And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks (14 page)

Danny said, “It’s a cinch.”

So I said, “Wait a minute,” and I rang the guy’s number, but he wasn’t in. I gave Danny the number and told him to call again later. “Just say Will recommended you for that house repair job. I told him if I found someone I’d have him get in touch.”

Danny thanked me and wrote the number down. He said when he got the money he’d fix me up.

I rubbed my hands and said, “Whatever you think is fair. The job is easy, but it’s not in my line.” (My line is letting other people take the risks, like Phillip’s old man.)

“I’m sure this guy’s all right,” I went on, “and I know where he lives. There won’t be any trouble collecting, but get half on account.”

Danny said, “You know me, Will.” He got up to go. “Say, I’m sorry about the sap.”

I said, “Why, that’s all right. I’m glad you didn’t get yourself in a jam.”

I
T WAS ABOUT SEVEN O’CLOCK
M
ONDAY MORNING
when my buzzer rang and woke me up. I put on my shorts and went out into the other room and pressed the button to release the outer door.

I said, “Who’s there?”

“It’s me.”

It was Phillip’s voice, and I opened the door and Phillip slid in quick.

“Here,” he said, “have the last cigarette.”

He held out a pack of Lucky Strikes smeared with blood. There was one cigarette left in the pack.

“I just killed Al and threw the body off a warehouse.”

I took the cigarette and held it in my hand.

Then I went and sat on the couch and motioned him to a chair opposite me. I said, “Sit down and tell me all about it.”

He sat down and said, “I need a hundred dollars to skip the country. I’m going to Mexico.”

I said, “Not so fast, young man. What’s all this about Al.”

“Well,” he said, “Al and I were drinking in Minetta’s, and we decided to take a walk. We walked over on Second Avenue somewhere and broke into an old warehouse and started exploring around. I found a hatchet and broke some windows with it.

“Later we were up on the roof. Al kept saying he wanted to ship out with me. I got mad and gave him a shove. He nearly went over. He looked at me and said, ‘I want to do the things you do. I want to write poetry and go to sea and all that.’” Phillip stopped and looked at me. “I can see you don’t believe me.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Well, so I said to him, ‘Do you want to die?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ He made a couple of wisecracks and tried to put his arm around me. I still had the hatchet in my hand, so I hit him on the forehead. He fell down. He was dead. Now give me that hundred dollars. I have to get out of the country.”

“That’s ridiculous. You can’t skip the country with a hundred dollars.”

“Yes I can. I’m going to hitchhike.”

“Well, you’d get picked up quick enough.”

“You don’t believe me?” he said. “You know, don’t you, that things drag on for just so long and then something happens.”

I said, “All right, Al is dead now. What did you do then?”

“Well, then he kept leering at me through half-closed eyes. I said to him, ‘You can’t do that, you’re dead.’ I rolled him off the roof with my foot. It was about seven stories high.”

“Anybody see you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“But you were seen leaving Minetta’s together.” I was thinking fast, and it all added up to one thing.

“Now give me that hundred dollars or I’ll kill you too.”

I smiled at him.

Phillip said, “Oh no, I wouldn’t do that, but please let me have it.”

I didn’t answer.

He took a bloody silk handkerchief out of his pocket. In one corner there were the initials, “R.A.” He stuck it under my nose.

“You recognize this don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, “that’s Al’s. Souvenir, eh?”

He looked at me with a naive, boyish expression, and pushed the handkerchief toward me.

“Do you want this? Shall I leave it here?”

“Christ, no! Take it with you.”

I put on my dressing gown and began pacing the room.

Phillip said, “What am I going to do if you won’t give me any money? I’ll get the hot seat.”

I put on my Claude Rains manner and walked over toward him. “The hot seat,” I sneered. “You’ll be out in two years at the latest.”

“Do you know what happened to you, Phil? You were attacked. Al attacked you. He tried to rape you. You lost your head. Everything went black. You hit him. He stumbled back and fell off the roof. You were in a panic. Your only thought was to get away. Get a good lawyer, you’ll be out in two years.”

Phil looked at me and nodded. “Well,” he said, “I guess I could stand two years. But I don’t know. Would you lend me your gun? I’ll commit suicide. You do have a gun, don’t you?”

I said, “Yes, I have a gun.”

“But you don’t have any bullets, do you?”

He knew damned well I had bullets. I said, “No, I haven’t any bullets.”

Phillip got up to leave and walked over to the door. I walked over and stood beside him. I thought that if it was true, I ought to put my hand on his shoulder and
say something kind to cheer him up. But then I remembered how he was always trying to get money out of me.

I said, “Good-bye, Phillip,” coldly.

He said good-bye and walked out.

I closed the door. Then I picked up the bloody pack of cigarettes off the floor, tore it up into small pieces, dropped the pieces into the toilet bowl, and flushed the toilet.

It was time to go to work, so I started to get dressed.

M
ONDAY MORNING AT NINE O’CLOCK
I
WAS UP AND
ready to go to the Union Hall to get another ship, but Phillip was nowhere around. I looked behind the couch and saw that his sea bag was still there. So I sat down and waited, figuring he might have gone downstairs to get breakfast and would come back to get me. I sat and lit a cigarette and started thinking about what we would have to say at the beef window in order to get another ship today.

The buzzer rang three times, which is the signal for telephone calls, so I went downstairs to the lobby and picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” I said.

“Mike, this is Phil.”

It was the first time I’d ever heard Phil’s voice over the phone, and I smiled because it sounded strange.

He said, “I disposed of the old man last night.”

I said, “What?” and then for some reason I knew what he meant, right away.

“Where are you?” I asked.

He said he was at the Anchor Bar.

“What are you doing there?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Come on over.”

“Right away,” I said, and hung up.

There was a woman entering the lobby carrying two shopping bags, and she was having difficulty opening the door. I watched her until she got the door opened, then I went back upstairs.

I reached behind the couch and hauled out Phillip’s sea bag. I went to the bedroom and found the cat sleeping on my sea bags. I picked up the cat and laid it on the bed beside Janie. She was sleeping, and there was a thin film of moisture on her face. It was already hot at nine o’clock.

I picked up my sea bags and threw them beside Phillip’s sea bag on the floor of the front room. I stood there looking at them for a minute or so. I couldn’t think.

Then I decided it was useless to take them along, because now neither one of us could ship out. So I left the apartment and walked down the stairs.

When I got down to the lobby, I suddenly turned around and went back up the stairs on the run, went
to the bedroom, kneeled at the bed, and kissed Janie on the brow.

I said, “I’ll be back tonight,” and she mumbled something and went back to sleep. Then I left the apartment house and walked rapidly toward the Union Hall.

The sun was hot and moist and you could already feel the heat breathing all round. I was sore because it was going to be a hot day. An old woman at the corner of 14th Street and Seventh Avenue tried to sell me some flowers but I rushed right by her.

When I got to the Anchor Bar, Phillip was standing at the bar with a whiskey glass half empty in his hand and several dollars and some change laid out in front of him on the counter. The place was full of seamen all talking at the same time and the jukebox was playing some South American record.

We said hello and Phillip ordered me a drink. I fixed my eyes on a ceiling fan above and let the whiskey slide into my mouth, then I took a beer.

I looked at Phillip and said, “So you disposed of the old man last night. Where is he?”

“In a warehouse yard.”

“Dead?”

“Of course.”

I looked at Phillip closely. I said, “Well, well,” and he leered at me, smiling.

Then he pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and showed it to me. There were some red stains on it, and the initials “R.A.” embroidered in a corner.

“Al’s?” I asked.

He nodded his head. Then he pointed down to the cuffs of his khaki pants and held up his foot. There were some red stains there, too. “Blood,” he said.

I didn’t know whether to believe all this or not, because he was so anxious to show me the evidence.

“How did you do it?” I asked.

“With a hatchet. I hit him on the brow and he fell down dead. Then I pushed him over the edge of the roof.” Phillip put his hands over his ears and pressed hard. “I did this for three seconds so I wouldn’t hear him fall in the yard.” He winced and made a face. “I heard it nonetheless.”

“Tell me all about it,” I said. My legs kept bending at the knee and I had to lean most of my weight on the bar. I said, “Let’s go somewhere and sit. My knees are shaky, I can’t stand up.”

“Me too,” he said, and picked up his money and cigarettes from the counter.

We walked out of the Anchor Bar, crossed the street, and started up 17th Street. In a play court on the right, a whole platoon of little children were seesawing and
playing hopscotch and wading in a pool in the hot sun. Phillip smiled at the children. I knew he was thinking of himself as a murderer.

We walked uptown along Eighth Avenue, and I gave one last glance at the group of seamen standing around in front of the Union Hall.

We found an air-conditioned bar a few blocks up the avenue. There were some red leather stools at the bar there, so we sat on them and ordered a couple of Calvert shots with beer chasers.

“Tell me what else happened,” I said. “Tell me everything since I last saw you, yesterday morning.”

“I spent all Sunday afternoon at my uncle’s,” Phillip said. “I told him I needed some more money because we had to get another ship. After dinner I went down to Minetta’s and started drinking whiskey, and then Al came in with Cathcart. Cathcart went home early and Al and I drank some more whiskey.”

So then Phillip gave me the story he’d told Dennison earlier in the morning. When he was finished I said, “What are you going to do?”

“Any suggestions?”

“Substantially what Dennison advised.”

“I guess that’s best,” Phillip said, and ordered two more drinks. “I’ll get the hot seat for sure.”

“No,” I said. “That’s preposterous. Al was queer. He chased you over continents. He screwed up your life. The police will understand that.”

Phillip shrugged.

And then I said, “Well at least we’ll have a good drunk this morning.” I was sorry I said that, so I said, “But God, it shouldn’t have happened, huh?”

Phillip shrugged again.

“Here’s to Al anyway,” I added, and held up my glass.

I drank down my Calvert and the next thing I knew Phillip was staring into space and two long tears were running down his cheeks. I was all embarrassed, because I had never seen Phillip cry. I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, and finally I did.

“‘There’s time for all kinds of things,’” I said, “‘time even for murder.’ Saroyan.”

He leered at me, his face all wet. “That sounds like T. S. Eliot,” he said.

“Does it?”

We laughed a little bit, and then I gave him a cigarette. I began to think about how I used to imagine what it would be like to kill someone and how I used to write thousands of words to create that pattern of emotions. Now here stood Phillip beside me, and he had actually done it.

“I’m going to my uncle’s and give myself up,” Phillip was saying. “He’ll know what to do, he’ll get lawyers. If the police haven’t found Al’s body by now, they will have, before nightfall.”

I explained to Phillip what I was thinking about, but he was concerned with facts.

“My uncle has a lot of political power,” he went on, “and he’ll know just what lawyers to get.”

We talked about that for a while, then Phillip said he wanted to go.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Let’s go to the Museum of Modern Art and spend a few hours there.”

“Okay,” I said, “but let’s have a few drinks before we go in.”

We went outside on Eighth Avenue to hail a cab. The sidewalks were crowded with people. A fruit vendor had pulled his cart up in front of the bar and was selling apples. We finally stopped a cab and jumped in.

“Go by way of Times Square,” Phillip said. Then, when the cab was under way, he turned to me and said in a loud voice, “I hope they don’t find the body right away.”

“Yeah,” I said loudly, and we were grinning at each other. “I’ll bet he’s a bloody mess.”

“Hell, yes,” Phillip said. “When I chopped him in
the face with the hatchet, the blood spurted out and gushed all over the roof. There must be a lot more blood down in the yard.”

“Yes,” I said, “you did a thorough job of it.”

We were passing through Times Square and Phillip said, “Drop us off here, driver.”

The cabby pulled up to the curb and turned to close the meter. Phillip handed him the money, and the cabby was grinning. The cabby knew the ropes, all right, but he didn’t know the facts.

On the sidewalk I said, “I thought we were going to the museum.”

“Let’s look around here awhile,” Phillip said, and started walking down 42nd Street.

We passed the Apollo theater, which was still playing
Port of Shadows
, and the Italian spaghetti joint, and then we crossed the street to a penny arcade.