Death Wish

He had thought of buying a heavy cane and carrying it as a weapon. But it would be unwieldy at best; someone with a knife could get in under it, and it might anger them if they saw you carrying an obvious club.

At the counter he stood behind a fat man in a grease-spotted apron who was buying change, probably for a lunch counter’s cash register. The man went away with a sack heavy with coins wrapped in paper rolls.

Paul bought a ten-dollar roll of quarters. Back in the apartment he slipped it into a sock, knotted it, and crashed it experimentally into his cupped palm. Then he put it in his pocket. He would carry it all the time henceforth.

He wasn’t gentle; he was a flabby coward. It was dawning on him that the most terrifying thing about his existence was his ineffectualness.

He felt like a fool. He took the roll of coins out of his pocket, untied the sock, and went to put the roll of quarters away in the drawer of an end table. The drawer opened an inch and then stuck. He jerked at it; it came out, fell from his hand, tumbled onto the rug. The oddments from it—safety pins, decks of cards—flew across the floor.

He blurted a string of oaths at the top of his lungs.

After he had put the drawer back and gathered up its droppings he re-wrapped the roll of quarters in the sock and returned it to his pocket.

He called a locksmith and the man agreed to come round Wednesday and change the locks, replace them with heavy models that couldn’t be slipped with cellulose or broken by pressure.

For several hours he sat constructing fantasies of methods of boobytrapping the apartment against intruders. Shotguns with wires attached to the triggers. Grenades.

After that he began to call himself names: stupid idiot, paranoid fool.

Jack phoned a little after five. “I’ve been trying to get you since noon.”

“I had the phone off the hook. Too many sympathy calls.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Did Carol see the psychiatrist?”

“Yes, we went around there this morning. He seemed like a nice guy, pretty level-headed. He prescribed some tranquilizers and said she’d probably take a little while to get over it. I think he spent more time talking to me than he spent with Carol. A lot of speechifying on how I have to be calm and patient and understanding with her until she’s over it. You’d think she was pregnant.”

“It sounds as if he’s probably right, though. Aren’t you relieved?”

“I was at the time. But she’s incredibly depressed, Pop. She hardly reacts at all when I talk to her. It’s like talking to a wall.”

“Maybe that’s partly the effect of the tranquilizers.”

“Maybe,” Jack said without conviction.

“Do you think it would do her any good if I came around to see her?”

“No. I mentioned it to the doctor. He said it might be better for her not to see you for a little while. I told him you might be hard to convince, but he seems to feel it’s important to try and protect her from certain associations with the crime. Evidently she identifies you with it because it was your apartment. Now please don’t misunderstand, Pop—it’s not that she blames you for anything. But it might be better if you didn’t see her for a few days.”

“That’s what he said, is it?”

“Yes. I’m sorry—I know things are hard enough for you without——”

“Never mind, I understand.” He wasn’t sure he did, altogether; but he didn’t want to start an argument. It would be fruitless. “Well, I’ll call you tomorrow.” He rang off, feeling dismal.

He had called the police Sunday morning; he phoned again Monday evening and was put through to a Lieutenant Malcolm Briggs. “Yes, that’s right, Mr. Benjamin, I’m in charge of the case.”

“I was just wondering if anything had developed. Any—leads.”

“Well, I’d like to be encouraging, but right now we haven’t got anything strong enough to call a lead. We’ve pi

“I didn’t know she’d been to police headquarters.”

“She wasn’t. I talked to Mr. Tobey, he told me her condition, so I managed to talk the deputy inspector down there into letting us have a couple of patrolmen relay the mug books over to her at her apartment, one at a time. She went through all our photo files of people who’ve had records of anything close to this kind of modus operandi. As I say, she didn’t pick any of them out. She did give us something of a description, though.”

“Oh?”

“She seemed to be pretty sure that two of them were Puerto Ricans and the third was black. Of course he may have been a black Puerto Rican—there are quite a few of them.”

“Well, isn’t there a method you people use of reconstructing faces with drawings of various features?”

“The Identikit, yes, sir. She didn’t seem to feel up to that.”

“Well, she should be feeling better within a few days.”

“She can have a crack at it whenever she’s ready, sir.”

After the co

“Jack?”

“Oh hello, Pop. Anything wrong?”

“Why didn’t you tell me Carol had been through the police mug books?”

“I guess it must have slipped my mind. I mean she didn’t recognize any of them.”

“It must have been damned upsetting for her.”

“She insisted on it, Pop. It was her idea.”

“Judging by what’s happened I don’t think it was such a good idea.”

“Well, at the time I thought it was an encouraging sign that she had the gumption to want to do it. Afterward it only seemed to make it worse, though.” Jack’s voice cracked slightly: “Hell, Pop, what are we going to do?”

He wished he had an answer.

When he hung up he realized why Jack hadn’t told him about it. Jack had anticipated an explosion; he knew how protective Paul could be.

It made him wonder why he hadn’t exploded more forcefully than he had. Things were still bottled up inside him, under high pressure. Something was bound to burst.

7

On Thursday Carol was hospitalized at Columbia-Presbyterian for observation; at least that was what the psychiatrist called it.

By Thursday morning Paul had begun to realize how dangerous it was to coop himself up alone. The longer he spent in the apartment the more terrifying the outside world became. He had to bestir himself. It was too easy to seal himself off, stare at imbecilic television programs and blank walls. Drinking more than he ate. Getting no exercise at all. He kept thinking he was having heart attacks.

Except for the hours when he tried to sleep he avoided the bedroom. It was too full of Esther. He knew he should pack her things and get rid of them but he didn’t want to go near them yet so he confined himself to the living room, the kitchen, the foyer; sometimes striding back and forth from one to the other but usually sitting blankly in front of the television console whether it was turned on or not.

He had only been out of the apartment three times on brief excursions in the past one hundred hours. That was no good. The body rotted, the mind deteriorated; only the demons of subconscious fantasies thrived.

He decided to call Sam Kreutzer at the office and take Sam up on the invitation to di