The Monkey Rope

by Stephen Lewis

  “We’re not going to get in that way,” she said.

  “You’ve got that one right.”

  “Are you alright?”

  He rose to his feet.

  “I think so, but we gotta get in there fast.”

  “What about a window?”

  “Around the other side,” he said.

  They found the bedroom window that sat right at ground level. The dog apparently had followed their movement because now they could hear his claws scratching the wall beneath the window. Seymour stood so that he could kick the glass out.

  “What about that beast?” Rosalie asked.

  “After I break the window, you distract him,” Seymour said.

  “Terrific idea,” she said. “Then what do I do?”

  Seymour brought the sole of his shoe against the glass.

  “I don’t know,” he said as the glass shattered, “but we’ll think of something.”

  The dog’s head appeared between the shards of glass, its teeth bared. Blood ran down its head. A piece of glass had lodged in one eye, and the dog, a German shepherd, was trying to throw himself through the window. As he did, he opened more cuts in his head. After a couple of seconds, he looked as though he had run into a propeller. Seymour saw a heavy board lying against the side of the house. He picked it up and brought it down as hard as he could on the dog’s skull.

  The dog froze for a second and then collapsed back into the room.

  Seymour pushed out the remaining glass with the board, and motioned for Rosalie to wait. He sat down before the window and thrust his legs through the opening. He edged himself forward, grabbed the window frame, easing himself inside. While he was hanging suspended, he searched the floor for the dog. It was lying in a still heap just beneath him. He dug his heels into the wall, arched his body, and dropped into the room. As he fell, he realized that he wasn’t going to clear the animal, so he split his legs and came down with one foot on either side of it. He lost his balance and broke his fall with his hands. He did not dare move. He thought he saw the dog’s body quiver and he tensed, ready to roll to safety. When his leg muscles started to cramp, he lifted one foot over the body and twisted himself away. The dog lay motionless. He lit a match and in its light inspected the bloody head. The dog’s mouth was ajar and its tongue lolled out between the fangs. Rosalie pounded on the door, and he blew out the match.

  “Are you okay?” she said as soon as he let her in. “What about the dog? The baby?”

  “The dog’s dead, or if he’s not, he’s not going to be moving for a long time. Do you remember where the light switch is?” he asked.

  He felt her pull away.

  “No, don’t you?”

  He began to reply to the hard tone in her voice but instead he groped along the walls until he found it. He led her back to the bedroom. Rosalie glanced quickly at the dog and then turned away, surveying the rest of the room. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here for a while.”

  The bed was neatly made and the dresser top was clear except for a pocketbook standing on one side. One pair of shoes was in front of the closet. Seymour got up and opened the closet door. The clothes, mostly Lois’, were hanging in place. He ran his hand over a black evening gown on one side of the closet and then a denim jacket on the other. He turned to Rosalie and shrugged.

  “I believe the baby’s room is down the hall,” she said. “What did you expect to find in the closet, and why the hell are we dancing around in here when we want to find the kid?”

  “Because,” he said, “I don’t think either of us wants to face what might be behind that door. But let’s do it.”

  Rosalie opened the door, found the wall switch, and flicked the light on. The baby’s room was tiny. It was dominated by a freshly painted white crib on one wall and an infant’s dressing table on the other. A teddybear sat on a bentwood rocking chair in the corner next to the crib. Seymour took Rosalie’s arm. He didn’t know if she had seen the teeth marks on the top rail of the crib. The mattress was hidden by the bumper guard which had been shoved a few inches up against the bars.

  “I see them,” she said.

  As if their legs were tied together, they each took a step toward the crib. It was empty. There was no sheet or cover on the mattress, which was pale blue except for a circular area in the middle that was much darker. Seymour reached in an felt the spot.

  “It’s damp,” he said.

  “As though it had been washed,” Rosalie said.

  “Do you think we should call the police?”

  “No, not yet. First we can check the hospitals. But before that, let’s see what our friend Hercules knows.”

  “He don’t know nothin.”

  Seymour whirled to face the teenager, who was in the doorway. The belligerence was gone from his face, replaced by a shadow of concern, maybe even sorrow. He moved cautiously into the room, his hands extended in front of him.

  “Peace,” he said. “I’m sorry for that stuff outside, but you see you gotta understand that I’m the man ‘round here, and I can’t be lettin’ no trash,” he paused, “no trash walk over me.”

  “You could have saved us both a lot of trouble,” Seymour said.

  “Hey, man, what you bitchin’ ‘bout. I’m the one almost got hisself killed out there. Just to keep my face, you hear?”

  “It is a pretty face,” Seymour said.

  “Now, don’t be jivin’ me.” He turned to Rosalie. “You know what I’m sayin’, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” she said. “But you must know something.”

  He shook his head.

  “Only this. That since her man in trouble, she been in and out, mostly out, and then she got herself that dog, mean sonofabitch, and told me, in front of my friends, you know, to keep everybody, I mean everybody, away from here while she out.”

  “And the baby?”

  “I hear it cry sometimes, and then I guess it would get too sleepy, or maybe she be home and takin’ care of her baby, but then, the last couple of days, I don’t hear nothin’ but that damned dog howling.”

  “And that’s it?” Seymour pushed. “Nothing more.”

  “Like I said, I don’t know nothin’, and I don’t want to be mixin’ in no business that ain’t mine.”

  Seymour steered Rosalie past Hercules and out the door. Seymour turned back to the teenager.

  “Look, we’re going out the front door. Lock up after us. Maybe you can fix that window.”

  Hercules’ face soured.

  “What I look like to you?”

  “You look like a smart dude who wants to keep himself clean, who wouldn’t want his customers to hear he got busted for dealin’, very bad for business. So just do what I say.”

  Hercules’s face softened into a grin.

  “I hear you. But, hey what you want me to do with the dog?”

  “Dump it someplace. You might want to bang him on the head one more time, you know, just to be sure.”

  They stood outside of the house in the grayness of a cold sunset. Rosalie’s face was drawn.

  “I should have tried harder,” she said. “I let my spite for her get in the way.”

  “We don’t know what happened.”

  “Don’t baby me, Seymour, Jesus not now. That dog, those marks on the crib, and you know, when we checked, there wasn’t a scrap of food in that house.”

  “I know,” he said, “I know all of that.”

  “Then we sure as hell know what happened to that baby. So let’s cut the crap and just find out the details.”

  Chapter Eight

  Rosalie’s hands squeezed the steering wheel, and her face was so ashen that her black hair and makeup against her white skin looked like a death mask.

  Seymour did not know if she shared his suspicion that the baby might still be alive. Somehow, he had difficulty accepting her brutal death as true. In spite of the evidence of his eyes, his rational sense, fed by his recollection of Lois nursing her daughter, rebelled at such a horror o
f neglect.

  He watched Rosalie’s hands tightening on the wheel with each controlled heaving of her chest. He wanted to comfort her, to feel her close to him again. Either she had been more distant, or he had projected his own uncertainty on her, ever since she first expressed hesitancy about seeing Junior’s case to the end. He wanted to narrow the gap, even if it meant pushing her to deal not only with the bizarre tragedy of the infant, but the mother as well, who was the cause.

  “Do you think Lois could have done this?”

  Rosalie drew her lips into a scowl, and her cheeks reddened with anger.

  “You really, I mean, how can you ask me that?” Her voice crackled, her rage like static, bending and distorting her words. She looked straight ahead, peering through the windshield into the black of the winter night. Her chest heaved beneath her heavy coat. After a moment, she took a deep, gasping breath. She dropped her hands from the wheel and turned to Seymour.

  “Do you think I can have a drag?”

  He handed her his cigarette and sought a way of easing the pain he had knowingly inflicted.

  “It was unfair of me to ask that,” he said. “I know you feel responsible for protecting Jennifer from her mother. And her father. But I don’t believe this, any of it.”

  “You are a bastard, sometimes, you know. You’re going to have to get this Lois business straight in your own head, and soon.” The gentleness in her voice, though, undercut the edge so that he felt both soothed and attacked, as though she had cut his wrist with a surgically sharp knife and then applied her lips to the wound to staunch the blood.

  “I know,” he said. “I will.”

  “Should I take you home? You may be right, but I have to check. You know that. I can do it myself.”

  “No, I want to be there. And I don’t want you to do it alone.”

  She leaned over and kissed him.

  “I need to go back in the house for a couple of minutes.”

  He thought he understood, and, in any case, his exhaustion lay too heavy on him for argument.

  “I’ll wait for you here,” he managed to say. He closed his eyes and permitted his head to droop onto his chest while he waited.

  * * * *

  He felt the rush of cold air and snapped his eyes open. Rosalie slid back into the driver’s seat.

  “Nothing here,” she said.

  He looked out the window and saw that they were parked in front of a local, private hospital. He sought the door handle and pushed it down, but she reached over and took his hand.

  “Where are you going?”

  He turned back to her and began to understand. He shook his head, hard, but he still felt as though he were looking at her through several layers of glass.

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “It would have taken twice the energy to wake you up. And besides I was pretty certain we wouldn’t find anything here. A large anonymous place would be more her style, and even if she had been here, I didn’t expect them to tell me.”

  “Which do you think it might have been, then?”

  “She wasn’t here. I’m sure of it. The administrator I spoke to looked at me like I was from Mars, and he wasn’t that bright to be giving me a show.”

  “We’ll try to the municipal hospital, and after that, whatever we find, we’re going home. Right?”

  He nodded, and she pressed the accelerator down until the car lurched forward.

  * * * *

  They followed an ambulance into the emergency room entrance and waited behind the vehicle while paramedics threw open its doors. Their headlights shone into the ambulance and revealed a figure on a stretcher. The person’s face was swathed in bandages, and a paramedic leaned over the inert body. It looked as though he were trying to trap the victim’s life inside his chest by squeezing a wound closed. The paramedic in the ambulance stood up when the doors opened, but he kept his hands on the victim’s chest until the stretcher was eased onto the ground. A doctor palpated the victim’s throat and shook her head. The paramedic did not seem to understand. He gestured them to rush the body into the hospital. One of his colleagues had to pull him away. The others started to wheel the stretcher into the hospital. The body on it was small, a child of ten or twelve. The bandages on its face were soaked red, as were those covering its chest.

  “I guess this is the place to come to if you want to blend in with the other disasters,” Seymour said.

  She began to speak, but instead opened her door.

  “Let’s get this business over, as soon as we can.”

  He reached across the seat to hold her for a moment.

  “You don’t have to, not this time.”

  “When are you going to understand that I must know. You stay here, if you want.”

  She freed herself and slid out of the car. Seymour caught up with her at the door to the emergency room.

  * * * *

  A television set on the wall of the waiting room offered the late night news. The sound was barely audible, and nobody was looking at the screen. A couple of people thumbed through worn magazines, but it did not appear as though they saw the pages. In one corner, a plump young man in a straight jacket sat rocking quietly, a grin fixed on his face. His nose was flattened and swollen and a drop of blood oozed from one nostril. An orderly sitting next to him daubed at the young man’s nose with a piece of gauze. The young man did not respond to the touch; he continued to rock. His tongue protruded from between his puffy lips.

  Rosalie walked straight through this area to the desk. Seymour paused in front of the television screen, just in time to see Emily Levine’s face disappear, and to hear an announcer indicate that the spot had been paid for by “Citizens for a Safer City.” He recognized the name as a political action group for O’Riley’s opponent. He stared at the screen, as though he could learn more, but the camera switched to the beaming features of the weatherman, standing in front of a map that showed a winter storm, brightly colored in blue, approaching from the west.

  “I saw,” Rosalie said. She was leaning on the desk, her head heavy between her hands. “But I don’t want to deal with it, not now.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  Rosalie pointed toward a back office.

  “We’re waiting for somebody who has access to the records.”

  “Did the person you spoke to remember anything? It’s not like we’re asking about something that wouldn’t stand out.”

  She looked over his shoulder and frowned. He followed her eyes to the stretcher passing behind them, the face of the child now covered and its arms folded on its chest. “Maybe, in this place,” she said softly, “nothing seems important or remarkable.”

  A frail man, in his sixties, his face drawn and lined, emerged from the back office. He was carrying a thick file.

  “The computer is down,” he said. “I’d wish they’d just toss the darned thing. Most of the time when it’s up, it’s wrong, anyway.” He smiled wearily. “If you’re going to ask how I know it’s wrong, it’s simple.” He placed his index finger to his forehead. “In thirty years, my memory has never failed me.”

  “Remarkable,” Seymour murmured. “Do you then remember the case we’re interested in.”

  The man’s face broadened into a confident smile.

  “Of course, but I will have to check the handwritten records. Fortunately, we still keep those. And there’s always a first time, so we’d better check.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Rosalie said.

  “A first time,” he repeated, and again pressed his finger to his forehead, “for this to fail.” He thumbed through the pages inside the file. He stopped at one page, and drew his index finger over a line on it.

  “Now what is your relationship?” he asked.

  “I’m the baby’s aunt,” Rosalie said without hesitation. “Do you want to see some kind of identification?” She lifted her purse to the counter and opened it, but the man waved his hand.

  “I don’t think that will
be necessary, under the circumstances.”

  Seymour felt his patience begin to falter.

  “And those are?”

  The man looked sharply at him.

  “And you are? What is your interest in this matter?” He began to close the file. “You know,” he said, “I thought I’d be helpful to you nice young folks, again especially in this case, but I don’t have to do this. I could have you go through proper channels. And that could take, well, let’s just say you’re not going to want to wait that long because then you might have to come back when the computer is working.”

  Seymour bit down hard on his lip.

  “Please excuse my husband,” Rosalie said, her voice warm and reassuring, “it’s just the strain you know. He’s taken it harder than even I have.”

  “Now, of course I understand, and I see that I’d better make this as quick as possible.” He reopened the file. “Two nights ago, yes, that was what it was, a young woman, gave the name, let’s see,” he peered more closely at the paper, drawing his nail over one spot, “name of, no, it’s smudged.” He looked up at Seymour and shrugged. “But the rest is clear. She brought in her child, said it had gotten caught between two animals that were fighting. The child was,” he hesitated and lowered his voice, “I’m very sorry to say, D.O.A. There was absolutely nothing we could do.”

  Seymour saw Rosalie’s face blanch, even as he felt his own legs buckle. He braced himself and drew Rosalie to him. She began to sob. The man closed the file and came out from behind the counter.

  “Perhaps I can get you something?” he said.

  Rosalie straightened herself.

  “No, that’s alright. We were prepared, but it’s still a shock, to hear.”

  “You couldn’t read the name?” Seymour asked.

  “Why, yes, that’s right. I can check again for you, if you like. But I’m quite sure.”

  “Yes, I know,” Seymour said, pointing to his own forehead, “You’ve got even that locked in there. Did you see the infant yourself?”