Herbert Lieberman - City of the Dead

Haggard stares at him quietly. For the first time in the more than twenty-five years he has known the man, Konig appears close to tears. Racked with exhaustion and worry, his body trembles. His voice, full of anger and recrimination, is modified by a deep sense of helplessness—something he is personally unfamiliar with. The effect results in something like whining. “They’ve got her. They’ve got my kid. Some kind of freaks have got her. They’re hurting her. And they’re going to kill her. Where the hell have you been?”

The detective is seething from the lash of that voice. He too has not yet been to bed. He’s been out all night crisscrossing the boroughs, chasing down false leads, running up blind alleys. The two of them gasping at each other now in the clammy gray of early morning, disheveled, sleepless, burned-out, have the look of two old derelicts, both off on an all-night rip, whose paths suddenly cross.

Finally Haggard stirs from some private musing. “I’ve been out looking for Wally Meacham.”

Konig gapes uncomprehendingly. “Wally who?”

“Wallace Meacham. Alias Walter Eames. Alias Wendell Barker. Alias Warren Eggleston. Three years Dannemora, armed robbery. Eighteen months Leavenworth, aggravated assault with intent to kill. Busted out of Danbury about a year ago. He was doing six-to-twelve for blowing up a bank. The Bureau knows him as 86438 912. Their file describes him as ‘Educated. Logical. Shrewd. With a tendency to brag, and possibly vicious.’ He’s a dilly. One of the beautiful people. Going to make the world a better place for us all to live in.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Konig booms. “They’ve got my kid. They’re gonna kill her and you talk riddles. What the hell has—”

“Paul,” snaps the detective, his voice so full of authority that it brings Konig up sharply. He peers, suddenly mute and petrified, into the detective’s face.

“Come upstairs, Paul. I’ve got some things to tell you, and you’re not going to like them.”

“You might have told me before.”

“I didn’t know before.”

“But you suspected.”

“I did suspect. That’s true.”

“And yet you didn’t tell me. Not a word.”

“About my suspicions? Why? What the hell for?”

“You could’ve at least let me know.”

“Know what?”

“For God’s sake, man, just to let a person know that things are going on.”

“Things were always going on—I couldn’t tell you more than that until I knew for sure.”

“And you know for sure now?”

“Now I know for sure.”

Konig and Haggard sit opposite each other across a narrow space of cluttered desk over which they shout back and forth. Their conversation is like an angry tennis match in which two old rivals bang, chop, and slash at each other remorselessly. It has a Vengeful quality about it and the room is hot, like a gymnasium, just as if men had been exercising strenuously there.

“What the hell are you doing for me now?” Konig bawls, red in the face.

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“Right now I’m sitting here wasting my time talking to you.”

Konig’s eyes bulge; the red in his face deepens. “Don’t smart-ass me. I warn you. I asked you a question. I want an answer. Now what are you doing for me?”

“For you?” Haggard’s expression is a smirk of bitter delight. “For you?”

Konig, catching the significance of that smirk, falters, suddenly aware that he has overstepped the bounds of propriety.

“For her, then,” he snarls, suddenly all self-righteousness. “You know what the hell I meant.”

For a moment they sit there not speaking, regarding each other warily, getting their second breaths, while the big Regulator wall clock ticks and black, vaporous coffee gurgles in the beaker over the Bunsen burner behind them.

“I’ll tell you what I’m doing for her ,” Haggard seethes. “Christ, I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I’ve got you the name of the guy who’s got her.”

“Meacham,” Konig sneers. “What the hell does the name mean to me? What the hell does—”

“Will you let me finish, goddamnit?” Haggard flings the FBI dossier down on the desk where it lands with the sound of a whip cracking. “I’ve got his name. I’ve got his profile. I’ve got his prints.”

“But you don’t have him,” Konig thunders. “Crap. Bunkum. That’s what you’ve got.”

“I’ve got verification that the prints in that FBI file are the same as—”

“—the ones in the loft and in that bomb factory. Crap. Bunkum, I say. Without him, you’ve got nothing. Nothing, I tell you. Nothing. You understand? And meanwhile, he’s got my kid. Meanwhile—” Konig’s voice trails off, his face flushed, twitching with a thousand unspoken questions. Thoughts shuttle wildly through his head like burning cinders. Charges. Recriminations Suspicions. Deeply seated fears. At one point his fists, clenched, knuckle-white, seem about to pummel the desk But they don’t. Instead they shudder in midair as if contending with an invisible force, and a question leaps to his lips. That too hovers there unexpressed, and dies, leaving his great jaws moving unceasingly, as if he were chewing rubber.

Having answered nearly a full hour of questions, Haggard sits coiled, awaiting the next assault. But it doesn’t come. At least not then. The Chief’s line of interrogation, for the time being, appears to be at an end. And now the rigidity, that state of alert that has kept Konig sitting ramrod-stiff for the past sixty minutes, suddenly lapses. He hunches forward, elbows propped on desk, hands on either cheek, supporting the immense, teetering dome of his head. Then slowly, like a pair of curtains being drawn, his fingers, reeking with the scent of formalin and decayed flesh, slide woefully across his face, covering completely his red, bleared eyes. “Sorry, Frank,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

For a while they sit there silently, Konig rubbing his eyes, Haggard watching him oddly, embarrassed, and wishing he were not there. “You’re right. Paul,” he says finally. “You’re absolutely right. I’ve got crap and bunkum. But while I don’t know where Meacham is, I might have a lead on a few of his buddies. I got about a dozen guys picking through that place up in The Bronx. Going through there with a fine-tooth comb. Sifting, analyzing, lifting prints. They weren’t very careful when they left. Smeared prints all over the place. Apparently had to get out fast. What I’m hoping for is to pick up a couple of ’em. Even one. If I can get my hands on just one, I’ll sweat it out of him. I promise you that, Paul. I’ll nail this Meacham bastard.”

Konig says nothing, merely sits slouched there at his desk, hiding behind his hands, rubbing his eyes with that slow, fierce rhythm, profoundly unconsoled.

“Tell me again,” the detective goes on. “What happened when he called?”

“I told you.”

“Tell me again.”

“She screamed,” Konig mutters blankly. “He spoke first and then they made her scream.”

“What did he say?”

“I told you,” Konig wails. “I told you. Nothing—just ‘That was your daughter.’ No hello—no goodbye—nothing. It was all just crazy.”

“Why didn’t you ask them to put her on?”

“Put her on?”

“Sure. Let her speak to you. Verify it. Next time they call—”

“Next time?” Konig gapes.

“Sure. When they call again. You know they’re gonna call again.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Sure they’ll call again. Put her on. Make her scream. Make you squirm.”

“Oh, Christ—no.” Terror curdles Konig’s eyes. He puts his hands up as if to ward off a blow. “I can’t. I can’t sit through another one of those things.”