by Howard Fast
At first the girl who played Suzanna did not notice the intruder. Sally looked up at him and stared unbelievingly. The intruder wore a white shirt, soaked with blood. He wore narrow, black, Italian-cut trousers, also sticky with blood and clinging to his legs. He wore a gray sports jacket and he had long blond hair and very pale blue eyes. In his right hand he held an automatic pistol. His left hand dripped blood onto the stage as he stood there, scanning the audience carefully.
In this makeshift concert hall there was not any real distinction between stage lights and house lights. The house lights burned dimly, the stage lights rather brightly.
Sally stared at the apparition in fascinated horror. His pale eyes scanned the audience, selected her, and fixed upon her. He raised his pistol, and Suzanna, stage wife of Count Gil, turned, saw the killer, and screamed.
There were mutterings in the audience and a man called out, “Hey, what are you doing up there?”
But the audience remained in their seats and Sally remained in her seat, helpless, fixed there as if a tight cord extended from her eyes to the ugly muzzle of the automatic pistol.
She watched the pistol. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak. She watched the pistol as the man raised his hand higher. The pistol came up—up—up, inch by inch—and then it seemed to her that so directly, so precisely was the muzzle of the pistol trained upon her forehead that she could look into it and see the bullet and see death.
And then there was the crash of a gun being fired.
Sally waited. A gun had fired. She knew that the bullet had struck home. All her awful flight, all her twisting and turning and protesting, and hoping and pleading, had been in vain. The confidence she had placed in a Puerto Rican policeman named Gonzalez had been equally in vain. She was dead. She wondered what happened after death. Strange that she felt nothing—no difference, no impact between her eyes, no explosion in her brain, no blotting out of her sight.
She could watch the stage. The girl playing Suzanna screamed again and stepped back, away from the blond young man. The right arm of the blond young man was still outstretched rigidly, but his fingers opened now and the pistol fell down onto the floor in front of the first row of the audience. The killer stood there, swaying back and forth. Then he swayed a little farther, lost his balance, and fell headlong on top of his gun.
Suddenly Gonzalez, his own gun in his hand, was next to Sally.
“Are you all right?” he cried hoarsely. “Sally, Sally, listen to me! Talk to me, Sally! Are you all right?”
Afterward Sally remembered the smell of the acrid smoke from the muzzle of the revolver. She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she looked at Gonzalez and said, “It doesn’t feel any different to be dead.”
“It feels different, all right,” Gonzalez whispered.
CHAPTER
12
A COP appeared. Since they had left Joey Compatra’s gym late that afternoon, this was the first cop that Gonzalez had seen. The cop came running in, calling out, “What’s going on here? Now what’s going on here?”
“A man has been shot.”
“Where? Where?” the cop demanded. “Where is he? Who’s been shot? Come on now, stand back.”
Gonzalez smiled wryly. He reached down and touched Sally’s hair. He was noticing things and experiencing sensations. He knew how it felt to be alive. A moment ago he had seen the cop. Now he told himself that Sally’s hair was soft.
“Soft as silk,” he told himself.
He walked over to the cop, and he introduced himself as calmly and quietly as if they were at a precinct breakfast.
“Detective Gonzalez,” he said, “from the Nineteenth Precinct.”
“Yes, sir,” The cop nodded. “What happened here?”
They were standing in front of the killer’s body. The killer lay there, sprawled awkwardly in the unco-ordinated, purposeless position of death. He lay on his back. His face was a cherub’s face, the face of a young boy, relaxed and freed from hate and passion.
“Who killed him?” the cop wanted to know.
The people who had filled the little concert hall were packed in a circle around the two policemen and the dead man. They stood on the stage, on the piano, and on the seats. They were sensitive people. Gonzalez recalled now how sensitive and concerned the people whom you saw at a concert were. Almost any concert. He glanced at their faces and realized that his conclusion held for this place too. Middleaged people, young people, sensitive, thoughtful, gentle—yet they could not drag themselves away from the circle of death. They could not break it up. Death held them and drew them and spoke to them in a dark voice more potent than music. No sensationalism held them here; it was the old, dark, grim, implacable master himself. His tones were irresistible. They remained.
Raising his voice, Gonzalez said to them, “Folks, there’s no use staying here. The performance is over. A man has been killed. He was a murderer. He has been killed in the line of a detective’s duty. Now, if the manager is within sound of my voice, would he please come here. I advise the rest of you to go home.”
The manager appeared as if by magic. A small, worried, bald-headed man, he came into the circle, rubbing his hands nervously and asking for more detailed explanations.
“Hold it for just a moment,” Gonzalez said to him. Gonzalez was explaining to the cop, “That’s right. He’s a contract man and I think he’s from the Coast. I don’t know what his name is, but we’ve been on him all day and he’s been on us all day. Look, I haven’t got time to read back the whole record for you. Just take it easy. Play it by ear from here on and you’ll get the story. Stay here. Maybe this gentleman here …” He pointed to the manager.
“Derby Clement,” the little man said. “I’m the dean of the school. Not precisely the manager, but we don’t have a manager in the sense you mean—”
“Can you find something to cover his face?” Gonzalez asked Clement.
The small man looked around and discovered a horrified young lady to transfer the problem to.
“Alice,” he said, “Alice, find something to cover him with. Do you remember the poncho we had—the one we covered the piano with? That will do if you can find it. Do you know where it is?”
Gulping and nodding, Alice replied that she thought she knew where the poncho was.
Gonzalez glanced around. Sally Dillman was at his elbow.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “What good will it do you to be here?”
“I had to look at him. Don’t you understand that I had to look at him?” Her eyes were fixed on the dead man.
“No, I don’t know why you had to look at him,” Gonzalez said.
“He’s like a little boy, isn’t he? Look at his face. You look at his face and you can’t believe that he could kill anyone. You just can’t believe it.”
Gonzalez said to the cop, “Stay with the body now. I got to call the lieutenant of the Nineteenth. Did you call in for anyone else?”
“I was on foot,” the cop replied.
“All right, I’ll take care of that. But first I got to call the lieutenant. You understand me. Stay with it.”
He raised his voice again. “Ladies and gentlemen, you might as well go home. There’s nothing constructive achieved by standing here and gawking at a corpse.”
The people responded to him and began to file out. Gonzalez took Sally by the arm and asked the dean, “You do have a telephone?”
Delighted with an excuse to get away from the corpse, the dean nodded. “Yes, of course. Let me lead you to it. It’s in the office. You have the office at your disposal, you know. But the performance is ruined. What will people think? I mean—to kill a man here in the school. It’s not right.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Sally said politely and apologetically. “Please, sir, where is a good place to be sick?”
“In the ladies room,” he whispered. He beckoned to another white-faced teen-age girl who was apparently attached to the school, and he said, “Please,
take this young lady to the ladies room. She’s going to be sick. So if you could stay with her, that would be very nice. But please take her there quickly.”
He was not aware of Sally’s place in what had occurred, but by Gonzalez’ tone and general air of purpose, he accepted her as a part of what had happened.
The young lady led Sally away, and the dean dolefully directed Gonzalez to the telephone in his office. Gonzalez picked up the phone and dialed the number of the precinct, staring meanwhile at a series of steel engravings that lined the walls of the room. Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Chopin, Haydn, Hindemith—most of them Gonzalez could not identify. He felt like a barbarian without culture and lost to a world that had real meaning. He was in a place that had meaning. His life of anger, passion, guns, and dead men had no meaning at all.
When Rothschild answered the phone, Gonzalez was annoyed and angry with himself. He said to Rothschild, “Well, I got him.”
“You got who?”
“I got the killer,” Gonzalez said. “I got the contract man.”
“What the hell do you mean you got him?”
“I killed him,” Gonzalez said sourly. “Can’t you understand? I killed him. He’s lying inside dead. It’s all over.”
“Just what the hell are you talking about?” Rothschild yelled. “Have you lost your mind? Where are you?”
“I told you where I am.”
“Like hell you did. Where are you? You know I’ve been looking all over this God-damned city for you? You know I thought you were dead and the girl was dead? What happened in Central Park? We got a report that there was shooting in Central Park—out at the Mall or the Sheep Meadow. Now where the hell are you?”
Gonzalez’ resentment collapsed. “I’m at Eighty-eight West Sixty-eighth Street,” he said tiredly. “I’m here with Miss Dillman. She’s all right—a little hysterical, but she’s all right. The contract man is dead.”
“What is Eighty-eight West Sixty-eighth Street?”
“It’s the Delphi School of Music. That’s a small music school. They were having an opera here. If you want me to be specific, the name of the opera was The Secret of Suzanna. I never heard of the opera before. That’s because I’m an ignorant, stupid cop.”
“Why don’t you get hold of yourself?” Rothschild yelled at him. “What the devil’s wrong with you? Are you cracking up?”
“When that day comes,” Gonzalez said, “I’ll have a decent and salutory excuse to resign from your lousy squad.”
“I’ll be right over there,” Rothschild said. “Stay right there. I’ll be right over there.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Suppose you get someone to notify Homicide South. I’m tired of talking. I’m tired of the whole God-damned thing, and as far as I am concerned, Lieutenant, you can go to hell!”
Rothschild didn’t reply to that. He had hung up, either before or after Gonzalez’ last remark. Gonzalez did not particularly care.
He put down the telephone and looked at the dean.
“It’s none of my business,” the dean said, “but if you don’t mind, I would like to know something about what happened out there. I know you’re very tired, Detective—”
“Gonzalez.”
“Detective Gonzalez. I know you’re very tired and I don’t want to push this, but you just killed a man in my school. You broke up the performance. You can’t go around killing people just wherever you please. Who was he?”
“He was a killer,” Gonzalez said. “He was a contract killer. In case you don’t know what a contract killer is, he is a man who kills for hire, for money. He’s hired to kill and a contract is made, and that’s why he’s called a contract killer. Don’t look surprised, Mr. Clement. He flourishes in our stinking civilization. It should not surprise you. Killing is not a thing that is rare, at any level of what we call civilization. That man out there, that dead man, is a kid who for some reason that’s beyond my understanding became a hired gun. Now that’s all I can tell you. I’m sorry I broke up your damn performance. Please excuse me.”
Gonzalez walked out of the office and back to the auditorium. The men and women who were the audience had left. There still remained some boys and girls who were students, the piano accompanist, and the actors in the opera. Two police prowl cars had arrived, and there were four cops in uniform in the auditorium and two plain-clothes men. The plain-clothes men were from the Eighteenth Precinct. Gonzalez introduced himself and let them ask questions. He was too tired to volunteer anything.
A few minutes later Sally Dillman came back into the auditorium. She was very white, pale as a ghost, and hardly steady on her feet. Gonzalez took her by the arm and led her to a chair at the back of the auditorium. He sat down on another chair, facing her.
One of the plain-clothes men from the Eighteenth Precinct came over to ask Gonzalez who she was.
“She’s been under a lot of pressure. She was the quarry.”
“What do you mean—quarry?”
“I like literary words,” Gonzalez said. “It makes me feel cultured. She was the mark. That son of a bitch who’s lying dead up there at the front of the place was hired to hit her. That’s how the damned thing started.”
The man from the Eighteenth Precinct nodded his head to indicate that he understood. He didn’t know why Gonzalez was angry and he had no desire to provoke him further. He went back to the other cops. Gonzalez faced Sally Dillman and asked her, “How do you feel?”
“I feel good, but I feel very rotten, terribly rotten. I feel like I vomited out everything that is terrible and everything that is good, and all that’s left now is a shell. But the shell is myself and now I can let it fill up. Do you understand me, Frank?”
“I understand you,” he said.
“Frank, you know in all this, in everything that happened, it never occurred to me—I mean it occurred to me, but I never put it together into words or into something I could understand—the fact that you saved my life, that all through today you saved my life.”
“Well, that’s wrong,” he said bluntly. “I didn’t save your life. I didn’t use my brains. I did about five things wrong, terribly wrong, and I almost got you killed a couple of times. I wouldn’t call that saving your life.”
“But in the end,” she insisted, “you saved my life.”
“In the end I shot that poor bastard there. You know, Sally,” Gonzalez said, “I never killed anyone before. All the time I’ve been a cop I would say to myself, ‘Someday it’s going to come to this,’ but I didn’t really believe it. I didn’t believe that I could go on and kill someone and remain a rational human being after it was over. I’ve done a terrible thing, Sally. I won’t ever be the way I was again. And I don’t think I’ll be a cop any more.”
“You had to do what you did,” she argued.
“No, no, that doesn’t wash it away. Look, Sally, you know a little about me already. You’ve got to know a lot more. Do you know, I guess there isn’t a day in my life when I don’t say to myself, ‘Gonzalez, if you had a shred of conscience or deep, human decency in you, you’d become a vegetarian.’”
“I don’t understand that,” she said, puzzled.
“I mean, it’s the question of meat—the question of eating meat. Every time I eat meat I say to myself, ‘I am a human being. I am supposedly a civilized human being, and I’m eating the dead flesh from a living creature.’ Do you see what I mean? Do you see what I’m trying to tell you, Sally?”
“I think so.” She nodded. “But you don’t have to tell me this now, Frank.”
“I do,” he said. “I got to tell it to you now, Sally. You know, any minute now that bastard—do you mind the way I swear all the time? That’s an occupational disease too. I mean, maybe I could break it, but not easily. Do you mind terribly?”
She shook her head. “No, I never met anyone who swore as much as you do,” she said. “You use very bad language. Right from the beginning I noticed how bad your language was. No, I don’t mind it. I mean I do mind it, but,
like you say, it will take some time for you to change.”
“Because,” Gonzalez went on, “as I said, in a minute or five minutes Lieutenant Rothschild is going to walk in through that door and he’s going to walk in screaming, and from then on I’ll know no peace. I mean I’ll know absolutely no peace at all. So before that, if I don’t say this to you now, I’ll never have the nerve to say it to you again. I mean, Mother of God, why do you think I’m thirty-three years old and I’m not married?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.”
“Well, it doesn’t mean that anything’s wrong with me. That’s the last thing in the world that you should even think about. It’s the kind of a person I am. The kind of nature I have. But now, right here this minute, I don’t know you. I mean, my God, we’re like strangers. We’re like strangers, and besides that I’m a Catholic. I mean I’m a lousy Catholic. I’m not even a Catholic. I guess if—if they knew in Rome the way I am, they’d excommunicate me in twenty minutes, but still I’m a Catholic. What are you?”
“Well, what difference does it make?”
“Well, can’t you answer a question? I’m asking you directly a thing of importance.”
“My father was a Presbyterian,” she said. “My mother was a Unitarian.”
“What? Oh—no! Not a Unitarian!”
“Well, I don’t see why you should react like that at all. Here you’ve been talking about being a vegetarian. Now what is a Unitarian except a person who tries to live religiously like a human being? I respect my mother’s religion—”
“Of course you do.” He nodded. “Of course you do. I wasn’t derogating Unitarians. Absolutely not! Nothing of the kind! Look, I don’t know you, but I want to marry you. You’ll have a lot of time to think about it. I’ll give you all the time in the world. You want to think about it. Only now tell me yes or no. Will you marry me, Sally? Will you?”