by Howard Fast
The two men in front of the Cadillac sat where I had left them. Angie stood alongside the car. He was wearing a black worsted suit and a white shirt, and as he stood there, tall, thin, knife-faced, he was reflected in my mind as an image of death. The afternoon was warm, almost hot, but I shivered.
“The key, Johnny,” he said flatly.
“Now listen to me,” I told him, fighting to keep my voice firm and decisive. “The reason I didn’t have the key with me today was because I left it in the pocket of the suit I wore yesterday. It’s just as simple as that. When I got to New York this morning, I discovered that I had left the key behind. I wasn’t playing any tricks. I knew that you’d want the key, and believe me, there was nothing in the world that I wanted more than to let you have it and be rid of this whole rotten business. So I called my wife from New York, and while I held the phone, she went to my suit and got the key. I told her to hang onto it. My wife is a very responsible person. But she isn’t home now. She’s at a PTA meeting, and those things wind up just about this time. So she should be home in the next half hour and she’ll give me the key.”
For a long moment, Angie said nothing. He just studied me out of those black, expressionless eyes of his, and then he shrugged and replied, “I ain’t happy. The fat man won’t be happy either.”
“That’s the whole story. I told you the truth.”
He nodded. “You’re a cookie, Johnny boy. I tell you what I am going to do. I am going to come back in one hour. Have the key for me. No more funny games.”
“I’ll have the key,” I said. “I’ll meet you here.”
“No. I come to your house, Johnny. Be good.”
He looked at me again coldly and thoughtfully. Then he got into the Cadillac and drove away.
5: Alice
As I walked back to the house, children drifted past me, and it nagged at me until I realized that this was something I had never experienced before, to walk down the street toward my house in mid-afternoon of a school day. There was a whole section of the life of this place that had never existed for me. I left in the morning and returned in the evening. The day here had existed apart from me.
Alice was guiding the car onto the driveway as I came down the street. A 1957 Ford, it was a tired car that we were going to turn in each year, and each year we made do with it. I quickened my steps, and Alice saw me, parked the Ford in the driveway, and got out of the car as I came to the house. Her eyes were questioning, a shade of alarm in her face, but none of the excitement with which some women might have greeted a husband who pops out of nowhere on a Wednesday afternoon, haggard, sweating, and tense.
I have mentioned that Alice is pretty, but that is a matter of taste, and she is none of the long-legged, waistless, breastless women who define beauty publicly today. She has what I always think of as a British figure, substantial without being fat, a strong, good body of medium height, a snub nose, freckled skin, straight brows, and clear, wide-set blue eyes that regard the world and its inmates calmly and appraisingly.
“What is it?” she asked me. “What happened, Johnny?”
“Don’t worry about my being here. I felt rotten and Jaffe gave me the day off. The important thing is the key.”
“Key?” She frowned. “What key, Johnny? Are you sure you’re all right?”
“For God’s sake, Alice—the key I telephoned about. You have it, don’t you?”
“That key? The flat one—of course. Johnny, I wish you’d tell me why you’re so upset and why that key is so important.”
“I’ll tell you,” I said. “I’ll be happy to tell you all there is to tell. Only first give me the key. Please, Alice—don’t look at me like that. It will all make sense. Just give me the key and let me put it safely away in my pocket. Where is it—in your purse?”
“No, it’s in the house, Johnny. Anyway, I’m glad you’re home. It occurred to me that you’re never home at this time of the day. Just spun into my mind when I saw you. There’s Johnny, and what can he be doing here at this time of the day?”
She led the way into the house, and I followed her.
“The good Lord save me from dessert luncheons, Johnny. One’s supposed to have a bite at home, and then the girl whose house we’re occupying does the dessert. Ten thousand calories, really. And I feel so old. Pre-kindergarten mothers are children, believe me. The only saving grace is that today the teachers do keep the kids in school until four-thirty when we meet instead of bouncing them out at high noon. Anyway, we’re cheating with Polly, you know. She’s not quite five yet—”
Talking, Alice led the way into the kitchen, and now she was standing and staring puzzledly at the counter. “I did leave it there,” she said.
“Where?”
“Right there.” She pointed.
“Well, God-damn it, it’s not there now!” I yelled.
Alice stared at me. “Johnny, what has happened?”
“Where’s the damn key?”
“You don’t have to shout, Johnny,” she sighed. “I told you where I put it—right there on the counter.”
“And it’s not there!”
Something changed in Alice. Her mouth tightened, and she said, very softly and very firmly, “Each of us has his own limit of toleration, Johnny. This is about mine. Suppose we sit down and you tell me what this is all about.”
I left nothing out this time, and when I had finished, I spread my hands and said, “Well, there it is. It’s time you knew exactly the kind of a man you are married to.”
“Johnny,” she sighed, “I think I always knew the kind of man I was married to, perhaps better then you did. The only thing that rocks me a bit is that business with the girl. I don’t have any illusions about myself. I was never beautiful, and to put it bluntly, I’m the dumpy type, but I thought we had something kind of good and strong between us. I really wouldn’t have minded much if you had gone out and done what men do—”
“Now what do you mean by that?”
“You know what I mean, Johnny—what you call a one-night stand—that’s it, isn’t it? I mean, I could try to understand it if you went to bed with someone for whatever reasons you felt you had to and maybe for whatever has been eating at you these past few weeks—but a schoolboy crush on a precious virgin who has been married four times and has a capon of a husband to pimp for her while she sprawls upstairs—just what was she wearing there? A black lace kimono?”
“I told you I didn’t go upstairs. Anyway, I was drunk. You know what happens to a man who’s drunk?”
“I don’t really, to tell you the truth. According to Shakespeare, he retains the desire but loses the ability to fulfill it. Is that what happened to you?”
“That’s not what happened to me. For God’s sake, Alice, can’t you understand what this whole thing did to me?”
“I’m trying to,” she said patiently.
“Can’t you forget that damn woman? The thing is the key.”
“It’s not easy to forget that damn woman, Johnny.”
“But the key. That’s all that matters now. We must find the key.”
“Why?”
“For heaven’s sake, must I go through that again? They’ll be here for it in a half hour.”
“And if you don’t give it to them?”
“They won’t stop at anything, Alice. I’m telling you that they won’t stop at anything.”
“I think you’re taking the whole thing too seriously. Whatever they have in that safe-deposit box, it’s their responsibility, not yours. You didn’t steal the key from them.”
“It amounts to the same thing.”
“It doesn’t.”
“We sit here and waste time,” I pleaded, “when we should be looking for that key.”
“There’s no use looking for it, Johnny. I know exactly where I put it. Right there on the counter. You looked there and I did. It’s gone. Someone took it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, Johnny. I was gone for hours, and the door wa
s open. Anyone who wanted the key could have come in here and taken it.”
“Why didn’t you lock the damn door?”
“Because I never do, Johnny. You know that. There’s no use losing your temper at me. And if you’re afraid of what they might do when they come here—well, we’ll call the police.”
“No!”
“Because you think you murdered that man—that concentration camp man—what was his name?”
“Shlakmann.”
“Yes. Now what in the world could be more bizarre than that? Can you for one moment imagine that you could ever push anyone off a subway platform? I think it’s the silliest thing in the world, and the police will think exactly the same thing.”
“Oh, will they?” I cried. “You’re so damn sure of everything! Well, just look here.”
The newspaper was there, and I crumpled through the pages until I found the story of the incident.
“There it is! People saw it who will go in and testify that I threw him off the platform. There it is in black and white. And do you think that Montez and Angie are just going to sit back and take it if I call the police?”
Alice read through the story and observed, “There are other witnesses, apparently, who saw it quite differently.”
“Fine. So I should dive head first into a murder trial and depend on other witnesses. Oh, that’s fine. That’s just great—great for you and great for Polly. That’s a fine way to grow up, my father was arrested and tried for murder, but he was acquitted—or maybe they just found him guilty of manslaughter, and any year now he’ll be coming out of jail. That’s good for a child, isn’t it?”
“Johnny, you’re losing the whole point. You didn’t kill anyone. And anyway, from all you say, this Shlakmann was a monster.”
“Unfortunately, my dear wife, in this country it’s just as illegal to kill a monster as a saint.”
“But you didn’t kill him.”
I dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and put my head in my hands. “It just seems to me that I don’t know any more—like a bad dream started and doesn’t stop. I read about how the cops get someone and they write a confession, and then they keep after him until he signs it. That’s the way I feel. If they wrote out a confession and kept hammering away at me, I’d sign it. Because nothing is clear any more. Maybe I did push him. How do I know?”
“You’re a sane, normal human being. That’s how you know. You didn’t push him. You told me how you thought about your father. You didn’t know who Shlakmann was. You weren’t hating him. And you didn’t push him. You couldn’t have pushed him. Johnny—”
“You don’t know these people. You haven’t seen Montez or Angie.”
She dropped one hand on my head and stroked it lightly. “Poor Johnny. Your hair is wet. You must have had a rotten time of it.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Sure you will. Johnny, can’t I call the police? I think we should, but I’ll only do it if you want me to.”
“I don’t want you to,” I muttered.
“All right. Then we’ll think of something else.”
“What?” I asked hopelessly.
“The key for one thing. It must be here. Why don’t we begin to look for it systematically. We can go through the house room by room, and if it’s here, we’ll find it.”
I looked up at her and managed to smile. “Alice—”
“Yes?”
“I don’t need therapy. Not now. I need the key.”
“We’ll find the key, Johnny.”
“No we won’t. You know that we won’t. You put it on the counter, didn’t you?”
She nodded.
“And it’s not there now.”
“No, it’s not there now, Johnny.”
“Then that means someone came into the house and took it. There’s no use looking for it. I may be going out of my mind, but you’re not.”
She stared at me thoughtfully and nodded. “That’s right, Johnny.”
“Funny,” I said. “I sit here waiting for the bell to ring, waiting for Angie to come back—and I keep asking myself why we don’t run away. Like kids would solve a problem.”
“It’s our house, Johnny.”
“But I think like a kid. I ask myself, should I fight him? But I don’t know how to fight—not with someone like him. Then I ask myself, should I take a knife from the drawer? Or should I take a poker or something? Then I start wishing that I had a gun. For what? Would I have the nerve to shoot him—or anyone? Anyway, how can you shoot a man? How can you just point a gun at someone and shoot him?”
“You can’t, Johnny.”
“Then what the devil does it all mean? I’m a grown man, and I have to sit here and wait for someone to come to my door and beat me up, maybe kill me. He doesn’t carry a gun. He uses brass knuckles and a beer-can opener. Someone was telling me what he can do to a human being with the opener and the brass knuckles. Shlakmann—that’s what Shlakmann told me.”
“Shlakmann?”
“Not the old man in the subway. Funny, I didn’t tell you that. I forgot all about that, but someone called me at the office this morning and said that his name was Shlakmann. Hans Shlakmann. He said the old man in the subway was his father. Then he told me what Angie does to someone with the knuckles and the opener.”
“What did he want?”
“What do you think—he wanted the key.”
“For Montez?”
“I don’t know—I don’t think so.”
“Believe me, Johnny, it’s not as bad as you think it is. This Angie person is not going to beat you up. He’d have to kill me too, wouldn’t he, and he’s not going to do that. Not here in broad daylight. They’re not ordinary run-of-the-mill hoodlums. Montez is a Consul General. He’s probably one of their delegates to the United Nations as well. Can you imagine them sending someone in here to kill us?”
“I can imagine it,” I said morosely.
“Well, I can’t. Anyway, we have the key.”
“We don’t have it.”
“Johnny, will you listen to me!” she said sharply. “They don’t know that we don’t have the key. They don’t know that anyone took it.”
I stared at her. “Could it have been Shlakmann—the man who called me? He found out where I worked. He could have found out where I lived—”
“No.” She shook her head impatiently. “You’re not thinking. Someone telephones you—well, that doesn’t mean anything, Johnny. You can’t tell them you lost the key. They wouldn’t believe you anyway, no matter if you took an oath on a Bible. That kind lies as easily as they tell the truth—”
“What do you know about that kind?”
“As much as you do and maybe more. I didn’t live in a place like this when I was a kid, Johnny. I grew up in the streets of London, and it was a liberal education, believe me. So just listen to me now. If you try to make them believe that you lost the key, they’ll beat it out of you. Because if it’s true, you’re no more use to them, and maybe better dead than alive—and if it’s a lie or they think you’re lying, they don’t have time to wait for you to change your mind.”
“Then what can I tell them?”
“Angie? He’ll be here won’t he? Not Montez?”
“Yes. Angie.”
“All right. Tell him you have the key. Then tell him you want more money. Tell him the key isn’t here. You left it with a friend—no, I did. That will go better, and if anything happens to either of us, this friend turns the key over to the police.”
“Alice—he’d never fall for a cockeyed story like that.”
“He certainly will—because that is exactly what he would do in your place. The fat man offered you ten thousand dollars, did he?” I nodded. “Then you tell him that you want twenty thousand dollars.”
I shook my head. “It won’t work.”
“It will work and it’s going to.”
“Alice, for God’s sake, what do we gain?”
“A few hours, anyway—and
that may be long enough to be clear of this whole wretched business. At least we’ll be able to think clearly and we won’t have to make up our minds while we watch a clock. We can fight with our intelligence, instead of with brass knuckles and a can opener. Didn’t you tell me that the police have another key? Sooner or later, they’ll find the box. Or maybe whoever stole our key will open the box. Or perhaps something else. I don’t know. I only know that we can’t find a way out of this in the next few minutes that’s any better than my plan.”
I gave up. “O.K.,” I said. “I’ll try it. It’s cockeyed, but I’ll try it. Only, I want you out of here. I don’t want you here when he comes back.”
“No, Johnny.” Alice shook her head. “No. We’re in this together now and it’s no use arguing. Maybe we can be some good when we’re together. We’re certainly not very good at it when we’re apart. And I want you to let me talk to him.”
“No!”
“Please—please, trust me, Johnny. This man Angie will do nothing until he’s spoken to Montez. But even if he’s made up his mind to do something awful to you, it will put a brake on all his thinking. He won’t hurt me—not now. Please believe me, Johnny.”
I shook my head.
“Please, Johnny.”
Then the doorbell rang. Alice pressed her hand on my shoulder. “Stay there, Johnny—just stay there and listen. I’ll answer it.”
6: Polly
The doorbell rang again, loudly, insistently, and I said to myself, “Now he’s going to walk in. He’ll try the handle, open the door, and walk in.”
But instead of that happening, Alice went to the door and I sat there. You can have it that this makes me less of a man than most men would like to be, and certainly less of a man than I would have liked to have been, but in the next few hours I was to learn a good deal about courage and cowardice. I revised a lot of ideas I had, but I’m not asking anyone else to revise their ideas, and the fact of the matter is that I sat there while Alice went to the door.
Ours is a small house. I heard her open the door and say, “How do you do. You’re Mr. Angie. Won’t you please come in.”
And even while I listened, my heart hammering, I was thinking ludicrously, now why is she so damn silly as to call him Mr. Angie? Doesn’t she know Angie’s his first name. I thought this in silence, and the silence stretched.
