Alone at Night

by Vin Packer

  “Laura, please. Please, Laura! Do you think I enjoy seeing you this way? Laura, if I could do anything—anything to help you, don’t you know that I’d do it?”

  “Would you, father?”

  “Certainly!”

  “Will you go see Buzzy? Will you go and tell him that I have an illness? Just tell him that I have an illness, father. You don’t have to be specific! You can think of something. Tell him I have an illness that has changed me, and that I’m embarrassed to see him, or talk to him on the telephone… Father, if you did it in a nice way, he’d believe you.”

  “Laura, Laura, the police would see to it that…”

  She shouted, “I don’t want the police to do it, father! You do it!”

  Tears formed in Kenneth Leydecker’s eyes. He took off his glasses and wiped at his eyes with his fingers. “If you want that… then…”

  “I want it, father.”

  “Very well, but…”

  “Will you do it tomorrow? Tomorrow morning?”

  “He had no right to come here.” Leydecker sighed. “No right at all.”

  “I’m asking you, father, will you do it?”

  “I said I would… He actually came here?”

  “I was sick after… sick right on the floor of my bedroom. I could hardly walk in here.”

  “He just left?”

  “I told you, father, he was just here!”

  “All right,” said Leydecker. “All right. I’ll take care of it. You’d better take a pill, Laura.”

  “I shall, father.”

  “Yes, take a pill. You need some sleep.”

  “I wonder if anyone in the world gets as much sleep as I do,” she said, walking out the door.

  The moment the door was shut behind her, Leydecker took the telephone to his lap. He dialed the three digits which would ring the police.

  fifteen

  “Who was it?” Nancy said.

  “I’m afraid I have to leave early,” Ted Chayka answered, as he walked back into the living room. On the floor beside her chair there were half-a-dozen red-stained Kleenexes wadded up and tossed there. There was the acrid, sickly-sweet smell of Milday Nail Polish Remover. Nancy’s lap was peppered with tiny red peelings, nail size. This was her habit at night, to peel off as many of the red shells as she could from her fingers; then finish the removal of her nail polish with a liquid, on those nails she could not peel… Christmas night was no exception. The tree was lit on the T.V. top, a testimony to the holidays, and there were tie boxes and jewelry boxes there—their gifts to one another, and strands of tinsel were draped around the ears of the T.V. indoor antenna, but it was still just another day. Chayka was due at work at eleven-thirty, an hour away, and Nancy was probably fussing over in her mind, whether to watch the late show featuring Tyrone Power, or the mystery movie.

  “Early? How come?”

  He said, “That was Rich Boyson on the phone. My cousin’s down to his place with a bag on.”

  “So let him. What’s it to you?”

  “It’s Christmas night,” said Chayka, depressed at the dullness of his voice, and at the irony of his own unnecessary announcement: it’s Christmas night, “Rich doesn’t want it spoiled for the customers.”

  “Is your cousin the only one who celebrates the holidays by getting a bag on? What’s Rich Boyson in business for anyway?”

  But she was not arguing because she cared that he had to leave an hour early; Nancy was just running off at the mouth again, about nothing at all.

  Chayka said, “I guess things are out of hand… Anyway, I said I’d stop in.”

  “There’s a play coming on at ten-thirty, so I’ll watch that, I guess.”

  “I’m sorry,” Chayka lied. “I have to go, though.”

  “So—go.” with a shrug of her shoulder.

  “Want a can of beer from the icebox, while I’m up?”

  “No, I want one from the oven.”

  “No sense being nasty, Nancy.”

  “Come on, Ted, I was kidding, for God’s sake. Kidding, s’all.”

  “I guess I’m jumpy. I’ll get you a beer.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you lately, Ted.”

  “I don’t know either,” he said. “Nerves, I guess.”

  But he knew very well what was wrong. He thought about it while he got Nancy her beer, and then while he dressed in his blue patrolman’s uniform—his shoes polished to a high shine, the crease in his pants sharp, the new black hatband on his cap, clean… the shield polished. He thought about it while he drove his old Plymouth down to Boyson’s.

  What was wrong was that he had changed.

  He had been married seven years to Nancy, and during those seven years, he had changed from a hoarse-voiced, shiftless, drunk-every-weekend garage mechanic, to a solemn and sober member of the Cayuta Police Department. He had become something, and becoming that, he had realized there was more to go. He wanted ultimately to be a Police Lieutenant, a detective… but not just that… He wanted to be a happy and respectable citizen, Someone, as well as Something. He wanted to love his wife and have her kids… and there was Nancy every night, same as always, same as seven years ago, slopping around in her bedroom slippers, peeling off her polish, dropping her Kleenexes and her stockings and her empty beer cans wherever she had a mind to—going at Life with all the zest of a “before ad” for Geritol.

  To make matters worse, it was all gone between them, as bad now as it had been wonderful in their teens, when they could not even wait out a movie in the darkness of the theater—not even a good movie, because every fiber of their being demanded more than the hand-holding, the furtive, futile groping: More and Everything.

  Now, whenever he mounted her, he felt a sick, sinking loss, a feeling that invariably lent him enough anger to compensate for the emotion of passion, and it was a violent thing between them, quick and thankless. She received no pleasure; she did not have to tell him that, and she never did, in words. They never spoke about it… But it was there—in their mutual embarrassment at love scenes on T.V., in the child they could not conceive, in her “kidding” and his “nerves”, and in the indifferent way of the passage of their years of married life.

  “It’s Christmas night.”

  “So—go.”

  It could not continue; if it did, the seven years of studying and working and getting-and-taking advice… and succeeding, step-by-step going ahead, would all be for nothing.… It was not Nancy’s fault that he had changed (God knows the drunken nights she had tolerated before Chris McKenzie came into their life to change him!) but it was not his fault either, that now he wanted more and better. And the more he wanted it, the better he wanted it to be, the worse it became between them. For a month he been unable to touch her—even to touch her, to try. Gone, and in its wake, a zero.

  As he parked the Plymouth before Boyson’s, he heard himself, in his mind, telling Chris about it, asking Chris about it. Tomorrow morning, when he was off-duty, he would go for coffee with Chris, air it—the whole thing… or it would drive him crazy, drive him back to the bottom of the bottle, where he used to look for solutions. Where there were none.

  Rich Boyson was hovering near the entranceway of the bar, waiting for Chayka.

  “Hi, Ted,” he said. “My golly, I’m sorry, but…”

  “Don’t be, Rich!” Chayka told him. “Where is he?”

  “Down at the end. I don’t like what he’s saying. I got to protect my good customers.”

  “Dirty mouth?”

  “That I could handle myself, Ted. He’s throwing around some pretty big names, not saying very nice things either.”

  “Okay, Rich.”

  Chayka walked back carrying his cap, nodding to this one and that one, and to Vincent, the bartender. When he came to the last stool at the bar, he said, “Hello, Al.”

  “Well, well, well! Himself!”

  “You here all alone tonight?”

  “Mona don’t hold her drinks any better than you use
d to. I took her home. We was up to Jitz’s place, at the lake.”

  “How about drinking up, Al?”

  “Wha for?… Listen, you heard the joke about the astronaut. Knock. Knock.”

  “You’ve had enough, fellow. I’ll give you a lift home.”

  “I got my Chevy outside.”

  “You’re a little bagged to drive, Cousin.”

  “Yeah, yeah, well—so arrest me.”

  “I’ll give you a lift instead.”

  “Let me finish first. I got half a beer… I got news too. News that ought to interest a policeman.”

  “Some other time, hmmm?”

  “I was out with your sponsor s’aftemoon, Ted. Isn’t that what you alcoholics call your wet nurse? Yep! Me and Mona was drinking up to Jitz’s place with the horse doctor and his wife, and Slater Burr and his current wife… and—get this, Cousin… And Donald Cloward.”

  Chayka studied Al Secora’s cloddish features with contempt. The empty eyes, dulled by alcohol, shot with red, the thick mouth edged with beer foam, the brown hair mussed and lacquered with hair oil. Secora seemed to personify what Chayka himself had been called years back: that dumb Polack. And Chayka knew, knew as well as he knew that Secora would spill on himself half the rest of his drink, that handled a few inches this side of Rough, Secora would start a fight.

  “Give me a ginger ale, Vincent,” he said, and then, to reassure Rich’s bartender, “A fast one for the road. Then we have to shove off.”

  “Yeah, I was honored to be amongst the big people, s’afternoon, Cousin. And I put a few twos together, for a four. A Police Department four.”

  Vincent shoved a glass of ginger ale down the countertop, and Ted Chayka picked it up, picked up Secora’s glass and beer bottle with it. “Let’s sit at a booth, Al. You can tell me all about it.”

  “I’m not kidding, Ted. I may be gassed, but I’m telling the truth.”

  They sat down across from one another.

  “What truth?” Ted asked.

  “I figured out that Slater Burr killed Carrie Burr, that’s what truth.”

  “Sure. And I’m Milton Berle.”

  “No, no, you listen to me, Cousin. I figured it out. Donald Cloward remembers being moved from Leydecker’s car to Slater Burr’s. Someone moved him. He remembers that. He thinks it was Leydecker!”

  “Un huh… What else?” said Chayka tiredly.

  “Well, Slater Burr went along with it. He went right along with it, Cousin, up to a point. He says, ‘Sure, Donald, Leydecker was out to get you.’ He went right along with it, up until I brought up the fact a Jaguar isn’t all that easy to operate, if you’re gassed and you never operated a Jag before.”

  “It all makes a lot of sense, Al. Now how about working on your beer.”

  “You listen to me, Police Department!”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I’m telling you that Donald Cloward never drove a Jag. If he’d pleaded innocent and had a trial, any lawyer woulda fixed on that little point. He nev-ver drove a Jag… But that’s about all Slater Burr ever did drive, and it was Slater Burr’s Jag, and Slater wanted Carrie Burr out of the way, so he could marry the horse doctor’s sister!”

  “That’s a hell of a stupid thing to say, and you know it, Al!”

  “Oh, I know it, ha? Listen, I saw them together—Jen McKenzie and Slater Burr, couple months before Mrs. Burr was killed. They was up to Blood Neck making out, same night I was up there with Francie. ’Member? Whatta you think I was kept on the payroll for when my ribs was busted? So I wouldn’t squawk! That’s what for!”

  “What if they were there? That doesn’t prove he’d murder his wife, even if he were having an affair with Jen Burr then.”

  “It’d establish a motive, though… es-tab-lish a motive, as they say on the T.V.”

  Secora slopped beer down the front of his shirt, and Chayka was relieved to see there was only an inch left in the bottle.

  Chayka said, “Why don’t you just worry about yourself, Al?”

  “Because I don’t have anything to worry about! And I’m tired of being pushed around!”

  “Who’s pushing you around?”

  “Slater Burr pushed me the hell out of Jitz’s place! He knew I was getting wise.”

  “Oh, sure. He has a lot to fear from you.”

  “Well, doesn’t he? You ever think how much weight I throw around with the unions down to his place?”

  “You’re going to announce to the unions that he’s a murderer, is that it? Oh, that’s going to fix Mr. Burr, that is.”

  “Just don’t say he’s got nothing to fear from me! He can afford another strike like I can afford to lay that broad he murdered his wife to marry!”

  “Al,” said Chayka, “listen to me now. You got a bag on and you feel your oats. But tomorrow you’re going to wake up and feel like a goddam ass, shooting your mouth off down here this way.”

  “Crap, I am!”

  “You know how it always is, the next day.”

  “Do you? Any more? Since you become Jesus Christ?”

  “Al,” Chayka forced a smile, “let me take you home now. You’re beat! You could use some sleep. Work day tomorrow, you know.”

  “Slave day.”

  “Sure, well, how about it? I’ll drive you up to your place, and tomorrow you can pick up your car… You know what a drunken driving rap means? A couple hundred bucks, and no license for a few months. Where would you be then?… And you’ll get picked up, Al. There are extra men out tonight looking for someone to arrest. End of the month. You know how it is.”

  “You lousy cops would arrest your mothers. You mother-arresting cops!” He guffawed at his joke and drained the bottle of beer.

  “C’mon, Cousin.”

  “Okay, but tomorrow isn’t going to change today, and my two plus two equals four.”

  “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

  “It was Cloward got me on to it. Cloward was up there spouting like a goddam whale… all about how he remembers being moved from Leydecker’s car to the Jag.”

  “Sure,” Chayka said, helping his cousin out of the booth, “we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Al Secora, “I’m going to do plenty of talking about it tomorrow.”

  After he dropped him off, Chayka drove toward the station. If there were any way he could simply rub out Secora’s kind, like a man rubbing out a roach under his shoe, he would do it. He was very familiar with all the nuances of the dumb punk putting in his nine-to-five, and nothing else; then hanging around beered up and belligerent at men who contributed a lot more than screwing bolts on by the clock. It was the Secoras, whose only responsibility outside a day’s work was to keep their flies zipped up in public and pay their taxes grudgingly, who sat around scorning The Rich. Without The Rich, they’d be back rubbing stones together for fire, but it never penetrated their thick brains that men of responsibility and industry made it possible for them to loaf away their lives.

  That was how Ted Chayka saw it, and he knew all the nuances. The borrowed glory of being at Jitz’s place with Slater Burr’s crowd, the drunken resentment at the fact he was one of them then, but not one of them… then the building up of his wobbly ego, by tearing them down… All in the glorious haze of alcohol, where the possibility of Slater Burr murdering his first wife was every bit as probable as Al Secora being the new Sherlock Holmes.

  And tomorrow, Al Secora would talk about it. That was what angered Chayka. It would create nasty gossip in Cayuta among Secora’s kind, and it would spread. Because there were a lot of people jealous of the Burrs, blaming Slater Burr for Cayuta’s ubiquitous business problems, blaming anyone big enough to put the blame on, the same as Nancy blamed the Burrs or the Ayres or the Leydeckers for anything from an early winter to a two-cent rise on butter.

  Chayka parked his Plymouth in the lot behind the station and stepped over the mud puddles on his way to the door. When he had coffee with Chris tomorrow morning, he would
tell him what Secora had been shouting around Boyson’s… let Chris hear it from Ted first… let Chris know where Al Secora stood with Ted Chayka; cousins was the end of it, cousins was the only fact to their relationship… and damn that fact!

  The loudspeaker on the wall beside the coatroom droned; “Calling Car 7, in the third district… at Genesee and Maple, automobile accident… at South Corner on…”

  “Ted?”

  Chayka turned around and faced the desk Lieutenant.

  “Don’t bother taking off your coat. I’m putting you at it a few minutes early tonight.”

  “Sure… What is it?”

  “Do you know Donald Cloward?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know what he looks like, I mean?”

  “I went to school with him.”

  “Good. He’s been up bothering old man Leydecker. We just got a call. Leydecker says he left on foot, ten minutes or so. Check Highland Hill, then follow down Genesee to The Burr Building. He’s probably somewhere along that route.”

  “Who’s driving?”

  “Leogrande,” the Lieutenant said. “He’s out front with the motor going. Waiting. He wasn’t sure he could identify him.”

  “I can,” said Chayka, heading for the main entrance, “I used to hang around with him. Heard he was back.”

  sixteen

  He often dreamed of Carrie. He never remembered the dreams, but he would awaken as he did in the gray light of six that morning, and feel her presence like a heavy veil of gloom enveloping him. And at those times, he would turn his head and see Jen beside him in the bed, and a wonderous relief would sweep through him, and reality would seem like found money, a clean bill of health from the doctor, a thing he did not want to do that he discovered he did not have to do.

  He sighed and smiled, rested his large hand on the soft silk gown covering her thigh. He lay there with his eyes open, listening to a wet winter snow dribble in the tin drain trough, outside the bedroom window.

  Random remembrances of Carrie wandered uneasily and sketchily through his thoughts, and fixed, finally, on their honeymoon night up in the Adirondacks. Throughout dinner at the main lodge Carrie had indulged in her usual shop talk, as though the day were no different from any other, and afterwards, over brandy, when Slater leaned forward and said softly: “Let’s go back to our cabin now. You know how I love you, don’t you, Carrie?” She had looked across the table and answered, “I suppose we’d better get at it.” Very seriously. Slater had laughed at her way of putting it: poor, solemn Carrie, but she seemed annoyed at his laughter. He had paid the check, and the walk back through the woods was slow and silent. He had known, from the stiffness of her embraces before their marriage, that it would require patience on his part; he had imagined she was shy and embarrassed beside him, as they went toward their cabin; he had thought ahead of ways to make it easier for her. On a pretense of checking over the car, he would spend time away from the cabin while she undressed. He had given instructions to the lodge to have a bottle of champagne on ice in the cabin. Little, predictable touches to facilitate their love-making.