Chapter VII: Part 7

Over the laughter and from somewhere overhead, came a Voice. The voice of God or the voice of his father; he didn't know which.

"Hell forever, my son, for you have done evil. You can be forgiven only if you can make _them_ believe you, and be punished on Earth for the evil you have done."

He tried to scream and answer but his voice was stuck too, like his arms. Then one of the pitchforks jabbed at his eyes and he had to take another step backward. He lost his balance and fell. As the boiling pitch closed over his head, he awoke.

Or had it been just a dream? Might not it have been a vision sent him by God or by his father in Heaven, to warn him, to instruct him?

He lay there sweating in the upper bunk, and then he remembered what Mrs. Saddler had told him to do whenever he awakened from a nightmare: get up and walk, walk till you're wide awake again and the nightmare goes away.

He climbed down from the upper bunk and walked--as far as he could in the cell, three paces one way and three back and three paces one way and three paces back--But the dream, if it had been a dream, stayed with him, more vivid than any of his memories of anything else that had happened to him that day or recently.

A sound made him pause in his pacing and look into the lower bunk. The sound was a snore. He saw that he was no longer alone in the cell; while he'd slept they'd put someone else there and he was now lying in the lower bunk. Fully dressed, as Benny was, except for shoes and coat. Even in the dim light of the cell, the man looked familiar to him.

Benny bent over him.

It was Mister Fleck. That surprised him, but what surprised him a thousand times more was that it was also the devil in his nightmare or vision, the devil without a pitchfork, the one who had laughed at him. The face of Mr. Fleck and of that devil were the same. And he remembered now why the laugh of that devil had sounded as though he'd heard it before. It was Mister Fleck's laugh, as Mister Fleck had laughed at him early in the evening, when he'd told Mister Fleck that he'd killed those women. The police hadn't _believed_ him, but they hadn't laughed at him.

And suddenly he knew what he had to do to make the police really believe him, to make them believe that he'd done evil and must be punished.

He put his hands on Mister Fleck's shoulders and pulled him up to a sitting position. "Mister Fleck!" he said.

Mister Fleck's eyes opened and blinked. "Huh?" he said.

Benny was very earnest because this was very serious. "Listen, Mister Fleck," he said. "I'm sorry, but I got to kill you. I got to kill you like I killed them women so the police will believe I killed them."

"Huh? Benny--?"

"I want you to know, Mister Fleck, I ain't mad at you. Even if you laughed at me. It's bad to kill because you're mad and I want you to know I ain't mad. I just got to kill you. And besides, it won't be evil for me to kill you to make them believe me. It won't be evil, Mister Fleck, because you're a devil."

Mister Fleck opened his mouth to say something, or to scream, but nothing came out because Benny's hands were tight around his throat, and getting tighter. A minute later they let go, and something limp and dead fell back on the lower bunk.

Benny Knox went to the door of the cell and grabbed his bars, rattling the door loudly. Even more loudly he yelled, "Policemen! Policemen! Come here and see. _Now_ do you believe me? _Now_ will you try to tell me I never killed nobody?"

This time they believed him.

2:45 A.M.

In his office off the kitchen of the restaurant, George Mikos paced a while, too keyed up to sit down and type, which was what he'd come here to do. Finally he sat down at the desk, took the cover off the typewriter and put fresh paper into it. He began to type:

Dear Perry:

This has been the damnedest night. If you'll forgive the cliché,
hell has been popping right and left.

Yes, this is a new letter and not a continuation of the one I
started to you earlier. Everything has changed so completely that
it would seem silly to go on with that one. But I'll enclose it,
uncompleted, with this, so you'll have the background to understand
what _this_ one is about.

It started a few minutes after eleven-thirty, when I'd just closed
up and was starting to check the register. There was a phone call
and a man's voice--not her husband's--asked for Ruth Fleck. She was
still here, getting ready to leave. I called her to the phone but
there was no one on the line when she got there.

You can deduce what I guessed from that, when she admitted she could
think of no possible reason why any man except her husband should be
calling her at that time of night.

I insisted on driving her home, and I also had her wait in the car
while I went up and searched her flat to make sure there wasn't a
reception committee waiting for her there. (I had told her I was
bringing a gun so she wouldn't worry about me doing this; actually
I don't even own one.) Then I escorted her upstairs, made sure she
bolted herself in, and left.

But I didn't go very far. I was more worried than I let her think
(luckily) and I drove off only in case she'd be watching from a
front window or listening for the sound of my car starting. I
U-turned at the corner and drove back the way I'd come, parked on
the opposite side of the street and a quarter of a block away. I'd
decided to watch the doorway of that building until I saw her
husband come home, no matter how late it might be.

She had a code knock of some kind worked out with her husband so
she'd know it was he when he came home and I'd impressed on her
not to throw the bolt otherwise. But I was still worried about her
for two reasons. First, she was confident Ray wouldn't have done any
talking in bars about that code knock, but I wasn't. Second, while
neither the door to her flat nor the bolt on it were flimsy, neither
were they so strong that a husky, heavy man might not be able to
break in with one good hard lunge. And it turned out I was right
on both of those counts.

At about one o'clock I saw, or thought I saw, Ray Fleck come around
the corner and go into the entrance of the building. But he'd hardly
disappeared and I hadn't yet turned the ignition key in the car when
I did the goddamnedest double take and realized that the man I'd
seen had not been Ray Fleck. He'd been about the same height and
weight, but not the same build; his bulk had been across the
shoulders and he had a narrow waist, whereas Fleck's weight
distribution is just the opposite.

And I was out of the car and running. If my second impression had
been wrong, if it had really been Fleck I'd seen, I was about to
make an awful ass of myself, but I was willing to chance that
rather than to take the opposite chance. When I got to the third
floor I saw the door was closed and not broken down--so I must have
been right about Fleck talking; she'd never have opened the door
except to that special knock. I didn't waste time trying the knob,
which was just as well since the door had been bolted again from
the inside; I threw my weight against the door, so hard that I
still have a sore right shoulder, and the door burst open and I
almost fell into the living room.

He'd heard, of course; he was in the doorway of the bedroom and
rushed me before I got my balance. I managed to turn my head in time
to take a vicious blow on the ear (it's still ringing) instead of
the jaw. I took a couple of steps back to get on balance and then
started to move in on him. I'm a wrestler; I wanted to grapple
instead of trying to slug it out. He cooperated, in a way; he rushed
me, head down for a solar plexus butt, both fists cocked low to
start pumping into my stomach or groin as soon as he connected with
the butt.

He couldn't have pleased me more. I moved just enough aside at the
last split second to let his head graze past my right side and then
I clamped down my arm and had a solid headlock on him. I twisted my
body around and twisted his neck with it. Until there was a quite
audible snap as his neck broke, and the fight was over. It had
probably lasted all of three seconds.

I didn't even bother to check whether or not he was dead; if by any
chance he wasn't, he wasn't going to be dangerous for a long time.
I just dropped him and ran into the bedroom.

Ruth was lying on the bed, unconscious, where he'd no doubt carried
her after knocking her out with a single blow as he came through the
doorway.

But otherwise, I'd got there in time. She hadn't been raped, let
alone strangled. Her jaw was beginning to swell but it didn't look
as though it was broken--and I learned later at the hospital that it
wasn't. She was breathing normally, and her heartbeat was okay.

He'd ripped open the housecoat that she was wearing, and torn the
tops of her pajamas. I put a cover over her partial (and very
beautiful) nakedness and then went to the living room again. I
checked the psychopath to see if he was dead; he was. And then I
used the phone to call for a police ambulance. The guy I got on the
phone annoyingly wanted details, but I told him a woman had been
injured by the psycho and I wanted the ambulance fast and I'd do
all the talking they wanted after she was hospitalized. I told him
they didn't have to worry about the psycho any more; they could send
a meat wagon for him at their leisure. He wasn't going anywhere.
Then I hung up.

And then went back to wait by Ruth, in case she should recover
consciousness before the ambulance came.

But I'd sat there only a few minutes, and hadn't heard any sirens
yet, when the phone rang. I answered it and--

Now hold on to your hat, Perry. Here comes the incredible part.
It was the city jail, wanting Ruth Fleck. When I'd convinced them
that she couldn't come to the phone but I'd take any message, I was
told that I should tell her that her husband was dead. He had been
killed--strangled, mind you--by a man in the same double cell with
him. Fleck had given himself up and was being held on suspicion of
theft. His killer was (or had been) a harmless moron who was being
held overnight because he'd made a false confession of murder. He
was unable to give any coherent account of why he'd killed Fleck; he
talked about laughter, and devils, and the police not believing him.
Although they'd known the man was slightly unbalanced mentally, he'd
always been completely harmless, and they'd thought nothing of
putting another prisoner in the same cell with him.

That was all I could learn; tomorrow I'll see what more I can learn,
and I hope it's something that will make things make sense. I hate
coincidences, and it takes a lot to make me believe in one.
Especially one as extravagant as a man getting himself strangled to
death on the same night his wife would, except for my intervention,
have been strangled to death--and not by the same strangler.

The man at the jail said Ray'd _given himself up_. I can't see him
doing that, on any charge, unless he had some damned good reason for
_wanting_ to be in jail.

Maybe the story will come out somehow, or maybe we'll never know.
Ray Fleck can't tell us his end of it. Nor the psychopath his end.

For that reason only, I'm sorry I killed him. That is, I guess I am.
I might have been able to subdue him without killing him, but it
would have taken time. And besides there was the risk of my losing
the fight. What if he'd been able to get in a lucky punch and knock
me out? He'd have strangled me while I was unconscious--and then
he'd have gone back to Ruth. Neither of us would have been alive
right now. No, I couldn't have taken that chance.

Ruth was still unconscious when we got her to the hospital, and they
gave her a sedative so she'd stay that way a while, or rather so the
unconsciousness would blend into normal sleep.

So I haven't talked to her yet. They told me she should have at
least a few hours of normal sleep, and kicked me out. I can go back
at five A.M.

So I have a couple of hours to kill and that's what I'm doing now,
writing this.

Perry, how'd you like to be my best man? Maybe I'm over-confident,
but I don't think so. I'm almost certain that Ruth will marry me,
now that she's free. I don't know how soon; there'll have to be what
people call a decent interval. And it'll be up to Ruth how long that
is. As far as I'm concerned, I'd marry her tomorrow and start out
our honeymoon by attending Ray Fleck's funeral. She'd hardly go
along with that, but she didn't really love him any more and I'm
hoping she'll think that not over a few months will be long enough.

And I'm serious about the best man business. And if Ruth will accept
my plans, you wouldn't even have to come here to do the job. I've
been thinking for a long time of taking a vacation and a trip to
Europe; I'd probably have done it before now if I hadn't fallen in
love with Ruth and wanted to stick around for that reason. And
combining a European tour with a honeymoon would be combining
pleasure with pleasure. We could be married in New York en route,
so you could stand up for us there, stay a week for a look at New
York if Ruth wants to (and I imagine she will; she's never been
there) and then hop off for Europe.

I feel as though I'm dreaming, and I suppose I am--but it's a dream
that will come true, I know it will.

Your old friend,

George Mikos.