The ambulance came. I must have been at the scene only two or three minutes. But I had seen a lot — those windows opening. There was scribbling over three pages of my notebook which included the girl’s name, Mea Gahn, which I couldn’t use because she was underage. Perhaps, I thought, I’ll keep on this.
The next day, my editor approved the story and I made two calls. One was to the Gahn house. I got an okay to come over later that morning. The other was to police headquarters. I asked for Lieutenant Brosnan. The desk sergeant told me Brosnan had stepped out for coffee. I knew where Brosnan got his coffee. The White House wasn’t far from the newspaper, so I walked it.
I got through the door in time to see him squeegeeing a moustache of foam from his upper lip. On the bar in front of him were an empty glass, a saucer holding an egg, and a half-full bowl of small pretzels. He said, “Join me?”
“It’s a little early for beer.”
“Beer? I came out for coffee.” Brosnan tapped the empty glass and the bartender refilled it, cut the head, then let another half inch or so of liquid run slowly into the glass.
I always hated to see Brosnan. He was bigger than I and as heavy. He ate and drank to what would be excess for me. Yet every inch of his body was rock hard, except his head. He projected a fumbling massiveness that put crooks off guard just long enough for him to snap on the cuffs. Brosnan was tough and bright and given to a droop-lipped jocularity which didn’t hide the fact that he’d been around a long time and probably seen too much.
“What brings you to the Oval Office?” he said mirthlessly. He picked up the egg, cracked it, pulled away the shell, and popped it in his mouth. Then he drank off the beer, but I swear he swallowed the egg whole.
“I’m doing a story on the Grabber,” I told him. “On the victims, that is.”
“So, read the papers. You guys know as much as we do.” He saw objection brimming to the surface. “No, I mean it, Monahan. We’re shooting blanks on this one. Those reassuring public statements we make now and then are not progress reports as much as they’re desperate attempts to stave off a wholesale firing.”
He grew thoughtful. Then he gave a decisive grunt and said, “There is something. Two conditions and you get this gem: One, it’s off the record, and two—” he looked wistfully at his glass like a kid who’s just been told the penny-candy counter is out of marshmallow twists — “as our Gaelic forebears would say, it’s hard to sing with an empty cup.”
“That’s a glass you have there.”
“I use the term generically, perhaps symbolically. The cup that cheers?”
“And numbs.”
“Mercifully, that too.”
I signaled the bartender and threw a bill on the bar. “So?”
“Here it is.” Brosnan drew near and said in a low voice, “He called last night. That’s a first. That’s how we knew where to find the Gahn girl. Some bombhead took the call and didn’t snap on the recorder.”
“That’s against the law unless the caller knows.”
“Wow! I’ll bet it is at that.”
“That’s it? That’s the big news?”
“That, I’m afraid, is it. You can’t use it, but maybe it’ll give you some insight into the character of this bird. And, remember, nobody knows about it except you, me, and a couple of bluecoats.”
I gestured at the beer the bartender had just served. “Can I get a refund?” Then I turned and walked toward the door. Brosnan threw a pretzel. It beat me to the door.
The Gahn house was in a better, not the best, part of Paulsburg. It was one of those neighborhoods where the houses look as if they have everything in common even though their plans are different. All the lawns are a uniform two-inch cut of greenness, the Buick’s in the garage and the Ford’s pulled up in the driveway, and inside the house some ugly, middle-class things are often going on.
The mother answered the door. When I introduced myself, she held out a dark hand with a quick motion that spoke of latent vigor, of some remembered urge to challenge. A faint odor of Emeraude hung in the space between us. She was a handsome woman, and you could see in her handsome face that somewhere in the past she had traded off beautiful for handsome. After the handshake, and under my scrutiny, she brushed nervously at her hair, black hair with strands of gray not quite combed under the black.
“I don’t know, Mr. Monahan,” she said in a washed-out voice. “We told the reporters everything…” Her voice trailed off.
I’d be put out if a newspaperman showed up on my doorstep the day after my daughter was beat up bad enough to go to the hospital. But she forced a smile. It was a small, soft, tepid smile, the kind you produce when you’re running at about half power. It contrasted with a tightness around her eyes, almost producing a squint, as if she were looking for something in the distance.
I went into my line about what I did on the Advance-lndicator, emphasizing I wasn’t a reporter. “No pictures, no names, no gawking crowds on your perfect lawn. Fm writing a story about feelings, and hurt, and impact.” It sounded so glib, I was encouraged to go on. “You’ll all be perfectly anonymous.” (As if there were degrees of anonymity!)
We were interrupted by a sharp, angular voice from inside the house. “Who’s it, Sue?”
She looked in the direction of the voice and I saw her deep brown eyes narrow and her forehead take on furrows. “The newspaper. The man from the newspaper.”
“Bring ’im in!”
She stood aside and I walked past her into a foyer. She closed the door, dodged around me, and led me into what I guessed was the house’s living room. Everything in it was bright and crisp, and obscurely depressing. Except for a wing chair, the furniture pieces were straight and spindly and modem and looked as if they had just been called to attention. There was the de rigueur television console along one wall, floor-to-ceiling bookcases along another. The books on the shelves appeared to be divided about evenly between military and historical titles at one end and fiction and poetry at the other. The first group of books looked spanking new, as if they had just been unboxed; the other group, the fiction and poetry, had tom or missing dust covers, and some looked as if their spines were broken. There was a selection of bookless shelves used to display trophies and a number of small figures and plaques of the type given to departing members of organizations, a custom associated more with protocol than affection. The dominant feature of the room was a large framed poster showing Douglas MacArthur’s beat-up Filipino marshal’s hat with the words “Duty — Honor — Country” below it, and below these, in smaller type, a number of MacArthur quotes. Around the poster were about ten smaller frames housing newspaper clippings and certificates for awards, honorable retirement, and varying species of patriotism, all earned by one Lt. Col. Arthur W. B. Gahn.
Who, I presumed, was standing now, back to his wife and me, looking up at the poster. His arms were behind him, the hands, bandaged, resting lightly on his buttocks.
His wife introduced me to his back.
Arthur Gahn made a slow, precise about-face and I saw the small, black-haired, middle-aged man I had seen the previous night. He had a reddish, shrunken, almost shriveled face, keen eyes, and a slight, wiry body like that of a terrier ready to spring. He wore a sweater with an outline of stitches on it where an alligator patch had been.
Gahn stuck out one of his bandaged hands, drew it back, then held up both of them so I could get a good look at the wrappings. I had the feeling I was supposed to admire them, gaze at them interestedly, as if reading an inscription on one of his trophies.