Spalter sipped his scotch. “It’s not always fun and games working for Childress. He works our asses off.”
“That’s the way I like it.”
“I’ve heard that about you. I think you’re going to fit in just fine, Paul—and what’s more important to you, I think we’re going to fit in just fine with you.”
Spalter was a bit of a bullshit artist but Paul rather liked him. He made a gesture with his drink.
“Christmas coming up fast,” Spalter said. “We won’t really be getting back into gear until after the first of the year. Childress and I both think it might be a good idea if you spent your first couple of weeks just relaxing, getting to know Chicago a bit before you plunge into the office routine. After the holidays there’ll be a pile-up of income-tax work and you may not have too much time for familiarization. Anyhow, take the holidays off, find yourself a house, get settled in, get to know our town a bit. There’ll probably be several Christmas and New Year’s parties—I’ll keep you posted. You can report in to work on Monday the sixth. How’s that sound?”
It gave him more than two weeks; he agreed to it with suitable gratitude.
Spalter sat forward, elbows on knees. “Stop me if I’m out of line. But naturally we’ve heard a little about why you decided to move here. Do you mind talking about it?”
“Not any more. But why go into it?”
“The place is full of rumors. I think you can understand that. It’d be a good idea if we could put a lid on the gossip before people start looking at you as if you’ve got two heads.”
“What gossip?”
“For instance they’re saying you went to pieces.”
Paul managed to smile.
“You don’t look to me like a man who’s gone to pieces.”
“It’s a dreary story. All too commonplace.”
“Your wife was mugged, I gather.”
“My wife and my daughter. They were attacked in our apartment. My wife died in the hospital. My daughter died two months later.”
“As a result of the attack?”
“Indirectly.” He didn’t elaborate. Carol had been institutionalized: catatonic withdrawal. In her mind she had fled from recollections too horrible to face. She’d become a vegetable. He’d watched her retreat: the steady terrible escape from reality until she’d collapsed into the final trance, unable to talk or see or hear or feed herself. Death had been, perhaps, an accident: she had choked on her own tongue and had been dead nearly half an hour before the nurse discovered it.
“Did they apprehend the muggers?”
“No.”
“Christ.”
Paul drained his glass and set it down gently. “Esther and Carol didn’t have any money with them, you see. Three or four dollars, that was all. The muggers got mad at them because they didn’t have money.”
“Jesus.”
Paul met his eyes. “They gave them terrible beatings.”
Spalter looked away. “I’m—”
“No. Maybe I’m the one who should apologize. I told it to you that way for a reason.”
“To prove that you can face it—that you haven’t gone around the bend.”
“That’s right. There are things you have no control over. To me it’s as if they were both killed by an earthquake or an unexpected cancer. It’s in the past. I’ve got my grief but we’ve all got sorrows to live with. Either we carry on or we throw in the towel. I’m not the suicide type. Do you go to the movies?”
“Now and then,” Spalter said indifferently.
“I’m a Western nut. The rituals are relaxing, I find. In every other Western there’s a line—’You play the cards you’re dealt.’”
“And that’s what you’re doing.”
“There’s really not much choice,” Paul lied.
Spalter brooded into his empty glass. The waiter brought fresh drinks and Spalter signed the chit. “My daughter’s boy friend lives on Howard Street. I guess you wouldn’t know the area. Anyway a few months ago the city in its wisdom put up no-parking signs there, and Chet had to find overnight parking on the side streets after that. Within a month his car had been stripped twice. Recently the council passed an ordinance to repeal the no-parking restrictions out there, but what the hell kind of solution to a problem is that? I suppose our troubles won’t come as any surprise to you but I’d be kidding if I said we didn’t have a hell of a crime problem in Chicago. A thousand murders—most of them never solved. It’s no promised land.”
Paul didn’t want to be drawn into speculations about the Crime Problem. The best way to avoid being betrayed by a slip of the tongue was to say nothing at all.
Spalter talked on. He darted from topic to topic and sometimes there were no discernible connectives. He wasn’t a stream-of-consciousness talker; he was being dutifully—and good-naturedly—helpful, telling Paul things he thought a newcomer ought to know. Paul was grateful when the subject moved away from crime.
He tried to put some show of interest on his face; he was finding it hard to keep his attention on Spalter’s pointers about the firm’s internal politics. There was useful data in Spalter’s anecdotes about office feuds and jealousies, his throwaway character sketches, his quick run-down on the companies for which Childress Associates regularly did audits. It would be important for Paul to familiarize himself with these oddments. He intended to do good work at Childress: he’d always taken pride in his abilities but now there was something else—he couldn’t risk drawing attention to himself by displaying any sudden deterioration in the professional capabilities for which he was known. It would require more effort than before because the job was no longer the center of his life; now it was merely a source of income and a camouflage for the appeasement of his private demons.
After lunch they had left the club and Spalter, burly in his topcoat, had ridden with Paul as far as the hotel. Paul had declined Spalter’s dinner invitation, pleading tiredness after his flight. When Spalter was gone he had crossed the street and prowled the arcade of the John Hancock complex until he found a magazine shop where he bought Chicago maps and guidebooks and all three local newspapers and a New York Times which had a page 40 column about the police department’s continuing unsuccessful search for the vigilante who had used the same revolver, according to ballistics reports, to kill seventeen people in the streets of New York over a five-week span. Of the seventeen victims of his retributive vengeance, fourteen had criminal records and two others had been found dead with stolen property on or near their bodies. It was possible he had saved a score of innocent lives.
In his hotel room he had found a printed card from the management:
We urge your use of the Safety Deposit Vaults available at no charge at the Front Office. Please DO NOT leave furs, jewelry, cameras, money or ANY VALUABLES in your room. Illinois State laws relieve the hotel from liability for loss, excepting when valuables have been properly placed in a safety deposit vault.…Please use the DOUBLE LOCKS on your guest room door. We wish you a most enjoyable stay.
That night he’d slept with his wallet inside his pillowca