Pale Betrayer (21 page)

“You moved the child yourself?”

“Certainly not. I arranged the ambulance.”

“What time was this, Doctor?”

“It was well after ten when the ambulance got there. I was going to be late for a meeting.”

“Let’s back up, Doctor. You went to dinner at, say, eight fifteen?”

“Approximately.”

“How long did you spend in the restaurant? We’ll check this, you know.”

“An hour? It must have been about that. It’s my only relaxation.”

“And what time did you reach the hospital?”

“A quarter to ten? I can’t drive uptown in less than a half-hour.”

“All right, Doctor. The other call? You said you made two.”

“I stopped for a few minutes to pay my respects to the family of a friend—a funeral parlor on 108th Street near Lexington.”

“What time, Doctor?”

“Ten thirty?”

“And the meeting, where was that?”

For the first time Corrales showed his impatience. “In the old Hispanic Hall on East Ninetieth. I spoke last—and it was unfortunate. I should have been on the program earlier as scheduled. They lost money having me wind up the meeting, you see. The collection suffered. I am assuming you know the cause, gentlemen? Cuban liberation?”

Herring had made notes throughout.

At this point Marks took over the interrogation. “Dr. Corrales, you drive a black sedan—a 1959 Chevrolet?”

“I do.”

“May we have the keys to the car?”

“For what purpose, may I ask?”

“To examine the car.”

“I understand that. But isn’t it time I was informed of the purpose of your visit? I’m not sure I shouldn’t have my lawyer present before we go any further.”

“Suit yourself, Doctor. A man of some distinction was the victim of a homicidal attack—not far from your clinic.”

“Ah, yes of course,” Corrales said, leaning back slowly in his chair with the air of someone suddenly realizing graver implications than he had at first suspected. “And closer still to where I have made the arrangement to park my car.” He took his car keys from his pocket and offered them.

Pererro took them and left.

“An unusual parking arrangement, wouldn’t you say?” Marks continued.

“Not at all. I had been the victim of having my car broken into.”

“Something of value was stolen, Doctor?”

Corrales hesitated. “Yes, Lieutenant, a case of surgical instruments.”

Marks heard the sound, almost a snort, from Redmond: he had predicted that the doctor would have a story waiting for them. He did not take his eyes from Corrales, however, and leaning on the desk he asked: “And a handkerchief, Doctor?”

“There were several—two or three at least in the case.”

“Did you report the theft to the police?”

“I did not—which is why I am now distressed. The physicist was knifed, was he not?”

“Beautifully,” Marks said.

The doctor looked at his hands. “I am … distressed,” he repeated.

Marks glanced at Herring: they were coming full circle now to his and Pererro’s wild improvisations, the thing that had put him in mind of Janet Bradley’s picture. “Why did you not report so serious a loss, Doctor?”

Corrales moistened his lips. “I am not licensed to practice surgery in the United States, Lieutenant. I was afraid of that kind of investigation.”

Redmond said: “When was the surgical case stolen, Doctor?”

“Oh, it was two or three weeks ago.”

“Have you replaced it?”

“Not as yet, no.”

“Then why take such precautions in parking the car—after the fact?”

Corrales said: “Because in my other, my patriotic profession—you do not know what it means to have to be a professional patriot, sir—I am often the custodian of certain things I should prefer not to have to carry. I will speak plainly, for your men will soon discover—if the vandals who smashed the window of my car to get what they took from it had broken into the trunk that night, they would have discovered an arsenal.”

The detectives digested that bit of information for a moment. Kid gloves, Marks remembered. The same thought must have occurred to Redmond. He said: “There will be charges growing out of such possession, Doctor.”

But not of homicide, Marks thought, that whole theory seeming to crumble. They were back on the street where Fitzgerald had wanted them in the first place, looking for a gang of thugs who attacked Bradley in the moments of his recovery from the blow on the head; two separate crimes. And yet there was Mama Fernandez’s testimony: the call out of “Doctor!” But wasn’t Bradley himself very often called Doctor?

Herring spoke for the first time: “Dr. Corrales, have you been out of town at any time since Monday night?”

For the first time something happened to disconcert the man, Marks thought, something in his eyes changed. He recovered almost at once: “Ah, I see—the old watchman, Bolardo. I read the newspapers, Officer. Having certain things on my conscience—irrelevant to your investigation, but nonetheless—I did not want to risk such trouble as I am now in. I have not been in the neighborhood since. But neither did I want to call attention to myself by my absence. I telephoned Bolardo with the simple lie.”

“The surgical instrument is not irrelevant to our investigation, Doctor,” Redmond said coldly, and then because he was a man who at some point had to throw away the kid gloves, he added: “You didn’t by any chance give the thief a short course in how to use it?”

Corrales smiled blandly. “I do not understand.”

“Think it over. It may come to you.” He led the way out, Herring and Marks following.

On the wall, near the door to the office, was a picture of Corrales, younger, but with the same smile. He was in uniform. Marks lifted it from the nail. “May I borrow this, Doctor?”

“I would prefer not to have it in the newspapers. I do not wish to further jeopardize the work of our committee by my personal blundering.”

“I don’t intend to give it to the newspapers,” Marks said, and took the picture with him.

On the street, a considerable crowd now pushing the police cordon around them, the technical men had arrived and commenced their work on the car.

A forlorn chance at best, Marks thought.

Redmond was instructing Herring and Pererro. “I want every goddamned step of his itinerary checked out and clocked to the minute.”

Marks and he took a cab, leaving the car with the younger detectives. Neither of them said much on the way downtown. “What are you going to do with that?” Redmond indicated the photograph in Marks’s hands.

“Have a couple of people look at it. Janet Bradley for one.”

A few minutes later Redmond said: “Did you believe him?”

“I’ll bet he could tell it the same way again,” Marks said. “Letter perfect. You prophesied that yourself, remember?”

“So did Anderson,” Redmond growled.

“I wonder if he rehearsed him,” Marks said.

Redmond looked at him: something very close to the same thought had crossed his mind. Then he said: “I don’t think so, Dave. One of our leading physicists is not an expendable. You and I have to believe that. Otherwise …” He left the sentence unfinished.

I
T WAS ODDLY COMFORTING
to contemplate other men’s destinies when you fairly well knew your own. The plane could go down in a crash of course. Mather wondered briefly if in such a case his notebook were recovered from the wreckage what the investigators would make of it. They always looked for sabotage, the planted bomb, the suicide proposing to take with him the plane’s full complement. A small item in the Chicago paper he was still holding in his hand by the time the plane was soaring over the Allegheny Mountains told of the burial at Moncton Grove of Peter Bradley’s ashes, while the New York police were still investigating the circumstances of his murder.

This being the early flight, his companions were mostly business men, starting their day soon after the opening of the offices of their New York conferees. Their Chicago suburb families would expect them home for dinner, the children waiting up … He had always been fond of children: with them he was—what he was, their make-believe his perfect dish. He wondered then what Janet’s child was like and why there had been no others.

Moving through the terminal to the limousine he picked up a copy of the morning
Times
. On the second page he saw the likeness of Jerry, the police artist’s re-creation from his description. It was remarkably good, he thought. But thinking about Jerry now, he regretted having given the description, its appearance in the papers. Until now Jerry would have felt secure. He would have supposed Eric Mather sealed within the conspiracy, doubly sealed by Bradley’s death. Now he would not know how much Mather had told the police, how much he had been able to tell the police. Jerry might be on the run.

The limousine was bound in by the morning traffic, the whole of it oozing forward like a log-jam on a river, the people within the cars and buses as helpless as woodworms. What an insignificant thing a man was truly.

He forced himself to read the
Times
story adjacent to the picture. Inspector Joseph Fitzgerald was a garrulous Irishman, a master at saying nothing with an air of profundity. His intent seemed to be to create the impression that the police were not telling all they knew. One might hope to God that this were so, Mather thought. He turned to the page where the story was continued. At the bottom of the column he read: “Professor Eric Mather, missing from his home for twenty-four hours …” And there, maddeningly, the story was suspended, cut off mid-sentence by the compositor at the column’s end and continued nowhere.

But the possibilities were not numerous. He could himself finish the sentence easily: “… is being sought for questioning.” He wondered if Jerry would put it together that way too.

If the police were actually looking for him, however, Mather felt that he dared not go home. They might take him into custody. He would have to tell them what he knew; he would want to. It was all written in the notebook he carried now in the valise along with his overnight things, all—up to this minute. But it was not enough by which to measure anything but ignominy.

He went directly to the University. Here too they would be alerted for him possibly. But he had promised his chairman to return in time for the afternoon classes: a little time of grace might still be left him if he hurried.

Mather entered the General Studies Building by the side door, opposite the park. Two girls were talking with the door attendant, and none of them knew him by sight. A better place for anonymity than a city university would be hard to find. Now he had to take the chance of charming a giddy girl who, he knew, would recognize him. He had tried to remember her name. He had had to leave a blank in his “Confession” though he could see her vividly in memory, pawing her face, wagging her wild red head while he had spouted Byron in the tavern. Then suddenly, opening the door to the Records Office, he had it: Sally.
Sally in Our Alley
…

He was not sure that it was the same girl now sitting at the desk until she looked up and recognized him. She opened her mouth, but closed it again without saying his name when he put his finger to his lips. An older woman turned from the files where she was working. Mather smiled and bowed a little toward her. With a curt nod she returned to her work and Sally came to the railing, asking loudly: “Can I help you?”

Close to him she said, scarcely above a whisper: “Mr. Mather, the police …”

He deliberately became off-hand. The girl was far too eager to conspire with him. “I’m trying to help them—in a certain matter,” he said.

“Oh.” She was disappointed.

“Sally, the boy who introduced us, Osterman?” She nodded, pleased now by the language of togetherness. “Do you see him still?”

“I don’t go out with him if that’s what you mean. Actually, it’s vice versa since that night—you know? I told you I worked in the Records Office?” Vaguely Mather remembered it now, but he had dug it sharply out of his memory needing to remember Osterman. “Common, you know. Unclean.” Sally made a face saying it that in his present disposition and relieved of this pressure he would have cherished: the girl who, for all her phony aspirations, could say that of herself. “And I thought we had a future. I do love the name Jeffrey …”

“Sally …”

“Sh …” She rolled her eyes toward the other clerk. “That’s Miss Katz. Gee, I wish I could help you, Mr. Mather.”

“Could you find Osterman for me now? I must know where he is, whatever class he’s in. I must talk to him.”

“Gee …” Sally said again, once more casting the backward glance toward Miss Katz who was now banging the file drawers, opening and closing one, then another.

“He’s an English major,” Mather prompted.

Sally drew a deep breath and called out: “I’m going out for coffee, Miss Katz. Okay?” She was on her way, Mather opening the gate for her before the woman could make up her mind what to say.

In the hallway Mather said: “I’ll watch for you here.”

“Do you want me to tell him …?”

“Nothing. Don’t even speak to him. Just come back and tell me where he is.”

Mather spent ten minutes in a booth of the men’s room halfway down the corridor. He was not a bathroom reader, but the time was interminable, the confinement with such literary examples of the college-educated as were to be read on the wall, nauseating. He took Carlyle’s
Hero Worship
from his bag and read a few paragraphs. Legs came and went. He heard an occasional monosyllabic greeting at the washbasins. Then the bell rang for the change of classes. He looked at his watch. It was five minutes to eleven.

On his first trip back to the Records Office, Sally had not returned. The second trip he came out in time to catch up with her in the hallway before she reached her office.

“He just went into study hall—room 408. I waited, you see, to find out where he’d go at the change of classes.”

“Bless you, Sally, you are intelligent and a princess.”

“I won’t tell anyone I saw you, Mr. Mather. But it said in the paper this morning that the police were looking for you.”

Mather wanted to go quickly. The hall was by no means deserted. But the girl put her hand on his arm to delay him, and when he stayed, she removed it quickly. “I’ve been thinking whether I ought to tell you. You know that picture of the man in
The Times
this morning?” Mather nodded. “I think I saw him once. Only I thought he was an F.B.I. man. He came in and asked for me, and then he wanted to see your record.”