Читать книгу Compulsion - Meyer Levin - Страница 17

JUDD MADE IT to 63rd and Stoney Island with seven minutes to spare, before the train arrived. He drove a block farther, to a Walgreen’s; he had Walgreen phone slugs ready in his pocket. Everything was working beautifully. Artie clapped him on the back as they entered the store. “He’s only a block away!” Artie said. There was a curious thrill in the idea.

Judd called the number they had noted—the booth in Hartmann’s Drugstore—where Kessler should by then be waiting. Artie was jittery, watching out the window, watching the I.C. tracks.

The phone was ringing. There had been ample time for the cab to bring Kessler there. Since ordering the cab, Judd himself had driven all the way from Twelfth Street, over twice as far.

Artie opened the booth door. “You sure you got the right number?”

At that moment someone answered the phone. “Hello?”

“Is that the Hartmann Drugstore?”

A Negro voice said, “Yah, who do you want, mister?”

“Will you see if a Mr. Kessler is in the store? He should be waiting for this call.” If Kessler was there, why hadn’t he answered, himself?

“Mr. who?” the Negro asked.

“Isn’t there a man waiting for a call? A Mr. Kessler?”

“What number do you want?”

Judd kept his voice under control. “Just ask if a Mr. Kessler, a customer—”

“Don’t see any customer in the store right now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Nobody here, mister.” And the receiver clicked.

Artie had gone pale. He rushed out of the store, half ducking as if expecting cops to be waiting outside.

Curiously, Judd found in himself no sense of oppression, nothing of the despair he had felt when that detail had gone wrong at the Help Keep the City Clean box. Instead, he experienced a new, sharp excitement. Joining Artie outside the store, he said, “Let’s drive past Hartmann’s.”

“Too risky.” Artie flung away a just-lighted cigarette.

“We could phone and check if the Yellow went out.”

Artie’s restless eyes fell on a newsstand, on a Globe headline: UNKNOWN BOY FOUND DEAD IN SWAMP.

“The jig is up,” Artie said, with his nervous way of lapsing into detective-story talk. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here!”

But in Judd the sense of ascendancy grew stronger. Artie was getting jittery, but his was a cool, cool mind. Buying the paper, he stood against the window of a men’s-wear shop, reading the story. “So they found the body,” he said. “They still have no clue to its identity.”

“Christ, don’t be a fish! Since the paper got this story, that’s hours ago. The cops can put that much together—a body, and a kidnaped kid. They’re not that dumb.”

“Don’t get scared so easy,” Judd said. “One must go to the end of an experience.”

Artie stared down into his eyes. Judd felt strong, the stronger. “You stupe, this is the end!” Artie hissed. “We’d better get rid of this goddam car and split up!”

Folding the newspaper, Judd started back into Walgreen’s. Artie caught his sleeve. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to try another call. We’ve still got a minute before the train. Maybe the cab was late, or anything. Why should we give up just because he might be stuck in the traffic?”

“You and your frigging bird-chasing!” Artie burst out. “You knew just the right place. Birdland! Nobody ever went near there. Nobody would even find the body!”

That was unfair. And something in Judd still kept denying the finding. Something in him insisted it was still the right place, the only place, the place where the body had to be put. And there could be no identification! Had they not poured the acid, to obliterate identity? But beyond that, deeper, was some kind of knowledge, some kind of insistence that the body would be impossible to identify because . . . because who was it? Deep in himself something was saying nobody could ever know.

It was a confusing, unclear thought. Judd didn’t like it, because it was unclear. He canceled it. He wrenched free of Artie to go and telephone.

“Jesus, not from here. They might have traced the last call!”

They hurried to the next corner, a candy store.

As Artie stood watching the street, fearful every moment of sirens, of cops closing the block off, he saw a train pulling in on the I.C. viaduct. That was surely their train. Even if Judd connected with Charles Kessler now, it would be too late for the man to run and catch the train. The train would pull out, and no longer would there be the moment when the package would come sailing to them through the air.

There arose in Artie then a frantic sense of deprival, a denial. No! No! It can’t have gone wrong; I want it, I want it to be! It was Judd who had screwed it up, Judd, Judd! There came an impulse to scream, to rage, to stamp his feet in a tantrum. And then he swallowed his anger; he had to be keen, cunning, the master.

In other things before, without Judd, nothing had ever gone wrong, nobody had ever found out. And Artie was engulfed by a wave of negation, a commanding need to wipe out all that had gone wrong, to wipe out Judd. As though he could will the dissolution of Judd, will him not to exist, by a pointing finger. You’re dead! You’re gone! That’s what you get for lousing everything up! And Artie turned, staring into the store, half anticipating that Judd would have vanished out of existence by his punishing wish. But through the glass of the phone-booth door, he could see the back of his partner’s sleek, small head, dark, tilted.

As Judd phoned, a different voice answered, not a Negro’s. “Jackson 2502.”

Judd felt triumphant. “Mr. Kessler?” he asked.

“Who? This is Hartmann’s Pharmacy.”

He got the druggist to call out, “Anybody named Kessler been asking for a message?” But: “No, nobody of that name.”

“Thank you,” Judd said. Then it was clear. Kessler had not taken the cab. In the last half hour, the body must have been identified.

The way Artie looked at him as he emerged was murderous. “Granted that we lost out on the ransom part of it,” Judd said, still feeling his mind working concisely, clearly, in the crisis—“the fact that they may have identified the body still does not mean they can identify us.”

Artie cursed and turned to the I.C. tracks. Judd, too, looked at the train, still standing there, as though waiting for Kessler to get aboard. Then the train pulled away. They turned back to their rented car. “Let’s just ditch it,” Artie said.

That would be the worst thing to do, Judd pointed out. The rental man would be bound to start a hunt, and by some freak, even though they had used fake names, a trail might be found leading to them. No, they had best return it at once and check out.