After the First Death

“I have some money saved. A savings account.”

“Much?”

“Enough for the time being. I’m not rich. I’ll have to work sooner or later, and God knows at what.”

“Try to get something on your own merits. Without changing your name, or hoping your identity doesn’t catch up with you. Know what I mean? Because people always find things out sooner or later, and you’re better off it you don’t set yourself up for a fall.”

We talked a good deal about this, about what sort of work I might get, about what town I would settle in-I was going back to New York, because that was the place I knew best, and because it is the easiest town in which to lose oneself and remain nearly anonymous.

Eventually he said, “You’ve never remembered it have you?”

“The murder, you mean? No. Never.”

“I wonder if that’s good.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure myself, Alex. I wonder if a person’s better off losing the memory of a crime. Forgive me an unpardonable liberty, but I have to say this. The important thing is that you not repeat the offense.”

I said nothing.

“Every man has a devil in him,” Pillion said. “With some the devil lives close to the surface, and alcohol or some other force can liberate him. This happened to you, with disastrous results. You must never lose sight of the fact that it could very possibly happen again.”

“I won’t let it.”

“I hope not.” He toyed with desktop objects-a pen, a pipe, an ashtray. “Two things to guard against. First, you don’t remember the murder itself. Second, you’re being released; you’re being told in effect that you’re legally innocent. These elements can combine to fool you, lead you to think that it never really happened in the first place. The tree falling when no human ear can hear it, eh? No murder, no guilt, no need to guard against a repeat performance. Eh?”

“I’m afraid you’re getting a litde metaphysical-”

“Perhaps. I’m not certain. What’s the saying? ‘He who fails to learn from the past is condemned to repeat it. “I’m afraid I’ve gotten the words wrong, but you know my meaning, you’re a historian yourself.”

“Yes.”

He lowered his eyes. “Actually, you’re a lucky man. A very lucky man. You’re getting a second chance, not because of anything you’ve done but because of a combination of circumstances. I hope you’ll keep that devil buried. Or see a psychiatrist and exorcise him entirely. And I hope you’ll stay far away from liquor. Some men can drink and some can’t, and-”

“I always thought I was one who could.”

“Perhaps you could have, at one time. Don’t experiment. Stay away from drink. Keep the lid on tight. Learn from the past, Alex. God, yes, learn from the past, don’t repeat it. It’s not a good past Don’t repeat it.”

I wanted to call him. I wanted to get him on the phone-better, to see him in person, in his office, sitting across the desk from him, telling him about it. I had not learned from the past, I had repeated it, and there would be no third chance.

I took some aspirin, then wandered around the apartment trying to think what it held that I might want to take with me. Certainly there must have been specific articles which might have been of value to a criminal on the run, but this was a role I had never before played and one to which I was consequently quite unaccustomed. I had to run. Presumably I had to run somewhere. But where? Embezzlers went to Brazil. Western gunmen went to the Badlands. Where did modern-day murderers go? And how?

Or did one merely attempt to avoid capture, staying in the same city, lurking in familiar haunts? That seemed unlikely. From what I had read, criminals usually headed for bright lights, the busy downtown sections of major cities. And there they were quickly caught. Or else they raced for the Mexican border, and were captured attempting to cross it.

Perhaps if I just went somewhere in the Midwest. But my face would be broadcast everywhere, newspapers, television. I would be recognized, I would be caught-

I left the apartment without taking anything with me. Not even my checkbook, nothing, nothing at all. I left the apartment and started walking.

4

MY FELLOW CONVICTS AND I WERE CHEAT TELEVISION FANS. We liked most shows (except for the cute situation comedies, which almost everyone hated) but the crime programs were our favorite hands down. We loved The Fugitive. I’ve read thoughtful analyses of the show which suggest that it represents wish-fulfillment for the American public-Kimble is innocent, but he has to stay on the run, and thus has an excuse to lead an escapist life with no permanent ties, etc., etc., etc. It certainly represented wish-fulfillment for all of us. Because the cops were after the sonofabitch, but he was on the outside, and he stayed on the outside, and in the course of staying on the outside he ran across a statistically improbable quantity of goodlooking women.

For several years I never missed that program. In the summer I watched the re-runs. So you would have thought that I would have learned something about the problem of functioning as a fugitive from justice. It seemed now that all those weeks of watching David Janssen scamper from hither to yon had done me no good at all. He always went interesting places and did interesting things. He got jobs, colorful jobs, and he concealed his true identity with the resourcefulness of Clark Kent, and he always knew which people to take into his confidence. But, more than that, he always seemed to be guided by some special sort of master plan. He never sat around like a dolt wondering what to do next, or where to go, or whether it wouldn’t be better to drown himself. When all else failed, he could start hunting the one-armed man again. But in the meantime there was always a place for him to go, a bit of business for him to involve himself in, a new road for him to follow.

I was an utter failure as a fugitive. I walked uptown to Fourteenth Street and west to Union Square. I ate baked beans and scrambled eggs and home fries at the Automat, and drank a few cups of coffee. I took a subway to Times Square. I got off the subway with seventy-five cents left. I spent fifty-five cents to get into a Forty-second Street movie, a pair of westerns, Audie Murphy, Randolph Scott. I spent ten cents on a candy bar. I sat in the balcony and smoked cigarettes and watched the movies. I had ten cents left, and I intended to spend it on a second candy bar as soon as I was hungry again. I was a complete failure as a fugitive and it barely bothered me.

While Audie Murphy and Randolph Scott led the forces of good to their inevitable triumph over the forces of evil, I hunched in my seat and followed the action on the screen, letting the films bake my psyche as a Turkish bath might have done for my body. Everything drained out. The headache went away, the fear, the pain, everything. Anesthesia.

And the hours slipped neatly away. If I were going to escape from New York City now was emphatically the time to do it. In a matter of hours the police would be looking for me, and once that happened bus terminals and airports and railway stations would cease to be safe. (It occurred to me now that I should have taken my checkbook, that the airlines would have accepted a check. It had not occurred to me before. And it no longer seemed to matter. I was watching the movie, I would go on watching the movie; as long as I stayed where I was nothing bad could happen to me. The cocoon mentality.)

When I entered the theater, the Audie Murphy picture was about a third gone. I watched it to the end, and then I watched the Randolph Scott picture, and then I watched a coming attraction for something and a Roadrunner cartoon and a two-minute advertisement for the goodies available at the downstairs refreshment stand in the main lobby. Then I watched the Audie Murphy picture to the point where I came in, and, since there was no particular place to go next, I stayed there to watch it through to the end again.

Remember, said an inner voice.

No. No, I’d rather not

Remember last night.

No. I had a blackout. I’m entitled to a blackout

Lift the curtain. Bring back bits and pieces of it-