Donald Westlake - Two Much!

“Betty,” I said, “listen to me.” But even I couldn’t hear my voice in the midst of those shrieks of hers.

And for what happened next I blame the motion picture industry of America. I had ceased to function as a thinking, planning intelligence, I had become a character in a specific sequence.

Three characters: two male, one female. One of the males is dead, shot by the other. The female arrives, sees, screams, turns, runs away. We’ve all seen mis sequence, in how many movies? And she runs toward the staircase, she always runs toward the staircase. And the man with the gun lifts it and fires. That’s what he does, every time.

Every time.

When i awoke, they were still there.

It was not callousness that had permitted me to go into a deep and dreamless sleep right after committing the first two murders of my life. At first I’d been so terrified I couldn’t think at all, and if I’d stayed awake I really believe I would have gone off the deep end. But my brain, more equal to the emergency than I was, simply called for a crash dive, and out I went like a stage hypnotist’s shill.

And when I awoke, they were still there: Volpinex by the bedroom door, Betty out in the hall by the head of the stairs. It was after two in the morning and my mind was clear. I came to consciousness all at once, remembering everything and knowing exactly what I should do in order to get out from under.

I started small, with that damned manila envelope full of un-twinning. It was the easiest to get rid of, and gave me confidence for the tougher part to follow. I burned it in the bathroom sink, watching the yellow flames flare up from the photostats, watching it burn down to anonymous ash. I ran water, smeared it around, dried my hands on a towel. Now for the other two pieces of evidence.

It was hard getting them downstairs. Dead bodies don’t feel like-living bodies, and the differences kept making my stomach churn. Over and over I had to pause in my labors, stagger to the nearest open window, and pant the fresh air for a while. Then back to it, tugging and toting and dragging those two awkward misshapen creatures down the stairs and back to the kitchen. And now I know why corpses are called stiffs.

Flammables, flammables — I opened cabinet after cabinet. Charcoal starter, floor cleaner, various burnable liquids. Good good good. On went the oven and the four gas burners. I sprinkled my flammables over the remains, and from them in a line through the house and up the stairs and here and there at the scenes of the crimes. Then I carefully put all the cans and bottles back where I’d found them, stored just so.

Now the gun. Bring it downstairs, wipe it off with this dish towel here, then force Volpinex’s reluctant fingers around it, grasping it tight. Good. Now remove the gun from his grip, careful not to touch it with my bare hand, holding the barrel wrapped in the dish towel.

Lights out, throughout the house. The smell of escaping bottled gas was now rather strong in the kitchen, less so toward the front door. Out on the porch I went, carrying the gun in the dish towel. I trotted down the slate walk, paused, then pitched the gun underhand into a thick clump of bushes on the far side of the concrete public walk. Then back to the house I jogged, to toss the dish towel inside, light the trail of flammable liquid, and watch the flame skitter like a kitten across the wooden living room floor toward its unborn big brother in the kitchen.

I was at the beach, but had not yet reached the Point O’ Woods border fence, when I heard the explosion.

Gloria buzzed me at ten-fifteen.

“Yes?”

“Liz Kerner calling.”

“Right.” Click. “Morning, sweetheart. Have a nice wedding night?”

“Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard? What, are they announcing your orgasms on the six o’clock news?”

“Then you don’t know anything about it,” she said. “The police didn’t call?”

“Police? What for?”

“Don’t go away,” she said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” And she hung up.

Twenty minutes. Good. It had been very very hard this morning to pretend I was still the same old Art Dodge and that nothing had gone sour in my little merry-go-round world. Starting twenty minutes from now, I’d be able to relax into the shock that continued to be my primary true feeling.

Last night I’d traveled for an hour across Fire Island until, at the end of a rundown dock in Robbins Rest, I’d found a motorboat with an unconscious seminaked couple lying in the bottom of it, sleeping it off in fond embrace. The key was in the ignition, and it was simplicity itself to get behind the wheel, start the engine, and steer toward Bay Shore. About halfway across, the male started to wake up, but I clonked him with the fire extinguisher and that was that. The girl never moved.

I didn’t tie up to the dock at Bay Shore, but gave the boat a push and permitted it to drift away. Then I walked through town till I found an all-night diner, where I called a cab to take me to an address in Babylon, the next town toward New York. (There was no way to claim Bart’s new Thunderbird, which was a pity.) Behaving as though I were half-smashed, I told the driver to let me off at the corner so I could sneak into the house without waking up the li’l woman. He grinned at me and blew cigar smoke around and wished me luck, pal. I thanked him, feeling I needed it.

Another walk in Babylon to another all-night diner, where I called a cab from a different company and traveled this time to Mineola, playing the same sort of role. From Mineola, another company’s cab took me to Queens, and in Queens I picked up a regular New York City cab to bring me to my office in Manhattan, which I staggered into at twenty after six this morning. Directly into the sleeping bag I went, where I dozed fitfully, full of bad dreams, until Gloria arrived at nine. Since which time I’d been taking a lot of coffee and Excedrin, and assuring Gloria my condition was the result of several nights on the floor in that sleeping bag.

But another and much better excuse for my condition was on the way. Twenty minutes she’d said, but she made it in fifteen, brushing past Gloria just like last time and saying to me, “We have to talk in private.”

“We have to talk about your manners,” I told her. “Okay, Gloria, it’s all right.”

“If you say so,” she said, and closed the door gently behind her.

Liz dropped heavily into the second chair. She looked even worse than I felt: strain lines, fatigue, nervousness. “I’ve never known how to break news gently,” she said.

“Don’t tell me you want a divorce.” Art Dodge was a role I’d played successfully for years; I might have muddied the part recently with my loan-out interpretations of twin brother Bart, but the original characterization was still there, full-fleshed and ready to go. And never had I needed it as much as I did right now.

“Lay off the jokes,” she said. “You’ll just want to bite your tongue in a minute.”

I frowned at her. “Come off it, Liz,” I said. “Nothing’s that serious, not in your world. What’s up?”

“Betty and Bart are dead,” she said. Just like that.

“Ha ha,” I said, and then I brought myself up short and stared at her. We kept our eyes solemnly on one another and neither of us said a single solitary word while I silently counted, very slowly, to one hundred forty-three.

At which number, she looked away from me, shrugging, and said irritably, “I shouldn’t have to tell you this. The police should notify you, right?”

“Police? What was it, an accident? A car?”

She looked at me again. “Somebody killed them,” she said. “On purpose.”