Free Songs in the Key of Death by William Bankier Page B

down. Pull off over there, between the lights. Here.”
    Dolan switched off and sat, trembling, sweating ice-water. “If you want me to stay away from Carmen, you’ve got it. I was just with my wife—we’re planning on getting back together.”
    “It’s Carmen staying away from you. She’ll never do it, no matter what I tell her. She’s a bad little girl. It’s vital that I prevent her having her own way. The kid is spoiled rotten.” Alvin leaned forward. “Now look at this. I want you to see something.” He held the knife blade in front of Dolan’s face. The thick fist, the muscular wrist formed an unbreakable grip that trembled slightly. The blade itself gleamed—at least seven inches long, a streak of oil on the honed edge. “If you yell. If you run. If you do anything but as I say, this goes into your gut and I turn it.”
    “Oh, Jesus,” Dolan whimpered.”Jesus.”
    “Get out of the car. Slowly.”
    Hopkins was out and waiting for him on the pavement, took his arm as he slammed the door and led the old ballplayer away from the light and down a pathway smelling of ripe earth. Furtive movement occurred at intervals in the shadows. “This is where the Gays hang out,” Alvin said. “We’re not alone.”
    They came to a silent clearing. Dolan could make out the surroundings, could see the shape of Alvin Hopkins as he was forced around to face him. “You’ll be robbed and stabbed a lot. They have these crazy killings here all the time. But you’ve behaved, so I’m not going to hurt you. This blade is razor-sharp. I’ll cut your throat—you won’t even feel it. Then I’ll do the rest. Believe me, it won’t hurt.”
    Casey Dolan found the desperate courage to raise his voice “Not going to hurt me?” he screamed. “Bloody hell, you’re killing me!”
    Alvin moved swiftly, turned Dolan, lifted his chin, and swung the knife. And he was right about that important thing—Dolan didn’t even feel it.
    Six months passed, during which Carmen Hopkins stayed late every night at the radio station. She told her brother she was writing a novel. He didn’t believe her, he thought she was messing around with Dolan’s replacement. But try as he would, however often he popped in unexpectedly, he always found her at the old typewriter, knocking hell out of the keys.
    Then it was finished and she began coming home after work, eating whatever he put in front of her, then watching television until signoff. It was agreeable in a way, a nice routine which Alvin appreciated. But she was putting on weight and had stopped doing anything with her hair, which gave him an uneasy feeling. In fact, by the end of the year she was looking more like a fat sloven than his sexy little sister.
    “You should take a look at yourself in the mirror,” he said to her one evening.
    “You should burn in hell,” was her calm response.
    The letter from Toronto came one Saturday morning while Carmen was still in bed. She received little mail, but whatever arrived with her name on it, Alvin opened and read. This one was first-class, typewritten envelope, a company name in the corner—Tandem Publishing Ltd. The letter was brief. It said:
    “Dear Miss Hopkins:
    Thank you for letting us see your novel, Hey, Don’t You Remember? It needs a bit of tightening but it is a powerful work and we would like to publish it. Is it autobiographical? The character of the psychopathic brother, Al, is particularly well drawn, while the doomed love affair between the young girl and the broadcaster is poignant, to say the least.
    Can you come to Toronto and talk to us? I’ll look forward to an early reply—”
    Holding letter and envelope in one hand, Alvin shuffled across the room in his broken slippers, drew back the curtain, and went through into the musty cave where Carmen lay asleep on her cot. She was breathing slowly, a hand resting below her chin, wrinkled thumb not far from her open mouth. When it used to be his job to watch her as a