Memory (Hard Case Crime)

by Donald E. Westlake

  The routine was so strong in him that he felt a nervousness, an unease, when he left the apartment immediately after breakfast instead of getting out the cleaning tools. He went down to a gray overcast day, and began to walk.

  The Village was in its Sunday morning hush, the streets nearly empty. Cole walked along, smoking, looking at the old buildings, enjoying the walk for its own sake and very nearly forgetting what trouble he’d had driving himself out here.

  After a while he stumbled across Minetta Lane, that tiny L-shaped side street in the heart of the Village. The street attracted him, pleased him; it made him feel buoyant merely to walk back and forth on its narrow sidewalk. He spent nearly half an hour there, with only an occasional hurrying pedestrian to interrupt him, and finally emerged on Mac-dougal Street refreshed and happy. Macdougal, the self-conscious center of the bohemian Village, made him nervous, and he hurried north out of that section as quickly as he could, coming to Washington Square Park, another oasis of calm, where he strolled back and forth amid the families and policemen until hunger pangs told him it was time to go back to the apartment.

  He left the park on the wrong side, but didn’t realize it till he’d walked three or four blocks and made at least one turning. Gradually it came to him that the quality of the streets had changed, that he was no longer in the neighborhood he’d been limiting himself to. Warehouses and display rooms and office buildings crowded together here, and even on Sunday there were trucks parked along the curb.

  When at last he realized his mistake, he tried to reverse direction, but that only made things worse. He walked and walked, this way and that, while panic grew in him, and the sudden sure knowledge that he could get just as brutally, just as totally, lost only a few blocks from home as if he were a thousand miles away.

  All the policemen seemed to be in the park. It was twenty minutes before Cole saw one walking ahead of him on the sidewalk. He could have asked directions of some passing pedestrian, but some self-consciousness had made him wait till he could find a cop.

  He hurried to catch up to this one, and said, “Excuse me. Pardon me, I’m looking for Grove Street.”

  “Grove Street?” He was middle-aged, very tall and somewhat overweight, with an expression of wary coldness. He said, “Over in the Village?”

  “Yes. That’s right, the Village.”

  “You want to go that way,” the policeman said, pointing. “The Village is over that way.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  Cole hurried on in the direction the policeman had indicated, and after several blocks he began to recognize buildings, intersections, signs. He had to ask directions once more, this time of a young woman wheeling a baby in a stroller, and eventually found Grove Street and home. He was trembling with nervous anticipation as he raced up the stairs and unlocked his apartment door, and once inside, the door safely shut behind him, he felt as relieved as if he’d just crossed no-man’s land at the height of a battle.

  Ten minutes later, stripped to the waist, he was scrubbing the bathroom floor.

  23

  It was an impressive building, with a broad façade of glass and chrome, and a doorman in a maroon uniform piped with gold. Cole was awed a bit by it; the first time, he went on past, peering in at the entrance from the corner of his eye, bashful about approaching the doorman directly, and still not sure that it was wise for him to be here at all.

  This was Thursday evening, four days after his walk through the Village, and that he was here now at all, slinking guiltily past Helen Arndt’s apartment building, was, in essence, an outgrowth of the same impulse that had sent him on the walk; the knowledge that it was wrong and dangerous for him to reduce himself to a hermit in the apartment. If he didn’t want to shrink, to wither, to become even worse off than he was now, he had to get out sometimes, see people, do things, move.

  But what was there to do, where was there to go, who was there to see? Not Rita, not Nick, not Fred or Mattie Crawford, not any of the people he had met in that week between Christmas and New Year’s. If staying in the apartment was bad for him, what was the alternative, other than more futile attempts to maintain contact with the friends of his past?

  There was another choice, of course; he could break off from the old Paul Cole completely, start building an entirely new and different life. He could get a job, make friends among people who hadn’t known him in the past—he’d been able to make friends in that town, hadn’t he?—gradually build up a whole life that would give his every movement meaning in the immediate present, but at the same time cut off the last remote chance of finding meaning in the past or in the future. But that black road he couldn’t permit himself to travel.

  So every path was closed. He couldn’t mingle with the people of his past life, he couldn’t establish new relationships that had no bearing on that past life, and he couldn’t just sit in the apartment and rot.

  Still, one thing was clear. He needed to be out of the apartment sometimes, around other people sometimes, with something to occupy his mind sometimes; otherwise, survival itself was impossible. But who and where and what? Day by day, who and where and what.

  Monday, the day after his walk, was easy; that was the day he went to the Unemployment Insurance office. By leaving earlier than was necessary, by strolling along and window-shopping on the way, by stopping in for coffee and a danish afterwards, he managed to make the trip last over three hours; it was twenty to four before he returned to the apartment. But once he was back, that was an end to it. There was nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. He thought for a while of going to a movie after dinner, but rejected the idea. Nick had told him the kind of movie the old Paul Cole had liked, Italian social dramas and English comedies, and he had already tried both and learned that both were now too subtle and complex for him to follow. It was better not to go at all than to sit with no comprehension, mocking himself with what he had once been.

  Tuesday, again, there was something already determined for him to do; it was the day of his X-rays. He had a note about it prominent on the bedroom wall, and Doctor Edgarton’s nurse phoned a little before noon to remind him, just in case. He went to the address, a squat yellow brick building on 53rd Street off Second Avenue, where a succession of white-garbed people, male and female, handled him with impersonal dispatch, maneuvering him this way and that like an automobile on an assembly line. As always, being surrounded by people who were not aware of him as a person made him nervous and sullen; toward the end he was being dense and uncooperative, and he was relieved when at last it was finished and he could go back out to the street again. Walking to the subway, he passed a movie house where a musical was playing. On sudden impulse he bought a ticket and went in. He sat through it twice, enjoying himself more than any other time he could remember. From instant to instant there was never anything he had to fix in his mind, only a series of brightly colored movements to watch and pleasant sounds to hear. But afterward, riding home on the subway, he regretted having done it; movies of that type had been foreign to his old self. He couldn’t go to see movies like that anymore.

  Wednesday, there was nothing to do. He fretted around the apartment a while after breakfast, but then he reassured himself, telling himself that even in the old days he must have stayed home from time to time. And the apartment hadn’t been cleaned now in three days. With anticipatory pleasure, he got out the cleaning gear.

  But then Thursday, another blank day. He told himself he’d work on the apartment only until the mail came; his first unemployment insurance check hadn’t come yet, and was due this week, so would in all probability be here today. When it came, he would take it to the bank and cash it, and then do some shopping; his food was getting low.

  But there was no mail for him at all. He looked through the slots of the other mailboxes, and saw that the mailman had been here already, so there was nothing to do but go back upstairs, and go on with the routine, until, unexpectedly, the phone rang.

  It hadn’t rung in..
.how long? Well, the nurse had phoned him Tuesday, but other than that, how long had it been? He couldn’t remember.

  Nor could he guess who it might be. Nick? Nick hadn’t been in touch with him in over a week, not since the night of the party. Or maybe it was Rita, to tell him they might take a second chance at getting to know one another again.

  He hurried to the bedroom, drying his soapy hands on his trousers, and picked up the phone.

  It was Helen Arndt: “Sweetie, don’t you ever call your answering service?”

  “My... Oh, I forgot.” It had been days since he’d even bothered to call there; they never had any messages for him.

  “I called Tuesday, honey, and when you weren’t home I left a message with your service. You know, there’s no sense paying them if you don’t call them from time to time.”

  “I know. I forgot to call. I never get any messages anyway.”

  “You poor dear, you sound frightful. What on earth is wrong?”

  “I don’t know, I’m just depressed, I guess.”

  “Honey, I want you to come see me, hear? You come right over tonight, and I’ll give you a great big steak, and we’ll talk. Now, I won’t take no for an answer.”

  A couple of times before she had extended similar invitations, and he had made excuses, but not this time. He needed a reason to leave the apartment, and she was giving him one. “I won’t say no,” he told her.

  “Well, now, that’s more like it. Have you got my home address?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, get pencil and paper.”

  “Got it.”

  “Three-twelve East 63rd. Have you got that?”

  “Three-twelve East 63rd.”

  “Fine. The man at the door will tell you the apartment number. Eight o’clock?”

  “All right, eight o’clock.”

  “Shall I call a little later, and remind you?”

  “No, I’ll remember.”

  “You’re sure, now.”

  “Yes, I’ll remember. Eight o’clock. Three-twelve East 63rd.”

  “That’s a dear boy. A steak smothered in mushrooms. I’ll see you then.”

  “Yes.”

  He hung up, and wrote himself a note, and tacked it to the hall door. There was a slight feeling of unease—he was still a bit afraid of Helen Arndt, unsure of her—but it was overridden by his pleasure at the prospect of getting out of the apartment.

  Now, a few minutes after eight, he had passed her building, and had walked down to the next corner. He stood there irresolutely for a minute, tempted to give it up, to forget the whole thing and go right back home again. But that would be stupid; he had come this far. Besides, why should he feel so uneasy about her? She was the only one from his past who hadn’t, one way or another, broken off relations with him since he’d come back.

  All right. It was the doorman intimidating him, and that was even more foolish than being afraid of Helen Arndt. All right. The thing to do was get it over with.

  He was smoking. He took one last drag on the cigarette, threw it into the gutter, and walked back to three-twelve. Inside the glass doors the doorman lounged against a little desk affair built into one of the walls, with a telephone on it and rows of pigeonholes above it. He saw Cole, hesitated a second as Cole moved toward the door, then sprang forward and pulled the door open.

  Cole stepped in and said, “Mrs. Arndt.”

  “Yes, sir. Your name, please, sir?”

  “Paul Cole.”

  “One moment, please.”

  Cole waited, while the doorman talked briefly on the phone. The doorman’s attitude had been odd; a strange cold mixture of firmness and servility. If Cole turned out to be an expected and admissible guest, the doorman would not have acted in an offensive manner. On the other hand, if Cole turned out to be an attempted gate-crasher who was to be ousted, the doorman would not have lost his dignity by affording him a courtesy he did not deserve. It was a very odd middle ground of demeanor; Cole wondered at it, how long it had taken him to find the exact note to strike. It was too bad this doorman couldn’t treat each person differently, as an individual, but of course there was no way that could be done.

  The doorman replaced the phone receiver and said, “Yes, sir. That’s apartment 7-H. Use the rear elevator, please, sir.” He pressed a button on his little desk, and a faint buzzing sound told Cole he could now push open the inner glass door.

  Beyond the doorman’s domain was a broad low-ceilinged foyer with cream-colored walls and pale blue carpeting. Mobiles of bright metal hung unmoving in the corners; one of them included a square of shiny metal.

  Cole stopped in his tracks. He stared at that mobile, disturbed by it, frightened by it, and not sure why. Was this something from his past, something he should know? He moved closer to the mobile, studying it, seeing himself reflected in miniature within the hanging flat square of shiny metal. What did this mean? He reached out, tentatively, and touched the cold surface of the square; the mobile trembled, giving off faint tinkling sounds, as though from a garden far away.

  “The rear elevator, sir.”

  Cole turned his head. The doorman was standing in the inner doorway, watching him noncommittally. Cole said, “I’m looking at this. I’m not lost.”

  “Yes, sir.” To the surprise of both of them, the doorman had been outfaced; he retired to his own area, the glass door closing slowly and silently.

  But Cole was lost. This mobile...no, not the whole mobile, just this one piece of it. It reminded him of his dreams. He was still having bad dreams every night, sometimes woke once or twice to darkness, contorted and gasping on the bed as though in his dreams he had been fighting monsters. But the content of the dreams always eluded him upon awaking.

  Why should this thin square of metal remind him of his dream? It was flat, thin, featureless, about a foot square, highly polished. It reflected his own face with a slight and subtle distortion that made him seem to be in the midst of writhing out of human shape. There were two small holes in it, at top and bottom, through which ran the wires that held it in its place within the mobile.

  In the past, he supposed, he had been to Helen Arndt’s apartment once or several times. He might have seen this mobile then, noticed this particular square. But what meaning could it have? What connection with his dreams? His impression had been, whenever any smoke or odor of a dream was left in his mind by morning, that Edna somehow figured in the dreams; what possible connection was there between this square of metal in the foyer of Helen Arndt’s apartment building and Edna, the girl from that forgotten town? Or was it that this piece of metal here was only a reminder of some other piece of metal? But what, and with what meaning?

  He felt the doorman still watching him warily through the glass. There was no answer here; he could stand here all night and find only questions. He turned away from the mobile and crossed the foyer.

  At the opposite end were two elevators, and between them a broad low-ceilinged hallway. He walked down the hallway, which had mirrored walls, and at the far end were two more elevators, facing one another. He pushed the button beside one, and the door immediately slid open. He boarded, and poised his finger over the panel inside.

  What was the apartment number? No! He wasn’t going back to ask the doorman again! What was it, what was it, what was it?

  Seven, seven. It was seven, seven, seven...seven H.

  He pushed the button with 7 on it, and the elevator door slid shut again.

  There was no sensation of riding, no sensation of movement at all. He simply stood a while in the cubicle of the elevator, and then the door slid back again, and he was on the seventh floor. He stepped from the elevator to a smallish room done in shades of green, with a mirror on one wall, and an ornate antique table bearing a vase filled with flowers. The room smelled of flowers, like a mortician’s.

  There were two doors in the wall opposite the elevators, and one door in each side wall. The door to the left was marked H. He rang the bell,
and after a minute the door opened, and Helen Arndt was smiling at him, saying, “You made it. Come in, come in, you must be starved.”

  “I guess I’m late.”

  She closed the door after him, saying, “Don’t think a thing of it. Honey, give me your coat, and we’ll go right on in and eat. Your timing couldn’t be better, dinner is just this minute ready.”

  She took his coat and said, “I won’t be a minute,” and went away. He stood uncertainly, looking around.

  He had entered on a kind of low balcony with a wall on the right and a metal railing on the left. Beyond the railing, two or three feet lower than this level, was the living room, a long sprawling affair dotted with intricate antique chairs and dark-wood tables and cabinets and small Persian rugs scattered over a gleaming hardwood floor, with closed French doors at the far end. A few feet away from Cole, the railing ended, and four broad steps led down to the living room. Beyond that, at the balcony level, an archway led deeper into the apartment.

  In a minute, Helen was back, coming through the archway. She was wearing something loose-fitting, not quite a dress and not quite a robe, very Oriental in feeling. She seemed heavier than in the suit she’d been wearing at the office that day, but at the same time she seemed somewhat younger. He guessed her age to be somewhere in the middle forties.

  She held her hand out to him. “Come along, honey, let’s tie on the feedbag.”

  He wasn’t pleased that she had taken his hand, but he could do nothing but accept it. She led him through another room, a smaller version of the living room, and then into the dining room, an oblong rectangle dominated by a long heavy table with two gleaming place settings opposite each other at the far end. Crystal-filled breakfronts and candelabra-topped serving tables flanked the walls. A hefty woman of about thirty was fussing with the place settings, moving a knife a little this way, a bowl a little that way.

  Helen said, “All right, Ruth,” and the maid smiled briefly and left the room, going through a swinging door at the far end.