Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 12, December, 1953

Wife Beater by Roy Carroll

The cops could hear her screams from the street, so they went up and got the guy who was beating her. But that was only the beginning...

Her name was Cherry Szykora. Regularly, every week, her husband would beat her black and blue. Across the street, Harry, the bartender, would slide a beer over the bar to a customer. They’d listen for a moment and chuckle. “Well,” Harry’d say, “Cherry’s gettin’ it again.”

The call came in at eleven sixteen P.M.

“Car six. Check on disturbance at two-ten Prescott. Man beating his wife...”

Jake threw his cigarette out the window. “Hell,” he said. Then he thought for a second. “Prescott. That’s down in Hunkytown, isn’t it?”

Tom Rivas nodded. “Yeah,” he said.

Jake, who was driving that night, jammed the prowl car into gear and headed toward the part of town where drab frame houses and dirty alleys huddled like a parasitic growth around the iron smelters. Hunkytown.

“Those people,” Jake grunted. “Always kicking their wives around.” He chuckled then. “Oh, well, maybe if my wife ran around like some of them babes do...”

Tom Rivas’ face was pale in the glow of the dash. He was quietly grinding his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “Don’t joke about it. It’s nothing to joke about.”

Jake Smith shot him a quick, puzzled glance.

Tom shrugged and lit a cigarette jerkily. “I just don’t like wife beaters, that’s all,” he muttered.

“Okay,” Jake shrugged. “So you don’t like wife beaters. Personally I don’t give a damn.” He concentrated on driving.

Tom Rivas watched the streets unfold before their headlights. He didn’t bother to explain his words. It was a matter of pride. You didn’t go telling everybody how you watched your old lady get her brains beaten out one night by a crazy-drunk father. But Tom could remember plain enough, though he’d been only seven at the time. He could remember her whimpering cry and the huge brute of a man, his father, slamming his fist into her face over and over. And then the piece of stove wood coming down on her head, popping it open like an overripe canteloupe.

Yeah, he could remember.

They got down to the narrow streets and the buildings that were a constant gray from the iron works smog.

They stopped the car and walked across a wet street to a bar. It was raining a fine mist that night.

The name of the bar was Harry’s Place. Harry, himself, was at the beer tap, carefully filling a glass with keg beer. He had a little plastic paddle in his right hand, skimming off the excess foam. He was an artist at this job.

Jake walked up to the bar. “You got some apartments in this building?”

Harry looked up at the two policemen. The other men in the dim place looked up too. Their faces all had the same look, a sullen animosity which was half fear. The people down here in Hunkytown had little use for the law, which was seldom on their side whether they were right or not.

Slowly, Harry laid the paddle down. He caught up a corner of the soiled apron that was tied around his fat middle and wiped his hands. “Nah,” he said. “We ain’t got no apartments here. Why?”

“This two-ten Prescott? We got a call to check a disturbance here. Something about a man beating his wife.”

Harry’s jagged teeth stumps revealed themselves in a leer. “Oh, sure.” Down the bar, there was a man with his cap pulled down over his eyes, a mug of beer in his hand. He laughed shortly.

“Well?” Jake asked, his temper beginning to shorten. Tom Rivas stood right behind him.

“Yeah,” the saloon keeper said, “I guess there was a disturbance here, you might say. They went home, though. He took her home.”

“The guy that was beating his wife?”

“Yeah. He come here and got her. She was screeching around like she didn’t want to go, so he slapped her up a little and took her home. It’s just across the street.” He took a dirty, broken thumb nail out of the beer suds and jabbed it at a frame house across the way.

The man in the cap chuckled again. “Ain’t nothin’ to get excited about, copper. Just Mack Szykora havin’ a row with his missus. Happens all the time. Every week he knocks her around a little. Don’t mean no harm.”

Tom Rivas’ fists bunched and he got a little white around the mouth, feeling the urge to knock the man in the cap down for his callousness.

The bartender said, “Don’t know who called you, copper. It wasn’t nothin’.”

Jake stood there a minute longer, then he went outside. “Let’s go,” he muttered. He opened the car door.

But Tom Rivas remained on the sidewalk. He gazed across the street at the cheap frame house with the shades drawn. While he stood there, he heard a faint cry.

“Hey,” Jake called after him, “where you goin’?”

Tom didn’t answer. He went right up to the house, walking through the weeds and rubble in the front yard. He could hear it quite plainly now. A man’s deep, rumbled curses. The smack of a hand against bare flesh. Then her gasp. “No, Mack. Please... for God’s sake. Don’t—”

Tom leaped up on the porch and went for the door. His lips were drawn back and a hot, red haze came down over his eyes.

The door was not locked. The knob spun in his hand. He jerked it open and charged into the place, stumbling over furniture in the dark hallway. Over to the left, a slit of light was showing under the bedroom door. Tom headed that way and wrenched the door open.

The man and the woman in the room froze with surprise when he burst in. For a split second the scene was transfixed. Nobody moved. The young policeman glanced at the girl who was huddled against a wall.

She was a pretty, young thing, not over twenty. Almost all her clothes had been ripped off. Her thick black hair had piled loosely around her naked shoulders and her puffed, tear-stained face. Her long, slim legs were coated with sheer nylon. She had lost one shoe. Her flesh was very white and smooth except where big Mack Szykora’s fingers had left ugly, purple bruises.

Like most of the girls in Hunkytown. she was a bit on the pale, thin side. But her huge black eyes and dark hair contrasted beautifully with her white skin.

Tom couldn’t get his eyes off her. He was a bachelor and not exactly dumb about women, but this one had an indefinable something that hit him like a strong electrical charge on a wet day. It was the first time he’d ever wanted a woman at first sight.

Her husband was a giant. Like all the iron workers in Hunkytown, he was well over six feet tall and carried at least two hundred and thirty pounds of solid beef. Heat from molten metal and blast furnaces had tinged his battered features a permanent dull brick red. Now he stood in the center of the room, blinking dazedly at Rivas.

The girl recovered first. She moved away from the wall to the bed where she snatched up a sheet to cover her nakedness. Her husband’s brain moved slower. “Whata hell’re you doin’ here, copper?” he grunted, shaking his head.

With an effort, Rivas stopped looking at the girl. “Come on,” he said. “You’re going with me.”

The ceiling light, a naked fifty-watt bulb on the end of a drop cord, hung directly over the big man’s head, shining on a bald spot and casting the jagged lines of his face in harsh shadows.

His big paws began flexing. A low rumble, like a freight going down a grade, issued from his throat. “Why, you rotten copper,” he whispered. Then he came at Rivas with his giant arms outstretched, a gorilla reaching to crush every bone in the policeman’s chest with one hug.

The raw hate washed up into Rivas’ mouth with a sour, rotten taste out of his stomach. He was glad Szykora wanted to argue about it. He took a blackjack out of his pocket and waited until the husky iron worker’s arms came around him and the man’s coarse face was pushed up to his with a gush of sour beer stench. Then, Rivas brought the blackjack down across Szykora’s face. He could have simplified all this by drawing his pistol and frightening Szykora into submission. But he preferred to do it this way. He preferred to swing the blackjack again and again, whipping the big ape down to his knees, whipping his face into a bloody froth, while everything dissolved into a red haze. The frightened girl merged with his memory of his old lady the night she was killed and he took out on Szykora the hatred that had lived with him for twenty years.

Rivas was making animal sounds in his throat as his arm came down again and again and the sweat soaked through his uniform and stood out in big, sticky drops on his face. He would probably have beaten Szykora to death on the spot if Jake Smith hadn’t come in and dragged him off the man.

The next day they brought Szykora into court. There wasn’t much they could do to him. The girl was there, but when she was brought before the court, she refused to testify against her husband. Nobody in Szykora’s neighborhood would file a complaint. They were all afraid of the big man. Finally, Szykora was given a couple of days for drunken behavior and resisting arrest.

After the brief trial, Tom Rivas saw the girl out in the corridor. She was standing in a corner, lighting a cigarette. There was a long purple bruise on one cheek bone, poorly disguised with heavy pancake make up. She was wearing a sheer blouse, gray skirt, high heel pumps. A cheap patent leather purse was hugged under her left arm. Her clothes across her bosom, hips and thighs were tight, and Tom thought about how she had looked last night and a warm flush came up his throat.

He walked over to her. “You should have told the truth in there,” he said gently. “You didn’t have to be afraid of him. We would have put him away where he wouldn’t hurt you any more.”

She glanced quickly up. Her eyes were numb and a little frightened. She looked at him the way any of them from Hunkytown would look at a policeman, with a mingling of fear and hatred. Damn it, Tom thought, even when you were trying to help them, they were afraid of you.

He took a card out of his pocket with his home telephone number on it. “If he tries to hurt you again, call the station, or call me. I’ll come down even if I’m not on duty.”

She gazed at the card for a long moment with wide eyes, as if not entirely comprehending. Then, as if she had been ordered to do so, she took the card and put it in her purse. She started to turn and leave, but he caught her arm.

“What’s your name?” he asked, with an undercurrent of desperation in his voice.

She stood there with her eyes lowered. Finally, she whispered, “Cherry.” Then she walked away.

After Szykora was released, Tom had Jake Smith drive through that neighborhood several times a night so he could check on the house.

“I don’t know,” Smith swore. “She’s nothing but a little twist. Not particularly pretty. I don’t see why you’re knocking yourself out over her. So her old man beats her up sometimes — so what? It happens to dozens of them every night. They like it.”

“I just don’t like a man that’ll do that to a woman,” Rivas said, rubbing his right fist into his left palm. “If he does it again, I’ll kill him.”

Smith shot him a disturbed glance. They’d been working together for several months. Smith had taken him under a wing because he was a rookie and he felt responsible for him. “Look, kid,” he advised, “that blue suit you got on don’t make you God. It don’t even give you permission to bust into another man’s house without a warrant. You’re liable to get in trouble, doing what you did to Szykora the other night. Take it easy, will you?”

Tom Rivas started going down to her neighborhood when he was off duty. He’d sit in the saloon by the hour, hoping to get a look at her. Sometimes he’d see her walking by, then he’d go out and make her stop and talk with him. She was always afraid, when he did this. She’d keep looking around, like a nervous animal. But he’d make her talk to him, anyway. He was going crazy, wanting her and worrying about her.

Szykora was still beating her up. She denied this, but she couldn’t cover up all the bruises and marks. Once, she went in a bar with Tom for a beer. They were sitting in a booth together in the back of the room and she was swearing that Mack Szykora wasn’t hitting her any more. With a swift movement, Tom caught her wrists in one hand and with his other, flicked the hem of her dress back up to her waist. Her thighs were firm and white above her stocking tops — except for the long red stripes where a belt had cut into the tender flesh.

She put her hands over her face and cried softly.

“Listen, Cherry,” Tom begged, “leave him before he really hurts you. Before he kills you some night.”

She took her hands away from her face and got out of the booth. “Leave me alone,” she whispered miserably. “Just leave me alone!”

How could you help a girl whose eyes were dead, the way hers were? A girl so afraid of a man, she was letting him slowly kill her?

One night Tom was on Prescott Street, off duty, in plain clothes. He stood in the thick shadows and listened to them row. It was worse tonight. They’d been keeping quiet since that night Rivas had arrested Szykora. But tonight the big iron worker was too drunk to be cautious. The sound of him cursing and slamming around inside the house could be heard across the street. In the saloon, Harry served a foaming glass of keg beer to a customer and they exchanged knowing smiles.

Sweat covered Tom Rivas’ face. He couldn’t stand any more of it. He threw a half-smoked cigarette into a gutter and started toward the house. Just then the front door burst open and Mack Szykora came reeling out in his shirt sleeves. The big man stumbled across the yard, headed to the saloon for more beer.

Tom met him in the shadows. “You dirty bastard,” Rivas cursed. “I told you to leave that woman alone.”

Szykora reeled and blinked, picking out Tom Rivas’ features in the darkness. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said thickly, “it’s th’ copper. And without his monkey suit.” A giant paw caught the front of Tom’s coat. “You listen, you damn copper. You keep away from here. You leave my wife alone. I know you been sniffin’ around her. I heard talk.” Szykora was whipping himself into a murderous rage. “She’s my wife. What I do to her’s my business — you hear me, copper?”

Rivas slapped the big man’s hand away from his coat, and hit Szykora with all his force. It was like throwing your fist at the side of a stove. Szykora shook his head and swept Rivas up like a rag doll, hurling him against the dark wall of a warehouse. Then Mack Szykora picked up a rock the size of a large cabbage and came at the half stunned policeman, raising it to smash Rivas’ head.

Numbly, Tom drew his service revolver and, lying there propped on one elbow, shot Mack Szykora in the face. Doing it gave him a great deal of pleasure.

Tom Rivas got in no trouble over the killing. Some men had come out of the saloon and they testified that it was justifiable homicide.

After the funeral and after the grand jury acquitted him, he went down to Hunkytown to see the girl. “It’s going to be all right now, Cherry,” he said, taking her gently into his arms. “I’m going to treat you right. You don’t know what it’s like for a man to treat you right.”

“Thank you, Tom,” she said numbly. She registered absolutely no emotion, neither grief nor joy at Mack’s death. Submissively, she allowed Tom to kiss her, but her lips were like clay under his.

He realized that he had never seen her display any kind of emotion; she was a strange woman.

Tom figured that her natural emotions had been stifled by the years of fear she had lived through in Mack Szykora’s house. She’d married him when she was sixteen. It would take a lot of tenderness and patience on his part to make her warmly human again.

As the weeks passed, he was good to her. As good as a man could be to a woman. He brought her gifts. He took her to fine restaurants where she had never been.

But she never showed a thing, other than to say, “Thank you,” very politely. She allowed him to kiss her whenever he wanted. She didn’t refuse a thing — she was like a statue that he could use in any way he wished. Several times he parked and kissed her and got a little more intimate, unbuttoning her blouse or brushing his hand along her leg. She was completely submissive, allowing him anything he desired. But he did not claim her. He wanted her more than anything in the world. He wanted to marry her. But not until she could come to him as a woman should, with fire on her lips and a warm response in her beautiful body that was made for a man to love.

He was living under a great strain, now. It was telling on him. He was thin. There were great shadows under his eyes which burned with a dark, restless fire. A man could stand only so much of what he was going through.

One night after he had been wooing Cherry for three months, he went down to Hunkytown to pick her up for their usual date. He went down to Prescott street to the house across from Harry’s Place, her house now, since the death of Mack Szykora.

He went in and waited while she finished the little feminine rituals required of a woman, touching a powder puff to her nose here and there, drawing a lipstick across her mouth carefully. Tom Rivas stood at one side of her mirror, watching her lithe, graceful movements, the soft curve of a bare arm, the valley of her bosom as she leaned toward the mirror and her deeply cut blouse fell away from her breasts. She was a beautiful, desirable woman, with her Slavic inheritance of large dark eyes, high cheek bones, a wide full mouth and a skin like moonlight. Tom stared at her, achingly, and with a sudden cry, he grabbed her arm and brought her up, crushing her wide red mouth under his, like a starving man.

“Cherry,” he cried against her lips.

Lips that were like clay, body like a statue.

She stood there letting him kiss her, letting him do whatever he liked. She was like a sleepwalker.

He shook her roughly, digging his fingers into her soft white shoulders. His face was slick with perspiration. “What’s the matter with you?” he gasped hoarsely. “What kind of woman are you? Don’t you ever feel anything?” He was shaking all over, sick with frustration.

Her eyes filled. “I’m sorry,” she said simply. He had been good to her and she was genuinely sorry that she could not give him what he desired.

“Don’t you like me, at all?”

“Of course I like you,” she answered quietly. “I like you, Tom.”

“Then what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you wake it up? Why do you treat me like this? A man can’t make love to an ice statue.”

All she could say, numbly, was, “I’m sorry, Tom. I... I can’t help the way I am. I’m sorry.”

Rivas dug shaking fingers into his hair. It was like ramming your head against an invisible barrier. What could he do? He became filled with rage at something he couldn’t see, couldn’t fight with his own hands. He began cursing her. “You filthy little tramp. There’s somebody else — isn’t that it? You’re sleeping with somebody else.”

“No, Tom,” she answered simply.

“Yes there is,” he screamed, and hit her across the mouth. “I’ve done everything for you — killed for you, and you go out and lay with some bum.” He struck her again, leaving red splotches across her cheek.

She took a step away from him, her head going back. Her lips parted, teeth gleamed. Something stirred in her dark eyes, something he had never seen before.

The months of frustration, desire and bafflement exploded in an uncontrollable fit of jealous rage. Listening to his own words, he had convinced himself that she was frigid with him because she was sleeping with another man. He hit her again and again, with blind, unreasoning anger.

She flew against a wall. Her black hair tumbled over her eyes. There, she cowered, whimpering, staring at him, fascinated. Her dark eyes were filled with a wild excitement he had never seen before. Suddenly, she reached up with both hands, grabbing the collar of her blouse. With a single, impatient gesture, she ripped it open, baring herself to her waist. Then she threw herself at him, mouthing unintelligible sounds. Her parted lips found his, hungrily. Her fingers, like claws, dug into his back while her body writhed and bumped against him in a paroxysm of uncontrollable passion.

But Tom Rivas could no longer stop. He tore the rest of her clothes off and then his fists struck her body again and again, tattooing the soft white flesh with ugly purple bruises. His eyes glazed and his breath rattled in a hoarse gasp.

He kept hitting her, harder and harder.

And across the street, Harry, the bartender, drew a glass of beer off tap, shoved it over the bar to a customer. They both listened to the sound of blows and a woman’s sharp cry from the frame house. Harry put a finger against one nostril and blew.

He grinned at the customer. “Well, Cherry’s happy. She’s gettin’ it again.”

“Yeah,” the man said. “She’s gettin’ it again.”