The MacGuffin by Stanley Elkin

Author:Stanley Elkin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781564782236
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 1991-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

“I’m making a fool of you. You know that, don’t you? I’m rubbing it in. I come, uninvited, to your apartment on a day you’re off duty. I seem to interrupt you at a time when you’re about to go out. And then, because I’ve apparently nothing better to do, I proceed to abuse you by pretending I’m drunk.”

“Strictly speaking, sir, I’m an officer of the law. I’m never off duty.”

“You’ve no shame, have you?”

“What would I be ashamed of?”

Druff studied the man, a fellow he knew to be his own age. Up there. An AARP card in his wallet. No doppelgänger, no alter ego. Just a humorless, unattractive, bachelor, jokey sort of man. “Well,” Druff said, “there’s been some talk.”

“Talk, Commissioner?”

“Not so much talk as rumor, chitchat, idle gossip.”

“What is it that’s said?”

Druff, slumped in the chair, straightened up. “I’m no tale-bearer, sir,” he said.

And then was talking away, spilling the beans. A mile a minute. But not about Doug, about the other one, dark Dick. “I’ve reason to believe,” he said, “the two-timing son of a bitch is tripping on his wife, making nice-nice with persons he never had no license to move on.”

Doug shrugged.

“What’s that? A sign? Wind sock for ‘That shit happens’? I know it happens. What do you think, I fell off a turnip truck? But no one bothers to lie anymore. In the past it was different. In the past people clung to their bits and snippets, their scraps and threadbare. But today, today the first thing to go is the fig leaf. It’s all ta-da today.

“Shameless. It’s shameless. Not like when you and I were young, Maggie. You know what she said to me? Dick’s chippie? (Charlotte, incidentally, by her own report, and a mother of twins.) You know what she said? ‘Nolo contendere.’ Can you imagine? ‘Nolo contendere.’ Well, I ask you!”

“And this was after she lied to you,” Doug said sympathetically.

“What?”

“This was after she lied to you. After she told you no one by that name even lived there. That you had the wrong number.”

Druff perfectly understood that it was entirely possible that today might be the day he would meet a violent death. He rated his chances at less than likely, but it certainly wasn’t out of the question. Put it this way, he thought—I wouldn’t be surprised.

Because it didn’t even occur to him that he’d caught Doug out, that Druff’s drunk act, or any of his subsequent tirade, had sufficiently disarmed the man to a point where he would offer up information involuntarily. It would have been a waste of breath now to spring any traps, launch his devastating accusations. (“Aha! Who said she lied? Who ever mentioned wrong numbers?”) Of course the old-timer had said it intentionally. Of course he had. Doug? A suspect old shady for as long as Druff knew him? But that was all it came down to finally. Suspicions. Smoke but no fire. Rumor and chitchat. Nothing ever proven. A man with no goods on him.

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