by James Yaffe
“Woman with the packages. Tall skinny woman. Put her packages down on the front porch, opened the door, went inside. That was—that was after the young fellow left—long time after.”
My heartbeat subsided.
“Saw the men too,” Abernathy went on.
“What men?”
“Men with the siren. Whee-whee-whee! Big black car, lights flashing on top, then they went running up the steps, and the woman let them in—”
“You saw the police arrive, in other words?”
“Thass it. Then, awhile later, one of them comes up to me, asks me how long I been there, what I saw—”
“Did you know it was the police when they pulled up in their car?”
“Sure I knew. Don’t you think I can recognize the cops? I had plenty experience with cops!”
“I don’t suppose you like them very much, do you?”
“Hate em! All the time sticking their hands on you—”
“So when you saw the police car pull up in front of the house, how come you didn’t get out of there before they could see you?”
“How come? They didn’t turn on the lights yet. Didn’t turn on the beautiful music. Thought maybe thass why they called the cops—to turn on the lights and the music.”
“And who else did you see? Did anyone go into that house or come out of it before the police and the woman with the packages?”
“I told you. Kid. Dark hair, wearing glasses.”
“Besides the kid?”:
He shook his head. “Nobody. Nobody human.”
“What do you mean by that? You saw an animal?”
He shook his head, and for some reason he looked frightened again. “The dark betrayer comes to that house.”
“Who?”
“The fiend with the flat head. The Triangular Egg. Thass how I know he’s cursed, the boy with the glasses.”
“I don’t get it. Why should the boy be cursed?”
“The fiend with the flat head follows him. He comes, he goes, he makes way for the dark betrayer.”
“Do you mean the Devil?”
The old man stuffed the last of his second doughnut into his mouth and gulped it down with a swig of coffee. “Don’t speak his name out loud! Ssh!” He jumped to his feet. “Got to go. Got to hurry.” With surprising speed he ran to the door of the restaurant.
Instead of using my credit card I tossed some money down on the table—I could put it on my expense account later—and followed him out to the street. He was moving away from the Java Hut as fast as he could, though his legs didn’t have much steam left in them.
“Wait a second,” I said, catching up to him. “I want to thank you for your help.” I pulled a ten-dollar bill out of my wallet and started to press it into his hand.
He pulled his hand away as if the bill were contaminated. I realized that it wasn’t surprise or confusion he was showing; it was anger. “Don’t need your money. Won’t take any money.”
His hand shot out suddenly, and his bony grip was on my arm. “Got to do something, got to see somebody. Don’t like what I hear, maybe I’ll talk to you instead. Then maybe I’ll take your money.”
“Sure, that would be fine.”
“Lighting up the tree tonight.” He waved in the direction of the giant Christmas tree a block or so away. It surprised me that he’d even noticed it, much less knew what it was all about. “You gonna be here for that?”
“Yes, I will. You too?”
“Lights! Love to see it when the lights go on! Just like it used to be at home—” There was a catch in his throat, I was afraid his tears might start flowing again. But they didn’t. He tightened his grip on my arm, and his voice was suddenly, surprisingly clear, almost commanding. “You be here tonight.”
He let go of my arm, and hopped off across the street. Luckily the traffic light was with him. I don’t think he even bothered to look.
* * *
I drove home and thought about going back to sleep and returning to the dream I’d been forced to interrupt this morning. In this dream I had reached out in the bed and felt something soft and smooth next to me, and realized it was that wonderful curve where Shirley’s neck met her shoulder—
No chance though. The phone rang, and it was Ann.
“Cancel everything for this afternoon,” she said. “We’ve got two appointments—at two o’clock and at four o’clock.”
“Who with?”
“The Big Bad Wolves. You didn’t know there were two of them, did you? And they both can’t wait till they gobble us up. I’ll come for you at twenty of.”
She wouldn’t tell me anything more. The mystery preyed on my mind, and sleep was now impossible. So I turned on the football game and watched it for the rest of the morning. It was a pretty good game, which meant I fixed myself a quick tuna sandwich and ate it on my feet in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Exactly the kind of eating that makes Mom shake her head and come out with gloomy predictions about my stomach.
Ann pulled up in her car at exactly twenty of. As we drove, she told me we were going out to the Richelieu Hotel, but she still wouldn’t tell me why. She wanted the impact to be fresh on me, she said.
We drove into that sweeping driveway, perfectly landscaped, always lined with fresh flowers, even in December. As usual, we had to cruise around for awhile before we could find a parking place. The Richelieu does good business in every season.
Somebody once said that you could settle into the Richelieu for months, in perfect comfort, without ever having to leave the premises. It’s got outdoor and indoor swimming pools, tennis courts, an 18-hole golf course, its own movie theatre, stables for horseback riding, an artificial lake stocked with real ducks and swans, four different restaurants featuring four different styles of cuisine, a beauty salon, a day-and-night doctor, and a spectacular view of the mountains. People come to the Richelieu from all over the country, but it’s especially popular with big spenders from Texas. On any typical day in the lobby you’ll see a dozen ten-gallon hats and diamond rings as big as toadstools.
Ann and I went up the elevator to the second floor and down the corridor to one of the small conference rooms. There was a round oak table in the center, and a huge cut-glass chandelier hanging over it. Three men were sitting around this table, prosperous-looking figures with ties and expensively-cut suits.
Two of them I recognized immediately—the minister of the Episcopal Church, where all the wealthiest families in town worshipped; and Mayor Willard A. Butterfield himself. The third man I didn’t recognize. He was small and wiry, in his sixties, with a fringe of gray hair ringing his baldness and a nose as sharp and craggy as an eagle’s beak.
He introduced himself to us as Arthur T. Hatfield, owner and publisher of The Republican-American. I get around a good deal in Mesa Grande, there aren’t too many public figures I haven’t had contact with, but I had never seen the great Hatfield before; he kept his picture out of the papers, and hardly ever attended public functions. Some people said he was shy, and some people said he was such an arrogant bastard that he hated to put himself within smelling distance of ordinary human beings.
He turned out to be in charge of this meeting. He invited us to take a seat, in a voice that was soft and polite enough, but had a definitely dangerous rasp to it. “Glad you could make it,” he said, with a nod at me. “Mrs. Swenson said she wouldn’t talk business with us unless you were here too. Guess she was afraid of what we might put over on an unprotected lady.”
Hatfield’s thin mouth gave a small twist which was apparently meant to be a grin. Mayor Butterfield took this as a signal that a joke had been made and it was all right for him to enjoy it. He gave out his gravelly laugh, familiar to every citizen of Mesa Grande who had ever attended a Chamber of Commerce breakfast or the annual Fourth of July concert in the park.
Hatfield turned his eyes quickly and fixed them on the Mayor. The laugh choked off instantly.
Hatfield turned back to Ann. “I
know you’re a busy woman, Mrs. Swenson. We’re all busy too. So I’ll come straight to the point. We’re concerned about this client of yours, this young fellow who killed the minister.”
“Who didn’t kill the minister,” Ann said.
Hatfield gave a brisk nod. “I take your meaning. That’s what an attorney’s supposed to say about his client. Shows your professional integrity, and I commend you for it.”
“Thank you,” Ann said. You could search for irony in her face all day and you’d never find it.
“This is an informal occasion, though,” Hatfield went on. “Everything we say here is off the record. Now just between us, Mrs. Swenson, there’s not much chance the boy didn’t do it, is there?”
“It’s hard to give an intelligent answer to that question,” Ann said, “since I haven’t been able to consult with my client yet and hear his side of the story. I always thinks it’s important to hear both sides of a story—don’t you?”
Hatfield produced again that slight twist of the lips which seemed to be the closest he ever came to a smile. “There now,” he said, “you’ve put your finger on one big part of your problem. The boy’s not around to tell his side of the story. He’s a fugitive. Makes it difficult to believe in his innocence. Leastways that’s how it strikes me.”
“That’s how the law looks at it too,” said the mayor. “I talked to the city attorney about it last night. Fleeing the scene of a crime, he says, is taken as presumptive evidence of guilt. The district attorney’s within his rights to bring it up in court.”
“If it is fleeing from the scene of a crime,” Ann said. “There may be a perfectly innocent explanation why Roger Meyer hasn’t come forward. He may not even know a crime’s been committed.”
“Assuming he doesn’t read the papers,” Hatfield said.
“There are people who don’t read The Republican-American, Mr. Hatfield,” Ann said. “Not many, I admit, since you have a monopoly in town—”
“Now, now, now, we’re straying from the point, aren’t we?” This from the Reverend Matthew T. Madison, our Episcopal minister. He was a short, round, reddish man who looked like a beardless Santa Claus and knew it; the perpetual twinkle in his eyes must have been the result of long practice in front of his bathroom mirror. “Mrs. Swenson, we’ve asked you and your associate to talk to us this afternoon because there’s a serious situation afoot. It threatens the stability, the serenity, I might even go so far as to say the spiritual health of our community. We know you care for the welfare of Mesa Grande just as much as we do, and that’s why we’re asking you to help us.”
“I’m not sure I know what situation you’re referring to, Dr. Madison.”
Hatfield took over again. “A prominent clergyman’s been murdered, a man who in the eyes of many citizens represented the God-fearing Christian element in our town. His killer—all right, his accused killer—is a young man who, in the eyes of those same good citizens, might very well be seen to represent the element that stands against religion, the anti-Christian atheistic troublemaking element that’s trying to bring in foreign influences and undermine—”
“Wait a second, wait a second,” Ann said. “There’s nothing foreign about Roger Meyer. He was born in the United States, he’s as much of a citizen as any of you.”
“Foreign to us,” Hatfield said. “Foreign by Mesa Grande standards.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen those standards written down,” Ann said. “When was the last time this town took a vote on them? And I don’t understand your reference to atheism either. What do you know about Roger Meyer’s religious beliefs?”
Hatfield gave a gentle snort. “We know where he goes to school, and what the prevalent attitudes towards religion are at that institution. We know about his hostility towards his neighbors, simply because they were engaged in the celebration of the most sacred Christian holiday. We know that the religious background of his family is far out of the mainstream—”
“I must be misunderstanding you, Mr. Hatfield. You can’t be saying that Roger Meyer must be a murderer because he’s Jewish.”
“Mrs. Swenson, please, please,” the Reverend Madison poured his benevolence over the flames again. “Nobody’s saying anything of the sort. I assure you, I wouldn’t be here this morning if I thought for one moment that even the slightest suspicion of anti-Semitism was animating anybody in this room. Indeed, the whole point of this meeting is that we’re trying to head off any such feeling. We’re trying to prevent the specter of anti-Semitism from rising up in our town.”
“Just why should it do that?”
“When your client gets arrested,” Hatfield said, “and I assume it’s only a matter of time, a lot of people in this town are going to be violently antagonistic towards him. The way a lot of simple people are going to see it, he’s a Jew who killed a saintly Christian minister because that minister was defending the celebration of Christmas.”
“That’s about the most absurd—”
“It may be absurd, but a lot of people are going to believe it. To them it won’t be any different from the Jews killing Christ two thousand years ago.”
“Such people are ignorant and narrow-minded, that goes without saying,” said Madison. “Nobody deplores their prejudices more than I do, believe me. But Mr. Hatfield, I’m afraid, is being realistic. Terrible emotions will be unleashed by this case. And when the Meyer boy goes to trial, with all the incumbent publicity, stretching on for days and days, possibly weeks—”
“All right, so these emotions will be unleashed. So what? Accused murderers are never popular with the general public. Maybe I’ll ask the judge for a change of venue. Anyway, the trial will run its course, I’m confident my client will be found not guilty, and sooner or later the whole thing will die down. People will find something else to get excited about.”
“All very well for you to talk about sooner or later,” Mayor Butterfield said. “Your whole income comes from the public payroll. You don’t have a business to run.”
“I don’t see what your business has to do with Roger Meyer’s trial.”
“I’ll tell you what. Sure, the hue and cry will die down eventually. But in the meantime, this is the sort of case that gets picked up by the media, the publicity won’t just be limited to Mesa Grande. Newspapers around the state, around the whole region, will pick it up, TV stations—maybe even nationally, if it gets ugly enough—”
“You’d be surprised,” Hatfield said, “how ugly the media can get if they smell a sensational story.”
Wouldn’t surprise me, I thought. I’ve read The Republican-American.
“Mesa Grande is growing,” the mayor was going on, “this whole area is growing, we’ve got a good chance of attracting some important business interests—I’m getting feelers all the time—just the other day, for instance, I heard from one of the biggest computer companies in the country, they’re looking to open up an office that’ll cover the whole West and Southwest.”
“And you think, if there’s an outburst of anti-Semitism over the next few months, they’ll decide to pick some other town?”
“Anti-Semitism is the least of it. How’re you going to defend this kid at the trial unless you throw mud at the deceased? Dig up a lot of rotten so-called scandals about him—I wouldn’t blame you, I’d do it myself if I were you. Any of that mud sticks, what effect is that going to have on individuals and organizations that are looking for a decent, law-abiding religious community to settle in?”
“In other words,” Ann said, “these business interests won’t care if the town is anti-Semitic. They just want to be sure the Christians in it look good.”
“You keep distorting things, Mrs. Swenson,” said the Reverend Madison. “The business aspects of the matter mean very little to me. They’re far less important than the question of Mesa Grande’s spiritual health. You know the kind of world we’re living in now. Faith is being weakened ansd undermined all around us—church attendance, the respect accorded to rep
reentatives of the ministry— I’m not in sympathy with the late Reverend Candy’s religious views any more than you are. He stood for a brand of Christianity which, frankly, I’ve always found to be quite distasteful. But if there should be a public scandal involving a local minister, regardless of his sect or complexion, I shudder to think what the impact might be on religious faith in this community.”
“All right, I get the idea.” Ann looked around at them. “What I don’t get is, what do you expect me to do about all this?”
“Get your client to plead guilty,” Hatfield said. “Soon as he’s caught, that same day or the next morning, he’ll be brought up in front of a judge. He pleads guilty to second-degree murder, the judge gives him a reduced sentence—on account of mitigating circumstances, he was under unusual emotional pressure, he wasn’t fully responsible, whatever. Your client gets fifteen years. With good behavior he’s out in five years, maximum.”
“And Mesa Grande doesn’t get a black eye in full view of the rest of the nation,” said the mayor.
“It’s nice of you gentlemen to make this generous offer,” Ann said. “But I’m not aware that any of you are moonlighting as judges or district attorneys.”
“If that’s what’s worrying you.” Hatfield leaned forward, his big beak quivering. “The district attorney will cooperate. So will the judge. You can take my word for it.”
“You tell the district attorney and the judges what to do, Mr. Hatfield?”
“Certainly not. They’re elected officials. Only the voters can tell them what to do. But I do happen to own a newspaper, and we do support and oppose candidates in elections, and the district attorney and those other fellows happen to be coming up for election next year.”
There was a long silence. At last Ann spoke, very calmly and amiably. “Gentlemen, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. And I agree that a full scale trial could be a terrible blot on the image of Mesa Grande. So let me make a counter-suggestion—an even better way to keep this scandal from erupting and spoiling everything for our town. When Roger Meyer gives himself up, have the district attorney announce that there’s no evidence of his guilt. Drop all the charges against him.”
