The Kill-Off

'I don't suppose-' I hesitated. 'I mean, is Janie with the band this summer?'

He didn't say anything for several seconds. Then, he said no, she wasn't with him. He had a new vocalist. Janie was staying in the city with the kids.

'I figure that gives her enough to do,' he added. 'Just bringing the kids up right, y'know. After all, you take a couple of boys that age, and a woman don't have time to- Yeah? You were saying, Kossy?'

'Nothing,' I said. 'I mean-well, the boys are all right, then?'

'All right?' He looked bewildered for a moment. Then, he laughed amiably. 'Oh, I guess you saw that little story in the papers, huh? Well, that wasn't Janie. That wasn't my family.'

'I see,' I said. 'I'm certainly glad to hear it, Rags.'

'Ain't it hell, though?' he said musingly. 'A guy wants some publicity-he knocks himself out to get some-and he just can't swing it. But let something phony come along, something that won't do him no good, y'know, and he'll make the papers every time.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'That's the way it seems to go, all right.'

'I thought about suing them,' he said. 'But then I thought, what the hell? After all, it was a natural mistake. It was the same name- names-see? And Janie does have a rep for tipping the bottle.'

I was almost convinced. In fact, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't. There were probably any number of small-time band leaders named McGuire. It would be easy to confuse one with another, particularly in a case where a story had to be written largely from newspaper files. And that had been the case in this instance. The two boys had died in the crash. Janie-if it was Janie- had lived, but she had been in a coma for days.

Rags had me drop him off in front of a bar. I drove on through town, wondering, worrying, then mentally shrugging. He wasn't a close friend-not a friend at all, really. Just a guy I'd got to know during the summers I'd come here. I liked him, like I like a lot of people. But he wasn't my business. Luane Devore was; and straightening her out would be headache enough for one day.

She lived in a two-story, brick box of a house on the land-side outskirts of Manduwoc. It sat a few hundred feet back from the road, at the apex of a wooded slope. The driveway curved up through an expanse of meticulously clipped, lushly green lawn; in the rear of the house, there was more lawn, stretching out fan-wise to the whitewashed gates and fences of the orchard, barnyard and pasture. I parked my car beneath the porte cochere and took a quick glance around the place.

A sleek Jersey grazed in the pasture. Several dozen Leghorns scratched and pecked industriously in the barnyard. A sow and half a dozen piglets wandered through the orchard, grunting and squealing contentedly as they gobbled the fallen fruit. Everything was as I remembered it from last season. Over all there was an air of peace and contentment, the evidence of loving care, of quiet pride in homely accomplishments.

You don't find that much any more-that kind of pride, I mean. People who will give everything they have to a humble, run-of-the- mill job. All the office boys want to be company presidents. All the store clerks want to be department heads. All the waitresses and waiters want to be any damned thing but what they are. And they all let you know it-the whole lazy, shiftless, indifferent, insolent lot. They can't do their own jobs well; rather, they won't do them. But, by God, they're going to have something better-the best! They're going to have it or else, and meanwhile it's a case of do as little as you can and grab as much as you can get.

So I stood there in the drive, looking around and feeling better the longer I looked. And, then, from an upstairs window, Luane Devore called down to me petulantly.

'Kossy? Kossy! What are you doing down there?'

'I'll be right up,' I said. 'Is the door unlocked?'

'Of course it's unlocked! It's always unlocked! You know that! How in the world could I-'

'Save it,' I said. 'Keep your pants on. I'll be right with you.'

I went in through the front door, crossed a foyer floor that was waxed and polished to a mirror-like finish. I started up the stairs. They were polished to the same gleaming perfection as the floors, and I slipped perilously once when I stepped off of the carpet runner. For perhaps the thousandth time, I wondered how Ralph Devore found the time to maintain the house and grounds as he did. For he did do it all, everything that was done here and a hundred other things besides. Luane hadn't lifted a hand in years. It had been years since she had contributed a penny to maintaining the place.

There was a picture of them, Ralph and Luane, on the wall at the turn in the stairs. One of those enlarged, retouched photographs hung in an oval gilt frame. It had been taken twenty-two years before at the time of their marriage. In those days, Luane had resembled The da Bara-if you remember your silent-motion-picture stars- and Ralph looked a lot like that Spanish lad, Ramon Navarro.

Ralph still looked pretty much as he had then, but Luane did not. She was sixty-two now. He was forty.

Her bedroom extended across the front of the house, facing the town. Through its huge picture window, she could see just about everything that went on in Manduwoc. And judging by the gossip I'd heard (and she'd started), she not only saw everything that happened but a hell of a lot that didn't.

Her door was open. I went in and sat down, trying not to wrinkle my nose against that bedfast smell-the smell of stale sweat, stale food, rubbing alcohol, talcum and disinfectant. This was one room that Ralph could do nothing about. Luane hadn't left it since God knows when, and it was so cluttered you could hardly turn around it.

There was a huge television set on one side of the room. On the other side was a massive radio, and next to it an elaborate hi-fl phonograph. They were operated from a remote control panel on a bedside table. Almost completely circling the bed were other tables and benches, loaded down variously with magazines, books, candy boxes, cigarettes, carafes, an electric toaster, coffee pot, chafing dish, and cartons and cans of food. Thus surrounded, with everything imaginable at her fingertips, Luane could make do for herself during the long hours that Ralph was away. For that matter, she could have done so, anyhow. Because there was not a damned thing wrong with her. The local doctor said there wasn't. So did a diagnostician I'd once brought down from the city. The local man 'treated' her since she insisted on it. But there was nothing at all wrong with her. Nothing but self-pity and selfishness, viciousness and fear: the urge to lash out at others from the sanctuary of the invalid's bed.

I sat down near the window, and lighted a cigar. She sniffed distastefully, and I sniffed right back at her. 'All right,' I said. 'Let's get it over with. What's the matter now?'

Her mouth worked. She took a grayish handkerchief from beneath her pillow, and blew into it. 'It- it's R-Ralph, Kossy. He's planning to kill me!'

'Yeah?' I said. 'So what's wrong with that?'

'He is, Kossy! I know you don't believe me, but he is!'

'Swell,' I said. 'You tell him if he needs any help just to give me a ring.'

She looked at me helplessly, big fat tears filling her eyes. I grinned and gave her a wink.

'You see?' I said. 'You talk stupid to me, and I'll talk stupid to you. And where the hell will that get us?'

'But it's not-I mean, it's true, Kossy! Why would I say so if it wasn't?'

'Because you want attention. Excitement. And you're too damned no-account to go after it like other people do.' I hadn't meant to get rough with her. But she needed it-she had to be brought to her senses. And, I admit, I just couldn't help it. I very seldom lose my temper. I may act like it, but I very seldom do. But this time it was no act. 'How the hell can you do it?' I said. 'Ain't you done enough to the poor guy already? You marry him when he's eighteen. You talk his father, your caretaker, into getting him to marry you-'

'I did not! I-I-'

'The hell you didn't! The old man was ignorant; he thought he was doing the right thing by his son. Setting him up so that he could get a good education and amount to something. But how did it turn out? Why-'

'I gave Ralph a good home! Every advantage! It's not my fault that-'