Night My Friend Read online

  “But that’s mostly guesswork, Johnny.”

  “It was guesswork until I talked to Harper in the garage and asked him if Backus had taken the bribe. He just looked at me, and said that Backus had been very young, and I knew. Harper’s eyes told me everything.”

  “Would you have turned him in?”

  “I suppose so. Though I knew his confession wouldn’t be long in coming. A man who murders for the honor of the police force can’t hide his crime for long. The very motivation of the murder told me that Harper would confess the whole thing very soon.”

  “And you used that knowledge to deal with Cravess. Why, Johnny?”

  His fingers moved again over the keys, and a song of the night came drifting to them. “Partly to save my own skin, since I was one of those who heard the girl’s dying words. But I guess mostly it was our discussion of Joan of Arc that did it. I saw that if someone like her could rise above the evil around her, possibly people like Jim Yorkman could, too. Why don’t you write a book about that?”

  She walked over and slid on to the piano bench next to him, and said, very quietly, “Maybe some day I will.”

  And then the night closed in around them, and there was only the song of the friendly darkness to comfort their thoughts.

  The Suitcase

  THE PLANE, A SILVER BIRD dipping its wings to the far-off dawn, came in low over Jason Lean’s farmland. Too low, he remembered thinking, for he’d seen so many hundreds on the airport approach that he almost at times felt he could fly one. Too low, with the rising sun in the pilot’s eyes and the double row of power lines crossing the tip of the hill. He shouted something, to be heard only by the field birds and the indifferent cows, then screwed his face in a sort of horror as the great plane touched the unseen wires.

  There was a crackle of blue flame, no more than that of a match lit and suddenly dying, but it was enough to spell death to an airliner. The entire hillside seemed to explode as the plane twisted into the ground, boring deep like some hibernating animal, spewing flames that might have told you the animal was a dragon.

  Jason Lean watched until the first flash of flame had died, and then began the short trek across the valley to the wreckage on the hillside. Others would have seen the crash too, he knew, and already it would be tapping out on the news tickers of the world. How many dead—fifty, sixty? Those big planes carried a lot of people these days. He shook his head sadly at the thought, but did not increase his pace. He already knew he would find nothing alive when he reached the smoldering wreckage.

  Now here and there a tree was burning, and there ahead he could see the tail section of the plane itself, a great silver thing that sat silent now as a giant tombstone. Padded seats, so comfortable with their bodies still strapped sitting—grotesque, but all too real. And strewn across the landscape, wreckage, flesh, baggage, mail pouches, fallen trees, dangerously dangling wires. As if a giant hand—a flaming devil’s hand—had written its signature on the hillside. All dead, all.

  He walked among them, terrified, remembering somewhere deep within the recesses of his mind a time when very young he’d walked through a country graveyard at night. He took in all the details of grief and tragedy, the spilled suitcases, the child’s toys, the scorched and splintered packing cases… and then his eyes fell on one suitcase, resting apart from the others, its leather hide barely marked by the smoke.

  It was a large bag, of pale pebbled pigskin, with two tough straps around it to reinforce the lock. It was the only one he saw that had neither burned nor tumbled open to spread its contents over the landscape. Jason Lean stood for some moments staring at the bag, as if it held some strange sort of fascination for him. Then, in an instant of certainty, he stooped and grasped the plastic handle, lifting the suitcase from the ground. He turned once to look over his shoulder, to make certain that none of the blackened corpses moved in accusation. Then he hurried back down the hillside, through the smoky haze of destruction, carrying his treasure like some traveler only just returned from a world tour.

  “A plane crash,” Martha said when he returned. “What a terrible thing!”

  “Terrible,” Jason agreed. He always agreed with his wife. “I was over there, looking at the wreckage. They’re all dead.” Already, on the distant ridge, they could see men moving like ants. Police, ambulances, morgue wagons, reporters—all converging now on the scene of disaster. Making their way carefully around the fallen wires and the blackened wreckage. Hoping, then feeling hope die as they saw what Jason Lean had seen.

  “What’s that you’ve got?” she asked, noticing the suitcase for the first time.

  “I found it up by the wreckage. It’s not burned or anything. Must have been thrown clear.”

  “And you took it?” She made the words into something terrible, and for the first time he realized just what he had done. “You took it? From the dead?”

  “I… I thought it might have something valuable in it. They’re all dead. It belongs to no one.” But even as he spoke the words he knew he would never convince her.

  “That’s looting! It’s like robbing graves, but even worse. Jason, you have to take it back this minute, leave it where you found it.”

  “Don’t be silly—how could I do that when the hill’s swarming with people?” It was the first time he had ever raised his voice to her, and he regretted it at once. “I’ll get rid of it, just as soon as I open it up and look inside.”

  “Jason, you’re not opening that suitcase! I can’t imagine anything more horrible than pawing about in the belongings of some poor dead creature who was so much alive just an hour ago.”

  “But… but there might be something valuable inside, Martha. It’s an expensive suitcase, you can see that. Suppose it contains fancy clothes, or an expensive camera, or important papers. Or even money!”

  “Jason, either you return that suitcase this minute, or you take it out behind the barn and bury it. I’m not going to have it here. I’m not going to have you opening it and going through it. I don’t want the man’s ghost coming and haunting us for your awful crime!”

  He knew it was useless when she got in one of those moods. And yet his will was torn between her commanding words and the questioning suitcase that rested now on the floor between his feet. “Martha…”

  “Bury it! Get it out of my sight, Jason!”

  “All right.” He went out with bowed head, carrying the heavy suitcase beyond the faded red barn to the little animal graveyard. While Martha watched from a distance he dug a shallow hole and buried the pigskin bag between the old cow and last year’s cat. “All right. It’s done.”

  But as he followed her into the house there was a sort of sadness in his heart.

  The following morning a car stopped on the road and a tall young man walked back to the barn where Jason was busy with his daily chores. “Hello there,” he called out. “Got a minute?”

  Jason set down his milk pails and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Sure, mister. What can I do for you?”

  “We’re investigating yesterday’s plane crash over on the hill. We thought you might have seen something that could help us.” The man had taken out a little notebook. “You’re Jason Lean, correct?”

  “That’s me, and I saw it, all right. Plane came in too low. Hit those power lines. Was just at dawn, and I suppose the sun might have blinded the pilot for a minute. It hit the lines and that was the end of it.”

  “Did you go over to see the wreckage?”

  “I… No, I started to, but then turned back. I was afraid of those fallen power lines.”

  “Just as well,” the investigator said, making a brief note in his book. “You couldn’t have done anything. They were all killed instantly.”

  “Yes. Horrible.” Jason turned to stare out across the valley, toward the hillside scar which would take many seasons to heal.

  “Thanks for your time,” the man said. “I may be back to talk to you again.”

  “Certainly. Anything I can do…”<
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  The man nodded a smile and started back to his car. He hadn’t asked about the suitcase, Jason thought. They’d never missed it. Burnt to ashes, they probably supposed.

  And that night, in bed next to the cold flesh of his wife, Jason imagined it all again. Opening the suitcase, finding a lifetime’s treasure nestled there waiting. What would it be? Money? A woman’s wardrobe and jewels? A salesman’s sample kit of fine furs? Something for Martha, perhaps. Or himself. Even a fine new suit that could be made to fit him.

  The next day, in the late afternoon, while Martha was cleaning in the front of the house, his uncertain footsteps took him once more to the animal graveyard beyond the barn. Perhaps, if he could only dig up the suitcase and look—then bury it again before she ever knew the difference. Yes, that was what he would do. Must do.

  He retrieved the old spade from the barn and started to dig. After a moment’s work he could feel the familiar leather hide as he scraped the dirt from it.

  “Jason!”

  “Martha. What are you…?”

  “Jason, you were going to open it! Cover it up this instant! Don’t you realize it will bring us nothing but tragedy? Don’t you realize it belongs to a dead man?”

  “All right, Martha. I was just…”

  “Cover it up, Jason. And don’t do that again.”

  He covered it up.

  But still, as the days passed and the memory of the crash itself drifted further to the back of his conscious mind, there was still the shape of the sealed suitcase to obsess him. He saw it in his waking and sleeping hours, saw it closed as first he’d met it, and open with all its treasures exposed. It became, in various fantasies, a spy’s hoard of secret plans, an embezzler’s final crime, a businessman’s stock of everyday valuables. He imagined all the hundreds of things that might come tumbling out if only he looked. The things he’d never owned; like an electric razor, or a portable radio, or a fine camera.

  No, decided Jason with finality, after a week of torment. Whatever was in that suitcase, it was not going to rot in the ground behind the barn. He found Martha in the kitchen and told her of his decision.

  “I’m going to dig it up and open it,” he said.

  “Jason…”

  “Nothing you can say will stop me, Martha. I have to know what’s inside it.”

  “Jason, there’s death in that suitcase. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “I have to know!” he screamed at her. And when she stepped heavily into his path he brushed her aside as he would some animal in the field.

  “Stop, Jason!”

  He hit her, only to shut that refusing mouth, only to silence her for a few important moments. She fell heavily, her head catching the edge of the old stove. He sucked in his breath and bent over her, chilled now to the bone. She wasn’t moving and he knew in some fantastic manner that he’d killed her.

  But he didn’t stop. He hurried on to the barn, with a speed born now of nameless panic. The spade, digging in the familiar earth, uncovering, revealing.

  Yes, the suitcase. Still there like some Pandora’s box awaiting him. His hands fumbled with the straps, teeth biting into lips, forehead sweating a chill moisture.

  But it was locked.

  Into the barn, carrying it gently now, with clods of earth falling from it. Into the barn, and a few careful blows with the pitchfork, prying the lock apart until it snapped under the pressure. Finally.

  He opened the suitcase.

  The government inspector found them, some time later, when he stopped by the Lean farmhouse to ask some further questions about the airliner crash. He found Martha Lean on the kitchen floor, and she looked so peaceful it was hard to believe she was dead.

  And he found Jason Lean in the barn, kneeling in a sort of daze over an open suitcase. It was a salesman’s sample case. It was filled with leather-bound Bibles.

  The Picnic People

  THE CAR RADIO THUNDERING a Sunday afternoon concert into my ear, the sun bleaching out my hair exposed in the topless auto, I wheeled briskly up the familiar park road searching for them. They always came to the same general area, the same hilltop with its vagrant view of distant beach and specks of suited swimmers, just far enough away to untempt husbands with roving eyes and satisfy wives with children to guard. Today, breeze blowing off the lake, rustling leaves at their summer peakness, was surely a day when the picnic people would be out. All of them.

  I spied Fred Dutton’s car first, parked with three wheels off the road, sporty and casual like its owner, top up and windows cautiously closed, also like its owner. Surely he could have reached it before any of the less than occasional overhead clouds grouped into a threat of rain, but Fred Dutton was like that. Take no chances. Play it safe. Better safe than sorry. Fred Dutton.

  I parked behind him, purposely kissing his bumper a bit harder than necessary, enjoying myself at the thought of the dent I might be leaving in it. Almost I expected him to come running at the sound, but they were just out of sight, down the hill hidden by the willows along the edge of the pond. It was a pleasant place, bringing back half-forgotten memories of days without care and nights when only the happiness mattered. I’d been the one in those days, and I wondered if I still was.

  Dora, Fred’s wife, saw me first. She was boiling water on the camp stove for her usual cup of tea and she jerked her hand back with such sudden shock that the pan of water clattered to the ground. “Why—Sam!”

  “Hello, Dora. Glad to see you remember me.” The grass seemed suddenly damp through my shoes, and I was vaguely aware that the children had been splashing here.

  “Sam!” She turned her head. “Fred, come here! It’s Sam—Sam Waggel.” Her voice almost broke as she said it.

  Fred came running, and the rest—except for the children—weren’t far behind. They came cautiously at first, as if viewing a beast newly escaped from the zoo. Then they crowded around, the foolish false grins on their faces, greeting me. “Sam boy, how the heck you been?” This was a real estate broker named Charlie Thames, who’d never really liked me on my best of days. Charlie hadn’t changed much, put on a few pounds maybe, but hadn’t we all. His wife Laura startled me a bit with her graying hair, but the rest of them were pretty much the same.

  Fred Dutton had his arm around my shoulder almost at once, as if I’d never been away, pressing a sweating can of beer into my hand. “When’d you get out, Sam? Why didn’t you let us know? How you feelin’?”

  “Well enough, Fred,” I said, answering his last question first. “I got out a couple days ago. Called your and Charlie’s homes but when nobody answered I figured you were probably out picnicking at the old place.”

  “Hello, Sam.” This was Jean O’Brian—Jean Falconi now, of course—a girl who’d meant a lot to me once. She was wearing white shorts that showed off her legs. She’s always had the best legs in the crowd. Her husband, Joe, came into view then too, carrying the youngest of the children in his arms.

  “Hi, Jean. Joe. The kids are really growing up.”

  “Have a hot dog, Sam,” Charlie offered. “We got plenty.”

  Laura, as if to back up the words, went to get one off the grill. “Here, Sam. Just the way you used to like them.”

  “Used to, Laura? I still do. Nothing’s changed that much.”

  She flushed slightly and turned away, but Dora Dutton was there to take her place. “Do you want to talk about it, Sam? We don’t want…”

  “Sure. What do you want to know? If you’ve finished eating I can give you some wonderful descriptions of the shock treatments and the aftereffects of the drugs they were feeding me.”

  “Go play,” Charlie said to one of the children who wandered up. “Go play with your sister.” His face was hard and set. Already he was remembering his old Sam-hatred from the days before the trouble.

  “Sam,” Joe Falconi said, speaking with that sort of almost-accent, “what about the charges? Are you going to have to stand trial now that you’re out?” Joe was a contractor, a g
ood guy as guys went.

  “No,” I told them, taking my time about lighting a cigarette, letting all damned six of them know I was out for good, here to stay, ready for action. “Remember, the court ruled I was insane at the time I did it. But I’m all right now, all cured. All.”

  “Well,” Fred Dutton said, “well, that’s damned good. All cured, huh?”

  “All cured.”

  But Jean wasn’t quite so convinced. “It’s only been two years, Sam. Are you sure? I mean…”

  I just sort of laughed at her. She did look funny standing there under the willow, thinking about how this guy she once necked with over in West Park might now be a homicidal maniac and what the hell was he doing walking around loose just two years after it happened.

  Charlie and Laura sort of drifted off, pretending to hike after the kids, and Dora started the water for her tea again. After all the excitement of my arrival they were acting now as if I’d never been away. Or were they acting as if I’d never come back?

  Joe Falconi brought me a beer to go with the hot dog. “It’s good to see you again, boy. Come on, let’s walk down by the water.”

  We strolled away from the others, kicking at stones, watching them skip and finally splash in the sparkling pond, stirring here and there an eddy of mud in the tranquil waters. “Your kids are growing.” I said. “You and Jean just have the two?”

  “No,” he answered, a bit embarrassed. “We had another boy last year. I guess you didn’t hear.”

  “Communications weren’t too good in there. Especially when none of my old friends ever came to see me.”

  “Sam…”

  “What?” I kicked at a loose stone.

  “Sam, I don’t blame you for being a bit bitter, but you’ve got to look at it from our point of view.”

  “Sure,” I told him with a smile. “You figured I was locked up in the nut house for the rest of my natural life, so why the hell should anybody bother about me. Right? It was just as if I was dead too, along with her.”