Compulsion

by Meyer Levin

  Judd sat down again. Now the machinery was in motion. The minute Artie, having planted the letter, slipped off the train, they would phone Kessler. Michigan 2505. Judd couldn’t quite picture the man. A skinny twerp, Artie had said. Until yesterday he had been Mr. A, for Adversary. Now he had a name. That too had been wonderful, sitting and drinking the old man’s liquor while playing over names of possible victims. Anyone you had a hate on for a day, you could put down as the victim.

  Evening after evening, playing the game, picking out victims discussing the size, the maximum weight of a victim practical to handle… Nobody too large – a struggle would be abhorrent. And then the long arguments – almost fights – he had had with Artie, trying to convince him that it should be a girl. The image of it swept back on Judd: making it a girl, and raping the girl, would have been part of it. From the beginning he had seen it that way, the image of the rape always sweeping through him like a dizziness.

  But Artie had eliminated the idea of a girl. He had no really valid reasons. He was simply against it. A boy, then. A small one.

  After that, they had spent evenings debating the amount of the ransom. If you asked for a hundred thousand, Artie said, every cop in town would be on the job. How much would a man risk, and keep away from the police, just to get his son back?

  “How much would your own old man give?”

  “Hah! That depends on which son!” And, eyes snapping, Artie had begun to stutter as he did only when he was extremely excited. “Billy now! Billy, the baby, the cutie! They’d pay a hundred thousand, a million for him! Hey! Why not really kidnap Billy?”

  For a moment he had been serious, Judd was sure. But then they had dismissed it as impractical. Artie would be surrounded by police all over the house. It would be too difficult to collect the ransom.

  For a whole evening their game had followed that vein. Suppose they staged a kidnapping, one with the other? “My old man would give a hundred thousand simoleons and say, ‘Keep the punk!’” Artie had kidded. And he had pictured where he would send his old man to pick up messages. His dignified pater. A message in a ladies’ toilet! That had convulsed him.

  Judd had in turn pictured how his own father would react. Oh, he’d pay; he was proud of his prodigy! The boy ornithologist! Judah Steiner, Sr., had to have his prodigy’s achievements to brag about at the club.

  Then Artie had produced an even better idea: kidnapping their own old men, in person! They had fallen over each other with laughter. Artie, imitating his father – dignity outraged! Judd could just see Randolph Straus, the richest Jew in Chicago: “Boys! What is the meaning of this!”

  Even now, sitting waiting for Artie, Judd had to smile at the thought. As if the whole thing were still to be done. And then he saw it as his own father, the old man’s bewilderment as they tied him up and took off their masks. “What are you doing to me?” the old man would demand in his ponderous way. Ah, there would be a crime for posterity!

  But the thing was already done, Judd reminded himself. Though if they got away with this, Artie might want him to – No. For when he returned from Europe and went to Harvard, he would be different; maybe he wouldn’t feel this way about Artie any more…

  Judd drew in his breath, and looked fearfully toward the wicket, as if by this disloyal thought alone he might lose Artie.

  In a moment Artie would be coming out. Judd rehearsed the Kessler phone number, the address of the drugstore, and told himself he must now be sure not to tell the Adversary to go into the Help Keep the City Clean box. That was eliminated, and there jumped into his mind the other thing about the box, the final, macabre idea Artie had proposed, a skeleton popping up as the lid was opened, or maybe – his eyes darkening – even better than a skeleton, a severed hand

  “You’ll give the guy heart failure; we’ll never collect!” Judd had said. “Besides, where would you get it?”

  And Artie had given him that look, as if, despite all they had done together, Judd really wasn’t in on the real, the inside things. “Oh, I could get it all right.” Laughing, he added, “From a medical student. From Willie.”

  And Judd had felt a fear, a sadness, that gripped him again even now as the scene came back to him; Artie’s merely naming Willie Weiss had brought the convulsed feeling around his heart that there were things Artie did with others, maybe with Willie, activities, secrets, from which he was excluded. He had even tried to turn it, to make Willie the victim.

  “Willie!” he had exclaimed, but with a fear in watching Artie’s reaction. “Hey, he’d be a good one. How about him?” For a moment Artie had joined in the idea. Had it been to tease him? Picturing Willie, the astounded look on his face, Willie trying to talk his way out of it and his cleverness failing him, Willie with the gag in his mouth, then dead between them. But finally Artie had said no, because Willie’s old man was a notorious tightwad. He’d never pay…

  There was Artie, coming from the train, smiling, as if he were just stepping out to buy a magazine. Now was the time to make the phone call. Judd pictured Mr. A by a phone, waiting. It was again a man like his own father. Still, it was better, purer, that nothing personal had guided them in their final choice. To have left blank the address on the ransom envelope, even as they prowled the street for the victim – that had been a superb affirmation. It proved destiny was accidental. Wouldn’t that settle forever the silly argument about any meaning in life? Concatenation of circumstances – admitted – but meaningless, meaningless…

  Judd arose to the gladness of Artie coming toward him. Yesterday had been an intrusion. Now, the game was continuing.

  He had already changed a nickel for a telephone slug, as each public phone had its own token. With the slug ready in his hand, Judd waited for Artie to crowd in beside him in the booth. They heard the busy signal together. Artie yanked the receiver from Judd’s hand, and slammed it back onto the hook. “Sonsabitches! They’re violating our instructions!” His eyes were yellow. Judd knew these sudden rages Artie could have. But after all…“Maybe somebody called them, by accident,” he said.

  “Let’s get out of here!”

  They hurried from the station. Artie, with his long stride, was already starting the car when Judd caught up with him. “Let’s call again from a drugstore,” Judd said. The note was on the train, the train would soon be on its way.

  Pulling up at the nearest drugstore, on Wabash, Artie was out of the car before it had completely stopped. He snapped his fingers at the clerk for a couple of slugs. The clerk was busy with some blobby-faced woman over shades of rouge.

  But Artie turned on his charm. “Excuse me,” he said to the lady, “I don’t want to keep my girl waiting by the phone.” She broke into a fat coy smile, while the clerk changed Artie’s dime.

  Hurrying into the booth, Artie took the phone; Judd seized it from him. Kessler might know Artie’s voice. “I was only going to get the number,” Artie snapped.

  The ringing began.

  Charles Kessler seized the phone almost thankfully. “Yes, this is Charles Kessler personally. My boy is all right?” The kidnappers were keeping their word; they were calling. Surely that newspaper reporter was crazy. Paulie was safe.

  “Do you have the money ready, according to our instructions?”

  “Yes, yes. Is Paulie all right?”

  “Your boy is safe. A cab will shortly call at your door. Proceed in the cab to the drugstore at 1360 East 63rd Street. Wait for a call in the first phone booth from the door. Is that clear?”

  Kessler tried again, about the boy. Could he talk to Paulie?

  “Remember, the address is 1360 East 63rd Street. You will receive further instructions at that time.” Their receiver clicked down.

  “Wait! Wait-”

  Judge Wagner seized the phone. “Operator! Operator-” But it was too late to trace the call.

  “He told me a drugstore, on 63rd Street…” Then, despairingly, Kessler clapped his hand to his head. He couldn’t remember the address of the store.
>
  From the phone next to Judd’s, Artie had meanwhile sent off the cab. Judd felt anew the pleasure in the whole thing, a kind of duet with Artie, the smoothness of their working together.

  The woman had selected her rouge, and now she turned to them with a naughty-boy gleam. “Well, whose girl is it?” she asked coyly.

  “Oh, it’s a double date,” Artie said, giving her his smile.

  Judd looked at his watch. “Come on, we can just make it.” This time he took the wheel. Artie’s wild driving might get them into a smash-up. Especially if he had an idea he was racing a train.

  I WAS WAITING on the sidewalk when the Pierce-Arrow drove up to the mortuary. “He’s in here, Mr. Kessler.” Jonas Kessler, taking off his derby hat, followed me into the rear of the shop.

  “That’s Paulie!” he cried instantly. And from him came a harsh, gasping wail of grief piercing through, as from archaic times.

  Two policemen had come. They stood with Swaboda, their faces fixed in respect. “Oh, this is dastardly,” the uncle kept saying, and I noted that people in a crisis seem to use words they have read somewhere. “Dastardly! They murdered him, and now they are trying to collect a ransom. My brother is waiting with the money in his hand for them to call.” He approached the body, raised his arm to touch it, but let his arm drop. “I have to telephone. No time must be lost.”

  We led him to the desk, but for a moment he did not have the heart to pick up the phone. “I have children of my own. Paulie was like one of my own,” he remarked. I offered to make the call. “No time must be lost,” Jonas Kessler repeated, and still sat motionless. “They said the boy is safe. How can they… Oh, this is dastardly.”

  At the Kessler house, the doorbell rang. A Yellow Cab driver stood there. Kessler picked up the cigar box full of money and started toward the door. But the address, the address! A drugstore on 63rd Street?

  “Did they tell you the address?” he asked the driver.

  The cabby was bewildered. “Didn’t you call, mister?”

  “The address to go to, on 63rd Street -?”

  And at that moment, the telephone rang again. Kessler hurried back into the house. Perhaps it was the kidnapper calling once more, a miracle from God.

  Judge Wagner handed him the phone. “It’s your brother.”

  “Charles, this is Jonas. I have to tell you. Charles, they were right. It is Paulie.”

  Kessler’s face remained rigid. Automatically, tonelessly, he asked if his boy had suffered.

  It always seemed to me a telling part of this tragedy that the victims were somehow external to it. The boy himself, since we came to know him only in death, never existed for us. The father we saw a good deal of, as he gave himself entirely to the case, and yet he was an utterly enclosed man. The mother we only glimpsed, once or twice. We never learned much about her, except that she was some fifteen years younger than her husband and that she suffered a nervous collapse.

  In a sense, this impersonality of the victims seemed fitting; in the world as I was to come to know it, the victims mattered very little. The Kessler murder was the first to show us how the victim can be chosen at random.

  Judd made it to 63rd and Stony Island with seven minutes to spare, before the train arrived. He drove a block farther, to a Walgreen’s; he had Walgreen phone slugs ready in his pocket. Everything was working beautifully. Artie clapped him on the back as they entered the store.

  Judd called the number they had noted – the booth in Hartmann’s Drugstore – where Kessler should by then be waiting. Artie was jittery, watching out of the window, watching the I.C. tracks.

  The phone was ringing. There had been ample time for the cab to bring Kessler there. Since ordering the cab, Judd himself had driven all the way from Twelfth Street, over twice as far.

  Artie opened the booth door. “You sure you got the right number?”

  At that moment someone answered the phone. “Hello?”

  “Is that the Hartmann Drugstore?”

  A Negro voice said, “Yah, who do you want, mister?”

  “Will you see if a Mr. Kessler is in the store? He should be waiting for this call.” If Kessler was there, why hadn’t he answered, himself?

  “Mr. Who?” the Negro asked.

  “Isn’t there a man waiting for a call? A Mr. Kessler?”

  “What number do you want?”

  Judd kept his voice under control. “Just ask if a Mr. Kessler, a customer-”

  “Don’t see any customer in the store right now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Nobody here, mister.” And the receiver clicked.

  Artie had gone pale. He rushed out of the store, half ducking as if expecting cops to be waiting outside.

  Curiously, Judd found in himself nothing of the despair he had felt when that detail had gone wrong at the Help Keep the City Clean box. Instead, he experienced a new, sharp excitement. Joining Artie outside the store, he said, “Let’s drive past Hartmann’s.”

  “Too risky.” Artie flung away a just-lighted cigarette.

  “We could phone and check if the Yellow went out.”

  Artie’s restless eyes fell on a news stand, on a Globe headline: UNKNOWN BOY FOUND DEAD IN SWAMP.

  “The jig is up,” Artie said, with his nervous way of lapsing into detective-story talk. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here!”

  But in Judd the sense of ascendancy grew stronger. Artie was getting jittery, but his was a cool, cool mind. Buying the paper, he stood against the window of a men’s-wear shop, reading the story. “So they found the body,” he said. “They still have no clue to its identity.”

  “Christ, don’t be a fish! Since the paper got this story, that’s hours ago. The cops can put that much together – a body, and a kidnapped kid. They’re not that dumb.”

  “Don’t get scared so easy,” Judd said. “One must go to the end of an experience.”

  Artie stared down into his eyes. Judd felt strong, the stronger. “You stupe, this is the end!” Artie hissed. “We’d better get rid of this goddam car and split up!”

  Folding the newspaper, Judd started back into Walgreen’s. Artie caught his sleeve. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to try another call. We’ve still got a minute before the train. Maybe the cab was late, or anything. Why should we give up just because he might be stuck in the traffic?”

  “You and your damned bird-chasing!” Artie burst out. “You knew just the right place. Birdland! Nobody ever went near there. Nobody would even find the body!”

  That was unfair. And something in Judd still kept denying the finding. Something in him insisted it was still the right place, the only place, the place where the body had to be put. And there could be no identification! Had they not poured the acid, to obliterate identity? But beyond that, deeper, was some kind of knowledge, some kind of insistence that the body would be impossible to identify because… because who was it? Deep in himself something was saying nobody could ever know.

  It was a confusing, unclear thought. Judd didn’t like it, because it was unclear. He wrenched free of Artie to go and telephone.

  “Jesus, not from here. They might have traced the last call!”

  They hurried to the next corner, a candy store.

  As Artie stood watching the street, fearful every moment of sirens, of cops closing the block off, he saw a train pulling in on the I.C. viaduct. That was surely their train. Even if Judd connected with Charles Kessler now, it would be too late for the man to run and catch the train. The train would pull out, and no longer would there be the moment when the package would come sailing to them through the air.

  There arose in Artie then a frantic sense of deprival, a denial. No! No! It can’t have gone wrong; I want it, I want it to be! It was Judd who had screwed it up, Judd, Judd! There came an impulse to scream, to rage, to stamp his feet in a tantrum. And then he swallowed his anger; he had to be keen, cunning, the master.

  In other things before, without Judd,
nothing had ever gone wrong, nobody had ever found out. And Artie was engulfed by a wave of negation, a commanding need to wipe out all that had gone wrong, to wipe out Judd. As though he could will the dissolution of Judd, will him not to exist, by a pointing finger. You’re dead! You’re gone! That’s what you get for lousing everything up! And Artie turned, half anticipating that Judd would have vanished out of existence by his punishing wish. But through the glass of the phone-booth door, he could see the back of his partner’s sleek, small head, dark, tilted.

  As Judd phoned, a different voice answered. “ Jackson 2502.”

  Judd felt triumphant. “Mr. Kessler?” he asked.

  “Who? This is Hartmann’s Pharmacy.”

  He got the druggist to call out, “Anybody named Kessler been asking for a message?” But: “No, nobody of that name.”

  “Thank you,” Judd said. Then it was clear. Kessler had not taken the cab. In the last half-hour, the body must have been identified.

  The way Artie looked at him as he emerged was murderous. “Granted that we lost out on the ransom part of it,” Judd said, still feeling his mind working concisely, clearly, in the crisis – “the fact that they may have identified the body still does not mean they can identify us.”

  Artie cursed and turned to the I.C. tracks. Judd, too, looked at the train, still standing there, as though waiting for Kessler to get aboard. Then the train pulled away. They turned back to their rented car. “Let’s just ditch it,” Artie said.

  That would be the worst thing to do, Judd pointed out. The rental man would be bound to start a hunt, and by some freak, even though they had used fake names, a trail might be found leading to them. No, they had best return it at once and check out.

  Now that the dead boy was known to be a millionaire’s son police cars swarmed the street in front of Swaboda’s, and cab doors slammed as reporters arrived. Some looked at me with the hostility and respect owed a man for a clean beat; others disregarded me – I was just a kid who had broken this big story by some fluke. And now that the real newspapermen were here, I began to feel inadequate.