The Mugger

18

There was only Molly Bell to call.

Once he’d done that he could leave the Jeannie Paige thing with a clear conscience. He had tried; he had honestly tried. And his efforts had led him into the jealously guarded realm of Homicide North, where he’d damn near wound up minus a shield and a uniform.

So now he would call her, and he would explain how useless he was, and he would apologize, and that would be the end of it.

Sitting in an armchair in his furnished room, Kling pulled the telephone toward him. He reached into his back pocket for his wallet, opened it, and then began leafing through the cards and scraps of paper, looking for the address and telephone number Bell had given him so long ago. He spread the cards on the end table. The collection of junk a man can…

He looked at the date on a raffle ticket. The drawing had been held three months ago. There was a girl’s name and telephone number on a match folder. He didn’t remember the girl at all. There was an entrance card to a discount house. There was the white card Claire had given him to explain Jeannie’s childish handwriting. He put the card on the table so that the reverse side showed, the side reading “Club Tempo, 1812 Klausner Street.”

And then he found the scrap of paper Peter Bell had handed to him, and he put that face up on the table alongside the other cards, and he reached for the phone receiver, studying the number at the same time.

And, suddenly, he remembered what he’d seen in the street at the first subway stop. He dropped the receiver.

He put all the cards and scraps of paper back into his wallet.

Then he put on his coat.

He was waiting for a murderer.

He had taken a train uptown, and he had got off at the first stop he’d visited earlier that week, and he was in the street now, standing alongside a police department sign and waiting for a murderer, the murderer of Jeannie Paige.

The night had turned cold, and there weren’t many people in the street. The men’s clothing store was closed, and the Chinese restaurant belched steam into the air from a vent on the side of the building. A few people straggled into the movie house.

He waited, and when the car pulled up, he put one hand on the police sign alongside him and waited for the door to open.

The man came out of the car and started walking toward the curb. He was not a bad-looking man. He had even white teeth and an enviable cleft in his chin. He was tall and muscularly built. There was only one bad feature on his face.

“Hello,” Kling said.

The man looked up, startled. His eyes fled to Kling’s face and then to the sign alongside Kling.

The sign read:

Peter Bell said, “Bert? Is that you, Bert?”

Kling stepped into the light. “It’s me, Peter,” he said.

Bell looked confused. “Hi,” he said. “What… what brings you down here?”

“You, Peter.”

“Well, good. Always glad to have a friend…” He stopped. “Listen, you want a cup of coffee or something? Take the chill off?”

“No, Peter,” Kling said.

“Well… uh… what is it?”

“I’m taking you with me, Peter. Up to the house.”

“The house? You mean the precinct?” Bell’s brows swooped down. “What for? What’s the matter with you, Bert?”

“For the murder of your sister-in-law, Jeannie Paige,” Kling said.

Bell stared at Kling and then smiled tremulously. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not kidding, Peter.”

“Well, you… you must be kidding! I never heard such a stupid—”

“You’re a murderer!” Kling said vehemently. “I ought to beat you black and blue and then—”

“Listen, hold it. Just hold—”

“Hold it!” Kling shouted. “You egotistical son of a bitch, did you think I was an absolute moron? Is that why you picked me to begin with? A rookie cop? A cop who wouldn’t know his knee from his elbow? Is that why you picked me to placate Molly? Bring a cop around, show the little woman you’re trying, and that would make everything all right, wouldn’t it? What was it you said, Peter? ‘That way, Molly’ll be happy. If I bring a cop around, she’ll be happy.’ Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes, but—”

“You read six newspapers a day! You stumbled on the item about your old pal Bert Kling being discharged from the hospital and resting up, so you figured he was the perfect chump. Bring him around, get Molly off your neck, and then you’d be free to—”

“Listen, Bert, you’ve got this all wrong. You’re—”

“I’ve got it all right, Peter! My coming around would have been the end of it, but something else came up, didn’t it? Jeannie told you she was pregnant. Jeannie told you she was carrying your child!”

“No, listen—”

“Don’t ‘No’ me, Peter! Isn’t that what happened? She said she had an appointment the night I talked to her. Was the appointment with you? Did she drop her bombshell then? Did she tell you and then give you time to mull it over for the next day, give you time to work out the way you were going to kill her?”

Bell was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I didn’t see her that Wednesday night. Her appointment wasn’t with me.”

“Who then?”

“A doctor.” Bell swallowed. “I saw her on Thursday. She met me here, at the hack stand, the way she always did. Bert, this isn’t what you think, believe me. I loved her, I loved her.”

“I’ll just bet you did! I’ll bet you adored her, Peter. I’ll bet you—”

“Why does marriage go stale?” Bell said plaintively. “Why does it have to go stale, Bert? Why couldn’t Molly have stayed the way she was? Young and fresh and pretty… like—”

“Like Jeannie? ‘She looks just the way Molly looked when she was that age.’ That’s what you told me, Peter. Remember?”

“Yes! She was Molly all over again, and I watched her growing up, and I… I fell in love with her. Is that so hard to understand? Is it so goddamn difficult to understand that a man could fall in love?”

“That’s not the hard part, Peter.”

“What then? What? What can you—”

“You don’t kill somebody you love,” Kling said.

“She was hysterical!” Bell said. “I met her here, and we drove, and she told me the doctor had said she was pregnant. She said she was going to tell Molly all about it! How could I let her do that?”

“So you killed her.”

“I… We parked on the River Highway. She walked ahead of me, to the top of the cliff. I… I had a monkey wrench with me. I… I carry one in the cab, in case of burglaries, in case of—”

“Peter, you didn’t have to—”

Bell wasn’t listening to Kling. Bell was reliving the night of September 14. “I… I hit her twice. She fell backward, rolling, rolling. Then the bushes stopped her, and she lay there like a broken doll. I… I went back to the cab. I was ready to drive away when I remembered the newspaper stories about Clifford the mugger. I… I carried a cheap pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment. I… I took them out and broke one lens in the cab, so that it would look like the glasses were broken in a struggle and then fell over the side of the cliff. I went back up the cliff again, and she still lay there, broken and bleeding, and I threw the glasses down, and then I rode on, and I left her there.”

“Was it you who sicked Homicide North on me, Peter?”

“Yes.” Bell’s voice was very low. “I… I didn’t know how much you knew. I couldn’t take any chances.”

“No.” Kling paused. “You took a chance the first night you met me, Peter.”

“What?”

“You wrote your address and phone number for me. And the handwriting is the same as the writing on a card Jeannie took to Club Tempo.”

“I knew the club from when I was a kid,” Bell said. “I figured… as a blind, a cover-up… to throw Molly off if she got wise. Bert, I…” He stopped. “You can’t prove anything with that handwriting. So what if I—”

“We’ve got all the proof we need, Peter.”

“You haven’t got a damn—”

“We’ve got your thumbprint on the sunglasses.”

Bell was silent again. And then, as if the words were torn bleeding and raw from him, he shouted, “I loved her!”

“And she loved you, and the poor damn kid had to keep her first love hidden like a thief. And like a thief, Peter, you stole her life.”

“Bert, look, she’s dead now. What difference does it make? Can’t we—”

“No.”

“Bert, how can I tell this to Molly? Do you know what this’ll do to her? Bert, how can I tell her? Bert, give me a break, please. How can I tell her?”

Bert Kling looked at Bell quite coldly. “You made your bed,” he said at last. “Come on.”