The Blunderer (27 page)

Walter studied those eyes, looking for courage, determination, confidence. He saw all three. “I don't buy,” he said, walking around his desk. “You can tell Corby what you wish.”

“You make a terrible mistake,” Kimmel said without moving. “Shall I give you forty-eight hours to think it over?”

“No.”

“Because in forty-eight hours I can begin to show you what
I
can do.”

“I know what you can do. I know what you're going to do.”

“That's your last word?”

“Yes.”

Kimmel stood up. Walter felt that Kimmel towered over him, though actually Kimmel was only a couple of inches taller.

“I protected you this morning,” Kimmel said in a different tone. “I was beaten—tortured about whether I had seen you before your wife's death. I did not betray you.” Kimmel's voice shook. He was convinced that he had come through hellfire, and for Stackhouse's benefit. He was convinced that Stackhouse owed him something. It had shamed him to ask for money, and he had done it only because he thought he deserved it. He had degraded himself once more in coming here this morning, and now to be refused by this stupid, ungrateful blunderer!

“That protection wasn't entirely altruistic, was it?” Walter asked. “I'm sorry you were beaten. You don't have to protect me. I'm not afraid of the truth.”

“Oh you are not afraid of the truth! I could have told them this morning. I could have told them more than the truth!”

Walter noticed the horrible smell of the bookshop clinging to Kimmel, or his clothes, emanating from them. It gave him a feeling of being closed in and trapped, which was made worse by the soundproofed ceiling that muffled Kimmel's muted, passionate voice. “I realize that. But what's going to happen is that I'll tell Corby the truth myself, you see. You can embellish it, if you like. I'll take the chance—but I'll never pay you a dime for anything!”

“I'd like to say you're a man with courage, Stackhouse, but you're only a fool and a coward from start to finish!”

Walter started to swing the door open for Kimmel to go out, but he paused with his hand on the knob. He did not want Joan to hear anything. “Have you finished, Mr. Schaeffer?”

Kimmel scowled. His huge, smooth face looked like a scowling baby's. “Had you rather I'd given my real name?”

Walter yanked the door open. “Get out!”

Kimmel walked through lightly, his head up. He turned. “I shall call you, however, in forty-eight hours.”

“That'll be too late.”

Walter closed his door, went to the window, and stared at the empty sky beyond the edge of a building. The idea of talking to Corby before Kimmel did was dissolving under him. The more he talked, the more of the truth he revealed—at this late date—the worse it would look for him. Walter could see Corby gloating when he confessed the first visit. Corby wouldn't possibly believe he had come by accident, or for the purpose he
had
come, just to look at Kimmel. Corby would think, well, what purpose did looking at Kimmel have? Of course it had a purpose, somewhere. No action could be totally without purpose, or without explanation.

Walter imagined himself stealing into Kimmel's shop, rifling the desk until he found the order slip. He squirmed and turned around. Kimmel wouldn't have it there, anyway. It was probably hidden. Or Kimmel carried it on him now. He looked at the telephone and wondered where he could reach Corby at this hour of the morning. Or was it better to wait forty-eight hours and let Kimmel call again? Something could happen by then. But what? Whatever happened he only sank deeper, that was what happened. Walter gripped his thumbs inside his fingers. He reached for the telephone on a frightened impulse, then realized that he wouldn't have the nerve to tell Jon this. He had spent an evening with Jon two days ago. Jon had acted perfectly natural, and apparently accepted the Kimmel clipping as pure coincidence. Corby had told him about the clipping. Jon knew he tore items out of newspapers. So far as Walter could see, Jon hadn't given the Kimmel clipping a bit of weight, but if Jon were to know he had been in Kimmel's shop…. That would be the final thing, and the rest would suddenly crystallize.

Walter went quietly out of his office and took the elevator down. He went into an hotel across the street and called the Philadelphia Police, Homicide Department, and asked for Lieutenant Lawrence Corby. He was switched to another line, and he had to wait. For a few moments, he debated hanging up, because it had just struck him that Corby might not believe Kimmel at all about the visit or the order slip. The order was written in pencil, Walter remembered, and Kimmel could have written his name on an order that had been somebody else's. Kimmel wouldn't have written his name in the letters he sent to other bookstores, asking for the book. It was the kind of thing Kimmel would try to do, to hit back at him, and Corby would know that. But Walter knew Corby would prefer to seize on it, whether he believed it or not, and defy him to disprove it. Personal belief didn't influence Corby in the least. Walter squeezed the telephone.

“Lieutenant Corby is in Newark today. I don't expect him back for forty-eight hours. This is Corby's chief, Captain Dan Royer.”

“Thanks,” Walter said.

“May I ask who's calling?”

“It doesn't matter,” Walter said.

He started for Newark at 5:30.

31

T
he first two precinct headquarters Walter telephoned had never heard of Corby. Walter wondered if he were working absolutely on the loose in Newark. He tried a third and got a response: Corby had been there early in the morning. They couldn't say when he would be back.

Walter got back in his car, discouraged. He decided to drive by the last place he had called and leave a sealed note for Corby with a message in it to call him. On the way to the precinct headquarters, Walter recognized the street where he had parked his car the day he went to see Kimmel to tell him that he was innocent. Walter turned his car into Kimmel's street. Just as he saw the projecting windows of the bookshop, their lights went out. Walter slowed down. Kimmel's big figure backed out of the door, stood for a moment locking the door, then turned, within ten feet of Walter's car. Walter watched him take a half dozen steps down the sidewalk—bent forward, head down as if he had to hurl his huge body forward to make progress—and then Walter's car passed him. Walter stepped on the gas pedal as if Kimmel were pursuing him.
My God
, Walter thought,
my God!
He kept saying it over and over in his mind.

It was the craziness of it. Kimmel—beaten in the morning, closing shop at night, carrying around a little hell in his head, a plan for vengeance against him. And what had he to do with a stranger in a dark street of Newark?

A police officer in the precinct headquarters said that he expected Corby to come in between nine and midnight. “He's working on a case around here,” the man said casually. “He's in and out.”

Walter waited in his car. Then he drove around for a while to ease his tenseness, came back and inquired again, and waited. He wondered if he could possibly prevail on Corby not to put the story of his first visit to Kimmel in the newspapers, and to stop Kimmel from doing it. He wondered, even if Corby were to think or pretend to think that he was guilty after hearing Kimmel's version of the visit, if Corby could be persuaded to wait until all the proof was collected. But Corby might say this was all the proof he needed.
But I haven't done anything
, Walter thought. Before, he had felt it buoying him up, that fact that he hadn't done anything. Now the buoyancy felt hollow and unreal.

As he stared in front of him, Walter saw Corby's long loose figure emerging out of the darkness on the sidewalk, and he got out of his car.

Corby's narrow face lighted under the dapper brim of his hat. “Good evening, Mr. Stackhouse!”

“I came to talk to you,” Walter said.

“Would you like to come in?” Corby gestured to the dismal building, as graciously as if it were his home.

“It's very private. I'd rather sit in the car.”

“You're not supposed to park here. However, it's such a small offence.” He smiled his boyish smile, and got into the car.

Walter began as soon as they had closed the doors. “Kimmel came to me today with a proposition of blackmail. I'm telling you what it's all about before he does. I saw Kimmel in October, a couple of weeks before my wife's death.”

“You
saw
him?”

“I went to his shop. I ordered a book from him. I knew he was Kimmel—the one whose wife had been killed. I mentioned it to him—that I knew about it. But that's all that was said. I left my name and address when I ordered the book.”

“Your name and address!” Corby sat upright, smiling. “Did you?”

“I had no reason not to,” Walter said. “I still haven't. I did
not
kill my wife!”

Corby shook his head as if this were all just too incredible to be believed. “Do you concede, Mr. Stackhouse, that you at least thought about killing her?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn't do it?”

“No.”

“And you also guessed how Kimmel did it?”

“How Kimmel
might
have done it.”

Corby laughed and opened his hands. “What is this? Both of you defending each other now?”

Walter frowned. “If you've got so much against Kimmel, why don't you arrest him?”

“We're getting there. I'm only collecting some more facts from the neighbors,” Corby said, pulling the limp brown tablet out of his pocket. “Motivations.”

“Can you convict a man on motivations? Or on circumstantial evidence? It doesn't take a lawyer to know that you haven't got enough to indict us, Corby. If you had what you needed, we'd be in jail!”

Corby was writing in the tablet. He looked around and turned on the car light so that he could see better. “Kimmel will crack finally. He's got a peculiar psychic structure—Corby mouthed the words like a pedantic schoolboy—full of little cracks. I just have to find the weakest.”

“You won't find any in me.”

Corby ignored it. “Do you mind telling me the date of your visit to Kimmel? Was there more than one?”

“No. As near as I can remember it was around the seventh of October.” Walter remembered the date exactly, because it was the day he had first gone to Ellie's Lennert apartment.

“How long did you stay there?”

“About ten minutes.”

“Can you tell me everything you said? Everything you both said?”

Walter related it, and Corby took notes. It was very brief, because they had exchanged very few words.

“Kimmel's probably going to tell you that I talked with him about murdering my wife,” Walter said, “or he's going to say that I asked so many questions that what I wanted to find out was obvious.”

“What did you want to find out?”

“I meant, what Kimmel's going to
say
I wanted to find out. Actually—the truth is that I wanted to see Kimmel, just see him. I did think that Kimmel might have killed his wife. It fascinated me. I wanted to see Kimmel to see if he looked like he could have done it.”

“It fascinated you.” Corby looked at him with interest the bright schoolboy look again, as if he were comparing Walter to some textbook criminal type that he knew thoroughly.

Walter regretted using the word, “It interested me. I'm admitting it!”

“Why didn't you admit it sooner?”

“Because—because of the position I was in,” Walter said desperately. “I'm admitting to you now that Kimmel has an order slip with my name and the date on it to prove my visit. I'm warning you in advance that Kimmel's going to tell you God knows what about that visit!”

Corby's half smiling expression did not change. “Mr. Stackhouse, I don't believe
your
story at all.”

“All right, get it from Kimmel!”

“I will. Stackhouse, I think you did not discuss murder with Kimmel, but I think you killed your wife. I think you're as guilty as Kimmel is.”

“Then you're not being logical! You're so determined to prove me guilty, you're no longer capable of looking at the facts or judging anything!”

“But I am looking at the facts. They're pretty damning, from anybody's point of view. The more you furnish, Stackhouse—” Corby left it unfinished and smiled. “Maybe next week we'll have the last installment. Is that all for tonight?”

Walter set his teeth together. He felt he had exhausted every defence he had, every fact, and that there was not another word he could say. He felt he was sliding down a sewer.

“Not a stupid man, Kimmel. You are, Stackhouse.” Corby got out of the car and slammed the door.

Walter heard his quick steps running up one of the flights of stairs that led to the door of the police building. How absurd he had been to think that he would be believed! How absurd to think that he could ask Corby not to print what he had just told him. Walter felt that Corby needed something explosive to shake the Kimmel-Stackhouse case into a new stage. This was really a much more spectacular story than merely finding the clipping.

A curious feeling came over Walter as he sat there. It took him a moment to understand what it was. Then he did: he was giving up. He didn't care any more. He'd tell Ellie. He'd tell Jon, everybody. He'd lose them all. He'd go down the drain alone.

Walter started the car. Ellie would be the first, he thought. It was after nine o'clock now. He wondered if he should call her from Newark to make sure she was in, and then suddenly he remembered this was the night of
Hansel and Gretel.
Thanksgiving Eve. Ellie was playing in the Harridge School auditorium now, and he was supposed to be there. He had his ticket in his pocket. Walter stopped the car, cursing, feeling completely rattled. The story would break on Friday evening if Kimmel succeeded in putting it in the papers. He wouldn't be able to do a thing about it at the office until Monday. By Monday Dick Jensen would be ready to say, “It's no go, Walter. Count me out.” They were planning to move into the new office December first. Cross would tell him he was through at the office, and he'd better get out and stay out. Walter wondered if by Monday he'd even have the courage to go to the office.