Martin Amis - Night Train

On our way to the door we took a glance at the no-smoking section. The guy was in there, alone, unattended, unserved, looking vigilant and strained.

“He’s like Colonel Tom,” said Silvera. “He’s in the wrong section. Oh and guess what. Five of them were women. It’s like we say. Men kill other people. It’s a guy thing. Women kill themselves. Suicide’s a babe thing, Mike.”

Saturday. In the morning, just for the hell of it, really, I do a half-block canvass on Whitman Avenue. It’s a nice neighborhood now. A middle-class enclave on the frontier of the Twenty-Seven: You got the old University Library over on Volstead, and the Business School on York. American cities like to fix it so that their seats of learning are surrounded by war zones (this is reality, pal), and it used to be that way around here. Ten years ago, Volstead Street was like the Battle of Stalingrad. Now it’s all nailed up and scorched-looking—vacated or plain abandoned, with hardly a hoody in sight. It’s tough to say who made this happen. The economy did it.

So as I move from door to door, under the elms, the residents are very, very cooperative. It wasn’t like doing a rowhouse block in Oxville or a project in Destry. Nobody told me to go suck cocks in hell. But nobody saw anything either. Or heard anything, on March fourth.

Until my last call. Yeah. Wouldn’t you know. A little girl, too, in pink ribbons and bobby socks. Silvera’s right: This case is so fucking cute. But it’s not pure ketchup, because kids do notice things, with their new eyes. The rest of us just looking out there and seeing the same old shit.

I’m winding it up with the mom, who suddenly says, “Ask Sophie. Sophie! Sophie was out riding her new bike up and down the street. I don’t let her leave the street on it.” Sophie comes into the kitchen and I hunker down on her.

Now, honey, this could be important.

“Number 43. Yeah. The one with the cherry tree.”

Think carefully, sweetheart.

“My chain came loose? I was trying to fix the chain?”

Go on, honey.

“And a man came out?”

What did he look like, sweetheart?

“Poor.”

Poor? Honey, what do you mean? Like shabby?

“He had patches on his clothes.”

It took me a second. He had patches on his elbows. Poor. That’s right: Don’t they say the darnedest things?

Sweetheart. How’d he seem?

“He looked mad. I wanted to ask him to help me but I didn’t.”

And soon I’m saying, “Thanks, honey. Thanks, ma’am.”

When I badge my way from door to door like this, and the women see me coming up the path—I don’t know what they think. There I am in my parka, my black jeans. They think I’m a diesel. Or a truck driver from the Soviet Union. But the men know at once what I am. Because I give them the eyeball—absolutely direct. As a patrol cop, on the street, that’s the first thing you have to train yourself to do: Stare at men. In the eyes. And then when I was plainclothes, and undercover, I had to train myself out of it, all over again. Because no other kind of woman on earth, not a movie star, not a brain surgeon, not a head of state, will stare at a man the way a police stares.

Back home I field the usual ten messages from Colonel Tom. He veers around, racking his brains for shit on Trader. A prior record of instability and temper-loss that amounts to a few family disagreements and a scuffle in a bar five years ago. Examples of impatience, of less than perfect gallantry, around Jennifer. Times he let her walk by a puddle without dunking his coat in it.

Colonel Tom is losing the story line. I wish he could hear how he sounds. Some of his beefs are so smallprint, they make me think of diss murders. Diss murders: When someone gets blown in half for a breach of form that would have slipped by Emily Post.

“What’s the game plan, Mike?”

I told him. Jesus... Anyway, he seemed broadly satisfied.

If the jury is still out on women police, then the jury is still out on Tobe. Still out, after all these months, and still hollering for transcripts of the judge’s opening address.

Right now the guy is next door watching a taped quiz show where the contestants have been instructed beforehand to jump up and down and scream and whoop and french each other every time they get an answer right. The multiple-choice questions do not deal in matters of fact. They deal in hearsay. The contestants respond, not with what they think, but with what they think everybody else thinks.

I just went through and sat on the great couch of Tobe’s lap for five minutes and watched them doing it. Grown adults acting like five-year-olds at a birthday party, with this routine: What do Americans think is America’s favorite breakfast? Cereal. Boing. Only 23 percent. Coffee and toast? Wheel All right.

What do Americans think is America’s choice suicide method. Sleeping pills. Yeah! Ow!

Where do Americans think France is? In Canada. Get down!

There’s an obit in this morning’s Sunday Times. In its blandness and brevity you can feel the exertion of all Tom Rockwell’s heft.

Just a resume, plus manner of death (“as yet undetermined”). And a photograph. This must have been taken, what, about five years ago? She is smiling with childish lack of restraint. Like you’d just told her something wonderful. If you skimmed over this photograph—the smile, the delighted eyes, the short hair emphasizing the long neck, the clean jaw—you’d think that here was someone who was about to get married kind of early. Not someone who had suddenly died.

Dr. Jennifer Rockwell. And her dates.

The little girl on Whitman, with her pink ribbons and bobby socks? She didn’t hear anything, on March fourth. Today, however, I went to see someone who did.

Mrs. Rolfe, the old dame on the top floor. It’s half after five and she’s half in the bag. So I don’t expect much. And I don’t get much. It’s sweet sherry she’s drinking: The biggest bang for the buck. Mr. Rolfe died many years ago and she’s quietly splashing her way through a widowhood that’s lasting longer than her marriage.

I ask about the shots. She says she was dozing (yeah, right), and the TV was on, and there were shots on the TV also. Some cop thing, naturally. She describes the report she heard for definite as unmistakably a gunshot, but no louder than a door being slammed two or three rooms away. You can feel the weight of the building: Constructed in an age of cheap materials. Mrs. Rolfe dialed 911 at 19:40. First officer showed at 19:55. Plenty of time, theoretically, for Trader to pack up and split. The little girl wheeled her bike in “around a quarter of eight,” according to her mother. Which puts Trader on the street—when? 19:30? 19:41?

“They fight ever?”

“Not to my knowledge, no,” says Mrs. Rolfe.

“How’d they seem to you?”

“Like the dream couple.”

But what kind of dream?

“It’s just so awful,” she says, making a move for the sauce. “It’s shaken me up, I admit.”

I used to be like that. Any bad news would do. Like your friend’s friend’s dog died.

“Mrs. Rolfe, did Jennifer seem depressed ever?”

“Jennifer? She was always cheerful. Always cheerful.”

Trader, Jennifer, Mrs. Rolfe: They were neighborly. Jennifer ran errands for her. If she needed something heavy shifted, Trader would move it. They kept a spare key for her. She kept a spare key for them. She still had that spare key, used to gain access on the night of March fourth. I say I’ll take that key, thank you, ma’am, and log it with Evidence Control. Left her my card, in case she needed anything. I could see myself looking in on her here, as I still do for several elderly parties in the Southern. I could see myself developing an obligation.