Memory (Hard Case Crime)

by Donald E. Westlake

  But he turned around anyway, and went the other way, gong around the block and coming out on Western Avenue a block farther from the tannery. He walked down Western Avenue, and when he crossed the next intersection he looked down to his left and saw the black car still parked in front of the depot. He hurried a bit, and lit a cigarette to calm his nerves.

  From there, it was just walking, with the direction known. Cole ran the last block, fumbled with the key, and when he was at last on the dark enclosed porch with the door shut he suddenly felt so weak he could barely stand. He stumbled across to the porch sofa and sank down on it, breathing in open-mouthed gasps like a man about to faint.

  It was beautiful here. Through the windows was the empty street, with a circle of light to the left and a circle of light to the right. No motion, no sound. Around him, the dim bulks of porch furniture. Behind him, the house, solid and silent. Beautiful. It was good to be home.

  After a minute he got to his feet and went into the house and up the stairs. He didn’t have to strain to be quiet; the whole house was cushioned, soft, muffled. His feet made no sound on the stair carpet.

  He closed his bedroom door before turning the light on, and the sudden brightness hurt his eyeballs. Squinting, he read the clock; twenty-five minutes past three. He didn’t know how long he’d been held in the bare narrow room at the police station, or how long he’d wandered before finding his direction. Long times, long times.

  He undressed quickly, and switched off the light, and climbed into bed. Friday was the day Mrs. Malloy changed the sheets, and the bed was crisp and clean. Beautiful. It seemed to him that everything was beautiful. He closed his eyes, and smiled, and slept.

  7

  He was not really watching television. He was facing the screen, but he was thinking about Captain Cartwright and last Friday night, wondering again if he should talk to Matt Malloy about it. It was now Monday, two o’clock in the afternoon, and he’d been worrying the question off and on all over the weekend. Captain Cartwright had said he knew Matt Malloy, and it might be that Matt could tell him what Captain Cartwright had wanted him for, but on the other hand Captain Cartwright was a policeman and it might be that Matt wouldn’t want Cole to stay on here if he knew Cole had been questioned by the police.

  But he couldn’t get it out of his mind. Why had they taken him? Why had they done it so nastily? Why had the Captain kept his Army discharge? What was that square of bright metal, and where should he know it from?

  It was the square of metal that bothered him most of all. Had he seen it, the Captain had wanted to know, had he seen it? Had he? He could remember it now, see it in his mind more clearly than anything else; bright, square, metallic, reflecting his own wondering face. Had he ever seen that piece of metal before? He couldn’t guess, he couldn’t begin to guess.

  So strange. There were so many things lost from his mind, that he wanted back and needed back; and here was one thing he’d prefer not to think about, and it stayed with him doggedly. Portions of the interrogation itself had faded—some of the Captain’s questions and his own answers, the names of the other two men, some of the physical look of the room where they’d questioned him—but the fact of it was still clear in his mind. And clearest of all, the square piece of shining metal, reflecting his face.

  When the doorbell rang, Mrs. Malloy called from the kitchen, “Answer that, will you, Paul? Please? My hands are in water.”

  He called that he would, and left the living room, opening the front door and going out on the porch. The venetian blind was shut most of the way over the porch door, so he couldn’t see the visitor clearly, just a stocky male shape.

  He opened the door, and it was the chunky policeman. The black car was out at the curb, and Cole caught a glimpse of the thin one in it, behind the wheel.

  The chunky man held out a card. “You can have this back now,” he said.

  Cole took it from him, his Army discharge. His mind was full of questions, but too many of them all at once, so he didn’t manage to say anything, until the chunky man had already turned away and started back down the stoop. Then, compressing all the questions into a bundle he could get past his lips, he said, “Why?”

  The chunky man paused on the bottom step, looking back up at him. “What’s that?”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why...why did you do all this?”

  The chunky man shrugged. “You got any complaints, talk to the Captain. I just do what I’m told.” He turned away again.

  And then Cole understood. “Oh,” he said. He watched the chunky man go on down the stoop, and a fragment of a phrase passed across his mind: doun the stair. He frowned, wondering at it. Doun the stair. Part of a line from a play, he supposed. Odd disconnected bits crossed his mind from time to time, like flotsam from a torpedoed ship.

  He watched the chunky man get into the car, and then the car drove away, neither of the detectives looking toward him at all. He stepped back and closed the porch door. He was still holding the Army discharge, and now he studied it, frowning, and wondered for the first time if he should turn himself in at a VA hospital. Maybe what he needed was medical attention.

  But he didn’t really believe it. What he needed was to be in New York, surrounded by his friends, by the places and purposes and aura of his life.

  Only a few more weeks. This Friday would be his last payment to Artie Bellman, and then he could start saving his money for the bus ticket.

  He put the Army discharge away in its proper place in his wallet, and went back into the house. Mrs. Malloy was coming down the carpeted hall from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, bracelets of detergent suds around her wrists. She said, “Who was it? Nothing important?”

  “Just a salesman,” he said, lying before thinking about it. “I told him we didn’t want any.”

  “That’s good,” she said, nodding emphatically. “I never buy from door-to-door salesmen. If I want anything, I can always go to the store for it. And if it isn’t right, I can bring it back, which you can’t do when somebody just comes to the door.” She went on into the living room, saying, “Oh, now, look! The Silent Heart is on, and you didn’t tell me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  They both sat down in the living room, facing the television set. Mrs. Malloy was somewhat embarrassed about her attachment to the soap operas, and from time to time assured Cole that she didn’t take them seriously. But she hated to miss an episode, though the plot movement of the shows was glacial enough for a viewer to watch only once a week and still follow the story threads. Cole liked the soap operas because they were live; he was watching flesh-and-blood actors in a television studio in New York City. There was a notation on his now-abandoned memory list to the effect that he himself had worked on one of the soap operas at one time, though he couldn’t now remember anything about it; it had been one of the memories that had returned only once, leaving behind no trace other than the cryptic note in his own handwriting. Still, the soap operas were his only contact with his own former reality; he watched them as a prisoner in a dungeon watches the clouds crossing the rectangle of sky behind his one high window. Sky and clouds might have been only minor parts of his earlier free existence, but now, being the only parts left to him, they have taken on major importance.

  Also, he treasured the faint hope that one day he might see a familiar face, some friend of his playing a temporary role on The Silent Heart or one of the others. To see the face, to match it to a name on the credits; it would make his past seem even more real.

  But today he didn’t pay any attention to the screen. He was thinking of what the chunky man had said, and of his own lie to Mrs. Malloy. His decision had been made for him; he would not talk about Captain Cartwright to Matt. He had once again come into contact with those who only work here, and the safest thing to do was get out of their sight as quickly and completely as possible, and say nothing to anyone.

  It was over with. It had never happene
d, that’s what his attitude would be. His mouth formed a painful smile; for him, it would be an easy attitude to assume.

  8

  Artie Bellman didn’t come to work on Friday. He had a bad cold. Instead, a young and slender girl with black hair was there to collect the money. “I’m Ann Bellman,” she explained. “Artie’s sister.”

  It seemed sometimes as though Artie Bellman were an unofficial part of the management. The way he could freely take over Joe Lampek’s office for the purpose of negotiating a loan. The way he openly collected his payments from the men in the payline, standing just behind Joe Lampek. And now his sister was in the building, taking his place, with no questions asked nor comment given.

  Ann Bellman looked to be in her late teens. She had her brother’s wiriness, and angularity of face, but in her the traits produced an entirely different effect. She was slender, not thin. And her face, a long oval, with prominent cheekbones and hollow cheeks, had an odd gypsyish beauty. Still, she had the hard look, the same as her brother. It was a look that seemed to tell of large and raggedly dressed families, sagging porches, backyards littered with automotive junk, sloth combined with cunning. Only her eyes expressed something different. They were large, round, soft, doe-brown. As though the hard shell were only there till the world should change, and then another creature would emerge from within.

  He gave her the ten dollars, which she stowed away in a deep pocket of her black skirt. He said, “This is my last payment, isn’t it?” And was angry at himself for making it a question. It was unsafe to be less than sure.

  But she agreed at once. “I’ve got your paper,” she said. “And your watch.”

  “Oh, my watch.” He said it blankly; he no longer remembered any watch.

  She’d been wearing it. She took it off now, and gave it to him, and he held it in his hands, studying it. But it had been five weeks since he’d seen it, and he couldn’t remember it at all. He put it on his left wrist, and it felt awkward and tight and heavy. The expansion band was pulling at the little hairs on the back of his wrist.

  She produced his I.O.U. from the same deep pocket and gave it to him. He would have gone on then, but she was disposed to talk. “How come I never see you around?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t go around very much.”

  “You never come up to Cole’s? You ought to, it’s named after you.”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “Funny I didn’t see you. But I just go there on weekends.”

  “I don’t think I’ve even been there on a weekend.” But he couldn’t be sure. Hadn’t it been a payday, the first time he’d ever gone there? He thought it might have been, but he didn’t know.

  “Maybe I’ll see you sometime,” she said. She smiled suddenly, softening and dignifying her features, and said, “Come on up tonight. Artie always buys a round when a man pays off a paper. Tonight I’ll buy it.”

  “All right,” he said. He smiled hesitantly himself, and then felt awkward and foolish, because there wasn’t anything else to say. “I guess I’ll see you,” he said, and started away.

  She waved negligently, looking past him at the line of men being paid, waiting for the next one on Artie Bellman’s list.

  After all the pay had been handed out, they went to work. Cole saw Ann Bellman stand chatting with Joe Lampek a minute, and then she crossed the big room to the door by the time clock, shrugging into a black carcoat as she went. As well as the black carcoat and the full black wool skirt, she was wearing a dark figured blouse and black flats, but neither stockings nor socks. Cole tried to catch her eye, to wave to her, but she didn’t look in his direction. He felt obscurely angry at her for not looking his way, and told himself she was just another like her brother. They were jackals, survival-types.

  Because the work was entirely physical, just moving boxes and crates from one place to another place, his mind was free to wander where it wished, and he always spent his worktime in reveries, catching on some fragment of memory and inventing stories about his possible past, or stories about his future once he would have returned to New York. But tonight he thought instead about women.

  He could remember women, remember coupling with women, but no definite events came into his mind. No particular face, no one body, no single incident. There was only a general image; darkness, the weight of a sheet across his shoulders, warm breath on his cheek, sweet-slick flesh against his belly, and the pulsing toward crescendo. The image of a woman’s body entwined with his own, and humid heat beneath the cover. And, suddenly superceding, an image of an angry fat male face, saying “Was it worth it?”

  What time was that? What was the event? Nothing came to him.

  But he didn’t dwell on it, and face and question receded again. Now that he had begun to think of women, he was surprised that he had not thought of them for so long. He didn’t think it was a direct result of his injury; he thought, instead, it was because for the last six weeks he’d had other things just as basic to think about. For the last six weeks it had been survival of himself that he’d been thinking about; women were only incidental.

  But Ann Bellman had started his mind working on sexual matters again, and he wondered why this one? Why this one, and not that one? He had seen other women in the past weeks, had met them briefly or seen them briefly in passing on the sidewalk, and nothing had turned over in his mind, so why Ann Bellman? She wasn’t beautiful. That is, she was beautiful in the way a fox can be beautiful; beautiful of a type, but a type that is not in itself beautiful. She was too slender to have an inviting or provoking figure, and her words and manner were too cheap and matter-of-fact to produce any sensual interest.

  It might be because she had invited him to the tavern, had promised to buy him a drink, even though the gesture was meaningless in any personal sense, was merely a business gesture of Artie Bellman’s, with his sister for his proxy. It would be too easy to read invitations into it, and make a fool of oneself, particularly for someone who was always alone, as Cole was. He warned himself not to let it happen; she had meant no more nor less than her words had stated.

  But should he go? In a way he wanted to, and in a way he was afraid to. He finally compromised by telling himself that he would go if he remembered it by twelve o’clock. Otherwise, he wouldn’t go. And there was no way for him to guess the odds beforehand, either way.

  During the dinner-hour break, Little Jack Flynn told a very long and detailed story of seduction, with himself as the hero, and claiming that the story was in every respect factual. Cole listened, and Little Jack’s story served to add detail to his own composite memory of his relationships with women. It also helped to keep Cole’s mind on the one subject, which didn’t often happen.

  Little Jack’s story inspired more like it from other members of the crew, and the storytelling continued past the dinner-break and on through the rest of the evening till quitting time. This had happened other nights, and Cole had only half-listened, while his mind went on with life-fantasies of its own, but tonight he gave the stories his full attention, and fantasized around them, giving the female role every time to Ann Bellman.

  It was, he knew, because she had talked to him, and she was the first woman to do so since his accident. Clerks who were writing his vital statistics on forms or waitresses who were taking his order for coffee and a doughnut were not talking to him; they were all completely impersonal. No matter what the business reasons behind it, Ann Bellman had actually been talking to him, as a person, and it was enough to break him out of his sexual lethargy.

  Because of the stories, and his own fantasizing, and his own self-analyses, Ann Bellman and her invitation were still fresh in his mind by midnight, quitting time, but he still hesitated at going. He told himself he couldn’t bring all his money with him, it wouldn’t be safe. He might lose it, or spend it. He couldn’t trust himself. So he could go home first, and put his money in his bedroom, and then decide whether or not to go to the tavern.

  It was a cold c
lear night, but Cole felt flushed and slightly feverish. His cheeks were warm, as he walked toward home, and his hands felt hot, the palms damp. Fragments of the sex stories he’d heard tonight kept crossing his mind, picto-rialized with himself and Ann Bellman. The mental pictures were exciting, but they were oddly frightening, too. It was as though some menace hung just out of sight, just beyond the picture edge, ready to leap once his attention was completely diverted. It was only a vague feeling, too slight to be called fear and too dim for him to find its cause, but it was the main reason—coupled with his understanding that Ann Bellman was only fulfilling what she considered a business obligation—for his hesitancy in going to the tavern.

  He walked home, worrying it out in his mind, and when he was in this bedroom with the light on and the door closed, he told himself it would be silly to go back out into the cold again tonight. Besides, tomorrow was another workday. So he wouldn’t go. Having made the decision, he felt both relieved and sad, safe and lonely.

  He undressed, and switched off the light, and went to bed. But he couldn’t get to sleep. The sex fantasies kept circling through his head, keeping him awake. He was physically aroused; he was wistful. The house was silent, and the world beyond his slightly open window was silent. Nothing moved nor sounded to break the solitude.

  He felt like a skier, about to push off at the top of the jump. Or a racing car driver, hunched over the wheel and waiting for the starter’s gun. Or a soldier in a trench, in those seconds before the charge. Poised, static, in the interval just before speed and danger and excitement.

  After a while he got up again, and switched on the light, and dressed. He put all but two dollars of his money in the top dresser drawer, and then changed his mind and got a third dollar out to transfer to his wallet. He put on his borrowed jacket, switched off the room light, and went out of the room. The Malloys kept a dim nightlight burning in the hall; it lit his way downstairs. He left the house, and walked to Cole’s Tavern.