The Faceless Adversary

by Frances

  For a time there were no cabs. Then several came and she leaned forward toward the door and put her hand out toward the knob which would open it. But none of the cabs slowed, pulled in to the curb. Another cab turned in at the corner and came through the street—and slowed—and then went on again and finally stopped across the street. A woman got out. She had a poodle on a leash. Then there was another cab, but it was empty. And another—but—And another.

  At six-thirty-five she had her slim hands clenched into fists. She could feel her heart beating rapidly—too rapidly. She took a deep breath, but the exciting beating of her heart did not slow. A cab turned in at the corner, and she found that she was holding her breath. But the cab went on.

  She tried to steady—to quieten—her mind, which seemed somehow to be beating with her racing heart. Six-thirty does not mean six-thirty. It means about six-thirty—it means twenty minutes before seven, even fifteen minutes before—The fights at the corner changed, and two cabs came through. John would be in one of them. She knew John would be in one of them. She opened the door and stepped out, ready to run down the steps to John. Neither cab stopped.

  It was six-forty-five. She went back into the house, and sat at the telephone table, and took a long, slow breath. She dialed a number. She heard the repeated signal of a ringing telephone. After a long time she replaced the receiver.

  Something has happened to John, her mind said, the words formed carefully, distinctly in her mind. Something has happened to John. Something has happened—

  She got up from the chair and went to the door and opened it and went down the steps outside, and went carefully because her whole body seemed to have grown numb. She stopped an empty cab and got into it and gave an address in a voice which was not her voice.

  XIII

  Miller would listen; he did listen. He listened with patience, and let the patience show. But before Shapiro had finished, before he had nearly finished, Miller was shaking his head. He said, “The trouble with you, Nate, is you’ve got a tender heart. You’re a good cop, but you’ve got a tender heart.”

  “The book—” Shapiro said, and Miller shook his head more firmly. He said Shapiro had told him about the book.

  “What’s got you, Nate,” Miller said, “is this girl. All right, she’s a nice girl. She’s in love with him. They’re a nice young couple, like people say. It goes right to that tender heart of yours. Like strawberries go to my stomach. And you break out with a rash, same as I do. Hayward killed the Titus girl. He killed the old woman. The D. A.’s satisfied, now we know who the girl was. And you come in and talk about a book, that maybe somebody’s stolen from the public library. And you haven’t any idea what’s in the book, except it’s about this Titus family.”

  “Only,” Shapiro said, “maybe we’d get a lead on who gets the money.” But he spoke sadly. “O.K.,” he said. “The other way it’s open and shut. Only—the old lady had a lot of money.”

  “I tell you,” Miller said, “whyn’t you leave that to his lawyer? Just work your own side of the street? You’re off duty now. You go home to Rosie and tell Rosie about it. She’s got a tender heart, same as you have. You play it that way, Nate.”

  “There’s a hole in it,” Shapiro said, his voice even sadder, more tired, than it had been. “And—somebody’ll maybe try to patch the hole.”

  “Somebody,” Miller said. “Always this somebody. This frame-up artist. Look, Nate. I like you. We all like you. You’ve got a tender heart. Whyn’t you just look at what we’ve got? Like I do. Like Martinelli does. Martinelli says it’s all right, and he’s got to take it to the jury. So, maybe there’ll be somebody on the jury with a tender heart like yours.”

  Shapiro shrugged. The shrug gave it up.

  “Now,” Miller said. “Listen. He meets this Titus girl. Very pretty girl. He rents an apartment for her. Maybe he says he’s going to marry her. But then this other girl comes along, and she’s a pretty girl too. And a girl with a lot of money. And the boss’s daughter.”

  “Hayward’s got plenty of money,” Shapiro said. “He made twenty thousand bail like snapping his fingers.”

  “All right,” Miller said. “Let’s keep it simple. Maybe what you and I’d call plenty of money, he wouldn’t. But, keep it simple. He falls in love with Miss Phillips. But he’s shacked up with the other girl. He says to the other girl, ‘Honey, looks like it’s all a mistake. I’ve found a girl I like better. Nice knowing you and here’s a check. So you run back to auntie.’”

  “Mrs. Piermont wasn’t her aunt,” Shapiro said, sadly. He was told he brought up the damnedest points. So, Mrs. Piermont wasn’t auntie. What did that have to do with it?

  “Nothing,” Shapiro said. “So—the Titus girl gets sore. Says, wait until she tells this new girl of his a thing or two, and see how the new girl likes it.”

  “Sure you get it,” Miller said. “That’s what she says. He says, ‘Now, honey, wait a minute. You wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ And she says—”

  “All right,” Shapiro said. “So he kills her so she can’t spill her story.”

  “All worked up,” Miller said. “Doesn’t know what he’s doing, hardly. Maybe doesn’t really mean to kill her. Just scare her.”

  “The old lady?” Shapiro said. “Just because she came down when he was looking for the picture?”

  “No,” Miller said. “She could identify him. Seen him with the girl. Knew more about what was going on than she told him. Maybe she was waiting until she’d actually identified the Titus girl. Maybe—how the hell’d I know what a woman that old thinks? Anyway, he kills her.” He paused. He was very patient. “What the hell do you want, Nate?” he said. “I’ve seen you ready to go with half as much.”

  Shapiro shrugged again. He said that Miller was the boss—Miller and the D. A. He said he just worked there. He said O.K., he’d go home to Rosie. Only, he said, it would be interesting to have them go over the slips and find out who last was interested in the Tituses of Rockland County, New York. Miller sighed deeply.

  “Sure,” he said. “Sure we will, Nate. Did I ever say we wouldn’t?”

  “You’re bringing him in now?” Shapiro said.

  “In the morning,” Miller told him. “He won’t try to run away, Nate. And, if he does, that’ll be swell, won’t it? That would toughen you up, wouldn’t it?”

  “It’d help,” Shapiro said, and went out of Miller’s office, and through the squadroom and out into the spring-bright street. He walked toward the subway which would take him home to Brooklyn, and to Rosie, who had a tender heart like his own. He would go home and walk the dog, and have a glass of wine with Rosie and after dinner they might go to a movie and— He even went halfway down the stairs to the subway platform.

  And then, his face long with misery, he went back up the stairs and walked a block to a diner, and had a cup of coffee and a hamburger. He called Rosie up and said he would be a little late.

  “Like always,” Rose Shapiro said. “I should marry a policeman.”

  A sign in front of her said, “Sit back and relax.” Barbara Phillips sat tightly erect; leaned forward a little. Her hands were clenched into fists, and one rested on either slender thigh. She seemed strained for sudden movement; her mouth was set so that generous lips were pressed hard together, narrowed by pressure. She willed the cab to speed greater than the cluttered street allowed; when the cab stopped, behind several other cars, for a distant red light, she tightened her lips further, so as not to scream—to scream, “Go on! Go on!”

  But behind the desperate urgency in her mind, there was the deep darkness of hopelessness. It would be no good. It couldn’t be any good. The telephone had rung and rung—it had shrilled its call in emptiness.

  I’m not like this, Barbara thought. I’ve never been like this. I’m not this kind of fool—this kind of hysterical fool. Now, she thought, right now, he is going up our steps, ringing the doorbell. There was some little thing—some meaningless little thing. It was only that. He had
trouble getting a cab. Or he got a cab and something happened to it—a tire. The motor stalled. Some of the cabs are old. Or—or something came up and he didn’t have a chance to telephone. Or—something’s happened to his telephone. Or—

  I should go back, she thought. I should go back and sit very quietly and wait for him to come. And if he doesn’t come, it means—it means he’s been arrested. He said that—that he’d be there unless they decided to arrest him. We thought of that. There’s an answer to that.

  But the answer was not the one she had made—was making. It was not to go numbly into a cab and give the address of an apartment in which he could not be, and to sit thus, frantic with fear—driven by urgency without meaning.

  “Take it easy, lady,” the driver said. “Get there as fast as we can. Traffic’s bad, lady.”

  But she had not spoken. Surely she had not spoken—had not cried out, “Go faster. Faster!” It must be, she thought, that I am screaming so loudly, in silence, that he can feel me screaming.

  “I know,” she said. “I realize that, driver.”

  “Just take it easy,” the driver said again, and she realized he had been watching her in the mirror. She forced herself to lean back in the seat. But in a second she was sitting as before. The cab was moving again—moving slowly, creeping. It moved to the center of the street and stopped for a left turn. There was no end to the traffic which opposed them, through which he could not turn. There would never—

  There was a gap. The driver went through it. In mid-block, he pulled to the curb. He said, “See? Didn’t take so long, after all.”

  There was no measure of the time it had taken. She gave him a bill without looking at it, and shook her head—shook it with a kind of violence—when he reached into his pocket for change. She was out of the cab and into the building, and the driver sat and looked at her, and still held the bill in his hand.

  The elevator was not at the lobby floor; the elevator was closed blankly against her. She put her finger hard on the signal button, and pressed hard, and held her finger there, pressing. After what seemed a long time—but still there was no measure of time—she heard the elevator moving in the shaft. It moved with lumbering slowness. Finally, she heard it stop behind the gate, and then the gate opened. A man in a uniform coat looked out at her, reproachfully. He said, “All right all right. Must be in an awful hurry.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s—Mr. Hayward. He’s on the fifth floor.” She went into the elevator.

  “Hayward?” he said, and looked at her curiously. “You said Mr. Hayward?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes—please.”

  “Fifth floor,” he said, and closed the elevator door, and the car went up. It went slowly, lumberingly. The man kept his hand on the controls, but turned and looked at her. He did not say anything more, but he looked at her with unhidden curiosity. She was only half conscious of this, and urged the car upward. It was as if she were lifting the car.

  The car stopped and the door opened.

  “Second door, that way,” the man said, gesturing, and after she had left the elevator, walked the way he had indicated, stopped at the second door, he stood just outside the elevator car and watched her. But then, as she began to press on the doorbell button, he went back into the car and, dimly, she heard the door clang shut.

  She heard the bell ringing inside the apartment, and took her finger from the button, and for a second waited. But then she pressed hard, again, on the button, and heard the bell—but really it was a buzzer—answer from inside. It seemed to answer angrily. She took her finger from the button and listened, and felt coldness creeping over her; felt defeat cry in her throat. Once more, but dully now, without anticipation, she lifted her hand so that her finger was on the button of the buzzer.

  But then, before she could press the button, she heard movement on the other side of the door. The movement became the sound of someone walking, slowly, toward the door. Then the door opened.

  “John!” she said. “Why—John!”

  She looked up at him, and her face was bright; a kind of brightness flooded through her.

  And there was nothing in his eyes.

  He said, “Hello,” as if the word meant nothing. She felt the word, strangely, as she would have felt a blow. The brightness went out of her face, and out of her mind.

  “John?” she said. “I—I waited. I—”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, in the same expressionless voice. “I—something came up, Barbara.”

  He seemed now to speak very slowly, using each simple word carefully, as if he were not quite sure of it. And he did not step aside to let her into the apartment.

  “Don’t you—?” she began, and stopped and began again. “Father told me something,” she said. “Something—important. Are you—did you want me to—just wait?” She looked at him again, and now his eyes were not so blank. There was something hidden in his eyes. “Has something happened?” she said.

  “Happened?” he said. “No, nothing’s happened. I—” He stopped, and she saw—thought she saw—the faintest negative motion of his head. But then she saw a curious rigidity in his whole body, in the way he stood. “I got held up,” he said. “I was just leaving. Why don’t you—” But he did not finish. “Fact is,” he said, “I—had a drink or two. Didn’t realize it was so—”

  He still spoke slowly, with exaggerated care, as if the words he used were elusive, alien. And there was still something hidden in his eyes. It was as if John Hayward—the reality of John Hayward—were hidden in his eyes.

  “I—” she said. “Of course, John.”

  She spoke dully, and continued to look at him—continued to try to find him in his eyes, in his face. This can’t be happening, she thought. Can’t be happening. Can’t—

  She felt herself, her whole body, moving—swaying—from side to side. She felt that she had been struck, and that the blow had left a kind of numbness—almost a kind of dizziness.

  “It’s all right,” she heard him say, as if from a long way off. But then she felt his hand on her arm, steadying her. And then he stepped back from the door, opening it further as he did so, and the hand on her arm pressed, just perceptibly, moving her toward the open door. She went with him into the apartment.

  Sunlight came through windows at the end of the living room, and was hard, rectangular, on the floor. The sunlight seemed to leave the rest of the room dim. It was a long room, not wide. There were two doors in the right wall of the living room.

  I was never here before, she thought, and realized that she had spoken, aloud, the meaningless words, only when he said, “No. You never were.” And then he said, still speaking in the same meaningless fashion, “I’m sorry, Barbara. Sorry about—all of it. I guess you made a mistake.”

  “A mistake?” she said. “What do you mean? John—what’s happened to you, John?”

  “Just—run down,” he said. “Things piled up and—well, I had a drink. Then I had another drink. I guess—”

  “I tried the telephone,” she said. “It rang—and rang. You didn’t answer it? Heard it and—didn’t answer it?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I guess that’s it.”

  She put her hands over her face; pressed the tips of her fingers hard against her forehead. Her voice was muffled by her hands.

  “You knew I was waiting,” she said. “Instead of coming to me, you had a drink? And when the telephone rang you didn’t answer it? Although you must have known I’d—”

  “That’s the way it was,” he said. “I—I guess you were wrong about me. You’d better—maybe you’d better go along home. Figure the whole thing was—”

  She had taken her hands down from her face. She looked up at him.

  “That’s the way it is,” he said. His voice was suddenly strained, harsh. “You’d better go along home.”

  In the first place, Shapiro thought, Miller was probably right. There isn’t anybody else in it—no “frame-up artist.” The chances are a hundred
to one there isn’t anybody else. Killings are simple things; simpler than anything else. If you want to run a swindle, you plan it all out, and take your time to get things right. If you want to rob a bank, you case the bank, and you don’t hurry, even if it takes you weeks. You get it all right first, so there won’t be a slip-up. But if you’re going to kill somebody, you just go out and kill him. There isn’t a lot of rigmarole. Killing is a simple thing. So, there isn’t anybody else. Hayward killed them both. Why don’t I go home and walk the dog?

  In the second place, even suppose there is somebody, why would he do anything else? He’s done all he needs to do, Tomorrow we take Hayward in, and in a few weeks—or maybe a few months—we try him. Martinelli handles it, and Martinelli’s good. They bring up all this about somebody impersonating Hayward and the jury says, “Ho-hum,” and doesn’t recommend mercy, because it was a girl he killed—a girl maybe in love with him—and an old lady. What would this other guy need to do now? He’s done plenty. (Walk the dog and have a glass of wine and something fit to eat.)

  Shapiro waited for a bus, his face a drooping pattern of discouragement. The bus came. He got on the bus, which took him in a direction opposite to the direction of Brooklyn. (Rosie would say, “You’re tired, Nate. Everything they put on you, Nate.”)

  In the third place—in the third place, maybe this man—the man who had stolen the book from the library because, if you looked carefully, you’d find his name in it—was one of those who didn’t know enough to stop. He hadn’t heard Miller. He didn’t know Martinelli figured the D. A.’s office had all it needed. And—perhaps he did know that, up in Hawthorne, they hadn’t held Hayward. Perhaps he’d called up and said he was a lawyer named Still and found out that, after all the trouble he’d gone to, Hayward was on the loose again. And—perhaps he was a lawyer named Still. For a man’s lawyer to call up was legitimate, whatever he really called about.