by Jerry eBooks
For a long moment she was quiet. Then, her voice level and calm, “I can’t tell you where he is, Lieutenant. I really don’t know.”
“When’d you last see him?”
“A few nights ago.”
“Where, exactly?”
“Here,” she said. “He came here and we had dinner.”
He leaned back in the chair. “You cooked dinner for him?”
“It wasn’t the first time,” she said matter-of-factly.
He pondered on the next question. He wasn’t looking at her as he asked, “What is it with you and Nolan? How long have you known him?”
“About a month.” And then, before he could toss another question, she volunteered, “We met in a cocktail lounge. I was alone, and I think I ought to explain about that. I don’t usually go out alone. But that night I felt the need for company, and although I drink very little I really needed a lift. I’d been going with someone who disappointed me, one of those awfully nice gentlemen who leads you on until you happen to find out he’s married—”
“Rough deal.” He looked at her sympathetically.
She shrugged. “Well anyway, I must have looked very lonesome and unhappy. I don’t know how we got to talking, but one word led to another and I didn’t know where it was leading. But to be quite truthful about it, I really didn’t care. He told me he’d just been released from prison and it had no effect on me, except that somehow I appreciated the blunt way he put it. Then he asked me for my phone number and I gave it to him. Since then we’ve been seeing each other steadily. And if you’re curious as to whether I sleep with him—”
“I didn’t ask you about that.”
“I’ll tell you anyway, Lieutenant.” There was a certain quiet defiance in her voice, and it showed in her eyes along with all the pain and suffering that had been too much to take, that had led to the breaking-point where a woman grabs at almost anything that comes along.
She said “Yes, I sleep with him. I sleep with the ex-convict you’re looking for. I know what he is and I don’t care. And if that makes me a criminal, you might as well put the handcuffs on me and take me in.”
Childers stood up. He turned away from her and said, “You shouldn’t have said all those things. It wasn’t necessary.”
She didn’t reply. He waited for her to say something, but there was no sound in the room, and after some moments he moved toward the door. As he opened it, he glanced at her. She sat there bent far forward with her head in her hands. He murmured, “Goodbye, Miss Burnett,” and walked out.
His wife and four children were looking at him and he could feel the pressure of their eyes. Their plates were empty and on his plate the pot roast and vegetables hadn’t been touched. He gazed down at the food and wondered why he couldn’t eat it. There was an empty feeling inside him but it wasn’t the emptiness of needing a meal. It was something else, something unaccountable. The more he tried to understand it, the more it puzzled him.
“What’s wrong with you?” his wife asked. It was the fifth or sixth time she’d asked it since he’d come home that evening. He couldn’t remember what answers he’d given her.
Now he looked at her and said wearily, “I’m just not hungry, that’s all.” The children began chattering, and the youngest, five-year-old Dotty, said, “Maybe Daddy ate some candy bars. Whenever I eat too much candy bars, I can’t eat my supper.”
“Grown-ups don’t eat candy bars.” It was Billy, aged nine.
And Ralph, who was seven, said, “Grown-ups can do anything they want to.”
No they can’t, Childers said without sound. They sure as hell can’t. Then he asked himself what he meant by that. The answer came in close, danced away, went off very far away and he knew there was no use trying to reach for it.
He heard six-year-old Agnes saying, “Mommie, what’s the matter with Daddy?”
“You ask him, honey,” his wife said. “He won’t tell me.”
“What’s there to tell?” Childers said loudly, the irritation grinding through his voice.
“Don’t shout, Roy. You don’t have to shout.”
“Then lay off me. You’ve said enough.”
“Is that the way to talk in front of the children?”
His voice lowered. “I’m sorry, Louise.” He tried to smile at her. But his mouth felt stiff and he couldn’t manage the smile. He said lamely, “I’ve had a bad day. It’s taken a lot out of me—”
“That’s why you need a good meal,” she said. And then, getting up and coming towards him, “Tell you what. I’ll warm up your plate and—”
“No.” He shook his head emphatically. “I don’t feel like eating and that’s all there is to it.”
“I wonder,” she murmured.
He looked at her. “You wonder what?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Let’s skip it—”
“No we won’t.” He heard the suspicion in his voice, couldn’t understand why it was there, then felt it more strongly as he said, “You started to say something and you’re gonna finish it.”
She didn’t say anything. Her head was inclined and she was regarding him with puzzlement.
“Come on, spill it,” he demanded. He rose from the table, facing her. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Well, all I wanted to say was—”
“Come on, come on, don’t stall.”
“Say, who’re you yelling at?” Louise shot back at him. She put her hands on her somewhat wide hips. “You’re not talking to some tramp they’ve dragged in for questioning. I’m your wife and this is your home. The least you can do is show some respect.”
“Mommie and Daddy are fighting,” little Agnes said.
“And maybe it’s about time,” Louise said. She kept her hands on her hips. “I knew we had a show-down coming. Well, all right then. You told me to say what’s on my mind and I’ll say it. I want you to drop this Nolan case.”
He stared at her. “What’s that you said?”
“You heard me. I don’t have to repeat it. I know your work is important, but your health comes first.”
She pointed to the untouched food on his plate. “I had a feeling it would come to that. I’ve seen you walking in at night looking as if you were ready to drop. I knew it would reach the point where you wouldn’t be able to eat. First thing you know, you’ll have an ulcer.”
He felt a thickness in his throat, a wave of tenderness and affection came over him, and he reminded himself he was a very fortunate man. This woman he had was the genuine article, an absolute treasure. His health and happiness and welfare were her primary concern. In her eyes he was the only man in the world, and after more than a decade of marriage, the knowledge of her feeling for him was something priceless.
He looked at her plump figure that was now over-plump with pregnancy, looked at her disordered hair that seldom enjoyed the luxury of a beauty parlor because she was too busy taking care of four children. Then he looked at her hands, reddened and coarse from washing dishes and doing the laundry and scrubbing the floors. He said to himself, She’s the best, she’s the finest. And he wanted very much to put his arms around her.
But somehow he couldn’t. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t. He stood there paralyzed with the realization that she was waiting for his embrace and he could not respond.
All at once he felt a frantic need to get out of the house. He groped for an excuse, and without looking at her, he said, “I told the Captain I’d see him tonight. I’m going down to the Hall.”
He turned quickly and walked toward the front door.
But his meeting was not with the Captain, his destination was not City Hall. He walked a couple of blocks, climbed into a taxi, and said to the driver, “Lakeside Apartments.”
“Right you are,” the driver said.
Am I? he asked without sound. Am I right? And there was no use trying to answer the question, his brain couldn’t handle it. Yet somehow he knew that from a purely technical standpoint this move was the lo
gical move, and he was making it according to the book. It amounted to a stakeout, going there to watch and wait for Dice Nolan. The thing to do, of course, was plant himself across the street from the apartment-house and keep an eye on the front-entrance.
Twenty minutes later he stood in the darkness under a thickly leafed tree diagonally opposite the Lakeside Apartments. A car was parking across the street and instinctively he reached inside his jacket to check his shoulder-holster. But there was nothing there to check. He’d forgotten to put on his holster and the .38 it carried.
You’ve never done that before, he thought. And then, with a slight quiver that went down from his chest to his stomach and up to his chest again, What’s the matter here? What the hell is happening to you?
Across the street someone was getting out of the car. But it wasn’t Nolan, it was just a tiny middle-aged woman with a tiny dog in her arms. She walked inside the apartment-house and the car moved away.
Childers leaned against the tree. For a moment he wished the tree-trunk were a pillow and he could sink into it and fall asleep. It had nothing to do with weariness. It was simply and acutely the need to get away from everything, especially himself. The thought brought a blast of anger, aimed at his own eyes, his own mind, and in that moment he fought to think only in terms of his badge and the job he had to do.
He glanced at his wristwatch. The hands pointed to seven forty-five. Assuming that Nolan would be coming to see her tonight, assuming further she’d be cooking dinner for Nolan, the chances were that Nolan hadn’t yet arrived. In Nolan’s line of business, dinnertime was anywhere from eight-thirty to midnight. So it figured he had time to hurry back home and get his gun and come back here and—
His brain couldn’t take it past that. Before he fully realized what he was doing, he’d crossed the street and entered the apartment-house.
In the elevator, going up to the ninth floor, he wasn’t thinking of Nolan at all. Somewhat absently, he straightened his tie and smoothed the hair along his temples. There was a small mirror in the elevator but he didn’t look into it. He knew that if he looked at himself in the mirror, he’d see something that he didn’t want to see.
The elevator was going up very fast, going up and up, and there was something paradoxical and creepy about that. Because it wasn’t the way going up should seem or feel at all. It was more like falling.
He pressed the doorbell-button. A few moments passed and then the door of 907 opened and she stood there smiling at him. He wasn’t surprised to see the smile. He had a feeling she’d been expecting him. It wasn’t based on anything in particular. It was just a feeling that this was happening the way it had to happen, there was no getting away from it.
“Hello. Wilma,” he said.
She went on smiling at him. She didn’t say anything. But her hand came up in a beckoning gesture that told him to enter the apartment. In the instant before he stepped through the doorway, he noticed she was wearing a small apron. And then, as she closed the door behind him, he caught the smell of cooking.
“Excuse me a moment,” she said, walking past him and into the kitchen. “I have something on the stove—”
He sat down on the sofa. He looked down at the carpet. It was a solid-color broadloom, a subdued shade of grey-green. But as he listened to her moving around in the kitchen, as he visualized her hands preparing a meal for Dice Nolan, the color he saw was an intense green, a furious green that seemed to blaze before his eyes.
Before he could hold himself back, he’d lifted himself from the sofa and walked into the kitchen. His voice was tight as he said, “When is he due here?”
She was pouring seasoning into a pot on the stove. “I’m not expecting him tonight.”
He moved toward the stove. He looked into the pot and saw it was lamb stew and there was only enough for one person.
Again she was smiling at him. “You don’t put much trust in me, do you, Lieutenant?”
“It isn’t that,” he said. “It’s just—” He didn’t know how to finish it. Then, without thinking, without trying to think, “I wish you’d call me Roy.”
Her smile faded. She gave him a level look that almost seemed to have substance, hitting him in the face and going into him. drilling in deep. For a very long moment the only sound in the kitchen was the stew simmering in the pot.
And then, her voice down low near a whisper, she said. “Is that the way it is?”
He nodded slowly. His eyes were solemn.
“Are you sure?” she murmured. “I mean—”
“I know what you mean.” he interrupted. “You mean it can’t be happening this fast. You want to tell me it’s impossible, we hardly know each other—”
“Not only that,” she said, her eyes aiming down to the thin band bf gold on his finger. “You’re a married man.”
“Yes,” he said bluntly. “I’m married and I have four children and my wife will soon have another.”
She looked past him. She seemed to be speaking aloud to herself as she murmured. “I think we’d better talk about something else—”
“No.” He came near shouting it. “We’ll talk about this. Can’t you see the way it is? We’ve got to talk about this.”
She shook her head. “We can’t. We just can’t, that’s all. We’d better not start—”
“We’ve started already. It was started as soon as we met each other.” His voice became thick as he went on, “Listen to me, Wilma. I tried to fight it the same as you’re fighting it now. But it’s no use. It’s a thing you can’t fight. It’s like a sickness and there’s no cure. You know that as well as I do. If I thought for a minute it hasn’t hit you the same as me, I wouldn’t be saying this. But I know it’s hit you. I can see it in your eyes.”
She tried to shake her head again. She was biting her lip. “If only—” She couldn’t get it out. “If only—”
“No, Wilma.” He spoke slowly and distinctly. “We won’t have any ifs or buts. A thing like this happens once in a lifetime. It’s more important than anything else. It’s—”
He hadn’t heard the sound of the key turning in the lock. He hadn’t heard the door opening, the footsteps coming toward the kitchen. But now he saw her staring eyes focused on something behind his back. He turned very slowly and the first thing he saw was the gun.
Then he was looking at the face of Dice Nolan.
Nolan said very softly, “Keep talking.” His lips scarcely moved as he said it, and there was nothing at all in his eyes.
The prison pallor seemed to harmonize with the granite hardness of his features. Except for a deep scar that twisted its way from one eyebrow to the other, he was a good-looking man with the accent on strength and virility. He was only five-nine and weighed around one-sixty, but somehow he looked very big standing there. Maybe it’s the gun, Childers thought in that first long moment. Maybe that’s what makes him look so big.
But it wasn’t the gun. Nolan held it loosely and didn’t seem to attach much importance to it. Now he was looking at Wilma and his voice remained soft and relaxed as he said, “You fooled me, girl. You really fooled me.”
“Maybe I fooled myself,” she said.
“Could be,” Nolan murmured. He shifted his gaze to Childers. “Hey you, I told you to keep talking.”
“I guess you heard enough,” Childers said. “Saying more would make no sense.”
Nolan grinned with only one side of his mouth. “Yeah, I guess so.” Then suddenly the grin became a frown and he said, “You look sorta familiar. Don’t I know you from someplace?”
“From Third and Patton,” Childers said. “From playing cops and bums when we were kids.”
“And playing it for real when we grew up,” Nolan murmured, his eyes sparked with recognition. “You put the pinch on me so many times I lost count. I guess ten years in stir does something to the memory. But now I remember you, Childers. I damn well oughta remember you.”
“You’re a bad boy, Dice. You were always a bad boy.”
/> “And you?” Dice grinned again, his eyes flicking from Childers to Wilma and back to Childers. “You’re the goodie-goodie—the Boy Scout who always plays it clean and straight.”
Suddenly he chuckled. “Goddam, I’m getting a kick out of this. What’re you gonna do when your wife finds out?”
Childers didn’t reply. He wasn’t thinking of his wife, nor of Wilma, nor of anything except the fact that he was a Detective Lieutenant attached to Homicide and he’d finally found the man he’d been looking for.
“Well? What about it?” Dice went on chuckling. “Tell me, Childers. How you gonna crawl outta this mess?”
“Don’t let it worry you,” Childers murmured. “You better worry about your own troubles.”
The chuckling stopped. Nolan’s eyes narrowed. The words seemed to drip from his lips. “Like what?”
“Like skipping parole. Like carrying a deadly weapon.”
Nolan didn’t say anything. He stood there waiting to hear more. Childers let him wait, stretching the quiet as though it was made of rubber. And then, letting it out very slowly, very quietly, “Another thing you did, Dice. You pulled a job on the waterfront three weeks ago. You heisted warehouse number four and got away with fifteen thousand dollars. You murdered a night-watchman and the other one is permanently blinded. And that does it for you, bad boy. That puts you where you belong. In the chair.”
“You—” Nolan choked on it. “You can’t pin that rap on me. I didn’t do it.”
Childers smiled patiently. “Don’t get excited, Dice. It won’t help you to get excited.”
“Now listen—” The sweat broke out on Nolan’s face. “I swear to you, I didn’t do it. Whoever engineered that deal, they fixed it so the Law would figure it was me. When I read about it in the papers, I knew what the score was. I knew that sooner or later you’d be looking for me—”
“It sounds weak, Dice. It’s gonna sound weaker in the courtroom.” Nolan’s features twisted and he snarled, “You don’t hafta tell me how weak it sounds. I wracked my brains, trying to find an alibi. But all I got was zero. I knew if I was taken in for grilling. I wouldn’t have a chance. That’s why I skipped parole. That’s why I’m carrying a rod. I ain’t gonna let them bum me for something I didn’t do.”