He paid through the little tilt-slot in the plexiglass and got out on the corner. He was about to cross the street when his eye fell on a convertible parked in front of the supermarket. Part of the roof had been slashed open; it hung in gaping shreds. Probably there had been some item of minuscule value visible on the back seat; someone had pulled a knife, ripped the car open, reached in and stolen the object. People ought to know better than to park canvas-topped cars on the streets.…
He stopped, drew himself up. What the hell kind of thinking is that?
Do we have to give up every God damned right we have? Do we have to let them scare us into giving up everything?
Fallen rain gleamed on the street like precious gems. He looked over toward the river—along the block, under the concrete of the West Side Highway. The lights of a boat were sliding past. Out there on the filthy river in a boat you’d be safe.
Safe, he thought. And that’s all we have left to shoot for?
The light changed and he had crossed the street and stepped up onto the sidewalk before he saw the man standing in the shadows right by the corner of the building. Standing against the wall, shoulder tilted, arms folded, smiling slightly. A black man in a tight jacket and a cowboy hat. As lean and efficiently designed as a bayonet.
Paul’s toes curled inside his shoes. His hair rose; the adrenalin pumped through his body and made his hands shake. They stood face to face with a yard of drizzling rain between them. The black man never stirred. Paul turned very slowly and put his foot forward and walked up the street with the sound of his heart in his ears.
A panel truck was parked in front of his apartment house, facing the wrong direction for the traffic; there was a police parking ticket on its windshield but it hadn’t been towed away: someone had slipped a few dollars to someone. Paul stopped beside the truck and used its big outside mirror to look back along the street. The black man stood where he had been, indistinct in the shadows. Streaming sweat, Paul went into the building.
The man’s smile: did he know who Paul was? Was he one of the ones who had killed Esther?
He was letting his imagination run away with him. Come on, get a grip on yourself. Kids, Carol had said. Teenagers. This guy was full-grown—he wasn’t one of them. Probably his amusement had been purely the result of Paul’s all-too-obvious fear; probably he was an intellectual, a playwright or a musician who’d just decided to post himself on that corner and see how long it would take the cops to roust him along—some sort of experiment to prove something about white bigotry.
Paul thought about going back outside and telling the guy it wasn’t a very wise experiment. If I’d had a gun in my pocket and you’d looked at me like that you might have been in a lot of trouble, fella. It was only a fantasy; there was no possibility of his going back outside. He nodded to the doorman and went back to the elevator.
A common enough fantasy though, I’ll bet. If I’d been there when that guy slashed that roof—if I’d seen it happen, and I’d been armed at the time….
8
“You wanted to see me, Mr. Ives?”
“Have a seat, Paul.”
Ives was the remaining survivor of the three nimble-penciled accountants who had founded the firm in 1926. It had moved uptown in stages from Beaver Street to Forty-third. The old man’s office was a repository for oddments of decor from each of the firm’s stopping places. An antique stock-ticker, a pair of grandmother clocks and four hideous gilt cherubs as wall decorations. The furnishings were pleasantly mismatched, the products of several different decades and levels of company prosperity: in one corner sat a modern Danish chair, a mock-Victorian step-end table, and a brass floorlamp from the ‘Twenties with a plain, cheap shade.
It was a huge office, plushly carpeted, occupying five hundred square feet of corner space with enormous windows on both exterior walls—a good view of the U.N. Building and the East River.
Paul pulled a chair forward and sat. Ives said, “How’s your daughter getting along?”
“Not much change from last week, I’m afraid.”
“A crying shame,” the old man said. “I certainly hope she pulls out of it.”
“The doctors have every confidence she will.”
“Yes. Well. Still I expect you’re very worried and anxious about her.”
“Yes, naturally.”
“There is something I can do to help—or to be exact, to help you to help yourself. That’s why I asked you to come by. It’s a job for you, and there ought to be a sizable bonus in it if everything works out as it should. I’m sure the hospital expenses are quite heavy for you—I realize you’ve got that major-medical policy, but all the same there are always considerable expenses the insurance won’t cover.”
“Yes sir, that’s quite true. I’ve had to dip into our little securities portfolio.”
“Then this ought to help handily.”
“I appreciate your consideration, Mr. Ives, but I’d prefer not to accept charity.”
“Nothing of the kind, Paul. You’ll earn it.” Ives had his elbows on the leather arms of his high-backed swivel chair. He steepled his fingers and squinted, making it clear he was going to be strictly business about it. “Of course it’s this Amercon situation. I had a call from George Eng this morning. Their board of directors wants to proceed in the direction he outlined to you a few weeks ago.”
“A merger with Jainchill Industries, you mean.”
“Yes. Howard Jainchill was here in the city last week and George Eng had several meetings with him. Everything seemed to go reasonably well, but of course they can’t sit down to do any serious dickering until the two companies have examined each other’s books. Naturally that’s where we come in, as Amercon’s accountants.”
“We’re to go over the Jainchill figures.”
“Yes, quite. Of course the Jainchill home-office is out in Arizona.”
Paul got a very straight look; Ives went on: “I thought, frankly, a trip away from the city might be good for you at this juncture.”
“Well, I hadn’t thought about it but it might be a good idea,” Paul said uncertainly.
Ives seemed to be waiting for a rider to the statement. When Paul added nothing the old man said, “Well then, that’s settled, you’ll fly out with George Eng the end of next week.”
“It’s very kind of you, Mr. Ives, but on a matter this big, shouldn’t one of the senior members handle it?”
“Not necessarily. It’s your kind of job.”
“Well, I’d like to be sure it’s not going to—cause friction.”
“Paul, I’m not concerned with doing a favor for you, except tangentially. You have a keen eye for other bookkeepers’ elastic accounting methods, you’ve always been willing to call a spade a spade. You handled the Masting case last year, so you’re a bit more up-to-date on this particular variety of merger than most of the rest of the members. And you——”
“Excuse me, Mr. Ives, but in the Masting case we knew they were cooking the books and it couldn’t help give us an edge—we knew what to look for. Are you suggesting the Jainchill people are doing the same thing?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them.” Ives said it with a tiny smile on his strict mouth. “I don’t know Jainchill personally but he’s got a reputation for being a man with the business ethics of a bankrupt car dealer.”
“Do the people at Amercon suspect anything specific?”
“Not according to George Eng. But Jainchill knows Amercon’s been sniffing around his company for quite some time. He’d be a fool if he hadn’t done a bit of juggling to inflate his profit picture. Everyone does it when he’s trying to promote a merger.
“Now we do know, for example, that for the past year Jainchill has been reducing the rate at which he’s been writing off the cost of new plant facilities—he switched from rapid to straight-line depreciation. Naturally it reduced the amount he had to set aside on his books to reflect the deterioration of plant and equipment. You’ll want to look into that to a
scertain the real figures and find out how much it increased their reported profits.
“When it comes to deciphering the footnotes that clutter up corporate reports, there isn’t a man in this office any better than you. It’s a sure bet Jainchill’s earnings reports look fatter than they really are. The question is, how much fatter? Basically that’s up to you to ascertain, but you’ll also want to look for all the other likely possibilities. Amercon has to have a clear picture of what they’re buying before they’ll make an offer for it.”
“Of course.”
“Then you’re all set. I only wanted to make sure you were feeling up to it—it will be a tough job, Paul. It’s going to take all your time for several weeks. I wanted to check with you this far in advance because you have to be certain you’re willing to be away from your daughter for that period of time and ready to devote your complete attention to it.”
He hadn’t been allowed to see Carol anyway. The trip away from the city might clear his head; things were pressing in on him. “I’ll be glad to do it, Mr. Ives. I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
“We’ll go over the details with George Eng before you leave. You’ve got a couple of weeks to prepare yourself. I know you’ll do a fine job with it, Paul—I’ve always had every confidence in you.”
Paul walked in relief to the door. When he glanced back across the length of the room Ives had a copy of the Revenue Code open and was scowling furiously at it.
9
“Well, you got pretty good hinges on this door,” the locksmith said. “Lucky. Some of these newer buildings, they got hinges you could bust with a toothpick.”
The first locksmith with whom Paul had made an appointment had failed to show up. It hadn’t occurred to him at the time and he’d forgotten it for a while. He’d called this fellow two days ago—a squat bald man with a cauliflower ear and feral eyes. He had tools all over the foyer carpet; curlings of sawdust beneath the door where he was drilling into its edge. “Now you realize you can’t just pull the door shut with this lock. You got to turn the key, otherwise it’s not locked at all.”
“I understand that. What concerns me is that nobody should be able to get in when it’s locked. If I leave it unlocked it’s my own stupidity.”
“Sure. Well, there ain’t no lock in the world that’s sure proof against an experienced pickman, but there ain’t many of them around and they usually don’t go for buildings like this one. Where you get trouble with them’s over on the East Side mostly—Fifth along the park, the East Sixties, Sutton Place, like that. I got one place I put three locks on their front door, most expensive locks you can buy, but didn’t stop some pickman from getting in the day after he read in the papers about these folks sailing to Europe. Stripped the place clean.”
The locksmith scraped sawdust out of the hole he had cut and began to fit an enormous device into it. “It sure don’t pay to tell the newspapers you’re going away,” he said. “Listen, you wasn’t planning to sell any valuables, are you?”
“Why?”
“If you do, don’t put your name and address in the ad. That’s an engraved invitation to thieves.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Listen, there’s plenty of things you can do to make it harder on these guys. Most people just leave one little light on when they go out—that’s stupid. Every burglar in the world knows that leave-the-light-on routine. What I always tell my clients, when you go out for the evening or to the office for the day or whatever, leave two-three lights on and turn your radio on so a guy can hear it if he’s standing outside your door. And there’s another thing—the middle of the hot summer days, these dope addicts go along the street lookin’ up at all the apartment house windows. They see an air conditioner sticking out a window that’s not turned on and dripping, they know nobody’s home. It don’t cost that much electricity to leave a few lights on and run your air conditioner on low when you ain’t home, and leave the radio on. Cheap insurance, I always call it.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
He hadn’t skied since 1948, and then only a few timorous times, but in his dream he was skiing down a long white slope—faster and ever faster, and then the slope grew steeper and he could not turn, the cold wind scissored his ears, the skis whispered under him with terrifying sluicing speed, and the hill kept tilting downward and he could not turn.
He awoke with chilled feet and lay in bed listening to the garbage trucks and watching shards of dim light flash through the blinds. Out there they were killing people. There was nothing to think about but that; and nothing to do but think about it in the insomniac night.
His feet were cold and yet the room was filled with a dense stale heat and the thick-tongued smell of bad sleep. He got up and switched on the air conditioner, went to the refrigerator and poured a glass of milk and brought it back to the nightstand by the bed. Now over the chill drumming whisper of the air conditioner he heard the swishing of cars in the street—it had started raining. His eyes dreamily tracked the wavering liquid light-movements on the ceiling; he heard the rain when a gust of wind blew it against the window. Unable to stand it any longer he got up again and took a pair of wool socks from the drawer, put them on and got back into bed, pulling the covers up neatly over him. The edge of the sheet dragged the glass of milk over and spilled it to the carpet. He cursed at the top of his lungs; slammed out of bed and went to get the sponge and paper towels.
It was no good trying to sleep any more. Half-past two in the morning. He reached for a book but couldn’t focus his eyes on the print; put it away and switched off the light and sat up in bed in the dark, swearing, staring.
Even in the darkness—perhaps especially in the darkness—the room had snaggy edges where memories clung. I ought to give up the apartment, move somewhere. Maybe move into one of those residential hotels where you got daily maid service.
The hell, he thought, the only sane thing to do is move out of the city. Get an efficiency in one of those high-rises across the Hudson on the Palisades, or maybe even a cottage in Jersey or Orange County. Not Long Island, he thought; he couldn’t stand Long Island. But somewhere out of the city—out of this madness.
That’s wrong. That’s giving in to them. I’m not running away. Stay and fight.
Fight how?
The mind wove ridiculous fantasies in the middle of the night. Feeling like an ass he got a glass of water, washed down a sleeping pill, set the alarm and went back to bed.
“Damn it, Lieutenant, haven’t you got anywhere at all?”
“We’re doing everything we can, Mr. Benjamin. We’ve picked up several people for questioning.”
“That’s not enough!”
“Look, I know how you feel, sir, but we’re doing everything we know how to do. We’ve assigned several extra men to the case. Some of the best detectives on the force. I don’t know what else I could tell you.”
“You could tell me you’ve nailed the bastards.”
“I could, yes sir, but it wouldn’t be true.”
“The trail’s getting colder all the time, Lieutenant.”
“I know that, sir.”
“Damn it, I want results!”
But the haranguing gave him no satisfaction and after he hung up the phone he sat cracking his knuckles and looking for someone to hit.
* * *
Lunch in Schrafft’s—single tables occupied by little old ladies in prim hats. We are all dressing for dinner in the jungle. He remembered a year or so ago in the same restaurant—lunching with Sam Kreutzer that day—he’d sat and watched an elderly woman alone at a table suddenly hurl water tumblers and silverware at the wall mirror. He had been shocked. If it had happened today he would regard it as predictably logical behavior. Everybody lived like a character in a one-act play that nobody understood; getting by from one moment to the next was like trying to hold on to your hat in a gusty wind.
He returned to the office after lunch and spent an hour deliberating over the Am
ercon papers George Eng had delivered two days earlier. Steeping himself in figures and processes so he would be ready for the trip out West at the end of next week.
At half-past three he phoned Jack’s office but Jack was in court. He tried again just before five and caught him in. “How is she?”
“Rotten.”
His scalp contracted. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing sudden. It’s hard to describe—it’s like watching someone sink into quicksand and knowing there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it.”
“She’s just not responding?”
“The doctor’s starting to talk about shock treatments. Insulin shock, not electric.”
He was tired, suddenly; his swollen eyes took longer to blink. Coming on top of the rest it was just too much to expect a man to bear.
Jack was saying, “… form of amnesiac catatonia. She looks at things and evidently she sees them, she recognizes you when you walk into the room, but it’s as if there’s no emotional reaction. As if she observes everything without any associations. You can turn her around and give her a push and she’ll walk across the room as obediently as a wind-up toy. She eats by herself if you put the food in front of her, but she doesn’t seem to care what it is. She ate a whole plate full of calves’ liver last night and you know how she detests the stuff. She didn’t even seem to notice. It’s as if there’s some kind of short-circuit somewhere between the taste-buds and the brain, or between the eyes and the brain. When I go in to see her she knows who I am, but she doesn’t recognize me—not in the sense of relating me to herself.”
He listened to Jack’s words and feeling almost burst his throat.
After he hung up, Dundee came into the office. Took one look at his face and said in alarm, “Paul?”
“There’s nothing to talk about, Bill. Not right now.”
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