Time and Again (33 page)

But he could: He was stirring as Carmody finished, mumbling, a long thread of saliva swaying at his mouth corner as, eyes still closed, he struggled to lift his head. Carmody stepped back, picked up his cane, and walked swiftly around to the back of Pickering's chair. Jake's head lifted, I saw his eyes open, focus, then squeeze tight shut as the pain of the concussion struck him. His head must have throbbed agonizingly because I saw his face go dead-white; then his cheeks puffed and his shoulders hunched as he fought against nausea. For a few seconds he didn't move. Then he very slowly lifted his head again, and opened his eyes a little at a time, accustoming them to the light. His shoulders convulsed once again, then he was able — blinking a lot — to keep his eyes open, and the color began to return to his face.

He stared down at himself for a few seconds. Then his hands moved up to the belt. But the most they could do, bent as far as they'd go at the wrists, was brush the leather with the tips of his fingers. Carmody walked around the chair to face him. They looked at each other: a narrow almost perfectly straight ribbon of drying blood ran down Pickering's temple, and another down his forehead to the corner of one thick, black eyebrow. Carmody said, "You've created an impossible situation. You found the key." With the tip of his cane he touched the little crumpled ball of newsprint, then flicked it toward the boarded-up doorway where it shot under the bottom board, rolling past me, and I saw it drop down the shaft. "This season is the first in which my family has taken its place among New York's society. It won't be the last; I'll see to that." He closed and strapped the suitcase, then swung it to the floor, setting it beside the door. "You should have taken this much when you had the chance. Now it will be nothing." Carmody took off his coat, tossed it to the desk top, unfastened his tie and collar, unbuttoned his vest, then took a cigar from a vest pocket, and lighted it carefully. When it was going good, he shook out the match, dropped it to the floor, and stepped on it. Then he walked to a filing cabinet and pulled open the top drawer.

For a few moments he said nothing, just stood there, cigar in his teeth, staring down at the coded file-markings. Jake Pickering could revolve his chair, and had turned to watch him. Carmody glanced at him over his shoulder, apparently about to speak, but did not. He turned back to the file, and beginning at the front of the cabinet he began to look at every paper in it, flicking through them with a steadily moving forefinger. He glanced at perhaps a paper every second, his hand seldom pausing in its steady motion, though occasionally he touched the extended forefinger to his tongue and occasionally he removed the cigar from his mouth to tap the ashes to the floor. He rarely removed a paper, merely glancing at each as he flicked past it. But occasionally he stopped to read at greater length, taking the paper from the files. Twice he set such a paper aside, on top of the cabinet. The others he didn't trouble to replace, crumpling and dropping them to the floor.

But I suppose there were three or four thousand, maybe as many as five thousand sheets in the two-foot depth of that wooden file-cabinet drawer. The City Hall clock bonged once; it was one o'clock. Carmody was less than halfway through the drawer, and on top of the cabinet he had set aside only two papers. Pickering said, "I've waited so that you could see for yourself; it will take you hours to search through that one cabinet alone, and there are thirteen of them all together, an unlucky number for you."

Carmody walked to Jake's desk and dropped his cigar stub into the cuspidor on the floor beside it. He walked back to the open drawer, placed his hands in position to resume his search, and smiled at Jake over one shoulder. "I have all night," he said pleasantly. "And if that isn't enough, all the next day. And as much more time beyond that as may be required." His forefinger resumed its steady motion, the continuous small sound of the flicked corners becoming almost a part of the silence.

I leaned very close to Julia, and when my lips touched her ear I whispered on the exhalation, almost soundlessly. I said, "Lie down; rest. We're going to be here a long long time." I could see her face clearly; as she nodded, a stripe of yellow light from the other room moved up and down her forehead. She nodded, and so slowly it was soundless, she lay back on the floor along the wall. In the doorway I carefully leaned a shoulder and the side of my head against the jamb, and with one eye watched Carmody through a crack. Nearly motionless, he stood before the open file drawer, head bowed, only his arm and hand in steady monotonous motion.

When the clock outside bonged twice, Carmody was about a third of the way through the middle drawer, and now Pickering spoke again. "By now you will have observed that no complete filing is to be found in one place. To assemble all of yours — scores of documents scattered through every drawer of every case — would take me twenty minutes, perhaps. The system for discovering them lies in my head. But you've found only two in two hours! Isn't it time you understood that you must deal with me?"

Carmody didn't pause or even glance up. He said, "All night and even all the next day for a million dollars is satisfactory wages to me," and the steady, endless riffling past sheet after sheet continued.

I watched, dreamily; there was no way to measure passing time till the clock struck again. Presently, without pausing in his work, Carmody slowly lifted one foot and moved his leg up and down, flexing the muscles, revolving his foot at the ankle. He did the same thing with the other leg, then stood, feet a little wider apart than earlier, riffling past paper after paper. I continued to stare out at him, neither awake nor asleep. After a time Carmody paused for a moment, thinking, then slid the entire drawer out of the cabinet, and, his feet shuffling under the weight of it, carried it to the desk top. Sitting on the edge of the desk facing the drawer, he resumed his search, and Pickering laughed at him. "I wondered when you'd think of that," he said. "If you're tiring, let me offer you my chair." But Carmody didn't even move his head in acknowledgment, and his fingers never stopped.

I lay back beside Julia. We were in darkness here, and I couldn't tell if she were awake, and was afraid to whisper unnecessarily. I wished I had a cup of coffee, and in the moment of thinking of it I wanted it so badly it seemed impossible that I couldn't have it. Something to eat, I thought then, and was instantly famished. I forced a smile but I wondered how long we could possibly stay here; I'd anticipated nothing like this. Could Carmody possibly mean that he might stay here all of tomorrow? It was impossible; he'd have to go out for food, he'd have to rest. And so would Jake; if only both of them were to sleep, Julia and I might ease our way out of here. I was drifting to sleep, and made myself pop my eyes open in the dark. I didn't dare sleep; a few feet to my right the floorboards ended; I could roll off and fall three floors to the basement. I sat up; Julia was sleeping, I knew; I could just barely hear her slow regular breathing. I couldn't move back to the doorway, I realized; she might roll to the right, too, to fall or to be heard in the other room. I had to stay here beside her, ready, if she began to stir, to ease her quietly awake.

For two hours I sat not daring to even lean a shoulder or the side of my head against a wall. My head endlessly drooping and jerking upright again, I kept awake and heard the clock outside strike three; in the next room the tiny flickering sound seemed never to stop.

An unbelievably long time later the clock again began to strike and as it started I stood up under the cover of its bonging. My legs were terribly stiff, and I had to reach quickly across Julia to the wall beside her and steady myself. Then, very slowly and completely silently, I stretched every muscle — arms, legs, back, neck — counting the slow bongs; it was four o'clock. I stepped to the doorway, and found a crack to peek through. Jake was asleep, head on his chest, snoring very faintly. Carmody still sat on the edge of the desk, but now his upper body lay along the length of the file drawer on the desk top before him: the top drawer, I saw, of the second cabinet. He slept silently; I had to watch closely to see the tiny motion of the back of his vest. I assume most people are tempted — at least the impulse stirs — to occasionally commit the outlandishly impossible: to whistle in church, to say something wildly inappropriate to a situation. It popped up in my mind to yell "Boo!" as loudly as I could, and then watch the wild scramble in the next room. I smiled, and sat down beside Julia, and knew she was awake, I'm not sure how.

I lay down beside her to bring my mouth to her ear. I had to put an arm around her in order to get closer and to get oriented; I didn't mind. "You awake?" Her hair brushed across my nose as she nodded. I whispered the situation then, and told her the time. She asked whether I'd slept, then made me change places, and she sat doing guard duty while I fell almost instantly to sleep.

The first daylight on my face and the slow bong of the City Hall clock awakened me. I opened my eyes; Julia's hand was hovering an inch from my mouth, ready to close over it if I started to speak. I lifted my head and kissed her palm, and she yanked her hand away, startled, then smiled. She made a pointing gesture toward the next room, then placed her finger across her lips, and I nodded. I'd been counting with the clock; it was seven, and when it stopped I heard once again what I seemed now to have been hearing forever — the steady
flick-flick
of paper in the room beside us.

We moved silently to the boarded-over doorway and sat down as before. Except that the room was now gray and shabby with daylight — a powdering of new snow had appeared on the outside windowsills — nothing had changed. Carmody sat on the desk top flicking steadily through the inches of paper in, I saw, the bottom drawer of the third cabinet. Jake had turned in his chair to watch; there was a huge swollen lump on his head nearly the size of a fist, and his face was haggard, his eyes red, the skin below them drooping into wrinkles, and his mouth hung open a little. He was in pain, I thought — from the blow on his head, perhaps, or the inability to alter his position. But Carmody's face looked almost as tired, his eyes dulled and staring, and I wondered if he were still able to fully comprehend the blur of paper passing endlessly before them. There were five sheets now, lying on top of the second filing cabinet.

Something had to change soon; that was obvious. In the new daylight, very white from the fresh snow, I glanced at Julia beside me, and she looked rested, and she smiled at me. But just the same I knew that neither she nor I could stay here much longer. And neither could Carmody. He might be willing to leave Jake Pickering just as he was, but he himself would have to leave soon if only to get some food, and return. If he left, he'd have to gag Jake, I supposed. Jake didn't dare shout now and take another blow on the head, but he'd surely shout if Carmody left, until someone heard and investigated — which wouldn't take long. The city was fully awake, Julia and I could hear the steady roar of it outside our windows. The building was awakening, too; twice I'd heard the sound, coming up the shaft, of footsteps on the building staircase. What should we do, I wondered, if Carmody left? We couldn't push our loosened boards aside and walk out through Jake's office without his seeing us. I leaned back out of the doorway to look down. Beside and behind me the floorboards were gone and I could see far below into the shaft, lighted at each floor by the windows facing east on Nassau Street. The joists of the floors below us had been removed, I saw; there was no way at all for us to get out of here by way of the elevator shaft.

And I was tired. I ached from hours of sitting or lying on wooden floorboards. I was thirsty and hungry, and Julia must be the same. But if there was anything to do but continue to sit here, staring into the next room, I couldn't think of it. I simply repeated to myself that something had to change soon, something had to give; and when Julia glanced at me I smiled reassuringly.

After half an hour or so Carmody stopped. He got to his feet, revolving his shoulders, rotating his head as he bent his neck, working the stiffness loose. He stood looking speculatively at Jake, and I thought I could read his mind; he was wondering if he dared leave him for a time, and how best to do it. But then he thought of something I hadn't; he turned, and began opening the drawers of Jake's desk one after another. I'd once searched these drawers, too, and I remembered what he was going to find.

He reached the bottom, left-hand drawer, opened it, lifted out the paper sack, looked into it, then looked over at Jake, and smiled. He sat down on the desk top and ate the four or five big white crackers, holding his cupped hand under his mouth to catch the crumbs, which he tossed into his mouth last. There were soft brown spots on the apple, but he ate it all, including the core. He wasn't deliberately taunting Jake, but Jake sat watching him, and when Carmody stood up again, dusting the last crumbs from his hands, he was grinning. He opened a file drawer, brought out the half-f bottle of whiskey, pulled the cork, and tossed down a good belt. The cork still in hand, he looked consideringly at Jake for a moment. "Want an eye-opener?" he said, and Jake hesitated, then shrugged a shoulder, unwilling to say yes, unable to refuse, and Carmody walked over and, a little contemptuously, held the bottle to Jake's lips, watched him swallow twice, then took it away. Then — I clutched my head in both hands, and rocked back and forth helplessly — Carmody went back to work.

For over two more hours we sat in a semi-stupor; the snowstorm was heavier now, snow piling up on the window ledge, lying flat against the glass. We'd been here sitting or lying on a hard floor too long, and I knew we couldn't take it much longer. Most of the time Julia sat simply staring at the floor and so did I; after a while I put my arm around her shoulders and made her rest against me, her head on my shoulder. It occurred to me that Jake Pickering looked to be in pretty good shape; his color was better now, probably from the whiskey. But he'd also had more sleep than any of us; and his arms, while bound, were protected by a considerable thickness of cloth, and the leather binding was broad and flat; they wouldn't be numbed. Still, he hadn't been able to stand or move about for over nine hours; I thought he must be in pretty severe discomfort, and I had to admire the calmness of his voice when presently he spoke.