A Dog's Ransom

  “Duhamell, you were the logical suspect and we hit it right. Right?”

  Collins gave a nod.

  “What’re you going to do, Duhamell? Going to admit it? Face up? Come clean?—It’ll be easier for you.”

  Clarence felt weak, transparent, and deliberately stood straighter. “No,” he said, in quite a righteous-sounding tone.

  Vesey smirked with impatience and nodded again. “Duhamell, you’re going to get a going over. You know what that means.”

  Show me the report, Clarence was thinking, show me it, if it’s true. Maybe they were putting on an act. And he wouldn’t have put it past them to show him a faked report.

  “Back to work, Duhamell. We shall see you again.”

  They went out first. Clarence walked back to Captain Smith’s office. The briefing was still going on, and there were eighteen or twenty patrolmen in the room. Smith was talking about handbag-snatching in the Park. Housewives had been complaining a lot lately. Clarence recalled Santini’s voice saying, “They oughta know better than to carry handbags when they’re walkin’ the kids. They never learn till they’ve all had it once.” Clarence got his patrol assignment, picked up his two-way radio, and went out with the rest.

  There was a sturdy west wind off the Hudson, and it was rather cold. Clarence waved a greeting to a doorman behind a glass door on Riverside Drive. The doormen were different from the ones Clarence saw on his night shift, but he knew these faces from his former day shifts. Had the detectives been bluffing? They must have been, because if they were trying to break him down, what better start than to show him a report of blood on the gun? However, the working over. That was no bluff. Homicide wanted solutions. They roughed up the innocent with the guilty, Clarence knew. He was wondering if he could stand up to it? The fact he had killed the Pole, in a curious way, didn’t count: he felt he ought to stand up to anything, ought to deny his guilt forever. He felt that he owed it to the Reynoldses. Guilt in a moral sense seemed to play no part. Perhaps that was abnormal. But hadn’t Ed said, “I might have done it myself”? And would Ed suffer any guilt if he had? Not much, Clarence thought. Maybe none at all.

  Clarence had just turned the corner at Riverside Drive into 105th Street, going east, when two shots sounded ahead of him. He stared for an instant without seeing where the shots had come from, then ran forward towards West End Avenue. At once there were two more shots, tinkles of breaking glass, laughter, and a woman on the sidewalk screamed, and Clarence saw that the shots were coming from a car moving slowly towards him. An arm, a hand with a smoking gun protruded from a window of the car, and there was more wild laughter. Clarence was sprinting for the car. Another shot, and a spatter of glass at the front door of an apartment building. A startled window flew up on Clarence’s left, and was immediately banged shut again.

  Clarence dashed obliquely into the street towards the car as the next shots exploded. He felt a jolt in his right leg. Glass behind him fell, sounding like treble piano notes, on cement. Clarence grabbed the extended arm with the gun just as the car put on speed. He held on to the arm, the gun fell from the black hand, and Clarence ran to keep up with the car, jerking at the arm of the man who was now yelling with pain. Then the back fender of the car hit Clarence and bounced him off, he landed on his shoulder, rolled a couple of times and was checked against the wheel of a parked car. Clarence pushed himself to a seated position, dazed. To his right, at Riverside Drive, the car was turning fast around the corner. To his left he saw someone reaching for the gun in the street.

  “Don’t touch the gun!” Clarence said.

  He got up. Two men came forward, hesitated as if he were dangerous, or perhaps they thought he needed no help. Clarence went and got the gun, picked it up by the tip of its barrel. An adolescent boy stared at him wide-eyed from the curb. A doorman was following him along the pavement.

  “You got hit?”

  Clarence was limping. He knew the doorman by sight. “Did you see the license number?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t. Look! Lookit what the bastards did to my door!—Hey, you’re hit!”

  “Anyone get the license of that car?” Clarence asked, because there were many more people on the street now and several windows had gone up on both sides of the street. Suddenly there were twenty or thirty people standing around, asking questions, cursing the shooters as if their personal property had been destroyed, or as if the gunfire had given them an outlet for pent-up rage.

  “Hoodlums!”

  “Had an R in it!” said a small boy’s voice.

  “An old black Cadillac!”

  “Blacks! Spades! I saw ’em!”

  “Look at that door! Jesus! What’s next around here?”

  “Foot’s bleeding!” said the same boy’s voice.

  Just as Clarence started to switch on his walkie-talkie, a patrol car arrived and braked at the curb, its siren dying down. Two officers got out and, not seeing Clarence at first, began talking to the bystanders. They were talking to a woman Clarence had not seen, whose hand was dripping blood. The woman was holding out her limp hand, gripping its wrist. One of the officers trotted back to his car and started talking on his radio.

  Clarence felt faint. He had lost his cap. He looked around on the street for it. No luck. A kid had probably made off with it. Clarence went to speak with the officers. He didn’t know either of them, and assumed they were from the Frederick Douglass Park and Amsterdam area just east.

  “You were here?” an officer asked Clarence.

  “Yes. A black car with three or four men in it. Blacks. I have the gun.” Clarence was carrying it still by the tip of the barrel.

  “You’re hurt, eh?” The officer looked down at Clarence’s feet.

  Blood was overflowing his right shoe, and his foot was soaking. Clarence’s senses took another lunge. The officer helped him into the patrol car. The other officer said something about waiting till the ambulance came for the woman.

  They arrived at Clarence’s precinct house.

  “Lost your cap?” someone said. “What’s happened?”

  Clarence sat on a chair, while someone pulled the leg of his trousers up above his calf.

  “Went through,” a voice said.

  Clarence started giving his report; time and place, but the scene was dissolving like a spotty, grayish film fading out.

  “. . . old Cadillac, they said . . . This officer got the gun . . .” Another officer had taken over for him.

  Clarence toppled off the chair, and felt himself caught in a slow-motion swoop by the arms of a policeman. He was aware of being laid out flat on a stretcher, and aware of feeling nauseous. Then he arrived at a hospital. They gave him a needle in the arm.

  He awakened in a bed, in a room with five or six other beds, a man in each one. His right leg hurt below the knee. His right shoulder was stiff with bandages, his forearm held by an absurdly light-looking cheesecloth sling. The window showed a clear blue sky. Was it today—Monday—or Tuesday? His wrist-watch was gone. It wasn’t even on the bed table. A nurse in white scurried into the ward, looking about to drop a tray which appeared excessively heavy.

  She said it was 9:30 a.m., Tuesday. His watch was in the table drawer. His shoulder? He had a fractured collarbone.

  “And my leg?”

  “A flesh wound. Nothing broken. You were lucky.”

  Her smile made him feel somehow worse.

  Clarence dozed. Then the nurse came back and said:

  “Your mother’s here.”

  His mother came into the room shyly, not seeing him at first. Clarence raised his left arm. His mother’s lips formed a silent “Oh” as she tiptoed towards him. She had three oranges in a cellophane bag.

  The nurse provided a chair and departed.

  “Clare, darling, are you in pain?”

  “No. I t
hink I’m full of dope. Anyway it’s not serious.”

  “The nurse said you’d be out in a few days, but you’re not to go back to work for three weeks at least.—What happened, Clare? Or don’t you want to talk?”

  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

  Clarence 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 hate
d 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—”