by Vin Packer
“And?”
“Every time I went over it, one thing stuck in my mind. One thing. Someone moved me, Mr. Burr. I was sitting in Leydecker’s car, and someone moved me.”
“Donald, at the time, you said Leydecker gave you the keys to his car. You said you must have just wandered over to mine afterwards. Leydecker denied giving you the keys, and you didn’t have his keys when you were found in my car… I think it’s all best forgotten.”
Cloward said, “Please listen to me, Mr. Burr… I know he gave me the keys. I know I was in his car, last I remember.”
“Why do you want to go over and over it, Donald? It doesn’t change your position any.” Slater started toward the door. “Forget it!”
“In your eyes, it would, Mr. Burr. What if you knew that Leydecker put me in your car, sir? What if you knew that Kenneth Leydecker put me in your Jaguar, not so I’d run down Mrs. Burr, but so I’d run off the bank your car was facing! Mr. Burr, I couldn’t have seen that sharp turn, drunk as I was! I would have gone straight down to the highway. I almost did, didn’t I?”
Slater Burr’s hand dropped from the doorknob. He turned around and looked at Donald Cloward.
Cloward said, “I want you to know I didn’t steal your car. I never would have—not your car… For whatever reason he had, sir, Kenneth Leydecker put me in your car. I know damn well he did!”
ten
After Donald Cloward followed Slater Burr into the Men’s, Chris and Lena McKenzie began dancing. Jitz Walsh started a conversation with Jen Burr about his European travels during the war, and Mona Sontag carried her beer down to the other end of the bar, rejoining her date.
“Welcome back,” said Albert Secora, “or are you just slumming for a few minutes?”
“I was having a very nice conversation with the doctor.”
“The doctor! If he’s a doctor, I’m an astronaut.”
“A veterinarian is a doctor, Al.” She pronounced it vet-ah-naran. “Maybe not an M.D. but…”
“A V.D. maybe, Mona?” Secora guffawed at his little joke. “Yeah, a V.D.… in charge of syph and gon. And I’m an astronaut… Hey, did you hear the joke about the astronaut?” She was watching the McKenzies dance, and he had to poke her arm to get her attention. She looked down at her sleeve and his fingers there, as though a garbage man had his hands on her. It infuriated him, but he went right on with what he was saying.
“Hey, Mona? Knock. Knock.”
“All right!,” she said tiredly. “Who’s there?”
“Astronaut.”
“Astronaut who,” she said in a bored voice.
“Astronaut what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country!” He gave a loud snort. Mona merely sighed peevishly. She said, “I don’t think it’s nice to make fun of the President of The United States of America.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!”
“Well, it isn’t. You just don’t have respect.”
“You don’t mean for the President, you mean for Slater Burr.”
“I heard you talking to him, Albert, all about how good the old days were, when Mr. Stewart was running the place.”
“So what?”
“He knew what you were getting at. He moved away from you, didn’t he?”
“What the heck do I care what he does, for Pete’s sake! You know how long I’ll be working for him, when G.E. gets here—about two seconds.”
Mona Sontag said, “When I go out with someone on Christmas Day, the very most important day in the year practically, I expect the certain someone to behave like a grown-up man!… Did I whine around about work? Big people don’t like it, Albert. They come in to relax like anybody else, and they don’t like their employees sitting around griping.”
“Big people! Oh, wow! Big people!”
“Well, he owns the place where we work, doesn’t he? Lock, stock and barrel!”
“I suppose it’s all right for you to sit up there and get free medical advice from that horse doctor, though, ha, Mona?”
“A man enjoys discussing his work. I was having a very nice conversation with the doctor.”
“Well, I was discussing Slater Burr’s work, wasn’t I?”
“He knew what you were getting at. He moved away from you, didn’t he? He went off and danced with his wife!”
“Was he supposed to ask me for a dance, Mona?”
“He did it to get away from you.”
“Heck with it!”
He sipped his beer silently for awhile; then Mona got around to the subject she was dying to talk about. She waited long enough for the edge to be off their testy conversation, and she said, in a conciliatory tone: “What I wonder, is what’s going on in the Men’s right now.”
“Same thing going on in the Women’s, Mona, only in one place they’re standing up, and in the other they’re sitting down.”
Secora wondered too, but he was still smarting at her words.
“On Christmas Day… of all the disgusting remarks… And that’s another thing, Albert, that’s another thing. Did you notice that I paid absolutely no attention to the drama taking place down at this end of the bar? I paid no attention, just went right on with my conversation with the doctor.”
“If you weren’t paying attention, how did you know there was a drama taking place?”
“What I mean, Albert, is that I didn’t gawk at them.”
“Aren’t you wonderful, though!”
“You gawked! Gawked right up at them!… I was just as surprised as you were to see Donald Cloward walk in here, but I paid no attention.”
“I bet you don’t perspire, either, Mona. I bet you don’t ever have to blow your nose, or clean under your nails, or any of the things we human beings indulge in, ha, Mona?”
“I don’t gawk!”
“Well, Merry Christmas, Mona. You can just bet your neck that I’m delighted I socked ten ninety-eight into that brooch I gave you!”
“You want it back, Albert?”
“Heck with it! Big people!… I could tell you a few things about Mr. Big in the can there! If he’s so big, why doesn’t he have the price for a motel when he wants to make out, or a hotel even!”
“Referring to what exactly?”
“Referring,” Albert Secora said, “to a night I saw him up at Blood Neck, in his car, with Jen Burr, before she was Jen Burr!”
“You kidding me? They didn’t even give each other the time of day, until his wife was killed.”
“Heck they didn’t. Me and a certain party, who shall remain nameless, as she is married to someone else, saw them up there. Parking. Couple of months after she first hit town.”
Mona Sontag shoved her beer glass forward on the bar top to signal a refill. She said, “Honest to God?”
“Honest to God… Now, if he’s such a Mr. Big, Mona, why didn’t he hire a motel, or even a hotel? He was up there same as I was, and for the same reason.”
“You sure?”
“Just as sure as I am that he kept me on the payroll three months while I was sick, so I wouldn’t mouth it around!”
“What do you mean, Albert?”
“Well, I had an accident next day. I had a fall and broke some ribs. You think he’d a kept me on three months, unless he had a good reason? He didn’t want me mouthing around what I saw.”
“G’wan!”
“You don’t remember the time I was sick three months?”
“I never paid any attention to you. I was engaged to be married to Wally Herman at the time.”
“Well, he kept me on, so’s I wouldn’t mouth it around.”
“I bet you did anyway.”
“Naw, hell, whatta I care what he does! He was laying Mitzi Caxton once, years and years back too!”
Jitz Walsh walked back and took Mona Sontag’s glass, put it under the beer jet; then refilled Secora’s too.
“There’s a lot of things goes on in this town,” said Secora. “For instance that high-and-mighty wife of the so-called doctor. She us
ed to hang around up to Farley’s Lake with Jitz here. Years before Chris McKenzie moved to Cayuta.”
“Oh, I know that.”
“She acts like she never seen him before now. I was noticing when she come in. ‘Hello, Lena,’ he says, and she says, ‘Ha-lo, there,’ real snippy like. Ha-lo there… like she never even heard of Farley’s Lake.”
“Well, I never heard that Slater Burr was hanging around with Jen McKenzie before they were married.”
“Oh, yeah… Yeah, I was floored and so was Francie, when we saw them drive in at Blood Neck.”
“Not Francie Boyson.”
“We used to get together, time to time.”
“Rich Boyson’s fat slob of a wife?”
“Eight years ago she was fat in the right places.”
“God, Francie Boyson! I should think anyone could do better than that!”
“She suits him, don’t she? Suits Rich, and he owns his own place, which is more than anyone you go out with owns!”
“Including you.”
Secora was going to answer her, but then the door of the Men’s opened, and out came Slater Burr and Donald Cloward. Burr had his arm around Cloward’s shoulders.
Beside Secora, Mona sucked in her breath.
Secora said, “Well, well, well, lookit that. They’re old buddies all of a sudden.”
“Don’t you start anything, Al.”
“Start anything? What the heck am I going to start, for Pete’s sake?”
“Well, don’t gawk and butt in. You know.”
“I do not know! What am I? Some kind of a horse’s ass? I know how to conduct myself, same as you.”
“It’s your hostile attitude I worry about. You know what hostile means?”
“No, Miss Webster’s Dictionary and Encyclopedia, I’m stupid or something, for Pete’s sake!”
“Just be nice, Albert.”
“I am nice! You don’t give me credit for knowing the alphabet!”
Slater Burr led Cloward to the bar. “Hey, Jitz!” he called out. “Let’s set ’em up here, fellow… What’re you drinking, Buzzy?”
eleven
The night Jen told Chris McKenzie she was marrying Slater Burr, they had this conversation:
“I can’t say I’m happy, Jen.”
“I’m not asking you to be, but you could hope that I’ll be happy.”
“You’re 22, and he’s 40.”
“39.”
“All right, 39. It’s the same thing.”
“What do you have against him, besides the fact we were having an affair before Carrie was killed?”
“Nothing against him, Jen. It’s just that you don’t know what you’re getting into. He’s more complicated than you know. Carrie Burr was complicated too. They suited one another.”
“She never liked the same things Slater did, never.”
“But she knew what he liked and let him have it. She knew how to manage him. She knew him like a book. You don’t.”
Jen had laughed. “She didn’t know Slater at all, not at all.”
“Don’t be foolish, Jen. They were married 14 years. What I mean is, she kept him jumping.”
“You make him sound like a little dog who jumps through a hoop for his trainer.”
“Maybe that’s the way it was. Don’t be so sure you can make him happy. He’s a grown man, and you’re a child in more ways than age.”
“You think I’ll bore him?”
“It’s possible you’ll bore each other after awhile.”
“And then, Chris?”
“I don’t know,” he had answered.
Now he knew. Night after night, drinking as they did, he knew.
Others in Cayuta knew as well as Chris knew. Only last week when Elmo Caxton brought his dog in with Harder’s gland, the subject had come up.
“How’s your sister”—Caxton.
“Well, I hope she’s all right,” Chris had said.
“They seem to get out a lot, seem very lively,” Caxton had remarked.
“Slater Burr does too much drinking,” Chris had told Caxton. “It worries me. He doesn’t worry me, but my sister could just as easily go the way I did.”
“Runs in families, does it?”
“Well, now, I’m not saying that. No, that’s not a fact, but…”
“Pretty thing like her. Too bad,” Caxton had ended the conversation.
No, it wasn’t just Chris who knew, never mind Lena’s complaint that Chris was obsessed with the subject of alcoholism. Give Lena enough rope and… well, look at her right now, Chris thought as he stood in Walsh’s Place. She had gone past her limit three beers ago. She was down by the jukebox, performing a little dance solo, her glass in her hand, singing softly to herself.
It was Slater, though, who irritated Chris the most. He was very high, encouraging Cloward to elaborate on his flimsy theory of what had happened the night Carrie was killed. Everyone in Walsh’s Place was listening; by now, making no pretense of it, even joining in—the way Secora was, agreeing with all of it, and telling Slater everything Slater said was right. Jen was very intoxicated too, mothering Cloward, smoothing his hair and calling him “poor baby” (both of them, not a year apart in age) and Miss Sontag was watching the proceedings through bleary, half-shut eyes, saying over and over, “I ought to report Mr. Leydecker to Father Gianonni. He’s a priest; he’d know what to do.”
Slater, of course, was buying the drinks.
“’Nother round,” Slater told Jitz, “… and he actually said he hated you, Buzzy?”
“He said he loathed me,” Cloward answered.
“Said it right out, ah?”
“That’s why I got so drunk, I think. I was upset. I’d never been to the club, never been out with him and Laura that way.”
“And he gave you the keys, drunk as you were?”
“Yes. Laura had gone on. Mr. McKenzie here—he took Laura home. She was sick, something was wrong with her ankle.” Cloward looked at Chris for confirmation. Chris shrugged his assent. He remembered taking Laura Leydecker home, remembered her complaint that she had synovitis of the ankle. He remembered too that Leydecker had seemed almost eager for his daughter to drive with them; he had wanted to stay on, which was peculiar enough, for a man who rarely went to the club, whose friends never went there. Maybe Leydecker had said all the things Cloward claimed, and maybe he did give Cloward his keys, and hope Cloward would kill himself. What did it change? Cloward still wound up behind the wheel of Slater’s Jaguar, no matter the circumstances; it was still manslaughter, clear cut… And if it made Leydecker look bad, it did not make him a murderer now, nor even an accessory. Water over the dam; that was what most drunken conversation concerned itself with. Try to tell that to a drunk.
Still, it was wrong of Slater to encourage this sort of talk in public; it was the sort of vulgar shenanigans all drunks became involved in, and were sorry for the next day.
Chris said, “Slater, we really ought to push along.”
“Go ahead. They out of ginger ale or something? Jitz? You out of ginger ale?”
Secora laughed hardily at the remark, and clapped his hand on Slater’s shoulder. “You’re a beaut, Mr. Burr!”
“Slater,” Chris tried again, “we came in your car.”
“Well, take the bus back, Carrie Nation. Buzzy, here, came out on the bus. Came looking for me. Clear his name. Like any man!”
Jitz Walsh set up another round of drinks, another ginger ale for Chris. Lena was sitting down in a chair now, near the jukebox, cooing to herself. Chris left her drink on the bar.
“I know Leydecker personally!” Secora said. “He’s always butting into union meetings. I know him personally! Always blabbing about new industry. What the hell we need it for? We got The Cayuta Macaroni Company and Burr Manufacturing, ha, Mr. Burr? Shoe plant, and whatthehell!”
“That’s right, Secora,” said Slater. He put his hands on Cloward’s lapels. “Buzzy here’d like to work for me. He’s got an offer in New York
working for a newspaperman, but he’d rather work for me.”
“I feel lost in New York,” said Cloward. “I dunno. The fellow I’m supposed to work for is carrying the torch for some girl. I get tired of hearing it. This is my home, here.”
“Sure,” Slater said. “And if what you say is true, if Leydecker put you in my car, well, now, hell! Hell, you got a gripe coming!”
Jen said, “I don’t think you even ran into her. I think she jumped in front of…”
Slater cut her off. “Oh now, Jen. Crap! Jen! People knew Carrie better ’n that.”
“Well, Slater, I…”
“The important thing is that Leydecker was out to get Buzzy! Now, I personally believe Buzzy! I think Leydecker did put him in my car. My car was pointed right at the drop-off.”
Secora said, “Leydecker coulda pulled off the emergency and started the car rolling even.”
“No,” Cloward shook his head. “I hit her too hard. She could have jumped out of the way, Al, if I’d been rolling.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to jump out of the way,” said Jen.
“Oh, now, Jenny! Now nobody gets killed with a car coming at them on a slow roll. Now, hell, you don’t know anything about it! Why, at the time you were so daffy over Horace Dryden you couldn’t see your nose on your face.” Slater laughed and tickled her under the chin. “Good old Horace!” he said. “Fell in love with him when you saw the back of his neck! You all know that? Old Horace the Bore-ass was Jen’s big moment that summer. Up at Blood Neck Point with him till the roosters crowed.”
“Slater! Oh, Slater,” and Jen laughed then. She sang, “I must have that doggie in the win-dow, the one…”
“With the fleas in his hair,” sang Slater.
Secora let out another whoop of delight at Slater, and said, “Why shore, shore enough, old Blood Neck!” He feigned a playful sock at Slater’s jaw. Slater looked uncomfortable. He downed his whiskey, while Secora turned to Mona Sontag and said, “How’m I doing? Am I nice or hows-stile?”
“I’m tired, Albert.”
“Well, now, just when I’m having me some fun, you’re tired.”
“I can’t help it… all this beer.”
