A Dog's Ransom (18 page)

“You expect to marry Miss Coomes?”

“I hope so,” Clarence replied, in as pleasant a manner as Morrissey had asked the question.

“The time you went to Rowajinski’s house on Morton Street—Why did you go there?”

“Because—Rowajinski said something to my friend, Miss Coomes. He was loitering in her street. He said something unpleasant—”

“What?”

“Something vulgar, I don’t know exactly.—Then he wrote a letter to her. But that was afterwards.”

“After what?”

“After I went to see him. I went to see him after Marylyn told me he’d followed her up the front steps of her house and said something nasty. I thought a good scare would stop him. I didn’t hurt him. I just wanted to scare him.”

Morrissey was waiting for him to continue. “And did it stop him?”

Clarence shifted on the foot of his bed. “Not exactly. The letter came after I saw him. The date’s on the letter, you can see it. It’s at Bellevue.” Clarence had dated the letter Friday, 30th Oct., in the manner of Edward Reynolds’s dating his letters from the Pole.

“Who sent it to Bellevue?”

“Marylyn Coomes showed it to me. I took it to Bellevue.” Clarence didn’t want to go into more detail, and didn’t think he had to.

“Another thing, Rowajinski accused you of taking five hundred dollars to let him go.”

Clarence explained about Rowajinski’s escaping while he went to ask for Edward Reynolds’s agreement to the second thousand of ransom money, and Clarence called it a mistake on his part. “I was searched—my bank account was looked into, I’m sure. I didn’t take that money.”

Morrissey nodded. “But it must’ve been annoying to you to be accused.”

Clarence shrugged. “By that nut? Rowajinski liked to annoy people. That’s all he did.” Clarence smiled and took a cigarette.

Morrissey asked Clarence about his career so far in the police force. It was a brief story: a year’s service, and nothing very interesting had happened to him in that time. Clarence thought Morrissey had very likely already looked into his record.

“You were in the neighborhood that night,” Morrissey said, “just about seven blocks away. And you had plenty of reason to dislike this guy.—You’re telling me the truth in all your answers here?”

“Yes,” Clare said.

Morrissey smiled. “Because I’m sure you’re going to be questioned some more and some of these guys, you know—a little tougher than I am—they’re going to give you a tougher time.”

Tougher than Morrissey, if Morrissey wanted to be tough? “I can’t help that,” Clarence said.

Morrissey nodded, still watching Clarence. “Of course I realize Rowajinski’s landlord didn’t like him and neither did the guy where he bought his groceries, but still.” Morrissey chuckled. “I doubt if they’d up and clobber him the way he was clobbered.” He lit a cigarette. “You’re getting along all right with your girlfriend?”

Clarence wondered if it was Morrissey who had been to see Marylyn, and it bothered Clarence that he didn’t know. “Yes,” Clarence said.

“She told me she didn’t like cops. She didn’t have to tell me that, I could see it. How does she feel about your being a cop?” Morrissey’s innocent, healthy grin was back.

“Oh, I’ve told her I wasn’t going to be a cop forever.”

“You have plans for quitting?”

“Not plans. Just that I don’t expect to stay in the force for twenty years. The way some do.”

“You look
down
on the force? You don’t like it?”

“Of course I don’t look down on it.” What else is there even trying to hold the fort? Clarence thought. However he knew what Morrissey was thinking, that he wasn’t a typical cop, not one of the brotherhood who stayed in for years and loved it. “I like it all right.”

Morrissey looked from Clarence to his wrist-watch. “About Edward Reynolds—He must’ve hated this guy, too.”

Clarence chose to say nothing. He was standing now, and so was Morrissey, about to leave.

“He wouldn’t’ve paid anybody to knock Rowajinski off, do you think?”

“Absolutely not,” Clarence said.

“You sound as if you’re sure.”

“No, that’s just my opinion.”

Morrissey nodded. “So—I thank you. You’ll be hearing from us.” Smiling, he put on his coat.

He was gone. Not a word about witnesses. Clarence felt easier.

Clarence telephoned Marylyn. She was in. He did not want to tell her that he had just seen Morrissey, even though it had been a fairly successful interview. He said:

“Can you have an early dinner with me tonight before I go on at eight?”

“No, Clare.”

“Why not?—You have to work?”

“I feel a little funny about it.”

She sounded so tense, he wondered if someone was with her, but he didn’t want to ask this. “Funny about me?”

“Yes, in a way.”

It was agony for Clarence not to be able to find, quickly, the right words. He couldn’t say over the telephone such fragile things as, “But you do care about me, don’t you?” Finally he said, “When can I see you? Give me a date, darling.”

“I don’t know. I wish you wouldn’t count on anything.”

“Oh, Marylyn—”

“What’s happening? Anything?”

“Nothing, darling.” In a way, he meant it. He wasn’t worried. “There’s not going to be any trouble.”

But she didn’t want to make any date with him, and she said she would have to work over the weekend.

Clarence went to Columbia and to New York University that afternoon to inquire about courses in business management. NYU was cheaper and closer to his apartment. He could also take two courses in the afternoons at NYU, while at Columbia the courses would be spread into morning and afternoon, sometimes on the same day. His problem was the police schedule. It was difficult to start any courses if he stayed on in the force, because every three weeks his schedule changed. Tonight and tomorrow were his last nights of the 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. duty, and on Monday, November 9, he changed to noon to 8 p.m. duty. If he quit the force after Christmas, he could start in the January semester. Clarence thought he should do this.

He wanted to try Marylyn again and didn’t dare. Her firmness was devastating to Clarence. It came to him forcefully that what he had done was repellent, shocking to other people. It was shocking to kill a man, pistolwhip him to death, even if the victim was a man who had hurt other people and who deserved worse than the law had given him. To the law, Rowajinski’s life was still a human life. Clarence himself was another human being, not a soldier, and not merely a cop in uniform. No one had ordered him to kill Rowajinski. Clarence’s thoughts were somewhat vague. He felt nervous and melancholic. He twice dropped his gun Friday and the gun made an awful clatter on the floor. The girl who lived in the apartment below him, a good-looking model who kept odd hours, said when they met in the hall:

“Are you practicing karate up there and flinging yourself to the floor?”

Clarence smiled, embarrassed. “I dropped something.”

“Not your gun, I hope.”

“I’m afraid you guessed it.”

“Hang on to that gun. New York is counting on you.”

O
N
S
ATURDAY MORNING
, Clarence awakened groggy after a series of unpleasant dreams. In one of the dreams he had been a cripple, more crippled than Rowajinski, scorned and avoided by other people. Clarence realized that he wanted to tell Edward Reynolds about Rowajinski. Mr. Reynolds would not despise him for it, Clarence thought. Mr. Reynolds would understand.

It was 10:20 a.m., and both the Reynoldses might be at home. When Clarence dialed their number, a recorded voice said that the number had been changed. Clarence took the new number down, dialed it, and Mr. Reynolds answered.

“Hello. This is Clarence Duhamell. You’ve moved?”

“Yes,” said Ed cheerily. “We’re on East Ninth.”

“I’d like very much to see you—today if possible. Have you any time? Fifteen minutes or so?”

“We’re going out to lunch. How is three o’clock?”

“That’s fine. Can I meet you out somewhere? If you’re on East Ninth, there’s the Fifth Avenue Hotel—”

Ed agreed.

Clarence was there first, and Ed arrived just after three, hatless, wearing a raincoat. He threw a cigarette out the door before he walked in. Ed smiled.

“Hello, Clarence.” Ed sat down and ordered an imported beer from the waiter who had come at once, and Clarence said he would have the same. “Beer puts on weight and scotch is too strong,” Ed said. “There ought to be more coffee-houses. So—what’s the trouble? Marylyn?”

“No. Well, a little, yes.” Clarence spoke softly. The nearest person, a single man at the bar, was ten feet away. This was a handsome bar with no juke-box, but by the same token it was quiet.

Silence until their beer arrived.

“It’s about Rowajinski,” Clarence said.

“Did you kill him?” asked Ed.

Clarence started, as if Ed had clutched his heart and dropped it. “You guessed that?”

“Not really. I was just—throwing out a guess.” Ed offered Clarence a cigarette, took one himself, and lit them both with his lighter. So Clarence had done it. He and Greta had speculated.
Oh, no
, Greta has said,
Clarence isn’t violent
. Ed couldn’t digest the fact at once. Now Clarence was suspected, he supposed. Even accused. Or maybe not accused, or he’d be in custody. Why had Clarence wanted to tell him? What did Clarence want? Ed said in a voice that he tried to make quite normal, and quite normally puzzled, “How’d you come to do it?”

“Well—that Tuesday night—I went down to see Marylyn on Macdougal. When I left around ten-thirty, I saw Rowajinski—turning the corner into Bleecker Street. He’d seen me and he started hurrying away. So I chased him. I thought he’d been hanging around again, snooping. He ducked into a doorway on Barrow Street and I followed him—into the doorway, I mean, and I hit him with my gun. I was carrying my gun. Anyway I lit into him. I hardly remember it. It’s not that I’m trying to excuse myself, I certainly am not.” Clarence glanced around, but no one was watching them. “I felt that I had to tell you this, Mr. Reynolds.”

Absently, Ed said, “You can call me Ed.” He felt dazed by what he’d just heard, as if it somehow weren’t real. “And now you’re suspected? Or what?”

“No. Well, yes, they’re questioning me. Marylyn told the police that I spent the whole night at her place. She told them that without my asking her to, before I even spoke to her about all this.” Clarence said in a quiet rush, “What bothers me is that I did it at all. I lost my head. I wanted to tell you, although I know it’s got nothing to do with you, Mr. Reynolds—Ed.”

And what do you want me to do, Ed wondered. “Marylyn knew right away that you did it?”

“I suppose she suspected, yes.—She hated the guy too. Not that that’s the point. The police weren’t really doing anything about him, you see. That sounds absurd because—” Clarence was careful to keep his voice low. “It’s not for me to kill a person just because I don’t like him. But I hated him and I lost my head.” He looked into Ed’s calm dark eyes, looked away again because he didn’t know how Ed was judging him. Clarence forced his heels down on to the floor. His legs were trembling.

Clarence would finally confess to the police also, Ed thought. In a few days probably. Maybe a few hours. Ed wanted to ask if Clarence intended to confess. “Did anyone see you in the Village? Notice you on Barrow Street?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You went back to Marylyn’s afterwards?”

“No, to my place. East Nineteenth.”

Silence.

“What’s Marylyn’s attitude? She intends to protect you?”

“So it seems.” Clarence smiled and took the first sip of his beer. “She so hates the police—being questioned by them. This is one way to get them off her—to say I spent the night with her and she doesn’t know anything about it. Of course, she may want to get rid of me, too.”

“Oh? You really think so?”

“I don’t know—at this point. She doesn’t want to see me just now.”

So this was a confession simply, Ed thought. Clarence wanted reassurance from someone who had hated Rowajinski also. “Is there any clue against you?”

“Just—circumstances. No one mentioned any real clue. I’ve been questioned.”

“And how seriously—questioned?”

“It might get more serious. So far they seem to believe me—and Marylyn. I don’t feel like confessing. I really don’t.”

Clarence’s blue eyes looked steadily at Ed. “Well, I didn’t send any flowers to his funeral. I appreciate your telling me, Clarence.” Ed smiled, wryly, at his own words which seemed absurd, even mad. “A detective came to see me this week. Morrissey, I think his name was.”

“Yes. He told me. At your apartment or your office?”

“The apartment. He asked if I had any idea who did it. I said no—quite honestly. He asked me about you and the five hundred dollars. I said I hardly knew you, and that you’d tried to help us when Lisa was stolen.”

“And that was all?”

“Yes. He didn’t make any remarks against you.”

But Homicide never talked, Clarence knew, only asked questions. Clarence drank more beer. His throat felt half-closed. “I especially went to see Marylyn to tell her—about this. I wasn’t trying to keep it from her.”

Ed was thinking that Marylyn was probably on the point of breaking with Clarence, despite her protecting him. And Ed imagined also that Marylyn, actively or passively, had contributed to the murder. “Why don’t the police
do
something?” Marylyn would have asked. Rowajinski had been annoying Marylyn at her apartment. She must have felt that Clarence had brought Rowajinski down on her himself, which, of course, he had. “You can trust me not to tell anyone. I won’t tell Greta, if you prefer I don’t, though she can keep a secret.” But even as he spoke, Ed was aware of an aversion to Clarence, a positively visceral dislike of him. He had killed someone. He looked a pleasant young man, his clothes and his nails were clean, yet he had passed, somehow, that unspeakable border. Ed’s thoughts were not clear to himself, because what had come to him was a feeling: Clarence was odd. Or
maybe
he was odd. He just didn’t
look
odd. Ed’s clearest thought was that he ought not to trust Clarence too far, and that he ought to keep a safe distance from him. But was he right in this? Was his attitude intelligent, really? Did you know the Pole was dead when you left him, Ed wanted to ask. But he felt it was a detail.