Night Squad (10 page)

      “On what?”
      “The rowing.”
      “You knew I was watching?”
      “Gimme a rating,” Grogan said.
      “It was nice,” Corey said. “It was something to see.”
      “They all say that,” Grogan murmured. He glanced at Corey. “You think I do it to show off?”
      “I wouldn't know.”
      “Well, I don't do it to show off. I don't do it for the exercise, neither. I mean the exercise is secondary.”
      There was silence for a while. Then Grogan said, “You wanna know why I do it?”
      “I'm sorta wondering.”
      “All right, I'll tell you. It's more than just pulling the oars. It's sorta like pumping the machinery. Up here,” and he pointed to his head. “The faster I move that boat, the better I can think,” Grogan said. “I mean real thinking. With real thinking it's just the brain that's talking, there ain't no interference from the muscles and the glands and the nerves. Or what they call the feelings.”
      “You mean when you're rowing you don't feel nothing?”
      “That about tells it,” Grogan said. “When it comes to real thinking, it's gotta be arithmetic and nothing else. If the feelings interfere, it ain't thinking no more; it's just worriment and the blues and a lotta confusion. You follow that?”
      Corey nodded slowly.
      Grogan said, “I'm rowing on that river, the numbers start to add, and sooner or later I get the total. Like today.”
      The car pulled over to the side of the highway. Grogan switched off the engine. He looked at Corey Bradford in silence. Then Grogan murmured, “I'm waiting, Corey.”
      “For what? I told you everything.”
      “You sure?”
      “All right, let's check it. I told you about City Hall. And the party I had with Macy and Lattimore. And that's it. That's the full report.”
      “For last night only,” Grogan said. He let a pause drift in. And then, “What about today?”
      “Whaddya mean, today?”
      “In my house. While I was upstairs. And you were downstairs. With her.”
      There was a long pause.
      Grogan said, “Here's how it adds. I come downstairs and she's sitting on the sofa. You're on the other side of the room. In the armchair. Now back to her again. She's got something in her lap. It's a picture magazine. It didn't hit me then, but when I'm rowing on the river I get to thinking about it.”
      Corey's eyebrows went up slightly. He wondered if he looked relaxed. He was trying very hard to appear relaxed.
      “I get to thinking she's a fussy reader,” Grogan said. “She don't go in for picture magazines. Always complains when I bring one home. Says it's just a lotta trash.”
      “So?”
      “So the magazine was in her lap and it was open. That means she was reading it. But she wasn't wearing her reading glasses.”
      Corey grimaced, puzzled.
      Grogan said, “She never reads without her reading glasses.”
      “So what?” Corey mumbled. “What are you giving me here?”
      “I'm telling you what you already know,” Grogan said. “She was bluffing. She wasn't reading no picture magazine while I was upstairs. And while I was upstairs there wasn't no twelve feet of carpet between you and her.”
      Corey gazed past Grogan and smiled lazily. He said, “You putting me on the grill?”
      “Without grease. Now let's have it.”
      Corey tightened his lips. He told himself it needed cold anger, and of course the less he said the better. He put cold anger in his eyes, looked at Grogan and said, “Look, let's forget the whole thing.”
      Then he had his hand on the door handle. He turned it, opened the car door and started to get out. Grogan took hold of his arm and held on. “Now wait,” Grogan said. “We ain't finished.”
      “Take your hand off me.”
      Grogan let go. He said softly, “Don't be a damn fool. You can't walk out on me. Nobody walks out on me.”
      Corey closed the car door and settled back in the seat.
      “What the hell's wrong with you?” Grogan asked. “Whatcha all upset about?”
      “I'll just tell you this,” Corey spoke through his teeth. “I didn't touch her.”
      “You wanted to?”
      “Now listen, Grogan,” and he shifted in the seat and faced the silver-haired man. “In the first place, she's your wife and I'm not a creep. In the second place, she's a teaser and I'm not a chump. In the third place, I'm out to score for loot, not gash.”
      “All right,” Grogan said.
      “It ain't all right. Christ's sake, you forget I damn near got bumped last night. This job I'm doin' for you, I'm playin' tag with the undertaker. So it ain't enough I got that on my mind. I gotta sit here and hear about your woman. What do I care about your woman? The hell with your woman.”
      Grogan chuckled very softly, somewhat bitterly. “I wish I could say that.” And then for a moment he closed his eyes and was alone with himself, muttering, “God damn her.”
      Corey slumped low in the car seat. He gazed through the windshield. He told himself not to say anything. He put a sullen look on his face and kept it there.
      Grogan said, “Don't pay me no mind, Corey. It's just that I been takin' it and takin' it and—it's chokin' me, that's what it's doin'. Like a knotted rope around my neck. And every day it gets tighter. So why do I keep takin' it? Why do I put up with her?”
      Grogan's voice was twisted with anguish. He bent low and his forehead was pressed against the steering wheel. “Whaddya do in a case like this?” he asked nobody in particular. “You know what it amounts to? She got me hexed, that's what. It's gotta be that. She puts the hex on me.”
      “You believe in that?” Corey murmured.
      “Corey boy, I'll tell you. I don't know what the hell to believe. If I could only reach her, you know? But I swear it's like reachin' for an eel in the water. You can touch it, but you can't hold on. That's what I live with. In my own house I gotta live like that.”
      Corey glanced at the silver-haired man. The thick rower's fingers were hooked around the rim of the steering wheel. The hands that had controlled the oars so precisely were quivering.
      “Three years now,” Grogan spoke through the soft chuckle laced with bitterness, anguish. “Three years I been living with this goddam question mark. Ain't a day in the week she don't throw another riddle at me. Like today with that picture magazine. Sitting there reading it and not wearing her reading glasses.” He raised his head and looked pleadingly at Corey. “Can'tcha gimme the answer to that? Can'tcha help me a little?”
      “Ain't nothing I can tell you,” Corey shrugged. “I can't look inside her head.”
      “You called her a teaser.” Grogan's eyes were lenses again, adjusting and probing. “Why'd you call her a teaser?”
      “It's the way she moves around. She sorta flicks it at you and then pulls it away. You know what I mean?”
      Grogan looked to one side. He nodded slowly, grunting as though someone was jabbing him with a blunt weapon, giving it to him in the kidney. “Yes, I know whatcha mean. I oughta know. There's been nights I just plain wished the wagon would come and take me away.”
      Corey blinked.
      Grogan went on, “But lemme tell you, Corey boy, there's been them other nights when I climbed into that bed, and it was there and it was fabulous. How many nights like that? I can count them nights on my fingers. And maybe that's why I hold onto her, just hoping for more of them nights.”
      There was a long silence. Then Grogan started the car engine, pulled away from the side of the highway and joined the stream of traffic. Several minutes later the car came to a stop across the street from Grogan's house. Grogan walked toward the house. Corey Bradford walked south on Second going toward Addison.
     

      On Addison, approaching the Hangout, he spotted Carp across the street. Carp was with some winos, sharing a bottle wrapped in newspaper. The little man glanced at Corey, then strolled away from the winos and went around the corner.

      Corey waited a few minutes. Then he crossed Addison, tossed a dollar bill to the winos, and rounded the corner onto Second. Carp was sitting on a doorstep a few houses down on Second. The little man had picked up a rag from the littered pavement and was using it to polish his rummage-sale shoes. The leather was cracked and, in places, torn wide, and his socks showed through. He continued to polish industriously, meticulously, as though the shoes were the finest quality and merited the best care. As Corey's shadow fell over him, he didn't look up. His complete attention was on the shoes.

      “You do what I told you to do?” Corey asked.

      “Exactly as specified,” the little man murmured, not looking up.

      “Where'd she go?”

      “First a meat market on Seventh Street,” the little man said, rubbing the rag across his left shoe. He raised the rag, examined the shoe, wasn't satisfied, and resumed the rubbing. “Then back to Addison and into a grocery. After that she went home.”

      “You sure it was home? She might have been visiting someone.”

      “No,” Carp said. “I checked that possibility. I checked it quite thoroughly. She entered her own place of residence.”

      Corey frowned slightly. “Whaddya mean you checked it?”

      “I watched through the window,” Carp said. “She put the meat in the icebox. She opened some cans of vegetables, peas and creamed corn, then unwrapped a loaf of bread—”

      “Was she alone?”

      Carp nodded.

      “All right,” Corey said. “Gimme the address.”

      “Six-seventeen Ingersoll Street,” the little man said. “First floor back.”

      “Thanks,” Corey said. And then, without thinking, he put his hand in his pocket, his fingers going for paper money. Carp looked up at that moment and his eyes said,
Please don't insult me.
Corey's hand came out of the trousers pocket empty, and the little man smiled with approval. He looked down again and went back to polishing his shoes. Corey walked away.

Six-seventeen Ingersoll
, Corey was thinking. He was in his room, getting into a clean shirt. He decided to take it all the way, and put on clean shorts and socks, then opened the closet and took out the only suit he owned. It was a $19.50 rayon acetate that needed pressing badly. He wished he had time to get it pressed. There were four neckties dangling from a nail on the inside of the closet door. He reached for the dark-green one, got it under the shirt collar, started to tie it and then realized what color it was.
You don't want that color
, he told himself.

      He pulled off the dark-green tie and put it back on the nail. For some moments he stood looking at it.
What's all this see-saw routine?
he wondered, and tried to back away from it, thinking.
It's just that you don't like that color—

      He snatched the dark-green tie and quickly slipped it under his collar and knotted it.

      After that he loosened the wall boards in the closet, took out the badge and the card and the police pistol. He put the card in his wallet and was placing the pistol under his belt when he heard the soft sound of someone tapping on the door.

      “Who is it?”

      “McDermott.”

      He went to the door, opened it and McDermott walked in. Corey frowned and deepened the frown as he watched the detective-sergeant move purposefully toward the window and pull down the shade.

      “Just so nobody can see us in here together,” McDermott said.

      “Nobody's looking.”

      “We don't know that.”

      “If they're looking, they saw you come in.”

      “I came in through the alley,” McDermott said. “And besides, there's other roomers here. No way of telling what room I'm visiting.”

      “They could check with the landlady.”

      “She didn't see me. The back door was open and I just slipped in.”

      “For Christ's sake,” Corey muttered irritably. “In broad daylight—”

      “Quit worrying,” McDermott said.

      Corey laughed lightly.

      “What's comical?”

      “He says quit worrying.”

      “So?”

      “You don't know this neighborhood.”

      “I know every neighborhood.”

      “Not this one,” Corey said. “To know this layout you gotta live in it. And not for a week or a month. You gotta be born and raised here. This is the Swamp and to know it, really know it, you gotta be a Swampcat.”

      “I'm wise to that fact.”

      Corey looked at him. There was something in the man's voice that chilled the room. And from the man's eyes, ice came out and sliced into Corey. It lasted for only an instant, but in that instant Corey had the feeling that he'd seen McDermott somewhere a long time ago.

      The detective-sergeant looked around for a chair. There was no chair, so he sat down on the edge of the bed. Corey moved past the bed and leaned against the dresser. There was a long pause. Then McDermott said, “Got anything to tell me?”

      “No,” Corey said.

      It was quiet again.

      McDermott looked at him. “I just thought you had something to tell me.”

      “If there was anything to tell,” Corey said slowly and quietly, “I wouldn't be sitting around waiting. I'da phoned in or reported in.”

      “All right,” McDermott said mildly. “All right, Bradford.”

      “You sure it's all right?”

      McDermott smiled at him. “Don't get annoyed.”

      “I'm not annoyed,” Corey said. He told himself to be extremely careful. He looked away from the detective-sergeant. “It's just that I'm curious, that's all. I just don't get this routine.”

      “But that's all it is. Just routine.”