After Midnight

by Nielsen, Helen

  She listened but the words didn’t take hold.

  “Get your shoes off,” she ordered. “I’ve got chocolate on the back of the stove—”

  “Dee, I’m serious,” Kyle persisted. “This isn’t a new thing. I’ve been thinking about it for months, and now I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to quit my job and take one of those overseas assignments—”

  “With mosquitoes and tsetse flies and deadly snakes crawling through the sleeping bags? Ugh!”

  “You can live in Rome or Paris.”

  “I live with you!” Dee declared. “Now you get out of those wet shoes right now. And out of the socks, too, do you hear? You know how easily you catch cold!”

  Kyle couldn’t tell her what he had seen in the garage. It was too soon and he was too frightened. He had to let her pour the chocolate while he removed his shoes and socks, and then he had to sit on a chair in the kitchen with his feet placed in a tub of hot water and choke down the sweet liquid while Dee gave a full report of the day’s news: Mrs. Leonardi, the vegetable man’s wife, was expecting in May; the gardener’s son was at the top of his class in law school; the garbage hadn’t been collected again and there was a leak in the shower head. Event after event stunted the imagination while the water in the tub turned tepid and the recitation of daily minutiae took away the edge of tension. Kyle hoped she would talk all night even if he never heard a word.

  “You aren’t listening,” she scolded.

  Kyle was listening but not to Dee. The kitchen door was open and his ears had picked up the plaintive wail of a siren searching a destination in the rain-swept streets. He knew why it was coming and where it would stop. He stepped out of the foot tub and walked quickly back to the living-room window with the Venetian blind.

  “Kyle—your slippers!” Dee called, but Kyle was already intent on the tableau in the street below. A police car arrived first—seconds later an ambulance whined out of the night and parked in front of the entrance to the garage. In spite of the rain and the late hour—it was now almost midnight—a scattering of the ever-curious began to emerge from the shadows. Kyle snapped shut the blind and intercepted Dee, slippers in hand, halfway in from the bedroom.

  “There’s been some kind of accident,” he said. “Always happens on rainy nights. I’m glad I’m home.”

  “That makes two of us,” Dee said.

  “So, now that I am home, why don’t you get into bed? I’ll wash up the cups and the chocolate pan for you.”

  Dee gave an exaggerated gasp. “Why, Mr. Kleen, where’s your earring?”

  “In my nose where all good husband’s rings are worn,” Kyle said. “Please, Dee, go to bed. You look tired. I’ll be in soon.”

  “You’re trying to get rid of me.”

  “Of course I am. I’m trying to protect you from the ugly truth. I haven’t been to class at all. I’ve been going out with a gang of armed hoods on stick-up jobs, and now the jig’s up and the cops are here. Now will you go to bed?”

  Sometimes she was like a child; sometimes he was her child. It was a kind of game that two people play, and the name of the game was life. But sometimes the wrong door opened and the game turned dangerous.

  He sent her off to the bedroom with a kiss and a sleeping powder, and then returned to the kitchen and tidied up like an Irish maid until the doorbell rang. It rang only once. Kyle opened the door before a big, square-faced detective with a police lieutenant’s badge in his palm could punch the bell button a second time.

  “Mr. Kyle Kevin Walker?” he queried. “I’ve been reading your nameplate above the bell.”

  “The same,” Kyle said.

  “I’m making a routine check of all the tenants in the building, Mr. Walker. Have you left this apartment any time this evening?”

  Kyle had forgotten to put on the slippers Dee delivered to him. He felt naked and awkward standing in the doorway in his bare feet. Too naked to attempt to lie.

  “I went to night school,” he said. “I have a regular class—”

  “At what time did you leave the building, Mr. Walker?”

  “At seven-thirty.”

  “Did you go out through the garage?”

  “Yes, I have a car—”

  “And when did you return?”

  “It must have been at least ten-thirty. It’s usually ten-thirty, but I may have been later tonight because of the wet streets. Why are you asking these questions, Lieutenant?”

  “Do you know Bernie Chapman?”

  The carpet was a cheap landlord’s quality semiburlap. Kyle couldn’t even dig his toes into the pile for anchorage.

  “He’s the garage attendant,” he answered.

  “Did you see him when you came in tonight? Think now. This question is important.”

  The lieutenant was right. Kyle wasn’t an expert on organized crime, but he did know that the men who had strangled Bernie weren’t amateurs. At this moment neither of them was running, emotionally or physically. Neither of them would lose a wink of sleep over an easily expendable eyewitness.

  And so the answer to the police detective’s question had to be, “No, sir. Bernie wasn’t in the office. His radio was playing and I thought he had gone out for coffee.”

  “Did you see anyone in the garage, Mr. Walker?”

  “I saw no one,” Kyle said.

  Lying was easy when the alternative was a length of wire in a killer’s hands. The detective seemed convinced. Kyle wanted to end the interview immediately, but he had to remember what a normally curious man would do next.

  “Is Bernie missing?” he asked.

  The lieutenant didn’t hide a thing. He explained that Bernie Chapman was dead, that the indications pointed to a gangland slaying. One of the other tenants had driven in half an hour ago and found the body near the elevators. There was talk that Chapman had been operating as a bookie out of his garage office, and talk that he was mixed up in the numbers game. Kyle hadn’t lived in the building long enough to absorb the local gossip and could add nothing to the story.

  “If you do think of anything, particularly anything unusual in that garage when you drove in, please give me a call at this number, Mr. Walker. My name is Adams.”

  Kyle accepted the detective’s card and started to close the door, but now the lieutenant reached into his raincoat pocket and pulled out Kyle’s car keys.

  “We found these in your car. We could see by the windshield that you had been driving in the rain tonight. You’re an honest man, but you shouldn’t leave your keys in an open garage. Good night, Mr. Walker.”

  The lieutenant dropped the keys into Kyle’s hand and moved on down the hall. Kyle stepped back into the apartment and closed the door behind him. It was over. He’d passed the first test in the dangerous game of survival and come through unscathed. He hoped the perspiration on his forehead hadn’t been too conspicuous—but what man wouldn’t be nervous if he was questioned about a murder in the middle of the night? He heard Dee’s sleepy voice calling from the bedroom to ask who was at the door, and he knew that he must tell her only as much as Lieutenant Adams had told him and pray that she wouldn’t listen between the words and remember how edgy he had been when he came home from class. Survival was a complicated game.

  Survival was a game played differently by different contestants, and the survival of an organization depended on its discipline. It had rained slightly in Scarsdale. The streets were barely damp when the VW van slid past the commuter’s station and veered off one of the sparsely lighted residential streets. Minutes later it was parked in the driveway of one of the less pretentious houses, and the van’s erstwhile occupants, a wiry, brown-eyed young man who wore a black leather jacket and cap, and the older and more conservatively dressed man who wore steel-rimmed spectacles, were seated in a pine-paneled library making a routine report. But it wasn’t entirely routine. There had been an unexpected witness to the murder of Bernie Chapman, and that necessitated emergency action. At about the same time Kyle Walker was making his state
ment to the police lieutenant, the two killers were ascending a spiral staircase to adjoining bedrooms furnished in mellow maple with antique accessories. They showered and slept until 7 A.M., at which time a buffet breakfast was served in the downstairs sun room, and thence repaired to the library once more.

  Six men were now seated about a long, executive-type table. The director rose to his feet and opened a leather folder.

  “The regional directors have taken your report under advisement, Mr. Drasco,” he said, “and it’s our unanimous judgment that the resident of the Cecil Arms, who has been identified as Kyle Walker, is not to be molested.”

  The bespectacled man rose angrily to his feet. “Molested!” he echoed. “I told you this guy got a good long look at me. I don’t think he saw Jake’s face, but he certainly saw mine!”

  “And he will probably remember it,” the director said. “We appreciate your position, Mr. Drasco. A man who can identify you for murdering Bernie Chapman isn’t a comforting citizen to have walking the streets. But we don’t think Mr. Walker is going to tell anyone what he saw. We’ve been examining Mr. Walker’s background—”

  The director read from the open folder. “ ‘Employed by the City Housing Authority. M.I.T. graduate. Korean War veteran—Army Engineers. Previously in partnership: Bryson-Walker Civil Engineering, Inc.’ The man is no fool, Drasco, and he’s had a stomachful of the hero business. Besides, he’s got a wife—a pretty one. He’s got a lot to live for. And so I’ll make a prediction. I think Mr. Walker will be looking for a position in another city soon. Somewhere a long way from the Cecil Arms.”

  “But you can’t be sure!” Drasco protested.

  “No, but we can be careful. And another murder in that apartment building right now or of a resident of it could raise a big stink with the press and the police. Chapman was a punk. Nobody cares about Chapman. This time tomorrow he won’t even get a mention in the obituary columns. But a young war vet with a pretty widow—that’s another story. So cool it, Drasco. The decision is unanimous and final. You don’t touch Walker. At least, not now. In the meantime, we’ve got a pair of airline tickets to Miami. You boys need a vacation.”

  Within twenty-four hours nobody in Manhattan remembered Bernie Chapman except Kyle. Chapman had no family—if he had friends they disappeared. Within forty-eight hours the management had hired another garage attendant, and there was no reminder that Bernie Chapman had ever existed until the VW van began to park under the street lamp across from the Cecil Arms. It came each evening after sundown and remained as long as Kyle was up to peer out of the sagging blind of the fourth-floor apartment. No one left the van; no one entered it. It parked, the headlights were switched off, and the vigil began. In the morning it was gone.

  After the third night, Dee noticed that Kyle’s nerves were fraying. He had stopped doing his night-school homework and brought home a listing of foreign jobs in engineering. On the fourth night he brought home application blanks for passports. He never mentioned the murder; neither did Dee. She was too busy trying to talk him out of the tsetse-fly circuit.

  “Home,” Dee insisted, “is where the faucets read ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ and work!”

  The week passed. Tuesday night came and with it the usual rain. Kyle made an excuse for not attending class and was trying to talk Dee into visiting her family in Buffalo when the doorbell rang. It was too late for bill collectors.

  Dee started toward the door.

  “I’ll get it,” Kyle said quickly. He crossed to the window and peered outside. The van was still parked across the street. Directly below, in front of the Cecil Arms, a cab was waiting. The bell rang again and Kyle scurried to answer before Dee called again. He remembered briefly that his service pistol was locked away in one of the desk drawers in the bedroom, and that was just as well because he was no match for professional killers. But it was a cab at the curb. He opened the door and dropped half a ton of tension from his shoulders.

  “I have a fifth of Scotch in this paper bag,” Van Bryson said. “We were wondering if you could share a couple of ice cubes.”

  Some people never changed. Van Bryson stood just under six feet in his field boots. He wore narrow cord trousers, a dark green velour shirt and a well-weathered trench coat. No hat. The small scar at the part of his sandy-red hair dated back to a mutually shared incident in Korea, and the mischievous glint in his blue eyes was the result of twenty-seven years of intense pursuit of happiness. But Van was no playboy. He was already one of the most brilliant scientists in the nation, and happiness was a fifteen-hour workday. His smile was infectious. He hadn’t shaved in several days. He carried a bottle in a paper bag in one hand and held the other on the arm of an overdressed young blonde who had spent too much money on hairdressers and not enough on dieticians. The blonde looked shy. Van looked as eager as an escaped monkey at a fruit stand.

  “I did come to the right place, didn’t I?” he asked.

  Kyle recovered from his surprise and opened the door wide. “Van!” he cried. “Am I glad to see you! Dee, Van’s here!”

  It had been six years since the last reunion, and that meant a celebration with Dee playing hostess with the bottle of Scotch while Van and Kyle sorted out the years since their post-Korean engineering venture that had perished from loss of blood in a cut-throat competition that had made the Yalu River basin seem like a company picnic in comparison. Finally, Van remembered his companion.

  “Forgive us, honey,” he said. “With all that Auld Lange Syne I forgot the introductions. Nice people, meet Miss Charlene Evans of Tucson, Arizona. You may call her Charley. She drinks her Scotch straight and on the rocks, Dee, and she’s an angel. A delivering angel. She’s just delivered me from a dull, no-future job in D.C. to a no-ceiling job with Samuel Zachary Stevens. Show the people the copy of Trend magazine, Charley.”

  Charlene Evans wore a long, hooded, Italian-style raincoat with deep pockets. From one pocket she withdrew a recent copy of the news magazine that carried Sam Stevens’ rugged likeness on the cover.

  “My new boss,” Van said. “Since two nights ago when I signed a two-year contract. If you read Trend, you know Sam’s switching from oil to construction—on a big scale.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kyle protested. “What happened to that Nobel Prize you were going to win?”

  “Time,” Van said. “Give me a little time. Stevens needs a geologist for his massive plans—and anything Sam does is massive. I think he’s the inspiration for all those horrible old Western empire-builder films they used to turn out in Hollywood.”

  “How much does he pay?” Kyle asked.

  “You’re wrong about my motivations,” he said. “I do get a salary—a nice, comfortable salary. But what’s more important is that I’ll have a lot of free time. I’ll take my Ph.D. at Arizona and work with some vitally interesting people in advanced physics. Later, I’ll teach—”

  “I missed something,” Dee interposed. “Where is this paradise?”

  “Tucson,” Van said. “Ever been there?”

  “Years ago—between planes. It was hot.”

  “It’s all air-conditioned now. The world of the future, people. My shoulders ache in this part of the world. I keep wanting to pull back my arms and split out the seams.”

  “You sound like Kyle—but with him it’s Saudi Arabia or Thailand or some terrible place where I’ll have to keep house in a tent and live on quinine and boiled water.”

  “Oh, are you planning to leave the country, Mr. Walker?” Charlene asked.

  Charlene Evans wasn’t what she appeared to be. Underneath the overdone exterior and the baby fat was a well-balanced dynamo, and it was working. Kyle sensed that immediately.

  “I’m in a rut,” he said. “I want to get moving.”

  “Then I think we arrived at the right time, Van,” Charlene said. “Do you want to tell him or shall I?”

  “You’re doing fine, Charley,” Van said.

  “All right. You see, Mr. Walker, Van left out s
omething in our introduction. I’m Sam Stevens’ personal secretary. For about a year Sam’s been trying to form a tight, fast-action corporation revolving about a few key men. Mr. Bryson was one. It’s been just a matter of weaning him away from his previous commitment. Mr. Bryson signed two nights ago and Sam flew back to Tucson, but he left me to look for a good production-control man. I twisted Van’s arm for a recommendation and he made a sharp cry that sounded like ‘Kyle Walker.’ What do you say?”

  Kyle looked at Dee. She didn’t know a thing about that van parked across the street, but she was smiling.

  “No tents,” she said.

  Charlene grinned. “I don’t guarantee there won’t be a jungle, of sorts, but who needs Utopia? Of course, if you’ve got something good set up overseas—”

  “But I haven’t,” Kyle said quickly. “I just started looking.”

  “Then you’re in!” Van said.

  “If Sam is satisfied with Mr. Walker’s references,” Charlene added.

  “Satisfaction guaranteed! Dee, fill up the glasses again. We have time for one more round before that cabby downstairs drives us to the airport. To a new life!”

  Ten minutes later Van and Charlene Evans left the apartment. Kyle watched from the upstairs window as the cab pulled away from the curb and disappeared in slackening rain, and for the first time in a week he began to feel free from fear. The van was no longer parked under the street lamp. Perhaps it dissolved at the witching hour; perhaps the watchers were no longer afraid he might communicate with the police. They needn’t have worried at all. Bernie Chapman was dead—nothing could change that. Heroes were out of style, and a hero who fingered a syndicate killer could quickly inherit the slab Bernie had recently vacated without so much as a flag for his coffin.

  The rain stopped. Kyle looked upward and saw a few stars winking between the parting clouds, and they seemed a good omen. There was no one waiting in the street. Nobody cared about Bernie any more. Nobody would care about Bernie, today, tomorrow or ever….

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