Deadline for a Critic

me, are they? Well, we’ll just see who gets the last laugh!”

Groendal tore the envelope away from the letter, spread the two pages on the desk and quickly, furiously read through it, pausing only to spit out invective.

“That’s . . . that’s ancient history!” He clutched at his tie, jerking it loose from his neck. “He wouldn’t dare bring that up! Why, it was as much his fault as it was mine!” Suddenly, he turned frantic. He first fumbled with, then tore at his shirt, popping off the top buttons.

“Rid! Calm down!” Harison moved to Groendal’s side. “Calm down! You’re only upsetting yourself! Get hold of yourself!”

“Peter!” Groendal’s eyes bulged. Rising from his chair, he clutched Harison’s jacket with both hands, shaking the smaller man like a doll. “Peter! None of them could do it alone! I could beat them one by one! I’ve done it before! Lots of times! They could never get away with this otherwise! But . . . Peter! But . . . Peter!” Groendal pulled Harison so close their noses almost touched. Now desperately concerned, Harison was unable to move. He could not escape Groendal’s clutch.

“Peter . . . Peter . . . I . . . Peter! Oh, God . . . this can’t be! I need . . . more time! Peter! Peter! Stay!”

Abruptly, Groendal released his grip, made a clutching gesture toward his chest and pitched forward, burying Harison beneath him.

It was Harison’s turn to experience fear. He was pinned beneath what he was certain was literally dead weight. But in times of terror, some people’s strength becomes as the strength often, whether or not their hearts are pure. With such unexpected strength, Harison pushed Groendal up and off him.

Still close to uncontrollable panic, he examined Groendal. He could detect no signs of life. But what did he know? Not only was he not at home with dead bodies, he was repelled by them.

Harison backed away from Groendal’s still form. Could Ridley yet be alive? Was he just unconscious?

Harison wasn’t sure what he should do next. CPR—any form of resuscitative aid—was beyond his capability. Help—he must call for help! 911. 911, the all-purpose emergency line. He turned and hurried through the door to the switchboard room, running into desks and overturning chairs on his way.

The board, as usual, was shut down for the night. How to activate it? Which buttons? He picked up the headset and with his other hand began to push switches. Nothing seemed to work.

Finally, despairing of getting a dial tone, he dropped the headset and ran toward the exit. Maybe he could find a public phone. Maybe it would not be out of order. Maybe he could avoid a heart attack himself.

3

Getting scooped in one’s own newsroom is a bitter pill indeed. Such was the lot of Suburban Reporter staffers who responded to their editor’s frantic phone calls in the wee hours of the morning. The general feeling was that they should do something. But what?

Most of the surface questions had already been asked by the television reporters: “With me is Detective Charles Papkin. Sergeant, have you found any signs of foul play in the death of Ridley Groendal?”

“We’re not ruling out anything.”

Or: “With me is Jonathan Dunn, publisher of the Suburban Reporter. Mr. Dunn, what will be the effect of Ridley Groendal’s death on the print journalism field?”

“Ridley Groendal was an institution, a legend in his own time. He’s going to be missed, there’s no doubt about that.”

A statement of the fact of Groendal’s death, along with the taped interviews, would be included in the morning news programs. The story, as far as television was concerned, either would die at this point, or—if there were further developments—there would be more interviews for the noon, six and/or eleven o’clock news. Since most people got their news from television, most people would learn that a critic had died under somewhat questionable circumstances and that he would be missed by, among a few others, his publisher.

Reporters from the News and the Free Press were next in line, demanding considerably more background information than the TV people. Some were milling about in search of provocative quotes or any other angle to the story no matter how seemingly insignificant.

Reporter staffers had their questions too. But they knew that everyone else would be in print long before they would. They had to go for a second-day story. So far, they had accomplished little more than returning to stare at the still unmoved corpse of the late Ridley C. Groendal. And Groendal was now history.

“You say that Mr. Groendal didn’t complain about anything this evening? No pain?” Ray Ewing, now questioning Harison, was by far the more affable of the two detectives present.

“No,” Peter Harison answered. “He seemed to be feeling fine. The review he finished just before he died was one of his better efforts. And I don’t think he could have done that if he’d been feeling ill. Rid was not the sort to work over great discomfort.”

“But you mentioned something to Sergeant Papkin about what Mr. Groendal had to eat tonight . . .”

“Yes, I did.” Harison was getting a bit testy. This was the second time he’d gone over the evening’s events. “Do I have to do this again?”

“If you don’t mind.” Ewing’s manner made it clear that it didn’t matter whether or not Harison minded. He was going to do it again. The implication was not lost on Harison. “You never know when some detail will come to mind. Could be a big help.”

“Oh, well, Rid really indulged himself tonight . . . uh, last night now, I guess. Anyway, he ate and drank all the wrong things. Bad for his heart, which was not all that strong.”

“Why would he do that? I mean, if he knew it was bad for him.”

Harison shrugged. “It certainly wasn’t the first time Rid did something foolish like this. He was not the abstemious type. He liked his food and drink and he didn’t, let us say, regularly deny himself. So tonight’s dining and libations were not in any way unique. It’s just that they happened to happen on a night when there would be a . . . a complication.”

“Now that’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about, Mr. Harison. We’ve heard from several sources, some of his fellow workers here, that Mr. Groendal was, well, a rather heavy eater. But he doesn’t look like one . . . I mean, he could not be described as obese. As a matter of fact,” Ewing’s inclined head indicated the corpse stretched out on the floor nearby, “he seems to be pretty thin.”

Harison shuddered. He had been trying assiduously to avoid again viewing his friend’s body. Now that his attention was directed to the corpse, Harison noticed abstractedly that Groendal was now blue—at least the exposed skin of his face and neck were a bluish hue. “Well,” he commented, “he wasn’t always.”

“I’m afraid I don’t get it. If he had a weight problem and he was currently eating the way you’ve described, how come he wasn’t a heavy man?”

Harison hesitated. “I guess you’d find out anyway. There’ll be an autopsy, won’t there?”

Ewing nodded.

“Rid had AIDS. That contributed to, if not caused, his somewhat emaciated appearance.”

“I see.” I wonder; thought Ewing, if he got it from you? It was not a certainty that Groendal had contracted the disease from Harison, but it was an hypothesis until something better came along.

Ewing had put this possibility—that theirs was a homosexual relationship—on hold in his mind shortly after he had arrived on the scene. It was not merely that the two men were together when Groendal died; a number of other factors contributed to the premise. The two were not journalistic colleagues. The deceased, the detectives were told, was a critic. The other stated he was not employed but was living in retirement. But he would not say from what he had retired. Then too, Harison had a slightly effeminate air.

That, along with the fact that they shared the same address and that neither was married, added to the suspicion that they were a homosexual couple. That Groendal had AIDS was about all Ewing needed to spell out his probable sexual preference. Short, of course, of coming right out and demanding the information from Harison. Which Ewing was prepared to do should such become relevant.

“I found it,” said Papkin, returning to Ewing and Harison.

Ewing looked at the other detective inquiringly.

“The other letter Harison says Groendal was reading just before he keeled over. It’s all crumpled into a ball.”