Reversible Error

EIGHT

The voice on the phone was pleasant, but only vaguely familiar. "Hi! This is Cliff Elliot. Is this Ellen Wagner?"

Ellen Wagner responded with a hesitant "Yes?"

The voice sounded amused. "You don't remember me? Cliff? From Cheetah's last Saturday night?"

"Oh, Cliff!" she exclaimed after the briefest pause. One met so many men in the bars. Ellen Wagner was a secretary-receptionist in the president's office of a large insurance firm. She had a boyfriend, of sorts, but in that era, the last when a single wage earner could afford to live alone in a Manhattan apartment, and the last when sex with strangers was more like romance than like Russian roulette, Ellen was not ready to, as she put it, "make a commitment."

The boyfriend was all right, for an insurance executive, steady and dependable, but in the night, in the city, the possibilities were infinite. She was good-looking: neck-length dark hair worn in a frizzed style that framed her round face and delicate, even features, and a small but well-proportioned body. She was twenty-six; there was still time for the unexpected. Anyone could walk into one of the bars, on any night, and see her, and whisk her away to the land of dreams.

She tried to bring Cliff's face to mind. Crinkly blond hair, smiling blue eyes. Gold jewelry, she remembered that. Good shoulders-he was wearing…?

"You were wearing the tight white jeans, right?" she asked.

"Yeah, you were drinking daiquiris," he replied. "I couldn't stop looking at you. Are you still pretty?"

She laughed and said, "I guess so. So… Cliff. What's going on?"

"Well, I thought I'd call and see if you were doing anything later on."

"Oooh," she sighed, her disappointment nearly genuine. "I have a date in like an hour. How bum!"

"Oh, that's OK. The thing is… remember we talked about how we both liked Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and I said I had outtakes from where I work-the record studio?-and I thought that since I was in the neighborhood…"

"You want to come up now? Where are you?"

A nervous laugh. "Well, actually, I'm right across the street. In the phone booth."

Cute, she thought, calling from across the street. It was thrilly and flattering, not the kind of thing an insurance junior executive would ordinarily do. Like in a movie.

"Just a minute," she said, and put the phone down. She skipped out to the hallway and looked out the hallway window. Her apartment faced the air shaft and this was the only way she could see out to Third Avenue. It was near dusk, a late Saturday afternoon, but she could see the figure in the phone booth three stories down. It was the guy.

She went back to her place and looked around. Reasonably neat. She picked up a skirt she had been hemming, threw it on a chair in the bedroom, and closed the door. She checked herself in the mirror in the living room, ran a brush through her hair, and tucked her shirt into her jeans. Then she picked up the phone.

"Come on up, then," she said. "But just for a little while."

When Art Dugman was angry he clenched his jaw so tightly that little round bunches of muscles, like grapes, stood out against his jawline, and thick veins popped out on his temples. In the Twenty-eighth Precinct they said that from the size of the veins you could estimate the degree of anger. To Lanny Maus they looked like firehoses ready to burst.

"Take it easy, Art," he said placatingly. "It ain't the end of the world."

"Boy, you don't know what the fuck you talk-in about," Dugman shouted. "They treatin us like fools! How long you think we gonna last out there if the word get around we been fucked up the ass like this?"

"What're you talking about, fucked up the ass? The D.A.'s the one screwed up-they had a kid in there didn't know shit from Shinola…"

Dugman gave him a baleful stare. "The fix is in. It was set up."

"Wha-a-a-t! You saying the D.A.'s bent, and the judge too?"

"I don't know about the D.A., but if the score was tied with seconds left, and the coach pulled out Dr. J. and put in some kid who never shot a basket in his life, you probably might want to see if he was talking to bookies. The judge? Fuckin Nolan's been on the wire longer than Western Union. If it wasn't fixed, grits ain't groceries and Mona Lisa was a man."

From the corner of the squad room where he habitually sat, leaning his chair against the wall in the space between two filing cabinets, Jeffers asked, "If you right, why'd they spring him? He wasn't doin any talking."

"Why?" replied Dugman. "Why you think? This big, my man, real big, and real dark. We got serious players involved here. Sure, he wasn't talking, but then, he never been up on no murder charge either. They can't take that chance."

"Somebody's gonna hit him," said Maus.

"Now you detectin, baby!" Jeffers exclaimed. "You cookin good!"

"Fuck you, Mack," said Maus. Then to Dugman: "We gonna pick him up? Where's he gonna go?"

"Where you think?" Dugman snarled. "He ain't got but one place to run. His momma." Ellen Wagner opened a beer for her guest and a Diet Pepsi for herself. They listened to the tape. Cliff seemed more nervous than she remembered him being, as if he were waiting for something to happen. When the tape ran out, Cliff rose to his feet to retrieve it. He slipped it into the pocket of his jacket.

"That was great," she said. "Can't I keep it? Or make a copy?"

"No can do: I'd get in trouble if they even knew I had it," he said apologetically. "Sorry."

"Oh," she said, beginning to get irritated. She didn't need two cautious guys in one day. She rose herself and plumped up the pillows where they both had been sitting. "Well, look, it's been real, but I have to get dressed, so…" She began to gather the glasses and cans from her coffee table.

"Let me watch you get dressed," he said softly.

She turned around abruptly, a sharp rebuke ready on her lips. It died there when she saw the expression on his face. Then she saw the knife.

Maus drove rapidly up Bradhurst Avenue, through the opening movements of Harlem Saturday night. It would start after suppertime, in the dusty twilight, first the little kids, running in screaming knots under the streetlights and through the schoolyards. Then the older kids would come out and hang in dense pockets around candy and convenience stores, blasting the night with boom-box music, yelling to each other, taunting, playing the dozens, going in and out of old unmuffled cars.

Later the older men and women would emerge, heading for the liquor stores or the clubs or the storefront churches, according to how they had decided to deal with life in Harlem. Last of all came the players, the pimps, gamblers, whores, runners, drug dealers, although there were getting to be so many of these that competition was driving them toward a continuous presence on the street. Maus drove by several places where drugs were being sold openly, circulating masses of young black men and women who talked little and shook hands with one another a lot.

Things were getting worse, according to Art Dugman, who had lived here all his life. Dugman had lovingly described for Maus Harlem as it used to be, full of sober, striving people constructing a dignified life in a world of unremitting hatred and contempt, blazing with music, lit by the genius of language.

"Crime and King killed Harlem," Dugman would say: crime for obvious reasons and King for leading the fight for civil rights and an end to segregation for those with the wit or luck to leave.

What was left was OK with Maus. Maus loved Harlem. To him it was like the Arabian Nights stories he had loved as a child-squalid, violent, exotic, exciting. This was not an opinion shared by many white cops from Long Island, which was why Maus was in the King Cole Trio and they were not.

"Turn right on Forty-four. It's 306," said Dugman.

Maus swung the blue Plymouth to the curb half a block east of where 144th Street joined Bradhurst, parking behind a hulk car up on cinder blocks. The hulk doubled as a playground for little kids, a party venue for teens, and a convenient rest stop for junkies on the nod. As the three cops left the car a party was getting under way; a dozen young men and a smaller number of girls were listening to music from a boom box set on the roof of the hulk, laughing, jiving, and passing around a fifth of sweet wine.

Dugman and Jeffers headed directly for the entrance to number 306, a classic five-story Harlem brownstone with broad limestone steps and balustrades, covered with graffiti and with inhabitants enjoying the early-summer evening. As the two cops mounted the stairs they seemed to bear before them an invisible cloud that suppressed casual conversation and caused the aversion of eyes.

They climbed three flights. Dugman flicked his head and eyes upward. Jeffers nodded and continued up the stairs. Dugman turned down the hallway to the apartment where Mrs. Booth supposedly lived. Dugman would knock on the door. If Tecumseh Booth was there, either Dugman would grab him or he would go out the fire escape. If he went down, Maus would pick him up; if he went up, Jeffers would. The Trio had done this a lot.

Down in the street, Maus had become an object of interest to both the young people in the hulk car and the children circulating in the street. Half a dozen little kids asked to see his gun. Several times a corruscating gale of foul language would emerge from a tiny mouth when he refused to do so. Maus just smiled and flicked his eyes from one side of the cliff of buildings to the other, watching the windows, straining his eyes in the gathering dark. As the light faded, the party got bolder.

"Hey, po-lice! He long gone!"

"Hey, you momma in there, runnin' a train!"

"Yo, Jake! Gonna shoot another nigger, muh'fuck?"

A thin girl of about fourteen in a white off-the-shoulder blouse and her hair in corn rows strung with bright beads came dancing in front of him, her smile wide and mocking. "Hey, li'l whitey, they lef you all alone. You want company? You wann give me a ride in you' po-lice car?"

Maus said in a not unfriendly tone, "Chile, get outta my face. I'se working."

"Oh, listen here, the man's tryin to talk black," she sang out, a look of mock amazement on her face.

"How I s'pose to talk, chile? Ain I soul?" replied Maus.

"Shit, no! You whiter 'n rice!"

"How you know that? Is you my momma?"

At this, a little kid giggled and there was a sprinkling of laughter from the crowd on the stoop. The black man with white pretensions was a familiar figure of fun in the community; this was a twist that some were prepared to find amusing.

"Hey, Sherril, tell him to show you his dick!" someone shouted from the car. The thin girl grinned and said, "Yeah, you got one o' them white-boy needle dicks?"

Maus said, "Honey, if I flash my rod, you think I was God. The sight of my meat would make you drop in the street. But you can't see how I hung, 'cause you too damn young. I don' wanna take the chance, I might scare you out yo' pants."

At this, general laughter, and a voice called, "He soundin' on you, Sherril."

The girl's mouth dropped and she placed her balled fists on her hips, preparatory to returning fire, but at that moment Maus stiffened and moved away from the car. At the same time he pulled out his police ID card and clipped it to the front of his sweatshirt and drew his.38 from its belt holster.

The girl gave a little yelp of alarm and backed away. The crowd followed the direction of Maus's gaze upward, to where a window on the third floor had opened. Tecumseh Booth was out on the fire escape and looking out heavenward.

Some people stepped out on the street to get a better view, and somebody must have spotted Jeffers' head poking above the roof parapet, because the crowd started yelling to Booth that there was a cop above him. Booth reversed direction and began to climb down the steel flights.

Maus moved into position to intercept him and suddenly became aware that, as often happens in Harlem, about a thousand people had appeared on the street in the past five seconds. A broad man with a beard and wearing a knitted green-red-and-black tarn pushed in front of him, shouting, "What you want with him-what's he done?" Others in the crowd took up the cry. Someone yelled, "Get his gun!" Maus looked the man in the eye and said, "Hey, let me by, fella! I'm just doing the job here. We just want to talk with the guy."

The guy in question was stalled on the second-floor escape platform. Maus could barely make out the flapping glow of his white shirt. Some people were urging him to come down now, telling him he could get away, that there was only one cop on the street. Others were whistling and cheering. Maus heard a bottle smash behind him. His belly started to get tight.

Maus didn't hear the first shot. He saw Booth grip the platform rail and look around wildly. The second shot hit the platform itself and made it clang like a broken bell. The third shot ricocheted off the building, leaving a bright scar on the tan masonry. A woman screamed like a siren and the crowd went totally silent for a weird instant. Maus felt the pressure of a dozen pairs of angry eyes. "Motherfucker shot her!" shouted the bearded man.

Maus reached out and grabbed the man by his shirt and stuck the muzzle of his revolver under the man's nose. "Fool! Smell that gun! Did I shoot it?" The man's eyes went wide and he tried to back away. Maus gave him a push, which cleared a space in the middle of the crowd. He filled his lungs and shouted, "Somebody's tryin' to shoot him…"

The space disappeared as people swirled around him. His arms were pinned to his sides. He smelled sweat, perfume; he saw a huge black shape coming down the fire escape, shaking the whole structure; there were more shots, closer this time.

Maus fell, was trampled, he staggered to one knee. He saw Mack Jeffers lift Booth like a child up on his hip and fire shots down the street. People were yelling and running around in circles. Horns blared from the stalled traffic and there were sirens in the distance. Maus heard another shot and the scream of tires from a car tearing off down 144th Street. "Someone's coming," she blurted. "My boyfriend…"

He waved the knife in front of her face. His smile was a terrifying parody of the social expression he had flashed moments before. "Your boyfriend will have to take sloppy seconds today, bitch. I'll make sure you're greased up good for him, you whore! Get into the bedroom and take your clothes off!"

She wasn't wearing panty hose under her jeans, of course. He made her take a pair out of a drawer. He wanted a dirty pair, but she didn't have any. That made him angry.

He made her lie on the bed, cursing her all the time, saying the foulest things in a quiet conversational tone. He wrapped the panty hose around her head and then made her lie back and draw her knees up to her chest so that she was fully exposed.

The telephone rang. With the blood pounding in her ears and the wrapping around her head, she heard it only faintly. It must be Seth, she thought. He always calls before he comes over and he's only fifteen minutes away. She felt a thrill of hope; whatever he did, it couldn't last very long. Maybe the phone would frighten him away.

But he leaned over her and placed the tip of his blade hard against her chest, under the breastbone. "Make a noise and I'll cut your heart out," he said, and then he answered the phone.

"Hello," he said. A pause. "This is the TV repairman." She heard the faint burble of Seth's voice from the phone speaker. The knife pressed harder. She felt a tiny trickle of something wet roll down her ribs, but whether it was sweat or blood she could not tell. "No, I don't think she can come to the phone now. I heard the shower going. Uh-huh. Well, sometimes these new sets go on the fritz right away, y'know? OK, I'll tell her. Bye."

He hung up. She felt the bed move. Her legs were getting stiff in the exaggerated sexual position he had demanded and she tried to ease them down, but he saw it and it made him angry. He moved closer to her on the bed. She felt the knife running lightly over her genitals. He was speaking hoarsely now, obviously excited, "You cunt, slut, you want it, you can't wait for it, can you?" She heard his zipper open. She felt his weight on her. She was being raped.

Maus climbed to his feet, shaking with the aftereffects of terror. Whatever it was, the incipient riot, was over. People stood on the street in small clutches, talking, and every doorway and window was thick with watchers. Booth was sitting in the unmarked car, shaking, holding his face, which had been cut by flying brick. Dugman was in the front, talking quietly into the radio, telling the dispatchers that no help was needed.

"What the fuck was that all about?" asked Maus.

Jeffers answered, "Ask Tecumseh, here. I think your friends don't like you anymore, Tecumseh."

Maus said, "Son-of-a-bitch! Needless to say, the shooter skipped."

Jeffers nodded and pointed across the street. "He shot from the first-floor window of that vacant building. The tin over the window's bent back. He took four shots and he stopped when I started shooting."

"Any chance…?"

"No way. He coulda gone out the back or up the roof. He coulda just walked out on the street and lost himself."

"How about that car that took off in a hurry? You think he was on board?"

Jeffers exchanged a look with Dugman, who put down his microphone and turned his attention to Tecumseh Booth.

"You know who it was, don't you?"

Booth looked at him mutely. Dugman reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette pack and matches, which he handed to Booth. The man lit one up and drew deeply on it. Dugman waited a minute or so and then repeated his question. Outside, the life of the street resumed as if nothing had happened.

Booth said, "Yeah, I guess."

"It was a cop, wasn't it?" asked Dugman.

"Yeah. He done the shooting. I jus drove, man. That's all I know."

"You gonna give us a name?"

"If I do, what do I get out of it?"

"If you don't, we'll be glad to put you back to your momma's house and wait for the man to come again. I bet next time he won't be shooting from cross the street. Figure the range be around two inches next time."

For the next few seconds Booth's face showed clearly the frantic working of his brain. At last he said, "OK, I'll tell you, but you gotta look out for me."

"Who?" Dugman asked.

Booth said, "It's you-all's boss. It's Fulton." It had hurt worse than she had imagined, worse than the worst kind of cramps. She lay there silently, tears of rage and pain soaking into the panty hose wrapped around her head. He was arranging his clothes and pacing about the bedroom, not talking now. After a while she said, "Can I get up now?"

He didn't answer. He was thinking. He shouldn't have answered that call, but he couldn't resist, talking to the schmuck on the phone when he was looking up his girlfriend's cunt. There was a catch, though. Boyfriend could identify his voice; the girl knew his face. It was corroboration. Not good.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice thin and high.

He was wrapping the bedspread around her, tucking it in tightly on both sides, until she was like a mummy with its head wreathed in Tan Natural nylon.

"Please, let me…" she said. He straddled her legs and held the knife over his head with both hands and drove it down into her with all his force. "Wha-a-a-at!" cried Maus. "Lieutenant Fulton? Fuck you, scumbag! Try again!"

Maus turned his incredulous look toward Jeffers and Dugman, seeking support as to the absurdity of this statement, but the two other cops wore expressions of blank gravity.

"Hey, guys? You don't believe this horseshit, do you? Fulton?"

"Maus," said Jeffers sadly, "that car. Blue Trans Am with whitewalls. It was the Loo's car. And he was in it." The rapist checked himself carefully in the full-length bedroom mirror. There was no blood on him at all, except on his hands, where he had gripped the knife. He looked at the shape on the bed. He couldn't remember stabbing her that many times. He must have lost track of time. Time! He checked his watch. Only eight minutes had passed since the phone call.

He went into the kitchen and rinsed his hands and the knife and put the knife away in his jacket pocket. He brought the beer can and the glass he had used back to the kitchen, wiped both of them off, rinsed and dried the glass and tossed the can in the trash. Then he wiped the tap handle off.

Twelve minutes. Another wipe on the stereo where he had touched it. He walked toward the door. He felt good, as usual, except that his underwear was wet and sticky. He had experienced another, more intense orgasm as he was taking care of the girl. Two for the price of one, he thought, and then had an even more amusing notion: the police would think it was a nut case, all that stabbing. It was a different pattern. No one would ever associate it with him. He was not, after all, a nut. The rapist opened the door, his hand wrapped in a handkerchief, and let himself out. The three detectives and their guest drove south through the increasingly noisy evening. Each of the cops was chewing over Booth's revelation in private. Maus broke the silence.

"It still don't figure," he said. "Why are we taking this mutt's word for it?"

"It ain't just his word," replied Dugman from the rear seat.

"What, then? What! Rumors? Street bullshit?"

"It adds up. The street know something's goin down. Here, I'll show you. Maus, see that line of cars waiting to buy dope? Get in line. Mack, grab us one of them skells."

"Which one?"

"Any damn one. We doin a scientific sample."

Maus pulled the car over to where a dozen or so men were crying their wares. A thin brown man in a lavender T-shirt and a Mets baseball cap came up to the passenger window and put his hands on the sill, saying, "What you want? I got it all an' the price is right. I got weed, pills, smack, skag, coke…"

Striking like a cobra, Mack grabbed the man by an upper arm and jerked him through the window. Maus hit the gas and they roared off down the street.

Mack flipped the man around so that his head and shoulders were resting on his own lap, while the pusher's legs were flapping out the window. His massive forearm rested gently against the pusher's throat.

"Wha', wha'… wha' the fuck goin on! Leggo me!" the pusher began. Mack increased the weight of his arm and the cries choked off.

"Listen up, my man," said Mack softly. "We just want to know one thing. Where you getting your stuff. Not the mutt you get it from, the big slick. Who's the Barnes Man?" He raised his arm a hair.

"Dunno what you talkin about, man. What stuff?"

Mack dropped his arm again. When he raised it, the pusher gagged and coughed for a long time. Mack repeated the question and this time the pusher croaked, "Choo-choo."

"Choo-choo Willis, huh?" said Mack. "OK, who else still in business?"

"Blade still movin it. Some Jamaicans. Some spies. Willis been doin good since they aced all those guys."

"What's out on the street about who's doin the hits?"

The man's face clouded, and he hesitated. From the rear seat Dugman said, "Don't worry, it ain't us. Just tell what you heard."

The man coughed hard and then said, "I heard it was cops."

"That's what we heard too," said Dugman. "You hear any names?"

The man shook his head vigorously. "No, I didn't hear nothin else. It just street jive anyway, you know?"

"The name Fulton mean anything to you? Clay Fulton?"

The man screwed up his features, showing thought superimposed on terror. "Yeah. Couple of days ago, my man Socks say somepin about some Fulton. Like he was connected, wired. Big dudes want to know anybody saw him aroun'. Some shit like that."

Mack looked back at Dugman, who nodded. Mack said, "Pull over," and when Maus did so, he flung the pusher out the window like a piece of trash.

Half an hour later Booth and the three detectives were sitting in a luncheonette on St. Nicholas Avenue having coffee and arguing about what, if anything, to do.

"I say, confront the man," said Maus. "We go up there, we say we saw you when somebody was trying to ace Tecumseh here, the word on the street is you're dirty, so what the fuck, Loo? That's the right thing to do."

Dugman shook his head. "Yeah, it would be, if Fulton was playing straight with us. But he ain't. Which means he thinks he's covered some way. So what's he gonna say? Either yes, I'm bent, and what the fuck you gonna do about it. Or no, and fuck you for accusing me. Either way we're fucked in the ass. But…"

"But what, Art?" asked Jeffers.

"Like I said before, there's somethin deep goin on here. We ain't got near all the story, and this old nigger ain't about to go jumpin into somethin deep when he don't know the whole story."

"So what do we do?" asked Maus, a note of tension straining his voice. "We can't just go on working for the man, pretending everything's cool. Maybe you all can, but I'm not made for this happy horseshit. I got to know who I can trust, you know? OK, the Loo is bent-fuck me for a chump, I thought he was a class act. But now, I'll tell you right now, I'm gonna transfer out of here. I'm no fuckin virgin-plenty of guys on the take are standup cops. But not pulling jobs, killing people, even if they are scumbags. How can you trust a guy like that, if it's true?"

"Play along, Maus," said Jeffers. "Game ain't over yet."

"Yeah, but we got no cards," replied Maus glumly.

At this remark, a smile, and a not very pleasant one, broke out on Dugman's face. "Uh-uh, you wrong there, Maus. We got us the biggest card in the deck. We got us the ace." And he looked at Tecumseh Booth. The others did too. Booth shifted nervously in his seat.

"What you gonna do?" asked Booth.

"That is the question," said Dugman reflectively. "What indeedy?" Here he paused and lit a long Macanudo cigar, and watched the sweet smoke rise to the tin ceiling above. "What we require," he said, "is, one, a place to stash our hole card. Mack, my thinking is it might be a good time for you to take a week off, take your cousin Tecumseh fishing over in Jersey. Tecumseh probably don't get in as much fishing as he'd like, driving hit men around all hours.

"Two, we need a connection, a pipe to the outside. This too big for just the three of us."

"You don't mean the snakes?" said Maus, shocked.

Dugman wrinkled his nose in contempt at this reference to the department's Bureau of Internal Affairs. "Shit, no! I meant somebody with some clout, but not under Fulton. What about that guy you were in court with when they sprung Tecumseh, the task-force guy."

"Manning?"

"Yeah," said Dugman, "Manning could be the one."