Reversible Error

by Robert Tanenbaum

  “Hey, po-lice! He long gone!”

  “Hey, you momma in there, runnin’ a train!”

  “Yo, Jake! Gonna shoot another nigger, muh’fuck?”

  A thin girl of about fourteen in a white off-the-shoulder blouse and her hair in corn rows strung with bright beads came dancing in front of him, her smile wide and mocking. “Hey, li’l whitey, they lef you all alone. You want company? You wann give me a ride in you’ po-lice car?”

  Maus said in a not unfriendly tone, “Chile, get outta my face. I’se working.”

  “Oh, listen here, the man’s tryin to talk black,” she sang out, a look of mock amazement on her face.

  “How I s’pose to talk, chile? Ain I soul?” replied Maus.

  “Shit, no! You whiter ’n rice!”

  “How you know that? Is you my momma?”

  At this, a little kid giggled and there was a sprinkling of laughter from the crowd on the stoop. The black man with white pretensions was a familiar figure of fun in the community; this was a twist that some were prepared to find amusing.

  “Hey, Sherril, tell him to show you his dick!” someone shouted from the car. The thin girl grinned and said, “Yeah, you got one o’ them white-boy needle dicks?”

  Maus said, “Honey, if I flash my rod, you think I was God. The sight of my meat would make you drop in the street. But you can’t see how I hung, ’cause you too damn young. I don’ wanna take the chance, I might scare you out yo’ pants.”

  At this, general laughter, and a voice called, “He soundin’ on you, Sherril.”

  The girl’s mouth dropped and she placed her balled fists on her hips, preparatory to returning fire, but at that moment Maus stiffened and moved away from the car. At the same time he pulled out his police ID card and clipped it to the front of his sweatshirt and drew his .38 from its belt holster.

  The girl gave a little yelp of alarm and backed away. The crowd followed the direction of Maus’s gaze upward, to where a window on the third floor had opened. Tecumseh Booth was out on the fire escape and looking out heavenward.

  Some people stepped out on the street to get a better view, and somebody must have spotted Jeffers’ head poking above the roof parapet, because the crowd started yelling to Booth that there was a cop above him. Booth reversed direction and began to climb down the steel flights.

  Maus moved into position to intercept him and suddenly became aware that, as often happens in Harlem, about a thousand people had appeared on the street in the past five seconds. A broad man with a beard and wearing a knitted green-red-and-black tarn pushed in front of him, shouting, “What you want with him—what’s he done?” Others in the crowd took up the cry. Someone yelled, “Get his gun!” Maus looked the man in the eye and said, “Hey, let me by, fella! I’m just doing the job here. We just want to talk with the guy.”

  The guy in question was stalled on the second-floor escape platform. Maus could barely make out the flapping glow of his white shirt. Some people were urging him to come down now, telling him he could get away, that there was only one cop on the street. Others were whistling and cheering. Maus heard a bottle smash behind him. His belly started to get tight.

  Maus didn’t hear the first shot. He saw Booth grip the platform rail and look around wildly. The second shot hit the platform itself and made it clang like a broken bell. The third shot ricocheted off the building, leaving a bright scar on the tan masonry. A woman screamed like a siren and the crowd went totally silent for a weird instant. Maus felt the pressure of a dozen pairs of angry eyes. “Motherfucker shot her!” shouted the bearded man.

  Maus reached out and grabbed the man by his shirt and stuck the muzzle of his revolver under the man’s nose. “Fool! Smell that gun! Did I shoot it?” The man’s eyes went wide and he tried to back away. Maus gave him a push, which cleared a space in the middle of the crowd. He filled his lungs and shouted, “Somebody’s tryin’ to shoot him …”

  The space disappeared as people swirled around him. His arms were pinned to his sides. He smelled sweat, perfume; he saw a huge black shape coming down the fire escape, shaking the whole structure; there were more shots, closer this time.

  Maus fell, was trampled, he staggered to one knee. He saw Mack Jeffers lift Booth like a child up on his hip and fire shots down the street. People were yelling and running around in circles. Horns blared from the stalled traffic and there were sirens in the distance. Maus heard another shot and the scream of tires from a car tearing off down 144th Street.

  “Someone’s coming,” she blurted. “My boyfriend …”

  He waved the knife in front of her face. His smile was a terrifying parody of the social expression he had flashed moments before. “Your boyfriend will have to take sloppy seconds today, bitch. I’ll make sure you’re greased up good for him, you whore! Get into the bedroom and take your clothes off!”

  She wasn’t wearing panty hose under her jeans, of course. He made her take a pair out of a drawer. He wanted a dirty pair, but she didn’t have any. That made him angry.

  He made her lie on the bed, cursing her all the time, saying the foulest things in a quiet conversational tone. He wrapped the panty hose around her head and then made her lie back and draw her knees up to her chest so that she was fully exposed.

  The telephone rang. With the blood pounding in her ears and the wrapping around her head, she heard it only faintly. It must be Seth, she thought. He always calls before he comes over and he’s only fifteen minutes away. She felt a thrill of hope; whatever he did, it couldn’t last very long. Maybe the phone would frighten him away.

  But he leaned over her and placed the tip of his blade hard against her chest, under the breastbone. “Make a noise and I’ll cut your heart out,” he said, and then he answered the phone.

  “Hello,” he said. A pause. “This is the TV repairman.” She heard the faint burble of Seth’s voice from the phone speaker. The knife pressed harder. She felt a tiny trickle of something wet roll down her ribs, but whether it was sweat or blood she could not tell. “No, I don’t think she can come to the phone now. I heard the shower going. Uh-huh. Well, sometimes these new sets go on the fritz right away, y’know? OK, I’ll tell her. Bye.”

  He hung up. She felt the bed move. Her legs were getting stiff in the exaggerated sexual position he had demanded and she tried to ease them down, but he saw it and it made him angry. He moved closer to her on the bed. She felt the knife running lightly over her genitals. He was speaking hoarsely now, obviously excited, “You cunt, slut, you want it, you can’t wait for it, can you?” She heard his zipper open. She felt his weight on her. She was being raped.

  Maus climbed to his feet, shaking with the aftereffects of terror. Whatever it was, the incipient riot, was over. People stood on the street in small clutches, talking, and every doorway and window was thick with watchers. Booth was sitting in the unmarked car, shaking, holding his face, which had been cut by flying brick. Dugman was in the front, talking quietly into the radio, telling the dispatchers that no help was needed.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” asked Maus.

  Jeffers answered, “Ask Tecumseh, here. I think your friends don’t like you anymore, Tecumseh.”

  Maus said, “Son-of-a-bitch! Needless to say, the shooter skipped.”

  Jeffers nodded and pointed across the street. “He shot from the first-floor window of that vacant building. The tin over the window’s bent back. He took four shots and he stopped when I started shooting.”

  “Any chance … ?”

  “No way. He coulda gone out the back or up the roof. He coulda just walked out on the street and lost himself.”

  “How about that car that took off in a hurry? You think he was on board?”

  Jeffers exchanged a look with Dugman, who put down his microphone and turned his attention to Tecumseh Booth.

  “You know who it was, don’t you?”

  Booth looked at him mutely. Dugman reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette pack and matches, whic
h he handed to Booth. The man lit one up and drew deeply on it. Dugman waited a minute or so and then repeated his question. Outside, the life of the street resumed as if nothing had happened.

  Booth said, “Yeah, I guess.”

  “It was a cop, wasn’t it?” asked Dugman.

  “Yeah. He done the shooting. I jus drove, man. That’s all I know.”

  “You gonna give us a name?”

  “If I do, what do I get out of it?”

  “If you don’t, we’ll be glad to put you back to your momma’s house and wait for the man to come again. I bet next time he won’t be shooting from cross the street. Figure the range be around two inches next time.”

  For the next few seconds Booth’s face showed clearly the frantic working of his brain. At last he said, “OK, I’ll tell you, but you gotta look out for me.”

  “Who?” Dugman asked.

  Booth said, “It’s you-all’s boss. It’s Fulton.”

  It had hurt worse than she had imagined, worse than the worst kind of cramps. She lay there silently, tears of rage and pain soaking into the panty hose wrapped around her head. He was arranging his clothes and pacing about the bedroom, not talking now. After a while she said, “Can I get up now?”

  He didn’t answer. He was thinking. He shouldn’t have answered that call, but he couldn’t resist, talking to the schmuck on the phone when he was looking up his girlfriend’s cunt. There was a catch, though. Boyfriend could identify his voice; the girl knew his face. It was corroboration. Not good.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice thin and high.

  He was wrapping the bedspread around her, tucking it in tightly on both sides, until she was like a mummy with its head wreathed in Tan Natural nylon.

  “Please, let me …” she said. He straddled her legs and held the knife over his head with both hands and drove it down into her with all his force.

  “Wha-a-a-at!” cried Maus. “Lieutenant Fulton? Fuck you, scumbag! Try again!”

  Maus turned his incredulous look toward Jeffers and Dugman, seeking support as to the absurdity of this statement, but the two other cops wore expressions of blank gravity.

  “Hey, guys? You don’t believe this horseshit, do you? Fulton?”

  “Maus,” said Jeffers sadly, “that car. Blue Trans Am with whitewalls. It was the Loo’s car. And he was in it.”

  The rapist checked himself carefully in the full-length bedroom mirror. There was no blood on him at all, except on his hands, where he had gripped the knife. He looked at the shape on the bed. He couldn’t remember stabbing her that many times. He must have lost track of time. Time! He checked his watch. Only eight minutes had passed since the phone call.

  He went into the kitchen and rinsed his hands and the knife and put the knife away in his jacket pocket. He brought the beer can and the glass he had used back to the kitchen, wiped both of them off, rinsed and dried the glass and tossed the can in the trash. Then he wiped the tap handle off.

  Twelve minutes. Another wipe on the stereo where he had touched it. He walked toward the door. He felt good, as usual, except that his underwear was wet and sticky. He had experienced another, more intense orgasm as he was taking care of the girl. Two for the price of one, he thought, and then had an even more amusing notion: the police would think it was a nut case, all that stabbing. It was a different pattern. No one would ever associate it with him. He was not, after all, a nut. The rapist opened the door, his hand wrapped in a handkerchief, and let himself out.

  The three detectives and their guest drove south through the increasingly noisy evening. Each of the cops was chewing over Booth’s revelation in private. Maus broke the silence.

  “It still don’t figure,” he said. “Why are we taking this mutt’s word for it?”

  “It ain’t just his word,” replied Dugman from the rear seat.

  “What, then? What! Rumors? Street bullshit?”

  “It adds up. The street know something’s goin down. Here, I’ll show you. Maus, see that line of cars waiting to buy dope? Get in line. Mack, grab us one of them skells.”

  “Which one?”

  “Any damn one. We doin a scientific sample.”

  Maus pulled the car over to where a dozen or so men were crying their wares. A thin brown man in a lavender T-shirt and a Mets baseball cap came up to the passenger window and put his hands on the sill, saying, “What you want? I got it all an’ the price is right. I got weed, pills, smack, skag, coke …”

  Striking like a cobra, Mack grabbed the man by an upper arm and jerked him through the window. Maus hit the gas and they roared off down the street.

  Mack flipped the man around so that his head and shoulders were resting on his own lap, while the pusher’s legs were flapping out the window. His massive forearm rested gently against the pusher’s throat.

  “Wha’, wha’ … wha’ the fuck goin on! Leggo me!” the pusher began. Mack increased the weight of his arm and the cries choked off.

  “Listen up, my man,” said Mack softly. “We just want to know one thing. Where you getting your stuff. Not the mutt you get it from, the big slick. Who’s the Barnes Man?” He raised his arm a hair.

  “Dunno what you talkin about, man. What stuff?”

  Mack dropped his arm again. When he raised it, the pusher gagged and coughed for a long time. Mack repeated the question and this time the pusher croaked, “Choo-choo.”

  “Choo-choo Willis, huh?” said Mack. “OK, who else still in business?”

  “Blade still movin it. Some Jamaicans. Some spies. Willis been doin good since they aced all those guys.”

  “What’s out on the street about who’s doin the hits?”

  The man’s face clouded, and he hesitated. From the rear seat Dugman said, “Don’t worry, it ain’t us. Just tell what you heard.”

  The man coughed hard and then said, “I heard it was cops.”

  “That’s what we heard too,” said Dugman. “You hear any names?”

  The man shook his head vigorously. “No, I didn’t hear nothin else. It just street jive anyway, you know?”

  “The name Fulton mean anything to you? Clay Fulton?”

  The man screwed up his features, showing thought superimposed on terror. “Yeah. Couple of days ago, my man Socks say somepin about some Fulton. Like he was connected, wired. Big dudes want to know anybody saw him aroun’. Some shit like that.”

  Mack looked back at Dugman, who nodded. Mack said, “Pull over,” and when Maus did so, he flung the pusher out the window like a piece of trash.

  Half an hour later Booth and the three detectives were sitting in a luncheonette on St. Nicholas Avenue having coffee and arguing about what, if anything, to do.

  “I say, confront the man,” said Maus. “We go up there, we say we saw you when somebody was trying to ace Tecumseh here, the word on the street is you’re dirty, so what the fuck, Loo? That’s the right thing to do.”

  Dugman shook his head. “Yeah, it would be, if Fulton was playing straight with us. But he ain’t. Which means he thinks he’s covered some way. So what’s he gonna say? Either yes, I’m bent, and what the fuck you gonna do about it. Or no, and fuck you for accusing me. Either way we’re fucked in the ass. But …”

  “But what, Art?” asked Jeffers.

  “Like I said before, there’s somethin deep goin on here. We ain’t got near all the story, and this old nigger ain’t about to go jumpin into somethin deep when he don’t know the whole story.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Maus, a note of tension straining his voice. “We can’t just go on working for the man, pretending everything’s cool. Maybe you all can, but I’m not made for this happy horseshit. I got to know who I can trust, you know? OK, the Loo is bent—fuck me for a chump, I thought he was a class act. But now, I’ll tell you right now, I’m gonna transfer out of here. I’m no fuckin virgin—plenty of guys on the take are standup cops. But not pulling jobs, killing people, even if they are scumbags. How can you trust a guy like that, if it�
�s true?”

  “Play along, Maus,” said Jeffers. “Game ain’t over yet.”

  “Yeah, but we got no cards,” replied Maus glumly.

  At this remark, a smile, and a not very pleasant one, broke out on Dugman’s face. “Uh-uh, you wrong there, Maus. We got us the biggest card in the deck. We got us the ace.” And he looked at Tecumseh Booth. The others did too. Booth shifted nervously in his seat.

  “What you gonna do?” asked Booth.

  “That is the question,” said Dugman reflectively. “What indeedy?” Here he paused and lit a long Macanudo cigar, and watched the sweet smoke rise to the tin ceiling above. “What we require,” he said, “is, one, a place to stash our hole card. Mack, my thinking is it might be a good time for you to take a week off, take your cousin Tecumseh fishing over in Jersey. Tecumseh probably don’t get in as much fishing as he’d like, driving hit men around all hours.

  “Two, we need a connection, a pipe to the outside. This too big for just the three of us.”

  “You don’t mean the snakes?” said Maus, shocked.

  Dugman wrinkled his nose in contempt at this reference to the department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs. “Shit, no! I meant somebody with some clout, but not under Fulton. What about that guy you were in court with when they sprung Tecumseh, the task-force guy.”

  “Manning?”

  “Yeah,” said Dugman, “Manning could be the one.”

  NINE

  “So what do you think?” Karp asked. “Do you like the boyfriend?”

  Guma wriggled in his chair and chewed thoughtfully on the stump of a dead black cigar. “Not particularly,” he said. “The cops, of course, love the boyfriend.”

  “They always do,” Karp agreed. “It’s convenient and it’s usually right. Why don’t you like him?”

  “Coupla things. One, the guy calls 911 from the girl’s apartment, and when the cops get there, the body’s still warm. So either he did it, or whoever really did do it must’ve practically passed him in the goddamn hallway going out.

  “So if there’s not another guy, we have to believe that this white-bread insurance exec with no priors and no history of violence shows up for a regular date with his sweetie, rapes her, wraps her up like a mummy, and stabs her thirty-nine times.”