In the Last Analysis (12 page)

“Deposit ten cents for the next five minutes, please.”

“Reed, you’re in a phone booth.”

“With practice, my dear, you will make a great detective. I could hardly spill out all these secrets from a phone in the D.A.’s office. Kate, I’m beginning to get interested in your case. This probably proves that insanity is catching. I haven’t got a dime.” He hung up.

Daniel Messenger. For a few hectic moments Kate toyed with the idea of hopping a plane for Chicago. But, however brutal one might be with Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot had to be coped with tomorrow. And of course, one
did not “hop” a plane. One took a long slow ride to an airport, and argued for hours with ticket agents who seemed to have been hired five minutes ago for what they supposed to be another job; and if one survived that, one got to Chicago only to join a “stack” over the airfield there, and then either died of boredom or crashed into a plane that thought it was in the stack over Newark. With an effort, Kate brought her wandering mind back to Frederick Sparks. Reed’s call, however, apart from distracting her and thickening the plot, had reminded her of the uses of the telephone. She dialed the number of a professor of sixteenth-century literature with whom she had studied for the orals, lo, these many years ago.

“Lillian. This is Kate Fansler.”

“Kate! How’s everything in the university on the hill?”

“Hideous, as always in the spring.” April is the cruelest month. That was how it had begun. For a few moments they chatted about personal things. “I’m calling,” Kate continued, “to ask about a colleague of yours. Frederick Sparks.”

“If you’re thinking of hiring him, don’t. In the first place he’s got tenure and wouldn’t dream of leaving, and in the second place he’s a great admirer of closet drama, and thinks
The Cenci
is better than
Macbeth.”

“Nothing was further from my mind than hiring him. I’ll tell you another time what this is all about. What’s he like?”

“Rather tedious. Good scholar. Lives alone, having recently broken away from mother, at least to that extent. Has a French poodle named Gustave.”

“Gustave?”

“After Flaubert. Although his favorite French author is Proust. Gustave’s, that is.”

“I take it he does not care for women. Sparks, that is.”

“Most people take it. Me, I’ve given up labels. So many incorrect ones have been attached to me that I’ve abandoned them entirely. Besides, he’s being analyzed.”

This was a lead which Kate had no wish at the moment to follow. “Lillian, is there some way I could meet Sparks, socially perhaps, or at least casually? Soon, that is.”

“You fascinate me. No one’s been anxious to meet Sparks since the P. and B. committee considered him for tenure.”

“What on earth is the P. and B. committee?”

“Oh, you innocents who do not work for city colleges. No one has the faintest idea what the initials stand for, but it’s all-powerful. As a matter of fact, I am going to a party tonight for a colleague who just got a Fulbright to India, and Sparks will undoubtedly be there. I’ve got a date, but I will drag you along as a cousin of his we couldn’t dump. The date’s that is. Will that do?”

“That will do gloriously. But the fewer lies, the better, I always think. Let’s just say I dropped in on you.”

“Very well, you mysterious creature. Drop in on me about eight. Bring a bottle for the festivities, and you will be triply welcomed. See you then.”

Which left Kate with nothing to do but get back to work and wonder what Jerry was up to. Richard Horan, of the advertising business, must by now be settled down on Emanuel’s couch. Dr. Barrister’s pretty nurse must be involved with the women patients. Jerry, for all his detective pose, was probably taking in a double feature. Kate put Daniel Messenger firmly from her mind, and turned to
Daniel Deronda
.

J
ERRY
was not at a double feature. It would have annoyed him to know that Kate thought he might be; but his annoyance would have been nothing to Kate’s had she known what he was up to. He was, in fact, lying in wait for Emanuel.

It was not precisely that Jerry doubted Kate’s assurances of Emanuel’s innocence. The two of them, Jerry knew, had been friends, and, Jerry suspected, something more—though Kate had been rather vague on this point—and this said a good deal for Emanuel’s innocence, since women, Jerry believed, did not automatically have a high opinion of men they had loved but not married. Nonetheless, to Jerry’s masculine, therefore objective, intelligence, Emanuel was still Number One as a suspect, and the fact that Kate was convinced of his innocence did not weigh as much with Jerry as he had pretended. Although he was prepared to follow Kate’s instructions—she was,
after all, paying him—he could carry them out with a greater sense of single purpose if he had met, and talked with, Emanuel. Jerry had, at almost twenty-two, great faith in his ability to size people up.

It was not possible, of course, simply to go in and present himself to Emanuel as Kate’s assistant and nephew-to-be. In the first place, Kate had not told Emanuel about his, Jerry’s, part in the investigations; and in the second place, it was important to catch Emanuel off his guard. For one thing, he wanted to know if Emanuel, with the eleven o’clock hour now free, would simply wander out, as Kate and Nicola had been sure he would.

Jerry therefore provided himself with a chamois from a Madison Avenue store—he righteously did not enter this on his expense account—and stood across the street from the entrance to Emanuel’s office polishing a car. This gave him a fine view of anyone who went out or in, and also a reason for loitering on an elegant street where people were not encouraged to loiter. It would be inconvenient if the owner of the car appeared, but Jerry was prepared to cope with this.

At five to eleven a young man emerged from the building. Richard Horan, in all probability. Jerry, ducking behind the car to wipe the fender, got a long look at him. Mr. Horan would have to be encountered later in the day. Rather to Jerry’s surprise, Mr. Horan looked like Hollywood’s idea of a “young Madison Avenue executive on his way up”; because Horan was in analysis, Jerry realized that he had expected him to look a bit more harried and uncertain, the Brooks Brothers suit perhaps askew. But here was assurance personified. Jerry felt a surge of relief, the origin of which he did not question; in fact, he was,
without knowing it, glad that he did not have to pity Mr. Horan.

Once the object of his scrutiny had disappeared, appropriately enough, in the direction of Madison Avenue, Jerry continued to polish the car, though less assiduously, pausing to smoke a cigarette. He saw one woman enter, and one woman leave, presumably on their way to and from Dr. Barrister’s office. To his surprise, neither of the women could be described as “aged.” One of them, in fact, was considerably younger than Kate, whom Jerry thought of, though he would have died rather than admit it to her, as middle-aged. (Kate, of course, had had far too much experience with students of Jerry’s age not to know precisely how he thought of her.) He forced himself to wipe the entire side of the car carefully, and to smoke a cigarette in an exaggeratedly leisurely fashion, before facing the fact of what was to be done next. He had just about decided that he had better go in and spin some sort of tale to Emanuel, when Emanuel himself, smoking a cigarette, came out of the doorway and turned toward the park.

Jerry could not, of course, be certain that this was Emanuel, but the man was the right age and was, moreover, wearing extremely shabby clothes, such as were unlikely to be worn by any tenant of so excellent a building except this eccentric man who donned old clothes for the purpose of running around the reservoir. Jerry folded his chamois neatly and left it on the fender as part payment to the owner of the car for the use that had been made of it, and followed the man into the park.

It was by no means clear to Jerry what he intended to do next. Trot around the reservoir after the man, trip him up perhaps, and then slip, amid apologies, into a conversation? Emanuel was certainly no fool; could Jerry get away
with that? Perhaps, at the reservoir, something would present itself. One thing was clear: this man walked with urgency, with the physical energy of one who has sat too long, who needs, quite simply, to move. This explained why he would go to the trouble of changing his clothes for scarcely half an hour’s run.

But he was destined not to have the run. He slowed down on one of the paths, so that Jerry came dangerously close to him. What had stopped him was a woman—who could tell what age?—over-made-up, appearing, appallingly, on the edge of lunacy. She was weeping, and the mascara ran in black streaks down her aging face, mingling with the rouge. Others saw her, some smirked, most simply turned away and skirted the path to avoid her. Jerry’s instinct was to do the same.

But Emanuel stopped. “Can I help you?” he asked the woman. Jerry dropped, unnoticed, onto a bench behind Emanuel. The woman eyed her interlocutor with suspicion.

“I’ve lost him,” she whimpered, “I just dozed off, and he’s gone away. I don’t sleep well at night.”

“Your little boy?” Emanuel asked.

She nodded. “I tied his leash to the bench, but he must have pulled it loose. Cyril darling, come to Mama,” she began to call. “Don’t you hurt him,” she said to Emanuel.

“How big was he?” Emanuel asked. “What color?” The scene, to Jerry, was grotesque. But Emanuel put his hand on the woman’s arm. “What color was he?” he asked again. The gesture seemed to calm her.

“Brown,” she said. “This big,” and she made a movement, as of one who holds a small dog under one arm. She looked at the empty arm with love.

“He won’t have gone far,” Emanuel said. By this time they had collected a small and interested crowd. Emanuel
began to search in the nearby bushes, and a few other men, with a shrug to show they thought this all nonsense, joined him. Jerry forced himself to keep his seat. It was one of the other men who, perhaps five minutes later, found the dog, not far off, rolling in some indescribable, to him delightful, mess. A pleasant change after that woman, Jerry thought.

The woman retrieved the dog, scolding him, calling him a naughty, naughty boy, and walking away from Emanuel as though he were a tramp who had accosted her. The man who had found the dog pointed to his forehead meaningfully. Emanuel nodded, and looked at his watch. No time now for even the quickest run. He has a patient at twelve, Jerry thought, and he has to change his clothes. Emanuel began walking slowly back toward the avenue. Jerry did not follow; he remained on the bench, thinking about Richard Horan. The need to speak to Emanuel had evaporated, somehow, in the morning air.

After sitting for half an hour longer in the park, Jerry found himself viewing the profession of detective with somewhat less insouciance than he had felt that morning. In fact, he thought himself rather a fool. It was all very well to tell Kate, in his most debonair manner, that he was going down to apply for a job at the advertising agency where Richard Horan worked, but as an idea, this was several light-years away from being brilliant. Well, he might not apply for a job, but obviously the thing to do was to go down to the agency’s offices and look around. It might work out that the best plan would be to follow Mr. Horan home—Jerry did not linger too long over the question of where, if anywhere, this would lead—but he might just as well move now in the general direction of Horan.

Going downtown in the Madison Avenue bus, Jerry pulled out the picture of the young man and studied it. Could it possibly be a picture of Horan? Viewing his victim from behind the car fender, Jerry had had only a general impression; a detailed description of the man’s face had not remained with him. Surely a detective who has had one look at a man should never again forget the face; Jerry, far from forgetting it, had really nothing to remember. Still, he felt, swallowing his humility, it was fairly certain that Horan had not looked like this. Well, one could but make sure.

It is one of the odd tricks of fate that, when we have admitted ourselves to be foolish, fully to blame for our own mistakes, she will hand us a piece of good fortune on a platter. The Greeks, of course, understood all about this, but Jerry had yet to learn it. Years later, Jerry was to look back on this as the time when he had learned that though one must do all one can, success is never entirely the result of one’s own efforts. Yet now, emerging from the bus, he knew only his own inadequacy.

All advertising agencies were named, by Jerry, Bing, Bang, Bilge, and Oblivion. This particular Bing, Bang, etcetera, had its offices on the eighteenth floor. Jerry stepped from the elevator feeling rather as though he were going into orbit. Surely there would be a receptionist. But Jerry was never to know whether there was or not. A hand was placed on his shoulder; in that moment, Jerry was certain, his hair began to go gray.

“What are you doing here? Don’t tell me Sarah’s talked you into going into the advertising racket. Take my advice; stick to the law.”

It was Horan. Jerry stared at him open-mouthed, as
though he were an alligator who had appeared suddenly in a suburban bathtub.

“You are the Jerry who’s engaged to Sarah Fansler, no? I met you at a party.… Anything wrong?” Jerry looked, in fact, as though he were going to faint.

“Small world,” he managed to say. “To coin a phrase,” he added, trying to save himself from the monstrous ineptitude of the first cliché.

“I think it is, literally. In my opinion, there are only fifty people in the world, and they keep moving about. Have you had lunch?”

Dear, wonderful, blessed Sarah, who really did know everybody. Jerry had realized, in a vague sort of way, that this might be useful—he was thinking years ahead to his practice of law—but now he began to view Sarah’s connections in an even brighter light. He had often remarked to Sarah, jokingly, that he thought they read different editions of the
Times
each morning. She never glanced at the sports page; Africa, the Near East, Russia, the acts of Congress whirled about somewhere in the outer reaches of her consciousness; if, to save her life, she had to name the nine justices of the Supreme Court, she would mention Warren, and die. But for her the
Times
was filled with small news items of people changing jobs, marrying, divorcing, supporting causes, and none of these items was ever forgotten. She not only “knew everybody” through the vast connections of family, school, college, dates—her social world generally—she also knew all about them.