The Sunlight Dialogues (14 page)

“Be that as it may,” the voice said, “I have just one piece of advice for you. Break out. If you don’t, I swear to heaven you’re dead. And this: once you’re out of this hole, don’t you ever let them drag you back.”

“Shut up,” he whispered. “I don’t need to break out. I got a lawyer.”

Suddenly, unbelievably, the bearded man laughed, softly; then his laughter grew louder, though still a whisper, like the laughter of wind. The noise was frightening in the darkness. His brother lumbered awake, swearing in his half-sleep like a man grumbling something under water. When he was fully awake, Nick’s brother moaned, “You again! Jesus god damn
hell!”

The door opened at the end of the hallway, and the nearer light came on.

“Why are you doing this?” Nick hissed at the bearded man. “You got to be crazier than shit.”

In the far cell he could make out the thief sitting up, fumbling for something with both hands. He found what he was after—his glasses—and put them on to look.

4

“Clumly,” Mayor Mullen said, “have a cigar.” He was expansive. A small man, noisy and quick as a blue jay—a flaming, apoplectic face—but he seemed much larger than he was, because of the size of the desk, perhaps, or because he had power over Clumly, or because he had a stubbornness about him, the same as a jay, an unshakable conviction of his own lightness that went beyond mere confidence born of his having looked through a fine-toothed comb, as he sometimes said, at the ins and outs of things. It was true, certainly, that he knew a great deal—a
working
mayor, the posters said—and had friends in high places. The glass-topped desk was completely bare, as though he never did anything, but that was because he was not a man who worked with paper: paper was for his underlings. He talked, listened, scrutinized men’s tics. Famous for phonecalls, sudden trips. If he worked with books, records, letters, he did it alone, late at night, unseen by mortal eyes unless perhaps the eyes of the man called Wittaker, his amanuensis, as he said, bald hawklike man in drab brown suits, nails too perfectly manicured, on one hand a discreet bronze ring like a Czechoslovakian coin. The Mayor, thoroughly public man, had no private identity unless one counted the farm equipment store he owned but had nothing to do with any more, and had no secrets public or private except that his hair, as white as virgin snow, was dyed.

He had risen from his desk as Wittaker, wearing his hat and coat, about to leave, showed Clumly into the room, and now he came out around the desk, awkwardly past the wastebasket, holding out the cigars in one hand, reaching for Clumly’s hand with the other. They were White Owls, cheaper than Clumly’s own cigars, but Clumly took one. It was a bad sign when the Mayor opened with cigars. One of many bad omens. It was bad to be called in in the first place—to talk about “a mutual problem,” the note from Wittaker had said.

Mullen tipped his head. “How you been, Fred?” Still holding Clumly’s hand.

“Fine, Walt,” Clumly said.

The afternoon sunlight, breaking through the Venetian blinds to Clumly’s right, made bands across the Mayor’s face.

“Good,” Mullen said. “That’s all that matters, isn’t it.” He released Clumly’s hand, veered away toward the center of the room, head still cocked, and rubbed his hands together. Clumly rolled the cigar between his fingers. Wittaker closed the door softly behind them, shutting out the clutter of his own, much smaller office and the closed door to the council chamber.

“Sit down,” the Mayor said.

Two captain’s chairs, old and nicked, faced the Mayor’s desk, another stood to the right of it. It was an absurd arrangement, calculated to shatter a man’s calm, because the Mayor never sat at his desk when he talked. He roamed about like a restless creature in a narrow cage, fussing with things, adjusting the blinds, studying the photographs beside the window (photographs in which he himself almost invariably appeared, inconspicuous in a second row, while men of more importance opened the racetrack, cut the tape at the western end of the New York State Thruway, or shook hands with one another, holding some solemn trophy on display). He went now to the hotplate on the waist-high cabinet where he made his coffee—a scummy glass Silex into which he spooned out Instant Nescafé.

“I’m not supposed to have to do this,” he said. “Make my own coffee. That man—” He pecked with his nose toward the door Wittaker had closed as he left. “He remembers as much as he wants to remember. You know the problem. Well, good worker. Dependable. Trained sociologist, you know. Don’t know what I’d do without him.”

“Mmm,” Clumly said.

“Cup of coffee, Fred?”

He wanted one badly, and therefore took hold of himself. “Just had one. Thanks all the same.”

“Fine, fine.” He screwed the lid on and put the coffee jar back in the cabinet. Except for a pair of galoshes, there was nothing else in the cabinet, as far as Chief Clumly could see. “Be right back,” Mullen said. He carried the Silex out past Wittaker’s office and into the hall and to the men’s room to get water. He took several minutes to get back. When he had the coffee heating, he came to stand by the bookshelf under the photographs and lounged on his feet, looking at them, bent forward, hands in pockets, his back to Clumly. “Damned hot,” he said. “We’re supposed to get an air-conditioner in here, they passed it more than a year ago. Well, it’s the old story. Corruption.” He turned to wink.

“Mmm,” Clumly said.

The Mayor cleared his throat and stepped to the window to the right of the pictures. (There were two windows, a wide window in the narrow wall behind his desk, a narrow window in the wide wall.) From the window where he stood he could look down on the jail or, scrooching down in his collar, up at the trees, old elms that dwarfed the City Hall.

“Well, we have a mutual problem, Fred. Speaking very frankly, I thought the best thing was to talk with you about it. I know you appreciate my position.”

“Certainly,” Clumly said.

He was moving again, crossing over to the Barcalounger, the coffee table, with its dusty artificial flowers and old copies of
Sports Afield
and
Life
and the
National Geographic.

“It’s about the budget.” His face grew redder.

Clumly nodded, pursing his lips.

“Now I want to speak very frankly with you, man to man. As I mentioned in my letter of, I think, June fourteenth, your budget don’t make sense, Fred. Now I don’t know what’s happening over there, and I know you have your own troubles, that’s only natural, but this thing has got me, well, to speak frankly, perplexed.”

“What’s the problem?” Clumly said. But he knew. And it was true that the room was insufferably hot. The man’s forever dancing around made it hotter.

“The problem, frankly, is communications. Between our two offices, I mean.” His mouth tightened a little and he tipped his blazing head far to the left and squinted. “The problem is we don’t
have
no communications. You don’t answer my letters.”

“Ah,” Clumly said.

“Now I think you’ll admit I’m not merely being petty when I say I can’t win no budget for you from that skinflint council if you don’t
tell
me nothing. Now I ask you, what am I to say to them? ‘How much for the cops?’ they want to know. Imagine how I’ll look if I say to them, ‘Frankly, the Chief hasn’t told me nothing yet.’”

“We did submit a budget,” Clumly said. He felt cross, but he kept it out of his voice.

“Well yes. Sure you did. A botch of a budget, if I may speak very frankly. You want six new motorcycles, you say to me, and what do you put under ‘Justification’? ‘Necessary.’ Now I ask you. And BMW’s you want, when Firster’s been selling us Harleys for years and his brother’s the County Superintendent. And what’s your Justification? ‘ Necessary.’ It won’t do, Fred. It’s a little thing. I don’t begrudge you your fancy foreign-made motorcycles that you got to buy up in Buffalo and the local merchants be damned. But I’ll tell you frankly, it’s them little things that lose elections. Now listen. What am I asking you? Clumly, I’m asking you take a few minutes and write a few words about why a cop needs some motorcycle made off in Germany that’s got no distributor here in Batavia. Just explain it, justify it, that’s all I ask. Just answer your mail.” His face was nearly purple, though his voice was controlled. His fist was closed tight. He relaxed himself, smiling. “You see my side, don’t you, Fred,” he said. I wrote to you on June fourteenth, and again on the second of July, and again last week, if memory serves me right. What the devil you people doing over there with your mail?”

The coffee was boiling, and he went to it and poured two cups and brought one to Clumly whether he wanted it or not. “Sugar?” he said.

“No thanks,” Clumly said.

“Funny joke I heard,” the Mayor said. “It’s a little off-color.” He glanced at the door. “Fellow goes into a cafe and gets coffee and says to the waitress, you know how to sweeten your coffee when you ain’t got no sugar? No, how? she says. Get your sweetheart to put her finger in, he says. She looks shocked and she says—” He began to laugh. “And then put it in the
coffee?
she says.”

“Mmm,” Clumly said.

“Well,” Mullen said. He straightened up. “Well all right. Yes.” He laughed again, then stopped himself. “Little joke now and then,” Mayor Mullen said. He cocked his head. “Grin and bear it. Walk on the bright side. All work no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Clumly recalled the cigar in his hand and raised it to his lips, patting his pocket with his left hand for matches.

“Well all right, then,” Mayor Mullen said. “I don’t know what you people are doing over there, but I thought we’d both benefit from a little talk about it. A little talk don’t hurt, I say.” His bright little eyes bored into Clumly’s nose.

“No, that’s right.”

“Of course the motorcycles aren’t all of it. Whole budget’s a problem. It runs the whole gambit. And then there’s other problems. You wrote me last winter about them parking meters, the new ones we put in on the lot behind Felton’s. You said they’re a problem, lot of difficulty one way or another—I forget the details: take a whole different schedule than the other meters, on account of the different size coin-boxes, throws you people off your synchronization, something like that. I asked you, if you saw my letter, should we put in all new meters, all the same kind, would that be justified, or would it be cheaper in the long run to reevaluate the whole parking system, what with urban renewal making havoc of what we got? Well I waited and waited. That was way last winter. So let me speak frankly about this. Because you see
I’m
on the spot as much as you are. What’s your explanation for all this? You see my problem.”

Clumly sucked in on the cigar and bowed his head a moment. It was not exactly that he had no explanation. It was as though they talked different languages. Where should he begin?

Mayor Mullen turned away and put his cup on the bookshelf. He looked at the books, rubbing his jaw and frowning. A strange batch of things—God knew where he’d picked it all up.
Success in Business. The Robe.
Two volumes of an encyclopedia, a book of business law, a world almanac old as the hills, some leatherbound
Reader’s Digest
condensations.

“God damn it, Fred, I’m going to level with you,” Mayor Mullen said. He went purple again. “You’re up to your ears and you know it. You know it and I know it and the town knows it. ‘What’s happened to Clumly?’ people say to me. I was over at the Rotary last Wednesday afternoon, and Phil Uphill said, ‘Walt, I want to ask you something? Chief Clumly been sick or something?’ ‘Why no, Phil, not that I know of,’ I says to him. ‘Well, I wondered,’ he says. ‘He acts funny lately. He don’t get the work out,’ Phil says. ‘That fire on Washington, we needed that street blocked off and the police was noplace to be seen. Off chasing cats or something, I don’t know what.’ ‘Well I don’t know, Phil,’ I says. ‘I’ll have a word with him.’ ‘You better, Walt,’ he says, ‘and that’s the truth.’ I says, ‘One thing, sure, they mean to cooperate, you can bet your boots on that,’ I says. ‘But they got troubles all right. Clumly’s working with a lot of new men. Big turnover there,’ I says, ‘and I can’t believe it’s Fred Clumly’s fault. Maybe he sent out one of those new men and the fellow got lost. Ha ha.’ Well listen now, Fred. Phil looks at me and says, ‘Ain’t the way
I
heard it. I heard Miller sent men and Clumly called ’em back. I heard Clumly said, if the people want to watch the place burn, let ’em watch.’”

Clumly folded his hands and said nothing. His clothes were sticking to him and his belt bit in at his shoulderblade.

“You say that, Fred?” Mayor Mullen asked.

“I may have,” Clumly said. He cleared his throat. “Acting according to your instructions, you know. Time Product Factor. I don’t remember the fire—what day it was—and I don’t know what we were doing right then. But it’s possible something more important came up. I don’t know.”

“More important,” Mullen said. He stood staring.

“Maybe there was a wreck that afternoon, or a fight somewhere, or maybe it was the day we raided—” He checked himself. He couldn’t think of a place they’d raided in a month. He tried to think when it was they’d arrested the Sunlight Man.

Mayor Mullen walked over to the Barcalounger and leaned one hand on the back, pushing it down. After a long moment he said, “You retire next year, that right, Fred?”

“October.”

“Been a long career,” Mullen said. “A lot of people look up to you with a whole lot of respect.”

Clumly waited. The Mayor gazed at the wall where there were no pictures, absolutely blank, the wall to the left of the door as you came in. It was the wall you didn’t see as you entered the room: so that when you came in you saw photographs, a window, chairs, plants on the windowsill and cabinet (dead), but when you went out you saw nothing, a dirty yellow wall as empty as a grave.

The Mayor said, “Fred, you got to put your house in order. This is no time to snap. Talking frankly to you. I think of you as a personal friend, a man I’ve been proud to have on my team. I mean that. Every word.”

Clumly turned his head back to the desk. It gave him a crick in his neck to be constantly twisting around to follow the Mayor with his eyes wherever he roamed. The Mayor came up behind him and put his hand on his shoulder, firm.