Trouble Follows Me

4

FIVE thousand miles and two weeks later I met Mary again. It was not a coincidence. We had known each other for only a little more than twenty-four hours, but neither of us was willing to let it end there. Before we parted that night in Hawaii, we exchanged Stateside addresses and telephone numbers.

I had kept on my bachelor apartment in Detroit by subletting it to a friend. When I got home I moved in with him. During my first week in Detroit not much happened to me externally but a good deal happened inside. I went to visit my old girl-friend Sandra, and found that she had flown the coop. She was in Florida with her very new husband, a very new flier stationed at Pensacola. The thought of Mary cushioned the blow, and I was surprised at how little I cared.

I was content to lead a bachelor life with my subtenant, a reporter on a morning paper named Joe Scott. I did a good deal of sitting around catching up on my reading and my drinking. The drinking was mostly beer and in the evenings, because I had nothing to escape from and was where I wanted to be. I went to a few shows and one or two parties, where I found myself mostly among acquaintances, not friends. Nearly all my friends were in the services, or in Washington, or in the OWI overseas. Still, it was good to be home for twenty days. Before the week was up I had begun to wonder how I could ever bring myself to go back out to the Pacific. I felt half like a civilian again, and even when I was bored it was good to be bored by something different from sea and sun and bogies on the radar screen.

With the war, Sue Sholto’s death receded like a nightmare in the morning. More vivid and frequent in my memory was Mary’s long brown body in the sand, the freshness of her mouth, the way she held me on the last night. The bad business came back and hit me hardest the day before Mary telephoned. I went to Ann Arbor to make a duty call on Eric Swann’s wife.

I had put it off for a week and couldn’t very well put it off any longer. I was embarrassed for Eric’s sake, though I had no objective reason to be. The story of Sue’s death had gone no further than the local Hawaiian press. Eric had been mentioned only in passing, as a member of the party who had testified at the inquest. Still I felt embarrassment, which deepened in the face of the woman’s love and loyalty to her husband.

Helen Swann was a big pale blonde, vaguely warm and vaguely nervous, the antithesis of Sue Sholto. She was the hausfrau type, but childless, so that all her love was lavished on her husband.

“You saw Eric, didn’t you?” she said in an eager flutter, when she had perfunctorily praised my tan and the lucky stars which had brought me back. “He wrote me about it. Tell me, is he well?”

“He seemed very well when I saw him in Pearl,” I lied. “In tip-top form.”

“I’m so glad. You know, he always tells me in his letters how well he’s feeling, but I can’t entirely believe him. It’s so nice to have confirmation. You see, even if he were sick he wouldn’t tell me, he wouldn’t want to worry me, the poor dear.”

“You’ll be able to see for yourself,” I said, wondering how deep her loving eyes would see. “His ship’s coming back to the States.”

“I know,” she said, her soft mouth wreathed in a girlish smile which struck a pang through me. “He’s coming home tomorrow. Look.”

With the air of a magician solving the riddle of time and space, she picked up a yellow telegram from the table and gave it to me to read:

SAFE BACK IN STATES ARRIVING HOME FOR SHORT LEAVE WEDNESDAY THE EIGHTEENTH EVER SO MUCH LOVE ERIC.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” she said. “I don’t care how short the time is if only I can see him again. And he’s coming tomorrow.”

“That’s swell,” but my enthusiasm rang a little uncertainly in my ears. I doubted Eric’s ability to shift with perfect ease from a dead mistress to a living wife. On the other hand, Helen Swann’s tremulous and brooding love needed very little to feed on. Which was why, I thought, her husband had been unfaithful to her.

I stayed long enough to satisfy propriety if not all her eager questions, and promised to have dinner with them during Eric’s leave. Then I went back to Detroit to read a book and forget about women.

The next morning Mary Thompson telephoned from Cleveland. As soon as I heard her low rich voice I knew what had been keeping me dull and somnolent all week. It was suppressed expectation, suppressed by the fear that I’d never hear from her again.

“You made it fast,” I said. “I’m damn glad.”

“Fast for a civilian. I’m damn glad too. How long have you been home?”

“A week.”

“Having a good time?”

“In a quiet way. I suddenly realized when I heard your voice that I’ve been waiting very hard to hear from you.”

“That’s nice. If you mean it. You’re sure you’re not really put out to hear from me, and just carrying it off like a gentleman?”

“You know different. My feeling for you is not precisely gentlemanly. When can I see you?”

“Well, I’m coming back to Detroit today. Not to see you: it’s about a job.”

“Back to Detroit? You mean you were here and didn’t call me?”

“I was just passing through from Chicago. I had to come here to see the folks. Not that any explanation is called for. Avoid that proprietary tone.” Her voice was mocking, but a little steel grated in it. “How’s the girlfriend?”

“Married off, thank God. In which case will you meet me for dinner at the Book-Cadillac at eight?”

“I’d love to. See you.” She hung up.

A couple of hours later I had another telephone call, and I began to feel as if it were Pearl Harbor old home week. This time it was Eric, calling from the airport.

“I’m glad I could get in touch with you,” he said when we had exchanged greetings. “Something new has been added.”

“In connection with – it?”

“Not exactly. Perhaps. Hector Land has disappeared.”

“I thought he was in the brig.”

“He was for ten days. Then we let him out, but he was restricted to the ship. The night we got into Diego he got away somehow, and hasn’t been seen since.”

“I don’t see how he got out of the Yard.”

“We weren’t in the Yard yet. We docked at North Island when we came in. I figure he must have slipped over the side and swum around to one of the unrestricted beaches, maybe at Coronado. He may have drowned himself, for that matter. Anyway he’s gone.”

“His being A.W.O.L. doesn’t prove very much, does it?”

“Not much. But I’m still interested in checking up on him. That’s the main reason I called you. His wife lives in Detroit.”

“I know. Somewhere in Paradise Valley.”

“I can’t take the time now – Helen will be waiting for me – but I thought I’d come into town tonight and look up Mrs. Land. Are you free?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I have a dinner engagement.”

“Could we get together afterwards?”

For a moment I thought of asking him to leave me out of it, let me forget it even if he couldn’t. But I said: “Look, it’s Mary Thompson I’m having dinner with – she just got back to the States. Why don’t you bring Helen and make it a foursome? We’ll make a night of it and if we get the chance we’ll look up Mrs. Land.”

As soon as I made the suggestion I regretted it. There are more entertaining projects for a mixed group than looking in Paradise Valley for a Negro woman you have never seen. Apart from that, I anticipated a certain amount of strain in a meeting between Eric’s wife and Sue’s friend. But Eric took me up on it and the engagement was made for eight.

The party fitted together better than I expected. Helen was so delighted to be with Eric again that nothing could have fazed her, and Eric flourished in the atmosphere of devotion which she generated. Mary, who I remembered had understood Eric from the beginning, was content to let well enough alone. She made no mention of Sue, nor even any subtly feminine insinuation, and the two women were soon on their way to becoming friends.

Mary had changed noticeably since I had seen her. On Oahu her whole nature had seemed open, like a rose in a sudden hailstorm, to the shock and pain of events. She had been shaken by the vibration of horror which had passed through Honolulu House, and I had felt helpless to comfort her, though I did my best. Now she seemed no longer vulnerable. Her nature had closed upon itself and become poised and self-contained again. Perhaps it was no more than the healthful effects of putting the island and its associations behind her, of taking a sea-voyage, of coming home again. But she seemed a different woman.

The difference was emphasized by the Martinis and highballs we had before and after dinner. When Eric and I proposed our expedition, Mary took it up with sophomore enthusiasm:

“I think it should be fun. A manhunt through the wilds of Detroit. A womanhunt, at least.”

“Hardly that,” Eric said drily. “I’ve got her address. 214 Chestnut Street.”

Helen was a bit put out: “I thought you were on leave, Eric. You’ve only got five days and one day’s gone already.”

He looked a little sheepish but said: “This won’t take half an hour. After that we’ll hit the night-spots.”

Mary and I shared the back seat of Eric’s carefully preserved sedan, and I lost interest in where we were going. She let me kiss her, but her mouth was not tremulous and yielding as it had been the one other time. She kissed me firmly back.

Before I wanted to see it I saw the number 214 in rusty metal nailed above the door of a dark building. It stood among other buildings like it, huge multicellular mansions which had once housed a single family in rather stuffy luxury, and now housed twenty or more. Hemmed in by economic pressure and social injustice, the Negroes swarmed in the rotting hives which they had neither built nor chosen, three, five, or seven to a room. The old houses were eaten away by interior decay, the plumbing dissolved and went away in the sewers, the floors and walls were unpainted and unpapered, the roofs were sagging and porous, the heating systems were left unused or taken out to be sold as scrap metal; and the landlords made no repairs, because they were not needed to rent the buildings. Yet from the outside, especially when snow and bleak weather kept the tenants huddled inside around their stoves, the houses looked as they had always looked. Their façades were ornate and imposing, like a pompous matron with a social disease.

Mary wanted to go in with us, for the adventure, she said, but Helen was glad enough to stay outside of the gloomy building.

“This isn’t a very good section,” Eric said, apparently regretting the impulse which had made him bring his wife here. “Keep the doors locked, and if anybody tries to bother you just drive around the block.”

We left them bundled up in their furs in the front seat, and knocked on the door of the silent house. A glass window set high in the huge carved door was painted over and shone whitely like an eye blinded by cataract. We knocked again, and when nobody answered opened the door and entered the dark hallway. The hall was deserted, but it was odorous and murmurous, alive with the memories and promises of human life: cooking and eating, copulation and birth, quarrels and music and violence.

The first door to the right showed a crack of light. I knocked on it and the crack widened.

“Who you want?” said the half-face, leathery and wrinkled and crowned with a grey poll, which appeared in the lighted crack.

“Does Mrs. Hector Land live here?”

“Bessie Land live down the hall,” the old man said impatiently. “Third to the left.” He shut the door.

We stepped carefully among perambulators and empty milkbottles and found the door. I lit my lighter and found a card nailed to the door with a thumbtack. It bore two autographs: Mrs. Bessie Land, Mrs. Kate Morgan.

I knocked on the door and a woman shouted brusquely: “Go away, I’m busy.”

There were sounds from inside the room which indicated the nature of the business.

“I don’t like this,” Eric said suddenly. “Let’s get out of here.”

I said: “Did you expect Mrs. Land to receive you in her drawing-room with her best tiara on?”

I knocked again and the sounds ceased. A young Negro woman came to the door holding a cotton wrapper across her breast. She kicked without malice at a white mongrel puppy which bounded out of the darkness and nipped at her slippers.

“Mrs. Hector Land?” I said.

“Bessie ain’t here. She ain’t in business any more anyway. If you wait a few minutes, maybe I–?”

She raised her right hand to stroke back her hair and made her right breast rise under the wrapper.

“We came to see Mrs. Land,” Eric said hastily. “On business. That is, not–” He blushed and subsided.

“Suits me,” the black girl said, and smiled without warmth. “I’m tired tonight. Bessie’s over at the Paris Bar and Grill. Around the corner to your left.”

We found Helen and Mary shivering in the car in spite of heater and furs, and drove around the corner to the left. A gap-toothed neon in red and orange flickered on the dirty snow like a dying fire, proclaiming the Paris Bar and Grill.

“Better come in and have a drink,” I said to Mary. “It’s cold out here.”

“Are you quite sure it’s safe?” Helen said. “It looks like an all-Negro place.”

“So what?” I said. “This is a democracy, isn’t it? They drink the same liquor we do, and it makes them drunk just like us.”

“Come on,” Mary said, and we all went in. There was a lunch-counter along the left wall, along the right a row of booths with tall thin partitions between them, and a bar at the back. At the right end of the bar there was a boogie-woogie piano with a black boogie-woogie pianist playing it. The big room was loud with the intricate rustle and jangle of boogie-woogie, thick with smoke, and crowded with people. But there wasn’t much talking, and there was no laughter. I realized with a jolt that everyone in the room was conscious of our presence. I was embarrassed by the power of my skin to stop a roomful of conversations. Our progress down the room was a little like running a moral gauntlet.

All the booths were full but there was room at the bar for us. We sat down and asked the bartender for four bourbons and the whereabouts of Mrs. Hector Land.

“Right beside you,” he said to me with a smile. I looked at the woman beside me. She was black but comely, like the girl in Song of Songs: well-made, with strong delicate lines in her face and long narrow eyes. But her eyes weren’t very well focussed and her mouth was gloomy and slack. There was a little glass of brownish fluid in front of her.

“Mrs. Land?” I said.

“Yes.” I smelt wormwood on her breath.

“I’m Ensign Drake. This is Lieutenant Swann, who would like to ask you a question or two.”

“Questions about what?” she said drowsily. Her eyes swung in her head slowly as if by their own weight.

“About your husband.”

“You know Hector? Why yes, you’re a Navy officer, aren’t you? He’s in the Navy.” Eric was standing by her shoulder now. She turned on her stool to look up at him, resting her cheek on one hand. Her elbow overturned the glass in front of her.

“Damn,” she said without feeling. “Another one, Bob.”

“Haven’t you had about enough, Bessie?”

“That’s what you always say. When do I ever get enough? Give me another one, Bob.”

He shrugged his shoulders and filled a fresh glass for her. Mrs. Land paid him out of a black leather bag.

Mary, who had missed nothing, didn’t miss the bag. “That’s good leather,” she said to me in a whisper. “Her clothes are good, too. Why on earth does she live like this?”

“Too much drinking can explain anything,” I said. “But it requires explanation in turn.”

“There’s a reason for everything, including drunkenness, I suppose.”

“She isn’t so drunk.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Mary said, so loudly that the bartender cocked an ear. “I know females and female drunkenness, and she’s so drunk that you’ll get no sense out of her. We might as well go home.”

“The young lady’s right,” the bartender leaned over the bar to say confidentially to me. “Bessie’s here every night and never leaves till we close the bar at midnight. She can take an awful lot, but not when she drinks absinthe. It puts you to sleep, see?”

I looked and saw. She breathed slowly and heavily like a patient in anaesthesia. Her movements were sluggish and uncertain. Her eyes were clouded.

“So Hector ran away from the Navy, eh?” she was saying. She laughed a laugh which descended the scale and died in a groan. “He always said he’d do it when the time came. Ever since he joined Black Israel.”

A tall man in a tan fedora and overcoat who was sitting on her other side leaned towards her and said through thin purple lips: “You’re talking a lot of crap, Bessie. Hector wouldn’t like that, would he?”

She straightened, and the last curves of laughter were smoothed out of her face. The piano-player began Suitcase Blues, and surprisingly she started to hum with the music in an alcoholic contralto. Before the song ended there were tears rolling down her cheeks, and when it did she put her head down on her arms and sobbed. Her glass rolled off the bar and crashed on the floor.

Eric said to her back: “I’ll come and see you tomorrow.”

“Don’t you think she should be gotten out of here?” I said to the bartender. “We’ll take her home if necessary.”

“She’s all right if you don’t try to talk to her,” he said coldly. “Try to get her out of here before midnight and she fight like a wildcat.”

“You will not come and see her tomorrow,” Helen Swann was saying to Eric. “You’ll stay in your own home for at least one day of your leave, I hope. And for God’s sake let’s get out of here and back to civilization,” she concluded petulantly.

Civilization consisted of paying three times as much for our drinks and listening to the same kind of music played worse. After I agreed to go and see Mrs. Land the next day instead of Eric, Helen began to enjoy herself again, but Mary didn’t. We were in a smoke-filled basement, the most crowded because the most popular place in town, and it didn’t agree with Mary. After a couple of drinks she asked me to take her home.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said in the taxi with her head on my shoulder. “It’s the migraine again, and there’s nothing I can do about it except go to bed. The doctor said I’ll never get over it till I learn to face things I don’t like.”

“I’m sorrier. We shouldn’t have taken you to Paradise Valley. It was pretty depressing, wasn’t it?”

“We’ll paint the town red another night, eh?”

“Tomorrow?”

“I’d love to,” she said in a tired little-girl voice.

She left me in the lobby of her hotel and the elevator took her away. I felt depressed, partly because the evening had petered out but mostly because I felt responsible for Mary’s loss of spirits. I walked to the nearest bar and downed three double whiskies in the half-hour before closing-time. Then I walked home and went to bed.

My tenant Joe Scott usually worked on his paper till two or three in the morning, and slept until noon. He wasn’t in yet when I went to bed, and when I got up he was still sleeping. Though there was something I wanted to ask him, I decided not to wake him. Perhaps after a good night’s sleep Bessie Land herself would be willing and able to tell me what Black Israel was.

Bessie Land might have been willing, but she was not able.

I took a taxi to Chestnut Street and alighted at the corner within sight of the Paris Bar and Grill. The neon sign was out, and under the light snow which had fallen during the night the streets looked peaceful and deserted. The snow was heel-packed on the sidewalks where the early risers had beaten their path to work, but it was after nine o’clock now and there was no one in sight.

I raised my overcoat collar against the bitter gusts which whirled the snow between the buildings, and made my way to 214 Chestnut. Inside the tenement there were the sounds of morning life: babies crying and crowing, children playing, women’s voices raised in gossip and argument. But the hallway was cold and empty, and all the doors were closed to conserve the heat in the rooms. The third door to the left was closed like the others, and I knocked on it and waited. I might have waited forever if I hadn’t turned the knob and gone in.

Bessie Land was flat on her back on the bed, staring at the discolored ceiling. One arm hung over the edge of the bed so that the hand half-rested on the floor. From the hand spread a pool of blood. The white mongrel puppy huddled there, licking the bloody hand.

When I moved nearer, the dog crawled under the bed. I saw that Bessie Land’s throat was deeply cut. The pull of the skin had made a raw ellipse in her darkly glistening neck. A wavy-edged bread-knife rested on the quilt beside her head. She had her coat on, but it did not prevent her from being terribly cold.

5

THREE minutes after I entered my call at the pay phone in the hall, a police siren whooped in the distance. Another thirty seconds and it howled like a wolf in the street. Suddenly it stopped, as if somebody had shot it.

A police lieutenant in a blue uniform and a man in civilian clothes came down the hall toward me with the air of men going to work.

“My name’s Cassettari,” the Lieutenant said. “You didn’t touch anything, like I said?”

“Not a thing. That is, I touched her face to see if she was cold. She’s very cold.”

The man in civilian clothes, a middle-aged man with grey hair and a frosty bitter face, examined the body without disturbing it. “You said it, she’s cold,” he said. “Fast-frozen nigger wench. Any necrophiles around, might be a market.”

“How long’s she been dead, Doc?” Cassettari said. He had a fleshy Mediterranean face. A thick dead cigar made the right side of his mouth sneer continuously. He used the cigar instead of a finger to point at things. His fingers were busy holding his hips.

“Eight-nine hours. I’ll know better when I get her stomach out, if there’s any of it left after the liquor she’s been drinking. But take a look at the postmortem lividity.”

I took a look. The hanging arm was heavy with stagnant blood.

“Did she kill herself?” Cassettari said.

“Fingerprints should tell. Where the hell’s Randy?”

“He’ll be along. He had to pack his kit.”

After a minute or two, the doctor said: “Yeah, she killed herself. There’s a hesitation mark.” He pointed a casual finger at the slashed throat. I saw the shallow cut above and parallel to the deep wound. “You don’t get a hesitation mark when a buck nigger cuts his whore.”

I said: “There’s more to this case than a buck nigger cutting a whore.” I told them briefly why I thought so.

“He’s been reading The Shadow,” Cassettari said.

“He’s been reading Dick Tracy, too,” Doc said.

“This woman was murdered,” I said.

“This woman was murdered, he says,” Doc said. “If she was murdered it’s our business to find out.”

“I wouldn’t be meddling in your business if you showed any sign of knowing it.”

“Wait till you see a few more bodies,” Doc said. “You won’t go off the deep end every time you see one. I wonder where the hell Randy is.”

“If you won’t listen to me, I’ll find somebody who will.”

“He’s going to bring pressure to bear,” Cassettari said.

“Listen, son,” Doc said. “These niggers get bumped every day. This woman killed herself. Hesitation marks mean suicide, understand? You’re not in your field.”

I said: “Maybe you’re out of your class.”

“Get the hell out of here,” Cassettari said. “You talk too goddamn much. Wait a minute, give me your address and phone. I suppose you got to say your piece at the inquest.”

I gave him what he asked for and went away, walking on legs made stiff by anger.

After that I had to get my information about the case from the newspapers, and from Joe Scott. His paper was the tabloid type, and intended to give the case a play. (Next day I saw what they did with it: Navy Wife Suicides at Husband’s Desertion.) He told me that the bread knife which had cut Bessie’s throat bore only her own fingerprints, and those of Mrs. Kate Morgan. Kate Morgan pointed out that naturally her prints were on the knife, she used it for cutting bread. She was shocked and grieved by her roommate’s death, and besides she had a perfect alibi. A considerable time before midnight, when Bessie left the Paris Bar and Grill, Mrs. Kate Morgan had received a telephone call and had immediately gone to spend the night with a certain gentleman in a certain hotel. When she got home the police were there.

Joe was interested in what Bessie Land had said about Black Israel, but didn’t know any more about it than I did.

He stroked his long sharp nose and looked thoughtfully over his lunch. “You might try Wanless,” he said finally. “It sounds like another of these Negro societies, and he knows all about ’em.”

“Simeon Wanless? The sociologist?”

“That’s the man. He did a pretty good book on the genesis of the race riot. It must have come out since your time.”

“It must have. I know Wanless by sight, though. Is he still in Ann Arbor?”

“So far as I know.”

Wanless still was. I found him two hours later in his little office in Angell Hall, which is the main building of the University of Michigan. He was sitting by himself swamped by papers, papers which were piled on his desk, on chairs, on the floor, and in the shelves which lined the walls. When I knocked on the half-open door he looked up with a smile, as if glad to have an excuse to rest his eyes.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“My name’s Drake.” We shook hands and I sat down at his invitation. “I won’t try to tell you the whole story, but you may be able to help me with some information.”

“My sole stock in trade. Information about what?”

“I understand that you know a lot about the Negro population of Detroit.”

“I’ve been studying them for years. A great people. You may have seen my book on the riots?”

“Not where I’ve been. We think we’re lucky to get the pony edition of Newsmagazine the Weekly Newsmagazine.”

“But that’s beside the point. It’s funny, isn’t it, how hard it is for an author not to mention his book?”

“I was told you know a good deal about Negro social organizations. Did you ever hear of Black Israel?”

“Why, yes. I believe I have. I’ve heard it mentioned, that is. I was never able to get inside of it, so to speak.”

“It isn’t some sort of a Black Hand organization, is it?”

“Good lord, no. At least I don’t think so. It’s a racist organization, standing for greater equality, more rights for the Negro, and so forth. There are a good many of them.”

“So far as you know, then, there’s nothing criminal or sinister in Black Israel. Nothing that would lead to murder.”

“I’ll tell you frankly, Mr. Drake, my study has been chiefly concerned with organizations that might have had a bearing on the Detroit race riots. Black Israel wasn’t active at that time, to my knowledge. When I examined the situation I found that similar racist societies among the Negroes had little or nothing to do with precipitating the riots. They were a product of many factors: economic competition and jealousy, Negro progress coming into conflict with the reactionary attitudes of Southern whites who have settled in Detroit. Attitudes which were deliberately encouraged and inflamed by certain demagogues and, in some cases, at least, by enemy agents.”

I had no time to listen to a lecture, so I said: “Thank you very much. May I use your phone?”

“Certainly. I’m sorry I couldn’t answer your specific question. Black Israel is rather mysterious in that it never gets in the limelight, though it may be quite important. I’d suggest that you ask some intelligent Negro what it’s all about. They know what’s going on among their own people.”

“Thanks, I’ll try that.”

I took the desk phone and dialled Eric’s number. When he answered I said: “Sam speaking. I’m in Ann Arbor, and I’m coming right over.”

“Where are you now?”

“Angell Hall.”

“I’m coming into town. Why not meet me at Davenport’s?”

“Say in half an hour?” I hung up.

Davenport’s is an ancient saloon and restaurant just off Main Street. I walked there and had ham on a bun and a bottle of beer while waiting for Eric. When he came in I ordered the same for him and another beer for myself. Then I noticed that he had a fresh Detroit newspaper in his hand, and a face which was partly very red and partly very white.

“Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me this over the phone?” he said when he’d sat down.

“Dr. Wanless was sitting beside me. I thought you mightn’t want your interest in the case known.”

“Yes. I see. What in hell does it mean? What sort of a thing are we mixed up in anyway?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The police are calling it suicide again. That gives us two suicides in two weeks, one on Oahu, one in Detroit. Maybe it’s a coincidence that I discovered the body both times. And maybe that coincidence has me unjustifiably convinced that there’s a connection between the two deaths. But by God I am convinced, and I don’t think either of them was suicide.”

“I don’t know how you’re going to tie the two together and make a case out of them. You haven’t even got a real suspect.”

“Hector Land was in a position to kill Sue. How many days ago did he leave the ship?”

“Let’s see. Three. Four tonight.”

“He could be in Detroit now. And there’s another thing. Bessie Land mentioned her husband’s joining Black Israel, and saying after that that he’d run away from the Navy.”

“I remember,” Eric said. “What is Black Israel?”

“I don’t know, but I’m bloody well going to find out. The man next to her at the bar practically threatened her to make her shut up. This morning she was dead. It could be that Black Israel is a sort of Maffia, and Hector Land one of its thugs.”

“It could be that it’s as harmless as the Baptist Church. You seem to be making a great deal out of nothing at all.”

“Two murders are not my idea of nothing at all. I admit that Wanless thinks Black Israel is harmless. But there’s one other thing, that I can’t help thinking is connected with the case.”

“Now what?” Eric said wearily. He ordered two more bottles of beer.

“Do you remember the conversation we had before supper the night Sue was killed?”

“How enemy agents would be able to get information out of Oahu, you mean?”

“And you remember what Gene Halford said, that information actually was leaking out? I think that Sue’s death may be connected with that fact.”

“I don’t see how.”

“She worked in a broadcasting station. She had access to means of communications–”

“What damned nonsense!” Eric exploded angrily.

“You didn’t let me finish. I’m not accusing her. She could have been approached by an enemy spy with a proposition, turned it down, and been killed to keep her quiet. I can’t explain the thing. All I’m trying to get at is that these deaths need more looking into. Are you with me?”

“No,” Eric said stonily. “I’ve got a certain responsibility to my wife–”

“I know. And two days left. All right, I’ll do what I can by myself.”

I left Eric sitting with his half-finished bottle of beer and caught a train to Detroit. From the station I took a cab to the black town, then walked through bleak streets of slum houses, every second one of which had a service star in a window, to the Paris Bar and Grill. When I got there twilight was gathering like soot in the low sky over the icy roofs of the tenements.

The booths inside were empty, but there were a few people at the bar, and the same bartender was there in the same greyish white apron. I walked up to the bar and ordered a drink. The bartender gave me a hard look but said nothing. I gave him a dollar for a forty-cent whiskey and told him to keep the change. Then I said:

“It was a terrible thing that happened to Mrs. Land last night.”

“Yeah.” His round black face set sullenly.

“How did she act before she left here? Did she show any signs of depression?”

“She was feeling lousy. She was dead drunk.”

“There wasn’t anybody with her?”

“Look, mister,” he said in a grudging whine. “I had the cops sitting in my lap this morning. I told them what I knew. There wasn’t anybody with her. How about letting me forget it?” He began to scrub the pock-marked surface of the bar with a wet rag. He scrubbed furiously, as if he were expunging all traces of the memory of Bessie Land.

The front door opened and let in a gust of winter which swept the length of the room. The bartender looked over my head. There was a look in his eyes, a glazed look of surprise and warning, which made me turn. A tall thin Negro in a tan overcoat and tan fedora paused at the door, caught my eye, turned and went out.

I ran the length of the room and went out after him. It was the Negro who had warned Bessie Land not to talk. When I got to the street he was already at the corner, walking swiftly with his head thrust forward and his coat-collar turned up. He looked back over his shoulder, and I caught a glimpse of his lean harried face in the glare of the corner streetlight. He began to run, and I ran after him, my feet sliding on the packed snow.

I began to gain on him. He looked back and saw that I was closer. I increased my pace, coming down hard on my heels to keep my footing. Two-thirds of the way down the long block there was a building with a boarded front. He made for it, went up the snow-piled steps in two bounds, and disappeared through a narrow plank door in the boarding. I followed him as fast as I could. Once he got away into the warrens of the tenements I’d never catch him.

The plank door opened on a blackness so solid it was almost tangible, and an inhuman silence. I closed the door behind me. Probably he was crouched in the hall waiting for me, and I didn’t want to be outlined against the light from the street. Inside the building there was still no sound.

I took a cautious step forward, feeling for the floor with the toe of my shoe. There was no floor to find. I lost my balance and fell into empty blackness. After what seemed a long fall, during which I held my breath and all my muscles became rigid, I landed on all fours with a crash. Before its echoes faded, a door opened and closed above and behind me. The man I had been chasing had baited an elephant trap for me, waited inside the door for me to fall into it, and gotten away.

It felt as if I had landed on a rubbish heap. I searched with my hands and found some wire, a couple of tin cans, handfuls of what felt like dust. Then I remembered my lighter and lit it. A fat grey rat bustled out of the circle of light, his naked tail dragging behind him. I was standing up to my ankles in ashes, in a jungle of twisted pipes, charred timbers and shapeless wreckage. I understood gradually that I was in the basement of a tenement whose interior had been destroyed by fire.

I took a letter out of my pocket and set fire to it. By its light I found a blackened concrete stairway in the corner, and made my way out of the pit. I edged along the narrow ledge of the foundation to the door. There was something about the empty shell of the burnt-out building which made me shiver, like a core of desolation in the heart of the city. Even the streets of dirty snow were human and cheerful in comparison.

In the street, there was no sign of the man I had been chasing. I realized the impossibility of finding him in the black city. I had no idea of his name and only a vague impression of his appearance, and the people of his own race would hide him from me. Still, I had to try. I brushed off my trousers and overcoat as well as I could, and went back to the Paris Bar and Grill. It seemed a long way.

The bartender looked at me this time with hostility that was almost open. “I poured out your drink. I thought you wasn’t coming back.”

“I don’t care about the drink. Who was that man in the tan overcoat?”

“What man in the tan overcoat?” he said with elaborate puzzlement. “I didn’t see no man in no tan overcoat.”

“Yes you did. The man that came in just before I left. The man that ran away when he saw me.”

“Oh, him. Did he run away? I thought he just came in and didn’t like the looks of the place so he went away again.”

“He was here last night.”

“Oh no, not him. Never saw him before in my life.”

“He was sitting beside Bessie Land,” I said.

His face had gradually become an idiot mask. “I guess you know better than me, mister. Never saw him before in my life. Another drink?”

I restrained my impulse to call him a liar, and walked out. Obviously I was getting nowhere on my own. I needed professional help. I walked quick with anger, three blocks before I caught a taxi. I told the driver to take me to the Federal Building on Lafayette Street.

It was past office hours, but there was still a girl on duty on the floor occupied by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I told her that subversive activities were on my mind. She ushered me into a bare, well-lighted office which contained a polished walnut desk and four chairs. A minute later a heavy-set red-haired young man in a grey business suit came in, shook hands, and said:

“My name’s Hefler. Ensign Drake? Very glad to know you. I believe you want to lay an information, as they said in the eighteenth century.”

“Information is what I’d like to have.”

“Be glad to help in any way I can.” He darted a sharp look through his soft smooth voice. “We’re very strong on cooperation with the armed services. You’ve probably heard of some of our activities in Hawaii?”

“I should have had sense enough to go to you in Honolulu. This second death might have been avoided.”

He had begun to lean on the desk, but the word “death” straightened his thick body. “You’d better sit down, Mr. Drake, and tell me what you know.”

I told him the things, from Sue Sholto’s death to the man in the tan overcoat, which seemed to have a bearing on the case. He took shorthand notes in pencil on a memo pad. When I had finished, he went on writing for several minutes. Then he said in the tone of a lecturer:

“There are several leading questions to be answered, Mr. Drake. I realize that you can’t answer them. Maybe we can. One, is Black Israel a criminal and/or a subversive organization? Mrs. Land’s death suggests that it may be criminal. Hector Land’s announcement that he intended to desert after joining Black Israel suggests that it may be subversive. We will investigate Black Israel.”

“I went to Dr. Wanless in Ann Arbor today, but he didn’t know much about it. He advised me to try an intelligent Negro.”

“I see. Question two is closely connected with the preceding. What were and are the activities of Hector Land? Where did his money come from, and why did he run away? Did he kill Sue Sholto? Did he kill his wife, Bessie Land?”

“He was in San Diego three days ago.”

“He could be here now,” Hefler said impatiently. “We’ll trace him. The third question is so inextricably bound up with the others that if we answer them we can answer it. Assuming that they were killed, why were Miss Shoto and Mrs. Land killed? You’ve advanced a conjecture of your own, Mr. Drake, and I’ll be candid enough to say, strictly off the record, that I’m inclined to agree with you.”

“I’ve suggested several possibilities,” I said. Hunger, unbroken strain and the bright glare of the ceiling light combined to make me feel dizzy. “Which exactly do you mean?”

“In our present uninformed state,” he went on in his dry abstract language, “we won’t pin ourselves down to anything more specific than a generalization. It does, however, appear likely that the two women were killed because they knew too much, whether guiltily or innocently, about some subversive or enemy-inspired activity. Perhaps it involved suborning members of the armed forces. Perhaps it included collecting information for Tokyo. In any case, it is our task to find out. One of the first things we’ll do is see about picking up your man in the tan overcoat.”

“It’s a relief to feel that I’m not in this by myself.”

“I’m grateful to you for coming to us, and I hope we’ll be able to keep in touch with you as the matter progresses.”

I got up and started to move towards the door. The bright clean office high above the city, and Hefler’s wordy talk, made the whole affair seem unreal. I wanted to get away into the dark. “I’ll be in town for the next ten days. I’d like to call you in a day or two, and see if you’ve answered any of those questions.”

“Call here and ask for me by name. Hefler. I don’t need to tell a naval officer that this matter is confidential.”

“Naturally. Good night.”

A remarkably smooth customer, I thought, as I rode down in the elevator. If there were any more bodies to be discovered, I hoped that Mr. Hefler would discover them. At any rate, the affair was out of my hands. Or such, at the time, was my illusion.

It was nearly nine o’clock by my wristwatch. Mary would be expecting to hear from me. I called her hotel from a pay phone in the postoffice and she answered her room phone on the first ring, “Sam?” There was impatience in her voice.

“I’m sorry for calling so late. I had some business to attend to.” If I could avoid it, I didn’t intend to tell her about Bessie Land’s death.

But she knew. “I saw the papers, Sam. It frightens me.”

“It frightens me, too. That’s why I–” I broke off. Hefler had said the case was confidential. I supposed that included Mary, though she knew almost as much about it as I did.

“Why you what?”

“That’s one of the reasons I want to see you tonight. I need cheering up.”

“I do, too. But I’ve got some good news to tell you. News isn’t always bad.”

“I’ll be over right away. Have you had dinner?”

“Not yet. Give me twenty minutes to dress.”

“Not a minute longer.”

“You’re sweet.” She hung up, and I rushed back to the apartment to change my clothes.

She came to dinner in a dark-blue knitted evening gown which made her shoulders dazzling. Her yellow hair was upswept from her sleek neck like a bright summer flower on a graceful stalk. The sight of her changed my mood. She symbolized all the bright soft pleasant things which I had been missing for a year. Beside her young beauty, warm and glowing across the candle-lit table, the dark things which had happened in the night outside seemed impossibly ugly and fantastic. For a time they seemed the shadow violence of fiction, the falseface evil, the wax-dummy death.

Over our Martinis she asked me about Bessie Land’s death. But Bessie Land had receded into another country.

“God knows what happened. I don’t. Anyway, it’s out of my hands.”

“What do you mean?”

“The police are handling it. It’s their business, and they think it’s suicide, so as far as I’m concerned it’s suicide.” The Martini went through my empty stomach into my veins and made me say: “I came on this leave to have some fun, and I’m going to have it if half the population of Detroit falls dead in their tracks.”

She looked at me with a cold half-smile. “You’re pretty callous, aren’t you, Sam?”

“Most people are. I’m just being candid about it.”

“I suppose you’re right. Most people are too busy looking out for number one to care much about anyone else.” She finished her cocktail and lowered her glass. She looked at me with the air of one who has swallowed a hard truth and been strengthened by it.

“Of course the callousness isn’t entirely real,” I said. “Puncture the outer crust and you’ll find a weak gruel made out of sour grapes, spilt milk, and wounded feelings.”

“Block that metaphor. Are you really such a cynic as you pretend to be?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been in the Navy so long I don’t know what I’m like. But I know what I like. You.”

Her eyes, half-transparent and of indeterminate color in the candlelight, looked narrowly into mine. “I can’t make you out. I can’t make out whether you’re an intellectual or a roughneck.”

“Both,” I said lightly, but I was secretly flattered by the discussion. “I’m an intellectual among roughnecks and a roughneck among intellectuals.”

“Whatever that means. What do you care about?”

“I used to think I wanted to be a great reporter. You know, to put my finger on the shame of the cities and all such stuff. But that petered out the last year or two.”

“Isn’t there anything you want? And if you say me I’ll scream.”

“I’m pretty sure I want to make money, I don’t much care how. That’s happened to more than half the men I know in the Navy. Get badly frightened a few times and you lose your idealism.”

Her lips parted and her eyes were inwardly intent on something that she was going to say. Just then the waiter arrived with some dishes. She didn’t say it.

We ate in silence for a minute or two. Then she said: “We won’t be seeing much more of each other.”

“I know. Two more weeks.”

“Two more days. I’ve been offered a job in San Diego. That’s my news.”

“I thought you said it was good news.”

“It is. It’s a pretty good job. In the Naval Supply Depot.”

I didn’t like the prospect of her going away, and that made me captious. “It’ll probably fold when the war ends.”

“I know. But while it lasts I’ll feel I’m – you know, making a direct contribution.” She flushed slightly, and her voice was embarrassed. “I went into the whole thing with the Navy today, and it’s settled.”

All I could think of to say was: “I wish I was going with you.”

“Why don’t you?” Her smile was challenging.

“Maybe I will. You say you’re leaving in two days?”

“If I can get a reservation. I have a priority.”

“Anyway, I’ll come and see you in Diego before I go out again.”

“Why don’t you come with me on Saturday? We could have a wonderful trip.” Her clear eyes, reflecting the flickering candles as tiny moving flames, held the promise of a warm soft-lit room.

That night as I lay by myself in my bachelor bed, I thought of what a wonderful trip we could have. After all, there was nothing to keep me in Detroit. My girl had married and gone away. Most of my friends were in uniform and on other continents. And the one person I really liked to be with was going to San Diego and wanted me to come along.

I went to sleep without making up my mind, but in the morning it was made up for me. I was awakened by the telephone beside my bed.

“Ensign Drake?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Hefler. We just got a teletype I thought you’d be interested in. Keep it to yourself, of course.”

Hangover and sleepiness made my voice a little sharp. “There aren’t more than one or two spies in the room.” Joe Scott was huddled in his blankets in the other bed, sleeping like a dead man.

“You understand we must take precautions,” Hefler said in a school-teacher’s tone. “I called to tell you that we’ve gotten word on the whereabouts of Hector Land.”

“Is he in Detroit?”

“Far from it. A big Negro answering to his description crossed the Mexican border at Tia Juana three days ago. He used a stolen Identity Card and a stolen Liberty Pass. As of this morning he hasn’t re-crossed the border. A search is being made for him.”

“I appreciate your calling, Mr. Hefler.”

“I thought it might put your mind at rest to know that Land is nowhere near Detroit. Good morning.” He hung up.

Joe rolled over in bed and sat up with a grunt. The early morning greyness of his face was stippled with black beard. “Who the hell makes phone calls this early in the morning?” he said.

“A friend of mine.”

“I didn’t know Hefler was a friend of yours. That was the name I heard, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but keep it to yourself. He asked me not to talk about it.”

“Is he after this Hector Land?”

“I said I wasn’t supposed to talk about it.”

“O.K., O.K., we won’t talk about it.” He yawned elaborately, giving me a view of the fillings in his wisdom teeth. “It’s just that I came across something last night that I thought might interest you. The paper put me on the background of the Land case. Only now I can’t tell you about it on account of we took an oath not to talk about it, didn’t we?”

I threw a pillow at his head. He caught it and threw it back.

“Spill it,” I said. “And don’t tell me I can read it in the papers.”

“You can’t read it in the papers,” Joe said more seriously. “It’s not that kind of a story. The city editor killed it but quick.”

I lit a bitter early morning cigarette, tossed him the pack, and waited.

“If Land deserted from the Navy,” Joe said, “he had some reason for it. I’m not saying he had justification, but he had what may have looked like a reason to him. The boy had a raw deal, there’s no getting around that.”

“What kind of a raw deal?”

“I’m telling you. Hector Land’s brother got killed in the ’43 riots. Somebody slugged him with a club and smashed his skull. Hector was with him when it happened, and he went hog-wild. He tore into a streetful of whites and started to throw them against the walls of the buildings. It took a squad of police and a straitjacket to quiet him down. But that’s just half of it. Do you know what the cops did then?”

“Jailed him.”

“That’s right. On a charge of aggravated assault. For beating up a couple of thugs that maybe killed his brother, he gets three months in the clink waiting for trial. He walks out of the clink into the Navy. That’s not a hell of a good background for making a black boy all eager and excited to fight a war for democracy and equal justice. Or is it?”

“It doesn’t excuse him for doing whatever he’s done.” I had to add: “But it helps to explain him. Is that the straight dope?”

“Straight out of the court records.”

“Hefler will want to know about it, if he doesn’t already.”

“There’s something else you can tell him,” Joe said in his monotonous grating voice. “When Hector went to jail his wife got fired from her job and started hustling to make a living for herself. She’s been hustling off and on ever since, until the last few months. A few months ago she suddenly got prosperous, and quit.”

“How do you know that?”

“From Kate Morgan. Mrs. Land’s ex-roommate.”

“Did Kate Morgan know where she got the money?”

“Mrs. Land said she got it from her husband. She didn’t say where he got it.” Joe’s mind skipped to another matter then, but I could follow his train of thought: “Could Wanless tell you anything about Black Israel?”

“Not a thing. Except that he didn’t know anything about it, and nobody else seemed to, either. They avoid publicity.”

“That’s suspicious in itself,” he said. “Your ordinary above-board Negro club or society is only too glad to get a little publicity. I asked Kate Morgan about it, but she wouldn’t talk. Maybe she didn’t know anything. I don’t know. It’s more likely she was scared. She saw what happened to Bessie Land.”

“Do you think Black Israel killed Bessie Land?”

“How the hell should I know? Anyway, it’s Hefler’s baby now.” He yawned again and retreated into his blankets.

I called Hefler back, and told him what Joe had told me. Then I got up and dressed. It was Hefler’s baby all right, but I couldn’t drop it. I had already made up my mind to go to San Diego with Mary. San Diego is a half hour’s drive from Tia Juana.