13: Mulligan

On the Hackensack River, just below Route 46, there is an old landing, and that was where Lenny told us to put her ashore. I told her that the footing was treacherous by night and that she would be better advised to come back to the Boat Livery with us. But she saw no sense in that, and I suppose she was right.

But then what would she do? She had to climb up the embankment to the highway—and then what? She only smiled at me and shook her head. I asked her to let me go with her at least to the road.

“You stay with your wife and kid, Johnny,” she said.

Polly was asleep now, cradled in Alice’s arms, and Alice herself said not one word, not a word of gratitude, not a word of farewell. Lenny climbed out of the boat, stood for a moment, looking at us, then walked across the stone dock and began the trudge up to the road. She was small and pathetic, and the night closed over her as if she had never been.

I went the rest of the way up the river at low speed. I could not have endured to open the throttle and race back at full, and now I didn’t care. I guess Alice felt the same way, because she did not urge me to hurry.

After a little while, when the lack of communication between us had become nearly unbearable, I reminded Alice that Lenny had the gun when we were on the cabin cruiser. She did not have to ask to come with us. She could have forced the issue at gun point.

“I suppose she could have,” Alice admitted. It was the first word she had spoken to me since Montez died.

“But she didn’t.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“When you come right down to it,” I said, “she saved your life.”

“Oh?”

“Well, didn’t she?”

“I suppose so,” Alice sighed. “You’ll wake Polly. She’s finally asleep.”

“Nothing is going to wake Polly now—or for the next ten hours. You know that. I want to know what you mean when you say, ‘I suppose so.’”

“She saved my life. Maybe I saved her life. Or maybe you saved all our lives. I don’t care.”

“Because you hate her.”

“You’re not very bright, are you, Johnny?”

“I try.”

“Well, she’s gone. That’s all. She’s gone. They’re all gone, and we have Polly—and I don’t very much care to discuss anything else.”

“I’m afraid you have to,” I said. “There are three dead men out there in the Meadows.”

“We didn’t kill them, Johnny. Try to remember that.”

“That kind of a crack makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, Johnny,” she said wearily, “what do you want me to do—weep over them? I have wept enough today. All I want is for today to be over, and it is over. That’s all that matters to me.”

“And is that what we tell the police?”

Her voice became cold and hard. “When did you get the idea of going to the police, Johnny?”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Then stop thinking about it!” she snapped.

“Isn’t it time we went to the police?”

“No, Johnny. I’ll tell you when it was time to go to the police. Yesterday—before this nightmare began. Then, if you had had a little sense and a little courage, and had gone to them and had explained to them exactly what happened there in the subway, none of today would have existed. But now, as you said, there are three dead men out in the Meadows, and it just so happens that your friend Lenny murdered one of them, and she’s gone. There’s no way of explaining to anyone what happened out there, or proving to anyone what happened out there, and if you think I am going to have this hanging over me for the rest of my life, you are mistaken. You are also mistaken if you think I am going to allow my husband—whatever he is—to be arrested and dragged through trials and hearings, and my daughter put on a witness stand, and all the dirt and nastiness that goes with that—no. No, we are not going to the police. We are going to leave this alone and keep quiet and allow events to take their course. Do you understand?”

“She isn’t a murderer,” I replied, stupidly and stubbornly.

“Oh? Have I blackened her character, Johnny?”

“Montez deserved exactly what he got.”

“And just who are you, John Camber, to decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die? How dare you tell me that Montez got what he deserved? This would be a pretty world indeed if we, all of us, got what we deserve.”

“For heaven’s sake,” I cried, “I wasn’t the one who managed it. I didn’t even know she had a gun. You knew it. You saw her take it out of her bag, and then you began to rant and rage at Montez and drove him half crazy, so that he couldn’t even hold the gun on us, and that gave her the chance she needed.”

“What are you trying to say, Johnny,” she asked softly, “that I killed Montez?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Why? It’s true, isn’t it? He said he would kill my child. I don’t hate, Johnny, and it’s hard for me to become really angry with anyone, but I think I would kill anyone who threatened my child that way—including your stinking virgin, Lenny.”

I didn’t say anything after that. There was nothing more to be said.

The last cigarette I had was stained—with either dirt or blood, and when I offered it to Alice, she shook her head with distaste. Some measure of the change in myself was the fact that I lit it and puffed it gratefully and did some thinking and watched my wife thoughtfully. She did not give an inch. They will tell you that English girls are gentle and soft-spoken and make good wives, and there is as much truth in that as in any ten-word description of an entire nation—or perhaps a little more, but nothing to take at face value.

Perhaps Alice was thinking about American men in some generalized manner; but I told myself that from here on in, I would not place twenty cents on my ability to guess what Alice was thinking about.

When we came to the Boat Livery, I saw a dark blur on the dock and a tiny speck of light on the blur. It turned out to be Mulligan, smoking a cigar, and he was a relieved man as he tied up the outboard and helped us onto the dock. Alice handed Polly to him, so that she could get out of the boat, but Polly did not awaken. As a matter of fact, Polly slept through to eleven o’clock the following day.

Mulligan held the child tenderly, peering at her face, and when he handed her back to Alice, he said, “That’s a fine, handsome child you got there, Mrs. Camber. She’s worth a big push.”

“It was a big push,” Alice sighed.

“I was too damned nervous to sleep, Camber,” Mulligan said to me. “I’m a small man here, and it would break my heart to lose that boat and motor. So I’m God-damned happy to see it all back in one piece.”

I had climbed out of the boat then, and he stared at me in disbelief.

“What the devil is that all over you?”

“Blood,” I replied.

“Jesus, are you bleeding?”

“It’s not my blood, Mr. Mulligan.”

“I’ll be damned if you could walk if it was. Come on, now, I have a pot of coffee in the shack, and you can tell me about it or not, as you damn please.”

“I think I have to tell you about it,” I said.

We went into the shack. He put some boating pillows on the desk and made a bed for Polly, where she continued to sleep peacefully and soundly. Then he poured strong black coffee for us, and we drank it gratefully.

“You’re a hell of a sight, Camber,” he said, “covered from head to foot with dry blood and your hair as stiff as a board with it. What the devil kind of a butcher shop were you in?”

“I brought my kid back,” I said carefully. It was the only boast I permitted myself in all that long day and night.

“You did that. Do you want to tell me?”

“If we tell you,” Alice said, “we put ourselves in your hands.”

Mulligan held out a pair of hardened, broad hands, palms up, the knuckles misshapen and enlarged, the skin grooved with the sign of the mechanic’s trade, thin black lines beyond the reach of soap. “Ugly as sin,” he said. “They are broken from my time as a pug. I was a light-heavy for seven years, not top grade but pretty good. I don’t like to look back on that. Mostly, they’re as honest as the next man’s hands, which ain’t saying a lot. Think it over.”

“They’re good hands,” Alice nodded.

“But just one thing, Mrs. Camber. If you’re going to the cops, then don’t tell me one God-damn thing.”

“We’re not going to the cops,” I said.

Then Alice told him. She told it well and concisely, and when she told what had happened on the deck of the cabin cruiser, she gave me more credit than I deserved. She made a fight out of a series of lunatic acts of utter desperation, and she made me look a great deal better than I deserved to look. Not that she lied or exaggerated, but she told it that way. As Mulligan listened, he regarded me with new respect. I was uneasy with that kind of respect, but I liked it.

When Alice finished, Mulligan was silent for a while. He lit his cigar and puffed it thoughtfully. Then he said, “Goddamn it now, this is a devil of a thing—to be a party to murder.”

“We’re not a party to murder,” Alice insisted.

“Anyone who witnesses a murder or abets it in any way is a party to it. He is—you are—I am. I gave you the boat, mind you. And how the devil can you prove that this Shlakmann died of the loss of blood?”

“We know he did.”

“Can you prove it?”

“An autopsy will prove it,” Alice said.

“Maybe yes and maybe no. Suppose Camber here fractured his skull with the brass knuckles? The man died because his heart stopped beating, but who is to say what caused his heart to stop beating? That’s the pity of an amateur in a fight. And this Montez—he’s not just some cheap hoodlum. He’s a diplomat.”

“I thought of that,” Alice agreed bleakly.

“It’s a bad business.”

“It’s sticky—yes. But do you believe us?”

“I believe you, Mrs. Camber. But how clean are we? The question is, can they trace it back here to the Livery or to you and your husband?”

“If they do,” Alice said, “we’ll swear that we stole the boat. That will put you in the clear.”

Mulligan shook his head sadly. “So help me God, Mrs. Camber, you are a strange one. You’re as nice a little lady as one wants to know, and, damn it, you go leaping from one deception to another. That won’t help, and you’ll do no swearing in my behalf. Either we are clear of this or not. If this wife of Montez keeps her mouth shut, there is only one danger that I can see—the fingerprints you must have left on the cruiser.”

“There are no fingerprints,” I said. “I wiped them all clean before I left the boat.”

They both stared at me, and on Alice’s face there was an expression I had never seen before. I didn’t interpret it. I saw it, and it made me feel a little better.

“All right,” Mulligan agreed. “I should have my head examined for this, but I go with you all the way. We’ll put the boat away tonight, Camber, and we’ll hose it and wipe it clean. I’ll take you home, and then I’ll dump Shlakmann’s car.

“Where?”

“Just leave that to me.”

“Then what?”

“Then we wait and see what happens.”

It took over an hour to wash down the aluminum boat, dry it, put it back on its winter rack, and then rub a winter’s accumulation of dirt onto it. The Johnson was broken down and placed in a cleaning wash, and by that time I was so tired I could barely stand on my feet. I fell asleep in the car when Mulligan drove us home, and when he dropped us in front of our house, the first gray hint of dawn was in the sky.

It’s hard for me to describe exactly what I felt when I got out of the car in front of our house. My first impression was that I had been gone for many months, and my eyes filled with tears at the simple pleasure of being back. Then I felt that I had never been away, and all that had happened was a dream, and that feeling clung so tightly that I had to force it out of my mind.

Alice took Polly inside, but at the doorway Mulligan stopped me and said, “Camber—”

I sensed what was coming.

“Camber, I’ll say good-by to you.”

We shook hands.

“You understand, Camber—don’t come back to the Livery. Ever. Not you or your wife.”

Slowly, I nodded.

“You know why?”

“I suppose it has to be that way,” I said.

“There’s no other way. You and me, Camber, we got to forget that the other ever existed. We got to lock this up inside of us, and never make any connection between us. I’m the way you got down that river and into the Meadows. If I’m out of it, then there’s no way you could have got down that river and into the Meadows. You understand?”

I nodded.

“Just stick to that. You don’t know me. We never saw each other. We never talked, and you never sat in no aluminum boat. That’s the whole story, and if we begin to believe it ourselves, we’ll be all right.”

“There’ll never be a connection,” I said.

“Never is a lot. For the time being, we stick to it.”

“It’s funny,” I said. “I mean I never knew anyone like you, Mr. Mulligan. I mean, not just to talk to, but to be close enough to say to someone, that’s my friend.”

“The world is full of friends, Camber.”

“Your world, Mr. Mulligan. Not mine.”

Mulligan shrugged. “It’s a long life, Camber. Don’t let them push you around. Just work easy.”

I nodded.

“You’re pretty damn good yourself,” Mulligan grinned.

Then we shook hands and he got back in the car and drove away. But what he said stayed with me. No one had ever said anything exactly like that to me before.