18-With Option to Die

by Lockridge, Richard

  “Nostalgia,” Brinkley said. “A hopeless yearning for a different time. In a way rather touching. Although I suppose, for some of them, there’s money in it. The Misses Monroe contribute, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Turning back the clock, in the old phrase,” she said. “Not that clocks can’t be turned back, of course. Or broken, Walter. But I said I didn’t mean the Birchites; the Misses Monroe. For that matter, the Lawrence Finches. He’s a member, I think. A pleasant, harmless man with a great deal of money and as much fear of something he thinks of as socialism. Without having any clear idea of socialism except, I suppose, that it has two heads with horns on each of them and suitably cloven hooves. Ridiculous, yes. Even pathetic. And, before you say it, it is quite legal to be idiotic. Ought to be, anyway. Whatever direction the idiocy takes.”

  She abruptly finished her drink. And Brinkley was more than ever puzzled. Had she asked him here to restate concepts about which their agreement could be taken for granted; had been for years so taken? It seemed unlikely.

  “There have been splinters off the right edge of the Birch Society,” she said. “Some of them very sharp splinters. There was a man a while back who advocated the liquidation of all Jews and Negroes. Had been a Birchite. Expelled for right-wing deviationism. Out in Missouri the leader of a right-wing splinter was arrested because he had his car full of guns. Turned out that that wasn’t illegal in Missouri, for some reason. But the guns were real, Walter. As real as the one somebody used to take a potshot at Peters.”

  “Two potshots apparently,” Brinkley said, still wondering what this was all about and looking with reproach at his empty glass. Fortunately, Tony was in signaling distance. Brinkley waggled a forefinger to include both empty glasses. It would, however, be ridiculous if two old friends, both white-haired and rounded comfortably during years, were to sit in this respectable tavern, talking to no apparent purpose and getting themselves drunk.

  “One of them missed,” Brinkley said, vaguely feeling that the conversation should somehow be rounded into coherence.

  “Out in the West somewhere,” Faith Powers said, “there’s an organization called something like ‘Patriots United.’ It’s stacking guns, they say—one of the newspapers said. To use in guerrilla warfare against Communists. It’s an underground sort of thing, they say. It has spokesmen instead of people with names. One of the ‘spokesmen’ said to a reporter, ‘We are poised to pounce.’ He added, of course, ‘When the time is ripe.’ Meaning, the reporter supposed, when there is an issue which can be dramatized by violence.”

  Tony brought drinks. He also brought menus. Faith Powers laid hers printed side down on the table.

  “There has never been an interracial country club in Westchester County, I understand,” Faith said. “I don’t mean—call it interreligious. There are a few of those, and others which more or less pretend to be. I mean black and white. Why are some Negroes nowadays so intent on being called ‘black’ do you suppose? When most of them are not, really. Any more than you and I are ‘white,’ really.”

  “I don’t know,” Walter said, and had a probably unfair suspicion that Faith Powers had had a drink or two before she came to the inn. Possibly, he thought, before she telephoned me.

  “The first interracial country club might seem a time to pounce,” she said. “A ripening of—”

  She stopped abruptly. Two men had come into the taproom, not together. The first was Lawrence Finch, who tossed what appeared to be a salute toward Faith and nodded his head to Walter Brinkley and went on to join the beer drinkers at the bar. The other man was dark and narrow-shouldered. He walked the length of the taproom to a table at the end of it and evidently knew his way there. Tony pulled the table out from the wall for him and said, “Good evening, sir.” Then, apparently with his only instruction provided by a nod of the dark man’s head, Tony went to the service end of the bar.

  Brinkley turned to look at the dark man, and turned because Faith Powers was looking at the dark man very intently. I wonder, Walter Brinkley thought, if this is what I was asked to come here to do—to look at a dark man with a long, narrow face?

  He turned back to Faith and lifted eyebrows and shoulders in enquiry.

  “Isn’t he,” Faith said, and spoke in a low voice, “somebody we both know? Used to know?”

  “I’m no good at faces,” Brinkley said. “You know that.”

  “Look again.”

  Brinkley looked again. He saw Tony’s back as Tony put a drink in front of the dark man. Tony moved away and then Walter Brinkley could look again at a thin-faced man with dark hair. A man entirely unfamiliar. A man—The face seemed slowly to dissolve into another face. A face not unfamiliar. An actor’s face, seen more than once on, probably, motion picture screens? A face never clearly identified but bafflingly familiar? A face—

  Brinkley turned back to Faith and when he spoke he kept his voice low, as Faith had kept hers.

  “Aaron Nagle?” he said. “He’s got older, of course. If he is Nagle. That’s who you think it is?”

  “Yes,” Faith said, almost whispered. “I’m almost certain. But here he calls himself Pederson, Mrs. Lambert says. Henry Pederson. He’s a writer, Mrs. Lambert says. Here for the summer and a quiet place to work.”

  V

  The hamlet of Van Brunt is some forty miles west of the hamlet of North Wellwood. There is a low house in Van Brunt, high above the Hudson, and M. L. Heimrich, New York State Police, awakened in one of the two bedrooms at eight o’clock, which was the time he had set his mind for. He looked at the other bed in the room and it was empty, as he had supposed it would be. School still held; Susan was up at seven to see her son off to it, duly breakfasted. Colonel had gone down the steep driveway, attendant on his god, and had sat mournfully waiting for the school bus and watched god go into it. Colonel had watched the bus until, its brakes squealing, it had turned right at the bottom of the hill. Colonel, who was big even for a Great Dane, had whimpered.

  Merton Heimrich knew that these things had happened as certainly as if he had seen them happen—as certainly as, without needing to look at his watch, he knew it was eight o’clock in the morning; eight o’clock of a sunny morning and already a warm one. Heimrich swung out of bed and stretched beside it—a very big man who, clothed, looked almost a bulky one. Or had, until Susan had taken a hand in the selection of suiting. Naked, stretching by his bed, Merton Heimrich was merely taut and powerful. He sighed, thinking that he probably looked like a hippopotamus, and dressed for the day.

  Susan, who was slim in slacks, came out of the kitchen and said, “It’s warm enough for the terrace.” She smiled up at him. She said, “Inspector.”

  She managed to get a note of reverence into her voice.

  Heimrich held his wife for a moment, tightly. Then, in retaliation for the note of reverence, he slapped her on the rump. It was a small, trim rump.

  “Five minutes,” Susan Heimrich said, and went back into the kitchen. Merton Heimrich went out onto the terrace. It was a fine, warm morning and sunlight jumped around on the Hudson. Heimrich sat at a table in the sunshine which was warm on his back. Everything was fine. Having been made Inspector, B.C.I., New York State Police, hadn’t, yet anyway, made any difference.

  Colonel, who had been resting in what shade spring’s young leaves provided, got up and ambled toward the terrace. Colonel always walked as if it surprised him to have four legs. He did this morning. There was only one thing different about Colonel that Tuesday morning. Colonel had something in his mouth.

  That was unusual to the point of being unprecedented. Colonel pursued small game in violent, if erratic, rushes but with no apparent conviction that anything would come of it. For so long as Merton Heimrich had known Colonel nothing ever had. That had been several years—had been since he had come to the house to live with a big dog and a quick and slender woman and a stepson named Michael Faye.

  Heimrich turned toward the house and raised his voice and said, “Susan! Colonel’
s caught something.” At the same time he stood up and started toward the enormous, advancing dog. He said, “Put it down, Colonel. Put it down!”

  There would, of course, be no chance of bringing back to life whatever prey Colonel had miraculously come upon. Whatever it was—something black which Heimrich could not identify—had probably been hopelessly incapacitated when Colonel caught it. That was the only reasonable explanation for its capture. Certainly, in Colonel’s enormous jaws, it would now be beyond salvation.

  Colonel came up onto the terrace, tripping momentarily over it. Colonel, who had lived almost all his life in the house, had not ever got used to the fact that the terrace was a step above the lawn. The step always came to him as a surprise, as most things did.

  “Put it down!” Heimrich said again. “Down” was one of the few words in the English language with which Colonel showed any appreciable familiarity. It meant “Lie down” and Colonel, if the tone of command was sufficiently peremptory, sometimes did. He did now.

  Colonel’s way of lying down was to collapse all over, landing with a thump. On the warm flagstones he looked up at Heimrich with mournful surprise evident in his sad brown eyes. He also opened his mouth.

  A small, entirely black, cat came out of Colonel’s mouth, and came out soaking wet. The cat landed facing the big dog and arched his back and laid back his ears and hissed. He tried, Heimrich thought, to bush his tail, but the tail, like the rest of the little black cat, was too wet to bush.

  Colonel reached one huge paw slowly toward the cat. The cat jumped away from it, but only for a foot or two. The cat said, “Yuh-ow” in a voice too large for it.

  “I’ll be damned,” Heimrich said. The cat turned to face Heimrich, his back still arched. The cat, who was by then impartial in such matters, hissed at Heimrich. “Susan!” Merton Heimrich said, rather loudly.

  “So will I,” Susan said behind him, and put a metal breakfast tray down on a metal table with a small but definite clang.

  The little black cat hissed at Susan, who said, “Why, you poor mite, you,” and went toward the cat. Then Susan said, “Merton! It’s alive!”

  “It sure as hell is,” Merton Heimrich said, and looked down at Colonel, who looked sadly up at him. The hurt expression usually in the big dog’s brown eyes was, Heimrich thought, accentuated.

  Susan went down on her knees near the little cat, who backed away from her, but did not back far away. She looked beyond the cat at the big dog.

  “I think,” Susan said, “he thinks he’s brought us a present. I think he’s waiting to be thanked.”

  And Merton Heimrich said, gravely, “Thank you for the present, Colonel.”

  And Colonel wagged his tail, of which there was not much.

  “The poor little thing’s all wet,” Susan said, and Heimrich looked down. Susan was, very gently, stroking the little cat with the tips of long, slim fingers. She said, “Wait right there,” to the little cat, and flowed up from her knees and to the breakfast tray. She took a napkin from it and went back to the cat.

  It was not, Merton noticed, the usual breakfast paper napkin. It looked like being a cloth napkin. And Susan had used the silver coffeepot, instead of the crockery pot which was usual for terrace breakfasts.

  Special things, Heimrich thought. In celebration of the promotion a week ago. She thinks—has for a long time thought—that my being called “Inspector” instead of “Captain” is going to mean that I keep regular office hours. The dear one. The poor deluded darling. Hoping for a better regulated hippopotamus.

  Susan was down on her knees again, and this time the little black cat did not back away, but let Susan rub the napkin gently along his back. Then the little cat, very suddenly, lay down and rolled over so that Susan could dry his belly. “Not a white hair on him anywhere,” Susan said. Heimrich, looking down at Colonel’s present, had noticed that. “A tomcat,” Susan said. Merton Heimrich had also noticed that. “Pretty kitty,” Susan said, continuing to dry. She looked at Colonel, who still lay in his collapsed fashion on the terrace flags.

  “Where on earth?” Susan asked the big dog.

  Colonel turned his head away, resting it on an enormous paw. He went so far as to whimper slightly. He did not look at Susan.

  There is not really much point in being a dog. A dog goes to the trouble of bringing a friend home and what is his reward? Humans make a fuss—a rather ridiculous, much too concerned, fuss—over the guest. But do they thank the dog? You’d think, from the way they act, the dog wasn’t around at all. Dogs always get the worst of it.

  “You’re making the monster jealous,” Heimrich told Susan.

  Colonel does not mind being called “the monster.” So far as the Heimrichs have been able to determine he regards it as a term of endearment.

  “Is a good dog,” Susan said rather absently. “Is a fine dog.” She continued to dry the cat. Colonel did not bother even to flap his tail. “He’s purring,” Susan said. “He’s got a big purr for such a little cat.”

  Heimrich got up and went to the breakfast tray. He filled two cups, putting cream in his, and cracked his soft-cooked eggs into their cup. He put the cup of black coffee on a flagstone beside Susan, where she could drink it if she had a hand free. He carried his own coffee and eggs to the table by which he had been sitting.

  “The mite is starving, probably,” Susan said. “Bring the cream while you’re up, will you?”

  Heimrich was no longer up. He got up and got the cream pitcher and put it down on the terrace beside Susan’s coffee cup. In all reason, Heimrich thought, it is impossible to be an object of grace while sitting cross-legged on a flagstone and drying a wet cat. But reason does not enter into such matters. Heimrich watched while Susan took her cup from its saucer and poured cream into the saucer and moved the saucer in front of the little black cat.

  “Feed a cat and you’ve got a cat,” Heimrich told her. “It’s a rule.”

  “I know,” Susan said. “Laid down by cats. Here, mite.”

  Mite rolled to four paws and leaned to sniff the cream. He looked up at Susan and made a small sound. “You’re very welcome,” Susan told the little cat. “Get on with it, mite.”

  The little black cat got on with it. Susan drank black coffee and Merton spooned his eggs. Colonel whimpered. (Dogs get left out of everything.)

  “Probably he belongs to somebody,” Susan said, and flowed from terrace flagstone to chair. “Where on earth do you suppose Colonel found him? And how did Colonel know not to hurt him?”

  “Where did you find him, Colonel?” Heimrich asked the big dog, who moved an ear in the direction of the familiar voice and let it go at that. “Big dogs sometimes carry things gently,” she told Heimrich and considered for a moment and added, “Ducks.”

  “Ducks have feathers,” Susan said. “Anyway, that’s retrievers. Not Danes. And—”

  The telephone rang in the house. Colonel reared, in segments, to his feet, looked for a moment at Heimrich, and started toward the house, presumably to answer the telephone.

  “Probably,” Susan said, “somebody to ask if we’ve stolen a cat.” She started to get up and was told to finish her coffee. Heimrich got up from his chair and followed his dog, feeling that he lumbered—that even by comparison to Colonel he had a lumbering gait. A lumbering old man, Heimrich thought, destined, and properly, to spend the few remaining years of his life behind a desk at Hawthorne Barracks. He also thought it would not be somebody asking about a lost black tomcat, unless, of course, somebody had seen Colonel steal him from somewhere.

  Colonel blocked the doorway into the house, as was his custom. Heimrich kneed him out of the way, as was his. The telephone continued to ring. Heimrich reached the telephone and stopped its ringing and said his name into it. He listened and said, “Go ahead, Charlie,” to Lieutenant Charles Forniss, also newly promoted, and speaking from Hawthorne Barracks, headquarters of Troop K, New York State Police.

  “Locals at the other end of the county think they’ve got
a killing,” Forniss said. “Looked like a routine smashup at first. Maybe not routine. Car went over an embankment into a gravel pit and rolled a few times and burned. Along with the driver. Only, hour or so ago they did an autopsy. Bullet in the brain.”

  “Where, Charlie?”

  “Place called North Wellwood,” Forniss said. “We’ve been there before, Inspector. Thought I’d take Ray Crowley along. O.K.?”

  “Yes,” Heimrich said. “Only—” He paused for a moment, remembering that he was an inspector and had many things to supervise; remembering that Forniss was a lieutenant now and due to be in charge. He said, “Who’s the victim, Charlie?”

  “Woman named Faith Powers,” Forniss said. “Mrs. Faith Powers. Fairly prominent in the community, from the way the locals talk. All right to get along, M. L.?”

  I should, Heimrich thought, go to the office and shuffle papers and put initials on them. I should assign others; delegate authority, as becomes an inspector. It is time authority is delegated to Charlie Forniss, who’s a good cop. On the other hand—North Wellwood.

  “Get along, Charlie,” Heimrich said. “I’ll join you there.”

  He went back to the terrace, after kneeing Colonel out of the way.

  Susan watched him coming toward her and thought, briefly, how well he carried himself for a man so big—for any man, come to that—and said, “About the cat?” although by then she had seen his face and knew it was not about the cat.

  He told her what it was about.

  “It’s Charlie Forniss’s case?”

  “Well,” Heimrich said, “I do know people there, Susan. People who maybe can help. Professor Brinkley. You remember him.”

  “Yes,” Susan said. “I remember him, Inspector.” She stood up and moved toward him and put her hands on both his arms and looked up at him.