The Glass Cell

  “What?”

  “Oh, you know what.”

  There was a terribly long silence. Finally, she reached for a cigarette from her bed table. “Nothing is resolved yet, is it?”

  He knew what she meant, but he said, “You mean about the Sullivan business.”

  “Yes. What else?”

  Us, he thought. There’s us, after all, just us. But she was waiting to see who killed Sullivan. Because it could be him.

  “Do you ever have hallucinations, Phil? From morphine?”

  “No,” Carter said. “Not even in prison when I was actually taking the stuff.” Then he remembered his daydreams of Hazel and Timmy, so real he had almost been able to reach out and touch them. Had those been hallucinations? If so, they had been mostly voluntary, and the only ones he had experienced.

  “Never dreams so you didn’t know what you were doing?” she said. “Walking around—doing things?”

  He knew what she meant. “No.”

  They fell into an unresolved silence, just as unresolved as the Sullivan case. Hazel could have asked him outright: Did you do it when you were fully conscious, then? Why didn’t she? Because she knew quite well he had? Would she be behaving any differently now, if she knew he had? Carter couldn’t see that she would be. In Hazel’s own particular way, she wouldn’t want to call any further attention to herself by announcing her suspicions and leaving him. Hazel put her cigarette out. They did not even say good night, and Hazel eventually fell asleep, Carter knew from her breathing. She would never let him make love to her until she knew, Carter thought. If he wanted Hazel, he’d have to hang it on O’Brien. Or O’Brien would have to get hung with it. That was not impossible, of course. As for scruple—had he any? O’Brien had been going to do it. Why should he scruple? To hell with O’Brien. Carter frowned in the darkness and tried to find his own conscience. Or the void that meant the absence of it. It slipped away from him. Maybe he hadn’t any anymore. He felt no pangs of conscience because of what he had done to Sullivan—bludgeoned him to death—only a little distaste at the thought of blood that he did not even remember, and a small jolt at the fact it had been he doing the deed. He had killed another man in prison for less reason, really less reason. That had never bothered him. Mickey Castle came to his mind. He remembered saying to himself the morning of Mickey’s death, that if he’d taken the trouble to step between him and whatever it was that he rammed himself into, Mickey might not have hemorrhaged, but was he his brother’s keeper? And after a couple of days, he hadn’t thought about it. Was that what happened to men’s consciences in prison?

  Carter wanted to get up and take a walk in the moonlight, but he didn’t for fear of awakening Hazel. He lay there with his thoughts turning, knowing he could not progress beyond this night, he and Hazel would not progress, though they had seven more nights to spend here. There was nothing to do but behave as pleasantly as possible, not approach Hazel again, make it as good a holiday for her as he could.

  And Carter did this. His only reward was that Hazel didn’t change for the worse toward him: she was still friendly, good-humored, and the time away from New York certainly did her some good.

  Carter returned to his office on Monday morning. He had explained to Mr. Jenkins that, though the police allowed him to go to New Hampshire to a specific hotel, they had not allowed him to go to Detroit, which was true. Carter had felt presumptuous asking the firm for a week off, but they had granted it pretty readily, or Mr. Jenkins had, and as to sacking him or not, Carter thought, they had probably made up their minds days ago, and taking a week off would make no difference in the scales. Like Hazel, they were probably waiting.

  He telephoned Ostreicher Monday afternoon, and after three attempts, finally reached him.

  “No real news,” Ostreicher said, “from your point of view. We found the dope in the apartment of one of Grasso’s friends. Gawill could be held or fined for hiding it for Grasso, but we’re letting Gawill have a little rope just now. He’s a free man,” Ostreicher said, so casually, with a sigh, that Carter suspected he wasn’t. Every move Gawill made was probably being watched, and Gawill no doubt knew it. “Unlike Grasso,” Ostreicher went on. “Grasso’s got a five-thousand-dollar fine to pay.”

  “And O’Brien?” asked Carter.

  “He’s got heavy expenses and no money. An interesting situation.”

  Carter understood. Gawill couldn’t afford to pay him just now. Couldn’t afford to be discovered paying him. But O’Brien had been counting on the money by now. “O’Brien’s a free man, too?”

  “Oh, yes,” Ostreicher said with a smile in his voice. “And you’re back on your job, Mr. Carter?”

  Carter felt very uneasy when he had hung up. Ostreicher was letting them all out on strings, very long strings, to see what they would do. Ostreicher could have grilled him, Carter thought, really beaten him up the way police did hardened criminals sometimes, which was what he was supposed to be, having been in prison, or at least the newspapers implied it. People never knew, or didn’t care what happened to hardened criminals whom the law suspected of new crimes. Carter thought the reason he had been spared was because he had a reputable job now, money and a wife who worked for public welfare. News of any beating-up would get around. And of course he was being watched just as much as Gawill or O’Brien, Carter thought.

  Nevertheless, Carter telephoned Gawill that Monday night. He did it while he was out buying cigarettes around 10 o’clock, but when he came back into the apartment, he said to Hazel, “I just called Gawill, and I think I’ll go over and see him. So if the police happen to call, that’s where I am.”

  Hazel looked at him in surprise. She was sitting on the sofa, mending the knee of Timmy’s new corduroy trousers, bought and torn in New Hampshire. “Why?”

  “I thought I might find out something. Gawill talks to me—sometimes.”

  Hazel looked at her watch. “What time shall I expect you back?”

  Carter relaxed a little and smiled. She seemed to care if he would get back. “By twelve, anyway. If I’m later, I’ll call you—before twelve.” Carter tossed one of the two packages of cigarettes he had bought on to the sofa, said, “Bye-bye, darling,” and went out again.

  He took a taxi. Gawill had sounded rather friendly on the telephone. “Phil? What a surprise . . . Well, okay, why not?” Not too friendly, just willing to see him, which was all Carter wanted.

  Gawill was alone, it seemed. The radio was on, the sofa covered with newspapers again.

  “What’s on your mind? Have a seat,” Gawill said.

  Carter sat, after putting his overcoat over the chair arm. Gawill was waiting. “I came to find out what you might know that I don’t,” Carter said.

  Gawill snorted. “And I should tell you? As a favor?”

  “You might.”

  “When you did me the favor of telling them I had some dope here? I should do you a favor?”

  Hazel had brought the dope up, Carter remembered. He wouldn’t have. “They’d have found out, anyway. They searched Grasso’s apartment—or apartments—on their own, didn’t they?”

  “You said it was in my apartment that you got it. And saw it.”

  “Sorry,” Carter said.

  “I bet you are. Sullivan off your hands, you walking around in the clear—”

  “I’m no more in the clear than you are.”

  Gawill only smoldered faintly.

  Carter waited for him to say, You did it, and my boy or my friend O’Brien’s getting the blame. Gawill wasn’t saying that. Carter waited. “Isn’t there a drink in the house?”

  Gawill got up. “Sure there is.” He went into the kitchen.

  “Next time I’ll bring you some.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  Carter smiled. Gawill came back with a fresh scotch and soda, plus a hal
f-finished glass which must have been his own.

  “Thank you.” Carter sipped his drink for a moment.

  Each waited for the other to speak.

  Gawill spoke first: “How’re you making out with Hazel?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “You don’t seem to be boasting about anything.”

  “I wouldn’t boast,” said Carter.”

  “You’d tell me if things were very rosy. It’d show—on you.”

  Carter let it go. The radio annoyed him, though it was not loud, but he didn’t want to annoy Gawill by asking him to turn it off. “When’re you going to pay O’Brien?” Carter asked, the big question, and coolly sipped his drink.

  “Never. O’Brien was never in that apartment. You were.” Gawill looked straight at him.

  But from the way he said it, Carter knew he was lying. He was suddenly glad, very glad, that he knew Gawill this well, that he had known him since the rosy nightmare days of working for Triumph, known him since his visits to the prison, learned when Gawill was lying, exaggerating, or plain faking. This was a mixture of lying and faking. “Quit your kidding,” Carter said. “I can see through you. I know you’ve got to pay O’Brien. O’Brien’s broke, I heard from Ostreicher today. He has a lot of heavy debts. Or expenses. Isn’t he waiting for your money?”

  “Ah, do you think I couldn’t get money to him if I had to, if I owed him any? I’d just get somebody else to give it to him for me.” Gawill shrugged, lifting a big hand, palm up.

  “No-o. Who could you trust, for instance? You’d have to explain why you owed O’Brien the money, wouldn’t you?”

  Gawill looked at the floor and pushed himself back farther on the sofa.

  Carter wondered what was going on in Gawill’s head? It was anybody’s guess, since Gawill was a bit cracked. But he knew if Gawill wanted to demolish him, all he had to do was say, I know you did Sullivan in, because O’Brien said he met you on the stairs going up when he was coming down—when Sullivan was still alive. But Gawill wasn’t saying that. Gawill said:

  “If I’d hired O’Brien, don’t you think I’d have paid him by now? And if I’d hired him, do you think anybody could ever find it out? Do you think they’ve found out anything now? No. Just the damned dope that wasn’t even mine.”

  Gawill was very angry about the dope, much more than about the O’Brien situation.

  “Tailing me now as if I’m in a dope ring, and I got nothing to do with the damned dope,” Gawill said, standing up.

  “Then why was it in your house?”

  “Ah, I was keeping it a couple of days for Grasso. I never got anything out of it.”

  Carter had suddenly had enough of Gawill’s whining. “Like the Triumph thing, I suppose. The chiseling there. You never got anything out of it.”

  Gawill turned, stormy-faced. “I didn’t!” he screamed, hoarse and falsetto.

  He’d trap himself with his blatant lying, Carter thought. Or with his blatant truth telling, which he sometimes did, too. Carter set his empty glass down on the floor by his chair, and stood up. “You never got anything out of it, not on your many weekends in New York with Palmer.”

  “No!” Gawill screamed again, as if he were being tortured.

  “I’ll be off,” Carter said.

  He left. He had found out what he came for. O’Brien was the only man who knew the truth.

  As Carter walked out of Gawill’s building, he noticed a black car parked at the opposite curb in the dark street. It looked like a police car. Had it been there before? Carter didn’t remember, and didn’t care. A man was sitting in it, looking his way, Carter thought, and then a light came on in the car and the man bent, presumably to write the time of his departure. Carter looked at his own watch under the streetlight at the corner: 11:35.

  Hazel was up and not yet undressed when Carter got home. She was curled in a corner of the sofa with her shoes off, reading some of her mimeographed office papers.

  He smiled at her as he hung his coat in the closet. “Well—”

  “Well?”

  Carter came into the living room slowly, unbuttoning his jacket, happy to breathe the smell of home. “Gawill hasn’t paid O’Brien, doesn’t know how he’s going to. Of course, says he doesn’t owe O’Brien anything.”

  “Did you find out anything you didn’t know?”

  “Gawill’s very annoyed because the police are after him for having dope in his house.”

  “How after him? They don’t seem to be doing anything to him.”

  “No, they’re letting him out on a string. But he’ll be fined something, probably. They may be attaching what money he has now. All the more reason why he finds it hard to pay O’Brien.” Carter laughed a little. “Also they’re shadowing him everywhere, which Gawill hates. He can dish it out, but he can’t take it.— There was a police car across the street from his place tonight.”

  Hazel looked startled. “That means they saw you, then.”

  “Yes. That doesn’t bother me. They could have had a tape recorder in the apartment tonight for all I care. I was trying to find out what Gawill knows. The police are trying to find out the same thing.”

  Carter had sat down on the sofa, not close to Hazel, but she suddenly reached out and put her hand over his right hand. Carter’s fingers took hers. It was the first affectionate gesture he could remember from her in weeks.

  She looked in front of her. She was not about to speak, not tense or strained. It was as if the touch of her hand spoke words of love and loyalty that did not need to be said.

  He set his teeth. He had told Hazel that he thought O’Brien’s lie-detector test had shown some agitation, more than his own, anyway. That was true, but the remark perpetuated the bigger lie. Hazel had not taken that as conclusive, Carter thought. In New Hampshire afterward, she had asked him about hallucinations. He was continuing to lie tonight, because he loved her. She was necessary for his own life. Was that love or was it self-interest? Carter pulled her to him, and held her in his arms.

  She did not answer, but she stayed in his arms for several minutes, several wonderful minutes. At last, she pushed gently away and said, “I suppose it’s getting late.”

  He did not push his good fortune that night, did not touch her again, but he felt blissfully optimistic about Hazel.

  26

  What were the police doing, Carter wondered, besides waiting and twiddling their thumbs? It took only so long to investigate Gawill’s bank account, his sources of money, his own bank account. Were they waiting for O’Brien to get impatient for his money and attack Gawill? Too obvious, and O’Brien wouldn’t risk it. The stillness of everyone, everything, got on Carter’s nerves. It also got on Hazel’s. The only people who seemed to be reassured by it were Jenkins and Butterworth. Carter’s arrival every morning at 9 o’clock might have been to them a guarantee that he was innocent, that the police were letting him alone therefore.

  “This frankly—” Butterworth said to Carter, “seems to have been an affair between Gawill, David, and—”

  “Your wife,” Carter started to say for him.

  “I should say Gawill and David Sullivan.” Butterworth spoke gropingly, but it was evident that he wanted to be friendly to Carter.

  The police were concentrating on the Gawill-inspired motive, and O’Brien was mentioned every day in the newspapers: the police were questioning him frequently. “O’Brien, when questioned by police officials in his Jackson Heights apartment today . . .” Whether O’Brien still had his barman’s job or not was not stated, but he was certainly not locked up.

  Then on a Wednesday evening at 6 o’clock, just after Carter got home, O’Brien called him up. O’Brien identified himself at once.

  “You can hang up if you hear your wife coming in,” O’Brien said. “I’m not where I can see the
house, but I know she’s not there now. Mr. Carter, I need some dough. Five thousand dollars.”

  Carter had guessed it as soon as he heard O’Brien’s voice. “This telephone may be tapped, you know.”

  O’Brien hesitated a second. “Well?— What do you mean ‘may be?’ Is it?”

  “I don’t know.— You can’t handle money. The police are going to find it as soon as you get it.”

  “Oh, no they won’t. Not in cash. I need it—Friday—and you know the either-or part, Mr. Carter.” O’Brien sounded very determined and sure of himself and almost intelligent. “You’ve got it, I know. Take it out of one of your banks.”

  Carter said nothing.

  “I’ll make a date with you on the street,” O’Brien said, slowly and distinctly now. “Tenth Street and Eighth Avenue, northwest corner, Friday night at eleven o’clock. Got that? You turn up with the money—in fifties and hundreds—and turn up on time—or I’ll talk to the police by eleven thirty. That’s all, Mr. Carter.” O’Brien hung up.

  Carter put the telephone down. He looked automatically at Timmy’s room—lightless, the door ajar. Where was Timmy? Then he went to the closet to hang his topcoat. And five thousand would be the beginning, as blackmail victims always said, and if they caught O’Brien with the second five thousand, or even with the first, they’d ask where he got it. From Carter, he’d say. And why? O’Brien would tell them that, too. O’Brien wouldn’t say it was from Gawill for his job, because Gawill would brazenly and probably convincingly deny such a story. Besides, Gawill would jump immediately to the truth, that Carter had paid O’Brien to keep silent. That might expose O’Brien having been at Sullivan’s house, of course, but as long as O’Brien hadn’t actually done it, Gawill’s intention to have Sullivan killed remained just an intention, or a plot, not a deed.

  A difficult spot, Mr. Carter, he said to himself. Yet he felt very cool. Very, very cool, just idealess. Except for a naïve idea, a fantasy: He might meet O’Brien and hand him the five thousand, saying calmly, sweetly, but as if he meant it, “Okay, Anthony, now you have it. Let this be the last of it. If you keep on playing it cool and denying everything, we’ll both go free, you know. Is it agreed?” But men like O’Brien wouldn’t accept that for long. He’d be tempted to ask for more soon. If O’Brien weren’t sorely tempted by money, he would never have hired himself out as a killer. Carter smiled grimly, like a man who has found himself with both shoes in muck, up to the ankles.