John Gardner - Stillness & Shadows

He glanced at his watch. It had stopped at a quarter to eleven, or so he thought. (At the bookstore, he’d fixed one fifteen in his mind. It was now his settled conviction that it must be two or so.) His secretary, Hannah, would be fit to be tied, wondering where he was; but no matter. He was his own boss, and he had nothing to do that couldn’t wait. He hadn’t been involved in what he’d call a real case — or would have called a case in his Chicago days — in years. He scowled, carefully not thinking about the past, stepping on the squares of the sidewalks, not the cracks, and abruptly, surprising himself, he stopped and, throwing one arm out for balance, spun around. The student he’d seen in the bookstore, in the oversized red sweater, was crossing the street diagonally, pretending not to know Craine was there. He was hurrying — loping, in fact, arms economically swinging like a jogger’s. Given the distance and the weakness of Craine’s eyes, that was as much as Craine could tell, but it would do. He knew about coincidence, probability. Heart thudding violently, he ran out into the street — a screech of tires, the bright yellow hood of a car bobbing downward with the suddenness of its stop — and Craine shouted, “You!”

The boy turned, jumping like a rabbit, looked at Craine, and ran. Craine ran after him. “You!” he yelled again. He lifted his long feet high to keep from tripping.

“Help!” the boy yelled. “Murder! Police!”

“Easy now!” someone said, and seized Craine’s arm. The man’s grip was firm as iron, official, planted right square on the crazybone. Craine, lifted half off his shoes, swung his head around and squawked.

“Some kind of trouble, Mr. Craine?” the man said. He was a tall, professorial person of about fifty — Craine had a feeling he’d seen him before. High, pink dome, horn-rimmed glasses, dark flat trapezoid smile with crooked little teeth behind it. Though he meant it to be genial, the smile had a hint of ferocity, flashing like a knife.

“That’s a criminal there,” Craine yelled, pointing toward where the boy had disappeared. He tried to pull his arm free.

“That why he’s calling for the police?” the man said, and smiled again. The heavy, dark shadows of buildings and trees, sprawled along the street, gave a shudder of disgust or laughter, then lay quiet again.

Craine had placed the man by now: Detective Inspector McClaren, professor of crime and correction at the university, lately made part-time criminal investigator with the Carbondale P.D. It came to Craine the same moment that it was not the boy who’d been spying on him, but someone else, he’d settled that long since. Some young woman. Yet how odd, he thought, suddenly putting his hand over his mouth, that McClaren should be planted just here, just now, perfectly set to intercept him.

Craine’s face, unbeknownst to him, put on its cunning look. “He’s been tailing me,” Craine said. “Follows me everyplace.”

“That so?” Detective Inspector McClaren said, brown shaggy eyebrows lifting. He studied Craine, looking down from high above him, then slightly loosened his grip on Craine’s elbow. “Well, never mind, Gerald,” he said. “We’ll see to it. I’ll have someone look into it.” If the use of Craine’s given name was intended to intimidate, the obscene trick worked. It made McClaren seem securely, ominously adult. One could imagine him signing important papers, giving firm, polite orders, shooting his cuffs for increased efficiency, sitting serious-minded and metaphysically alone at his orderly desk, head and shoulders thrown back, a certified, no-nonsense, horn-rimmed intellectual, beloved and feared by his inferiors.

Craine glared at him, angry as a goat, still trying to jerk free. “How the hell do you intend to look into it? You don’t even know him, and you’ve let him get away!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Inspector McClaren said, blushing again, red as a beet, but smiling. He kept an eye on the people passing by on the side-walk, careful of his dignity. “You know how it is in a town this size. With a little quite simple technology—” Though his eyes remained dead, smoky blue, ice cold, he stretched his mouth into a still wider version of the trapezoid grin, chin thrown forward — the expression of a professor being patient and studiously unvindictive with an irritating student who no longer has a prayer. He drew his left hand from his sport coat pocket — brown coat, leather patches, a gift from his new, young wife, no doubt (Craine had heard about that; sooner or later he got all the filth) — raised his thin, freckled wrist for a glance at his watch, then looked back at Craine. Soberly, he said, “See here, Gerald, do you by any chance have time for a cup of coffee?”

“Dime?” Craine said.

“Time,” the inspector said, slowly and distinctly, as if speaking to a dull-witted foreigner.

“Oh, time!” Craine hesitated, pondering, thinking about the bottle in his pocket, imagining himself at the diner pouring Scotch into his coffee-with-cream, keeping the bottle steady by holding it with both hands. It was painfully tempting: McClaren would take the check. But suppose it was true that they were setting him up as the Lady Killer, planning to let him make them heroes? Head lowered, lips sucked inward, he slid his eyes toward McClaren, sizing him up. He was a man it might be useful to have a fix on, in point of fact, now that McClaren was working with the police. For a private eye, especially a tiresome old bum like himself (Craine had no illusions; that was the one decent card he had left), there was no such thing as good relations with the police, not in a place like Carbondale; but it was nice to know the enemy. McClaren felt the same, of course. It was the reason for his kind invitation. McClaren stood waiting, bald head tilted, mechanically smiling, as if someone had turned off his power switch.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Craine said at last. “Matter of fact, I haven’t had time to get lunch yet.”

“Fine! Jim Dandy!” the inspector said, looking at him oddly. With his right hand clamped on Craine’s crazybone, he turned Craine around like a peeping Tom taken into custody and marched him back into traffic. He raised his left arm to stop oncoming cars (Craine snatched his hat off, not to be outdone, and waved it furiously, leaning out past the inspector’s paunch), the inspector murmuring in his just-slightly-backcountry, reedy voice, “Glad I ran into you! Splendid piece of luck!” Craine racked his brains to place the accent. Northern South, he decided; east of Kentucky and West Virginia. Baltimore, maybe, where they murdered poor Edgar Allan Poe.

“I’ve been meaning to get over to see you, Gerald,” the inspector said, helping him up onto the curb as if Craine were a cripple. Two dogs drew back from them in alarm and a woman raised her hands. Craine waved his Stetson at her, then mashed it back onto his head.

The inspector was saying, “But you know how it is, mutatis mutandis and all that.” He smiled and gestured grandly with his free left hand to show Craine that, though a gentleman and scholar, he wore his learning lightly. They turned toward the Chinese restaurant, McClaren steering. (Craine hated Chinese restaurants.) Abruptly, as if just now remembering something, McClaren bent forward. His face showed concern. “I understand you’ve been ill,” he said. “You’re better now, I trust?” As if guiltily, he released Craine’s arm.

Craine smiled inwardly, registering that flicker of guilt in McClaren, and tightened his grip on the book. They were a wonder, these people: wanted to find a scapegoat with a terminal disease. No question about it, the world was in good hands! Craine clamped his lips. He would volunteer nothing. Let the bastard pull teeth. “I’m fine,” he snapped, and gave his head a little nodding jerk.