Like Love

7

The combination of Bert Kling and Michael Thayer was a curiously trying one. Hawes liked Kling a hell of a lot, or at least he had liked the Bert Kling he’d known until last year; the new Bert Kling was someone he didn’t know at all. Being with him for any length of time was a strange and frustrating experience. This was surely Bert Kling, the same clean young looks, the blond hair, the same voice. You saw him coming into the squadroom or walking down the street, and you wanted to go up to him with your hand extended and say, “Hi, there, Bert, how are you?” You wanted to crack jokes with him, or go over the details of a perplexing case. You wanted to sit with him and have a cup of coffee on days when it was raining outside the squadroom. You wanted to like this guy who was wearing the face and body of Bert Kling, you wanted to tell him he was your friend, you wanted to say, “Hey, Bert, let’s get drunk together tonight.” You wanted to do all these things and say all these things because the face was familiar, the walk was familiar, the voice was familiar-and then something stopped you dead in your tracks, and you had the feeling that you were only looking at a plastic mold of Bert Kling, only talking to the recorded voice of Bert Kling, that something inside this shell had gone dead, and you knew what the something was, of course, you knew that Claire Townsend had been murdered.

There are different ways of mourning.

When a man’s fiancée is the victim of a brutal, senseless massacre in a bookshop, he can react in many ways, all of which are valid, none of which can be predetermined. He can cry his eyes out for a week or a month, and then accept the death, accept the fact that life goes on, with or without the girl he was going to marry one day, life is a progression, a moving forward, and death is a cessation. Bert Kling could have accepted the life surrounding him, could have accepted death as a natural part of life.

Or he could have reacted in another manner. He could have refused flatly to acknowledge the death. He could have gone on living with the fantasy that Claire Townsend was alive and well someplace, that the events which had started with a phone call to the squadroom on the thirteenth of October last year, moved into the shocking discovery of Claire among the victims in the bookshop, and culminated in the vicious beating of the man who’d killed her-he could have gone on pretending, indeed believing that none of these things had happened. Everything was just the way it was. He would continue to wait for Claire’s return, and when she came he would laugh with her and hold her in his arms and make love to her again, and one day they would be married. He could have kidded himself in that way.

Or he could have accepted the death without a tear, allowing grief to build inside him like a massive monument, stone added to stone, until the smiling outer visage became the ornate facade of a crumbling tomb, vast, and black, and windswept.

It is perhaps simple for an accountant to evaluate the murder of his fiancée, to go through the tribal custom of mourning, and then to cherish the memory of the girl while philosophically adjusting to the elementary facts of life and death. An accountant adds up columns of figures and decides how much income tax his client owes Uncle Sam. An accountant is concerned with mathematics. Bert Kling was a cop. And being a cop, being involved daily in work which involved crime, he was faced with constant reminders of the girl he had loved and the manner in which she had met her death. It was one thing to walk the streets of the precinct and to cross a six-year-old kid who stood on a street corner waiting for the traffic to pass. It was one thing to be investigating a burglary, or a robbery, or a beating, or a disappearance. It was quite another thing to he investigating a homicide.

The facts of life in the 87th Precinct were too often the facts of death. He had looked into the lifeless eyes of Claire Townsend on October 13th last year, and since that time he had looked into the lifeless eyes of three dozen more victims, male and female, and the eyes were always the same, the eyes always seemed to look up beseechingly as if something had been ripped forcibly from them before they were ready, the eyes seemed to be pleading for that something to be put back, the eyes seemed to beg silently, “Please give it back to me, I wasn’t ready.” The circumstances of death were always different. He had walked into a room and found a man with a hatchet imbedded in his skull, he had looked down at the eviscerated victim of a hit-and-run, he had opened a closet door and discovered a young girl with a rope knotted about her neck, hanging from the clothes bar, he had found an alcoholic who had drunk himself to death in the doorway of a whorehouse, the circumstances were always different-but the eyes were always the same.

“Please give it back to me,” they said. “I wasn’t ready.”

And each time he looked into a new pair of eyes, he turned away because the image of Claire Townsend on the bookshop floor, her blouse stained a bright red, the book lying open in a tent over her face, his hands lifting the book, his eyes looking into her own dead and staring eyes, this image always and suddenly flared into his mind and left him numb and senseless. He could not think clearly for several moments, he could only turn away from each new corpse and stare at the wall like a man transfixed while a private horror movie ran in the tight projection booth of his mind, reel after reel until he wanted to scream aloud and stopped himself from doing so only by clenching his teeth.

Death meant only one thing to Kling. Death meant Claire Townsend. The daily reminders of death were daily reminders of Claire. And with each reminder, his emotions would close like a fist, tightly clenched; he could not open it, he could not afford to let go. He withdrew instead, retreating from each grisly prod, accepting the burden of memory wearily, refusing sympathy, forsaking hope, foreseeing a future as bleak and as barren as the present.

The equation that day in the tiny office of Michael Thayer in the Brio Building was a simple one. Hawes examined the equation dispassionately, uncomfortable in the presence of Kling and Thayer, recognizing the source of his discomfort, but finding no solace at all in the recognition. Irene Thayer equaled Death equaled Claire Townsend. Such was the elementary equation that seemed to electrify the very air in the small room.

The room was on the sixth floor of the building, its single window open to the April breezes, it contained a desk and file cabinet and a telephone and a calendar and two chairs, Michael Thayer sat in one of the chairs behind the desk Hawes sat in the chair in front of the desk, Kling stood tensed like a spring coil alongside Hawes, as if ready to unlock and leap across the desk the moment Thayer said anything contradictory. A stack of completed greeting-card verse rested alongside Thayer’s typewriter in a neat, squared pile. A sheet of unfinished doggerel was in the typewriter.

“We work pretty far in advance,” Thayer said. “I’m already doing stuff for next Valentine’s Day.”

“Don’t you find it difficult to work so soon after the funeral. Mr. Thayer?” Kling asked.

The question seemed so cruel, so heartlessly devised, that Hawes was instantly torn between a desire to gag Kling and a desire to punch him right in the mouth. Instead, he saw the pain flicker in Thayer’s eyes for an instant, and he almost felt the pain himself, and then Thayer said very softly, “Yes, I find it difficult to work.”

“Mr. Thayer,” Hawes said quickly, “we don’t mean to intrude at a time like this, believe me, but there are some things we have to know.”

“Yes, you said that the last time I saw you.”

“I meant it then, and I mean it now.”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Did you know your wife was going to sue you for divorce?” Kling asked abruptly.

Thayer looked surprised. “No.” He paused. “How do you know that?”

“We talked with her lawyer,” Hawes said.

“Her lawyer? Art Patterson, do you mean?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He never said anything to me about it.”

“No, sir, she asked him not to.”

“Why?”

“She wanted it that way, Mr. Thayer.”

“Mr. Thayer,” Kling said, “are you sure you had no inkling that your wife was about to divorce you?”

“None whatever.”

“That’s a little odd, isn’t it? A woman plans to leave you next month, and you haven’t got the slightest suspicion that something’s in the wind.”

“Irene seemed happy with me,” Thayer said.

“That’s not what her mother said.”

“What did her mother say?”

“If I recall the report correctly,” Kling said, “Mrs. Tomlinson referred to you as a bully. And a boss.” Kling paused. “Did you argue with your wife frequently?”

“Hardly ever.”

“Did you ever strike her?”

“What?”

“Strike her, hit her? Did you ever?”

“Never. Of course not.”

“Bert…”

“Just a second. Cotton, will you? Just a second?” He leveled his impatient gaze on Hawes, and then turned back to Thayer. “Mr. Thayer, you’re asking us to believe that there was no friction between you and your wife, while all the time she was playing footsie with…”

“I didn’t say there was no friction-”

“… another man and planning to divorce you. Now either you didn’t give a damn about her at all, or else…”

“I loved her!”

“… or else you were just plain cockeyed and didn’t see what was going on right under your nose. Now which one was it, Mr. Thayer?”

“I loved Irene, I trusted her!”

“And did she love you?” Kling snapped.

“I thought so.”

“Then why was she going to divorce you?”

“I don’t know. I’m just learning about this. I don’t even know if it’s true. How do I know it’s true?”

“Because we’re telling you it’s true. She planned to leave for Reno on the sixteenth of May. Does that date mean anything to you, Mr. Thayer?”

“No.”

“Did you know she was seeing Tommy Barlow regularly?”

“Bert…”

“Did you?”

“No.” Thayer said.

“Then where did you think she was going every week, every other week?” Kling asked.

“To see her mother.”

“Why did her mother call you a bully?”

“I don’t know. She doesn’t like me. She could have said anything about me.”

“How old are you, Mr. Thayer?”

“Thirty-three.”

“How old was your wife when she died?”

“Twenty. Well, almost twenty-one.”

“How long had you been married?”

“Almost three years.”

“She was eighteen when you married her?”

“Yes. Just eighteen.”

“And you were how old?”

“Thirty.”

“That’s a pretty big span, isn’t it, Mr. Thayer?”

“Not if two people are in love.”

“And you were in love?”

“Yes.”

“And you claim you didn’t know anything about your wife’s boyfriend, or the fact that she was planning to leave you next month?”

“That’s right. If I’d known…”

“Yes, Mr. Thayer? What would you have done if you’d known?”

“I’d have discussed it with her.”

“That’s all you’d have done?”

“I’d have tried to talk her out of it.”

“And if that failed?”

“I’d have let her go.”

“You wouldn’t have bullied her or bossed her?”

“I never bullied or… I was always very good to Irene I… I knew she was much younger than I. I cared for her deeply. I… cared for her deeply.”

“How do you feel about her now, Mr. Thayer? Now that you know all the facts?”

Thayer hesitated for a long time. “I wish she would have talked it over with me,” he said at last. He shook his head. “What she did wasn’t the way. She should have talked it over with me.”

“Are you a drinking man, Mr. Thayer?” Kling asked suddenly.

“Not… well… a few drinks every now and then. Not what you’d call a drinking man.”

“Did your wife drink?”

“Socially. A Martini now and then.”

“Scotch?”

“Sometimes.”

“There were two Scotch bottles found in the room with her. Both were empty. One had been knocked over, but the other had apparently been drained. What was the most your wife ever drank?”

“Four drinks. Maybe five. In an evening, I mean. At a party or something.”

“How’d she react to liquor?”

“Well… she generally got a little tipsy after two or three drinks.”

“What would a half-bottle of Scotch do to her?”

“Knock her unconscious, I would imagine.”

“Make her sick?”

“Maybe.”

“Did liquor ever make her sick?”

“Once or twice. She really didn’t drink that much, so it’s difficult to say.”

“The autopsy report showed your wife was not drunk, Mr. Thayer. Yet a full bottle of Scotch, or possibly more, was consumed in that apartment on the day she died. Either consumed or poured down the drain. Which do you think it was?”

“I don’t know,” Thayer said.

“You just told me your wife didn’t drink much. Does killing a bottle of Scotch sound like a thing she would have done?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head again. ‘Suicide doesn’t sound to me like a thing Irene would have done. Adultery doesn’t sound to me… divorce doesn’t sound… so how do I know what she would or wouldn’t have done? I don’t know this woman who supposedly killed herself, who had a lover, who was going to Reno. I don’^}t know her! So why are you asking me about her? That’s not Irene! That’s some… some… some…”

“Some what, Mr. Thayer?”

“Some stranger,” he said softly. “Not my wife. Some stranger.” He shook his head. “Some stranger,” he repeated.

* * * *

The lobby of the Brio Building was crowded with musicians and girl vocalists and dancers and arrangers and song writers and agents who filled the air with the musical jargon of Hip. “Like, man, I told him two bills for the weekend or adios,” a din arising to meet the detectives’ ears the moment they stepped from the elevator, “The jerk went and hocked his sax. So I said, like, man, how you expect to blow if you ditched the horn? So he tells me he can’t blow anyway unless he’s got junk, so he peddled the sax to buy the junk, so now he can’t blow anyway, so like what’s the percentage?”; bright-eyed girls with bleached-blond hair and loose-hipped dancers’ stances, trombone players with long arms and short goatees, agents with piercing brown eyes behind black-rimmed bop glasses, girl singers with hair falling loose over one eye, “Like I said to him, like why should I put out for you if I don’t put out for anybody else on the band, and he said like this is different, baby. So I said how is it any different? So he put his hand under my skirt and said this is like love, baby”; a lonely pusher standing on the edges of the crowd, The Man, waiting for an afternoon appointment with a piano player who’d been an addict since the time he was fourteen; a seventeen-year-old girl with a Cleopatra haircut waiting to meet a trumpet player who had arranged for an audition with his group; the babble of sound hovering in the air, none of which Kling heard, the pretty girls, overly made up, but pretty with a fresh sparkle in their eyes and with tight light dresses stretched taut over comfortable behinds, none of whom Kling saw; the thronged lobby and the newspaper stand with the tabloids black and bold, the headlines no longer carrying the news of the death of Irene Thayer and Tommy Barlow, both of whom had been shoved off the front page by Khrushchev’s latest temper tantrum; they shouldered their way through the crowd, two businessmen who had just completed a business call, and came out into the waning light of a late April afternoon.

“You were too rough with him,” Hawes said. He said it suddenly and tersely. He did not turn to look at Kling.

“He may have killed them,” Kling answered tonelessly.

“And maybe he didn’t. Who the hell are you? The Lord High Executioner?”

“You want to fight with me, Cotton?” Kling asked.

“No. I’m just telling you.”

“What are you telling me?”

“I’m telling you there are good cops and shitty cops, and I’d hate to see you become one of the shitty ones.”

“Thanks.”

“You’d better watch it, Bert.”

“Thanks.”

They stood on the sidewalk for a moment as the homeward-bound office workers rushed past them. There didn’t seem much else to say for the moment. Like polite strangers, they stood with their coats open and their hands in their pockets.

“You going back uptown?” Kling asked.

“I thought you might want to type up the report,” Hawes said. He paused, and then caustically added, “You asked all the questions.”

“I guess I did.”

“Sure. So you do the report.”

“You sore?”

“Yes.”

“Screw you,” Kling said, and he walked off into the crowd.

Hawes stared after him for a moment, and then shook his head. He took his hands out of his pockets, hesitated, put his hands back into his pockets again, and then walked toward the subway kiosk on the corner.

He was glad to be away from Kling and away from the squadroom. He was glad to be with Christine Maxwell who came in from the kitchen of her apartment carrying a tray with a Martini shaker and two iced Martini glasses. He watched her as she walked toward him. She had let her blond hair grow long since he’d first known her, and it hung loose around the oval of her face now, sleekly reflecting pinpoint ticks of light from the fading sun that filtered through the window. She had taken off her shoes the moment she’d come home from work, but she still wore her stockings and she padded across the room silently, walking with an intuitively feminine grace, insinuatingly female, her straight black skirt tightening over each forward thrust of thigh and leg, the cocktail tray balanced on one long tapered hand, the other hand brushing at an eyelash that had fallen to her cheek. She wore a blue silk blouse that echoed the lilac blue of her eyes, clung loosely to the soft curve of her bosom. She put down the tray and felt his eyes on her and smiled, “Stop it, you make me nervous.”

“Stop what?”

“Looking at me that way.” Quickly, she poured both glasses full to the brim.

“What way?”

“You’re undressing me.” Christine handed him one of the Martinis and hastily added, “With your eyes.”

“That would be a most impractical way to undress you,” Hawes said. “With my eyes.”

“Yes, but you’re doing it, anyway.”

“I’m simply looking at you. I enjoy looking at you.” He lifted his glass in the air, said, “Here’s looking at you,” and swallowed a huge gulp of gin and vermouth.

Christine sat in the chair opposite him, pulling her legs under her, sipping at her drink. She looked over the edge of the glass and said, “I think you ought to marry me. Then you could look at me all day long.”

“I can’t marry you,” Hawes said.

“Why not?”

“Because good cops die young.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Are you insinuating I’m not a good cop?”

“I thank you’re an excellent cop. But you’re not exactly young any more.”

“That’s true. I’m beginning to creak a little in the joints.” He paused and said, “But good cops die old, too. In fact, all cops die, sooner or later. Good ones, bad ones, honest ones, crooked ones…”

“Crooked cops? The ones who take bribes?”

“That’s right. They die, too.”

Christine shook her head, a mischievous grin on her mouth. “Crooked cops never die,” she said.

“No?”

“No. They’re just paid away.”

Hawes winced and drained his glass. “I think you went pretty far for that one,” he said.

“I think you went pretty far to avoid discussing our imminent marriage.”

“Our eminent marriage, you mean.”

“I mean imminent, but it’ll be eminent, too.”

“You know, I have the feeling I’m drunk,” Hawes said, “and all I’ve had is a single drink.”

“I’m an intoxicating woman,” Christine said.

“Come on over here and intoxicate me a little.”

Christine shook her head. “Nope. I want another drink first.” She drained her glass and poured two fresh Martinis. “Besides, we were discussing marriage. Are you an honest cop?”

“Absolutely,” Hawes said, picking up his drink.

“Don’t you think honest cops should seek honest women?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then why won’t you make me an honest woman?”

“You are an honest woman. Only an honest woman could mix a Martini like this one.”

“What’s wrong with it, and you’re changing the subject again.”

“I was thinking of your legs,” Hawes said.

“I thought you were thinking of my Martinis.”

“That’s why it sounded as though I were changing the subject.”

“Now I feel a little drunk,” Christine said. She shook her head, as if to clear it. “How was that again?”

“What’s the matter?” Hawes asked. “Don’t you dig Ionesco?”

“I not only don’t dig him, I also don’t understand him.”

“Come over here on the couch, and I’ll explain Ionesco.”

“No,” Christine said. “You’ll make advances.”

“That’s right.”

“I think a man and a woman should be married before he’s permitted to make advances.”

“You do, huh?”

“Sure, I do.”

“Sure.”

“What were you thinking about my legs?” Christine asked.

“How nice they are.”

“Nice? That’s a fine word to describe a woman’s legs.”

“Shapely.”

“Yes?”

“Well-curved.”

“Yes, go on.”

“Splendid.”

“Splendid?”

“Mmmm. I’d like to take off your stockings,” Hawes said.

Why?”

“So I can touch your splendid legs.”

“No advances,” Christine said. “Remember?”

“Right, I forgot. I’d like to take off your stockings so I can see your splendid legs better.”

“You’d like to take off my stockings,” Christine said, “so you can reach up under my skirt to ungarter them.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, but now that you bring it up…”

“You brought it up.”

“Are you wearing a girdle?”

“Nope.”

“A garter belt?”

“Yep.”

“I like garter belts.”

“All men do.”

“Why should all men like garter belts? And how do you know what all men like?”

“Are you jealous?”

“No,” Hawes said.

“If we were married, I wouldn’t have any opportunity to know what all men like,” Christine said. “You’d be the only man in my life.”

“You mean there are other men in your life?”

Christine shrugged.

“Who are they?” Hawes asked. “I’ll arrest them.”

“On what grounds?”

“Obstructing the course of true love.”

“Do you love me?” Christine asked.

“Come here, and I’ll tell you.”

Christine smiled.

“Come on.”

She smiled again. “How long would you say we’ve known each other, Cotton?” she asked.

“Oh, let me see. Four years?”

“Right. How many times would you say we’ve made love in those four years?”

“Twice,” Hawes said.

“No seriously.”

“Oh, seriously. Seriously, we’ve made love… how much is four times three hundred and sixty-five?”

“Come on, seriously.”

“Gee, I don’t know, Christine. Why do you ask?”

“I think we ought to get married.”

“Oh,” Hawes said, with an air of discovery. “Is that what you were leading up to? Ah-ha!”

“Don’t you like making love to me?”

“I love making love to you.”

“Then why don’t you marry me?”

“Come here, and I’ll tell you all about it.” Christine stood up abruptly. The move surprised him. A serious look had come onto her face suddenly, and it gave a curious purposefulness to her sudden rise. She walked to the window in her stockinged feet and stood there in silhouette for a moment, the dusky sky outside touching her face with the burnished wash of sunset, and then she pulled down the shade and turned toward Hawes with the same serious expression on her face, as if she were about to cry. He watched her and wondered how this had got so serious all at once. Or perhaps it had been serious all along, he wasn’t quite sure now. She took a step toward him and then stopped and looked at him with a long deep look, as if trying to resolve something in her own mind, and then gave a quiet sigh, just a short intake of breath, and unbuttoned her blouse. He watched her in the darkened room as she undressed. She hung the blouse over the back of a straight chair, and then unclasped her brassiere and put that on the seat of the chair. She pulled back her skirt and ungartered her stockings, and he watched her legs as she rolled the stockings down over the calves and then the ankles and then rose and put them over the back of the chair and stood facing him in her panties and garter belt, and then took off the panties and put them on the seat of the chair, too.

She walked toward him in the dim silence of the room, wearing only the black garter belt, and she stopped before him where he sat on the couch, and she said, “I do love you, Cotton. You know I love you, don’t you?”

She took his face between both slender hands, and she cocked her head to one side, as if seeing his face for the first time, studying it, and then one hand moved gently to the white streak in his red hair, touching it, and then trailing over his temple, and down the bridge of his nose, and then touching his mouth in exploration in the darkness.

“Nothing to say?” she asked. “Nothing to say, my darling?”

She stood before the couch where he sat, looking down at him with a curiously wistful smile on her mouth. He put his arms around her waist and drew her gently close, cradling his head on her breasts and hearing the sudden frantic beating of her heart and thinking there really was nothing to say to her, and wondering all at once what love was. He had known her for such a long time, it seemed, had seen her undress in exactly the same way so many times, had held her close to him in just this way, had heard the beating of her heart beneath the full breast. She was Christine Maxwell, beautiful, bright, passionate, exciting, and he enjoyed being with her more than any other person in the world. But holding her close, feeling the beating heart and sensing the wistful smile that still clung to her mouth, and knowing the serious expression was still in her eyes, he wondered whether any of this added up to love, and he suddenly thought of Irene Thayer and Tommy Barlow on the bed in the apartment filled with illuminating gas.

His hands suddenly tightened on Christine’s back.

He suddenly wanted to hold her desperately close to him.

She kissed him on the mouth and then sank to the couch beside him and stretched her long legs, and looked at him once more very seriously and then the wistful smile expanded, and she said, “It’s because it makes us look French.”

“What?” he said, puzzled.

“The garter belt,” Christine explained, That’s why men like it.”

* * * *