John Gardner - Stillness & Shadows

“You actually don’t remember why you moved?” McClaren said.

“I never remember much of anything,” Craine said bleakly, stuffing his pipe, poking with his finger. “Anyway, nothing about my”—his face went wry—“personal life.”

“That’s very strange,” McClaren said. A kind of stillness had come over him, a hovering, as in zero gravity, the wide-awake stillness of a hunting dog who’s picked up a scent. It was so subtle that only a fellow detective would have noticed it, but it was there all right, unmistakable, and not unexpected. Everybody’s got one twisted spot, one knot in the wiring where the heat builds up; that was axiomatic in Craine’s profession. And McClaren, with the instinct that made him what he was — unconsciously scanning, Dr. Tummelty would say — was aware that he’d stumbled onto Craine’s. Craine sighed. The inspector spoke lightheartedly, chattily, nosing closer. “You never remember anything about your personal life! Good heavens!” He gave a laugh. He pushed his head forward, chin first, white and gold grin flashing. “You’re speaking figuratively, I take it?” He grinned on.

On the curtain that led to the restaurant’s innards, across the room, something white appeared — an animal, possibly a rat, Craine thought at first, heart leaping — but it resolved itself at once into the Chinese boy’s hand, drawing the curtain back, bringing in — centered like a jewel on a round, black tray — Craine’s coffee. The boy stopped at the bar and fixed whiskey for the inspector, then hurried to their table.

“Thank you, my good man,” Inspector McClaren said. He sat erect, his right hand closed on the front of his sport coat just below the lapel. Picture of a dandy. A Baltimore lawyer at home among magnolias and row houses, sunny of disposition, elegant. He should be wearing a vest, a Phi Beta Kappa key. Beware of him , Craine thought wearily. Small silver knife .

“Will that be all?” the Chinese boy asked.

Craine lit his pipe, thinking, as he always did, lighting his pipe, of lip cancer, lung cancer, heart attack, the shadow inside him.

Inspector McClaren surveyed the table, then raised his head abruptly, eyebrows lifting, his black mouth distorting to a trapezium. “My colleague here,” he said, “wanted coffee with cream .”

The waiter bowed and, as if in self-parody, put his fingertips together, then hurried off.

McClaren leaned forward again, interlaced his fingers above his whiskey glass, and said, “You were saying you have trouble with your memory.”

“I wasn’t saying it’s trouble. It’s no trouble at all,” Craine snapped. “People are always deciding what’s trouble for other people. It’s an interesting quirk.” He caught himself and smiled, not quite genial, and took a suck at his pipe. “Trouble for you , maybe.” He smiled harder and let out smoke. “That’s what we usually mean when we talk about other people’s trouble.”

McClaren looked at him oddly, thought of saying something, then thought better of it. The gears were working. Click, spin, click. He raised his whiskey glass. “Cheers,” he said, and drank. Craine set his pipe down, drew the bottle of whiskey from his pocket — spilling more paper scraps — uncapped the bottle, still inside the sack, and, with slightly trembling hands, carefully poured a little Scotch into his coffee. He set down the bottle and picked up the cup. “Bung-o!”

“Still,” McClaren said, setting down his glass, eyebrows lowering in an irritable but lightly conversational frown, “how do you do your work if you forget things?”

“Oh, I remember that kind of thing, for the most part.” He capped the bottle, wrung the dirty paper sack closed again, and with a hand not too noticeably wobbling set it to his left, beside the soy sauce. Then once more he closed both hands around the cup, preparing to lift it. Why he continued, getting himself in deeper, he couldn’t have said — the crackling of electrons in the back of his head had grown louder — but he did, and in fact it gave him pleasure. Joy of coming clean, he thought. Beauty is Truth. “I remember pretty much everything, when I’m working on a case. But when it’s over, that’s it.”

“Odd,” McClaren said.

“Yes, that’s true,” Craine said, “I’ll admit it. But you know how it is with a private detective — Sam Spade, Lew Archer—” He shrugged, smiling crookedly — a smile he’d practiced at his mirror as a child — and he reminded himself again to be careful. “It’s much more a matter of style, with us. Columbo, for example. You’ve seen Columbo on TV?”

“I’ve watched it, yes,” McClaren said, watching Craine. He whispered something that Craine didn’t catch. Again he raised his glass to drink. As he set it down again he said, “I don’t believe Columbo’s ‘private,’ actually. And in any case, you know as well as I do, those are fairy tales. Actual police work, when compared to its fictional representation on TV—” He cleared his throat, prepared to launch a lecture.

“True!” Craine said, “but more true for you than for me, that’s my point. In my line — private as opposed to public — we have to keep in mind what our clients expect. ‘Image,’ that’s the name of the game with us.” He leered. “We have to be characters . You think I like this getup?” He pointed to his ragged cuffs, the large brown stain on his overcoat sleeve. He sat back, cocked his head. “You, Inspector. You’ve got a wife, children from a previous marriage …” How he knew McClaren had children he couldn’t say; instinct maybe; contact with “the bioplasmic universe,” as Dr. Tummelty had said. He must think about that, remember to write himself a note about it; something fake in the way Tummelty had said it, maybe — but for now he must hurry on, step lightly, beware of getting tangled in his shoelaces. “You think I like making these sacrifices?” he asked. He leaned forward and raised the coffee cup with two hands, sipped the Scotch-coffee loudly, then set down the cup again. “But there are forms, you know. We have to accept that. Right ways and wrong ways of doing things, you know. Not true forms, mind you. Not Platonic forms.” Craine’s voice, unbeknownst to him, was sorrowful. “Social prejudices, expectations, that’s what we’re discussing.” He leered again, his sagging eyes morose. “How do I know you’re a professor?” he asked, slightly nasty. “Because you behave like a professor, you dress like a professor, you occasionally throw in a little French.” He let out what he meant for a smile, squinting, and raised his cup again. When he’d sucked in, loudly, intending to offend, he hurried on, lowering the cup, picking up the pipe, relighting it. “So it is with us. Form is function, as the physicists say — and vice-a-versa. What does the American private detective do? Lew Archer, say? J. T. Malone? He drinks Scotch! Every time he turns around, every scene he walks into, more Scotch! It’s hard on the system, but you see how it is, we have no choice. Just like the Avon lady can’t be too fat. And when he’s shadowing people he reads newspapers, magazines, books. Thass less harmful, probly—” He felt the slur coming into his speech and took hold of himself. “Depends on what you read.” He pointed with his pipe stem at the old book on Sanskrit beside his cup.

McClaren looked at it, shook his head, the glass hovering in his still hand halfway to his mouth. “I believe this is the strangest conversation I ever got into,” he said.

“Yes, that’s part of it too! I’m glad you noticed! Sam Spade pretended to be dishonest, remember? You’ve seen The Maltese Falcon , I imagine. Yes of course. Everybody has. Yer going over for it, baby. I’m not gonna play the sap fer you . Humphrey Bogart. Me now, I play crazy.” He cackled, the sound so crazy in the great, dark, empty restaurant that for an instant he was frightened.