The Cleveland Branch case had been one of the high points of Harry’s career. It had seemed so obvious to everyone that a gigantic embezzlement had taken place that the bank’s officers had wanted to close the branch and put every employee under arrest as material witnesses until the thing had been cleared up. Harry insisted that they give him a little more time, and sure enough, he found that the shortage was due to an honest error; and a paper error at that — the bank hadn’t lost any money after all.
After Harry mentioned the Cleveland Branch, Mr. Wexler would awake from his reverie — he had long since stopped listening to Harry’s boring, methodical, too-perfect reports — and by way of dismissal would say, “Cleveland... Yes, that’s right. Well, keep up the good work, Harry.”
Harry Pulver’s innate lack of confidence made him confident that Blanche was unfaithful. He had been trying to gather tangible evidence of her infidelity for fifteen years without success, but his dogged determination precluded any thought of giving up. In his free time — when he was not making thorough searches of the house or spot checks of Blanche’s handbags, shoes, and toilet articles — Harry had worked out the details of what he would do when he finally had her dead to rights. Every detail lay in his mind like a separate, glistening gem, waiting to be used at the right time.
Harry completed his count of the eggshells and threw them in the garbage can beside him. He had the garbage strewn on a four by ten foot tarp that he’d bought for just that purpose. He picked up a single nylon stocking, glanced at it, and put it aside on the pile for later analysis. Soap boxes, cans, frozen food wrappers, candy wrappers (the kids liked Butterfingers and Snickers), paper towels, toilet paper wrappers, and coffee cans were examined, counted, noted in the blue notebook he kept with the tarp in their secret hiding place in the garage, and thrown in the can with the eggshells.
He had originally gone through the garbage every day, but quickly found it to be a monumental task, so he shrewdly curtailed that effort in favor of random trips home from the office, always unexpectedly. Sometimes he would not even go to the office, just stop at the coffee shop over on Bright Road for a half hour or so and then drop in at the house saying, “I left some papers I needed at the office.” When he left town through, even while he had it a practice to lie to Blanche about his schedule (leaving later and returning earlier than he told her), the garbage had to be inspected on his return.
For her part, Blanche knew all about Harry’s obsession. She never said anything about it to him, partly because it kept him busy and out of her hair, and partly because it flattered her vanity somewhat. Blanche had a dumpy figure that hadn’t recovered from her second birth-giving stint, stained, yellowing teeth that were badly in need of capping, and fine, stringy hair that just wouldn’t take a set. If she had a saving grace, it was the soft, haunting light that emanated from a pair of large, deep-violet eyes. Oh, she had been beautiful once — and had pictures to prove it, but those days were gone.
At first she hadn’t understood his numerous, if haphazard, trips home from work. Then she had caught him with all that garbage spread out on that piece of canvas. He had been so intent over the classification of cigarette butts that he hadn’t seen her, and she quickly returned to the house to ponder his behavior. She and Edna discussed the whole thing some time later over coffee, and came to the entirely proper conclusion that Harry thought she had a lover. Edna, whom Harry disliked intensely, thought it was “perfectly delightful” of Harry to supply them with such a humorous subject for conversation, and she wanted to get Harry a fingerprinting set for his next birthday, but Blanche wouldn’t hear of it and swore her to secrecy.
If Blanche were having an affair, she was certainly being circumspect about it. At least, Edna knew nothing of it, and Edna knew more about Blanche by far than Harry ever had. Edna knew a good deal about Harry, too. She knew that he was an ineffective and sporadic lover. If Blanche were having an affair, certainly Edna wouldn’t blame her though God knows where she would find him. Edna knew too that every time Harry left town he dismantled the second car in such a way that it was useless. She either had to drive Blanche to the store or take her over to her Mother’s to get their old car. Once, Blanche had called the mechanic from the garage over on the highway to come out and get the car running — she had called the bank and found out that Harry would be gone at least ten days (that time, he had told her that he’d be gone for a couple of days). The mechanic told her that it would cost at least seventy dollars to replace the parts that Harry had stripped off and taken with him. Harry was a methodical man.
The methodical man had classified and disposed of all the ordinary garbage and was approaching the meat of his task. He set out a Scotch bottle and a gin bottle, nothing in themselves because Blanche drank gin and Edna drank Scotch, but nevertheless important in giving the overall picture of Blanche’s activity during his absence. Three lemon soda bottles — about the right amount of chaser for Blanche’s gin — joined the two liquor bottles at one corner of the tarp. The next item made Harry’s eyes narrow speculatively behind the rimless glasses.
In spite of his training, in spite of his apparently calm appraisal of the seltzer bottle that he fondled almost reverently, Harry was feeling a tingle of excitement in his spine. Edna drank her Scotch with water! It was insufficient evidence, to be sure, but Harry’s visceral tremors stemmed from the fact that his perseverance had finally been justified: After nine years of searching, he had finally found a clue. Blanche had at last gotten careless. How careless, the remainder of the pile would reveal. Unhurriedly, but with growing excitement, Harry picked over the dwindling pile and laid out an empty cigarette package that had contained those cigarettes made with pipe tobacco, a kleenex smeared with lipstick — not blotted, like a woman does, but smeared like a man would do if he were wiping off the evidence of heavy petting — and to complete the mounting pile of evidence he added a button — one just the right size and shape for the job of holding a man’s trousers together. He checked against his own trouser button to be certain.
Harry didn’t even bother to assay each individual cigarette butt; he simply dumped the garbage into the can and strode purposefully toward the house. He was so furious that he very nearly went ahead with phase two of his neatly formulated plan, but a tiny voice in the back of his mind jangled through the red haze to remind him, “...and remember the Cleveland branch...”
An icy calm gripped him as he found Blanche in the kitchen. “Why don’t you run the kids over to your Mother’s, Blanche? I’m tired and cross, and I don’t want to snap at them. I know I will, though, if they’re around.”
“All right, Harry,” she answered, putting down the magazine she had been reading. “Kids!” she shouted toward the back of the house, “Get your peejays and your toothbrushes; you’re going to Gramma’s.”
While she was gone, Harry mixed himself a bourbon, after satisfying himself that the level in the bottle was right on the tiny line he had made with his thumbnail before leaving on his trip. “At least,” he said aloud, “the bastard didn’t drink anything out of my bottle.”
When Blanche returned, Harry was sitting in the living room with a magazine over his knees. He looked at her legs and noted with satisfaction the small bruise on her right shin. It was located in the same spot where the discarded stocking, now residing in his left hand coat pocket, had started to run.