The killing had stopped being manslaughter the minute I decided not to call the police, the minute I decided not to go to court or to jail. I couldn’t plead for gentle justice anymore. I couldn’t get caught at all.
So now I was the man on the run. The fact that I wasn’t running at all, that in fact I was having breakfast in my own kitchen, had nothing to do with it. I had to run — hell, I had to do more than that. A lifetime on the run was nothing but a life sentence to a mobile jail.
I had to be someone else. I had to be someone who was not Donald Barshter, someone who didn’t live in this town, someone who didn’t sell insurance. Someone who hadn’t murdered his wife. Someone who wasn’t running.
Someone with a new name and a new address and a new personality. Someone with his own life to live and his own fish to fry. Someone settled in his own little groove.
And it couldn’t help being an infinitely better groove than selling insurance to people who didn’t really want or need insurance; living with a woman I didn’t even like, let alone love; making monthly deposits in the savings account and the checking account and balancing these precariously with monthly payments on the house and the car and the television set and the washer and the dryer; and saying the same dismal words day after day to the same dismal people.
The impersonation might even be fun. Like an actor playing a part. Like Danton playing Legs.
I left the breakfast dishes in the sink and wondered if anybody would ever wash them and dry them and put them to bed in the proper cupboards. I went upstairs again, took a shower and got dressed. I found a good leather suitcase of mine, one of the few that hadn’t been monogrammed. I opened it, propped it up on the bed and looked through drawers and closets for things to put in it. I found few things. It was going to be necessary to travel light. The wardrobe that suited Donald Barshter would not suit the man I was going to become.
Clothes are part of a personality. Donald Barshter’s tweeds and pinstripes and regimental ties and button-down shirts were part and parcel of his grownup Ivy League personality — they went hand in hand with the briefcase and the actuarial tables and the memo books. Barshter’s clothes wouldn’t do.
I packed three white shirts, a few pairs of undershorts and T-shirts, a few of my louder ties. I didn’t bother with suits or shoes — I would wear one suit and one pair of shoes and that would be enough. The less of Donald Barshter’s clothes I had, the less I’d have to get rid of later on.
That more or less took care of Sunday. During the afternoon I wandered around the corner to the drugstore and picked up a copy of the New York Times. I ran into a few people I knew and mentioned that Ellen was out of town and that I was living a bachelor’s life for the next day or two. I even set up an appointment to talk a fellow into carrying more life insurance. Then I went home and alternated between the Times and the television set until it was time to go to sleep.
I didn’t sleep much.
I had the alarm set for eight-thirty but I was up before it had a chance to go off. I was completely awake the second I opened my eyes and my blood nearly sang with energy. I showered and shaved and dressed, picking out an anonymously gray suit and a pair of Italian shoes. I tried to remember the last time I’d felt so thoroughly alive, so excited and ready to go. I couldn’t remember a comparable morning in years. There had been similar mornings in Korea, of course, and a few in the first years of marriage. But since then excitement had not been part of my life, had not been a common feeling at all. Which was a shame — excitement is a healthy thing.
I tucked my wallet in one pocket, my keys in another. I scooped up a handful of loose change and dropped it into a third pocket. Next I found my bankbook and my checkbook and made room for them. I picked up the suitcase, which wasn’t heavy at all, and carried it out of the house to the car. I put the suitcase in the back of the car on the floor.
The two banks where I had accounts were across the street from one another on Chambers. I cashed a check for thirteen hundred at the bank where I had my checking account, leaving a hundred dollars to keep the account warm. I crossed the street and emptied the savings account, explaining that I had a cash deal pending and needed the dough in a hurry. The teller told me I could take a low-interest loan and keep my account intact but I managed to talk him out of it. I left the bank with forty-eight hundred-dollar bills in my wallet. I hoped the sum would be enough.
Now I felt tension building up in my body like steam in a teakettle just before it whistles. I crossed the street to my car, the morning sun coming down strong. I couldn’t help feeling that everybody was looking at me, that I was marvelously conspicuous with Cain’s mark on my forehead. Or maybe there was a special mark for uxoricide, a particular sign for wife-killers.
I got into the car and drove out of town. There was a perfectly good railroad terminal in town just a few blocks away — but I had to go somewhere safe, to a place where I wouldn’t be stepping on acquaintances. I drove to Hartford and put the car in a downtown parking lot. I carried the suitcase to the railroad station. On the way I shredded the parking check and dropped it in a trash can.
It was a shame to give up the car but I could hardly keep it. And it might have hurt more if I had liked the car or if it had been paid for. As it was I owed an impressive sum to the finance company, so it wasn’t quite as though I were abandoning the entire car. Just the power steering and the power brakes and the automatic transmission — I could live without them just as I could live without Ellen.
There was a line in front of the ticket window in the railroad station. I stood in line and waited my turn, still feeling painfully conspicuous, still feeling that everyone was taking careful notice of me. Finally I was at the front of the line. I bought a ticket to New York and went to the platform to wait for my train. It came and I boarded it.
2
I went as far as Syracuse and took another train out of there at six-fourteen P.M. and headed west. Nathaniel Crowley sat alone in a seat in the coach nearest the dining car. At Syracuse he had bought a hat, a black fedora with a very short brim, now resting on top of a folded New York tabloid on the seat next to him. His legs were crossed at the knee and his hands rested easily in his lap.
But he wasn’t as relaxed as he looked. His nerves were stretched taut and his heart was beating a little faster than it usually did. His mind refused to rest. It planned, plotted, schemed and came up with ideas and rejected them. His mind worked a mile a minute, more than could be said for the train — which crawled.
I’m not projecting. I know precisely how Nathaniel Crowley felt. I was Crowley. Nathaniel Crowley — a new name to take the place of Donald Barshter, to fit the new personality and the new life. The name had to be nationless because a handle like Giardello or Rabinowitz or Pilsudski would only get in my way. But the name had to be a little more memorable than Joe Jones or John Smith — it had to be something simple but with a certain amount of individuality.
Thus Nathaniel Crowley, Nat for short. It had come to me somewhere in the course of the void between Albany and Utica, and when it came I didn’t fight it. I let it run through my head a few times and decided that I liked the sound of it. Nat Crowley. It had a nice, easy, breezy ring to it. Easy to spell, easy to pronounce, easy to remember. Probably easy enough to scrawl on a hotel register in Buffalo.
Buffalo. Because that was where Nat Crowley was going to live. For a variety of reasons, some of which might be worth thinking about.