The Sunlight Dialogues (86 page)

His answer came from so close it made her jump. “In here.”

She could peek through the chicken-run door, but she couldn’t get in. It was dark as a pit inside. Then her eyes began to adjust. He had his head bent down on the other side of the wall to look out. Beyond him she could see straw and cobwebs and part of a cornplanter someone had stored here, and on the wall a darker place that she knew must be nestboxes.

“You should have run for the grove,” she said. “Come around.”

“There’s no back door,” he whispered.

“You have to come out the front, the way you got in, and come around.”

“They’ll see me sure.”

“No they won’t. They’re by the barn. But hurry.”

But they weren’t by the barn. She heard Luke’s car starting up. They had figured it out and were heading toward the road to cut him off.

“They’re leaving,” she whispered. “You can cut through the back lot.”

But that was wrong too. Only one of them had left: the back door of the garage opened, and through the cracks in the chickenhouse wall opposite her she could see light. After a moment she could feel him coming toward them.

“He’s coming,” Hardesty said.

“Sh!”

She lay still, feeling the cold softness of the dirt. She dug her hands into it, and it felt good. The lines of light coming through the barn wall looked soft and alive, and where the light touched old straw and dust it made everything sharp and distinct. He took forever to cross the grass place—taking a step, listening a minute, taking another step, it must be. She remembered sleeping in the mow at her grandfather’s when she was a child. There were mice and rats there. There would be mice and rats here too, probably. She would sleep in the softness of earth and dew-wet grass and not notice them.

The hinges of the chickenhouse door creaked and Nick said quietly, “Mr. Hardesty?”

It seemed to her that she could hear Hardesty’s breathing on the other side of the wall. She tried to breathe without a sound. Then his feet and something he was holding, a pipe maybe, came into view, inside the chickenhouse, and it came to her with a jolt that he would see her. She didn’t move. Right now, she knew, he was seeing Hardesty.

Hardesty said softly, “Don’t. Please.”

She heard him move a little, only his arms perhaps. Nick stood still, directly facing him.

“Please,” Hardesty said again.

He won’t do it, she thought. There’s no reason for him to. Beside Nick’s foot there was a pail and a mess of something, old burlap. Light from one of the wall cracks made two little glows on the rim of the pail, like a pair of sights. Her neck ached from holding her head rigid in the same position and she wanted to lean on her arm, but she stayed as she was. He’ll tell him to get up and come with him, and it will be over, she thought. He’ll take him back to the house with him and that will be all.

Hardesty said, “I was startled, that’s all. It was crazy to run away like that.” He tried to laugh.

He said nothing, and again she could feel him thinking, and then she heard a crack, like the sound a bat makes. Hardesty was screaming, and then she heard the crack again, and she remembered her name was Millie Jewel and Gil was in the barn with his hands tied to the wagon wheel and her grandfather puffing her name Millie Jewel and Gil was in the barn with his hands tied to the wagon wheel and her grandfather puffing her name was Millie Jewel and his hands were tied to the wagon wheel; her grandfather puffing. Gil was her brother. His hands were tied to the wheel spinning in the dark were tied to the wheel her grandfather puffing

The Sunlight Man said, “Come back in the house, Millie.” His feet were far apart, and his trousers were wet.

5

“Ahem,” said Clumly.

Esther was working on the dress she’d been working on for years, sewing and unsewing and sewing.

“I have to go out tonight,” he said.

Her lips stopped moving and she turned her face toward him. She sighed. “Will you be late?”

“I don’t know.” He sucked at the cigar—it had gone out again—then removed it from his lips and glared at it, focusing on it the whole force of his anger. “I imagine I won’t be too long. There’s no telling, I guess.”

She nodded and said nothing. He was grateful for that. The case was making him an old man, cutting the wrinkles of his jowl deeper, darkening the bags under his eyes, wasting his flesh away. She couldn’t help but see it, and no doubt it seemed to her her business to worry about it. He’d lost nine pounds in the past two weeks. And it wasn’t just the stewing or the physical exhaustion. There was something wrong with him. He ate like a hog, had the trots all the time, and he went on losing weight. Ate from sickness, not love of food. The very smell of food was revolting to him. He felt as if he had lead in his stomach, and when that confounded speech for the Dairyman’s League came into his mind, or the thought of Miller standing in a doorway watching him, or the memory of the papers piling up on his desk, or Will Hodge Sr forever turning up in unexpected places, staring at him, Clumly’s whole chest filled up, or so he imagined, with greenish gas.

Esther said, as if to herself, “When will it be over?”

“Not long now,” Clumly said heartily, and added, “one way or another.” And then, because that sounded ominous: “We pretty well got it wound up, Kozlowski and me.” The thought of Kozlowski, like everything else, stirred the green gas feeling in his chest. He’d felt free at first, a kind of joyful release, letting Kozlowski in on it. Kozlowski was a man who stood back from things, looked them over, so to speak, and came up with his own private judgments. That was exactly what Clumly had thought he needed. It wasn’t even that he wanted Kozlowski to corroborate his own suspicions. The man’s presence was enough, gave Clumly something to hang on to, as you might say. And best of all, Kozlowski was no talker. Whatever his private opinions might be about Clumly’s manhunt, he would say nothing to the others. He was safe as a bank. Or so it had all seemed then, when Clumly had made his decision to let him in. Not now. Because this afternoon when Clumly had come out of his office to go home, Kozlowski and Miller were talking by the desk, and at sight of him they stopped talking. Kozlowski had nodded his greeting to Clumly, and Miller had called with exaggerated cheerfulness, “Cutting out, boss?” “Going home, yes,” Clumly had said. “Say hello to the wife,” Miller said, and showed his grin. Clumly had nodded. They’d watched him out the door. At his car, Clumly had stood fiddling with his keys, heart racing in his chest, a belch forming, inexorable, and he’d wanted desperately to sneak back and spy and find out what they were saying. Crazily, he’d looked along the ledge below the window. He could climb up the corner of the building, where the crossed corner blocks formed a kind of natural ladder, and he could get up on the ledge and inch across. … He’d be out in plain sight, where anybody driving up Main Street couldn’t help but see him, and the next day, who knew? he might open the paper and see a picture of himself crawling on the jailhouse ledge, and some lunatic caption:
CHIEF TRIES TO BREAK INTO JAIL, CLAIMS HE LOST HIS KEYS.
And so he’d climbed into his car, nerves twitching, and had driven slowly home. Trust
nobody,
he thought. But the thought brought a ghastly smile. He was beyond that now, had no choice but to trust Kozlowski. He’d told him to come pick him up here at nine, to go with him to his appointment with the Sunlight Man. It was now five minutes to.

He got up out of his armchair wearily, hesitated a moment, from habit, to let the hint of dizziness that always came when he got to his feet pass through him and subside. Then he went to the clothespress for his coat and hat and revolver. When he opened the door a shock of alarm ran up his arms and legs: He thought there was a man there, waiting among the coats. A mistake, of course. He rubbed his mouth with his right hand, giving his heartbeat time to slow down, then put the gunbelt on, the hat, the coat. He thought,
Suppose I were to leave before Kozlowski shows up, like the pig in the story.
Kozlowski didn’t know where the appointment was.

“Someone’s here,” his wife called from the livingroom. “A car just drove up.”

“Mmm,” Clumly said. “One of my men. I’ll be right there.” He turned his head to glance craftily at the kitchen door, behind him, and then he glanced over at the diningroom window. He too could hear the car motor.
Still time,
he thought.
A man could be over to that window and out …
But she would hear him—what’s-her-name, his wife. Who would understand? In the morning the Mayor would be waiting for him, and the men in white coats would be with him, maybe. No. Now there came a knock at the door. He heard her crossing to it, drawing the door open. “Hello,” she said. “Fred says he’ll be right out.” He took a deep breath.
Take a Deep Breath,
he thought. Title for a speech.

“Lot of people might get the wrong idea about this, Kozlowski,” Clumly said. He sat with his elbow out the window, head thrown back, cold cigar in his right fist. “There’s different ways you go about investigating. You follow me? It all depends on the situation. Sometimes you go after a criminal right away, sometimes you give him rope and let him hang himself. It’s like a farmer.” He squinted at the branches above the street, lighted up by the streetlamps and the prowlcar’s headlights, and he pursed his lips. He shot a glance at Kozlowski, then squinted upward again. “It’s like a farmer,” he said again. He’d started it with confidence, but now, in panic, he realized he could think of no example. “A cow starts crowding you when you’re milking her, moving over on you, you know what I mean. Well sometimes you give her a knee in the belly, and sometimes …” No, that was wrong. You had no alternatives, in that case. “Or like a dog that chases cars,” he said, “or a horse that nibbles the stall.” He nodded, thoughtful. The hell with it. Let Kozlowski figure it out if he was so smart.

“Pull in here,” he said.

Kozlowski looked surprised, but he slowed and turned left and came to a stop at the cemetery gates.

“Hell of a place for a meeting, eh, Kozlowski?” He chuckled.

Kozlowski turned his black-socketed eyes toward him.

They sat with the headlights shining in, throwing bars across the grass and the nearest tombstones and the trunks of trees. He tried to think how much he should say of what Kozlowski might expect of the cracked magician. He framed the beginnings of sentences in his head, but he couldn’t decide to let them out. “Gate’s probably open,” he said. “That would be like him. I’ll see.” He opened the car door and got out and went around to the front and pushed at the gate. He’d guessed right. It opened away from him, creaking. “Might’s well drive in,” he said. He forced a smile. He stepped back to the right, and Kozlowski drove up even with him and let him back in.

“Want the gate left open?” Kozlowski said.

“Might’s well,” he said, studiously off-hand. They’d park the car in plain sight. Yes. It looked crazy coming to the meeting at all; at least they didn’t have to look like they were sneaking. “Park here,” he said. “Kill the motor.”

Kozlowski switched off the key and turned the lights out.

“Ok,” Clumly said. He clapped his hands softly. He made no move to get out. He felt short-winded. For a minute or more they sat in the cemetery’s hush, behind them the long curve of the cemetery drive, the wrought-iron fence, the blank, abandoned blackness of the old Massey-Harris plant and, above it, the yellow-red glow of the city. Nothing stirred anywhere. Clumly sighed. “Ok,” he said again. “Here’s how it is. I’ll go over where he’s waiting—that little crypt over there, with the fence around it.”

Kozlowski nodded.

“Give me two, three minutes, then you follow and wait by the door. I’ll get him talking, let him babble about anything he wants. If we’re lucky he’ll let something slip, something that tells us who he is, where he’s worked before, what he’s up to—that kind of thing. You just stand there and listen, don’t make a move unless I yell. If my guess is right he’ll pull one of those disappearing acts, sooner or later. You keep your eyes and ears peeled, don’t miss a thing, and
zap!
we’ve got him. And keep out of sight. If anybody shows up to help him, see who it is, find out where they go. You got it?”

Kozlowski nodded.

“And don’t touch the radio.” He took the flashlight from the glove compartment. “Anybody calls, don’t answer it—unless they ask for me. Then it’s ok.”

“Yessir.”

He pressed the flashlight button, testing it. It worked. He put the flashlight inside his shirt with the tape recorder. Then he lit the cigar. “Ok.” He saluted. Unnaturally official. It was as if, he thought, he were trying to pretend to himself that the whole thing was regular. He opened the car door, got out, and closed it quietly.

“See you,” Kozlowski said.

He felt moved by it. Touched. He nodded solemnly and started across the dew-wet cemetery grass toward the crypt.

Both the wrought-iron gate and the studded iron door to the crypt itself stood open. Clumly bent forward, his hand on the side of the door, and peered in. He could see nothing. It was cold here at the doorway to the crypt. A shiver passed over him, and he could not tell whether it was the chill in the air or childish fear or outrage.
Damned clown,
he thought. That was what made the whole thing so infuriating. Not the fact that he’d chosen a cemetery crypt, a gloomy night, but the fact that the Sunlight Man loved clowning, took monstrous delight in playing with a human being as though he were a toy. It was the incredible ego of the man that made you sweat. Who could say when he would stop being amused and end the game? But that was nonsense, of course. He could admit to himself that it was nonsense, but he wasn’t yet admitting why he’d come. “When all’s known,” he thought, seeing if it sounded at all convincing, “it may prove that every word that man said about the Negro boy and the store full of salesmen is true. Who can say? I may be matching wits with a Master of Crime.” He glanced over his shoulder, sheepish. He felt for the handle of his pistol. Still there. But he didn’t really expect he’d be allowed to keep it. His enemy was everywhere at once. A thousand tricks. But a man had no choice. No choice. It was a comfort.