by Howard Fast
“Nothing is going to wake Polly now—or for the next ten hours. You know that. I want to know what you mean when you say, ‘I suppose so.’”
“She saved my life. Maybe I saved her life. Or maybe you saved all our lives. I don’t care.”
“Because you hate her.”
“You’re not very bright, are you, Johnny?”
“I try.”
“Well, she’s gone. That’s all. She’s gone. They’re all gone, and we have Polly—and I don’t very much care to discuss anything else.”
“I’m afraid you have to,” I said. “There are three dead men out there in the Meadows.”
“We didn’t kill them, Johnny. Try to remember that.”
“That kind of a crack makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, Johnny,” she said wearily, “what do you want me to do—weep over them? I have wept enough today. All I want is for today to be over, and it is over. That’s all that matters to me.”
“And is that what we tell the police?”
Her voice became cold and hard. “When did you get the idea of going to the police, Johnny?”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Then stop thinking about it!” she snapped.
“Isn’t it time we went to the police?”
“No, Johnny. I’ll tell you when it was time to go to the police. Yesterday—before this nightmare began. Then, if you had had a little sense and a little courage, and had gone to them and had explained to them exactly what happened there in the subway, none of today would have existed. But now, as you said, there are three dead men out in the Meadows, and it just so happens that your friend Lenny murdered one of them, and she’s gone. There’s no way of explaining to anyone what happened out there, or proving to anyone what happened out there, and if you think I am going to have this hanging over me for the rest of my life, you are mistaken. You are also mistaken if you think I am going to allow my husband—whatever he is—to be arrested and dragged through trials and hearings, and my daughter put on a witness stand, and all the dirt and nastiness that goes with that—no. No, we are not going to the police. We are going to leave this alone and keep quiet and allow events to take their course. Do you understand?”
“She isn’t a murderer,” I replied, stupidly and stubbornly.
“Oh? Have I blackened her character, Johnny?”
“Montez deserved exactly what he got.”
“And just who are you, John Camber, to decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die? How dare you tell me that Montez got what he deserved? This would be a pretty world indeed if we, all of us, got what we deserve.”
“For heaven’s sake,” I cried, “I wasn’t the one who managed it. I didn’t even know she had a gun. You knew it. You saw her take it out of her bag, and then you began to rant and rage at Montez and drove him half crazy, so that he couldn’t even hold the gun on us, and that gave her the chance she needed.”
“What are you trying to say, Johnny,” she asked softly, “that I killed Montez?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Why? It’s true, isn’t it? He said he would kill my child. I don’t hate, Johnny, and it’s hard for me to become really angry with anyone, but I think I would kill anyone who threatened my child that way—including your stinking virgin, Lenny.”
I didn’t say anything after that. There was nothing more to be said.
The last cigarette I had was stained—with either dirt or blood, and when I offered it to Alice, she shook her head with distaste. Some measure of the change in myself was the fact that I lit it and puffed it gratefully and did some thinking and watched my wife thoughtfully. She did not give an inch. They will tell you that English girls are gentle and soft-spoken and make good wives, and there is as much truth in that as in any ten-word description of an entire nation—or perhaps a little more, but nothing to take at face value.
Perhaps Alice was thinking about American men in some generalized manner; but I told myself that from here on in, I would not place twenty cents on my ability to guess what Alice was thinking about.
When we came to the Boat Livery, I saw a dark blur on the dock and a tiny speck of light on the blur. It turned out to be Mulligan, smoking a cigar, and he was a relieved man as he tied up the outboard and helped us onto the dock. Alice handed Polly to him, so that she could get out of the boat, but Polly did not awaken. As a matter of fact, Polly slept through to eleven o’clock the following day.
Mulligan held the child tenderly, peering at her face, and when he handed her back to Alice, he said, “That’s a fine, handsome child you got there, Mrs. Camber. She’s worth a big push.”
“It was a big push,” Alice sighed.
“I was too damned nervous to sleep, Camber,” Mulligan said to me. “I’m a small man here, and it would break my heart to lose that boat and motor. So I’m God-damned happy to see it all back in one piece.”
I had climbed out of the boat then, and he stared at me in disbelief.
“What the devil is that all over you?”
“Blood,” I replied.
“Jesus, are you bleeding?”
“It’s not my blood, Mr. Mulligan.”
“I’ll be damned if you could walk if it was. Come on, now, I have a pot of coffee in the shack, and you can tell me about it or not, as you damn please.”
“I think I have to tell you about it,” I said.
We went into the shack. He put some boating pillows on the desk and made a bed for Polly, where she continued to sleep peacefully and soundly. Then he poured strong black coffee for us, and we drank it gratefully.
“You’re a hell of a sight, Camber,” he said, “covered from head to foot with dry blood and your hair as stiff as a board with it. What the devil kind of a butcher shop were you in?”
“I brought my kid back,” I said carefully. It was the only boast I permitted myself in all that long day and night.
“You did that. Do you want to tell me?”
“If we tell you,” Alice said, “we put ourselves in your hands.”
Mulligan held out a pair of hardened, broad hands, palms up, the knuckles misshapen and enlarged, the skin grooved with the sign of the mechanic’s trade, thin black lines beyond the reach of soap. “Ugly as sin,” he said. “They are broken from my time as a pug. I was a light-heavy for seven years, not top grade but pretty good. I don’t like to look back on that. Mostly, they’re as honest as the next man’s hands, which ain’t saying a lot. Think it over.”
“They’re good hands,” Alice nodded.
“But just one thing, Mrs. Camber. If you’re going to the cops, then don’t tell me one God-damn thing.”
“We’re not going to the cops,” I said.
Then Alice told him. She told it well and concisely, and when she told what had happened on the deck of the cabin cruiser, she gave me more credit than I deserved. She made a fight out of a series of lunatic acts of utter desperation, and she made me look a great deal better than I deserved to look. Not that she lied or exaggerated, but she told it that way. As Mulligan listened, he regarded me with new respect. I was uneasy with that kind of respect, but I liked it.
When Alice finished, Mulligan was silent for a while. He lit his cigar and puffed it thoughtfully. Then he said, “Goddamn it now, this is a devil of a thing—to be a party to murder.”
“We’re not a party to murder,” Alice insisted.
“Anyone who witnesses a murder or abets it in any way is a party to it. He is—you are—I am. I gave you the boat, mind you. And how the devil can you prove that this Shlakmann died of the loss of blood?”
“We know he did.”
“Can you prove it?”
“An autopsy will prove it,” Alice said.
“Maybe yes and maybe no. Suppose Camber here fractured his skull with the brass knuckles? The man died because his heart stopped beating, but who is to say what caused his heart to stop beating? That’s the pity of an amateur in a fight. And this Montez—he�
��s not just some cheap hoodlum. He’s a diplomat.”
“I thought of that,” Alice agreed bleakly.
“It’s a bad business.”
“It’s sticky—yes. But do you believe us?”
“I believe you, Mrs. Camber. But how clean are we? The question is, can they trace it back here to the Livery or to you and your husband?”
“If they do,” Alice said, “we’ll swear that we stole the boat. That will put you in the clear.”
Mulligan shook his head sadly. “So help me God, Mrs. Camber, you are a strange one. You’re as nice a little lady as one wants to know, and, damn it, you go leaping from one deception to another. That won’t help, and you’ll do no swearing in my behalf. Either we are clear of this or not. If this wife of Montez keeps her mouth shut, there is only one danger that I can see—the fingerprints you must have left on the cruiser.”
“There are no fingerprints,” I said. “I wiped them all clean before I left the boat.”
They both stared at me, and on Alice’s face there was an expression I had never seen before. I didn’t interpret it. I saw it, and it made me feel a little better.
“All right,” Mulligan agreed. “I should have my head examined for this, but I go with you all the way. We’ll put the boat away tonight, Camber, and we’ll hose it and wipe it clean. I’ll take you home, and then I’ll dump Shlakmann’s car.
“Where?”
“Just leave that to me.”
“Then what?”
“Then we wait and see what happens.”
It took over an hour to wash down the aluminum boat, dry it, put it back on its winter rack, and then rub a winter’s accumulation of dirt onto it. The Johnson was broken down and placed in a cleaning wash, and by that time I was so tired I could barely stand on my feet. I fell asleep in the car when Mulligan drove us home, and when he dropped us in front of our house, the first gray hint of dawn was in the sky.
It’s hard for me to describe exactly what I felt when I got out of the car in front of our house. My first impression was that I had been gone for many months, and my eyes filled with tears at the simple pleasure of being back. Then I felt that I had never been away, and all that had happened was a dream, and that feeling clung so tightly that I had to force it out of my mind.
Alice took Polly inside, but at the doorway Mulligan stopped me and said, “Camber—”
I sensed what was coming.
“Camber, I’ll say good-by to you.”
We shook hands.
“You understand, Camber—don’t come back to the Livery. Ever. Not you or your wife.”
Slowly, I nodded.
“You know why?”
“I suppose it has to be that way,” I said.
“There’s no other way. You and me, Camber, we got to forget that the other ever existed. We got to lock this up inside of us, and never make any connection between us. I’m the way you got down that river and into the Meadows. If I’m out of it, then there’s no way you could have got down that river and into the Meadows. You understand?”
I nodded.
“Just stick to that. You don’t know me. We never saw each other. We never talked, and you never sat in no aluminum boat. That’s the whole story, and if we begin to believe it ourselves, we’ll be all right.”
“There’ll never be a connection,” I said.
“Never is a lot. For the time being, we stick to it.”
“It’s funny,” I said. “I mean I never knew anyone like you, Mr. Mulligan. I mean, not just to talk to, but to be close enough to say to someone, that’s my friend.”
“The world is full of friends, Camber.”
“Your world, Mr. Mulligan. Not mine.”
Mulligan shrugged. “It’s a long life, Camber. Don’t let them push you around. Just work easy.”
I nodded.
“You’re pretty damn good yourself,” Mulligan grinned.
Then we shook hands and he got back in the car and drove away. But what he said stayed with me. No one had ever said anything exactly like that to me before.
14: The Key
Polly was still asleep when Alice put her to bed, in her own bed. Emotionally and physically exhausted, it was surprising how little she remembered when she awoke, and it took small persuasion indeed to convince her that most of what she remembered was only a bad dream. The psychiatrists say that these things are not erased, that they leave, so to speak, lesions on the brain, traumas that remain with the child all of her life, and that may be. I imagine that few children are free of one scar or another, and Polly, at least, has waking hours that are filled with love and understanding.
While Alice was putting the child to bed, I went downstairs and made certain that all the doors and windows were locked. That is something I will be doing for a long time to come.
Then I got out of my blood-stained clothes, thankful that I was not wearing one of my respectable suits, but only slacks and a sport jacket. I held them up gingerly as Alice entered the kitchen and told her that they would have to be burned or something.
“They will not be burned,” she said firmly. “Clothes don’t grow on trees. I’ll put them through the washer, and if they’re not as good as new, they’ll be wearable anyway.”
I nodded, being past argument. The sky was lightening with morning.
“I won’t go to work,” I said.
“I should think not.”
“They won’t resent it. Jaffe thought I was sick the other day.”
“It wasn’t the other day. It was yesterday.”
“Oh? Yes, I meant yesterday.”
“Of course they won’t resent it. You’re never sick. Why should they resent it?”
“Well—you know how they are. The way a boss is.”
“I think you ought to go to sleep, Johnny. Right now.”
“I need a bath.”
“Take your bath and then go to sleep. Are you hungry?”
I shook my head.
“We have half a bottle of rye.”
I shook my head again. “I want a drink. But I’d throw up if I tried it.”
“Then go to bed and get a proper sleep.”
“If Polly lets us.”
“If Polly wakes up, I’ll get up. You can sleep yourself out.”
“You’ve been awake as long as I have.”
“I’m just not as tired as you, Johnny.”
“Why?”
“Because women are different from men, Johnny. That’s hard to learn, isn’t it?”
“It is—it is, indeed,” I agreed tiredly.
I took a full change of bath water, scrubbing my hair and my body and trying not to gag at what came off and ran down the drain. I told myself that I should have taken a shower, but I was too tired to wash on my feet. I made the second tub very hot, and lay there, dozing, until Alice called me.
“Johnny—are you asleep in the tub?”
Then I dried my body, pulled on pajamas, and staggered into bed. Ours is a double bed, not twin beds, not extra wide, but just a plain, old-fashioned double bed. I mentioned twin beds once, but Alice held that they were at least improper if not downright indecent, and informed me that respectable Britons did not exactly share the American feeling on the subject. “If you are married, then you might as well be married,” she pointed out, “and not try to pretend that you are only friends. And what would you tell Polly when she’s old enough to ask?” That settled it, and the double bed stayed, and tonight—or this morning, more properly—she got into bed, but distantly. She lay there for a little while like a mountain climber on a ledge, and I was just drifting into sleep when I felt her sliding toward me, and then the warm pressure of her body.
“Johnny?”
“Uh?”
“Are you asleep?”
“Almost.”
“I can’t hate you in bed, Johnny.”
“All right.”
Her arm slid around me. “Johnny?”
I was drifting off, but she pulled me back.
>
“Johnny?”
“Yes?”
“Tell me one thing.”
“All right. One thing.”
“Do you love her?”
Better than half asleep, I replied, “Not exactly.”
“What!”
I opened my eyes now and rolled over to look at her. When I tried to kiss her, she pulled away.
“What the devil do you mean, not exactly?”
“You never used to swear.”
“Well, it’s a bloody damn different situation! Just what do you mean—not exactly?”
“I don’t know what I mean. I love you, Alice.”
“Easy to say it. And what do you feel toward her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Something?”
“Something,” I admitted.
I was almost asleep this time when I heard her say, “Johnny—”
“Uh?”
“You can kiss me now, if you want to.”
It is seven weeks since all this happened, and nothing in our lives is very different, except that according to Alice, my temper is better. I imagine she’s right, but her temper is no better and frequently worse. I tell myself that one change begets another.
The following day, the newspapers carried the story of what had happened in the Meadows—or at least as much as they knew about what had happened in the Meadows. Since it was the most sensational mystery of its kind in years, it is hardly remarkable that the tabloids gave it screaming headlines, space and pictures for as long as they could; but even there, it had its day. It goes into history as one of the more unusual unsolved murder mysteries of our time. And even as early as now, it has begun its first revival run as meat and drink for the Sunday supplements. However, on the day in question, certain newspapers, such as the New York Times, recognized its political implications and treated it quite soberly.
A New York newspaper said:
While the incident on the cabin cruiser, may be explained as a brutal fight to the death between two unsavory hooligans, the reasons for the fight remain unknown. Also to be answered are the following questions: What is the relationship of these two men, habitual criminals whose fingerprints are on file with the FBI and whose records go back a good many years, to the Consul General of the Republic of———, if any? What were they doing on a cabin cruiser owned by the said Consul General? Why was this boat anchored at Berry’s Canal, a particularly dismal and unlikely spot in the Jersey Meadows? And finally, who murdered the Consul General himself in his speedboat in Newark Bay?
