The Investigations of Avram Davidson

by Avram Davidson

  “Ah, let her go,” said her mother. “Let her get a breath of air and take a little walk. Here’s the whole lot of us jabbering away—let the girl alone.” She waved at her daughter, who waved back as she walked off down the street.

  It was lined with two-story wooden houses; they were set right next to one another. They were all kind of on the small side, but each had a back yard and a front yard, a tree and a little garden and some potted plants, and some had a swing on the porch and stained glass in the front door. It was a comfortable neighborhood, a quiet one, known to even the older generation from childhood. It was safe, it was home.

  “Listen here, Peg,” Aunt Emma demanded. “I wanna see that seating list. If you’ve put me and Sam next to Maymie Johnson like you did at Jeannie’s wedding—”

  Mrs. Benner gave the sigh of one who has—or as nearly as makes no difference—married off her last child, a daughter aged thirty, and for whom life holds no further problems; and she said to her sister, “Oh, if you didn’t have something to complain about, Emma, I honestly believe you’d die. Maymie Johnson, poor thing, hasn’t set foot out of her house in munce.” Emma said, No! and asked what was wrong, and Mrs. Benner said, “Well, she had like what they used to call dropsy, but nowadays the doctors gave it another name.…”

  * * *

  SALLY ROUNDED THE corner and came face to face with Bob Mantin, on his way back from the barber shop with his brother Eddie. She said, “Oh!” and blushed. Eddie cried, “Hey, you ain’t supposed to see your bride the day of the wedding, it’s bad luck!” and he playfully put his hand over Bob’s eyes.

  Bob pushed aside the hand. He and Sally gazed at each other. Neither, it seemed, could think of anything to say. Finally Eddie asked Sally where she was going, and she said, to the store to get a few things. He said, “Oh.”

  Bob broke silence at last. “Well, I’ll, uh, see you tonight, honey.”

  Sally nodded, and they parted.

  * * *

  “—SO I SAID to her, ‘Well, it’s up to them, Mrs. Mantin,’ I said. ‘Joe and me, we put it up to them,’ I said. ‘We let them choose. Do you want a big wedding or would you rather have the money to buy furniture?’ we asked them. And they talked it over and the decision was entirely theirs. ‘I know it’s very nice of you and Bob’s father to move all your things off of the second floor and put in a kitchen and all,’ I said. ‘But if they want to buy furniture, I mean such expensive furniture, that they have to do it on time, why, that’s up to them,’ I said. ‘That’s up to them.’” Mrs. Benner’s sister, her older daughter, her daughters-in-law, and her younger daughter’s girl friend, all listened to Mrs. Benner and nodded. Occasionally they punctuated her recital with Believe Me or I’ll Say and Imagine That!

  And then the church clock began to chime eleven. The expression on Mrs. Benner’s face (at once combative and self-excusing) changed immediately. “Why, what’s happened to Sally?” she exclaimed.

  At first her emotion was one of mere affectionate annoyance. By half-past eleven she had begun to feel vexed. By twelve she was experiencing a definite anxiety. Jeannie got into her car and went to look for her sister. Mrs. Benner got on the telephone and began calling places where it was possible Sally might have stopped off, to get so engrossed in conversation as to forget this was her wedding day. The girl friend (a thin girl with a skin condition, named Agnes, who had—after the first outburst of joyful congratulations—begun to moan that after the wedding Sally wouldn’t want her around any more) left to call on a few people who had no telephone. One of the sisters-in-law went around the corner to Mr. Benner’s shop, as his line was busy.

  “What is he doing there, anyway, so long?” fretted his wife. “He should of been back here long ago—hello, Sadie? Peg. Is Sally there? Oh … Well, was she there? This morning. I mean. She wasn’t? All right, Sadie, I’ll see you this—no, no, it’s all right, I just thought she might of dropped by. Tonight, then, Sadie. ’Bye.”

  And so it went. Sally hadn’t been to anybody’s house, even the Mantins’. Bob’s brother Eddie answered the phone. He told of their having met on her way to “the store.” When? Oh … a little after ten. No, she didn’t say which store. “Should I tell Bob? I mean, I will right now if you want me to, but—I mean, she’ll prob’ly turn up any minute now, so why get him nervous for nothing? But if you want me to—” Mrs. Benner said, no, he was right, there was no point in getting Bob upset, too.

  By half-past one they had canvassed all the stores in the neighborhood. The only one where Sally had been seen was Felber’s Pharmacy. She had bought some things, the druggist said, at about ten or fifteen minutes after ten. She had seemed okay. When Mr. Felber said to her, handing over the package (cosmetics, hairpins, chewing gum), “Well, today’s the big day, eh, Sally?” she had smiled and said, “I’m so happy, Mr. Felber.” He had wished her all the luck in the world.

  By now it was half-past two. Suddenly Aunt Emma, who had been saying, “Oh, I wouldn’t worry, Peg, she’s prob’ly just wandering around in a kind of sky-blue-pink daze”—Aunt Emma suddenly burst into tears and said, “Well, I don’t care what anybody says: I think we oughta call the police!”

  And all the women broke down and began to wail, and so Mr. Benner found them when he returned. And after he got them quieted down, that was what he did. He phoned the police.

  * * *

  THE WEDDING WAS called off, but quite a number of guests turned up anyway—some, because they hadn’t got the word, others because they thought Sally might turn up in time for the wedding to take place after all. Naturally, they all made their way to the house; and the police decided not to turn them away because—who knows?—one of them might know something that would shed light on the matter.

  But no one knew anything.

  Late that night Detectives Bonn and Steinberg were talking about it with Captain Foley. “Everybody says the same thing,” Bonn observed. “She was a nice, sweet, quiet girl. She was a homebody. She’s had no broken engagements, no troublesome ex-boy friends. She never even went steady before. So far as anybody knows, the girl was perfectly happy with the marriage. Except for the fiancé, his brother, and the druggist, though, nobody seems to have seen her once she left the old lady’s sight.”

  Steinberg took up the tale. “The fiancé seems to be okay. Nobody knows anything against him, and even if they did, he’s been with some member of his own family all day long—brother, mother, father. He says she couldn’t’ve run off by herself. Crying like a baby, the guy was. At the same time he doesn’t want to admit she maybe met with foul play. So he says it’s got to be amnesia.”

  Bonn was dark and thin, Steinberg was red-haired and stocky. Captain Foley, who was pale and bald, asked, “What about the druggist? And don’t give me that line. He sold her vanishing cream.”

  Bonn said, “Well, as a matter of fact, Captain, he did. Vanishing cream, face powder, deodorant, hairpins—and a pack of chewing gum.”

  Foley shook his head. “That don’t sound like no suicide to me. I know, I know—people have committed suicide on the eves of their weddings before. But a girl who’s going to kill herself don’t buy deodorants and chewing gum. Even if the river is only five blocks away, I’m not buying suicide. No, either she made a voluntary disappearance—in which case she ought to have her butt smacked, not letting the family know—or else it was foul play. And if she was attacked, she’s most likely dead by now. They’ve been through every empty building in the neighborhood?”

  “Not only in the neighborhood, but in that whole section of the city,” said Steinberg. “How could she be the victim of violence in broad daylight, at ten o’clock in the morning, in a place where everybody knew her?” But Captain Foley said the violence needn’t have occurred in the neighborhood. A car pulls up to the curb, a guy offers her a ride, she gets in—what’s to notice? he asked. And then the car drives off. She wasn’t the kind of girl to accept a ride from a stranger? Then maybe it wasn’t a stranger.…

  *
* *

  THE STORY WAS in the morning papers, and the usual crowd had gathered (or rather, was circulating; the police wouldn’t let them stop) near the Benners’ house. Mrs. Benner was in her room, having failed to fight off the effects of a sedative the doctor made her take. Joe Benner and Bob, red-eyed, were sitting together in the kitchen drinking black coffee.

  “It was amnesia,” Bob repeated for the thousandth time. “She wouldn’t run off. Not Sally. Her picture’s in the papers, somebody’s bound to see her.”

  “Sure,” Sally’s father repeated, his face reflecting no such optimism. “Sure.”

  Bonn and Steinberg mingled with the crowd. They looked and listened.

  “They ought to call in the FBI.”

  “Can’t do that unless there’s evidence of a kidnapping.”

  “They oughta drag the river.”

  “Evidence—whadayacall evidence?”

  “They must of had a quarrel. Don’t tell me. They had a lover’s tiff, and the boy friend’s ashamed to say.”

  “They oughta drag the river.”

  “My cousin he run out on his own wedding once. But a guy, that’s a different thing. Know what I mean?”

  The next day Mrs. Benner went on television and appealed to her daughter to return home, or—if for any reason she was unwilling to do this—at least to communicate with her family. For the afternoon and evening news she was joined by Bob Mantin. He begged Sally’s forgiveness if he had offended her in any way. He asked only that she notify them if she was all right. The minister of the Benners’ church issued a statement.

  But no one heard a word from her. The usual flow of evil communications began, by mail and phone. Sally’s body was in an alley on the other side of town. Sally was being held for ransom. A woman had seen her from the window of a bus in another state; she was coming out of a bar.

  “Speaking of bars,” suggested Bonn, “let’s circulate in a few of them. For all I know the girl is what they say she is, but maybe she isn’t. If there’s any dirt, you hear it over the bar.” Steinberg nodded.

  Perhaps it is because Americans have guilt feelings about drinking during daylight hours that almost all bars are dark and dim. When the first place fell into focus after the bright street, the detective partners observed that there was a moderate gathering in the bar-cavern. An elderly woman with wild white hair and a cracked-enamel face was crooning into her beer, “I don’t care, you go ahead ’n laugh if you wahnoo, but I say, in my opinion, all these young girls disappearing: it’s the white slave trade. What I think.”

  “Naa,” said a sharp-looking young man a few stools down. “That’s all a thinga the past. No mystery in my opinion. Girl changed her mind. Woman’s privulidge, is’n it, Mabel? And she’s afraida go home.”

  The man to his right met this suggestion with such an insufferable smirk that the sharp-looking fellow was nettled. “All right, Oscar,” he said, “whadda you think?”

  “I think they oughta drag the river,” said Oscar. Bonn looked up. He saw out of the corner of his eye that his partner had caught it, too.

  “Weren’t you over by the Benners’ place yesterday?” Steinberg asked Oscar.

  Oscar said, “Yeah, he’d went over to a take a look. But the cops kept moving everybody on.”

  “You saw that, did’n ya? Howdaya like that? ‘Move along, keep moving,’” he mimicked. “No wonder they ain’t found nothing out yet. Waste all their time like that.”

  Bonn said, “Yeah, well, I heard you make the observation at that time that they ought to drag the river.”

  “And I still say it.”

  Mabel ordered another beer. The sharp-looking young man took a look at Bonn, observed Steinberg, affected a startled glance at the clock, and was suddenly gone. Steinberg moved into his place. “Well, now, Oscar, that’s a long, long river,” he said. “Where do you think they ought to start dragging? Because unless they pick the right spot, they could spend a year and not find anything. Where would you imagine is the best place?”

  Oscar studied his face in the mirror. Bonn moved in from the other side. “From the Point, maybe?” Bonn suggested. Oscar snorted. Bonn, seemingly offended, said, “What’s the matter with the Point?”

  Steinberg said, “Well, where then? Come on, Oscar. I’m really interested.”

  “You guys reporters or sumpthing?”

  Bonn nodded. Oscar brightened, turned to face him.

  “No kidding?” he exclaimed. “You writing up this story?”

  “I’ve got my car outside,” Bonn said. “Why don’t we take a ride down by the river?” Oscar thought that was a fine idea. He and Bonn went out.

  Steinberg said to the bartender, “And who might that guy be?”

  The bartender shrugged. “One of old man Portlin’s nephews. Old lady died maybe a month back, Portlin don’t like to live alone so he invites Oscar to move in with him. What does Oscar do? Well, matter of fact, I don’t b’lieve he does anything. Except play cards, drink beer, and watch the TV. And shoot off his big mouth, like for instance just now.”

  * * *

  THERE WERE PARKS along the river, wastes, factories, and docks, some of them abandoned. Bonn and Oscar Portlin walked along one of the docks. “Look how dangerous it is,” said Oscar. “Girl could of come down for a walk, tripped, and—zing!—in she goes. See what I mean? Maybe hit her head going over. Then she wouldn’t come up or yell for help or nothing. You hadda lotta experience with incidents like that. Whadda you think?”

  It was a pleasant day, the breeze whipping the water lightly. Sea gulls swooped and skimmed low, creeing to one another. Out in the river a tug passed slowly by with a string of barges. “I think,” said Bonn, after a pause, “that it sounds very possible. I think we ought to tell the police.” Oscar’s reply to this was a short, blunt syllable. “Don’t like the police much, huh?” Oscar’s lip went psshh! “They give you a hard time? A bum rap, maybe?”

  That did it. “Boy, you can say that again!” Oscar burst out. His rather nondescript face darkened.

  Sympathetically, Bonn asked what the rap was. “Off the record, of course.”

  Oscar smirked. “Off the record? Statchatory Rape. It was a bum rap. She said she was eighteen. How was I supposed to know? She was a tramp, anyway. Everybody knew that.”

  Bonn said, gee, that was too bad. But he still thought they ought to see the cops.

  When Oscar still demurred, Bonn took out his badge. Then—in silence—they went back to his car.

  * * *

  “SHE WAS ALWAYS such a good baby,” said Mrs. Benner in a tear-choked voice to a lady reporter. “See, this picture here. When she was only eight months old…” She showed the reporter photos and locks of hair and letters and school books—her daughter’s life from infancy to womanhood.

  What did Sally like to read when she was young? the lady reporter asked.

  “Poetry,” said Mrs. Benner. “She always liked high-class poetry.” She blew her nose. “This little book here, now, she bought this with her own money.” Mrs. Benner belonged to a class and generation which did not buy books; that fact alone would have served to grace the small volume even if it were not hallowed by having belonged to her missing daughter. “It’s the poems of John Keats. She always used to say to me, ‘Oh, Mama, they’re so beautiful!’ She particularly liked this one—I know the name the minute I see it—Oh. Here. This one.” She moistened her lips and prepared to read, following the line with her finger.

  “Thou still unravished bride of quietness…”

  Her voice was measured and proud. As the meaning of what she had just read penetrated her awareness, she looked up at the reporter, then over at her daughter’s picture on the piano. Then she raised her hands, and screamed, and dropped her face into her hands and cried again and again in her grief and fear and anguish.

  * * *

  “ALL RIGHT,” SAID Steinberg, “so it was a bum rap, she was a tramp, she said she was eighteen. So let’s forget that one. What else you b
een sent up on? We’ll find out soon enough.”

  Oscar mumbled that he was never convicted of anything else.

  “So you weren’t convicted. What were you tried for, besides this one? Nothing? Sure? Okay. Ever charged with anything else? What were you charged with?”

  The man looked around the small cubicle. He tried to smirk again, but failed. “Ah, that was a bum rap, too. Wouldn’t even press charges.”

  “What was it?”

  Oscar swallowed, took another long look around. Then, not meeting anyone’s eyes, he said loudly, “Rape. But she did’n’ even press the charge!”

  Bonn said, “What makes you so sure the girl’s in the river? Did you put her there?”

  “No. Naa. I never even seen her.”

  “You kept saying that the police ought to drag the river,” Steinberg hammered away. “Why? You put her in the river, didn’t you? She resisted you and you killed her. Isn’t that what happened?”

  “Or maybe,” Bonn suggested persuasively, “it was an accident? You didn’t mean to kill her? So maybe you made a pass—what the hell, it could happen to anybody!—only she was a dumb kid, she got scared.…”

  Oscar nodded slowly, his lips beginning to settle into their habitual smirk.

  Bonn went on, “She started to run, tripped on that rotten old dock, fell, and hit her head. Maybe it was like that, huh? It could’ve happened to anybody. Why don’t you tell us, kid? Then we can wrap this up, you cop a plea, get a few months which you can do them standing on your head! Give us the details, that’s all we want. We find the body, settle the whole matter. Let’s have the story. The stenographer takes it down, we order in some lunch—you hungry, huh?—we get some steak and some French fries—”

  The smirk was in full reign now. Oscar shook his head, slowly, admiringly. “I got to hand it to you,” he said. “Boy, you must have eyes in the back of your head. Yeah, that’s just how it happened. She trips and falls and hits her head. I feel for the pulse—there’s no pulse. The dame’s dead. So, I mean, I panicked. I figured, who’d believe me? With my record. You know what I mean? So I threw her in the river.” He looked up at the two detectives.