His mother touched her apron to her mouth in a gesture of horror.
“The Kellermans?” she gasped. “Oh, Buddy, when are you going to stop that? Why, they’re the last people in the world…She seems like a very nice woman. Why, she was right down here at the door, only the other day, to borrow a cup of sugar from me.”
“Well, he’ll grow up fine,” his father said darkly. “There’s something wrong with a boy like that. This had to happen to me! I don’t know where he gets it from. I wasn’t that way in my whole life. My brother Ed—God rest his soul—wasn’t that way. But I’m going to take it out of him if it’s the last thing I do.”
He started to roll up his shirt sleeve. He pushed his chair back.
“Are you going to say it’s not true?”
“But I saw them. I watched through the window and saw them,” Buddy wailed helplessly.
His father’s jaw set tight.
“All right, come in here.”
He closed the door after the two of them.
It didn’t hurt very much. Well, it did, but just for a minute. It didn’t last. His father wasn’t a man with a vicious temper; he was just a man with a strong sense of what was right and what was wrong. His father just used half-strength on him; just enough to make him holler out satisfactorily, not enough to really bruise him badly.
Then when he got through, he rolled down his shirt sleeves and said to the sniffling Buddy:
“Now are you going to make up any more of them fancy lies of yours?”
There was an out there, and Buddy was smart enough to grab it.
“No, sir,” he said submissively. “I’m not going to make up any lies.” And he started for the door.
But his father added quickly, too quickly:
“Then you’re ready to admit now that it wasn’t true?”
Buddy swallowed hard and stood still, with freedom just within reach. He didn’t answer.
“Answer me,” his father said severely. “Was it or wasn’t it?”
There was a dilemma here, and Buddy couldn’t handle it. He’d been walloped for telling what they thought was a lie. Now his father wanted him to do the very thing he’d punished him for doing in the first place. If he told the truth it would be called a lie, and if he told a lie he’d only be repeating what he knew they were walloping him for.
He tried to sidestep it by asking a question of his own.
“When you—when you see a thing yourself, with your own eyes, is it true then?” he said falteringly.
“Sure,” his father said impatiently. “You’re old enough to know that!”
“Then I saw it, and it has to be true.”
This time his father got real sore. He hauled him back from the door by the scruff of his neck, and for a minute he acted as if he were going to give him another walloping. But he didn’t. Instead he took the key out of the door, opened it, and put the key in the front.
“You’re going to stay in here until you’re ready to admit that whole thing was a dirty, rotten lie!” he said wrathfully.
He went out, slammed the door after him, and locked Buddy in from the outside. Then he took the key out of the lock so Buddy’s mother wouldn’t weaken while he was asleep.
* * *
—
Buddy walked across the room and slumped down onto a chair. He hung his head, and tried to puzzle it out. He was being punished for doing the very thing they were trying to lace into him: sticking to the truth.
He heard his father moving around out there, getting ready for bed—heard his shoes drop heavily, one after the other, then the bedsprings creak. He’d sleep all day now, until dark. But maybe his mother would let Buddy out before she went to work for the day.
Buddy went over to the door and started to jiggle the knob back and forth, to try and attract her attention with as little noise as he could.
“Mom,” he whispered close to the keyhole. “Hey, Mom!”
After awhile he heard her tiptoe up on the other side.
“Mom, let me out.”
“It’s for your own good, Buddy,” she whispered back. “I can’t do it unless you take back that sinful lie you told. He told me not to.” She waited patiently. “Do you take it back, Buddy? Do you?”
“No,” he sighed. He went back to the chair and sat down once more.
What was a fellow to do, when even his own parents wouldn’t believe him? Who was he to turn to? You had to tell somebody about a thing like that. If you didn’t, it was just as bad as—just as bad as if you were one of the ones that did it.
He wasn’t as scared any more as he’d been last night because it was daylight now. But he still felt a little sick at his stomach whenever he thought of it. You had to tell somebody.
Suddenly he turned his head and looked at the window. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? Not about getting out through the window—he’d known he could all along; it was latched on the inside. But he hadn’t tried to get out that way until now because he wanted to stay here and get them to believe him here, where he was. As long as they wouldn’t believe him here, there was another place where maybe they would believe him.
That’s what grown-ups did the first thing, whenever they were in his predicament. Why shouldn’t a kid do it? The police. They were the ones who had to be told. They were the ones you were supposed to tell, anyway. Even his father, if he’d only believe him, was supposed to tell them. Well, if his father wouldn’t, then he’d tell them himself.
He got up, walked softly over to the window and eased it up. He slung himself over onto the fire escape. It was easy, of course; nothing to it. At his age it was just as easy as going out a door. Then he pushed the window down again. He was careful to leave it open just a little so that he could get his fingers underneath and raise it up again when he came back.
He’d tell the police, and then he’d come back and sneak in again through the window, and be there when his father woke up and unlocked the door. That would get it off his mind. Then he wouldn’t have to worry any more.
He went down the fire escape, dropped off where the last section of the ladder was hoisted clear of the ground, went in through the basement, and came out the front, up the janitor’s steps without meeting anybody. He beat it away from the front of the house fast, so he wouldn’t be seen by anyone who knew him. Then as soon as he was safely around the corner he slowed up and tried to figure out how you went about it. Telling the police.
It was better to go to a station house, for anything as important as this, instead of just telling a stray neighborhood cop you met on the sidewalk.
He didn’t actually know where the nearest station house was, but he knew there must be one somewhere close around. There had to be. He saw a storekeeper sweeping the sidewalk, and he got up his courage and approached him.
“Where’s the station house, mister?” he asked.
“How should I know?” said the man gruffly. “What am I, a telephone book? Look out with your feet. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
Buddy backed away. That gave him an idea. He turned and went looking for a drug store. When he found one, he went in and looked in the telephone books they had in the back, chained to the wall.
He picked the nearest one and headed for it.
When he got there, all his instinctive fear of that kind of place, left over from when he was a kid of six or eight and cops were the natural enemies of small boys, came back again for a minute.
He hung around outside for a short while. Finally he saw the station house cat go in. That gave him courage, and he went in himself.
The man at the desk didn’t pay any attention to him for a long time. He was looking over some papers or something.
Finally the man said, kindly, “What is it, son? Lost your dog?”
“No, sir,” Buddy said spasmodically, “I—I got something I
want to tell someone.”
The desk sergeant grinned absently, continuing to look at the papers.
“And what would that be, now?”
Buddy glanced apprehensively behind him, at the street outside, as though fearful of being overheard from there.
“It’s about a man that was killed,” he blurted.
The sergeant gave him his full attention for the first time.
“You know something about a man that was killed?”
“Yes sir,” said Buddy breathlessly. “Last night. And I thought I better tell you.” He wondered if that was enough, and he could go now. No, they had to have the name and address; they couldn’t just guess.
The sergeant clawed his chin.
“You’re not trying to be a smart aleck, now, or anything like that?” he asked warningly. One look at Buddy’s face, however, seemed to reassure him on that point.
“No, sir,” Buddy said nervously.
“Well, I’ll tell you. That’s not my department, exactly. You see that hall there, over next to the clock? You go down that hall to the second door. There’s a man in there. You tell him about it. Don’t go in the first door, now, or he’ll have your life. He eats kids your age for breakfast.”
Buddy went over to the mouth of the corridor, looked back from there for reassurance.
“Second door,” the sergeant repeated.
He went on. He made a wide loop around the dread first door, pressing himself flat against the opposite wall to get safely by it. Then he knocked on the one after that, and felt as scared as if it were the principal’s office at school.
“Come in,” a voice said.
Buddy couldn’t move for a minute. He felt as if he were paralyzed.
“Well?” the voice repeated with a touch of annoyance.
To stay out, now, was worse than to go in. Buddy took a deep breath, held it, caving in his middle, and entered. Then he remembered to close the door after him. When you didn’t close the door after you in the principal’s office, you had to go outside and come in all over again.
There was another man, at another desk. His eyes had been fixed in readiness at a point about six feet up along the door. When it opened and closed, and they still met nothing, they dropped down to Buddy’s four-foot level.
“What is this?” he growled. “How’d you get in here?”
The first part of the question didn’t seem to be addressed to Buddy himself, but to the ceiling light or something like that.
Buddy had to go through the thing a second time, and repetition didn’t make it any easier.
* * *
—
The man just looked at him. In his imagination Buddy had pictured a general rising up and an excited, pell-mell rushing out on the part of everyone in the station house, when he delivered his news; patrol cars wailing into high gear and orders being barked around. That was what always happened in the pictures.
But now, in real life—the man just looked at him.
He said, “What’s your name, son? What’s your address?”
Buddy told him.
He said. “D’y’ever have a nightmare, son? You know, a bad dream that scares the life out of you?”
“Oh, sure,” Buddy said incautiously. “I’ve had ’em, lots of times.”
The man said, into a boxlike thing on his desk:
“Ross, come in here.”
Another man came in. He, too, was in plainclothes. They conferred in low voices. Buddy couldn’t hear a word they said. He knew it was about himself, though—he could tell by the way they’d look over at him every now and then. They didn’t look in the right way. They should have looked—well, sort of concerned, worried about what he’d told them, or something. Instead, they looked sort of amused, like men who are trying to keep straight faces.
Then the first one spoke up again. “So you saw them cut him up and—”
This was a distortion, and Buddy scotched it quick. He wasn’t here to make things up, although only a few short weeks ago he would have grabbed at the chance this gave him.
“No sir,” he said, “I didn’t see that part of it; I just heard them say they were going to do it. But—”
Then, before he could reaffirm that he had seen the man fall and the knife go home three times, the detective cut in with another question. So he was left with the appearance of having made a whole retraction, instead of just a partial one.
“Did you tell your parents about this?”
This was a bad one, and nobody knew it better than Buddy.
“Yes,” he mumbled unwillingly.
“Then why didn’t they come and tell us about it?”
He tried to duck that by not answering.
“Speak up, son.”
You had to tell the truth to cops; that was serious, not telling the truth to cops.
“They didn’t believe me,” he breathed.
“Why didn’t they believe you?”
“They—they think I’m always making up things.”
He saw the look they gave one another, and he knew what it meant. He’d already lost the battle. They were already on his father’s side.
“Oh, they do, huh? Well, do you make up things?”
You had to tell the truth to cops.
“I used to. But not any more. This time I’m not making it up.”
He saw one of them tap a finger to his forehead, just once. He wasn’t meant to see it, it was done very quickly, but he saw it.
“Well, do you know for sure when you are and when you’re not making things up, son?”
“I do, honest!” he protested. “I know I’m not this time!”
But it wasn’t a very good answer, he knew that. It was the only one he had, though. They got you in corners where you hardly knew what you were saying any more.
“We’ll send somebody around, son, and check up,” the first man reassured him. He turned to the other man.
“Ross, go over there and take a look around. Don’t put your foot down too hard. It’s not official. Sell them a magazine subscription or something—no, an electric razor, that’ll tie in with the story. There’s one in my locker. You can take that with you for a sample. It’s the—” He glanced at Buddy inquiringly.
“The sixth floor, right over us.”
“That’s all I’ve got to do,” Ross said in a disgruntled voice. But he went out.
“You wait out in the hall, son,” the first man said to Buddy. “Sit down on the bench out there.”
Buddy went out and sat down. A half hour went by. Then he saw Ross come back and enter the office again. He waited hopefully for the rushing out and shouting of orders to come. Nothing happened. Nobody stirred.
All he could hear was Ross swearing and complaining in a low voice through the frosted glass inset of the door, and the other man laughing, like you do when a joke has been told at somebody’s expense. Then they sent for him again.
Ross gave Buddy a dirty look. The other man tried to straighten his face. He passed his hand slowly in front of his mouth, and it came out serious at the other side of it.
“Son,” he said, “you can hear things quite easily through that ceiling of yours, can’t you? The one between you and them. Pretty thin?”
“Y-yes,” Buddy faltered, wondering what was coming next.
“Well, what you heard was a program on their radio.”
“There wasn’t any. They didn’t have a radio in the room.”
Ross gave him quite an unfriendly look.
“Yes they do,” he said sourly. I was just over there, and I saw it myself. You could hear it all the way downstairs to the third floor when I came away. I been on the force fourteen years, and this kid’s going to tell me what is in a room I case and what isn’t!”
“All right, Ross,” the other man trie
d to soothe him.
“But I saw it through the window!” Buddy wailed.
“It could have still been on the radio, son,” he explained. “Remember, you can’t see something that’s said. You can only hear it. You could have been looking right at them, and still hear what the radio was saying.”
“What time was it you were out there?” Ross growled at Buddy.
“I don’t know. Just—just night time. We only got an alarm clock and you can’t see it in the dark.”
Ross shrugged angrily at the other man, as if to say: “See what I mean?”
“It was the Crime-Smashers Program,” he said bitterly. “It’s on from eleven to twelve. And last night was Wednesday. Or don’t you know that either?” he flared in an aside to Buddy. “She told me herself it was a partic’ly gruesome one this time. Said her husband wouldn’t talk to her for an hour afterward because he can’t stand hearing that kind of stuff and she dotes on it. She admits she had it on too loud, just to spite him. Fair enough?”
The other man looked at Buddy, quizzically. Buddy just looked at the floor.
Ross finished rubbing it in, with vengeful relish.
“And her husband uses a safety razor. She brought it out and showed it to me herself when I tried to peddle the prop to her. Did you ever try cutting anybody up with one of them? And there are two valises still right there in the room with them. I saw them when I tried to fumble my pencil and stooped down to pick it up from the floor. With their lids left ajar and nothing worse in them than a mess of shirts and women’s undies. And not brand new replacements, either; plenty grubby and battered from years of knocking around with them.
“I don’t think cheapskates like them would be apt to own four valises, two apiece. And if they did, I don’t think they’d pack the stiff in the two best ones and keep the two worst ones for themselves. It would most likely be the other way around. And, finally, they’ve got newspapers still kicking around from two weeks back. I spotted the datelines on a few of them myself. What were they supposed to have used to clean up the mess, paper napkins?”
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 24
