Alone at Night

by Vin Packer

  II.

  “Oh, you’re just drunk!” Francie Boyson said. “How’d you get so drunk in the middle of the day?”

  She wished he would hang up. She was sitting in the banister-back arm chair with a glass of beer and an egg-and-olive at her elbow, trying to follow Search For Tomorrow on the television at the same time she talked to him. Thank God it was Rich’s day to buy the week’s meat for the restaurant, and he was downtown doing just that right now.

  “Well, did we or did we not see them up at Blood Neck making out? Just answer me that, Francie.”

  “What’re you doing drunk and talking all over about that? That’s over and done with. I been true to Rich ever since then, and I don’t like it being dragged in, after all this time!”

  “Francie, if I told you that you might be a murder witness some day, in a murder trial, what’d you say to that?”

  “I’d say you was having more of your drunken pipe dreams, is what I’d say!” But she put down her glass of Budweiser, leaned across, and turned down the sound on the set.

  “This is no pipe dream, Francie! I’m collecting evidence!”

  “Oh, yeah? I’m collecting stamps!”

  “Slater Burr murdered Carrie Burr, to marry Jen McKenzie… Now! How does that set with you, Francie?”

  “Get outa here!” Francie Boyson said. Then she turned the set off altogether. “Get outa here!” she repeated, eager… waiting for Al Secora to continue.

  III.

  At noon, Walter Olinski had a three-hour break before he was back on Car 2. Sometimes he went home, ate lunch and lounged around the house; other times, he took the bus up to the P.W.V. club, drank some beer and played the pin-balls. Today he had done the latter, and instantly, as he walked in the door, he regretted it.

  It was The Club’s fault, for letting non-members come there, just because they were Polish, and The Club needed the money. Al Secora was no war veteran! Walter Olinski had fought in The First World War, and he resented the way outsiders like Secora came into the P.W.V. and threw their weight around, as though they’d broken the Hindenburg line single-handed!

  What irked Olinski even more, as he strolled into the bar, was the fact Secora was sounding off about Milt Cloward’s kid.

  Milt Cloward was a Prince, one of the greatest guys Olinski had ever come across, and while Olinski did not hear everything Secora was saying, he did hear Secora say, “And Buzzy Cloward will get it next! Me and Mona got fired, and there’s no telling what Slater Burr will do to Buzzy Cloward!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Brushkin, the bartender was humoring him, “but I’d sober up before I made any more phone calls, Al.”

  “Gimme some more dimes,” Secora said. “Next I’m calling Cloward. Don’t think he’s not going to get the axe from Slater Burr!”

  Olinski said quietly, “That’s all you know.”

  “What’s that mean?” Secora said, turning to face him.

  “Mr. Burr is very fond of that boy, for your information.”

  “Sure, pop, and you won the second battle of the Marne. We heard all about it.”

  “Donald Cloward is going to make something out of himself,” said Olinski. “More than you’ll do… not even a member here.”

  “He’ll make something out of himself if Slater Burr don’t get him first. C’mon, Brushy, gimme some more dimes. I’m collecting myself some evidence.”

  Olinski said, “Mr. Burr has asked Donald Cloward to stay at his place. I happen to know that for a fact.”

  “He’s what?”

  “Milt told me right before I went off. He was real proud because Mr. Burr’s taking an interest in Donald. Him and Mrs. Burr asked the boy up to their place to stay. Your talk don’t amount to nothing, never did. You don’t belong here at the P.W.V.”

  Secora said, “You got shell-shock, old man. Don’t know what you’re talking about any more.”

  “Oh, I know what I’m talking about. Milt told me right before I went off. ‘Whatta you think of that, Olinski,’ he says, ‘Slater Burr’s taking a personal interest in Donald’… Well, I says, I think that’s swell! And that’s what I do think. You just want to make trouble, Albert Secora.”

  “What’s this about them moving Buzzy in?” Secora said.

  “Surprise you that there are decent people, Albert?” Olinski said back. Then he turned away from Secora, and went back toward The Trophy Room, where he could have a beer and look through the magazines in peace.

  IV.

  “But Mr. Leydecker,” said Oliver Percy. “I don’t have any idea where he’d be. I don’t relate to his sort at all.”

  “Did you call Boyson’s?”

  “Of course. It was the first place I called, sir. Then I called Walsh’s Place, and O’Conners, and the pool hall.”

  “And his home?”

  “No answer.”

  “He wouldn’t still be hanging around Burr Company?”

  “I tried there too, sir… It seems to me, sir, that we can hardly be accused of unfair employment practices if we hire people Mr. Burr has fired!”

  “I don’t care how it seems to you, Oliver! Don’t hire anyone from Burr Company. Miss Sontag said just the two of them were let go for no reason. Now, I don’t like the looks of it.”

  “He’s fired people before, sir… She had very dirty fingernails.”

  “Oliver, Al Secora is big in the union at B.M.C., and she’s worked there for ten years! Firing them both in the middle of the day doesn’t make sense! It sounds to me like Slater Burr is building for a strike! Otherwise, there’s no sense to it.”

  “Why would he want a strike?”

  “Someone might have tipped him off about I.L.C.… I don’t know why he wants one, but he’s asking for one, that’s clear!”

  “Yes, sir… I’ll keep trying to locate Secora, Mr. Leydecker, but I truly don’t relate to his sort at all!”

  “You’d better start relating to his sort! His sort is what we have to deal with! I can convince Secora, if I can get my hands on him. He’s pliable, and he doesn’t like Slater Burr.”

  “Could Secora stop a strike?”

  “He could if he just said he didn’t want the job anyway. The union won’t fight for a man who doesn’t want the job, and I’ll see to it that Secora won’t need the job. We won’t hire him… his name won’t be on our payroll, but we’ll take care of him,” Kenneth Leydecker said, “if you just find him, before he ruins everything!”

  V.

  Everything had gone so well that morning… right until Chris called.

  It had been the first time, in a long time, that Slater had made love to her twice. He had awakened her that way; then he had come back an hour later. He had loved her very slowly and well. There was something poignant and special about it… sometimes there was, and the second time had been one of those times… Afterward, they had smoked cigarettes, the bedsheet covering them, the first circle of morning sun spotting their pillow.

  “I must have dreamed of Carrie,” Slater had said. “I felt low when I first woke up.”

  “It’s Donald Cloward being back.”

  “I suppose… That was stupid yesterday, bringing him here—getting involved with him at Walsh’s.”

  “Do you think there’s anything to his story?”

  “No. I was humoring him along.”

  “And the job you promised to get him?”

  “More of the same. But in the den I was thinking,” Slater said, “I think I’ll give him some money, get him out of my hair and back to New York.”

  “Yes… Is he coming for dinner tonight?”

  “The hell with it! I’ll tell him to come to my office and give him the money. He can get the sleeper tonight.”

  “We’ll have dinner alone.”

  “I’d like that,” said Slater.

  Chris had called while Slater was showering. What he told her made Jen laugh. God, what next, would people think of to say about Slater!

  Jen had said, “Was I supposed to be off hid
ing in the bushes, like Carole Tregoff, Chris? Just think what a sensation it’ll be in Cayuta! Another Finch trial!”

  “Jen, it isn’t funny! I know there’s nothing to it, but it’s nasty gossip. Prepare yourself.”

  “I’m ready to swear in court that Slater and I fell in love the second we laid eyes on one another! And if the Cloward boy hadn’t done in Carrie, well, we might very well have! Okay?”

  She had felt very pleased, lying there in bed, full of Slater, full of him and glad to announce possession of him, right from the start.

  She had a smile on her face. She felt high and gay, superior to Chris’s world of if-you-knew-what-people-were-saying, and drink-will-be-his-downfall. While she let Chris babble on in his old maid’s tone of portentous anxiety, she planned to go down and make a Bloody Mary for Slater, have it ready for him when he came out of the shower. He was a magnificent man; his magnificence was stamped all over her; God, she bet not another woman anywhere felt as Jen Burr felt right then!

  When Slater came from the shower with a towel around him, a grin cut across his face as she handed him the drink.

  “Happy this morning,” she said, “and get ready for a good laugh, darling.”

  And then… all hell had broken loose.

  She had never seen Slater act that way before; it was as though something had snapped in him.

  He had called Chris back, and the house had shaken with his shouting.

  He had refused breakfast, hurried into his clothes, and gone off to work in the station wagon, hardly saying anything to her.

  After she pulled herself together, she was able to realize that her suspicions were accurate, right to the letter. Slater did feel guilty about Carrie’s death; it was not just a sore point, it was a malignancy.

  Around eleven o’clock, he called to apologize. He sounded more like himself, but there was still a peppering of hysteria in what he said. He had talked to Cloward. Cloward was coming to dinner that evening, and Slater was putting him on the sleeper to New York at eleven P.M.

  “Don’t mention it to Chris,” he said, “or to anyone.”

  “Very hush-hush, hmmm?”

  “Goddam it, Jen, that silly tone in your voice is irritating! I’m trying to get something done about this thing!”

  “You’re not really concerned about the talk, are you, Slater?”

  “I just want Cloward out of here!”

  It was best all the way around. As Jen drove the Jaguar to pick up Donald Cloward, she realized that. It was what the boy wanted, and it was best for Slater too. There had been enough pressure on Slater these past few months; Cloward’s return was the catalyst to a minor crack-up in Slater… because what else could it be called?

  Jen turned onto Genesee Street, and stopped before The Burr Building. She watched while Donald Cloward came out, carrying his bags, his father hovering in the background, waving at Jen, smiling.

  Jen heard Cloward say, “See you later, pop.”

  While Cloward put his bags in the jump seat, Jen said, “You’re not angry with one another, Don?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “I just wondered… the way you said ‘goodbye’.”

  “He thinks I’m going to spend a few days with you, before I leave for New York. He doesn’t know I’m taking the sleeper tonight. I thought I’d write him a letter when I got to your place. If I try to tell him, he’ll just feel bad that he didn’t make me welcome, or something. Both him and Selma… Mr. Burr said it was better this way, to write a letter.”

  Jen said, “Do you want to drive, Donald?”

  “Gee, sure!”

  He came around to the left side of the car and got in.

  “It’s great of you and Mr. Burr to do this for me,” he said… Then, for a few moments, he sat working with the shift, to figure it out, before he could make the Jaguar go.

  nineteen

  The luminous dial on the alarm clock by the bed read four-twenty. Ted Chayka rolled over on his side and thought about his dream. It had been the same old one. In it, he always failed the police examinations and had to go back to Pat’s Garage and beg for his old job.

  “Don’t try to be what you’re not,” Pat always said, at the end, and Chayka always woke up, just as Pat’s grease-stained hand reached out to touch him.

  There was a faint odor of stale beer in the room. Chayka did not have to guess where it came from. Nancy had left one of her ubiquitous empty cans beside the bed last night. This morning, when Ted came into the bedroom to go to sleep, he had found the bed unmade, as usual, and covered with last night’s newspapers, the TV Guide, and more nail-polish peelings.

  He thought of his talk with Chris that morning. He had complained to Chris about the way Nancy did that—peeled off her polish that way, and Chris had said it was a nervous sign. Probably Nancy was as nervous as Ted was, Chris had said. What they both needed was a long candid talk together.

  While Nancy and he ate breakfast, before he had come in to sleep, he had tried.

  “Nance,” he had said, “what do you think about us?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, do you think we’re as good together as we used to be?”

  “In bed, or what?”

  “In every way,” Chayka said. “In every way, Nancy.”

  Nancy had answered: “You been itching for a fight all week, Ted, so you might as well get it off your chest! What’s the matter? You still burned because I didn’t send your uniform to the cleaners last Tuesday?”

  He had dropped it there. A long candid talk with Nancy was as likely as hot snow or cold fire; he might as well have a long candid talk with the kitchen sink… Then, it occurred to Ted Chayka that there was someone else he was supposed to have a talk with… someone else, and finally, he remembered. He was to call the Leydeckers, tell whoever answered, that Buzzy Cloward was not coming by there again.

  Chayka reached for the phone, and started to dial, when he heard Nancy’s voice on the wire.

  “… wouldn’t surprise me,” she was saying, “nothing would about Slater Burr. But do you know for sure, Francie?”

  “Well, I happen to know first hand they was having an affair, summer of 1954, but I can’t say how I know. I just know for sure.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Nancy. “But how’d the Cloward boy get in the car?”

  “I heard he was put in the car. Slater Burr put him in it!”

  Oh, for the love of Christ! Chayka banged the phone down and got out of bed. He put his trousers on over his shorts and reached for his shirt on the back of the chair. Then he slid into his socks and shoes and went into the living room. “Hang up that phone!” he said.

  Nancy said, “Count Dracula is awake! I gotta hang up, Francie.”

  When she put down the phone, Chayka said, “That’s nice gossip! Dammit, Nancy, I want you to cut it out!”

  “For your information, Ted, Francie Boyson called me. I didn’t call her!”

  “What the hell is wrong with you anyway, Nancy? Don’t you know the Burrs can sue for that kind of talk?”

  “Are they tapping everyone’s wires now? That wouldn’t surprise me! Where you going?”

  “Out.” Chayka grabbed his coat and scarf from the hook in the hall.

  “It’s all over town anyways. They going to sue the whole city of Cayuta?”

  “You believe that gossip, and next you’ll believe the earth is flat!”

  “Where are you taking yourself off to, middle of the afternoon?”

  “I have an errand,” he said.

  There was no sense chancing Nancy’s overhearing a call to the Leydeckers. God alone knew what she would make of that!

  II.

  Mona Sontag was mad at Father Gianonni. She had said her Act of Contrition and the Hail Marys, but she left St. Anthony’s angrily. Father Gianonni had yawned during her confession. That was a man for you—just yawn it off, same way Al Secora just pushed her back on the couch right there in the parlor. Never mind making
it nice, taking it seriously. One damn man was just like another. God was already punishing her, and if a priest was not going to take the sin seriously, he was not going to have it in his power to forgive her. The mumbo-jumbo would not get her off the hook, not if the priest had no interest. Half of it was up to the priest. At the end of the confession, when he had said, “Pray for me, my child,” she had felt like saying back, “Oh yeah? Why should I do you any favors?”… But she had said a prayer for him, a very quick one, since she was not a type to take chances with Fate.

  Mr. Leydecker had been very nice about all of it, but he was not about to hire her. Big as life out front of Leydecker Electric was a sign saying “Office Help Needed,” but he was not about to hire Mona Sontag. All that talk about not hiring help from another industry in Cayuta was just claptrap… and since when… since when! Leydecker Electric had even hired Linda Hadley, a known thief!… But not Mona Sontag!

  All Mona could think of was that Al must have really fixed them, the last hour at Jitz’s place. She had a lot of trouble remembering anything about that time; she had not really come to until Al was fumbling with her clothes in the parlor. Oh, God, and the things he had done too—things no man had ever done to Mona Sontag, and there weren’t that many men in the first place. She had never been punished this much before, and she could not blame God!

  “I didn’t know, God,” she said to herself as she walked down Capitol Street. “How was I to know he was some kind of pervert!”

  Ah, but that was no excuse. No excuse. She let him, was all, and now she was like a piece of dirt.

  At Acme Drugs, she stopped to buy terramycin for poor Burr. She was nearly in tears now, thinking of Burr with the Blue Eye, and herself in the state she was in: … and I detest my sins above every evil, because they displease Thee.”… The thing was, how long were they going to displease Him?