Wall of Eyes

Chapter 15

Johnny Heath, at thirty, should still have been at college. It was the life he liked, the life that suited him: people to talk to and drink with, girls who didn’t expect him to propose after two dates, careless comfortable clothes, men to look down on (those who got A’s) and to sympathize with (those who shared his own C’s). No woman to boss him, except by post and long-distance telephone. Fun and games, horseplay and rugby.

He had even thought, once or twice, of going back to take a post-grad course. But it wouldn’t be the same, and besides they wouldn’t let him into grad work since he had required five years to finish a three-year course.

But still. Nice to think about. Nice to have everything planned for you again, to have a goal post set up. All you had to do then was get there, any way at all, gain yards inch by inch or make a spectacular touchdown. And after the goal, what? Another goal post further away and hazy, with blurred lettering: Success. Make something of yourself.

Get a job. Be at the office at nine. Sell bonds. Sell five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of bonds and then look up and see if the goal post is any nearer, or if you’ve reached it. It isn’t and you haven’t.

Somebody’s moved the damn thing further back, the lettering is no clearer. Or maybe your eyes aren’t so good, you’re older, your uniform’s wearing out, somebody’s got a grip on your ankle and your face is on the ground and the umpire went home to lunch. Get up. Another day, another nine o’clock, another bond.

He snapped the radio off and yawned.

“You’re late,” Philip said.

“I hope so,” Johnny said. “I hope to God so.”

“I thought they gave you a week off.”

“They did,” Johnny said. “One week off. But I’m too noble to take it. I go down today, stricken though I am. Then I break down. Then the boss says, ‘Heath’s a fine fellow, let’s give him two weeks off.’ You begin to perceive?”

“Yes,” Philip said shortly, “and I don’t like it.”

“You’ll live.” Johnny waved his hand and went out into the hall.

Inspector Sands was standing at the front door with his coat over his arm.

“Good morning,” Johnny said. “Going or coming? I’m going.”

“I want to talk to you,” Sands said.

“Sure, but I’m late.”

“I’ll drive you down.”

“I always take my own car.”

“Always except this morning,” Sands said. “Get your coat and hat.”

Johnny whistled. “Tough. Very, very tough this fine fall day.” He went to get his coat.

“I am investigating the death of Geraldine Smith.”

“Geraldine...?” Johnny turned around, his eyes blank. Sands knew the blankness was real, that Johnny had forgotten the girl.

“Smith,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Died, apparently, in an accident while riding in your car. Remember?”

“Of course I remember,” Johnny said irritably. “That was settled years ago.”

“Your mistake. I’m just settling it now.”

“I don’t understand. Why rake that up?”

“Get your coat and hat.”

“I’m not going,” Johnny said. “If you want to talk, talk here.”

“As you like.” Sands put his coat on the hall table and followed Johnny down the hall into a small room furnished with sun, wickerwork and yellow chintz. Johnny filled one-half of the room nicely which, Sands thought, made the whole thing far cosier than was necessary.

Johnny dangled one leg over the arm of a wicker chair and smiled at Sands.

“Why be cute?” Sands said. “Or can’t you help it?”

The smile faded. “Why be tough for that matter?”

“I just wanted to make it clear that no matter how charming your smile or glistening your teeth or open your countenance, you leave me cold. Save yourself trouble and just answer questions. How long had you known Geraldine Smith before she died?”

“A month or so, maybe. I met her at the club and took her out a couple of times. She was their singer then.”

“Nice girl?”

“Average. Rumor had it that she raped easily, but I wouldn’t know about that. I didn’t try it. She always acted very prim. Anyway, she had a boy friend at the time.”

“Who?”

“She never told me and I didn’t give a damn. I wasn’t trying to get her away from him. She was just a girl.”

“What happened the night of the accident?”

“It’s a long time ago...”

“Go ahead.”

“Well, Kelsey and Philip and I had gone to a football game at the stadium. Alice stayed home with my mother. After the game we felt the way you feel, you know, sort of festive, as if we should be doing something interesting. We went downtown and had dinner and after dinner Kelsey wanted to go dancing somewhere and told me to get another girl. I rang up Geraldine from the restaurant and she said she’d come if we could have her at the club at nine-thirty. Then I went back to the table and told the others that I’d gotten a girl and we piled in the car and went to pick up Geraldine. That was about eight o’clock.”

“Dark?”

“Yes. Kelsey drove. She’d had a couple of drinks and Philip objected, but Kelsey always got her own way. So they waited in the car while I went in to get Geraldine. She was ready, waiting. I took her out and introduced her to the others and we got in the rumbleseat. We decided to go out to the Golden Slipper for a while. But we didn’t get there. That’s all I can tell you.”

“I hope not,” Sands said dryly. “How did the accident happen?”

“I was in the rumbleseat and can’t swear to it. But Kelsey said she asked Philip for a. cigarette and while Philip was lighting it the car skidded. Philip grabbed the wheel but we crashed anyway. That’s all I remember.”

“You were unconscious?”

“We all were.”

“Go on.”

“When I came to there was a motorcycle cop and an ambulance and a lot of other people around. They took the other three away in the ambulance. I wasn’t cut and didn’t seem to be broken anywhere so I stayed and told the cop all I could and then one of the people drove me home. Later on I went to the hospital and found out Geraldine had been killed. She’d been cut by flying glass.”

“Where did you come to?”

“Where? In the rumbleseat, naturally.”

“Not naturally.”

Johnny stared. “Why not? That’s where I’d been sitting.”

“The girl’s body was found some distance from the car. She’d been flung out by the impact. You were sitting beside her.”

“You mean, why wasn’t I flung out too?”

“No. I mean you were and came back and parked yourself in the rumbleseat again.”

“While I was unconscious?”

“No, while you were conscious.”

“What in hell would I do that for?” Johnny said violently.

“Because you wanted to be found as far from Geraldine’s body as possible, having just cut her throat.”

There was a silence. Sands reached in his coat pocket and brought out an envelope.

“See,” he said. “Here’s Geraldine when she was found. Here, take it.”

“No,” Johnny whispered. “No, I don’t want it!”

“Go on, look at it. It’s only a picture taken a long time ago of a girl who doesn’t look like that now.”

He took the picture out of the envelope and held it in front of Johnny’s eyes.

“See. This is Geraldine.”

Johnny raised his eyes slowly and looked at the picture.

“Well?” he said hoarsely. “That’s her. What about it?”

“Dead as a doornail, isn’t she? Yet the rest of you got off pretty lightly. It was a freak that your sister was blinded, she wasn’t badly hurt and Mr. James was merely cut. You were simply knocked out. Geraldine was killed.”

“Well, hasn’t that happened before in accidents?”

“Often,” Sands said. “But look again. Where is the glass? Where is all the glass that cut Geraldine’s throat?”

“I don’t know!”

He lunged out of his chair nearly knocking Sands across the room. “I can prove I was unconscious. I can prove I didn’t do anything to her. Wait here, I’ll prove it!”

He ran out, shouting, “Phil! Phil!”

A couple of minutes later he came back thrusting Philip ahead of him into the room.

“Tell him,” he shouted. “And you, you smart bastard, you listen.” He pushed Philip into a chair and towered over him. “Go on, tell him.”

Philip looked wanly up at him. “What am I to tell him? I don’t even know what you were talking about.”

“Tell me about the accident,” Sands said.

“Accident? What accident?” Philip said. “If you wouldn’t make so much noise, Johnny — I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

“He thinks I killed Geraldine,” Johnny cried. “He says I cut her throat, murdered her.” He swung back to face Sands. “Why in hell would I murder her? Have you thought of that?”

“Stevie Jordan thought of it,” Sands said quietly. “He was the boy friend whose name you didn’t know.”

“Jordan?”

“Geraldine moved out of his place. She expected to marry you and I gather you didn’t want her.”

“So I killed her! I didn’t just quit seeing her, I had to kill her!”

“You’re making this stuff up,” Philip said to Sands. “You know as well as I do that the girl wasn’t murdered.”

“She was murdered,” Sands said. “Jordan’s known for some time. Last night he told me — a couple of hours before he was shot in the stomach.”

Johnny opened his mouth wide as if he were going to shout, but his voice was merely an echo of itself. “Jordan’s dead?”

“Not quite. As good as dead for the time being, though. Somebody’s safe. Jordan wanted to tell me something, about Murillo. I was talking to him on the phone when he was shot. By a friend of his. A friend of yours, too, Mr. Heath, a woman.”

“What if it was done by a friend of Johnny’s?” Philip said anxiously. “Why, Johnny has millions of friends, He’s not responsible for what they...”

“Shut up,” Johnny said. He stared at Sands, blinking his eyes slowly. “What’s Jordan got to do with Geraldine dying? You think I asked one of my friends to shoot him? You think I can’t do my own shooting?”

“Johnny,” Philip cried. “Don’t talk...”

“Shut up,” Johnny said again, without looking at him.

“I won’t shut up! I... you get so irresponsible. Don’t say any more till you’ve cooled off.” He looked at Sands. “Johnny couldn’t have killed Geraldine. He was unconscious. I know, because. I came to first and got out of the car to help Kelsey. When I saw I couldn’t do anything for Kelsey I went around to the rumbleseat. Johnny was bent over, his head had cracked against the seat and he was unconscious. Then a motorcycle policeman came along...”

“You didn’t go over to help the girl?” Sands said.

“No. No, I’m sorry. I... I forgot she was with us. I’d never met her before and the shock... I just forgot her.”

“You think I can’t do my own shooting?” Johnny said. “You think I couldn’t shoot up this whole goddamn bastard town and get away with it?”

“That’s right,” Sands said, “you couldn’t. If I’m lucky you and your friend Murillo will hang together.”

“I don’t need my friends to help me!”

“You can’t be serious,” Philip cried, “either of you! You’re just talking! How could Johnny know a man like Murillo?”

“Ask Johnny,” Sands said. “How much did you fork out, Heath?”

Johnny smiled coldly. “Nothing. He did it free on account of we’re pals, Murillo and I. We were talking one day and he said, ‘Johnny, is there anyone you want murdered?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Geraldine Smith and my sister Kelsey and a guy called Jordan.’ Now how about getting out of here before I lose my temper?”

“You won’t lose your temper,” Sands said mildly. “You can’t afford to. Try to smile your way out of this one, charm boy.”

Johnny walked to the door. “I’m cool,” he said over his shoulder. “And now that I’m onto your methods I’m going to stay cool. I’m going for a walk. The hell with the office.”

When the door slammed, Philip kept staring at it as if he were trying to convince himself that it was a door. At last he turned his eyes to Sands, almost pleadingly.

“You don’t understand Johnny,” he said. “He never means what he says. He’s always boasting, talking big. He’s never grown up, he’s still a boy.”

“You think such boys are harmless?”

“Johnny’s harmless. Anybody knows that. He brags because his sisters and his mother have always tried to boss him. He doesn’t know Murillo. He never even heard of him until this morning.”

“Yes?”

“I’m sure of it. Johnny’s harmless. He gets his small pleasures from trying to outwit people. Like this morning. He intended to appear at the office as a sign of good-will so they’d give him an extra week off. That’s typical of him.”

He spoke gravely and pedantically, and like a schoolmaster finishing a lecture he inclined his head slightly and left the room.

A dull young man, Sands decided, with a faint air of apology about him as if he didn’t feel entitled to the air he breathed, the rarefied air of the Heath family. The type of man the Heath sisters would choose, to bully and to mother alternately.

Yet Sands could not dismiss the man from his mind with such a simple classification. Could there be irony in the naive blank smoothness of Philip’s manner? Irony, Sands mused, there are a dozen kinds of irony. I’m ah ironist myself: Socratic irony I suppose you’d call it — but when I say I know nothing it’s often true. Johnny is a romantic ironist, defying fate, fighting his own mediocrity with a loud laugh and big muscles and his family’s money. And Philip? If Philip was an ironist the division between the external falsity and the internal truth lay so deep in his nature that it could not be decried. Perhaps so deep that it lay in the center of his mind, so that when his right lobe said white and his left lobe said black he himself could not tell which was right and which was wrong, but only that both were ironic in relation to each other.

Then the truth would be in neither, Sands thought, the truth would be in the irony.

The sun was becoming stronger and warmed the back of his neck. It was pleasant to sit in this strange bright little room and consider the destinies of other people and not have one of your own. Alice and Philip would marry, and eventually Maurice and Letty, and Maurice, in the manner of men who marry too late, would show his affection by patting Letty’s rear. The pats would be too hard to be playful, yet not hard enough to be anything else. They would undress, partly, in the dark, and Letty would close her eyes and think things. What did women think of at such a time? It had never been told or written. Women never gave themselves away completely.