A taste for sin, p.8
A Taste for Sin, page 8
“Eight-thirty.”
A librarian was coming down through the stacks. Felice pushed against me with her hips, then slipped around the other side of the shelves, and left. I finally went out walking sideways like a crab, wanting to back out with my humps. I got clear, went to the car, put the books on the floor, and drove to the store.
It was then I began to think of Felice out running around town, writing checks, and having herself a time.
It could go to her head.
I sat in the car a minute and checked the book How To Make Keys. I knew I had to get some plasticene and maybe some paraffin wax.
During lunch, I went through the book on Astrology, picked up a few things, and in a little while, I got hold of Roy Taft and gave him the business. I shot Ephemerises and Tables of Houses and tines and Greenwich mean time, and sidereal time and zodiacs at him, and told him I wanted to do his horoscope. “A hobby of mine,” I said. “You know how hobbies are. Where were you born? I’ll need the date, too.”
Roy Taft was born July eighth, nineteen-twenty-nine, in Spokane, Washington. His mother was born there, but his father was born in Shreveport, Louisiana. I gave him a lot of stuff about how he was moody, because he was Cancer, and that if he’d curb his temper he could charm the pants off any girl, and that he and John D. Rockefeller were born on the same day, and that he had great talent, maybe music. “Maybe you’ll even write a play, or something. Or act in one. You’ve revealed a little of it through that inventive mind of yours,” I said, thinking of his conveyor belt. “Your birthstone’s a red ruby. Ought to wear one, a ring, it’ll bring you luck. Your flower’s Larkspur.”
“What the hell’s Larkspur?”
I explained it would take a month or so to work his horoscope out, especially since he didn’t know the hour and
minute of his birth. “Not easy, this horoscoping.” He didn’t know the half of it.
I got off work a half hour early. Webster seemed to understand I was still under the weather. As soon as I got home, I took pen and paper and wrote a letter to The Office of The County Clerk, Spokane, Washington. I asked for a copy of my birth certificate, gave my birthdate, July 8th, 1929, and my present address, 242 Old River Road, Riverport, New York and signed it Roy Taft.
I went out and mailed it, air mail, then drove downtown. I bought a copy of a horoscope magazine for July; the book was fine but too much trouble to read through. If Roy Taft forced the issue, I’d copy his horoscope out of the magazine.
I went to the Post Office, wrote out money orders, and sent fifty dollars to each of the three loan companies I owed, one car payment to the bank and apologized for getting behind in a note.
Then I drove home, and waited till I saw Tom Fisher, a bubbling, red-faced jolly type who really was a natural born rat and I paid him all the back rent. This left me with a hundred and fifty dollars from the nine hundred. But since Felice had the bank account now, it didn’t matter. I wanted my finances as straight as I could get them.
I had to get fifteen hundred dollars from her, right away, so I could move fast. She’d have to get that in the morning.
I had two hours before I saw her. I went through the book
How To Make Keys, and this bird Gourmont really knew his business.
Then I drove downtown again. At one place I bought some plasticene modeling clay; at another I bought paraffin wax. Back home I worked a gob of each in my hands till they were soft, but not too soft. Then I wrapped each in a wash cloth, put them in my pockets so they’d stay fairly warm, and soft.
I drove over and parked across the block where I had that first night, behind Felice’s place. I’d just reached for the door handle to get out of the car when a white 190-SL whisked past. It was Sy Krueger at the wheel. It stunned me. I felt sure it wasn’t his car. Probably that drunk blonde’s. I didn’t think he’d seen me.
But what the hell was he doing around here?
Then I thought, Cut it out. He can ride down the street, can’t he?
Sure. But this street One block over. I had to forget it, somehow I sat there for a minute, smoked a cigarette, then got out and went through the vacant lot into her back yard. The lot was really dark, and I moved quietly I came through the hedge.
“Jim.”
She was waiting by the garage.
“I’m emptying the garbage,” she said. “There’s no time for anything. He won’t even speak to me. He acts funny.”
“You got the key?”
She had it. It was one of an enormous bunch. I unhooked it off the ring and while she clanked the garbage can lid, I forced the key into the clay and the wax. I did it four times, both sides. I carefully held the wax and plastic clay. Then I
told her about seeing Krueger.
“You be sure,” I said. “Don’t even let him talk to you. Laugh in his face…”
“He called me on the phone, Jim.”
“What?”
“Yes. He’s not working for Solengren any more. He was trying to be nice, you know?”
“What else?”
“That’s all. I told him I was busy, and hung up. I’ve got to get back to the house. He’ll be out here.”
She looked lovely. She wore a white terry cloth robe, and carried the small kitchen garbage pail. I was putting the key back on the ring.
“I’ve got to fly to Newark, first thing in the morning,” I said. “I want you to take out fifteen hundred dollars from the account.”
“But why?”
“I’m going to establish us. Rent a house down there, buy furniture and ship it to Riverport.”
“But, Jim—why all this? For God’s sake!”
“Because—I’m trying to disperse things and make everything absolutely reasonable. It’s got to look perfect. Just in case. I’ve got it worked out, don’t you worry.”
“But, Jim—”
“Now, the fifteen hundred, Felice…”
“That’s what he’s going mad about, in there. I drew two thousand from the bank this afternoon. I told him I just wanted to hold it.” She giggled.
“Can you get it to me? I’ll wait here by the hedge. And afterward, make him think you still have it”
“I’ll get it.”
“Something else,” I said, my mind working like crazy. “Did you think of a woman? We’ve got to get you a birth certificate.”
“Yes,” she said. “I got one. But, Jim—” She gave a shrug. “I guess you know what you’re doing. Her name is Gertrude
Bingham, and she was born in…”
The back door of the house opened, and George Anderson stood there. “Doll? Doll? Where are you?”
I dove flat by the hedge, holding the wax and clay carefully. The keys fell with a clank.
“Be right in, hon,” she called. “Getting a breath of air.” Her voice was a little shrill, but it was okay.
“Well, hurry up, Doll. I want to speak with you.”
He went back inside.
“I’ve got to go,” she said nervously.
I hunkered by the hedge. “It may be that money. He may want it back. You’ve got to get it out to me—somehow. And, this Gertrude Bingham. I want to know where and when she was born, day, month, year—also where her mother and father were born. It’ll probably be on the birth certificate, but I can’t take chances. So, listen, call her—pretend you’re interested in astrology. Ask her…”
‘That’s Gert’s hobby,” Felice said. “Astrology.” For a minute I couldn’t think.
“Okay,” I said. “Make believe you want to learn. Get the information and get it out to me with the money.”
“Jesus, Jim!”
“I know—you want that million dollars, don’t you?”
“I’ll get it. You wait.” She leaned down and kissed me and ran for the house.
I began to get a headache.
Fourteen…
I waited by the hedge, cramped.
It was like standing on a cliff with a strong wind blowing. I waited twenty minutes. Then I knew she couldn’t make it. It was too much to ask. Especially with him in there. I decided to leave. Then I saw the back door inch open very carefully. A hand came out and something sailed through the air and the door closed.
Whatever it was landed in the middle of the back yard.
I juggled the hunks of clay and paraffin, went over through the vacant lot. Crickets chirped.
In the car, I laid down the clay and paraffin very gently on the seat. What I’d picked up on the lawn was a wad of currency wrapped in a strip of pink toilet paper, tied with a rubber band and weighted with a tube of toothpaste.
I drove home and went to my room with this stuff.
She’d written on the pink toilet paper with an eyebrow pencil. “In bathroom.” The writing was faint and the paper had torn here and there. “George mad. Gert Bingham. Br. Dec. 24,1938, Charleston, S. C, Mth. and Fth. N. Y. C. $1500.
Kiss. Kiss. Kiss!”
I flushed the paper down the toilet put the paraffin and clay in the refrigerator, phoned the airport and made a reservation. I could catch a plane to Newark in half an hour. I tossed some stuff into a small zipper traveling bag, along with How To Make Keys, drove to the airport and managed to catch the plane.
Forty minutes later I was in Newark. I had taken out insurance in the name of Roy Taft, and Mrs. Gertrude Taft would get the loot in Riverport if the plane goofed.
In Newark, I rented an unfurnished house, and explained to the landlord that the rental had to be on a month to month basis, because my job was erratic. We might have to move at a moment’s notice. That was all right with him, he’d get the extra dough if my wife and I shoved off.
In a hotel room, I collapsed, then forced myself to stay awake half the night studying How To Make Keys.
First thing in the morning, I called Webster at his home, station to station and told him I was in Davenport, Iowa, and that my mother was dying. “I can’t say exactly how long I’ll be, Ned. I’m sorry. You know how it is. She’s failing rapidly.”
He was very sorry, but he said, “Your vacation’s coming up, you know? If you want..”
“Oh, no. I’m saving that. I want it. I get two weeks. I’ll only be a couple days here.” What could he do? My mother.
I found a second hand furniture store and bought a flock of stuff; couch, chairs, double bed, dresser, bureau, cocktail table, bookcase, a mess of old books, two rugs, some marvelous old framed prints of cows in a field, the one with the wolf on the snowbank, a herd of wild horses chased by an Indian, and a ship in the sunset with a squashed roach under the glass. I bought a box of tarnished silverware and some dishes. Then I called a moving outfit, refusing delivery by the store itself, and had them pick up the stuff at the store and deliver it to the house. Then when that was taken care of, I called another moving company and had them pick up the stuff for delivery to Riverport, the Old River Road address. I gave them my name, Roy Taft
By now I was beginning to go a little crazy.
Then I went to the Newark landlord and explained about the mix-up. A call had just come through from the front office and I had to leave town. A real mess. I argued about the rent money, then let him have it, to make it look good.
I’d had to buy used furniture; new furniture wouldn’t do. I couldn’t buy stuff at Riverport. I’d already said we were from Newark. Things had to look normal, and they were going to. Even at the cost of my sanity. I couldn’t just ship the junk straight through by van from the second hand store. There was the possibility of word of a screwy guy named Taft in Newark when the van reached Riverport. Every item had to be covered. Besides, there’d be another use for the Newark address.
The moving outfit agreed to put the furniture in their warehouse in Riverport and deliver it to my home at Old River Road on the afternoon of the eighteenth. This gave me six days. It gave Felice six days.
I took a bus to Trenton, and went directly to the Motor Vehicle Bureau. I talked them into letting me take the written and driving tests for a driver’s license, and managed to get it the same day. “I’ve got to have a car and be on the road in
two hours,” I told them, “or I lose a terrific job.”
“How come you don’t have a driver’s license?”
“I just got out of the army.”
They said it was understandable and that it happened. I gave them my Newark address for the license, and signed it Roy Taft.
Then I went out and bought a white fifty-five Buick for six hundred dollars. In a half an hour, I was on the road, headed up-state.
It had been hectic. But with every mile, I was closer to Felice—my Spanish bomb.
I was dizzy with all I had to do. And there were still maybe 700,000 items on the list so I could make it equal the million so I could get the million. Because that’s how it seemed to work; one item accomplished, one dollar made toward that load in the cash vault. Every time I’d think I had it ironed out in my head, I’d see one more flaw to be taken care of. It always meant two or three more items on the list.
They say Crime doesn’t pay. Well, the catch is you’ve got to work harder to really make it with crime than you ever worked at anything else in your life.
And you work under near impossible strain.
It was about forty miles to Newark. I went right on through, thinking, My old home town, yes, sir! I stopped in Rockland County, at Nyack, and went to the Post Office and wrote a letter to the County Clerk, Charleston, South Carolina, asking for Gertrude Bingham’s birth certificate. I asked to have it sent to Riverport immediately, airmail, and enclosed five dollars and many thanks. Then I drove like a madman.
There was an irresistible pull, a regular yank. It was that bad. I had to get back, and fast.
At Syracuse, I consulted How To Make Keys, and bought several different files, a small vise, a pair of cutting pliers at one place, and some graph paper at another, and stiff cardboard and scissors at still another. Then I picked up some various sized key blanks, the closest I could come to the bank key of George’s. I was certain one of them would be right I bought two of each for goofing privileges. I bought a thing they use for tracing on metal, and two different pens filled with two different grades and colors of ink. I filled out the identity cards in the wallets I’d bought Sunday. Roy Taft etc., and Gertrude Bingham, with a Hackettstown address and crossed that out with the other pen and wrote Gertrude Taft, with the Riverport address. I put some bills in the wallets and sat on Felice’s the rest of the way to Allayne. Somewhere along the road, I threw the pens out the car window.
James Nightmare Monomaniac Phalen.
Or maybe just maniac?
I drove to Bridgedale, utterly exhausted now. I bought garage space for the Buick, caught a bus to Allayne, called a cab and went to the airport, picked up the Chev and drove home.
I was absolutely shot
Yet all I could think of was Felice. I wanted to rest. I had to rest But I wanted to see her. The compulsion was malignant. It devoured my insides. Nothing could stop the gnawing and chewing in there, unless I saw her, and I couldn’t see her. I parked the Chev and started up the stairs to my room.
“Jim?”
It was Gloria Fisher at the foot of the stairs, arm waving, poking, red-lipped and crocked.
“Jim. Somebody’s been calling you all afternoon. A woman.
She left a number for you to call. It seems to be very urgent.”
I stood there with all that stuff in my hands; paper bags with key blanks, files, cutting tools, the vise, and the zipper bag with socks and a shirt and How To Make Keys.
“What name’d she give?”
“Mary Thornbush.”
“Thanks Gloria.”
“Okay, honey. Hope it’s nothing serious.”
“It’s my sister,” I said, “passing through. Hope I don’t miss her.” I thought of something. “Better give me the number she left.”
She gave it to me scrawled on a book of paper matches. It wasn’t Felice’s number.
I got upstairs fast, tossed the stuff on the bed, and dialed. “Jim?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been standing here three hours.”
“Where?”
“A pay station—a booth.” She seemed kind of wild. “You’ve got to meet me. Right now. Something’s happened.”
“Where are you?”
She told me. It was on the edge of town. “There’s a bar. I’ve been going in and out, waiting. It’s only luck you called just now. I came out, for a walk. Not many people in the bar…”
“What’s up?”
“Not over the phone. I’ll just tell you, it’s Krueger.”
She hung up. I put all the stuff I’d bought under the mattress and drove cross-town.
Krueger.
Fifteen…
She looked ready to crack up.
“He called me right on the phone last night, with George in the room. Sy Krueger. He laughed at me. I hung up and told George it was the wrong number. He called right back. He said he knew everything—everything.”
“Take it easy,” I said, trying not to look scared. “He can’t possibly know anything.”
We were by this phone booth. She had on a white skirt, a thin white sweater, and white pumps. She was mad and frightened at the same time, and the waiting had told on her. There was night all around us.
“No?” she said. “He can’t know anything? You think not?”
“Will you please take it easy, Felice?” I was going to pieces myself, inside. But it couldn’t be real.
“…one!” she said, counting it off on her fingers. “He told me you were flying to Newark. He said the car was parked out at the airport. Two! He knows you were going to rent a house in Newark and buy furniture to ship to Riverport. Three! He knows it was to establish us. Four! He knew I drew two thousand dollars out of the bank and that I was going to give you fifteen hundred. Five! He knows we’re getting false birth certificates and mine’ll be under the name Gertrude Bingham.
