Death Wish

“Are you trying to say,” Paul breathed, “that Carol’s mother invited this to happen by something she herself did?”

“Not at all. Don’t fly off the handle again. I suppose if both of you had lived as if you were in a besieged fortress—use the peephole religiously, never let a stranger inside the apartment, put extra locks on the doors, never travel outside the apartment without a vicious guard dog on a leash—I guess if you chose to live like that she might still be alive, but who can put up with that?”

Paul knew people who did.

“Look, Pop, I know this won’t set well right now, but in time you’re going to have to think of it as a tragic accident—as if a disease had struck her down, or a runaway bus on the street. It’s no good getting worked up into demands for vengeance and retribution. Even if they catch these three bastards and put them away for the rest of their lives it won’t really change anything.”

Paul waited for the inevitable It won’t bring her back but Jack never uttered it; perhaps, after all, he was not totally insensitive to the more blatant clichés.

“We both have to face that,” Jack droned on relentlessly. “In these times you have to feel inadequate if you can’t slip a door-lock open in three seconds with a plastic calendar card—every kid on the street can do that. Do you know the crime statistics? I hear them every other day from some sourpussed Assistant D.A. There’s an assault or a robbery every twelve seconds in New York—something like seventy thousand reported cases last year, and that’s probably less than half the number that didn’t get reported. In felony cases they only make arrests in about one-sixth of the cases and of those they only get convictions on about one-third. Of course in murder cases it’s a lot higher—the police usually solve about eighty percent of them, but still we have about three murders a day in the city. You and I and Carol and even Mom—we’re statistics now. On that God damned blotter. That’s what makes it so damned hard to maintain your personal perspective: To you and me this is the most devastating thing that’s ever happened—to the cops it’s something they see all the time, so often they just can’t keep getting worked up about it.”

Paul felt acid. “Thank you, Jack, you’re a balm and a consolation to me.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like a wise ass. But I’m in this business, I guess you could say—at least I’m on the periphery of it, I have to deal with the police every day. And I think you’ve got to be prepared for the possibility that nothing more is ever going to develop in this case. You’ve got to go on living, haven’t you?”

“No,” Paul said slowly, “you don’t have to go on living.”

“I don’t want to hear any more of that.”

He stood splayed with the drink in his hand. His lowered head swung back and forth like the head of a worn-out prelim fighter in the ring, trying to locate his opponent. “I’m not thinking about suicide, I didn’t mean that.” But he kept bulling it, thinking. His breathing was shallow; his sphincter contracted, he formed a loose fist. “I’ve never hit a man in anger in my life. Never called a black man ‘nigger’ or stolen a pe

“And this is the thanks you get,” Jack murmured. “I know, Pop. And it’s true, and there’s no answer to it.”

“There’s one answer I intend to demand. I want those three killers.”

“They’ll probably get them. They may not. But if they don’t, what do you plan to do? Turn your back on every decent principle you’ve ever stood for? Join the Birchers or the Ku Klux Klan?”

“Well, I don’t know what I’d do,” Paul said vaguely. “But Christ, there ought to be something.”

“You mean like hire a private eye? Or get a gun and go looking for them yourself? Those things only happen on television, Pop.”

“Well, just the same you may have hit on something there. A private detective might be——”

“Private detectives aren’t what the movies make them out to be, Pop. They exist for the purposes of getting divorce evidence and providing security services like industrial counter-espionage and bank guards. There are no private eyes who investigate murder cases, and even if there were, they wouldn’t be able to hold a candle to the police. At least the police have manpower and organization and know-how.”

“And total indifference.”

“I wouldn’t say that. You remember that policeman who stayed with us at the hospital?”

Paul even remembered his name: Joe Charles. “He was only a uniformed patrolman.”

“Sure. But he’s a human being. He does care, Pop. Some of them are corrupt and some of them don’t give a shit, but the cops aren’t really the pigs we made them out to be in college.”

“Like unto thee and me,” Paul growled. “It doesn’t change the fact—if your estimate is correct—that there’s an excellent chance these animals will never be brought to justice.”

“Justice—or revenge?”

“What difference does it make what you call it?”

Jack shook his head. “All I’m saying is you and I may never be able to do a thing about this. Obviously we can’t go out into the streets and find these killers ourselves. We wouldn’t begin to know where to look.”

“Then you’re saying we should just forget the whole thing. Go back to bed and pull the covers up over our heads.”

“Or write letters to the Times.”

It made Paul look at him; it was the kind of sarcasm you didn’t expect of Jack.

“I guess you’re right,” Paul said. “I guess you’re right.”

“We may have to get used to it, Pop.”

“I guess we can try.”

5

He didn’t sleep at all that night; but he hadn’t expected to. There were chloral hydrate capsules if he wanted them. He didn’t. He felt the longer he went on drugging himself out of it the longer it would take to purge himself of his demons. It was better to face them and have it out.

It was the first night he had spent in his own apartment since the murder. He had left Carol’s apartment early, before the sun went down. He hadn’t pla

In the circumstances none of them had the stomach for silence and so they had begun to talk: awkward, forced. The significant things were not to be said; it was bad enough having to think them. So they had attempted to make impersonal conversation but it was too much of a strain and inevitably the talk had come around to things closer to home: whether Paul would keep the apartment now, whether they should call the police to find out if anything had developed or whether they should wait for the police to call them.

In the end it had led to another argument about retribution vs. reality and Paul had got to his feet to make some angry point, his voice trembling, and Carol suddenly had covered her ears with her palms and screwed her eyes shut and uttered an earsplitting shriek.

“You’d better go on home,” Jack had said.

“I’d rather wait till the doctor gets here.”

“No, I think it would only upset her more. You can understand that.”

Jack had given her a pill and put her to bed while Paul was calling Dr. Rosen; now Jack picked up Paul’s jacket and handed it to him. “I don’t mean to seem cruel.”