A Covenant with Death (3 page)

Talbot shivered. “She won't leave me.… That fellow Rollins.” (Or so Alfred heard it.) “Nobody.… Nobody.… My wife.”

Alfred bent closer. “Talbot: did you do it?”

Talbot was asleep.

“Can you get somebody to stay with him?” the doctor asked.

Alfred looked at Tolliver. Tolliver nodded. He was ashamed of himself. Alfred patted him on the shoulder. “Tolliver'll stay. What about the body?”

“I'll call Parsons,” the doctor said. “Unless you want to examine her some more.”

“No,” Alfred said quickly. “I'll look around the house, but you can take her away.”

The doctor went to the telephone and called our Protestant undertaker.

Alfred looked around the house. It did him little good. He found what he'd have found in any respectable establishment: private correspondence, unincriminating; unpaid bills; clothes and food and cigarettes and a deck of cards; towels and sheets and pillowcases; a dressing table heaped with rouges and lipsticks and powders and pomades and perfumes; a supply of perfectly ordinary, unimaginative lady's underthings; a few books, including Andrew Carnegie and a Bible—all the usual, none of the remarkable. Through the living-room window he saw the Donnelleys' lights and shades and shrubbery; and then he craned slightly and saw people on the sidewalk. He went out to tell them what had happened.

There were half a dozen of them, naturally including the Donnelleys. Again Alfred quitted this planet briefly; life and motion ceased, leaving only the ruthless lights and colors, the night sounds, the pale faces like blossoms clustered before him. “There weren't even any expressions,” he said. “No eyes, no noses; it was like standing up in front of so many skulls. There was a street light about fifty feet off, and I got to feeling like the sun and moon had gone out for good, and soon that street light would go, and that would be the end of us all.” But it was hot, and the sweat tipped over his eyebrows and ran down his nose, which recalled him to life. Helen Donnelley was pale; Bruce was impassive, but his eyes roved for details. He was chewing on a toothpick. Alfred told them, briefly, and asked them to go on home. Helen Donnelley let out one stifled yell and fainted. Bruce's expression never changed. He caught her as she fell, cradled her in his arms, and carried her home.

By noon the next day Soledad City had high blood pressure. Manslaughter was common enough: we had our brawls and blood feuds and outraged husbands just like any other frontier town. What we did not have, or had not had until then, was inexplicable murder by an unknown hand. Death was no less natural to us than to another community, perhaps more natural because we were almost a desert town, and our nut-brown tots, straying a mile, could amuse themselves with the traditional bleached bones: the remains of not only wild cattle and an occasional horse, but coyotes and dogs and cats, vertebrates of all kinds, among whom chance dictated that a few, now and then, would wander dying to the edge of the sandy sea. But this was a crime and a riddle; the crime was a shock, and the riddle was a pleasure. It was like one of the movies we all whistled and hooted at, but with a familiar cast, and with sound: voices, rumor, speculation. “I can't believe it was Bryan,” Colonel Oates said gravely. “I cannot believe that a man dedicated to the pursuit of money would jeopardize his future by murder. Not to mention that this was the utterly useless murder of a magnificent helpmeet. Bryan wouldn't even steal. Embezzlement, possibly: a careful, methodical felony. But not the single rash act. Not Bryan.”

“He's a gambler,” I pointed out.

“Gamblers know the odds,” the Colonel said, “and will not make them steeper. What about the girl's past? Before Bryan?”

“Nobody knows much. She's from Dallas. Married five or six years to Bryan. Bryan's from Tulsa. She had an ordinary childhood. Through high school. Considered a bit fast, free and easy, but no scandal. No ghosts out of the past. Alfred's spoken to her parents. So has Bryan. Her father's a ticket agent on the railroad.”

“Poor people,” the Colonel commiserated. “What a blow. Any scandal here in town?”

I scowled. I enjoy scandal, but being a judge I despise rumor. I don't like to pass it along. Still—“Bound to be. There isn't a man in town who hasn't lusted after her in his heart. Even Cathcart was noticeably gallant at the dinner last year.” We were still celebrating—annually and alcoholically—the privilege of admission to the mother republic. Cathcart, Milton D., was our mayor. Nobody loved or hated him. A short, round, bald man in steel-rimmed spectacles, efficient rather than friendly, he was a good mayor. Since he had been in office, which meant nine years, nothing of note had happened in Soledad City. We liked it that way. There had been a war, and electricity, and the streetcar line, and the Prohibition we ignored, and women voting, but all that was maintenance rather than news.

“Yes,” the Colonel said. “You should wear a hat.”

“What? I have a nice Stetson.”

“You should wear it. I know the heat doesn't bother you much, but when a man wears a hat he can tip it to the ladies. I used to tip mine to Mrs. Talbot, and my reward was a smile and a soft word.”

“I never thought of that.” Used to, he had said. We accept it, assimilate it, so quickly.

“I heard Bruce Donnelley used to look at her now and then.” The shaggy white brows arched.

I knew Donnelley, as people know one another when they are required to attend civic functions together. He liked those functions; I despised them; so his attendance was honest and mine was hypocritical. He had never to my knowledge made a joke, but he had come close once, at a luncheon, when he turned ponderously to me and said, “I wonder just when they mashed these potatoes.” I allowed a smile to grace the comment, but it was not answered; he merely stared, grave, stern, as though cardboard potatoes were a visitation of the Lord upon us poor sinners.

“Of course he did,” I said to the Colonel. “But not seriously. Not the elder. And so what?”

“Well, he lived next door, after all.”

“What does that mean?” I was annoyed. “Assignations by the garbage can?”

“It means proximity,” the Colonel said loftily. “It means temptation. It means the bedroom light at night, the undrawn shade.”

“It means the Donnelleys' chickens in the Talbots' petunias. Somehow I can't see two hundred and twenty pounds of Bruce Donnelley lurking in a flower bed for a glimpse of raspberry nipple.” The Colonel winced. I kept my tone dry. “And if he did? From Peeping Tom to Bluebeard is a long jump.”

“I suppose it is,” he said grudgingly. “But who would want to hurt that dear lady, and why?”

“Ask Alfred.”

“Ah, no.” He smiled. “I am going to ask Eulalia. I admire Alfred, but I adore Eulalia.”

“You old goat,” I said. He was delighted.

Eulalia was my mother, Mrs. Eulalia Morales Lewis, Mexican, handsome in her early fifties, boasting a good mind and innumerable cousins, among them Ignacio, who had a daughter Rafaela, who—no. Later. My mother had been a good wife from 1892 to 1921 to Graeme Lewis, known as Bulldog, who was a good father, the best, long ago a ranger and then county sheriff, a man of great heart who had killed when necessary. My mother was intensely proud of my being a judge, but I was not supposed to know that; our conversations consisted largely of raillery. They were also bawdy; she was a well-read woman of shrewd good humor, and enjoyed quoting my father. Now and then I would remember one of her more salacious (and salubrious) observations while I was on the bench—in state, sweating under the obligatory robe, straining to freeze an expression of mature dignity on a twenty-nine-year-old face—and would be appalled by the masks we human beings wear when we transact our most earnest business. Needing most to be ourselves, relaxed, mortal, receptive to good sense and to the nuances of truth and falsehood, available to the urgent supplications of wisdom and mercy—precisely then we deck ourselves in cold anonymity, that heads may better roll. If judges were required to sit stark naked we would have more justice.

We had been informed of the murder by telephone, at breakfast. We had been quarreling amiably in her large, airy, buff-and-white kitchen. The eggs were fresh, the bacon was lean, the coffee hot and strong; the day was beginning well. She had sat back with a deep grunt of pleasure, her brown eyes clear and at peace, and had lit a thin, black, four-inch stogy. “A good day,” she said. “Cooler. Have you asked Rosemary down for the weekend?”

“No. I may. Do you want me to?”

A shrug. “She's all right. A little shy for my taste.”

“Your taste is not paramount. Anyway you're a lusty Latin. A dirty Spic lady.”

“Like Rafaela. And Rosemary's a nice clean Swede.”

“And a schoolteacher,” I said. “She has a pretty face and a fine bottom. She'll make some man a wonderful wife.”

“You?”

“Maybe.”

She blew a smoke ring. “How could I face Ignacio?”

“More coffee, please. You're trying to tell me something.” I was jumpy, not knowing what she had guessed.

“No, no, no,” she poured coffee.

“Rafaela,” I said. “So you can dominate her. You're afraid if I marry Rosemary you'll have to sleep in the garage—”

“We don't have a garage. And it's my house.”

“—but if it was Rafaela you could be a nosy old bawd. You think you'd scare her half to death.”

“She's already scared,” my mother said with great good nature. “She told me. She's scared you like boys.”

I was shaking my head in gloomy disgust when the phone rang. She went off to answer it, and talked awhile, and came back looking sad.

“Louise Talbot was murdered last night,” she said.

I chased down to my office, which consisted of one-half the second story of a two-story building. Across the hall from me was a ladies' hairdresser. The arrangement was undignified but interesting; I never knew whom I would meet on my way to the men's room, or what vision of factitious delight would grace my exit from same. The ground floor was a drugstore, with soda fountain, notions, newspapers, magazines, bottled liquor with hair-tonic labels, toys and games, and occasionally an all-night poker game in the back room, including me. It was run by a folksy, rubicund gentleman named Geronimo Goldman who described himself as the last Jewish Apache. He was around sixty, and specialized in forgetting to send out bills, weeping openly at hard-luck stories, and giving away free medicine. Also removing cinders and bandaging cuts. “I make it up on the newspapers,” he said. He had told me once that his real name was Bernard, that he was from Newark, New Jersey, and that he had moved west just before the war for his health and because he was fascinated by Indians. “Is that why you have that lilt to your voice? Almost an accent. Is that New Jersey?”

“What, New Jersey,” he said. “That's what's left of a Yiddish childhood. Plus, plus,” the admonitory finger, the toothy smile, “plus my Apache heritage. But the Apaches have no word for herring. Salt fish, they say. You go in and ask for a salt fish, you're liable to get anything.”

“Funny,” I said, “I don't know that I ever talked to a Jewish fellow. I mean not
as
a Jewish fellow.”

“You don't have to say ‘Jewish fellow,'” he explained gently. “Just ‘Jew.' An all-right word. Being a Jew is honorable work.”

“Jew,” I said obediently. “Jew.” It sounded odd.

“Very good,” he said. The rumor was that he supported himself playing poker, and I am in a position to confirm that, but I have indicated my aversion to rumor. The building itself had been put up in the 1880s, and its various occupants worked with a constant sense of impending catastrophe, heightened by the groaning and crepitation of exhausted lumber.

I had two rooms. One was an anteroom where my part-time clerk could read the Police Gazette, and where people could sit when I wanted to impress them by making them wait. The clerk, a bright young ex-Zuñi of twenty-two, had little to do, but he had been graduated from a state law school and a clerkship was traditionally the next step. His name was John Digby, which was his idea of the emancipated form of Jumping Deer, the name given him at birth. He was all right: smart, cheerful, ambitious, you might even say one hundred per cent American. I considered him with an odd mixture of respect, melancholy, and expectation. The respect because he did his work well; the melancholy because he had chopped away his own roots—he had
chosen
a kind of anonymity; and the expectation because I never fully believed that he wanted to be like the go-getters around him, and I kept hoping that he would show up in war paint, naked and greased, with a bleeding goat's-scrotum, full, hanging around his neck. He wore blue suits, black shoes, white shirts, and red neckties. In the year following these events the government of the United States condescended to grant him and his brothers American citizenship.

I have mentioned my work. There was not much of it. Soledad City, all four thousand of us, was a county seat. The county consisted of eleven hundred square miles with a total population of about nine thousand. There was a fair amount of theft, and there were a good many fights, and as the automobiles sputtered in we had accidents and insurance problems; there were wills to probate and an occasional divorce to maneuver; there were town ordinances to uphold and neighborhood bickerings to resolve and imprecise surveys to adjudicate; and there was local politics. Otherwise it was a quiet life. The county had two judges, and we sat alternately, three months on and three off, always in Soledad City; whoever was off performed the lesser functions of justice of the peace and assisted Ira Grandison, the municipal judge, when necessary. My colleague was an older man, over sixty, a former United States marshal named Alvin Hochstadter. I did not care for him at first—he was showy and frontierish, with a string tie, a wide-brimmed hat, white hair, a ruddy face, a promiscuous smile—but he was a fair man and we got along. He knew the law, but I don't believe he ever in his life gave a thought to the philosophy behind the law. Maybe he was better off. He had a vinegary wife who was one of the nice people. Nobody liked her. They had two boys and a girl out in the world.