Evan Hunter - Nobody Knew They Were There

“Sara…”

“Do you want me to let you off at the hotel, or will you walk back from my place?”

“Sara, you can’t do this.”

“Can’t I? rm doing it.”

“Not after last night.”

“Last night When was that? I’ve forgotten last night completely.”

“Sara…”

“I don’t want to go to bed with you again,” she says flatly. “I don’t even want to kiss you again.”

“Let me off here.”

“I’ll take you to the hotel.”

“Let me off here, goddamnit!”

She pulls the car to the curb. I get out, close the door gently, and walk away without looking back.

In the room, I sit drinking scotch.

It is close to midnight, and I have not had dinner, and I am getting very drunk. I do not understand Sara. I do not even understand myself. There is a reproduction of Rembrandt’s Man with the Golden Helmet hanging on the wall opposite the desk. The son of a bitch keeps glaring at me. I get off the bed, go into the bathroom, rip some toilet tissue from the roll, come back to the framed painting, wet the edges of the tissue and stick it over the baleful bastard’s head, covering his eyes. There, I think. If you can’t see me, I don’t exist. Which is Sara’s point exactly, isn’t it? If I die alone with no one to mourn me, I will never have lived. Without her to record my passage, I will never have existed. Smart-assed teen-ager. Anything I can’t stand, it’s a smart-assed teen-ager.

I decide to call my son in Boston.

First I will call Sara to tell her I’m going to call my son in Boston. You’ll probably like him better than me, I will tell her, more your age and style, long hair, beard, sloppy clothes, dropping out of school next month to head for San Francisco, start a commune there with three other guys and two girls. Maybe you’d like to go to bed with him, Sara, and then drop him cold the next day. I don’t understand you, I really do not.

I decide not to call her after all, hell with her.

I dial my son’s number.

A girl answers the phone. Her voice is a whisper. I tell her I want to speak to David, and she asks who this is, and I say David’s father, and in the same mournful whisper, she asks me to hold on a moment. There is no sound on the other end of the line. No music, no voices. It is only twelve, twelve-thirty, but there is no sound in my son’s apartment in the biggest college community in the United States.

“Pop?” he says. “God, you must be psychic. I was just about to call home.”

“I’m not home,” I tell him.

“No? Where are you?”

“Salt Lake City. Important contract to negotiate. How are you, David?”

“Well, I'm fine. But we’ve got all kinds of trouble here. That’s why I was going to call. I’d like your advice.”

“Legal or paternal?”

“Both,” David says.

“Oh-oh.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad, Pop. You know Hank and Stevie, two of the guys I was going out to San Francisco with?”

“Well, I don’t know them, son…”

“Yeah, I know you don’t know them, though I think you met Hank once. He wears a headband. He came home that time during the spring break, don’t you remember?”

“I think so, yes. What about them?”

“Pop, they both got busted last night”

“For what?”

“Somebody planted some stuff in their apartment, and the cops came around with a search warrant about two o’clock in the morning.”

“Planted? What do you mean, planted?”

“Just that.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Grass.”

“Any hard stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Speed. And acid.”

“Heroin?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“How much of the stuff?”

“Enough, Pop. Lots of it.”

“Who planted it?”

“Well, Hank and Stevie’ve got some ideas, but they can’t be sure. They think it’s this guy they hassled with a couple of weeks back.”

‘What have they been charged with, David? Do you know?”

“Hank’s been charged with possession, presence, and conspiracy. Stevie and the girl who was there have been charged only with presence.”

“Where are they now?”

“They’re still here in Boston. They paid the bail…”

“How much?”

“Three thousand dollars.”

“Who paid it?”

“A bondsman. Pop, the cops confiscated all the money that was in the apartment — as evidence that Hank was dealing.”

“How much money, David?”

“Close to fifteen hundred dollars. It’s the money he was going to put in for the California trip. He got it by working, Pop. He’s doing drugs, we all are — but he’s not dealing. I swear to God, Pop, he’s not dealing.”

“Has he notified his parents?”

“He’s going to do that tomorrow. Pop, here’s the point…”

“What’s the point, David?”

“The point is this really screws up the California thing, you know? Also, he’s my best friend, Pop.”

“So?”

“Pop… he plans to jump bail and leave the country.”

“That isn’t wise, David.”

“It’s wiser than spending five to ten years in prison. That’ll ruin his life, Pop.”

“I know it will.”

“I mean, you know what that’ll do to him.”

“Yes, David, I know.”

“So he’s going to leave the country. The point is should I go with him or not? He’s my best friend”

“Are you asking my advice?”

“Yes.”

“Tell him not to jump bail. If he does, he adds an additional charge to all the others. And if he goes to a foreign country, he can be extradited.”

“They can extradite for drugs, huh?”

“Yes, son.”

“Still, Pop, he’s my best friend.”

“David… friends come and go.”

“Pop, please don’t give me that shit.”

“All right. But you’ll be traveling with a fugitive. And the way things are now in this country, guilt by association is as real as it was dining the McCarthy era.” I hesitate. I don’t know what more to tell him. I am suddenly very fearful for him. “David,” I say, “leaving the country is a cop-out I don’t want you to cop out”

“Deserting a friend is a cop-out, too,” he says.

“David…

“Especially when the goddamn stuff was planted.”

“That’s his allegation.”

“Hank says it was planted, and he wouldn’t lie to me.” He pauses. He is trying to think of what to tell me next When he finally speaks, it is not as a twenty-year-old young man; it is as a child sitting on my knee. “Pop, it isn’t fair.”

“I know it isn’t”

“What shall I do?”

“What about your apartment?”

“What about it?”

“Is there any stuff there?”

“Yes. Some pot, that’s all.”

“Get rid of it”

“I will.”

“And make sure you don’t let anybody in who might…”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow. I want to know what Hank intends doing. And you, too.”

“Can’t I call you, Pop? I may be in and out…”

“No, I can’t give you the number here.”

“What?”

“I said I can’t give you the number here.”

“Why not?”

“I’m at a client’s house, and I can’t divulge his name.”

“Oh,” he says. I know he does not believe me.

“I’ll get to you tomorrow. Be very careful, son.”

“Don’t worry,” he says.

“Good night.”

“Good night, Pop.”

I hang up. The tissue I hung over the painting’s eyes has come loose and is dangling from one comer. I pour myself another drink. I suddenly wish the train would arrive tonight It is getting later and later and later. We are losing them all, we are losing our sons. We are sending them to war, or sending them to jail, or sending them into exile, but we are losing them regardless — and without them there is no future.