The Knave of Hearts (8 page)

He went on sharply, hastily, "Something offbeat,
sure, but not lunatic in the legal sense. He likes it by force,
maybe—he’s got a grudge against females, maybe—not what we call
normal. But in any other—mmh—area of life, quite possibly he
looks sane as you or me, and one thing we can say about him, Art,
just as I pointed out, he’s not legally insane, by the McNaughton
rule.
Pues no
. He
knows what he’s doing, he knows he can go to the gas chamber for
it. Because he gives them different names, you notice. Edward
Anthony—Mark Hamilton. A family resemblance there, and if, as, and
when we get the names he gave to Piper and McCandless, they’ll be
the same kind, names out of the popular circulating-library stories.
I’ll bet you—I’ll bet you ....Who can say exactly what’s
wrong with him, and why?" Mendoza opened his eyes and smiled at
Hackett. "Cross out the head doctors’ pompous talk,
chico
,"
he said softly, "and off the record—can any man say there
hasn’t been a time he didn’t have the impulse to violence with a
woman—to let her know he’s a male creature? Or with some men, to
repay her for being female? Tell the truth to yourself if not to me."

And after a moment Hackett said as softly, "Like
they say,
touché
.
It’s a thing in us, if we’re men at all."

"Two sides to every coin,
entendido
.... Given any choice, would you rather be finally judged by a
psychiatrist or a priest? What’s the difference?—the one blames
your grandparents, the other blames you.
¡Ni
qué nirio muerto!
—me, I’m done,
finalmente
, with the
priests and all their works, but if you pin me down, I think they’re
a little closer than the head doctors—it’s the individual who
decides what the individual does, or thinks, or feels, or wants."

"There I’m with you.
De
veras
. Sure we do, sure!" said Hackett
rather violently, and stabbed out his cigarette as if it was a
personal enemy. "Is it because we’re—the male animal, so to
speak—or just because we’re human?"

"I’ll pass on that one, boy."

"That’s a kind of answer from authority, God
knows," said Hackett, and his tone was angry, hard. "You’ve
had enough experience to say—and walked out on enough women."'

Mendoza looked up at him, silent for a moment, his
eyes turned cold and remote. So, he thought, of course—Art had
heard about it now, from his Angel, probably. Words unsaid between
them here, now, about a woman they both knew: personal words,
irrelevant to this case they would work together. “
Mi
amigo bueno
," said Mendoza, amiable,
soft, friendly, "let’s keep it the professional
discussion—¿conforme, compañero?”

Hackett met his eyes. "O.K., agreed.
Excusas
muchas, por favor
. . . So how and where do
we start to look? You’re the one gives the orders." And if
that was just very subtly sardonic, he didn’t emphasize it.

Mendoza smiled. "I’ll tell you what occurs to
me . . ."
 

SIX

The man who had once called himself Edward Anthony,
and at another time Mark Hamilton, and other names, was dressing to
go out. He’d thought for a while he would have to call and make an
excuse; the idea of going out, anywhere away from the safe haven of
his own apartment, started him shaking—after he’d read all the
papers today. But he felt better now; there wasn’t really any
reason to get the jitters, not yet anyway, he’d realized that when
he reread everything in the
Times
story— that one had more details.

They had come so much closer than he’d ever thought
they could, that he’d been terribly frightened at first—all the
past two weeks and a half, since the story about Haines had come out
in the papers. Every day he’d bought all the editions of all the
papers, to see what more they’d found out, and it was like the hand
of God starting to reach for him, what they knew. The worst of it
was, of course, that they might know a lot more than they let the
papers print—you couldn’t be sure. You read about these smart
young reporters who ferreted out police secrets, but did they
exist?—and he had an idea that these days the responsible
newspapers cooperated with the police, withheld things if they were
asked. They might know more—but when he thought about it straight,
they didn’t know anything important, they just c0uldn’t: his real
name or where to find him. He didn’t see how they could ever find
out, so there wasn’t any danger really. He mustn’t get nervous
for no reason.

The things they’d found out were all dead ends,
couldn’t lead them anywhere. All the same, it was frightening to
see it all printed like that, little things nobody but him had known.
On that Monday there’d been the Haines story, about that woman
confirming his alibi after all, and the question printed in big black
type, to startle—Who Murdered Mary Ellen Wood? Then on Tuesday, the
interview with Mrs. Haines, and how she thought those other three
cases were connected. And for a while the police just kept saying, No
comment, on that. But then on Thursday and Friday there’d been
rerun stories on those three, and with a lot more detail than had got
into the papers before, and the police—maybe pressed by those
reporters—had admitted that they were working over those cases
again. A lot of deductions and speculations—that was all the
reporters. The police wouldn’t tell them what they were thinking,
but policemen read newspapers too, and one or two little things might
give them ideas if they hadn’t had them before. But of course, even
on those things, they could only find out so much—nothing would
lead them anywhere. Would it? About how whoever killed Mary Ellen
maybe had lived in that neighborhood where the Haineses lived—and
that, by what had come out about the other girls, the murderer had
planned his crimes, because of giving different names—and what the
proprietor of that record-and-art-supply shop had said—and the
names—and what those other women said. You wouldn’t think people
would remember little niggling bits of casual conversation so long .
. . but of course women were all gossips, and especially when it came
to what they called boy friends and so on ....

Lascivious, lewd-minded, setting the trap for men
always, all of them. Whether they realized it or not—and some of
them, of course, were entirely innocent, poor things. The way Mary
Ellen had been. He remembered that little man in the record shop. The
little man, his pictures in the papers on Friday and Saturday, who
said he remembered the fellow Miss Teitel got talking to a couple
times there. But he didn’t really, because the description he gave
was vague, would apply to lots of men.

He looked at himself anxiously in the mirror as he
knotted his tie. Surely it would? Nothing at all definite, as if he
had a scar to remember, something like that. The proprietor had said,
"He was kind of tall, maybe five-eleven, and thin, and he had
brown hair, and he was clean-shaved"—al1 true, but true of
thousands of men—"and blue eyes," and that was wrong, his
eyes were brown. People didn’t really observe closely, remember
accurately. No danger there.

No danger really from what the women said, those
friends of Jane Piper, and Pauline McCandless, and Celestine Teitel.
The names, sure. Christopher Hawke for Pauline, Stephen Laird for
Jane. But the names didn’t mean anything, and none of the women had
known much about him to tell their friends, even the little while
they’d known him before. . . Anything like what he really did,
where he worked, where he lived. It didn’t add up to anything, to a
useful description or a definite fact.

Unless the papers hadn’t printed all they’d said;
but how could any of them know anything, just from the little those
women could have told about him?

There wasn’t any way the police could connect who
he really was with any of those names and women, was there? All the
time, he’d been himself too, with a permanent, different name and
background, and none of them had known anything about that. And these
others, friends they’d mentioned him to, had never laid eyes on
him. Had they?

The papers had said some bad things about the police,
because of their getting Allan Haines for Mary Ellen, and not
suspecting about these other girls—but other times, in other
articles, he’d read how most modern police forces were efficient
and honest, with all sorts of scientific experts to help them, and
particularly this one here. It was a handicap, not having firsthand
knowledge of all this—were they fools or not? In today’s papers
and some of yesterday’s, there’d been pictures of some of them.
The one in charge of the investigation, it had been a little
surprise—he was Mexican, a lieutenant, it said. The fellow with him
in that picture, Sergeant Hackett his name was, was quite
ordinary-looking except that he looked awfully big—unless this
Lieutenant Mendoza was awfully small, and there were standards about
that for police, weren’t there? They had to be over a certain
height. You couldn’t really tell much from a picture. This Mendoza,
that was one thing, of course—he’d be a Roman Catholic and
consequently not very smart or knowledgeable. They weren’t allowed
to think independently, and any of them that were very smart were
sent into the priesthood, they wouldn’t be in the police. That was
easy to figure, and encouraging.

What were they thinking, where were they looking?
They’d have to make a big pretense of hunting, with all the papers
said about their stupidity.

But he just couldn’t see any way they’d ever get
to him, who he really was. He didn’t like it—he was uneasy—that
people had remembered the names he’d given, and even a little about
him, or what he’d told those women. He hadn’t thought even that
much would ever be found out. But it couldn’t be dangerous; he’d
been too careful.

He was finished dressing, and it was too early to
leave; he sat down to reread the
Times
article again. Just to be sure there wasn’t anything really
dangerous.

No; since he knew how it was with him, he’d been
careful. Just luck that he hadn’t been found out the first couple
of times—the one back home, and then the second one. After that, he
knew he had to be terribly careful, just in case he couldn’t stop
himself, and oh, God, he had tried, he had tried not to. Because when
he hadn’t been found out—the police there said it might have been
anybody who killed Rhoda, a woman like that—and again with that
Anderson girl—it had seemed to him that God meant to give him
another chance. And he’d tried. Because it wasn’t right, it was
terrible when he thought about it calmly, afterward. Some of the
time—right then—it seemed the only possible, righteous thing.
These women who had tempted him just being women, who knew the awful
weakness in him, who had seen him stripped of all camouflage, all
spiritual dignity and control—impossible to let them live. That
first time it had happened, he hadn’t had a thought for his own
safety. Just a thing he had to do and he’d done it, that was Rhoda,
and nobody had connected him with it at all. But terrible, terrible,
how the devil was so insidious, tempting .... It hadn’t been quite
as hard, somehow, when Father was alive. There under the same roof, a
living presence reminding him and, of course, keeping him busy,
occupied—idle hands opportunity for the devil—there’d been the
shop to tend, always things to do, talk about. The times this awful
fleshly hunger came over him, he’d made himself sit down quietly
and read the Scriptures or something improving and calming like that.
Mostly. But once he was alone, there was the opportunity, nobody to
ask where he was going, what he was doing, thinking, feeling. And so,
eventually, there he was seeking out the wanton woman—

And once he’d gratified the lust, the temptation
worse, worse, and oftener too—useless to fight, though he fought
it, he tried, but always it was eventually too strong for him ....
And then he’d have to destroy the source of temptation. It was like
riding a toboggan out of control down a steep hill, everything faster
and faster once he was out of control, and the inevitable crash at
the bottom. The way it was, he knew now—almost surely—never any
different, whenever he got to the place with one of them where he had
to let go, give in to the lust, then it took him all the way down,
helpless, and it always ended in the crash, the holier kind of lust,
the savagely beautiful time of total destruction.

You could really say, all their fault for being what
they were—the whole source of sin—but he knew all the same that
something was a little wrong in him too, because other men didn’t
go out of control this way. Of course, a lot of men hadn’t had the
advantage of a really religious upbringing, but— Better to marry
than to burn, that was St. Paul, and he’d thought that was the
solution—after the Anderson girl, he’d thought that. It wasn’t
the best way, the ultimately right way, but if it was your wife it
wasn’t sin. He’d been trying to arrange it that way, with Mary
Ellen. But it was difficult, there were preliminaries to getting
married. The girl expected to be taken around a little, to get to
know you, and so on, and it was just too long and nerve-racking. He’d
been so upset after the Anderson thing, he’d held himself in
desperately for a long while, nearly a year, and then he’d decided
he must get married, it would be all right then. Didn’t much matter
who, but Mary Ellen was a nice girl, he’d liked her—not like
Rhoda or Julie Anderson. But that was the trouble, you couldn’t
meet a girl one day and marry her the next, and he couldn’t wait,
he couldn’t stop himself—