by Ed Lacy
Now London was walking around me, his shirt open showing the hair on his big chest. He had a length of dull red rubber hose in his right hand, kept cracking it against the wall every few seconds. It made a nasty sound. All my tiredness turned into a deep pain, a fear sickness. After a time he told me, in Spanish, “We have tried our best to treat you good. Yet you refuse to help us in the smallest way. Even if you did not actually kill Harry, you refuse to help with details which will enable us to bag the killer. I have been up all night and am tired, at the end of my patience. If I have to beat the truth out of you, I will do it.”
Artie suddenly opened the door, a smile on his fleshy face. He shouted, “Jack, we got him now! The boys been grilling Helen downstairs and she finally gave in. Says he told her Harry had decided not to sell them the house—the neighbors were raising all this hell—and Joey was so sore at Harry, he told her he was going to beat the slop out of him!”
They both turned to watch me, an expectant look on their faces like boys who have lit a firecracker and are waiting to see it explode. I was ice-cold with dread for a moment at the thought of Helen—with her temper—being grilled. But then it came to me with great speed how this had to be a trap! Because Helen was stronger than me in many things, and she would simply never lie: not against me—no matter what they were doing to her. And the knowledge that they were forced to resort to lies gave me a trickle of new hope and strength.
I merely stared back at them trusting my face revealed nothing.
“We had to search her for possible concealed weapons … undress her. Wowie first time I ever saw a buck-naked Indian babe … sultry stuff!” Then in a leering whisper loud enough for me to hear, Artie added in London’s ear, “What a strip tease! Sexier than anything I ever seen on a burlesque stage! Like a stag … before the whole midnight tour going off duty. Ya should of heard the cracks. She was crying but we told her there wasn’t any policewoman on duty and if she didn’t strip herself, we’d do it. And there were plenty of volunteers for the job! So she began pulling her things off slowly … got a sweet little shape … and her nipples—!”
They were still staring at me. I wasn’t upset: this also had to be part of their police act. And a wild guess on Artie’s part about the delight of my wife’s bosom. Nor would he forget what he had seen when they had come to our room for me, Helen sitting up in bed for the moment, with only her thin T-shirt on.
London said, “That’s a lousy thing for a woman to be forced to do, before all the men.”
Artie shrugged. “Only following regulations. Supposed to search all—”
“Still a terrible ordeal for a decent woman to go through. Joe, hasn’t this gone far enough? Perhaps now you’ll tell us the real story?”
I nodded. “I will: Harry ran after the ball and vanished. That’s the real story.”
Artie left, slamming the door. London slashed the air before my nose with his rubber hose. While I was far too frightened to laugh at them, I wanted to, because now I was certain I had won. They would never break me, force me to lie. If I did not break I could not be framed. Their stupid plan had backfired because they could not know Helen the way I did….
Yet there was some uneasiness ticking in the back of my mind, growing louder. It was not the business about undressing Helen, or even the remarks about her tetitas. While I would not put anything past a cop when it comes to our women, they would not try it in a police station, not with a bunch of cops around. But it was possible they had brought Helen here for questioning. Had they not said they were also questioning May someplace in the building? And Louisa? Yes, they could bring Helen here. Then who was taking care of the baby?
When I was a kid in the islands being alone was never a problem—I was always hanging about some member of the family. So I hardly know why I have this absolute fear about Henry being alone. It was something I even had words with Helen about, for I did not trust any baby-sitter with my son either. I’ve heard of Hispano kids bitten by rats up here, or run down by cars, or burnt to death by gas-heaters during the winter … while left alone. The blanco papers never fail to blame the parents in such cases, as if they are at fault for the high rents and prices forcing both mama and poppa to work. And in my Henry’s case … such a tiny baby.
I watched London pacing the room, swinging the rubber hose like he was in love with it. I felt myself going to pieces, fear melting my insides. It wasn’t fear of the hose, for myself, but the thought of my helpless son. Oh Dios Mio, if it should be about eight or nine o’clock now he would be awake, screaming for his bottle, for a diaper change … I knew it was a mistake but I could not help asking, “Did Helen bring the baby here? Who is with him?”
London stopped walking abruptly: a guy who has stumbled onto something. “Gosh, Jose, I don’t know about the kid. But he isn’t here in the precinct house. Won’t one of the other mujeres in the house look after him? Or are they all out to work?”
“What has my baby to do with this? Why should he be alone? What if a rat attacks him?” My voice was as shrill as a woman’s.
London nodded. “Don’t you worry, we won’t let anything happen to a little baby.” He picked up a phone from someplace in the darkness outside my ring of light, said to somebody, “Give me the desk. Al, this is Jack London. This Indian dame, the wife of the guy I’m interrogating, when are we going to release her? Oh … sure, sure, but that may take time. Who’s with their kid? What? Sure she has a kid. Yeah, young baby, in the crib in their room. What do you mean you didn’t know? Hell, if you’ve locked the door, how will anybody be able to hear or get to the kid if he cries? That’s good, send a policewoman over right. Hell, what do you mean you’ve sent them all out on assignment? The baby can’t wait until four in the afternoon for the other shift. Kid might starve, or choke on a sheet. What difference does it make who’s to blame? Okay, but I don’t like to call in one of these social work agencies except as a last resort. You know them, once they place a kid in a home … have a hell of a time getting him back. Try to do something soon. Sure, I’ll call you back the second he talks, so you can release the wife.”
He had been half facing me as he talked. I had a hunch this was but another part of the act. Only I could not risk Henry’s life on a hunch! “Why can’t you let Helen go? She certainly has nothing to do with this?” My voice was shaking badly.
London shrugged his thick shoulders. “How do we know she has or she hasn’t—you won’t tell us? If you and Leon did Harry in, she could be part of the plan. Jose, stop stalling. Tell me what happened and I swear I will let your wife go at once.”
“What do you want of me! I can only tell what did happen….”
The phone rang, cut into my sobbing. London listened for what seemed a long time, then scratching the side of his head with his free hand he said, “You sure of this? Blood stains, high up on the factory wall above the warehouse? But how the hell can that be? Sure … must have weighed damn near 200 pounds. No, nothing here. Look I’m … Yes sir, off and running again. I’ll bring him too. Lab boys able to come up with anything about this?” Hanging up, he put on his coat, told me, “Get up, we’re going to the warehouse roof again. Harry must have grown wings.”
“What about my baby?”
“Work that out later. Now we—”
“The hell with later! I don’t want my kid left alone!”
“Then talk, you bastard!”
“I’ve told you all what happened….”
London opened the door, grabbed me by the back of the neck and sent me flying into the hall. After the hours of sitting, motion was a relief, but I wasn’t thinking of that. I saw the bright sun through a window. In the light London’s face looked very haggard. Way the sun was out, it had to be after ten. Henry always awoke at six … yelling his head off in a locked room, he might have fallen from his crib … in pain this second … or dead!
We went down the stairs and London told a new man behind the desk, “Will you tell Artie I’m taking the prisoner to the wareho
use roof, to pick me up there.”
“All squad cars in use,” the desk man said. I glanced around wildly, hoping to see Helen.
London snapped, “That goddamn Artie and his fancy stomach—can’t eat in the joints around here. I’ll get one from the garage.”
The garage was a small building next door and the sun was a tonic on my face, but I didn’t give it any thought. A stooped man in coveralls who didn’t look like a cop told London, “Why didn’t you phone first? Only decent load I have needs a battery charge. Why don’t you flag down a radio car? Or wait a moment for me to—”
London cut him off with, “Make it snappy, Matt.”
“What snappy? If you’d called, given me a chance to—”
“Balls, I want a car not some chatter.”
The mechanic disappeared into the darkness of the back of the garage, behind some sort of wire wall. London and I were alone. I said, “About my baby, can’t you at least allow Helen to go home and bring him here?”
“Worried about your kid, Jose? Crap! You think so damn much of his life, why don’t you talk?”
The tenseness coiled up within me suddenly came apart like a striking snake. I could simply no longer control my anger. London was busy packing his pipe with tobacco. Then as he bent forward to light it, I struck him a Judo chop on the back of his thick neck. In my madness, the blow sort of half-landed on his shoulder, but the pipe flew from his mouth, bouncing toward the door, as he fell to his knees, then pitched forward on the dirty floor.
Glancing around quickly, shaking my numbed right hand, I walked out; forcing myself to walk slowly. Nobody stopped me, no one saw me.
Like a wild animal suddenly fleeing his cage … I felt free. Free to run deeper into this nightmare, into the horror I was sinking in. A Hispano who slugs a cop might as well commit suicide—it is one and the same thing.
But that didn’t matter … regardless of what torture awaited me, I had to get to my Henry … now.
Chapter 6
I WANTED TO run back to our room, but it was too far and anybody running in New York City stands out. A bus was too slow and the subway too risky. I had a buck and change in my pockets and a few blocks from the police station I hailed a cab.
It was a luxury to sat back on the cool leather of the taxi, feeling so relaxed and exhausted I was on the verge of sleep, or passing out. I shut my eyes and the very motion of the cab was soothing. It felt so good I nearly forgot my troubles, and what a big mistake taking a cab could be. Certainly the police would question all taxi drivers near the station house.
I told the driver to stop, paid him off. I was about four blocks from my hotel. I had to stop sleeping with my brains if I wanted to stay out of jail: here I was heading straight for our room where the police would most certainly be awaiting me with open arms and night sticks. But how else could I reach my baby?
I walked past our street—without seeing anybody in front of the hotel—and turned into the next block below. I stepped into a small apartment house as if I belonged there, ran up the five flights to the roof. No one was on the roof and neither did I have a story ready as to what I’d say or do if I was stopped—and a Latino seen on a roof would be stopped. Crossing this roof in the hot sun, I jumped down on the another, across one more, then walked carefully around an air shaft, scrambled up a small wall, and finally came to the roof I wanted: the one opposite our room.
On my belly I crawled to the edge … and what a view I had! There was my Helen walking around in a pair of old blue jeans, and a thin bra very white against her golden brown skin. She was dressing Henry and except for an intense look on her long face things seemed very normal. I lay there in the hot sun, my mind whirling with big thoughts and tiny ones. Like, how we’d certainly have to put up curtains at once, no matter what Helen said—we were practically living in public. There was the sudden relief that the baby was okay, mixed with the bitter realization I had been a sucker. London had angered me into charging wide open after all … his lies about Helen being at the police station and Henry alone in the room! Of course he hadn’t expected me to get away, but now I was not only suspected of murder, but wanted for slugging a cop. Of the two, for a Puerto Rican, the second was worse. If they caught me, they’d work me over until I was dead or crippled for life.
The tar paper on the roof was hot and melting under me, as if to remind me of the hell I was in. If I hadn’t belted London … they could have grilled me from now on and I would never have cracked. If … if. I had clipped a cop. Instead of lying here in the sun feeling sorry for myself, I had much to do and little time in which to do it. I needed to eat and drink, or I would faint. I had to find Rastello the sun-bather. Somehow I had to get in touch with Helen. And the main thing—I had to find Harry’s killer, or killers.
That was the big thing I had to do because by now the police would be convinced I was the murderer. I had run, which was sufficient sign of guilt for them when it comes to one of us. I had not only run, I’d socked a cop; the police would now spend all their time hunting for me … and allowing whoever had killed Harry to get away. So the only thing for me to do, was find the killer.
How absurd and easy it was to say! The only thing for me to do, was find the killer. Who knows how to find a murderer? What do you do? Where do you start, if the police didn’t know who? Crazy as it seemed, perhaps I could show the police their job, for I knew Rastello was lying about not seeing Harry and me. I would question him. And May—she must know something about Harry’s enemies. Yes, I would come up with the true killer and then the worst that would happen to me would be a beating. Once the murderer was found, la jara would let me return to my family alive—I hoped.
I watched Helen slip on a thin polo shirt. Then she adjusted her blue jeans, put Henry in his stroller and started for the door. I could have shouted or waved at her, but if the cops were watching the house below, I’d be trapped. She left the room and I knew where she was going: on sunny days she took Henry down to the Lower Drive and watched the men fishing, the boats passing on the dirty Hudson. I almost felt hurt: Helen was going about things so normally, as if I and my big trouble didn’t exist. But I knew that wasn’t so—what else could she do?
I sat up on the roof, licking my dry lips. I had to get away from here. This was one of the fairly swank houses salted in with the slum-hotels they allowed us to live in. Anyone seeing me on this roof would immediately phone the police. But I waited until Helen came out on the sidewalk below, aware of the way she walked—an Indian proud of her land. She pushed the stroller toward the Drive as I expected and—how glad I was I had been wise enough not to call from the roof—I suddenly saw two men step out from a car parked across from the hotel, and follow her. They even looked like detectives. They all strolled down to the upper Drive and when Helen crossed with the baby, one of the men followed. I had a bird’s view from the roof and a few minutes later I watched him return, say something to the other dick, dismissing Helen with a wave of his heavy hand. They walked slowly back up the block, lit cigarettes, and shook the sweat from their hat bands. They sat in their car again, waiting for me to show up at the hotel. They must have figured Helen, only being out to air the baby, would be a waste of time tailing. Well, their laziness was a break for me.
I ran across the roofs, the way I’d come, and down to the street. The janitor, a large plump old man with thin hair so red it had to be a cheap dye job, was polishing the door brass. As I breezed by he asked, “Hey, where you been?”
“Making a delivery,” I said, without stopping. And that gave me an idea for disguise. Most of the big stores along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue used Hispanos for deliveries—but rarely ever for clerks, of course. (As a delivery boy there was less chance of being noticed.)
I crossed West End Avenue, feeling naked and exposed. At Broadway I stopped for an orange drink and a doughnut. There was a supermarket a few stores away with some cans and boxes of trash outside. I picked up a good-sized carton, then some empty cereal and soap po
wder boxes. By turning them open side down and stuffing them in the carton, it would look like I was carrying an order. A clerk was watching me through the window. I took the boxes inside, politely asked him, “Okay if I take these? My kid wants to play store?”
“Sure, but not very sanitary,” he told me and his tone added, “But then, what difference would that make to you people?”
I asked him to sell me a paper bag for a nickel and with the grand gesture he tossed one at me, saying, “Now beat it.” He was merely a pimply-faced jerk of a blanco kid who badly needed a swift kick in the can. Outside, I made a clumsy square hat out of the bag, something like printers make. I noticed many delivery men wore them. Putting this on my head and with the “order” on my shoulder—masking one side of my face—I could safely go almost anyplace.
I headed for the Lower Drive: to anybody but the detectives I would merely be another Puerto Rican goofing off to talk to his girl. Helen always sat near a certain patch of grass which was clean enough for Henry to crawl around on. I stopped to “rest” on a bench as soon as I was in sight of them. Everything seemed okay: a few mothers wheeling kids, a colored maid with a little blonde girl on a fancy scooter, two elderly men sitting on the wooden railing facing the river, and patiently fishing. One of them had the wiry build of my father. He might also be fishing this very moment down on the island. I didn’t know why I thought of him suddenly—he probably didn’t even remember fathering me. An intelectual, yet he would not hesitate about working in the cane fields and wear a broad brimmed straw pavas. It gave him a chance to spout about our history. Was he still a follower of Campos, still a radical? One merely said it was a good day to my father and he would answer that in 1929 the average weekly wage of an entire island family was less than $7 a week. Or that in 1933 on the sugar raising isle of Vieques, the whole population of 11,000 only made $500 a week.