The Complete Crime Stories Page 5

  When he’d quit threshing, and lay there as limp as Maria was, I let go and dragged him away from her. I reached in his pocked and got my eighty dollars, and then I massaged his throat to give him a chance to breathe.

  His fact was almost black, but he began to fight for air, sounding like a windsucker horse.

  I went over a Maria and aimed a kick at her bottom.

  It gave me some satisfaction, sinking my toe in like a kick from the forty-yard stripe, and listening to her groan. I did it again, and when she sad up I said, “Once more, baby—what did Zita come here for? You ready to talk about it?”

  She opened her mouth to answer me, but then she saw Bill lying there and she gave a yelp and scrambled on all fours to him to help him.

  I had to slap her around a little more to get it through her head that I was the most important guy in this room. And I had to ask her a question.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s have it. What was it she came about?”

  “To—warn you.” Maria said. “I knew she was becoming suspicious of Bill and me, and …”

  She moistened her lips and turned to look at where Bill was still sleeping with his noisy gasps.

  “The rest of it!” I said. “And hurry!”

  She shrugged. “I phoned Bill right after I talked to you, so that he’d know where to come. I spoke softly—but even so, perhaps Mademoiselle Zita overheard enough to put two and two together.”

  “You said she came here to warn me,” I told her. “Why didn’t she go ahead and do it?”

  She shrugged again. “You ask her.”

  She moved over and took Bill in her arms, and I didn’t try to stop her. I watcher her stroking his face, and I was so surprised to see that a ferret like her could love that I was a second slow on the buzzer when it sounded abruptly.

  I was a little groggy from all my exertion by then, but I staggered into the foyer, closed the living room door, and opened the one to the hall.

  Sure enough, Zita was there again. She was holding a dress folded across her arms.

  I jerked the dressed away from her. “Come in, Zita,” I said. “Come in and join our fouled-up little party. We’re having one hell of a time here, Zita—thanks to the warning you didn’t give me.”

  I took a breath, and was all ready to start in on her again, when she took a step toward me and fired a slap that stung clear down to my heels. Her eyes sparkled with anger.

  “What did you expect?” she said. “You dated my maid! My maid!”

  I stepped out of range and thought over what she’d just said. It could explain a lot, the warning she had expected to give some poor boob in this suite, and the warning she didn’t give when she saw that the boob was me.

  The way she’d reacted when she knew it was I who had made the date with Maria was just feminine enough to be compatible with linking me pretty well.

  All at once, bill started that wind-sucking sound in the living room again, a truly frightening sound. Zita grabbed the dress away from me, brushed past me, and went in there.

  It wasn’t more than a minute before Bill went staggering out, and after him Maria, zipping up the dress in back and crying.

  Zita came out of the living room and walked up to me slowly. She apologized then for having slapped me, and I apologized for having spoken so roughly to her, and she nodded at me and I nodded at her.

  Pretty soon we were both smiling, and there didn’t seem to be much point in doing any more apologizing.

  And so that was that. Starting from that moment, things moved along very smoothly, and Zita’s Hungarian accent never gave me a minute’s trouble.

  It didn’t, that is, until a few afternoons later when we were faced with the novel situation of the bridegroom having to ask the bride what he should fill in under: WOMAN’S FULL NAME—PLEASE PRINT.

  The Birthday Party

  He bounced the tennis ball against the garage with persistence, but no enthusiasm. He would have gone swimming, but Red would be there, and he owed Red ten cents. Red drove the ice-cream truck evenings, and so swam in midafternoon; debtors, therefore, used the creek mornings, late afternoons, and, if there was a moon, nights. Between times they passed away the hours bouncing tennis balls against garages.

  He bounced the ball with sudden zeal. There had come a call from the house: “Burwell!” It was repeated, twice, and then amended: “Burwell Hope!”

  He slowed the tempo. “You call me, ma?”

  “I don’t see why you can’t answer when I call.”

  “I was practicing strokes,” he told her.

  “Well, don’t stand there yelling so the whole neighborhood can hear you; and, besides, I don’t think that’s any place for practicing strokes. It makes an awful noise and I don’t wonder people are annoyed.”

  He slouched slowly into the house, practicing a trick that involved mashing the ball into the ground, hitting it with the edge of the racket as it sprang up, and catching it in the pants pocket as it bounced waist-high.

  “Have you bathed?”

  “It’s too hot to bathe now. I’ll be all perspired up again. I’ll bathe after supper.”

  “You ought to bathe now.”

  “It’s too hot.”

  “Did you black your shoes as I told you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not yet, what?”

  “Not yet, ma.”

  “Well, there’s the pen and ink; sit down and write the card now so I can wrap it up. I’ve got a minute now and I don’t want to have to think about it later.”

  “Wrap what up?”

  “Burwell, how many times have I got to tell you you must stop this habit of asking useless questions? It’s annoying, and you have to stop it. Marjorie’s birthday present, of course. I can’t wrap it up until I have the card, and you’re giving it to her, so you have to write the card.”

  “I’m not giving it to her. I don’t even know what it is.”

  “It’s a very nice bottle of perfume. Want to see it?”

  “Phooie!”

  “Stop—using—that—word!”

  “I don’t want to see it.”

  “Very well. Then as soon as you write the card you can black your shoes.”

  “What for?”

  “Will you stop asking those useless questions! For the party, of course. Didn’t I tell you? Answer me. Didn’t I tell you not two hours ago that Mrs. Lucas stopped by, told me they were giving a little surprise party for Marjorie tonight because it’s her birthday, and that she especially wanted you to be there? Didn’t I tell you that?”

  “I’m not going.”

  “You’re—”

  “Sure, you told me, but I never said I would go.”

  “Why, Burwell Hope, the very idea. And after Mrs. Lucas said she especially wanted you to go. And after I made a trip downtown to buy a nice present. Why, I never heard of such a thing. All her friends are going. Spencer, and Jackie, and Junior LeCrand, and—”

  “Bunch of sissies.”

  “Is every boy a sissy that has some kind of manners and does what his mother tells him to once in a while without always having to argue?”

  “I’m not going.”

  “What will Marjorie think?”

  “Marjorie Lucas. The belle of Home Room Twenty-nine.”

  “Why do you always have to be so mean to Marjorie? What has she ever done to you?”

  “The face that only a mother could love.”

  “I haven’t time to stand around and argue with you. You write the card right now—‘Happy Birthday to Marjorie from Burwell’—and then you go out and black your shoes. They’re on the back porch, and there’s a new can of blacking in the things that came up from the market.”

  He wrote the card, then went out on the back porch and looked at his shoes. Then he looked at the sun. Then
he looked at the sun again, making certain calculations based on its position in the heavens and its relation to the general progress of the afternoon. Then he drifted into the backyard, took his swimming suit off the line, and slipped quickly through the hole in the hedge.

  The creek was deserted, but damp spots on the boat landing showed that Red, to say nothing of his more solvent customers, wasn’t long gone. Burwell peeled off his clothes, had a moment of wild determination to go in naked, but compromised on trunks, without shirt. The water felt queer, and all his tricks seemed shriveled: He kept opening his mouth to yell, “Hey, look at this one,” but there was nobody to look. He tried a back dive, but all he got out of it was a pair of smarting shins, where they slapped the water as he came over. He tried a feat of his own, for which he imagined he had acquired quite a local reputation: to go down under and stay down under, with only his feet sticking out; but something seemed to be wrong with it. As a rule, he could stay down under at least five minutes—or, at any rate, so he frequently asserted, in the absence of any watch to time him, and in the absence also of any knowledge that even one minute is a prodigious time for holding the breath; but now, for some unexplainable reason, he was no sooner down than he had to come up again, puffing grievously.

  Treading water, about to try again, he felt a tingle in his back: somebody, he knew, was watching him. This time, as he lazily flipped himself under, all was as it should be. He stayed down at least ten minutes, crossing his feet as they stuck out in the air, wiggling his toes, sending up bubbles, and in other ways putting in subtle artistic touches. When he came up he tossed the hair out of his eyes nonchalantly and breathed through his nose—to conceal the puffing, and to show that, staggering though the performance might be, it had been done with ease.

  Marjorie was on the boat landing. “Hello.”

  “Hello.”

  “My, but you scared me.”

  “Me scare you?”

  “I thought something had happened to you. When I saw your toes wiggle I thought something had you. I thought I would die.”

  “Oh, that. That wasn’t nothing.”

  He put his face in the water and blew through his mouth, at the same time uttering loud noises. He conceived this to be a peculiarly terrifying experience for the beholder.

  However, she didn’t seem to be paying much attention. “I wish I could go in.”

  “Well, come on.”

  “I didn’t bring my suit.”

  He became a steamboat, churning up a great deal of foam, but stopped when she wandered into the canoe house. When she came out she had his swimming shirt.

  “Are you going to be wearing this?”

  “Only sissies wear shirts.”

  “I could pin it at the bottom. It’s pretty big for me, and I could pin it so it would be all right.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  She went back into the canoe house again, and he began doing all his tricks, one after the other. Presently she came out, a bit suggestive of diapers and safety pins here and there, but in the main clad neatly in a one-piece bathing suit, made of his shirt. He let go with a jackknife; then climbed out with an air of triumph mixed with boredom.

  She climbed down the cleats and felt the water with one toe.

  “What’s the matter? You scared?”

  “I’m not scared. But I always like to know if it’s cold or not.”

  “You’re scared.”

  “Well, I always am. A little.”

  “If you’re scared, you’ve got to dive in.”

  “I’m going to.”

  “Well, why don’t you?”

  “I’m going to. In a minute.”

  He had a moment of vast, soul-warming contempt, but it congealed within him to a drop of bitter, cruel gall. She was climbing the piling. He watched her, stunned, saw her poise far above his head, then go off and cut the water so cleanly that only a high spurt of foam marked her entering it.

  Nobody had told him that little girls dive better than little boys. Nobody had told him that little girls could possibly do anything better than little boys. All he knew was that he had never had the nerve to climb the piling and dive off, and here she had done it; and not only done it, but done it, apparently, without even knowing that it was hard.

  He jumped up, as soon as her head came out of the water, and yelled at her: “So you think you’re smart, hey? That’s nothing. I can do it too. I’ve done it plenty of times. I can even do a back dive from up there.”

  “Can you really?”

  She said it with honest admiration, and he climbed up. But when he got there a sick feeling swept down his throat and into his stomach. It was higher than he imagined. It was higher than he had ever imagined anything could be. The water was way, way down, far removed from anything that he could possibly dive into.

  He tried to get set for a dive, but couldn’t even stand up. All he could do was squat there, holding the tops of the piles with his hands, and gulp.

  “If you’re scared,” she said, “you’ve got to dive in.”

  The ancient apothegm, quoted so blandly by himself not two minutes ago, was spoken innocently, yet it floated up from the water with a terrible mockery.

  “Who’s scared?”

  “Well, my goodness, anybody can be scared.”

  “I’m not scared. I’m just taking it easy.”

  “It just comes from being dizzy.”

  “Why don’t you kick your feet when you swim? That’s no way to swim. Why don’t you kick your feet like I do?”

  “I can’t swim very well, but I like to dive.”

  “Well, anybody can dive. Swimming’s the important thing. If you can swim good you might save somebody from drowning, but what good is diving?”

  “Maybe if you sat down on the big pile and then let go, it would be like jumping off.”

  “Who’s asking you?”

  She climbed up beside him. “What makes you dizzy is looking down. Why don’t you look up at the sky and try it? like this.”

  She threw back her head, gripped the pile with her toes, stiffened, sprang. But he didn’t see her swash into the water. The pilings shuddered so sickeningly from her leap that he had to clutch them tight with his fingers, looking cravenly into the cracks of the wood. When the swaying stopped he looked up at the sky and tried to stand. He couldn’t. She climbed up there again. This time she turned her back to the water, leaned out. He knew it was a back dive, but he didn’t see that one either. She stretched herself out on the boat landing to rest, and there was nothing he could do but climb down. He was panting when he reached her, not from exertion, but from rage.

  “I know what you’re doing here. I know why you’re not home. It’s your birthday, and they’re giving you a surprise party, and they ran you out of the house so you wouldn’t see them getting ready for it. Yah! Got run out of the house. Yah!”

  “I knew it all the time, but I think it was mean of you to tell me.”

  “Whole lot of cake and stuff coming in and they didn’t want you to see it. Bum old cake from the bakery.”

  “It’s not bum old cake. It’s a special birthday cake with my name on it in icing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I peeped and saw it. It’s going to have candles on it and they’re going to bring it out in front of everybody and then I’m going to cut it.”

  “Old stale cake they had left over from last week and then they put your name on it in icing.”

  “It is not.”

  “Phooie!” He spat in the water and sat there laughing, mumbling, and shaking his head, as though the ignoble tricks of the whole human race were quite beyond him.

  She sat up and began to fluff out her hair. “Are you invited, Burwell?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “I kind of said one or two things so
they wouldn’t forget to invite you.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “Are you coming?”

  “Is that a laugh! Is that a laugh!”

  “I don’t see anything funny.”

  “Am I coming? Say, is that a laugh! Me come to a bum birthday party with a lot of sissies and an old stale cake the bakery couldn’t give away but your old man came and bought it cheap and had your name put on it in icing. Well! Is that a laugh!”

  “Aren’t you really coming, Burwell?”

  “Who, me?”

  “I was going to give you the first piece of cake.”

  “That stale stuff.”

  “Tell me, Burwell. Why aren’t you coming?”

  “Phooie! I’m busy.”

  “How do you mean, busy?”

  “Don’t you wish you knew? Don’t you wish you knew?”

  She looked at him and he had a sensation of having to think fast. “Are you really busy, Burwell?”

  “Sure, I’m busy.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Why—I got to work.”

  The agreeable degree of her astonishment surprised even him. “Have you got a job, Burwell?”

  “Sure I got a job.”

  “What kind of a job? Tell me.”

  “Helping Red.”

  Now this wasn’t true. The only relation it had to truth was that he had been considering a plan whereby he would offer to help Red for a night or two, in return for the extinguishment of the ten-cent debt. But actually he had made no such offer, and whether he would ever make it was problematical for Red was a brisk young man, rather hard to talk to, despite his professional affability.

  “Honest?”

  “Busy guy these days. Me go to a party? Say, is that a laugh!”

  “I haven’t seen you with Red.”

  “I’m inside the truck.”

  “What doing?”

  “Oh, lot of things.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, I pass out the stuff to him. Drive the old bus, so he don’t all the time have to be jumping in and out, saves him a lot of time. Keep things going. Ring up the cash. Lot of things.”