Nightmare Alley (36 page)

“I just pushed him. I don’t think he was all the way out.”

“How badly is the girl hurt?”

“For God’s sake, she isn’t
hurt!
I just dropped her; she’ll come out of it quick. If she stays groggy it will give the chump something to worry about: what to do with her. If she gets clear she’ll head straight back to the flat and wait for me. She’ll have a good long wait. I’ve got the keyster parked uptown in a check room. The phoney credentials and everything. If Molly had any brains she could put the con on that mark for hush money: claim he attacked her in the dark séance room. Christ, why didn’t I think of that angle sooner? But it’s sour now. I’m on my way.”

He lifted Lilith’s face and kissed her, but the lips were cool and placid. Stan was staring down into her eyes. “It’s going to be a long time, baby, before we get together.”

She stood up and moved closer to him. “Don’t write to me, Stan. And don’t get drunk. Take sedative pills if you have to, but don’t get drunk. Promise me.”

“Sure. Where you going to write to me?”

“Charles Beveridge, General Delivery, Yonkers.”

“Kiss me.”

This time her mouth was warm.

At the door he slid his arm around her, cupping her breast with his hand, and kissed her again. Suddenly he drew up, his face sharp with alarm. “Wait a minute, baby. He’s going to start thinking back on who tipped me to that abortion. And he’s going to think straight to you! Come on, sweetheart, we’ve both got to scram.”

Lilith laughed: two sharp notes like the bark of a fox. “He doesn’t know that I know that. I worked it out from things he
wouldn’t
say.” Her eyes were still laughing. “Don’t tell me how to look out for myself, lover. Tell me—” A black-gloved hand pressed his arm. “Tell me how you made that precision balance move!”

He grinned and said over his shoulder, “Yonkers,” as he walked swiftly out of the door.

Mustn’t use the car. Cab drivers remember people. Subway to Grand Central. Walk, do not run, to the nearest exit. One hundred and fifty grand. Christ, I could hire a flock of private cops myself.

In a dressing room under the station he opened the traveling bag and pulled out a shirt and a light suit. There was a fifth of Hennessy; he uncapped the bottle for a short one.

A hundred and fifty grand. Standing in his underwear he fastened on a money vest with twelve pockets. Then he took up the roll of currency—one handful—his profits from the church racket. Take a fifty and a few twenties and stash the rest away.

Snapping off the rubber band from the fat roll he peeled off the fifty. The next bill was a single. And the one after it. But he hadn’t cluttered up the convincer boodle with singles! Had he added any money to the pile that night in Lilith’s office? Singles!

He spread out the wad, passing the bills from one hand to the other. Then he turned so that the light above the wash bowl would fall on them and riffled through them again. Except for the outside fifty the whole works was nothing but ones!

Stan’s eyebrows began to itch and he dug at them with his knuckles. His hands smelled of money and faint perfume from bills carried by women.

The Great Stanton took another pull of brandy and sat down carefully on the white dressing stool. What the hell had gone sour now? Counting over showed three hundred and eighty-three dollars in the boodle. There had been eleven thousand— and the “take”? Good Christ!

He let the dollars fall to the floor and snatched at one of the brown envelopes, cutting his thumb as he tore it open.

There was a shuffle of feet outside and the attendant’s white duck trousers appeared beneath the door. “You all right in there, sir?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

This pile ought to be all five-century notes—

“You ain’t feeling faint, is you, mister?”

Oh, good God, leave me alone
. “No. I’m okay, I tell you.”

“Well, that’s fine, sir. I just thought I heard noise like some gentleman having a fit. Gentleman have a fit in here last week and I had to crawl under the door and hold him down. Had to get the porter, mop up all the blood where he cut his self.”

“For God’s sake, man,
let me get dressed!
” Stan grabbed a dollar from the scattered bills at his feet and held it under the door.

“Oh—oh! Thank
you
, sir. Thank
you
.”

Stan tore off the brown paper. Singles!

The other envelope was tough; he ripped into it with his teeth. Again—the thick packet contained nothing but one-dollar bills!

The pastor of the Church of the Heavenly Message crushed a handful of them in his fist, his eyes traveling along the black lines between the tiles of the floor. He let out an explosive sound like a cough; lifting his fist he beat the crumpled paper against his forehead twice. Then he fired the money into a corner and turned on both faucets of the washbowl. In the roaring water he let himself go; he sank his face in the basin and screamed, the sound bubbling up past his ears through the rush of water. He screamed until his diaphragm was sore and he had to stop and sit down on the floor, stuffing a towel in his mouth and tearing it with his teeth.

At last he hoisted himself up and reached for the brandy, swallowing until he had to stop and gasp for breath. In the mirror’s merciless light he saw himself: hair streaming, eyes bloodshot, mouth twisted. Bleeding wounds of Christ!

The gypsy switch.

He stood, swaying, his hair falling damply over his eyes.

Dr. Lilith Ritter said, “Sit down, Mr. Carlisle.”

Her voice was cold, kind, and sad—and as professional as the click of a typewriter.

His head began to shake as if he were saying no to a long series of questions. It went on shaking.

“I’ve done everything I can,” said the sad voice through cigarette smoke. “When you first came to me you were in bad shape. I had hoped that by getting at the roots of your anxiety I could avert a serious upset. Well—” The hand gestured briefly with its star sapphire. “I failed.”

He began rubbing his fingers along the top of the desk, listening to the small whimpering noise of sweat against mahogany.

“Listen to me, Mr. Carlisle.” The doctor leaned forward earnestly. “Try to understand that these delusions are part of your condition. When you first came to me you were tortured by guilt connected with your father—and your mother. All of these things you think you have done—or that have been done to you lately—are merely the guilt of your childhood projected. Do I make myself clear?”

The room was rocking, the lamps were double rings of light, sliding back and forth through each other while the walls billowed. His head shook: no.

“The symbolism is quite obvious, Mr. Carlisle. You were filled with the unconscious desire to kill your father. You picked up somewhere—I don’t know where—the name of Grindle, an industrialist, a man of power, and identified him with your father. You have a very peculiar reaction to older men with a stubble of white beard. It makes you think of fungus on the face of a corpse—the corpse you wanted your father to be.”

The doctor’s voice was very soft now; soothing, kind, unanswerable.

“When you were a child you saw your mother having intercourse. Therefore tonight in hallucination you thought you saw Grindle, the father-image, in intercourse with your mistress— who has come to represent your mother. And that’s not all, Mr. Carlisle. Since I have been your counselor you have made a transference to me—you see me also as your mother. That explains your sexual delusions with regard to me.”

He slid his hands over his face, mashing the palms into his eyes, gripping strands of hair between his fingers and wrenching until pain freed his frozen lungs and let him draw a breath. His thoughts ran over and over, playing the same words until they became meaningless: grindle grindle grindle grindle mother mother mother stop stop stop. The voice didn’t stop.

“There is one thing more you must face, Mr. Carlisle: the thing that is destroying you. Ask yourself why you wanted to kill your father. Why was there so much guilt connected with that wish? Why did you see me—me, the mother-image—in hallucinations both as your mistress and as a thief who had cheated you?”

She was standing up now and leaning across the desk, her face quite near him. She spoke gently.

“You wanted intercourse with your mother, didn’t you?”

His hand went up to cover his eyes again, his mouth opened to make a wordless noise that could have been anything, a yes, a no, or both. He said, “Uh—uh—uh—uh.” Then it seemed that all the pain in him was concentrated in the back of his right hand in a sudden, furious stab like a snake bite. He dropped it and stared at the doctor, momentarily in focus again. She was smiling.

“One other thing, Mr. Carlisle.” She blew cigarette smoke. “The man you claimed to have killed in Mississippi—I thought at first that was merely another delusion involving the father-image. On investigation, however, I discovered there really was such a death—Peter Krumbein, Burleigh, Mississippi. I know you’ll be glad to know
that
, at least, really did happen. It was quite easy to trace. Not so many years ago, was it, Mr. Carlisle?”

She turned away suddenly and picked up the telephone, the smooth voice brisker now. “Mr. Carlisle, I’ve done all I can for you, but you
must
have hospital care. These hallucinations—We can’t have you wandering about and getting into trouble. Just put yourself in my hands; you can trust me absolutely.

“Bellevue Hospital? Psychiatric Division, please.”

The buzzer hummed; a latch clicked in the foyer. Then the door into the waiting room opened and closed. Someone coming.

He backed away, looking at her, his mouth hanging open, his eyes bulging. Door. Have to get out. People. Danger.

“Psychiatric Division? This is Dr. Lilith Ritter. Please send an ambulance …”

The door, rushing behind him, shut off her voice.

Get out. Street. Hide. He clung to the knob, holding the door shut so she couldn’t follow him.

Dream. Nightmare. Delusion. Nothing … nothing real. Tongue … naked … talk … money … dream … nightmare.

Dimly, through wood, he heard the telephone click into its cradle. Snap of a latch … waiting room. Then her voice. “Will you come in, please?”

Silence.

He sucked without thinking at the back of his right hand, where there was a red, smarting mark like a cigarette burn.

Safe? People coming! Got to get—

Another voice beyond the panels, high-pitched. Man. “Doctor —a ghastly mess …”

“Lie straight on the couch, please. Let me take your glasses, Mr. Grindle.”

T
HERE
was a plate of glass shaped like a star in the floor where the dancers swayed and shuffled. When the band went into a sweet one the house lights dimmed out and the star glowed, shining up the girls’ skirts, leaving their faces in darkness, but X-raying their clothes from the hips down. They screamed and giggled as their partners pushed them across the star and back into obscurity.

In one corner of the room the mentalist rose from his chair, steadying himself by a hand on its back. “Thank you, sir, and your charming girl friend, for your interest and for the drink. You understand, folks, I’ve got other people waiting …”

The drunk slid a silver dollar along the table and the mind reader took it in his finger tips. It vanished in a quick movement. He bowed and turned away.

The girl snickered, the noise bubbling in her glass as she drank. “Daddy, isn’t he spooky?” She kept on chuckling. “Now, then, sweetheart, you heard what he said! He said, ‘A man who has a good head for business will give you the thing nearest to your heart, something which once lived in a wire cage.’ You heard him, daddy. What d’you s’pose he meant?”

The man said thickly, “Anything you say, kid, goes. You know that. Anything. Gee, honey, you got the prettiest lil pair of—” He remembered the slip of paper that the mind reader had told him to tuck under the strap of his wrist watch and he pulled it out, unfolding it and trying to focus on it. The girl struck a match.

In her affected scrawl, using small circles for dots, was written, “Will Daddy buy me that red-fox jacket?” He stared at the slip and then grinned. “Sure, kid. Anything for you, kid. You know that. Le’s get outa here—go up t’your place. C’mon, honey, ’fore I’m too lit—too lit t’enjoy”—he broke wind but never noticed it —“anything.”