Black Is the Fashion for Dying (25 page)

Finally, half to himself, Captain Walsh said, “Jesus, Joseph and Mary!”

“
You buy it now, Captain?
”

“Looks like I got to.”

“
Better saddle up then.
”

“Yeah.” The captain rose, turned towards Dick and Sergeant Grimsby. “Let's go.”

“The prisoner, too?” Sergeant Grimsby asked.

“What prisoner?”

“Oh.” Sergeant Grimsby reluctantly took a key from his pocket, unlocked the cuff on Dick's wrist. “Still some charges against him, though.”

The captain, facing the loudspeaker again, ignored this.

“Talk to you later, Mr. Gordon,” he said. “And thanks.”

Josh said, “
Just catch the bastard.
”

Walsh went up the aisle and out of the room, followed by Sergeant Grimsby and the detective who had been standing by the door. Herbie spoke into the loudspeaker. “Anything more?” “
What do you think this is?
” Josh asked. “
A double feature?
” Herbie and the others filed out. Dick came over, rubbing his wrist. “You okay, Lisa?”

“Just a little numb, darling.”

“Me too.” Dick's eyes crinkled at the corners. “Seems like a dream, to coin a phrase.” He took hold of her hand. “Except for a moment or two this afternoon.”

“More than a moment.”

“And to think it took a murder to do it.”

“Dick!” She glanced warningly at the loudspeaker. “I don't think …”

Dick asked, “You still on tap, Josh?”

“
Don't mind me,
” said the speaker.

“We're thinking of shoving off.”

“
And I'm thinking of Lorrance.
”

“What about him?”

“
That's just it.
” Josh's voice was troubled. “
I don't know.
”

T. J. Lorrance

In one of the Nembutal dreams, peopled by nightmare creatures with grotesque faces, a bell janglod. The bell was at the base of a teeter-totter that see-sawted-him and a harlequin clown up and down between sawdust and a canvas tent top. Each time he neared the sawdust the bell jangled and the clown giggled hysterically. The clown's skin was chalk-white and he had only one eye, long-lashed and high on his forehead. With the giggling clown he went up and down, faster and faster until sawdust and canvas tent top seemed to merge in a blurry half-circle and with a crash the teeter-totter broke, cutting off the jangling bell in mid-ring.

He was trying to find something on the night table beside the bed. His hand searched the surface, encountered water glass and pill box. On the floor was where the telephone was, the handpiece under the bed. Wondering dazedly how it had gotten there, he pulled the handpiece out by the cord, heard a tiny voice crying, “T. J.… T. J.…” The clown, he thought, and then he realized he was no longer dreaming.

The tiny voice was Karl's!

He raised the handpiece, felt cold plastic touch his cheek. “Yes …?”

“What the hell's wrong?”

“The phone … knocked over.”

“Are you drunk?” Karl asked and quickly added, “Never mind. Don't answer. Just come downstairs.”

“Downstairs?”

“I'm in the den.”

“Den?” He felt confused, as though he were back in the dream. Karl in the house and using the telephone, too? “How … call me?”

“Your unlisted phone, you fool.”

“But why?”

“Come down and I'll explain.”

The crack of Karl's handpiece being slammed down hurt his eardrum. He sat motionless in the somehow comforting darkness, not wanting to move. Something had happened. Karl wouldn't be downstairs if it hadn't. But he felt neither apprehension nor curiosity. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to pull up the covers, set the electric blanket at womb temperature, curl up in the fetal position and sleep. Forever, if possible.

But it wasn't possible. He had commitments this side of forever. And besides the phone would soon be ringing again. Or Karl would be appearing in person. He sighed, turned on the lamp beside him and slid off the bed. On a chair he found his silk robe and below it the fleece-lined slippers. He put these on and tiptoed out of the bedroom. He was nearing the stairs on the far side of the landing when Pamela's door opened and Miss Mclntyre, her nurse's uniform ghostly in the dim light, peered out.

“Mr. Lorrance?” she asked softly.

“Yes.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“No. Nothing's wrong.”

There was an uneasy note under the Scotch burr. “I heard the telephone.”

“Just a business call.”

Back of her, in the chintz room lit by the rose-colored night bulb Pam loved, he could hear the whir of the respirator and the whisper of mechanically driven air.

“She's … not awake?” he asked.

“No,” Miss Mclntyre said. “The lamb hasn't moved for three hours.”

“Good.”

“Will you be having breakfast with us?”

“Of course,” he said. “Don't I always?”

He sensed rather than saw her smile, and then she was gone and the door was closed. He went slowly down the stairs, thinking-about Pam. She had come far since that awful time of almost complete paralysis. The respirator was needed only at night, and now in the warm water of the backyard pool she had begun to find life in those fragile pipestem legs that made him want to weep. Five years, the doctors guessed, before respirator and braces and crutches would be gone. But she would only be thirteen then. Still time to make up for the years she—

“What the devil kent you?”

Startled. Lorrance looked up, found he had somehow entered the den. Across the room, on the Danish teak desk, the copper bull's-eye lamp was lit. He saw centered in the harsh circle of light the Smith-Corona portable, a legal-size sheet of paper drooping from the carriage. Then, moving forward, he dimly made out Karl's face back of the light, beady eyes glowing malevolently.

“Well?”

He saw Karl was still wearing the dress clothes he had put on for the Academy show. “I … I stopped to speak to Miss McIntyre.”

“She knows I'm here?”

“No. Nobody does”

“Good.” Some of the rasp left Karl's voice. “That's why I didn't go up to your room. So nobody'd know.”

“But what difference …?”

“Didn't you see the Academy broadcast?”

Lorrance shook his head.

“Too bad, because I made a fool of myself.” Karl leaned forward. “Worse than a fool.” Reflected light from the table illuminated his face, glistened on tallow skin, wet with sweat.

“Are you sick, Karl?”

“Sick?”

“You're pale. And perspiring so.”

“I'm not sick,” Karl snarled. “And if you'll for Christ's sake listen I'll tell you why I'm sweating.”

He jerked a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket, began to wipe his face. Below the den's French windows Lorrance could hear the tree toad that lived in the ivy bed, each croak like a piece of heavy linen being torn. Further off he could hear crickets and rustling leaves. Presently Karl spoke around the handkerchief.

“I lost my head, T. J. For the second time in three days. Once with Caresse when I thought she was crazy. And now with this gaunt popinjay, this skid-row actor!”

“Actor?”

“He walked up onto the platform with me. When the writing award was announced.” A terrible look came over Karl's face, as though he had suffered a seizure of some kind. “I thought I'd gone crazy myself.” His thick lips writhed. “Or that the dead had risen.”

“I don't understand.”

“I thought he was Pixley!” Karl pushed sweat out of his eyes with the handkerchief. “He was made up to look like Pixley. He accepted the Oscar in Pixley's name.”

“But why …” Lorrance began, and then it came clear in one lightning-stroke flash. “The ledgers!” he exclaimed. “The screenplays! They were Pixley's?”

Behind the handkerchief Karl nodded.

“And after he died, you and Caresse …?”

“It was her idea.” Karl's voice was calmer now. “The plays were in blank verse. I had to take the poetry out, make a series of major revisions. It wasn't easy. In the end they were as much mine as Pixley's.” Deep in his throat he made a choking sound that might have been meant for laughter. “But that didn't prevent me from running.” The handkerchief came down, disclosing a twisted smile. “I don't even remember leaving the theater. I came to in a taxi just entering my driveway. And by then it was too late to go back.”

“Was it the … police?”

“Josh Gordon.”

“He hired this actor?”

“Yes. And now he'll go to the police.” Sweat had already begun to bead his face again. “Give them the motive. And it may be they will eventually figure out how Caresse was killed.” His voice faded to a phlegmy rumble in his chest. “They'll never convict me. Not an iota of proof anywhere. But that's unimportant.” He paused, spoke slowly for emphasis. “It's my being arrested that's important,”

“I don't see …”

“Scandal. I'll never survive it. Not in this business.” His eyes sought Lorrancc's face. “And neither will you, T. J. Guilt by association, even if you're not found guilty of being an accessory.”

“You'd tell them?”

“And cut my own throat?” Fabro snorted. “I'm not that stupid. But don't you think that Gordon knows by now you stole the ledgers?”

A small current of fear ran along Lorrance's spine. He wished he hadn't taken the sleeping pills. He needed to think clearly, but his mind was confused, as though he were still in the clown dream.

“What can we do?”

“Go under. Both of us. Unless …”

“Unless what?”

Karl bent over the Smith-Corona, drew out the legal-size sheet, laid it on the table. “Read this.”

Lorrance came forward cautiously. “What is it?”

“A confession.”

“Confession?”

“How the murders were committed.”

“No, Karl,” Lorrance protested. “I already know too much …” He felt his heart leap in its rib cage. “
Murders?
”

“Yes. Caresse and some girl. I don't even know her name.”

“You're confessing to
two
murders?”

Karl's rubbery lips stretched into a smile. “No,” he said. “You are, T. J.”

Karl Fabro

Even with the terror still gnawing at his belly, it was all he could do to keep from laughing. The impact on T. J. was as violent as if he had suddenly undergone shock treatment for acute paranoia. Arms, legs, body twitching uncontrollably, he looked like a frog on a hook through which voltage was passing.

It had really unbalanced him, and now the thing to do was to keep him off balance.

Hurrying around the desk, he took hold of a thin arm, dug his fingers into the stringy flesh. He yanked on the arm, dragged T. J. back of the desk, shoved him into the chair, turned his head towards the paper.

“I told you to read that.”

“No no no no.…”

“Stop it!” Fabro raised his hand. “Or do I have to slap you again?”

Slowly the twitching diminished. Sight began to return to the glazed blue eyes. “Karl, I could never—”

“Read, damn you!”

Blinking, T. J. bent over the sheet, began shakily, “‘I, Terrance Joseph Lorrance, do hereby confess that …'” His voice trailed away as his eyes raced down the page, reading paragraphs rather than words. Halfway down his eyes halted. “Killed Caresse at the pool …?”

Again Fabro felt an urge to laugh. “When the other shots were being fired. You used a topcoat you stole from my office to muffle …” Breaking off, he reached into his pocket, took out the envelope. “I almost forgot.” He let the seven tortoise shell buttons slide from the envelope onto the table. “These were left, T. J. After you burned the topcoat.”

“I didn't burn …” Fearfully, T. J. looked up from the buttons. “Have you gone crazy, Karl?”

He
did
laugh then. Crazy when he felt this lightness of body that made him want to dance?

“Keep reading,” he gasped. “You'll see.”

T. J. was still looking at him. “Nobody will believe this.”

“Why not?”

“I'd have no possible motive,” T. J. said. “I barely knew Caresse.”

“The last paragraph.”

T. J. looked. “Blackmail …?”

“She knew something in your past.” Fabro bent over, read aloud from the bottom of the page, “‘… and because it involves others I can never tell, not even to save myself.'” He chuckled. “Still think I'm crazy?”

“But the Academy Awards,” T. J. protested. “You were the one who ran.”

“I'll say I thought the man was mad. Some actor I'd refused a job.”

“That still doesn't explain the ledgers.”

“You explain them. In that same last paragraph.” Fabro aimed his forefinger at the sheet. “They contained the material Caresse was using to blackmail you.” He laughed delightedly. “Oh, it's all foolproof, T. J. Look. I even typed the way you would. Letters transposed, words misspelled. A man with a warped mind.”

“My mind isn't—”

“Wait.” Fabro composed his face against the laughter. “The finest lawyers in the country to defend you. A battery of experts to prove insanity. Three, maybe five years in a pleasant sanitarium somewhere. Then you regain your sanity, the experts testify again, and the court frees you.”

“Impossible. Even if I had the money—”

“My money!” Fabro felt a brief flare of irritation. Why was the idiot so slow to grasp things? “Don't you see? I'll be head of Major. In Benjy's place. With millions to use.”

“I still can't …”

“Not even for Pamela?”

T. J. exhaled, as though he had been kneed in the groin. “What does Pamela …?”