After the First Death

7

THE HOTEL WAS ON THIRTY-SEVENTH STREET BETWEEN PARK AND Lexington. In the bathroom of Room 401 there was a mirror, and in the mirror there was a face which looked altogether too much like mine.

Still, there were differences. I still looked like me, but I no longer looked like my description. My hair, normally a dark brown, was now a rather washed-out-gray. I had had all of it; now, with the aid of a razor, I had provided myself with something of a receding hairline. An all-night drugstore had furnished me with the necessary paraphernalia.

The face in the mirror was the face I would probably be wearing in ten or fifteen years. If I lived that long.

I had not expected to be able to sleep. By the time I was through with my work as an amateur makeup man, the city was yawning outside my window, impatient for the day to begin. I dropped into bed and closed my eyes and started to think things out, and before I could begin to get my thoughts organized I was under, and slept for ten hours without stirring.

When I awoke finally I looked at myself in the mirror again. I needed a shave and thought briefly of growing a beard or moustache. This struck me as a bad idea-men with beards or moustaches are more noticeable, and one automatically wonders what they would look like without facial hair. I wanted as little attention paid to me as possible. I’d picked up a copy of the News before registering at the hotel, and I had studied the picture they ran under the headline GIRL KILLER DOES IT AGAIN! The photo was one they had taken upon my release from prison (at which time the headline read PLAY-GIRL SLAYER FREE AGAIN) and it was not an especially good likeness to begin with. With the gray hair, with a bit of a slouch and a slower, more elderly walk, I ought to stand something of a chance.

I left the hotel, had eggs and sausages at a luncheonette around the corner. My hotel rent was paid a week in advance-I’d told them something about the airlines having done something unusual with my luggage. I forced myself to dawdle over a second cup of coffee, fighting the urge to rush back to the safety of the hotel room. After all, it would not be safe forever. I was better off using it not as a refuge but as a base of operations. It would not do to let the police find the murderer. I had to find him myself, and the longer I waited the more elusive he would no doubt become.

Who on earth was he?

Someone who hated me. Someone who wanted me well out of the way. Someone who would inherit my money or take my job or steal my wife once I had been deftly removed from the picture.

Except that I had no wife and no job and very little money. And no known enemies. And no friends who might be enemies in secret. And no women who might be women scorned. I was a threat to no one, an obstacle to no one, a confidant to no one, a lover to no one. I scarcely existed.

Years ago, of course, it had been different I was an up-and-coming young professor with a book half-finished and an emerging reputation in academic circles. I had a wife, I had friends, I was a person. But now…

Then daylight dawned. I sat stunned for a full minute. I stood up at last dropped some coins on the formica table, took my check to the cashier, paid, left. The afternoon sun hurt my eyes. I wondered if a pair of drugstore sunglasses might help my disguise, or if they would be more apt to direct attention my way. I decided that this was something I would think about later, when I did not have infinitely more important things to contemplate.

How had I missed it before? It was extraordinary. And yet when one’s mind has been painfully, tortuously conditioned to accept something as fact, one is not quick to challenge that fact thereafter.

I walked. A policeman glanced my way, then returned to the job of directing traffic. I shivered at his glance. I lowered my head, concentrated on my walk, my shoulders stooped, my head bowed, my feet covering the ground more slowly than usual I walked to my hotel, and I walked past my hotel, and I turned at the corner and headed downtown.

From an outdoor phone booth at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street I called a man many miles away. I had heard that most pay phones in Manhattan are tapped, but I didn’t really believe it could be dangerous. The police could not possibly have the personnel to listen to all of the phones all of the time. I didn’t care. I got his number from Information, and I dialed it direct, hoping he’d be in his office. He was.

I said, all in a rush, “Warden Pillion, this is Alex Penn, I have to talk to you, I didn’t kill that girl I never killed anybody-”

“Where are you, Alex?”

“Chicago.” Never trust anyone. “I have to-”

“You’d better turn yourself in, Alex.”

“I didn’t kill that girl, Warden. I was framed. I can’t prove it and I can’t expect anyone to believe it, but I know it I saw someone else kill her just before I passed out Damn it I remember it. And-”

“The police will-”

“The police will throw me in a cell. I wouldn’t blame them a bit You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Well, I-”

“No reason why you should. Warden, Just let me talk a minute, that’s all I know. I didn’t kill the girl Or the first one, Evangeline Grant I never could believe that I had done it I never remembered it and the pattern’s the same, someone must have framed me. Because there’s no reason for anyone to frame me now. I’m nothing, I’m not even a person, nobody even knows me, but I used to be somebody and have things and somebody framed me then, some son of a bitch did it to me, and did it again the night before last and-”

“What do you want me to say, Alex?”

“I don’t know.”

I have to tell you to turn yourself in. You know that.”

“Yes.”

“Of course you don’t have to do what you’re told, do you?”

“Thank you, Warden.”

“Be very careful. Don’t expose yourself unnecessarily. And don’t… don’t do anything violent. Keep away from liquor. Am I telling you anything you hadn’t figured out for yourself?”

“No”

I thought not For the record, I don’t believe you. I think you killed Evangeline Grant and I think you killed Robin Canelli. I think you’re a very dangerous man. I have to think that you know that.”

“Yes.”

“I hope that you’re right and I’m wrong. Why did you call me?”

“I had to talk to someone. I’m going crazy, I had to talk to someone. I couldn’t think of anyone else.”

“Did it help?”

“Yes, I think so-”

The operator cut in to tell me my three minutes were up. I hung up immediately and left the booth. I wondered whether he would trace the call. It would be possible, I think; he had the operator there on the line, and it seemed probable that an operator could check the source of a long-distance call even after the connection had been broken. Would he call the New York police? Probably, if only to cover himself.

He wanted me to be innocent. He even wanted me to try to solve things on my own. Even so, he didn’t believe me.

He would, though. Once I found the bastard who jobbed me, once I nailed him down, they’d all believe me.