The Eighth Circle

by Stanley Ellin

  The trouble was that Murray knew what was rankling in McNally, and couldn’t altogether blame the man for it. So when he put down his razor and swung, it was half-heartedly and ineffectually. McNally swung back, both punches missed, and the two men clutched each other and clumsily wrestled around like a pair of inept preliminary fighters until Bruno Manfredi pulled them apart.

  Later, Bruno shook his head at Murray. “Jesus, to fall for a stupid crack like that. You’ve got to laugh off that kind of stuff. Otherwise, you’ll get people figuring it’s on the level.”

  “What do you figure?”

  “Who, me? I figure it the way it is. The old man never had any family or anything, so you’re the one he picked on to be sonny boy. And don’t let it bother you any, pal. It’s like money in the bank.”

  It didn’t bother Murray, because he knew when he finally browbeat Frank into giving him a partnership that he was worth it. He was top man in the agency by then; he handled only the big cases. He had sold Frank the idea of starting the payroll-guard service, which proved immediately profitable. He had convinced Frank that expensive publicity can pay off, and had hired the public-relations outfit which made it pay off in radio and TV guest appearances for Frank, and through gossip columns where the Conmy name could become familiar to fat cats in trouble.

  The partnership lasted two years. The day after it was ended by Frank’s death Murray learned with considerable gratification but small surprise that he had been willed his partner’s entire share of the agency.

  So there it was. He had walked into the office ten years before with eighty-five cents as his worldly wealth. Now—almost on the anniversary of that day—he followed the scanty funeral cortege in his own Cadillac, and on the way back from the services he stopped at the St. Stephen to sign on the dotted line as the new tenant of Frank’s apartment.

  He took possession that evening. At midnight, he drank a final toast to the departed spirit from the familiar balloon glass, and then smashed the glass in the fireplace. It was a self-conscious gesture made on maudlin impulse, but it was well intended. He had liked Frank, and wanted to say farewell in a way that Frank himself might have approved. He thought—he really believed at that moment—that he was saying farewell to Frank.

  But there were times after that—bad nights now and then—when he found himself alone in the apartment wondering about it. Then oddly irrelevant thoughts would move through his mind in a disorderly procession. Like a pointless parade they would circle around and around, going nowhere. Thoughts of his father, who had sold groceries at a loss and written bad poetry, or of the wall of filing cabinets in the office with the double locks on them, or of Frank, or even of the people locked away in the compartments of the St. Stephen below him. Too many people. Too many thoughts.

  And all of them, like the scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, waiting for the Lundeen case to come along and start putting the picture together.

  2

  Although his name is not to be found on any record at all, it was Otto Helmke who put the first piece into place.

  Helmke was a waspish, dried-out little householder in the Ridge-wood district, the doting father of a remarkably zoftik young daughter, and the fractious neighbor of Police Officer Everett Walsh. The feud between Helmke and Walsh had gone on for years, dating back to some hair-splitting argument over property lines. It culminated the night that Helmke walked into his garage and caught his daughter and the oldest Walsh boy hotly tangled together in the rear seat of the family car.

  Helmke took his revenge in two ways: he belted the boy off the premises with a rake handle, and then in the small hours he sat down at his kitchen table to write a letter. Its opening paragraph simply raised the question of how anyone supposedly living on a policeman’s salary could live the way Everett Walsh did. Its contents then went on to describe with astonishing accuracy every detail of Walsh’s financial life, with emphasis on the two new cars in Walsh’s garage, an expensive refurnishing of the Walsh home, and a twenty-four-foot cabin cruiser named the Peggy W. moored in Sheepshead Bay. It was a letter which Helmke had dreamed of writing many times before, and he read it through now with pleasure. Then he signed it “A Worried Citizen” and addressed it to “The District Attorney, New York City.” It was his mistaken impression that there was just one district attorney in the city, but, as it happened, it was not a mistake that mattered.

  Countrymen west of the Hudson, where they know about such things, have observed that seed, even if tossed recklessly in the air, will take root if it lands on fertile ground. The fertile ground in this case was a Special Grand Jury recently set up to investigate corruption among New York’s Finest. Helmke’s letter landed before this grand jury, and then, after close investigation by two bright young men from the District Attorney’s office, so did Walsh.

  What Walsh had to say was graphically summed up by the first tabloid headlines to deal with it as COP BLOWS WHISTLE ON PALS. One pal called to the spotlight before the grand jury turned out to be a bookie on a phenomenal scale, George Wykoff, who operated a city-wide betting ring from an estate on Staten Island, the most remote and pastoral of New York’s five boroughs.

  If Walsh had blown a whistle, Wykoff blew the kind of trumpet that Joshua must have sounded before Jericho, and at its blast the walls of the Police Department came tumbling down with a crash. Three hundred men, ranging in rank from patrolmen to deputy inspectors, were caught in the wreckage. Most of them crawled free by hastily resigning or retiring from the force. Twenty of them, however, trapped by conflicting testimony before the grand jury, were indicted for perjury and held for trial. Arnold Lundeen was one of the luckless twenty.

  So Otto Helmke, whose name is not to be found on any record, cast his bread upon the waters, and it came back increased three-hundredfold. A fair return, you might say, and still he was not happy about it. He lost appetite, snapped continually at his stolid wife and chastened daughter, and brooded behind his newspaper for hours on end.

  It is always hard for a man to know that he is the agent of Divine Providence and yet remain anonymous.

  Conmy and Kirk

  PART II

  1

  At noon on Thanksgiving Day, Murray was in the bathtub, immersed both in Gulliver’s Travels and in water so hot that it was an exquisite agony to wiggle a toe in it. When the phone rang he tried to close his ears to it, then finally heaved himself from the tub and went into the bedroom, dripping as he went.

  “What the hell, Marge,” he said into the phone.

  The girl at the switchboard said: “I’m sorry, Mr. Kirk. I know you didn’t want any calls put through today, but this gentleman’s been at it since nine o’clock, and I finally had to tell him I’d see if you were in. Are you?”

  “Who’s the gentleman?”

  “It’s a Mr. Ralph Harlingen. He said you’d know him from the Rector Street office.”

  The name was a familiar one, because the Harlingen office was an old client. It was one of those overgrown law firms around Wall Street where ten senior partners and twenty juniors politely argued corporation cases for lush fees. Conmy-Kirk had handled its executive files for a long time.

  But Ralph Harlingen was one of the lowliest juniors there, very small fry, indeed, and his only distinction, as far as Murray knew, came from the fact that his father was head man of the outfit. Murray had met him a few times at the Harlingen office, a big, rangy man with crew-cut hair showing some gray at the temples, and a manner uncomfortably youthful for his years. They had talked about Ivy League football, a subject about which Harlingen was evidently as passionate as Murray was indifferent, and that was it. It was hard to imagine what he could be calling about.

  On the phone Harlingen was voluble with apologies, then quickly came to the point.

  “You have no idea, fella,” he said, “but right now you’re the one indispensable man. Look, did you ever hear of somebody named Arnold Lundeen? Does that ring a little bell somewhere?”

  “No.�
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  “Oh,” said Harlingen. “Well, anyhow, he’s a client of mine, one of the cops indicted in that Wykoff mess. And I don’t have to tell you this case has nothing to do with Rector Street, fella. I’ve left the old shop, and I’m on my own now. How does that sound to you?”

  Murray shifted his feet out of the pool of water collecting on the rug beneath him. “Fine,” he said. “Fine. It’s a big step.”

  “Right. And what you and I have to do now is put our heads together over the case. The thing is that Mrs. Harlingen and I are leaving tomorrow to spend the rest of the week end with her people in Philadelphia, so I’d like to see you today. Tonight, possibly. We’re having open house, and there’ll be a lot of folks here, but we can fit business into it somehow. And the drinks are the best. Positively ambrosial.”

  “Fine,” said Murray. “I’ll be there, Mr. Harlingen.”

  “Ralph, fella. Ralph.”

  “Sure,” Murray said. “Thanks a lot, Ralph.”

  Good old Ralph.

  Murray put down the phone, then lifted it and dialed the Conmy-Kirk number. The office was closed for business Sundays and holidays, but one of the men was always supposed to be there on stand-by duty. In this case it was Lou Strauss, an old-timer.

  “Do me a favor, Lou,” Murray said. “Check that master index in Mrs. Knapp’s desk, and see if we have files listed for two names. That’s Ralph Harlingen and Arnold Lundeen.”

  “Is that the Harlingen who called up here this morning? I told him he could get you at the hotel.”

  “He did. Check him and Lundeen.”

  Murray waited briefly, and then Strauss picked up the phone.

  “Harlingen’s name is down here, Murray, so there’s a file on him, all right. But nothing on the other character.”

  “I figured not. Anyhow, leave a note for Mrs. Knapp to have Harlingen’s file on my desk when I get in tomorrow. Were there any other calls?”

  “Only Mrs. Knapp,” said Strauss. “She wanted to make sure I was on the job. Thank God I was.”

  At ten o’clock Murray drove to the Harlingen apartment and found it in one of the gigantic new glass and aluminum boxes that tower, terrace to terrace, over the grimy banks of the East River. The apartment itself was a Swedish rhapsody of foam rubber, sleek furniture, and long, low couches on which people perched in a row like birds on a telephone wire. Good, uninhibited talkers, their voices filled the place with a nervous clamor.

  Murray, taken in hand by Mrs. Harlingen, an intense and wiry blonde, worked free of her and idly drifted from group to group until he finally found himself pinned down by a young man in a black corduroy jacket with a velveteen collar.

  “The most unforgettable character, for God’s sake,” the young man said bitterly. “How do you like that? The most unforgettable character!”

  “Who?” asked Murray pacifically.

  “Not who,” said the young man. “It’s the most that’s wrong. Don’t you see? Unforgettable doesn’t take the superlative degree. You can’t have a partly unforgettable thing, can you? If something is unforgettable, it’s always there in your memory, isn’t it?”

  “I guess it is.”

  “What do you mean, guess?” the young man said belligerently. “Either you know or you don’t. It’s your kind of guessing that’s destroying the purity of the language while we stand here.”

  A tall girl with black bangs jostled Murray with her elbow. “Don’t mind Donald,” she said. “He’s hipped on the subject.”

  The young man stared at her incredulously. “Hipped,” he said, “oh, my God, hipped!” and stalked off in outrage.

  The girl watched him go, then turned apologetically to Murray. “It’s not altogether his fault,” she said. “He’s really awfully bright, but he went to Oxford on a Fulbright, and it’s sort of an obsession. What do you do?”

  “Research.”

  “Oh? In what media?”

  “No media,” Murray said. “Just facts and figures.”

  The girl’s eyebrows went up. “That sounds perfectly stupefying,” she said, and it was clear that he had lost her.

  At the buffet he poured himself a finger of Courvoisier. The man next to him, stout, red-faced, and with a tonsure of white hair fringing a splendidly gleaming scalp, followed suit, but kept the bottle tilted until the glass was almost brimming. They touched glasses solemnly and drank, and the stout man snorted with pleasure.

  “Know why I’m here?” he demanded.

  “Because you’re in media,” Murray told him.

  “Hell, no. I wouldn’t know media from a hole in the ground. I’m in banking; handle investments for the Commercial Trust downtown. Name’s Walters.”

  “All right, I give up,” Murray said. “Why are you here?”

  “Because,” Walters said triumphantly, “I’m the downstairs neighbor. Way these places are built you can hear a pin drop, and sometimes with these shindigs going on I thought the ceiling was coming down on my head. I’m a peaceable man, don’t like any fuss between neighbors, as who does? So I just made a deal with friend Harlingen. He can have a crowd up here any time he wants, and in return I’m free to join in and drink up my troubles in his liquor. And he serves the best, son. I must be five hundred bucks ahead of the game already.”

  “ ‘Good fences make good neighbors,’” said Murray.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s from a poem,” Murray said, “by Robert Frost.”

  Walters bunked. “Is he here?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Murray.

  He was alone, nursing the last of his drink, when a child appeared before him. She bore the sallow-complexioned, nail-bitten, pony-tailed earmarks of adolescence, but her mouth was a bright, sticky smear of lipstick, and her shoulders sagged in a world-weary droop. She looked like a bony question mark.

  “Hello,” said the child. “I’m Megan Harlingen. Daddy’s told me all about you.”

  “Delighted,” said Murray. “And where have you been all along?”

  “Oh, out to the movies. It’s a form of escape for me. I mean, literally. I can’t stand these parties, can you? They’re so full of people getting potted and being pretentious.”

  Murray hastily set down his drink. “I don’t know,” he said cautiously. “They look like nice enough people to me.”

  “Then you don’t know them at all,” Megan said firmly. “Actually, they’re all full of emotional conflicts. Just writhing with them. Practically everybody here is in analysis, you know. Have you ever been in analysis?”

  “Not yet,” said Murray. “Have you?”

  “Only for a little while, and it was deadly, deadly, deadly. Then when Grandfather raised a stink about it, they let me stop going. Of course, Grandfather’s a sort of religious fanatic; he would be dreadfully anti-Freudian. You know what he told me once? He said that if heathen witch doctors went to hell, so did psychiatrists! Isn’t that the everlasting end?”

  “I wouldn’t be too hard on him,” Murray said. “He’s probably just a little old-fashioned.”

  “A little? You should have heard what he said about newfangled ideas when Daddy left the old office and set up practice for himself. The scene they had. And the things Grandfather had to say about people who go to work for criminals! You could hear every word of it right in my bedroom even with the door shut.

  “Of course, Daddy’s been unspeakably heroic about the whole thing. I mean, taking criminal cases and all. He’s the first one in the family to ever do it, and it’s all so new. I suppose that’s why he’s asked you to help him, isn’t it?”

  “M-m-m, I doubt it. Usually, my job is just to help on details.”

  “What kind of details? You know, I think it’s absolutely heroic being a private detective. You are a real private detective, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “I mean, because you don’t really look like one. But you do have adventures?”

  “What kind of adventures?”

&
nbsp; “Oh, you know what I mean. Don’t you ever watch TV or anything?”

  “Only Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” said Murray.

  “Well, no wonder,” Megan said in relief. “Now you come along with me, and I’ll show you.”

  She guided him to a bedroom strewn with feminine things in wild disorder, pushed him into an armchair facing a television set, and, after a brief search among the channels, located Private-Eye Brannigan battering his way through the Case of the Missing Finger. Then she briskly swept the bed clear of books and garments and settled there tailor-fashion, chewing away at the ragged edges of her nails, her eyes fixed raptly on the screen.

  The darkness of the room, the patter of television dialogue, were treacherous temptations. Murray closed his eyes for a second, found he couldn’t open them, and came to with a start only when Private-Eye Brannigan had cleared up his case with a salvo of pistol shots. The blare of three successive commercials finished the wakening process, and then the eleven-o’clock newscaster appeared, looking, if anything, even more steely-eyed than Private-Eye Brannigan.

  “What’s the news from all parts tonight?” he demanded. “Well, the holiday traffic toll continues to rise. The latest local casualty was sixty-year-old Charles Pirozy, a Westchester resident, who was wantonly struck down and killed by a hit-run driver at Madison Avenue and Sixtieth Street one hour ago. Drivers, we urge you—”

  Megan hastily arose and turned off the set. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she said. “Ugh.”

  “It didn’t bother you when Private-Eye Brannigan was shooting them down right and left,” Murray pointed out with malice.

  “That’s different,” protested Megan. “Anyhow-”

  The lights of the room suddenly went on, and they both turned to blink at the figure in the doorway. It was Harlingen.