Dark Stain (20 page)

He lit a cigarette and as he inhaled, thinking it was half-past five now and she wasn’t back, terror clutched him by the throat and choked the cigarette smoke back into his lungs. She had been gone over three hours. He picked up the telephone. “I want to send a telegram,” he said, and seconds later, years later, he relayed the message. “ ‘Phone me at Clair minute you get home. Urgent.’ ” He hung up and the meaning of what he had done throbbed in him. He felt a terror beyond terror sitting here, safe and sound, and Suzy God alone knew where. For it was no use deluding himself. Johnny Ellis had never sent anyone over to the office this day.

Clair poked his head in at Sam. “You still here? Marian’s gone, has she?”

“Yes, she’s gone.”

“May I inquire why you are waiting here?”

Sam thought, he doesn’t know a thing of what’s been happening. “I’m waiting for Suzy.”

“Of course. I’ll be going home. Will you be certain to lock the door when you leave?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.” Clair disappeared and reappeared, a straw hat on his head, a stack of stamped envelopes in his hands. “I’ll see you at ten-thirty tonight, Miller. Have I told you where the committee’s meeting.”

“No.”

“At the Harlem ‘Y’ on One Hundred and Thirty-Fifth Street. Goodnight. I am positive we will accomplish something tonight. Slowly, the wheels are turning. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” He sat alone in the office. At six o’clock the phone rang. It was Johnny. “Sam? Hello, Sam. Just got home. What’s the fire?”

“No fire.” Even as he spoke, even before asking Johnny about Suzy he knew what the answer would be, must be, as a condemned man in the death house knows the answer. “I want to ask you a question, Johnny. Did you send a friend of yours over to the office? About two o’clock?”

“No, Sam.”

The NO scorched him like electricity, shocking his heart and nerves so that he felt withered and charred. In a shred of voice, for that was all the voice left him, he croaked. “This friend — This friend — ”

“Sam, what’s wrong?”

“This friend — ”

“I sent no friend over. What’s wrong?”

“So long.” He returned the phone to its base. “Maybe,” he croaked in the silent office. “Maybe, Suzy’s mother was sick and she had to go home.” His eyes glued to the table where Suzy had been working since Tuesday. He reeled to his feet but he couldn’t walk a step, his legs hollowing out, boneless, bloodless. His hand flattened against the partition to support himself, his eyes on the table for that was all that was left of her. He felt he would go mad if he stayed here any longer. He advanced one foot like a baby learning to walk, then another, and blundered out of the office. He shut the door and feebly like an old shoelace man he descended endless stairs into an endless street. In a few seconds, he had learned to walk and in a few seconds his life was over. He moved out among the endless faces and none of the faces were Suzy’s. Like an old shoelace man he stared blearily into the faces, the black faces, the brown faces but there were no buyers left in the world for him. Sometimes, the face of a white girl penetrated into his consciousness but it wasn’t Suzy, it could never be Suzy, never, never, never. His shoulders bowed, his lips slack and witless like the lips of the senile and he walked with plodding footlessness on a nameless street, unthinking, his brain centers paralyzed, his purpose so slowly won to and only clear and whole after Cashman and himself had spoken with Clair in the morning, this purpose gone, flying away in a thousand particles like a good piece of metal ground into nothingness against an emery wheel. So he wandered the Harlem streets. Everywhere, the subways were emptying out their loads of working people who walked swiftly homewards to supper and to family. But he walked alone under a sky that had a sheen to it like tin. Light was refracted from the tenement cornices and the sun broke its mighty ray on the eastern windows.

He trudged past fish and chip places, Negro chefs inside frying slabs of mackerel and sea bass a deep burnt brown, and the smell of cooking from these places, from the bar-b-q’s, from the open doors of the cafeterias, at last, singly and cumulatively, shaped an idea upon his consciousness. Dinner. He and Suzy were going to have dinner together. Dinner. Then they were going to a movie. To an early movie. Then they were going to talk to Suzy’s mother. Marriage, maybe, marriage, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe …

How long his stupor lasted, Sam would never know, but slowly the thousands of sentiments, the thousands of memories, the thousand hopes, expectations, experiences that constitute a human being whirled back into him out of the nothingness, the living death beyond the last gritted-jawed endurance. The street had a name, the pedestrians had shapes, and he, who had been dismembered, recognized himself as he was, recognized what had happened, recognized what must be done. You idiot, he cursed himself and looked about for the nearest subway.

He rushed down stairs to a change-booth, to a face behind glass and fingers sliding out nickels into the hollow wooden change-booth pocket as dexterously as the change makers at the Automat. God, he had wasted time! What kind of a man was he, what kind of a cop?

He bit on his fingernails as the subway roared him downtown. Oh, Suzy, baby, he thought and clapped his hand across his mouth. Stop your crying, he cursed himself. Stop! Frenziedly, he tried in minutes to amputate all the thousand holds of flesh and spirit and mind between Suzy and himself. He had to, must. God, he must, must, must. Please God, he prayed to the God of his orthodox father and mother, the God whose Torahs had been destroyed the night before; please let her be all right. Please God, he prayed to the God of all men; please let her be all right. God, god, he prayed in his anguish to a god more primitive and more ancient than Jehovah, a god that had preceded the God of the Jews and the God of the Christians, a god far away in time and yet always present in spirit, a god of revenge, a god that might be bribed with sacrifice, a god of blood and disaster; let it happen to me, let anything happen to me, let me die before she dies. Stop, he tore at himself; stop! He must forget her. Must. For her sake. He must view Suzy as another incident in the series of incidents that had begun when his trigger finger had ejected two bullets into Fred Randolph. Must.

He held his head between his hands as the subway express hurled into lower Manhattan down the shining silver tracks, fleeing past the local stations that seemed like stops no train would ever stop at. Behind him, too, he was leaving the timeless endless bright beach of love, on which her body lay in a sunlight, gleaming and beautiful as a shell, and strewn about her, the thousand tokens of love washed up out of trillion-objected life, the lilac lipstick, the black dress with the red S, the pile of her magazines under the maple end table in her house, all part of her, part of love, patterned and meaningful because she was their center. What remained were facts. A dead Negro. Leaflets. The office of the H.E.L. The A.N.H.C. meeting tonight. The vandalized synagogue. The anonymous phone threats. A girl, by name, Suzy Buckles, kidnapped by parties unknown.

At Police Headquarters, Sam sat in one of the Identification Bureau offices, a medium-sized room with one desk and three chairs; the walls decorated with the autographed photographs of two Police Commissioners and a banquet picture of the Homicide Squad, all the faces smiling for the camera. Sam had spoken for a long time to Detective Anthony Wajek. Wajek was a heavy man of about forty-five, phlegmatic, with a big-chinned, blue-eyed face that might have belonged to a trolley car motorman or a shipyard worker. The eyes were well protected by heavy florid cheekbones and protruding bony brows. The lips were thin clamps, the nose short, the coloring in his cheeks between brick-red and purplish. Wajek’s brown hair had stopped growing at about the height of his pink ear tips, the top of his head completely bald. He had removed his jacket when Sam had begun to speak, hanging it on the back of his chair, and he had listened with the silence of a man who has been trained to listen for hours if necessary. When Sam finished, Wajek said. “You claim that the guys who printed the leaflets, one of which was signed ‘United Negro Committee’ — that’s correct, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You claim they’re the lads who snatched Buckles? Correct?”

“Yes. They phoned me today and yesterday warning me to stay out of Harlem. I didn’t stay out — ”

“So they snatched the girl. I got it. I got it. Those black babies up there are sore. Don’t have to argue that point, copper.” He smiled patronizingly. It was more than the old feud between patrolmen and the plainclothes men that Sam felt now.

“This is no sorehead job.”

“I got it, Miller. I got it. You claim that the lads who snatched Buckles are fascists, white men? Correct?”

“Yes, I do.”

“That don’t make you right. The Bund can’t show itself. Hoover’s done a job, you got to agree.”

“I never said it was the Bund. I don’t know who they are. They might be — ” he paused the fraction of a second. “ — Christian Fronters.” Wajek was smiling. “They might be some other fascists working to a riot.”

“There won’t be any riot. The black babies up there are being treated almost as good as whites since the war. I don’t begrudge it to them. Aw, we’re wasting time with all this jabber jabber.” He reached for a form sheet on his desk. “Let’s put Buckles through the mill.”

Buckles through the mill
. Sam clenched his fists at Wajek’s phrase.

“Name,” Wajek said, spelling. “S,u,z,y. B,u,c,k,l,e,s. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Any middle name?”

“No.”

“Sex? Female.” Wajek was writing on the form sheet and looking like a storekeeper jotting down an order. “Color? White. Nationality. American.” He glanced at Sam. “What religion is she, Miller? Jewish?”

“No. Protestant. Presbyterian.”

Wajek made no comment but he raised his fountain pen from the sheet and said. “Protestant, huh. Occupation?”

“Secretary.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Height?”

“Five foot two or three.”

“Weight?”

“About one hundred and eight.” Behind his eyes, another Suzy haunted him, a Suzy without weight, without height, without age, without occupation, just Suzy. He banished her from him as Wajek droned.

“Build?”

Sam was silent.

“Build?”

Sam couldn’t talk.

“What do you coppers learn training? Pinochle?” Wajek asked ironically. “In description of wanted and missing persons when it comes to build, we have to know whether the person is large, stout, medium, slim, stooped, stocky?”

“Slim.”

“Complexion?”

“Fair.”

“Color hair?”

“Brown.”

“Thick or thin?”

“Thick.”

“Wavy or straight?”

“Wavy.”

“What style did she wear it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you told me you and Buckles were going steady. Aw, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be seeing her family tomorrow. I need a pic, more information. She live with her family?”

“With her mother.”

“How many besides her mother?”

“Just the two of them. Her father’s dead. Must you see her mother? I can give you all the information you want. It’ll be an awful shock — ”

Waejk grunted. “Miller, I’d like to turn the Department upside down for you but no can do. You’ve been running around Harlem like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail from what you’ve told me and from what I hear. How about learning a lesson, Miller? Knock off the legwork, let me advise you like a friend. Let the Department handle Harlem. The Department’s been at it longer’n you, I don’t have to tell you. You can’t win a ball game with the best pitcher in the world. You need eight other lads, you need a team. Eyes?”

“What?”

“Eyes, color eyes?”

“Grey.”

“Bulgy, small, large?”

“Large.” Sam felt the muscles in his stomach quiver.

“Eyebrows? Slanty? Bushy? Arched? Wavy? Horizontal?”

“Horizontal.”

“Short or longhaired?”

“Shorthaired.”

“Penciled?”

“No.”

“Nose? Small or large?”

“Medium.”

“Pug? Hooked? Straight? Flat?”

“Straight.”

“Chin?”

“Small.”

“Arched? Dimpled?”

“Dimpled.”

“Face? Long? Round? Square? Peg-top? Fat? Thin?”

“Round. Wide at the cheekbones. She had wide cheekbones,” he said.
Had
, he thought; I said
had
.

“Neck? Long or short?”

“Medium.”

“Any folds in the back of her neck?”

“No.”

“Lips? Thick or thin or medium?”

“Medium.”

“Lower lip droop?”

“No.”

“Mouth? Large or small?”

“Smallish.”

“Droop any?”

“No.”

“Upturn at the corners?”

“Yes, a little.”

“Did it get bunched up while she talked or in laughing?”

“No.”

“What was the posture of her head? Bent forward? Did it turn sideways? Left or right sideways? Bend backwards any?”

Sam shut his eyes and a dozen Suzies came towards him inside his brain, Suzy in her black dress with the red S, in the green pyjamas, in her suede hat with the maroon feather. “Her head was bent forward a little. But it wasn’t turned right or left.”

“Ears? Small or large?”

“Small.”

“Close to her head or projecting?”

“Close to her head.”

“Were they pierced for earrings?”

“No. That is, I don’t think so.”

“That’s where her mother’ll come in, Miller. Forehead? High or low? Sloping or bulging? Straight?”

“Straight and medium.”

Wajek dropped his pen and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, offering one to Sam. “I want you to think hard on this next one. I want you to remember any distinctive marks on the girl. These are some she might have. Scars. Moles. She might have fingers missing. Teeth missing. Gold teeth. She might be lame or bowlegged. Pigeon-toed or knock-kneed. She might have nicotine fingers if she were a heavy smoker. She might be freckled. She might have birthmarks. This one’s important. Take your time on it.”