Death Is a Lonely Business (33 page)

Single authors, single books, fine. A Poe here or a Sade there is a spice. But this was no library, it was an abattoir, a dungeon, a tower where ten dozen men in iron masks were penned, silently raving, forever.

Why hadn't I seriously seen and known?

Because Rumpelstiltskin was in charge.

Staring at Shrank even now I thought, at any moment he'll grab his foot and rip himself straight up in half and fall in two pieces!

He was hilarious.

Which made him all the more terrible.

"Those books," said Shrank at last, breaking the spell, not looking at them, staring up at the moon, "they don't care for me. Why should I care for them?"

"But…"

"Besides," said Shrank, "would anyone really want to steal
Decline of the Wat?"

"I thought you loved your collection!"

"Loved?" He blinked once. "My God, don't you see? I hate everything. Name it, there's nothing in the world I like."

He strode off in the direction Henry had taken with his taxicab.

"Now," he said, "coming or not?" "Coming," I said.

Is that a weapon?"

We walked slowly, feeling each other out. I was amazed to find Henry's cane in my hands.

"No, an antenna, I think," I said.

"Of a very large insect?"

"A very blind one."

"Can he find his way without it, and where's he going this time of night?"

"Running errands. Back immediately," I lied.

Shrank was a lie detector. He almost writhed with delight at my voice. He quickened his pace, then stopped to examine me.

"I take it he steers by his nose. I heard what you asked and what he answered back."

"Armpits?" I said.

Shrank shriveled inside his old clothes. His eyes darted first to his left, then to his right underarm and down along a vast history of stains and time's discolorings.

"Armpits," I said again.

It was a bullet in the heart.

Shrank staggered, then firmed himself.

"Why and where are we walking?" he gasped. I could sense the rabbit palpitation under his greasy tie.

"I thought you were leading the way. I only know one thing." I moved, this time half a step ahead of him. "Blind Henry was searching for some unwashed shirts, dirty underclothes, bad breath. He found and named them for me."

I did not repeat the dread epithet. But Shrank, with each word, was diminished.

"Why would a blind man want me?" said Shrank at last.

I didn't want to give it all away at once. I had to test and try. "Because of
Janus, the Green Envy Weekly,
" I said. "I've seen copies in your place, through your window."

That was pure lie, but it struck midriff.

"Yes, yes," said Shrank. "But a blind man, and you…?"

"Because." I took a deep breath and let it out. "You're Mr. Fixit."

Shrank shut his eyes, spun his thoughts, chose a reaction. Laughed.

"Fixit? Fixit! Ridiculous! Why would you think?"

"Because." I walked on, making him dog-trot to follow. I talked to the mist which gathered ahead. "Henry smelled someone crossing the street, many nights ago. The same smell was in his tenement hall, and here now tonight. And the smell is you."

The rabbit palpitation shook the little man again, but he knew he was still clear. Nothing was proven!

"Why," he gasped, "would I prowl some downtown lousy tenement I wouldn't dream to live in, why?"

"Because," I said, "you were looking for Lonelies. And damn fool stupid dumb me, blinder than Henry, helped you find them. Fannie was right. Constance was right! I was the death goat after all. Christ, I was Typhoid Mary. I carried the disease, you, everywhere. Or at least you followed. To find Lonelies." A drumbeat of breath. "Lonelies."

Almost as I said it, both Shrank and I were seized with what were almost paroxysms. I had spoken a truth that was like a furnace lid thrown back so the heat scorched out to sear my face, my tongue, my heart, my soul. And Shrank? I was describing his unguessed life, his need; all yet to be revealed and admitted, but I knew I had at last yanked the asbestos up and the fire was in the open.

"What was that word?" asked Shrank, some ten yards off and motionless as a statue.

"Lonelies. You said the word. You described them last month. Lonelies."

And it was true. A funeral march of souls went by in a breath, on soundless feet, in drifts of fog. Fannie and Sam and Jimmy and Cal and all the rest. I had never put a proper label on them. I had never seen the carry-over that tied them all and made them one.

"You're raving," said Shrank. "Guessing. Making up. Lying. None of this has to do with me."

But he was looking down at the way his coat was run up on his skinny wrists and the weathermarks of late-night sweats down his coat. His suit seemed to be diminishing even as I watched. He writhed in his own pale skin, underneath.

I decided to attack.

"Christ, you're rotting even as you stand there. You're an affront. You hate everything, all, anything in the world. You told me that just now. So you attack it with your dirt, your breath. Your underwear is your true flag, so you run it up a pole to ruin the wind. A. L. Shrank. Proprietor of the Apocalypse!"

He was smiling, he was overjoyed. I had complimented him with insults. I was paying attention. His ego roused. Without knowing it, I had made and baited a trap.

What now? I thought. What, what, for God's sake do I say now, now? How draw him out? How finish him?

But he was walking ahead again now, all inflated with insults, all magnificent with the medals of ruin and despair I had pinned to his greasy tie.

We walked. We walked. We walked.

My God, I thought, how long do we walk, how long do we talk, how long does this go on?

This is a movie, I thought, one of those unbelievable scenes that continue and continue when people explain and others talk back and people say again,

It can't be.

It is.

He's not sure what I know and I'm not sure that I know, either, and both of us wonder if the other is armed.

"And both of us are cowards," said Shrank.

"And both are afraid to test the other."

The Carpenter went on. The Oyster followed.

We walked.

And it was not a scene from a good or bad film where people talked too much; it was a scene growing late at night and the moon vanishing to reappear as the fog thickened and I was having a dialogue with Hamlet's father's idiot psychiatrist's friend's ghost.

Shrank, I thought. What a name. Shrink from this, shrink from that, you wind up shrunk! How had it started? Out of college, on top of the world, hang a shingle; then the great earthquake of some year, did he recall? the year his legs and mind broke and there was the long slide without a toboggan, just on his skinny backside, and no women between him and the downfall pit to ease the concussion, lubricate the nightmare, stop his crying at midnight and hatred at dawn? And one morning, he got out of bed and found himself, where?

Venice, California, and the last gondola long since departed and the lights going out and the canals filling with oil and old circus wagons with only the tide roaring behind the bars. . . .

"I have a little list," I said.

"What?" said Shrank.

"The Mikado,
" I told him. "One song explains you. Your object all sublime, you will achieve in time. To make the punishment fit the crime. The Lonelies. All of them. You put them on your list, in the words of the song, they never will be missed. Their crime was giving up or never having tried. It was mediocrity or failure or lostness. And their punishment, my God, was you."

He was puffed now, with a peacock stride.

"Well?" he said, walking ahead. "Well?"

I loaded my tongue and took aim and fired a round.

"I imagine," I said, "that somewhere nearby is the decapitated head of Scott Joplin."

He could not help the impulse that moved his right hand to his greasy coat pocket. He pretended to pat it in place, found himself staring with pleasure at that hand, glanced away, and went on walking.

One shot, one hit. I glowed. Detective Lieutenant Crumley, I thought, wish you were here.

I fired a second round.

"Canaries for sale," I said in a tiny voice like the faded lead-pencil lettering on the cardboard in the old lady's window. "Hirohito ascends throne. Addis Ababa. Mussolini."

His left hand twitched with secret pride toward his left coat pocket.

Christ! I thought. He's carrying her old bottom-of-the-birdcage headlines with him!

Bull's-eye!

He strode. I followed.

Target three. Aim three. Fire three.

"Lion cage. Old man. Ticket office."

His chin dropped toward his breast pocket.

There, by God, would be found punchout ticket confetti from a train never taken!

Shrank plowed on through the mist, absolutely oblivious of the fact that I was butterfly-netting his crimes. He was a happy child in the fields of the Antichrist. His tiny shoes flinted on the planks. He beamed.

What next? My mind swarmed. Ah, yes.

I saw Jimmy in the tenement hall with his new choppers, all grin. Jimmy in the bathtub, turned over and six fathoms deep.

"False teeth," I said. "Uppers. Lowers."

Thank God, Shrank did not pat his pockets again. I might have shouted a terrible laugh of dread to think he carried a dead grin about. His glance over his shoulder told me it was back (in a glass of water?) in his hut.

Target five, aim, fire!

"Dancing Chihuahuas, preening parakeets!"

Shrank's shoes did a dog-dance on the pier. His eyes jumped to his left shoulder. There were bird-claw marks and droppings there! One of Pietro Massinello's birds was back there in the hut.

Target six.

"Moroccan fort by an Arabian sea."

Shrank's little lizard tongue made a tiny whiplash along his thirsty lips.

One bottle of Rattigan's champagne, shelved behind us, leaning on De Quincey in his dope, Hardy in his gloom.

A wind rose.

I shuddered, for suddenly I sensed that ten dozen candy wrappers, all mine, were blowing along after Shrank and me, ghost rodent hungers from other days, rustling along the night pier.

And at last I had to say and could not say but finally made myself say the terrible final sad words that broke my tongue even as something burst in my chest.

"Midnight tenement. Full icebox.
Tosca.
"

Like a black discus hurled across the town, the first side of
Tosca
struck, rolled, and slid under A. L. Shrank's midnight door.

The list had been long. I was poised on the near rim of hysteria, panic, terror, delight at my own perception, my own revulsion, my own sadness. I might dance, strike, or shriek at any moment.

But Shrank spoke first, eyes dreaming, the whispered arias of Puccini turning and turning in his head.

"The fat woman's at peace now. She needed peace. I gave it to her."

I hardly remember what happened next. Somebody yelled. Me. Someone else yelled. Him.

My arm thrust up, Henry's cane in it.

Murder, I thought. Kill.

Shrank fell back only in time as the cane chopped down. Instead of him, it struck the pier and was shocked from my grip. It fell, rattled, and was kicked by Shrank so it sailed over the edge of the pier and down into the sand.

Now I could only lunge at the little man with empty fists and lurch to a halt as he stepped aside because a final thing had broken in me.

I gagged, I wept. Days ago, the crying in the shower was only a start. Now the full flood came. My bones began to crumble. I stood weeping and Shrank, astounded, almost reached out to touch me and murmur, there, there.

"It's all right," he said at last. "She's at peace. You should thank me for that."

The moon went behind a great bank of fog and gave me time to recover. I was all slow motion now. My tongue dragged and I could hardly see.

"What you mean is," I said, at last, underwater, "they're all gone and I should thank you for all of them. Yes?"

It must have been a terrible relief for him, having waited all these months or years to tell someone, no matter who, no matter where, no matter how. The moon came out again. His lips trembled with the renewed light and the need for release.

"Yes. I helped them all."

"My God," I gasped. "Helped? Helped?"

I had to sit down. He helped me to do that and stood over me, astonished at my weakness, in charge of me and the night's future, the man who could bless people with murder, keep them from suffering, put off their loneliness, sleep them from their private dooms, save them from life. Benefit them with sunsets.