Long Time No See

Eleven

Carella was hoping against hope that it wouldn’t turn out to be the Eight-Three.

The Eight-Three was the precinct in which Fat Ollie Weeks worked.

Isola was divided into twenty-three precincts, and five of those were up in Diamondbacks The Diamond-back precincts were, for some reason known only to police commissioners past, numbered not in consecutive but in bi-consecutive order. First there was the Seven-Seven on the easternmost tip of the island, bordering Riverhead and taking in the area surrounding Devil’s Break. The Seven-Seven was considered a lucky precinct, but only because of the twin sevens and the allusion to the game of craps; actually, it had the highest crime rate in the entire city, higher even than the notorious Hundred and First in West Riverhead. The 101st was called Custer’s Last Stand in honor of Detective-Lieutenant Martin Custer, who ran the squad up there. It was a curiosity of police jargon that the 87th, for example, was referred to as the Eight-Seven, and the 93rd was referred to as the Nine-Three, but the 101st was called the Hundred and First rather than the One-Oh-One. Go figure it.

Moving right along, folks, the precinct west of the Seven-Seven was the Seven-Nine, bordering the River Harb and affording a fine view of the Hamilton Bridge from its squadroom windows — if you peeked through the peaks and minarets of a thousand some-odd tenements between the station house and the river. The Eight-One was on the other side of the Diamondback River and ran southward all the way to Hall Avenue, where North Diamondback officially became South Diamondback — try to pay attention, Harold. The Eight-Three and the Eight-Five sat like a pair of nuns, one facing the river, the other facing Hall Avenue, in that part of Diamondback bearing such religious names as St. Anthony’s Avenue and Bishop’s Road and Temple Boulevard and Tabernacle Way. The Eight-Seven, somewhat less sacrosanct except to those who worshipped it, bordered both on its eastern end. On the 87th’s north was the river, on its south was Grover Park. End of geography lesson.

Fat Ollie Weeks was a detective in the Eight-Three. Carella did not like working with him. That was only because Ollie was a bigot. Carella did not like bigots. Ollie was a good cop and an excellent bigot. His bigotry entended to everyone and everything. He missed being a misanthrope by a hair. That was because there were some people he actually liked. One of those people was Steve Carella. Since the affection was somewhat less than mutual, Carella tried to avoid wandering into the Eight-Three except out of dire necessity. Carella even avoided calling the Eight-Three unless a hatchet murderer was last seen on the steps leading up to the station house there. His dislike of Fat Ollie bordered on ingratitude; the man had, after all, helped them crack at least two cases in recent memory.

Carella hoped it would not be the Eight-Three. On the telephone he asked Sophie Harris where she’d been living when her son Jimmy was eighteen, and then held his breath in anticipation of her answer. The telephone line crackled and spit. Sophie said she’d lived on Landis and Dinsley. Carella let out his breath and then thanked her more profusely than her simple answer seemed to have warranted. Landis and Dinsley was in the Eight-Five.

They went up there at ten o’clock that Sunday morning. Meyer had a hangover, but he was able to report with some lucidity about what he’d discovered, or rather what he had not discovered, in the Harris apartment yesterday.

“The way I figure it,” he said, “something was buried in that window box, and somebody later dug it up.”

“Jimmy?”

“Maybe. Or maybe the killer. I packed a specimen of the dirt in an evidence—”

“Soil,” Carella said.

“What?”

“It’s soil, not dirt.”

“Yeah — in an evidence bag and sent it over to the lab. This was before I went to Irwin’s wedding, I want you to know. You had me very busy yesterday.”

“Did you check out the back yard?”

“I went down there before I left the building. I didn’t see any signs of digging.”

“How’d the window box look?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was it dumped on the floor like the rest of the stuff in the apartment?”

“The dirt, you mean?”

“Yeah, the soil.”

“No, it was in the box.”

“Well, if the killer went throwing everything all over the place, why was he so neat with the window box?”

“Then maybe it wasn’t the killer,” Meyer said, and shrugged, and then winced. “My head hurts when I shrug,” he said. “I shouldn’t drink. I really shouldn’t drink. I can hold my liquor, I don’t get drunk, but I always have a terrible hangover the next day.”

“What do you drink?” Carella asked.

“Scotch. Why? What does it matter what I drink?”

“Some drinks give you worse hangovers than other drinks. Gin gives you terrible hangovers. So does bourbon. Cognac is the worst.”

“I drink Scotch and I have a hangover,” Meyer said. “That’s because I’m Jewish.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Indians and Jews get terrible hangovers from drinking Scotch,” Meyer said. “Jewish college girls get headaches from eating Chinese food, did you know that? It’s from the the monosodium glutamate in it. It’s called the Jewish College Girl Syndrome.”

“How do you happen to know that amazing fact?” Carella asked.

“I looked it up.”

“Where?”

“In the library. Under Jewish College Girls.”

“I’ve never in my life looked under a Jewish College girl,” Carella said.

“The reason I looked it up, I was working on this case,” Meyer said, “where an Indian...

“Yeah, yeah,” Carella said.

“God’s truth. An Indian was lacing a Jewish college girl’s Chinese food with Scotch, and she was getting terrible headaches all the time. I finally arrested the Indian.”

“Did the headaches go away?”

“No, but the Indian did. For six years.”

“What did the girl do about the headaches?”

“She went to see a headache doctor. He told her she was wearing underwear a size too small.”

“How did he know?”

“He looked it up.”

“Under what?”

“Underwear,” Meyer said, and both men burst out laughing.

They were still laughing when they showed their shields to the patrolman stationed outside the front steps of the 85th Precinct. The patrolman looked at the shields and then looked at the two men. He suspected they were imposters, but he let them go inside, anyway; hell with it, let the desk sergeant’s mother worry. The building that housed the 85th looked very much like the one that housed the 87th — twin green globes flanking the entrance doors, wide steps leading up to those doors, muster room beyond, brass rail just before the muster desk, sergeant sitting behind the high wooden desk like a magistrate in a British court. They showed him their shields and said they wanted to talk to someone in the Detective Division.

“Anyone in particular?” the sergeant asked.

“Anyone who might be familiar with street-gang activity in the precinct.”

“That’d be Jonesy, I guess,” the sergeant said, and plugged a line into his switchboard. He waited, and then said, “Mike, is Jonesy up there? Put him on, will you?” He waited again. “Jonesy,” he said, “I’ve got a pair of detectives down here, want to talk to somebody about street gangs. Can you help them?” He listened, and then said, “Where you guys from?”

“The Eight-Seven,” Meyer said.

“The Eight-Seven,” the sergeant repeated into the phone. “Okay, fine,” he said, and pulled out the plug. “Go right upstairs,” he said, “He’s waiting for you. How’s Dave Murchison? He’s your desk sergeant there, ain’t he?”

“Yes, he is,” Carella said.

“Give him my regards. Tell him John Sweeney, from when we used to walk a beat together in Calm’s Point.” “We’ll do that,” Meyer said.

“Ask him about the ham and eggs,” Sweeney said, and laughed.

The detectives of the 85th had somehow managed to wheedle from petty cash, or someplace, the money for a printed sign. It read DETECTIVE DIVISION in bold black letters. Just below the words was a pointing carnival-barker hand that looked like what someone’s great-grandmother might have seen. It gave the otherwise decrepit muster room a look of antiquity and shoddy dignity. Up the iron-runged steps they went, just as if they were home. Turn the comer, walk down the hall, there was the bull pen. No slatted rail divider here. Instead, a bank of low filing cabinets that formed a sort of wall across the corridor. Just inside the battered metal barrier was a desk. A huge black man in shirt sleeves was standing behind the desk, a clearly anticipatory look on his face.

“I’m Jonesy,” he said. “Come in, have a seat.”

A plastic nameplate on his desk read Det. Richard Jones. The desk top was strewn with familiar D.D. report forms, departmental flyers and notices, hot car sheets, stop-sheets, all-state bulletins, B-sheets, mug shots, fingerprint cards — the usual clutter you’d find on the desk of any detective in the city. There were four men besides Jonesy in the squadroom. Two of them sat typing at their desks. One was leaning against the grilled detention cage, talking to a young black girl inside it. Another was at the water cooler, bending over to look at the spigot.

“Steve Carella,” Carella said, and took a chair alongside Jonesy’s desk. “This is my partner, Meyer Meyer.”

“What can I do for you?” Jonesy asked.

At the water cooler, the detective straightened up and said to no one in particular, “What the fuck’s wrong with this thing?” No one answered him. “I can’t get any water out of it,” he said.

“We’re looking for a line on a street gang named the Hawks.”

“Right,” Jonesy said.

“You know them?”

“They’re inactive. Used to be a bopping gang, oh, ten, fifteen years ago. Half of them got drafted, busted or killed, the others went the drug route. Haven’t heard a peep from them in years.”

“How many members were there?”

“Maybe two dozen in the nucleus group, another fifty or so scattered throughout Diamondback. These gangs like to think of themselves as armies, you know what I mean? In fact, some of them are — four, five hundred members all over the city. Once the shit is on, it’s important how many guys they can put on the street. We had a fight three weeks ago, I swear to Christ this one gang put a thousand guys in the park. Gang called the Voyagers, I love those grand-sounding names, don’t you? Had it out with a Hispanic gang in Grover Park. The Eight-Nine put us onto it because the other gang is in their precinct. Gang named the Caballeros. What a bunch of bullshit,” Jonesy said.

“About the Hawks,” Carella said. “Would you be familiar with someone named Lloyd?”

“Lloyd what?”

“That’s all we’ve got. He would have been president of the gang twelve years ago.”

“My partner’d know more about that than me. He’s the one started this detail. We were getting so much gang activity in this precinct, we had to create a special detail, would you believe it? Two men who should be taking care of people getting robbed or mugged, got to waste our time instead riding herd on a bunch of street hoodlums. Let’s take a look at the cards, see what we got on this Lloyd. I’m not sure they go back that far, but let’s see.”

They went back that far.

Whoever Jonesy’s partner was, he had done a fine job of compiling individual dossiers not only for members of the Hawks but for every other street-gang member in the precinct. The card on Lloyd Baxter was typical of a “leader’s” card. He had been a truant throughout his elementary, junior high and high school career, finally dropping out the moment he could do so legally, at the age of sixteen, and getting busted six months later for Burglary Three, defined as “knowingly entering or remaining unlawfully in a building with intent to commit a crime therein.” The building was, naturally enough, a school. Lloyd Baxter smashed a window and went in there with the alleged intent to steal typewriters. He copped a plea for the lesser charge of Criminal Trespass Three, “knowingly entering or remaining unlawfully in or upon premises,” a simple violation for which the punishment was three months and/or a fine of two hundred and fifty dollars — just what a prostitute might have got. He was sentenced to three months in jail, and the sentence was suspended because he was a juvenile. Four months later, immediately after the probationary period ended. Lloyd Baxter was arrested for Assault Three. By that time he was sergeant at arms in the street gang known as the Hawks and the person he assaulted was a kid named Luis Sainz, who was president of a gang called Los Hermanos. Again Lloyd got off with a suspended sentence, probably because his victim was a punk like himself and the judge thought it foolish to pay for the care and feeding of hoodlums who might otherwise do away with each other if left to their own devices on their own turf. The week he beat the assault rap, Lloyd was elected president of the Hawks, a conquering hero returning home to ticker-tape parades and consequent droits du seigneur.

One of die prizes awarded to the newly elected leader was a girl named Roxanne Dumas, who sounded like either a stripper or a great-grandaughter of the late French novelist, neither of which she was. She was, instead, a fifteen-year-old girl whose parents had come from the lovely island of Jamaica, her forebears having been part-English, part-French, her nature amiable and benign until the city got hold of her.

It was some city, this city.

Roxanne was twelve when her parents moved from Jamaica into a section of the city inhabited almost exclusively by legal immigrants or illegal aliens from various Caribbean islands. And even though the mix was predominately Jamaican, the neighborhood had been dubbed Little Cruz Bay by law enforcement officers, later bastardized to Little Cruise Bay when it became a happy hunting ground for teenage prostitutes of island extraction — the white-collar white workers of this city being extremely tolerant when it came to a little café au lait on their lunch hours. Roxanne missed initiation into the oldest profession by a whisper; her parents moved from Little Cruise Bay to Diamond-back when she was thirteen, into a neighborhood where tan was black and black was beautiful whatever the nation of your origin. When Roxanne was fourteen, she began “going” with a boy of sixteen who was a member of the Hawks. She was fifteen when Lloyd Baxter assaulted the president of Los Hermanos to himself become president of the Hawks. Lloyd was seventeen at the time, an impudent age for a president; there were street-gang leaders who were in their late twenties, some of them married and with children of their own. Lloyd and Roxanne hit it off at once. Her former boyfriend, a kid named Henry, merely shined it on without a murmur; he was by then shooting twenty dollars’ worth of heroin a day and was well on his way to a career as a raging junkie. Henry died of an overdose two years later, shortly before the supposed Christmas trauma Jimmy Harris related to Major Lemarre during his stay at Fort Mercer.

There was nothing in the police dossier about Roxanne Dumas having been raped by members of the gang and carried bleeding to a vacant lot. The dossier went much beyond the Christmas twelve years ago, detailing the disposition of each gang member — drafted, busted, hooked, burned or snuffed. But there was nothing about the basement rape; nothing about a bleeding teenage girl being found in a vacant weed-filled lot on a street comer near the clubhouse; nothing about a hospital admitting Roxanne as an emergency patient, wherever she’d been found or wherever she’d dragged herself. Either the beat patrolmen had been derelict, Roxanne had crawled off unnoticed, the records kept by Jonesy’s partner were incomplete — or the incident had never taken place at all.

The records seemed fastidious enough. According to his dossier, Lloyd had resigned as president of the Hawks at the ripe old age of twenty-three, four years after the alleged basement rape. He had been in and out of trouble with the law ever since, but his biggest fall occurred six years ago when he was busted for Robbery One and sentenced to ten at Castleview. He’d served three, and was currently out on parole and working in a car-wash on Landis Avenue. He was now thirty-one years old.

Five years ago, when Lloyd was serving the first year of his sentence at Castleview, Roxanne married a dope pusher named Schoolhouse Hardy. That was his real name. She was twenty-four when she became Mrs. Hardy. She was twenty-eight when Schoolhouse got busted and sent away under the state’s stringent dope laws. Schoolhouse would not be seeing his wife again for a long, long time — except on visiting days. He was now thirty-seven, she was twenty-nine. According to the follow-up on her, she had begun working as a beautician in a place called The Beauty Hut last August, shortly after Schoolhouse was sentenced to twenty-five at Castleview for unlawful possession of eight ounces of cocaine. There was no indication in the records that she had ever again seen Lloyd Baxter from the day he was sent away to the present.

They thanked Detective Richard Jones for his time, and went to look up the long-ago sweethearts at their separate last-known addresses.

834 North Eighty-ninth was a four-story brown-stone with wrought-iron railings flanking the front stoop. They found a mailbox-listing for Lloyd Baxter in apartment 22, rang the bell, and got an answering buzz almost at once. The interior hallway was spotlessly clean; in fact, it smelled of disinfectant. The linoleum on the steps was worn and patched, but- it, too, had been scrubbed to within an inch of its tired life. A gleaming window on the first-floor let in frosty November sunlight. They continued climbing, Meyer puffing audibly and blaming it on his hangover, until they came to the second floor. There were only two doors on the landing, one opposite the other. They knocked on the door to apartment 22, and the door opened instantly.

The black man who looked out at them was perhaps six-feet four inches tall, wearing only belted trousers and looking very much like a magazine ad extolling the merits of weight lifting. Bare-chested and barefooted, broad-shouldered and strikingly handsome, he looked out at the two detectives in clear surprise, eyebrows raising at first and then coming together into a frown.

“Yeah, what is it?” he said, obviously annoyed.

“Police,” Carella said, and showed him the shield. “Are you Lloyd Baxter?”

“I’m Lloyd Baxter. What now?”

“All right for us to come in?”

“What’s the beef? I’m gainfully employed, I go see my P.O. when I’m sposed to, and I ain’t so much as spit on the sidewalk in months.”

“No beef,” Meyer said.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“We have some questions.”

“About what?”

“About something that happened twelve years ago.” “I can hardly remember what happened twelve minutes ago.”

“Is it okay for us to come in?”

“I’m expecting somebody,” Baxter said. “I thought it was her at the door, matter of fact.”

“We won’t be long.”

“I got to get dressed,” he said, and looked at his watch.

“You can dress while we talk.”

“Well,” he said reluctantly, “come on in, then.” They stepped inside and he closed the door behind them and led them through the apartment into a bedroom on the street side. The room was simply furnished — bed, dresser, a pair of night stands, a few lamps. Baxter took a clean white shirt from one of the dresser drawers and began unbuttoning it. “So what are the questions?” he said.

“Know anybody named Jimmy Harris?”

“Yeah. Man, this really must be twelve years ago. I haven’t seen him since he got drafted.”

“Christmastime twelve years ago,” Carella said. “Does that ring a bell?”

“No. What kind of bell is it supposed to ring?”

“A girl named Roxanne Dumas.”

“Yeah,” Baxter said, and nodded, and put on the shirt. “What about her?”

“Was she your girl friend?”

“Yeah. But, man, that’s ancient history. She got married while I was upstate doing time. Guy named Schoolhouse Hardy.”

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

“Six, seven years ago,” Baxter said. He was buttoning the shirt now, obviously pressed for time, glancing at his watch and then going back to the buttoning again.

“Do you remember what happened in the Hawks’ clubhouse twelve years ago?”

“No, what happened?” Baxter asked, and tucked the shirt into his trousers. He zipped up his fly, tightened his belt, and then walked swiftly to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Searching there for a moment, he found a pair of blue socks a shade darker than the trousers he was wearing, sat on the bed, and began putting them on.

“You remember dancing with Roxanne?”

“I was always dancing with Roxanne. She was my woman. I don’t understand this,” Baxter said, looking up, one sock on, the other in his hands. “What’s supposed to have happened, man?”

“Do you remember a record with drums on it?”

“Come on, man, every record I ever heard’s got drums on it.”

“You were dancing with Roxanne and there were five other boys in the room. You told them to quit watching you. You told them to go upstairs.”

Baxter was pulling the other sock onto his foot now. He looked up again, clearly puzzled. “Yeah?” he said.

“Do you remember?”

“No.”

“The boys said they were tired. The Hawks had been rumbling with another gang...”

“We were always rumbling with other gangs. Man, I still don’t get what you’re after.”

“The boys grabbed you and held you against a basement post.”

“The boys grabbed me?” Baxter said, and burst out laughing. “You talking about me?” he said, still laughing, and rose from the bed and walked toward the closet. “Take an army to grab me and hold me against no post. I been this big since I was fourteen, ain’t nobody ever grabbed me but the motherfuckin cop who busted me, and he was holdin a cannon in his fist. Ain’t nobody on the Hawks ever grabbed Lloyd Baxter and messed with him. Be some busted legs, they even thought about it. Be some bodies strewn all over the sidewalk,” Baxter said, shaking his head in utter disbelief, and opening the closet door and taking from the floor there a pair of black patent-leather shoes. “Where’d you get this shit, man? Whoever told you anything like that?”

“Jimmy Harris.”

“Told you some cats in the club jumped me?”

“Told his doctor.”

“Why’d he tell a doctor no shit like that?”

“You’re saying it didn’t happen?”

“You bet your ass that’s what I’m saying,” Baxter said, plainly insulted by the very notion. He sat on the edge of the bed again and began putting on his shoes.

Carella looked at Meyer. Meyer shrugged. “We have reason to believe Roxanne Dumas was raped in that basement room twelve years ago,” Carella said.

“What?” Baxter said, and burst out laughing again. “Man, these are fairy tales, you understand me? These are pipe dreams.”

“She didn't get raped, is that what you’re saying?”

“Who’d rape her, man, would you tell me? If you knew Roxanne was my woman, would you rape her, man? Would you even wink at her, man?” Baxter stood up again.

The detectives watched him as he went to the closet for a tie. They were both thinking they would not have winked at Baxter’s girl friend. Baxter made his selection, a simple blue-and-red-striped silk rep, lifted the collar of the shirt, slipped the tie around his neck, and began knotting it.

“So none of this happened, is that it?” Carella said.

“None of it, man.”

“You’re sure you’re remembering correctly?”

“I’m sure.”

“Then why would Jimmy have said it happened?”

“Man, I guess you got to go ask Jimmy.”

There was no asking Jimmy, not any more there wasn’t.

But there still remained the lady in question, Roxanne Hardy nee Dumas, who — if indeed she had been raped — could be considered an unimpeachable source of information on the subject. If she had not been raped, Carella didn’t know what to think. Neither did Meyer. Of the two, Carella was perhaps more psychologically oriented than his partner, but both men were conditioned to believe — after having seen films like The Three Faces of Eve and David and Lisa, and Spellbound and Marnie, and any one of a thousand television dramas depicting mental patients who were severe catatonics standing in comers with their faces to the wall till some understanding psychiatrist unlocked the past for them and let the sunshine in on the trauma that was causing all their pain — after having seen mental rehabilitation happen dramatically and suddenly once the patient knew what was bugging him, Meyer and Carella were both ready to accept Lemarre’s contention that Jimmy’s nightmares were rooted in Roxanne’s rape twelve years ago. Except that now Lloyd Baxter had told them there’d been no rape, been no such event that might have irritated a man Lloyd’s size and caused him to break you in itty-bitty pieces.

Which left Roxanne.

They did not find her till a little after three that afternoon. They had tried her last-known address and were told by the landlady there that she’d moved out, oh, at least six months ago, she didn’t know where. They had then checked the Isola telephone directory for a place called The Beauty Hut, and had found a listing for one on The Stem. They did not expect anyone to answer the phone there — this was Sunday — and no one did. But they drove over anyway, hoping to find something open in the immediate neighborhood — a delicatessen, a bar, a restaurant, a luncheonette, a movie theater — anything where there might be someone who knew the person who owned The Beauty Hut.

The stores immediately adjacent to it were a closed pawnshop on its left and a closed lingerie shop on its right. Two doors down was an open counter-top store selling pizza by the slice. It was now past two in the afternoon, and neither of the men had yet had lunch. They each ordered two slices of pizza and an orange drink, and Carella asked the counterman if he knew who ran the beauty parlor down the street. The attendant told him it was a woman named Harriet Lesser. Carella asked if he knew where Harriet Lesser lived, and the counterman said No, she only came in every now and then for a slice of pizza — why? Was Carella a cop? Carella said Yes, he was a cop, and then he finished his pizza and both he and Meyer paid their own separate tabs and went to the telephone at the back of the store where a directory was hanging on a chain.

The directory was frayed and frazzled, but it told them there were thirty-three Lessers (thirty-three, count ’em, thirty-three) in Isola, fourteen of which were clearly business establishments like Lesser Drafting Service, Inc., Lesser Marine and Lesser Volkswagen, which left nineteen Lessers to go, and none of them named Harriet. There were two H. Lessers in the directory. They tried calling them first. One was a Helen and the other was a Hortense. It was not until almost three that they discovered a Harriet Lesser who was the wife of a Charles Lesser and who (hallelujah!) owned The Beauty Hut. They told her who they were and what they wanted, and she gave them Roxanne Hardy’s new address. They got into Carella’s car again, and drove downtown and crosstown, arriving at her apartment at twelve minutes past the hour.

The woman who opened the door was tall and lissome, with a smooth pecan-colored complexion and luminous brown eyes that looked puzzled now by the presence of two white men on her doorstep. She was wearing a striped caftan that flowed about her body like a huge sail in the wind, tight across her abundant breasts, flaring out below to end just above her ankles and her bare feet.

“Yes?” she said.

“Mrs. Hardy?” Carella said.

“Yes?”

“Police,” he said, and showed her the shield.

She examined it without interest. The puzzlement left her eyes and a look of mild curiosity replaced it — a slight lifting of one eyebrow, a bemused expression about the mouth.

“May we come in?” Carella asked.

“For what purpose, Officer?” she said, and there was in her voice the lilt she’d brought with her from Jamaica seventeen years before, when she was still a girl of twelve unfamiliar with the ways of any city bigger than Kingston.

Carella didn’t know quite how to put his question. Should he ask her flat out if she’d been raped twelve years ago by four assorted members of the Hawks? He might have done just that, if Lloyd Baxter hadn’t seemed quite so certain that nothing of the sort had happened. Instead, he said, “Mrs. Hardy, I understand you have some knowledge of a street gang called the Hawks,” and realized at once that he was referring to carnal knowledge, and again wondered about the subterranean workings of his own mind, and by extension, Jimmy’s. If Jimmy hadn't witnessed a rape, then what the hell had traumatized him: The recurring nightmares hadn’t come out of thin air, they were rooted somewhere in his unconscious. All right — where?

“I used to know some members of the Hawks, yes,” Roxanne said. “But that was a long time ago.” Her voice was soft; it sounded almost nostalgic.

“May we come in, please?” Carella said. “We’d like to ask you some questions about the gang.”

“Yes, all right,” she said, and stepped aside to let them into the apartment.

The place was still with late afternoon sunlight that streamed bleakly through the kitchen window and touched the hanging potted plants with silver. She led them into a modestly furnished living room, and beckoned gracefully to the two easy chairs that sat on either side of a color television set. She herself sat on the sofa opposite them, pulling her legs up under her Indian-fashion, the caftan tented over her knees.

“What is it you want to know?” she asked.

“We’d like you to tell us what happened just before Christmas twelve years ago,” Carella said.

“Oh, my,” she said, and laughed suddenly. “We were all children then.”

“I realize that,” Carella said. “But can you remember anything important that happened around that time?

“Important?” she said, and raised her shoulders expressively, rather like a dancer, her hands opening wide to further expand upon the theme of places and events too distant to recall.

It occurred to Carella that Lloyd Baxter and Roxanne Hardy were two of the most strikingly good-looking people he’d ever met. It seemed a pity they hadn’t chosen to remain together — The cop suddenly took over. Why hadn’t they chosen to stay together? Was it because Lloyd had allowed the rape? Or was it because she’d invited it?

“It would have been something very important,” Carella said, and felt suddenly as though he were playing Twenty Questions. Meyer caught his eyes. They both acknowledged silently and at once that the time had come to quit pussyfooting around. “Mrs. Hardy,” Carella said, “were you raped shortly before Christmas twelve years ago?”

“What?” she said.

“Raped,” he said.

“Yes, I heard you,” she said. “My,” she said. “Raped,” she said. “No,” she said. “Never. Not twelve years ago, and not ever.” Her eyes met his. “Should I have been?”

“Jimmy Harris said you were.”

“Ah, Jimmy Harris.”

“Yes. He said four members of the Hawks strong-armed Lloyd Baxter and then forced themselves upon you.”

“Lloyd? Have you met Lloyd? No one strong-arms Lloyd. No, sir. Not Lloyd.”

“Mrs. Hardy, if this never happened... where do you suppose Jimmy got the idea?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and smiled pleasantly, and Carella knew at once that she was lying. Until this moment, she’d been speaking the truth, but now the smile was false, the eyes above the smile were not smiling with it, she was lying. Meyer knew she was lying, too; the men glanced at each other, and separately wondered who was going to attack the lie first.

Meyer stepped in delicately. “Do you think Jimmy made the whole thing up?” he asked.

“I really don’t know,” Roxanne said.

“Your being raped, I mean.”

“Yes, I understand. I don’t know why Jimmy told you something like that.”

“He didn’t tell us.”

“He didn’t? You said...”

“He told his doctor.”

“Well... Roxanne let the word trail. She shrugged. “I don’t know why he did that,” she said.

“Seems a pretty strange thing to invent, doesn’t it?” “Yes, it certainly does. What kind of doctor was this? A shrink?”

“Yes.”

“A prison shrink?”

“No. An Army doctor.”

“Mm,” she said, and shrugged again.

“Mrs. Hardy,” Carella said, “how well did you know Jimmy Harris?”

“Same as the other boys,” she said.

“The other boys in the gang?”

“Yes. Well, the club. They called it a club. It was a club, I guess.”

“About two dozen boys altogther, is that right?” “Well, there were others all over Diamondback.”

“But two dozen in the immediate gang.”

“Yes.”

“And you knew Jimmy about as well as you knew any of the others.”

“Yes.”

She was still lying. He knew she was lying, damn it. He looked at Meyer; Meyer knew it, too. They weren’t going to let go of this. They were going to sit here and talk her blue in the face till they found out why she was lying.

“Would you say you were friendly with him?” Meyer asked.

“Jimmy? Oh, yes. But I was Lloyd’s girl friend, you understand.”

“Yes, we understand that.”

“So I only knew the other boys casually, you see.”

“Mm,” Meyer said.

“The way your wife— Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“Yes,” Carella said.

“Well, the way your wives would know other detectives you might work with, the same as that.”

“That’s the way you knew Jimmy Harris.”

“Yes.”

“You thought of yourself as Lloyd’s wife, is that it?”

“Well, no not his wife,” she said, and laughed. The laugh was phony; it had none of the genuine resonance of her earlier laughter. She was still lying, there was still something she was hiding. “But we did have an understanding with each other. We were going with each other, you see.”

“What does that mean?” Carella asked. “No other girls in Lloyd’s life...”

“That’s right.”

“And no other boys in yours?”

“Exactly.”

“It seems strange, though, that Jimmy would come up with this story about the boys’ having raped you.” “It certainly does,” Roxanne said, and laughed again. This time the laugh ended almost before it escaped her throat.

“Did he ever—?” Carella said, and cut himself short. “No, forget it.”

“What were you about to say?” Meyer said, playing the straight man.

“I just wondered... Mrs. Hardy, Jimmy never made a pass at you, did he?”

“No,” she said, “No, never.”

Another lie. Her eyes would not even meet his now.

“Never, huh?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course I’m sure. I was Lloyd’s girl friend, you understand.”

“Yes, I understand that.”

“I was faithful to Lloyd.”

“Yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Jimmy was faithful to him. Do you see what I mean, Mrs. Hardy? If Jimmy ever approached you—”

“No, he didn’t.”

“—sexually, then perhaps that might account for what he told his doctor.”

“Why is this important to you?” she asked suddenly.

“Because Jimmy Harris is dead, and we don’t know who killed him,” Carella said.

She was silent for several moments. Then she said, “rm sorry to hear that.”

“Mrs. Hardy... if anything ever happened between you and Jimmy, or between you and any of the other boys on the Hawks, anything that might have prompted someone to start thinking of revenge or retribution—”

“No,” she said, and shook her head.

“Nothing happened?”

“Something did happen,” she said. “But no one knew. Only Jimmy knew. And me.”

“Could you tell us what it was, please?”

“It won’t help you. No one knew.”

She looked at them for a long time, not saying anything, debating silently whether or not she wished to reveal whatever secret she had carried for the past twelve years. She nodded then, and said in a voice almost a whisper. “It was raining. It was very cold outside, it seemed as if it should be snowing...”

Her voice, as she spoke, seemed to become more and more Jamaican, as though the closer she came to the memory of that day twelve years ago, the more she became the seventeen-year-old girl she then was. As they listened, the present dissolved into the past, only to become the present again — a different present, but an immediate one nonetheless; whatever had happened in that basement room so long ago seemed to be happening here and now, this instant.

It is raining.

She is surprised by the rain, she thinks it should be snowing at this time of year, it’s so cold outside. But it’s raining instead, there is thunder and lightning. The lightning flashes illuminate the painted basement windows high on the cinder-block walls. Thunder crashes everywhere around them. They are alone in the basement room. It is four o’clock in the afternoon on the Wednesday before Christmas.

They are alone here by chance. She has come looking for Lloyd, but there’s only Jimmy standing by the record player with a stack of records in his hands. The cinder-block wall is painted a blue paler than the streaked midnight-blue that covers the windows. Lightning flashes again, thunder sounds. Jimmy puts a record on the turntable. He tells her the other guys are right this minute in the Hermanos clubhouse, over in Spic-town, negotiating a truce. He’d have gone with them, he says, but his mother cut her hand, he had to rush her to the hospital. Lightning again, the bellow of thunder. Cut herself decorating the Christmas tree, he says. The music is soft and slow and insinuating. The thunder booms its counterpoint.

You want to dance? he says.

She knows at once that she should refuse. She is Lloyd’s woman. If Lloyd comes back unexpectedly and finds them dancing together, there will- be serious trouble. She knows this. She knows they will hurt her, she knows she can expect no mercy from Lloyd, the code is the code, they will whip her till she bleeds. Last summer, when they caught one of the Auxils talking to a Hermanos on the street, they stripped her to the waist, tied her to the post, and the sergeant at arms gave her twenty lashes. She whimpered at first, and then began screaming each time the whip raised another welt on her back, the welts opening at last and beginning to bleed. They threw her out in the gutter, threw her blouse and brassiere out after her, told her to go to the Hermanos she liked them so much.

That was last summer, but this is now, and this will be worse. This will be dancing with a brother when Lloyd isn’t around. Be different if he was here, nothing would be said of it. But he is not here, she is alone with Jimmy, and she is frightened because she understands the danger. But it is exactly the danger that attracts her.

She laughs nervously and says Sure, why not?

Jimmy takes her in his arms. The music is slow, they dance very close. He is excited, she can feel him through his trousers and through her skirt. They are dancing fish, he is socking it to her, grinding against her. There is more thunder. She is still frightened, but he is holding her very tight, and she is getting excited herself. She laughs again. Her panties are wet, she is dripping wet under her skirt. The record ends, the needle clicks and clicks and clicks in the retaining grooves. He releases her suddenly and walks to the record player, and lifts the arm from the record. There is silence, and then lightning streaks the painted windows again, and thunder crashes. He walks to the door.

She stands motionless in the center of the room near the post. She is afraid they will tie her to the post with her hands behind her back. This is a serious offense, she is afraid they will whip her across her naked breasts. She knows of a girl in another gang who was whipped that way for the offense of adultery. The offense is clearly lettered on the rules chart that hangs on the clubhouse wall. Adultery. She is about to make love to a brother, but she is Lloyd’s woman, and that is adultery, and they will hurt her badly for it. They will hurt Jimmy, too. They will force him to run the gauntlet, hitting him with chains and pipes as he runs between his brothers lined up on either side of him.

And when it is all over and done with, when they’ve given her the fifty lashes she’s certain she’ll receive in punishment, fifty of maybe a hundred because she’s the president’s woman, across her naked breasts, the sergeant at arms methodically and deliberately beating her with the seven-thonged whip; when they’ve forced Jimmy through the gauntlet and have left him bruised and bleeding and unconscious on the ground, why, then both of them will be thrown out of the club to fend for themselves. The club is their insurance in a hostile world of enemy camps that grow like toadstools in the surrounding streets. There is no help from the Law in these streets, there is no help from parents who are scrounging for the big white dollar out there, there is only aid and comfort from your brothers and sisters in the clubs.

If you don’t belong to a club, you are anybody’s.

If you’re a boy, you’re anybody’s to beat up on, anybody’s to rob, anybody’s to cut or bum or snuff. If you’re a girl, you’re anybody’s to hurt, anybody’s to fuck, anybody’s to do with what they want. This is the city. You need insurance here. Belonging to the Hawks’ auxiliary is her insurance, and she is about to have it canceled only because she is a stupid bitch. She knows she’s being dumb, she knows that. But she wants Jimmy Harris, and she suspects she’s maybe wanted him from the first time he began coming on six months back, and she began looking the other way and making believe it wasn’t happening. It was happening, all right. It is happening right now. He is locking the basement door, double-locking it like he’s expecting a raid from a hundred gangs, putting the chain on it in the bargain, and then coming back to where she’s standing, and grabbing her tight, and kissing her hard on the mouth till she has to pull away to catch her breath.

His hands are all over her. He unbuttons her blouse, he touches her breasts, he slides his hands under her skirt and up over her thighs, he grabs her ass tight in nylon panties, she is getting dizzy standing there in the middle of the room. She falls limp against the post, and he does it to her standing there against the post. Rips her panties. Tears them in his hands, rips them away from where she’s wet and waiting, unzips his fly and sticks it in her. He comes almost the minute he’s inside her, and she screams and comes with him, the hell with the Hawks, the hell with Lloyd, the hell with the whole world. They grab each other like it’s the weekend ending, they cling to each other there against the post in the middle of the basement, the lightning and thunder crashing around them. She begins crying. He begins crying, too, and then makes her promise she won’t ever tell anybody in the world that he cried