by Ed McBain
The city outside was unwinding at day’s end, dusk softening her pace, slowing her step. Kling sat in an armchair near the window, watching the sky turn blood-red and then purple and then deepening to a grape-stained silky blackness. The apartment was very still.
Somewhere out there in that city of ten million people, there was a man named Walter Damascus and he had killed Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Leyden, had killed them brutally and viciously, pumping two shotgun blasts into each of their faces.
Kling wanted very much to go to bed with Cindy Forrest.
He did not move when he heard her key in the latch. He sat in the dark with a smile on his face, and then suddenly realized he might frighten her, and moved belatedly to turn on the table lamp. He was too late, she saw or sensed movement in the darkness. He heard her gasp, and immediately said, “It’s me, Cind.”
“Wow, you scared hell out of me,” she said, and turned on the foyer light. “What are you doing here so early? You said—”
“I felt like coming over,” Kling said, and smiled.
“Yeah?”
“Mmm.”
She put her bag down on the hall table, wiggled out of her pumps, and came into the living room.
“Don’t you want a light?” she asked.
“No, it’s all right.”
“Pretty out there.”
“Mmm.”
“I love that tower. See it there?”
“Yes.”
She stared through the window a moment longer, bent to kiss him fleetingly, and then said, “Make yourself a drink, why don’t you?”
“You want one, too?”
“Yes. I’m exhausted,” Cindy said, and sighed, and padded softly into the bathroom. He heard the water running. He rose, turned on the lamp, and then went to where she kept her liquor in a drop-leaf desk. She was out of bourbon.
“No bourbon,” he said.
“What?”
“No bourbon. You’re out of bourbon,” he shouted.
“Oh, okay, I’ll have a little scotch.”
“What?” he shouted.
“Scotch,” Cindy shouted. “A little scotch.”
“Okay.”
“What?”
“I said okay.”
“Okay,” she said.
He smiled and carried the scotch bottle into the small kitchenette. He took two short glasses down from the cabinet, poured a liberal hooker into each glass, and then nearly broke his wrist trying to dislodge the ice-cube tray from the freezer compartment. He finally chipped the accumulated frost away with a butter knife, dropped two cubes into each glass, and then carried the drinks into the bedroom. Cindy was standing at the closet in half-slip and bra, reaching for a robe. With her back to him, she said, “I think I know what I’m going to write for my thesis, Bert.”
“What’s that?” he said. “Here’s your drink.”
“Thank you,” she said. Turning, she accepted the drink and tossed her robe onto the bed. She took a long sip, said, “Ahhh,” put the glass on the dresser, and then said, “I’ll be getting my master’s next June, you know. It’s time I began thinking about that doctorate.”
“Um-huh,” Kling said.
“You know what I’d like to do the thesis on?” she asked, and reached behind her to unclasp her bra.
“No, what?”
“The Detective as Voyeur,” she said.
He thought she was kidding, of course, because as she said the words her breasts simultaneously came free of the restraining bra, and he was, in that moment, very much the detective as voyeur. But she stepped out of her slip and panties without so much as cracking a smile, and then went to the bed to pick up the robe and put it on. As she was belting it, she said, “What do you think?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, looking at him with a somewhat puzzled expression. “Of course I’m serious. Why would I joke about something as important as my thesis?”
“Well, I don’t know, I just thought—”
“Of course I’m serious,” she repeated, more strongly this time. She was frowning as she picked up her drink again. “Why? Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”
“I don’t know what you have in mind,” Kling said. “You gave me the title, but—”
“Well, I don’t know if that’d be the exact title,” Cindy said, annoyed. She sipped some more scotch and then said, “Let’s go into the living room, huh?”
“Why don’t we stay in here a while?” Kling said.
Cindy looked at him. He shrugged and then tried a smile.
“I’m very tired,” she said at last. “I’ve had a lousy day, and I think I’m about to get my period, and I don’t—”
“All the more reason to—”
“No, come on,” she said, and walked out of the bedroom. Kling watched her as she went. He kept watching the empty doorframe long after she was out of the room. He took a swallow of his scotch, set his jaw, and followed her into the living room. She was sitting by the window, gazing out at the distant buildings, her bare feet propped on a hassock. “I think it’s a good idea,” she said, without turning to look at him.
“Which one?” he asked.
“My thesis,” she said testily. “Bert, can we possibly get our minds off—”
“Our minds?”
“Your mind,” she corrected.
“Sure,” he said.
“It isn’t that I don’t love you—”
“Sure.”
“Or even that I don’t want you—”
“Sure.”
“It’s just that at this particular moment I don’t feel like making love. I feel more like crying, if you’d like to know.”
“Why?”
“I told you. I’m about to get my period. I always feel very depressed a day or two before.”
“Okay,” he said.
“And also, I’ve got my mind on this damn thesis.”
“Which you don’t have to begin work on until next June.”
“No, not next June. I’ll be getting my master’s next June. I won’t start on the doctorate till September. Anyway, what difference does it make, would you mind telling me? I have to start thinking about it sometime, don’t I?”
“Yes, but—”
“I don’t know what’s the matter with you today, Bert.”
“It’s my day off,” he said.
“Well, that’s a non sequitur if ever I heard one. And anyway, it hasn’t been my day off. I went to work at nine o’clock this morning, and I interviewed twenty-four people, and I’m tired and irritable and about to get—”
“Yes, you told me.”
“All right, so why are you picking on me?”
“Cindy,” he said, “maybe I’d better go home.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to argue with you.”
“Then go home if you want to,” she said.
“All right, I will.”
“No, don’t,” she said.
“Cindy—”
“Oh, do what you want to do,” she said, “I don’t care.”
“Cindy, I love you very much,” he said. “Now cut it out!”
“Then why don’t you want to hear about my thesis?”
“I do want to hear about your thesis.”
“No, all you want to do is make love.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, except I don’t feel like it right now.”
“Okay.”
“And you don’t have to sound so damn offended, either.”
“I’m not offended.”
“And you could at least express a tiny bit of interest in my thesis. I mean, Bert, you can at least ask what it’s going to be about.”
“What’s it going to b
e about?” he asked.
“Go to hell, I don’t feel like telling you now.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Fine,” she said.
They were both silent.
“Cindy,” he said at last, “I don’t even know you when you’re like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like a bitch.”
“That’s too bad, but a bitch is also part of me, I’m awfully sorry. If you love me, you have to love the bitch part, too.”
“No, I don’t have to love the bitch part,” Kling said.
“Well, don’t, I don’t care.”
“What’s your thesis going to be about?”
“What difference does it make to you?”
“Good night, Cindy,” he said, “I’m going home.”
“That’s right, leave me alone when I’m feeling miserable.”
“Cindy—”
“It’s about you, you know, it was only inspired by you, you know. So go ahead and leave, what difference does it make that I love you so much and think about you day and night and even plan writing my goddamn thesis about you? Go ahead, go home, what do I care?”
“Oh, boy,” he said.
“Sure, oh boy.”
“Tell me about your thesis.”
“Do you really want to hear it?”
“Yes.”
“Well…,” Cindy said, “I got the idea from Blow-Up.”
“Mmm?”
“The photographs in Blow-Up, you know?”
“Mmm?”
“Do you remember the part of the film where he’s enlarging the black-and-white photographs, making them bigger and bigger in an attempt to figure out what happened?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, it seemed to me that this entire experience was suggestive of the infantile glimpse of the primal scene.”
“The what?”
“The primal scene,” Cindy said. “The mother and father having intercourse.”
“If you’re going to start talking sexy,” Kling said, “I really am going home.”
“I’m very serious about this, so—”
“I’m sorry, go ahead.”
“The act of love is rarely understood by the child,” Cindy said. “He may witness it again and again, but still remain confused about what’s actually happening. The photographer in the film, you’ll remember, took a great many pictures of the couple embracing and kissing in the park, do you remember that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Which might possibly relate to the repetitive witnessing of the primal scene. The woman is young and beautiful, you remember, she was played by Vanessa Redgrave, which is how a small boy would think of his mother.”
“He would think of his mother as Vanessa Redgrave?”
“No, as young and beautiful. Bert, I swear to God, if you—”
“All right, I’m sorry, really. Go on.”
“I’m quite serious, you know,” Cindy said, and took a cigarette from the inlaid box on the table beside the chair. Kling lighted it for her. “Thank you,” she said, and blew out a stream of smoke. “Where was I?” she asked.
“The young and beautiful mother.”
“Right, which is exactly how a small boy thinks of his mother, as young and beautiful, as the girl he wants to marry. You’ve heard little boys say they want to marry their mothers, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Kling said, “I have.”
“All right, the girl in these necking-in-the-park scenes is Vanessa Redgrave, very young, very beautiful. The man, however, is an older man, he’s got gray hair, he’s obviously middle-aged. In fact, Antonioni even inserts some dialogue to that effect, I forget exactly what it was, I think the photographer says something like ‘A bit over the hill, isn’t he?’ Something like that, that’s the sense of it, anyway. That this man, her lover, is a much older man. Do you understand?”
“Yes. You’re saying he’s a father figure.”
“Yes. Which means that those scenes in the park, when the photographer is taking pictures of the lovers, could be construed as a small boy watching his mother and his father making love.”
“All right.”
“Which the photographer doesn’t quite understand. He’s witnessing the primal scene, but he doesn’t know what it’s really all about. So he takes his pictures home and begins enlarging them, the way a child might enlarge upon vivid memories in an attempt to understand them. But the longer he studies the enlarged pictures, the more confused he becomes, until finally he sees what might be a pistol in one of the blow-ups. A pistol, Bert.”
“Yes, a pistol,” he said.
“I don’t have to tell you that the pistol is a fixed psychological symbol.”
“For what?”
“For what do you think?” Cindy asked.
“Oh,” Kling said.
“Yes. And then, to further underscore the Oedipal situation Antonioni has his photographer discover that the older man is dead, he has been killed—which is what every small boy wishes would happen to his father. So that he can have the mother all to himself, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, so that’s what started me thinking about the detective as a voyeur. Because, you remember, there was a great deal of suspense in that part of the movie, the part where he’s blowing up the photographs. It’s really a mystery he’s working on—and he, in a very real sense, is a detective, isn’t he?”
“Well, I suppose so.”
“Well, of course he is, Bert. The mystery element gets stronger and stronger as he continues with the investigation. And then, of course, we see an actual corpse. I mean, there’s no question but that a murder has been committed. Antonioni leaves it there because he’s more interested—”
“Leaves what? The corpse?”
“No, not the corpse. Well yes, he does leave the corpse there, too, as a matter of fact, but I was referring to the mystery element, I meant…” She suddenly looked at him suspiciously. “Are you putting me on again?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, and smiled.
“Well, don’t be such a wise guy,” she said, and returned the smile, which he thought was at least somewhat encouraging. “What I meant was that Antonioni doesn’t pursue the mystery once it’s served his purpose. He’s doing a film about illusion and reality and alienation and all, so he’s not interested in who done it or why it was done or any of that crap.”
“Okay,” Kling said. “But I still don’t see—”
“Well, it occurred to me that perhaps police investigation is similarly linked to the primitive and infantile desire to understand the primal scene.”
“Boy, that’s really reaching, Cindy. How do you get—”
“Well, hold it a minute, will you?”
“Okay, let me hear.”
“Got you hooked, huh?” she said, and smiled again, this time very encouragingly, he thought.
“Go on,” he said.
“The police officer…the detective—”
“Yes?”
“…is privileged to see the uncensored results of violence, which is what the child imagines lovemaking to be. He can think his father is hurting his mother, you know, he can think her moaning is an expression of pain, he can think they’re fighting. In any event, he’ll often explain it to himself that way because he has neither the experience nor the knowledge to understand it in any other way. He doesn’t know what they’re doing, Bert. It’s completely beyond his ken. He knows that he’s stimulated by it, yes, but he doesn’t know why.”
“If you think looking at a guy who’s been hit with a meat ax is stimulating—”
“No, that’s not my point. I’m not trying to make any such analogy, although I do think there’s some truth to it.”
“What d
o you mean?”
“Well, violence is stimulating. Even the results of violence are stimulating.”
“The results of violence caused me to throw up last Saturday morning,” Kling said.
“That’s stimulation of a sort, isn’t it? But don’t get me away from my point.”
“What is your point?”
“My point is—”
“I don’t think I’m going to like it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you said I inspired it.”
“Antonioni inspired it.”
“You said I did.”
“Not the initial impetus. Later, I connected it with you, which is only natural because there was a homicide involved, and because I’m madly in love with you and very interested in your work. All right?”
“Well, I like it a little better now, I must admit.”
“You haven’t even heard it yet.”
“I’m waiting, I’m waiting.”
“Okay. We start with a man—the detective—viewing the results of violence and guessing at what might have happened, right?”
“Well, there’s not much guesswork involved when you see two bullet holes in a guy’s head. I mean, you can just possibly figure out the violent act was a shooting, you know what I mean?”
“Yes, that’s obvious, but the thing you don’t know is who did the shooting, or what the circumstances of the shooting were, and so on. You never know what really happened until you catch whoever did it, am I right?”
“No, you’re wrong. We usually know plenty before we make an arrest. Otherwise, we don’t make it. When we charge somebody, we like to think it’ll stick.”
“But on what do you base your arrest?”
“On the facts. There’re a lot of locked closets in criminal investigation. We open all the doors and look for skeletons.”
“Exactly!” Cindy said triumphantly. “You search for detail. You examine each and every tiny segment of the picture in an attempt to find a clue that will make the entire picture more meaningful, just as the photographer did in Blow-Up. And very often your investigation uncovers material that’s even more difficult to understand. It only becomes clear later on, the way sexual intercourse eventually becomes clear to the child when he reaches adulthood. He can then say to himself, ‘Oh, so that’s what they were doing in there, they were screwing in there.’ ”