Like Love

by Ed McBain

  “Not a mark on either one of them, Sam.”

  “Well, I’m just telling you what I think. I think there was a third party in that room. Who, or why, you’ll have to figure out for yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. How’s the wife and kids?”

  “Fine, Sam…”

  “Mmmm?”

  “Sam, not any prints? Not, a single print?”

  “Nothing.”

  Carella thought for a moment and then said, “They could have wiped the place themselves.”

  “Why?” Grossman asked.

  “Neat. Just as you said. Note neatly typed, clothes neatly stacked, shoes neatly placed. Maybe they were very neat people.”

  “Sure. So they went around dusting the place before they took the pipe.”

  “Sure.”

  “Sure,” Grossman said. “Would you do that?”

  “I’m not neat,” Carella said.

  * * * *

  7

  The combination of Bert Kling and Michael Thayer was a curiously trying one. Hawes liked Kling a hell of a lot, or at least he had liked the Bert Kling he’d known until last year; the new Bert Kling was someone he didn’t know at all. Being with him for any length of time was a strange and frustrating experience. This was surely Bert Kling, the same clean young looks, the blond hair, the same voice. You saw him coming into the squadroom or walking down the street, and you wanted to go up to him with your hand extended and say, “Hi, there, Bert, how are you?” You wanted to crack jokes with him, or go over the details of a perplexing case. You wanted to sit with him and have a cup of coffee on days when it was raining outside the squadroom. You wanted to like this guy who was wearing the face and body of Bert Kling, you wanted to tell him he was your friend, you wanted to say, “Hey, Bert, let’s get drunk together tonight.” You wanted to do all these things and say all these things because the face was familiar, the walk was familiar, the voice was familiar-and then something stopped you dead in your tracks, and you had the feeling that you were only looking at a plastic mold of Bert Kling, only talking to the recorded voice of Bert Kling, that something inside this shell had gone dead, and you knew what the something was, of course, you knew that Claire Townsend had been murdered.

  There are different ways of mourning.

  When a man’s fiancée is the victim of a brutal, senseless massacre in a bookshop, he can react in many ways, all of which are valid, none of which can be predetermined. He can cry his eyes out for a week or a month, and then accept the death, accept the fact that life goes on, with or without the girl he was going to marry one day, life is a progression, a moving forward, and death is a cessation. Bert Kling could have accepted the life surrounding him, could have accepted death as a natural part of life.

  Or he could have reacted in another manner. He could have refused flatly to acknowledge the death. He could have gone on living with the fantasy that Claire Townsend was alive and well someplace, that the events which had started with a phone call to the squadroom on the thirteenth of October last year, moved into the shocking discovery of Claire among the victims in the bookshop, and culminated in the vicious beating of the man who’d killed her-he could have gone on pretending, indeed believing that none of these things had happened. Everything was just the way it was. He would continue to wait for Claire’s return, and when she came he would laugh with her and hold her in his arms and make love to her again, and one day they would be married. He could have kidded himself in that way.

  Or he could have accepted the death without a tear, allowing grief to build inside him like a massive monument, stone added to stone, until the smiling outer visage became the ornate facade of a crumbling tomb, vast, and black, and windswept.

  It is perhaps simple for an accountant to evaluate the murder of his fiancée, to go through the tribal custom of mourning, and then to cherish the memory of the girl while philosophically adjusting to the elementary facts of life and death. An accountant adds up columns of figures and decides how much income tax his client owes Uncle Sam. An accountant is concerned with mathematics. Bert Kling was a cop. And being a cop, being involved daily in work which involved crime, he was faced with constant reminders of the girl he had loved and the manner in which she had met her death. It was one thing to walk the streets of the precinct and to cross a six-year-old kid who stood on a street corner waiting for the traffic to pass. It was one thing to be investigating a burglary, or a robbery, or a beating, or a disappearance. It was quite another thing to he investigating a homicide.

  The facts of life in the 87th Precinct were too often the facts of death. He had looked into the lifeless eyes of Claire Townsend on October 13th last year, and since that time he had looked into the lifeless eyes of three dozen more victims, male and female, and the eyes were always the same, the eyes always seemed to look up beseechingly as if something had been ripped forcibly from them before they were ready, the eyes seemed to be pleading for that something to be put back, the eyes seemed to beg silently, “Please give it back to me, I wasn’t ready.” The circumstances of death were always different. He had walked into a room and found a man with a hatchet imbedded in his skull, he had looked down at the eviscerated victim of a hit-and-run, he had opened a closet door and discovered a young girl with a rope knotted about her neck, hanging from the clothes bar, he had found an alcoholic who had drunk himself to death in the doorway of a whorehouse, the circumstances were always different-but the eyes were always the same.

  “Please give it back to me,” they said. “I wasn’t ready.”

  And each time he looked into a new pair of eyes, he turned away because the image of Claire Townsend on the bookshop floor, her blouse stained a bright red, the book lying open in a tent over her face, his hands lifting the book, his eyes looking into her own dead and staring eyes, this image always and suddenly flared into his mind and left him numb and senseless. He could not think clearly for several moments, he could only turn away from each new corpse and stare at the wall like a man transfixed while a private horror movie ran in the tight projection booth of his mind, reel after reel until he wanted to scream aloud and stopped himself from doing so only by clenching his teeth.

  Death meant only one thing to Kling. Death meant Claire Townsend. The daily reminders of death were daily reminders of Claire. And with each reminder, his emotions would close like a fist, tightly clenched; he could not open it, he could not afford to let go. He withdrew instead, retreating from each grisly prod, accepting the burden of memory wearily, refusing sympathy, forsaking hope, foreseeing a future as bleak and as barren as the present.

  The equation that day in the tiny office of Michael Thayer in the Brio Building was a simple one. Hawes examined the equation dispassionately, uncomfortable in the presence of Kling and Thayer, recognizing the source of his discomfort, but finding no solace at all in the recognition. Irene Thayer equaled Death equaled Claire Townsend. Such was the elementary equation that seemed to electrify the very air in the small room.

  The room was on the sixth floor of the building, its single window open to the April breezes, it contained a desk and file cabinet and a telephone and a calendar and two chairs, Michael Thayer sat in one of the chairs behind the desk Hawes sat in the chair in front of the desk, Kling stood tensed like a spring coil alongside Hawes, as if ready to unlock and leap across the desk the moment Thayer said anything contradictory. A stack of completed greeting-card verse rested alongside Thayer’s typewriter in a neat, squared pile. A sheet of unfinished doggerel was in the typewriter.

  “We work pretty far in advance,” Thayer said. “I’m already doing stuff for next Valentine’s Day.”

  “Don’t you find it difficult to work so soon after the funeral. Mr. Thayer?” Kling asked.

  The question seemed so cruel, so heartlessly devised, that Hawes was instantly torn between a desire to gag Kling and a desire to punch him right in the mouth. Instead, he saw the pain flicker in Thayer’s eyes for an instan
t, and he almost felt the pain himself, and then Thayer said very softly, “Yes, I find it difficult to work.”

  “Mr. Thayer,” Hawes said quickly, “we don’t mean to intrude at a time like this, believe me, but there are some things we have to know.”

  “Yes, you said that the last time I saw you.”

  “I meant it then, and I mean it now.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Did you know your wife was going to sue you for divorce?” Kling asked abruptly.

  Thayer looked surprised. “No.” He paused. “How do you know that?”

  “We talked with her lawyer,” Hawes said.

  “Her lawyer? Art Patterson, do you mean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He never said anything to me about it.”

  “No, sir, she asked him not to.”

  “Why?”

  “She wanted it that way, Mr. Thayer.”

  “Mr. Thayer,” Kling said, “are you sure you had no inkling that your wife was about to divorce you?”

  “None whatever.”

  “That’s a little odd, isn’t it? A woman plans to leave you next month, and you haven’t got the slightest suspicion that something’s in the wind.”

  “Irene seemed happy with me,” Thayer said.

  “That’s not what her mother said.”

  “What did her mother say?”

  “If I recall the report correctly,” Kling said, “Mrs. Tomlinson referred to you as a bully. And a boss.” Kling paused. “Did you argue with your wife frequently?”

  “Hardly ever.”

  “Did you ever strike her?”

  “What?”

  “Strike her, hit her? Did you ever?”

  “Never. Of course not.”

  “Bert…”

  “Just a second. Cotton, will you? Just a second?” He leveled his impatient gaze on Hawes, and then turned back to Thayer. “Mr. Thayer, you’re asking us to believe that there was no friction between you and your wife, while all the time she was playing footsie with…”

  “I didn’t say there was no friction-”

  “… another man and planning to divorce you. Now either you didn’t give a damn about her at all, or else…”

  “I loved her!”

  “… or else you were just plain cockeyed and didn’t see what was going on right under your nose. Now which one was it, Mr. Thayer?”

  “I loved Irene, I trusted her!”

  “And did she love you?” Kling snapped.

  “I thought so.”

  “Then why was she going to divorce you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just learning about this. I don’t even know if it’s true. How do I know it’s true?”

  “Because we’re telling you it’s true. She planned to leave for Reno on the sixteenth of May. Does that date mean anything to you, Mr. Thayer?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know she was seeing Tommy Barlow regularly?”

  “Bert…”

  “Did you?”

  “No.” Thayer said.

  “Then where did you think she was going every week, every other week?” Kling asked.

  “To see her mother.”

  “Why did her mother call you a bully?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t like me. She could have said anything about me.”

  “How old are you, Mr. Thayer?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “How old was your wife when she died?”

  “Twenty. Well, almost twenty-one.”

  “How long had you been married?”

  “Almost three years.”

  “She was eighteen when you married her?”

  “Yes. Just eighteen.”

  “And you were how old?”

  “Thirty.”

  “That’s a pretty big span, isn’t it, Mr. Thayer?”

  “Not if two people are in love.”

  “And you were in love?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you claim you didn’t know anything about your wife’s boyfriend, or the fact that she was planning to leave you next month?”

  “That’s right. If I’d known…”

  “Yes, Mr. Thayer? What would you have done if you’d known?”

  “I’d have discussed it with her.”

  “That’s all you’d have done?”

  “I’d have tried to talk her out of it.”

  “And if that failed?”

  “I’d have let her go.”

  “You wouldn’t have bullied her or bossed her?”

  “I never bullied or… I was always very good to Irene I… I knew she was much younger than I. I cared for her deeply. I… cared for her deeply.”

  “How do you feel about her now, Mr. Thayer? Now that you know all the facts?”

  Thayer hesitated for a long time. “I wish she would have talked it over with me,” he said at last. He shook his head. “What she did wasn’t the way. She should have talked it over with me.”

  “Are you a drinking man, Mr. Thayer?” Kling asked suddenly.

  “Not… well… a few drinks every now and then. Not what you’d call a drinking man.”

  “Did your wife drink?”

  “Socially. A Martini now and then.”

  “Scotch?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “There were two Scotch bottles found in the room with her. Both were empty. One had been knocked over, but the other had apparently been drained. What was the most your wife ever drank?”

  “Four drinks. Maybe five. In an evening, I mean. At a party or something.”

  “How’d she react to liquor?”

  “Well… she generally got a little tipsy after two or three drinks.”

  “What would a half-bottle of Scotch do to her?”

  “Knock her unconscious, I would imagine.”

  “Make her sick?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did liquor ever make her sick?”

  “Once or twice. She really didn’t drink that much, so it’s difficult to say.”

  “The autopsy report showed your wife was not drunk, Mr. Thayer. Yet a full bottle of Scotch, or possibly more, was consumed in that apartment on the day she died. Either consumed or poured down the drain. Which do you think it was?”

  “I don’t know,” Thayer said.

  “You just told me your wife didn’t drink much. Does killing a bottle of Scotch sound like a thing she would have done?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head again. ‘Suicide doesn’t sound to me like a thing Irene would have done. Adultery doesn’t sound to me… divorce doesn’t sound… so how do I know what she would or wouldn’t have done? I don’t know this woman who supposedly killed herself, who had a lover, who was going to Reno. I don’}t know her! So why are you asking me about her? That’s not Irene! That’s some… some… some…”

  “Some what, Mr. Thayer?”

  “Some stranger,” he said softly. “Not my wife. Some stranger.” He shook his head. “Some stranger,” he repeated.

  * * * *

  The lobby of the Brio Building was crowded with musicians and girl vocalists and dancers and arrangers and song writers and agents who filled the air with the musical jargon of Hip. “Like, man, I told him two bills for the weekend or adios,” a din arising to meet the detectives’ ears the moment they stepped from the elevator, “The jerk went and hocked his sax. So I said, like, man, how you expect to blow if you ditched the horn? So he tells me he can’t blow anyway unless he’s got junk, so he peddled the sax to buy the junk, so now he can’t blow anyway, so like what’s the percentage?”; bright-eyed girls with bleached-blond hair and loose-hipped dancers’ stances, trombone players with long arms and short goatees, agents with piercing brown eyes behind black-rimmed bop glasses, girl singers with hair falling loose over one eye, “Like I said to him, like why should I put out for you if I don’t put out for anybody else on the band, and he said like this is different, baby. So I said how is it any different? So he put his ha
nd under my skirt and said this is like love, baby”; a lonely pusher standing on the edges of the crowd, The Man, waiting for an afternoon appointment with a piano player who’d been an addict since the time he was fourteen; a seventeen-year-old girl with a Cleopatra haircut waiting to meet a trumpet player who had arranged for an audition with his group; the babble of sound hovering in the air, none of which Kling heard, the pretty girls, overly made up, but pretty with a fresh sparkle in their eyes and with tight light dresses stretched taut over comfortable behinds, none of whom Kling saw; the thronged lobby and the newspaper stand with the tabloids black and bold, the headlines no longer carrying the news of the death of Irene Thayer and Tommy Barlow, both of whom had been shoved off the front page by Khrushchev’s latest temper tantrum; they shouldered their way through the crowd, two businessmen who had just completed a business call, and came out into the waning light of a late April afternoon.