Night Walker (14 page)

“Larry,” she said. “What’s the matter, Larry? You’re looking at me so—”

“How can you tell how I’m looking?” Young said. “With these damn bandages?” It occurred to him that he had said the same thing before; and Bonita Decker’s reaction was very similar to what Elizabeth’s had been.

“Bandages!” the red-haired girl breathed. “Oh, Larry, bandages! Do you think I can’t —?” She checked herself and took a step forward. “Larry, is anything the matter? Is something wrong? Are you
scared I won’t — Are you going to have a big scar or something? Is that why you’ve been acting so strange? Do you really think it would make any —
This
is how much I care about that!” she cried, and took another step forward and, rising on tiptoe, threw her arms about his neck. “Oh, Larry, Larry —!”

For a moment he was holding her small, hard body, still wet from the river, against him. Her arms were tight about his neck, and her face was close, and her lips, that he had once thought thin and reckless, looked soft and willing enough now. It seemed an easy enough thing to do — even a pleasant one — but suddenly he could not do it. You could carry a masquerade only so far. You might feel quite justified in stepping into the shoes of a man who had tried to kill you; you could without qualms take over his home and eat his food. You could even plan to run away with the wife who detested him. But you could not, in his name, accept the mistaken kisses of a girl who loved him.

He took her by the shoulders and pushed her away. “Take it easy, Red,” he said. “Relax, take a deep breath, and start over again.”

Her face seemed to crumple. “But Larry—”

“Ah hell” he said. “I’m not Larry, Miss Decker. Now sit down somewhere and behave yourself, damn it. You’re getting me all wet.”

She took two steps backward, staring up at him. Her incredulous scrutiny made him impatient. “I am not Larry Wilson,” he said, repeating himself more distinctly for her benefit. “Catch on, Red? I never was Larry Wilson and I never will be, and just between you and me, it’s one of the few things I have left to be proud and thankful for. Come the last Thursday in November this year, and no matter how rough things are for me — and I expect they’ll be plenty rough — I’ll be able to cheer myself with the thought that they aren’t quite as bad as they might be. I may be a louse and a bum and a few other things, but at least I’m not Larry Wilson. It will be something to give thanks for—”

He checked himself abruptly, because the girl facing him had laughed. It was his turn to stare, uneasily, with the thought that he had already coped with one bout of hysterics that morning; but Bonita Decker’s laughter was healthy enough, and she controlled it easily.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, “but I couldn’t help....
Damn it, sailor, do you know you’ve just cost me five bucks?”

He frowned. “Five—”

“Yes,” she said. “I had a bet on with Aunt Molly Parr. She said the way to make you speak up was for me to make love to you. She said no decent young man would let a girl kiss him under false pretenses. I wanted to know what the hell made her think you were a decent young man. We put five bucks on it.”

Then her smile faded, and they faced each other warily. Presently the boat brought up against the dock fenders with a jolt; the girl took the shock with her knees but Young, weak and tired, had to reach out a hand to steady himself. He saw the faint crouching movement she made at his gesture before she realized it was not aimed at her; and he understood the strain the kid must be under, facing, in these cramped quarters, a man twice her size whose face and expression were hidden from her so that she could have no real warning of what his intentions might be.

He asked, “How long have you known?”

“That you weren’t Larry? Why,” she said, “I knew something was screwy the minute I saw you two days ago; hell, I’ve known Larry all my life. I don’t pretend I caught on right away; I mean, when you go visiting a sick friend you hardly expect to find a complete stranger in the bed, but after I’d got thinking about it—”

“Carry on,” he said as she paused.

“Well, Larry’s pretty big but he doesn’t
look
big, if you know what I mean. He’s — well, he’s a smooth kind of a man. When I started thinking of you in that damn bed — You’re a hell of a big, hairy bruiser, you know, sailor. Of course, I haven’t seen Larry for six months and in spite of what his wife thinks I’m not in the habit of seeing him in pajamas, but just the same —” She moved her bare, freckled shoulders briefly. “So I got Aunt Molly to take a look at you and she said while she didn’t remember Larry any too clearly — he never visits Laurel Hill any more often than he has to — she was pretty well up on heredity, what with dogs and horses and things. She said that to the best of her knowledge none of the Wilsons had ever come through with a male with that kind of football shoulders since Cousin Loretta Mae Wilson ran off with a stevedore back in the nineties. Besides, you kept your hands hidden. Larry’s always kind of proud of his hands and waves them around to show them off; he thinks they’re aristocratic. And the hospital records didn’t show anything wrong with the patient’s hands—”

“Oh, you checked at the hospital?”

“You’re damn right I checked at the hospital,” she said. “I wanted to know what the hell was going on! Like I said, I didn’t quite catch on at first; I only got to look at you for a moment, remember, and the light
was wrong. What I first thought was that Larry had got a bad crack on the head — amnesia or something — and that
she
had taken advantage of it to get him where she could keep an eye on him. Of course, the hospital said you seemed perfectly normal, so that was out. It was driving back from Rogerstown that I got the idea you might not be Larry at all, and stopped off at Laurel Hill to get Aunt Molly to help me. She thought I was crazy at first, but she kind of likes crazy people, being a little eccentric herself.”

Young could not help grinning briefly. “I know what you mean,” he said, remembering the formidable old lady with her cane. He said, “Tell Mrs. Parr, when you see her, that I thank her for her good opinion of me.”

The girl looked at him a little oddly. “You’re a funny kind of a guy for the spot you’re in, sailor.”

“I could say the same about you,” Young said. “In more ways than one. What the hell brought you here today, if you knew I wasn’t Larry Wilson?”

She licked her lips and hesitated, watching him. “Why,” she said, “I noticed that the chain was gone.”

“The chain?”

“Why, yes,” she said softly. “
Amberjack’s
mooring chain. Larry used to keep her lying out a ways so she wouldn’t be all the time beating up against the dock like this. I helped him pull the mooring last fall. Well, it was all lying there on shore all winter and spring:
the mushroom anchor, the buoy, and the chain. But this morning when I sailed past I noticed that — that the chain was missing, so I came back to look around.” The little hesitation was the first sign of fear or uncertainty that she had given. Young noticed suddenly that she was poised on the balls of her feet, ignoring the bandaged cut, and that the muscles of her calves and thighs were quivering slightly with tension; the kid was ready to dive for the deckhouse door if he should move. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she whispered. “He’s dead and out there somewhere with the chain wrapped around him; and you’re pretending to be him so nobody’ll know! I thought — There was a possibility you might be working with him in some way, and I didn’t want to interfere; but you hate him, too, don’t you? You’re all in it with
her.
... No, don’t come any closer!”

Young had not moved. He said, “You’re making a mistake, Red.”

She shook her head vigorously. “I doubt it, sailor,” she said breathlessly. “I doubt it very much. First she ruined him and then she killed him; and do you want to know something? I’m going to get her for it. I’m going to get her for it no matter how many suckers she finds to take the rap for her — you or that old fool Henshaw or anybody else.” The girl’s face became sharp and her voice took on a shrill and ugly note. “I don’t know how she roped you into this, but how do
you like sharing her with Henshaw, sailor? Do you take alternate nights or do you just flip a coin?”

Young said, “That’s enough of that, small stuff. Keep it clean.”

She laughed sharply. “My God, I’ve shocked the man. I’m sorry, sailor, I didn’t know it was true love!”

The strain was telling on her, turning her nasty, and he realized it and checked the impulse to retort in kind. Instead he said, “Shut up and listen to me. Your boyfriend is all right—”

“He’s not my boyfriend, and I don’t believe you!”

“God damn it, shut your trap and listen!” Young snapped. “I don’t know what Wilson’s up to, or what part you’ve got in his plans, but I’m just advising you not to go off half-cocked and run to the police with any story of murder. I don’t think Wilson wants the cops any more than we do; and I don’t think he’ll thank you for —” He overrode her attempt to interrupt him. “Shut up! The man’s alive, I tell you. I saw him last night. If you don’t believe me, come up to the house and I’ll show you the bullet in the wall where he took a shot at me.”

Her reaction surprised him. She stared at him for a moment, then whirled abruptly, and there was a clanking sound as she hauled out from beneath the settee cushion a Stillson wrench that was fully two feet long and so heavy that she had to hold it in the manner of a baseball bat.

“Just stay where you are,” she said. “I don’t think you’ve got the guts to use that gun in your pocket, not in broad daylight.” She started backing cautiously toward the deckhouse door.

Young said, “You and your boyfriend have a lot in common, Red. Did he teach you that little trick of keeping a club handy?”

She hesitated. “What are you driving at, sailor?”

“You read the hospital reports. Do you really think I got beat up like that just going off the road in a car? And guess who set the car afire before it started rolling. You look like you might be a pretty nice kid if you gave yourself a chance; are you sure you go along with everything your little playmate is doing?”

Bonita Decker frowned.
“Larry?”
she asked. “You want me to believe that
Larry
beat you up like that? With a club? And then shot at you last night. Why — why you’re
crazy!
”

Young said, “Listen, Red—”

“And don’t call me Red!” she screamed.

He made an impatient gesture. “Christ, what a lot of sensitive characters! Elizabeth blows up if I call her Liz, Henshaw has a fit if I call him Doc, and now you threaten to hemorrhage if I call you Red.... Talking about names, what’s this ‘sailor’ routine, anyway?”

“Well,” she demanded, “aren’t you? You talk like one. And —” There was a small, triumphant smile on
her lips as, holding the wrench against her body, she explored the brief green satin top of her bathing suit and came out with a small object that gleamed in the light as she tossed it up and caught it again: a single gold button. “How do you think I came to cut my foot, sailor? I caught a glimpse of this under the dock and sliced myself open poking around to find it again in the murk. A funny thing, sailor, it has soot on it. Now how do you suppose that happened?”

He heard her laugh; then she bent over quickly and he was forced to jump as the big wrench came sliding and rolling, clattering along the deckhouse floor. She was over the side before he had caught his balance again.

He stood in the
Amberjack
’s cockpit for a minute or two, waiting for her to come up, but nothing broke the surface of the river anywhere close at hand, beneath the dock or the boat itself. She was, apparently, not quite sure that if she were to tempt him by swimming away openly he would not take a shot at her or perhaps try to run her down with the cruiser. It was not a pleasant thought, that someone should think him capable of cold-blooded murder. Yet, he reflected, you could hardly blame the kid for being careful, under the circumstances. From her point of view, she had taken enough chances for one day.

Young climbed to the dock and walked to shore, not looking back even when he heard, over the sound of the waves on the beach, a faint splashing that might, or might not, have been the sound of a large fish surfacing briefly. The climb up the bluff took a lot out of him; he was dizzy and breathless when he reached the top, but he did not stop to rest. Inside the house he went directly to the closet beneath the stairs where he had put the suitcases Elizabeth had
packed the night before. He carried these into the front hall. Then he mounted the stairs heavily and entered the bathroom.

There was a pair of cuticle scissors in the cabinet over the lavatory. He took these, regarded his bandaged head for a moment in the mirror, and began to cut. The small scissors made hard work of the surgical gauze. When the stuff was loose, he hesitated for a moment, then pulled it away. It gave more easily than he had expected, falling down about his neck.

The shock was not as great as he had expected. The face that confronted him in the mirror was completely familiar. It was just his own face, looking badly beat-up and very bearded, but still the face to which he had become accustomed from childhood, with an island of tape protecting the nose. He drew a long breath, cut away the bandages hanging about his neck, and looked about for a razor.

When he came into Elizabeth’s room a little later, she was still soundly asleep. He stood by the bed looking down at her; asleep she looked young and helpless but still desirable. He found her appearance pleasing and, in a way, restful, after Bonita Decker’s brash self-confidence. The weaker a man was, he reflected wryly, the more important it was for him to feel that he might be able to be a tower of strength to somebody. No man was ever going to be a tower of strength to Bunny Decker.

Elizabeth stirred slightly. She was wearing no nightgown, and the movement let the covers fall back to reveal a bare shoulder and the curve of a breast; Young leaned down and replaced the covers, watching her with a kind of impatient tenderness as, disturbed by his action, she opened her eyes.