The Eighth Circle

by Stanley Ellin

  “Yes,” she cried out, “I do mean it,” and then she crumpled, the high defiance ebbing from her as he held her pinned against the wall. “Why does it matter so much to you?” she asked piteously. “It’s all changed now. Don’t you know that it is?”

  He said: “All I know is that you’ve picked me to be a cure for hurt pride, some kind of medicine to help get Arnold out of your system. But why me? You made it plain enough in front of Ralph Harlingen what you thought about me and my business. It’s a dirty business, you said, and it makes dirty people. All right, I’ll buy that. But in that case aren’t you moving down too far below your class? Aren’t you doing me too much of a favor, considering what I am?”

  “The way you say that—” Ruth looked at him wonderingly. “You don’t hear yourself, do you? You mean it to be sarcasm, but it isn’t. You really believe it. You’re defensive about it.”

  “The hell I am. You’re defensive when you’ve been pushed into a spot you can’t get out of, and you want to rationalize it. Nobody pushed me into this spot. I walked into it for a good reason, and with my eyes wide open. The day my father—”

  He was cut off in mid-sentence by the telephone. It rang St. Stephen fashion, a brief, warning tinkle, followed by a long pause. Then it tinkled again, making a small, eerie sound in the hard-breathing silence of the room.

  There is not and never will be any escape from the telephone, Murray thought, and turned toward the bedroom. “It must be your people,” he said. “What do I tell them?”

  “I don’t care.”

  But it wasn’t her people. It was Nelson calling from the desk downstairs, and his voice was a fine blend of unction and polite distaste. “Mr. Kirk, you understand how much I dislike registering a complaint, but the tenants of the apartment next to yours—that’s Admiral and Mrs. Johnson—after all—”

  Murray slammed down the phone and waited, daring it to ring again. Ruth had followed him into the bedroom, and he said, “It wasn’t for you.”

  “I know,” she said, dismissing it. She sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up at him. “What were you going to tell me about your father?”

  “Nothing.” The clock on the night table said five, he was numb with fatigue, physically and emotionally, and the last thing in the world he wanted to talk about now was his father.

  “I want to hear,” Ruth said. And then she said surprisingly, “I have a right to hear.”

  Maybe she had at that, Murray thought, trying to understand why. He took a cigarette from the pack on the dresser, and then jammed it back into the pack, sure he would find the taste of it in his mouth acrid and unpleasant. “There’s not much to hear,” he said. “He was a well-meaning fool. He went broke and my mother died at about the same time—I was starting high school then—and those years the only job somebody like that could get was being a janitor. So that’s what he was, a janitor for a tenement building in the neighborhood there. He got a basement room and a few dollars a month for it, and I hustled packages for the women who shopped at the super market that had put him out of business, and that’s how we got along. Sounds like something out of Dickens, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t know yet. What happened after that?”

  “Not much. It might have been a lot worse, if it weren’t for the people in the building. Mostly Puerto Ricans, the bunch of them, just landed here. They were all crazy about him, they acted as if he was Jesus Christ come to earth for them, and that made it easier to take. There was this couple—Julio and Marta Gutiérrez—with five kids of their own, and they practically brought me up. I ate with them, slept with them—the old man didn’t like me sleeping down in that miserable basement room—and I guess I was about the most important member of the family, as far as they were concerned. All my father worried about was that I become a great lawyer; the eating and sleeping part didn’t bother him very much. He had a whole beautiful plan worked out. I would become a great lawyer and then a great statesman like William Jennings Bryan, his pet hero, and then I would be right in position to settle all the world’s problems for him. You can see what a pathetic crackpot he was.

  “When I came out of the army he still had that bug, and as far as I was concerned, being a lawyer was as good as anything else, so I went through the mill and wound up clerking for a firm downtown. I won’t even tell you what salary I got, but I can say that if it wasn’t for Marta’s cooking every night I would have been a damn hungry law clerk.

  “Then one day they took the old man to the hospital. It wasn’t anything dramatic; he was shoveling snow in front of the building during a freeze and he got pneumonia. They took him to the city hospital and he died there a few days later. It was what happened after that that made the difference.”

  He drew the cigarette from the pack again and lit it this time, and the taste was, as he had expected, bitter in his mouth. He wondered if he were coming down with something, the way he felt. The sensation of chill permeating him must have been what Ruth had gone through before.

  “What was it that happened?” Ruth asked.

  “It was a farce. I couldn’t raise the money for a funeral, and there they were, waiting for me to take him away and bury him. I almost went crazy trying to get three hundred bucks in cash together, and in the end it was the Gutiérrez bunch and some other people in the building took care of it for me. They were all at the funeral, too. I think they loved the old man because with his weird Spanish and all he used to talk to them as if they were people, and he liked and respected them. They don’t get very much of that. It’ll be a long time before they do, if ever. So you can see why they would make a big thing of him.”

  “Yes,” Ruth said, “I can.”

  “When I left the cemetery that day,” Murray said, “I knew that I had had it. I went right from there to the Conmy office, where there was a job open, and a chance to make real money, and a chance to be a human being. I know it sounds funny to hear talk like this when things are so different nowadays, but it wasn’t funny to me then. I never went back to that law office I was working in, and I never turned around. I went straight to where I wanted to go, and that’s why I can say I’m not being defensive about it. I know why I’m here, and any time I forget why, I can always take down the dime notebook the old man used to write his poetry in and remind myself. There’s no place in this world for well-meaning fools. It’s tough enough when you’ve got brains and know how to use them.”

  He watched Ruth, waiting to see how she took this, wondering if she understood the depths of his feeling about it. When she slowly shook her head his heart sank. “No,” she said tonelessly, “it’s not like Dickens, at all. It’s like Murray Kirk.”

  “I’m sorry about that. Next time I tell it I’ll try to work it up a little better.”

  She turned this aside with a shrug. “I must be getting home,” she said, as if there had never been any question about it in the first place. “What do I do about clothes? My things are sopping.”

  So that was that, Murray saw. The party was over, the time had come to say good-by and not au revoir. He indicated the bottom drawer of the dresser where he had stored Didi’s belongings. “There’s some stuff there—sweaters and skirts—and a pair of fancy mules that’ll do for shoes. They’re Didi’s,” he said, hoping to draw some response to this, no matter how tart, “so they’ll probably fit well enough. And you can use one of my coats.”

  She remained indifferent. “All right. How long would it take to call a cab here?”

  “You won’t need any cab. I’ll drive you home.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “I’d rather I did. There’s a certain hard-boiled gentleman who may be taking a close interest in you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ruth said.

  “You mean, you don’t believe so.”

  “That’s right. I don’t believe so.”

  Murray said evenly: “And you still think I’m playing on Wykoff’s side. In spite of what you saw tonight.”

>   “Yes.”

  “What does it take to convince you?” he asked. “Do I have to bring you the evidence against Arnold wrapped up in a pink ribbon?”

  “You could never do that,” she said.

  He gave up then. There was no longer any chance of penetrating the wall she had built around herself, no sense battering himself against it when every blow only seemed to reinforce it. So he drove her home in silence, her answer to him the final words spoken between them.

  When he returned to the apartment the first gray light of dawn was showing at the windows. The blue dress still lay in a heap at the foot of the phonograph cabinet, the high-heeled slippers, their toes curling as they dried, near it. In the bathroom her undergarments and stockings were neatly draped over a towel rack, the newspaper he had been reading in the tub the evening before—a hundred years before—just as neatly folded on the sink.

  He swept everything together into a damp bundle—underwear, stockings, dress, slippers, and newspaper—balled them together and flung them into the disposal can in the kitchenette. Then he went into the bedroom and picked up the phone.

  It took Mrs. Knapp a long time to answer, and when she did her voice was thick with sleep. “Mr. Kirk,” she said blurrily, “there’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  “No,” Murray said, “but I won’t be getting to the office until very late. Meanwhile, I want you to assign a couple of men to keep an eye on Miss Vincent. Ruth Vincent, have you got that? It’s protective service, but she’s not to know anything about it. Take care of that as soon as you get in. Oh, yes, and you can close the file on Lundeen. Conmy-Kirk’s finished with the case.”

  “We are?” Mrs. Knapp sounded puzzled. “Then who do we charge Miss Vincent’s expenses to? Isn’t she—”

  “All I said was that Conmy-Kirk is through with the case. But I’m taking it over on my own now. Any expenses in regard to it can be charged to me. Not the office, but a personal account right here at the hotel. Just charge it all to Murray Kirk.”

  Kirk

  PART III

  1

  Leo McKenna—and Leo would have been the first to admit that he knew as much about burglar-alarm systems as anyone in New York City—said that it could not be done. He leaned over the desk, his head close to Bruno Manfredi’s, and studied the crude sketch Murray had made of the device in Wykoff’s window. It was obvious at a glance that Leo did not like what he saw.

  “Right off,” he said, “I can tell you one thing. What you’re showing me here is the standard photoelectric system which we don’t even feature any more. It’s the same in my business as in everything else today. You improve, or you go under. You give them more and better for the money, or some bastard like Hoch or Garfield moves in with a system that’s got fins on it or chromium or something, and steals a customer right out from under your nose. That’s why when we now get a customer who wants one hundred percent security, and money is no object, we push our new ultrasonic system. Let me tell you, gentlemen, that is the system. Floor-to-ceiling protection, no dead spots—”

  “Ah, come on,” Bruno said. “Will you quit selling so hard, Leo. We don’t want to buy a system. We only want to know if we can beat this one here.”

  “I was getting to that,” Leo said. “My professional opinion is that you can’t. Not unless you have an inside man working with you. That’s only my professional opinion, of course, but you know how I rate in this business.”

  Murray shifted in his chair. “But a photoelectric system can leave dead spots in the corners of the window where the beams don’t reach,” he said. “Isn’t there any way of getting past them and disconnecting the alarm from inside?”

  Leo looked hurt. “I gave you my professional opinion, didn’t I? What more do you want? Look—” he drew a pencil from his pocket and outlined the rectangle of a window “—you’ve got the eye of the beam midway up the window frame. From there the beam fans out wide right across the whole glass. At the most you’ve got a couple of little dead spots at the top and the bottom, and you don’t even know how big they are. Maybe big enough for a finger; maybe big enough for a hand. So right there you don’t even know how much room you’re operating in.

  “But let’s say you can get a hand through. You cut out the glass, you get your hand inside, and then what? I’ll guarantee you won’t short-circuit that system by monkeying with the eye. All you’ll do is set off every alarm in the house. You see what I mean? This isn’t like one of those jerk systems where the alarm goes off only if you try to raise a window, so you can clip a wire when you get the molding off. This is the real thing. You put a finger into that beam, and it’ll sound like the war starting. Naturally, that’s only my professional opinion, but if twenty years in this business don’t mean anything—”

  “Sure it means something,” Murray said. “How do they power this system? From the main fuse box?”

  “That’s right, but it has its own lead, so you can’t cut it off by short-circuiting something else in the house. Gentlemen, when the underwriters certify a system as Grade ‘A’ they take all this into account and a little more besides. Of course, my company stands behind the ultrasonic as the one and only system for the man who wants the best, but I have to admit that the photoelectric is entitled to genuine respect. I don’t say this grudgingly. I’ve been in this business twenty years, and I always—”

  When he was gone Bruno said: “That’s only his professional opinion, of course. But my professional opinion is that he knows what he’s talking about. How do you feel about it now?”

  “I don’t know,” Murray said. “I’m thinking it over.”

  “Thinking it over! Thinking what over? Jesus, you’ve got a house wired up like Fort Knox, you’ve got three, four hoods hanging around looking for trouble, you’ve got a housebreaking rap waiting if something goes wrong, and do I have to tell you something’ll sure as hell go wrong? What kind of thing is that to think over?”

  “Wykoff’s got something I want,” Murray said. “What do you expect me to do, tell him to mail it to me?”

  “Why not? That makes just as much sense as trying to get in there and take it for yourself.”

  “No, because I can take it for myself. I have a good idea how to do it, if I can count on you to help.”

  “Thanks,” Bruno said. “It isn’t every day I get such a wonderful chance to get beat up and put in jail. But I wouldn’t want to take advantage of you, Murray. Do somebody else the favor.”

  “There’s two hundred dollars’ worth of favor here,” Murray said. “Does that change your mind?”

  “No.”

  “All right. How much would?”

  “One million dollars,” Bruno said. “All in small, dirty bills. Or make it clean bills, if you want, and I’ll dirty them myself.”

  “How much?”

  Bruno said seriously: “Look, a joke is a joke, but don’t push it too far. Right away it stops being funny.”

  “Do you think I’m joking?”

  “No, and that’s what worries me. Let me put it to you straight, Murray. In all the time Frank was here he never got himself into any deal like this, and that’s why he died rich and happy. If you want to go the same way, don’t get any ideas in your head that can blow up this whole place along with you. You remember what Frank used to say? He used to say this agency was a business, it’s got to be run like a business. But it’s even a bigger business than when he was around, and maybe you’re not the only one who’s got an interest in it. Maybe I’ve got an interest in it, too. Maybe I want to protect my interest.”

  “What are you talking about?” Murray said. “What’s all this about an interest? Do you mean your job?”

  “No, I don’t mean my job. Didn’t Jack Collins get in touch with you? He was supposed to call you this week.”

  “Well, he didn’t. And if you’re so anxious to put things to me straight, you can start with this. What’s Jack Collins got to do with you and me right now?”

  “That’s fo
r him to say when he calls.”

  “Suppose you say it.”

  “All right,” Bruno said, “it’s about him buying in here. What the hell, you can’t run this place alone any more. Don’t you think everybody knows that? It’s built up so big now, you don’t know what’s going on half the time. But if you take in somebody like Jack as a partner, why, you’ve got one of the best men in the country with you, and you can live it up a little for yourself. He’s got the cash, he’s got the know-how, so put you two guys together, and you could have the biggest thing around outside of the F.B.I.”

  “You think so?” Murray said. “And what’s your interest in this proposition? Or are you just a friend of the groom?”

  “You don’t have to be so snotty about it, Murray. Remember me? I knew you when you didn’t have a pot. As for getting an interest, sure I’ll get an interest. I’ve had a percentage coming to me for a long time, and this way I’ll finally get it. But not from you. It comes right out of Jack’s end. He knows I’m worth it, just the way Frank did and you do, but he’s not afraid to give it to me.”

  “That makes three partners,” Murray said. “Are you sure there’s nobody else on the waiting list?”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Bruno said, “three is just right.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Murray said, “I won’t even pick up that phone when Jack calls, unless I’ve got this Wykoff thing all cleared up.”

  Bruno digested this in silence. “I don’t believe it,” he finally said. “You’ll never get another partnership offer like this as long as you live. Jack’s loaded right now, and he’s got money behind him, too. He’ll pay whatever you want for a half share. You wouldn’t throw away a deal like that, just to put the squeeze on me now. Not you.”

  “You knew me when I didn’t have a pot,” Murray said. “From then to now have you ever caught me lying to you?”