Charles Williams-All The Way 1958(3)

All The Way — 47
She went into the bedroom. I started the tape, turned up
the volume, and walked up and down as I listened to it. The
bedroom door was open. I stepped inside. The blue pajamas
were tossed casually on the bed and she was beyond it with
her back turned, wearing only bra and pants as she stood
before the clothes closet. I looked at the long and exquisitely
slender legs, ever so faintly tanned below the line of her swim
suit and pure ivory above as they flowed into the triangular
wisp of undergarment about her hips.
She turned then. I must have taken a step towards her, for
she said crisply, “No, you don’t! Outside!” She meant it. She
took a slip from a drawer, and slid it over her head.
“I’m sorry, Teacher. But you’re a very exciting girl.”
“Yes, yes, I know.” She tugged the slip down. “I’m
irresistible to twenty-eight-year-old wolves. I’m female,
breathing, and within reach.”
“Thanks a million,” I said. “From both of us.”
“You’re welcome. Now get out there and get busy. And start
the tape over; you’ve missed part of it.”
“So you will give yourself that much?”
She waved a slender hand. “Out, Cyrano.”
All The Way — 48
Five
I shrugged, and went back to my study of Harris Chapman.
She came out after a while and left to get the sandwiches. I
looked after her. She could disturb a room by walking through
it, and leave it empty by walking out of it. I forced my
attention back to the tape. What was the matter with me,
anyway?

When she returned, we didn’t even stop while we ate. She
asked questions about the things we’d covered so far, and
tried to catch me in errors. “Who is Robert Wingard?”
“Robin Wingard,” I said. “He’s manager of the radio
station.”
“Good. And Bill McEwen? What does he do?”
“Bill McEwen is a girl.”
She shot me an approving glance. “Very good.”
“Her real name is Billy Jean, she’s twenty-seven years old,
unmarried, and she’s half the editorial staff of the paper, and
sells advertising.”
“Correct,” she said. “But don’t get too cocky. We’ve only
begun to scratch the surface.” She finished half her sandwich,
threw the rest of it in the kitchen garbage can, and started a
fresh roll of tape on the recorder.
“I was born in Cleveland,” she began. “And went to school
at Stanford. My mother died when I was in my early teens,
and my father never remarried. He was a physician. A
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gynecologist, and a good one. In about thirty-five years of
practice he must have made considerably over a million
dollars, and when he died a few years ago he left an estate of
less than twenty thousand. Bad investments. Some day,
maybe, somebody will write a book about the investment
habits of doctors— But never mind. It was his money. The
point I’m trying to make is that it was probably his horrible
example that first interested me in business and investment.
When we entered the war she enrolled in a business college
for a quick course in shorthand and typing, and went to work
in a defense plant. And she liked it, from the first. She was
alert, interested, and highly competitive, and in less than a
year she was the private secretary to one of the top brass of
the firm. In the spring of 1944 she met and married Kenneth
Forsyth. He was a flier sent home for reassignment as an
instructor at an air base near San Antonio, Texas.
They were happy enough, but she couldn’t stand the
boredom of having nothing to do but police a one-room
apartment, so she went back to work, this time for the local
office of one of the big nationwide brokerage outfits. She
immediately fell in love with the stock market as if she’d
invented it. Here was something you could get your teeth
into; this was the whole world of business and industry,
distilled. She studied it with the passionate intensity of
another Baruch, trying to learn everything there was to learn
about it. Forsyth remained in the service after the end of the
war, but was transferred to another field near Dallas. Keeping
house still bored her, so she went to work for the Dallas office
of the same brokerage house.
Then in 1949 Forsyth was transferred to the air field at
Thomaston, Louisiana, and she was out of a job. She found it
unbearably dull. She didn’t like small towns and their cliqueridden
social life, and for a woman with ambition and a
restless mind it was stifling. Then she met Chapman. That
changed everything.
He’d just opened his law office, and while he wasn’t very
busy he did need somebody once in a while to type briefs and
answer the phone. She offered to do it, partly out of boredom
and partly because he interested her. And before long he
interested her even more. Here was a man with drive,
business ability, and daring, and he was wasting himself on a
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piddling law practice. They were attracted to each other from
the beginning.
His first venture, in the process of becoming a millionaire in
eight years, was a laundromat, and it was she who prodded
him into it.
“He defended the owner of the laundromat in a minor
damage suit,” she went on. “And got him off with a minimum
judgment, but the man was in financial trouble and couldn’t
even pay the legal fee in full. I had an idea and went out and
surveyed his place. His trouble was location; he was in the
wrong end of town, where most of the families had washing
machines of their own, and he had a bad parking problem. To
the south of town there was a large colored section swarming
with children. I located a building that could be leased, and
told Harris about it. Because of his father’s connection with
the bank, he had no trouble borrowing the money. He bought
the man’s machines at a terrific bargain, and moved them. We
got a deacon of one of the colored churches to run it, and I
kept the books. Eight months later he sold it for a net profit of
six thousand dollars.”
They were on their way. Next came a couple of real-estate
speculations that paid off to the tune of better than fourteen
thousand. By late 1950 she was working for him full time, and
the law practice was only a small part of his operations. He
was far over-extended and in debt to his ears, but he was
growing, right along with the big business boom of the early
1950’s. Chapman’s wife had left him now, and Marian Forsyth
and her husband had had several painful and increasingly
bitter arguments about her working for him. People were
beginning to talk. She refused to quit. The showdown came in
less than six months. Forsyth was transferred again.
The choice was hers, and she made it. She told Forsyth she
wanted a divorce, and stayed in Thomaston. She was in love
with Chapman.
She had no illusions as to what she was letting herself in
for. He couldn’t marry her, as long as his wife was alive, and
in a small town no matter how discreet they were with the
affair everybody was going to know. I thought of the snubs,
and frozen stares. They probably didn’t bother her a great
deal, I thought—not during the six busy years while she had
Chapman and the fascination of the job. But when he jilted
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her and left her standing alone and naked in the middle of
town— That must have been a long, long mile to the city
limits.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “A point’s just occurred to me.
You’ve got to have a legitimate excuse for going back, or it
won’t look right.”
She stopped the tape. “Of course. But I still own my house
there. It will take two weeks at least to sell it and put my
furnishings in storage in New Orleans. And don’t forget, I
won’t arrive there until he’s left for his vacation, which will
give it exactly the right touch.”
She was right, of course. It all fitted perfectly, like the
stones in an Inca wall. If sheer deadliness could be beautiful,
this operation of hers was a masterpiece.
We went on. We finished that roll of tape with a detailed
account of how Chapman acquired the rest of his holdings in
the next five years and how she’d led him a little at a time
into growth stocks in the big bull market from 1950 to 1955,
into IBM and Dow Chemical, and Phillips Petroleum, and
United Aircraft, and DuPont.
”Always for capital gains,” she went on. “Income wasn’t any
good to him any more, not in the tax bracket he was in, or
approaching. All those years I’d been studying stocks and the
stock market paid off for him. He rode it up all the way. And
last summer, when the market showed signs of running out of
steam, we began switching to defense holdings—utilities,
high-grade preferreds, and bonds. And cash. It’s safe—except
from me.”
It was three-thirty when we came to the end of the roll.
“Play it back,” she said, already making notes for the next
session. I ran it. She fired questions at me until I was dizzy.
She put on one of the rolls of recorded conversation between
him and Chris Lundgren, and played it through. I listened,
studying his speech, while she went out in the kitchen and
mixed us two Martinis.
She ht a cigarette, took a sip of her drink, and stopped the
machine. “Tell me what you heard.”
“He’s abrupt on the phone,” I said, “at least in business
matters. No asking how the other party is, or about families.
He says G’bye just once and hangs up. Your name comes out
almost Mer’n. He hits the first syllable of DuPont, and the u is
All The Way — 52
iu. Dew-Pont. He slurs hundred a little more than most
people. Hunrd. He still uses Roger once in a while, left over
from his service days.”
She nodded approvingly. “Good ear. Keep it up.”
We knocked off at seven, changed, and took a cab over to
Miami to have dinner at the Top O’ the Columbus. She was a
knockout in a dark dress, so very tall and beautifully groomed
and poised. It made me feel good to see men—and women—
turn to look at her. We sat by one of the big windows looking
out over Biscayne Bay and its perimeter of blazing lights.
You make all these other women look like peasants,” I said.
She. smiled. “Honing the old technique, Jerry? Why waste it
on me?”
“No. I mean it.”
“Of course, dear. Conditioned reflexes are like that.” Then
she went on. “Now here’s a point we have to consider.
Lundgren’s voice, of course, you’ll recognize, but you’ve
never heard hers.”
I sighed. “That’s easy. Until she identifies herself and I’m
sure, I can say we have a bad connection and I can’t hear very
well.”
On the way back we ran a test. I got out of the cab at a
drugstore not too far away, gave her time to reach the
apartment, and called her from the phone booth. She read
Lundgren.
“Chris? Chapman,” I said. I asked how the market had
closed, discussed some stock or another, and gave an order or
two, and then stepped out of character to ask, “What do you
think?”
“Good,” she said. “Very good.”
I walked back to the apartment in the warm and oceanscented
darkness, thinking of seventy-five thousand dollars.
When I let myself in she was just coming out of the bedroom.
She’d taken off the dress and slip and was pulling the blue
robe about herself.
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Maybe just a shade less
abrupt. But it’s a fine point—”
“Stop worrying,” I said. “I can do it.” I took hold of her
arms. Then I was holding her tightly in mine and kissing her
All The Way — 53
as if women were going to be transferred to some other
planet in the morning.
When she could get her mouth free at last, she murmured,
“But I thought we’d work for another hour or two.” Then she
relented. “All right, Jerry—”
Enlightened management, I thought, never forgets the
importance of employee recreation. If the seal balks, toss him
another herring. I started to say something angry and
sarcastic, but choked it off. I wanted her so badly I’d take her
on any terms at all.
Afterwards, of course, we did go back to work.
* * *
The next day was a repetition of the first. She was relentless.
Chapman and Chapman Enterprises and Thomaston ran into
my brain until they overflowed. We filled two tapes. I played
them back. She questioned me. I played them again. And all
the while I was conscious that she herself was taking more
and more of my attention. I was thinking about her when I
should have been concentrating. I didn’t like it, but there it
was.
We went out again for dinner, and came back and worked
until eleven. I made love to her. She was as gracious about it,
and as accomplished, and as completely unreachable as ever.
I lay in the darkness thinking about her. It wasn’t that she was
cold, or that she merely endured it. It was worse. It was so
unimportant she had trouble even noticing it.
Chapman, I thought, might not be the dirtiest bastard who
ever lived, but he was the stupidest. I tried to imagine what
she was like before she became numb to everything except
remembered humiliation and hatred. The next morning, just
at dawn, I awoke to find her struggling in my arms, trying to
break free.
“Jerry,” she snapped, “for heaven’s sake, what are you
trying to do? Break me in two?”
Oh,” I said stupidly, looking round the room. “I must have
been having a bad dream.”
It started to come back to me then. I could see it all with a
horrible clarity. I’d been running after her across the Golden
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Gate bridge, and I’d caught her just before she could leap. I
was trying to hold her back.
That day we filled the last roll of tape. She told me
everything she knew about Coral Blaine, and she knew a lot—
including the fact her name wasn’t Coral at all, but Edna Mae.
Apparently she was a believer in the old maxim of military
science that you never stop studying the enemy. She
described her, psycho-analyzed her, and gave me a complete
rundown on the affair from the time Chapman first gave her a
job until the engagement was announced.
“I was scared the first time I saw her,” she said. “For years
I’d done all the hiring and firing of office personnel. He never
interfered, hired anybody himself, or cared. I’ll admit to being
quite unfair a couple of times when I fired girls for no other
reason than that they had their eyes on him— But never mind.
At any rate, when I saw this Blaine number, I had a
premonition. Flawless natural blonde, about five-foot-three,
and of course only twenty-three years old, but it was that
dewy and virginal look that frightened me. He’s forty—or will
be next month.
“He saw the dew, all right; and I could see the cutlass
between her teeth as she came over the rail. She was the
daughter of an old friend of his, he said; she’d just graduated
from some co-educational football factory in Texas and he’d
promised her a job. I felt my way very slowly, and I hit
resistance right away. I wasn’t going to be able to fire this
one. Nothing overt on either side, of course, but the
resistance was there, and it was firm. So I moved her up to a
better job I knew she couldn’t handle. And all I accomplished
was that I had to do her work myself. She came to work,
incidentally, about three weeks after Mrs. Chapman died.”
It must have been bloody, I thought. And lonely as hell. A
wife in the same position had status and the solid weight of
community opinion going for her, but she had nothing. She
knew she’d lost, of course, long before the blow actually fell,
and in the end Chapman didn’t even have the decency to tell
her himself. I gathered it wasn’t that he was ashamed to, or
reluctant to face her; he just didn’t bother. Some business
came up that was more important.
You’re not coloring this a little?” I asked.
All The Way — 55
She sighed. “I assure you I couldn’t be that stupid. I’m
telling you exactly what happened, because I have to. God
knows I don’t enjoy it; I’m no masochist. But obviously you
have to know the truth, and not some dramatized version. I
was informed of the engagement by Coral Blaine herself, in
the office, on Monday morning, and if you have any doubts
she knew exactly how to do it for the most exquisite effect,
forget them. That was quite a day.”
Seven thousand years, I thought, from nine to five. With all
those eyes watching, and nothing to crawl under and hide. An
outstanding day, any way you looked at it. Then a sudden
thought occurred to me, something I’d missed completely
until now. It was what she had in mind for Coral Blaine.
“Do you think she’ll know?” I asked.
She nodded coolly. “Yes. I should think she’d be pretty sure
I did it—somehow.”
As a study in the subtler forms of revenge, I thought, that
would be hard to match. Coral Blaine was having a husband
and a million dollars snatched out of her reachy little hands,
and she was going to know it was Marian who’d done it to
her. And that she not only would never be able to prove it, but
that she’d actually helped prove it couldn’t have been Marian.
”If she’s only twenty-three,” I said, “she has a long and
interesting life ahead of her, trying to figure that one out.”
“Yes, doesn’t she?”
We went back to work. While she was gone to get the
sandwiches at noon I suddenly remembered what day it was.
This was the eighth. I looked up florists in the phone book,
called one, and ordered two dozen roses. It was around four
o’clock and we were still busy with Coral Blaine when the
doorbell rang. I beat her to it, paid the delivery boy, and
brought them in.
She glanced up as I put the long carton on the coffee table
before her. “Flowers? Why?”
“Happy birthday,” I said.
She shook her head chidingly. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Then
she opened the box, and exclaimed, “They’re beautiful, Jerry.
But how did you know it was my birthday?”
“Your driver’s license,” I replied.
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“Snoopy.” She filled a vase with water and put them on the
phonograph console at the other end of the room. She
admired them for a moment, and then came over and put her
arms about my neck.
She smiled. “Dear Jerry, the indefatigable chaser of old
streetcars he’s already caught.”
It was no use, I thought. She was impervious; nothing could
get through to her, no gesture of any kind. She’d had it. Then
I wondered if I even knew myself what I was trying to tell her.
It seemed to be all mixed up.
We went back to work.
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Six
She did some shopping the next morning, and left for Nassau
around eleven. The minute she closed the door behind her,
the apartment became almost achingly empty.
I assembled everything on the coffee table, and looked at it.
Except for his identification, his clothes, and his car, here was
Harris Chapman—seven rolls of tape, boxed, numbered, and
indexed; horn-rim glasses; cigarette holder; the insipid filter
cigarettes he smoked; the map of Thomaston she’d drawn
with street names, locations of his businesses and his office,
and an appended list of some twenty telephone numbers;
three documents containing specimens of his signature, which
had come from the old briefcase; and the bottle of gunk for
lightening the dark shade of my hair and the sprouting
mustache.
This latter wasn’t really dye, she said, and if I didn’t use too
much of it there wouldn’t be any noticeable artificial effect,
but rather like that of brown hair bleached down a few shades
by the sun. I went into the bathroom, combed in a light
application of it, and started practicing the signature. When
my wrist was tired, I loaded the recorder with the first roll of
tape, and turned it on. Her voice issued from the loudspeaker,
and when I closed my eyes she seemed to be there in the
room. I forced myself to concentrate.
When my brain was numb from memorizing, I went back to
the signature again. I found I didn’t have as much talent for
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forgery as I did for mimicry, but after several hundred
attempts I could see definite improvement. I kept at it. After a
while I tried breaking it down into individual letters and
writing each one hundreds of times to correct my errors.
Around seven I walked over three or four blocks to a
restaurant for dinner, and came back and worked until
midnight. When I turned out the light, she was all around me
in the darkness.
The next day was Sunday. I worked from seven a.m. till
midnight with only brief periods out for food, attacking the
job with intense concentration to keep her out of my mind. I
was closing in on him. Whole sections of those five hours of
recorded data were stamped into my mind intact. I could see
him now, and feel him, and there was no longer even any need
to practice his speech. The signature was improving. I went
on writing it, hour after hour, and listening to the tapes. It
was harder than I had ever worked at anything in my life.
When I went to bed I was dizzy with fatigue.
She had left me five hundred dollars in cash. On Monday
morning I went over to Miami and picked up a rental car, one
with a trailer hitch. I drove out US 1 to a sporting goods place
that rented boats and motors. Using my right name and my
California driver’s license, plus the local address on Dover
Way, I rented a complete outfit—sixteen-foot fiberglass boat,
twenty-five-horse Johnson outboard, and a trailer with a
winch. I put up a deposit against the week’s rental, bought a
spinning rod and some lures, asked the man about
bonefishing flats in the Keys, and headed south on the
highway.
In a little over an hour I was on Key Largo. I checked my
highway map, noted the speedometer reading, and turned off
US 1 into the dead-end road going towards the upper end of
the Key, watching for launching sites. I found one, made a
notation of the mileage, and went on. In a little over a mile
there was another, and I noted the speedometer reading at
this one also. I needed at least two I could find fast and in the
dark, so I’d have an alternate in case the first one was being
used or someone was camped near it. There was nobody in
sight at either of them now. I practiced maneuvering the car
with the trailer behind it. It was awkward at first, but after
about fifteen minutes I became fairly adept.
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I backed down to the water once more, put on the fishing
clothes I’d brought, and launched the boat. There was a
moderate south-east breeze, but the water over the flats
inside the line of the reefs was smooth. It took about fifteen
minutes to run out over the reefs to the edge of the Stream.
The boat handled nicely in the moderate sea and ground-swell
off-shore, and would do all right provided the weather was no
worse than it was now. I ran back, winched the boat on to the
trailer, and drove back to Miami Beach.
There was a driveway along the side of the apartment and a
garage in the rear. I backed into it, uncoupled the trailer and
locked it in the garage, and left the car in the drive. When I
let myself in the front of the apartment, there was a card from
her in the letter-box.
It had been mailed Sunday afternoon in Nassau, and said
she was flying to New York Monday night. It was printed in
block letters, and was unsigned. “I miss you,” she said. I
wondered if she did. For a moment she was all around me in
the apartment, the remembered gesture of a hand, the swing
of a silken ankle, and the smooth dark head it was a joy
forever to watch.
I showered, and shaved, using a safety razor to get around
the mustache. The latter was beginning to show, and
surprisingly it made me look a little older, which was fine. I
went to work, practicing the signature. I could forge it well
enough now to fool myself at times, but I had to learn to do it
faster and more naturally. The next morning I drove over to
Miami to a salvage store and bought a second-hand tarpaulin,
about eight by eight. On the way back I stopped at a building
supply place and bought four concrete blocks, saying I
wanted them to patch a wall. At a dime store I picked up a roll
of wire and a cheap pair of pliers. I put everything in the
trunk, and locked it. I went back to the apartment and worked
with furious concentration until midnight.
When I awoke in the morning and realized what day it was,
there was a fluttery, sick feeling in my stomach. This was the
thirteenth. He was supposed to be here tonight. I was scared.
It was easy to say something was fool-proof—but was it, ever?
A million things could go wrong. I tried to work some more,
but had trouble concentrating. I didn’t need any more
preparation, anyway; I either had it pat now, or I never would.
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The only thing it took from here on was nerve. I wasn’t at all
sure I had that.
The morning passed with no word from her. Maybe he
wasn’t coming. I began to hope something had happened so
he couldn’t get away. Then at five-thirty in the afternoon the
phone rang. It was a call from Mrs. Forbes, in New York, the
operator said. Would I accept the charge? I said yes. She
came on the line.
“Jerry? Listen, dear, I’m calling from a phone-booth because
I didn’t want this call on my hotel bill. He’s on his way.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Yes. I just talked to a friend at home. He left late yesterday
afternoon, intending to stay in Mobile last night. He should be
there between midnight and two a.m. I’m leaving right away,
and I’ll be in Miami shortly before nine. Don’t come to the
airport.”
“Right,” I said.
“Is everything all right there?”
”Yes. Except that I wish you were here.”
“I will be, very shortly. Good-bye, dear.”
The afternoon was interminable; I paced the living room,
chain-smoking cigarettes while I thought of a Cadillac and a
DC-7 converging on Miami in a sort of cataclysmic and
irrevocable vector. I wanted her here worse than I’d ever
wanted anything, and I hoped he’d never arrive. He was a fast
and reckless driver; maybe he’d have a wreck and kill himself.
I went out and tried to eat dinner, and didn’t know afterwards
whether I had or not.
It was nine-thirty when I heard a car pull into the driveway.
I opened the front door. She was coming up the walk with the
cab driver behind her carrying the small overnight case. The
rest of her luggage would still be in New York, in her hotel
room. A very smart-looking hat was slanted across the side of
her head, and she wore gloves and carried a light coat on her
arm.
She smiled, brushed my lips lightly with hers, and started to
fumble at her bag. I gave the driver some money. I didn’t
know how much, but it appeared to satisfy him. He turned
and went down the walk. Then we were inside, and I pushed
the door shut with my shoulder, and put down the bag.
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She broke it up, finally, and gasped. “Jerry! After all—”
“Let me look at you,” I said. I held her at arm’s length. I’d
smeared her lipstick quite badly and tilted the hat a little out
of position, but there was no doubt of it. She was the
smartest-looking and the loveliest woman on earth.
I told her so. Or started to. “Are you drunk?” she asked.
No, I said. “I haven’t even had a drink. God, how I’ve missed
you. I can’t keep my hands off you.”
She smiled. “You must have been working long hours. No
girls at all?”
“Look,” I said. “I’m not getting through to you. It’s not girls.
It’s you—”
“Jerry, you’re talking gibberish,” she said. “And could we sit
down?”
I’m sorry,” I said. I led her to the sofa, and sat down beside
her. I took her in my arms again. She tried to fend me off,
shaking her head protestingly. “I think I must be getting too
old to cope with the under-thirty type of wolf.”
“Listen, Marian,” I said. “Damn it, will you listen to me?” I
removed the hat and dropped it on the coffee table, and put
my hand against her cheek, turning her face and looking at
the smooth dark line of her hair and the incredible blue eyes.
I was overcome again with that crazy yearning to imprison
and possess every last bit of her. I kissed her again, and it was
the wildest and most wonderful thing I’d ever known.
She stirred. “Jerry, what on earth is the matter with you?”
“I love you,” I said. “I should think that would be obvious to
a fourteen-year-old girl—”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She tried to pull back. I held her
more tightly. “Jerry,” she protested, “this is hardly the time—”
“Will you, for the love of God, listen to me a minute?” I said.
“And try not to kick my teeth out, for once? I’m in love with
you. I’m absolutely crazy about you. God knows I missed you
while you were gone, but I didn’t realize until I saw you
coming up that walk just how much you did mean to me—“
She tried to break in.
“Don’t interrupt,” I said. “I’m going to get through to you
some way, if it takes the rest of the night. I’ve tried to tell you
before how wonderful I think you are, but you seem to think
All The Way — 62
it’s just some sort of conditioned reflex because I noticed you
weren’t wearing a beard. There must be some way I can make
you understand. Listen. You’re what I came back for, when I
ran off to New York. I know that now. All I want out of this
business is you, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life
looking over my shoulder for the police—”
She stiffened in my arms. “What are you saying?”
“That we’re going to call this thing off. It’s too dangerous.
And it’s crazy. I want you, and I don’t want to be running and
hiding all the time like an animal. I realize I’m not one of the
solider types of prospect for the vine-covered mortgage and
the lawn mower, but I can hold a job when I want to. I want to
marry you—”
She broke free and pushed away from me. She laughed, but
the sound of it was more like that of a bad skiing accident.
“You want us to go steady, is that it? Oh, my God. I wonder
how I’d look in crinoline petticoats and bobby socks. Or
maybe you could just introduce me as your mother—“
I grabbed her arm and shook her. “Marian! Stop it! For
Christ’s sake, I never heard of anybody who could make such
a Federal case out of being thirty-four years old. You don’t
look twenty-eight.”
Her face was distorted with contempt or bitterness; I wasn’t
sure which. “You fool! Don’t you even know yet? Didn’t you
hear me say I’d already graduated from college when we got
into the war? I’m referring to the Second World War. Or didn’t
you study that one in school? Do you have any idea how long
ago that was? I’m not thirty-four. I’m thirty-eight years old.”
She began, to laugh again. I caught her, but she turned her
face away and went on laughing. “I had one last little shred of
dignity left, and you want me to throw that away and start
cradle-robbing—”
I caught the turning and twisting face between my hands
and held it still so she had to look at me. “I don’t give a damn
if you’re thirty-eight,” I said savagely. “Or fifty-eight, or
ninety-eight. All I know is what I see and feel. You’re the
loveliest woman, probably, that I’ve ever known, and the
smoothest, and there’s a grace about you that makes me
catch my breath when I look at you. I think you begin being
feminine where all other women leave off. When you go out of
All The Way — 63
a room, you leave it empty and when you come back you redecorate
it—”
“Will you stop it?” she lashed at me. “Even if I were capable
of ever loving anybody again, do you think I’d marry a man
ten years younger than I am, and as attractive as you are, and
cringe every time people looked at us and wondered what I’d
used to buy you with? I’ll assure you, laddie boy, I don’t look
twenty-eight to women. And I can’t compete in that division
any more. I’ve just had that demonstrated to me, quite
publicly and convincingly.”
“Forget that meat-headed Chapman for a minute,” I said, “if
he’s too stupid to know what he had, that’s his hard luck, and
he’ll find it out soon enough—”
“Precisely. In about four hours.”
“No! Dammit, no! It’s dangerous, and I don’t want you to do
it. Chapman hasn’t got anything you need, or even want—”
She broke in coldly. “I beg to differ with you. He has
something I want, and intend to have—a lot of money I helped
him make for both of us. That’s the only thing left now. I
suppose it’s utterly impossible for you to understand, being a
man and a very young one, but I’m through. Finished. I’m all
over. I’m something that’s already happened. If I started now
and worked at it night and day, by the time I could feel like a
woman again, I won’t even be one. Not an operating model,
anyway, or one that anybody but the utterly desperate would
have. I poured the last six years of my life into an aging
adolescent, and all I’ve got left to show for it is humiliation.
There are probably women more philosophical than I am who
could adjust to that and absorb it and come out of it healthy
again. But I can’t. Maybe it’s unfortunate but I don’t even
intend to try. I have nothing more to lose, and I’m not going to
stand in the wreckage of my own life like some placid and
uncomprehending cow and see them get away with it.”
I’m not going to let you do it—”
“Don’t be an idiot!” she said furiously. “There’s no risk at
all. And doesn’t the money mean anything to you?”
“Yes. It does. It means plenty. But I’ve just discovered you
mean more. And if that sounds like something out of a
shampoo ad, I’m sorry, but there it is.”
“And this is Jerome Langston Forbes?” she asked pityingly.
All The Way — 64
I sighed. “All right, rub it in. This is Jerry Forbes, the angle
boy. The guy who discovered before he was twenty that this
place is just a nut-hatch for the rest of the universe. And
maybe when you stop to think about it, it still is. After all
these years I finally go overboard completely for a girl, and I
have to pick the one who’s decided to throw away her union
card in the female sex.” I lit a cigarette, and stood up.
“Then you won’t help me?” she asked.
“No,” I said. I went in and sat down on the bed. I felt like
hell. I stretched out, with the ashtray on my chest, and looked
up at the ceiling. There didn’t seem to be any answer.
I was still lying there ten minutes later when I heard her
come into the room. She lay down across the bed with her
face very near mine. “I’m sorry, Jerry,” she said. “I guess I
didn’t really grasp what you were saying. When you have
nothing left inside but bitterness, a lot of things don’t come
through very well.”
“It’s all right,” I said.
Her eyes looked into mine from a distance of a few inches.
“What if I would go away with you afterwards?”
“You would?”
“Yes. God knows why you’d want me, but if you still do, I’ll
go.”
I thought about it for a minute, wavering. “It still scares me.
You know what we’re fooling with.”
“Yes. And you know how we’re going to do it. Nothing can
go wrong.” She smiled faintly, and touched my lips with a
finger. “You understand it’ll have to be a long time
afterwards? Maybe a year. And that it’ll have to be
somewhere a long way off, where there’s no chance that
anybody who knew him will ever hear your voice.”
“Of course.”
“All right. I have a little money, too. We’ll have well over two
hundred thousand. Somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean,
or the Aegean. Or if you want to fish, somewhere in the
tropics. Ceylon, perhaps. Just the two of us. And no strings
attached. When you get tired of me—“
I drew a finger along her check. “I’d never get tired of you.”
All The Way — 65
“You will, when you get old enough to need younger
women.”
“But I wouldn’t have to wait a full year?” I asked. “I mean,
before I can even see you again?”
”No. We can meet somewhere after I’m sure I’m not being
watched, in a month or so. will you do it, Jerry?”
I thought of that dream I’d had when she was trying to jump
off the bridge, and felt cold in the pit of my stomach. Maybe it
was a warning that something could go wrong. But I knew I
was whipped. By this time I was conditioned to taking her on
any terms I could get her.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get started.”
All The Way — 66
Seven
I looked at my watch for the hundredth time, conscious of the
increasing tightness of my nerves. The waiting was bad; there
was too much time to think. It was forty-five minutes past
midnight. I was in the rental car, parked on Collins Avenue
across from the entrance to the Dauphine. This was another
of those glorified motor hotels of the Gold Coast Strip, about
two blocks from the Golden Horn. He had a reservation. She’d
made it for him, along with his fishing reservations at
Marathon, in the Keys.
I lit another cigarette, and went on watching the oncoming
traffic, which was definitely thinning now. I’d already checked
the area for phone booths, to be sure I could get to one when
I wanted it. I nervously looked at the time again. I’d been here
an hour and a half. Maybe he wouldn’t drive all the way
through from Mobile in one day. His plans could have
changed in the two weeks since their bitter fight and her
resignation, and he might be going somewhere else. He could
have been in a wreck—I came alert. It was another Cadillac.
Well, I’d seen at least a hundred so far; there was no
shortage of them in Miami Beach. But this was one of the big
ones, and it was a light gray hardtop. Out-of-state license
plate. Then I could see the pelican on it. The car was turning
into the driveway of the Dauphine. It was Chapman, all right.
And he was alone. I exhaled softly. That was the thing we had
All The Way — 67
to know for sure. If he was going to live it up this trip, he
hadn’t picked up a girl so far.
The Cadillac stopped in the circular drive before the glass
front wall of the lobby, partially screened from the street by
the boxes of tropical vegetation bearing colored lights. I got
out and crossed the street.
Chapman had already gone inside, and a porter with a
luggage barrow was removing three large expensive-looking
bags from the trunk of the car. I went into the lobby and
turned towards the two telephone booths at the left rear,
beside the archway that opened into the dining room. Nobody
paid any attention to me. Chapman was standing at the desk.
He was just as she had described him. We looked nothing
alike except that we were the same height and—within the
limits of the average description— the same build. He wore a
lightweight gabardine suit and a cocoa straw hat, white shirt,
and a conservatively striped tie. And the glasses, of course.
“Reservation for Harris Chapman,” he said brusquely. It
wasn’t a question; it was a statement of fact.
I didn’t hear the clerk’s reply, but he turned away to check.
I had reached the telephone now. I went through the motions
of looking up a number, and just before I stepped inside I
glanced toward the desk again. The clerk had returned. He
was smiling as he pushed across the registry card. Then he
handed Chapman an envelope. So far, so good. But I had to
see what he did with it. If he shoved it in a pocket, he might
forget it. He glanced at it curiously, and then set it on the
desk while he registered. He’d recognized the handwriting by
this time, I thought. It was from Marian. She had written it
just before she left for Nassau. I closed the door of the booth
and quickly dialed the apartment. She answered on the first
ring.
“He’s here,” I said quietly. “And he got the letter.”
“What did he do with it?”
“Nothing, yet. “Wait.” I turned and glanced toward the desk
again. “He’s opened it.”
”Good,” she said. “He’ll call when he gets up to the room.”
I wasn’t so sure. He’d just driven over seven hundred miles,
and would be ready to fall in bed. But she knew him inside
out, and should be able to guess bis reaction pretty well. The
All The Way — 68
letter was an implied but very arrogantly worded blackmail
threat. She had something to discuss with him relative to his
1955 income-tax return, and would be waiting for him to call,
not later than tonight.
“He failed to report fifty-five thousand dollars,” she’d
explained. “It’s pretty well covered, but he knows how they
dig once they’re tipped off. And that informers are paid.”
I glanced around again. Chapman had shoved the letter in
his coat pocket and was striding toward the booths. “Hang
up,” I said quickly. “He’s going to call right now.”
The phone clicked and went dead. He stalked into the other
booth and banged the door shut. I went on talking, ad libbing
a conversation with an imaginary girl. He was dialing.
“Hello, Marian? Harris.” I could hear him perfectly. “I
thought they said you were in New York. What the hell’s this
let—? Yeah, I just checked in. Look, if this is some kind of gag
to get me to come out to your apartment, I thought we’d
agreed that was all over. It wouldn’t change anything, and I
don’t see why we have to embarrass ourselves. . . . What? . . .
What’s that?”
There was a longer pause.
“Oh, so that’s the way it is?” he said curtly. “By God, I didn’t
think you’d stoop to a thing like this. I guess Coral was right. .
. . You know damn well that return’s been checked and
double-checked, and they’ve never found a thing wrong with
it. . . . Never mind what you think . . . If you need money, why
didn’t you take that six months’ pay I offered you? . . . No, I’m
not coming out there. I’m tired. I’ve been driving all day. . . .
What proof? . . . You haven’t got any proof, and you know it.”
I heard him hang up and slam out of the booth. I pulled
down the hook, dropped in another dime, and dialed her
again.
“What do you think?” I asked softly, when she answered.
“He’ll come, as soon as he thinks it over. Let me know.”
“Right,” I said.
When I came out of the booth, Chapman was entering the
corridor at the other side of the lobby, followed by the porter
with his bags. I went back to the car, and lit a cigarette. The
Cadillac had been parked in the area off to the left of the main
building. Ten minutes went by. Maybe she was wrong. Then
All The Way — 69
an empty cab turned into the driveway. In a minute or two it
came out the exit, crossed the traffic to this side of the street,
and started south, the way it had come. There was a man in it,
wearing a hat. It was Chapman.
I looked at my watch. It had taken me fifteen minutes to
drive up, but the traffic had lessened considerably by now.
Call it ten. I got out and crossed the street again, and walked
down about half a block to the bar I’d noted before. It had a
booth, and I didn’t want to go back to the lobby again unless I
had to.
There were only three or four customers in the place, and
the booth was empty. I was tight as a violin string now, and
couldn’t seem to take a deep breath. I ordered a shot of
straight whisky, downed it, and went back to the phone. I
closed the door, and dialed. She answered immediately.
”He left here five minutes ago, in a cab,” I said.
“Good,” she replied. “Remember, wait two minutes from the
time I hang up. I’ll be in the kitchen, getting out the ice
cubes.”
“Right,” I said. The drink had loosened me a little now, but
it was very hot in the booth and I was sweating. She went on
talking. She seemed perfectly calm. The minutes dragged by.
“I think I hear the cab,” she said.
I waited. Then I heard the doorbell, very faintly. The line
went dead. Chapman was at the front door.
I checked the time, pulled down the hook, and dropped in
another dime to get the dial tone. I looked back out at the bar.
No one was near enough to hear any of it through the door.
Just before the two minutes were up, I started dialing. It rang
twice.
“Hello.” It was Chapman, all right. She’d got him to answer.
“Mrs. Marian Forsyth,” I said brusquely. “Is she there?”
“Just a minute.”
I heard him call her, but not her reply. Then he came on
again. “She’s busy at the moment. Who’s calling?”
“Chapman,” I said. “Harris Chapman—”
“What?”
All The Way — 70
Most people, of course, have no idea how their voices and
their speech sound to others, but he did. He was accustomed
to using dictating devices and recorders.
“Harris Chapman,” I repeated with the same curt
impatience. “From Thomaston, Louisiana. She knows me—”
“Are you crazy?”
I cut in on him. “Will you please call Mrs. Forsyth to the
phone? I haven’t got all night.”
”So you’re Chapman, are you? Where are you calling from?”
“What the hell is this?” I barked into the phone. “I’m calling
from the Dauphine. I just checked in here. I’ve driven seven
hundred and thirty miles today, and I m tired, and I don’t feel
like playing games. Maybe you want to talk to me about my
nineteen-fifty-five income-tax return, is that it? Well, it just
happens I’m an attorney, my friend, and I know a little about
the law, and about shakedowns. Now, put her on, or I’ll turn
this letter of hers over to the police right now.”
“What in the name of God? Marian—”
I heard the phonograph come up in the background then,
softly at first, and then louder. It was a song that had come
out the summer Keith had gone mad—The Music Goes Round
and Round. Shortly before they’d given up and had him
committed for treatment, he’d locked himself in his room one
day and played the record for nineteen hours without
stopping.
“Listen!” I snapped. “What are you people up to? What’s
that music—?”
He was still there. I heard him gasp.
Oh, the music goes round and round . . . and it comes out
here. . . .
“Turn that off!” I said harshly. “Who told you about Keith?
She’s been coaching you. You even sound like me. What’s that
woman trying to do to me? I offered her six months’ pay. . . .”
“Marian,” he shouted, “for the love of Christ, who is this
man?”
I couldn’t hear her reply, of course, but I knew what it was,
and the way she said it. “Why, Harris Chapman, obviously.”
The shots weren’t too loud, mere exclamation points above
the level of the music. There were two very close together,