by John Farris
He returned his attention to the person in the chair, giving him a patient stare that wasn’t unfriendly but a hell of a long way from being kind. One of Gulliver’s eyebrows was slightly raised, which meant he was out of sorts.
When the guy in the chair started to fidget, Gulliver said, in a gentle tone that made me look at him sharply, “Listen, Charley, we’ve had a lot of trouble with you, haven’t we?”
Charley mumbled something apologetic.
“I’ve tried to give you every break,” Gulliver went on. “I know how it is with you and the booze. Now, it doesn’t make a bit of difference to me if you drink, just so you don’t do it where we finally have to come along and pick you up because somebody complains. How many times have you been in this year? Three, isn’t it?”
Charley nodded. He was a tall bony man with thick black hair, sideburns, and two days’ beard. His face had the shapeless vein-burst look of a violent drinker. He wore a pair of old tennis shoes without socks, light blue denims smeared with tar that hadn’t washed out. His sport shirt was yellow, with collar stitching in blue, and it looked new.
“Now what have I done for you, Charley?” Gulliver said. “I gave you a chance to get out of that jail, to work out in the open for the city, cutting weeds or something, out in the fresh air where you could get a little sun and build up your strength instead of sitting around the jail all day gathering stink. I even put you on your honor that you’d work, and I didn’t have somebody around all the time watching to see that you did. What do you do for me? You run off and you’re gone for three days. It makes me look bad, Charley.”
“I wanted to see my sister. I ain’t seen my sister in two years,” the man sniffed.
“Goddam,” Gulliver said in exasperation. “It’s all right with me if you want to see your sister. But it’s not all right with me when you run off like that. I ought to give you another fourteen days. I don’t know what the hell else to do with you.”
“Aw,” Charley said.
“What did your sister think about you?” Gulliver said.
The man lowered his head. “Aw, she wants me to come stay with her. She wants to get me off the booze. She says I ought to talk with the preacher there.”
Gulliver rubbed his jaw. “Hot tiddy,” he said bleakly. Then he said, “I don’t know if you’re too late for religion or not, Charley. All I know is I don’t want to smell you drunk in my town again. I’ll make a little bargain with you. I’ll send you back to the jail for the six days you got left. I won’t give you no more time. But when you’ve served out your sentence this time I want you to get out of my town and stay out. You got that? Never set foot in my town again.”
He got up from behind the desk and came around to the man. Charley stood up. He was about a head taller than Gulliver, looked fifty pounds lighter.
“Deal, Charley?” Gulliver said with a smile, holding out his hand.
Charley managed a nervous smile and took Gulliver’s hand. Gulliver’s face changed. With a powerful jerk he brought the man stumbling closer, face slack with surprise and fear. Gulliver’s left hand was useless. He brought his left arm up and twisted his body, so that his elbow smashed across Charley’s mouth, snapping his head back.
Charley sagged, still held by Gulliver’s hard right hand. Gulliver released his grip and Charley collapsed to the floor, gagging, blood from his mouth and broken lips puddling the floor. He made a helpless noise, resting on his elbows and knees.
He ducked his head so he could finger his damaged mouth without upsetting his balance. Then he started to get up, slowly. Gulliver kicked him in the knee and Charley fell again, crawled into a corner near me and sat up, holding his fingers at his chin so blood wouldn’t drip on his new shirt. His eyes were sullen.
“Wait till I tell you to get up, next time,” Gulliver admonished. He walked over and kneeled beside Charley. “Your mouth is all bloody,” he said, shaking his head solicitously. He grasped the man’s new shirt and ripped it apart, buttons tearing from the cloth.
“Stop,” Charley said weakly. “Stop tearing my new shirt.”
Gulliver ripped it again, tearing a piece loose with which he dabbed at blood on the man’s lips.
Unexpectedly, Charley began to cry. He stopped trying to brush Gulliver’s hands away and just cried.
“My sister gave it to me,” he said, looking at the tom shirt. He said it over and over, brokenly, crying harder every time.
Gulliver stood and tossed the blood-smeared piece of shirt into Charley’s lap. “Get out of here,” he said without interest. “Go wait on the bench outside until somebody comes to take you over to the jail.”
Clenching the piece of shirt in his fist, Charley got up awkwardly, using the wall at his back for support, rubbing at his eyes with his knuckles. There were blood trickles on his chin and his lips were already swelling badly. His hairy round belly showed through the gap in his shirt. He lurched toward the door and got his hand on the knob. He turned with hate in his eyes and looked at Gulliver.
“You dirty ——,” he said. “You dirty ——.”
Gulliver laughed.
The man edged the door open and went outside.
Gulliver turned to his desk and took a cigar. He peeled away the celophane and looked at me. He seemed vaguely pleased.
Something in my face made half his mouth tilt in a puzzled smile. “You don’t like it, do you?” he said.
“No. I don’t like it.”
He shrugged. “Well, what did you want me to do? Hold hands with him?”
Gulliver looked moodily at me. He turned and went to the window, adjusted the blinds so he could see out. Gulliver’s office has air-conditioning, paid for by himself. He got the cigar going, came back to his desk. He was looking at the bad hand.
“I’ve been trying for so damn many years,” he said, “to make you see that there is only one way to handle guys like that. You got to show them right off that they can’t get away with a damn thing and if they try they get their nuts nailed to the deck.”
He looked up, his face grim. He held the hand up to me, the wrist stiff, last two fingers permanently fixed.
“Look, Bill! Look at it! How would you like to have something like this? I’m telling you, Bill, you can’t give them a break, not one lousy break, because if you do they’ll step on your face and laugh. You’ve got to be twice as tough as they are or you can’t survive.”
His good fist pounded the desk. “Bill, I’m telling you, I’m trying to tell you, what I know, what I’ve learned from experience. I’m trying to explain that you can be only one kind of cop and still keep your sanity. You’re . . . we’re garbage men, Bill, but the garbage is human and we’re up to our armpits in it every day.”
He put the cigar in his mouth and talked around it. “Now, Charley there doesn’t like me very much. But he’ll remember a lot better what I said to him. You can’t go around beating up on all the punks, of course. You got to know who’s ripe for it, who’ll remember a good punch in the guts the longest. It’s psychology.”
“Sure,” I said, without inflection.
Gulliver put the cigar in an ashtray and sucked at his teeth. “I’m going down to the lake for fishing this afternoon,” he said. “I want to get through around here. You got anything new on this Veilleux killing?”
“He was a guard at the same bank where Smithell worked,” I said. “Eight months after Smithell disappeared Veilleux quit his job. Nothing on him after that time. He probably had a lead nobody else picked up and was trailing Smithell. When he found him he tried to cut himself in on the bank money and got knifed for his efforts.”
“That’s the way I had it figured,” Gulliver said. “Where’s the rest of the money?”
“I don’t know. I think I know what happened to it, but I don’t know where it is.”
I explained carefully what I had found out, telling him the same things I had told Phil. He listened contemplatively, in a haze of cigar smoke, hardly moving at all, his eyes fixed
on the tip of the cigar in his right hand.
“Well,” he said, “that’s pretty good, Bill. Good job of thinking. Trouble is, it won’t wash.” He gave me the cheery eye, but his mouth was turned down at the corners. “Jimmy shot it full of holes by confessing.”
“Goddamn it,” I said, “how many times do I have to explain? Jimmy didn’t kill Smithell. I just spent five minutes telling you—”
Gulliver’s mad eyebrow jerked up sharply. “That kid said he killed Smithell. He told us how and why and what he did with the stuff he took and I got it all down in writing and he signed it. Here. You want to read it again? You want to refresh your memory—?” He tugged at a desk drawer.
“What’s the matter with you?” I said. “You can’t even make yourself believe it any more. You spent three days, five hours at a crack, working that kid over until his tongue was so thick he couldn’t say his own name and finally he signed that piece of fiction and now you think you’ve got a closed case. It wouldn’t be closed if Jimmy hadn’t gone off the deep end with his shirt around his neck. And it’s not going to be closed any more. We can’t help that poor little bastard but maybe we can help ourselves if we go back and pick up a cold trail and try to find the right—”
“Get out,” Gulliver said. He was trying to flex that wrist, and not doing very well at all.
“No. You’re going to listen—”
He lunged half out of the chair, was stopped by the desk. “Get out! I said it was closed. He did it. He said he did it, and I got it right here, to show you. What do you want, you want my job, you want to make me look bad so you can get my job? I been watching you. I could tell, you think you’re so goddam smart, figuring it all out, but you can’t make a lie out of what he said, he signed it, you’re not going to make me look bad!”
“You—if you’d—”
He put his hands on the edge of the desk, his face reddening, bulging with strain, cords thick in his neck. He heaved, and the desk toppled over.
“I told you to get out! Get out of here before I kill you!” He raised the damaged left hand. “It was two of them, in an alley, two like that Herne kid, and I was supposed to take it easy with them too, I guess, even when they did this to me. Oh, everybody was very sorry, but I just couldn’t stay with the department any more, because everybody knows a cop has to have two good hands and I was a damned cripple because those kids—”
“All right,” I said. “All right.”
He fell back into the chair. “Get out and don’t come back. You’re through. You’re suspended until you’ve had time to think it over and remember who you are working for around here. Get out before I break your lousy neck!”
“All right,” I said. My mouth was dry. I went to the door and tried to open it, my hand slippery on the knob. The knob wouldn’t turn correctly for some reason and my guts were tight as I waited for him to come after me. I could hear him breathing. That was all. I got the knob turned and went outside and shut the door quickly. I leaned against the wall and felt perspiration slide down my face.
Ramsey, the desk man, looked over his shoulder at me. “Something wrong in there?” he said.
“No,” I said. “Not really.” There was a sick taste in my mouth. “Things just sort of blew apart. Nothing’s really wrong, that I can’t fix. Just watch me. I’ll fix everything.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, cocking a worried eye at me.
I WAS DRUNK, DRUNK, DRUNK.
It was hot in the cell, my apartment.
There was the whiskey bottle, in my hand, and I had another drink and was happy to lie on the rug with sweat in my eyes. I didn’t have any clothes on.
I had to shut all the windows and pull the blinds so he couldn’t get in. But he got in anyway. He was there. In the mirror on the wall. I saw him sometimes, when I got up. Me. A looney. Boy oh boy. He was one. With hair in his face and that mask. Actually, I suppose, it wasn’t a mask. Just that little scar under his eyes and his eyebrows which made it look like. Looney, though. He kept talking to me, serious. I tell you. He made me feel nervous. He made all the memories come back.
What happened, he said. What happened to the boy who was going to be such a great lawyer? What is he doing now? Is he studying law?
How should I know? I said.
I’ll tell you what he’s doing, he said. He’s a cop. How tragic.
Like Gulliver, I said. I looked over my shoulder. I felt nervous again. I took another drink. He had a bottle, too. I looked at him when he didn’t know it. The looney with hair in his eyes. He was drinking, too. I felt sorry for him. Like I wanted to cry. So sorry.
Gulliver stole him, I said.
The looney, the one in the mirror, nodded. It’s Gulliver’s fault, he said.
Let’s forget about Gulliver.
Let’s talk, about the great lawyer, he said. The one who’s a cop.
No, I said. Get out of here. I threw the whiskey bottle at him. Almost empty, anyway. He went away with a big crash, and there was nothing. Just a wall.
I knew he’d be back. Somewhere else. But if I just stayed there, just sat there on the rug, I wouldn’t have to see.
I giggled.
There was someone at the door.
Pounding.
“Umcomin’.”
“Bill, open up!”
Hard to see. Sweat in my eyes. There. Ooops. Got to rest. Tired. Lean against the wall because everything’s dizzy-dizzy. Say. Who let the light in?
“Bill!”
“What?” It’s a woman. A dame. And you haven’t got any clothes on.
“Come on, Bill.”
“Where we goin’?”
“To sit on the couch. Before you fall down. How could you get so drunk?”
“Well—”
“Sit down.”
“Hell with you. I got perfect command my—” Oh, well. “My God, it’s hot in here. You’re dripping wet. What did you shut the windows for?”
Zip. The blinds. The light hurt my eyes. I shut them.
“Come,” she said. She took my hand. She was strong. We walked a long way and she had to help me. She made me get on my knees. She held my head together and pushed it under the cold water. Then she pushed me into the water.
“Wash yourself off. You smell. Couldn’t you find the bath?”
“Go away. I’m not real any more. I’m images in pieces of broken mirror. That’s me and that’s me and that’s me but not really me because I never was.”
“Bill!” She hit me across the face. I looked at her. I saw her. There was a look of ferocity in her set white face. “Goddam you, sober up! I need help, and you’re the only one I can trust. Help me, you—”
“Lots coffee,” I mumbled.
She sighed. “All right,” she said.
When she was gone I floundered upright in the tub, faced the cold spray and shook helplessly, grinding my teeth. She came back with the coffee and I turned off the shower, stepped out dripping on the bath mat and drank a cup, hot and black. She threw a bath towel at me, went into the bedroom and brought my robe. I put it on. I drank another cup of coffee.
“God,” I said.
“Better?” Karis said.
“I’m living.”
“What brought this on?”
“Gulliver. Son-of-a-bitch. Jimmy Herne didn’t kill Smithell. Gulliver wouldn’t listen. I’m through. So he thinks. But I’ll make him listen.”
“Jimmy Herne didn’t kill Smithell? Who did?”
“How should I know? Maybe I’ll find out.”
I reached for her with a lurching motion of arms, caught her, held her. “This is for hitting me,” I said. I kissed her, feeling her lips soften, feeling her succumb to the warmth of the kiss. She pulled away and there was an intense look of nothing at all in her wide eyes.
“Will you help me?”
“With what?”
“I called and called you, all morning. I tried to get hold of you, tried everywhere. I didn’t know you were—”
“Damn it,
what’s wrong?”
“Nathan. He didn’t come home last night. I can’t locate him. He must be in trouble!”
“What do you want me to do?”
She was close to tears. “Find him. Find him!”
I shook my head. “If you don’t know where to look, how—”
Her lips pressed together. “Bill—please—”
I sat on the edge of the tub. “Stop that. Did you try all the booze joints?”
She nodded.
“He may be shacked up somewhere. I don’t know.” I thought for a few seconds, then went into the bedroom and started pulling on my clothes. When I was dressed I went into the living room. Karis was on the sofa.
“Nathan shouldn’t be too hard to trace,” I said, “if he started off with a round of the bars and then got picked up, somebody will have seen him. What time is it?”
She looked at her watch. “Ten after four.” I set mine.
“I’m going out for a little while,” I said. “I won’t be long. You can wait here if you want to.”
IT WAS LATE SUNDAY MORNING AND THERE WERE ONLY A few cars parked in the courtyard of Roxy Marko’s place. The bar was closed. I went up the stairs to Roxy’s office.
With my duplicate key I opened the door about an inch, exercising great caution, and immediately heard voices. One was Roxy’s, a different voice from what I knew. His tone was contemptuous, caustic, designed to make the one he was talking to feel a vast inconsequentiality.
“Doctor, I could ruin you overnight.”
The other voice was deeper, a church-choir bass. “You can’t ruin a man already ruined.”
Roxy laughed delightedly. “Doctor, what’s got into you? For a ruined man, you’ve got the best practice in the city.” His voice was shaded with sudden knowledge. “Oh, I see what you mean, Dr. Einhorn. You’ve developed a conscience. A bad thing for a man of medicine. All doctors should be born without it. Why don’t you have it removed surgically, doctor?”
“I hate your damned guts,” the doctor said distinctly.