April Evil (6 page)

Or—“The thing I like best in the books and in the poetry and in the music is when all of a sudden something comes up that makes you feel all prickly, the back of your neck and the backs of your hands, and you can’t breathe deeply. It’s like you recognize something you knew all along. Is that what they try to do to you?”

“That’s what they want to do, yes. But few people ever respond that way. Too few people, Laurie.”

They talked together a great deal. Paul Tomlin was able to ignore the depressing presence of Joe Preston for the sake of the delight he took in watching this girl grow and unfold and flourish. She made the more immediate relatives, Dillon and Lenora Parks, poor things indeed. As she grew in stature, the efforts of his guidance became more visible. He began to feel possessive, and also felt growth and change within himself.

He became more resentful of Joe’s claims on her time and her body and her emotions. The quiet evenings would end when Joe would, with surly insistence, take her off to bed. It seemed shameful to him that this perceptive girl, this sensitive organism, should be chained to crassness, vulgarity and appetite.

One March day as they sat together on the garden bench, Paul Tomlin asked her about her husband.

“How did you meet him, Laurie?”

She looked at him and looked quickly away, and he suspected that she sensed the disapproval behind his words. She shrugged. “I was in a little town named Crystal, California. I was with my aunt. She’s dead now. She was run over last year. I was seventeen, and I had to quit school. I worked in the lunch room in the bus station. Joe came to town with a crew. They were mapping some kind of irrigation project. I went out with him a few times. He got into trouble and they fired him. He was stranded there. He seemed so helpless. He wanted to get married. So … we got married.”

“He doesn’t seem right for you, Laurie.”

“How can you say that? What makes a person right for another person? I love him. He needs me. He isn’t very much, but he’d be even less without me. I make him feel he belongs somewhere. He knows there’s someone on his side. He needs that. We had to leave Los Angeles. I guess you didn’t know that.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“He started getting money. He lied about how he got it. He was running around with the wrong people. A man named Dingle was a bad influence on him. Joe likes to act like a big shot. He was picked up. I found out he was working for a bookmaker. Then he was picked up again on suspicion of robbery. One of the police sergeants was nice to me. He said I ought to get Joe to leave. He said if Joe stayed in town he wouldn’t stay free very long. He said we should leave. It might help Joe and it would save the state of California some money. That’s why we left and why we came here.”

“The small amounts of money I’ve given you for your personal use, Laurie. You’ve given some of it to him.”

“He has to have
some
money in his pocket, even if it’s only a dollar or two. I didn’t want to take any money, anyway. I can get a job here. I’ve told you that, Doctor Paul.”

“I don’t want you to. You do enough right here, in this house.”

“I don’t do much of anything.”

“Arnold thinks differently.”

She smiled. “You two were in a rut. The same menu every week. The same routine. I’m afraid we’ve spoiled the routine.”

“For the better.”

“I should get a job. I feel like I’m sponging.”

“You’re not. Laurie, would you feel better if I gave you some sort of a title and regular pay? Housekeeper or something?”

“I … I might. But I didn’t plan that we’d stay on here.”

“I want you to. I think I need you here, Laurie. I needed to be stirred up.”

At other times he told her about his life, about what had happened to him. And one day when Joe had gone to town and Arnold was on an errand, he took her to the study, slid the
paneling aside and showed her the big safe and its contents, the brown-wrapped bills stacked with the dusty profusion of magazines in a basement, behind and around the large tin box that held important papers.

He watched her face, saw her eyes go wide and then saw the puzzled frown.

“But why?” she asked. “It doesn’t even look real. It seems … grotesque.”

He closed the door of the safe, spun the dial. “I guess it is grotesque.”

“Why do you keep all that here?”

“My dear, you can call it affectation. And a gesture of defiance. I treated their bodies for years, the people in this town. I knew their bodies well. The laboring lungs and the overworked hearts. The cancers and the infections. There is something impressive and awe-inspiring about the resiliency of the human body. I couldn’t treat their bodies without learning about their minds, the way they thought. Bitterness and envy and greed. Dirty little machinations to gain this advantage and that. And their sorry little god was and is money.

“I was fortunate enough to make a great deal of money in land. I had captured their god. To their way of thinking, once the god has been chained, you put him to work for you. And he faithfully brings in your three per cent or your eight per cent, depending on the risk of the work you assign him to. It is inconceivable to them that once you have captured the god, you don’t put him to work. So, as a gesture of defiance—probably childish—I imprisoned the god in this safe and would not let him work. There is enough there for a dozen lifetimes. There is no necessity to make him work for me. Whatever I spend, it comes out of capital. I suspect I am the only millionaire in the world with absolutely no income whatever.

“Perhaps it is a product of my original hurt—to defy the rules of the clan, break the taboos of the village. Through the years I have taken a certain satisfaction in being a man of mystery, in knowing that they whisper and point and envy me. It has been a source of wry pleasure to have them envy me for
the possession of something I value very little. I am a contrived eccentric. It is my small revolt against society. Do you understand?”

“I think I do, Doctor Paul.”

He closed the panel and said, “Locked away in here are the services the imprisoned god will perform for you. Cars and planes and cruises. Or charities that bear your name. All manner of gleaming things. But I won’t play the game their way. Because of that they respect me and they despise me, and maybe it makes them doubt a little. This is a god who does not work.”

“What will happen to it?”

“When I die? Don’t blush, Laurie. It’s a perfectly normal question. I will set up two trust funds. One will be for you. Then the balance will be divided among medical research organizations, with one lump sum set aside for taxes.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Be honest, Laurie.”

She smiled then. “Of course I want it. I don’t want you to think that’s why I asked.”

“I don’t.”

“Then … thank you.”

“With an income for the rest of your life, you can do as you please about Joe. You can support him or not, as you please. I suggest you’ll be happier if you do not support him.”

“There’s something good about him. You don’t see it.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

He stood at the window and looked down at her as she worked in the yard. There was a new zest in living since she had come into his life. Had his child lived, this was the granddaughter he would have wanted. He went down the wide stairs and out the side door. She looked up as he approached.

“I never sleep late in the morning,” she said, imitating his voice. “Good morning.”

“We talked too late. Past my bedtime.”

She stood up. “And now you need your breakfast. I sent
Arnold off with a mile-long shopping list. You walk around in the sun. It will make you hungry. I’ll whistle when it’s ready.”

She went into the house. The grounds enclosed by the high stone wall were not large. The sun was warm on the back of his neck. The garage doors were open, and the black Packard was gone. He could see Joe Preston’s ancient car in the other stall, behind closed doors. Arnold lived over the garage. The curtains at his windows were crisply white. Tomlin walked down the drive and saw that the front gates were open. Before Laurie and Joe had come, Arnold Addams had been ceremonious about locking the gate each time he left the house. He seemed to feel there was security in added numbers.

Dr. Paul Tomlin stood in the entrance, his hands in the pockets of the robe. Across the narrow street there was an empty house, a relic of the boom of the twenties, a great crumbling yellow cement monstrosity, heavy with Mediterranean arches, bastard offspring of mixed Spanish and Moorish ancestry. Off to the left, beyond the sad yellow house, he could see the bright new homes of a low-cost housing development, houses in shades of raspberry and lime, aqua and peach. Homes with terrazzo, Floridy rooms, and coaxial television from a community aerial, with small yards afflicted by chinch bugs and sand spurs. Carport homes where once there had been dry flats with palmetto scrub and the raw grasses. Now the flats were bisected by the thin skin of asphalt, and robins in migration no longer rested there.

A car moved slowly down the narrow street. It was a travel-dusty Buick, with a big man behind the wheel who stared curiously at the doctor and at the stone house behind him. The doctor stared calmly back. The car speeded up after it had passed the house. He noted that it had Illinois plates.

Through the glass of the office wall Mooney could see Dil Parks. Dil had a friend in there with him. Even though somebody was beating out a fender in the adjoining service garage, Mooney could hear the juicy ripeness of Dil Parks’ laughter. Mooney moved to a place on the showroom floor where he could not see Parks and where he could hear him less. He reflected that he would dearly love to bust Parks firmly in the nose.

Mooney was a restless man, an itinerant auto salesman. He had broken in on the used car lots of Dayton and Cleveland and Columbus. He was forty and looked thirty. He was restless, unattached, world-wise. He knew he was no good on the long-term contract sales. He had no stomach for clubs, or golf games, or cocktail-party chatter. He knew he was the best floor man and best lot man he had ever seen. He could club the drifters. He felt alive when he was jamming the sale down their throats, making it taste sweet to them. He’d sharpened his weapons in Los Angeles, in Detroit, in the Bronx. He’d drifted down to Florida right after Christmas. And he’d unloaded a lot of iron for one fatheaded Dil Parks. Now the season was tapering off and it was time to think of heading north. The wallet was fat enough. Maybe just ease around for a month or so.

This Parks didn’t know one thing about running an agency. That had been clear right from the start. On sales of the used stuff he’d been able to clip the agency regularly with one of the oldest tricks in the book. Look in all directions and say, in a low voice. “Okay, he’s got a three-fifty tag on it. Personally I think that’s a touch high, but I’ve got no authority to cut the price on it. But I like you and I think you ought to have a break. Suppose I write it up for three hundred. I’ll get a hell of a chewing out, and I might lose my job. So how about twenty in cash. It saves you thirty bucks on the car. But for Christ sake don’t tell anybody.” Then tell Parks he had to let it go at the minimum listing of three hundred, and take the commission on that figure.

Parks didn’t appreciate salesmanship.

Take that joker that came in yesterday, just looking around. Didn’t want any help. Just looking. Got into conversation with him. Gave Manny the sign to go look over the sucker’s car and make an estimate. Manny, on his way back through, held up seven fingers, showing that they could go to seven bills on the trade-in. Then never quote the total difference. Split it up in your head into payments.

“I got a demonstrator outside. You say you’ve got to pick up the wife at the beauty parlor. Okay, suppose I run you over there and drive the two of you back here. No obligation. Glad to do it. Hell, you can drive it. See how it feels.”

The wife was sore. “You thinking of another car already?” she squalled.

Mooney stepped in. “He isn’t thinking of a new one, ma’m. But if he was, it isn’t a bad time. In another six months it’ll be twice as hard to move the car you’ve already got, and I understand the list on this one is going up. The difference will be a lot bigger. Right now you could drive this one away for just about fifty bucks a month. You know, if you get too far behind, it’s damn hard to get back to a new car. Might be up around a hundred bucks a month next year.”

A little push here and a little push there. Fifty bucks a month. That didn’t include the insurance, but you didn’t tell
them that. Plenty of time for that in a day or two. Tell them you thought they carried that separately. The payments will total about sixty-six a month, but they’re happy. They’re rolling on new rubber. They have their feet on a few more horses.

“Why the hell weren’t you on the floor?” Parks demanded. “We had some customers in here.”

“I was out selling one.”

And that didn’t mean anything to Parks. He wanted you handy to step on when he felt like it. He wanted to show you what a truly enormous wheel he was in this town. Address these postcards, Mooney. Here’s the list. Set up that display. Run over to railway express and pick up those parts for Bernie.

He used his sleeve to wipe some fingerprints off the roof of the car he was leaning on. He didn’t like to peddle this make of car. This make was like Dil Parks. All noise and flash and no guts under the hood. They were harder to move than a lot of other kinds. It was a crummy agency. No price policy. Low-pressure advertising. Maybe a sixty per cent utilization of the repair department. Sloppy, big-mouth mechanics. And Parks kept banker’s hours and never knew quite what the hell was going on.

He came to with a start as he realized Dil Parks was calling him. He went over to the office door.

“You asleep out there, Mooney?”

“It’s quiet enough to go to sleep.”

“Hook the bike on the back end of the green demonstrator and take it out to Mrs. Parks. Tell her I’m going to be held up and I’ll get a ride later to the Shermans’ party and meet her there.”