False Negative (Hard Case Crime)

by Joseph Koenig

  “The frame’s bent,” he said. “It’s stuck.”

  Cherise gobbled up air, gorged on it.

  Jordan slipped off his shoes. He put his head out the window, squeezed his shoulders through, and swam free. Fifteen feet above, or a little less, sunlight dissolved against the surface of the bay.

  Using the driveshaft, the transmission, the oil pan, he pulled himself over the undercarriage. Cherise hadn’t opened her door. The window remained sealed. He tugged at the handle, and the door swung easily.

  She tackled him as he reached inside. He was in a no-holds-barred wrestling match that scorched his lungs and made him regret each of the tens of thousands of Luckys he’d lit since the first one when he was twelve. He got an arm around her throat (a submission hold; wasn’t that what the pro wrestlers called it?) and was adjusting his grip when he lost her. Clinging to his legs, she anchored him to the bottom while he calculated his responsibility to keep her alive.

  He kicked her away, and exhausted himself going after her. When she’d almost quit struggling he took her again. Scissoring his legs, he started for the surface, marking time until he switched to a frog kick that brought him into the sun and the frigid salt air he couldn’t get enough of.

  A wave caught him in a trough that funneled the horizon. On the back side was the dock. He paddled with one hand, the other inching Cherise’s face out of the water. The old man tossed a line, nearly skulling him with the crab pot. He kicked as the old man reeled him in, but the cold took his remaining strength, and it was all he could do to hang on.

  Cherise was wracked by a fit of coughing that threatened to sink them. The old man shouted something in Spanish that Jordan didn’t understand, pointing to rungs at the side of the dock. Jordan let the tide carry him, and the old man went down to the water, and took Cherise. Climbing after them, Jordan saw her on her side with her eyes rolled back, not breathing. Her skin was ashy. The old man drew a cross over his heart.

  Jordan zipped open her jacket, pressed the heel of his hand below her ribs, and tried to force life back into her body. All he knew about artificial respiration was what it looked like in the movies. Water belched from her mouth with every push. More spilled from her nose. Still she wasn’t drained.

  He pushed, released, pushed again, assumed the rhythm of breaths that refused to come. The old man sighed, rolled the lids over Cherise’s eyes, and put his hand on Jordan’s arm. Jordan didn’t let up. An eye fluttered—he thought it did—and he pushed harder, then spread her lips apart and blew air into her lungs while he pinched her nose. Cherise gagged. She shoved him away, and the old man cradled her head through another coughing bout. “You broke my ribs,” she said when she could talk.

  “That’s the thanks I get for nearly killing myself saving you?”

  “You’d’ve slowed down like I told you, we wouldn’t’ve gone in the water in the first place.”

  Her eyes shut. Jordan collapsed beside her, and would have frozen, he thought, if a couple in a forest green Nash hadn’t stopped to see what the commotion was about. The couple loaded them into the back seat wrapped in blankets, and ran the engine with the heater on high. The man said, “Hospital’s not far. I can bring you, if you want.”

  “I don’t need a hospital,” Cherise said, “just a bowl of hot soup, and to lie under a hundred covers near my radiator.”

  “What about you?” the man said to Jordan.

  Jordan shook his head. He couldn’t get his teeth to stop chattering.

  Cherise told them she lived off Missouri Avenue. She rolled against Jordan as the Nash backed onto the street, and arranged him on top of her. The couple looked at them disapprovingly, and at the puddle accumulating on the seat. After ten minutes Cherise rolled down the window a couple of inches. Jordan was going to ask why she hadn’t done that at the bottom of the bay, but didn’t want an argument.

  “Where am I going?” the man said at Missouri Avenue.

  “I’ll walk from here,” Cherise said. “Bring him home.” She opened her door, closed it as the wind hit her. “Take a left at the second light, please.”

  Seeing the couple look anxiously around the neighborhood, Jordan knew what they were thinking: Con artists—desperate actors—had lured them to this squalid place to rob them. He got out after her.

  Cherise lived on a street of row houses blackened by fire. In twilight’s soft glow her apartment was an icy dump. The furniture was secondhand, second or third. Green paint flaking off the walls was filled in in a lighter shade. The radiators made hissing sounds for appearances’ sake. Jordan ran the kitchen bathtub as hot as he could stand it, and then soaked until he stopped shivering.

  Cherise came out of the bedroom in a chenille bathrobe. She watched him dry himself until he noticed her, and held the towel across his middle.

  “Think I ain’t seen a naked man before? What you got’s too shocking for my innocent eyes?”

  She tossed him a robe, a yellow shorty, and hung his wet things on the clothespin dryer above the tub.

  “Want soup?” she said. “We got Campbell’s concentrated.”

  She put up a pot of chicken soup, and they sat at a scarred table waiting for it to simmer. “You drive like a crazy man. Don’t expect me to thank you for saving my life, and all. You didn’t, I’d haunt you to your dying day.”

  “I wasn’t driving fast.”

  “Want to tell me what we were doing at the bottom of the ocean?”

  “The brakes failed.”

  “That beautiful new car? Puh-lease.”

  “Someone cut the hydraulic lines.”

  “Who hates you enough to do that?”

  “No one.”

  “See what I mean about your driving?”

  “Someone’s afraid of me.”

  “Same question again: Who?” she said. “Also: Why?”

  “Your friend Beach.”

  “Ain’t my friend.”

  “Now you tell me.”

  “You didn’t ask,” she said. “He ain’t my enemy either. Could be yours. I’ll find out next time I see him. He ain’t a killer, though.”

  “Up to now,” Jordan said.

  “We’re still alive, far as I can tell. Mr. Beach, he’s efficient, hates mistakes. He wanted us dead, we wouldn’t be waiting on soup, discussing what a two-face son-of-a-gun he is.”

  “I’m going to file an accident report,” Jordan said. “The cops will fish out the car, and do an inspection. Want to bet they find the brakes were tampered with?”

  “What you got I want now you don’t have the car?”

  She poured soup while Jordan tried to think of a snappy comeback.

  “Did you go to parties with Etta?”

  “Beach paid me.”

  “To have sex with the men there?”

  “What do you take me for? To have it with Etta.”

  “I see.”

  “Seeing what you want to see, like those men. Was pretend sex is all. Didn’t do nothing I’m ashamed of, didn’t take money to sleep with men. Colored girl’s like a tiger, far as they’re concerned, never petted one before, but figure it’s a maneater and they better treat her with respect.” She blew on her soup, tried it, and spilled it back in the bowl. “Some other girls were plain whoring, and robbing the house while the party was going on.”

  “Etta?”

  “She loved to show off her loot. Favorite thing was a new camera, makes its own pictures without bringing the film to the drugstore. And a jewel wristwatch wasn’t safe around her. She’d pawn it for the least little thing she could get.”

  “Did Beach know?”

  “Ain’t nothing Beach don’t know.”

  “It couldn’t have made him happy that she was stealing from his customers. He might have decided to teach his girls a lesson.”

  “Don’t need lessons in anything,” she said. “He sent us to steal. Kept two thirds for himself, and kicked back the rest. What didn’t make him happy was a girl who held out.”

  “Why
didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Wouldn’t have had the pleasure of your company going off the dock.”

  “Everything points back to Beach as a suspect.”

  “You think too much,” Cherise said. “Eat your soup.”

  “I’m exhausted, I want to go home.”

  “How’ll you get there?”

  “Without a car? There’s a bus—”

  “Without clothes,” she said. “Yours are soaking wet.”

  “What do you have that I can borrow?”

  “How about a navy blue fall dress from the Monkey Ward catalogue. Chic number that’ll show off your curves.”

  “Do you have pants and a shirt?”

  “Fresh out of those in your size, dear. Same for shoes and a coat. Walk out in my duds, and you’ll have a pack of johns on your back before you go two blocks.”

  Jordan finished his soup, and then he went into the living room and stretched out on the couch.

  “It’s a backbreaker,” Cherise said. “Promise not to snore, you can bunk with me.”

  “I’m fine where I am.”

  “What are you afraid of?” she said. “Maneater?”

  “I snore like a bear.”

  “I’m being neighborly, and you acting like I’m trying to have my way with you. I’m the one should be looking over her shoulder, bringing a strange man and all into my house. You could be bad as that killer you say you’re looking for. You could even be him.”

  “I’m too tired to kill anybody tonight,” he said. “Can we go to sleep?”

  “It’s up to you. I’m just a helpless woman.”

  Her bed was a little wider than his old army cot, with a deeper furrow. The springs protested every twitch as they settled in. His arm was squeezed between their bodies, and he made room by resting it on her hip. When she rolled against him the covers fell away.

  She was taut and lean with broad shoulders and angular hips, yet the overall impression was of softness. Her breasts were large, a shade lighter than the rest of her. A scar curling across her abdomen was too blunt to have been made by a scalpel. She made a slow play for the light, let him catch her hand as it landed on the switch.

  “Seen enough?” she said.

  “Not really, no.”

  “Ever been to bed before with a—”

  “A colored girl?”

  “Any kind of girl. Ain’t that much to look at after you seen it once.”

  He put his lips to hers to stop the chatter, curious if she kissed like other girls. He’d never been with a Negro girl, an Oriental, a redhead. Had never slept with girls from west of the Susquehanna River, north of New London, Connecticut, or foreigners aside from the Austrian whores he’d screwed by the truckload, a degraded species who’d taught him nothing about women, nothing he wanted to know.

  The springs groaned as he slid over Cherise. She kissed him, and he decided it was for encouragement. Her ankles curled around his, and as he came inside she sighed, and thrust herself against him. Her arms locked behind his back in a death grip.

  He stopped thinking, ideas not as compelling as the sobbing sounds Cherise made which he influenced with the motion of his hips. The springs whined, shrieked, struck a violent rhythm, and for a moment he was afraid the bed would shake apart, and he held back. Then he didn’t and neither (unless she knew the same tricks as the Austrian whores) did Cherise.

  When he was reaching for his Luckys she pulled him back. “Ain’t done with you yet. I mean for tonight. Got no use for you right now,” she said as she let him go. “Give me a smoke, too? Gotta have one.”

  He lit up for her, and she said, “You a good deal of fun, know it?”

  He wanted to ask if it was something she told all her men. He was a reporter who asked the tough questions, and it carried over into his private life. But he kept his mouth shut.

  After a couple of puffs she stubbed out the cigarette, and squirmed against him. He thought she was trying to maneuver him on top till she said, “I’m gonna close my eyes now.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Trying not to sound disappointed.

  “Only for a little bit. I’m exhausted, too,” she said. “I don’t usually have nightmares, but if you hear me breathing hard, and bunching up the covers, wake me before I start screaming. Know what I’m frightened about?”

  “Being trapped in a car at the bottom of the sea.”

  “Uh-uh,” she said, but didn’t explain. “You my boyfriend now, huh, in a manner of speaking?”

  “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “Can I be your girlfriend more than a month?”

  He kissed her, grateful for the darkness. Listening to her drop off, he tried to figure how to tell her he’d be living in New York by the weekend.

  The mechanic, whose name was George C. Brutus, said, “Back up, Bud. Insurance regs.” His elbow caught Jordan across the chest, moving him away from the lift as the air compressor began to hum, and the Hudson rose off the floor.

  Several gallons of water rushed out of the passenger compartment while a grease monkey broomed them into a drain in the floor. The antenna was bowed against the ceiling when the lift stopped climbing, and Brutus ducked under the front end with a portable light.

  He rattled the steering mechanism, reached behind the manifold, and felt left and right. A worm of ash fell on his shoe as he tilted the beam at the undercarriage, played it from bumper to bumper.

  “Hydraulic lines are intact,” he said. “I can take your wheels off, and examine the brakes, you want, but I won’t find anything out of order. Somebody’s out to commit murder, making it look like an accident, they don’t jack up the wheels and remove the brake drums. They do what you thought happened, they slice through the lines and let the brake fluid run out. But you can see that isn’t the case here.”

  “What is?” Jordan said.

  “You were driving a Hudson,” Brutus said. “Biggest hunk of junk on the American road. Dreadful cars put together with spit and baling wire. Management’s trying to save a buck here and there, and thought they could get by with cardboard brakes. Fifty-three Hornet is a rolling deathtrap.”

  “There’s no chance someone tampered with it?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. You got an enemy who knows his way around a drive train, he could’ve done something to the accelerator. I’ll look there, it’ll make you feel better, but nobody cut your brake lines.”

  “I’ll take your word.”

  “You sound disappointed,” Brutus said. “You’d be happier knowing someone’s trying to kill you?”

  Jordan shaded his eyes as the light swung across his face.

  “If I was out to kill you, I wouldn’t leave evidence. I’d mess with your suspension. That’s my job, being a mechanic, not the other,” Brutus said. “It’s more trouble, not everybody could do it.”

  Brutus was at the front end, fiddling with the wheels when Jordan opened his eyes.

  “Here’s what I mean. Your ball joints are shot. It’s a good thing you went in the drink, made a soft landing. You had this baby at sixty on the open highway, you’d’ve thrown a wheel, and really been in trouble.”

  “My lucky day,” Jordan said. “Did someone play with them?”

  Brutus clicked off the light. “You garage this car, or leave it in the street?”

  “The street,” Jordan said.

  “I’d keep my next one in the garage, I was you.”

  “You need a few minutes, or just having a good time,” Cherise said, “don’t stop on account of me. I got nothing I’d rather be doing.”

  “I was about to say the same thing,” Jordan said.

  Cherise parked her heels on his hips, encouraged him with growls and whispers, the bed creeping away from the wall until sharp raps on the heat riser froze him. “Mrs. Williams downstairs in 4D is telling us she had enough love,” Cherise said, “enough of ours.”

  In forty-five seconds Jordan was on his back with the pillow bent behind his head, looking at the posters
on the wall through Lucky smoke.

  “That one there’s from my first time in front of an audience,” Cherise said. “The Nat King Cole trio, Moms Mabley, and Sandman Sims at the Alhambra Theater in Philadelphia. I danced in a sandbox with Sandman, who’s a sweetheart.”

  “How old were you?” Jordan said.

  “Fourteen. Told ’em I was sixteen, which was still too young to work. They gave me four dollars each performance off the books, and I blew it all on alligator boots caught my eye in Wanamaker’s window. Wore ’em home in a foot of snow, and ruined ’em.”

  “You were in all these shows?”

  “Some,” she said. “Some I didn’t get closer to the stage than the second balcony.”

  She reached under the bed for an album bound in leather. On the first page he saw her in a shot with Sims looking so young he wouldn’t have recognized her, the Sandman posing in his sandbox while she hogged center stage.

  “Loved seeing my picture in the papers,” she said. “Only thing, I was afraid my mom would see it, too, and lock me in the house at night, make sure I was up early for school.”

  Several pages devoted to Lena Horne and the Nicholas Brothers had nothing about Cherise. They were her heroes, and she was in awe of them. Page after page showed her in cheesy jungle reviews wearing next to nothing in photos credited to the Freeman. There were also publicity shots from beauty contests. It wasn’t easy for Jordan to pick her out of a long line of black girls in swimsuits. She never looked the same twice. She hadn’t figured out how to stand out from the crowd, and was experimenting with her look. In a cluster of pictures she was posed on the Steel Pier with other girls in Negro League flannels. The photos were credited “Pix.”

  “Know Pixley?” Jordan said.

  “Do I know what?”

  “Pixley. The photographer on this shoot.”

  “Don’t think so. Wish I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Gonna get anywhere on the beauty circuit, I need better pictures than from a scrapbook. A portfolio’s expensive, a good one is. He a friend of yours? Give me the friend-of-a-friend special rate?”