Джеймс Кейн - Rainbow’s End

By that time, after a whispered conversation with Edgren, Mantle had left, I supposed to phone in from his car, for the undertaker to be called, and maybe the coroner notified. He was now trotting up the path, and Edgren, after a glance in his direction, told my mother: “OK, soon as Officer Mantle gets back. Someone must stay with this body, and—”

“Can do, can do,” Rufe chirped up, very friendly. “We’ll stand by, if you want. You don’t mind if we move upwind a little way? Like to the island, maybe.”

“Of course not,” said Edgren. “Thanks.” Then: “OK,” he told my mother.

So we all headed for the ranchhouse, he and my mother leading, Bledsoe and Knight following along behind, and York following them, with me. And sure enough, soon as we passed the kitchen there was my car, parked between it and the house. When I opened the door, Mom’s bag was on the seat, and her keys were in the ignition. Edgren had me open the house, and then open the kitchen, so he could search, as he did once before. I think he hoped he might find the money. When he came out my mother told him: “Now, if you want my help, I have to tell you I could do without yours for a while. There are people I have to see, to find out what they know, and they’re the kind of people who won’t come in to talk if police cars are parked outside.”

“You want us to leave?”

“If it’s not asking too much.”

Knight nodded. “OK,” said Edgren. “We’ll clear out soon as we’ve cleared the undertaker, when he comes for that corpse. By now, Officer Mantle has put in the call.”

“And one other thing: I’ll have to be using that phone for some fairly personal calls. I have to know if it’s bugged.”

“Well, madam, as to that, we don’t give out information—”

“Is it bugged?” Her voice snapped.

“No, ma’am, it’s not.”

“That’s what I want to know.”

Knight eyed her, Bledsoe eyed her, York eyed her, Jill eyed her, and Edgren did. It was no trouble to see who was running the show. She thought a minute, then said: “Now, Dave, if you’ll drive us over — I think Jill can ride with us — we can get busy with what we have to do. First, we could use some lunch — or at least I could.”

I got in and she opened the other door, standing aside for Jill. “You ride in the middle,” she whispered.

“ You ride in the middle,” I snapped. “Let her ride by the door.”

Mother hesitated, then got in. Jill said: “I don’t have to ride at all!”

“OK, then, walk,” I told her.

I reached over Mother and closed the door, then pulled out after starting the motor. “You weren’t very nice to her,” said my mother.

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

“She’s a very sweet girl.”

“She’s a rotten little bitch.”

“She had some provocation.”

“What provocation?”

“When you lose a hundred thousand dollars—”

“Ninety-eight thousand dollars.”

“When you lose $98,000, you’ll find out, all by yourself, what it can do to you — your temper, your love, your everything.”

“She called me a thief.”

“Did the officers call you that first?”

“Does she have to call me everything they think up?”

“It makes a difference.”

“Not to me.”

All the cars were still there, but we parked and went inside. I went back to the kitchen to get her something to eat, but she put her arms around me and edged me back to the living room. “I’ll take over,” she said. “You’ve been put through the wringer — sit down and I’ll bring you something.” A fire was built and I lit it. Pretty soon she came in with some lunch — a couple of ham sandwiches, some pie, milk, coffee. We sat there eating, and one by one the cars left, the officers ringing the bell, to tell me “stand by,” as usual, and to wish her luck with her looking, in a most respectful way.

Bledsoe did the same, being much upset still, and then Santos was there, after supervising his men, as they shoved something wrapped in a tarp into his dead wagon. He checked it over with me, the cemetery lot we had, that Mr. Howell was buried in, the kind of casket I wanted, and so on. He gave it to me quick, the arrangements they’d made for the inquest, “which will now be kind of a double.” While he was talking, Knight rang the bell to explain it to me from his angle. After he left Jill showed, from the path that led from the ranchhouse, York behind her, but they got in their cars and drove off without ringing the bell.

When Santos left, that seemed to be all, but when Mother finished eating she jumped up and picked up the phone, saying: “I have to call Sid and get him over here.”

“What for?” I asked, sounding sour in spite of myself.

“The money,” she answered.

“To hell with the money,” I snapped, “and once more, to hell with her. Who’s paying you to get it back? She’s not, I promise you.”

“It’s not her. If who took it is who I think, they’re a Giles from Flint, and turned on her the selfsame way they turned on other Gileses three years and more ago. I have to get them for that.”

“And Sid knows who they are?”

“Sid knows everything.”

“I could do without him.”

“I couldn’t, not today. I need him.”

She had dialed and now someone answered, a child from what I could hear. Sid wasn’t married, but he had what he called a housekeeper, kind of a fleshy-looking woman who had a couple of children. My mother asked for Sid, and the answer seemed to be he’d gone to Marietta. She left word if he should call, then hung up and came back, to sit with me on the sofa. She picked up my hand and kissed it, and all of a sudden the day melted off, and it was just her and me, in a moment of beautiful peace. I said: “Well, here we are.”

“Yes, darling. And I love it.”

“Me too — but who are we?”

“What do you mean, who are we?”

“We know who you are, of course, but who am I? Mother, who is my father?”

She closed her eyes, as though in pain, and when she opened them didn’t look at me, but stared straight ahead. Then: “Dave, your father’s a very big man, one you’re going to be proud of, when he finally makes himself known. But my lips have been sealed all these years, on account of his wife — this girl he had married shortly before he met me, who got sick almost at once, and after that wasn’t a wife, but an invalid dependent he couldn’t turn his back on — at least as he thought. She was dying. She still is — 22 years have gone by, and she’s still dying, Dave. She had a stroke that made her as helpless as a baby and she stays out there in Arizona, where she lives with her nurse.”

She closed her eyes again, beat her knee with her fist, and moaned: “I shouldn’t talk that way. I sound as though I want her to hurry up, and I mustn’t! And yet I can’t help it, I do! I want him! I want him all to myself! I want an end of this secret we have!”

“Why doesn’t he get a divorce?”

“He won’t cast her off.”

“It doesn’t matter to her — not so good for you. Why should he put her ahead of you?”

“I asked him that once; I screamed it at him. I can be pretty rotten. I come from Flint, West Virginia. He shut me up, though. So I had to calm down, and did. Know what he said, Dave?”

“What?”

“ ‘She has to die.’ ”

“That shuts me up, too.” And then: “You’re going to be married, though, soon as she does die?”

“I think so.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Dave, we discuss it often. You have to understand. We live together. We have a beautiful home on the river in Indianapolis. He introduces me to his friends. We entertain them together. Of course, for how it looks, I have a house of my own, next door, so I’m just a friend. I have no reason to fear, to suspect him at all, and yet — I’m a woman, Dave. I’ll believe it when I see it, when I’m looking at that ring he puts on my finger.”