11

Daniel Coombs, as soon as his wife had left the apartment, put on his hat and coat and departed. It was his first full day of freedom. They had, all four of them, been booked on one count of disturbing the peace and one count of disorderly conduct. Each had spent the night in jail, in a separate cell.

Now, on his way downtown, Daniel Coombs brooded over the imbalances of the universe. His wife had the morals of a pig. She had slept with men as they came along, had exhibited and then opened herself for Joseph Schilling and then an Italian boy who ran a vegetable concession and then a music pupil and another music pupil and after that a confused procession that had wound up with a Negro named Carleton Tweany. It could go no further.

He recalled the depravity of that night, and his pace increased. By the time he had reached the business section of Pacific Park, he was almost running.

On a side street in the slum area, among cafes and pool halls and cigar stores, was a gun shop. Coombs entered and stood at the glass-topped display case, waiting for the proprietor. Presently a bald person in vest and pin-striped trousers made his appearance.

"Yes, sir," he said, in a New England twang. "What can I do for you?"

Coombs spent an hour selecting the gun he wanted. It was a tarnished Remington .32 repeating pistol, which cost him more than he had anticipated. An additional fifteen minutes was spent haggling over the price. Finally, the sale completed, he left the gun shop.

On foot, he tramped out of the slum section, past the residential area, and into the open country beyond. A meager tangle of trees and brush grew a few miles from the highway; Coombs crossed the fields in that direction. Soon he was wandering in the cold gloom, looking for something to shoot, something to practice on. He hadn't fired a gun since his days in the National Guard.

Some birds fluttered overhead and he shot into the group at random. Nothing came of it, except a startled panic and a rain of detached feathers. Moodily, he poked around, kicking the damp underbrush and wondering if a bird had fallen anywhere. Apparently not. Now the woods were still. He could hear, from the distant highway, the swish of tires and occasionally the burble of a truck horn.

Two boys came thrashing their way along, followed by a scampering springer spaniel. Coombs retired behind a heap of rusting trash and vines until the boys had passed. The dog, nosing, stopped within a few yards of him. Coombs raised his pistol and shot the dog. A cloud of gray smoke drifted up from his gun; ears ringing from the noise, Coombs backed away into the shadows.

Startled by the sound, the two boys began to circle cautiously back. One of them, in a low, abashed voice, called again and again: "Corky! Corky!" The wounded dog, not yet dead, whined dismally and tried to crawl toward the voice. Coombs was reloading his gun when the boys burst out into the clearing and gathered around the remains of their pet.

Watching the boys try unsuccessfully to collect the animal, Coombs reflected on the vanity of life. Finally they located a rotting board and laid the dog on it. Each holding an end, the boys lugged the board and its bleeding occupant from the clearing toward the highway. Having nothing else to do, Coombs followed.

At the edge of the woods the boys, exhausted, halted and laid down the board. While they were resting, Coombs, on impulse, stepped out and said: "What's the matter! What happened?"

Face streaked with tears, one of the boys cried: "Somebody shot our dog!"

The other said nothing; he was staring at the gun in Coombs's hand.

"That's terrible," Coombs said. Again on impulse, for reasons unknown to him, he brought out a ten-dollar bill and pushed it into the first boy's hand. "Go flag down a car," he instructed him, although neither boy seemed able to hear. "It's still alive; you can get it to the vet."

Both boys, smeared with blood, gazed dumbly after him as he departed. A quarter mile away-across an open marsh-he stopped and lifted his gun; taking aim toward the figures at the edge of the woods, he fired. The shot dissolved into the morning air, and Coombs went on.

By ten o'clock he was back in Pacific Park. His Ford was still parked on Elm Street, in front of the great slatternly house in which Carleton Tweany lived. Coombs, the gun in his pocket, stood undecidedly by the car; then, his mind made up, he walked over to the stairs and proceeded to climb.

There was no response to his knock. He shielded his eyes against the window of the door and peered in. A littered hall and room were visible; clothes were strewn everywhere. But nothing stirred; there was no evidence of Tweany. Coombs tried the knob, but the door was locked. Resigned, he descended the stairs, got into his car, and drove away.

When he reached a Standard station he shifted into second and drove up onto the concrete. He had been intending to do this all week; the appearance of the gas station had tripped a suprarational reflex. Climbing out, he said to the service station attendant: "How long would it take to get my car greased? It's been two thousand miles at least."

The man pondered. "About half an hour."

"Fine," Coombs said, reaching back to put the car in gear. He wandered next door to a lunch counter, but after he had ordered he discovered he wasn't hungry. Leaving his soup untouched, he paid the tab and walked out.

Gratifyingly, his Ford was already up on the rack. Strolling over, he critically supervised the men as they squirted grease up into the transmission. He created a lively discussion about weights of motor oil, heatedly demanding, in spite of their advice, a crankcase full of detergent oil, ten-thirty weight. Fussily he paced around until he had what he wanted. The attendants finished the greasing, lowered the car, and wrote out a bill.

At eleven-thirty he drove up Elm Street and parked a block from Tweany's house. He was close enough to see who came in and who went out. Clicking on the car radio, he tuned in the good-music station at San Mateo and listened to the Brahms Third Symphony. Now and then somebody passed along the sidewalk, but for the most part there was no sign of life.

Doubt assailed him. Perhaps Tweany had appeared during his absence.

His gun bumping around in his pocket, he climbed out, crossed the street, and walked toward the house. But again, when he tapped on the door, there was no response. Satisfied, he returned to the car and clicked the radio back on. Now they were playing the Berlioz Roman Carnival Overture. He wondered if there was an opera called Roman Carnival or if it was one of those overtures. Schilling would know. Schilling knew everything there was-about music, at least. Outside of that, he wasn't too bright; he certainly was a pushover for a piece of tail. For the space of one Berlioz overture Coombs considered driving around to the record shop, but then he changed his mind. Max Figuera would be hanging close by. It was, as always, too risky.

Slightly after noon, a figure came hurrying up the sidewalk, a brown-haired girl in a cloth coat, with hooped earrings and heels. It was Tweany's friend Mary Anne Reynolds.

Without hesitating, the girl left the sidewalk and dashed up the flight of wooden stairs to Tweany's apartment. She didn't bother to knock; producing a key, she unlocked the door and pushed it open. Disappearing inside, she slammed the door after her. For a time the street was silent. Then, one after another, the windows of Tweany's apartment flew open. The sounds of activity filtered out. At last came the roar of a vacuum cleaner: the girl was cleaning the apartment.

Lounging in the warmth of his Ford, Coombs continued to wait. Time passed, so much and so uniform that he lost all sense of it and drifted into a doze. Somewhere along the line his car battery gave out and the radio faded away. Coombs was unaffected. He remained inert until two o'clock in the afternoon, when, without warning of any kind, Carleton Tweany hove into sight at the far end of the block, his arm around a woman. The woman was Beth Coombs. The two of them, chattering, ascended the stairs and, like a pair of mud wasps, squeezed into the apartment. The door closed after them.