Someone Is Bleeding (13 page)

I went up Sunset and then down Chatauqua to the coast highway. I slopped at a bar and called Jones and told him about Steig and told him I was going back to my room. He asked me to come in but I hung up. I was too tired. I went back to the car. I just wanted to go to bed and forget everything.

I drove slowly up the canyon and down Seventh Street. I turned left at Wilshire and parked across the street from my room, I unlocked the door and stumbled across the room in darkness.

In the light of the bulb I saw my face in the medicine cabinet mirror. It was puffy and scratched. I gritted my teeth in pain. I drew open my torn shirt and looked at the thin line of blood-caked flesh where the bullet had gouged. I drew in a pained breath. Then I stared at the mirror and felt a burst of insane rage in me. I felt rage at Steig and wanted to kill him again. I wished I had Jim alone too. The same rock in my hand.

“Son of a bitch!”’ I snarled at the mirror, at the world. “Dirty, lousy son of a bitch!’”

“So he failed.” said Jim Vaughan.

I whirled and stared at my bed.

He was sitting there in the shadows, hat and top coat on.

“Where is he?” he asked.

I started for him, then stopped as he leveled the gun at me.

“Don’t come any closer, David,” he said, “or I’ll take the pleasure of putting a slug in your belly.”

I gaped at him. Sickness hit me again. I’d just escaped from death, was I to be asked to face it again? I don’t know whether I was afraid or outraged at the turn of events. I think it was more outrage. Fear had been so much in me that there wasn’t any left. I had to concentrate to realize that I might die now too.

“Well?” he asked.

“He’s dead,” I said. “I killed him.”

Surprise on his face a moment. The slightest of consternation. Then a flicker of amusement. Even now Jim could force upon himself the pose of detached bystander.

“Dead,” he said. “So, at long last, you are also guilty of murder.”

“Murder,” I said. “You speak of murder.”

“Indeed,” he said, smiling deceptively, “I’m quite versed on the subject.”

He was drunk. I hadn’t realized it at first. That smile, the slightly, almost imperceptibly disheveled appearance. The tie knot slightly off center, the hair slightly uncombed, the hat at the minutest wrong angle. All added up. I remembered how Jim had been at college the few times he’d been drunk. He’d been quite unpredictable. And this time he had a gun in his hand. And hate for me.

And I remembered something else, too. Me refusing to go down to the station to see Jones. He must have known that Jim would be after me. Now it was too late.

I know you’re versed on the subject,” I said, my mind tripping over itself in the attempt to find an escape, “well versed.”

He gave me a look of dispassionate criticism.

“So the poor, bungling kraut finally found his peace,” he said, “And to think it was at
your
hands. The hands of a dull, indefinite pacifist. The young American idealist, the writer of novels, the seeker of truths . . .”

He kept rattling on. There was a reddish tint in his cheeks. And a light in his eyes that wasn’t there normally. I let him rattle. I hoped he’d rattle himself to sleep.

I moved for my chair.

“Careful, careful,” he warned, breaking off his bantering continuity.

“I’m not trying anything,” I said, disgustedly. “Do I look like I’m in any condition to try anything?”

“You look like something three cats dragged in,” he said. He lowered the gun.

I wondered what he was planning. He might have been confused, it was just possible. I don’t think he knew what to do. He wanted me dead but the idea of personally committing murder had never occurred to him, I’m sure. That fell in the province of menial labor. But he might change his mind.

Except for one thing. My mind seized on it. Steig had done those killings. I was sure of that. And now Steig was dead. And there was no one who could prove Jim was involved. He was clear. I think even he realized that.

“So poor, benighted Steig, Kaiser Wilhelm’s beloved warrior, Chicago’s beloved killer and navigator of getaway cars, is dead. We bow our heads for Walter Steig, victim of society’s perverseness.”

His face grew cold, the humor drained from him in an instant.

“I never trusted the fool. He was a lunk-head.”

Amusement back.

“It must have been the climate that got him,” he said.

He stopped talking and looked at me. He raised the gun.

“I should shoot you,” he said, “now, while the opportunity is here.”

A car motor. Headlights coming to the curb. I saw them out of the corner of my eye. My heart thudding. Was it Jones? And, if it was, would he come thudding up or the porch?

It was fortunate that Jim was drunk. Otherwise he surely would have heard the car door slamming, the footsteps on the porch, the shadowy figure that stopped outside of the screen window.

“Now that you’re going to kill me,” I said, “you can tell me about your murdering of Albert and Dennis.”

He looked at me with that thin, supercilious smile on his lips. The light reflected off his polished, rimless glasses.

”You had them killed, didn’t you?” I said, hoping that there was no sign of eagerness in my voice.

His face sobered.

“Of course I did,” he said. “They both stood in my way.”

“Albert?” I said.

“He attacked her,” he said.

“And Dennis?”

It seemed too good to be true. A confession in the hearing of a police lieutenant. “Why go on?” he said. He raised his gun and pointed it at me. “And now a third victim?” I said.

Jim didn’t point the gun at me. He just let it hang loosely in his hand.

“Who knows?” he said.

“You can put down that gun now,” Jones said from the window.

Vaughan twitched a little. But he didn’t turn. He seemed to listen a moment as if waiting for Jones to say something else. Then that smile came to his lips again.

He seemed too drunk, too emotionally exhausted to feel fright.

“Trapped,” he said.

Then Jones took Jim Vaughan away.

I rushed over to Peggy and told her and we decided to drive down to Tijuana the next day. When she saw my bruised, swollen face and the torn gully in the flesh of my shoulder she cried terribly and couldn’t help me bandage it.

We packed her clothes and then I went back to my room and packed some things for myself. My shoulder throbbed and I felt exhausted but I was at peace.

I slept that night. I turned out the light without dread. The end of it. I figured, closing my eyes.

No.

Because the next day after I’d gone to a doctor, after I’d picked up a wedding ring, after I’d bought a bottle of champagne to open at night, I found a note slipped under my door.

I opened it.

At first I couldn’t believe it. It seemed too cruel a joke.

The letterhead was
Santa Monica Police
and the message said that . . .

I drove as fast as I could up Wilshire. I wheeled around the corner of 15th and jerked to a stop in front of Peggy’s house. I ran in the open door.

She whirled in fright as I entered. Her fingers clenched on the dress she was holding.

“Davie! What is it?”

“Are you finished packing?” I asked quickly. “We have to get out of here right away.”

“Why?”

I handed her the note. She looked at it. Then looked up at me her eyes frightened.

“Jim?” she said.

The note said that Jones hadn’t shown up yet.

My car raced down Lincoln. Every time I hit a red light I thought it was a plot. My eyes stayed fastened to the road ahead. I wasn’t going to the police. I didn’t want to stay in town. I wanted to get out fast.

I remember looking out the rear view mirror. But I didn’t notice anything. Because, without thinking, I was only looking for a black Cadillac.

Tijuana. A five hour drive. Dirty and almost wordless, with me looking at the rear view mirror. With Peggy sitting close by me and glancing at me in fear every once in a while.

We stood side by side in the little place and I slipped the ring on Peggy’s finger. It felt wrong though. As if I were being forced into it  As if we really weren’t sure but had to go through with it. Inevitable. There was nothing casual, nothing leisurely or pleasant. The nerve-wracking aspect of a man following to kill me. And if I felt uneasiness at the haste of the wedding, Peggy felt it twice as much.

“What is it?” I asked.

For the last ten miles she’d been staring ahead glumly at the highway. She shook her head.

“What is it?” I asked again.

She tried to smile and press my hand reassuringly.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Tell me.”

She shrugged.”

“I guess I know,” I said. “The wedding. The way we’re rushing. It isn’t what we’d hoped for. It doesn’t seem like a wedding at all.”

“I . . . I“ she started. “I guess it’s because it reminds me of my first wedding. The same rushing and . . . I was even more scared then.”

“Scared?”

“Of him. Of . . . my . . . of George.”

“What are you afraid of now?”

“Not of you,” she said, but it didn’t sound convincing. “Jim, I guess.”

That didn’t sound convincing either. I tried to get her mind on something else. I thought I knew what she was afraid of.

“As soon as we hear one way or the other about Jim,” I said, “we’ll have a real church wedding. We’ll go back to New York and have all my family at it.”

She turned, a smile flickering on her tired face. We’d been driving all morning and afternoon.

“Honest?” she said.

“Honest.”

She leaned against me wearily and was at peace for a moment. She held my arm.

Then a horn honked behind us and she sat up with a gasp and looked back. The car passed us and disappeared up the dusty highway. Peggy drew in a heavy breath.

“We’ll be out of it soon,” I said.

But I was beginning to get the feeling that neither of us would ever get out of it. It seemed to be going on endlessly. Months of it. Would it go on for years?

Night was falling over the highway and I was sleepy and tired. And starving, too. We hadn’t eaten much all day and my stomach was about empty.

I signed the motel registry with as pleasant a smile at Peggy as I could manage.

Mr. and Mrs. David Newton, Los Angeles.

For a moment I had the crazy notion that the man was going to ask us for identification because we looked so young. But the man didn’t. He looked bored and slid us the keys. To Cabin K.

We walked along the gravel path under the sky that was hidden by dust clouds. And we tried to pretend we were happy.

But every sound made us start nervously and I was almost getting angry at Peggy, with a whole society for getting me into this. There were no thoughts of wedding night pleasures. I felt grimy and disgusted with life. It took a strong effort to be pleasant for her sake

Cabin K. All wrong. A slanty little structure, painted green and white and the paint was probably an inch thick. The shutters hung lopsided and the window curtains looked as if they hadn’t been laundered since V-J day. And then with lye.

I stood before the door and looked at her. She shook her head once and I didn’t go near her. It would have been a tragic mockery to carry her over that dismal threshold. I just opened the door and stepped aside.

She looked inside. Something held her back. She shuddered once.

“Davie.”

“Don’t be afraid,” I said. “Have I ever harmed you?”

The pleasantness slipped as she still hesitated.

“Come
on,
Peggy,” I said. “I’m too tired to make a pass at anyone.”

She stood inside looking around the room as I put the bags on the bed. The room was terrible. For anybody. Especially for us. We were newlyweds and the room was dingy and uninviting. No touch of sweet romance. No windows with boughs stirring outside. A dusty floor, a touch of stale whiskey in the air.

I looked at her. And the expression on her face made me forget my own irritation and worries. I took her hand.

“Peg,” I said, “I’m sorry. I wish it was a castle. But it’s all we can get now. We
have
to sleep.”

“I know,” she said. Without enthusiasm.

While she was in the bathroom I went down to the manager’s office.

“Hey, can I get some food?” I asked.

“Afraid not,” he said. “All I got’s candy. And that popcorn machine over there.”

“How about some ice?”

“Only got a little, mister,” he said. “Ice’s hard to get around here.

“Look,” I said, “we’ve just been married. And I have a bottle of champagne in my bag. Can’t you let us have a little ice? Maybe a pailful or something?”

He looked at me studiedly. Then he got compassion. He got a pail and put a chunk of ice in it.

“Fifty cents,” he said.

I paid him and held back the temper.

“What about glasses?” I said irritably.

“Glasses in the cabin.”

“I can’t get this chunk of ice in the glasses,” I said. He reached under the counter . . .

“Voila!”
I cried to her as she came out of the bathroom. I’d chopped up the ice into small pieces and decided to chill the bottle instead of putting the ice chips in the glasses. I’d stuck the bottle into the pail. But the ice only covered about two inches on the bottom of the pail. The champagne would never chill.

“Oh!” Peggy said. “Champagne!”

She tried to smile and keep smiling. But even Peggy with her imagination couldn’t overcome all this dinginess. Couldn’t picture us as being anywhere but where we were—a dreary cabin K on the highway.

She sat on the bed as I opened the bottle. I noticed her glance at the pail, at the object beside it. Then she turned her eyes away and smiled at me again.

She was wearing a long dressing robe over her body. She sat on the bed and watched me. But she wasn’t relaxed. Her poise was strained, her lips forced into a smile.

I put down the unopened bottle and sat beside her and put my arms around her.

“Honey, be happy,” I said. “It’s not paradise, I know. But we’re away at last. And we’re free of the past.”

Her arms clung to me.

“Oh, Davie,” she said, “don’t let anything happen to me. Don’t let anything spoil it.”

“I won’t,” I said, cheerfully. Then I stood up and opened the bottle.

“Ooops!”

The white foaming champagne spurted out of the bottle mouth and ran onto the floor. I leveled the bottle quickly and poured it into the glasses. Then I put down the bottle on the bedside table next to the pail. I put some pieces of ice into the glasses.

”I shouldn’t dilute it,” I said, “but if I don’t, the champagne will be too warm.”

“It’s all right,” she said.

I handed her a glass. I held my own out to her.

“My love,” I toasted.

She smiled. We sat side by side and drank. I was thirsty. The cool tingling of the champagne tasted good. I polished off the glass in two swallows.

“Popcorn, m’lady?” I asked.

She took a few pieces. I tried some. It was stale.