Night My Friend

by Edward D. Hoch

  “You know about it?”

  “Enough. He tells me. He trusts me. You should, too.”

  “Did you see the story about me in the Zeitung?”

  “Yes.”

  “I destroyed your park, your buildings, your lives.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this was only one of the cities. There were many others. It’s no different up there. It’s exactly the same as killing a man with your bare hands—or at least it was for me. When the war ended, I had to go on. Now I work unofficially for a government agency that would throw me to the wolves in a minute. Why do I do it? Because if I didn’t I think I’d go mad.”

  “Are you so sure of your sanity now?” she asked.

  “Is anybody?”

  She lit a cigarette, waving the wooden match afterwards to put it out. It might have been a signal to some watcher outside the window, but he knew it wasn’t. He trusted her, just as Visor did. “Do you want to make love to me?” she asked casually.

  His mouth seemed suddenly dry. “I’m sorry. I have to be going.”

  “It’s the killing, isn’t it? It’s that instead of sex.”

  “I have a job to do.”

  “Get out of it,” she said. “Get out of it before it destroys you.”

  He paused at the door. “I guess it destroyed me the first time I flew over a burning city.”

  Then, more serious than he’d seen her before, she came to him at the door. “Emerson,” she whispered, “be careful. You came back too soon.”

  He left her in the doorway and hurried down to the street.

  Emerson waited in the shadow of a ruined building until he saw Colonel Roger China enter the Allied Officers’ Club on schedule. Then he walked several blocks until he found a telephone. It took them several minutes to page Colonel China and get him to the phone, but finally his voice came on the other end of the line.

  “China here.”

  “Colonel, you don’t know me, but as a fellow officer I thought I might appeal to you. My name is Emerson. You may have read about me in the newspaper.”

  “Emerson. Yes, you’re the one who led the bombing raid.”

  “I must talk to somebody. Could I come to see you?”

  “When?”

  “Tonight. Now.”

  A snort from the other end. “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

  “Please, sir. It’s an important matter.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, and then China said, “Very well. I can give you ten minutes. No more. Ask for me at the desk.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Emerson waited a half-hour before putting in his appearance. He saw Colonel China at once, standing with a group of English and French officers near the entrance to the club dining room. Playing out the charade, he asked at the desk, and waited while the colonel was summoned.

  “You’re Emerson?”

  “That’s right, sir. Pleased to meet you.” The harsh lights of the club anteroom played down on China’s balding head, giving it momentarily the appearance of a grinning skull. His eyes were dark and deep-set, and the weathered skin of his slim face was stretched taut. He was an ugly man, but he had the bearing of a leader.

  “We can talk in here,” China said, leading him into a smoking room hung heavily with the male trappings of the military.

  “You have a nice club here.”

  The colonel nodded. “It’s a nice retreat from the rest of Augsheim. If I may say so, you did a thorough job with your bombs, Emerson.”

  “I’d like to forget about that, sir. It’s one of the reasons I came to you.”

  “And why me?”

  “You’re the ranking officer in Augsheim. After that newspaper interview, I felt I had to talk to someone—a countryman.”

  “What’s your trouble, man?”

  “I… I feel I did the wrong thing. I feel that the whole war was wrong and I was wrong to kill all those people. I suppose that’s really why I came back here. I need somebody like you to tell me, sir.”

  Colonel China regarded him with something like distaste. “War is never wrong to a soldier. If you think so, it’s just as well you’re out. I won’t say I agree with every aspect of our government’s policy, but I fought for it. Now, after the war, is the time to work for changes in that policy.”

  “I do want to change it, though!” Emerson insisted. “War is nothing but burning and looting and killing!”

  China smiled slightly. “But you see, even to change it, to achieve an end to war, would necessitate more of the same. This old world will never be free of war until the Russians and the English—and, yes, the Americans too—are as defeated as Germany is today. Perhaps that will be the only true communism this planet will ever know—the communism of destruction and defeat.”

  “Who would rule a world like that?”

  “The strong will survive. There are always rulers. Hitler was one, until he went mad.” Then suddenly he got to his feet, ending the conversation. “I’ve given you more than ten minutes already. Come see me tomorrow at my office.”

  “Thank you, sir. You’ve helped me.”

  Colonel China paused. “I did it for a fellow officer. Have all the doubts you want, but remember one thing. Don’t ever forget how to kill.”

  Emerson found a nearby bar from which he could observe the club parking lot. He kept his eye on the big black car in which China had arrived. The Allied Officers’ Club had been carefully chosen as the one place where China would probably drive himself. An enlisted man who might be his regular driver would not be allowed inside, and colonels weren’t usually important enough to keep drivers waiting outside a bar all night. No, China had arrived alone and would leave alone—unless he decided to drive another officer home. In that event, Emerson had two alternate plans.

  It was two in the morning before China appeared, but he was alone. Though he’d obviously been drinking, he walked hurriedly to his car and got in. Emerson stepped out of his hiding place and ran across the street.

  “Please, sir,” he said, pulling open the door on the passenger side. “I’ve been drinking. Could you drop me at my hotel?”

  Colonel China stared at him with surprised distaste. “What’s the matter with you, Emerson? Get out of this car!”

  Emerson gave a last glance to make sure the parking lot was empty. Then he leaned over and delivered a short judo blow to the colonel’s throat. The man coughed once and started to sag, and Emerson broke his neck with a second blow.

  He slid over the body into the driver’s seat and edged the car quickly out of the lot. The highway to Colonel China’s rented house had been carefully covered, and Emerson knew exactly the right place for the accident. He aimed the car for the guard rail and jumped.

  It started burning at the bottom of the gully, and he had to keep low to avoid being silhouetted by the flames.

  Emerson had killed a great many men in the brief years since the war. It didn’t bother him any more, if it ever had. He reported to a quiet man behind a desk in Washington and went where he was sent, to contact people like Visor and Mona in dingy back rooms. Sometimes he wondered how much official Washington ever knew of his activities, if they knew anything. Perhaps, in the bureaucratic confusion of the postwar world, he was a lost segment simply serving the whims of some minor department head. But the truth of Emerson was that he didn’t really care.

  He walked back into town, thinking abstractly that he would like to see Mona again before he left Augsheim. The city was sleeping, and he strolled for a long while among the ruins, seeing them for the first time bathed in a silvery moonglow. The mists of the previous night had dissipated, and the air was clear with November coolness.

  Piles of brick, blackened timbers. Still, after all this time. Perhaps some bodies, too, undiscovered yet in their unmarked tombs. The city would come back, but not the same. Not ever the same.

  He paused on the street where Mona Kirst had her apartment, and pressed his face against the damp bark of a
tree to stare up at the rectangle of curtained light that was her window. She would not be alone, not even at three in the morning. He wondered vaguely where Visor was that night, and turning to walk back to his hotel caught the distant shrill pitch of sirens heading out of town. Perhaps the burning car had only now been discovered, and Roger China had spent this hour alone in his death.

  Ahead, finally, the hotel glowed like a beacon on the dim street. He hurried toward it, suddenly tired, not hearing the voices until they were almost upon him.

  “Emerson!”

  “That’s him. Get him!” The words were German, but he understood. He turned to see a half-dozen men emerging from the shadows. Some carried clubs, and at least one had a knife.

  “We’ve been waiting for you, Emerson. This is for the city. For Augsheim. And for our families.”

  He thought he saw the reporter, Burkherdt, watching from across the street. Then he closed his eyes against their hatred as the first blows fell. In that final moment he was once more skimming over the ice-blue clouds in the lead bomber, free and powerful as an eagle.

  They Never Come Back

  HARRY GORDON SWUNG THE CAR out of the driveway, belatedly switched on his lights, and began the long drive home. It had been a late party, later than he’d planned, and Lois was already half dozing beside him on the seat. Near the river, the road plunged suddenly into scattered patches of post-midnight fog, and he cursed to himself as he slowed the car to a crawl.

  “What’s the matter?” Lois asked, rousing herself from near slumber. “You slowed down.”

  “Little fog. Don’t worry about it. Only slowed as a precaution.”

  “I told you we should have left earlier. But you had to have one more drink.”

  “Go back to sleep. We’ll be home soon.”

  She was silent, and he glanced sideways at her. Curled up on the seat with her long blonde hair falling over one eye, she might have been a little girl on the way home from a birthday party. There were times during the past six years when he’d regretted marrying her, but this was not one of them.

  He turned back to the fog-patched road, a half-instant too late. The car was headed straight for the steel guard rail on the river side. He twisted hard on the steering wheel and felt the wheels skidding wildly beneath him. There was a grinding, tearing crash, and then a sheet of flame that might have been a dream. And then nothing.

  His vision came swimming out of an amber pool, into a tropic oasis where the only sounds were the rustle of white-skirted legs and the tonal beeping of some far-off chimes. The place might almost have been a hospital.

  “Harry?”

  He started to turn his head and then the pain stopped him. The pain and the bandages. “Is that you, Les?”

  Lester Shaw stepped into his vision and bent over the bed. “Thank God you’re all right, Harry.”

  “I don’t feel all right. Where am I?” He asked it even though he knew.

  “In the hospital. There was an accident, Harry.” Lester’s face was a somber mask that looked like molded putty.

  “Lois…?”

  “I’m sorry, Harry. She didn’t make it.”

  “Lois!” He started out of bed, and had one wobbling foot on the cool floor when the nurse grabbed him and pulled him back. Then his head began to spin and someone plunged a needle into his arm.

  Harry was in the hospital only three days. He came out with a slight concussion, two cracked ribs and numerous bruises, in time to attend his wife’s funeral at the little church where they’d worshipped on infrequent occasions. Lester and Muriel Shaw were at his side during the whole service, and the painful, eternal drive to the cemetery afterwards.

  It was Muriel who had explained, a bit too bluntly, about the closed coffin at the funeral parlor. (“There was nothing left of her, Harry. She was burned to a cinder.”) And it was Lester who had filled in the details of the accident itself. (“We were about a half-mile behind you, Harry. We saw the car turn over and burst into flames, and we got there in time to pull you clear. But she was a goner from the start.”)

  After the funeral they’d driven in silence back to Harry’s house—the rambling ranch on the hill that now seemed too big, too dank, too empty. While Muriel fixed coffee and Lester helped settle things, Harry dug out the folded newspapers from the last few days and read all about it in the clipped jargon of the newsman.

  Mrs. Lois Gordon, 33, prominent socialite and wife of insurance man Harry G. Gordon, died early this morning in the flaming crash of their car on Route 17. Mr. & Mrs. Gordon were returning home after a party at the home of Joseph Angora when the accident occurred. Gordon, who was driving, was hospitalized with undetermined injuries, and is listed in fair condition.

  There was a picture of her too, a recent one with her long blonde hair in all its glory. Some anxious photographer had flopped the negative, though, so that the familiar little mole was on her right cheek instead of the left. It was almost as if he were seeing her in a mirror, and somehow it made her seem still alive.

  “I suppose it’s a good thing there aren’t any children,” Muriel said with her usual tact. “It would be terribly hard on them.”

  “It’s hard on me,” Harry told her, sipping the coffee that was a poor imitation of Lois’ brew.

  “Would you rather be alone tonight?” Lester asked.

  “I think so, Les. Why don’t you two run along? Thanks for everything. Thanks for saving my life.” He didn’t add that they might better have let him burn along with her.

  Later, when he was alone, he got out the bankbooks and stock certificates, and tried to figure out the financial meaning of Lois dead. Much of the money had been in her name, but there were two joint bank accounts and some other things like the house and car. Her mother had died a year after their marriage, leaving her close to a quarter of a million dollars.

  Staring at the figures until they started to blur before his eyes, Harry Gordon wondered if it had been Lois or only the money that he’d loved. Now Lois was gone and the money remained, and he was afraid of what he might be learning about himself.

  He went back to the office the next day, with his head still bandaged and his ribs taped. The injuries didn’t bother him, but the smothering air of careful solicitude drove him from the office after only an hour. Joseph Angora phoned him for lunch, and he used it as an excuse to say he’d be gone the remainder of the day.

  Angora was a middle-aged balding man who ran an export business of vague dimensions and hovered at the fringes of Long Island society. Since his wife Betty was crippled and confined to a wheel chair, Angora did more than his share of party-giving at the big old house out beyond Garden City. Harry and Lois had been returning from one of Angora’s parties when the accident occurred.

  “Sorry I couldn’t get to the funeral,” he said with a somber shake of Harry’s hand. “Betty and I just couldn’t believe it.”

  “Thanks for the flowers,” Harry said.

  They ordered drinks and talked about it, in the matter-of-fact manner of mature men. To Harry it was a relief, after the solicitude of the office. But then, over the second drink, Angora suddenly looked away. “You know, Betty doesn’t think she’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you know how Betty is, stuck in that chair all the time. Sometimes she gets some pretty strange ideas. She doesn’t think Lois is dead.”

  “Who does she think we buried?” Harry asked, somehow becoming angry at this sudden turn in the conversation.

  Angora tried hard to chuckle, apparently sorry he’d mentioned the subject. “Forget it, Harry. Forget it! It’s getting late. We’d better order our food.”

  But though no more was said, the seed of thought had been planted. All that afternoon, Harry tried to remember Lois as she had been, tried to summon up in his mind a picture of Lois alive, not Lois dead. It was foolish, of course. She was dead and buried, and Betty Angora’s ramblings would never bring her back.

  On the weekend, Harry bought a new car
and drove into Manhattan. The city had never seemed quite so lonely to him as it did that Saturday night, and when he finally parked in an all-night ramp to walk the streets for a while he found that a light spring drizzle had deprived him of even the companionship of the sidewalk.

  He finally settled for two beers in a Greenwich Village bar, but even there he could not be free of the memory of Lois. They’d come here once or twice, and over the second drink he found himself sneaking a look at the folded newspaper clipping that told about her death. He tried to tell himself that such feelings were only natural just a week after her death, but somehow rationalization didn’t help. He left the bar and found that the drizzle had stopped. The streets of the Village were beginning to fill once more.

  And then he saw her—Lois.

  His heart seemed to stop beating, and a cold sweat covered every inch of his body. Lois, her blonde hair hanging free, dressed in a shabby raincoat and slacks, carrying a paper bag from an all night delicatessen.

  He started after her, hurrying as she threaded a rapid passage through the suddenly crowded sidewalk. She’s not dead, Betty Angora had said. She’s not dead.

  “Lois!”

  She didn’t turn, only kept going. At the south end of Washington Square she turned suddenly and entered the dimly lit hallway of an apartment house. It was there that he caught her by the arm. “Lois—you’re alive!”

  She turned to him in the harsh light of the overhead bulb. “Take your hand off me, mister, or you’ll be dead.”

  “I…” There was still an amazing resemblance, but now, up close, he could see his mistake. The eyes were different, harder, and there was no mole. Even the long hair was not exactly the right shade. It was not Lois. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

  “You thought I was somebody else. That’s an old line, mister.”

  “I thought you were my wife. She died last week.”

  “Well! That’s the first time I’ve ever been mistaken for a ghost!”

  “I—I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Could I make up for it by buying you a drink?”

  “I’ve got a whole bagful of beer right here, and a party going upstairs.” He started to turn away and she stopped him. “Let me drop the beer and I’ll come out for a quick one, mister. I guess you owe me something after scaring me half to death. Be right back.”