A Dog's Ransom (19 page)

Ed had nothing more to say, Clarence supposed. Clarence had had a great deal to say this morning, an hour ago, but where was it all now? “Thank you for talking with me,” Clarence said.

Clarence suddenly seemed to Ed young and tortured and honest. Honest to a fault, perhaps. In a curious way that defied all the principles of civilization and rectitude, Clarence had come to speak with him in hope of a word of reassurance, even of praise or gratitude for what he had done—essentially avenged the killing of Lisa. Suddenly to Ed, Clarence was a young man who had lost his temper against an evil that no one else was doing anything about. The aura of the sinister left Clarence as if blown away by a wind. Ed said, “You don’t have to thank me for anything.—Would you like to bring Marylyn to the house some evening? For a drink or coffee? Maybe it would help. That’s up to you.”

“Yes, I would like to. Thanks.” It would help, if Marylyn would agree to come. Clarence’s brain whirled, and he shook his head. He had not finished his beer and certainly wasn’t tipsy. It was because he had entered a different world, he felt, a world in which a person like Ed Reynolds shared a dangerous and intimate part of his own world.

“Are you going to tell Marylyn that you talked to me?” Ed asked.

“Yes. I think I would like to. You don’t mind?”

Baffled for a second, Ed said, “No, no,” casually. But what would Marylyn think of him for not reporting it? Or did such things matter any more? Especially to someone anti-fuzz, or revolutionary, as he gathered Marylyn was? “Want to ask her this evening? I think we have people coming at eight, but six is fine.”

Clarence was afraid tonight would be too short a notice for Marylyn in the mood she was in. “Could I ask her for tomorrow?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Tomorrow at six, six-thirty?” Ed gave Clarence the address.

“I’ll speak to her as soon as I can and confirm it.” Clarence pulled out a five-dollar bill and insisted on paying.

On the street, where the rain came down harder now, Clarence had an impulse to accompany Ed back to his apartment building, but felt he would appear to be clinging if he did.

Ed extended his hand. “Cheer up. See you tomorrow, maybe.”

Clarence walked home, heedless of the rain. It seemed less than a minute since he had left Ed when he arrived at his doorway. He had hardly thought of anything during his walk except of the excellence of Ed Reynolds, the rarity of a man like him in New York, of Ed’s kindness, and of how lucky he was to have made the acquaintance, possibly the friendship, of two persons like Ed and Greta. He dialed Marylyn’s number.

She answered.

“Darling, can you come for a drink at the Reynoldses’ tomorrow around six? He’s asked us.”

“Us?”

“Well, I’ve told him about you. It’s very close to you, on East Ninth. I’ll pick you up just before six, all right?”

“It’s a party?”

“I don’t think so. Just us for a drink. You’ll like them both. Just for a few minutes, if you’ve got work.”

“Can I wear anything?”

“Oh, sure! They’re not stuffy!”

19

C
larence went to Marylyn’s apartment at 6 p.m. She greeted him casually. She was still putting on make-up, a long process when she bothered with it, because she experimented, and never looked the same twice.

She was wearing bell-bottom black pants, flat yellow shoes, a yellow jersey blouse, and a long necklace that bore a huge oval pendant of pink—probably something that she had picked up at the thrift shop on Macdougal. Some of the furs in this shop looked actively verminous to Clarence. So far, Marylyn had not bought any of the so-called mink coats or jackets which had patches missing in them. All in all, Marylyn looked pretty tonight, not as far out as Clarence had thought she might, and anyway, would the Reynoldses mind? No.

“Marylyn, I have to tell you before we go. I told Ed Reynolds about the Pole.”

She turned from the mirror. “Really?” Her eyes looked especially startled, because of their black outline. “Was that wise?”

“He understands. He’s a wonderful fellow. That’s why I want you to meet them. My God, you don’t think
he
liked the bastard, do you? He said something like. ‘Well, I didn’t send any flowers to his funeral.’ He’s not going to tell even his wife, he said. But I wanted you to know before we went there.” It was of the greatest importance to Clarence, but he didn’t want to hammer the point. Was Marylyn casual and cool about it or not? Should he be calm and unworried also? Life was cheap in New York, in a sense, and Rowajinski had been obnoxious, and yet the police dug and came up with the murderers more times than not. It was the legwork by Homicide that counted, and they expended it on the most worthless corpses. Was he safe? Clarence put the question out of his mind for the moment.

“Are they saying anything at the pig-pen?”

“Not a thing. Otherwise I’d tell you,” Clarence said.

They walked to the Reynoldses’ apartment house.

“I’m going to take some business management courses at NYU starting in January,” Clarence said. “I’ll stay on in the force till then and resign after Christmas. Maybe before Christmas or it’ll look as if I’m trying to get the bonus.” He smiled, but she didn’t see it. “No tramping the beat in the cold this winter.”

“You’ve got enough dough?”

“Oh, sure.” Clarence had just enough. It had crossed his mind to give up his apartment and live with his parents. A long subway ride, and he would lose the independence his apartment gave him, but after all, Marylyn had spent only two nights there with him. She didn’t like to be away from her own place, from the telephone that brought her jobs. Clarence was hoping he could stay frequently with Marylyn on Macdougal.

The Reynoldses’ apartment house was a modern one some ten stories high with a grass terrace in front and a doorman. Greta opened the apartment door for them, and Clarence introduced Marylyn to her.

“Let me take your—cape,” said Greta with her faint accent. “Oh, how glamorous this is!”

“Thrift shop,” said Marylyn. She stooped to pet a small white poodle who was wriggling around her feet.

The cape was new to Clarence, dark blue and lined with the Vietcong flag, he now noticed.

Greta led Marylyn into the living-room and introduced her to Ed. “What may I offer you, Marylyn?” Greta said. “We have whisky, gin, rum, beer, Coca-Cola—and wine.”

Ed beckoned Clarence into the hall that led to the front door. “I told Greta. I hope you don’t mind. It’s the same as your telling me. I thought things would go better tonight if she knew.”

Clarence nodded, a little startled.

“It won’t go any further. Not from this house.”

“All right.” Clarence followed Ed back into the living-room. Greta was giving Marylyn what looked like a gin and tonic.

“I hear you are a freelance typist and you live on Macdougal. Very near here,” Greta said to Marylyn.

It was obvious to Clarence that Greta meant to be friendly.

“What’ll you have, Clarence?” Ed asked. “Not just a beer, I hope. Beer doesn’t give a lift.”

“A scotch, thanks.”

The puppy sat on the big sofa between Greta and Marylyn, and her black nose turned from one to the other as they spoke, as if she were following everything they said. This apartment was bigger, lighter, and more cheerful than the Riverside Drive place. Clarence, still standing up, noticed a long wooden table in a front corner of the room that held a buffet spread—platters of cold meats, a salad bowl, wine glasses. He wondered if it was for them.

Greta said in her high, clear voice, “We were hoping you and Marylyn could have a bite with us, Clarence. I know you haven’t much time, so I made a buffet.”

“Really it looks like a banquet!” Marylyn said.

“I’m not on duty tonight,” Clarence said, “My schedule changes tomorrow and tonight’s sort of a bonus.”

“Oh, marvelous!” said Greta. “When are you on duty now?”

“Noon to eight p.m. now. Saturdays and Sundays off. Almost normal hours,” Clarence replied.

Ed sat down on a hassock. “Park yourself somewhere, Clarence.”

“. . . after our last one,” Greta was saying to Marylyn. “We had to get another dog very soon, so now we have Juliette. Eddie thought it was best and he’s right.”

“I know about your other dog,” Marylyn said. “Clare told me.”

“Ah, well.” Greta’s small figure was settled comfortably in the arm of the big sofa. “Lisa, yes, she is no more.” She looked at Clarence and said, “Eddie told me the story, Clarence. About the Polish man. We can keep secrets. I will not tell anyone, even my best friend. I know you know, too, Marylyn.”

Marylyn nodded. “Yes.”

Clarence felt that Greta, as she looked at him now, was looking through him, not thinking of him but of something in her own past, more complex and important than the present situation.

Greta said, “I also have some secrets to keep. My family history isn’t pretty. Not a bedtime story either!” She laughed with sudden merriment and glanced at Ed.

“One would think she meant things she ought to hide,” Ed said. “I’m afraid Greta, being half-Jewish, was more on the receiving end than the dishing out.”

“But still,” said Greta, “some things are too horrible to speak about later, even much later.”

Clarence was silent. He did not know where they were headed. He was more interested in Marylyn’s reaction than in anything else. She looked merely polite and serious, and soon she and Greta were discussing a ring. Whose ring on whose finger? Each was showing the other a ring that she wore. Marylyn seemed at ease with Greta, and Clarence realized she had no reason not to be at ease, not to be detached from all this, because she could detach herself from him whenever she wished, starting tonight, starting even now.

“You know, Marylyn,” Ed said, “If I may call you Marylyn—Clarence told me you were upset by the story of the Pole. It’s very understandable. But if ever a man deserved it—”

“Oh, Eddie, don’t say that,” said Greta. “Don’t put it that way.”

“Well, why not?” Ed said. “I mean to say, I might’ve been capable of it myself, if I’d met him on the street. If like Clarence I’d known he was annoying and deliberately scaring a friend of mine—you, Marylyn—not to mention if he’d accused me of taking money to let him go.” Ed leaned forward with his forearms on his knees. “I think I might’ve lit into him for all I was worth, on the street or anywhere, if I’d run into him.”

“Eddie, you’ll make yourself upset,” Greta said.

“I’m not upset, darling! I’m just trying to say something. I’m saying what I might’ve done in anger. I can speak for myself, because I was—furious enough after Lisa, you know that. And why shouldn’t I have been? And neither the police nor Bellevue locking him up. I’m not saying it’s right to beat him up or kill him, but I’m saying what I might have done. I might’ve attacked him even with people watching me. And what I wanted to say to you, Marylyn,” Ed went on, trying to finish and not to make too much of an oration of it, “is that I understand it was a shock for you to hear about. About Clarence killing someone. Just that fact. It might as well have been me, however, and I don’t think I’m a murderous type.”

“Oh, murderous!” said Greta. “Don’t say that, Eddie!”

“I said I’m
not
!” Ed said, laughing.

Marylyn’s dark-rimmed eyes looked from Greta to Ed. “It did throw me when I heard it. I suppose I couldn’t believe it. Now I do. But when you think—” She hesitated.

“Think what?” Ed asked.

“Think what kind of a creep he was, I suppose, and the fact that no one was doing anything about it.”

Exactly, Ed thought. But if one wanted to be civilized, one ought to say that punishment by death was barbaric. And murder in anger was inexcusable. Ed didn’t care to mention that, and just now didn’t even care to think about it. For a while he indulged in feeling primitive. He even glanced at Clarence with a smile, rather a smile of brotherhood. Anyway, the reason for his speaking to Marylyn was to try to make her understand Clarence’s actions, if she didn’t already, and perhaps he had succeeded.

“There’s so much killing everywhere,” Marylyn said, “not just in New York. Wars everywhere and for what? Sometimes you want to say, ‘Stop all of it.’ I
do
say it. And then this Rowaninsk—whatever it is, his death was still a
death
, somehow—you see. This is what makes it difficult for me to judge, even though I thought he was the worst creep I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty in the Village, believe me.”

“I don’t think Clarence should be blamed,” Greta said.

I’m sorry and yet I’m not sorry
, Clarence thought, and set his teeth and looked at the floor.

Ed stood up. “At least Kenneth Rowajinski isn’t around to do the same things to other people—or other dogs.” Ed now wanted to end the subject, having started it, and he hoped he had not said too much.

“Darling, did you open the wine?” Greta asked Ed. “Is anyone hungry?”

They moved towards the table, took plates and napkins.

“I go to a lot of meetings,” Marylyn was saying to Greta. “Do you mean outdoor or indoor?”

“Are things any better?” Ed asked Clarence.

“I don’t know.”

“She’s an attractive girl,” Ed said.

They sat down, plates on laps or on the coffee-table. Greta and Marylyn were still talking about meetings, Greta mentioning names of people Clarence didn’t know—except for Lilly Brandstrum.

“Sometimes I play the piano at the end and we sing,” Greta said. “What do I play? Vietcong songs, hill-billy, anything. The Battle Hymn of the Republic. We have funny words . . .”

“They should pass the hat for Greta’s piano,” Ed said to Clarence. “It’d help pay the rent.”

“We pass the hat for more important
zings
,” said Greta, who had heard this.

“Gretchen, you take me so seriously!” Ed said.

Greta said, “Marylyn, you must come to one of our meetings some time. Ours is just a little further east. Wednesday nights. Ours is more a cultural outlet than a political outlet,” Greta said with amusement in her eyes, casting a glance at Ed who was listening. “We would all rather grab a guitar and sing than talk about politics, really, but it’s fun.”

“I don’t think she tells them that she has a husband who works for a corporation on Lexington,” Ed put in. “However it may soon be Long Island if the company moves.”

Marylyn nodded. “Moving. I know. This city’s getting impossible.”

“Not definite, but it’s in the air for us,” Ed said, “moving.”

Marylyn and Greta began to talk again.

“So,” Ed said, turning to Clarence, “what’s the latest?”

“Nothing,” Clarence replied, knowing Ed meant had he been questioned again. “I may quit the force before Christmas. I want to take some business management courses. At NYU.”

“Oh?”

“Marylyn doesn’t like cops.”

“I know. Business management for any particular kind of business?”

“The motivational side. The four-day week. As long as people have to work—I can’t explain it now, in a nutshell.” Clarence felt suddenly lost, miserable, weak. He wanted to rush to Marylyn now, seize her in his arms, proclaim that she was his, and spirit her off. Instead he sat like a dolt on the hassock, talking vaguely of business administration, when actually he was as fed up with the whole system as Marylyn, fed up with built-in depreciation, advertising, wage-slaves and their own pilfering dishonesty, as fed up with the whole putrid corpse of it—as Marylyn was. Was it that he didn’t have the guts to be a revolutionary?

Ed was thinking that Clarence Duhamell was even more vague and unformed than he had imagined. Or was he dazed, temporarily, by the events of the last few days? “Are you an only child?”

“Yes.”

Ed had thought so. Clarence was probably spoiled. But spoiled how? Overprotected? “You joined the police force just after school?”

“No.” Clarence told him about the job in the personnel department of the bank, and of his two years in the army before that, just after Cornell, when he had not been sent to Vietnam because the army had found use for him in the placing of draftees in army jobs. “I had it lucky,” Clarence said.

“What does your father do?”

“He’s an electrical engineer with a firm called Maxo-Prop. A turbine place. It’s a nice solid job.” Clarence was aware of a note of apology in his voice.

“Your parents are probably no older than Greta and me. Funny, I’m getting old. Forty-two.”

“Oh, my parents are a little older than that! I’m twenty-four.”

Greta passed the platters for second helpings. Liverwurst, sliced ham, roast beef. “No begging, Juliette! Don’t give her anything!” Then she picked up the little dog and hugged her as if she were a baby.

“Do you go to Marylyn’s meetings?” Ed asked Clarence.

“I have been. To two or three. Not in uniform, I assure you!” Clarence laughed. “I wouldn’t get out alive in uniform. And in civvies my hair’s not long enough—to please Marylyn. Personally I don’t care how long people’s hair is—” As long as it’s clean, Clarence started to say. “I wear mine as long as I can without getting remarks from my captains.”

Then came coffee. Brandy if anyone wanted it.

Marylyn and Greta were looking at a painting.