My Son, the Murderer

by Patrick Quentin

  Her voice was pretty and light. Her meaningless hostility frustrated me.

  I said: “I’ve got to see him.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “I’m saying it again.”

  “And I’m saying again—why?”

  “For God’s sake,” I said, “the police are after him.”

  “The police?”

  “The police.”

  Once again she paused. “You’d better come.”

  “Then he is there?”

  “Yes. You’d better come. The address…”

  “I know,” I said.

  I thought of taking my car out of the garage. But I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to drive. I felt drunk. I took a taxi. It lost its way maddeningly before it reached the address on Perry Street.

  It was a typical, seedy Greenwich Village brownstone. I read the buzzers by a bad light. Sylvia Rymer was in the third floor rear. I pressed the buzzer. The glass-paneled front door wheezed and released itself from its catch. I walked up bare stairs past trash cans and paper bags put out for the night. I rang the buzzer of Three B and the door opened immediately.

  Sylvia Rymer was wearing slacks and a sweater and harlequin shell-rimmed glasses. She was about twenty-five and short with no particular figure. She looked the way I supposed I’d expected her to look—more or less like any other girl in the Village who was clever and had written a novel in verse which had almost interested Ronnie.

  She had a jelly jar full of red wine in her hand.

  “Where is he?” I said.

  “Come in.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I wish you’d come in. I want to close the door. Neighbors take an intense interest.”

  I moved past her into a little hall. She shut the door.

  “He’s in the bedroom,” she said. “He’s asleep.”

  We went into a dreary, make-shift living-room with studio couches and all the usual paraphernalia, Lautrec prints, a mobile, books scattered everywhere. One of the studio couches was made up as a bed and a pair of Chinese pajamas was thrown down on it. Sylvia Rymer went to a desk covered with manuscripts and poured some wine into a cheese-spread glass with blue flowers on it.

  “Here,” she said. “It’s all there is.”

  I took the wine, largely, I suppose, because she handed it to me. I was suddenly at a loss and frightened—frightened at what had happened, frightened of this girl who was so unknown a quantity, but most of all frightened of having to see Bill.

  She said: “You’re not sick, are you?”

  “Sick?”

  She sat down on the edge of the table. Her lips bulged. She seemed to be all harlequin glasses and hips.

  “Well,” she said, “what’s Bill done?”

  I said: “He hasn’t told you?”

  After I’d said that, it sounded foolish. She put down her wine glass and lit a cigarette from a packet on the table, spurting out smoke.

  “He came in … What time is it now? Twelve-thirty? He came in about an hour ago. He didn’t say anything. He just said he was tired and he was going to bed. But I could tell something was wrong—as usual.”

  He said he was tired and was going to bed! So his presence here was routine! Sylvia Rymer was the “friend” who had been so glad to take him in—to the extent of giving him the bedroom and sleeping on a couch! This glimpse into that part of his life which was a closed book to me confused me still more. To keep balanced, I clung to facts. Ronnie had been killed at nine-twenty. Bill had come here at eleven-thirty. Between those times, he had been—where?

  Sylvia Rymer said: “I suppose it’s something about Jean?”

  “You know about Jean?”

  “Mercy! ” Her voice was edged with bitterness. “What else do I get night and day? I’m Bill’s mother.”

  I was, I suppose, so close to the borderline of collapse that the words “Bill’s mother” meant only Felicia to me. In my mind, Felicia was on the sill, getting up, straightening her skirt, jumping … I gripped the cheese glass.

  Sylvia Rymer slipped off the table. “You are sick, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Then for pity’s sake, say something. What’s he done? Is it important? It isn’t important, is it?”

  I said: “He killed Ronnie.”

  Now it was out, now I’d put some of the shock on to her, I felt steadier. For a moment she looked quite stupid, fishlike, like Angie on the stairs, I thought.

  Then, very quickly, she said: “When?”

  “At nine-twenty.”

  “At seven he was here. He spent the whole evening with me. By God, I’ll stick to that if they beat me with rubber hoses for a month.”

  I supposed you had to be young to have a clear-cut reaction like that. In two seconds she’d taken the shock, she’d taken her stand, she knew exactly what she was going to do. I felt ineffectual and old.

  I said: “He stole my brother’s gun. He left it by the body. No power on earth can help him.”

  Sylvia Rymer swung away from me and started to run towards an inner door. I went after her.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To see him.”

  I grabbed her arm. “I must see him alone first.”

  She struggled in my grip. “No. No. You can’t keep me out of it.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  Her mouth was half open and quivering. She was wearing no lipstick. Her lips were as pink as her tongue. She glared at me through the harlequin glasses.

  “Because I love him, you jerk,” she said. “For all the good it does me, I love him.”

  We went together into the bedroom. It was hardly a room. It wasn’t much bigger than a closet. A bed took up all the space. Bill was lying in it on his side, his legs curled under him, humping the covers. The sheets were up to his chin. His hair against the pillow was yellow. He was sound asleep.

  We stood looking down at him. That he should be asleep, that he should be lying there as harmless and undamaged as a baby, made it almost more than I could bear. I put my hand on his shoulder. He jumped to a sitting position. He was wearing a T-shirt. The hair flopped down over his eyes. He pushed it back. He blinked up first at Sylvia and then at me. Sleep was still in him, confusing him.

  “Pop! What are you doing here?”

  “He called,” said Sylvia Rymer. “The number’s in the book.”

  I said: “I’ve come from Ronnie’s.”

  As he glared at me, the old familiar look of rebellious contempt was on my son’s face. “Can’t you ever stop butting your nose in?”

  Sylvia Rymer lit a cigarette. The spurt of her match sounded to me like a hand grenade.

  Bill drew his knees up under the covers and circled them belligerently with his bare arms. “So the great Ronnie sent you with some new thunderous threat! Well, you can tell the great Ronnie—nuts! I don’t care what he says. I don’t care what he does. I don’t care whether he lives or dies. It’s Jean and me. Jean loves me. She’s going to get a divorce and we’re going to be married. That’s what’s going to happen—so to hell with Ronnie, to hell with you, to hell with you all.” He swung around to Sylvia Rymer, gesturing with his thumb. “Sylvie, be a good kid. Throw this distinguished, boot-licking assistant publisher out of your apartment. I’m tired. I want to get some sleep.”

  There he was, scowling, ranting against Ronnie just as if Ronnie were alive, just as if…!

  My legs started to tremble. It was a strange sensation. I’d never felt it before. It was almost impossible to accept the fact that it was only my legs and not the house, not the whole city, I suppose that's how hope comes after complete despair.

  Because I had to tell him, I said:

  “Ronnie’s dead.”

  For one brief moment, there was on my son’s face an expression of utter astonishment. Almost immediately it was glossed with other emotions, shock, incredulity, fear. But it had been there. I was as sure of it as I had ever been of anything. He couldn’t have faked
it—not Bill, who from the cradle had been the clumsiest, the most transparent of liars.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. I had never hoped for this, never dreamed it could be possible. But miraculously it had happened.

  I said: “Then you didn’t kill him?”

  “Kill him? Kill Ronnie?”

  I wanted to laugh. It was an effort to keep the idiotic, convulsive merriment choked back in my throat. I glanced up at Sylvia Rymer.

  “He didn’t do it,” I said. “He didn’t kill Ronnie.”

  11

  Sylvia Rymer didn’t pay me any attention. I don’t think she even heard me. I should have known she was in love with Bill, even if she hadn’t told me. Her heavy, uncompromising, homely-girl’s love was as evident in the room as an odor. She fumbled a packet of cigarettes out of her slacks pocket, lit one and handed it to him. He took it without a word. His face was grim. He’d realized the danger now. He was trying to hide his fear behind a mask of stubbornness. He used to look that way as a kid when Felicia took him to the dentist.

  “What happened, Pop?”

  “He was shot.”

  “When?”

  “Nine-twenty. Jean called me. Peter and Iris and I went over. We found him. We called the police.”

  My absurd sense of well-being was still with me. Nothing, I thought, could ever take it away. It would be tough, of course. Lieutenant Barnes was ahead. But what did even Lieutenant Barnes matter when Bill was innocent? I didn’t stop to think that I had no evidence to go on but one fleeting expression on my son’s face.

  Some of the ash fell off Bill’s cigarette on to the sheet in a little roll. Sylvia Rymer took a step forward, instinctively ministering to her man, and then stopped. Bill wasn’t looking at me. In a husky voice, he said:

  “He was shot with Peter’s gun?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You stole it, didn’t you?”

  “Don’t admit anything to him.” Sylvia Rymer’s voice was hard and clear.

  I turned to her, more surprised than anything else. “What do you think I am—an enemy?”

  “Aren’t you? You called the police. You put them after him. You came round here saying he’d done it.”

  She was glaring at me. She was hating me. I didn’t really blame her. But this wasn’t a time to defend myself or excuse myself to Sylvia Rymer. I turned away from her back to Bill and repeated:

  “You did take Peter’s gun?”

  He nodded.

  “Tonight?”

  He nodded again.

  I said: “It was there on the carpet beside Ronnie.”

  My son moistened his lips. Sylvia Rymer broke in: “And you, in your role of loving father, left it for the police to find, I suppose?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Of all the…!”

  Without even bothering to look at her, Bill said: “Lay off him, Sylvie.” And then: “They know it’s Peter’s gun, Pop?”

  “Peter had to tell them.”

  “Sure.” The skin of his face was a greenish white. “And you told them everything—about me and Jean and…”

  “It’s Jean.” The jealousy in Sylvia Rymer’s voice was pitifully naked. “It’s all her fault. It’s Jean.”

  My son blazed: “Get out of here.”

  “But, Bill…”

  “Get out of here and stay out and shut up.”

  Behind the harlequin glasses, her eyes blinked as if she was about to cry. I was sorry for her. She might be a brilliant girl who’d written poems for the Literary Review. But she hadn’t yet learned that you can’t wear your heart on your sleeve—particularly if your hips bulged. She stood a moment, trying to be defiant. Then she moved clumsily to the door. It closed behind her.

  For a moment after she’d gone, my son squatted in the bed looking down at the sheets.

  “So you thought I did it! Right away you thought that!”

  He wasn’t like Sylvia Rymer; he wasn’t accusing me. He was merely stating a fact as if there was nothing surprising about it, as if he’d always known that, whatever happened, I would think the worst of him. I made myself ignore the chastening light it threw on our relationship. I wasn’t going to think of that. Not now.

  “And the police?” he said. “They think I did it too?”

  “Yes.”

  “The gun was there. They know about Jean and me.”

  “Yes.”

  “And they’re going to arrest me?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get a lawyer. We’ll fight. We haven’t a thing in the world to worry about.”

  He looked at me as if he found my optimism fatuous, which it was.

  “You kidding. Pop?”

  “This isn’t Russia. You don’t get convicted when you’re innocent.”

  “Who said I was innocent?” He dropped his head forward on to his hunched knees. His whole body was limp as if he’d run a cross-country race. “You were right, of course, to think what you thought. I did it, Pop. I killed Ronnie.”

  For a moment I felt panic cold as ice up my spine. But only for a moment. Because I understood. The poor, pig-headed, love-sick little dope.

  I said: “You don’t have to protect Jean.”

  “What do you mean? Who’s talking about Jean?”

  “Jean’s in the clear. Ronnie locked her in the bedroom. His fingerprints will be on the lock. I had the police photograph them.”

  Bill’s head came up from his knees. He looked at me blankly as if my words hadn’t sunk in. At last he said:

  “Jean’s in the clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “With the police?”

  “Yes.”

  His face completely changed.

  I said: “You didn’t do it, did you?”

  He reached forward impulsively and put his hand on my arm. His face was suddenly tender, almost pitying, as if I was the one with the troubles.

  “Pop,” he said. “Poor old Pop.”

  I laid my hand, rather awkwardly, over his. He didn’t take his away.

  I said: “I’ll call Arthur Freedland. He’s not a criminal lawyer. But he knows everything.”

  “Sure, Pop.”

  “And, while we’re waiting, I guess you’ll tell me what really happened?”

  “Sure, Pop. I guess I’ll tell you what happened.”

  He got out of bed. He was wearing his T-shirt and shorts. His clothes were on a chair in the corner.

  I said: “While you’re dressing, I’ll call Arthur.”

  “Okay, Pop. And Pop…”

  I turned. “Yes, Bill.”

  He looked acutely embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I mean, I know you were fond of Ronnie—and, well, I’m sorry…”

  I went out into the living-room. Sylvia Rymer was sitting on the table with the jelly jar of wine in her hand.

  I said: “I’m going to call a lawyer.”

  She didn’t answer. I put my hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s going to be all right,” I said.

  “Oh, go to hell.”

  I went to the telephone and called Arthur Freedland. He was Ronnie’s lawyer and my lawyer. His firm handled all of Sheldon and Duluth’s legal business. He was more Ronnie’s friend than mine. Suddenly that made me rather awkward. He’d just arrived back from Baltimore and wasn’t asleep. I merely told him it was important and that he had to come and gave him Sylvia Rymer’s address. That was all. He didn’t ask any questions.

  “I’ll be right over, Jake.”

  “Thanks, Arthur.”

  Bill came out of the bedroom. He was wearing pants and his shirt with no necktie. He hadn’t combed his hair. He looked very young and scared.

  He went to the table where the wine was. He searched through the papers for a glass. There wasn’t one. He took Sylvia Rymer’s out of her hand, filled it and gulped.

  He said: “Is Mr. Freedland coming. Pop?”

  “Yes.”

  He sat down on a studio couch. He said: “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  He got
up again and went through another door into the bathroom. He came out after a few minutes.

  “Okay, Pop. I’d better tell you.”

  “Yes.”

  Sylvia Rymer got off the table. In a preposterous, uppity voice, she said: “If you gentlemen want to be alone, I suppose I can go out and walk the streets.”

  Bill said: “Don’t be a jerk, Sylvie. She can stay, can’t she. Pop?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Suddenly Sylvia Rymer ran to Bill and threw herself against him.

  “Oh, Bill, Bill, baby…”

  Bill patted her shoulder. The big adult male, I thought, reassuring his womenfolk.

  “It’s okay, Sylvie.”

  She broke away from him and sat down on a couch. She reached into her slacks pocket, brought out a crumpled handkerchief and blew her nose.

  Bill said: “Okay, Pop. From the beginning?”

  “Yes,” I said. “From when you went there first this afternoon.”

  “I got in from Fire Island around four. I put your car back in the garage, Pop.”

  “I know.”

  “I came down here to Sylvia’s on the underground. Then …” He flushed. “I don’t have to go into how I feel about Jean, do I, Pop? I mean, I don’t have to go into that?”

  “No.”

  “I was ashamed. Out on the Island, I’d been a louse to her. She didn’t understand. It was my fault. I hadn’t made her understand. I figured I had to go and apologize, make her see…” He paused. “She left her handbag out in the cottage. It was kind of an excuse to go. So I took it and went back uptown to 58th Street. Johnson let me in. Angie was in the hall. I asked her if Jean was there. She said yes, she was upstairs in the living-room. So I went up and Jean was there and … She was surprised to see me. I guess I looked pretty terrible. I mean, I hadn’t slept much and I was all het-up. But I started trying to make her see—that I was sorry, I mean, but that things hadn’t changed. I said I’d always love her and she’d always love me and, if she understood, she’d realize…” Sylvia Rymer blew her nose. Bill glanced at her irritably. “She hadn’t said a thing to begin with, Pop. But then—well, she came from where she’d been sitting and ran right into my arms. I’d been going to explain everything. But there she was. She was crying, and she kept saying: ‘I’m sorry, Bill. I’m sorry’—as if she was the one who’d made a fool of herself, not me. And I kissed her … and that’s when Ronnie came in…”