chapter 13
BERNARD Krissel arrived in the city by train at two P.M. and caught a bus to Blanchard. He was a dark lean man with a narrow face, poor posture and nervous movements. Under his dark eyes the flesh was puckered and discolored, like tiny gray velvet draperies. In contrast to the frail, unwell look of the rest of him, his hands were huge and meaty, malformed by labor. But it was labor performed long ago. They were soft, carefully manicured. He wore a pale gray suit with a wide black mourning band on the sleeve. He carried a scuffed black briefcase. He wore a black Homburg. The turned-up brim made his face look thinner and weaker.
He sat near the front of the bus, by the window. A massive woman with a pink face sat on the aisle, exuding body warmth. Krissel gave her many quick furtive glances. He sniffed explosively time after time until at last she turned her big head slowly and stared at him out of small blue eyes.
“You have to forgive me, lady. I am all upset today. Maybe you heard of the terrible accident near Blanchard?”
“I heard something about it. Yeah.”
“Now I got to go there on account of it was my family got killed.” He sniffed again.
Her eyes sharpened and she licked her underlip. “You don’t say!”
“That’s right. My sister. Dead. My brother-in-law. Dead. My littlest niece. Dead. My other niece. At death’s door.” Each time he said “dead” he snapped the big white fingers on his right hand. “Happy people off on a vacation. And bang. Like that. Murdered in their happiness on the road, singing, laughing and suddenly it is over.”
“Gee, that’s terrible,” the woman said.
“I got the phone call in my office yesterday. I thought it was some terrible joke. Believe me, it was like the world fell down. You have no idea. Death you always plan on. It happens to all of us. But so many!”
“Yeah.”
“Bert was a hard-working man. He thought of nothing but his family. Their pleasure. Beautiful daughters he had. All his hopes and dreams.”
“It sure is a terrible thing. Four years ago my cousin was on a trip out to Bakersfield where…”
“I was just sitting in my office and the phone rang. You have no idea. Alice said she would send me post cards. I never got married. They were my family. Those girls were like my babies. It was a criminal that killed them.”
“Huh?”
“A way of speaking only. Anybody who kills them in their happiness is a criminal.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Bert almost went in business with me once. I begged him. I did everything but get down on my knees. But he wanted to stay in the mill. He liked the mill. He liked using his strength. He said he was not for offices. I have a wholesale business. Three salesmen.”
“My cousin…”
“Now it becomes my responsibility. The oldest girl, if she lives. To make a home for her, educate her.” He slapped the briefcase. “The copy of the will is in here. I have the legal say. It was like a joke when they made it out with the lawyer. What could happen? Well, it just goes to show.”
“You never can tell,” the woman said. She clutched her packages and started hitching her weight toward the edge of the seat. “Would you pull the cord, please? I get off here.”
Krissel pulled the cord. She stood up after the bus stopped. She said, “Well, it’s a terrible thing.”
“Thank you for your sympathy,” Krissel said loudly. She lumbered to the front of the bus and got off. As the bus started up Krissel looked down out of the window into her upturned blue eyes. A nice sympathetic woman. The two women in back of him were whispering. He caught the words “accident” and “brother.” He sat up straighter and sniffed loudly again.
At the bus terminal in Blanchard he found that the hospital was nearly a mile away. He found a taxi. The newness of the hospital surprised him. He paid off the taxi with money from a deep brown purse.
To the girl inside he said, “I am Mr. Krissel, the uncle of the poor Scholl girl, please.”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Krissel. Dr. Budischon will want to know you’ve arrived. Will you have a seat, please.”
“I must insist on seeing my niece, young woman.”
“Just have a seat, sir.”
He remained standing. Dr. Budischon came briskly into the waiting room. “Would you step this way please, Mr. Krissel.” He took him into a smaller waiting room.
“Has Suzie died?”
“No, Mr. Krissel. She was banged up but not seriously hurt. Today is Tuesday. I would say she can be released on Thursday. Certainly no later than Friday in any case. Naturally, she is in a state of emotional shock.”
“Naturally.”
“I don’t believe she has completely comprehended the situation.”
“So young! She couldn’t…”
“I’m going to let you see her, but I must ask you not to be emotional. Be pleasant and affectionate. Reassure her. Tell her everything is going to be all right. Do you understand?”
“All right, Doctor? With her father and mother and her sister in their caskets? All right?”
“Mr. Krissel, get hold of yourself. If you go on like this I won’t let you see her today.”
Krissel drew a deep breath and let it out. “I will try to do what you say.”
Dr. Budischon studied him for a few seconds. “All right, then. Come along with me.”
Suzie Scholl’s arm and hand throbbed. Her leg hurt when she moved it. When they had awakened her that morning, she had been confused. She hadn’t known for a time where she was or what had happened. But, little by little, it had come back. She had found stark clear pictures in her mind of how they had looked. She hadn’t wanted to talk to the nurse, or smile at her, or co-operate. She had just wanted to lie and look at the wall and try to figure it out.
Dead. It was a funny word. If you said it over and over in your head it didn’t mean anything any more. A word that was a funny sound, like knocking on something. All of them dead.
She remembered how she had imagined her sister dead a lot of times. Connie would be very still, wearing white satin, her face cold and hard like artificial fruit, her lips smiling a little, her hands folded over the stem of a flower. She would be in the front room. Mother and Dad wouldn’t be able to stand it. They would be back in the bedroom crying. And when people came to see Connie, she would let them in. She would wear black and no lipstick. She would talk in a whisper and keep her eyes down and lead them into the living room where they could look at her. The women would bring food to the back door. Cakes and casseroles, and everybody would whisper and the house would smell of flowers.
She remembered that by thinking of that hard enough she had sometimes been able to make herself cry. But she couldn’t find tears now, because it wasn’t like she had imagined it. That ugly thing she had seen couldn’t be Connie.
Connie was dead and she couldn’t find any meaning in it. Or in her mother and father being dead. She could think of them, just how they were, and close her eyes and see their faces and even hear them talk, but it didn’t mean anything that they were dead. It was something that had happened. She knew she ought to feel grief. Terrible grief. It was awful when you thought about it. Four of them and just her left. It was like you would read in a book or see on one of those sad television things. It was easy to cry at the television. So it ought to be a lot easier to cry when it was real. The pain she felt ought to be nothing compared to grief. But the throb in her arm kept getting in the way of thinking about it.
Nothing would ever be the same again. She tracked that thought back through the mild jungles of her mind and found that she could not feel loss that things would never be the same again.
She was looking at the wall when she heard his voice. She turned and looked at him, standing there, black hat in one hand and briefcase in the other.
“Hello, Uncle Bernie,” she said.
He stood for a moment, looking tragic, and then came toward her. “Suzie!” he said. “My little Suzie! Darling, are you in pain?�
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“I hurt some. But it isn’t bad, Uncle Bernie.”
He sat beside the bed and held her good hand in both of his. His big white hands were cool and moist and unpleasant. “Everything is going to be all right, darling. I swear. Everything is going to be all right.”
“That’s a funny thing to say,” she said, frowning.
“I’ll take care of you, dear.”
“They’re all dead. I don’t see how you can change that.”
“Nobody can change that, dear. Nobody.”
He looked at her and his dark eyes filled with tears. He put his head down on her bed and began to cry. His black hair gleamed with the tonic he used. His shoulders shook. He had her hand imprisoned, his forehead touching her wrist. A tear fell like hot wax on the back of her hand. She felt a sticky embarrassment and tried to pull her hand free, but he held it tightly. He had always made her feel creepy. He had always kept trying to tickle her and fondle her, long after she had gotten too big. His eyes would shine in a funny way and he’d giggle.
“Poor Suzie,” he cried, between sobs.
She didn’t want it to happen again, not with him there. She had not felt the least bit like crying. But all of a sudden the tears came, a hot bursting, a tearing, a convulsive scalding spasm. She ripped her hand away from him. It suddenly seemed unbearable to her that he should be sharing her time of tears. She fought for control and obtained it long enough to yell, “Get out of here!”
Uncle Bernie raised a face so shocked she wished she could laugh. “Suzie darling!” he said.
“Go away, you old creep, God damn you!” she yelled.
It was Dr. Budischon who pulled him out of the room, holding onto his arm, Uncle Bernie looking back, Dr. Budischon’s face red and angry. When he was gone she settled herself into tears. She curled herself into a nest of tears. It had started like a thunderstorm, and now it settled down to a long warm steady rain—tears without thought or reason. Just tears.
Bulky red-headed Lieutenant Thomas Fay shrugged and got up from his desk. “Okay, Mr. André. I see no reason why you shouldn’t see it. Come on back.”
They went back into a sunny room in the rear of the trooper station. There was a waist-high counter along one wall, and several items of laboratory equipment. Fay said apologetically, “We do some drunk tests, that sort of thing. Anything too technical, we send it up the line. Benny, let’s see that section of tire off the Jamison car.”
The man in shirt sleeves handed Fay a piece of tire casing two feet long, half a tire wide. Fay handed it to André. “It’s a blowout all right. You can see that. The question was whether or not it blew when he hit the curbing. Now look right along here. See those threads, how discolored they are? That was an old break in the casing. That’s where she blew. Now see how light-colored the threads are where the blowout enlarged the break? That tire was broken so bad that road dirt had a chance to get in on the threads. Hell, the tube must have damn near been bulging out through the break. Is that what you wanted to see?”
“That’s a help,” André said. “The policyholder is a little… hysterical about this thing. You know, people killed. He’s sensitive. An architect. Artistic type. He wants to take the whole blame.”
Fay took the piece of rubber back and slapped it against his palm. “This is what takes the blame, Mr. André.”
“Does your investigation show that he was speeding?”
“No. He was passing legally.”
“What’s the paper work setup?”
“Oh, we turn a copy of our investigation over to the deputy coroner of the county. He holds an inquest. This will be death by misadventure. If our investigation showed somebody in the wrong, then after the inquest, the findings would be turned over to the county attorney and he’d prosecute for manslaughter.”
“So from your end, Jamison is in the clear?”
“That’s right.”
André grinned ruefully. “I wish it were as simple from my end. Civil actions are a hell of a lot trickier. Get this thing to a jury and heaven only knows what they might award, just because Jamison obviously has money and the dead people just as obviously didn’t. Thanks for co-operating, Lieutenant.”
“Good luck to you.”
“At least I’m not going to have to mess around with the people who were in the Olds. How does that look, by the way?”
Fay looked at his watch. “We’re going to go down in a while and give that car another going over. No money burned inside it. The one that got out wouldn’t have had it in his pocket. Not forty thousand in medium bills. I can’t see it being stashed, or their mailing it to themselves. It’s a funny thing. And not up my alley. I got into this sideways. I’m road patrol.”
André thanked him again and went out to his rented car. He took out his pocket notebook and looked up the name and local address he had picked up from the Ace Garage. Mr. and Mrs. Paul Conklin. Night Wind Motel. He remembered passing the motel sign before he had gotten the address. He drove down to the motel and found out that the couple was in number ten. One carload of tourists was unloading into number eleven. He heard somebody laughing inside ten. He rapped on the edge of the screen door. A thin pretty girl in yellow denim shorts and a white blouse came to the door. André noticed that her right knee was bandaged.
“Yes?”
“They told me at the garage where to find you. My name is André. I’m with Fidelity Mutual Guarantee. I’d like to talk to you and your husband.”
“Won’t you come in?”
André went in, shook hands with Conklin. Conklin was lean and dark, with an angular saturnine face. “Who handles your insurance, Mr. Conklin?” he asked.
“Atlantic Casualty.”
“Have you informed them of the accident?”
“I wired them last night, Mr. André.”
“The accident report on file at the State Police office shows that you ran into the Jamison car, Mr. Conklin.”
The room was quite still. They both looked at him. André returned the puzzled stare calmly.
“We hit that car, of course,” Mrs. Conklin said. “But goodness! Paul did beautifully. That other car started bouncing around right in front of us.”
“There’s a distinct possibility that the Jamison car wouldn’t have gone over into oncoming traffic if you hadn’t hit it when it was out of control,” André said.
The girl’s face got pink. “That’s the most utterly ridiculous…”
“Hush, Joyce,” Conklin said. “Just what are you after, André?”
“Proper assignment of liability. I can talk to the Atlantic adjuster, of course. Jamison’s car is a total loss and he suffered bodily injury.”
“And after you’ve scared hell out of both of us, you haul out a release form and give us one dollar and we sign gladly, and you tell us that Jamison can’t come back on us because the dollar is an admission of his liability. So everybody is happy. Jamison must carry a big policy.”
André had to smile. “You know the script. What are you after?”
“What do we want out of it? We got out with our lives. We’d have a tough time getting very much because we did hit him. I don’t deny that. But we’re not going to sign anything without the advice of my insurance company.”
“Are you sure your wife isn’t going to suddenly start to have a lot of trouble with that leg?”
“Are you suggesting that?”
André sighed. “This is a cynical business, Mr. Conklin. I’m not willing to admit Jamison’s liability. But for the sake of getting this cleaned up, I’ll offer you two hundred and fifty dollars for an unconditional release as of right now. I’m sure your company would advise you to accept. You understand that if Jamison had gotten his car back under control after you hit it, your liability would be quite clear.”
“I’m afraid I don’t want to sign anything today.”
“It was a try,” André said.
“Mr. André,” the girl asked, “will the truck driver’s family get something
from Mr. Jamison’s insurance?”
“I’m afraid not. The car and the truck were never closer than thirty feet from each other. As I understand it, the truck driver merely turned off the road. Lost his head or something. There’s no liability there.”
“He turned off to miss us. And we were in his way because Mr. Jamison lost control of his car.”
“Too tenuous. I’m sure the trucking company has some sort of plan for things like that.”
“It doesn’t seem fair,” Mrs. Conklin said.
“I have to be running along. I’ll see you later.”
Back at the hospital André found out from the girl that the Scholl girl’s uncle had arrived. He was out walking around the grounds. He was upset. André set out to find him, saw him at a distance, leaning against a birch tree.
chapter 14
AFTER lunch Devlin Jamison had Roger Seiver come with him while he found a place to stay. The cab driver recommended the Midlands Motel, but, lacking a car, Jamison preferred the conveniences of a hotel. The Hotel Blanchard was an aged brick cube, angular with windows. It was in the center of the old town, far from the main highway. It apparently existed mainly on the patronage of the men’s service clubs, plus women’s meetings and school dances. The lobby was tile and the main staircase marble.
Jamison’s room had high ceilings, two gilt framed lithographs of Flemish masters, a two-ton bureau and an acre of bed. His golf clubs were an anachronism hastily concealed in the far reaches of a closet of garage dimensions.
Seiver, with hands in pockets, leaned against the bureau. “All I ask is just take it easy, Dev.”
“I want to do what I can for those people.”
Cry Hard, Cry Fast Page 13
