John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

The Woodworth sisters could describe the burglar in detail. So could the neighbors. He had knocked at one door after another, asking nervously for a man named Day. At the Woodworth house no one had answered his knock, though he waited for perhaps five minutes. He could not know, of course, that neither of the sisters could speak above a whisper, that the elder was unable to leave her chair, and that the younger moved so slowly on her two black canes that, watching her, you could not have told whether she was going toward the door or resting for a moment. She was standing in the middle of the parlor when the burglar came in through the kitchen, still holding the hammer. He stopped in his tracks, and cunning Miss Octave (as everyone said) whispered, “Don’t murder us, young man. We’re blind as bats. We couldn’t possibly identify you later. Just go about your business and be gone.” They delivered up their handbags to him, told him where he’d find the silverware (the second-best, however; they said nothing of the cherrywood box tucked under the bed), and even let him know there were oatmeal cookies in the yellow crock on the sink. Most of their money, luckily (since there wasn’t much), was in the bank drawing interest for them. He took what he wanted (he left the cookies) and ran away through the garden and the back lawn of the Episcopal church, where another neighbor saw him and shouted to him. The burglar had on a baggy sweater and an old dirty cap, the neighbor said. His arms were loaded with a large sack and some china and old silver pitchers and lamps, and there were beadlike things hanging out of his pockets. He was unshaven and ran awkwardly, with his head thrown forward, like a horse, the neighbor said. The Rector had seen him too. He’d been watering his hydrangeas at the time. Nobody’d seen him before in Batavia. Apparently he had a car parked somewhere, because nobody had seen him since, either. The Woodworths had insurance, luckily. And so the police had made a routine check, knowing the case hopeless and, anyway, not the kind of case that warranted an all-out effort. Perhaps the stolen goods would eventually turn up, in some junkstore in Lockport, or in a garage somewhere a year from now. They had written their reports, expressed their sympathy to the burgled ladies, and filed the case — having no choice in the matter — and they’d forgotten it.

Miss Octave Woodworth, however, had not forgotten. She was morally outraged. They hadn’t so much as taken fingerprints, had even refused to take along the hammer which Miss Woodworth had left all this time on the enormous, carved walnut table and would not touch even now except with the handkerchief that had come down to her from her Great-Great-Aunt May, a Judd. She wanted an investigation.

Four o’clock. He stood gazing sullenly at the great stack of papers, sucking at the cigar with short quick puffs, hungrily, trying to get it going better than it could. He had time yet to get over to Stroh’s Flower Shop, for the Paxton flowers, and then to the Woodworth sisters’. Yet he hesitated. It irritated him that there was nothing he could tell them, no way he could honestly satisfy their demand for action, and it was only partly that they were the Woodworth sisters. No matter who it was that made the complaint, Clumly would have felt the same irritation at the box he was in.

We’d have gotten that burglar twenty years ago, he was saying to himself. It’s the times. What’s the world coming to? They had never considered, twenty years ago, the cost of catching a criminal — the man-hours involved in the investigation. A crime was committed, you went after the man. Just like that. Not now. “As near as we can estimate,” Mayor Mullen said, “every cop on your Force costs us nine dollars an hour. Nine dollars, Clumly. Think of it. That’s taking account of the overhead — buildings, cars, gadgets, the whole gambit — including salaries. So I put it to you: I want time-sheets, Clumly. And I don’t want you hiring a lot of office help to figure them. No sirree. I want a paying operation, and I want it now. Here. Put it this way. Say a merchant gets robbed at his store and he loses nine dollars. You know what that’s worth in Police Department time? One man for one hour. Period. Or two men for a half an hour. Case closed.” Mayor Mullen patted his stomach. It made sense, of course, like everything Clumly found disagreeable in the times. You couldn’t catch all of them anyway, might as well put your time where it meant good business. Nevertheless, it grated on him. He’d run a tight ship, in the old days. No figuring the odds, no punching a clock each time you started and stopped an investigation. A man could build up pride in his work. It was a service. Do ministers keep time-sheets, Mr. Mayor? Or schoolteachers? And doctors? But he hadn’t asked it. He had a suspicion they did.

And so (he brooded) he would visit the Woodworth sisters, soothe them with lies, invite them to visit the jail sometime and look at the thief they had locked up in another connection — Walter Boyle, if that was really his name — knowing all the time that it wasn’t Walter Boyle, he was no “wildman,” a smart old pro — and knowing too that the Woodworths couldn’t come down to the jail anyway, they never got out of the house any more: if the sun hit the Woodworth sisters they would shrivel up and disintegrate like corpses in a vacuum casket when you cracked the pane of glass.

The shiver of a hare-brained idea ran up Clumly’s back. Why not? he thought. The idea startled him, and he crossed quickly to the window and bent toward it to peer out, as if seeing if anyone had observed him thinking it. But the more he thought about it the clearer and simpler the plan seemed, however irregular. He’d have done it without a moment’s thought in the old days. He was Chief of Police, wasn’t he? Why not? It was four-fifteen.

Salvador handed the keys to him without even looking up from his paperwork. Miller was nowhere in sight. Clumly hurried down the hallway, glancing over his shoulder once or twice, to the cellblock. “You,” he said. “Up on your feet.” He unlocked the cell. The thief, Boyle, looked up at him over the top of the Daily News he was reading and, after a moment, stood up. He was short and fat, slightly humpbacked, still wearing the suit they’d arrested him in — brown trousers, black and gray suspenders, a dark tie of uncertain color. His suitcoat was neatly folded on his pallet.

“Get your coat,” Clumly said.

Boyle turned slowly, blinking his heavy-lidded eyes, and ran one hand over his thin, graying hair. He got into the coat, glanced furtively over at the others, and came out of the cell.

The bearded one grinned like a mule and closed his eyes. “God be with you.”

The thief, Walter Boyle, ignored him. He held out his hands for the handcuffs automatically, and Clumly snapped them on.

On the way to the street they passed no one but Salvador, still working on his papers, the radio chattering and spitting behind him. “I’ve got the prisoner with me,” Clumly said. “Checking an identification.”

Salvador glanced up, slightly surprised, then nodded. It was a new one, no doubt, but everything was new to Salvador and would be for a long time. He was slow.

But there was another complication, it came to Clumly as he was getting into the car. He looked up at the toy-castle towers of the police station, the gaping stone archway over the porch, the barred windows to the rear. He groped with the problem, scowling fiercely as he started up the engine, and at last he saw that he’d left himself no choice. He’d have to take Walter Boyle in with him when he stopped at Stroh’s for the flowers. Well, all right. He drove to Pearl Street and pulled up in front of the hydrant in front of the store.