Rendezvous in Black

by Cornell Woolrich

  Until the lights go out in the window behind him. Until the drugstore man locks up and goes by. Until the eight that never moves has become the midnight, the one, of reality.

  Then the pathetic drugstore cowboy shuffles away, loses himself in the darkness. “Tomorrow night she’ll come. Tomorrow night at eight. Maybe she stayed away on purpose; you know how girls are, trying to tease me, keep me on my toes.” The wan footfalls die away, the figure loses itself in the gloom.

  No one knows where he comes from. No one knows where he goes. No one cares, much. It’s just another life, and the world’s so full of lives. He doesn’t live where he used to live; they wouldn’t have him there any more. They touch their heads and nod to show what they mean. He doesn’t work where he used to work; they wouldn’t have him there any more, either.

  But you can always find him, down by the drugstore, down by the square. On a date that never comes true.

  Lots of people get so they know him by sight, even the ones that didn’t know him before. But the ones that did, they pass him by with the rest. What can they do for him? “Don’t look. There’s poor Johnny Marr waiting for his dead girl again.”

  A few of them try to be kind to him in odd, haphazard ways. Human beings are funny. One of the young fellows he used to know goes by one night, silently puts a package of cigarettes into his hand, goes on without a word. To keep him from being quite so lonely while he waits.

  One particularly raw night the drugstore man suddenly comes out to the door, thrusts a mug of steaming coffee into his hands. Again without a word. Takes the mug in again when he’s emptied it. Just that once—never before then, never again.

  Human beings are funny. They are so cruel, they are so kind; they are so calloused, they are so tender.

  He becomes a landmark, a fixture, a cigar-store Indian. Only, a cigar-store Indian with warm blood coursing through it beneath its stoic rigidity.

  Another night, a well-meaning middle-aged lady, who didn’t know, hadn’t heard the story, who had just come out of the movie-house a few doors down, stepped over and accosted him.

  “Pardon me, young man, but can you tell me what time it is? I’m afraid I stayed in there longer than I intended to.”

  He looks at his watch solemnly. “Three to eight.”

  “Why no. You must be mistaken!” she protests volubly. “It can’t be. It was that when I went into the show, and I’ve been in there all of two and a half hours. Is it too much trouble for you to give me a civil ans—”

  Suddenly she shuts up. Her jaw hangs slack. Something about the look he gives her strikes terror into her heart. She backs away, a step by a step, until she has increased the distance between them sufficiently. Then she turns suddenly and waddles away as fast as she can carry herself, looking back repeatedly to make sure he hasn’t started after her.

  She has just seen imminent death peer forth at her from a living face.

  She is one of the wise ones, one of the forewarned ones; she ran away in time.

  And then one night they changed the cop down there by the square. The old one got too old, or was shifted, or went away. The new one was officious, overconscientious, as new cops are so often apt to be.

  He made his tour of the square, and Johnny was there. He made his return tour, and Johnny was still there. He came back again the third time, on his last tour of duty, and he stopped and went over to him.

  “Now, what is it?” he said. “You’re getting on my nerves. You’ve been here three solid hours. You don’t dress up the square. I don’t care what Simmons put up with, but I’m in charge now.” And he nudged him in the hip with his stick to get him to move his leg.

  “I’m waiting for my girl,” Johnny said.

  “Your girl’s dead,” the cop said brutally. “They told me about that. She’s buried. She’s lying in the ground, in the cemetery up on the hillside, this very minute. I even went up there and seen the plot and the marker with my own eyes. I can even tell you what the headstone says on it—”

  Johnny Marr suddenly flung up his hands and covered both ears, with desperate intensity.

  “She’s never coming here again,” the cop said. “Get that through your head. Don’t do that when I’m talking to you, understand? Now move on, and don’t let me find you here again.”

  Johnny Marr swayed a little, like someone coming out of a trance. The cop’s stick nudged him, and he moved one foot. The cop’s stick nudged him again, and he moved the other foot. The cop’s stick kept it up until finally he was moving his feet of his own accord. Then the cop stood there and watched him, until he was out of sight.

  And from that night on, suddenly he wasn’t standing there in that same place any more. No one saw him any more.

  A few of them wondered about him, where he’d gone, what had become of him. Then they forgot to wonder about him. Then they forgot about him.

  One or two people claimed they’d seen him standing, the next day, with a packed grip beside him, waiting on the station platform for the train to take him away. But nobody knew if that was true or not.

  Maybe the cop should have let him stand there, should have let him alone. He hadn’t been hurting anybody, until then.

  Tri-State Airlines were well satisfied with the services of the employee down on their rolls as Joseph Murray. He’d been with them about three months. His job was filing clerk. That gave him access to flight schedules, lists of reservations, and all the multitudinous archives accumulated by such a large organization. He seemed to take a great interest in his work. He was constantly at the files, burrowing through them, looking up former bookings, scanning old-time passenger lists. He even stayed after hours, did it on his own time. He went back, back, back—years back in the records. Then suddenly he lost interest.

  He would even have been in line for a small raise. It was the policy of the company, at the end of the first six months. Only, all at once he wasn’t there any more to get it. He didn’t resign, he didn’t even give notice of quitting. He just walked out the door and never walked back in again. One day, in the morning, he was working there. But that same day, in the afternoon, he wasn’t.

  They waited for him to come back. He didn’t. They checked. He’d left the address he’d given. Nobody knew where he had gone.

  They couldn’t understand, but they couldn’t stop and worry about it either. They took on somebody else in his place, they had to. But his successor wasn’t nearly as diligent or conscientious about his work as he had been. He only went near the files when he had to.

  Liberty Airways Inc. were well satisfied with the services of the employee down on their pay roll as Jerome Michaels. He, too, was constantly at the files, winnowing through them, noting dates, frowning over hours of departure and hours of arrival, plotting courses of flight on the reference maps. Then suddenly he just stopped being around. One day he was there, the next he wasn’t.

  Continental Transport had the same experience. So did Great Eastern. So did Mercury. It happened once to each of them. To each of their ground staffs.

  And then the smaller companies started running into this oddity. One by one, all down the line. Down to small concerns, with about six planes to their name, operating nonscheduled flights. That is, flights without any definite timetable—flights to order, so to speak, chartered by private individuals or small private groups just for the one occasion itself. However, they too kept records and accounts, they were required to by law, for the sake of the licenses permitting them to operate, for tax purposes, and so on.

  Such as the little shoestring organization calling itself, with a grandiloquence that fooled no one but that sounded good, Comet Trips. It had a very small headquarters of not more than two subdivided rooms, an office staff of exactly two, some very patchy planes that passed inspection by the skin of their teeth, and two very worried and harassed partners to run it. But it had files of a sort.

  One day one of the two employees, Jess Miller by name, made a funny sound at those files. The other, th
e girl who worked in the dusty, decrepit office with him, looked around, said, “What’s the matter, Jess? You sick or something?”

  He didn’t answer. He never said a word.

  He just ripped one of the yellowed file cards bodily out of its fastening.

  “Hey, don’t, the bosses’ll have a fit!” she exclaimed.

  The file drawer stayed open, the office door stayed open, he wasn’t in there with her any more.

  He never even took his hat with him. It stayed there on the rack. It stayed there for days until they finally threw it out. He had six-twentyfive coming to him too, for a half week’s work. And believe it or not, it was a boon to Comet Trips, just then, not to have to pay it.

  She told one of the bosses what he’d done, and the boss took a look, tried to find out for himself just which card it was that had been torn out. He couldn’t. The whole file was so out-of-date, so jumbled up, he couldn’t even tell.

  However, in addition to getting a lot of dust all over his cuffs, he did get one good idea out of it. He extracted and dumped out the whole file then and there, into a trash basket.

  “That should have been done years ago,” he said. “I didn’t even know it was still in there. Glad he reminded me.”

  The card said in faded typing:

  Number (and then a set of numerals that meant nothing any more).

  Chartered by: Rod and Reel Club, Amateur Sporting Organization.

  Destination: Lake Star-of-the-Woods.

  Rate: $500.

  Time of Departure: Six P.M., May 31st, 19—

  Pilot: Tierney, J. L.

  And then these names, as passengers, each with an accompanying address as of that time:

  Garrison, Graham.

  Strickland, Hugh.

  Paige, Bucky.

  Drew, Richard R.

  Ward, Allen.

  On a map, by secret lamplight, card at hand for quick reference, a ruler and a pencil plot a careful straight line between the large city, where the flight had its origin, and the small star-shaped lake, where it had its terminus. The shortest line between the two. As the crow flies. Trains don’t run that way on tracks, nor cars on the roads. They can’t. But a plane can, in the unobstructed air.

  And between the city and the lake, this pencilled guide line passes directly over a little place called—

  The pencil-point snapped off. The body of the pencil struck the map and bounced off again. A fist clawed at the map, and as it vengefully closed and squeezed and choked it, the map rippled into furrows, was sucked up into a crushed mass between its remorseless fingers.

  “He’s dead,” the weary-looking woman in the doorway said without emotion. “Been dead two years now. He was my older sister’s eldest boy. Better off, too. Ah, it was no life for any man, risking his neck in them rotten old crates held together by wires and spit. All for a few measly dollars. Carrying drunks to conventions and lodge meetings and fishing trips and what not. No, he didn’t drink himself. But the passengers all brought bottles on board, he told us so often enough. They were not supposed to, but he had to shut one eye. What could he do? It was his living. They’d hide the bottles from him, and then when they were empty they’d throw them over the side. He never actually caught them at it, but they must have. They’d all be roaring, singing drunk when they got there, and not a sign of a bottle in the plane.”

  “How’d he die?”

  “Like his kind do,” she said simply. “Deep down under the ground, and only three blocks from his home. He was jostled off the edge of a subway platform, and a train cut him in two.”

  The list now read:

  Passengers: Garrison, Graham.

  Strickland, Hugh.

  Paige, Bucky.

  Drew, Richard R.

  Ward, Allen.

  2.

  THE FIRST RENDEZVOUS

  GARRISON, Jeanette (nee Wright). On May 31st. Beloved wife of Graham S. Funeral services private. Kindly omit flowers.

  —OBITUARY COLUMNS, DAILY NEWSPAPERS, JUNE 2ND.

  The blinds were down over all the windows. There was a wreath on the door. It was raining softly, and the red-brick, white-trimmed Georgian house looked cold and lonely. The drops falling from the trees that stood around it, more clearly visible than in the open for they were held back and thickened by the screen of leaves they had to filter through, made the trees all seem to be weeping in unison.

  The blinds were down on the limousine too as it turned into the rain-polished driveway and slowed to a stop before the entrance steps. The driver alighted, opened, and held the rear door.

  A man got down, his face solemn, turned to face the inside of the car, and extended his arm helpfully to someone else, who was yet to appear.

  A second man emerged. His face was more than solemn, it was ravaged with grief. He accepted the supporting arm, and painfully made his way up the steps. The door had already been opened to admit them by the time they reached it. A butler stood behind it, his eyes decently cast down.

  Inside, there was that hushed, brooding melancholy of a house in which a death has just taken place. The two men went into a library just off the main hall. The butler tactfully closed the door after them, left them in privacy.

  The one helped the other into a chair. The sitter turned his head and looked up at him presently in a sort of pathetic appeal.

  “She looked natural, didn’t she?”

  “She looked beautiful, Gray,” his friend reassured him. He clutched him hard by the shoulder for a moment, turned his head away as he did so, let his hand trail away finally in helpless inability to do more than just that.

  “Don’t you want to go upstairs and lie down for a while?” he asked him.

  “No, I’m all right. I’ll—I’ll make it.” He tried, rather bravely, to smile. “It comes to everyone, and whining or whimpering doesn’t make it any easier to bear. She wouldn’t have wanted me to take it that way, anyhow. I want to be like she wanted me to be.”

  “Do you want some brandy?” his friend said softly. “It was damp out there.”

  “No thanks.”

  “How about some coffee? You haven’t eaten a mouthful all day today and most of yesterday.”

  “Thanks, no. Not right now. There’ll be time enough for all that. I’ll have all the rest of my life for food and drink.”

  “Do you want me to stay here with you tonight? Morgan can put me up in the guest room.”

  Garrison raised a protesting palm. “You don’t have to do that, Ed. I’m really all right. It’s pretty far out here for you, and you’ve got an office waiting for you tomorrow. You go home and get some sleep. You’ve earned it. You’ve been swell. Don’t know what I would have done. Thanks for everything.”

  His friend gripped his hand. “I’ll call you in the morning, see how you’re making out.”

  “I’ll go up to bed in a little while,” Garrison promised. “I’ll sit here first and look over some of these condolence messages Morgan’s stacked up here. It’ll take my mind off . . .”

  “Good night, Gray,” his friend said quietly.

  “Good night, Ed.”

  The door closed.

  He waited until he’d heard him leave the house. Then he waited a little longer, for Morgan’s inquiring good-night tap that he’d known was coming, to sound upon the door.

  He told him the same thing he had his friend when he opened the door and put his head in. “You can go up now, Morgan. Don’t wait for me. I’m just going to sit here awhile and look over these messages. No thanks, I don’t want anything. Good night.”

  He was alone now. The way he wanted to be. Even in grief, it’s better to be alone than with someone else.

  He cried a little, first. In the way of a man who is not used to crying, who has seldom if ever cried before. In a subdued, stifled way, head within his arms. Then that was over. He raised his head, and presently his eyes had dried of themselves. He sat there thinking of her for a while. Her laughter out there in the hall; her voice, when she
came home and asked Morgan, “Is Mr. Garrison here yet?”—the sight of her in the open door, all bustle and animation. “Oh, there you are! Hello there! Did you think I was lost?”

  So sudden. So sharp. So swift.

  It hurt much worse, even, than the crying had. It would never stop, either. It would always go on hurting, because he would always go on thinking of her.

  He tried to dispel it, assuage it, presently, by turning his attention to the messages of condolence. He began to go through them one by one. “Our deepest sympathy,” “our most heartfelt sympathy,” “in your loss.” There was something monotonous about them. But then, he realized, what could they say? What should they say?

  He went ahead. The fourth one from the top said—

  He jolted a little and his eyes opened wider.

  He sat staring at it for some time. Then he sat staring off into space, but still holding it tight in his hand. Then he returned to staring at it again.

  He rose and stood there now, but still staring at it. He’d placed it on the table with his hands flattened, one on either side of it, and his head inclined, acutely, tautly, staring down at it from directly above.

  Then, in some kind of swift decision, he strode for the door, flung it open, and went out into the hall. He went back to where the telephone was and taking it up, dialed with nervous haste. Then he stood there waiting.

  When he spoke at last, his voice dropped to a bated urgency.

  “Is this the police department? This is Graham Garrison. Sixteen Penrose Drive. Could you send someone over here? An investigator? Yes, right now. As soon as possible. Of a homicidal nature. I’ll discuss that with the person you send. I’d rather not over the phone.”

  He hung up. He went back to the library, back to the table where he’d left it. He looked at it some more.

  It was unsigned. It said simply:

  Now you know what it feels like.

  They sent Cameron over. It was his baby from then on.

  Cameron was nothing too confidence-inspiring. Perhaps because there hadn’t been anyone else there at that hour, or perhaps because, in their book, that kind of a call only rated that kind of a man. Or perhaps because the draft law was already beginning to be felt and standards were going down.