The Cry of the Owl

by Patricia Highsmith

  It came to him suddenly: Greg was with Nickie. She’d hide him, or help him to hide. She’d be pleased to. Robert’s pencil stopped, and he stared at the glaring white paper in front of him. And what about Ralph? Would he put up with it? Of course, it depended on what Nickie told Ralph, and she could make up a good story, but even Ralph could read a newspaper. Or was he such a weakling he wouldn’t put up any opposition? Robert didn’t know much about Ralph Jurgen, but he thought he was a weakling. And of course he was in that first fine glow with Nickie. Best to assume he’d put up with anything Nickie wanted.

  At five P.M., just before he left the plant, Robert went into one of the telephone booths at the end of the main corridor and called Jenny at her house. She sounded a bit constrained.

  “Are you by yourself?” Robert asked.

  “Oh, yes. Susie’s coming over later, but I’m alone now.”

  “Is anything the matter? Have you heard anything?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You sounded a little strange. The police talked to me today, the same two. They said they’d talked to you.”

  “Yes,” Jenny said.

  “What’s the matter, Jenny? Can’t you talk to me?”

  “Nothing’s the matter. Why do you keep asking that?”

  Robert rubbed a hand across his frowning brows. “They said they asked you how we’d met. I wondered what you told them.”

  “I told them it was none of their business.”

  “Oh. It’s too bad we didn’t agree to say we’d met at a drugstore counter over a soda, something like that. Anything—”

  “I don’t think it’s their business,” Jenny said stubbornly.

  “Well, it seems they’re hammering the prowling story now. Greg spoke to Nickie about it. What she said didn’t help. I—” He decided not to tell Jenny his suspicion that Nickie might be helping to hide Greg, or that he wanted to go to New York to see Nickie.

  “Well—I denied that,” Jenny said finally, slowly.

  “Jenny, you sound so low. I’m damned sorry about this mess.”

  “Robert, I love you so,” Jenny breathed into the telephone with a sound like a sob.

  She made it seem they were being wrenched apart by the cruel force of the law. It was not what he wanted to hear. “How did you say we’d met? Did you say anything?”

  “I said it was an irrelevant question.”

  “Oh. Jenny, I can’t go to Philly tomorrow because the police want me to stay in town this weekend.”

  “All right,” she said with resignation. “Robert—you still think he’s alive?”

  “Yes. I certainly do.”

  15

  Robert drove to New York on Sunday evening. He had thought of putting it off until Monday evening, Sunday still being part of the weekend, but the telephone call from Greg’s landlady at noon on Sunday had thrown him into a rage. He hadn’t mentioned Mrs. Van Vleet’s call when Jenny phoned him at three Sunday afternoon. Jenny was a little hurt because he hadn’t wanted to see her Sunday. She had invited him to come for brunch, and she had asked him Saturday noon, when they met in Rittersville for a snack in a diner near the garage where Robert was having his car greased. It had been an unsatisfactory meeting. Jenny had kept looking at him as if he were miles away, lost to her somehow, as perhaps he was, from her point of view. They hadn’t found much to talk to each other about, and Robert had wanted nothing but to get back to his house, where he could be alone, where news, good or bad, might come at any minute at the door or over the telephone. Or simply disagreeable voices, like that of Mrs. Van Vleet. She had called him up to give him a piece of her mind, Robert supposed, and what surprised him more than anything was that she could be so voluble, so sure of herself, while addressing someone she considered a murderer. Weren’t people supposed to be afraid of murderers? If she really believed him a murderer, wouldn’t she be afraid he might get angry and come after her, too? She had asked if Robert was still working at Langley Aeronautics, and when he said yes, she had said, “It’s a wonder to me you’ve still got a job. It’s a wonder to me you can hold your head up in the community, it is indeed. … A fine young man like Greg … trifling with his girl … a fine young girl. I hear you don’t even want to marry her. I should hope not! You’re a killer—or the next thing to it!” And Robert had stood there answering, “Yes … No,” politely, trying to smile at it and failing, failing to get more than four consecutive words out before he was interrupted. What was the use? But he knew it took only a noisy minority like Mrs. Van Vleet in a community to hang a man, literally or figuratively.

  Robert drove fast over the Pulaski Skyway toward the Lincoln Tunnel. After all, he remembered, the Tessers’ two calls had been friendly and very comforting. On the second one, Dick had been a bit tight and had said, “I believe you left him sitting on the bank, but if he got up and fell in, that’s about what he asked for. Isn’t it?”

  Robert stopped at a drugstore on Ninth Avenue and called his and Nickie’s old number. She kept a listing in her maiden name, Veronica Grace, and in the year-old directory before him, the number was their old one. To his surprise, Nickie answered on the first ring.

  “Well, well! I wonder what brings you here. … Yes, darling, but we’re not through dinner yet. Can you give us maybe forty-five minutes? … Nine-thirty, that’ll be fine for us.”

  Robert walked slowly back to his car, wondering if he should call the Campbells or Vic McBain in the half hour he had to kill. Edna Campbell had written him last week, saying they would like to see him and could put him up if he came to New York, and saying they hoped the trouble he was in in Langley would soon be over, and what really had happened? Robert had not answered her letter as yet. He decided not to call anyone before he saw Nickie.

  She had given him an address on East Eighty-second Street. Robert drove slowly, deliberately hitting red lights, put his car in an underground parking garage on Third Avenue, and walked the three or four blocks to Nickie’s building. It was a five-story town house, with a marble foyer to which he was admitted by a release button. He climbed the stairs, though there was a small self-operating elevator. The Jurgens were on the third floor.

  “Exactly on time,” she said, swinging the doot open for him.

  She was in an off-white dinner dress that almost touched the floor, and suddenly he thought she might have guests, but the apartment was silent. She took his overcoat in the small front hall. “You’re looking very well,” he said.

  “Can’t say the same for you. Greg got a few licks in, didn’t he? And you’re thinner, too.”

  Yes, and bilious, hair falling out, the mole is worse, et cetera, Robert thought, and his smile stung his not quite healed lip. He followed her into a wall-to-wall-carpeted living room full of large pots of shiny-leaved plants. An expensive apartment in an expensive neighborhood. Ralph Jurgen made a lot of money. The only sign of Ralph was a pipe on an end table. The furniture Robert recognized as mostly his and Nickie’s, and after a glance he avoided looking at it. There was a painting over the black-and-white stone fireplace, one of Nickie’s he had not seen before, vermilion with a black background, the red splotch suggestive of a splayed banana peel with the closed end at the top. Then the bold signature in white in the lower right corner: “AMAT.” He loves, she loves, it loves. Amat was Nickie’s third or fourth pseudonym. She changed her name with a change of style, and liked to think she was making fresh beginnings, though there was a continuity of style throughout all her work. “If you painted junk like this, would you want your real name on it either?” Robert had overheard a man say at one of Nickie’s group shows on Tenth Street, and Robert remembered he had wanted to whirl around and sock him, but he hadn’t even looked around. Leaning against the fireplace were three or four large wash drawings upside down. Robert bent over to read the signature. It was “Augustus John.”

  Nickie sat down, almost flung herself down in the corner of a white sofa that was nearly the color of her dress. She had lost no weight, and had
probably gained some. Then his eyes moved to her face. She was smiling at him, her brown eyes full of amusement, mirth really. Her black hair was shorter and fluffier, her full lips a darker red.

  “So—you’ve got a new girl friend, I hear. Sit down.”

  He took a nearby chair, also white, and got out his cigarettes. “I didn’t come here to talk about that.”

  “What did you come here to talk about?” Then she called, “Ralph! Ralphie? Don’t you want to join us? What did you come for? Would you like a drink?”

  “Thanks. Coffee’s more like it, I think.”

  “More like what?” she asked, leaning forward, her restless hands on her pressed-together knees. She smiled at him teasingly. She had doused herself in a perfume he knew well. “Ralphie’s napping, I think.”

  She was nervous, Robert saw.

  “I will have a drink,” Robert said. “It’s easier than coffee, isn’t it?”

  “Why, darling, I’d do anything for you, you know that. But then you never thought much of my coffee, did you?” She got up and went to the bar cart, where a silver icer stood among a dozen bottles. “I’ll join you,” Nickie said. The ice thocked loudly in the highball glasses. “Well, tell me about your new girl friend. I hear she’s just out of college. Or is it high school? Is she going to throw any more heavyweights at you for you to beat up? You’d better go into training. Second thought, I don’t want to hear about her. I know your taste and it’s awful. Except for me.”

  Robert drew on his cigarette. “I didn’t come here to talk about you or her. I came here to ask if you possibly know where Greg is.”

  She shot a glance at him and then stared at him, not quite smiling, not quite serious. She was trying to see what he already knew, Robert thought. Or that might be totally wrong. She might just as well be going to pretend she knew more than she did. “Why should I know where he is?”

  “I thought maybe you’d heard from him. I understand he’s been talking pretty often with you on the phone.”

  “He did. Until you knocked him in the river.” She handed him his glass.

  The door Nickie had called to opened, and Ralph came in, in dressing gown and trousers. He looked fuzzy and pink with sleep, or possibly drink. His hair was thin and blond, his eyes blue. He put on a tight smile for Robert and shook his hand heartily. Robert had stood up.

  “Hello, Bob, how are you?”

  “Well, thanks, and you?”

  “Darling, can’t you find a shirt? Or a folded towel like those boxers wear under their robes? You know I hate to see all that hair creeping up your chest.” Nickie gestured airily at his neck.

  There wasn’t any hair showing above the small white patch of Ralph’s undershirt.

  Ralph’s flush deepened. “Sorry,” he murmured. He seemed to balk or hesitate about going back to the bedroom, but at last he turned and made his way back to the door he had come out of.

  “Married life seems to be exhausting you,” Nickie said after him.

  After a moment, when Ralph had closed the door, Robert said, “I don’t think you really answered me.”

  She turned to him. “About what? Greg?”

  “Yes.”

  Ralph was back, draping a folded bath towel around his neck, stuffing its ends into his black-and-gray silk robe. He went to the liquor cart.

  “Yes, Greg,” Robert repeated, and noticed Ralph’s head go up with interest.

  “Never seen Greg in my life,” said Nickie.

  “That doesn’t mean you haven’t a clue where he is,” Robert said.

  “But it does, though. I haven’t a clue.” Nickie turned with a challenging air, with a smile, toward Ralph, and in that instant Robert knew she was lying. She looked at Robert. “Oh, give the girl up, Bobbie. Leave her to a better man. Providing he’s alive.”

  “The girl isn’t the issue. I’m interested in finding Greg.”

  “Oh, the girl isn’t the issue!” Nickie mocked.

  Robert looked at Ralph. His weak, plain, fortyish face was merely solemn and blank. The expression was a little too deliberately blank, Robert thought. “Do you know what I’m talking about, Ralph?”

  “Don’t quiz Ralph!” Nickie shouted.

  “How can I, if he doesn’t know anything?” Robert saw her eyes almost close as she gathered herself to attack, and Robert said to Ralph, “I think you know I’m in a spot, Ralph. I’ve got to find out where Greg Wyncoop is—or if he is. I’m in a position to be accused of manslaughter. I could lose my job—”

  Ralph was still blank and calm, but Robert felt that he watched Nickie for his cues.

  “So why did you come here?” Nickie asked. “You sound as if you want to search the apartment. Go ahead.” Then she laughed suddenly, with apparent pleasure, her head thrown back and her dark eyes twinkling.

  “I was talking to Ralph, Nickie,” Robert said.

  “But he doesn’t seem to be talking to you, does he?”

  “I think you know about the fight in Pennsylvania, don’t you, Ralph?” Robert asked.

  “Yes. Yes, I do,” Ralph said, rubbing his nose. He drifted with his drink to the center of the room, circled the big round cocktail table. Then quickly he drank off half his tall amber glass.

  “Ralphie, I’m sure you want out of this nonsense,” Nickie said. “Reminds me of some of the idiotic, endless conversations I used to have with Mr. Forester. I can see this is going to be endless, too.”

  “Ralph hasn’t given me a plain answer yet. Do you have any idea where Greg is, Ralph?”

  “Ugh! What a bore!” said Nickie, swinging around, making her skirt flare with one foot. She picked up a table lighter, lit a cigarette, and banged the lighter down.

  “No,” said Ralph.

  “There,” Nickie said. “Satisfied now?”

  Robert was not at all satisfied. But Ralph was retreating into the bedroom again. He closed the door.

  “Coming here to find Greg! You’re a creep who picks up girls by prowling around their houses! Oh, Greg knows how you met her! Or knew how. What’s the matter with her, by the way? She must be an oddball, too. Maybe you two deserve each other.”

  Robert’s throat was tight. “What else did Greg talk about?”

  Nickie snorted and tossed her head. “Is that any business of yours? Really, Bobbie, you’re losing your mind. You’ve lost it. You’re a mess. Look at yourself. A black eye. A cut on the lip. You’re a mess!” When Robert made no reply, she continued, “Think hard, Bobbie, and I’ll bet you’ll remember holding him under the water till he drowned.” She laughed. “Don’t you remember, darling?”

  Slowly, Robert drank the last of his drink and stood up. It was like old times with Nickie, insults and lies the order of the day. There was no purpose in staying on. He felt that Greg was in New York and that Nickie knew it, and he would do what he could about it, which meant asking the police to look for him here—but would they?

  “Oh, sit down, Bobbie. We haven’t begun to talk,” Nickie said. “Not thinking of marrying this Jenny, are you? That’d be a dirty trick to play on any girl, even an oddball.”

  “The girl isn’t the issue,” Robert said. “Is something the matter with your hearing tonight?”

  “Not a thing.”

  Ralph had come back. He had on a shirt and tie and a jacket. He looked at Nickie, then went to the front closet, where he put on a topcoat.

  “Going out?” Nickie asked.

  “Just for a while. Night, Bob. See you again sometime,” he said with a twitch of a smile, and opened the door.

  The door had almost closed when Robert started toward him. Robert went out into the hall, and the apartment door boomed shut behind him.

  Ralph turned to face him. “What’s the matter, Bob?”

  “You know where he is, don’t you?”

  Ralph glanced at the closed apartment door. “Bob, I don’t care to say anything,” he said in a low voice. “Sorry. I don’t.”

  “You mean you know something and you don’t care
to say it? If you know anything—” Robert stopped, because Ralph was staring at his cheek, or at the cut on his lip.

  “So that’s the mole on your cheek,” said Ralph. “Not so big, is it?”