by David Mamet
“Nobody pays you to want to do it.”
“Or I’ve forgotten how.”
“Oh, you poor thing, what is it, writer’s block? Does the wee thing have writer’s block . . . ?”
“I might,” Mike said. “What are the symptoms?”
“I don’t know; I don’t understand writer’s block,” Crouch said. “I’m sure it’s very high toned, and thrilling, like these other psychological complaints. I, myself (or ‘I,’ as one used to say, when he could still speak), could never afford it. As I had a Sainted Mother at home, who, without my wages, would have been hard put to drink herself to death. Further: I think, if one can afford it, but one has nothing to say, one should not write. This is not writer’s block but common courtesy.”
“I do not have writer’s block,” Mike said.
“Good,” Crouch said, “for that is a disease of the rich, and God knows you can’t afford it.”
“I—”
“Like gout,” Crouch said. “I beg your pardon, you were speaking.”
“I was drunk,” Mike said.
“Yes, I understand,” Crouch said.
“. . . and,” Mike said.
“I was at the funeral,” Crouch said. “You want to be a sob sister, I’ll fire Miss Fisk.”
“Miss Fisk is doing a fine job,” Mike said.
“You read it?” Crouch said.
“I would rather,” Mike said, “do any number of things.”
“The women read it,” Crouch said. “At least that is what Circulation says.”
“They ought to know,” Mike said.
“Lovemaking to one side,” Crouch said, “take Poochy, scoot down to the South Side; we require bold, clear words and gruesome pictures on the murder of this colored girl.”
“Really?” Mike said. Crouch wrote an address on a slip of paper. “Send some cub out,” Mike said, “I don’t—”
“Yeah, but when I tell you this you will,” Crouch said. “Who is the girl?”
“I don’t care,” said Mike.
“She was a maid. She worked for Lita Grey, maîtresse en titre to the LL Jackie Weiss.”
“No. Everybody works for someone,” Mike said. “It won’t stretch.”
“Well, this might stretch it,” Crouch said. “While you were playing Ten Nights in a Barroom, Lita Grey, late of East Lake Shore Drive, has gone quite missing. That’s right.”
Crouch handed him the slip of paper.
“Go the fuck back to work,” Crouch said.
Chapter 25
The dead black girl had been identified as one Ruth Watkins. She was already on a gurney in the tenement hall, covered with a sheet. Mike drew back the sheet. Most of her head was gone, and her hands showed evidence of torture.
Poochy, followed by Mike, elbowed his way into the doorway of the murder room. The flashbulb caught the faces of the two attendants, glaring white. The sergeant came over to Mike.
“You lookin’ for Reilly?” he said.
“Reilly,” Mike said, “. . . this rate a lieutenant? What’s Reilly doing here?”
“He’s at the drugstore, talking to Downtown. I heard about your girl. I’m sorry,” the sergeant said.
“What the hell. Thank you,” Mike said. He looked a question to the sergeant, who nodded him into the room. “Yeah, alright,” he said.
The body’s position had been chalked out on the loose-weave rug. The flat outline showed one arm stretched forward. The arrow marked inside the head indicated she had been facedown. That she was shot on the floor was clear from the huge bloodstain around the chalked head, and the hole in the carpet. The hole was singed, indicating the weapon’s muzzle had most probably been placed against the head.
Mike felt the sergeant moving up behind him. “Guy comes in, girl’s in bed,” the sergeant said. “Fucked her around a bit. Hit her here and there, took a knife to her hands. She gets free . . . ?” He formed his hand into a pistol, and put it up against the side of his head. “Large caliber,” he said. The sergeant nodded. Ruth Watkins had died, then, on the floor, facedown, sprawled out, and reaching toward the dresser.
“Her feet got caught up in the sheets,” the sergeant said. “Going for the dresser, tangled up, she falls, guy? Walks right over, nothing left of her head.”
“Gun in the dresser? Going for a gun . . . ?” Mike said.
The sergeant nodded. Mike walked over to the dresser’s half-open top drawer. A small pearl-handled .25 automatic lay in the pile of neatly folded silk handkerchiefs.
“Your guys open the dresser?”
“I did,” the sergeant said. He turned to the cops in the room. “The fucken gun there, I saw it. I want it to be there, ’til I sign off.” He waved his small black notebook. “I got it in the report. Gun was there when I saw it. Better be there when Homicide comes. It happens after then . . . They take over, their lookout.”
Mike looked at the floor. “You find a shell?” he said.
The cop shook his head.
“Who shot her?” Mike said.
“Jealous husband, jealous wife, not a thief, ’cause . . .” He swept his arm around the room, which was intact, and held articles easily translated into cash. “Clock, silver clock,” the sergeant said, “radio, for chrissake, couple of furs in the clos—” He raised his voice. “The fucken furs, I saw ’em.” He muttered, “Fucken job . . .”
“Not the same as when you came on, huh?” Mike said.
“Aw, quit yer kiddin’,” the cop said, in a brogue. “I’ll tell you what, however, truly, is, kids coming up, you’d think they studied with the firemen, what sticks to their fingers, it’s a wonder they don’t, additionally, sell the bodies to the morgue, spare parts. Or flog ’em for horsemeat, fucken thieves.”
Reilly, the homicide detective, appeared in the apartment door. The sergeant went to him, opening his notebook. Reilly surveyed the room, caught Mike’s eye, and nodded a greeting.
The evidence technician, on his knees, was digging with a scalpel around the singed hole in the floor. Reilly stood by Mike, lighting a cigarette. He offered one of the pack to Mike, who took one. Reilly nodded at the chalked-out form. “Everybody loves a lover,” he said.
Mike lit his cigarette. “Brings you down?” he said.
“Brings me down?” Reilly said. “Communication from Hizzonner, may have come to your attention, ‘lack of appropriate response, investigation, crimes against persons, the colored community.’”
“Uh-huh,” Mike said.
“. . . What’d the girl do?” Mike said.
“Do?” Reilly said. “How do I know? She was a maid, what do I know?”
Poochy stood over the chalked rug. He took a flashbulb from his overcoat pocket, licked the contact, and snapped it into the flash holder.
“Yeah, one,” Reilly told him, “and then, that’s it.”
The evidence technician had taken a small forceps and removed a large, deformed slug of lead from the wooden floor. Mike watched him as he held the slug. He angled it toward the light, turned it, and looked at it intently.
He shook his head, and shrugged. “Looks like a forty-five,” he said.
The technician took a small glassine envelope from his kit and dropped the slug into it, then dropped the envelope into his kit. Poochy went up on his tiptoes to take the photograph. The flash went off.
“Ah, for chrissake,” Reilly said. He turned away, squinting to clear his eyes. He looked down into the dresser drawer and picked up the small automatic—he turned it and found the initials J.W. set into the grip. He thought a moment, and pocketed the gun. The uniform cops, in deference to rank, mimed witnessing nothing. As they turned away Mike stooped over the evidence kit and removed the envelope holding the slug.
Mike walked slowly past Poochy. “Pop a couple flashbulbs,” he said, “and get us thrown out of here.”
Mike continued walking toward the closet, where Reilly was instructing the sergeant. The sergeant was nodding his comprehension, when the next flashbulb went off. T
he detective turned, and started out of the room as the second bulb went off.
“I thought I told you,” he said.
Mike heard the altercation as he entered the closet. Three floor-length furs hung on oversized white satin padded hangers. The hangers were embroidered in large flowery script, Mlle Antoine, Chicago. Mike opened the coats, each labeled Mlle Antoine.
There was a fourth hanger marked Mlle Antoine. It held no coat.
Chapter 26
Peekaboo nodded permission at Marcus, and he began.
“White folks,” Marcus said, “let me begin with this: see nothing.”
“As a journalist I’m well aware,” Mike said.
“. . . You don’t realize,” Marcus said, “is that black folks see everything. And, as importantly, hear everything. D’you know that?”
“He can stand instruction,” Peekaboo said.
“The girl was tortured,” Mike said.
“And if you wanted, truly, to understand, whatever you call it, ‘human nature,’” Marcus said, “your school of philosophy would be not here, but a barbershop on the Stroll.”
“I’m the wrong color,” Mike said.
“Yes, and that’s insurmountable,” Marcus said. “Where we: see everything, hear everything, repair to our Forum to thrash it about, until it makes sense.”
“And return, wiser to the world?” Mike said.
“No,” Marcus said. “We live in the world. You see, we live in the world.”
“Where the fuck else would we live? Marcus,” Peekaboo said, “that snow gonna kill you.”
“I don’t care,” Marcus said. “Of course it’s gonna kill me. What the fuck do I care? Some of the girls here,” he said, “break your heart, see them get hooked on the shit, that’s sad. The other hand, it makes it easier have someone to talk to, and they like to talk.”
“Ruth Watkins. Worked for Lita Grey,” Mike said.
“The girl, worked for Lita Grey, I knew her, through her brother, ’fore he went away, that is, I knew of her.”
“Who was she?” Mike said.
“Ruth Watkins? She was a black girl,” Marcus said. “Intelligent girl, got took up, by some white man, so on, worked for his whore.”
“How did you know of her?” Mike said.
“I said, through her brother. He worked downtown? The Chez Montmartre.”
“Doing what?” Mike said.
“He worked there running errands awhile some time back. So on. His sister? Comes to meet him, one day, swept up by one of their Sheenies there, for a while, when her brother goes downstate; white man?, she takes his sympathy, this and that, he gives her the clap, claims she gave it to him, bats her around, what he’s going to tell his wife? The altercation, back room of the Chez. Very bad. Coming out, this girl, no place to go, no cash, she’s sick, isn’t she taken up by this white girl.” Marcus stopped. “You really see Bessie Coleman fly?” he said.
“I did,” Mike said.
“Where was that?”
“It was right here on Cottage Grove, the air show, ’twenty-five?”
“What’d she do?”
“She flew all over the sky and threw the plane around,” Mike said. “She snatched a handkerchief off the ground with her wingtip.”
“She flying anymore?”
“Not that I know of,” Mike said.
“Any black men fly in France?”
“Not for the AEF,” Mike said.
“Who then?” Marcus said.
“They flew for the French,” Mike said. “They don’t see color like we do.”
“I know that,” Marcus said, “from the tales, the boys came home.”
“Some of ’em stayed there, and got married,” Mike said.
“Yes, they did. To the white women,” Marcus said.
“They don’t see color the way we do,” Mike said.
“Why’d they kill Ruth Watkins?” Marcus said. “Do you think?”
“Well, as they roughed her up, beforehand, it would seem she died because she knew something, wouldn’t you say?”
“Or the next worse thing,” Marcus said, “they thought she did, but she didn’t.”
“Yes, that’s the bad one,” Mike said.
“And the other girl’s gone missing,” Mike said.
“The other girl?”
“. . . She worked for,” Mike said.
“Oh, yes.”
“Lita Grey.”
“Yeah well, they will have done her, too,” Marcus said.
“What were they looking for,” Mike said, “. . . do you think?”
“Well, you might have to want to ask that of the cops,” Marcus said.
“The cops?” Mike said. “Why?”
“As previous, and I’m sure unconnected, to her death, word is, they pulled her in on a pawn ticket. Yeah, yeah. I would like to see justice done. I don’t know what it is, but I would like to see it.”
“Pawn ticket?” Mike said.
“Piece of jewelry she was hocking,” Marcus said.
“Ruth Watkins?”
“That’s right.”
“You saying the cops fingered her?” Mike said.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Marcus said. “It’s just she pawned something.”
“I don’t suppose you know where,” Mike said.
“Well, of course I know where,” Marcus said, “where does anyone?”
Chapter 27
Everyone, Mike learned, went to Levinson’s Loan Office, at Twenty-Fifth and State. Mike was the only white in the store, with the exception of its owner, Hersh Feldstein, Levinson’s son-in-law.
Hersh and his black customer were separated by the wicket. Hersh had the loupe in his eye and was prying the back off a large gold pocket watch.
“My grandfather gave it to me,” the customer said. Hersh nodded.
“Seventeen jewels,” the man said.
Hersh closed the watch, and polished it with a jeweler’s cloth. He handed it back through the wicket. “I can let you have ten bucks,” he said.
“What about I want to sell it?” the customer said.
“Look in the window,” Hersh said. “I got a million of ’em.”
“Then whyn’t you take one more?” the man said.
“You’re better,” Hersh said, “you want to sell it, take it to the barbershop, Remington’s, someplace, show it around.”
“I showed it around,” the man said, “nobody wanted to touch it.”
“There you go.” Hersh smiled.
“I got this watch,” the man said.
“I din’t ask you where you got it,” Hersh said. “I understand. You got a business, I got a business.”
“Give me the ten bucks,” the man said.
Hersh took the watch back, and began filling out a pawn ticket. He looked up at Mike. “One moment,” he said.
Hersh showed Mike the entry in the pawn book: one platinum brooch, shape of a violin, fourteen stones, value fifty-five dollars, fifteen dollars in pawn, Miss Ruth Watkins.
“Why’d you turn her in?” Mike said.
“I run a business,” Hersh said, “people needing money come in here with various articles, if I can I accommodate them. How would I feed my family, I considered myself the Champion of Abstract Justice?”
“You didn’t turn her in?” Mike said.
“Kid,” Hersh said, “you ever hear ‘Live and let live’?”
“I have,” Mike said.
“I work amongst the colored,” Hersh said, “we get along, why shouldn’t we? I’m not in the business, turning people in.”
“Somebody knew she came here,” Mike said.
“Yeah, that’s not unlikely,” Hersh said, “as the cops came by, with the insurance people, every pawnshop the South Side, examining the books.”
“Looking for the brooch?” Mike said.
“The entry, it would seem, caught their attention.” He showed Mike the card clipped to the page bearing the entry of the brooch: Mid-Continental Insurance.
“They wrote it down?” Mike said.
“They wrote her address down,” Hersh said.
Mike shook his head to clear it.
“They come by often?” Mike said.
“I’m walking a tightrope,” Hersh said. “My customers tolerate me, the cops tolerate me, everybody tolerates me, many would love to find a reason, ruin my fucken life because I’m white, or a Jew, or white and a Jew, or a pawnbroker or all of the above. But we get along. Who’s in charge of that? I am. And it’s just doing business.”
“Was this unusual, that the cops came by with the insurance guy?” Mike said.
Hersh sighed.
“Was it?”
“The piece was valuable, but not that valuable,” Hersh said.
“The piece, the violin, they ask about it specifically?”
“What is it to you, finally?” Hersh said.
“I’m doing my job,” Mike said. “For the gallant Tribune.”
“What is that job?” Hersh said.
“I’d like to find out who killed the girl.”
“I would too,” Hersh said.
“Why?”
“I liked her,” Hersh said. “She was a nice kid.”
“Why’d you remember her?”
“She was quite good-looking. Beautifully dressed . . .”
“You’d seen her before?”
“Never saw her before.”
“You’d remember?”
“I remember everything,” Hersh said.
“What was she wearing?” Mike said.
“Lamb coat, Persian.”
“She try to pawn it?” Mike said.
Hersh closed the record book.
“She try to pawn it?” Mike repeated.
“Alright, she did. I wouldn’t touch it,” Hersh said.
“Why not?”
“Oh, come on,” Hersh said.
“Specifically,” Mike said.
“Well, it had initials in it, they weren’t hers.”
“What were the initials?”
“As I recall, they were L.G.,” Hersh said.
“As you ‘recall,’” Mike said, “I thought you remembered everything.”
“It was a figure of speech,” Hersh said. “She cop the coat?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Mike said.