In John Hopkins, a quartet of specialists studied a case of leukemia and wagged their heads over it, knowing it to be incurable. In surgery a famed obstetrician finished a Caesarian and the new life was rushed to an incubator.
It was people. It was sound and silence, life and death. It was kinship, for no matter what a man was doing that hot night in Baltimore, there was another doing or thinking a similar act — even to murder.
Save for the man in the small apartment on Mount Royal Avenue. He was quite alone in his decision, his act — for there was, after all, only one John Brennan.
He stood looking at the slim steady girl with the brunette hair and the rotund, bald man who sat on the couch beside her. They looked back at him and the silence was heavy, broken only by the angry hum of traffic on the street below and the laboring whir of an exhaust fan somewhere in the building.
The rotund, bald, red-nosed man stood up his bulldog jaw quivering on the black cigar clamped between his teeth. “But you can’t mean this, John! Now that you’re back, you’re staying right here — in Baltimore. We need you. Jean,” he glanced at the girl who looked at John Brennan so steadily, “and me. The force needs you. And the city, John. We’ve been waiting for you to come back — me and Jean and the force and the city. We’ve waited a long time. When V-J day came—”
Brennan turned from the window. He’d been a big, strapping, lean-bellied man once. Now he wasn’t. He felt only the ghost of himself.
He broke in, “V-J day was just another day in a hospital for me, MacLaren — and for a lot of other guys.” His voice was almost savage, bringing the heavy silence back again. Then he added, “Sorry.” He waited a moment and said, “Thanks for coming by, Inspector MacLaren. Tell the boys on the force—”
The ash on MacLaren’s cigar glowed. “I’ll tell them you’re coming back, John.” He moved over beside the younger man, the man who looked and felt old. He took Brennan’s elbows in his hands and gripped until the tall, gaunt man winced. “You remember Donnavan, don’t you, John? Donnavan is dead.”
Brennan closed his eyes. “Sure,” he said, “I remember Donnavan. A pug-nosed, red-a headed kid in school — the flivver we used to chase around together in.”
“That was Donnavan,” Inspector MacLaren said. “And you remember him as a red-headed rookie, too, John. The way he kept his shield shined and gun oiled. He worshipped you Brennan — and he was right.”
“No,” Brennan husked. “Donnavan was wrong.”
“But you remember, don’t you?” MacLaren released Brennan’s elbows and sat down again, slowly, stiffly. “Now he’s dead, Donnavan is. He never had a chance to tell us what crook killed him. He only had time to say one thing, Brennan. He said, ‘I was trying to do it up like Brennan — but I guess I just ain’t man enough.’”
MacLaren stopped and that brought the heavy silence again. Once more the bald man got up, paced back and forth. He wheeled on Brennan abruptly. “Then let’s forget Donnavan — let’s just think of all the decent people and the rats who are going to hurt some of them in the years ahead.”
“Let the decent people look out for themselves,” Brennan said. “Dammit, I’ve told you I’m tired. I’m sick of fighting for decent people! I’m through — washed up. Who the hell are the decent people to depend on me to look after them?”
“Just people,” the girl on the couch told him softly.
Brennan almost snarled at her, “Not you too, Jean!” Then, “Sorry — look, MacLaren, I’ve never known anything but fighting. As soon as I was old enough and had sense enough to pass a civil service exam, I been fighting. First on the force — then to make the world safe for decent people. All right! I’ve made it safe! Now I’m tired. Who are you and Joe Doaks to tell me, ‘Here, Brennan! Here’s a gun, Brennan. Keep on fighting, Brennan. Make us safe.’ What gives anybody the right to put the finger on me — me? — and say, ‘Finish your job! Keep us safe!’”
“Nothing,” MacLaren agreed, “gives anybody that right — except you, John. But as long as this world stands the right guys are going to have to keep swatting back the ears of the wrong guys. To hold them back. Safety and freedom are like gold — you got to keep ’em polished.”
Brennan sat down heavily and reached for a cigarette. His hands were trembling. “Then a let Joe polish a while!”
“But a lot of Joes can’t,” MacLaren said quietly. “They try, but a lot of them are like Donnavan. He polished his life right out of his body, Brennan, fighting the wrong Joes here while you were trimming them over there. That job over there is done now, but Donnavan is still dead. We’ve drawn a blank on Donnavan’s kill — but you could get the guys who killed Donnavan. And the wrong Joes who are going to hurt a lot of other people, every day, every year. You can do it because you’re Brennan. I guess that’s the answer to your question, John. The way you got born. The way your brain thinks and your body moves. Some men are born with music in their fingers. For every one of those a hundred are born who try but fail. Just like a hundred Donnavans are killed trying to stop the wrong Joes while only one Brennan is born.” Cigar smoke gushed from MacLaren’s heavy mouth. “So it ain’t a job you can pick up or turn down, Brennan. It’s something you got born to do!”
“Like hell,” Brennan said harshly. “If I got born for it, then I’m dead and come to life again. I tell you I’m through, MacLaren! I’m going to Chicago and sell insurance, and be one of the right Joes the Brennans are keeping safe!”
The silence hung a long while this time. MacLaren and Brennan looked at each other; then Brennan looked away, and MacLaren said heavily, “Well, here’s hoping you have a good time living with yourself.”
Brennan bared his teeth to snarl back, but the other picked up his hat, went out the door, and a few moments later Brennan heard the hum of the elevator.
He felt the slim, soft hand glide into his. He turned on the couch and looked into hazel eyes. He could read nothing there. “You’ll like it okay, Jean? Being the wife of an insurance salesman?”
She laid her head on his shoulder so that her lips touched his neck lightly just above his shirt collar. “I’ve waited too long to want anything except to be John Brennan’s wife,” she said, and if there was a hint of a hollowness in her voice. Brennan made himself not notice it.
“Swell,” he breathed, “we’ll set ’em on fire.” But the heartiness in his voice was almost like laughter in a tomb. Sweat beaded his brow, his upper lip, though the apartment was cool. The words of MacLaren were running around in his brain — Donnavan dead — the right Joes... Damn MacLaren anyway! Why did the old fool have to come here tonight, Brennan’s homecoming night?
“Baby,” he told Jean, the suddenness of his voice startling her. “We’re forgetting. This is a special night, a hell of a special night. Which club do we hit first?”
Coming out on the street was like walking into an oven. They strolled down Mount Royal, passing the patch of grass and benches the city fathers called a park. Young couples — and a few older ones, too — occupied the benches, lost in worlds of their own. Right Joes, Brennan thought. Like gold, he thought, polish safety and freedom — born for it.