Candy

Chapter Eleven

THERE COULD, OF COURSE, be any number of rational explanations. The wires of Associated Press had more than a few goofs on their respectable shoulders and this was quite possibly one of them. Or, if the Galveston Record went to press without benefit of teletype apparatus, a local linotype operator might have substituted a non-existent kitchen knife for my bloody hands.

And then again …

I tried to forget about the then-and-again part of it. I got out of the coffee shop and found a cab to take me to the Record building, a three-story brick mess that looked as though it was taking a siesta until it was time to get down to the monotony of putting out a newspaper once again. The friendly old coot with horn-rimmed spectacles and alcoholic breath who was minding the store gave me copies of the past week’s issues and didn’t even charge me a nickel apiece for them. I remember thinking hazily that a person could save a nickel a day in Galveston if he was willing to get his news a day late.

If the kitchen knife gambit had been an error, then it had been a persistent wire service goof that showed up an amazing total of four times in the first story and at least once in every other version. It seemed that Mrs. Caroline Lipton Christie had suffered the overwhelming indignity of having her ivory throat slit from ear to ear.

The possibility of suicide had been ruled out, I learned. Police had conjectured that Caroline might have been raped and then have killed herself, but the absence of any fingerprints whatsoever ruled that out. It was a clear-cut case of rape and murder (although the puritanical press persisted in calling it “Criminal Assault”) and the rapist and murderer, according to all sorts of testimony, turned out to be none other than yours truly.

Two people in the world knew better. Three people if you could count Caroline, but since she was no longer in the world but in a gay heaven all her own, that left just the two of us.

Me.

And my own true love.

I thought it over and decided that I didn’t believe it. Then I thought it over some more and decided that there was nothing else to believe no matter how bitter the inevitable realization tasted in my throat.

So I tossed the newspapers in the nearest trashbasket in an effort to oblige in the drive to KEEP GALVESTON CLEAN and found my way back to the Hotel Westlake. My brain burned and my fingers played neurotic games with themselves. The beautiful morning was a neutral gray now and the hot sun was a pale cardboard cut-out on a sky of vomit purple.

It all made sense, sick sense, horrible sense, unnatural sense that was now frighteningly and staggeringly and all-too-obviously natural. I was the ultimate Mark, the Magnificent Sucker, the Patsy-to-end-all-Patsies. I felt duped and swindled and taken, but more than anything else I felt appallingly stupid, which hurt more than the rest of it. There are few things quite so disheartening as the discovery that your love and trust have been used to nail you to the wall.

In the taxi back to the hotel and on the elevator to the room I thought valiantly that it couldn’t have been her, that she couldn’t have done a thing like that, that even if she had she would never have been able to fool me the way she did. My mind invented an Unknown Person who slipped into the apartment after I left and before Candy appeared, a blank-faced, medium-built nonentity who had done the evil deed and vanished like smoke in a whirlwind.

That explained everything. Mr. Nobody had done it, Candy thought I had done it, and off we were to Mexico. Mr. Nobody, the little man who wasn’t there.

Only he wasn’t there. That was the sore point and it sort of fouled things up.

I started to knock on the door, then changed my mind and used my key instead. The door opened and I walked inside and closed it behind me. She was on the bed and she was awake and she was naked. She looked at me and her eyes were wide with a combination of Gee-I’m-glad-to-see-you and Something’s-bothering-you-what-is-it? shining softly in them.

I didn’t know what to say or where to start. I walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the nudity of her. Somehow it made me feel out of place with my clothes on but there was nothing to do about that but take my clothes off and that wasn’t what I had in mind. I was, for once in my life, not in the mood for love.

“Hi,” she said. “I missed you this morning. I wanted you when I woke up and you weren’t here. The bed was empty and it was terrible.”

I looked away from her. I saw her shoes at the edge of the bed with their high heels and pointed toes. I saw our clothes on one chair where we had hurled them the night before. I saw a wisp of lingerie in a tangle on the floor at the foot of the bed.

I turned back and saw her. Her face was a little drawn now, not so much that anybody would have noticed it, but enough so that I knew she knew that something was wrong. I knew her well enough to read her face.

Or did I? Perhaps I never knew her at all. Perhaps I was just beginning to discover her.

“Jeff,” she said. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Did I do something?”

That was sort of a leading question.

“Jeff—” She paused, a significant pause that was pregnant with meaning, and waited for me to unburden my alleged mind.

I said: “How come you killed her with the knife?”

The silence was strikingly loud.

Her face never cracked but there was just the merest twitch of her right eye and the slightest trembling of one shoulder. That was enough. Then she was calm and relaxed and said things that didn’t mean anything to me because I did not hear them. I sat there mute and deaf with rage and self-pity and hate and every emotion in the catalogue except happiness, and finally I asked her to start over at the beginning because I hadn’t heard one goddamn word that came out of her mouth.

“The knife was right there,” she said. “You cut her throat with it. What are you talking about?”

“I never saw any knife.”

“But it was there! Jeff, are you sure? Because … because if you didn’t then somebody else must have done it and you’re in the clear. Of course we’ll still have to go to Mexico because there’s no way to prove it and you did rape her, but—”

“Candy.” I had just remembered something, something that made Mr. Nobody nobody at all. I had thought that Mr. Nobody had already died within my mind, but evidently he hadn’t because this present realization was sufficiently crushing to keep me speechless for a second or two. It was all I could do to get her name out in a flat two syllables devoid of any intonation whatsoever. That was enough—the tone of my voice must have combined with the expression on her face to silence her because her mouth snapped shut and she didn’t say another word.

“She died in your arms,” I said. “She talked to you and told you all about it and died in your arms.”

She looked at me, puzzled.

“That’s how you knew I had been there,” I went on. I was talking very easily now—it seemed almost as though someone else was talking with my mouth and some other brain moving my lips, it was that simple.

“You went to her and she told you I had been there. And then she died in your arms. Right?”

She nodded.

“Quite a lot of talking,” I said. “Quite a speech from a woman with her throat cut from ear to ear.”

The color drained out of her. It was the first time I had seen her genuinely shaken and the sight did something to me. It was as though I was getting my first real indication that Candy Cain was a human being like the rest of us, a person who was not wholly invulnerable.

But she recovered quickly. She didn’t say anything at first but the color seeped back into her flesh as suddenly as it had left it and she lay there keen-eyed, waiting for me to say something else.

“This is unnecessary,” I said. “You already know what you did but I’m going to tell you, anyway. You walked in on Caroline, saw I was an obvious patsy for a play like this and killed her. I don’t have the slightest idea why you did it but I don’t suppose that makes much difference.”

There was a touch of humour in those eyes of hers now and I hated her for it.

I pushed on. “Then you cleaned out the apartment, beat it to the Astor and phoned me. You managed to convince me that I had killed her—how could I figure it for anything else? You were always careful never to say a word about how she got it. You never mentioned any knife. As soon as you did it would have been all over. Because I did a lot of things in that apartment without knowing just what I was doing, but I know damned well I never had my hands on a knife.”

I fumbled for a cigarette and got one going. I didn’t offer her one and she didn’t ask for one. I smoked and took a few breaths.

“Never played the radio,” I said. “I should have noticed how nervous you were when that one newscast was on, but I was so nervous myself that it sailed right past me. Now it makes sense. But how in God’s name did you expect to get away with it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Good God! I couldn’t go the rest of my life without stumbling across a newspaper story. What kind of world do you think this is? Even in Mexico there would have been some mention somewhere and someday I would have hit it and the jig would have been up. How did you figure to get clean?”

She smiled. I didn’t particularly care for that smile.

“Jeff,” she said, softly and clearly, “I did get away with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said.”

“You got away with it this far. But now you’re not getting away with it any further. I know damn well I didn’t kill the Christie bitch and that you did.”

“So what?”

I just looked at her.

“Can you prove it, Jeff?”

I stammered something quite meaningless.

“You can’t prove a thing, Jeff. You know and I know that I killed Caroline. After you left she decided that I wasn’t worth the agony you had just put her through. She wanted me to leave, Jeff. She was going to throw me into the street.”

“That’s where you belong.”

“She was going to throw me out on the street,” she repeated, and she didn’t act as though she had heard a word I said. “I had to kill her. She had all that money lying around the apartment, money and jewels and all, and all I had to do was kill her and it would be mine and we could run away together. You and me.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because I like you, Jeff, and because—”

“Cut the crap.”

“That’s part of it,” she said, her eyes level. “I’d rather live with you than anybody else, I guess. But running away with you made it safe for me.”

I was baffled and it must have shown on my face because my expression got a tiny laugh out of her.

“If you didn’t come away with me,” she said, “they might not have proved you killed her. You could have taken one of those lie detector tests or something and wormed your way out. But you’re not safe now, Jeff. You ran off and nobody outside of you and me is ever going to believe you didn’t kill Caroline. Nobody in the world.”

“But you ran off with me—”

“I know. That makes me an accessory after the fact. And I stole all the money and jewels and that makes me a thief. But it doesn’t make me a murderer, Jeff, and that’s what it makes you. They may send me to prison for a while, but they’ll send you to the electric chair.”

I couldn’t say a word.

“Now do you see what I mean? You found out about me killing Caroline, but that doesn’t change a damn thing. You still have to get out of the country and I’m still going with you. We can live good in Mexico, Jeff. We can have each other just the same, and we couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t killed Caroline. We can have each other and we can be happy and—”

I couldn’t believe it. I looked at her there, all naked and all unashamed, confessing a murder and trying to make it appear both rational and blameless, confessing a frame-up and propositioning the guy she’d just framed in the same breath.

It made no sense. No—it made sense if you could believe in Candy. Candy was the part of the equation that made no sense at all. Candy’s reasoning fit neatly with Candy, but Candy herself did not fit in with anything in the entire world. She was a species all her own.

“Look,” she said. “I know you’re mad at me right now but you might as well be practical. If you want to see me punished for murdering Caroline you’re crazy. I couldn’t possibly be convicted. There’s not a chance in the world.”

She was right.

“The only way you can save yourself is by leaving the country. And if you do—Give me a cigarette, will you?”

I gave her a cigarette and held a match for her. She drew on the cigarette and blew out smoke. Her hands were steady and she seemed calm.

“If you leave the country,” she went on, “you might as well take me with you. We’re registered as Mr. and Mrs. David Trevor and we’ve left a wide trail under those names. It’d look funny if we split up now. You might have trouble getting across the border.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“Besides, I’ve got the money.”

I shrugged. “I could take it away from you.”

“Probably, but not without a fight. And a fight could attract attention and I don’t think you can afford attention. If worst came to worst I could always tell the police on you and turn state’s evidence. The most that could happen to me is that I’d get a year or two in jail. Probably not even that.”

“Go on.”

She stretched lazily. She was entirely in command of the situation by now and she knew it and the knowledge pleased her no end. I looked at her and I let my eyes take in all of her from her head to her feet. Her body was just a body now and I found it hard to believe that I had ever been a slave to it. It was just flesh, just a chemical mess worth maybe 79c on the open market.

I shook my head sadly and she raised her eyebrows, wondering what I was shaking my head sadly about. I didn’t say anything and she breezed idly on.

“If we go to Mexico together,” she continued, “nothing will be changed. You’re the best man I ever had, Jeff. That’s the truth. I love having you. I always have and I know for a fact I always will.”

Perhaps she was telling the truth; perhaps she was lying in her teeth. At one time it would have been very important to know whether the words she spoke were true or not. Now it seemed inconceivable that I could care one way or the other.

“And you want me. I know you do, Jeff. You won’t get tired of me. I’ll be good.”

Very good. Like a machine. Put in a nickel and the hips start rolling.

“It’ll be the same as if you never found out, Jeff. I could have turned you in to the cops but I didn’t because I want to be with you. So we’ll do just what we planned on doing before you read that article in the newspaper. We’ll go to Mexico and settle down and live on Caroline’s money and make love all the time and—”

I’d been shaking my head from side to side all through the tail end of that little speech but it took her a while to run out of words. Then she looked at me blankly as if she wondered very genuinely what was the matter with my hitherto logical mind.

I just went on shaking my head. Then I dropped the cigarette on the floor and ground it out.

“Jeff?”

I looked at her.

“What’s the matter?”

Somewhere in Galveston a bell was tolling the hour and I counted the chimes without thinking. It was ten o’clock, ten o’clock and all’s well, except for the pertinent fact that all was not well. I fished out another cigarette and set it on fire. I didn’t say anything.

“Jeff?”

“You killed her,” I said simply.

“So what?”

I shrugged.

“Look,” she said, “be reasonable. Jeff, look at it sensibly. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

She sat up on the bed and smiled. She was almost-but-not-quite sure of herself now and that’s what the smile was saying, a shy, almost girlish smile that curled her mouth prettily but left her eyes serious.

When she sat up like that her breasts were just a few inches from me. They looked like ripe fruit and they were obviously there for the plucking.

I remembered her words: I’ve got the hardest and firmest breasts of any girl I know. They’re big, too. You can see how big they are.

That had been long ago. Not so long ago by the calendar perhaps, but ages ago, a lifetime ago by the clock that ticked in my head.

That was in another country. And besides the wench was dead.

I have read that when a man drowns, his entire life passes before his eyes. The exactness of this time-worn myth has never seemed apparent to me—if the man drowns, how does anybody know what was on his poor mind before he gobbled down enough water to kill him? I was not drowning, needless to say, so I am still unable to report on the dilemma of the drowning dolt.

But I do know that my whole life passed through my mind as I contemplated the succulent breasts of Candace Cain. All the rather inane things I had done, all the stupidities of my life unreeled before me in one unholy panorama of Cinemascope and Technicolor and Stereophonic Sound and, God save us, Aromarama.

It was an unpleasant spectacle. The Aromarama came into play quite prominently.

The whole thing stank out loud.

The murderess cupped a breast in each of her bloody hands and offered them to me. Perhaps the sick aspect of the scene actually aroused her; perhaps she was enough of a fake to simulate tangible signs of excitement. Whatever the reason, her proud little nipples stood up and beckoned to me.

“Take me,” she pleaded.

If I could have laughed out loud that is precisely what I would have done. The whole tableaux was hysterical. But I was beyond laughter.

I didn’t even turn away. I just looked at her and drew a complete blank. No, thanks, I wasn’t having any.

“Jeff—” she said huskily.

I said: “No.”

“Jeff—”

“I’m not interested.”

“Of course you are.” Her voice was suddenly fierce, as if the world would end if I ceased to want her body. “You want me, Jeff. You want me!”

“I don’t. I did once but now I don’t.”

When she pouted at me she looked like a baby, a child denied an extra hypnotic hour in front of the television set or a second piece of candy. I had to remind myself that she was not a kid but a killer, not a baby but a bitch.

“Jeff,” she oozed, “what else can you do?”

I told her.

“I can kill you,” I said.

And I did

She was inches from me when my hands reached out for her throat. She did not draw back at once as she might have done. I think she refused to believe me, thought I was joking, assumed my hands were reaching to possess her rather than to destroy her.

She could not have been further from the truth.

My hands went around that neck and I squeezed her neck harder than I have ever squeezed anything in my life. It is not a simple matter to strangle another person with your bare hands. The books and television shows make it seem much easier than it really is. It is a tough proposition, even if you are a relatively strong guy and the person you are strangling is a woman.

There are all those cords and tendons and muscles in the human neck, and they get in your way. They were in mine, and if Candy had put up much of a fight she might have made things harder for me. But she did not put up any fight at all, did not try to scream or fight me off or anything. She just sat there, her eyes bewildered and her forehead wrinkled in a frown that was part disbelief and part sheer physical pain; just sat there with something approaching calm while I choked her to death.

She must have been dead long before my hands relaxed their grip. God knows how long I held onto that throat. I think I was afraid that if I let go too soon she would pick up another kitchen knife and wipe out half the human race.

She might well have.

But finally I was satisfied that she was dead. Quite satisfied, and very pleased with myself. Not joyous, not happy, but curiously elated with my performance.

I had performed a task which was not only difficult but essential.

For quite some time I remained in the room with Candy’s corpse. She was not beautiful in death. Perhaps no victim of strangulation could ever be beautiful—her tongue hung out of her mouth, her eyes bulged, her face was purplish and puffy.

But it was more than that. A good part of what passed for beauty in Candy was actually more akin to vivacity. She had been very much alive, desperately alive, alive with the verve and spirit of a jungle creature to whom civilization is a cumbersome affair.

Now, now that she was dead, this Life with a capital “L” was gone, and what remained was nothing but the right amount and variety of component parts which added up to Woman. The result could not be called beautiful by anyone but a true necrophile, an absolute worshipper of Death.

When I couldn’t stay in the room any longer I rummaged through her purse and took as much money as I felt I would need. I stuffed the wad of bills into my pocket and left the room, hanging a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob so that no errant chambermaid would stumble upon the body of the late and unlamented Candace Cain. I took the elevator to the main floor, wandered out through the lobby into the sunshine.

A pawnshop in a less-than-respectable section of town supplied a .38-calibre revolver and some bullets. I had to pay a good deal of money for the gun but I didn’t worry about the price.

My next stop was a typewriter sales and service shop a few blocks from the hotel. I bought a new typewriter—an extravagance, I admit—and paid cash for it.

From there I went to a stationery store and bought a ream of bond paper. With the gun and bullets in my pants pocket and the paper and typewriter in my arms I re-entered the hotel and elevated back to my floor. I opened the door of the room and it was as I had left it, which was hardly surprising. Death had not been kind to Candy. She looked worse than she had when I left her.

I placed the typewriter on the desk and pulled up the chair and sat in it.

I am sitting in it now.

I placed the revolver, loaded with a single bullet, on the desk by the side of the typewriter. I looked at it from time to time.

I am looking at it now.

I began typing, and I typed very fast and very long. The words came freely, almost too freely. There is still some of the ream of typewriter paper left, but quite a bit has been used already.

I strongly suspect, Officer, that this is the longest suicide note you have ever read.

THE END