Chapter III: Part 3

Mack had been a policeman once, on the vice squad. Now he was a private detective, a lone operator who, if he was a bit on the shyster side and did mostly divorce work, stayed nearly enough honest to be on good terms with the police. Which made him a very valuable friend and protector for a girl like Dolly, who, although she did nothing seriously illegal, frequently skated on somewhat thin ice.

"Ray," Mack was saying to her. "That's the guy who's a liquor salesman, no? The one who brings you a case of whisky once in a while?"

Dolly nodded. "He said he just wanted to stay a little while, Mack honey. If he means that and doesn't change his mind maybe I can phone you after he goes and you can come back. Where'll you be?"

"At the office, I guess. I've got some skip-trace reports I might as well write up. I'll be there a couple of hours. I'll go home after that if I haven't heard from you. Should hit the pad early tonight anyway."

"Swell," Dolly said. "Mack honey, you make us a couple drinks while I take a quick shower. I won't be three minutes."

She walked quickly into the bedroom. She undressed quickly, putting away the clothes she took off since she wouldn't have to dress again this evening; she could just put on a robe when Mack left.

She wondered if Ray would bring a case of whisky with him tonight; that was something she was always glad to get. She thought back and decided that he wouldn't. He'd brought a case last time he'd come. Dolly didn't expect her friends to bring her a present _every_ time they came to see her, if they'd brought something fairly valuable the previous trip. Something like a dozen pair of nylons, dollar forty-nine variety, anything that cost no more than twenty or twenty-five dollars (and it had better not cost much less than twenty) was good only for the time it was brought. Something worth fifty was worth a couple of visits and so on up the line. Dolly didn't keep books on the presents brought her but she had a good memory and always knew who was due to bring something and who wasn't. She didn't have her rules printed and posted on the inside of her door, as rules and prices are posted inside hotel room doors, but the men who came to see her soon got the idea and could figure it the same way Dolly did. No, Ray probably wouldn't bring anything tonight and she didn't expect him to. A case of whisky, the brand he'd brought, was worth at least fifty dollars. He would have paid less, of course, since he'd have been able to get it at wholesale, but Dolly didn't care about that; it was still worth at least fifty to her.

She was in the bathroom almost exactly the three minutes she'd predicted. Two minutes under the shower and one with the bath towel; she didn't dry herself too thoroughly because Mack liked her with her skin a trifle moist. And during the minute of toweling she had time to admire her body in the full-length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door.

Her breasts were especially beautiful, she thought, and why shouldn't she think so when she knew they drove men crazy. Already their shell-pink, tip-tilted nipples were hardening in anticipation.

Naked and glowing she walked through the bedroom and into the living room. Mack was sitting on the sofa; two freshly made highballs, strong ones, were on the coffee table in front of it.

Naked she ran lightly across the room and sat in his lap, kissed him. His arms went around her, one of his hands cupping one of her breasts, a perfect fit.

He pulled back to break the kiss, groaned softly.

"Little bitch," he said. "How can a man enjoy a drink with you like this. The drinks will have to wait."

He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. She laughed; this was what she'd wanted, to have to wait for her drink until afterward.

8:24 P.M.

He stood outside a living room window of the little three-room cottage looking in, watching her. By moving from one side of the window to the other he could see almost all of the room, and she, even if she looked toward the window, would not be able to see him. There was a net curtain inside the window. From the outer darkness he could see through it clearly into the lighted room, but from where she sat the curtain would be opaque. He could--except for his Need and his desperate impatience--stand here as long as he wished to make his plans and calculate his chances.

He thought they were good. The cottage was on the outskirts of town, in a neighborhood not very built up as yet. There were only a few houses in the block.

There was one almost directly across the street but it was dark and there was no car in the carport alongside it. Obviously either no one lived there or no one was home.

The nearest house on the right was vacant and had a "For Rent" sign on it. People were home and lights were on in the nearest house to the left--but it was well over a hundred yards away and besides either a radio or television set was turned on quite loudly. He could hear it from here. Over that volume of sound so close to them would they be able to hear the sound of a scream? He didn't think so. But it was a risk he would have to decide to take--or not to take. He'd never be able to get through the window and get to her to knock her out without her having time to scream once.

The window at which he stood was at the side of the house and he could see the inside of the front door--and the chain bolt on it. Probably just about every house or apartment in town had one now. Well, the method he'd tried three times had succeeded twice but now he might as well forget about it.

The danger that was greater than a scream being overheard was in plain sight on a stand right beside the door. The telephone. Would he be able to get through the window and to her before she could get to the phone and finish dialing a number? If she got a call through--even managed to get an operator and call _help_--he wouldn't have time to have his way with her. But if by then he was in the room with her, if she'd seen him, he could still take a few seconds to kill her quickly, so she'd never describe or identify him, and still, he hoped, be out of the neighborhood before the police came.

It would all depend on how quickly he could pry that window up and get into the room.

He weighed the other chances against him. He'd checked the garage behind the house; the door was open and the car was gone. That meant that her husband, if she had one, was out and not in the bedroom or the kitchen. Of course the husband might return too soon, but that would be too bad for the husband unless he was a heavyweight champion boxer. He'd hate to have to interrupt himself to do it, but he could handle any ordinary unarmed man. The only difference would be that he'd be leaving two corpses behind him this time instead of one. Or three or more corpses if by any chance a child or children asleep in the bedroom. He wouldn't mind killing them at all; he hated children almost as much as he hated women.

His eyes went back to the woman. She was sitting on the sofa, her feet curled under her, reading a magazine. Well--what was he waiting for?

He took the heavy chisel out of his pocket and put its edge between the bottom of the window and the sill, then put both hands on the handle and leaned his full weight against it. It made no appreciable sound; she hadn't looked up from her magazine. But it was in as far as he could push it, and was it in far enough?

There was only one way to find out. He threw all his strength into pushing down on the handle of the chisel, and this time there was noise--but it was the noise of splintering wood and not the snapping of the window catch above. He had failed.

She looked up now, and there was fright in her face, but not panic. She didn't scream. But she ran for the telephone and started dialing.

And there was no chance of getting to her in time now, with a second try at the window. He ran to the car he had parked a quarter of a block away. Stupid, he thought; he should have found the telephone wire outside the house and snapped it. Then he'd have had time to get in while she struggled with a dead phone. Next time, if he tried this method again, he'd do that. And he'd have a hammer to use with the chisel, to drive it far enough in so the catch would snap instead of the wood splintering.

This time he was six blocks away when he heard the approaching sirens. But would one of them by any chance stop and investigate a car driving away from the address to which they'd been called? There wasn't much traffic out here, and the cops just might get that bright idea. They weren't in sight yet so he quickly parked at the curb in front of a house, turned his lights off and lay down across the front seat out of sight. They wouldn't investigate an apparently empty parked car this far from their destination.

They didn't. Two of them screamed past him. No more seemed to be coming, so he started his car and drove back into town, thinking despairingly that he wouldn't dare make a third attempt tonight after two unsuccessful ones. He'd have to case and plan his next kill carefully.

For tonight, he thought, the Need would have to go unsatisfied. He'd have to settle for the poor consolation of a few drinks to calm his nerves, and then sleep.

That's what he thought. But then, he had not yet met Ray Fleck.

8:26 P.M.

Ray Fleck's reluctant footsteps stopped on the sidewalk of an apartment building on Willis Street, just on the edge of the downtown business district, and he hesitated before entering it, as a man hesitates before stepping under a cold shower.

This talk with Joe Amico was bound to be an unpleasant one. But Joe had told him to come, and before ten o'clock, and Joe was mad at him already and would be madder if he didn't show up. So he'd better get it over with.

In a way, he thought, it was lucky Dolly Mason had told him not to come before nine; that gave him time to come here--Joe's apartment was only three blocks from the drugstore from which he'd phoned Dolly--and still get to Dolly's in plenty of time. Surely Joe wouldn't want to keep him more than a few minutes. What was there to say to Joe except to reassure him that he'd pay the money as soon as he could possibly raise it?

Yes, it was far better to get the interview with Joe over with now. That way, if Dolly lent him money, even fifty dollars, he could stay with her a while, almost two hours, until time to head for the game. That way he'd at least be sure of keeping his capital intact. And he knew that if she was free she'd let him stay. For that matter, it might be just as well for him to stay with Dolly even if she couldn't or wouldn't lend him money. If he spent the time elsewhere he was at least as likely to diminish his fifty dollars as to augment it.

He entered the building and saw that the self-service elevator door was closed and that the indicator above it showed that it was at the fourth floor and going up. So he didn't wait for it but went to the door that led to the staircase instead; Joe's apartment was on the third floor and he'd rather walk two flights than wait.

Going up the stairs his mind went back to Joe. Damn him, he thought, it was as much Joe's fault as his that he was in this jam; Joe should have told him how deep in the hole he was getting. He hadn't kept track and had thought he was in only for maybe a couple of hundred. Until yesterday when he'd tried to phone in a fifty dollar bet. Big Bill Monahan, who worked for Joe and who usually answered the phone at the apartment, had said, "Just a minute, Ray. Joe said he wanted to talk to you the next time you phoned." And Joe had come on. "Ray-boy, don't you realize you're in the soup for four-eighty? You'd better pay that off before you do any more betting." He'd told Joe that he'd stop in, thinking at first to ask Joe to show him the slips on the bets; from the names of the horses and the amounts he'd know whether all the bets were his or not. Maybe Joe or Big Bill had made a mistake. But after the call he'd tried to remember all the bets he could and had added them up. They'd come to four hundred and ten dollars and since he was sure that he hadn't remembered all of the bets, he was willing to take Joe's word on the total.

But why hadn't Joe called him on it sooner? Twice before Joe had called him on running into debt, both times when the amount involved was a couple of hundred. Both times he'd been able to raise the money within a few days. The first time he'd done it on a signature loan, but that wouldn't work again because he'd got behind on his payments and had had a fight with the loan outfit. He'd paid it off eventually but the damn company had marked him as a poor credit risk. And loan companies keep one another posted on things like that. He'd found out when he'd applied for a second loan from another outfit and had been turned down. He'd raised the money that time by putting up his car for security but that wouldn't work again either right now. He'd had his present car only six months and had made only five payments on it. It was financed over a two-year period and he still owed too much on it for him to borrow anything against it. He could probably sell it for a few hundred more than he owed on it but he needed a car to hold down his job.

He pressed the door buzzer and after a moment Big Bill opened the door a few inches on the chain and looked out through the opening. He said, "Hi, Ray," and then closed the door momentarily so he could take the chain off and open it wide. It was a silly system; Ray had kidded Bill about it once and he'd shrugged and said, "Boss's orders." It was still silly. Were they afraid of a raid? Amico paid for protection and got it. He had to take a raid once in a while but he was always tipped off in advance exactly when one was coming--usually just before a local election. When a raid came, Amico wouldn't be there nor would there be any clients. The cops would serve the warrant on Bill Monahan or whoever was working for Amico at the time, and find and confiscate some betting slips--phony ones with fake names on them; Amico would have the real ones. Monahan would appear in court and pay a fine or, if the police wanted to make a better showing than usual, sit out a short jail sentence. Amico wouldn't even get his name in the papers, and would meanwhile be opening up in a new location, already rented in advance, and spreading the word on his new address and phone number. No raid was expected tonight or Big Bill wouldn't have let him in; clients never got caught in one.

Big Bill closed the door behind Ray and said, "Joe's laying down. Had a headache and took some aspirins."

"Maybe he's asleep," Ray said. "Maybe I better come back some other--"

"No, he wants to see you. Said if he was asleep when you came to wake him up. Just a minute."

Big Bill crossed the room--a living room furnished like any living room except for the addition of a desk with two telephones on it--opened the door of the next room and looked in. He turned back and said, "He's awake. Go on in."

Ray Fleck went in and, in case he was going to have to take a bawling out, closed the door behind him. The room was a bedroom and Joe Amico was lying on the bed but on top of the covers and fully dressed. Ray had never seen him otherwise; like many small men Joe prided himself on being dapper. Even on the hottest days of summer he always wore a suit coat over a white shirt and a necktie and the shirt was always so fresh and clean that Ray thought he must change shirts at least twice a day and possibly oftener. The bed was a big one and Joe was so small that he looked almost like a doll lying there on it.

"Hi, Ray-boy," he said. "Pull a chair around where I can see you from here. I'm gonna stay flat. This damn headache--"

It was going to be all right, Ray thought; Joe wasn't angry and wasn't going to get tough about the dough. He pulled a chair around to the side of the bed and sat down. He remembered that Joe had once mentioned sinus trouble and asked, "Sinus headache?"

"Yeah. Get 'em every once in a while, in streaks, in series like. One at the same time every day for about two weeks. They get worse each day for the first week and taper off during the second. I'm over the hump this time; this is about the tenth day."

"Can't a doctor do anything for them?"

"Naw, I been to a dozen of 'em. The pills they give me don't help any more than plain aspirin. And it ain't bad enough for an operation; I get a streak of headaches only about once a year and I'd rather stand 'em than have a--what do they call it?--sinusotomy. What are you doing about that money, Ray-boy?"

"Trying to raise it, Joe," Ray said. And then, to give himself some leeway: "Might take a few days or even a week, but I'll get it."

"What if you can't?"

"Hell, I can--somehow. I've always paid you before, haven't I?"

"Yeah. But what if you can't scare it up this time, in one chunk? I know how much you make--about how much anyway--and that's quite a piece of cash for you. Close to a month's income. I shouldn't of let it get that big but I wasn't keeping track and didn't realize how far into me you were till Bill called my attention to it yesterday."

"Sure, Joe, it's quite a piece of cash. But don't worry; I'll get it. And this damn losing streak can't last forever."

"Maybe not, but one can last a hell of a lot longer than yours has. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I think you'd better lay off any kind of gambling till you're back even again--and that'll give your luck time to turn maybe. I don't run an installment business but I'm willing, in your case, to let you pay it off by the week. Say fifty a week; that'd take you a little less than ten weeks."

Ray winced. "My God, Joe! I can't pay fifty a week--I wouldn't have enough left to live on. How about twenty-five--if I can't raise the whole thing, that is."

"Fifty might be rough on you, yeah. How about thirty-five?"

"Okay," Ray said. "Give me a week to see if I can raise the four-eighty. Then if I can't pay you at least most of it I'll start forking over thirty-five every payday. A deal?"

"A deal. All right, that's settled. Isn't anything else you wanted to tell me, is there?"

A little puzzled--what was Joe getting at?--Ray said, "Nothing I can think of. Except thanks, and I'll do my best to raise the dough without having to make it in installments. Well, so long."

Crossing the living room on his way out he walked almost jauntily. It was over with, and it hadn't been half as bad as he'd expected. He had a full week to raise or win the money and even if he didn't succeed things wouldn't be too bad. At thirty-five a week it would take a hell of a long time to pay off four-eighty but it would still leave him money for small bets and as soon as he started winning he could pyramid.

Monahan went to the door with him and opened it; they said so longs and then the door closed behind him. But it opened again when he was halfway to the stairs and Monahan stepped out into the hall and said, "Come back, Ray. You forgot something."

Forgot something? He hadn't forgotten anything. As he walked back he was thinking of Joe's "Isn't anything else you wanted to tell me, is there?" That had been puzzling too. What went on?

He went back. Big Bill held the door open from outside, then followed him in and closed it. This time there was the sound of the chain.

Joe Amico had come out of the bedroom, and in a hurry, because for the first time Ray saw him less than completely immaculate; his straight black hair was mussed from having lain on the bed and he hadn't taken time to comb it. He was sitting on a corner of the desk, legs dangling, and he no longer looked like a doll. You could have taken him, though, for a malevolent little marionette with eyes as cold and hard as marbles.

He didn't raise his voice but it was as cold and hard as his eyes. "How long you been making book yourself, Ray-boy." This time the "Ray-boy" didn't sound like an affectionate nickname; it sounded like a swear word.

"Wha--" Suddenly in the middle of a word Ray Fleck realized what had happened, what _must_ have happened. "My God, Joe," he said. "That bet I took to place with you for Chuck Connolly--he must've phoned you to change it or something and said I had the money for you. I have, but _honest_, Joe, I forgot, completely forgot."

"How many other times have you made book yourself on dough somebody gave you to give me?"

"Never, Joe, honest to God, never." And, in fact, he'd never before done it, to speak of. A few times, not over half a dozen, he'd taken a small bet, never over two or five, to give Joe, thinking that he'd be seeing him or phoning in some bet of his own; then had decided against laying anything that day himself and hadn't bothered to phone in the peanut bet. Once one of the horses had won and he'd paid off on it, twelve-forty on a two-dollar win bet. But never until tonight had he deliberately held out a bet to raise money.

He was taking his wallet out of his pocket with a hand that he tried to keep from trembling, opening the wallet to take out the three tens Connolly had given him. But Joe was saying, "The whole thing, Ray-boy. The wallet."

His eyes had been looking down at the bills in the wallet, trying to focus on it to pick out the three bills. He looked up in surprise and that made it too late. Big Bill jerked the wallet out of his hand and tossed it to Amico, who held it in his hand, tapping a corner of it on his knee, not as yet opening it.

He said, "How many bets in here besides Connolly's?"

"None, Joe. Honest to God. I've _never_--"

"Shut up. You stink, Ray-boy. Chuck Connolly didn't call me up to change his bet; I wouldn't of even known about it if you hadn't told me. Sam Washburn called me, Sam the waiter at Feratti's. I eat there often and know him; he almost always takes a buck bet instead of a tip, and sometimes adds cash of his own.

"So he called just before you came here, said he'd got worried about his bet on Birthday Boy and wanted to change it a little. Said he gave you five besides a one tip, all on the horse's nose. Got a little doubtful about the hunch and wanted to play the six across the board. And I had a hunch about _you_, Ray-boy--that you've dragged down on me before by playing bookie on your own. I decided to see if you'd give me that six bucks. I gave you every break, even asked you, God damn it, if you had anything else to tell me. Waited till you were clear out the door before I sent Bill to get you back. And what happens when I get you back? You know I've got something on you and you pop off on a deal I wouldn't of known about otherwise. And then stand there with your bare face hanging out and swear Connolly's is the _only_ bet you ever dragged down." He held up the wallet. "How many other bets from today and tonight you still got in here?"

"None, Joe. Honest to God, I--"

"Shut up." Joe Amico opened the wallet and, without taking them out, checked the bills in it. "Fifty bucks. How much was Connolly's bet, and on what? Don't bother lying because I'll check with Connolly on it."

"Thirty," Ray said miserably. "Thirty across, on Blue Belle. Fifth, Aqueduct."

Amico put the wallet down on the desk beside him. "Bill," he said, "take thirty-six out of that. Make slips on both bets--you heard 'em. Then give him his wallet and his lousy fourteen bucks change back."

Monahan went around behind the desk.

Ray said, "My God, Joe, I know this looks like I was dragging down on you on purpose, but--"

"Shut up. From now on don't say a God damn word, till I finish and ask you if you understand, and then you damn well better say yes. Just yes and nothing else.

"Somebody else taking bets in my name, dragging down on me, that's one thing--_the_ one thing I won't stand. Don't matter if it's six bucks--that's all I knew about for sure at first--or thirty-six or a million. Or six cents, for that matter.

"We're through, Ray-boy, finished. You come around here with a grand in cash and want to lay it, I don't take it. I don't deal with chiselers.

"I made you a nice easy deal--four months I'd of took to get all that four-eighty at thirty-five bucks a week. I meant it and you could of had the deal, but at the same time I was testing you, to see if you were going to give me that lousy six bucks. I knew if you ever dragged down on me you would tonight, on account of you're behind the eight-ball."

Monahan came around from behind the desk and held out Ray's wallet to him. Ray took it and put it back into his pocket with a hand that was shaking badly.

Joe Amico was saying, "Do I have to tell you that deal's off now? You got a new deal and here it is. I want that money, _all_ of it, by this time tomorrow night. You got twenty-four hours to raise it. I don't care how you raise it. Sell your car. Sell your wife. Rob a bank."

"Joe, I _can't_--"

"I said shut up. Bill, if he opens that yakker of his again put a fist in it. Ray-boy, I almost _hope_ you can't. Because I'll get a four-eighty kick outa what I'm going to do if you don't."

He looked at his wrist watch. "Just twenty-four hours from right now I start putting out the word that you're marked lousy, that you're a cheap crook and a welsher besides. I start with all the tavern and liquor store owners I know--and I know plenty. Chuck Connolly will be on top of the list. I tell 'em if they're friends of mine they won't deal with a rat like you. I'll ask 'em to pass the word to the other guys in their racket, the ones I don't know. And some of the boys, the ones I know best and do business with, are going to phone in your boss and complain about you, about the way you treat 'em, the way you act in their joints.

"It'll take a little while for the word to get all the way around, but you'll be lucky, Ray-boy, to make fifty bucks in commissions next week or to hold your job for two weeks.

"Oh, and you'll never lay another bet, even if you ever get any money to lay. I do know every other bookie in town and they come right after the bar owners. And I know who at least some of your friends are, too, and I spread the word there. By a couple weeks from now you won't be able to sit in even a penny-ante stud game in a private house.

"Okay, that's it. Now you can talk--one word and it better be yes, and no more than that. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Ray said. Hopelessly he turned to go; nothing he could possibly say would help right now, even if he dared to say it.

"Not quite yet," Amico said. "Bill, touch him up a little. Take it easy and don't mark him. Just something to help him remember."

Ray had sense enough to know that it wouldn't do any good to fight back; he'd get hurt worse if he did. He stood still and tried to make himself limp when Big Bill's left hand grabbed a handful of the front of his coat and shirt, thinking that if he went down from whatever came first maybe they'd let it go at that.

But what came first was a pair of flat-handed slaps to the face--back of the hand to one side, palm to the other. Slaps that rocked his head, stung like hell, and made his ears ring.

Then Big Bill, still holding with his left, pulled his right hand back and drove a fist like the business end of a battering ram into the pit of Ray's stomach. The pain was so great that, as his hands went to his stomach, he tried to double over and would have except for the big hand still holding his clothes bunched in front of his chest. From somewhere miles away and through a haze of redness he heard Monahan's voice say, "Enough, Joe?" and Amico's voice say, "Yeah. Put him in a chair. Don't put him out in the hall till he can walk. We don't want him laying on our doorstep."

He was in a chair and nothing was holding him now; he could double over forward in the chair and he did. He was retching. From somewhere not quite so far away he heard Amico's voice again. "And don't let him out till you're sure he won't puke on the hall carpet, either. If he pukes in here keep him till he's able to clean it up."

He heard a door open and close; Amico had gone back into the bedroom. He heard a phone ring and then Big Bill's voice answering it and then saying, "Ten to win on Rawhide in the fourth, twenty to show on Dark Angel in the seventh. Right, Perry."

He could straighten up now, and he wasn't going to puke. His stomach still hurt like hell and his cheeks stung and his ears rang, but he thought he could stand up now. He _had_ to stand up and get out of here fast. For a moment he couldn't remember why, and then it came to him. His date with Dolly. She was his only chance now, or the only one he could think of. Joe Amico had meant every word he'd said.

He raised his arm to look at his wrist watch. Yes, he could still make it in time if he was lucky in catching a taxi quickly outside. Lucky that this was Willis Street and taxis were fairly frequent. He put his hands on the arms of his chair and stood up. Not quite straight; the pain in his stomach made him bend forward a little at the waist.

"You okay?" Big Bill asked him. His voice was impersonal, neither friendly nor unfriendly.

"Sure. I got to get out of here. I'm going to be late for a date if I don't leave now."

"Walk back and forth a few times. When I see you can navigate, okay."

He was a little tottery walking across the room the first time, better coming back. After a few trips he was walking almost normally, as much as it hurt him to do so.

Big Bill got up and went to the door and opened it. "Okay, Ray. No hard feelings?"

"No," Ray said.

As he walked through Big Bill said, "Believe it or not, I pulled my punch on that poke in the gut." And then, before Ray could answer, not that there was anything _to_ answer, the door closed behind him and he heard the chain slide into the slot.

No stairs this time. He went to the shaft of the self-service elevator and pushed the button. The indicator showed that it was on the top floor, but it started down. He leaned against the wall opposite the elevator door to wait for it.

Suddenly he remembered something and reached for his wallet. Amico had told Monahan to take thirty-six out, but what if Monahan hadn't put back the change? But Monahan had; the wallet held a ten and some singles. Fourteen lousy bucks.

He _had_ to get money from Dolly now. And he might as well try for five hundred while he was at it--what was to lose trying? If he got that much--and he'd offer _any_ kind of interest to get it--he'd stay out of the poker session and not risk losing any of it. He'd keep it intact to be _sure_ of being able to pay Joe tomorrow.

But fifty or a hundred wouldn't do him any good with Joe, so if that was all he could get, running it up would be his only chance.

_Dolly, Dolly_, he thought, _please, Dolly. Be like the mistress of the man in the French short story._

The elevator came and the door slid open automatically. He stepped inside.

A minute later he was at the curb, looking frantically both ways for a taxi. None was in sight and he ran, doubled over a bit because his stomach hurt, to the corner, where he'd have a better chance of flagging one.

8:47 P.M.

See now as through a defective windowpane that lets in light but distorts the images that the light bears. See now into Benny Knox as he himself sees out. See a twisted cosmos peopled by phantoms who buy newspapers as they pass and then are seen no more, except for a few who come regularly enough to become real for a while and to be remembered most of the time. Through this pane Benny sees a frightening but basically simple universe run by a good God of Vengeance when sin is done.

But first let us see him from the outside, as others see him. Benny Knox was born thirty-five years ago to a mother who died in bearing him, her firstborn. His father was a Baptist minister, a fiery fundamentalist to whom Heaven and Hell were fully as real as Earth. His father, who never remarried, raised him.

During infancy he seemed perfectly normal and not only seemed but was perfectly healthy and he was always big for his age. If during the next years, those of his preschool childhood, signs of retardation began first to show and then to multiply, his father, who after all had no standard of comparison, failed to recognize them.

The fact that he was retarded wasn't known until he was entered in the first grade of school (his father hadn't 'believed in' kindergarten; all they did there was let children play and Benjamin already knew how to play). Within a month he had been examined by a school psychologist and the Reverend Matthew Knox had been called in for conference and advised to send his son to a special school for subnormal children.

Benny had attended that school for eight years, until he was fourteen. Then the school's principal had told Benny's father: "I'm afraid we've done all we can for Benjamin. He has approximately the equivalent of a third-grade education. Perhaps a little better than that in some subjects--such as reading and arithmetic. Not so good in some others, subjects that require memorizing, such as geography or spelling.

"Socially, the picture is neither too good nor too bad. He gets along reasonably well with people, especially his contemporaries, but only when circumstances force him to. He greatly prefers solitary occupations and activities. He seems to daydream; whether or not that will decrease or increase as he grows older, only time will tell.

"Morally--well, he's almost too good. It's obvious that he had very strong religious training at home and is--well, almost too literally convinced of everything he was taught."

The Reverend Matthew Knox had frowned slightly. "What he was taught at home _was_ literally true," he had said.

"Of course. But, unless tempered with reason, some of the teachings of Christianity are--ah--hardly survival characteristics in our society. Or in any society for that matter. Generosity is a virtue, for example, but it must be practiced with moderation. Recently I happened to learn of a boy having come to school without his lunch. Not, mind you, because his parents are poor; they aren't. Just because he forgot it. Benjamin gave the boy his lunch and went hungry that day. When I learned of it I talked to him and explained that while it would have been a good thing for him to share his lunch with the boy he should not simply have given it away and gone hungry himself. There have been other such instances but that's the most recent one."

Benny's father had nodded thoughtfully. "I'll talk to him about it," he said. As a matter of fact, he already had, a great many times. Benny simply couldn't keep such things as baseball gloves, roller skates or kite reels, and when something was gone it was always because he had given it to a poor boy who didn't have one. Several times, when Benny knew the name of the poor boy and where he lived, the Reverend Knox had gone and got the article back; never had he encountered any poverty more real than his own. He had finally solved the problem--and without crossing Benny's desire to give to the poor--by issuing and occasionally repeating a flat order to the effect that before he gave anything of his to a poor boy he should bring the boy home with him; he would then talk to the boy and decide whether or not the boy was really poor and needed the article in question worse than Benny did. With rare exceptions, when Benny had forgotten, this had worked. Apparently none of the boys who had been taking advantage of Benny had wanted to face an inquisition at Benny's home first. But apparently Benny had not known that this edict had extended to school.

"And there is one other thing," the principal was saying, "that troubles me about Benjamin. I must say that it troubles me _much_ more than his indiscriminate generosity--for I believe you can train him out of that without too much difficulty. He has a tendency to confess to having done things he did not do. His teacher tells me that several times when some prank or bit of minor vandalism has been committed she has talked to the class about it and then asked whoever was guilty of it to raise his hand; each time Benjamin's hand went up. And each time some minor punishment was meted out to him for what she believed he had done. Then one day the prank in question happened to be one she knew positively Benny could not have done, and he still raised his hand. It was a caricature of the teacher drawn on the blackboard during lunch hour and it was rather well done for a child's drawing; Benny is very poor at drawing. The teacher sent Benjamin to me to have a talk.

"His answers to me were vague and confusing. I honestly don't know whether he knew he was innocent and had some compulsive reason for offering himself as a scapegoat--perhaps guilt feelings about something else--or whether he really thought, once the question was put to him, that he had really done it."

The Reverend Knox was troubled; this was something new to him. True, whenever he had asked Benny whether or not he had committed some certain dereliction, the answer had almost always been affirmative, but he had never questioned the boy unless he was already reasonably sure Benny was guilty, so the affirmation had never been a surprise. He asked, "Could Benjamin have been with the boy who made the drawing--aided and abetted him, as it were--and thus felt that he shared the guilt and have raised his hand for that reason?"

"No. Once the teacher seriously considered drawing styles, the identity of the culprit became obvious; only one boy in the class could have done it. Once the question was put to him directly he confessed--as a matter of fact he was justifiably a little proud of the drawing--and admitted that another boy had been with him but it wasn't Benjamin. Benjamin hadn't even known of the drawing."

"I'll have a talk with him," Benny's father had said.

And he'd had a number of talks with him during the first year or two Benny was out of school. He'd made a number of tests, too. For example, if he himself should accidentally break a drinking glass in the kitchen, later he'd show Benny the broken glass and ask if he had done it. All too often, for a while, Benny would admit guilt. This always led to another and longer talk, and finally he felt sure that he had cured Benny of this fault--and he had, for a long time. Like the principal, he had never been able to decide whether Benny had deliberately made a false confession to court punishment or whether he really thought, when asked, that he had committed the offense in question.

He had given thought, too, to Benny's being able to make a living for himself in the world. At first, since Benny was too young for a full-time job, he had bought him a newspaper route. After a few mistakes, Benny had done all right on it. It was teaching Benny responsibility, he thought, and the five or six dollars a week it brought in helped out immeasurably. After a while the only help he needed was to be reminded once a month when it was time to make his collections.

When Benny was sixteen and already bigger than most men his father decided that it was time to help him find a niche in the world in the way of a full-time job. The good minister was himself in failing health and beginning to realize that, by the time of his own death, Benny's needs must have, not only a means of earning a full livelihood, but a way of living alone without constant parental care and advice. The only alternative would be, after his own death, for Benny to be institutionalized and become a public charge. This was to be avoided if at all possible. Over the course of the next two years he found Benny a variety of jobs--in vain. Benny could handle almost any of them, with constant supervision, but no employer could afford an employee whom he had to watch all the time. Even at manual labor jobs, although he was plenty husky enough to handle them, Benny managed to get into trouble. Set him to digging a ditch and he would dig it into the next county unless you were there to stop him.

When Benny was eighteen and had never held a full-time job longer than a few weeks, and few that long, the Reverend Knox learned that he had only about six months to live. Fortunately, at about the same time, he chanced to learn that an elderly man who for many years made a living running a newspaper stand on a busy downtown street corner was about to retire and wanted to sell his business. Newspapers were the only thing Benny had ever got along with; if he could run a newspaper route maybe he could sell newspapers over a counter. In some ways the latter was even simpler. Every transaction was a simple cash deal instead of a more complicated monthly collection. Knox had a long talk with the retiring vendor, and bought the concession. The seller stayed on for a few days to show Benny what ropes there were. Knox saw the circulation managers of the two newspapers Benny would handle and the manager of the distribution agency that supplied him with the items he would sell; with each of them he arranged to have Benny's bills sent to the parsonage. There was nothing to it, and Benny got along fine from the start. Each evening he brought home his receipts for the day and turned them over to his father, who took care of paying his bills and managed his money for him, starting him out each day with the amount and variety of change he'd need to start business at the stand.

There remained only one problem to solve before he could die, and Knox had had its solution in mind for a long time; he had waited only until he was sure his son could earn a living. A Mrs. Saddler, a widow and a good woman, was a member of his congregation and she ran a boarding house within walking distance of downtown. He went to see her and made arrangements for Benny to room and board with her, and for her, for a small but adequate percentage of Benny's earnings, to take over the management of his affairs.

That, too, had worked out. Each night he brought his money home to her, as he had to his father. She managed it for him, took out what she had coming for room and board, gave him an allowance of spending money--which went for candy and ice cream sodas, his only dissipation--bought clothes for him when he needed any, and put the surplus in the bank, part of it in a special checking account against which she drew for his business expenses, the rest in a savings account in his name--but which she reminded him of only when some extra expense or minor emergency necessitated his help in drawing some of it out.

This accomplished, the Reverend Knox had quit fighting the Reaper. He had given up his ministry and his parsonage, had gone to a hospital and died.

And all had gone well for fifteen years, until Benny Knox was thirty-three. On the surface anyway; Mrs. Saddler sometimes wasn't sure what went on down inside of Benny when occasionally he had dark, unhappy, brooding spells; she wasn't able to get him to talk about them although ordinarily he prattled to her freely about anything and everything. And nothing had ever come of the spells; they'd always worn off.

Until suddenly at the height of one of them Benny, she subsequently learned, had gone to the police station one morning and had confessed to having committed a murder that had been much in the newspapers for two weeks. It had been, according to how one might look at it, a bad time or a good time for him to have confessed to that particular crime; the police had just apprehended the real killer only an hour before; the news had not yet hit the papers or Benny would have read about it. Benny did read the newspapers during dull periods at the newsstand--the parts of them that he was able to understand and make sense of, which included crime stories and the comic page and not much else.

The police knew who Benny was and what he was; after fifteen years his downtown newsstand was a landmark and just about everyone in town knew him by sight. Many policemen knew him well enough to stop and talk a moment when they were passing his stand. So they brushed Benny off gently. They asked for his wallet and looked at the identification in it to see if it had an "in case of accident or illness notify" card with a name and address and it did. They phoned Mrs. Saddler and, after talking to her long enough to establish her relationship with Benny, they explained to her what had happened and asked her to come in and talk with them, after which she could take Benny back home with her. Which she did. And she talked to him until he was finally convinced that he had just imagined what he had tried to tell the police. Or perhaps he was not completely convinced until he read an afternoon paper with the story of the capture and confession of the real killer. Along with many people with higher I.Q.'s than his, Benny believed implicitly everything he read in print.

The next time Benny Knox confessed to a crime he did not commit, again a murder, was two years later--a year ago, when Benny was thirty-four. That time he did not get off so lightly, for several good reasons. The crime was not yet solved, and it had been a wanton, purposeless killing that bore all the earmarks of having been committed by a mentally deranged person. A few days later it turned out to have been committed by a pair of teenage heroin addicts, but until then Benny had rather a rough time of it. His story was hard to disprove; it made sense insofar as it covered all the facts that had appeared in the papers. Only one thing saved him from being actually charged with the crime and getting his name and picture in the papers as a murderer--which would have been very bad for business at the newsstand, even though he would subsequently have been cleared. Some people would still have been afraid of him. The thing that had saved Benny had been his choice of a weapon. The news stories had said only that the man had been beaten to death with a blunt, heavy weapon. After the autopsy the police knew that the weapon had been a section of rusty pipe; not only did some of the wounds clearly indicate its diameter but tiny fragments of rust had been found embedded in the victim's skull. But they had not given this particular bit of information to the newspapers, and Benny's imagination had supplied him with a baseball bat as the blunt heavy weapon he had used. Moreover, he was unable to remember where he had obtained it or what he had done with it afterward.

The police, that time, were not so ready and willing to release Benny Knox. He'd given them a hard time and caused them a lot of work. For a while they'd seriously considered charging him despite the one discrepancy in his story. The rest of it made sense and could have been true. Further, they were convinced that he was, or at least had been, sincere in thinking he had committed the crime. That made him a psychopath, and it could be that he was a potentially dangerous one. If he could imagine himself to have committed a crime possibly someday he might really commit one.

They held him while Dr. Kranz, an alienist who was a friend of the police commissioner's and who usually advised the police on borderline cases like Benny's, talked to him twice and also had a long talk with Mrs. Saddler, who knew more about Benny's background and history than anyone else. Dr. Kranz saved Benny.