Dark Stain (40 page)

“That’s right,” Sam agreed. “There’ve been dozens of calls and callers too. But this particular tip’s come in over and over again. I think it ought to be checked.”

“Maybe,” Wajek said. “Miller, this Harlem show’s going to break, if it breaks, through brain work. Through keeping at the job. It’s going to break and I’m referring to the conspiracy up there in Harlem — ”

“You believe it’s a conspiracy then?” Sam interrupted.

“I do.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Those leaflets that came out yesterday. And your girl’s story — ”

“Suzy’s story?”

“Her story proved to me that she wasn’t kidnapped by professional slavers. It was a professional job but no Negro snatch mob’d work it the way it was worked. That hideaway out on the Island, for instance. Negro snatch mobs don’t take a white girl out on Long Island. There’re no Negroes to speak of out on the Island. They’d keep her right here in Harlem, or drive her to the Negro belts in Philly or Chi. It’s a conspiracy and it’s going to break because we’re all working to break it. The Department, the F.B.I., all those people upstairs. Even you, copper, checking on the anonymouses.” He smiled.

“I was going to keep an eye on Sam,” Johnny said, “but if — ”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Wajek said hastily. “I don’t want the unions raising hell — ”

“That’s the pressure I was speaking of,” Sam said.

When they got to the Hotel St. George, Wajek showed his badge to the desk clerk. “I’m looking for a party with burn scars on his face. He’s from the South.” The desk clerk nodded at the three men in front of him. “I’m sorry I can’t help you, officer.”

“Try again,” Wajek said.

The desk clerk concentrated. “I’m sorry. But I can’t think of anyone. I better inquire — ”

“Burn scars,” Wajek said. “A Southerner.”

The desk clerk’s eyes half-closed. “Let me see — Let me see — Is he alone?”

“I don’t know,” Wajek said. “He might have a woman with him.”

“A very pretty woman?”

“Possible,” said Wajek.

The desk clerk consulted an index. “You want Mr. Bill Johnson.”

“Find out if he’s in,” said Wajek.

They all watched the desk clerk pick up the receiver. “Hello,” the desk clerk said, calling off a room number. “Hello? Mrs. Johnson? This is the Management. A routine call to see if your telephone service is in good order. Thank you.”

“Thanks,” said Wajek. “Give me the key.”

They rode up in the elevator, walked down the corridor. “This leaves us wide open for a law suit if the scar-face is on the level,” said Wajek. He passed the room key to Sam, grinning. “You’re the detective in this case, copper. All I say is give him the works. Shock him. Might as well have a good law suit while you’re playing dick.”

Sam inserted the key in the lock, turned it, pushed open the door. He stepped inside and saw a slender woman in a housecoat reading the Sunday newspapers in a chair near the open window, and on the bed, a big man in a maroon bathrobe and the big man’s face was marked with burn scars. In that instant of entry, Wajek and Johnny behind him, Sam hesitated. Against the blue sky in the window, the woman with her Sunday papers seemed as innocent as any one of a thousand housewives.

“What’s this mean?” the woman cried out, rising to her feet. Sam glanced at the man on the bed. The man had blue eyes and they were flashing over at … Sam turned around … over at Johnny. “Johnson!” Sam said. “Johnson, you’re wanted for the disturbances in Harlem!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bill said and he felt sick. They’ve come! he thought frenziedly; the niggers’ve come!

“That’s a lie!” Sam shouted. Through his consciousness, there ran a half memory, the accuser and the accused; so it had been before, somewheres, sometime.

Bill glanced at the man who had spoken, at the heavy man who had removed his hat, at the Negro. “Get out of here!”

“Johnson, you’re wanted for the disturbances in Harlem! We let you ride, Johnson! We suspected you for a long time! We let you ride!” God, Sam thought; like a movie, like a movie, the accuser and the accused.

“Don’t believe them, Isa!” Bill cried. Isabelle was looking at him. She was twisting her hands together, almost as if she were praying.

“We let you ride until we found out your contacts,” Sam said. “We know everybody in your ring — ”

“Get out of here!”

Wajek stepped forward and showed his badge. Bill gaped. The badge seemed to explode in his face; it was like the time when the tear gas bomb burst in front of him. He sucked in his breath. So it’d come, it’d come; Big Boy’d given him away and the org’d get him the best lawyers, the best hebe lawyers in the world to spring him out of the can. Oh, Christ! He steadied himself and said. “Get out of here.” And again his eyes, despite his will, as if his eyes had been magnetized by the color in the black man’s skin shifted up into the colored face and the colored face swelled before him, became a moon-face, and he saw Big Boy’s face, and he yelled. “Get out of here, you nigger!” Sam was fascinated by the fear, the hate in the scarred man’s eyes, the fear and hate in the voice.

“You printed the leaflets, Johnson!” Sam said.

“No. No.”

“What leaflets are you saying no to? You know the leaflets I mean, Johnson.” As Bill was silent, Sam pounded. “You organized the attack on the synagogue. The stink bomb raids on the Italian bars. You ordered the kidnapping of Suzy Buckles.”

“No!” Sam pivoted. It was the woman shouting no at him.

“No,” Bill echoed Isabelle. They’d gotten his name, gotten the key to his room, they’d trapped him. His burning eyes peered helplessly at Isabelle. His body slumped and he seemed to sink down into his own haunches.

“Marian Burrow’s in your mob!” Sam charged. “Aden’s in your mob!” Relentless and triumphant, he observed the scarred man’s face whiten, become whiter than the scars, or as white as them, so that the face seemed to have been cleaned up by some invisible surgeon’s knife. SO ADEN WAS IN IT, he thought. The anonymous letter about Aden’d been a real tip, he thought; a real tip sent in by a friend.

THEY KNEW ABOUT ADEN, Bill thought; they knew everything. The kidnapping! They’d frame him on the kidnapping. Send him to jail for life! For life! For life! “Who are you?”

“Miller. Sam Miller.”

“Miller!” Bill recoiled as if he had been hit. He lifted his hands in front of his face. There was so much terror in his face that Sam hesitated a second, numbed by what he saw. He saw himself as something terrible to this man; it was strange, almost eery to think that he could be so terrible to anybody.

“Do you know me?” Sam asked.

Bill was breathing convulsively. He glimpsed a shape coming to him and felt Isabelle’s arm around his shoulders and he recoiled from her, too. Christ, he was in for it! In for it! The kike had caught up with him! The jinx of a kike! For life! Life … “Go away,” he cried and the three men weren’t in the room any more for he had driven them out. Creak … and they were gone. Bill laughed. “That’s where all the niggers’ll go. All of them. Dirty niggers, kikes. I made ‘em go!”

Sam stared at the face that wasn’t terrified any more; the laughing face. “Do you know me?” he repeated in a low voice as if asking: Do you know anybody.

Bill peered at Sam. He had heard the question distinctly and he said. “No, who are you?” One Bill was speaking while the other Bill was planning: Dive through the window. The other Bill knew of a blue blue blue city of skyscrapers without niggers or kikes, a blue blue wonderful city where no niggers’d ever catch up with him, never, never, a blue wonderful city where Isabelle could never give him away. His knowledge of the secret city made him smile craftily; let her give him away and he wouldn’t take her with him, no city for her, let her give him away, he’d never trust anybody again and so he wouldn’t tell her how to dive out of the window into the blue blue, let them all stand and gibber at him but he’d tell nobody, trust himself, that’s all …

“Miller. Sam Miller.”

“I’ve read about you,” the speaking Bill said. “Get out. You need a warrant to come in. Get out. It’s the law. You can’t break in. Man’s home’s his castle. Get out.”

Both Bills stared at Isabelle rushing to the door and flinging it open. Both Bills watched Wajek shut the door.

The three men followed the woman’s flight to the bed. She took the scarred man’s hand. Sam thought of Suzy and shook his emotions out of his mind. “You kidnapped Suzy Buckles! Did you read about that, too?”

“Nigger!” Bill said.

“None of that,” said Wajek.

“Nigger!” Bill said to the bald man. His head sank on his chest. Isabelle lifted his head by the chin. “Bill, Bill,” she cried. “Did you — ”

“Bitch!” he snapped at her. “Tell them. You told Hayden! Nigger bitch!” He shook his fist at the cloud faces in the room and he imagined the clouds outside the window and the long blue blue blue drop into the blue sky city. He heard a woman crying and he lowered his head stubbornly. He wouldn’t listen to niggers any more. He was strong. Strong. “Mr. President,” one Bill was saying. “The organization isn’t strong.
Ersatz
. That’s all. No new order — out of Hayden. Damn them.

They work with niggers. Big Boy. Aden. Damn herd world.”

Sam was silent like the others. It was shocking to see a man who had been sane, suddenly, in minutes, begin to rant. He felt unsure of himself as if the man on the bed had spun up the madness coiled in his own heart. He was thinking of Randolph with the bundle of laundry in one hand; always the accuser and the accused, the sane and the mad, always the psychopaths, always, always until the world, until the world … Sam glanced at the sobbing woman; it was shocking to see her this way. She had been reading the Sunday newspapers only a few minutes ago. God, a few minutes.

Sam felt the weeks that had passed since he’d gone out on ambulance duty condense into minutes; those minutes had to happen; they weren’t accidental; they’d been generated out of himself, out of all of them, Johnny, Wajek, the woman, the scarred man on the bed, out of Suzy and Clair and Marian and Detective Maddigan, generated out of all of them, out of the city, out of the cities in the nation, out of the people; they’d all been twisted, worked on, urged on, led on, duped on to produce such minutes.

“Herds,” Bill said to them in a deliberately quiet voice for he had something to do and no one was going to know about his city. “You want Heney, Madame Fox, Hayden.” He pointed behind him in the direction of the window, across to the skyscrapers in Manhattan, and with sudden fear dropped his pointing hand because they mustn’t know about his city. “The niggers. The niggers, you’ve got here. Who you, boy?” he laughed gratingly. “Who you? Get them all. Darton. Get Darton.” He thought that only Dent was good and he wouldn’t give Dent — away for a million dollars, not Dent. He’d be silent as the grave about Dent. “They’re not fascists. No. Too weak. Should’ve layed the nigger girl. Should’ve. Weak. Not human. Weak. Some day, we’ll run the country.”

He shook his head and for a second he became aware of Isabelle as a person. He had known her once. She was crying, she was saying something but he didn’t want to hear what she was saying. He shut his eyes on her and felt something tear in his brain, like a newspaper tearing. “I’m strong!” he said. He leaped from the bed, strong as a madman, and the blue shone in his eyes and he hurled through the open window into the blue blue city and in the second of hurling, he thought: She’d be waiting for him in the blue city. “Christ!” he screamed as he tumbled over in space, the floor of the room no longer solid under his feet. The onrushing air choked the voice out of him and beyond madness, one Bill knew that he had killed himself; and the Bill was gone, both Bills were gone. He had at last divided himself into death. The glittering, tumbling masses of skyscrapers poured into his eyes and out of his eyes. Down …

Isabelle keeled over on the floor. Wajek and Sam lifted her to the bed. Wajek said, “That was the tip all right, all right. You remember those names?”

Sam nodded. “Yes,” said Johnny. “I’m going back to Clair’s,” said Johnny. Wajek went to the telephone. “Police Headquarters,” Wajek said. Johnny looked out of the window.

Sam walked into the bathroom, dipped a towel in cold water.
His
towel, Sam thought. He returned to the bed. At the phone, Wajek called to Sam, “If she don’t come to, put her head lower than her body.”

Sam looked down at the woman’s unconscious face, a face like a death mask. Gently, he applied the cold towel. She had to be brought to. She had to tell them of what she knew. There was work to be done. Work to be done in all the wide world. He stroked her brow and thought that this woman had loved the scarred man. He felt his love for Suzy and Suzy’s love for him. This woman had loved the scarred man. She was a beautiful woman. Her oval face with the black eyebrows and black hair seemed to him to be deeply sleeping. She had to be wakened. All the sleepers had to be wakened. He watched the eyelids flicker and the light come into the dark eyes. “She’s coming to,” he said.

“Close the window,” Wajek said to Johnny. “One’s enough.” Johnny shut the window.

Blue and golden, the spring sun filled the window as if nothing could keep it out, as if there were no crushed corpse far below, no crushed corpses anywhere, no madness, no horror, no terror, no sudden death in all the world.

— THE END —

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