Nervously, Clumly said, “I wonder, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble—” He cleared his throat. “Could you show me the study, where he died?”
“You need both of us?” she said.
He bit his lips. A stupid question, and she knew it.
She got the Professor to understand that she needed the wheelchair. He brought it over from the corner where it sat waiting, glossy in the sun, and before Clumly knew it would happen she pushed away the covers, shockingly indifferent to Clumly’s eyes on her sagging, braised skin. He caught only a glimpse before the Professor bent over her to lift her, as if tenderly, into the chair. When he had her in place he covered her again and moved slowly around to the back. “This way,” he said. They moved toward the study.
Clumly said, squinting, covering his chin with his hand, “All those bruises … excuse me … what the devil—?”
She turned her head, but not far enough to see him. “Love,” she said. Her laugh made his back run with chills, and the same instant he saw, vividly, that same word painted across Oak Street, official and absurd.
“Shocking,” he whispered.
“Yes.” A hiss.
The Professor said nothing; perhaps he had not heard.
Give Paxton’s study told Clumly nothing he had not known already—or at any rate, nothing important. He too saw in the full morning sunlight the deadness of the place, the grim actuality of every line and tone, the effect she’d mentioned at the cemetery. A vision of death, she’d said. The room did not need his corpse to make it that; the living dead would do—the Professor, the widow, Fred Clumly himself, for that matter, ten minutes late for an investigation of his incompetence! He could have laughed. He said, “He was sitting over there?”
She nodded.
But he did not look at the chair. He tried the lock on the rolltop desk, then the lock on the bookcase. “These were locked when you came in?”
“The bookcase, not the desk. I locked that later. He always liked everything locked. He was bitter, afraid of everything. Well he might be.”
Clumly nodded, cutting her off. “But the window was open.”
“No. That was locked too, I think.”
“You said it was open.”
“When?”
“At the cemetery. You told me you thought you would faint, that morning, but the breeze coming in from the window revived you. You said that. You said you were kneeling by the window.”
She thought about it. “That’s true. How clever you are!”
“Then you went over and closed his eyes.”
She nodded.
“Then what?”
“I made a telephone call.” She hesitated. “Is this important?”
He nodded.
“I’m tired,” she said. “I’m a sick old woman.”
The Professor put his hand on her shoulder.
Clumly turned his back, angry for no reason. “You called your daughter, is that right? But she wasn’t there. So then you made more calls, right? To Phoenix, for instance—to your former son-in-law? But he was gone too.”
She said nothing for a long time. At last: “I won’t tell you a thing. You don’t know what you’re doing. There’s no reason!” It was a whisper.
He turned back to her, all his muscles limp. Slowly, he drew two of the little white stones from his pocket. “What are these? You seen them before?”
“Never,” she whispered. But her eyes remained fixed on them, and her chest heaved. Her hands closed like claws on the arms of the wheelchair, and the Professor, startled, bent down closer to her. It took Clumly longer than it should have to see what was happening. Kozlowski was in front of him all at once, lifting her feet up and shouting something—far away it sounded, a voice in a dream—“Call the hospital! Jesus! Help me get her to the car!”
But the next instant she was breathing again. She opened then closed her eyes.
“You’d better go,” the Professor said softly.
Clumly frowned, absent-minded.
“Let’s go,” Kozlowski said. He took Clumly’s arm.
Halfway back to town, Kozlowski said, “You damn near killed her.”
Clumly nodded.
“I guess you figure it was murder. That it? The old man, I mean. Paxton.”
He nodded again.
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” he said. But he knew.
“The old woman and the Professor?”
“Could be that.”
“But you don’t think so.”
Clumly said, “How much did you hear last night?—that talk we had in the cemetery, me and the Sunlight Man.”
“None of it. Just a rumble, sort of, through the wall.”
“You be interested to hear?”
Kozlowski glanced at him.
“I have a tape-recording,” Clumly said. He thought about it. “After you get off this afternoon, come by my house. I’d like you to hear it. Tell me what you think.”
Kozlowski watched the road and said nothing. For two minutes neither of them spoke.
Then Kozlowski looked at him, frowning. “You notice something?”
It came to Clumly now. The radio was dead. He picked up the microphone and flicked the switch off and on. There was nothing. Kozlowski took it from him, and still there was nothing.
“I’ll be damned,” Kozlowski said. He hung the mike on its hook.
“It gives you the sweats, don’t it,” Clumly said.
Kozlowski said nothing.
They went over the Oak Street bridge and turned left onto Main. At the firehouse, the raid was on. He could see them lined up, hands against the wall, policemen frisking them. Clumly smiled. “Drop me off at City Hall,” he said.
Kozlowski nodded.
Clumly adjusted his cap, looking hard at the lifeless mike. “Stay in the car,” he said. He sighed. “Keep an eye out.”
Kozlowski pulled up to the curb and Chief Clumly got out They saluted, careful now of forms.
2
“Sorry to be late,” Clumly said. He took his cap off and held it over his belly.
The Mayor scowled. “Well, not serious,” he said. But it was serious. “Mr. Uphill just got here himself.” He backed out of the way, giving Clumly a view of the three men, the photographs on the far wall, the dead flowers in the window, the scummy Silex. “Come on in,” he said. “You gentlemen have met, I take it?”
They all nodded. Uphill’s face was dark red.
They sat waiting, solemn as cobras at a funeral. Two were members of the City Council. Mr. Peeper was bald and heavy, a pharmacist Known for endless talk, an uneasy smile. Hater of unpleasantness; but he would be the one who wrote up the formal charges, when it came to that, and the dismissal. The second one was Mr. Moss, lean, unhealthy brown; he had a bad liver. He saw very little good in the world but rarely said so, merely asked questions, turned over stones and observed, unsurprised, the grubs. As for Uphill, he had a red face, silver hair. A dedicated man, an idealist. He’d been an Army Major once.
“Good,” Mayor Mullen said. “Fine and dandy. Well, since it’s late we might’s well get right down to business.” He went around behind his desk. “Sit down, gentlemen.”
Only Clumly was standing. “Wittaker, bring the Chief of Police a chair.” He looked sternly out the window while he waited. Wittaker came in with a chair, and Clumly sat down between Peeper and Uphill in the semicircle around Mayor Mullen’s desk. Moss was to Clumly’s far right. “Excuse me,” Clumly said. The three men nodded in unison, formally, again like cobras, as Clumly saw it. The Mayor dusted his hands. “That’s better,” he said. He opened the manilla folder on his desk.
“As you know, gentlemen,” he said, “this is not a formal hearing, it’s just an investigation.”
They nodded, slow and formal. Clumly got out a cigar. Their heads turned and they looked at him and he quickly changed his mind.
The Mayor pursed his lips and moved around the side of the desk and behind them, so that they ha
d to—turning slowly—crane their necks. “Now one problem,” he said, “has been partly taken care of, and that is the problem of communications. As I explained to you gentlemen before the Chief arrived, for a while there the Chief wasn’t speaking to me. But I got three letters from him this very morning, delivered in person by one of his own men to avoid any needless further delay, and I’m grateful for that.”
Clumly kept his face blank, but he knew he had not signed the letters.
“That’s good,” Peeper said. The uneasy smile.
“But we don’t know the improvement’s permanent, do we,” Moss said. He shrugged, and his mouth hung down at the corners, trying to smile, sorrowfully failing. “I’m just asking,” he said.
“That’s a point,” Mullen said. “And also, of course, exactly why he chose to write those letters right now, with the whole town in an uproar from all these robberies and murders and I don’t know what—is a mystery, frankly. But no doubt there’s some explanation.”
“Surely,” Peeper said.
Moss said, neither kind nor unkind, “There’s never a right time, is there. Wait for the right time and you could be dead before it came, right? I only speak from my own limited experience.” The tragic smile. “It’s like the lady who kept hoping to be raped, right?” He dismissed the untold joke with a mournful wave.
They all laughed; all but Uphill and Clumly. It was as if the whole fool room were laughing—the dead flowers, the chairs, the desk, the Silex on the hotplate. Peeper, to Clumly’s left, said grimly, “Nyeh heh heh heh!” Mullen said, “He he he he!” Clumly scowled.
“Well all right,” the Mayor said. “No harm in a little joke, ha ha.”
“Nyeh heh heh.”
“He he he.”
Uphill glared.
“Well all right,” the Mayor said. His face grew sober. “Hurry on, then. We got to hurry along with this. Ah! Coffee’s ready.” He poured five cups, still talking. “So as to the first complaint, we can more or less forget it, it’s all in the family, so to speak, and the Chief’s shown he’s willing to do better, or so it appears.
“The second complaint—I’m saying all this very frankly, so we can get someplace, not just set here jawing around, if you see what I mean—the second complaint is that the police department has not been fully cooperating with our other facilities, such as the fire department, for example. Not yet Fred. You can answer the complaints in a minute. Cream and sugar? Ah.” He passed them around.
“Look here,” Uphill said.
“The third complaint is, the Chiefs not always where he’s supposed to be, and where is he? He’s out checking up on his men or—” He paused significantly. The cobras hung poised, on target. “Or worse,” Mullen said. “Let’s let that one ride for a minute. Can’t delegate authority, then. So his men say. Whole lot of unrest and bad morale, if we want to face facts.
“Which brings me to the next problem. The crimes just isn’t getting solved. I have a chart on my desk. …” He drew it toward him. “Now. What was I saying? Ah! I have a chart. Crime’s up thirteen per cent over last year, here in Batavia. It makes you stop and wonder, don’t it. And it’s getting to have a professional look—you agree with that, Fred? Francis and Mead’s Jewelry Store, for instance? Or that Boyle fellow you let go from jail, few days ago. You figure those are signs of professionals coming in?”
“You asking my opinion?” Clumly said.
“Not yet. I’ll give you time to say your piece.”
“We’ve got all day, right?” Moss said despairingly. He sucked in his cheeks and looked down at his sharp, crossed knees.
Clumly nodded. He sipped the coffee, not really intending to drink it. He got out his cigar again and, this time, lit it. Moss, two seats over, on his right, turned his head slowly, looking, then lit a cigarette.
“Just one more remark,” Mayor Mullen said. “We talked with your subordinate, Sangirgonio. We asked him some straight-from-the shoulder questions. I’ll tell you frankly what it comes to. He doesn’t trust you. There it is.”
Clumly squinted.
“I’d just as soon not release the details on that, right at this time,” the Mayor said.
“No need,” Moss said. “Mere instances.” Lip slightly curled, sad, he looked at each of them for confirmation. “Distrust is universal, right?”
The Mayor looked down at his cup. “Well all right,” he said, “let’s hear your side of it, Fred. What about all that mail, the speeches you forget to go to? What about the questions people ask you and you don’t even hear them, or that crazy little escapade out by the railroad trestle—pictures in the paper and everything, no rhyme or reason, made the whole dang town a laughingstock. What about those tapes? And what about what’s going on at the firehouse right now, those men standing in their underwear, I heard, being searched like thieves? What about it?”
The red of Uphill’s face darkened.
“You’re changing the charges,” Clumly said. His hands shook.
“Don’t you go logic-chopping with me, Clumly. I’m asking you to explain to us why we should let you go on with this confounded circus, not ask for your resignation.”
“Times are changing,” Clumly said. He said nothing more.
They sat leaning forward, necks craned, motionless, watching him with beady, dusty eyes.
At last the Mayor said, “Is that all you got to say?”
Clumly thought about it. “Times are changing,” he said.
The Mayor and the three men waited, unimpressed.
“That may seem like nothing to you,” Clumly whispered. “I’m not surprised. You’re well-off, no real dealings with troubled people—poor people, people with bad tempers, people sick to death of their life.” He thought of Elizabeth Paxton and the Professor. “You’re responsible for it, if you want the truth: it’s because of your kind I have to deal with the other kind, but you don’t know it, you don’t know they exist. That’s your advantage. You’re responsible, but you’re not responsible. It’s your laws they hang by, and if one of you slips over from your side to their side, it’s your laws he hangs by. You, for instance. Peeper. Say you suffer reverses. Your wife commits suicide, sick to death of your stink of fat. You find out she’s been playing the ponies for fifteen years. Hundred thousand dollars in debt. Your money. You say you won’t pay it. ‘Hell no,’ you say, ‘I’ll take it to court!’“
“I certainly would,” he said. His mouth seemed to move much too slowly for the words that shot out.
“Correct. Your house burns down mysteriously. And your son gets kicked out of college, they say he’s a fairy, been sleeping with his teachers.” (It could happen.) “All right, you slip over to their side. These gentlemen here will be sorry, correct? But sooner or later they’ll send me after you. The responsible one. And I don’t have to think about it any more than they do. No sir! I enforce the law—whichever of their laws you broke—I pull you in, I leave it to the court. And they don’t have to think about it either, right? The lawyers can look up their precedents, they can hang you because they hung some poor devil in 1866. And after I’ve turned you over to the courts I can go on making speeches about law and order, and after they’ve hung you, there in court, they can go home and work on speeches about law and order, and nobody has to think. Nobody! That’s democracy, you follow me? Like a huge aluminum dome made out of a million beams, and not a single beam is responsible, everything hanging on something else. And if an earthquake comes, or a tidal wave, or a good fat tornado, what’s it to beam number nine-hundred-seventy-two? Ha!” The room was bright, their figures dark, like a negative.
Mullen leaned forward slowly. “What are you talking about?”
“Mouse turds,” Clumly hissed. “Horse manure.”
“You’re like a madman.”
Clumly nodded. “It’s the Times.” At last he fell silent.
Moss said, “What he’s saying makes sense.” His eyes fixed on Mullen.
“But is he competent?” Mullen said. “I??
?m talking very frankly, you understand. This is just an informal chat.”
Moss drew back, then turned his head to look once more at Clumly.
Uphill said, “I’ll lose men because of this morning. And don’t fool yourself. That’s the reason he done it.”
“I’ve got work to do,” Clumly said. “If you’re through with all this-”
Mullen’s head turned. “All right, Fred. You may go. You can wait in the hall.”
Clumly stood up.
“I’m sorry about this,” Mayor Mullen said. His head was thrust forward and tipped.
“I can see that. Let me know what you decide.”
The Mayor looked at him. “I’m truly sorry.”
“You sound like you’ve decided already.”
Nobody spoke. Clumly turned to the door.
It was Moss who brought the news. He stood with his head tipped, weight despairingly on one leg. He smiled, gently cynical, cigarette poised in his lean hand, between his thumb and four fingers. “It was a foregone conclusion, right?” he said. He looked past Clumly’s shoulder. “Who can escape if he’s investigated? I couldn’t. Nobody could, right? Our best judgment is that you should step down. We realize it may be a mistake. We all make mistakes.”
Clumly nodded, his right hand clutching his left.
“Finish out the day,” he said. He looked off into space, and it was as if he was thinking what he would do in Clumly’s place. He would finish out the day. He did not seem to guess that his heart would be broken.
An informal investigation, the Mayor had said. Clumly wept. “He lied to me,” he said. “The Mayor told me”—he sobbed—”told me a lie.”
Clumly cried for a long time. Mr. Moss brought him coffee, and Mr. Peeper went out and got him two donuts and would not hear of letting Clumly pay for them. “It’s just one of those unfortunate occurrences,” he said miserably. “This whole business is a mess,” he said. At last Clumly went to the room which said GENTLEMEN and washed his face.
Kozlowski said, “You got a message. On the radio. I wrote it down.” He held out a slip of paper.
“Good morning Chief Clumly,” the message said. “I invite you to one last conference. Here are my instructions …”