Killing Time

by Thomas Berger

  “There was someone in the room with me, other than Mrs. Starr. Someone alive. I could smell her perfume, and she was humming ‘Silent Night.’ I felt a rush of air as cloth passed me: she was removing her clothing and tossing it onto the bed. I stood right there, but it was dark, so neither of us could see the other; and we were each ignorant of the significance of the situation, she not aware of my presence, I not knowing what she intended to do.

  “Another important feature: I thought it was Betty, I really did. I had a choice, either one or the other, so naturally I chose the one I preferred. The quality of a voice is difficult to judge if it is heard only humming, and I could tell nothing from the perfume.

  “As to why Betty would come into the apartment in such an assured way though she no longer lived there, did not occur to me. I had hoped she might leave her husband and return, and then I could get my old room back, and we could take up where we left off. She would make hot chocolate and little saltine sandwiches with peanut butter, and put a marshmallow in the cup, which the best technique was to leave until the last swallow, maybe only a drop or two of cocoa left and the slow-moving, melted lump of white sweetness—it was agonizing to wait for it to slide towards your tongue. Betty was a marvelous cook and did things of genius with peanut butter alone: with pickles, with fried bananas, though her mother didn’t like her to be in the kitchen, wanted her to improve her mind. Well, I used to talk philosophy and religion with Betty, but her mother didn’t like that either. I suppose she was afraid of sex cropping up: misconceptions in the opinion people have of others are often sexual in their content. You take the district attorney and the police: they were seriously inquiring whether—well, I have already said that.

  “Sex is important, like food, but at the same time very simple. It can be pursued by just two people, a man and a woman, alone on a desert island, or alone in all the world. You can’t get much simpler than that, if you think about it, when it comes to human relations. Of course, when it comes to larger populations, then you get tastes, jealousies, and various diversions of energy, organizational matters, laws. I noticed in your list of whom you defend, Mr. Melrose, that no mention was made of sex criminals.”

  “You have an eye for particulars, Joe. I believe sex is the concern of medicine and not law. But perhaps I am just a coward. Nobody wins a sex case.”

  “Winning is important to you, I haven’t forgotten that,” Detweiler said. “And I don’t condemn you, but maybe the greatest trial of this whole affair will be between you and me. Look, I don’t want to be executed, because I don’t like pain, and surely there must be some involved though electrocution is supposed to be very fast indeed, but I am not bothered by the prospect of being dead. I don’t believe that except in particulars (for which you say I have so good an eye) it is different from being alive: mind and will still exist, and matter is merely converted into something else.”

  “Joe,” said Melrose, “I swear to you that though like all men you will one day inevitably die, you will not be executed as a result of the charges now against you. It is not my habit to make predictions, and I have never before given such an assurance to a client, but this I swear to you.”

  “But what about my obligation to society?” asked Detweiler. “People can’t be allowed to go around killing others if things are ordered rationally.”

  Melrose spoke quickly and harshly, as if to prove Detweiler’s theory that they were antagonists. “If you want to be rational, there is of course no proof that society exists, except as a meaningless term signifying the human beings who live in a certain place and time. Society is merely everybody else, and it is impossible to owe everybody anything. Secondly, people do go around killing others, although things are presumably ordered rationally.”

  Detweiler said: “I suppose you could owe them common decency.”

  “Whatever that is,” Melrose answered sardonically. “It would be common decency for a doctor a kill a patient suffering from a painful, hopeless illness. Decent persons commonly do that to injured animals. But according to ‘society’ that is unjustifiable homicide, at least so says the Law.”

  “You may not be able to prove the existence of society, but you can see its power, anyway. We wear suits and ties, you and I, like most everybody else around us. We disapprove of murder, like most everybody else. Obviously there are various motives for taking human life and various means of committing the deed: these must be examined, in order to determine whether there was justification. I myself do not approve of mercy-killing.”

  Melrose asked sharply: “Why?”

  “Because it denies the possibility of a miracle,” Detweiler said.

  “Joe, I don’t care whether you had good reasons or bad for what you did, or no reason at all. I want you to plead not guilty.”

  “I guess my argument is full of holes,” Detweiler admitted. “I don’t know much about the Law, but I don’t welsh on a promise, and I promised Tierney I would plead guilty.”

  “Did Tierney beat you?”

  Detweiler laughed. “Far from having struck me, he never even asked me to confess. In fact—and this will go to show you something about the man’s quality—he told me not to confess to that unless it was the truth!”

  “Joe,” said Melrose, “you are an interesting man to talk to, but I don’t know whether I can afford the luxury of it, and I doubt that Tierney can either. You seem persistently to maneuver the other fellow into taking what should be your side of the argument, and you take his. Generally if I have to warn a client, it is against overoptimism. I have acquired a reputation for keeping people out of the death house, but it is a dangerous game. At any time a jury might decide to break my perfect record, and when I lose in a capital case my client may lose his life. I therefore must warn him at the outset to expect the worst.

  “With you I am in the unique situation of insisting that you accept the best. There is the distinct possibility that Tierney was tricking you, that having assessed your character as the sort that works against the grain, he induced you to condemn yourself. When I was a child in grade school, underweight and puny—unlikely as that seems today—I was often the target for the bullying of a certain large and muscular boy. It would have been hopeless to try to fight him, so I employed guile. On an occasion when I was in his presence and he did not strike me, I demanded an explanation for the failure. ‘I like to be punched,’ I said. He was dumbfounded. I insisted. He reluctantly knocked me down. It hurt, and I don’t like pain any more than you do, but I had far rather suffer physical pain than moral. I insisted he do it again. The second time, his blows lacked half the force he was capable of delivering. ‘You are getting weak,’ I said. ‘Again.’

  “‘You are crazy,’ said he.

  “‘And you are a yellow son of a bitch,’ I replied.

  “‘Well, I’m not crazy anyway.’ He balled his fist to strike me, but I had him now.

  “I cried: ‘You are a weak, yellow son of a bitch.’ I said this from a bloody mouth.

  “At that point the lout burst into tears and blubbered: ‘You leave me alone!’

  “My point is,” said Melrose, “that in human relations there are many different types of power, but the aim is always to get the other fellow to do what you want.”

  “That is the most extraordinary story,” said Detweiler. “Almost unbearably ruthless. Did you have no pity for your victim?”

  Melrose answered softly: “None whatever.”

  Detweiler was terrified. If only Tierney were there to help him—or even the district attorney, who sought only his execution. Melrose was out to save his body and destroy his soul. Obviously, since he had committed the killings, and since there was no legal excuse for them but one, if he were to plead not guilty Melrose intended to represent him as insane.

  Then Melrose made a final, crushing statement: “I didn’t ask you to be my client, Joe. If you remember, you came to me.”

  Detweiler traced this out in his mind. True. He had a prior obligation to M
elrose: it was a matter of time.

  “There is a practical difficulty,” he said. “I signed a confession.”

  “Under duress,” Melrose replied. “They beat it out of you.”

  Detweiler began: “Oh, no—”

  Melrose cut him off. “Joe, you have your own theories of reality, and they are interesting, challenging, serious, so serious that you took human lives in their pursuit, and are willing to lay down your own life as well. My own philosophy does not have the magnitude of yours. I practice a profession of particulars, and I tell you that in a courtroom, reality is what the jury believes.”

  Melrose was a guileful man, as a lawyer should be in view of the imprecision of the law. To Detweiler, and he knew Tierney agreed with him, the punishment for killing was death. But he was now in the hands of this devilishly shrewd fellow, and no longer under the control of the straightforward, benevolent police. Melrose would have his way, had been practicing prevalence since childhood, according to his remarkable anecdote.

  Cunning was something new to Detweiler. It apparently consisted of pretending to do one thing while preparing to do another, like a cat crouching near a mousehole, simulating animation.

  “All right,” he said. “I will go along with you. I will plead not guilty, and may God have mercy on my soul.”

  He had decided to strangle Melrose, premeditated, malice aforethought. No one could deny this would be absolute murder.

  But as luck would have it, at just that moment Tierney came to take him into court.

  “You will visit me soon at the jail?” Detweiler asked Melrose.

  “Inevitably,” his counsel promised and then gave Detweiler a hearty handshake with every evidence of honest feeling. “Thank you, Joe. Now let’s go in to face the bench.” He picked up a beautiful briefcase made of lizard skin. Once he got his way Melrose was not devious about showing his pleasure.

  Chapter 16

  TIERNEY asked his wife to return the fried eggs to the pan for a once over lightly to coagulate their mucosity. She was relentless about not doing this till requested: it was her quirk. But very little irritated Tierney when he was home. His profession drained him of spleen.

  When Kath returned the eggs to his plate the yellows were quite hard, and as was his practice with solid yolks, he chopped up the eggs, added catsup, and stirred up the lot into a pink puree, which he spread on his toast. He would have preferred standard sunny-side-ups, firm whites, running yellows into which the toast might be dipped. But he made do. He was not Detweiler, with finicky tastes.

  Katharine had got up earlier than he, to give Dennis and Mary breakfast and send them off to some church thing. John Michael, the baby, was still snoozing in his crib, in his parents’ bedroom. They needed a larger apartment. Dennis’ quarters were in what was supposed to be the dining room. The Tierneys therefore were not equipped to entertain. On holidays they went to Katharine’s family, who now had retired to the suburbs. Except New Year’s Eve, when Kath’s brother James and wife held a regular get-together with relatives and friends.

  Katharine had already eaten her breakfast, but had a cup of tea with Tierney while he chewed his. She had very dark hair but very white skin, was slender in outline but giving the impression of pudginess when touched. She had fat, motherly hands. Tierney reached across and patted the one not holding the teacup.

  He said: “We’ll see Jimmy tomorrow night, huh?” Kath was fond of all four of her brothers, but James, the oldest, was her favorite: he guyed her a lot, slapped her behind, made her blush: “Still pee in bed, kid?” Tierney didn’t mind him, Jim being a goodnatured slob. Tierney’s sister-in-law, however, made him nervous. Everybody got a little high at these New Year’s functions, and men and women exchanged the ritual kisses at midnight; first, solemnly with their mates and then in a jokey manner with the others. Phyllis, Jim’s wife, once stuck her tongue into Tierney’s mouth, offending, frightening, and exciting him. She was the mother of two. This happened only once, but Tierney remained leery of her. Two nights afterward he had had a dream in which he watched Katharine French-kiss her brother.

  Kath said now: “But tonight is New Year’s Eve.”

  “Is it?” Tierney looked at the top of the newspaper. “I lost a day. I could have sworn—”

  “Where does Time go?” Katharine asked idly.

  “Why’d you ask that?”

  Tierney’s question had a violence to it, and Katharine showed surprise. She rose to fetch the coffee pot, not answering until she had filled his cup, one hand on the glass cap of the percolator, which was habitually loose.

  “Another year will go down the drain,” she said. “I hate the thought.”

  Tierney winced. “We brought in this psycho, you know.” He took some coffee into his mouth and let it disappear.

  “I saw the pictures this morning.” Katharine pointed a spoon at the paper. “You won’t like the one of you.”

  Tierney turned to the centerfold and saw his white face between black overcoat and gray hat. His eyes were caught at half-closure, and the caption of course did not identify him by name. The press generally respected the Department’s wish to keep detectives anonymous, save the occasional publicity hound whose awesome reputation was supposed to discourage would-be wrongdoers and capture the imagination of the taxpayer: like Roughhouse Riordan, the Terror of the Underworld, who worked on special assignments. When thirty precinct officers trapped two punks in a cheap hotel and filled the premises with tear gas, Riordan might show up to make the arrest.

  Shuster, if you already knew him, could also be made out in the upper left of the same photo, but the focus was on Detweiler and the police commissioner.

  “Detweeler,” said Katharine. “What kind of man would kill on Christmas Eve? He looks proud of himself, doesn’t he?” She was being experimental, giving Tierney the opportunity to talk about the case if he wished. She was superstitious about his work because it was so exclusively masculine; she would have been the same if married to an airline pilot or a Marine.

  Tierney had told her very little about the Starr murders, and the paper they took at home was not the one that printed Betty’s story, but rather that of old Starr, which furthermore Katharine had not read, as, in loyalty, she never read any special newspaper series that pertained to police affairs.

  She was really all wife and mother and gave Tierney no trouble whatever: he didn’t mind the quirk about fried eggs and other minor matters.

  He said: “He isn’t proud. He’s nuts.”

  Katharine answered quickly: “Is he actually, or is he just pretending?” Tierney was astonished to see that for once she opposed him, and in his own work.

  He said: “Oh, you know all about it, do you, Kath?”

  “I know I hate sex maniacs.” Her face colored in anger. “And this town is crawling with them. You ride the subway and someone in the crowd pushes his lump into your backside. A man in a car showed his filthy thing to Dennis last week in the next block, in broad daylight last week.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I never knew about it till yesterday.”

  “Had he seen him before? What kind of car? I don’t suppose he got the number.”

  Kath waved her hands. “I know, a cop’s son…. But do you realize why? He might have been scared, but he was also impressed, and I find out about it only because I caught him, himself, showing his little whatzis to Mary.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” Tierney exclaimed. “I’ll tan that little fart’s behind for him. I’ll teach him to be so fresh. His own sister.”

  “You maybe are missing the point,” Katharine said. “His sister or someone else’s. What is so spectacular in a man’s anatomy that we all are supposed to be worshipful? Why are sex fiends permitted to roam the streets and even enter private houses and murder women?”

  Tierney didn’t like to hear that kind of talk from a cop’s wife. For one thing, it lacked precision.

  “Well, Kath,” he said, “I have seldom see
n you so worked up. You’d think they were your relatives. As it happens, if you like to know, Detweiler is not a sex fiend. He’s even a bit of a Puritan. He didn’t have relations with those women: he strangled them and that was that. He’s crazy. And it might surprise you but he’s quite religious.”

  “Don’t tell me he’s Catholic,” Katharine stated spitefully, “because never have I made a claim that—”

  “No,” Tierney interrupted, “he’s all by himself in faith, but as to his moral principles, I’ll tell you something funny, he has a way about him—you might find this hard to accept, and I wouldn’t mention it to anybody else; Shuster for example—”

  “I never thought I would hear you defending a criminal.”

  “You haven’t heard what I was going to say.”

  “But he killed women, did he not? The dirty pervert.”

  “Kath, I have been on this case for a week now and I didn’t hear you say a word till the present.”

  “You never caught him till now,” said Katharine. “I never saw him until the picture this morning. Look at him, little washed-out piece of nothing. I’ve seen them on the subways, squeezing up against you, knee between your legs.” She pushed her saucer so that the cup wobbled within it, and said: “Sex criminals are always men. You cannot deny it.”

  “Not true,” said Tierney. “There was a woman in the Tenth Precinct two years ago who molested her own children.”

  “The exception that proves the rule,” Katharine said.

  “Women,” Tierney said passionately, “rape men in a different, deceitful way, and no amount of bodily exposure is ever considered indecent by them. There are women in this city who wear gray-flannel suits and smoke cigars; they neck in public with their girl friends. Anybody from the Vice Squad can tell you enough about female offenders to raise your hair. You don’t know these things, Kath. You’ve lived a protected life.”