Herbert Lieberman - City of the Dead

Still, that is not what he’s been thinking about. He’s been thinking only of her. What it will be like having her home. How he will try to make things up to her. They might take a trip. Now that it was spring and the weather beautiful, they might go off somewhere together. Ideal time for Europe or why not even the-Orient? Both Lolly and Ida had always wanted to see the Orient. But he’d always pooh-poohed it. There was always a conference he had to go to in England, France, or Germany. So they’d always wind up going there. More civilized anyway, he’d tell them. Less chance of disease. Orient’s a filthy place. Can’t stand the food, and besides, the weather’s beastly. So, in the end, they’d do it his way. Always his way. God—what a selfish, insufferable bastard. Well, things would be different now.

Suddenly he wheels, staring down hard at the floor. “What was that?” he murmurs half aloud to himself, thinking he’s heard a phone ringing. But it isn’t. At least not in his house. Possibly across the way at the Cruikshanks’.

He goes back to the cartons once again and the old clothing, working in a desultory way now. Soon, he feels a little tired. That Strang thing—nasty business. Ugly, unpleasant. But glad it’s done with. Should’ve been done years ago. Cleared the air. Never liked Strang. Competent enough pathologist. But sloppy. No passion. Really doesn’t care. Just intent on rising. Next-step-up sort of thing. That’s the whole game with him. All this young breed—just winning—no real passion. Relieved now it’s over. Although he knows that as far as Strang’s concerned, it’s only just begun. Won’t take it lying down. Probably on the phone right now with his bigshot City Hall pals. But even that won’t help. Mayor might very well have my head Friday, but Strang will never be my replacement. Strang will not be ME of New York City. Not over my dead body, he won’t. “Now what in hell do you s’pose she wants with these?” he mutters, pulling out a pair of bright, filmy culottes, shaking his head and holding them up to the light. “Good Christ.” He laughs. “There’s a side of her I never knew.” And suddenly the phone is ringing. Not in his head this time, but somewhere in the house. So intently has he been awaiting that sound that hearing it now, at last, he doubts its actuality. Or at least he doesn’t understand it. Instead, he stands there stunned and baffled, listening to it ringing in his bedroom down the hall.

Then, finally, the significance of the sound dawns on him. He stirs, and in the next moment he is moving, first walking, then running, actually running. He turns the corner to his room, stumbles, barks his knee, trips, then bangs his jaw down hard on the edge of the night table. His teeth crack together and for a moment, sprawled there on the floor, hugging his knee, a cold, numb spot in the center of his forehead, he sees stars. The ringing, like a pulse, stabs relentlessly through the shadows of the room. Terrified it will stop, he staggers to his feet and lurches at the phone. Mustn’t stop. Mustn’t.

“Hello. Hello.”

“Dr. Konig?”

“Speaking.”

A pause, then suddenly the awful shriek. One, then another. A high, stricken sound, like a small animal being slaughtered.

“Hello,” Konig shouts. “Hello.”

Someone is breathing back at him from the other end but doesn’t speak. Then another shriek. A long, sustained wail of unutterable horror that stands Konig’s hair on end. “Leave her alone,” he shouts, but there’s a note of pleading to it. “Goddamn you. Leave her alone.”

Another pause in which he can still hear the breathing on the other end. Then another ghastly scream. A sound so awful, so horrifying, he must make it stop. Must get it out of his head.

He flings the receiver down with a crash onto the cradle and crouches there shivering on his bed with the sound still shrieking in his ears, and, curiously, the taste of salt in his mouth. He’s unaware of the blood seeping from a broken tooth in his jaw.

In the next moment the phone rings again. Just as violently as he slammed it down before, he now snatches it up; and there again is that awful, hideous sound.

“Leave her alone. Please. I beg you, whoever you are. Leave her alone. I’ll pay. I’ll pay you anything. Anything. Just don’t hurt her anymore.”

Suddenly the screaming ceases as abruptly as it had started. And he’s left there, beads of sweat glistening on his forehead, blood streaming from his mouth onto the bedspread.

“Good night, Dr. Konig,” says a refined voice whispering at him from the other end.

Interminable night. Night of calls. Night of ringing phones. Dialing and waiting for call-backs. Konig’s old friend the Police Commissioner. Very calm, very wise. Sympathetic. Counseling patience. “Yes, the entire force is on it… Key people detailed… Investigation going speedily forward… Very quiet… very discreet. Hang in there, Paul.” Then down to Washington. To the Bureau, and by midnight, back to New York, his friend the Bureau’s district head in New York, whom he’d gotten out of bed. He’d talked to him only a week ago, and now he could sense the edge of impatience in the man’s voice. More than faintly piqued. “Yes, we’ve got some leads. Nothing definite, mind you, but everything is being checked out Followed up. These people are obviously well financed. Techniques fairly sophisticated. Sufficient evidence to indicate that Meacham had been the brains behind several other kidnappings—identical patterns—in recent years. All under different names. Mountain of information. Files. Dossiers. Police reports. All being collated, analyzed. Very definite picture starting to emerge. If he’s made contact with you, certain we’ll have something tangible in the next week or so.”

“Next week or so?” Konig murmurs, letting the phone drop back onto the cradle, cold pockets of sweat at the small of the back, in the armpits. And Lolly—that awful sound still resonating in his head.

Hands trembling, he flips through an address book on his night table. Finding Haggard’s home number, he dials. Gets a wrong number. An irascible voice at the other end. Jarred from sleep and hissing oaths, obscenities, even as Konig apologizes and hangs up. Dials again. This time the quiet, mildly apprehensive voice of a woman unaccustomed to late night calls.

“Oh, yes, Dr. Konig. Frank’s right here.”

Then Konig, breathless, panting, spewing over into the phone. Frantic. Incoherent. Aware he’s making no sense whatever.

“Hold everything,” the detective says. “I’ll be right there.”

“Thank you, Frank. Thank you.” Still saying “thank you” even after he’s hung up.

Then suddenly alone there, the silence of the house closing in upon him. Sitting there, terrified of the silence, not knowing what to do next. Bathed in sweat, body coiled taut as a spring, he sits there, rigid, erect, waiting he cannot say for what. Possibly the phone. Afraid it will ring again. Afraid it won’t.

He goes to the bathroom and takes a pair of Librium, then for the first time that night sees his face in the bathroom mirror and he’s alarmed. Truly alarmed. Gray, haggard, vaguely demented, he looks, with a gash of blood now dried at the corner of his mouth and at the crease of his chin, a line moving downward, coagulated russet on the collar of his shirt. Tentatively now, like a man avoiding pain, he glides his tongue over the jagged edge of broken tooth at the back of his mouth. There is, too, inside his mouth, badly abraded tissue where on impact the tooth bit deep into the soft flesh of the inner cheek. But it is that bluish cast to his lips that really alarms him. That ghastly cyanotic blue.

Konig pads back to the bedroom, still in his clothes, and stretches out full length on the bed, lying there, still panting like a winded, harried animal.