I chortled. This is a problem that I frequently suffer from: objectivity. When I find myself in a situation that could objectively be described as “ludicrous,” I often chortle as though I were viewing myself as a character in a movie. Specifically, a comedy. Like a member of a theater audience watching Laurel and Hardy walking inattentively toward an open manhole, I start laughing before anything funny has actually happened. The problem is that in real life, laughing inexplicably can be unnerving to nearby people, such as bus passengers, bank customers, and cops.
“No … what I mean is … I just remembered something,” I said, dropping my smile.
Glance.
“You were saying that it was time to what?” Argyle said.
“Yeah. Time to … what?” Duncan said.
“I was going to say it was time to … to get in my cab and go on up the mountain. But I just now remembered something that I forgot to tell you yesterday.”
Glance. Glance. Glance.
Duncan and Argyle kept looking from each other to me and back to each other again. They were like kittens watching a ping-pong game.
I kept talking. “I didn’t want to look at the wrecks, so I walked back toward my cab. But when I turned around to see if Trowbridge was following me, he was kneeling on the abutment.”
“What do you mean?” Argyle said.
“I mean he had crawled up onto the stone wall. He was on his hands and knees looking out over the edge of the cliff.”
Glance.
I think I’ll knock off the “Glance” business from now on. You probably have the general idea about Duncan and Argyle’s synchronized-swimming approach to investigative teamwork.
“Why didn’t you tell us this yesterday?” Duncan said.
I started to say “I … don’t … know,” but one Jon Voight per fine mess was my limit. Instead I said, “I just didn’t think of it. That’s what I meant when I abruptly ceased speaking a moment ago. Yesterday you asked me if Trowbridge said or did anything that might indicate to me that he was thinking of committing suicide. Well, the fact is, for a moment there I thought he was going to jump off the cliff.”
I’m sorry. I gotta do this one more time. Glance.
Okay. End of gimmick.
The cops peered at me. Let’s be frank. I was fully aware by now that they suspected me of bumping off Mr. Trowbridge.
And then, in a voice that was so soft and steady and slow that he might have been painting Fabergé eggs with his breath, Argyle said, “Did he make a move to jump?”
“No he didn’t,” I said in a similar voice. This is another problem I have. I start talking like the people who are talking to me. It’s a cabbie habit. It’s motivated by tips, i.e., you don’t want to start talking like Abbie Hoffman if General Patton is in your backseat. But the habit becomes so ingrained that you sometimes forget that tipping doesn’t take place “outside the cab,” which is to say, no lawman ever handed me a tip at the end of a grilling.
“What did he do next?” Duncan said.
“He didn’t do anything. He just kept kneeling there. I told him I had left the meter running, but he didn’t move. So I went back toward him.”
“Why?”
“Because … like I said … I had this idea that he was going to jump. I kind of started walking fast. And then …”
I stopped.
“And then … what?” Argyle said.
I couldn’t stop myself from stopping at the wrong places in the middles of sentences. It happened every time I started thinking. Thank God I wasn’t chewing gum.
“I walked toward Mr. Trowbridge with my arms out.” “Out how?”
“Well … like this,” I said, and I reached toward my supervisor, Hogan. That was mere coincidence. Or was it?
“Why did you do that?”
“Because I had the feeling he was going to jump and so did my arms. I mean, it was instinctive. Before I even got to him I thought I was going to have to grab him.”
Argyle sat up straight and said, “How fast were you moving?” “I would say that I was moving at a quick shuffle.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fast … but not running.”
“That sounds like a trot.”
“It wasn’t quite a trot. I guess it was more of a lope.”
“So you were loping toward Mr. Trowbridge with your arms sticking straight out in front of you, is that correct?”
“Well … my elbows were poised in a slight crook.”
“Crook?”
“Bent at the joints.”
I crooked my elbows to demonstrate.
“Then what happened?” Duncan said.
I paused and lifted my eyes to a point above Hogan’s head. Argyle glanced around at the wall. “What are you looking at, Murph?”
I lowered my eyes and looked at Argyle. “I’m trying to picture the scene in my mind so I can describe it accurately. I often do this when I’m writing prose fiction. It’s a tip I once read in a how-to book.”
“Fiction?” he said.
“Novels,” I said.
“What kind of novels do you write?”
“Unpublished.”
Argyle looked at Duncan. It wasn’t a glance. It was more of a telepathic inquiry. I recognized it. I once wrote a novel about two telepaths who robbed a bank.
“Do you enjoy making up stories, Murph?”
I swallowed hard. “Well … ‘enjoy’ may not be the right word. I’ve been doing it for twenty years, and while I did enjoy it when I started writing in college, the thrill sort of wore off after fifteen years. Rejection slips had a lot to do with it. Nowadays I think of writing as hard work rather than the lark it was when I was a student and felt that writing a novel was merely a matter of getting some words down on paper and … and …”
I stopped talking again. I had the feeling I had either answered the question or hadn’t come close.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Hogan said. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but approximately thirty-four percent of the drivers at Rocky Cab are unpublished writers. You can check my files.”
Argyle nodded. “No need, Mr. Hogan. I’ll take your word for it. Half the lab boys in Homicide are writing techno-thrillers.”
He turned back to me. “When you approached Mr. Trowbridge with your arms crooked, did you take hold of him?”
“No, sir. He climbed down off the abutment before I actually reached him.”
“So you didn’t touch him?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you tell him that you were afraid he was going to jump?’
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I would have been embarrassed.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t like people to know I think things.”
“What happened after the incident ended?”
“We got back into my cab, then he told me he had changed his mind and wanted to return to Denver.”
“Why did he change his mind?”
James Dickey was back. I decided to try a new way of phrasing my reply. “I … didn’t … ask.”
“Why not?”
“I never ask my customers why they go places. I just take them there.”
“Let me see if I have this straight,” Duncan said, referring to his notebook. “Mr. Trowbridge asked you to take him to the top of Lookout Mountain. You stopped at a scenic overview halfway up, got out, and looked over the cliff. Mr. Trowbridge climbed onto an abutment and looked over the edge, and you loped toward him with your arms out because you were afraid he was going to jump. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“And then, after the two of you got back into the cab, Mr. Trowbridge inexplicably changed his mind about going to the top, and he asked you to take him back to Denver. Is that correct?”
For a moment I was tempted to joust with Duncan over the word “inexplicably.” But I had to remind myself that I was no longer in college where debating the nuances of language couldn’t get you arrested.
“Yes.”
“Then you drove him back to Denver and dropped him off in an area where there may or may not have been any witnesses.”
“Yes.”
Duncan closed his notebook and looked at his partner.
“I think we had better continue this conversation down at headquarters.”
I waited for the cuffs to come out.
I had a long wait. I wasn’t under arrest. Not yet anyway. Duncan told me that they just wanted to take me in for some further questioning. He said things were getting a little murky. I knew what he was referring to. He was referring to me.
I stood up and reached for my briefcase, but Duncan said he would hold onto it for the time being. As the detectives accompanied me down the stairs and out to their unmarked car, I felt ashamed. Nobody in my family had ever been “taken in for questioning.” Whenever the cops showed up at the Murphy house, they always had a bona fide arrest warrant. One of my uncles, Kenneth Murphy, was arrested in Tennessee in 1950. It was during the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Uncle Ken had been a janitor at Oak Ridge, but let’s drop it. The federal government did, for lack of evidence.
They drove me to DPD. I had taken fares there before but I had never been inside. It was a newish building that covered the entire block between 13th and 14th at Bannock. Slick architecture. Vast apron of concrete that you had to cross to get to the front door, except we went in the back door, i.e., the basement entrance. It was a basement like all basements. I could have designed that basement.
Architects.
Give me a break.
We took an elevator up to Missing Persons. I wondered why they didn’t call it “Missing People.” What’s the difference between Persons and People? I decided not to ask. I had the feeling Duncan and Argyle were in no mood for etymology.
“Have a seat, Murph,” Duncan said.
We were in a small room. If you’ve ever seen In Cold Blood, you’ve seen a small room.
I sat on a chair by a table. It was the same table you see in all small rooms. Rectangular. Wooden. Big enough for two cops to sit side-by-side opposite me. There was only one thing missing: an ashtray. The state had outlawed smoking in government buildings. Now only outlaws smoked in government buildings. I used to smoke cigarettes, but that was long ago and in another shirt: white collar.
Duncan and Argyle left me alone in the room. They told me they had some official business to take care of. It may have been a veiled reference to a restroom, but I didn’t ask. I sat alone for five minutes, certain that my every move was being recorded by a secret hidden camera. I’ve felt this way ever since I was six, the same year I entered Blessed Virgin Catholic Grade School. When I was a kid I used to put a towel over the bathroom mirror in our house whenever I used the can because I thought it was a “TV window.” I thought all my classmates were watching me through it. But when I went to school everybody acted innocent. This made me even more suspicious.
At any rate, the idea that I was being watched by members of the DPD made me sit very still. I became self-conscious. I became aware of my every physical motion. I tried to act innocent. I knew how to do it. I had twelve years of Catholic schoolmates under my belt. But suddenly it occurred to me that by sitting too still I might look suspicious, so I decided to move around a bit: cough, scratch my nose, blink a few times, scoot my chair back, rub my left elbow, clear my throat, suck in my cheeks, cross my eyes, and wiggle my fingers like a piano player—you get the picture.
Then Duncan and Argyle walked back in.