Once he started laughing Elsa looked really confused, and that made it even funnier, and he laughed until it was clear in her face that she thought he might be gone, committable. “I’m fine,” Babe said then.
Elsa nodded.
“And I love you. No I don’t—I did a little while ago and I will a little while from now, but right at the moment, I’m fresh out.”
She came toward him, touched her index finger to her lips, then to his. Then she turned, hurried down the stairs while he went back inside.
Within five minutes, the first crew cut appeared.
The head cop went to him, very respectful.
Babe watched it all from his perch in the corner.
The crew cut went to Doc, pulled the sheet down until he’d uncovered Doc’s face, glanced at it, nodded. Then he went to the phone, dialed, and started mumbling.
Pay attention, Babe told himself. Listen. And he tried, but all he got from the crew cut were a few respectful “Yes sirs” and a couple of “Commanders” and not much more. Then the phone call ended. Babe gazed at the crew cut. Thirty, probably, in good shape, muscular but not so you’d look at him twice. Just a guy who took care of himself, no one special, not much going on behind the eyes.
The second crew cut, when he got there, was a different story. Older, maybe forty, smaller, but not slight, and not flabby either. But quick eyes, quick and blue, and fair-haired—too blond for a crew cut really, it made him sometimes, when the light was behind him, look bald. But except for that, he resembled nothing so much as a man who should have made a fortune doing Wheaties commercials.
He knelt over Doc, and, unlike the other crew cut, who just glanced at the corpse, this one really did a study. Babe looked away, toward the other corner of his room. There were some terrific cracks in the plaster there, you could get just about any animal you wanted if you worked hard enough, so the next few minutes he only heard.
“They must have ambushed him, Commander,” the first crew cut said. Babe recognized the voice from when he made the phone call.
“That or he knew them,” the blond crew cut said. It must have been him talking, though Babe couldn’t swear to it. But he had that tone of authority you just hated, of being right all the goddamn time.
“What about my men?” This was the head cop.
“You can go,” the blond crew cut said, obviously the honcho.
“We’ll just move on then,” the head cop said.
Babe was about to wonder who could tell the cops what to do like that, but then he found a hippo in the plaster that would be terrific if he could just get it done.
“Ambulance?” the blond crew cut said then.
“I made arrangements before I came,” the dark crew cut answered. “It must be waiting outside by now; shall I get them up here?”
“Right now.”
Babe glanced over as the first crew cut hurried out. The blond looked briefly at Babe, then went back to his study of Doc. Babe went back to his hippo.
Three guys took Doc away. The first crew cut and two other guys. He couldn’t tell from their white jackets which hospital they came from, but that didn’t seem to make much difference, when you came right down to it.
Doc was going now.
They had him on a stretcher and the stretcher in the air and the white jackets were doing the heavy work, the first crew cut the leading.
Babe could feel himself losing control.
No. Later, fine, but don’t you do it now. Not in front of all these bastard strangers.
Gone.
“Want me to wait around?” This from the black-haired crew cut.
Head shake. This from the blond.
Babe watched the first one leave, closing the door; then they were alone. Babe went back to his animals. He found a fantastic owl, you could practically hear it going “Hoooooooo.”
“Maybe we might talk; would you mind terribly?”
Babe glanced toward the blond crew cut. The guy was bringing the desk chair over close to where Babe was sitting.
Babe shrugged. He hadn’t wanted to talk to Elsa, so why the hell should he feel like shooting the breeze with this arrogant son of a bitch?
“I know what an inopportune time this is—”
“Right!” Babe almost interrupted. “Bingo. Give the genius a box of fucking Mars Bars.” Only it wasn’t worth the effort, so he just shrugged again.
“I know how close you were to your brother—”
“You do, huh?—you know that, do you?—how do you know that, for Jesus’ sakes?—how do you know anything about anything?—”
“I don’t, I’m sorry, I was just trying to ease into things—”
“What things?—what the hell’s going on?—what the hell are you a commander of?—”
The crew cut was really in retreat now. “How do you know I’m a commander of anything?” he tried.
“The flunky with the other crew cut called you that—‘commander,’ he said, I heard him.”
“Oh, that was nothing, Navy talk. I was a commander in the Navy, it was the top rank I got, and it’s the same as a Senator or a Vice President, when they’re out of office you still call them that, I don’t know, probably out of respect, ‘Senator’ or ‘Good morning, Mr. Vice President’ ”
“Bullshit.”
There was a long pause. Then the other guy said, “Okay, you’re right, no more bullshit, but look, we’re not hitting it off any too well, I’d say, and it’s important that we do. Forget the Commander stuff. I’ll explain it all. My name’s Peter Janeway.” He held out his hand and made a dazzling smile; “But call me Janey. All my friends do.”
PART III
PULP
19
“I’M NOT YOUR FRIEND,” Babe said, not even starting to make a move toward taking Janeway’s hand, just letting it hang there, awkwardly, in space.
“I know that, believe me. But it’s not important now. Only one thing is important and that’s this: You and I have got to talk.” He pulled his hand back, clearly embarrassed.
I should have shaken with him, Babe thought; it wouldn’t have killed me or anything, a quick shake, what the hell’s that, nothing. But even while his mind was working in that direction, his words were headed elsewhere. “Everything’s important with you, isn’t it? It’s ‘important’ that we hit it off, it’s ‘important’ that we talk. If you’ve got a list of other things that are going to be ‘important,’ I wish you’d tell me now.”
“And I wish you’d stop being difficult,” Janeway said.
“I haven’t started being difficult,” Babe replied, kind of liking the sound of his answer even as he spoke it. Bogart might have said something just like that. Not in any of the great ones like African Queen or Casablanca, but it was a decent-enough comeback for most of those crummy B pictures Warners was always sticking him in.
Janeway sighed. He mimed pouring a drink. “Do you have anything?”
Babe shrugged, nodded toward the sink area.
Janeway got up, found a bottle of red Burgundy, opened it quickly. “Want some?” he asked as he poured some wine into the closest remotely clean glass.
Babe shook his head, no, wondering why he was acting so crummy toward Janeway. He seemed a decent-enough guy, well-spoken, tactful. He reminded Babe of ... Babe rooted around a moment before he had it: Gatsby—if Janeway would lose a couple years and let his hair grow, he’d be a ringer for Gatsby, and you love Gatsby, so why take it out on Janeway? It wasn’t Janeway, he realized then; it was the presence of Janeway that was so ruffling.
Because I need to be alone, Babe thought; I want my chance to mourn.
His mother he’d been too young to remember, and when it came H.V.’s turn, he and Doc had keened together. “I shoulda gone in sooner, Doc, I shoulda shown him the paper on wool.” “Shut up, you don’t know anything, it was me, it was my fault, all of it my fault, that goddamn chem class.” And then they would go silent, because all their bickering wouldn’t make the old man move.
And now it was Doc done with moving, and Babe would have to be sure the event didn’t pass unnoticed. It didn’t matter so much if he shed tears. But they had laughed a lot together, and those times needed to be remembered.
Janeway downed the first glass of wine in a gulp, poured another, smaller portion. Then he came back to Babe, sat.
“Do you think you might try to be helpful?”
Babe said nothing.
“Look: I’m not about to get trapped into any wit-matching contest with any semi-genius historian, so if you want to prove you’re smarter than I am, you’ve proved it, that game’s over, I give, you win.”
“Who told you about me? How’d you know what I was studying?”
“Later; later I’ll explain everything, but first it’s important that you tell me a couple of things, okay?”
“No, it isn’t okay, because when you say ‘it’s important that we talk’ you don’t mean ‘it’s important that we talk,’ you mean it’s important that I talk and you listen. Well I’m probably being inconsiderate as hell, but my brother was just murdered and I’m not feeling all that chatty, if you don’t mind.”
Janeway swirled the wine around in the glass, sniffed it. “Go change,” he said softly. “Shower if you like; then we’ll try again.”
“Change?” Babe said, all confused. Then he said, “Oh,” because he was still in the same clothes as when Doc died, blue shirt and gray pants, and both were layered with drying blood. He touched the blood with his fingertips. I must always save this shirt, he reminded himself. I’ll fold H.V.’s pistol up in it. The pistol and the extra bullets, all wrapped up together. It was too bad he had nothing of his mother, a piece of tree bark maybe. Babe began to blink. Tree bark? Where was I? Oh yes. Keep the bloody clothes.
“You all right?” Janeway asked.
Babe kept on blinking, lightheaded. “Fine,” he said, louder than he meant to.
“I’m looking for a motive,” Janeway said then. “Believe me, I’m just as anxious to find whoever did it as you are.”
“Quit making those stupid overstatements. He was my brother, my father practically, he brought me up, and I never once heard your name, so I’m more anxious, wouldn’t you agree?”
Janeway hesitated a long time. “Well, of course,” he answered finally.
But his tone was odd. Babe looked at him, waiting.
“We were both in the same business, you see; we knew each other quite well for quite some time.”
“I don’t believe you’re an oil man.”
“I don’t care what you believe except this—I want who did it.”
“It hadda be some nut—this is New York, nuts are slaughtering people every moonrise—some addict tried getting his money and he wasn’t quick enough handing it over and you know the rest.”
“I don’t think that’s even close,” Janeway said. “I think it was political. At least, that’s the assumption I’m going on till proven otherwise. And I wish you’d do what you could to help me.”
“Political?” Babe shook his head. “My God, why?”
“Because it makes some kind of sense. Considering what your brother did. And, of course, your father.”
“What about my father?”
Janeway sipped his wine. “Why are you determined to make this so unnecessarily difficult?”
“What about my father?”
“He was H. V. Levy, for Chrissakes.”
“And he was innocent!”
“I never said he wasn’t.”
“You did—you did, goddamn it, you implied it.”
“Well, he was convicted, wasn’t he? That’s a helluva lot more than implying, that’s fact.”
“He was not!—he was in no way convicted—” Babe’s voice was out of control. “Do you know that in four years, McCarthy never offered legal support for one single charge—it was all the court of public opinion—did you know he was a Nazi, a fucking Nazi, and he had the country scared pissless. My father was an historian, a great historian, and Acheson asked him down to Washington and he went, like Schlesinger and Galbraith went later, and he was there when McCarthy hit. Two guys suffered worst from it all—Hiss went to jail but at least he’s alive, selling stationery, and my father. He tried defending himself but he didn’t have a chance against that Nazi son of a bitch—it was a Senate hearing and my father was just cut to shit—every time he tried to establish a point McCarthy made it funny. My father talked in long rambling sentences and McCarthy made jokes out of it. It didn’t matter that he had no real facts, McCarthy killed him. He killed his ego, and when you’re like H. V. Levy and kids start laughing at you, it’s over. I was five in fifty-three, that was when they had the hearing, and Dad quit Columbia and began to write a book about the whole thing, to clear his name and get it all together again, but he couldn’t do it—my mother died the next year, and that left just the three of us, and Dad was drinking bad by then. He lasted till fifty-eight. Five years on the bottle, staggering around. Those years I remember, and that’s a shame because he was nothing then, he was garbage then, but what I’d give to have known him before. I read every book he ever wrote and they were great, and I read every speech he ever gave and they were great, but I never met that guy, not so I remember, just this husk is all I have for memories, and you can keep all your goddamn stupid implications about my father, just you wait, wait till I finish, it’s all gonna be down in black and white, right there in my doctorate and—and—”
And stop, Babe told himself. Right now. He doesn’t care.
“And?” Janeway said. He sat impassive, watching.
Why is everybody staring at me nowadays? Everybody’s got such great eyes nowadays, and they’re all the time staring at me. Biesenthal, Elsa, now this one. Babe wondered, for a moment, about the early symptoms of paranoia. Make a note, he told himself. Check it out.
“And?” Janeway said again.
“Don’t stare at me any more.”
“I’m sorry. It’s only because I was interested.”
“Don’t humor me.”
“Then finish up.”
“Huh?”
“I want this bubble out of you. I mentioned your father, I touched a nerve, something burst. All that talk of yours was simply a draining process. We’ll never get to what’s important until you’re done. So finish your father.”
“Nothing more to say.”
“Fine,” Janeway said. “We’ll leave his guilt in abeyance and get on to other things, if that’s what you prefer.”
Babe couldn’t believe it. “You didn’t hear one thing I said,” he started, again unable to control either pitch or volume or timbre. “There was no guilt. That’s the whole point to my doctorate, and I’m gonna get my dissertation published, the whole story, I got it all in my head, I been researching it and researching it, I got boxes of notes, facts, not newspaper gossip, not public opinion; I’m clearing my father with truth, just that, nothing else but, but it’ll do the job, you’ll see, you’ll see ...” Babe was almost panting now. “Hey,” he said, after a time.
Janeway looked at him.
“You made that happen, that last part, about the publishing. I was done except you got me to go on, didn’t you? That was the bubble you were talking about.”
Janeway shrugged. “I suppose.”
Babe looked back into the quick blue eyes. “Maybe you’re not as dumb as I figured you were.”
“I probably am,” Janeway assured him. He flashed a quick white smile.
Even his goddamn teeth are even, Babe thought. He probably never had a pimple all through adolescence. And then he remembered asking Doc once about pimples and masturbation and if you did the one, did you get the other, because some goon named Weaver had said it was so and Babe had said baloney and Weaver replied, “Yeah, well I never had pimples till I started jerking off, argue with that,” and Babe couldn’t. He couldn’t even whip a meatball like Weaver in intellectual debate, and that night he tried to casually get the subject about
to acne and onanism and was there maybe some connection, and when he finally managed to do it, which wasn’t easy, Doc was serious and reflective before saying, “Newsweek published a study on that, now what the hell were those statistics?” and he closed his eyes and Babe said, “Go on, it doesn’t have to be exact, just kind of a general idea,” and Doc said, “There is absolutely no causal relationship between blackheads and beating your meat, and it also doesn’t cause feeblemindedness,” and Babe said, “I knew Weaver was full of it,” and Doc said, “The odd thing they found was that excess lying lengthens the nose,” and Babe was halfway through an empathetic nod before he realized that Doc had nailed him again, skewered him, taking advantage of Babe’s unending supply of gullibility, except that when Doc did it, you couldn’t get mad; no, you could, but you had to laugh first.
Babe could feel himself starting to lose control. I hope this guy goes, he thought. Soon. He got up and poured himself some Burgundy.
From across the room, Janeway said, “I’m still looking for a motive. A specific. Why was tonight different from any other night?”
Babe came back and sat down, thinking that Janeway was far from a dummy, because that was a Jewish expression he’d just used, a paraphrase of one of the questions in the Passover service.
“Why don’t you start and tell me what happened this evening?”
“I was home. He came in. He died. The police came. You came.” He swirled and sniffed the wine, thinking how Doc would have described the nose and he would have faked a snore.
Janeway leaned toward him. “That’s everything? You couldn’t possibly have left out any minor details or along those lines?”
“I’m a demon on details.”
“You mean you want me to do some explaining now, is that it?”
“I think it’s important,” Babe said.
Janeway sighed.
Babe just sat there.
“You have no idea how much I’ve been dreading this,” Janeway said. “You have every right to know, but it’s still embarrassing; I hate it, it all gets so goddamned never-never land.” He took a breath, plunged in. “You don’t really think your brother was in the oil business, do you?”
The Novels of William Goldman: Boys and Girls Together, Marathon Man, and the Temple of Gold Page 106