“The fat one with the moustache,” Marion said to Jack. “He never shows his face unless it’s to come out and yell at somebody. Always taping something, so he hates any noise around. Why didn’t he come out when Elsie was being—” She broke off.
Jack saw that she meant the middle-aged fellow who had asked him what the hell was going on when Jack arrived.
“I swear Elsie said something to me when I grabbed her,” Marion went on. “I swear she said, ‘Help me up’ or ‘My head—’”
Jack could not believe this, not after having seen the dent in Elsie’s head. He took Marion by the arm and steered her into the apartment, which for the moment looked empty. And Marion wilted suddenly, her shoulders bent. “Sit for a minute, Marion.” Sweat dripped from Jack’s forehead, and his T-shirt was soaked. He saw blood, a dark wide splotch, on the turquoise-colored pillow that had supported Elsie’s head, and he quickly turned the pillow over. Blood had soaked into the teal blue stone or cement floor, too, but was less conspicuous than the pillow. The blanket lay mussed on the floor. “Got a drink in the house, Marion? Or hot tea? Hot tea’d do you good.”
“Hot tea!” Marion laughed bitterly. “You bet I’ve got a drink in the house. Upper right. Pour it, Jack.”
She meant the cabinet over the sink. Jack got down the Cutty Sark, poured some into two glasses, and handed one to Marion.
Marion took a sip. “She was just here!” She sat up straighter on the sofa, then stood up.
“No, sit down again.” But Marion walked, and Jack with difficulty led her toward the next possible sitting place, a double bed in the corner.
Marion sat down on the edge. “They’re coming back. They’re not finished.”
“Who?”
“The police.”
“Of course they’re coming back. They’ll get whoever did this.—Marion, do you want to call someone? Want to come home with me? Us?—You can’t stay here alone.—Drink that.”
She took a big gulp, her reddish-brown lashes closed, them she looked at him more steadily. “I’m okay.”
Jack looked up at the high, white ceiling, saw guitars hanging on two walls, and three or four paintings by the same person which were not bad at all. “Where was Elsie this afternoon?”
“She had a job at two at a studio on East Thirty-eighth. Said she’d easily be finished in an hour or so, and she’d be home by four. Well, she was—She—” Marion’s voice trembled.
“Come home with me, Marion. Or call up a friend. I’m not going to leave you alone here.”
Marion rubbed her forehead. “I’ll call Myra, okay.”
“She’s someone in the neighborhood?”
“Yes.” Marion started to get up, nearly fell back again, then straightened and stood up like a soldier before Jack could reach her. “I’m really okay, Jack. And I’m going to get the son of a bitch who did this. I swear!”
“Never fear. We will.”
Manon telephoned, and Jack wet his face at the sink in the kitchenette, slopped water over his ribs under his T-shirt. He heard Marion saying, “Okay, so let me in, will you?…In a couple of minutes. Five minutes.”
They locked up, and went down the stairs. A man and woman were still in the downstairs hall, talking.
“Your friend’s dead?” the woman asked. “Is that true?”
“Yes.” Marion pulled back from the woman’s outstretched hand.
“The police still up there, Marion?” This came from a tall blond young man in jeans and black T-shirt, with an earnest expression on his face.
“No,” Marion said. “Thanks, Vince, for phoning.”
“Phoning! ‘S nothing!—Jesus, Elsie!” he whispered. “I was afraid to come up in case the police were still talking with you. Coming back tonight, Marion?”
“Not sure. I’m at Myra’s.”
“Okay, we’re home. Keep in touch.”
They walked south. Marion said Myra’s place was two blocks away. Jack held her arm, lightly, maybe unnecessarily, but it helped him to hold her arm, and maybe she derived a little comfort from it too.
“Why do you think Fran might have done it?” Jack asked.
“She’s such a sick creep, and she so hated Elsie. I dunno, Jack, but I think.”
Jack got a bang on his thigh from the handlebars of a kid’s bike, and the kid yelled something hostile back. “But you didn’t say that to the police.”
“I’m not going to get myself in trouble with the fuzz. False accusation? Ha! They’d think I was hysterical! Gay in-fights, maybe.—Plenty of time to mention Fran. Let’s see what they come up with.”
They turned a corner, left.
“You don’t think Linderman?”
“Lin—The old creep? Na-aah, I don’t see it.” Marion sounded her level-headed self suddenly. She glanced at Jack. “I don’t see it, really.—Here we are. Or I am.” She was ready to climb a stoop of four or five steps.
“I want to be sure you get in,” Jack said, and saw Marion smile weakly before she climbed the steps and pressed a button. “We’re home tonight, Marion. We’ll be home. Phone us if you want to. But you don’t have to.”
“Thanks, Jack.” Marion’s voice was clear and strong. A buzzer sounded, and she went into the house.
Jack turned uptown, head down, walking, breathing faster, looking ahead of him only enough to dodge anyone who might be coming toward him. His mind was full of curses, astonishment, disbelief, anger, and his eyes began to sting, which seemed the only normal or understandable fact at that moment. Tears, yes, clearing his eyes of dust, tears that hurt his eyes in a real way.
What was Ralph Linderman doing at this moment? Jack was heading for Linderman’s abode, which had been his intention since he had poured the Cutty Sark in Marion’s apartment. Ask Linderman a couple of questions. Of course he might not be in.
Jack looked at his wristwatch. 5.37. Now he was on Bleecker and he began to trot, trotted when he could without bumping into people. He wasn’t sure of Linderman’s house number, but he would recognize its entrance, its little stoop with its black door battered with use. Now a diapered baby sat on the stoop landing, a couple of boys were tossing a dirty tennis ball, and they stared at Jack as he walked between them, and watched him as he pressed the Linderman bell. The front door had been unlocked.
“That bell don’t work,” said one boy, and giggled.
Jack didn’t know whether to believe him or not.
“You wanna see the ol’ bananas?—Go on up!”
A shriek of laughter from both boys.
Jack tried the second door, which was also unlocked, and started up the stairs. Voices and cooking smells, age and dust. In the heat, every apartment door seemed to be slightly open. All the way at the top, Jack remembered, and the door back left. Jack knocked.
Footsteps approached. “If that’s you again, I’m not opening this door!”
Jack rapped more firmly. “Sutherland here!”
A pause. “Sutherland?”
“That’s right, Mr Linderman,” Jack said, standing with feet apart. He wiped sweat from his eyes with his forearm.
Linderman opened. He was half-shaved, lather on part of his face, safety razor in hand. “What’s the trouble?”
“Can I come in?”
Stiffly, Linderman stepped aside and let Jack in.
Someone below was yelling in Italian, and the voice was not entirely shut off when Linderman closed his door.
“Excuse my appearance,” Linderman said, “but there’s been disturbance in the house all afternoon, and I’m getting ready to go to work.”
Jack nodded. Linderman was in trousers and undershirt. The black and white dog nosed against Jack’s legs and wagged its tail half-heartedly. Linderman walked in houseshoes to the back of the apartment to turn off running water somewhere.
“What’s the matter?” Linderman asked, coming back. “You’ve been running? In this heat?”
“No.” Jack did not take his eyes from Linderman.
“Want a
glass of cold water?—Why’re you looking at me like that?—I suppose my letter annoyed you.”
Jack felt as if his torso, his face, were a furnace. The sweat ran down him. “What were you doing this afternoon?”
“Hah!—Trying to sleep! A new wop family’s moved in just below. Kids crawling all over the place, up these stairs!” Linderman pointed. “I’m on duty at eight. Have to get my sleep. If these were work sounds, I always say, I wouldn’t get so mad, but these are unnecessary noises! Kids screaming, people yelling!”
A thump sounded nearby, Jack jumped like a nervous cat, and he looked at the door.
“That’s habitual! That’s their ballgame—against my door!” Linderman spoke with sneering contempt. He still held the safety razor. “They do it deliberately, of course.”
A child’s voice squealed in the hall.
“I’d love to train God to clear ‘em off this floor, but then they’d complain about my dog and win! Nobody cares about peace and order any more.”
“Where were you around four o’clock today?” Jack asked.
“Four?” Linderman looked surprised. “I was here.”
“When was the last time you aired your dog?”
“Aired God? This morning around noon. He’s got to go out again before I go to work.” Linderman shifted, almost touched his lathered cheek with his free hand, and didn’t. “‘S matter, Mr Sutherland? Have you had a house robbery? A break-in?”
Trotting toward Linderman’s house, Jack had so easily imagined Linderman following Elsie as she walked home, Elsie saying something rude to him over her shoulder, and Linderman picking up the first thing to hand, some kind of brick from the gutter, having suffered the last straw of rejection from Elsie, hitting her on top of the head after she’d opened her door with her key, hitting her perhaps twice more while she screamed, then dropping the brick and fleeing when he heard Marion opening the door above. Now here was Linderman angry with his neighbors, saying that he’d been in all afternoon, and maybe he had been. Should he believe Linderman?
“Mr Sutherland—”
“No, no break-in,” Jack said.
“Something happen with your little daughter?”
“No.”
“With Elsie?” Linderman looked more concerned.
“No, no.”
“Good. Well—if you’ll excuse me just two minutes—You could sit down. I’ve got to finish this face-scraping, then take the dog outside for a minute.” Linderman gestured toward his armchair, and retreated to his bathroom somewhere to the right of the two windows.
Jack walked toward the open door through which Linderman had gone. He saw an unmade bed in a small room, heard water running again. The bed did look as if Linderman had just got out of it, but couldn’t he have got out at 3 this afternoon? Jack turned and walked toward the apartment door, then noticed above the door a square card edged in brown with black lettering: PREPARE TO MEET THY DOG. Linderman had pasted DOG over what must have been GOD. It was one of the cards that sold at souvenir shops.
“Ha-ha,” said Linderman, returning. “My latest addition. “Prepare—”
“Where’re you working now, Mr Linderman?”
“Ah. Something called the Hot Arch Arcade. Broadway and Eighty-first. Bread and circuses for the masses. Open day and night. I don’t think you’d like the clientele.—Mr Sutherland, you’re looking pale now!”
“Pale?”
“Minute ago you were red as a beet, now you’re pale! If you want to talk about—what I wrote to you about Elsie—Won’t you—” Linderman extended a hand as if to escort Jack to a seat.
Jack edged back and moved toward the door. “Thank you, I’ll be off. Sorry to’ve bothered you.” Jack went out.
Then Jack was down on the sidewalk in the sun again, walking at a normal pace, and the air was cold on his body. He reached for his keys.
Natalia and Amelia were home, Natalia in the kitchen.
“Hello, Jack! Guess what we—What’s the matter, Jack?”
“Nothing.”
“You look beat!—Where’ve you been?”
Jack realized that he was shaking slightly. Was it a chill? He suddenly remembered Elsie’s chill, here, in February, hadn’t it been? He pulled his T-shirt over his head. “I think I’ll take a shower.” He went and turned on the hot water in the shower.
Natalia followed him. “Jack, what happened? Did you get into a fight somewhere?”
“Fight, no!” Jack almost laughed as he stepped under the hot water. The water felt marvelous. He let it run onto his head, his upturned face, hot as he could bear it. His teeth stopped chattering.
“A hot shower.—Want a cold drink?”
“I’d love some hot tea.”
“Really?”
“I mean it.”
Jack put on a terrycloth bathrobe and took his tea into the bedroom. He had beckoned to Natalia. “Sit down.” He meant on the bed or on a chair. She didn’t want to sit, but he insisted with a gesture.
“All right.” She took the straight chair that always stood near his side of the bed.
“Elsie’s been killed,” he said softly.
Natalia started. “Killed?—What do you mean?”
“This afternoon. Marion called me. This was around four. I went—”
“Killed how?”
“Somebody hit her head with a brick.” Trembling again, Jack lifted his teacup.
“Where was this?”
“It happened right in the entrance to her house. Marion heard her scream and—went down and got her upstairs. But she was dead. The police were there and—the hospital people from St Vincent’s. Marion thinks—”
“I can’t believe it!” Natalia whispered. “Do you think that Linderman creep—” Natalia had stood up. “Did Marion see anything?”
“No. She said she saw someone running out, someone in white trousers, she says, but really she’s in a state of shock, Natalia darling, and she might not be right about that.”
“It’s unbelievable!”
“I just went to see Linderman,” Jack said. “He says he’d been in all afternoon, and I swear it looks as if he has.—Marion mentioned this girl Fran. You know? That dikey type?”
“Fran, yes.”
“What’s her last name?”
“I forgot.—My God, Jack—you saw Elsie?”
“Of course. Yes. I ran down to Greene Street when Marion phoned me. I think she thought Elsie was just hurt—knocked out, but—” Jack did not want to describe Elsie’s wounds. “Marion suspects Fran.—Oh, the cops’ll get onto Fran, Linderman, question them, I’m sure. But how many other toughs were hanging around Elsie? I don’t know. Do you?”
Natalia might not have heard him. She was frowning, head down, but not weeping. “F’Chris’ sake, Elsie!—No!” she yelled suddenly at the thumping knock on the closed door.
Amelia opened the door a little, wanting something.
“I’ll be back,” Natalia said, going out. “No, honey, your daddy and I have to talk about something. For five minutes.—Yes, about the trip. We…” Her voice faded out of hearing.
The Yugoslav trip. They were leaving at the end of the month, flying to Belgrade via Vienna. A couple of suitcases, open and closed, lay in corners of the hall, and some packing had already been done.
Natalia was back with a Glenfiddich.
In the next five minutes or so, Natalia extracted every detail from him, the time, where Elsie had been wounded, what Marion had said, where Marion was now (Natalia had met Myra but was not sure of her last name, Jackson or Johnson), and what the police had said or asked, and what Linderman had said.
“I’m going to go and see her,” Natalia said, putting a cigarette out.
“Who? Marion?”
“Elsie.”
Jack couldn’t dissuade her. Natalia was going to go to St Vincent’s, and then to the morgue, wherever Elsie was.
“Then I’ll go with you,” Jack said, getting up, ready to dress.
“I don’
t want you to. I’ll do it.”
Something in Natalia’s determined voice, and face, made Jack pause. She really preferred to go alone.
“Don’t let Amelia watch the box tonight. Something might be on it, you know? An announcement.” Natalia had whispered.
Jack got dressed as soon as he heard the door close. He put on cotton trousers and a shirt that hung out. In the bathroom, he picked up his levis, still dark with sweat at the waist.
“Dad-dee! The Nebu—koo!” Amelia cried from the living-room.
“The what?” He saw his daughter on the floor, propped on an elbow, long hair flowing down.
“It’s here!—I can read it! What is it?”
Jack leaned over the Yugoslav map which Amelia had spread on the carpet, not seeing a thing except the big rectangle of the paper. “It’s a place. What else?”
“Are we going to see one?” Losing patience, Amelia said, “It’s not a place, it looks like a tent! At the edge here. Look!”
Light, daylight fell on Amelia’s fair hair from the windows behind her, and Jack thought of Elsie. This was the last light of the sun of the last day for Elsie. Jack closed his eyes and turned away. “Got to see about dinner. Aren’t you getting hungry?”
“No,” said Amelia, being perverse. “Where is Mommy?”
“Went out for a while. She’ll be back.”
Natalia had started dinner, so there wasn’t much for Jack to do. The telephone rang while he and Amelia were eating. A man’s voice said he was Police Officer So-and-So, and would it be convenient for him to come over and have a word with Jack?
“Of course. Now?”
“In about ten minutes.”
Jack tried to get Amelia to bed. She suspected something, and consequently kept trying to fool him. Yes, she was going to bed, no, she wasn’t, because someone was coming.
“Sure you can stay up,” Jack said, trying homeopathy. “It’s going to be a party. Cops ‘n robbers.”
Amelia’s golden eyes widened. “Who’s coming? How many?”
“It’s a pajama party. Get those on!”
The doorbell rang.
Two policemen, both in uniform with blue short-sleeved shirts came up the stairs. Jack recognized one as the cop who had spoken to him in Marion’s apartment.