Death in The Life (22 page)

“I didn’t.”

“Sure you did. You hated her. You know you hated her.”

May tried to scramble away, to get to her feet. The other two jumped her, flattened her on the floor, a whirl of pajama legs until the black girl lay still.

“Admit you hated her.” Suzie hammered away, trying to pound May’s head on the floor.

“She hated
me.
I’m black.”

Julie had to get into it: “Then why in hell would she confide in you about the halfway house if she hated you?”

“That’s right,” Suzie said. “She wouldn’t, not to you, to us maybe and she didn’t do that.”

“I don’t know why, teasing me maybe.”

It was the day after Rita had gone to Doctor Callahan that Mack had come in raging about Sister Julie trying to cop his girls for Jesus. If there was any advice Doctor ever gave, it was “Confront.” You can’t go forward by backing off. Rita herself had told Mack she was going, and for good measure, that she was getting out by way of the halfway house recommended by a friend outside The Life.

Julie got down on one knee so that she could speak into the girl’s face. “Didn’t Mack tell you exactly what to say to me on the phone?”

May turned her head away, but Suzie forced it back.

Julie said, “And didn’t he tell you to try me again tonight for the name of the house?”

May kept trying to bounce the two women off her. “I ain’t heard from him today. I ain’t heard from him for two days.”

“Let her up,” Julie said. “For God’s sake, let her up. It doesn’t make that much difference what she says.”

“Something makes a difference,” Goldie said, having come in from the kitchen. He wore a chef’s apron over his dress shirt. “With one ass a ’ho’ don’t work for two pimps. No way.” He waved the girls off their prisoner. “Now you, little black spider, just take off Goldie’s pajamas and get out. I want you in that elevator in five minutes or it might just happen there was a terrible accident, like you falling off the terrace out there and turning up a grease spot on the sidewalk.”

“Can we help her, Goldie?” Suzie asked as the unfortunate black one got to her feet.

“Do that,” Goldie said. “Miz Julie, why don’t you come in the kitchen? Smell that barbecue sauce? That’s Goldie’s own.”

“If you don’t mind, I’m going to stay here and think things out,” Julie said. She intended to go out the door when May did, even if it took karate to make it.

J
ULIE AND MAY WENT
down in the elevator together, the black Cinderella, back in her street clothes, short pants, boots, and a fake fur jacket, cursing everybody in gutter jargon, interrupting herself now and then with sniffs and sobs. The weeping whore, Julie thought. She could file that one with Magdalene’s daughter. The romance of the street had lost its allure. Madame Allure, she had said to Pete before Friend Julie took hold, and he had told her she was in the neighborhood for it. She offered the girl a Kleenex.

“Keep your fucking rag, little white cow.” She gave a swipe at her nose with the fur cuff. Little white cow: May was the same girl she had seen Mack slapping around outside Mr. Bourke’s. Same girl, different wig.

In spite of everything, or maybe because of it, Julie felt sorry for her. “Come on, they’re not worth crying over. I’ll buy you some breakfast if we can find a place open.”

“I ain’t crying over them. I’m crying over me.”

“Okay, that makes it worthwhile.”

They walked out through a deserted lobby. The white Cadillac sat where Goldie had left it, a bleached hearse.

“How about breakfast?”

May chose a greasy joint where she felt safe. Julie took one look through the window, a derelict drunk, trying to get his mouth and the coffee mug together. “To hell with that. Let’s go to Howard Johnson’s.”

May trudged alongside her, muttering still, half-aloud, her invectives against her persecutors. It was dawn, the whore’s twilight, a cold, dank mixture of Jersey smog and the riled Hudson at low tide. Julie caught the drift of May’s wretchedness as it turned on Mack, not taking care of her the way he promised. Not even calling her. Then suddenly, stopping in her tracks: “White girl, you don’t want to go in Howard Johnson’s with me.”

“Call me Julie.” Julie linked her arm through May’s and bore her along.

May ate like a truck driver: two eggs, a slice of ham, two orders of raisin toast. Julie had a grilled cheese sandwich and orange juice. Whatever the other patrons thought, those get-up-and-get-out-in-the-morning travelers, she didn’t care. She could hardly blame them: she and May did make an odd couple. But when a scrubbed, ruby-cheeked cat pushed up against her and asked a rotten question, she swung around on him and said, “Yeah, miscegenation.”

May gave a crackle of laughter. Julie wouldn’t have thought she knew the word. Maybe she didn’t.

When they were ready to go, Julie said, “Want to talk, get it all out of your soul?”

“I got to go home,” May said.

“In case Mack calls? What are you going to be able to tell him?”

“I got to be there.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t
have
to be anywhere. Don’t you know that’s the first step toward freedom, not
having
to be anywhere?”

“Fuck freedom.”

“Okay, but let’s go to Friend Julie’s Place and talk about what you’re going to do without Mack.”

In the next two hours Julie got the story of May’s life, eighteen years of degradation. Sixteen, and then two years of cashing in on it. She had been in The Life for two years.

“Why Mack?” Julie wanted to know.

“He just whup, he don’t screw.”

All right. She’d had about all she wanted or needed to know of The Life. Then she wondered: had she just learned why Rita also was with Mack?

“You never did like Rita, did you, May?”

“She treat me like dirt.”

“That’s a good reason. Were you with Mack when she came into the family?”

“Uh, huh, but don’t go thinking I was jealous.”

“I won’t.”

“I was still number one, don’t care what them others say.”

“I believe you. If you weren’t he wouldn’t have trusted you to call me, would he? And he did trust you, May. You were the only one.”

The black girl nodded. “Number one.”

“Did the police question you?”

“I couldn’t tell ’em nothing then. I ain’t going to tell ’em now.”

Russo was waiting, Julie thought, waiting for Mack to contact her.

If May was not exactly bright, she was shrewd. Julie had to hide the real direction of her next question in that illusion May chose to hang onto: “What I don’t understand, May, if you are number one, why is Mack so anxious to find Rita?”

“He got to find her right away. They could frame him for that John’s murder.”

“Who could frame him?”

May shrugged.

“The police?”

“Mack don’t say. He don’t tell me nothing I don’t have to know. He don’t want to get me into trouble.”

“Sure,” Julie said. She had nothing to lose that she could see in putting the big question to May: “Did you know Mack when he was working for Sweets Romano and pimping on the side?”

“I don’t ever hear that name, not ever in my whole life.”

It seemed like a heavy answer; the trouble was Julie didn’t know how heavy the question was.

A few minutes later she proposed to treat May to the taxi fare back to her apartment.

“No. Thank you just the same, but I just think I’ll walk.”

The lure of the street: the early money. She watched May put herself together and then went outdoors with her. The morning traffic was in full rush. She was turning back to the shop, stopping for the morning word with Juanita, when she heard a familiar voice from a passing car.

“Good morning, Julie.” Detective Russo saluted her. The driver of the unmarked car picked up speed, hugging the curb, until they were alongside May Weems. Russo got out, showed his identification, and took the black girl into custody.

Friend Julie, yeah.

She ran the penthouse and May Weems scenes through the typewriter, mostly typos. When she came to the whip business, she knew what she had to do. She was waiting outside Mr. Bourke’s shop when he opened for the day.

“Well, Julie, what can I do for you?”

She waited until they were in the shop. “I want to know how to get in touch with Sweets Romano.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I think so. Your moonlight customers make porn films, don’t they? He’s the big distributor. Couldn’t you get one of them to arrange an introduction for me?”

“I’ll try,” he said without enthusiasm.

A few minutes later he had an unlisted phone number for her. “Better call from here, Julie. I want to know what happens.”

“Thanks.”

When Julie dialed the number and asked for Mr. Romano, the male voice said, “Mr. Romano will call you back. Let me have your number.”

Julie gave him her name and the shop number and then said, “I have to go out for a few minutes, but I’ll be right back.” She hung up.

Mr. Bourke admitted her quick-wittedness. “You do know how to handle yourself. But be careful all the same. And leave me that phone number, just in case.”

Julie didn’t ask, In case what? She didn’t want to know. She had only let herself into the shop, her own shop, when the call-back came. “Mr. Romano is sending his car for you, Mrs. Hayes.” He gave the address on Forty-fourth Street.

“That’s it,” Julie said. The Romano outfit was even more quick-witted.

“Inside a half-hour.”

She looked up Mr. Bourke’s number, phoned him and promised to call him as soon after the interview as she could get to a phone.

“If I don’t hear from you by noon, Julie, I’ll call Detective Russo.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“There are rumors on the street,” Bourke said.

Julie walked up and down outside the shop. She thought of phoning Doctor’s service and decided against it. She had a couple of hours before her appointment.

The limousine that pulled up was black with heavily tinted glass. There had to be two men, for one stepped out on her side before the car had quite halted. Julie scarcely came to his shoulder. A bruiser, but polite, he opened the back door for her and then got in beside her. Whether to reassure her or to be sure of her staying was hard to say.

It was a green world she saw, looking out the window. A black one to anyone looking in. Sitting where she was, the president of the United States could ride through the city unrecognized. Or Yasir Arafat.

They sped up Eighth Avenue, surrounded by music, through Columbus Circle and on to cross the park at Sixty-fifth Street. Julie noted the telephone in the car. There was probably a liquor cabinet. No doubt they were bullet-proofed. And yet she didn’t feel any great fear. Having had so little sleep, she wasn’t even sure it was actually happening. Something hallucinatory; a trip or a ride? The man beside her was humming along with a heavenly choir.

They pulled into the circular drive of a new apartment building where, while one doorman opened the car door another opened the door to the building. As Julie and her guide moved along to the elevator, she knew for sure that she was headed for another penthouse.

But the difference: it was like walking into a museum. Sweets Romano was a patron of the arts as well as hospitals. Left to herself for a long time to wait and wander between the foyer, which was more a gallery, and the sunken living room which was a solarium as well, she moved from painting to painting, Picasso to Vuillard to names less familiar, but painters quite as sure of themselves. The sculptures included Giacometti and Manzu and an exquisitely sensuous nude infant of white alabaster to which Julie felt compelled to put her hand the second time she came around to him.

Her host seemed to have waited for that moment. “Do touch it,” he cried, coming down the steps. “It is the greatest tribute. I am Romano.” He padded across the rich carpet. Julie thought he might offer his hand, but instead, coming up to her, he tucked both hands into the sleeves of his velvet jacket. She could see why Rudy had called him The Little King. He was round and graceful and smoothly soft looking, except for the cold blue eyes. She could not begin to guess his age. Even his voice, while high-pitched, was cultured and authoritative: I am Romano.

“I am Mrs. Hayes.” No Julie here.

“Yes. I hope you will forgive the ceremony of transportation, but when somebody in whom I am interested seeks me out, they deserve to find me. It so happens, I was about to get in touch with you.”

“Okay.” Julie said. “So here we are.”

“I want to share the memorial to Peter Mallory.”

“Oh.”

“Are you surprised?”

“Not exactly. Only there isn’t much to divide, a memorial Mass.”

“We must do something more than that.”

“How did you know about it? I mean there hasn’t been an announcement yet in the papers.”

“But an announcement.”

On the Forum bulletin board. “Yeah. I hung it myself.”

“I am not uninterested in the theater, Mrs. Hayes. So I have numerous informants.”

“That figures,” Julie said.

“I had in mind a luncheon afterwards—something at which his friends could gather and drink a toast. Would Sardi’s be appropriate?”

“I don’t think his friends would mind,” Julie said.

“Then you will arrange it and I will give you a check to cover. I prefer anonymity where it can be managed. Please, where would you like to sit?” He swept the room with an open palm.

“Opposite that old man.” Julie said and pointed to the Vuillard.

As he moved among his sculptures, Romano laid a caressing hand on a figure reclining on a couch. Julie looked at her watch. He had kept her waiting for more than an hour, a deliberate ploy, she thought, to gain a psychological advantage. It was as much to establish some kind of leverage as the import of the call itself that she said, “Mr. Romano, could I make a phone call? I’m going to be late for an appointment and I ought to phone.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said, and indicated the chair. He brought a phone to her and jacked it into a floor connection. “I shall wait in the next room.”

“It’s all right,” Julie said.

He went out nevertheless while she dialed and, opening the door, gave her a brief glimpse of a library in leather.