Death in The Life (13 page)

“That’s it,” Julie said. “Gosh.”

“Funny. I’d have thought it was closer the first time,” Greenberg said. He put the sketch in an envelope and gave it to Russo. He left the building with them.

Russo proposed to show the drawing to the cowboy before sending it to photography. It was the pretext on which the police had delayed his leaving the city.

In the car Julie said, “Now what?”

“There ought to be other stuff in the hopper by now. A half-dozen detectives have been on the case since morning. Sift, check out, pray, and needle the lab people.”

Julie was tempted to ride uptown with him to Forty-fourth Street.

Russo didn’t like the idea of her going back there right away. “Do you have a phone in the place?”

“No.”

“First thing in the morning, get one installed. Have the phone company call me at Midtown if you have to.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that permanent an establishment when I started.”

“That’s even better. Stay away from there.”

“I’ll call the phone company,” Julie said.

“That’s what I figured you’d do.” Russo drove in silence for a time, spinning off his own associations. “I’d give a lot to know who put in that missing persons squeal. The cowboy swears he didn’t do it, and that makes sense. When a hooker stands a guy up, he generally takes for granted she’s been busted and stays clear.”

“Where was he going to meet her?”

“She was to come to his motel room.”

“But when I saw them, they were going to her place. At least, I think that’s where they were going.”

“They were. She was the one who changed the locale. Starting Wednesday night, eleven-thirty, which was when she collected the hundred bucks.”

“It seems to me he’d have wanted to check her place when she didn’t show up the next night. You know, to see if there’d been a mixup.”

“I’d also like to know if she was on the street Wednesday night before their date. One trick a night isn’t exactly hustling.”

Julie thought Mr. Bourke might know, but she decided against volunteering him. “Mack would know.” Him she didn’t mind volunteering.

“If you see him, Julie, stay clear, but let me know. We want him.”

“You bet.”

The phone calls began to come in soon after she got back to Seventeenth Street: people she hardly knew at the Forum and friends of Jeff’s… and hers, she supposed, although there were not many friends of Jeff’s whom she considered her friends.

Anne Briscoe’s call was typical: “Darling, what have you been up to? You
are
the same Julie Hayes…”

I’m Janet, she wanted to say, remembering the last time she had spoken to Anne Briscoe to get out of her dinner party.

Somewhere back there long ago, she had been living a sort of life, shipping between two seas, having her thrice-weekly sessions with Doctor Callahan and writing letters of reassurance to Jeff that she was fine, that everything was fine. She decided not to answer the phone anymore that night and then changed her mind to take one more call.

“This is Doctor Callahan. I’m sorry about your friend Peter Mallory.” The tone was as brusque as ever.

“Thanks.”

“I think it would be a good thing for you to keep your regular Monday appointment.”

“Me too.”

“I have made the hour available.”

“Thank you… Doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Did Rita call you?”

Silence.

“I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“I saw her,” Doctor said and hung up.

D
OCTOR CALLAHAN SHOWED NEITHER
welcome nor sympathy. She did take one clean, direct look at Julie at the door. Eye to eye. Then she thumped into her office, leaving Julie to close the door between office and vestibule as always. With a sweeping gesture, she directed Julie onto the couch.

“Right away?”

“Yes.”

Doctor settled in her chair and released the brake. A power break… the arrogance of power…

“‘Pride comes knocking with thin knuckles on the heart,’” Julie said, prone.

“What?”

“It’s a line from a play I just thought of.”

Silence.

“Pride, police, passion. Passion. I thought I didn’t have any. That’s crap. I know I do, but I can’t get it out. I can’t bleed. Like a thorn is stuck in me, the sacred heart of Jesus, Pete in church reading during the Mass, a half-assed priest, a prostitute can sing hymns—‘Holy God, we praise thy name.’ Her bouncing ass, my dream, my face turned into my backside with one eye bleeding at me. Pete’s mouth in the morgue like an eye and no eyes, and his arm like jelly under the sheet. I masturbated in bed the next morning. I thought of him, the way he was dead, and I never knew him. I never knew any man. My father using the church to get away, free, home safe in Ireland. Are there any whores in Ireland? Who needs whores if everybody plays? Street games, Pete called it, and everybody plays, the woman upstairs with her stunted child, Little Orphan Annie, empty eyes. She tears her dolls apart and loves them till she hates them. She picked up the pimp’s money and gave it back to the bastard so he could throw it down like seed on the dead ground. Whore seed. Magdalene’s daughter.”

Dead. Blank. Nothing.

“What about Magdalene’s daughter?”

“I made it up. I wrote it in my notebook the first day on Forty-fourth Street.”

“Who is Magdalene?”

“Mary Magdalene in the Bible.”

“Who was her daughter?”

“I just made it up. It sounded good, like the title for a book.”

“You’re writing a book?”

“Something. I always am, and then I don’t ever finish.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Failure.”

“What’s failure?”

“Not being able to say what I want to say.”

“What do you want to say?”

“Something about me. Something that’s real, deep, true. Sure, beautiful. I thought Pete was beautiful. When he said, They don’t know a ceiling light from the star of Bethlehem.’ That’s beautiful to be able to say that. ‘Give me an ocean of stars for an Irish heaven.’ He studied to be a priest. Hey! now I know what was wrong in church when I saw him. It wasn’t obscene, him doing his thing on stage. I was jealous! And ashamed though I didn’t know it. I felt lousy, seeing him behind the altar railing. I wished I hadn’t seen him.”

“It spoiled your fantasy, perhaps.”

“Maybe, except I didn’t know I was doing much of that then. He’d stood me up the night before. Just didn’t show up, but sent me a lovely note. I can say it by memory. ‘Friend Julie, I’m sorry to have gone into my vanishing act. A sick friend needed me and since that doesn’t happen very often I stood by. May the gods inspire you and the fates send custom.’”

She waited for Doctor’s comment. Nothing.

“That’s all,” she said.

“Who was the sick friend?”

“I don’t know. I never really thought about it then. Now…”

“Then:
stay with then. You didn’t think it might be a woman?”

“You mean Rita?”

“I’m talking about you. Did
you
think it might be a woman he was with?”

“No.”

“And yet you were jealous of him in the church.”

“Crazy. No, it isn’t. Everybody at the Forum thinks Pete was homosexual. I don’t think so.”

“But you didn’t think this sick friend excuse might be another woman.”

“You sound like a Victorian spinster!”

“Why are you angry?”

“Because that’s what I am. A Victorian spinster. I’m an oddball, an anachronism. I don’t even love my husband and I’m as faithful as a seeing-eye dog.”

“So you fantasize a homosexual.”

“Oh, shit.”

“That’s probably what it is, shit.”

“You don’t let up, do you, Doctor?”

“Are you in mourning?”

“What does that mean?”

“Do you feel pain or do you pretend?”

“I don’t pretend. I’m not going to pretend anything anymore. When my mother died, I pretended all over the place. And I didn’t feel a goddamn thing. I don’t know what I feel about Pete. Why did I masturbate? I was lying there doubled up thinking of him. What is it? Necro… necro-something. The whole feeling of rottenness, dead, decaying… But why did I feel that way? I wanted to go back, back, deep back… that look at myself, my behind with an eye, what looked like an eye staring back at me from the mirror, one, homo… I don’t know! Death, birth, one eye, Father, one church, immaculate conception, one, one… But I’m two! Jeff wants me to come to Paris for a month in June if you say it’s all right.”

“What do you say?”

“He didn’t ask me what I say.”

“What
do
you say?”

“The honeymoon part turns me off, a second honeymoon. I never thought I’d get through the first. He should’ve taken my mother. The way she flirted with him. I was ashamed for her. Christ! She was too much. Too much for Jeff. He took me. I’ll bet she was too much for my father. Maybe that’s why he took off. She was a whore!”

The realization of what she had said blocked out everything for the moment. That she said it had to mean something. It had just come out.

“How do you feel?”

“Angry.” That just came out too. But angry at whom, herself? Her mother?

“Magdalene’s daughter,” Doctor said.

“Oh, boy. I’ve got to sit up. I want to think. I don’t want to just lie here kicking it around. I can’t.” She sat up and put her feet on the floor.

The doctor did not try to direct her. She sat with her eyes averted.

“I don’t mean she was on the streets or anything like that, but there were men I pretended not to know about, even to myself. Like once when all the plumbing broke down at school and we were sent home early. She was supposed to be at work at the bookstore, but she wasn’t. I heard them thumping in the bedroom and I went out again like lightning. I locked the door and went to a movie.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Oh, boy, was I a mess. I didn’t ever want to go home so I went to the zoo. Those goddamn monkeys… It was like the whole cage was in heat. It wasn’t just sex. All the kids at school were making out, and when I went on that peace march, it was great. It just happened and I hardly knew the boy. How many times have I told you this?”

“It comes up,” Doctor said.

“One day we wouldn’t have enough money to pay my tuition or the rent or something, and the next day it was okay. I was going to come out like a Vanderbilt. And I knew. I know what it was I hated most of all: she’d say to me, ‘You know, it’s all for you, my little darling. Everything I do…’ And inside I’d be screaming. Outside I just said, Okay, Mother. I believe you… Hey, that little child upstairs. Juanita… a little Puerto Rican me.” She told the doctor about Mrs. Rodriguez, then about Mack coming to look for Rita. “I told the police everything I knew about her except the part about you. I didn’t mention you.”

Doctor Callahan sat back in her chair, her feet elevated. The
New York Times
was on her side table. She touched her hand to it. “According to this, no one has seen her since Wednesday night. I saw her here Wednesday at six
P.M.”

“Good,” Julie said. “I mean it’s good that somebody saw her after you did.”

“I understand.”

“I’m very sorry, Doctor.”

“Why?”

“I shouldn’t have involved you.”

The doctor looked at her quizzically. “Why don’t we talk about that?” she said, and made that famous gesture with her hand that had the effect of toppling Julie over on the couch.

“I did ask myself why I was doing it—if it was because I really cared about her, or if it was a way of getting back to you. I think I was sincere when I said to you about a human being asking for help, you had to help them. But I did feel good about you and being able to tell her you would see her. It got me off the hook. Ah. All right. But why was I on the hook? What was she to me? I saw her take off her jacket… I went out of the shop and watched her go up the street toward Eighth Avenue. She took off her jacket and slung it over her shoulder. The way she walked was different, I felt she was turning back into a whore. No, I felt I’d been had. Put on. That’s what I felt at first. Then she threw the jacket into the face of some guy”—Julie imitated the motion—“as though she was saying, No! I won’t do it! And then she ran, and I couldn’t see her. But you can bet I was cheering for her all the way. He dumped her jacket in a wastebasket and I thought for a minute I’d go and get it for her, but an old beggar woman got it before I’d even made up my mind. That’s when I decided to call you. I believed her then. That’s the main thing, and I thought, Even if I’m wrong, if she is a phony, Doctor will know it in ten minutes. And if she
is
a phony she still needs help.”

“How do you feel now?”

“I want to believe in her. I do believe in her. By which I mean I don’t think she killed Pete. But if I believe what I’m saying, then I’ve betrayed her all over the place. I’ve probably spoiled her chance of ever getting out.”

“Isn’t it possible you exaggerate your contribution?”

“I don’t see how I could have done anything else. If she is innocent, maybe I can help prove that.”

“What can you do?”

“A lot. I know things now about Pete I didn’t know before.”

“Was she the sick friend he mentioned in the note to you?”

“She could have been. She could have told him the same story she told me, about wanting to go home, et cetera, and he could have tried to help her.”

“Was it through him you met her?”

“No, that was Mr. Bourke.”

“Who is Mr. Bourke?”

“Well, Doctor, that’s another story. Let’s just say he’s an all-around mutual Mend.”

“You have certainly acquired an odd assortment of friends in two weeks’ time.”

“There are lots more I haven’t told you about—Detective Russo and Mrs. Ryan…”

“Will you continue in this shop? What do you call it?”

“Friend Julie’s. Pete suggested Sister Julie.” She sat up, remembering something that seemed important. “Mack called me Sister Julie. He did. ‘Look, Sister Julie…’”

“Mack is the procurer?”

“Yes… It could be coincidence, his calling me Sister Julie. It sounds commoner than Friend Julie. But what if
he
got it from Pete?”