‘What letter?’ Dussander asked vacantly, and Todd’s lands itched to throttle the
drunken old monster.
The one I was reading to you! The one from Willi What’s–his-face! Where is it?’
They both looked at the table, as if expecting to see the letter materialize there.
‘Upstairs,’ Dussander said finally. ‘Look in my dresser. The third drawer. There is a
small wooden box in the bottom of that drawer. You will have to break it open. I lost the
key a long time ago. There are some very old letters from a friend of mine. None signed.
None dated. All in German. A page or – o will serve for window-fittings, as you would
say. If you hurry -‘
‘Are you crazy?’ Todd raged. ‘I don’t understand German! How could I read you a
letter written in German, you numb fuck?’
‘Why would Willi write me in English?’ Dussander countered wearily. ‘If you read me
the letter in German, / would understand it even if you did not. Of course your
pronunciation would be butchery, but still, I could -‘
Dussander was right – right again, and Todd didn’t wait to hear more. Even after a
heart attack the old man was a step ahead. Todd raced down the hall to the stairs,
pausing just long enough by the front door to make sure his father’s Porsche wasn’t
pulling up even now. It wasn’t, but Todd’s watch told him just how tight things were
getting; it had been five minutes now.
He took the stairs two at a time and burst into Dussander’s bedroom. He had never
been up here before, hadn’t even been curious, and for a moment he only looked wildly
around at the unfamiliar territory. Then he saw the dresser, a cheap item done in the style his father called Discount Store Modern. He fell on his knees in front of it and
yanked at the third drawer. It came halfway out, then jigged sideways in its slot and stuck
firmly.
‘Goddam you,’ he whispered at it. His face was dead pale except for the spots of dark,
bloody colour flaring in each cheek and his blue eyes, which looked as dark as Atlantic
storm-clouds. ‘Goddam you fucking thing come out!’
He yanked so hard that the entire dresser tottered forward and almost fell on him
before deciding to settle back. The drawer shot all the way out and landed in Todd’s lap.
Dussander’s socks and underwear and handkerchiefs spilled out all around him. He
pawed through the stuff that was still in the drawer and came up with a wooden box
about nine inches long and three inches deep. He tried to pull up the lid. Nothing
happened. It was locked, just as Dussander had said. Nothing was free tonight.
He stuffed the spilled clothes back into the drawer and then rammed the drawer back
into its oblong slot. It stuck again. Todd worked to free it, wiggling it back and forth,
sweat running freely down his face. At last he was able to slam it shut He got up with the
box. How much time had passed now?
Dussander’s bed was the type with posts at the foot and Todd brought the lock side of
the box down on one of these posts as hard as he could, grinning at the shock of pain that
vibrated in his hands and travelled all the way up to his elbows. He looked at the lock.
The lock looked a bit dented, but it was intact. He brought it down on the post again,
even harder this time, heedless of the pain. This time a chunk of wood flew off the
bedpost, but the lock still didn’t give. Todd uttered a little shriek of laughter and took the box to the other end of the bed. He raised it high over his head this time and brought it
down with all his strength. This time the lock splintered.
As he flipped the lid up, headlights splashed across Dussander’s window.
He pawed wildly through the box. Postcards. A locket. A
Apt Pupil
249
much-folded picture of a woman wearing frilly black garters and nothing else. An old
billfold. Several sets of ID. An empty leather passport folder. At the bottom, letters.
The lights grew brighter, and now he heard the distinctive neat of the Porsche’s
engine. It grew louder … and then cut off.
Todd grabbed three sheets of airmail-type stationery, closely written in German on
both sides of each sheet, and -an out of the room again. He had almost gotten to the
stairs when he realized he had left the forced box lying on Dussander’s bed. He ran back,
grabbed it, and opened the third dresser drawer.
It stuck again, this time with a firm shriek of wood against wood.
Out front, he heard the ratchet of the Porsche’s emergency brake, the opening of the
driver’s side door, the slam shut.
Faintly, Todd could hear himself moaning. He put the box in the askew drawer, stood
up, and lashed at it with his foot. The drawer closed neatly. He stood blinking at it for a
moment and then fled back down the hall. He raced down the stairs. Halfway down them,
he heard the rapid rattle of his father’s shoes on Dussander’s walk. Todd vaulted over the
banister, landed lightly, and ran into the kitchen, the airmail pages fluttering from his
hand.
A hammering on the door. Todd? Todd, it’s me!’
And he could hear an ambulance siren in the distance as well. Dussander had drifted
away into semi-consciousness again.
‘Coming, dad!’ Todd shouted.
He put the airmail pages on the table, fanning them a little as if they had been dropped
in a hurry, and then he went back down the hall and let his father in.
‘Where is he?’ Dick Bowden asked, shouldering past Todd.
‘In the kitchen.’
‘You did everything just right, Todd,’ his father said, and then hugged him in a rough,
embarrassed way.
‘I just hope I remembered everything,’ Todd said modestly, and then followed his
father down the hall and into the kitchen.
In the rush to get Dussander out of the house, the letter was almost completely
ignored. Todd’s father picked it up briefly, then put it down when the medics came in with
the stretcher. Todd and his father followed the ambulance, and his explanation of what
had happened was accepted without question by the doctor attending Dussander’s case.
‘Mr Denker’ was, after all, seventy-nine years old, and his habits were not the best The
doctor also offered Todd a brusque commendation for his quick thinking and action.
Todd thanked him wanly and then asked his father if they could go home.
As they rode back, Dick told him again how proud of him he was. Todd barely heard
him. He was thinking about his .30-.30 again.
18
That was the same day Morris Heisel broke his back.
Morris had never intended to break his back; all he had intended to do was nail up the corner of the rain-gutter on the west side of his house. Breaking his back was the furthest
thing from his mind, he had had enough grief in his life without that, thank you very
much. His first wife had died at the age of twenty-five, and both of their daughters were
also dead. His brother was dead, killed in a tragic car accident not far from Disneyland
in 1971. Morris himself was Hearing sixty, and had a case of arthritis that was
worsening early and fast. He also had warts on both hands, warts that seemed to grow
back as fast as the doctor could burn them off. He was also prone to migraine headaches, and in the last couple of years, that potzer Rogan next door had taken to calling him
‘Morris the Cat’. Morris had wondered aloud to Lydia, his second wife, how Rogan
would like it if Morris took up calling him ‘Rogan the haemorrhoid’.
‘Quit it, Morris,’ Lydia said on these occasions. ‘You can’t take a joke, you never could take a joke, sometimes I wonder how I could marry a man with absolutely no sense of
humour. We go to Las Vegas,’ Lydia had said, addressing the empty kitchen as if an
invisible horde of spectators which only she could see was standing there, ‘we see Buddy
Hackett, and Morris doesn’t laugh once.’
Besides arthritis, warts, and migraines, Morris also had Lydia, who, God love her,
had developed into something of a nag over the last five years or so … ever since her
hysterectomy. So he had plenty of sorrows and plenty of problems without adding a
broken back.
‘Morris!’ Lydia cried, coming to the back door and wiping suds from her hands with a
dishtowel. ‘Morris, you come down off that ladder right now!’
‘What?’ He twisted his head so he could see her. He was on the second-highest step of
his aluminium stepladder. There was a bright yellow sticker on this step which said: