Then he lifted his glass in a gesture of toast. “But it’s possible to find an antidote for our failure, you see. Sometimes it may take a certain ruthlessness, of course — a willingness to suspend the stupid values we were brought up on. So-called civilized principles are the enemies of any true individualist — you have to learn that or you’re doomed to be a loser for all time. The kings and robber barons we’ve honored throughout history — none of them was the kind to let himself be pushed around by the imbecilic bureaucratic whims of college deans or tenure systems.”
“Establishments and institutions and laws are designed by winners to keep losers in their place, that’s all. You’re only free when you learn there’s no reason to play the game by their rules. Hell, duckie, the fun of life only comes when you discover how to make your own rules and laugh at the fools around you. Look — consider your own situation. Is there any single living soul right now who truly gives a damn whether you, Brenda Briggs, are alive or dead?”
Put that starkly it made her gape. Eric leaned forward, brandishing his glass as if it were a searchlight aimed at her face. “Well?”
“No. Nobody,” she murmured reluctantly.
“There you are, then.” He seemed to relax; he leaned back. “There’s not a soul you need to please or impress or support, right? If you went right up Front Street here and walked into the Bank of Hawaii and robbed the place of a fortune and got killed making your escape, you’d be hurting no one but yourself. Am I right, duckie?”
“I suppose so.”
“Then why not give it a try?”
“Give what a try?”
“Robbing a bank. Kidnaping a rich infant. Hijacking a yacht. Stealing a million in diamonds. Whatever you feel like, duckie — whatever appeals to you. Why not? What have you got to lose?”
She twisted her mouth into an uneven smile. “You remind me of the sophomoric sophistry we used to spout when we were undergraduates. Existentialism and nihilism galore.” She put her glass down. “Well, I guess not, Eric. I don’t think I’ll start robbing banks just yet.”
“And why not?”
“Maybe I’m just not gaited that way.”
“Morality? Is that it? What’s morality ever done for you?”
She steadied herself with a hand against the workbench, set her feet with care, and turned toward the door. “It’s a drink too late for morbid philosophical dialectics. Thanks for the booze, though. I’ll see you…”
“You’d better sit down, duckie. You’re a little unsteady there.”
“No, I —”
“Sit down.” The words came out in a harsher voice. “The door’s locked anyway, duckie — you’re not going anywhere.”
She scowled, befuddled. “What?”
He showed her the key; then he put it away in his pocket. She looked blankly at the door, the keyhole, and — again — his face. It had gone hard; the polite mask was gone.
“I wish you’d taken the bait,” he said. “Around here all they ever talk about is sunsets and surfing and the size of the marlin some fool caught. At least you’ve got a bigger vocabulary than that. I really wish you’d jumped at it, duckie. It would have made things easier. But you didn’t, so that’s that.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
She stumbled to the door then — and heard Eric’s quiet laughter when she tried the knob.
She put her back to the door. Her head swam. “I don’t understand…”
“It’s the ivory, duckie. The best material is fresh human bone. The consistency, the hardness — it takes a fine polish if it’s young and healthy enough…”
She stared at him and the understanding seeped into her slowly and she said, “That’s where the wino went.”
“Well, I have to pick and choose, don’t I? I mean, I can’t very well use people whose absence would be noticed.”
She flattened herself against the door. She was beginning to pass out; she tried to fight it but she couldn’t; in the distance, fading, she heard Eric say, “You’ll make fine bones, duckie. Absolutely first-rate scrimshaw.”
THE CHALK OUTLINE
“The Chalk Outline” was a visceral response to an accident that involved a friend. The story is an attempt to restate and clarify a point I tried to make in DEATH WISH. I probably would not write the same story today because it seems too much of an endorsement of the character’s behavior; it does not show the distinction between attractive fantasy and destructive reality.
She wasn’t even hurrying.
She turned the corner, driving sedately, and without warning the Murdochs’ new puppy squirted into the lane like a seed popping from a squeezed lemon. Carolyn braked and turned, avoiding it, and that was when the little Murdoch girl, chasing the puppy, grenaded out from behind the hedge and it just wasn’t possible to stop in time.
The lawyer’s name was Charles Berlin. He had represented her in the divorce. He was the only attorney she’d ever dealt with. “This isn’t my usual kind of case,” he told her. “If you’d feel more comfortable with a criminal lawyer…?”
“Criminal?” She hadn’t thought of it like that.
“Manslaughter’s a crime,” he said gently.
It took her a moment to absorb what he was saying. Her mind hadn’t been tracking very well since it happened. “I’m sorry,” she said, and shook her head as if to clear it.
“Don’t get into the habit of saying that all the time,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s about the tenth time you’ve said ‘I’m sorry’ since you walked in here.”
“I’m sor —” Then she nearly laughed.
He smiled at her. “That’s better.”
He was a kind man; she’d appreciated that in him two years ago — he’d handled the divorce with grace and without abrasiveness. She tried to compose herself by sitting up straighter and tossing her hair back and glancing around the office as if to get her bearings. The room was like Charles’s person — ordinary, matter-of-fact, quietly attractive. He was, she supposed, about five years older than she was — forty or so.
Carolyn said, “I just don’t know what to do. What do you suggest?”
“I’ll handle it if you like. I don’t think it’ll be difficult. Technically you’ve committed a crime but it obviously wasn’t intentional. I hardly think they’ll throw the book at you.” And again the reassuring smile. It was the first time she’d ever noticed the dimple in his left cheek.
He was a comfortable and comforting sort of man: very low-key but she supposed he’d cultivated that because a good many of his clients must be people who needed soothing.
He leaned back in his swivel chair with one leg crossed over the other knee, pivoting on the ankle, a yellow pad against the upraised knee and a pencil against his teeth. “Okay. Take it easy. I’m going to have to ask some direct questions. Ready?”
She dipped her head, assenting.
“Formally, then — you acknowledge that you ran down the child?”
She closed her eyes. She knew she’d have to force the words out sooner or later. It might as well be now.
“Yes. I killed the little girl.”
It was all prearranged — an agreement between Charles and the State’s Attorney. She was amazed how quickly it went, in the court-room. She pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. There were a few affidavits, and the judge — a surprisingly young but quite overweight woman — seemed less interested in the various depositions than in Charles’s photographs of the scene of what Carolyn had finally been able to start calling The Accident (as opposed to The Day I Killed Amy Murdoch).
Charles pointed out the overgrown hedge in the photos and showed how it would have been impossible for anyone to have seen the little girl in time. He also pointed to the brief black skid marks that showed up clearly against the pale gray pavement; according to the police analysis they showed she couldn’t have been doing more than twenty-five miles an hour at the time she saw Amy emerge into the street.