Shooting Star / Spiderweb Read online

  Tonight was important to me. I knew that now. It marked the turning point, the real turning point. I’d find out, once and for all, if what the Professor promised was true: if I could reach out and take what I wanted from a world of suckers.

  It was a little after twelve. I’d know very soon, now.

  I staggered out, lurched up the road, breathing deep. I got my balance under control quickly, but my thoughts were still spinning.

  It was a good night. It was a damned good night. Cool, but not too cool, and very clear. Stars up overhead. Millions of them. They went round and round. Why not? What the hell else did they have to do? That’s what they got paid for. Going around like that. That’s why MGM put them in the sky. I wondered who had the moon concession. Paramount, probably. No, they had stars, too—stars and a mountain. Well, I was also going to have a star.

  The house was dark as I approached the terrace. Cars were all gone. Good. I cut across the lawn, went through the shrubbery. There was the swimming pool ahead. Mustn’t stumble and fall into the swimming pool. Show up all wet. Stars in the swimming pool, too. Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, wish I may, wish I might—

  Well, I was going to.

  Coach house. What the hell kind of a business was that, a coach house? Nobody had coaches. Not this little Cinderella, certainly. But here it was. Here it was in the dark, and here was I, and where was the door?

  I found the door and it opened and somebody was waiting for me. Sure enough, I could see her: she was waiting. She came forward. What was I waiting for?

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  “Sure. Mike was upstairs. Out cold.”

  “You’re not cold.”

  “You’re not sober.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “What do you think?”

  Then she laughed. I wanted to stop that, so I did. My mouth closed down on hers, and her mouth came up to mine, and all of her came up to me. Through the doorway I could still see the stars. Then the stars turned to buttons, and I began to give them my attention. And then—

  “Wait a minute. What’s that?” she said.

  “Forget about it, honey.”

  “No. I hear something outside. Somebody’s coming.”

  Now I heard it too: the crunch of gravel, then the fumbling and the sudden squeaking of the door.

  “Mike!”

  He stood there in the doorway, going round and round. I tried to focus my eyes on him. He was a big man, and it was hard to see him clearly or separate his bulk from the monstrous, menacing black shadow on the wall—the shadow of an ape.

  He stood there and cursed us. He cursed us in a low, steady, monotonous voice, ripping his words off back-alley fences, off privy walls. He said other things, too.

  “ž’N now I’m gonna kill ya. I’m gonna rip out ya guts an’—”

  He was in the light, I was in the dark, and now was the time, if ever.

  I went up to him and he reached out those hairy-ape arms of his. I weaved under them, straightened, and hit him hard. But not hard enough. He backed away and then he came up with one on the side of my head. I felt it, soft and far away, and I wobbled as he hit me again. He turned and knocked me outside.

  Then we were both in the moonlight and Lorna said, “No...stop...please...” But it was nothing but cheap dialogue; it was a corny scene, a couple of drunks fighting over a tramp.

  That made me mad, so I hit him again. He swung, not to hit this time, but to gouge at my eye with his thumb. He was good at it. I pushed my knuckles against his mouth, hard. He grunted and tried to tackle me.

  All the while he was growling deep in his throat, and he kept coming in. Coming in for the kill. He had meant what he said—he wouldn’t stop now until he killed me. And I was beginning to realize he could do it.

  Mike was heavy, Mike was strong, and he pushed me back towards the edge of the pool. I could see him gritting his teeth in the moonlight, and the blood running out of the corners of his mouth looked bright and heavy as quicksilver.

  His knee came up suddenly, found its target. My loins lanced with pain. His thumbs sought my eyes. I pushed him off, but only for a moment. He growled louder.

  Then everything went away, and I felt something tightening around my throat. He had my neck, he was choking me, trying to tear my windpipe out, trying to tear my head from my body.

  Lorna whimpered and he growled louder, but I could only gasp from far away. Everything was far away, including life. It was oozing out of my body, my breath was going, my sight and senses. He was killing me.

  I kicked up and in. It was a last convulsive movement, but something happened. The tightness suddenly relaxed. I could get to my feet, slowly. There was time to breathe now, time to fight off the pain and regain my awareness, time to watch him. He stood doubled-up at the edge of the pool, waiting for his pain to ease. Then he’d come in again and finish killing me.

  I couldn’t wait. I moved towards him. He was getting ready, now. He spread his big hands and poised there, crouching to spring. I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes and swung from the waist.

  My hand hurt. I stood unsteadily, rubbing my fingers, watching him fall backwards into the pool. It took a million years before he hit the water, another million years before the splash came, another million before he disappeared.

  Lorna stopped whimpering. Everything got very quiet. I could hear my panting subside. I could hear a little bird chirping a mile away. I could hear the stars going round and round on their courses. I walked over to the pool and looked down. There was nothing to see in the pool but bubbles. Pretty little silvery bubbles, gleaming in the moonlight.

  Eight

  The water stabbed me with novacained needles. I gulped, paddled, then dived. Silver pressed my eyeballs, but I could see through silver. I could see something dark and huddled, bobbing down there at the bottom of the pool.

  I reached for it, tugged at it. Heavy. Heavy as the weight inside my lungs, my head. I went up for air, got it. Then I dived again, tugged again. This time I could lift. We came to the surface together, live and dead weight. Dead weight. He couldn’t be— I had to get him out.

  “Help me lift him up!” I panted.

  Lorna stared over the edge of the pool. Her lips twitched, and then her mouth tried to run away from her face. But she reached down and held Mike’s collar as I pulled myself over the side and then grabbed him under the arms.

  I pushed and lifted. He was heavy as lead. Lead. Dead. No, he was all right. He had to be all right.

  Then he was sprawled out on the grass, face down, and I was kneeling over him, pressing his back and lifting him, press and lift—

  “Is wrong, perhaps?”

  I jerked and Lorna jerked. Mike Drayton just lay there.

  We stared up at the plumpness of Miss Bauer.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “She is with me.”

  Professor Hermann emerged from the shadows of the walk. “What goes on here? We’ve been looking all over for you. When the party broke up, we left, and I called your apartment from a filling station. No answer, so I came back. Apparently it was wise that I did so.”

  “We had a fight,” I said. “I hit him and he fell into the pool. I fished him out. But—”

  The Professor pushed me aside. He knelt and took off his hat. The bald moon of his skull shone down over Mike’s face as he turned him over on the grass. A fat hand fumbled beneath the soggy wet shirt. It came to rest there, and it stayed forever.

  The wind stopped moving. The grass stopped rustling. The stars stopped twinkling. The trees bent forward, listening...listening for a heartbeat.

  “He’s dead,” said Professor Hermann.

  Then everything was moving again, fast. Too fast.

  “Steady up.” Miss Bauer was holding me.

  “But he can’t be. We’ve got to work on his lungs, get the water out! He couldn’t have stayed under more than a minute or so—”

  “He was unco
nscious,” the Professor said. “It is too bad.”

  “Too bad?” We all looked at Lorna. Her mouth was twitching again, but this time a torrent of sound gushed out.

  “I’ll say it’s too bad! Wait until the papers get hold of this, wait until Lolly finds out. I’m through! Himberg will tie a can to me. And the cops! God, somebody do something. You got to—”

  I shook her. It only jumbled the sounds together.

  “Oh God...Himberg...gotta...”

  I slapped the mouth shut.

  “Cut that out!”

  The Professor put on his hat, rose and laid his hand on Lorna’s shaking shoulder. “He’s right. Hysteria will not help, now. We must be calm. We must think.”

  “Think? What good will thinking do? Mike’s dead, and they’ll find out, they’ll get us—”

  “No. Not if we’re calm.”

  That stopped her for a moment. The Professor’s voice gained assurance as he went on.

  “Listen to me, Miss Lewis. I may have a solution, but you’ll have to help me.”

  “How?”

  “By answering questions. Here.”

  He gave her a cigarette, lit it for her. He watched it wobble between her lips, then steady a bit as she inhaled.

  “Better? Now listen to me and answer. Are there any servants in the house now?”

  “No. I told Frieda to clear out when the gang left. The rest were just hired for the party. They went home, all of them.”

  “Good. Can you remember what Mike did at the party?”

  “Mike—No—I don’t want to talk about him—”

  “You must. It’s important. Your life, your career.”

  He knew how to get to her, all right. Not with “life” but with “career.” She sobered at the word.

  “What time did Mike go upstairs with his bottle?”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “I saw him. Miss Bauer saw him. Others must have seen him—that group on the stairway.”

  “Yes, you’re right. Let me see, now. It was around eleven, I guess.”

  “Was he drunk?”

  “No more than usual.”

  “He drank frequently?”

  “He’s been lushed up, off and on, for the last six months now, like I told you the other day.”

  “And people know that? Your friends?”

  “Right.”

  “Did they know why—the reasons he had for drinking?”

  “Say, I don’t tell people everything. You know and Judd knows, because I told him tonight. But outside of that, nobody. I guess they all thought he was just a rummy.”

  “But it is established generally that he drank a great deal. That he was moody, anti-social.”

  “He pulled that stunt at every party I’ve given, or every one we went to. Not that he’d come with me very often, the louse. And when he did, he generally sneaked off in the middle of the evening and took the car with him.”

  “You say he’d get drunk and then leave a party—drive off somewhere alone?”

  “Sure. He wrecked the station wagon about four months ago. Drove it into a piling near Santa Barbara. How the hell he ever got way up there I don’t know. He didn’t know, he was that stiff. It was in the papers.”

  “That time he wrecked the car—how long was he gone?”

  “Two days, nearly. The cops picked him up. He wasn’t hurt, but I had a hard time helping him beat the rap. Himberg fixed it somehow.”

  “Your friends know his habits. You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” She gasped. “Please, Professor, don’t ask me anything more. I think I’m going to be sick.”

  She weaved away and was sick—very sick—over by the trees. I turned and watched Miss Bauer as she worked silently, furiously, on Mike.

  “Please,” said the Professor. “That is useless. Besides, I have a plan.”

  He looked up at me. “Did anyone else know of your... visit here at the coach house?”

  I shook my head. “I stopped in at a tavern below the hill here, but there was no one around except the bartender. I didn’t spill anything to him, of course.”

  “Good. Then will you please take my car and drive yourself home? I’ll get in touch with you tomorrow.”

  “But Mike—the police—”

  “I am taking care of Mike. And there will be no police, if you do as I say. Go, now. I must talk to Miss Lewis alone.”

  Miss Bauer tugged at the Professor’s sleeve. “I do not like this,” she said. “Let me continue. The water is leaving the lungs. If we send for a rescue squad, he may yet be alive.”

  The Professor faced her. “That is for me to decide.”

  It was more than a statement. It was a command. Miss Bauer bowed her head. The Professor went over to Lorna and took her arm. She sobbed against him and he began whispering to her. His voice was soft, soothing, gentle. I couldn’t hear anything he said, and they both ignored me.

  Then I was walking, walking away from the swimming pool; walking away from the thing that lay on the grass, shining white and bloated in the moonlight, like a dead fish. I walked to the car, climbed in, drove away. I went up to the apartment, closed the door. I ripped off my wet clothes and fell down on the bed.

  First I was sleeping and then I was watching. I watched my smart-aleck brother Charlie sneering as he read about the murder in the papers. I watched myself run from the cops. I watched them catch me, grill me. I saw myself stumbling up the iron stairs to the cell block. I gripped the rail with hands that left a trail of sweat and blood.

  I talked to my lawyer, I talked to all of them: the state’s attorney, the judge, the twelve good men and true. They looked like the people I’d seen on the beach. Lorna screamed at them, but they took her out of court.

  The matron who dragged her away was “Mrs. Hubbard.” She had the same power, and I could see she was able to foretell my future. They could all do that. The jury did and then the judge did.

  I saw the Professor at the last. He was better than a priest. I watched myself pleading, couldn’t he slip me something? Just one little favor, that’s all I asked, just for him to slip me something so I wouldn’t have to suffocate.

  It was no use. Nothing was any use. No wonder my legs wouldn’t work, no wonder they had to drag me, no wonder I fell as they took me into the gas chamber. That gas chamber—nobody could hear me scream, and there was a hissing, and then I coughed. I choked, my meal came up and my lungs came up and my chest burned with a million novo-cained needles. Only this was different.

  I watched them carry me and cut me. What was left went into the wagon. The grave diggers get union pay, and it’s steady work. The Professor brought flowers. Charlie didn’t want my body. But the Professor was kind, he brought flowers, and he was the only one who came. Then it rained that night on my grave, and the flowers melted into a soggy mess. Like the soggy mess inside the box.

  But how could I know that if I was dead? I couldn’t be dead. This was all out of my imagination. I was safe in bed in the apartment. Safe until tomorrow, when they found out.

  I opened my eyes, then fell forward into a pool of deeper sleep. Somewhere in that pool I found the body of Mike Drayton. We drowned there together...

  Coming up out of the darkness, into the sunlight, I felt like a new man. A man who needed a shower, a shave, breakfast, a cigarette.

  I had them all. But when I lit the cigarette, my hand trembled. The old yoga wasn’t working for Judson Roberts today.

  I wondered if Professor Hermann was working. I wondered whether he had dumped the body in the ocean, tried to make it look like suicide by drowning. I wondered if something had gone wrong, if they were looking for me. Better pull down the blinds, quick, and—

  No. That was wrong. I must trust him. I had to trust him. He told me to wait, that he’d get in touch with me. So I’d wait.

  I read a little bit about totemism and tried to figure out how Lorna Lewis was taking it, if she’d gone to the studio today. I took some notes, and all the
while I kept thinking what if Miss Bauer had been right, if resuscitation might have worked.

  I threw down the book and asked myself what her angle was—why the Professor had hired her instead of a smart, fast-talking female who was never at a loss for a bright remark, a file folder, or a fresh box of Kleenex.

  I picked up Flugel’s Psychology of Clothes and began to read about canes as symbols of personal extension, and wondered what Ellen Post was doing this fine day. Did she have a hangover? Did she remember me? I tried to picture her, place her in a setting. A hall bedroom? Obviously not the place. An apartment like this one? Wrong, again. A big house? Room next to her parents? Did she have money, live alone?

  Why hadn’t I found out more about her, gotten her address, made a date?

  Lorna said she was a lush. They were all lushes, according to Lorna—she lived in a world of them. Lushes. Hopheads. Queers. Crackpots. This town was full of them. People with quirks and delusions and dreams. People with money. The kind of people I was supposed to take over the jumps, if I got out of this jam.

  But Ellen Post was different. Like ripe apricots. Charlie and I used to eat them when we were kids, a whole bagful at a time. They were soft and sweet.

  This was no time to think about it. This was no time to read about canes as phallic symbols, either. I wanted to know what was going on. I had to know. Why, it was past noon already!

  I dialed the Professor’s office. He’d paid my phone bill for me for just that reason, last month. I listened to the double ring, then heard a click.

  “Yes?”

  “Miss Bauer, this is—Judson Roberts. Did he—is the Professor back?”

  “No.”

  “Have you heard anything?”

  “No.”

  “I see. If he should come in, you’ll ask him to call me at once?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thanks.”

  I put the little black baby back in its cradle. As I reached for a cigarette, the doorbell rang. I started to get up, then sank back. Once before the doorbell had rung and I’d been afraid to answer it. I’d waited, and a hundred-dollar bill had slid under the door for me. What would happen if I waited now?

  I decided to find out. I sat there, as the bell sounded again. Then came an eternity of silence. I stared at the door.