Not Safe After Dark

by Peter Robinson

  * * *

  Calvin didn’t sleep at all that night and spent the next day in terror of the knock upon his door. The newspaper reported Charlie’s death and asked anyone who might have seen anything to contact them. Calvin was almost certain that no one had seen him, but there was still room for doubt, and that doubt bred fear. If the police came to check out his car, they would see the damage Charlie’s body had caused to the radiator and the headlight. They could probably even match paint chips from the body to his car; he had seen them do it on TV.

  So terrified was he that he almost forgot to phone in his picks. Almost. At four thirty he picked up the phone with trembling hands and dialed the administrator’s number. Just as the answering machine cut in, Mother’s stick banged on the floor above. He automatically held the phone at arm’s length and put his hand over the mouthpiece, even though there wasn’t a real person on the other end, and shouted up that he was busy and would be with her in a few moments. When he got back to the phone, he was just in time to hear the familiar beep. He began: “Giants, Broncos, Bills, Jets, Rams, Bears . . .”

  * * *

  The journey to Fort Myers on Thursday morning was a nightmare for Calvin. Not because of the weather, though the flight was delayed more than an hour and the wings had to be deiced. Not even because of Mother, despite the fact that she never stopped complaining for one moment until the plane took off, when she immediately fell asleep. No, it was because he expected to be arrested at every stage of the journey. At the check-in he noticed two airline officials huddled to one side talking, and occasionally they seemed to be looking in his direction. Sweat beaded on his forehead. But nothing happened. Next, at US Immigration, just when he expected the firm hand on his shoulder, the hushed “Please step this way, Mr. Bly,” the immigration officer wished him and Mother happy holidays after barely a glance at their passports.

  Could getting away with murder really be that easy? Calvin wondered when he disembarked at Fort Myers and found no policemen waiting for him, only Frank and Vicky in the crowd waving, ready to drive him and Mother back to the condo. Nothing had happened. Nobody had come for him. He must have got away with it.

  Though the locals thought the weather cold and farmers were worried about the citrus crop, Calvin found it comfortable enough to sit out on the deck. As he poured himself a Jack Daniel’s and looked out over the long strip of beach to the blue-green sea, Charlie’s murder began to seem distant and unreal. After a few hours and three or four bourbons, he could almost believe it hadn’t happened, that it had merely been a bad dream, and the following morning he imagined that when he got back to Toronto and walked into the bar they would all be waiting there, as usual, including Charlie, flashing his winnings.

  In the late afternoon Florida sun, how easy it was to believe that snowy Tuesday night in Toronto had never happened.

  * * *

  By Christmas Eve, Calvin was already two games up, having picked the Bills to beat a three-point spread against the Seahawks and the Broncos to win plus seven over the 49ers on Saturday. He’d lost the Giants–Jaguars game, but even with his system he could never expect to win them all.

  He was sipping a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks and watching Miami against New England, hoping the Pats would beat the spread, when during the halftime break came a brief interview with a convicted killer called Leroy Cody, scheduled to be electrocuted early in the New Year. Instead of pushing the mute button, Calvin turned the sound up a notch or two and leaned forward in his chair. He’d read about Cody in USA Today and found his curiosity piqued by the man’s nonchalant, laconic manner and his total lack of remorse.

  The interview was a special from death row, Leroy in his cell in drab prison clothes, hair cropped close to his skull, no emotion in his eyes, his face all sharp angles.

  “You shot a liquor store clerk for fifteen dollars, is that right?” the interviewer asked.

  “I didn’t know he’d only got a lousy fifteen dollars when I shot him, now, did I?” Leroy answered in his slow, surprisingly high-pitched drawl.

  “But you shot him, and fifteen dollars is all you got?”

  “Yessir. Sure was a disappointment, let me tell you.”

  “And then you shot a pregnant woman and dragged her out of her car to make your escape.”

  “I didn’t know she was pregnant.”

  “But you shot the woman and stole her car?”

  Leroy spat on the floor of his cell. “Hell, I had to make a fast getaway. I don’t have no car of my own. I had to take a goddamn cab to the store, but I was damned if I was gonna hang around and try to flag one after I done robbed the place.”

  “And you feel no remorse for any of this?”

  “Remorse?”

  “Regrets.”

  “Regrets? Nope. No regrets. I’m a killer. That’s what I am.”

  “You regret nothing at all?”

  Leroy smiled; it looked like an eclipse of the sun moving slowly across his features. “Only getting caught,” he said.

  Calvin’s attention wandered as the presenter started to comment, and then they were back at the halftime show, catching up on scores. But even as he checked the numbers, part of Calvin’s mind stayed with Leroy Cody. “I’m a killer. That’s what I am.” He liked that. It was honest, direct, had a ring to it.

  Calvin tried it out loud: “I’m a killer. That’s what I am.” It sounded good. He let the fantasy wander, trying on his new self and finding it a perfect fit. “I’m a killer. That’s what I am. Me and Leroy. Yeah, man.” And if he was a killer, he could kill again. Why stop at Charlie? He could kill Heidi’s husband. Could even kill that bitch Heidi herself, maybe make her beg a little first. He could kill . . .

  There was no upstairs in the condo, but he heard the click-click of Mother’s walking stick on the tile floor before he heard her voice. “Leroy,” she said (he was sure she called him Leroy), “are you going to just sit here and watch this garbage all Christmas? Why don’t you come and play cribbage with the old folks for a while?” Calvin sighed, picked up the remote, turned off the game, and muttered, “Coming, Mother.”

  * * *

  There were no cops waiting at the airport when Calvin and Mother got back to Toronto on Wednesday. It was over a week since Charlie’s death, and still nothing to fear.

  After settling Mother at home, against her protests, Calvin decided to drop in at the bar. As he had suspected, the usual crowd was there. Minus Charlie.

  “Calvin,” said Marge, patting his arm when he sat down beside her. “Welcome home. You’ve heard the news?”

  Calvin nodded sadly. “Heard just before we left for Florida. It’s tragic, isn’t it?”

  “I still can’t believe it,” said Marge. “He always seemed so . . .”

  “Alive?” Calvin suggested.

  “Yes. Alive. That’s it. Alive.”

  “Is there any progress?” he asked the table in general.

  “No,” Jeff answered. “You know the cops. They’ve put it down as a hit and run, asked for the public’s cooperation, and that’s the last you’ll hear of it.”

  “Unless someone comes forward,” Calvin said.

  “Yes,” Jeff agreed. “Unless someone comes forward. By the way,” he went on, “here’s the final scores on the pool.” He handed Calvin the sheets of paper.

  Kelly, the waitress with the walk out of a forties noir movie, finally came over with his drink. Calvin desperately wanted to see the final scores, but he didn’t want to appear too anxious. After all, Charlie was dead. So he sipped some beer, talked a little about his Christmas, and then, casually, glanced down at the sheets.

  The first thing that caught his eye was his weekend’s score: 5. That had to be wrong. Calvin had checked the game scores after the cribbage game and found he had nine. He had also won the evening game, the Raiders over the Panthers, and the Monday evening game, when the Titans had creamed the Cowboys. So how could he end up with five? He had eleven.

  He turned to the col
umn of picks and noticed scrawled across the line where his should be, the word “DAWGS.” Charlie, of course, had got the same. It meant they hadn’t got their picks in on time.

  But Calvin had got his picks in; he remembered phoning them. It was late in the afternoon, four thirty to be precise, but definitely before the five o’clock deadline. So what was going on?

  “Calvin?”

  The voice came as if from a long way. “Huh? Sorry. What?”

  “Just that you’ve gone pale. Are you OK?” It was Marge, and her hand was on his arm.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Must be . . . you know . . . Charlie . . . delayed shock.”

  Marge nodded. “I don’t suppose it seemed real until you got back here, did it?” she said.

  “Something like that. What’s happening with the pool?”

  Marge frowned. “Well,” she said, “with Charlie gone and you forgetting to phone in . . . er . . . I won.”

  “You?”

  Marge laughed nervously. “Well, don’t look so surprised, Calvin. I’ve been up there with the best of you all season.”

  “I know. It’s not that . . .”

  “What, then?”

  “Never mind. Congratulations, Marge.” Calvin knew he couldn’t complain. Whatever had gone wrong here, however he had gone from eleven to five, there was nothing he could do about it, and getting upset about the result would only look suspicious.

  “Thanks,” said Marge. “I know it must be a disappointment, you being so close and all.” She managed a weak smile. “I only beat you by one, if that means anything at all. It was my best week of the whole season. Twelve.”

  Calvin laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “So what are you going to do with your winnings?”

  Marge looked at the others, then said, “I decided—well, we all decided, really—that I’d use the money for a wake, you know, to pay for a wake here. For Charlie. He would have liked that.”

  “Yes,” said Calvin, still quaking with laughter inside while he tried to keep a straight face. “Yes, I think he would.”

  * * *

  When Calvin got home he poured himself a large whisky and tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Five. The DAWGS. It was an insult, a slap in the face.

  He cast his mind back to that Wednesday afternoon and remembered first that his hand had been shaking as he dialed. He had, after all, just killed Charlie the previous evening. Could he have misdialed? The first three numbers were all the same, and connected him to the newspaper the administrator worked for. The last four were 4697. It would have been easy, say, to transpose the six and the nine, or even to dial seven first rather than four, given that he was upset at the time. He tried both and got the same message: “I’m away from my desk right now. Please leave a message after the beep.” The only difference was that 7694 was a woman’s voice and 4967 was a man’s. So that was what had happened. In his disturbed state of mind, Calvin had dialed the wrong number. Why had it happened like that? Why hadn’t he listened to the message, noticed the difference in voice, and realized what he had done?

  Then he remembered. Just as he had got through, Mother had knocked on the bedroom floor for him. He had held the phone at arm’s length and covered the mouthpiece, as you do, and yelled up that he was coming in a minute. He hadn’t heard the administrator’s message, only vaguely recognized it was a man’s voice on the answering machine, heard the usual beep, and left his picks with someone else at the paper.

  Someone who hadn’t a clue what he was talking about.

  Calvin held his head in his hands. The wrong number. All for nothing. He drank some more whisky. Well, maybe not all for nothing, he thought after a while. Hadn’t he already decided that, nice as it would have been, he hadn’t killed Charlie only for the money? Wasn’t $2,000 a paltry sum to murder for? More than $15, but still . . . he knew he had had more reason than the money. Winning the pool was a part of it, of course, but that wasn’t to be. So what was left? What could he salvage from this disaster?

  “I’m a killer. That’s what I am.”

  The voice seemed to come into his head from nowhere, and slowly as the whisky warmed his insides, understanding dawned on Calvin.

  “I’m a killer. That’s what I am.”

  The sound of a heavy stick hammering on the ceiling above broke into his thoughts. He could hear her muffled yelling. “Leroy! Leroy! I need my hot milk, Leroy!”

  Calvin put his glass down, looked up at the ceiling, and got to his feet. “Coming, Mother,” he said softly.

  In Flanders Fields

  I considered it the absolute epitome of irony that, with bombs falling around us, someone went and bludgeoned Mad Maggie to death.

  To add insult to injury, she lay undiscovered for several days before Harry Fletcher, the milkman, found her. Because milk was rationed to one or two pints a week, depending on how much the children and expectant mothers needed, he didn’t leave it on her doorstep the way he used to do before the war. Even in a close community like ours, a bottle of milk left unguarded on a doorstep wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.

  These days, Harry walked around with his float, and people came out to buy. It was convenient, as we were some way from the nearest shops, and we could always be sure we were getting fresh milk. However mad Maggie might have been, it wasn’t like her to miss her milk ration. Thinking she might have slept in, or perhaps have fallen ill with no one to look after her, Harry knocked on her door and called her name. When he heard no answer, he told me, he made a tentative try at the handle and found that the door was unlocked.

  There she lay on her living-room floor in a pool of dried blood dotted with flies. Poor Harry lost his breakfast before he could dash outside for air.

  Why Harry came straight to me when he found Mad Maggie’s body I can’t say. We were friends of a kind, I suppose, of much the same age, and we occasionally passed a pleasurable evening together playing dominoes and drinking watery beer in the Prince Albert. Other than that, we didn’t have a lot in common: I was a schoolteacher—English and history—and Harry had left school at fourteen; Harry had missed the first war through a heart ailment, whereas I had been gassed at Ypres in 1917; I was a bachelor, and Harry was married with a stepson, Thomas, who had just come back home on convalescent leave after being severely wounded during the Dunkirk evacuation. Thomas also happened to be my godson, which I suppose was the main thing Harry and I had in common.

  Perhaps Harry also came to me because I was a Special Constable. I know it sounds impressive, but it isn’t really. The services were so mixed up that you’d have the police putting out fires, the Home Guard doing police work, and anyone with two arms carrying the stretchers. A Special Constable was simply a part-time policeman, without any real qualifications for the job except his willingness to take it on. The rest of the time I taught what few pupils remained at Silverhill Grammar School.

  As it turned out, I was glad that Harry did call on me because it gave me a stake in the matter. The regular police were far more concerned with lighting offenses and the black market than they were with their regular duties, and one thing nobody had time to do in the war was investigate the murder of a mad, mysterious, cantankerous old woman.

  Nobody except me, that is.

  Though my position didn’t grant me any special powers, I pride myself on being an intelligent and perceptive sort of fellow, not to mention nosy, and it wasn’t the first time I’d done a spot of detective work on the side. But first, let me tell you a little about Mad Maggie . . .

  * * *

  I say old woman, but Maggie was probably only in her midforties, about the same age as me, when she was killed. Everyone just called her old; it seemed to go with mad. With a certain kind of woman, it’s not so much a matter of years, anyway, but of demeanor, and Maggie’s demeanor was old.

  Take the clothes she wore, for a start: most women were trying to look like one of the popular film stars like Vivien Leigh or Deanna Durbin, with her bolero dresses, but even
for a woman of her age, Maggie wore clothes that could best be described as old-fashioned, even antique: high, buttoned boots, long dresses with high collars, ground-sweeping cloaks, and broad-brimmed hats with feathers.

  Needless to say, the local kids—at least those whose parents hadn’t packed them off to the countryside already—used to follow her down the street in gangs and chant, “Mad Maggie, Mad Maggie, she’s so mad, her brain’s all claggy . . .” Children can be so cruel. Most of the time she ignored them, or seemed oblivious to their taunts, but once in a while she wheeled on them, eyes blazing, and started waving her arms around and yelling curses, usually in French. The children would squeal with exaggerated horror, then turn tail and run away.

  Maggie never had any visitors; none of us had ever been inside her house; nobody in the community even knew what her real name was, where she had come from, or how she had got to be the way she was. We simply accepted her. There were rumors of course. Some gossipmongers had it that she was an heiress cut off by her family because she went mad; others said she had never recovered from a tragic love affair; still others said she was a rich eccentric and kept thousands of pounds stuffed in her mattress.

  Whoever and whatever Mad Maggie was, she managed to take care of life’s minutiae somehow; she paid her rent, she bought newspapers, and she handled her ration coupons just like the rest of us. She also kept herself clean, despite the restriction to only five inches of bathwater. Perhaps her eccentricity was just an act, then, calculated to put people off befriending her for some reason? Perhaps she was shy or antisocial? All in all, she was known as Mad Maggie only because she never talked to anyone except herself, because of the old clothes she wore, because of her strange outbursts in French, and because, as everyone knew, she never went to the shelters during air raids, but would either stay indoors alone or walk the blacked-out streets muttering and arguing with herself, waving her arms at the skies as if inviting the bombs to come and get her.