I asked Iverson if he'd gotten the wirephotos yet. He said he hadn't, but wanted to confirm for me that Detweiller was there. Just knowing he was brought me some relief-I don't mind telling you that, Ruth.
So here's Act III, Scene I, and the plot sickens, as us guys in the prose-biz like to say. I got a call from Sergeant Tyndale, at the 31st Precinct. He told me that Central Falls had gotten the pictures, that Iverson had taken one look, and had ordered Carlos Detweiller brought in for questioning. Tyndale wanted me down at the 31st right away to make a statement. I was to bring the Demon Infestations manuscript with me, and all my Detweiller correspondence. I told him I would be happy to come down to the 31st as soon as I talked to Iverson again; in fact, I'd be willing to catch The Pilgrim at Penn Station and train right up there to—
“Please don't call anyone,” Tyndale said, “and don't go anywhere-anywhere, Mr. Kenton-until you've beat your feet down here and make a statement.”
I'd spent the day feeling upset and on edge. My nervous condition was getting worse rather than better, and I suppose I snapped at the guy. “You sound as though I'm the one under suspicion.”
“No,” he said. “No, Mr. Kenton.” A pause. “Not as of now.” Another pause. “But he did send you the pictures, didn't he?”
For a moment I was so flabbergasted I could only flap my mouth like a fish. Then I said, “But I explained that.”
“Yes, you did. Now come down here and explain it for the record, please.” Tyndale hung up, leaving me feeling both angry and sort of existential-but I'd be lying, Ruth, if I didn't tell you that mostly what I felt was scared-I'd gotten in far over my head, and it hadn't taken long at all.
I popped into Roger's office, told him what was going on as quickly and sanely as I could, and then headed for the elevator. Riddley came out of the mailroom wheeling his Dandux cart-empty, this time.
“Is you in trouble wid de law, Mist Kenton?” he whispered hoarsely as I went past him-I tell you, Ruth, it did nothing at all to improve my peace of mind.
“No!” I said, so loudly that two people going up the hall looked around at me.
“Cause if you is, my cousin Eddie is sho one fine lawyer. Yassuh!”
“Riddley,” I said, “where did you go to college?”
“Co'nell, Mist Kenton, and it sho was fine!” Riddley grinned, showing teeth as white as piano keys (and just as numerous, one is tempted to believe).
“If you went to Cornell,” I said, “why in God's name do you talk that way?”
“What way is dat, Mist Kenton?”
“Never mind,” I said, glancing at my watch. “It's always fine to have one of these philosophical discussions with you, Riddley, but I've got an appointment and I ought to run.”
“Yassuh!” He said, flashing that obscene grin again. “And if you want my cousin Eddie's phone numbah—”
But by then I had escaped into the hall. It's always a relief to get free of Riddley. I suppose it's terrible to say this, but I wish Roger would fire him-I look at that big piano-key grin and, God help me, I wonder if Riddley hasn't made a pact to drink white man's blood when the fire comes next time. Along with his cousin, Eddie, of course.
Well, forget all that-I've been tickling the typewriter keys for over an hour and a half, and this is starting to look like a novelette. I had better scamp through the rest. So... Act III, Scene II.
I arrived at the police station late and soaking wet all over again-no cabs and the rain had become a good steady downpour. Only a January rain in New York City can be that cold (California looks better to me every day, Ruth!).
Tyndale took a look at me, offered a thin smile with no noticeable humor in it, and said: “Central Falls just released your author. No cabs out there, huh? Never are when it rains.”
“They let Detweiller go?” I asked incredulously. “And he's not our author. I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot-plague-pole.” “Well, whatever he is, the whole thing's nothing but a tempest in a teapot,” he said, handing me what may have been the vilest cup of coffee I have ever drunk in my life.
He took me into a vacant office, which was something of a mercy-that sense that the others in the squadroom were sneaking peeks at the prematurely balding editor in the drippy tweeds was probably paranoid, but it was pretty strong just the same.
To make a long story even longer, about forty-five minutes after the wirephotos had arrived, and about fifteen minutes after Detweiller had arrived (not handcuffed, but flanked by two burly men in blue-suits), the plainclothesman who had been dispatched to the House of Flowers after my original call arrived. He had been on the other side of town all afternoon.
They had left Detweiller alone in a small interrogation room, Tyndale told me, to soften him up-to get him thinking all sorts of nasty thoughts. The plainclothesman who had verified the fact that Detweiller was indeed still working at the House of Flowers was looking at the “Sacrifice Photos” when Chief Iverson came out of his office and headed for the interrogation room where Detweiller was being kept.
“Jesus,” the plainclothesman said to Iverson, “these look almost real, don't they?”
Iverson stopped. “Do you have any reason to believe they aren't?” he asked.
“Well, when I went into that flower-shop this morning to check on that guy Detweiller, this dude getting the informal heart-surgery was sitting off to one side behind the counter, playing solitaire and watching Ryan's Hope on TV.”
“Are you sure of that?” Iverson demanded.
The plainclothesman tapped the first of the “Sacrifice Photos,” where the face of the “victim” was clearly shown. “No mistake,” he said. “This guy.”
“Well why in God's name didn't you say he was there?” Iverson demanded, no doubt with visions of Detweiller bringing charges of false and malicious detainment beginning to dance dolefully in his head.
“Because no one asked me about this guy,” the detective said, reasonably enough. “I was supposed to verify Detweiller, which I did. If somebody had asked me to verify this guy, I would have. No one did. See you.” And he walked away, leaving Iverson holding the bag. So that was that.
I looked at Tyndale.
Tyndale looked back at me.
After a moment or two he softened. “For whatever it's worth, Mr. Kenton, that particular photo did look real... real as hell. But so do the effects in some of these horror movies. There's one guy-Tom Savini-and the effects he does—”
“So they let him go.” A dread was surfacing inside my head like one of those little Russian submarines the Swedes are never quite able to trap.
“For whatever else it's worth, your ass is covered with three sets of skivvies and four sets of pants, the middle two sets iron-clad,” Tyndale said, and then added, with a sobriety that was positively Alexander Haigian: “I'm speaking legally-wise, you understand. You acted in good faith, as a citizen. If the guy could prove malice, that would be one thing... but hell, you didn't even know him.”
The submarine came up a little more. Because I felt right then like I was starting to know him, Ruth, and my feelings about Carlos Detweiller were not then and are not now anything I would describe as jolly or benign.
“Besides, it's never the informant they want to sue for false arrest anyway-it's the cop who came and read them their rights and then took them downtown in a car with no doorhandles in the back doors.”
Informant. That was the source of the dread. The submarine was all the way up, floating on the surface like a dead fish in the moonlight. Informant. I didn't know Carlos Detweiller from a psychic begonia... but he knew something about me. Not that I was the head of the Brown University literary society, or that I'm prematurely balding, or that I'm engaged to marry a pretty miss from Pasadena named Ruth Tanaka... not any of those things (and please God, not my home address, never my home address), but he knows I'm the editor who had him taken into custody for a murder he did not commit.