Murder Among Children

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Let me know if anything else happens,” I said.

  13

  I HADN’T HEARD FROM Hulmer again, nor from either of my acquaintances on the force, by ten the next morning when I left the house and took the subway to Manhattan.

  It was going to be another miserable day, hot and humid, the air heavy with sunlight and rancid moisture. When I stepped outside at ten o’clock the world already had the characteristic feel of hot wet wool, and one had the feeling of walking doggedly through some substance thicker than air. I wore a short-sleeved white shirt open at the throat, no tie, and by the time I’d walked to the subway stop the shirt was drenched and sticking to my skin.

  The train I rode was nearly empty. The fans helped a little, but at the other end of the ride was Manhattan, which was even closer and muggier than Queens. Because there’s no sensible subway method for getting to the Lower East Side, and because I’ve never been able to understand the Manhattan bus lines, I splurged and took a cab downtown. It turned out to be air-conditioned, the only time I’d ever been lucky enough to get one of those, though at first the luck didn’t seem entirely good; my sopping shirt turned ice-cold, and I sat there shivering, thoughts of pneumonia circling in my head while people on the other side of the window glass were fanning themselves with magazines.

  Just as I had gotten used to the cool dry air inside the cab we arrived at the new headquarters of the New World Samaritans. Another store front, the windows here were painted a flat white, plus a great deal of gold lettering. The window to the left of the entrance said, near the top, New World Samaritans, and below that, American Cathedral. Filling out the rest of the window were groups and clusters of words, among them Have You Been Saved?, Bishop Walter Johnson Resident Custodian, All Welcome, Open Twenty-four hrs, Jesus Will Succor You, Enter and Make Your Peace with God, and so on. The window on the other side, without repeating any of the phrasing, continued the same sentiments, while the white-painted glass of the door merely read Entrance to Salvation.

  Leaving the cab was like walking into a closet full of overcoats. Almost nauseated, I hurried across the sidewalk and into the—store? church? cathedral? mission?

  The inside was astonishing. I’d expected the usual grubby Lower East Side store front, plus some chairs or benches. Instead I’d walked into a cool dim pale room that made me think of California monasteries. The walls had been done over in rough plaster and painted white; there were dark wood beams across the otherwise white ceiling, the floor was good old wood dark with oil, and about a dozen rows of pews—dark wood, well polished—faced a muted dim altar at the far end of the room, the altar done in white with gold and purple trim. Some kind of ivy stretched across the wall behind the altar, looking cool and serene.

  The air in here was cool, rather dry, very pleasant, much more natural than that inside the cab. As I walked down the central aisle toward the altar I felt my body relaxing, as though in some strange and unexpected way I’d turned a corner and there in front of me was home. I very nearly smiled, just to be there, and the feeling was in no way religious or mystical; it was, in fact, mostly architectural, the delight of these pale dim surroundings contrasting with the muckiness of the world outside.

  There was no one in this room, but I found I was in no hurry to seek anyone out. I stood in front of the altar, looking at the few objects on its white-draped surface: candlesticks, a large open book, a brass goblet, a black square cloth edged in gold, and so on. Even seeing that the climbing ivy on the rear wall was artificial—it would, I suppose, have to be—didn’t affect the grip the place had on me.

  I don’t know how long I stood there, but I didn’t move until an unobtrusive door to the right of the altar opened and a man in a floor-length white robe with a white rope braid belt came through and said, “Good morning, brother.” He shut the door behind himself and walked over to me, saying, “It was good of you to come to see us.”

  Everything was right about him but the face, which belonged not to a monk but to a bank clerk or post-office employee. It was round, pale, weak-featured, with pale blue eyes behind glasses with light plastic frames. But he was balding, with a very tonsure-like effect, and his voice was deep and confident and sympathetic.

  I said, “I’d like to speak to Bishop Johnson.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Then your purpose here is a secular one.”

  “I’m Mitchell Tobin. I believe Abraham Selkin phoned the bishop I’d be coming.”

  “Possibly,” he said. “I’ll go tell the bishop you’re here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Not at all.” He turned away, went to the door, and paused there to look back at me again and say, “And yet, brother, when I first saw you I believe you had another purpose in your head.”

  I glanced at the altar, and looked back at him. “That may be,” I said. “But it will have to wait.”

  “Salvation always has to wait,” he said, and went through the doorway, and left me alone.

  I looked at the altar again, frowning, asking myself: What did he see in my face? When he’d opened the door, for just a second or two I’d been unaware of his presence. What had been on my face then? What had I been thinking about, standing here in this pseudo-monastery?

  My days on the force. An acrid nostalgia had crept into my mind, bringing me scenes from those days, tinged with brass-green as though the memories had been too long in a trunk in a galleon sunk at the bottom of the sea. I’d been remembering small moments of companionship with Jock Sheehan, who had been my partner, and small moments of pleasure with Linda Campbell, in whose bed I had been while Jock was being shot to death.

  I wanted to talk to someone. I picked through a filing cabinet in my mind, turning over card after card, going through the names of all my friends, my former friends, my acquaintances, my relatives, everyone, looking for someone to whom I could go and say the million words I hadn’t said in the last year.

  I even wanted to talk to the tonsured white-robed bank clerk. But that would be self-indulgent, useless and away from the point. The point was the murder of Terry Wilford, the murder of Irene Boles, the probable murder of George Padbury, the arrest of Robin Kennely, the possible threat to either myself or the other partners in Thing East. Even if there were anything to be gained in making it possible for the million unsaid words to be said—and I didn’t believe there was—this was neither the time nor the place for it.

  I’m sure there was nothing in my face to intrigue the white-robed man when he returned. I was under control, standing near the door, going over in my mind the questions I intended to ask Bishop Johnson.

  The white-robed man looked at me and nodded as though he’d just won a bet with himself. “The bishop will be happy to see you,” he said. “If you’ll come with me?”

  I followed him into a small beige room with a few armchairs and end tables—clearly a place for talk—and on to a flight of stairs leading upward. We went up to the third floor and down a narrow dark gray corridor lined with doors and into an absolutely bare room furnished only with two white kitchen chairs facing each other in the middle of the floor. Two windows, heavy with dust but completely without drapes or curtains or shades or blinds or anything else, looked out over Avenue A and Tompkins Square Park. My guide said, “The bishop will be with you in a moment,” and went out, shutting the door behind him.

  The room was square, about ten feet on a side, with gray walls and a stained yellowing ceiling. Faded dark-patterned linoleum was on the floor. The paint on the two chairs was chipped. The upper pane of glass in the right-hand window was cracked, the crack covered with masking tape peeling loose at one end.

  This was what one should expect from a building in this neighborhood, and the contrast with that first-floor chapel was unnerving. Why had they left this room like this? Why intensify its bleakness even more, with bare windows and less than the minimum of furniture?

  I went over to one of the windows and looked out at the park, which was full of children, running
and riding the swings and playing basketball as though there were no such thing as humidity. I stood and looked out the window and refused to let my mind drift from my purpose.

  It was only two or three minutes before the door opened and Bishop Walter Johnson walked in, surprising me; I’d expected for some reason to be left alone here for a considerable time.

  Bishop Johnson himself was also surprising. I hadn’t been sure what to expect Bishop Johnson to be, but in my list of possibilities I wouldn’t have included a slender handsome crew-cut thirty-year-old blind man in a dapper pale gray suit and pearl-gray tie.

  He entered, shut the door, took two strides into the room, smiled at air, stuck his hand out, and said, “Mr. Tobin? I’m happy to know you. Abe called last night, told us you’d be coming along.”

  I hurried over from the window, not wanting his hand to be suspended alone in midair overlong. “How do you do? Bishop Johnson?”

  “That’s right.” His smile was strong, self-confident, and so was his handshake. “Sit down,” he said, and gestured toward one of the kitchen chairs, himself walking without hesitation to the other one and sitting down.

  It was difficult to look at him. His blindness was of a kind that marred his eyes, leaving them flawed and wrinkled and gray, a shocking error in his handsome face. He must have realized this, because he was no sooner seated than he took out dark glasses and put them on. I understood that he had come into the room without them so I would know at once that he was blind, and I found myself admiring the unobtrusive control this man had on his environment.

  Seated facing him, I said, “I suppose Selkin told you what I want to see you about.”

  “I think so. The murders, naturally. But mostly about keys.”

  “Yes. There’s some question how Irene Boles—she’s the girl who was murdered also.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Well. There’s some question how she got into the building.”

  He nodded. “Naturally you want to know how many keys there are and who has them.”

  “Yes.”

  “There are two in this building,” he said. “One with several other loose keys in an old Sucrets box in my middle desk drawer in my office upstairs. I’ve checked, and it’s still there. The other one is on a large ring of keys always to be found in the pocket of Riggs, our resident janitor, and it too is still where it should be.” He cocked his head to one side. “And now I suppose you want to know if there’s any connection between Irene Boles and the New World Samaritans.”

  I did, but it surprised me he would guess that in advance. I said, “Is there any?”

  He spread his hands. “Not that I’ve been able to discover. None of our residents knows any woman by that name, though of course some of them have had dealings at one time or another with women of her type. Of course I’ll continue to inquire, and if anything does turn up I’ll be happy to phone you and let you know.”

  “Thank you.” It was all going very swiftly, he answering my questions even before I could ask them, volunteering cooperation before it was requested. I wasn’t getting a chance to think about his answers, decide what I thought about him and them. I said, “But of course if one of your residents did have a connection with Irene Boles, he might be unlikely at this point to admit it.”

  Gently he said, “We don’t lie to each other in this building, Mr. Tobin.”

  “Murderers lie wherever they are,” I said. “Their lives are at stake.”

  “One’s soul can also be at stake,” he said. “And there is no murderer in this building, that I assure you. Your murderer is somewhere in the outside world, Mr. Tobin.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “When you learn more about us,” he said, “you will know why I can speak with such assurance.”

  “You may be right,” I said. “There is something else I want to talk to you about, though.”

  He smiled broadly. “I know,” he said. “Why Thing East?”

  “You’re ahead of me again,” I said, beginning to be irritated by him. “It does seem unlikely for a religious organization to rent space for a Greenwich Village coffee house.”

  “Unlikely? Why unlikely?”

  “The image seems wrong,” I said. “The young people who hang out in coffee houses tend to be not very religious.”

  “Still,” he said, “a coffee house is hardly a den of iniquity. No black masses, no gambling, no prostitution, not even alcohol. There’s no conflict between church and coffee, Mr. Tobin. The only conflict, really, is between the stereotypes in your own imagination.”

  “Of course,” I said, a little irritated, “I don’t know that much about your religion…”

  “You don’t?” His smile was frankly mocking now. “A religion with a name you’ve never heard of? In a store front? On the Lower East Side? Surely, Mr. Tobin, you do believe you know us.”

  “This place is different,” I said, “I can see that. I do have an open mind, Bishop.”

  He put his head on one side again and sat there as though staring at me, the illusion increased by the dark glasses. Thoughtfully, perhaps to himself, he said, “Do I owe you an apology?”

  “Not at all,” I said, not understanding him.

  “Brother William,” he said, “told me he thought you were troubled by something unconnected with your stated purpose here. He has very good eyes, you know. I only wish my ears were as perceptive. I’ve heard only truculence in your voice, and I mistook it for the contempt of the shallow mind, a reaction I have grown used to. But Brother William was right, wasn’t he? What I’ve been hearing is your struggle not to talk about what’s really on your mind.”

  “If so,” I said, “I intend to win the struggle. Had you known Terry Wilford before he came to you to rent your old place?”

  He hesitated, as though wanting to pursue the other subject, but then said, “No, that was our first meeting. Mrs. Joyce Regan brought him, he was a friend of her son Edwin.”

  “Did you agree to the idea of a coffee house right away?”

  “No, I didn’t. We hadn’t planned to rent the store area at all; in fact, we’ve been looking for someone to buy the property. But Terry was quite insistent, and he did agree to vacate at once if we found someone interested in buying, so at last I said yes.” He smiled in reminiscence. “Terry was quite a personality, friendly but very self-assured. And infectiously enthusiastic.”

  “You got caught up in his enthusiasm?”

  “Yes, I did. Not that I ever expected them to make a long-range financial success there, but I thought they probably would enjoy themselves a great deal while it lasted.”

  “What was the rent?”

  “We settled on eighty dollars a month,” he said.

  That was low for that part of the city, maybe half the rental Bishop Johnson could legitimately have asked. I said, “How long had the place been empty?”

  “We moved here in February.”

  “Six months ago?”

  “You seem surprised.”

  “The chapel on the first floor looks—older.”

  “Some of our residents are quite clever at do-it-yourself projects,” he said.

  I said, “On the window downstairs it says ‘American Cathedral.’ Are there others?”

  He smiled again, saying, “No, I’m afraid not. Some of our residents are also quite optimistic about our future. I haven’t seen the windows myself, of course, but I understand the brothers who did them were—enthusiastic.” He laughed, adding, “Infectiously enthusiastic, like Terry Wilford.”

  “Someone didn’t catch the infection,” I said, and got to my feet. “I want to thank you for your time—”

  “Not at all,” he said, rising. “I don’t know if I’ve helped you at all on your quest.”

  “I don’t know myself yet,” I said.

  “On the other thing,” he said, smiling gently at me, “perhaps we could help you.”

  “It isn’t necessary,” I said. “Thank you, but I can handle it myself.�
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  “I’m sure you can. Still, if you should ever want to talk I’ll be more than happy to listen.”

  I didn’t like the offer, it was presumptuous and somehow insulting. He had no right to think he knew me that easily. Stiffly I said, “I’ll remember that. Thank you.”

  “Of course. If you’ll just wait a moment, I’ll have Brother William escort you back downstairs.”

  He started for the door, but I said, “That won’t be necessary. I can find my way.”

  “We’d prefer it if you had an escort,” he said blandly, and turned with his hand on the knob. “Don’t worry, Mr. Tobin. He won’t pry.”

  “All right,” I said, and turned my back on him, which of course he couldn’t see. He went out, closing the door after him, and I went over to the window and looked out again at the park.

  As I watched, Donlon got up from the bench he’d been sitting on, near the sidewalk at this end of the park, and walked over to his black unmarked Ford. He reached in, got a pack of cigarettes from the glove compartment, and strolled back to his bench, opening the package and tossing the cellophane and foil away. Children ran around him like foaming wavelets around a rock. He didn’t look over at this building at all.

  When Brother William came in, I said, “Is there a back way out?”

  “Has to be, brother,” he said. “That’s why we’re not at the old place any more.”

  “That’s the way I want to go,” I said.

  “Might I ask why?”

  I motioned at the window. “There’s a policeman out there, he’s been following me. I want to get away from him.”

  Brother William came over to the window. “Where is he?”

  “Sitting on the bench there by the—”

  “Donlon!”

  I looked at Brother William in surprise. “You know him?”

  “The sweetest thing about moving over here,” he said, “is that we got at last out of Detective Donlon’s territory.” He looked at me. “And now have you brought him back to us?”

  “What was the problem with him? At the old place?”