“No,” I said. “You wouldn’t. You’d fetch the bedpan, and do your job, because all he’d have to do is complain just once to this Miraglia—even joking—and that would be that. He’d have a registered nurse in there so fast you’d hardly know it happened.”
“Don’t frighten me. But you’re right. Doctor Miraglia says he can stay up a little. Victor wants to be up a lot. I let him. It’s our secret. I try to even urge him, carefully, of course, thinking something might happen.”
“You ever think maybe it makes him stronger?”
“I’m trapped,” she said. “I’ll go out of my mind.”
“Not now. Remember?”
She said, “This doesn’t seem wrong at all, Jack.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve come to hate him—hate everything about him. He’s stealing my life. He’s taken my fun, and I can’t escape because of that damned money he holds over my head. He doesn’t talk about it. It’s just there, in his eyes, in the way he grins at me. I don’t even think of him as a person any more.”
“Easy, now. I understand.”
“You can’t really understand, Jack. Not really. Nobody could.” It was there in her eyes. “He’s like a corpse, only he can’t be decently buried.”
“I get you.”
“And you don’t even know him. He’s nothing to you, so it shouldn’t really matter to you, either.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Her eyes got dreamy. “To be free. God, to be free again. Free to come and go. Free—to have you, Jack—free to breathe again, without hate.”
“You’re getting poetic.”
She laughed softly. Her eyes were misty. “I guess—I guess I just can’t help it.”
“You weren’t thinking of anything like dropping that TV set on his face, were you?”
“I read it in a magazine. Somebody had a TV set on his ceiling, so he could watch it, lying in bed. I kept thinking about it. I couldn’t forget it.”
“You’d have lasted about ten minutes after the cops got there. They’d have torn you apart. Listen, Shirley—I am going to put that TV set up there on the ceiling. But it’ll be up so damned solid you won’t get it down without pulling the roof with it.”
“What, then?”
“It’s obvious. No air.”
The corners of her mouth tipped up. “You think that hasn’t occurred to me about a thousand times?” Her eyes lidded faintly. “Every time I hold that mask over his face I have to fight myself to turn on the oxygen.”
“That’s right,” I said. “You turn it on—only you just don’t put the mask over his face.”
“I don’t agree with you.”
“That’s how it’s got to be.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Only it won’t be quite that simple,” I said. “There’ll be more to it.” I reached across her and opened the door. “I’ve got half an idea. I want to work on it. You run along. I’ll meet you at your place, with the truck, and take up where I left off. I won’t come till the doc’s gone.”
She put her hand to her mouth. “I forgot. I’d better hurry.” She got out. “I told Victor you were busy with something unavoidable that came up. I told him you’d be back.”
“Pretty sure of yourself.”
“I prayed you would.”
She went to her car. Well, so far Victor was just an old half-dead bastard who was going to finish dying. I had to keep it that way. The minute conscience stepped in, you were in trouble.
She drove off, and I sat there, and she was no more than out of hearing when I began to worry. One slip-up was all we needed. I’d forgotten to tell her to prepare a sound alibi for where she’d been.
I gunned the car out of there and went tearing down the boulevard. It was too late. She was gone.
I pulled over to the curb and stopped the car, and sat there gripping the steering wheel, knowing I would go through with this thing. All my life I’d been waiting for a chance like this. Keep your eyes and ears open and stay tuned in, and one day there it is. If you don’t want it, you don’t have to touch it. And it’s not half frightening, or anything like that. Shirley and I generated something together that drowned out conscience. This was just something we were going to do together. And, of course, the money. I wanted it. I would get it. All I had to do was make him die in a way that looked natural, and make the whole thing look legitimate. And there would be Shirley, too.
Thinking that made it better still. Shirley Angela was under my skin like the itch and it was going to take a lot of scratching.
He was ready to die. He was old enough. He sure as hell was rich enough.
Then I thought, “But you never killed.”
So there had to be a first time. It wouldn’t be hard. It would just barely be killing, if you looked at it right. And there would be no more Grace; something that had gone on too long already with no way to top her.
We were going to kill Victor Spondell for his money, and that’s how it was going to be.
I went downstairs and had Veronica Lewis, a babe I knew, run a quick check on Victor Spondell’s bankroll. It would be okay, because I was doing a big job for him. Everything Shirley Angela had said was true. I didn’t get the exact figure, but I wasn’t worried if it came to a split.
Five
It wasn’t dark yet. We were in the back yard, and she was helping me figure placement for a couple of speakers out there. I carried a folding ruler, and kept measuring tree trunks and the side of the house, craning my neck around to make it look good, in case anybody happened to see us.
I said, “You can’t stay out here long. You better keep running back into the house, so you can check on him. Isn’t that what you’d do normally?”
“Yes.”
“Did the doctor have anything to say when you got back?”
“He told me Victor should be in the hospital.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek.
She said, “He didn’t speak to Victor about it, though. Because it riles him up. I told them I’d been shopping. I stopped on the way home and bought a lot of stuff; I just grabbed everything in sight.”
“Good. But we can’t be seen together again, away from this place—not once.”
“All right.”
“You do everything just as you’d normally do it,” I said. “Try to imagine me as exactly what I am—a TV serviceman, who’s installing two television sets and an intercom system in your home. Try and remember that.”
“All right, Jack.”
“One thing we’ve got to be absolutely certain of. If he has one of his attacks, will he positively die if he doesn’t get oxygen?”
She stared at me. She didn’t speak.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“It just struck me for a minute—what we’re doing.”
“Listen,” I said. “You go soft on this and it’s all off. Got that? If either one of us goes soft, we’ve got to quit.”
She nodded. “I’ll be all right.”
“See that you are. Make damned sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. Would he die if he didn’t get oxygen?”
“Yes. It might take a little time, but he’ll die. He’ll suffocate, choke to death. Excitement hastens it. Then when he can’t get air, he gets scared. If nobody helps him, he’ll choke to death. That is, if his heart doesn’t go first.”
“He’s in a hell of a shape, isn’t he.”
She didn’t say anything. I went to the rear of the house, brought back a ladder, and leaned it against the pine tree. I climbed up three rungs and made it look as if I were inspecting the tree trunk.
I said, “Does the doc give him anything to keep his nerves steady?”
“Yes. He takes nerve pills regularly. And he takes some other stuff to help prevent the forming of mucous. He takes nitroglycerin pills for his heart pains, and the doctor gives him shots to help dehydrate him, so liquid won’t form.”