The Bait

by Dorothy Uhnak

  He stood now leaning his large arm on the sticky counter of an orangeade stand, his lungs filling with the sour smells of pizza and juice. He watched pale liquid slosh around and up and over within the dirty glass bubble of the juice machine; he pointed to it, accepted the glass from the pimply boy who bounced his dime change at him, absently put the coin in his pocket. His eyes saw none of the bodies around him, and they, realizing that whatever it was he sought did not include them, shrugged. Nothing about the giant of a man interested them: not the odd-shaped skull which continued from beneath the plaid cap into the collar of his white knit shirt; not the strange welder-goggles which hid half his face nor the massively muscled arms. His eyes discounted them and they, intent on searches of their own needs, discounted him.

  Rogoff’s eyes were fixed on the tenement building directly across the street. A four-story tenement, surrounded up and down the block by identical structures, each opening directly onto the street. The hall would be long and narrow and badly lit. In one long gulp, Murray let the cold and tasteless liquid run down his throat, feeling it plunge into his chest with a coldness that did not cool him, but merely created a passing sensation of pain.

  Without hesitation, without consulting the slip of paper in his pants pocket, Rogoff strode across the street, pushed the door open with his rubber-soled shoe. These doors were never locked; the hallway, too, was what he had expected: nothing surprised him. The two electric bulbs on the high ceiling glowed yellow in small circles which did not penetrate the darkness. Not stopping, going directly to the long, narrow stairway, Murray Rogoff took the steps easily, two at a time. Three long flights were nothing; he stopped at the top landing, pushed his cap back, then leaned his face close to the door of the apartment nearest to him, his fingers rubbing, searching for something. The lettering had long since been obliterated; he moved to the next door and it was the right one: 4-C—directly in line. Rogoff took the next flight of stairs soundlessly, pushing against the sticking door with his shoulder, feeling a sudden rush of air against his face. But it was only breeze caused by the pressure of the door opening suddenly onto the roof, for the night air was still and heavy and breathless as Murray, walking with some strange and quiet shrewdness, rolled his feet on the tarpaper surface. He stood motionless: no bodies lying against chimneys, no whispers or laughter. The roof was deserted.

  Crouching now, Murray moved carefully, sliding himself to the edge of the unprotected roof, and looked down, his mind holding his purpose to the exclusion of all other thought: there was a little courtyard below and the windows of the apartments in the “C” line opened onto that little courtyard and that was what Murray needed to know. His eyes, seeing well in the darkness, studied it like a road map all sketched out for him: the narrow alley cutting between the buildings like a path, leading into the courtyard, leading like a beam of light to the window four stories down, directly beneath where he now lay. Counting, he calculated exactly where the street location of the opening to the alley was and, this firmly in his mind, Murray stood up, inhaled with a gasp, for the air seemed to contain no oxygen, seemed to be choking him and his head ached and his eyes burned and for the moment, he had the strangest feeling: as if he had just fallen from the roof into the courtyard below, or that his body, rocking forward now, was going to fall.

  Rogoff had to get away from this place: had to get on the street again. He spun around looking for direction, then, no longer concerned about sound or footsteps, he ran heavily across the seemingly endless series of roofs until his eyes picked out a structure and he lunged his body against the door which didn’t move and then he pulled at it and thudded down the long flight of narrow stairs. He sucked the night air into his lungs and walked with rapid, heavy strides along the safety of the sidewalk.

  Johnnie Devereaux, standing in the darkness, pressed his body against the crumbling brick structure of a chimney and felt unavoidable reality race through him like an uneven pulse. His lips moved silently over the words that he could taste inside his mouth: Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’ve lost him. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’ve lost him.

  But the desperation was checked immediately by that calmer voice which took over instinctively, as he knew it would. Okay. So you lost him for a minute or two. So he took off into another building. Did you expect him to drop pebbles for you? There’s only one place he’d head for now: the alley.

  Detective Jimmy O’Neill’s legs were aching. Kneeling on the hard floor, his long torso made it necessary for him to bend down in order for his eyes to be level with the two inches of space between the shade and the window sill. He couldn’t adjust the shade to better advantage because he knew that then his head would be outlined, darker against the darkness of the opened window.

  To keep his vision certain, he had to glance away periodically from the two figures on the roof across the alley and he had found a fantastic contrast for his vigil : on the fourth floor of the building adjacent to the stake-out there was an orange-headed girl, and for the life of him, Jimmy O’Neill couldn’t figure what the hell she was doing, but Christ, whatever it was, she sure was doing it great. There were no shades on her window, which was thrown open, and she would appear suddenly across the rectangle, gyrating to some music, then disappear into the recesses of her room.

  But Jimmy O’Neill, who had watched the odd, continuing movements steadily for the last hour, glanced there now only as a necessary part of his job: to keep his eyes sharp. From the moment he had heard the one piercing ring of the telephone, clearly reaching him from across the courtyard, the orange-haired girl aroused no feelings whatever within him. His interest was directed solely on the two figures who moved about the roofs across from him. Figure number one was suspect: Christ, even from this distance, outlined against the gray sky, Jimmy could see he was tremendous. Devereaux was “harder to spot and probably the only reason O’Neill knew there was a second figure was because he had worked as Devereaux’s partner for four years.

  This bastard is shrewd as hell, O’Neill thought with grudging admiration. Reconnoitering: placing the apartment, then the alleyway, then leaving the roof via a different route; it was tough on John. Tough to do a close tail job under the circumstances. The long even line of roofs was deserted now and Jimmy O’Neill let his eyes rest for a few moments; the orange head flashed by, then her body spun around:

  Christ! She was stripped from the waist up! A flash of breast moved past the window, then disappeared. Jimmy O’Neill dug his long bony fingers into his watering eyes, then with great determination, he concentrated on the concrete courtyard two stories below him, becoming familiar with its dimensions and shapes and shadows. That’s where the next action would be.

  John Devereaux entered the alley like a phantom: without sound and without form. He let his body blend with shadows, moving only against that part of the wall where no dim light from some window touched, crossing with a short step whenever necessary so that he stayed part of the darkness.

  John Devereaux didn’t breathe because automatically he stopped breathing at moments like this. He had learned long ago that there are times when a man can go for a very considerable period of time without drawing in or letting out breath. His eyes narrowed, darting rapidly around the small yard, first to the particular window, which had not yet been raised, then to all the corners, into all the shadows and all the dimly lighted places.

  John Devereaux softly exhaled all the stagnant air and soundlessly drew in another portion, moving carefully against the wall of a building. Once again, the words filled him and his lips twitched: Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I’ve lost the bastard!

  Casey Reardon slumped in the front seat of the black Pontiac, his knees digging into the dashboard, his arms folded across his chest. He licked the beads of sweat which collected over his lip, glanced again at his watch, which registered a minute more than the last time he had consulted it, which was twenty minutes from the moment he had dialed the telephone, letting it ring once to indicate subject was in the area. Thou
gh Casey had been silent for all the intervening time, Dell spoke now as though in response to him.

  “Want me to check it out, boss?”

  Reardon hesitated, shook his head. He wondered how Dell could look so cool and uninvolved, because he knew Dell was keyed up too. “We wait,” Reardon said, his eyes watching the alleyway, trying to figure out why Devereaux had gone in but Rogoff had not.

  Christie felt her left arm growing numb and carefully trying to prevent the grating noises caused by the slightest movement on the bed, she raised her head. She had to lift her deadened arm with her right hand, biting her lip against the sudden assault of pain as feeling returned in aching waves of pins and needles.

  Her mouth fell open as though that would help her to hear: her eyes sought the direction of the sound. A slight, bumping sound from the kitchen area. Or was it from the bathroom?

  In a whisper so light it was hardly heard, “Sorry. That was me.” Ferranti.

  She couldn’t hear the release of breath, but she knew Marty and Stoney had resumed breathing as well as she. How long had it been since that single crashing ring of the telephone? It was impossible to measure time now and there was no slight glimmer of light by which she could read the dial of her watch which was supposed to glow in the dark, but didn’t. There was nothing to measure time by except her own feeling and that wasn’t accurate because her body became a stranger to her mind: transformed by the single, anticipated, yet somehow unexpected ring of a telephone. She was filled with internal rushes so sudden and so distinct the only thing that surprised her was that the sounds within her didn’t echo and bounce all over the room.

  There was a soft, slow, hesitant, opening sound, heard despite the rushes of internal noises, distinct and separate in the darkness.

  It was followed by Marty’s voice, hollow and low. “Time?” he whispered carefully and she could hear Stoney moving.

  “Ten forty-five.”

  They all calculated it: the single ring of the phone came at exactly 10:10 P.M. Thirty-five minutes ago. Thirty-five minutes of waiting.

  Where was he? Where in God’s name was Rogoff?

  For Murray Rogoff, the world was a pit of corruption hemmed by lightless cabarets which opened unashamed onto the heated sidewalks, spilling over with wordless, degraded voices emanating from the throats of faceless subhuman inhabitants. In long and hurried strides, directionless, he strode among them, the anger building into a formless fury, winding its way from his intestines upward into his chest and lungs, downward into his thighs and knees, until his entire being was one pulsating mass of thoughtless emotion. He flung the touching, inquisitive bodies from him in a horror of contamination, knowing he must find release from the filth in which he found himself.

  Wandering the streets of Greenwich Village, his mind could not grasp the steady, clear and certain salvation that somehow he knew was hidden within him, elusive and stolen from him by the narrowed, glinting eyes, the simpering voices, the brushing bodies that approached him hopefully, curiously, lustfully. His eyes burned beneath the encasement of his glasses and he pulled them from his face. His fingers dug at the sockets which itched dryly and ached in response to his rough touch. The sounds became a part of him: part of his being, the blatant noises echoing behind him, around him, before him as he rushed around a corner only to be confronted by the discordant moanings of some singer whose voice came at him as through a long tunnel, reaching out from the cavern of some cafe. His eyes moved constantly behind his glasses again, watching the tourists: gaping, not daring to enter the tempting, sawdust-floored interiors, but their eyes shining in a particular way, fascinated by the strangeness around them, trying to proclaim their own innocence by their reluctance to participate, yet their longings clearly visible, gleaming from their eyes and on their dry lips, licked by furtive tongues.

  And all the time, down all the streets, the hunger built within him: the hunger for cleanness and purity and love, which could not be found here on these streets.

  Finally, Murray Rogoff stopped, halting in the middle of the street, his mind freed at last from his surroundings. Stretching his arms over his head, his voice raised in a great sob of relief, unmindful of the curious or wishful stares of the other searchers, Murray Rogoff’s brain relayed the message that had been there all the time, beneath the turmoil, waiting for him to recognize it.

  He could walk through them now, untouched, unused, and uncorrupted. He knew where his freedom and his joy and his happiness was: he knew where love was and the image of Christie Opara destroyed all the vileness around him. With a great feeling of reality, Rogoff carefully looked around him and carefully and purposefully headed in a definite direction.

  John Devereaux was a patient man and he had learned through bitter experience that a police officer cannot afford the luxury of impatience. He was accustomed to waiting and he waited with a certainty based on years of experience, but even the certainty could not completely control the spurts of anxiety which pumped irregularly through him.

  He sifted the facts once again, for in facts there was something to hold onto: One—subject had located room and entry thereto; two—subject, for reasons known only to himself, had decided not to make entry; three—he had lost all contact with subject; four—he, John Devereaux, could not leave this alleyway if hell froze over, unless instructed to do so by Reardon (and omiGod what must he be thinking?) or until daylight, since subject might change his mind and enter the alley after all. So that in fact, the fact was that it was Rogoff who was making all the decisions.

  John Devereaux was a man who could think like a machine. He was also a man who could experience very human emotions and during the approximately one and a half hours he had clung to the shadows of this particular alleyway, he felt an exhaustion close to despair and a helplessness bordering on anger and a deep regret that he could not light up a cigarette and inhale just one lungful of nicotine and a sorrow that he could not ease off his shoes and spread his swelling toes.

  To keep his brain alert, Devereaux devised small mental games, testing his awareness: scanning an entire line of tenement windows, turning his face, then mentally recalling what each window had contained, in proper order. He wondered what technique O’Neill was using: probably keeping tabs on that nutty babe up there. She was inexhaustible, whatever the hell she was doing. He wondered what they were doing in the room: each one cut off like he was, each working out some kind of mental gymnastics, fighting off sleep, which incredibly could easily weigh them all down. Including him. Christ, where was the bastard?

  Jimmy O’Neill had known within the first two minutes that the figure in the alley was John Devereaux because if the shapeless form had been the suspect, there would have been a second figure in the alley and that would have been Devereaux. But there was just one man down there and Jimmy calculated, accurately and sympathetically, what had happened. The bastard had given John the slip and John stationed himself in the target area, and Jimmy O’Neill, through the period of time he spent kneeling and waiting and watching, offered up some fervent prayers on behalf of Devereaux and himself and all the others concerned that the bastard would show.

  If there had been any slightest doubt in Jimmy’s mind of the identity of the man hidden in the alley—and there really wasn’t—that doubt would have been dissipated now.

  A second figure bad entered the alley and O’Neill’s eyes, professionally sharpened by his vigil, picked out the shape as identical with that of the giant he had spotted on the roof over an hour and a half before. Coldly and clearly, O’Neill’s mind registered the circumstance: Rogoff is now in the courtyard.

  John Devereaux stopped breathing as automatically as a diver who plunges into cold deep water without apparatus of any kind. Knowing that he was invisible within the particular shadow he inhabited, he pressed still closer against the wall, watching the large, agile form moving cautiously but steadily across the courtyard, stopping for a moment, listening, looking without seeing, then moving again. Devereaux�
�s eyes left the suspect for just one quick glance at the window on the second floor behind him, then fastened themselves on Rogoff, assured that Jimmy O’Neill would move out onto the fire escape and begin his climb down the instant Rogoff’s body was inside the bathroom window.

  The silence within the room was a special kind of silence, not total and complete, but composed of two distinct layers. The first layer was made up of sounds: the sounds of radios and TV sets and whirrings of fans and voices talking behind opened windows and children whimpering their useless protests against the heat. These sounds could be ignored for they were all accounted for and after a while did not have to be listened to: they tended to press together into a kind of steady hum that did not interfere with the concentration required of the inhabitants of the room.

  The second layer was distinctive within the room: it was the purposeful silence of the occupants, breached occasionally by a shifting of body weight, a stifled cough. A deliberate, wordless silence enforced by Stoner Martin, his voice softly furious a long time back (when? hours?) when Marty Ginsburg had absent-mindedly begun to hum in the blackness of his closet floor and Stoney had tossed it at all of them: We are waiting this out; get with it. I’ll bash the next goddamn head that makes a sound; if it takes all night, we wait!

  Her body had relaxed dangerously and Christie was unable to revive the string-tight awareness, the readiness; she was filled with a dull, unreal, sleepy lack of emotion, all feelings had been nakedly bared too long ago, had receded now, and she felt numb and empty.