by Gene Wolfe
“So the people who were phoning Larry could just be babies to throw to the wolves? How do you know?”
“You heard me tell Sandoz that I knew him. That was how I came to meet him. A mutual friend suggested I might be able to help him.”
“Who were they? Did he give you their names?”
“I think he knew more than he told me. But I learned that they objected—if that is the word—to something he had done in Vietnam. When Larry applied for a loan to set up his business, they had sent an anonymous letter to one of the officers of the bank, accusing Lief of unspecified crimes against humanity. If their objective was to sour the loan, as I suppose it was, they failed. I would not imagine that an unsigned letter would have much effect on a bank unless its accusations concerned financial malfeasance. The officers are not generally the sort of men who view crimes against humanity with severity. I spent some time trying to locate that letter—it was the only tangible clue in sight—but it had been destroyed. Then this happened.”
“In other words, they got him.” My leg was hurting pretty bad by then, and I was feeling sorry for myself.
“I doubt it. That’s why I didn’t tell my little story to Lieutenant Sandoz.”
“Maybe you doubt it, but nobody else would.”
Blue stood up, looking grim. “Then isn’t that all the more reason for me to do what I can to keep the investigation on the right path? What are war crimes? Torturing prisoners, perhaps, or multiplying civilian deaths. Professional dissidents might use those accusations to extenuate any actions of their own, and in fact apologists for the American policy in Vietnam used the very real war crimes of the North Vietnamese to excuse ours. But these people appeared to be anything but professional; they struck me as consciencestricken blunderers. They might, just conceivably, have been carried to the point of destroying the object of their hatred. But would they do that by detonating an infernal device that not only might, but actually did, kill or mutilate a dozen blameless people? I suppose you’re too young to remember the comic strip Pogo, but there was a character called Deacon Mushrat who urged the others to ‘Kill the warmongers! Bomb them off the face of the earth!’ That was a comicstrip pacifist, however.”
“But Larry’s dead, so it could have been them. Only you don’t think it was. Who do you think?”
“I don’t think. I need more facts.” He had gone over to the window, and was looking out. It wasn’t dark yet—in fact it was only the middle of the afternoon—but I had the feeling that for him it was night out, that he was staring into blackness.
I said, “Sandoz sounded like he thought it might be Elaine. Did you buy that?”
“No.” Blue turned to face me. “Did you?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Why?”
“Oh, just because he made it sound so good. Fixing the drawing, finding out what ticket Munroe had. All that.”
“Yes, it was beautifully logical. However, you followed it to the place Sandoz wanted you to go, and not to the place where it had led Sandoz. I’m still not quite certain why, but Sandoz wanted you to believe he might accuse your mother. What all of that really meant was that unless Mrs. Hollander was the killer, Munroe was not the target. Anyone might have learned his ticket number, just as Sandoz said. But only your mother could have arranged for that number to be the winner. Besides, if someone had merely wanted to kill Munroe, and wasn’t concerned about the possible deaths of others, why not put a bomb in his car in the parking lot? The Mob does such things all the time. Why bother with so much folderol?”
I had been thinking, a bad habit my teachers hadn’t quite knocked out of me. “Wait a minute! There’s another way someone could’ve fixed the numbers. Suppose it was somebody that little girl—What was her name? Nancy Noonan? Suppose it was somebody Nancy trusted, and somehow he got hold of Munroe’s ticket. I took tickets for a while, and I was just dropping them into a box. He could have pretended he had to tie his shoe or scratch his ankle, or if it was a woman maybe pull up a heel strap, just after Munroe went in. Later, he’d give the ticket to Nancy and tell her they were going play a joke or something, and she was only supposed to pretend to reach into the drum.”
Blue said, “He could never rely on a child that age to keep his secret.”
“Maybe he figured she’d be killed too when the bomb went off—only Sandoz says it wasn’t a bomb. Well, whatever it was. He probably thought Munroe’d be right there in the crowd watching the drawing instead of inside at the book sale with us. If he’d been outside, there wouldn’t have been time for her to get down off the platform. Anyway, the murderer would think that even if he missed her, he could—”
I broke off because all of a sudden the chocolate in my stomach had turned to vinegar ice. Besides, there wasn’t any use in going on with it. Blue’s face doesn’t give away much, but it’s nowhere near as expressionless as Sandoz’s, and I was learning to read it; it was blank now, just no expression at all, and that meant he had pulled into himself and was thinking so hard that he didn’t have any attention to spare for it. “She should be under guard,” he said. “And of course the police must speak with her as soon as possible. When it becomes known that they have, she’ll be out of danger.” He checked out my bedside table. “I must find a telephone.”
That was when a nurse I hadn’t seen before came bustling in. “There are public telephones in an alcove off the lobby, sir. The receptionist can show you, but you’ll have to go now. Visiting hours are over.”
Then to me: “Have you heard about the murder?” Her eyes were shining. What a treat!
“It wasn’t a little girl … .”
“Oh, no. An old man. They found him by the parking lot, right here at our hospital!”
She bustled out again, this time with Blue after her like a lame hound that can still run when a bunny jumps under its nose. I head the thump of his cane out in the corridor, and then the murmur of their voices; the only words I could make out, though, were what he said last: “I’d better go down and talk to them. I think I may be able to identify him.”
How I Heard Some News
After dinner when the news came on, I was right there waiting. One good thing about living close to a big city like Chicago is that you get a full hour of local stories from a station that can spring for mobile units and good reporters. My favorite’s Ben Jacobs, a good-looking Jew about thirtyfive or forty who doesn’t care what the hell he says or who the hell he says it to, and gets fighting mad about at least half the stories they cover. Naturally I was hoping tonight was my big night with Ben—if I couldn’t be in his arms, at least I’d be on his lips. But when they finally got around to “the Barton Bombing,” it was Gerri Corkeran. Gerri’s a pretty lady with big eyes and hair like a gold helmet, but she isn’t Ben Jacobs.
Besides, as soon as she started I realized I was really a day too late. All the big, exciting coverage had been the night before, when I was out of it. What Gerri had was follow-up. She interviewed Mrs. Munroe, who turned out to have one of those pushed-together faces and a couple little kids, besides a dumb-looking daughter about my age. And then, so help me, there were Molly and Megan and old Mr. Lief from the shoe store, all sitting side-by-each on the living-room sofa.
Gerri: “I might as well ask the inevitable question and get it over. How does it feel to have your son survive two tours in Vietnam, and then have him die like this?”
(Mr. Lief doesn’t answer—just shakes his head. He has one of those bent-down pipes in his mouth, but it doesn’t seem to be lit.)
Molly: “It was them! I know it was.”
(Megan nudges her, but she won’t shut up.)
Gerri: “It was who, Mrs. Lief?”
Molly: “The ones that used to phone. They haven’t called no more. Not since Larry passed on, not one call. They got him, but I’m goin’ to get them.”
Megan: “It didn’t have to be them. Everybody knows Larry’s dead now.”
Gerri: “Your husband was receiving threatening
calls,
Mrs. Lief?”
Molly: “Yes!” (Cries.)
Megan: “No!”
Gerri: “Do you know anything about this, Mr. Lief?
Have you informed the police?”
Lief: “I personally only answered one crank call, and that was at least six months back. I’d practically forgotten about them. They weren’t actually threatening—at least the one I answered wasn’t.”
Megan: “The police know already. They’ve talked to us.” (Back to the studio, where Gerri’s sitting at one of those long lunch-counter desks TV newspersons use and nobody else does.)
Ben: “Gerri, what were those calls about?”
Gerri: “It took a lot of digging—Mrs. Lief was very upset, and Lawrence Lief’s father and sister didn’t want to talk, but whoever called told war stories, if I can put it that way.”
Ben: “War stories?”
Gerri: “Yes, from Vietnam. All this may’ve had nothing to do with the bombing.”
Ben: “But it might. Did it really end months ago, as the victim’s father implied?”
Gerri: (Shaking her head.)“Ben, the victim’s wife received one two days ago—the day before he was killed.”
Then off they went to look at a million white chickens that had gotten loose on the Dan Ryan Expressway. If I’d had Les or somebody there to talk to, I’d have bitched because Megan never mentioned my name or said I’d been hurt; but what I was really thinking about mostly were Munroe’s kids, kids that weren’t nice-looking or anything, and now no daddy.
Then I started wondering whether Megan knew it was me who told the cops about the calls, and if she did, whether she was mad. If she didn’t, sooner or later I was going to have to tell her. It wasn’t Larry that I felt sorry for, or Munroe either. Munroe had just been a guy in a loud shirt, like a million other guys; Larry’s troubles were over. I felt sorry for Munroe’s dim little wife and her three kids, whose troubles had just begun. And for Megan and Molly and Larry’s dad. Especially for old Mr. Lief, because although he wasn’t showing it, I had the feeling he was the one who’d never get over it.
Baseball then. You can’t get away from baseball scores on the news. The Cubs lost. The Sox lost. Watching the TV news, you’d think there isn’t one pitcher in baseball who can throw a strike. Every time they show somebody at the plate, you can bet he’s going to get wood on the ball, even if he’s thrown out at first, maybe. If I were managing the Cubs, I’d have a hundred curvy cheerleaders, like the Honeybears or the Dallas Cowgirls; and when a guy from the other team was at bat and they revved up the TV cameras for him to sock one, I’d signal my Cutecubs to shake their goodies to get his eye off the ball. All the other teams would have to sign gay players, and it would change the entire complexion of the game.
When we’d seen the run that beat the Cubs and the run that beat the Sox (there’s a joke there, but I wouldn’t want you to think I go after every one I see), the newsroom was back, with Cutter Williams, anchorman supreme, in one of his five-hundred-dollar suits. “Our city has been the site of many famous crimes and the home of many famous criminals. John Gacy lived here; so did Al Capone. But for each famous crime we remember, there are hundreds of others we forget. That, tonight, is the subject of Ben’s Commentary.”
Ben was always away from the lunch counter for this, turned around in a swivel chair, at a messy desk that might really have been his. “There was a terrible explosion in Barton yesterday,” he said. His face wasn’t Sad the way an actor’s face gets; just serious. “Today’s papers are full of it, and the televised news shows—such as this one—are full of it. Even the politicians are full of it, at least when we reporters are asking questions. It’s always safe, politically, to be against a mad bomber.
“Two men were killed in Barton, other people were hurt—”
Hey, that’s me! Lookit me, Ben!
“And many more might have been killed. But in the thirty hours or so since the Barton bombing, eight other persons have been killed on the streets and in the homes and bars of Greater Chicago. A famous poet, T.S. Eliot, once wrote, ‘This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.’ Those eight have hardly had the whimper, as far as the politicians and the news are concerned. We talk about a war against crime. They’re the casualties of the skirmishes of the war crime fights against us. Just before we went on the air tonight we got word that the body of an elderly man, as yet unidentified, had been found near a parking area in the northwestern suburb of Palestine. He had been shot in the chest with a thirty-eight, and his pockets were empty except for sixty-two cents in change and a torn artificial rose. Just like one of those poppies they sell on the street for the casualties in the VA hospitals—casualties that nobody remembers.”
Then Ben was gone and we were left with a couple California beach bums peddling beer. I started to yell and pound the damn whiter-than-white scratchy sheet, and after a while I remembered to turn off the TV and yell louder. It wasn’t very long before a nurse came running to ask what was the matter, and pretty soon an orderly came too and held my arms down until I shut up.
“I know him,” I said when they finally got me quieted down. “It’s got to be him. I want to see him.” And I told them all about it, just the way I’ve been telling you, only not quite so organized. And naturally they didn’t call the police or Aladdin Blue, or even my father in New York. They just made me swallow some kind of pill that had me out like a Cubbie in ten minutes.
When I woke up there was sunshine coming in the window. I had a visitor, too, but she didn’t look at all like the one I’d had the morning before, even aside from being a woman. She was little, with a big nose and frizzy hair and bright black eyes. Like the other one she had on a uniform, but hers was the white medical kind. When she saw my eyes were open, she said, “Hello. How are you feeling?”
Which was a switch. The nurses always said, “How are we feeling?”
“I feel great,” I told her. “When do I get out of here?”
“This afternoon, perhaps. It will be up to your doctor, and he’ll see you then. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to stand on that leg.”
“Is someone coming for me?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Do you think there’s a chance no one will?”
I noticed then that she had a clipboard in her lap, and she was holding a pen. Her fingers made just a little twitch with the pen, as if she had written, maybe, half a word. I said, “I guess they’ll have to send somebody. Maybe Bill.”
“Who is Bill?”
“Who are you?” I asked. “That’s what I want to know.”
“I’m Dr. Rothschild, and I’m a psychiatric intern here. You can call me Ruth.”
“So they’re afraid I’m crazy.”
Dr. Rothschild shook her head. “We’re afraid you may be emotionally shaken. After what you went through it would hardly be surprising.”
“Aren’t I supposed to be lying on a couch?”
“Not for me. I’m not a Freudian. Do you remember last night, when you began to scream?”
By then I was smarter; I didn’t try to tell her everything. I just said, “I was watching the news, and they had a story on it about finding an unidentified man dead. It was my uncle, and I started to cry.”
“You’re sure this man was your uncle? How did you know, Holly?” (My name was on the chart thing at the foot of my bed, naturally.)
“Because of something he had in his pocket. They told about it on TV. It was my Uncle Herbert.”
“What did he have?”
“You’re not going to believe this,” I said, and I was sure she wasn’t.
“Try me.”
“A fake rose.”
“And that made you certain the man was your uncle?” The pen twitched on the clipboard again.
I tried to put it together for her in a way she’d believe. “In the first place, they didn’t find him just anywhere; he was found here, I think, near the parking lot of this hospital—
one of the nurses came in last night and said a dead man had been found there; and later it was on TV, and they said it had been in Palestine, which it would be if it was here. He was coming to see me, I think. A rose was, well, a sort of secret signal between him and me.”
Dr. Rothschild smiled. She wasn’t pretty, but when she smiled that way she was beautiful. “I used to have a signal like that with my grandmother,” she said. “I’d wear a comb in my hair, and it meant that there was trouble at home, and she should stay or take me with her if she had to go. Usually it was Mother and Father fighting.” She stopped smiling. “So I understand. I’m sorry that your uncle’s dead, if it was your uncle.”
“You loved your grandmother,” I said. “I don’t want to fool you; I didn’t love my uncle.”
“Perhaps he loved you.”
“Yeah, maybe he did. I was scared of him, but you don’t want to hear about that. Would you do me a favor? It would make me feel a lot better, and that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Call up the police, or wherever they have his body. Ask if he’s been identified, and if he hasn’t, tell them he’s Herbert Hollander. Say I can identify him when I get there, or if they’ll send a picture.”
Dr. Rothschild went out and came back in about five minutes with a white phone that plugged into a jack in the wall, and a phone book. It took some calling around before she reached the right party, then she said who she was and that she was calling for a patient who might be a member of the family. She put me on, and I said, “Hello, this is Holly Hollander.”
“Detective Corning. Wait a minute.” I could hear papers rattle. “You’re the man’s niece?” (He didn’t say dead man’s.)
“Yes. How’d you know?”
“A guy identified him last night. He said he had a brother named George Henry Hollander, and a niece. You don’t sound like George Henry.”