Hands of a stranger, p.23
Hands of a Stranger, page 23
He said: “I’ll go through it a second time, more slowly. I want you to study each of these women.”
Slowly he turned the pages. About halfway through he found himself peering down at his wife; Mary smiled up at him. Although he wanted to flip past her as quickly this time as last, he did not do so.
He forced his hands to operate at normal speed - and this proved not quick enough.
The youngest of the three men, he was about fifty, said, “Her I recognize. Well, I think I do.”
Joe closed the album. “But you’re not sure.”
“Let me see her again.”
Joe, who had become very tense, reopened the album.
“Nice looking piece of ass,” commented the man. He kept staring down at Mary for some time. “Yeah, I saw her within the last few days.”
Joe said, “She’s the one who checked in here with the black man. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“No, no. With a white man.”
Joe closed the album with a snap. “What did he look like?”
The clerk thought about it. “Tall guy, I think. Lots of muscles. Him I don’t remember. She’s the one I remember.”
Joe’s voice had become a monotone. “Why is that?”
“The guy was taking her upstairs to fuck her.”
The most powerful word in the language.
It made Joe shift his weight from one foot to the other. “What was it about her that you remembered?”
“Just that I would like to have fucked her myself.”
More powerful than the word God. This time it made Joe flinch. “You couldn’t possibly remember this specific woman,” he said. A sudden vision assailed him: Mary with her legs spread - and some other man climbing between them.
The hotel clerk shrugged.
“You see dozens of women every day,” said Joe. “You’re making it up.”
Suddenly the clerk remembered something specific. “She was carrying a cardboard cylinder in her arms.” For him, this clinched the identification. He gave Joe a triumphant grin. “You know, like for a rolled-up poster.”
Joe knew nothing about any cardboard cylinder. But Mary might have been carrying one that day. She had just come from art class, after all. She sometimes came home with drawings.
The clerk said triumphantly, “That cardboard cylinder was full of heroin, wasn’t it? Is that what you think?”
Joe gave a harsh laugh. “You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you?”
The clerk said, “I remember she stood off to the side looking embarrassed while her boyfriend registered. They all do that - pretend they’re embarrassed. As if fucking the guy is the furthest thing from their minds.”
Joe headed for the door. “You’ll be hearing from me,” he muttered, and slammed it behind him.
That night he did not go home but bedded down on the couch in his office. His stomach was churning and he did not sleep. The next morning he drove to his house to ask Mary about the cardboard cylinder. But she knew nothing about it, she maintained.
“Maybe to carry home some of those drawings you do?”
“No.”
“No cylinder?”
She glanced up at him, looking a bit wary. “No,” she said.
“Good,” Joe said. He went into his den to put her photo back in its frame, then got back in his car. As he drove toward the city, he felt relieved. The hotel clerk’s testimony had shaken him, he admitted that. But now he wondered what he had ever been worried about. The man had not remembered Mary at all. It could never have been Mary. Eyewitness testimony was notoriously unreliable. This was proven in court in nearly every trial. Eyewitnesses, so-called, simply could not be believed.
At the Police Academy, the laboratory analysis of the balls of tape had long since been completed. A report addressed to Inspector Hearn had reposed on Captain Lauder’s desk for several days, and he had left phone messages for Joe, but his calls had not been returned.
But Lauder, too, had heard rumors of Hearn’s strange conduct recently, of his mysterious investigation. Obviously the balls of tape were part of this case, and Lauder, being curious to know more, persisted with his calls. At last, he got through.
“I thought you were anxious to get this report,” Lauder began.
Because his investigation appeared to be over, and because this time Deputy Inspector Pearson happened to be standing beside his desk, Joe had taken Lauder’s call. He had to begin taking some of them and returning the rest. The case was totally stalled. He had to try to begin behaving normally again.
“Yes?”
“We finished our tests on that tape.”
“I’ve been busy,” Joe said. He was sorting through his other phone messages.
“Four separate pieces of tape,” said Lauder. “It’s a puzzle.”
Joe, the phone at his ear, had turned his chair and was staring out the window.
“You don’t have one victim,” Lauder said, “you’ve got two.”
“No,” said Joe, “one victim.”
“Lots of hairs on those tapes, and they belong to two different people. The reason we know that is, they’re of opposite sexes. It’s all in my report.”
Pearson, who had come in with a draft of the reorganization plan, still stood beside Joe’s chair. They had been going over the draft paragraph by paragraph. To Pearson, the important business was this draft. His job seemed safe for the moment, and this draft was the key to it. He waited beside Joe’s chair for the interruption to end so as to get back to it.
“A man and a woman,” said Lauder, and he laughed. “Unless,” he joked, “one of them was a fag. Lot of fags bleach their hair these days, don’t they?”
Joe said nothing.
“The woman had blond-streaked hair,” explained Lauder.
Mary’s hair, Joe thought. That much he knew already. The rest too, probably.
“The guy’s hair was black. Still is black, I suppose.”
“A black-haired woman,” said Joe.
“His facial hair is black too. His beard. You know, his whiskers. There’s a difference between a woman’s facial hair and a man’s.” Lauder tried another heavy joke. “I mean, unless the woman is one of these dykes shaves every day.”
Joe said nothing.
“Two blindfolds, two gags,” said Lauder. “Two victims, a man and a woman. I’ll send over these reports.”
When Joe had hung up, Pearson moved in even closer. The draft was on the desk, and in a proprietary way he touched it with his pencil. “Of course, Inspector, I realize you’ll want to edit this. Probably rather heavily, in fact.”
Joe glanced up at him. Pearson was really very loyal, not at all the dangerous man he had at first imagined.
“You won’t hurt my feelings with your editing, Inspector.”
Abruptly Joe stood up. “Have it typed up, and I’ll sign it.”
Pearson looked pleased. “Right, Inspector.”
Joe was half out the door.
“Tomorrow you’ll have it for presentation to the chief of detectives and the PC,” said Pearson to his back.
Joe drove directly to the Midtown Art League. He had met Mary’s instructor once, a baldish older man. He did not remember his name: He had to stop in at the office and describe him. After that, he had to locate the classroom. The art teacher came out into the hall to talk to him.
He wore overalls spattered with paint. There were drops of paint in his beard and on his bald head as well. He shook Joe’s hand with great enthusiasm: “Your wife is quite a talent,” he said. “She missed the last couple of meetings though. Nothing wrong, I hope?”
“Nothing wrong,” said Joe.
“One of the kids got sick, probably. Something of that nature. Well, how can I help you?”
Joe said he was trying to track down a certain cardboard cylinder. He gave the date of Mary’s last appearance at the school. Had she left here carrying some of her drawings in a cardboard cylinder?
The painter was nodding. “They were especially successful drawings. Why do you ask? One was a real beauty.”
Five minutes later, Joe stood on the sidewalk in the sunlight in front of the building, and there was so much moisture in his eyes that he could not see properly. He stood there blinking. “Oh, Mary,” he said, and began walking. He walked uptown. He walked up through Times Square. He walked through crowds past the windows of the sex shops, he passed under the marquees of the porno movies. He walked up Seventh Avenue past the big hotels, past Carnegie Hall to Fifty-Ninth Street. Across the street was Central Park. He crossed through the traffic and went into it. He was walking fast under trees as if intent on getting somewhere. He was breathing hard but had no destination in mind. At last, he had all the proof he had been avoiding. The rapist did not march his wife into the hotel at gunpoint. She was already in there. His Mary. With another man. But you knew that already, he told himself, didn’t you? You must have known it. Sure you did. You knew it from the start. You’re a policeman. You’ve heard all kinds of stories, and you never believed Mary’s. You may have wanted to believe it, you tried to delude yourself. But you knew the truth all along.
He walked in dappled sunlight. There was a warm breeze against his face, in his hair. He walked in the park along an alley of trees. There were kids roller skating on the asphalt paths, clackety-clack. Since he knew all along, then why was he suffering this much now? His pain was physical, it was in his chest, in his throbbing skull, but it was intellectual too. He knew the intimacy that existed between husband and wife, between him and Mary, and was trying to understand that Mary had shared this intimacy with another, and it was inconceivable to him. He could not believe that all along she had had a secret life, a life of her own that he didn’t know about - three hours a week at the Art League, sure, but not this. He could not accept the idea of her laughing, talking, touching some other man, satisfying another man sexually. A man he did not know. Such conduct was inconsistent with her character as he knew it. A situation confronted him that he could not comprehend. His Mary. His trust in her had been so total. He could not understand how she could have betrayed him so, carried on with another man without telling him, without him knowing anything about it. His Mary.
There were rowboats out on the lake. People, couples mostly, drifted around in the sun. He began to skirt the lake. He passed a pushcart that was surrounded by kids buying ice cream. There was a glare off the water and a glare off what he imagined to be his wife’s behavior, and he felt blinded. He could barely see.
A little later, he left the park. He started downtown on Sixth Avenue walking against the flow of traffic. He did not know what to do next. He believed he had to do something. He was trying to settle on a course of action. He could not simply do nothing - his own pain was too great. His life up to now had been one of action. Always he had turned to meet fate head-on, and he wanted to do the same now.
A tangle of possibilities began to move through his head. They came in no logical sequence, and some were not logical in themselves. He was suffering so much that he could not think straight. If he confronted Mary, what? She would never tell him her lover’s name. He knew her. She wouldn’t do it. Furthermore, to confront her would be to drive her into the other man’s arms. Is that what he wanted? No. He wanted her back. If he confronted her, their marriage was over, and he did not want it to be over. He wanted her more now than he had ever wanted her in these nineteen years, more even than he had wanted her that first night they had ever spent together, in a hotel at the beach with the noise of the surf coming in the window, and mingling with their whispers of love for each other.
He had to have her back, but this would be possible only if he remained silent. He would have to remain silent or lose her. If he confronted her she would hate him, especially if her love affair with the other man was over, which perhaps it was. If she thought her husband had caught her in the act so to speak, she would leave him. Her pride would make her leave him. His only chance was not to confront her. She must never know he knew. All he asked was the chance to win her back.
In the meantime, he had to learn who her lover was, for the face of every man they knew was running through his head, and in that direction lay madness. He would identify the man. His search for the rapist would now end, and his search for Mary’s lover would begin. One investigation would give way to another. He might find that the affair was over. He might even find that there was no man, that he was imagining all this. It was possible. He would do nothing rash until he was sure. To look for the man, at the very least, would postpone the end of their marriage, his ultimate loss of his wife. It would give him time to make Mary fall in love with him again.
That afternoon, he stopped off at the Police Academy where he checked out a voice-activated tape recorder. When darkness came he slipped unseen into his own cellar, opened the junction box, and attached the machine to the telephone wires. From now on, it would record any calls Mary made or received.
The tapped phone was one part of his plan and the surveillance of Mary another. Beginning the next morning, he took up his station at the end of his street and waited to follow wherever she would lead him. He sat there all that day and into the night, and she left the house only once, at noon, wearing a cocktail dress. At noon. He did not recognize it as a cocktail dress. He did think, she’s all dressed up, she’s going somewhere. And his stomach turned over inside him, and he began to tremble.
But to his intense relief, she led him only to the supermarket and back.
The second day she did not leave the house at all, and for Joe that day passed very slowly. As a young detective, he had often sat on long surveillances. It was what detectives did. They watched and they waited. It had never bothered him then.
Each night he sneaked into his own cellar and checked the tape recorder. There was nothing on it but the ringing of Mary’s unanswered phone.
A dozen detectives, meanwhile, milled around Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, and no one came by to take their reports or give them direction. The Narcotics Division reorganization plan was presented to the police commissioner by Deputy Inspector Pearson who, when asked the whereabouts of his commanding officer, replied that he did not know. With downcast eyes, he modestly accepted congratulations for the plan, and left the PC’s office with instructions to begin implementing it - and with the feeling that his own career had just taken a great leap forward. He had instructions, too, from an angry Chief Cirillo - to find Inspector Hearn wherever he might be and to inform him that he was ordered to report to the chief of detectives’ office forthwith.
The third morning Mary came out again, this time wearing a flamboyant orange dress that Joe, who had long since forgotten her sister’s wedding, did not recognize at all. Again Mary led him only to the supermarket and back. He sat in his car for most of the rest of the day, calmer now, wanting this surveillance to be over, knowing that any additional information he might obtain would only cause him more suffering. Nonetheless, he was still on post when she backed out of the driveway late in the afternoon and headed for the high-school baseball field.
After watching her park on the first-base side of the field, Joe drove around the school to the faculty lot. He pulled into a slot between two other cars and watched her come in his direction, crossing the field toward home plate. She was dressed in pants and a sweater now, walking purposefully, almost angrily, toward home plate, and it seemed to Joe that this outing by Mary was harmless too, and he was feeling an emotion that was certainly relief, almost happiness. So far there was no indication that Mary had a lover, that any such man existed. Joe was willing to believe it. He was willing to give the whole surveillance up, to put aside his suspicions entirely, to blame his own distraught imagination. In the days following the rape of his wife, he had been half out of his mind, and that explained it. So had Mary.
Now he watched her speaking to Loftus, the baseball coach. They stood in the dust at home plate, in plain view of everyone. Clearly this was not any lover’s assignation. Now their conference seemed to be coming to an end, for Loftus had walked off several paces. Joe had already turned the key in the ignition. He was preparing to back the car out of the lot so as to be in position to follow Mary home.
And then Mary slapped Loftus. His wife slapped the baseball coach.
Perhaps it was surprise more than anything that made Joe cry. He had not expected to find his proof here and now in bright sunlight on a baseball field.
It was then that he had put his head down on the steering wheel and wept.
For days, Judith had waited for Joe Hearn to come back, or at least return her many calls, but this did not happen. For some reason, he did not want to call her or see her. She told herself she only wanted to pursue her case, The Case, but if this was true, then why did she simply not commandeer other detectives elsewhere? She had more than enough stature to do so. Why wait for Joe? Technically district attorneys did not outrank police commanders, but on a practical level they did. They were thought to have political power, and sometimes did have, and they were lawyers, so instinctively cops feared them. Law enforcement was like a dangerous machine full of gears and cogs. This machine was run by lawyers. Cops, who only serviced the machine, sometimes were dragged in and mangled. This rarely happened to lawyers. Lawyers were people who put cops in jail, but rarely went to jail themselves. So Judith could have demanded detectives from almost any commander. There might have been initial resistance, depending on how she presented her case, but if she insisted they would have been accorded her. She knew this.
But she hated to throw her weight around. Perhaps it was because she was a woman among too many men, but doing so seemed to her the worst sort of ugly behavior. It was behavior that men resorted to without hesitation everywhere, whether necessary or not, which was part of the reason the world was in such a mess. She was not a man. Usually, she refused to do it. She would much rather take the time to make people want to help her, want to do a job her way.
And so she had waited for Joe Hearn and each day she was consumed by emotions more virulent than the ones the day before. Frustration was the first of them, the longest lasting, and the hardest to bear, because it was fueled by the hope without which it could not have existed at all. The next ringing telephone might be Joe. In the meantime, she paced and waited and was unable to concentrate on the normal business of her office. Each day’s new victims meant little to her and her young assistants seemed like strangers.
