Masters Of Noir Vol I Part 17

"Sorry, Tony? Will you ever be sorry?"

I looked down into the hot, gold-flecked eyes, and I said, "No, I'll never be sorry," and her cigarette dropped with a small sound to the asphalt tile behind me. Out on the front veranda, there was a loud knocking at the door.

I went in through the living room and on out through the hall to the front door, and there on the veranda stood Aaron Owens, the sheriff of the county. He was a short, fat little man with round cheeks and a bowed mouth, and it crossed my mind that maybe he'd been elected sheriff because the voters thought he was cute. Looking in at me through the screen, he mopped his face with a bright bandana and blew out a wet sigh.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Wren. It's a hot walk up from the lake."

I opened the screen door and told him to come in. "My cousin's on the sun porch. She'll mix you a drink."

We went back to the sun porch, and Cindy put bourbon and soda and ice in a gla.s.s and handed it to him. He took the drink eagerly.

"We've been listening to the blasting," Cindy said. "We haven't heard any now for an hour."

He looked at her over the rim of his gla.s.s, his face and voice taking on a studied solemnity.

"We've brought him up. Poor old guy. I came to tell you."

Cindy turned quickly away, looking again out across the yard to the timber, and the little sheriff's eyes made a lingering, appreciative tour of the black sheath.

"He'll be taken right into town," he said. "Twenty-four hours in the water, you know. Didn't do him any good. We thought you'd prefer it that way."

"Yes," I said. "Of course."

He lifted his gla.s.s again, draining the bourbon and soda off the cubes. He let one of the cubes slip down the gla.s.s into his mouth, then spit it back into the gla.s.s.

"The coroner'll look him over. Just routine. An old man like that shouldn't swim alone in deep water. Maybe a cramp. Maybe a heart attack. Never can tell with an old man."

"Grandfather was always active," I said.

He looked wistfully at his empty gla.s.s for a minute and then set it down on the gla.s.s-topped table.

"Sure. Some old men never want to give up. Ought to know better. Well, time to be running along. Lucky to get him up so soon. Can't tell you how sorry I am."

"Thanks very much," I said.

I took him back to the front door and watched him cross the veranda and go down across the cleared area into the timber. Turning away, I went back to Cindy.

She was facing me when I came in, black and gold against the bright gla.s.s. Her lips were parted, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s rose and fell with a slow, measured cadence.

"Everything's all right, Tony. Everything's going to be all right."

"Sure. They can't touch us, honey."

"He was an old man. We didn't take much of his life away."

"Don't think about that. Don't think about it at all."

"I won't, Tony. I'll just think about the time when we can go away. I'll think of you and me and more money than we can spend in a dozen lifetimes. You and me and the long, hot days under a sky that's bluer than any blue you've ever seen. Oh, Tony.... "

I went over and held her tightly until she whimpered with pain and her eyes were blind with the pleasure of suffering.

"It won't be long, honey. Not long. After the will's probated. After everything's settled."

She snarled her fingers in my hair and pulled my face down to her hungry lips, and it must have been a century later when I became aware of the shrill intrusion of the telephone in the hall behind me.

I went out to answer it, and when I spoke into the transmitter my mind was still swimming in a kind of steaming mist. The voice that answered mine was clear and incisive but very soft. I had to strain to understand.

"Mr. Wren? My name is Evan Lane. I have a lodge across the lake. I see the sheriff's men have quit blasting. Does that mean they've found the old man?"

"Yes," I said. "They found him."

"Permit me to extend my sympathy." The country line hummed for a long moment in my ear, and it seemed to me that I could hear, far off at the other end, the soft ghost of a laugh. "Also my congratulations," the voice said.

A cold wind seemed to come through the wire with the voice. The warm mist inside my skull condensed and fell, leaving my mind chill and gray and very still. Inside my ribs, there was a terrible pain, as if someone had thrust a knife between them.

"I beg your pardon," I said.

The laugh was unmistakable this time, rising on a light, high note. "I offered my congratulations, Mr. Wren. For getting away with it, I mean."

"I don't understand."

"I think you do. You see, Mr. Wren, you made one small mistake. You made the mistake of acting too soon after your lovely friend had been sun bathing on the beach. A girl like that is an open invitation to a man like me to use his telescope. I have a clear shot from my veranda. Now do you understand, Mr. Wren?"

"What do you want?"

"I think you'll find me a reasonable man. Perhaps we'd better meet and discuss terms."

"Where?"

"Say the barroom of the Lakesh.o.r.e Inn."

"When?"

"Tonight? At nine?"

"I'll be there," I said.

I cradled the phone and went back through the living room to the sun porch. Cindy was standing at a liquor cabinet in the corner, moving a swizzle stick in the second of two drinks she'd mixed. She stopped stirring and looked across at me, becoming suddenly very quiet.

"Who was it, Tony?"

"He said his name's Evan Lane. He has a lodge across the lake."

"What did he want?"

"He wants to meet me at the Lakesh.o.r.e Inn. Tonight."

"Why?"

"He has a habit of watching you on the beach through a telescope. He was watching yesterday. He saw me and the old man in the lake."

She took two stiff steps toward me, her slim body rigid in its black sheath. Bright spots were burning in her cheeks.

"Blackmail?"

"It looks like it."

"What shall we do, Tony? What shall we do?"

"Find out what he's after, first of all. After that, we'll see."

"He'll bleed us, Tony. He'll bleed us white."

"No," I said. "It won't be like that. It won't be like that at all."

Then she came the rest of the way to me, but her body was cold and rigid in my arms, and it was a long time before it got back the way it was before the telephone rang.

3.

The Lakesh.o.r.e Inn was on an arm of the lake that was almost at a right angle to the main body. In the barroom, they'd tried to make an effect with rafters. After they'd finished, the effect was just rafters, but you felt friendly because they'd tried.

I crawled onto a stool. A clock on the wall behind the bar said five to nine. I looked at my reflection in the mirror below the clock and was a little astonished to see that I didn't look any different from the way I'd looked yesterday or the day before. Same brown hair. Same eyes a little browner. Same face in general.

The bartender said, "Good evening, Mr. Wren," and c.o.c.ked an eyebrow to show that he was tuned in.

"The usual," I said.

He put a couple of cubes in a gla.s.s and covered them with White Horse. Down the bar, around the curve to the wall, a heavy man with a bald head was drinking beer. The bartender went down to him and resumed a conversation I'd interrupted. At nine precisely, someone came up behind me and got onto the stool on my left. I looked up into the mirror.

The face I saw went on from where mine stopped. Thin and dark, with a clean, chiseled look, burned mahogany by wind and sun. Above it, black hair was feathered with white around the ears and almost mathematically divided by a single white streak. It was a head to make the ladies itch. The head of a man who might have been a heavy actor but thought he was too good for it. I sat and watched it until the bartender had done his job and gone back to his beer drinker.

"You don't look like a blackmailer," I said.

An incisive white smile flashed in the shadows of the mirror. "Thanks. You don't look like a murderer, either."

"It's a funny world," I said.

We drank in silence, two congenial guys, and after a while I said, "You're a little previous. Right now I'm a poor relation. So's Cindy. You know Cindy, don't you? She's the girl you peep at through a telescope. We're just a pair of lovable young parasites, Cindy and I. We won't have any money for blackmailers until the estate's settled."

The smile reappeared in the mirror, growing to a laugh, the soft, substantial embodiment of the ghost on the wire.

"You think I want money? My friend, I have more of the stuff than I can ever use. More, I imagine, than you'll get from Grandfather."

"In that case, what the h.e.l.l are you after?"

Our eyes came together, locking in the gla.s.s, and his, I saw, were darkly swimming with the amused and cynical tolerance that doesn't come from compa.s.sion or conviction, but from a kind of amoral indifference to all standards.

"Nothing that need worry you, if you're reasonable. Believe me, I feel no compulsion to see you punished merely for killing a man old enough to die." He lit a cigarette, doing it neatly with a silver lighter. In the mirror, the light flared up across planes and projections, giving his face for a moment the quality of fancy photography. "I'm a tenacious man, Mr. Wren. I know what I want, and I'll use any available means to get get what I want. In the light of yesterday's events, you should be able to understand that." what I want. In the light of yesterday's events, you should be able to understand that."

"You're talking all around it," I said. "The point, I mean."

The coal of his cigarette glowed brighter and faded. "I'm thinking about the girl. Cindy, I believe you called her."

I guess I'd known all along what was coming. I guess I'd known from the instant I looked into the mirror and saw that thin, patrician face with its ancient eyes. Strangely, there was no anger in me. There was only a cold, clear precision of thought: This time it'll be easy. This time it'll be fun. Not just a job, like it was with the old man. This time it'll be easy. This time it'll be fun. Not just a job, like it was with the old man.

"You can go to h.e.l.l," I said.

His white teeth showed pleasantly. "My friend, you are the one in peril of going to h.e.l.l. I can send you with a few words."

Killing the White Horse and turning to face him directly for the first time, I said, "You're lousy with dough. You said it yourself. Buy yourself a girl."

I got off the stool to go, and his hand came out to lie lightly on my sleeve.

"Since she's involved in this, it might be smart to let Cindy make the decision. She may not be as ready as you for that trip to h.e.l.l. In case she isn't, I'll be here until eleven."

"You can stay forever," I said. "You can stay forever and to h.e.l.l with you."

I went away without looking at him again, because I was afraid if I looked at him that I couldn't resist ruining his pretty face. Outside, standing by my convertible in front of the Inn, I felt the cool wind come up off the lake and hit me, and all the strength went out of me. My hands began to tremble, and I clutched the edge of the door. After a long time, I got into the convertible and drove back down the lake road to the lodge.

In the drive, I killed the motor and sat quietly under the wheel. Beyond the timber, a cold slice of moon was rising. In the lodge, all lights were out except the one in the room where Cindy slept. Cindy, Cindy, Cindy. Golden, sultry Cindy. The thought of her and Evan Lane brought the hot trembling back into my body, and I gripped the wheel until I was quiet.

I'd kill him, of course. I'd kill him, and it would be a pleasure. It would be the greatest pleasure I'd ever have on earth, except the pleasure that Cindy brought. Thinking of it clearly that way made me feel better, almost uplifted, and I got out of the convertible and went into the lodge and up to the room with the light burning.

Cindy was in bed with a book open, but I could tell she hadn't been reading. I stood leaning against the door, looking across at her, and pretty soon, she said, "I heard you drive up several minutes ago."

"Yes," I said. "I've been sitting down there thinking. I've been thinking about how to kill a man."

"No, Tony. Not again."

"It's the only way. I've always heard that one murder begets another, and I guess that's the way it is."

"We'll have money, Tony. Lots of money. We can pay."

"Like you said, he'd bleed us. He'd bleed us as long as we lived. Besides, he's got money. He isn't interested in getting any more."

"What does he want?"

"He wants you."

Her eyes dilated, and the breath rattled in her throat. I watched her lips come open and bright color creep under gold, and I thought again of the pleasure of killing Evan Lane.

"What do you mean, Tony?"