The Four Johns (2 page)

“You're evading the question. Please answer
me
. It's important.”

Mervyn considered. “Let's put it this way,” he said at last. “If I were shipwrecked on a desert island and Mary arrived on a life raft, I wouldn't order her back to sea.”

“Are you or are you not in love with her?”

“You're a persistent little cuss.”

“Are you going to answer?”

“It's a silly question. Everybody loves Mary. She's a local institution.”

Susie made an extravagant gesture. “Don't think I'm offended. Why should I be? Everybody's nice to me. I'm Mary's mousy kid sister, happy for even a blind date. Sick with joy when a Mervyn Gray asks me to go out.”

Mervyn laughed uneasily. “Mousy. This is how you think of yourself?”

“How do you think of
your
self?”

“Oh, a modern-day Quixote. Or the fellow A. E. Housman wrote about, the one who left his necktie God knows where.”

“Literary, as usual.”

Mervyn raised an eyebrow at the unexpected attack. “I teach English literature. I read books.”

“Don't apologize; it's nothing to be ashamed of.”

Mervyn sighed. “You're completely perverse.” He thought of his chart and the ratings. “A clear score of ten.”

“Is that good? Or bad?”

“It's as perverse as you can get. How about telling me whom Mary went off with?”

Susie sat back, surveying Mervyn through narrowed eyes. “Are you jealous?”

“Of course not.”

“Why the fever, then?”

“Someday I'll explain.”

“Very well,” said Susie. “I'll tell you everything I know for
sure
. On Friday, June the fourteenth, Mary finished her finals.”

“This I know. I wound up mine the same day.”

“Whereupon she arranged to meet John.”

“This I know, too. But which John?”

“Harriet, the source of the information, claims to have no clue. Neither do I.”

“It's the first time Harriet hasn't known everything about everything.”

The waitress stood by the table. “Twelve o'clock. We're closing.”

Susie insisted on paying for her own coffee. At the cashier's desk Mervyn, reaching for his wallet, drew out the chart. He started to crumple it, changed his mind, stuffed it back in his pocket. A conceit crossed his mind. He pulled the chart out once more and glanced down the headings. Interesting. Highly. Enlightenment … If he dared take it seriously?

He accepted his change and joined Susie in the street. She looked at him curiously. Mervyn drew a breath. “So much for that.”

“So much for what?”

“For June twenty-fourth. It's now June twenty-fifth.” The day he had been promised death.

“For me it's the twenty-fourth,” said Susie. “Till I go to bed.”

Mervyn looked up at the sky. “What a beautiful night. Notice the moon. And all those feathery clouds.”

“Is that what they call a mackerel sky?”

“Imagine a night like this at sea.”

“You're a romantic.”

“Some people call me a brutal realist. To Harriet I'm a madman. I wonder why.”

“Perhaps because you're half romantic and half brute realist.”

They walked down Telegraph Avenue and presently came to Mervyn's dark-blue Volkswagen. He opened the door; Susie hesitated an instant, then got in. Mervyn slid into the driver's seat, looked sidewise toward Susie. “I think I've learned something. It just came to me.”

“What?”

Before answering, Mervyn started the car, pulled out into traffic. “It's a complicated business. Do you have to get home right away?”

“No.”

Mervyn looked at her with his twisted grin. “Let's drive to Reno and get married.”

“Not on June twenty-fourth. That's bad luck.”

“But it's June twenty-fifth.”

“For me it's still June twenty-fourth, I told you.”

“So you refuse me.” He reached in his pocket and brought out the chart. He switched on the map light, handed the chart to Susie. She studied it with care. “What do you think of it?”

“It seems, on the whole, haphazard. Some of these headings are sinister.”

“Something sinister has taken place. You've had no word from Mary?”

Susie's face became impassive. “No.”

“It's been a week.”

“And a half.”

“Has it occurred to you that she might have had an accident?”

Susie made no response.

“That she might even be dead?”

Susie sat like a statue. They were driving through a long tunnel; the overhead lights lit her face in quick, recurrent flashes.

“Well?” asked Mervyn. “Has the thought occurred to you?”

“Naturally.”

They came out of the tunnel, coasted down the road between dark-firred mountains. Mervyn chose his words carefully. “I've been thinking about this situation.” He paused. “I really think Mary is dead.”

Susie was silent. Then she said, “Why haven't you gone to the police?”

Mervyn looked pained. “I'm a member of the faculty. That means I'm like Caesar's wife—I can't just avoid evil, I shouldn't even know what the word means.”

Susie blew a skeptical sound through her teeth.

“You think I'm overcautious?” he asked.

“Some such idea had occurred to me, among others.”

“The perquisites of the teaching assistant are few. If I keep my nose clean I get an instructorship in the fall semester. And that's only half the story. My thesis is a translation of a Provençal geste,
cum
commentary. It happens to be old Burton's specialty, and he's as good as promised me an assistant professorship as soon as my Ph.D. comes through. This is absolutely meteoric promotion, the break of a lifetime. Now consider the headlines: ‘Instructor at Cal Questioned in Sex Slaying.' I might as well learn a new trade.”

“So it was a sex slaying.” Susie's voice was brittle.

“That's what the newspapers will call it.”

“Tell me more about my sister's sex slaying.”

“Don't be obtuse, Susie. I merely foresaw the headlines in the hypothetical event that I were involved in a hypothetical crime.”

Susie tapped the chart. “If it's all so hypothetical, why this?”

Mervyn spoke slowly and patiently, as to a child. “According to Harriet, Mary made arrangements with ‘John.' In which case, it would seem that ‘John' came to meet Mary.”

“You don't have a heading for lust or lechery or whatever you'd call it. Isn't that an important element of a sex slaying? Almost indispensable, I'd think.”

“If a sex slaying occurred. Naturally, there are wheels within wheels.”

“Naturally.” Susie nodded at a private, rather grim, joke. She studied the chart. “Am I supposed to take this seriously? Perhaps we're on our way to hang John Pilgrim now. Or better, let's get John Boce. His score is almost as high, and he lives closer.”

“My chart doesn't seem to impress you.”

“It's silly. The headings all overlap.”

“If you arrange them in a circle, like a color wheel, they all blend smoothly together. For instance, Imagination, Ingenuity, Drive and Persistence come in sequence. Imagination and Drive are equivalent to Ingenuity. Ingenuity and Persistence equal Drive. What I'm trying to say is, these headings are just points around a circumference. The chart indicates the shape of the circumference—I won't call it a circle. The totals indicate the extent of the enclosed area.”

“Clever.”

“You're still not taking me seriously.”

“To think that ten minutes ago you were insulting Harriet because she's a psychologist.”

“I see I'll have to explain.”

“I wish you would. I've been wondering whether my sister is alive or dead.”

“She's dead.”

CHAPTER 1

The Yerba Buena Garden Apartments, a pair of two-story six-apartment complexes, faced each other across a court flagged with black concrete rectangles. There was a small fountain in the center of the court; and a strip of soil planted to palms, white flax, pampas grass, oleander and dwarf bamboo comprised the “garden.” Mary and Susie Hazelwood occupied Apartment 12, at the far end of the south unit's upper tier. Psychologist Harriet Brill had Apartment 10, at the street end of the balcony. Between, in Apartment 11, resided old Mrs. Bridey Kelly, a retired schoolteacher and a widow, who was very much interested in God. Apartment 9, directly below Susie and Mary, was vacant. In Apartment 8 lived a retired couple currently spending a month in Mexico. Apartment 7 irregularly housed a group of airline hostesses who came and went at unpredictable times and whom no one knew.

In the north six-plex, directly across from Susie and Mary but on the lower level, Mervyn Gray occupied Apartment 3. Apartment 2 was vacant. In Apartment 1, across from Harriet Brill but also on the lower level, lived John Boce. Apartment units 4, 5 and 6, on the top deck, were rented to three working couples who formed a clique of their own.

On the morning of Friday, June fourteenth, Mary Hazelwood, a senior at the university (with another semester to go before graduation), finished the last of her final examinations. At eight o'clock in the evening she left Apartment 12. She was wearing a sky-blue suit and a jaunty light gray coat, and she was carrying a small suitcase. She went down the steps to the court and out to the sidewalk and was seen no more.

She had confided her plans to no one, least of all her sister Susie, whom she loved dearly but with whom she quarreled regularly.

Harriet Brill was the last person to admit having seen Mary. About six o'clock, entering Apartment 12 without ringing, she found Mary, curled on the couch, talking into the telephone. Harriet stood poised on tiptoe in the event Mary should turn to look questioningly at her. Mary completed her conversation: “… I don't know how, but I'm sure you'll manage. You've got such a persuasive tongue.… Please, John, be on time for once?… Please?… Naturally I love you. Who else?… Well, then … Good-bye.” The affectionate avowals were in Mary's usual frivolous vein, and Harriet attached no significance to them. Later she was not so sure.

Mary jumped to her feet. She showed no surprise at the sight of Harriet; possibly she had been aware of Harriet's presence. “You'll have to forgive me,” said Mary. “I'm in a terrible rush. I've got to shower and change and pack a suitcase and I've only got an hour or so.”

“Going somewhere?” asked Harriet, eyes dancing with curiosity.

“Timbuktu. Around the moon. The robber woods of Tartary. Possibly even Los Angeles.”

“
Tchk, tchk
. Such high spirits!”

“Exams are over. I'm a free woman. Hurrah.”

“I scent a mystery,” said Harriet archly. “Are you eloping?”

Mary laughed, the friendly, infectious laugh that instantly reduced men to servility (if her physique had not already done so). “I might do worse. I'm twenty-two and still single. Practically a spinster.” She went into the bathroom and started the shower; and Harriet, thirty and still single, turned on her heel and marched out. She had no great affection for either Mary or Susie, though Mary was usually easier to get along with. Conceited little twerps, both of them. Just because they had sleek round bottoms and cute young faces they thought they could elbow everyone else into corners.… And she wondered who the John could be that Mary loved so exclusively.

Mary's world was full of Johns, and Harriet knew all of them. John Boce, John Viviano, John Thompson, John Pilgrim. Mary no doubt loved them all exclusively; her heart was catholic. Harriet herself scorned the tricks that Mary used to attract attention. Popularity was one thing; cheapness another. Not many people saw through the sunny façade to her mixed-up interior. The ingenuous flirting, the teasing, the laughing—they housed an underdeveloped sexuality. An enormous number of men were either blind or just didn't care. That offensive but Byronically handsome Mervyn Gray in Apartment 3, for instance. And dear dependable John Boce, solid and comfortable as an old oak settle. Thank heaven
he
was starting to show more stability.

Harriet returned to her own apartment at the beginning of the deck. She was tall, with thin shoulders and legs that unfortunately emphasized her heavy hips. She wore her straight black hair in a coiled braid to frame what she felt to be the keen, classic purity of her features. Harriet had her master's degree in psychology, and she worked at various part-time jobs as a consulting psychologist. She was addicted to violent peasant blouses, straw sandals and Mexican jewelry; she marched for peace, she folk-danced like one possessed. Her walls displayed copies of the more incomprehensible works of Picasso and Klee; besides her technical books her shelves displayed Kafka, Henry Miller, Sartre, Camus, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, C. Wright Mills and Lawrence Durrell, as well as a group of exotic cookbooks from which she concocted the most unsavory messes imaginable.

Now she prepared a cup of tea and speculated on the identity of “John.” Not that she really cared, but … She reached for the telephone, dialed a number. Then she hung up when the bell at the other end began to ring.

She chewed at her lower lip. Finally, with defiance, she dialed the number again. The bell rang—three … four … five times. No answer. Harriet returned the receiver to its cradle with a stealthy click.

Presently she took it up again and called the Bancroft Textbook Exchange, where Susie had taken a temporary job during the end-of-semester rush. Susie was a junior, a sociology major, and her finals were also over and done with. There was a short wait while Susie was called to the phone.

“Hello? Susie Hazelwood.” Susie's voice, as usual, was self-possessed.

“Harriet here, Susie. Are you busy?”

“This madhouse? It's always busy.”