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Kuntz walked him quickly out of the diner. Pete Spinelli, Joe’s partner, was sitting at the wheel of the prowl car, with the motor ru
“Pete,” Thomas said, “will you tell Joe to let go of me.”
“Shut up, kid,” Spinelli said.
Kuntz shoved him into the back seat and got in beside him and the prowl car started toward town.
“The charge is statutory rape,” Sergeant Horvath said. “There is a sworn complaint. I’ll notify your uncle and he can get a lawyer for you. Take him away, boys.”
Thomas was standing between Kuntz and Spinelli. They each had an arm now. They hustled him off and put him in the lockup. Thomas looked at his watch. It was twenty past two. Bertha Dornfeld would have to go without her visit today.
There was one other prisoner in the single cell of the jail, a ragged, ski
IV
Harold Jordache paced nervously up and down the platform. Just tonight the train had to be late. He had heartburn and he pushed anxiously at his stomach with his hand. When there was trouble, the trouble went right to his stomach. And ever since two-thirty yesterday afternoon, when Horvath had called him from the jail, it had been nothing but trouble. He hadn’t slept a wink, because Elsa had cried all night, in between bouts of telling him that they were disgraced for life, that she could never show her face in town again, and what a fool he had been to take a wild animal like that into the house. She was right, he had to admit it, he had been an idiot, his heart was too big. Family or no family, that afternoon when Axel called him from Port Philip, he should have said no.
He thought of Thomas down in the jail, talking his head off like a lunatic, admitting everything, not showing any shame or remorse, naming names. Who could tell what he would say, once he started talking like that? He knew the little monster hated him. What was to stop him from telling about the black-market ration tickets, the faked-up secondhand cars with gear boxes that wouldn’t last for more than a hundred miles, the under-the-counter markups on new cars to get around the Price Control, the valve and piston jobs on cars that had nothing more wrong with them than a clogged fuel line? Even about Clothilde? You let a boy like that into your house and you became his prisoner. The heartburn stabbed at Uncle Harold like a knife. He began to sweat, even though it was cold on the station, with the wind blowing.
He hoped Axel was bringing plenty of money along with him. And the birth certificate. He had sent Axel a telegram asking Axel to call him because Axel didn’t have a telephone. In this day and age! He had made the telegram sound as ominous as he could, to make sure Axel would call, but even so he was half-surprised when the phone rang in his house and he heard his brother’s voice on the wire.
He heard the train coming around the curve toward the station and stepped back nervously from the edge of the platform. In his state he wouldn’t be surprised if he had a heart attack and fell down right where he stood. The train slowed to a halt and a few people got off and hurried away in the wind. He had a moment of panic. He didn’t see Axel. It would be just like Axel to leave him alone with the problem. Axel was an u
Then he saw a big man in a workman’s cap and a mackinaw limping slowly toward him on the platform. What a way to dress. Harold was glad it was dark and there were so few people around. He must have been crazy that time in Port Philip when he’d invited Axel to come in with him.
“All right, I’m here,” Axel said. He didn’t shake hands.
“Hello, Axel,” Harold said. “I was begi
“Five thousand dollars,” Axel said.
“I hope it’s enough,” Harold said.
“It better be enough,” Axel said flatly. “There isn’t any more.” He looked old, Harold thought, and sick. His limp was worse than Harold remembered.
They walked together through the station toward Harold’s car.
“If you want to see Tommy,” Harold said, “you’ll have to wait till tomorrow. They don’t let anybody in after six o’clock.”
“I don’t want to see the sonofabitch,” Axel said.
Harold couldn’t help feeling that it was wrong to call your own child a sonofabitch, even under the circumstances, but he didn’t say anything.
“You have your di
“Let’s not waste time,” Axel said. “Who do I have to pay off?”
“The father, Abraham Chase. He’s one of the biggest men in town. Your son had to pick somebody like that,” Harold said aggrievedly. “A girl in a factory wasn’t good enough for him.”
“Is he Jewish?” Axel asked, as they got into the car.
“What?” Harold asked, irritatedly. That would be great, that would help a lot, if Axel turned out to be a Nazi, along with everything else.
“Why should he be Jewish?”
“Abraham,” Axel said.
“No. It’s one of the oldest families in town. They own practically everything. You’ll be lucky if he takes your money.”
“Yeah,” Axel said. “Lucky.”
Harold backed out of the parking lot and started toward the Chase house. It was in the good section of town, near the Jordache house. “I talked to him on the phone,” Harold said. “I told him you were coming. He sounded out of his mind. I don’t blame him. It’s bad enough to come home and find one daughter pregnant. But both of them! And they’re twins, besides.”
“They can get a wholesale rate on baby clothes.” Axel laughed. The laughter sounded like a tin pitcher rattling against a sink. “Twins. He had a busy season, didn’t he, Thomas?”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Harold said. “He’s beat up a dozen people since he came here, besides.” The stories that had reached Harold’s ears had been exaggerated as they passed along the town’s chain of gossip. “It’s a wonder he hasn’t been in jail before this. Everybody’s scared of him. It’s the most natural thing in the world that something like this comes up, they pin it on him. But who suffers? Me. And Elsa.”
Axel ignored his brother’s suffering and the suffering of his brother’s wife. “How do they know it was my kid?”
“The twins told their father.” Harold slowed the car down. He was in no hurry to confront Abraham Chase. “They’ve done it with every boy in town, the twins, and plenty of the men too, everybody knows that, but when it comes to naming names, naturally the first name anybody’d pick would be your Tommy. They’re not going to say it was the nice boy next door or Joe Kuntz, the policeman, or the boy from Harvard whose parents play bridge with the Chases twice a week. They pick the black sheep. Those two little bitohes’re smart. And your son had to tell them he was nineteen years old. Big shot. Under eighteen, my lawyer says, you can’t be held for statutory rape.”
“So what’s the fuss?” Axel said. “I have his birth certificate.”
“Don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” Harold said. “Mr. Chase swears he can have him locked up until he’s twenty-one as a juvenile delinquent. And he can. That’s four years. And don’t think Tommy is making it any easier for himself telling the cops he knows twenty fellows personally who’ve been in there with those girls and giving a list of names. It just makes everybody sorer, that’s all. It gives the whole town a bad name and they’ll make him pay for it. And me and Elsa. That’s my shop,” he said automatically. They were passing the showroom. “I’ll be lucky if they don’t put a brick through the window.”