The Pearlkillers Read online

  The five of them had many urgent, whispered arguments. Bill sat with his hands squeezing and squirming together while the others told him that if only he could pull himself together enough to get through the next couple of weeks, he’d be able to go away for the summer as usual, and from then on everything would be easy.

  Suddenly the final exams were on top of them. Even Bill put aside the memory of Carmen. They all got through somehow. And afterwards, Herb called a meeting. He said they’d have to face it: they’d have to be careful. For the rest of their lives they would never be able to go on a real bender, in case they spilled the truth. They’d never be able to let their guard down completely with anybody – not with a girl, not even if they got married. You could never tell when somebody else would repeat a thing, and no one had the right to put the others in danger like that. ‘It’s going to be hard,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t realized how much I’d want to talk about it to someone who’d be sympathetic and make it all right. But I’m telling you – never. Not to a doctor or your mother, or anybody. Think it over and you’ll see I’m right.’

  They thought about the matter all summer long. They changed towards each other. It wasn’t exactly that they began to think of the others with hatred, but the friendship was broken. Herb and Sherman still liked each other, as did Dave and Joe. But Bill ended up on the outside of both groups.

  In the fall they all asked for different room-mates. And right after college, they all moved away from town. It took several years before any of them wanted to come back.

  *

  Of course they told other people about it. Twenty years is a long time and it’s possible to describe an accident as if you had been on the sidelines, rather than saying: I helped to kill somebody.

  They told their wives. And their versions of the incident made it seem like a practical joke gone wrong, a group disaster that had taken place while alcohol had temporarily removed everyone’s responsibility. By the time they were married, the event had decreased in importance, anyway. It had ceased to frighten them because of possible consequences, but it had also lost its power to make them afraid of themselves.

  Only Bill was different. He didn’t marry. He lost touch for many years. He never – so he said to them later – told anyone. He lived with the memory until he couldn’t stand it any longer, and then he broke. What finally did it was the years he spent in South America.

  He was working as an adviser on government agricultural schemes. Men he had known well would be missing from their jobs one morning and he’d assume that they had been arrested either by the police or the army, or a semi-official government organization – guerrilla fighters or small city groups of terrorists who had been at the receiving end of the official murder and torture squads. During his last two years, foreigners were particularly at risk, Americans more than others.

  Perhaps Bill himself was left alone because he was in-drawn, didn’t speak much, didn’t have many friends. He had no religious thoughts, either – at least, he wasn’t aware of having any, nor at that time did he have a regular girlfriend. Women had stopped wanting to know him at about the time when he had lost the ability to take part in his own life. He said later that it was like being a sleepwalker.

  He was woken up by his sense of danger. Fear was all around; it was shining out of the streets. He knew all at once that if he stayed, they’d get him no matter how innocuous he appeared. Political groups like the ones around him were entirely uninterested in who was innocent or guilty, and of what. They were only intent on producing more fear. The falling-dream he’d had years before gave way to one in which people pounded on the door and called his name: coming to get him, as he and his friends had gone to get Carmen and found him naked.

  He wasn’t so completely panic-stricken that he was ready to abandon all his belongings. He spent two hours making arrangements to leave, telephoning packing companies, the bank, his employers. He told everyone that his parents – who had died five years before – were in the hospital, were badly injured and needed him to be with them immediately and take care of them for a while.

  At the airport he was shaking all over. The fear was worse than anything he’d known before. He was prepared now to go to an ordinary American jail and give up a few years of his life; but to be beaten, tortured and humiliated was something he realized he wasn’t going to be able to live through. He still had something of himself to lose; if it went, he wouldn’t be human any more.

  He had the jitters all during the plane trip. When they put down in Texas, he stood by one of the airport watercoolers and drank one paper cup of water after another. He collected his suitcases and sat in the airport for two hours. He had no idea where he should go.

  At last he grew hungry, had a meal in one of the airport cafeterias and decided to take a bus out of town.

  He spent over twenty-four hours on different buses. In the end, he couldn’t go any farther. He sat down at a bus stop in the middle of a small town he’d never seen before, and collapsed.

  He wasn’t very loud. The tears poured silently over his cheeks. He sighed and swallowed and put his hands over his face.

  After a short while someone laid a hand on his shoulder. A woman’s voice said, ‘Are you in trouble?’

  He gulped and breathed in. ‘I’m at the end,’ he told her.

  ‘We’re never at the end,’ she said. ‘You tell me about it.’

  He told her everything. He started to talk long before he had taken a look at her and seen how lovely she was, and with what sympathy she listened to everything – not just the death of Carmen back in his college days, but even before that: his family, and never being able to do anything right or get anywhere in life.

  She listened to the whole recital with interest and understanding. He couldn’t believe there were still people in the world who were nice like that – who would come up and try to help you and not be sure that you’d turn out to be a maniac or a bore or a swindler.

  Her name was Nancy. She told him that he had suffered so much because he had tried to live a lie, and that God wanted to give him the chance to live with the truth and to be a free man. When he was free, he would be happy.

  *

  Herb wondered how many of the others had told someone, and who it had been. Maybe they had told more than one person. For him, once had been enough: it had relieved the pressure, and after that the memory moved away from him so quickly that though the facts were still there, he thought about the episode as if it had been something he’d once seen on television. He no longer had any sense that it had happened to him; it might even have been someone else’s story told to him in a bar somewhere, but with such vividness and detail that he could imagine it was his own story.

  He had told his first wife, Elaine. He hadn’t mentioned his fear or guilt or the sense of shame and remorse that had come over him later; nor had he said anything about the occasional patches of dread he went through when he began to feel that some day everything was going to catch up with him. He gave her an unadorned but biased account and she had said what he had hoped to hear: that it was an accident and he shouldn’t brood about it; he was being too conscientious, too good. She made him think that nothing bad would develop from the death because he didn’t deserve to have bad things happen to him.

  He hadn’t stressed the danger he had felt himself to be in. And he didn’t think any of the others – if they had talked – would have. That was an important point. Divorced wives could be vicious about not getting their alimony on time. It was possible, for example, that while not exactly blackmailing a man, you could let him know that you still remembered something he’d told you. Dave’s first wife might be like that, or Joe’s – except that Joe wouldn’t have told a wife; it would have been more likely for him to tell a friend from his combat unit. And Sherman, dearly as he loved the wife he’d stayed with all these years, would probably have chosen one of his brothers, or a cousin.

  So far, there had been no consequences. And if Bill went to t
he police now, the four of them could get together and say he’d always been crazy, or they could tell the truth and say it was an unpleasant accident. He didn’t really think they’d be put in jail. Their youth, drunkenness and shock would be taken into account, as well as the fact that all of them had led respectable lives afterwards and had families to protect. Bill was the only one who didn’t have children.

  He didn’t think the worst would happen, but it was just as well to look ahead. Dave, he thought, would do anything to avoid publicity. He was an advertising man, who knew the value of appearances; he lived by them. A spell behind bars would be the end of him. He might not take any action himself, but he’d back up anyone else who did.

  Joe was the one to watch. He could be likeable and charming, he could be a good friend. But he was stupid in so many different ways that you had to spend a lot of time putting things to him all dressed up, so that he wouldn’t take offence or think you meant something else, or just get mad. He was also violent and his stint in the marines, when he was actually killing people every day as a job, hadn’t driven the violence out of his system, only turned it into a routine.

  When he thought about Joe, it seemed to Herb that he wouldn’t be able to predict what would happen, even though he knew that Joe had a fear, a real mania, about being imprisoned or captured or in any way physically constrained. On the other hand, he did know about Sherman. Sherman, if he had to, would face the music. He wasn’t really afraid of scandal or what other people thought. His family was right at the top. They could do just about anything and come out of it still admired. People would think he’d kept quiet only to save the others. No one would think badly of Sherman. Herb himself had always looked up to him, and still did.

  Sherman would never raise his own hand against Bill. But would he allow somebody else to? That was going to be a tricky point. They had all heard Joe talk about killing. Not all of them would have taken it seriously. Herb did. He knew that Joe meant it, and would do it. And afterwards? Could you count on someone who was so ready to kill? And could you be sure that Sherman or even Dave might not go to the police? Whatever happened now, it wouldn’t be the same as a drunken brawl.

  As far as Herb was concerned, there had been a point after which the line was drawn and he decided: it must never be known that he was implicated in Carmen’s death, or had even known anything about it. That point had come very early, at the moment when Carmen’s uncle, Earl, had shaken his hand. He didn’t understand why he felt so strongly, or what had happened to him at the time; but he knew that he wouldn’t go back on that handshake. He had to be, for ever afterwards, a man who was believed to be innocent.

  He took his wife, Sue, out to dinner and talked about plans for the summer – what the children wanted to do, whether they’d visit her mother at the end of June or in September. The night was cool, though a warm spell had been promised. In another couple of months it would be coming up to nineteen years since Carmen had gone over the roof.

  She said, ‘Everything in the garden’s late this year. I’m sure it’s making people depressed.’

  ‘Who’s depressed?’

  ‘Just about everybody I know except you. The weather’s so important, even for people who aren’t farmers or gardeners. There’s a lot of truth in that biological clock theory.’

  ‘Keep winding it up every day?’

  ‘You know what I mean. It’s important to our state of mind. Light and dark, when we feel good, when we feel scared.’

  ‘But not so important as other things.’

  ‘Well, it’s basic.’

  ‘The weather can be overcome. Unless you’re making your living out of something that depends on it. It’s less important to your moods than a good meal or a drink, or being with people you like, or having a broken arm or noisy neighbours, or feeling crowded, or—’

  ‘All right, Herb,’ she said. ‘I’m not taking it to the Supreme Court.’

  It was his turn to drive the babysitter home. Her name was Cheryl and she paid him the great compliment of removing her Walkman earphones in the car; when Sue was driving, she kept them on. Between themselves, they called her Miss Sunshine, because she always looked so miserable. She seemed half asleep too, but if you could get her to talk to you, she usually had something intelligent to say.

  He said, ‘Seen any movies lately?’

  ‘A couple.’

  He asked her about them. She’d seen a science-fiction fable for children, a weepie comedy-drama about charming kooks, and a story about lust and adultery which he knew she was too young to have been allowed to see.

  ‘I saw that one too,’ he said. ‘I guess that was a pretty good plot for a perfect murder.’

  ‘But they get her in the end. I didn’t like that. I thought she was so smart she should have gotten away with it.’

  ‘Well, she escaped to – wherever it was. A different country.’

  ‘They get her with an extradition order. They can do that for murder.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure. She had all that money. She could buy her way out.’

  ‘Maybe. I didn’t think of that.’

  ‘Does that make you feel better about it?’

  She laughed. ‘It’s only a story,’ she said. ‘I just get mad when I keep seeing all this stuff on TV and everyplace where the women are always getting punished for practically breathing.’

  ‘Is this Women’s Lib or a desire for poetic justice?’

  ‘Poetic justice is the other way around. That’s when they don’t get away with it.’

  ‘Is it? I thought it meant happy endings. How would you commit the perfect murder?’

  ‘I wouldn’t plan it out too carefully.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You plan it too much, and if something goes wrong, the plan isn’t any good, so what you should do is forget about it and do it some other time. But what everybody does is: they go ahead with the busted plan. Then something else in it goes wrong and finally it’s a mess, the whole thing, and you’re stuck with it.’

  ‘So how would you do it the right way?’

  ‘That depends on whether I’d be a suspect or not. It’s hard to murder anybody who’s in your family, or an enemy, or a husband or wife.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Or if you’d gain from it – you know, if they’d left you something in their will.’

  ‘I guess it would be safer to be alone, too. Or for nobody to suspect you had a connection with the other person.’

  ‘Oh, you’d have to be on your own. Of course. And also, you’d have to choose your method.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Make it look like an accident. That’s the best way.’

  ‘But not always easy to get an opportunity if you don’t live with the person.’ He turned the car in to the street where she lived and stopped outside the house. ‘So, how would you do it?’

  ‘I’d follow them around, and the first minute nobody was looking, I’d just run up and biff them over the head with a brick or something.’

  ‘That could take years,’ he said.

  It could take a long time, and before you even started, you’d have to be willing to kill. Could he really do it? It had been bad enough the first time, when he hadn’t actually been guilty of plotting a death, only of what was called manslaughter. This time, if he did anything, it would be murder. But, in his opinion, it would also be self-defence.

  *

  Dave picked Herb up on the street corner. It was raining lightly. As Herb got into the car, Dave said, ‘OK?’

  ‘All set.’ Herb slammed the door. They moved off. ‘What about the place?’

  ‘It’s perfect, completely isolated. The builders finished last week. It’s already bought. All the furniture’s there, kitchen working, pipes hooked up, the whole deal. Two of the houses are still unsold, but they’re way at the other side. Anybody who wants to look at them has to go with somebody from the firm.’

  ‘That’s the kind of brother to have.’
>
  ‘He thought first of all I wanted it to fix something up with a girl.’

  ‘You need a whole house for that?’

  ‘I got some food and liquor.’

  ‘Fine. You tell us how much it was, and we’ll pay our share.’

  ‘This is on me,’ Dave told him. ‘I put it down on the squeeze-sheet, anyway.’

  It started to rain heavily. Herb wiped the palms of his hands over his thighs. He said, ‘Have you seen them yet?’

  ‘No. Sherman’s bringing them.’

  ‘He knows the way OK?’

  ‘We all did some dry runs the past few days. That’s all right. The only thing I’m nervous about is Joe. He’s going crazy. He wanted to go get them straight off the plane. He’s afraid they’ll talk to somebody.’

  ‘We’re the ones they want to talk to. They want to tell us why it’s going to be good for our souls to do time in the State Pen. Jesus.’

  ‘I kept telling him: they could have talked to hundreds of people before they left their place. They could have told their whole religious club.’

  ‘And maybe they did. But I doubt that they’d give last names.’

  ‘They could look up the register of who was rooming in the same house with him Sophomore year.’