“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’ll get the pictures now. You can take your pick.”
When she went up the stairs Terrell stood and glanced around the room. His nerves assured him he was on the right track; his body was tight with tension. Paddy Coglan had been told to clear out. To stay away until after elections. His lie had destroyed Caldwell’s only hope. And now he was gone, safely away from Caldwell’s lawyers or suspicious newspapermen.
The room told him nothing; it was tidy and unrevealing. He hardly knew what he was expecting — a letter or postcard perhaps with a return address on it. He looked through the shelves beside the imitation fireplace, moving the dozen-odd books, but careful not to disturb the orderly rows of china figurines. An enlarged tinted photograph of Paddy Coglan as a young man hung above the mantle. His eyes stared with pointless defiance into the middle distance, soft and innocent in his round and vulnerable face.
Terrell sat down as he heard Mrs. Coglan descending the stairs. “Well, here we are now,” she said. She was breathing with some difficulty. “Up and down, up and down, I swear those stairs will be the death of me.” She carried a bulky cardboard box which Terrell helped her to place on the coffee table. “I’ve always kept everything,” she said. “Newspaper clippings, transfer orders, letters from the pension and medical officers — you know how it is. You never know when they’ll ask you for something they sent you five years ago. And here are the pictures. You should find something in that bunch.”
“I’m sure I can.” He sat on the sofa and began turning over snapshots of Paddy Coglan. Most of them were from local papers, probably turned over to Paddy by reporters. Paddy standing beside the mayor at a parade, Paddy at the scene of a four-car crash, Paddy holding a baby whose mother had been burned to death in a fire.
“He worked hard, if I do say so,” Mrs. Coglan murmured, studying the photographs with a softened expression. “He never got on though in the bureau. He always had enemies, false friends who carried tales.”
“That’s a damn shame,” Terrell said.
“You’ve known Paddy a good while, and you know he’ll take a drink. He’s never hidden that — take me or leave me, that’s Paddy Coglan. He wouldn’t put drink in a can of fruit juice, the way old Captain Maloney always did. Or pretend it was medicine. But it always worried me. As God is my judge, it was his only fault. He never, well — you know, had his hand out for favors, or anything like that. Just the drink.”
“It’s no crime to take a little nip now and then.”
“I suppose not. But a man on a beat is different. Captain Stanko said—” Mrs. Coglan cleared her throat and pointed to a picture. “There’s himself just after we were married. I used to see Paddy at seven o’clock Mass every morning with his mother and that’s when I set my cap for him.” She smiled at Terrell. “My own mother, God rest her soul, always said, ‘Look for a boy who looks out for his mother.’ ”
“That’s a good thought.”
“I’ve always been afraid—” Mrs. Coglan twisted her apron with rough, red fingers. “I don’t know why I’m talking this way. But each day that brought his pension nearer, I seemed to be more sure he’d get into some trouble. You know, that something would happen while he was off his beat having a nip. I’m running on like an old fool. Nothing can happen now, anyway. You take what you want, and I’ll go on with my work. I shouldn’t be bothering you with my chatter.”
“Not at all. But could I use your phone? I have to check in to the desk.”
“Just like a policeman,” Mrs. Coglan said, shaking her head. “Always checking in. The phone is in the dining room, and you’re welcome to it.”
Terrell followed her into the dining room and she turned on the overhead lights. The phone was on the sideboard. “It used to be nice and bright in here,” she said. “But since all the factories have come in you can’t have a meal without lights.” She lingered in the doorway, still twisting her hands in her apron.
Terrell dialed the Weather Bureau’s information service, which gave a recorded weather report every fifteen seconds. There was a centerpiece of wax fruit on the sideboard, several spools of wool, and a darning egg. A picture of St. Francis of Assisi hung facing Terrell. The rug was a bright green, and the highly polished top of the dining room table mirrored the overhead lights.
The announcer was speaking in Terrell’s ear, giving details of wind and temperature. He nodded and said, “Okay, okay, I’ll check that, too.”
Mrs. Coglan said, “I’ll just be in the kitchen, if you want me,” and left the room.
He smiled at her, and went on talking into the phone. When he heard her footsteps fade away he turned quickly to a small table a few feet from the sideboard. There was a small stack of mail on a metal tray and with the receiver held between his jaw and shoulder, he went through it quickly; he flipped over utility bills, a birth announcement, promotion material from a national magazine, and then he came on it, an envelope postmarked the day before with the name “P. Coglan” written in the upper lefthand corner. The letter was addressed to Mrs. P. Coglan and the return address was the Riley Hotel, Beach City, New Jersey.
Terrell put the letters back on the tray, hung up the phone and strolled back into the living room. He made a selection of pictures, and was ready to leave when Mrs. Coglan came in to ask him if he would like a cup of coffee.
“Thanks, but no,” said Terrell. “I’ve got to run.”
“We’ll be looking forward to your story. It will be kind of a nice ending for Paddy’s days with the police force. It’s really the most important case he was ever connected with.”
“Yes. Well, thanks again.”
Terrell didn’t feel very cheerful as he walked down the steps to his car. The morning was gray and cold, and the sulphurous smoke from the freight yards burned his throat and eyes. Paddy Coglan, he thought taking his mother to seven o’clock Mass, sneaking off his beat for a nip on frosty nights. Somebody had to trip him but it was a lousy job.
Terrell smiled and waved to Mrs. Coglan, who stood in the doorway with her shoulders hunched against the cold wind. Then Terrell got in his car and started the motor. Beach City was a hundred miles away. He could make that in two hours.
7
The Riley Hotel was a gloomy red-brick building four blocks from the ocean, facing an unrelieved stretch of penny arcades, garages, shooting galleries and cheap restaurants. In Beach City’s well-publicized social stratifications, the Riley simply didn’t exist; all values here, personal and material, were estimated from the waterline, and four blocks from the water took one into social Siberia. But there was a kind of despairing defiance in the Riley’s chromium and gilt entrance, Terrell thought; it was incongruous, silly, but rather brave, like a fat woman’s decision to wear a bikini and to hell with it.
The lobby was drafty and needed cleaning; the beery wind eddying from the lounge set little flurries of dusty tobacco and cigar bands skipping across the hard-wood floor. Terrell knew the Inspector of Detectives in Beach City, a man named Moran. He mentioned Moran’s name to the elderly desk clerk, and then asked if he might look at the register.
“Why, of course,” the desk clerk said. “The inspector was in just the other day, as a matter of fact. No trouble, just a misunderstanding. A girl passed out in the bar, and somebody slapped her to bring her around — and it frightened her. As I say, it was a misunderstanding.” He smiled, displaying large, very white and false teeth. “There are people who judge a hotel by its location. It’s a form of snobbery, don’t you think?”
“You have a point,” Terrell said, looking at the register. Paddy Coglan had checked in the day before, at ten in the morning.