Eighty Million Eyes

1

The man was sitting on a bench in the reception room when Miles Vollner came back from lunch that Wednesday afternoon. Vollner glanced at him, and then looked quizzically at his receptionist. The girl shrugged slightly and went back to her typing. The moment Vollner was inside his private office, he buzzed her.

“Who’s that waiting outside?” he asked.

“I don’t know, sir,” the receptionist said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“He wouldn’t give me his name, sir.”

“Did you ask him?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What did he say?”

“Sir, he’s sitting right here,” the receptionist said, her voice lowering to a whisper. “I’d rather not—”

“What’s the matter with you?” Vollner said. “This is my office, not his. What did he say when you asked him his name?”

“He—he told me to go to hell, sir.”

“What?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be right out,” Vollner said.

He did not go right out because his attention was caught by a letter on his desk, the afternoon mail having been placed there some five minutes ago by his secretary. He opened the letter, read it quickly, and then smiled because it was a large order from a retailer in the Midwest, a firm Vollner had been trying to get as a customer for the past six months. The company Vollner headed was small but growing. It specialized in audiovisual components, with its factory across the River Harb in the next state, and its business and administrative office here on Shepherd Street in the city. Fourteen people worked in the business office—ten men and four women. Two hundred six people worked in the plant. It was Vollner’s hope and expectation that both office and factory staffs would have to be doubled within the next year, and perhaps trebled the year after that. The large order from the Midwest retailer confirmed his beliefs, and pleased him enormously. But then he remembered the man sitting outside, and the smile dropped from his face. Sighing, he went to the door, opened it, and walked down the corridor to the reception room.

The man was still sitting there.

He could not have been older than twenty-three or twenty-four, a sinewy man with a pale, narrow face and hooded brown eyes. He was clean-shaven and well dressed, wearing a gray topcoat open over a darker gray suit. A pearl-gray fedora was on top of his head. He sat on the bench with his arms folded across his chest, his legs outstretched, seemingly quite at ease. Vollner went to the bench and stood in front of him.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“Nope.”

“What do you want here?”

“That’s none of your business,” the man said.

“I’m sorry,” Vollner answered, “but it is my business. I happen to own this company.”

“Yeah?” He looked around the reception room, and smiled. “Nice place you’ve got.”

The receptionist, behind her desk, had stopped typing and was watching the byplay. Vollner could feel her presence behind him.

“Unless you can tell me what you want here,” he said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

The man was still smiling. “Well,” he said, “I’m not about to tell you what I want here, and I’m not about to leave, either.”

For a moment, Vollner was speechless. He glanced at the receptionist, and then turned back to the man. “In that case,” he said, “I’ll have to call the police.”

“You call the police, and you’ll be sorry.”

“We’ll see about that,” Vollner said. He walked to the receptionist’s desk and said, “Miss Di Santo, will you get me the police, please?”

The man rose from the bench. He was taller than he had seemed while sitting, perhaps six feet two or three inches, with wide shoulders and enormous hands. He moved toward the desk and, still smiling, said, “Miss Di Santo, I wouldn’t pick up that phone if I was you.”

Miss Di Santo wet her lips and looked at Vollner.

“Call the police,” Vollner said.

“Miss Di Santo, if you so much as put your hand on that telephone, I’ll break your arm. I promise you that.”

Miss Di Santo hesitated. She looked again to Vollner, who frowned and then said, “Never mind, Miss Di Santo,” and without saying another word, walked to the entrance door and out into the corridor and toward the elevator. His anger kept building inside him all the way down to the lobby floor. He debated calling the police from a pay phone, and then decided he would do better to find a patrolman on the beat and bring him back upstairs personally. It was 2:00, and the city streets were thronged with afternoon shoppers. He found a patrolman on the corner of Shepherd and Seventh, directing traffic. Vollner stepped out into the middle of the intersection and said, “Officer, I’d—”

“Hold it a minute, mister,” the patrolman said. He blew his whistle and waved at the oncoming automobiles. Then he turned back to Vollner and said, “Now, what is it?”

“There’s a man up in my office, won’t tell us what his business is.”

“Yeah?” the patrolman said.

“Yes. He threatened me and my receptionist, and he won’t leave.”

“Yeah?” The patrolman kept looking at Vollner curiously, as though only half-believing him.

“Yes. I’d like you to come up and help me get him out of there.”

“You would, huh?”

“Yes.”

“And who’s gonna handle the traffic on this corner?” the patrolman said.

“This man is threatening us,” Vollner said. “Surely that’s more important than—”

“This is one of the biggest intersections in the city right here, and you want me to leave it.”

“Aren’t you supposed to—”

“Mister, don’t bug me, huh?” the patrolman said, and blew his whistle, and raised his hand, and then turned and signaled to the cars on his right.

“What’s your shield number?” Vollner said.

“Don’t bother reporting me,” the patrolman answered. “This is my post, and I’m not supposed to leave it. You want a cop, go use the telephone.”

“Thanks,” Vollner said tightly. “Thanks a lot.”

“Don’t mention it,” the patrolman said breezily, and looked up at the traffic light, and then blew his whistle again. Vollner walked back to the curb and was about to enter the cigar store on the corner, when he spotted a second policeman. Still fuming, he walked to him rapidly and said, “There’s a man up in my office who refuses to leave and who is threatening my staff. Now just what the hell do you propose to do about it?”

The patrolman was startled by Vollner’s outburst. He was a new cop and a young cop, and he blinked his eyes and then immediately said, “Where’s your office, sir? I’ll go back there with you.”

“This way,” Vollner said, and they began walking toward the building. The patrolman introduced himself as Ronnie Fairchild. He seemed brisk and efficient until they entered the lobby, where he began to have his first qualms.

“Is the man armed?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Vollner said.

“Because if he is, maybe I ought to get some help.”

“I think you can handle it,” Vollner said.

“You think so?” Fairchild said dubiously, but Vollner had already led him into the elevator. They got out of the car on the tenth floor, and again Fairchild hesitated. “Maybe I ought to call this in,” he said. “After all…”

“By the time you call it in, the man may kill someone,” Vollner suggested.

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Fairchild said hesitantly, thinking that if he didn’t call this in and ask for help, the person who got killed might very well be himself. He paused outside the door to Vollner’s office. “In there, huh?” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Well, okay, let’s go.”

They entered the office. Vollner walked directly to the man, who had taken his seat on the bench again, and said, “Here he is, officer.”

Fairchild pulled back his shoulders. He walked to the bench. “All right, what’s the trouble here?” he asked.

“No trouble, officer.”

“This man tells me you won’t leave his office.”

“That’s right. I came here to see a girl.”

“Oh,” Fairchild said, ready to leave at once now that he knew this was only a case of romance. “If that’s all…”

“What girl?” Vollner said.

“Cindy.”

“Get Cindy out here,” Vollner said to his receptionist, and she rose immediately and hurried down the corridor. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a friend of Cindy’s?”

“You didn’t ask me,” the man said.

“Listen, if this is just a private matter—”

“No, wait a minute,” Vollner said, putting his hand on Fairchild’s arm. “Cindy’ll be out here in a minute.”

“That’s good,” the man said. “Cindy’s the one I want to see.”

“Who are you?” Vollner asked.

“Well, who are you?”

“I’m Miles Vollner. Look, young man—”

“Nice meeting you, Mr. Vollner,” the man said, and smiled again.

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t think I’d like to tell you that.”

“Officer, ask him what his name is.”

“What’s your name, mister?” Fairchild said, and at that moment the receptionist came back, followed by a tall blonde girl wearing a blue dress and high-heeled pumps. She stopped just alongside the receptionist’s desk and said, “Did you want me, Mr. Vollner?”

“Yes, Cindy. There’s a friend of yours here to see you.”

Cindy looked around the reception room. She was a strikingly pretty girl of twenty-two, full-breasted and wide-hipped, her blonde hair cut casually close to her head, her eyes a cornflower blue that echoed the color of her dress. She studied Fairchild and then the man in gray. Puzzled, she turned again to Vollner.

“A friend of mine?” she asked.

“This man says he came here to see you.”

“Me?”

“He says he’s a friend of yours.”

Cindy looked at the man once more, and then shrugged. “I don’t know you,” she said.

“No, huh?”

“No.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Listen, what is this?” Fairchild said.

“You’re going to know me, baby,” the man said.

Cindy looked at him coldly, and said, “I doubt that very much,” and turned and started to walk away. The man came off the bench immediately, catching her by the arm.

“Just a second,” he said.

“Let go of me.”

“Honey, I’m never gonna let go of you.”

“Leave that girl alone,” Fairchild said.

“We don’t need fuzz around here,” the man answered. “Get lost.”

Fairchild took a step toward him, raising his club. The man whirled suddenly, planting his left fist in Fair child’s stomach. As Fairchild doubled over, the man unleashed a vicious uppercut that caught him on the point of his jaw and sent him staggering back toward the wall. Groggily, Fairchild reached for his gun. The man kicked him in the groin, and he fell to the floor groaning. The man kicked him again, twice in the head, and then repeatedly in the chest. The receptionist was screaming now. Cindy was running down the corridor, shouting for help. Vollner stood with his fists clenched, waiting for the man to turn and attack him next.

Instead, the man only smiled and said, “Tell Cindy I’ll be seeing her,” and walked out of the office.

Vollner immediately went to the phone. Men and women were coming out of their private offices all up and down the corridor now. The receptionist was still screaming. Quickly, Vollner dialed the police and was connected with 87th Precinct.

Sergeant Murchison took the call and advised Vollner that he’d send a patrolman there immediately and that a detective would stop by either later that day or early tomorrow morning.

Vollner thanked him and hung up. His hand was trembling, and his receptionist was still screaming.

In another part of the 87th Precinct, on a side street off Culver Avenue, in the midst of a slum as rank as a cesspool, there stood an innocuous-looking brick building that had once served as a furniture loft. It was now magnanimously called a television studio. The Stan Gifford Show originated from this building each and every Wednesday night of the year, except during the summer hiatus.

It was a little incongruous to see dozens of ivy-league, narrow-tied advertising and television men trotting through a slum almost every day of the week in an attempt to put together Gifford’s weekly comedy hour. The neighborhood citizens watched the procession of creators with a jaundiced eye; the show had been on the air for three solid years, and they had grown used to seeing these aliens in their midst. There had never been any trouble between the midtown masterminds and the uptown residents, and there probably never would be—a slum has enough troubles without picking on a network. Besides, most of the people in the neighborhood liked the Stan Gifford Show, and would rush indoors the moment it took to the air. If all these nuts were required to put together the show every week, who were they to complain? It was a good show, and it was free.

The good show, and the free one, had been rehearsing since the previous Friday in the loft on North Eleventh, and it was now 3:45 P.M. on Wednesday afternoon, which meant that in exactly four hours and fifteen minutes, a telop would flash in homes across the continent announcing the Stan Gifford Show to follow, and then there would be a station break with commercial, and then the introductory theme music, and then organized bedlam would once again burst forth from approximately twenty million television sets. The network, gratuitously giving itself the edge in selling prime time to potential sponsors, estimated that in each viewing home there were at least two people, which meant that every Wednesday night at 8:00 P.M., eighty million eyes would draw a bead on the smiling countenance of Stan Gifford as he waved from the screen and said, “Back for more, huh?” In the hands of a lesser personality, this opening remark—even when delivered with a smile—might have caused many viewers to switch to another channel or even turn off the set completely. But Stan Gifford was charming, intelligent, and born with an intuitive sense of comedy. He knew what was funny and what was not, and he could even turn a bad joke into a good one simply by acknowledging its failure with a deadpan nod and a slightly contrite look at his adoring fans. He exuded an ease that seemed totally unrehearsed, a calm that could only be natural.

“Where the hell is Art Wetherley?” he shouted frantically at his assistant director.

“Here just a minute ago, Mr. Gifford,” the AD shouted back, and then instantly yelled for quiet on the set. The moment quiet was achieved, he broke the silence by shouting, “Art Wetherley! Front and center, on the double!”

Wetherley, a diminutive gag writer who had been taking a smoke on one of the fire escapes, came into the studio, walked over to Gifford, and said, “What’s up, Stan?”

Gifford was a tall man, with a pronounced widow’s peak—he was actually beginning to bald, but he preferred to think of his receding hairline as a pronounced widow’s peak—penetrating brown eyes, and a generous mouth. When he smiled, his eyes crinkled up from coast to coast, and he looked like a youthful, beardless Santa Claus about to deliver a bundle of goodies to needy waifs. He was not smiling now, and Wetherley had seen the unsmiling Gifford often enough to know that his solemn countenance meant trouble.

“Is this supposed to be a joke?” Gifford asked. He asked the question politely and quietly, but there was enough menace in his voice to blow up the entire city.

Wetherley, who could be as polite as anyone in television when he wanted to, quietly said, “Which one is that, Stan?”

“This mother-in-law line,” Gifford said. “I thought mother-in-law jokes went out with nuclear fission.”

“I wish my mother-in-law had gone out with nuclear fission,” Wetherley said, and then instantly realized this was not a time for adding one bad joke to another. “We can cut the line,” he said quickly.

“I don’t want it cut. I want a substitute for it.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Then why didn’t you say what you meant?” Gifford looked across the studio at the wall clock, which was busily ticking off minutes to air time. “You’d better hurry,” he said. “Stay away from mothers-in-law, and stay away from Liz Taylor, and stay away from the astronauts.”

“Gee,” Wetherley said, deadpan, “what does that leave?”

“Some people actually think you’re funny, you know that?” Gifford said, and he turned his broad back on Wetherley and walked away.

The assistant director, who had been standing near one of the booms throughout the entire conversation, sighed heavily and said, “Boy, I hope he calms down.”

“I hope he drops dead,” Wetherley answered.

Steve Carella watched as his wife poured coffee into his cup. “You’re beautiful,” he said, but her head was bent over the coffeepot, and she could not see his lips. He reached out suddenly and cupped her chin with his hand, and she lifted her head curiously, a faint half smile on her mouth. He said again, “Teddy, you’re beautiful,” and this time she watched his lips, and this time she saw the words on his mouth, and understood them and nodded in acknowledgment. And then, as if his voice had thundered into her silent world, as if she had been waiting patiently all day long to unleash a torrent of words, she began moving her fingers rapidly in the deaf-mute alphabet.

He watched her hands as they told him of the day’s events. Behind the hands, her face formed a backdrop, the intense brown eyes adding meaning to each silent word she delivered, the head of black hair cocking suddenly to one side to emphasize a point, the mouth sometimes moving into a pout, or a grimace, or a sudden radiant smile. He watched her hands and her face, interpolating a word or a grunt every now and then, sometimes stopping her when she formed a sentence too quickly, and marveling all the while at the intense concentration in her eyes, the wonderful animation she brought to the telling of the simplest story. When in turn she listened, her eyes watched intently, as if afraid of missing a syllable, her face mirroring whatever was being said. Because she never heard the intonations or subtleties of any voice, her imagination supplied emotional content that sometimes was not there at all. She could be moved to tears or laughter by a single innocuous sentence; she was like a child listening to a fairytale, her mind supplying every fantastic unspoken detail. As they did the dishes together, their conversation was a curious blend of household plans and petty larceny, problems with the butcher and the lineup, a dress marked down to $12.95 and a suspect’s .38-caliber pistol. Carella kept his voice very low. Volume meant nothing to Teddy, and he knew the twins were asleep in the other room. There was a hushed warmth to that kitchen, as if it gently echoed a city that was curling up for the night.

In ten minutes’ time, in twenty million homes, forty million people would turn eighty million eyes on a smiling Stan Gifford who would look out at the world and say, “Back for more, huh?”

Carella, who did not ordinarily enjoy watching television, had to admit that he was one of those forty million hopeless unwashed addicts who turned to Gifford’s channel every Wednesday night. Unconsciously, he kept one eye on the clock as he dried the dishes. For whatever perverse reasons, he derived great pleasure from Gifford’s taunting opening statement, and he would have felt cheated if he had tuned in too late to hear it. His reaction to Gifford surprised even himself. He found most television a bore, an attitude undoubtedly contracted from Teddy, who derived little if any pleasure from watching the home screen. She was perfectly capable of reading the lips of a performer when the director chose to show him in a close shot. But whenever an actor turned his back or moved into a long shot, she lost the thread of the story and began asking Carella questions. Trying to watch her moving hands and the screen at the same time was an impossible task. Her frustration led to his entanglement, which in turn led to further frustration, so he had decided the hell with it.

Except for Stan Gifford.

At three minutes to 8:00 that Wednesday night, Carella turned on the television set, and then made himself comfortable in an easy chair. Teddy opened a book and began reading. He watched the final moments of the show immediately preceding Gifford’s (a fat lady won a refrigerator) and then read the telop stating STAN GIFFORD IS NEXT, and then watched the station break and commercial (a very handsome, dark-haired man was making love to a cigarette with each ecstatic puff he took), and then there was a slight electronic pause, and Gifford’s theme music started.

“Okay if I turn this light a little lower?” Carella asked. Teddy, her nose buried in her book, did not see him speak. He touched her hand gently, and she looked up. “Okay to dim this light?” he asked again, and she nodded just as Gifford’s face filled the screen.

The smile broke like thunder over Mandalay.

“Back for more, huh?” Gifford said, and Carella burst out laughing and then turned down the lights. The single lamp behind Teddy’s chair cast a warm glow over the room. Directly opposite it the colder light of the electronic tube threw a bluish rectangle on the floor directly beneath it. Gifford walked to a table, sat, and immediately went into a monologue, his customary manner of opening the show.

“I was talking to Julius the other day,” he said immediately, and the line, for some curious reason, brought a laugh from the studio audience as well as from Carella. “He’s got a persecution complex, I’ll swear to it. An absolute paranoiac.” Another laugh. “I said to him, ‘Look, Julie—’ I call him Julie because, after all, we’ve known each other for a long time, some people say I’m almost like a son to him. ‘Look, Julie,’ I said to him, ‘what are you getting all upset about? So a lousy soothsayer stops you on the way to the forum and gives you a lot of baloney about the ides of March, why do you let this upset you, huh? Julie baby, the people love you.’ Well, he turned to me and said, ‘Brutus, I know you think I’m being foolish, but…”

And that’s the way it went. For ten solid minutes, Gifford held the stage alone, pausing only to garner his laughs, or to deliver his contrite look when a joke fell flat. At the end of the ten minutes he introduced his dance ensemble, which held the stage for another five minutes. He then paraded his first guest, a buxom Hollywood blonde who sang a torch song and did a skit with him, and before anyone at home realized it, the first half of the show was over. Station break, commercial. Carella got a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, and settled down to enjoy the remaining half hour.

Gifford came on to introduce a group of folk singers who sang Greensleeves and Scarlet Ribbons, a most colorful combination. He walked onto the stage again as soon as they were finished, and then went to work in earnest. His next guest was a male Hollywood personality. The male Hollywood personality seemed to be somewhat at a loss because he could neither sing nor dance nor, according to some critics, even act. But Gifford engaged him in some very high-priced banter for a few minutes, and then personally began a commercial about triple-roasted coffee while the Hollywood visitor went off to change his costume for a promised skit. Gifford finished the commercial and then motioned to someone standing just off camera. A stagehand carried a chair into viewing range. Gifford thanked him with a small bow, and then placed the chair in the center of the enormous, empty stage.

He had been on camera for perhaps five minutes now, a relatively short time, and when he sat in the chair and heaved a weary sigh, everyone was a little surprised. He kept sitting in the chair, saying nothing, doing nothing. There was no music behind him. He was simply a man sitting in a chair in the middle of an empty stage, but Carella felt himself beginning to smile because he knew Gifford was about to do one of his pantomimes. He touched Teddy’s arm, and she looked up from her book. “The pantomime,” he said, and she nodded, put down her book, and turned her eyes toward the screen.

Gifford continued doing nothing. He simply sat there and looked out at the audience. But he seemed to be watching something in the very far distance. The stage was silent as Gifford kept watching this something in the distance, a something that seemed to be getting closer and closer. Then, suddenly, Gifford got out of the chair, pulled it aside, and watched the something as it roared past him. He wiped his brow, faced his chair in another direction, and sat again. Now he leaned forward. It was coming from the other direction. Closer it came, closer, and again Gifford got up, pulled his chair aside at the last possible moment, and watched the imaginary thing speed past him. He sat again, facing another direction.

Carella burst into laughter as Gifford spotted it coming at him once more. This time, he got out of the chair with a determined and fierce look on his face. He held the chair in front of him like a lion tamer, defying the something to attack. But again at the last moment he pulled out of the way to let the something roar past. It was now on his left. He turned, whipping the chair around. The camera came in for a tight shot of his perplexed and completely helpless face.

Another look crossed that face.

The camera eye was in tight for the close-up, and it caught the sudden faintness that flashed across the puzzled features. Gifford seemed to sway for an instant, and then he put one hand to his eyes, as if he weren’t seeing too clearly, as if the something rushing from the left had taken on real dimensions all at once. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, and then shook his head, and then staggered back several paces and dropped the chair, just as the something streaked by him.

It was all part of the act, of course. Everyone knew that. But somehow, Gifford’s pantomime had taken on a reality that transcended humor. Somehow, there was real confusion in his eyes as he watched the nameless something begin another charge. The camera stayed on him in a tight close-up. Gifford looked directly into the camera, and there was a pathetically pleading look on his face, and suddenly contact was made again, suddenly the audience began laughing. This was the same sweet and gentle man being pursued by a persistent nemesis. This was comedy again.

Carella did not laugh.

Gifford reached down for the chair. The close shot on one camera yielded to a long shot on another camera. His fingers closed around the chair. He righted it, and then sat in it weakly, his head drooping, and again the audience howled, but Carella was leaning forward now, watching Gifford with a deadly cold, impersonal fixed stare.

Gifford clutched his abdomen, as if struck there by the invisible juggernaut. He seemed suddenly dizzy, and his face went pale, and he seemed in danger of falling out of the chair. And then, all at once, for eighty million eyes to see, he became violently ill. The camera was caught unaware for a moment. It lingered on his helpless sickness an instant longer, and then suddenly cut away.

Carella stared at the screen numbly as the orchestra struck up a sprightly tune.