The Cry of the Owl (18 page)

“Exactly on time,” she said, swinging the doot open for him.

She was in an off-white dinner dress that almost touched the floor, and suddenly he thought she might have guests, but the apartment was silent. She took his overcoat in the small front hall. “You’re looking very well,” he said.

“Can’t say the same for you. Greg got a few licks in, didn’t he? And you’re thinner, too.”

Yes, and bilious, hair falling out, the mole is worse, et cetera, Robert thought, and his smile stung his not quite healed lip. He followed her into a wall-to-wall-carpeted living room full of large pots of shiny-leaved plants. An expensive apartment in an expensive neighborhood. Ralph Jurgen made a lot of money. The only sign of Ralph was a pipe on an end table. The furniture Robert recognized as mostly his and Nickie’s, and after a glance he avoided
looking at it. There was a painting over the black-and-white stone fireplace, one of Nickie’s he had not seen before, vermilion with a black background, the red splotch suggestive of a splayed banana peel with the closed end at the top. Then the bold signature in white in the lower right corner: “
AMAT
.” He loves, she loves, it loves. Amat was Nickie’s third or fourth pseudonym. She changed her name with a change of style, and liked to think she was making fresh beginnings, though there was a continuity of style throughout all her work. “If you painted junk like this, would you want your real name on it either?” Robert had overheard a man say at one of Nickie’s group shows on Tenth Street, and Robert remembered he had wanted to whirl around and sock him, but he hadn’t even looked around. Leaning against the fireplace were three or four large wash drawings upside down. Robert bent over to read the signature. It was “Augustus John.”

Nickie sat down, almost flung herself down in the corner of a white sofa that was nearly the color of her dress. She had lost no weight, and had probably gained some. Then his eyes moved to her face. She was smiling at him, her brown eyes full of amusement, mirth really. Her black hair was shorter and fluffier, her full lips a darker red.

“So—you’ve got a new girl friend, I hear. Sit down.”

He took a nearby chair, also white, and got out his cigarettes. “I didn’t come here to talk about that.”

“What did you come here to talk about?” Then she called, “Ralph! Ralphie? Don’t you want to join us? What did you come for? Would you like a drink?”

“Thanks. Coffee’s more like it, I think.”

“More like what?” she asked, leaning forward, her restless hands on her pressed-together knees. She smiled at him teasingly. She had doused herself in a perfume he knew well. “Ralphie’s napping, I think.”

She was nervous, Robert saw.

“I will have a drink,” Robert said. “It’s easier than coffee, isn’t it?”

“Why, darling, I’d do anything for you, you know that. But then you never thought much of my coffee, did you?” She got up and went to the bar cart, where a silver icer stood among a dozen bottles. “I’ll join you,” Nickie said. The ice thocked loudly in the highball glasses. “Well, tell me about your new girl friend. I hear she’s just out of college. Or is it high school? Is she going to throw any more heavyweights at you for you to beat up? You’d better go into training. Second thought, I don’t want to hear about her. I know your taste and it’s awful. Except for me.”

Robert drew on his cigarette. “I didn’t come here to talk about you or her. I came here to ask if you possibly know where Greg is.”

She shot a glance at him and then stared at him, not quite smiling, not quite serious. She was trying to see what he already knew, Robert thought. Or that might be totally wrong. She might just as well be going to pretend she knew more than she did. “Why should I know where he is?”

“I thought maybe you’d heard from him. I understand he’s been talking pretty often with you on the phone.”

“He did. Until you knocked him in the river.” She handed him his glass.

The door Nickie had called to opened, and Ralph came in, in dressing gown and trousers. He looked fuzzy and pink with sleep, or possibly drink. His hair was thin and blond, his eyes blue. He
put on a tight smile for Robert and shook his hand heartily. Robert had stood up.

“Hello, Bob, how are you?”

“Well, thanks, and you?”

“Darling, can’t you find a shirt? Or a folded towel like those boxers wear under their robes? You know I hate to see all that hair creeping up your chest.” Nickie gestured airily at his neck.

There wasn’t any hair showing above the small white patch of Ralph’s undershirt.

Ralph’s flush deepened. “Sorry,” he murmured. He seemed to balk or hesitate about going back to the bedroom, but at last he turned and made his way back to the door he had come out of.

“Married life seems to be exhausting you,” Nickie said after him.

After a moment, when Ralph had closed the door, Robert said, “I don’t think you really answered me.”

She turned to him. “About what? Greg?”

“Yes.”

Ralph was back, draping a folded bath towel around his neck, stuffing its ends into his black-and-gray silk robe. He went to the liquor cart.

“Yes, Greg,” Robert repeated, and noticed Ralph’s head go up with interest.

“Never seen Greg in my life,” said Nickie.

“That doesn’t mean you haven’t a clue where he is,” Robert said.

“But it does, though. I haven’t a clue.” Nickie turned with a challenging air, with a smile, toward Ralph, and in that instant Robert knew she was lying. She looked at Robert. “Oh, give the girl up, Bobbie. Leave her to a better man. Providing he’s alive.”

“The girl isn’t the issue. I’m interested in finding Greg.”

“Oh, the girl isn’t the issue!” Nickie mocked.

Robert looked at Ralph. His weak, plain, fortyish face was merely solemn and blank. The expression was a little too deliberately blank, Robert thought. “Do you know what I’m talking about, Ralph?”

“Don’t quiz Ralph!” Nickie shouted.

“How can I, if he doesn’t know anything?” Robert saw her eyes almost close as she gathered herself to attack, and Robert said to Ralph, “I think you know I’m in a spot, Ralph. I’ve got to find out where Greg Wyncoop is—or if he is. I’m in a position to be accused of manslaughter. I could lose my job—”

Ralph was still blank and calm, but Robert felt that he watched Nickie for his cues.

“So why did you come here?” Nickie asked. “You sound as if you want to search the apartment. Go ahead.” Then she laughed suddenly, with apparent pleasure, her head thrown back and her dark eyes twinkling.

“I was talking to Ralph, Nickie,” Robert said.

“But he doesn’t seem to be talking to you, does he?”

“I think you know about the fight in Pennsylvania, don’t you, Ralph?” Robert asked.

“Yes. Yes, I do,” Ralph said, rubbing his nose. He drifted with his drink to the center of the room, circled the big round cocktail table. Then quickly he drank off half his tall amber glass.

“Ralphie, I’m sure you want out of this nonsense,” Nickie said. “Reminds me of some of the idiotic, endless conversations I used to have with Mr. Forester. I can see this is going to be endless, too.”

“Ralph hasn’t given me a plain answer yet. Do you have any idea where Greg is, Ralph?”

“Ugh! What a bore!” said Nickie, swinging around, making her skirt flare with one foot. She picked up a table lighter, lit a cigarette, and banged the lighter down.

“No,” said Ralph.

“There,” Nickie said. “Satisfied now?”

Robert was not at all satisfied. But Ralph was retreating into the bedroom again. He closed the door.

“Coming here to find Greg! You’re a creep who picks up girls by prowling around their houses! Oh, Greg knows how you met her! Or knew how. What’s the matter with her, by the way? She must be an oddball, too. Maybe you two deserve each other.”

Robert’s throat was tight. “What else did Greg talk about?”

Nickie snorted and tossed her head. “Is that any business of yours? Really, Bobbie, you’re losing your mind. You’ve lost it. You’re a mess. Look at yourself. A black eye. A cut on the lip. You’re a mess!” When Robert made no reply, she continued, “Think hard, Bobbie, and I’ll bet you’ll remember holding him under the water till he drowned.” She laughed. “Don’t you remember, darling?”

Slowly, Robert drank the last of his drink and stood up. It was like old times with Nickie, insults and lies the order of the day. There was no purpose in staying on. He felt that Greg was in New York and that Nickie knew it, and he would do what he could about it, which meant asking the police to look for him here—but would they?

“Oh, sit down, Bobbie. We haven’t begun to talk,” Nickie said. “Not thinking of marrying this Jenny, are you? That’d be a dirty trick to play on any girl, even an oddball.”

“The girl isn’t the issue,” Robert said. “Is something the matter with your hearing tonight?”

“Not a thing.”

Ralph had come back. He had on a shirt and tie and a jacket. He looked at Nickie, then went to the front closet, where he put on a topcoat.

“Going out?” Nickie asked.

“Just for a while. Night, Bob. See you again sometime,” he said with a twitch of a smile, and opened the door.

The door had almost closed when Robert started toward him. Robert went out into the hall, and the apartment door boomed shut behind him.

Ralph turned to face him. “What’s the matter, Bob?”

“You know where he is, don’t you?”

Ralph glanced at the closed apartment door. “Bob, I don’t care to say anything,” he said in a low voice. “Sorry. I don’t.”

“You mean you know something and you don’t care to say it? If you know anything—” Robert stopped, because Ralph was staring at his cheek, or at the cut on his lip.

“So that’s the mole on your cheek,” said Ralph. “Not so big, is it?”

“You’ve seen me before,” Robert said, embarrassed. “Ralph, if you—” He heard the apartment door open behind him.

The elevator door slid open, and Ralph walked into the elevator.

Robert turned to Nickie.

She was leaning against the edge of the door, one hand on her curving hip. “Locking yourself out? Well, now we can be alone.”

“That’ll be great.” Robert went past her into the apartment. His coat was lying on a white leather chair near the closet.

She put her hands on his shoulders. “Why don’t you stay awhile, Bobbie? You know, I’ve missed you. Why shouldn’t I? The best lover I’ve ever had or ever will have, probably.”

“Come on.” He drew back from her approaching lips, and she pulled back also, and for an instant her eyes appraised his face. He moved to one side and walked toward the door.

“Darling, let’s go to bed. Ralph won’t be back for an hour. I know him. Anyway, the door has a bolt. And a service stairway,” she added with a smile.

“Oh, Nickie, cut it out.” Robert reached for the doorknob, but she stepped in his way and stood with her back against the door.

“Don’t deny it’d be pleasant. Why be a prude? Don’t tell me that girl in Pennsylvania is better in bed than I am.”

Robert reached past her, had to touch her waist to get hold of the doorknob, and she leaned against his arm, laughing in her cooing, pigeonlike way, her lips compressed. It was a laugh he had heard when she was at her worst and also in her most affectionate moments. Now the laugh was strictly a taunt. Robert opened the door so abruptly it bumped her head. “Sorry,” he said, and pushed his way out into the hall.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want to.”

“Not in the mood. So long, Nickie.”

“Oh, you’re always in the mood for it, you’re always up to it,” she called after him.

Robert took the stairs down.

“Coward!” she yelled. “Coward!”

Robert went fast down the steps, his hand just above the polished banister, ready to grab it in case he tripped.

“Coward! You’re insane !” her voice came after him. “You’re
insane!
”

When Ralph left the apartment building on East Eighty-second Street, he walked downtown on First Avenue and went into the first bar he came to. He ordered a Scotch and soda, drank half of it, then went to the telephone directory by the hat-check booth and looked up the number of the Sussex Arms Hotel. He asked to speak to Mr. Gresham. A funny name for Wyncoop to have chosen, Ralph thought. It made him think of Gresham’s Law, which he doubted if Wyncoop knew or could quote, about bad money driving out good, causing people to hoard the intrinsically more valuable, and though there seemed some possible connection between this law and the perhaps intrinsically valuable girl in Pennsylvania whom two men were fighting over, or he had thought Robert was fighting over her, Ralph hadn’t come to any clearer notion before Wyncoop was on the telephone.

“Ralph Jurgen,” Ralph said. “I’d like to see you tonight.”

“Tonight? Anything the matter?”

“No-o. Are you going to be in?”

“I was thinking of cruising around a little, maybe going to a late movie.”

“Well, never mind that. I want to see you.” Ralph was a little high and also angry, or he wouldn’t have spoken so firmly, but it got results. Greg said he would stay in and wait for him.

Ralph took a taxi down. The Sussex Arms was a third-rate hotel off Fourth Avenue. The lobby was vaguely dirty and so shabby one could not even imagine that it might once have seen better days, or known a more distinguished clientele. And it was for curious reasons, Ralph thought, that Wyncoop had chosen such a place—only partly because he felt less conspicuous here than at a more expensive hotel, but mostly to feel humble, to admit he was doing something dishonest, maybe to punish himself a little. Certainly Nickie would have paid his hotel bill anywhere. Greg had run out of cash, of course. Ralph took the elevator to the fourth floor. Even the elevator operator’s uniform was threadbare. Ralph Jurgen came from a poor family. Signs of poverty anywhere shocked his sensibilities, his aesthetics, even his morals. Poverty was ugly, tragic, and unnecessary.

Greg was in shirtsleeves, an unbuttoned vest, and stocking feet. “Well, what’s up?” he asked when he had closed the door, but he asked it with a smile and rather politely.

Ralph took off his topcoat and kept it over his arm as he sat down on a straight chair. “Bob Forester was in town tonight. He came to see Nickie.”