Mumsie, Billy was right there playing with Paulie on the baseball lot. I saw them myself! No. Maybe better not go that far.
Artie leaped up the stairs. Billy’s room was empty. There, for an instant, Artie’s mind stood blank, with some weird confusion. As if the room were of course empty because it had been Billy they— Then he told himself, Hell, the kid was over in that crowd at the Kesslers’, soaking up all the excitement; he’d give a full report before his big brother could get in a word—a bright, cute Billy-boy report.
They should really have snatched him, the brat, as they had once planned. Only Judd had taken it as a joke. Artie saw it now as if they had done it, grabbing Billy, feeling the kid in his arms in a squirming struggle, like sometimes when they playfully wrestled. But this time—the look on the kid’s face when he was bopped! And if it had been Billy, Artie wondered, would he himself have wanted to weep?
Then his imagining switched suddenly to a jail. He was behind bars, and people passed, grimacing at the monster killer; then came girls he knew, that big-eyed Dorothea, and Susan French, and that babe in Charlevoix, Betty, and then strangers, all grimacing at the monster, and he grimaced and made faces back at them, stuck out his tongue, made funny faces; Dorothea laughed, then he let his arms hang long and he pranced like an ape. Some fun!
On Billy-boy’s bed was an open box of chocolates. Artie grabbed a handful and ate them. The images of the jail went on. They were giving him the third degree.
He heard a gasp. The maid was in the doorway. “Oh, it’s you, Artie! I didn’t hear anyone come in.” She looked scared stiff. “We’ve all got the heebie-jeebies today. You know what happened to poor little—”
“Yah, it’s in the papers. Where’s Billy?” he asked with concern.
“Oh, he’s safe! Your mother went with the car the minute we heard something was wrong, and took him out of school. She wouldn’t leave him there another minute. All the mothers have been calling up, all day! Your mother took Billy along with her to her meeting. It’s in the papers, is it?”
“Sure.” He showed her the headline.
“It must have been a fiend that did it,” Clarice said. “He could be someone in that school!”
Artie wished he had been there to see that sight, all the limousines filling the street. There must have been a regular traffic jam, with all the anxious mommies hurrying to get their darling children safely home.
“It could be a fiend in the neighborhood,” Clarice repeated.
“That’s right, and they come back to the scene of their crime,” Artie said. She was excited, moistening her lips with her tongue. If she weren’t so dumpy, and her hands always damp, he might give her a shove. She was always asking for it, brushing against him. But once he made the push he’d have to go through with it, and maybe the disgust over her would hold him down so he couldn’t do anything. Then he’d always have that funny feeling, having her around, knowing. The hell with her.
“I hope they catch him,” she said. “No one will feel safe until they catch him. That poor little Paulie, I hope he didn’t suffer. I hope the end was quick.”
The delivery bell rang, and she had to go. Artie picked up Billy’s bow and arrow, thrown on the floor. No Miss Nuisance to make Billikins pick up things. Mumsie herself took care of her precious little boy.
The image returned. He was in the jail. They had him. Two huge dicks with rubber truncheons. He bent over, and they delivered the blows. He took all the blows, on his shoulders, on his ass. But he kept silent. They could never prove anything on him. He was the master criminal and they knew they had him, but they could never prove it on him! What a guy! At last they had to let him go. They followed him, the stupes, as though he would lead them to his gang. He gave them the slip. He got to his headquarters, in the basement hideout, and now he would take care of that rat, Judd. A couple of his strong-arm men brought in Judd and hurled him on the floor. Leaving his goddam glasses!
Artie threw the bow and arrow on Billy’s bed. He shook Billy’s piggy-bank—the hell with it—and flung it down. From Billy’s secret store of marbles he selected a couple of aggies, prize ones, milky, translucent, slipping them into his pants pocket.
With Judd lying prostrate at his feet, in the hidden cellar headquarters, Artie arose to give judgment. He stretched out his arm. The surge of power was in him. He pointed his finger downward at the quivering traitor. It is my will that you cease to exist. And the power passed like unseen lightning through the form of Judd, and life was gone from him.
Or else, take him with the pistol in his back to the pier, maybe late tonight. You see, Judd, this makes everything perfect. You have to agree, this is the perfect solution and therefore I am obliged to carry it out. That would be slick, using Judd’s own crappo philosophy on him. Judd would agree—they had found his glasses, they would find his body floating in the lake, a suicide. Q.E.D.
Suddenly Artie felt the fear. The fear, the heebie-jeebies, the unbearable shrieking thing coming up in him—he’d snap! Someone—to be with someone, to keep him from— Not Judd. He tried to call Willie Weiss, but Willie wasn’t home. Piling out of the house, Artie strode across the street, passed right against the Kessler place. The lawn was clear; all the reporters were gone. But police cars were still there. How would it be to ride in one of those Marmons, the siren blowing, a big cop on each side of you, while already you had the feeling of their truncheons across your naked back?
Artie forced himself away, circled back to his own house. His brother Lewis’s Franklin was in the driveway. Go screw yourself, Lewis! Behind the wheel, Artie felt somewhat easier. He swung the car down Hyde Park Boulevard. Not to Myra’s house—screw Myra . . . string bean with her long stringy fingers, she gave you the jitters. Halfway across the Ingleside intersection, he swung the car violently into a left turn, barely missing a flivver and causing a couple of old ladies who were crossing the street to squawk and scramble exactly like hens. Artie laughed out loud, feeling better as he braked in front of Ruth’s house.
She was exactly the one. He hadn’t called her in a month. But she was the one, with her round face, milky and smooth as an aggie. Have Ruthie sitting here beside him as he coasted out by the lake. Tell her a big story. She swallowed everything. Like the bootlegger act. The time he shot a hole in a shirt and wore it, showing her the hole, telling how he went bootlegging for the kick of it, and had to shoot it out with some hijackers. As if to prove she never believed the story, she would always ask how his bootlegging was getting along. But she was one of those who swallowed it. He’d tell her now that it was he who had kidnaped the Kessler kid! “Oh, yes, uh-huh,” she would say, with her serious eyes fixed on his, while keeping a you-can’t-fool-me-again note in her voice.
Looking in, through the window of her father’s drugstore, Artie could see that Ruth wasn’t downstairs. Their flat was on the second floor. He sounded the horn. Three, four times. Finally her mother appeared at the window over the store. The old lady went away, and then Ruth appeared. Artie blew again.
She pulled up the window. “Artie, is that nice?” she said, not too reproachfully. “Are you too lazy to get out and ring the bell?”
“Hey, come on down,” he said. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Well, you may come up if you wish.”
“Come on down.”
People were beginning to get interested. Ruth closed the window, and a moment later came out of the hallway, with an air of pique.
