“And you don’t — don’t care?”
“Of course not. On the contrary, I admire your success.”
“But you did go to the police about Mr. Croats.”
“That was before I wised up, as they say. That was before I really understood you, Mother. I bore a grudge. I thought you boarded me out just to get rid of me. Now I know you did it because you didn’t think I would understand. You thought I would condemn your actions.”
“Of course I thought you would.”
“I felt bitter that night and went to the police — mostly because you just never confided in me, never shared your work and dreams. If you had been honest with me from the first, you would never have had to have me committed so that whatever I might have said would be considered the hallucinations of a mad person. I would have understood the truth. After all, I’m your son.”
“I know, I know,” she half-sobbed with joy and relief and then embraced me. “And you really sympathize with my — kind of enterprise?”
“Of course, Mother!”
“I didn’t want to put you in that place, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do after you told about Mr. Croats.”
“Oh there was one alternative, Mother. And I got to thinking about that. I knew that because you didn’t take that logical alternative you really loved me.”
“What else could I have done Sunny?”
“You could have murdered me.”
“Oh no, Sunny!” she screamed. “I could never have done such a thing. Why, I’m your Mother!”
She heard it too, just as I did. A slight chuckling sound from the brush nearby. I twisted around and grabbed up the pistol. I edged forward. At that moment, Dr. Lawrence stepped into view and stood there grinning at me.
Dr. Lawrence chuckled again and casually lit a cigarette. Either he was a brave man or didn’t consider me a threat. I walked a few feet nearer so some high-compression BB slugs could easily penetrate his stupid head.
He ignored me, bowed slightly and said good morning to Mother. Without looking at her, I caught the very agreeable tone in her voice as she acknowledged his affable greeting.
“All right, Doc,” I said. “Now maybe you figure to die happily because you’ve solved everything.”
Dr. Lawrence exhaled thoughtfully into crisp morning air. “Yes, my research can lead back to odd sources. But I don’t like to waste time. I was sure you intended to run away, Sunny. I had been confiscating your letters. The pattern became clear to me, but I followed you, a sort of a shortcut to the heart of the matter.”
I pointed the pistol at his face. “Too bad you won’t live to receive the Nobel Prize for snooping,” I said.
“I hope I didn’t exaggerate your intelligence, Sunny.”
“Only your own,” I said.
He laughed. “You mustn’t compare me with Mr. Croats, Mr. “Y” or those other lucrative expendables, Sunny. I wouldn’t be easily explained away. Especially with a load of buckshot in my head.”
“But you won’t be worried about it,” I said.
“Now wait, Sunny, please,” my Mother said. She swayed past me in that seductive walk and smiled at Dr. Lawrence.
“Get out of the way!” I screamed at her. But she ignored me and walked right up to him and there they stood gazing into each others’ eyes. It was the sort of unabashed drooly gaze often seen in Ladies Home Companion illustrations. It was nauseating and incredible and if filled one with choking rage.
“Get out of the way, Mother!” I yelled again. “We’ve got to kill the damnable snoop!”
She continued to gaze up into Lawrence’s face, transfixed. “But Sunny,” she whispered, without turning toward me, “Dr. Lawrence saw everything didn’t he? He saw what was happening and he didn’t do a thing to prevent poor Mr. “Y’s” unfortunate accident.”
I stumbled back and sat down heavily on Mother’s florid beach-towel. It was true, horribly true. No need to speculate about Dr. Lawrence’s game which he had probably been playing, or planning to play, for some time. He wanted half of what my Mother had acquired, he wanted to share the wealth that I had expected to monopolize. And Mother was also eager to play the game, only this time I could see it was true love in all of its sentimental odiousness. Dr. Lawrence knew everything. From now on he would be calling the plays. I realized suddenly that I had better admit the facts, make a fast adjustment, or I would be lucky to end up with a weekly allowance.
I jumped up as Dr. Lawrence, his arm around Mother’s waist, walked toward me smiling. He put his other arm over my shoulders.
“It’s my business to know things of this sort,” he said. “And what you’ve always needed, my boy, is a father. A real father. You’ve needed a genuine, warm, family relationship. I want you to call me Dad.”
I had to grin. “You’re the doctor, Dad,” I said.
Then, Dr. Lawrence being a legally constituted medical authority, we discussed the proper sort of obituary report for Mr. “Y.” Then we carried him back to the patio and went into the cabin for lunch before making our emergency call.
Come Back, Come Back...
by Donald E. Westlake
Window ledges are constructed primarily as a place upon which one may set flower pots. Should you insist on going out on one that is high above the busy streets, just remember the chance you’re taking of attracting a crowd.
Detective Abraham Levine of Brooklyn’s Forty-Third Precinct was a worried and a frightened man. He sat moodily at his desk in the small office he shared with his partner Jack Crawley, and pensively drew lopsided circles on the back of a blank accident report form. In the approximate center of each circle he placed a dot, drew two lines out from the dot to make a clock-face, reading three o’clock. An eight and a half by eleven sheet of white paper, covered with clock-faces, all reading three o’clock.
“That the time you see the doctor?”
Levine looked up, startled, called back from years away. Crawley was standing beside the desk, looking down at him, and Levine blinked, not having heard the question.
Crawley reached down and tapped the paper with a horny fingernail. “Three o’clock,” he explained. “That the time you see the doctor?”
“Oh,” said Levine. “Yes. Three o’clock.”
Crawley said, “Take it easy, Abe.”
“Sure,” said Levine. He managed a weak smile. “No sense worrying beforehand, huh?”
“My brother,” said Crawley, “he had one of those cardiograph things just a couple months ago. He’s just around your age, and man, he was worried. And the doctor tells him, ‘You’ll live to be a hundred.’ ”
“And then you’ll die,” said Levine.
“What the hell, Abe, we all got to go sometime.”
“Sure.”
Abraham Levine was fifty-three years alive, twenty-four years a cop. A short and chunky man, he wore plain brown suits and dark solid-color ties, brown or black plain shoes. His hair was pepper-and-salt gray, trimmed all around in a stiff pseudo-military crew-cut. The crew-cut didn’t go with the face, roundish, soft-eyed, sensitive-lipped, lined with fifty-three years’ accumulation of small worries.
“Listen, Abe, you want to go on home? It’s a dull day, nothing doing, I can—”
“Don’t say that,” Levine warned him. “The phone will ring.” The phone rang as he was talking and he grinned, shrugging with palms up. “See?”
“Let me see what it is,” said Crawley, reaching for the phone. “Probably nothing important. You can go on home and take it easy till three o’clock. It’s only ten now and— Hello?” The last word spoken into the phone mouthpiece. “Yeah, this is Crawley.”