straight on to New York, a few hundred miles of perfect roadway. I didn’t even need my toothbrush. Toothbrushes aren’t all that hard to come by, and I had never developed any great sentimental attachment to mine. Just swing the wheel soft right, pick up a ticket at the toll gate—
But I couldn’t, and that was the hang-up. Not now, not with Murray’s case all up in the air. So far no one had given me much of a second glance. If I skipped town now, someone would start thinking.
I pulled the Ford off the road, lit another cigarette, smoked a little of it. When the traffic thinned out I whipped the Ford around in a U-turn and drove back into town.
I made my apartment in time to answer the phone. I picked it up, said hello, sat down in a chair. It was Murray, and for a second or two the sound of his voice threw me. I’d almost forgotten that he was out of jail now.
“You’re a hard man to find,” he said. “I tried you at your office. No luck. Been keeping busy?”
“Fairly busy.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “Listen, Bill, I’d like to talk to you. Got anything doing right now?”
I didn’t, but I had no overwhelming desire to rush over there. “I’ll be tied up for an hour or so,” I said.
“And after that?”
“I’ll be free.”
“Good. I’d ask you to come over here, but I’d rather go some place where we can be alone. I’m not under house arrest, you know. I’m just supposed to stay within city limits, something like that. Where can you meet me?”
“Anywhere.”
He thought it over for a moment. “There’s a little lunch counter at Washington and Plum,” he said. “Sort of a central location, and the coffee’s not bad. All right with you?”
“Fine with me.”
“About an hour?”
“Right.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”
I hung up and found a bottle of Cutty Sark with a little left in it. I poured a small shot and tossed it down. Murray Rogers wanted to see me. I didn’t know why.
The hour dawdled along. I smoked a few cigarettes and listened to mood music on the radio. I had another shot of scotch. Then it was time to go. I found Washington and Plum. The lunch counter was diagonally across the street from me on the northwest corner next to a drugstore.
I crossed Washington, waited for a light, crossed Plum. I stepped into the lunch counter and sat down on a plastic-covered stool and leaned on the Formica counter. I asked for black coffee and a ham sandwich. The coffee steamed in front of me about the same time Murray appeared.
No jailbird he. He was wearing a suit some expensive tailor had made. There was a fresh white carnation in the buttonhole. His tie had the Countess Mara crest, his shoes had a mirror shine, and the smile on his face would have done justice to an upstate politician. Confident eyes, a firm stride, a quick and strong handshake.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said to me. “Just coffee, and black,” he told the counterman. He eased himself on to the stool next to me, took a cigar from his jacket pocket, cut the tip, put it in his mouth and lit it. He blew out a cloud of smoke. We both sat there. He watched the smoke and I tried to guess what this was all about.
He said, “Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered you, Bill. But I’m worried.”
“About what?”
“About Joyce. Have you seen her at all?”
Easy now. “Once or twice, since—”
“Since I was arrested?” I nodded. “Then you probably know what I’m getting at,” Murray said. “How did she seem then?”
Anxious to be laid, I thought. And worried that you, Murray, might wiggle off the hook.
“She seemed all right,” I said. His eyes were studying my face. “A little—well, worried, of course. But she didn’t believe you were guilty and she was sure everything would work itself out.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.” He chewed on the cigar, puffed on it, blew out another cloud of smoke. We were riding two levels, I thought suddenly. There was something underneath everything he said, something I could only half hear. “She didn’t know I was guilty,” he said softly. “That’s it right there, in a nutshell. Now she knows.”
I didn’t have anything to say.
“She’s in a bad way, Bill. Maybe she’s worrying about what’s going to happen to me. Maybe it goes deeper than that. Maybe she can’t accept the fact I killed Milani. Whatever it is, it’s changed her. And I don’t like it.”
“How do you mean?”
“She’s tense and nervous and depressed. The tension and the nervousness—that’s understandable, that’s not so dangerous. But the depression bothers me. I’m afraid of it.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid. Afraid she might—might do something rash.”
The counterman brought Murray’s coffee and my ham sandwich. I took a bite and sipped at my coffee. I put the sandwich down, turned, looked at him.
“I’ve only been out of jail a few hours,” he said. “Maybe things will change. I’ve tried to perk her up, tried to reassure her that there’s nothing to worry about, that Nester figures we have a good chance to get clear on temporary insanity. If she were just worried about me, I could probably talk her out of the mood she’s in. But I think there’s something else.”
“What?”
He took a long sip of coffee. He didn’t look at me when he talked. “Joyce came from a less than ideal background,” he said. “I suppose you know that.”
“I didn’t.”
“Well,” he said. “At any rate, she’s extremely conscious of social position, has been ever since we were married. I’m no psychiatrist, Bill, but I’ve got enough sense to know she feels insecure in the position she’s gained through marriage to me. And now she sees that position as shaky. She thinks we can’t hold up our head in this town any longer. She sees her whole world crumbling around her, and the result is a pretty terrifying depression. I’m afraid of it, to tell you the truth. Afraid of what she might do.”
I didn’t answer him. Everything had a funny ring to it, an odd feeling. I felt as though our roles had been reversed. I was supposed to be the one on the inside while he was swimming in dark waters. But everything was getting scrambled. I had the uncomfortable feeling he knew things I didn’t know, and that I was way off in a corner somewhere. Depressed? Anxious about her social position? It didn’t sound much like Joyce. Maybe she was putting on an act for his benefit, maybe he just had things ass-backwards. But I couldn’t help getting the impression he had somehow taken the ball away from me.
“Bill, I shouldn’t have bothered you. I don’t know what you can do—”
“That’s what I was wondering.”
“Unless you could talk to her,” he said. “You might have some influence over her.”
“Me?”
He nodded. “She seems to think a lot of you. You must have made a good impression on her.”
“I hardly know her,” I said.
He let that go right on by. “She has a bottle of sleeping pills,” he said. “Or had. I—I took them out of the medicine chest, spilled them into the toilet and threw the bottle away. That’s how worried I am.”
“You don’t think—”
“That she’ll kill herself? I certainly hope not. But I don’t know what to think any more, Bill.”
We batted it around for ten or fifteen minutes. The conversation ran out of gas and I made up something about another appointment and having to run. I caught the check, he argued, I paid, he left the tip, we left the restaurant. He crossed to his car and I to mine and that was that. I returned to my office long enough to cancel a couple of appointments and retrieve a few things I wanted from my desk. Perry Carver and I tossed some small talk at each other. Back at my place I broke the seal of a fresh bottle of Cutty Sark. Then I sat in a chair and tried to get some thinking done.
One fact emerged. I was finished with this town and it was finished with me, for all practical purposes. My
