Росс Макдональд - Meet Me at the Morgue

“I got Fred drunk that Saturday night. It was his first time in two years, but Fred was always a pushover for liquor. I bought him a bottle myself and fed him a few triples after supper so he wouldn’t know what was going on. Then I took the Lincoln and went to meet them at the time they said. It was ten o’clock they said.

“I didn’t have any plan to kill Kerry. I wasn’t thinking. I just felt surrounded. It happened like automatically when I saw them standing there in the road beside their car, two little men there standing in my lights. Lemp saw me coming and got away. He rolled away under their car. But I knew I hit Kerry. I felt the bumps, double bumps. I didn’t care. I loved him so much, but he didn’t love me any more.

“I drove up on the ridge away from the city and parked for a while. I tried to think. There was a moon that night. I remember how it looked, shining on the water. It was pretty on the water. I sat there watching it for a while. All I could think was: ‘I killed Kerry tonight, and I’m as cool and calm as moon on the water.’ That is the way I felt.

“When I went back, their car was gone. I said to myself: ‘I frightened you off, Art Lemp. I’m a better man than you are, Art Lemp.’ Kerry was lying on the side of the road. He looked dead. He didn’t look like Kerry. He looked like a picture of a dead man all black and white in the moonlight. I didn’t stop. I didn’t want to go near him. That way I could kid myself that he was never alive.

“Fred was fighting blind drunk when I got home. His bottle was gone. He wanted another bottle. I told him he was too far gone to drive, but he wouldn’t listen. He was blind drunk and deaf drunk. They picked him up that way in town – I don’t know how he ever got as far as town. What could I do? I let him take the blame for what I did to Kerry Snow.

“What else could I do?” she asked us, grinding her bony wrists against the handcuffs. “If I confessed that I was the one, they’d know I did it out of malice and forethought. They’d dig it out all about Kerry and me, how he went over the hill so he could stay with me, and all those days we had in the flat together, and how Fred’s jealousy sent him up to the pen. I couldn’t tell them. I couldn’t tell Fred, either. He could never hold anything back, he always went by the rules. He’d broadcast it to the world.

“Fred never did find out that it was Kerry, and he never did find out that I was the one. I thought for a while, when he got his probation and all, that things would turn out for us yet. Then Art Lemp came back one night. He was scared of me now, I could tell by the way he acted, only he wasn’t scared enough. He thought he was smarter than me, that he could outsmart me and out-talk me. I let him think that.

“Lemp told me how lucky I was. He told me he did me a favor, by taking all the stuff out of Kerry’s clothes so the body couldn’t be identified. Now it was my turn to do him a favor, he said. He was full of his plan to take Jamie, still burning up with that plan. He said he was a mastermind, that he could operate by remote control and never get caught. – I was the one that was caught. I had to do what he said, I had to tell him what the Johnsons did at all different times of the day, and spy on Mr. Johnson’s savings-book to see how much cash there was. But that last week I worked out a plan of my own.

“He wasn’t even going to pay me!” she cried in a surge of anger. “Not a red cent was he going to pay me! A man so cheap, didn’t he deserve to die?”

“He deserved to die,” I said.

My agreement seemed to calm her. She went on: “And I was the one who had to do his dirty work for him. The hardest part was Saturday morning. I had to lie to Fred and make him believe me. I told him Mrs. Johnson sent him a message, that she was sick in bed and sent him a message through me. She was worried, I told him, because somebody threatened to kidnap Jamie. He was to take Jamie off to the desert house where he would be safe from the kidnappers over the weekend.

“Fred swallowed it. I was glad, not just for myself. I knew the boy would be safe with Fred, as long as Fred had breath in his body. He did take good care of Jamie, didn’t he?”

“Better care than he took of himself,” I said.

Helen’s bright head was bowed forward into her hands.

Amy Miner said: “Fred was always like that. Even after he knew about me and Kerry, he was a kind husband to me. He said that he would give me another chance, and I tried to love him. I tried to be good for him. It’s funny, after I killed Kerry Snow, I really did start to love him, but it was too late.”

Her father leaned forward: “You ruined Fred.”

“Shut up, Danny.”

He withdrew his head and neck tortoiselike into the shabby armchair. The time-laden air in the room, cross-sectioned by a single slash of light, was heavy and oppressive. I tried to imagine the childhood that had been passed here, the family life from which Amy had sprung defiantly into the world and fallen beating her angry fists against it.

Helen lifted her face. It was grave and lovely. She said: “Fred Miner was a good man, the decentest man I’ve known. Thank you for giving him back to us.”

“You’re thanking me?” Amy said incredulously.

“Just for that one thing, and for caring about what happened to Jamie. I can’t forgive you for the rest.”

“I didn’t ever expect to be forgiven. I didn’t hardly expect to come out of it alive. If Fred didn’t believe me about the message from you, Lemp was going to make me steal the boy myself. I knew that much. I didn’t know all his plans. He was cagy about them. But I caught on fast when I saw that letter he sent you. I said to myself right away: ‘Art Lemp, your days are numbered.’ ” Her voice rang out in the room.

“I had this icepick in the house. I snitched it from Danny’s store last time I was down here.”

“You always were a snitcher,” her father said.

Her mouth twisted scornfully. “Which is worse, a snitcher or a cheapskate? What did you ever give me in my life, except a damn good beating whenever you got the chance?”

“I should have licked you oftener and harder.”

“Go on, Mrs. Miner,” Sam said.

She drew a deep, sighing breath. “Well, as soon as I could get away, I took the bus into town and went to the station. I could see the front of the newsstand from the window in the ladies’ waiting-room. I could see everything that happened: Mr. Johnson leaving the suitcase there, and then the bellhop taking it away. I saw Lemp come out of the Pacific Inn with the suitcase, and I followed him down to the beach. It was such a nice bright day. I thought to myself: ‘Art Lemp, you’ve lived long enough. The sun will shine brighter without you.’

“He was trying to start the engine of his car and back out of the sand. I walked right up to the side window. I said: ‘Do you need any help, Mr. Lemp?’ Before he could answer me or move from his seat I leaned in through the window and stabbed him to death. He was surprised. You should have seen his face.”

“I saw it, Amy.”

“Not when he died, you didn’t. I saw him die. He just lay over on the seat and died with his eyes open. It wasn’t like killing Kerry, when I felt so calm and empty. I was excited. It was what I wanted, to see that old man die.”

“No,” her father said. “You oughtn’t to talk like that. What kind of an impression–?”

“Shut up, Danny.”

He fell silent. In the fading light his face was a pair of eyebrows mounted on a white receding blur, his body a pair of thin knees clasped by large hairy hands.

She said: “I was only doing what I had to do, getting rid of him for good and all. It was funny when it turned out that it was what I wanted to do. And then there was the money. I had this wrapping-paper and string I brought from home. I thought if it worked out, if I really had the nerve to kill him, why shouldn’t I get the money out of it? Mr. Johnson had plenty left. I never had any money in my life.