Stillness & Shadows

by John Gardner

  He glanced at his watch. It had stopped at a quarter to eleven, or so he thought. (At the bookstore, he’d fixed one fifteen in his mind. It was now his settled conviction that it must be two or so.) His secretary, Hannah, would be fit to be tied, wondering where he was; but no matter. He was his own boss, and he had nothing to do that couldn’t wait. He hadn’t been involved in what he’d call a real case—or would have called a case in his Chicago days—in years. He scowled, carefully not thinking about the past, stepping on the squares of the sidewalks, not the cracks, and abruptly, surprising himself, he stopped and, throwing one arm out for balance, spun around. The student he’d seen in the bookstore, in the oversized red sweater, was crossing the street diagonally, pretending not to know Craine was there. He was hurrying—loping, in fact, arms economically swinging like a jogger’s. Given the distance and the weakness of Craine’s eyes, that was as much as Craine could tell, but it would do. He knew about coincidence, probability. Heart thudding violently, he ran out into the street—a screech of tires, the bright yellow hood of a car bobbing downward with the suddenness of its stop—and Craine shouted, “You!”

  The boy turned, jumping like a rabbit, looked at Craine, and ran. Craine ran after him. “You!” he yelled again. He lifted his long feet high to keep from tripping.

  “Help!” the boy yelled. “Murder! Police!”

  “Easy now!” someone said, and seized Craine’s arm. The man’s grip was firm as iron, official, planted right square on the crazybone. Craine, lifted half off his shoes, swung his head around and squawked.

  “Some kind of trouble, Mr. Craine?” the man said. He was a tall, professorial person of about fifty—Craine had a feeling he’d seen him before. High, pink dome, horn-rimmed glasses, dark flat trapezoid smile with crooked little teeth behind it. Though he meant it to be genial, the smile had a hint of ferocity, flashing like a knife.

  “That’s a criminal there,” Craine yelled, pointing toward where the boy had disappeared. He tried to pull his arm free.

  “That why he’s calling for the police?” the man said, and smiled again. The heavy, dark shadows of buildings and trees, sprawled along the street, gave a shudder of disgust or laughter, then lay quiet again.

  Craine had placed the man by now: Detective Inspector McClaren, professor of crime and correction at the university, lately made part-time criminal investigator with the Carbondale P.D. It came to Craine the same moment that it was not the boy who’d been spying on him, but someone else, he’d settled that long since. Some young woman. Yet how odd, he thought, suddenly putting his hand over his mouth, that McClaren should be planted just here, just now, perfectly set to intercept him.

  Craine’s face, unbeknownst to him, put on its cunning look. “He’s been tailing me,” Craine said. “Follows me everyplace.”

  “That so?” Detective Inspector McClaren said, brown shaggy eyebrows lifting. He studied Craine, looking down from high above him, then slightly loosened his grip on Craine’s elbow. “Well, never mind, Gerald,” he said. “We’ll see to it. I’ll have someone look into it.” If the use of Craine’s given name was intended to intimidate, the obscene trick worked. It made McClaren seem securely, ominously adult. One could imagine him signing important papers, giving firm, polite orders, shooting his cuffs for increased efficiency, sitting serious-minded and metaphysically alone at his orderly desk, head and shoulders thrown back, a certified, no-nonsense, horn-rimmed intellectual, beloved and feared by his inferiors.

  Craine glared at him, angry as a goat, still trying to jerk free. “How the hell do you intend to look into it? You don’t even know him, and you’ve let him get away!”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Inspector McClaren said, blushing again, red as a beet, but smiling. He kept an eye on the people passing by on the side-walk, careful of his dignity. “You know how it is in a town this size. With a little quite simple technology—” Though his eyes remained dead, smoky blue, ice cold, he stretched his mouth into a still wider version of the trapezoid grin, chin thrown forward—the expression of a professor being patient and studiously unvindictive with an irritating student who no longer has a prayer. He drew his left hand from his sport coat pocket—brown coat, leather patches, a gift from his new, young wife, no doubt (Craine had heard about that; sooner or later he got all the filth)—raised his thin, freckled wrist for a glance at his watch, then looked back at Craine. Soberly, he said, “See here, Gerald, do you by any chance have time for a cup of coffee?”

  “Dime?” Craine said.

  “Time,” the inspector said, slowly and distinctly, as if speaking to a dull-witted foreigner.

  “Oh, time!” Craine hesitated, pondering, thinking about the bottle in his pocket, imagining himself at the diner pouring Scotch into his coffee-with-cream, keeping the bottle steady by holding it with both hands. It was painfully tempting: McClaren would take the check. But suppose it was true that they were setting him up as the Lady Killer, planning to let him make them heroes? Head lowered, lips sucked inward, he slid his eyes toward McClaren, sizing him up. He was a man it might be useful to have a fix on, in point of fact, now that McClaren was working with the police. For a private eye, especially a tiresome old bum like himself (Craine had no illusions; that was the one decent card he had left), there was no such thing as good relations with the police, not in a place like Carbondale; but it was nice to know the enemy. McClaren felt the same, of course. It was the reason for his kind invitation. McClaren stood waiting, bald head tilted, mechanically smiling, as if someone had turned off his power switch.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Craine said at last. “Matter of fact, I haven’t had time to get lunch yet.”

  “Fine! Jim Dandy!” the inspector said, looking at him oddly. With his right hand clamped on Craine’s crazybone, he turned Craine around like a peeping Tom taken into custody and marched him back into traffic. He raised his left arm to stop oncoming cars (Craine snatched his hat off, not to be outdone, and waved it furiously, leaning out past the inspector’s paunch), the inspector murmuring in his just-slightly-backcountry, reedy voice, “Glad I ran into you! Splendid piece of luck!” Craine racked his brains to place the accent. Northern South, he decided; east of Kentucky and West Virginia. Baltimore, maybe, where they murdered poor Edgar Allan Poe.

  “I’ve been meaning to get over to see you, Gerald,” the inspector said, helping him up onto the curb as if Craine were a cripple. Two dogs drew back from them in alarm and a woman raised her hands. Craine waved his Stetson at her, then mashed it back onto his head.

  The inspector was saying, “But you know how it is, mutatis mutandis and all that.” He smiled and gestured grandly with his free left hand to show Craine that, though a gentleman and scholar, he wore his learning lightly. They turned toward the Chinese restaurant, McClaren steering. (Craine hated Chinese restaurants.) Abruptly, as if just now remembering something, McClaren bent forward. His face showed concern. “I understand you’ve been ill,” he said. “You’re better now, I trust?” As if guiltily, he released Craine’s arm.

  Craine smiled inwardly, registering that flicker of guilt in McClaren, and tightened his grip on the book. They were a wonder, these people: wanted to find a scapegoat with a terminal disease. No question about it, the world was in good hands! Craine clamped his lips. He would volunteer nothing. Let the bastard pull teeth. “I’m fine,” he snapped, and gave his head a little nodding jerk.

  “You had”—McClaren tilted his dome, looking down at him at an angle—“you had some kind of operation, I understand?”

  “That’s right,” Craine said. The inward smile widened, and a crackling like burning pine boughs began inside his head. The noise distracted him but also put him more determinedly on guard; it was something he’d experienced before, he couldn’t say when.

  “Nothing fatal, I hope?” the inspector asked, then blushed.

  “Everything’s fatal in the end,” Craine said, and gave a cackle. He turned to aim his nose at the inspector. “So
you’ve joined the P.D.!”

  “Yes,” McClaren said. “—Yes and no.” He hesitated. He seemed to cling for an instant to his hope of getting more on Craine’s illness, then relinquished it, looking down. He interlaced his fingers, thumbs upward, on his paunch. On two of the fingers he had heavy gold rings, one of them a wedding band, the other one the setting for a large red stone, perhaps a ruby. “Yes, I thought I’d get my hands ‘down into the dirt a bit,’ as Juvenal says. It’s no good being too theoretical.” By the lift of his eyebrows and the tilt of his head he gave Craine to understand that no one in the universe was his match when it came to pure theory. Craine had, as usual, his suspicions. He wondered, among other things, whether Juvenal had ever said anything of the kind. McClaren’s smile sharked out again. “Criminology,” he said, “is the science and practice of crime control.”

  They’d arrived at the restaurant, and McClaren stopped, sweeping his bejewelled left arm out to open the door, pleased with the way he’d expressed himself and insisting, having won the advantage, that Craine enter first.

  “Me before you?” Craine said. “You think there may be hit men inside?”

  McClaren seemed not quite to hear him, and stared blankly at his grin. “Après vous,” he said, smiling, tipped forward and sideways so that his bald head slanted toward the door.

  Craine hesitated for just a moment longer, leering, inspecting their two reflections in the blacked-out restaurant window to the right of them—his own pitched forward, debauched and stooped, a shabby old stuffed-with-rags clown of a creature, prowler of the sewers, his wide hat brim level with his thickly glassed-in eyes—Detective Inspector McClaren’s form larger, more distinguished—he might have been the last of a noble line of owls, or a member of the Scottish country gentry, stuffed for posterity—tilted at the waist, the legs long spindles below the beer paunch. Beneath his trousers—brown corduroys—McClaren’s legs would be as white as boiled eggs, Craine thought, though maybe that was wrong: under his sport coat he wore a black cotton T-shirt, the kind boating men wear. Perhaps he had a Chris Craft, out at the marina on Crab Orchard. His legs would be dark brown, then, with bleached-out hairs. On the boat he’d wear a captain’s hat, drink martinis with people who sold real estate. (Craine smiled. “Most dangerous animals Nature’s ever known,” he’d told his neighbor Ira Katz. “Never mind the butler! Keep yer eye on the man in checked pants!”) On his wrist, the inspector had a sportsman’s watch, a two-hundred-dollar gold Seiko.

  Craine stepped in through the door McClaren held and paused a moment to let his eyes adjust. It was a place he’d never been, so high, cool, and still it gave a feeling of murky temple ruins, possibly an old-fashioned roller-skating rink. A smell of must, maybe bones and hides, fell over him, and a darkness that had nothing to do with photons or the energy of the sun. McClaren came in behind him, closing the door softly, like an undertaker closing a coffin lid, and began to wipe his feet on the entryway mat. He took a long time at it, head bowed devoutly, making sure he did it right. Craine looked up at the ceiling. It was cluttered with objects; he couldn’t make out what. Blocky things, feathery projections. It was like being trapped inside a crystal.

  “This is where I always come,” McClaren said heartily, his ritual ended.

  Craine looked at him. “I see.”

  There were mirrors on all the walls. Craine looked instinctively from one to another of them, hunting for some sign of whoever it was that had been spying on him, but there was no one, not even a shadow. His uneasiness increased. The room seemed to Craine to grow larger, more empty, by the moment. Again McClaren seized Craine’s crazybone, to guide him to a table near the enormous, black-lacquered bar. They were alone—no waiters, no bartender, nothing but dead objects from a dead civilization—so Craine put it to himself. The red, mirrored walls were a chaos of masks, old weapons, fake scrolls, queer musical instruments, lanterns, unidentifiable carved things as dusty as spiderwebs, and rising above the rest an immense, brightly painted papier-mâché lady, Indian, not Chinese.

  “I like the company,” McClaren .said. In the dimness his face was lead-gray.

  As Craine seated himself, the inspector went over to the bar and, with the flat of his hand, came down hard on the service bell. Then, pleased with himself, pulling with both hands at the tail of his sport coat, making it fall neatly, he came over, inspected the table—red-lacquered plywood—pulled out his chair, inspected the chair seat, and sat down. From the way he lowered himself—the smoothness of the thing—Craine got a momentary alcoholic vision, quite alarming for an instant, of a spider descending, tiny legs flying, huge dome floating like a sinking balloon or a large, bright stone falling slowly to the bottom of a pool. As soon as he was seated a waiter appeared, a long-torsoed Chinese Craine was certain he’d seen before somewhere (as it happened, he thought that of all Chinese), a high-school-aged boy with hair slicked so flat it seemed painted to his skull. He hurried to their table and, grinning, speaking in near whispers, took their order: whiskey for the inspector; for Craine, coffee with cream. The boy bowed and fled.

  “Whiskey gives you cancer, you aware of that?” Craine said, then after an instant realized he hadn’t really said it, clearly as he’d heard himself; had only thought it.

  “So!” the inspector said, and threw back his head and shoulders, smiling grandly.

  Craine nodded, hunched like an invalid, peering nearsightedly around the room. He could relax here, there was no way anyone could observe him; yet he remained as tense as ever. His left hand picked at the book on the table in front of him, his right hand fiddled with the neck of the bottle in his coat pocket. Somewhere in the room a cat moved. Craine jumped.

  “This is indeed an unexpected pleasure,” the inspector said. “An occasion, as they say. I’m acquainted with your exploits in Chicago, needless to remark.” His “remark” was protracted, an elegant southern drawl that seemed to slip from just one side of the pitch-black, trapezoidal smile. He fixed Craine firmly with his smoky eyes, though his smile was intended to be disarming. “What ever induced you to bring your practice to a place like Carbondale?”

  Craine drew his pipe out, spilling scraps of paper without noticing, and toyed with it, smiling absently, staring at the center of the table, sharp-eyed, part of his mind trying to remember. “I forget.”

  “You forget!” McClaren said, and laughed, slightly wincing. For an instant an anxious look came into his eyes, his bald head reddening to a blush again; then he swung forward and put his elbows on the table. “It’s none of my business, that’s true, I concede.” A gold tooth glinted as his smile flashed. “I just wondered. Natural curiosity.”

  It was at this point, drunkard that he was, that Craine made his mistake.

  “It’s a fact, actually,” he said, just a touch irritably, his voice ironed flatter than before. “I never remember anything, except sometimes when I read.” He got out his tobacco and penknife and opened the red Prince Albert package. When he looked up, McClaren was studying him, trying to make out whether his leg was being pulled. Craine’s blood chilled. If it was true that they were seeing if he’d do as a scapegoat, then what a piece of luck—this discovery that Craine had no memory! Craine winced, squinting. It was as if he were setting up the whole thing himself. He tensed all his muscles, straining to clear his head, make himself fit to take care of himself; but he knew it was useless, he’d do what his drunkenness pleased; no doubt feel proud of it.

  “You actually don’t remember why you moved?” McClaren said.

  “I never remember much of anything,” Craine said bleakly, stuffing his pipe, poking with his finger. “Anyway, nothing about my”—his face went wry—“personal life.”

  “That’s very strange,” McClaren said. A kind of stillness had come over him, a hovering, as in zero gravity, the wide-awake stillness of a hunting dog who’s picked up a scent. It was so subtle that only a fellow detective would have noticed it, but it was there all right, unmistakable, and not unexpected. Ev
erybody’s got one twisted spot, one knot in the wiring where the heat builds up; that was axiomatic in Craine’s profession. And McClaren, with the instinct that made him what he was—unconsciously scanning, Dr. Tummelty would say—was aware that he’d stumbled onto Craine’s. Craine sighed. The inspector spoke lightheartedly, chattily, nosing closer. “You never remember anything about your personal life! Good heavens!” He gave a laugh. He pushed his head forward, chin first, white and gold grin flashing. “You’re speaking figuratively, I take it?” He grinned on.

  On the curtain that led to the restaurant’s innards, across the room, something white appeared—an animal, possibly a rat, Craine thought at first, heart leaping—but it resolved itself at once into the Chinese boy’s hand, drawing the curtain back, bringing in—centered like a jewel on a round, black tray—Craine’s coffee. The boy stopped at the bar and fixed whiskey for the inspector, then hurried to their table.

  “Thank you, my good man,” Inspector McClaren said. He sat erect, his right hand closed on the front of his sport coat just below the lapel. Picture of a dandy. A Baltimore lawyer at home among magnolias and row houses, sunny of disposition, elegant. He should be wearing a vest, a Phi Beta Kappa key. Beware of him, Craine thought wearily. Small silver knife.

  “Will that be all?” the Chinese boy asked.

  Craine lit his pipe, thinking, as he always did, lighting his pipe, of lip cancer, lung cancer, heart attack, the shadow inside him.

  Inspector McClaren surveyed the table, then raised his head abruptly, eyebrows lifting, his black mouth distorting to a trapezium. “My colleague here,” he said, “wanted coffee with cream.”

  The waiter bowed and, as if in self-parody, put his fingertips together, then hurried off.

  McClaren leaned forward again, interlaced his fingers above his whiskey glass, and said, “You were saying you have trouble with your memory.”