Black Is the Fashion for Dying (19 page)

Hot metal grazed his head. Back of his eyes a skyrocket exploded, sent out millions of red stars. The stars flew upwards, became dancing motes of pinkish light that vanished into outer space. Something soft pressed his cheek. It was the rug. He was lying on it by the Chinese chest. He heard a distant padding sound and tried to sit up, but it was like fighting Jupiter's gravity. He heard Gordon yell, “Got you!” and a shrill sound like a rabbit's scream. He heard a tremendous crash, followed by a series of lesser crashes.

Jupiter's gravity became earth's gravity. He got to his feet, feeling pain stab his skull, and staggered through the door to the head of the stairs. In the hallway below a figure was tugging at the front door. The door came open and the figure disappeared.

He started down the stairs. Gordon, sprawled face down on the hall floor, pushed himself up with one arm, with the other pointed dramatically at the open door and cried, “He went thataway!”

Outside the house, looking down at the driveway, Blake could see nothing except shrubs and crushed stone. Then, behind acacias masking the road below, he heard an engine start, heard a meshing of gears, heard pebbles and sand hiting asphalt. The car, still hidden by the acacias, plunged downhill towards the lights of Westwood. It rounded a turn with a scream of rubber. The motor noise diminished, was replaced by a tree-frog's croak.

In the hall Gordon was sitting up, his back propped against the bottom stair. “Got away, eh?”

“In South America by now,” Blake said.

“Knocked me ass over tea kettle.”

“You get a look at him?”

Gordon shook his head. “Wasn't Fabro, though. Didn't smell bad enough.”

“You think he was after the ledgers?”

“Got 'em,” Gordon said. “Felt 'em when I grabbed him.”

Blake began, “That means Ashton Graves …” and broke off as a siren moaned on Sunset or some street below. Heads cocked to the open door, they listened. The siren moaned again, closer this time.

“Only one chance now,” Gordon said hurriedly. “The naked blonde.”

“The one who—”

“Right.”

Another siren with a deeper voice joined the first siren.

“My apartment,” Gordon said. “On Miller Place Yvonne'll find her.”

“But what good will that do?”

“Explain later.”

The sirens, coming up fast now, sounded like angry jungle cats.

“Back way,” Gordon said “Quick.”

“All right. Let's go.”

“I can't.”

Blake bent over him. “Sure you can.” He reached for Gordon's arm. Gordon knocked his hand away “Don't touch me.”

“Why not?”

“Leg,” Gordon said. “God-damn thing's broken”

Karl Fabro

Peering furtively around the library curtains at the driveway, white cement shimmering with a kind of ectoplasmic radiance, he experienced a feeling of time warp. As though he and the driveway and the waiting house were parts of a film seen in a darkened projection room where, when the lights came on, he would make his customary comments to the deferential faces around him and then drive home with Dawes to the pale driveway he was now watching.

An escape fantasy, he knew. A product of his nerves. Like the watching Oscar on his office shelf. He was pulled taut, dangerously taut.

Yet how could he help but be pulled taut? After such an evening as this bad been, coming on top of everything else. He would remember it forever. Irene another watcher, searching his face with questioning eyes whenever she thought he wasn't looking. He could have cheerfully killed her a dozen times. And the others, too. Ed Klauber with his big voice and bigger laugh and his phony sympathy over Caresse. Dolly, drunk as usual to the point of actual paralysis. Charlie Blancard, the nanny producer. T. J.'s friend. A strip-tease homosexual who'd never quite mustered up the courage to cross the line. And that newest protégé of his. Bren? Brown? Bruin? Anyway, a radio writer from Chicago. A droll turd-kicker with a line of hayseed jokes and the cold eyes of a gangster.

And if being penned up for hours with five people he had come to hate with an intensity that actually frightened him, and losing seven hundred and eighty-five dollars at gin to boot, wasn't justification enough for mass homicide, there was the phone call.

He could still feel it in the pit of his stomach. Ashton Graves a suicide.
Tiger in the Night
really finished now. A major pawn in the game with Benjy, extinguished. Why couldn't the drunken fool have waited one more day? What difference would it have made to him? Twenty-four hours against two million dollars.

A ripping sound came from the curtains. He unclenched his hand, discovered the fingers were numb. Taut. Dangerously taut. But it was still all right. The loss of
Tiger in the Night
didn't mean the chess game was lost. He'd realized that at once. Benjy had ordered the picture junked. So he'd be the one the stockholders would—

A beam of light lit hibiscus bushes along the street. A car came up, moving fast. It swung into the driveway, halted beside the house. He caught a glimpse of a rabbity face just before the lights went off. He turned from the curtains, hurried out of the library and down the hall to the side door. He opened the door, came face to face with T. J., just reaching for the knob. He saw with hollow shock that T. J.'s hands were empty.

He cried, “You didn't get them?” and simultaneously T. J. bleated, “Trouble, Karl.”

“But the ledgers!”

“People there!”

“Answer me, damn you!” He caught T. J.'s arm, shook him. “Where in Christ's name are they?”

“In the car …”

“The car!”

He ran to the car, jerked open the door. The ledgers were on the seat, all three of them, carelessly tossed there like old magazines. He snatched them up, feeling the coarse texture of the heavy cardboard bindings against his palms.

T. J. burbled, “Karl, I must tell you—”

“Shut up.”

Holding the ledgers tight against his chest, he trotted into the hall and along it to the cellar stairway. He pressed the light switch and without looking back went down the stairs. He passed the two furnaces with their twisted asbestos-wrapped pipes, halted by the green metal box that housed the gas incinerator. There, in one quick motion, he jerked open the lid and dropped in the ledgers.

He felt a warming glow begin to dissolve the icy ball in his belly. It was all over. Danger converted to ashes.

“Karl …!”

Part way down the stairs, T. J. was staring in horror, as though he had just witnessed the dismemberment and cremation of a corpse.

“Haven't you ever seen papers burned before?”

T. J. edged down the stairs, his face alarmed. “But the smell … like
hair.
”

“Oh, that.” Fabro chuckled, genuinely amused. “Something I put in earlier.”

“Not …?”

“Yes. Irene.”

“Oh. no!” The pink drained from T. J.'s checks. “You couldn't … wouldn't …!”

“Stop being a God-damn fool. A wool blanket.”

Still shaken. T. J. cautiously approached the incinerator. “With buttons on it?”

Fabro turned, saw on the cement floor by the incinerator the seven buttons he had unaccountably left there, three as big as half dollars. He picked them up, thrust them in a pocket, wondering how he could have overlooked them.

“All right,” he growled. “So it wasn't a blanket.”

“Then what …?
”

“Who asked you to come down here?”

“I wanted to tell you …” T. J.'s chin trembled. “At the house. Josh Gordon … and Blake.”

“They were there?”

“Trapped me. In the bedroom.” The memory convulsed T. J.'s features. “We fought. I … I pushed Josh down the stairs. And I hit Blake with a claw hammer.”

“You idiot!”

“I had to.” T. J.'s hands fluttered. “Had to hit him.”

“To let them see you.”

“But they didn't. It was dark. And I ran.”

The steel springs in Fabro's body slowly uncoiled. Trouble, all right. But apparently not disaster. He made his voice matter-of-fact.

“Where were you when all this began?”

“I told you. In the bedroom.”

“And they came up?”

“Blake did. He turned on a light. He was at the chest when I hit him.”

“You'd already taken the ledgers?”

“Yes.”

“And where was Josh?”

“On the stairs.”

“Ashton Graves.” The name came from nowhere, but he knew it was the answer. “He must have told them before he died.”

“Died!” Eyes bulging like pigeon eggs, T. J. recoiled. “How …?”

“Blew off his head with a shotgun.”

“Suicide?”

Fabro didn't answer. It was all coming together. At one time or other Caresse must have mentioned the ledgers to Graves. A slip, perhaps, while talking about Pixley, as she often had while drunk. Or a veiled boast about valuables in her possession, a mysterious allusion to priceless objects in her Chinese chest. That would have been like her, to amuse herself with something so dangerous. But she would never have told anyone what was in the ledgers. Not when it meant the end of her career. Yes, that was it. A slip or a boast or an allusion that Graves had remembered.

From T. J. he caught mumbled names. “What about Gordon and Blake?” he demanded.

“If they know …?”

They don't know what's in the ledgers. Nobody does,” He narrowed his eyes. “Unless you …?”

“I never opened them. I swear.”

Fabro saw he was telling the truth. He went to the incinerator. “Let them play detective then, if that's what they're doing.” He lifted the lid, saw small flames lapping the charred edges of the smouldering rectangles inside. “They'll never get anywhere.” He let the lid drop, turned back to T. J. “Not without the ledgers. And in ten minutes they will never have existed.”

“I certainly hope you're right.”

“Haven't I always been?” He put a hand on the thin shoulder, ignoring the involuntary recoil. “You've done a good job.” He made his voice warm. “So stop worrying. You're safe.”

“I certainly hope—” T. J. began and then broke off, his head turning towards the stairs. Coming down them was Irene. She was wearing a pink quilted robe and pink mules and her hair, pulled back in a pony tail, was tied with a pink ribbon. Without lipstick or make-up, her face had an innocent, freshly scrubbed look. Her eyes were fixed on T. J.

“Safe from what?” she asked.

Fabro waited, wondering what T. J. would answer. No answer came. T. J. seemed to have been stricken dumb.

She came past the two furnaces, halted in front of T. J. “You still won't tell me?” she asked softly.

T. J. stood frozen.

“Karl …?”

“Go back to bed.”

The luminous eyes, frightened and faintly accusing, searched his face. “You've been burning something.”

“Papers.”

“It smells like wool.”

“All right. Wool, then.”

“Why?”

He grinned at her. “You'd better ask T. J.”

“No!” T. J. cried. “I … never tell.”

Fabro said mockingly, “That answer you, Irene?”

“No.” She studied him for a moment, then looked at T. J., her expression softening. “I know you're protecting Karl.”

T. J. shook his head wildly. “Nothing to do … with Karl.”

“It has. I'm sure it has.” She put a hand on T. J.'s trembling arm. “And I have a right to know.”

T. J.'s eyes, agonized, met Fabro's for a fleeting second. A chill enveloped Fabro. What if he did tell? What would happen to the chess game then? What would Irene do? But T. J. wasn't telling. He was backing away from Irene, saying, “Please. I told you before.” He backed into one of the furnaces, backed to the stairs. “Can't talk about it. Ever.” His eyes, nearly all whites, turned imploringly to Fabro. “May I go now?”

Fabro grunted sardonically. “Best idea you've had all night.”

Unsteadily mounting the stairs, T. J. vanished without a backward glance. Irene stood motionless, staring after him, her expression at once alarmed and compassionate. Glowering at her, Fabro wondered how such a pipsqueak could inspire such a look. The maternal instinct, he supposed. The instinct that took care of crippled sparrows and Mongoloid idiots. The instinct that made her meddle with things that didn't concern her. He felt a surge of hatred. No, not of hatred. Of contempt. The eternal mother, glands bursting with milk, searching for a hungry mouth.

“By God, Irene!” he exclaimed.

Dazedly, like someone coming out of a deep sleep, she focused her eyes on him. “Yes?”

“You forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“To kiss the little bastard good night.”

Richard Blake

Ivory telephone held between cheek and bare shoulder, she leaned forward and lit the du Maurier with the brass lighter from the glass coffee table. She had tangerine-colored hair, sultry blue-shaded eyes and her fingernails were painted burnt-orange. She was wearing a lime silk wrapper and, as far as Blake could tell, nothing else. She drew on the du Maurier, let smoke slide out the corners of her mouth, spoke huskily into the telephone.

“You're sure, Sadie?”

She listened a moment, then made a raspy laughing noise deep in her throat. “Are you crazy? I call the Vice Squad and they'll come for me!” She laughed again. “Well, thanks, anyway.” She raised a hand for the telephone, then said, “Who? Sid Barstow? Yeah, he might at that.”

She put down the telephone, looked across the glass coffee table. “That makes nine calls.” Her legs were bare up to where the lime silk fell away from slender brown thighs.

“What about this Sid?” Blake asked.

She blew a derisive puff of smoke at him. “You sure got the hots.”