Murray rubbed his hands along the seams of his chinos; his palms began to feel sticky. He closed his eyes, putting his hand over his glasses, smearing them. He rubbed his wrist over the lenses, batting his eyes rapidly. They were leaving. God. He almost missed that.
Murray Rogoff walked slowly through the wandering, aimless crowd, not feeling an occasional pocketbook bang against his thigh, not hearing any stray remarks directed at or about him. Not daring to take his eyes from her head, which was all he could see except for a quick glimpse of her upturned face now and then as she listened to the black-haired boy, Murray moved steadily into the mass of bodies. At 42nd Street, as he had expected, they turned left, toward the subway at the end of the block. Some seedy old panhandler approached them, his hand outstretched, his face polluted. The boy, smiling, said something to him, extending his own hand, Murray’s fingers curled into the palms of his hand.
Murray walked slowly down the subway steps, hearing Carol’s voice beyond the two middle-aged couples directly in front of him. The men, walking behind their women, gesturing and arguing about something, edged nearer to their wives, taking their elbows and steering them clear of him, and Murray cut through the sharp, sudden silence, ignoring their rounded eyes and opened mouths. He slammed his quarter at the agent in the change booth, slipped his token in the slot, pushed himself through the turnstile, right past Carol, who lingered inside the controls, still talking to the black-haired boy whose fingers were moving, through the iron bars, along her bare arm.
Murray walked right past them, slowly down the subway steps leading to the uptown platform, without looking back. He heard her quick step, running for the train which was pulling into the station. Murray boarded the “D” train at the center door, aiming for one of the few empty seats. The woman who had gotten directly in front of him raced him for it, but he got there first and he sat, pulling his cap over his forehead, sliding low in the seat so that the woman, glaring, had to move away because his feet took up all the space directly under the handstrap. Murray turned his face toward the front of the car. Carol was standing, holding one of the enamel loops, her face gazing at the subway map. His eyes moved along the line of her arm, bare at the shoulder in the sleeveless shift. Her raised arm hid the neat breast, but the shift, pulled up now, dove in at the waist and glided along the hip and just a tiny fraction of blue slip showed.
He felt a tightening in his thighs and in the pit of his stomach. He closed his eyes. It would be a long ride up to the Bronx.
By Kingsbridge Road, the train had nearly emptied but three other people got off besides Murray and Carol. She had a firm grip on her leather satchel and little pocketbook and she didn’t look around, just straight ahead. Murray walked behind the other people, some tired-looking men, elderly, dazed strangers. He lost sight of her momentarily, but it didn’t matter. He knew where she was headed.
The cool night air hit his chest and the back of his neck. The sky was deep black now with little holes of light, like sparks from the full moon whose glow did not extend much beyond a wide circle. The sound of Carol’s shoes across the street was steady and a little rapid, but not scared and panicky like some girls’, alone on the side street, three blocks from home. She walked in the center of the sidewalk, not against the parked cars pressed tightly into one another, and that was smart, because you never knew who might be sitting in one of those cars, waiting for some girl.
Murray walked faster now so that he was well ahead of her. He was on the side of the street where her building was, close against the wall of apartment houses. It was strange that she always got out at the exit across the street, but people do funny things out of habit. He reached the dark red brick building and could see her in the blackness coming steadily toward him. He pushed the hall door inward, easing himself into the small entrance hall. The light was on, which was good because any bum could be hiding in a hallway like this. Not touching the brass knob of the door atop the flat steps, just pushing it with his shoulder, Murray felt an anger. The locks on these doors were always jammed. Someone should complain to the landlord, but a hell of a lot they cared about a young, beautiful girl coming home alone into a trap like this.
Murray’s feet touched the tile floor of the long hallway so lightly he couldn’t hear them himself. He narrowed his eyes in the dimness. That damn light over the sticky brass mailboxes alongside the first staircase was flickering. Murray took out his handkerchief and touched the bulb. He could feel the heat of it even through the folds of cloth. Gently, he turned it. He took off his cap and, his eyes comfortable in darkness, he eased his glasses from his face, placed them inside his cap, which he set against the wall. He could smell the stale odor of dirty wet mops. Some great janitor they must have here, sloshing a filthy pail of water around.
Murray sucked his breath in, holding it now, feeling it in both of his lungs. He pulled his stomach in, hard and flat. He heard her open the door, heard her two hesitant steps, then she stopped. Christ, she was frightened by the darkness ahead of her. He didn’t want her to be afraid. He was there. There was nothing to be afraid of.
He heard her short breathy sound, then heard her start toward the stairway, toward him. She could probably see that the lights were on further up the stairs and had decided to hurry past the dark place near the mailboxes.
Murray felt the fragrance of her preceding her, flowing from her, pressing down the odor of wet dirt, reaching out to him as he reached out for her, his arms silently, strongly, surely encircling her, one hand across her mouth, then his hand sliding away for his mouth to press on hers so completely that he could breathe into her and suck the sweetness of her into himself. She was so light. God, he had never realized that her beautifully limber body would be so light, but he hardly needed any strength at all to lift her to him, as though she were part of himself and he part of her, her body real and alive beneath him as he easily pressed her to the floor beneath him, carefully cradling the back of her head with his hand and forearm. And she, Carol, her hands unable to get to his chest, was digging at his back and her body was moving now beneath his and she rocked urgently on the hard floor beneath him, passionately and soundlessly beneath the great, unrelenting strength of his mouth, which never left hers, though her head rocked from side to side; his mouth clung to hers and his hand helped her because a man should remove a woman’s clothing: only prostitutes, sitting there, glassy-eyed, pulled off their clothes. But when a man loved a girl, it was a thing a man did and he didn’t want her to have to do anything, just to feel him there with her: loving her, giving pleasure to her, enjoying her, possessing her body with great joy, but not just taking, giving. She was so small beneath him: he could feel her heart thudding through the fragile rib cage hitting his own heart: it was as if they had just the one heart between them and his fingers could feel the great sound of exaltation rising along her throat and his ringers pressed the sound lovingly back: back into her so that she could savor it deep within herself as he did his astounding full, deep, anticipated and finally accomplished pleasure.
His mouth now lifting from hers, he gasped a lazy warm mouthful of air and the air was filled with Carol and he touched her lower lip with the tip of his tongue. Her mouth was relaxed and silent for she was at peace in the deep and beautiful sleep of his love.
Murray pressed his face into her hair, his tongue lightly touching at her earlobe, running down her cheek, along her parted lips, just skimming her teeth. He buried his face into that warm small place in the bend of her neck, wishing he could see her face in the blackness, but he knew she would be smiling, her eyes closed in that nice, happy, fantastic feeling which enveloped them both. And this canceled out all the other times: all those cold, mechanical, used bodies on which he had released the accumulations of nothing more than animal lust with a sense of despair and anger, his body juices being sucked from him absently as though he were alone on some filthy, paid-for bed, because this was Carol and he was now truly Murray and his body ached with a marvelous awareness
of love and pleasure.
His voice was so soft it was almost as though he was thinking rather than speaking, but he spoke directly into her ear and he knew she heard him, because she lay so still: listening.
“Carol. Carol. I love you so much. I worry about you so much. You’re so special, so special. Not like the little tramps in the candy store: they all wanted it, every one of them, anyone I picked out, taking it from me, but not giving me anything, just grabbing for it and then none of them even seeing me.” Murray’s eyes blinked against the darkness. He didn’t want to think about that; letting his lips become still for a moment, he knew that none of it mattered, because he had given love and had received love and that was what counted. “Oh, Carol, you’re so clean and so good.” Then kissing her lips, nipping at them lightly, touching them with his fingertips, Murray knelt over her. “It’s late. You rest for a while. I feel so good. I can’t remember when I felt this good.”
And then, Murray took a switchblade knife from his trouser pocket, letting the four-inch blade drop down. Lifting her head gently, so as not to disturb her sleep, carefully and surely his hands, steady and kind, gathered a small sweet thick lock of clean hair from that warm place at the nape of her neck. He cut the lock of Carol’s hair, closing his fingers over that small part of her. He flicked the knife closed, replaced it in his trouser pocket, then unfolded his handkerchief, placed the hair into the center of it, carefully refolded it into a small square, placed it into the breast pocket of his shirt and patted it against himself like a treasure.
Smoothing her hair from her brow, he lightly touched her lips, then her forehead, with his lips and tongue, whispering to her, “Rest and sleep, Carol, and dream of me.”
His hand went directly to his cap, his foot brushing against her leather satchel and pocketbook. He first put on his glasses and then his cap. Not knowing that her eyes were frozen open, he wished her sweet dreams and soundlessly, Murray Rogoff left the hallway, wedging his shoe’ into the partly opened door, prying it with his shoulder. He went down the four flat steps, out through the opened street door, onto the cool black street.
Murray Rogoff walked the three blocks to the Grand Concourse, stood for a moment looking at the entrance to the Independent subway, then, holding the peak of his cap, he stretched his head upward to the sky. It was a great night: cool and clean and he felt so good. He turned and decided to walk a mile or two or maybe ten miles in the fresh clean air. He could take the subway somewhere farther down the line.
8
CHRISTIE OPARA SAT IN a leather and steel sling chair absorbing the black and white sterility of Dr. Sidney Ginsburg’s waiting room. It was the kind of room that advised a prospective patient to expect extreme professional competency, if not sympathetic concern. A collection of pictures, placed on the ice colored walls with a mathematical precision, were either blackly indicated flowers against white backgrounds or whitely suggested figures impressed on black. A long narrow steel magazine rack hung low against one wall, and inserted in various-sized slots were celluloid-covered magazines: issues of everything from Life and Look to the Partisan Review. It wasn’t what Christie had expected.” Not from a cousin of Marty Ginsburg.
She hated to crush her cigarette into the gleaming black stone ashtray; it seemed a defilement. Marty’s voice rumbled behind the black enameled door of the doctor’s office, and in response, Christie could hear a low murmur of inaudible words. The door swung open and the face behind Marty’s, belonging to the son of his father’s brother, was narrow and pale, marked clearly and sharply by straight black eyebrows and a thin neat black mustache extending exactly the length of the thin lips. A crisp fresh odor of starch wafted from the cardboard-stiff jacket which covered a well-built, Sunday athlete’s frame. Before Christie could extricate herself from the somewhat complicated chair, the door clicked shut and the voices began again. She exhaled a thin whistle of annoyed amusement. That nut, Marty Ginsburg, could never just do something: he had to build a plot around the simplest of things. Christie wondered what he was telling his wary-looking cousin.
Marty, leaning his bulk against the door, rested his hand heavily on the reluctant shoulder of his cousin. “There’s nothing to worry about, Sidney, I’m telling you. This kid is okay now, honest. It’s only when there’s a lot of strange people around that she gets—you know.” Marty nodded his head in a particular way. “Which is why I asked to come here on a Sunday night so there wouldn’t be no patients around.” His fingers pinched into the stiffness of his cousin’s jacket. “And besides, like I said, there might be some of your patients who would recognize her: just because you don’t read the papers don’t mean that practically everyone else in the city don’t know who this kid’s father is.” Marty shook his head at this possible danger. “That’s all I’d need—for someone to spot her.”
Dr. Ginsburg removed himself from Marty’s grasp and traced his long slim fingertips along his mustache. “Marty, I don’t see why you brought her here at all. Couldn’t the District Attorney have arranged to have this done by one of your police surgeons?”
“A police surgeon? You’re kidding. Police surgeons are the world’s biggest blabbermouths. If the reporters ever got wise that the daughter of the ...” Marty grabbed at his mouth, bunching his lips into a grotesque cupid’s bow. “See? See, Sidney? Now see what you almost made me say? You almost made me say who she is and that would be very, very bad. My main job right now is to keep this girl under wraps.” Marty’s hand formed a barrier around his mouth, but his voice was still loud. “This whole thing is by way of a favor, Sidney. You know how these things work, huh?” He winked. “The D.A. does a very important man a favor and then the very important man can do a favor for the D.A. sometime.” Marty recognized an alert gleam in his cousin’s eye. “And of course both the VIP and the D.A. will know who, exactly”—his index finger dug into Sidney’s chest—“is the man who really cooperated, you know?”
Dr. Ginsburg withdrew from any more of Marty’s jabs and retreated toward the small examining room to the rear of his office. “All right, Marty, let’s get this over with. I have everything ready for the cast.”
“Okay, Sidney. But look, I got to go and talk to the girl for a minute. She’s a little nervous, you know? Nothing I can’t handle. See, she trusts me, which is why I’m the one brought her here. Anything Marty tells her, she does. Not even her old man could have talked her into this. You should have heard the story I had to tell her to get her to agree to this.” Marty shook his head decisively; he couldn’t tell Sidney any more.
This time when the black door opened, Marty seemed to fill the room. He motioned Christie beside him on the black leather couch but kept his eyes alertly on the door. “Poor old Sid. He’s still nutty as a fruitcake.”
Christie patiently asked the expected question. “What do you mean?”
Marty hunched himself closer to her. “Listen, Christie, my cousin, Sidney—well, he always was a little strange. You know.” He smacked at his forehead. “But we always figured it was because he was so brilliant. A very brilliant man, my cousin, so I guess when you’re a genius, you got to be a little crazy, you know, to balance things up.”
Christie sighed. “Okay, Marty, let’s hear the story.”
Her tone did not affect the seriousness of Marty’s words; he was very sincere. “Well, he’ll make the cast for you all right. But Sid’s got some weird ideas. He took one look at you and, don’t ask me why, please don’t ask me why, but he thinks you’re the Mayor’s daughter.”
“The Mayor’s daughter?” Christie lowered her voice in response to Marty’s urgent expression. “The Mayors daughter? Why would he think that?”
“Gee, I told you not to ask me, but okay, you asked me. See, Sidney is a real gossip column fanatic.” Marty shook his head over his cousin’s malady. “He reads all the gossip columns and he stores away all kinds of crazy information: especially about anybody in politics, and he goes to his district Reform Democratic Club every Tuesday nigh
t and he picks up little pieces of information and then he figures things out and he comes up with some real crazy stories. And he really believes them, which is the sad part. So, when he looked at you, he slams the door and he tells me, ‘Marty, I know who that is. That is the Mayor’s daughter and I know all about her.’ Gee, I didn’t know the Mayor had a daughter, did you?”
In a quietly rational, reconciled voice, Christie asked, “What about the Mayor’s daughter?”
Marty shrugged. “Who knows? Sidney says she is a suicidal person.”
Christie glanced at her wristwatch; this was taking more time than she had expected. “Marty, why are you playing games? Come on, just tell him who I am and let’s get the cast made.”
“I did, I did tell him, Christie, but he thinks I made it up as a cover story. See, he figures things out to suit his own theories, that’s how some nuts are I guess.” Marty nodded sympathetically at Christie’s growing annoyance. “Okay, kid. Sidney says he knows—from little things planted in the columns and from his politician friends—that you, the Mayor’s daughter, got involved in some kind of weird Oriental religious cult.” He shrugged at her raised eyebrows. “Don’t ask me. Sidney says, that’s all I know. And that part of this religious cult is that you got to slash your left wrist and watch yourself bleed to death and while all this is going on, you got to recite certain prayers and that way you’ll get into some kind of Oriental heaven.” Admiringly, he said, “Gee, for a Jewish boy, Sidney knows a lot about non-kosher religions.”
Flatly, Christie stated. “Marty, you’re kidding.”
“No honest, he’s a Jew.” Marty spoke rapidly, pulling Christie to her feet. “And that somehow the Mayor convinced you to keep your left arm in a cast for a while until he gets you over this whole business, and you have some kind of confidence in me, like I’m your trusted friend, so that’s why you agreed to come along with me tonight.” Marty lowered his voice in a warning whisper. “Listen, don’t say nothing to him, nothing at all: you say anything, and right away, Tuesday night, he’ll be felling all his pals at the club that the Mayor’s daughter said this and that, you know.”
The Bait Page 9