Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (50 page)

Then September arrived and Labor Day weekend, and suddenly, just as I had feared, there seemed to be no more empty apartments anywhere. I would spend whole days now searching for them, and I found myself frequently forced to remain in the same apartment for several days, although I knew how dangerous that was.

One day I saw Tyler. I was sure it was Tyler, even from a distance. A large black man, walking with a limp up Third Avenue. I had no idea where he had come from or where he was going to. He walked half a block, climbed into a grey sedan, and drove away. There was no way of knowing what he was doing there. Perhaps he lived there. Perhaps they had all forgotten about me and were working on something else. In that block there was an enormous white brick apartment building — just the sort of building I would be likely to stay in.

One thing was certain: they were not looking for me in some other city. Jenkins had probably worked it all out — where I was staying, how I was doing it. But it was possible that they knew nothing definite at all. They might still be unsure whether I was even in New York. I wished there were some way of knowing. Or at least of stopping myself from turning it over endlessly in my mind, until I could hardly think of anything else. It would have been easier if I could have talked to someone — anyone. About anything.

I thought of going to Boston and calling Jenkins from there. The call itself would mislead him, and perhaps I would get some sense of what he thought and what he was doing. Ridiculous. The only thing was to keep absolutely quiet: give them nothing to go on, nothing to lure them on. If they went long enough without a trace of me, they would have to give it up. For all they knew I might be dead.

A few days later I thought I saw Gomez again. I began to see all of them all the time, until I was no longer sure if I had ever really seen any of them. Always, when I would rush after them, they would be gone before I could get to them. They would disappear around the corner. The car would be just pulling away as I got there. I was watching for them constantly now.

Sometimes a telephone would ring in some apartment I was staying in, and I would become convinced that it was Jenkins calling me. He knew I was there. Or that I might be there. He was tempting me to answer. It would be almost a relief to speak to him. The telephone would go on and on. Then the ring might stop and start again a few seconds later, until finally I would have to flee the apartment to get away from it.

I hated the feeling of them gradually, steadily closing in on me, and waves of rage and hatred would surge up in me until I could not think of anything else. I had the gun. I would imagine myself patiently watching for them and picking them off one by one. I would imagine myself stepping up to Jenkins and saying, “I’m here, Jenkins.” And then I would fire into a joint, an elbow or knee, which would shatter horribly. He would collapse, his face contorted in unendurable pain. I would fire again at the writhing form, and he would watch the blood spurting out of the holes in his chest. These scenes of revenge would take possession of me, and I would live through them over and over again, powerless to turn my thoughts in any other direction.

But in practice, as Jenkins had so helpfully pointed out, it is difficult to raise the gun and shoot down the other person. One needs a sudden access of hatred or desperate terror — feelings which, although they seem to be forever crowding useful thoughts out of your head, are never there when you really need them. I still shuddered at the memory of Tyler, bleeding before me. And as Jenkins had also pointed out, there was nothing to be gained by shooting any of them. It would hardly diminish their determination to get me. My only choice was to go on as I was.

Then, late one morning as I was setting out for the day from an apartment in a large white brick building on Second Avenue I saw Clellan at the other end of the lobby, talking to the doorman. Although I was constantly watching for them, constantly expecting to encounter them, the sight of one of these people always stopped my heart and filled me with dread. Trembling, I walked very slowly and carefully up to where they were standing.

Clellan was saying in his hearty way, “Now you know and I know that in a building this size, there’s no way you’re going to be able to monitor one hundred percent who comes in and who goes out. Which is why this city-wide task force has been set up.”

The doorman spoke with an Eastern European accent. “The people that come through here, I could tell you things, you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Well, that’s it,” Clellan said. “That’s why we’re here. We can work with you. The thing is, we need your input. We need to know exactly where the problems are, whether you’re seeing any sign of unauthorized access to any of these apartments. Any keys missing or out of place. You keep keys to apartments down here in the lobby, don’t you?”

“The keys I could tell you. The night man, Freddy — Puerto Rican guy, you know what I mean? All you gotta do is put the keys A to C or D to F for each floor on that hook, you know what I mean? But after Freddy’s been on, you can forget it.”

As the doorman spoke, Clellan’s face suddenly took on an intent expression, and I saw that he was staring down at the floor. Following his gaze, I looked down too. He was staring directly at my feet, or rather at the two footprint-shaped depressions in the carpet beneath them. For a moment neither of us moved. Then, very carefully, I lifted my right foot and put it quietly down again on the marble floor beyond the edge of the carpet. Clellan and I both watched as the carpet pile gradually straightened itself in the footprint. He continued to stare down. Then his hands twitched at his sides and his fingers opened indecisively, as if he were unsure whether to lunge in my direction. I withdrew the left foot, and the other footprint began to disappear from view. Clellan’s hands relaxed at his side. He looked up at where I was standing, an uncertain expression on his face.

The doorman, having noticed that Clellan was no longer listening to him, had stopped talking. He was watching Clellan now with a look of mystification.

“Halloway?” Clellan asked softly. I said nothing, made no movement. Clellan was staring intently toward me. I tried to decide how certain he was of my presence. His gaze went back to the carpet. No sign left there. “You there, Halloway?”

The doorman was watching Clellan very closely now, through narrowed eves. “You mind if I have another look at your identification?” he said suddenly. Clellan was not paying any attention to him. “You’ll have to wait here until I call the superintendent,” the doorman went on.

“Halloway?” Clellan repeated.

Quietly, slowly, I backed away.

“Halloway, we want to help you.”

I backed out through the open front door. Clellan’s gaze was moving all around the lobbv. He took a good look at the open door, screwed up his face, and turned back to speak to the doorman, who was trying desperately to call someone on the housephone.

I waited there in front of the building for Clellan. He came out several minutes later and walked purposefully down the street to the next block, where he climbed into a grey sedan parked in front of a fire hydrant. I followed him right to the car, peering into it in vain for anything that might give me some sort of useful information about them. As Clellan drove off, he had a telephone receiver in his hand and was talking animatedly.

I
could not go on helplessly watching these people close in on me. There must be something I could do to stop them. Or even just to slow their advance. Or to hurt them. My mistake was that I was always running, always retreating passively out of their way. Everything I did was defensive, a response to some move Jenkins had made. That was why he was always in control and why he would eventually get me. I had to find some way to seize the initiative. I had to strike directly at Jenkins somehow, take some forceful and unexpected action against him.

But where exactly was he? Somewhere these people would have some sort of headquarters, some office from which Jenkins organized his search for me. What I had to do was track Clellan or Gomez back to it. There I would find my opportunity to strike back. At the very least, I might learn something that would enable me this time to anticipate their next move, instead of letting them once again anticipate mine.

Then I suddenly understood why Clellan and Gomez and the others always arrived and departed in their grey automobiles. It was precisely so that I would not be able to follow them. It was to keep me from doing just what I was now trying to do. Jenkins had, of course, already thought all this through, and even if he did not expect me to try it, he would, as a matter of course, make sure that I could not get at him. I would never be able to track Clellan or Gomez or Tyler or Morrissey. They knew exactly what they were guarding against. They knew all about me. But Jenkins was conducting a massive investigation, and he would have to be using a lot of people who had no idea that they were searching for an invisible man and who would have no reason to think that anyone might be following them. I had to do something just interesting enough to draw one of those people but not interesting enough to warrant sending Clellan or Gomez.

The next morning I called my old office and, disguising my voice, told the receptionist that I would like to speak to Mr. Halloway. She told me that I was no longer employed there.

“He’s not?” I said. “There you are. I had no idea he’d changed jobs. You just start to lose touch with people as the years pass. Do you have any idea where he’s working now? I’ve tried his home number, and I never get anything but an answering machine.”

She said that she had no number or forwarding address to give out, but that if I wanted to leave a message, she would see that I got it.

“Will you?” I said. “That would be very kind. You could just tell him that Howard Dickison called. Nothing urgent. I just ran into a mutual friend, and I have some news that I thought might interest him. Nothing important. But he might give me a call.” I gave her Howard Dickison’s number.

I had encountered Howard Dickison at a party in July and recognized him as someone I had once been introduced to. I chose him now for two reasons. First, I did not know him, so that Jenkins’s investigators either would not have talked to him at all yet or would not have wasted much time on him — it really did not matter which. Secondly, he had no office-he was a writer, or said he was — which meant that I would not have to stake out both an office and a home.

Dickison lived in a brownstone in the West Seventies off Central Park West, and I went there immediately upon making my call and camped out on the front stoop for the rest of the day. He seemed to have the first two floors of the building and probably the garden, although I never saw the inside of his apartment. He must also have had a trust fund, since he seemed to work a fairly light schedule. He emerged at a little after ten-thirty, and I followed him over to a coffee shop on Broadway, where he consumed a prodigious quantity of eggs and bacon, while slowly reading the
Times.
I stood outside in the street and watched him enviously. He was back home again, ready to start his day, a little before noon.

I sat on the stoop and waited. Nothing whatever happened the rest of that day. Between five-thirty and seven, the tenants of the apartments on the upper floors straggled in. First a girl in her early twenties, not unattractive. Then a man in his fifties, who looked like an accountant. Next a middle-aged woman with both a briefcase and an enormous bag of groceries. Then another young woman in her twenties, who was probably the roommate of the first one. By seven-thirty they were setting out again. First the accountant; then the two young women, together. At exactly eight, a sweating, bald man carrying flowers arrived and rang one of the bells. The woman with the groceries presumably. He was buzzed in and set off up the stairs.

Dickison came out a little after eight-thirty, wearing a blazer and a silk tie. I followed him over to Central Park West and watched him get into a taxi. Then I walked north to a building in the Nineties where I knew of an empty apartment in which I could spend the night.

I was back at Dickison’s the next morning before eight. Not that Dickison would be up, but the visitors I was waiting for might well be. I watched the other occupants scurry out between eight-thirty and nine. The high points of the day were the mail delivery; the arrival of the superintendent, who vacuumed the hall and rearranged the garbage cans; and Dickison’s breakfast expedition at eleven. I hoped he would at least take a walk in the park, but he went straight home again, leaving me to sit out front on the stoop. By nine in the evening I had seen everyone come home from work and go out again for the evening, and I decided that I could leave too. No one would be coming to talk to Dickison this late.

On the third morning I was back once again in time to watch them file out as usual, except that one of the girls came out a little late with a young man, pink faced, not much over twenty-one. Out on the sidewalk, he squeezed her hand, a bit embarrassed, and turned quickly toward Broadway, while she hurried off the other way toward Central Park West.

At exactly nine-thirty the man I was waiting for appeared, walking up the street from Central Park West. He was middle-aged and stocky and wore an ill-fitting brown suit. He stopped in front of the house, checking first the house number and then his wristwatch before walking past me to the door and ringing. I followed and stood next to him, waiting. It was some time before Dickison appeared at the door, wearing a purple robe and evidently still more asleep than awake. He seemed confused by the presence of the visitor, who began at once to get through the formalities, speaking in a slow, mechanical monotone almost devoid of any pause or inflection.

“Good morning, Mr. Dickison, my name is Herbert Butler, I spoke to you yesterday, thank you very much for meeting with me, we’re performing a routine investigation of Nicholas Halloway in connection with the granting of a security clearance permitting access to classified materials who we understand is a friend of yours and I’d just like to ask you several questions about him which should only take a few minutes—”