Herbert Lieberman - City of the Dead

“Hello—”

“Hello—Mrs. Sully?”

“Hello—”

“Hello. Is this the Sully residence?”

“That’s right.” The woman’s voice has grown strident, somewhat testy.

“Sorry to bother you at this hour.”

“What hour?”

Konig glances at his watch, laughs a little awkwardly. “Oh, it’s a few hours earlier there, isn’t it?”

“Depends where you’re calling from. Who is this?”

“This is Dr. Konig in New York City. I’m calling about your daughter.”

“Who?”

“Your daughter. Do you have a daughter—about sixteen or seventeen—name of Heather—er, Molly. Actually, it is Molly, isn’t it?”

There’s a pause in which they listen to each other breathing.

“Hello—hello—Mrs. Sully?”

“Wait a minute, would ya, please? Tim—” Konig can hear the note of alarm in her voice as she cries out, “Tim.”

Another pause as Konig waits, hearing something like agitated whispering on the other end. Then suddenly a gruff, beery masculine voice.

“Hullo.”

“Hello—Mr. Sully?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Dr. Konig in New York City. You have a daughter Molly?”

“Thas right.”

“Well, this may all sound strange to you. Incredible, really—” Konig laughs a little idiotically. “Has she been missing?”

There’s another pause while he can actually hear the other man pondering the question. “Left here eighteen months ago. Ain’t heard from her since.”

“I knew it.” Konig’s heart lightens and he rushes on eagerly. “I knew it. Listen—I saw her tonight.”

“You saw her?”

“Had dinner with her. Quite by accident. I mean, I looked up and there she was—selling postcards in a restaurant in Greenwich Village. I knew she was a runaway. I knew it. Just knew it. Had that feeling. But listen, don’t worry. She’s all right. She’s not in any immediate danger. But I’m afraid she’s going to get into a great deal of trouble. I’ll talk to you more about that when you get here. I know where she is—where you can find her. If you get the first plane out tomorrow—”

“Who’d ya say this was again?”

“Konig—Dr. Paul Konig. I’m the Medical Examiner for the City here. Listen, I have the address. If you want her picked up, I can—”

“I don’t want the address.”

“She’s not using her own name, but—” Konig’s voice trails off. “Beg pardon?”

“I said I don’t want the address. I don’t ’give a good goddamn where she is.”

Konig frowns into the black mouthpiece of the phone. “Oh?” He hovers there a moment, quite at a loss. “But your daughter—”

“She ain’t no daughter of mine. Walked outta here eighteen months ago with a lotta fancy notions. Far as I’m concerned—”

“Tim—Tim—” Once more the agitated, pleading whispers come hissing through the wires. “Tim—”

“She don’t ever set foot in—”

“Tim—”

“Shut up, Alice. You hear that,, mister? You ever see that little bitch again, you tell her for me—”

Konig hears the sound of muffled sobbing on the other end.

“—I’ll bust her fuckin’ head she ever comes suckin’ around here again.”

A big old Tudor set high on a hill above the Hudson River. Inside, in the huge living room with its lofty, beamed ceilings and its musty, heavily curtained silences, “Paul Konig stands before tall French windows. From where he stands, he can look out over a stone patio and a moon-flooded garden that creeps up to its edge, and beyond that to a steep, grassy declivity tumbling downward to the river. Beyond the great black void of the river, he can see the cliffs of the Palisades rising squat and gibbous on the other side, and atop them, a dim, sluggish pulse of lights denoting early-morning traffic on the Palisades Parkway.

“ Paul—we need more champagne .”

“ Coming, Ida. It’s coming. For God’s sake, give me a minute. I only have two hands .”

Beyond the stone patio, shadows drift and flicker back and forth in the moon-flooded garden.

“ Isn’t she lovely? ”

“ Image of her mother .”

“ Fortunately for her. ”

Laughter rippling up through the branches of beech and poplar swaying above the garden. The air heavy with the scent of lilac and honeysuckle, hyacinths around a goldfish pond. Laughter echoing now through the great tomblike silence of a house long vacant.

“ Aren’t you proud of her today? ”

“ Of course I am. Of course I’m proud of her. ”

“ What’s she going to do now she’s finished school? ”

“ God only knows. Watch out for that cork—bang — there it goes. Get a glass. Quick. ”

More ghostly laughter echoing through the immense silences of the house.

“ Got some funny notion she wants to go abroad for a few years and paint. ”

“ Doesn’t sound funny to me. ”

“ You finance her then. I won’t. I’ve footed bills for twenty years. I’m tired. Now’s her turn. ”

“ But I imagine you’d feel a little different about financing her through, oh, let’s say for instance—medical school. ”

“ Don’t be so goddamned smug, Chester. We all have ideas about what our kids should do. ”

“ Just ideas, Paul. Seldom ever works out the clever way we plan it for them. ”

“ Well, I don’t want her to go to medical school to please me. She can do what she goddamned pleases. I’ve washed my hands of it. ”

Standing now before a marble mantel, Konig stares at the craggy, pitted visage wavering in the smoke-glazed mirror opposite him. The eyes are Ted and bleary, as if they’d peered too long into a blast furnace.

“ Depressing, isn’t it, Paul? Being around so many young people? ”

“ ’Specially when you’ve just had a glimpse at your own EKG’s. Ida—who’s that fellow with Lolly? ”

“ I don’t know. Some young man she met at school. I think he’s an instructor or something on the faculty. ”

“ Oh?” Konig frowns deeply. “Well, I don’t like him. ” Stillness hovers about the house with palpable weight, crouching in shadows and corners, inhabiting rooms and hallways long untenanted. Upstairs now, Konig drifts like a stranger down corridors he has known for a quarter of a century. Past doorways he has walked in and out of, and gloomy spaces still haunted by the aura of occupants long since gone.

In his own bedroom, where he has not slept since the death of his wife, the fine old French furniture—the tall canopy bed, the Louis XVI escritoire, the graceful silken Recamier—is shrouded now in sheets. On a night table on the side of the bed where Ida Konig slept is a yellow, faded photograph—a bridal picture, formal and stiff, depicting a tall, stern-visaged young man awkwardly attired in top hat and tails; beside him, a dark, diminutive woman in long peau de soie lace, more handsome than pretty, with a strikingly arresting gaze.

Farther on, a music conservatory. A grand piano sits before a huge bay window with leaded panes and insets of stained glass depicting shepherds and lambs, swains and milkmaids, saltimbanques and saints, funereal crows in laurel branches, all limned in scarlets and cobalts, regal, ecclesiastical purples.

On the music stand on the grand piano, a book stands open to a Chopin nocturne; an air of expectancy about it all, as if the whole setting were simply awaiting animation by the appearance of players soon to come.