Friday for Death Page 2

  “It’ll be all right from here on in,” I said. “We’ve been sort of waiting for the old buzzard to die, Harv. Gwen’s been fed up with my job here for a long time. You know that.”

  “We’ll fix it,” Harvey said. “We’ll fix it, but good.”

  Harvey’s phone rang. For a flickering moment I thought it might be Gwen. My hope died when he laughed into the mouth piece.

  “Hello, big eyes,” he said. “What’s eating you?”

  I envied him his casual aplomb with women. I rose in my chair, to leave him with his latest love. But Harvey waved me back. He held his hand over the mouthpiece. “I’ll brush off this babe in a minute,” he said. “Sit tight, Steve. We’ve got things to talk about.”

  He chatted amiably for a few minutes. He joked. He quipped. Then he hung up and poured another drink. We drank the Teacher’s straight, out of paper cups. We chased it with water, the way we used to swill it at Meade, when Harv and I were hardening our guts for Uncle Sam. In those days, Harvey was lighter, younger, but not fresher. He was a middleweight soldier who could think and fight with equal skill. He was agile and athletic, the fastest man in our unit until a grenade got him in the leg at the Battle of the Bulge. His was an uncanny perception. You had the feeling that Harvey knew how the little gears were working behind your ears. He looked at you and through you. He didn’t push it. His eyes were soft and quiet, as harmless as his voice. But behind his bright blue eyes was a storehouse of knowledge. The Jonas Tripp Company grew fat on his talents. Harvey loved the business, and because he loved it, he mastered it long before I understood the rudiments of skip-tracing. It was his passion for the small things that made him a genius at searching down the fly-by-night bill dodgers, the runaways, the chiselers, all of whom were the meat and fish of the Jonas Tripp Company. Harvey could track down and trace any problem handed to us. But, better than that, he could see through the hard bone of your frontal lobe.

  “Rejoice,” he said, and lifted his cup. “The king is dead, like I said before, Steve. You look as though you expected him to walk in and join us.”

  “He’s not easy to forget.”

  “I find it no great strain,” said Harvey.

  “I won’t lose him until you get the painters to redo this morgue,” I said. “Jonas Tripp left his mark in this layout. The place reeks of him. I can see him now in the vintage decorations behind you. He was a strong character. He could come back and haunt us. We practically wished him to death.”

  Harvey laughed. When Harvey laughed he gave it his whole face. He exploded suddenly and returned to normal with a short gasp. “I’ll bet you’ve got a little dummy of him at home, Steve. I’ll bet you stuck pins in Jonas every day since you came to work for the old buzzard.”

  He wasn’t far wrong. For four years I had chafed under the office routine created for me by Jonas Tripp. I had butchered him often in my own living room. I had boiled him in oil while Gwen listened to my endless stories of his crotchety reign of terror. I had painted him for Gwen in simple colors, an evil old man, a ghoulish crank, a modern Scrooge who lived only to torture Steve McGrath. But after a while I stopped sharing him with Gwen. She told me to change my job if he annoyed me that much. But, of course, that was impossible because of Harvey. Harvey had made a promise a long time ago. I wondered now whether he remembered it.

  I said, “I stuck pins, all right.”

  “You can throw them away now,” Harvey said, and swallowed a long gulp of Scotch. He dropped the cup daintily in the basket. “Unless you want to begin on old Harvey. You are gazing at the new crown prince of the Tripp empire.”

  “Hail the prince,” I said. “Is the prince sure he’s the only remaining heir?”

  “The prince is positive. Uncle Jonas was too mean to take a spouse and share his ducats with a living creature. Uncle Jonas was a maggot, an evil man, but it has availed him nothing. In spite of himself, he was working for little Harvey all along. It would have killed him sooner, I’m sure, had he known about it while he stamped these dusty corridors.”

  “No strings?”

  “Not a thread, Steve.” Harvey smiled. “He willed it all to me and I’m boss now and we can talk business.”

  This was the moment. This was the sentence that should have moved me to the edge of my chair. But the excitement had died in me. My heart did not flutter. My hands were stiff on the chair arm. Instead of joy, the tightness grew. My eyes saw only the sick brown of the walls behind Harvey. My mind clung to the image of Gwen as I had seen her last night. I remembered that she had smiled at me slyly when I told her to wait for my call. She had almost laughed at me; that was it.

  “I’ve felt like a heel these past four years,” Harvey said. “But I feel better now, Steve. I promised you a future here because I really thought we’d go places. It never occurred to me that you’d have to warm your tail in that rat nest of yours until Jonas died. But that’s the way it had to be and you waited it out. It’s been a long wait, chum, but from here on in I make good for you.” He waved a hand at the mahogany paneling. “It’s all little Harvey’s now, every last inch of dust and grime. We’ll do this dump over, Steve. We’ll tear out all the cubbyholes and bring light and air to the business. We’ll load it with class so we can gather in new customers, the big ones, naturally. Then, when we’re all finished, we’ll change that name plate on the door to read: Tripp and McGrath, just like we planned it at Fort Meade, remember?”

  “I remember,” I said, remembering nothing but the immediate past, the last four hours, the birth of the day. If Gwen had made my breakfast, I might have reminded her again. I might have sold her the idea of waiting for my call. But Gwen had not made my breakfast in over three years.

  “What’s eating you, Steve?” Harvey seemed let down. He had expected enthusiasm. I gave him nothing but my vacant stare. He leaned forward and poked me playfully in the ribs. “You look as though you really missed the old man.”

  “I’m overcome,” I said. “It’s a little sudden, even though I’ve been wishing for it all these years. I’ve got to get used to it. I’ve got to live with it for a while, Harvey.”

  “Take it home and live with it then,” said Harvey. “Tell it to your little woman. Gwen will get you hopped about it.”

  “She sure will.”

  He pushed me gently through the door. His phone was ringing again. “We’ll finish our bull session later, Steve. Meantime, you just relax. I’ll expect you in on Monday morning, bright and early, any time before eleven. We’ll make you an operator and you’ll work outside.”

  The clock in the reception room stood at eleven when I left. In the street I was plagued by strange impulses. I was a foreigner on the sidewalk. Around and about me swirled the pedestrian flow. I stared at it, a tourist on a holiday. There were invisible chains holding me to the edge of the building. If old Jonas were alive, I would be up at my desk, arranging the final details of my noon report for his sharp eyes. I would be fingering the yellow sheets, checking and rechecking for errors. I would be bracing myself for the impact of his personality. He would hold me at his side until a minute to one. Then would come sudden release, the free time, the hour for lunch. His rheumy old eyes would squint over his spectacles at the wall clock, always at the right moment. “Lunch, McGrath,” he’d say, turning the yellow sheets upside down on his green blotter. “We’ll continue at two.”

  But this was not lunch time. My legs obeyed my brain and did not carry me across the street to the restaurant. Instead, I ambled along Broadway.

  The sun was bright and the street alive with new sights and sounds for me. I should have known this part of town well. Certainly I had worn a groove in it during the last four years. Yet I was charmed by this street, suddenly aware of its myriad details, the signs over the shops, the glitter of the windows, the little things, the red-headed cop blowing his whistle, the blind man on the corner who tapped his way through the crowds. Caugh
t in the snare of my daily routine I had never really opened my eyes to these things before.

  There was a subway entrance on the next corner. Habit nudged me toward it. I was going home, of course. It was eleven in the morning and I was going home. I stared at the maw of the subway, disturbed by the sight of it, annoyed with myself for having reached here so soon. Who can describe the tortures of habit? For four years I had rushed for this subway entrance immediately after the long day at the office. I would reach this stage of my homeward voyage at precisely 5:06. It had become part of my automaton existence to set my watch with the clock over the change booth in the station. I would tuck my paper under my arm and correct my wrist watch, always a few minutes late.

  I went through the turnstile and corrected my watch. It was 11:08. The gesture seemed strange flow. Out of place. Out of time. On the platform, a few people stood in idle poses. A man in a brown hat studied the posters. A woman dabbed at her face in a gum machine mirror. Far down the end, two men argued, and the sound of their voices was flat and unreal. The scene was out of focus for me. I was accustomed to noise and confusion on this platform, the sweat and strain of the rush hour. Now the quiet oppressed me, ate at my brain, building an indescribable uneasiness in me. I was a stranger here. I was an automaton, a perfect machine. But slightly out of whack.

  I fought off the urge to rush away from this subway station, to take a walk, see a movie; bury myself in another line of action. It would be a punishment for Gwen, certainly. I could go to a ball game, planning my return home at the usual time—at 5:30. I could break the good news to her over the dinner table, casually, gently. In that way, it might be a greater surprise to her.

  Or would it only annoy her? Gwen would expect me to remain in character. Steve McGrath, the little boy with the box of candy, the pursuer, the man who kept trying. She had learned to use her coldness, her overpowering disregard, as a weapon. That was why she had taken the trip to Pine Bush. She began her campaign without words, showing me her restlessness by inflicting her boredom upon me. And when the breach was wide, she began to talk of Pine Bush. She needed a vacation; that was it. We had never lived apart since the day we were married. A week with her folks would do us good.

  She reckoned my loneliness during that long week. She sent me no message. I went through the separation, heavy with a sadness for the first few days. I missed her. I would have shouted for joy if she had phoned me—just once. And as the days wore on, I found myself hating her for her forgetfulness. I made plans to rebuff her when she returned, to tell her how cruel she had been.

  But how skillfully she used herself against me! How completely she controlled me! Only yesterday, last night, she came back from her vacation, and it was as if she had never been away. Could it be that she had made up her mind about me? Had she decided that our marriage was good, that we were still in love? I tried for perspective. I tried for an honest appraisal of our life together. But the past faded, somehow. I measured everything by the yardstick of this final piece of news—my release from the bondage of Jonas Tripp. If our marriage was not completely hopeless, this was the time to rededicate it. This was the last chance, the change of pace, the promise of final adjustment.

  I took the local train uptown. I tried to relax, to enjoy the strangeness of an almost empty train, to study the two or three people who rode with me. But the image of Gwen persisted. What would she say when I walked in? I pictured the first rush of pleasure, the attempt at gaiety, the forced smile. And then? She might sit at the table in the dinette, leaning lazily on an elbow, her cold eyes bright with some secret enjoyment. She might smile at me in her brittle way, and pass it all off with a few forced words of enthusiasm. And after that she could kill it with a word. It could become stale and dead within a day or two, whether good news or bad, only because I, myself, had become stale and dead to Gwen.

  On the street, I shook off all my doubts. This was a fine day, a spring day. On Bleecker Street the children played in the sun and a pushcart peddler rolled his wagonload of potted flowers along the curbing. He was singing as he walked. In a window a fat woman leaned on her ample bosom. The sounds of the city were hushed here. The hum of traffic came from far away, over the wall of buildings, muted and dull. Here an organ grinder turned a sprightly tune. Four little girls hopped and skipped about him. Across the street, Giuseppe, the Italian baker, breathed in the freshness. All these things were a tonic for my eyes. I found myself whistling now, confident, alert; alive.

  Gwen and I belonged here. This was our home. Four years ago we had met in a Greenwich Village bistro, The Tub, an artist’s hangout, a cellar hideaway where Bohemian talent sipped tall mugs of beer and ate pretzels from a barrel top. Gwen had come into New York from upstate, a farm girl in search of the muse. She painted pretty miniatures on lampshades. She lived with Mitzi Granger in an upstairs studio, complete with skylight, plaster walls, and the roaches and mice that made it different and artistically acceptable. Mitzi danced. Her friends were of the lower caste theatrical society, a group of hams. We married quickly. But we did not leave the Village. Bleecker Street was our street, a block full of our people, artists and musicians and cartoonists. In the beginning we were thrilled by every moment here. And now, walking down its crowded pavements, I was thrilled anew. After today we would be again a part of this little street within the city’s core. I would see it more often now. The shackles of routine were falling away from me. This was our future, now that Jonas Tripp was dead.

  I let myself into the hall without ringing. I wanted to avoid Mrs. Monati, the ground-floor Amazon with the heart of gold and the voice of Sicily. Mrs. Monati had a heavy tongue, rich and loud and emotional. She might greet me in her usual way, arms outflung, mouth wide open, shouting my name in olive oil accents, loud enough to telegraph my surprise to the second-floor front. I crept away from her door. I went up the stairs gingerly, the excitement alive in my chest.

  The upstairs hall lay gray and quiet before me. There was a milk bottle in front of Ken Sisley’s door. Ken was a cartoonist, who lived the true Bohemian life, a commercial buffoon who worked on a variable schedule. He lived by his wits and sketched only when the imp was in him. He would give us a party, tonight, I was sure. He would call us in and open a bottle of corn for us.

  I stood, finally, before our door. This was the moment and I found myself unprepared for it. A confusion of ideas beat at my brain and in the pause, I stood there like a fool, staring at the small chrome “A” on the upper panel. I was home. And early. For the first time in years the sight of this door seemed strange to me. It could have been the small square of sunlight filtering down from the upstairs landing. It could have been the sharp highlights on the edge of the “A.” I reached for the knob and turned it. I took a deep breath and opened the door, and went in smiling.

  And then all humor left me.

  Gwen lay half sprawled on the couch. She had on her bright red robe. The robe was half open over her knees. She did not see me immediately. She couldn’t see me. A man sat beside her on the couch, his back to me. He was kissing her. She had her arms around his neck and her hands were in his hair and I saw the small veins on her wrist and the orange polish on her fingernails. Her foot moved, slowly, sensuously, along the cushions. Her slipper dropped to the floor. My eyes clung to the slipper, fascinated by the yellow pompon. In the tight moment I heard the rasp of my breath. A breath of wind rustled the drawn shade. From some far place a taxi hooted. All this in a flying tick of time. All this in a breath, a shudder, a clenching of fists, a pounding of my heart.

  The door clicked closed behind me.

  The man turned and then Gwen saw me and it was a tableau, a cheap scene. I watched the man. Gwen rose on an elbow and pushed him away. A muscle quivered in his cheek. There was a simpering smile under the muscle. He got up and began to fuss with the open collar of his striped shirt, gray and blue stripes, broad and loud. He was medium-sized, puffed in the chest. I noticed his hair
y wrists and the garish wrist watch, glittering gold and broad-banded. His face was slick and oily, long-nosed and dead pan. He put his hands in his pockets.

  He said, “Who’s this character?”

  He said it casually. I was the Fuller Brush man. I was the bill collector or a plumber. Gwen didn’t answer him. She sat there smiling at me, challenging me with her eyes, arrogant and sly.

  “Hello, Stevie,” she said. “Who let you out so early?”

  It was supposed to be funny. It was always light and airy when she called me Stevie. But I didn’t laugh. I was trapped inside the walls of my emotions. I was frozen, rooted, shocked. Once before I had been caught like this, a long time ago, in a small town in France. Harvey and I had shared the moment then. We had been sent out to get a sniper, at night, through the woods, behind a dark farm into a barn. We crept the last mile. We squirmed through a field of dying grain, listening to the sound of our breathing. We saw him at last, from a little hillock behind the barn. He was a small German, a boy, maybe. His thin frame was silhouetted against the sky, an easy target, a duck on a log. But when my finger moved to the trigger, I froze. The little tendons in my hand refused to pull for me. The sweat was salt on my tongue. It was Harvey who finished the German. I needed Harvey now.

  The scene was out of focus for me. I couldn’t handle it. It was as though I were an actor with stage fright, iced into inactivity, afraid to read my lines, to make the right gestures, the movements needed to further the action. My hands were tight at my sides. My knees shook. And my brain was paralyzed, rooted to the moment through my eyes. I stared at the slipper, only the fallen slipper on the floor.

  Gwen said something then, but my ears did not pick it up. The man laughed, deep in his throat, a surly laugh. Alongside her slipper sat a tall glass, half full of liquor. Gwen laughed. The glass went up. She was drinking now, finishing her liquor.