Someone Is Bleeding (8 page)

“What kind of love do you have for me anyway? Fair weather love? The kind that . . .”

“Please, Davie.”

“Listen,” I said incredulously, “this is serious business.”

“I was
afraid . . .”

“Afraid,” I said. “I’m afraid too, Peggy. Jim said he’d get me one way or the other. Steig said he’d kill me. What am I supposed to do because of that—crawl into a hole and die?”

“Steig said that?” Something new to worry about.

“Yes.
Yes,
Peggy Ann. And I say that Steig killed Dennis on Jim’s orders.”

“But . . . they were with us last night.”

“We met him at Western,” I said. “It took us almost an hour to drive there. Then we had to drive all the way back to Hollywood. Was there any real sense in that?”

“He had a case over there and . . .”

I didn’t say anything. I looked at her somberly.

“He wouldn’t kill his own
brother.”

“Jim would kill his own
mother
if it served his purpose.”

“No.”

“It serves his purpose to get me out of the way. And he’ll do it too, if you keep lying about me.”

She looked at me blankly, then nodded once.

“All right.” she said quietly. “This afternoon I’ll go to Lieutenant Jones and tell him you were with us.

”I took an easy breath. They were short and far between those days. I knew I should start worrying about what Jones would do when she changed her story in midstream. A girl who was proven to have murdered once and suspected of having done it again.

But sometimes I’m selfish, too. Or thoughtless.

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll go now.”

I was beginning to sense the end of our relationship. I couldn’t see how it could last through all this. Even if I loved her. Let’s face it. It
isn’t
enough when everything else is lacking. I turned at the door.

“Don’t forget to tell Jones that it was Jim’s suggestion for you to say I wasn’t with you. Put the onus where it belongs.”

“I’ll . . . do what I can.”

I left. I told her I’d come back soon. And, in my mind I knew that I loved her but I didn’t understand her. If only there was a way to find out what she’d gone through, what had been her life before I came. If there were someone who she had known before. Maybe her father or her brother. If I could talk to them.

A thought. Why couldn’t I?

I was thinking about that when I found Steig waiting for me again.

“This time, you try to get away and I’ll break your neck,” he said viciously.

I tampered with the immediate instinct to take a flying kick at his groin before he could make a move. I decided against it. I wanted to see Jim anyway. At least that’s what I told myself to avoid a battle which I would, rather obviously, come out second best in. In this case that might be dead, too. Yeah, I wanted to see Jim.

This didn’t take long. He was sitting in the back seat of the car. He nodded once as I sat down beside him. He was dressed immaculately as usual. Grey, subdued sharkskin, homburg just right, tie just right. A man to excite admiration and respect. Until the shell was pierced anyway.

“So I wasn’t with you last night,” I said before he could talk. “I dreamed it all.”

“Don’t be a fool,” he said. “You must realize why I lied about it.”

“I’m not a fool,” I said. “You did it to incriminate me. When did Steig kill Dennis? Before you met us or after I left you?”

You
are
a fool.” he said, “if you can’t see that I did the only thing possible.”

I was going to let him know that Peggy planned to spike his lie but I changed my mind. I didn’t want to have him trying to stop her before she had a chance to do it.

Instead I said, “Your brother must have meant a lot to you.”

He surveyed me icily.

“You really think I had my brother murdered, don’t you?” he said

“I know it,” I said. “Real life murder isn’t as complex as one in a two-and-a-half dollar mystery. There aren’t so many suspects in this case that I have to read two hundred pages to know who killed Dennis.”

I knew that Steig was listening. I saw those big shoulders hunch back, then forward. As if he were flexing, readying himself. It made me a little nervous.

“You’re a blind idiot,” Jim said. “I’ll tell you why I lied about you. Because I knew there wouldn’t be any evidence against you that meant a thing.”

“Just a corpse in my room with my icepick in his head.”

“Do you think you’d be out on bail if Jones really suspected you?”

I didn’t know.

“I knew you’d be free,” he said. “But the real murderer wouldn’t be.”

“You,” I said, “Steig.”

“Peggy,”
he said.

That skin crawling again. I’d tell myself, he’s lying, he’s lying, he’s lying. Three times, because once wasn’t enough. But every time I did, he said something more and I got sicker and weaker in conviction. He seemed so sure and I am chronically incapable of believing that intelligent people can keep lying. even if they threaten to. And Peggy had stabbed her husband to death. That was authenticated.

“You’re lying.” I said, but only to talk.

“You know I’m not,” he said. “You know that there’s every possibility in the world that Peggy went to your room last night and killed Dennis.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I . . .I  know Peggy.”

“You don’t know Peggy.”

“She didn’t do it.”

“She killed Dennis.”

“Can you prove that?” I said.

“Prove it?” he said. “I’m trying to make it impossible to prove. I don’t want anyone to have a chance to prove it.”

I must have looked blank.

“I’m telling you,” he said, “Peggy killed my brother. And I’m trying to save her.”

“Why did she kill him in my room?” I asked, suspiciously, but weakening.

“He told her to come there. He threatened her.”

“With what?”

“With exposing her as Grady’s murderer.”

“Oh, you’re crazy,” I said.

He paid no attention. He seemed to sense me weakening. He went on.

“She’s insane,” he said. “You may not choose to believe that, but it doesn’t alter the fact. She’s killed
three
men now. God knows why.”

“But you still want her,” I said, searching vainly for confidence in Peggy.

“I guess you wouldn’t understand that.” he said. “You who live by the morals of a petty world.”

We sat in silence a moment.

“All right,” I said, looking for a peg to hang my mind on. “Where does that leave us?”

I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t concentrate. I was sick thinking that maybe everything Jim had ever told me was the truth. How  long can blind love sustain you when someone keeps hacking away at it with a very tangible axe? And the thought that my relationship with Peggy had been an endless fabrication of lies made me ill.

“I’ve told you,” he said, “they can’t do anything about it. And as long as you don’t try to involve her, I’ll leave you alone.”

“I still don’t believe you,” I said. “I saw the shock on her face when . . .”

“One night Peggy and Dennis went out together,” he said. “At three o’clock in the morning, Dennis came in the house with his arm streaming blood. He had to have five stitches.”

“It’s . . .”

And the next day Peggy came to see him and she cried and said she didn’t mean it.”

“It’s your story,” I said.

”It’s the facts.” he said. “Use your head. David. When are you going to stop plunging into things you can’t cope with?”

“Look . . .” I said.

“You
look,” he said. “Open your eyes. You’re not up to this.”

That’s what Audrey had said too. Maybe they were right. Maybe I wasn’t up to it. I knew it would be a relief to get away from it all.

“Peggy is . . .” Jim started, “I don’t know what word will express it Deranged, perhaps. I know it’s not a nice word but I have to use it. There’s a Hyde beneath her I don’t know what brings it out, but it’s there. Love won’t help her. Psychiatry may. I don’t know. But she’s dangerous, very dangerous.”

“Why do you love her, then?” I asked.

“I happen to love Peggy,” he said, “with a love I don’t think your type of narrow-minded idealist understands. Because it’s a love that asks nothing.”

“Maybe it asks nothing,” I said, “because it gets nothing.“

“Now we’re being petty.” he said.

He said it with the old familiar expression of intellectual scorn on his full face. And it was a shock to realize for a second that this man and I had gone to college together and called each other friends.

I got out of the car and looked at him. He made no effort to detain me and waved Steig back into the car.

“There’s only one thing to say.” I said. “Your entire story is a lie from beginning to end.”

But as I walked back to my room, I knew I’d been reaching. Peggy
had
murdered once. These clippings were genuine. Even Jones had told me that.

Which helped not at all. Because there came visions to my mind. Of Peggy holding an icepick, a razor. Standing over Albert, standing over Dennis. Plunge of the arm, sound of steel point driving into flesh and tissue. A look on Peggy’s face. One I’d seen that night on the pier when she’d been attacked. A shocked and wild look.

A look not human.

Funerals are not nice.

They are creations of society which are intended to provide people with a last chance to show respects but which turn instead into miniature Grand Guignols. For my money, they’re morbid and tasteless. You just can’t effect anything tasty with a corpse They’re too dead.

Dennis’s funeral was no exception. I don’t know what brought me to it. Peggy told me about it. She wasn’t going with Jim so I took her.

And I did feel sort of sorry for Dennis. A little ashamed, too, at having suspected him of murder. He’d just been an ill-fated kid with no chance at all. Victimized all of his short life by brother James.

A few relatives were there. Not many. Most of them, I suspected, were in Missouri. Even the ones that came looked like country cousins. Their clothes weren’t on a par with Jim and Audrey’s. Yes, Jim had his wife with him. It was his concession to appearance After all, this was in the paper and no breath of scandal must besmirch the moment.

Some people there I didn’t understand. They were men mostly. And there was something about them. Something faintly tawdry in spite of the clothes they wore. An aura of inherent cheapness and vulgarity.

They didn’t look too sad either. One of them even snickered during the service. Jim didn’t hear it. But Steig did and I saw him put his big hand on the man’s shoulder and the man went white.

The relatives played their expected role. They looked sad. They clucked pityingly. They commented. Once I thought it was a joke, that line about how “natural” the corpse looks. Well, it’s not a joke. I heard it about five times that afternoon.

And there was poor Dennis, unable to complain, lying up there in front and taking it straight. That ugly little hole in his temple all covered up and prettied. Dennis finally at peace. The hard way.

Peggy didn’t speak to me much. She kept her head lowered during much of the service. I don’t think she looked at Dennis once. Her dark gloved hands were clasped tight in her lap. The thought in my mind that she might have caused all this was enough to make my hands tremble spasmodically all afternoon.

I watched Audrey in the front row. I’d been surprised to see her at first. I didn’t think Jim would want her there. Maybe he didn’t.

Maybe she went in spite of his wishes. But there she was at his side, thinner-looking than ever in her black dress, looking at Dennis fixedly.

When the dismal charade was over and we had all guessed that Dennis was dead, we filed out in the sunlight and found Wilshire boulevard much the same and all the people thereon alive and moving.

The assemblage milled respectably in front of the parlor. They made gentle, strained smiles and spoke in muted, strained tones.

“Horrible thing, James, horrible.”

Jim nodding gravely, lips pressed together. To keep back a smile? I didn’t know.

“The dear boy looked so natural.”

Chicken claw hands plucking at pearls. A relative ghoul passing comment on the dead.

I didn’t concentrate on staying by Peggy and somehow, Jim managed to get her beside him. So I moved over to where Audrey stood with an aunt.

As I approached, the woman said a few extra words of vain condolence and then passed into the void.

Audrey looked at me, dry-eyed and dead sober, it appeared. There was a certain classic loveliness about her. Dressed in black, her dark hair pulled back tight, her eyes as funereal as her outfit, her skin pale and clear.

She tried to smile at me but couldn’t, it was nice of you to come,” she said.

I took her hand and squeezed it.

“I’m sorry for him,” I said. “That’s why I came.”

As I stood close to her now. I noticed her breath. She wasn’t sober. Sorrow had just given her the capacity to hold it in. She was as taut as a drum. I got the impression that it wouldn’t take much to unhinge her.

“I’ll be going.” I said.

She held onto my hand

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me with these, jackals. Relatives waiting for scraps. And those . . . those tramps.”

I didn’t know what she meant. But I stayed as her fingers dug pleadingly into my arm.

“Have you your car?” she asked. “Yes, but . . .”

“Take me somewhere,’’ she begged, “anywhere, David. I’ve got to have a drink or I’ll go out of my mind.”

“But I’m with Peggy.”

“Does she look as if she’ll have to walk home?” she asked bitterly.

“Well,” I said, “I should . . .”

The bar was cool, dark and empty. We sat in a back booth. Outside July shimmered hot fingers over the streets.

Audrey had a long one, a stiff one. I watched her throat move convulsively as she poured it down. When she’d finished it off, she put down the glass and leaned back against the booth. The tenseness gave a little at the edges. Alcoholic relaxation eased her nerves temporarily. And two big tears forced themselves from under her closed lids and ran down across her white cheeks.