Mickelsson''s Ghosts by John Gardner
“I don’t know,” she said, and snapped her head around sideways, away from him, then dragged, shaking, at the cigarette. “Ten thousand dahllars?” She laughed, brittle as glass, edging toward hysteria.
“OK,” he said, and nodded. “We’ll see.” He felt himself absolutely still, like Gibraltar, and at the same time felt himself rushing toward some dark shore.
Again she looked at him, really scared now, thinking twenty things at once—thinking, among other things, that maybe she hadn’t asked for enough. “What are you going to do?” she asked. She raised her hand as if to stop him as he pushed by, heading for the door, then changed her mind. “Hay,” she said, dancing along beside him, “hay, where are you going?”
“Tell you later,” he said.
As he tried to pull her door closed behind him, she held it against him, looking out at him through the eight-inch-wide opening, white as a ghost. “Pete, where are you going?” She whispered it, as if she knew.
“When I knock,” he said quietly, “open the door for me. Otherwise I’ll break it off its hinges.” Macho, macho. Self-hatred stoked the fire of his anger higher. This time when he pulled at the door, she did not resist. It slammed shut.
He had a momentary impression, as he stood leaning on the silver-headed cane, his head near the fat man’s door, that there was someone inside. It seemed unlikely in the extreme. Mickelsson had no very clear idea how long he’d stood arguing with Donnie, quizzing her—bullying her—between the time he’d seen the fat man get out of his car and now. But logic suggested (and for all the frantic rush of his heartbeat, his mind seemed to be working with unusual clarity) that since the man had put money in the meter before entering Thomas’s, he couldn’t possibly, in this brief span of time—surely not more than five minutes or so—have gotten back to his car, driven it to its garage, wherever that was, and made it back here to his apartment before Mickelsson. Softly, with the head of his cane, Mickelsson knocked. He waited—probably just a second or two, though it seemed forever—then tried the doorknob. It was locked, of course. He looked up and down the hallway—no one in sight—stepped back across the hallway, then threw himself with all his weight and might against the door. It gave, with a splintering sound like an explosion, then snagged for an instant, caught by the chainlatch. The instant he felt that snag, he knew he was in terrible trouble: impossible as it might seem, the man was certainly inside. He tried to stop, reverse himself, but there was now no going back; he was thrown into the room by the momentum of his rush. They stood facing one another in the room’s yellowed dimness, clutter all around them, two huge animals squared off, each more frightened than the other. They stood braced, staring at one another for an eternity, Mickelsson’s heart striking wildly at the root of his throat, stealing his breath; and then the fat man moved, lunging toward a dresser, jerking a drawer open and drawing out a gun. Mickelsson stood motionless, trapped in a nightmare, but now the fat man’s mouth opened, round as a fish-mouth, showing blackness within, and he bent a little, as if cringing in shame, and slammed the fist that held the gun toward his own chest, clutching himself, his mouth still open, eyes narrowing to slits, squeezing out tears. Though Mickelsson’s mind wheeled, one thought came through clearly, as if someone else were thinking it: he’s having a heart attack. “The broken heart,” he remembered, and felt, along with his own heart’s pain, a vast surge of pity. Still the fat man hadn’t gotten his breath. Judging from the look on his face, the pain was unspeakable, so violent that it blasted from his mind all thought of Mickelsson. Seconds passed—minutes, for all Mickelsson knew. Again and again Mickelsson told himself that he must shout for help, and never mind the consequences to himself—no one knew the arguments better than he—but each time, he did nothing, mentally begging the man to die quickly, lose that expression of pain and, worse, bottomless, childlike disappointment. At last the fat man’s knees buckled, a strained, babyish cry came from his throat—a cry to Mickelsson for help—and, turning toward the bed, trying to reach it but too far away, he tumbled like a load of stones onto the carpet. Mickelsson bent down for a look at the eyes. They squeezed shut, dripping tears, then weakly fell open and were still. He cringed away, clutching his stomach, and, leaving the man as he was, hurried to the door. There he stopped, dizzy with fear and confusion. Clumsily, he ran back to the chest beside the chair facing the television. The glass refrigerator tray was there, but no sign of the money. He stood stupefied, swaying in disbelief, then hurried back to the door and closed it. He stood for a moment breathing in heavy gulps, hands over his ears, trying to think. He wouldn’t remember clearly, afterward, how he hunted through the room, pulling out drawers, throwing the mattress from the bed, emptying the wardrobe. In one corner stood a Kero-Sun space-heater, not working. He lifted it from its place, moving it aside, and saw, behind it, an old ratty sweater. He almost left it there, then on second thought picked it up and found, tucked inside it, a large, aluminum-foil-wrapped bundle. Even before he tore the foil off, he knew this was it. It occurred to him only now to wonder how much time had elapsed, and whether anyone had passed outside the door. Tentatively, as if it might be filled with electricity, he touched the bank-banded money. It was miraculous that, in all this junk, he should find it. With steady fingers he dropped some of the money-packets into the pockets of his overcoat, the rest into his suitcoat. Then, unsteadily, numb all over, he straightened up and moved toward the door. The fat man lay on his side, knees bent, eyes partly open. He had holes in his shoes. Mickelsson moved past him, then paused. Suppose he wasn’t dead. Suppose, against all odds, someone should wander in and find him, even now save his life. He looked in horror at the silver, lioness-headed cane and imagined it flashing down, sinking into the fat man’s temple. “Holy God in Heaven,” he whispered, fully understanding at last that, though not with the cane, he had murdered the man. He moved in a kind of dream toward the door.
Upstairs, in Donnie’s apartment, Mickelsson dropped the money, all of it, onto the threadbare carpet. She was silent. Though he did not count—nothing could have been farther from his mind—it was clear that he’d given her more than the fifteen thousand she required. Neither of them said a word. She suddenly turned, her hand over her mouth, and fled to the bathroom. He heard her vomiting. He meant to leave, but, strange to say, he found himself sitting down, dazed, in the chair where she liked to read or listen to her records. He imagined himself on his knees, counting the money, but did not stir. His mind was crowded, swollen with the image of the dead man’s calm face.
She appeared at the bathroom doorway.
Solemnly, Mickelsson rose, buttoned his overcoat, and leaning on his cane, moved toward the door. She watched.
“Prafessor,” she said.
He opened the door, stepped out, and softly closed the door behind him.
PART THREE
1
He knew, of course—everybody knew—about murderers returning to the scene of the crime, but it was necessary. Partly he felt—for all practical purposes believed—that whatever happened to him from this point on was fated, as all things material are. He seemed not his own man, only an agent—the submissive means by which evil powers he could not understand did their work. Insofar as it was this faintly psychotic sense of abandonment that ruled him, any risks he might take were impersonal. If he was of two minds, one that had fled elsewhere, leaving only the smell of its horror, the other clanking on, and if in that second mind he was sunk deep in the swirling mud of actuality, acting helplessly but with full intent and will, like a pilot fighting his plane through a tornado, the ethical result was all one. Volition was for angels. He must do whatever the instant required, without thought.
Back at home, after he’d left her, and after the shock had partly lifted (he’d lain in his bed unmoving, staring into space the whole night), he’d realized that he should have talked more with Donnie, calming her, making sure she understood her accessory involvement, feeling her out and guiding her. There were a thousand tricks s
He had no real idea, as he emerged from his lair to seek her out, what he meant to say to her. (In the rear-view mirror he was red-eyed, un-shaven.) He tried one imaginary conversation after another, each more fatuous and improbable than the last. It grew increasingly clear that, despite his despairing indifference, it was for his sake as well as hers that they must talk, so that, now that his head was clear, he could gauge her mood and figure out how much he could tolerate from her, exactly what forbearance he was capable of. If she intended to go to the police … what then?
It was not as if, like one of those low-born, ever-the-same TV murderers, he had something to protect—his possible future with Jessie, his job and reputation. He cared not a whit about any of that. He was now absolutely on his own, cut off utterly. The question was simply, how much would he put up with? Where no law was left but the animal sense of one’s own life’s worth—a sense now both poisoned and illuminated by guilt, by experience of the truly disgusting (he now understood) fear of raising one’s head among the common, “decent,” ever-witlessly-judgmental herd—how much, if anything, would he think himself worth? He grew angrier and angrier, like one scandalously misused. He found himself increasingly indifferent and unafraid.
But when he reached her apartment at seven that morning, he found Donnie Matthews’ door locked and Donnie gone, and though nothing in specific suggested that her absence today was any different from her ordinary absences—except, of course, for the time of day, and the fact that the plastic rose she’d taped to her door was gone—he felt convinced that she was gone for good, or anyway gone for a good long while. After knocking repeatedly, speaking softly to the door, listening for footsteps on the stairs behind him, he turned away, walked down one flight, then stopped again. The fat man’s door, twelve feet down the hallway, was as solemnly closed as Donnie’s, though he knew that at a touch it would spring open, both the catch and the chainlatch torn loose. How long would it be before the stench of the body—or some wandering draught, or some Jehovah’s Witness visiting with a pamphlet, giving the door an accidental push—brought the police? Gloomy daydreams moved through his head: how he might come here at night and bundle the body, wrapped in a blanket, out through the window onto the tar-and-pebble roof, drag it across the roof and drop it with a thud into the alley below, load it into the back of the Chevy or Jeep, if he was able to get the Jeep running, and haul it away someplace, dump it where no one would find it. But even as, out of the corner of his mind’s eye, Mickelsson attended to these macabre dreams, he was moving on down the stairs, his left hand sliding gently, ready to grip hard, on the worn railing. Perhaps he should have taken the fat man’s gun. In the entryway he paused, the mailboxes a little behind him, and cautiously peeked out. The town’s one patrol car was edging by—today it was Cobb driving, not Tinklepaugh—heading toward the outskirts of town. He waited until the patrol car was well out of sight, then ducked his head and stepped out, like a man full of business, onto the sidewalk. The sky was gray and low, building up toward a renewal of the blizzard. A puff of snow moved up the street, slow and formal as a skater. With two hands he pulled his hat down harder, his ears still unprotected, waiting for the first freezing gust.
Behind him, a voice cried out, “Hey! Professor!” He started so violently he almost fell, but he managed to catch himself, then turned to look back past his shoulder. It was the real-estate man, Charley Snyder, bundled up against the cold, elegant even so, hurrying down the sidewalk to catch him. “I’m glad I ran into you. Saves me a trip up to your house!”
Mickelsson struggled to get his face in control. To give himself more time he fussed with his scarf, tucking his head in as if to watch the work of his fumbling hands.
“Any developments on that break-in up there?” Snyder asked.
His heart slammed; then he realized what Snyder meant. “Nothing yet,” he said, and shook his head, ruefully, then horribly winced.
Snyder took his arm, drawing him back toward Reddon’s door. “Listen, you mind giving me a minute of your time? Let’s go inside, where it’s warm.”
Mickelsson jerked his head in a kind of nod, glancing left and right, and made his face rigid, hiding panic and what might appear even worse—impatience, extreme irritation. He moved inside the drugstore with Snyder. The electric door whooshed shut and warm air fell over them.
“You aware of the Lonergan Hill business?” Snyder asked.
Mickelsson looked hard at the bridge of Snyder’s nose, trying to pay attention. “I guess not.” He grinned, then dropped the corner of his mouth, teeth still bared, like a man in pain.
“It’s a dumping spot—legal, I’m sorry to say; there’s plenty of the other kind. Anyway, the Department of Environmental Resources OK’d it. You know how they are. Don’t let the name fool you; they work for the companies.” He still had his gloved hand on Mickelsson’s arm, as if afraid he might bolt, and he leaned close to speak, as if company spies were everywhere. “They’ve granted permission that chemicals from at least twenty-three locations be ‘disposed of’ there. Eighty-five per cent of it’s from outside Pennsylvania—New Jersey and New York. It’s bad stuff. Carcinogenic, mutagenic …” He checked Mickelsson’s eyes, perhaps saw confusion and impatience, and hurried on. “To make a long story short, we think it’s serious. There’s at least seventy-five families living on the roads around Lonergan Hill that get their water from wells and springs, every one of ’em in danger of pollution.” Again he checked Mickelsson’s eyes, then drew back a little. “You all right?”
“I’m fine,” Mickelsson said quickly. “The heat in here—after you’ve been out there in the cold for a while—” He laughed loudly.
“Maybe we should go back outside.”
“No, I’m fine.” He gave another laugh, then sternly concentrated his attention on Snyder, waiting for the speech to be over.
“Well, OK, if you’re sure.” After a minute he continued, reaching inside his coat and drawing out papers as he spoke, “People may never even know when their water’s gone bad. Last Saturday we had a meeting in Harrisburg and a woman told me her family’s been hauling water for three years, ever since they found out, completely by accident, that their well had been poisoned by a landfìll. The same thing could happen at the Lyncott fill. Here, let me give you this—all the facts and figures.”
Mickelsson blinked, uncertain whether Lyncott and Lonergan Hill were the same place; but he had no intention of prolonging things by asking. He took the papers from Snyder, glanced at them, then put them in his pocket.
“They’ve applied for an expanded permit,” Snyder said. “Instead of the original ten acres they want a hundred and forty-six. That’s bad business—bad real-estate business and bad human business. The company applying already has a record of illegal and misidentified waste disposal. I’m a county commissioner, as you may know, and we’re having hearings on the subject; but for me that’s not enough. I have a petition here—” He released Mickelsson’s arm and with one hand opened the front of his coat while with the other he reached inside to extra
“Ah!” Mickelsson said, “you want me to sign! Certainly I’ll sign!” He took the pen Snyder offered him and quickly signed his name, then wrote his address and put a period after it. “There,” he said. “My soul for infinite power.”
“You’re sure you’re all right?” Snyder asked. He glanced at the druggist in his high box.
Mickelsson grinned, waved, and without a word hurried out onto the street.
He got groceries at the Acme, enough to hold him for a good long while—several days, anyway—in case he should decide he wasn’t in condition to see people. He was convinced that he was safe, had gotten away with it, at least for the time being; and time was always on the killer’s side. Nevertheless, since he couldn’t trust himself—since remorse walked only a step behind him, cursing him, wringing its pitiful, domestic hands—it would be best to stay close to his house. At the check-out counter he remembered they no longer accepted his checks, and he blushed, wincing, breaking out in sweat, drawing his hands to his face like a man feeling monstrously guilty, perhaps a shoplifter with his pockets full of goods. “I’m sorry,” he said, slapping his forehead, crazily smiling at the check-out girl. “I completely forgot that I’m not supposed to write checks here!” He flung a desperate glance around the store as if thinking he might see a friend who would help. How stupid, he thought—and furiously blushed again—to kill a man for his money and then recklessly throw it all away, not even keep forty-five dollars for groceries! His distress must have been a pitiful thing to see, because the girl said, “Just write out the check. It’s OK, this once. I’ll tell the manager I forgot.” He fell all over himself, foolish with gratitude, then finally got himself in control, took off his glasses, and wrote the check, then carefully entered it, the only check he’d entered in months. Then he snatched back his glasses and, all in one armload, carried the four large sacks of groceries out to the car. When the engine caught, a gray, putrid cloud rose not only from the car’s rear end but from under the hood as well. No matter. For the moment the thing still ran. Existence on the edge, he thought. Everyone, everything. When was it—and why—that everything had gone wrong?