The taxi took Diamond there now. Sixty-seven Dove Street.
Diamond got out of the taxi. It was a quarter to five in the morning. The taxi drove off. The street was silent. Not a light showed in the rooming house. He unlocked the front door with a key, and went inside. The door closed behind him. The street was silent again. We waited. On the second floor of the rooming house, a light came on.
"Do you think the wife is already here?" Dominique asked.
"He told her to stay at the club."
"What will you do if she's there with him?"
"I don't know," I said.
"You will have to kill her, too, no?"
"First let me get in the building, okay?"
"No, I want to know."
"What is it you want to know?"
"What you will do if she is there with him."
"I'll see."
"Well, I think you will have to kill her, no?" "Dominique, there is killing and there is killing." "Yes, I know that. But if you go in there, you must be prepared to do what must be done. Otherwise, his people will come after us again and again. You know that." "Yes. I know that." "We will have to keep running." "I know."
"So if the woman is there with him, you will have to kill her too. That is only logical, Richard. You cannot leave her alive to identify you." I nodded.
"If she is there, you must kill them both, it is as simple as that. If you love me."
"I do love you."
"And I love you," she said.
The light on the second floor went out.
"Bonne chance," she said, and kissed me on the mouth.
I left her sitting behind the wheel of the car, its engine running.
I tried the front door of the rooming house.
Locked.
I leaned hard on the door. The lock seemed almost ready to give. I backed away, lifted my left leg, and kicked at the door flat-footed, just above the knob. The lock snapped, the door sprang inward.
Silently, I climbed the steps to the second floor. Mrs. Wood had innocently told me that Diamond and his wife were staying in the room on the right of the stairway. "Such a quiet couple," she'd said. The steps creaked under me as I went up. A night-light was burning on the second floor. Almost too dim to see by. A shabby carpet underfoot. I turned to the right. The door to Diamond's room was at the end of the hall. I took a gun from each pocket of my overcoat. I had loaded both pistols with soft-nosed bullets. Dum-dums. If I was going to do this, it had to be done right.
I tried the doorknob.
The door was unlocked.
I eased it open.
The room was dark except for the faintest glow of daybreak beyond the drawn window shade. I could hear Diamond's shallow breathing across the room. A leather traveling bag was on the floor. His chinchilla coat lay beside it. So did his hat. His trousers were folded over the back of a chair. I went to the bed. I looked down at him. He was sleeping with his mouth open. He stank of booze. My hands were trembling.
My first bullet went into the wall.
The next one went into the floor.
I finally shot Diamond in the head three times.
I came tearing down the steps. The front door was still ajar. I ran out into a cold gray dawn. A man coming out of the building next door saw me racing across the street to where Dominique was standing outside the car on the passenger side, the engine idling, the exhaust throwing up gray clouds on the gray dawn.
"Was she there?" she asked. "No," I said. "Did you kill him?" "Yes." "Good."
Across the street the man was staring at us. We got into the car and began driving north. I was behind the wheel now. Dominique was wiping the guns. Just in case. Wiping, wiping with a white silk handkerchief, polishing those gun butts and barrels in the event that somehow, in spite of the gloves, I'd left fingerprints on them. As we approached St. Paul 's Church, a mile and a half from Dove Street, I slowed the car. Dominique rolled down the window on her side, and threw out one of the guns, wrapped in the silk handkerchief. Five minutes later, she tossed out the second gun, wrapped in another handkerchief. We sped through dawn. In Saugerties, a uniformed policeman looked up in surprise as we raced through the deserted main street of the town. We were free again. But not because I'd killed Legs Diamond.
"What do you mean?" I asked Vinnie on the phone. "It's okay," he said. "Somebody talked to the goons who scared your grandmother."
"What do you mean? Who? Talked to them about what?"
"About you and Dom."
"Who did?"
"Mickey Tataglia. He went to see them and convinced them you're not worth bothering with."
"But Diamond is dead. Why would they…?"
"Yeah, somebody killed him, what a pity."
"So why would they be willing to forget…?"
"Well, I think some money changed hands."
"How much money?"
"I don't know how much."
"You do know, Vinnie."
"I think maybe five thousand."
"Where'd the money come from?"
"I don't know."
"Whose money was it, Vinnie?"
The line went silent.
"Vinnie?"
More silence.
"Vinnie, was it Grandma's money? The money she's been saving for another shop?"
"I don't think it was her money. Let's just say somebody gave Mickey the money and he gave it to the goons, and you don't have to worry about anything anymore. Come on home."
"Who gave Mickey the money?"
"I have no idea. Come on home."
"Whoever's money it was, Vinnie… tell him I'll pay it all back one day."
"I'll tell him. Now come home, you and Dom."
"Vinnie?" I said. "Thank you very much."
"Come on, for what?" he said, and hung up.
When I told Dominique about the phone conversation, she said, "So you killed him for nothing."
I should have picked up on the word you.
But, after all, she hadn't killed anyone, had she? "I killed him because I love you," I said. "Alors, merci beaucoup," she said. "But money would have done it just as well, eh?"
A week after we got back to the city, Dominique told me that what we'd enjoyed together on the way to Chattanooga had been very nice, bien sûr, but she could never live with a man who had done murder, eh? However noble the cause. En tout cas, it was time she went back to Paris to make her home again in the land she loved.
"Tu comprends, mon chéri?" she said.
No, I wanted to say, I don't understand.
I thought we loved each other, I wanted to say.
That night on the train…
I thought it would last forever, you know?
I thought Legs Diamond would be our costar forever. We would run from him through all eternity, locked in embrace as he pursued us relentlessly and in vain. We would marry and we would have children and I would become rich and famous and Dominique would stay young and beautiful forever and our love would remain steadfast and true-but only because we would forever be running from Legs. That would be the steadily unifying force in our lives. Running from Legs.
We kissed good-bye.
We promised to stay in touch.
I never heard from her again.
At the Paradise Motel, Sparks, Nevada by JOYCE CAROL OATES
How many of you pigs. Emissaries of Satan. Adulterers in your hearts and fornicators. How many rapists and despoilers of the innocent, how many creatures groveling in lust. How many of you deserving of God's wrath "Starr Bright" might have killed had 7 not been run to earth before my time 7 cannot know for such knowledge is not given to us in the wisdom of the Lord God. Amen.