The Four Johns

Chapter 12

I’d better move to a motel or something, Mervyn thought wildly. Today. Right now. Before this maniac gives me what he gave Mary.

The thought that this might well be the last day of his life made no sense to him at all. It couldn’t be. Things like that didn’t happen except in books.

Then the memory of the curled-up thing that had been Mary Hazelwood, stuffed in the trunk of his convertible, leaped into his consciousness. It had happened. To Mary.

He had to do something. Run. Go to the police. Or hide from this nemesis who had murdered Mary and was trying to frighten him into paying for the crime.

Mervyn straightened up sharply. Trying to frighten him... Of course! “John” didn’t want to kill him! What would “John” gain by that? Confess, confess, the messages kept saying. That was it. Psychological warfare! Trying to break him down into turning himself in for something he hadn’t done, so “John” would go scot-free!

Mervyn groaned at his own imbecility. And at the same time a weight was lifted from his chest. He rose from the table grimly, looked around for a pencil, found one and went outside with no hesitation at all.

He had enlarged the bullet hole in digging the slug out; and he stuck the pencil in the hole and squinted toward where the pencil was pointing. Not the hedge; to the right of the hedge. From the empty lot. All right. Take it from there.

Looking over the lot in the light of day, he was even more perplexed. He had made for the gap in the hedge on the run, almost at once. His assailant could not have reached the street more than a few seconds before him. The man had not dodged into the barnlike garage; he could not have hidden on the garage roof; it was too high to reach without a ladder, and there was no ladder.

Again Mervyn considered the passages behind each of the buildings making up the complex. To the north the hedge forming one side of the passage was an impassable barrier. The south hedge showed a gap, but the passage beyond it came to a dead end at Perdue Street. Nor could the man have got through the opening where the hydrangea bush stood without leaving plain traces of snapped branches and broken blossoms — and there were none.

That left the fence separating the south six-plex from the next-door property. And here Mervyn found something he had missed the night before.

Directly under the fence lay a vegetable garden. The moist soil was undisturbed. Not a footprint to be seen.

No one had gone over the fence.

There must be an answer to this, Mervyn thought desperately. The facts say he didn’t go anywhere. Yet he vanished. How? Where?

That was when Mervyn, re-entering the court, almost bumped into the tall man in the gray suit.

The moment Mervyn laid eyes on the tall man he knew the man was a policeman. There was something about his sinewy length, the set of his jaw and the glint in his unwavering gray eyes in the weather-beaten Gary Cooperish face, that stamped him a lawman.

This is it, Mervyn thought. It’s caught up with me.

“Mr. Gray?” the tall man said. He had a slow, drawly sort of voice. “Mervyn Gray?”

Mervyn croaked, “Yes?” and thought, I probably look guilty already.

“I’m Lieutenant Hart of the Berkeley police.” He flipped open a wallet; Mervyn looked at it automatically. That’s who he was, all right. “I’ve been waiting for you. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Sure,” Mervyn said on the third try. “Let’s go to my apartment.”

It was incredible how empty his head was. According to the books he should be thinking furiously, laying out a campaign of evasions or half-truths, clicking away like a computer. Instead — nothing. A vacuum. Boy, could I write a detective story! Mervyn thought.

In his apartment Mervyn said, “Sit down, lieutenant,” and he drew back the living-room drapes to let the sun in — let there be light, O Lord! — and braced himself for the first question about Mary Hazelwood.

Gary Cooper said, “It’s about Mrs. Bridey Kelly’s fall down the steps, Mr. Gray.”

Mervyn sat down. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, yes.”

“I’m not going to beat around the bush,” the lieutenant said sternly. “Mrs. Kelly says that she was pushed. And she charges you, Mr. Gray, with having pushed her. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“She must be out of her head,” Mervyn said.

“Then you deny the charge?”

“Of course I deny it. Is this an official charge, lieutenant?”

“Well, not exactly. She’s made a complaint. Hasn’t signed anything yet. Of course, she is an old lady, and old ladies got funny notions sometimes. But old ladies do get pushed down stairs sometimes, too.”

“Why would I do a thing like that? I hardly know the old woman. I’m not a psycho.”

“Mrs. Kelly says you jumped out at her.”

“How could I?” asked Mervyn. “I wasn’t even here.”

“Oh? Where were you?”

“When she fell down those steps?”

“Yes.”

Mervyn considered hastily. “I don’t know. Probably in the university library.”

“Any way of proving this?”

“You mean fix the exact time? I’m afraid not.”

Lieutenant Hart rose and went to the door. Suddenly he turned, his tanned cheeks showing a slight burgundy stain. “Mr. Gray, I’ve got to ask you one more question. A pretty screwy one.”

“Ask away. It couldn’t be screwier than Mrs. Kelly’s accusation. What’s the question?”

“Do you make it a habit to walk around outside in your bare feet?”

“What?” said Mervyn.

“Mrs. Kelly says that when you attacked her you were barefooted.”

“Lieutenant Hart,” said Mervyn. “How long do you think I’d last at the university if the word got around that Mr. Gray of the English faculty traversed the streets of Berkeley sans shoes and socks?”

“That’s what I thought,” sighed the lieutenant. “I guess the old lady’s in her dotage, at that. You understand, Mr. Gray, when somebody lodges a complaint we have to follow it up. But I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Unless, of course,” the lieutenant said, looking at Mervyn, “you did push her?”

“Well, I didn’t!”

Lieutenant Hart departed. Mervyn stood in his doorway watching the tall figure lithely cross the court. When the incarnation of Gary Cooper was gone, Mervyn turned to stare at the bullet hole against which he had been leaning. Maybe he should have pointed it out? He gave a barking laugh. Let them find it themselves! They weren’t so much.

The phone rang in the apartment. Mervyn went back in and said dully, “Mervyn Gray here.”

“This is John Viviano. Why did you take my Chinatown photograph? Eh? Where is it, you — you pickpocket?”

Mervyn was sick of the whole business. “Keep your panties on, Viviano. I’ll send it back.”

“If it’s not here by tomorrow, I’ll go to the police!” Viviano spluttered. “What right have you to steal my property?”

“None. I’m sorry. Good-bye.” Mervyn hung up.

He felt oppressed, smothered; he had to get away. He ran out of the apartment.

He reached the street just as Harriet Brill drove up in her two-door.

“Mervyn, how sweet,” she cried. “Waiting just to see me.”

“I wasn’t, but I won’t look a gift horse under the tail,” Mervyn growled. “Harriet, why the hell did you tell me you and John Boce went to see Alexander Nevsky a week ago Friday night?”

Harriet’s eyes widened girlishly. “But, Mervyn, we did,”

“Oh, yeah? I have news for you, doll. The Eisenstein picture didn’t come to that theater till the following Monday.”

“It didn’t?” She went into the brownest of studies. Then she gave an embarrassed little laugh. “Of course. You’re perfectly right, Mervyn. It was Monday night that we went. Friday night was when John broke a date with me. His uncle took sick and he had to go to the city.”

“He used your car?”

“He wanted to, but I wouldn’t let him have it. I don’t like lending my car.”

Mervyn jumped into his Volkswagen and roared off down Perdue Street, leaving Harriet staring after him.

He drove without conscious destination. Up over the top of the campus, down Hearst Avenue, back around again. He turned into Milton Street and found himself approaching John Pilgrim’s cottage. Mervyn pulled over to the side and parked. When he had fought down his tension, he got out and walked up the cracked path.

Pilgrim, in ragged blue jeans, was tinkering with his Lambretta. At Mervyn’s step he looked up coolly. “Now what?”

“I want the truth,” Mervyn snarled. “Where were you a week ago Friday night?”

Pilgrim slowly rose. He had big muscles. “What the hell is it to you?”

“It’s a lot to me,” Mervyn said defensively.

“You’ve got a long nose, you know that? Better quit checking out all my moves. I might have been working Friday night, I might not have. Anyway, it’s none of your business. Any more questions?”

Mervyn threw up his hands and walked blindly back to his car.

Somehow, he must find a way to come to grips with his tormentor.

He drove up to Telegraph Avenue and parked and went into the Parnassus Coffee Shop. Here he consumed a pizza. After a while he paid his check and went back to his car. But now he hesitated. He had nowhere to go. The Parnassus was as good a place as any. He reached into the Volkswagen for a loose-leaf notebook and went back into the coffee shop.

He settled himself in a booth at the rear, ordered coffee and proceeded to organize the facts as he knew them.

Two hours later he was still writing. Staring at the sheer mass of his labors, he shook his head and started all over again. The thing he needed was an outline. Terse. Every relevant fact, or every fact that seemed relevant.

The afternoon passed.

He ordered a steak sandwich, more coffee, bent over his notes again.

Names, dates, events. They were beginning to blur and blend into a meaningless, colorless hodgepodge.

John Boce. John Thompson. John Viviano. John Pilgrim.

He was back where he had started. To the four Johns. Any one of whom could be the John.

Telegraph Avenue darkened. The street lights came on. Diners came and went. New waitresses appeared.

By 11:30 P.M. Mervyn had constructed his chart. Evaluating the four Johns against a set of arbitrary attributes: boldness, drive, vindictiveness, imagination, the rest. Pilgrim’s score 48, Boce’s 45, Viviano’s 44, Thompson’s 42. About as meaningful as the results of a Ouija-board session.

Then Susie Hazelwood came in, and they had their curiously tense conversation, and the waitress reminded them that it was midnight, the closing hour; and they got into Mervyn’s dark-blue Volkswagen, and on the way Mervyn showed his chart to Susie, and she mocked it.

“I see I’ll have to explain,” Mervyn said.

“I wish you would,” Susie answered. “I’ve been wondering whether my sister is alive or dead.”

That was when Mervyn heard, out of his own throat, in his own voice, the words: “She’s dead.”