Memory (Hard Case Crime) (10 page)

After the first week, his pay rose to its normal level. A gross pay of forty-three dollars was hacked away by deductions of ten dollars and eighty-three cents, leaving him thirty-two seventeen. Ten dollars to Artie Bellman, seventeen dollars to Mrs. Malloy, and he had five dollars and seventeen cents for himself. He tried to live on the two meals a day Mrs. Malloy made for him, but sometimes he got too hungry after work and then he’d buy something cheap and filling, like a cupcake and a Coke. He was losing weight, but he didn’t seem to be losing strength; the hard work in the Shipping Department had firmed his muscles, and as he went on the work got easier instead of harder.

The Malloys were pleasant people. Mrs. Malloy never gave up her curiosity about his past, but she wasn’t insistent about it, and for the rest she seemed willing to let Cole, to a certain extent, take the place of her son Bobby, now off to Texas in Army basic training. This relationship was limited by too many things to become cloying, but from time to time Mrs. Malloy did call him Bobby by mistake, and it always embarrassed both of them. Her husband, Matt, was a hearty industrial peasant, fat from beer but still strong, who wore baggy sweaters his wife had knit for him, and who smoked a stinking thick scraggly old Scottish treeroot of a pipe. Matt was an unreconstructed egalitarian, and since he looked on Paul as a co-worker was perhaps closer to him and friendlier with him than if he’d looked on him as a son. Tommy, the boy still at home, was sixteen, chunky and intense, with deep hungers for which he hadn’t yet found any names.

The days took on a sameness. He arose about ten, and went downstairs to find Mrs. Malloy. Usually some murmur met him; the vacuum cleaner in the living room, the radio in the kitchen, the washing machine down in the basement. He would follow the sound, and when he found her he would say good morning, and usually she would say, “Just a minute, Paul. Just let me finish this. Put on the water for the coffee.”

He’d put the water on, and then sit in the kitchen and read the paper. Matt Malloy always left it a thick, ill-folded, dogeared mess, and Cole would arrange it into a neater shape and then read it. He didn’t read the national and international news very often, unless an intriguing headline caught his eye, because those stories required continuity, day by day. He liked the comics, and he read the engagement and wedding announcements, and all the columns that weren’t political, and while he was reading Mrs. Malloy would be getting his breakfast ready. Almost always she made herself a cup of coffee too, and sat with him while he ate.

After breakfast he watched television, which was game shows and soap operas. Mrs. Malloy came into the living room during the soap operas, but she always left during the game shows, which she disliked. “Something for nothing. You never get something for nothing.” And she’d go back to her work.

Cole liked the game shows; they fascinated him. They were mostly just exercises in memory, the remembering of capitals and movie stars and song titles, and he liked to watch the faces of the contestants in those seconds between question and answer when memory was being put to work. He liked the applause that greeted a right answer, and he enjoyed something like a feeling of companionship with a contestant who had just failed.

At three-thirty, he would get ready to leave for work. He had a heavy jacket to wear now, lined with fiberglass; it belonged to Bobby Malloy and had been loaned to him by Mrs. Malloy. It was a little small on him, but warm.

Work was work, unchanging, and after work he usually went home and to bed. Once or twice a week he would stop on the way home for coffee and a doughnut, and on rare occasions he would go along with Little Jack Flynn and some of the others to Cole’s Tavern. He always felt guilty about going to the tavern, because he couldn’t spare the money, but he needed the occasional evening of unloosening.

He wasn’t saving any money. He couldn’t yet, not until Artie Bellman was paid back. His wallet was full of reminder notes to himself now, and one of them was a record of the payments he’d made so far to Bellman. He was afraid that otherwise he would just keep on giving Bellman ten dollars every payday forever, never knowing when the fourth week was reached.

It was an easy life, because there was little to remember. He didn’t know if his memory was getting better or worse; he knew that he was still forgetting things, that Mrs. Malloy had given up asking him to remind her to be sure to put butter on the grocery list or start the roast at three o’clock, that every once in a while the name of a co-worker would be lost, that he sometimes did forget the address of the Malloys’ house, that there were still mornings when he woke up and didn’t remember his job till he saw the note on the door. He could remember the details of his present life better than he could the details of his past life, but that was only natural. And he’d given up the memory list again, this time for good, because the isolated names and facts written on a sheet of paper hadn’t been good memory aids at all.

He’d thought it would be difficult to explain to Mrs. Malloy why he had reminder notes tacked up in his room, but when she’d asked him he’d just said, “I have a terrible memory,” and she’d accepted it, telling him of her husband’s terrible memory; he could never remember birthdays, not even his own, or any other family occasion.

It was an easy life, with a simple pattern to it that didn’t strain him overly much, but he never allowed himself to sink into it completely. It was only a transition, and that was all it could be. One night, in his fourth week in town, he happened to be looking in his wallet and he saw his New York State driver’s license, and he frowned at it, wondering where it had come from. Then he saw his own name on the license, and an address: 50 Grove St., New York, N. Y. And all at once he remembered why he was here, and that his goal was to return to New York City. It had been out of his mind, completely out of his mind, and he didn’t know for how long; just that he had been thinking of this life in Jeffords as permanent, without beginning and without end. New York, his acting career, his old friends,
everything
, had been erased completely from his mind. Not just smudged and misted, but erased. If he hadn’t run into a reminder, like this driver’s license, he would have stayed here forever.

It terrified him. That night he added a new reminder note to the bedroom door:

50 GROVE ST.—NEW YORK—Look In Wallet

But the note was enough. On seeing it, he didn’t have to look in his wallet to find out what it meant. Still, it had been close. He had been on the very edge of losing his identity completely, of falling into the hole between the tick and the tock, of falling out of space and out of time and down into gray mindless emptiness, and not even knowing that anything had happened to him.

“That’s what a zombie is,” he told himself. “That’s what a zombie is.”

In the fifth week, they came for him.

It was Friday night. He’d been paid, he’d given the third payment to Artie Bellman, and now he was on his way home. Little Jack and Buddy had wanted him to come along with them, but he never went to the tavern on payday. The idea frightened him, obscurely, though he wouldn’t spend very much at the tavern anyway. But he didn’t trust himself. He didn’t like to carry money with him, more than a few dollars at a time.

It was the end of November. The trees had lost their leaves, and the leaves had been raked and burned, all long since. It was too cold now to be autumn anymore, but the snow hadn’t started yet. He was walking along the tilted slate squares of sidewalk, past the barren trees and the streetlights; it was just past midnight, and the street was deserted. He was a block from home when the highly polished new black car rolled slowly past him, going in his direction, and crept to a stop a few doors away. The passenger-side door opened, and a man climbed out. He was hard-looking and chunky, in a baggy suit and a wrinkled shirt and a dark tie. He stood on the sidewalk with his hands on his hips and squinted at Cole, the squint making the corners of his mouth turn up like the beginning of a snarl.

Cole hesitated, not knowing what it was. He looked around, and the street was still deserted, the houses were all dark and silent. A man in a brand new highly polished black car couldn’t be meaning to steal his little pay; but what else was this? He stopped, a few feet away from the man, and said, “What do you want?”

“Paul Cole?” The man’s voice was harsh, but soft, as though there were no strength in it and he had to strain his throat to make any sound at all.

“What is it?”

“You’re Paul Cole?” It was said impatiently; he looked slow-moving but irritable.

Do I know him? He acts as though he doesn’t like me, as though he hates me. Maybe he knows me from somewhere, and his is one of the faces I’ve forgotten. But if we already know each other, why did he ask me if I was me?

His only choice was to admit to the name, and see what happened next. He moved his head and said, “Yes. I’m Paul Cole.”

The man nodded, his irritation temporarily satisfied. His right hand slipped with surprising speed into his hip pocket, and came out with a wallet, which he flipped open, saying, “Police.”

They were between streetlights, and it was pretty dark here. Cole took a step closer, saying, “I can’t see that.”

The man held it up higher, being impatient and irritable again, and Cole could now vaguely see an identification card of some sort. The man said, “We’re to bring you in.”

“What for?”

“They’ll tell you when you get there.” He stepped over to the car and jerked open the rear door. “Get in.”

“But what is it? What do you want?”

“They just told us, bring you in.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“Why? What’ve you done?”

Cole took an involuntary step backward. “I haven’t done anything.” But he wasn’t sure.

“You’re just wanted for questioning,” the man told him.

“About what?”

“You’ll find out when you get there.”

The door on the driver’s side opened, and the driver got out of the car. He was very tall and very thin, and he was wearing a hat. He looked over the top of the car at Cole, and said, “Get in the car.” His voice was flat, and cold, and full of menace.

Cole got into the back seat of the car, and the first man slammed the door after him. The two policemen got into the front seat, and their doors slammed one right after the other, like twin rifle shots. The car pulled away from the curb, and made a U-turn

It smelled of new car. The back seat was firm, the upholstery felt new beneath his palm. The two men in the front seat were dark shapes, a chunky thick-necked shape and a thin, hatted shape. No one said anything, till they stopped in front of the police station, and then the chunky man said, “All right, Cole. Here we are.”

The police station was grimy brick. It looked like the Wilson Hotel, but with green lightglobes flanking the entrance. There were the same slate steps leading up.

Inside, it was all old dark wood and green walls. The thin detective talked to a uniformed policeman behind a high desk, and then Cole was taken down a corridor and ushered into a room. The chunky man said, “Wait here.” They closed the door and left him alone.

It was a long narrow room with a high ceiling, and a window high up in one of the short walls. There were exposed pipes running upward in the corners, painted the same flat green as the walls. A single white lightglobe was suspended from the ceiling on a chain, giving the room a stark cold light. The floor was thin wood strips, dark with age and grime, and the furnishings consisted of three armless wooden chairs scattered asymmetrically here and there.

Cole was afraid to smoke, and afraid to sit down. He stood in the room, waiting, and the air felt cold and damp. He was thinking frantically, trying to remember something, remember anything, that would explain this, but he couldn’t come up with anything at all.

Oh, God
damn
this memory!

He waited fifteen minutes, and then the door opened and a new one came in. This one was portly, and gray-haired, and smiling. He was short, no more than five-five, and as neatly dressed as a banker. He came in, smiled and nodded, and said, “Sorry to keep you waiting, Paul. Mind if I call you Paul? Sit down, why don’t you. The smoking lamp is lit.”

Cole sat down, more confused than ever, and lit a cigarette. The chunky man and the thin man had come into the room, too, and had closed the door again.

The smiling man said, “Well, now, Paul, did Blake and O’Hare tell you what it was all about?”

“No.”

He smiled some more, and shrugged meaty shoulders. “Ah, it’s just as well. May I see your wallet a minute, Paul? Take your money out of it first, all right?”

Cole was the only one seated, and it made him feel uncomfortable, so he stood up to get at his wallet, and then remained standing. He took the bills out and stuffed them in his pocket, and handed the wallet to the smiling man, who took it with dainty pudgy fingers, saying, “Ah, thank you. I didn’t introduce myself, did I? Captain Cartwright, that’s my name, Captain Cartwright. May I look at your cards?”

“Go ahead.”

“Thank you. Do sit down, Paul, I know you have been working hard, you must be tired. This won’t take long. Go on, sit down.”

Cole sat down. He saw that the thin man had a notebook and pencil in his hands now. The notebook had a soft black leather cover, which he’d folded back. As Captain Cartwright continued to speak, the thin man made jottings in the notebook; it looked as though he were writing in shorthand.

Captain Cartwright said, “What’s this? A New York State driver’s license, number 2962596. Paul Edwin Cole. Your middle name’s Edwin, eh? My first boy’s name is Edwin. And the address here, 50 Grove Street, New York City. Grove Street? I thought all the streets in New York were numbered. 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, and like that.”

“Grove Street’s in the Village,” Cole told him, and suddenly remembered the look of Sheridan Square, the Paperback Gallery and the Riker’s and the florist on the corner; his building was just off the square.