Murder Among Children

by Donald E. Westlake

  On the way uptown in Hulmer’s ancient black Buick, he had told me the little that Irene Boles’ sister had told him about Jim Caldwell. He had several women, Irene had been one of his women for three years, he had a reputation for a bad temper, he had no arrests or convictions that the sister knew of, and he hadn’t killed Irene because he’d been at the sister’s apartment for four hours that day, with three other people present, the four hours including the period when the murder had taken place. And the reason he’d been there was that Irene had run out on him and he wanted her back and he assumed sooner or later she’d show up at her sister’s place.

  It had been Hulmer’s opinion, based on the sound of the sister on the phone, that she wasn’t likely to be a party to manufacturing an alibi for the murderer of Irene. In fact, Hulmer had the impression the woman was sorry she knew anything to get Jim Caldwell off the hook. Hulmer believed there was no love lost between Jim Caldwell and the sister of Irene Boles.

  Looking at him now, sitting at his ease in the back booth of Mighty Micky’s, I was sorry he was alibied, because otherwise he was exactly what I would like for Terry Wilford’s murderer: brutal enough to have used the knife, clever enough to have used Robin’s state of shock to his own advantage.

  I found myself thinking: Do you have the same thing in red?

  Hulmer did the talking at first, beginning with a civil and slightly mush-mouthed “Mr. Caldwell?”

  Caldwell preened under the Mr., and showed off a little with a white man in the audience. “That’s me, boy,” he said, his voice lazy and good-humored. “What kind of thing you want with me?”

  “Mr. Caldwell,” Hulmer said again, “do you know that little girl they say killed Irene?”

  His eyes suddenly hardened into wariness, and in a sharper, faster voice he said, “What about her?”

  When in Rome. Hulmer was talking now like a semi-educated field hand, putting on the dialect for Caldwell’s benefit. He said, “This here’s her cousin. He don’t think she done it at all, and he wants our help.” Half the consonant sounds were missing from his speech now, so that don’t became dohn, help became hep. I could barely understand him.

  Caldwell’s speech was crystal-clear and hard as ice. “What kind of help you figure on from me, boy?”

  “We was talking to Susan—”

  “That sowbelly!”

  “She told us how you were with her when Irene was getting killed.”

  Some of the hardness went out of Caldwell’s eyes. He smiled thinly and said, “What do you know? I figured that bitch would railroad me sure, she got the chance.”

  “Can we sit down, Mr. Caldwell?”

  He looked past Hulmer at me, and said, “Let the man talk for himself, boy. What is it you want from me?”

  I took a step closer to the table. “Information,” I said. “I want to know who killed Irene.”

  “That cousin of yours,” he said.

  I shook my head, and met his eye.

  He wanted to be a hard case with me, but he couldn’t quite do it. After a minute he looked away, and shrugged, and said, “What do I know? I was uptown, I don’t know who she was with, I don’t know nothing.”

  “Maybe you do,” I said. “Let me ask you a few questions, see what we get.”

  “What do I get?”

  “I’m not buying information from you, if that’s what you mean. I’ll stand for drinks, but that’s it.”

  He laughed and said, “You’re a cheap John, ain’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m drinking Scotch,” he said, as though to impress me or scare me. “And my zook’s on the same. Ain’t you, sugar?”

  She turned her head and looked at him vaguely, as though not sure he had spoken, or not sure he had been talking to her, or just generally not sure of things.

  “Scotch is what I’m buying,” I said.

  “Then sit down, Mr. Cousin,” Caldwell said, motioning at the seat opposite himself. To Hulmer he said, “Boy, you go tell the man we want him back here.”

  Hulmer seemed hesitant to go. I got out a five, pushed it into his hand, and said, “Get us a round. You and me, too.”

  “Okay,” he said, a little doubtful, and turned away.

  I slid into the booth, put my elbows on the table, and said, “The way I see it, Irene was the one he wanted to kill. The Wilford boy just showed up at the wrong time.”

  “Some fellas are unluckier than other fellas,” he said. “But I’ll do my talking when I got my drink in front of me.”

  “That’s sensible,” I said.

  We sat there in silence, then, Caldwell grinning lazily at the empty glass in front of himself, the woman gazing lumpishly into the middle distance like a robot waiting to be turned on, and me facing them both, studying both their faces, wondering what I could hope to get from behind either of those masks.

  Hulmer brought the drinks on a round metal tray advertising Rheingold beer. A shot glass of Scotch for each of us, a glass of water and ice for each of us. He put the empty tray on a table behind him, and sat down next to me.

  I drank a little of the water and then poured the Scotch into the glass, filling it up again. In the meantime Caldwell had picked up the shot glass in front of himself, tossed the drink back, and put the glass down in front of his woman. Sliding her drink over in front of himself, he said, “There, now. That feels better. Go ahead and ask your questions, Mr. Cousin.”

  I said, “When was the last time you saw Irene alive?”

  “Last time I seen her,” he said. “Just like on TV, huh? That’d be ‘bout five in the morning. She was out working, she come into the pancake place on Broadway there near Forty-ninth, that’s mostly where I spend my nights. She come in, poor-mouthed me about things so slow. I told her things wasn’t slow for everybody, she talk about how she feeling sick, she need a lift, I tell her she got to come all the way uptown for that, she can wait till six, maybe seven, depending how slow things go on the street. She went back out, she never showed up any more. I come on uptown seven-thirty, went to sleep, got up eleven o’clock, no Irene. I went on over to that bitch sister’s place on Morningside, I’m still there when the fuzz shows up.”

  I said, “She was full of H when she was killed. Where’d she get the stuff usually?”

  “From me,” he said, surprised at my having to ask. “You wouldn’t let a dumb molly like that make her own arrangements, she wouldn’t never work.”

  “Then where’d she get the stuff the day she died?”

  Caldwell shrugged it away. “From some John, maybe.”

  “That ever happen before?”

  There was a slight hesitation, just enough hesitation, and then he said, “No, but that don’t mean it couldn’t sometime.”

  “You don’t have to hold back,” I told him. “I’m not law, I’m not on speaking terms with the law.”

  “Who’s holding back?”

  “You are. Irene connected somewhere other than you, one time, maybe lots of times.”

  Caldwell studied me, eyes wary, mouth smiling falsely. He picked up the second shot glass, threw the drink down his throat, said, “We’re ready for more.”

  “Of course.” I got out another five and handed it to Hulmer. “None for me this time,” I told him.

  He nodded and left the booth.

  I said to Caldwell, “I realize there’s nothing in this for you, and you’re worried it might be dangerous to talk too much, but I swear to you nothing you say to me will ever kick back at you.”

  He nodded, grinning cynically to me. “That’s maybe easier to say than to do,” he said.

  “You didn’t kill Irene,” I pointed out, “and that’s all I’m interested in. If Irene connected somewhere other than you, why not tell me about it?”

  Gazing at me, still thinking it out, he said, “Maybe because where she connected is some place I shouldn’t ought to talk about.”

  “Like where?”

  “Don’t hurry me,” he said. “Let me make u
p my mind.”

  “All right.”

  We sat in silence till Hulmer came back, bringing two shots, both of which he put in front of Caldwell. Then he said to me, “I’m going to call Vicki, I’ll be right back.”

  “All right.”

  Caldwell watched Hulmer go away, and then said to me, “That’s a sharp boy there, ain’t that right?”

  “He seems so.”

  “College boy?”

  “I don’t know. Possibly.”

  “Some friend of this little girl cousin of yours, that right?”

  “They’re friends, yes.”

  He nodded. “I come along too soon, man,” he said. “Born just about ten years too soon. These baby cats these days, they go downtown, go to Greenwich Village, get themselves all the white ass they can handle. I try that, my time, I’d come back uptown in a suitcase.”

  “Times change,” I said.

  “She got it off some cop,” he said.

  The change of subject was too abrupt for me. It took me a second to realize he was answering the other question, and then I said, “The connection?”

  “Right. Maybe three months ago, she was gone all night, come back nine in the morning, coked to the hair, tells me some fuzz picked her up by the Americana, she thought he was busting her, but it turns out he takes her to some damn cargo ship on one of them West Side piers. There was a fire on this cargo ship, there’s nobody on it, he knows about it, takes her on, they go in the captain’s cabin, shoot up together, they make it, she comes on home. Then like a couple more times the same thing, same cop, always takes her some crazy place he knows about, like he gets a kick out of being some place weird. Never gives her no money, but always springs for a shot.”

  “What was his name?”

  “I don’t know. That’s straight. He never told the pig. Leastways, she said she didn’t know.”

  “When she didn’t show up at the pancake place that last morning, did you think she might be with the cop again?”

  “Until she never come home. She was never later than eight-thirty, nine o’clock coming home when she was with him.”

  Hulmer came back, then, looking serious. “Are you nearly done, Mr. Tobin?”

  “Just about,” I said.

  “I could use another round,” Caldwell said, having downed both drinks during my questions.

  I had one five left in my wallet and I gave it to him, saying, “If it’s okay with you, you can order it yourself.”

  “I’d be more than happy,” he said, smiling at me, and tucked the bill into his jacket breast pocket. His woman watched the money disappear like a hungry dog watching a plate being scraped into the garbage pail.

  I got to my feet, saying, “Thank you for helping me.”

  “You think I helped?”

  “I think you may have helped a lot,” I told him. “And I still promise you it won’t boomerang back at you.”

  “That’s okay,” he said lazily. “What the hell, I’m clean.”

  Hulmer was obviously in a hurry to leave. I walked to the front, he trotting ahead of me, and when we got outside in the humidity and the glare, I said, “All right, what is it?”

  He said, “Let’s get to the car, I’ll tell you on the way.” He started walking down the block, me beside him, and said, “Bishop Johnson called Abe, looking for you. Abe told him you might be at Thing East, so he called there, left a message. We got to get down there.”

  “I’m not sure we do,” I said. “While you were gone, Caldwell told me something that just might be it.”

  “Let me tell you first,” he said. He’d reached his Buick, and as he unlocked the driver’s door he said over his shoulder, “Donlon’s dead.”

  19

  WE PARKED TOO CLOSE TO a hydrant, at my urging. “If you get a ticket,” I said, “I’ll pay for it. We can’t start driving around the block looking for a place to park.”

  When he had the car parked and the engine off, Hulmer said, “You want me to wait here?”

  Until then I had, but once he asked me, it became necessary to have him come along. I said, “Why? Stick with me.”

  “Okay.”

  I didn’t wait with him while he locked the doors, but walked quickly back along the sidewalk to the store-front entrance of the New World Samaritans building. I stared across the street as I walked, but of course Donlon was no longer sitting on that bench near the sidewalk. Two elderly women were sitting there, surrounded by shopping bags, talking comfortably together.

  I entered the store front, my eyes took a second to adjust to the dimness, and then I saw Brother William getting to his feet from one of the rear pews. Behind him, Bishop Johnson was sitting, sunglasses on, looking grim and determined.

  Brother William allowed himself a second of surprise when Hulmer followed me in, but didn’t comment. Instead he said, “Do you want to see him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Outside.”

  Three of us went out, Brother William first, me second, Hulmer last. Brother William led the way to the left, away from Hulmer’s car, and most of the way down to the corner. He looked odd on this dirty street in his white robe, odd but clean. And cool. He looked as though the humidity stopped short of him, leaving him in a column of coolness and dryness.

  He stopped near the corner and nodded at a black car parked illegally across the street, by the park. “In there,” he said. “I’ll wait here.”

  “All right.”

  We had to wait for the light to change, and then Hulmer and I went across and took a look.

  It was the same car Donlon had used when he’d driven out to my house. The windows were rolled down and he was lolling in there, head back, eyes shut, mouth open. You’d have said he was sleeping, in the heat. Sunlight gleamed on the left side of his throat, and the flesh looked alive.

  Hulmer waited on the sidewalk while I went around to the driver’s side for a closer look. Just below the window the left side of his white shirt was messy with a gummy-looking brown stain, spreading out and down, across his belt, down into his lap. The gun lay in his lap, bloodied. I had no doubt it would have Donlon’s fingerprints on it.

  It was easy to see how it was done. Donlon had switched from bench to car, had been sitting here either still waiting for me to come out of the church building or merely keeping the church building under surveillance, and someone had slid into the front seat beside him. Not necessarily somebody he knew, just somebody with a gun. They’d held the gun on him, they’d taken his own gun away from him, stuck it against his chest, pulled the trigger. Then wrap Donlon’s hand around the gun, let it drop into his lap, and leave.

  No one would notice a single gunshot, somewhat muffled by being fired inside the car. A backfire, they might think, if they consciously heard it at all.

  Our murderer was fast, and an amateur, and improvisational. He had now murdered five times, and his MO varied widely from incident to incident. He had used a knife, a car, a heavy dropped object, and a gun. He had done murder that looked like murder, framing a bystander in the process. He had done murder that looked like accident, in the hit-and-run killing of George Padbury. He had done murder that looked motiveless, in the attempt on me. And now he had done murder that looked like suicide.

  Where was he now? Who was he going to be afraid of next? Still me? Or were there others who frightened him also?

  I had to talk to Robin. I had to see for myself how well she was guarded.

  I walked back around the car to Hulmer. “I’ll need to be chauffeured for a while. Are you free?”

  He looked pinched around the eyes. “Sure. He’s really dead?”

  “Yes. Shot. I think it’s set up to look like suicide.”

  “Why kill Donlon?”

  “I don’t know.”

  But my mind was taking it this way and that way, worrying it like a dog at a rag doll. When Jim Caldwell had told me about the strange cop who had fed Irene’s narcotics habit and taken her unusual places to have intercourse with he
r, I had found my mind filling with the image of Donlon. He was certainly strange, he was hanging around unnecessarily, he had known about Thing East. But now I didn’t know. Was he the strange cop, but nothing more, and had he too been looking for the real murderer of Irene Boles? Or was he tracking down the strange cop? Or was he something else entirely, his motives unguessable without more facts?

  Hulmer was waiting for me. I was waiting for me. Months of inaction had made me sluggish. It seemed to me as though I should be understanding things by now, but comprehension was far away.

  If only the weather were better, cooler, drier, less obtrusive. If only I had more time. I felt as though, if I could have a day to myself, a full day to work on my wall and mull over what I had seen and heard, I would be able to put it together right, to say this is what happened, and why, and who. But the weather inhibited thought, and there was no spare time because our murderer was running scared and running hard and running fast.

  Had he killed Donlon before trying for me, or after? After seemed more likely. There was more to think about in that, but I couldn’t do it yet. I couldn’t do anything yet.

  I shook my head and said to Hulmer, “Come on, let’s get indoors.”

  We went back across the street, where Brother William was waiting, his expression troubled. “You bring us violence, brother,” he said.

  “Not me,” I told him. “I have my own retreat. This business forced me out, too.”

  “What do we do now?” he wanted to know.

  “We get away from this sun. I’ve had enough of it today.”

  We walked back to the church and inside. Cool and dry. Bishop Johnson was still sitting in the same pew; he half turned when we came in.

  I sat down beside him. “He’s been shot,” I said. “Dead, as you said.”

  “What now?” He seemed very bitter, very angry. “Trouble for everyone, is that it?”