Hell's Gate

less than honest with him.
        The sunlight broke through the windscreen and caught her yellow hair, sparkled in it, made her green eyes grow larger. For a moment, he was unsettled. The hidden, confused part of him swam upward, shoved out the iron Victor. He said, “I heard someone was killed here. Could you… tell me about it?”
        They left the car, walked into the porch, to the front door. “It wasn't a big surprise to the town,” she said as she unlocked the door and pushed it inward.
        “A murder wasn't surprising?”
        They moved into the entrance foyer, a charming nook. The soft Victor, struggling for control of the body he shared with his iron counterpart, suddenly felt a deep self-loathing as he tried to imagine the kind of man with this sort of taste, the kind of man he had murdered. The carpet was green, dark and rich like oak leaves. The walls were buff, with a dark wood closet on one side and an original Spanish oil on the other.
        “ This murder wasn't surprising. Harold Jacobi lived here in Oak Grove, but made his living off some crooked little sidelines in Harrisburg.”
        “Oh?” Iron Victor was getting the upper hand again.
        “Yes, Harrisburg is big enough for small time crooks. Three hundred thousand with suburbs is big enough to breed high priced call girls, numbers, some discreet big money card games. Nothing to get the Federal Government on dear Harold's tail, but sufficient to make enemies among the competition.”
        They walked into the living room, which was every bit as tasteful as the foyer. Again, guilt unbalanced his mind enough to allow soft Victor a moment in control. “He must have been a sensitive man, though.”
        “Harold Jacobi was about as sensitive as a cow flop!”
        With his programmed self momentarily repressed, he was able to laugh. “I take it he made a pass at you.”
        “No. Not overtly. He was my uncle, you see. It's embarrassing to have such an uncle. He was always trying to do things for me. All the passes were covert. Just Dear Uncle Harold wanting to help his niece. Except that his hand was always straying to my knee. Things like that.
        Anyway, he left this house to me, so I should show some respect. If he just hadn't been such a bore of a man!”
        “But the decorations are so well done.”
        She grinned as if at a private joke. “He had the Fabulous Bureau do it.”
        “Fabulous Bureau?”
        “You should have heard of them. They're from Harrisburg. A new interior decorating firm. Two nice young boys. Very dear boys, if you know what I mean. They came out here in a mauve Cadillac and spent a month of eight-hour days, flitting about like birds. They ate most of their lunches in the restaurant where I eat That's how I came to know them, though it wasn't my feminine charm that won them. Just a mutual interest in art. Despite what you might think of their sort, you'll have to admit the Fabulous Bureau fellows did a fabulous job, eh?”
        The unprogrammed Victor could not resist telling her, as the computer had informed him, that he was an artist. She was impressed, as he had hoped. He was afraid she would ask him to draw something on the spot, the cliché request made of all artists. Somehow, he felt that if he tried to draw a person, it would look like a tree. A tree would look vaguely like a person; a house like a barn, a barn like an automobile, and automobile like God-knew-what.
        Then, as his guilt lessened over the murder of Harold Jacobi, he felt the steely, cool alter-ego surging upward. Everything shimmered. He moved, again, like a robot.
        They toured the house with little conversation, though she tried to initiate some several times and seemed puzzled that, when he was so close to coming out of his shell, he had suddenly drawn back into it. The drive back to town, to arrange financing terms, was stilted and uncomfortable as far as Lynda was concerned. Iron Victor Salsbury only stared straight ahead.
        The vice-president of the major local bank was hesitant about giving a mortgage to an artist without a full-time job. He softened considerably when Salsbury produced thirty thousand in cash, proceeded to pay twenty thousand on the house, and deposited five thousand in savings and four thousand in checking. His gold-plated, silver-dollar heart thumped almost audibly at the sight of so much money, and he concluded their conference with a