IT WAS four o’clock in the morning before I made it to Roxy’s. The motel courtyard was parked solid with cars, so I left mine in the drive and went upstairs. Roxy has a small apartment on the second tier of his bar.
He came to the door after a while, wearing passionate pink pajamas. He still had sleep in his eye.
“Glad you made it, Bill. C’min. Be awake in a minute. Have a seat. You look weak in the knees.”
In the large living room I sat myself in a low chair across from the studio bed where Roxy had been sleeping. He went to the bath, washed his face and combed his hair, came back looking surprisingly brisk.
“I can put on some coffee . . .”
“Don’t think so, Roxy.”
“Cigarette?”
I made a face.
“What kept you?”
I shook my head. “We brought him back. That’s all that matters.”
“Donny phoned in earlier. You had trouble.”
“Some. We left a couple of hurt people behind. That Arlene. They had me. He came through in a big way.”
Roxy sat on the side of the bed. “He was at the hospital when he phoned. Something about his eye. They were giving him shots. He’s earned himself a bonus tonight. So have you.” I let that one ride.
“What kind of shape was Nathan in?”
“Drunk. I think he woke up when Karis was putting him to bed. He had another bad headache.”
“You’ve been over at the Fisher house?”
“Yeah.”
“Donny said there were pictures.”
“Somebody was taking snapshots from the closet. He had a full view of the bed.” I took out the one remaining photo, the one I had saved for Roxy. He got up from the studio bed and took the picture cautiously.
“I burned the rest,” I said. “I must have brought home a bushel of pictures like that. I didn’t want to take a chance on missing any of Nathan.”
“Interesting,” Roxy said, looking at the photo. He turned and walked slowly toward an old slant-top desk beside double windows.
I took a cigarette lighter from a low buffet table near the chair and flicked it on. “Roxy.”
He looked at me.
“Better burn it,” I said. “The wrong people might get hold of it.”
A trace of annoyance crept into his eyes before being obliterated by a smile that was a little too warm and friendly to be convincing. “Yes. Certainly.” He came toward me almost regretfully and handed over the picture. I touched the flame to it without looking. I had seen too much of Nathan and his poor frantic efforts to reaffirm his looted manhood.
When the flame began to warm my fingers I dropped the charring fragments into an ashtray, stirred the ashes with a fingertip after they had cooled some. Roxy watched me silently.
“You spent a lot of time with her this evening,” he said in soft tones.
“Yeah.”
“The two of you sorted through those pictures?”
“No. Karis didn’t see them. She was upstairs with Nathan.”
“Did you make it with her tonight, Bill?”
“What?”
He looked reflectively at his hands. “She’s a lovely girl. Tall, graceful. She can be strong as iron. I know. I know how it is with girls like her. I happened to be in the right place at the right time once. With her, I mean. I was surprised. Afterward, I had a taste in my mouth. Like dark warm blood.”
“Roxy!”
He gave me a look of some astonishment. “I’m sorry, Bill. I supposed—well, I supposed you thought she was entirely amateur. I just thought I’d mention the way it is with her. I have nothing against Karis. I hardly know her. It’s not her fault.”
He turned away and went to the windows, walking stiffly. I put my face in my hands and listened to the beat inside my head. I was tired. I knew I was liable to say almost anything. It was a dangerous feeling.
Roxy said, “A silly thing to be talking about. There are more important matters we need to discuss.”
“Like what?”
“I saw Sam Gulliver today.”
“Oh.”
We looked at each other, Roxy regarding me with faint speculation, wondering if I were still a bargain. He was ready to make up his mind either way.
“I got suspended,” I said.
“I know.”
“He tell you why?”
Roxy made a movement with his hand. “The Jimmy Herne thing. Sam seemed pretty upset. He seemed to think you’re trying to undermine him.” I saw the beginning of a doubt in Roxy’s eyes that could mean anything.
“Roxy, the other night a body was discovered in the basement of Jimmy Herne’s employer, Leland Smithell. The point is, during our investigations we proved Smithell a murderer and thief, and we turned up other information that strongly indicates Jimmy Herne didn’t kill Smithell, that he was the victim of a neat frame. I took this evidence to Gulliver, expecting him at least to look into it further. He didn’t.”
Roxy considered this. “What do you think you can do, Bill?”
“I don’t know. I can’t make Gulliver reopen the case. But I’ll do something.”
He turned his head away from me disapprovingly. “I told you once that it would only bring you trouble if you went out of your way to antagonize him.”
He leaned against the slant-top desk. “Besides, if you’re right, Bill, you share Gulliver’s blame.”
“You’re not telling me anything.”
Roxy smoothed a few errant hairs in his mustache with his little finger. “Gulliver’s had three good years in Cheyney,” he said reflectively. “There’s nothing dishonest about Sam. But he has no refinement of thought or personality. Crude men make mistakes, and their mistakes make them useless. I think the good years are over for Sam Gulliver.”
He opened a drawer of the desk and took out a fountain pen and checkbook. He wrote out the check and brought it over to me, offered it with a shy smile.
I took it, looked at it. The check was for five hundred dollars. I felt a weary urge to laugh. I had just found out how much I was worth. I tried to think what five hundred dollars meant to me. I decided it meant nothing, not when it came from Roxy. I gave back the check.
“I’m not for sale, Roxy.”
He looked properly puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean. It’s just a little thank-you note. For helping Nathan tonight.”
“I didn’t help Nathan,” I said. “I’m not qualified. He’s a sick baby boy. You better talk to him, Roxy, or he won’t be good to anybody.”
Roxy folded the check slowly, and put it in the pocket of his pajamas. He seemed oblivious of my warning about Nathan. “I’ll keep this. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
“No. What I did wasn’t for you and wasn’t for Nathan. You don’t need help and Nathan’s beyond it. I was trying to help Karis.”
I closed my eyes, remembering her asleep on the bed, sleeping like a child, breathing deeply. She was very lovely, but I knew there was a remoteness in me she could never reach. That no woman would ever reach again.
He nodded understandingly. “She is rather satisfying. Even passionate.”
“Stop talking about her.” I got to my feet, swayed a little. It would have been easy to fall on my face and stay there for twenty-four hours. “What do you want with Nathan anyway?” I said recklessly. “Are you really interested in his career, or is he just another potentially useful little knicknack like Dr. Einhorn and his wonderful bottle?”
DR. EINHORN WAS TWO HOURS LATE. HIS WAITING ROOM filled slowly with patients, who shuffled in uncertainly with their complaints and ailments and sat tensely in formidable wooden chairs as if listening for a scream.
He came in about ten and distributed apologies. I cornered him before he could go into conference with his office nurse, showed him the badge, requested a few words. He sighed. He was very busy. But he took me to his office and shut the door.
“What can I do for you, Randall?” he said, putting himself in an old swivel chair behind his desk. He wore a brown suit with russet threads and a black string tie. Two deep lines clutched at his large dry mouth like small ice tongs, and there were pads of finely wrinkled skin under his sad eyes. He didn’t look well.
“I understand Nathan Fisher is one of your patients,” I said.
He nodded. “I’ve been the family physician for some fifteen years now. Why don’t you have a seat?”
I chose a chair near the desk. Dr. Einhorn said, “What is your interest in Nathan?”
“I don’t know him very well. But I’ve seen enough of him to guess he’s heading for a crack-up. He goes on periodic drunks. He has violent headaches. He takes up with prostitutes. I wouldn’t care one way or another, except for his sister.”
He leaned back in the chair, studying me. “I understand, then, this visit isn’t an official one.”
“No. But don’t close up on me, doctor.”
He slid open a desk drawer, took out a small box, removed two capsules from the box. He swallowed them, wincing slightly. He replaced the box.
“What is it you want to know? You think I can, or will, tell you what’s wrong with Nathan?”
The doctor shrugged. “He gets drunk. He has headaches. He seeks quick, convenient outlets for his sexual energy. Is all this so strange or terrible? He’s under a strain. He’s launching a political campaign, the outcome of which is vitally important to his career. He lost his wife a year ago. He’s the high-strung type. Works furiously for long hours without rest. These things contribute to the behavior of which we speak.”
“I could figure that out for myself, doctor. You haven’t said a word.”
He covered his annoyance with a grin. “Then suppose you tell me what’s on your mind, Randall.”
“I think maybe his headaches are psychosomatic.”
He shrugged again. “I’ve examined him. So have specialists in St. Louis. You’re right about that. We found no organic cause. I suggested psychiatric treatment.” Dr. Einhorn chuckled sourly. “He threatened to find another doctor. So I told him I had a drug that might give him relief. The capsules he takes are sugar. They do him as much good as anything will. That, of course, is confidential.”
“How did Nathan get along with his wife?”
He pouted slightly, as if it were none of my business, but he answered readily. “He worshiped her. Nathan’s an intense young man. He became far too wrapped up in Kelly Anne, so that she dominated his life instead of being just a desirable part of it. I warned him about this. Kelly Anne had a rheumatic heart condition. She was my patient. If she had taken good care of herself she might have lived ten or fifteen years longer. She didn’t take good care of herself. She drank too much. She never slept. The consequence was inevitable. Her heart gave out. Nathan was inconsolable. He had tried to get her to slow down, but felt a distinct sense of guilt because he’d failed. I think he’ll straighten out before long.”
He was silent momentarily. A faint remorseful smile appeared for an instant.
Then he said, “I told you Nathan adored Kelly Anne. Perhaps you know she did not adore him.”
“I’ve heard.”
“She was going to divorce Nathan.”
“Oh? When?”
“She made up her mind a couple of weeks before she died. They had already been to her lawyer’s once. Maybe Nathan’s abject love was at the bottom of it. Maybe she was just ready to move on. Maybe it was Karis being a competitor for Nathan’s affection.”
“What kind of settlement did Kelly Anne want?”
He smiled thinly. His eyes remained constantly sad, as if a part of his mind forever dwelled on his own difficulties. Maybe that was the reason he talked so freely of Nathan.
“I suppose if I don’t tell you, you’ll find out elsewhere.” He glanced at his watch. “I don’t know how much she wanted. But I was told it was more than the family could easily afford.”
“I thought a sustained exertion on the heart was necessary to cause failure in rheumatic cases,” I said. “From what I’ve heard, Kelly Anne just dropped.”
He gave me a smile of approval. “That’s true. But Kelly Anne had been drinking with foolish abandon all afternoon. Perhaps she ran up the stairs after something, ran down. This sudden exertion, combined with the effects of the alcohol, finished her. It was a large party, and nobody was keeping track of anybody else. I was there. I got to her right after it happened.”
“What did the autopsy show?”
He shook his head. “There was no autopsy. No reason for one. I signed the death certificate.” He took a pair of rimless glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. “I’ll have to get to my patients now. I hope I’ve been able to tell you something about Nathan.”
“You’ve given me some help,” I admitted.
He looked over his glasses at me. “I hope you understand,” he said softly. “I’m worried about Nathan. I want to help him. He won’t let me.”
His eyes were glumly intent on his introspected thoughts. I left him.
AT THREE THAT AFTERNOON I MET PHIL NAAR IN A HIGH-way cafe on the west side of town. He sat in an isolated booth toward the rear of the place, staring at the table. A cup of coffee in front of him looked cold and untouched. His raw white hair was slickly combed and parted in the middle. It had been a long time since I had seen him with his hair combed.
“Hello, Bill,” he said without looking up.
“I didn’t know if you’d come,” I said uncertainly.
He looked at me then, as I sat across the table from him. “Gulliver was in his office all morning with two FBI men. They seemed satisfied that Smithell was Richard Olson. I don’t know what Gulliver told them, what he said about the money. Or if he mentioned it.”
A waitress came and I ordered something to get her out of the way. Phil continued to stare at the table.
“You know what, Bill?” he said in a quiet, plodding voice. “I woke up yesterday morning and discovered I didn’t like myself.”
“Everybody goes through that.”
He looked at me, his eyes hurt and faintly bitter. “No. This was different. I looked at myself in the mirror. I really saw me. I told myself, ‘You stink,’ and didn’t feel any pity or remorse. I agreed one hundred per cent with myself that I was no damn good. I’ve wasted my whole life trying to kid myself that I was being useful as a cop. I would have been a failure at anything else and I would have been a failure as a cop, too, anywhere but in this town. Maybe you’re a failure, Bill. You failed Jimmy Herne. But you had guts enough to fail honestly. I would never have dared say a word to Gulliver.”
In a way his self-abasement gave him a sort of lonely strength. I couldn’t touch him with pity or anger or sympathy. I let him alone.
He spoke more rapidly, as if completing vague resolutions. “I’m through. I’m going to resign. I don’t want this town any more. I don’t want the pension checks. I’m going to live with Jerry. He’s the only good thing that’s a part of me.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Next week, some time. Do you think I’m right, Bill?”
“You’re running away from a ghost.”
He had anticipated this. “No. Jimmy Herne’s not the cause of it. He was just a focal point. When he died I began to think.”
He nodded. With one hand he pulled nervously at the metal link band of his wrist watch. “I’ve made up my mind. What are you going to do, Bill? Go back?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about it much. I’m beginning to wonder if I care any more. I’ve had other things to think about.”
There was a zealous gleam in his eye. In the midst of his self-destruction he had sensed the salvation for others. “Why not go back to school, Bill? You’re older now, better adjusted. Go back and study law. With your experience as a cop you’d have a head start.”
“I’m considering it. Sometimes I think I’ve had a gutful. But I can’t run away.”
“If you go back to Gulliver you’re still a quitter. You can’t do anything now.”
I said with a flaring of anger, “Don’t try to push me into your mold.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled. He studied his watch. “Well, I’m due at HQ. I’ll be gone in a week . . . I hope I see you before I go, Bill.”
“I hope so,” I said. We watched each other awkwardly, complete strangers despite years of association.
“What did you want to see me about, Bill? Is there anything I can do to help you—” he began.
“Maybe there will be.”
“Tell me.”
“I’m working on something now. But I’m not sure what.”
“Well,” Phil said. “I’d like to help, sure. Sure I’ll help. If I can.”