Where There's Smoke

Twenty-One

There are almost eight million people living in this city, and nine percent of them—more than 700,000—are black. Of these, close to half a million live in the rank ghetto known as Hammerlock. Knowing the bitter humor with which slum dwellers baptize the rat-infested areas in which they’re forced to live (as, for example, La Perla in San Juan, a pearl indeed), you might automatically conclude that the name of a wrestler’s hold had been applied to Hammerlock only after it became a slum—the grip of poverty metaphorically pulling the slum dweller’s dig­nity up behind his back and yanking on it till it broke.

Wrong.

Once upon a time, and long before my own Dutch grandfather came to these shores, the section now known as Hammerlock was interlaced with canals built by his ancestors. The harbor and river, then as now, were busy with seagoing traffic; the network of canals eased the clutter, diverting barges loaded with merchandise onto the inland waterways. Hammerlock in those days was an area of farms and forests, its dirt roadways permitting the passage of a single horse and wagon, or a coach perhaps, but certainly not two of them approaching from opposite directions. The canals were speedier and safer; then, as now, there were highway robbers everywhere, and they probably thought twice before sticking up a barge, which was a crime close to piracy on the high seas and punish­able by hanging. In any case, as with all canal systems, there were locks. These locks were named after the keep­ers who ran out of the Canalside shacks to open the gates whenever a barge approached. Buersken’s Sluis, Goed-koop’s Sluis, Favejee’s Sluis, Weidinger’s Sluis were all part of the system. As was Hemmer’s Sluis. Well, when the roads were improved, the canals were filled in (some of them, in fact, were filled in to make roadbeds), and the names of the locks vanished together with the locks themselves and the Canalside shacks that had dotted the landscape. But the keeper Hemmer had constructed for himself a house of huge stones cleared from the field be­yond his lock, and this remained on the site long after the canal running past it had been filled in. The house itself became known as Hemmer’s Sluis, which was changed to Hammer’s Lock when the English took over the city, and later, long after the house itself had been burned down by the Hessians fighting Washington’s troops, this was shortened to Hammerlock. As a matter of interest, the northernmost corner of the slum named Hammerlock—the part that jutted into the river and pointed a jagged finger of land toward the next states—was called Landslook, a bastardization of Lange’s Lock from days of yore.

I got uptown at about ten minutes to three, found a garage on Liberty and 104th, and parked Maria’s Pinto there. The last known address for Charles S. Carruthers— according to his parole officer’s report—was 8212 McKenzie, four blocks west of Liberty, near the corner of 106th. The day was sunny and mild, and the residents of Hammerlock were out in force to enjoy the good weather, anticipating the winter perhaps, when they would be im­prisoned indoors in badly heated apartments. It was no accident that Hammerlock had the highest fire-incidence rate in the entire city, or that most of those fires took place in the wintertime, when cheap and faulty kerosene burners were used to supplement the heat that was sup­posed to be coming up in the radiators; go fight City Hall.

The citizens regarded me with suspicion, partially be­cause I was a white man in an exclusively black neigh­borhood, but more specifically because they knew I was fuzz. To them, it didn’t matter that I was retired fuzz. Fuzz is fuzz, and there’s a fuzz look and a fuzz smell. They knew exactly what I was, and they could guess at why I was there—to get one of their people in trouble. They were wrong. I was there looking for a white woman who maybe knew why a white man had stolen a corpse from a mortuary after killing a white employee of the place. But they were right, too. Fuzz is fuzz.

I know too many cops, especially detectives, who are very quick to assume a man is guilty of something or other simply because he looks “bad.” Nine times out of ten, this means he looks “black,” a condition over which he has very little actual control. I know a two-hundred-pound white detective, for example, who beat up a hundred-and-ten-pound black postal clerk coming home from work at two in the morning—because he looked “bad.” He later charged the man with loitering and resisting ar­rest. I know another white detective—a pair of them, in fact, working as partners—who were investigating a nar­cotics case and busted into an apartment where a teenage black kid was puffing on a joint. That’s all the kid had on him, that single joint, and it was almost down to a roach when they broke in. Otherwise he was clean. But their stoolie had told them there was a dope factory up in Apartment 6A, and this was Apartment 6A, and there was only a skinny black kid sitting on the bed in his under­shirt, half stoned out of his mind on grass, and not know­ing what they were talking about. They figured he looked “bad.” They dropped three nickel bags of heroin on the floor, and they called in the cop on the beat to witness the arrest, and when the three cops testified against the kid in court, they made him sound like the dope king of the Western world. He’s now doing time at Brandenheim, up­state. He probably will still look “bad” when he gets out. Some black detectives aren’t much better where it con­cerns their brothers. Or sisters, as the case may be. I know a black Vice Squad detective who arrested a black woman for violation of Section 887 of the Code of Crim­inal Procedure—the section defining prostitution. In court, he claimed she came up to him on the street, asked if he wanted to have a good time, set a price, took him up to a hot-bed apartment, and “exposed her privates” to him, which in this city is the moment of truth before which no vice arrest can be made. The charge stuck. The woman was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment at the state reformatory for women in Ashley Hills. No pimp came forward to put up bail for her while she was awaiting trial, no shyster lawyer got her off with a pat on the behind and a fifty-dollar fine. That’s because she wasn’t a prostitute, you see. She was a manicurist at a beauty parlor. The detective who arrested her had been stopping by the place for months, trying to make time with her. He’d finally got the courage to ask her for a date, and when she refused—she was a married woman—he busted her the next day.

I’m not trying to suggest that every cop in this city is bigoted or ignorant or merely short-sighted—the hell with that. I’m merely trying to explain why I was watched warily and silently and suspiciously and angrily as I walked past tenement stoops and markets, bars and billiard parlors, storefront churches, barbershops, banks, and empty lots—yes, even pre-school kids playing on heaps of rubble turned to look at me with undisguised hostility. Fuzz is fuzz.

The tenement in which Charles Carruthers lived was made of red brick, but it looked gray, just like all the oth­ers on the block. A fat woman wearing a blue dress and a dark-blue cardigan sweater was standing on the wide top step of the front stoop, holding a sleeping baby in her arms. I nodded to her and went into the entrance foyer. The mailboxes were just inside the door. A naked light bulb hung overhead. The locks on four of the boxes were broken. I could find no nameplate for Charles Carruthers. I went outside again.

“Excuse me,” I said to the woman.

“Baby’s sleepin’,” she said.

“Do you know what apartment Charles Carruthers is in?”

“Nope,” she said.

“I’m an insurance adjuster,” I said. “I’ve been autho­rized by Allstate to turn over a check to Mr. Carruthers, but...”

“Shit, you’re an insurance adjuster,” the woman said. “You’re a cop is what you are.”

“I used to be a cop, you’re right,” I said. “How’d you know that?”

“Huh?” she said.

I reached into my pocket and took out the little black-leather case, and opened it, and showed her the gold shield, and said, “See where it says ‘Retired’? Right there under the ‘Detective-Lieutenant’?”

She looked at the shield and nodded. “Mm,” she said.

“How’d you know I used to be a cop?” I asked.

“Jus’ lucky, I guess,” she said dryly, and studied me with a fresh eye, her head cocked to one side, the baby’s head resting on the opposite shoulder. “You’re an insur­ance man, huh?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“With Allstate, huh?”

‘“You’re in good hands with Allstate,’” I said, and smiled.

“And you got a check for Charlie, huh?”

“If I can find him,” I said.

“Whyn’t you just mail it to him?” she said.

“I need his signature. On the release form.”

“How much is the check for?” she asked.

“Not much. Seventy-four dollars and twelve cents. But I’d like to close the file on this, and unless I can find him ... Does he live in this building?”

“Upstairs,” she said. “The fourth floor. Tell him when he cashes that check, he ain’ to forget he owes me six dol­lars. Gloria, tell him. He’ll know who you mean.”

“Thank you,” I said. “The fourth floor, right?”

“Tha’s right. Apartment 42. Now don’t you forget t’tell him, hear?”

“I’ll tell him.”

“Six dollars,” she said.

I went into the building again. The glass panel on the upper half of the inner lobby door had been broken out completely; a gaping open rectangle revealed the stair­way inside, garbage cans stacked to the left of it. I opened the door and climbed the steps to the fourth floor. There was the stench of contained living in the hallways, cook­ing smells and garbage smells and the smells of human waste. I listened outside the door to Apartment 42, and then knocked. A man’s voice answered immediately.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Carruthers?”

“Yeah?”

“Police officer,” I said.

“Again?” he said. I heard him coming toward the door. It was apparently unlocked, I heard no tumblers being turned. He opened the door and looked out at me. He did not ask for identification, and I offered none.

“Come in, come in,” he said wearily.

The description Dave Horowitz had read from Car­ruthers’ yellow sheet had done little to suggest the hand­someness of the man. Carruthers was tall and muscularly built, his hair barbered in a modified Afro cut, his dark eyes alert and intelligent, his complexion a warm brown color. He was clean-shaven, dressed in form-fitting, bell-bottomed slacks and a long-sleeved white sports shirt with patch pockets, sandals on his feet. He had very big hands, with the outsized knuckles of a street fighter. A gold ring was on the index finger of his right hand.

“I already gave at the office,” he said, and smiled.

“I take it my partner was here,” I said.

“Man named O’Neil?”

“That’s the one.”

“He was here,” Carruthers said. “You guys ought to try avoiding duplication. Save the city a little money.” His smile was entirely charming. I found it difficult to re­member he’d spent half of his life in prison.

“I hope you won’t mind answering a few more ques­tions,” I said.

“Long as we make it fast,” he said. “I got to get to work.”

“What kind of work do you do, Mr. Carruthers?” I said. It was now four o’clock in the afternoon.

“I’m a dishwasher,” he said. “I work at the R&M, up on Liberty. I go in at four-thirty, and I’m through by ten. It’s a good deal.”

“I guess you know why I’m here,” I said.

“Natalie Fletcher,” he said, and nodded. “Your partner finally got around to asking me about her, after an hour of bullshit. I guess I had to convince him first I didn’t kill a man, and steal a dead body, and hit an old lady with a crowbar.”

“I take it you convinced him.”

“I convinced him because I was next door playing poker last night, and three guys in the game live right here in this building, and he talked to two of them, and they swore on a stack of Bibles that I was in Apartment 33 from eight-thirty to two in the morning. I also lost forty-seven dollars,” he said, and smiled again.

“Did my partner mention why we’re looking for Na­talie Fletcher?”

“Your partner is a very close-mouthed person,” Car­ruthers said. “He told me about the homicide only be­cause he figured to scare hell out of me. He had me doing life at Brandenheim even before he walked through that door. But this time I’m clean. As clean as a field of daisies. Sit down. You want some coffee or something.”

“Thanks, no, I realize you’re in a hurry. Mr. Carruthers, according to your parole officer...”

“Mr. Elston, yeah.”

“According to him, you’re living with Natalie Fletcher.”

“Was,” Carruthers said.

“She’s not living here now?”

“No.”

“When was she living here?”

“She moved out three months ago. Took a pad on Oberlin Crescent.”

“Mr. Elston seems to think...”

“Mr. Elston is a very nice guy, but he’s also very old­-fashioned. He thinks if you’re living with some chick, that’s it forever. Till death do us part, you know? He keeps asking me ‘How’s Natalie?’ when I already told him maybe a hundred times I kicked her out.”

“And that was three months ago?”

“June the eighth, to be exact. A Saturday. We had a very nice scene here. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live.”

“What happened?”

“What happened is Nat’s crazy, that’s what happened. And also, she almost got me in trouble. I went to one of her fuckin’ witches’ Sabbaths, and some guy tipped off Elston, and he started warning me about breakin’ parole, and like that. Look, I’m leveling with you, mister, I don’t want you going back to Elston and telling him I did go to that thing. I told him he was making a mistake, and he be­lieved me. Anyway, I didn’t go to any more of them. Crazy damn bitch,” he said, and shook his head. “Every­body standin’ around with black hoods over their faces, and doing the whole voodoo bit, and carvin’ up chickens ...”

“Chickens?”

“For blood sacrifices. A bunch of bullshit is what it was. If I’d known she was hipped on that devil shit, I never would’ve started up with her.”

“How’d you meet her?”

“At a party downtown. I was the token spade, she was the obligatory kook. We hit it off right away. This was right after her brother died, I guess she was looking for somebody she could talk to. My own brother died when I was just a kid, so I knew how it felt. Also, she’s a terrific-looking girl, I guess you know that. Or at least she was till she started coming on like Cleopatra, dyeing her hair black and starting to wear that shit around her eyes. Jesus!”

“When was that?”

“A little while after we began living together. Must’ve been the end of April, the beginning of May. I figured it was just some more of her kookiness coming out, you know? I mean, to tell the truth, it was the kookiness that attracted me to her in the first place. I’d had white ass before, even chicks who were better-looking than Nat, but none of them had that kookiness about them, you know? I never knew what to expect from her. It was like every day was some kind of surprise.” He grinned suddenly. “When you’re trying to make it straight, there ain’t much excitement around, you know? You’ve got to be careful you don’t spit on the sidewalk, otherwise you’re back in­side. Well, living with Nat made things exciting.”

“Then why’d you kick her out?”

“Because there’s a difference between a kook and a crazy. The minute I realized Nat was a crazy, I asked her to leave.”

“Crazy how?”

“The brother thing.”

“What about it?”

“Well. . . her mother gave Nat all this junk when her brother died. His personal stuff, you know? All kinds of shit—his birth certificate, some of his toys from when he was a kid, his Army discharge papers, his report cards from elementary school, his driver’s license, his social security card, compositions he’d written in high school, his class ring from when he graduated college... a whole pile of worthless shit. But Nat used to take it out and go through it again and again, as if it was some kind of national treasure. And you know this pendant she wears all the time? This little jade thing with the carving of Cleopatra on it?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“It was a gift from her brother, I guess you know that.”

“Yes.”

“Okay. He gave it to her, I don’t know when, her twenty-first birthday, I don’t know, he found the pendant in an antique shop and gave it to her as a present. Had it engraved with her name. A nice gift.”

“Go on.”

“Okay. Right after we began living together, she tells me the gift was from Ptolemy the Twelfth, who her brother Harry has suddenly become in her mind, right? And she takes it to a jeweler and has him engrave it with the date Cleopatra was born—69 B.C. And she starts re­membering things about Harry—who’s now Ptolemy, right?—and telling me they got married when she was seventeen, and telling me how much she loved him, and then…Ah, shit, she just got crazy, that’s all.”

“How?”

“She started calling me Ptolemy. She started saying I was her brother. And in a little while I realized she wasn’t fucking Charlie Carruthers on that bed in there, she was really fucking Ptolemy the Twelfth, who was Harry Fletcher her goddamn dead brother. Mister, I don’t like being a phantom fuck. I told her to get out.”

“And she left.”

“She made a fuss. But she left. This was on the eighth of June. She came back on the fourteenth to get her stuff, told me she’d found an apartment on Oberlin Crescent.”

“Have you seen her since?”

“Once. She came up to Hammerlock last month to show off her new boy friend. Must’ve been looking for me all night, driving around from bar to bar. Finally caught up with me outside Dimmy’s on a Hun’-third. I was just coming out of the place, I see her sitting in this VW bus. She waves me over and introduces me to the guy behind the wheel. He’s white, naturally, and blond. Very blond. Big head of blond hair, blond mustache, blond eyebrows. Leave it to Nat. A spade kicks her out, so she latches on to the blondest stud I ever saw in my life.”

“What color was the bus?”

“Red. With a white top.”

“What was the man’s name?”

“Arthur Wylie.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“I don’t know. I know only one thing, and that’s he isn’t gonna last too long, not with that hang-up she’s got about her dead brother. There were times I thought she’d commit suicide or something, just so she could get to good old Harry. It was spooky. I had enough of that voodoo shit when I was a kid and my grandmother used to tell me stories. Seven years old, and she used to sit me on her lap and scare me out of my wits. I’m glad my grandmother’s dead, and I’m glad I got rid of Natalie, too. I began to breathe again the day I kicked her out. I hope I never see her again as long as I live. One fling with Cleopatra was more than enough, believe me.”

“Was that the last time you saw her? When she came up here with Wylie?”

“Yeah. But I got a call one night, I guess it was from her. I answered the phone, and a woman said, ‘I put a curse on you,’ and hung up. It didn’t sound like Nat, but who else could it have been?”

“Susanna Martin?”

“Maybe,” Carruthers said, and shrugged.

“You know her?”

“I know her. She’s another crazy, thinks she’s some goddamn witch who was hanged.”

“Would you know if Natalie was living with Wylie?”

“Down on Oberlin Crescent, you mean? I don’t know.”

“Did you mention any of this to my partner?”

“Any of what?”

“Wylie? The VW bus?”

“He didn’t ask. I told him only what he wanted to know. I hope you won’t take this personal, but I didn’t like your partner so much.”

“The witches’ Sabbath you went to. Where was it held?”

“I don’t know. Nat blindfolded me when I got in the car, and she blindfolded me again when we left the place. That was all part of the bullshit, you see.”

“Can you describe the inside of the place for me?”

“It was the basement of a church.”

“But you have no idea where it was.”

“It took us about an hour to get there.”

“From here?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, Mr. Carruthers,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

“Am I supposed to expect you guys again, or what?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Your partner advised me not to leave town.”

“That’s cop talk.”

“Sure, but cop talk scares me when there’s a homicide involved. You think Nat had something to do with it?”

“I don’t know. We found her pendant at the scene.”

“Then she’s got something to do with it,” Carruthers said flatly. “She never took that thing off. Never. She wore it when she was in the shower, she wore it when we were in bed, she wouldn’t part with it for her life. It was from her brother, don’t you see? Her dear dead Harry.”

I was walking toward the door. Carruthers opened it for me. I extended my hand.

“Thanks again,” I said.

He took my hand and shook it. “Tell your partner I’m clean, will you? I’ve spent enough time on the inside.”

“I’ll tell him.”

He closed the door behind me. I waited a few minutes, and then pressed my ear to the wood. Inside the apart­ment, Charlie Carruthers was whistling.