Someone Is Bleeding Page 10

  Peggy is suspected.

  I knew then, finally, objectively, that she could have committed either crime. And the knowledge was like a wedge between us. And more knowledge would be like hammer blows on the wedge, hurting us, separating us. I was almost afraid to learn any more, to admit any more to myself.

  “Peggy?” Phillip said. “Peggy is suspected?”

  “Yes. You see she…”

  “Who rang, Phillip?”

  Stentorian voice. Our eyes shifted quickly to the hall. There in the doorway, straight and bleak.

  Aaron Lister.

  He was tall. There was some resemblance to Peggy. In the frame. In the touch of masculine strength in Peggy’s face. That strength that hinted of flint-like resolution. He was her father, all right.

  His eyes were on me as he spoke to Phillip.

  “Father, this is…” Phillip looked at me for help.

  “David Newton,” I said.

  I was standing up as he came walking in. Captain Bligh on the maindeck, I thought. Ready to squelch mutiny or flog a dead man. His face was unmoving and rocklike, like one of those faces carved out of that mountain out west.

  “Newton,” he said. He seemed to taste the word to see if it were poisonous.

  Then his eyes moved over me in examination. I might have been before his court martial board, a twenty-year A.W.O.L.

  “Mr. Newton is a friend of Peggy’s,” Phillip said nervously.

  Lister didn’t speak. He walked over to the fireplace and turned. Still not a flicker on his face. This guy even makes Vaughan look transparent, I thought. World, oh world, full of people afraid to show themselves as they are.

  “You wished to see me?” he said and it wasn’t a question. It apparently never occurred to him that anyone might come there to see Phillip.

  “Yes,” I said, “I did.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Phrased politely. But behind it, the unspoken words—Speak, man, or I’ll have you thrown to the dogs.

  I looked at him, wondered why I always felt that momentary sense of uneasy timorousness when I came across these people who were bent on dominating all relationships. Was it because I wasn’t ever pushing hard? Because I just took life easy and was thrown off stride by these intent ones? These people to whom life is a challenge and a never-flagging combat? I don’t know. But I felt a little nervous at first. Until I realized, as I ultimately did in all such cases, that they were born the same way as I was and were no better. No Olympian horn had sounded the nascence of Aaron Lister. Just a squawling like mine. Ten fingers, ten toes, et cetera. I looked at bleak Captain Lister without a qualm then. The regal manner was just show to me.

  “I’m interested in your daughter,” I said.

  “Are you?” Amusement? Contempt?

  “I plan to marry her,” I said. I felt a slight twinge in the knowledge that I wasn’t sure whether I said it because I meant it or because I wanted to get a rise out of the captain.

  His cheeks seemed to twitch. His whole body seemed to be galvanized, then stiffened as if his spine had transformed itself into a long iron rod. His poker face changed an iota.

  “I believe my daughter is expecting to marry another gentleman,” he said. Final words, the clap of doom.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  There went my plan. He wouldn’t talk to me now. Why did I always bristle before smug minds?

  “Your opinion is immaterial to me,” said Captain Lister.

  That was that, it appeared. Thirty days, next case.

  Dead silence. Lister apparently expected me to retire, bowing. Phillip cleared his throat.

  “Mr. Lister,” I said.

  “Captain Lister,” he corrected.

  I licked my lips.

  “Captain Lister,” I said.

  “I have nothing to say,” he said.

  “Captain Lister, I want to know about your daughter. This is very important. She’s involved in murder and…”

  “I have no interest in it,” he said, deceptively mild. “I do not care what my daughter is implicated in.”

  “Well, for God’s sake, can’t you…!”

  I stopped. I could see I wasn’t going to get anything out of him. I might as well try to melt an iceberg with a match.

  “That’s all, I believe,” Aaron Lister said. Still on the board. He’d die on that court martial board. I could see him instructing his pallbearers.

  “Captain Lister,” I said, “you have no idea what a shock it is to see a father who doesn’t give a damn about his own child.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Lister!”

  “Mr. Newton!” he exploded. “My daughter is no longer a part of my family!”

  I looked at him. I shook my head. Then I turned on my heel.

  “Good day,” I said.

  “Good day,” he answered.

  I slammed the door in a fury and started down the walk. So. That was her father. A starchy, heartless ramrod. I could just visualize Peggy’s bringing-up by him. The unbending discipline, the harsh cowing of her young personality. Like taking a bird and holding its wings so that all it could do was flutter in mute impotence.

  Then I heard the door open. I turned.

  “Mr. Newt…”

  “Phillip!”

  The voice rang out inside. Phillip looked at me. Then he tried to smile but it didn’t come off. He shut the door quietly and I stood there looking at the white door, the polished brass knocker, the entrance to emptiness.

  I couldn’t concentrate as I drove back. I was too distracted. Peggy had been brought up by that. Her impressionable brain assailed with hardness and cruelties. Her entire youth sterile of love after her mother’s death. No wonder she was hungry for it. She’d been starving for it all her unhappy life.

  I wanted to run to her, to make it up. I drove to her apartment when I got to Santa Monica. She wasn’t there.

  I waited a while but she didn’t come back. I tried to think she wasn’t with Jim. She couldn’t be. Not now, after what she’d told me. Could she trust him after he threatened her? If she could…

  I tried to think it out as I drove to Malibu to see if Jim were out.

  Yes, it made sense. I finally decided that. She’d never had anyone she could really count on. Jim had been the rock she needed. She had never known real love. Was it surprising then that she misinterpreted and decided that Jim loved her the way she needed? How could she really know that being given things and having favors done for her wasn’t being loved? No one had ever taught her differently.

  A maid opened the door at Malibu.

  “Mr. Vaughan in?” I asked her.

  “No, he isn’t,” she said.

  “Oh.” I stood there looking at her.

  “Who is it, Jane?” I heard a voice calling from the head of the stairs. Audrey.

  I leaned in and looked up.

  “Hi!” she said, smiling. “Come on in. All right, Jane.”

  The maid nodded, closed the door and disappeared down the hallway.

  “Come on in the living room,” Audrey said, coming up to me. “I’ll make you a drink.”

  “Where’s Jim?”

  “He’s down at the police station.”

  “Oh.”

  We went up the stairs and into the high-ceilinged living room. I remembered the first night I’d gone there, met Jim again for the first time since graduation. Since then—murder, murder and here I was again.

  “What’d you want to see Jim about?” she asked, pouring drinks.

  I shook my head.

  “That’s right,” Audrey said, “we went through that routine once, didn’t we? We’ll skip it this time. Soda?”

  “A little.”

  “None for me, thank you,” Audrey piped to herself. “I like to drink it straight if you don’t mind I don’t mind at all well that’s nice of you thank you you’re welcome.”

  She was drunk again. Good and…

  I went over to the big picture wi
ndow and looked out. Way down below, across the highway, I could see rocks and blue-green ocean dashing out its white brains on them. Foam flashed and drops sparkled in the crystalline air. The breeze coming through the windows was crisp and tangy with the smell of the sea. To live in a house like this, the thought came. It had everything.

  Except happiness.

  “Quite a view,” I said.

  “Quite a jump,” she said.

  “Planning on it?” I said.

  She pursed her lips.

  “Who knows?” she said, sinking down on the couch. She patted the cushion beside her.

  “Sit here,” she said. “Tell mama all about everything.”

  I sat down. She grinned at me.

  “You’re feeling pretty chipper today, aren’t you?” I said.

  “No,” she said blithely, “just pretending.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I’ll pretend too. Is it easy?”

  “It is if your brain falls out,” she said.

  “Uh-huh. Oh… I… guess I should apologize for the nasty way I spoke to you last time I saw you.”

  “When was that?”

  “The day… I took you home.”

  “Oh.” She shrugged. “Anything you said, I’m sure I deserved.”

  I smiled at her. I took a sip of my drink.

  “The police station, you said? What’s going on?”

  “Questions and answers, I suppose,” she said. “Jones probably has the culprit.”

  “If he has,” I said, “you have no husband.”

  She looked at me without anger.

  “I haven’t got one anyway,” she said.

  “When are you going to leave him, Audrey?”

  “When are you going to leave that girl?”

  “I’m not.”

  She shrugged. “That’s my answer,” she said. She held up the glass and looked at the liquor. She shook her head.

  “It looks so innocent,” she said. “Just some colored water. But what it does. Lawsy.”

  I didn’t say anything. We had nothing to discuss really, but I didn’t want to leave. I was tired of driving, tired of looking for answers. I wanted to relax. You can’t pile-drive twenty-four hours a day.

  “You look pretty,” I said.

  She smiled.

  “Sweater girl,” I said.

  “That’s me.”

  “You have a nice figure, Audrey.”

  “Mercí.” She drank. She licked her lower lip. “Well here we are, Davie boy.”

  “Here we are,” I said.

  “You in love with a murderess, me in love with…”

  “Cut it out.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Audrey.”

  “Wha’?”

  “Did Dennis… have his arm cut open by Peggy?”

  She looked at me. “Yes,” she said. “He had to have stitches taken, it was so bad.”

  “What did he do?”

  “You mean to deserve a cutting-up?” she said. “He probably looked cross-eyed at her.”

  “Oh, stop it. You know he must have done something serious. He probably made a pass at her.”

  “Is that bad? A man should make a pass at me. I wouldn’t cut his arm open.”

  “She would. You don’t know what she’s been through.”

  “I don’t care, Davie. I don’t care.”

  “All right. Forget it.

  “Audrey,” I said then, trying to get somewhere in all this crazy tangle, “who were those men at the funeral? The ones you called tramps?”

  She looked at me over her glass.

  “I don’t know whether I should tell you,” she said.

  “Listen,” I said, “I know about Jim. I know he didn’t win his money at a raffle.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Law is profitable,” she said.

  “Come on, Audrey. You know what I mean.”

  “You won’t…”

  “Repeat it? I won’t use it against him. I wouldn’t hurt you even if you are in love with the wrong guy.”

  “Who’s the right guy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Kiss me, Dave?”

  I leaned over and her warm mouth opened a little under mine. I could taste her breath.

  She sighed as I straightened up.

  “Gee, it’s nice to be kissed,” she said. “It’s been so long. You kiss nice, Dave.”

  “Tell me about Jim, Audrey.”

  She looked away from me. Then she settled herself in the couch. She poured a little from the bottle into her drink. She smiled. Then it went. She couldn’t relate it in a joking way. That was clear.

  “It’s not too complicated,” she said. “Jim has dozens of ties with the crime syndicate out here on the coast. He started out as just a lawyer. But he found out soon enough that a beginner couldn’t make out in law. At least he couldn’t make out the way Jim wanted to make out. So he took on a couple of shady characters as clients. He defended them. He saved one from the gas chamber and got the other one acquitted. He got money for that. And a rep, too. They started coming to him. One thing led to another.”

  “Did you know about it?” I said.

  “Not at first,” she said, “but he couldn’t keep it a secret. Those men kept coming to the house. You can’t keep them away. When I found out, I almost left him. But I can’t, you know that. I tried to talk him out of doing it. You can imagine what good it did.”

  “Did Dennis ever threaten to expose him?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Audrey, did he?”

  “Well…”

  “He did, didn’t he?”

  “He… Dennis was always a hothead. He’d threatened lots of things.”

  “And you wonder why Jim had him killed,” I said.

  “David, I don’t want you to say it anymore.”

  “Listen,” I said, “do you know what Steig is?”

  No answer.

  “Audrey, he used to be a Chicago gunman. A paid killer!”

  I thought she’d gone into a coma the way she stared at me.

  “Jones told me that,” I said. “He showed me the card on Steig, too. He’s suspected of murdering about a dozen men. That’s your husband’s chauffeur, Audrey.”

  “Is that true, Dave? You’re not lying?”

  “I swear to God it’s the truth, Audrey.”

  Her head slumped forward and her eyes closed.

  “God help him,” she whispered. “God help my poor Jim.”

  I stared at her. At a woman who could love him still.

  “Audrey, how can you…”

  “Don’t. Don’t, Dave. I love him. That’s it. I don’t question your love even if I question the girl you love.”

  “I’m not sure I love her,” I said.

  She looked at me bleakly.

  “I hope you don’t,” she said, “I hope at least somebody gets out of this in one piece.”

  I put my arm around her but she didn’t respond in any way. She stared at her lap. She put the drink on the table.

  “I guess you’d better go,” she said.

  I took my arm back and looked at her. Poor Audrey. Not a sodden alcoholic. A girl, confused and betrayed in her love. Lost in a morass of frustrations and unanswered yearnings. One thing I know and will always know. When love starts turning itself in, the results are horrible to see.

  “I wish there was something for you to hold on to,” I said. “I wish I could be that something.”

  She smiled momentarily and patted my hand. Then she got up.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  I followed her across the thick rug, feeling a dragging sense of inevitability in me. That Audrey would live and die here in this house. In her terrible despair as long as Jim lived. And if he died, maybe even then.

  Someone was bleeding.

  ***

  Later I went home and sat around my room. I tried to work on the novel but it was impossible. I kept writing the same sentence over and over again.
I read the paper and saw that nothing had developed on the case. Nothing that the papers had anyway. No fingerprints on the second icepick either.

  Finally I threw down the paper and went to call up Peggy. I didn’t get an answer. I drove over to her place. She wasn’t home. I got disgusted and went out to have supper. I ate at the Broken Drum, a little place on Wilshire whose motto is—You Can’t Beat It. The pun is bad but the food is good.

  I went back to my room and tried to write. I couldn’t. I kept thinking about Peggy being with Jim. It disgusted me. Yet I think I almost felt glad. It gave me an excuse for being disgusted with her. In spite of everything I felt I had a desire to get away. I was on a fence and it seemed as if Peggy was pushing me over the other way.

  I tried to read. I couldn’t do that either. I listened to the radio. That wasn’t any good either, so I turned it off and went to the movies.

  ***

  “Hi!” she said brightly, standing by the screen window. I jumped up and unlocked the door. She came in and we embraced. I’m like Audrey, I thought. I can talk too, but when it comes down to it, I can’t do anything but love her when she’s near.

  “Did I wake you up, Davie?”

  “Nope.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I was going to tell her that I had to work on my book. But I knew if I did she’d go away and I didn’t want her to go away. She looked so fresh and clean. Come to think of it, the only time I could deliberate about leaving her was when we were apart. When she was close to me, I didn’t have a chance.

  “Nothing in particular,” I said.

  “Wanna take a hike?” she said.

  “I… guess so.”

  Her face fell.

  “Wouldn’t you?” she said.

  “Sure, babe.”

  “If you don’t want to, tell me, Davie.”

  “Baby, I’m a little sleepy, that’s all. Go make us some breakfast while I take a shower.”

  She smiled and rubbed her warm cheek against mine.

  “Davie,” she whispered happily. And even though the words in my mind were Here we go again, I didn’t care.

  “Shall we go to Griffith Park?” I said, dressing after my shower.

  “Ooh, yes!”

  I smiled to myself. Just a big kid, really. Give her the love she needed and the world was her oyster.

  “Shall I make sandwiches?” she asked.

  “Sure. I’ll go get the stuff.”

  “Okay. After you eat. Breakfast is almost ready.” While we ate she looked up.