Дональд Уэстлейк - Baby, Would I Lie?

“The unholy two.”

“Now and forever. However, Hiram says I gotta go back.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

The feeling that came over Sara now was much more real and much harder to take than her crocodile guilt over Binx Radwell. She’d enjoyed having Jack around, enjoyed sharing with him her reactions to this weird place, enjoyed sleeping with him. “What’s the hurry?” she asked.

“Well, it isn’t exactly a hurry,” he said. “I’ve been here almost a week as it is, and Hiram’s wanted me back since Wednesday. I stalled it as long as I could, but now I gotta go. I said to him, ‘Why don’t I stay till the end of the trial?’ and he said, ‘We have somebody covering the trial.’ ”

“Me.”

“That’s who he had in mind, all right.”

“I’ll miss you,” she said.

His face was really very attractive, in those rare moments when he permitted an honest expression to cross it. “We’ll miss one another,” he said with a rueful smile. “But then we’ll be together again.”

“I’ll hurry home.”

“You do that. The instant the trial’s over.”

“In the meantime,” she said, pointing at his wineglass, “don’t drink too much of that stuff. I’ll want you at your best tonight, for the farewell scene.”

Binx Radwell slept, when he slept, humidly, curled on his side, arms and legs bent, hands and feet twitching like a dog chasing a rabbit in his dreams — only, in his dreams, Binx was the rabbit. And Binx awoke, when he awoke, in terror, eyes staring, heart pounding, listening for horrors in the dark. Then he’d get up and work a while on the project until he was calm enough to go back to bed.

No one in the world knew about Binx’s project, and perhaps no one ever would. No one knew that Binx was a changed man, and perhaps no one ever would, but he was. The change had begun during the time when he was fired, when his fear and despair were at their most acute, and when he had nothing but time on his hands. He’d started the project then, partly to distract himself from reality and partly as an excuse to close himself into his study, away from Marcie and the kids.

Then, when he was rehired, the project languished, he returning to it only occasionally, usually when on assignment on the road. But when Massa died, and the Pure Reef Development Corporation took over control of the Galaxy , Binx knew immediately and instinctively that change was coming and that the change could not possibly be for the good. He went back to the project, then, more seriously than he’d done anything in years, and it had grown.

He still worked on it, but only at night, when the great tides heaved him out of sleep onto the stony shore of consciousness. By day, he was either too busy or had been drinking too much; only at night, in the sharp edge of night’s terror, did he have the clarity to work on the project.

Saturday night, Branson, Missouri. Binx’s bedroom in the Galaxy house on Cherokee is the only room in the house to remain what it had been, all the rest having been converted to the purposes of communication. Three times he clawed out of sleep, shaking, sweating, and calmed himself with half an hour or so of further work on the project. The fourth time he jolted awake, scared, staring, surrounded by enemies, there was daylight beyond the drawn window shade and the sounds of voices on the other side of his closed door.

It was Sunday, and there was no rest for the wicked. Binx arose, locked the project away in the attaché case under the bed as usual, spent some time in the adjoining bath, and went out to see what fresh mischief had been occupying his troops. Later today, he’d have to go over to 222, which still sailed merrily on like a ship of the heedless condemned in an allegory, but not yet; he wasn’t up to 222 just yet.

The kitchen was now a darkroom, so for breakfast Binx had to get into a Galaxy car and drive downtown, ten minutes away, to eat various kinds of grease. Then he went back to the house on Cherokee and prepared himself for his two required awful phone calls to Florida, the daily obeisances — to the Galaxy and to Marcie — but as he sat there, tasting this morning’s grease and thinking about what he might say to the citizens of Florida, the front door opened and a diseased Englishman entered, his pale and poxy face open in a smarmy smile. “Happy time, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “You must all think happy thoughts now. Boy is among you.”

It was true. Boy Cartwright, the most successful of the Weekly Galaxy s editors because the most loathesome, a sickly, pasty creature in his mid-forties, who had lived most of his adult life on champagne and Valium, who would sell his mother for a nickel and beat her up for you as a favor, was here , here in Branson, here in the Galaxy house, here on Binx’s turf !

Binx leaped to his feet from his chair of pain, squawking: “This is my story!”

Boy gazed upon him with superior pleasure: “Ah, Binx, lad,” he purred, with that voice like a fur-coated tongue, “what a bundle of energy you are. Come walk with me and talk with me, and tell me of many things.” Boy crooked a finger, smiling like a road-show Oscar Wilde, and turned to go back outside, fouling the morning air by his presence.

Binx had no choice but to follow. He did, trying to look stern and manly and in charge, to bolster the morale of the onlooking troops, but inside he quaked with fear and rage. He knew what this was; he knew what this meant. Don Grove and Chauncey Chapperrell had been arrested, had spent a night in the Branson bastille and been fined and tongue-lashed by a local judge, and it was going to be Binx’s fault. Unfair, unfair, unfair; but who ever expected fairness, after all? (Binx did, and couldn’t help it.)

Boy wanted to stroll up and down, though there were no sidewalks, and the Galaxy’ s cars lined both curbs. So they walked in the street, on which, fortunately, there was rarely any traffic, and Binx said, “Just tell me one thing straight out. Am I fired again?”

Boy smiled like a gargoyle made of bread dough. “But of course not, dear boy,” he said. “Our lords and masters admire your persistence; they esteem you. Really.”

“They sent you here.”

“To assist, dear boy, assist, nothing more.” Gazing around in mild amuse, he said, “What a charming corner of Americana this is, every bit. One will enjoy working here, rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi, taking the pulse of the great unwashed.”

“What’s going to happen to me , Boy?”

Boy looked at Binx as though a bit surprised to see him still there. “You, dear boy? Why nothing. Everything’s already happened to you .”

“Why do they think I need to be assisted?”

“Oh, well, our employees in Newgate overnight, you know, there was the feeling, just the slightest feeling, you know, that perhaps the hand on the tiller was not quite so firm as it might be.”

“How can that be my fault? How?”

“No one’s talking about fault, dear boy, blame, all that sort of thing. You take these things too much to heart, if I may say so. Take the long view, lad, take the long view.”

“I will,” Binx said grimly, his mind hardening. “I definitely will.”

“We’re closing down, you know, that little bacchanal of yours over at that hovel called the Palace,” Boy said.

“We are?”

“Its effectiveness has diminished. We’ll retain the space, however; in fact, I’ll be staying there.” With a pouting little smirk. Boy said, “One has always wanted to live in the Palace.”

“When do you want me to shut it down?”