got to his feet. He came over to me, and he laid an infinitely gentle hand upon my shoulder and he spoke very softly, very softly indeed.
He said, “I’m afraid you did, Mr. Penn.”
24
A LOT HAPPENED AFTER THAT BUT I DO NOT REMEMBER IT VERY well I moved through it as a ship through fog. There was some police business, and some forms to fill out, and a horde of newspapermen, and flashbulbs popping in my face. That sort of thing. And eventually it stopped and I escaped, and found a bar and had a drink, and then everything slipped away and the days and nights went by. I don’t know how many of them there were. Somewhere along the line I got to my bank and took out a lot of cash, so I didn’t have to worry about money. I just stayed drunk and the days went by. If I went too long between drinks I thought about things that I did not want to think about, and that was bad, so I stayed drunk.
Until one day or night I looked up from a drink and saw her face. I knew that I recognized her but I could not remember at first just who she was. I couldn’t remember.
She said, “Oh, baby, you’ve been hard to find. You’ve been so hard to find.”
Then I knew who she was. “Jackie,” I said. “You’re Jackie.”
“You better come home with me, Alex.”
“Can’t go home,” I said. “Can’t.”
“Come on, Alex.”
“I’m a dangerous man. Killed a girl. Might hurt you, Jackie.”
“You come with me, baby.”
I picked up my glass and spilled most of my drink on myself. She was holding my arm, trying to draw me out of that place. The other drinkers were regarding us with appropriate interest.
“Let’s go, baby.”
“Gotta keep drinking.”
“We’ll pick up a bottle. There’s a liquor store down the street, we’ll take a bottle home with us.”
“Cause I gotta keep drinking.”
“Sure, baby. Come with me, now.”
She got me out of there. She picked up a bottle of Scotch at a nearby liquor store and stopped a cab and helped me into it. On the way to her place the motion got to me, and the driver stopped the car so that I could get out long enough to be sick. Then we went to her place, and I was sick again, and she opened the bottle for me and I drank enough of it and passed out.
I went on drinking for about a week. She made sure I took in food along with the liquor, and she had a doctor come by from time to time to give me vitamin shots. During all this time I was something less than a person. Each night she went out to hustle, first waiting until I passed out then locking me in with a bottle handy in case I woke up before she returned.
Until finally I woke up one morning and didn’t want a drink, and knew that I would not want a drink again for a long time. I was sick for that day and most of the next day, but I was done with the drinking, and by the following night I was feeling better again.
“What we do to ourselves,” she said. “Jesus, the things we do to ourselves.”
“You saved me, Jackie.”
“You would of come out of it by yourself sooner or later. I was just afraid you might get in trouble.”
“I’ve never been on that kind of a binge before. It lasted a long time.”
“It’s over now.”
“I hope to God it’s over.”
“It is, Alex. You had to get it out of your system, and it’s out now, and it’s over.”
“Jackie, I killed that girl.”
“I know.”
“For a while I tried to tell myself the first one could still be a frame, but I know better. I couldn’t sell it to myself, not after Williams confessed. I killed Evangeline Grant.”
“I know. I knew it before you did.”
“You-”
“As soon as I knew it was the Turkey,” she said. “I knew Robin had dealings with him, and I thought about Danny, and I knew it had to be something like that. Either that she worked some kind of a cross on him, or that she sold him out to the cops, set him up for an arrest, something like that. It had to be.”
“You knew it all along.”
She nodded. “And after he was shot, when they didn’t know if he would come to or not I was praying he would die. All the time that you were hoping he would talk I was praying he’d the with his mouth shut. So you would never know. I fell apart when the cop came out and said he talked. And then let you go to see him. I knew what was coming and I fell apart inside. I tried to stop you-”
I remembered. “I never even thought she could have been killed for private reasons. It never occurred to me.”
“Well, you wanted to be innocent, Alex.”
“Uh-huh.”
She took one of my hands in hers. “Listen to me,” she said. “You killed somebody once. You got drunk and you didn’t know what you were doing and it happened. All right. You have a temper, Alex. You do. You told me about your sister-in-law, how you were ready to kill her-”
“Anybody would have-”
“And with that fence, Alex, I saw the look on your face. You were ready to take him apart. You got on top of it and nothing happened, but imagine if you were drunk at the time.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Or with Phillie, the way you beat up on him. You weren’t just trying to frighten him. You just let go.” She squeezed my hand. “Look, you have a temper and one time it got away from you. You were drunk and it got loose. But you lived with that for a few years, Alex, and you’re free now, and it’s over.”
“And I’m a killer again.”
“You want to write out a label and paste it on your forehead.
“It’s not the same.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You know the difference.”
“Maybe.”
“I was going to go back to work,” I said. “I was going to become a professor again. I don’t feel very professorial right now.”
“Maybe you still can.”
“Not a chance.”
“Well, you can do something.”
“What?”
A stretch of silence. Then, “I just wish I knew how to say things better. I know what I want to say but I don’t get the words right.”
“Go ahead.”
She turned away from me. In a small, clear voice she said, “Well, I don’t know what good it does either of us, Alex, but I love you. That’s all.”
In the little bedroom where she had never lain with any man but me I said, “I can’t be in very good shape after all that drinking. I may not be much good to you.”
“Oh, Alex. Oh, baby.”
“How soft you are.”
