The doc called and said he would stop in before he went to bed, so I knew Elma must be real sick. Alice and Tony dropped in after supper, asked me if I'd eaten. I lied that I had. I was half high, what with nibbling at the bottle all day. I went out to buy another fifth and it was a hard shock to realize that I was paying for it with his money.
There wasn't much in his wallet—a driver's license, membership card in a local merchants' association, a Legion card, a memo to pay some bills by the tenth, a couple of blank checks. I went out to the homemade incinerator back of the house, where we burned most of the garbage, spilled a can of lighter fluid over the wallet, carefully burned it.
Alice and Tony left. Elma was staring at the ceiling, without seeing anything. I sat beside her bed like a mourner. A disk jockey was knocking himself out on the radio. It was nearly nine. I'd either have to chance telling Elma— and that would probably kill her—or drive into New York in the morning and get a copy of the Newark papers... if Elma survived the night. And that would look phony, I'd never bought the Newark papers before. But I sure had to do something—murder wasn't enough, it seemed.
I lit my pipe, asked if the smoke bothered her.
“No.”
“This is your favorite brand—real aromatic.**
“Is it? I don't smell it.”
“How about a game of gin?”
“No, dear.”
“Shall I read to you?”
“No.”
The record jockey read a commercial and as the nine o'clock news came on, I tuned in another station for more music. A brittle-voice commentator said, “Now for another crime-doesn't-pay bulletin taken from real life. Today, a Newark businessman, Maxwell Morse, was shot to death in a hold-up. The unknown gunman took a life for fifty dollars in cash and a handful of jewelry....”
I tuned it up loud, asked, “Elma, did you hear...?”
She was sitting up in bed, one hand motioning for me to keep still. Her face seemed to be listening with every pore—a pose I'd love to sketch, put in clay.
“... Later in the afternoon, some children found the cheap jewelry off the main road, where the thug had evidently thrown it away. So a human life was snubbed out for a few dollars and a handful of cheap trinkets, worth less than ten dollars. What price death! And now a news item from Denver tells us of a freak accident in which...”
I cut the radio off. Elma fell back against the pillow, began to cry once more.
I stroked her hair, wanted to shake her. “Elma honey, may sound hard to say this but... well... our troubles are over! The baby is ours, we can be married tomorrow... you're a widow!”
“What a way for poor Mac to die... always hated that store and now...”
“Damn it, the hell with poor Mac! He didn't give a fat damn if you went through hell, worried yourself and the kid into a... Poor Mac, my ass!”
Elma held out her arms and I kissed her wet face as she bawled, “Marsh, don't talk like that. He was such a weakling, and the .world so strong. He never had any of the happiness we've known, and now he's dead and...”
“Baby, don't cry. You heard what the doctor said. You're shaking with sobs.”
“I'm okay, Marsh. Really I am. This is different... I only feel sorry for him, the way he lost out in life.”
And as I held her I realized the difference in her crying. Now it was the sort of abstract tears a person gives out when they see a sad picture, or a puppy run over. I held Elma gently and knew everything was going to work out. I began to cry too... because I was still damn scared.
Elma asked, “Should I call up his mother?”
“Why?”
“She must be sick and...”
“I wouldn't call her now. As you say, she's probably too sick and upset to talk.” And as I listened to my own words, the casual, offhand sound of them, I was surprised at my hardness. For as soon as Elma called his mother, it might be the start of a link between me and the case... the police.
Elma slept soundly that night—without pills. The doc dropped in and we were both in bed. He looked at Elma, said it was a “good sleep.”
I had the same nightmare, only with a corny touch this time. I was running out of the store and a motorcycle cop was chasing me, Mac sitting behind the driver and pointing to me and laughing as he yelled, “Killer I Killer!” Then I ran into a huge spider web and got hung up on it. The web turned out to be my fingerprint and Mac's pointing finger became a gun barrel and flame spurted from the finger nail and I felt the hot lead tearing through me with horrible pain and I awoke with a short scream, my pillow sweat-wet.
In the morning Elma ate a large breakfast and I managed to keep coffee and toast down—although even that gave me the runs. She decided to call her mother-in-law. I tried to stall her, but there wasn't any way I could talk Elma out of it. She had a long talk with the old woman, who was hysterical most of the time. I held my face next to Elma's, listened in.
The old woman said, “Elma, we've lost him. God has taken all I had in life. Maybe I was wrong in wanting him so much, in trying to run his life and yours. Elma, do you forgive me?”
“Of course.”
“The funeral will be... tomorrow. Oh God, they're burying my son tomorrow, tomorrow!” When she finally checked her sobbing, she said, “In the prime of his life, he had to die. I keep asking myself only one question: Why? Why did this happen to me and mine? He was right, always hated the stores... they fed and clothed him, and they killed him. Elma, you must be at the funeral. I have so few friends, and I know so few of his...”
I shook my head. The thought of me driving Elma back to the scene of the crime, to the cemetery, gave my guts a chill. The old lady's babbling didn't upset me... she probably had talked as passionately in convincing Mac he had to take the baby.
Elma said, “I'm not feeling too well. And I'm quite a long ways from Newark. I can't travel. You see, I expect to have the baby in a few...”
“Ah, the baby! My God, are You punishing me for what I did to Elma? Elma....”
“Yes?”
“Do you have it in your heart to forgive an old jealous mother? Oh my daughter, no one has the right to take a child from its mother—how I know that now! How I think of...”
The old woman rattled on and I gave up listening. As I lit my pipe I thought it was lucky she wasn't going to try to take the baby. Her case wouldn't be as strong as Mac's, but it would still be a nasty mess if she tried... and mean I'd knocked off Mac for... nothing.
Elma talked to her for almost an hour, soothing her. It seemed to be a tonic for Elma too. When the doc came and spent some time with her, he gave me the eye to walk him to the door, told me, “Well, Jameson, your wife is very much better. I think she's snapped out of it. Young women of today, they read too much. In the old days they didn't know about childbirth, couldn't worry too much. You know the saying: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Now, a woman reads a couple of these pseudo-medical books or articles, and scares herself half to death. Glad she's over whatever was worrying her. She'll be all right, and shouldn't have any trouble during the birth— she's built right.”
The doc was correct—within two days Elma was out of bed and pretty gay. She still called the old lady every day, to comfort her, and the old woman suddenly seemed to love Elma like a daughter... all of which I took with a grain of salt.
I drove to New York and bought all the Newark papers, including back issues to the day of the killing. It looked good. The police admitted they didn't have the slightest idea as to the identity of the killer, and in one story they even said that fingerprints weren't found... which made me feel better, but I knew that might just be newspaper talk. Two other storekeepers said they remembered “a swarthy little fat man leave the shop at about the time of the murder.” One of them even recalled the freight hook and the other said, “he looked like a tough little thug.” The papers said the police were searching the Jersey docks for the man.
Driving back to Sandyhook, I had a bad minute wondering what I'd do if they picked up some jerk and framed him... but I gave up thinking about that.
When I suggested to Elma that we could now be legally married, she roared with laughter—for the first time in months—asked, “With me all swollen as though I'd swallowed a watermelon? Marsh, the minister wouldn't be able to keep a straight face. Be too much like one of those old jokes.”
“Would you be embarrassed?”
“A little. Why can't we wait till the baby comes?”
“We can. Thought it might make things simpler. But you're right, no one will know the difference if we're married later. Just have to give the hospital a small white lie about us being legal now.”
The next few weeks were wonderful—or nearly wonderful. Elma was again the picture of health and happiness. We had long and silly arguments over what to name the baby if he was a boy, or if he turned out a she.
I still had my usual nightmares, and nervous stomach. Couldn't sleep without taking a stiff hooker of whisky before I hit the sack. I managed to get into New York every couple of days, followed the Newark papers. Whoever said there's nothing as old as yesterday's headlines wasn't kidding—the case was forgotten. Even his mother told Elma—over the phone—that the police had given it up as hopeless, couldn't find the killer... me. The old lady was mad as a hornet at the cops, claimed they weren't trying.
Exactly seven weeks and three days after I'd shot Mac, Elma gave birth to a six-pound girl, whom we named Joan. It was a week sooner than the doc expected, but the kid was healthy and hungry. This may sound crazy, or maybe all new babies look alike, but the kid looked like me! She had Elma's wide mouth, but what little hair she had was sandy-blonde, and she had my pug nose, the same wide bone structure around the eyes. Elma and I roared with laughter over the resemblance. When we came home from the hospital we found an unexpected gift for the baby—a letter from a Newark attorney.
He was handling Mac's “estate” and as his legal wife Elma would get a $10,000 G.I. policy Mac had evidently never got around to changing over to his mama. There was also an accident policy for $5,000 which mama, as head of the corporation running the stores, had taken on Mac. There was a personal checking account of $700, and an apartment full of furniture and a second-hand car.
Elma and I had a long talk as to whether she should accept the dough. Our radio prize money was down to less than $400 and we could use the cash. But Elma felt squeamish about taking the money, since she knew Mac never meant for her to have it. But if she didn't take it, it would go to mama, and mama was already well fixed. We finally decided to take it and put at least five grand in the bank for Joan.
Several things started moving for us. I saw Sid in town and he had an idea for plastic molds—an easier and cheaper way of replacing plaster casts and, more important, a method of getting work down to fit everybody's pocketbook. I had lunch with him on my way to see my agent, and Sid was excited about this plastic deal and I agreed to advance $500 as a one-third partner in the deal.
The agent had terrific news—my bronze had been sold to a private collection in the midwest for $900. Strangely enough, my first sale made me sad. Somehow it didn't seem right that my efforts should now belong to this rich man who had no talent, except for making money. However, it really was a big break—his collection was always on exhibit at some museum or other, old moneybags getting his kicks out of being known as a patron, busting his buttons with pride over the words... “From the private collection of Mr. Joe Blow....”
The agent wanted to know what I was working on. Although I'd made several sketches of Elma nursing Joan— and gave them up as being too trite—I wasn't working at all. I was still too damn nervous and worried to work. Along with my nightmares, there was still one very real piece of business that tied me to the killing.
The day Elma took Joan over to Newark to see the lawyer and let Mac's mother have a look at her granddaughter, I dropped in on Alice, asked, “Can I borrow Tony's pistol? Sketching an idea I have... figure to be called THE THUG, like to use the gun as a model.”
“That's an odd composition.”
“I know, but crime is a part of American life and never put in clay, as yet,” I said.
“Let me see, where did he put the gun?” Alice said, looking through several drawers. “Haven't seen that horrible thing for months.”
I watched Alice hunting for the gun, careful not to tell her exactly where it was. Alice finally found it in a drawer full of bathing suits.
Back in my studio I examined the clip—there was still one bullet missing. Evidently Tony hadn't looked at the gun, or noticed the missing shell. I quickly made a few rough sketches on paper, all corny as hell, even a rough in clay of a gangster, with the gun as a background... then got in my car and drove toward the ocean.
The ocean was rough, the waves exploding against the shore, and I had this sudden hunch the damn gun might be washed ashore. About twenty miles past Sandyhook, going out toward Riverhead, there's a small, deep lake that's used as a reservoir. After making certain I was alone, I threw the gun as far as I could and when it vanished into the smooth water, a great feeling of relief swept over me, as though the water that hid the Luger had also washed the last signs of murder off me.
When Elma came home she said, “In a few days I'll get a certified check for $15,000. I signed a waiver to any claim on the shops, car, and furniture. Mama Morse was rather sweet to me, and of course simply crazy about the baby. However, I made it very clear to her, without sounding harsh, that I thought it best she didn't see Joan again. Also told her about you—not by name—but that we expected to be married shortly.”
