Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

Strangers stopped him in the street to shake his hand.

Lomax’s appeal for a new trial was refused by the court. Another date was set for the execution of the death sentence. His lawyer, occupied with a trial for embezzlement, said he could not discuss plans for another appeal. Professional etiquette prevented his asking, “Who’s going to pay for it?” Only action by the Governor could prevent a certain electrician, name never mentioned — thus giving the impression that it was not a man, but some impersonal force — from earning his fee of $250 for killing Lomax. And there was no reason to expect the Governor to act.

And then, one evening, Lew Livingston visited the Rosco home. Marie set out coffee and crackers, apologizing for there being no cake. “How is Clara?” she asked.

Lew made a gesture which almost upset the coffee.

“It’s not Clara,” he said, answering, not Marie’s question, but some question unmasked outside of his own mind. “It’s her old lady.”

“Mrs. Barnett is sick?”

“Sick in the head! ” said Lew in a rush of words. He hesitated, then let it all come out.

“The old lady gets up at six in the morning and turns on the television. She sits and she looks at the college professor — don’t ask me what the hell she understands — she just sits and looks. She watches all the programs for the little kids who aren’t even old enough to go to school, she— Listen.” Lew’s mouth worked, his hands moved, before he could catch hold of his words. “All day long, from six in the morning until whenever the Late Late Show goes off, the old lady sits in the living room and watches the television.

“She eats in front of the television, Clara has to bring it to her. She’s hard o’ hearing, so she keeps it up high. Her eyes aren’t too good, so it’s focused just right for her, which means it’s blurred for everybody else. You dasn’t turn it down for even a minute, you dasn’t focus out the blur even for a minute, you dasn’t try and watch another program even for a minute — and, Charley, lemme tell you, may heaven help you if you try to turn that damn box off for even so much as half a minute!”

Charley and Marie made sympathetic noises. This was not news.

“I’m going outa my mind,” Lew said, holding his head as if only the pressure of his hands could keep the skull from falling into two separate parts.

“But that’s not the worse,” he went on. “Ohmi god, that’s bad enough, because what can ya do? You try to fix the television any way but the way she wants it and she carries on. She screams, she yells, she grabs my hands. What can ya do? The kid gives me a hard time, but can I hit an old lady? They’d put me in jail. We have company in the house, we hafta have’m in the kitchen.

“But that’s not the worse of it...” He paused, and the furrows in his long face deepened in misery. “The kid is fourteen years old now. But she’s, uh, well, she could pass for seventeen, eighteen, easy. The kids nowadays, they seem to grow up like mushrooms, you know? Overnight.

“She sleeps in the same bedroom with the old lady. Tiny little room, two beds, one dresser. Our bedroom, Clara’s and mine, the same size. But suppose she wants to bring in a friend? Where’s she going to go? Entertain anybody in the same room where that loud, blurry set is blasting away? She going to entertain her friends in the kitchen?” Lew’s eyes were bloodshot.

“When she was little and she had a girl friend, so they went and sat on her bed together. But she ain’t little any more... What’s the result? The result is she’s hardly ever at home any more. She says she’s with this friend, with that friend, at their house, and they do their homework together. Maybe so. But — all the time? Charley, she’s a pretty girl, the boys all like her, she likes them. Not the ones her own age, a boy fourteen years old doesn’t have a car—”

Marie sighed deeply, nodding.

Abruptly Lew said, “So I’m taking my share.”

After a second Charley asked, “Your share of what?” And almost instantly understood.

“With that,” Lew said, nodding his head as he spoke, “I can put another room on the house. The kid can have a decent room of her own to fix up. Move her bed out of the old lady’s room and I can move that damn television set and the old lady in. She won’t care. Then the kid can have her friends in, with the living room to themselves, and Clara and me can sit in the kitchen — what the hell? — but keep an eye on things, you know...”

His voice died away.

“It’s up to you,” Charley said.

“Maybe you don’t know how easy it is for a girl to get in with the wrong crowd, your kids are too young, but if you were in my shoes you’d do just what I’m doing — take the money, put on the extra room, and have your kid stay around the house instead of going off who knows where and doing who knows what with a bunch of wild kids older than her.”

“It’s up to you,” Charley repeated.

“She looks like sixteen or seventeen, see, but she’s only got the sense of her own age, only fourteen—”

“Lew,” said Charley slowly and stiffly, “for the last time — it’s up to you.”

Lew relaxed. “Then you agree, huh? It’s all right, then. We take the money.”

The stiffness left Charley in an instant. “ ‘ We? There isn’t going to be any we about it! You want the damned money, you take it. That’s your privilege. I wouldn’t touch it with a—”

Lew bounded to his feet; his face convulsed. “So you’re still on your high horse, huh? You’re gonna leave me take the dirty looks and the wisecracks all by myself! You’re gonna be the good one, huh, and I’m gonna be the bad one, huh? What makes you so high-class? When did you become a preacher, Rosco? ‘Rosco’? That’s a laugh, all by itself. My old man knew your grandfather when he couldn’t speak six words of English. His name wasn’t no Rosco! Rocco — that’s what it was, Rocco! And you—”

Charley got up and Marie quickly ran between the two of them and grabbed her husband’s arm.

“Get out of here,” he said. “Get out, Lew—”

“Wait,” said Lew as he left “You wait!”

They heard him drive away. Then Marie said bitterly, “That’s a nice enemy you found for yourself.”

“ I found?” He stared at her. She met his eyes defiantly. He yelled. “You know what that money is? It’s the price of Frank Foster’s blood!” He pounded on the table. “Did anybody give Frank Foster’s widow five thousand dollars?”

“That has nothing to do with it,” she yelled back. And then they shouted at each other, neither hearing the other, till they suddenly fell silent on seeing the children at the door of their room — open-mouthed, astonished, all set to whimper. Charley turned on his heel and walked out.

Next morning, Max White, the foreman said, “Boss wants to see you, Charley?” And he repeated it, assuring him it was no joke.

So Charley made a brief trip to the washroom and then passed through the outer office, where he almost never went, into the outer office, where he had absolutely never gone before.

He could remember quite well when old Mr. Damrosch had not been old, had been in the full flower of vigorous late middle-age. Mr. Damrosch had not been seen too often around the plant in those days; he had let his brother-in-law, Mr. Cooper, stay in the office while he himself had spent long, long vacations in Saratoga Springs, Daytona Beach, Bermuda, and similar places. But Mr. Cooper was dead, the laundry business was not what it was, and although he still wore spats and a flower in his buttonhole, Mr. Damrosch nowadays stayed on hand most of the year — “Minding the stoor,” as he put it.