Killing Time: A Novel

by Thomas Berger

  Now his blood receded swiftly. A firearm was most deadly in the hands of the unpracticed. Any policeman would rather face a veteran gunman than an amateur.

  He had begun to stalk her when she said, wistfully: “You forgot this,” and laid the weapon beside her on the couch. Her lipstick seemed intact: therefore he must not have been defaced. He had got away with it, probably; could not recall any irony in Spinelli’s manner.

  He strapped the .38 into the holster. It had been a close call, all around, but he had emerged without damage. With his back to her he fastened his fly.

  Then he turned and told her that, and where, Joseph Detweiler had given himself up.

  Betty gasped.

  Tierney was touched. He wanted to help her from the couch, or something, but was certain she would reject any offer. So he just stood there and tried to smile.

  He said: “I have to go along now.”

  “Poor Joe,” said Betty. “Will you hurt him?”

  She seemed genuinely worried. Tierney believed this was the first evidence he had ever seen in her of authentic emotion. Perhaps it was not that she never had such, but rather that he had not detected it. But he was a detective of facts and not suppositions; else he was doing a job other than that for which he had been hired. No one would pay a nickel for him as a person, at the mercy of normal human weaknesses. He worked on call, like a device; and like a mechanism he did not understand regret.

  “I won’t have responsibility for him,” he said, with some amazement at her plea.

  She searched his face. “He might say funny things, but it won’t be defiance. He looks at things differently than most people. He expects more of people than they do of themselves.”

  Tierney found himself oddly embarrassed. He said: “Who doesn’t?”

  “You don’t,” Betty replied with bitterness.

  Jesus Christ, thought Tierney, so we’re back to that. All the same, he was impressed by her consistency. She was quite a woman. He could fall in love with her if he wished, but it would be too much trouble.

  “That’s how you can tell you are sane,” Betty added.

  Tierney drove her to the hotel in a slow crosstown passage through rush-hour traffic and snow-wet streets. The curious episode at the apartment had lasted only about ninety minutes. He had gone there to lay her, and succeeded: he decided this in retrospect. With Detweiler in custody, Tierney would have no further reason to see Betty. He seemed to suffer no ill effects from coitus interruptus; he kept his mind off the subject, though maintaining a surveillance on his body. In his profession health was a major concern.

  Tierney pulled into a snowdrift some distance from the entrance to the hotel.

  “Would you mind?” Betty asked derisively. “Would you mind letting me out up where it’s clear?”

  They had said nothing on the journey.

  She went on: “What I have always heard about a cop’s manners is true: they are nonexistent.”

  Before complying, Tierney took her gloved hand. He said with awkward evidence of despair: “Can I see you again?”

  Betty had known all along that she could make him fall in love with her.

  She asked: “What for?”

  He drove to the main entrance, and the uniformed functionary opened the door.

  As Betty swung her boots out, Tierney said softly but distinctly: “Ah, to hell with you.”

  Chapter 11

  DETWEILER got out of bed and saw a white angle across the sash of the window. The snow had followed him cross country. He turned his back to it as he performed his exercises. He squatted, spread one hand against the floor between his knees, and lifting himself upon it, legs drawn up, sat like a frog upon a toadstool. This took strength and more than strength, balance, and more than either, will.

  Usually when in this position he meditated on that which was inexpressible, his faculties in suspension. There were yogis who claimed that in its ultimate refinement the exercise could be done without the supporting hand, but Detweiler did not believe such was possible except by some kind of self-delusion: that is, the practitioner deceived himself into thinking he sat on air. For the physical laws were absolute, made sense. The earth was a magnet that attracted anything which had weight. It was a marvelous principle, and Detweiler had no interest in trying to defy it. He was no enemy of the natural.

  Today, various practical considerations addressed him as he aligned his forces along that rigid arm growing from the rootlike fingers. Perhaps he would not succeed in getting himself mutilated. Certainly his efforts of the day before had been fruitless. He knew he tended towards the idealistic. What he really wanted was for a doctor to seek him out, to suggest the operation as if it were a surprise: “Say, I specialize in amputations. Sell you one?” Casual, breezy, but not vulgar. Detweiler could then accept tentatively, as if it were not of enormous importance to him; or maybe initially resist, ask for a prediction of the advantages thereof. “Come on,” the doc would say. “What the devil.”

  A thin but assertive pain began to insinuate itself through the tendons of his wrist. This was not right: his breathing must be off. That snow was getting to him. It was certainly distracting to think of the mess he had left behind. Detweiler began to lose confidence in the arm on which he was supported; his body started to sway as if atop a high pole in a breeze. There was this to say about concealment: it led to misconceptions. Suppose a man performed an act which had another appearance than the one intended, or perhaps its significance was that it had no significance: driving to an urgent appointment, he ran down and killed a pedestrian, but kept on going because he was already late. Thus he became a criminal in the eyes of the law, though he had had nothing to gain from destroying the victim and, in fact, no interest in him. Indeed, he could have remained wholly legal if he had only stopped and displayed some concern for the fallen. His crime was one of omission. However, were the pedestrian already dead, whatever the driver did subsequently would be relevant only in a social way, only to satisfy the Law. There were reasons why the Law had to be absolute and not allow for exceptions. Otherwise it would be preposterous to punish a motorist for not stopping to minister to a man well dead.

  There was knocking upon the door of his room. Detweiler said, “Come in,” and his mother did. He performed a headstand and, seeing her upside down, said: “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, Ernest,” replied his mother. “Did you sleep well?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. But I got up on the wrong side of the bed. I’m trying to figure out something about the Law, at the moment.”

  “Of course I can’t see you properly in that position,” said Mrs. Detweiler, “but your nose looks swollen and your one eye seems to be black. I wonder if you fell out of bed.”

  “No,” Detweiler answered, “a drunken man hit me twice last night. In the mood he was in he had to hit somebody, so it was just as well it was me rather than someone who would have been hurt.”

  “And you’re feeding the areas with a fresh flow of blood now,” said his mother.

  “I suppose I am, but not intentionally. I’m really thinking about the Law, as I said.”

  “Manmade or natural?”

  “Their connection, if any.”

  “How so?”

  “I was wondering whether I ought to go and report something I did that was against the Law.”

  “Report to whom, Ernest?”

  “The police,” said Detweiler. “I don’t “imagine anyone else would be interested. But the police are probably puzzled about it, and they work pretty darn hard. It makes me feel lousy to keep them in suspense, taking up their time with a problem I could very easily settle.”

  “But would they be any better off?” asked his mother. “The police always have lots of work. Any job you take off their hands will be replaced with another. It reminds me of that time you worked as a postal clerk, sorting mail. You would dispose of a great stack of letters, all in the proper pigeonholes, and it was a real satisfying feeling to
have everything managed so nicely, but then, you remember?, a fellow would wheel up a cart and line up another three hundred letters in front of you. Took away your incentive, you said. At the end of your shift there remained as much mail as at the start, and it would go on so forth throughout the night, and no doubt unto this very day.”

  “Yes,” said Detweiler. “But if one letter went astray it would mean something to the person who mailed it. That I am sure of. Just because there are a lot of people in existence does not lessen the value of particulars.”

  “What was it you were thinking over reporting?”

  “I’ll remember in a minute. I had a reason for doing it, and so the whole thing was canceled out. You know how you will add up how much money you owe and then match it against what you have, pay the bill, and then forget the specific figures?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ve never had a head for figures. Which is why I couldn’t ever be a numerologist, though having known some lovely people in that field. The great composer Johann Sebastian Bach wouldn’t take a step, couldn’t write a note without determining its numerological significance. I reached him once, asking for help with a numerical situation in which a friend was involved, but for the most natural reason it came to nothing.”

  “He spoke in German,” said Detweiler, from under his chest.

  “Exactly.”

  “I hope you had a good séance last night,” Detweiler said.

  His mother answered: “We had one doubter, and that can often be disruptive because doubters want blowing winds and floating trumpets and the claptrap. They are dumbfounded when you tell them that matter obeys its own laws, and so with the spirit; sometimes the two are combined, as in human and animal life, contained in physical bodies but animated by spirit. But the purely physical does not have a life of its own, and no spiritualist ever claims it does.”

  “I disagree with you there, Mother, I must say. I think if you kick a table leg the table feels it.”

  “All right, Ernest, that is its nature. But a table won’t ever fly.”

  Detweiler let himself down and lay on his back.

  “I was just thinking, in connection with calling you ‘Ernest’,” said his mother. “If you keep calling me ‘Mother,’ anybody would know you were my son no matter what I call you, wouldn’t they?”

  “Oh yeah,” Detweiler replied, snapping his fingers. “That’s right.”

  “Of course I am at an age where you get addressed as mother by total strangers,” said Mrs. Detweiler.

  Detweiler began to laugh. He said: “I can’t keep it up, this false-identity stuff. You don’t have to pretend any more. Guess I wouldn’t have made much of an actor. But you really keep the professional touch.”

  The reference was to Mrs. Detweiler’s early days as partner in a mental act with Detweiler’s father. They played little clubs, theaters, county fairs, trade conventions, his father in a turban out among the audience, his mother blindfolded upon the stage. They were supposed to work by means of a code: in Mr. Detweiler’s phrasing was the clue to the object he asked her to identify. “What have I here?” perhaps signified a gentleman’s watch. “Can you tell me what this is?” a lady’s comb. And so on for two dozen common articles found in pockets and purses. Rarer items were dealt with by a laborious system which secretly spelled out key words.

  In fact Mrs. Detweiler never learned even the simple phase of the code; she had no head for that type of symbolism. And no need for it, being naturally able to see through faculties other than the physiological eye. Thus when her husband was not able discreetly to ignore some member of the audience who handed him a small jar of calf’s-foot jelly; said: “Well, well, ah yes,” the signal for the institution of the difficult code; and began to spell “jam” with the first letter of the first word in the first sentence, the second letter of the second word, etc. (“Just a moment, please. My partner is concentrating. She uses memory, introspection, clairvoyance….”)

  Mrs. Detweiler did not count efficiently or spell with any conviction. She had tried, though, and would try again, for her husband strongly disapproved of her using techniques other than his. Any suggestion of the supernatural made him furious, and he might punch her face if aroused. Still, she often took a chance on his being so distracted by showmanship as to overlook her defection from the modes of reason. Calf’s-foot jelly was a case in point. She got “jam,” but “calf” was taking so long to announce, though her husband was glib, and she soon lost count, and it was foolish anyway to make so arduous what was no task at all: in her mind’s eye she could see very clearly the little jar, ex-commercial peanut butter; the label, hand-lettered in pen and ink; the paraffin disk that topped off the jelly; the screw-on lid.

  She interrupted her husband to make the identification. After the act was finished and they were back in the dressing room, he struck her with the old one-two. Her husband was show-business all the way: he never gave her a beating the effects of which could not be concealed by make-up or costume. He never caused her to limp. Nor did he make a commotion which would wake young Detweiler, a baby in this era, asleep in his portable crib. Mrs. Detweiler did not protest against these well-deserved punishments.

  When Mr. Detweiler passed on she was free to take up spiritualism. By the time she got through to him he had calmed down. Life in the otherworld was such as to extinguish high emotion. All there was serene, truly superior, and beautiful. You could choose your age and remain in it: Mr. Detweiler decided on twelve and wore knickers above high stockings, and a billed cap. He remained an entertainer, amusing the Elysians with sleight-of-hand and jokes, for fun was the rule Over There, where no one worked or needed an income.

  Of Joseph, he often told her: “We don’t have to worry about him. He’ll make his way. He’s no fool.” But, like her husband, Joseph had a temper. He disliked noise, rudeness, and cruelty unless it was the natural type displayed by animals. Mrs. Detweiler could not endure watching a cat stalk a robin, but as quite a young child Joseph assured her this was as it should be in the great circuit of existence. But he half-killed a neighbor boy who plinked at birds with an air rifle. They, Joseph and she, had to leave town. They left many towns, and his formal education had been catch-can, but he seemed to turn out well nevertheless, and philosophically he was developed far beyond the standards of the schooled. He also had this artistic talent from an early age, could make likenesses of anybody in any medium, and was therefore popular though quiet.

  Mrs. Detweiler found it easy to gather about her a little circle of spiritualists wherever she was: they recognized one another on sight. Nose around a local grocery or bus stop and you would find a kindred soul. This elite was never numerous, but international, of all races and levels of income. The more prosperous communicants provided her rent- and food-money; give what you can, she levied no charges and used her gift as strenuously for those who had no money to spare.

  Since Joseph had grown up and gone away to follow his own bent she had lived in the same place. He had occasionally visited her in the years since, without incident. But now he was apparently involved in some difficulty, his nose enlarged and his eye ripe, and she suspected she might have to move soon again.

  “I had better go pack the suitcase,” she said.

  Detweiler shook his bruised face. “No, I don’t think that’s necessary, Mother, I really don’t. Nobody knows me here, and this trouble may not turn out to be serious. I just wish I could remember. At the moment I just have this sense of something wrong at the back of my head. He might have been deaf.”

  “Who?”

  “This guy.”

  “The fellow who hit you?”

  “No,” Detweiler said. “The fellow I think I killed.”

  His mother shook her head: too deep for her. Joseph had his own doings. If he wanted to elucidate, he would in his own time. Now she had to get some breakfast for both of them, went and fried some cornmeal mush and served it with Karo syrup, and Detweiler spooned up most and then, scraping his fo
rk across the plate, collected the sweet film between the tines and licked them clean.

  What had previously been inchoate now fell into place. Detweiler shaved himself again though he had done so only yesterday and his beard was very light, and put on a necktie and a suit of his father’s that his mother had kept for twenty years—still in good condition, moth-free, and better than the one he had worn on the trip out. The pants were somewhat large but supported by suspenders. Detweiler had been fond of his father but never missed him. He had not seen it as a pity that his father had done away with himself, given his rationale. His father had always lusted to make it big in the entertainment profession: next season, next year; he had been a slave of time. But the intervals of experience measured by clocks and calendars were arbitrary creations.

  When a boy Detweiler had been amazed by the people who had no sense of reality, who rejected the here and now in the quest for the other, like the boys who wanted to “be” something when they grew up. With the same idea, his father wanted to “be” a headliner, as if that were a type of existence which differed altogether from the kind in which he presently lived.

  To Detweiler this was an extraordinary misapprehension, especially in view of the fact that an entertainer’s audience had no face at all, and his father had a thorough disregard of even the identities of its individual members as he circulated among them and chose their personal possessions for use in his act, held up a comb with no acknowledgment of the living hair through which its teeth had swept.

  Detweiler’s father had therefore hanged himself. It had been Detweiler, who was seven, who found him: like a side of meat or a big bunch of bananas, leaving no note. The mise en scene was a room in a small hotel in Denver, Colo. The immediate cause, Mr. Detweiler’s chagrin that he could not afford the inexpensive suite the Detweiler’s had occupied the last time an engagement brought them to Denver. This occurred on a day in late summer, warm in town, but if you looked across into the western distances, the vast reaches, the mounting, aspiring thrusts, you saw the first cap of snow on the Rockies.