Cue for Quiet Read online

  Now, I use two buses to get to work, transferring from the Harper bus to the Clairmount line, and it's a forty minute ride. For two days I fed my ego by holding my breath. I likely looked queer with a bursting red face, but no one said anything, at least directly to me. I wouldn't have cared much, anyway, because I didn't care much what happened; after all, wasn't I a benefactor to practically all the human race, the thinking part, that is? Wasn't it going to be nice to live in a world without punctured eardrums and hamstrung nerves? Wasn't it going to be good to be able to eat a meal in peace, to sip your ten or sixty-cent drink without having some moron with a nickel prodding your ulcer? I thought so.

  Thursday, or maybe Friday, my careful searching of the daily papers found my tiny item buried back of the stock reports, with the labor news. I read it three times.

  JUKEBOX WAR SUSPECTED.

  –

  An anonymous tip today told our labor reporter that serious trouble looms in the canned music industry. R. C. Jones, czar of Local 77, AFL, has issued orders to individually guard each machine serviced by his union. Jones had the classic "no comment" for publication, but it is an open secret that intra-union friction is high in the Harper-Gratiot area. Jones inferred that deliberate sabotage is responsible for the wholesale short-circuiting of jukeboxes and television sets. He named no names, but in an off-the-record statement threatened to fight fire with fire. "We're not," he snapped, "going to stand by and watch while goons ruin our livelihood. We will…. "

  Now I was in a fix. They had to make a living. I'd forgotten that. A union man myself, who was I to break another's rice bowl? I could see no point in writing to this R. C. Jones. He'd think I was as crazy as they come. And the newspapers-I could imagine the reactions of a tough city editor. So, wrapped up in my own thoughts, I stepped off the curb a little ahead of the green, and I jumped just in time. I swore at the truck that almost got me, and it happened so quickly I wasn't prepared to hear or to see the motor of the truck throw a piston right through the rusted hood. White as a sheet the driver got out of his cab, and I crossed the street against the red light and lost myself in the crowd. This curve I was putting on the ball, it came to me then, wasn't limited to jukeboxes and noisy radios and burnt-out bearings. I had to watch my temper, or I was going to get someone in trouble. I was in trouble myself, and I had to get out of it.

  By the time I got home I'd thought it over quite well. This-this power whatever it might be, was the McCoy. Why should I waste it when an honest dollar might be turned? A factory job in Detroit is just a factory job, and I might keep mine for the next forty years if I lived long enough through the noise and the dirt and the uncertainty and the model changeover layoffs every Christmas. The Olsens' radio disturbed my thinking and it took only a second. Either they were going to get tired of putting new tubes into that gadget, or play it softer, or move. I didn't care which.

  So I used my wife's portable to type out a letter to Naval Ordnance in Aberdeen where my brother-in-law used to be stationed, telling them what I'd done, what I thought I might be able to do, and asking them for an opportunity to give them a demonstration. In return, I asked for a steady government job in a warm climate. Until I could arrange a certain demonstration, I went on, I could understand they might think me a crank, so I wouldn't at present sign my name. I suggested they pay close attention through the week of the fifth through the twelfth to the various press association dispatches, and I would arrange later, in my next letter, for a more personal show if they wanted to take it any further.

  * * * * *

  The fifth fell on a Saturday. Bright and early I was up to ride the bus downtown, changing to the Woodward line, ending up at Ferndale, all the time concentrating furiously and holding my breath as much as I dared. On the way back home I tried to work it a little differently. Probably no one else on the streetcar beside myself noticed there wasn't a single passenger car, truck or bus that passed us. Every car, as we sailed by, stalled and every traffic light we passed either turned three colors or blinked out completely. Most of the moving cars made it to the curb on their momentum. The others stayed where they were. When I got off in front of the City Hall, filthy old hulk that it is, the streetcar stayed immobile at the safety zone, it was a new PCC car, and the insulation poured smoke from under the wheels. Naturally there wasn't any moving traffic in back of it, or in front. I saw to that. Then I just strolled around Cadillac Square, bollixing up everything that occurred to me, from trucks to busses to traffic lights. You never saw such a verminous tangled mess in all your life. When the patrol wagons began to scream into the Square loaded with reinforcements for the helpless purple single cop at the Michigan intersection I let them get as far as the center of the street before I pinned them down. Even when I saw it later in the newsreels I couldn't believe it. Even Mack Sennett could have done no better.

  I had to walk all the way out Gratiot to St. Antoine before I could find transportation home that wasn't walled off by screaming horns and haggard foot-patrolmen, and when I got off at my corner all Gratiot and Harper behind me was as clogged as Woodward. I even knocked out every red neon sign within two blocks of a traffic light. That one might keep a few pedestrians alive a little longer.

  Helen was over at her mother's helping her hang drapes when I got home. The icebox gave me a cold Jumbo bottle and I turned on our little portable set. On every station the spot broadcast crews were hoarse. I spun the dials and finally concentrated on one announcer-you know who I mean-with the raspiest, most grating voice this side of a vixen file. Unfortunately, the housewives seem to like him, including Helen, and it's the housewives who have the radio on all day. I knew he was broadcasting from the roof studios of one of our highest buildings, and I took an enormous and perverted pleasure in holding my breath and thinking about the elevator system there. On second thought, I held my breath again and the station left the air in the middle of a word. I hope he liked the walk downstairs.

  The newspapers next day couldn't make things add, as was natural. They published silly interviews with all the top engineers in the city and a good many all over the world, including the Chairman of the Board of the company where I worked, and his answer was just as asinine as the rest. All in all, it had been a good show, and I put in another letter to Naval Ordnance. I knew I had gone much further than I had intended, and I suggested they get in touch with me, if they wanted, through the personal columns of one of the Detroit newspapers. I didn't want to get into trouble with the city police. I didn't sign my name to the second letter either. And that was a mistake.

  * * * * *

  Early in the morning of the tenth I felt good. I'd been sleeping well lately, now that I was rid of the Olsens' radio, not to mention the Werners', and the Smiths'. I rolled over and squinted at the luminous hands of the' clock. Beer cheese in the icebox. Half a Dutch apple pie left over from dinner. Milk. Helen didn't wake as I eased out of bed and groped for my slippers, and the rustling and shuffling I heard as I tiptoed down the back stairs I attributed to an overbrave mouse. One of these days, I thought, I was going to have to get some traps and catch me a mouse. When I turned on the kitchen light the mouse was holding a howitzer nine inches away from my head.

  "All right, you," the mouse snarled. "Reach!"

  I reached. Quick.

  The gunman backed to the outside door and flicked it open with one hand, never taking his eyes from me. Footsteps pounded on the back porch and hard faces filled the kitchen. One even had one of these gaspipe Sten guns, and I liked that even less than the howitzer. My pajama tops might have concealed an arsenal from the care I got when I was searched. No one said a word, and I didn't dare. Just about that time Helen got the sandman out of her eyes. Likely the noise had awakened her appetite, and she had come down to help me eat a snack. One of the gunmen heard her slippers clattering down the stairs, and a hard hand slapped over my mouth and a gun rammed viciously against my spine. Spun around and held as a human shield I had to helplessly watch her come yawning in the
kitchen door. One look she got in at me, and the drawn guns, and her mouth opened for a scream that got no further than a muffled yip and a dead faint. They let her fall. The gunman took his hand from my mouth and swung me around.

  "Shut up!" he snapped, although I hadn't tried to say anything.

  [Illustration]

  At the point of his gun he held me there while the rest of the hard faced crew roamed the house, upstairs and down. None of the faces did I know, and I began to wonder if behind one of those granite masks was the revengeful personality of R. C. Jones, President of Local 77, AFL. I heard footsteps pad on the back porch, and my head tried to turn in spite of myself. The gun in my back gouged a little harder. Out of the corner of my eye I could see who pushed open the screen door I hadn't got around to taking down yet. The gun in my back helped me stand up.

  * * * * *

  J. Edgar Hoover motioned to the gun and the pressure eased a trifle. His voice was reasonably unexcited, but to my present taste, ominous.

  "All right. Someone go get him some pants." To me, "Your name Miller? Peter Ambrose Miller? Get that woman off the floor."

  Yes, I was Peter Ambrose Miller. I agreed to that. My mouth was dry as popcorn, but I managed to ask him what this was all about.

  Hoover looked at me and scratched his nose. "This is about your fingerprints being all over an anonymous letter received in Aberdeen, Maryland."

  I gulped. "Oh, that. Why, I can explain-"

  Hoover looked at me with the fond expression of a man who has cracked open a bad egg. "That," he said, "I doubt," and he turned on his military heel and walked out the back door. When they got me my pants I followed him. I had to.

  I ended up at the Federal Building, which is a cavernous morgue, even during business hours. They gave me what might have been a comfortable chair if I hadn't had to sit in it. A young fellow was sitting opposite me with a stenographer's notebook, and I knew that any story of mine had better not be repeated two different ways. Hoover came in with a nondescript man with a hat pulled down over his eyes, who inspected me from all angles and then shook his head, a little resentfully, I thought. The hat-over-the-eyes left and I shifted nervously under those grim eyes staring at me.

  "All right," said Hoover; "now we'll hear that explanation. Talk!"

  So I talked.

  * * * * *

  When I finished my throat was dry and he was nodding as though he believed every word. He didn't. I asked for a cigarette and for news of my wife, and they gave me a cigarette. They told me my wife was all right, or would be, if I behaved.

  "Don't worry," I said. "I'll behave." They just laughed when I said that.

  "Quite likely," said Hoover. "Now, let's hear that once more. Begin at the beginning."

  They gave me a room all to myself, finally. For three days, maybe more, I had that room all for myself and the various people that walked in at all hours of the day and night to ask me some of the silliest questions you ever heard just as though they expected sensible answers. After that first night I didn't see J. Edgar Hoover at all, which is just as well, because I don't think he liked me one little bit. They brought me a suit with the lining in the sleeve ripped and a shirt with the cuffs turned. When I got those I began to worry all over again about Helen, because I knew she had no part in picking out the clothes they brought me. I didn't feel too chipper when they came after me in force again.

  * * * * *

  The same room, this time more crowded. Older men this time, and a few of the usual high school boys. Again we went through the same routine, and once again my voice cracked dusty dry. They were all desperately sorry for such an incurable psychopathic liar. I hadn't felt so helpless, so caught-in-a-quicksand since my days in the army.

  "I'm telling you the truth, the truth. Don't you see that I've got to tell you the truth to get out of here? Don't you believe me?"

  Never such disbelief outside of a courtmartial. In desperation my eyes jerked around looking for escape. They slid over, and back to, the ventilation fan purring on the wall. I sucked in a loud gasp. The blades of the fan slowed to where you could see them as individuals, and the motor housing began to smoke.

  "See?" I yelled at them. "Believe me now?"

  The blades came to a standstill and the black smoke oozed toward the ceiling.

  "See?" I yelled again. "Look at that fan!"

  Their eyes showed their astonishment. The smoke began to disappear in the stillness. "What about that? Now do you believe me?"

  Maybe they did. No one said anything. They took me back to my room. About an hour or so later they came after me again. The chair felt no more comfortable than it ever had, though it was beginning to shape itself to my seat. The same faces were there, but the air was a little different this time. On the desk, where I had seen sit no one but J. Edgar Hoover were a half dozen fans, plugged to an extension cord that snaked away and lost itself in a dark corner. My ears twitched hopefully. Maybe this was going to get me out of here. One of the younger men spoke up.

  "Mr. Miller," he said briskly, "can you stop these fans as you did, apparently, the other?"

  I started to tell him that "apparently" wasn't the right word. One of the older men broke in.

  "One moment," he said. "Can you stop any one of these fans, or all of them? Any particular one, and leave the rest alone?"

  I thought I could. "Which one?" There were five fans whirring silently away.

  "Well … the one in the center."

  * * * * *

  The one in the center. One out of five. Hold your breath, Peter Ambrose, hold it now or you can hold your breath the rest of your natural life and no one will ever know, nor ever care. The fan in the center began to smoke and the blades choked off abruptly.

  I said, "The one on the far left … the one next to it … the far right … and four makes five." I watched the last blade make its last swing. "Has anybody got a cigarette?"

  I got a full package. While I tore off the cellophane someone held a light. I filled my lungs so full they creaked and sat back defiantly.

  "So now what?"

  No one knew just what. Two men slipped out and the others drew together their chairs for a whispered conference full of dark looks in my direction. I sat quietly and smoked until even that got on my nerves. Finally I broke it up with a yell.

  "Can't you fatheads make up your minds? Don't you know what you want? Do you think I'm going to sit here all night?"

  That was a stupid question; I knew I was going to sit there until they told me to get up. But at the time I wanted to say it, and I did, and I said a few other things that were neither polite nor sensible. I was a little upset, I think. It didn't matter. They paid no attention to me, so I lit another cigarette and waited. The outer door opened and one of the two that had left came back in. He came directly to me, waving the others out as he came. They filed out and he stood in front of me.

  * * * * *

  "Mr. Miller. This is rather an awkward situation for all of us, particularly for you, obviously. I want to say this, Mr. Miller; I-that is, we here in the Bureau are extremely sorry for the turn of events that brought both of us here. We-"

  At the first decent word I'd heard in days I blew up. "Sorry? What's being sorry going to do for me? What's being sorry going to do for my wife? Where is she? What's happened to her? Where is she, and what are you doing to her? And when am I going to get out of here?"

  He was a polite old man, come to think about it. He let me blow off all the steam I'd been saving, let me rant and rage, and clucked and nodded in just the right places. At last I ran down, and he moved a chair to where he could be confidential. He started like this:

  "Mr. Miller, I, speaking personally, know exactly how you must feel. Close custody is as unpleasant for the jailor as it is for the jailee, if there is such a word, sir."

  * * * * *

  I snorted at that one. A jail is a jail, and the turnkey can walk out if he chooses.

  "You must remember that you are and ha
ve been dealing with an official agency of the Government of the United States of America, of which you are a citizen; an agency that, officially or otherwise, can never be too careful of any factor that affects, however remotely, the security or safety of that Government. You understand that quite well, don't you, Mr. Miller?" He didn't wait to find out if I did. "For that reason, and for no other, you were brought here with the utmost speed and secrecy, and kept here."

  "Oh, sure," I said. "I'm going to blow up a tax collector, or something like that."

  He nodded. "You might."

  "Blah. So you made a mistake. So you're sorry, so my wife is probably completely out of her head by now, I'm crazy myself, and you want to talk politics. All I want to know is this-when do I get out of here?"

  He looked at me with an odd, queer smile. "This, Mr. Miller, is where the shock lies. I think, diametrically opposite to the opinions and, I might add, to the direct pleadings of some of my colleagues involved in this rather inexplicable affair, that you are the adaptable Teutonic type that likes to know exactly the odds against him, the type of man who likes to know where and when he stands."

  "I know exactly where I stand," I told him. "I want to know just one thing; when do I get out of this rat trap?"

  He mulled that over, his forehead wrinkled as he searched for the right words. "I'm afraid, Mr. Miller, very much afraid that you're going to get out of here very soon. But never out of any place else." And with that he walked out the door before I could lift a finger to stop him.

  But when they came after me to put me away I wasn't stunned. It took four of them, and one more that came in as reinforcement. They weren't rough deliberately, but they weren't easy. They had a time, too. I think I've been around long enough to know a few dirty tricks. I used them all, but I still went back to my room, or cell. I got no sleep at all for the rest of the night, nor most of the next night. I wondered if I could ever sleep again. If someone had mentioned "Helen" to me I likely would cry like a baby. I couldn't get her out of my mind.