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Walking to the railway station from his final sales call in Albany, Judd noticed his haggard, gloomy reflection in the front window of an old-fashioned apothecary. Your face says it all, he thought. You are being destroyed by all this. And yet he went in and purchased a half-pint of Duncan’s Pure Chloroform that had been imported from Scotland and a pair of green rubber chemist’s gloves that would conceal his fingerprints.
And then, checking into the Stuyvesant Hotel in Kingston on March 3rd, he was given a short letter from Ruth. She began: My Own Loverboy, Gee, but I’m happy. Oh, ain’t I happy. I’m so very happy, dear, I can’t sit still enough to write what I’m thinking of. She mentioned that she’d seen the movie Johnny Get Your Hair Cut and thought Jackie Coogan was a sweet kid and a marvelous actor. She continued: All I keep thinking of is handling A.—and you, you darn loveable little cuss. I could eatcha all up. She ended with Hurry home, darling. I’ll be waiting for you. All my love, Your Gal. Judd studied it, then carried the letter over to the fireplace and watched the writing paper brown and warp and convulse into flame.
Upstairs in his room he made a long-distance telephone call to Queens Village. Ruth answered. Judd asked, “Can you talk?”
In a hushed voice, she said, “Carefully.”
“We can’t use a hammer. Cops know that a burglar wouldn’t carry one. We need something that’ll do the trick but is hard to identify.”
“Like what?” But before Judd could answer, she said, “I hear footsteps,” and hung up.
The next afternoon, Judd walked into the L. S. Winne hardware store on Wall Street in Kingston and purchased a sash weight. The owner would remember Judd because his fine tailoring in a hardware store was like a flare that said Notice me, and because the owner could recall saying, “Don’t know as I’ve ever sold only the one. You sure you don’t want a pair?”
Judd said, “I have just what I need.”
When Judd returned to Manhattan from upstate, he hid his purchases with his golf clubs in his office. Arranging to meet Ruth for lunch at Henry’s on Monday, March 7th, he got a few yards of butcher paper from the mail room and wrapped the murder items as if each were fragile, including with them a socket and electric cord, an empty Pinch bottle of Scotch whisky, and a piece of green felt because she’d read instructions in McCall’s on how to make a cute lamp. Judd carried the paper-wrapped bundle into Henry’s at noon and waited thirty minutes for Ruth to arrive. When she did, she was joined by Lorraine. Judd was vexed that the nine-year-old was being involved.
Ruth forgot to apologize for her tardiness as she shoved his package into a soft-sided tapestry bag. But she did say, “You look terrible, Judd.”
“I feel terrible.”
Ruth glanced at Lorraine beside her and penned on a paper napkin that she passed across to him: But you’ll do it tonight?
Judd nodded.
Lorraine lifted to watch as Ruth took the napkin back and penned: Still trying to get chloral hydrate.
Judd asked, “What’s it say, Lora?”
She told him, “I can’t read cursive.”
Judd penned: We don’t need that stuff now.
She wrote: Just you hit A. + chloroform?
In a frenzy, Judd looked around the restaurant as if the handwriting could be heard. There was a squat red candle on their dining table and Judd set the writing on their napkin aflame. Lorraine was solemnly considering him. Judd squeezed a hand inside his trouser pocket and exclaimed, “But I’m forgetting! There’s a dime in here for New York’s prettiest girl. And that’s you.”
She fisted the coin and said, “You’re so nice, Uncle Judd.” But now it sounded scripted. As did he, Judd admitted.
A bovine old waiter with a handlebar mustache ambled to their table and leaned on his knuckles to inquire if they were ready to order.
Judd said, “I’m sorry but I won’t be eating. I have to get back to work.”
Ruth scanned his face with panic. “But you’ll be there?”
Lorraine scowled in confusion.
“Don’t forget your bag,” Judd said, and left them.
If I had possessed any mind at all, I certainly would have acknowledged the wrong that was being evidenced in my very soul and would have come out like a man and told her so. But I never recall it coming to my mind, that this is the wrong or right thing to do. It was simply a question of whether I could go through with it, or hoping something would happen to prevent it.
If I had not lost all consciousness of God and drifted away, I could have stepped from the abyss and deterred her, too. Certainly, God was prompting my spiritual self to do right. But if that self has been quelled to the extent mine was, it is a hail from a friend unrecognized.
That night, March 7th, Judd took the bus up Jamaica Avenue to 222nd Street and soldiered north, intending to finally get it done. She’d told him that if
he saw a lamplight at her mother’s window just above the front door, Judd was to go around to the kitchen stoop and she’d meet him there. But there was no light on and Judd couldn’t recall another contingency plan. He took some hits from his flask and just watched the house for a while.
Crouching forward, Judd looked through a cellar window and watched Albert filling a fifty-gallon steel drum with water from a garden hose, then hefting his Johnson outboard motor into his shipshape workshop. Albert spun the motor’s propeller, seemingly hearing faint problems; softly ran his hand along the keel-like skeg; then hauled up the Johnson and dunked it into the drum water as he tightened the transom bracket on the drum rim. Albert tested the tiller, unscrewed the gas tank lid and looked in, then exchanged an old spark plug for a new one. He yanked on the starter rope just once and the motor throbbed alive, churning up blisters on the water’s surface and puffing smoke into the workshop until Albert jammed off the choke. Each of his motions was confident, efficient, perfectly mechanical. And he smiled through it all, with complete serenity and purposefulness. Such a man could pass hours in this way, could glance at his wristwatch, be nicely unprepared for midnight, and trudge with happy weariness up the stairs.
