The Drill Is Death Read online

  “Although by his own actions, the influence of Mr. Ezra Pound has been jeopardized,” Mr. Reginald Grant said, formally, to some eighty-odd lovers of poetry, “we must not let extraneous factors blind us to—”

  II

  It is, Grant thought, riding home in a taxi through a night which had not improved, remarkable how selective the human mind can be—how it can, in a sense, segregate. My own mind, he thought, pushed murder out, locked the door behind it; my mind has been, for the past three hours or so, occupied solely with the way words fall, are arranged to fall, so that, in the end, the whole made by the words is infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. (Or, his mind irrelevantly interjected, its participles.) Greater than and, in some sense—a sense as infinitely hard to put into words—different from.

  For those hours of the mind’s segregation, it was as if there had never been a child’s blood on his hands. For those hours, his mind had been in the way Pound had had with words, and Eliot and Frost and John Ciardi. And it had gone rather well, which was surprising. It was true that, autographing a book of his own, he had noticed under one nail a trace of something he was very much afraid was blood. He had, surreptitiously, managed to flick it out with a nail of his other hand.

  He could tell that it had gone well not only by the intentness of the faces into which he looked as he spoke, but by the very considerable number who had, afterward, come around to ask questions left unanswered—very intelligent questions, for the most part. He had sat on the edge of the platform, his legs dangling—a position of no special dignity but of reasonable comfort—and answered questions as well as he could (so many intelligent questions do not permit of intelligent answers) and written his name on the flyleaves of four books. (Four/ This last one, counting both British and American sales, must by now have reached almost three thousand. And in two years only!)

  He had got into the cab, which had not been easy to find on a dripping night, and had turned out to be one of the objectionable midgets, with, still remaining, that glow which warms the spirit of anybody who feels that he has done something rather well, and has not yet had time for cooling second thoughts. And, as he got into the cab, he had looked involuntarily at the floor on the other side. There was nothing on the floor and he took a deep breath of relief. His mind said that this was ridiculous; something else inside him said it was nothing of the kind.

  He had read, of course, of “juvenile delinquents” (which had seemed rather an elaborate way of putting it) and of the wars of teen-age gangs. He had not supposed that this was peculiar to the United States or, for that matter, to the present time. He thought, as he often thought in various connections, of the great difference there is in knowing that certain things happen—famine, for example; the murderous leaps of tidal waves—and having immediate contact with catastrophe. Boys and girls were shot on city streets and stabbed to death on them for—what had the sad detective said? Reasons only a vicious child would understand—and one clicked tongue against teeth in deprecation. But one did not expect to find blood on one’s own hands.

  He had supposed, to be sure, that it was usually the boys who were killed, and usually by other boys, and that the girls of the gangs were more likely to be the occasions for than the victims of murder. He had also assumed that, when murder was done—inadvertently or by intent—the victim was left to lie in sight, while the assailants ran.

  This girl, clearly, had not been—had been tucked into a cab. Or, pushed in alive and killed there? Put in the cab, the detective—oh yes, named Shapiro—had said to “get her out of sight.” As a child might hide a toy he had broken.

  “Here we are,” the cabby told him. “Lousy night, ain’t it, Mac?”

  Reginald Grant, recalled, said, “Quite,” and paid, and climbed a flight of stairs to his flat on the first floor. (He was too tired now to make adjustments; suddenly, as the cab driver told him they were there, his mind had emptied, as if a plug had been pulled.) He made himself a drink; there were coals glowing in the fireplace and he added to them two ridiculously expensive, and not especially flammable, sticks of wood. After a time, one of the sticks began to smoke, which was approximately par for the course.

  Grant, sipping slowly of scotch and water—he had put a cube of ice in the drink, absent-mindedly and without even surprising himself—was nearing the bottom of the glass when the buzzer sounded, very loudly. Who, at this time of night, he wondered, and went into the hall and pressed the button which would release the latch of the downstairs door. He heard the door open, and opened his own door into the stair hall. Two men were coming up the stairs.

  The first of them was a square man with a wide face and a brush haircut. He wore a double-breasted suit and Grant, who noticed such things, noticed that the shoulders were padded. He was dressed, Grant thought, more as he had once expected all American men to be than had any other American man he had so far met. The man looked up the stairs and smiled pleasantly.

  The man behind him was taller and darker, and wore a single-breasted blue suit, with a black raincoat over it—over it but unbuttoned.

  Grant said, “Yes?”

  The square man said, “Mr. Grant?” and, when Grant nodded, “Police officers.”

  Grant was not really surprised. He had not, actually, thought it would be all that simple, all that cursory. He knew little of the methods of American police—or of any police, for that matter—but he had been a little surprised that there had not, in the police station, been more—well, call it routine; call it formality. Allowing for the different idiom—in his one previous contact with policemen above the rank of constable he had been “sirred” endlessly—he had supposed, or would have supposed if he had ever before thought of it, there would be many questions and much writing down of answers. (When he had been asked about poor old Ben the questions had been endless, although it had been clear from the start that he knew few significant answers.)

  He said, “Yes?” again and the square man indicated, by a gesture, that he go back into the flat. He went back and the two men came in after him and the tall one in the black raincoat closed the door after them. Grant led them along the corridor to the living room.

  “Sorry to bother you on a lousy night like this,” the square man said. “Only, the captain’d like to see you about the girl.”

  “I’m afraid,” Grant said, “I told the other detective—Shapiro—all I know about it. Of course—”

  “Sure,” the square spokesman said—the other man merely stood with his back to the door and looked at the slowly smoking fire. “Don’t doubt it, myself. But the captain’s a different kettle of fish. Know what I mean?”

  “No,” Grant said. “I can’t say that I do, y’know.”

  “Man you talked to,” the spokesman said, “is pretty easygoing.” He paused, seemed to consider. “Fact is,” he said, “between us, the captain sort of chewed him out. Don’t tell him I said that, but that’s the way it is. Lots of lines on the reports, see, and the captain likes to see ’em filled up. So he says to us, ‘Go ask this Mr. Grant to come around and help us get things squared away.’ So, here we are.”

  “I don’t,” Grant said, “suppose I have any choice?”

  “Now listen,” the square man said, “it ain’t that way, Mr. Grant. Just some details for the record. Shouldn’t take more than—oh, an hour maybe. Take you to the captain and bring you back. Not more than an hour or hour and a half at the most. O.K.?”

  “Not in the morning?”

  “You know,” the square man said, “that’s what I said to the captain. You want him tonight? And he said I was damned right he did.” He shrugged the padded shoulders. “We’re just doing what we’re told,” he said. “Can’t go beyond that.”

  The implication was there, Grant thought. If he had his way, the implication was, the square man wouldn’t have dragged himself, or anybody else, out on a lousy night like this. Only, he didn’t have his way. And, Reginald Grant did not have a choice.

  He put a damp
Burberry on again; he put a screen in front of the fire, on the outside chance it was not planning to smoulder out; he went ahead of the two police officers down the stairs and across the sidewalk and into a dark gray car parked at the curb. The square man got in beside him and the man in the raincoat—the speechless man—got behind the wheel. They started west; started, Grant assumed, toward the station house in West Twentieth Street where he had talked to the now “chewed out” Detective Shapiro.

  But this driver apparently knew a better route than Joe had followed when the cab carried death in its back seat. This driver turned north on Fourth Avenue and then west on Twenty-third. And, when Grant was quite sure he had gone much farther west than the cab had gone, the car turned south in a wide, one-way street, went a block and U-turned up a ramp. It was only then that Reginald Grant asked the pertinent question: “Where is this captain of yours?”

  “Uptown,” the square man said. “Fact is, he’s checking something out. About the girl. Figured it would save time if we took you where he is instead of going to the station and waiting till he gets back. See what I mean?”

  They were on the West Side elevated highway. They were, now, going quite fast. They were, it occurred to Grant, going as if no immediate stop were contemplated.

  “No,” Grant said. “I can’t say I do, officer. For one thing, you said an hour. An hour and a half at the most.”

  “It could be,” the square man said, “it’ll take a little longer than that, Mr. Grant.”

  “I’d like,” Grant said, and spoke slowly, “to see your warrant card, officer.”

  “Huh?”

  “Identification,” Grant said.

  “Oh,” the square man said. “Didn’t get you at first. Shield. Sure.”

  He put a hand into a coat pocket It came out with something flat, something that shone.

  “Should have shown you that earlier,” the square man said, and put the shield back in the pocket. “Maybe you should have asked earlier, huh?”

  “I still—”

  “Police Department, City of New York,” the square man said. “That’s what it says. Nothing to get worked up about, Mr. Grant.”

  But he did not offer to show the shield again, and it seemed to Grant that now the gray saloon car was going faster—faster, surely, than the speed limit; almost dangerously fast through the foggy night. The speed did not slacken when they left the elevated highway, continuing north. On a bridge, the car checked, and hardly more than checked, while the man in the black raincoat dropped a coin into a waiting bin.

  A few blocks beyond the bridge, the car turned from the parkway onto a side road which paralleled it and then went across an overpass above the parkway. After that, it went more slowly on narrower streets and went, generally, downhill. As it moved down the heavy moan of ship horns—always a part of sound on a foggy night in New York—grew louder.

  Reg Grant’s knowledge of New York was no more than a man may pick up in a few weeks during which he has much else to do. He did not, he realized now, have any clear idea where in New York he was except, he thought, they were coming back to the Hudson River, beside which the elevated highway had taken them. And—that they had come a long way from Twentieth Street, or from Gramercy Park. And—that they had come a very long way indeed from the corner where a cab had stood, unoccupied, long enough for the body of a fragile girl to be thrust into it, so that the body’s blood might flow away, unseen.

  He looked at the square man. The square man was looking at him. The light was dim, but not so dim that Reg Grant could not see that the man was no longer smiling.

  Realization had nibbled under the surface of his mind for some time, as in still fishing the hoped-for prey may nibble and make the cork bob, just perceptibly. Now the cork went under. This was not what the square man had said it was; this was no formality, to be got through quickly. Nobody needed, now, to tell him that, even by letting a smile fade out.

  They had told him that that was it, that that was all it was, merely to make it easier—easier for themselves. He would have said, “May I see your warrant, please?” if there had not been this subterfuge. If they had produced no warrant, he could have said, “Sorry. No,” when they started to walk into his flat, and closed the door against them. What was the American for it? They had—“soft-soaped him.” That was it. They had had him on.

  The car was going quite slowly now through the foggy night. The fog was thicker here, nearer the river.

  They had found out something that, somehow, in their minds, tied him to the girl’s death. He could not imagine what it was, what they thought it was. He tried to bring a picture of the dead girl’s face into his mind. The most likely thing they had discovered—thought they had discovered—was some connection between himself and the dead girl. He studied the face he had pictured in his mind. Vaguely familiar—yes. But only as one of a certain kind of face—as a common denominator of the faces of American girls of about her age. He was entirely certain, as certain as he was that he had had nothing to do with the girl’s death, that he had never known her, anywhere.

  Was it then something else they had discovered, thought they had discovered? He could not have been seen near the cab while it stood empty at the curb. But, was there someone who would say he had been seen? He had gone to his flat that afternoon at about five, after one of his undergraduate classes. He had had a scotch as he checked over his notes for the evening lecture; put slips of paper between the leaves of books. At about seven he had had bread and cheese, and a bottle of bland American beer, and had checked to see whether he needed to shave again and, deciding it would do no harm, briefly run an electric razor over his face. Then, at about half past seven, he had walked downstairs, ruminating vaguely about the difference between British and American verbal usage (to keep his mind off the lecture ahead; to keep his stomach from twittering) and, in the fog, raised a hand to summon Joe’s big taxi.

  He could not, of course, prove any of this. No one had seen him go into his flat at about five, or he knew of no one who had. No one could corroborate his assertion that he had stayed in it. No one, certainly, could swear that he had seen him out of it, behaving suspiciously in the vicinity of the parked cab, perhaps with a small girl in sweater and skirt—not and swear truthfully. But—mistakes can be made. Were they bringing him here—wherever here might be—to show him to some witness; some witness who might, perhaps in all honesty, say, “Yes, that’s the man I saw.”

  There aren’t, Reg Grant thought, too many men who look like me. Not in New York, there aren’t. I’m a type of sorts, but not a type here. It’s going to be sticky going if—

  The car turned off the street into a semicircular drive curving back toward a house. The house appeared to be large; it appeared to waver in the fog and to have a square tower in the center, with a little fence around the top. A quite preposterous house—an incongruous house; a house out of Poe; a house drawn by that somewhat chilling American, Addams.

  The car stopped in a porte-cochere.

  “End of the line,” the square man said, quite matter-of-factly. Reg Grant wished he had chosen other words. He nudged Grant’s arm. “Captain’s inside,” he said, and Grant folded his long body out of the car. With the square man behind him, Reg Grant walked to a door and the door opened as if somebody had been watching for them through the glass panel. But Grant had seen no one. He went into a hall with a staircase rising out of it and, as the square man pushed the door to behind them, he heard the car start again—heard the motor rev up and the squish of rubber on the wet pavement.

  “Upstairs,” the square man said. “Captain’s upstairs.”

  The captain and—what? What kind of confrontation, what twisted game to play?

  Reg Grant went up the stairs obediently. If there had been a time for disobedience, the time had been earlier. At the head of the stairs, the square man said, “Right along there, Mr. Grant,” and pointed “along there,” and Reg walked, the square man behind him, to a door at the end of a
hallway. He was told to go right in, and opened the door and went right in—into a room furnished with a couch and a chest of drawers and two comfortable enough appearing chairs; a smallish, but pleasant room, with a single, not large, window.

  “O.K.,” the square man said. “Make yourself at home, Mr. Grant. Captain’ll be right along.”

  He had not entered the room. Now he closed the door, with himself on the outside and, as he turned toward the door, Reg Grant heard the grate of metal on metal as the square man, who had never given a name, locked him in.

  Grant was not really surprised. He was, however, suddenly, even violently, annoyed. He went to the door and hit it twice, hard, with the knuckles of his right fist and said, also loudly, “I say!” The silence which followed was complete and what is commonly referred to as hollow. It was rather as if he had been beating on the head of a drum.

  Grant did not repeat this obviously futile activity. There was no use bruising knuckles—not on a door. There was no use making vocal protest to people who were not listening.

  Grant went to the window and tried to raise it, and discovered that it would not open. He tried to look out of it, and found he could see nothing; he returned to the door and a light switch beside it, and turned the light off and looked again out of the window. This time he could see grayness, with the shapes of not distant trees wavering in it.

  He turned the light on again and tried a door in the side wall of the room. It opened on a bathroom, small and orderly and windowless. All the comforts of home; more than the comforts of a cell. Yet a cell was obviously what it came to.

  His indignation did not subside, but it became orderly. He would have a few things to say to this “captain” when the captain appeared. One might be able to treat an American citizen in this manner. A British subject was another matter. He would bring this fact to the captain’s attention.