by David Rhodes
They listened to her throwing things in the office, breaking windows and sobbing. Finally, she left, and July watched the Cadillac lunge away from the curb and roar out of his vision.
“Phew. She gone?” asked Carroll, half laughing.
July wanted to answer, but couldn’t. Franklin flipped on the light, and in amazement July noticed that he’d been drinking out of his glass during the whole time the light was out. It was nearly empty. He felt relief. Franklin was obviously right: there was nothing to be upset about, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to sit there and lazily sip his wine—it would be impossible. So July was convinced that he’d been mistaken—it had all been for show, and they went downstairs to see what was broken.
Much of the furniture was toppled over. Window glass was everywhere. The heavy desk in the office was overturned, and one wooden chair had all four of its legs busted off. July began cleaning up, but Franklin, finding the spectacle very amusing, told him not to bother—they’d get to it in the morning—called a cab to come take them to a good place to drink, and they left. As they rode he asked if July wouldn’t be interested in taking the truck, just once more, up to Boston. July told him no.
After saying good night to Carroll and abandoning him to his friends at the private club, July walked back, and cleaned up as best he could, so that, except for there being no glass in the window frames, everything looked much as it had before. Only after he’d finished did he feel like going to bed.
The memory of the evening upset him, and he tried to think his way out of it, but with no success. Two days later he saw Mrs. Carroll and searched her face from across the room for signs of an explanation. But none appeared. Only a falling grimness that seemed to deny any ability on her part to pretend anything. She stayed five minutes and left without waiting for Franklin to come back from lunch. Franklin remained away from the store until almost five; when he came in, he opened the safe in his office, took something out and left.
When the police came a day later, July and Carroll were filling out an order form. They knocked on the door frame of the office. The door was wide open.
“Come in,” Carroll said, stretching out his hand. “Sit down. What can we do for you? My name’s Franklin Carroll. This is July Montgomery. If there’s—”
“We’ve got a warrant to search here,” said the one in uniform, very coldly, and produced a document to that effect. The cloth of his shirt rasped like starched canvas.
“Well, look wherever you like,” said Carroll, without the slightest trace of fear in his voice, but no longer trying to be pleasant.
“Do you know a man by the name of Bobby Thompson?”
“No.”
“From New York.”
“I’ve never been there. Look where you will. There are three floors here, and all of them are open. Help yourself.”
“We need the keys to the rooms in the basement,” said the plainclothesman. “That’s all we really care about.”
Franklin turned to face the wall. July watched as pale, thin waves of color washed across his face, one after another. He looked at his watch for a moment as though he were thinking about something.
“Sure, here,” said Franklin, and tossed them a ring of keys. “Go with them,” he told July. The words cut him. “I’ll be right down.”
July knew that the keys he’d given them didn’t fit the locks in the basement, but he went with them anyway and showed them downstairs. They made no attempt to talk to him. Go with them. The tone in which Carroll had said that had been the same tone he used with the policeman, as though he, July, were no closer to him than they were—as if he were a stranger. At the first lock they went through each key on the ring twice to make sure, then hurried on to another door. Before they were even halfway through the number of possibilities for this one, it began to dawn on them that something might be wrong.
“Better go check,” ordered the plainclothesman, and his partner turned and ran up the stairs. In the confusion of leaving, the keys were dropped, and, losing his place, he had to go through the whole ring before confirming his maddening suspicion. Just as he finished, “He’s gone, Murphy,” came from upstairs, and he kicked the door. Then, noticing July was still there, he said, “He’ll pay for this,” and directed him to lead the way upstairs.
“Get on the phone,” he shouted as soon as they reached the first floor. “Have his car’s description sent out.”
But the other was across the room in the middle of a lamp display. “There’s no hurry,” he said. “A guy like that can’t get very far away. Look at these things here—these ‘lava lights.’ I’ve never seen anything like it. What’ll they think of next?” In anger, the plainclothesman charged out of the building and over to his car radio.
“How do these things work?”
“I think it’s heat,” said July.
Bob Reed was standing with a small family who were looking at sofas. He excused himself politely and went over to the policeman. “Say,” he said, “what’s the trouble here?”
“It doesn’t concern you. Boy, these are really something. How much are they?”
“Seventeen fifty.”
“That much?”
“Is Mr. Carroll in some kind of trouble?”
“For all I know, you are too, so you better get yourself a lawyer and stop asking questions. This smaller one here, how much is it?”
“Fifteen fifty.”
“That much?”
July went into the office and sat down on the desk. The plainclothesman came back from outside and with the uniformed policeman came into the small room that still had no windows and shut the door. The latter carried a lava light and searched around for a plug. “Wait till you see this thing. This guy said it was heat that did it.” He found an outlet, unplugged the desk lamp and plugged in the light. The heavier orange liquid in the bottom refused to rise.
“It has to warm up,” said July.
“What were you doing when we came in?”
“Filling out an order form.”
“What kind of order form?”
“Here.” July handed him the paper.
He looked at it and put it down. “Where did Carroll go?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you know a man by the name of Bobby Thompson?”
“No.”
“You want to take a ride down to the station?”
“Ask me something I can answer.”
“You know that your boss was involved with a company that exported stolen goods overseas and sold them through discount houses?”
“No.”
“What did you think?” asked the uniformed man. “That all the truckloads of stolen property taken during a single week in the city were sold through secondhand shops? No, there’s no market of that size anywhere. If there was, it’d be discovered. There had to be a mechanism for getting rid of it—an export business. Hell, in an underdeveloped country most secondhand stuff would look like new.”
“A neat little business,” put in the other. “And I suppose you didn’t know anything about it.”
“No.”
“Look, it’s beginning to work! Isn’t that amazing. They cost seventeen fifty, though.”
“That much?”
July was glad for their questions. He didn’t want to be left alone. The companionship of his own thoughts was not welcome.
“Where do you live?”
“Upstairs.”
“Upstairs here?”
“ Yes.”
“Hmmm. How long has this been going on?”
“What?”
“Living in the store.”
“Five years.”
“Hmmm. Did you know—Say, Bailey, why don’t you go up and check his room—just to make sure?”
“The salesman said he drove away in his car.”
“Go ahead and look anyway.”
The uniformed policeman left.
“It’s funny,” the remaining one said, settling down into a chair w
ith a cigar and putting his hat next to July on the desk. “We’ve been looking for an outlet for these ‘dentist office’ burglaries ever since the mid-fifties. We broke up a couple of smaller gangs who actually had delivery trucks and you could call in your order and have the stuff brought over. But they handled musical equipment almost exclusively. Then we turned over this stone in Chelsea—outside of Boston—and who do you suppose was underneath it? Right, Mr. Carroll. And the damnedest thing is—after all these years he’d decided for some reason to get out, and ever since week before last he’s been closing down his contacts and turning his hired thieves back on their own. None of them will testify, of course—criminal morality—and with the trouble we had in getting anything to base a warrant on, we thought he’d surely have his own place cleaned out. I’m surprised. But I suppose you knew all of this.”
“It’s a surprise to me.”
Bailey returned. “Nothing but a bunch of books, Murphy, and a cat. Cruddy little place to live. You’d think the kid was a monk. Are you a monk, kid? Probably not. Ask him where he got the TV. It looks new.”
“Where’d you get the television?”
“Honestly. If you don’t think so, check the serial numbers.”
“I already got them, Murphy. Boy, do I get a kick out of those lights.”
“Now, where do you suppose Carroll went off to?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he went home.”
“No. They’d’ve brought him back already. Oh well, he won’t be hard to find. He’s too used to being obvious. He’s been rich too long. I wonder what a guy like that must be thinking now—knowing he’s going to prison. There’s a basic stupidity in all criminals—at least in criminals who commit passionless crimes. Jesus, if there’s anything important in life, it must be health first, then not being in prison.”
“What’s with all those books?”
“Nothing.”
“You going to some school?”
“No, why? Make you suspicious?”
“Don’t be smart or we’ll take you down to the station. As a matter of fact, I like books myself. Just very odd is all.”
“I liked books when I was a kid,” said Bailey, “until I grew out of’em. Records too. How long do these lava lights keep working?”
“Nobody knows. They just came out.”
“Do you have a crowbar or something we can get into those rooms in the basement with?”
“I don’t think so. Why don’t you just shoot through the locks?”
“You’ve been watching too many late shows. That’d be dangerous. Anyway, go find a screwdriver and we’ll take off the hinges.”
The three of them went back down into the basement, pulled the pins out of a set of hinges, and with amazing difficulty pulled away the door, flipped on the light inside and went in. There was nothing but cardboard boxes. Bailey immediately began looking through them, but they turned out to be all empty. The next room they got into had boxes containing everything imaginable, except a lava light, much to the disappointment of Bailey, who was hoping to be able to confiscate one as evidence and put it on the main desk in the station.
“Here, look at this,” said Murphy, and roughly shoved one of the boxes into July’s hands. July looked down into it, resentfully wondering why he was supposed to be looking into it at all: old watches with some of the gold worn off, pieces of jewelry, an electric sander, a radio, fishing tackle, an ornate keepsake box—things taken out of homes, not offices. He set it down and pushed it away.
“So what?” he said.
“You remember taking any of that stuff yourself?”
“No.”
“Ever been arrested?”
“No.”
“Ever been in trouble?”
“No.”
“Ever been to Boston?”
“No . . . I mean yes.”
“Slipped up, didn’t you? It was Chelsea, wasn’t it?”
“No.”
“We can check, you know.”
“Go ahead.”
“I think he’s clean, Murphy,” said Bailey. “He doesn’t look like a bad kid. Where are your parents?”
“They’re dead.”
“Too bad. How long?”
“Over ten years.”
“Traffic accident?”
“Yes. How’d you know?”
“Happens all the time. Both parents dead, young kid, almost always a traffic accident. Really, I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“Now, level with us, what do you know about all this?”
“Nothing.”
“OK. Murphy, let’s take ’im down to the station.” And they went upstairs. But as it happened, after another police car arrived, and then a van to take away the stolen goods in the basement, they decided against it and told him not to leave the city and that they’d come to check on him from time to time, and after Carroll was picked up he’d be notified and probably there’d be some things to talk over by then. But in the meantime the store would be closed and he was advised to look for another job, as was the salesman. Both of them, they were told, were eligible for unemployment benefits. The salesman followed them out to their car asking questions. July heard the heavy wooden door in the basement shut and the van pull out of the lot. He went to the front door and locked it, put out the closed sign and felt the silence envelop him. He went to the office, opened the desk drawer and took two green tranquillizers from a bottle with Mrs. Franklin Carroll written across the prescription label.
These were the first pills, other than aspirin, that he’d ever taken, and he had no idea what to expect. Trying to anticipate their effect kept his thoughts closely centered on himself and away from the reasons he’d taken them. Upstairs, he ran a bath, watching the tub fill up with the clear water. He undressed and got in. The light drained from the room as the afternoon wore out, and he remained immersed in the dark, thinking about why it might be that Freud never really addressed himself to the reason why there should be such a distortion between the dream, dream material and dream thoughts. First he thought it would’ve been too difficult and mere speculation. Then he thought perhaps it was for that very reason that the book was extraordinarily profound—because he refused to say anything he couldn’t justify. Then he changed his mind and decided there were a lot of things Freud said that couldn’t be reasonably justified; he began thinking half of Wittgenstein and half of getting married to someone he’d never seen before, as part of a bet, and began to fall pleasantly asleep. Only then, just as he was letting some of the lukewarm water out and was running in a fresh supply of hot, did it occur to him that he was under the influence of the tranquillizers, and that his serenity of mood was entirely attributable to tiny dust particles of green chemicals in his brain.
July was not the kind of person to greet new things with perfect ease, and this was no exception. What could life mean if the grains of a common chemical, manufactured crudely and with almost no effort, could have such an effect on one’s mind? With horror, he saw this had awful implications. Good feelings—happiness, compassion, even well-being and reverence—had no more solidarity than a whiff of menthol, and were no more worthy of praise than drunkenness. It seemed like a rotten, insensitive world in which that was true; but because of the tranquillizer, he couldn’t get very worked up about it. They’ve got you coming or going, he thought: it leaves you wanting to say, I won’t take any pills because that’s false emotion, to which they can parry, Don’t then, who cares? Go ahead and worry. One of those endless situations where a fool can be made to look like a fool. He got out of the tub, turned on the light, dressed and set about fixing himself something to eat.
About this time a knock came from the door to the fire escape, and guessing who it might be, he opened it to Carroll, who immediately rushed into the room, bringing in a blanket of cold air from outside. One elbow of his jacket was ripped out.
“You took a chance coming back here,” said July.
“They have somebody downstairs?”
His voice was nearly inaudible.
“I don’t think so, but maybe on the street.”
“That’s OK. I came down from the roof.”
July turned off the overhead light and lit a small table lamp next to the fire-exit door. Carroll collapsed into a chair. “Quite a day,” he said. His face and hands were gray, his eyes wild with blood lines. “You got anything I might eat?”
“Sure. I was just making something. Your car—you didn’t leave it outside?”
“No, no, it’s nowhere around here.” Pause.
“Jesus,” exclaimed July, trying to keep himself from breaking into tears. “I didn’t know—When you asked me if I’d—”
“Forget it. It wouldn’t have mattered. I should’ve had a couple of the boys take it up.”
July looked at Franklin’s hands, folded deadly in his lap. “I didn’t tell them anything.”
There was a silence then, and July stirred the soup and cut pieces of cheese with the bread knife, and took down some crackers and bowls. “Milk?”
Franklin nodded, looking at the floor as though it were a great hole in the ground. Suddenly he stood up, but then seemed for a moment not to know why he had, and rubbed his hands on his face. “I’ve got to go downstairs,” he said finally.
“Wait. It’s almost ready, then I’ll go down first and look around.”
They sat at the small table. Franklin ate quickly, spooning up the soup as though it were hot water. The crackers and cheese seemed dry and hard to swallow. Taking a drink of milk, he commented matter-of-factly, “A little sour. You ought to go out tonight and get a quart, it’ll be completely gone by morning.”
“I don’t drink much milk,” said July. “It always seems like it’d be too much bother to pour it out, except for the cat.”
“Slovenliness. Say, what did they talk about today? What’d they ask you?”