Dark Stain (26 page)

The phone rang. “Hello,” Clair said. “Yes, what is that? Yes? Who are you? All right. What? Say that again. Yes?” He hung up. “That was somebody who read the editorial I wrote. He wouldn’t give me his name.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that a white man with burn scars on his face is the man we want.”

“No business ‘til I eat,” Matty Rosenberg said to Sam as they seated themselves in the garden of an Italian restaurant in downtown Brooklyn. Rosenberg was off duty, having served his eight to four shift. He had told Sam to meet him at half past four on the northwest corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and Fulton Street. “No business ‘til I eat,” he repeated. “I want nothin’ to upset my appetite.”

“Okay.”

“They got no menus here,” Rosenberg said, chewing on a chunk of Italian bread. He was in his uniform, a burly six-footer who was proud of the fact that he could knock out a man with one punch. His face was a flat moon, his eyes small and black, his lips red. He had removed his officer’s hat and his black hair was shiny. “This La Palina’s run by one family, a father and mother and a whole slew of children. The food’s swell. Do you like Italian food?”

“Yes.”

“I love to eat wop. I like it better’n Jewish cooking any time. It’s just as heavy as Jewish cooking but it’s got class to it. All the bandleaders and stars from the Brooklyn shows come here. Did you notice their pictures framed on the walls?”

“No.”

“Anyway they make a nice penny here.”

They were alone in the garden, an alleyway and a brick wall to one side. The waiters had long cleaned up after the lunch hour crowd. The red and white checkered tablecloths were fresh and unspotted. Rosenberg started on a second chunk of bread. Sam lit a cigarette. God, it was maddening, he thought; here he was on the speedup and this copper wouldn’t spoil his appetite. He had spoken to Johnny after leaving Clair’s apartment; Johnny had said that Cashman had interested the secretary of the C.I.O. Council who would be glad to talk to Sam at seven sharp; and Clair had fixed it for him to see Marian at eight. “Matty, what I’ve got to say can’t wait.”

“Where’s that waiter?” Rosenberg raised his voice, a hoarse voice like an old traffic officer’s. “Waiter, waiter! Where are you? Come here! Take our order! I want spaghetti marinara. Plenty sauce. Veal and peppers and coffee and pie. What you want, Sam?”

“Coffee.”

“What kind of meal’s coffee? Get a veal and peppers anyway. No, get veal chops with sauce and we can split.”

“Okay. While we’re waiting.” As the waiter left their table, Sam said. “This can’t wait!”

“No business until I eat. You get me!” He picked up a third slice of bread and remarked morosely. “Always have to ask for butter in this joint. Maybe I got no right to gripe. The boss and me are pals if you get me. But when you get used to butter, you get used to butter, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Don’t put me off, Matty. Suzy Buckles is my girl.”

Rosenberg drank his glass of water and then he said. “She is?”

“She is.”

“No kidding?”

“I’m not kidding.”

“Too bad.”

“I didn’t come here for sympathy. I came here for your help.”

The small black eyes looked him over. They were like two glass receptacles in which Sam could see Rosenberg shaping up his answer. “I can’t help you in a snatch case.”

“I don’t need your help with my girl. I’ve seen Wajek twice. Wajek’s in charge.”

“He’s a good man. One of the best. None of the papers say she’s your girl?”

“Wajek kept it out.”

“I see. So the boogs who snatched the girl done it to get even with you? Hell, let’s eat first. It ain’t that I’m fussy. It’s a rule with me, honest to God. If my own father was dying, God forbid, I’d have to eat first. I don’t think straight if I’m hungry.”

When the meat orders came, he dived into his plate, he dunked bread into the gravy, dipped his fork into the spaghetti marinara. Red-gold driplets sprinkled on his chin. “Eat,” he advised Sam. “Not eating never helped nobody.”

Sam tried to eat but he wasn’t hungry. “I haven’t much appetite.”

“You sure.”

Sam nodded.

“Give me your portion. It’s a shame to waste good food in war time.” He reached over a broad slab of a hand to Sam’s plate. When he was finished, he stuck a cigar in his mouth and lit up. “Shoot,” he said.

“I need your help. That’s why I’ve been trying to get you all day. Nobody knows Harlem like you.”

“I’m a Brooklyn cop now.”

“That makes no difference.”

“Shoot. I’m admitting nothing. And before you give me a song and dance, let me give you an earful. You and me, we belong to the Shomrim Society.” Rosenberg was referring to the benevolent society of the Jewish policemen on the force. “There ain’t a Jewish cop or a goy cop who hasn’t heard big of you.”

“So what?”

“So what? Twelve hundred Jewish cops and he so-whats me. You’re hurting us, Sam.”

“How?”

“What does the Shomrim stand for, kibitzer? They stand to keep the religious spirit going among the Jewish cops. That means all for one and one for all.”

“It means doing the right thing. I’m doing the right thing.” Sam had had a few calls from the Shomrim officials right after the Randolph shooting. They had congratulated him as he had been congratulated at Headquarters for behaving like a good cop.

“Sam, you’re a kid. I’m forty-one. We don’t think the same, a kid and a settled man. You’re a wild kid. You feel it’s right to hurt the Shomrim?”

“I’m not doing anything to hurt the Shomrim.”

“No? Who took a leave of absence so he could be Big Dick himself? Who went up to the Harlem League? Was that you or some other guy?”

“I did only what any good Shomrim member might’ve done.”

“Come, come.”

“The Shomrim stands for many things. Not only to work for the welfare of its members but to help the general welfare work of the community. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.”

“They snatch your own girl and still it don’t teach you a lesson. I always heard a nigger lover was crazy but now I believe it.”

“You’re talking like a fool.”

Rosenberg removed the cigar from his mouth. “So help me, you’re crazy. You must be crazy. You want my help and you call me a fool. Only a crazy would run around chasing nothing.”

“The people who wrecked the Beth-Sholem synagogue and beat up the Jewish storekeepers and printed leaflets; stink-bombs — all nothing? And nothing kidnapped Suzy.”

“All niggers.”

“They’re white men.”

“You’re crazy again. I’m almost sorry for you. The boogies’ve had it in for the wop bars a long time. They got it in for the hebes. You said before I know Harlem like a book. Brother, that’s no joke. I was born and brought up in the black hole. I was a cop in Harlem for more’n ten years. White men, my ass! You’re crazy with the heat. Didn’t all the wops say it was boogies giving them the hot-mouth and then the stink? Didn’t the hebe storekeepers say it was niggers who muscled them? And about the leaflets, that was more boogies. And it was a boogie who faked your girl out. Sam, you God damn poor slob, I’m sorry for you, no fooling. It’s boogies, the dirty bastards!”

“Maybe Negroes are doing the dirty work. But white men, fascists, are behind them. You can help me. None of those Negroes have been caught. I want to catch them. I figure them as muggers, hoodlums. Maybe they’re followers of the Negro sandlot Hitlers like Royer or Aden. They hang out in certain spots. They’ve got their joints, their bars, hotels. You can help me.”

“How can I help you?”

“By getting a leave of absence and running them down.”

“Maybe I could and then maybe I couldn’t. What do you mean by fascists? Black fascists or white ones?”

“Both kinds.”

“You’re both kinds of crazy, Sam. There are no whites in this.”

“There are white fascists working behind these Negroes. If we can run down some of the Negroes guilty we might get to the top. We’ve got to pull in some of these stink bomb throwers!” That was his plan of pursuit. To begin with the criminals on the bottom. To tap the communications Johnny had spoken of in order to ferret out those on the top.

“I’m no private investigator like you. The Department’s investigatin’, anyway.”

“The Department may find out something or they mayn’t. But what’s wrong in helping the Department? Don’t you think you’d try harder to run down the guys who wrecked the synagogue than some other cop?”

“What’re you posing for? A good hebe? Don’t give me that song and dance. A good hebe wouldn’t go around queering all of us hebes.”

“You could take off a week and get into plain clothes. You could find out who wrecked the synagogue.”

“Who do you think I am? An outlaw? The Department’s investigating. Besides, the Investigating Commissioner is investigating.”

“That proves my argument. Remember what the Investigating Commissioner said? That all the attacks on synagogues and Jews that took place a year or so ago couldn’t be investigated by the Department? The Department tried to handle it as malicious mischief, disorderly conduct, assault and battery. But the Commissioner said that it was an organized pattern. Organized by the Nazis or friends of the Nazis. That’s why the Department turned over their files and reports to the Investigating Commissioner.”

“So now Big Dick’s bigger’n the Investigating Commissioner?”

“It’s not being bigger.”

“What is it?”

“It’s supplementing the official activity.”

“You and the Marines.”

“One rabbi’s house and synagogue were put on fire four times in four years and nobody’s been caught yet. That’s Rabbi Milner over on Staten Island.”

“Aw, they’ll catch the bastards!”

“The Beth-Sholem is your own synagogue.”

“Damn you, look who’s the good hebe.”

“Ten Torahs were torn to pieces in your synagogue. All the
tallises
torn and thrown all over. They did it to hurt the Jews. To warn them that even in New York, in America, the Jews aren’t safe. Who’s putting up dough for these jobs? Are they Christian Fronters or who are they? Who’s been attacking Jews and synagogues off and on for five years now and practically nobody caught. That’s why the Investigating Commissioner stepped in. Why didn’t the Department catch them? Was it because the Department didn’t sweat over it? Or didn’t they want to sweat? Or was the Department too busy?”

“My father’s all broken up,” Rosenberg said in an altered voice. “He’s been a
shul
member of the Beth-Sholem for fifty years. It was like they told him I was dead when he heard. But what’s your game, kibitzer?”

“I want to uncover the fascists behind it all. You can help me. You can, at least, give me a list of the spots where I might find some of the Negroes I’m after.”

“What’s your game?”

“I have no game. My girl’s gone. Do you think I’m trying to pull a fast one?”

Rosenberg looked at him a long time. Then, he put on his officer’s hat. His tanned face with its wide lips almost made him seem like a Negro. “You’re crazy, wacked. I ought to steer a mile away from you. But I’ll think it over. I’ll prove to you it was only muggers who wrecked the
shul.”

“What about the other
shuls
? They weren’t all in Harlem.”

“About them, wise guy, I don’t guess. In Harlem, it was muggers.”

“What will you do?”

“Think it over like I said.”

“How about giving me a list of the spots where — ”

“I’ll think it over. Let’s go before I get hungry again.”

Sam, Johnny, Cashman and Vine, the secretary of the C.I.O. Council, sat at a table in the rear of the Stanwick Cafeteria. The supper crowds, trays in hands, were waiting for their nexts at the hot food counter. Stenographers who had movie dates with their boy friends for eight o’clock ordered light suppers; after all, the boy friend might blow to some Chinese food after the show. Workers, who were returning to over-time, ordered meats and potatoes. Knives and forks clattered. The wall mirrors reflected the hungry faces spooning up pea soup and biting into rolls. The four men had been talking for a half hour. Johnny had finished his supper. Sam sat next to Johnny over a glass of water. Opposite, Cashman and Vine had polished up their plates. Vine was even slighter than Cashman, a man in his late thirties in an oxford grey suit that accentuated the pallor of his small square face. It was one of those habitually wary, shut-mouthed faces that never seem to relax. Vine hadn’t said a dozen words since he had first clasped Sam’s hand on being introduced. He sat there, Sam thought, like a cagey poker player, husbanding the tens of thousands of C.I.O. members in the Council.

Sam tried a new explanation. He declared that the Clair editorial pointed out the road they should follow; for example, in police work, criminals were classified and caught by the manner in which they operated; all criminals, including fascists, left clues as to their personality and working methods at the scene of their crimes. No two criminals were alike in the way they operated. The very fact that they had no clues to speak of was a description of the criminals they were after. There should have been more legitimate clues when one considered the nature and the extent of what had been going on in Harlem. Cashman had asked if this was because of police negligence? Sam said he didn’t know. All he knew was that there should have been more legitimate clues and there were none. Nobody had been caught. Another clue that wasn’t a clue in the usual meaning of the word, Sam had continued, was the sense of timing; each crime seemed to have been planned with an expert eye on publicity and the press; and all the crimes had built up to the kidnapping and the terrific press they had all read that day. It was Sam’s opinion that this sense of timing was not accidental. It pointed to criminals with brains and with organization. They had but one alternative. And that was: To arouse the people of the city. To get the people on the alert. Their pursuit, to call it that, had to be a pursuit enlisting not only the official agencies but the people themselves. Vine said that such a project was Utopian as far as he was concerned. Sam amplified his ideas. He answered Vine that the Department had used this Utopian technique, itself. When, for example, a streamlined burglary gang was operating all over town and there were no arrests, the Department first analyzed the technique of the gang; some gangs would only break into a house through the roof; others only by breaking the glass panel on the door; others would use a false key and so on. Then, the Department would warn the people of the neighborhood where the gang was operating to be on the alert for all strangers and strange incidents. Cashman had agreed with Sam but for different reasons.