A Dog's Ransom Read online

  Somehow they talked during dinner, and without forcing their words out. Finally Ed said, quite firmly and matter of factly, “Darling, we ought to get another dog soon. It’s the sensible thing to do.”

  “Yes, but not just yet, Eddie.” Dry-eyed too, she began to clear the table.

  Yet the sadness remained, the curious emptiness of the house, the curiously ugly silence.

  CLARENCE ARRIVED AT MARYLYN’S APARTMENT just in time to leave with her to go to the theater on West 3rd Street. Marylyn was annoyed.

  “You could’ve telephoned, no? I was going with Evelyn if you didn’t turn up. Now I’ve got to call her.” So she did. Evelyn was a friend of Marylyn’s who lived on Christopher Street.

  Clarence waited, chewing his under lip, not sitting down. Two minutes before, he had seen Pete Manzoni at the corner of Bleecker and Sixth Avenue, and Manzoni had happened to glance into his taxi and had seen him. Manzoni’s eyes had widened, and he had smiled in an amused way. It was only one street from Marylyn’s apartment on Macdougal, and Clarence had the feeling Manzoni had followed the taxi, or tried to, though when Clarence had paid off the taxi, he hadn’t taken the time to look around. Now Clarence was afraid Manzoni would be on the sidewalk when he went out with Marylyn.

  “I said, are you coming?” Marylyn stood at the door.

  Clarence leapt. “They kept me busy this afternoon. At the station house.”

  “Yes, for gosh sake, what happened? I even called your parents.”

  “You did? Oh, that’s all right,” Clarence said nervously.

  “I had to do something. They said you’d been there, but you got a call from the pighouse, as usual. Can’t they let you alone on your day off or is New York just crawling with crime?”

  “They caught the Pole again, the guy who kidnapped the dog.” They were going down the stairs.

  “Who caught him?”

  Clarence held the door for her. “A fellow from my precinct house.” He began looking around at once for a taxi, hoping they’d find one on Macdougal and not have to walk down to Houston.

  “There’s one!” Marylyn said, and raised her arm. “Taxi!”

  Clarence just then saw Manzoni standing across the street, up near the Bleecker corner. Manzoni nodded knowingly and smiled a little. Clarence got into the taxi after Marylyn. Marylyn gave the theater’s address.

  Clarence said, “I’m accused of taking five hundred dollars from that stink of a Pole to let him go. So I’m sorry if I was late. Or I didn’t telephone you.” He had thought of not telling Marylyn this, but it was impossible. He couldn’t keep it from her.

  “Who accuses you?”

  “Well—Rowajinski. The man who stole the Reynoldses’ dog. He killed the dog—right away, he said.”

  “Jesus! Really!—And then collected the ransom.”

  “Yes. Twice.” Clarence explained the second thousand-dollar payment. “I just saw the Reynoldses. I had to go by to tell them—tell them I’m going to do my best to throw the book at Rowajinski, you see.” But Clarence couldn’t tell Marylyn that Manzoni and another cop had searched his apartment today. Or that he’d just seen Manzoni in the street outside her apartment. Marylyn would get into a panic. She had a completely wrong—or maybe completely average—idea of the police force: they were all tough, corrupt, fascist, and not above persecuting individuals if they could gain anything from it.

  “You seem to be in more of a mess every day,” Marylyn remarked coolly.

  “No, that isn’t true. Not with Mr. Reynolds—he doesn’t think I took any money. He knows I want to help him.” But did Mr. Reynolds doubt his honesty? Or did his wife?

  Clarence did not follow the play at all, could not become interested, even though two of the cast were nude. The damned thing went on for two interminable acts, the second longer than the first. During the intermission, Marylyn met some of her friends and talked away, ignoring Clarence, it seemed to him.

  After the show, they had a snack at a nearby Italian restaurant where unfortunately the carafe of red wine was awful.

  “What’re they going to do to this Polish guy?” Marylyn asked.

  “He’s locked up. They’ll give him a sentence, I suppose. I don’t think he’s enough of a nut to be put in a loony-bin. But what a creep!”

  “What do you expect to run into in your profession?” Marylyn pushed a neatly wrapped forkful of spaghetti into her mouth.

  Clarence smiled. Her perfume, which was so expensive even Marylyn was economical with it, came faintly to him across the table, blighted a little by tomato sauce. “Don’t think I’ll be a cop for the next twenty years, darling. The fact that I have been a cop a year or two won’t hurt me, it might be an asset if I take another kind of job.”

  “Oh, you’ve changed your mind? A couple of months ago you were talking about the great challenge or something—being able to do some good and so forth.”

  One of his euphoric moments, no doubt. One of the moments when he was at peace with the world, and could think about fighting the people, the evils that were not on the side of peace. “I know. I’m thinking of taking some business administration courses. Then I’ll see what comes to me.” I haven’t really found myself yet, Clarence wanted to add, but was ashamed to. How could he expect a girl to marry a man who hadn’t found himself as yet?

  And Marylyn wasn’t very interested, wasn’t looking much at him, as if she found the restaurant’s décor, a table across the way, anything, more interesting.

  She said at her door, “Clare, you’d better go to your place tonight. I don’t feel like anything.”

  He had wanted to stay with her, just sleep in the same bed with her. Marylyn’s apartment was more home to him than his apartment, therefore safe, somehow, despite Manzoni. But Clarence didn’t want to beg. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you earlier today, really. Can I—I’m not on duty till tomorrow night at eight. Want to have lunch somewhere? Russian Tearoom?” Marylyn liked the food there.

  “Tomorrow I’m meeting Evelyn for shopping. Then we’re going to a movie at three.”

  That let him out. He didn’t want to ask to go to the film if Evelyn was going along. Clarence walked to 19th Street via Fifth Avenue. It was just after midnight. The next time he saw Manzoni, he’d have a word with him, Clarence decided. What did Manzoni have against him? What did he have to lose by asking? On the other hand, Clarence didn’t want Marylyn dragged into it. Manzoni could have got her name by now, if he cared to get it: a reddish-haired girl at that address. All Manzoni had to do was ask the delicatessen man around the corner, or the coffee-shop fellow downstairs, the blond, wavy-haired fellow Clarence said hello to when he passed the shop, because the blond fellow was often at the door. Would they, Clarence wondered, say to Marylyn the next time they saw her: “There was a tough type asking if I knew your name, Marylyn. Thought you ought to know.” She might suspect at once the man was a fuzz, or someone brought on by him, somehow.

  Clarence found himself standing in his apartment with the ceiling light on. He had opened his door with his key as if sleep-walking. He put on some chinos and a soiled shirt and started cleaning. He dusted first, then swept. He plumped up his pillows which had covers and were used as sofa cushions when the bed was made up, then he changed the pillowcases to make the bed look fresher. He was too tired to change the sheets. The bathtub was gray with soot, which had come in through a closed, clouded-glass window that didn’t fit very well. Clarence turned the shower on, rinsed out the soot, then scoured the tub. Damn the goddam Pole! He didn’t deserve to be walking the earth, leaving a trail of sadness, of lies, behind him. Bleeding the government for compensation now, and next it would be the old-age pension. What could he do, Clarence wondered, to make Rowajinski get the maximum? Must look into that tomorrow.

  The telephone rang. Clarence darted for it, hoping it was Marylyn, maybe askin
g him to come down to Macdougal.

  “Clare?” said Marylyn’s voice. “I just wanted to know if you got home safely . . . I’m sorry I was such a shit . . . Yes, I’m in bed.”

  She didn’t ask him to come down, but Clarence was smiling when he hung up. Marylyn did care something about him. She did. Maybe she even loved him.

  11

  Clarence slept until 10 a.m. He went down to the grocery store on Second Avenue to buy some things, and meanwhile he was thinking of what he would say, and do, at the precinct house. Clarence was not sure Rowajinski would still be there. Clarence made breakfast, tidied up the dishes, and dressed in gray flannels and a tweed jacket. The day was warm with sunlight.

  Captain Rogers was on duty, and looked very busy. Clarence went into another office and found Lieutenant Santini.

  “Well, well,” said Santini, surprised to see Clarence.

  “Morning, sir. Is Rowajinski still here?”

  “Nijinski, Nijinski,” mumbled Santini in mildly facetious manner. “The Pole! The man about the dog. Yeah.” Santini blew his nose in his handkerchief. “Yeah, Clarence. One of the fellows was telling me. He got caught again. By Pete.”

  “If it’s possible, I’d like to talk with Rowajinski.”

  “Yeah? Why?”

  Clarence hesitated, briefly. “Because he’s accusing me of taking five hundred dollars to let him go.”

  “Yeah, I heard that.” Santini sounded indifferent, as if even a lie, a nasty accusation like this was an everyday event. “Well, I think a shrink’s with the Pole now, you’ll have to wait.”

  “Yes, sir,” Clarence was glad that Santini had no objection to his seeing him.

  “Oh, go ahead in, if the shrink doesn’t mind,” Santini said.

  Clarence went down the hall to the cage. He saw Rowajinski sitting on his bunk and a man in a dark suit opposite on a chair. The man was chuckling, rolling on his chair. Rowajinski looked through the bars at Clarence and said, pointing a finger:

  “There! That’s the one! The one who took the five hundred!”

  The man looked around. “You’re Patrolman—”

  “Duhamell. I’d like to speak with Rowajinski when you’re finished.”

  “Come in now.” He opened the cage door, which had not been locked. He was smiling still. “We’ve got a jolly customer here.” He shut the door with a clang behind Clarence.

  Rowajinski had stood up, as if to ward off a possible attack.

  “This one thinks he’s the greatest,” said the psychiatrist.

  “Listen,” Clarence said to the Pole, “you know you didn’t offer me any five hundred dollars and I didn’t take it. You’d better come clean about that, or someone’s going to beat the truth out of you!”

  “Bullshit!” said Rowajinski.

  “You’re just feeding his ego. The more attention he thinks he’s going to get, the better he likes it,” said the shrink indulgently, as if he were talking in the presence of someone deaf.

  “Well, what the hell’re you going to do with him? Do you know besides—besides everything else, he murdered a dog, a French poodle, a family pet?”

  “Yes, I heard all that. Well—delusions of superiority. Paranoid, too.”

  “I suppose he’s going to be locked up?”

  Rowajinski was following the conversation with birdlike turns of his head as each man spoke.

  “Let’s hope,” said the shrink somewhat hopelessly.

  “Where’s he being sent to?”

  “Maybe Bellevue—first.” The psychiatrist was putting papers into a briefcase.

  “You won’t get anything out of me but the truth!” Rowajinski asserted, jutting his unshaven chin forward. His eyes glinted, and there was a shiny pink circle on each cheekbone, also at the end of his nose.

  Rowajinski was wearing new shoes, new trousers that he must have bought with Mr. Reynolds’s money, Clarence noticed. “Bastard,” Clarence murmured. He said to the psychiatrist, “At least he admits killing the dog, I suppose.”

  “Bye, Kenneth,” the shrink said.

  Clarence went out with him, because it was probably more profitable now to speak with the shrink than with Rowajinski. A guard came up and locked the cage at once.

  “He’s a pain in the ass, sure,” said the psychiatrist, “but a dog isn’t a human being. Like a child. What you’re annoyed about is that he accuses you of taking five hundred bucks.”

  Clarence didn’t want an analysis. “Can you tell when this guy’s lying and when he’s telling the truth?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes his boastings are wildly exaggerated. He says he swam the Hudson River back and forth at once.” The man laughed. “Like Lloyd Brian, he says. He expects me to know Lloyd Brian, some other guy with a limp, he says.”

  Good God, he meant Lord Byron, Clarence realized, and what was so damned funny about it? “I wonder if you or another doctor could make a statement that this man is lying about the five hundred dollars?” Clarence was aware that the psychiatrist wanted to go to see Santini now.

  “Um-m,” said the psychiatrist, musingly.

  “Where can I call up to find out about him?” Clarence asked.

  “Best to try Bellevue.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Maybe tomorrow, yeah.” The man went into Santini’s office.

  Clarence hesitated, then went back down the hall to Rowajinski’s cage.

  Rowajinski was on his feet, and he looked at Clarence cockily.

  “You’d better knock it off now, Rowajinski. You’re in for a long time.”

  “That’s what you think!—I’ll tell ’em the truth.”

  Clarence gave it up and walked back towards the front door. The psychiatrist was just leaving, and turned briskly eastward on the pavement, swinging his briefcase. Clarence was going in the same direction. Ahead of Clarence, approaching him, came Manzoni, walking with his side-to-side but very muscular-looking gait. Manzoni’s musing smirk became a grin as he saw Clarence.

  “Well, Clarence,” he said.

  Clarence could have swung a fist into his teeth. “Hello, Pete. I saw you in the Village last night.”

  “I live there. Jane Street. Just had a talk with your girlfriend. MacGregor’s orders, y’know.”

  Clarence felt a rush of blood to his face. He was sure MacGregor hadn’t ordered any such thing. “You get around.”

  “Been talkin’ to Rowinsk? He spilled the beans on yuh, eh Clarence?”

  Both of them were slowly moving in opposite directions, and Manzoni waved casually.

  Clarence went on towards the subway. Manzoni was probably going to keep the rumor, the story going that he’d taken the five hundred from the Pole. Such malice, and why? Manzoni would probably also tell the whole precinct about Marylyn Coomes, say that he, Clarence, had needed some extra money because of her. Lies were so much easier than the truth, they hung together so much better sometimes. Manzoni could have found out Marylyn had no regular job, only freelance. Had he talked to her in her apartment? If so, Manzoni had probably looked into her closet and noticed some of his clothes there. If anyone would resent being invaded by an obnoxious pig, asked personal questions by him, it was Marylyn. Clarence looked hectically at his wrist-watch. Twenty-two past twelve. Maybe he could catch Marylyn before she went out shopping with Evelyn. Fumbling for a dime, Clarence went into a cigar store.

  Marylyn answered. “Yes, there was a stinking pig here and he delayed me badly, so I’ve got to rush.”

  “Marylyn, I’m sorry. I know. Manzoni. He had no reason to come to see you! He wasn’t under orders, believe me, whatever he said.”

  “He was harping on the money you took. And what a vulgar bastard he is!”

  Clarence had never heard her so angry. “The psychiatrists are on to Rowajinski now
. They’ll find out soon enough I didn’t take any money.—Darling, I just saw Manzoni and he told me he saw you. That’s why—”

  “What did he say? I’d like to know! You’d think I was a whore the way he spoke to me!”

  “Honey, he’s a bum. Don’t let him bug you. Manzoni—”

  But Marylyn had hung up.

  Clarence went into the next bar for a beer. Sometimes a beer soothed his nerves, made a sort of weight in his stomach that held him down. He had two steins of draught beer, then took the subway to his apartment.

  He took off his jacket and shoes and lay on his back on the bed. He realized he didn’t dare to turn up at Marylyn’s after work tonight, at 4:30 a.m. If she was half asleep and still angry, she might push him right out her door, and Clarence admitted to himself that he wasn’t the kind to force his way in, fling a girl on the bed and—well, at least hold her there, which under some circumstances might be the right thing to do. But he could telephone Marylyn tonight around 7 p.m., when she might be back from the film. Maybe she’d be in a better mood. Clarence put his arm across his eyes. He might lose Marylyn because of this. Manzoni might call on her again, just to heckle her. Marylyn would be livid.