The Eighth Circle

by Stanley Ellin

  He waited while Bruno stood there unhappily arguing this out with himself. And he kept his face impassive when Bruno said: “You louse. But it’s no ten-cent job. I want a thousand bucks for it, and I want the check before I walk out of here tonight.”

  “Five hundred,” Murray said, but when Bruno stubbornly shook his head he said, “All right, a thousand. But you’ll have to work for it.”

  “How?”

  “First of all, get out to Staten Island and rent a car there from one of those Drive-It-Yourself places. Nothing flashy. If you can get something plain black, so much the better. Then make a couple of runs past Wykoff’s house. Try it through the tunnel and Bayonne, and then try it with the ferry, and see which way you make better time. Do it around nine at night, because that’s when we’ll go out there. Tuesday night around nine. Wykoff should be in then, because they show the $64,000 Question at ten, and he’ll be watching it.”

  “In?” said Bruno. “What do you want him in for?”

  “Because that’s how we get in. The other thing you have to do is get yourself an outfit. Some kind of high-class workman’s outfit, because you’ll be a repairman for Staten Island Utilities. You’ll need identification cards and a receipt book, too, so have Mrs. K. arrange for that at the print shop we use over on Sixth Avenue.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you stay away from here. If you’ve got anything to say, call Mrs. K. at home; I’ll tell her to wait in evenings just in case. Tuesday, you pick me up in front of Luchow’s restaurant at eight. If I’m not there, keep going around the block, and whatever you do, don’t get yourself a ticket while you’re rigged up like that.”

  “Lüchow’s,” Bruno said. “The condemned man—”

  “You’re a cute kid,” Murray said. “What made Jack decide to move back to New York? Did they run him out of California?”

  “He’s leaving before they can. This Peephole thing is going to bust wide open. Criminal libel and a couple of other things. Would you want to hang around and take a rap for that, if the stupid magazine loses out?”

  When Bruno showed up before the restaurant Tuesday evening it was in a black Chevrolet of respectable vintage. The car swerved toward the curb, Murray jumped in, and it slid back into the cross-town traffic almost without a change in speed.

  “Which way do we go?” Murray asked, and Bruno said, “It takes about the same both ways. I figure we’ll go by ferry so you can brief me while we’re crossing, and we can make the run back through the tunnel in case somebody’s tailing us. You can’t shake anybody off when you’re on a ferry. But why did I have to rent this job? What was wrong with my car?”

  “Nothing, except that this one’s got Staten Island plates, and yours has Queens County plates. Suppose somebody takes a look and starts wondering why a Queens car is on a repair job out in Staten Island?”

  “I didn’t think of that,” said Bruno.

  “No, you were probably too busy fixing up Lucy with another baby. How did it feel to be home on a four-day vacation with pay?”

  “All right,” Bruno said, “and I wasn’t fixing up Lucy with any babies. I was fixing up the house for Christmas. Only she made me go to church Sunday. You know how long it’s been since I was in church?”

  “Too long. It must have done you a lot of good.”

  “If I get home in one piece from this screwball deal, I’ll know it did. Otherwise—” Bruno shrugged, and then on second thought crossed himself. “I talked to Jack long distance last night,” he said. “He won’t be calling you. He’s flying in right after the holidays to talk things over. I told him it’s better that way.”

  “He knows where to find me,” Murray said.

  “I hope so,” said Bruno.

  The ferry was almost empty when they made the crossing, and the sound of it—a slow thumping of engines, a rhythmical splash of water against the hull—gave Murray the feeling that he was, for the time being, infinitely far removed from the overpowering noise and pressure of the city. That was the thing about boats, he reflected. While you were on them there was nothing you could do but mark time. And it might explain why he had the obsession to own a boat, and why he had never gotten around to buying one.

  He said to Bruno: “Here’s the way we’ll work it. You’re on an emergency call from the utilities company, because there’ve been complaints about power failure in the neighborhood. When you’re in the house telling Wykoff about this, see if you can’t get five or six feet down the hall opposite the French doors there. I’ll keep an eye on you from outside, because there’s a window looks right through those doors. If things go wrong, take off your cap and scratch your head, and I’ll head back to the car, but try not to let things go wrong. Your big job is to get down to the cellar and get the fuses out of the box, so that the alarm is cut off. Then give me a count of a hundred, put everything back, and get away. Make a good front all the time, though. Give them a receipt for the call, look official, don’t try anything offbeat. You have any idea how a repairman would do it?”

  Bruno nodded. “I got better than an idea. Yesterday I put the fuses in my house on the blink, so I could watch one of those guys in action. I know the routine. I’m even dressed up the way he was. Didn’t you notice?”

  “Now I notice. Was he wearing one of those patent-leather bow-ties, too? I didn’t even know they made those things any more.”

  “What do you mean? Where I come from, a well-dressed electrician would just as soon be caught without his pants as without one of these things. It makes all the difference.”

  “Not on you it doesn’t. What about the identification cards and the book?”

  “Right here in my pocket. I filled in some of the book to show I been on a couple of jobs. And I got a box with some tools in it on the back seat. But what happens if Wykoff calls back the utilities company while I’m there, to see if I’m on the level. Any guy who spent all his life ducking subpoenas knows all the tricks we do. How do you figure to get around that?”

  “Easy. When we land at St. George, pull up someplace where there’s a phone and I’ll show you.”

  In the first available candy store Bruno leaned against the open door of the phone booth and slowly peeled the wrapper from a bar of chocolate while Murray dialed.

  “Staten Island Utilities,” said the voice at the other end of the wire. It was a woman’s voice, charged with efficiency. “Emergency service. What is it?”

  “Look,” said Murray plaintively, “my name is Waggoner, and I live out here on Shore Lane in Duchess Harbor. There’s something funny happening to the power around here. The street lights keep going off, and it’s very annoying. Can’t you people—”

  “The street lights?” the woman said. “We haven’t been getting any complaints about that, sir. If there was any failure on the line it would show up here. Are you sure you aren’t mistaken?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I’m telling you in plain language that something’s wrong with the lights around here, and I want a man out to fix them. You have my name and address, young woman. Take my word for it, I am not in the habit of playing practical jokes!”

  The woman’s voice now bore the weary resignation of one who has listened too often to unwarranted complaints from lunatic consumers. “Very well, we’ll send a man out as soon as possible, Mr. Waggoner. It may take a little while, but he’ll be there.”

  “He’d better be,” Murray said, and hung up.

  Bruno swallowed the last of the chocolate bar. “You know,” he said admiringly, “you just sounded like the most miserable crab on Staten Island. You really did, man. What that poor dame must think of this Waggoner, whoever he is—”

  “He’s got a house near Wykoff’s,” Murray said. “Come on. Now we move fast.”

  The trip to Duchess Harbor had taken twenty minutes in Caxton’s limousine. Bruno shaved that to fifteen minutes by keeping a heavy foot on the gas, and a wary eye out for stray policemen along the way. When the Chevrolet turned off the highwa
y into the road leading to the shore Murray slipped off his overcoat and shoes, and Bruno, observing this, said, “Now I see I really got myself into something. What are you supposed to be—Kirk of the Commandos?”

  The knot which had been withstood so far tightened in Murray’s stomach. It pressed up against his diaphragm, and breathing became difficult. “That’s me,” he said. “Watch out when you get to the driveway. The garage is on this side, and there were a couple of guys hanging around it last time. Best thing is to come in around the other side, and slow down when you’re near the corner of the house, so I can jump off there.”

  He had the door already open as the car passed the corner of the house, and he jumped out, skidded and almost fell on ground which was icy-hard and slick under a film of frozen snow, and then regained his balance and ran, crouching low, to the side of the building. Light showed behind the lowered Venetian blind in the window there, but the window itself was a foot above his head. He braced his hands on the sill and cautiously drew himself up until he was resting on his forearms, his stockinged feet dangling free. Hanging there like that, he found that every sound around him was magnified and distorted. Everything became approaching footsteps; the wind flicking at the cuffs of his trousers was a restraining hand laid on him. It cost him an effort not to look around at the threatening unknown. Not that it would do any good to look, especially if something was there. In his position he was a perfect target—the classic sitting duck—for anything aimed his way. It was hard to gauge whether it was that chilling realization or the bitterness of the night air that was numbing him into helplessness while he strained to see through the slats of the blind.

  It seemed an endless time before Bruno finally came into sight in the hall. Joe, the major-domo, was with him, shaking a doubtful head, and then Wykoff himself appeared, along with a man who might, from the looks of him, have been one of the nephews Dowd had referred to. He towered a head over Wykoff, but he had the same vulpine features, the same sulky air about him.

  Bruno was apparently having a hard time of it, but was playing his hand well. His manner was one of indifference, mild puzzlement, the manner of a man who finds himself the innocent victim of a misunderstanding between a corporation and a customer. He spoke casually, shrugged, looked at his receipt book with a frown—and then Wykoff turned away from him and headed directly toward the window from which Murray dangled.

  That, Murray saw, was something he hadn’t taken into account. The phone was on a table not five feet from the window. When Wykoff picked it up and dialed, his back was toward Murray. But as he started to speak he slowly turned, his eyes abstractedly fixed on the wall, the window, passing over it, and for that moment he was, as far as Murray knew, looking directly through the blind into Murray’s eyes. It seemed impossible that the man didn’t see him. But nothing showed on Wykoff’s face except interest in his phone conversation. Then slowly he turned away, nodded, replaced the phone. He must have called the utilities company, must have been satisfied by what he had been told. He gestured at Bruno, and Bruno, still magnificently unconcerned, still the man who could take a job or leave it, whichever suited the customer, followed Joe out of sight down the hall.

  Murray let his feet down to the ground. To the best of his recollection there were two windows in the living room he had just been looking into, two windows in the dining room beyond it, and then there was the room with the desk in it. He counted his way along the side of the house and waited, watching the glow of light from the living-room windows and from the upstairs windows above them. In his mind’s eye he saw Bruno at the head of the cellar steps, moved with him downstairs, and followed as Bruno crossed the cellar to wherever the fuse box was.

  Still the lights shone from the house, the naked trees thrashed around him making warning noises, and the wind whipped at him. There was no sign that anything had happened or was going to happen to those maddening lights. Nothing to say that Bruno hadn’t been lured into the cellar where he might be lying now with a bullet in him. And how was that going to be explained to Lucy and the four kids? What right did a man have to play with people’s lives, because he had a furious need for a woman who wanted no part of him, anyhow?

  Murray never saw the lights blink out. They might have been out for a minute or an hour; the only thing he knew was that there was blackness all around him, every window in the dim grayness of the wall towering over him was now a black patch instead of a lighted eye. He knew it must have happened while his mind was wandering, and he swore at himself for that and for precious seconds wasted.

  He heaved himself up to the sill and pushed at the window frame. It slid up an inch and then stopped. He pushed harder, balancing precariously on his knees and using both hands, but either the frame was jammed or there was a safety catch holding it. If it was jammed—but there was no use thinking about that. The thing to do was try the catch first.

  The outside of the sill was very narrow. It was hard finding a foothold on it after he had gotten himself up to a standing position there, and meanwhile Bruno must be well through his count of a hundred. Murray pulled the glass cutter from his pocket, ran it in a semicircle around the point where he calculated the catch would be, and worked the glass loose from the frame. He had calculated correctly, the catch was directly above the opening he had cut. He reached in and turned it, and with one heave pushed the window up the full way.

  The room was a well of darkness. He lowered himself cautiously into it, holding his breath as he passed through the invisible wall ordinarily provided by the electronic eye, half expecting the alarm to go off next to his ear. Then he was inside. He swiftly drew down the window behind him, and turned on the flashlight which was the second of the three tools he had brought along with him.

  The third tool was a chisel meant to serve as a jimmy, and if the desk didn’t yield to it—he couldn’t keep that thought from rising in his mind—he would have no second chance. The desk was there against the wall. He tried the top drawer, hoping against hope that it was unlocked, but it remained immovable. He slid the chisel into the narrow crack over the lock and struck it hard with the heel of his hand. The noise startled him. He stood there poised for a second blow, but afraid to deliver it, feeling the time running out on him lightning fast. It was the sound of voices in the distance that released him from his paralysis. Wykoff was grumbling about something; it was clear that if power wasn’t restored in time for the $64,000 Question the Staten Island Utility Company was going to have to answer for plenty. If a lousy electric company wanted to monkey around—!

  Murray struck the chisel again. It drove in deep, he bore down on it, and felt the drawer give. He inched it out, saw with cold foreboding that it was empty, and tried the next drawer below it. There was a binder there with a sheaf of paper in it. He turned the light on it, saw the columns of figures headed by cryptic initials, thrust it inside his shirt, and got to the window as fast as he could. Once outside that window and with it closed behind him he could breathe again. He balanced on the sill, shoved the window down, and dropped clumsily to the ground. He was not a second too soon. Still crouching there, shaken by the fall, his foot bruised by a stone he had landed on, he saw the lights of the house go on. It was that close, he knew. Close enough to have gotten him a broken skull or worse if George Wykoff kept his ledger in the bottom drawer of his desk instead of the middle drawer. Close enough to make him even more terrified after the event than he had been during it.

  All he wanted to do now was get into the waiting car and be away from there. The car was the symbol of everything that was beautiful and desirable in the world. It was a refuge on wheels. It was a way of getting as fast as possible to some place where he could lock himself in, soak up alcohol until his blood warmed up again, and look with equanimity on the fact that he had just too damn much imagination to be a really brave man.

  He made his way toward the car, limping a little, one hand pressing the binder of papers to his chest. The rear door of the car was open—it took
Bruno to realize that a door would have to be left open for this exigency—and he went through it, huddling out of sight on the floor there, the door left open behind him. Then Bruno came out of the house, thrusting his receipt book into his pocket, tossing the tool box on the back seat with a flourish, slamming the car door, getting into place behind the wheel, starting the motor so that Murray felt the vibration of it through him like the feeling of life beginning again.

  The wheels spun on the icy road, the car lurched forward, found traction, and moved down the driveway, jouncing as it went over the small rise leading to the road away from George Wykoff. It turned into the road and Bruno stepped up its speed so that the small vibration was transformed into a gentle, swaying motion. He reached around and slapped Murray on top of the head.

  “Tell me something,” he said. “Is it true what they say about a guy’s hair turning white if he’s scared enough?”

  2

  As they emerged from the tunnel into Manhattan, Bruno said, “Where to?” and Murray said, “Make it your place. Wykoff might check the office and the hotel in a little while, and I don’t want to be around when he does. Meanwhile, we can look over these papers and see what they’re all about.”

  “If that’s what you want,” said Bruno.

  The Manfredis lived in a frame house that fronted on a dead-end street, and whose back yard overlooked a cut of the Long Island Railroad where now and then could be heard the slow rumble of passing freight trains. The house was an old one but well kept, and a good deal of Bruno’s own handiwork had gone into it. Bruno, as Murray had learned years ago when he had been drafted without warning to help lay a flagstone walk, was a devotee of the do-it-yourself school, and it was his beloved house, more than anything else, that had anchored him to New York when Collins had offered him a good job on the Coast. Which, as Frank Conmy himself had once grudgingly admitted, was a break for the agency. You didn’t come by a man like Bruno every day of the week.