On the Other Hand, Death

21

The Westway Diner was lit up like a small city in the black night. A glass-sided outer lobby contained a cigarette machine and a pay telephone. From across the avenue we watched Dot step out of her car at eleven-fifty-nine and climb the few steps into the lobby, where she stood by the phone. From a special radio speaker mounted on Bowman's dashboard we could hear Dot's breathing and accelerated heartbeat. The picnic basket hung on her arm.

At midnight, the telephone beside Dot rang.

"Hello?"

The diner pay phone had been tapped, and from the regular police radio speaker we could hear both Dot and the caller.

"Drive down to Price Chopper." The now-familiar voice again. Where had I heard it? "Wait by the pay phone out front."

"Which Price Chopper?" Dot quickly asked. "The one at the Twenty Mall, or the one down Western Avenue toward Albany?"

"Down Western. We'll call in two minutes."

Click.

Bowman sputtered, "Jesus, Mother, and Mary! We'll never get into that line in two minutes! Can we?"

A metallic voice from Second Division Headquarters, seven miles away, said, "We'll try, Lieutenant. We're workin' on it."

Dot was back in her car and turning east onto Western Avenue. Traffic was light and she swung out into the four-lane thoroughfare with no difficulty.

"You hear that, Conway?" Bowman barked into his microphone. "Boyce? Salazar? It's Price Chopper, back down Western."

"Got it, Lieutenant."

"We heard."

"On the way."

The parking lot of the all-night supermarket was practically deserted. Dot had pulled directly up to the pay phone near the brightly lighted entrance. Again she climbed out and stood by the telephone with her picnic basket. The phone rang.

"Yes, hello?"

Now we could hear only Dot's voice, the tap not yet completed.

"Yes, yes, I understand."

Bowman muttered, "Repeat it for us, lady. Repeat it."

"Yes," Dot said. "I'll do that right away."

Dot hung up and entered the supermarket, the basket dangling from her arm. Her voice came out of the radio speaker again.

"He told me-I hope you can hear me, Lieutenant Bowman. The man told me to go inside the store and to… to buy a chuck steak. That's what he said. And then to go back outside and wait by the telephone."

Bowman writhed in his seat. "A chuck steak. Shit. He couldn't have said a chuck steak. Strachey, is the old doll hard of hearing, or what?"

"Not that I know of. I'd say no, she isn't."

"Oh, my land!" Dot's voice again. "My word, I didn't bring a cent with me. All I have is the money in the basket! Well, that will just have to do. Let's hope they can't count."

Bowman squirmed some more, shook his head. "I don't believe this is happening."

"I've got the steak," Dot said after a minute. "It's a bit fatty, but fine for stew. The roasts look nice, but the man said steak, so steak it is."

From our position across the highway we watched a dark blue Dodge identical to Bowman's pull into the Price Chopper lot, come to a stop at the edge of the woods on the western side of the lot, and douse its lights.

A young, tired female voice said, "That's four sixty-seven."

There was a pause, during which Dot's heartbeat quickened.

"Don't you have anything smaller than a hundred?" the cashier asked wearily.

"No, I'm sorry- Oh! Aren't those nice little TV sets! Just what I need for the den. I believe I'll just take one of those along. How much are they?"

"Eighty-nine ninety-five. There'd be sales tax on that too."

"Oh. Yes. And how much would that make it?"

A silence. Then: "Ninety-five thirty-four for the TV. And four sixty-seven for the meat."

"Fine," Dot said. "That's just fine."

Click, click, ring.

"That'll be one hundred dollars and one cent."

The heartbeat again. I thought I detected a slight mitral valve prolapse.

"Oh, heavenly days, I seem to have only another-"

"Forget the penny," the young woman said.

"Oh, thank you. Thank you so much."

"Have a nice night."

"Yes. You too."

She came into view again, the picnic basket over her right arm, a grocery bag clutched in her right fist. Her left hand grasped the handle of a small portable television set.

Dot quickly placed the TV set in the back seat of her car, then went and stood by the phone again. She said, "Do any of you have a hundred dollars? What if they count it?"

Bowman froze, but Dot made no move away from the phone.

A minute went by.

"Where the hell are they?" Bowman rasped. "What kind of crazy goddamn treasure-hunt-of-a-stunt are they pulling this time?"

The phone rang, startling all of us.

"Hello?"

Then another voice on the police radio: "Phone company's got it, Lieutenant. We're patching."

"Do it."

"— and go home. And take all those fuckin' cops with you!

"But there are no policemen with me. As you can see- Can you see me? I'm alone. I wouldn't let them come."

"You just do like I said, missus!"

"Is Fenton nearby? Are you releasing him now?"

"Just do what I said."

"All right. I'm doing it now." Dot hugged the receiver between her neck and shoulder so that both hands were free. She bent down, took the package of meat out of the grocery bag and seemed to unwrap it. "I'm placing the meat in the basket," she said. "And now I'm putting the basket down on the pavement by the phone."

Bowman and I both said it at once-"A dog!" — as the form shot out of the woods on the eastern edge of the parking lot, snatched up the basket handle between its teeth, and hurtled back across the tarmac and into the deep woods.

"Oh, my stars!" we heard Dot shout. "Get back here with that! Get back here, you damnable mutt!"

She was exclaiming only to herself and to us. The phone line had gone dead.

"Salazar, around the block! Boyce, you follow me! There's a street on the other side of those woods!"

We sped down Western a third of a mile, then hooked sharply left onto a side residential street that paralleled the woods the dog had run into. The street dead-ended after a block, and the woods spread out to the left and right. We couldn't see the end of them in any direction.

We leaped from the car and stood listening. We heard peepers.

While Bowman and the eight or ten other patrol cars that suddenly materialized rushed pell-mell up and down the streets and back roads of Guilderland, I jogged back to the Price Chopper parking lot. Dot was seated in the driver's seat of her car, the radio on, tuned to WAMC. The midnight jazz show was on, with Art Tatum playing "Sweet Lorraine."

I climbed into the car and we sat and listened for a few minutes. Neither of us spoke. When the song ended, we exchanged seats and I drove us back to Dot's house. Edith was waiting in the kitchen, and we all had a sandwich and a beer.

No one said much. Dot and Edith were exhausted, defeated. I was watching the clock, and waiting. end user