“Oh?”
“She wanted an abortion.”
You look at him coolly. “I resent the implication.”
“I don’t care what you resent. I want to know where the girl is.”
“And I have no idea. Look around. Satisfy yourself.”
You are neither a help nor a hindrance as he goes through the apartment. Finally, he has completed the circuit, returned to the front door. There is frustration in his eyes.
“You’re the same Ralph Bradley,” he says, “who was involved in the recent dope traffic scandal.”
“Yes,” you say, “and my defense bankrupted me, ruined my reputation, and ended my career.”
“I suspect you have a new career, doctor. Illegal medicine.”
“Perhaps you suspect,” you say, “because I am convenient, easy to suspect. Because you haven’t the imagination or mental acuity to find out what happened to the girl. Maybe she decided to simply run away.”
Then you close the door in his face. His suspicions constitute no threat — so long as he doesn’t have proof.
And therein, Bradley thought as he scrubbed his hands at the screened basin, lies the biggest if that has arisen in my entire life. The proof lies dead on the table. The final scene will not go at all as I have imagined it — unless I get rid of the proof.
A husky, almost handsome man, Bradley emerged from behind the screen, his eyes sweeping the crumpled sheet he had tossed over the girl.
You are no small item to be rid of, he thought. Not a fingerprint that may be wiped away, or an incriminating note that can be burned. A thin sheen of sweat broke suddenly on his squarish, heavy face.
Don’t consider failure and its consequences, he told himself. He struggled for an iron control over his emotions. He succeeded partially. But he remained too acutely aware of the danger he was in for comfort. His apartment occupied a second floor. The building teemed with people, and outside lay the immensity of the city — thousands of more people.
In his present circumstances, he hadn’t even a car left. If he managed to sneak the body out of the building, he would be no better off. One doesn’t travel far with the body of a dead girl over one’s shoulder.
He crossed to the wooden chair where the girl had draped her things. Her purse lay on top of the folded skirt.
Opening the purse, he began rummaging in it. It yielded a few loose bobby pins, a crumpled package of cigarettes, a compact, a slip of paper with his name on it.
He paused long enough to stare at the paper. Then he crushed it in a small, tight wad and dropped it in his pocket, hating the girl intensely.
In the bottom of the purse lay a single key and another slip of paper. His spirits lifted. The paper was a scrawled receipt for a month’s rent on apartment 214, 37 Dixon Street.
He stuffed the key and receipt in his pocket and turned again toward the girl. He reflected for a moment. Then he crossed the room, opened the closet door, returned to the girl, and carried her to the cubicle.
Back at the table, he stripped off the rubber under sheet, gathered up the blood-stained sponges, pads, and over-sheeting. He added her purse to the wad, rolling the whole tightly in the rubber sheeting. He tucked the bundle into the closet beside the girl, and then he locked the closet door.
It was a wholly unsatisfactory hiding place, but it would have to do for the moment.
Bradley lingered outside the Dixon street address as a couple emerged and strolled down the sidewalk. When the man and woman turned the corner, he gave the house a second look. It was an old brownstone, barely respectable, but not a slum.
When he decided to move, he did so quickly, entering the vestibule and going rapidly up the stairs, the worn carpeting and heavy padding muffling his footsteps.
The second floor hall was quiet. He stopped at the door of 214, placed his ear against the panel. He heard no sound in the apartment.
He had the key in his hand. He inserted it in the lock. A bit of the metallic taste left the edges of his teeth. The key fitted.
With the door closed behind him, the apartment was close, hot, and dark. The early evening glare of the city outlined the windows. He picked his way to them and pulled the blinds. Then he struck a match.
On a nearby table was an old-fashioned lamp with a fringed shade. He risked clicking it on.
The wan glow of the lamp revealed the shabbily furnished bed-sitting room of a cramped apartment. A worn plush sofa, club chair, and a TV set on a circular table occupied most of the room. Double doors in the inner walls marked a pair of pushed-up Murphy beds.
The place was barren, almost as if no one lived here.
Bradley looked about quickly. A narrow hallway opened off the sitting room. At the farther end of the hallway was a small kitchen. A cursory examination was all he needed to determine that he’d find nothing useful here. The ancient gas stove, refrigerator, and dinette set had been wiped clean. Dishes and pots were washed and stacked in the over-the-sink cabinet. Nothing more personal here than in the living room.
He returned to the hallway, opening doors as he went He discovered a linen closet, an outsized old bathroom, and then a dressing room.
That uncomfortable cold-hot sweat had returned. He did his best to ignore it as he turned on the overhead light and gave his attention to the dressing room.
Covering the far end of the small room was a faded chintz curtain. He jerked it aside and saw that it comprised a wardrobe of sorts for dresses, coats, shoes.
He let the curtain drop and turning, moved to the chest of drawers. It held blouses, folded underthings, and a dozen cellophane-wrapped inexpensive nylon stockings.
Only the dressing table remained to be examined, and Bradley moved to it without real hope. The table was covered with jars, bottles, and boxes of cosmetics — a wide assortment, it seemed, for one girl. Perhaps her loneliness had given rise to a hunger for cosmetics, a way to change herself, as if she could hide momentarily from what she knew herself to be.
The second small drawer he opened in the table contained writing materials, and a couple of cheap ballpoint pens that had been tossed in carelessly. He reached out and tumbled the stuff in the drawer. There were a few bills but no letters.
Then as he was about to close the drawer, he noticed a folded sheet of paper with the imprint of writing showing through. When he opened the paper, an alertness began to rise in him. The note was terse and to the point:
Dear Louse,
I’ve decided not to carry out my threat. I know I couldn’t win, with all that money and connections stacked against me. I could ruin you, but you’re not worth it. Especially since I’d ruin myself in the bargain and mess up any chance I might have with a decent guy in the future.
After that last scene with you, I know exactly how I stand. And not only me, but this condition that’s going to turn into a baby, if given time. You don’t want it. You won’t claim it. And I don’t see how I can give it any kind of chance.
It isn’t a baby yet. It’s not anything — not yet. That’s the way I’ve got it figured out, and the best thing I can see is to wipe the slate clean, forget you exist, and start out fresh with a few less stars in my eyes.
I just wanted you to know the thing isn’t getting me down, not a bit. Who is Darrell Caraway? A worm, that’s all. Just a worm.
With all bad wishes.
Bradley recognized the heartbreak and tragedy that lay unspoken in the letter, behind the letter. He experienced no feeling of sympathy or compassion. Such feelings had never found much of a welcome in him, and at this moment his own danger overshadowed everything else.