Murder Among Children

by Donald E. Westlake

  After dinner Hulmer and I moved to the living room and engaged in uneasy conversation. Neither of us was sure of his attitude toward the other, so that we spoke haltingly on the safest of topics—weather and highways and baseball—skirting even around the subject that had brought us together. As each of the others arrived, Hulmer made introductions and then the new member joined our uncomfortable group. After Kate had the dishes done, and joined us, talk was somewhat easier, but still hampered by the reason for our all being here.

  Ralph Padbury was the first arrival, and simultaneously looked exactly like his dead brother and nothing at all like him. Where George Padbury had taken the basic features common to both brothers and overlaid them with long hair, bushy mustache, and turtleneck sweater, Ralph Padbury had chosen a severe, pedestrian, anonymous, clerkish façade, with slicked-down hair, cleanshaven face, low-priced conservative suit and shirt and tie, and bookish horn-rim glasses. He seemed incomplete without an attaché case.

  He also looked unnaturally pale, having that pinched chalky expression about the eyes that means a recent severe shock. His brother had died a scant twelve hours before, and it showed in his face.

  A girl named Vicki Oppenheim was next. Short and stout, she was dressed all in black—sweater, skirt, stockings, shoes—and had to be dying of the heat, but didn’t show it. Her hair was black and long, gathered with a red rubber band at the back of her head and then falling free to below her shoulders. Her face was rather pretty, in a chubby way. Her natural expression was obviously an ebullient smile, which she was trying with uncertain success to banish, due to the seriousness of the occasion.

  “Golly,” she said, when Hulmer introduced us. “I don’t know what to say. Golly.”

  Kate saved me, saying to the girl, “None of us knows what to say, Vicki. Come sit over here.”

  The last to show up was a boy named Abe Selkin, thin, intense, hot-eyed, spade-bearded, crackling with intelligence and energy. He scanned the room with a quick computer-like glance and said, “War council.”

  “Not war,” I said. “Defense.”

  He nodded briskly, studied me for a millisecond, and said, “You’re in charge.”

  “Not the way you mean,” I said. “I’m not putting an army together here, I have no tasks to be performed. What I want from you people is enough information to make it possible for me to act on my own.”

  “We’re part of the scene,” Selkin said. “You could use us.”

  “Perhaps,” I lied. “For now, I only want information. Would you sit over there with Hulmer?”

  “Right.”

  I went back to my own chair before saying, “I’ve done my best to stay out of this thing. Which means I haven’t even read the newspaper stories about it. I know almost nothing, so forgive me if I ask what may seem like stupid questions. Like the name of the murdered girl, I don’t know that.”

  There was silence, each of them obviously waiting for one of the others to answer me, until Kate volunteered, saying, “Her name was Irene Boles, Mitch.”

  “Irene Boles.” I had armed myself with a notebook, into which I wrote the name. I looked at Hulmer. “What was her connection with the group?”

  He grinned a little and shook his head. “None,” he said.

  “None? Who was she?”

  “Hooker,” he said. “From uptown.”

  Abe Selkin said, “According to the papers, she was a prostitute, she’d done time.”

  “Where did she live?”

  Hulmer answered me, still with the same faint grin: “Harlem.”

  “And none of you had ever seen her before?”

  They all shook their heads, and Kate said, “The newspaper said she usually spent her time in the midtown area.”

  I said, “Would Terry Wilford have been likely to know her professionally?”

  “Not a chance,” Abe Selkin said.

  Vicki Oppenheim, looking wide-eyed and innocent, said, “Terry didn’t have to pay for it, Mr. Tobin.”

  “All right,” I said. “How about socially? Could he have met her somehow in her non-working life?”

  Hulmer said, “Terry didn’t know that chickie. She was a snow-head; if she wasn’t on Broadway working she was up in her place in Harlem stoned to the eyes.”

  I said, “Is that a guess? Kate, did the papers say she was a dope addict?”

  She nodded. “It said she was under the influence when she died.”

  “All right.” I looked from face to face. “I need a truthful answer to this one,” I said. “It won’t go any farther than this room.”

  “We know that,” Abe Selkin said.

  “Was Terry Wilford an addict?”

  Selkin shook his head. “Definitely not.”

  “Are any of the rest of you?”

  “That stupid we’re not,” Selkin said.

  Hulmer said, “We aren’t users, Mr. Tobin, that’s straight.”

  “What about George Padbury?”

  The brother, Ralph Padbury, who until now had been sitting quietly in his chair and seeming too dazed to really comprehend the conversation going on around him, suddenly sat up, very angry, and said, “My brother never touched any of that stuff! Who do you think you are?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to ask all the questions, I have to know where I stand.”

  “My brother’s dead, don’t you realize that?”

  Vicki Oppenheim reached out and took Padbury’s hand, saying, “Come on, Ralph. Everybody knows, that’s why we’re here. Mr. Tobin isn’t putting George down, he’s just trying to get the picture.”

  “He can just leave George out of this.”

  Vicki shook her head. “No, he can’t. He has to know everything about George. And about me, and Abe, and Hully. And you, too.”

  Padbury pulled his hand free, saying, “I have nothing to do with any of this. I told you people at the outset, I’m not involved, I’m not a party to any of this. I have my own—I have to take—”

  “I know how you feel, Mr. Padbury,” I said. “I feel much the same way myself. But a situation is—”

  “My life isn’t ruined!” he said hotly, glaring at me. “What does it matter to you, what do you care what happens? Or any of the rest of you? What sort of, what sort of reputations do you have to—I have a future to think about, a career.”

  “Mr. Padbury,” I said, and the doorbell rang. Kate got to her feet, and I went on, “No one is here to accuse anybody of anything, or muddy anybody’s reputation. I have to know the situation, that’s all.”

  “Well, I’m out of it!” he said, and got to his feet, moving with the jittery agitation of an essentially mild man driving himself to violent reaction. “I don’t know why you people called me here, I—Hulmer, I told you on the phone I didn’t see what good I could do, and—”

  I said, “Mr. Padbury, did you know Irene Boles?”

  “What?” Thrown off stride, he blinked at me without comprehension. “Who?”

  “The dead woman.”

  “The pros—No!”

  “I didn’t think so,” I said. “But you do know Robin Kennely.”

  “Of course I know Robin. Everybody in this room knows her.”

  “She’s in jail,” I said.

  “Bellevue,” Hulmer corrected me, and added, “But it’s the same thing.”

  Padbury said, “There’s nothing I can do for her. I know what you’re trying to say, but there’s just nothing I can do to help her.” He had calmed down in spite of himself, and went on reasonably, “I understand her parents are fairly well-to-do, I imagine they have hired attorneys to represent her. If she’s innocent, I’m sure—”

  Abe Selkin said, “Come off it, Ralph. Do you think she killed George?”

  “All right.” Padbury nodded, impatiently conceding the point, and said, “But the fact remains, I can do nothing to help her.”

  “You can help me,” I said, “and I’m trying to help her.”

  “What can you do that—?”

/>   “Mitch.”

  I turned my head, and Kate was in the doorway, and standing beside her, looking from face to face with a faint grim smile on his lips, was Detective Edward Donlon, the cop who had started all this.

  “Quite a gathering,” Donlon said, and took one step into the room. “What’s the occasion?”

  11

  I GOT TO MY feet. “You wanted to see me?”

  “I’m happy to see all you people,” Donlon said. He looked at Ralph Padbury, frowned at him, finally said, “Who are you, boy? You look familiar.”

  “He’s my guest,” I said. “Kate, would you stay with our guests? Mr. Donlon and I will talk in the kitchen.”

  “You know who I am.”

  “You were pointed out to me.”

  “Who did that nice thing?”

  “George Padbury.”

  His eyes flickered, and then he looked at Ralph Padbury again. “That’s who you look like,” he said.

  I walked across the living room, saying, “Come along. We can talk in the kitchen.”

  “Why don’t we stay here?” he said. “Don’t let me interrupt, you people just go right on like before. Talk about whatever you were talking about when I came in. What was the subject, Fass?”

  I said, “Donlon, are you here to create a situation?”

  He looked at me, amused and mock-innocent. That heavy jaw, bluish-gray now and almost in need of a razor, was deceptive, distracting from the quick intelligence in the eyes. Donlon looked almost like a dumb bull, but not quite. He was smart, and he wouldn’t act without a reason.

  He said, “What’s the problem, Tobin? This is a friendly call, a bunch of your new friends getting together. I mean, these people aren’t old friends of yours, are they?”

  I said, “Excuse me,” and started around him, toward the hall doorway.

  “Where you going? Aren’t you the host?”

  “I’m calling Captain Driscoll,” I said. “Maybe he’ll tell me what you’re here for.”

  “That’s enough, Tobin,” he said, and his voice was suddenly all steel.

  I turned and looked at him. “We’re in my house, Donlon,” I said. “In my house I decide what’s enough and who talks to who and when people come and go. Is this an official call?”

  “I already said it wasn’t.”

  “If you want to talk to me,” I said, “we’ll talk privately. In the kitchen. You coming? Or do you want to leave?”

  He didn’t like it. He wanted to throw some weight around—not so much because of me as because of the presence of the coffee-house crowd—and he couldn’t do it. I had the edge here, and it bothered him, the way a man might be bothered by too-tight shoes.

  But he didn’t let the silence get too long. He shrugged, and smiled, and kept looking directly at me as he said, “Well, that’s all right, I’ll be happy to come to the kitchen with you, Tobin. I can talk with these other folk some other time.”

  “That’s right. Come along.” I turned away again, and left the living room, and walked down the hall to the kitchen, hearing him come along behind me. From the living room there was total silence.

  At the kitchen entrance I stood aside and let Donlon go through first, then I followed and pushed shut the swinging door. It was perhaps the second time in fifteen years that door had been closed.

  I said, “Sit down if you want.”

  But he didn’t want. He turned to face me and he was all cold now, all steel. He said, “What are you mixing into, Tobin? What are you and those brats brewing?”

  “You’re beginning to sound official again,” I told him.

  “You got trouble enough,” he said. “You want to stay out of the way.”

  I said, “What are you worried about? Don’t you know Driscoll had me in to see him today?”

  He hadn’t known it. His eyes narrowed, and the hands closed into fists at his sides. He said, “What about, Tobin?”

  “My statement. He didn’t like it, so I changed it.”

  He wasn’t sure he understood me. Warily he said, “Changed it how?”

  I said, “My cousin Robin Kennely told me a police officer had told her friends about violations at Thing East. They weren’t sure what they were supposed to do to correct these violations, and Robin wanted me to talk to the police officer and find out what was required.”

  The wariness eased out of his expression and he made a small happy smile, saying, “What do you know? That’s what he wanted, huh?”

  “That’s what I gave him.”

  “And then he was happy?”

  “He was satisfied.”

  “That’s good.” His smile widened and he nodded, saying, “That was smart, Tobin, very smart. You don’t rock the boat.”

  “I remember the drill,” I said.

  The smile went away, replaced by a frown. “I don’t follow you, Tobin,” he said. “First you do a smart thing with Driscoll, and then you do something dumb.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like having that crowd in your living room. They’re troublemakers, Tobin. Dumbheads. Smart-ass kids. Bo-hee-mians. You going to be scoutmaster for them? You know the type they are, you must of run into them yourself back in the old days.”

  I knew what he meant. Any large city, and most particularly New York City, attracts hordes of the rootless young, youths who have left home as part of a vague unfocused revolt against authority—and, I suppose, against the inevitability of their future—and who, with too much time and too little money, become bored and restless and itchy, spoiling for any sort of action. Whether it’s drugs or sex or political activism or just ordinary barroom brawling, many of these youngsters come to the attention of the police sooner or later, and their attitude toward the cop is a distillation of their attitude toward home and parents. The cop is the bluntest and most direct symbol of authority, that authority against which the youth is already in rebellion. Professional criminals are less trouble to arresting officers than are members of the cult of rebellious youth.

  But if the youngsters right now in my living room did bear some resemblance to that type, and if they undoubtedly traveled with a group that contained several members of the type, and if they would react to arrest or police harassment in the same way as members of the type, it was still true that they themselves were other than or more than the type. Vicki Oppenheim, with only minor changes of dress—and, probably, speech—would fit right in at any rural church picnic in the country. Abe Selkin was too direct and self-contained to be involved with anything as vague as revolt against authority. Hulmer Fass, even more self-contained, was an entire population in and of himself, too completely divorced from the world to allow anything in it to upset him emotionally. And Ralph Padbury, of course, didn’t even bear a similarity to the bo-hee-mians, to use Donlon’s word.

  But whether Donlon was right or wrong about them was irrelevant and beside the point, the point being that their presence in my living room was no concern of his, which I told him, saying, “What are they to you? They can be where they want to be. I can have in my house who I want in my house.”

  “You aren’t sitting around,” he said, “playing spin the bottle. They’re up to something, and they want you in on it. Am I right?”

  “What would they be up to? I already told you the amended statement I gave your captain. You have nothing to fear from me, and nothing to fear from those people in there either.”

  “Then why are they here?”

  “That’s their business,” I said.

  “I’m making it mine.”

  I shook my head, and we stood looking at one another, me disliking him for being arrogant and on the take, and him disliking me for being an unknown quantity that could cause him trouble. Finally he shrugged and said, “Why struggle? I’ll get it later.”

  “Don’t start making trouble for those children,” I said.

  He gave me the mock-innocent look again. “What makes you think I’d make trouble?”

  “We had some like you in my
old precinct,” I said.

  He didn’t like that. He said, “We don’t have any like you, Tobin. We like it that way.”

  Simple insults don’t bother me any more, so I said, “Just remember to leave them alone.”

  “Or?”

  “Or I see if I can make trouble for you.”

  He frowned at me, not sure of himself, and said, “You think you can? With your past history, you think you can make trouble for anybody?”

  “I don’t know. I can try. I still know a couple of people. I could do my best to make a smell in your area.”

  Frowning, he turned away from me, walked around the kitchen table, stood facing the refrigerator for a minute. I heard him say under his breath, “Everything cuts twelve ways.” Then he rubbed a hand across his face, as though he were tired, and shook himself like a dog coming out of water.

  The swinging door pushed open, startling the both of us, and Bill walked in, absorbed in something inside his own head. He stopped two paces into the room and blinked at us. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he said, “I didn’t know anybody was here. I thought you were all in the living room.”

  Donlon looked at Bill like a man seeing a long-lost relative. “Your father and I just had some private talk to do, son,” he said, his voice unusually soft. “But we’re just about done.”

  “I’ve just got to get a couple tools,” Bill said. He went over to the tool drawer near the sink.

  Donlon said, “Working on a project, eh?”

  “Yes, sir.” Bill got wire cutters and the smallest screwdriver out of the drawer.

  “Model plane?” Donlon asked him.

  “No, sir. Some phonograph stuff. Excuse me.”

  Donlon’s eyes followed him as Bill left the room. Donlon shook his head and said, “That’s when they’re good. Kids, I love kids. You ever do any PAL work when you were on the force, Tobin?”