Afraid to Death

by Marc Behm

  It was ten o’clock.

  The Eye did the last four crosswords in the paperback, finishing the book. He tossed it into the wastepaper basket.

  At ten thirty he borrowed Le Figaro from the girl sitting at desk eight, read the headlines, the Cornet du jour, the Vincennes racing results, and the Programmes radiotélévision. He tried to do the French mots croisés but gave it up.

  The young swinger at desk nine passed him Playboy, and he looked at the nudes. All the girls were lying askew, playing with themselves slyly. ‘MISS AUGUST, far-out Peg Magee (left) is turned on by Arab movies, skin diving, Mahler, and zoology.’ ‘MISS DECEMBER, demure Hope Korngold (right), admits her erotic fantasies often involve subways, buses, and ferryboats. All aboard!’

  He watched the parking lot again for a while. Then, at eleven thirty, he took the photo out of the drawer and studied it. He usually did this for a half-hour or so every morning he was in the office.

  It was a group shot of fifteen little girls sitting at tables in a classroom. His wife sent it to him in sixty-one, in a letter postmarked Washington, D.C. ‘Here’s your fucking daughter, asshole! I bet you don’t even recognize her, you prick! P.S. Fuck you!’

  It was true – he had no idea which of the children was Maggie. He’d flown to Washington and spent two months looking for them, but there had been no trace of them there. Watchmen bureaus all over the country tried for ten years to locate them, then had just put the file away in the dead archives.

  He set the photo against the telephone on the desk, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his arms.

  Fifteen little girls with camera-shy faces. Seven- or eight- or nine-year-olds. One of them was his daughter. She would be twenty-four years old this July.

  His favorite for a long time had been the uncombed moppet in the white sweater sitting under a crucifix hanging on the wall. She was holding an apple and scowling. Then he’d switched to the blonde with the ponytail sitting by the blackboard at the opposite side of the room. She was biting a pencil. On the board was neatly chalked the beginning of Psalm 23: ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I …’ Then, for years, his choice had lingered on the pale narrow visage with the bangs in the last row. Her hands were tightly clasped and she looked terrified. Then the girl next to her had attracted his fancy. She wore glasses and was grinning …

  But he no longer had any preferences. He knew them all by heart now and loved every one of them.

  The classroom was the most familiar decor of his life: three walls, crucifix, tables, blackboard, the psalm, the apple. And the fifteen lovely faces, like infantile mug shots, the myriad of gazing eyes … and in the far corner a door through which he knew he would one day enter and call her name. And out of the multitude would rise his lost child.

  He was absolutely certain of this.

  He stared through the window. The old man in the overalls was back in the parking lot, looting the glove compartment of a Thunderbird.

  The telephone rang. It was Miss Dome, Baker’s secretary, summoning him upstairs.

  It was noon.

  Watchmen, Inc., filled two basement levels and the second, third, and fourth floors of the Carlyle Tower. Baker’s office was in the northeastern corner of the fourth floor, an enormous salon with two Van Goghs, three Picassos, and a Braque covering one entire wall.

  Baker was only twenty-nine years old. He had inherited the agency from his father a year ago. The old-timers downstairs ran the business, but he always handled what he called ‘the thousand-dollars-a-day clients’ himself.

  Two of them, an elderly man and woman, both in tweeds, were sitting in Hepplewhite chairs facing the refectory desk. Baker introduced them to the Eye: Mr. and Mrs. Hugo.

  The Eye knew the name. Hugo shoe stores. Old-fashioned ‘booteries’ (Founded in 1867) on downtown streets in all the big cities. He remained standing and tried to anticipate the squeal. A family problem, surely. A son or a daughter straying off the beaten track.

  He was right.

  Baker struck a pose, looking grave and professional. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Hugo have a son,’ he announced. ‘Paul. He graduated from college recently and is unemployed for the moment.’

  Mr. Hugo laughed nervously. ‘He’s been unemployed for the last ten months!’

  ‘He’s made no effort at all to find a job,’ Mrs. Hugo said. ‘He’s just loafing.’

  ‘He has a girlfriend,’ Baker continued. ‘His parents want to find out something about her. They want to know just how deeply the boy is involved. You follow me?’

  The Eye nodded. A college boy and a hustler. Dad and Ma desperate. A big retainer. He turned to Mr. Hugo. ‘What’s the girl’s name, sir?’

  Mr. Hugo twitched. ‘We don’t know. We’ve never met the young lady.’

  ‘She’s been calling him up at the house,’ Mrs. Hugo whined. ‘That’s how we found out about her.’

  Baker emerged from his chair, ending the session (he had a squash date at the Harvard Club at one). ‘Establishing her identity won’t be any problem,’ he said. And he walked around the desk and stood staring at the front of the Eye’s jacket. ‘They would like a preliminary report within twenty-four hours. Is that possible?’

  ‘Yes.’ He fingered his buttonhole. The goddamned button was gone!

  ‘Can we hear from you this time tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s all, then. Thank you.’

  The Eye bowed to Mr. and Mrs. Hugo and left the office. He wondered where the hell the button was. He found it out in the corridor, on the floor by the elevators.

  On his last assignment he’d followed an embezzler named Moe Grander to Cheyenne, Wyoming. (The guys downstairs called him ‘Grander the Absconder.’) He’d cornered the Eye in an alley one night and tried to brain him with a hammer. The Eye had shot him in the stomach. Watchmen, Inc., did not approve of killing suspects, and he’d been confined to his desk ever since. The Hugo job meant that the interdiction was lifted. The idea of escaping from the Tower and going out on the streets again elated him. He decided to skip lunch.

  He took his sewing kit from his drawer and checked a Minolta camera out of the supply room. He went down to the second basement and asked the motor pool girl if he could have a car. She gave him the keys to the yellow Toyota.

  He went out to the parking lot. The old thief in the overalls was still there, but scurried off when he saw the Eye coming.

  It was a quarter to one. The sky was like greasy golden dishwater, the air tasted of hope and glee, the glittering windows of the Tower almost blinded him.

  He climbed into the yellow Toyota and drove across the city.

  MARC BEHM was born in 1925 in Trenton, New Jersey, and served with the US Army in Europe during the Second World War. After playing a variety of small parts in American television, he eventually made a name for himself as a screenwriter. When he retired from screenwriting, he published a number of novels, including Afraid to Death and The Eye of the Beholder, both now published by Dover Publications, Inc.

  www.doverpublications.com