The Sunlight Dialogues (15 page)

“I’m pulling for you, Fred. Now you know I am. And every man on the Police Force is pulling for you. Yessir. But if all this keeps up, complaints keep coming, if I have to go before that City Council—” He pointed toward the Chamber—“and I have to tell them Fred Clumly’s not getting the paperwork done, well … I hope it won’t come to that. I
believe
it won’t come to that.” Suddenly, ferociously, he exclaimed, “More coffee, Fred?”

Clumly started, thinking for an instant of the girl Rosemary with the henna-red hair, and Kozlowski running the toe of his boot back and forth along the crack in the floor. “No no,” he said. “No coffee. I’m fine. Fine.”

“Suit yourself,” Mullen said. Then, solemnly: “I’m glad we had this little talk.”

Clumly nodded, getting up.

“Heard a funny story,” Mayor Mullen said as he showed him to the door. “You’ll die at this one. Lady told her three lovers whichever one brought her the most ping-pong balls could have her hand in marriage.”

“I heard it,” Clumly said.

“Seems the first lover went to the grocery store, and the second lover went to the sporting goods store, and the third lover went to Africa.”

Clumly shaped the end of the half-smoked cigar between his thumb and first finger, his eyes tacked to it.

“Well the first lover that went to the grocery store comes back with a hundred ping-pong balls, and the second lover that went to the sporting goods store comes back with a thousand ping-pong balls, but all the one that comes back from Africa has got is two big brown bloody balls. Are these ping-pong balls? the lady says. Ping-pong balls, he says,
I
thought you said King Kong’s balls!” The Mayor roared. Tears ran down his cheeks. “Well, Fred, I be seeing you,” he said. “Walk on the bright side. Grin and bear it.”

“Good night,” Clumly said. His heels clicked loudly on the wooden floor of the long empty hallway. Behind him Mayor Mullen went on laughing, filling the corridor with quick, dusky echoes like bats.

When Clumly got back to the station, at quarter-after-six, a paper bag of hamburgers tucked under his arm, a guilty sensation like suffocation inside him, Miller was still at his desk, chin-deep in papers, and Mickey Salvador was working on the police radio speaker with a screwdriver, whistling to himself. Clumly drew off his hat. “Any excitement?” he said.

“Like a tomb,” Miller said. He looked at the paper sack and, after thinking about it, grinned. “You, Chief? Any news?”

“Nothing,” he said.

Miller said, “Got a minute?”

“Come on in.” He opened the door to his office and went in. He sat down, motioned Miller to the chair across from him. “What’s on your mind, son?” The word
son
rang oddly in his ears. They’d worked just fine together all these years, he and Miller. If he had had a son, Miller was the kind of man he’d want him to be. But he felt slightly worried in Miller’s presence. He would be his replacement, if they forced him to resign. It was even possible that behind his back … But he checked himself. It came to him that there were things missing from the clutter on his desk. Miller had picked them up, then. Miller was helping out again, covering for him. It made him feel sick. Clumly had done the same for Miller, picked up some of his work when he was crowded. There was nothing unusual in that, no reason for Miller to sit there grinning too gently, pitying him. We all work together. You can’t run a Force without mutual respect. Watchdogs. (“Cowdogs, you mean,” Kozlowski had said.) He winced and opened the sack.

Miller stretched out his legs. “It’s nothing much,” he said. “A couple of things. One is this kid Salvador. I tried to talk to him.”

“Mmm?”

He opened his hands. “I don’t know. That is, nothing specific. Makes me nervous. He wants to be loved. Know what I mean?”

Clumly scowled.

“It’s this. He’s easygoing, gets into these long conversations with the bears. Long talk with the Indians this afternoon—kidding around with them, big friend of the family. I let him finish with ’em, and then I laid down the law—to them, not him: No more talk. One word back there in the cells and I said I’d brain the whole crowd of ’em. It’s your buddy the Sunlight Man mainly. Keeps getting at the Injuns, working ’em up. So I tell them to stow it. New policy. Pretty soon I hear them back there chattering again and I go back and guess who’s right up to his nose in it. Salvador.”

Clumly nodded and bit into the first of the hamburgers. He was feeling guilty now about not having offered Miller one. It wasn’t too late even now, but he didn’t. “He’ll get slugged for his trouble. After they’ve knocked him on his can once, he’ll see reason.”

“Yeah. Still—”

“You’re as jumpy as I am,” Clumly said. He smiled wryly.

Miller looked at the front of Clumly’s desk. “It’s true,” he said. “Tired. Maybe I should go home and knock up the old lady or beat the dog or something.” He smiled, and now he relaxed for a moment, but soon his eyes became thoughtful. “There’s something in the air, you know it? It’s like a smell.” He tipped his head back to look at the ceiling, thinking. “You want to know the truth? I keep hearing things. Somebody digging a tunnel right under us, or some kind of prehistoric monster waking up, down under the ground, scratching to get out.”

“You need a good stiff whiskey.”

“You telling me?”

Clumly hunted up his pencil and wrote himself a note about Salvador. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.

“Yeah, good.” He started to get up.

“There was something else too?”

“I guess so.” He mused, then stood up, pushed his fists down into his pockets, and leaned toward Clumly. “I know how to nail our thief—Walter Boyle.” He drew his right hand from his pocket and snapped his fingers.

“How?” He happened to break wind as he spoke, but not noticeably.

Miller pivoted away and went to the window. The sky was red now. “You ever hear of a paragnost, Chief?” When Clumly said nothing, he went on, “It’s a guy who knows things it’s impossible to know. The future, the past, what people around him are thinking.”

“A mind reader.”

He nodded. “Sort of. Anyhow, we got one right in our hands. Your Sunlight Man may be a lot of things, and some things he may not be, but one thing he is for sure is one of
them.
Listen.” He turned suddenly and crossed to the file to the right of Clumly’s desk and opened the drawer. He shuffled through the confusion of papers that lay flat in the drawer and pounced on one of the tapes. He cocked his eyebrow, reading the label on the tape, then drew the tape out and threaded it through the machine. “This is from day before yesterday,” he said. He played with the buttons, running the peeping, babbling tape through the spools until he found the place he wanted. “There,” he said. “Listen.” They bent over the machine.

      …
no sense of divertisement. Ifs a great responsibility, accepting the role of policeman. I suffer for you. Do you know why you hunt? Do you understand the Order you struggle to preserve? Alas, gentlemen, I suffer for your victims, too. The poor kid that goes through town with his muffler open, the old man that runs his cart down the center of Main, the kids that skinny-dip in the Reservoir, those Indian boys, or me, or that poor fool Benson.

CLUMLY
:
Tell us why you burned the papers in your billfold.

PRISONER:
Because I wasn’t out of matches.

Miller flicked off the tape.

“I don’t see it,” Clumly said.

“Listen. Boyle told us this Sunlight Man can see things. He told us the guy predicted that woman will die—the one the Injuns put in the hospital.”

“Is she dead?”

“Not yet. But she’ll die. The point is, the Sunlight Man made Boyle halfway believe he really could do it, even though Boyle doesn’t want to believe it. And the Indians believe it. Salvador says—”

“What are you driving at?” He broke wind again and frowned.

“Salvador says the man does it all the time, tells them things he can’t possibly know.”

“But
you
don’t believe all that?”

“I don’t know. How
can
I? There’s things in this world would surprise a person. That’s my honest opinion. You ever seen what a fortune teller can do with cards? I mean they tell you
facts,
not just vague stuff, some of them. Or palmists. There was one at our church one time—made your hair stand up. There may be lots of things we don’t like to admit to. Flying saucers, ghosts, I don’t know what. Ok, so maybe there is all that stuff and maybe not—who cares? But if some of it comes along and you can
use
it … this time for instance. If it’s true, if it just happened to be more than a joke, say.”

“Now wait a minute. Are you saying you’re going to get the Sunlight Man to come here and tell us—”

“No.
Hell
no! He’s told us already! Listen again.” He turned back the tape and played it once more, squinting at it.

skinny-dip in the Reservoir, those Indian boys, or me, or that poor fool Benson

He snapped it off.

“Benson!” Clumly said. His back crawled. Miller nodded. Clumly said, chewing, “Hmp. Even if I accept your wild theory that he can read people’s minds, how do we know it’s not a slip of the tongue—how do we know he didn’t mean to say Boyle?”

“Don’t move,” Miller said. He crossed to the door and went to the outer office. He came back with his clipboard, the pencil dangling by a string. He pushed the clipboard toward Clumly and quoted without looking at it, “Walter Arlis Benson, 362 Maple Street, Kenmore, New York. Male. Blue eyes. Height, 5–8. Weight 190. Married. Occupation, salesman.”

Clumly glanced at him.

“I talked to his wife on the phone this afternoon. He’s out of town on a trip, been out for three weeks. Doesn’t know when to expect him back. I can have her here tomorrow for an identification.”

“You told her—”

He shook his head.

“Holy smoke,” Clumly said. Face drawn into a fixed wince, he turned the tape back once again and listened. Then he got up, lit a cigar, and went to stand in the doorway to the other office. At last he said, “You may be right.”

“A hundred dollars says yes.”

He puffed at the cigar, building up smoke, shaking his head slowly. “It’s a hell of a thing. Crooks build up a system you can’t beat, and then all of a sudden—” He was uneasy. As if talking to himself, he said, “You almost didn’t tell me. You told me the business about Salvador, and you were about to leave. If I hadn’t asked you right out if there wasn’t something else—” He was whining, he noticed.

Miller shrugged, grinning. “You gotta admit it’s a crazy damn piece of police work.”

But Clumly shook his head. It was coming clearer. “When’s she due to arrive here? Who brings her—Buffalo police?”

“Who, Chief?”

“Who, who,
who!”
he roared. “The Benson woman.”

“Sorry,” Miller said. “Ten o’clock. With the Buffalo fuzz, right.”

Clumly came back to his desk. “Call it off,” he said.

“What?”

“Call it off. You heard me. No identification, no nothing.”

“For Christ’s sake, Chief—” But he moved toward the door.

“And this, Miller. When they fire me and make you Chief,
then
you be Chief. Not yet.”

“You mean you plan to let Boyle walk out free? Just walk out the door when you know damn well how to tie him? Boy! the State’s Attorney will do cartwheels.”

“I don’t know what I’m gonna let Boyle do. I need to think about it.”

“Let me get this straight. You think I was butting into your business, and you’ve decided if you can’t get Boyle yourself, nobody gets him for you. That it?”

“Of course not.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” He raised his hands and smiled, angry.

Clumly sat down, partly because of his gas problem, and put his chin on his fists. He remembered again that Miller had taken some of the papers from the clutter on his desk, and he couldn’t tell whether to be grateful or indignant. It came to him (some secondary part of his mind still grinding grist) that maybe the Sunlight Man knew Walter Boyle from somewhere. As simple as that. And if so … He filed it to think about later. Miller stood waiting, and Clumly sighed. “It was good thinking, Miller. I’m cognizant of that. It was a good hunch, damn good thinking. But you have to give me time. I’m not up with you yet. Whole thing’s got implications I’ve got to think through. Sorry. No hard feelings.”

Miller looked at him. “Ok. No hard feelings.” He went out. There were hard feelings.

Clumly shut his eyes. The station was quiet now. If he let himself he could hear the scratching, tunneling sound, the creature waking up, or anyway feel it moving toward him, coming from the darkness outside the city limits, maybe, to smash down the door with its fingertips and have them before they knew it. Clumly snorted.

“Home,” he said suddenly, aloud. It was getting late.

He ought to go out somewhere with his wife, get his work off his mind. He should take her to dinner—except that dinner would already be fixed, waiting for him. Out on the town, then. Over to Bohm’s Mortuary, where Paxton was laid out.

His wife’s minister was there when he got home. Clumly himself had no patience with ministers or churches, not that he had anything serious against them. He was not an atheist, simply disliked religion. Sermons left him full of a vague turmoil of questions, irritation at answers not sufficiently convincing—right answers, maybe, but answers not explained to his satisfaction. There were questions of fact—why the fish weren’t killed when the other things were in Noah’s flood, why Christ prevented the stoning of the adulteress but blasted the barren fig tree in a fit of pique. It was true that the questions were of no importance, no interest, even; nevertheless, he felt there were things that weren’t getting said, loopholes left open, problems of contradiction and confusion. As for singing, Clumly was tone-deaf. And as for the offering, it was not clear to him that the work of the church was a thing he ought to invest in. He never went to church, except to drive his wife and pick her up after the service. But for her sake he tolerated the minister’s visits. She was very religious. She got copies of
Today
magazine in braille, which cost him plenty, and kept them piled like old telephone books on the wicker hamper in the bathroom. She gave his money not only to the church but to the Children’s Home, the old-folks’ home in Rochester, even a thing called the Jewish Orphans’ Fund. When they were first married, she would kneel beside the bed for fifteen minutes every night to pray, moving her lips, and when she found it bothered him she had taken to praying in the bathroom before she came in. She never nagged him about his opinions, he would give her that. Indeed, the truth was, she was as fine a Christian woman as a man could know, except maybe for the drinking. At the head of their bed she had a cloth she’d laboriously embroidered before the operation, when the last of her eyesight went. A poem.