The Tribe

by Bari Wood

  Pescado shut off the recorder and looked at Hawkins. His face was red and he was holding a peeled orange in one hand.

  “I came all the way from Brooklyn to hear this shit,” he said. “And it’s total shit. No one’s nine feet tall.”

  “Maybe he was only eight three,” Hawkins said mildly. He still had the headache and everything in the room looked out of focus. He’d tried to call Levy three times, but Luria answered every time and said Levy was sleeping. He’d asked to talk to Rachel then, but Luria said she was busy. Alma kept calling, but he hadn’t called her back, and the speech which he was supposed to give day after tomorrow was only half finished.

  “No one’s eight three either,” Pescado said, sectioning the orange as he talked. “You gotta come up with something better than that.” Orange juice dripped on Pescado’s trousers as he leaned forward. “In the first place your witness is lying or crazy. There’s no way one unarmed man could beat five other men to death. No way in the world.”

  “Maybe he was armed,” Hawkins said.

  “He wasn’t. Did your genius witness see any weapons?”

  “No,” Hawkins answered.

  “Right. Because there weren’t any.”

  “So maybe they took them away or hid them . . .”

  “They didn’t. Weapons leave tracks. You know that, Roger. You show me a stab wound, and I can probably tell you if it was made by a butcher knife, a bowie knife, a nail. You hit someone with a baseball bat—it looks like you hit him with a baseball bat.”

  “Okay,” Hawkins said warily, “no weapons.”

  “Not unless they were made of clay.”

  “Is there such a thing?” Hawkins asked.

  “I never heard of it,” Pescado answered.

  Hawkins was quiet and Pescado opened his copy of the Post. There were pictures of the outside of the clubhouse, and of the basement room after they’d taken the bodies away. Hawkins didn’t look at it. Pescado said, “Roger, one of the boys was torn apart.”

  Hawkins remembered the leg on the floor. He closed his eyes and breathed through his mouth.

  “How did they do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Pescado said. “I never saw anything like it. There’s more.”

  “I’m waiting,” Hawkins said quietly. He kept his eyes closed.

  “The boys had their knives out. All of them.”

  “So?”

  “If they had their knives out, they must’ve used them. Right?”

  Hawkins didn’t answer.

  “But there was no blood on them, Roger.”

  Hawkins opened his eyes. “That’s crazy,” he said.

  “Yeah, crazy.”

  Hawkins tried to think. A man six nine or seven two could look huge on a rainy evening in the street light. There might be weapons that Pescado never heard of . . . maces of wood or clubs made out of clay. But the bloodless knives didn’t make sense, and never would, no matter how many witnesses they found or how much evidence they uncovered. The headache pounded and he stopped thinking and pulled the speech to him. The last paragraph read, “We have to prove more than the cops before us. They just had to prove that they were regular guys because no one believed that they were. We have to prove . . .” He pushed the speech away and picked up the Post. There was a picture of the basement room on page two, and yearbook and communion pictures of the boys. The one who’d cried was Jorge Ortiz; he was fifteen and a freshman in high school. The Post said the funeral was that afternoon, at one.

  He called Levy again, but now the line was busy. Why had the boy cried? Because Adam had a father? Or because his wife was pregnant? Hawkins looked closely at the picture. He had been a handsome kid, trying to grow a mustache. He looked again at the clock. It was twelve-ten. He put on his jacket, told Betty, his secretary, she could get him on the car phone in an emergency but that he was going to a funeral and didn’t want to be disturbed.

  The church was yellow brick, big and ugly, and looked like it was meant to house a swimming pool. It was in a section of factories and gas stations mixed with asphalt-­sided houses built to fit odd-­shaped lots. A few trees came up through holes cut in cement. The murders made page one in the Post and News, and TV cameras waited at the foot of the church steps to catch the glistening of tears on the mothers’ faces, or even better, on the fathers’.

  Hawkins put on the plain sunglasses he kept in the glove compartment; he couldn’t see too well with them, but it was a disguise of sorts. He kept to the side of the steps as he eased his way through the crowd and into the church. The families were in the front; the women were mostly overweight and pretty and they sat together in the first row, weeping and rocking. The men were in the second row. They wore shiny dark jackets with tight shoulders and sleeves that were too short. Hawkins stooped at the end of the row. One man saw him and nudged another, then another, until they were all staring at him. The looks were hostile, and he wondered weakly if it was because he was black or because he was a cop. He also wondered if they’d feel better if they knew how bad his head hurt. He smiled at them, but none of them smiled back and he went to the back of the church and stood to the side, while the priest went through the service for the dead.

  The service was in English, but the sermon and eulogies were in Spanish so Hawkins couldn’t understand what they were saying about the dead boys, about death itself. He leaned against a bilious-­yellow stone pillar and looked out over the dark heads of the people. Almost all of them were from San Juan or Ponce, or villages on the coast. They lived within a few blocks of each other, went to the same butchers, vegetable stands, movie houses. They had bright painted plaster statues of the saints at home on false mantels or dressers or windowsills. They had souse for wedding feasts and trumpets for funerals. The trumpet started now, a beautiful moaning sound, and a drum came up under with a slow Caribbean beat. The pallbearers lifted the coffins and came up the aisle toward him, their tight jackets hiked up.

  He left the church with the crowd and stood to the side at the top of the stairs as they carried the coffins down the stairs to waiting hearses. Sobbing mothers followed their sons’ coffins, the cameras moved in to catch them coming down, and Hawkins turned and thought he saw Jacob come out of the crowd and head down the street. He didn’t want to attract attention by calling, so he pushed through the crowd and down the stairs to the sidewalk, keeping the mass of people between himself and the cameras. The black-­coated man walked fast toward the subway entrance at the end of the block and Hawkins went after him. He reached the head of the stairs just as the man went through the turnstile and Hawkins ran down the stairs, feeling in his pockets for a token. He didn’t have one and there was no agent on duty to buy one, so he jumped the turnstile and ran into the passage to the westbound trains. The passage was empty. When Hawkins got to the southbound side he saw the man standing at the center of the platform with his back turned. Bare low-watt bulbs shone from the high arched ceiling. Dirty white tile walls caught the light, threw it back, making the air look misty. There were no trains coming, the station was silent and empty except for the two of them, and Hawkins knew as soon as he reached the platform that the man ahead wasn’t Jacob. The man turned slowly, and Isaac Luria faced Hawkins.

  “It’s Jacob you want, isn’t it?” Luria asked softly.

  Hawkins couldn’t answer.

  “You can’t have him,” Luria said, “because he’s leaving you. Right now, he’s saying good-­bye to the shop, to the streets, the people. To you. Say good-­bye back, and I’ll convey the message.”

  Tears of desolation filled Hawkins’s eyes behind the flat dark glasses. He saw an empty room with dust balls rolling across a bare floor.

  The train pulled in and Luria stood in the open door waiting for Hawkins to say something. When he didn’t, Luria shrugged, “Good-­bye then, Inspector, you should leave us alone now.” The doors closed and the train pulled ou
t of the station.

  Hawkins made it from East New York to Flatbush in ten minutes. He stopped at the shop, but the window was empty, the stacks were gone, and so were the little folding table and chairs. He raced around the corner to Sterling and saw the moving van still standing in front of Levy’s building.

  He got out of his car and was halfway across the street when something made him turn around. A dark green Dodge van like the one Comera had described was parked three cars ahead of his. He crossed back and went around the front of the van. The license plates were orange and black, like New York plates, except that these were issued by the state of Minnesota, Land of a Thousand Lakes. Without thinking, he went back to his own car, opened the trunk, and found the long flat blade he carried in case he lost his keys or had to open a strange car. He went back to the Dodge, slid the blade between the window and door, felt the blade catch the lock mechanism. He pulled, the lock button popped up, and he opened the door. Two movers came out of the back of the truck and watched him. He sat in the front seat, closed the door, and inhaled. He smelled pine air freshener, stale smoke, and under that something else. A moldy, damp, muddy smell. The pond-­bottom smell he’d never forget. He opened the glove compartment and found the registration. The car was owned by Rachel and Adam Levy. He put the registration back, got out, slid back the rear panel door, and felt the floor. It was slightly damp, as if it had been washed recently. He brushed at the carpet and gray powder came off on his fingers. He took out his handkerchief and wiped it off; it showed up clearly on the white linen.

  He knew there was someone behind him, and he turned. It was Levy. He looked at the open van doors, and the gray streaked handkerchief in Hawkins’s hand. He was pale, his yarmulke was pushed off-­center from packing and moving boxes, which he shouldn’t have been doing, and the front of his jacket was covered with dust. Hawkins waited for Levy to look at him, to explain. And if he couldn’t, if there wasn’t any explanation, Levy would talk to him in that quiet voice Hawkins loved listening to. He’d tell him what they’d done, and how. He’d plead for understanding, and Hawkins already knew he would understand. They’d work something out. Levy was old, so were the others. They were mad with grief over Adam. They’d never go to jail. . . . Hawkins waited for Levy to talk. But Levy looked down at the dust on the front of his jacket. He brushed at it, frowning. When he did speak, his voice wasn’t halting or remorseful, it was clear and strong.

  “What did you expect?” Levy asked, then he looked right into Hawkins’s eyes without pleading or guilt. “What would you have done?” he asked. He waited, but Hawkins was too stunned to answer. Levy stared at him for a while, then turned and crossed the street. He didn’t look back, and Hawkins watched him until he disappeared into the building.

  Hawkins slammed the door of Ableson’s little office. The walls shook.

  “Levy did it,” he said.

  Ableson didn’t say anything.

  “The van belonged to Adam. They tried to clean it up, but this was still there.” Hawkins pulled out the handkerchief. Ableson looked at it, then away.

  “They did it,” Hawkins said again.

  Ableson nodded.

  “Say something,” Hawkins shouted.

  “What?” Ableson asked mildly.

  “Tell me how you’re going to pin it on them.”

  “Tell me how they did it,” Ableson said.

  “We’ll find out, Mo. . . .”

  “You’ll find out, Roger.”

  Hawkins looked murderous. “Get Lerner in here.”

  Ableson shook his head. “Adam was a Jew, the kids were Spanish,” Ableson said. “A quarter of the men here’re Jews, ninety percent are white . . . They’ll lose tapes, Roger, reports’ll get filed in the toilet. . . .”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Ableson went on in the same mild voice, “Those kids killed an innocent man with a pregnant wife and a father who’d been in the camps, and no matter who got them, or how, every man here is glad they’re dead. You understand that, don’t you?” Ableson asked softly.

  Hawkins didn’t answer, and Ableson opened his desk drawer and took out a telex sheet. “I found this by accident on Dan Schwartz’s desk this morning.”

  He handed it to Hawkins. It was from R & I, a report on a dark green 1980 Dodge van registered in Minnesota to Rachel and Adam Levy. It was dated three days earlier. “Schwartz said he meant to send it through, but he lost it or some shit. He had the grace to blush when he said it. And that’s what’ll happen to everything we get on this case. You want to hang them, Roger? I won’t say you should or shouldn’t, I won’t say how I feel, because I swear to God, I don’t know—but if you really want to hang them, take the report, tape, handkerchief, to that Ivy League bunch in Manhattan.”

  He took the cassette out of his drawer and held out both hands to Hawkins, one with the tape, one with the report. “Take it to the WASPs, Roger. Because if you leave it here, you ain’t gonna hang nobody. They killed five kids without a trial, without even a chance to talk for themselves, and they’re gonna walk for it unless you stop them.”

  Hawkins didn’t move and Ableson’s hands sank and rested on his desk.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know what I’d do if I were you.” He lifted the tape and report and held them out again. Hawkins hesitated, then took them and left the office.

  “Hello, hello! Who’s there?”

  It was Pinchik’s voice, sounding like it used to when Hawkins would call him Friday morning to see if he’d be at Vinnie’s on Friday afternoon.

  “What is it?” That was Rose Pinchik in the background.

  “Some schmuck calls and doesn’t talk,” Pinchik said to her, then back to the phone, “Whatsa matter, schmuck, you can waste a dime to hear me call you names? Nu? Shmekele . . . paskudnyak . . .” Hawkins almost said it wasn’t a dime, it was eighty cents and he needed help. But he couldn’t talk.

  “It’s a breather,” Pinchik told Rose, and he hung up. Hawkins stayed in the phone booth until a woman with a string bag and an umbrella banged on the glass. He showed her his badge and she yelled that that didn’t give him the right to just sit in a phone booth when other people had to make calls. What about the call boxes that were everywhere the public phones should be. He wanted to open the door to tell her that he didn’t have the strength to get up and even though she was a taxpayer she should let him sit here until his legs were steadier. But she banged on the door with her umbrella, and a few people stopped to see what was going on. Hawkins got the phone booth door open and walked stiffly out onto the street.

  “He’s drunk,” she yelled at the people who’d stopped. “He’s a cop. I saw his badge, and he’s drunk.” He made it to the wall of the building. It was a variety store and across the street was a sign in Arabic and strips of shiny pastry in the window. He was on Atlantic Avenue and he couldn’t remember how he got there. He couldn’t even remember getting into the phone booth in the first place. “Drunk!” the woman yelled.

  The sun was over the Island.

  It was morning and he couldn’t remember where he’d spent the night. “And they give him a gun,” she yelled. He kept his head down out of the light. He knew there was a bar half a block away that opened at eight-­thirty. He went inside, out of the sunshine, and went right to the can. To himself he looked like an old black bum in the cloudy mirror over the sink, but Lerner would have to listen to him anyway. He had clout in Brooklyn, in Queens, and most of all in Manhattan with the chief and the mayor, and with or without Lerner’s help he was going to start an investigation like they’d never seen.

  He left the bar and found his car on State Street. He drove around the block, back toward the Expressway, but the sun blinded him and he forgot to turn and all at once he was in a little street he couldn’t remember and the sun was so bright he couldn’t see the signs. He kept going and made another turn
that he was sure would get him back to Joralemon or Fulton, but instead he was under the Expressway, in the shadow of the bridge. The blocks were very short and he could see the bay to his left. He turned again and there was a stone church on the corner, with people just leaving mass, and across the street was a playground with kids in it, and nuns standing at the gates. Another turn and the bay was to his right. He didn’t know these streets at all. The houses were strange, much poorer than in the Heights, and some looked empty. There was a vacant lot, and through it he could see a grape arbor in the backyard of one house. They made wine in the fall, and fruit brandy, and kept it all in the basement for Easter and for next Christmas. There’d be crucifixes on the walls, and pictures of Jesus with His heart neatly exposed, dripping blood. Hawkins turned and turned again, he drove faster around the corners, up and down the strange streets. He wanted to stop and ask someone to help him but the only people he saw were women wearing black dresses and scarves on their heads. They would be scared of a black man, and they wouldn’t speak English. He tried to find some building or street that looked familiar, but all he found was the church with the steps, and the playground, empty this time.

  He turned left doing fifty, the tires screeched, and an old woman jumped out of his way. He pulled over then and made himself breathe evenly until he calmed down. He was in Red Hook somewhere and if he turned left, then left again, and kept going, he’d get back to the Expressway. But he drove straight ahead to the river at the end of the street, left the car in an empty asphalt square, and got out on shaky legs.

  He walked out on a sort of dock that was covered with abandoned clay conduits, broken cinder blocks, and steel drums rusting in the sun. The asphalt heaved up from the weather and years of neglect, and he had to walk carefully. There was scree further out on the dock and his feet scraped and slid, but he kept going until he was at the edge of the river where it widened to the bay, and lower Manhattan and all the bridges were to his right.