By nine o'clock the excitement was about all over; they were tying up loose ends there at the General Hospital. If you could say anything like this really ended, or ended satisfactorily, maybe this had. The woman was dead, and the murderer was dead; the boy wasn't badly hurt; Morgan had a slight concussion and could go home tomorrow, they said. The reporters had come and gone, after the usual backchat with the nurses about flash-shots and noise. his would make the front page tomorrow morning, just once, and not as a lead story; people would talk of it a little and then soon forget it.
'Also,' said Mendoza to Hackett, lighting a fresh cigarette, 'we can't claim to have done much about winding this up, can we? Just the way the deal ran-sometimes you get a hand you can't do a damn thing with.'
'That's the way it goes sometimes. But I don't know, you'd linked this up, in the process of time-'
'I think so, yes. It only needed somebody with official excuse to get into that apartment for any length of time, you know-sooner or later such an outsider would have heard or seen something to rouse suspicion, and then the lid would have blown-with what we had already.'
'One hell of a thing, who'd have-And danm lucky in a way it ended like this, nothing worse. I've got no sympathy for that woman, that I'll say-she got what she asked for. But when you think what it must have been like for that kid, for the husband, all these years- Seven years, the husband said, since they'd come west away from home where everybody knew.
'Mother love,' said Mendoza, and laughed. They had quite a lot from the husband about that, by now: incoherent, poured out in sporadic bursts jumbled together with seer-apology. I knew it was awful wrong of me, but I got to a place where I just couldn't stand no more. An' I thought, it I warn't there, it'd be bound to come out- they'd make her put him away somewheres-account it was getting where she couldn't handle him herself, all I could do to manage him, times, he was so big, you know. They were silent awhile, thinking about it.
Mother love, maybe: also pride, shame, ignorant conviction of guilt. An obsession: if he was to be put away, questions, forms, people knowing; and also habit, also familiarity, saying the doctor back home was wrong, no danger, poor Eddy just like a little kid, he'd never- A little kid twenty years old, six-feet-four and stronger than most men.
Ashamed of him, but refusing to send him away. And quite possibly aggravating the whole mental state by the unnatural secret life she forced on him in consequence-on all of them. Moving in or out of places by night, watching, waiting, so that none would see. Keeping him in by day, close-watched: if she had to go out, the husband home from work, the boy home from school, to keep watch. Taking him out like a dog for exercise after dark, keeping to unlighted side streets. Training him like a dog, no noise inside the apartment. Building three lives around the one unproductive life, everything else subordinate to looking after Eddy and keeping Eddy a secret from everyone else.
I figured she'd have to give it up, if I wasn't there. He got into, well, like rages they was, times-any little thing'd set him off, wanted to smash things, you know, an' she couldn't handle-Same time, he knew lots o' things you wouldn't expect, an' it was like that doctor said, when he got to be fourteen, fifteen, you know, getting to be a man, like, he-It got harder, he kept wanting get out, away, by himself, an' then when you'd bring him back, say no, he got just terrible mad, couldn't see why Of course Lindstrom had argued with her. Not the kind of man to be very articulate. Not the kind of woman to listen, reason, understand clearly what she was doing and why And I never did think he'd ever turn on any of us-on his own Ma! Didn't seem possible, if I'd thought that I'd never in this world gone off like I did. I knew it was awful bad for Marty, sleeping same room and all, 'twasn't fair-but she wouldn't never listen. I just got to a place where Mendoza dug his cigarette into the tub of sand in the corridor there and repeated, 'Mother love.'
'People,' contributed Hackett rather savagely. The pretty blonde nurse came out and said they could see the boy for just ten minutes, if they wouldn't let him get too excited, held been in shock after all and needed rest and quiet.
The boy had tight hold on his father's hand, sitting up in bed looking at them a little uncertain, a little scared still. 'We don't bite,' said Mendoza, smiling down at him. 'There's just a few little questions we want to ask and then we'll let you go to sleep.'
'Yes, sir. I-I want to tell you-how it was, it was my fault, I know that-let him get away, when I knew how he was, he'd maybe get in trouble. But I-but I- That first time, it was all account of that doll, it was awfully silly but he wanted it so bad, he saw it in the store window, there was a light left on even when it was shut, you know, and times I took him out, nights, we went past a couple times and I couldn't hardly get him away from it, he-'
'He took funny notions like that,' said Lindstrom. 'Don't you get excited, Marty, I'm right here to watch out for you now, and all they want to know, I guess, is about-about today.' He looked still a little dazed and shaken, but his voice was reassuringly stolid.
'But I want to tell-about everything, have it over… Ma, she'll be awful mad-I made things happen like they did.' He hadn't been told about his mother yet; there was time. 'I-I was scared to tell her, first, that time over on Tappan-and then I had to, account of knowing what he'd done. Ma said he told him she'd buy it for him, see-the doll. She'd saved up the money-'
'Waste, waste,' muttered Lindstrom. 'Foolish, but she'd do such, whatever he-'
'And then I guess she couldn't, somebody else- And that night, I was out with him, he ran off and I couldn't catch up-I looked everywhere, I went to that store but they'd taken the doll out of the window a while before, he wasn't- And when I f-found him, he had it, a great big box and inside- I thought he'd stole it, I shouldn't've let him get away like that-'
'You take it easy now,' said Hackett, soothing; he glanced at Mendoza. They could both reconstruct that one, Brooks, now. Eddy peering in the shop window, seeing Carol come out with the doll. His doll, that he'd been promised, that she had no right to. Following, working up to anger at her thievery.
'-when I heard-about that girl, and I remembered there was a little spot on his shirt, like blood-I had to tell Ma, but she wouldn't listen, she wouldn't believe he'd- She said I'd just forgot, she had so bought the doll and I was making up bad stories-'
Mendoza sighed to himself; he had heard that animal mothers too always gave more attention to the runt of a litter, the sickly one.. ..'I'd like to hear something about the skating rink, Marty. This girl, this time.'
'Yes, sir. That was even more my fault, 'cause I knew how bad he could do, then. I shouldn't've-but Ma'd got kind of sick, she was doctoring at the clinic and couldn't go out with him any more nights, I had to every night. And sometimes it was kind of hard, things I wanted to do with other fellows, like movies sometimes-you know-h-he got away a couple times more, and once when I found him he was at that place, he'd found a sort of little back door that was open and he was getting in, and I had to go after, I had an awful time getting him to come away-he liked the music, and he liked to watch them going round and round. And Dad, you know how when he liked anything he'd be good and quiet, just sit there still as could be, hours sometimes-I thought it was all right! I-I went with him a couple of times, and he never moved, just sat there watching and listening, see. So I thought, he'd do like that long as that place was open at night, never bother nobody, nobody knew we was there at all. And, Dad, it wasn't like cheating to sneak in without paying like that, because we wasn't using it, I mean didn't go to skate. I thought I could just, sort of, leave him there and it'd be all right, he'd just sit and never do nothing. And I did, a lot of times, I went off and to a movie or somewheres, not to see it all through but mostly, you know-and came back to get him, and he was fine, right where I'd left him.'
'And at the rink,' said Mendoza softly, 'he saw a girl, a pretty girl who looked like his beautiful doll… How'd I know that? Why, I'm a detective, Marty.'
'He was-funny-about the doll,' said the boy with a little gasp. 'I mean, I guess he sort of-loved it-but same time, he did things to it-bad things. Yes, sir, it was like that-at that place, he saw this girl, he got terrible excited about it, kept talking about her- I mean, what-what he meant for talk, he couldn't ever talk real plain, you know. It was really that, sort of, that'd tell you what he was like, because just to look at him, he-'
Yes; not until you looked twice, saw the eyes, the lumbering walk, or heard the guttural attempts at speech, would you know. Otherwise, to the casual look, just a big young man, maybe a little stupid.
'Once down on Commerce, when I was with him, I saw her too-he-tried to go up and talk to her, I got him away then. And I guess she was a little scared, remembered me anyways, I mean what I looked like, even if it was dark-because a couple days after, in the daytime, I saw her in the street again, and she made like to say something to me, but she never-Danny was with me, he-'
'You're doing fine, but don't try to tell everything, just take it Easy.'
