The Darkest Hour

16

The ringing phone woke Retnick and he sat up in the darkness and fumbled for his watch on the table beside the bed. The illuminated hands stood at six-thirty. He heard Mrs. Cara’s door open, and then the cautious murmur of her voice. She knocked on his door a second or two later. Retnick crossed the floor and turned the knob. He had been dozing only a few minutes — except for a coat and tie he was fully dressed.

“It’s a call for you,” Mrs. Cara said.

Retnick nodded his thanks and went down the hall and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Steve Retnick?” It was a girl’s voice, low and intense.

“That’s right.”

“This is Dixie Davis.” She laughed but the sound of it was all wrong. “I... I’m scared, I guess. That’s why I called. You gave me your number, remember? A million years ago, I guess.”

“Take it easy,” he said.

“I got a call just a few minutes ago. It was a man and he said he had dialed the wrong number. But it scared me. He hung up right away. It’s so quiet here. The whole building is like a tomb. It’s — nerves, I know. Isn’t that right?”

“Did you call the police?”

“What for?” she said nervously. “I... I just wanted to talk to somebody, that’s all. I know you think I’m no good, but a few minutes’ talk won’t corrupt you.”

“I’ll call the cops,” Retnick said. “Now listen: lock your door and sit tight. Don’t open up for anyone but a police officer. Watch the street from your windows and you’ll see the squad arrive. Understand?”

“You think I’m in trouble?”

“Why take chances? Keep that door locked, remember.”

“All right, sure.”

Retnick broke the connection and dialed the police board. He asked for the precinct which covered Dixie’s neighborhood, and was put through to a Lieutenant Mynandahl. When he explained what the trouble was the lieutenant said, “All right,” in an unexcited voice. “We’ll send a car over to look into it. You say she heard a prowler?”

“That’s right.”

“We’ll check it.”

Retnick returned to his room, picked up his hat and coat, and left the house. It was black outside, and the streets were empty and cold. He headed for the avenue at a run, knowing that his chances for a cab were slim at this hour. He waited five minutes at the intersection, his collar turned up against the wind, until a cruiser turned off a cross-town street and pulled up for him. Retnick gave the driver Dixie’s address and told him to hurry...

An empty, black-and-white squad car was pulled up before her building with the motor turning over smoothly. As Retnick paid off his driver he heard the metallic sound of the police radio, and the flat, businesslike voice of the announcer listing routine details and instructions. It was a comforting sound in the darkness and silence.

He went into the small foyer breathing more easily; the cops had got here ahead of him which meant there had been a very brief time-lag between her call and their arrival. Hardly time for anything to happen... Then he saw that the inner door stood slightly ajar and that the jamb had been worked on with a jimmy; splinters of torn wood gleamed whitely in the overhead light. Retnick hesitated, feeling the quickening beat of his heart. The cops might have forced their way in, which meant she hadn’t answered their ring...

He took the steps two at a time and when he turned the landing below her floor a hard young voice said, “Hold it right there. And get your hands up.”

A uniformed patrolman stood at the top of the stairs and the gun in his hand was pointed at Retnick.

“I put the call in,” Retnick said, standing perfectly still. “I talked to a Lieutenant Mynandahl and he said he’d send a car over here.”

The cop said, “How’d you know there would be trouble?”

“She called me.”

“All right, come on up,” the cop said, after hesitating briefly.

Retnick knew then that he was too late. “She’s dead, eh?”

“That’s right. You go in and wait for the lieutenant. He’ll want to talk to you.”

Retnick walked down the short hallway to her apartment, noticing that here too the iron teeth of a jimmy had been at work on the wood above and below the door lock. Inside the neat living room a middle-aged cop was talking on the phone. He glanced at Retnick and a surprised little smile of recognition touched his round face. His name was Melburn, Retnick remembered; they had worked together in Harlem ten years ago.

Melburn waved to him and continued speaking into the phone. “We’ll stick here until Homicide shows up,” he said. “Right.” Replacing the receiver he shook hands with Retnick and said, “Well, long time, eh? You know this girl?”

“Yes, I knew her,” Retnick said slowly. And because of that she was dead, he thought. For the first time in five years he experienced something like guilt. “Where is she?”

“In the bathroom.” Melburn shifted his weight awkwardly. “Steve, if she meant something to you, well I’m sorry.”

Retnick shrugged wearily. “She didn’t mean anything to me,” he said. Turning he went to the bathroom and pushed open the door.

She looked even smaller in death, curled on the floor in a child’s sleeping position, her knees drawn up almost to her chin. The bruises on her throat were partially concealed by the angle at which she lay, but he could see the mindless fear in her face, blurred and magnified by her swollen lips and widely staring eyes. One of her slippers had fallen off and her blue silk robe was twisted up around her thighs. The light above the medicine cabinet gleamed along her thin, chalk-white legs.

Retnick turned back to the living room and lit a cigarette. The smoke tasted hot and dry in his mouth. Melburn said, “We were cruising on Park when we got the call. We got here just a few minutes after it happened. Damn shame, eh?”

“It’s a damn shame all right,” Retnick said.

“You better stick around, I guess,” Melburn said. “The detectives will want to talk to you.”

Retnick pushed his hat back on his head and sat down on the edge of a chair with his big hands hanging limply between his knees. “I’ll wait,” he said. She had been sure that Evans would get her, he was thinking. Why did you put me on this spot? That had been her question to him, and he hadn’t bothered to answer it. He’d made a speech, he remembered. A pious angry speech. Well, why had he put her on the spot? Now it was an academic question. It was all I could do, he thought, drawing deeply on the cigarette. I had to make Evans think he was being framed. That someone was talking. Otherwise he’d never crack. It was Dixie’s life against— He frowned, unable to complete the thought. Against what?

A Homicide detective named Caprizzio came in and Retnick stood and shook hands with him, relieved to get away from his pointless, guilty thoughts. He answered Caprizzio’s questions, and Caprizzio nodded gloomily when he was through, and said, “These jobs that don’t have a nickel’s worth of planning in them are always the worst. The guy jimmies two doors, strangles her and walks out. That kind of murder is like a bolt of lightning, and just as hard to trace. Well, I’ll see you around.”

Retnick was ready to leave when the door opened and Lieutenant Neville came in, looking tired and worried. He frowned at Retnick and said, “Just a minute, I’ll go with you,” and then crossed the room and talked to Caprizzio for a few minutes.

Neville was very pale, Retnick noticed, and there was a hard look around his eyes. When he finished with Caprizzio he nodded to Retnick and said, “Let’s go downstairs, Steve. I want to talk with you.”

The darkness was lifting. A thin pearly light sparkled coldly on the frosted branches of the winter-black trees and shed a soft hazy glow along the well-kept little block. The wagon and three squads were double-parked along the curb, and a group of pedestrians, out early with their dogs, had bunched together across the street to watch the excitement. Two reporters and a photographer were waiting outside the foyer for Caprizzio’s okay to go up; they all looked tired and irritable.

“What’s going on?” one of them asked Neville. “Come on, don’t be like Caprizzio the Cautious. Has she got any relatives in town? That’s all the desk wants now. Pictures of her family, if any.”

“It’s not my case,” Neville said. “Caprizzio will give you the works pretty soon, I imagine.”

A uniformed patrolman put his head out the door. “Okay,” he said to the reporters. “The lieutenant says you can come up.”

Neville and Retnick walked down the sidewalk toward Park. The lieutenant took out his cigarettes, lit one and inhaled deeply. “I just left another dead one, Steve. Mario Amato. He blew his brains out an hour ago.”

Retnick stared at him, and when he saw the expression on Neville’s face the sense of guilt moved in him again, crowding insistently against the weight of his cold heavy anger. “When did this happen?” he asked.

They had stopped and were facing each other in the cold gray light of dawn. Neville said, “Anna Amato found him in bed when she got home from six o’clock Mass. She brought him a breakfast tray. Mario was in bed, a gun in his hand. Half his forehead was gone.”

Retnick swallowed a dryness in his throat. “You’re sure it’s a suicide?”

“It’s suicide, all right.”

I didn’t kill him, Retnick thought. Mario had shot himself after being grilled by Neville. A soft, nervous kid, caught in a murder investigation, he’d taken the easy way out...

Neville stared at him with cold stern eyes. “I blame myself for this,” he said. “Maybe you blame yourself, too. I don’t know. We threw away the book and made a mess of things. It was your idea but I carried it out. I thought you deserved any break I could give you. But all we did was cause two deaths. The girl’s murder, and Mario’s suicide. My only consolation is that I didn’t buy your insane notion to spread the word that Mario had squealed. If I had I might be responsible for another murder. But I didn’t, and that’s my one consolation. I wonder what yours is.”

“You’ll let Red Evans go now, I suppose?” Retnick said.

“We have nothing to hold him on. He’s in the clear.”

“You let him go,” Retnick said slowly. “I’ll be waiting for him.”

“As a cop, I’m warning you,” Neville said in a cold official voice. “You get in trouble and I’ll treat you like a lawbreaker.”

“Thanks all to hell,” Retnick said.

“Steve, I—” Neville paused, frowning into Retnick’s hard face. “There’s no way to get through to you,” he said at last, and his voice was empty and tired. “But remember this: the price of vengeance can be too high for any man to pay. You’ll know that someday.”

“I’ll pay it, don’t worry,” Retnick said.

Neville shrugged. The instant of compassion was gone and his face was once again closed and grim. “Good night, Steve,” he said shortly, and walked down the quiet street to the police cars.