Day of Wrath

by Jonathan Valin

  I bent down beside her and whispered, “It’s going to be all right.” Then I put my arms around her and held her. After a time, I took a handkerchief from my pocket and wiped off her face.

  “I thought you didn’t like me,” she said with surprise.

  “I don’t dislike you,” I said, trying to find a way to explain it—what I’d been feeling for two days. “It’s this street. I grew up on a street like this. I know it too well.”

  “Why do you hate it?”

  I helped her to her feet. She was still clutching the glass ashtray to her breast. I pulled it away and put it back on the end table.

  “I don’t hate it,” I said. “I just don’t agree with it.”

  She laughed weakly. “I don’t think you’re being honest.”

  “Perhaps not,” I said. “Are you all right?”

  She shook her head. “No, I feel awful.”

  “I’m sorry if what I said this morning—if it upset you.”

  “It’s not you, Harry.” She took a deep breath and said, “Maybe I’d better lie down for a bit.”

  “Do you want me to call anyone? A neighbor?”

  “There’s no one to call,” she said simply. “If you’d stay here, just for a bit. Until I fell asleep?”

  “All right. I wanted to look through Robbie’s room again, anyway.”

  We turned to the stairs like an old married couple retiring for the night.

  “I’m sorry I broke down,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”

  When we got to the bedroom, she pressed my arm. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be O.K. now. I just needed a shoulder to cry on, I guess. I’ll be fine.” She turned to the door, then looked back at me. “I don’t think you disagree with it, Harry. The street and all this.” She gestured about her. “I think you’re disappointed in it. And that’s a very different thing. You seem to be a man who is easily disappointed in people. You must have very high standards.”

  “For everyone but myself,” I said with a laugh.

  “No,” she said earnestly. “I don’t believe that. You’re idealistic, which is what makes you such an odd man. As for me...I just want things to be the way they were. I just want my daughter back.”

  She stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind her.

  ******

  I spent an hour going through Robbie’s things one more time. But I wasn’t thinking about the girl as I looked over the books and the jewelry and the clothing. I was thinking about her mother, who was lying in a bed in the adjoining room, trying to make sense out of the jumbled materials of her own life—trying to piece it all back together, as if it were one of her china cups.

  She’d come close to breaking down an hour before. So close it had worried me. I wasn’t in the business of keeping other people sane. I knew that. But I’d acted as if I were, partly because the woman had needed reassurance, partly because I’d felt guilty for the way I’d treated her earlier that morning, and partly because it had been the only thing to do. It had been thoroughly unprofessional to pretend there was no reason to worry about Robbie’s welfare. The whole business left me feeling vaguely conspiratorial, as if I’d committed myself to a scheme to keep Mildred from learning the truth about her daughter—not just the truth about what had happened to her, but the truth about what had happened to their relationship. Mildred only wanted things to be the same as they were; the truth was that they could never be the same again. Not after what had happened to Bobby Caldwell. Not after what she’d begun to discover about Robbie. And not after what Robbie had probably learned about herself.

  10

  I DIDN’T find anything new in Robbie’s room. I spent a few minutes thumbing through the Gurdjieff and the Rueben books. The one looked like it had barely been opened; the other had been thoroughly read and underscored, as if Robbie had been prepping for an exam in sex education. It would have been easy to make a good deal out of that, if I hadn’t dimly remembered my own adolescence and all those nights spent squinting over art books and medical texts in my father’s study. That was how I picked up my sex education—ogling paintings by Rubens and nude photographs of hebephrenics. It’s no wonder you’re an odd man, Harry, I said to myself.

  The hash pipe and the papers had been purchased at The Head Shop in Mt. Adams. Thumbnail price tags were still attached to each. There was no store label in the T-shirt or on any of the other items. I put them all back in the cardboard box, put the box in the closet, and closed the sliding door. The house was still and sleepy, save for the faint hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. I tiptoed past Mildred’s bedroom and down the stairs.

  Outside, everything was still and sleepy, too. The boys had gone in from the playfield. And the street was deserted, except for a tall, gray-haired priest sweeping dust from the cobbled stairs leading to the school. I watched him for a moment—lean, black, intent—bent to his work as if the sweeping actually meant something, as if he wouldn’t have to do the same thing again the next afternoon when the boys trudged in from the playfields. He finished with a flourish, tamping the broom stoutly on the stone then putting his hands to his hips with the air of a man well satisfied with what he’d done. He went inside and I turned back to the street, back to my job.

  I walked up the sidewalk to the Rostow home. Past the plaster Negro with his wide-eyed, bedevilled look. And up to the paneled door. Madge Rostow answered my knock.

  She had a plaid scarf on her head and a plaid apron on over her blouse and pants. Little taffy-colored curls had escaped from under the scarf and a big lock was dangling in the middle of her face. She blew it out of her eyes with an exhausted huff and smiled at me wearily.

  “You caught me in the middle of house cleaning,” she said. “Thursday is my day to sweep and dust.”

  “I just wanted to speak to Sylvia for a minute.”

  She nodded smartly—like a second lieutenant’s salute. “Sure. Come in.”

  I walked into the living room and sat down on the edge of the couch. Madge went over to the staircase and shouted, “Syl?”

  “What do you want?” the girl shouted back.

  Madge Rostow flashed me an apologetic smile, then turned back to the staircase with something like vengeance in her eyes. “Get down here!” she commanded.

  “Aw, Mom,” the girl called out.

  Madge turned back to me. “We read about Bobby Caldwell. My Lord, it’s hard to believe that that could happen on this street. I mean, you usually read about those things happening in Covington or Milford or some godawful place. But on Eastlawn Drive!” She shook her head disbelievingly. “It didn’t have anything to do with Robbie, did it? That would just be too horrible, if Robbie...Mildred must be a nervous wreck.”

  “She’s in a pretty bad way,” I said.

  Madge Rostow pulled the scarf off of her head and her hair bobbed once, as if it were suspended on a heavy spring, then settled into a permanent wave. “I’m going to go talk to her,” she said with concern. “I tried calling her earlier this morning, but the line was busy.”

  I started to tell her that Mildred was sleeping, then checked myself. Mildred needed the company and, besides, I wanted Sylvia to myself. The Rostow woman walked to the door just as her daughter came downstairs. The girl had a bottle of Coke in her left hand. When she saw me sitting there, she froze and looked beseechingly at her mother.

  “Mom,” she whined. “I don’t want to talk to him.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Madge Rostow said. “I’m going next door and if I come back and find out that you’ve been rude, I’m going to ground you for the week.”

  “Mom!” the girl cried.

  But Madge was already out the door and down the walk.

  Sylvia Rostow stared after her mother for a moment, then turned slowly back to me. She stood on the landing, pivoting on one bare foot—her right hand on the banister, her left holding the Coke bottle. She had the same smug, arrogant look on her face that she’d had the day before. Only this time I thought
I saw a bit of fear in her eyes. It made her whole posture look slightly unnatural, like the pose of a fourteen-year-old model trying to look all grown up. She stood on the landing for another couple of seconds, then sashayed into the living room. She was wearing blue denim overalls and a pink bib-collar blouse. She collapsed on one of the chairs, boosted the Coke to her mouth, and pretended to sip on it. But her eyes didn’t leave my face.

  “You read about Bobby, didn’t you?” I said.

  She nodded—the Coke still at her lips. She pulled the bottle away suddenly, with a smacking noise, and rubbed her round mouth. “I don’t have to talk to you,” she said with bravado. “I don’t want to. And I don’t have to.”

  “Do you know who did that to him, Sylvia? Who cut him up like that?”

  “I told you,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “Would you rather talk to the police?” I asked.

  Her plump round face went white. “What do you mean the police? What do I have to do with it?”

  “You were a friend of Bobby’s, weren’t you? The police will want to talk to his friends.”

  She pulled herself up in the chair and tried to smile at me. “I wasn’t his friend,” she said almost gaily. “You’ve got the wrong idea, if you think I was his friend. Robbie was his friend. She’s the one you should talk to.”

  “Only she’s a little hard to find at the moment, Sylvia. You know that.”

  “So?” she said. “What am I—her keeper or something? Go talk to her, why don’t you? And just leave me out of it.”

  “What are you frightened of, Sylvia?” I said. “What’s scaring you?”

  “Who said I was scared?” she said with a phoney laugh. “I’m not scared. I just don’t want to talk to you, O.K.?”

  I shook my head and the smile came right off her face.

  “Look,” she said. “Just get out of my life, O.K.?”

  “Not until you tell me what’s frightening you.”

  “Nothing’s frightening me!” she shouted and pounded so hard on the arms of the chair that a bit of Coke spouted out of the bottle. “Just quit saying that, O.K.?”

  “Is it what happened to Bobby?” I said. “Is that what’s bothering you? Did it have something to do with Robbie Segal?”

  She bit her lip and looked longingly at the front door.

  “Momma’s not here right now, Sylvia,” I said. “It’s just you and me.”

  She whirled in the chair. “I don’t want to talk about what happened to Bobby. Understand? I don’t. O.K.?” She bit her lip again. “I don’t know anything about it. So why don’t you leave me alone.”

  “All right, Sylvia.”

  She made a small, satisfied face, as if she weren’t quite sure she’d won out.

  I got up from the couch and started for the door. She followed me with her eyes—the look of triumph growing bolder, less contained.

  “I can’t make any promises about the police, though,” I said over my shoulder. “You’ll have to talk to them.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she said cunningly.

  “Believe what you want. But I’m telling you, I’m going to have to go to the police.”

  “Why?” she said sweetly. “Why do you have to do that? I told you I didn’t know anything. Why do you have to go to the police?”

  “Because I think you’re lying,” I said, staring at her coldly.

  For a second I thought she was going to throw the Coke bottle at me. Sylvia Rostow was a little girl so used to getting her own way that she thought she was invincible. And like most men and women who slide through life on charm alone, she was fully capable of murdering anyone who threatened her powers. “I hate you!” she said furiously. “You’re a real bastard.”

  “All right, I’m a bastard. But if you don’t want the police to come calling, you’ll answer my questions.”

  She flung herself back in the chair and stared daggers at me. “I’m not going to talk about Robbie,” she said through her teeth. “I don’t know anything about Robbie.”

  “What about the Caldwell kid, then? Do you have any idea who might have done that to him?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He hung around with some people at school...”

  “What people?”

  “I don’t know,” she said and tossed her head dramatically. “Greasers. Why don’t you talk to them?”

  “What are their names?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “C’mon, Sylvia,” I said. “Give me a name.”

  “Hank Lemon,” she spat out. “There. Satisfied?”

  I wrote the name down in my notebook. “Where does he live?”

  “On the other side of Eastlawn,” she said. “Near Bobby.”

  She’d lost interest in the talk. I could see it in her face. Which probably meant that giving me Hank Lemon’s name hadn’t really cost her anything she wasn’t fully prepared to give up. Whether there was more there—whether she actually suspected some connection between Bobby’s death and Robbie’s disappearance, or whether she was just putting on a show—I couldn’t tell. She liked being the center of attention. I knew that much. On the other hand, her fear of the police seemed genuine. But then most teenagers were afraid of the police. And most teenagers didn’t like to snitch on their friends, either.

  She tilted the Coke to her lips and drained it noisily. “I don’t want to talk any more,” she said, tossing the empty bottle on the rug. “Go on and tell the cops about me if you want to. My dad won’t let anything happen to me.”

  She got up and walked across the room to the staircase. “Go on and tell them,” she said over her shoulder. “See if I care.”

  ******

  I found an Anthony Lemon on Eastlawn in Madge Rostow’s phone book. The address was just a couple of houses down from Pastor C. Caldwell’s apartment. It would have been a short walk from the Rostow home. Only I didn’t feel like walking it. Not after the previous night. So I stepped out to the street, got in the Pinto, and drove down the block—coasting by the big yellow apartment houses and their treeless yards—until I got to a small, red-brick four-family, with white siding on the upper story and a tiny cement stoop. There were two holly bushes planted on either side of the stoop and a pair of Pennsylvania Dutch planter boxes hanging from each of the lower-story windows. The only things growing in the muddy dirt of the planters were cigarette butts—a neat row of them, stubbed and half-buried in the soil.

  I opened the storm door and stepped into a small tiled hall. There were two apartment doors on either side of the landing and a staircase opposite the door, leading up to the second-story apartments. Another stairway led to the basement. Someone was working on his car downstairs. I could hear an engine racing and the clatter of tools in a tool box.

  I found Anthony Lemon’s name on the mailbox—Apartment Two—and knocked on the right-hand door. A small, fat man in a white T-shirt and chino work pants answered my knock. The shirt was too small for him. It rode up his big, pendulous belly, leaving a pale layer of naked flesh hanging beneath it. The rest of Anthony Lemon was just as pale and fleshy as his beer gut. Fat, sweaty face, ringed at the neck with double chins. Curly black hair that looked wet to the touch. And a fat man’s innocent blue eyes and bee-stung lips.

  “Yeah?” he said gruffly. “What can I do for you?”

  His breath smelled of beer. The apartment behind him of garlic and onions.

  “I’m looking for Hank Lemon,” I said.

  “Downstairs,” the man said and shut the door.

  I turned to the stairway and the door opened again. The fat man rested one arm on the jamb and eyed me suspiciously.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “My name is Stoner. I’m a private detective.” I got my I.D. out of my wallet and showed it to him. “Are you Hank’s father?”

  “Yeah,” he said slowly. “What of it?”

  “I just want to ask the boy a few questions, Mr. Lemon. He isn’t in any trouble.�
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  “This have something to do with that Caldwell kid getting bumped off?”

  I nodded.

  “That was something, wasn’t it?” the fat man said with vague enthusiasm. “Boy, that was something.”

  “Did you know Bobby Caldwell?” I asked him.

  “Sure, I knew Bob. He was an O.K. kid. You can take it from me. Good head on his shoulders. Good with his hands, too. He would have made a damn fine mechanic. He and Hank...they worked on cars together.” His face darkened suddenly. “You don’t think my boy had something to do with the murder, do you?”

  He didn’t give me a chance to answer him. “You better not come around here making any trouble. I got a boy in the Marine Corps twice your size. You come around here making trouble for Hank—you’re going to be plenty sorry.”

  “No trouble, Mr. Lemon,” I said. “Just a few questions.”

  He eyed me again and jerked his head toward the basement door. “Downstairs, like I said.”

  I could feel him watching me all the way down to the first landing. “I’m keeping an eye on you,” I heard him call out.

  The basement walls were unpainted cement block, the floor unpainted concrete. I followed a row of light bulbs to the doors that led to the twin garages. A tall, skinny boy in workshirt and jeans was standing in one of the garages, working on a Plymouth. He had the motor running and the outside door open to vent exhaust.

  He didn’t see me at first—he was so engrossed in what he was doing. I had to walk up and tap him on the arm to get his attention.

  He jerked his head up from under the Plymouth’s hood and stared at me. “Man,” he said over the roar of the engine. “You scared me.”

  He was a tall, swarthy sixteen year old, with dark brown eyes, very white teeth, and a steep straight nose that made him look vaguely like an Indian. The only feature he’d clearly inherited from his father was his black, curly hair. He reached inside the car and shut off the engine, then looked back at me.

  “I said you scared me,” he said again. His voice was high-pitched and boyish.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Are you Hank Lemon?”