No Lesser Plea

by Robert Tanenbaum

  “Butch, what if he’s from Detroit or Jersey? Donnie didn’t say what prison. I mean other states got prisons.”

  “Then we’re fucked. For that matter, he could have split town. But, I figure Louis for somebody who’s got to control everything. Look at how successful he’s been. You think he’s going to pick a sidekick who’s going to split, who has any real options. No, we’re looking for a local mutt, Sonny. Just a regular anonymous local mutt. Look, let’s check the parole records. He’s a first offender, he had to make parole, right. One of these guys ever did straight time it’d make headlines.”

  Dunbar looked skeptical. “This is another long shot, Butch.”

  “Shit, Sonny, a long shot is the only shot we got. And I was right once, wasn’t I?”

  Dunbar sighed. “I’ll check it out,” he said.

  Number 563 Boynton Street was one of three apartment houses on the block still occupied by human beings. The name of the building, graven in a marble lintel, was Lancaster. In its better days it had sheltered a generation of Irish, then a generation of Jews. The other buildings had been torched by vandals, or by their owners for insurance. Some of these had their windows blocked with glittering tin sheets. Others had been demolished and turned into fields of gray and red lumps, from which sprang jungles of hardy weeds. The streets sparkled with crushed glass.

  So many buildings had been cleared that Dunbar, climbing out of his dusty white Chevy, once again had the odd impression he often got in this part of the Bronx, of not being in the city anymore, but out west, among the classic landscapes of the horse opera. In the vacant plains of flattened rubble, the buildings stood like weathered buttes. It was one of the few parts of New York where you could see almost the whole dome of the sky from street level. It always gave Dunbar the shivers.

  Karp had been right. There was an armed robber who had been released from Attica at just the right time. And who looked right. And who had the right name. Dunbar patted his gun, unconsciously, and entered the fetid hallway of 563, heading for Apartment 505, the last known address of Preston Elvis.

  Dunbar was about to ask the girl who opened the door if her momma or daddy was home, until he saw her swelling belly and the little boy who clung to her pink housecoat. This thin child was the lady of the house. He flashed his shield.

  “Police. Are you Mrs. Elvis?”

  “What you want? I ain’t done nothin’.”

  “Could I come in?”

  Silently, she backed away from the doorway. Mother and child stared at him with liquid, sad brown eyes. The living room was the same as all the others he had been in. A lumpy couch—this one was green plastic—and a big color TV. A game show was blaring: a capering man was giving things away to white people.

  “That’s a nice new TV, there,” said Dunbar. “Preston got that for you, did he?”

  “Who?”

  “Preston Elvis. This guy,” said Dunbar, showing the mug shot. “He lives here, right?”

  “No, nobody live here, jus us.”

  “But, he comes here a lot, doesn’t he? I mean I could find out lots of ways, but it’s easier if you tell me. And, shit, honey, I ain’t from welfare. I don’t give a rat’s ass who lives here or when. I just need to talk to him.”

  “He ain’t been ’round for a long while,” she said, sullenly.

  Dunbar looked through the apartment. There was a pair of men’s shoes near the couch. The bedroom and bathroom were empty, but there were male clothes scattered around and in the closet, and there were recently used shaving things in the bathroom.

  He went back to the woman. The boy had returned to watching TV.

  “What’s your name, girl?”

  “Vera. Higgs.”

  “OK, Vera. I’ll tell you the truth, now. I don’t want to take you downtown. I don’t want to take your little boy away. And I definitely don’t want to tell the welfare that a man’s been living here. OK? But all that is gonna come down, if I don’t get to talk with Preston real soon? So tell me, where’s he at?”

  “He workin’. He ain’t done nothin’.”

  “Right, and where does he work?”

  “I don know. He never tell me shit about what he be up to. Someplace, down in the city. No lie, Mister, I don know.” Her voice became shrill and tears started.

  Dunbar believed her. He thought, OK, Sherlock, time to play detective. What he didn’t want was to have to stake out this shithole, maybe for hours or days even, if Elvis decided not to come home for a while. He looked more closely at the miserable dwelling, opening drawers, peering into cabinets, willing something to pop out at him. There was a pile of newspapers on the kitchen table. Idly, Dunbar picked one up and glanced at the headline, something about black leaders selling out their third-world brothers in the struggle against imperialism. Late-breaking news. Then something clicked.

  He showed the paper to the woman. “Who reads this paper, you?”

  She shrugged. “He bring them here.”

  “He ever talk about a dude name of Mandeville Louis? Or Stack?” Shrug. Dunbar said, “I’ll be back.” He left the apartment and rushed down the stairs. It could be a coincidence that Preston Elvis had lying around his apartment twenty or thirty copies of the Claremont Press, the same newspaper that Mandeville Louis had worked for. But somehow Dunbar doubted it.

  “Mister Barlow? Emerson Dunbar,” said Dunbar, showing his ID. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

  The editorial offices of the Claremont Press occupied a storefront on the avenue of the same name, and consisted of a small shop immediately off the street, where you could buy the Press and a selection of books and records, or place classified ads; and, behind a glass door, one large room, which held a jumble of battered desks, filing cabinets, and other necessaries of journalism. Dunbar was standing at one of these desks, talking to James Barlow, the managing editor of the Claremont Press.

  Barlow, a chubby, tan man with an Afro and ferocious side whiskers was dressed in a bush jacket and a black T-shirt. He regarded the police ID with studied repugnance.

  “Why don’t you pigs leave us alone? The fucking FBI was here last week. I’m being followed, you know that? Two little blondies in a gray car. You see this phone? Tapped. The entire power of the fascist racist state is ranged against us, but we shall continue to speak and print the truth. Now, beat it! Go fuck with the Times for a change.”

  “Mister Barlow, I’m not trying to harass you. This is a routine investigation of a routine crime. All I want to know is, have you seen this man?” He held out the mug shot of Preston Elvis. Barlow barely glanced at it.

  “No,” he snapped.

  “You sure? Why don’t you take another look? We have reason to believe he worked here.”

  “I don’t need to. One oppressed nigger is the same as another. And if you think I’m going to help an oreo pig track down a brother, you’re dumber than you look.”

  “Take it easy, Barlow. I gave fifty bucks to the NAACP in 1969.”

  “Get out of here!”

  “Honest, Barlow, I could care less about this guy’s politics. And they promised me if I broke this case I’d make sergeant—don’t you want to see the brothers get ahead on the force?”

  “Brother, my ass! When the oppressed peoples rise up it’ll be class traitors and running dogs like you who’re gonna go to the wall first.”

  “I can hardly wait. Lookie here, Lumumba, I’d like to stay and bullshit with you about the class struggle and all, but there’s this guy who seems to have aced about a hundred guys, most of ’em blacker than you, and I’d like to put him away, and this dude Elvis is gonna help me do it. Now, I asked you nice to help me, and you told me to get fucked so what do you say, we go along downtown and I’ll ask you again?”

  Barlow jumped to his feet. “Oh, now the pig shows his true colors. You want to take me to jail? Go right ahead. I been in jail before.” He held his hands out rigidly, wrists together. “Go head, muthafucka! Take me in! Hey, people! Uncle Tom is gonn
a arrest my black ass. If I get shot trying to escape, remember his face.”

  There were about twenty people in the large room, and at Barlow’s outburst they stopped what they were doing and began to move ominously toward Barlow’s desk, making belligerent noises.

  Dunbar said, “Oh, for cryin’ out loud, Barlow! Get real!” Dunbar knew he couldn’t afford to start trouble. The crowd was obviously not going to let him take Barlow in without a scuffle, and if he called for backup, somebody was going to ask what he was doing there in the first place, which meant he would either have to lie, or get chewed out for wasting time on a dead case.

  He snorted in disgust and pushed his way past the growling revolutionary cadres and out of the main office. He heard the crowd cheering as he swung past the glass door.

  The detective loitered despondently in the bookstore for a while. There was a good deal on the collected works of Kim II Sung in twenty-five volumes, but Dunbar was able to restrain himself. He had just about become resigned to sitting in his car on Boynton Street until Elvis should decide to show, when he happened to look back into the office.

  Everyone had gone back to work after their revolutionary victory. Barlow was dialing a number, reading it out of a small, black book. He looked around furtively as he waited for a connection. He was on the phone for no more than a few seconds of conversation. Then he hung up, put the book in a desk drawer and locked it.

  Dunbar thought that was funny. Old Jim Barlow did not seem like a terse man. Probably talk your ear off about the oppressed working classes while ordering a cup of coffee. On the other hand, if he were telling somebody that the cops were after him and he thought his phone was tapped, he might be brief for once.

  Dunbar really didn’t want to sit on Boynton Street. Which is why he waited until the place cleared out that night, broke in, picked the desk lock, and copied down all the names, addresses, and phone numbers in Barlow’s little book. All of the thirty-two names were nicknames or first names and initials—Chili T., Joe Q., Chingo Ray, Che M., and like that. Very conspiratorial. As he looked over the list, something almost rang a bell in Dunbar’s head. He looked at the list for several minutes trying to make something happen, and failing. Then he locked everything up again and went home to Queens.

  The next morning, early, Dunbar went to Centre Street to let Karp know what he had found. Karp was in court. As he left Karp’s office, he ran into Marlene Ciampi in the hallway. As soon as he saw her, the bell finally rang.

  “Hey, Champ. What does the name ‘Chingo Ray’ mean to you?”

  “Chingo Ray? A.K.A. Charles Hargreaves, A.K.A. Charlie the Bomber. He’s the guy who got blown up in the townhouse. I’m prosecuting his buddies. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, nothing much. His name turned up in an address book I picked up on uptown. He’s waxed, you say?”

  “A probable. We know he was at the townhouse the night it blew up. They recovered a male body—in smithereens—from the wreckage. It could be him. On the other hand, he’s a slippery bastard and smart as hell. It’s not beyond him to have set up the explosion and leave us with a plausible stiff, to cover his tracks. Also, the bomb that blew away that judge’s secretary. Very similar to letter bombs Charlie made in the past. So … tell me about this address book. Where did you get it?”

  “Just stumbled over it, is all. Look, Champ. I gotta go detect. Catch you later.”

  As he walked to his car, Dunbar thought hard. He had asked Barlow about Elvis. The call made right after he left Barlow must have been triggered by his questions. He didn’t think Barlow was calling out for a pizza; he was calling somebody in the book. Elvis’s name was not in the book, therefore he was calling somebody connected with Elvis. Thirty-two addresses to check out. He decided to start with the late Chingo Ray, resident, according to his little list, at 351 Avenue A.

  Nobody answered his knock at the apartment on Avenue A. He slipped the lock and went in, pistol drawn. The place looked like a typical East Village crash—mattresses on the floor, a sleeping bag, filthy sheets, garbage bags full of rotting stuff, graffiti sprayed on the walls, political and head-shop posters. A cheap table and chair stood in the center of the main room. The apartment was deserted, but Dunbar was delighted to see evidence of hurried flight—drawers half open, clothes strewn around, a pot of coffee, and dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.

  Dunbar put his gun away and checked out the main room. The floor around the table was covered with short snippings of bell wire in different colors. On the table itself were several large manila envelopes. These were stamped and postmarked from different cities— Berkeley, Chicago, Detroit. Oddly, they were not addressed. Dunbar poked around some more. By the stinking trash bags he found more wire, some thin springs and a crumpled package of peel-off labels. It looked like somebody was going through a lot of trouble to create envelopes that could be made to look like they were coming from different places. Dunbar felt a chill run through his body. It had just occurred to him why somebody might want to take such trouble. He grabbed the envelopes and ran out of the apartment without bothering to close the door.

  It took him nearly an hour to drive up to Boynton Street, running lights, cutting people off, pounding his fist on the wheel, and cursing every vehicle in front of him. His most vehement curses were reserved for himself. With the wisdom of hindsight it was clear that, once Elvis’s dwelling had been located, someone should have watched it continually thereafter. Now, for some reason, Elvis had formed an association with terrorists. Who could have figured it? Stick-up artists don’t usually move in political circles. The more Dunbar thought about it, the crazier it became.

  He screeched to a stop at 563 Boynton, flung himself out of the car, and raced up the stairs. At the Higgs apartment he yanked out his pistol and used it to pound on the door.

  When Vera Higgs opened the door a crack, Dunbar threw his weight against it, knocking her to the floor. He stormed through the apartment, kicking through doors, tossing the bed, yanking out drawers. Nothing—no Elvis, no envelopes.

  He returned to the living room. The TV was on and the child sat on the floor in front of it. Vera Higgs was just climbing to her feet.

  “You knock me down. You din hafta.”

  “Right, sorry, it was an accident. Look, Vera, where’s Preston? I’m not fooling now. I got to know where he is.”

  Sulkily, she walked slowly to the ratty couch and sat down.

  “He ain’t here.”

  “Goddamn, I know that! Where is he?”

  “I don know. He lef.”

  “When? When did he leave?”

  “Bout an hour, somethin’ like that.”

  “Oh, Christ! Where to?”

  “He din say. He never tell me.”

  That figured. Dunbar pulled one of the manila envelopes out of his jacket pocket and held it up.

  “Vera, did he have an envelope like this?”

  “I don have to tell you no thin’. He say, you come back here, I don have to tell you nothin’.”

  Dunbar gave a strangled cry. He went over to the little boy, picked him up, and put him on the couch next to his mother. Then he went over to the TV and pointed his pistol at “Lust for Life.” He cocked the hammer.

  “Lady, you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m gonna waste your TV. I swear it!” Dunbar shouted. The child began to blubber.

  She got to her feet, her eyes widening in terror.

  “No! Don! I got my programs comin’!”

  Dunbar put up his gun and eased the hammer down. “OK, what about the envelope?”

  “Yeah, he got one—it look the same, but it be real fat, thick like.”

  “Was there an address on it? Can you remember the address?”

  “No, but, like, Pres, he tol me to write one on it, on account of I got real good handwritin’. The teacher, she be sayin’ I could be a schoolteacher, I got such fine writin’. But I had to quit school, you know?”

  “Right,” said Dunbar, moving closer to her and tryin
g to control his voice. “Now, Vera, can you remember the name and address you wrote on the envelope?”

  “I don know. I copy it down. He done have it writ out, you know?”

  “Try, Vera.”

  “It somethin’ like Carl, the las name. And some street like Senn, San, somethin like that. It start with a C.”

  “Senn? Was it Centre Street, One hundred Centre Street?”

  “Yeah, that it. I think.”

  I’m so stupid, I should turn in my potsy and be a fucking doorman, thought Dunbar.

  “Vera, baby, tell me. The name was Karp, Roger Karp, right?”

  She smiled for the first time. “Yeah! Thas right! Karp.”

  “Where’s your phone?”

  “They cut it off,” she said. “Hey, I don be in no trouble jus for writin’? I din do nothin’.”

  But Dunbar was already gone.

  Marlene Ciampi was looking for an excuse to see Karp again, and make up. At the same time she despised herself for wanting to. I can’t believe it, she thought for the millionth time. I’m having an affair with a married man, who works where I work. It was so degrading—like the secretary screwing the boss, like a public convenience or one of his perquisites. Here’s your big office, Mr. Karp, your special couch, your walnut bookcases, your leather judge’s chair. Oh, yeah, you want some pussy? Ciampi, put down that case file and drop your pants.

  Then again, she felt, she feared, she was truly in love. She could feel herself flush when he came near her. Her belly gave a jump even when she saw his name written. When she awakened in her own apartment, she felt empty, and it took all her self-restraint not to rush to the phone and call him.

  And she couldn’t tell anyone about it. Most of her friends from high school were married and had settled suburban lives. They’d think she was a freak. Her family? Mama, I’m fucking this married man. No, he’s not Italian. He’s not Catholic, either. Instant coronary. Her professional friends? Out of the question. That’s all she needed, this story to get around the office.

  She rubbed her face and tried to shake these thoughts out of her head. To work. Maybe he’d call. She turned to her brimming in-basket. Sorting through the papers, she noticed that they were still sending her Karp’s mail.