“I’m listening.”
He began to spout his monotonous dialogue. He was no actor now. He garbled his lines. He stuttered and gasped them at me. But he held to his story. He gave it to me in a hoarse and hysterical pitch, the same old tale, his simple saga, the meeting at the art school, the few drinks, the early morning visit, the posing, the drawing, and the last goodbye. It was told without embellishment this time. He did not editorialize. He moved it in a quick synopsis, unadorned by description. It came through to me as phony. My right hand began to itch.
I hit him again. He did not fight me off. He was paralyzed by the gun. I kept the gun under his eyes. I handled him with staccato punches. One. Two. And when he went down I waited for him. I gave him a chance to see my fist again. He said nothing. One. Two. There was a trickle of blood now, a crooked line from the corner of his mouth to his chin. He was on the floor. He moved his lips but there were no words behind them. He shook his head and said, “Wait. Wait, McGrath.” But when he stood again, I did not wait. One. Two. He went down, gasping and crying. He sobbed at the floor. His black hair fell over his eyes. A dot of blood dropped away from his chin. I watched it spread. His hands were white on the boards. He began to cough and cry. His head fell forward and his arms gave way and he thudded to the floor. He was out.
I revived him. I went to his sink and filled a tall glass and threw it at him. He came out of it and lifted his head and blubbered some more. I let him have more water, in his eyes. He didn’t look at me. He was awake now, but my last punch had done him serious damage.
He said to the floor, “No more, McGrath.”
“Why did you kill her?”
“No more, McGrath.”
He wasn’t hearing me. I jerked him around and sat him up against the wall. His head was on a hinge. But the screws were loose. He bobbed and bounced, out of control. Punch-drunk. I slapped him awake.
“Why did you kill her?”
“You got me wrong, McGrath.”
“And Frugi? What were you after him for?”
“No. You’re wrong. Wrong.”
I stepped closer. “What were you after in Frugi’s apartment?”
“The police,” he gasped. “Call them in. I can prove you’re wrong.”
“You want the police?”
“Call them in. I’m hurt.”
I went to the phone. I held down the buttons. I lifted the phone.
“Call them in, I tell you,” he whispered.
“You want to confess?”
His head wobbled and bobbed. He was putting all his effort into telling me no. “No. But you won’t listen. You won’t believe me. I got nothing to hide, I tell you. Call them in McGrath.”
I dropped the phone.
“I’m listening,” I said. “Where did you go after you left me here with Consuelo?”
“Romani.”
“You’re lying.”
“Call him,” he whispered. “Ask him.”
“I’m asking you.”
“I was with Romani—on a job. Café Magenta—Forty-fourth Street.”
“For how long?”
“An hour. Maybe more. Witnesses. After the Café Magenta I went to Consuelo’s apartment. You remember the time.”
He was covered from eight to nine-thirty.
“This afternoon. Where were you?” I asked. “Make it good.”
“Here. All afternoon.”
“Alone?”
“Model,” he said. He waved a hand weakly at the easel. “That picture. I was working on it. From one to five.”
“Which model?”
“Mary Foster. And Herb Flack, later. They were with me. Call Mary. Ask her. Call Herb Flack.”
He leaned on his hands. These were no histrionics. His head hung low. He was a sympathetic character, suddenly. I could be all wrong about him. If I was wrong, I had almost killed an innocent man. He was beaten. But he did not squirm. He had alibis. But I could check them, if I chose.
And he had asked for the police.
I went to the liquor cabinet. I filled two hookers. I downed one and carried the other to Barker. I held it to his mouth. It dribbled over his chin. Then he caught at it and gulped it. He seemed to gain a measure of strength from it. He sat back now. He leaned into the wall and showed me his face. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. He had difficulty keeping them open. His chest rose and fell, still strained by the beating I had given him.
“One more,” he said.
I gave him another hooker. He held it and downed it. He made a face at it. When he put down the glass, it clacked against the floor and rolled away from his hand. He watched it, stupidly.
“Think back,” I said. “I’m beginning to believe you, George. Maybe you can help me. But you’ve got to think. Try to remember her at Romani’s. Did you ever see her with another guy?”
“Give me time,” he said.
“You’ve got it.”
He closed his eyes. I stood there, straining now, waiting for his mouth to open. He was believable now. If I could get him to remember. If I could find something in him about Gwen’s first day at school.
“Somebody called for her the first night?”
“Give me time, McGrath.”
Time? Time was the breath of life to me. Time was this worried second, ticking off quickly, too quickly. Time was the ebb and flow of my breathing, the awful silence around me, the pressure in my head; the dull and distant noises of the sleeping city. Time clawed at me, irked me, set up a panic in my ears. My eyes burned with time. My mind ached with the pain of rime. There would be a siren screaming soon. This minute? The next minute? There would be rushing feet, heavy and official, on the steps outside. There would be drawn guns and hard faces. I would be trapped. This was the meaning of time for me. The little whiskey glass grew heavy in my hand. I threw it against the wall. It splintered over him.
“I don’t remember,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”
“The painting. You said she commissioned you. Was she giving the picture to somebody? Did she mention a name?”
“Let me think.”
“Her boyfriend?”
He nodded. “That’s it.”
“His name?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Take a stab at it.”
He stabbed. “Harry,” he said. “I recollect Harry.”
“You’re sure now?”
“Now I’m sure.”
The phone rang. Barker kept his head down, too tired to be bothered with it. I picked it up.
Abe said, “Why didn’t you call me, Steve? I’ve been waiting here.”
“You got McPhail?”
“McPhail is nothing.”
“Nothing?” My hand was hot on the phone, as hot as my head and just as sticky. The room sang with silence, punctuated by Barker’s wheezing breath, and from far away the drone of the city came to me as a sad and weary song, a dismal dirge that added black hopelessness to my dying spirit. “Nothing at all?”
“He’s clean,” Abe said. “He’s got an airtight alibi—man by the name of Sanderson, a booking agent who lives up Bleecker, a few doors away from you. Sanderson alibied for him, from mid-morning through lunch, and after that they were in an empty theater uptown, where he gave McPhail an audition. McPhail admits nothing, nothing at all. What’s with Barker?”
“The same.”
“What took you so long?”
“I was up at Wagner’s,” I said. “Another dead end.”
“Wagner’s?” His voice rose. “What the hell for?”
“It was Harvey’s idea, Abe. I got quite a bit from Wagner—but it was all about Gwen.”
“Where’s Barker?”
“Barker’s as clean as McPhail. He’s here with me now.”
“Don’t leave him,” shouted Abe
. “Stay where you are until I get there!”
“There’s nothing here,” I said.
“Don’t leave,” said Abe again.
I hung up and started out of there.
Harry?
The stairway to the street was out of perspective, a cliff, a chasm, a bottomless pit. Far downstairs, the hall light glowed in the dirty corridor. The stair rail was a long arrow, pointing down, a straight line, a dark line, pulling my eyes to the depths below, another dead end, another hopeless pause on my way to nowhere. I stared into the pit, grubbing for an idea, a clue whim.
Harry?
I took a step down. I stood there, fighting to find him in the past, searching for him in the clouded corners of my memory. I closed my eyes and delivered myself to the vague distances of recollection. How far back? Two years? Three years? Now time stood still. I was alone, running down the lonely path into the brighter days, the early days with Gwen, seeing all of it in a quick picture pattern, recalling each strange face—standing off with a camera eye to examine our friends, our acquaintances.
I stepped again. Deep, and deeper still, back to our first meeting, at the little noisy bar. I heard the sound of the music, the loud and heavy beat of the drums, taking the lead in a Calypso novelty. Stone cole dead in de mahket, stone cole dead in de mahket, a young girl’s voice, too husky for her age, shouted the rhythmic words, and her hips shook as she sang, and my eyes enjoyed her until I saw Gwen at the corner table alone, and watching me. Her friends welcomed me when they returned. Her friends? Who were they? Mitzi Granger had a boy named Skeet, a freelance musician, a trumpeter. And who was Gwen’s friend? Who was the man at her side that night? Paul Hervek. His name came easily. Paul Hervek had made a name for himself as a pianist. I couldn’t forget him. I wiped away the scene.
I stepped again. One scene out of a thousand, one name out a thousand, one memory out of a rushing tide of thought. How can you measure the past? How can you calculate the important events, the casual times? How can you revive the little moments? I fought back through the monotony of our married life. I delivered myself to the gayer months, the days of courtship. Our first kiss, our walks together, our talks together; listening with the ear of memory to her slow speech, her careless banter; the tale she told of her life before she met me.
I stepped down. I stepped down deeper into the past. There was a man before me. In Pine Bush. I struggled to relive the interlude. Gwen had mentioned him only once, in the park one night, in Central Park. This was a clear picture, bright and sharp because it was important, alive in my mind because of an old sentiment, a once important sentiment. There was no moon that night. We walked through the park, through the heavy shadows under the ripe trees, seduced by the gentle night, enchanted by this lonely garden within the screaming streets of the city. We walked slowly, aimlessly. I had my arm around her waist. I thrilled to her. We felt nothing but the closeness between us. We enjoyed the whisper of the trees, the perfumed grass; the idyllic isolation from the roar of traffic. We were alone, Gwen and I, alone in a precious moment. She warmed to me that night. She talked to me as she never talked again.
I stepped down. Her voice came to me. This was the Gwen I loved, yet knew but once, that night under the black sky. She had an irresistible charm, a softness, a glow. There was no end and no beginning to her talk. She built me a story of her life as a girl. She told me the tale of her father’s farm, the solitary days; the days of torment. She built it with drama, the hard times after her mother died, the cruelty of her father, the loneliness; the pain. She told it well. She had been born to hate him, this hard and vicious man. She trembled as she pictured him for me.
“Why did you hate him, Gwen?”
“He killed my mother. He tortured her until she died.”
I stepped down, deeper now, into her girlhood. When she was seventeen she burned to escape from the farm, from her father. She had her chance, in Albany, on a school trip to see the state capitol. She met her first love then. He was a college boy, on vacation from Cornell.
“You don’t have to tell me, Gwen.”
“But I want you to know. I’ll feel better if you know.”
She abandoned her schoolmates and went with him. He had a car. He drove her into the mountains and she stayed with him that night, and afterwards he gave her money to go to New York. He would meet her there. They would be married. But she never saw him again. And he left her with a legacy of bitterness and hurt and pain. She had hated all men after him. She had turned inward, building a steel wall around her heart, a wall that no man living could ever scale again. But that was ended now. That had died when she met me.
“Who was he, Gwen? The Cornell man?”
And she had said his name.
Tom Farwell. Tom!
I stepped down to the landing and the darkness closed in upon me. Tom! I wiped him away, and with him the brittle magic of the scene. I leaned hard against the wall and closed my eyes again and tried for more and still more moments alone with Gwen. But the past was a flood of distorted pictures now. The sickness of the moment beat at my head and nothing came to me but the pain of disillusionment. My brain slammed shut the book of memory. My head was fogged and tired. Hope died in me, and with hope dead my hand shook on the door knob. I pulled open the door to the Street.
And then I heard movement above me.
George Barker was on the landing above.
He was silhouetted in his doorway. His arms were up, gripping the door frames. He was a heroic figure, legs spread; the bulk of his torso sharp-edged against the light behind him.
“I remember it, McGrath,” he shouted. “I got it now.”
I ran upstairs.
CHAPTER 13
Three forty-nine in the morning.
“This is the alley,” Linda said.
Abe tapped Monkowitz and the cab slowed and stopped. He got out and examined the alley. He walked halfway through it and then returned, fanning himself with the derby.
“Go through over the first fence to your right, Steve.”
“Mrs. Willis never locks the back door,” Linda said. “But if you find it locked, you can get in through a cellar window.”
“You know what to do?” Abe asked.
“I can’t wait,” I said.
“This time you’ll wait,” said Abe. “Remember that.”
“Give me a little time, Abe. I’m not used to house-breaking.”
“Ten minutes. Look at your watch. I’m going to be prompt.”
I set my watch. Linda came to me and pressed my hand. “Be careful, Steve.”
“I’ve still got Sliger’s gun,” I said.
“Don’t use it,” Abe cautioned.
“This time I’m right, Abe.”
“You never know until the chips are down.”
“I know.”
“Don’t use the gun,” Abe said again.
The cab rolled away. I entered the alley. Around me pressed the high black walls, but the narrow path was straight and clean. This was the way to the last door, the door that would open out of the maze. A cat wailed in a yard a block away, two blocks away. The rain fell gently, wakening me, refreshing on my face. There was a low-hanging tree at the end of the alley, and the young leaves brushed my cheeks as I passed under it. The fence made a corner here and I climbed it slowly, worried about the old wood, bracing myself to slide over and then sliding and holding until the earth was solid underfoot.
The back door did not give under my touch. I circled the house and groped for the cellar window. It pushed forward and then clattered when I pulled back my hand. On my knees, I waited. Rain dripped from a gutter and splattered in a tin can near my shoe. I watched and listened. I pushed at the window again and held it up. I put a foot over the ledge and forced the window up with my head. I waited again. The flat silence pricked at my ears. Somewhere a taxi hooted and was quiet. A little
wind played with the clothes on the line behind me, slapped and flapped and then was still.
The cellar was dank and dark as a hole. I blessed Monkowitz for his flashlight. Now the yellow circle moved among the ancient columns, square-bricked pilasters, cobwebbed and wet. I played the light ahead of my feet, picking a path free from boxes and stored goods. I stepped lightly. The door to the upstairs hall lay straight ahead. I looked at my watch. I had come this far in five minutes. I had time. The steps to the door took my weight without sighing. I turned the knob and put out the light and walked out into the dim and narrow hallway. I measured the distance to the door that led to Linda’s friend’s apartment. Four steps, across the landing to the stairway. The ancient house was a box of silence. I dropped to my knees and crawled across the hard floor.
And then I was inside the room, the door closed behind me. Ken lay a-sprawl on the couch, snoring softly; one hand down, his fingers touching the carpet, his handsome face relaxed in sleep. I moved to the far end of the room. There was a door here a small kitchenette. I went inside. With the door open only a crack, I could see enough—the couch, the entire couch, and beyond the couch the other door to the hall. I leaned against wall, my eyes at the crack, staring into the gloom, feeling the tightness crawl over me, the gun sticky in my hand. I blinked to kill the dryness in my eyes. I closed my eyes.
A phone rang from upstairs. The sound of it pulled at my nerves—the little nerves in my scalp, the messengers of fear. My ears picked up the soft sound of footsteps, through the ceiling, muffled and remote, yet exaggerated by the silence. These were unusual steps, awkward steps; familiar steps. Once, not too long ago, I had slept in a barrack house, an improvised headquarters, far behind the lines at Combières, the gay little town in Western France. We had been sent there on leave after the Battle of the Bulge, three hundred weary men. We came into Combières and ran berserk, drinking good French wine and enjoying good French women and feeding the tills of the starving storekeepers in the village And after the first night of revelry, we returned to our barn and slept fitfully, dreaming of home and knowing that this time the dream would come true for all of us because the war was over.
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