“You think I’m evil, Charlie?”
“No, I realize…I mean, years of living with him wouldn’t endear him to anyone…”
“He’s never suspected my feelings. Isn’t that a greater, more laudable sacrifice than acting out of pure love?”
“Yes.” Charlie said, his voice hoarse and quick. “Yes. It is, Laura.”
“If we throw him out, there is the chance a nurse will marry him for all that money.”
“Yes, there is a strong chance.”
“Or out of spite, he’d will the money to some charity. I know he’d do that, Charlie.”
“I’m pretty sure of it myself, knowing him.”
“So we don’t have any alternative, do we?”
“Not that I can see.”
She smoothed the hem of her dress over her knees and stared thoughtfully at the carpet.
“A quarter million, Charlie.”
“I can’t imagine that much honest-to-goodness money.”
“Trips around the world. Good clothes. Thumb your nose at the mortgage company. Think in those terms, Charlie. When he is at his most trying.”
“I’ll do that.”
She raised her eyes slowly to his. “We’ll earn the money, Charlie.”
“I guess we will.”
“We must always be kind to him. As long as he lives.”
“Yes. Kind.”
“Are you afraid, Charlie?”
“Of taking care of an old man until he dies?” he laughed softly. “No, I’m not afraid, Laura.”
Charlie felt five years younger when he woke the next morning. He hummed while he shaved. His undreamed-of good fortune caused him to look at himself in the mirror “Old pal,” he said to his image, “you’re going to be a rich man.”
A feeling of love and respect for the old man surged up in Charlie. When I spend that money, Charlie thought, I want it free and untainted. I want you to know that its mine by right. I want to remember that I eased your last days, Father Emmons.
* * * *
The old man noticed the change. Two days later when Charlie brought him a box of his favorite sugar stick candy, the old man’s eyes seemed to sink in even deeper depths, cloaked with caution.
They were in the old man’s bedroom, the nice, sunny room. “Charlie,” the old man said, “what are you up to?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Father Emmons.”
“This business of holding a chair for me, of calling me father, of bringing me stuff like this candy.”
“Why, I…”
“And no accidents, Charlie, for the last couple days.”
“Accidents?”
“You know what I mean,” the old man said softly. “Nothing in my food to make me sick. No hiding of my pills. No boxes on the basement stairs.”
“Just accidents, that’s all,” Charlie said. “I hope you like the candy.”
“Here,” the old man said suspiciously, “you eat a piece of it” Charlie stared at him. Then he took a stick of candy from the box. “Not that one,” the old man said, grabbing the candy away. “I’ll eat this one.” He pulled a piece from the box and thrust it at Charlie. Charlie took a bite while the old man watched him closely.
“Is the candy good, Charlie?”
“Sure, but if I had your…”
“What was that? You meant to say something, didn’t you, Charlie. If you had my what? My what, Charlie? If you had my what?”
Charlie swallowed. “If I had your taste, I’d try some better candy.”
“I like this candy,” the old man said.
He remained standing there, just staring, until Charlie finally said awkwardly, “well, it’s pretty good candy at that.”
He went to his own room and closed the door. He leaned limply against it. The first misgiving since his talk with Laura came to him. Already he suspects that I’m planning something…that I know about his money…that I’m going to kill him.
Kill him.
Charlie put his hands over his ears, went in the bathroom, and took two aspirin. Through the small window, he saw the old man puttering in the backyard, nibbling at his stick candy.
Charlie was in the living room trying to concentrate on the newspaper when the old man came back in. The old man stood holding his candy. He was stringy inside his heavy sweater and baggy pants. “Have some candy, Charlie.”
“No, thanks, I—”
“It’s real good.”
The overture seemed genuine enough. Charlie took a stick of candy, and the old man went to his room and closed the door.
Charlie carried the candy to the kitchen and dropped it in the garbage can.
“Dinner in a few minutes, Charlie,” Laura said, busy at the stove. “Sure,” he said absently.
He stepped out of the kitchen, crossed the yard, opened the shop door, and clicked the light switch.
The small room was full of butane from the heater’s open pet-cock. The electric spark and the butane produced a chemical reaction that sent the garage mushrooming into the twilight sky. A piece of the garage knocked down an antenna across the street. A woman in the next block went hysterical when she heard the explosion and screamed something about the Russians. Charlie had barely time for one last thought: “Old Man Emmons had it all worked out. Blast him, but he’s blasting me right out of his money!”
PRECIOUS PIGEON
Originally published in Manhunt, April 1963.
The motel was an old one, located on a once-busy highway that had been by-passed by the new city expressway.
The number of cars in the parking area indicated occupancy of about half the units. I slid my car to stop beside a four-year-old Chevy.
It was a hot, humid autumn evening, the last growl of summer. In the drab unit at the far end a baby was crying fretfully.
My own reaction to the surroundings was one of sharp distaste. I knew how Constantine must be chaffing, anxious to get on the final phase of the task we had planned. Constantine was living, I knew, only on the hope of escaping this and similar places forever.
I assumed he had been watching for me through a crack in the blind. The door of his room opened
