They’re having TV trouble here.”
“What were you doing, staring in that window?”
“I wasn’t staring in any window, Grace. You’re drunk and you’re not fouling me up. Move,” I said.
She balked. She pushed back against me. I figured I would fly apart, the way I felt. She turned, with her face squinched up, and cursed me. She was too loud.
“You expect me to believe that?” She said. “Damn you, Jack—you dirty liar!”
I hit her. I hit her so hard she ran sideways off across the lawn, and fell in a heap. I went over and yanked her to her feet. I hit her again. I let her have it hard. Then I turned her, with her sobbing and moaning, and bent her arm up behind her back and ran her staggering out on the lawn. Her car was parked behind the truck. It was a yellow Buick hardtop.
It had me nuts, wondering what went on in that house.
“Now,” I said. “You get in that car and get out of here. You come around me again, I’ll smash your jaw. Get going.”
She stood there with her face full of wrath.
I opened the door on the driver’s side, and flung her under the wheel and slammed the door shut.
“Go,” I said. “Fast.”
Her face was something out of a comic book. She looked crazy.
“I swear it, Grace. You come around me again, it’s a promise. Stay away from me.”
She was sobbing and talking to herself. She kept choking and trying to swallow. She wanted to say something, but she was so mad she never got it out. She started the engine, shoved the car into reverse, backed away from the truck, slammed it into low, and shot past me. She barreled down the street with the gas pedal to the floor.
I ran back to the house, down the side walk of stepping stones. Victor Spondell wasn’t in his bed. I saw him, clinging to the door jamb. He hung there like a kind of ghost in ballooning white pajamas, his hands clawing at the woodwork.
I ran around back. Shirley’s bedroom light was on. The kitchen was bright. I went up on the back porch as softly as I could.
The kitchen door was open. What I saw in there was like some crazy scene out of a movie. The bright neon kitchen light shone down on Shirley and Mayda. Shirley’s face was puffed with anger, tinged with red against that white pallor, in an effort to keep herself under control. She wasn’t doing a good job. There was little she could do. The cat was out of the bag, and running. There was sly scheming in her eyes. Desperation showed in the taut shape of her mouth. She wore the yellow housecoat I’d seen before.
“Just exactly what
I hugged the porch shadows. Mayda Lamphier’s back was to me. Shirley hadn’t seen me. Mayda’s shoulders were tense under a white sweater, her hands clenched into the dark fabric of her skirt, at her hips.
“You won’t listen to me, will you,” she said.
Shirley didn’t speak. She stood by the sink. The kitchen table was between them.
What happened then, I would never forget. There was something more than horrifying about it.
“All right,” Mayda said. “I’ve tried.” She half turned toward the porch door.
Shirley’s voice rose. “Where are you going?”
Mayda turned toward her again. She didn’t speak. There must have been some readable expression in her face, because Shirley reacted sharply.
“You won’t tell anybody!” Shirley said. “You
“Won’t I, though...?”
Mayda turned and moved fast for the porch. I could never let her pass me. I worked on instinct now, and stepped out in front of her.
“You.” It scared her. She stopped, staring at me, her eyes wide and round. “You,” she said again.
Shirley was clawing through a kitchen drawer over by the sink. She whirled, running, the yellow housecoat billowing. She saw me.
“Jack!”
Mayda made a stab at getting past me. I grabbed her shoulders, facing her. She struggled, making hurt sounds in her throat. I shoved her back toward the kitchen, and there was a kind of savage desperation inside me.
“Let’s talk this over,” I said.
Shirley came full tilt across the kitchen. I didn’t see the knife until it arched in a vicious slant at Mayda Lamphier’s back. I tried to fling Mayda aside. I heard her grunt with pain.
“Don’t let her go!” Shirley said.
Mayda lurched free over against the kitchen wall.
“You crazy fool,” I said to Shirley.
She stared at Mayda, one hand at her mouth. Her eyes were like glass.
I thrust her out of the way and stepped toward Mayda. I was scared all the way now. I had no idea whether she’d told Shirley about what we’d done in her car, down by the bay.
Mayda Lamphier moved away from the wall, watching us. She tried to speak. Her hands both reached up behind her back. Her face was filled more with shock than pain. She broke, running for the kitchen door that led into the dinette.
I saw the knife sticking out of her back. It was a carving knife, and the blade was in to the hilt. She kept struggling to reach it with her hands. The back of her white sweater was a sheet of dark blood. She stopped, swayed, and fell to the floor.
She said, “No,” sharply.
I went over to her. I was conscious of Victor Spondell standing in the doorway.
“Jack,” Shirley said. “Is she all right?”
Somehow, from the way Shirley spoke, I knew Mayda hadn’t told her about what we’d done. Mayda Lamphier was dying. For only a moment, she was dying. Her eyes looked up at me with awe and confusion from the cramped position of neck and head. Then she was dead.
I would never know why she hadn’t told.
That didn’t matter now. What mattered was that she was dead and the ball was rolling.
“I was just trying to stop her,” Shirley said. “I couldn’t let her go.”
“That’s right,” I said. “You couldn’t.”
I looked up at Victor Spondell.
I was shriveled up like a weed inside, now.
Spondell turned dazedly and stumbled toward the living room, his white pajamas ballooning.
“Stop him,” Shirley said.
I stood up, and looked at her. I heard myself speak.
“It’s all right,” I said. “You couldn’t do anything else. There was nothing else to do.”
She nodded numbly. I heard the telephone dial.
“Victor,” I said.
I turned fast and went in there. He was in the living room, dialing on the phone. He saw me and went all to pieces. I yanked the phone out of his hand and slapped it on the cradle. He fell back against the wall, trying to get his breath.
I guess maybe it was right about here that the whole thing began to turn into a nightmare.
I stood there looking at Victor Spondell. He had to die. It was either him, or Shirley and me.
You go into a confused state. You do things you know have to be done. It’s all very crazy. You know you’re doing hellishly wrong things. You know you can’t stop doing them, because the minute you stop you’ll wash away with the sands. You’re a swimmer in a riptide, fighting toward a receding shore.
So details were like that. Swarming in my brain. Victor Spondell had to die. Something had to be done about Mayda Lamphier’s body. Miraglia had to be called. The intercom unit had to be checked. I had to post Shirley on what to say. I had to figure what to do with Mayda’s body. The money had to be collected.... I would have to get my story straight for Miraglia, and maybe even the Law. Grace was out there someplace, God only knew where,
