Эд Макбейн - Love, Dad

Jamie stood just inside the doorjamb. The door was open, and he could see past the library with its Oriental rugs and Joanna’s music stand and her flute case open on one of the wingback chairs, silver against green velvet — he was probably after the flutes. She had three flutes, she had told Jamie how insurance costs were devastating for musicians who owned expensive instruments; Fillipa owned a Strad that was insured for half a million dollars. He was here for the instruments. He had heard her playing one day, figured he’d come in just before dark, before she got home from wherever she worked, grab whatever instrument it was he’d heard up there on the third floor.

Past the study, Jamie could see the flat even light of late afternoon streaming in the hallway, and then he heard footfalls crunching on the broken glass beneath the hall window, and then more footfalls, and something blocked the streaming light for just a moment, caused it to waver for just a moment before the man obviously flattened himself against the corridor wall, and began inching his way down the corridor soundlessly, perhaps sensing someone else in the house, perhaps merely exercising a caution any burglar might, Jamie neither knew nor cared. He was trapped in a nightmare realized.

He had often in the Rutledge house, lying awake at night and listening to the creak of a staircase or the clatter of a raccoon, wondered what he would do if someone entered the house. He always slept naked; he imagined himself at an immediate disadvantage against a fully clothed and possibly armed intruder, a man facing however many years in prison for breaking-and-entering or armed robbery, or whatever the hell the police called it. He had imagined someone creeping up the steps from below, hearing the creak of the treads under a stranger’s heavy footfalls, hearing him padding down the hallway toward the bedroom where Jamie stood just inside the doorway, a brass candlestick in his right hand, one of a pair that were a wedding present from Connie’s mother, both normally sitting on the ledge of the upstream bedroom windows. Had imagined this scene. And had known he would kill to protect either Lissie or Connie, and had hoped no one ever forced him to do that, no one ever got as far into his house as that bedroom hallway outside, where he would have to swing the heavy brass candlestick hoping merely to stun but knowing he might perhaps kill.

The hall outside was silent now.

The afternoon light filled the open doorframe at the far end of the study, unbroken. On the bed behind him, Joanna sat still and tense, listening. This was not Jamie’s house, he did not know what to do here. If he struck this man as he entered the bedroom, if he knocked him unconscious with the hairbrush or God forbid killed him — no, he didn’t think the hairbrush would kill him, he wasn’t even certain it was heavy enough to knock him out — but then what? What did they do then? If he had warned Joanna against calling the police before the man posed the threat he now posed, how would the situation have changed after he was bleeding and unconscious on the Bokhara outside the bedroom door?

“Anybody here?” a voice called.

Joanna gasped. Jamie felt a shock of electric fear run up his spine and into his skull.

“Hey?” the voice called again. “Anybody here?”

Black. A black man.

“You hear me?” the voice called.

Jamie looked at Joanna. He took a deep breath, and very quietly said, “I’m waiting for you with a shotgun.” The lie hung on the suddenly stifling air. He waited for an answer. Nothing came.

“You hear me, you little prick?” he yelled. “I’ve got a shotgun in my hands, you come one step closer and I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

“Hey, cool it,” the voice said.

“Get the fuck out of here!” Jamie shouted.

“Shoot him, shoot him!” Joanna screamed, as if she really believed there was a shotgun.

There was another moment of silence in the hall outside, and the frantic beat of footsteps toward the broken window, and the crunch of glass underfoot when he reached the window, and then more glass as he went through, and the sound of his feet on the iron railings of the fire escape and the iron rungs of the ladder, retreating, fading. Jamie went out into the library, still holding the hairbrush in his hand, and peeked around the doorjamb. The hallway was empty.

“He’s gone,” he whispered.

“I have to pee,” Joanna said.

He sat naked in the red leather wingback chair near the tiled Franklin stove, and he heard the sound of Joanna urinating, and he thought, If I don’t tell Connie soon, the whole fucking world will know before she does. All the black burglars in Harlem will know, only next time we might not be so lucky, next time the guy out there in the hall may have a shotgun himself, a real shotgun and not a hairbrush posing as one. And he’ll come in here blasting, ask the questions later, kill the fucking honkies first, grab the silver flute and all the silver shit on the dresser, fence the stuff uptown, leave it for the cops to later discover that the honkie with his brains on the rug ain’t married to the honkie with the big tits and the open windpipe.

He heard the toilet flushing and then heard the sink tap being turned on, Joanna splashing water onto her hands and perhaps her face as well, cold water to wash away the stale sweat caused by that fucking bastard who’d had the nerve to break in here, to intrude, to violate, smashing the window and stealing down the hallway, here to steal the silver, here to steal the family jewels, the family, the... what do we do now? Today was dangerous, today could have been disastrous. Too damn close today. No cigar, but very goddamn close. So what do we do? What do the big lovers do. The red-hot lovers. The red-hot burglars, what do we do? Burglars breaking into that fucking Rutledge house, stealing through its hallways, intruding, violating the way that cocksucker violated this house today, violating! What do we do?

“Don’t go out in the hall without your shoes on,” Joanna called.

The airmail letter was waiting in the mailbox when he got home from the city that afternoon. It read:

April 20, 1970

Dear Mom and Dad,

I know this will come as a shock to you both, and I hope you won’t take it the wrong way. I know you think I’m in school right now, but instead I’m in London. Before you hit the ceiling, please let me explain. This isn’t a flouting of parental authority, or any kind of diminishing of the love I feel for you both. When I went out to California, I did plan on returning to school, I told you the truth about that, and those are still my plans now, nothing has changed. But me and Barbara, she’s the girl you spoke to briefly on the telephone, had some very good talks in San Francisco about the direction my life was taking, and I decided to get away for a while to think things out more completely. I know you’re probably wondering why I needed another break from school when I’d just had one, but what with the hassle of getting across the country, and the subsaquent troubling talks we had with each other, I felt the need for further replenishment of the spirit. So that’s why I’m here in London.

Barbara (Duggan) is a girl my age, well actually just a bit older, who plans to stay here in Europe much longer than I. She’s a darling person, and she has money of her own, you don’t have to worry about her grubbing from me or anything. My own plans indicate that I’ll be home in two or three weeks, which is about how long I guess my money will last. I drew the $500 out of my savings account in Boston, and I also sold my stereo to a girl in Davis Hall. I know you’ll be pleased to hear I got $400 for it, which I think was cool trading since we only paid $620 for it brand-new at Radio Shack. This will be more than enough to get me to Amsterdam, which is where we’ll be heading when we leave here tomorrow morning. I don’t know where we’ll be staying yet, so I can’t give you an address. I’ll keep in touch, though, and I don’t want you to worry about me.