Hotchner rubbed his fat double chin. "Arrest you?" he asked wonderingly. "For what? Vagrancy? Pounding on the table?"
I let out a long laugh and sat down in a chair next to Hotchner's. "Yes, you're playing your old tricks again, Mr. Detective Hotchner. Don't you ever try anything new?"
"My dear young fellow, I assure you that I am most earnestly trying to understand why I should arrest you, but you see it's hard to do so when I lack the knowledge as to just what section of the law I'm supposed to arrest you under. The law in this country—up to the present time, at any rate—is, you understand, given to these complexities whereby I must have some inkling of what the charge against you is to be before I can arrest you. Ha-ha-ha! Isn't that ridiculous? But the real reason is that I have to fill in several forms if I'm going to arrest you and I won't be able to fill in the box where it wants to know what you're charged with—an insuperable obstacle in this police bureaucracy, I can tell you that. So...er, the point is, therefore, that you must tell me—ah..."
Hotchner let his sentence trail off so that I could respond. Instead I went off into another long nervous laugh, and then, stopping, glanced at Hotchner. He seemed not at all offended, but almost amused, as if he were sharing in a joke of some kind. He was also, I noticed from his eyes, watching me now with a cool detachment. I leaned close to him and, as if imparting a joke, whispered:
"Have you ever heard of Jane Berenson?"
Again I went off into a long laugh. Hotchner, also, smiled now, as if finding my joke quite amusing. When I noticed that his eyes were not smiling at all, however, but were quite deadly serious even while the rest of his face was grinning broadly, I abruptly stopped laughing and became rather serious myself.
"Yes, I've heard of her," Hotchner said. "That's quite a sense of humor you have there since I have been working on little else for almost a week now. Ha-ha! Yes, very funny..."
He stopped, waiting for me. I waited for him.
"So...?" he continued.
"So I come into your office mentioning Jane Berenson and telling you to arrest me in the same breath. What does that suggest to you, Mr. Detective Hotchner?"
"Perhaps you want to confess to the murder of Jane Berenson?"
"Detective Hotchner, allow me to congratulate you," I said, smiling caustically. "You are displaying now signs of that supreme brilliance which I always knew you must have somewhere."
Hotchner got up and paced the room, his fat belly bobbing to and fro as he did so, his wide face seeming to be deep in thought. He spoke as if he weren't thinking of what he was saying: "So, ah...you want me to arrest you..."
"Excellent, Mr. Hotchner. Excellent. You are showing a keen grasp of the matter at hand."
"Ah, you're a native humorist, I can see that. Yes, indeed. But just what—er—makes you think you're guilty?"
He stopped and scrutinized me.
"You're slipping now, Mr. Hotchner, you're slipping," I replied. "I expect better from you. Do you actually doubt that I'm guilty? Here I am, sitting in front of you, telling you I'm guilty, solving all your problems in fact, and you ask me whether I'm guilty in such a way as to cast doubt on my—oh, so that's it, you think I'm not in my right mind, do you? Let me assure you that I'm in my right mind, but I can't wait for you any longer. You're too slow, Mr. Hotchner, you're not doing your job properly, you should have arrested me Sunday, or yesterday at the latest. Instead you allow me to sit around and stew in my own juices, wondering when you're going to come again. Do you think I'm going to wait for you forever? Do you really think I am?"
"Dear me, no. Certainly not. And you young men are in such a hurry, too—"
"Mr. Hotchner, what I'm flatly telling you is that it is I who murdered Jane Berenson. Now are you going to arrest me or not?"
"I'm not," Hotchner said.
A feeling of shock went through me. "You're—not?"
"No."
I felt a strange, twisted smile distort my features. "Mr. Hotchner, is there something the matter with you? Are you feeling quite well? Are we in the police station or have I already arrived in the looney bin? Yes, I must already be in the looney bin—what other explanation can there be?"
"Well, the whole earth is the looney bin, ha-ha-ha!" Hotchner laughed mischievously, wiping his brow with his handkerchief. "There's no escaping from it, except, of course, by death, and even then—who knows? Perhaps on the other side of life is an even more exquisite looney bin, though, I will confess, it would have to be quite spectacular to rival this one.
"...Now take you young men, for instance. Do you know this town is crawling with young men eager to get ahead, but in particular to make a name for themselves? Yes, sir. There's nothing that weighs down on a young man like obscurity, and this town is filled with such morbid young men—and young women too, let us not forget. The women can be even more morbid than the men, I assure you—ghastly!
"...At any rate, how could the whole thing be otherwise? There are at least a million young men in this town, don't you think?—and doubtless an equal number of young women. Now of course it's a law of nature that they can't all be famous, for indeed if they were all famous we'd all have our heads so crammed full with famous names that we'd have no space left for anything else; I seriously doubt if we'd have the mental room left over to remember our own names in such a case—in short, a catastrophe, ha-ha!—for as we all know our own name is the most important thing in the universe.
"...Now then. Your young man looks about him and asks himself how he can make the name of John Smith or Joe Doe or whatever his name happens to be resound throughout the world, and he immediately discovers that he has a very tough problem on his hands. Now naturally there are the traditional paths of attempting to rise to the top in business or politics, but the road is somewhat crooked and besides it takes such a long time, so much effort and compromise and so forth. And even when you get there you can still be unknown, as for instance you can be the head of XYZ Manufacturing Company and nobody's heard of you except your wife and one or two employees, perhaps your children. It happens, believe me—a tragedy.
"...Then, too, you can be an artist or writer and devote yourself to turning out perfect masterpieces which the world has no use for, demonstrating by the right clothes and hairstyle that you are indisputably a genius and so forth, but the world has little use for geniuses these days and much prefers a good plumber or TV repairman every time. So that, you see, unless you become famous and get some foundation grant which you no longer need you will be unable to demonstrate your genius, clothes and hairstyle notwithstanding, and you will remain in a state of semi-poverty and, what is much worse, obscurity. An intolerable and oppressive state of affairs, as anyone will tell you.
"...Why, in this country alone we must have 40 or 50 million artistic geniuses languishing in neglect. I can't even walk into the barbershop without meeting three or four artistic geniuses, so that the conclusion is inescapable that the Good Lord in his blinding wisdom saw fit to create geniuses and potato chips in equal numbers, ensuring that there would be an equal demand for each, or perhaps a slightly greater demand for potato chips. So what then, I ask you, is our young man to do?"
I got up from the chair and buttoned my coat.
"Mr. Hotchner, it is revolting, disgusting! You can never get to the point! I can't stand it! Why can't you ever get to the point?"
"Sit down, my dear fellow, sit down," Hotchner said while motioning me to the chair again. "You look positively angry, I swear you do. Well then, the point is this: Our hypothetical young man grows restless and morbid in obscurity until he hits upon the idea that there must be some quick way to the top. And so there is—murder. The more sensational the better. The more quick-witted among these young men, however, discover the modern truth that substance is nothing and packaging is everything. 'Why should one go through the messiness of a murder,' they ask themselves, 'when one can just confess and be done with it?'
"...Why, do you know that confessions are a dime a dozen these days? They're all the rage, in a manner of speaking. Yes, sir. They're fashionable. Everyone wants to unburden their soul and get on television. One large photograph in the newspaper, or better yet a feature piece on one of the infotainment shows, is worth ten lifetimes. Life is nothing, but publicity is everything!—yes indeed, that's what it's come to. You think I'm joking?
"...Now then, what am I to do, therefore, when you come to see me with one more confession? Am I to give up all my work on this case? Am I to forsake the attitude of a scientist in my patient accumulation of facts? Am I to throw you in jail and—er—'wash my hands,' so to speak?"
Hotchner at this point leaned close to me, his large brow gleaming with sweat and his bulging eyes seeming as if they would pop out of his head. "I'll tell you the God's honest truth," he whispered slowly, "there are some people in this department who would throw you in jail without so much as missing a bite of coffeecake. You, however, have fallen into the hands of a perfectionist. You may be sure that if you're guilty I'll come after you at the appropriate time, after I've marshalled irrefutable evidence."
I sat down in a chair and smiled slyly at Hotchner. "And suppose," I said, "I'm not 'available' then, when you're ready? Suppose I've 'flown the coop," as the chickens say? What then?"
Hotchner leaned back and casually lit a cigarette. "But my dear fellow, you misunderstand entirely. Do you think it will be hard to get you once I've decided I want you? You could go to the most arrid stretches of Saudi Arabia, the jungles of Brazil—anywhere you like! We have Interpol, the FBI, the CIA, the police network, the State Police, the Deuxieme Bureau—why, the list could go on forever.
"...And these organizations scarcely have enough to do, they've got all sorts of people just sitting around waiting for assignments. Tracking you down would be like having a cup of tea—pure pleasure, consumed in measured sips to prolong the enjoyment. The day of the individual is over, my dear sir. The individual is just like a grain of sand in the desert, like a single fly in a steaming jungle—of no account whatever. There's too many people already; what's a few more or less, eh? We're only the opening chapter in the Age Of Insects, anyway. Any schoolboy can tell you they'll be around long after we've become a margin note in God's History Book. Ha-ha! Isn't that amusing? They thrive on radioactivity, you see. Upon my word, they eat it right up and smack their lips.
"...Now. Besides all that, which I grant you might not have an immediate bearing on your situation but which, as it were, must be kept in mind—besides all that, I say, what chance does the individual stand, in addition, when we've got radar, walkie-talkies, radio patrol cars, metal detectors, direction finders and helicopters, backed up by laboratories with scientists in white coats? No, my dear sir, you'd last four, maybe five days before we found you. My advice is to save yourself the airfare and stay in New York where at least you have the conveniences of a good deli at hand. And don't underestimate flush toilets until you've gone without them, as they say. Yes, sir. You do—ah—see what I mean, don't you?"
I crossed my hands on the table. "Yes, I think so," I said, staring at the floor. Hotchner remarked:
"But you're looking a little depressed now, if I may say so. Honestly, that wasn't my intention."
There was a pause.
"Well!" Hotchner said at last. "Er—I never said, you know, that I wouldn't hear your confession. Yes, sir, I'm quite willing, it could prove very interesting and informative. In fact, I think now is as good a time as any. Yes, now."
Hotchner went to the wall and flipped what looked like a light switch. "That's just to set the recorder going in the other room," he explained. "I hope it's working today." He lifted his voice to what looked like a heating grill in the ceiling. "You hear that, Morris?" he said. Then he turned to me. "Just speak in a normal tone of voice, we'll have it transcribed, you can sign it, and then we'll...ah...get in touch with you at the proper time."
There was a silence.
"Just tell what happened in your own words," Hotchner said. He lit another cigarette and waited for me to begin.
I gestured toward the grille in the ceiling. "Is the recorder going? You're quite sure?"
Hotchner nodded. "Fairly sure."
"Very well. I wish to state that I have no wish to make a statement at this time."
Hotchner paused in the middle of a puff and frowned. "What's that?"
"I've changed my mind."
"Surely you're joking."
"I'll say nothing," I said, "until I get a lawyer and even then I won't say anything."
Hotchner ground out his cigarette. "But—look here, my dear fellow—I mean, this is highly irregular and so forth—"
"Nothing. I will say nothing."
"Er—why?"
"Why?" I asked rhetorically. "Because since I'm a 'grain of sand,' as you so aptly put it, since I'm a 'fly in the steaming jungle,' and since you have radar and tape recorders and probably two-way wrist radios and Christ knows what else—why, you hardly need any help from me, do you?
I smiled and got up. "Good day, Mr. Hotchner. Have a pleasant day." And I moved toward the door.
Hotchner scrambled over to the door also, smiling and sweating. "Do sit down, my dear fellow, sit down! You're joking, of course—ha-ha!—and I, too, was joking! Yes sir, I too! A figure of speech, and so forth—my imagination running away with me—"
In the most pleasant way imaginable I went and sat down again.
"I'll sit down if you like, Detective Hotchner," I replied amiably, "but I won't say a thing. Absolutely nothing. You understand it's nothing personal against you, don't you? I'm just speaking frankly, from one 'grain of sand' to another as it were."
I smiled again in a very friendly way. Hotchner frowned and said nothing. There was a long silence.
© 1998 by james sloman
|
