The Listening Walls

4.

Rupert Kellogg’s office was on the second floor of a new concrete building that stood just on the edge of Montgomery Street’s ancient prestige. Here he ran a small accounting business with the aid of his secretary, Pat Burton, a spinster addicted to changing the color of her hair, and an apprentice, a young man named Borowitz who was working his way through San Francisco State College.

Rupert was forty, a tall, bland-faced, soft-talking man who’d been in the accounting business for nearly twenty years. He was moderately efficient, and moderately successful, in his work, but he didn’t enjoy it. He would have preferred to do something more interesting and amusing, to own a pet shop, for instance. He had a profound love for animals and an intuitive understanding of them. The hours he spent at Fleishhacker Zoo seemed to him to be full of the fundamental meanings of life, but he never told this to anyone, not even his wife Amy; and the only time he’d suggested the possibility of opening a pet shop there’d been such a rumpus among his in-laws that he’d given up the idea. At least he’d given up mentioning it. It was still in the back of his mind, hidden away like a deformed child from the disapproving gaze of his brother-in-law.

On Monday morning he arrived late at the office, a habit that was growing on him, especially since Amy had left. Miss Burton, pumpkin-haired for the beginning of the autumn season, was on the telephone looking distraught. This she did easily and with so little provocation that Rupert paid no attention. He found Miss Burton’s anxiety states more tolerable if he stayed beyond their boundaries as much as possible.

“Hold on, operator. He’s just this minute coming in the door.” Miss Burton pressed the telephone dramatically to her chest. “Thank God you’ve come! A Mr. Johnson in Mexico City wants to talk to you.”

“I don’t know any Mr. Johnson in Mexico City.”

“He’s from the American Embassy. It must be terribly important. You don’t suppose something awful has...”

“Isn’t this the wrong time to suppose, Miss Burton? I’ll take the call in my office.” He closed the door behind him and picked up the phone. “Rupert Kellogg speaking.”

“One moment, please, Mr. Kellogg. All right, go ahead. Here’s your party, Mr. Johnson.”

“Mr. Kellogg? This is the American Embassy in Mexico City, Johnson speaking. I have bad news to report so I might as well give it to you now and straight.”

“My wife...”

“Your wife’s going to be all right. It’s her companion, Mrs. Wyatt. She’s dead. To be quite blunt about it, she went on a drinking spree and killed herself.”

Rupert was silent.

“Mr. Kellogg, are you still there? Operator, I’ve been cut off. Operator! Telefonista! For the love of the Lord, couldn’t I make just one phone call without interruption? Telefonista!”

“You haven’t been cut off,” Rupert said. “I was — this is a — shock. I–I have known Mrs. Wyatt for many years. How did it happen?”

Johnson told him what details he knew, in a sharp, disapproving voice, as if he considered Wilma’s death a breach of international etiquette.

“And my wife?”

“She’s suffering from shock, naturally. They’ve taken her to the American-British-Corday hospital. Do you want that address?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Mariano Escobedo, 628. The telephone number is 11-49-00.”

“Will she be able to talk to me if I call?”

“Oh no. She’s under sedation. She has a head injury incurred when she fainted, nothing serious as far as I know.”

“How long will she be in the hospital?”

“It’s impossible to tell,” Johnson said. “Do you have any friends here who could look after her?”

“No. I’d better come down myself.”

“That’s a good idea. Shall I call the Windsor Hotel where she was staying and ask them to hold the suite for you?”

“Please,” Rupert said. “I’d also appreciate it if you left a message at the hospital for her: I’ll be down there tonight.”

“What if you can’t make it tonight?”

“I’ll make it. There’s a flight leaving in two hours. My wife took it last week.”

“Do you have a tourist card? They won’t let you on the plane without one.”

“I’ll get one.”

“Very well. I’ll leave the message for her. One more thing, Mr. Kellogg. The police were unable to find any next of kin to Mrs. Wyatt. Has she any relatives?”

“A sister in San Diego.”

“Name?”

“Ruth Sullivan.”

“Address?”

“I don’t know where she’s living, but her husband is a lieutenant commander attached to the Eleventh Naval District. It shouldn’t be hard to find out his home address. Earl Sullivan.”

“Thanks, Mr. Kellogg. And if there’s anything the Embassy can do for you while you’re down here, let me know. The number is 39-95-00.”

“Thank you. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

Miss Burton appeared in the doorway, slump-shouldered and spaniel-eyed, as befitted the gravity of the situation. “I couldn’t help overhearing, people talk so loud over long distance.”

“Do they?”

“That’s a terrible thing about Mrs. Wyatt, dying in a foreign country like that. All I can say is, God rest her soul.” It seemed enough. Miss Burton straightened her shoulders, put on her spectacles and said briskly, “I’ll call Western Air Lines right away.”

“Yes.”

“Are you feeling all right, Mr. Kellogg?”

“I — certainly. Certainly.”

“I’ve got some aspirin.”

“Take them yourself.”

Miss Burton knew better than to argue. She merely dropped two aspirins on his desk and went out to the reception room to phone the air lines. Rupert stared at the aspirins for a long time. Then he got up and went over to the water cooler and swallowed them both at once.

Miss Burton sailed in on a note of elation. “Success. You leave on flight 611. But goodness, the arguing I had to do. Some snip of a clerk kept saying that the people leaving on 611 were already checking in at the airport. And I said, listen, this is an emergency. I spelled it right out for him, e-m-e-r-g-e-n-c-y... Oh, I see you took the pills. Good. How are you fixed for money?”

“I’ll need some.”

“O.K., Borowitz can run over to the bank. Now, here’s your schedule. Depart International at 11:50. Lunch on plane. Stopover in L.A. for about an hour. Leave L.A. at 2:30. Dinner on plane. Arrive Mexico City at 10:10, Central Standard Time.”

Miss Burton might go to pieces over smaller crises, but when the larger ones came along she expanded to meet them. She arranged for money, tourist card, toothbrush, clean socks and pajamas, care of the Scottie, Mack, and message to Amy’s brother, Gill Brandon. When she finally got Rupert on the plane and he waved good-bye to her from the window, she was moist-eyed but relieved, like a mother sending her son off to school for the first time.

She drove Rupert’s car back to the city and parked it in the garage of his house on 41st Avenue. Then she let Mack out to run while she washed and dried the dishes Rupert had left in the sink. In all the years she’d worked for him, this was only the second time she’d been inside his house, and it gave her a curious feeling, like watching somebody sleeping.

After she finished the dishes she wandered through each of the rooms, not snooping really but merely taking mental notes like any good secretary interested in her boss: Mahogany and lace in the dining room, that’s too formal for him, must be her doing... I’ll bet he sits in the yellow chair, there are hair oil marks on the back and a good lamp beside it. He loves to read, he’d need a good lamp... A grand piano and an organ, fancy that. She must be musical, he can’t whistle a note... I’ll never get used to those colored johns... The maid’s room, I bet. Every bit as nicely furnished as the others, which goes to show how generous he is. Or maybe it’s her. Borowitz says she comes from a very moneyed family... The hall table looks like genuine rosewood, the kind you polish with your bare hands if you’re crazy that way and have lots of time. A post card. I wonder who from. Well, post cards aren’t private. If you’ve got something private to say, say it in a letter.

Miss Burton picked up the post card. It bore a colored photograph of the Old Faithful geyser on one side and a penciled message on the other.

Yellowstone yet, Miss Burton thought. And I can’t even afford Sequoia. Not that I want to. People are always saying how small you feel under the big trees, which isn’t my idea of fun at five foot one-half inch.

Having finished her unofficial tour of the house and mail, Miss Burton let the Scottie in at the back door and fed him several dog biscuits. Then she walked over to Fulton Street to catch a bus back to town.

She had no premonition of disaster. The day was sunny and her horoscope that morning had been exceptionally favorable. So had Rupert’s, which she always looked up even before her own: This is a wonderful day for you Leos and Librans.

Wonderful day, Miss Burton thought, and skipped along the sidewalk, quite forgetting that Mrs. Kellogg was in a hospital and Mrs. Wyatt was dead.

The plane was on schedule. Rupert called the A.B.C. Hospital from the airport and made arrangements to see his wife in spite of the lateness of the hour.

He arrived at the hospital shortly before midnight and was met at the main desk by a dark young man who identified himself as Dr. Escobar.

“She’s alseep,” Escobar said. “But I think, under the circumstances, it would do her good to see you. She has called for you several times.”

“How is she?”

“That’s difficult to say. She’s been crying a great deal, whenever she wakes up, in fact.”

“Is she in pain?”

“Her head may hurt a bit, but I think the crying is explained more by emotional reasons than physical ones. It is not merely the death of her friend that has disturbed her, though that certainly is bad enough in itself. There were additional circumstances, the fact that the two women were alone in a strange city without friends, that they’d been drinking a good deal...”

“Drinking? Amy has never taken more than a cocktail before dinner.”

Escobar looked a little embarrassed. “There is considerable evidence that both your wife and Mrs. Wyatt had been drinking tequila with an American barfly named O’Donnell. The women had a loud argument.”

“They were very good friends,” Rupert said stiffly. “Ever since childhood.”

“Very good friends sometimes argue together, sometimes drink together. What I am trying to tell you is that Mrs. Kellogg feels extremely guilty, guilty about the drinking, guilty about the argument, guilty, most of all, because she was unable to prevent her friend’s suicide.”

“Did she try?”

“Anyone would try, naturally.”

“Has she told you what...”

“She’s told me very little. She has very little to tell. Tequila is a formidable concoction if one is not used to it.” Escobar turned to the elevators. “Come along, we’ll see her now. We’ve moved her from Emergency to a private room on the third floor.”

She was asleep with the night light on. Her left eye was black and swollen, and there was a bandage over her temple. Crumpled pieces of Kleenex littered the floor beside her bed.

“Amy.” Rupert bent over his sleeping wife and touched her shoulder. “Amy, dear, it’s me.”

She was hardly awake before she began to cry, holding her fists against her eyes.

“Amy, don’t. Stop that, please. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“No — no...”

“Yes, it is. I’m here to take care of you.”

“Wilma’s dead.” Her voice began to rise. “Wilma’s dead!”

Escobar stepped swiftly over to the side of the bed and grasped her hand. “Now, Mrs. Kellogg, no more hysterics. The other patients on the floor are sleeping.”

“Wilma’s dead.”

“I know,” Rupert said. “But you must think of yourself now.”

“Take me home, take me out of this terrible place.”

“I will, dearest. Just as soon as they let me.”

“Come now, Mrs. Kellogg,” Escobar said smoothly. “This isn’t such a terrible place. We’d like to keep you here for a few days of observation.”

“No, I won’t stay!”

“For a day or two...”

“No! Let me go! Rupert, get me out of here. Take me home!”

“I will,” Rupert said.

“All the way home? To my own home and Mack and everything?”

“All the way, I promise.”

It was a promise which, at the moment, he intended to keep.