Donald Westlake - Two Much!

“That’s hard to say.” I could only find one shoe; then the other turned out to be under the bed. “I’ll call you tonight,” I said.

“Be sure to get that blood test”

“I’ll call my doctor as soon as I get to the office.” Shirt on and tucked in, I went toward her to kiss her good-bye. But she turned away, studying her hair in that damn mirror again. Standing behind her, looking at her reflected face, I said, “Does this mood go away?”

“Well find out, won’t we?” she said.

“Right. Well, don’t bother to see me out, I can find my own way.”

She didn’t say anything. She was brooding at herself in the mirror when I left the bedroom.

Betty’s door was now entirely closed. Down the hall I went, feeling very nervous, and ducked into the guest bathroom again without seeing anybody. Closing the door, I sat on the toilet and leaned my ear close to the keyhole, so I’d hear when Liz walked by.

It took a while, and once again I had leisure to think. I visualized Liz entering the lavatory, hearing the shower running, going in there and finding the room empty, turning off the water, and then meeting Betty in the middle. “Where’s Bart?” “Who?”

I’m too greedy. I shouldn’t have signed, I should have kept to my original plan and made Art disappear. Look what was happening this morning, and this was only the beginning.

And we were rapidly reaching the point where exposure would mean a lot more than a simple loss of income. We were moving into Felony land now: bigamy, fraud, God knows what else. I could even wind up in jail at the end of this; both of us, Art and Bart, serving concurrent sentences.

Sounds in the hall, somebody going by. Once they were past me, I opened the door a crack and peeked out, and if was Liz moving away down the corridor. Looking at her, I found myself wishing it was Betty I could give up, and not entirely because of the two grand a month.

Oh, well, stick with the possible. Once she was out of sight, I nipped out of the guest’s John and sprinted back down the hall toward the bedrooms again. And all I needed now was for Betty’s door to open, for Betty to come out and find me running along here, for Betty to begin asking...

It didn’t happen. Into Liz’s room, across it, into the lavatory, through it into the steamier-than-ever tub room. There were large storage drawers under the counter, some of them empty. Yanking my clothing off, I jammed it all into an empty drawer, added my contact lenses wrapped in toilet paper from Liz’s John, and stepped into the shower spray just long enough to get wet Then I turned the water off, got a big soft golden bath towel from a shelf, put my glasses on, and returned to Betty, who was standing in front of a mirror on the wall, dressed, patting her hair. Turning a sweet smile toward me, she said, jokingly, “You must have been very dirty.”

“Now that I’m yours,” I said, “I’ll have to take very good care of myself.” Twice, everything twice.

“Do you want breakfast?”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “For some reason, I’m starved.”

What a day. I told Betty I wanted to go to the apartment I allegedly shared with Art, because I wanted to get the rest of my things from there. She offered, naturally, to go with me, but I managed to talk her out of it. Once out of the apartment, I headed for Dr. Osbertson, the quack who fails to cure my flu every winter, and received my second blood test in less than a week. From there I went to my apartment; the freak who was subletting was away, but had left traces of himself behind. Apparently his hobby was blowing up pizzas. Picking my way through the swamp, I packed a lot of junk that could be Bart’s, and toted it all away to the office, where the usual turmoil and trouble from my other life awaited me. I let it keep on waiting while I called Ralph out at Fair Harbor, but unfortunately got Candy instead. “Ralph Minck, please,” I said, but she recognized my voice, made a few formerly unprintable suggestions, and hung up on me. And through it all I kept thinking, I have to get rid of Bart, just for a little while; I have to get him out of town, I have to make him go away, go away, go away .

When I was a kid, the Saturday afternoon movie would occasionally show a treasure-hunting underwater diver caught in the clutches of an octopus. Fighting and struggling, bubbles rising up, seabed roiling, octopus arms waving all over the place. For the first time, I understood exactly what that diver was going through.

Over the next hour I dealt with the mail, the telephone messages, crap from illustrators, threats from the printer, filthy language from the landlord. “I’m getting out of this, prick,” I told the landlord, while my mental image-screen showed dollar bills with little wings flying in the window. And through it all I was thinking, Bart away .

I tried to be smarter than that. I tried to reason with myself, convince myself of the insanity of even planning to marry Liz. Stay with the old plan, take the lumber mills and run, don’t be so greedy, don’t be so stupid, don’t be so crazy. I told me, I really did, I can’t claim I didn’t warn me, but none of it did any good. In my brain, or whatever that is behind my eyes, I was already committed, I was thinking only, Get rid of Bart .

The only distraction was a pair of phone messages from Linda Ann Margolies. Regretfully I dropped them into the wastebasket; I had liked that girl, but one more complication would finish me forever. Or should I just return her call, talk for a minute, see if she knew any new jokes?

No. I phoned Ralph again instead, and this time I got him. “Listen, Ralph,” I said, “could you do a little job of research for me? On the QT.”

“Sure. Trouble at the firm?”

“No trouble. In fact, and this’ll probably surprise you as much as it does me, I’m thinking of getting married.”

“No kidding! Well, you old son of a gun. Anybody I know?”

“You never met her,” I said. “She’s got a place at Point O’ Woods.”

“Rich, huh? Trust you.”

That was something nobody was likely to do. I said, “She’s the one I’d like you to look up. Also her lawyer.”

“Her lawyer? You aren’t pulling something funny, are you?”

“Of course not I’ll tell you the situation, Ralph. I’m in love with this girl, and she’s in love with me, but her lawyer’s out to get her for himself, because she’s rich. Anyway, that’s what I think.”

“That’s unethical,” Ralph said. He sounded shocked.

“Exactly what I told him to his face,” I said. Then, speaking to Ralph in what I took to be his own language, I said, “He brazened it out But I just don’t trust him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Ernest Volpinex.”

“What firm is he with?”

“I have no idea. No, wait I think I have his card. Unless I threw it away.” I made a fast search on my desk, but it wasn’t there. “Sony, I don’t have it any more.”

“That’s all right. I can look him up.”

“Fine.”

“What do you want to know, exactly?”

“Well,” I said, “he told my fiancée she had to get married this year or she’d have a great big tax bite next April. She’s an orphan, see, her parents both died last New Year’s Eve.”

“Before or after midnight?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, what’s her name?”

“Elizabeth Kerner. What I want to know is her financial position. How much did she inherit, does she really have that tax problem, what her general situation is. And about Volpinex, I want to know what kind of bird he is. I think he’s a crook, and I’d like to know his reputation in his field, and any scandal or anything like that in his past.”