The Fiend (18 page)

“The Brants' lights are still on,” Virginia said, her voice slurred and softened by fog. “I think I'll drop over for a minute and say good night.”

“No you won't,” Howard said.

“Are you telling me I
can't?”

“Try it and see.”

“What would you do, Howard? Embarrass me in front of the Brants? That's old stuff, and I don't embarrass so easily any more. Or perhaps you'd try and bring Jessie into the act. It's funny you can't solve your problems without dragging in the neighbors. You're such a big, clever man. Can't you handle one wife all by yourself?”

“I could handle a wife. I can't handle an enemy.”

Jessie tiptoed over to the window and looked out through the slats of the Venetian blind. The floodlight was turned on in the Arlingtons' yard and she could see Howard bending over unlock­ing the back door. Virginia stood behind him holding her purse high against her shoulder as if she intended to bring it down on the back of Howard's neck. For a moment everything seemed reversed to Jessie: Howard was the smaller, weaker of the two and Virginia was the powerful one, the boss. Then Howard stood up straight and things seemed normal again.

Howard opened the door and said, “Get inside,” and Virginia walked in quickly, her head bowed.

The floodlight went off, leaving the yard to the fog and the darkness, and the only sound Jessie heard was the dripping of moisture among the loquat leaves.

(14)

The following morning
Ralph MacPherson rose, as usual, at 5:30. Since his wife had died he found it possible to fill his days, but the nights were unbearably lonely. He minimized them by getting up very early and going to bed when many lawyers were just finishing dinner. His matchmaking friends disapproved of this routine but Mac thrived on it. It was a healthy life.

Before breakfast he took his two dogs for a run, worked in the garden and put out food and water for the wild birds and mammals. After breakfast he read at the dining-room window, raising his head from time to time to watch the birds swooping down from the oaks and pines, the bush bunnies darting out of poison oak thickets at the bottom of the canyon and the chip­munks scampering up the lemon tree after the peanuts he'd placed in an empty coconut shell. Helping the wild creatures survive made him feel good, like a secret conspirator against the depredations and greed of man.

He reached his office at 8:30. Miss Edgeworth was already at her desk, looking fresh and crisp in a beige silk suit. Although he'd never accused her of it—Miss Edgeworth didn't encourage personal conversation—Mac sometimes had the notion that she was making a game out of beating him to the office, no matter how early he arrived, and that winning this game was important to her; it reinforced her low opinion of the practicality and effi­ciency of men.

There was always a note of triumph in her “Good morning, Mr. MacPherson.”

“Good morning, Miss Edgeworth.”

Her name was Alethea and she had worked for him long enough to be on a first-name basis. But it seemed to him that “Good morning, Alethea” was even more formal than “Good morning, Miss Edgeworth.” He was afraid the day would come when he would accidentally call her what the girls in the office called her behind her back—Edgy.

He said, “Any calls for me?”

“Lieutenant Gallantyne wants you to contact him at police headquarters. It's about a car. Shall I get him for you?”

“No. I'll do it.”

“Mrs. Oakley also—”

“That can wait.”

He went into his office, closed the door and dialed police headquarters.

“Gallantyne? MacPherson here.”

“Hope I didn't wake you up,” Gallantyne said in a tone that hoped the opposite. “You lawyers nowadays keep bankers' hours.”

“Do we. Any line on the green coupé?”

“One of the traffic boys spotted it an hour ago. It's standing in Jim Baker's used-car lot on lower Bojeta Street near the wharf.”

“How long has it been there?”

“Garcia didn't ask any questions. He wasn't instructed to.”

“I see. Well, thanks a lot, Gallantyne. I'll check it out myself.”

He hung up, leaned back in the swivel chair and frowned at the ceiling. The fact that the green car had been sold made it more likely that Kate was right in claiming that the man behind the wheel had been Sheridan. Ordinarily Mac took her accusa­tions against Sheridan with a grain of salt. A number of them were real, a number were fantasy, but most of them fell some­where in the middle. If she walked across a room and stubbed her toe she would blame Sheridan even if he happened to be several hundred miles away. On the other hand, Sheridan had pulled some pretty wild stuff. It was quite possible that he'd tried to frighten her into coming to terms over the divorce and had ended up being frightened himself when she pursued him with her car.

Mac thought, as he had a hundred times in the past, that they were people caught like animals in a death grip. Neither was strong enough to win and neither would let go. The grip had continued for so long that it was now a way of life. It was not the sun that brightened Kate's mornings or the sea air that fresh­ened Sheridan's. It was the anticipation, for each of them, of a victory over the other. They could no longer live without the excitement of battle. Mac remembered two lines from the chil­dren's poem about a gingham dog and a calico cat who had disappeared simultaneously:

 

“The truth about the cat and pup

Is this: they ate each other up.”

 

It hardly mattered now who took the first bite, Kate or Sheri­dan. The important thing was how to prevent the last bite, and so far Mac hadn't found any way of doing it. With the idea that perhaps someone else could, he had tried many times to per­suade Kate to engage another lawyer. She always had the same answer:
“1 couldn't possibly. No other lawyer would understand me.” “I don't understand you either, Kate.” “But you must, you've known me since I was a little girl.”

Kate's attitude toward men was one of unrealistic expectation or unjustified contempt, with nothing in between. If they be­haved perfectly and lived up to the standards she set, they were god figures. When they failed as gods, they were immediately demoted to devils. Mac had avoided demotion simply by refus­ing either to accept her standards or to take her expectations seriously.

Sheridan's demotion had been quick and thorough, and there was no possibility of a reversal. Sheridan was aware of this. One of the main reasons why he went on fighting her was his knowl­edge that no matter how generous a settlement he made or how many of her demands he satisfied, he could never regain his godship.

Mac was sorry for them both and sick of them both. He al­most wished they would move away or finish the job of eating each other up. Mary Martha might be better off in a foster home.

He told Miss Edgeworth he'd be back in an hour, then he drove down to the lower end of Bojeta Street near the wharf. It was an area of the city that was doomed now that newcomers from land-locked areas were moving in and discovering the sea. Real estate speculators were greedily buying up ocean-front lots and razing the old buildings, the warehouses and fish-processing plants and shacks for Mexican agricultural workers. All of these had been built in what the natives considered the damp and un­desirable part of town.

Jim Baker's used-car lot was jammed between a three-story motel under construction and a new restaurant and bar called the Sea Aira Club. A number of large signs announced bargains because Baker was about to lose his lease. Baker himself looked as if he'd already lost it. He was an elderly man with skin wrin­kled like an old paper bag and a thick, husky voice that sounded as if he'd swallowed too many years of fog.

He came out of his oven-sized office, chewing something that might have been gum or what was left of his breakfast, or an undigested fiber of the past. “Can I do anything for you?”

“I'm interested in the green coupé at the rear of the lot.”

“Interested in what way?” Baker said with a long, deliberate look at Mac's new Buick. “Something fishy about the deal?”

“Not that I'm aware of. My name is Ralph MacPherson, by the way. I'd like to know when the car was sold to you.”

“Last night about six o'clock. I didn't handle the transaction —my son, Jamie, did—but I was in the office. I'd brought Jamie's dinner to him from home. We're open fourteen hours out of the twenty-four, and Jamie and I have to spell each other. He sold the young man a nice clean late-model Pontiac that had been pampered like a baby. I hated to see it go, frankly, but the young man seemed anxious and he had the cash. Sooo—” Baker shrugged and spread his hands.

“How young a man was he?”

“Oh, about Jamie's age, thirty-two, thirty-five, maybe.”

Sheridan was thirty-four. “Do you remember his name?”

“I never knew it. It's in the book but I'm not sure I ought to look it up for you. I wouldn't want to cause him any trouble.”

“I'm trying to prevent trouble, Mr. Baker. A client of mine—I'm a lawyer—is convinced that the husband she's divorcing has been using the green coupé to spy on her. I've been a family friend for many years and I'm simply trying to find out the truth one way or the other. Even a description of the man would be a big help.”

Baker thought about it. “Well, he was nice, clean-cut, athletic-looking. Tall, maybe six feet, with kind of sandy hair and a smile like he was apologizing for something. Would that be the husband?”

Sheridan was short and dark and wore glasses, but Mac said, “I'm not sure. Perhaps you'd better look up the name.”

“I guess it'd be all right, being as it's just a divorce case and nothing criminal. I don't want to get caught up in anything criminal. It plays hell with business.”

“To the best of my knowledge, nothing criminal is involved.”

“O.K., wait here.”

Baker went into the office and returned in a few minutes with a name and address written on an old envelope: Charles E. Gowen, 495 Miria Street.

“Is that the man?” Baker asked.

“I'm glad to say it's not.” Mac returned the envelope. “This will be good news to my client.”

“Women get funny ideas sometimes.”

“Do they not.”

 

If it was good news to Kate, she didn't show it. She met him at the front door, wearing a starched cotton dress and high-heeled shoes. Her face was carefully made up and her hair neat. It seemed to Mac that she was always dressed for company but company never came. He knew of no one besides himself who any longer got past the front door.

They went into the smaller of the two living rooms and she sat on the window seat while he told her what he'd found out. With her face in shadow and the sun at her back illuminating her long, fair hair, she looked scarcely older than Mary Martha.
She's only thirty,
Mac thought.
Her life has been broken and she's too brittle to bend down and pick up the pieces.

“You can stop worrying about the green car,” he told her. “Sheridan wasn't in it.”

She didn't look as if she intended or wanted to stop worrying. “That hasn't been proved.”

“The car was registered to Charles Gowen. He traded it in last night.”

“Funny coincidence, don't you think?”

“Yes. But coincidences happen.”

“A lot of them can be explained. I told you from the begin­ning that Sheridan was too crafty to use his own car. Obviously, he borrowed the green coupé from this man Gowen. The kind of people Sheridan runs around with nowadays exchange cars and wives and mistresses as freely as they exchange booze. Sheri­dan's moved away down in the world, farther than you think.”

“I haven't time to go into that now, Kate. Let's stick to the point.”

“Very well. He used Gowen's car to harass me. Then when I fought back, when I chased him, he got scared and told Gowen to sell it.”

“Why? Why didn't he simply return it to Gowen and let the matter drop? Selling the car was what led me to Gowen.”

“Sheridan's mind is usually, I might say always, befuddled by alcohol. He probably considered the gambit quite a cunning one.”

“What about Gowen?”

“I don't know about Gowen,” she said impatiently. “I've never heard of him before. But if he's typical of Sheridan's cur­rent friends, he'll do anything for a few dollars or a bottle of liquor. Don't forget, Sheridan has money to fling around. It makes him pretty popular, and I suppose powerful, in certain circles.” She paused, running her hand along her left cheek. The cheek was bright red as though it had been slapped. “You asked, ‘What about Gowen?' Well, why don't you find out?”

“I don't think there's enough to warrant an investigation.”

She looked at him bitterly. “Not
enough?
I suppose you think I've imagined the whole thing?”