Shakespeare's Landlord

Page 23

I actually laughed.
"You know, Norvel's already out on bail," I said, not knowing how to respond.
"Bet he won't be coming around you anymore," Janet said dryly. I figured she was still there because she was maneuvering to leave at the same time Carlton did, hoping for some significant exchange about meeting for a drink, maybe.
"Better not," I said sincerely. There was a little silence. They exchanged glances.
"Did you enjoy it, Lily?" Raphael asked suddenly. "I mean, here we practice all the time, spar all the time, have aches and pains that make my wife ask why I'm doing this. And me, big man, I've never been in a fight since I got out of junior high. But you, woman, you've done it. So how did it feel?"
"I'll tell you," I said after I'd thought for a moment. "It was scary and exciting and I could have hurt him real bad if the police hadn't shown up so quick."
"They pull you and Norvel apart?" Janet asked.
"No, I had him on the ground - bleeding. He was whipped. But I would have hurt him more." Raphael and Carlton exchanged uneasy looks. "It was the adrenaline," I tried to explain. "I had beaten a real man in a real fight, but he scared me, coming at me like that, unexpected. And since I was scared, I was mad. I was so mad at him for scaring me, I wanted to hurt him even worse." Admitting I'd been frightened wasn't too easy.
Raphael and Carlton were thinking over what I'd said, but Janet was after something else. "So it did work, all this training," she said, leaning forward to stare in my face. "You reacted just like you would in class, no freeze moment, the trained kicked in." I could tell what she was scared of - not too hard to figure out. And there was a short answer. "Yes, the training kicked in."
She nodded, a short, sharp bob of the head that signified confirmation of a deeply held hope. Then she smiled, a cold smile that made this shortish, ordinary woman something formidable. It was my turn to lean forward, and for once deliberately I looked someone else straight in the eyes, searching hers for what I suspected. I found it. I gave my own little nod. We were fellow survivors.
But we weren't going to talk about it. I wanted to avoid a girlish mutual emotional bath at all costs. It was something I couldn't bear. So I grabbed my stuff and mumbled something about going home to get cleaned up, said I was hungry.
I started thinking about Pardon's shirt on the way home. I've done laundry. I know the way clothes look when they've been washed hundreds of times. Pardon's shirt was a cheap shirt to begin with and he'd worn it and washed it repeatedly for years. It had been almost thin enough to read through. I remembered in my flashlight's beam seeing the ripped chest pocket. The threads had been frayed. I did not doubt that some of those threads remained at the site of Pardon's death, which had probably occurred in his apartment. More of them had to be at the place where his body had been stored. And where were his keys?
I prepared a baked potato and vegetables when I got home, but I hardly tasted the meal. That body had been hidden on the street I considered my turf. My cart had been used to haul Pardon to the dump site. Now that my mind was unclouded by thoughts of Marshall - or at least mostly unclouded -  it began to run around the track of speculation about Pardon's death.
Suddenly, the parking garage popped into my mind. Something about it had sparked an uneasiness; something not as it was supposed to be? A memory jogged by something I'd seen there?
It bothered me while I washed my dishes, bothered me while I showered. I wasn't going to sleep. I put on black spandex shorts and a black sports bra, then pulled a red UA sweatshirt over that. Black socks and black cross-trainers completed my outfit. I punched in Claude's number, sure that if I heard his voice, I'd know what I wanted to tell him. But his answering machine came on. I don't leave messages on machines. I paced up and down my hall. I tried his number again.
Finally, I had to get out. Dark night. Cool air on my bare legs. Walking. It was a relief to be outside, to be silent, to be moving. I passed Thea's house without so much as a glance. And then I passed Marshall's. His car wasn't there. I walked on. I heard someone else coming on Indian Way and glided behind some azaleas. Joel McCorkindale ran by, wearing sweats, Nikes, and a determined expression. I waited till the sound of his running feet faded into the night before I stepped back out on the street.
The wind was blowing, making the new leaves rustle together, a sound almost like the sea.
I walked faster and faster, until I, too, was running down the middle of the street in silent Shakespeare, seeing no one, wondering if I was invisible.
I entered the arboretum from the far side, plunging into the trees and stopping to catch my breath in their concealment.
It came to me what I had to do. I had to go back to the garage. Looking at it would be better than visualizing. I would remember what had been niggling at me if I stood there long enough.
It was maybe 11:45 when I walked silently up the north side of the apartment driveway. I hugged the brick wall so anyone glancing out a window would not see me. I checked the lights. Mrs. Hofstettler's was out - no surprise there. A dim glow lit up the Yorks' bedroom window; maybe one of them was reading in bed. I had a hard time imagining that. Maybe a night-light? Norvel's second-floor apartment was dark, as was Marcus's.
As long as I was doing a bed check, I circled the building.
Of course Pardon's rooms were dark, and the O'Hagens'. Tom would be at work and Jenny would have to be in bed at this hour. Upstairs, Deedra's lights were out. She was in bed either solo or duo. There was a light in Claude's bathroom window, so I walked around front to check his bedroom window. It was lit.
I didn't want to go in the building. I squatted and patted the ground around me until I found a rock the size of my thumbnail. I threw it at his window. It made quite a sound. I flattened myself against the wall again in case someone other than Claude had heard the noise. But no one came to see what it was, not even Claude.
All right, then, I'd remember on my own.
And suddenly, I did.
I'd have to go in the building after all. I moved around to the back door, taking a terrible chance. I pulled the key no one had thought to take away from me, the key to the back door, from my bra. I unlocked the door as quietly as it could be done, then went in. The stairs creak less by the wall, so I went up them quietly and carefully, one foot in front of the other. I passed Claude's door and went to Deedra's, decorated with a little grapevine wreath wrapped with purple ribbon and dried flowers. I knocked quietly.
The door opened so quickly, I was sure Deedra had been lying on the floor right inside it, with company. In the light falling through from the hall, I could see a male leg, and since it was dark, I deduced that Marcus Jefferson had succumbed to temptation once again.
Deedra looked very pissed off, and I couldn't blame her, but I didn't have time for it.
"Tell me again what you told me - about when you came home from work early to give Pardon the rent check."
"I swear to God you are the weirdest cleaning woman in Arkansas," Deedra said.
"Talk to me. For once, I want to listen."
"Will you go away right after? No more questions?"
"Probably."
"Okay. I came home from work. I ran upstairs to get the check Mama had given me. I took it down to Pardon's. The door was a little open. He was lying on the couch, his back to the door. The area rug was all rumpled and the couch was crooked. I said his name, I said it a lot, but he didn't move. I figured he'd maybe had a drink and passed out or he was taking a hell of a nap, so I just put the check on his desk, to the left of the door. This what you want?"
I beckoned to her to keep on.
"So ... so then, I ... well, I went back and got in my car. I had to go back to work even though I just had a few minutes left. You wouldn't believe how ticky Celie Schiller is. ..."
"Lower your voice and speed up," I suggested quietly.
"My maid tells me what to do," she told the air, "Incredible."
But she looked in my face and went on. "And then I got in my car... and I backed out of my place, and put it in drive to go out, and I had to go out careful because of the Yorks' stupid camper. ..."
I held a finger to my lips. Her voice was rising.
"That's what I wanted," I whispered.
"Oh, don't want to hear about the run in my hose that day?" she asked with killing sarcasm, then shut the door firmly in my face.
I ran my fingers through my hair and gripped two handfuls of it. I stood there thinking, my eyes closed, still facing Deedra's door. I took a few steps down the hall and tapped Claude's door with one finger. I couldn't risk more.
No answer. I turned the handle. Locked, of course.
I went back down the stairs quietly. Even if I'd been standing in the bottom hall, I wouldn't have heard me.
I didn't know why I was so tense, why my mission seemed so urgent. But I never ignore the back of my neck, and the skin of it was crawling. There was tension in air. In the silent building, the air was humming with it. I opened the door with a feeling of relief to be getting out, and I eased through the opening as silently as I could manage. I re-locked the door behind me.
Going from the lighted hall to the relative gloom of the parking area cost me some vision, and I stood still to let my eyes adjust. Pardon had installed one all-night security light in the middle of the garage, and it lit up that immediate area like stage lighting. But the illumination didn't extend to the end stalls. I skirted the edge of the light and drifted to the outside wall of the garage. For maybe five minutes, I stood in the darkness, listening. I shifted my foot, and something clinked.
Slowly, I crouched down in the weeds that had found life against the wall of the garage, sprouting through cracks in the pavement. I patted the ground gently. My fingers found a familiar shape, traced it. I tried to pick up what I'd found all in one piece, so it wouldn't jingle. I held it up close to my face. Pardon Albee's key ring. I had nowhere to put it; there were at least fifteen keys on the metal circle. The safest place was where they'd been, so I gently laid them back in the weeds, where they'd been since the day he died.
Nothing moved. I didn't hear anything but the faint sound of a car cruising by in the street. Even that died away. But as quiet as it was, I knew there were people near. I could feel the hair standing up on the nape of my neck. So I slowly rose to my feet, nearly moved away to the safety of my house, wondered if I would make it.
I extended my hand to the knob on the camper. It was in the camper that Pardon's body had been concealed; if any evidence remained, it would be in that little space.
The Yorks hadn't been due home until night. But they'd come home earlier, the day Pardon had died. I knew it.
And then I turned the knob. The door popped open with a click, and just as I took in a breath of triumph, a huge shape launched itself at me from the black interior.
I didn't have a chance to defend myself. In ferocious silence, I was being beaten, and I needed all my breath to fend off the blows, to keep the fists from killing me. I knew only one person was there, but it was a person possessed of a demon, a man who seemed to have more than two hands.
I had to fight back or I would die, but the frequency and pain of the blows left me scant brainpower. I formed a fist and struck the first thing I could see, some ribs, not an effective blow, but a start, a gesture. I was weakening and soon I would be down on the ground, and it would be all over if I fell. It was almost a miracle I'd managed to keep on my feet as long as this.
Then I caught a glimpse of exposed neck and drove the edge of my hand in as hard as I could. My attacker gave a grunt and faltered, and I thrust-kicked with all my strength, not really caring where it landed as long as it sank into him. He staggered, and I could take a deep breath, and then a voice behind me said, "Stop right there."
Who? Who should stop? My attacker was in no doubt, and he threw himself at the source of the command, again moving so quickly and with so much determination that the speaker and I were unprepared.
The struggle came into the light, moving toward the center of the parking area, and I could see T. L. York and Claude rolling on the ground, struggling for a gun that I thought must be in Claude's hand. Their hands and legs were so confused and I was so dazed by the suddenness of all this that for a second I stood staring blankly, as if I had no stake in the outcome. I was weak enough to be shaking, but I had to move, to help - whom?
"Lily!" Claude said, in what he maybe intended as a shout, and that decided me. Only the innocent one would want my help.
I circled them, looking for my chance. It came when T. L. rolled on top of Claude, still gripping both Claude's wrists. I leaped in to straddle them, grabbed T. L. by his hair with one hand and cupped his chin with the other, and pulled back hard, almost hearing the faint echo of Marshall's voice adjuring me to be careful practicing this in class, since a wrong move could cause serious injury.
Well, this was serious-injury time. I twisted his head and pulled up. You have to follow your head. The rest of his body had to come up, too, or his neck would break. With a howl, he let go of Claude and raked backward, trying to get me off him, but I had my fingers sunk in his still-thick hair. In agony, he reared back, but my legs were locked on either side of him, I was gripping him with my knees, and the only way he could get rid of me was to do what he did next - fall backward on top of me. I wrapped my legs around him as he left the ground and heaved back, and I never loosened my grip on his head. I began squeezing with my strong legs, my ankles crossed over his gut, and he rolled from side to side trying to dislodge me.
"Hold still, goddamn it!" said a voice I could hardly recognize as Claude's, and again I didn't know if he meant me or T. L. I didn't have a lot of options, since I couldn't breathe and I could tell only my own rage was keeping me attached to him.