Ed Lacy - Enter Without Desire

Everybody is lucky—only one can't tell if it's good or bad luck 'til it's too late to matter.

It was all crazy: I lay on the beach and sunned myself, as though the sun or lack of sun was the main thing wrong with my health, my chances of being alive a year from now. I joked and played around with Elma in the water, and under it all only one thing was on my mind—murder.

That night I even slept and in the morning there was a letter from my agent, he had a possible buyer for the bronze of the baby's lips sucking Elma's breast. It was a legitimate reason for going to town... and I made up my mind I'd kill Logan that day.

Just like that, practically on the spur of the moment, I decided to take a man's life. I wondered if I was crazy, or was the violence in the air so great these days that taking a life seems almost normal?

I didn't know how I would go about it, but I felt a certain sense of relief that I had made up my mind, that within a few hours things would be settled for me, one way or the other.

I borrowed Sid's car and stopped off at the Alvins to ask Alice if she wanted anything from the city. She and a woman in one of the summer cottages were going to make a big outdoor barbecue and while Alice went to ask what sauces they'd need.... It was so easy to find a gun, take it... a long-barreled target automatic... lighter than the Luger. What a gun expert I was becoming!

Crossing the Tri-Borough Bridge I suddenly turned off into the Bronx and drove around aimlessly. North of the Yankee Stadium I came upon this old residential section that almost looked like the side street of a small town. I found a little alley that had this square wooden house on one side, the drawn dusty shades evidence it was either empty, or maybe shut for the summer. On the other side of the alley were these nice high hedges that needed trimming, then a wide open lot and a small modern brick house. The alley ran around the old wooden house to an unused garage. Back of the garage there was the exposed skeleton of an apartment house foundation—a house that was probably started way back during the depression years and never finished. This was surrounded by a sagging wooden fence that kids had knocked down in several places, and a street with more private houses.

I looked the scene over as though it was all a stage set, something especially built for what I had in mind—a personal drama.

Suddenly everything fell in place: if I could only get Logan in the alley, a quick shot that nobody would notice... Sid's car waiting in front of the sagging fence on the other street... me rushing across the old foundation and a clean get-away.

It sounded too easy, too simple, and yet I knew its very simplicity was in my favor. There were no complicated plans here to go wrong... I'd lucked up on this place by chance, nothing to identify me with it again.

I drove downtown and called my agent. He was out and I left my name, said I was coming into town from Sandyhook and would call later in the afternoon; even that was a sort of alibi—a mild one.

Driving over to Newark made me feel a bit queasy... I kept thinking over and over—the murderer returning to the scene of his crime. Harry Logan was in the book. I figured him for a small, one-man agency... he'd been doing all this snooping himself... and I knew I was right when he answered the phone himself, saying, “Yes? Logan speaking.” He had a dull, clear voice.

“Are you Harry Logan, the private detective?”

“Not the, but a private detective. Who's this?”

“Free to do some work today?”

“Maybe. Who is this?”

“Tell you when we talk. Have some shadowing I want done. I'm willing to pay well for it.”

“Fine. Come up to my office and start talking. Anybody who can pay well is more than welcome in my...”

“I can't come up to your office,” I said. “I think I'm... eh... being followed. Explain it all when I see you. Can you meet me in about ten minutes? I'm a big guy in a baggy tweed suit, bald head.”

“Funny way to do business. Why can't...?”

“This is a kind of funny case. Mean a hundred bucks for a few hours' work.”

“Got yourself a boy, baggy tweed. Where do we meet?'

I was phoning from a drugstore across from his office. “There's a drugstore across the street from your place. I'll be able to be outside there in ten minutes. What do you look like?”

“Tall, girls sometimes tell me I'm handsome—even when they're sober. I'm wearing a blue suit and a brown coconut straw,” Logan said, as though I amused him.

“Okay, ten minutes,” I said and hung up.

I drove around the block twice and even stopped at the drugstore for a red light. Logan was tall and handsome, didn't look at all like a dick—nothing tough about him.

I drove north and when I came across the George Washington Bridge, I parked and called him again. “This is baggy tweed, Mr. Logan. Sorry I couldn't keep our date.”

“What is this, a rib?”

“Oh no, this is on the level. For...”

He said, “I don't like this.”

I said quickly, afraid he'd get off the hook, “You see, I got scared. It's... eh... sort of dangerous for me to be in New Jersey. Process server after me.”

“Gotcha. This a divorce case?”

“Why... yes. Any objections?”

“Nope, long as you put the green on the line. How do we get together?”

“It's one-thirty. Have you a car?”

“It's been called that.”

“Suppose you come to New York, to my place in the Bronx? If you use the George Washington Bridge, shouldn't take you more than an hour to get there. Let's make it for three.”

“Right. What's the address?”

I gave him the address of the house in the Bronx, added, “My wife has been giving me a hard time, so if the shades are down, don't worry. Don't want her to know I'm living there. Just come around to the back door. I'll give you fifty dollars then, and another fifty by seven tonight, when you tell me who she's seeing for supper.”

“Got yourself a deal. Only, be there—this is a long ride, chum.”

“I'll be there. This means a great deal to me.”

I drove up to the Bronx, parked the car on the street side of the sagging fence and old foundation. There wasn't a soul on the street, the kids must have been in a neighborhood pool, or park. Walking around the block to the deserted house, I passed a woman wheeling a baby carriage—no one else in sight. I knew my luck was with me, I'd stumbled on the ideal spot for murder. It was two-twelve. My seersucker coat was wet with sweat and my mouth sandy dry. I had to walk three blocks before I found a candy store. A bottle of soda made me feel a little better, only I wished the soda had been a whisky bracer.

Walking back slowly, I turned into the alley as though I owned the place, sat on the back steps. I put my hand in my right pocket, made sure the safety was off the gun....

And waited.

The sky turned a grayish blue... as though it was all a blue wash on which a drop of black had been spilled. I wondered if I was losing my sight. I wanted to ask Logan, who was pacing up and down beside me, staring at my stomach every few minutes with a worried look.

But when I opened my mouth to ask him about the sky, the air was as thick as a huge marshmallow and all I could do was chew on it. It felt good whenever I was able to swallow a little of the air. It stunk a bit, too, a rotten, over-sweet smell.

Logan muttered—and it was amazing how clearly I could hear even the smallest sounds. “Hope your wife gets here soon. Almost an hour now. Cops will come any minute and unless she gets here first or...”

He suddenly stiffened, held out a hand for me to be quiet —which was comical—as we both heard a car stop out in the street with the weird scream of tortured rubber. I heard the sound of people running up the alley... then Elma came into focus and behind her I saw the frightened face of Alice.

Logan grabbed Elma as she came toward me, her face ugly with hysteria. He shook her, said something in her ear, glancing at Alice. I saw her lips move and she pushed him aside and knelt next to me. She was wearing a strapless summer dress and I noticed the creamy white of the rise of her breasts as she bent over me—in pleasant contrast to her tan shoulders. I'd never do that terra-cotta nude of her now. I'd never do a damn thing any more...

She moaned, “Oh Marsh... Marsh,” and tears rushed from those wonderful slant eyes. The lovely mouth, the fine body, the ideas and jokes we had in common... all the things I loved and thought would always be mine... the things I murdered to keep... and now was losing.

I had only one thing more to do—try to explain to Elma why I did it. But when I opened my mouth, the air came in thick as spongy rubber. I kept chewing on it, trying to talk.

I moved my jaws hard... I had to tell her! But when I swallowed to clear my throat, another chunk of the sticky air stopped up my mouth.

I knew then I wouldn't be able to explain things to her and that made me sad, hurt. I made one last effort to clear my throat, but the hunk of air in my mouth merely moved down to my Adam's apple and stuck there and I began to choke.

I must have blacked out while I was gagging, for when I opened my eyes again I thought the blue sky had fallen on us. There was a wall of dark blue behind Elma... and a streak of white. Then I knew I was looking at the legs of a lot of cops and the streak of white was merely the pants of the ambulance doc.

Keeping awake was a long effort. The air was still stuffing my mouth and I could hardly breathe. Elma was bending over me, her eyes the tenderest things I'd ever seen. I looked into those wonderful eyes... tried to tell her with my own why I'd done all this... the gamble I'd taken, the horrible crime I'd committed... all for our happiness.

Her big lips were moving but I didn't hear a sound. I swallowed a few times, barely moving the chunk of air clogging my throat. Then—as if an invisible door had been opened—I heard her say, “Marsh, and if what they say is true... that you shot Mac... it was all my fault! I—I brought all this misery to you.... But, darling, if you had only told me!” She began to weep again, her tears falling on my face like a caress.

My eyes smiled up at her, trying to say she'd given me the only happiness I'd ever known and I was grateful.

She sobbed. “Marsh, Marsh... if you had... told me!”

I pushed the chunk of air to one side of my mouth with my tongue. I moved my hand, trying to touch her face— and nearly fainted with the effort. With my eyes I wanted to say, “Elma, what difference would it have made if I had told you? Only make you upset. And this goddamn professional busybody, this Logan, would have got me—us—and there would be the scandal of a long trial and the chair waiting at the end of the line, the...”

Then she said it... how clear I heard her words!

“Marsh, sweet, you see.... I hired Logan. To make the old lady feel better. And if I'd known it was... you...” She looked up and Logan's ordinary face came into view as he whispered, “Sure, Mr. Jameson, I'd have kept my mouth shut. I'm only paid to find out things, not to do anything about it. Why... when you told me your name... why I stalled calling the cops... till Mrs. Jameson came.”

“Marsh, we have so much ahead of us. You must get well and somehow we'll fight this out and...” Elma's voice ended in a hopeless sob and her tears wet my eyes.