by Ed McBain
Two college-girl waitresses are talking about a new lipstick they saw advertised on television. One of them glances at me, finishes what she was saying, and then walks to where I have taken a stool at the end of the counter.
“Yes, sir?” she says.
“I’d like a hamburger and some French fries,” I say.
“How would you like that, sir?”
“Medium rare.”
“And to drink?”
“Have you got any imported beer?”
“Don’t have any beer at all, sir.”
“A glass of milk then.”
“Thank you.” She glances toward the entrance door behind me. My palms are suddenly wet. She goes to the small opening leading to the kitchen, bawls out the order, glances toward the door again, and comes back to the counter in preparation for the newcomers. They seat themselves two stools away from me. They take off their fedoras almost simultaneously and put them on their laps. They are both blond. One of them is wearing a crew cut. The other has hair about the length of mine. He glances at me briefly. His eyes are green.
“Help you?” the waitress asks.
“Just coffee,” the one with the crew cut says.
“Two coffees?”
“Mmm,” the green-eyed one says, and nods.
“Regular?”
“Regular.”
The one with the crew cut gets up, walks to the jukebox, turns to his partner and asks, “Anything you’d like to hear, Bob?”
“No, doesn’t matter to me,” Bob answers.
“Well, anything special?”
“Anything by what’s-her-name in there?”
“Who? Streisand?”
“No. What’s-her-name.”
“I don’t see anything. There’s some Streisand, though.”
“Sure, Harold.”
“Streisand?”
“Sure.”
Harold nods his crew-cut head, deposits a quarter in the juke, makes his three selections, and comes back to the counter. Bob’s green eyes flash sidelong at me again. The waitress brings my hamburger and milk. Streisand’s voice soars into the room.
“I’ve got some French fries coming, too,” I remind the waitress.
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” she says absently.
She draws the two coffees, deposits them on the counter before Bob and Harold, and then yells through the opening for my potatoes. The man in the kitchen yells back, “Coming!”
“Coming,” she says to me.
“You go to school here, miss?” Bob asks abruptly.
“Me?”
“Mmm.”
“Yes, I do. Why?” She is smiling a trifle coquettishly, as though expecting a pickup. Bob is not looking at her. His green eyes are fastened to the sugar bowl. He has ladled three teaspoonfuls into his cup, and is now working on a fourth. Harold is watching the transfer in fascination, as though his partner is dredging the Mississippi.
“Know anybody named David Hollis?” Bob asks.
“Why?” the waitress answers. The smile has dropped from her face. She has recognized them, too. She has perhaps never confronted one of them before, but she has heard enough about them, and now she recognizes them and is instantly wary.
“What’s your name?” Harold asks. He slides the sugar bowl over in front of him and puts a carefully measured, level teaspoonful into his coffee. He does not look at the girl as he performs the operation. Neither of the pair seems even the slightest interested in her. This is undoubtedly their personal method of interrogation, and they perform it effortlessly, like two softshoe dancers in a vaudeville palace. It is a frightening routine. Sitting two stools away from them, I feel their overpowering menace and am terrified for the girl. And for myself. And for the plot.
“Why do you want to know my name?” the girl asks.
“You have something to hide?” Bob asks. He is stirring his coffee now. He has not once looked into the girl’s face.
“No. No,” she says, and shakes her head.
“Then what’s your name?”
“Mary.”
“Mary what?”
“Mary Brenner.”
The other waitress, who up to now has been following the conversation with only mild interest, suddenly decides it is time she went to the ladies’ room. She takes her bag from under the counter and unobtrusively disappears. Mary Brenner watches her departure, and then wets her lips.
“Do you know David Hollis?”
“No,” Mary Brenner says. “Who is he?”
“We thought everybody here on campus knew David Hollis.”
“Well, I’m just a soph, you see,” Mary Brenner says.
“Have you got any Danish pastry?” Harold asks.
“I think so. Do you want some?”
“If you have some.”
“Yes, I think so. Cheese or prune?”
“Prune,” Harold says.
Mary Brenner goes to the pie rack, slides open one of the glass doors, picks up the pastry with a pair of tongs and puts it on a plate, which she carries back to the counter. My potatoes are waiting in the opening just behind her.
“You weren’t here last year then, huh?” Harold asks, biting into the Danish.
“No. Well, yes. But I got here in the fall. I wasn’t here last spring.”
“Why? What happened last spring?” Bob asks.
“I don’t know. I was just saying.”
“You mean, all that business with David Hollis?” Bob asks.
“Gee, I don’t know,” Mary Brenner says, and shrugs.
“Where he tried to kill that guardsman?” Harold says.
“Gee, I don’t know,” Mary Brenner says.
“Thought everybody here at the school would know about that,” Bob says.
“No, I don’t know about it,” Mary Brenner answers.
“So you wouldn’t know where he lives, huh?”
“No. No, I wouldn’t.”
“We went to the address we had over near the railroad tracks, but the man living there says Hollis moved out last month. You wouldn’t know where he moved, huh?”
“No. I don’t even know him.” Mary Brenner tries a smile. “I never heard his name before you came in here.” The smile is faltering. “Never,” she says, and shrugs again.
“He’s not in any trouble, you realize,” Harold says.
“Even if he was …”
“This is just a routine check.”
“I still wouldn’t know him.” She studies them for a moment, and then decides she will try to clinch it. The lie she is about to tell is immediately transparent; it is a good thing they are not looking at her. “Is he a student here?” Mary Brenner asks.
Bob raises his green eyes from his coffee cup and stares directly into her face. Mary Brenner blinks.
“How much is that, miss?” he asks.
“I’m not finished here yet, Bob,” Harold says.
“Thirty cents,” Mary Brenner says, anxious to speed them on their way.
“I’m not finished,” Harold says again.
Bob puts two quarters on the counter. “Keep the change,” he says.
“Thank you.”
“Think your friend might know Hollis?” Bob asks.
“Which friend?”
“The one in the ladies’ room?”
“I don’t know,” Mary Brenner says. “Why don’t you ask her?”
“Well now, we can’t go in the ladies’ room after her, now can we?” Bob says, and smiles icily.
“No, I don’t guess so.”
“So why don’t you just pop in there and tell her we’d like a few words with her, okay?”
“Okay.”
“There’s a good girl,” Bob says.
“Miss?” I say.
Mary Brenner is quite anxious to get her girl friend out of the bathroom so that the attention of Harold and Bob will be diverted to someone else—anyone else. But I am just as anxious to get out of here, and when it seems she will ignore my voice, I raise it a fe
w decibels.
“Miss!”
“Yes, your potatoes,” she says.
“No, never mind the potatoes, just let me have a check.”
“Sir, could you wait just one moment, please? These two gentlemen …”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m in a hurry.”
Bob glances at me. He says nothing. Into the silence, a second Streisand record falls into position on the juke. Mary Brenner fretfully bites her lip. She seems on the edge of tears. Her eyes are bright, almost feverish-looking. She writes my check and then hurries off to the ladies’ room. I leave money on the counter and go out of the coffee shop, certain that Bob’s gaze is following me all the way.
From a booth in the corner drugstore, I try Weglowski’s number. The phone is answered by a woman who can barely speak English. She asks me to wait, and then a young girl’s voice comes onto the line.
“Yes?” she says.
“Who’s this, please?”
“This is Emilia. Who did you want?”
“Mr. Weglowski.”
“I’m sorry, my father’s out right now.”
“When do you expect him back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you ask him to call me, please? When he gets in?”
“All right, what’s your name?”
“Arthur Sachs.”
“Just a minute.” She puts down the receiver. I hear her clattering around, presumably searching for a pencil. “All right,” she says.
“Arthur Sachs,” I tell her again, “S-A-C-H-S.”
“And the number?”
“He has it.”
“I’ll tell him you called.”
“Thank you,” I say, and hang up. I sit in the booth for several moments, wondering where the old man can be. I want to tell him that there are now agents in town, that we must now postpone the wiring of the bridge until the last possible moment. I wonder if Emilia is the girl who will be twenty years old tomorrow. I wonder if Weglowski will recognize the urgency of the situation and agree to forgo her party. Tomorrow is Halloween, it is not safe to wire a bridge on a night when goblins and federal agents are abroad. I wonder if Weglowski is superstitious. I am wondering too many things. I take another dime from my pocket and dial Hester’s number. The telephone is answered on the third ring.
“Miss Pratt’s residence.” (Fanny Hollis, mother of Davey, my follower, who incidentally caused a slight commotion on campus last spring, and who has now incidentally brought federal agents to town looking for him in advance of the train’s arrival.)
“May I speak to Miss Pratt, please?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Arthur Sachs.”
“One moment.”
I wait. When Hester’s voice comes onto the line at last, it contains all of its customary warmth and good humor. “Yes, Mr. Sachs, what is it?” Good old Hester. The one constant in a variable universe.
“There are federal agents in town. They’re asking about David Hollis.”
“Where are you?” Hester asks immediately.
“In a phone booth, don’t worry. Do you know where he is?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I think he should get out, don’t you?”
“Possibly.”
“Will you warn him?”
“He’s not that difficult to find, you realize. His family moved last month, but they’re still living in town. Any competent …”
“Hester, if they get to Hollis, they may get to you next. And Epstein. And Raines.”
“What makes you think so?”
“You were all involved with Hollis last spring.”
“Only in arranging for his defense.”
“That’s enough these days.”
“I’ll contact David. It might be best for him to be someplace else when the train arrives.”
“And the rest of you?”
“Connie’s here now. I’ll ask him what he thinks.”
“Connie?”
“Professor Raines. Thank you for calling, Mr. Eisler.”
“Listen, Hester …” I start, but she has already hung up. I debate calling her back, and decide it can wait until I’ve talked to Weglowski, I walk back to the hotel and into the lobby. The agents are nowhere in sight. In the room, Sara is asleep, snoring lightly.
Thursday, October 31
It is All Hallows’ Eve, and Sara is still asleep when my son calls from New York.
I am rattled for a moment. He says, “This is David,” and at first I think it is Hollis, and then I realize it is my son, my David, and that he is in a different place, not here. But no sooner have I sorted this out than I become puzzled again. It is now ten A.M. Does that make it noon in New York, or only eight? Elementary, Eugene had said when he revealed his clever detection, but now I am hopelessly confused by time. Past, present, and future seem to be merging, as though I am sitting opposite my son in a railroad car, I facing the locomotive, he facing the caboose. I see everything ahead of the train. He sees the same things a moment later, as they flash past the window into his field of vision. The things I have already seen are the things he has yet to see. My past is his future. And there is no present for either of us.
“What time is it there?” I ask immediately.
“What?” he says. “What?”
“The time. What time is it?”
He begins crying.
I am so startled that I can think of nothing to say for several moments, can only hold the receiver mutely as his sobs explode against my ear, great racking sobs painfully wrenched from him to become my own pain almost two thousand miles away, his pain mine, our pain shared, father and son.
“David, David,” I say at last, “please.”
He cannot stop crying.
“David, son, please, please, don’t, please, what is it, please,” I say to him, and we are plunged backward again in time to when David or Adam wept openly against my chest and I tried to understand and console, though now my words have no effect and he continues sobbing until I fear he will choke. The sobs crumble into a fit of coughing, and then his words erupt spasmodically, “Pop, don’t do it. Please.”
She has told him, of course. Abby has told him, and now she is using him, and I feel flaring resentment at what I consider to be her betrayal of us both. In addition, I suddenly realize that Bob or Harold may very well be downstairs wearing earphones and listening to every word of this conversation.
“Why are you doing it, Pop?” David asks, and I am sure he will expose the entire plot in the next moment.
“I’m doing it for you,” I tell him quickly. “Now listen to me, David, we can’t talk.…”
“Pop, fuck them,” he says. “Pop, they’re not worth it. They stink, Pop, all of them,” he says, “fuck them. Pop, do you hear me? Pop, don’t do it. It isn’t going to help. Pop, please.”
“David, David …”
“Come home, Pop, please. Don’t do it. Pop, if you come home, I promise to do whatever you say. I won’t go to Denmark, I won’t even go to California. I’ll do whatever you want, Pop. Only please come home. Don’t do it, Pop. Fuck them. Please, Pop.”
“David …”
He is sobbing again.
“Pop, I love you.”
“Yes, David.”
“I love you, Pop.”
“I love you, too, David.”
“Then don’t do it. They’re not worth it.”
“You’re worth it, David.”
“No, no, I don’t want it. Not for me, Pop, I don’t want it! It’s wrong, can’t you see that? Can’t you see how wrong it is?”
“David, listen, this telephone …”
“It won’t change a thing, Pop. And even if it did, is that what you really want? Is that how you want it to happen? Jesus, that’s the way they would do it, don’t you see? Not you, not my father. Not you, please. I want you to come home. I miss you. I miss you, Pop. I miss Adam. Don’t do it, Pop. Don’t die. I love you, Pop. Please.”
I can visualize on the other end of the line my big hulking David with his long hair and beard, and I wonder for the briefest tick of time whatever happened to the child I held in my arms an eon ago, where now are the sounds of his infant delight? I am suddenly overwhelmed with an ineffable sense of grief. I no longer care whether Bob or Harold or the entire universe is listening. I want only to weep with David. I want only to weep for David. I cling desperately to the telephone receiver, and listen to his sobbing, and again do not know what to tell him. I am doing this for him, but he has just told me he does not want it, and I wonder now how many of my previous paternal sacrifices were unwanted and unneeded by my sons. I remember what Abby said to me on our solitary windswept walk not two nights ago, and for the first time weigh my own guilt in having allowed past events to shape this deadlocked present in which sons and fathers alike make meaningless sacrifices for each other in the name of love. There is more than a train coming over Henderson Gap on Saturday. There is a family in bewildered descent, a tribe on the panicky edge of dissolution.
I whisper good-bye to my son. Gently, I replace the phone on its cradle. Sara, wide awake, is watching me from the bed.
“What?” she says.
“Nothing.”
“Who was that?”
“My son.”
“Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying,” I tell her, and turn away from her, and go into the bathroom to wash my face.
Sara has about her the look of an invalid recovering from a long illness. Pale, weary, she refuses at first to explain why she went to Seth’s. Head bent, she sits naked in the center of the bed while I badger her mercilessly, confident that no opposing attorney will object. I realize that I want her to cry, just as David cried on the telephone. She has told me that she never weeps, and I want her to weep now, in penance.
“Why did you go to Seth’s?” I demand.
“Because I wanted to.”
“Why?”
“To get drunk.”
“Why?”
“Leave me alone. What do you want?”
“I want to know why you did such a damn fool thing.”
“I don’t have to account to you for anything.”
“Everything.”
“Nothing. Go to hell. Where are my clothes?”
“You’re not leaving this room until you …”