Meyer Levin - Compulsion

Now and now was the culmination, the completion of their deed, the fulfilment of the compact. Now, now he felt released of fear. He would never be caught, for he was strength itself. The lake, the blackened sand, the stars, the long close body of his friend, the fire-tipped chimneys, and the power in himself – the dark power growing toward release, eruption, the bad stuff, the dark evil clot in him pushing like a ball of fire in the huge tall chimney, wildly flaming out.

I had two morning classes, and all through them I kept trying to think of some way to stay on the big story. But when I made my routine call, Reese said it himself. “See if Tom needs you over at the inquest.” A reward for my work of yesterday. From the morning papers I learned the inquest would be held at two o’clock, and I started for the frat house, to lunch there. It was raining, I was half running, soaked, and just as I reached the house Tom Daly called to me, coming up the street. He’d come looking for me, any place to get in out of the rain. The story was up against a stone wall. He had been to the Kesslers, to the police – hell, a man couldn’t even get a drink around here in the morning.

I said I could probably find him a drink in the house. We had not even shaken the rain from our hats before Artie Straus was up from a chair, holding an early Globe . “Anything new on the story?” he asked me. “Did you give them all that stuff about Steger? I gave you lots of stuff they haven’t got in here.”

I introduced him to Tom, and he became even more excited. Sure, he’d rustle up a drink. What about going out on the story with us? “Listen, I bet I can get you another scoop!” Artie said.

“Artie, the Boy Detective!” Milt Lewis kidded. “Now’s your chance.”

Hell, Artie said, just from the papers he could see there were lots of things that hadn’t been tried. There was the drugstore on 63rd Street, where the father was supposed to go with the ransom, only he forgot the address. How about tracking down that drugstore?

“You think the killer is still standing there waiting?” Milt jeered.

“The killers would never have been there!” Artie said excitedly. “That shows how much you know. The way they’d do it, it would be a relay. The father would get another call in the store, to relay him to the next spot-”

“Well then what use would it be to find the store?” Milt asked.

“For crissake, you never know; it could be a clue.”

“Jesus, it’s raining cats and dogs,” Tom complained.

“Come on. I’ve got a car. I bet we find it!” Artie said. “All we have to do is check drugstores on 63rd Street. Ask them if anybody phoned yesterday for Mr. Kessler.”

Tom and I followed him out to his car. Artie drove along 63rd, talking about the crime the whole time.

Tom asked, “You knew this kid pretty well?”

“Sure. Like my own kid brother.”

“What was he like?”

“A cocky little bastard,” Artie said. “Christ, if you were looking for a kid to kidnap, that’s just the kind of cocky little sonofabitch you’d pick.”

We were both struck dumb. Artie resumed. “I mean, why crap around, that’s the straight dope. It might help you to find the murderer.”

Tom pursued it. Who, for instance? Did his little brother have any ideas? Who could be sore enough at a kid to do a thing like that!

“I’ll ask Billy,” Artie promised.

As 63rd Street was miles long, it seemed a crazy chase, but Artie said he bet the criminal would have chosen a store in the busiest part of the street, somewhere east of Cottage. He parked in the middle of a block; there was a drugstore on each end. “Let’s divvy up,” he said.

Tom and I ran for one of the stores, and Artie toward the other. We told the druggist we were from the Globe on the kidnapping murder. He kept shaking his head. As we left the store, Artie came hurrying from the other end of the block. “Nothing doing,” he said. “Let’s try some more.”

That way we worked up the street. After a dozen stores, Tom said the hell with it – even if we found the store it would be meaningless. “Hell of a newspaperman you are!” Artie laughed. “Persistence is the only way in a case of this kind.”

“Fine,” Tom said, “that’s the spirit.” Artie and I could persist and he would wait in the car. We parked again, at Blackstone. There was only one store, and Artie and I made the dash. A Negro was behind the fountain. Artie headed for him while I approached the druggist. As soon as I uttered the name Kessler, the druggist’s face broke into a gasp. “Why, yes, yes, I never made the connection in my mind-”

At the same moment Artie was yelling triumphantly, “It’s here!”

Later on, we could ask ourselves whether it was a compulsion to bring down punishment on himself that drove Artie to reach closer and closer to the fire; for if Judd had been the one to leave a trail of clues during the crime, it was Artie who persisted in the days immediately afterward in taunting fate, pushing in among us, the reporters, and even among the police, like some perversely teasing, transgressing child, being bad and being bad until he brings the slap of anger down upon himself.

The fountain man and Mr. Hartmann told how they had answered the calls, about ten minutes apart, from a man asking for a Mr. Kessler. “He said look around and make sure,” the Negro recalled, “so I even yelled out in the store. Then I told him there was nobody of that name.”

“The nearest booth to the door,” the ransom letter instructed; now Artie went and stood in the booth, as though it might contain the presence of the criminal. “He must have come in here at some time, to copy down the number of this phone,” Mr. Hartmann said.

Artie even lifted the receiver and tried on a wild chance to trace yesterday’s calls. What was the man’s voice like? he demanded of Hartmann. “Any accent? Did he use good English?”

“You’d make a better reporter than I am!” I told him.

“Aren’t you going to call your paper?” he urged. “See! I told you I’d get you a scoop!”

I said Tom should make the call, and Artie ran ahead of me to Tom, waving his arms, yelling, “We found it!”

Our paper made much of the feat, crowing that the first tangible scent of the criminal had been picked up by the same Globe reporter who had identified the victim. It was a small thing to hail as a triumph, but there was no real news. The city seemed to stand transfixed by the murder. The case had seized the public imagination as a crime beyond other crimes. Perhaps it was because of the wealth of the boy’s family. But perhaps, I was to think as the story developed, because by some uncanny process people sensed from the beginning that this crime had meanings that would project far into our time.

We drove back to the campus. We ought to have him stick with us on the story, Artie insisted. He’d get us scoop after scoop!

On Woodlawn, spotting the red Stutz, he began to honk madly. “It’s Judd Steiner. You must know him,” he said to me. “Those clucks just had their Harvard Law entrance exam.” Artie pulled alongside. “Hey, Jock! I just got a scoop for the Globe ! I found the kidnapper’s drugstore. How’d you come out?”

Judd quietly said he came out okay, it wasn’t a tough exam at all, and asked, “What was that? What drugstore?”

Artie explained how he was on the trail of the Kessler kidnappers, and in the same breath said, “Hey, Judd, you ought to celebrate. How about going out tonight?” He and a hot date were going to the Four Deuces, Artie said, and Judd should come along. Then turning to me: “Hey, drag a frail, we’ll make it a real party! Bring that babe of yours, Ruthie.”