John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

He got up out of his armchair wearily, hesitated a moment, from habit, to let the hint of dizziness that always came when he got to his feet pass through him and subside. Then he went to the clothespress for his coat and hat and revolver. When he opened the door a shock of alarm ran up his arms and legs: He thought there was a man there, waiting among the coats. A mistake, of course. He rubbed his mouth with his right hand, giving his heartbeat time to slow down, then put the gunbelt on, the hat, the coat. He thought, Suppose I were to leave before Kozlowski shows up, like the pig in the story. Kozlowski didn’t know where the appointment was.

“Someone’s here,” his wife called from the livingroom. “A car just drove up.”

“Mmm,” Clumly said. “One of my men. I’ll be right there.” He turned his head to glance craftily at the kitchen door, behind him, and then he glanced over at the diningroom window. He too could hear the car motor. Still time, he thought. A man could be over to that window and out … But she would hear him — what’s-her-name, his wife. Who would understand? In the morning the Mayor would be waiting for him, and the men in white coats would be with him, maybe. No. Now there came a knock at the door. He heard her crossing to it, drawing the door open. “Hello,” she said. “Fred says he’ll be right out.” He took a deep breath. Take a Deep Breath, he thought. Title for a speech.

“Lot of people might get the wrong idea about this, Kozlowski,” Clumly said. He sat with his elbow out the window, head thrown back, cold cigar in his right fist. “There’s different ways you go about investigating. You follow me? It all depends on the situation. Sometimes you go after a criminal right away, sometimes you give him rope and let him hang himself. It’s like a farmer.” He squinted at the branches above the street, lighted up by the streetlamps and the prowlcar’s headlights, and he pursed his lips. He shot a glance at Kozlowski, then squinted upward again. “It’s like a farmer,” he said again. He’d started it with confidence, but now, in panic, he realized he could think of no example. “A cow starts crowding you when you’re milking her, moving over on you, you know what I mean. Well sometimes you give her a knee in the belly, and sometimes …” No, that was wrong. You had no alternatives, in that case. “Or like a dog that chases cars,” he said, “or a horse that nibbles the stall.” He nodded, thoughtful. The hell with it. Let Kozlowski figure it out if he was so smart.

“Pull in here,” he said.

Kozlowski looked surprised, but he slowed and turned left and came to a stop at the cemetery gates.

“Hell of a place for a meeting, eh, Kozlowski?” He chuckled.

Kozlowski turned his black-socketed eyes toward him.

They sat with the headlights shining in, throwing bars across the grass and the nearest tombstones and the trunks of trees. He tried to think how much he should say of what Kozlowski might expect of the cracked magician. He framed the beginnings of sentences in his head, but he couldn’t decide to let them out. “Gate’s probably open,” he said. “That would be like him. I’ll see.” He opened the car door and got out and went around to the front and pushed at the gate. He’d guessed right. It opened away from him, creaking. “Might’s well drive in,” he said. He forced a smile. He stepped back to the right, and Kozlowski drove up even with him and let him back in.

“Want the gate left open?” Kozlowski said.

“Might’s well,” he said, studiously off-hand. They’d park the car in plain sight. Yes. It looked crazy coming to the meeting at all; at least they didn’t have to look like they were sneaking. “Park here,” he said. “Kill the motor.”

Kozlowski switched off the key and turned the lights out.

“Ok,” Clumly said. He clapped his hands softly. He made no move to get out. He felt short-winded. For a minute or more they sat in the cemetery’s hush, behind them the long curve of the cemetery drive, the wrought-iron fence, the blank, abandoned blackness of the old Massey-Harris plant and, above it, the yellow-red glow of the city. Nothing stirred anywhere. Clumly sighed. “Ok,” he said again. “Here’s how it is. I’ll go over where he’s waiting — that little crypt over there, with the fence around it.”

Kozlowski nodded.

“Give me two, three minutes, then you follow and wait by the door. I’ll get him talking, let him babble about anything he wants. If we’re lucky he’ll let something slip, something that tells us who he is, where he’s worked before, what he’s up to — that kind of thing. You just stand there and listen, don’t make a move unless I yell. If my guess is right he’ll pull one of those disappearing acts, sooner or later. You keep your eyes and ears peeled, don’t miss a thing, and zap! we’ve got him. And keep out of sight. If anybody shows up to help him, see who it is, find out where they go. You got it?”

Kozlowski nodded.

“And don’t touch the radio.” He took the flashlight from the glove compartment. “Anybody calls, don’t answer it — unless they ask for me. Then it’s ok.”

“Yessir.”

He pressed the flashlight button, testing it. It worked. He put the flashlight inside his shirt with the tape recorder. Then he lit the cigar. “Ok.” He saluted. Unnaturally official. It was as if, he thought, he were trying to pretend to himself that the whole thing was regular. He opened the car door, got out, and closed it quietly.

“See you,” Kozlowski said.

He felt moved by it. Touched. He nodded solemnly and started across the dew-wet cemetery grass toward the crypt.

Both the wrought-iron gate and the studded iron door to the crypt itself stood open. Clumly bent forward, his hand on the side of the door, and peered in. He could see nothing. It was cold here at the doorway to the crypt. A shiver passed over him, and he could not tell whether it was the chill in the air or childish fear or outrage. Damned clown, he thought. That was what made the whole thing so infuriating. Not the fact that he’d chosen a cemetery crypt, a gloomy night, but the fact that the Sunlight Man loved clowning, took monstrous delight in playing with a human being as though he were a toy. It was the incredible ego of the man that made you sweat. Who could say when he would stop being amused and end the game? But that was nonsense, of course. He could admit to himself that it was nonsense, but he wasn’t yet admitting why he’d come. “When all’s known,” he thought, seeing if it sounded at all convincing, “it may prove that every word that man said about the Negro boy and the store full of salesmen is true. Who can say? I may be matching wits with a Master of Crime.” He glanced over his shoulder, sheepish. He felt for the handle of his pistol. Still there. But he didn’t really expect he’d be allowed to keep it. His enemy was everywhere at once. A thousand tricks. But a man had no choice. No choice. It was a comfort.

His eyes had somewhat adjusted to the darkness now. He could make out, just barely, the slabs of the crypt floor, the iron exfoliation on the arched window of the crypt’s back wall, the shelves of concrete, two on each side, and the four enormous wooden caskets, gray with age. He calmed himself. “Are you here?” Clumly said. The thick concrete walls gave a boom to his voice, and again he felt a shiver of mingled terror and indignation. “Piece of foolishness,” he thought. “Damned nonsense.”

And then — ridiculous! height of indignity! — something whirred past his shoulder and struck the far wall and stuck fast. He whirled, drawing his pistol, but there was no one. From the crypt to the cemetery fence nothing stirred. To his right the police car sat waiting in the darkness, Kozlowski sitting in the driver’s seat as though nothing had happened. Cautiously, pistol still drawn, Clumly entered the crypt and moved toward the far wall, pulling out the flashlight and snapping it on as he went. Low on the concrete wall he found an arrow, a child’s arrow with a suction-cup tip, and attached to the arrow, a note. It was written in pencil, in childish block letters: WELCOME. As he frowned and read, the paper shaking under his flashlight, the crypt door behind him swung shut, slowly — but he could not move quickly enough to prevent its closing — and the lock clicked. Clumly leaned on the chilly wall, shaking, believing he would faint. He stood leaning for what seemed five minutes, and ice-cold sweat ran down his face and neck. Thank God for the flashlight. At length, without a sound, the lid of the coffin on the upper shelf to his left lifted three inches and a white-gloved hand, limp as the glove of a vaudeville clown, groped along the edge. Clumly was beyond horror now. He felt only the profound, hopeless disgust of a man repeatedly victimized by moronic jokes, with no sign of hope on the horizon.