Murder Among Children Read online

  “Of course.”

  They didn’t accompany me upstairs, which was another sign that I wasn’t under any particular current cloud. I made it as fast as I could, wanting to get the thing over with, taking only enough time to put on my shoes and change to a less wrinkled shirt.

  They were waiting near the front door when I came down. I told Kate I would either be home within the hour or would call her, and then the three of us left the house.

  Their car was a green Mercury. I said, “Back or front?”

  One of them said, “You might as well ride in back.”

  They both got into the front seat, and we started off.

  The one who wasn’t driving turned and grinned at me over his shoulder and said, “You didn’t have to make time limits with your wife. We really will bring you back.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “What does she do, if you don’t show up in an hour?”

  “Starts making phone calls,” I said.

  He nodded. “That’s what I thought. I hear you used to be on the force.”

  “That’s right.”

  He kept looking at me, smiling, waiting for me to say something more, which meant he didn’t yet know the story. He wouldn’t hear it now, either, not from me; when the silence between us became awkward I turned my head away and watched the buildings go by the side window, and that was the end of conversation in the car.

  The precinct, when we got to it, was an old brick building with slate steps, flanked by a tailor shop on one side and a grim-looking public school on the other. We double-parked by a fire plug and they brought me in, both of them much cooler toward me now. They escorted me up to the second floor, told me to wait on a bench in the hall there, and went through a door with DETECTIVE SQUAD on the frosted glass.

  It had been a long while since I’d been in a place like this, and I found its sense of distorted familiarity more unsettling than I would have suspected. There was no comfort for me in the old wood of the bench, the walls painted two unlovely shades of green, the dark oiled wooden floor, the ceiling with its cream-colored paint peeling in one corner. As I sat there alone and waited, I found myself getting increasingly nervous and agitated, till at last I had to get to my feet and pace up and down the hall to work off the tension. I tried to hold my movements to a casual stroll but kept going instead at a faster and faster stride, then abruptly breaking it back to the stroll and building all over again, so that I’m sure I must have looked like a rookie out there practicing how to walk a beat.

  It was only a few minutes I waited, but it seemed an hour. The same two detectives came out, and the one who’d tried to chat with me in the car said, “Captain Linther wants to see you now.” He was still cold, because of the way I’d acted before.

  I got to my feet and they led me through the bullpen, a long bleak room lined with small square wooden desks, each with its telephone, most now unoccupied. One man in shirt sleeves was pecking at an old typewriter in the corner, another at one of the desks was murmuring into a phone.

  At the far end was the door marked CAPTAIN. They didn’t come in with me, but stood aside for me to enter and then shut the door after me.

  I was now in a small square office done in the same color scheme as the hall. A large wooden desk, scrupulously neat but battered by age, dominated the room. The other furniture—sofa, wooden chairs, table—all were the same ancient vintage, except for a gleaming new gray metal filing cabinet in the corner. On the walls were framed photographs of the President, the current Mayor, and other less recognizable faces.

  Two men were in the room, both seated, both in civilian clothing, both in their fifties. The one on the sofa was lean and rangy, with thick gray hair and a heavily lined pale face. The one behind the desk—this would be Captain Linther—was a balding bulky man who obviously had heard the story of my being thrown off the force; he looked at me with apparent distaste and said, “So you’re Tobin.”

  I said nothing, because there was nothing to say.

  He turned his head to the side, saying, “This is Captain Driscoll, Twenty-seventh Squad.”

  I said, “How do you do?” and Captain Driscoll nodded.

  Captain Linther said, “Captain Driscoll wants to talk to you about a murder case in his precinct you’re involved in.” He turned his head again, said, “Well, he’s all yours,” and got to his feet. “I’ll be down the hall.”

  Captain Driscoll thanked him, waited till Captain Linther was out of the office, and then looked at me and said, “Sit down, Tobin.”

  “Thank you.” I sat on a wooden chair not far from him.

  He took out a pipe and a dark leather pouch. Watching his hands fill the pipe, he said, “You’re a witness in that double killing in my precinct.”

  “I was there, yes.”

  He glanced at me, then back at pouch and pipe. “Why were you there?”

  “Robin Kennely asked me to come. She’s a relative of mine, second cousin.”

  “Why did she ask you?” He put the pouch away and looked at me directly.

  I said, “A plainclothesman had been giving her friends at that coffee house a bad time. They didn’t know if he wanted to be bought or what, so she asked me to have a talk with him.”

  He nodded heavily, and put the pipe in his mouth, and began to pat himself for matches. “I still have one question in my mind,” he said.

  I took matches from my pocket and extended them to him. Because he wanted me to, I asked, “What’s that?”

  “Thank you,” he said, taking the matches. He lit one, and between puffs on his pipe he said, “It seems to me, you’re accusing, one of my men, of trying to get a bribe.” He shook the match out, leaned forward to drop it into an ashtray on Captain Linther’s desk, sat back and looked at me again. “Do you have any evidence to back up this accusation?”

  “I should have known,” I said.

  He looked puzzled. “You should have known what?”

  “I’ve been away from the force too long,” I said. “Otherwise I’d have realized you’d have to come to me for this. I’d have realized a captain wouldn’t be here to ask questions on a murder case.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you,” he said. He’d taken the pipe from his mouth and was holding it in his hand, where it was in danger of going out. My matches were still in his other hand.

  I said, “Let me go over my statement again.”

  “I don’t see why that would be necessary.”

  “It won’t take long.”

  He shrugged, noticed he was holding my matches, and leaned forward to give them back to me.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Robin Kennely told me there was a plainclothesman who’d told her friends there were some violations in their coffee house they had to take care of. They weren’t entirely sure what they were supposed to do, so she asked me to have a talk with the plainclothesman and find out.”

  He frowned at me. “Are you changing your story?”

  “It’s a change of interpretation, that’s all,” I said. “Do you want me to dictate it?”

  It was too fast for him, he wasn’t being given a chance to get everything covered neatly with rationalizations. He said, “Your original statement accused Detective Donlon of attempted extortion. Now you want to change your statement. Was that earlier statement a lie?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I stand by every word in it. But I can see now where it might be misleading, so I want to make an amended statement that you can put in place of the original one.”

  “If you have evidence of wrongdoing on my squad,” he said, “you can bring it forward. I’m not covering for anybody.”

  “I have no evidence,” I said.

  “Then it seems to me,” he said, “your original statement may be actionable.”

  “No. I only repeated hearsay, what I’d been told by Robin Kennely. I have never stated whether I believed or disbelieved her.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  “I have no opinion.”<
br />
  We disliked each other intensely by now, and neither of us was bothering to hide it. His pipe had gone out, still held in his right hand. He said, “Have you always been this cynical, Tobin? Or are you just bitter against the force?”

  “I know how the world works,” I said. “I don’t think you want to push me back to my old statement.”

  He hesitated, and I knew what was bothering him. He’d come here to get something, and he’d gotten it too easily. He’d expected to have to browbeat me into changing my statement about Donlon, instead of which I’d volunteered to do it before he’d gotten the question well asked. He was on a seamy task, and we both knew it, and I had agreed so readily that now we were perforce on the same team, accomplices, and he disliked the idea of being my accomplice in anything.

  Still, there was nothing he could do about it. He shook his head heavily, and looked at his unlit pipe, and then back at me, saying, “You want to make an amended statement.”

  “Naturally.”

  “I’ll arrange for a stenographer,” he said, and got reluctantly to his feet.

  “Thank you,” I said, trying to make it pointed, trying to rub his nose in the fact that he should be thanking me.

  He went out without a word.

  I had no doubt that Captain Driscoll was personally honest. If indeed I were to bring him direct and irrefutable evidence that Detective Edward Donlon was demanding bribes, I don’t doubt that Captain Driscoll would go after Donlon all the way. On the other hand, I don’t doubt but that Captain Driscoll already knew everybody on his squad who was square and everybody who was bent, knew in a silent and unofficial way, and was prepared to let the world go on behaving in its normal manner just so long as no one caused any trouble.

  In the present case, the double murder at Thing East, what he had was a straightforward homicide, complete with suspect in custody, into which my statement intruded the unwelcome and irrelevant specter of police corruption. If he could get me to alter my statement in a way that had nothing to do with the murder, so much the better.

  Of course, he would have preferred it to have happened much more subtly than I had permitted. But I was tired, I was impatient with his grubby esprit de corps, and I disliked everything about the atmosphere of this building. I didn’t want to play games here, I wanted merely to do what was required of me and then go home.

  The stenographer came in a few minutes later, a skinny uniformed patrolman with thick glasses. He sat at the desk and took my statement, doing his shorthand with crabbed concentration. When I was done, he said, “This won’t take long,” and left.

  Hard on his heels Captain Linther returned. Still looking at me with an expression of repugnance on his face, he said, “Captain Driscoll’s done with you now. You can wait outside.”

  I went out to the bullpen and sat at a handy empty desk. The man who had been typing was still there, but the one who had been on the phone was gone. Two other desks were now occupied, though, the man at one of them filling out forms with a ballpoint pen, the other one eating a sandwich, drinking a container of coffee, and reading the Daily News.

  The feeling of familiarity here was stronger than ever, though the physical similarities between this place and the squadroom of the precinct where I’d been assigned were few. Still, the aura was the same, so much so that when the phone rang I looked around the room to see if it was my turn to catch the squeal. Then, embarrassed, I looked down at my hands in my lap, hoping no one had seen my move or comprehended it. I stayed in that position until the stenographer came back with the typed copies of my new statement. I signed them all, and he took them into the captain’s office. I continued to wait.

  Captain Linther came out of his office and walked over to stand in front of me. Standing, he seemed shorter and bulkier than he had while seated behind his desk. He said, “One thing I want to say to you, Tobin, before you go.”

  I waited.

  “I didn’t know you lived in my precinct,” he said. “Not till now. I don’t like the idea you living in my precinct. If you’re smart, you’ll keep your head down.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “That’s all,” he said. “You can go now.”

  “I was told I’d be driven back.”

  “I can’t spare the men,” he said, and turned away, and walked back to his office. I took a cab.

  9

  KATE MET ME AT the door, saying, “There’s someone here to see you, Mitch.”

  By the expression on her face I knew I wasn’t going to like it and she was going to try to persuade me to do something I didn’t want to do. Not moving any farther into the house, keeping out of range of the living-room doorway, I said, “Who is it?”

  “A boy named Hulmer Fass. He was another partner in the coffee house.”

  “I don’t want to see him, Kate. I’m not having anything to do with any of that.”

  “Mitch—”

  “No,” I said. I went past her, quickly past the living-room doorway, and started up the stairs.

  Behind me, she said, “Mitch, George Padbury is dead.”

  I stopped. I looked back down at her. “How?”

  “Hit and run. Thirty minutes after he called here yesterday. Died in the hospital this morning, without regaining consciousness.”

  I frowned, and gripped the banister. I didn’t want to be involved. “It doesn’t have to connect,” I said.

  “Mitch,” she said.

  “What do the police say?”

  “What you say. No connection.”

  “They’re closer to it than we are,” I said.

  “No, they aren’t,” said another voice, and standing in the living-room doorway was a light-skinned Negro boy of about twenty, tall and slender and economical and neat, narrowly dressed in a dark latest-style suit. “They’re spectators,” he said. “We’re standing in it.”

  “Not me,” I told him. “I have no connection with anything. I don’t know you, I don’t want to know you.”

  “Mitch!”

  I turned back to Kate. “I was just told by a captain of detectives,” I said, “to keep my head down. That’s what I intend to do.”

  The Negro boy—Hulmer Fass, Kate had said his name was—said to me, “The reason I came here, Mr. Tobin, is because I figured we’re in this together. You and me, we’re locked in.”

  “I don’t see that.”

  “We don’t know yet why he hit George,” he said. “If it’s because he’s connected to the joint, then I’m next. If it’s because he was there when it happened, you’re next.”

  Kate said, “Mitch, you can’t stay out of it. What if he comes after you?”

  “I’ll worry about that when it happens,” I said.

  Kate said, “What about George Padbury?”

  “What about him? He’s dead.”

  “Thirty minutes after you refused to talk to him.”

  I raised my hand. “No,” I said. “You can’t do that.”

  Hulmer Fass shook his head. “That’s how it goes with non-involvement, Mr. Tobin,” he said. “One day it’s not your problem, the next day they’re all over you.”

  “I’m not responsible for George Padbury’s death,” I said.

  He gave me a smile of knowing and cynical contempt. “Goodbye, baby,” he said, and turned toward the door.

  Kate said to him, “No, wait. Don’t go yet.” She looked up at me. “You go on upstairs, Mitch,” she said, “and think it out. You think about Robin, in Bellevue, going to be transferred to jail. You think about George Padbury and this boy here and your own family. When you’ve got it all thought out, you’ll find us in the kitchen.” To the boy she said, “Come along, Hulmer. Do you like iced coffee?”

  He was grinning at her respectfully. “Sure thing,” he said, and they walked back to the kitchen together.

  I didn’t go up to the second floor. I sat down where I was, on the stairs, and felt the iron hand closing on me. But all I wanted was to stay here, stay in my hole, keep my head d
own.

  Bill came thundering into the house as I sat there. Fourteen years old, he was well into the transition from open childhood to the mysterious complexity of the young people connected with places like Thing East. How much of my disgrace he knew about I had never learned, nor tried to learn. There was a widening rift between my son and me, caused for the most part I knew by myself, but there was nothing I could do to mend it without opening myself, which I didn’t ever want to do.

  Now he came bounding up the stairs, a brown paper bag in his hand, and paused beside me to say, “What’s up, Dad?”

  “Thinking,” I said. “What’ve you got there?”

  “Tubes,” he said. “See you.”

  “See you.”

  He pounded on up, leaving me alone. I shook my head, and got to my feet, and went down to the kitchen, where I said to Hulmer Fass, sitting at the kitchen table, “Do you know how to get in touch with George Padbury’s brother? The almost lawyer?”

  “Ralph? Sure.”

  “We’ll need him. Would you call him?”

  He got to his feet. “To come out here?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled. “Yes, sir.”

  I said, “Is there anybody else connected with Thing East? Any more partners?”

  “Two,” he said. “You want them?”

  “Yes. The phone’s in the hall.”

  “When do you want them?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “Done,” he said, and went out to make the calls.

  I looked at Kate and said, “Don’t grin at me. I want you to know I hate this, I intend to get it over with as quick as I can, and when it’s done I’ll go straight back into my box.”

  “It’s all right, Mitch,” she said. “Really. It’s all right.” Which only meant she didn’t want to believe I was telling her the truth.

  10

  WE WERE ALL ASSEMBLED by quarter to seven, six of us sitting around the living room, the coolest place in the house. Outside the sun was still strong, refusing to give way to twilight. Inside, the feeling of twilight, muted and forlorn, was a heavy aura around us.

  Hulmer Fass had stayed to dinner, during which he and Bill had gotten into a complex electronic discussion in which it emerged that one of the things Bill was working on up in his room was a homemade phonograph, using odd parts from here and there. Hulmer did more talking with Bill in the course of that one meal than I’d done all told for a year, and I listened with agonized embarrassment at the degree of my hunger for knowledge of my son. I envied Hulmer his easy access to Bill, knew the envy was absurd to the point of irrationality, and envied him anyway.