The Seventh Page 9

  But she wasn't frightened. Or if she was she made no sign of it. Instead she said with utter scorn, “You moron, what are you going to do with that? You never could stab me, not with—”

  Knowing what she was going to say, knowing in advance all the ways she now meant to hurt him, he also knew he had to stop her. There wasn't any choice, none at all.

  He lunged forward, and his right arm pushed ahead of him, and he impaled her forever on that red instant of time. The words remained unspoken, would remain unspoken ever after. The world tick-tocked on, and Ellen remained back there in that blood-red second, slowly slumping around the golden hilt.

  It was as though he had stabbed her from the rear observation platform of a train that now was rushing away up the track, and he could look out and see her way back there, receding, receding, getting smaller and smaller, less and less important, less and less real. Time was rushing on now, like that rushing train, hurtling him away.

  That's what death is; getting your heel caught in a crack of time.

  He had to get out of there, get away, but he couldn't turn his back on her. It was as though the sword wasn't enough to impale her there; she was being held also by his eyes, as though once he stopped staring at her she would live again, move again, speak again. As though, should he turn his back, catlike she would leap on it and bear him down under her weight.

  Police. There would be police now. Had he left any clues?

  He was wearing gloves; that was a lucky thing. He'd worn them because of the cold outside, not to cover fingerprints, but it came to the same thing. So he was safe there.

  Anything else? Anything of him in this apartment, anything he hadn't taken away with him last time?

  He studied the room and saw nothing, and then opened the closet door and saw the suitcases and all the guns.

  All those guns.

  And when he opened the suitcases—given the presence of the guns, he had to open the suitcases—when he opened them they were full of money. Bills and bills, green and green.

  For a minute or two he forgot Ellen completely, sitting over there on the bed in a posture of contrition. He closed up the suitcases again, he grabbed one of the handguns at random and stuck it into his pocket, and he lugged the suitcases out of the bedroom, out of the apartment, out of the building.

  His Ford, still grayed with the dust of Mexico, was across the street. He stowed the suitcases in it and clambered in behind the wheel, and looked out through the windshield to see the stranger across the way at the intersection walking back to Ellen with a package in his arms. He had a heavy, solid way of moving, as though he were made of metal. He looked inexorable, like fate.

  These must be his suitcases, his gun. The closet had been full of the stranger's guns.

  The stranger reached the building and turned and went up the steps and inside. He would go upstairs, find Ellen, and find the suitcases stolen and he would come looking.

  In the rearview mirror he could see a telephone booth on the corner, all glass, held together by strips of green metal. He climbed out of the Ford and ran back to the phone booth, fumbling for a dime, fumbling for a plan. The thoughts clicked through his head like numbers through an adding machine. He was like a man on a bob-sled; later on he would have leisure to wonder just how he'd gotten down that bastard hill.

  “Operator. May I help you?”

  “Operator, there's a woman been murdered.” His voice was a hush. “At 106-12 Longmans Avenue, apartment fourteen.”

  “What?”

  “Get the police. Hurry! He's still there, the killer's still there.”

  “Sir, would you—”

  “It's 106-12 Longmans Avenue, apartment fourteen.”

  “Your name, si—”

  He hung up.

  Returning to the Ford, he sat in the back seat, feeling clever. In the front seat he might be seen, but back here in the shadows and the darkness he could observe without fear.

  Barely two minutes after his phone call a green-and-white prowl car shot around the corner and braked to a stop in front of her building. It stopped so hard it rocked a while on its springs, and two uniformed policemen clattered out and hurried into the building and out of sight.

  His imaginings took him thirty times around the world.

  The stranger came out, alone. He looked this way and that, and walked off down the street.

  In the back seat of the Ford, he stared and ground his teeth and punched his hands together. What was wrong, what was wrong? Why did they let him go? With the dead body there, with all those guns in the closet, surely he hadn't been able to explain it all away so readily. Why had they let him go?

  Or had they let him go?

  What was this stranger? For the first time, it occurred to him to wonder what sort of man would have two suitcases full of money hidden carelessly in a closet, what sort of man would have pistols and machine guns on that closet floor, what sort of man would move with that square inflexible gait.

  He followed because he was afraid to let the stranger out of his sight. He followed on foot because the stranger was on foot. Hurriedly he locked the doors of the Ford and then went off after the stranger, watching from a block back how the stranger planted his feet, how his arms swung like lead weights at his sides.

  He trailed the stranger to the taxicab garage and beyond, until he saw that someone else was following the stranger too, a short, heavy man in a mackinaw, and then he hung farther back to wait and see.

  When the stranger and the man in the mackinaw had their eerie conversation, he was close enough to hear without being observed. He heard them mention the name Kifka, and it seemed to him he could vaguely remember Ellen having mentioned that same name at one time or another. But aside from that lone name, the conversation had little meaning or interest for him.

  Then the conversation ended, and the stranger went on, and the man in the mackinaw followed, until the stranger got into a taxi and went away and left the man in the mackinaw standing on the curb.

  As soon as he was sure the taxi was out of sight, he came forward and talked with the man in the mackinaw and found he was unimportant, ineffectual, and harmless. But he did know the man Kifka's address; in that he had been lying to the stranger.

  “Show me where he lives,” he said.

  “Sure. Sure.” He was a weasel in a mackinaw, and his name was Morey.

  He and Morey rode another taxi, and left it two blocks from Kifka's address. It was awkward bringing Morey along, but he was afraid Morey might otherwise go to Kifka's place himself and warn the stranger of the man who was following him. It was best to bring Morey along.

  Morey was full of questions until he showed him the gun and said, “Shut your stupid face.” Then Morey was quiet. They crouched together in the driveway across from where Kifka lived, and waited. Morey had pointed out Kifka's windows, and they were all lit up.

  The stranger had to be taken care of and then everything was done, and it was back to Mexico forever, this time with two suitcases full of money. It might be a little tricky getting the money across the border, but ways could be found. The spare tire full of cash instead of air, for instance. There were always ways.

  He was dreaming of Mexico, and money, and didn't at first see the stranger come out the doorway across the street and start down the steps. When he did, he jerked his arm up, the heavy gun pointing, and Morey, the stupid one, shouted, “Hey!”

  He turned the gun and blew Morey's loud head off. He didn't think about doing it, he just did it.

  But it was too late to change anything. Across the way, the stranger was leaping for cover. He pushed Morey's falling body away and fired twice at the stranger, but missed both times.

  And then the stranger shot back, and something stung his earlobe, like touching it for just a second with an electric wire.

  He'd never had anyone shoot bullets at him before. It was terrifying. It was more frightening than he could have imagined.

  He ran.

  When
he finally calmed down, he realized he shouldn't have run, that was the last thing he should have done. He'd lost the stranger now; the hunter could very easily at this point become the hunted.

  He had to know where the stranger was, he had to. It was necessary that he be behind the stranger, able to see without being seen, because the alternative was horror. If the stranger was not at all times in front of him, he would never know but what he was behind him.

  He thought of fleeing to Mexico, right now, forgetting everything and only getting away from here, but he just couldn't do it. In Mexico, in Europe, anywhere on earth it would be the same; he was too afraid of the stranger to permit him to stay alive.

  But the mistake had already been made. He went back, and Kifka's windows were now dark. The stranger had gone, of course, no telling where.

  Behind him? He kept looking over his shoulder. Tendrils of ice kept creeping inside his coat to touch his spine. The back of his neck ached. His hands wouldn't stay still.

  He went back to the rented room, taking a devious route, doubling back time after time, making wide detours around all pools of darkness. It didn't seem he'd been followed, but there was no way to be sure.

  In the room, he arranged glassware on the window sill so it would fall and break if anyone opened the window. He pushed the dresser against the door. Even then, he slept only fitfully, his dreams chaotic, full of scarlets and ebonies, glinting with swords and guns, a-sting with bullets.

  Most of the next day he spent in the room, waiting. He dozed sometimes, and stood staring out the window sometimes, and paced the floor sometimes. When, late in the afternoon, he finally understood that what he was waiting for was the arrival of the stranger, he forced himself into action. He couldn't just lock himself away in this cube on the edge of the world; he had to be out and around, he had to be doing. Whether or not there was anything to do.

  He went past the place where Kifka lived, but didn't see the stranger there at all. The body of Morey was gone, too, with nothing now to mark the place where he had fallen.

  (He couldn't really encompass the concept that he had murdered two people and tried to murder a third. He did these things because in their moments they were the only possible things he could do, but at no time did it seem to him that these actions were a part of the fabric of his personality. He was sure he wasn't the type; he did these extraordinary things because he had been thrust into extraordinary situations. In the normal course of events he would no more murder anyone than he would spit on the flag. His having killed Ellen, and then Morey, and then having tried to kill the stranger, were all atypical actions which he would not want anyone to have judged him by.)

  He went past the place where Ellen had lived, and saw no sign here either that murder had been done within that building last night. On impulse, he parked the Ford in the next block and walked back.

  The stranger had been living in there. Would he be in there again?

  He went in, and up the stairs, and too late saw the policeman sitting on the kitchen chair outside the closed door. He couldn't go back down any longer, so he took the remaining alternative; he went on by the policeman and continued up the stairs. The policeman, reading a tabloid with huge black letters on the front, hardly gave him a glance.

  There was no place to go but the roof. He emerged onto a flat deserted world with black tarpaper underfoot and the gray sky of late afternoon overhead. He walked cautiously across the roof, plagued by the idea that it wouldn't support his weight, that he'd crash through into the apartment below, and when he got to the front edge with its knee-high wall he squatted and looked carefully over, staring down at the street far below.

  Would the stranger come back here? It seemed to him somehow necessary. Besides, there were only two locations where he knew the stranger might be, here and the Kifka place, so it was sensible that he should wait in one of these locations until the stranger should pass by again. Of the two, this was the better place to stay.

  He wasn't sure whether he wanted to stay here because he thought the stranger would come back or because he thought the stranger wouldn't come back. Still, he kept watching the sidewalk far below and wondering if the gun in his pocket would fire accurately that far, straight down.

  He wished he could go into the bedroom where he'd killed her and look around again. He supposed the body was gone, and that was a shame. Still, just the empty bedroom—he wished he could go in there and look around.

  He squatted by the parapet, lost in his roiling thoughts.

  A sound startled him, but he resisted the impulse to move, to make noise of his own. He turned his head and saw the stranger, far across the roof, just stepping off into thin air.

  No, not into thin air. There was a fire escape back there, running down the rear of the building.

  He reached with quiet haste into his pocket for the gun, but it was too late. The stranger receded downward, legs disappearing and then torso and arms and finally head. What a cold face he had!

  He hurried across the roof just as quiedy as he could, and got to the back edge just in time to see the stranger disappear into Ellen's apartment through the window down there.

  Follow him? No, that would be far too dangerous. Sooner or later he must come out again, by this same route. All that was necessary was to wait, and this time not miss.

  It didn't take long, but it seemed long. At last the stranger reappeared and started up the fire escape in the fading daylight, coming up toward the staring eye peering down at him past the straight line of the top of the automatic.

  He fired and missed. Missed the way amateurs always do when shooting downward, aimed too high.

  The stranger flung himself to the right, flattened himself against the wall down there. But still a target, still a target.

  He fired again, and again he missed.

  The stranger fired back, and shards of brick peppered his cheek as the bullet ricocheted by.

  He couldn't stand that. If he lived to be a hundred and if someone shot at him with a gun every day until then, he would still never get used to it, never fail to give in to immediate panic. The stranger could be fired at repeatedly and still be alert and aware, still act in defense or offense. He would never know how the stranger did it.

  For the second time he ran. Across the roof, pell-mell, all fears that he might fall through the tarpaper and the roof forgotten. He yanked open the door and pelted down the stairs, not noticing the kitchen chair standing empty in the hallway or the now-open door to Ellen's apartment. He ran on down, and out to the street, and a block away collapsed inside the Ford, frantic and ashamed of himself and out of breath.

  After a while he went back to the room, and here he was now, still in it, a small square room with beige walls, the room nine feet long, ten feet wide, nine feet high. He was looking out the window, feeling the stranger's eyes, knowing he would no longer have the courage to go searching for the stranger himself, knowing he didn't have the courage to try to run away, knowing he could do nothing but wait here to be found.

  He hadn't wanted any of this. It was all Ellen's fault, Ellen's fault. If only, if only . . . .

  The room was getting smaller, meaner, dimmer. He couldn't stay here forever, he couldn't wait here indefinitely like this.

  He deserved some time off. The tension had been so great for so long, it was about time he relaxed, forgot about things, found some way to amuse himself, distract himself.

  He pulled the dresser away from the door and went out to the hall where the pay phone was. He called a friend of his, a guy he'd known in the old days, who said, “When did you get back from Mexico, man?”

  “Just a couple days ago. You doing anything tonight?”

  “Naw, you know.”

  “Why don't we take in a movie, have a couple beers?”

  “Sure thing. Come on over. Say, wasn't that something about Ellie?”

  “What? Oh, yeah. It sure was. Be right over.”

  He hung up, having made the mistake that wou
ld kill him.

  2

  Detective Dougherty wasn't at all sure he'd done the right thing. The smart thing, yes, there wasn't any doubt of that, but the right thing? Maybe not.

  Driving downtown to talk it over with the lieutenant, Dougherty allowed himself little fantasies in which he got the drop on the man who'd called himself—obviously lying—Joe, in which he captured Joe, bested Joe, worsted Joe. In the cellar there, sitting as calm and deceptive as W. C. Fields playing poker, and then all at once—like Fields producing a fifth ace—whipping the pistol out and crying, “All right, hold it!”

  In the dining-room, as Joe copied down the names, distracted . . . .

  At the front door, as Joe turned to leave . . . .

  “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.” Francis Bacon said that, whether he wrote Shakespeare's plays or not.

  Detective Dougherty was a good enough detective to have been aware of all the opportunities Joe had given him to try for an arrest. But he was also a good enough detective to know they were all opportunities given him by Joe, not out of carelessness but as a challenge. Every opportunity given him deliberately to remind him of his wife and children, currently next door, safely out of the house but close enough still to hear the shot that would kill him. And listening for that shot.

  That, Dougherty thought to himself as he drove downtown, is probably the most enervating, the most spine-softening, the most weakening thing that can happen to a man: to know that his wife and children are sitting with cocked heads listening for the sound of the shot that will kill him.

  If there had been no wife, no children, Joe would never have walked in and out so casually. Dougherty might have died or Joe might have been caught, but either way it would have ended.

  Of course, he knew full well that if there had been no wife or children Joe wouldn't have handled it the same way.

  “He used my weakness,” Dougherty said to himself. In his own personal soul, in the part of him that wasn't a policeman, he hated Joe for that and would pursue him more for having done that than for anything involving the stolen gate receipts or the murder of Ellen Canaday.