Murder for the Bride (16 page)

“Then you’ve got one hell of a good act, Jill.”

“Better than I knew,” she said softly. “Refill?”

I held out the empty glass. She didn’t meet my eyes as she took it. She carefully avoided touching my hand. As she walked away, I said, “And that yak about bathing suits. Did it mean anything? You spend a lot of time in a sun suit.”

She turned and stared back at me, and I could sense the anger that stirred in her. “I do things because they’re difficult, Dil. I do things I don’t like to do as a form of self-discipline.”

“Does having me here come under that heading?”

“You make me so darn mad! You twist everything around, in that superior way of yours. And inside you’re laughing at me.”

“With you, my lamb. Not at you.”

The larder was low. I helped her inspect the cupboards. The meal we had was abundant enough, but a slightly odd assortment. After the dishes were done we sat in silence and watched night obscure the bronze boy. There was a smell of new rain in the air, and the stars came out only to wink for a few moments in the early night sky before the clouds covered them.

“Any time now,” I said.

I saw the pale outline of her face turn toward me. “At least you don’t have to pack, do you?”

“Tram will have some things that will fit. These clothes feel like I’ll have to take them off with a trowel.”

“I won’t go in with you, so there’s no point in changing, I guess. I’m ready when you are.”

She turned on the floor lamp at the head of the couch and picked up her purse, and we went down the hallway to the wooden door that fronted on the sidewalk.

“I’m forever grateful to you, Jill,” I said softly.

“Don’t make such a thing out of it. When I kill my managing editor, you can hide me in your pocket.”

She had her hand on the door latch. The light from the living room was faint. I took her wrist and pulled her hand away from the latch, turning her toward me. Her whole body stiffened. I slid my hand down around her fingers. They felt like ice. I put my other hand on her shoulder, and knew that she trembled. It was the clumsiest possible kiss, with our noses getting in the way, and her lips tightly compressed under mine. I realized what a mistake it was to make any attempt to step out of the brotherly role. She made me feel as if I were all hands and feet.

“Sorry,” I said.

“I guess I’m no good, Dil. I’m not often kissed.”

“I hope the next guy does a better job than that, anyway. Come on. Let’s roll.”

After two blocks I said, “Hey! Wouldn’t it be a little embarrassing to be picked up?”

She didn’t answer me. She sat on a seat cushion that kept her high enough so that she could lean forward and grasp the top of the wheel of the battered coupé. Somebody kept the motor in sweet shape for her. She gunned it up to each corner, took a quick stab at the brake, and wrenched hard, letting the wheel slip back through her hands as the coupé swayed back into line.

I had to force myself to lean back and relax. She looked straight ahead and her lips were a firm, tight line. She barged across Canal, got on Tulane near Charity Hospital, and roared out Tulane, weaving through traffic, to the Airline Highway. The motor began to sing like a big bee.

“Damn it, Jill, take it easy!”

She didn’t answer me. She just depressed the foot throttle another fraction of an inch. She took the cutoff to Metairie Road and skidded the back wheels as she took the oblique onto Metairie. When we reached Tram’s, she waited until the last instant before braking and
ducking into his drive. A few house lights were on.

“Here you are,” she said coldly.

That’s as far as I got. She left me looking at the twin red tail lights as she spun away. She left me rubbing my elbow where the window frame had rapped it smartly, wondering what was wrong with her.

Sammy opened the door a few moments after I leaned on the bell. He peered out at me and his eyes grew wide and he took an involuntary half step backward. Then he pulled himself together and said, “Evening, Mr. Bryant Come in, suh. Mr. Widdmar, he’s out in the patio, suh.”

“Thanks, Sammy.” I went through onto the central patio. Tram was a bulky shadow enfolded in a Barwa chair. Lights in the house proper picked up glints from the glassware on the tray table at his elbow.

“The condemned man ate a hearty Scotch,” I said.

“Mix your own, you felon,” Tram boomed. Sammy brought a second chair out and set it down with a soft scrape of aluminum on the patio tiles. I made my drink and sat down, feeling at ease for the first time in many days.

“Hope I’m not intruding,” I said.

“I’ve been sitting out here crying into the night. I had a nice tasty setup for this evening. Tall and demure and cautious and widowed and potentially hotter than Mammy’s pressure cooker. I had mood music all stacked on the machine. A duck-and-wild-rice dinner, with brandy to float on top of it. What do you think I built this house for? As a refuge for fugitives from justice, or as an adjunct to seduction?”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I had to sit up with a sick friend. Feeble, wasn’t it?”

“Nothing like making me feel at home, Tram.”

“
Es su casa
, as we old bullfighters say. Barney was enigmatic. Where the hell were you hiding?”

“Under a wet rock.”

“So? You know, I thought I heard the loose connecting rods on Jill’s heap just before you arrived. Sound carries nice on this night air. And I decided that Jill’s place would have made a nice little hidey-hole for you, even though the
young lady is colder than the proverbial well-digger’s wallet.”

“From experience you speak?”

“From the experience of futile attempts, during which I was laughed at. Hideous thing for a man of my sensibilities. Always thought there was hidden talent there. Did she make you comfy?”

“On the couch.”

He turned and awkwardly fixed a new drink. His brown chest was bare and he wore the perennial faded sarong. There is a wide band of rubbery fat around his middle. Not unhealthy fat. Rather, the sort of fat you see on middle-aged Hawaiians who still do a lot of swimming and fishing.

“To descend into pure corn for a moment, Dil, let me say that I am your boy. Lawyers, pressure, refuge, or alley-type fisticuffs.”

I felt a stinging sensation in my eyes. A friend is a rare thing, and precious. “Thanks, Tram.”

“There will now be a brief interlude of music, mostly violins.”

“Tram, I’m being pushed around without entirely knowing why.”

“That sounds revoltingly familiar. What does it remind me of? Ah, yes. Our Army careers. Hurry up and wait, soldier.”

I’d been a battalion commander of an engineer outfit on Pick’s Pike, more commonly known as the Ledo Road. Or the Stilwell Road. My outfit pushed the lead cats out along the track. Tram had been on the staff at Ledo Headquarters, Advance Section I. We’d had a few laughs, a few monumental drunks at Calcutta, a pair of cute little No’th Ca’lina nurses from the station hospital at Chabua. We’d been shot at in anger, and we’d hated the same general officers, and we’d lived through a couple of monsoon seasons while atabrine turned us as yellow as the Chinese troops heading down the line to Myitkyina.

Nobody had saved anybody’s life. We’d just got along pretty well. Assam and North Burma hadn’t sapped Tram’s energy or lessened his bounce. We’d agreed to keep in touch after the war. We might not have done that
had I not worked out of the New Orleans office of Trans-Americas, his home town and great love.

“That was a hell of a mess, the way Laura was killed, Dil.”

“It was pretty cold and pretty professional.”

“When you have something that somebody wants badly enough to kill you for, then you better get rid of it. You know, I’ve been thinking and thinking about it. I’ve talked with Bill French. We’ve been wondering what the hell it was she smuggled in. What do you think it was, Dil? Jewels? Dope?”

“Information. Some kind of document. Spy stuff, Tram.” With what he was doing for me, it would have been pretty stuffy to clam up on him.

“Shades of Mr. Oppenheim, eh? Plans of the secret weapon. Cloaks and daggers under a waning moon.”

“I know how it must sound to you. It sounded that way to me, too. Now I’m used to it. Hell, as far as I’m concerned now, there’s a spy behind every bush.”

“O.K. Even though it’s intellectually painful, I’ll go along with the assumption that she brought in some kind of information. Did they get it from her?”

“No. She got rid of it somehow. Or maybe it was memorized.”

“But I don’t suppose they could take a chance that it was memorized—that is, if it was highly important?”

“No. She had a partner. Maybe he had it. He’s dead. Maybe they took it off him. If so, then the heat will be off me. The damn fools still think I’ve got it.”

“And you haven’t?”

“Hell, no!”

He was silent for a while. He said, “Dil, I know you pretty well. I know just how stubborn you can be. It would be just like you to hang onto something she gave you just out of pure orneriness.”

“Brother, if I had it, I wouldn’t have it any longer. I would have given it to the right people and they’d have it in Washington by now, believe me.”

“Parlor patriot?”

“Call it that if you want to.”

“You’d turn it in, even when it might lead you to the
guy who killed Laura if you should hang onto it?”

I gave my answer considerable thought. When I spoke my voice sounded far away, and very tired. “A funny thing, Tram. I was panting around wanting to get my hands on the guy who killed her. I wanted to kill him with my hands. But I’ve learned a lot of things. And now I don’t care too much any more. I think maybe Laura was overdue for killing. I think she had done some things that canceled out her right to keep living. I almost hope she died hard. She was just a disease I had for a while. I can look back on my time with her the way you look back on a fever, a high fever that blurs outlines and intensifies colors.”

“Pliers and a wire coat hanger don’t make what you’d call a very merciful weapon, Dil.”

“I think she was unconscious when it was done. I feel a hell of a lot sorrier for that little girl I’m supposed to have killed in Harrigan’s apartment. She knew what was coming, and just how it was going to be done.”

“Are you sorry for the big guy in the alley, too?”

“Not exactly.” It was bone-weariness, I guess, but the two drinks plus what I’d had at Jill’s made my lips feel thick and numb. I felt a little dizzy too. I heard myself talking about Haussmann, about Talya, about all manner of things.

“Get it all off your chest, boy,” Tram said softly. “Talk it out. That’s the best way. I’ll fix you another.”

The words poured out. A monotonous flood. It was good of Tram to sit and listen to it all.

I gabbled like a girl. The cornflowers for Talya. The guy with the sunburned nose, cleaning his fingernails. Jill’s research file. The color of Siddman’s face. As I talked, my voice slowly went rusty, and my lips wouldn’t fit around the words any more.

Vaguely I can remember leaning heavily on Tram as he walked me into the bedroom. I can remember staring into a bathroom mirror at a face that didn’t look like mine, then falling across the bed.

When I awakened Monday morning it was ten o’clock and Tram had gone to his office. I’ve never felt worse.
Sammy brought in some clothes of Tram’s. They bagged around the middle, but they were clean.

My stomach quivered on the edge of nausea. It was a full hour before I could attempt black coffee, liberally laced with brandy. It was Sammy’s polite recommendation. It worked fine. At about eleven-thirty I had a genuine breakfast and read the morning paper. I was still the object of a city-wide man hunt. It was like reading about somebody else. I remembered the way Jill had acted when she drove me out the night before, and I began to wonder what I could do. I was dialing when Sammy came silently up behind me and reached around me and pushed the cradle buttons down.

“Terrible sorry, suh, but Mr. Widdmar, he left strict orders for you to do no telephonin’ today.”

I shrugged. It was probably a pretty smart idea. Tram stood to lose a lot if anyone got a line on where I was hiding. I played some of his old jazz records, took a swim, and managed to get thoroughly restless.

T
ram came bouncing lustily in a little after five, shedding his city clothes, singing in a thunderous baritone about a lady known as Lou. He came out in flowered trunks and plunged, snorting and bellowing, into the pool.

It wasn’t until he came out onto the poolside mattress, puffing and hammering water out of his ear, that I got a chance to talk to him.

“Have a good day?” he said.

“Oh, dandy! Any more days like this and you better send your demure damosel around before boredom drives me nuts.”

“I thought you’d be too busy with your hangover.”

“It really hit me last night.”

“Your energy was down, I think.”

“I’m glad you didn’t make a recording of that gab fest, Tram.”

“I let you talk, and it was a struggle. I’d rather hear myself talk any time.”

“Look, I’ve got to decide what to do. It’s a nice house and all that, but I can’t spend the rest of my life here.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too. Dil, I don’t think you ought to risk bucking the officials on this. They grab you and they’re going to have a time. I made some calls. This hiding hasn’t done you any good. I’ve been kidding around, Dil, but right now I’m serious. I think you ought to get the hell out of town. Maybe out of the country, and let this thing blow over.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’m not. That’s the bad part of it. You don’t know what public hysteria can do. They’re about to hang you in effigy down there in the city. And let me ask you one question. Can you prove, Dil, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that you
didn’t
kill that girl and the guy in the alley?”

“No, but—”

“You’d have to have that sort of proof to make it a good gamble to turn yourself in. You know I don’t get hysterical. But right now I’m actually afraid of what they might do to you if they get their hands on you.”