The Order of Death

by Hugh Fleetwood

  It stayed with him as he got off the Brooklyn express at Boro Hall, and it stayed with him as he crossed the platform to change on to the F train. And it only left him when, as he was about to get on to the waiting train, he saw, watching him, a slim youth wearing a black woollen cap and dark glasses who he knew, the second he saw him—he had no doubt at all—was Smith.

  *

  He should have gone up to him of course, talked to him, hit him, or arrested him. But perhaps because of the shock of sud­denly seeing him when he hadn’t been expecting to, of suddenly realizing that here he was more or less face to face with a figure who had become, in little over twenty-four hours, mythical, or perhaps for the same reasons as he had given to himself for not having him sent up to the apartment, or for going down to the lobby to meet him—i.e. that every second he avoided actually meeting the Enemy was time gained—he did none of these things, but simply turned and—a vast red hippopotamus in a panic—ran.

  He ran up the stairs of the subway, crashed through the exit barrier, and up the street. He ran as fast as he could, not really knowing where he was going, but knowing only that he had to get away. He ran, noticing the looks of surprise or fear on the faces of the people in the street, but—neat man that he was—he avoided bumping into anyone, and didn’t stop for a second. He ran, and found himself heading towards Brooklyn Bridge, and after only a second’s hesitation, decided to let his body have its way, and to cross it. Manhattan seemed more attractive than the quieter streets of Brooklyn.

  But when he was on the bridge, with the cars and the river beneath him, and the wind icy on his sweating face, he stopped running and started to walk. And then, panting, sweating, shivering, he even stopped walking. He was mad, he told him­self. Where was he running to? What was he going to do when he got to Manhattan? Why hadn’t he simply grabbed a cab, and made sure he wasn’t being followed? He breathed in and out, slowly, and told himself to turn round and go back. He told himself that Smith wasn’t going to pursue him. He should go home and go to bed, and try, in the warmth of his bed, to think what to do. He should try to be calm. He closed his eyes for a second and repeated this to himself. He should try to be calm he should go home, to bed. Yes. He should go home to bed….

  He turned—and then froze; froze as if the cold wind had suddenly iced his blood, and paralysed him. Because behind him, not fifty yards away, standing quite still, and watching him through his black glasses, was Smith.

  His first thought was that he would have liked to fling himself from the bridge, and be drowned in the cold black water below. His second thought was that—he couldn’t think.

  He ran.

  And now if there had been anyone in his way he would have knocked them over; wouldn’t even have seen them as he trampled them massively under foot. He ran faster, he was sure, than any man his size had ever run. He ran and ran, and never looked round, and felt that if he did, like the story of Orpheus with a twist, he, instead of the Eurydice in dark glasses behind him, would be lost forever—would be condemned for eternity to hell.

  He didn’t know how he kept running; how anyone could have kept running as long as he did. But he did, and when he thought he couldn’t run any more, that his heart would explode, he only ran faster. He ran and ran and ran; he ran all the way to the City Hall subway. And there he ran on to a train that arrived as he did. And only then, as he crashed into the car amidst the nervous and then averted—as if the sight of a terrified hippopotamus was not pleasant—glances of the other passengers, did he stop. He stopped; but in spite of his exhaustion he would have been quite ready to start again—to have leapt off the train and run all the way back to Brooklyn—if he had seen Smith getting on the train. But the doors closed, and he didn’t, and he sat down and started shaking and trying to control the vomit he felt rising within him—rising within him as it had risen in the apartment that morning. He shook and trembled and con­trolled himself for two stops, and then he could control himself no longer, and threw up. He threw up all over the floor of the car, and then he wiped his mouth with the back of his big red hand, stood up without raising his eyes—without daring to look at the disapproval and disgust that he knew must surround him —and got off at the next stop.

  He looked round only casually to make sure that Smith hadn’t got off too, didn’t see him, and went up to the street.

  He walked now, slowly, and aimlessly, only waiting till he could feel something apart from the pain in his stomach, feet, legs, chest and head. He walked up and down, round and round, until he came to Washington Square; then he sat down on a bench and put his head between his hands, and told himself he wouldn’t run again; not for anyone, not for any reason on earth.

  He sat on the bench for half an hour or more; or, at any rate, until he was too cold to sit there any longer; and then he walked until he found a bar, went in, and stayed there for an hour. He drank two whiskies. Then he went to another bar and drank two more. And then he went out into the street feeling courage­ous once again, feeling proud of his size and strength, and feeling quite capable of dealing with Smith if he saw him now.

  He didn’t however; or he didn’t think he did. But then New York was so full of shadows late at night, real or imaginary, that it was difficult to know who or what one saw. Especially when one was drunk….

  He went to three or four more bars, and walked around a great deal—looking, he told himself, for Smith—until three or four in the morning. And then he took a taxi back to Brooklyn.

  At least, he thought, next morning when he woke, very late, that he had taken a taxi home. But he couldn’t really remember. Maybe he had taken the subway. Or perhaps he had walked. Still, he seemed to remember having taken a taxi somewhere, and guessed it had brought him home. In any case, it didn’t really matter.

  *

  His sleeping late didn’t matter either, since he wasn’t working that day; so he took his time about getting up, shaving, shower­ing, and taking a bus to where, according to his diary, he had to buy his Times; and it wasn’t until two o’clock that afternoon that he got to the apartment on Central Park West and had a chance to read the paper; to read about, as the headline put it, ‘Another Policeman Murdered’.

  CHAPTER THREE

  According to the Times, there was a certain amount of doubt as to whether the new murder was the work of the ‘Cop-Killer’. For one thing, the previous five murders had taken place at monthly intervals, whereas the killing last night had taken place only a few days after Officer Jim Parro’s death. Secondly, Ser­geant Petrie, the policeman killed last night, was not with the Narcotics Bureau, as the others had all been. Thirdly, he was stabbed to death with a smallish knife, whereas all the others had had their throats cut with a bread-knife. And lastly, the other murders had been distributed evenly round Manhattan; the first in Morningside Park, the second on East Seventieth Street, the third in Battery Park, the fourth on West Forty-Sixth Street, and the fifth, the other day, on East Fourth Street. It seemed that the killer was trying to give each neighbourhood its killing. But the one last night had again been on the Lower East Side—on East Seventh Street. It was too close to the previous murder….

  It was possible, of course, the Times reported, that the ‘Cop-Killer’ was getting careless, was changing the pattern and style of his crimes; in which case, there was a hope that very soon he would make a slip and get caught. But it was far more likely that last night’s murder had been an isolated, unconnected inci­dent; someone with a grudge against Sergeant Petrie who was trying to make it seem that his death was the work of the ‘Cop-Killer’, or someone who just wanted to share, in a horrific man­ner, in the ‘Cop-Killer’s’ notoriety.

  When Fred had finished reading about the killing he put the paper down on the floor. He guessed he should—as he always did—read the rest of it; just as he should have changed into his real clothes. But he didn’t have the energy; he couldn’t be bothered. All he felt capable of doing was waiting for the door­man to call up and tell him Smith
was downstairs—as call up he was certain the doorman would, in spite of his instructions to the contrary. He didn’t even pour himself a glass of whisky.

  He just sat there, and waited….

  But though he sat there till six o’clock that evening, the door­man didn’t call up; and by the time Fred was ready to leave he was beginning to allow himself to hope again; to hope that Smith had got tired of the game he was playing, and wouldn’t bother him any more. And if that were the case—then he even allowed himself to think of his talk with Bob last night and be finally, unconditionally glad about it. All this would be his, he thought, looking around. All this space would be only his, and he would be able to take it all, at last, completely into himself; he would have, as it were, this space within his head, and he would be able to wander round in it without being afraid of ever bumping into any foreign bodies, any germs which could infect it. And perhaps he would now, without waiting till he retired, start to furnish it; slowly, and without any hurry; bit by bit, piece by piece, until finally the whole thing was a perfect beautiful home —within himself. He closed his eyes and let himself soak in this dream for a moment or two. All this space, and the view … it was his soul. A great, wide, ordered soul, with a view….

  He went over to the window, and stared out across the Park, to the lights on the East Side. All, all his….

  He had sometimes wished that he and Bob had taken an apartment on the East Side; after all, the East Side was tradition­ally the side that represented all that he admired and liked about New York, and the West Side was definitely not. But—apart from the fact that it had been Bob who had found the apartment, and Bob had wanted to live on the West Side—he couldn’t really regret it. In part because he loved the actual apartment, in part because at least here he was constantly aware of being surrounded by the Enemy, and therefore his enclave was all the more secret, and precious, and sacred, and in part because—unless they had taken an apartment on Fifth Avenue or Central Park South, which might have been too expensive even for them—he would not have had a view of the Park. And the Park was important to him. That green rectangle with its twisting paths and lakes; that landscaped, lovely stretch of earth that represented nature—oh yes, that, almost as much as his apartment, was his soul…. In the summer he would spend hours gazing out of the window at it, picturing it as it had been a hundred years ago; with car­riages, and horses, and women wandering around in white dresses that were caught now and then by the breeze, to ripple softly in the sunlight…. That was the real New York. The real America. That was what it had been, and should be still. A land of order, and decency, and ideals, where the strong survived and ruled, and where the weak went under, never to be heard of again. A land created from the wilderness, a land snatched from the hands of savages; a formal garden of the spirit. That its formality was only, in a way, a dream, and that its order could be maintained only with a great deal of hypocrisy and falsity and even, maybe, out of sight and out of mind, violence, did not really affect the end result; the formality was its own justification, became its own reality, and transcended itself. Had it not been for that formality, the garden would have returned, very quickly, to wilderness. It had to be constantly weeded, pruned; the dead flowers thrown out, the unsuitable plants, in spite, perhaps, of their beauty, or originality, had to be assimilated, or allowed to wither, and die. It had to be an ideal garden, and that ideal had to be constantly before one’s eyes, and anything that threat­ened the ideal had to be ruthlessly sacrificed. It had to be—but it no longer was; and now chaos, like weeds growing in a smooth lawn, was condoned, and even praised; and now in Central Park danger lurked behind bushes, and sprang out every now and then to rob, or rape, or kill those who had forgotten that the Park was no longer a safe and perfect place that merely represented nature, was merely the ideal of nature, but had been allowed to return—in spirit, if not yet in fact—to nature itself; return to anarchy, and disorder, and horror….

  He sighed, and came away from the window, and wondered why Smith—Smith the Enemy, Smith the spirit of chaos—hadn’t come today.

  *

  He didn’t come the next day, either, or the next; but the day after that, as Fred was in the subway making his way uptown to the apartment, he felt that he was being watched—or rather, he knew he was being watched. Quite how or from where he didn’t know, since he saw no one in the car he was sitting in who could have been Smith, even if he had taken off his dark glasses and his cap, and even if he had disguised himself in some way. There was simply no one of Smith’s physical build. There was no one in the adjoining cars, either, because he walked up and down the car he was in and looked in them. But still—he was being watched. He knew it.

  When the train drew into the next station he waited until everyone who had to had got off, until everyone who had to had got on, and until, he guessed, the doors were about to close; then he got off. As he did so he was aware of a woman in the next car getting off too. Was it a coincidence, he wondered. Had she almost forgotten her stop, and then realized at the last moment. Or was she—no, she couldn’t possibly be Smith. He saw, out of the corner of his eye—because he didn’t want to attract her attention if she had only forgotten to get off earlier—that she was small, and sort of plump, and even if Smith had decided to dress up as a woman to follow him, he couldn’t have shrunk ten inches or so. Besides, so far Smith had made no attempt to disguise himself—unless dark glasses and a cap were a disguise—so it was unlikely that he would go to the lengths of changing sex in order to follow him. But then—as he lingered on the platform, wondering whether to go up to the street, or simply wait for the next train and get on that, it occurred to him that Smith might not be alone. There might be two or three, or even twenty Smiths, of all different sexes, ages, colours and shapes following him. And this idea made him sweat even more than the idea of a single Smith following him did. Because more than one Smith could only mean that all these various people were, like himself, policemen or women, and they were following him because they suspected him of—what? Of being corrupt, and having an apartment on Central Park West he couldn’t have afforded on his lieutenant’s pay? Hardly—because they obvi­ously knew already that he had an apartment on Central Park West. So if they wanted to do something about that they could have done by now. Unless they were hoping to see who was paying him off. But both he and the gentlemen on Long Island were much too careful about that—his ‘expenses’ were paid directly into an account that he kept with a bank in Long Island City that was not his regular bank; a bank in which certain of those same gentlemen had, if not a controlling interest, at least a great deal of influence; so there was little chance of his secret funds being discovered. But if the Smith or Smiths who were following him were not interested in his address or his bank account, what could they be interested in him for. Not, surely, because they suspected he had anything to do with, or even was, himself, the cop-killer? No….

  But as he stood there, watching, still out of the corner of his eye, the small plump woman—who had wandered to the end of the platform, but hadn’t left it—he told himself that Smith, or the Smiths, couldn’t be policemen. Because they were making no secret about following him, and yet weren’t approaching him either. No. They couldn’t belong to the police. But who were they then? What did they want, these one or two or more people who were pursuing him? More and more he felt himself to be helpless, lost, and threatened by these un-named—un-nameable? —forces; as if they, very much as his apartment, were inside himself, and were, like foul worms, eating through his vital organs; even now gathering about his heart and brain, waiting for the final attack.

  More people drifted on to the platform. He looked them over, wondering if there were any Smiths among them. But there was no way of knowing. Smiths looked the same as everyone else. Smiths were everyone else. He felt his body waving as he stood there, like a flag in a strong wind; his strong fine body, thin and light as a piece of cotton, pinned to a pole that kept him captive. He couldn’
t move, but he couldn’t stand still; he couldn’t stay where he was, but he couldn’t go away. He was becoming dizzy, with Smiths all around him, and Smiths within him. He thought he was going to faint….

  But then, through his faintness, he heard the rumble of an approaching train, and managed to stand straight until it clat­tered into the station. This time, he thought, he would get in and wait till the doors were actually closing before he stepped off again; if he timed it right that plump woman—he could see her edging down the platform, towards him—couldn’t get off behind him.

  He did it beautifully, he thought; as neatly, cleanly, perfectly as if he had been trained in the movement for years. The doors just brushed his shoulders as he edged between them, back on to the platform. He stared down the train. No one else had got off. He grinned to himself, and felt as elated as a small boy who has just, successfully, performed some daring and illegal deed. He watched the train as it pulled slowly out of the station, and then turned, still grinning, to go up to the street. And then, as he turned, he stopped grinning and jumped. Because there, right in front of him, smiling at him, was the small plump woman—or girl, as he saw now that she was. He closed his eyes and let the waves of chaos sweep him out to sea without so much as a struggle. He was lost. And she, whoever she was, had won. She hadn’t, he realized—anticipating his move—got on the train at all.