An Exquisite Corpse

by Helen A. Harrison

  “Lam, huh? Must’ve had a chink father. Sure looks like it. I saw half-breeds like that in Santiago. Used to throw rocks at ’em when I was a kid.” He chuckled at the memory.

  “What a charming little boy you must have been, Joey,” Nita cooed, emphasizing the word little. “And bright as a button, I’ll bet. At the top of your reform school class, no doubt.”

  Joey didn’t appreciate sarcasm, especially from a woman. If one of his girls sassed him like that, the next thing that came out of her mouth would be a cry of pain. But this ball-breaker was a police officer, so he masked his anger with a genial grin.

  “Reform school? Not me. I’ve always been a law-abiding citizen. Always happy to help the police with their inquiries.”

  “Then ask around. Find out if anyone knew Lam, and let me know.” She jotted the deceased’s name on the back of the photo, together with her phone number at the precinct, and handed it back.

  Nita rose to leave. She was six inches taller than Joey.

  He didn’t get up to see her out.

  Twenty-One

  Carlos Solana was in a quandary. After an uncomfortable night on a sagging cot at the Seamen’s Church Institute on South Street, a wash and shave with tepid water, and a breakfast of weak coffee and bland rolls in the institute’s galley, he was sitting on a bench overlooking the East River, trying to decide on his next move. Using his ditty bag for a pillow had given him a stiff neck, but he was taking no chances on someone making off with it while he slept.

  Finding Lam dead in the studio had shaken him badly. If only he had gotten there on Friday as planned, he could have delivered the package to his friend, picked up his money, had a delicious Cuban dinner at Little Havana, spent the night in a comfortable bed in Lam’s apartment, and gone out with him on Saturday to see the sights. Then Lam wouldn’t have been home when the killer arrived. But a hurricane in the Caribbean had delayed the departure from Cartagena, and the ship had arrived a day late. By the time they had berthed at Pier Fifty-Two and he was given shore leave, it was 8:45 p.m.

  It had taken him less than twenty minutes to walk across the West Village to Lam’s apartment. The light was on in the studio. He must be wondering where I am, thought Carlos. He had his own keys—Lam had given him a set after his first visit. “Come up anytime you’re in port,” he had said, “even if I’m not around. The daybed in the studio is yours whenever you want it. It’s not the Hotel Gran Caribe, but it makes a change from the hard bunk on that rusty tub you’re stuck in most of the time.” So kind and generous, even taking him along to parties with his Surrealist friends. Always ready to translate in a shop or a restaurant, so he didn’t feel lost in a city where he didn’t speak the language. And a great companion, full of interesting ideas.

  His paintings were kind of crazy, but when he explained them, you could see what he was driving at. The figures weren’t supposed to look real, like the pinups over Carlos’s bunk. Sometimes they were sexy, but not like pretty girls, more like she-devils that would put a spell on you.

  Playing that silly drawing game with Lam helped him understand. You couldn’t tell where it would lead or what kind of picture you’d end up with, but it was bound to be something really strange. Something magical. With his fantastic imagination, Lam could develop one of those little drawings into a whole world on canvas. “They are the matches that light my fire,” he had said.

  “No more matches,” Carlos murmured in Spanish, “and no more deal.” Lam was dead, and he still had the package but no idea what the next step was supposed to be.

  Twenty-Two

  Joey pressed a button on his desk and a bell rang in the front room. The five gang members playing blackjack looked at one another and at their hands.

  “Low hand goes,” said one of them. Raul Gutierrez, a weedy specimen whose chief asset was unquestioning loyalty to Joey, had a deuce and a five. He threw in his cards, forfeited his stake, and left the table to answer his boss’s summons.

  Joey handed him the photograph of Lam. “Ever seen this guy?”

  Raul frowned at the picture. “Not when he was alive.”

  “Half chink, half chardo. Somebody iced him downtown. That cunt cop who just pranced out wants me to get a line on him. I’m feeling civic-minded, so I said okay.”

  Joey’s real motivation was somewhat more self-serving. If Lam had been killed over a deal with someone in his territory, he wanted to know who, what, and why. There might be something in it for him.

  “You want me to ask around?” Raul suggested.

  “No, asshole, I want you to stay here and circle jerk with that bunch of fairies out front.”

  “Sorry, Boss. I’ll get right on it.”

  “Call me if you come up with anything—no, not if, when.”

  After showing Lam’s photo to the rest of the gang and drawing a blank, Raul spent what was left of the morning canvassing every shop and restaurant in the neighborhood with the same result. He called from a pay phone to report.

  “Keep looking,” Joey ordered.

  Suddenly Raul had one of his rare ideas. “You said he was killed downtown, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s where he lived. An apartment in the Village, she said.”

  “I got an uncle owns a bar down there. Okay if I ask him?”

  “Nothing to lose, right? But don’t take all day. And no drinking on the job, understand?”

  Raul headed for the IRT subway station at 110th Street. Two transfers later, he emerged at 14th Street and 7th Avenue, not far from where West Street intersects Horatio. That was his destination.

  Twenty-Three

  Sunday afternoon

  The Port of Call stood in a row of grubby commercial buildings on West Street, in the Express Highway’s shadow, facing the North River docks. The name was neatly lettered on a plywood panel that covered what once had been a plate glass window, and a small neon sign over the door said simply BAR. Inside, the atmosphere was strictly utilitarian. No nautical-themed decorations, no hatch-cover tabletops. The men who drank here needed no reminders of life at sea. The customers were almost exclusively the ships’ crews, as well as the stevedores, longshoremen, and truckers who serviced the freighters.

  Raul’s uncle Julio commuted to the Port of Call every day from uptown. He opened at noon. Arriving not long after opening time, Raul found the place nearly deserted. His uncle was at his usual station behind the bar, crating empty beer bottles for pickup.

  “¡Buenos tardes, Raulito!” cried Julio with delight as his nephew approached. “¿Cómo estuvo tu día?”

  “Not so hot, tio. I got a problem. Joey wants me to get a line on a Cuban guy, but I’m coming up empty.” Raul pulled out the photo. “This guy ever come in here? He lived in the Village.”

  Julio shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Not a sailor, right? And not living in the Village anymore. In fact, not living at all.”

  “You got that right. This photo was taken at the morgue. Somebody snuffed him last night. Joey wants to know why.”

  Julio flipped the photo. “Funny name, Wifredo Lam. Cuban, you say?”

  A man rose from the far end of the bar and approached them. “Let me have a look,” he said. He turned the photo to the light. “Yeah, that’s Lam all right. He’s a friend of one of my shipmates.”

  Raul couldn’t hide his enthusiasm. “Now we’re getting somewhere! What do you know about him?”

  The seaman eyed him steadily. “I know plenty, but why should I tell you?”

  “No reason,” replied Raul. “But maybe you’ll tell my buddy Abe.” He opened his wallet and laid a five-dollar bill on the bar.

  “I’ll tell him and his twin brother.”

  Raul placed another five on top of the first one. The seaman picked them up and folded them into the pocket of his pea jacket. He didn’t offer his name, and Raul didn’t press him. Let him play it his
way, he said to himself. He asked his uncle to draw a couple of beers, and he took them to a table.

  “Good health,” he said, lifting his glass. “I’m sure glad I ran into you.”

  “Your lucky day,” replied his companion. They drank in silence for a few minutes.

  “About a year ago,” the seaman began, “we were making our regular run from Cartagena to New York with a cargo of coffee. Not many freighters do the Atlantic coast route these days, but our owners are willing to take the risk if the profits are high enough. On the way, we called in at Mariel to pick up Cuban rum and cigars. Always get a good return on that cargo. We picked up a passenger, too. That was Lam.

  “He gets to talking with the crew, and it turns out he’s from the same town in Cuba as my mate Carlos. They really hit it off, spent a lot of time together. Carlos let him come into the crew’s quarters and use the table for sketching. Lam’s an artist. He had a little watercolor set, some pencils and paper on him, the rest of his gear was in the hold.

  “He gave Carlos drawing lessons, but the stuff they did was kind of weird. They’d fold up the paper and hand it back and forth. Carlos showed me a couple, and they looked all jumbled. Lam said that was the point. His kind of art was supposed to look like something you’d only see in your dreams. I said it looked more like a nightmare, and he said, ‘You’re right. That’s what I been through.’

  “He told us that before the war, he’d been doing pretty well in France, but his crowd got kicked out by the Nazis. They had to hide out in Marseilles, waiting for a ship and hoping the Gestapo didn’t find them before they could scram. Him and his wife managed to make it to Cuba, but there was no support for him there. He decided to park his wife with his family and try his luck in New York. He said his pals from Paris are sitting out the war here and they got friends with money who are helping them out.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Like I said, around this time last year. Yeah, fall of forty-two. When we dock in New York, him and Carlos go off together. Carlos don’t speak no English, but Lam’s was pretty good. They went to look up one of Lam’s artist friends, a Chilean guy lives in the Village. He put Lam up for a few days and found him a place in the neighborhood. From then on, whenever we got into port, Carlos would go straight over there and hang out with Lam. He’d come back with great stories about the crazy artists he met.”

  The seaman paused and finished his beer. Raul signaled his uncle for a refill.

  “Something he said last time, maybe you should know. He comes back to the ship grinning from ear to ear. I says, ‘You pick a winning number?’ ‘Better,’ he says, ‘this ain’t no gamble. It’s a sure thing.’ ‘What gives?’ I says, and he tells me he’s got a business deal with Lam that’s going to pay off big. That’s all he’d say.”

  “I need to talk to Carlos.”

  The seaman shook his head. “He ain’t on board now. Has shore leave while we unload and take on cargo, so he went to Lam’s. That was yesterday. If Lam’s dead, he ain’t there, so I don’t know where he could be. But he has to be back on board by tonight. We ship out first thing Monday morning.”

  Raul pulled out the notebook and pencil with which he recorded protection payments. “Give me some details, man. What’s Carlos’s last name? What does he look like? What’s the name of your ship, and where is it docked? What time do you leave port on Monday?”

  “I kinda forget those things. I think Abe could jog my memory.”

  Reluctantly, Raul opened his wallet again and extracted another five. This time he laid it on the table and covered it with his left hand while he flipped open the notebook with his right. “Abe is asking,” he prompted.

  The seaman gave him the information and drained his glass.

  Raul took his hand off the bill, which disappeared into the pea jacket pocket.

  Twenty-Four

  Carlos was feeling increasingly desperate. After buying a hot dog from a street vendor, he was down to his last few coins. His pay went directly into the Seamen’s Bank for Savings on Wall Street, where the shipping company had its account, but the bank was closed on Sunday. He could have drawn something on account from the ship’s purser, but he’d expected to have a pocketful of folding money by Saturday night, so he hadn’t bothered. Of course he could go back on board, but the undelivered package was burning a hole in his ditty bag.

  He had trusted Lam to make the arrangements. All he knew was that someone would hand him a package in Cartagena and that he was to pay the man one hundred dollars American. Lam had given him the cash the last time he was in New York.

  “When you bring me the package,” he had told Carlos, “a fellow I know will pay you three hundred dollars for it. You go back to Cartagena, pay a hundred for another package, and keep the other two hundred.”

  Lam had smiled broadly and clapped him on the back. “Not bad money for a delivery boy.”

  Not bad at all. More money, in fact, than Carlos made in a month at sea. It had seemed so easy, and in fact, it was. The contact who met him as he debarked in Cartagena had greeted him like an old friend, whisked him off to a nearby cantina, and, over a glass of guaro, handed off the package in exchange for the envelope of cash. Carlos had gone straight back to the ship and stashed it in the hidey-hole under his bunk. He didn’t trust his sea chest—too many of his shipmates were good at picking locks. He made the secret cache after a box of contraband cigars went missing from the chest before he could sell them on the New York docks, where the longshoremen were ready customers for smuggled goods.

  The contents of this package could not be peddled piecemeal, like cigars. It was medical-grade Peruvian cocaine, a kilo of it.

  With all the legal production diverted to the military and smuggling riskier than ever due to the threat of U-boat attacks, the drug’s price had increased significantly in the past couple of years. Carlos had no idea how much it was worth uncut to a dealer, but its street value would be many times the three hundred that Lam’s contact was paying. Yet it was worth nothing to Carlos if he couldn’t pass it on.

  It could be worse than worthless. Suppose Lam’s body had been discovered and the police were investigating? Suppose they had connected him with Lam and were looking for him? If they found the package on him, he’d be sunk. He thought about dumping it in the East River, but the prospect of throwing away $300 made him reconsider.

  Maybe I could go to Matta, that Chilean pal of Lam’s, he thought. He lives right down the block from Lam.

  He started walking north toward Tenth Street, but began having second thoughts along the way. How could the artist possibly help him? He wasn’t likely to have a spare three hundred just lying around, so he wasn’t going to take the stuff off Carlos’s hands. And how could he explain the whole business? What if the guy called the cops?

  Then he remembered that, before he met up with Lam and Matta, when he first sailed into New York harbor not knowing anyone in the city, one of his shipmates had taken him to East Harlem, where the bartenders and waiters spoke Spanish and there were even a few Cubans sprinkled in among the mostly Puerto Rican population.

  As they were enjoying a couple of cold Hatueys at the Agozar, his buddy pointed out one of them, a short young man in a sharp suit, arguing with a brassy girl at the bar.

  “Hard to believe,” his buddy said, “but that little runt is the big cheese around here. He runs the rackets out of the shop next door. Looks like one of his whores is holding out on him. If you want to make some extra cash, Joey’s always in the market for Cuban smokes and booze.”

  Carlos fished in his trouser pocket and found a nickel for the Third Avenue El.

  Twenty-Five

  Raul dropped a nickel in the pay phone next to the Port of Call men’s room and dialed the Lexington Social Club number. The phone was answered in the front room.

  “It’s me, Raul. Tell Joey to pick up.”

 
It was a few moments before the extension was picked up and Raul heard the other receiver disconnect. The boys weren’t too curious about his errand.

  “What have you got?”

  “Good news, Boss. It took some doing and it cost three fins and three beers, but I got a line on Lam that ties him to a merchant seaman who makes a regular run to South America.” He didn’t mention that his meeting with Carlos’s shipmate had been dumb luck. “From what my contact told me,” he continued, “I think Lam and this sailor were working a smuggling racket.”

  Joey interrupted him before he could give the details. “Sailor name of Carlos Solana, off the Princesa out of Cartagena, right?”

  Raul almost dropped the receiver. “How the fuck do you know that?”

  “I know because before I took your call, Carlos Solana, able seaman, was standing in my office holding a key of what he says is pure coke. He was supposed to deliver the stuff to Lam, but he got there too late.”

  “No shit! How did he get to you?”

  “He heard I was the man,” said Joey enigmatically. “Right now the bundle is on my desk and Carlos is cooling his heels in the front room. You can come back, I got all the information I need.”

  After he hung up, Joey took a switchblade out of the desk drawer and made a small hole in the package. He moistened a fingertip and inserted it. It came away with a coating of white powder, which he rubbed on his gums. A smile lit up his face. “Excelente,” he murmured.

  Properly cut, this could be worth as much as $3,000 on the street. Maybe more if he could connect to one or two of the midtown nightclubs. Pulling a roll of Scotch tape out of the drawer, he repaired the hole. He pressed the call button, and Carlos was escorted back into the office. His distress was obvious.