After the First Death

9

I WENT THROUGH THE WINDOW WHILE A VOICE SHOUTED “HALT!” behind me. I scampered down the fire escape, hoping they’d think I was nothing more dangerous than a burglar with a bad sense of direction, hoping they’d decide I wasn’t worth the trouble of an all-out chase. I kept going, and the voice shouted again, and I ignored it, and someone fired what I suppose were warning shots, two of them, echoing incredibly loud in the air shaft between the buildings.

I kept on going, expecting to be shot yet never even considering the possibility of giving myself up. It was not bravery. It just did not occur to me. I kept going, and I dropped from the bottom of the fire escape and hit the garbage can, and it skidded crazily out from under me. I landed badly, one leg doubled up under me, pain flickering in colored lights. Another pair of shots, and not for warning this time. One hit the garbage can. I ran. There was more shooting, a steady barrage of it, as I ran across to the window I had kicked in earlier. None of the bullets came particularly close. It was dark, and they had to shoot almost vertically, and I suppose that helped. I dove through the window, squeezed past the furnace, raced for the stairs. The door of the super’s apartment burst open in front of me and a huge Negro with a cloth cap and no shirt stepped out, blocking my way. I said, “Turk!” but of course it wasn’t Turk, it wasn’t anyone I had ever known.

I ran straight into him. We bounced off each other, and I made a fist and threw one enormous punch at him. If he had dodged it I am sure I would have fallen down. But he was as surprised as I, and my fist found what must have been precisely the right spot on his chin. His eyes went absolutely blank and he began falling in slow motion. I ran on, to the stairs, up the stairs, down the hall, out the door.

Running, running. I knew that I ought to stop, that I had to walk normally and melt away into the shadows, but my brain couldn’t convey this message to my legs. If the police had circled the block they would have seen me, and that would have been that. But luck held. After three blocks I managed at last to turn off the running and drop into a darkened doorway. My heart was hammering and no matter how deeply I breathed I couldn’t suck in enough air. I thought I was having a heart attack. I held onto the side of the building, and that didn’t work, and I sat down on the stairs and went on gulping air and trying to catch my breath.

It would have been very easy to black out then. I felt it coming on, waves of dark nausea and exhaustion, working at once upon stomach and head. It was drowning me. I fought it, and clenched my teeth and took deep breaths, and I stayed on top of it, until finally everything came back to what passes for normal.

Then, when I was once again steady, I began to hear the gunshots again, to feel bullets slapping at the pavement on either side of me. I had been too busy at the time to be properly terrified. Now, after the fact, I started to shake as if palsied. I couldn’t stop trembling.

Stupid, stupid. Of course the apartment was empty. Naturally the police would come and take everything away. And, even if they hadn’t, my landlord would surely empty the apartment prefatory to renting it to someone else. He would hardly hold it for me. Though the rent was paid through the first of the month, he had every right to expect that I would not be back.

I walked a couple of blocks, heading uptown and west. I managed to get past a good number of bars, and when I finally entered one it was less for want of a drink than to use the men’s room. I was a mess, one hand cut, the other slightly bruised, my clothes dirty from the fall. I washed my hands and face and brushed off my slacks as well as I could. I was still something of a mess, but now at least I looked presentable enough to return to my hotel without raising eyebrows.

But the shaking wouldn’t quit. So on the way out I stopped at the bar, telling myself I was going to have a drink because I damn well needed a drink, and telling myself also that one drink was absolutely all I was going to have.

I took a shot of bar rye, took it neat with water back, and gagged on it but kept it down. And drank the water chaser, and had another glass of water after that, and walked out knowing that I did not need a second drink, and that, thank God, I did not want a second drink.

The one drink helped. It took the edge off and stopped the shaking. I walked the rest of the way to Union Square and took the subway back to my hotel.

The hotel room got to me. I couldn’t sit still. I took a shower and cleaned the rest of the grime from my clothes. I almost forgot the dye and washed my hair. A little water did get on it, but no harm was done.

Then I sat around the room, and tried to look at the television set. I caught the eleven o’clock news. I didn’t get much of a play this time, just that I was still being sought They hadn’t received anything on the debacle at my apartment building-perhaps the police actually thought it was a burglar and not me at all. And if Morton Pillion had told the police that I’d spoken to him, they had decided to keep it a secret for the time being.

I turned off the set and started pacing the room. I had to get started, and the night had to be the best time for it. There were people I had to talk to. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, but I didn’t want to sit still either. I got dressed again and went out.

I called Doug MacEwan from a pay phone. He answered, and I rang off without saying anything.

He lived with his wife and son in one of the new buildings in Washington Heights. I walked across town and took a subway up to his place. I was getting over the nervousness of being among people now. After the shower, when I looked at my face in the bathroom mirror, I looked less like me than ever before. It wasn’t just the gray hair. My face looked older. In just a few days I had lived some new lines and creases into it. Ones that wouldn’t wash off.

I didn’t want to ring MacEwan’s bell. I didn’t want to give him the chance to call the police while I rode the elevator to his floor. So I waited into the shadows until a woman was opening the door, and then I moved after her, holding my hotel key in my hand. I must have looked as though I belonged, because she held the door for me. We took the elevator together, and told each other what a nice evening it was, and how we hoped it would stay warm and clear for the rest of the week. She got off at the fifth floor. I rode on up to the sixteenth, and knocked on Doug’s door.

He answered it in pajamas and a bathrobe. Evidently I looked enough unlike myself to put him off balance for a second or two. Then he did a take and stepped nervously backward, and I followed him inside and closed the door.

He said, “Oh, Christ.”

“I need help, Doug.”

“Yes, I’ll bet you do. Jesus, you look awful. Did you go gray overnight or what?”

“It’s dyed.”

“I thought you’d be out of town by now. Or caught I looked all over that corner for you last night, I had the money, and I couldn’t find you. What the hell happened?”

So evidently he had kept our date. I felt momentarily bad for not trusting him.

“There were cops around,” I said. “I got rattled, I ran.”

“You want the dough? I’ll-”

“It’s not important. Not right this minute.” I took a breath. “We have to talk. What I said last night was serious. I didn’t kill the girl. And that means I didn’t kill the first one, either. Somebody’s framing me, Doug. I’ve got to find out who.”

“The police-”

“The police won’t look any farther than me. I’ve got to come up with something more than what I know myself. Once I do that, then I’ll go for the police on a dead run. Until then I’ve got to do it on my own.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Information. There are things I have to know. Somebody did it to me, then somebody must have had a reason. I can only think of two reasons so far. There might be more, but I can only think of two of them. The job and Gwen.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“They were the only two things I had that somebody might want to take away from me. My job and my wife. What do you know about Gwen s new husband?”

“Absolutely nothing. She met him in California, that’s all I know.”

“Oh?”

“She went out after you were sent to prison. Sublet the apartment for the remainder of the lease period, sold everything except a few things she put in storage, then took a plane to the coast. Awhile after that Kay got a note from her. We exchange Christmas cards. That’s about all She hasn’t been back since then, as far as I know.”

I lit a cigarette. “Suppose she knew him before.”

“It doesn’t seem likely.”

“Nothing seems likely. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. Kay would know-”

“Is she home?”

“Sleeping. She went to sleep about an hour ago.” He looked down at his pajamas and robe. His feet were bare. “I was reading, just about ready to turn in myself.”

“Sorry to bother you.”

“Don’t be silly.” His eyes met mine. “I think you could use a drink. What can I get you?”

“Nothing for me.”

“Well, I can use one, then.”

He found a bottle of Scotch and carried it into the kitchen. I followed him. He filled a tall glass with ice cubes, added a jigger of Scotch, then filled the glass the rest of the way with tap water. He asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to join him.

“Maybe some coffee,” I said.

“Instant all right?”

“Sure.”

We waited while the coffee boiled. We sat at the kitchen table, he nursing a drink, me working on the coffee.

I said, “The name.”

“I don’t remember it, Alex.”

“Wake Kay.”

“I can’t do that”

“Why the hell not? Christ, Doug, I don’t have an abundance of time. I can’t afford to wait until things are convenient for people. The time’s too short as it is.”

“I can’t wake her.”

“Why?”

“She’ll panic. She’ll want me to call the police. She thinks-”

“That I’m a killer?”

He shrugged, drank, nodded. “You know women.”

“The hell I do.”

“Well I don’t know what to do. You really think this guy-”

“I don’t think anything, but it’s a place to start.”

“You figure he and Gwen-”

“Uh-huh.”

He got to his feet “No. Not a chance.”

“She wouldn’t have to have known what he did. She could have thought it was all straight, that I really killed Evangeline Grant.”

“But you figure she was having an affair with him.”

“That’s how it would read, yes.”

He shook his head. “Not Gwen,” he said.

“You sound sure of yourself.”

“Dammit, I am! She loved you-”

“And I loved her. But it didn’t keep me out of Evangeline Grant’s bed, or too many other beds before that. People are unusual animals. They don’t always do things for the right reasons. They don’t always do things that make a vast amount of sense.” I lit a cigarette. “I need that name, Doug.”

“Kay has an address book. I’m not sure where she keeps it, but I could dig it up.”

“Do that.”

He sighed, set his glass down empty. “All right,” he said. “Wait here.”

I waited while he went off to hunt for the name and address of my wife’s current husband. I waited, smoking my cigarette, drinking my coffee, listening very intently. At first I didn’t realize what it was that I was listening for. Then all at once I did. I was waiting for the sound of him making a telephone call to the police. The sound never happened, and he came back with a red leather book in his hand, and I wondered when if ever I would be able to start trusting people again.

“This is it,” he said.

The entry, carefully inscribed in Kay MacEwans’s small neat hand, read:

Mr. & Mrs. Russell J. Stone (Gwen Venn)

4315 Portland Hill Drive

Los Angeles, California

“She didn’t take down the zip code,” Doug said idiotically.

“I don’t think I’ll need it.”

“Are you going out there?”

“God, no. Too dangerous. And not worthwhile, yet.” I copied down name and address on a scrap of paper, tucked it away in a pocket. “Mr. Russell J. Stone sounds very possible,” I said. “But there are other possibilities.”

“Like who?”

“Like an old boyfriend of hers whom I don’t think you know. Like a departmental colleague of mine whom, come to think of it, you do know. Whatever happened to Warren Hayden?”

“Hayden? You must be kidding.”

“I haven’t done any kidding in almost five years, Doug.”

“Well, why in hell would Warren Hayden-”

“Cam Welles got put out to pasture, didn’t he?”

“Oh, sure, Just a couple of months after you, uh-”

“You can say went to jail, you know. I know. I went There’s no point in pretending it didn’t happen.”

“Just a few months after you went to jail, Cam Welles retired.”

“And Warren got the top spot?”

“Who else was there?”

“My point,” I said.

He stared incredulously at me. “Do you mean to suggest,” he said, “that for the sake of a department chairmanship, a meek little man like Warren Hayden would take a knife and-”

“Why not?”

“Alex-”

“God damn it,” I said, “at least it’s a reason, isn’t it? Everybody on earth is very goddamn willing to believe that I killed two girls for the sheer hell of it, with no reason at all. At least I’m talking about motives, I’m advancing some possibilities.” I lit another cigarette. “There was an old lag I knew, a trusty in for life. A murderer. You know why he was in there?”

“No.”

“He was playing cards with his best friend and he lost. And when he thought about it afterwards he decided that the friend must have cheated him, and that really got him mad. He waited two days and thought it out all very carefully, and then he went downtown and bought a shotgun, and then he went to the friend’s place and emptied both barrels in the friend’s face. Took most of his head off.”

“I don’t see-”

“You didn’t let me finish. You know how much he lost in that card game? You know the staggering sum that made him.

kill?

“Alex-”

“Fifteen cents, Doug.” I closed my eyes for a moment The human race is so imperfect an invention. “Fifteen cents. The chairmanship of the history department is worth a hell of a lot more than that.”

“I don’t think Warren Hayden would do anything like that.”

“Neither do I. But I’ll want to make sure.”

“I don’t even think he’s in town this year. I think he’s on sabbatical somewhere in South America. Peru, I think.”

“I’ll have to check. There are quite a few things I’ll have to check, Doug. It’s my life, you know.”

“Sure.”

I got up, pushed back my chair. We were uncomfortable with each other, Doug and I. I had gotten what I had come for, and we would each of us be glad to say goodbye.

“I’ll go now,” I told him. Thanks for the coffee, and the conversation. And Russell Stone.”

“Don’t go off half-cocked.”

“I won’t”

“Even if Gwen was having an affair, and I don’t believe it for a moment it doesn’t prove anything. Not by itself.”

“Maybe not.”

“So just take it easy.”

“Uh-huh.”

He walked me to the door. I’ve still got some money set aside for you. Want it?”

I said I did. I still had some money, but I felt I couldn’t have too much. There was little enough time, and I did not want to get hung up with money worries. He came back with two hundred dollars in tens and twenties.

“You’ll get this back,” I said.

“I expect to.”

He didn’t expect to. He was good enough to say so. He was my only friend in the world, and he didn’t really believe me, and I didn’t entirely trust him. It can be rather a lonely place, this world.

“Where can I get in touch with you?”

“No place. I’ve been sleeping in alleyways.”

“Is that safe?”

“No. I’ll find a hotel now. Maybe across the river in Jersey, I don’t know. I won’t be staying in any one place very long, I don’t suppose. Safer to keep moving.”

“Suppose something comes up?”

“Put a notice in the Times. The personal column. One of the standard ones. My wife having left my bed and board, I will no longer be responsible for her debts. There’s half a dozen of those every morning, nobody ever reads them, so it’ll be subtle enough. And if I see it, I’ll call you.”

“I wouldn’t want to use my own name. Kay would be furious-”

“Oh, Christ, of course not. Make up a name. Oh, Peter Porter, how’s that? My wife Petunia having left my bed and board-that’ll do it.”

“Peter Porter and his wife Petunia.”

“Perfect. Easy for both of us to remember.”

“Uh-huh.”

We very awkwardly shook hands. He opened the door for me and waited with me for the elevator. It came, and we shook hands again, a little less awkwardly, and he went back to his apartment while I rode down to the lobby.

Peter Porter and his wife Petunia. Simpler to tell him the hotel where I was staying. But I still didn’t trust him, or anyone else.