Phyllis

by Howard Fast

  “It was one man.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know. Nobody knows anything for sure. I think I know. Maybe I’m wrong. That’s a chance you have to let me take. I don’t have six months or a year. You counted out the days for me. This thing has to break. It has to break somewhere. If I get a chance to make it break, I have to take the chance.”

  Comaday looked at Fredericks and raised a brow. Fredericks nodded. “I think Clancy has a point,” Fredericks said. “It’s beginning to build up around him. He has to prick it somewhere.”

  “How do you want it now?” Comaday asked me.

  “I want to question him. I want to talk to him.”

  “You alone?”

  “Not alone. I want you to be there. I want Mr. Fredericks to be there and I want you to get Grischov down from the Soviet building.”

  “Grischov?” Fredericks said. “When did you see him?”

  “I saw him this morning.”

  “How does he connect with the tail?” Fredericks wanted to know.

  “Grischov has a broad acquaintance. Maybe this is someone he knew. Maybe it isn’t.”

  Then there was a moment or two of silence. Fredericks’s face became impassive again. Comaday watched me thoughtfully. Then he nodded. “All right, Clancy, we’ll play it your way. I’ll send for Grischov and meanwhile we’ll all of us have a conversation with your tail.” The Commissioner picked up the telephone and gave his instructions. Then the three of us left his office and went to a quiet room.

  It was a plain, bare room about fifteen feet square and the walls were painted cream color. In one corner there was a sink and running water. In the middle of the room there was a table, a plain wooden table, and four chairs, plain wooden chairs like kitchen chairs. There was a light bulb over the wash basin and another light bulb under a green shade hung from the ceiling. There were no windows in the room. The air came through a grille, and the heat came from a radiator. It was a quiet room because no matter what went on in there you couldn’t listen outside. The walls weren’t soundproofed; they were just heavy stone and plaster walls, and the door was a heavy wooden door.

  When we entered this room, my tail was sitting at the table. A uniformed officer stood behind him and a second uniformed officer faced him across the table. The tail’s topcoat, his suit jacket, and his tie had been removed; his pockets had been emptied and the contents of his pockets were spread out on the table. When we entered the room, the officers nodded at us. No one said anything. We grouped around the table and went through the contents of his pockets. He had a billfold, which contained $411. His change was not loose, but in a small suede purse—a European habit that was as good as a European label. Aside from the money, there were no papers in his wallet, no cards, no identification. There was also among his possessions a key chain with two keys attached, one of them a car key, and a small card, folded and dirty. However, there was no license to go along with the car key. On the card was written “Thomas Clancy” and then my address. A small penknife of mother-of-pearl completed his wordly possessions. The three of us went through his things. Comaday was interested in the money. Among the $411 there were eight twenty-dollar bills. Comady separated these, took one of the officers aside, whispered to him, and gave him the money. I suspected he was sending it down to Jacobs to see if it could connect in any way with the twenty-dollar bills that had been left with me. Then Comaday motioned for the other officer to go. The three of us were left in the room with the tail. We pulled chairs up to the table, sat down, and looked at him. He was afraid now. Fear was stamped into him, written all over him, and coming out of his skin in tiny droplets of sweat. He sat facing us, both his hands gripping the edge of the table.

  Minutes passed and none of us said anything. Fredericks was a guest. I was taking my cue from Comaday. At least at the beginning of this thing, I would say nothing until Comaday said something. If Comaday wanted to wait, I was willing to wait. As a matter of fact, the waiting and the silence could be more profound and more efficient than any questions.

  So we sat there and we waited, and the minutes ticked by, and the tail looked at each of us, from face to face, and then at the table, and then at his hands, and then at us again. In such circumstances, three or four minutes can be an eternity, and it could not have been more than that before someone knocked at the door. I rose and let Jacobs in and he nodded at Comaday, who came over to join us;

  “No connection, Commissioner,” Jacobs said. “The money is plain clean money.”

  “Clean money, hell!” Comaday muttered.

  Then he dismissed Jacobs and we went back to the table and sat down again. A minute more was all that the tail could stand. He burst out at us,

  “What do you want with me? Why do you bring me here? I have committed no crime.”

  His voice was high-pitched and strident with a fairly clearly defined German accent. He made his plea and there was no answer. We continued to sit in silence. For myself, I thought Comaday was overdoing it. It was a little old-fashioned and it had reached a point where it ceased to make much sense—at least to me. Then the tail broke the silence again,

  “I have committed no crime. Why do you bring me here?”

  After that a few more seconds of silence.

  “You can’t hold me here. I am not a criminal. I know what the law is. I want to call a lawyer. That is my right. I have the right to call a lawyer. I have the right to know why you have brought me here.

  Comaday sighed. He looked at me and nodded, and I asked the tail what his name was.

  “I don’t have to answer that. I don’t have to answer any questions.”

  “What’s your name?” I repeated.

  This time he answered briefly and to the point. “Hans Kempter.”

  “Why were you following me?” I said to him.

  “I was not following you.”

  “I say you were following me. Why were you following me?” He shook his head.

  “Why were you following Miss Goldmark yesterday?”

  He shook his head again.

  “Who do you work for?”

  He pursed his lips and tightened them. Then there was another knock on the door and this time Comaday answered it. He stood at the door, talking to a uniformed officer, and then motioned for me and for Fredericks to join them. We went over to the door and Comaday told us about the fingerprints. They had done a local check and there were no prints. The check from Washington would be back to us in about thirty minutes. Then Comaday told the officer to take the material on the table. The officer scooped it up into a brown envelope and left us. We sat down at the table again facing Kempter. Comaday glanced at me and said,

  “Go ahead, Clancy. Do it any way you want to do it. This bastard is here and that’s it.”

  Kempter had been gathering up his courage. “I have rights!” he burst out.

  “You haven’t any rights,” Comaday said tiredly.

  “I want to make a telephone call!”

  “There’s no telephone here,” Comaday said just as tiredly. “No telephone, no lawyer, nothing. You’re here with the three of us, Kempter. All the law and the rights and the privileges that you’ve memorized about this country are suspended. There’s no law in here, there’s no right, there’s no privileges. You know why.”

  As wildly as an animal, Kempter stared from face to face. He pushed back his chair and stood up.

  “Sit down!” I said to him. It wasn’t my kind of work. It wasn’t work I enjoyed. There are those who enjoy this kind of thing. You’ll find them on a police force as well as in other places, and some of them have a talent for it, and some of them even elevate it into an art. I had no talent for it.

  “Sit down, Kempter!” I repeated. Kempter sat down slowly, warily.

  “Why were you following me?”

  “I was not following you.”

  “Who do you work for, Kempter?”

  He shook his head.

  “Who do you work for?” I
repeated.

  He shook his head again.

  “Who gave you that card you had in your pocket?”

  When he didn’t answer, Comaday rose and walked around the table and stood behind him. “You can make it easy for yourself, Kempter,” I said softly. “You will have to put away everything you learned about our law, our police methods, and your rights. You haven’t any more rights. You know as well as we do how big this thing is. You can die here. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference—not to any of us—not to anyone in this building. Nobody asks any questions. The size of this thing is that ten like you could die here and it still wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. Do you understand me?”

  He stared at me out of his pale blue eyes, licked his lips, and tightened himself to the presence of Comaday behind him. I had never realized before how brutally wide and powerful Comaday’s body was. When you are a Police Commissioner, you get away from the dirty things that are done in quiet rooms. But Comaday hadn’t forgotten. He hit Kempter with an open hand that was like a ham, and the force of the blow flung Kempter out of his chair and sent him sprawling on the floor. Then Comaday walked back around the table and sat down again.

  Kempter picked himself up and crouched on the floor on his hands and knees. “Get up and sit down,” I told him.

  He was an interesting type—an interesting man—an interesting personality. He crawled over to his chair and then worked his way up and into it, and I began again.

  “Who are you working for?”

  It went on like that for the next fifteen minutes. The mythology of courage is as phony and as formalized as most other things in our society. I have sometimes thought that when you come down to it no one is brave in the meaning of the word that we accept. It adds up to a question of fear. There are men who are either dull or sick or insensitive and their bodies and their minds don’t experience fear; but for the run of men, it’s a question of what fear predominates, and as often as not, the fear of being a coward will make a hero out of a man. Kempter was a coward because his life was mean and dirty and without virtue; but he had a large fear of something else—of a place or a man or a time. It was a large enough fear to make him very hard to break.

  So fifteen minutes passed and there was a knock on the door and this time it was Grischov. I answered the knock and when I saw who it was, I took him into the corridor and explained. He asked only one question,

  “Have you tried him in German?”

  I mentioned the fact that we were not linguists and that Kempter’s English was passable.

  “Do you mind if I try him?” Grischov asked.

  “Whatever you wish,” I shrugged.

  He was watching me with a trace of a smile on his face. “Soviet methods?” he asked.

  “I have read this and that,” I said. “I don’t pass any judgments. My whole philosophy has improved. Live and let live.”

  “I don’t think philosophies improve,” Grischov said, almost sadly, “they grow tired. The hell with it, as you put it. Let’s go in there.”

  We went into the room. I stood to one side, leaving my chair for Grischov in case he wanted to sit down. But he walked around the table, his eyes fixed on Hans Kempter. Then suddenly and sharply Grischov broke into German, barking his words savagely. Kempter was taken unawares. He stiffened, cringed, began to stand up, and then relaxed back into his chair. Grischov hammered at him in German again. Kempter shook his head. Grischov walked over to him, dragged him out of his chair, held him by his shirt, roaring at him in German. Comaday looked at Fredericks and then both of them at me. None of us said anything. Grischov flung Kempter across the room and into the wall, and Kempter hit the wall and slid down to a sitting position. Grischov closed in on him, moving like a prowling beast, and roared at him in English,

  “Get up! Get on your feet, you lousy bastard!”

  Kempter did not move except to cringe and to try to force himself into the angle where the wall met the floor. Grischov kicked him savagely in the buttocks and sent him sprawling on his face. As Kempter tried to rise, Grischov kicked him in the ribs and shouted at him again in German. Kempter was weeping. Again Grischov in German and this time Kempter answered him.

  I looked at my watch. It was half past one and at three o’clock I had a class at the university. I wanted to get out of here. I felt a sick disgust that was almost evenly divided into several parts. It included Comaday and Fredericks, who had watched Grischov with aloof and professional curiosity. It included Kempter, who quivered on the floor, more like an animal than anything that resembled a man. It included Grischov, who was a product of our same exalted twentieth-century civilization that had produced a method which would enable a man, no better or worse than any of us, to eliminate in a moment a city of eight million human beings. It also included me.

  Grischov walked back to the table and sat in the chair Kempter had occupied. He was not excited, not disturbed, not even angry.

  “Do you know him?” Fredericks asked.

  “Him? I don’t know him, I know his kind. He is a small leftover from the Third Reich. A small, cheap, unimportant remnant, who found that the work he could do was done with and then maybe he did this and that until he could find more work that was like the work he used to do.”

  “What did he tell you, Grischov?” I asked him.

  “He works for someone and he doesn’t know who he works for—that’s what he said.”

  “That’s a tired one,” Comaday said. “‘I don’t know who I work for’—that’s the most tired one of all.”

  “I have to go,” I told them. “It’s a long way uptown.”

  “You bring this and dump it in our laps and then you have to go,” Comaday said flatly. “I don’t understand you, Clancy. So help me God, I wonder what I picked in you.”

  “Maybe you picked a turkey,” I said. “It’s too late to make any changes. What do you want from me? You’ve got a whole goddamned police force here and you’ve got Grischov. I’m a teacher with a class to teach. You can’t do that off the cuff. You can’t do it the way you beat up a man. It takes a little peculiar thought.”

  Grischov was watching me out of his small pale eyes. I think he was amused by me, and I, in turn, was glad that I amused him. “I think Clancy is right,” Grischov said.

  “I didn’t ask you what you thought,” Comaday observed with annoyance.

  Out of the corner of my eye I was watching Kempter. He crawled along the floor like an animal and, when he reached the sink, he pulled himself up and turned on the faucet. Grischov hadn’t been watching him, but when Grischov heard the water run he barked in German at Kempter. Kempter turned the water off and stood next to the sink.

  “I know you didn’t ask what I think, Commissioner Comaday,” Grischov said gently, “but perhaps I have a more objective view of this whole matter. I think we can spend a few hours very profitably with Hans Kempter.”

  Fredericks’s face was hard and calm, his eyes distant. He nodded and said, “I agree with Mr. Grischov.”

  “You break the habits of a lifetime more easily than I do,” Comaday muttered. Then he stared at me thoughtfully. Then he said, “All right, Clancy, go ahead. Get the hell out of here.”

  “Thank you, Commissioner,” I nodded, and then I left.

  part five MAXIMILIAN GOMEZ

  THE SEMINAR that afternoon was a nightmare. Again and again I lost the thread of the discussion and blundered and wallowed and covered up and backtracked in a manner that must have put my students to wondering whether I was drunk or an imbecile. There is an old theory that it is sufficient unto a teacher to keep a paragraph ahead of the one he teaches, but that breaks down where physics is concerned. There is simply too much to know and no possible way of getting around the fact of knowledge. In any case, I finished it, apologized as best I could, explained to my patient students that I was not feeling too well, and went to meet Phyllis. But at least I went to meet her with a need for her and not as the next step in my job. My nerves on edge,
my whole body rasped and ragged, I felt, for the first time in a long while, that what I wanted most was to be with someone who would extend to me a little sympathy and perhaps even a little affection.

  Phyllis was waiting for me at my office. She wore a black dress and she had gone to a hairdresser who had cut and shaped her brown hair into a mold that combined well and naturally with the shape of her head. She was pleased to see me, and excited, and her parted lips and the sparkle in her eyes made her quite attractive—almost beautiful. This did not change her; no miracles had been worked; but at one time or another every woman touches the edge of beauty. She offered me her hand and hoped that the seminar had gone well. When I told her that it had not gone well at all but very badly and that I was pretty much of a washout as a teacher, she disagreed and held that I was a good teacher and would be a better teacher. I watched her face, so much younger today, so much more alive and alert, as I asked her how she could possibly know.

  “It’s not a hard thing to know,” she said. “After you’re with a person for an hour or two and you’ve watched him and you’ve listened to him, you’ll know what kind of a teacher he’ll make.”

  “You like being a teacher?”

  “I like it. I don’t think I ever spoke to anyone about how I like it and why I like it, but I do like it. I don’t know of anything that can make you more tired. Sometimes I’m so tired when I’ve finished that I can’t think or talk or even relate myself to anything in the world or anyone—if you know what I mean—?”

  I nodded.

  “And then there are other times,” she went on, searching for the words, “when I feel that there is nothing better in the whole world—I can’t explain that—do you know what I’m trying to say, you want so desperately for some justification, just for being alive, just for existing. Have you ever felt that way?”

  “I’ve felt that way, Phyllis,” I said. “I’ve often felt that way.”