The Cry of the Owl

by Patricia Highsmith

  “I wanted to get some cigarettes, and there’s not a damned place open,” Greg muttered.

  The warm yellow sun was beginning to pour through the tops of the trees on Greg’s street. It was wonderful to see the old familiar street again. Home! Greg sat on the edge of his seat.

  “It’s that next place on the left with that white window jutting out. Go all the way into the driveway.” Then as the car lurched over the hump of the sidewalk and rolled onto the gravel between Mrs. Van Vleet’s house and the garage over which Greg’s apartment was, Greg had a sudden misgiving, a feeling of hollowness and fear. He dreaded having to talk to Mrs. Van. “What did Mom say, Pop?”

  “Oh, she’s glad you’re alive and well,” his father said in a tired voice, and pulled the emergency brake.

  Greg had just gotten out of the car when Mrs. Van Vleet’s back door squeaked. She had come out on the back porch in a robe, her hair under a net.

  “Who’s that? Greg?” she asked tremulously.

  “Hi, Mrs. Van!” Greg called, his usual greeting to her.

  “For goodness’ sake,” she said, opening the porch door to see him better. She stood with one foot on the first step down, as if she couldn’t believe him. “You’re all right, Greg?”

  “Yep. I am. This is my father. You met him once, I think.”

  “Morning,” Mrs. Van Vleet said vaguely to Mr. Wyncoop.

  “Morning, Ma’am.”

  “Where’ve you been, Greg?” asked Mrs. Van Vleet.

  “Well—” Greg walked a few steps toward her and stopped. “I had a case of amnesia, Mrs. Van. Couple of weeks of it. Talk to you about it later. I’m pretty anxious to get home again. O.K.?” He waved and turned away.

  “Were you in the river, Greg?” she asked, still standing with her foot on the step.

  “I sure was. Not for long, though. I got knocked in. I’ll talk to you later, Mrs. Van.” He was opening his key case. It was the one possession, besides two snapshots of Jenny that had been in his bill fold, that he still had. “The rent’s due, I know, Mrs. Van,” he said over his shoulder. “Come on up, Pop.” Greg opened the door, and they climbed the steps. Greg’s door was at the left at the top of the stairs. He went into the room and raised a window. “Sit down, Pop.”

  The coffee pot was sitting on the stove, and when Greg shook it, he found some coffee still in it. As he was washing the pot, he saw a pack of Kents, fresh and unopened, on the shelf in front of him beside the coffee can. Greg smiled. He had put them there providently one day, so long ago he’d forgotten. He wished there were a bottle tucked away somewhere, but he knew there wasn’t. But if he had taken a nip, his father would probably have made some remark about it.

  “We’ll have some coffee in a couple of minutes, Pop. Nothing to eat, though. Whatever’s in the icebox I suppose is a little stale.”

  “Um-m. That’s all right, Greg.” His father was sitting on Greg’s bed, leaning forward, his fingers locked in front of him.

  “Want to stretch out, Pop? Go ahead.”

  “I think I might.”

  Greg went into his little windowless bathroom, put on a light, washed his face and brushed his teeth. Then he took his shirt off, rubbed lather into his nearly three-day beard and shaved.

  His father was still gloomily silent, even when they were having coffee.

  “Sorry you had to make this trip, Pop,” Greg said.

  “Oh, that’s all right. You’re supposed to call in to the police today before six this evening, so don’t forget it. They want to know where you are.”

  Greg nodded. “All right, Pop.”

  The telephone rang, and it was like an explosion in Greg’s ears. He had not the slighest idea who it could be, who it was going to be, and a nervous sweat broke out on him as he picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Greg,” said Alex’s firm voice. “I just had a call from your landlady. She told me you’d come back.”

  “Yeah, I—”

  “So I called the police in Rittersville. Wasn’t sure they knew it, you know. Because your landlady didn’t know anything.” Alex’s voice was cold and flat, the way it was when he was angry about something. “So they picked you up in Langley, they said.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I had—well, for a long time I had amnesia, Alex.”

  “Yeah? Really? According to what the police said, you’re in quite a lot of trouble, Greg.”

  “Listen, Alex—”

  “I know some of it myself, maybe not all of it. It’s good to know you’re alive, but if I’d known all this time you were just on a spree in New York—”

  “A spree? What do you mean ‘a spree’?”

  “Oh, I heard about the woman up there from the police. And all this time I thought you were either dead or—or just possibly eating your heart out about Jenny. And then 1 find out—”

  “Alex, if you’d give me a chance to talk to you face to face—”

  “I thought maybe you were dead, Greg, but I sure thought Jenny was your girl. And then this shooting, for God’s sake.”

  “What are you, getting moral on me or something? Were you a saint at twenty-eight?”

  “Greg, if that’s your boss—” said Greg’s father, standing up, frowning disapproval at him.

  “Greg, I wish you luck, but I’m calling to tell you you’re no longer working for me, in case you had any ideas that you were.”

  “F’Christ’s sake, Alex.”

  “I can’t afford a mess like this in my business,” Alex said. “Do you think all the guys in the area who know me and know you—? I don’t even care to discuss it.”

  Greg imagined Alex standing at the wall telephone in his kitchen, his wife listening with a cigarette and a cup of coffee at the table in the breakfast nook, nodding encouragement to Alex. “All right, I won’t argue either, Alex. But you got any objections to my having a talk with you?”

  “Yes, I think I have. There’s no use in it. You let me down, Greg, in more ways than one. I thought you were a pretty fine young man. You let me down on two of the biggest orders of the season, if you remember them, that suntan stuff and—Was I supposed to wait for you to communicate before I hired somebody else to go after them?”

  “All right, Alex. I see this isn’t the time to talk.”

  “That it isn’t. Goodbye, Greg.” He hung up.

  Greg put the telephone down and turned to his father. His father was still frowning, and there was more reproach than sympathy in his face, Greg saw. “O.K., he fired me,” Greg said. “There’re other jobs.”

  Then they were both silent. His father’s silence annoyed Greg. It was as if his father were thinking of things too shameful to say. Greg looked at his watch and saw that it was only ten of eight. It was going to be an interminable day unless he could sleep away some of it. Greg wished his father would leave.

  At eight, the telephone rang again. It was Nickie, and Greg was so surprised it took his breath away for an instant.

  “I’d like to come and see you,” Nickie said, not angry, not friendly either, just brusque.

  “Sure, Nickie. Wh-where are you?”

  “I’m in Humbert Corners. Some booth on the sidewalk. How do I get to your place?”

  Stammering, Greg told her, and saw his father sit up, his face worried, as he looked at Greg. “How’d you find out I was here?” Greg asked.

  “Called the police station. Simple as that,” Nickie said, and now she sounded as if she’d had a couple of drinks. “See you in a minute.” She hung up.

  “Who’s coming over?” his father asked.

  “Nickie Jurgen,” Greg said. “The woman I was telling you about, Forester’s ex-wife. She’s in Humbert Corners.”

  “l’d better go,” said his father, and reached for his jacket, which he had hung on the back of a chair.

  “Oh, Pop, come on. She’s nice. I’d like you to meet her. You’d understand a lot more of this, if—”

  “No, Greg.”

  “I ne
ed you, Pop. I really do. It’ll be better if you stay.”

  “Your mother needs me also.”

  There was no persuading him, and Greg gave it up. After all, it might be better if he went, Greg thought. There was no telling what Nickie might come out with. His father reminded him again that he would have to telephone the police. Greg told his father to give his mother his love, and then his father was gone down the steps, the car motor starting in the driveway. It seemed no time at all before he heard a car zoom into the driveway and stop with a scrape of gravel. She and his father must have passed on the street. He looked out his window and saw Nickie getting out of a low-slung black Thunderbird, slamming its door. She looked up, saw him, and without a smile or a greeting walked to his door. Greg ran down the steps to let her in.

  “Hi,” she said. “By yourself, I trust.”

  “Sure, Nickie. Come on up.”

  She went ahead of him up the stairs, and turned and faced him as he came into the room. “So—you’ve made a fine mess of it, haven’t you?”

  “Listen, Nickie, if we talk this thing over, come to an agreement about what we tell the police—”

  Nickie laughed. “You seem to have done quite a bit of talking already. Are you going to talk more to them? What do you think my husband thinks of all this? What do you mean by popping off to every dope who looks at you that I kept you in New York? That’s a hell of a way to pay me back, isn’t it?”

  Greg glanced at his windows, then went and pushed down the window he had opened. Nickie was talking loudly, and she kept on. He couldn’t put a single word in. He had expected her to be annoyed, angry with him, but she was like a volcano, and he knew that he could never placate her now, never win her back to his side.

  “You are about the lowest son of a bitch …”

  He interrupted. She only talked louder, and when he tried again to interrupt, she uttered a lot of gibberish in a shrill tone—“Luddle duddle-duddle-duddle!”—as if she were really out of her mind, just to drown him out. She talked of his ingratitude, his stupidity, his crumminess, his complete disregard for her. Greg was shaking now, with anger and fear. Nickie was going to make his situation worse. She had already said a lot to the cops, she said, and she wasn’t through yet.

  “It hasn’t occurred to you that my husband can divorce me on this?” she yelled in a grand climax. “It hasn’t occurred to you that he’s going to do just that?” Her manicured hands clenched and unclenched as she spoke, flew from her hips in a wild gesture and returned, clenched in fists. She was wearing the black slacks she had worn the second and last time she had slept with him, in the Sussex Arms Hotel. He remembered her smiling at him, remembered her confident voice that day. Now her eyes were bloodshot, her lipstick gone except at the outside edges of her lips.

  At last he shouted through her words: “What the hell have I done that’s so awful?”

  “You’re such a heel, you wouldn’t know! You’ve wrecked my life, you crumb. And I’m going to see that yours is wrecked, mark my words.” She lit a cigarette, snapped her lighter shut. “I know how to get back at people, don’t think I don’t. Crumb,” she said in a low tone, swaying from side to side restlessly as she gathered herself. Then she burst forth again in a torrent. “You should have heard the argument I’ve been having all night with Ralph. He wants to divorce me on this, sue me, get it? Where do you think I’ll be then? This is going to be in the papers, because Ralph wants it there. He won’t buy it out. Do you realize how much money he has?”

  “All right, all right!” Greg yelled. “Just what the hell do you want me to do about it?”

  “First go to the police and take back what you said to them—about me. Get your God-damned coat or whatever, and let’s go,” she said, and swung herself half around, away from him.

  He watched her angry eyes glancing here and there in the room.

  “Listen, Nickie, I can’t—”

  “Don’t tell me anything about what you can and can’t. Let’s get going. We’re going to Rittersville, wherever the hell that is.”

  “Nickie, I’ve lost my job. What else do you want to do to me?”

  “Your job? Your lousy job? If you think that’s all you’re going to lose! Come on.” She started toward the door.

  Greg was rigid and breathless. He watched her open the door and turn to him, her hand on the knob. “I’m not going,” he said quickly.

  “Oh. So.” She nodded mockingly. “You’re not going. All right, stay. I can talk for you.” She turned to the door.

  “You’re not going!” Greg said, wrenching her around by one arm.

  The movement flung her back against the kitchenette sink, and for one instant her eyes looked at him, wide and frightened, then she plunged head down toward the door again.

  Greg put his arm out and caught her across the chest, held her with her back to him, and her fists flailed, but only briefly. Greg caught one of her wrists in a grip that stopped her.

  “All right,” she said, gasping. “All right, you’ll write it. Sit down and write it.” She shook her wrist free. “Where’s a piece of paper?”

  Obediently, he got out a writing tablet, found a ball-point pen among a lot of pencils in a glass on a kitchen shelf. “Write what?” He sat down on his bed, and pulled the bridge table toward him.

  “Write that it was not true that you slept with me in New York, and that the money I gave you was to get back to Pennsylvania.”

  “What’s the date?”

  “May 31st.”

  He wrote the date, then:

  It is not true

  and stopped. “My hand’s shaking too much. I’ve gotta wait,” he mumbled. “Christ, I wish there was something to drink here.”

  “I’ve got something in the car. Would that help?” Nickie went out.

  Greg heard her car horn blow loudly, and heard Nickie’s “Damn it!” Then the clink of a bottle against metal, and the slam of the car door. Then Mrs. Van’s high-pitched, moaning voice. Greg went to the window.

  “Sure, I’ll tell him,” Nickie said to Mrs. Van.

  Mrs. Van was standing on her back porch, behind the screen door.

  Nickie came up with a bottle of White Horse. “Your landlady wants to talk with you.”

  Greg shoved his palms over his hair and went down. Mrs. Van was just going back into her house, but she turned when she heard his step. “You wanted to talk to me, Mrs. Van?”

  “Yes, Greg.” She cleared her throat. She spoke to him through the screen door. “I wanted to tell you, Greg, that I’d just as soon—I’d just as soon you’d look for another place, after this month.”

  “All right, Mrs. Van. I understand.” Greg paid his rent on the 15th of the month, but hadn’t paid it this month, which was why it had been due now for two weeks. So he had two more weeks to find another place.

  “I’m sorry, Greg, but that’s the way I feel,” she said gently, but her mouth trembled to a firm line. Her chin was jutted forward in a righteous way as she looked at Nickie’s car, then up at the windows of Greg’s apartment.

  “I’ll pay you the rent right away, Mrs. Van, and I’ll try to be out before the fifteenth,” said Greg, thinking he was being very agreeable, more than fair, but Mrs. Van said only, “That’ll be fine,” coldly, and walked into her house.

  Greg ran up to his room. “Jesus!” he said. “My landlady wants me to move.”

  “Surprised?” Nickie was sitting in Greg’s armchair with a drink.

  Greg went to the bottle on the drainboard and poured himself a strong one. He took a few sips of it before he turned around. Then he went back to the paper on the bridge table. He knew what he had to say, but it took him a long time. He covered both sides of the paper, and signed his full name, Gregory Parcher Wyncoop. Nickie had gotten up twice to get drinks, and now she was humming as if she were in a better mood.

  “Finished? Read it to me,” she said.

  He read it, and when he had finished, Nickie said, “Not very smooth, but it sounds l
ike you. It sounds fine.”

  Greg poured another drink, and put into it one of the ice cubes from the tray Nickie had set on the drainboard. He felt better. Another drink or two and he wouldn’t be so anxious about any of this.

  “And—what’s Mr. Forester doing today?” Nickie asked.

  “How should I know?” Greg sat down on his studio bed and leaned back against a pillow. “I suppose he’s celebrating because I was caught.”

  Nickie made a sound between a laugh and a grunt.

  “That doctor—that doctor in Rittersville might die,” Greg said. “It’s too bad.”

  “Hm-m. Is he a friend of Bobbie’s?”

  “Seems to be.”

  “Bobbie’s getting it right and left, isn’t he?”

  “What?”

  “People dying. He used to talk about it—till I told him to go to an analyst and shut up about it. People dying. Death.”

  Greg sat up. “Do we have to talk about it? Forester’s not dead. He’s O.K.”

  “Oh, trust him.” Nickie looked sleepy, leaning back in the big chair. Her lips were faintly smiling.

  “If that doctor dies, I’m guilty of murder, they said.”

  “Murder?” Nickie’s eyes opened wider. “Not manslaughter?”

  “No. Murder.” Greg finished his drink and stared at his empty glass. Then with a vague, scared smile, he stood up and went to the bottle. When he turned around, Nickie was looking at him. “Murder,” he repeated.

  “All right. I heard you.”

  Greg looked at the paper he had written and wondered if he could avoid showing it to the police. Would Nickie trust him to hand it to them? Greg doubted that. And how much good would it do, if he were going to be guilty of murder anyway?

  “I’ll take you to the police later, so you can give them that,” Nickie said, nodding toward the bridge table. “Don’t you have to report to them today, anyway?”

  “Just—phone in.”

  “Well, we’ll go in. Together. But first let’s call Mr. Forester and see what he’s up to.” She got up a bit unsteadily, but she was smiling, cheerful.

  “Call him why?”