All Gone Page 2

  I pleaded guilty and got six years. In prison I was taught mess hall cooking and worked in the kitchen there the last three years of my term. In the prison library I read as many books on psychology and psychiatry, including two of the professor’s works, as any student could read in any university in the world.

  Lots of times in prison I thought about getting revenge on that man once I got out. I thought I would wait for him outside his class, and only after I was sure he remembered me and the ride we took together, would I slam a two-by-four over his head, not caring if he got killed. But then I knew I could never do anything that fierce. So I thought I’d just walk up to him on the street and slap his face, and after I wrestled him to the ground, as he was a pretty small guy so probably easy to handle, I’d kick his legs and arms and maybe spit at him, and then just leave him there like that.

  But I knew I wouldn’t be capable of doing any of those things either. After reading those psychology and psychiatry books, I found I wasn’t at all the type to go around kicking and slapping anyone for anything. I also learned from those books that the professor was the type who would always have a gun, or know where to get one, and that he would come after me and use it if I so much as accused him of the crimes I went to prison for and took a swing at his face. And he’d have all the right excuses too. He could say “That man tried to kill me for having told the truth about that day he kept me captive in his cab. For he swore to me in the cab that he’d get even with me if I ever talked. And he’s phoned me a number of times since he left prison, with threats against my wife and me. So I got a gun. All right—I got it illegally”—if he couldn’t get it legally and as the one he had in the cab must have been gotten—“but I was desperately afraid of him. And when he came for me I had to shoot him to save my life.”

  So I gave up on getting revenge. I was a model prisoner, got out in four years and returned to college, but this time to get a simple business degree in restaurant management. Louise, my old girlfriend, was too seriously involved with someone else to see me. Some of my old friends were still in the city. They all had fairly good jobs and a couple of them were married and had children. The few times I did meet some of them for beers, they asked me to tell the story about the professor and me. But I always told them it was best for my future career and personal well-being if I forgot that incident forever and if everybody else forgot about it too.

  Most nights now I worked as a waiter. About once a week since I got the job a few months ago, that same man comes in the restaurant and sits at my station and orders drinks and a complete meal. Near the end of his dinner on the first night, he said “Aren’t you the fellow who did that strange thing with the taxi and police that was such a popular news story a few years ago?”

  I said “I’m the man, all right,” and he said “I thought you looked familiar. You’ve clipped most of your hair and taken to wearing a mustache and eyeglasses, but I suppose those pictures of you on TV and in the papers left an indelible impression on me. I happen to have more than a morbid gossiper’s concern in criminal cases and yours I have to admit was one of the more interesting ones.” Then he excused himself for having brought up the subject, “since it must be embarrassing if not potentially damaging to you for anyone to repeat it in public,” and didn’t say another word to me for the rest of the meal except “Thank you” and “Goodbye.”

  Since then, after his first drink, he always asks if I’d mind speaking some more about that day he had talked about, and I always say I wouldn’t.

  “What I’m saying,” he’s said in a different way each time, “is I don’t want you getting mad at me or anything. Because if you think I’m being nosey, even if it is with a professional interest in mind that could lead to a paper on the subject, please say so and I’ll shut up and never ask you about it again.”

  He always asks just one question each dinner, though a different one each time. Such as “What prompted your doing it in the first place?” and “Didn’t you think you could get killed in the act?” and “Where did you get the courage to face the police like that?” and “What was the significance of riding around the blocks so many times?” and “Why for a while did you settle on just one gas station in case you ran out of gas a second time?” and “Didn’t you know that if caught you’d be jeopardizing your employment and social activities for life?” and “Did you really believe you were innocent as you first proclaimed to the press the day you were caught?” and “Didn’t it occur to you that your passenger might have been killed by the police for being thought of as your accomplice or by a stray bullet aimed at you?”

  I always make up an answer for him. Such as “At the time I intentionally wanted to get myself killed,” and “I really can’t say why I did anything that day because it was essentially another me who was responsible for the act,” and “I went around and around those blocks to draw attention to myself, simple as that,” and “I was too concerned with carrying out the crime itself and having a good time playing around with the police to pay any attention to the passenger in back.”

  My answer always seems to satisfy him for the time. He then apologizes for having brought up the subject again and changes the conversation by asking after my health or college work or if the dinner special looks good tonight, and throughout the rest of the meal acts somewhat frightened as if he thinks I’m about to pick up a chair and crash it down on him. Then he finishes his dinner and the bottle of wine he always orders with his meal, and leaves without ever giving me a tip.

  ALL GONE

  He says goodbye, we kiss at the door, he rings for the elevator, I say “I’ll call you when I find out about the tickets,” he says “Anytime, as I’ll be in all day working on that book jacket I’m behind on,” waves to me as the elevator door opens and I shut the door.

  I find out about the tickets and call him and he doesn’t answer. Maybe he hasn’t gotten home yet, though he usually does in half an hour. But it’s Saturday and the subway’s always much slower on weekends, and I call him half an hour later and he doesn’t answer.

  He could have got home and I missed him because he right away might have gone out to buy some necessary art supply or something, and I call him an hour later and he doesn’t answer. I do warm-ups, go out and run my three miles along the river, come back and shower and call him and he doesn’t answer. I dial him every half hour after that for the next three hours and then call Operator and she checks and says his phone’s in working order.

  I call his landlord and say “This is Maria Pierce, Eliot Schulter’s good friend for about the last half-year—you know me. Anyway, could you do me a real big favor and knock on his door? I know it’s an inconvenience but he’s only one flight up and you see, he should be home and doesn’t answer and I’ve been phoning and phoning him and am getting worried. I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes. If he’s in and for his own reasons didn’t want to answer the phone or it actually is out of order, could you have him call me at home?”

  I call the landlord back in fifteen minutes and he says “I did what you said and he didn’t answer. That would’ve been enough for me. But you got me worried also, so I went downstairs for his duplicate keys and opened his door just a ways and yelled in for him and then walked in and he wasn’t there, though his place looked okay.”

  “Excuse me, I just thought of something. Was his night light on?”

  “You mean the little small-watt-bulb lamp on his fireplace mantel?”

  “That’s the one. He always keeps it on at night to keep away burglars who like to jump in from his terrace.”

  “What burglars jumping in from where? He was never robbed that I know.”

  “The tenant before him said she was. Was it on?”

  “That’s different. Yes. I thought he’d forgotten about the light, so I shut it off. I was thinking about his electricity cost, but you think I did wrong?”

  “No. It only means he never got home. Thanks.”

  I call every half hour after that till arou
nd six, when he usually comes to my apartment. But he never comes here without our first talking on the phone during the afternoon about all sorts of things: how our work’s going, what the mail brought, what we might have for dinner that evening and do later and if there’s anything he can pick up on the way here and so on. The concert’s at eight and I still have to pick up the tickets from my friend who’s giving them to me and can’t go herself because her baby’s sick and her husband won’t go without her. I call her and say “I don’t see how we can make the concert. Eliot’s not here, hasn’t called, doesn’t answer his phone and from what his landlord said, I doubt he ever got home after he left me this morning.”

  “Does he have any relatives or close friends in the city for you to call?”

  “No, he would have gone to his apartment directly—I know him. He had important work to finish, and the only close person other than myself to him is his mother in Seattle.”

  “Maybe he did get home but got a very sudden call to drop everything and fly out to her, so he didn’t have the time to phone you, or when he did, your line was busy.”

  “No, we’re close enough that he’d know it would worry me. He’d have called from the airport, someplace.”

  “Your line still could have been busy all the times you were trying to get him. But I’m sure everything’s okay, and don’t worry about the tickets. Expensive as they are, I’ll put them down as a total loss. Though if you are still so worried about him, phone the police in his neighborhood or even his mother in Seattle.”

  “Not his mother. There’s no reason and I’d just worry her and Eliot would get angry at me. But the police is a good idea.”

  I call the police station in his precinct. The officer who answers says “We’ve nothing on a Mr. Schulter. But being that you say he left your apartment this morning, phone your precinct station,” and she gives me the number. I call it and the officer on duty says “Something did come in today about someone of his name—let me think.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Hey, take it easy. It could be nothing. I’m only remembering that I saw an earlier bulletin, but what it was went right past me. What’s your relationship to him before I start searching for it?”

  “His closest friend. We’re really very very close and his nearest relative is three thousand miles from here.”

  “Well, I don’t see it in front of me. I’ll locate it, though don’t get excited when I’m away. It could be nothing. I might even be wrong. It was probably more like a Mr. Fullter or Schulton I read about, but not him. Want me to phone you back?”

  “I’ll wait, thanks.”

  “Let me take your number anyway, just in case I get lost.”

  He goes, comes back in a minute. “Now take it easy. It’s very serious. He had no I.D. on him other than this artist society card with only his signature on it, which we were checking into, so we’re grateful you called.”

  “Please, what is it?”

  “According to this elderly witness, he was supposedly thrown on the subway tracks this morning and killed.”

  I scream, break down, hang up, pound the telephone table with my fists, the officer calls back and says “If you could please revive yourself, Miss, we’d like you to come to the police station here and then, if you could by the end of the night sometime, to the morgue to identify your friend.”

  I say no, I could never go to the morgue, but then go with my best friend. She stays outside the body room when I go in, look and say “That’s him.” Later I call Eliot’s mother and the next day her brother comes to the city and takes care of the arrangements to have Eliot flown to Seattle and his apartment closed down and most of his belongings sold or given away or put on the street. The uncle asks if I’d like to attend the funeral, but doesn’t mention anything about providing air fare or where I would stay. Since I don’t have much money saved and also think I’ll be out of place there and maybe even looked down upon by his family I’ve never seen, I stay here and arrange on that same funeral day a small ceremony in the basement of a local church, where I and several of our friends and his employers speak about Eliot and read aloud excerpts of his letters to a couple of us and listen to parts of my opera records he most liked to play and for a minute bow our heads, hold hands and pray.

  According to that elderly witness, Eliot was waiting for a train on the downtown platform of my stop when he saw a young man speaking abusively to a girl of about fifteen. When the girl continued to ignore him, he made several obscene gestures and said he was going to throw her to the platform and force her to do all sorts of sordid things to him and if he couldn’t get her to do them there because people were watching, then in the men’s room upstairs. The girl was frightened and started to walk away. The young man grabbed her wrist, started to twist it, stopped and said he would rip her arm off if she gave him a hard time, but didn’t let go. There were a few people on the platform. Nobody said anything or tried to help her and in fact all of them except Eliot and this elderly man eventually moved to the other end of the platform or at least away from what was going on. Then Eliot went over to the young man, who was still holding the girl by her wrist, and very politely asked him to let her alone. Something like “Excuse me, I don’t like to interfere in anyone’s problems. But if this young lady doesn’t want to be bothered by you, then I would really think you’d let her go.”

  “Listen, I know her, so mind your business,” the young man said and she said to Eliot “No he don’t.” Then out of nowhere a friend of the young man ran down the subway stairs and said to him “What’s this chump doing, horning in on your act?” The elderly man got up from a bench and started for the upstairs to get help. “You stay right here, grandpa,” the first young man said, “or you’ll get thrown on your back too.” The elderly man stopped. Eliot said to the young men “Please, nobody should be getting thrown on their backs. And I hate to get myself any more involved in this, but for your own good you fellows ought to go now or just leave everybody here alone.”

  “And for your own good,” one of the young men said, “you’d be wiser moving your ass out of here.”

  “I can only move it once I know this girl’s out of danger with you two.”

  “She’ll be plenty out of danger when you move your ass out of here, now move.”

  “Believe me, I’d like to, but how can I? Either you leave her completely alone now or I’ll have to get the police.”

  That’s when they jumped him, beat him to the ground and, when he continued to fight back with his feet, fists and butting his head, picked him up and threw him on the tracks. He landed on his head and cracked his skull and something like a blood clot suddenly shot through to the brain, a doctor later said. The girl had already run away. The young men ran the opposite way. The elderly man shouted at Eliot to get up, then at people to jump down to the tracks to help Eliot up, then ran in the direction the young men went to the token booth upstairs and told the attendant inside that an unconscious man was lying on the tracks and for her to do something quick to prevent a train from running over him. She phoned from the booth. He ran back to the platform and all the way to the other end of it yelling to the people around him “Stop the train. Man on the tracks, stop the local train.” When the downtown local entered the station a minute later, he and most of the people along the platform screamed and waved the motorman to stop the train because someone was on the tracks. The train came to a complete stop ten feet from Eliot. A lot of the passengers were thrown to the floor and the next few days a number of them sued the city for the dizzy spells and sprained fingers and ripped clothes they said they got from the sudden train stop and also for the days and weeks they’d have to miss from their jobs because of their injuries. Anyway, according to that same doctor who examined Eliot at the hospital, he was dead a second or two after his head hit the train rail.

  For a week after the funeral I go into my own special kind of mourning: seeing nobody, never leaving the apartment or answering phone calls, eating littl
e and drinking too much, but mostly just sleeping or watching television while crying and lying in bed. Then I turn the television off, answer every phone call, run along the river for twice as many miles than I usually do, go out for a big restaurant dinner with a friend and return to my job.

  The Saturday morning after the next Saturday after that I sit on the bench near the place on the subway platform where Eliot was thrown off. I stay there from eight to around one, on the lookout for the two young men. I figure they live in the neighborhood and maybe every Saturday have a job or something to go to downtown and after a few weeks they’ll think everything’s forgotten about them and their crime and they can go safely back to their old routines, like riding the subway to work at the station nearest their homes. The descriptions I have of them are the ones the elderly witness gave. He said he was a portrait painter or used to be and so he was absolutely exact about their height, age, looks, mannerisms and hair color and style and clothes. He also made detailed drawings of the men for the police, which I have copies of from the newspaper, and which so far haven’t done the police any good in finding them.

  What I’m really looking out for besides those descriptions are two young men who will try and pick up or seriously annoy or molest a teenage girl on the platform or do that to any reasonably young woman, including me. If I see them and I’m sure it’s them I’ll summon a transit policeman to arrest them and if there’s none around then I’ll follow the young men, though discreetly, till I see a policeman. And if they try and molest or terrorize me on the bench and no policeman’s around, I’ll scream at the top of my lungs till someone comes and steps in, and hopefully a policeman. But I just want those two young men caught, that’s all, and am willing to risk myself a little for it, and though there’s probably not much chance of it happening, I still want to give it a good try.

  I do this every Saturday morning for months. I see occasional violence on the platform, like a man slapping his woman friend in the face or a mother hitting her infant real hard, but nothing like two or even one man of any description close to those young men terrorizing or molesting a woman or girl or even trying to pick one up. I do see men, both old and young, and a few who look no more than nine years old or ten, leer at women plenty as if they’d like to pick them up or molest them. Some men, after staring at a woman from a distance, then walk near to her when the train comes just to follow her through the same door into the car. But that’s as far as it goes on the platform. Maybe when they both get in the car and especially when it’s crowded, something worse happens. I know that a few times a year when I ride the subway, a pull or poke from a man has happened to me.