Chapter 6
ALAN SIDLED CAUTIOUSLY THROUGH THE SHADOWS. The street was silent, in the hour before dawn. It seemed to him there was an eerie, waiting stillness he'd never known before.
No matter how softly he tried to tread, his footsteps were loud on the walk. It seemed to him his own heartbeats were fearfully noisy.
He thought bitterly it was too bad he was no longer writing crime scripts for TV. He could really put the truth into them now. Now, when it was too late, he knew how a frightened fugitive really felt, creeping through the darkness.
Something clicked in the deeper shadows, and Alan froze. He pressed against the wall as lights fizzed on, searchlights on police vans!
The lights raked the gutters, the walk, the doorways, zapping toward him like lethal rays.
It was as if his legs were made of inferior clay.
He was helpless to move from that approaching light, and he felt that if he moved, his clay legs would crumble to fragments.
For one instant it flashed through his mind that there was no reality in this. He was asleep. He was sprawled unconscious in fatigue on those silk sheets. He was dreaming this, the voices of the police in the dark, the lights, the patrol panel truck, the way his legs would no longer obey commands from his brain, the whole, futile bit.
"There he is!"
A policeman yelled it from an angle across the night street.
The sound of the patrolman's voice was the spur Alan needed to make him move.
The lights flicked at him, and he ran. His feet pounded the pavement. The glaring beam whirled faster now, pursuing him along the building fronts, striking doors, reflected in gray windows, crawling across jutting beams.
He and the light reached the corner of the alley in the same instant.
For that moment Alan stood lanced like a pinned bug in the center of that glaring light. It blinded him, and he trembled all over.
"Hold that! Don't move, or I'll shoot."
Alan shivered. He had to run. He had to stand rigid or they'd kill him.
There was a brilliant burst of rage inside him, and then the sense that it no longer mattered. He had tun as far as he could. It was over.
"Hold it!" They warned. He heard the panel truck's engine fire into life. The light was fixed on him. They were going to drive toward him.
He couldn't see, but nobody had to tell him they were coming with guns drawn.
He retreated a step, another. He was in the narrow alley. It was too small for the truck. This was the only thought his mind could contain.
He wheeled suddenly and ran. He heard the police shouting, the light being fixed along the passageway.
He angled sharply left into a larger alley, running as fast as he could. Ahead he saw an open street. In a few moments the police truck would wheel into this alley, and surely they'd radioed for reinforcements by then.
He slowed, looking around helplessly. Banked near the darkened entrance of a cafeteria were a dozen huge, galvanized garbage pails.
He looked once more both ways along the alley, then he lunged toward the shadows and the pails. As quietly as he could, he lifted a cover, eased himself inside, replaced the lid.
He crouched there in the humid, sick-sweet stench of garbage. He held his breath as long as he could. He felt his stomach churn.
He heard the police cars whip past in the alley, and then the shouting officers on foot, searching in every shadow and every cranny.
He hunkered in the garbage, waiting. They were out there a long time, but none of them opened the garbage pails.
He knew why. It never occurred to them that even a hunted man would lower himself into such vileness.
Alan shivered, thinking sourly that they were right. No man in his right senses would...
Alan looked at Connice Stewart and winced.
There was a look about Connice that had the impact of a karate chop. It wasn't the kind of remote loveliness of Nora. Connice was tall, fair and slender. Her long legs reminded one of long-stemmed roses, the expensive kind. She was shapely of ankle, calf, thigh and hips, and her body was olive-tanned. Her eyes were a violet blue, and vulnerable as hell, which was one reason why he winced. It had been months since he had seen her-and hurt her but he saw that Connice had not forgotten, not any of it.
It was late afternoon, and Connice had obviously just come in from work. She had slipped into Capri pants, a bulky sweater, and she was barefoot. He saw that her feet were lovely, too, with the high-arched insteps, the long, pink toes.
She held the door open, staring at him, and he saw the flash of memory, the flash of hurt, and the lingering color of her hatred. But she moved quickly, she grabbed his arm and drew him inside her apartment.
It was as he remembered it, as he'd left it, cluttered, and littered, the way he'd left Connice's life when he walked out on her. He had tried to tell her that Caroline was still in his mind, and he couldn't forget so quickly, and it wasn't fair to Connice to hang around under such conditions. But he had learned one thing: women never understood when you tried to tell them you didn't return their devotion, even when you said that though you wanted to, you couldn't
They didn't understand.
His face felt heated. There was more to it than that. He had hurt her badly. She had offered him everything, and in the drunken stupor in which he existed in those days, he misused her
And this was why he winced. Looking at Connice, he saw it was impossible to believe that anyone would hurt her, even under the influence of liquor.
Connice stared at him, and her pert nose quivered, assailed by the sick-sweet odor of garbage that clung to him all these hours later.
"You stink," she said. "Physically as well as personally. Where the hell have you been?"
"In a garbage can," he said.
"It figures. Everything finds its level, huh?"
"I know you hate me, Connice."
"Sure you do. But you just don't know how much I hate you. How deeply."
"I'm sorry about that."
"What do you want here?"
He spread his hands. "I don't know. I really don't. I walked all day. I had to stay away from people because I smelled so bad. I walked out here because I had to talk to you."
"Me? Why?"
"I don't know that, either. I only know that I'm in desperate trouble, and there has to be a reason."
She laughed coldly. "There is a reason. The reason is that God's in his heaven, and everybody gets his, sooner or later. I'd say you were overdue."
He drew the back of his hand across his eyes. "All right. I know you hate me. But do you hate me so bad you can't even talk to me?"
"I don't know what I could talk to you about, except hate."
He wavered slightly. The room wheeled and skidded before his eyes. He was afraid he was going to fall. He bit down hard on his underlip. He was damned if he'd fall. He wouldn't give her that satisfaction.
The concern showed in Connice's vulnerable eyes, even through the chilled mask she set against him.
She came forward, touched his arm. "You're sick."
"No. Just tired. I'm beat, Connice. Just let me sit down somewhere. Just a minute."
She looked around the cluttered apartment. She made a quick decision. "Go take a shower. Get out of those clothes. You left slacks and a Banlon shirt here once." Her eyes darkened. "I'll throw those things in the disposal, and I'll be glad to have you get the last of your belongings out of here."
He was too ill and too fatigued to argue with her. She pushed him gently through her frilly bathroom and into her bath. Stockings hung to dry, lotions and bottles stood open everywhere. Connice was a hellish housekeeper.
He undressed, his hands trembling. He dropped his soured clothing outside the bathroom door. He heard Connice making "yecch" sounds as she took them out and got rid of them.
He stepped under the shower, turned on the hot and cold taps full force.
The water almost knocked him down.
Alan leaned against the shower stall wall, trembling. He'd had no idea he was so tired, so weak. He had eaten only chicken and potato salad in Nora's apartment. That seemed three days ago, and he had not rested.
He felt the tensions in his body when he remembered what he had done in that guest-room bed. Everything but rest. He had been a pretty good swordsman, at that. Nora had fallen asleep, exhausted under him. Unwillingly, he remembered the rise of her breasts, the urgency in the persistent up-thrust of her hips to him, and the heated water of the shower was like tears streaming down his cheeks...
He turned off the water and stepped out. He smelled decent now, fresh, like the feminine soap that Connice used. He drew a deep breath, thinking it was the first full breathing he had done since he'd lowered himself into that garbage pail.
He scrubbed himself dry with one of the thick, large towels from a rack. He felt better, lusty with hunger, his belly churning with need for food and coffee. My kingdom for a hot cup of coffee, he thought, something to eat and twenty hours of sleep. Everything would look better then.
The door was cracked open and Connice dropped his pressed slacks and fresh banlon shirt on the tile flooring. "Sorry you never left any underwear around."
He pulled on the shirt and stepped into the slacks. She had placed an aged pair of his straw sandals just outside the bathroom door.
She was leaning against the headrest of her bed, watching him. Her face remained cold, set against him. Her hatred went deep, self-nourished all these months. He'd left her few pleasant memories.
"Now," she said, in exaggerated satisfaction, "when you go this time, there's nothing left of you around here."
"I'm sorry about all the hurt I caused you, Connice. I know I can't ever make it up to you."
"No." She straightened. "Come on. I fixed something for you to eat." She stood up and looked him over. "You can get by now. Buy a pair of dark glasses and you'll look like any other Sunset Strip creep."
"Gee-thanks, fella."
She braced her shoulders, as if squaring them against him, against feeling any emotion for him except the old hatred.
Alan smelled the coffee percolating as he came out of her bedroom. His stomach heaved. He was afraid he was going to be sick. He was so hungry he was afraid to try to eat.
She was looking at him oddly. "Just take it easy, friend. It's going to be all right."
He drew a deep breath and sat down across from her at the breakfast-nook table.
She had cooked bargain-ground hamburger, made a tossed salad, with instant-whip potatoes and tiny, garden peas. He remembered the elegance of his meal with Nora. It was another world, all right.
She poured coffee for him. He drank it slowly, the heat searing him all the way to his stomach. He was able to hang on to it. Gradually life returned to him, along with a little strength.
He said softly, "You know I'm wanted for murder."
She shrugged. "So what else is new?"
He winced. "I didn't hope you'd care, but I didn't do it. I've been framed."
"We hear that here in death row all the time, my boy. I'm innocent. I'm innocent. They all say that."
He did not smile. "God help them. I hope it's no truer than it is with me."
"Killing an old man over an argument about a dog. Boy, when you're drinking "
"That's just it. I wasn't drinking." He remembered he'd had a couple of drinks with Nora the night the old man was slain. He shook his head. "I went on the wagon, Connice, after I left you "
"I know that'll make your old, gray-haired mother happy "
" I knew the way I'd treated you was rotten, Connice. I knew I had to quit drinking."
Connice shrugged. "I listened to a Salvation Army sermon on the corner of Hollywood and Vine one night same music, same lyrics."
"All right. I hurt you. I tried to tell you I wasn't myself "
"I didn't even like whoever you were." She wrung her hands, "Oh, 'e was a Dr. Jekyll."
"All right. I cleared out."
"Only you didn't stay out. Why didn't you?"
"Why didn't you throw away my slacks, shirt and sandals?"
She laughed in his face. "Because you're no bigger than most men. I figured they might fit almost anyone who came along."
He sagged in the chair. "I knew you hated me, but you were right I just didn't know how deeply."
She shrugged, and watched him across the table. "I still want to know why you came back here. Don't you know the cops are as near as my phone?"
"Yes. I know that."
"Still think I'm a sucker, don't you? Take you in, wash you and feed you and dress you, and protect you."
"No. I didn't think that." He shook his head. "Maybe I hoped it. I knew I had to come here, because I need your help."
"My help!" The words lashed at him. "Why in the name of Rock Hudson should I help you?"
Alan spoke to the backs of his trembling hands. He whispered it, "Somebody's got to "
"Well, not me, Charley."
"I don't mean help like you think hiding me from the police, anything like that."
"Oh? There's some other kind? Not that I'm interested."
"Yes. I am being framed for the murder of old man Sheram, Connice." He told her about his shoes his gun, his bullet, everything used to make him look guilty. "Somebody even called and told them where to find the pistol."
"Don't look at me." Her voice was flat.
"Listen to me, Connice!"
"Oh, you mean you don't suspect me?"
"Stop hating me long enough just to help me think. I've got to think, Connice. Somebody hates me enough to frame me for murder, to tip off the police, to keep them after me. Who? I was with you in the worst time of my drinking after Caroline died "
"Yes. Real complimentary. Moved in soaking wet, and ran the moment you finally started to dry out."
"No sense trying to tell you I cleared out because it was best for you."
"No sense at all. You got tired of using me for a punching bag. You walked out. Simple. Real simple. Let's not busy it up with a lot of kind-sounding lies."
He gazed across the table at her. "Help me!" he begged. "What did I do those months? There were whole days that were lost to me. I could have wronged anybody. I don't know. What did I do?"
She sat for a long time. He saw she was going back over it, whether she wanted to or not.
Finally, Connice shook her head. "There was only me, Alan. You didn't run up against enough people to make any enemies. You were in no condition for it. Only me. I'm sure of that. I'm the only enemy you made all those months with me, you didn't need any others."
Alan caught her hand on the table. It was like ice. She let him hold it a moment, and then she jerked free.
"Don't come around here with your sweet words, and your confessions of guilt and your fine promises. It won't buy you anything."
"I never wanted to hurt you."
"You managed to do it without wanting to, then. I wanted so little, but you managed to deny me that. I tried to be good to you, only you wouldn't let me "
"Don't you understand jiet? I was out of my mind with grief and with whiskey. I'm sorry."
"Forget it. I hate you enough to frame you for murder." She laughed emptily. "I may have even thought about it. Killing you. Framing you for murder. Cutting your heart out. But I didn't. For just one reason. I wasn't smart enough. If I'd been smart, I'd have stayed away from you in the first place."
She gazed at him across the table. Her face contorted. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She tried to shake them away, her rich hair hobbling about her head. She was unable to stem the flow, and suddenly she was sobbing.
Alan came around the table. He caught her in his arms. He knelt on the floor and drew her down to him.
He had forgotten how slender she was! She was as fragile as some kind of rare Dresden china.
She tried to struggle free, but he held her, gently and yet firmly.
He cradled her in his arms. She gripped him with her fingers, pressed her face upon his chest, sobbing wildly.
He said nothing. He caressed the rich texture of her hair, smoothing it with the palm of his hand. Her tears burned his chest, her breath was hot through the shirt.
She clung to him and cried until there were no more tears. She was weak, exhausted then, and she lay against him, breathing helplessly.
He lifted her head slowly and kissed her on the mouth. He felt the shiver go through her body.
She reached up, cupping his head in her slim-fingered hand, holding her mouth to his as if she had thirsted for his kiss for a long, cruel time.
He held her for a long time. His hand slipped under her armpit and covered the taut rise of her breast. It was as natural as breathing. She did not protest. A quiver went through her and she relaxed upon him, letting him fondle her nipple.
They did not move from the floor beside the table. The glow of the lamps illumined them. He reached down, unhurriedly, caught her bulky sweater and lifted it over her head. Her hair toppled wildly, giving her the look of a wanton little girl.
She caught the sweater and threw it away from them. She wore no bra. Alan kissed her again and his hand caressed her urgently. She exhaled and hugged him tight. Her breasts were bright red, livid with the marks of his hands. It was as if she were on fire inside.
Alan unzipped her capri pants. She lifted her hips so he could roll them down along the long, scenic route of those legs. She kicked the pants away. He thumbed down her underpanties and she sighed again, raggedly.
She lay naked in his arms.
"Beautiful," he whispered. "You're so beautiful."
"Just don't talk."
He nodded, kissing her again. He held her breast with one hand, moved the other downward. Her breathing was hard, loud when he touched her, moving his fingers vigorously.
She lay upon him, letting him play with her breasts and her thighs, her buttocks. Her hips began to quiver in a rising rhythm of the beginnings of lust.
She stretched out on the floor. He bent over her and took a breast in his mouth. He suckled it for a long time. Breathing strangely shallowly, Connice ran her hands through his hair, caressing his cheeks, his jaws, his mouth, his ears, the nape of his neck. Her hips were grinding faster now. She could barely wait.
"Lie back," he whispered. "Close your eyes." She obeyed.
His hands moved over her, swiftly, with fevered urgency, exploring her sweet flesh for the first time not numbed by whiskey. She was helpless to resist him, and she lay back, letting herself go. She abandoned herself completely to the overpowering delights he stirred inside her.
When he loved her thighs with his fingers, she went wild. He made circles, going faster and faster until she was crying out in helpless pleasure.
He felt her hand catch at his trousers, opening them, loosening them, clutching at them. He was ready. He throbbed with readiness.
"Now," he said.
But she pulled away from him then, and looked down at him, admiring him. He tried to push her down and mount her, but she delayed him for the moment. She had other ideas.
"What's the matter?" he said.
"I want to do something first," she said.
"What?"
She told him. She snuggled down upon him, and he felt her heart battering crazily. He said, "Oh."
"I've got to, honey," she said. "First."
"Why?"
"Because I want to. I've wanted to for so long. I dreamed about it sometimes, even when I hated you the most."
"Then do it."
"I'm going to," she said. "I love it. I really do." He lay back, his own breathing matching hers.
It seemed she was doing all the work, he was getting all the thrill, but this wasn't the way she acted. She wanted it. Lord, what a difference that makes, he thought, between the girls who do it not liking it, and those that do it just to please you. She liked it. She loved it. She made him love it.
He was afraid it was going to happen before either of them was ready. It was going to end too soon because she was unbridled in her frenzy.
He caught her and pulled her away. She whimpered, but stopped complaining when he came to her and thrust with all his strength.
Connice cried out as he worked hard, going faster and faster as she dug her nails into him, urging him on until neither of them could endure its ecstasy another second.
Sirens screamed, but they were heavenly sirens.
The lights flared up wildly, burst and exploded into fragments of brilliant hues.
He wasn't sure for a long time that the house hadn't burned to the ground, consuming them both...
"Oh, Alan."
He knelt over her and lifted her in his arms. Her long legs dangled. He couldn't remember where he'd heard that the long-legged girls were best, as long-stemmed roses were. She put her arms around him and he carried her in to her bed.
He laid her down across it and then knelt beside her. She reached for him, catching him, stroking.
"You're so fine I" she cried. "Lord, you're so fine."
"You make me good."
"You'd be good with with anybody. That's what's the matter with you. You're a devil. You were made to drive silly girls even sillier. Wild girls even wilder. Crazy girls even crazier. Oh, thank God for you!"
The very act of praising him excited Connice, and the thought of his wondrous performance stirred her again. She quivered on the bed, reaching for him. "I wish I knew everything," she whispered. "All tricks. Everything. I'd do everything for you. That's what I want to do."
He put his hand on her and she tilted her hips, making herself ready for him. He moved his hand on her, bringing her almost to a peak, making her tremble with desire. She clutched him to her, guiding him, closing her legs about his waist, working herself in fury. He felt the buildup begin anew in her and knew she was driving herself almost crazy, unable to pause now, even to breathe. He grinned, thinking this was the end of the line for Connice for the present, whether she believed it or not.
He could tell she did not believe it. She worked faster and faster beneath him, her whole body on fire and trembling with the incredible desire he awoke in her. It was going to last forever. This was all she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
Only it wasn't like that. She screamed out in agonized ecstasy, her whole body trembled and she sagged under him. She was fast asleep, snoring in exhaustion, in less than five minutes.
Alan lay beside her, letting his hands fondle her loveliness, bared to him in the vague bedroom light.
He was exhausted, at least his body was. Every muscle and fiber of his being screamed for the release of deep sleep. But his conscious mind would not let go. It couldn't. He kept remembering Sevidge and Renner, and the jail cell, and the nightmare he was running through.
It would be worse if they found him. If they got him again he could kiss freedom good-bye.
He envied Connice's being able to sleep. His eyes burned, but when he closed them for a few minutes they flew open, staring, frightened.
Connice had said he'd made no enemies during that lost time when only her kindliness had stood between him and complete ruin. Whole days and weeks of that time were lost to him. Connice would know better than anyone what had happened to him. He'd made no enemies during that time. If this were true, and he could recall no trespasses in the life he'd had with Caroline, there were no enemies back there. He'd been only a kid before he met and married Caroline.
He had to start somewhere, so the thing to do was to accept what Connice said. His enemy-whoever he was-had come along after he'd left Connice, since he'd tried to make a new life out there in Island Groves.
This didn't leave much. His wearied mind combed back through the immediate past, turning everything up even the least slight, some unintentional insult because people were so strange. But there was nothing.
What did this leave? The true crime stories he had been using as a basis for his TV scripts? Had some murderer,' still walking free, seen one of the scripts and somehow become convinced that the contrived ending he had dreamed up for it meant that he, Alan Taylor, had some inside information dangerous to that killer?
This could happen. People flip over fiction they see on TV, seeing it as some slur, or revelation, or slap at them. What if some guilty man had seen himself in one of those scripts seen himself play out the crime, and then seen himself trapped because of some mistake that Alan had planted into the script during the writing to make the law triumphant where it had not been in real life?
This meant that whoever it was had not only been clever enough to get away with that old, unsolved crime, but he had had to come close enough to Alan Taylor to learn his habits, the layout of his house, his neighborhood feud, where he hid his gun.
His mind touched at Rose Miner. For all her pious talk about working in a respectable environment, couldn't she be married, perhaps, to a man who had killed a man who used her to gain information about Alan Taylor?
Oh, come on now, Taylor. This is too jar out even for a TV script. And yet, was it? Any more fantastic that what had been happening these past days?
He sweated. He put this idea aside, trying to concentrate on other possible criminals. Tillinghast. the realtor? The fat man had fingered him good at the hearing. Why? What was Tillinghast's past? Or Tess Simpson? She'd been almost vindictive in her testimony against him. Even mild Old Man Wakefield. They all had pasts, didn't they? Who knew what fearful secret lay buried back there?
It was crazy.
Then he remembered a man who had called at the offices of D & T wanting to talk to him about the "Murder of the Bookie" script. The man had asked questions, learned where Alan had found the original case. The man had said, "You lay off the Festish story, friend. So you've made a script of it, a TV show of it. Now you forget it. You let everybody else forget it, you know what's good for you."
Alan sat up on the side of the bed. His face felt flushed. This wasn't much. It was nothing, less than nothing, but the death of the gambler what was his name? Ira Festish?
He got up quickly, dressed. His legs felt too weak to support him. He made coffee and drank two cups, black. Then he returned to the bedroom and trailed his hands over Connice's nakedness.
He bent over and kissed each pink nipple. She went on breathing deeply between her parted lips.
He gazed at her a moment, feeling sadness and excitement and something else, all at the same time, all directed toward the nude girl on that bed.
Then he turned quickly, and got out of there.