Man Sinister

I slammed the phone into its cradle and turned to the window. A man was idling across the street. For an instant my scalp went tight as I thought he might be McGinty. But he was too tall. A stake-out of Hagan’s, probably, watching the house.

Then a taxi rolled to a stop before the house, and a woman got out. Without hesitation, she came up the walk toward the house. The same black hair. The same softly angular face. The slender body was thinner now; the long legs took short steps.

I rushed into the hall and jerked the front door open. My wife was lifting a slim finger to ring the bell!

We looked at each other and it was all I could do to control my feelings. She smiled.

“Hello, Steve.”

“Hello, Bry.”

We told each other that we were looking well. Then we were in the silent parlor and our bodies came together and our lips met. Finally I held her back to look at her.

“Well!” she sighed. She sat down. “Do you have a cigarette?”

I lighted one for her. She took a couple of puffs before saying through her smile, “I came prepared to be brisk, businesslike, to ask if you had a job, what you intended to do with yourself in the future. You moved too quickly for me.”

“Would you believe that I intended to come to Greensboro as soon as I got a job?”

Her eyes and mouth released the smile, growing serious. She studied my face. “I’ve always believed it, Steve. I know the bargain my folks forced on you. It was cruel, unfair. Somehow we’ll have to repay them every penny.”

I pulled a chair close and sat down before her, reaching for her hands. “Lucy told me you were up and around, but she made it seem as if—”

“Lucy has been here?”

“Last night.”

Bryanne laughed. “The dirty little plotter. I suppose she had a deal in mind. She told me she was driving down to the beach for a week. She probably guessed I was tracing you and managed to keep up with my progress so that she knew where you were about as quickly as I did.”

Her glance curved up to lock with mine, her eyes deepened. “Steve, before things can be as they should, you’ll have to forgive yourself.”

“I can do that.”

“You’ll have to forgive the folks as well,” she pleaded. “Try to understand them, Steve. From the beginning they’ve been fighting for something they thought belonged to them. They’ve been so sure that our wartime infatuation, as they called it, would blow over, but that before it did, it would cost a terrible price.”

“Do they still feel the same way?”

“Yes, but they are not so sure now. They forced us apart. They’re aware of my feelings. They also know that you seemed to be deliberately trying to destroy yourself. They’ll still fight, but their punches will lose their sting. Forgive them, Steve, and give them an opportunity to stop fighting without losing face.”

I thought of Lucy sitting in a room in the Bradley Hotel, claws unsheathed. I wasn’t sure Lucy would interpret forgiveness as such. To her it would be calling her bluff. There was a big chance she would never follow the bluff through. Doing so would involve the Quavely name, indirectly, through the husband of a Quavely, in murder. But she might feel that the Quavely name was already involved. Forgiveness certainly entailed complications.

“You always admired a fighter, Steve,” Bryanne said quietly. “They’re fighters. You’ve seen only their worst side. They do have a good side. I know you’ll never be close to them in your feelings, and I realize how much I am asking of: you. But don’t let them be an invisible barrier between you and me, Steve.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” I promised.

She almost cried. Her lips held a tremulous smile.

“There are several things you must be told,” I said.

As quietly as I could I gave her the whole story, including Lucy’s threat.

“Leave Lucy to me,” she said, when I’d finished. “I’ll register at the Lang Park Hotel and get in touch with her. Steve, I’ll be waiting. I can’t tell you how badly I feel because of this dreadful thing happening to Papa Joe. But don’t worry about Lucy, darling.”

I kissed her when the taxi came in answer to my phone call, and as I watched her go away I remembered what she had said. She would be waiting.

Chapter VII

Early in the afternoon, Vera came downstairs to take lunch up to Harold. While she was busy in the kitchen with Ellen, I went upstairs. Harold was standing at the front window looking at Hagan’s stake-out across the street.

Harold was pale and tired. From the droop of his lower lip I guessed him to be in a sullen, petulant mood.

He asked what arrangements I’d made about the funeral. After I told him, I veered our talk abruptly.

“I want to hear about McGinty.”

“What about him?”

“Everything.”

“It was personal,” he said curtly.

I wouldn’t allow him to anger me. “Not too personal for you to hope that I covered traces of what happened in the vacant cottage.”

He studied my face. “You’re not going to drag that out before Hagan?”