Keeper of the Children

by William H Hallahan

  He parked in the underground garage and walked in the rain toward his office. When he got to the door, he glanced up and saw Renni, peering out at him from the corner of the building. She stepped out from the alley and walked uncertainly toward him, holding part of her saffron blanket over her head. She seemed smaller and perhaps thinner.

  She stopped ten feet from him. “Daddy.”

  He stood waiting.

  “Daddy, run away. You have to run away. Please.”

  Behind her stood Pammy—with Cecelia Garman’s face in a younger version without the black eye. It struck Benson that she didn’t know her mother was dead.

  Renni backed away several steps. “Promise, Daddy. Go far away. Today. Right now.”

  On that point, Renni and her mother agreed.

  “How is he doing it?” asked Benson. “Renni, what’s his trick?”

  He watched her expression of fear as she glanced back at Pammy.

  “Renni. Do you know? Can you tell me?”

  “I know.”

  “What is it? Tell me.”

  She looked again at Pammy.

  “Renni.”

  Turning back to her father, she raised her hand and tapped her temple. Then she turned to Pammy and they trotted away, across the tree-filled square in their absurd saffron sheets and soaked blankets.

  When Renni raised her arm, he’d seen the bracelet. He knew the inscription on the inside of it by heart: “To Renni on her sixth birthday with all our love. Mom and Dad.”

  He watched the two figures grow smaller as they hurried, holding each other’s hand. No. Renni was holding Pammy’s hand. Like mother and child: Renni was leading, Pammy following.

  And Benson finally comprehended: it played in his head as clearly as a film in a screening room. This entire misadventure was Renni’s doing and it all began in Garman’s kitchen over breakfast dishes. Renni had gone to get Pammy for the walk to school. He could see Renni’s horror as she stood in the Garmans’ kitchen, staring at Cecelia Garman’s eye. Maybe she’d seen Garman do it. He saw Renni look at Cecelia Garman, in her frilly dressing gown, smoking and weeping at the kitchen table while Garman stood spraddle-legged in the living room staring angrily out of a window. He saw Renni firmly take Pammy’s hand and lead her away from the house—as she was leading her now through the park.

  Renni must have spent the best part of the school day asking students where Pammy could go. When someone suggested Kheim, Pammy stood leaning on a corridor wall and refused to go alone. Kheim got two brand new recruits—from Garman’s fist.

  Benson turned away from the office building and walked to a coffee shop in the diamond merchants’ section on Samson Street.

  He sat over coffee in his wet raincoat, watching the office-bound pedestrians hurry under umbrellas, watching the middle-aged jewelers in the booths around, him with their special eyepieces fitted to their eyeglass frames. They sat over coffee and shopped each other’s lines: a bracelet pulled from a cloth bag, a ring in a nest of tissue paper, a wristwatch, a discussion of a new fitting for the stone. Loose gems held up to the muted light. “Two?” “No. Five.” “Get out, five.” “Ask him.” Commerce over coffee on a rainy day in Philadelphia.

  He sat and wondered what to do, sat over his coffee taking a lesson from his fourteen-year-old daughter. By the time he finished his second cup of coffee, he’d made his decision. He got some change from the cashier and went out on the sidewalk and into a phone booth. Rain drummed on the top as he dialed.

  “Stanley, this is Benson. You can scrub my name from the trip to Africa.”

  Thirty cents in coins later, and Stanley was shouting now. “If you do this, you’ll be marked lousy up and down the street from here to L.A.”

  “Come on. Calm down.”

  “Calm down, he says. You out of your mind? It took me months to piece all this together. I fixed you up with the job of a lifetime. You been talking about it for years and here it is in your lap and you screwed me! There’s not another guy around with the background you have on all these accounts. You’re the only one that can go, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Look, Stanley, I have to go cry now. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “I’m around the corner at the coffee shop.”

  “Stay there. I’ll be right over.”

  “Forget it, Stanley. I’ll be gone before you can get here. I have a lot to do today.”

  “You can’t do this. You hear me? You can’t!”

  “Talk to you later.”

  “When’s later?”

  “Few days. A week. Who knows?”

  “Before you hang up, you bastard, tell me something. Is that kid of yours worth it?”

  It was still raining when he drove to the Theatrical Props Company over on Arch Street near the old Troc Burlesque House.

  “My name’s Benson,” he told the clerk. “I called you.”

  “Mr. Benson. Okay. What you’ll do is drive around back and up to the loading platform and open your car trunk. Okay?”

  “Sure. Pay now?”

  The clerk pushed the invoice over the counter at him. “You get the whole deposit back when you bring the thing back. As I told you, it’s all nylon and tough as steel. King Kong wouldn’t have a chance. You know how it works?”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “You need a pulley. You got a pulley?”

  “I can get one.”

  “Get one with a big wheel. A real big wheel.”

  It fit easily in the car trunk. At the lumberyard near home he bought nearly seventy-five feet of two-by-four lumber cut into six- and eight-foot lengths, plus two dozen six-inch threaded bolts with washers and nuts.

  The first thing Harry Garman did when he got off the plane in Philadelphia late that afternoon was call his lawyer.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m back. Now what?”

  “Your bank have evening hours tonight?”

  “Yes. I’m pretty sure.”

  “Okay. Clean out the safe-deposit box of anything taxable. Stocks, jewelry, money. Clean out the checking account and the savings account. And don’t forget the two wills. I need both of them. Then go to the morgue. You’re going to have to identify her. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go to your house and get all the papers we talked about—records and anything worth money. All the securities. Okay?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “Then when you have it all, call me. We meet and I take you to the airport and you’re back in Bermuda late tonight or down in Florida, whatever. Her mother can bury her. I want you out of sight until they catch this guy.”

  “You sure it was her?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sure it was suicide?”

  “Nope. But the police say they’re sure. Unless the autopsy turns up something different, that’s what’s going to go in the records.”

  “It couldn’t be that this freako did it?”

  “Who knows? But it’s not his style.”

  “Go to the bank first?”

  “Right. Before you identify the body.”

  “Okay.”

  “You can handle this? I don’t want you to come apart on me, now.”

  “I won’t, I won’t.”

  “You ever identify a body before?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe I better go with you.”

  “I can handle it.”

  He checked his bags in the airport locker and emptied the small bag into it, then took the empty bag with him. He was admitted without challenge to the bank’s vault, where he cleaned out the safe-deposit box. It was stuffed. If the IRS had ever gotten their hands on it …

  His idea of what was valuable and his wife’s were poles apart. He found an envelope with hair in it. The legend in Cecelia’s handwriting said: “Pammy’s hair, first birthday.” A report card from nursery school informed him that Pamela Garman had been absent four days, took a nap every day, had good w
ork habits, played well with other children and had good interpersonal relations with peers and adults. “Bullshit,” Garman said aloud. Among the birth certificates and other records he found the bank statements from Switzerland, the American Express checks, the cash, all her jewels, the pay-to-bearer gold certificates and her grandfather’s gold watch, her mother’s jewels, and the savings account passbook. He put it all in his case.

  Now came the tricky part. He glanced around at the bank officers’ desks. All gone for the day. He pushed the passbook over the counter and said, “Close it out. Cash.”

  “Cash?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a lot of money. How about a certified check?”

  “No. Cash.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Toting the case, he took a cab to the County Morgue. As he rode through the dark streets, he remembered that he had once visited the morgue—the old City Morgue in town—with a journalism class, in the days when he thought he might be a reporter.

  It had been a Saturday morning, a hot Saturday morning in June. They were first shown the autopsy room; the guide, a fat man with slick hair and a casual manner, explained that any person dying without a duly filed death certificate from a doctor was subject to an autopsy. During the dissection, samples of all the vital organs were taken and a full description of the condition of the body was recorded. The tissue samples were sent to the laboratory upstairs, where they were subjected to various tests to discover the presence of any poisons, diseases, or foreign substances. Only after the autopsy report and the laboratory tests were assembled was the cause of death officially determined.

  The students were then taken to the “meat locker” where the bodies were stored awaiting autopsy. It had been a big night downtown—a hot night—and there were bodies everywhere, many on shelves in the refrigerated reefers, others in the main room and still others in the hallways. They were naked, covered only with a long sheet of white paper, and each had a large disc with an identifying number tied to the root of the big toe.

  Up near the front of the building was a curtained window in a wall. Bodies were brought there in a sheet; the curtain opened, and from the other side of the glass stricken faces peered in as the sheet was drawn back. Yes? No? Oh, my God!

  That’s what he would have to do. Look through a window at Cecelia, dead on a table.

  He knocked on the cab window. “Cabbie, stop at that bar first.”

  It was quiet in the saloon. Dark and safe.

  Garman went to the far end of the bar and sat on a stool. “Very dry martini.”

  When the drink came, he took a closer look at the bartender, a woman. She wore black slacks, a white blouse and a red ribbon at the collar. Middle-aged and heavy, she wore her blonde hair in a careful pile on her head. She looked easy to talk to.

  “How’s the drink, love?”

  “Okay. Great.”

  She moved to the other end of the bar, mixing drinks and talking to other patrons.

  He summoned her. “Again.”

  “That’s right—can’t fly on one wing, love.” She brought him another martini, watched him light his cigarette with bad hands. He squirmed on his bar stool and leaned unhappily over his drink. A man with a problem.

  “You always work here?” he asked.

  “Just tonight. Regular’s sick.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nearly eight, love. You got to be somewhere? You going to meet someone?”

  Garman shook his head. “No. Yes. Well, she’ll wait, that’s for sure.”

  She nodded and inclined her head in the direction behind her. “You have to visit the morgue?”

  “It shows?”

  “There’s a look.” She waited. “A relative? Someone close?”

  “Wife.”

  “Oh, God. How old?”

  “My age.”

  “Kids?”

  “One. A girl. A rotten bitch. Fourteen and just plain stinko.”

  “Kids.”

  “Yeah. Kids. Goddam Pammy. If I never see her again, it’ll be too soon. She caused her mother’s death, you know that? Her mother killed herself mooning for that little bitch.” He looked away. On the run, his wife dead, hiding from scarecrows and cats, for Christ’s sake, all for trying to rescue a kid he didn’t want back.

  “Rough. Kids are heartache.”

  “Yeah. I just realized that I’m all alone. No wife, no family.”

  “Rough. Another?”

  “I better not. I have to keep my wits about me.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Keep one warm for me. I’ll be back.”

  “Sure.”

  When he came out he was ready. Quite ready.

  The people at the morgue would be indifferent: they wouldn’t bother him.

  “I’m here to identify a body.”

  “Name?”

  “Cecelia Garman.” He’d said her name. Now he needed to sit down. Things were closing in on him.

  Next came the forms and the papers and the questions. He signed them. He filled them out. He answered them, The man at the desk stood up.

  “We’re ready. Will you come this way, please?”

  The man led him down a corridor to a large room and, in that room, to a window in the wall with a curtain on the other side of the glass. There were several chairs against a wall.

  “How do you feel?” asked the man.

  Harry was surprised. “Rotten.”

  “Are you prepared to identify Cecelia Garman?”

  “Yes.” Seventeen years leading to this window. He wanted a drink so badly.

  The man studied Garman’s face. “You didn’t bring anyone with you?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to call a friend or a relative?”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  They turned to the window. Just the two of them facing a curtain, like children waiting for a Punch and Judy show to begin. Garman felt his heart begin to pound. His face burned. Get it over with.

  At last the curtain parted. The corpse lay under a drape on a wheeled table. An attendant pulled back the drape to the shoulders. Garman sighed. It was a long sigh; for he was looking at Cecelia. Her face had the nakedness of a woman who’s just washed away all her makeup, except that it was smaller than he remembered and sagging. The skin had a puttylike quality; and the eyes were shut and the hair, uncombed, lay pushed back from her face. She would go to the grave with the ugly bruise around her eye.

  Garman walked over to a chair and sat down. “You have a drink around here somewhere?”

  “Shortly, sir. Can you make positive identification?”

  Garman nodded. “That’s my wife.”

  The man touched his elbow. “Will you follow me, please.”

  Now there were more forms and several telephone calls.

  “Was it suicide?”

  “The autopsy hasn’t been performed yet.”

  “What’s your guess?”

  “We can’t tell anything without an autopsy, sir.”

  “Can I go now? Am I through?”

  “Just one more thing, sir. Please stay in your seat.”

  “What is it?”

  “A few more questions, that’s all, sir.”

  Garman sat there, seeing her naked face and remembering “Miss Bathing Suit” of the senior high school class, the figure the boys all loved. Now a body on a tray—soon to be carved and snipped—a sample of every organ, a biological smorgasbord.

  “Homicide.” Garman looked up and saw a man standing near his chair, holding out a detective’s badge to him. “Homicide,” he said again. “I have to ask you some questions.”

  Garman didn’t like the bastard. He was over six feet tall, heavy, businesslike—all cop through and through. Irish saloon type with a beer slab over the belt and a beer flush on his face. He apparently had taken a dislike to Garman in turn, and he pressed question after question on him.

  “Had she ever tried suicide before?”
/>   “No.”

  “Would you describe her as a heavy drinker?”

  “No. Why?”

  “How much liquor would you say she drank in a day?”

  “She was a social drinker. Just a couple.”

  The detective looked at him with disbelief. “Would you describe yourself as a social drinker too?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “You have any idea how much she had to drink last night?”

  “What’s with the drink? She didn’t kill herself by drowning in booze. She cut her wrists.”

  “She left a note for your daughter.” He looked in a manila file. “Pamela.”

  “So?”

  “She didn’t leave a note for you.”

  Garman shrugged. “So she said everything to me before she died. We were married seventeen years, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Were you estranged from her?”

  “No. What do you mean?”

  “You were in Bermuda and she wasn’t.”

  “No, no. It was just a short trip. In fact, I more or less expected her to turn up down there this morning.”

  “More or less. You know what happened to her eye? Where she got that bruise?”

  “Had an accident.”

  “An accident. Could you describe it?”

  “Come on. What is this?”

  “Just describe the accident.”

  “It was a door. In the dark, I guess.”

  “What door? Which one?”

  “I don’t know. Kitchen door.”

  The detective pulled up a chair. He drew a hand over his thick face. “Did you hit her?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t, hah?”

  “I said no.”

  “Was she despondent lately?”

  “No. Well, yes. She was unhappy because Pammy—our daughter—ran away.”

  “You daughter lives—ah …” He looked in his manila folder. “The House of Peace, in town. When did she run off?”

  “Not too long ago. A few days, a week, something like that.”

  “What was your relationship with your daughter? You get along with her? You in the habit of dusting her off with a few belts now and then?”

  Garman sat up straight. “That’s enough! You’re investing a suicide. Let it go at that.”

  The detective thrust an angry face toward Garman. “I’ll never prove it, schmuck, but I think you pushed your wife around the bend. I’ve seen the pattern a million times—the boozing, the runaway kids, the mysterious bruises and the suicide and at the bottom, every time there’s a turd like you.”