“Sure there was. A nice-looking woman, sixty or thereabouts, white hair. I figured at first it must be Loftus’ mother. I asked him didn’t he want to take the picture out and keep it, and he said no. So I guess it wasn’t his mother.”
“I think it was.”
“Well, now that’s strange, eh? You’d think a guy would keep a picture of his own mother.”
It was strange. Particularly strange in the case of Loftus, the devoted son. “What did you do with it?”
“Threw it away. It was no pin-up, what else would I do?”
“Maybe you could remember where you threw it.”
“Sure I could remember, for all the good it will do. I put it in the furnace and burned it along with the other rubbish. It was just an ordinary picture, ordinary woman. How was I to know anybody’d want it? What do you want it for, anyway?”
“I don’t. I’m just curious. I’d like to know why Loftus didn’t keep it.”
“Maybe he was sore at her. I get sore at my old lady.”
“You may be right.” Meecham opened the door. After the mustiness of the shop the winter wind felt fresh and clean. “Thanks for the information.”
“Welcome. Come in again.”
“I will.” Meecham stepped out into the street and stood for a moment in front of the cluttered window, buttoning his topcoat. When he looked back into the store, he saw that Devine had returned to the wicker bench and was sitting with the ancient shotgun across his knees.
10
He found Loftus in a small room across the hall from the Sheriff’s office. Loftus was alone, and not under restraint of any kind, though there was a policeman outside in the corridor.
Meecham knew the policeman. His name was Samuels; he was nearing retirement age, his legs and feet bothered him, and he suffered from attacks of hiccups that sometimes lasted for hours. Whenever Samuels got the hiccups his colleagues planned intricate, and occasionally hilarious, ways of scaring them away. None of them worked.
“Hello, Samuels,” Meecham said. “How are things?”
“Bad. You got here just in time. They’re taking your boy in there away.”
“Where to?”
“The doc says he should be in a hospital. So as soon as I get the transfer papers, that’s where I’m taking him, out to County.”
“I’ll talk to him first. Mind if I close this door?”
Samuels shrugged, a magnificently eloquent shrug which implied that as far as he was concerned every door in the place should be shut and the whole building blown up.
Meecham went inside and closed the door. The room was very small, furnished with a card table and three folding chairs, all different, a bridge lamp, a davenport with two broken springs, and a swivel chair with a cracked and worn leather seat. Everything in the room seemed to be discards from other rooms and offices, including the pictures that lined the windowless walls: photographs of the Detroit Red Wings, Abraham Lincoln, a sailboat, Dizzy Dean, and a score of unnamed and unremembered magistrates and judges and policemen.
Loftus was sitting in one of the folding chairs, staring up at the ceiling ventilator, his eyes strained and supplicating, as if they saw, beyond the ventilator, the sky; and beyond the sky the great hole of eternity already open for him.
Meecham said, “Loftus?”
Loftus moaned, faintly, the protesting sound of a man returning from a dream.
“Sorry I’m late, Loftus. Are you feeling all right?”
“I’ve been trying to pray. My mind won’t let me, it keeps flying, flying through space.” He lowered his head, and his eyes met Meecham’s. “They’re taking me away. I think I’m dying.”
The ventilator whirred like wings.
“No. No, you’re not, Loftus. Cordwink thinks you’ll be more comfortable in the hospital, have more care, better food.” He spoke too heartily, in an attempt to cover his conviction that the care and comfort were too late, the food useless to a man who couldn’t eat.
“I don’t want to go to the hospital. Please. I don’t want to go, Mr. Meecham.”
“I can’t prevent them doing what’s best for you.”
“It’s not best. I hate that air, smelling of sickness. I... well, I’ll go, of course. I’ll go. There’s no choice.” He glanced down at the suitcase beside his feet. It was the first time Meecham noticed it. “Emmy came to see me this morning.”
“Mrs. Hearst?”
“Yes. They wouldn’t let her in, but they let me have the stuff she brought me, some of my clothes and my radio. I don’t know how she got the radio. I sold it yesterday.”
“She bought it back from Devine this morning.”
“She? God! She must have found out about the name I... I used.”
“Maybe not,” Meecham said. “I did, though.”
“Duane Desmond. How do you like that for a grown man, eh? Funny, isn’t it? I don’t know what got into me. Duane Desmond. God!” He pounded the flimsy card table with his fist. One of the hinged legs collapsed and the table sagged but didn’t fall. Loftus bent down and straightened the hinge, looking a little ashamed of himself. “You won’t tell Emmy.”
“Why should I?”
“She mustn’t find out. She doesn’t know I’m a fool.” He rested his head on his hands. Meecham saw then the toothmarks on the knuckles of both of Loftus’ hands. Even in the dim yellow light of the old bridge lamp they were plainly the marks of teeth, and one of them was bleeding. The blood looked like any other blood to Meecham. But he knew that this blood was venom, and that the long night — when Loftus had sat in silent frenzy biting his knuckles — was only the beginning of a longer night.
Meecham was seized by a sensation of incredible helplessness. He wanted to communicate with Loftus, to express sympathy and friendship, but the words he knew were inadequate as all words are inadequate in the imminence of death. For the first time in his life Meecham experienced a sense of religion, a feeling that the only way he and Loftus could communicate with each other was through a third being, a translator of the spirit.
Loftus turned his head suddenly. “You went to Devine’s to check up on me, Mr. Meecham?”
“I had to find out what happened to the articles that were missing from your room, whether you’d given them away, pawned them, sold them.”
“Is that so important?”
“It’s important because Cordwink has — or had — an idea that someone paid you to kill Margolis.”
“Is that your idea too?”
“No. I think you sold the stuff to Devine because you were broke. If you were broke, obviously you weren’t paid.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Certainly. You could tell me anything you like but it wouldn’t necessarily be the truth.”
“You think I’m a liar, Mr. Meecham?” he said, anxiously.
“You’re human.”
“All this checking up on me, it’s not necessary. I ask no favors. I’m a guilty man and I’m willing to take my punishment. But this prying — this unnecessary...”
“What you say isn’t evidence unless it’s backed by what you’ve done.”
“I guess you’re right. But whatever you find out, don’t tell Emmy.”
“What is there to find out?”
Loftus didn’t answer. He was gnawing on his bleeding knuckles again.
“She’s very fond of you, Loftus.”
“She is, yes, I’m sure she is. I... What did...? You were talking to her last night, what did she say about me?”
“She was full of praise, of course; how kind and thoughtful you were, and a little bit about your history.”
Footsteps passed in the corridor beyond the door. They sounded faint and far away.