Night Shift

He looked dully down at the picture. No question about this one. The crew cut had been replaced by long hair, but it was still blond. And the face was the same, Vincent Corey. Vinnie, to his friends and intimates. He stared up at Jim from the picture, an insolent grin on his lips.

When he approached his period-seven class, his heart was thudding gravely in his chest. Lawson and Garcia and Vinnie Corey were standing by the bulletin board outside the door - they all straightened when he came towards them.

Vinnie smiled his insolent smile, but his eyes were as cold and dead as ice floes. 'You must be Mr Norman. Hi, Norm.'

Lawson and Garcia tittered.

'I'm Mr Norman,' Jim said, ignoring the hand that Vinnie had put out. 'You'll remember that?'

'Sure, I'll remember it. How's your brother?'

Jim froze. He felt his bladder loosen, and as if from far away, from down a long corridor somewhere in his cranium, he heard a ghostly voice: Look, Vinnie, he wet himself'

'What do you know about my brother?' he asked thickly. 'Nothin',' Vinnie said. 'Nothin' much.' They smiled at him with their empty dangerous smiles.

The bell rang and they sauntered inside.

Drugstore phone booth, ten o'clock that night.

'Operator, I want to call the police station in Stratford, Connecticut. No I don't know the number.'

Clickings on the line. Conferences.

The policeman had been Mr Nell. In those days he had been white-haired, perhaps in his mid-fifties. Hard to tell when you were just a kid. Their father was dead, and somehow Mr Nell had known that.

Call me Mr Nell, boys.

Jim and his brother met at lunchtime every day and they went into the Stratford Diner to eat their bag lunches. Mom gave them each a nickel to buy milk - that was before school milk programmes started. And sometimes Mr Nell would come in, his leather belt creaking with the weight of his belly and his .38 revolver, and buy them each a pie ~ Ia mode.

Where were you when they stabbed my brother, Mr Nell?

A connection was made. The phone rang once.

'Stratford Police.'

'Hello, My name is James Norman, Officer. I'm calling long-distance.' He named the city. 'I want to know if you can give me a line on a man who would have been on the force around 1957.'

'Hold the line a moment, Mr Norman.'

A pause, then a new voice.

'I'm Sergeant Morton Livingston, Mr Norman. Who are you trying to locate?'

'Well,' Jim said, 'us kids just called him Mr Nell. Does that -'

'Hell, yes! Don Nell's retired now. He's seventy-three or four.'

'Does he still live in Stratford?'

'Yes, over on Barnum Avenue. Would you like the address?'

'And the phone number, if you have it.'

'Okay. Did you know Don?'

'He used to buy my brother and me apple pie a'la mode down at the Stratford Diner.'

'Christ, that's been gone ten years. Wait a minute.' He came back on the phone and read an address and a phone number. Jim jotted them down, thanked Livingston, and hung up.

He dialled 0 again, gave the number, and waited. When the phone began to ring, a sudden hot tension filled him and he leaned forward, turning instinctively away from the drugstore soda fountain, although there was no one there but a plump teen-age girl reading a magazine.

The phone was picked up and a rich, masculine voice, sounding not at all old, said, 'Hello?' That single word set off a dusty chain reaction of memories and emotions, as startling as the Pavlovian reaction that can be set off by hearing an old record on the radio.

'Mr Nell? Donald Nell?'

'Yes.'

'My name is James Norman, Mr Nell. Do you remember me, by any chance?'

'Yes,' the voice responded immediately. 'Pie a'la mode. Your brother was killed . . . knifed. A shame. He was a lovely boy.'

Jim collapsed against one of the booth's glass walls. The tension's sudden departure left him as weak as a stuffed toy. He found himself on the verge of spilling everything, and he bit the urge back desperately.

'Mr Nell, those boys were never caught.'

'No,' Nell said. 'We did have suspects. As I recall, we had a lineup at a Bridgeport police station.'

'Were those suspects identified to me by name?'

'No. The procedure at a police showup was to address the participants by number. What's your interest in this now, Mr Norman?'

'Let me throw some names at you,' Jim said. 'I want to know if they ring a bell in connection with the case.'

'Son, I wouldn't -'

'You might,' Jim said, beginning to feel a trifle desperate. 'Robert Lawson, David Garcia, Vincent Corey. Do any of those -'Corey,' Mr Nell said flatly. 'I remember him. Vinnie the Viper. Yes, we had him up on that. His mother alibied him. I don't get anything from Robert Lawson. That could be anyone's name. But Garcia . . . that rings a bell. I'm not sure why. Hell. I'm old.' He sounded disgusted.

'Mr Nell, is there any way you could check on those boys?'

'Well, of course, they wouldn't be boys anymore.'

Oh, yeah?

'Listen, Jimmy. Has one of those boys popped up and started harassing you?'