Naturally enough, Marceline became a drinker. But not in the fashion of Fitzy and my old man. He wouldn’t go to some dive where he could relive old glories and air old complaints. In the evenings, he’d buy a bottle of cheap red wine and drink it alone in his room with the door closed, refilling his glass in a smooth, elaborate motion, as if it were part of the act.
But in the mornings, he would leave his door ajar. And when I gave it a tap, he would welcome me with a doff of the hat that he no longer owned. Sometimes, if he had a little money on hand, he would send me out for milk, flour, and eggs and cook us tiny little crepes on the bottom of an electric iron. And as we ate our breakfast sitting on his floor, rather than talk about his past he would ask about my future—about all the places I would go, and all the things I would do. It was a grand old way to start the day.
Then one morning when I went down the hall, his door wasn’t ajar. And when I tapped, there wasn’t an answer. Placing an ear against the wood, I heard the slightest creaking, like someone turning on the bedsprings. Worried he might be sick, I opened the door a crack.
—Mr. Marceline? I said.
When he didn’t reply, I opened the door the rest of the way, only to find that the bed hadn’t been slept in, the desk chair was toppled over in the middle of the room, and Marceline was hanging from the ceiling fan.
The creaking, you see, hadn’t come from the bedsprings. It had come from the weight of his body turning slowly back and forth.
When I woke my father and brought him to the room, he simply nodded his head as if it were what he had expected all along. Then he sent me down to the front desk to have them call the authorities.
Half an hour later there were three policemen in the room—two patrolmen and a detective taking statements from me and my father and the neighboring tenants who’d come poking their heads through the door.
—Was he robbed? one of the tenants asked.
By way of response, a patrolman gestured to Marceline’s desk, where the contents of his pockets had been laid out, including a five-dollar bill and some change.
—Then where’s the watch?
—What watch? asked the detective.
Everyone began talking at once—explaining about the solid gold pocket watch that had been so central to the old clown’s act that he had never been willing to part with it, not even when he was broke.
After looking at the patrolmen, who shook their heads, the detective looked at my father. Then my father looked at me.
—Now, Duchess, he said, placing an arm over my shoulder, this is very important. I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to tell me the truth. When you found Marceline, did you see his watch?
Silently, I shook my head.
—Maybe you found it on the floor, he suggested helpfully. And you picked it up, so it wouldn’t get broken.
—No, I said with another shake of the head. I never saw his watch.
Patting me on the shoulder almost sympathetically, my father turned to the detective and gave the shrug of one who’s tried his best.
—Search them, said the detective.
Imagine my surprise when the patrolman asked me to turn out my pockets and there, among the gum wrappers, was a golden watch on a long, golden chain.
Imagine my surprise, I say, because I was surprised. Stunned. Astounded even. For all of two seconds.
After that, it was plain as day what had happened. My old man had sent me downstairs to the front desk so that he could frisk the body. And when the watch was mentioned by the meddlesome neighbor, my father had draped his arm over my shoulder and given his little speech so that he could slip it into my pocket before he was patted down.
—Oh, Duchess, he said with such disappointment.
Within the hour, I was at the police station. As a minor committing his first offense, I was a good candidate for being released into my father’s care. But given the value of the old clown’s watch, the crime wasn’t petty theft. It was grand larceny. To make matters worse, there had been reports of a few other thefts at the Sunshine Hotel, and Fitzy claimed in a sworn statement that he had seen me coming out of one or two rooms in which I didn’t belong. As if that weren’t enough, the people from child services discovered—to my father’s utter shock—that I hadn’t been to school in five years. When I appeared before the juvenile judge, my father was forced to admit that as a hardworking widower he was not in a position to protect me from the malevolent influences of the Bowery. For my own good, all agreed, I should be placed in a juvenile reform program until the age of eighteen.