Not even a breeze rustled in the dark shrubbery. I went inside and locked the door and turned on all the lights, and there was nobody there, and nothing happened.
I leaned against the door, breathing as hard as though I had run all the way out from town. Bush, I thought, whoever you are, I'm going to get you and get you fast, because I can't stand much more of this.
Good night, Bush. Sleep well.
7
KOLESKI called me about eight-thirty the next morning. It seemed like the middle of the day to me, I'd been up so long waiting. I told him what Miller and the other two had told me.
"Bush," he said. "Is that all?"
It didn't sound like much even to me in the cold light of morning. But I said, "It's something, isn't it? It's a name."
"I'll check it out with Juvenile," he said.
"Do you want me to come down there?"
"No, I'll call you. And Sherris, do me a favor? Don't start looking up Bushes in the phone book and battering their doors down."
"I won't," I said, "but it's likely to be a Bush somewhere on this side of town. I made a crasher with that convertible the other day, but the idea was right enough. They were headed this way, coming home."
"I'll keep it in mind. Will you be there if I want you?"
"On the spot."
He hung up. I made another pot of coffee, feeling the absence of Tracey as though some part of myself was missing, thinking how quiet it was without the kids. I did not look up any Bushes in the phone book. I didn't need to. I had already looked them up, made a list of possibles, thrown it away, remade it, and thrown it away again. I didn't do anything. I just twitched and waited.
About eleven the phone rang, and I was almost disappointed when it turned out to be Tracey. Only for a minute, though. I told her what was going on and assured her that I was all right.
"I don't think they're going to pay any attention to that business about the car," I said. "If they'd been going to, they'd have done it last night."
"I hope you're right. Do you think this—this name will lead to anything?"
"Can't tell yet. I'm waiting for a call right now."
"Let me know," she said, kind of small and far away.
"Just as soon as I can."
She hung up, and I asked myself if I was enjoying making her suffer. I could honestly say I was not. Perhaps I was trying to get her to confess before she was caught. I hoped she would.
It was not until after noon that Koleski called again.
"You may just possibly be in luck," he said. "Juvenile has a record on a boy named Bush. Everett Bush, 10710 Shenango Road. That's on your side of town."
"Yes," I said. "One of those slightly crummy new subdivisions, just a mile or so west of here." I tried to keep my voice steady. But Koleski said, "Don't get too hopeful, Sherris. This doesn't have to be the right one. His record doesn't say anything about assault. He's never been accused of anything worse than petty theft and vandalism and he's never been in a corrective institution. Matter of fact, he was very cooperative, readily admitted his guilt, promised not to do it again, and was on a year's probation. There's a coincidence there that kind of interests me, though."
"What's that?"
"His probation ended on April eighteenth."
"The day after they beat me up."
"Yeah," said Koleski. "They just might have been celebrating something more than the big boy's birthday."
He told me to sit tight and hung up. And I waited, and it was hot, and the hours were ten years long.
At quarter after two Koleski's car pulled into the drive. I waited for him at the door. His brows were drawn down into a black line over his eyes, and he looked like one angry Pole. There was a young fellow with him, a man from Juvenile named Davenport, who had been the Bush boy's probation officer. Koleski made the introduction as though he hated us both, and Davenport grinned.
"Pete's used to the easy stuff," he told me. "Murderers, gunmen, bank robbers, cream puffs like that. He hasn't bucked up against angry mamas when you come and look hard at their little Junior. The papas only take a sock at you sometimes, but the mamas—wow-ee!"
Koleski said, "The boy's parents are bringing him downtown now. I'll call Noddy. We'll see if we can get an identification."
"Maybe I can give you one," I said. "From the voice."
"It had better be a damned positive one from somebody," Koleski said. "Both his parents swear he was at home that night."
"They would, of course," I said, but my heart sank. And Koleski looked straight at me and said evenly, "Before you go down there, Sherris, I want to remind you of your obligations. Don't give me an identification you're not sure of just because you want to pin this on somebody. And remember that you are dealing with a juvenile and not a fugitive from Sing Sing. Can I use your phone?"
"Go ahead."
He called Noddy while I was getting my coat. Then I locked up and we went out together. I said I would take my own car, and for them to go on ahead. After they left I got into my car and sat there for a minute or two, calming down. Koleski was right, of course. I had to be sure. I mustn't try to implicate some kid who might be absolutely innocent.
I tried to call to mind again the voices of the five boys. I had thought! would never forget them as long as I lived. Now I was not so sure. Chuck's I would know, but he had done most of the talking. The short boy's loud, moronic laugh I would know, too. But the others—a grunt, a laugh, a brief few words out of the darkness over my dizzy head, and four months of time now in between. I was not so sure.
I put the automatic-drive lever in reverse and backed out of the drive. This was only making things worse. I might as well get downtown and get it over with.
They had the boy in one of the bleak interrogation rooms with the scarred golden-oak chairs and the banged-up table—and the mud-colored linoleum on the floor. His parents were with him. They were a type you can see any Saturday night in any cheap tavern—a thick-necked, red-faced man, ostensibly as jovial as a dancing bear and potentially twice as nasty, and a brassbound blonde with a loud voice. Mr. Bush was not at all jovial right at this moment, and Mrs. Bush was sitting beside her boy, glaring at Koleski and Davenport, and puffing furiously on a cigarette.
The boy himself was sitting quietly, apparently not disturbed by any of it. He looked at me when I came in, and his face was blank and innocent, mildly curious and nothing more.
Mrs. Bush looked at me too. "Are you the one that's accusing my boy? Well, I can tell you, mister, I don't care what you say, Everett was home with his father and me——"
"Please, Mrs. Bush," said Koleski. "Nobody's accusing him of anything yet."
"Yeah," said Mr. Bush. "Shut up, Martha. Let 'em handle this their own way. We got nothing to hide." He eyed me as though he was daring me to call him a liar.
Koleski turned to me. "Well?"
"I don't know," I said. "Give me a minute——"
He wasn't a bad-looking boy. Medium height, not fleshed out yet but well-grown and strong. Medium brown hair in a crew cut, a roundish face heavily sunburned, nondescript features, mouth a little slack and sulky perhaps, but nothing you could point to as vicious. Just a boy, like a million other boys that swarm on the campuses of every high school and junior college, good boys, athletes, scholars, the backbone of the future nation. His eyes were blue. They were lifted vaguely toward mine but not quite meeting them. There was nothing in them. They were like pieces of blue glass washed clean by a careful housekeeper.
My heart was pounding and there was a bitter taste in my mouth. I said to Koleski, "Ask him to say something."
Koleski turned to the boy. "What's your name?"
"Everett Bush."
"Where do you live?"
"10710 Shenango Road."
"Where do you go to school?"
"Northside High."
"Do you remember where you were between ten-thirty and eleven on the night of April seventeenth?"
"Yes, sir. I was home."
>
Koleski looked at me.
It was a very curious feeling. It was as though somebody had opened up the top of my head and poured something scalding hot in through the hole, so that all my veins burned. I took a step toward Everett Bush.
"You weren't at home," I said. "You were on Williams Avenue with four other boys, beating me up."
Everett answered softly, "It wasn't me, mister."
Mrs. Bush stood up. She was a large blonde, very angry, very formidable. She seemed honestly shocked. "You can't accuse my boy of a thing like that," she said.
Everett smiled. "It couldn't have been me. I was home."
"Think carefully, Mr. Sherris," said Koleski, with a note of warning in his voice.
I looked at Mr. Bush and at Mrs. Bush. Two faces against me, hard as adamant.
I looked at Everett. Four months past, four months of brooding. A few brief words out of the night, out of the pain and the fear and the astonishment.
"It sounds like one of them," I said.
"But are you absolutely positive? Could you swear to it in court?"
"I don't suppose," I said, "that I honestly could. Not and make it stick."
Koleski got up from where he had been sitting and nodded to the Bushes. "All right," he said. "You can go now. Thanks for co-operating."
. "Co-operating," said Mrs. Bush. "That's what you call it. I call it persecuting a child, that's what I call it. One little black mark, and the child gets blamed for everything that happens."
"Come on," said Mr. Bush, shoving the boy to his feet. "This is a hell of a place to spend my day off."
Everett started toward the door, passing quite close to me.
"Everett," I said, "who's Chuck?"
He stopped, just a little past me, speaking over his shoulder. "Chuck? There's four or five of the guys at school we call Chuck. Which one do you mean?"
"You know which one I mean. The big one. And the one you call 'goof.' And Bill."
He shook his head. "I don't know who you're talking about, mister—did you say your name was Sherris?"
Koleski said quickly, before I could answer, "Ever heard that name before?"
"Yes, sir," said Everett.
"Where?"
"In the paper. About how he chased that car, only it was the wrong one."
Koleski sighed. "Okay," he said. "That's all."
Mr. Bush stopped in front of me, looking me up and down. "So that was you," he said. He turned to Koleski. "Seems to me like you ought to lock this bird up instead of letting him make trouble for any kid he happens to pick on."
Everett turned in the doorway. "Honest, mister," he said. "It wasn't me."
And now for the first time he looked directly at me for a flicker of a second, and for the first time there was something in his eyes, something dark and secret and triumphant, and laughing.
Then they were gone away down the corridor, out of my grasp.
"Noddy couldn't identify him either," said Koleski. "Not positively. He said if it was the boy, he's had his hair cut short since then and he looks different. I'm sorry, Sherris."
"I think he was one of them, just the same," I said. I was still looking after him out the door, remembering that look in his eyes, remembering the quiver of my own flesh as he passed close to me. "I know he is."
"You weren't so sure of that just now."
"You asked me if I could swear to it in court. Suppose I did. Suppose I stood in front of a magistrate and swore that his voice sounded like one of the boys, and that he looked at me in a certain way, and I got a certain feeling in my bones. How much of a hearing could you get on that?"
"He's got a good cast-iron alibi, Sherris."
I turned to Davenport. "You know these people. Would they lie about that?"
He shrugged. "It's a natural reaction. I couldn't say they would. I'd say they might, if the penalty looked worse than the offence."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, suppose the boy came home late and said he'd got into a little fuss around a saloon. No harm done, just a little fuss, see? But he's still on probation. Minors are forbidden by law to enter such places and demand to be served and that goes double for him. At the very least, there'd be trouble about it, an extension of probation, investigation of home conditions, red tape. It's easier for everybody if the parents just say he didn't go out at all that night. He wouldn't have to mention anything else."
"You know what you've done, Davenport?" said Koleski wearily. "You've just pulled the pin and handed the grenade to Sherris."
"Don't worry," I said. "I'm just trying to think." I sat down. I didn't feel good. Reaction, disappointment, an absolutely vicious hate boiling up in me without my asking for it, frustration—I was glad Everett and his parents were gone, or I might have made more trouble for Koleski in spite of myself. "Couldn't you have him watched? If I'm right, and he is one of the bunch, he'd lead us to Chuck and the rest, and then we'd have them."
Koleski lighted another cigarette and sat on the edge of the table, studying me.
"What is it?" I asked him.
"I wish I knew," he said. "I wish I knew how much is being honestly sure, and how much is wanting something so bad that the whole world has got warped around it."
"I wish I could tell you," I said.
"Wait here," he said. "I'll see what I can do."
I waited. Davenport said he would check out Northside High for a possible lead, but he was not hopeful because of the lack of any identification, and because Everett himself had not seemed at all worried. Davenport figured the boys probably went to different schools and did their running around together off the campus. Everett's parents apparently did not know or care much about who he went with, and Davenport said that was one big thing that was wrong with people these days. He wished me luck and went away.
It was hot and stifling in the room and the air was stale. I sat looking at the chair where Everett Bush had sat, and all of a sudden I thought with the sharpest and most curious surprise how strange it was that I had got into such a mess, and why I was sitting here in this dingy room in Police Headquarters, looking death and damnation at an empty chair.
Koleski came back shaking his head. "No dice. There isn't a team of men to spare. I told you we're having a busy season." He paused and then he said, "That's most of the truth, Sherris. The rest of it is that we could dig up a team if the skipper felt there was a real reason for it. Under the circumstances, he doesn't."
After a while he said again, "I'm sorry."
"Listen," I said. "Could I hire a detective? A private detective. Is there any law against that?"
"Not that I know of," said Koleski. "You could try it, anyhow." He wrote two names and addresses on a scrap of memo paper and handed it to me. "Both these guys are all right. Don't say I sent you."
"Okay," I said. "Thanks." We shook hands. "Can I buy you a drink?"
"Some time," he said. "When I'm off duty."
"It's a deal."
I started out.
"Uh—Sherris——"
"Yes?"
"Where'd they teach you to be so stubborn?"
"The Army," I said, "told us never to give in to aggressors."
"Hm," he said. "I was in the Marines myself. Active service?"
"Occupation stuff. They got me between wars."
"Well," said Koleski, "don't push it too far, that's all. Let me know."
I said I would. I went out into the street, baking under the August sun, and headed for the first of the two addresses on Koleski's slip of paper.
8
THE first man was already tied up and couldn't do anything for me for at least a couple of weeks. The second one, a Thomas Finelli, was in court giving evidence in a divorce case, but his secretary, a very young girl who said Finelli was her uncle, seemed to think he would be glad to talk to me.
I asked when.
She frowned, turning over the pages of an appointment book.
"He'll be in court probably till five and the
n he has to go straight to Newbridge for the party. It's their golden wedding—my grandparents, that is. So it'll have to be tomorrow, say around nine-thirty? Unless for some reason he has to go back to court. Maybe you better call before you come all the way in."
"Will he stop by here after he's through in court?"
"Oh yes. He has to pick me up."
"Maybe be can give me a minute then. It won't take long. I'll be back."
She was unhappy about that, but I didn't give her any chance to talk me out of it. I wanted to know. If Finelli couldn't or wouldn't take me on, I would have to find somebody else and I didn't want to waste any more time than I had to.
I killed an hour or so around town, using part of it to buy Tracey a present, a bottle of a particular perfume I knew she liked but usually wouldn't buy because it was too expensive. I owed her that much anyway. She had taken good care of me these past months. Better, sometimes, than I deserved. She might have been inspired by a guilty conscience but that was beside the point. I had the perfume sent.
At four-thirty I went back to Finelli's small office on the fifth floor of a building no dingier than most of the old unlovely structures in the Mall's Ford business district, where hardly anything has been built since the turn of the century, and where between the mill smoke and the winter soot from thousands of chimneys it doesn't much matter anyway, given a couple of years. He had not come in yet. His niece was all combed and lipsticked and ready to go, with the desk cleaned off slick as a whistle. I sat down and began to work my way through a stack of movie magazines and true confessions. The girl took one sulkily out of her desk drawer, where she'd been hoarding it, and we read together until Finelli came in.
He was a square stocky man, somewhere in his middle forties, and he had a competent look about him. He did not seem very happy to see me but he listened politely while I explained what I wanted wouldn't take long.
"Real important?"
I said it was to me.
"Okay. Come on inside."
I followed him into the inner office and he shut the door. The room was about ten feet square, with a desk, two chairs, and some filing cabinets. He motioned me to sit down.
The Tiger Among Us Page 6
