by Howard Fast
“And the photograph could be that kid?” Burton persisted gently.
“I don’t know. When I looked at it, it snapped me back—and there I was looking at the poor, sad little kid again. But now, when I think about it—”
“What was the kid’s name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, God damn it, you applied for a job! Where did you go? What was the family’s name?”
“I don’t remember. That was ten years ago. There was no reason for me to remember.”
“Where did you go?”
“I don’t remember.”
“All right, all right,” Burton said, spreading his hands. “We’re going to take this slowly, and we’re not going to get excited. You lived in Brooklyn then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You took the subway into New York?”
Mr. Bergan closed his eyes and wrinkled his brow. After a moment, he nodded. “Yes, sir—I took the subway.”
“Which subway?”
Another long pause. Then, “The Lexington Avenue.”
“And you got off where?”
“Well, I think there was a school on the corner. Would Hunter College be there?”
“Sixty-eighth Street Now think—what did you do then?”
I walked north,” Mr. Bergan replied slowly. “Then I turned left—west, you know.”
“One block—two blocks?”
“It was Seventieth Street,” said Mr. Bergan with growing excitement. “I can swear it was Seventieth Street.”
“Seventieth Street then. An apartment house?”
“No. No, I remember that clearly enough, because I had never been inside of that land of house before. It was one of those city town houses, a private house. You know, white stone front—”
“Good. Now from Lexington to Fifth, we have three blocks—Lexington to Park, Park to Madison, Madison to Fifth. How far did you walk—do you remember?”
“I crossed Park. Yes. I know that. I crossed Park Avenue, because I remember standing on the traffic island. It’s funny, the kind of things you remember.”
“Did you cross Madison?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fifth? Were you near Fifth Avenue? Did you see the park? That’s the corner with the Frick mansion. You must have been there. You must have seen the collection—sometime?”
Mr. Bergan shook his head sadly. He had never dreamed that this particular hole in his cultural background would affect the life of someone he loved.
“Would you recognize the house now?” Burton insisted.
“I might.”
“All right, then, let’s go.”
“Where?” Cohen demanded.
“Up to Seventieth Street.”
“Do you know how many houses like that there are on Seventieth?”
“Not so many. They’ve been tearing them down like mad, and what’s left, we’ll have a look at.”
“I always figured you for a smart cop,” Cohen said, shaking his head.
“Well, that’s a mistake. A smart cop wouldn’t have any part of a crazy hunch like this. He’d sit here on his fat backside. I’m too nervous for that.”
11. Morton Stillman
Santela sent Soames down to the garage for the Buick. “Wipe it off,” he said to Soames, and Soames asked him what the hell did he mean, wipe it off?
“It’s sold, isn’t it?” Soames demanded. “What do I have to do? Be a garage boy for the new owner?”
“We’re riding in it tonight. I can’t stand a dirty car.”
“What am I, some kind of flunky?”
“You know that isn’t so, Albert,” Santela protested. “You know that I have the greatest regard for you.”
“Sure. Al, go down and get some sandwiches! Al, go down and get the newspapers! Al, go wipe the car!”
“You’re driving, aren’t you, Al? That’s a place of trust.”
“Go to hell,” Soames said, and then he left and went for the car. Santela turned to Shirley and asked her, “How about that? He’s very sensitive, isn’t he?”
“You’re both very sensitive,” Shirley agreed. “You are absolutely bleeders—both of you.”
“What do you mean, bleeders?”
“It’s just an expression,” Shirley said.
“You know something,” Santela said thoughtfully, “you rub me the wrong way. You always rub me the wrong way. Since the first moment I saw you, you began to rub me the wrong way. You’re one of these snotty little gutter kids that know all the answers. So let me tell you something. Tonight, if you cross me up, I’m going to kill you. I want that to be as plain as the nose on my face.”
“Why should I cross you up?” Shirley asked him. “Do I look honest or something? Do I look like a Girl Scout? But from all I can gather, you’re going into a house with servants and all that kind of jazz. Anything can go wrong. What happens—do I get my throat cut if anything goes wrong?”
“That’s just what’s wrong with you,” Santela said. “The way you talk. You sit there with your God damn teeth in your mouth as if you didn’t have a nerve in your body. What are you—a woman or some kind of creep?”
“All I asked was about my throat.”
“Nothing will go wrong. Tonight is Thursday, and all the help is off. I was just over to see the old man. There’s no one in the house except Stillman and the cook in the kitchen—and she’s a fat old bag who sits tight. We have a cold supper, buffet style. You know what that is? The food is out. You go to the buffet and help yourself—why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m sorry,” Shirley said softly. “Tell me what happens if the old man doesn’t fall for it.”
“That’s too bad for the old man, Shirley.”
“You’re going to kill him?”
“Yes, Shirley.”
“Why? Why can’t you knock him over the head? Why can’t you tie him up?”
“Because he’s a witness, Shirley. Is that plain?”
“Plain.”
“Good—because I don’t want to slap you around any more. I want you to be a nice girl from here on in, Shirley.”
“It’s too late to slap me around,” Shirley said. “The marks wouldn’t go away. After all, what would he think if my face was all blotchy with hand marks? It would make a bad impression.”
“You’re a card,” Santela said.
“Sure. I’m a card. When I walk into a party, everyone says, There’s Shirley. A million laughs.”
They were in the Buick and heading east when Santela observed that Shirley had been silent for some time, since before leaving the apartment, and since in his opinion she was a loud-mouthed and garrulous bitch, the circumstances caused him a measure of surprise.
“I was just thinking,” Shirley said.
“Think out loud,” Soames told her. He was in front, driving; Shirley was in the back seat with Santela.
“Let us in on it,” Santela agreed. “We get nervous when you’re silent.”
“It’s not important,” Shirley said. “I was just thinking about how I was brought up as a kid—”
“In the gutter,” Soames said.
“That’s right, lover boy—in the gutter. The bottom rung. I knew all kinds of people. Nobody kids me about how nice poverty is. It’s not nice, it stinks. But I never knew any killers. I knew cheap hooligans and petty thieves. I knew the kind that would steal you blind. But I never knew anyone who would coldbloodedly kill a dying old man.”
“Shut up!” Soames shouted.
“Let her talk,” Santela said generously. “It helps me to understand Shirley. That’s important. Only, if we kill the old man, Shirley, you’re in on it Right?”
“I’m in on it,” Shirley admitted.
“Where does that put you?”
“On your level,” Shirley said. “That’s a hell of a place to be, isn’t it?”
Morton Stillman was a small man. Small-boned, delicate, his hair white, his eyes pale blue sockets of pain, he himself ope
ned the door of the big house in the East Seventies. Santela stood aside, and he was face to face with Shirley in the shadows of the vestibule, and there was a silence as long as forever as he looked at her. Then he held the door aside, and said softly:
“Come in, my dear.”
But he made no move to go closer to her, to kiss her or embrace her, only standing aside as she entered, Soames behind her, and Santela behind Soames.
“This is Charles Alexander, your son-in-law, Mr. Stillman,” Santela said.
Stillman nodded, without offering his hand. He hardly glanced at Soames, his eyes on Shirley.
“How do you do, sir,” said Soames.
“It’s been a long time,” Santela said.
Stillman’s voice was rich and full, more than his size. The very richness of the voice made it hard for Shirley to tell whether he was moved by emotion or not.
“Long,” he replied to Santela, as he led them inside, through a richly ornate receiving room, marble-floored and white to its shadowed arches, and then into a reception room.
“No—no, two years is not long, Joseph. Not for me. For me, time is like a film run at crazy speed. The most painful thing about dying, Joseph, is not the awareness of one’s fate, but what such awareness does to one’s sense of time. So it is only yesterday that my daughter went away, and today you bring her back. Well! I must be grateful to you.”
In Shirley’s mind, a sense of pity was stippled all over with alertness, and she was too much aware of her own necessity to weep, even inwardly, for Morton Stillman. Actually, she did not pity Stillman at all. People die. Her own mother had died a long, long time ago, and even before that, her father had abandoned them and come to his own miserable end. It was part of her quality that she could control and stoke the fires of her own anger, and her rage was still less for what they were doing to Stillman than for what these two men, whom she despised more than she feared, had done to her.
She had seen the house from the outside, the ornate reception room, and now the warmth and beauty of this study, four splendid pictures that a lifetime of work at Bushwick Brothers would not even begin to purchase, the beautiful mantel, covering the coals of a wood fire, the leather-bound books in their places, the antique furniture with its glowing patina of age and luxury, the fine rug upon the floor. She could give names to nothing, but she sensed everything, and briefly and futilely, she tried to cope with the problem of one Janet Stillman, whose tragic sadness had driven her away from all this, to die in a senseless auto accident half a continent away.
She wondered how it felt to be rich beyond the ordinary or extraordinary dreams of man, and then to be eaten up with cancer, and sit looking at death and at the same time become the target of two tawdry and pathetic swindlers.
“I doubted you at first, Joseph,” Stillman was saying to Santela, the old man at a bar that was part of the bookshelves, “but I was wrong to doubt you, wasn’t I?”
Soames was standing awkwardly in a corner. The room shrank his soul. Riches shrank him, and in the face of riches, he dwindled; as if a fanatically religious man were to come face to face with his god. Stillman had neither words nor attention for him, but he did tell him to sit down, hardly glancing at him when he said it. Soames seated himself in a big leather chair. Shirley remained standing.
“And you, my dear?” Stillman asked. He was pouring drinks now. His hand shook a little, Shirley noticed.
“I think you were wrong to doubt me,” Santela said, attempting to keep his voice straightforward and hearty. “I said I would bring your daughter to you, and I did.”
Flatly and evenly, Shirley said, “Don’t be stupid, Santela. He knows I’m not his daughter. He knew it the moment he saw me.”
For a long moment, Santela was speechless. At the bar, Stillman watched with interest, shifting his gaze from Santela to Shirley, but calm and apparently untroubled. Then, Santela spat out “That’s the way she is, Mr. Stillman—sick. You know that.”
“He knows I’m not his daughter,” Shirley repeated.
Soames and Santela stared at Stillman, who smiled slightly and nodded. Shirley thought she had never seen a sadder smile. “Joseph,” he said, “people like you, as clever as they may be, know nothing about father and child or mother and child. That isn’t a part of your life, God help you. Did you think I wouldn’t know my own child?” And then to Shirley, he said, “Who are you, child?”
Santela didn’t move. Soames sat in the chair. Out of the corner of her eye, Shirley saw Soames feeling for his gun under his jacket, but she watched Stillman.
“Nobody,” Shirley said bitterly. “I am nobody. I look like your daughter, so these creeps cooked me up as part of their idiot scheme. My name is Shirley Campbel. That’s all.”
Still, no one moved, and then Stillman asked, very gently, “And are you part of their plan, my dear? You can talk very freely. And without any guilt, because I don’t care. I have passed the point of caring about anything in particular. I cared to see my daughter. I loved her very much, poor child, and I beguiled myself into believing that there was some chance that she was still alive. A small chance, but perhaps some chance. Oh, I know Joseph—but still, I beguiled myself. Now I know, and I really care about nothing at all.”
“Then why do you care whether I’m a part of their plan or not?” Shirley asked.
“Because you gave me something I treasure,” Stillman smiled.
“What?”
“A glimpse of a face that for one fraction of a moment was my daughter’s.”
“And you’re grateful for anything as cruel as that?” Shirley demanded.
“It was not cruel, my dear. For someone like myself, a moment with my best of memories, no matter how small a moment, is not cruel.”
“I don’t understand that,” Shirley said. “But I don’t understand you, Mr. Stillman. Maybe if I could give the time to think about it, I would be able to understand about a man as rich as you who lives in a place like this, and a daughter who can’t live here but must run away, and how you let yourself be conned by Joey Santela—”
“All right,” Santela interrupted. “Enough!”
Soames was still clutching his gun under his jacket.
“No!” Shirley cried. “Now I have my say, Santela. Then you take over. But now I have my say, and that old man asked me a question, and I’m going to answer it.”
Santela started toward Shirley, but Stillman’s voice, soft as it was, stopped him: “Let her talk, Joseph. I think you owe me that. If I can be patient, you can.” He reached into the back of the bar and took out a thick bundle of bills. “Here is the money you asked for. There is no one in the house but the cook. You have the combination for the safe, and my wife’s and my daughter’s jewels are there, just as they have always been. So there is time for everything, Joseph, and I want to hear what she says.”
Santela stopped. He stood rigid, trembling slightly, but he waited.
“Then you knew all the time,” Shirley said.
“I knew and I didn’t know. The point is, Miss Campbel, that I didn’t care.”
“But I care,” Shirley said. “I think that’s the difference between us, Mr. Stillman. I hate to say anything as nasty as this to you, but even if I was dying, I’d care. I don’t have much of anything, but when I was maybe twelve years old, maybe younger, I said to myself, ‘Well, Shirley, what is it going to be? Either become proud, or curl up and die. Take your choice.’ So I took my choice. I never talked to anyone else about this, and now I got to say it in front of these two stinking creeps. You know why I hate to be pushed around, Mr. Stillman—because all I got is my own self and my own pride, and as soon as I let someone push me around, then I got nothing. Absolutely nothing. So when that lousy little faggot there in the chair—Soames is his real name, and he hates women so much he’d like to kill every one he sees—once I let him into my place, I was caught. I didn’t think I’d stay caught. Up until an hour ago, I thought I’d find a way out. I wanted to live. I still want to
live—and that’s where you and I are different. But I don’t want to live on their terms—not on his terms”—pointing to Santela—“not on his!” Indicating Soames. “But I still think I’ll live. They came here to rob you and murder you. But you know what I think? I don’t think they have the guts to murder anyone!”
“You’re wrong, Shirley,” Santela said huskily, and he reached into his pocket, took out the pearl-handled knife, and let the blade click into sight. “You’re wrong, Shirley,” he said again. “You dirty little bitch, you’re wrong! Wrong as hell!”
Shirley glanced at Soames. He hadn’t moved. His hand was still under his jacket, but he was forcing himself deeper and deeper into the recesses of the big leather chair.
“Put the knife away, Joey,” she said. She was afraid then—in a manner she hadn’t been afraid since the whole thing started. She had played her poor, thin hand and it had failed. Santela came toward her, and she backed away.
“Joseph,” came Stillman’s voice.
Santela continued toward Shirley.
“Joseph!” This time, Stillman’s voice had lost its softness. It barked the name as a command, and Santela stopped and flashed a glance at Stillman. The old man had a gun in his hand. He said to Santela, “Drop the knife, now, Joseph.”
“Albert!” Santela cried shrilly. “Albert—shoot that bastard! Shoot him! Shoot him!”
Soames cringed into the big leather chair. His hand emerged from under his jacket, but it was empty of the gun.
“Albert, shoot him!” Santela pleaded.
“Drop the knife, Joseph,” Stillman said, his voice soft again. “You knew that I keep this gun here, Joseph. How could you forget that? You know that I can use it. I don’t want you to hurt that girl. I had no intention of permitting any of this. I don’t care about the money—I really don’t care about anything very much, not the money, not the jewels. But you couldn’t leave it that way, could you, Joseph?”
“Albert,” Santela pleaded.
