The Cry of the Owl (32 page)

Nickie didn’t show up. Greg’s father came at six-thirty in the morning, and he had a certificate or a check that was good for Greg’s twenty-thousand-dollar bail, and he had also brought a green-and-black woolen shirt, an old one of Greg’s his mother had found at home, his father said, and a clean pair of old tan work pants that were too big for him, but Greg was glad to have them, and went back to his cell to change into them. Lippenholtz wasn’t at the station. Things went a little easier.

His father was stonily silent, even when he and Greg were alone outside the station on the sidewalk. There was a Sunday-morning deadness about the street, as if all the human race had been killed off—except for the police in the station, of course. His father couldn’t remember at first where he had parked his car. Then when they finally got into his father’s old two-door black Chevy and his father had driven about a block, he said, “Where did you want to go, Greg?”

“Home,” Greg said. “Good God, home.”

“To our place?”

“Home
. Humbert Corners, Pop. Gee, I’m sorry,” impatiently. “I thought you knew. Naturally I want to get home.”

Silence for a few seconds, then his father said, “You haven’t been so anxious to get home for the last two weeks, so how do you expect me to know?”

“Listen, Pop, don’t you start it. Just please, eh? All right?”

“Do you know what I’ve been through tonight to raise your bail money?” his father said, glancing at him as he drove. “Do you know I couldn’t have done it if a lawyer friend of a friend of mine hadn’t happened to know the judge up here? It’s absolutely contrary to judicial procedure, the judge said. There’re supposed to be five persons present, the district attorney, the prosecutor—”

“Oh, Pop, you got it anyway. I don’t want to hear all that.”

“You may not, but I think you should. All the trouble I had tonight putting up every asset I possess just so you wouldn’t have to spend a night in jail!”

The tremor in his father’s voice startled Greg into silence. A night in jail was like a blot on the whole family history, Greg knew. Greg had an older brother, Bernie, who had disappointed his parents by failing in one job after another, by never marrying, and by finally becoming an alcoholic. He was in San Diego, doing what, nobody knew, and he might as well have been dead. His parents had crossed him off, and had fixed their hopes on him, Greg. It was too much of a burden to put on anybody, Greg thought. It made them intolerant of mistakes, any mistakes he might make.

“And the bail would’ve been five times this, if that doctor were dead,” his father added. “I hear there’s a good chance he will die.”

“All right, Pop, he—”

“I can’t understand you, Greg. Neither your mother nor I. We can’t understand you.”

“All right, I’ll tell you!” Greg shouted. “He killed my girl. Understand? He tried to kill me. He’s a crackpot. He’s—”

“Who?”

“Who?
Forester! Robert Forester! For Christ’s sake, Pop, do you think I’m off my head or something?”

“All right, all right. I thought you meant Forester,” said his father nervously, and Greg looked at him.

He was shorter than Greg by about six inches, and though only in his mid-fifties, he looked ten years older. His tense face, his hunched shoulders as he drove, showed the strain he had been under. And lately he was suffering from some kidney ailment, backaches. Greg started to ask him how his back was, and didn’t. He seemed to have more gray hair at his temples. Already, he had started working part-time, and Greg knew his father had accepted the fact that he was going quickly into old age. His father was district supervisor for a warehouse-and-storage company.

“You turn left here,” Greg said. They were taking the shortest way to Humbert Corners.

“Forester tried to kill you? At the river, you mean?” asked his father.

“Yes. You’re damned right,” Greg said, and lit the last cigarette from the package of Luckies. “Knocked me into the river and left me. I barely made it out. Oh, I told all that to the police,” Greg said, bored with the story, and yet he could feel now that he believed it. He felt he could stand up under any kind of questions, torture even, and stick to that story.

“So it’s not true that he pulled you out. That’s what the paper said.”

Greg laughed. “The paper said? That’s what Forester said. Of course he didn’t pull me out. Pop, I met his ex-wife in New York.”

Then Greg told his father about Forester’s ex-wife, how kind she was, how intelligent and attractive, and how she’d warned him against Forester, how she’d lent him money so that he could hide out, because that was the
only
way to get Forester—“by drawing people’s attention to him” was Greg’s phrase—since he was the kind of psychopath who didn’t do anything you could actually nail him for, just messed up other people’s lives, as Nickie said. “Witness Jenny’s suicide, Pop. Jesus!”

“Seems to me,” said his father, “if he deliberately tried to knock you in the river—”

“He did.”

“—did knock you in the river with the idea of drowning you, you could just have gone to the police when you climbed out and told them.”

“The police don’t necessarily believe you, Pop. And I—sure, I went after him that night. I admitted that. I wanted to beat him up. A fair fistfight, you know, man to man. Forester picked up a piece of wood and let me have it over the head. He was trying to shove me in the river the whole time. And once he had me in and he thought I was going to drown, he beat it.”

“How long were you in?”

“I don’t know. Maybe just five minutes. When I climbed out and got back on the road, I was still dazed. That’s why I left my car. I don’t even remember seeing my car.” Greg talked on, about his sensations of amnesia, about aiming for New York because that
was where Forester’s ex-wife was, and she had been friendly to him over the telephone when he’d called her and told her about Forester stepping in and taking Jenny away from him. Then Greg told his father about the prowling episodes at Jenny’s house, and how Forester had admitted he had prowled around the house. Jenny had said it to Susie Escham.

His father clicked his tongue and shook his head. “I don’t say Forester was in the right,” his father said, and here Greg interrupted him, because they were at Humbert Corners, and his father had to make a turn. His father had been to his place once or twice, but he didn’t know the way, at least not this morning.

“I wanted to get some cigarettes, and there’s not a damned place open,” Greg muttered.

The warm yellow sun was beginning to pour through the tops of the trees on Greg’s street. It was wonderful to see the old familiar street again. Home! Greg sat on the edge of his seat.

“It’s that next place on the left with that white window jutting out. Go all the way into the driveway.” Then as the car lurched over the hump of the sidewalk and rolled onto the gravel between Mrs. Van Vleet’s house and the garage over which Greg’s apartment was, Greg had a sudden misgiving, a feeling of hollowness and fear. He dreaded having to talk to Mrs. Van. “What did Mom say, Pop?”

“Oh, she’s glad you’re alive and well,” his father said in a tired voice, and pulled the emergency brake.

Greg had just gotten out of the car when Mrs. Van Vleet’s back door squeaked. She had come out on the back porch in a robe, her hair under a net.

“Who’s that?
Greg?
” she asked tremulously.

“Hi, Mrs. Van!” Greg called, his usual greeting to her.

“For goodness’ sake,” she said, opening the porch door to see him better. She stood with one foot on the first step down, as if she couldn’t believe him. “You’re all right, Greg?”

“Yep. I am. This is my father. You met him once, I think.”

“Morning,” Mrs. Van Vleet said vaguely to Mr. Wyncoop.

“Morning, Ma’am.”

“Where’ve you been, Greg?” asked Mrs. Van Vleet.

“Well—” Greg walked a few steps toward her and stopped. “I had a case of amnesia, Mrs. Van. Couple of weeks of it. Talk to you about it later. I’m pretty anxious to get home again. O.K.?” He waved and turned away.

“Were you in the river, Greg?” she asked, still standing with her foot on the step.

“I sure was. Not for long, though. I got knocked in. I’ll talk to you later, Mrs. Van.” He was opening his key case. It was the one possession, besides two snapshots of Jenny that had been in his bill fold, that he still had. “The rent’s due, I know, Mrs. Van,” he said over his shoulder. “Come on up, Pop.” Greg opened the door, and they climbed the steps. Greg’s door was at the left at the top of the stairs. He went into the room and raised a window. “Sit down, Pop.”

The coffee pot was sitting on the stove, and when Greg shook it, he found some coffee still in it. As he was washing the pot, he saw a pack of Kents, fresh and unopened, on the shelf in front of him beside the coffee can. Greg smiled. He had put them there providently one day, so long ago he’d forgotten. He wished there were a bottle tucked away somewhere, but he knew there wasn’t. But if he had taken a nip, his father would probably have made some remark about it.

“We’ll have some coffee in a couple of minutes, Pop. Nothing to eat, though. Whatever’s in the icebox I suppose is a little stale.”

“Um-m. That’s all right, Greg.” His father was sitting on Greg’s bed, leaning forward, his fingers locked in front of him.

“Want to stretch out, Pop? Go ahead.”

“I think I might.”

Greg went into his little windowless bathroom, put on a light, washed his face and brushed his teeth. Then he took his shirt off, rubbed lather into his nearly three-day beard and shaved.

His father was still gloomily silent, even when they were having coffee.

“Sorry you had to make this trip, Pop,” Greg said.

“Oh, that’s all right. You’re supposed to call in to the police today before six this evening, so don’t forget it. They want to know where you are.”

Greg nodded. “All right, Pop.”

The telephone rang, and it was like an explosion in Greg’s ears. He had not the slighest idea who it could be, who it was going to be, and a nervous sweat broke out on him as he picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Greg,” said Alex’s firm voice. “I just had a call from your landlady. She told me you’d come back.”

“Yeah, I—”

“So I called the police in Rittersville. Wasn’t sure they knew it, you know. Because your landlady didn’t know anything.” Alex’s voice was cold and flat, the way it was when he was angry about something. “So they picked you up in Langley, they said.”

“Yeah, that’s right. I had—well, for a long time I had amnesia, Alex.”

“Yeah? Really? According to what the police said, you’re in quite a lot of trouble, Greg.”

“Listen, Alex—”

“I know some of it myself, maybe not all of it. It’s good to know you’re alive, but if I’d known all this time you were just on a spree in New York—”

“A spree? What do you mean ‘a spree’?”

“Oh, I heard about the woman up there from the police. And all this time I thought you were either dead or—or just possibly eating your heart out about Jenny. And then 1 find out—”

“Alex, if you’d give me a chance to talk to you face to face—”

“I thought maybe you were dead, Greg, but I sure thought Jenny was your girl. And then this
shooting
, for God’s sake.”

“What are you, getting moral on me or something? Were you a saint at twenty-eight?”

“Greg, if that’s your boss—” said Greg’s father, standing up, frowning disapproval at him.

“Greg, I wish you luck, but I’m calling to tell you you’re no longer working for me, in case you had any ideas that you were.”

“F’Christ’s sake, Alex.”

“I can’t afford a mess like this in my business,” Alex said. “Do you think all the guys in the area who know me and know you—? I don’t even care to discuss it.”

Greg imagined Alex standing at the wall telephone in his kitchen, his wife listening with a cigarette and a cup of coffee at the table
in the breakfast nook, nodding encouragement to Alex. “All right, I won’t argue either, Alex. But you got any objections to my having a talk with you?”

“Yes, I think I have. There’s no use in it. You let me down, Greg, in more ways than one. I thought you were a pretty fine young man. You let me down on two of the biggest orders of the season, if you remember them, that suntan stuff and—Was I supposed to wait for you to communicate before I hired somebody else to go after them?”

“All right, Alex. I see this isn’t the time to talk.”

“That it isn’t. Goodbye, Greg.” He hung up.

Greg put the telephone down and turned to his father. His father was still frowning, and there was more reproach than sympathy in his face, Greg saw. “O.K., he fired me,” Greg said. “There’re other jobs.”

Then they were both silent. His father’s silence annoyed Greg. It was as if his father were thinking of things too shameful to say. Greg looked at his watch and saw that it was only ten of eight. It was going to be an interminable day unless he could sleep away some of it. Greg wished his father would leave.

At eight, the telephone rang again. It was Nickie, and Greg was so surprised it took his breath away for an instant.

“I’d like to come and see you,” Nickie said, not angry, not friendly either, just brusque.

“Sure, Nickie. Wh-where are you?”

“I’m in Humbert Corners. Some booth on the sidewalk. How do I get to your place?”

Stammering, Greg told her, and saw his father sit up, his face worried, as he looked at Greg. “How’d you find out I was here?” Greg asked.

“Called the police station. Simple as that,” Nickie said, and now she sounded as if she’d had a couple of drinks. “See you in a minute.” She hung up.

“Who’s coming over?” his father asked.

“Nickie Jurgen,” Greg said. “The woman I was telling you about, Forester’s ex-wife. She’s in Humbert Corners.”

“l’d better go,” said his father, and reached for his jacket, which he had hung on the back of a chair.

“Oh, Pop, come on. She’s nice. I’d like you to meet her. You’d understand a lot more of this, if—”

“No, Greg.”

“I need you, Pop. I really do. It’ll be better if you stay.”