Night of the Juggler

Chapter 21

They traveled south on Central Park West in the long green Cadillac, Samantha and Coke Roosevelt in a leather cocoon of luxury in the rear seat with Samantha’s chauffeur, Doc Logan, at the wheel.

Samantha put her head back and closed her eyes and rested her legs on one of the jump seats. She wore purple suede boots, a darker purple suede pants suit, with a jacket which flared at the hips and whose color was in brilliant contrast with her flaming red cashmere sweater.

Coke put a hand on the back of her shoulders and neck and began to massage her muscles, which under his probing fingers felt stiff as boards. She sat silently with her eyes closed, but he could feel some of the tension easing in her body.

“What else you prescribe, Coke?”

Coke fished a pillbox from the pocket of his leather jacket, opened it with a flick of his thumb, and held it out to Samantha.

“Come on,” he said, and removed a flask from an inner pocket of his jacket. She opened her eyes and looked down at the box of pills.

“Pop a couple of these and have a taste,” he said.

“Think that’s all I need?” But she took two of the pills and swallowed them with a sip of whiskey. Then she said, “Where’s Manolo and them black kids now?”

“Biggie collected them twenty minutes ago; they’re probably at that circus the cops are staging for the boob-tube set. What’s in this for us, Sam? She’s a white kid. Snow-white, the magic princess. What’s that got to do with our brothers and sisters?”

“I told the Gypsy I’d help him,” Samantha said, and winced as needles of pain pierced her temples.

“You need more than pills and booze to stop those ice picks punching your eardrums,” Coke said, looking at her clenched jaws and flaring nostrils. “You’re rippin’ yourself off, Sam, helping Whitey. And what’s worse, helpin’ honkie cops.”

“You’re a dumb nigger,” she said. “How come you’re talking like a headshrink?”

“Don’t take an Einstein to dig it. Look. You and me travel first-class. But most of the brothers have to kiss white-fuzz ass, grin, and bob their heads at ‘em, hoping, just hoping, they won’t ram their nightsticks up their butts. So when you help cops who do that to your people, then you put your head in a vise and crank the handle to hurt yourself as bad as you can.”

Samantha sighed and looked down at the backs of her hands. They were a nice color, she thought. There were places in the world men would write poetry about them. Places she could take Manolo.

“Lemme say something, Coke,” she said. “I can’t help the way I feel. I wish I could. God, how I wish I could! But something inside me won’t let me hate like you do.”

Coke smiled and took a swig of whiskey. “Let’s keep that our secret, Sam,” he said.

Her mother did not think that white people were devils. Neither did her grandmother. Nor had Emma and Missoura, who from faded photographs she knew as large, cowlike girls, her great-great-aunts and the daughters of slaves. They all had kind words for white folks, because a white man had once been kind to Emma and Missoura at a time when kindness to blacks had a high price tag on it.

But what a cruel kindness it had been, Samantha thought.

Emma and Missoura had worked for a white family, the Meltons, in the twenties in Mobile, Alabama. They lived in the black community on the outskirts of town, without heat, light, or plumbing facilities on meadows that were churned frequently into nightmarish quagmires by seasonal rains and hurricanes that swept across them from the Florida coastlines. But Emma and Missoura shared a comparative comfort with their elderly mother, subsisting on toting privileges and what money the Meltons paid them.

It had been on one of those rainy nights when Mr. Melton committed that act of kindness which sang down the filaments of time and caused Samantha’s throbbing headaches when the Gypsy asked her for official favors.

One night Mr. Melton had told his black chauffeur, Abraham, to drive the girls home during a rainstorm. Abraham had been frightened and had made some excuse. No chauffeur drove dumb black maids around in those days. So Mr. Melton drove the girls home himself. He had done the same thing on numerous other occasions. He had been warned by white friends that he was making a mistake; he was ridiculed for it. And he was threatened because of it.

But Mr. Melton hadn’t budged, had driven the girls home whenever the weather was too bad for the five-mile walk. If he’d done it just once, Samantha thought, she could write it off as just plain damn foolishness. But he had done it for the three and a half years the girls had worked for the Melton family.

The stories of Mr. Melton, sagas more like it, had come down to Maybelle Cooper like tales from King Arthur’s Court.

On one occasion when a pack of red-neck white trash had circled the shanty town, screaming filth at Mr. Melton and the coloreds huddling in their cold shacks, Mr. Melton had leaped from his car and had shouted songs of freedom and glory at them in a fine, vigorous voice and the red-neck pack had slunk off into the shadows.

When she was a little girl, it had amused Samantha to hear her grandmother talk about Mr. Melton and croak off-key phrases from songs like “The West’s Awake” and “Kelly, the Boy from Killan,” and to listen to her re-create the picture of that big Irishman standing in driving rains and chasing away yellow bastards with his powerful voice and songs of freedom. When Samantha went to school in New York, she found some of the songs in an old sheet-music shop and had picked out the tunes with one finger on an upright piano in the school gym.

One line she had never forgot: “The harp he loved, ne’er spoke again, for he tore its chords asunder. And said ‘No chains shall sully thee, the soul of love and liberty. Thy songs were made for the pure and free, they shall never sound in slavery.’”

During her adolescence, Samantha had tried to convince herself that Mr. Melton had done only what any decent man would do; he had done what only a courageous, sensitive, and feeling man would have done, and the worm in Samantha’s soul was that she hated him for it.

Mrs. Schultz stood behind the police lines, so swaddled in sweaters under her bulky cloth coat that she looked almost as wide as she was tall. Mrs. Schultz had asked the policeman if she could go into the park. In her worried old head was the thought that she might find Gus and talk some sense to him before he hurt the girl. But when the policeman asked her why, she didn’t tell him because that would only lead to other questions. About Gus and other nights. And why their family had no records when they came from Canada into the United States.

She told him she wanted to use a toilet, and he told her there was one off the lobby of the Plaza. She nodded and went off into the crowd.

Imagine her in the Plaza in her old cotton stockings and worn coat.

She watched a tall man approach the police line, accompanied by a slim girl with a scarf knotted about her blond hair. She heard him say to a policeman, “Wayne, the New York Times. This is Crescent Holloway. She’s with me.”

The patrolman nodded and waved them past the barriers into the park.

Watch him, his mother had said, Mrs. Schultz thought bitterly and wearily, but how could she help him if no one would let her? Her lips moved in prayer. In her halting English she said, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and forever. . amen.”

Barbara Boyd was alone in the rear of a police squad when Paul Wayne stopped beside the car and spoke to her.

“Mrs. Boyd? Paul Wayne, the Times.”

“Yes,” she said.

A strikingly beautiful girl stood with Paul Wayne, and her face was vaguely familiar to Barbara.

“Crescent Holloway, Mrs. Boyd. She’s a friend of Rudi Zahn’s.”

What did they want from her? Barbara wondered, because she could see questions in their eyes, in their expressions. But she couldn’t help them. She couldn’t think of anything but a desperate black terror that was like a physical presence inside her body. She sat hugging her arms across her breasts, numb and isolated in the orderly turmoil of the command post. This concentration of equipment and manpower didn’t touch Barbara Boyd; nothing existed for her but the terrible certainty that her daughter was dead. Not taken away with a merciful illness, not dying in a split-second fall from a horse, but taken away-Christ, no! she pleaded silently, but the dreadful thought could not be exorcised-taken away by a sadistic monster who would torture and terrify her before finally killing her.

Her only hope was contained in a cruel paradox. The facets of her husband’s character that she hadn’t understood, that she had been critical of were the only strengths that might save their daughter’s life tonight. She wasn’t afraid for him, but she longed to be with him.

“I’m really terribly sorry, Mrs. Boyd,” Crescent Holloway said. “Words are pretty stupid now. I’ll just say some prayers.”

“Thank you,” Barbara said.

“Mrs. Boyd, do you know where Mr. Zahn is?” Wayne asked her.

“He was so brave,” Barbara said. “He tried to save my child.”

She was in shock, Crescent realized; her eyes were glazed, and a tiny tic pulled rhythmically at the corner of her lips.

“Did he say where he was going?”

“He just went away. He said he hadn’t done enough. He said he’d never done enough.”

Ilana, Crescent thought, while an anxious fear stirred in her heart.

Was that where Rudi had gone? Into this dark and dangerous park to look for a lost little girl who had disappeared from his life but never his memories almost three decades ago?

Paul Wayne took Crescent’s arm and led her away from the squad car.

“We can check with Lieutenant Tonnelli,” he said.

They found the Gypsy standing with a cluster of detectives and patrolmen studying the brilliantly illuminated contour map of the park.

But Tonnelli had no news of Rudi Zahn. “Thought he was with Mrs. Boyd,” he said, and beckoned to one of the detectives of his unit, Jim Taylor. He told Taylor to pick a detail of men and start looking for Rudi Zahn.

As Taylor went off, Max Prima came hurrying up to Gypsy Tonnelli.

“Got a message from that black lady that shylocks up in Harlem. She wants to talk to you, says it’s important.”

“Where is she?”

“Parked due east of here, on the drive.”

There were two cars parked on the East Drive, Samantha’s green Cadillac and Biggie Lewis’ white Imperial. As Tonnelli crossed the brightly lighted CP with Max Prima, he saw that Biggie, Coke, and Samantha were standing on the lawn beside the cars, and beside them were Manolo Ramos, a faggot hustler, and a pair of young black boys he didn’t recognize.

Prima and Gypsy Tonnelli stopped, and Tonnelli looked at Samantha and drew a thumbnail down the length of his scar.

“What you got?” he asked her.

“Tell him, Hugo.”

“Well, me and Billy were cruising through the Ramble, and we saw this little white girl lying there on the ground all tied up with ropes and a piece of tape over her mouth.”

“When and where was this, son?”

“I’ll wrap it up,” Samantha said. “About thirty minutes ago, east side of the Ramble. About Seventy-fifth, Seventy-sixth. Hugo and Billy here pulled the tape off the little kid’s mouth, and she began to scream, and who could blame her?”

“And that’s the last I saw of the big horse who wants to trick with me,” Manolo said. “We hear somebody screaming and he-”

Tonnelli cut in. “Let’s sort this out,” he said. “You first, Manolo.”

“I’m hustling the park, this big stud comes out of the woods. He don’t talk much, but I know he wants to mess around. He got no money, but I don’t like his looks. So I tell him I’ll meet him later to get rid of him. He says he could get some money, but then we heard her yelling.”

“Big bastard chased us away before we could untie her,” Hugo said, excitement threading his voice.

Tonnelli was staring intently at Manolo. “You said you’d meet him later?”

“Don’t cost me nothing to say that.”

“You could find where you said you’d meet him?”

Manolo was savoring his moment of importance, enjoying Lieutenant Tonnelli’s attention.

“The place, I can find it easy.”

Gypsy Tonnelli glanced at Prima, beckoned to him, and the two officers moved away from the group in front of the big cars. It was worth a try, he thought.

The emotional profile which department psychiatrists had constructed of the Juggler over the past few years placed a primary emphasis on the fact that he was driven by feelings of psychopathic inferiority, but they had also concluded that his compulsions were deeply rooted in latent homosexuality.

“Report to Deputy Chief Greene,” Tonnelli said to Prima. “Tell him we may have a geographical fix on the Juggler. And that I’m alerting our marksmen.”

When Prima went off, Tonnelli walked back to Samantha, who was watching him with cold, suspicious eyes.

“What you setting up, Gypsy?”

“Manolo’s got a date,” Tonnelli said. “Naturally, he’s gonna keep it.”

“No way, unless he wants to.”

“I think he’ll want to,” Tonnelli said. “Otherwise, I know a dozen interesting ways to kick his little ass clear out of New York City.”

“Will you kindly shut up, Pope?” and there was a mix of anger and fear in her voice. She knelt so that her great white-rimmed eyes were on a level with Manolo’s and put her hands gently on his slim shoulders.

“What about it, Manolo. Want to help the Man?”

Manolo looked sullenly at Tonnelli. “What’s he talking about kicking my ass out of New York for?”

“That’s the way Italians talk,” Samantha said. “They don’t know any better.”

“Think I should, Sam?”

“It’s up to you, Manolo.” He was so pretty, she thought, fragile and delicate as a flower. “You could get hurt, and that’s the truth.”

“I’m still short about three hundred, Sam.”

“Do what the lieutenant wants, if you want to, then you don’t owe us nothing.”

Tonnelli looked appraisingly at Manolo. “You’re sure this bad-ass will keep this date with you?”

“No way he won’t,” Manolo said.

“I’m asking again. How do you know?”

“I turn on a stud, Lieutenant, he stays turned on,” Manolo said, and gave him a smile of such piercing sweetness and intimacy that Tonnelli experienced an involuntary spasm in his loins and realized guiltily that a tide of color was rising in his cheeks.

Sweet Jesus, not me! But the reflection was touched with only a wry amusement, for he had no confusion about his sexual identity.

Nonetheless, Samantha’s needling smile both irritated and embarrassed him.

Well, who could blame anybody, he thought, because this beautiful youngster seemed able to flick a switch that caused an explosion of sensual excitement? This was quality merchandise, a choice package, the white fur jacket and the blue suede skintight trousers, the curly black hair oiled and perfumed, and those eyes like velvet flowers, these were major-league, high hard ones, and the Gypsy was thinking, if we’ve got to bait a trap for a faggot, we’re in luck, because we got a prime piece of ass to do it with.