The Big Heat

Chapter 2

Bannion sat in the kitchen with a scotch and soda before him and watched his wife, Kate, as she made dinner. He smiled as she put a steak into a very hot, lightly greased frying pan.

“How you squeeze steaks out of my salary is a source of wonder to me,” he said. “At work they don’t believe it. They insist you’ve got a private income, or something.”

She sat down opposite him and took a small sip from his drink. “Well, enjoy this one then because it’s the last of the month. And next year, when Brigid starts to school, you can kiss them goodbye until she gets out of college. Unless you become Superintendent in the meantime.”

“Oh, that’s inevitable. How was bedtime by the way?”

“The usual tug of war,” Kate said, going to the stove to turn the steak. She was a tall, red-haired girl, with good-humored but very direct blue eyes, and very fair, flawless skin. She wasn’t beautiful, although people thought she was at first because of her hair and complexion; but her features were very appealing in their liveliness, humor, and interest. Now, as she salted the steak, she was grinning slightly. “She had to go to the bathroom a few times, hear a couple of extra stories, and have a glass of water, before she finally went to sleep. She’s angelic all day, but at night she’s a holy terror.”

Bannion raised his eyebrows. “That’s the way I usually describe you,” he said.

“Seriously, the book says to be patient but firm. You’ve tried that, I suppose?”

“The book, the book,” Kate said. “It’s very scientific and calm, but it doesn’t work. Not with me anyway. The baby books never heard about Brigid, that’s the trouble.”

“The thing is, she’s madly in love with me,” Bannion said. “The Oedipus business, you know. Naturally she’s jealous of you, as any sensible woman would be, and that’s why there’s conflict. Reasonable?”

“Yes, but I don’t believe it,” Kate said.

“Well, it’s a little too pat, I guess,” Bannion said. “It’s like circumstantial evidence. If everything fits too well, look out. Come on, that steak’s done.”

“Here you are.”

After dinner Bannion settled down in the living room to look through the papers. He was in an odd mood, one of curious, nonspecific gratitude. It wasn’t just a highball, the steak, the sense of pleasant relaxation. He glanced around the warm, slightly cluttered room. One of Brigid’s dolls was on the radio, and a pull-toy and some books of hers were on the floor. Kate was sitting on the sofa, the sofa that needed covering he remembered, her feet curled under her, the lamplight touching her hair, her plain gold wedding band, her slim, silken legs.

He went back to his paper, his mood unresolved and unexplained. There was a story on Tom Deery on page three, a short story with a picture of the dead man. He read through it, remembering Deery as he had lain on the floor in his neat, orderly home, and his wife, who had seemed so fastidiously untouched by the messiness of his death. Bannion put down his paper and lit a cigarette. Deery’s travel books, tracked with marginal notes, was an odd thing. Why the devil did people read travel books? To learn something, to kill time, to escape into a world of arm-chair adventuring. All of those reasons perhaps. Possibly Deery was simply bored, and used the books as a crutch to help him through the long evenings. Bannion smiled slightly and glanced at the bookcase beside his chair. There were his crutches then, comfortable, well-worn ones, with pages as familiar to him as the lines of his hands. They were travel books of a sort; they were volumes of philosophy, and the world of ideas could be travelled and explored as well as foreign countries, and strange jungles. Deery read about the bullfighting in Spain, while he read the spiritual explosions of St. John Of The Cross, who was a Spaniard but no bullfighter. What was the difference? Why did one man read one thing, the next man another? Well, there didn’t have to be a difference of course. Bannion read philosophy because it was a relief from the dry and matter-of-fact routine of his own work. I’m not trying to escape from anything, he thought. Still you couldn’t be sure; the need for escape might be unconscious. But he didn’t think it was that. He was frowning now, asking himself some of the questions he would have liked to ask Deery. I read philosophy, he thought, because I’m too weak to stand up against the misery and meaningless heartbreak I run into every day on the job. I’m no scholar. I wouldn’t touch Nietzsche or Schopenhauer with a ten-foot pole. That’s a frank, cheerful prejudice, nothing more. I don’t want to listen to idols being smashed, I want to read something which puts sense into life.

“Are you going to read tonight?” Kate said, noticing that he was frowning at his books.

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe for half an hour at most.”

“Which one is it going to be?” she asked. “Croce or — what’s the German’s name?”

“Kant, I guess,” Bannion said. Deery, he thought, might have been better off with these books than with descriptions of the fertility charms in Pompeii. These were the men he, himself, had gone to for peace of mind. St. John Of The Cross, Kant, Spinoza, Santayana. The gentle philosophers, the ones who thought it was natural for man to be good, and that evil was the aberrant course, abnormal, accidental, out of line with man’s true needs and nature.

“That’s the one, Kant,” Kate said. “Isn’t it nice how I ramble on whether you’re listening or not? It must be a cozy little background noise for your own thoughts.”

“What? Oh, sure.” He glanced at her, smiling. “You’re getting good. You’re getting the names down fine. Kant, Croce, whither will it end?”

Kate made a face at him, and said, “I look at their names when I do the dusting, Smarty Pants. Don’t be stuck-up.”

“Go on, you’re reading them the minute my back is turned,” Bannion said, picking up his paper. Deery’s wife, he thought, knew nothing of her husband’s interests. She hadn’t known he read travel books. That didn’t indicate a very warm or sympathetic relationship. When a man takes to travel books it is something that a wife, if only in the light of self-interest, should consider thoughtfully, he thought.

Kate put her magazine aside. “Dave, didn’t you get enough philosophy in school?”

“At the time it seemed like too much,” he said. “I was interested in football then, and speculative discussion left me pretty cold. Probably—”

The phone rang, cutting off his sentence.

“Who could that be?” Kate said.

“I’ll get it.”

“Hurry. It’s going to wake Brigid.”

Bannion tip-toed past Brigid’s closed door and shut the dining room door before picking up the phone. “Hello,” he said.

“Mr. Bannion? Is this Mr. Bannion, the detective?” It was a woman’s voice, low, faintly anxious.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered you so late,” the woman said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“What is it?” Bannion said.

“My name is Lucy, Lucy Carroway. I was a friend of Tom Deery’s. That’s why I called you, Mr. Bannion.” There was the sound of a faint, noisy conversation behind her anxious voice. “I just read that he killed himself, and I saw your name in the story. I looked you up in the telephone book, and that’s how I got your number. I know it’s late, Mr. Bannion, but I felt that I just had to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Well, about Tom,” the woman said. “I’ve got to see you about him, about him killing himself.”

“Won’t it keep till tomorrow?”

There was a pause. “I suppose so,” the woman said.

Bannion damned his conscience. He didn’t want to go out, but he would, of course. “Okay, where can I talk to you?” he said.

“I’m at the Triangle Bar now. I work here. That’s at Twentieth and Arch”

“I know the place.” He glanced at his watch. It was one-twenty. “I’ll be there before two, Lucy.”

“Thanks, thanks a lot, Mr. Bannion.”

He replaced the phone in its cradle and returned to the living room. Kate looked up at him inquiringly. Bannion shrugged. “Mysterious female wants to talk to me about a job I had tonight,” he said. “Probably she’s got it mixed up with a couple of other people she knew in Detroit or Oshkosh, but I’ve got to see her.” He smiled and touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “Hell of a life, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I’m used to it,” Kate said, standing and smoothing down her skirt. “I’m getting to like it, as a matter of fact. The suspense is pretty heady. Will he come home for dinner? Will he be called out? Where’s my wandering boy tonight?” She put her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “I’m okay, Dave, don’t worry. I’ve got it good, I think.”

“I’ll hold that over your head someday,” he said.

“How late will you be?” That was as much as she ever asked him about his work.

“Not long, baby.”

“I’ll wait up for you.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“Sure, I’m tired.” She looked up at him and smiled. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Okay, I’ll see you in an hour or so then,” he said. “And don’t think I’m not flattered.”

“You should be,” she said.

He kissed her goodbye and went out to his car. He was still smiling slightly as he started back toward center-city...

The Triangle Bar was a small-time nightclub, choicely located between a burlesque house and a State Liquor Store. It was on Arch Street, a dreary skid row that stretched for about twenty blocks between the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers. Here there were shooting galleries, Army and Navy stores and dozens of warehouses, clip joints, and small, weary shops. It was a depressing street, patently, determinedly small-time, with a quality of winking, guilty, rib-nudging lust about it.

Bannion parked under the glare of the Triangle’s neon sign and went inside. The long, oval bar, which imprisoned a colored trio on a tiny bandstand, was crowded with sailors, soldiers, and sharply dressed young men, who were covertly eyeing the chorines from the next-door burlesque house, hard, hennaed, heavily made-up girls who slipped in for a drink and a sandwich between shows. They wore mappers over their shorts and bras, and sat together, talking shop and sipping their drinks. The young men wouldn’t score with them, Bannion knew. The girls were a tough and practical lot, dead-tired most of the time from their four shows a day, and they wanted no part of sailors, soldiers, and nervous young men. They sipped their drinks, minding their own business, but their lures, the mascaraed eyes, the shaved, chalk-white legs, the ladies-of-mid-night aura, all smacking of the illicit, kept the young men hanging around, kept them in a state of noisy, nervous excitement. The girls might go for a calm, sensible fruit-grower from New Jersey, perhaps, or a middle-aged truck driver, who’d treat them decently and not cause trouble, but they wouldn’t go for the nervous young men.

Bannion got the bartender’s eye. “I’m looking for a girl named Lucy who works here. Is she around?”

“What’s on your mind, friend?” The bartender was a large, middle-aged man with a narrow head and slightly protruding eyes.

“I just told you,” Bannion said. He smiled because he never liked to play it tough. “Police business. Is she around?”

“Oh! Oh, sure. She’s down at the end of the bar, this side, last stool.”

“Thanks.”

There was a girl on the last stool, a small, slender girl in a black satin dress, with dark hair cut in bangs above a round, pretty face, and eyes that looked very tired, but still cheerful. There was something appealing in her expression — some attractive blend of boredom and weariness, and the capacity for surprise. She smiled as Bannion approached her, and most of the tiredness left her face. “You must be Mr. Bannion,” she said.

“That’s right.”

“I’m sorry about disturbing you,” she said, sliding off the stool. “Let’s sit in a booth, okay? When the band starts playing you need megaphones here at the bar.”

“Fine.” Bannion followed her to the rear of the place and sat down facing her across a cigarette-burned, drink-ringed table. A waiter came over and Bannion ordered a scotch and soda. The girl shook her head. “Only when I’m working,” she said to Bannion.

“You’re a hostess here?”

“Well, that’s putting it pretty fancy,” Lucy Carroway said, and laughed. “I would take a cigarette, if you’ve got one.”

“Sure.” Bannion lit hers, lit his own, and dropped the match in the ashtray. “Okay. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, as I said, it’s about Tom.” She put a newspaper clipping which she’d been holding in her hand on the table. Bannion saw that it was the story on Deery’s suicide from the latest edition of the Express.

“Okay, what about him?” he said.

“The story’s wrong,” Lucy said, in a tone of uncertain, confused defiance. She looked straight into Bannion’s eyes. “He wasn’t worried about his health, like it says in the story.”

Bannion studied the girl. She struck him as oddly earnest and reliable. “Well, what was he worried about then?” he asked.

“He wasn’t worried about anything. He was never happier in his life.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last week, just five days ago.”

“I see.” Bannion drew on his cigarette, considering this news. It was rather surprising, in its implications, in the light of what he knew of Tom Deery, and, more particularly, of his wife, Mary Ellen Deery. “Supposing you tell me how you happened to know Tom?” he said.

She looked away from him then, and glanced at her hands. “Well, that’s kind of a long story, Mr. Bannion.”

“It could be a long night. Let’s have it.”

“All right,” she said, and sighed. “Well, it was a long time ago, back in nineteen forty-one, that I met him. He had a summer home in Atlantic City, and I was singing there in a club. I started out as a singer. I didn’t get into this racket until my agent finally told me I was heading strictly from nowhere as a singer. Well, that’s another story, I guess. Anyway, I met Tom when he came in one night for a drink and stayed for the show. One of my friends there knew him and introduced us. I liked him right away. He was a nice guy, gentle, if you know what I mean. And he was always worried because the world wasn’t good enough, and because people were such bastards. Lots of times his wife didn’t come over with him — she used to go off on her own, to Miami, places like that, he told me. Those times, when she wasn’t around, I’d go out to Tom’s place after the show. We’d go swimming early in the morning, and then lie around in the sun after breakfast.”

“It all sounds very pleasant,” Bannion said. He tried to sound non-committal, but there was a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

Lucy Carroway shook her head. “No, no, you’ve got it all wrong,” she said. She looked miserable and badgered. “I don’t blame you. I know what it sounds like. A guy tom-catting around while his wife’s away. But it wasn’t like that. Not with him, anyway. Just forget about me in this thing. Maybe that’s the way to make you see it. Check me off as a hustling babe. But he was different. He wasn’t happy about the way we had to do it. Oh, I was happy enough. I’d take him on any terms and feel lucky. But he was married and couldn’t forget it. He thought we were doing something terrible.”

“He loved his wife?” Bannion said.

“No, but he felt responsible for her. That was his trouble. That’s what made him such a sweet guy. He felt responsible for everybody, for me, for his wife, for all the crookedness in the world. He couldn’t just enjoy himself and let the world go to hell. Anyway, his wife wouldn’t give him a divorce. She did everything she could to hang onto him, things most decent women couldn’t make themselves do. She told him she was pregnant — before that she wouldn’t give him any kids. And it was a lie. She said she had a miscarriage, but that was a lie too. Trust her not to risk her figure having a baby. But she made Tom feel responsible for the whole thing — the whole damn bunch of lies.”

“This was all in nineteen forty-one?” Bannion said.

She nodded. “That was the start of it and the end of it. I knew I was on a one-way street. I wanted Tom, don’t think I didn’t, but I couldn’t have him without hurting him, and I didn’t want to do that. So I bowed out, and that was that.”

“And you’ve survived,” Bannion said, with a smile. “Now, let’s get to the point. What makes you think this story about his health isn’t on the level?”

Lucy met his eyes. “I talked to him last week, had dinner with him, as a matter of fact. It was the first time I’d seen him since Atlantic City. We just bumped into each other on Market Street about five in the evening. His wife had gone to Harrisburg to visit her sister, he said, and he asked me to have a drink with him. It drifted into dinner. He was in a wonderful mood, happy and gay. I’d never seen him that way before. He told me he’d never felt better in his life.”

“Was he referring specifically to his health when he said that?”

“Well, I’m not sure,” Lucy said. “No, he couldn’t have been, because we didn’t talk about his health. There was no reason to. He looked fine, and he said he felt wonderful.”

“The phrase is a fairly general one,” Bannion said. “People use it to express a state of mind, satisfaction with work, things like that.”

“But that’s not the only reason I think something is — well, funny,” Lucy said. “Tom just wouldn’t kill himself. Not the way he was feeling.”

Bannion paused, and then shrugged. “Lucy, the fact is Tom did shoot himself. That’s definite.”

She shook her head slowly, but some of the conviction, the assurance had left her face. “It just doesn’t seem right.”

“Tell me this,” Bannion said. “Did he seem worried about anything else. Did he say anything about finances, about the wife, something like that.”

“No, he didn’t, and that’s funny, too,” she said, in a slightly surprised voice. “I told you how worried he always was, how he was always stewing about things. Like he was to blame for things being in a mess. He felt responsible for everything, it seemed. You’d think he felt guilty about not being able to take care of all the trouble in the world.” She watched Bannion, excited and eager. “But last week he was a different person. He was really happy. He felt good. Like he’d just done something to ease his conscience, make him stop feeling guilty. I could tell. That’s why I know he wouldn’t shoot himself.”

“Still, Lucy, he did.” He frowned slightly and lit another cigarette. “Perhaps this change you saw in him, this happiness, was a result of his coming to terms with the world, and seeing it for what it is, neither heaven nor hell in itself, but a place you live in and make the best of.”

“Well, if that’s what happened to him, why did he shoot himself?” Lucy said.

“I don’t know, Lucy,” Bannion said. “However, and I’m frankly-guessing now, he might never have got rid of that feeling of guilt and responsibility. Underneath, it worked away on him until he thought the only way to destroy it was by destroying himself. Maybe Tom never changed; maybe he was just as upset and insecure last week as he was when you met him the first time.”

“I don’t think you’re guessing right,” Lucy said, uncertainly. “I don’t know why, I can’t put it in words, but Tom was happy, really happy, last week. It wasn’t just an act. I know it wasn’t.”

Bannion shrugged. “And I know that he shot himself.”

“I’ve wasted your time, haven’t I?”

“No, of course not.”

She rubbed her forehead. “You’ve been really nice about it. I’m sorry about dragging you out this way.”

“Forget it. That’s what cops are for. If there’s anything strange about a suicide we want to know about it. Now, how about having a drink with me?”

She shrugged and smiled. “Okay, Mr. Bannion.”

Fifteen minutes later Bannion was on his way home. The curving river drive was silent and deserted. He drove at a steady fifty-five. An hour wasted on a wild-goose chase, he was thinking, but not with rancor. And then the habits of years caused him to amend the sentence. Probably wasted, he decided, and snapped on the radio.