The Longest Second (12 page)

Once I was on the street, without incident, I took a deep breath of the evening air.

“THE
eyes check,” said Burrows. “Blue.”

“Sure,” agreed Jensen, “and the weight isn’t bad either.’

“One sixty in 1942,” Burrows glanced at his note, “and Gorman says one eighty-five now.”

“That’s not too much difference after all these years. How many guys you know weigh the same as they did in the war? Twenty-five pounds isn’t too much if a guy’s taking it easy and living it-up a little.”

“The stiff didn’t look fat though,” Burrows remarked. “If he weighed one hundred and sixty pounds then, wouldn’t one eighty-five look a little heavy ... like he’d gone a little to fat?”

“I don’t know,” Jensen said honestly. “I agree the stiff didn’t look fat ... just good and husky. I’d say that if Pacific had been a real skinny guy ... one twenty-five, one thirty, something like that, he might’ve looked like a tub at a hundred and eighty-five pounds. But in 1942, Pacific was just twenty-two years old. The war, regular meals, and the heavy work filled him out.”

“I guess you’re right. It did to a lot of men. Pacific might put on twenty-five pounds and not look fat.” Burrows got up from his desk and walked over to the window. He looked out for a moment then returned to Jensen and sat down again “If Pacific was twenty-two when he got drafted, that would make him around thirty-seven, thirty-eight now.”

“Yes. Gorman said the stiff was anywhere from thirty-five to forty-five years old.”

“That would put Pacific right in the middle of Gorman’ guess.”

“Sure,” agreed Jensen. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” Burrows replied slowly, “but it’s that old spread again. Everything is spread.”

“The eyes are blue, the fingerprints check. There’s no guess or spread about them.”

“Damnit!” Burrows exploded impatiently, “I wish Gorman would get his report finished and tie this up. You can say what you want to about it, but five eleven and six one or two is a hell of a spread; thirty-seven and forty-five is another spread; one hundred sixty and one hundred eighty-five pounds is just more of the same thing. I feel like I’m talking about two different guys entirely.”

“Except for the Army,” Jensen replied patiently.

“Sure. Except for the Army.”

“Time changes everything,” explained Jensen. “Look at the Army record. It says Pacific’s hair was brown, not dark brown, or anything else, just brown. On your own report you described it as light brown. If I’d been making out that report, I’d have said sort of sandy with gray in it. We’re all talking about the same guy, but everybody talks a little bit differently from everybody else. It doesn’t mean anything. Once he had brownish hair, now it’s got a little gray in it.”

I MOVED
from Bianca’s that same night. Rosemary Martin was dead, and because she was dead it was logical that I leave the house at once. Rosemary Martin, Merkle, Santini, Doctor Minor ... all the persons who had crossed my life since the day I had regained consciousness in the hospital meant nothing to me. But when the time came to say goodbye, I was not so convinced regarding my sentiment toward Bianca Hill for there was a generosity of spirit within her which I recognized to be unusual. The rest of the world, and the people in it, existed only to prove my own reality. They were shadows which passed me each day, in a world made of present fragments and fleeing hours. I knew only that each man is a product of the whole of humanity; the seed which is passed down from ten thousand grandfathers; his present, his virtues and vices, are the product of his past.

I had no present, because I had no past.

It was impossible for me to explain this to Bianca. Bianca read my explanation silently. It was only about Rosemary though I did tell her I felt I owed her that—and I knew that when Rosemary’s body was found the police would question Bianca, and Bianca knew I had been looking for Rosemary. When I told her that I was leaving, she began to cry. Her face shadowed, and she no longer held back her tears.

“Vic, Vic,” she spoke softly, “what will you do? Where will you go? Whoever tried to kill you before will certainly try again!”

I pointed out that my unknown assailants could have killed me many times over, but had not. They wanted me alive—at least for a while.

Then she said, “Rosemary, poor Rosemary...” I touched her shoulder, a gesture of sympathy which I thought might help her, and she stopped her crying after a moment, and said with determination, “I don’t believe that she killed herself!” I had to agree with this, although I did not tell her so. She repeated, “Vic, I just don’t believe it!” Then I saw her eyes begin to cloud with doubt as she looked at me, and I knew that she was thinking that I might have killed Rosemary Martin. I said nothing, and permitted her to wrestle with her doubts. Then her fear passed, and she attempted to regain her composure. “Rosemary knew something that you’ve forgotten. She knew you from the past.”

I nodded. Bianca’s observation had been obvious. I left her, and went upstairs to pack my few belongings in a suitcase which I had to borrow from her. As I prepared to leave, she said, “But why go now? You can’t escape them. You’ll be as safe here as you will anywhere.”

With my pad, I attempted to make plain that Rosemary Martin would be identified, and very soon the police would be checking with Bianca regarding the time the two women lived together. I did not want to see the authorities again, to be hampered by them or their questionings. When they inquired concerning me, Bianca was to say that I had moved away, and she did not know where I had gone. This would be true because I had no idea where I would stay.

After she had agreed to this, I made one last request. I asked her not to tell the police that I had known Rosemary Martin in my past, nor that I had called on her at the hotel. I did not ask her to lie about this, because Bianca was a very poor liar. I merely told her not to volunteer the information. The police, I knew, would attempt to locate me, but it might take them time to do so without this added motive.

With my suitcase, I walked to the door. As I stepped over the threshold, Bianca called to me. “Vic! If you need help always call me!”

“Yes,” I told her. For an instant something about her touched my heart.

On Eighth Avenue, near Fourth Street, is a Spanish hotel named the Castillo. I didn’t know it was there until I passed it, carrying the suitcase. It was a shabby place with a linoleum-covered lobby containing a few chairs and scattered tables. Along one end was a long counter which advertised that it was also a travel agency to Puerto Rico, Cuba, and South America. I decided it was a racket hotel which specialized in flying native labor back and forth—and fleecing them. If I was correct in my surmise, then everyone in the hotel minded his own business, and it would be a good place for me to stay. I went in.

An emaciated room clerk, with jaundice-tinted skin, and plastered hair, spoke English. I registered under the name of Harold Rocks. The name made no difference, especially as I paid for my room a week in advance. The room was what I had expected, but I didn’t care.

Before going to bed, I took out the post card and clipping which I had found in Rosemary Martin’s possession, stuffed my pocketbook with the five hundred dollars inside the pillow case, and left my knife on the floor beside the bed. Then I went to sleep. About two in the morning, however, I awakened.

During my sleep, one answer had arrived. I had found the key to the name Rosemary Martin was using at the Acton-Plaza ... Nell C. O’Hanstrom. It was the kind of name no one could possibly have, or if having, use. And yet there was a certain lucidness, a vaguely defined sense about it which made an off-balance logic. Subconsciously I had worked it out, or at least very nearly so, and all that remained to do was to write it on my pad. I put it down:

Colonel Horstman

Nell C. O’Hanstrom

If I accepted the premise that the apostrophe in O’Hanstrom represented a second letter “o,” then the name “Nell C. O’Hanstrom” was a simple anagram for the name “Colonel Horstman.”

This was enlightening, although I still did not know who Colonel Horstman was. Was it possible, I asked myself, that Rosemary Martin had been Colonel Horstman? This was ridiculous; not by the most absurd stretching of my imagination could I believe it. The name did not belong to her. This I knew instinctively, not even if Rosemary Martin had been a colonel in any of the women’s services during the war. And even this most slender of possibilities was completely eliminated by the fact that she had been too young to even consider serving at that time.

I sat in the night, smoking cigarette after cigarette. It is in the predawn hours that facts sometimes become stripped and naked under scrutiny and examination. It is possible for them to become distorted too—blown up to a new importance, inflated with despair and emotion. The connotation of the name Horstman to me was not an unpleasant one; I felt that at some time I had known him well; that he had been my friend. I was anxious to find him again, to see him, to secure his help. I decided that Rosemary Martin had used his name, in an anagram, because she had obviously expected me to recognize it; it was a name filled with meaning and good intent for me, and I was expected to know it.

After reaching this decision, I returned to bed. My nightmare began with my sleep. The same long dark room, the same spot of light at the end. Outside the radius of light, there was movement and preparation in the darkness ... a quickening of the black shadows, but no materialization. When I awakened, my knife was in my hand, my body was covered with sweat, and daylight was pouring through the dirty window of my bedroom.

I had breakfast at a bar and grill in the neighborhood. As I drank the muddy coffee, I examined the post card again with its cheap, gaudy, lithographed scene of the New York City skyline. While I sat on a stool, carefully looking over the colored card, the full light of the day reflected from the imitation marble top of the counter and struck the post card, and I observed something which I had not noticed before. Near the top of one of the buildings, a tiny hole had been punched with a pin or needle. It might well have remained invisible except for the roving ray of light. There was no question that the hole was there, and had been punched there deliberately.

The reason for its presence seemed clear. It indicated the building where I was supposed to meet Rosemary on some Tuesday, in the past, at ten o’clock in the morning. Unfortunately, however, I failed to recognize the building. At one time both Rosemary Martin and I must have known the address well, and an indication had been sufficient for her to determine my intention. But now to me it was only a small colored area on the card, rearing slightly over other similarly colored areas. There were neither towers nor ornamentation such as the Empire State or Chrysler buildings to set it apart. From the card, it appeared to be located north and slightly to the west of the Empire State structure, although the relative distance was impossible to determine accurately. Taking the card, I went down to the public library, but the maps of the city offered me no help as I didn’t know the name of the building or its location.

I rode the subway back downtown and got off at Fourteenth Street. There was no particular reason for doing this except that I had become tired of riding. I was anxious to escape its confines and the rushing roar of its dark journey, and decided to walk the rest of the distance to my room. On Twelfth Street, between University Place and Fifth Avenue, I passed an ancient, six-story building, the front of which was a patina of smoke, dirt, and soot. Outside the doorway was a sign “Expert metal worker wanted—6th Fir.”

The building was occupied by various manufacturing companies, one on each floor. A decrepit elevator wobbled in its shaft, from side to side, cautiously inching its way to the top where I left it. The sixth floor was occupied by the Warner Stained Glass Company, a cavernous area the overall size of the building—dark and blanketed with a layer of gritty dust. At the front by the windows several six-foot-high partitions had been installed to separate three desks. The rest of the floor was littered with heavy wooden tables, and tremendous shelves to store glass.

A man who identified himself as the shop foreman approached me and asked what I wanted. I wrote that I wanted a job. He told me his name was Haines and he inquired concerning my experience—especially in stained glass work. I told him that I had no experience in that particular field, but that I had been a silversmith, and might qualify as a metal worker. He regarded my pad which I had been using to answer his questions, and he asked me if I was a veteran. I told him yes. This impressed him favorably as he was a veteran too, and evidently he decided that I had been wounded. This was true enough, but not in the sense he thought, and I didn’t disillusion him. Haines motioned me to follow him toward the rear of the shop. On the way, he said, “We keep only four regular employees: an artist who does the life-size cartoons of the designs, two glass workers ... call ’em cutters ... and a metal worker. I do a little bit of everything.”

He stopped by a large bench which held a number of strips of U-shaped lead. The foreman selected an irregular piece of blue-colored glass and handed it to me. “Let’s see you completely solder around the four sides with lead,” he told me. On the bench was an iron which was hot enough to use. I had no difficulty in doing the job—which was relatively coarse work compared to my experience soldering jewelry for Bianca Hill. Haines inspected it, and said, “It looks pretty good. There’s a little knack in shouldering the glass more solidly in the lead, but you can pick that up pretty quick.

I indicated that I could. When he asked me for more personal information, I told him my name was Rocks and I lived at the Castillo Hotel. Evidently he had never hear of the Castillo, which was all right with me too. We shook hands and agreed that I would start work the next day. The job satisfied me for several reasons; although I had the five hundred dollars which I had taken from Rosemary Martin, I had no way of knowing how long the money would have to last. I might need it for emergency reasons, and the job at Warner’s would permit me to keep it in reserve. Also, if I should be traced by the police, the fact that I was working would be in my favor; I would have visible means of support. It paid a good salary, far more than Bianca Hill could pay and was an excellent excuse for me to have left her house.