The Outsider (27 page)

But if he wanted to assume Lionel Lane's name, should he not try to learn something about him? Where he had worked? How he had lived? Did he have a family? His ardor ebbed somewhat when he realized that he had not the remotest idea of how to find out about the man. Oh, there must be a caretaker somewhere around this cemetery who could tell him if Lane had belonged
to a church, or the name of the funeral home from which he had been buried…He looked about in the sea of frightened snowflakes, full again of that old sense of dread and criminality. But there's nothing to be scared of…Find the caretaker and tell him that Lionel Lane had been an old pal of his, that he had just come from the army and had learned that poor Lionel was dead, and that he was searching for Lionel's folks…

Cross struggled through the snowdrifts back to the huge, iron gate and peered about for signs of life, a house…Nothing but silence and flurrying flakes of white. He was about to leave when he noticed on the gate a square, wooden plaque whose face was obscured by a thick layer of snow crystals. He cleaned the flakes away with his coat sleeve and read: Address all inquiries to Mr. Sloane, 6 Pine Road, White Plains…

More frozen than alive, he dragged himself out of the cemetery and tramped back to the street. When the bus rolled silently toward him out of the scudding swirls of whiteness and stopped, he stumbled on board and had difficulty getting his money out of his pocket, so frozen were his fingers.

“Looks like you came out of a deep-freeze,” the bus driver said.

“You can say that again,” Cross mumbled.

At the office of the Woodvale Cemetery in White Plains, Cross found a colored girl of about eighteen years chewing gum behind a typewriter. In reply to his plea to find the relatives of his “long lost pal”, Lionel Lane, the girl said:

“You'd better come back this afternoon at four when Mr. Sloane's in, because I'm not allowed to give out information like that to anybody—”

“What harm could that do?” Cross asked. “My
friend's dead now. Come on, have a heart.” Cross aped the sentiment of nostalgic distress. “I want to see his mother—”

“Why don't you try his pastor at his church?” the girl suggested.

“I don't know his church or his pastor—”

“And you say you were an old, dear friend of his, hunh?” the girl asked him in a light, taunting voice.

“But I never asked him about his religion—”

“He lived in Harlem,” the girl said. “But that's all I can tell you. I'm sorry, but you'll have to see Mr. Sloane…” The girl resumed masticating her gum and turned back to her typewriter.

Though disappointed, he decided not to press her any further; he thanked her and left. If untoward events developed in the future, he did not want that girl to recall that a young man had been demanding details about Lionel Lane…Dammit, he had failed in his first essay. But perhaps he could phone the office later in the afternoon and pretend that he was…Whom could he pretend to be? He stood musing in the street amid the circling columns of snow, then he looked again at the scrap of paper upon which he had written the data he had taken from the wooden headboard of Lionel Lane's grave, rereading the words: Sleeping in the Faith of the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen…Where and when had he heard words like those before? They reminded him of something.
Yes!
Of course…That inscription expressed the cardinal article of faith of the Seventh Day Adventist Church! He had, in his childhood in the Deep South, met and known adherents of that denomination. True, it was a guess, but not at all a bad one. His task, now, was to find the Seventh Day Adventist Church from which Lane had been buried. The girl had said that Lane had
lived in Harlem, and it would be safe to assume that the church was there…

During the subway ride to Harlem, he pondered over the difficulties involved in his quest. As the excitement wore off he realized that he was attempting a long shot gamble. For instance, he did not know if Lionel Lane had been born in the State of New York or not. Suppose it turned out that Lionel Lane had been born in, say, Ohio? What could he do then?

At 110th Street he got out of the subway, went into a drugstore and consulted a telephone directory. Ah…Here were three addresses of Seventh Day Adventist organizations in Harlem. One was on West 135th Street and another was on West 123rd Street; and there was still another organization called the Seventh Day Adventist Conference on West 150th Street…Yes, he'd call the Conference. He dialed and heard a suave, masculine voice answering:

“Hello.”

“This is the Eastern Insurance Company,” Cross lied smoothly. “I wonder if you'd be kind enough to give us some information, please?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“We are searching for the address of a man's family; the man, we believe, was buried from one of your Harlem churches about two or three days ago. The name is Lane, Lionel Lane. Could you tell us where his parents are living? Or do you know the last address of the deceased?”

“Just a moment, please.”

Cross waited, looking uneasily over his shoulder at people shopping at the counter of the drugstore.

“We have no direct information here, sir. But I understand that there was a funeral three days ago at our
Ephesus Church at 101 West 123rd Street. Why don't you get in touch with Elder Wiggins there?”

“Thank you,” Cross said.

He dialed Elder Wiggins and, still impersonating an insurance official, asked for the whereabouts of the Lane family.

“Oh, yes,” the gentle, tired voice of a man came over the wire. “We held services for the Departed at our church last Thursday. But I cannot help you very much, sir. My secretary's not here for the moment. But I know that the Lane family lives in Newark, New Jersey. The Departed lived here in Harlem, I'm fairly certain. You see, the Departed was not himself a member of our church. His mother, Mrs. Mary Lane, is one of our oldest members and, though she lives in Newark, she wanted her son buried from our church. If you'd care to phone later today…”

“It won't be necessary,” Cross said. “Our Newark office will be able to locate the family. I thank you very much.”

So Lionel Lane had parents in New Jersey. Well, he'd go there right now. Twenty minutes later Cross was in the Pennsylvania Station, hunched over a Newark telephone directory, feverishly thumbing the thin, crisp leaves, searching under L's. Good Lord, here was a long list of names of Lanes: there was an Albert Lane, a Bernard Lane, a Daniel Lane, a Harry Lane…and then there came Mary Lane…This undoubtedly was Lionel Lane's mother. He jotted down the address and an hour later he was in Newark, inquiring for the street on which the Lanes lived. He was so excited that he had to calm himself when he learned that the street was located in the heart of the local Black Belt: 17 Broome Street in the Hill District.
This
was it!

When he reached the bleak neighborhood, he slowed and mapped out his plan of attack. Presuming that he was on the track of the right family, to go to the Lane house directly and ask questions carried a risk. If, when carrying the name of Lionel Lane, something happened to him and caused that name to get into the newspapers, someone might recall that a stranger had been around asking vague questions. It would be better if he posed as a social worker or a salesman of some sort and in that way pick up bits of information from neighbors or shopkeepers. What kind of a family were the Lanes? Working class or professional? If they turned out to be a family of prominent citizens, then it would be almost impossible to go to the Bureau of Vital Statistics in a city like this and impersonate Lionel Lane and demand a birth certificate without getting into serious trouble. He first had to get hold of some basic facts.

The Lane house proved to be a ramshackle, wooden affair, sitting unpainted on a run-down dirty, treeless street in a bleak slum area. If Lionel Lane came out of this hellhole, then not many people of any consequence could have known him. But was this the house of the family of Lanes whose son was buried in Woodvale?

At that moment he saw an elderly Negro postman bent under the weight of a mailbag coming toward him over the snowy street.

“Say,” Cross stopped him, “have you got a minute? Maybe you can help me?”

The postman paused, spat a stream of tobacco juice into a snowdrift, eyed Cross cynically and mumbled: “That depends on what kind of help you want. I'm on my rounds. But I'll spare you a minute.”

“I'm from the Central Credit Bureau of New York City,” Cross lied fluently. “I'm trying to track down a young chap by the name of Lionel Lane.”

“Lionel Lane?” the postman echoed, smiling ironically. “He owed money somewhere?”

“Confidentially, yes.”

“Well, the people who let him have money didn't have good sense,” the postman observed, spitting another spout of tobacco juice. “And you got a fat chance of collecting, 'cause that baby's where you can't get at 'im. He's six feet deep with snow in his face. He kicked off three days ago. Had consumption—”

“Did he live with his family?”

“When he didn't have any dough, he did; and that was almost all the time. He holed up somewhere in Harlem, I'm told, with a dame. Didn't want his family to know where he was when he was with that dame. Had to forward all his mail there…”

“Can you give me his address in Harlem?”

“Sure; 145 West 147th Street, it was.”

“What kind of a family has he got? Do you know 'em?”

“Ain't but one person in that outfit that you could call human, and that's the mother…She's solid, religious. But the rest of 'em—I've seen 'em, but I don't know 'em and don't want to know 'em,” the postman sought to disabuse Cross of any illusions. “Boy, if you're thinking of giving the Lanes any more credit, then just don't.”

“What kind of work did Lionel Lane do?”

“Work?” the postman mocked Cross, chuckling. “He used to work in a laundry, but for the past two years he used all his energy pulling at the neck of a bottle—”

“Thanks, Buddy,” Cross said.

He felt he had a chance. He went into a bar, THE FAT MAN, and schemed out his next move over a whiskey. How soon was a death reported to the clerks in the Bureau of Vital Statistics? Lionel Lane had died in
Harlem and it was safe to assume that the Newark officials did not yet know that he was dead…When he approached the clerks about a birth certificate, there must not be in their minds any doubt whatsoever that he was Lionel Lane. One blunder and the whole structure he was so carefully building would tumble. How was he to handle it? He reflected intensely, calling upon his knowledge of white and black race relations to stand him in good stead. If ever he could act convincingly the role of a subservient Negro, this was the time. He would have to present to the officials an appearance of a Negro so scared and ignorant that any white American acting out the normal content of his racial consciousness would never dream that he was up to anything deceptive. But why would any black wastrel be wanting a birth certificate? Cross was well aware that the American authorities were chronically watchful these days about handing out birth certificates, for spies were using such documents to establish their claim to having been born in the United States. In the end Cross decided that a simple, an almost silly reason was the best reason that an ignorant Negro could have in demanding a birth certificate; it would have to be a reason that whites, long schooled in dealing with Negroes as frightened inferiors, would accept without question.

He went to the City Hall and presented himself at the window marked:
DUPLICATE BIRTH CERTIFICATES
. Looking apprehensively about, he took his place in line. When his turn came to face the young white clerk, he said in a plaintive, querulous tone:

“He told me to come up here and get the paper.”

The clerk blinked and looked annoyed. “
What
?” the clerk demanded.

“The paper, Mister. My boss told me to come and get it.”

“What kind of paper are you talking about, boy?”

“The one that say I was born,” Cross told him as though he, in his ignorance, had to teach this white man what to do.

The clerk smiled, then laughed: “Maybe you weren't born, boy. Are you
sure
you were?”

Cross batted his eyes stupidly. He saw that he was making this poorly paid clerk happy; his pretense of dumbness made the clerk feel superior, white.

“Well, they
say
I was born. If I wasn't born, I can't keep my job. That's why my boss told me to come here and get the paper.” Cross let a tiny edge of indignation creep into his voice.

The clerk regarded him with benevolent amusement and turned and yelled behind him: “Say, Jack! Come here and get a load of this, will you?”

Another clerk, somewhat older, came forward and asked: “What's up?”

“This coon clown says he was born somewhere,” the young clerk said.

“I
don't
believe it,” the older clerk said.

“Oh, yes, sir. I
was
born,” Cross said, his lips hanging open, his eyes wide with desperation.

“Can you prove it?” the first clerk said.

“Now, look here, Mister. I ain't done nothing to nobody, 'specially to no white folks,” Cross wailed in deep distress, pleading innocent to a charge not even mentioned.

“The worst thing you ever did was to be born,” the older clerk said.

“But I ain't done nothing wrong, Mister,” Cross protested.

“You are always wrong,” the young clerk said. “Say, Jack, what in hell do we do with 'im?”

The older clerk pulled down his mouth and muttered:
“Hell, go ahead and give 'im a certificate if he was born around here. These clowns don't mean any harm.”

“If I can't say I was born, I'll lose my job,” Cross complained.