Where There's Smoke

Eighteen

Ninety-sixth and Fairleigh was in Shrink City, where a plentitude of psychiatrists’ offices nestled within a three-block area, bordered by the park on the west and Fair­leigh Avenue on the east. To the north lay a Puerto Rican ghetto. To the south, Fairleigh and two other wide av­enues plunged downtown to the heart of the city’s busi­ness district. There was only one building with a green awning on Ninety-sixth. I stepped into the lobby and was walking toward the mailboxes when a doorman came briskly toward me.

“Hey you!” he said. “What do you want here?”

“I’m a police officer,” I said, and showed him the shield. “I’m looking for a woman named Susanna Mar­tin.”

“There’s no Martins in the building,” he said.

“Are there any Susannas in the building?”

“There’s two Susans, but no Susannas,” he said. “There’s Susan Howell in 12C, and there’s Susan Kahn in 8A.”

“Let’s try them both,” I said.

“What do you mean try them? You mean ring the apart­ments?”

“Yes.”

He looked at his watch and said, “It’s three-thirty in the morning.”

“I know that.”

“Can’t this wait till at least the sun comes up?”

“A man’s been killed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “But if I go waking up a tenant in the middle of the night, I might lose a Christ­mas tip. Is the Police Department gonna make that up for me?”

“You can take your choice,” I said. “Either ring them and tell them I’m here, or I’ll go up and knock on then-doors.”

“You do that,” he said. “I didn’t even see you come in the building,” he added, and turned his back and walked toward the switchboard in the corner of the lobby.

I took the elevator up to the eighth floor, found Apart­ment 8A, and rang the doorbell. A pair of chimes sounded inside. I waited, and then rang again.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice said.

“Police,” I said.

“What do you want?” he said.

“I’m looking for a woman named Susanna Martin.”

“There’s no Susanna Martin here,” he said.

“Is there a Susan Kahn?”

“Yes, she’s my wife.”

“Would you mind opening the door, sir?” I said.

“Mister,” he said, “if you told me you were the mayor himself, I wouldn’t open the door for you at this hour of the night.”

“How about just opening the peephole and looking at my shield?”

I heard the peephole flap being thrown back. I held up the shield.

“Very nice,” he said. “If you’ve got legitimate business here, go get a warrant.”

“Mr. Kahn,” I said, “would your wife happen to know someone named Natalie Fletcher?”

“No,” he said. I heard the final click of the peephole flap. “Goodnight,” he said.

I went back to the elevator and rode it up to the twelfth floor. Outside 12C, I looked at the nameplate—Susan Howell—and rang the doorbell, and waited. This time a peephole flap went up before anyone said anything. I stood well back from the door to give whoever was studying me a full-length picture.

“What is it?” a woman’s voice said.

“I’m looking for Natalie Fletcher.”

“She’s not here.”

“Do you know her?”

“I know her. She’s not here.”

“May I come in, please?”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Yes.”

“Come back later,” she said.

“I’m a police officer,” I said, and held up my shield.

There was a silence. Then she said, “Just a moment, let me put something on.”

It took her five minutes to put something on. When she came back to the door, she opened it only a crack, a night chain tethering it. “Let me see that badge again,” she said. I held it up to the crack. “It says ‘Retired,’” she said.

“That’s right.”

“I don’t have to let you in here,” she said.

“Natalie’s in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Miss Howell, we’ll wake up the whole building.”

“I don’t care about the whole building. What kind of trouble is Natalie in?”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Answer me first.”

“She’s wanted for questioning.”

“About what?”

“A murder, Miss Howell, would you please open the door?”

The night chain came off, the door opened wide.

Susan Howell was a woman in her late thirties. She was wearing a white quilted robe over a long pink night­gown. Her hair was carrot-colored and frizzy, standing out from her narrow face like the coiffure created for the bride of Frankenstein’s monster. Her nose was thin and long, ending in a contradictory tip-tilt. She had pale-amber eyes, like a cat’s, and she studied me for a long moment before she said, “Come in.” She was perhaps five feet seven inches tall, and her carriage was ramrod stiff. As I moved past her, I felt somehow very short. She closed and locked the door behind me, and then said, “In there.”

I walked into a living room illuminated by a single lamp on an end table. The walls were painted black. I had never before been in a living room with black walls.

“Sit down,” she said.

I sat in a black-leather armchair. The other furniture in the Living room was black, too. I had the feeling I was sit­ting in the dark, even though the lamp threw plenty of light into the small room. Susan Howell sat opposite me in a wing chair upholstered in black brocade.

“What’s this about Natalie?” she asked.

“I told you. She’s wanted for questioning.”

“The police want to question her?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re not a policeman.”

“I’m a retired policeman.”

“Are you asking me to believe that the police would send a retired cop to investigate a murder?”

“It’s not unusual. I’ve had years of experience. The de­partment often calls me for advice and consultation.” This was an outright lie. In the four years since I’d re­tired, the Police Department had never so much as sent me a Christmas card.

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

“The man in charge of the case is named Dave Horowitz,” I said. “He’s a second-grade detective on the Twelfth Squad. Call him. He’ll tell you I’m here on be­half of the police.”

She considered this for several moments. Neither of us spoke. Someplace in the apartment, a clock ticked nois­ily. At last she sighed, and said, “I’ll answer your ques­tions. But first I want to know who was killed.”

“A man named Peter Greer. He worked at a funeral parlor. He was about to embalm a corpse when somebody stabbed him. Tell me, Miss Howell, would you happen to know where Natalie Fletcher is?”

“I have no idea where she is.”

“When’s the last time you saw her?”

“A month ago.”

“Are you expecting her tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Have you spoken to her on the telephone since you last saw her?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know she isn’t home?” I said.

“What?”

“You told me you don’t know where she is. How do you know she isn’t at 420 Oberlin Crescent?”

“I... I assumed you’d already been there.”

“Why’d you assume that?”

“It’s what a policeman would do.”

“Miss Howell,” I said, “would you—?”

“I prefer that you address me by my proper name,” she said, suddenly.

“And what’s that?”

“Susanna Martin,” she said, and added immediately, “The witch of Amesbury.”

“All right, Miss Martin, is it true that Natalie Fletcher has been attending black masses at which blood sacrifices are made?”

She suddenly burst out laughing.

“What are you laughing at?” I asked.

“Well may I laugh at such folly,” she said. Her voice sounded different. Not only had her language changed abruptly, but so had her normal speaking voice.

“Do you know that Natalie has been attending black masses?”

“I don’t desire to spend my judgment on it,” she said. “If she be dealing with the black arts, you may know as well as I.”

“Her mother...”

“A curse on mothers!” she said. “Was not Sarah Atkin­son of Newbury a mother? And did she not, when I was sorely taken with the witchcraft, report to the magistrates that I had once in weather foul walked to her home from Amesbury and entered her kitchen with the soles of my feet dry? And when she said to me, ‘I’d be wet to my knees if I’d come so far,’ was I not right to reply, ‘I scorn to have a drabbled tail?’ A curse on all mothers, a curse on the goodwife who saw me melt into nothingness and then reappear in the form of pecking, pinching birds. And a curse on fathers, too, and on thee, and on thine own fa­ther! A curse on John Kembal, to whom I sent the van­ishing puppies, as black they were as the heart of Jesus, to leap at his throat and his belly, immune to his swing­ing ax! ‘In the name of Jesus Christ avoid!’ he shouted, and the puppies relented, but though I gave him puppies enough, I curse him still.”

“Miss Martin,” I said, “why is Natalie coming here to­morrow?”

“To hear me tell of Tituba the slave, half-black, half-Carib, and of the tricks and spells and voodoo magic she brought from the Barbados to Salem Village.”

“I don’t think she’ll be here,” I said. “She’s moved out of the apartment on Oberlin Crescent. The place is empty.”

“Thy head is empty,” she said.

“Her mother spoke to her last night. Natalie told her she was passing over into a new life. Do you have any idea what that might have meant?”

“It is a shameful thing that you should mind these folks that are out of their wits.”

“Do you know where Natalie’s gone?”

“I would say if I knew. I do not know. Look!” she shouted, and pointed toward the ceiling. “There sits Goody Cory on the beam, suckling a yellow bird betwixt her fingers.”

I looked up. There was nothing on the ceiling.

“Don’t you hear the drumbeat?” she asked. “Why don’t you go? Why don’t you go?”

“Where? Where can I find Natalie?”

“There stands Alden,” she said. “A bold fellow with his hat on before the judges. He sells powder and shot to the Indians and French, and lies with Indian squaws and has Indian papooses.”

“Is Alden someone Natalie knows?”

“Ask John Indian,” she said.

I didn’t know whether John Indian was real or imag­ined, but I knew there was no point in asking Susan How­ell or Susanna Martin any further questions. I’d put her on guard back there when I’d asked how she knew Natalie was not in the Oberlin Crescent apartment; it was then that she’d gone into her Salem Village routine. True delusion or diversionary tactic, there was no getting her out of it now.

“Well,” I said, “thanks a lot. I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“When did I hurt thee?” she asked, and grinned.

I walked to the door.

“No further questions?” she asked.

“None,” I said.

“No more weight?” she said, and grinned again.

I went out of the apartment. She closed and locked the door behind me. I pressed my ear to the wood. If she was making a hurried telephone call, I could not hear her di­aling. I walked to the elevator and rang for it. I didn’t know much about the history of witchcraft in Salem but I did know that when Giles Cory, an accused witch, was being pressed to death in an open field next door to the jailhouse, rock upon rock being piled upon his chest in an effort to get him to confess to the crime of witchcraft, he had maintained silence almost to the end. And then he had said only, “More weight.”