The Sunlight Dialogues (96 page)

“Good,” Mayor Mullen said. “Fine and dandy. Well, since it’s late we might’s well get right down to business.” He went around behind his desk. “Sit down, gentlemen.”

Only Clumly was standing. “Wittaker, bring the Chief of Police a chair.” He looked sternly out the window while he waited. Wittaker came in with a chair, and Clumly sat down between Peeper and Uphill in the semicircle around Mayor Mullen’s desk. Moss was to Clumly’s far right. “Excuse me,” Clumly said. The three men nodded in unison, formally, again like cobras, as Clumly saw it. The Mayor dusted his hands. “That’s better,” he said. He opened the manilla folder on his desk.

“As you know, gentlemen,” he said, “this is not a formal hearing, it’s just an investigation.”

They nodded, slow and formal. Clumly got out a cigar. Their heads turned and they looked at him and he quickly changed his mind.

The Mayor pursed his lips and moved around the side of the desk and behind them, so that they had to—turning slowly—crane their necks. “Now one problem,” he said, “has been partly taken care of, and that is the problem of communications. As I explained to you gentlemen before the Chief arrived, for a while there the Chief wasn’t speaking to me. But I got three letters from him this very morning, delivered in person by one of his own men to avoid any needless further delay, and I’m grateful for that.”

Clumly kept his face blank, but he knew he had not signed the letters.

“That’s good,” Peeper said. The uneasy smile.

“But we don’t know the improvement’s permanent, do we,” Moss said. He shrugged, and his mouth hung down at the corners, trying to smile, sorrowfully failing. “I’m just asking,” he said.

“That’s a point,” Mullen said. “And also, of course, exactly why he chose to write those letters right
now,
with the whole town in an uproar from all these robberies and murders and I don’t know what—is a mystery, frankly. But no doubt there’s some explanation.”

“Surely,” Peeper said.

Moss said, neither kind nor unkind, “There’s never a right time, is there. Wait for the right time and you could be dead before it came, right? I only speak from my own limited experience.” The tragic smile. “It’s like the lady who kept hoping to be raped, right?” He dismissed the untold joke with a mournful wave.

They all laughed; all but Uphill and Clumly. It was as if the whole fool room were laughing—the dead flowers, the chairs, the desk, the Silex on the hotplate. Peeper, to Clumly’s left, said grimly, “Nyeh heh heh heh!” Mullen said, “He he he he!” Clumly scowled.

“Well all right,” the Mayor said. “No harm in a little joke, ha ha.”

“Nyeh heh heh.”

“He he he.”

Uphill glared.

“Well all right,” the Mayor said. His face grew sober. “Hurry on, then. We got to hurry along with this. Ah! Coffee’s ready.” He poured five cups, still talking. “So as to the first complaint, we can more or less forget it, it’s all in the family, so to speak, and the Chief’s shown he’s willing to do better, or so it appears.

“The second complaint—I’m saying all this very frankly, so we can get someplace, not just set here jawing around, if you see what I mean—the second complaint is that the police department has not been fully cooperating with our other facilities, such as the fire department, for example. Not yet Fred. You can answer the complaints in a minute. Cream and sugar? Ah.” He passed them around.

“Look here,” Uphill said.

“The third complaint is, the Chiefs not always where he’s supposed to be, and where is he? He’s out checking up on his men or—” He paused significantly. The cobras hung poised, on target. “Or worse,” Mullen said. “Let’s let that one ride for a minute. Can’t delegate authority, then. So his men say. Whole lot of unrest and bad morale, if we want to face facts.

“Which brings me to the next problem. The crimes just isn’t getting solved. I have a chart on my desk. …” He drew it toward him. “Now. What was I saying? Ah! I have a chart. Crime’s up thirteen per cent over last year, here in Batavia. It makes you stop and wonder, don’t it. And it’s getting to have a professional look—you agree with that, Fred? Francis and Mead’s Jewelry Store, for instance? Or that Boyle fellow you let go from jail, few days ago. You figure those are signs of professionals coming in?”

“You asking my opinion?” Clumly said.

“Not yet. I’ll give you time to say your piece.”

“We’ve got all day, right?” Moss said despairingly. He sucked in his cheeks and looked down at his sharp, crossed knees.

Clumly nodded. He sipped the coffee, not really intending to drink it. He got out his cigar again and, this time, lit it. Moss, two seats over, on his right, turned his head slowly, looking, then lit a cigarette.

“Just one more remark,” Mayor Mullen said. “We talked with your subordinate, Sangirgonio. We asked him some straight-from-the shoulder questions. I’ll tell you frankly what it comes to. He doesn’t trust you. There it is.”

Clumly squinted.

“I’d just as soon not release the details on that, right at this time,” the Mayor said.

“No need,” Moss said. “Mere instances.” Lip slightly curled, sad, he looked at each of them for confirmation. “Distrust is universal, right?”

The Mayor looked down at his cup. “Well all right,” he said, “let’s hear your side of it, Fred. What about all that mail, the speeches you forget to go to? What about the questions people ask you and you don’t even hear them, or that crazy little escapade out by the railroad trestle—pictures in the paper and everything, no rhyme or reason, made the whole dang town a laughingstock. What about those
tapes?
And what about what’s going on at the firehouse right now, those men standing in their
underwear,
I heard, being searched like thieves? What about it?”

The red of Uphill’s face darkened.

“You’re changing the charges,” Clumly said. His hands shook.

“Don’t you go logic-chopping with me, Clumly. I’m asking you to explain to us why we should let you go on with this confounded circus, not ask for your resignation.”

“Times are changing,” Clumly said. He said nothing more.

They sat leaning forward, necks craned, motionless, watching him with beady, dusty eyes.

At last the Mayor said, “Is that all you got to say?”

Clumly thought about it. “Times are changing,” he said.

The Mayor and the three men waited, unimpressed.

“That may seem like nothing to you,” Clumly whispered. “I’m not surprised. You’re well-off, no real dealings with troubled people—poor people, people with bad tempers, people sick to death of their life.” He thought of Elizabeth Paxton and the Professor. “You’re responsible for it, if you want the truth: it’s because of your kind I have to deal with the other kind, but you don’t know it, you don’t know they exist. That’s your advantage. You’re responsible, but you’re not
responsible.
It’s your laws they hang by, and if one of you slips over from your side to their side, it’s your laws
he
hangs by. You, for instance. Peeper. Say you suffer reverses. Your wife commits suicide, sick to death of your stink of fat. You find out she’s been playing the ponies for fifteen years. Hundred thousand dollars in debt. Your money. You say you won’t pay it. ‘Hell no,’ you say, ‘I’ll take it to court!’“

“I certainly would,” he said. His mouth seemed to move much too slowly for the words that shot out.

“Correct. Your house burns down mysteriously. And your son gets kicked out of college, they say he’s a fairy, been sleeping with his teachers.” (It could happen.) “All right, you slip over to
their
side. These gentlemen here will be sorry, correct? But sooner or later they’ll send me after you. The responsible one. And I don’t have to think about it any more than they do. No sir! I enforce the law—whichever of their laws you broke—I pull you in, I leave it to the court. And
they
don’t have to think about it either, right? The lawyers can look up their precedents, they can hang you because they hung some poor devil in 1866. And after I’ve turned you over to the courts I can go on making speeches about law and order, and after they’ve hung you, there in court, they can go home and work on speeches about law and order, and nobody has to think. Nobody! That’s democracy, you follow me? Like a huge aluminum dome made out of a million beams, and not a single beam is responsible, everything hanging on something else. And if an earthquake comes, or a tidal wave, or a good fat tornado, what’s it to beam number nine-hundred-seventy-two? Ha!” The room was bright, their figures dark, like a negative.

Mullen leaned forward slowly. “What are you talking about?”

“Mouse turds,” Clumly hissed. “Horse manure.”

“You’re like a madman.”

Clumly nodded. “It’s the Times.” At last he fell silent.

Moss said, “What he’s saying makes sense.” His eyes fixed on Mullen.

“But is he competent?” Mullen said. “I’m talking very frankly, you understand. This is just an informal chat.”

Moss drew back, then turned his head to look once more at Clumly.

Uphill said, “I’ll lose men because of this morning. And don’t fool yourself. That’s the reason he done it.”

“I’ve got work to do,” Clumly said. “If you’re through with all this-”

Mullen’s head turned. “All right, Fred. You may go. You can wait in the hall.”

Clumly stood up.

“I’m sorry about this,” Mayor Mullen said. His head was thrust forward and tipped.

“I can see that. Let me know what you decide.”

The Mayor looked at him. “I’m truly sorry.”

“You sound like you’ve decided already.”

Nobody spoke. Clumly turned to the door.

It was Moss who brought the news. He stood with his head tipped, weight despairingly on one leg. He smiled, gently cynical, cigarette poised in his lean hand, between his thumb and four fingers. “It was a foregone conclusion, right?” he said. He looked past Clumly’s shoulder. “Who can escape if he’s investigated?
I
couldn’t. Nobody could, right? Our best judgment is that you should step down. We realize it may be a mistake. We all make mistakes.”

Clumly nodded, his right hand clutching his left.

“Finish out the day,” he said. He looked off into space, and it was as if he was thinking what he would do in Clumly’s place. He would finish out the day. He did not seem to guess that his heart would be broken.

An informal investigation,
the Mayor had said. Clumly wept. “He lied to me,” he said. “The Mayor told me”—he sobbed—”told me a lie.”

Clumly cried for a long time. Mr. Moss brought him coffee, and Mr. Peeper went out and got him two donuts and would not hear of letting Clumly pay for them. “It’s just one of those unfortunate occurrences,” he said miserably. “This whole business is a
mess,”
he said. At last Clumly went to the room which said
GENTLEMEN
and washed his face.

Kozlowski said, “You got a message. On the radio. I wrote it down.” He held out a slip of paper.

“Good morning Chief Clumly,” the message said. “I invite you to one last conference. Here are my instructions …”

Clumly read no further. Mouth open, heart drained, he looked at Kozlowski.

“You going, Chief?”

Clumly could not think. He said, a kind of whimper, “Quit fooling with me, Kozlowski.”

Kozlowski pursed his lips, at last realizing what had happened. “Sorry,” he said, then: “They found the trooper.”

Clumly scarcely heard it. “When you listen to the tapes …”

“The Sunlight Man?” He looked incredulous. “He’ll kill you. It’s a fact.”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think—”

“He’ll kill you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He would have wept, if he weren’t wept out. He said abruptly, “Come with me. Watch.”

“Not on your life. Not alone.” He switched on the motor, shifted, pulled out onto the street. “What are you after? Tell the truth.”

For a long time Clumly said nothing. At last he sniffed. “You make a man think, Kozlowski.”

Kozlowski cracked the door, like a farmer, and spit. At last he said, “It’s a funny feeling, riding around with a dead man.”

3

He went on as before, but he looked preoccupied. That afternoon they visited Kathleen Paxton. The sign on the iron gates said
Pleasant Hills.
The gates stood open. Kozlowski drove in. Once out of the trees, the driveway dipped sharply and they could see the broad, mercurial Genesee River, and, right up against the river, on the nearer bank, the high, many-gabled house. “Used to be the Bell place,” Clumly said. “Canal money. I don’t know how long it’s been a hospital. Ten, fifteen years.”

A furtive old man stood in the turn-around with a watering can. As they drove up, he ran away.

“Like a prison,” Kozlowski said.

Clumly said vaguely, “People say it’s a snakepit. I wouldn’t know. Lot of shock treatments here. Lot of people say they’re a medieval torture. They work the same way as a blow on the head with a hammer. Some psychiatrist says. Read it in the
Reader’s Digest.
Then there’s other people say a shock treatment does some good, reorganizes the brain patterns, something. It makes you wonder. You know that in any profession there’s bound to be some incompetents, dishonest people, people full of malice—schoolteachers, doctors, lawyers, dentists. So you know it’s possible these shock treatments really are a kind of crime against the public. But then again, you know there’s always the radicals, too—teachers that don’t think there should be grades, the ministers who say you should quit paying taxes if the money’s going for war. Hard to tell which is which if you’re not some kind of a specialist. It’s like high-speed dentist’s drills.” He sighed. “Some dentists’ll tell you a high-speed drill is the only thing to have, and then others’ll say it breaks down the structure of the tooth. What’s a man to do? Things work ’emselves out, eventually—the right side ends up winning, I s’pose—but that’s no help if you’re sitting in a dentist’s chair before it’s been decided.” Again, a sigh. “It used to be you could tell when a man was wrong just by the way he went at it: you could tell those American Nazis were wrong by how red their faces got. Same with the Communists. But this House Un-American Activities Committee, for instance—what’s a man to do when on one side there’s all those kids with beards and on the other side that man from I think it’s Texas? I saw on TV where one of those rioters from Berkeley stood up in front of the camera and told how her parents were hypocrites and liars and how she was better, shacking up with some long-haired dope addick or whatever, and I thought, Now there’s a lunatic if I ever see one, but then I read about how all these professors are right there behind her, saying all how a university is the experiment grounds for the future and how it’s not enough to theorize about how society ought to be fixed, you have to act, even if some of the actions don’t turn out. It’s hard to know where you stand any more. The same thing with shock, if you know what I mean. You feel like you ought to be doing something, come out, one side or the other. But who’s to say? I went in the drugstore, couple days ago, I ordered a ham on rye. Came out all fat, not enough meat for a horsefly, and a piece of lettuce looked like maybe they found it on the floor behind the stove. I says, “Wait a minute now, this ham on rye’s not fit for a person to eat.” Waitress says, “Don’t look at me, sir. I just work here.”
Everybody
just works here. If the sandwiches are gonna be fit to eat, somebody’s got to behave as if he owned the place. Suppose it was your kid they were gonna give shock treatments to. You willing to leave it to the specialists? But what’s a man to do! What’s this world coming to, Kozlowski?”