I opened my mouth to tell him the reason she’d gone there, but decided that any reason that I knew before he did could only make things worse. I clammed, watched the gun, and waited. He went on, almost sobbing, to tell the ride he had taken, “for hours, through a drizzling rain, to Annapolis. To Solomons. To La Plata. Any place, to try and deaden the torture in my heart. No use. No use. No use!”
By now he didn’t even try to hide the tears in his eyes, but reached around with his left to his right-hand hip pocket, got his handkerchief out, and wiped them off. Then he told of how he’d come home, and then in the morning had kept his promise. He said: “I went to the bank, got the confession out, and came with it here, to give you. I called, but you weren’t around, and I went to my desk for an envelope, so I could leave it, in your room some place, where you’d be sure to find it. And there, in my desk drawer, looking at me, was this gun. Duke, do you know whose it is?”
I had the shivers so bad, from realizing that all this must have been while she and I were out back, holding hands in her car, that I was a little late when I said: “...My gun, I imagine.”
“Your gun, Duke, that Officer Daniel took off you, the gun I made him give me, with the confession you’d given, that morning down in Marlboro, to assure you complete protection. That gun, this gun, looked up to mock me.”
“Mr. Val, I don’t get the point.”
“It told me, this forty-five did, what one man had done. One gallant man, I thought. A thing beyond me, as I haven’t the strength. But the gun would give me strength. With it I could do what in my heart I knew I must. I sat down. I thought it out. I tore your signature off the confession. I enclosed it in an envelope, put it in the drawer. I took the gun out. I drove to Cheverly. I lost my nerve. I drove to Marlboro, to Glen Burnie, all over, as I had during the night. I drove to Cheverly again.”
He stopped, sobbed, stared at the gun, went in kind of a trance. I asked him: “Have you killed Lippert?”
“No, thank God, no.”
He seemed to shrivel as he sat there, pitying himself for “being inspired by a god, a god who turned into a rat — by you, Duke, that’s the horror of it.” Little as I pitied him, and bad as he had me scared, I caught something in his eyes just the same, that I knew most men never feel, of torture, at being fooled, at having his power mocked, that for a second or two changed him from a bedbug into a guy, and a terrific guy at that. But then all that was gone, when he began working me over, all he had done to help me: “—for your own good, Duke. Just to help you go straight. Out of the goodness of my heart.”
“You sure got a heart and a half.”
He jumped up, ran around the table, chocked the gun in my ribs, and said apologize. I clipped him, bouncing him off the table, so it rocked around on the rug. But it was just an uppercut, pulled up from a sitting position, and he didn’t really go out. Quick as I jumped for the gun, he was quicker with his roll, so he fetched up against the wall, the gun still leveled at me. He screamed back up and I backed, but had gained a little at that. If plugging me was the idea, why hadn’t he already done it? He had to have more on his mind, and I could risk one pitch to uncover it. I said: “You didn’t kill Lippert, then. If not, why not?”
“He had a better idea.”
That wasn’t so good, and when he told me sit down, I went back to my place. He started straightening table, ashtray, and rug, and I said: “Take your time, bus boy, do it right.”
“So, you’ve been talking to Bill!”
“Who has your number, I’d say.”
“That worthless, good-for-nothing drunk, who couldn’t even keep up with the mortgage till I stepped in at the bank. Calling me a bus boy, a bedbug—”
“But if you are a bedbug—”
For one awful second I thought I’d overshot it and would hear the better idea somewhere in kingdom come. I shut up and did it quick, and he sat down on the sofa again and wiped his tears again, but not until he’d finished at the table, being a bus boy until the last thing was in place. He said: “He begged me, Lippert did, on his knees with his hands up, on his bed, soon as he saw me. I went in without knocking, ready to shoot six bodyguards if it was necessary, to do what I had to do, which was — shoot him. He knew from my eye what I meant, and wailed like a puppy-dog: ‘Please, Mr. Val, no! You’ve got the wrong man, I swear!’”
He said he hadn’t believed Lippert, even a little bit, but wanted to watch his eyes before he died, and told him, “about Dan Sickles, what he had done, what the jury had done, and the rest — which he said didn’t apply.”
I said: “Who is Dan Sickles, by the way?”
“Duke, Washingtonians know.”
“However, I’m from Nevada.”
“Sickles married a wife. The wife took a lover. Sickles shot him dead, and the jury acquitted Sickles, fast. I wanted Lippert to know it would do the same for me.”
He sobbed, went on: “But Lippert kept wailing: ‘It’s another guy, Mr. Val — she was over here, begging me here in this room, that I should spare his life.’ And that I couldn’t laugh off, as I knew she had been there, because I’d seen her car myself. And yet I still didn’t believe him when he said the guy was you, Duke, that he’d been brought there just to be hit, that she’d even admitted as much. But then, Duke, he said: ‘I’ve placed him at last, Mr. Val, that hired man of yours. He was king of the sparring partners. He trained all the champs, out west. He was the guy who could get the weight off!’”
Once Lippert had told him that, we were into the last round, and I did no more pretending, but sat there and waited. He balanced the gun on his knee, wiped his eyes some more, drew some deep breaths, and then, in a quiet conversational way, went on: “Duke, it was interesting, my talk with Lippert. Once I realized, and he knew I realized, that he was telling the truth, he gave it to me quick, the talks he’d had with her, kidding along on the phone, the cock-and-bull story she’d told, about the uppity hired man, the real purpose he had which was getting the Ladyship account. That all corresponded, right down to a T, with what I already knew, and there was nothing I could say. But mainly he talked about Sickles, refreshing my recollections on angles I had forgotten — fascinating angles that put the whole matter in a totally different light.”
“May I ask what those angles were?”
“I’ll tell you, Duke, in due time.”
“I’d like to say one thing.”
“Feel free, Duke. Please.”
“It may be true I’m in love with your wife. It may be true I helped save her from a fate, from a death you were fattening her for. It’s not true we’ve done anything we shouldn’t.”
“That’s a lie, you have.”
He began screaming, that he’d trusted her, trusted me, “and all that time, every day, she was out there in your bed — your bed, oh God, your BED!”
“How can you say such a thing?”
“Because she hasn’t been in mine — not since you came here, not once. She was sick, she was cut up by barbwire, she was this, she was that, and, fool that I was, I believed her!”
By then I could hear Jordan roll, and yet, as I sat there, my heart gave one little bump, after those insane nights I had spent, knowing she was in here with him, to find out now she’d been true to me all along. He must have known how it changed the score, because he sat for some seconds staring, trying to look at me and not being able to. Then he told me move to the sofa, put my hands on the table, and keep my back to the phone. I did as he said, heard him pick up the receiver and dial. He asked for Bill’s number, and when a voice answered, I began to feel sick, because I knew it was Holly. He talked along very friendly, and I could tell, from what was being said, she was alone in Bill’s house. When he found that out, he said she could come on up, that I was all ready to go, with the confession burned and everything, but wanted to tell her good-by. From her voice I knew she was worried, and after what she had said, at the water tank that morning, about the fear she had for me, and what she would do about it, I knew if he kept at it there could be only one answer. Sure enough, after a break while she thought it over, I heard her tell him: “All right,” and he was excited when he hung up.