Dead on the Level (14 page)

Johnson’s face was lost behind the coffee cup for a few seconds and then came up grinning. “Sounds like a celebration,” he said. “What’s up, John? An anniversary?”

“Anniversary? Naw! My wife’s son come home last night with a bride. Hey, Casimir! What’s the matter, she leave you already for one of them good-looking boys?”

A party was a party, and John wasn’t beyond sampling his own wares on such an occasion. He was, therefore, in one of his rare fatherly moods. Casey felt himself being yanked toward the bar, Big John’s fat, sweaty arm hugging his shoulder and urging him closer to the last man on earth he wanted to face.

“Casimir, here, we thought was dead. No word, no letters for nine, ten years. Then, all of sudden, he comes home with a wife. What you think of that?”

“Well, there are those who might say he was the same as dead,” the lieutenant drawled, “but being a happily married man myself— Congratulations, Casimir.”

The blue eyes didn’t tell Casey a thing, maybe because there was nothing to tell. He wasn’t even sure that the man had noticed him that morning in the hotel lobby; there was no real reason to think that he had. He was just being scared, and that was the worst thing he could possibly do. He tried to think of something witty to fill up the awful gap in the conversation, but Casimir Morokowski was never quick on the comeback. And now Ma was staring, too, or was that just another trick of nerves?

“I could use some of that coffee myself,” he muttered. “I’m not used to these parties.”

“So you get drunk!” John roared. “That’s what a wedding party’s for—so a man gets one good drunk before his wife spoils the fun. Ain’t it?”

Even if Johnson didn’t remember Casey’s face this time, he was certain never to forget it again. “So you’re Casimir,” he said. “So you’re the son Mrs. Posda’s always talking about.”

“Talking about?” Casey echoed.

“The one she thought was lost in the war.”

It surprised Casey to hear that. He’d never thought of Ma as caring too much one way or the other, let alone talking about him to outsiders. “I was in it,” he said.

“Army of occupation?”

That’s his business, asking questions
, Casey reassured himself.
It
doesn’t mean anything. He’s just trying to fill in the years
. But he didn’t get around to answering the question because the rhumba came to a cheering climax and the gang started yelling for another polka. Glancing back from the bar, Casey could see Phyllis looking for him and that wasn’t good. Even with her hair fixed that way, even with the strange transformation that had wiped away her brittle ways, he didn’t like the risk of having her come face-to-face with a man who must have studied her photographs enough to have memorized every feature.

“If I don’t get back to the party,” he muttered, edging toward the crowd, “they’ll probably forget which one of us is the groom.”

It wasn’t polite to turn his back on the lieutenant that way, but Casey felt a lot better with the gang closing in around him and the music starting up again. He never knew exactly when it was that Johnson left, but the next time he dared to look back at the bar the man was gone. Gone as silently as he had come. By that time, what with the wine and the juke box and Phyllis in his arms, Casey didn’t much care.

The second time Big John padded down the hall to the bathroom Casey stopped trying to sleep. He couldn’t turn it off like that just because the party was over. He couldn’t turn off the music and the excitement; besides, the rocker was poking holes in his back. He stood up and stretched and then walked over to the window. It was a clear night. A sprinkle of stars were caught in the wedge of sky outside the window and it was sure to be cold. But on the other side of the pane was a narrow frame porch and an outside stairway, and Casey needed a smoke. The sash slid up silently and he stepped out.

Now he wasn’t at all sleepy. From the porch he could count the dark windows of shops lining the side street back to the alley. Beyond that point the two-story frames took over again, but Casey never got beyond that point; he was too busy dusting off a few old memories. Right across the street was Kovack’s delicatessen, a half-basement shop tucked in under a big yellow brick apartment house. He’d been about ten when that yellow brick went up and had barely missed getting picked up for swiping boards from the building site. That was before Ma married Big John and a little fuel was worth taking chances for. And there, a couple of doors farther down, there was the little funeral parlor with the mustard-colored drapes and a potted rubber plant in the window.

Casey leaned against the wooden porch railing blowing smoke into the darkness and watching the ghosts outside the funeral parlor. He remembered them well. The little one with the drawn face was himself, Casimir Morokowski, trying to understand what it meant to be going to his own father’s funeral; but that was a very small ghost and there were so many others. He’d watched them all from this very porch, not understanding anything except that death was a silent thing and there was no arguing with it, no more arguing than with a copper or the sisters at school or with Ma’s cat-o’-nine. In some ways death was just like life.

There had been a funeral with four coffins, one large, three small. There had been coppers and crowds and men with cameras and the little mechanic from Sadow’s garage looking sick and bewildered, crying like a baby. Why had the little mechanic confessed to poisoning his wife and children when all the time (it had taken a little while to establish this) it was the faulty refrigerator in their cheap apartment that was poisoning the food? Why? The ghosts were very old but Casey trembled. He could tell himself that things weren’t like that any more—that nobody was going to rubber-hose anything out of Casey Morrow, but he didn’t really believe himself any more than he expected the world to believe.

“Casey—”

The sound whirled Casey about, but it was only Phyllis coming toward him through the window. Even in the darkness there was nothing ghostly about Phyllis. “I can’t sleep,” she said. “I need a cigarette.”

At least he could light her cigarette without his hand shaking, that was some improvement. “You’ll catch cold,” he said.

“I’ve got my coat on.”

“You’ll catch cold anyway crawling out of a warm bed that way.”

But it wasn’t important. Suddenly Casey knew that nothing they would say or do, for the next few moments, would be in the least important because now everything was settled and what was going to be was going to be. It was just another of those things you didn’t argue with.

The street lamp on the corner below brought her face out of the shadows. “What were you staring at?” she asked.

“Ghosts,” Casey said.

“Are there many of them?”

This wasn’t important, either. They were just so many words that had to be exchanged. Nobody knew why. That’s just the way things were done.

“Too many,” Casey answered. “I used to come out here like this a lot when I was a kid. At night, I mean. Especially in the summer when it was too hot inside to sleep. This isn’t much of a place to be a kid in.”

This is my world
, he was saying;
take a good look and beware
. But it was already too late. The wine and the juke box and the crazy dream were all one now, and all of the words had been spoken. Phyllis’s cigarette slipped from her fingers and spiraled down through the darkness like a falling, sputtering star. Casey’s followed, and the ghosts, all the miserable gray ghosts, faded then and were gone.

AND THEN it was morning—the same winter gray as all the other mornings—but now everything had changed. It took a bit of doing to understand how much everything had changed. Casey looked away from the ceiling where the window light was doing its best to bring dawn to the shadows, and turned his head. Phyllis was sleeping like a baby, flat on her stomach and with her fists burrowed in the pillow, and it came over him then how he had known all along that this was going to happen. From the very beginning of the dream, from the moment she first looked at him with those smoky eyes and first smiled that faraway smile, Casey Morrow was a marked man. And Phyllis Brunner? Yes, he decided. She, too, must have known. Such things really happened, then. They really did.

Casey felt good. Never—and this was remarkable remembering the party of the night before—had he felt quite so good. He wanted to sing, but that would awaken Phyllis. He wanted to whistle, anyway, and that’s just what he did, softly to himself, as he slid out of bed, gathered up his clothes, and tip-toed off to the bathroom. It was still early and the flat was filled with Sunday silence. Ma would be off to mass, night before or no night before, and Big John (no sound of snoring, so he must be up) would be down at the bar reading the funnies and having a shot or two for the ones he’d overshot last night. It wasn’t until he was almost through shaving that Casey’s whistle died out and he remembered.

Not everything had changed. Not quite. He still couldn’t saunter into the nearest police station, tell them the whole story, and expect everybody to shake hands all around and wish Casey Morrow and his bride a happy life. He still couldn’t walk down any street without fear walking beside him, and that was no kind of life at all. Something had to give. The hiding had to stop now; the running and the lying had to end. He rinsed the lather off his face and finished dressing slowly and thoughtfully, and then, back in a little corner of his mind, he came across an unfinished chore. Maggie had rented a car for him. Purpose—a visit to Mrs. Darius Brunner. Now that he remembered, that visit seemed long overdue. Mrs. Brunner wasn’t the police; she wasn’t an enemy. She must be worried sick about her daughter and with that as a lever he might be able to bargain. He wasn’t getting very far going it alone.

Phyllis was still asleep when Casey went back to the bedroom for his coat. Good. He could imagine what an argument she would put up if he told her of his plan, but at the rate she was pounding her ear he could make the trip out and back without her knowing whether he’d traveled forty miles or just down to the corner drugstore. Casey was grinning as he slipped down the back stairs. For a new husband he was learning fast.

To find a place like Darius Brunner’s country home you didn’t need an address or a map; you needed about five gallons of gas at a roadside station just outside Arlington, and you needed a little ordinary conversation. The overcast was thinning as the morning progressed, and the sun was starting to put out feelers.

“Doesn’t look much like rain today,” Casey ventured.

The man in old army twills and a leather jacket finished swabbing the windshield and grinned.

“Sure doesn’t.”

“Be a relief after last week.”

“Yeh, I hear you really caught it in the city. We haven’t had a drop out this way since October.”

As the pump was running up the gallons, Casey had time for a little problem in addition. Maybe it was the diligent way the station operator had cleaned that windshield that reminded him of the Negro attendant at Gorden’s apartment garage; in any event, something didn’t jibe. The Negro had recalled polishing Gorden’s car after that rainy night, and yet, Gorden was supposed to have been with Mamma Brunner, and with Mamma Brunner was no rain. It was an intriguing problem and Casey was most happy with the total.

“Isn’t this the place where that murdered millionaire was from?” Casey queried when the operator again appeared at his window.

“You mean Darius Brunner?”

“Sure, that’s the guy. The story’s been in all the papers. Know him?”

Leather Jacket was grinning again. Hobnobbing with tycoons wasn’t exactly in his line, but this wasn’t the first curious motorist he’d served in the past week. “Oh, I’ve seen him around,” he answered. “He wasn’t out this way much. It’s Mrs. Brunner who likes the country. She’s got a nice string of saddle horses. Like horses?”

Casey didn’t like horses, which was fair enough considering how little they had liked him at Santa Anita, but in order to get the information he was after he was willing to woo the creatures with ardor.

“Sometimes, a couple of times a year I guess, Mrs. Brunner throws the place open for a charity horse show. I always go. She’s got some dandy jumpers.”

“I’ll bet!” Casey answered. “I’ll have to catch that next time. Near here?”

“Just west of town. Watch for the place if you’re going out that way. It’s a big place with white barns and a white rail fence all around.”

White barns and a white rail fence all around—that was easy. The rest wasn’t quite so easy. Now that he was here, actually nosing the coupé up the long, curved driveway, Casey was scared. What do you say to a woman whose husband has been murdered and whose daughter has been missing for a week? What do you say when she’s Gold Coast and you’re a punk from a flat at Big John’s saloon, and incidentally, her son-in-law? It was the incidental that had brought him here, and the incidental drove him on. But, Casey decided, the incidental he would keep to himself.

By this time he had reached the place where the driveway merged into a wide parking-area that stretched out toward the barnyard. There were several barns, stables, probably, and a neat white cottage that must belong to a caretaker. All of this in addition to the great white house with dormers that sat in among the now leafless maples, as confident and elegant as Mrs. Brunner herself had seemed in that instant of recognition that day in Brunner’s apartment. Now Casey was more than scared; he was awed. And then a middle-aged man in Levi’s and a red-plaid shirt sauntered up from the white rail corral and made him feel right at home.

“Well,” he demanded, and his furry brows assembled at the bridge of his nose, “what do you want?”

Casey cut off the motor. “Is this the Brunner place?”

“And if it is?”

“I want to see Mrs. Brunner.”

A well-fanged dog would have looked less hostile than the man in the plaid shirt, but Casey didn’t like being glowered at. His scare was wearing off fast.

“So you want to see Mrs. Brunner? So would a lot of other nosy folks. Now you just turn tail, son, and get on about your business.”