Killing Time

by Thomas Berger

  Smart described his profession as that of ladies’ shoe salesman.

  Tierney asked: “Are you married, Mr. Smart?” The room was neuter in furnishings and arrangement: beige rug, light-green upholstery, green ottoman striped like a circus tent, a glass-topped coffee table on top of which a selection of magazines were neatly shingled so as to display the titles, as if in a public library. The last could have been women’s work, but Smart himself seemed meticulous enough to have been responsible for it. From where Tierney sat he could see along the hallway to a closed door, which perhaps concealed a wife, perhaps merely an unmade bed.

  “Yes I am,” said Smart. “I was between wives when I lived at Mrs. Starr’s. I left there to marry for the second time.” Saying which, he looked hypersensitive, perhaps vain, and left the sofa’s arm to sit properly on one of its cushions.

  “How did you get along—” Tierney started to ask, but his voice was obscured by a short question which Matty had already put.

  “Divorced?”

  “Yes,” said Smart, crossing his legs and picking at his sock He had child-sized feet.

  “Not an annulment but a divorce?”

  “Right,” said Smart, and seemed to display an air of self-congratulation. Smart’s attitude implied he was proud of what-even his role had been, adulterer or cuckold: as yet Tierney did not know enough about him to say which was more likely. The question had been Matty’s and revealed a personal interest: Matthias was secretly separated from his own Mrs., a fact to which only Tierney was privy. Matty didn’t want it bruited about the Department that his wife was carrying on with an ex-juvenile offender whom Matty had befriended and kept out of reform school. The odd feature was that the lad had really straightened out, working honestly at the menial job which Matty had got him. Matty’s wife was forty and they had a daughter of fifteen. This home-wrecking boy was now twenty-two. Ways to get rid of him were infinite, for a police officer; but Matthias was leery of his wife.

  “How did you get along with Mrs. Starr?” Tierney now was able to ask.

  “I guess it came out about even,” Smart answered with a snicker. “There was nothing we would not have done for one another, and that’s what we did: nothing.”

  To pinch off the wise-guy progression, Tierney asked quickly: “What did you do on Christmas Eve?”

  Smart said, earnestly: “Right here.”

  “Did you ever visit the Starr place again after checking out?”

  “Never.”

  “Are you sure about that? It’s just a couple blocks away.”

  Smart instituted a smug movement of his neck and mouth. “Not likely. I had enough of her.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” It was Matthias again, leaning forward with his huge head, like a lion over its meal of red meat.

  “All right,” Smart said after a long breath. “Wilma slept on the couch out front. So if you came in after midnight you had to go through the living room, and it always woke Wilma up. She complained about it every time, and I got pretty annoyed since I was paying my rent and was entitled to come and go as I pleased.

  “After several such occasions I threatened to move out, but she didn’t want that either: she wouldn’t like to lose a good, respectable roomer of my type, she said, and was sorry to have put me to any trouble, but she was a light sleeper and also worried about this separated husband of hers, who she was afraid would get in some night and beat her up. I said O.K. but I reserve my right to come and go, it was not my responsibility that she had to sleep where she did.

  “So we let it go at that, but the very next time I came in late she began to bitch from the darkness over by the couch, and I told her to go to hell, I was leaving in the morning, and went down the hall to my room, got into my pajamas and went to the toilet and brushed my teeth, returned to the room and found it dark as if the bulb or a fuse had burned out, and too tired to investigate, climbed into bed.”

  Smart had thus far spoken dispassionately, but now he produced a smile in which pride and embarrassment were braided.

  “I climbed in right on top of a woman. I don’t know if you’ve had the experience, but it isn’t sexy. It’s creepy if you don’t expect it, especially if the arms and legs start to squirm about like fish or snakes. I froze for a while. It took me a while to realize Wilma—or Mrs. Starr, for we hadn’t even got to first names by that stage—had got into my bed. She was in her forties but still set up. A nice-looking woman, a little plump. I hadn’t noticed her much in that way, because of that daughter. I don’t mean I was horny for the girls, but just that you notice women in their twenties over older ones if they are all in the same household, particularly Billie who was something of a show-off, going in and out of the bathroom a lot with her robe loose or sometimes in just a slip.

  “The squirming Wilma did was because I had put my knee into her stomach as I got into bed. When she had moved out of the way she lay silent and heavy, never touching me, and then she finally asked if I was going to say anything. That’s how I recognized it was Wilma, from her voice. I guess I had up to now thought it might be Billie, whose room was right across the hall—if I had any idea, that is, being astounded.”

  Smart now laughed outright. “To tell the truth, what I did then was to get sore. I was still mad about her complaint and since she never figured as sexy in my mind, I had a crazy idea she got into my bed with me to argue some more. I am a man who likes his privacy, which is why I didn’t take board there.”

  Matthias had been scribbling in his notebook. He now interrupted Smart’s account, which had been flowing smoothly, to ask the pompous question: “Did you and she have intimate relations?”

  Smart was startled, and Tierney was furious with his partner. It was destructive to impede the fluency of an interrogation, so long as the subject did not stray into irrelevance, which Smart had not. It was unusual for a man to reveal this sort of experience without undue prodding, and it signified that Smart, whom Tierney had assessed as brimming with the self-love characteristic of many small persons, tended towards exhibitionism.

  Smart appealed to Tierney. “Must I answer that?”

  See what you’ve done, you horse’s ass, Tierney silently told Matthias. To Smart he said wearily: “You were going to tell us anyway, weren’t you?”

  “I didn’t intend to relate personal details,” Smart said, returning to the prissy manner which was apparently his habitual reaction to what he saw as official duress. He was one of those persons who speak freely if given their own head and allowed to believe they are helping the police voluntarily.

  “Before I did anything like that, I’d have to consult a lawyer on my rights,” Smart added, with growing rigidity.

  “Now, calm down, Mr. Smart,” Tierney said in his assuaging tone and dreary rhythm. “We’re just doing our job. You can’t say we have been impolite to you in any way. We just want to hear the story in your own words. Three human beings have had their lives taken from them. I know you want as much as we do to see the responsible individuals brought to justice.”

  Smart said warily: “I’m not sure I approve of capital punishment.” He glanced towards Matty, who was again writing in the notebook. “I guess that makes me a suspect according to your lights.”

  “We’re not judge or jury,” Tierney said. “Please proceed, Mr. Smart.”

  The small man opened his mouth to do just that when Matty looked up and stated: “I want an answer to my question.”

  For a moment they stared at each other, and Tierney developed a violent contempt for them both: the inept, stupid, obdurate, cuckolded Matty, but also for Smart, the civilian.

  The telephone rang twice before Smart rose and walked stiffly to its wrought-iron stand beside the entrance to the hallway.

  It was for Tierney. Having announced that, Smart laid down the instrument and went to the bathroom, halfway down the hall. Matty lumbered to his feet.

  “I’m getting it,” Tierney said.

  “Where’s he going?”
r />   “The crapper,” Tierney said in a low voice. “Let him alone, will you?”

  Matty looked hurt.

  It was Shuster: “The junkie was a waste of time.” He cursed in lieu of an explanation. “How does Smart look?”

  “Who knows?” said Tierney. “We just got here.” He counted on Smart’s hearing that through the bathroom door, but the toilet began to flush before he finished.

  “Listen,” said Shuster. “I might as well tell you now that Matthias has got some trouble.”

  “I know.”

  “No you don’t. The precinct men up in his home district have just picked up that kid that Matty supposedly straightened out. He held up a candy store, using Matty’s extra revolver.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tierney responded. Matthias had gone back to his chair.

  “Don’t say anything to him now,” said Shuster, wheezing slightly. “I’ll catch him when you come in. I’ll shove it up his ass, I can tell you that. If Smart is clean you want to go for what’s-his-name—” Shuster rattled a paper—“Detweiler, Joseph Detweiler. You got the address.”

  Tierney grunted and hung up. “Nothing on the junkie,” he told Matthias, who had put away his notebook and was toying with the brim of his hat.

  They looked at each other in mutual apology. Matty spoke first. “I been nervous lately,” he said, smiling almost paralytically.

  “You and me both,” Tierney admitted in something more than sympathy. Smart was a little smart-ass. Tierney saw that now in retrospect, and when Smart emerged from the bathroom with an air of gratification, Tierney laid it on the line for him: no more pissing around would be tolerated. The change of tone caught the little man off guard. He showed bewilderment and sat down.

  “I was trying,” he stated, “to show some respect for the dead…. All right, Wilma moved in with me. It was very homey, and she prevailed upon me to eat with the family, too, it being ridiculous in my position to go out for dinner, she said. So I went on full board finally, except for lunch on my own, of course, near work. Billie was around a lot, usually half dressed. She was always taking baths and leaving her underwear on the bathroom floor. More than that once she was totally stripped when I passed her door, which she seldom closed, and looking at herself in a full-length mirror. Yet I will say this: she was not sexy. It was kind of innocent the way she displayed herself. I mean it. I remember my brother Charlie, who was a health nut and lifted weights as a boy: he used to stand in front of a mirror in only his jockstrap and study his build. He wasn’t admiring himself, but merely checking his development like a carpenter might look over something he had put together.”

  Smart raised his eyebrows at Tierney, pushing his point.

  “I had got myself into a peculiar position there. Guys that came to call on Billie thought I was her father or stepfather. I was treated very respectfully. Sometimes this gave me a kick, for I couldn’t be more than ten years older than Billie. But the mistake was understandable since I’d be sitting around the living room in my shirtsleeves or maybe still at the kitchen table.”

  Tierney asked him to name some of these guys, but Smart said he could remember only first names for the most part: Al and Ralph and Maury or Murray, all of whom came for Billie; and the descriptions he furnished were undistinguished. Al was tall, Ralph was probably Irish, Maury once got a parking ticket and claimed he could get it fixed. “They were generally a lot older than she,” said Smart. “You might have thought they were coming for Wilma.”

  He looked significantly towards Matty, who had remained silent, on his good behavior. “I don’t know whether they were intimate with her or not,” Smart said. “She was a model. They might have been associated with her in business.”

  For the hell of it, Tierney asked him what Billie had modeled. Dresses, hats?

  Smart didn’t know that either.

  “Oh, come on,” Tierney said. “You’re beginning to break our balls again.” He glanced at Matthias in affinity, but Matty made no return, looked barren.

  Smart winced. “I wish I could get my position over to you. I realize it sounds fishy. But I never wanted to get in with them. Wilma made the play. It was easy for me, simple. I didn’t have to do anything. My first wife was conceited and selfish and lazy. Her idea of a meal was to warm up something frozen. I had to darn my socks myself.”

  A keenness refined his features, as of cruelty, but in view of his statement, rather that received than dealt out.

  “I didn’t want to get involved with the Starrs,” Smart protested. “Wilma tried to suck me into her affairs just because she was sleeping with me. Her husband would come around to get money out of her, I guess. He was harmless, some old drunk. She talked about him trying to beat her up, but that was nonsense. He was scared of me, and I am five-four. ‘Kick him out,’ she said. I refused to get involved. Anyway, all he’d need to do was know I was in the apartment and he wouldn’t stay.

  “I always figured Wilma would say anything to get me, suck me in, wrap me up, and not for marriage because she claimed she would never divorce Starr. Though she wasn’t religious, either. I believe she liked to hook men in one way or another. She’d do all types of favors which you never asked, like washing and ironing shirts. She was motherly, if you like that. Frankly, I don’t. I got stuck there for a while and then pulled loose.”

  Tierney had gone over the list of boarders and verified his memory, letting Smart run on in his characterization of the late Mrs. Starr though it was not likely to be useful. What people thought, or believed they thought, generally was worthless in the investigation of a homicide. Smart may have been quite right in his theory that Wilma Starr tried, morally speaking, to suffocate a man, but that opinion, like all such, was a dead end. The next boarder, of another make-up than Smart, might analyze her personality to an altogether different conclusion. Or if he and ten more agreed, it might still suggest nothing as to the identification of the person who committed the murders.

  Matty came to life. “You resented Wilma Starr’s ways? Did you argue with her, maybe lose your temper? Why did you move out if you had it made?”

  Smart took no offense. He shook his head sadly. “She was really kind to me. I am sorry she had to die like that.”

  “Where’d you say you spent Christmas Eve?” Matty asked, as though he expected the man to change his story for no reason at all.

  Smart answered as he had earlier: here, here at home. Tierney had of course noticed on entering the apartment that no Christmas decorations were displayed, not even a jarful of colored balls or a pyramid of silvered pine cones. Yet Smart did not seem to be Jewish.

  Tierney asked: “You and your wife?”

  Smart made a funny, defenseless, ducking movement of the head. “I don’t get out much. She’s sick, and it costs all I’ve got to have a nurse here while I’m at work. I’m home today because they are taking inventory at the store and don’t start the after-Christmas sale until tomorrow.” He rose without using his arms; strong in the legs, like many small guys. “You can come see her if you want.”

  It was Matty who said decently: “We won’t disturb her?”

  “Not at all,” said Smart, smiling. “It gets pretty lonely back there.”

  He led them along the hall, a veritable child or midget ahead of the elephantine Matthias. He opened the door after a courtesy-knock, stood aside for Tierney to pass through, but in view of Matty’s bulk, himself went second. A woman lay in bed. She was probably about thirty years of age in standard time, but ancient in illness: yellow within the sheets, her eye sockets as dark as her hair, hands and wrists gone skeletal. She was indeed dying.

  Tierney had once worked on a case in which the female corpus delicti had been butchered into sixteen parts with a rusty implement and wrapped in as many separate sheets of newspaper, then packed into two valises and deposited in the main checkroom at Grand Central Station. The victim had probably been quite dead before the dismemberment commenced. Thus a particular sympathy was beside the point. By aesthetic
definition it was a horror, but in human terms was perhaps not so bad as it looked: suffering may not have been an issue. And in fact, when the killer had been apprehended, he claimed, if he could be believed, to have crushed the woman’s skull while she lay sleeping.

  On the other hand, a divine sadist was devouring Mrs. Smart, one corpuscle at a time, and this shook Tierney, who, though he had been reared as a Catholic, never thought about God unless he could lay some criminal act at His door: the Omnipotent Malefactor, exempt from punishment.

  In a corner, on top of a television set now dumb and blind, was a small Christmas tree, bedecked, entinseled, and a little bell of red foil terminated the pullstring of the window shade. Through the sickroom odors came the aroma of spruce.

  Matty spoke graciously to the patient on commonplaces of the season. Tierney had never seen this side of his giant partner.

  “The long needles last longest,” Matthias was saying. “It’s the short ones that fall out creating a mess.”

  Smart, kneeling, unwound the cotton sheeting that swathed the base of the tree. “Have to add a lot of water,” said he, peering into the container between the legs of the supporting tripod. “It evaporates in the heat of this room.” He topped up the level from a long-spouted, miniature sprinkling can, the indoor-garden model.

  Mrs. Smart worked at a response to Matty: froglike sounds issued from the waste of her throat. Tierney could not begin to understand the words, which seemed to be of the vocabulary one hears in dreams, recognizable as English yet incomprehensible to the dreamer, to whom only pictures speak. Her eyes, though, were jewels.

  Tierney smiled and mumbled, standing stockstill with all his musculature in contraction; he was a kind of human projectile and could have been shot from a cannon.

  In a moment Smart showed them out, of the sickroom and the apartment. “Thank you,” he said in the hallway, summoning the elevator with his small thumb. “Being absolutely hopeless, it is not as hard to take as you might think.”