by Jim Beard
***
The pitch black basement room smelled as bad as anything on the Old East Side, he reckoned, and perhaps worse. Still, he summoned what little courage he could, closed the door to the sidewalk behind him, and began to make his way down the ancient wooden staircase into the inky darkness.
Some small light from around the door frame illuminated only the top few steps, and feebly at that, making the shadows below him even darker and more impenetrable. To keep his mind off what lie waiting for him there and the terrible creaking and groaning of the rickety staircase, he summoned up a mental list to survey his progress to that point.
Through his old contacts he’d gotten wind of a new presence on the streets of the great city, someone who, according to that wind, might be buying information. If a person, like himself, was possessed of information – it wasn’t exactly clear what kind was desired, but he fancied that his was of fair worth – they could bring it to the attention of the new presence and, perhaps, make a sale of it.
He was told that he was to go to the old Trombley Hotel on Ship Street and leave a note as to his purpose in the box for Room 2-B. Then, if his request was accorded some value, he would receive a Summons to Appear.
Shivering again from those words, Summons to Appear, he fingered the note he’d received not half a day later from the very same box at the Trombley and recalled the address printed upon it in blood red letters and numbers – the very same address he presently visited.
And so, here he was, stepping into a darkened basement room that stunk of mold and trash and other things he didn’t care to dwell upon.
He reached the bottom of the steps and glanced back up at the door at the top of the stairs. Its dim light seemed a million miles away. Turning back to the room – hard to call it even that when he couldn’t make out an inch of it - he cleared his throat and spoke aloud.
“Er, ah, hello?” he inquired in his girlish voice. “Anybody…there?”
He felt immediately very foolish. A man of your stature, he thought to himself, playing about on the East Side like a common criminal… But, he’d give it one more try.
“I have something you might like to, ah, know? Information of a very confidential nature?”
Came a rasping, scraping sound, like stone against stone. It made him jump.
“Are you there?” he asked of the darkness, realizing that his eyes should have adjusted by then, but hadn’t.
“I am The Red Judge.”
The voice chilled him to the marrow. He never imagined that mere words, a short sentence, could cause such an effect in him. It was as if a grave had opened up and Death itself had spoken from it.
Dumbfounded, he could not find his own voice.
“Speak,” insisted the sepulchral voice. “What do you bring me?”
“I am…Lynwood Totty,” he croaked, his normally high pitched tone lost somewhere in the darkness. He added a shaky little half bow to it.
“I know who you are,” said the voice, somewhat angrily. “What have you brought me?”
Totty wiped at his brow with his handkerchief, staring into the absolute blackness. “I…I heard you like to…hear things, and you…then you…”
“Judge them,” the unseen presence continued for him. “I hear what you bring, and then I judge its value to me.”
The Assistant District Attorney shook his head, perspiration dripping into his eyes, making them blink. If he didn’t need the money…
“A body,” he began, hesitantly, “found yesterday morning…in the East River.”
The voice surged in volume. “Bodies are found all the time, and many of them in the river. Sad, but true. Why do you believe this would interest me?”
Totty paused, asking himself that question. Indeed, why did he believe that? Why would he…then, he remembered.
“Oh!” he squeaked, “because of how it was dressed! Like a gentleman…and its eyes!”
“What about its eyes?”
“Cut out! Not, err, by accident, or from animals…but cut out! A blind man in fancy dress, if you take my meaning.”
The voice did not return with a comment. Totty waited, listening. He thought that perhaps he could hear the sound of cloth rustling somewhere in the room.
A light blazed in the darkness!
Lynwood Totty staggered backward, his shoes barking against the wooden staircase, his hands flailing about, hoping to catch himself from falling over onto what was surely a floor that no decent person would want to touch, let alone see.
Looking up — for the light came from above his head — he saw a halo of weird crimson light across the room from him, opposite the staircase.
Within that orb of red illumination sat the large figure of a man.
He squinted, trying to define the apparition in his mind. Dressed in red robes that blanketed his shoulders and arms, the man sat imperiously on a raised dais of some kind, looking down upon Totty. On his head rested a strange headdress or helmet, made to follow the lines of the wig of a judge of old, and over his face lay a mask that cloaked his features completely, save for the eyes. Those were large and piercing, or so they seemed to be in the queer light.
Every bit of the man was red, a dark, bloody crimson that around the edges of the halo of light appeared black.
“I am The Red Judge. Your information has found favor with me.”
Totty found himself nodding, his chin dipping up and down, up and down, over and over again. He forced words out of his mouth again. “You’ll…you’ll pay?”
The Red Judge rose up, a robed figure glaring down upon the little man there in that darkened subterranean chamber, not unlike a courtroom of a sort.
“Who knows of this?”
“The Mayor…a few cops…err, the two guys who fished it out of the river…” Totty paused, thinking. “Oh, yeah; and the D.A., Henry Wildenburg!”
“I know who the District Attorney is!”
The fury of the words shock Lynwood Totty deeply. For a moment, he was sure that he wasn’t to be paid, or that he wouldn’t make it out of that room alive.
The man sat down again, his eyes smoldering underneath his mask. “Where is the…corpse now?”
The Assistant D.A. gulped, wiped his brow again. “In the morgue,” he replied. “So, I guess the coroner knows about it, too. They’re all having kittens about it, on account of it looking like His Honor…”
The hand of The Red Judge appeared from beneath his robes and made a gesture as if tossing something into the air. The sound of an object hitting the floor in front of Totty echoed loudly within the room. He flinched, looking down to see a thick stack of bills done up with a band, now illuminated by a small cone of red light.
“Take it – and go. Speak of this to no one.”
“Nossir,” Totty promised. “Nossir, no one at all!”
With that he was back up the stairs and through the door, never once looking back into the red light.