The Search for Joseph Tully

by William H Hallahan

  So be it. By bell. And by Book. And by candle.

  Ex auctoritate Dei omnipctentis, Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, et sanctorum canonum, sanctaeque et in-temertate Virginis Dei genetricis Mariae, atque omnium coelestium virtutum, angelorum, archangelorum, thro-norum, dominationum, potestatum, cherubin ac seraphin, et sanctorum patriarcharum, prophetarum, et omnium apostolorum et evangelorum, et sanctorum innocentum, et sanctorum martyrum et sanctorum confesorum et sanctarumirginum, atque omnium simul sanctorum et elec-torum Dei— EXCOMMUNICAMUS ET ANATHEMATIZAMUS Albert Clabber

  Albert Clabber straightened the crucifix between the two bulls and, holding a trouser-cuff bicycle clip in his hand, surveyed the barrack neatness of his apartment. He then left.

  3

  Apartment 3C

  Oswaldo Goulart’s cat sinuated lithely along the length of a long trestle table amidst a profusion of potted plants and stepped onto the windowsill. She sat down there by the warmth of the apartment radiator. Her feral golden eyes watched a sparrow that sat on a telephone wire in the freezing air just outside the windowpanes, deftly balancing itself as the wind turned its feathers.

  Oswaldo Goulart sat at his taboret, washing his art brushes in a basin of brush cleaner and watching his cat.

  The cat mewed at the unreachable bird.

  Albert Clabber appeared in the street below, and Goulart leaned closely to the window to watch him. Bulky in his heavy, hooded parka, he sat on his bicycle and pulled on a pair of large leather mittens. Then he pedaled away, chased by a cloud of red brickdust.

  “Where you going so early?” murmured Goulart. “Scurry, scurry, scurry.” Clabber rode along a side of the great quadrangle of leveled real estate. More clouds of dirt and dust were driven across the empty expanse by the bone-chilling wind. Clabber cycled past the tractor-mounted crawler that was being readied for another day of wall smashing.

  Another day of destruction—of decapitated buildings, of smashed masonry, brickdust, showers of laths, plaster, splintered wood, shattered glass, the dull thunder of collapsed walls, and the ponderous parade of dump trucks carting off the rubble to fill in Jamaica Bay, which was slowly disappearing under garbage and trash at the other end of Brooklyn.

  On the far side of the quadrangle, rows of vacant houses stood. Once stuffed with warmth, with the fury and cavalcade of the living, the buildings lay like abandoned honeycombs, broken into, emptied, the heat of life dissipated.

  A sudden cloud of brickdust blew across the iron-frozen quadrangle. The bitter wind. A whining winter wind. A sentinel, it was posted out there to warn anything with the heat of life in it away from those frozen dead walls.

  Man’s insatiable appetite for land. Land.

  The cat observed the stream of steam that jetted from the gurgling electric coffeepot on the windowsill. She observed how the steam was melting the skin of ice on the lower window-pane. Then she lost interest. She began to clean herself. With licking tongue and nodding, affirmative head. Lick lick lick. Yes yes yes.

  Clabber rode past the comer store with its crazy sign, “Waite’s Groceries,” and was gone.

  Goulart studied the sign. “Waite’s. Wait. Waiting.” He tried, again, yet again, to find that picture that skulked in the shadows of his mind. When he captured it clearly in his mind’s eye, he would sketch it. But when? Waite, wait, waiting. Goulart meditated on the sign.

  4

  “Who’s there?”

  “Me.”

  “Come on in, me.”

  Richardson opened the door. “Hullo.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Come on in.” Goulart hastily put away his sketches.

  Richardson sniffed the odor of fresh coffee. He crossed the room and looked down on the blank drawing board and at the brushes on the taboret. “Secret sketches of a new Russian missile site.”

  “You guessed it. You get a kiss on both cheeks. Take that crap off that chair and sit down.” Richardson hefted a large plant in its earthenware pot off the chair and set it carefully on the floor. He wiped the seat with his palm and sat down.

  Goulart looked at him. “You need some sun.”

  “You mean I look pale, eh?”

  “I mean you look pale. Here we are deep in February; it’s cold enough to freeze hell over six feet deep, and we’re a long long way from summer fun.” Goulart shook his head. “Hiding from the cold under our pile of rocks while that tin demon out there goes bash bash bash on perfectly sound brick buildings. We are all gone mad. What can I do for you besides give you a cup of coffee? Aren’t you going to go to work today?”

  “What makes you think I’m not, nosy?”

  Goulart shrugged eloquently. “You’ve got that look—that I’m-not-going-to-go-to-the-goddamn-office look. You find an apartment yet?”

  “No.”

  “You’d better, buddy. They’re going to have this building down in jig time.” Goulart poured a mug of coffee and handed it to Richardson.

  *Teah, yeah. How about you?”

  “Don’t ask me. What the hell am I going to do? Look at this stuff. Cartons piled to the ceiling. Filing cabinets. Ten thousand plants. But worst of all, where am I going to find a place with this light? I could look forever and not find a place with a light like that.” He pointed at the skyline directly over his drawing board. He looked at Richardson. “Something bothering you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what’s bothering you? Look at your hand. You cold?” “Yeah. Cold.”

  “Come on, come on, Petey. You worried about something?” “Nah.”

  “Well, what the hell is it?”

  “How can you tell something’s wrong?”

  “I smell it. You’ve had bad news?”

  “No no. I-ah-sheesh. If I told you, you’d have me locked up.” “Locked up? What do you mean—locked up?”

  “Ah. Nothing. I had a bad dream.”

  “What are you talking about? A bad dream.”

  Richardson bowed his head and held it in the palm of his hand. He sighed. “I wouldn’t tell this to anyone but you.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Get to it. I can’t stand suspense.”

  “Maybe I’m going crackers.”

  “You said that. Talk.”

  “I woke up this morning around four.”

  “Yeah. And?”

  “I was absolutely sure there was someone in my apartment. It sounded like someone was in my living room, standing there in the dark swinging a golf club.”

  “A golf club! In the middle of the night in your living room?” “Yeah” Goulart leaned back in his chair and crossed his huge arms. “So, in the name of sweet bleeding Jesus, go on.” “That’s it. I prowled around, opening closets and cabinets and—nothing.” “Nothing?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Zero. Zilch. But I couldn’t calm down. Still can’t. Look.” Richardson held forth his trembling hands. “Now, I never shook like this before in my whole life. But I’m sure someone’s going to kill me.”

  “What?” Goulart sat up. “What did you say?”

  “I said someone is going to kill me!”

  Goulart exhaled. He turned his head and gazed out at Waite’s grocery store. “Is this the first time you’ve felt it?”

  “Yes. And I hope to God I never feel it again.”

  “Do you still feel it?”

  “Yeah. A little. It comes in waves. It’s like—it’s like panic. You just want to run.” Richardson sighed deeply. “I’ve even begun to think my mind’s going.”

  Goulart punched Richardson’s shoulder lightly. “Easy does it, mate. Could be something you ate or just a bad nightmare.” Richardson hesitated. “I—ah. Well, hummmm. Tell you what. The best way I can answer that is to say I don’t know whether I know.”

  Goulart nodded.

  “You understand that?” asked Richardson. “Really?” Goulart nodded solemnly.

  “Maybe you dreamed the whole thing, Pete.”

  “No. Nope. Not a bit of it. I was asleep. And the sound woke me. Wide awa
ke. My eyes were open in an instant. I didn’t dream that sound.”

  “Is a puzzlement.”

  “Yeah,” said Richardson. “What’s even more puzzling is— why would anyone want to kill me?” Goulart’s cat mewed at the bird, twitched her furry tail and reached for the plump featherball. The claws of her slow paw raked down the windowpane in vain.

  5

  Apartment 4B

  He tapped on Abigail Withers’s apartment door.

  Mrs. Withers opened it promptly. “Right on time! Oh, it’s a bitter bitter cold day out there. They’re forecasting snow.”

  Richardson shut the door and patted Johnny the terrier on the head. “Great,” he said unenthusiastically. He watched Mrs. Withers’s portly figure waddle into the kitchen.

  “We could get snowbound,” said Mrs. Withers.

  Richardson made a sour face. “Not me. The last thing I want is to be snowbound here.” “Oh?” Mrs. Withers whispered numbers to herself as she counted out scoops of coffee into the pot.

  “Let them keep the snow in the mountains.”

  Mrs. Withers poured hot water into the coffeepot. “Do you hear that machine out there? Banging and whacking. They’re in a terrible rush to get the rest of those buildings down. Oh, I do so hate to move—and this poor beautiful building. I think they ought to make the judge come over here and walk through it. It’s a work of art. It makes my skin crawl to think of that monstrous ball smashing those beautiful slabs of Carrara marble—and that rose brick façade. One of the workmen told me that it’s a lost art in this country, that kind of brickwork.”

  Richardson looked out at the cold morning. “It looks so cold out there I’m afraid to go to work.” “Have you found an apartment yet, Peter?”

  “Oh.” He brushed the subject away.

  “I know. I.know. But they’ll have this poor beautiful building down in a matter of weeks. You’ll have to find a new place, Peter. Very soon now.”

  “You talk like Goulart.”

  “Well, he’s right.” She touched her lips with her fingertips in sudden fear. “I’m going to miss him terribly. When everyone’s gone to work, he’s the only other person in the whole building.” Her eyes began to fill. “I don’t know what I’ll do without the both of you.”

  “Ah ah ah. Enough enough enough, Abby. We’ll all probably end up within three blocks of each other.” She shook her head. “It’ll never be the same.” She nodded knowingly at him. “I’ve got seventy-two years of experience to prove it. Nothing lasts long. Except death.” “Ah ah ah, Abby. Bright thoughts.”

  “Yes. Bright thoughts.”

  “Let’s talk about our party.”

  “Party. Yes. We’ll have a wonderful party. I told Griselda to wear her new pants suit and bring her deck of tarot cards.”

  “Does she really tell fortunes with those cards, Abby? Guy told me he saw her act in a Manhattan nightclub and everyone was so busy looking at her figure that she could have palmed the whole deck.”

  “Oh, it’ll be very entertaining. She’s very good at it.” Mrs. Withers looked at him. “Well, you needn’t be concerned. It’s a very good act. She makes very good money at it.”

  “Okay, okay. As far as I’m concerned, she can do her act without the cards. I’d watch her even if all she did was stand in a comer and hiccup.”

  “She’d do it beautifully, if she did.”

  “Yes. The Carsons will be there, won’t they?”

  “Oh yes. They found an apartment. And Professor Abernathy and Ruth have signed a three-year lease on their apartment. And Mr. Clabber found a place near the library and Grand Army Plaza.”

  She abruptly took his hand. “Are you cold, Peter?”

  “No.” He withdrew his hand.

  ‘‘You’re right. Your hand’s hot. Why is it trembling?” Richardson paused. “Let’s say I saw a ghost.” “Don’t joke about such things.”

  “Maybe I’m not joking.”

  She searched his eyes for a moment, then turned away. “Oh, by the way, Mr. Clabber asked me if he could bring a friend of his. I hope you don’t mind—I said yes.”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s a woman.”

  “I’d like to see the kind of woman Clabber’d bring. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. She’s a witch.” “How did you know?”

  “Know?”

  “He’s bringing Mrs. Quist.”

  “Who’s Mrs. Quist?”

  “But I thought you knew. Anna Quist is a clairvoyant. She calls herself a white witch.” “Oh. It was weird for me to guess that, wasn’t it? Does she ride a broom?”

  “No. Her specialty is scry.”

  “Scry?”

  “Crystal-ball gazing.”

  “Oh. Scry.” He watched her narrowly with a faint smile. “Abby, do you believe that stuff?”

  “Well—” She avoided his eyes. “I’m too old to laugh at anything.”

  “Have you ever been to a—whatchamacallit—séance?”

  “Oh, yes. Several times.”

  “Ever see anyone do any scrying?”

  “No.” She smirked slyly at him. “Don’t laugh at what you don’t understand. We have a little mystery going on right across the way that may be supernatural.”

  “What? Where?”

  Mrs. Withers looked out of the window across the quadrangle. The crane stood there, dauntless, a threatening gladiator in the arena, brandishing its club-like broom. The crane began to pivot. The boom with its pendulous ball swung in an arc. The ball struck the building. The whole upper corner of the building toppled, fell four stories, and burst open on the ground. Shattered bricks scattered across the barricaded roadway.

  Mrs. Withers squinted, peering at it. “God. How—how-how remorseless that machine is. It’s like—cancer! Yes, it’s like cancer!” She pressed her soft white knuckles to her lips as her eyes filled. “You know, Peter, sometimes I feel like it’s killing me, too.”

  Richardson put an arm around Mrs. Withers’s shoulders. “Don’t think about it, Abby. You’ll move out soon and that will be the end of it. Tell me about your supernatural mystery.” “Oh yes. Of course. Here. Let’s take the coffee to the table.” Her hands fluttered about her face as she inventoried the table —cream, sugar, rolls, linen napkins, silver utensils, juice, butter. Abruptly she snatched open the refrigerator. She pulled out a squat jar of strawberry preserves. “I remembered,” she said, smiling. “After breakfast take the jar with you. I’ll never eat them.”

  They sat down to coffee. “I’m not being coy,” continued Mrs. Withers. “After all this buildup, what I have to say will seem unimportant.”

  “Something new has turned up?” asked Richardson.

  “Well. More lights.”

  “More?”

  “Yes. The police were over there again last night.”

  Richardson nodded. “You called them?” He watched Mrs. Withers lean forward to the window and point.

  “There. Right in the corner. Waite’s grocery store. Lights going from room to room in that empty building. I sat up half the night with my opera glasses. The police came twice. But they’re not very interested. Their only concern is to keep the bums out of there so they don’t start fires.”

  “Why not? The buildings are going to come down anyway. Fire’s quicker.”

  “Oh. Fires are very dangerous. Remember what happened in Chicago with the cow. Oh no. The police would never allow fires. But it isn’t bums with those lights.”

  “Oh.” Richardson leaned forward. “What is it?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  “Oh.”

  “How long is it now? Two weeks. Three weeks. All kinds of people have seen lights there. All the police do is run through the buildings. If they don’t find anyone, they leave, and that’s the end of it.” Mrs. Withers took a sip of coffee. “I’ll tell you those lights mean something ominous.”

  Richardson tried to smile at her. He failed.

  6

  Peter Richardson descended the stairs of
the condemned apartment house, crossed the vestibule and opened the front door. Freezing, sailing air wrapped around him. He put his head down for the paralyzing walk to the subway three blocks away.

  Abruptly, in the middle of the sidewalk, he stopped.

  With the taste of Abby Withers’s coffee in his mouth, the grip of the winter wind around his ankles, a luncheon appointment on his mind, an anticipation of seeing Griselda Vander-meer in her new pants suit, he was suddenly struck with an irrefutable fact; beyond argument: Someone was going to kill him.

  7

  At the top of the brownstone steps stood two gleaming old glass doors that rocked faintly in the wind. Inside, a tiled vestibule with a large fern in a huge ceramic crock.

  A handsome middle-aged woman opened the inner door and studied him and his bags briefly. She opened the outer door. “Yes?”

  “Good morning. My name’s Willow. Matthew Willow. Is Mrs. Gundisun about?” “Come in. I’m Mrs. Gundisun.” She studied his face and clothes as he stepped past her into the vestibule. She followed him through the doorway to the hallway. It was wide and warm, paneled in handsome old walnut and thickly carpeted. Mrs. Gundisun shut the door and padded up to him on the heavy carpeting. A pendulum clock ticked slowly in the orderly si- lence. “I have your apartment all ready, Mr. Willow,” she said. “Four to six weeks, you said.”

  “Yes. That’s right.” He met her eyes and found something merry lurking there.

  “Follow me, then, Mr. Willow.”

  She mounted the stairs, and Willow followed. He realized that she had an excellent figure and walked with considerable grace.

  “Did you fly in from England, Mr. Willow?”

  “Yes. BOAC Flight 716 from London.”

  She stopped at an ornate walnut door on the second floor. She opened it with a key. The apartment beyond it was a comfortably furnished large room with an unobstructed view of New York Harbor. Willow put his bags down and walked over to the two large windows. Harbor traffic moved over the surface of the wind-driven bay waters. Smoke streamed westward from many chimneys and stacks. Directly below him and far down were the Brooklyn docks. Freighters were loading and unloading along all the piers in view.