Дональд Уэстлейк - Collected Stories

“I know, I know.”

“You’ll be just as wonderful, I know you will.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Laurena asked her. “I’ve trained for it long enough.”

“Rest,” the older woman urged. “I’ll come back for you in fifteen minutes.” And with that, at last, she was gone, leaving Laurena semi-alone, the raucous chorus surging when the door was open.

Boy lunged upward, grabbing for handholds among the robes, knees exploding like bags full of water. His first sentences were already clear in his mind, but as he staggered from concealment, hand up as though hailing a cab, movement flashed from off to his left.

Boy looked, and lunging from another hiding place, between himself and the stageward door, heaved a woman, middle-aged, depressingly over-weight, in a home permanent, brandishing a stained steak knife from the five-and-ten like a homicidal whale.

Good God! Have they both come back? Is there hope for Ruby Mae and Ruby Jean’s mom after all?

Laurena’s makeup mirror was positioned so that it was the whale she saw in it first, not Boy. Turning, not afraid, still imperious, she leveled her remote gaze on the madwoman and said, “What are you?”

“You know who I am!” snarled the madwoman, answering the wrong question. “I’m here to finish what my mother started!”

And in that instant Boy knew everything. He knew that the roused chorus in the temple auditorium meant that cries for help would go for naught. He knew that escape past the madwoman out that door toward the stage was impossible. He knew that he himself could make a dash for the opposite door, the one by which he’d entered, but that Laurena, by the makeup table, would never make it.

But he knew even more. He knew the scam.

However, what he didn’t know was what to do about it. Where, in all this, was poor Boy’s story? Should he zip out the door, report the murders, have that scoop? Should he remain here, rescue the maiden without risk to himself and in hope of the usual reward, have that scoop (and reward)? (The “without risk to himself” part tended to make that plan Plan B.)

How old was she, that was the question, the most important question of all. Answer that one first.

“Dears, dears, dears,” he announced in his plummiest voice, swanning forward like the emcee in Cabaret , “play nice, now, don’t fight.”

They both gaped at him. Like a tyro at the game arcade, the madwoman didn’t know what to do when faced with two simultaneous targets. She hung there, flat-footed, one Supphose’d shin before the other, knife arm raised, looking now mostly like a reconstructed dinosaur at the museum, while Laurena gave him a stare of cool disbelief and said, “And who are you? ”

“Oh, but, dear, you must remember me,” Boy told her, talking very fast indeed to keep everybody off balance. “Dear old Boy, from the Galaxy , I still have your thank-you note, I’ve treasured it always, I brought it with me in my little bag here.” Deciding it would be dangerous to reach into the bag — it might trigger some unfortunate response from the dinosaur — he hurtled on, saying, “Of course, dear Laurena, one had to see you again, after all this time, report our meeting, tell the world we—”

The penny dropped at last, and now she was shocked. “You’re a reporter? ”

“Oh, you do remember!” Boy exulted. “One knew you would!”

“You can’t stop me!” the madwoman honked, as though she hadn’t been stopped already.

But of course she could reactivate herself, couldn’t she? Boy told her, “One did not have the pleasure of meeting your mother, dear, I’m sorry to say, but one did see her in custody and at the trial, and she certainly was forceful.”

Whoops; wrong word. “And so am I!” cried the madwoman, and lumbered again toward Laurena.

“No no, wait wait wait!” cried Boy. “I wanted to ask you about your mother.” As the madwoman had now halved the distance between herself and the shrinking Laurena, Boy felt an increasing urgency as he said, “I wrote about her, you know, in the Weekly Galaxy , you must have seen it.”

That stopped her. Blinking at Boy, actually taking him in for the first time, a reluctant awe coming into her face and voice, she said, “The Weekly Galaxy? ”

“Boy Cartwright, at your service,” he announced with a smile and a bow he’d borrowed from Errol Flynn, who would not have recognized it. “And as a reporter,” he assured her, “I assure you I am not here to alter the situation, but simply to observe. Madam, I will not stand in your way.”

Laurena gawked at him. “You won’t?”

“Good,” the madwoman said, hefted her knife, and thudded another step forward.

“But first, ” Boy went hurriedly on, “I do so want to interview Laurena. Very briefly, I promise you.”

They both blinked at him. The madwoman said, “Interview?”

“Two or three questions, no more, and I’m out of your way forever.”

“But—” Laurena said.

Taking the madwoman’s baffled silence for consent, Boy turned to Laurena. “The silver-haired party was your grandmother,” he said.

Managing to find reserves of haughtiness somewhere within, Laurena froze him with a glare: “I am not giving interviews.”

“Oh, but, dear,” Boy said, with a meaningful head nod toward the madwoman, “ this exclusive interview you will grant, I just know you will, and I must begin, I’m sorry to say, with a personal question. Personal to me. I need to know how old you are. You are over twenty-one, aren’t you?”

“What? Of course I—”

“Honest Injun?” Boy pressed. “One is not a bartender, dear, one has other reasons to need to know. I would guess you to be twenty-five? Twenty-six?” The change in her eyes told him he’d guessed right. “Ah, good,” he said with honest relief.

“That’s right,” the madwoman said.

They both turned to her, having very nearly forgotten her for a few seconds, and she said, “People don’t get older in heaven, do they?”

“No, they do not,” Boy agreed.

Laurena said, “What difference does it make?”

“Well, if you were twenty-one, you see,” he explained, “you’d be my daughter, which would very much complicate the situation.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Laurena said, which meant, of course, that she had every idea what he was talking about.

Now he did dare a quick dip into his bag, and before the madwoman could react he’d brought out and shown her his audiocassette recorder. “Tools of the trade, dear,” he explained. “No interview without the tape to back it up.”

Laurena finally began to show signs of stress, saying, “What are you doing? She’s got a knife, she’s going to kill me!”

“Again, darling, yes,” Boy said, switching on the machine, aiming it at her. “Just so soon as I leave, at the end of the interview.” Because now at last he knew what his story was, he smiled upon her with as much fondness as if she had been his daughter — interesting quandary that would have been, in several ways — and said, “Of course, in your answers, you might remove our friend’s reason for wanting to kill you all over again.”

Growling, the madwoman bawled, “Nobody’s going to stop me! I’m here to finish what my mother started!”

“Yes, of course, you are, dear,” Boy agreed. “But what if your mother did finish the job?”

The madwoman frowned. “What do you mean? There’s Laurena Layla right there!”

“Well, let’s ask her about that,” Boy suggested, and turned attention, face, and recorder to the young woman. “I must leave very soon,” he pointed out. “I only hope, before I go, you will have said those words that will reassure this lovely lady that her mother did not fail, her mother is a success, she can be proud of her mother forever. Can’t she, dear?”