I nodded slowly. “Yesterday afternoon. Car hit him. The driver got away. I’m checking on his background. When you’re hunting for somebody or something you check the background. The clues can be found there.”
“A hit-and-run? Evans?” He couldn’t snap out of the daze. “Why... why, he was a good friend of mine.”
I said nothing.
Kennedy went on, “You mean he’s really dead?”
“He’s dead all right. I saw the body.”
“Harry dead...”
Absently he moved away from the drug store window. I followed him but not without one backward glance at Roboto. He was human all right. He stood staring after us, some what shocked. He had been reading our lips. I waved good-bye and he so far forgot himself as to wave back.
“Damn it to hell!” Kennedy exclaimed. “I liked the man.”
“You knew him well?”
“Yes, certainly. But not the way...” He stopped and looked around him. “I don’t want to talk here. Let’s go down home.”
“Wait a bit. I haven’t eaten. Is there a good restaurant in the neighborhood?”
Kennedy waved his hand vaguely. “A couple of blocks. Place where I eat. A good place.”
“Have dinner with me?”
“No, thank you. But I’d like a bottle of beer.”
“It’s on me. Lead on. You were saying—?”
“That I knew him well. But I’ve never met him in my life if that’s what you mean. We had an extensive correspondence, swapped a few books and things like that. Each of us always said we were going to run over and see the other, but we never got around to it.”
“How long have you known him?”
Again that vague wave. “Perhaps three years. We joined the amateur journalism society at about the same time. Newcomers are placed on a six months probation period during which time their work is judged by the other members.
“Naturally, Evans and I wanted to gain full membership so we helped each other with our magazines.” He fell silent for a block. Then, “He put out a mighty neat magazine.”
He led me into the restaurant. It was a long, narrow job with indirect lighting, and thick, red leather on the booth seats. The news I had brought continued to depress him. He went at the beer slowly like a good beer drinker. My steak was called a “Green Mill Special” and it
I ate in silence; he stared at each bare spot on my plate uncovered by the vanishing steak. His beer was followed by two more but he never noticed it.
After awhile he snapped partly out of it. I was having a second cup of coffee, letting him find his own way.
“Well — I’ll be glad to help you in any way I can.”
“That’s appreciated. Do you have a file of his magazines?”
“Yes, complete.”
“Good. I want to read them. There may be something in them that will tie into something else. That’s the way this business works.”
“I can’t imagine what.” Kennedy turned the glass around and around on the table top. “He printed a lot of book reviews, a few amateur scientific studies, poetry.”
“Poetry. What kind of poetry?”
“Free verse.”
“No — I mean poetry about what?”
“Love.”
Maybe the man had been frustrated.
I offered in amplification, “The car that hit him was driven by a woman.”
“That’s ironic. He loved women. By that I mean he idolized them; women as a class, not any particular person. He often said that a woman was the most beautiful thing in the world. Quite frequently he printed poems dedicated to his daughter.”
Evans had no daughter. “What’s her name?” I asked the young man.
“Eleanor, I believe.”
I got back to, “The car was his own machine.”
“It was? How do you account for that?”
“Stolen — or loaned to the driver. Apparently a woman friend of his. And something went wrong between them, something serious. So she ran him down.”
“You seem so positive it was deliberate.”
“I am, and it was. I was an eyewitness, luckily. I could read the tire tracks left in the snow. And later on the car was abandoned, ditched. Familiar pattern.”
“It seems incredible, doesn’t it? I don’t mean that he would have women friends. I knew he was married; neither of us are prudes, although he never paraded his morals — or lack of them — in print. But it seems so incredible that a friend of his would actually murder him.”
“It may sound incredible, son, but people do it all the time. It happens among friends, in families... I want some more coffee.”
The waitress caught my glance and interpreted it.
Kennedy was gazing off into space.
“What else,” I interrupted his thoughts, “did Evans publish in this magazine?”
“Nothing else that I can remember offhand. Oh yes — he was running discussions on the languages of the various peoples of the world. It was becoming a rather bitter debate. Something to the effect that one universal language would eliminate the mistrust between nations. But I don’t believe that would help you.”
“I don’t think so, either. I’ve met Evans, and I’m learning things about him I never dreamed existed. That old adage about appearances often deceiving is hitting the nail on the head. Let’s get back to this poetry. I still can’t picture him writing poetry.”
