Calypso

4

In the silence of the 3:00 A.M. squadroom, he sat alone at his desk and wondered what the hell was happening to him. He would have to call her in the morning, apologize to her, tell her it had been a long day and a longer night, tell her that sometimes in this business you began looking for murderers under every rock, explain — shit. He had treated a grieving widow like a goddamn assassin. There was no excuse. He was tired, but that was no excuse. He had listened to Monoghan and Monroe making jokes about death and dying, and he had been irritated by their banter, but that was no excuse, either. Nor was the rain an excuse. Nothing could excuse his having played cop with a woman who’d been feeling only intense grief over the death of her husband. He sometimes believed that if he stayed at this job long enough, he would forget entirely what it meant to feel anything at all.

“This is your case,” the manual advised, “stick with the investigation.” Stick with it in the pouring rain where a man lay with his open skull seeping his brains onto the sidewalk, stick with it in a hospital room reeking of antiseptic, stick with it in a tenement apartment at 2:00 in the morning, the clock throwing minutes into the empty hours of the night while a woman wept tears for her man who was dead. Search her closet for the clothes the killer wore. Get her to talk about her husband’s possible infidelities. Be a fucking cop.

He should have gone home. The squadroom clock read ten minutes to 3:00 now. Technically, it was already Saturday morning, though it still felt like Friday night, and it was still raining. Technically, his tour had ended at midnight, and he’d have gone home then if the Chadderton squeal hadn’t come in at a quarter to 12:00, just when Parker and Willis were supposed to relieve. He was exhausted and irritable, and feeling hugely like a horse’s ass for his handling of the Chadderton woman, feeling not a little self-pity besides, poor public servant forced to deal with the more violent side of life, low pay and long hours, lousy working conditions and departmental pressures for swift arrests and convictions — he should have gone home to bed. But the notebook was here on his desk, sitting with its frayed blue cover and its pages of lyrics written by the dead man, urging scrutiny. He rose, stretched, went to the water cooler, drank a paper cup full of water, and then went back to the desk. The clock on the wall read 3:05 A.M. The squadroom was silent, a poorly lighted mausoleum of empty desks and stilled typewriters. Beyond the slatted wooden railing that separated the squadroom from the corridor outside, he could see a light burning behind the frosted glass door to the locker room, and beyond that the banister post for the iron-runged steps that led to the muster room on the first floor of the building. Downstairs, a telephone rang. He heard a patrolman greeting another patrolman coming in off the street. Alone in the squadroom, Carella opened the notebook.

He had never been to Trinidad, had never witnessed the monumental calypso contests that took place in the carnival tents at Port of Spain each year before Ash Wednesday. But as he leafed through the pages of the notebook now, the words scribbled in pencil seemed suddenly to pulse with the Afro-Spanish rhythms that had been their base, and he might have been there at Mardi Gras, swaying to the music that swelled from the corrugated-iron and palm-leaf tents, the men and women in the audience snapping their fingers and shouting the call-and-response, the performers ingeniously twisting their rhythms and rhymes, singing out their sarcasm, their protest, their indignation:

Smiling, Carella wondered if he should go look up the mayor. A song like that was reason enough for murder, ridiculing as it did the mayor’s obese wife, Louise, and the highly touted Champagne Ball she’d sponsored last April. He shook his head, washed his hand over his face, and told himself again that it was time to go home. Instead, he turned to the next page in the notebook.

The rhyme scheme and rhythm in the next song seemed similar to that of the first, but he detected almost at once — before he’d come through the first several lines, in fact — that it was written to be sung at a much slower tempo. He tried to imagine the dead George Chadderton singing the words he’d jotted into his notebook. He imagined there would be no smile on his face; he imagined there would be pain in his eyes. Recognizing the intent of the song, Carella went back and began reading the lyrics again from the top:

The white man who approached her was holding an umbrella over his head. She stood just across the street from the city’s main railroad terminal, a long-legged, good-looking black girl in her early twenties, wearing a blond wig, a beige coat, and black high-heeled patent-leather pumps. She stood in the doorway of a closed delicatessen, her coat open over a scoop-necked pink blouse and a short black skirt. She wore no bra under the blouse; the chill wetness of the September night puckered her nipples against the thin satin fabric. It was ten minutes past 3:00 A.M., and she had turned eight tricks since beginning work at ten. She was bone weary and wanted nothing more than to go home to her own bed. But the night was young — as Joey often reminded her — and if she didn’t bring home no more bread than she already had in her bag, he’d more’n likely throw her out naked in the rain. As the white man approached, she pursed her lips and made a kissing sound.

“Want a date?” she whispered.

“How much?” the man said. He was in his late fifties, she supposed, short little man with almost no hair, wearing eyeglasses that were spattered with rain despite the umbrella over his head. He looked her up and down.

“Twenty-five for a hand job,” she said. “Forty for a blow job, sixty if you want to fuck.”

“Have you... ah... been to a doctor lately?” the man asked.

“Clean as a whistle,” she said.

“Forty sounds high for a... for what you said.”

“A blow job? Is that what you’re interested in?”

“I might be.”

“What’s holdin you back then?”

“The price. Forty sounds definitely high.”

“Forty’s what I’m gettin.”

“You’re not getting much standing here in the rain,” he said, and laughed at his own little joke. “Three o’clock in the morning,” he said. “You’re not getting much standing in the rain.”

“You ain’t gettin nothin ’thout the forty dollars,” she said and laughed with him. “Think it over. Take your time.”

“That’s a nice... ah... set you’ve got there,” he said.

“Mmm,” she said, smiling.

“Very nice,” he said, and reached out to touch her breasts.

She turned away shyly. “No, please,” she said. “Not here.”

“Where?”

“Place around the corner.”

“Forty dollars, is that it?”

“Forty’s the price.”

“Are you very good at it?”

“I’m not Linda Lovelace, but I promise you won’t be sorry.”

“And you’re clean? You’ve been to a doctor?”

“Get a checkup every day,” she lied.

“Still,” he said, shaking his head. “Forty dollars.”

She said nothing. He was already hooked.

“Well, okay,” he said, “I guess so.”

She looped her hand through his arm, and stepped under the umbrella with him.

“This is my first time with a colored girl,” the man said.

“Always a first time,” she said. “Change your luck. You want to let me have the forty, please?”

“Oh, sure,” he said, “of course,” and took his wallet from his rear pocket, and pulled out a sheaf of bills. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“C.J.,” she said. She waited while he searched for the forty. She once had a John ask her if she could break a C-note. Surprised hell out of him when she dug the change out of her bag. Thought he was going to get a free ride, the jerk. Can you break a hundred? Sure, honey, how you want it? Twenties or tens? This same room right here. Sometimes they let her use a room in one of the massage parlors, when things weren’t busy with the regular girls. Go in there, mirrors on the walls, bottles of oil all different colors on the floor, think you were in an Arabian whorehouse someplace. This room here at the hotel was costing her $5 for however long it’d take her to blow this dude and send him on his way. Double bed and a dresser, sink in the corner, easy chair over by the window, shade on it, no curtains. Five bucks for a half hour at most. She was in the wrong business, she should be a hotel owner someplace.

“You gettin that forty?” she said.

“Yes, yes,” he said. “Do you mind singles?”

“Singles? Forty dollars in singles?”

“I’m a waiter,” he said, as if that explained it.

“I’m gettin to be a waiter, too,” she said, “waitin for the forty.”

He looked at her again, and then laughed and said, “Sorry,” and began counting out the $40 for her, one bill at a time, onto the palm of her outstretched hand. She listened to him counting it out, thinking the damn fool would spend all night paying her, never would get down to business here.

“...thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and forty,” he said triumphantly. “I hope this’ll be good.”

“It’ll be real fine,” she said. “Don’t you worry. You want to go wash yourself now?”

“Wash myself?”

“Mm, wash your little ole dick, honey. Way I stay clean is to make sure you’re clean.”

“Yes, good,” he said. “Very good. Yes.”

“This your first time with a hooker?” she asked.

“No, no.”

“I’ll bet it’s your first time,” she said, smiling.

“No, I’ve been around,” he said, and went to the sink in the corner.

“But you never been asked to wash yourself before, huh?”

“Oh, sure I have,” he said.

“Wash it good now,” she said, and climbed onto the bed. She was wearing no panties. She opened her legs wide, figuring she’d give him a shot of the beaver when he turned around, maybe talk him into a fuck at sixty. Blow jobs were quicker, though. All percentage, she guessed. Come on, you asshole, she thought. I said wash it, not sterilize it. He turned from the sink, saw her lying there with her legs wide open, and damn if he didn’t blush!

“Come on over here,” she said, smiling.

He had a little white dick, was drying it with one of the hand towels as he came toward the bed. He was still blushing, little bald honky in his fifties, blinking at her behind his glasses, blushing red all the way from under his chin to the top of his baldy bean head.

“Think you might want some of this sweet pussy instead?” she asked, raising her hips. “Cost you only twenty more.”

“No, no, that’s all right,” he said.

“Mighty sweet pussy,” she said.

“No, no, thank you.”

“Just the blow job, huh?”

“Yes, please.”

“Just C.J.’s tender lips, huh?”

“Yes, please, just that.”

“Well, fine then,” she said. “Get up here on the bed. What’s your name, honey?”

“Frank,” he said.

Frank, she thought. Shit, your name is Marvin or Ralph. I get more fuckin Franks, she thought.

“Will you... ah... take off your clothes?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, “if that’s how you want it.”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

“You’re the boss,” she said.

She stripped silently. He watched her while she undressed. Wearing only the blond wig and the high-heeled patent-leather shoes — always turned them on, you wore your spikes to bed — she went back to him.

“Ready, Frank?” she asked.

“Yes, please,” he said.

Her mouth descended.

It was still raining when they came out onto the street together. Frank, or whatever his name was, thanked her for her services, and told her he’d look for her again sometime. She said, “Right, Frank, glad you enjoyed it.” They parted company on the corner outside the hotel. With the umbrella over his head, he walked off into the rain. She pulled the collar of her coat high on the back of her neck, ducked her head against the rain, and began walking up toward the railroad station again. It was almost three-thirty. Turn a few more tricks, call it a night. Fuck Joey. Had no heart that man, sending a whore out on a night like this. Well, it wasn’t gonna be for much longer. Warned him, told him you keep treatin me mean like this, I’m splittin for good, you just wait and see. He told her, “You split on me, baby, I’ll split your head. They’ll find you in the gutter with your skull in two halves, you split on me.” Sure, Joey, she thought, but you just wait and see. I got me twenty-six hundred in the bank now, money you don’t know nothin about, man, got it all in a savings account uptown, Clara Jean Hawkins, far from the scene, man, don’t want you seein me make no deposit. Twenty-six hundred so far, and more comin. Two hundred every Wednesday night. And tomorrow I’ll be talkin to the man again, I’ll be sittin down at lunch with him and we’re gonna be talkin bout that album again. I’m gonna tell him I’ll have the three thou by the end of the month, which is more’n enough to get it done, he tole me, and then you know what you can do, don’t you, Joey? You can take your warnin’s and your threats, and you can shove them right up your—

There were footsteps behind her.

Light, clicking through the rain.

She turned, thinking it might be a John making an approach. She squinted through the rain, could make out only somebody tall and thin, dressed all in black. She pursed her lips and made a kissing sound.

“Want a date?” she asked.

The shots thundered into the night, four of them in succession. The first bullet missed her, but the second one entered her body just below the left breast and killed her instantly. The third shot ripped into her larynx and the fourth, as she staggered backward dead, entered her face just to the right of her nose, and blew out an exit wound the size of a half-dollar at the back of her head. Her wig fell off as she collapsed to the pavement. It lay on the sidewalk beside her open skull, the rain drilling its synthetic blond fibers, the rain pocking the spreading puddle of thick red blood.