“I don’t think so,” he said seriously. “This could be the last stop. He hasn’t been in the papers for six months. The thing you forget-he looks like an important man, with that hair and that voice, but basically he’s a jerk. Sooner or later people find it out.”
“He’s a symbol. He’s not a person. When I shoot him he’ll bleed press releases.”
The gin in her last drink ended its journey and exploded behind her eyes. And that was enough of an explanation for one day. If Paul wanted to buy her another drink or two and feed her dinner, she would repay him by taking him back to her apartment for a fast bout of love-making which she might not even remember in the morning. She needed someone at night. The nights she slept alone were the bad ones. There would be new lines around her eyes the next time she looked. She knew she was deteriorating fast-it was her way of commenting on the mess around her.
Paul’s eyes seemed to be moving from one place to another in his face, which was otherwise, as always, solid and dependable. He had marvelous arms and shoulders, the legs of a quarter-miler. If she had married him instead of Felix Steele-
But she hadn’t, she very definitely hadn’t, she had married a handsome boy with a black Maserati, incredible clothes, a monthly check from a trust fund set up by a grandfather. And the trap had snapped shut. She was still in the trap, and she no longer expected to get out. Accepting that truth might be progress of a sort.
Two days after she left her husband-that fact was never brought out at the trial-he was arrested for the rape and murder of a beautiful Negro singer in her suite in a Miami Beach hotel. He had been taking the drug commonly referred to as “speed.” He had been seen in the hotel corridor with blood on his shirt. For some unexplained reason-Camilla, who knew him better than most, concluded that it was a queer kind of put-on, to show that he was brighter than the detectives-he had answered their questions playfully, admitting to lustful thoughts about the singer when he watched her perform. Camilla suspected that the particular crime of rape was beyond his capabilities. But it was the right moment in history for a white man to be convicted and executed for the rape- murder of a black woman, something that for two hundred years had happened only when the colors were reversed.
It was a spectacular trial, with a victim who was not only black but famous, a defendant who was rich and wild, a drug-taker. Felix’s family had just the right amount of political clout. They sounded more important than they actually were. Crowther defied their attempts to bring political influence to bear, and got his conviction and his reputation.
Camilla was twenty-two that year. She was twenty-seven when her husband was finally executed.
Now, three years later, she pressed Paul’s hand, feeling a sudden need for human contact. She had thought she was beyond all that, but perhaps not. She wished she could make him understand. She, too, had been playing a role-the loyal wife, insisting on her husband’s innocence, helping organize a defense committee, raising money for new appeals. The white-supremacy groups made sure that the defense fund was never short of cash. Felix himself ran the campaign from his condemned cell, using his wife as liaison. Month by month he became more hateful to her. He might be innocent of the murder, but of nothing else. She despised the cause, the bigots who were attracted to it, the embittered man in his cell.
After losing the battle for a new trial, she fought to have his sentence commuted. And if she succeeded, he told her, he had promised himself that he would kill one Negro convict for every year he was kept in jail. He spent most of his time devising ways of doing it without being caught.
He horrified her, but in the end he bored her. During the last weeks she was completely fed up with the legal maneuverings and her husband’s obsession. She longed for an end to the ordeal, for a definite date after which there would be no more appeals, no more writs and stays, no more
And when it happened, she felt that she had helped bring it about. A few days later, she swallowed too many sleeping pills, an easy way to stop thinking.
She was out for forty-eight hours, and her recovery was slow and painful. She wrote her first letter to Eliot Crowther from the hospital, warning him not to expect to live forever.
After that, one of her main interests, at times her only interest, was following Crowther’s rise in state and national politics. Two years later, a Miami private detective named Michael Shayne brought in a talkative hotel thief who had rashly boasted of having committed the murder for which Felix Steele had been killed. Steele had been unlucky that day, this man had been lucky. His good luck continued. He repudiated the confession, and in the absence of other evidence the grand jury failed to indict. Camilla’s doctors were afraid this would be bad for her, but she had decided by that time that nothing mattered very much, except to see if she could harass Eliot Crowther and make him uneasy.
Her letters became more and more ingenious. Someone like Paul London, of course, would consider them a symptom of mental illness. And they were. She was willing to concede the point. They were!
She squeezed his hand and picked up her glass, which she found to be empty.
“Now that that’s taken care of,” she said, as though she had actually explained something, “it’s time for more drinks.”
“It’s time for dinner. I see you don’t like the idea about getting married. I’ve got another idea, and this is nearly as good. Come to Mexico with me. I’ve still got two weeks of vacation.”
“I’m sorry, Paul, it’s out of the question.”
Ordinarily she would have accepted promptly, because why not? But she couldn’t leave Miami right now. She was looking forward to something. For a moment she couldn’t remember what, and then it came to her-her number-one enemy, Mr. Eliot Crowther, was showing himself in Miami Beach the next Saturday, to accept some kind of award-for hypocrisy and opportunism, probably. She was planning to be in his hotel lobby when he walked through. She didn’t intend to spit at him, or shout. She was simply going to post herself where he couldn’t avoid seeing her. She had been practicing a smile. If she did it right, she was sure she could unsettle him. When he accepted his damn award, she hoped he would still be stammering and mopping sweat from his forehead.
Paul continued to badger her. He had friends in Acapulco. There was a hotel which would give him a fifty percent discount. He refused to let go of the subject, and finally she lost patience and told him to disappear.
He looked at her. “What was that word?”
“I don’t mean forever. But as far as tonight goes-” She gripped the edge of the table in both hands. “I mean it.
“I saw a movie yesterday. We could talk about that.”
She shook her head without looking at him. “Good night, dear. I can’t get properly plastered with you around. I’ll sit here and brood for five minutes, and then I’ll call somebody.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything about marriage. That’s what scared you.”
“Leave some money for the drinks.”
He took out a bill, folded it carefully and put it under her empty glass. “As long as you realize this isn’t such a wonderful way to live.”
“I’m not advocating it for everybody. For me it works.”
“Does it?” he said gently. “I think I’ll go to Mexico anyway. When I get back I won’t call you for a while. But if you need anything get in touch with me.” He kissed her lightly. “Good luck.”
She watched him walk away, and almost changed her mind. He had a sexy way of moving. The one thing that was wrong with him was that he had terrible taste in women. Anybody with any native intelligence at all could see that Camilla Steele carried a very high risk, and you had to be a little sick yourself to take a chance on getting involved.
She felt the first probing touch of depression, an old acquaintance. She had to do something about that right away, or she would sit here the rest of the evening, ordering drinks and not bothering to phone anybody because it was too much of a problem to put a coin in the phone and dial without making a mistake. And she would arrive home alone, the one thing she was desperate to avoid.
She took a pill-holder out of her purse and ripped the plastic sheet to get at one of the pretty striped pills inside. If she remembered correctly, these babies were slightly unpredictable when combined with gin. There was only one way to find out.
She washed it down with what was left of Paul’s martini, and looked for a waiter to order another.
When he brought it he said, “A phone call for you, Mrs. Steele.”
