Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death Page 15

  But I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t any sense of responsibility that held me back, or any desire to see justice done, or even any interest in particular in the task I was out to perform. It was merely that this was my profession, and that it was impossible for me to work at my profession in any other way than with my best efforts. When I handed someone over to the authorities—or to Rembek, depending on the situation—it would be when I was sure I had the right man.

  As I was studying the dossiers and thinking about my attitudes to the job, Rembek came back in, saying, “What do you want to see Goldberg for?”

  “Stay and listen,” I said.

  “He’s got nothing to do with the corporation,” he said. “He’s my personal attorney.”

  “Still,” I said, “I have things to ask him.”

  “You’re looking for somebody in the corporation,” he insisted. “Sam Goldberg can’t help you.”

  “Rita Castle was a part of your personal life,” I explained. “So I want to talk to your personal attorney.”

  “You don’t need him.”

  “Either I talk to him, or I’m off the case.”

  “You want to quit? You keep threatening to quit. You really want to quit?”

  I did, of course, if I were given the right out, but all I said was, “I do if I don’t get to talk to Sam Goldberg.”

  “Then quit,” Rembek said. “Goodbye.” And he stalked out, leaving the door open.

  twenty-four

  KERRIGAN STOPPED ME AT the front door. He wanted to know what was going on, and I told him Rembek had accepted my resignation. He said, “You mean you’re on strike?”

  “No. I mean I’m going home and I’m not going to think about all this any more.”

  “You can’t.”

  “I can. Easily.”

  I left. Down on the sidewalk the doorman tipped his hat at me and called me sir and asked if he should get me a cab. I walked on without acknowledging his presence, went to the subway, and took my train out to Queens.

  The house was very empty. I called Kate in Patchogue and told her she could come on home, I’d quit the job. She wanted to know why and I told her it was because my employer had put an obstruction in my path that made it impossible for me to go on. She asked me if that wasn’t an excuse, and I said, “Maybe it is, but it doesn’t matter, because It’s also the truth.”

  The rain had lessened and was now merely a fine mist, almost hanging suspended in the air. I went out to the backyard, took the tarpaulin off the hole, and started putting down a first layer of concrete block, getting each piece level and smooth and at the proper depth, filling the holes in the blocks with dirt, packing earth in on the sides. I was completely absorbed by the work I was doing, and did no thinking about the murder of Rita Castle.

  Two or three times I heard the phone ringing, but I didn’t answer.

  I worked as long as I could, until it was too dark to see what I was doing, and then reluctantly put the tarp over the hole again and went into the house. Kate and Bill should have been home long before this, so I called Patchogue again and they were still there. Kate said, “I tried to call you, but there wasn’t any answer.”

  “I was in the yard.”

  “We’ll stay over here tonight,” she said. “If you still want us to come home tomorrow, we will.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind,” I said.

  “I’d rather do it this way,” she said.

  So we left it at that. I took a shower, made myself an easy dinner, and then sat in the living room with one lamp lit and watched television. There were no more phone calls. At eleven-thirty I went to bed. I was quite tired from my work in the backyard, and fell immediately asleep.

  Sunday morning opened cloudy, but without rain. I had a quick breakfast but didn’t shave, and was out in the yard by nine o’clock.

  They came a little before eleven, Rembek and Kerrigan and a short round white-haired man with round spectacles and a black briefcase. If they rang the front doorbell I didn’t hear it, and wasn’t aware of them till I looked up from my digging and saw them coming around the corner of the house.

  I knew then I’d never believed it would be that easy to get rid of the job. I knew I had always known it would come after me, it would keep coming after me until it was done, until the murderer of Rita Castle was found and punished.

  I stood leaning on my shovel and watched them come diagonally across the yard toward me. Rembek and Kerrigan looked around in some surprise at the signs of digging, at the mounds of material, but the third man merely came forward, moving in a sort of dogged roll, like a man grown old and fat in luxury and comfort who has suddenly been thrust outside to make his way amid the nettles as best he can.

  The three of them stopped in front of me, and Rembek jabbed a thumb at the third man, saying, “All right, here he is.”

  I said, without hope, “You accepted my resignation.”

  It was Kerrigan who answered. “Mister Tobin,” he said, “you can consider that when Ernie hired you he was doing so in the name of the corporation. It’s the corporation you’ve been working for, and the corporation hasn’t accepted any resignation from you, and isn’t going to accept any resignation from you.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course.” There was no point in further discussion. I put down the shovel and climbed up out of the hole. “If you’ll wait for me inside,” I said, “I’ll get cleaned up.”

  The third man—he had to be Sam Goldberg, judging by Rembek’s nameless introduction—snapped, “I have an appointment at twelve-thirty.”

  “It’s Sunday,” Rembek said, in irritation. “What do you want with appointments on Sunday?”

  “I didn’t want this one either,” said Goldberg. He was peppery, for such a round man.

  I led them into the house and left them in the living room while I went upstairs to shower and shave. When I came back down, Goldberg said, “Could we get this over as soon as possible?”

  “Of course,” I said. I sat down and asked him, “How long ago did Rembek come to you about the divorce?”

  Kerrigan betrayed his surprise, Rembek’s grim mouth told me he’d known this was going to be the subject, and Goldberg, oblivious of any special import to the question, answered it by saying, “About three months ago.”

  “What’s been done on it so far?”

  “Paperwork? Nothing.”

  “Why?”

  He made an irritable little shrug, a fat man’s shrug, and said, “Ernie’s been blowing hot and cold on the subject. One day this, one day that. They told me to speak frankly to you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “You say he’s been blowing hot and cold. Has he come to a final decision at all, do you know?”

  “They’re all final decisions,” he snapped. “Every three days another phone call: yes! no! yes! no! The last word I’ve heard is no.”

  In a sad attempt at adult reasonableness, Rembek said, “Sam, you’re overstating the case. It wasn’t back and forth that much.”

  But Goldberg was in no mood to help Rembek retain his dignity. Turning on him, he said, “I’ve told you for months, that girl’s made a fool out of you. Every three days another phone call, don’t tell me.”

  I said, “Have you talked it over with Mrs. Rembek?”

  Goldberg spread his hands. “How could I? It was never on long enough.”

  “Did you tell her or did Rembek?”

  Rembek shouted angrily, “She doesn’t know! Nobody told her, she doesn’t know!”

  Goldberg gave his little shrug again. “If she knows, it isn’t from me.”

  I said, “I get the impression you didn’t care for Rita Castle.”

  “I prefer not to speak unkindly of the dead.”

  “Would you tell me what you used to say about her when she was alive?”

  He looked at me in some surprise, and an instant later flashed a surprisingly bright and merry smile. “I’d be happy to,” he said. “When she was alive, I said of her that sh
e was a cheap golddigger and a tramp and that she had so much contempt for Ernie that she didn’t even bother to hide it. I said that she was marrying him for commercial reasons exclusively and that he would live to regret it. I said that if he hadn’t promised to put money into this theater operation of hers, she wouldn’t have agreed to marry him at all, and I predicted a longer run for the play than the marriage.”

  I turned to Rembek. “What play?”

  “Hedda Gabler,” he said sullenly. “She wanted to direct.”

  “Not appear?”

  “No. Acting was just interpreting, that’s what she said. She wanted to direct.”

  “And you were going to produce.”

  “Off-Broadway,” he said defensively, as though the smaller budget thus implied was somehow a point in his favor.

  “What had been done on it so far?”

  “Nothing. We were going to start after—when we—”

  “After you were married.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  I said, “Why did you lie to me at the beginning? Why tell me the girl wasn’t really important to you, why make such a point about your wife not finding out?”

  “She was dead,” he said. “It was all over. What difference did it make?”

  “It confused the issue,” I told him. “It wasted my time. It made me struggle to learn things you could have simply given me at the beginning.”

  He said, “You want the truth? I was ashamed. I’d found out Sam was right about her, everybody was right about her. After I saw that note.”

  “Yes, the note,” I said. “I don’t like that note any more than you do.” I got to my feet. “I have to go back to Allentown,” I said.

  twenty-five

  REMBEK INSISTED ON COMING along, though I told him there was no point in it, he would see nothing and learn nothing. Still, he came. We let Sam Goldberg off in midtown, went through the Lincoln Tunnel, and the limousine stretched itself out along the road west.

  Kerrigan rode in front beside the driver, Dominic Brono. Rembek and I sat in back, a great width of seat between us, each of us sunk in his own thoughts. Rembek’s, judging from his somber face, were mostly sour thoughts, while mine were optimistic. I didn’t know yet who was the inspiration for all this chaos, but at least the lies and confusions and false trails had been cleared away. I was no longer working from inaccurate postulates, and it seemed to me I was very close to the end. Maybe today.

  For most of the ride out we were all silent, but at one point I did have a brief conversation with Kerrigan, to which Rembek listened as though in hopes of hearing the word that would save him and restore everything to what it was. What I was asking Kerrigan about was one of the possibilities that had occurred to me, which I found unlikely but which had to be dealt with.

  I said, “Kerrigan, the corporation considers Rembek an important man, doesn’t it?”

  He looked over his shoulder at me. “Of course. He runs a district.”

  “The corporation might feel protective about him.”

  He thought about it, not liking the word protective, and finally said, “In a way. They’d like him to go on functioning.”

  “It occurs to me,” I said, “that the corporation might have thought Rita Castle dangerous to Rembek’s functioning, and might have had her killed in order to protect his usefulness.”

  He considered that one, too, and said, “Possibly. It’s unlikely, but it is possible.”

  “What I’m wondering,” I said, “is how the corporation would behave now if that were the way it happened. You’d be the man sent to be sure I didn’t find out the truth.”

  He shook his head. “That isn’t how we’d do it,” he said.

  “I’m glad to hear it. How would you do it?”

  “Ernie had to ask permission to hire you. If the corporation had eliminated Rita, Ernie would have been told no, there were policy reasons why it was best to let everything lie. He might have been told that anyway, it all depends on the situation in the world.”

  I turned to Rembek. “If they’d said no, what would you have done?”

  “Waited,” he said. “Hoped I could do it later on.”

  “You wouldn’t have argued?”

  It was Kerrigan who answered. “You don’t argue with the corporation,” he said.

  I said, “All right. Would you have suspected the corporation had killed Rita if they told you no?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “They didn’t have to. If they didn’t like Rita they would have come talk to me first.”

  I looked at Kerrigan. “Is that right?”

  He nodded.

  “Good,” I said. I sat back and removed that possibility from my thoughts.

  We ran into drizzling rain at Easton, which had become a downpour by the time we reached Allentown. It was only one-thirty in the afternoon, but dark enough for most cars to have their headlights on.

  The lights of the Mid-Road Motel were also on, red and blue and white neon, suggesting warmth and dryness. Brono pulled the limousine to a stop as close to the office door as possible, and I said, “You all wait here. I won’t be long.”

  “I’ll come along,” said Kerrigan.

  “Don’t argue with me,” I said.

  I got out of the car, took three running steps through the pelting rain, and pushed through the door into the office. MacNeill was there, sitting on a high stool behind the counter, his elbows on the ledger. He’d been gazing out the streaming window at the rain and the road, daydreaming, and he blinked at me in some confusion for a few seconds before reorienting himself. Then he said, “Yes, sir. Room? No weather to travel, is it?”

  “You remember me,” I said. “I came about the dead girl.”

  “Oh! Yes, now I do. I’m sorry, I was wool-gathering. What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to speak with your wife,” I said.

  That confused him again. “Betsy?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, no, not at all, not at all.” He got down from the stool and headed toward the rear, pausing to mumble, “Scuse. Back in a second.”

  They came back together and I said to him, “I’d like to speak to Betsy alone for a minute.”

  “Sure thing,” he said hastily, as though someone had accused him of being uncooperative. “Go right ahead, go right ahead.” He went through the curtain again and out of sight.

  Betsy, as ill-named as ever, stood waiting, as sullen and truculent as a Sherman tank. I asked her, “Will he listen at the curtain?”

  “No,” she said, and her lip curled. “He wouldn’t think of it. He’ll go out to the kitchen.”

  “Does he know about the money?”

  There was no sound for quite a while but the distant drumming of the rain. She stood there unmoved, unchanging, as though nothing had been said to her. Her dress was faded toward gray from its original blue-flower pattern, her apron was totally gray with none of its original color or pattern still showing, her shoes were heavy, laced, low-heeled, scuffed oxfords, she wore gray bobby sox, her shins showed small bites or pimples, and she’d done little or nothing with her hair for quite a while. She stood there looking like something from a photo of Russian peasant women rebuilding a road, and we both listened to the rain and the silence and the echoes of the question I’d asked her.

  Finally, hopelessly, she decided to lie. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Out in the car,” I told her, “are Mister Rembek and another important man from the corporation. I haven’t told them yet about you taking the money. If I can avoid unnecessary trouble, I’d rather. So I’ve come in here alone, you’ll give me the money, and I won’t tell them how I got it.”

  “I don’t know about any money,” she said, in a monotone, not really expecting me to believe her.

  “If you won’t give it to me,” I said, “I’ll have to tell Rembek, so he can have men start searching for it. Then when they find it Rembek will punish you. It’s up to you
which way you want it.”

  She went over to the window, walking heavy-legged, and rested a soft thick hand on the sill, and looked out at the rain. “We’re going to lose this place,” she said. “If we could make it through till summer we’d be okay, but we can’t. We won’t get through the winter.”

  “Failure is your way of life,” I said. “Don’t try to change it.”

  She turned her head, with puzzled animation in her eyes. “That’s a rotten thing to say.”

  “Bring me the money, Betsy.”

  She looked away from me, at nothing. We hung there an instant, in that second of stillness at the top of an arc, before the fall down the other side. Then, wordless, she turned back from the window, padded around the counter, and went through the curtain.

  She was back a minute later with a black leather bag. She handed it to me, neither of us said anything, and I went back out to the car.

  Rembek stared at the bag as I got in. “Where the hell did you get that?”

  “I found it.”

  “They took it.”

  “No,” I said. “I found it.”

  “Where?”

  “None of your business,” I said.

  He glowered out the rainy window toward the office. “They did take it, those two.”

  I said, “Kerrigan, you heard me say the MacNeills didn’t take the money. I don’t want any misguided attempts at vengeance on them.”

  He nodded. “There won’t be,” he promised.

  Rembek said, “Maybe they killed her.”

  I shook my head. “No. The killer’s in New York.”