He handed the mike to Kozlowski, though he himself was nearer to the hook. He turned to Ben Hodge. “Some business,” he said.
Hodge nodded sympathetically. “Well, you were right, your hunch about him.”
“Correct. Lot of good it did.”
Vanessa shook her head sadly. “Esther says it’s got you half sick. I can see it’s so.”
“I still manage,” Clumly said. He hunted for a cigar. He was out. “At least he was able to steal a car without murdering somebody. I had a feeling we were going to find some farmer …”
“Thank goodness for that,” Vanessa said.
Clumly nodded. “Well, so long, Ben, Vanessa.”
They nodded and wished him luck. Kozlowski started up. The sunlight had yellowed now, as it always did late on a summer afternoon. It made the trees seem taller, their colors richer, and gave a new sharpness to the lines of the Richmond mausoleum and the iron urns beside its gate. It was as though all the world were alive with spirit: in the woods beyond the graveyard there might have been satyrs and dancing nymphs, or at least parked cars.
“Where to?” Kozlowski said.
“Just drive,” Clumly said.
“You serious?”
Clumly turned to squint at him, scowling. “Does it seem to you I’m a playful man, Kozlowski?”
“You’re serious,” he said.
They drove.
At last Kozlowski said, “You got a theory, haven’t you.”
“No,” he said. “Stop at Deans’, I need a cigar.”
Kozlowski nodded and, when they came to the drugstore, pulled over.
Then afterward, smoking, sitting on the middle of his back in the seat, Chief Clumly said, “I got hundreds of theories, Kozlowski. I believe them all. Some of them I believe in the morning, some in the afternoon, and some of them I believe when it’s late at night. You follow me?”
He opened his hands on the steering wheel, a kind of shrug.
“It ever occur to you that a cop’s just like a philosopher, Kozlowski?” He leaned forward a little to look at him.
“No,” Kozlowski said.
Chief Clumly sighed. “It’s occurred to me sometimes,” he said, petulant. “A cop’s just like a philosopher, and a robber’s just like—” Imagination failed him.
They drove in silence. Then Kozlowski said, “Like a magician.”
Clumly shot a glance at him to see if he was mocking. “You serious?” he said. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Only in the late afternoon,” Kozlowski said.
Clumly frowned and thought about it. “You’re a good man to work with, Kozlowski. You make a man think.”
Kozlowski sighed.
Cops and Robbers, or Philosophers and Magicians. That was good. A title for a speech.
“You’re kidding,” Chief Clumly said suddenly. “That’s pure nonsense, no meaning at all.” He squinted at him, watching for a sign. The young man’s face was a mask.
6
Miller stood in the high, dry grass of the bank watching. The car looked as if it had grown there. It was up to its doorhandles in silt, and it was seaweed green all over, even the windshield and windows. Willowtrees hung motionless and unreal behind and above it, their tops reddened by the setting sun. Beyond the willows stood the crumbling stone walls of what had been, long ago, a flourmill feedstore and carriage shop. Beyond that you could see a little of the black brick of the box factory. Borsian, of the State Police, stood with his foot up on a rock, his right arm leaning on his knee. “How long the fucking thing been here, you think?”
Miller shook his head.
Borsian said, “Current must’ve brought it down, that’s all I can figure.”
Miller nodded. If the current had brought it, it had done it a long time ago. Fifteen, twenty years. There were tin cans, tires, a snarl of old barb wire on the creekbed around it; mostly they weren’t as green. The creek was down to nothing—a trickle along one side, here and there a muddy, isolated pool. Inside the car there were two skeletons with bullet-holes in their heads. All the windows of the car were closed and there were no holes in them except the one in back that the three boys who had found the skeletons had made.
7
He was getting home earlier tonight, not for lack of work down at headquarters but for plain lack of strength. He had a couple of hours yet before sunset, to sit in the overgrown garden with the paper or to pace back and forth on the porch, making up his speech for the Dairyman’s League. But Esther’s minister was there again. Two nights almost in a row. Was the man after money? Clumly nodded his greeting, then took off his gunbelt and hat and put them away. Then he said, “I’ll be out in the garden,” and went out through the kitchen and back entryway. When he reached the bench in the garden he realized the minister had followed him out.
“Beautiful retreat you have here,” the minister said. “So restful and serene.”
“We like it,” Clumly said.
Weedpatch. The lilacs along the fence had taken over completely, so that the tulips and crocuses he’d planted five years ago—it was over a thousand bulbs he’d put in—were as shaded now as a worm down in under a rock. He hadn’t sprayed the roses once all year: there was hardly a leaf left on them. And the hollyhocks he’d had such a devil of a time getting started had taken over every corner of the garden now and were spreading out into the vacant lot behind it. In the shadow of the weeds there would be lizards and sleeping snakes.
“Nothing like Nature to take a man’s mind off his troubles,” the minister said. He came over to stand beside the bench. He said, “How are you, Fred?”
“Just fine, fine.” It came to him that the man had come out here to tell him something. Instantly he felt as he would feel in the office of the Mayor.
“Every man needs a place like this to retreat to,” the minister said. “It’s like Eden. Do you mind if I sit down?”
Clumly made room and the man in black sat down. He took off his glasses to polish them on his handkerchief, and he beamed toward the sunset as he did it. His dimple showed. “Well,” he said. “I’ve been thinking over our talk.”
He leaned his elbows on his knees and tipped his head, waiting.
“Our talk about, so to speak, the Sunlight Man. The magician, and wire-tapping.”
“I remember,” Clumly said. “Yes.”
He began to speak rapidly, smiling all the while with pleasure, like a satisfied crow. The faster he talked, the more his false teeth whistled. “It goes right to the heart of our modern predicament, doesn’t it. Especially with respect to the church in the modern world. Perhaps I don’t express myself clearly, but I’ll try to explain. You’re a good man, Chief Clumly, but you never go to church.”
Clumly straightened up a little.
“Now now,” the minister said quickly, patting Clumly’s knee, “don’t misunderstand me! I’m not canvassing for members. Nothing like it. God bless you! I’m here to talk to you, as one thinking man to another, because your remarks the other night interested me, and to tell you the truth, a man in my profession can sometimes find himself starved, truly starved, for good talk.”
Clumly leaned over his knees again tolerantly (the man was lying) and pursed his lips as a sign that he was listening.
“The church has always considered itself responsible for the welfare of the world, the spiritual welfare, that is. Yes good. Now in what, we might ask ourselves, does that responsibility consist? And to what extent are we equipped for our responsibility?”
“Mmm,” Clumly said. He nodded.
“It was once a fact of life in our society, that the decision-making forces in the community were in general people of the church—I don’t mean just legislators and judges and the like, I mean decision-making forces on every level. That situation has altered, if I’m not mistaken, particularly in the larger cities, and the presence of people like yourself in a town like Batavia—please understand I have no grudge in this, we’re talking as one thinking man
to another, nothing more or less—the existence of people like yourself in small towns is an indication that the prevalent condition in the larger cities can spread. Now the question is, is this good or not good?”
Clumly tipped his head and considered. He got out a cigar.
“There’s one very serious difficulty in religion, you know. It can result in megalomania, as I call it. Are you familiar with my colleague Reverend Warshower, the Presbyterian? A good man, a fine man in many respects. But a touch of megalomania, all the same. A very righteous man. The Presbyterians usually are. Don’t you think that may have certain dangers in it—political and social, I mean?”
Clumly thought. “I may not be following you, exactly,” he said.
“Precisely. Let me try to explain. Don’t you think it’s just possible that we, as a nation, have perhaps been crippled for world affairs by a slightly excessive sense of righteousness? I mean Asia, for instance. A very difficult matter. It’s very possible, I think, that we really do involve ourselves in Asia’s problems for Asia’s sake. And yet sometimes … You see, a megalomaniac, as psychologists tell us, is a man who has done a good deal of repressing—pretending to himself that he does not actually feel what he actually feels, if you see what I mean. He feels very powerful through his rectitude, but in fact, hidden in his heart … evil.” He smiled as though evil were a great delight to him. “Or take social problems. The white and the Negro. Isn’t it just possible that the racist’s view of the Negro as a person may be nothing other than a megalomaniac projection—that is to say, a feeling of righteousness in one’s superiority to a person onto whom one has projected all one has had to repress to become what one has become. I mean: our civilization is built on work, and to do well in it we must repress our desire to loll about. We project, so to speak, this repression into the inherent nature (as we think) of the Negro. We say he’s lazy by very birth.” He paused for comment.
“Mmm,” Clumly said.
“But you see, if there’s an ounce of truth in all this I’m saying, our religion—our puritan ethic in one form or another, is at the heart of the American problem.”
“I see,” Clumly said.
“It’s a discouraging thought for a man of the cloth, you can imagine.” He looked at the setting sun.
“It would be, yes.” Clumly remembered the cigar and lit it.
“And what it comes to, of course, is this: if the church is truly to be responsible for the spiritual welfare of the world, its business must be to hunt down and expose the evil in people’s hearts. Or, our business is to contend against the very megalomania we tend to induce, if you follow my reasoning. Our business is to point the finger, so to speak, at pious hypocrisy—not simple hypocrisy of the usual sort but a psychological kind, a sort of lie in the soul.”
“Yes, I see,” Clumly said. “I’m with you.”
“Precisely,” he said. “But what a terrible dilemma! What of the invasion of privacy? What of our wire-tapping of the heart? In short, what of—as you say—our voodoo? We pry into men’s souls. It’s our stock in trade!”
Clumly nodded, a trifle startled. It was an interesting question. He stood up, studying the cigar. “What’s your opinion?” he said.
“My opinion,” the minister said, “is that I am responsible. I recognize the megalomania in myself, and I recognize that I must make perfectly sure that my motives are as pure as possible. But ultimately, when I find what we might call sin, I must act against it. I can see no reasonable alternative.”
“You may be right,” Clumly said. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“For instance.” He smiled. In the gathering dusk his smile seemed ghostly now, perhaps a little mournful. “If I discover a man who in my best judgment is destroying himself and those near and dear to him, whether that man is a member of my congregation or not, I believe it is my responsibility to worm my way into his thought. Am I right, do you think?”
“It’s a question,” Clumly said.
“God bless you, so it is!”
The minister stood up and began to pace slowly, with exaggeratedly long steps, back and forth in front of the bench. “A man, say, who, with the best intentions, has so thoroughly thrown himself into his work that he’s forgotten what worries may be torturing his wife. A man who, by his very diligence, has begun to set people around him to talking and fretting against him, people who might, potentially … Hypothetical, of course. But possible, barely. I suspect I should make myself his demon.”
Clumly stood watching him. “Maybe you should.”
He stopped pacing. “It’s difficult to know, isn’t it. By what right? I ask myself. All very well for the prophet to tell David, ‘Thou art the man.’ He had God’s voice buzzing there in his ear. But the voice of reason is not necessarily the voice of God, is it?”
Abruptly, surprising himself, Clumly said, “What are you getting at?”
Again he smiled whitely. “Conversation,” he said. “You’ve no idea how starved a man … one thinking man … hard to express.”
Clumly said, “Well, it’s getting dark.” Then: “Would you care to have supper with us? I assume Esther—”
“No thank you,” he said. He seemed alarmed.
Clumly smiled, puzzled. “Whatever you like.”
They studied each other in the reflected red of the sunset. Abruptly, the minister shook Clumly’s hand, then put his hat on, ready to leave. “You’ll excuse me to your wife, I hope. I really must run.”
“Certainly, yes.”
The minister nodded and smiled one last time, funereal, and started across the grass to the side of the house.
“You had a nice talk with Reverend Willby?” Esther said.
“Very interesting, yes.”
“He’s such a kind man,” she said.
“Mmm. Interesting.” He looked up briefly, watching her chase her stew around the plate with her bread. Like all blind faces, her face had a look of unspeakable weariness, despair. “This past couple weeks has been hard on you,” he said.
“Oh, don’t think about me.”
“Well, it won’t last forever,” he said cheerfully, though he didn’t feel cheerful.
“I hope not,” she said.
He drew his Sanka toward him and sucked at the edge.
She reached for her teacup.
“To the left,” he said.
She found it and leaned forward, raising the cup to her lips.
Clumly said, “Any interesting mail?”
She lowered the cup a little. “I’m sorry. I forgot to look.”
“That’s not like you,” he said.
She laughed, glass eyes staring, and he was distressed.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked. It came out a little sharp.
She said nothing for a moment, her face fallen to despair again. “You’re right, it’s not like me to forget the mail. I’ll go get it.”
“No no, I’ll do it.” He got up.
There was nothing. An electric bill, a second notice from the water company, a letter from Esther’s younger sister. “There’s a letter from your sister,” he said. “Shall I read it to you?”
She said nothing, and he read it in an interested voice. Halfway through he realized she wasn’t listening—in fact she was talking to herself. He went on with the letter. When it was over and she’d made no response, he said, “Aren’t you feeling well, Esther?”
She smiled. “Just tired.”
“We’ll get us a good night’s sleep,” he said.
She got up to clear the dishes and, after a moment’s thought, Clumly got up too. He patted her shoulder. “I’ll help with the dishes,” he said.
“No, don’t bother. Please. No trouble at all. Really.”
He stood in the kitchen doorway rubbing his nose. What was wrong? But he knew, yes, now that he thought about it. The Sunlight Man again. She was worried, that was all it was. She’d picked it up from him. He would have to be careful. Tomorrow he’d bring her flowers.
/> Later, in the bathroom, looking at the braille Today’s, he had a sudden suspicion that the copies were old; she’d allowed her subscription to run out. The image of the minister’s smile came back to him, and then the black, narrow back hurrying across the yard to the side of the house.
Just as he was crawling into bed his usual nighttime fears came over him more powerfully than ever. He was absolutely certain that there was someone in the house. So certain, in fact, that he drew his trousers on over his pajamas and got into his slippers and bathrobe and went downstairs to investigate. She lay sleeping like a log, as far as Clumly could tell as he left. He stood in the darkness of the livingroom, listening with all his ears, but there was nothing. He looked out at the lawn. There too, nothing. And yet the crawling of his skin was not to be denied. Something was very wrong. Where?
Miller had talked with the Mayor this afternoon. About what? They might have sat there for hours in the Mayor’s office, swapping stories, perhaps, and then slipping back to business. One could guess pretty well what business it was. Then finally they’d have parted, and after his laughter at his own last joke, the Mayor would have returned to his office, abruptly sober, grim, and would have gotten his suitcoat from the closet next to Wittaker’s office. … If only there was some way of knowing how much time a man still had! But forget it. Drive as fast as possible down the road to the Sunlight Man, the rest would take care of itself, more or less. He would go back to his bed.
But the sky was very light, the night air warm, the street completely deserted beyond the window out of which Clumly stood peering. What was happening over on Ellicott Avenue now, at the Mayor’s house? The hunger to be sure grew into an ache in his abdomen, and sweat prickled on his chest. He remembered with revulsion the Sunlight Man’s words in one of the examinations: “I have thoughts of spying on my boss, listening outside his window.” The man was a devil! He knew your desires before you knew them yourself, or maybe it was that he created them. The devil. Insane, the whole business insane. He’d go up to his bed. Lord yes.
But he’d been wrong, it came to him. The street was not deserted. Directly in front of his house, in the dappled shadows under the maple trees, by the sidewalk, there was a car—not hidden, though not out in the glare of the streetlamp either—impossible to miss except by a trick of one’s vision. It was not the car of anyone he knew, but he knew in the back of his neck that he’d seen it before. After a moment it came to him. It was the car he’d seen parked down the block on Ross Street, when he’d gone with Boyle to the Woodworths’. He drew back from the window and collected his thoughts. “All right then,” he said aloud, and he walked quickly to the clothespress where his hat and pistol hung. He fastened the belt around the outside of his bathrobe and started back for the front door. Just as he was passing it, the telephone rang. He jumped. He let it ring again—he stood with his head cocked, looking at it—and then, full of dread, he lifted the receiver. “Yes?” he said.