Death Kit (10 page)

One railroad official, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the circumstances of Mr. Incardona's death did not rule out the possibility of suicide. Local police are discounting the suicide theory but declare they have no intention of closing the case immediately. The newly reorganized Accident Investigation Squad, headed by Capt. Arthur G. Mallory, has opened a file on the case and expects to determine whether any responsibility belongs to the railroad. “I'm not saying there are, but there just might be some loophole in the precautions laid down by the railroad for the safety of men working on the tracks,” Capt. Mallory said last night when reached at his home by the Courier-Gazette. Capt. Mallory said he plans to inspect the lighting available in the tunnel, the system of shelters and storage areas, and the functioning of the electronic warning system. Representatives of the New York, Boston & Standard have already pointed out that their safety regulations are far stricter than the minimums established by federal and state law. But they have assured the police of their continued and full cooperation with every phase of the investigation.

Hasn't the anonymous author of the story been carried away by the faint prospect of a larger story, an investigation leading to a negligence suit that might put the state's second wealthiest railroad on trial? Forgetting his original subject, mere Angelo Incardona. But eventually the zealous reporter had to descend to the commonplaces of an obituary; summarizing a life that had only the most schematic existence as far as public records show. Perhaps his rewrite man had to cut away a good deal more pyramiding of supposition about the railroad, to bring the reader smack up against Incardona, as he existed before his abruptly accomplished removal from this world. A few facts, anyway. Not much to tell in this fourth, and last, paragraph.

Mr. Incardona was born in Utica but moved to this city at the age of fourteen. He graduated from William McKinley High School, where he was a star quarterback in his senior year. After graduation, he enlisted in the army and served in Korea during the Korean War. He was a member of American Legion Post #701 and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way, AFL-CIO. He is survived by his wife, Myra, and a son, Thomas Francis, 11. Services will be held tomorrow at 2:00 at the Floral Gardens Funeral Home, 303 Schuyler Avenue.

Diddy sat, hands twitching, the coarse sheets of the newspaper agitated beyond his control.

All doubts resolved: a man had died yesterday. Whose home, by an unspeakable coincidence, was here. The city where Diddy was obliged to remain for a week.

(Now) Diddy has his sad triumph over Hester. The messy, mortifying uncertainty was over, quelled by the dreary but precise screed of newspaper prose. Undeniable relief to know he was sane. If anyone suffered from absences of mind, it was Hester. And also, he recalls irritably, the man who wrote headlines at the
Courier-Gazette.
Can't people read? That headline not merely inaccurate. It contradicted the story. Wasn't the railroad who was investigating, or proposing to investigate, the incident in the tunnel; it was the police.

So, everything was certain (now) with respect to the past. But what's Diddy to do, at this moment? This morning? Present himself to Capt. Mallory, informing the conscientious cop that his suspected case of negligence is actually a murder? Well, perhaps not a true murder in the technical sense. It occurs to Diddy that if he confesses promptly, he might be tried on a reduced charge. Hadn't he been overdramatizing his crime? From a legal point of view, it wasn't murder straight and simple. What he'd done to Incardona sounds to Diddy the Layman more like manslaughter, in which the assailant isn't acquainted with his victim; so that the crime is not premeditated. Than murder, where the killer knows his victim and can plot the crime in advance.

Could Diddy's lawyer make that argument stick? So that, at worst, he'd be tried for manslaughter or for murder in the second degree?

But wait. Diddy is going too fast. Already bargaining with Capt. Mallory, with the sergeant at the station, with the D.A. Somewhat premature, when he has yet to decide bluntly, once and for all, whether he intends to give himself up.

One ordeal he means to spare himself. That of mockery and derision. It's possible the police won't believe him. Diddy the Demented, one of the horde of guilt-stricken folk longing to be punished who stride by the hundreds into police stations each year, to confess loudly to crimes they read about in the papers, perhaps wish they'd committed; but surely didn't commit. No, his confession must be supported by evidence. Witnesses. His fellow passengers will testify that he was absent from the compartment long enough to commit his crime. Can't be that the others share Hester's inexplicable lapse of memory. God, why hadn't he taken down their names and addresses! Surely they can be traced. And don't forget that his fingerprints must be smeared all over the crowbar he used on Incardona—unless some idiotic foreman has already assigned the dead man's tools to another laborer, who's wielding them right (now), dissolving Diddy's prints with fresh sweat and grime. Lastly, an autopsy; which might disclose that the train that may have crushed Incardona's torso couldn't also have broken open his skull. No time to waste. Before the priest and the stamp dealer, candy effigies, melt, vanish into oblivion; before Incardona's corpse is retouched by the mortician's lying skills, stuck underground, and begins to rot.

But wait. No, no. Something wrong. The newspaper would have it that the Privateer's run was without incident, that the train passed through the tunnel without stopping at all. Diddy knows the world is built on lies. But why would they tell such a stupid lie, one so easily exposed? The railroad must be desperate to conceal its fallibility, to deny that breakdowns and unforeseen accidents ever occur. Those buck-passing bastard bureaucrats won't be allowed to get away with such tricks. Everyone aboard the Privateer can testify that the train stopped for about forty minutes. Even Hester remembers that.

Quick, then. To work. Either that, or don't move at all. Diddy the Dilatory doesn't rise from the deep upholstered chair in the hotel lobby. He can't help thinking, why should I? Why was Diddy bent on confessing to a crime no one suspected him of committing, the penalties for which he could, if he chose, escape entirely? The justification for that impulse, once plain to Diddy, had dissolved a mere moment ago into a murky elusive blur of inner speech, tuned down so as to be unaudible. But it's not as if Diddy isn't permitted to think any more, once he's reached a decision. No. Then think. Thinking some more. Maybe it wasn't judgment or punishment he desired, only clarity and certainty. These he'd yearned for with such passion, and with so little hope of attaining them, that he could easily have misread his desire as a craving for judgment and punishment.

But (now) he had them both, clarity and certainty, clenched in his fist. Like splinters of glass which, miraculously, fail to lacerate the hand. Why go any further? Did he want to die? Diddy the Done. No, he wanted to live. But was that enough of a reason to remain sitting in this chair?

And what about the lovely girl sequestered in the hospital? Hadn't Diddy set himself two projects to carry out this Monday morning? Discover if he were a murderer, and send Hester some flowers. He's seen through one project. Before turning himself in, he'd take care of the other. Diddy tore the story on page 16 out of the
Courier-Gazette
and tucked it in his wallet. Then left the hotel and strolled down the street, unexpectedly lighthearted, inhaling the damp fresh morning air, lightly pricked with sensations from the miniature rush hour getting underway, like a toy imitation of Manhattan. The buses crammed with sleepy-eyed office workers and compulsive shoppers. He crosses the street. The florist, a small brown paper bag clamped between his elbow and right side, was just pulling up the iron shutters and unlocking the door when Diddy arrived, his first customer. Diddy, pacing about the dark, humid, fragrant interior of the store. All dark places should smell like this. The man watched him patiently, permissively, while sipping coffee from a cardboard cup.

Real nice morning.

Yes, very nice.

It was a challenge to choose flowers for someone who can't see them. For whom flowers must be legible and pleasurable in all ways except the ordinary one, sight. Diddy selected lilacs for their scent. Pussy willows for their texture. Six anthurium stalks for their keenly erotic shape. “They're awful expensive, I have to tell you. Get them flown in all the way from Hawaii.” Diddy said he knew and that it didn't matter.

Making out a card to accompany the flowers. “I hope to see you today. Dalton.” After that, Diddy started back for the hotel. He's walking more slowly (now). Away from life, back to death. True, he's all but convinced himself that no good would be served by turning himself in to the police. Yet the final step is not in place. Hence, conviction doesn't arrive. And all his reasoning is sterile. Diddy on the way to confession, humiliation, and imprisonment. He will enter the Rushland, go to his room, and telephone the police. It's done by taking one step at a time, putting one foot in front of the other. But Diddy has yet to cross the whole of the lobby, he's still twenty feet short of the elevator door, when someone calls “Hey! Hey, Dalton!” Jim Allen of the sales department hailing him. Diddy knew Jim was among the group from New York picked to attend the conference. But how long has he been here? Was it possible that Jim, unperceived by Diddy, had been about the lobby earlier; watching Diddy feverishly scanning the newspaper, finding what he sought, tearing it out, and secreting it in his wallet? “When d'you get in, Dalt?”

“Early yesterday evening,” replied Diddy, anxiously wheeling around. He was startled to find Jim just behind him. Close enough to be stretching out his arm for a handshake. Diddy managed it. “I took the Privateer,” he continued slowly, not sure whether that was a prudent admission. Hastily, before Jim thinks of an item he may have read in his morning's paper, adding, “When did you arrive, Jim?”

“A few minutes ago. I caught an Earlybird. I just don't have the patience for trains any more.”

What reply could Diddy make to that?

“Say, is Duva coming up for any of this? I can't ever get a straight word out of that guy. What a cold fish. It beats me how you can work with him.”

Duva would be up on Wednesday if he came at all, Diddy said. Hardly believing that these were the words coming out of his mouth. In this casual tone.

Jim grunted. Looked distractedly around the lobby, then at Diddy. “Have you had breakfast?”

Diddy said he hadn't.

“Come on then! Neither have I, and we're due at the plant by ten. They're sending a car by the hotel at nine forty-five for us and the two other guys … you know, Bill Katz and Fred What's-his-name.”

Diddy, drifting from his firm purpose, knew it. What he's set out to do, what he had to do, was not getting done. Diddy the Delayer. But what could he reply to Jim? “Excuse me, but I must go upstairs to call the police.” “Yeah? Why?” “It's to turn myself in for a murder I committed yesterday afternoon.” “What! Come off it!” Diddy shakes his head gravely. “C'mon, Dalton, don't try to put me on.” Until, eventually, in another voice: “For God's sake. Where?” Diddy's reply: “On the Privateer. No, off it.” Then a wry joke. “Pity I
do
have the patience for trains.” Diddy the Comedian.

Diddy could not perform so clumsy and predictable a scene. Something else, then. Taking a step away from the elevator, hesitating. There, alongside affable gelatinous Jim Allen, was the track of his life stretching out before him. He had only to keep going, not look back. Even though the track curved sharply. But curves are natural. Nobody would know. Only Hester knew Diddy's truth, without believing it. Why should she (now)? Hardly likely that she was having the local newspaper read aloud to her, cover to cover, at the hospital this morning. And sooner or later the paper would drop the story, if no lunatic with a wild tale jumped forward to make it more interesting. Capt. Mallory's zeal might flag, or the railroad make it worth his while to abandon the investigation. Then, once the story disappeared from the
Courier-Gazette,
no chance the girl would ever hear of it. There wouldn't be anyone to connect Diddy with the accidental death of a railroad laborer named Incardona.

Was this Diddy's mandate? Striding across the lobby with Jim Allen, Diddy took it to be the mandate of life. Giving himself up to the police would not resurrect Incardona. That was just a way for Diddy to commit suicide, this time successfully. And he didn't want to die (now). Diddy mellowing toward himself. Loving himself, even his lean body, turned very pale since that sad decision last month. The heat of increased consciousness relayed into an unaccustomed sense of bodily vigor. (Now) Diddy consented to breathe even noxious city air; could imagine himself walking briskly, running, and swimming; was eager to work. Xan's matted hair needs combing out. He wanted to continue sending Joan the money so she could finish law school. He wanted Jim Allen to feel easy with him, he wanted to be close to Hester.

“I'm hungry,” says Diddy, smiling. “I didn't have any dinner last night.”

*   *   *

Diddy found his appetite with Jim. Both men put away a big breakfast. Speculating on the conference, wondering whether anything useful would be accomplished.

It was possible that everything the company had built up was about to be washed away. The firm was unprepared; they'd been accustomed for so long to being secure from serious competition. Manufacturers of the Micro-Recorderscope, known familiarly in memos and on charts as Scope 21. Cornerstone of the company's reputation and financial solidity; the item that accounted for fifty percent of its profits. An apparatus about eight inches high which combined the features of a rigorous, high-powered magnifying instrument with the resources of an excellent camera. An apparatus no one could rival.