“It’ll fizzle out.”
“Only if you and me fizzle out.”
“What good’s all this talk do? Her mother — ”
“You got to face it the way a Negro would.” Johnny’s voice was bitterly proud now. “Every time they lynch us that’s Suzy, Sam. But we kept on plugging even with our insides busted up.”
“Easy to pass the advice out.”
“You been hit. You got to hit back like all those Chinese, all those occupied peoples, those Russians — ”
“Easy,” Sam said numbly. “All that Cashman Red talk’s easy until it hits you.”
“That’s when the test comes. When it hits you. Anybody can spout nice and handsome when he ain’t hit. But when it hits you, you got to prove whether you’re a man or a toad on two feet.”
Johnny kept on hammering at him as they walked the spring-time Harlem streets, the stores closing for the night, and the stores opening for the night, the ice cream parlors, the cafeterias, the shining windows of small religious societies. They walked among the night-time people, who in the daytime were porters, elevator operators, fur floor boys, domestics in white homes. They passed the night spots where the whites came to dance among the blacks. And the eyes of the night spot Negroes gazed appraisingly at the white man with the black man, for they might be pleasure men with pleasure rolls of bills; the street corner marihuana salesman, the pimp wary of plainclothes bulls and frame-up Vice Squadders, the independent whore in a silk dress under her coat, the pervert, the gambling den puller-inner, the number book. The night opened one vast pocket for the money that flowed in on the night. By degrees, Sam began to listen to Johnny. By degrees he began to speak. He told Johnny to expect a visit from Detective Wajek in the morning. Wajek, Sam said, was going to question him and Clair and Marian Burrow.
“By rights,” Johnny said, “you ought to be seeing her mother this minute but tomorrow’s one of those days from what you say. And this business isn’t only your girl.” His voice momentarily again was biting. “Our union’s meeting tomorrow night. I’m not asking you to come again. But before you go, you ought to give me an idea of what’s been cooking. About Suzy. Everything. We’re going to nail those sons-of-bitches sooner or later. Their communications’re spreading out. Raids on the Italians, the Jews, the leaflets, everything. There must be a weak point somewhere. Somewhere, they’ve exposed themselves.”
Back into the hours vanished forever, Sam reversed himself, reporting on what he had seen and thought that day.
“Go on,” Johnny urged when Sam had finished. “Anything else?”
“Aden.”
“Aden? What about that nuisance?”
“This morning Suzy showed me a letter sent in to Clair. It was unsigned, that letter. I forgot about it until now. It warned Clair against Aden.”
“A gripe letter?”
“I guess that’s all it is. It was about the last thing I spoke to Suzy about — ” Sam swallowed. “I guess that’s why it seemed important. And yet I forgot to tell Wajek. Clair gets them every day, Marian said. Marian was the last person to see Suzy! She’s been on the make for me, Johnny! And Wajek thinks she’s the one to have tipped off the mob who pulled Suzy out. It’s her, Johnny!”
His words tumbled and all his thoughts about Marian poured out of him.
“She was the last person to see Suzy?”
“Yes. It’s her!”
“This Burrow girl sounds like a hot tomato but she’s in Clair’s office. Clair isn’t hiring anybody.”
“It’s her!”
“You can’t be so sure, Sam. Wajek’ll give her the works tomorrow, all right. After he gets through, Sam, you ought to talk to Marian yourself.”
“For what?”
“To check on the story she told you today. To convince yourself she’s got nothing to do with Suzy being gone. And if — But it can’t be! About Aden, that might be a tip. This Saturday night he’s giving a talk, one of his talks on the future of the colored races or something. I’ll take it in. He hasn’t been around in a long time, come to think of it. This is his first talk in a long time. Why now?”
Obsessed, Sam cried. “It’s Marian.”
“Look here, Sam. It might’ve been right in my own union. Look here, that Negro who spoke to Suzy said he come from me. You’re as logical as that. Holy smoke, maybe I’m not kidding! Maybe it is the union! They’re four of us on the Inter-Race Committee. Cashman and Sattenstein, two whites. Me and another Negro, Jones. But it can’t be!”
“How do you know it can’t?”
“You know Cashman. Sattenstein’s a good guy and he’s Jewish. He wouldn’t be working for a riot.”
“I don’t trust anybody because he’s a Jew.”
“I see what you mean.”
“What about Jones?”
“Maybe one of them mentioned it to a friend? And it might’ve gotten around to the guys who kidnapped Suzy?”
“My fault she went to Clair!” Sam cried and the horrors suppressed out of consciousness burst on him. Where was Suzy? In some hole, dead, her throat cut, murdered, raped by a line-up of muggers, grabbed by black hands, black hands on her thighs, God, God … Maddened, he shook his head as if to empty these horrors out on the sidewalk. What was he? A lunatic? He must be a lunatic to be planning out tomorrow’s detective story with Johnny. What was Johnny to him? Who was Johnny but a man with iron for a heart, another one of those inhuman Reds full of advice and slogans and reminders of the brave Chinese and the brave Russians, the brave this and thats, soapboxing that it was larger than Suzy, and he’d fallen for the line, lunatic that he was, listening to a Negro who couldn’t be touched by any white man’s heartbreak. God, if Johnny’s wife were in Suzy’s shoes, Johnny wouldn’t be talking so nobly. And he had listened like a movie dick, repeating ideas out of his Modern Criminal Investigation; Authors: Dr. Harry Soderman and Deputy Chief Inspector John J. O’Connell. The textbook of Sam’s training period stood up in his consciousness like a book on a shelf. God, he was a lunatic, making believe Suzy was somebody he didn’t know, another diagram like the diagram of the suicide on the text-jacket. She was Suzy, Suzy! “Let me alone!” he cried, strangled. “Let me alone!”
“Sam, I know how you feel.”
“You can’t.”
“I can’t. Keep your chin up. Don’t let them get you!”
Sam rang the Buckles bell in the vestibule of the Rochambeau Apartments. The door clicked and he pushed inside. The marble bench, the bust of Dante on its pedestal confronted him. Where was Monday night, Tuesday night, where was Suzy? God! he gasped and climbed the stairs to Suzy’s floor. He rang her doorbell.
“Did you lose your key, dear?” a little voice said from behind the door.
“It’s me, Sam Miller, Suzy’ll be up — Later.”
The door opened and Sam attempted a smile. Mrs. Buckles was small, about Suzy’s height, and her crinkled yellowish face resembled Suzy’s as a rose pressed between book pages still bears the shape of the living flower. Two grey eyes, eyes like Suzy’s, were peering at Sam. “Do come in,” Mrs. Buckles said. She was wearing a dark brown dress with a white lace collar and she held the door ajar with a hand so small it seemed more like a paw. The line of her short nose hadn’t altered with the years but the loss of her teeth and faulty plates had pinched her jaws together. “Do come in, please, and we will wait together. Is it her union again?”
“Yes.” Sam said, stepping inside. Behind him he heard her say:
“Go right into the parlor or should I have said the living-room as Suzy wants me to.” The old voice almost warmed, almost laughed.
He thought: How am I telling her? His footsteps boomed in his ears and dizzily he remembered his heels crunching on the fallen autumn leaves at a funeral he had gone to last October, his cousin Charles dead of T.B. at thirty-one, and his heels on the leaves, and the tears of the women, and the leaves, yellow, russet, gold, red, scampering across the cemetery like a multitude of chicks. He pressed his arms agains
t his sides and plunged into the living-room. His eyes darted to the studio couch. It wasn’t made up as yet for sleeping this night. A cry started deep in him. He gritted his teeth, choked the cry silent. In front of his eyes, her belongings added up, precious now, her bed, her magazines under the end table, her two pictures on the walls, the Oroczco reproduction, the Degas print of the two mauve dancing girls. She had itemized their history to him Tuesday night like a new bride reporting to her husband on her dowries and treasures. The Oroczco had been saved for; the dancing girls won at a benefit party for some cause.
“Make yourself at home, Sam. I’ll bring you a cup of tea.”
He turned around. “No, thanks, Mrs. Buckles,” and then, reconsidering: Tea was a stimulant and if he told her after a cup or two of tea, she might not be so affected. “All right.” Mrs. Buckles whisked out of the living-room and he walked to the windows as he had on Monday night. There was the street below, he made himself think; there was the street below, the street below …
Mrs. Buckles came in, a lacquer tray between her hands. Sam helped her place the tray on the end table at the foot of the studio couch. She sat down on the couch and daintily, her tiny fifth finger curling politely, she poured him a cup of tea. He took the cup and crossed to the easy chair. Over the studio couch, behind Mrs. Buckles’ shoulder, the two mauve girls, handsome and muscular, were dancing. “How soon do you expect Suzy?” she said.
“Mrs. Buckles — Mrs. Buckles — You ought to know — I love Suzy. We intended to tell you tonight we were getting married.”
Mrs. Buckles blinked and put her cup and saucer down on the lacquer tray.
“We love each other,” Sam said. “You ought to know —
Suzy’s been — ”
Mrs. Buckles craned forward as if she hadn’t seen him until now. “You seemed distrait, I thought, when you came in. Very distrait. Did you say? Married — ”
“Yes, but something — ”
“Pardon me, Mr. Miller. Perhaps it is just as well Suzy is detained. Pardon me, but may I speak candidly?”
Good God, he thought. Where’s this going. “Mrs. Buckles — ”
“Pardon me, Mr. Miller. This is not altogether a complete surprise. Have you considered what a mixed marriage actually means?”
“This is no time. I’m sorry. But — ”
“This is the best time of all.” Her voice was steady, her two yellowish hands clasped together on her lap so that she seemed to him like a cornered mouse. “Have you considered that your faith and Suzy’s faith, Mr. Miller, will not be conducive to a happy married life? I have nothing but understanding for your people. Your people have suffered cruelly from Mr. Hitler. I may be an old woman. I am an old woman. I will be seventy years in March but I know what is happening to the Jewish people. They are not Christians who persecute the Jews — ”
“Please. You don’t understand — ”
“But I do understand. I have had my suspicions that Suzy and yourself were drifting into a serious situation. Not that she confided in me as a daughter should. She is wayward.” One hand waved towards the pile of magazines. “But in my life, I have seen many wayward young girls settling down and marrying in accordance with their faith.”
Sam got to his feet and stared down at the small woman expounding her dogmas. He didn’t resent what she was saying. He understood her, sensing there wasn’t so much difference after all between Mrs. Buckles’ genteel Protestantism and the lustier Jewishness of his own mother pleading with him not to bring home a schicksa; both mothers were defenders of their own traditions, both were afraid of the stranger outside the tribe. And gently he broke in. “Mrs. Buckles! Suzy has been detained!” A tremor shook him and shook his words and he was conscious of her staring at him, suddenly apprehensive, suddenly fearful of the wind of warning in his words. “She’ll be back — when, I don’t know — I’ve notified the police. Suzy — Suzy has temporarily — she’s disappeared.” He watched Mrs. Buckles’ fingers leap to the withered lips. “Please, Mrs. Buckles. Both of us love her. Both of us must — In the morning, Detective Wajek will be here to ask some questions.”
His eyes strained in his head and all that day and night flared before him, and a pity for the old woman agitated him, a pity larger than his own loss that second, for this mother was like that other mother remembered now in sparks of fire; this mother like Mrs. Randolph had lost a child. He walked over to Mrs. Buckles and touched her arm with his fingers. She was quivering; under his fingers her arm seemed thin as a leaf.
“Thank you for coming here,” Mrs. Buckles said, dry-eyed. “I am alone here.”
His heart lifted in admiration for the courage behind the polite words, the politeness a courage, a tradition of courage that blasted his eyes even clearer. He understood now where Suzy got her courage; out of the old woman, out of the abolitionist ancestors before the old woman, out of the courageous past Suzy had sprung. “Don’t you worry,” he said. “We’ll get her back. If you want, I’ll stay here tonight — You might need — If you want — ” The old woman was crying the tiny tears of the aged. Her head had turned towards the arm where his hand was, to the hand full of the sun of life. “Don’t you worry. We’ll get her back.” He was choking and he was strong and he was full of pity. “We’ll get her back, Mrs. Buckles. We will, mom.”
CHAPTER 11
THURSDAY’S sun rolled over the Brooklyn war plants clustering near the giant stone feet of the bridges into Manhattan. It was a sun that seemed forged and smelted out of the factories; it wheeled over the tenements near the factories, the pool parlors near the tenements, the stores of the naval outfitters on Sands Street near the pool parlors, the office buildings on Fulton Street into the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood west of the office buildings. Bill yawned half-awake in his room in the Hotel St. George. Curled on his side, close to his wife, her black hair in his eyes and tickling his nose, he felt as if deep in a cloud from which he didn’t want to wake. His brain was like a series of rooms, each room locked tight on the new morning, each room full of the black cloud that was Isabelle’s hair. He twisted over on his face, wanting to sleep, but one by one the doors of consciousness were opening.
He stared at the ceiling. He listened to Isabelle’s breathing. He fingered the burn scars on his face as if to dust them off. He traced the scar on his lip and his blue eyes shifted sideways to his wife, innocent and sweet in sleep like a child. He wondered if he looked like that in his sleep? The damn shut-eye was a fake like everything else. In her sleep, Isabelle looked as if life were a cinch, no headaches, no tears. What a fake! He was disgusted with himself. Here he was chewing the fat over his life. To hell with all this dumb crapping about life, about the future. Darton was right. The future was a kike disease. Christ alive, was he a Jew philosopher to be kiking about life, about the future? A man had to know how to live today without nagging at himself whether he was fair or unfair to his wife, or whether Big Boy’d did the job on Miller or not. Darton wouldn’t get into a lather about his work or about any woman on earth. Darton was right. What was the sense yapping at each other like every other married couple in the world? What was he, another husband who worked from nine to five every day, and went to the movies twice a week and slept with his wife every Saturday night eleven p.m. sharp? No, he was above that. He was no shoeclerk; he was above the rules. Damn all these rules and laws, all this religious yapping about the sanctity of marriage. Shades of Theresa! Darton had the right ideas about women; you had fun with women. What were women for, anyway? To hold holy mass with their souls? Damn, but the Church had spoiled a lot of God damn good screwing women with this soul racket. Worrying about Isabelle and the child she wanted! Holy Christ, another little stinking soul and where did it all lead but back into the past? To the church, to socialism, to communism; the idea of all men having souls and being brothers in Christ was just communism; it was the same racket as all the kikes and niggers and jackal breeds being in one herd. Damn the shoeclerk rules! To be a master meant acting like
a master.
Now, he knew why he had gotten up so early. The newspapers! The newspapers were outside the door of his room; he had put in an order for them yesterday. Suddenly, he was sour on the whole damn business. Here he was jerking around in bed as to what a great guy he was. His mind filled with Big Boy’s face, Hayden’s, Heney’s. He screwed his eyelids tight but the faces stayed. Like a prison warden, he was locked in his own prison, locked by his own thoughts; he slapped at the faces as if with iron keys and blackjack; relentlessly, he tried to drive them out and at last he succeeded. Deep into the dungeon he had driven them, deep into the pit; there let them lie. I better get the papers, he thought.
He got out of the double bed, a strong tall man in blue and white pyjamas and, barefooted, crossed the rug to the door. The newspapers were stacked in a neat pile. He picked them up and then dropped into a chair. WHITE GIRL kidnapped, he read, and underneath this headline: Harlem Vice Ring Suspected. The two headlines registered but he dismissed them. They weren’t his business. He consulted the newspaper index and found what he was after: Stench Bombs In Harlem Page 24. But he didn’t turn to page 24. What about Miller? Why wasn’t he front page news? But, no, there was only: Stench Bombs In Harlem Page 24. He frowned. That meant the Jew’d been wiped too late to make the morning papers. That meant the body was dumped somewheres, hidden. Bill cracked the newspaper in two on page 24 and read:
“Numerous Harlem bars and grills were the victims of a stench bomb attack late last night….” He skipped through paragraphs of details to: “Mr. Louis Lombardo, owner of the Four Flags Bar and Grill, stated that his bar had been attacked at eleven-thirty. His statement follows. ‘The door was shoved open and before I knew what was happening, I saw a Negro wind up like a pitcher and throw something down hard on the floor. I hollered at him but he ran out …’ ” Bill leaped into the next paragraph: “The stench drove about thirty customers, three bartenders and the owner out on Lenox Avenue. The Emergency Police Squad on arriving decontaminated the premises. Electric fans were placed on the floor to drive out the heavier than air fumes. Oil of wintergreen and ammonia were used in other bars as counteracting agents. In all cases, business ceased for the night.” Bill smiled, reading: “Bar owners of Italian descent in Harlem and in adjacent areas are open in their belief that the stench bomb attack, following the boycott begun on Monday night is only the beginning of a campaign to bankrupt them….”
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