a plan, an entity, perhaps a poetic unity, a flower of evil, a union between Artie and himself. And it was dead.
What had killed it? What was it really that had gone wrong?
Judd pulled away from the curb, but Artie, in the midst of lighting a cigarette, made a motion for him to stop, and jumped out to a newsstand—a new headline had caught his eye: MILLIONAIRE BOY SLAIN. Artie stood there on the pavement, reading. Judd honked. Still reading, Artie got into the car.
“How did they find out who he was?” Judd asked.
“Some stupid sonofabitch reporter went out there—”
Judd parked part way up the block and leaned over to read with Artie. His eye skipped down the column, and together they saw the line about the glasses: “Desperately awaiting word from the kidnapers, the Kessler family at first refused to believe that the boy found dead in the culvert was Paulie, because the police reported that the dead boy wore glasses. Then it was learned that the glasses had been picked up in the weeds, and placed on the boy by his finders. The glasses, police now believe, were dropped by the murderer, and should prove a valuable clue.”
Artie turned his face full on Judd. His cheek was twitching, high up under his eye. “You buggering sonofabitch, you had to go and spoil it.”
Automatically, Judd’s hand had gone to his breast pocket, though he already knew that it was so: this was the flaw. And a curious thrill went all through him, the first complete thrill of the entire experience. It was not the dark thrill he had imagined he might feel at the height of the deed itself, as at a black mass, nor was it the elative thrill he might have felt had the package been tossed from the train. It was a thrill as from some other being within himself; it was a gloating.
He told himself that it was a thrill to the challenge that now existed, the challenge to outwit pursuers, even when they possessed a clue. For there was no game unless you gave the other side a chance.
But why had the glasses been in his coat pocket at all? He speculated on causation. He had scarcely used the glasses during the past few months, not even for studying. It must have been weeks ago that he had stuck them in this coat pocket, and, hardly wearing this suit, he had forgotten they were there. Then what had made him choose this suit yesterday?
And when could the spectacles have dropped out? Judd tried to bring back the scenes of yesterday, to see into them, but only briefly, partially, only for that one item, as a man, to shield his sight from the burning sun, will cover part of a view. Had it happened when he was bending over, in the back of the car, the glasses dropping into the lap robe half wrapped around the boy? Judd saw again the boy entering the car, the quick blows, the suffocation—that part of it already done, so hastily, so irretrievably done before you could decide finally whether or not to do it. Then driving through the Midway, past the university, through the park, south to the edge of the city, then stopping at a hot-dog stand, leaving him in back there while they ate the franks, then cruising, then parking on the little side road back of a cemetery, waiting for darkness. And both climbing into the back seat, and Artie’s high-pitched, “Let’s see.”
Like kids in a dark closet, to do the most awful imaginable forbidden things. Huddling down. Had the glasses fallen out then, onto the robe? Artie beginning to undress the body, pulling off the knee pants. And Judd in himself wondering at himself, now that the opportunity had come to test the farthest human experience, dispassionately, as in a laboratory. Remembering the untried experiences from the list in Aretino’s Dialogues. Artie’s saying, almost petulantly, “He’s dead all right. Getting stiff.” Then all at once, tumuluously, himself losing interest . . . Now Judd shut off the dark image. The glasses, only the glasses—were they glinting there, fallen on the robe?
Pulling out of that cemetery lane, dark enough then, and driving down Avenue F . . . the turn, the ruts onto the wasteland, the spot where he always parked and left the car, going birding. Lucky, lucky no love birds parked there this night; then the two of them removing the long bundle wrapped in the lap robe, lugging it all the way across the weed-grown wasteland . . . Artie stubbing his toe, stumbling and swearing and letting down his end, the bundle dragging on the ground. Stopping to rest, Artie complaining, “Why the hell so far? Why not an easier place?” But no, this had to be the place—and stooping to pick up the bundle again, was that the moment when the glasses had fallen out? No, they were found too near the culvert. That weird and exhilarated march, the sky rim reddish from the Gary chimneys, the clumsy burdened feeling of endlessness, weighed down awkwardly with the bundle on one side, and under the other arm the boots he was carrying, and the container of hydrochloric in his pocket bumping his hip . . . Why labor so? Only for something that had to be done, had to be done!
And all the time trying to quiet Artie, to shut up Artie in his high mood making his jokes, waving his flask—“We come not to bury Paulie but to baptize—”
“Shut up! There’s some bastard railway switchman got a shack up the track. He’ll hear you.”
“Invite him! Let’s give him a drink of that old acid! You sure you got the ass-it?”
“I’ve got it, right in my pocket.”
Then coming to the edge of the pond, putting down the long bundle. And there it must have happened . . . Judd saw himself there, sitting for a moment on the slope of the low railway embankment, bending to take off his shoes and pull on the boots—his brother Max’s fishing boots, taken from Max’s closet. You’re in it with me, Max, you sonofabitch, big man Max. How’s this for sissy stuff? Who’s a sissy now! And as he bent, Judd could hear a distant train, a muffled rhythmic pounding under the earth like a heart under the earth. And before him, the dark flat water, going into the dark hole, the culvert. Then, heated from the long exertion, and knowing he had yet to lift the body and carry it into the water, Judd rose to remove his coat. He placed the coat carefully folded upon the grass, beside his shoes.
The remainder of the scene flashed through his mind now, accelerated, for he still found it distasteful to review. First, Artie unrolling the lap robe. The lower part of the body, bare except for the knee-length stockings, appearing grotesque under the low-held beam of Artie’s flashlight, looking like those manikins you sometimes see half undressed in store windows . . . when you see the cold glassy surface of the middle portion . . . No! the glasses would have glinted then, under Artie’s light. No! Now Judd felt sure; he could sense the glasses lying there still folded in the breast pocket of his folded coat.
“Cold stiff,” Artie said. “Help me with his goddam clothes.”
“Rigor mortis,” Judd repeated, kneeling. They both worked to finish the undressing.
Artie joked—the punk was like some broad that goes rigid and won’t let you get her clothes off. He kept up the stream of jokes the way he had in the car, kept it on a level of high deviltry, good and ginned up, handling the body so casually, the way he had in the back of the Willys. Then the nude body lay there, a pale streak on the lap robe, and Judd knew his part had come. He rose and got the can of hydrochloric. Was it then? Not then; he had not disturbed the folded jacket—the can was already out of the pocket, placed on the ground.
And Artie had moved the body off the robe, to the water’s edge, and Judd stood over it, raising the can of hydrochloric, so well forethought—acid to dissolve all evidence of mortality. Then he was pouring the stream from the can—“I hereby baptize and consecrate nothing to nothing”—and with his high giggle, watching the stream, silvery, upon the face. To obliterate, all, all! A thought, an urge, a dark wing beating far back in his mind, so they never might recognize, never might identify, but it was more than that, it was all, all faces, and no face. It was as though he himself were being obliterated so he could never be caught. And then there was a sure
