101 Mystery Stories

82 Letter To the Editor Morris Hershman

Dear Mr. Hitchcock:

I’m writing to you because I’ve heard of you and I want your advice about something. My friends say I ought to be a real writer, anyhow. I write letters very good.

What I figure, though, is that maybe you can tell me if I ought to be as scared as I am.

Like I say, this thing really happened. If you want to make a story out of it maybe I could collaborate with you on it. I’ve got the story; all you’d have to do is write it up.

Anyhow, this happened to me on Brighton Beach. In Coney Island, you know, in Brooklyn.

When I go out there I usually bring a blanket in a paper bag. unroll it on the sand, take off my pants and shirt and, with my bathing suit already on instead of shorts, try to catch me a little sun. I park myself near the peeling wooden sign that says Bay 2. A lot of people near my own age come out there, in the twenties and thirties. I can lie on the sand and look up at the boardwalk. Though it’s plastered with signs saying that you need shirt and pants to go walking up there, that doesn’t really matter.

It happened just this afternoon, the thing I want to tell you about. You know what it’s been like in the city: 93 in the shade, people dropping like flies. Even on the beach today, the sand was like needles under your feet.

When I’d waited for half an hour and none of my friends showed up. I went into the water. Usually I walk in up to my ankles, then dive in to get the rest of me good and wet.

Well, I swam out past the first buoy. Like all the rest of them, it’s red on top and with what looks like barnacles on the sides. All of a sudden I saw a guy coming almost head on into me. About twenty feet or so away I heard another man yell, “Sam!” and then there was the sound of bubbles.

The fellow had disappeared (the guy I’d been looking at call him number one so you won’t get confused) and then he showed up above water with the crook of his arm on the other guy’s neck, pulling him in.

“This man’s hurt!” he shouted.

I can scream pretty good, too. “Give ’em room!”

On the shore they tried artificial respiration. I went along to watch the hefty lifeguard in his white shirt, the victim’s legs between his, jumping up and down like clockwork. I won’t forget it as long as I live.

How long that’s going to be, maybe you can guess.

Anyway, this fellow who’d brought him in stood off to one side. He wore a bright-red rubber cap and a bathing suit with white stripes at the sides. He was a beanpole of a guy, the kind who probably never stops eating, though. His large brown eyes stared right past me.

“Poor guy, whoever he was,” Beanpole said to anybody who’d listen. Then he stopped and pointed. “Look!”

I did, but all I saw was the usual beach scene: the kids selling ice cream or tin-bottomed paper cartons of orange drink or cans of cold chocolate, or cellophane bags with potato knishes inside. You can always recognize the sellers because they wear white sun helmets like in movies about big-game hunters in Africa.

At my left a guy wandered from girl to girl, trying to strike up a talk — “operating,” it’s called nowadays. A lot of acquaintances run into each other at Bay 2 because they’ve mostly been to the same summer places: White Roe, Banner Lodge, Tamiment, Lehman, whatever you like.

At one blanket, people gathered around a uke player who was picking out “Blue-Tail Fly.” He stopped to tell a singer something about one of the downtown social clubs for older unmarried people. “I’m going down for a dance tonight at the change-of-life club,” he said.

Then I saw what Beanpole had been pointing at. Two men, clearing a path for themselves, inched their way along the lines of blankets. Between them they carried what looked like a white gauze pad folded in two. It turned out to be a stretcher. They covered up the guy with a sheet over his face, so he couldn’t even breathe.

“I guess they’re taking him to the first-aid station,” I said to a small blonde next to me, remembering the wooden shack on Bay 6 or 7 that looks like it was on stilts and with a spiral staircase that takes you up to the dispensary.

The blonde shook her head slowly. “No, it’s the ambulance for him and then the morgue. I saw him earlier in the day. He was a very good swimmer.”

At my side the Beanpole nodded. “He must’a gotten cramps or something. We were way out, past the fourth marker. Nobody in sight except...” And he turned to me like he’d just noticed I was there.

I introduced myself. He mumbled that he was glad to know me, but he didn’t mention his name. His eyes were hard and bright.

“How much of it did you see?” he asked quietly.

“I saw you practically on top of him and trying to get a grip on him. You did a hero’s job out there. Nothing to be ashamed of, believe me!”

I had made up mind not to go in swimming today, and when my friends came around a little later, I told them what I’d seen and spent the afternoon lying in the sun.

Once I felt somebody’s eyes on me. I looked up and there was Beanpole, not too far away. He was asking a girl the name of the book she was reading, but every so often he glanced in my direction. I lay back and closed my eyes and forgot it.

But when I was going home by way of the Brighton local, I started to ask myself questions. Once I remember I looked up at my reflection in a subway window glass; I might have been a skeleton.

Well, as soon as I got home to Snyder Avenue, where I live, I started writing this letter to you. I was supposed to take a shower and go down to a State of Israel bond rally at Twenty-third and Madison, but I don’t think I will. Not tonight. For all I know, maybe I’ll never go to a rally again in my life.

It’s this way: the blond girl at the beach told me that the dead guy was a good swimmer. If he’d been in trouble, well, any old hand at swimming knows enough to float around till he can save himself. I’d heard the victim calling, “Sam!” before he went under, like Sam was right near; but Beanpole said he never knew the dead guy.

The idea I’ve got explains why Beanpole behaved like he did, the way he kept looking at me. I’ve been thinking hard, and now what I saw looks completely different. I had told Beanpole, “I saw you practically on top of him.” The way I remember it now, Beanpole was holding the guy under water, not saving him. Beanpole kept him under water till it made no difference one way or the other.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Beanpole is a right guy, after all. Maybe.

I figure it like this, though: I’m the only one who saw it happen, and he knows that.

Like I say, maybe I’m all wrong. Beanpole could have gotten so bollixed up trying to save the guy he went around afterwards like he’d flipped his lid. He looked calm to me, but maybe some guys carry all their feelings inside them, like a guy does if he’s worked up to kill somebody.

Well, that shows what you can think about in the morning. It’s almost morning here, and I can look out the window and see dawn touch the rooftops across the street.

I guess I’m all wrong, crazy with the heat or whatever you’d call it.

But it’d be so easy for Beanpole to find me. After all, he knows my name and it’s in the phone book. All he has to do is come in right now and shoot the top of my head off.

But even if he did the truth would come out. This letter alone is sure to do it. If I hear anybody coming, I’ll stop writing and hide it as quick as I can. It’d be found by the police, afterwards. I’m sure Beanpole’s name and address were taken this afternoon, and plenty of people got a good look at him.

Anyhow, that’s all of it, and like I said at the beginning I want your advice about whether I’m right to be as scared as I am. Should I go to the police and tell them all this?

To show you the way a guy can get nervous; just this minute I could have sworn I felt a draught on the back of my neck, like the door had been quietly opened by somebody, and.