Shiva and Other Stories (14 page)

The Twentieth Century Murder Case

I
TAKE THE INVESTIGATION TO THE STREETS.
Footwork is laborious, mindless, dull, but there is no other approach which in the long run pays equal dividends. Particularly in stubborn, intractable cases of this nature. The twentieth century lies gasping in the intensive-care ward, four-fifths slain and in very poor condition. Cheyne-Stokes syndrome has set in. Flayed to within an inch of its poor life, then shot in the temple, the century twitches under resuscitative devices, inattentive to the solicitous concern of attending personnel. It does not look like the twentieth century is going to pull through, and who did it? Who brought this innocent victim to such a terrible condition? The case has been handed to me. My credentials are splendid; my record among the best. Still, here is a case to make even such as me quail. There is hardly a shortage of suspects, a dearth of motive, and yet the unusual
cruelty
of the assault—

I cancel such speculations. I am of a mordant and introspective turn of mind which is not bad for my profession but deadly to straight-forward investigation. At the offices of Cambridge, Hawley & Smoot, advertising agents, I show my identification to a hierarchy of secretaries and assistants, refuse to take no for an answer, refuse to take yes for an answer, refuse any answers at all until I am finally in the presence of Hawley himself, senior partner and sole survivor of the original trio who with little but faith and an insight started this agency from a ground-floor cubbyhole in 1946. He is an enormously fat man, pulverized by decades of business lunches and success, expensively hopeless affairs and terror of coronary bypass. “I didn’t do it,” he says, when I present myself. The twentieth century assault case is very big news, as would have been expected, and is on the front pages of all the newspapers; he does not have to ask my business. “I had no reason. It’s the only century I ever knew; I was born in 1909; I’ll never get out of it alive. Why would I want to kill the twentieth century?”

“If it dies you’ll get out of it alive,” I point out shrewdly.

He turns his palms up. “I tell you, I have no reason,” he says. “I always had the kindest thoughts. Television, intercontinental flight, the double dry martini, the Cadillac, the sun visor. The telephone, the turbo-hydramatic transmission. Cheap contraception. What would I have against the century that gave me these blessings?”

“You leached the heart out of it,” I point out mildly; “for decades you infested it with lies, institutionalized lying, misdirection, used the technology granted to dehumanize, to sell people goods they did not need at prices they could not afford for purposes they could not fathom. Having scraped away at its soul, mad with power, you went for its heart. Overcome with guilt, inflamed by megalomania, you cornered it in an alley and put the knife in.”

His jaw drops but his eye is steady. “I’m afraid that’s not so, lieutenant. That’s simply not so. Even though you might disagree with our methods or market practices—and I point out to you the theory of the greatest good for the greatest number—I am not a murderer nor are any of my associates. We are businessmen. Besides,” he concludes, “the century may pull through. Latest reports indicate that it has survived the initial crisis.”

“Even if it lives,” I say, “brain damage is irreversible. It will never walk or talk or laugh or cry again; all but clinically it will be dead.” I push back my chair, stand. “You are to keep me apprised of your whereabouts at all times,” I say, handing him my card. “You are not to leave the city without permission.”

“I will not be intimidated,” Hawley says. “My attorney will be in touch with you.”

“It would be a very good idea to contact your attorney,” I say and leave the office quickly. It is always best to terminate interviews rapidly, to leave them off balance, to leave an ambiguous threat hanging. This is one of the first principles of investigation. Truly, I am the very best at what I do, and yet I have never had a case like this. No one in the division has any experience with an atrocity of this dimension. I whisk down in the elevator fifty flights, come out on the gray streets filled with those who keep vigil, and get into my illegally parked car. A pretzel vendor recognizes me, nods. “I’m glad you’re on the case, lieutenant,” he says; “you’re the best. You’ll get him, won’t you?

“We all loved the century very much,” the vendor says, wiping away a tear from an ashen cheek. “Even though he treated most of us so inequitably, we knew that he had a good heart. We felt that he was on our side. Secretly, if you know what I mean. Most of us plain folk loved him.”

Touched I say, “I know what you mean.”

“Any chance he may live?”

I shrug. A small crowd which has gathered stares at me quietly. “It may,” I say, “but it will never be the same.”

“You get the dirty swine who did this to my century, lieutenant,” the vendor says. He gestures. The crowd applauds thinly. I start the engine of the specially equipped, heavy-duty Plymouth and spin off into traffic. Truly, the mourning of the plain folk has moved me and made me even more determined to solve the case, and yet one hardly knows where to begin. Everywhere there are suspects, of motive there is a plethora.

Impulsively, I take the car north on the Harlem River Drive, merging at last with the Cross County Expressway; into the wealthy northern suburbs I speed. At Scarsdale I cut east, turn into a town even more shielded and exclusive, pull up to the gates of an enormous estate, show my credentials to the armed guard. The process is slow and rife with bureaucracy and threats, but eventually I am led into the presence of Howard Waffles, Senior, chairman of the board of Wonder Waffles. “You poisoned the century slowly,” I say after the brief preliminaries, moving directly to the assault. “Foul synthetics, deadly additives, tenderizers, pollutants, cancer-causing particles, diseased meat, franchised out at a million intersections through the nation. You filled the bloodstream of the century with evil, and then you would want to destroy the evidence. The
corpus delicti
; the century itself.”

“Nonsense,” says Howard Waffles, Senior, a sprightly old man with the company insignia jutting through his lapel. “I’m in business to feed, not to slaughter.”

“You never told the truth. You sold poison and called it enriched, budget-minded health.”

“You’ll have to talk to my advertising agents, Cambridge, Hawley, and that young fella Smoot, about that,” Howard Waffles, Senior, says. “I was just a man with a plan; I left the specifics of merchandising up to them. But, uh-uh, sonny, uh-uh, lieutenant. Murder wasn’t my attitude. The century’s been too good to me. It gave me four hundred million dollars; why would I want to lead it into a dark alley and hit it over the head? Or shoot it in the temple, as I’ve read.”

“Maybe because you’re an old man and you knew the century would out-live you. It was jealousy; a crime of passion. Passionate rage.”

Howard Waffles, Senior, belches and laughs thinly; a ripe odor of franchised Wonder Waffles onion rings drifts toward me. “Sorry, lieutenant,” he says, “I’m an old man; I can’t be bullied. I didn’t do anything to the century and you know it.”

“You poisoned it—”

“I gave cheap food to the mobile millions.” Howard Waffles, Senior, takes up my card, which has been lying on the desk before him, and puts it in a pocket. “I’ll thank you to leave now, lieutenant,” he says. “I find your methods crude and insulting. And you can’t scare an old man; the nights are all the fear he can handle.”

There is nothing to do but leave. Although it is very hard for me to admit this, I know when I have been bested. If I had the unusual force, the dynamism and certitude of a Howard Waffles, Senior, or of a Hawley for that matter, I would probably not be attached to homicide or to any part of civil service, for that matter. I would be in business for myself. As it is, I have to get along as best I can.

I am ushered out of the estate. Half-way down the cross-county parkway my radio beeps for my attention and I learn the worst. The century has expired. It is definitely, then, a murder case. Emotion overwhelms me briefly and I am forced to pull the car over to the side of the road. It is for me, truly as it is for Hawley, the only century I will ever know. It was four-fifths dead and poisoned past endurance, but it was still around for all of us; it was something that we could take as much for granted as the air we breathe, and now it is gone, and what is there for us to say? How will we live? Where will we go? My tears come spontaneously, mingled with an awesome determination: I will find the assailant. I cannot bring back the century but I can avenge him.

I drive directly to the huge offices of the International Communications Network, ICN as it is called, park defiantly in the executive parking lot, and bully my way past three vice-presidents and the chairman of the board into the office of the Vice-President for Programming who is, of course, the real power. There is very little difficulty for once in getting through; news of the tragedy, as such things have a way of doing in this era, has spread throughout the city and vigil has turned into mourning. In corners I see younger personnel weeping; middle-echelon executives with more ambivalent attitudes sit in their offices staring emptily through the open doors and shredding little bits of paper in their fists. The board, in the nature of such things, is probably celebrating the death of this guilt-provoking century and already planning massive, once-in-a-lifetime coverage of the funeral ceremonies. But the Vice-President for Programming is otherwise occupied; he stares at me across the massive bulwark of his desk. “I don’t know why you came to see me,” he said. “I have nothing to do with this. I send my sympathies, of course. Perhaps he’ll recover.”

“The century is dead,” I say flatly. “Everyone in the city knows that by now and so do you.”

He twitches back in his chair. “I’ve been busy,” he said. “I’ve been working all this time. No, I hadn’t heard. I’m very sorry.”

“Are you?”

“Of course I am.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“The century . . . you’re talking about a great public figure. And of course we owed him everything. What do you want, lieutenant?”

“I want to know why you murdered him.”

The vice-president’s mouth opens, not unlike Hawley’s in an interview that is already a long time ago. Of course it would be. It occurred in a previous millennium. “I’m afraid you’re being ridiculous, lieutenant.”

“Am I? You had the motive, you had the opportunity. Nobody thinks of the century anymore in this city; everything was twenty-first this or twenty-first that. And once you did away with the century, all recent history was obliterated. You could lie at will, misrepresent the past, misrepresent heritage, sentimentalize and falsify passion, clean up the cruelties . . . once the century was gone, there was nothing to sit in judgment of you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” the Vice-President for Programming says. “I haven’t been in this job for two years. I inherited the situation.”

“But once the century was dead,” I say, “no one would know how long you’d been here, would they? Everything would be a fresh start. There would be no history.”

“You’re being a fool,” the vice-president says but his voice quavers. “This proves nothing.”

“It proves everything,” I say. “Confess. It will go easier for you.”

“You’re bluffing me. I want an attorney. I won’t proceed any further until I get an attorney.”

“No one will be your friend,” I say. “The simple people will turn against you. But there is a way. I don’t think you were in this alone. Nothing like a murder of the century can be accomplished without conspiracy. I want to propose that you were merely a member of a group, that you had associates. If you name names, describe the modus operandi, throw yourself on the mercy of the court, it might go easier for you. You might be able to settle for a plea of conspiracy.”

The vice-president’s eyes are wide and lustrous. “You’re bluffing,” he says again. “You don’t have a shred of evidence.”

“I can get it,” I say relentlessly. At the end, when I feel a case coming to completion, the instincts take over and I roll toward the conclusion without ambivalence; this is why I am the best in the world at what I do. Or did. A new millennium is a fresh start. “I can talk to Hawley. Or to Harold Waffles, Senior. They’re both clever men, entrepreneurs as you are not, self-sufficient types. They’ll see the wisdom of going over to the state even if you do not. They’ll hang you out to dry. They’ll leave you alone with all the guilt.”

He holds himself rigid and then his control breaks. He lunges toward the desk, his face disfigured. “It wasn’t my idea!” he screams. “It was theirs! The liars! They would take care of all the details; all I was supposed to do was to take care of the media, the public relations, the cosmetics. I had nothing to do with it at all, do you hear me? They came to me! I wanted no part of it! It was that Waffles, he’s crazy, he wants to kill everyone!”

I take the handcuffs from my pocket, lean forward, snap them on his unresisting, clasped wrists. “We’ll hear all of it at headquarters,” I say. “We’ll take your full statement.”

“I didn’t want to do it!” the vice-president shrieks. “They had been planning it for years, they said, had to get it done now before the century died a natural death; they said they were going to do it whether I came in or not but if I did I would get a piece of it, a new ranking, a large promotion, a fresh start—”

I haul him to his feet by the cuffs. “We’ll all get a fresh start now,” I say. I propel him toward the door. “That’s for sure.”

“I
loved
the century—”

“Every man kills the things he loves,” I point out philosophically.

* * *

Which may even be true, but after this is wrapped up, I’m quitting. There have already been five attempts on the twenty-first, three of them sniper fire, one a bear trap, one poison, all of them near-misses. A successful crime always leads to imitators. I am too old, the century too young.

It’s going to be a rotten millennium.