The Expendable Man (10 page)

He cut a rapid crosstown path toward Jefferson Street. Walking in one hundred-degree heat had little resemblance to walking on a Westwood campus. But he didn't diminish his pace even though he knew it to be compulsive. There was need to put as much distance as possible, and as quickly as possible, between himself and the motel. He wouldn't be hidden with the family. He had mentioned Dr. Edward last night. If Ringle and Venner didn't know, they could easily find out where to look for Hugh. His grandfather was as well known as the doctor.

Again the sick feeling overwhelmed him. Surely the police wouldn't interrupt the wedding. But having met Ringle and Venner, he knew that it would make no difference to them. They'd come for Hugh whenever they wanted him. It might even give them a twisted satisfaction to slur their black shadows over the shining white of the bridal ceremony.

When he reached his grandparents' house, he took the porch steps by twos as if Ringle's hand were outstretched to clamp his shoulder. He plunged into the living-room coolness. The voices led him to the dining room. They were at the table, not at one of his grandmother's Sunday chicken dinners, not on the wedding day. But the breakfast they were finishing was equally substantial. None of the young people was present, nor were the out-of-town guests. Only his father and mother and his grandparents.

His mother looked up, appalled. “You didn't walk over here, Hugh! Why didn't you call me?”

They hadn't heard of any trouble. They wouldn't be as normal if they had. He poured himself a glass of water and drank it slowly before answering the concerted hubbub.

“I'm a tenderfoot. Why didn't somebody remind me it would be a hundred and ten in the shade?” His voice sounded normal. He hoped his demeanor didn't belie it. He must remember to be supranormal all this day, not let an inflection or a glance betray the inner nerves.

“Have you had your lunch yet?” It was his grandmother, starting to rise.

Hugh put his hands on her shoulders. “I haven't had my breakfast yet. Don't move. There's enough here for all the starving Chinese.” He sat down beside her.

“Those corn cakes are cold. And the bacon.”

“You just brought them in, Mama.” His father began to serve a plate.

“I'm not hungry,” Hugh said quickly. “All I want is a cup of coffee.” But he found himself eating; it was easier than arguing. “Where is everybody?”

His father said, “If by everybody you mean the girls, they've gone swimming.”

“I thought you planned to go with them,” his mother said.

“I planned a full day,” Hugh told her. “I overslept.” The Sunday papers must be in the front room. He should have thought about them when he first came into the house, before joining the family. Just for a quick look at the headlines. There could be nothing about him in them, not even implied, or his parents would be asking questions.

He heard his mother with his outer ear. “You needn't have sent the car back last night, Hugh. There are enough cars at Stacy's to take care of us.”

This then had been Ellen's story. “It's your car.”

“Maybe you thought you'd better not drive after the party,” his father suggested.

“May be.” His grin felt unforced. Ellen might have included such a suggestion. “Those magnums came around pretty often.”

They were talking about the dinner and about this afternoon's reception and he tried to listen in case he should be called on for response. They didn't seem to notice his silence; as an excuse for it he kept eating. If he could get away from the table before they did, he could take a moment for the newspaper. The day's plans seemed to involve him; the girls would decorate the house but men were needed for the heavy work.

“Whenever you're ready,” he heard his father saying. “You can give me a lift to Stacy's and bring the girls back here with you.”

What he saw was his father taking the Sunday paper from the near chair. It had been invisible under the drape of the white tablecloth. Automatically his hand twitched out for it, even as he watched his father hand the folded sections to his mother. “I'm too old for heavy work,” his father was continuing heartily. “Besides, after that champagne supper last night, I need a snooze. And once you clear the place of those babbling females, that's what I'm going to have.”

Hugh could have asked her: May I have a quick look at the front section? But what answer could he give to her inevitable: Why, is there some particular story . . .? And she would glance at the front page in passing, would see the headlines about the dead girl. Fear would squeeze her, the fear lying ever-dormant beneath the civilized front, beneath the normal life of a Los Angeles housewife whose husband's income was in near-five figures, whose children had been born and bred and coddled in serenity and security and status.

He did not ask. He rose from the table, made the proper good-bye sounds, and in a flurry of his mother's memoranda for Stacy, followed his father out to the car. He should have emerged with a reassurance granted by the untroubled respite of the dining table. But anxiety smote him as sharply as the sun glare when once he was in the open. He was not able to dismiss it until he was certain that there were no strangers loitering on the street, no unfamiliar cars standing at the curb.

“You drive,” his father said. “I don't know whether it's the champagne or the weather, but I'm beat.”

As Hugh took the wheel, the anxiety recurred. This was no longer his mother's white Cadillac, this was an item in police reports. He wondered how many eyes would be watching for it as it wheeled in and around the Phoenix streets.

It was important that he make a special effort to match his father's holiday mood. If anyone would sense something wrong in him, it would be Dad. “Anyone with no more sense than to play eighteen holes under an Arizona sun deserves what he feels,” he said.

The radio had not come on at the turn of the ignition switch. Ellen must have turned it off manually last night. To protect him, just in case. He didn't turn it on. He couldn't risk it.

The inevitable question was being asked. “When do you have to be back at the hospital?”

“I can take a few days.” He had to take at least one more day. If everything worked out right tomorrow, as it surely would, he could fly back in time for duty on Tuesday.

“I was hoping you might have a week, so you could drive Mother home. She's going to stay on with Stacy and help her get rested up. The girls and I are flying out tonight.”

How could it be possible to be comforted and fearful at one time? He echoed, “Tonight?”

“I must be in the office in the morning. Your sisters are bellowing to stay longer, but they've missed enough school this week.”

Hugh said, “I wish I could stay.” And he wished from the bottom of his heart that he could talk to his father about what had happened. But it wouldn't be fair. His father didn't get away often enough from his growing insurance business. Why should he have the vacation spoiled by Hugh's problems? Hugh was a man, not a child. Yet if it hadn't been that they were already in sight of Stacy's, he might not have been able to keep quiet. He'd always confided in his father, from the time he could talk. The dangerous moment passed. He parked in front of the house, and together, he and his father went up the walk.

Approaching the handsome suburban dwelling, for the first time Hugh's anxieties were truly allayed. The Densmores and the Willises weren't the kind of people you pushed around. The flurry of careless voices within the house increased his sense of security.

He called out, “All passengers for the fifty-cent tour to Phoenix, line up at the door. At once. This means now.”

He was answered by protests and pleas from the bedroom corridor. The girls were obviously engaged in the multitudinous pre-preparations that were a part of partytime. In the midst of the clamor, Stacy sat on the living-room couch, turning the hem of her dress. “The girls said it was too long,” she supplied.

Hugh didn't, couldn't, sit down to wait. He put out his cigarette in an ash tray and automatically lighted another. He was nervous about facing Ellen. He would have to give her an explanation for last night, and the only explanation there could be was the facts of the whole sordid mess. It wasn't something he wanted to tell her. Of all the many girls he'd known and liked and perhaps loved, she was one who might have developed into the real thing. If he hadn't met up with Iris Croom.

When Ellen emerged from the bedroom corridor, he knew he hadn't been wrong in trusting her to handle things the night before. Her competence was implicit in the reassuring way her eyes met his in the moment before she put on her dark sun glasses. There might have been a flicker of relief that he was here, not held by the police. He attempted to move toward her, trying to make it unobtrusive, but his way was blocked by what seemed a roomful of sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews. She too made the attempt. But always before they could converge, the others, as in a ballet, had moved to thrust them apart again. He gave up and raised his voice, “Come on everybody who's going.”

The rush through the door began. He watched Ellen approach. There was no chance to speak, for Clytie came pushing after her, calling back to Stacy, “But I have to go, Mother. I've always decorated the wedding arch. Besides, I'd go nuts sitting around here doing nothing until four o'clock.”

When Hugh reached the car, the group was somehow mashed inside. With Ellen next to the driver's seat. He wondered if she had arranged it or if it were his sisters' matchmaking tendencies. He was sorry he would have to disappoint them. So sorry, but there was another girl . . . in another country, and the wench was dead.

Through his bitterness, he heard Ellen's voice, almost beneath her breath. “There's nothing about you in the morning paper or on the radio.”

He said, as quietly, “It was too late to call you last night.”

“I read by the phone until three. Is it—all right?”

He nodded. It wasn't a lie. Everything was all right as far as he knew. He said, “I'll tell you what it's about when there's a chance. Perhaps after the reception we can get away for a while.”

“It's a date,” she confirmed gravely.

Being able to postpone the recital somehow steadied his nerves. At the house, work, physical work, took over. He and the nephews put up the arch while the girls wrapped the white satin ribbon on the balusters and the handrail of the staircase. There was no time for brooding as they all raced against time to cover the whole with white oleanders and shining green leaves. His mother and Mrs. Bent were doing the dining room, the two grandmothers were stirring in the kitchen. It was near three o'clock before all the groups were satisfied. And he must return to the motel to dress.

He drew Ellen aside, ignoring the wise looks that followed them. “Do you mind taking the crowd back to Stacy's? I'm going to cut out.”

“I'll drive you over.”

“No,” he said, too quickly, too sharply.

She must have known that everything wasn't right, but she said only, “All right. You won't forget we have a date?”

“I won't forget,” he told her, wishing that he could forget it, or wishing that it was a date, no more than that. He waited for a moment until attention had been diverted from him, then unhurriedly slipped out to the porch and ran down the steps to the pavement. He struck out slantwise across the wide street, dodging the Sunday afternoon traffic. The heat was no longer ablaze; by now it was heavy, oppressive, as before a storm in the eastern part of the country. In Arizona it didn't presage a storm, merely the late afternoon. He walked as quickly as possible, but it was as if he were walking through shifting sand.

He could have accepted Ellen's offer for a ride, but if Ringle and Venner were waiting for him, he didn't want her exposed to their scrutiny. Last night they had given her no attention, they'd been too busy concentrating on him. Unless they saw her again, they wouldn't remember her. They must not see her again. He couldn't bear the thought of their ugliness touching her.

He was on the side street which led to the motel when he first noticed the car. Noticed yet didn't notice the first time it went by. It wasn't until it passed a second time, more slowly, that he realized it was the same car which had been with him since he'd crossed Washington. By then it was out of sight. He found he could remember nothing, neither color nor shape nor make. Just an old sedan with a man at the wheel. It could have been a plainclothes police car; it wasn't so different from the one he'd ridden in last night. But it hadn't been Ringle or Venner driving, and there'd been only one man in it. The police usually worked in pairs. For the first time it came to him that there would be others besides the police interested in him. The unknown man Iris had come to meet. The man who refused his name to the police. The man because of whom the girl had met death. Three men or one.

The thought slowed his steps and the taste of fear was again in his mouth. Somehow he knew, knew with dreadful clarity, that this man had full intent to make Hugh the killer. He had begun last night with the anonymous call. No, before that he had shown his intent. The first shape had been when he brought Iris to Hugh's door on Friday night. It must have been he who brought her there.

Hugh half ran to the door of his unit. But he hesitated before turning the key and slipping inside. No messages, no persons waited for him. Having no radio, he turned on the television set, not expecting news but just in case. There wasn't any. He blanked out thought while he did what had to be done—another shower, a clean dress shirt, a cotton of lighter fluid to erase a spot of cigarette ashes from his white coat. When he was dressed in his wedding garments, he tried all the television channels but there was still no news. He said aloud, “No news is good news,” but he knew he was lying as he said it. If only there were some way, some safe way, to make inquiries of the police. There wasn't. Not for him.