A Dog's Ransom (21 page)

His mother had somehow got hold of his left hand, though she was on the right side of the bed. “There was a car. They were shooting from the car. Shooting up the doorways. I should’ve got the license number but I only got the gun, I remember.”

“Thank goodness, Clary, the bullet didn’t hit you in the chest!” His mother was whispering out of courtesy to the other men in the room. “Ralph’s coming to see you around six-thirty.”

“Where is this hospital?”

“It’s at Amsterdam and a Hundred and fourteenth Street. It’s St Luke’s.”

Clarence was thinking of Marylyn. She was an apricot-colored haze. He could see her lips moving, and she was neither angry nor not angry, but was trying to explain something to him. His mother was putting the oranges on his table, as gently as if they were eggs, saying something about hospitals so seldom having anything fresh.

“You’ll come and stay with us, Clary . . . The officer who called us said you were very brave. I think the nurse is signaling for me to go. Don’t forget Ralph’s coming. Tell him I’ll be back to meet him here around seven.”

“Mom, can you do something for me?”

“Of course, darling.”

He had been thinking of the Reynoldses. Tell the Reynoldses where he was. But that would look as if he were asking for attention. His mother didn’t even know the Reynoldses. “Nothing.”

“No, tell me, Clary. Something about Marylyn? Does she know you’re here?”

“I was dreaming. I made a mistake.”

His mother looked puzzled, kissed his cheek and went away.

Whatever sedatives they had given him, they certainly lingered. Clarence was gradually aware of his father sitting by the bed, of his taut, clear voice, of his smile coming into focus like the emergence of the Cheshire Cat. “. . . as your mother just told me. Well, things could’ve been worse! . . . Stay with us for a couple of weeks, Clary old boy, and get a little VIP treatment . . .”

Clarence hoisted himself on his pillow, trying to awaken, and paid for it with pain in his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I can’t seem to wake up.” Why were his thoughts a jumble of Marylyn, Ed, Greta, and not at all of his parents?

“. . . think you’re going to sleep. Don’t try to fight it. See you soon, Clary. Bye-bye, son.”

Clarence slept, and awakened when it was dark, except for an unearthly blue light that glowed over the door into the hall. He would have liked to pee, but they wouldn’t let him walk and he was shy about asking for a urinal.
I am a failure
, Clarence thought.
I’ve failed with Marylyn, and failed as a cop, and what can Reynolds think of me? I failed to save their dog, or even all the money they paid for the dog. And Marylyn hates me because of what I brought on her, I have made the mistake of killing a man. Try and get over that one! So I ought to kill myself
. Clarence’s body tensed with purpose, and he did not mind the pain. He bared his teeth. To kill himself seemed a decent and logical way out. Thus he could stop making mistakes and being a hardship, even a detested enemy, to so many people.

The nurse scurried in like a fast-moving ghost and pressed both hands on his ribs. “Sh-h! lie down! You’re making a lot of noise!”

The men in the room were mumbling, annoyed also. A needle went into his left arm. God, were they merciless! And what on earth were they giving him?

He had a dream: he was not quite himself and not quite a different person either. He had killed two people, and he disposed of the second corpse, like the first, by stuffing it into a large rubbish bin on a deserted street corner. The second victim was Manzoni (the first was unidentified in his dream). Then Clarence was in a shop or store of some kind, mumbling to himself, and he became aware that several people were glancing at him, thinking that he was an eccentric character, someone to be avoided, and Clarence realized what he had done, killed two people and disposed of their bodies in such a way that they were bound to be discovered fairly soon. “If a tough detective tries to beat the truth out of me,” he thought, “I’ll certainly crack and tell everything.” Then he suffered guilt, shame, a sense of being cut off from other people, because he had done something that no one else had done or could do. He felt damned, unique and horrible, and he awakened with a dismalness of spirit such as he had never known.

It was dusky in the ward, and only one small lamp glowed where a man was reading in his bed.

The dream and the drugs Clarence tried to shake off by shaking his head. It was not a dream, however. He
had
killed someone. And the way he felt now would last. He would be isolated, living in terror of being found out. Clarence’s depression was so shocking to him, he remained a long while propped on his elbow, his lips parted in astonishment. He felt about to scream, yet he didn’t.

21

C
larence was to be in the hospital two more days, until Friday evening. MacGregor telephoned on Wednesday, and Clarence spoke with him on the hall telephone. “We’ve been in touch with the hospital,” MacGregor said. “I’m glad things are going all right.” And that was all. Brief, but Clarence was surprised and grateful that MacGregor had troubled.

Around five on Wednesday afternoon Clarence telephoned the Reynoldses’ apartment. Tonight Greta was supposed to have a date with Marylyn. Greta answered.

“Clarence Duhamell,” Clarence said on a pleasant note. “How are you? Did you go to the ballet last night?”

“Yes, we did and we enjoyed it very much. Thank you, Clarence.”

“I’m calling—because I’m in hospital just now. Just till Friday and I—”

“The hospital? What happened?”

“Just a flesh wound. A bullet.”

“How terrible! Who shot you?”

“Oh—people on a Hundred and fifth. It’s only a little wound in the leg.”

“What hospital? . . . Can you have visitors? . . . I will come to see you tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, Clarence.”

“Please don’t bother, Greta!”

But she was going to bother.

Clarence limped back to his bed feeling infinitely happier. Tomorrow Greta could tell him about her evening with Marylyn, perhaps tell him what Marylyn’s attitude was towards him. Clarence closed his eyes and let himself sink into a half-sleep. In the bed on his right a man was talking with the man beyond. They were old fellows.

“. . . night nurses, all that, when I was in Singapore. British hospital, of course.”

“Singapore?”

“. . .” A laugh. “Malaria . . . you catch out there. Jap prison camps were full of it . . . the worst, cerebral. Some people never shake it off . . .”

Greta came the next morning just before eleven, bearing a plastic bag of pale green grapes and a thick book in a new dust jacket. It was a George Orwell anthology of essays and journalism, and included
Homage to Catalonia
.

“Do you like Orwell?” asked Greta. “Maybe you have read all these.”

“I’ve read
Catalonia
. But I don’t own it. Thank you.—Is that chair all right?” Clarence was prepared to offer her one of his pillows because the chair looked so uncomfortable. He felt awkward. A ghost of the awful dream still lingered, and he felt as if people could see the dream in his face when they looked at him.

Greta said the chair was quite all right. She wanted to hear what had happened to him. He told her about grabbing the gun, stupidly he said, because he should have got the car’s license number also.

“You saw Marylyn last night?” Clarence asked.

“Oh yes!” Greta’s face beamed. “I hope she enjoyed it. We had two speakers and the last half was poetry. Anyone could read or recite anything.”

“Marylyn looked all right?” He hated it that the man on the right might be listening—eyes closed but that meant nothing. He’d listen for entertainment.

“Oh, I think so. She is living on West Eleventh Street, she said.”

A pang went through Clarence rather like another bullet. West 11th meant Dannie, the ballet dancer. It must mean Dannie. “She didn’t say,” Clarence went on, “who she was living with?”

Greta for a moment tried to think. “No. She didn’t.”

Greta perhaps suspected that Marylyn had moved in with a man friend. But how unconcerned Greta was, Clarence thought. And what else could he expect? And he hadn’t told Greta about Dannie. “She—Did she say anything about me?”

“Oh! I told her you were in the hospital. I told her it wasn’t serious, because you said that.”

Clarence knew Greta must know that Marylyn hadn’t even telephoned. He was vaguely embarrassed, or ashamed.

“It’s a bad time for you, isn’t it, Clarence?”

I wonder sometimes if there’s any hope about Marylyn, Clarence wanted to say.

“How long must you be in bandages?”

“Oh, these. I can probably take them off Friday. When I leave. My parents want me to stay with them for a few days. My place on East Nineteenth is a walk-up. Might be a bore with this leg.”

“But of course stay with your family. You need someone to cook your meals.”

The nurse came in then, the smiling Puerto Rican one, to tell Greta that she should leave in a few minutes.

“Marylyn didn’t give you her phone number?” Clarence asked.

“No, but she said she would call me again.”

Clarence was abashed by Greta’s smile of understanding. He felt Greta knew he had lost with Marylyn, and that Greta was thinking—as all older people would—that he would get over it.

“You know, Clarence, if you would like to stay a few days with us, you are very welcome. We have an extra room. I already mentioned it to Ed.”

Clarence could not quite believe it. “That’s kind of you. But my parents—”

“They’re in Long Island. At our place you could see Marylyn more easily.”

That was true. “I wouldn’t want to be trouble to you. I’d rather be a help.”

“Nonsense! I am not so busy.” She was standing up, smiling so that the corners of her eyes as well as her mouth seemed to turn up. “Maybe Ed can telephone you. Cheer you up. We can call you here?”

“Yes, there’s a phone in the hall.—Thank you for coming to see me, Greta. And for the book and the grapes.” Clarence was sitting up and would have accompanied Greta to the door, except that he felt asinine in his nightshirt.

She was gone. The walls were pale-blue blanks again, the room empty of her warmth.

Clarence’s parents, who arrived at 6:30 that evening, were astounded that he was thinking of staying with a family he hardly knew.

“Not a family, Mother, just a man and wife.”

Who were the Reynoldses? They hadn’t heard of them until the detective who called at their house mentioned them.

Clarence explained how he had met the Reynoldses last month. “I didn’t mean I’d go straight to them.” But of course he did want to go straight to them. Astoria held no attractions. “Edward Reynolds works at Cross and Dickinson. He’s a senior editor. They’re very nice people, Mother.”

“You’ll stay with us first,” said his mother. “You’ll want to be feeling stronger before you visit people you don’t know so well.”

“We’ll come the same time tomorrow and pick you up in the car, Clary old boy,” said Ralph.

There was no way out. “I ought to get something from my apartment. Check the mail. Bills, maybe.”

“Have you got the keys, Clary?” asked his mother. “Shall we go by tomorrow night? But you shouldn’t climb those stairs . . . I’ll bring you some clothes from home meanwhile. You’ve lots of clothes at home and you like those old clothes.”

Clarence reached for his keyring in the drawer of the bed table. On the ring were Marylyn’s two keys, no longer of any use. “My blue jeans, maybe a shirt or two. Shirts’re in the middle drawer. Not the French cuff shirts, the ordinary ones.”

“I know,” said his mother, pleased.

“Marylyn been to see you?” asked his father, “I was hoping we might run into her.”

Clarence realized that his mother looked younger than Greta, looked very pretty with the fur collar of her black coat still close about her neck and her sturdy face smiling and full of health. But Greta was to him more attractive, even though feature by feature Greta was really uglier. He realized he was a little in love with Greta.

His father was talking about how lucky Clarence had been. “. . . twenty-one policemen killed so far this year in New York alone . . .”

The nurse came in. It was time for his parents to go.

Clarence picked up a book, and felt for a few minutes content. Then he thought of Dannie, of Marylyn on West 11th Street—Marylyn probably cooking his meals, arranging her clothes and her typewriter in his apartment (which Clarence for no real reason imagined rather swank), and he grew tense, and he blinked his eyes. It couldn’t last, couldn’t be anything serious, Marylyn and Dannie. Dannie knew Marylyn was his girl. And Dannie himself didn’t look serious about anything. Clarence had seen him twice. Marylyn could be cool, unfeminine almost, just like another fellow or someone sexless, if she wasn’t interested in a man. Clarence had seen it. And what was so marvelous about Dannie? He was twenty-six and not yet a roaring success. His parents were helping him with his rent, he remembered Marylyn saying. Maybe he even had a roommate, another fellow there. Clarence hoped so.

As Clarence was staring without interest at his dinner tray, a nurse came in and told him there was a telephone call for him. Marylyn, Clarence thought. He got out of bed as quickly as he could, preparing the most casual of remarks about his injuries. And he could say he hoped life was quieter for her on West 11th Street.

“Hello. Clarence?”

Clarence recognized Ed’s voice. “Yes. Hello, Ed. How are you?”

“That’s what I’m calling to ask you. Greta thought you looked pretty well, considering.”

“Oh, I’m fine. Out tomorrow. My parents are coming to pick me up.”

“Greta said you might be able to visit us for a few days. I hope you can. How long are you going to be
hors de combat
?”

“Three more weeks, they say. I can get around now. It’s just that I can’t work for three more weeks.”

Clarence returned to his bed, to the boring tray. He had hoped Ed would mention Marylyn, say something about having seen her Wednesday evening. How absurd it was to grasp like this, Clarence thought, for a word, an impression Ed might have had, assuming Ed had seen Marylyn at all, and possibly he hadn’t. Clarence knew he was being unrealistic, hanging on to hopes that were maybe doomed. Marylyn hadn’t even telephoned.