Chapter 11
Ben Argon turned his attention from the courthouse window to the river where a barge skittered flirtatiously at the dock like a tipsy middle-aged woman at a cocktail party. He sighed tiredly and sought to loosen his bunched shoulder muscles in a stretch as he let his gaze travel back to the window of the building across the street.
The Venetian blinds were still drawn and he suspected that June Ryan was still in Judge Charles Aiken's office. It annoyed him almost as much as he was annoying himself with his unofficial vigil. What was the purpose of his private detective work? Who had asked him to turn the spotlight on corruption in high places? What was his real motive? Indignation, as a citizen? Instinct, as a cop? Guilt, as a man?
Was it Helen Aiken? Or Kathy Aiken, whose face continued to haunt his dreams and add to his guilt? Was he doing it for them or because of them?
Argon thought of Charlie Aiken's full-bodied wife. He hadn't kept his promise to her. He hadn't called. He hadn't seen her since that winter night when they met in the diner and went to his flat. He hadn't seen or talked to her but he hadn't forgotten her. It wasn't just sex. He could not dismiss his obsession with her by any one word. Sex was perhaps the core of her lingering effect on him but any woman might have provided the same fulfillment. No, it was more than sex.
It was almost as if Helen Aiken personified the mystery and frustration of his entire life. It struck him as being only fitting that she should belong to another. Added to this was the fact that she was the stepmother of a young girl whose face remained with him every minute of every hour when he awaited sleep in the darkness of his room. Could he destroy Charles Aiken and still hope to have either Helen or Kathy to himself? Would he still want them if he stabbed Charlie in the back? And the biggest question of all ... which of them did he really want?
Argon suddenly needed to get away from the crowded street. He walked away from the corner and toward the river, his back to the courthouse window. For the past month he had given thought to leaving Whitebank and becoming a policeman somewhere else. The idea remained a vague one, an expression of inner agitation, rising to the surface only when he thought of Charlie Aiken and of the unmistakable signs that organized crime was moving into White-bank on a big scale. Such a movement, headed by a man like Marty Jex, was never initiated without official encouragement and cooperation.
He passed a crew of eight-year-olds on their way from school. Startled, he realized how quickly the day was passing. Before he knew it, he'd be due back on duty without having an hour's sleep. He stepped into a drugstore, ordered a large orange juice and tried to organize his anxieties.
Why did he expect more morality at top level in Whitebank than he would have from a larger city? Morality, he decided, was a thing of contrasts and contacts. A man could be moral only within the framework of society, not living as a hermit-and when a community grew too large, everyone in it became a sort of hermit, responsible just to himself. Whitebank hadn't progressed, had it, to the point where people were all strangers together?
He had better get some rest-night duty was no picnic.
As he was about to get up, he felt a feather touch on his sleeve. Without thinking, he reached for a gun holster that wasn't there. Then he recognized Kathy Aiken.
"Officer Argon," she said. "How nice to see you again."
The face of the judge's daughter had no mystery in it-she looked merely like a pretty kid, a little spoiled, a little sad. He took her hand, "How are you, Kathy?" he asked.
"I'm fine," she said. "Except I may get kicked out of school."
"Too bad," he murmured. "I'm sorry to hear it."
The pretty girl shrugged. "I've been cutting too many classes. Lack of interest, I guess." She looked small and proud and lost and lonely as she drew a deep breath. "I don't admit this usually but I'm kind of sorry about it, too."
The crowd swelled behind them at the counter. High school kids in search of treats, momentary escape. But not in bunches, he noted uneasily, the way kids usually do at that age. They came one by one or two by two and departed quickly. Maybe in this day and age only the bad kids bunched and maybe all the good ones were like Kathy ... lost and lonely.
"You're not in uniform," she commented. "I'm not taking up your free time, am I?"
"Not at all."
Her smile was as he remembered it, warm and sweet. "Why are you in this part of town if you're off duty?"
Argon avoided her eyes, knowing he could not tell her the answer, that he was spying on her father, that he was amassing information that would create the biggest scandal Whitebank had ever known. He remembered the night he picked her up on the street and how red her cheeks had been from the cold. Now her skin was smooth and warm.
Spring had put a light in her eyes in spite of her look of loneliness. The light would have been easy to miss, a candle burning in the afternoon. Nevertheless, there was something stirring in her, the eternal life force-which for a woman, was man.
He said, "I was just walking around." He added abruptly, "How old are you, Kathy?"
She lost the earnest look. "I'm twenty-one. How old are you?"
He laughed. "I'm older. A lot older ... and you're only nineteen. Why lie to me? What's so great about being twenty-one?"
"That depends." Her voice was wistful. She looked around. "I wish we could go somewhere else together."
He spoke, barely conscious of his meaning, "I'd bore you after a while, kid." In a way-she was as alone as he was. It didn't mean a thing to her that she saw Helen every day. If there was a closeness between stepdaughter and stepmother, they were not warmed by it. "Let's go," he said, rising.
They walked north along the avenue. The wind changed to a chill uneasy whistling. The sunlight clouded. This too was spring.
"What's your full name, Officer Argon?" she asked.
They were holding hands-but she was wearing pale blue gloves, a fact that struck him as having random significance. "A kid like you doesn't need my first name," he answered. "But it's Ben."
"Do you make a lot of money as a policeman?"
He laughed. The wind grew chillier. Her skirt swirled and hugged her thighs. Her youthful hips were rounded-but she seemed thinner than she had during the winter. "Not much," he answered.
"Why do you stay with it, then? Is it because you like to boss people around?"
He grinned and told her, "Kathy, there are smart cops and there are dumb cops-"
"And?"
"And I'm one of the dumb ones. I never take an extra buck-or even a free apple from a grocer. I don't call in sick when I have a hangover. Sometimes-I hate to say it-but I think what I have is pride. The money I make doesn't matter. Crazy, huh?"
She giggled. "Is that why you've never married?"
He stopped short. She had angered him although he was not sure why. "Did I tell you that?"
She seemed frightened by the look on his face, by the way he was holding her arm. "No," she said.
She drew back, but he held her tighter than ever in his iron grasp. "Kathy," he said, in a confession that was also self-discovery, "I'm a sort of judge by nature-not like your father, who was legally appointed. There's a craziness in me that makes me want things clean and safe-"
And now she had forced the truth out of him. He was dogging Charlie Aiken, not because he coveted Charlie's wife and daughter, but because he suspected Charlie of betraying his high office. The thought was a curiously comforting one for a man who believed in justice. For every weakling, there was a matching strength, if not in the weak man, then in the one who watched him. The system would not collapse. Charlie might perish-and Ben might also perish while purging the world of Charlie. But the world would go on as he liked it to be, middling decent at least.
They continued to walk for a while. She pointed out the landmarks on the way-a child's ball dropped at the curb, now forever lost, a swallow floating with the wind above the paved street. When they reached the river, the water was iron-gray under a clouded sky.
"Do you want to tell me about it, Ben Argon?" she asked suddenly.
"Tell you about what?"
She tried to laugh. "What's on your mind. Your real reason for coming here today."
But his real reason was a chasm that separated their worlds.
"It's getting cold." She hunched her shoulders. He helped her back to the path that led away from the river. At this end of town the buildings were old and small, weathered under their paint. A few of them looked abandoned. Somewhere a cat complained. The sound was lonesome.
Kathy lifted her innocent face and asked, "Ben, will you take me to your place? I've wanted you ever since that night we met."
He spoke sullenly, "What do you think I am-a training ground for young virgins?" But if there had even been an argument in favor of such a status-there she was in all her beauty. The fine, high cheekbones, the tiny waist, the strong mouth with untouched lust written into it, the racehorse legs, the way her breasts rose and fell, the wistfulness--
She bowed her head. "I've made a fool of myself. Seems to be my destiny."
His arms closed about her. He ignored the scattering of passersby. Her thighs grew tense against him and she sighed in his arms.
He whispered. "You don't understand, Kathy. Sure, I'd enjoy being with you-while it lasted. But you could never mean anything to me. Do you understand that? Afterward I'd want to kick myself for getting involved with a fool kid." She began to say something and he covered her lips with his fingers. "Don't. You're too young to know the score. It wouldn't be fair of me-"
"Let me decide what's fair." Her breasts trembled as she clung to him.
He whispered in her hair, "I'm not the guy for you. I'm too old, too ugly. I make five hundred dollars a month. I'll probably never make more than that."
"I don't care." She started to weep silently.
"I'm not really your friend," he continued. "I'm a threat to your way of life, your security-"
She pushed away from him, fury in her eyes. "Okay," she said. "I'll find someone young and willing. Anyone. I'll pick someone up on the street since you won't have me. Good-bye, Argon-maybe I'll see you in jail."
She started to run from him, but he grabbed her arm and held her. A woman passed and asked indignantly, "What's going on here? You want me to call a
"I am a cop, lady," Argon said. The woman was short, stout, homely and unafraid. Kathy ungratefully told her to mind her own business. The woman looked in no mood to take the advice-in fact, she seemed ready to form a committee of neighbors to enforce law and order.
"You win," he told Kathy. "We'll go to my place. It's where I belong anyway. I haven't slept in thirty hours."