The Blunderer (26 page)

“You thought after that that everybody knew about you,” Corby said, “so you moved to Newark. The last straw was here in Newark—that insurance salesman Ed Kinnaird.”

Kimmel twitched. “Who told you that?”

“That's a secret,” Corby said. “It's too bad you didn't kill him instead of Helen, Kimmel, you might have got off. That lout! And Helen picked him up on the sidewalk like a prostitute—at the age of thirty-nine, a sagging old woman having a last fling. To you it was repellent! And she was proud of him, boasting all over the neighborhood about what he could do. You couldn't stand that, not when you were carrying on scholarly correspondences with college professors all over the country. By that time you'd built up quite a reputation in Newark as a book dealer who knew his business.”

“Who told you about Kinnaird?” Kimmel asked. “Nathan?”

“I don't reveal my sources,” Corby said smiling.

Nathan had been at the house the night before, Kimmel thought, the night Helen and Kinnaird had come in, yet he didn't believe Nathan would tell, not about that night, anyway. Lena could have told him about Kinnaird, or Greta Kane—any of the lowest people in the neighborhood Helen had used to babble to! But what bothered Kimmel most was that with all Corby's investigations in the neighborhood, no one had come and informed him.

“It wasn't Nathan,” Corby said, shaking his head, “but Nathan did tell me about the night you and he were playing pinochle and Helen came in with Ed Kinnaird to change her clothes before she went out somewhere dancing. Kinnaird walked in as unconcerned as you please. Nathan knew what was going on. And you might as well have been a fat eunuch sitting there!”

Kimmel staggered forward, grappling for Corby with both arms. Kimmel's stomach heaved, his feet left the floor, and something smashed against his shoulder blades. For an instant his face was pressed against his belly. His legs were propped against the wall.
Every bone in my body is broken!
Kimmel thought. He did not even try to move, though the pain in his spine was excruciating.

“You told her to get out of the house—right in front of Nathan. It wasn't the first time, but you meant it this time. Ed got out and she stayed, wailing it all to Lena over the phone.”

Kimmel felt a kick in his legs. His feet hit the floor and began to sting. Nathan who never talked, Kimmel thought. That was why Nathan had not come to see him for so long. Kimmel knew from the Newark police that Nathan had never even said: “He
might
have done it” when he was questioned. But maybe the Newark police had never gone into that story of the night before. Nathan had betrayed him—the high-school history teacher whom Kimmel had considered a gentleman and a scholar! A bitter disappointment in Nathan, like a private inner hell, filled Kimmel's mind, balancing the outer hell of the room. He had lost his glasses again.

“Lena told Helen to go to her sister's in Albany for a while. A very unlucky move. Really, Kimmel, with all the people who knew about your fracas that night, you've got off amazingly well till now, haven't you?”

Kimmel was beyond speaking. He lay in a heap. The black spot not far from his eyes was his shoe, he thought. He reached for it and his hand pressed against something cool, but whether it was floor or wall, he didn't know.

“You didn't kill Helen because she was going with Kinnaird so much as because she was stupid. Kinnaird was only the match that touched it all off. So you followed your wife in the bus that night and killed her. Admit it, Kimmel!”

Kimmel's tongue was limp in his mouth. In a sense, he had even closed his ears to Corby's voice. He cringed on the floor like a dog, painfully aware that he was like a dog, yet enduring it because he knew there was no alternative. No alternative to Corby's rasping, screaming voice. Corby's hands yanking him up by the shoulders with their terrifying strength and propping him against the wall, cracking his head against the wall. Kimmel couldn't see anything. It was dimmer than before.

“Look at yourself! Pig!” Corby shouted. “Admit that you know Stackhouse is guilty! Admit that you know you are here because of Stackhouse and that he's as guilty as you are!”

Kimmel felt his first passionate thrust of resentment against Stackhouse, but he would not have betrayed it to Corby for anything because Corby wanted him to. “My glasses,” Kimmel said in a squeaky voice that didn't sound like his own. He felt them pushed into his hand, felt the nosepiece crack even as he took them. Half of one lens was gone. He put them on. They fell to one side, below his eye level, and he had to hold them up to see anything.

“That's all for today,” Corby said.

Kimmel did not move, and Corby repeated it. Kimmel did not know which way the door was, and he was afraid to look, afraid even to turn his head. Then he felt Corby yank him by one arm and shove him in the back. Kimmel nearly tripped over his big dragging feet. Something bounced in on the floor. It was his shoe that Corby had thrown after him. Kimmel started to put it on, had to sit down on the floor to get it on. The floor felt icy beneath him. Kimmel got himself up the stairs to the ground level of the building. Corby had disappeared. He was alone. There was a policeman reading a newspaper at a desk in the hall, who did not even look at him as he passed. Kimmel had a ghostly feeling, as if he might be dead and invisible.

Kimmel went down the steps clinging to the banister and thinking of Laura doing it. He held to the end of the banister, trying to think where he was. He started off, then turned again and went in the other direction, still holding up his glasses so he could see. It was morning now, though the sun had not risen. When he felt the cold wind on him, he realized that he had wet his trousers. Then his teeth began to chatter, and he did not know if it was cold or fear.

As soon as he reached home, Kimmel dialed Tony's home number. It was Tony's father who answered, and Kimmel had to pass the time of day with him before he put the telephone down to call Tony. Tony senior sounded just as usual, Kimmel thought.

“Hello, Mr. Kimmel,” Tony's voice said.

“Hello, Tony. Can you come over to my house please? Now?”

There was a startled silence. “Sure, Mr. Kimmel. Your
house
?”

“Yes.”

“Sure, Mr. Kimmel. Uh—I didn't have breakfast yet.”

“Have your breakfast.” Kimmel put the telephone down, and went with as much dignity as he could in his damp trousers upstairs to his bedroom, removed the trousers and hung them to dry before taking them to the cleaners.

He washed his shoes carefully in the bathroom, put his socks to soak in the basin, and drew himself a hot bath. He bathed slowly and exactly in the manner in which he always bathed. Yet he felt he was being watched, and he did no more than glance at himself in the long mirror when he stepped out of the tub, and it was a furtive, disapproving glance. In his bedroom, he took a clean white shirt from the stack in his drawer, put it on and put his robe on over it. His fingers caressed the starched white collar absently and appreciatively. He loved white shirts more than almost any tangible object in the world.

What proof could Tony give them? he asked himself suddenly. What if Tony did turn against him? That would prove nothing.

The doorbell rang as he went downstairs to put on coffee. Kimmel let him in. Tony came softly, a little reluctantly. Kimmel could see the apprehension in his black eyes. Like a small dog afraid of a whipping, Kimmel thought.

“I stepped on them,” Kimmel said in anticipation of Tony's question about his glasses. “Will you come into the kitchen?”

They went into the kitchen. Kimmel motioned Tony to a straight chair and set about making coffee, which was difficult because he had to hold his glasses.

“I hear you talked to Corby again,” Kimmel said. “Now what did you tell him?”

“The same old thing.”

“What else?” Kimmel asked, looking at him.

Tony cracked his knuckles. “He asked me if I'd seen you after the show. I said no—at first. I really didn't see you, you know, Mr. Kimmel.”

“What if you didn't? You weren't looking for me, were you, Tony?”

Tony hesitated.

Kimmel waited. A stupid witness! Why had he chosen a stupid witness? If he had only kept looking that night, looked around in the theater, he might even have found Nathan! “Don't you remember? You never said you were looking for me. We spoke to each other the next day.” Kimmel felt repelled by the shiny black hairs that grew over Tony's thick nose, connecting his eyebrows. He was hardly a cut above a juvenile delinquent in appearance, Kimmel thought.

“Yes, I remember,” Tony said. “But I might have forgotten.”

“And who told you
that
? Corby?”

“No. Well, yes, he did.” Tony put on his earnest, frowning expression that was no more intelligent than his normal one.

“Told you you might have forgotten. Said I could have been miles away killing Helen by nine-thirty or ten, didn't he? Who is
he
to tell you what to think?” Kimmel roared with indignation.

Tony looked startled. “He only said it was possible, Mr. Kimmel.”

“Possible be damned! Anything is possible! Isn't it?”

“Yes,” Tony agreed.

Kimmel could see that Tony was staring at the pink blotch on his right jaw, where Corby had hit him. “Who is this man to come here and make trouble for you and me and the whole community?”

Tony hitched himself to the edge of his chair. He looked as if he were really trying to think just who Corby was. “He talked to the doctor, too. He said—”

“What doctor?”

“Mrs. Kimmel's doctor.”

Kimmel gasped. He knew: Dr. Phelan. He might have known Helen would have gone to have a talk with Dr. Phelan. He had cured her of arthritic pains in her back. Helen thought he was a miracle man. Kimmel even thought he could remember the time when Helen must have been going to him, about a month before she died, when she was wrestling with herself as to whether to give up Ed Kinnaird or defy her husband and indulge herself in that last fling. Dr. Phelan would have told her to indulge herself, of course. But Helen would have told Dr. Phelan about his own efforts to stop her. “What did the doctor say?” Kimmel asked.

“Corby didn't tell me that,” Tony said.

Kimmel frowned at Tony. All he saw in Tony's face was fear and doubt now. And when a primitive mind like Tony's began to doubt—Tony
couldn't
doubt, Kimmel thought. Doubt demanded a mind capable of entertaining two possibilities at once.

“Corby did say—the doctor told him about Ed Kinnaird. Something like that. A fellow—”

Everybody knew, Kimmel thought. Corby had circulated like a newspaper.

Tony stood up, sidling from his chair. He looked afraid of Kimmel. “Mr. Kimmel, I don't think—I don't think I should be seeing you so much any more. You can understand, Mr. Kimmel,” he went on faster, “I don't want to get myself in no more trouble over this. You understand, don't you? No hard feelin's, Mr. Kimmel.” Tony wavered, as if he were about to extend a hand, but was far too frightened to extend a hand.

He sidled a few steps towards the door. “It's okay with me, Mr. Kimmel, whatever you say. Do, I mean.”

Kimmel roused himself from his trance of astonishment. “Tony—” He stepped towards him, but he saw Tony retreat and he stopped. “Tony, you are in this—to the extent that you are a witness.You saw me
in
the theater.That's all I've ever asked you to say, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Tony said.

“That's the truth, too, isn't it?”

“Yes. But don't be angry, Mr. Kimmel, if I don't—don't have so many beers with you any more. I'm scared.” He nodded. He looked scared. “I'm scared, Mr. Kimmel.” Then he turned and trotted down the hall and out the front door.

Kimmel stood still for a minute, feeling weak, physically weak and lightheaded. He began to walk up and down his kitchen. A concentration of curses rattled steadily through his mind, curses mild and foul in Polish and in German but mostly in English, curses directed at no one and nothing, then at Corby, then at Stackhouse, then at Dr. Phelan and Tony, but he checked the curses at Tony. He lumbered round and round his kitchen, chin sunk in the fat collar of flesh that flowed into his rounded chest.

“Stackhouse!” Kimmel shouted. It echoed in the room like pieces of glass falling around him.

30

“I
want fifty thousand,” Kimmel said. “No more and no less.”

Walter reached for the cigarettes on his desk.

“You can pay it in installments, if you like, but I'd take it all within a year.”

“Do you think I would even begin? Do you think I am guilty in the first place? I am innocent.”

“You could be made to look very guilty. I could make you guilty,” Kimmel replied quietly. “Proof is not the thing. Doubt is the thing.”

Walter knew it. He knew what Kimmel could make out of the first visit to his shop, the visit that he could prove by the book order. And he knew why Kimmel was here, and why his glasses were broken and tied with string, and he understood that he had at last been driven to desperation and revenge; yet Walter's uppermost emotion was shock and surprise at seeing Kimmel here and being threatened by him. “Still,” Walter said, “rather than pay a blackmailer, I'll risk it.”

“You are most unwise.”

“You're trying to sell me something I don't want to buy.”

“The right to live?”

“I doubt if you can do me that much damage. What proof have you got? You have no witnesses.”

“I've told you I'm not interested in proof. I still have the dated order you left in my shop. The date can be confirmed by the people I wrote to for the book. I can weave a fatal story for the newspapers around that day, the day you first came to me.” Kimmel's eyes were stretched expectantly behind the glasses that reduced them.