Hard Case Crime: Shooting Star & Spiderweb (27 page)

“Help me lift him up!” I panted.

Lorna stared over the edge of the pool. Her lips twitched, and then her mouth tried to run away from her face. But she reached down and held Mike’s collar as I pulled myself over the side and then grabbed him under the arms.

I pushed and lifted. He was heavy as lead. Lead. Dead. No, he was all right. He had to be all right.

Then he was sprawled out on the grass, face down, and I was kneeling over him, pressing his back and lifting him, press and lift—

“Is wrong, perhaps?”

I jerked and Lorna jerked. Mike Drayton just lay there.

We stared up at the plumpness of Miss Bauer.

“What are you doing here?”

“She is with me.”

Professor Hermann emerged from the shadows of the walk. “What goes on here? We’ve been looking all over for you. When the party broke up, we left, and I called your apartment from a filling station. No answer, so I came back. Apparently it was wise that I did so.”

“We had a fight,” I said. “I hit him and he fell into the pool. I fished him out. But—”

The Professor pushed me aside. He knelt and took off his hat. The bald moon of his skull shone down over Mike’s face as he turned him over on the grass. A fat hand fumbled beneath the soggy wet shirt. It came to rest there, and it stayed forever.

The wind stopped moving. The grass stopped rustling. The stars stopped twinkling. The trees bent forward, listening...listening for a heartbeat.

“He’s dead,” said Professor Hermann.

Then everything was moving again, fast. Too fast.

“Steady up.” Miss Bauer was holding me.

“But he can’t be. We’ve got to work on his lungs, get the water out! He couldn’t have stayed under more than a minute or so—”

“He was unconscious,” the Professor said. “It is too bad.”

“Too bad?” We all looked at Lorna. Her mouth was twitching again, but this time a torrent of sound gushed out.

“I’ll say it’s too bad! Wait until the papers get hold of this, wait until Lolly finds out. I’m through! Himberg will tie a can to me. And the cops! God, somebody do something. You got to—”

I shook her. It only jumbled the sounds together.

“Oh God...Himberg...gotta...”

I slapped the mouth shut.

“Cut that out!”

The Professor put on his hat, rose and laid his hand on Lorna’s shaking shoulder. “He’s right. Hysteria will not help, now. We must be calm. We must think.”

“Think? What good will thinking do? Mike’s dead, and they’ll find out, they’ll get us—”

“No. Not if we’re calm.”

That stopped her for a moment. The Professor’s voice gained assurance as he went on.

“Listen to me, Miss Lewis. I may have a solution, but you’ll have to help me.”

“How?”

“By answering questions. Here.”

He gave her a cigarette, lit it for her. He watched it wobble between her lips, then steady a bit as she inhaled.

“Better? Now listen to me and answer. Are there any servants in the house now?”

“No. I told Frieda to clear out when the gang left. The rest were just hired for the party. They went home, all of them.”

“Good. Can you remember what Mike did at the party?”

“Mike—No—I don’t want to talk about him—”

“You must. It’s important. Your life, your career.”

He knew how to get to her, all right. Not with “life” but with “career.” She sobered at the word.

“What time did Mike go upstairs with his bottle?”

“How did you know about that?”

“I saw him. Miss Bauer saw him. Others must have seen him—that group on the stairway.”

“Yes, you’re right. Let me see, now. It was around eleven, I guess.”

“Was he drunk?”

“No more than usual.”

“He drank frequently?”

“He’s been lushed up, off and on, for the last six months now, like I told you the other day.”

“And people know that? Your friends?”

“Right.”

“Did they know why—the reasons he had for drinking?”

“Say, I don’t tell people everything. You know and Judd knows, because I told him tonight. But outside of that, nobody. I guess they all thought he was just a rummy.”

“But it is established generally that he drank a great deal. That he was moody, anti-social.”

“He pulled that stunt at every party I’ve given, or every one we went to. Not that he’d come with me very often, the louse. And when he did, he generally sneaked off in the middle of the evening and took the car with him.”

“You say he’d get drunk and then leave a party—drive off somewhere alone?”

“Sure. He wrecked the station wagon about four months ago. Drove it into a piling near Santa Barbara. How the hell he ever got way up there I don’t know. He didn’t know, he was that stiff. It was in the papers.”

“That time he wrecked the car—how long was he gone?”

“Two days, nearly. The cops picked him up. He wasn’t hurt, but I had a hard time helping him beat the rap. Himberg fixed it somehow.”

“Your friends know his habits. You’re sure?”

“Yes.” She gasped. “Please, Professor, don’t ask me anything more. I think I’m going to be sick.”

She weaved away and was sick—very sick—over by the trees. I turned and watched Miss Bauer as she worked silently, furiously, on Mike.

“Please,” said the Professor. “That is useless. Besides, I have a plan.”

He looked up at me. “Did anyone else know of your... visit here at the coach house?”

I shook my head. “I stopped in at a tavern below the hill here, but there was no one around except the bartender. I didn’t spill anything to him, of course.”

“Good. Then will you please take my car and drive yourself home? I’ll get in touch with you tomorrow.”

“But Mike—the police—”

“I am taking care of Mike. And there will be no police, if you do as I say. Go, now. I must talk to Miss Lewis alone.”

Miss Bauer tugged at the Professor’s sleeve. “I do not like this,” she said. “Let me continue. The water is leaving the lungs. If we send for a rescue squad, he may yet be alive.”

The Professor faced her. “That is for me to decide.”

It was more than a statement. It was a command. Miss Bauer bowed her head. The Professor went over to Lorna and took her arm. She sobbed against him and he began whispering to her. His voice was soft, soothing, gentle. I couldn’t hear anything he said, and they both ignored me.

Then I was walking, walking away from the swimming pool; walking away from the thing that lay on the grass, shining white and bloated in the moonlight, like a dead fish. I walked to the car, climbed in, drove away. I went up to the apartment, closed the door. I ripped off my wet clothes and fell down on the bed.

First I was sleeping and then I was watching. I watched my smart-aleck brother Charlie sneering as he read about the murder in the papers. I watched myself run from the cops. I watched them catch me, grill me. I saw myself stumbling up the iron stairs to the cell block. I gripped the rail with hands that left a trail of sweat and blood.

I talked to my lawyer, I talked to all of them: the state’s attorney, the judge, the twelve good men and true. They looked like the people I’d seen on the beach. Lorna screamed at them, but they took her out of court.

The matron who dragged her away was “Mrs. Hubbard.” She had the same power, and I could see she was able to foretell my future. They could all do that. The jury did and then the judge did.

I saw the Professor at the last. He was better than a priest. I watched myself pleading, couldn’t he slip me something? Just one little favor, that’s all I asked, just for him to slip me something so I wouldn’t have to suffocate.

It was no use. Nothing was any use. No wonder my legs wouldn’t work, no wonder they had to drag me, no wonder I fell as they took me into the gas chamber. That gas chamber—nobody could hear me scream, and there was a hissing, and then I coughed. I choked, my meal came up and my lungs came up and my chest burned with a million novo-cained needles. Only this was different.

I watched them carry me and cut me. What was left went into the wagon. The grave diggers get union pay, and it’s steady work. The Professor brought flowers. Charlie didn’t want my body. But the Professor was kind, he brought flowers, and he was the only one who came. Then it rained that night on my grave, and the flowers melted into a soggy mess. Like the soggy mess inside the box.

But how could I know that if I was dead? I couldn’t be dead. This was all out of my imagination. I was safe in bed in the apartment. Safe until tomorrow, when they found out.

I opened my eyes, then fell forward into a pool of deeper sleep. Somewhere in that pool I found the body of Mike Drayton. We drowned there together...

Coming up out of the darkness, into the sunlight, I felt like a new man. A man who needed a shower, a shave, breakfast, a cigarette.

I had them all. But when I lit the cigarette, my hand trembled. The old yoga wasn’t working for Judson Roberts today.

I wondered if Professor Hermann was working. I wondered whether he had dumped the body in the ocean, tried to make it look like suicide by drowning. I wondered if something had gone wrong, if they were looking for me. Better pull down the blinds, quick, and—

No. That was wrong. I must trust him. I had to trust him. He told me to wait, that he’d get in touch with me. So I’d wait.

I read a little bit about totemism and tried to figure out how Lorna Lewis was taking it, if she’d gone to the studio today. I took some notes, and all the while I kept thinking what if Miss Bauer had been right, if resuscitation might have worked.

I threw down the book and asked myself what her angle was—why the Professor had hired her instead of a smart, fast-talking female who was never at a loss for a bright remark, a file folder, or a fresh box of Kleenex.

I picked up Flugel’s
Psychology of Clothes
and began to read about canes as symbols of personal extension, and wondered what Ellen Post was doing this fine day. Did she have a hangover? Did she remember me? I tried to picture her, place her in a setting. A hall bedroom? Obviously not the place. An apartment like this one? Wrong, again. A big house? Room next to her parents? Did she have money, live alone?

Why hadn’t I found out more about her, gotten her address, made a date?

Lorna said she was a lush. They were all lushes, according to Lorna—she lived in a world of them. Lushes. Hopheads. Queers. Crackpots. This town was full of them. People with quirks and delusions and dreams. People with money. The kind of people I was supposed to take over the jumps, if I got out of this jam.

But Ellen Post was different. Like ripe apricots. Charlie and I used to eat them when we were kids, a whole bagful at a time. They were soft and sweet.

This was no time to think about it. This was no time to read about canes as phallic symbols, either. I wanted to know what was going on. I had to know. Why, it was past noon already!

I dialed the Professor’s office. He’d paid my phone bill for me for just that reason, last month. I listened to the double ring, then heard a click.

“Yes?”

“Miss Bauer, this is—Judson Roberts. Did he—is the Professor back?”

“No.”

“Have you heard anything?”

“No.”

“I see. If he should come in, you’ll ask him to call me at once?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.”

I put the little black baby back in its cradle. As I reached for a cigarette, the doorbell rang. I started to get up, then sank back. Once before the doorbell had rung and I’d been afraid to answer it. I’d waited, and a hundred-dollar bill had slid under the door for me. What would happen if I waited now?

I decided to find out. I sat there, as the bell sounded again. Then came an eternity of silence. I stared at the door.

Something rustled. Something rustled, crept, slithered under the door. It wasn’t green, like money. It was white, like paper. A newspaper.

I rose and walked over to the door on tiptoe. I looked down. The newspaper had been reduced to a single sheet, and the torn top portion of a column was inserted under the door upside down. I cocked my head and read a headline:

HOCKEY STAR VICTIM IN TRAIN SMASHUP

I opened the door and let Professor Hermann in.

“I don’t see how you did it!” I shook my head and tried not to shake anything else.

“It was simple. The newspaper tells the story, does it not? A drunken driver, stalled on the tracks near the curve at La Placentia, just outside of town. The express hit the car, dragged it for a quarter of a mile. Michael Drayton, 31, husband of Imperial starlet Lorna Lewis. Wife hysterical at news of accidental death.” The Professor shrugged and put down the paper. “End of story.”

“Didn’t they find water in his lungs?”

“There was no water left, thanks to Miss Bauer’s work. I checked on that. Lorna’s story about smashing the station wagon gave me the idea of what to do. I told her it would cost her a car. She gave it to me without question. I bundled the body into the back and drove over in time to catch the train that comes through at 4:10 A.M. It was still dark and the side road was deserted. I got out, stalled the motor and propped Mike up in the front seat. Then there was nothing to do but wait for the express to come, and watch it hit. The car was smashed to bits, and I suppose that Mike—”

He saw my face and broke off without finishing the sentence. “I walked a few miles and caught a bus,” he concluded. “Then I phoned Lorna Lewis and told her what to say when she was notified. After that I went home to sleep. I slept until I knew it was time to get up and look at the newspapers.”

The Professor told it that way, without inflection, without emotion. I began to feel cold all over.

“You make it sound so simple,” I said. “But if you hadn’t figured it out, I’d be finished. The whole thing is like a nightmare, from the beginning. It was all an accident, you know. But I could never prove that. Maybe he was no damned good, maybe he had it coming—but I’m still to blame. And you saved me. I don’t quite know how to say it—”

He sat there, smiling at me. “Never mind. I understand. You can forget last night. It was just lucky that I happened to be there.”