Duplicate Keys (37 page)

“Were they talking about the cocaine?”

“Oh, they wouldn’t have talked about that in front of me.” Susan reached across the debris of her breakfast and picked up a red book on Alice’s side of the coffeetable. Susan said, “This is a guide to records that was put out by
Rolling Stone
about a year ago.” She opened it. “Page ninety-eight. You see how it falls open at the page?
‘Deep Six;
two stars. Sole album by the band that recorded the hit single “Dinah’s Eyes.” “Dinah’s Eyes” had a mildly interesting riff by guitarist and band leader Dennis Minehart, and the wavering voice of lead singer Craig Shellady attains a kind of gravelly substance, but the rest of the album is pallid stuff, imitating almost everything else that had a vogue in the early seventies. Both sides are short (thirty-four minutes combined playing time) but they seem twice as long. Too long. Now deleted.’ That was the subject.”

“Miss—”

“You have to understand. They talked about that review for almost a year. Both of them knew it by heart. I knew it by heart. I also knew by heart every remark they had to make about the review. That
Rolling Stone
always hated their kind of music. That you had to be black and play jazz to get four stars, or be produced by an editor at the
Rolling Stone
. That at least they’d gotten two stars. Look at John Denver, he only got one and sometimes none. But then look at what they said, those fuckers. ‘Imitating almost everything else.’ They’d been trying some stuff out, but not imitating, not copying. They went through the whole book and counted how many records got no stars or one, how many got two, how many got three or more. Then they went through again leaving out the jazz section. It seems like it took
days. But at least, this particular discussion of that six-line passage took another whole day out of my life. Believe me, I’d stopped telling them not to worry about it, that it was only one guy’s opinion, or that they couldn’t control what people thought, they just had to do their best. Now I kept quiet, and hoped they would go on to something else, and finally they did. They went on to a discussion of whether Craig had been right in breaking their contract for a second album. That was a discussion they’d been having for four years. I could just envision both discussions going on for the rest of my life, and never going anywhere. They repeated themselves so much that they were even using the same phrases. Well, about dinner time, they stopped talking about the contract, and there was about a half an hour of silence, and then they started talking again, and damn if it wasn’t about the review. Craig compared it to the original review of the album in
Rolling Stone
, which had been better. He decided for the umpteenth time that the two reviews balanced each other out, and then he went over to the framed clipping on the wall of the article about them in
Rolling Stone
, and he read it, even though he knew that by heart, and then the both of them began talking about those fuckers. I mean I could see what they were doing. They were trying to make sense. They were trying to make these two reviews and this article into the word of God, into some kind of oracle that would tell them once and for all whether they were any good, but they couldn’t do it, and I knew that even if they had, even if a real voice from the sky said, ‘Stop playing music, you aren’t going to make it,’ they would have talked their way around it. That night I thought truly for the first time that they needed to be killed. Or rather, that if they had an accident or something, they would be a lot better off. And I would too.”

“Susan—”

“Let me finish. I used to think that if I could get Denny away from Craig then Denny and I could go on and do something else, and have a grown-up life with kids and jobs. When Craig was out on the Coast those eight months, it almost happened. Denny was
ready to do something else, and was thinking hard about what he wanted to do. He even called Craig and told him what he was thinking about, and Craig said he thought it was a good idea and maybe things weren’t going to work out after all. That was what I should have been suspicious of, that permission, because sure enough, about three weeks later, this woman in L.A. calls and says that Craig is in really rough shape with heroin and that he nearly died and was in the hospital. Denny was the only person he had in the world, and could Denny come out and get him when they let him out of the hospital? Well, we left that day. How could we not? They were like brothers. I didn’t even dare start a fight over it. The trip out was terrific, but as soon as we got Craig, everything changed. The first day, Denny talked a little about what he was thinking of doing, and then the second day he didn’t talk about it at all, but they talked about what Noah was doing and Ray, and how much fun the band had been, and the third day, they talked about what they would do differently if they had it to do over again, and by the time we were back to New York, they were figuring out how to get a few gigs here and there. I screamed at Denny over that, and he said he was just humoring Craig till he felt better and got back on his feet, because they were brothers, you know, just like brothers, they’d slept in the same bed as kids, and before we knew it we were back in the same old shit. I realized that I didn’t have a chance. As long as I was with Denny, Craig would be there, too, robbing him of every bit of will power, every bit of real ambition, always supplying him with wishes. He could talk you into a tizzy, Craig could. After that, it got so that every time I even disagreed with something they wanted to do, Denny would say, ‘Why do you hate Shellady so much? You’d cut off your own arm rather than give him anything with it.’”

“So why didn’t you just leave him?” exclaimed Alice.

“I was going to, as I said.” Susan’s voice had taken on a slight hollowness. “I really had made up my mind that morning, and even though I was angry by the time I left for the Adirondacks,
that was still my intention. But you’ve got to understand what it’s like hearing the same conversations over and over for years. Musicians are home all day. They never have to be anywhere. This apartment was never quiet. It was always the scene of endless chatter, and all they talked about was themselves and their careers and their ambitions and what they would do with the money when they got it. It hurt me. It literally made my skin prickle and my heart pound. I dreaded for them to get up in the morning, I dreaded coming home from work, I dreaded for them to come back from the store or wherever, I dared not be awake when they got back from a gig. The knowledge that they were going to talk about this made me want to jump out of my skin. When I went away, I expected there would be relief, silence and relief, but there wasn’t. Everything they were doing was engraved on my brain. I dreamt about it, I thought about it during the day, I thought I heard their voices. At one point I was sure I could hear them coming through the woods, that they had found me. I was so sure that I just sat down on the front step and waited. I could hear the crashing of their boots and the eternal conversation about ‘those fuckers.’ I must have sat there for an hour. And it didn’t subside until I started thinking about silencing them, and I couldn’t think of any other way. Each time I did one little thing, like finding the plastic bag for my shoes, or learning how to load the gun, it seemed like the noise was just a little closer to being silenced, that I was just a little closer to finally communicating the truth to them. And I thought I was doing them a favor. Even if I left them and my life went on, their lives would never go on. Their lives would be like listening to a scratched record play the same three notes over and over forever. I thought that even if I left them, it could take years before I stopped hearing it all. I couldn’t stand that. I really couldn’t. Anyway, I didn’t think I would really do it until the moment I pulled the trigger. And I have to say that when they saw me in the doorway, there was dead silence, and they weren’t thinking for one second about
their careers.” She put her chin in her hand and gazed toward the kitchen.

“So it went like he said, the night of the, uh, murder?”

Susan glanced at Honey. “Pretty much. The stuff about the dope was rather annoying to overhear, since Denny had promised and promised and sworn up and down that they had a buyer and they were going to be rid of it and paid off the very weekend I left. The first thing the guy did when they brought it out was weigh it on his own scales. It weighed three point two ounces, and they had had five. Even when I left, they’d had almost five, so I knew that they’d been into it the whole time I was gone, that only my presence and irritation had kept them out of it before. And then he did some kind of purity test, and he said that he guessed that the stuff they had was only about seventy percent pure, so he would only pay them for a little over two ounces, and that was doing them a favor. After he left, the first thing Craig asked Denny was whether I had any money, and how much Denny could get from me. Denny said that I had some shares of stock, he didn’t know how much. Then Craig said that Rya’s old man was rich, but Noah said that Rya hadn’t talked to her folks since before Thanksgiving, and that had been a fight about money. So they were stuck, and the next thing I heard was Denny saying that I would be home tomorrow and I would have a shit fit if this stuff was still around, and Craig dismissed him, and then he apologized for me, as if I were crazy or something. Noah was still pissed and said he wouldn’t take the stuff, even though they promised to have it out of his place by Monday. I always did wonder what happened to it. I was furious, I was just furious, and then they settled down to drink some more beer and plan how they were going to spend their first million when this guy at A and M they’d just met played their tape for someone, and that’s when I came out of the bedroom.”

It was a seductive story, and Alice, as always, was seduced. She could imagine everything perfectly, and she hardly blamed Susan
at all. She half thought Honey would get up and leave, giving Susan an hour to leave the country or at least change her name and disappear into Brooklyn, but Honey said, “I’m not clear, Miss Gabriel, about your motive for attacking Mrs. Ellis.” There was that. Alice had nearly forgotten.

“Oh,” said Susan.

Looking at her, Alice’s spirits began to sink.

In a more subdued voice, Susan said, “I couldn’t figure out where you were last night. I knew you were there. I had a strong feeling of your being there, especially when I saw that the bed of the second bedroom was mussed, but it was like magic. You were invisible. That spooked me.”

“Actually,” said Alice, “I was out on the ledge, crawling around the building.”

“Mrs. Ellis did a very amazing thing—” put in Honey.

“I did go out on the fire escape.”

“I saw you. I was one floor up. I saw you come out. I saw the gun, too.”

“I remember looking up, but I didn’t see you. All I saw was plants.”

“I was wedged behind a pot, next to the wall. It was so dark.” Alice thrust her hands between her knees. “Were you going to shoot me?” She was as afraid to hear the answer as she had been to round the corner of the building, except that no adrenaline buoyed her up now.

Susan wrinkled her brow. “I really don’t know. I had the gun, and I was looking for you, but I didn’t know until I shot Denny that I was going to shoot them, either. I felt very separated from everything the whole time it was going on. I suppose the evidence is that I would have shot you like I shot them, but as I told you yesterday, I can’t really tell.”

“But why did you want to kill me? I love you! I wasn’t going to hurt you! Why me?”

Susan tried to smile. “Don’t you always have to kill anyone who knows? I mean, you are a faithful voter, you lick stamps for
the Democratic Party, you worry about the state of the union. Wasn’t this scene inevitable?”

“I didn’t feel in danger! I didn’t even blame you! If you hadn’t scared me half to death last night—” Alice’s voice trailed off. There was no telling, after all, what Honey would overlook and what he would not. Finally, she said, “And they’ve got Noah. The least practical thing would have been to kill me.” She turned to the detective. “I mean, you told me yourself that you were waiting for something like that.”

Susan tried to attain a light tone. “None of this has been exactly practical, has it?”

“But—”

“Don’t ask! Can’t we just talk about it some other time?”

Alice looked down at the scratches on her arms and knees. They no longer stung very much, but the skin felt tight and grated. She said, “Well, I think you should tell me.” Even as she said it, she was amazed at how determined she sounded.

Susan looked out the window rather than at Alice. After a long pause, she said, “I don’t think I was really afraid of your turning me in, even though I was sure that once you knew you would turn me in. Maybe I was afraid of your not turning me in. I was afraid of your knowing! I was afraid of the closeness you would feel to me once you knew, of the unspoken kinship. And I was right! Over the weekend it was like being married. It felt like you were practically in my clothes with me, and there would never be any end to it. You would wear me down about living together, and then we’d eat and sleep and breathe this intimacy for the rest of our lives! How could I get away from that? I wanted to be alone! I wanted there to be silence! For thirteen years I worried about all the permutations of three people’s feelings about each other. And for a while after they—after that night, I was sad and horrified but I was also relieved! It was over! Really over! And then you started preying on me!”

Alice must have looked shocked, because Susan exclaimed, “I know you don’t see it like that, but I did! You were like an animal
circling closer and closer, and when you got to me, you weren’t going to devour me, you were going to sit on me, all over me, affectionately, forever. Your intentions were great. I realize that. But that was what was wrong. People with good intentions never give up! Denny had good intentions. Denny was a kind man. He was superhumanly kind. He never gave up on anything, not Craig, not me, not the music business. Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions. Oh, God!”