You Can't Catch Me

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Key West,” Tristram said tonelessly.

  “Indeed: Key West. Where, in December 1985, a very peculiar incident occurred, involving the disappearance of a forty-year-old man named ‘Mason P. Hinkman,’ a broker and real estate entrepreneur, and his reappearance after twelve days as, it seems, in retrospect, another man. That is, ‘Hinkman’ did disappear, was in fact thrown from a moving train,—the corpse was found months later, badly decomposed, at the foot of a railroad embankment in the country—but another ‘Hinkman’ seems to have taken his place, impersonating the man not only to his business partners and associates but to his own wife and children. How long the deception could have been sustained, one can’t guess, but it did last long enough for our friend—and there is no doubt but that the murderer was our friend: photographs of Hinkman resembled the photograph of ‘Markham’ in my possession—to help himself to as much ready cash out of his victim’s savings and assets as he could; and after a week or so he disappeared. ‘Into thin air, for the second time,’ as Mrs. Hinkman told me. Thus, Key West! Isn’t it remarkable?”

  Handelman glanced up smiling at Tristram, who was sitting very still, his hands tightly clasped on his lap, and his eyes, behind the slightly misted lenses of his glasses, penetratingly fixed to the other’s face. “—Remarkable, I mean, in two ways,” Handelman added, “—that the man you think of as ‘Angus T. Markham’ was so clever, and so cruel; and that his victims, his dupes, seem, at least to us, so very—” he shook his head in wonderment, grinning, “—credulous.”

  Tristram’s voice seemed to rise, with enormous effort, from someplace deep inside him. “The world is founded upon credulousness, Mr. Handelman. Credulity. It is another word for faith.”

  “Another word,” Handelman said, with a dimpled laugh, “—for stupidity.”

  Tristram stared, and made no reply. From somewhere close by, on the street, came a sudden blare of sirens; which neither man seemed to hear.

  Smiling, animated, his voice rising and falling with a childlike pleasure in performance, the detective returned to his elaborately prepared report; reading for nearly an hour; tracking his elusive subject to Palm Beach … to Baltimore … to Washington, D.C.… to Manhattan … to Pittsburgh … to Fredericksburg, Virginia, where, in March of this very year, he seemed to have dropped from sight. Tristram listened, and did not listen; heard, and did not hear; his glasses several times so befogged with condensation he had to remove them and polish them; his heart beating steadily, yet not hard; his head as empty as the not-yet-filled cylinders of a revolver. Once or twice a sigh escaped from him loud enough, or despairing enough, to cause Handelman to glance up, squinting, and to inquire, “Is this all too much for you, Mr. Heade? Would you like me to stop? Or to summarize the rest?” Tristram shook his head, no, not at all, too strangely fatigued to speak; but thinking, Neither of us is going to escape so easily.

  In all, it seemed that “Angus T. Markham” was involved in a number of murders, possibly as many as eleven, in five states, within the past six years; primarily of women, but, in three probable instances, of men. The female victims were without exception the wives of older, fairly wealthy men; the eldest, Mrs. Klingerman, was fifty-two, and the youngest, a Baltimore heiress, was only twenty-seven; though varying considerably in temperament, education, and background, each of the women had a reputation as a local beauty, and was therefore attractive enough to seem to have warranted the legitimate romantic interest of the man known as “Angus T. Markham.” (“There is even the possibility, which I throw out as mere speculation,” Handelman said thoughtfully, “—that our murderous friend did fall in love with these women, one by one; and did adore them as he seems to have sworn he did; but immediately lost interest in them as soon as he married them, and they were ‘his.’ Perhaps, once they were ‘his,’ he came to loathe them? I have heard that such behavior characterizes the psychopathic personality.”) By contrast, the male victims conformed to a fairly narrow model: each was between the ages of thirty-two and forty-two; each was comfortably well-to-do, though not spectacularly rich; and each resembled “Markham” to an astonishing degree, or “he” resembled him, since “he” was able to slip into his life and impersonate him without being detected.…

  Tristram said softly, “Yes.”

  Handelman concluded by saying that the trail went cold the previous April, when “Markham” seemed to have boarded the train Tristram took, probably in Richmond, where Tristram boarded it; but seemed not to have arrived in Philadelphia. “Thus we come to the present time, or nearly,” Handelman said, closing his portfolio with a snap, “—the subject’s whereabouts, so far as Bud Handelman could discover, ‘unknown.’ I tried a number of leads but each proved worthless, as if the man had indeed disappeared into thin air! Or gone flying from that train into a bog! And I began to worry that you were losing patience, Mr. Heade, waiting so many weeks for a report; and might object to the expenses I was accumulating on the road. So I tried to contact you, and had some difficulty, at first, but, well, I persevered,—and here I am.” His eyes were eerily magnified behind their thick lenses; his small, round, babyish face seemed lit from within, with innocent pride. Tristram thought, staring, This man is my friend: my only friend. Then, in the next instant, This man cannot be allowed to live.

  Tristram removed his glasses, and rubbed vigorously at his eyes; as if, perhaps, he hoped to rub the vision out of them. With a wan smile he said, “But that is only the tip of the iceberg, I suppose? Eleven deaths? We know, don’t we,—I mean, we can surmise—that a man like ‘Markham,’ depraved as he clearly seems, and insensible to the sufferings of others, would probably have killed many more?”

  “It’s quite possible,” Handelman said, nodding brightly. “A serial murderer; a psychopath; very shrewd, very mercurial, very quick to adapt himself to changing circumstances—yes, it’s quite possible, even probable, that he has, during the course of his lifetime, killed many more than eleven people. But my trail began in Tampa, in 1983. For a private investigator, a trail must begin somewhere, and it is sometimes arbitrary.”

  Handelman extracted from an inside pocket a much-folded sheet of paper, which, with a slightly shy gesture, he handed to Tristram. It was a minutely itemized expense account with such headings as “travel,” “lodging,” “meals,” “telephone calls,” and “incidentals.” The last-named was particularly high, and, seeing Tristram’s expression, Handelman said quickly, “‘Incidentals’ includes payment to informers. What one might call bribes.”

  Tristram was holding the expense sheet in his hand, and seemed to be closely examining it; but said, after a moment, “Have you ever encountered anyone like ‘Angus T. Markham’ in your investigative work before?”

  “Well—I didn’t encounter ‘Markham’ in the flesh!” Handelman said with a boyish self-deprecatory laugh. Then, more seriously: “No, I must admit I have never had a case quite like this. I have done surveillance on two or three decidedly psychopathic personalities, but they were not actual murderers; still less were they serial murderers like our friend ‘Markham.’” Handelman leaned brightly forward and said, with a confidential air, “Most of a private investigator’s work, you know, is fairly routine; not at all as the popular media would have it. It can yield dangerous moments, of course, but it is more often monotonous; even clerical; the slow, patient, meticulous accumulation of facts, minutiae, ‘evidence.’ We investigators poke our noses about in the dustheap of the world to get information on such utterly commonplace men and women, it is astonishing to believe that anyone in his right mind would pay for such services!—But your ‘Angus T. Markham’ is a very different proposition altogether.”

  “And you never, so far as you know, caught a glimpse of him?”

  “Ah no! Of course not!” Handelman said, opening his eyes wide. He smiled at Tristram as if suspecting him of a joke. “If I had, I would have included that in my report; I would have been very proud of that.”

  “And his current whereabouts are un
known?”

  “Unknown to me!—to us! But not, after all, unknown to him.”

  “You think the man is still living?”

  Handelman lowered his voice, and touched a forefinger lightly to his lips. “It is my hunch, wholly ex tempore, that, yes, the man is living, still. And will simply resurface, elsewhere, or has already done so, in another guise.”

  “And kill again?”

  “If no one prevents him?—very likely yes.”

  Tristram seemed to consider this, his gaze downcast, and his nostrils widened in breathing; he had been sitting nearly motionless for some time, and now seemed to rouse himself, in quick nervous rippling little shivers. “You will want your payment,” he said quietly. And yet he remained sitting, and made no move to get his checkbook from its hiding place in the lining of one of Markham’s suitcases, piled with the other pieces of luggage in a corner of the room. A thought occurred to him. “May I have the photograph back?”

  “Ah yes! Of course!” The detective drew the photograph out of an inside vest pocket, and handed it over to Tristram, murmuring apologetically, “I’m afraid it seems to have clouded a bit more, though I can’t think why—I’m sure I didn’t expose it unnecessarily to the sun.”

  Tristram did no more than glance at the familiar malevolent likeness, and, in an action that seemed to startle Handelman, tore the photograph into halves, quarters, and eighths, and let them fall where they would on the floor. He was breathing so deeply, though so calmly, his nostrils widened pronouncedly with the effort. “No more killings,” he murmured.

  Another thought occurred to him. “Have you been a detective for very long, Mr. Handelman?” he asked, with an effort at sociable warmth. “You seem quite young.”

  Handelman blushed with pleasure, like a man to whom such direct questions are rarely put. He said, wryly, “I am perhaps not so young as I look!” Then, more soberly: “In a sense I have been a detective all my life. I come from a family of detectives—that is, most of the men in my family, on my father’s side, have been detectives. ‘Private investigators.’ My great-great-grandfather did some top-flight investigative work for Horace Greeley—you have heard of Horace Greeley?—the crusading editor of the New York Tribune, in the mid-1800s?—particularly in uncovering the secrets of the Ku Klux Klan; my great-grandfather was a top Pinkerton man, and led a small revolt of his fellows out of the agency when Henry Clay Frick—you have heard of Frick?—not an art museum, you know, but chairman of Carnegie Steel—hired Pinkerton’s men by the hundreds to fight picketing workers, and fire upon defenseless men and women. And my grandfather, and my father—” He blushed more deeply, and said, “But I must stop: I am boring you!”

  “You are not boring me,” Tristram said, “—you are not boring me at all.” He paused; he saw that his hands were trembling, but so finely no one might see. He said, “I like you. I think you are a good, decent man, and I like you.” He swallowed hard. “You are my only friend.”

  How this peculiar statement struck the young detective, Tristram did not know; for he dared not look at the man’s face, and said, quickly, “And in your own generation?—the Handelmans continue to be private investigators?”

  “There are only two of us now,” Handelman said, slowly, “—I mean, there were. My elder brother Barry died not long ago in the line of duty.”

  “Died?”

  “Was killed.”

  “Ah, killed! I’m terribly sorry to hear it!” Tristram exclaimed. “—But how did it happen? ‘In the line of duty’—how?”

  Handelman sat quietly, staring at the floor. An expression of childlike hurt, pain, and loss passed over his face; his small jaw hardened, in the instinct to resist tears. “I would rather not speak of it at this time,” the detective said quietly. Then: “It has been said that ‘The detective story is a tragedy with a happy ending,’ but it is not so, always. In fact it is rarely so. Tragedy, yes; happy ending, no.”

  “Even if you ‘get your man’?”

  Handelman’s moist gaze lifted to Tristram, with a look of patient irony. Though the detective could not have been more than twenty-seven or -eight years old that look bespoke decades of experience. He said softly, “It is always doubtful, Mr. Heade, whether a detective ‘gets his man,’ or ‘his man gets him.’ For evil triumphs, in the end.”

  “Evil? Triumphs? In the end? But why?—why do you say that with such conviction?” Tristram exclaimed, shocked.

  For a moment it looked as if Handelman was about to speak; then, thinking better of it, he drew a large, not very clean handkerchief out of his pocket, and touched a corner to his eyes, each in turn; then rose, clearing his throat, with a gesture meaning it was time for him to leave—and time, perhaps, for him to be paid.

  So Tristram too rose from his seat, slowly, rather clumsily, like a man in a dream.

  As if loosed from their confinement words careened through his brain There was the Door to which I found no Key There was the Veil through which I could not see like freight cars rattling in the night, emerging out of nowhere and disappearing into nowhere Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee There was—and then no more talk of Thee and Me and, more urgently, Taking yourself by surprise you take your quarry by surprise as well. Breathing rather hard, he said, “Let me get my checkbook, Mr. Handelman! It’s hidden between the bedsprings and the mattress,—excuse me just a moment!”

  He bent, tugging at the mattress; a terrible roaring rose in his ears. The detective said, “May I help you, Mr. Heade?” But when he placed his child-sized hands next to Tristram’s, the two men straining to lift the mattress, but having difficulty getting, at first, the proper leverage, Tristram gently nudged him away; and surprised both Handelman and himself by sitting down, hard, on the edge of the bed, as if, overcome by a sudden spell of dizziness, he had lost his balance. “I only now remembered,” he said, embarrassed, “—my checkbook isn’t here, but in one of my suitcases. Hidden in a secret compartment in one of my suitcases. There, over there, in the corner of the room—that big leather one.”

  Though it could hardly be said that Tristram was feeling altogether himself, and frank terror lurked at the edges of his consciousness, like a flood of darkness preparing to spill into a sunlit room, he accompanied the detective along the hotel corridor, and, the elevator being, as nearly always, not working, down several flights of grime-encrusted fire stairs, rife with the odors of disinfectant, vomit, and stale urine. He might have said he meant to protect the little man, in this questionable place; yet surely—and this was a thought he only now considered—Handelman carried a revolver? Strapped into a holster, discreetly hidden inside his oversized greenish tweed coat? At the foot of the stairs the men shook hands another time, and Handelman, his face quite pink with pleasure, thanked Tristram another time, both for the promptness with which he had paid his bill, and his “unexpected generosity,”—for Tristram had pressed into Handelman’s hand several hundred-dollar bills, in token, as he said, of his personal esteem. “You have eradicated all Mystery for me regarding this ‘Markham,’ and cleansed my soul,” Tristram said passionately. “You have shown me the path I must now take: it is I who am grateful to you.”

  Handelman turned to leave, but Tristram detained him, with another thought—as if to hold at bay, if only for another few seconds, the flood of terror that awaited him. “The artificial eye in the ashtray on my dresser: you must have noticed it? You must have wondered what it was?” he asked, lightly. Handelman blushed even more, and smiled a boyish, rather guilty smile. “Oh no, I didn’t wonder! Not at all!” Tristram said, “You weren’t curious?—you didn’t think the eye, well, an oddity, there, resting in my ashtray; an item sui generis; perhaps a ‘clue’?” Rather pedantically, Handelman said, “There are no ‘clues’ apart from the specificity of cases, Mr. Heade. That is the first principle of detection. If I had wondered, unsolicited, about the eye on your bureau, which I assure you I did not, I would very likely have theorized, you know, that it was a personal memento of some
kind; or a good luck charm; or, perhaps, a spare eye of your own—a spare artificial eye, I mean.”

  And, limping slightly, the little detective walked off, with Tristram staring in astonishment after him.

  5

  “And now it is all clear.”

  “And now I can no longer refuse to acknowledge the horror.”

  “That I myself am—the horror.”

  For it was, now, absolutely and incontestably clear, that Tristram Heade no longer lived; and that the murderous psychopath Angus T. Markham had taken his place.

  Except—not entirely. As a host-victim is taken over by a parasite, which, initially at least, is careful not to drain too much nourishment from him, wanting the host-victim to remain alive as long as possible. So there is a small part of “Tristram” that remains, Tristram thought. But how long, in the face of “Markham’s” invasion, will he endure?

  And so, it must end.

  Tristram was standing before a spotted mirror, and began now vigorously to brush his hair with twin tortoiseshell brushes. His wire-rimmed scholar’s eyeglasses winked slyly at him. He knew what he must do, and would: he must cross the room to the window as if I were already dead. “No more deaths by my—or his—hand. Ever again.” He would touch the windowpane with cool, trembling fingers—he would press his forehead against it, his head prayerfully bowed—he would summon forth his deepest strength, and shut his eyes, and make the plunge—into oblivion. And so absolve myself. Redeem my sins. Farewell, Tristram Heade!