“Horace, I don’t know how to thank you.”
And the sheriff said in sorrow, “That’s all right. It’s what I’d want my friends to do for me.”
“The goddam bitch,” his visitor said softly, and Horace Quinn knew that part of the curse was for him.
And he knew he wouldn’t be sheriff much longer. These guilt-feeling men could get him out, and they would have to. He sighed and sat down. “Go to your lunch now,” he said. “I’ve got work to do.”
At quarter of one Sheriff Quinn turned off Main Street on Central Avenue. At Reynaud’s Bakery he bought a loaf of French bread, still warm and giving off its wonderful smell of fermented dough.
He used the hand rail to help himself up the steps of the Trask porch.
Lee answered the door, a dish towel tied around his middle. “He’s not home,” he said.
“Well, he’s on his way. I called the draft board. I’ll wait for him.”
Lee moved aside and let him in and seated him in the living room. “You like a nice cup of hot coffee?” he asked.
“I don’t mind if I do.”
“Fresh made,” said Lee and went into the kitchen.
Quinn looked around the comfortable sitting room. He felt that he didn’t want his office much longer. He remembered hearing a doctor say, “I love to deliver a baby, because if I do my work well, there’s joy at the end of it.” The sheriff had thought often of that remark. It seemed to him that if he did his work well there was sorrow at the end of it for somebody. The fact that it was necessary was losing its weight with him. He would be retiring soon whether he wanted to or not.
Every man has a retirement picture in which he does those things he never had time to do—makes the journeys, reads the neglected books he always pretended to have read. For many years the sheriff dreamed of spending the shining time hunting and fishing—wandering in the Santa Lucia range, camping by half-remembered streams. And now that it was almost time he knew he didn’t want to do it. Sleeping on the ground would make his leg ache. He remembered how heavy a deer is and how hard it is to carry the dangling limp body from the place of the kill. And, frankly, he didn’t care for venison anyway. Madame Reynaud could soak it in wine and lace it with spice but, hell, an old shoe would taste good with that treatment.
Lee had bought a percolator. Quinn could hear the water spluttering against the glass dome, and his long-trained mind made the suggestion that Lee hadn’t told the truth about having fresh-made coffee.
It was a good mind the old man had—sharpened in its work. He could bring up whole faces in his mind and inspect them, and also scenes and conversations. He could play them over like a record or a film. Thinking of venison, his mind had gone about cataloguing the sitting room and his mind nudged him, saying, “Hey, there’s something wrong here—something strange.”
The sheriff heeded the voice and looked at the room—flowered chintz, lace curtains, white drawn-work table cover, cushions on the couch covered with a bright and impudent print. It was a feminine room in a house where only men lived.
He thought of his own sitting room. Mrs. Quinn had chosen, bought, cleaned, every single thing in it except a pipestand. Come to think of it, she had bought the pipestand for him. There was a woman’s room too. But this was a fake. It was too feminine—a woman’s room designed by a man—and overdone, too feminine. That would be Lee. Adam wouldn’t even see it, let alone put it together—no—Lee trying to make a home, and Adam not even seeing it.
Horace Quinn remembered questioning Adam so very long ago, remembered him as a man in agony. He could still see Adam’s haunted and horrified eyes. He had thought then of Adam as a man of such honesty that he couldn’t conceive anything else. And in the years he had seen much of Adam. They both belonged to the Masonic Order. They went through the chairs together. Horace followed Adam as Master of the Lodge and both of them wore their Past Master’s pins. And Adam had been set apart—an invisible wall cut him off from the world. You couldn’t get into him—he couldn’t get out to you. But in that old agony there had been no wall.
In his wife Adam had touched the living world. Horace thought of her now, gray and washed, the needles in her throat and the rubber formalin tubes hanging down from the ceiling.
Adam could do no dishonesty. He didn’t want anything. You had to crave something to be dishonest. The sheriff wondered what went on behind the wall, what pressures, what pleasures and achings.
He shifted his behind to ease the pressure on his leg. The house was still except for the bouncing coffee. Adam was long coming from the draft board. The amused thought came to the sheriff, I’m getting old, and I kind of like it.
Then he heard Adam at the front door. Lee heard him too and darted into the hall. “The sheriff’s here,” said Lee, to warn him perhaps.
Adam came in smiling and held out his hand. “Hello, Horace—have you got a warrant?” It was a damn good try at a joke.
“Howdy,” Quinn said. “Your man is going to give me a cup of coffee.”
Lee went to the kitchen and rattled dishes.
Adam said, “Anything wrong, Horace?”
“Everything’s always wrong in my business. I’ll wait till the coffee comes.”
“Don’t mind Lee. He listens anyway. He can hear through a closed door. I don’t keep anything from him because I can’t.”
Lee came in with a tray. He was smiling remotely to himself, and when he had poured the coffee and gone out Adam asked again, “Is there anything wrong, Horace?”
“No, I don’t think so. Adam, was that woman still married to you?”
Adam became rigid. “Yes,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
“She killed herself last night.”
Adam’s face contorted and his eyes swelled and glistened with tears. He fought his mouth and then he gave up and put his face down in his hands and wept. “Oh, my poor darling!” he said.
Quinn sat quietly and let him have it out, and after a time Adam’s control came back and he raised his head. “Excuse me, Horace,” he said.
Lee came in from the kitchen and put a damp towel in his hands, and Adam sponged his eyes and handed it back.
“I didn’t expect that,” Adam said, and his face was ashamed. “What shall I do? I’ll claim her. I’ll bury her.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Horace. “That is, unless you feel you have to. That’s not what I came about.” He took the folded will from his pocket and held it out.
Adam shrank from it. “Is—is that her blood?”
“No, it’s not. It’s not her blood at all. Read it.”
Adam read the two lines and went right on staring at the paper and beyond it. “He doesn’t know—she is his mother.”
“You never told him?”
“No.”
“Jesus Christ!” said the sheriff.
Adam said earnestly, “I’m sure he wouldn’t want anything of hers. Let’s just tear it up and forget it. If he knew, I don’t think Aron would want anything of hers.”
“ ’Fraid you can’t,” Quinn said. “We do quite a few illegal things. She had a safe-deposit box. I don’t have to tell you where I got the will or the key. I went to the bank. Didn’t wait for a court order. Thought it might have a bearing.” He didn’t tell Adam he thought there might be more pictures. “Well, Old Bob let me open the box. We can always deny it. There’s over a hundred thousand dollars in gold certificates. There’s money in there in bales—and there isn’t one goddam thing in there but money.”
“Nothing?”
“One other thing—a marriage certificate.”
Adam leaned back in his chair. The remoteness was coming down again, the soft protective folds between himself and the world. He saw his coffee and took a sip of it. “What do you think I ought to do?” he asked steadily and quietly.
“I can only tell you what I’d do,” Sheriff Quinn said. “You don’t have to take my advice. I’d have the boy in right now. I’d tell him everything—every single thing. I’d even tell him why you didn’t tell him before. He’s—how old?”
“Seventeen.”
“He’s a man. He’s got to take it some time. Better if he gets the whole thing at once.”
“Cal knows,” said Adam. “I wonder why she made the will to Aron?”
“God knows. Well, what do you think?”
“I don’t know, and so I’m going to do what you say. Will you stay with me?”