Savage Streets

Chapter One

John Farrell and Sam Ward got off the train together at Rosedale, a suburban station twenty-three miles from New York City. As they joined the crowd moving toward the commuters’ parking lot, Sam Ward took Farrell’s arm and said, “Now let me just sum this thing up, okay John?”

For the past half hour — the normal running time between Grand Central and Rosedale — Ward had been complaining in a random but energetic fashion about the golf dub both men belonged to; and now, Farrell thought, he obviously felt the good executive’s need to recap his thinking. And Farrell also realized there was no graceful way of escaping this; Ward’s hand was on his arm with the authority of an arresting policeman.

“We’re a small club and a new club, granted,” Ward said, steering Farrell along by the elbow. Everyone was in a hurry at this hour of day, the crowd streaming like water toward wives and cars waiting in the parking lot, but Ward kept himself and Farrell abreast of the current without disrupting the continuity of his comment. “Okay, we’re small and new, period. That doesn’t mean we have to be cheap, does it?”

“Well, not necessarily,” Farrell said.

“Of course, when I say ‘cheap’ I’m not talking about money or anything physical, you understand. I’m talking about tone.” Ward’s voice was loud and belligerent, which was in keeping with the way he walked, looked and thought; he was stocky, red-faced and pugnacious, a blunt, no-nonsense sort of person who wore a black Homburg and Chesterfield overcoat and seemed to be rushing eagerly toward middle age, impatient for the responsibilities and perquisites of seniority. In a few more years. Ward (he was now thirty-two) might turn into an authentic character, Farrell thought. Old Man Ward — “the Old Man shook hell out of the St. Louis office on his last trip. Did you hear about it?”

“What do you mean by tone?” Farrell asked him.

“Damn it, you know what I mean. Little things. Members leaving caddie carts piled up in front of the pro shop while they go down to the locker for a beer. Kids taking pop bottles to their wading pond. Aside from the danger of broken glass, it makes the place look like a junk yard. Third, the rules about dress, as you know only too well, are either laughed at or ignored. Ties and jackets in the restaurant and lounge, that’s the regulation, and it doesn’t seem too much to ask, if you ask me. But you know as well as I do that half the members wander around both those places in sports shirts. And here’s another thing: some of the waiters are getting familiar as hell lately. And it’s the members who encourage that crap who’re chiefly to blame. You know some people think it’s great to have waiters call them by their first names and kid them about hang-overs and that sort of thing. They think it proves they’re nice guys. Well, you either have a well-run club, or you have something else altogether. Now take the Detweillers, for instance. They’re friends of yours, right?”

“Chicky and Bill? Sure.”

“Okay, they’re friends of mine, too, but they treat the club like a playpen. Every time they get a few extra drinks it’s the same story. College songs, arms around waiters, both of them behaving like a pair of drunken teen-agers. Hell, I’ll take a drink with the next guy, but my policy has always been, if you can’t handle the stuff then leave it strictly alone. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Well, it’s a good policy. I understand that much.”

“Did you hear about Chicky the other night?”

“No, what did she do?”

“Climbed up on the bar after a few Scotches and went to sleep. And Mac, our idiot bartender, crossed her hands over her chest and put a cherry in her mouth. Isn’t that cute? Isn’t that a nice sight for someone coming in with his family, say, for a drink before dinner? I tell you, we’ve got to take up some slack while there’s still time. I know Rome wasn’t built in a day, but one day a couple Romans got together and started to build it. And that’s what we’ve got to do. Get moving before it’s too late.”

John Farrell laughed as they moved along with the crowd toward the end of the platform. The evening light was pale and dim, and the cold salt-sharpened wind off the Sound whipped his topcoat about his legs.

“What’s funny?” Ward asked him.

Farrell said, “Nothing,” but in fact Ward’s comment about Rome had raised a preposterous image in his mind, that of two togaed figures standing on a lonesome and wind-swept plain somewhere in the middle of Italy. He invented some dialogue for them: “Well, we can’t build it in a day, damn it!” There was the pessimist harrying the man of vision. “But we can start, can’t we?” And that was Sam Ward, one day to be a consul of Rome, and one day (even more certainly) to be a vice president of Texoho Oil Company, a vast industrial complex he presently served in an important minor capacity.

“My idea is to get the interested people together in an informal committee,” Ward said, glancing about the graveled parking lot for his car. “We’ll decide what we want done, and then make sure it is done. Okay, John?”

“Let me think about it.” Farrell saw the specter of committee work rising out of Ward’s dissatisfactions; nights spent in slaying miniature dragons, of hashing the obvious to pieces, of too much coffee and Scotch, and a great deal of censorious talk about abuses and indiscretions committed by absent members and their families. “Okay?” he said, pulling his arm gently from Ward’s grip. “We’ll think it over, okay?”

“Well, sure,” Ward said doubtfully. “But we don’t want to let things get too far out of hand. Bad habits have a funny way of turning into traditions, you know.” He smiled in surprise at his epigram. “Hey, that would be the way to put it, I think. Tactfully, I mean.”

“That’s an idea,” Farrell said.

Sam Ward’s wife honked for him and he turned and waved toward her dark head. “Can we give you a lift, John?”

“No, I’ll walk. It’s the only exercise I get. Say hello to Grace for me, will you?”

“Hey, you’re seeing us tonight, remember?”

Farrell hadn’t remembered, but he nodded and said, “Sure thing. See you later.”

“Right.” Ward waved good-by to him, and went sturdily across the lot to his car, holding the brim of his Homburg against the gusts of wind sweeping down the sides of the train. The crowd thinned out quickly in well-rehearsed patterns: wives were kissed, cars circled the lot with military precision, and by the time Farrell had gone down the wooden steps to the sidewalk the Express was pulling away from the station and only a few stragglers were left on the platform.

The village of Rosedale was peaceful and picturesque in the falling evening light. Everything seemed calm and attractive and permanent; the discreetly expensive shops (for cheeses and wines and riding apparel), the white clapboard church, the colonial courthouse with well-tended lawns and privet hedge, the small square, the equestrian statue of General Grant — all of this was something more than real estate, it was a way of life kept sacrosanct by rigid zoning, preserved in sentiment by the old families who still maintained the big homes on the south shore of the Island. This was the oldest section of the Township; there were no hamburger stands here, no ice cream palaces or noisy barrooms, no garishly illuminated real estate offices. Everything from the burnished whipping post behind the courthouse to the extravagant maples along the main street had been grimly held against the forces of progress.

When Farrell crossed Whiting Boulevard a few minutes later he entered a world of split-levels and ranch houses, of a mile of shops that modestly called itself “miraculous,” of gas stations and steak houses ablaze with neon, the world of the middle-class commuter, new, mortgaged and efficient, with television antennae flying like pennants above every man’s castle.

A half mile beyond Whiting Boulevard, Farrell came to the area known as Hayrack. Now he was nearly home. Hayrack was an incongruously run-down neighborhood, a square mile of deteriorating houses and shops pressed in tightly between the Faircrest development and the commercial section of Rosedale. It was not quite a slum area, but the streets were poorly lit, and there were several pool halls and a number of cheap, noisy barrooms. Hayrack had been a respectable, lower-middle-class community when the larger homes on the south shore had dominated the area. It had supplied the labor that kept the big houses running gracefully; maids and chauffeurs, stable boys and gardeners, all the essential props of privilege had come from Hayrack. When the big houses ceased to function, so had Hayrack. Now everyone said the whole area had to go; the land was needed for decent housing and the bars and pool halls were a disgrace. But so far nothing had been done. Hayrack continued to exist, held together by the complicated tendrils of politics, taxation and ethnic loyalties.

Farrell always experienced a certain tension as he walked through Hayrack. The street comers were dim and the alleys full of heavy shadows but his uneasiness was not a physical thing; he simply felt out of place in this neighborhood, a stranger, an alien.

After Hayrack he followed a street bordering the ninth fairway of the golf course, and this brought him to the arched entrance of the Faircrest development. There was a sentry box to the left of the arch, and beside this architectural irrelevancy stood a stone column with the name Faircrest spelled out in colored pebbles. Rows of willow trees stretched out in a long semicircle on either side of the archway, screening the development from the highway with soft, drooping branches.

Farrell passed under the arch and walked between the masses of rhododendron flanking the graveled entrance. He turned right at the first intersection. The homes he passed were identical in their snug, inexpensive feel of luxury; they stood on quarter-acre, well-tended lots, and came equipped with carports, barbecue pits, basement workshops, television antennae and combination washing and drying machines. In the twilight their picture windows gleamed warmly against the coming darkness. The scene was comfortable and familiar to his eyes. Glancing at the cars along the curbing he knew who was home, and who had missed a train or got tied up in the city. Some children were kicking a football around in the street and he recognized Billy Sims, Bobby Detweiller and Junior Norton. As he passed them the football bounced off the roof of a parked car and rolled along the sidewalk to his feet. He bent and scooped it up with one hand.

“Okay, who wants to go down under a long one?” He stepped off the sidewalk to the street. “Were trailing by three points, there’s time for just one play. Who’s going to be the hero?”

“Me, Mr. Farrell, me!” Bobby Detweiller shouted, pushing Junior Norton and Billy Sims aside. They protested shrilly, but Bobby was already trotting down the street. “Come on, throw it, Mr. Farrell,” he yelled. “Make it a good long one.”

As he drew back his arm to throw Farrell suddenly experienced an odd but directionless nostalgia for something he was at a loss to name or define. It was a confusing instant; there was the cold wind on his face, the touch of the smooth leather football in his hand, and an abrupt sense of emptiness and futility; it was all so long ago, he thought, and this was the first concept that isolated itself from the curious welter of self-pity. So damn long ago. For no understandable reason he thought of Union Station in Chicago at Christmas time, with the great illuminated tree centering the concourse and the music of carols booming against the high, vaulted ceiling. That was what Chicago looked like when you got off the University train for the Christmas vacation. The sweet, exciting music, the masses of people, the girls with pink cheeks and slim legs, the young men bigger and more confident than when they’d gone away in the fall, everyone shouting and happy in the rush for home.

“Throw it, Mr. Farrell!” Bobby Detweiller cried.

Farrell lobbed the ball carefully. The pass was good; it hit the boy’s upraised hands.

He dropped it and for some reason this pleased Farrell. Just like his old man, he thought.

“I couldn’t see it,” Bobby Detweiller said plaintively. “And it was too high. Throw me another one, Mr. Farrell. Just one more, please.”

“It’s too dark, I’m afraid. We’ll try it again tomorrow. Where’s Jimmy?”

“I don’t know,” Junior Norton said in his quick, eager little voice. He was thin and slenderly built, with his father’s dark good looks and cautious eyes. The Nortons had moved to Faircrest only a few months ago, and Farrell didn’t know Wayne Norton too well. He worked in a bank, and Farrell had the impression that he was vigilantly scenting the wind for the acceptable prejudices and taboos in his new environment. He said little, smiled a great deal, and was careful to take a straddling position in most discussions or arguments. Some of this wariness had obviously transmitted itself to his son, Wayne Jr., for the boy behaved with the youngsters in the development like a small edition of his father.

Billy Sims said, “Jimmy can’t play football any more. He’s studying or something.”

Farrell glanced at him closely; it was too dark to see the expression on his face, but there was a suggestion of illicit excitement in his voice. Farrell said, “What do you mean ‘Jimmy can’t play football any more’? Is he in the doghouse with his mother?”

Bobby Detweiller pushed the Sims boy from behind and said, “He doesn’t know anything, Mr. Farrell. He just blabbers all the time.”

“I do not,” Billy Sims cried and turned angrily on Detweiller’s son. “Jimmy told me he can’t play any more. He’s my friend, not yours. I should know, shouldn’t I?”

“He’s my friend just as much as he is yours,” Bobby Detweiller said very loudly, for this wasn’t true; Jimmy and Billy Sims had been playmates for a year or so before the Detweillers had moved to Faircrest.

“Well, let’s not quibble about it,” Farrell said and patted both boys on their shoulders. “I’ll ask Jimmy and settle the mystery myself. Take it easy now.” Farrell waved a good-by to the group of boys and went up the walk to his home. He hung up his hat and coat and turned into the small study that adjoined the foyer. The room was dark except for the television screen. His ten-year-old daughter, Angey, was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, her face pale and solemn in the faint illumination from the TV set. The program which held her transfixed was an animated cartoon featuring the clown named Boffo. Boffo’s reason for being, as nearly as Farrell could judge, was to sneak up behind people and strike them over the head with a huge club. Then he ran away to hide.

Angey didn’t turn her eyes from the screen. She said automatically, “Hi, Daddy. Please don’t turn on the light.”

“Just for a second.” He turned on a lamp and lifted the lid of the ice bucket. There was no ice. “You want to do me a favor, honey?”

“Oh, Daddy!”

“I’ll keep my eye on Boffo for you. You run along and get me some ice.”

“Oh, all right,” she said, sliding from the sofa with childish grace, fluid and awkward at once.

Farrell turned down the television set. In theory this room was to have been his retreat and sanctum, a place for tying trout flies and cleaning guns, a haven for the solitary drink and private thoughts. In fact, however, it was the family sitting room where Barbara sewed, Angey played her records and Jimmy staged war games with batteries of remote-controlled tanks and cannon. The nominal living room, carpeted from wall to wall, and featuring a picture window and working fireplace, was used only for parties. He heard Barbara’s step on the stairs. She looked into the study and smiled at him in surprise. “I didn’t hear you come in. I thought Angey was watching TV in here by herself.”

“I sent her for some ice.”

She kissed him and gave him a quick hug. “I’m just off to pick up Mrs. Simpson. We’ve got a date tonight, you know.”

“Yes, I rode out with Sam. He reminded me.”

“Well, we’re on a kind of tight schedule. You’d better shower. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“Where’s Jimmy?”

“Upstairs.” She hesitated, then said, “He’s on a scholarly kick lately.”

“What’s the matter, honey?” Farrell had just noticed the tense little frown on his wife’s forehead. She wasn’t a worrier and this particular frown, like that of a nearsighted person narrowing his eyes for better vision, was always an indication of trouble. “Anything wrong?”

“I’ve got to rush. You get showered, okay?”

When the door closed behind her, Farrell rubbed a hand slowly over the back of his neck. Angey returned with the ice bucket and asked if she could play her records. Farrell said all right and made himself a mild whiskey and water. Then he went upstairs and stopped at the doorway of his son’s room. Jimmy was hunched over his desk, the light from a reading lamp shadowing his small, alert face.

“Man at work, eh?” Farrell said. “How goes it?”

“Everything’s fine. Dad.” Jimmy glanced sideways at him, his eyes shadowed by the lamp behind his head. “There’s nothing wrong.”

Farrell sat on the edge of Jimmy’s bed and looked around the room. “I don’t know what else we could fit in here,” he said. Most of the available wall space was occupied with tanks of tropical fish and Jimmy’s cigar box collection. In addition, there was a cage of parakeets, two dismantled radios, a gum-dispensing machine and several boxes of picture albums and business ledgers which Jimmy had bought at an auction in Hayrack. He glanced at Jimmy’s desk and saw an open notebook covered with doodles and ticktacktoe games. “How come you’ve slacked off on football, by the way?”

“I don’t know. I got tired of it, I guess.” Jimmy drew a circle on the paper and began shading it with the broad tip of his pencil. He seemed disturbed by the conversation. “I’m not good at football,” he said, his voice rising and breaking childishly. “I couldn’t play it any good. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“No, of course not. But I understand what Billy Sims meant now. He said you couldn’t play and I assumed your mother had clamped down for some reason or other.”

Jimmy glanced quickly at him. “How come you were talking to Billy about me?”

“Well, I saw the boys outside and asked where you were. Anyway, I think you’re too young to decide whether you’re good, bad or indifferent at any sport. Play for fun, that’s enough for the moment. By the time you get to prep school, you’ll probably know if you’re any good or not.” Farrell glanced at his watch. He knew he should be getting ready for the Wards’ party, but he did not like to leave his son in this cheerless mood.

“You know, maybe we should take in a few pro football games this fall,” he said. “You’ll see men who’re paid a lot of money to play make a foolish mistake every now and then. I’m serious. They miss blocks and drop passes just the way you boys do. They’re not perfect, and they’ve been playing the game for years. So you shouldn’t worry about making a mistake or two. It happens to the best. So how about it? Would you like me to pick up some tickets tomorrow?”

“All right,” Jimmy said, staring at the circle he had shaded with his pencil.

“You don’t sound excited about it.”

“Well, gosh, I said all right, didn’t I?”

“It’s a deal then.” Farrell walked down the hallway to his bedroom and put his drink down on the night table. Barbara had laid out his dinner jacket on his bed, and he remembered then that the Wards’ party was in honor of Mr. Hunter, one of the directors of the Faircrest development. They were dining at the country club, and on the train two mornings ago Ward had said, “Mr. Hunter rates a black tie, I guess.” The inference that his friends might not rate a black tie had not been allowed to hang awkwardly in the air. Ward had underscored it with a bold flourish. “If it were just our regular gang I wouldn’t bother,” he had said, shaking out his newspaper. “But with Mr. Hunter putting in an appearance, it’s a little bit special.”

Farrell took off his coat and tie, and stretched out on Barbara’s bed, adjusting his position so that his shoes rested on the footstead rather than the spread. He was tall enough to do this without difficulty; he was over six feet, and except for an additional eight or ten pounds he was very much as he had been fifteen years ago, with big arms and shoulders, a deep chest and narrow hips. Farrell had a long, angular face, dark gray eyes and brown hair cut close. The normal cast of his features was almost grave, but there was a humor about his eyes which frequently encouraged people to tell him their problems. His nickname in college had been Uncle; even then he had been a good listener.

Farrell glanced at the bedside clock. Six-thirty. The room was pleasantly warm, and the color scheme of grays and blues was restful. They had splurged a bit here, with wall to wall carpeting, and two handsome old walnut chests to supplement the built-in closet space. It was a very comfortable room, and Farrell rather wished he didn’t have to get up. He punched the pillow into a more comfortable position under his head and took a sip from his drink. It would have been agreeable to close his eyes and relax completely for a few minutes, but he could not anesthetize a nagging speculation as to what was behind the tense little frown on Barbara’s forehead. He knew that particular frown very well. It was different from her expression when the children were ill, or when she was working on her accounts, or when she was exasperated with him for playing an extra nine holes of golf on Saturday and leaving her to cope with the children and preparations for a party. This particular frown was different; it meant she was up against something she couldn’t handle, a problem she saw no way of solving.

Farrell had seen this frown the first day they had met, and now, sipping a drink in the quiet bedroom they had shared for years, his thoughts drifted back to that time...

He had called the Walker home from Philadelphia, saying hesitantly, “This is Lieutenant Farrell, John Farrell, that is. I called because I knew David Walker, he was in my platoon and I thought...”

That was as far as he had got; her excited voice cut him off. “Yes, of course, Lieutenant. David wrote us about you. Darn! Dad isn’t in just now. He’ll be so eager to talk to you. Where are you now?”

“In Philadelphia.”

“Dad’s gone to Pottstown for the cattle auction. He’ll be so disappointed he missed you.”

“Well, I could call later.”

“That would be wonderful.” He had heard her catch her breath. “But look! I know you must have all sorts of plans of your own, but could you possibly come out and spend the night with us? Dad would be so pleased. Could you squeeze it in? Please?”

“Well, I’d like to very much but my schedule is pretty tight. I’m supposed to be in Chicago tomorrow.”

“I shouldn’t be trying to pressure you this way. If you could call Dad later that would be wonderful.”

“Well, actually, I could probably make it all right,” he had said. That hadn’t been the truth; he was due in Chicago the next day to see an advertising agency about a job, and changing his plans meant giving up what in those days had been a very precious plane ticket. But he had not been able to resist the wistfulness in her voice.

The afternoon he met Barbara for the first time had been in 1945. She was waiting for him when he got off the train in Westchester, Pennsylvania, a slim, twenty-year-old girl in a blue tweed coat, a rather plain girl (he had thought then) with a smooth forehead, gravely dark eyes and brown hair cropped close to her small head. On the drive to her father’s farm they had talked of gas rationing (the Walkers had been lucky; they had had an agricultural quota) and the beauty of the countryside, the purples and reds and yellows of the dying season. “This is what I missed,” he remembered that he said to her. “This kind of an American fall. These colors.”

“Not hot dogs and the chance to boo the umpire?” She had turned her head to smile tentatively at him, and he saw that she wasn’t so plain after all. Some women were only beautiful in repose, he had learned; but there were women with a more exciting kind of beauty, with faces that came alive with the business of living. She was that sort.

“I guess I was an odd-ball,” he had said. The fields of late fall stretched away from the road like a calmly rolling sea, and a stand of trees on a low hill looked as if a fire were raging through their branches.

They spoke little after that, but the silence was comfortable. At a traffic light he had lighted a cigarette for her and she had taken it from him with the scrubbed hand of a child, thin brown fingers and rosy unpainted fingernails. That’s what she had reminded him of then, with her spindly legs and slender body, a child with sad eyes.

The Walker home was old and sturdy, with fieldstone walls and narrow windows. Leaves were falling that afternoon, he remembered, twisting slowly through the cold blue air and settling with whispering sounds on the hardening ground.

Mr. Walker was tall and handsome with dark eyes and prematurely gray hair. He did not look like a dairy farmer; with his pink cheeks and light hair he looked more like a college senior made up to portray a character in a class play.

Dinner was served after several rounds of cocktails, and by the time they returned to the living room Mr. Walker was drunk in a casual, affable fashion. Barbara left them alone and they sat before the fireplace with flames from the apple-log fire shining brightly on the dark beams above their heads. Mr. Walker brought a bottle of cognac and two brandy snifters from the sideboard and said, “I think we might drink this to my son, David, Lieutenant.”

Then Mr. Walker poured himself another brandy and said, “I would appreciate anything you can tell me about David’s death, Lieutenant — anything, that is, which won’t give you pain.”

Farrell described young David Walker’s death. It had been a routine death, if any death under fire could be called routine, but Mr. Walker had obviously been gratified by his account. He had stirred himself with an effort to pour a drink. “I’m most grateful to you. You have given me great solace,” he had said.

A little later Mr. Walker was asleep and Farrell was wondering uneasily if he should try to get him to bed. But Barbara returned then, and this was when he had first seen the tense little frown on her forehead. She hadn’t apologized for her father. She had said, “I’ll take care of him, please don’t worry. I know your talk has done him a lot of good.”

“There wasn’t much I could tell him. David died well — that was all I could say.”

“I hate talk about soldiers dying well or not dying well,” she had said in a low voice. “They’re gone — we should just remember that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Please don’t be. I shouldn’t have said that. Not to you. And I am glad you talked to Dad. He needs heroes. Mother was his first and greatest, and now he has Dave.”

“And how about you?”

She had smiled, but it hadn’t erased the crease of worry in her forehead. “I’m not heroic, not the least bit.”

He said awkwardly, “Can I help with him?”

“No, I’ll manage all right. This doesn’t happen every night. But when he learned that David had been killed he just couldn’t...” She sighed faintly. “I suppose if you were charitable enough you could call Dad a war casualty, too.”

He had been very moved by her then. “The hell you’re not heroic,” he said. “The hell you’re not.”

When he left the next morning Farrell’s impression of Barbara had been neither sentimental nor romantic; what had remained with him was the simple fact that she had been putting her handsome, well-mannered father to bed for years without resentment or shame, knowing it was a problem she could never solve but facing it nonetheless with dignity and compassion.

Farrell sat up and glanced again at the bedside clock. It was ten of seven, which was almost his deadline. He smiled as he began unbuttoning his shirt. Put her father to bed for years. Hardly a dainty recollection to carry away from the first meeting with his future wife. But most people, he felt, were in the habit of summing up one another in a sentence or two, and usually these capsule estimates lacked any hint of grace or dignity. Do you know so-and-so? You mean the guy whose wife ran off with the bridge teacher? That’s the one. So much for so-and-so, his dreams and yearnings, his conviction that he was made of significant clay, destined for eternal existence.

Farrell did not find it a gloomy idea. In fact, it struck him as rather funny, and he was thinking of how it might be incorporated into a parlor game when the door opened and Barbara came in. She said, “John!” helplessly and irritably. “What is the matter with you? Are you trying to be late? You know what a big thing this dinner is for Sam and Grace.”

“I’ll hurry. I was just thinking up a parlor game. Do you want to be a guinea pig?”

“Tell me later. I’m going to shower.” She put out a black dinner dress, pumps and hose, and then collected her robe and lingerie.

“How’s Mrs. Simpson?” Farrell asked, as Barbara unzipped her skirt. “In a good mood?”

“She’s usually all right. She simply likes a little advance notice. It upsets her when people call at the last minute and sulk because she’s not available. Start getting ready, please.”

Barbara came out of the bathroom a few minutes later in panties and bra, her skin pink from the shower. She rubbed the steam from the mirrored panel of the door and began putting on lipstick. As she inspected her eyes and mouth with impersonal care, Farrell glanced at the reflection of her body in the mirror. She was no longer the spindly-legged girl he had met that long-ago afternoon at the railroad station in Westchester. The spare childish look was gone; her body had filled out to a functional maturity.

Farrell went in to shower and shave. When he came out she was wearing a black dress with a skirt that flared out over a pink petticoat. The straps of the dress were vivid against her bare shoulders, and her jewelry, a double strand of pearls and matching earrings glowed against her warm coloring.

As he twisted studs into his dress shirt Farrell said, “Look, I forgot about my game. Now bear with me a second. Do you remember Joan Mellon?”

“Yes, I think so. Isn’t she that friend of yours who broke her leg skiing the week before her wedding?”

“That’s it exactly. Now how about Al Pearson?”

“Oh, really, John. We are late. Is he the one who came home to find that his wife had sold the house and furniture and gone off with a brush salesman or something?”

“Exactly,” Farrell said. “The lab work is over. Now the game goes like this: you see, everybody is in the habit of summing everybody else up in a sentence or two. I ask you about Joan Mellon, and you say, oh sure, she broke her leg the week before she got married. And the same with poor old Al Pearson. Wife ran off with a brush salesman and so forth. The thing is this: we’ll ask everyone to write a single sentence describing someone else at a given party. Or maybe we’ll have two teams. Details we can handle later. Anyway we put the slips of paper in a hat, distribute them hit-or-miss, and then the job is to relate the one-sentence description to the person to whom it applies. Got it? I see some obvious bugs, but we can iron those out in the heat of combat. For an example now, how would you describe Chicky Detweiller in one sentence?”

“I think you’d better skip the whole idea,” Barbara said. “I don’t like it.”

“What’s the matter, honey?”

“It’s a stupid thing to involve people in,” she said. “It simply gives them a green light to be hurtful and cruel, to damn one another with a few flip comments. Can’t you see that?”

“You’re taking this pretty big, aren’t you? It’s just a gag, you know.” Turning her by the elbows, he said, “Hold still now. Relax.” He massaged the back of her neck slowly with his fingers. “You’re all tied up in knots. What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t mean to fly off the handle,” she said. “I thought I’d wait until after the party to tell you. I didn’t want to spoil the evening.”

“Never mind that. Let’s have it.”

She turned around and sighed despairingly. “Jimmy’s been stealing money from the house for the past couple of weeks. I couldn’t believe it at first and that’s why I didn’t say anything to you about it. It seemed so preposterous. I’m careless with change sometimes and I thought perhaps I’d mislaid the money. But I’m afraid that was just wishful thinking.”

“Now just a minute, honey.” Farrell sat on the bed and pulled her gently down beside him. He patted her hands and said, “Maybe it isn’t so wishful after all. We’re both pretty careless with money, for that matter.” Farrell took a deep breath; he seemed to need more air, cleaner air. Jimmy wasn’t a thief; there was no chance of that. “Now listen, honey,” he said. “How about baby sitters and the woman who comes in to do the ironing? And Angey’s friends, for that matter? They fly in and out of here like birds. How did you happen to pin this on Jimmy?”

She glanced at him quickly. “Do you think I’m trying to pin it on him, for heaven’s sake?”

“Now, now,” he said, still patting her hand. “You know that wasn’t what I meant. But I want to know why you’re sure it was Jimmy.”

“You haven’t given me a chance.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

“Well, a half-dozen times in the past two weeks I’ve missed odd bits of change. Sometimes it would be a dollar or two, other times a quarter or a few dimes or nickels.” She drew a deep breath. “For instance, I’d pay the milkman and leave the change in the kitchen. It would vanish. Or I’d be sure I had a dollar or two change in the pocket of my car coat, but when I stopped to buy cigarettes or something the money would be gone. Then two days ago I bought a magazine subscription from the Sims’ oldest boy. I put two dollars and eighty cents change on the table in the hallway and just then the phone rang. It was Chicky and she chattered on as usual. While I was talking to her Jimmy came down the stairs and went out the front door.” She rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. “When I went into the hallway the money was gone.”

“You didn’t actually see him take it, did you?”

“No, but he was the only person who went through the hallway while I was on the phone.”

Farrell got up and lit a cigarette. He was frowning. “Yes, but how about the front door? Supposing you hadn’t closed it after the Sims’ boy left? Couldn’t someone else have come along while you were on the phone? A delivery boy, or a salesman, maybe? If they saw the money and heard you talking on the phone, they could have taken it before Jimmy came down the stairs. Isn’t that possible?”

“John, I’m as eager as you are to prove that Jimmy is innocent. Will you please let me finish? This morning just after breakfast — well, you were still at the table, you must remember. The milkman stopped by with the weekly account and I paid him with a ten-dollar bill. The change came to three dollars and sixty cents and I put it on the table while I finished a cup of coffee. You do remember, don’t you?”

“How do you expect me to keep track of details like that?”

“Well, you and Angey left the table together. She wanted you to see her English exercise book. Afterward she kissed me good-by and ran out to meet Charlotte Fairman — you and she went to the front door together. Do you remember that?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Farrell said slowly.

“Jimmy was still moping around the dining room. He told me he couldn’t find his school books. I went upstairs to look for them, and when I came down he was waiting for me in the hallway. He took the books and ran. When I went in to clear the breakfast dishes — well, there was only a dollar and sixty cents on the table. Two dollars were gone, and no one but Jimmy could have taken them.”

“It seems like an airtight case,” Farrell said and he felt a quirk of illogical anger at her; she hadn’t left the boy a loophole. “How much do you figure he’s taken altogether?”

“I don’t know. Fifteen or twenty dollars anyway.”

“It’s still petty larceny, that’s something to be grateful for.” He shrugged helplessly. “Well, where do we go from here, honey?”

“First, I think you should have a talk with him,” Barbara said. “You’ve got to find out why he’s taken this money.”

“I’ll have a talk with him,” Farrell said.

“You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

He sighed and said, “Goddammit. Goddammit to hell.”

She put her fingers across his lips. “That doesn’t sound like you. Getting mad isn’t going to help things.”

“I don’t feel mad,” Farrell said. “I just feel a little bit sick.”

Ten minutes later Farrell went down to the study and made himself a drink. “Where’s your mother?” he said to Angey, who sat cross-legged on the floor sorting her records. Jimmy stood at the windows staring out at the dark street, his tousled hair shining in the lamplight.

“I don’t know,” Angey said absently; she was looking closely at a record. “Jimmy, were you playing ‘Plant Life’ today?” She spoke with an ominous sharpness, turning the question into an accusation.

“I didn’t touch your silly old records,” he said.

“Well, how did the peanut butter get on ‘Plant Life,’ that’s all I want to know. Look at me, Jimmy. I can tell if you’re telling the truth.”

Farrell said, “All right, knock it off. Miss District Attorney.”

She looked up at him and her eyes brightened under her neat blonde bangs. “You look wonderful,” she said. “Those clothes make you look so thin.”

“Well, thanks.” Barbara came in and he raised his glass to her. “One for the road, you know.”

“I know,” she said drily. She patted Angey’s head. “Sweetie, get my stole out of the closet, will you please? I’ll say good-by to Mrs. Simpson, John.” She nodded meaningfully at Jimmy who was still staring out into the street. “I won’t be long.” When Barbara and Angey had gone Farrell sat down in a chair beside Jimmy and squeezed his thin shoulder. “What’s so fascinating out there?”

“I don’t know. I was just looking, that’s all.”

“Well, come here and sit down. I want to talk to you.”

Jimmy turned and slumped down on the ottoman at Farrell’s feet. He stared down at his shoes, his expression withdrawn and cautious in the shadings of soft lamplight. “What do you want?” he said, in an anxious little voice. He sat dejectedly and helplessly, his face averted as if expecting a blow.

Farrell felt a wrench of compassion for him, but he said casually, “I know you’ve got a birthday coming up pretty soon, and it occurred to me you’re about old enough to start choosing some of your own presents. My father let me do that when I was your age. Of course there’d be surprises, too, but he let me pick out the big thing. Does that strike you as a good idea?”

Jimmy raised his head to look at him, and Farrell saw the relief in his face. “Yes, it sounds fine,” Jimmy said.

“Okay then, we’ll try it on your next birthday. Think it over carefully. Is there anything you’ve really got your heart set on? I mean, something so exciting that you might be afraid to mention it for fear — well, that we might think it’s too expensive or too dangerous?” Farrell saw that Jimmy’s expression had become cautious again and he said quickly, “I mean a rifle or a printing press, or one of those fancy English bikes — something you might think we wouldn’t even consider getting for you?” He smiled and patted his son on the shoulder. “Well? Am I getting closer?”

“I don’t want anything in particular, Dad.” He stared away as if the discussion embarrassed him. “But I’ll think about it, okay?”

“Sure. That’s all I want you to do.”

Barbara came in with a fur stole over her arm and Farrell got to his feet. She kissed Jimmy and gave him a tight hug. “Your supper is ready and you get one-half hour of television, repeat ‘one-half hour,’ before your bath. Okay? We won’t be too late.”

In the car Farrell said, “Well, I didn’t accomplish very much.” He turned from his driveway into the quiet, familiar street and headed for the club. The Wards’ car was gone, but the Detweillers’ convertible was still in front of their house. They wouldn’t be the last arrivals at any rate. “This isn’t going to be easy,” he said, “unless we can get Jimmy to talk to us, to trust us...” He let the sentence trail off; he knew he was merely stating the obvious.

Barbara reached over and touched his hand. “We’ll work it out some way. But let’s make an effort to enjoy the party tonight. It’s a big evening for Sam and Grace. You know how tense they are about entertaining.”

“They’re goddamn bores about it, is what you mean,” Farrell said.

“Come on, come on,” Barbara said. “Do your best to have fun.”

“Okay,” Farrell said. “I’ll give it a grim, muscular try.”