“What if I told you it’s only six?” she asked abruptly.
“I’d believe you.”
“You would? Why?”
“I guess you know why. Except for being battered, there wasn’t much else done to Mea. That wasn’t like the Grabber, he always had the ultimate fun. Mea’s coat was neatly buttoned. She had a wool cap pulled down on her head. Her gloves were on her hands. All of this as if to protect her from the cold. If it had been the Grabber, it would have been very different. Mea would have been lucky to have any clothes on at all. She was with someone. The five girls before her and the one after were alone. And today, those sixes, the Grabber was telling us something and it wasn’t something out of the Bible, which I doubt he knew an awful lot about anyway. He was telling us his score was six, not seven. Finally, that day at your house, when I let slip about the Grabber’s phone call, neither of you showed any interest. I figure the colonel must have made it and told you the Grabber did. But the cops didn’t give out that information.”
She picked up her drink and sucked fiercely. With most of the liquid gone, the straw made a dry, rattling sound as it pursued the remains. She put the glass down, picked up the miniature parasol and twirled it between two fingers, the same two fingers that touched my lips the year before. She hadn’t dabbed at her lips. They glistened. So did her eyes. So did her hair, jet black without a trace of gray.
“You may be stuffy, Oscar, but you’re no dumbbell,” she said. “Do you know why he did it?”
“He was a father. She was an unruly child. It was punishment, a gritty object lesson to give her a taste of what she might run into if she kept sneaking out. Maybe he wanted her to be like him. I don’t know.”
“He never wanted her to be like him, only less like herself. He couldn’t stand anyone being themselves.” She laughed cruelly. “You saw him hit the tree. God, I wish I had seen that. The pain, the sweet, excruciating pain. He didn’t take off those bandages for over a month.”
“Did it ever occur to you he might have been punishing himself?”
Her eyes went wide. “You don’t believe that, Oscar.” When I didn’t say anything, she said, “He hit that tree to cover up the bruises already on his hands.”
I nodded, a little sadly. Right there, at that grimy gin-mill table, we were stripping away from Arthur Gahn the last shred of humanity that still clung to him.
“Maybe all we got are guesses,” I said. “Good guesses, but still only guesses.”
“Not me! Not guesses.” She leaned over the table, almost toppling her glass. “He did it all right, and he planned it. Want to hear what I found in the Buick? That’s the car he took that night. Only the best for the colonel, even going out to assault his daughter. I had to get dressed and move the Ford so he could get the Buick out of the garage.”
“What did you find?”
“In the trunk. The ski mask and the leather jacket.”
I ordered another beer. She didn’t want another floor show. When my beer came, I let it settle, watched the foam bubbles burst one after another, then stared down at the flat golden surface. I raised the glass and talked into it as it neared my lips. “Did you tell Mea?”
“I waited till she got her head screwed on straight, then told her. She was eighteen by that time.”
“Why did you tell her?”
“I wanted him to have more than a pair of sore hands. She moved out lock, stock, and barrel. He never knew why.”
“He who plucks a flower disturbs the farthest star.”
“Is that authentic Monahan?”
“No. I picked it up somewhere along the line.” I swallowed some beer and tried a final time to bring Gahn back into the human race. “In his screwed-up way maybe he thought he was doing it for her good.”
“You men always make excuses for each other. Ever admire a statue from a distance, then get up close and see it’s covered with pigeon excrement?”
“So, hose it down.”
“Too late. The filth has eaten at it until, underneath, its character is changed. The corruption has shaped itself to the sculpture’s original lines.”
“What’s in Chicago?”
The change of subject seemed to startle her. It was a thing of seconds, a forming cloud hovering between us, then it was gone and she answered, “I have a detective agency looking for Mea. They seem to have a lead out there.”
“Going to bring her back?”
“Not unless she wants to. I just want to tell her he’s gone and how he went. Her leaving brought it all on.”
“How did he go?”
“Painfully. He was twisted in knots. Medicine was keeping him alive. Someone had to be with him all the time to give it to him.” Her eyes went dull and she smiled, but it wasn’t a smile she was giving to me. It belonged someplace else. She was seeing something else. Somewhere inside her a record went on and a calm, ordered monologue came out.
“The nurse didn’t come that day. I’d been waiting on him all day. At the end, I was sitting with him. He was in bed asleep. His mouth was open. I could hear his breath whistling over his teeth. I must have dozed. I dreamed. I was on a sidewalk. In the middle of the street was this dog. He must have been run over. He was whining. A really rotten sound. A plea for life. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see him. Closing my eyes on one nightmare, I opened them on another. He was on the floor. He had tried to crawl to me. I think I heard him cry out one last time. I reached into my apron pocket for the medicine. It was no good. He was gone. There — on the floor.”
“Suleika,” I said sharply. “Suleika!”
She came around, her smile now directed at me. She said she’d better start out for the airport.
“Need a ride?”
“No thanks. I have the Buick. Ill leave it in longterm up there.”
Before we parted, she said, “Can we see something of each other when I get back?”
I said, “I’ll keep in touch.”
I didn’t, though.
Arthur Gahn was no great shakes as a human being, but he deserved a better death. I think of him whimpering, crawling toward the woman just feet from him. The same woman who, once, on the top floor of her home, awoke to the faint click of a downstairs door.
Later, I heard she remarried. I saw them one day on a busy street. He was talking incessantly and bounding ahead of her. She looked briefly my way but I don’t think she saw me. She wore a half smile, and there was a tightness around her eyes.
James O’Keefe
Death Makes a Comeback
Though he has been writing stories for thirty-three years, since he was seven, “Death Makes a Comeback” is the first published story by James O’Keefe. It is also, he tells us, his first attempt at a hard-boiled story “since I quit trying as a teenager to be a clone of Hammett and Chandler ” Mr. O’Keefe was encouraged to submit this story to NBM by the response of his writers group, which includes Loren Estleman. He plans to make the psychiatrist, Dr. Larsen, into a series character.
Violent death was no novelty to Sgt. James Peyton. He had seen far worse than a brunette with a bruise on her forehead and a slit throat.
He felt as if he had just touched a live wire.
He wide-eyed the older detective. “Dad—”
Lt. Lawrence Peyton raised a cautionary hand. “Please, Jimmy.” His voice dropped. “I wish I’d never told you about him.”
“But the MO—”
“Sh. The husband hears you, spreads the rumor he’s back…” He glanced at the bedroom door as if he expected something to enter and devour them.
Lucy Welch’s long hair spread out like a nun’s veil on the gray carpet beneath her. Her brown eyes stared up at Jimmy.