The Night Remembers

12

They were never rich or fancy houses, the ones that stretch out Ellis Boulevard along the river, but after the war and well into the Sixties they were the kind of sturdy middle-class homes people I knew wanted to live in. I’m not sure when it changed, when the new Chevrolets and new Fords and the occasional sparkling Pontiac became rusted-out metal beasts that seemed to be dying of some disease... but change it did. The people with good factory jobs moved out, up into the hills, or out into the dense housing development along O Avenue, or over near Edgewood Road where young doctors and other professional people were starting to give the west side a good reputation again. Leaving Ellis Boulevard to the ravages of the night. Oh, occasionally you saw new shingling on a house, or a new roof, or a spanking new paint job, but mostly — smashed windows, junk overflowing on porches, a dead car on the front lawn — mostly the area was sliding into slow and certain death now, hanging on for another generation until the urban renewal monster came along and gobbled it up, decimating the Timecheck area so completely, all trace of its existence would be gone forever except for a few fading photographs in Grandma’s photo album or the civic history section in the library.

She lived in one of the worst houses. According to the radio reports, the police had now identified her as Stella Czmek, age forty-eight, unmarried. The reports offered no information about what she’d been doing in the Pennyfeathers’ back yard in the first place.

From a beauty shop on the corner came two fat black women. One had plump pink curlers in her hair, the other what appeared to be an almost comically long cigarette dangling from her mouth. Seeing what house I was standing in front of, they frowned at each other and whispered a few things. As they drew near me, the lady with the curlers nodded to the house where Stella Czmek lived and shook her head with a slow sadness.

“Hello,” I said.

The woman with the cigarette nodded. “You any relation to Stella?” she asked.

“No. I’m afraid not.”

“You heard what happened to her, didn’t you?”

“I sure did. Terrible. You knew her, then?”

The lady in the pink curlers had a very pretty face buried in excess flesh. “Not real well.”

“She didn’t like black people much,” her friend said.

“Especially us,” said the woman in curlers.

“Why not you especially?”

“Oh,” she said, “ ’cuz one day we was walking past her porch and she flipped her cigarette just so it’d about hit Dolores here. Right on purpose.”

“Absolutely on purpose,” Dolores said.

“So I told her, right then and there, I said, ‘Lady, in case you think you’re any better than we are, you just take a look at this house you live in.’ ”

No doubt about her point. In a long row of dirty gray houses in various stages of falling apart, Stella Czmek’s had been one of the grimiest, rust stains like blood running down the filthy white shingles around the small porch.

“What’d she say to that?” I said.

“Called us ‘nigger trash,’ ” said Dolores.

“Bitch,” said her friend.

“That was about it, huh?” I said.

“Till about two weeks later, when she got that car.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Dolores. “You should’ve seen that car.”

“Big?” I said.

“Big ain’t the word for it.” Dolores giggled. “Try humongous. Right, Esther?”

“Cadillac?” I asked.

“Lincoln,” Esther said. “You could sit in the front seat and on this little panel you had controls to do everything.”

“Lock all the doors, roll up all the windows,” Dolores said.

“Everything.”

“It was her car?”

“That’s what she said.”

“She had money, then?”

Inevitably, Dolores looked at Esther. A tiny frown appeared in the corner of her mouth. She looked back at me. “Are you the police?”

“Nope.”

“A friend of hers?”

“Not that, either.” I took out my wallet and showed it to them.

Dolores was positively ecstatic. “Just like Mike Hammer on TV!”

Esther pulled the license I was holding toward her. “I’ll be damned. I never seen no private eye’s license before. This for real?”

“For real.”

“The cops was here all morning,” Dolores said. “Asked everybody in the neighborhood stuff about her.”

“Didn’t get much, though,” Esther said. “Either people didn’t know her or they seen what she was like when she was drunk and they didn’t want to know her. And that goes for white and black people the same.”

“She drank a lot?”

“Oh, my, did she drink,” Esther said, giggling again. “I mean, I maybe shouldn’t be sayin’ this about her, her just dyin’ and all, but she was the worst drunkard on the block. And believe me, there’s some champion winos on the block. Some champions. See that little grocery store down there?”

I looked down the block. A shabby little place of smashed windows and 6-PK Beer $1.99 signs stood on a corner across the street from the beauty parlor.

“Four times a day,” Esther said.

“Four times a day?” I asked.

“That’s how many times she’d make a trip to that store.”

“She drank beer in the quarts. She’d get two a trip. Plus cigarettes if she needed ’em,” Dolores said.

“She have any friends?”

Dolores nodded to the house next door. “Mr. Bainbridge, he talked to her sometimes.” She rolled her eyes. “In his line of work, of course.”

“What’s he do?”

“Well, what he does and what he thinks he does is two different things.”

“Oh?”

“What he does is work at the post office sortin’ mail. But what he thinks he does is minister to our needs.” Dolores laughed. “He got hisself some degree from some bible college in Texas and ever since then he walks around thinkin’ his shit don’t stink. Excuse my French.”

“So he was trying to save her soul?”

“Tryin’,” Esther said sardonically.

“What time does Mr. Bainbridge get home?”

“Usually about three-thirty. But he’s home right now. Seen him ’bout an hour ago peekin’ out from behind that curtain right up there. He was watchin’ the police.”

“Wonder why he’s home,” I said, hoping one of them would volunteer an answer.

“Beats me,” Dolores said.

“You gettin’ cold?” Esther asked her. “I’m gettin’ cold and I’m headin’ inside.”

“Real nice meetin’ you,” Dolores said.

“Likewise,” I said, and gave each of them one of my business cards.

“You a private detective. I just can’t get over it.”

I smiled and watched them walk down to the end of the block. They waved to each other and went into separate houses, the grave dignity of the womanhood sad counterpoint to the wry girlishness of their laughter.

When I looked up, I saw a pair of eyes behind thick glasses peering from behind burlap curtains and out of morning gloom. The eyes behind the heavy lenses stared down at me from the second floor. As soon as we made eye contact, the curtain flapped shut.

The two-story house had been painted chocolate brown many decades ago. The brown showed everything — dust, mud, rust, even the white undercoating where the shutters over the front window had been torn out and now hung loose. On the porch were stacks of aged newspapers, yellowed and winey with the odor of mildew. Over the doorbell was a small cracked decal of the American flag. Another decal, this one on the small glass pane of the door itself, said, This House Protected by Jesus and Smith & Wesson.

I rang the bell and leaned forward to make certain it rang. It didn’t. Inside I heard the noises of an old house settling, and then quick, sharp footsteps on the staircase. I peered into shadow so deep it was virtually like nighttime. All the curtains were drawn.

He opened the door so abruptly, I took a step back, sensing he might attack me.

He was skinny, tall, with an almost grotesquely large Adam’s apple, short-trimmed gray hair, pasty white skin, eyeglasses so thick they seemed comic, and blue eyes that spoke of turmoil, grief, and abiding madness. He was probably a few years younger than me. In his plaid work shirt and baggy jeans and house slippers, he looked like the sort of melancholy psychotic you saw roaming the halls of state mental institutions just after electroshock treatment, the pain and sorrow only briefly dulled by riding the lightning.

“I saw you talking to those nigger women,” he said. It was an accusation.

I had my wallet ready and showed him my license.

“What’s this?”

“Private detective.”

He glared at me. “Private detective?”

“Yes.”

“About what?”

“I’m trying to find out some things about the Czmek woman.”

“Why?”

He used his short, pointed questions the way a boxer uses jabs — to keep his opponent off balance.

“I’m just trying to find out some things about her.”

“For who?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say.”

“You came to the wrong place.”

“You didn’t know her very well?”

“No.”

I stared at him and sighed. “Mr. Bainbridge, all I want is—”

“It isn’t ‘Mr.’ ”

“No?”

“No, it’s ‘Reverend.’ ”

“Oh. Excuse me. Reverend.”

“Inside I have a degree that says I’m a reverend.”

“I see.”

“But don’t think I’m gonna help you just because you call me by the right name.”

“All I want is—”

“I know what you want.”

“You do?”

“It’s obvious.”

“It is?”

“You want to know if we ever fornicated.”

“I do?”

“That’s what those nigger women were telling you.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t play innocent.”

“That doesn’t happen to be what they said.”

“I don’t believe that. They used to spread stories about Stella and me all the time.”

Just by referring to her as “Stella” he confirmed what Dolores and Esther had told me.

“How’s your ministry doing?”

“What?”

“Your ministry. How’s it doing?”

“I suppose you’re really interested.”

“I am. You said you were a minister. Seems a logical question to ask, how your ministry is doing.”

“You know darn well what they did to me.”

“They?”

“The people down on E Avenue. At The Church of Jesus Praised.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Sure you do. That’s another lie those two nigger women love to tell.”

“About The Church of Jesus Praised?”

He nodded. “ ’Bout that teenage girl and how I was supposed to’ve been peekin’ in that hole and all. They just said that to get rid of me ’cause I wasn’t afraid to say they was preachin’ the Devil’s gospel.” He leaned forward, as if church members might be standing behind me on the porch. His blue eyes glanced about with birdlike speed. “Reverend Cahill is the Antichrist.”

“Really?”

He pulled back into the doorway and nodded. “That’s why they put that hole in the wall. So I’d look inside just out of idle curiosity. I didn’t know no fourteen-year-old girl was goin’ to the bathroom in there.”

“And as soon as you peeked in that hole—”

“They landed on me. They was just waitin’.” Bitterness curled his lower lip. “ ’Course, they told the police that I put the hole in the wall.”

“And the police believed them?”

“They’re part of it.”

“Part of what?”

“Part of the Antichrist’s plan. Who do the police protect today?”

“I guess I’m not sure.”

He swelled his chest up slightly and fixed me with a long bony finger out of which he probably imagined a death ray was firing. “Today the police protect niggers and drug dealers and queers. Those are the people who will run this country once the Antichrist has taken over.”

“I see.”

He eyed me carefully. “You’re not a believer, are you?” He was back to making accusations.

“Not in the way you mean.”

“You go to church?”

“Sometimes I go to mass. Not very often, I’m afraid.”

“Mass,” he said, chewing the word as if somebody had just put a turd in his mouth. “You know about the pope?”

I sighed. “This the one about how he has sex with nuns all the time or the one about how he’s secretly Jewish?”

“Sarcasm is the Devil’s device.”

“Look, Reverend,” I said, tiring of his madness and no longer able to sustain my pity. He’d be better off shot dead, I thought, despite all my Christian training. His grief was beyond help and his viciousness was dangerous. “I’d just like to ask you some questions about Stella Czmek.”

“All I’ll say is that she was my friend.”

At least this was an improvement over pretending he scarcely knew her.

“Did she come into some money?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m told she suddenly started driving around in an expensive new car.”

He glared down the street to where Dolores and Esther lived. “Can’t keep their mouths shut, can they?”

“You know where she got the car?”

“No.”

From the wallet I took a twenty. Before coming over here, I’d driven into Merchants Bank out on Mt. Vernon Road, deposited the check Carolyn Pennyfeather had given me, and taken five crisp twenties from the automatic teller machine.

One advantage a licensed investigator has over a cop is that he can bribe people. In the kind of world we live in, that’s one hell of an advantage.

I held the twenty out to him. He looked snake-charmed by the sight of the bill.

“I’d like you to take this.”

“Why?”

“Call it a contribution to your ministry.”

“I ain’t gonna tell you nothin’ about Stella.”

“Here. Please.”

I could see him weakening. In a way, it was almost disgusting.

“You ever ride in that car of hers?”

“What if I did? We never fornicated, no matter what those nigger women said.”

“It have a nice radio?”

“Very nice.”

“I’ll bet those nice plump seats were comfortable.”

“Real comfortable.”

“And those electric windows.”

He grinned and I saw the boy in him. The boy looked just as screwed up as the man. “They was fun to do.”

“Who do you think gave her the car?”

“Oh, no.”

“Pardon?”

“Oh, no. That’s what you want, ain’t it?”

“What is it I want?”

“That fella’s name. The one who come to see Stella sometimes.”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t mind if you—”

“Oh, no.” He pushed his hand up, almost knocking the twenty from my fingers. “You just go on, git out of here.”

“But Reverend—”

“You just git and git fast.”

He slammed the door as abruptly as he’d opened it, the sound booming off the snowy gray morning.

At least I’d learned that Stella Czmek had had a friend who was worth trying to track down.