Al said, “What’s that got to do with her having me arrested?”
“You obtained a large sum from Mrs. Fergesson under false pretenses. You alleged that while working to protect her interests you encountered a severe loss, and you intimated that she was responsible and so should make good. As soon as she told me what she had done, I advised her to start action to stop that check.” The man’s eyes danced. “But of course you put it right through. Mrs. Fergesson then wished me to advise her concerning further action. You had, as we discovered, left California as soon as you had cashed the check.” His smile grew. “The bank informed us that you had converted the two thousand dollars into traveler’s checks. And we found that both you and your wife had packed and left together. In fact she had packed while you cashed the check.” He continued to smile at Al, almost as if he admired him.
“I sold her a car,” Al said.
“A thirty-year-old car completely in ruins. Worth no more than a few dollars as scrap.”
It was true. He had to admit it. “But they wrecked the car,” he said.
“Who?” Tsarnas’s eyes blazed up briefly.
“Harman and his goons.”
“Nonsense. Yes, you told her that. The Oakland police have the vandals. The car was wrecked even before Mr. Fergesson’s death, by some kids who’ve been vandalizing property up and down West Oakland for months.”
“Juveniles,” Al murmured.
“Yes,” Tsarnas said.
Al said, “Harman got my wife fired.”
“Your wife wasn’t fired,” Tsarnas said.
Al stared at him.
“If its important to establish this, and I don’t quite see why it is, we—that is, the Harman organization—checked with your wife’s employer. She quit, sir. She said that her husband now had a decent job and she had been wanting to quit for quite some time. It was not unexpected. They had no idea where she or you might have gone; she simply quit and left the office. Her check is being mailed to her. She didn’t even wait to pick it up.” The lawyer studied Al. “You were interested in Fergesson’s money, I take it; the accrual from the sale of his garage. Or was it a grudge because he sold his garage? Why did you go to so much trouble to bilk Mrs. Fergesson, deceiving her regarding the investment arranged through Mr. Harman, and then settle for two thousand instead of the—”
“I have nothing to say,” Al said. Somewhere he remembered that statement; it seemed to be right. It seemed to be what he wanted.
Considering, Tsarnas at length said, “Mrs. Fergesson is interested in having her money restored to her. Not in persecuting you. Do you have the money?”
“Most of it,” Al said.
“It can be arranged,” Tsarnas said, “that if you make full restitution, no charges will be pressed. There are innumerable expenses connected with your arrest in Utah and your return here; probably something would have to be worked out with both states. I don’t know. Anyhow, if you are willing and able—”
“I am,” Al said. “Willing and able. I can sell my lot and the rest of my cars. To get the money.”
“You have no record?” Tsarnas said. “No history of bunko stuff of this kind?”
“No history at all,” Al said.
“Were you working alone?” Tsarnas said. “I’m just curious. I know Mrs. Fergesson had great fondness and admiration for you, up to the moment she realized—and don’t imagine she wanted to realize—that you had bilked her out of two thousand dollars. My Lord, didn’t you work with her husband for a number of years?”
“Yes,” Al said. “I worked with her husband a number of years.”
“You really must have been nursing a long-term grudge,” Tsarnas said, “to become active so soon after his death. That man was just cremated.”
“How was the service?” Al said.
“I didn’t have the opportunity to be present.”
Suddenly Al realized that he still had the five dollars that Lydia had given him to buy flowers. It was still in his shirt pocket; he got it out and held it between his hands. He had bilked her out of this, too. So he handed it over to the lawyer. “This belongs to Lydia,” he said.
The lawyer put it in his briefcase, in an envelope.
“How did you know which way I went?” Al said. “How did you know I headed for Utah?”
“You were cashing those traveler’s checks all along the route. Every time you stopped to eat. And you paid for your ticket at the Sparks Greyhound ticket-office with a traveler’s check. There was a bulletin out just after that, and they got in touch with the police.”
Al said, “What about my wife?”
“She got in touch with us,” Tsarnas said. “From Reno. She had noticed that you were acting erratically, and she feared to travel any farther with you. So under a pretext she disembussed at some small town along the way. Wendover.”
“Of course I was acting erratically,” Al said. “Everyone was against me. Plotting to kill me.”
“So she probably is back here by now,” Tsarnas said, half to himself as he rose to his feet. “She felt you needed psychiatric aid. Possibly you do. If I were your attorney, I’d advise you to place yourself under county or state medical care. You certainly could obtain it, and private care is frightfully expensive.”
“Harman’s after me,” Al said. “He’s brought everyone else into it on his side. I’m surrounded. That’s why I had to leave the state.”
Eyeing him, Tsarnas said, “You might consider this. Mr. Harman has an airtight case he could bring into court against you, if he really wanted to hound you—as you seem to believe. Defamation of character, in as much as you accused him before witnesses of being a criminal, a swindler. And it can be shown that it damaged him in a financial way; it affected his business interests, did it not?”
“Who’d I say that in front of?” At the Harman house he had said nothing against Harman; he was sure of it. “Who’s the witness?” The old man, who had heard him say that, was dead.
Tsarnas said, “Mrs. Fergesson.”
It was true. He nodded.
“I have no reason to believe he contemplates any civil action against you,” Tsarnas said. “I’m only pointing it out in order to bring you to your senses, so perhaps you can be made to listen to reason.”
“I’m listening to reason,” Al said. “All the time.”
“Did the grief and shock of Fergesson’s death temporarily drive you to derangement?” Tsarnas said. “Under the emotional pressure did you lose the ability to distinguish what you were doing, from a moral standpoint? Well, it doesn’t matter; if you behave yourself, and keep your head, you won’t be coming up before the judge anyhow.” He nodded goodbye to Al and left the room. The door shut after him.
An hour later Al was told that he could go.
He left the Hall of Justice and stood outside on the sidewalk, his hands in the pockets of his cloth jacket.
They really gave me a demonstration, he said to himself as he watched the people and traffic going by, the heavy downtown Oakland traffic with its buses and taxis. They showed me they could whip me back here any time they wanted. And they could tell it their way, make their account of it work and demolish mine. The same way they demolished my Marmon. And, he realized, they got everyone in it, even my wife. Although, he realized, she doesn’t know and never will know.
Who does know? he asked himself. Lydia Fergesson? Probably not. That lawyer? Too shrewd; I’ll never be able to tell about him, one way or another, if he believes it, or if he knows it’s nothing but a mass of interlocking and carefully polished shit. The police? They don’t care. They’re just a machine that does what the wires make it do, like a vacuum cleaner that sweeps up whatever’s in front of it, and whatever’s small enough.
Harman knows, he said to himself. That, perhaps, is the only one I can be certain of. Not Bob Ross for sure, not Knight, not Gam, or any of them working for Harman; not even Mrs. Harman. But Chris Harman himself; that’s the difference between him and the rest of us. He k
nows what’s going on; he knows what makes the thing run. And, Al thought, I know.
Hands in his pockets, he walked over to the bus stop to wait for a bus that would take him uptown to his apartment.
They prey on the weak, he said to himself. That is, the sick, such as the old man. The helpless, such as me. The widows, such as Lydia Fergesson. And they have us. There’s no way we can fight back, because the language itself works against us. The very words were manufactured to explain their situation so it looks good, and ours so it looks bad. Looks so bad, in fact, that we’re relieved to be let out of jail; we’re relieved to be allowed to walk the street.
He thought, I guess they’ll let me go back into the used-car business. Where I was. I wasn’t offending anyone, there. I was in my place, the way Tootie Dolittle is in his place.
But the difference between me and Tootie, he realized, is that Tootie knew the boundary; he knew how far he could go before he was stepped on. And I didn’t. I thought if I used all the words, the same type of talk as Harman and Ross and Knight and Gam and the rest of them, I could make it, too. As if the only thing that separated me from them was the talk.
The yellow Key System bus came. Along with the other people at the stop he pushed onto it; the doors wheezed shut, and the bus started up. He was on his way back to his apartment in the three-story building where the McKeckneys and the young Mexican couple lived. Where he had begun his effort, his life of lies and crimes.
I wonder if Julie is home, he asked himself. He did not feel like coming home to an empty apartment.
16
The door of his apartment was unlocked, and, as he opened it, he could hear voices from inside. So she was home, he thought. He pushed the door so hard that it banged. But it was not Julie. In the living room of the apartment stood Bob Ross, smoking his pipe and looking at a motor magazine that he had picked up from the table. And, in the other room, was Chris Harman. He was using the phone.
Seeing Al, Harman finished his phone call and hung up. He came into the living room and said, “We were just checking now, trying to locate your wife.”
“I see,” Al said. “Did you find her?”
Ross said, “Apparently she’s somewhere in Nevada, or possibly on the California side of Lake Tahoe. She may be at one of those Lake resorts, such as Harrah’s Club.”
“She’ll turn up,” Harman said, in his easy, friendly voice; he smiled at Al, the smile that Al was familiar with. “But probably broke. But glad to be home again.”
“What do you care?” Al said.
Harman said, “You’ve suffered a lot of unnecessary loss in this, Al. I personally am very concerned that it be made up to you.”
Beside him, Ross nodded in agreement as he put down the motor magazine.
Al said, “What loss?”
“The humiliation,” Harman said. “For one thing.” His hand moved. Ross, seeing the motion, ducked his head and started from the apartment, out into the hall. “I’ll be along in about fifteen minutes,” Harman said after him.
“I’ll be in the car,” Ross said, and shut the door after him.
“I haven’t suffered any humiliation,” Al said. “Show me where I have.”
“Perhaps the words the wrong one. Pardon me if it is. I get a little clumsy sometimes when I try to express my deeper feelings; bear with me. You don’t deserve what happened to you, Al. You know it and I know it. Bob is aware of it. In fact we were all discussing it last night, when we learned that you had been picked up in Salt Lake City and were being held. My wife, Bodo, was especially concerned that something be done for you. I got in touch with Mrs. Fergesson’s lawyer…” Harman paused and grinned, almost a grimace. “She’s an incredible person, that Lydia. I had never met her before, of course. Until this business. I must say it’s a real experience to be around her for any length of time. But surprisingly, we found we had a great deal in common in terms of interests. She’s educated well beyond her external manner; once you get down to the authentic person—it makes you anxious to know her much better.”
Al nodded.
“She could hold her own in any salon,” Harman said. “Anywhere on the Continent.”
Al nodded.
“What’s your attitude toward me?” Harman said.
Al shrugged.
“Not too unfriendly,” Harman said. “Not something you can’t get over, in time. Although God knows you have no valid basis for any enmity toward me. But we’ll let that pass. The mind is a strange instrument.” He reflected. “At any rate,” he said, pacing around the living room of the apartment, “I want to rehabilitate you.”
Al said, “I see.”
“I feel,” Harman said, “that it’s my responsibility. In many ways. Some that you wouldn’t understand.”
They both were silent.
“How do you mean, ‘rehabilitate’?” Al said. “You mean send me to a psychiatrist?”
“Oh hell no,” Harman said. “What kind of rehabilitation is that? A perfunctory social means of providing custodial care, or some crackpot Freudian religion to make money off neurotic women. I mean through a decent job that will give you back your self-respect and dignity. By harnessing your ability.” He added, “Of which you have plenty. Perhaps more than you realize.”
“Would I work for your organization?” Al said. “Or do you mean you’d put in a word for me somewhere?”
“Frankly,” Harman said, meeting his gaze directly, “I’d like to have you with me. But if you don’t cotton to the notion—” He shrugged, still smiling. “It’s okay with me. I’ll see that you’re put on somewhere else.” He glanced at his watch.
“You have to go?” Al said.
“Yes. In a minute. Jim’s death was a terrible ordeal for all of us. God, he was so—” Harman gestured. “Lively. Animated. Full of his old good spirits. Like he was when I first started taking my cars to him. Cracking jokes.”
“Full of the old Jim,” Al said.
“As if,” Harman said, “what was left of him all sort of—how would you put it? Boiled up at once. And was consumed. There was nothing left, after that.”
“Really sad,” Al said. “And thought provoking.”
“Will you be thinking it over?” Harman said. “About going back and picking up? I mean the job.”
“Oh yes,” Al said. “Sure.”
“Good boy,” Harman said. “You know, Al, you always have to be able to pick up again. If you can learn that you have it. If you can put adversity behind you and resume. Resume and resume; never stop resuming. Because—well, here’s how I see it, Al. Nothing is that important. Not even death. You see?”
He nodded.
Harman s hand shot out and they shook. Then Harman opened the hall door, waved, smiled a short, penetrating, official smile at him, and was gone. But then, almost at once, the door flew partway open, and he was back. “You have no fundamental hard feelings toward me, do you, Al?” he said sharply.
“No,” Al said.
Nodding, Harman shut the door. This time he was really gone.
For a long time Al stood at the window of the empty apartment, by himself, watching the street below. Julie had not come back, even by six, and by then he was becoming too hungry to stay any longer. He went into the kitchen and fooled with dishes and cans, but it was no use. So he wrote a note to her and left the apartment.
As he came out onto the dark sidewalk he saw a shape at work off in the shadows, bouncing up and down. At first he thought it was an animal. But it was Earl McKeckney, busy with some matter of his own, toiling as silently as usual. The boy raised his head as Al passed him. They looked at each other, said nothing, and then Al went on down the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets.
A flapping sound made him pause at the corner. Behind him, at top speed Earl McKeckney came running along the sidewalk backward. He did not bump into anything, but veered as he came to each telephone pole and wall; he reached Al, danced around in a circle, and continued on, still backward, still avoiding all th
ings.
“Hey,” Al said. “How do you do it?” Perhaps the kid had memorized the position of every object in the block.
Not stopping, Earl yelled, “I got my ring.” He held up his hand; on his finger was a ring with a bit of glass in it, a mirror. “My Captain Zero Secret Periscope Ring.” Eyes fixed on his ring, facing Al, he departed, hurrying deeper and deeper into the darkness, until he at last was gone.
Really weird, Al thought. Can’t make it out at all.
He continued on until he reached an Italian restaurant where he and Julie had often eaten. She was not there, but he went in and ordered dinner anyhow.
After he had eaten dinner he roamed around the evening streets for a while. And then he turned in the direction of Tootie Dolittle’s apartment.
“Hi,” he said, as Tootie let him in. The Dolittles were still eating dinner; he saw the table with its dishes and pans and silver. Leading Tootie off to one side, he said, “Listen, I want you to do something for me. I want you to get me something.” He wanted Tootie to get him a gun.
“That thing?” Tootie said. “That we were discussing you should have?”
“That’s right,” Al said.
Glancing at his wife, Tootie said in a low voice, “You can walk into a hardware store and buy one, man.”
“Oh,” Al said.
“Only it’ll be registered, and you know how they can do with those bullets.” Tootie’s voice was virtually inaudible. “You mean a gun what got found somewhere. That nobody bought.”
“Yes,” Al said.
“I don’t know,” Tootie said. “Anyhow, come in and have some dinner,” He moved Al toward the table.
“How do you do, Al?” Mary Ellen Dolittle said, as he seated himself. “Welcome, and have something with us, please.”
“Hi,” Al said. “Thanks.” He had a little of the dumplings and lamb stew. Tootie had already put a plate, silver, a napkin, plastic cup and saucer in front of him; Al stared down in bewilderment. The objects seemed to materialize out of nothing.
“You look really tired,” Mary Ellen said, with sympathy. “I think I never seen you so tired-looking, Al.”
Humpty Dumpty in Oakland Page 22
