Chapter 10
I WALKED up the front steps of the brownstone on Tenth Street and pushed the buzzer to the right of the door. A set of chimes, far back in the house ran up and down the scales and echoed away into the silence. In spite of the cold I could feel sweat gathering on my forehead. I puffed nervously on my cigarette, flinging it down into the snow only when the door opened.
"Come in." A gray-haired woman, who was in her late fifties, stared at me without feeling. "Follow me, please."
I went in and the door closed automatically. As I pursued the woman down a thick-carpeted, dimly lit hall, I heard the lock on the door engage itself. The sound had all the effects on me of a pistol shot. I felt the sweat sliding down my ribs, spreading out and turning cold as it reached my belt line.
"In here," she said.
I entered a small waiting room equipped with a tiny desk and two maple chairs. A yellow light glowed from the desk lamp. There was no one else in the room.
"Have a seat," the woman said. "Hell be here in a few moments."
She went out, closing the door behind her. From somewhere within the house I could hear music playing. I didn't know the correct name of the tune but it was a long-hair version of Tonight We Love. I sat back in one of the chairs and lit another cigarette. I didn't look at my hands. I didn't want to see them shaking.
It was hot in the room and I stood up to remove my overcoat. Just as I was placing the coat on the top of the desk a narrow door to the right opened soundlessly and a man wearing heavy-rimmed glasses came in.
"That's right. Make yourself comfortable," he said.
"Thanks."
The newcomer was elderly, slightly bald, red-faced, and very fat. I marveled that he had been able to negotiate his huge hulk through the limited space of the doorway.
"I guess you know why you're here?"
"I was told to see you."
"But you don't know what we're going to do?"
"No. I haven't the slightest idea."
He sat down on the chair behind the desk. Opening the middle drawer he rummaged through a collection of boxes and bottles for a moment. Finally, he located one which seemed to please him.
"Take this," he said, sliding a small yellow capsule across the top of the desk. "I'll get you some water if you want."
The sweat was running down my legs now, soaking me.
"What is it?"
He laughed, amused at my concern, and stood up. "Don't worry," he said. "It isn't poison. We aren't quite that crude."
I picked up the capsule, holding it in the palm of my hand. My throat was tight, burning.
"I just wanted to know," I said. "It isn't every day that somebody hands you one of these things."
He shrugged his massive shoulders and left the room, going out into the hall. Presently he returned carrying a glass of water.
"Take the capsule," he instructed somewhat impatiently. "There isn't anything in it that will harm you; I assure you of that. It's similar to the type that doctors use before going ahead with an operation. A little codeine and a couple of other things, I guess. It simply makes you more willing, shall we say, to accept some of the things you may see."
I held the glass of water in one hand, the capsule in the other. I had forgotten about the cigarette in my mouth and I closed my eyes against the curling smoke. I could still turn back. I could still stop. I didn't have to go on with it. Nobody could force me to do what I didn't want to do. I opened my eyes, staring through the smoke at the fat man. Perhaps, I concluded, I was entirely wrong. It would be most difficult to change my mind at this point.
"Sure," I said, grinning weakly. I removed the cigarette from my mouth and popped the capsule inside. "Thanks for the pill, doc," I said, drinking all of the water.
He told me that he wasn't a doctor, just a photographer, but that he used the medicine all the time and there had never been any bad effects from it.
"Sit down," he suggested, wiping his face with a large lavender handkerchief. "And I wouldn't smoke any more, if I were you. Not for a while, anyway."
It was easy not to smoke. It was equally easy to sit there and'listen to him, though I'm not at all sure what he talked about. In fact, everything was incredibly easy to take-my being there in this room with the fat man; Eudora Channing and her lavish home on Panther Hill; the man who had met me in the cafeteria and who had had me slugged afterward. Nothing was worth worrying about any more. There was no such thing as love or hate or deceit or violence. It was all the same. Everything was the same. The world was a big happy place with millions of .contented people in it.
"How are you feeling?" The voice, I knew, spoke to me from within the room but it sounded far away, different, without significance. "Slightly high?"
"Great. Just great!"
Had I said that? I couldn't remember having done so. I shook my head, trying to clear it. A pleasant, unconcerned feeling swept through me.
"Jesus Christ, that's some pill," I told him.
He nodded understandingly and opened the narrow door. I guess he told me to come along but, whether he did or not, I found myself doing so, anyway.
We went through another hall, a smaller one, and I checked myself as we went along. I wasn't, I discovered, staggering. My steps were light but certain and, while the floor was covered with gray tile, I had the sensation of walking on carpet four inches thick.
"Pretty good, isn't it?"
"Wonderful."
We were in a bedroom. The walls were jet black, blacker than the night itself, and the blonde double bed, dresser and chairs stood out in sharp, startling contrast.
"Take off your clothes," the fat man told me.
I gazed uncertainly at the rose-colored bed lamp and then back at the small eyes behind the huge glasses.
"Well, hell," I said.
I crossed to the bed and sat down. I was tired. I wanted to he down and sleep the hands off the nearest clock.
"I said, take off your clothes! You think I got all night to fool around here?"
I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, holding my head in my hands. Somewhere in this huge brownstone house, in one of its many rooms, a pretty young girl by the name of Judith Call cringed in shock and fear. I shook my head. But, perhaps, she wasn't afraid. Perhaps she didn't care. I shook my head again. Maybe she wasn't even in this house.
"You'll have to help me," the fat man was saying.
He wasn't speaking to me, of that I was sure, so I took my hands away from my face and looked around the room. A girl stood near the foot of the bed, smiling down at me.
"A new one," she said.
The fat man didn't answer her but, again, told me to remove my clothes. Without giving the matter a great deal of consideration I took off my coat and began to unbutton my shirt.
"Give him a hand," the fat man said.
The girl, a henna-rinse blonde, was neither pretty nor not pretty. She was wearing a white wrapper. A nurse I figured. I protested a few times-rather feebly, I'm afraid-but in a few moments I was completely disrobed except for my shoes and socks.
"To hell with them," the fat man said as she untied one of my shoes. "Get yourself ready."
This, it developed, was no real problem.
"Just give me a chance to fix my face," she said.
She walked toward the dresser and I noticed that she lacked nearly all of the usually amplified attributes of the female body. Her legs were long enough, but unshapely, her hips were those of a hungry young boy. Her only truly feminine appeal was confined to her ponderous bosom. She bent over the dresser, staring into the mirror.
With a groan of revulsion I fell back on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. I heard the girl talking to the man but I paid no attention to what was said. My guts were twisting, turning, heaving, and I wanted to hurl myself through the door and become lost in the night. But I could make no worthwhile effort to do so. The capsule had made the moment tolerable, if not acceptable, and I lay there waiting, feeling disgusted with myself, but unable to do anything about it.
There is no need to relate all that this girl did to me that night, even if I could remember. She had altered the appearance of her face with liberal amounts of eyebrow pencil which gave her the look of a vicious young vampire sprung from the roots of hell.
"Don't be afraid," she whispered. "I won't hurt you."
A long agonized sob ripped up out of my throat and I closed my eyes tightly against the blinding light from the exploding flash bulbs.
"Just a couple more," the fat man said. "You know what I mean."
I cursed savagely as she pressed her ugly body to my face, almost smothering me. I brought up my right fist, summoning all of the power that I could find, and slammed it into her. A flash bulb went off, and she was lying upon the floor, moaning and cursing.
"That's all," the fat man said wearily. "Let him sleep it off."
They left the room, turning off the light and closing the door behind them. I tried to sit up, to get to my feet, but an inexorable lassitude possessed my body, freezing every nerve, every muscle, turning my belly into a hollow void of defeat. I fell back on the bed, grateful for the darkness and for being left alone. From somewhere within the house I again heard music playing. It sounded like one of the Beethoven concertos, wonderfully peaceful and soothing. I believe I was crying when I fell asleep.
I awoke, later, and the music was still playing but this time it was something modern with a fast, rhythmic beat. I got up from the bed, found the fight and snapped it on. I dressed hurriedly.
Much of what had taken place in the room was only a misty, unreal recollection but I remembered enough of it to cause me to feel ill as, straightening my tie, I glanced at myself in the mirror. My face was white. I turned away from the mirror, searching for a cigarette, my hand trembling. I was in the grip of a wild, mounting fury. And I couldn't afford the extravagance of blowing apart now. I couldn't rip the brownstone down with my bare hands and strangle everybody in it. I had gone fishing, deliberately, and I would nave to fish according to the rules of the stream.
I recovered my overcoat from the waiting room and departed, unnoticed, from the brownstone on Tenth Street. It was not an easy thing for me to do. It is never easy for a man to turn his back upon something he knows he must some day destroy.
I walked, slowly, toward the river. It had stopped snowing and the stars overhead were bright and clean in the sky. A neon-lit clock in a tailor shop informed me that it was just a few minutes past ten o'clock. In the front window of a furniture store two young girls moved about, barefooted, decorating a Christmas tree. They smiled at me and I smiled in return. But I think, as I walked along the docks that night, that I hated my own guts. It was a feeling I had not experienced since that hot July afternoon when I had turned, unable to see because of the tears, and walked unsteadily from the brink of Sandy's grave.
Sandy. I thought of her now. If she were alive, would she be able to understand what I was doing? Would she believe, as I believed, that the only way to crack this ring was to follow the path which I had elected to pursue? Or would she regard me, as I knew she had so many times, as being an uncouth young man, a little too fond of direct, violent action.
I suppose that is why I had loved Sandy so much-she had been soft and gentle and she had believed, fully, in the good and the peaceful ways of living. It had been her simple mildness, I understood now, which had dominated me from the very start, changing me from an unsure, impetuous, temper-ridden man into one who tried to carefully and honestly consider the people and the world around him.
At the corner of Washington and Eighth I stepped from the curb and hailed a cab. The driver, when I gave him the address on Panther Ridge, smiled and observed, rather pleased, that it was a fine night for business.
I thought again of Sandy as we crossed the Twin Cities Bridge and headed toward the mountains. I thought of her nice ways and how she had been so sweet and tender and how none of it had a place in this thing that I was doing. My job now was not one of understanding the motives of other people or of attempting to sway them with pretty words. The task which confronted me dealt with the debauchery of human life, of human minds and bodies, which only swift and calculated violence would ever settle. I wondered, as we pulled up and stopped before the white colonial house on Westminister Drive, if I could possibly hope to meet the high standards for brains and courage which would be required of me.
"Good night," the driver said happily, fingering my tip.
I walked through the loose snow to the house. She was waiting for me at the door.
"Come in, Bill," she said, her eyes bright.
She wore a gray satin dressing gown that hugged every curve of her voluptuous figure and, as I passed her, I could smell her perfume, obviously expensive and tremendously exciting.
"Well, I did what you wanted me to do," I said. I threw my hat on a chair. "It was hell. Believe me, I don't know why you asked me to go there."
"Poor Bill." She helped me off with my coat. I thought I detected a note of amusement in her voice. "They tell me you got a little ornery."
"Who wouldn't?"-I demanded. It wasn't necessary for me to pretend anger. "You didn't have to do something like that just to-"
"No," she admitted, leading me into the living room. "I didn't have to, Bill. But the others would have insisted. I told you there wasn't any other way."
I walked over to the fireplace and turned, my back to the flames. I noticed that one of the davenports had been converted into a bed. The sheets looked crisp and clean.
"Well, I can see the point," I said. "As long as those pictures of me with that girl are around I'm not likely to get any ideas."
She fixed a couple of drinks and brought one over to me.
"It's our only insurance," she .said. "There are similar pictures of all of us. It is the only way we have of guaranteeing mutual trust."
I looked at her across my glass and grinned.
"And here I thought your friends were a lot of class," I said. "How silly can you get?"
This seemed to worry her and her eyes became deep and anxious.
"You're not mad at me, Bill?"
"Oh, hell, no."
"Some of them are nice people. You'll see."
I finished the drink and began to relax. I had passed the first test and I could look forward to meeting the others who worked with her. After that, I assumed, I would be making real progress.
She asked me if I wanted another drink and I said, sure, go ahead and fill it up.
"I'll bet you're wondering what the bed is made up for."
I gave her an evil grin.
"There may be other ideas on the subject," I stated, "but for me a bed is good for only one thing."
She never brought me that drink. Instead, she came over and crawled into my arms, pushing her body in close as I fastened my mouth over her lips.
"Bill," she whispered, "I'm one hell of a woman."
"I can tell you better later," I said.
I turned out the lights so that only the flames from the fireplace illuminated the room.
"I deal in sex morning, noon and night," she confided, stretching out on the bed. I could see her face, dimly, and she smiled up at me. "But I like to pick my own men and in my own way."
I sat down beside her. I lit two cigarettes, gave her one, and we smoked for quite a while, not saying anything.
"Bill, I believe in sex."
"Tell me somebody who doesn't."
"I mean real sex. Beautiful. Like this, the way we are."
She turned, coming into my arms. Her body was warm and soft and throbbing.
"Those other things are for animals, Bill. Human animals. Aren't they, Bill?"
Her lips moved against my mouth, teasingly at first, then driving in harder.
"I want you, Bill Gordon," she said huskily.
She was no good, a tramp, but she was there in my arms and there wasn't very much I could do about it. It was all part of the game I was playing. And, in a way, I suppose she was right about one thing.
Eudora Channing was one hell of a woman.