New York Nocturne

by Walter Satterthwait

  Mrs. Hadley had been watching me. I placed the spoon in the empty plate, stood up, walked to the door, and slid the plate back through the opening in the door.

  “When can I see a lawyer?” I asked her.

  She sniffed. “When you start telling the truth,” she said.

  She lifted the plate and then walked away, her shoes clapping at the floor, her keys jangling. I stepped back to the cot.

  Once again, her footsteps ebbed into the distance. And then, just as the sound stopped, all the lights went out.

  My heart slammed against my chest.

  At home, in hotels, in John’s apartment, everywhere I had ever slept, in all of my life, there had always been some residual light seeping into the room from somewhere. From beneath the door, from between the curtain and the wall. Even starlight, sifting through the draperies, can soften the darkness.

  But there were no windows down here. The darkness in that cell was absolute. I could see nothing at all; it was as though the cell, the city, the world had ceased to exist. Or I had.

  I sat there, listening to my heartbeat, willing it to slow.

  It would not.

  I was alone, utterly alone, in the utter blackness. Around me there was only the silence and the stink of disinfectant.

  But worse than being alone in the darkness, of course, is the realization that you are not alone.

  And, very soon, over the thumping of my heart, I began to hear other sounds.

  A low mechanical mutter, as of some distant machinery.

  A faint scratching sound, not so far away. Someone in another cell?

  A scrabbling sound, much closer, of tiny claws scratching on stone. And then again, closer still. Something scuttling along the concrete nearby.

  Rats.

  Once again my heart juddered.

  The scrabbling sound came again, nearer this time.

  I tried to quell fear with reason. They were only rats.

  What, then, did I know about rats?

  They were mammals, yes. They were filthy, sodden with sewage, and once upon a time they had carried the plague. I recalled stories from the war, of men in trenches falling into exhausted slumber and awakening to find their fingers gnawed away.

  Reason was not doing an especially good job of quelling. It seldom does.

  Another scrabbling sound. Even closer.

  I knew that they were in the cell with me, scurrying along the floor, thirsty, hungry.

  I swung my feet up onto the cot and held my breath.

  I have no idea how long I stayed awake. Today I cannot reckon how long it might have taken a rather spoiled young girl, frazzled by the events of the day, to overcome her fears—or be overcome by them—and finally fall asleep.

  Possibly by that point in the night I was so weary that I simply surrendered, reaching a point at which I decided that the rats could have me.

  But fall asleep I did. I know this because, sometime later, I was suddenly awakened.

  The lights were on, seemingly brighter than before, and footsteps were rattling toward me. More than one set of footsteps.

  It was Mrs. Hadley once again, but this time she was not alone. With her was a girl, perhaps eighteen years old, an inch or two shorter than I but much broader through the torso. She wore a frayed white cotton shirt, gray at the collar; a pair of denim overalls; and heavy black lace-up boots, scuffed and scratched. Beneath her straight black hair, cut in the shape of a large inverted soup bowl, her dark face was broad and heavy—small hooded brown eyes, a snub nose, and a plump narrow mouth that was turned down at the corners in a permanent, sullen frown.

  Mrs. Hadley smiled at me. Sweetly. “We brought you a little friend. This is Ramona. Ramona, say hello to Amanda.”

  From beneath her fringe of black hair, the girl merely glowered at me.

  Mrs. Hadley plucked the keys from her belt, unlocked the door, swung it open, and turned to Ramona. The girl entered, looked coldly down at me on my cot, and then turned to face the door. Mrs. Hadley pushed it shut, locked it, and went off, her shoes clip-clopping.

  This time the lights stayed on. I wasn’t sure whether this was a good or a bad thing.

  When the sound of Mrs. Hadley had died away, the girl turned back to me. She glanced down at my pumps, which I had set beside the cot. She glanced over at the other cot. Then she looked directly at me.

  “That’s my bed,” she said. “Get out.”

  For a second or two I was baffled. I could see no reason for anyone to prefer one cot over the other.

  Then I realized that the cots were not her real concern. Her real concern was establishing the dynamics of power in that cramped gray room.

  One might think that a sixteen-year-old girl such as myself would know nothing of the dynamics of power. But there are few places better to learn about it than a Boston finishing school like the one I had been attending for the past few years.

  Carefully, I eased back the covers. I sat up and put my stocking feet onto the cold concrete floor. I stood.

  Ramona looked me over, up and down. Then she smiled—a small, cunning smile. “Real pretty,” she said.

  She took a step closer to me. “We’re gonna get along just fine, aren’t we, pretty?” She put out her hand to touch my face.

  I backed away.

  Her plump lips turned down again. “Maybe I gotta teach ya how,” she said, moving toward me.

  Three years before, during the investigation of my first stepmother’s murder, I had spent time with a squat, balding Pinkerton detective named Harry Boyle. We had talked about many things as we drove around that small seaside town, and one of them had been self-defense.

  “When you know someone wants to hurt you,” he said, looking out at the road, “what you got to do is hit him first, and hit him as hard as you can.”

  He had explained the technique: a knee to the groin, a grab of the hair, then a dash toward the nearest wall, smacking the head into it: klonk.

  “What about a girl?” I asked him.

  The car hit a pothole, and the steering wheel bucked lightly in his hand. He swung it gently back to center and looked at me. “If it’s a girl wants to hurt you?”

  “Yes.”

  Another nod. “A stomach punch. Right below the rib cage. You don’t aim for the stomach, see. You aim for a few inches behind it. You aim for the spine, and you put all your weight behind it. Everything you got. That’ll double her right up. Then you do the same thing with the hair.” He looked at me. “Straight into the wall.”

  “I don’t think I could do that.”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “It’s hard. Hurting people is hard. But if you don’t do it, you’re the one gonna get hurt.”

  Now, as Ramona came closer, I remembered Harry Boyle.

  I had never in my life hit a human being, had never hit even an animal.

  But I had been through a difficult day. And now this big, sullen, dangerous person wanted to hurt me.

  She took another step. “Hey,” she said. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, pretty. You’re mine now.”

  I said, “What about her?” And with my left hand I pointed over Ramona’s shoulder.

  It had been, of course, a schoolyard trick since antiquity. But perhaps Ramona had never been on a schoolyard. Or perhaps she simply did not expect a trick of any sort from someone so clearly helpless as I. She turned.

  I believe that she realized, even before she reached the apex of her turn, that it had been a mistake. She was reversing herself, swiftly, but I had cocked back my arm already, and then, just as she faced me again, I swung my fist forward and slammed it as hard as I could, with every single ounce of my bodyweight behind it, smack into her broad, round stomach.

  Chapter Seven

  With a great whoosh of air, arms flying to her belly, Ramona folded forward.
r />   After this promising beginning, however, I am afraid that I rather let Harry Boyle down.

  I did in fact grab Ramona’s hair and run her toward the cinder block wall—she was limp and unresisting—but at the last moment, I hesitated. I abruptly saw myself as though from above, looking down upon the two of us, seeing what I was doing to another human being.

  Self-consciousness is not always a good thing. (I speak not morally here but tactically.)

  Yet I had established so much momentum that I could not stop my rush. Ramona’s head did indeed hit the wall but not with the force that Mr. Boyle had (very wisely) recommended. Still, it produced a kind of sickening smack, and, as I released her, she bounced away from the wall and collapsed to the floor onto her back. Her arms flapped against the concrete.

  I was horrified.

  On the floor, Ramona moaned unhappily and then her hand reached up to touch her head. She gasped, almost a cough. When her hand came away, it was dripping red.

  She blinked again, looked left and right, then blinked some more. Tentatively, she touched her stomach. She exhaled dramatically.

  Then, ever so slowly, she rolled over.

  Many years later, someone suggested to me that it was exactly at this moment that I should have sprinted forward and kicked Ramona with as much enthusiasm as possible, directly in the face.

  This I failed to do.

  Slowly, slowly, she raised herself onto hands and knees. She shook her head, and I was reminded of a dog shaking off water. She looked around the cell again, and this time she saw me. Her small eyes narrowed. “Kill you,” she said.

  She pushed herself to her feet. Blood was trickling from behind her bangs and down along the right side of her face. She wiped it away. She wavered slightly. With visible effort, wincing, she forced herself upright. “Kill you, bitch,” she said.

  I readied myself.

  For what, precisely, I did not know. I did know that I would not be permitted any more tricks. Not that I possessed any; my bag was empty.

  Just as she made a lumbering move toward me, hurried footsteps came clattering down the corridor.

  “Disgraceful,” I heard a male voice say. “Outrageous!”

  Then, through the bars, I saw him: a short and balding middle-aged man in a gray wool suit who held a derby hat in his left hand and, surprisingly, my purse in his right. Mrs. Hadley stood beside him, looking more cowed than I would have believed possible. She was fumbling with her keys.

  “Open it up!” said the man. “Right now, madam, or I’ll slap a suit against the city so fast your nose will bleed.” He was splendidly splenetic—his wide eyes were glaring, his face was bright red against the white of his handlebar mustache.

  Mrs. Hadley slipped the key into the lock, turned it, and pulled the door open. She stepped back, looking down.

  The man rushed in and leaned toward me. “You all right, kiddo?” Lightly, he tapped the crown of his derby against my shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

  He turned to Ramona. She had backed up against the wall, and now she was wiping more blood from her face. He said, “What happened to you?”

  She glanced at Mrs. Hadley, looked back at the man, and lifted her chin. Her defiance was as flimsy as mine had been with Becker and Vandervalk, and I actually felt a sputter of sympathy. She said, “I slipped.”

  The man looked at Mrs. Hadley, looked at Ramona, then looked at me. The redness drained from his face. He grinned at me. “Okay. I’m Morrie Lipkind. You’re Amanda Burton. We’re leaving.” He looked down at my feet. “You got shoes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Terrific. Put ’em on.”

  I sat down on the bed and picked up a shoe. As I slipped it on, he turned back to Mrs. Hadley.

  He said, “This is low. This is about as goddamn low as it gets.”

  Mrs. Hadley said, “It wasn’t my—”

  “Save it. You tell that little pig Vandervalk that he’ll hear from me in the morning.”

  I stood up.

  Mr. Lipkind said, “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  He handed me the purse. “They got anything else of yours?”

  “My watch,” I said.

  He turned to Mrs. Hadley, whose hand was already fumbling in the pocket of her uniform.

  I noticed, with surprise, that her face was a vivid scarlet, and I felt a kind of horrible gloating satisfaction, one that I had never felt before, and one that I did not much care for.

  Mr. Lipkind stepped over, snatched away the watch, stepped back, handed it to me, and placed his arm around my shoulder. “Let’s go. You can put it on in the car.”

  I glanced at the time.

  Nine thirty. That seemed impossible. I had been certain that it was two or three in the morning.

  Mr. Lipkind looked at Ramona then looked back at me. “What about her?” He nodded toward the girl.

  She frowned and glanced away, blinking very quickly.

  It was the blinking that did it.

  I turned to Mr. Lipkind. “Can you get her out?”

  “I can do anything,” he said. Then he turned to Ramona. “You want out?”

  Her eyes darted back and forth as she looked from Mr. Lipkind to me to Mrs. Hadley. She looked back up at Mr. Lipkind. “Uh huh.”

  “Outside the front door,” he told her. “No farther.”

  She nodded. “Uh huh.”

  Mrs. Hadley’s voice was querulous. “You can’t do that, your papers say—”

  “Madam,” said Mr. Lipkind, “please shut it.”

  As soon as we stepped outside into the summer night, through a small door onto Centre Street, Ramona started running. Without a glance back, her boots clomping on the asphalt, she sprinted across the street.

  “You’re welcome,” Mr. Lipkind muttered. He stroked his hand down his handlebar mustache.

  She slipped like a ghost into an alleyway.

  I did see her once again, some ten years later, on a cruise ship heading for Havana. She was sailing in first class, and I was working undercover, traveling in steerage. By then we were both professionals, and we each let the other do her job.

  Mr. Lipkind’s car was a glossy black Cadillac that came with its own livery driver, a large black man named Robert. As Mr. Lipkind and I settled down on the leather backseat, he introduced me to the man.

  In the glow of the car’s overhead light I could see Robert nod his big handsome head. “Miss,” he said. Deep and resonant, his voice reminded me of Paul Robeson’s.

  Mr. Lipkind pulled the door shut, and the light went out. “Okay,” he said to me. “Tell me about it.”

  The car moved forward.

  I said, “My uncle, you mean?”

  “You can tell me that part later. Tell me about the cops. When did they turn up?”

  And so, as the big car purred through the nighttime city, streamers of bright lights flickering by on either side of us, red and white and green, I told him.

  Now and then he interrupted with a question.

  “So when did Becker make an entrance?” “They feed you?” “That Ramona babe. She hurt you?”

  When I told him what Becker and Vandervalk had wanted me to say—that my uncle had in some way interfered with me—he shook his head. “Bottom of the barrel stuff. They’re desperate. They got no one else for this.”

  When, finally, I finished, he shook his head again. “Cossacks,” he said. “Filthy Cossacks. Putting the frame on a kid. You want to, Amanda, we can sue ’em blind. Personally, tell the truth, I’d love to shiv that Vandervalk.”

  “But how did you know where I was?” I asked him.

  “I—hold on, we’re here.” He leaned toward the driver. “Robert, let us off across the street, okay? Then, you don’t mind, you could zip over to the apartment and gr
ab the stuff. ’Kay?”

  “Okay,” came the deep bass voice.

  We were in Midtown, somewhere in the Forties. The Cadillac swung over to the right and came to a smooth stop. Mr. Lipkind opened the door, stepped out onto the curb, and held the door for me. After I clambered out of the car, he slammed the door shut.

  We walked around the Cadillac. He looked left and right, waited for a few cars to pass, then said, “Okay, kiddo.”

  We were heading across the asphalt toward an expensive-looking hotel called the Algonquin. I followed him through the big brass-and-glass door into the carpeted lobby, and then across it, between elegant pillars of polished wood. Mr. Lipkind waved his derby at a man behind the front desk and the man nodded. When we arrived at a pair of elevators, Mr. Lipkind pushed the UP button.

  “You were going to tell me,” I said, “how you knew about me.”

  One of the elevator doors smoothly rumbled open.

  He grinned at me. “Tell you in a minute. In you go.”

  It was all very mysterious, but the man had arrived in my life as a wonderful deus ex machina. He had plucked me away from that frightful little cell, plucked me away from Mrs. Hadley and Lieutenant Becker and Mr. Vandervalk. I stepped into the elevator. It smelled of perfume, a huge improvement over the various bouquets available at police headquarters.

  The elevator rose three floors and then stopped. The door opened, and Mr. Lipkind held it back with his hand while I stepped into the corridor. He followed me out and the door rumbled shut behind him.

  “This way,” he said.

  We padded along the thick red runner of the hallway floor until we came to room 311. He knocked on the door.

  After a moment, it was opened by an attractive woman in her early thirties. She was tiny—not quite five feet tall. Her shiny, short black hair was parted on the right, and she wore a smart green dress that showed off her excellent legs and her black patent leather pumps. I could smell her perfume, laced with the woodsy fragrance of chypre.

  She looked from Mr. Lipkind to me and then back at Mr. Lipkind. She smiled. “Hail the conquering hero.” Her voice was soft, and she spoke with the expensive drawl taught in East Coast finishing schools. When she turned to me, the smile widened into something dazzling. “Hey, Amanda. Get your ass in here.”