The Monkey Rope

by Stephen Lewis

  When he found the house, several blocks farther up the road, he saw that the surface of the snow around it showed no tracks of man or vehicle. He parked the car and approached the house, knowing before he got close enough to see that the old man would not be there. The house was boarded up, and a realtor’s sign had been driven into the ground near the front door. Seymour brushed the snow from his face, and walked slowly around the house to the back. At least the surf did not disappoint him. It thundered hard against the shore, and he imagined the angry black curls of the ocean beneath the blowing flakes.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned around. An old woman, a coarse shawl wrapped around her head and face peered back at him.

  “He’s gone,” she said, “put the house up for sale a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know where he went.”

  “I’m an old friend,” Seymour said.

  The woman pulled the shawl from her eyes so that she could get a better look at him.

  “I used to work for him, some time ago, and since then I’ve tried to keep in touch.”

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  Seymour told her.

  “He left a message for you. He said to tell you that he was sorry.”

  “That’s all?”

  The old woman nodded sadly and shuffled off in the dark.

  Seymour made his way back to the car, got in, and rolled his window down. He sat for a long time listening to the surf, muted by the thick curtain of snow, and he imagined the vivid white crests of the waves turning in on themselves and burrowing into the soft belly of the cold, black water.

  Chapter Seven

  On the other side of the glass, Junior picked up the phone. Seymour waited, holding his own receiver to his ear, but all he heard was a loud crackling. Junior motioned for them to try again, and when they each picked up their receivers this time, the line was clear.

  “You have to wonder,” Seymour said, “how they can screw up a three-foot connection.”

  Junior’s face broke into a laugh.

  “Three feet, my ass,” he said into the phone. “This line has to go all the way to the recording booth and back. We probably caught some dude comin’ back from his coffee break.” He tapped his mouthpiece against the glass and then brought it back to his ear. “Ready when you-all are,” he drawled.

  Junior smiled again, and Seymour felt his own mouth widen for a moment. He checked himself and coughed into the phone.

  “Can I remind you that in a couple of days we have to appear for presentment and see what we can do about bail so that we can get you out of here. So maybe we should get down to business.”

  “Whatever you say, counselor. That’s what I’m paying you such big bucks for.”

  “You couldn’t pay me enough to take this case,” Seymour snapped.

  “Good thing, too,” Junior said smoothly, “as you know.” He knit his brows. “I’ve been meanin’ to ask you that, you know.”

  “Why I’m doing this?”

  Junior nodded, and Seymour sought an answer. Finally, he shrugged.

  “I don’t think I can tell you why. I wish I could, as much for me as you.”

  Junior grinned.

  “In my crowd, you’d be considered an ass.”

  “Maybe,” Seymour said, “that is why you’re on that side of the glass.”

  Junior’s eyes blazed.

  “Maybe it is, but I don’t think so any more than you do.”

  Seymour waved his hand to the side.

  “Let’s not argue that, for god’s sake, we don’t need a philosophical or psychological discussion right now.”

  “Right you are, as usual. Just so we understand each other. Anyway, like you said, down to business. I won’t need bail.”

  Seymour shook the phone as if by doing so the words would come right.

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  Junior’s face was perfectly serious.

  “It’s not gonna get that far. Listen closely. I’ve been pickin’ up some things while I’m in here, things about Gomez, that I’d like to check out. So why don’t you just relax, and try not to lose your self-respect, on my account.”

  “And since I’ll be relaxing, waiting for a rabbit to be pulled out of the hat, what should I be doing with my time?”

  “Keepin’ out of the way, man.” His eyes darkened and his lips tensed. “And lookin’ after Lois. You are keepin’ an eye on her, like you promised?”

  The lie died in Seymour’s mind before he could utter it.

  “I’m afraid that she’s not making that very easy.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I know she’s gonna do what she’s gonna do. It’s just the damned baby.” He paused, as though reflecting. “The hell with her. It’s the baby. Look, just do what you can, alright.”

  “I’ve already said that I would.”

  “Okay. Good.” He closed his eyes, apparently lost in thought.

  “Are you sure about this Gomez thing?”

  “Like I said, I’ve been hearin’ things, but inside you hear a lot of shit, so I gotta check it out. But if the word is righteous, he’s gonna fall.”

  Seymour took a deep breath.

  “Are you sure of this?”

  Junior nodded.

  Seymour’s memory flashed to Emily Levine’s abused body, the blood congealing on her white flesh, and he stared at the hard lines of Junior’s face.

  “Why the ‘fall’?” he asked. “Didn’t you tell me that you were sure he did it? Remember?”

  Junior shrugged.

  “Sometimes I can be right, too. You don’t have a lock on that.”

  “I want,” Seymour said slowly, putting his full weight on each word as though by doing so he could make Junior feel his intention, “to be right about you.”

  Junior’s gaze had narrowed to the space between them as Seymour spoke. He squeezed his receiver until the veins on his neck seemed to throb. His face was black with constrained fury.

  “The only thing you have to want,” Junior said through clenched teeth, “is for me to walk. And that means keepin’ out of the way.” His face relaxed into a bright smile. “That’s the easy way, and the right way. A smart man knows when he’s overmatched.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like Mr. Goode.”

  Junior leaned back in his chair, began to reply, and then looked over his shoulder at the guard who was indicating time was up. Seymour followed his eyes, and then shuffled his papers together.

  “There is one more thing.” He considered how to make the request, but a guard was walking toward him. “Rosalie,” he said simply, “wants to see you.”

  Junior did not hesitate.

  “No way. Not until I’m out and this mess is over.”

  Seymour rode with the anger.

  “I don’t have her on a leash, you know.”

  “Maybe you’d better get one,” Junior snapped. “But keep her away from me.”

  “Too late. She’s coming in right behind me,” he said and got up to leave.

  “I hope she ain’t wired,” Junior shouted at him.

  * * * *

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have talked to him,” Rosalie said. She and Seymour were waiting for the elevator in the visitor’s area. Her voice quivered. Seymour reached for her hand, but she pulled it away.

  “No,” she snapped. “I don’t need any more of that.” She leaned against the call button for the elevator. Seymour saw her shoulders heave, and when she turned to face him again, she was wiping the damp spots by her eyes with the tips of her fingers.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “but that’s how he treated me. Like the little kid sister. We’re all each of us has, really, but in his eyes I’m still the little girl, and he sees it as his job to make sure that I don’t fall, and to pick me up, and make nice, nice, right away if I should. I just can’t stand it.”

  Seymour moved his head back as though to remove himself from the circle of her anger. But he had to ask the question.

&
nbsp; “Did he say anything,” he sought for the right words, “about his involvement?”

  “You mean did he say whether he did it?” Her voice cut him. “Why are you playing lawyer with me? Now of all times.” She started to move away, but he held her arm.

  “Okay,” he said. “But I have to know.”

  She searched his eyes.

  “Don’t you think I have to, as well, and even more so?”

  He nodded.

  “He said that he didn’t do it.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  She averted her eyes for a moment, and when she again faced him, the pain seemed visibly etched on her face.

  “Please, don’t push me on this. He’s my brother. I want to believe him. But I can only tell you what he said.” She took a deep breath. “And he did say one more thing, something he thought you would understand.”

  Seymour leaned closer to her so that his face almost brushed against hers, but she moved away.

  “He said that the Gomez business was going ‘to go down real soon, but maybe with a bang’. Those were his words exactly. And ‘you should remember the easy road’.”

  “That’s a warning.”

  “Yes. And?”

  “Am I going to heed it? Where your brother is concerned I have a real problem doing that.”

  “I know,” she said, her voice soft with resignation. “But I think you should.” She took him by the arms. “I can’t ask you to explain why you must be so damned stubborn. But know that I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

  * * * *

  Several of the streetlights along the walkways in Gomez’s project were out. As Seymour made his way through the shadows, he saw that the lamps had been smashed and that pieces of glass littered the ground around the stanchions. He narrowed his eyes and stood still for several minutes, but he saw nothing, no movement, no people, and he realized that that was the problem. Something was wrong. Even on a cold winter’s night such as this, he had expected to find teenagers hanging out, and perhaps an adult or two returning home. Somebody. But he saw only shadows shifting like black skeletons suspended on invisible wires and stirred by the breeze into grotesque motions. At least, he thought, he had been able to convince Rosalie, over strenuous, objections, to look in on Lois, if not for Lois’ sake, then for her niece and for her brother. He wasn’t exactly sure why, maybe something in her manner after she spoke with Junior, but he wanted to do this one alone.

  After several wrong turns, he stumbled on the building and pushed the door open. The lobby light was on, but the elevator didn’t respond when he pushed the button. He found the stairs and started climbing them. His foot brushed against something soft and he jumped back. He didn’t move for a few seconds. His fingers slid on a thick, cold liquid. He brought his head closer and saw that it was a puddle of some indistinguishable Chinese food next to an overturned container he had stepped on. He kicked the container to the side and started up the steps again.

  Nobody answered his knock at the apartment door. He placed his ear against the door, but although he expected to hear the sound from the television, all was quiet. He stooped down to peer under the door, and the apartment inside appeared to be dark. He tried knocking again, waited, and then turned back to the stairway. He sat down on the landing, so that his body was hidden from the apartment door by the corner of the wall. After a few minutes he peered around the corner, and thought he saw the door move, just a little, and he pulled his head back. He heard nothing, and so he got up and walked to the door. Again, no one answered his knock. He returned to the landing and waited. Except for an occasional snatch of conversation drifting out from behind the other doors, the whole floor was quiet.

  He trotted down the stairs, and just as he reached the first floor landing he heard a sharp crack and then a muffled thud that seemed to come from the basement. He hesitated for a moment, but remembering the figure he had seen crouching there, he decided to chance it.

  The door to the basement was locked, and he banged his fist against it in frustration. As if in answer, the knob turned, and he pushed the door ajar. He sensed somebody on the other side, and so he hurled himself through the opening. He spun just in time to see a baseball bat crash against the floor. In the dim light he could see that the man holding the bat was Eddie Gomez. A few feet away, a large man lay crumpled in a heap.

  Eddie lifted the bat up over his head and stared at Seymour.

  “I thought you wanted to talk to me,” Seymour said, as he raised his arm in front of his face.

  Eddie stood motionless for a moment, his eyes staring hard at Seymour as though trying to remember, and then he eased the bat down. He leaned on it, much as he did his broom, and he cocked his head in his familiar gesture and cackled.

  “Esmeralda, she call you, no?” He glanced at the man on the floor. “But then how do I know that you are not with him?”

  “I’m not, and who the hell is that anyway?” Seymour kept his eyes on the bat.

  Gomez shrugged.

  “Just somebody,” he said.

  Seymour edged toward the man, and knelt down next to him.

  “Do you mind?” he asked.

  Eddie grinned.

  “Sure, go ahead. He ain’t gonna get up and go nowhere.”

  The man was lying face down, one arm twisted underneath him. He did not move while Seymour shoved him off the floor enough to pull out his wallet from his inside suit pocket, but Seymour did hear his slow breathing.

  “I no kill him,” Eddie offered. “I hit him here.” He motioned toward the back of his neck. “And not so hard.”

  Seymour found an ugly red bruise just above the collar line of the man.

  “He wanna get up in a while,” Eddie said, “but we be gone by then.”

  Seymour flipped through the billfold that contained a thick wad of hundreds, but nothing else, no credit cards or papers.

  “You don’t find nothin’ there,” Eddie said.

  “Did you take it?”

  “Take what? What do I want to take from him?” Eddie spat and the thick globule landed at the man’s feet.

  “The badge,” Seymour said.

  “You crazy? That man, he want old Eddie real bad. No fuckin’ badge.”

  Seymour understood. Of course, O’Riley wouldn’t come after Gomez. Not now. Maybe never, if he still thought he could nail Junior.

  “Do you think this guy’s got any friends in the neighborhood?” he asked.

  Eddie shrugged.

  “Sure. Lots of friends. Don’t matter. If they find me, I get them, one at a time, like him.” He lifted the bat and brought it down in a sharp, violent arc. “One at a time. As many as he send. Maybe,” he grinned, “the son-of-a-bitch come himself.”

  “You’d like that.”

  Eddie’s eyes turned cold.

  “Him, yeah, him I kill.” He wagged the bat in front of him like a hitter approaching the plate. “Baseball, it’s the American game, no?”

  Seymour wondered how long Gomez’s fuse was, and decided that the direct approach was best.

  “Like you killed his daughter?”

  Seymour tensed, but Eddie only brought his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes.

  “No, you got that wrong.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you think I have Esmeralda call you? To confess? What the hell I wanna do that for? When I didn’t do nothin’.”

  “So? What’s the deal?”

  Eddie cocked his head and spat. Seymour now recognized the mannerism, as just that, a kind of screen dropped down in front of the man.

  “No deal,” Gomez said. “I didn’t do nothin’, like I said, but I saw plenty.” He righted his head on his neck, and his eyes appeared bright and clear. “And what I saw was your friend, with his belt around her neck, and she had her eyes closed, and then she try to jump off him, but he just hold that belt real good.”

  “She was on top of him?”

  Gomez stared at him.

  “You never fuck that way?” he asked.
“Esmeralda, she too fat for that.”

  Seymour nodded, but Gomez seemed to have lost his concentration. He swung the bat in lazy circles, inches above the floor. After a few moments, his eyes found Seymour again.

  “Oh, you want all of it. Which I saw, all of it.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “That too, I tell you that.” He crouched as though he had seen an insect on the floor. “You smart guy. You know I didn’t just wind up in that building. I planned it. For a long time. I look at all the ads in the paper, and see the one about the new showroom, so I tell my parole officer, and he set it up for me. So I could be near her, watch her.”

  Seymour pushed, harder this time.

  “Like you did, when she was a cute little thing, when you couldn’t keep your hands off her?”

  This time Eddie reacted in a leap toward Seymour that brought them both crashing down on the hard cement floor. Seymour shoved against Eddie’s chest and squirmed free long enough to grab one end of the bat. Eddie slumped against the wall.

  “I never touched her. I used to show her things in the garden. That’s all. She get in trouble and say those things, but she lied.” He drew in a deep breath. “I just wanted to ask her.”

  “Why she lied?” Eddie nodded. “That’s all?”

  “Maybe not, maybe something else,” Gomez said. “But I didn’t get no chance. I used to watch her with him. How he give her the stuff, and then they do it. But this time, she only wanted the stuff. Said she didn’t need him for nothin’ else. Said,” he paused, “she got somebody new in mind.” He leaned toward Seymour so that his face was inches away. “She tell him, she want you next.”

  Seymour got up with the bat in his hand and tossed it into the shadows. He heard it crack against the wall.

  “You almost had me believing you,” he said. “But you’ve left out a few things. Like how your arm got scratched up.”

  “I said there may be something else. I tried to talk to her. That night. But she was strung out. Waitin’. She needed it.” He stood up, his eyes focused on the corner where Seymour had thrown the bat. “I put my hand on her shoulder, just so she wouldn’t walk away, and she clawed me, and I tried to hold her harder, and then I heard him comin’, so I let her go.” He stopped for a moment.