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I drove back to the house and told Elma about the Buick, talked to her calmly, as though I was interested...
and all the time I felt like a bystander, an eavesdropper.
She thought we should buy the Buick and I called Len and said we would probably take it, but Elma
wanted to see it. He said he'd drive it over to our place Thursday or Friday and we could settle the deal.
I went out to my studio, lit my pipe, stared at my sketches of the blow-fish mobile. How unimportant all
that seemed now! It had taken all my courage, everything I could get up, to kill Mac. In a way it helped that I
hated him... but now... to shoot down this Logan, to kill a man I'd never seen or talked to... in sheer cold
blood. I wasn't sure I could do it.
And could I get away with it... again? Again. I was getting to be an old hand at murder. Would it be again
and again and again and...?
Sid came over to drive us to the beach and I mechanically got into my trunks, held the baby, even took part
in the small talk, discussed my idea of the mobile, as we drove. And all the time my inner mind was working
like an adding machine, turning over and discarding ideas ways of killing.
68
Enter Without Desire
I still had that same old advantage Logan didn't know me from a hole in the wall. I'd have to see what he
looked like, then surprise him, ambush him. And the gun?
Good God, I ought to at least buy the tools of my new trade!
And the gun? I could steal Tony's new revolver, but would the same scheme work again? One thing if
Logan was killed the cops would certainly learn about Mama Morse, but unless Logan had told anybody about
Bud and the gun, the cops would be right back where they started looking for the swarthy fat man who shot
Mac... and now Logan. The same old false trail, but for a double murderer this time. What about Bud? Would
he run to the cops when he heard about Logan dying?
Bud might... but it was a fifty-fifty chance. From what Len told me the only idea Bud had was to get out
from under. I'd have to chance his clamming up. Christ, all the things I'd have to chance! Was my luck still
riding, or was I pushing it too hard?
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.
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