The Order of Death

by Hugh Fleetwood

  He was shaking, and he stood up and went over to the window and calmed himself by looking down over the granite hillocks of the park, at the people hurrying along the sidewalk, and at the snow that was starting to fall more heavily now, and settle. He breathed in deeply, and told himself that he really shouldn’t have these fantasies; they agitated him and were bad for him, because he knew they were just fantasies, and crazy fantasies, too. And yet there was some sort of truth in them, he was convinced, even if it was only a sort of poetic truth; and what was more, he did, quite rationally, approve of drug taking, because it did make the weak—no! He mustn’t start again. He mustn’t think about such things. That too—the indulging of idle fantasies—was weakness. Let them call him a corrupt cop if they wanted to, let them say that this apartment and his slowly growing number of stocks were the fruits of his corruption. Let them call him what they wanted, and let them forget that if it weren’t for him, and people like him, there would be still more violence and crime than there was. Let them call him what they wanted; they were the weak and guilty. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t be bothered with them.

  He picked up the paper, folded it again, and put it in his brief­case; later he would throw it away. Then he glanced at his watch, saw that it was almost time to go, and went to change.

  *

  He was just putting on his old cheap trousers when some­thing odd happened; something odd, and something very disturbing. First of all his house phone rang—something that happened about once a year normally, and then generally only because Bob was passing by for some reason, couldn’t be bothered to come up, and was just calling up from the lobby to say hi, or to tell him something—and then, secondly, when he softly, suspiciously answered, the doorman told him there was ‘a Mr. Smith’ to see him.

  ‘For me?’ Fred said, feeling, as he had done earlier at the news-stand, sweat break out on the back of his neck, and in the palms of his hands.

  ‘Yes sir,’ the doorman said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ He was not only sweating, but feeling sick now.

  He heard the doorman smile. ‘Yes sir.’ Then, more faintly, he heard him say, ‘It was Mr. Fred O’Connor you said?’

  He didn’t hear anyone say anything. Then the doorman spoke to him again.

  ‘Yes sir. It’s you.’

  ‘Who did you say it was?’

  ‘Mr. Smith.’

  He heard a murmur.

  ‘Mr. Leo Smith.’

  ‘I’m sorry. There must be some mistake. I don’t know any Smith. And I’m busy. Could you ask Mr. Smith to write me if he wants to see me?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the doorman said for the last time.

  Fred backed away from the phone, staring at it as if it were a dangerous animal. And then he looked wildly round at his corridor, at his walls, at his open doors leading into empty rooms, and thought he would pass out. The walls seemed to waver and become insubstantial, the empty rooms to dissolve. His secret palace, his secret life, his unassailable fortress—unassailable be­cause it was secret—was being threatened. It was impossible. Someone looking for him. For him? And a Mr. Smith. He didn’t know any Mr. Smith. How could it have happened? He backed, lurching now, big and red and frightened, all the way back to the room overlooking the park, and sat down in one of the armchairs. All his precautions had been in vain. Someone had followed him. Someone knew where he lived. He started to shake his head back and forth, as if to fling what he had just discovered out of it. Then he gripped the sides of the armchair and told himself to keep still. He bit his lower lip—bit it savagely —and forced himself to keep still. Then he thought—Bob. Yes. That was it. Someone must have followed Bob one day. Because Bob never took any precautions at all when he came here—he always said he couldn’t see why he should. He just took the subway or the bus, and walked casually up to the door. Bob never took the secret path, as it were, to the secret palace; and now he had led the enemy there. And with his carelessness he had threatened four years—no, fifteen years—of planning, and saving, and safety. Goddam him. Goddam him. He would kill him when he saw him. He would—but then, he said to himself, if Mr. Smith, whoever he was, had followed Bob, why hadn’t he asked for Bob? Why had he asked, instead, for him? He looked out of the window and felt a depression falling on him as heavily and deeply as the snow outside. No. It wasn’t Bob’s fault. It was his fault. But what had he done wrong? What more precautions could he have taken? He shook his head again, though slowly now, knowing that he could shake nothing out of it.

  Then he stood up, and went to finish dressing.

  Maybe, he thought, Mr. Smith was someone entirely in­nocuous. A salesman. Someone from an insurance company. Someone—but no. Otherwise he would have asked for Mr. Frank O’Connor—Frank, which was his real name, not Fred, which he was always called. Besides, what insurance agent or salesman was ever called Smith? No. He suddenly became sure. Mr. Smith was the enemy. The Enemy. He was absolutely certain. Mr. Smith was weakness. He was disorder. He was crumbs in the kitchen, the New York Times, the representative not of any company or corporation, but of the guilty. He was the Bad Conscience. He was the worm eating at the base of this great, strong, safe dream that was America. He was—Fred paused, as he knotted his cheap black tie. He was, possibly, waiting down in the lobby for him. Or if not in the lobby, then across the street. Or in some doorway further down the street.

  He breathed in deeply. Well, if he was, he would face him. He would go out on to the field of battle and meet him, and beat him, whoever he was. He wasn’t afraid of Mr. Smith, or anyone else. He couldn’t be. Because if he were afraid now, he might lose everything. And he wasn’t going to. Not now. Not for any Mr. Smith on earth.

  He pulled his jacket on, folded up his clothes—his real clothes —put them away—wrapped his scarf around his neck, looked at himself in the mirror in the bathroom to reassure himself that he was still a giant—a great man six foot six inches tall, thick and strong, red as a warrior, and, at thirty-eight, at the peak of his power and his manhood—and then walked grimly to his front door, opened it, and locked it behind him; remembering just at the very last minute to whisper a silent farewell to his apart­ment.

  *

  In the lobby he asked the small, plump, pale young doorman if Mr. Smith had left any message. He tried to make the question sound entirely casual.

  ‘No sir. He said it wasn’t important, and he would come by again some other time when you weren’t busy.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘I couldn’t really tell you. He was young I guess. But he had one of those wool caps pulled down over his ears, and a scarf all up round his face, and dark glasses.’

  Fred nodded, and with a great effort, managed a visible smile. To give what would be recognized by the outside world as a smile always cost him a great effort. And then, with an even greater effort, he managed to say slowly, ‘I guess he was someone from my ex-wife. She occasionally sends spies to check up on me.’

  He glanced at the doorman to see what effect this lie would have. He hoped it would be greeted with proper indifference. Instead, it prompted an understanding nod, which made him feel angry first with the doorman—how did he dare to presume to understand him?—and secondly to make him feel angry with himself, for having lowered himself, for having lied. Why had he bothered to explain? Why hadn’t he just asked what he wanted to ask then walked out with a polite nod, as he normally did? But then, to make matters worse, he added, quite involun­tarily, and without being able to check himself, ‘If he comes again, just tell him I’m not in, will you?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ the doorman said—and now slyly, and with an air of complicity—smiled at him.

  He walked out into the street, without even acknowledging the doorman’s ‘Have a good day sir’.

  *

  It was only much later that day when, sitting at his desk in the headquarters of the Narcotics Bureau, playing his part now of Lieutenant O’Connor—a big precise officer with a shy, stern, if slightly old
-maidish manner and a hatred of confusion, a soft spoken man who had worked his way through college and had an ex-wife living in Denver, a man who was respected for his record and his dedication, in spite of a suspicion that his oc­casional fraternizing with the upper crust of the criminal classes went above and beyond the call of duty (though there was no evidence that he did it for financial gain; no one had ever seen him accept a bribe, and, after all, his suits were really pretty cheap, he didn’t own a car, he never went away on vacation, and the few men who had seen the apartment where he lived in Brooklyn had been surprised by its austereness and, for such a fastidious man, its shabbiness), and a man who was not known to have any interests, friends, or hobbies outside his work—that he realized he had forgotten to wash his whisky glass before he had left the apartment.

  CHAPTER TWO

  He decided to return there after he went off duty. And if this morning he had taken precautions against being followed, now he was doubly, triply cautious. He took a taxi; he changed to the subway; he took another taxi. He lurked in doorways to see if there was anyone following; he stood in phone booths, his feet cold with the snow, and pretended to call someone.

  It was just before midnight when he arrived at his building; there was a doorman he had only seen once or twice before on duty, and he didn’t think there was any point in asking him if Mr. Smith had called for him again. But when he took the elevator up, and unlocked his door, there was a light on in the apartment.

  He allowed himself just a second of doubt, of panic; then he settled down, more comfortably, into anger.

  It was Bob. It had to be Bob. And he hated to see Bob here. It was bad enough knowing that he came, but to actually meet him here…. He hated to be reminded that his kingdom wasn’t quite exclusive. And what did it mean—this coming twice in two days?

  He walked softly down the corridor towards the kitchen where the light was coming from, and wondered if Bob had heard him come in. He hoped not. It would be nice to give him a shock; nice to see, if only for a moment, fear in his face, too.

  And when he got to the door of the kitchen, and stood there, Bob didn’t seem to be aware of him. He was calmly, gravely spreading some peanut butter on a slice of bread, gazing at it sadly as he did so, as if it were one of the sick, underprivileged, exploited souls his heart was always bleeding for.

  Fred coughed.

  Bob looked up, his soft, handsome face—his weak actor’s face —collapsing slightly into a smile; his brown mournful eyes flickering with a shade—not so much that he could be accused of it, but just enough to be offensive—of pity.

  ‘Hi Fred,’ he said—as if addressing a patient in a hospital; or in a mad-house.

  Fred didn’t move, and didn’t reply, trying to think of some­thing to say that would remove that shadow of pity from Bob’s eyes; trying to think of some way of smashing that mask of condescension, and exposing the fear that he knew lay behind. He stared at the crumbs lying once again on the sideboard, and thought that they might provide him with an excuse.

  ‘Sorry about the crumbs,’ Bob said. ‘I’ll clean up when I’m through. I saw your note.’ He smiled again, as if the note had been a joke; or as if he felt he had to humour his patient.

  And he managed to embarrass Fred, and make him regret that he had left the note; or at least the consciously ignorant tone of it….

  ‘How come you’re here?’

  ‘Lenore’s gone to visit her mother. She’s sick,’ Bob added sadly.

  They were vultures, the two of them; sitting on their tear-watered tree, scanning the countryside for some sign of sorrow that they could fly to, and pick the bones of….

  ‘No one followed you here, did they?’

  ‘No. Of course not,’ Bob said, taking his patient’s fears seriously, and brushing them gravely, understandingly away. ‘Why?’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  He didn’t want to tell Bob about Mr. Smith. Because Mr. Smith concerned him, and had asked for him, and if he told Bob, Bob would think that he hadn’t been careful. No—Mr. Smith was someone he’d deal with by himself.

  He turned, and walked on down the corridor to the living room. The light was on there, too, and as Fred gazed towards the armchair where he had sat this morning, he heard Bob call, reassuringly, from the kitchen, ‘If you’re looking for your glass, I washed it.’

  He sat down and closed his eyes. Oh God, how he hated Bob. Hated, hated, hated him. Maybe Mr. Smith was a joke of Bob’s; someone sent to scare him, to disturb him, to spoil his paradise. He clutched the arms of the chair. Oh, how he would love to kill Bob. To get him out of this apartment forever. He hated, hated and hated him. And he hated himself for having been weak once in his life; for having, once, been taken in by Bob. And yet, he told himself wretchedly—as he had often told him­self—if it hadn’t been for Bob, he wouldn’t be here at all now….

  Bob hadn’t been the first person to discover secret depths in him—to guess that somewhere, buried way down in that great red Irish hulk, there was some small, odd flame burning. In fact, quite a lot of people had realized it. His superiors, for one; which was why his promotion had been so rapid. Of course, his college degree had helped, and his efficiency, and his record, and the exams he had taken. But other people had college degrees and good records, and hadn’t risen as quickly as him. No, he was sure it was because, unconsciously maybe, they had felt that flame in him, and, probably even more unconsciously, had been afraid of it; afraid of what might happen if it wasn’t given a little more air, a little more space to breathe in, and burn more brightly and less dangerously. And then his financiers—those old-fashioned gentlemen with European accents and big houses on Long Island who catered to the weak; who sold stock, as it were, in slavery—they too had guessed, quite early on, the existence of that flame in this unlikely looking material, and realized that, if fed properly, it could well power and propel a strange, intense craft that would be useful to them, and their defence. And then again, Lenore, who had come to interview him for a series of snappy, satirical little articles she was writing for the New York Magazine about the police, and who, instead of getting some easy copy from her meeting with—what she had hoped would be—an archetypal, quintessential pig, had got so near that flame that not only had her paper been charred before she ever set pen to it, but had very nearly been burned herself.

  But no one, ever, apart from Bob, had seen that flame in him the very first time they had laid eyes on him. Yet Bob had seen it like a hawk sees a field-mouse; and he had swooped on it. He had gone straight to it, and hadn’t been afraid for a second; and within an hour of meeting Fred had exposed it and made it flare up more brightly than even Fred himself would have thought possible. They had been on the Lower East Side together —two plain clothes cops, one looking like an Irish construction worker, and the other, newly transferred into the Narcotics Bureau, like his kid brother up from the country—watching some big—too big for the Commissioner, but not big enough for the gentlemen from Long Island to want to save—black pusher, and had gone, in the line of duty, into a grimy bar on Avenue B to have a drink. And there, sitting in a corner of that sordid saloon—that looked like an English pub and was frequented by Irish construction workers, their kid brothers who were pretend­ing to be artists or bums, artists, bums, and a lot of black and Puerto Rican kids—with two cans of beer on the rickety wooden table between them, and keeping an eye through a diamond paned window on a house opposite, they had talked.

  Or rather, Fred had talked. He had told Bob all about his huge, asthmatic, alcoholic father who used to beat up his wife—Fred’s mother—and had died by choking on his own vomit one hot summer evening after he had drunk, one after another, fourteen cans of beer. He had told Bob all about his mother, who had been a tall, thin, proud, well-educated woman who had almost died giving birth to her only son—who had weighed eleven pounds—had never forgiven him for the pain she had suffered, and had always loved the wheezing wreck of a sea-lion she had married, even
when he beat her up—smashing, over the years, her left arm three times, her right arm once, all her front teeth, her nose, and nine of her ribs—even when she was so tired from working, cleaning, cooking and fighting that she couldn’t, by the time she went to bed, stop the tears pouring silently out of her eyes, as if some pipe had broken in her head which she no longer had the strength to repair, and especially when her son, who by the time he was twelve was stronger than his ruined father, attacked him, generally with words, but sometimes physic­ally, too. He had told Bob all about their apartment in the Bronx, that reeked of drink and vomit and piss the whole time, but always had clean white antimacassars on the three old chairs they owned, a statue of the Madonna whose eyes lit up in the bathroom, and a lot of books in a big old bookcase that his obsessively clean mother never dusted, as if to remind herself—or not to remind herself—of what had happened to her education. He had told Bob about his schooldays, about the fear he had inspired in the other kids, and the even greater fear he had inspired in his teachers when they had realized that this un­attractive, unsympathetic, sullen lump was no fool—was even, in fact, rather bright, and possibly quite clever. He had told Bob about his loneliness as a child, that he had never realized was loneliness until he had read the definition of the word in a dictionary, and how, because he had never had a single friend, he had never, really, missed having friends. He had told Bob how he had worked his way through college, supporting himself by working for one year as a construction worker, and for two as—don’t laugh; he got the job through an employment agency after he told the unbelieving man at the agency that he could, among other things, draw quite well, or at least neatly—an assistant to a mad old arthritic Frenchman who was—and had for years—been writing an unpublishable book about butterflies, and who wanted someone to make drawings of every known species of butterfly, to lift and carry about the glass display cases in which the butterflies, many of them moth-eaten, were pinned out, and to act as a sort of sorcerer’s apprentice. The old Frenchman had been mean, ill-tempered, and unpleasant, and in the two years Fred worked for him they hardly exchanged more than fifty words; but whether because the gigantic red youth who made minute drawings of butterflies satisfied his craving for eccen­tricity, whether because he was too frightened of him to send him away, or whether because he was simply satisfied with his assistant, the job lasted until Fred graduated. And after he graduated he did his military service, and then decided to join the police….