by Ed McBain
We reached a large cubicle that was not only disheveled but it also smelled. The smell was sharp and unhealthy. Morganthau sat down on one of a pair of gray steel desks that faced each other. He indicated the chair that sat at the desk for me.
“Can you take these things off my hands?” I asked.
“Sorry,” he said with an insincere gray smile. “Policy.”
I lifted my arms to go behind the back of the chair and sat slightly hunched over.
“I’m Morganthau and this is Officer Perez,” he said. “Tell us what you know about Hank Lansman.”
The “Hank” threw me off for a second. I frowned trying to connect it.
“Come on, kid,” Perez said. “You were seen at the barbershop. We know you were there.”
My mind flooded with thoughts. How did they know I was there? Was Lansman murdered? Even if someone saw me how would they know my name? I didn’t tell anyone. I don’t have a record or even any friends in that part of town.
All of this was going on just barely in the range of consciousness. Most of what I felt was fear and discomfort. Morganthau’s breath was beginning to reach my nostrils again. That coupled with the sharp odor of the cubicle started to seriously mess with my stomach.
“I want to make a phone call.”
“Later,” Perez said. His voice was soft.
“I have a right …” I began but I stopped when Morganthau put his shod foot, sole down, on my lap.
“I asked you a question,” he said.
“A man named Archibald Lawless hired me to see about four people. He didn’t tell me why.” I gave them the names of Lox, Lansman, Drexler, and Cornell. “He said that I should go see these people, make sure I saw them in the flesh.”
“And then what?”
“That’s all he said. He said see them. I suppose he wanted me to make a report but we didn’t get that far.”
“What were you supposed to say to these people when you saw them?” Perez asked.
“What was said didn’t matter. Just make sure I saw them, that’s all. Listen. I don’t know anything about this. I answered an ad in the paper. It was for Lawless. He said that he wanted a scribe …”
“We know all about Lawless,” Morganthau said. “We know about his scribes and we know about you too.”
“There’s nothing about me that has to do with him.”
“One dead man,” Perez suggested.
“I thought he had a heart attack?”
The officers looked at each other.
“We don’t need any shit, kid,” Morganthau said. “Who else is in the cell?”
It was at that moment I began to fear that even my father could not save me.
I had to swallow twice before saying, “What do you mean?”
Morganthau’s foot was still in my lap. He increased the weight a little and said, “This is about to get ugly.”
I felt cold all of a sudden. My head was light and my tongue started watering.
“Shit!” Morganthau shouted. He pulled his foot back from my thighs but not before I vomited soba noodles all over his pant leg. “Damn!”
He skipped away. Perez flung open a drawer in his desk and threw a towel to his partner who began wiping his pants as he went back down the corridor we came from.
“You’re in trouble now, kid,” Perez said.
If I had seen it on a TV show I would have sneered at the weak dialogue. But in that chair I was scared to death. I retched twice more and steeled my neck to keep from crying.
After he was sure that I was through being sick, Perez jerked me up by the arm and dragged me down another corridor until we came to a big room where there were other chained prisoners. All of them male.
The center of the room was empty of furniture except for a small table in the middle of the floor where a lone sentry sat. Along three walls ran metal benches that were bolted to the floor. Every four feet or so along each bench there was a thick eyebolt also planted in the concrete floor. There were three eyebolts along each bench. Six men were attached to these stations by manacles that also held their feet. All of these men were negroes.
“Finney,” Perez said. “Grab me some bracelets for this one.”
Finney was my age with pale strawberry hair. He was tall and long limbed. He had to stand up in order to kneel down and reach under the table for the restraints. Perez undid my handcuffs, made me sit at a station next to a big brown man who was rocking backward and forth and talking to himself. He was smiling through his words, which were mostly indistinct, and tapping his right foot on the concrete. Two places away, on the other side was a man so big that it didn’t seem as if the chains he wore could possibly hold him. Across the way was a young, very mean looking man. All he wore was a pair of tattered jeans. His eyes bored into mine. It was as if I were his worst enemy and finally my throat was within his reach.
Perez didn’t say anything to me or even look me in the face. He simply attached the new manacles to my ankles and wrists and secured the chains to the eyebolt in the floor. Then he went to fill out a form on Finney’s table. After they exchanged words, which I couldn’t make out, Perez left through the door we had entered.
8
I was relieved to be away from Morganthau’s putrid breath. At least I had a few moments to think about what happened so far. If Lansman was murdered the man in the red parka had something to do with it. I wanted to tell the police about him but they seemed so sure of my guilt that I thought they might construe any information I gave them as confirmation of my culpability. I wasn’t very experienced with police procedure but I knew a lot about the law from my father and grandfather, LJ Orlean.
I knew that I needed to speak to a lawyer before I could have any kind of meaningful dialogue with the law. But they didn’t seem ready to allow me my Constitutional phone call. I was screwing up my courage to ask the midwestern looking Finney for my one call when the big guy two spaces to my left began speaking to me.
“You look like a cherry,” he said. It was almost a question.
“Cherry, cherry, cherry …” the grinning rocker on the other side chanted.
“You might need a friend,” the big man suggested.
“I’m all right,” I said with nary a break in my voice.
“ … cherry, cherry, cherry …”
“You dissin’ me, bitch?” the big man asked, this time it was hardly a question.
I didn’t know what to say. An apology seemed inappropriate and getting down on my knees to beg was not what a man should do in such a situation.
The man across from me mouthed a sentence that was either announcing his intention of killing or kissing me, I didn’t know which.
“Officer,” I said. “Officer.”
“ … cherry, cherry, cherry, cherry …”
“Officer.”
“Shut up,” Finney said.
“Officer, I haven’t been given the right to a phone call yet. I want to make that call now.”
The strawberry blond didn’t respond. He was reading something. I honestly believe that he no longer heard me.
“I’ma bust you up, punk,” the big man to my left proclaimed.
I started thinking about the possibility of weapons at my disposal.
A man is only as strong as his th’oat or his groin. My aunt Alberta’s words came back to me with a flash of heat and then cold passing over my scalp. Just remember, baby—don’t hesitate, not for a minute.
“ … cherry, cherry …”
I glanced at the big man. He had fists the width of a small tree’s trunk. I decided that when I got the chance I’d go in low on him: hit him hard and ruin him for life. Jail had turned me into a felon and I hadn’t been there an hour.
A phone rang, which in itself was not unusual but I couldn’t see a phone anywhere in the room. It rang again.
“ … cherry, cherry, I want some,” the rocking man sang.
The shirtless man across the way was still mouthing his violent flirtation.
&n
bsp; The phone rang for the third time.
The guard turned the page of his magazine.
The big man on the left suddenly yanked on his chains with all his might. My heart leapt. I was sure that he’d break those flimsy shackles.
“Settle down, Trainer,” the blond guard said. Then he got up and walked to the wall where there was a space between the benches.
The phone rang.
“You gonna suck my toes, niggah,” the man called Trainer promised.
The kid across the way made me another promise.
The phone rang. The room started spinning. The guard located a hidden door in the wall and pulled it open. He reached in and came out with a yellow phone receiver connected to a black cord.
“Finney here,” he said.
“ … cherry, cherry the best dessert,” the rocking man said. “Cherry, cherry in the dirt.”
Maybe he didn’t say those words but that’s what I remember. The room was spinning and my sweater smelled of vomit. Finney looked at me.
“ … cherry …”
“ … suck on my big black dick …”
“ … Orlean?” Finney said.
“What?”
“Are you Felix Orlean?” he asked.
“Yes sir.”
“Yes sir,” Trainer said. He was trying to make fun of me but I think he realized that I might soon be beyond his reach.
“He’s here,” Finney said into the receiver.
He hung up the phone and went back to his chair and magazine.
“Hm,” Trainer said. “Looks like they just wanted to make sure you was up here wit’ me.”
“Fuck you,” I said. I didn’t mean to, I really didn’t. But I was sick and he was stupid …
“What did you say?”
“I said, fuck you, asshole.”
Trainer’s eyes widened. The veins on his neck were suddenly engorged with blood. His lips actually quivered. And then I did the worst thing I could have done to such a man—I laughed.
What did I have to lose? He was going to brutalize me if he could anyway. Maybe I could catch him by the nuts like my aunt Alberta had advised.
“You a dead man,” Trainer promised.
“Mash his cherry, Jerry,” the rocking man tapped his toe for each syllable.
I lowered my head and tried to remember the Lord’s prayer.
I could not.
Then I heard the door to the strange room open. I looked up to see a white man walking through. He was tall and dressed in an expensive gray suit.
“Which one is Orlean?” the white man asked Blondie.
“Over there.” Finney gestured with his chin.
“Unlock him.”
“Rules are you need two guards to remove a recal,” the guard replied.
“Get up off your ass, kid, or I will have you mopping up vomit in the drunk tank for a month of Sundays.” The gray suit had a deadly certain voice.
The guard got up and unlocked my fetters. I stood up and smiled at Trainer and the shirtless man across the way.
“This way, Felix,” the man in the gray suit said.
“I’m gonna remember you, Felix Orlean,” the prisoner Trainer said.
“Whatever you say, loser,” I said smiling. “Maybe you’ll learn something.”
Again the prisoner named Trainer strained at his bonds. He jumped at me but there was no give to his chains. I was scared to death. The only way I kept from going crazy was taunting my helpless tormentor.
The man in the gray suit took me by the shoulder and guided me out of the room. The shirtless detainee spat on the floor as I left. Trainer screeched like a mad elephant.
We walked down a long corridor coming to a small elevator at last. The car went up seven floors and opened into a room that was almost livable. There were carpets and stuffed chairs and the smell of decent coffee.
“You can go in there and clean up,” the suit said, pointing toward a closed door.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Captain Delgado.”
The door led to a large restroom and shower area. I took off my college clothes and got under a spigot for at least fifteen minutes. After the shower I washed the vomit from my sweater. Between the lateness of the hour, the heat, dehydration, and fear I was so tired that it was hard to keep moving.
I staggered back to the room where Delgado waited. He was sitting in a big red chair, reading a newspaper.
“Feel better?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Let’s go then.”
We retraced every step I’d taken through the station. Me sticking close to the slick policeman and him leading the way. Nobody stopped us, nobody questioned our passing.
We went to a ’98 Le Sabre parked out in front of the station and Delgado drove us up further into Harlem.
“Where we going?” I asked.
“Up on One Fifty-sixth,” he said.
“I’d like to go home.”
“No you wouldn’t. Take my word on that.”
“What’s going on, Captain?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea, son.”
We stopped in front of a large stone apartment building on 156th Street. Even though it was late there were young men and women hanging out around the front stoop.
“Eight twenty-one” Delgado said.
“What?”
“Apartment eight twenty-one. That’s where you’re going.”
“I want to go home.”
“Get out.”
“Are you coming?”
“No.”
I had never felt more vulnerable in my life.
I opened the door and all the faces from the stoop turned toward me.
“Who’s up there?” I asked Delgado.
He pulled my door shut and drove off.
“You a cop, man?” a young man asked me.
He had climbed down from his seat on the top step of the stoop.
“No. No. He just gave me a ride.”
My inquisitor was probably a year or two younger than I. His skin was very dark. Even though the air was chilly he wore only a T-shirt. His arms were slender but knotty with muscle.
“You fuckin’ wit’ me, man?”
“No. I’m supposed to go to an apartment upstairs.”
Two other angry looking youths climbed down from the stoop. They flanked my interlocutor, searching me with their eyes.
“What for?” the youth asked.
“They told me that the man who had me released is up there.”
I started walking. I had to go around my three new friends. Up the stoop I went and into the dark corridor of the first floor.
There was no light and I could almost feel the young men they followed me so closely. As we climbed the stairs they spoke to me.
“You with the cops you ain’t gonna get outta here, mothahfuckah,” one of them said.
“We should take him now, Durkey,” another suggested.
“Let’s see where he go,” Durkey, the first one who had approached me, said. “Let’s check it out.”
I was breathing hard by the time I got to the eighth floor landing. Most of the journey was made through semi-darkness. Along the way there was some light from open apartment doors. Silent sentinels came to mark our passing: children, old people, women, and some men. But no one asked Durkey and his henchmen why they were following me.
I had been in places like this before, in the Ninth Ward, New Orleans. But I was always under the protection of my aunt Alberta and her boyfriends. Being from a light-skinned family of the upper crust of colored society I was always seen as an outsider.
I knocked on the door to apartment eight twenty-one and waited—and prayed.
“Nobody there,” Durkey said.
He put a hand on my shoulder.
The door opened flooding the hallway with powerful light. I winced. Durkey’s hand fled my shoulder.
Archibald Lawless appeared in the doorway.
“Mr. Madison,” he said lou
dly. “I see that you’ve accompanied my guest upstairs.”
“Hey, Lawless,” Durkey said with deference. “I didn’t know he was your boy.”
“Uh-huh,” the anarchist said. “You can go now.”
My retinue of toughs backed away. My recent, and ex, boss smiled.
“Come on in, Felix. You’ve had a busy day.”
9
It was an opulent room. The floors were covered in thick, rose-colored carpets. On the walls hung a dozen eighteenth-century paintings of countrysides and beautiful young men and women of all races. There was a fireplace with a gas blaze raging and a large dark-wood table set with cheeses, meats, fruits, and bottles of wine.
“Have a seat,” Lawless said.
There was a big backless couch upholstered with the rough fur of bear or maybe beaver.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Are you hungry?”
“I don’t know. I threw up at the police station.”
“Wine then,” Archibald said. He took a dark green bottle and a slender water glass from the table. He filled the glass halfway with the dark red liquid and handed it to me.
It was the finest burgundy I’d ever tasted. Rich, fruity, almost smoky.
“Cheese?” Lawless asked.
“In a minute,” I said. “Is this your apartment?”
“I own the building,” he said blandly. “Bought it when the prices were still depressed.”
“You’re a landlord?”
“Building manager is the title I prefer. I collect a certain amount of rent from my tenants until they’ve paid for the cost of their unit. After that they pay whatever maintenance is necessary for taxes and upkeep.”
I must have been gaping at him.
“It’s the way Fidel does it in Cuba,” he said.
“Castro’s a dictator.”
“And Bush is a democratically elected official,” he replied.
“But …” I said.
Lawless held up his hand.
“We’ll have enough time to discuss politics on slow days at the office,” he said. “Right now we have some more pressing business.”