The Monkey Rope

by Stephen Lewis

  “Later I find the body. I think about cutting it up and tossin’ it in the incinerator. But I don’t have no saw. So I call the cops and disappear,” he said, and then he was gone into the darkness.

  Seymour opened the outside door just enough to let his body through and then headed for a walkway about a hundred feet away that was still lit. When he was almost there, a shadow appeared and took human form. It circled behind him, and as he turned toward the movement something hard struck his ankles and he felt himself falling. He tried to catch himself, but a fist drove into his face. After the first kick, he hardly felt the thuds against his ribcage.

  * * * *

  “Looks like somebody was trying to tell you something.” Detective Rosenberg leaned over him and offered a handkerchief. Seymour was sitting, braced against the back of a bench. He could see the detective’s car, its red light flashing in the darkness. He took the handkerchief and dabbed at the blood flowing from the corner of his mouth. He tried a smile, but his lips were too swollen.

  “I guess so,” he managed to say. “And what do you think he wanted me to know?”

  Rosenberg shrugged.

  “Did he take anything?”

  Seymour ran his hands through his pockets and then shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so,” Rosenberg said. “It didn’t look like that kind of business.”

  Seymour stood up and fought back the dizziness. His ribs throbbed.

  “Maybe I should call an ambulance,” Rosenberg said. “Don’t worry about reporting this, or anything like that, I can take care of that.”

  Seymour tried to stop his head from spinning.

  “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “How’d you get here so fast?”

  Rosenberg smiled.

  “Let’s just say I was in the neighborhood. Maybe looking for the same guy you were.”

  “Well, if you find him, you’d better be prepared to duck. There’s a guy lying there in the basement, who didn’t.”

  The detective frowned.

  “Maybe I’m getting a step too slow.”

  “Or maybe Goode is just that much faster.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll take you home. You got a big day coming up. The preliminary report on the physical evidence should be on O’Riley’s desk in the morning.”

  * * * *

  Seymour waited for the alarm clock to ring. Rosalie was sleeping lightly next to him. Every once in a while, she would open her eyes and ask how he was. He would force a grim smile through his swollen lips and close his eyes and pretend to sleep.

  Every breath jolted his ribcage. He timed these reminders of pointed leather crashing against his flesh so that their predictability became almost soothing, but his mind jumped from one half-formed idea to another. He stared hard at the ceiling, dimly lit by the glow from his clock, until he could find the thin crack and follow it back to the corner where it disappeared in a spider’s web. He stared until his eyes hurt, and then he closed them.

  He leaned over, turned the alarm off and tried to slide out of bed. He grunted as he lifted his body up. Rosalie stirred and opened her eyes.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

  “Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might as well do something useful, like fix some breakfast.”

  “You could have asked me, you know.”

  He took a deep breath before trying to respond and doubled over. He felt like a truck had just rolled over his chest, and he fought to catch his breath.

  “What you should do,” she said, “is go to the hospital and get x-rayed. You’ve probably got two or three broken ribs.”

  For reasons he could not explain himself, he found her concern irksome.

  “We’ll make breakfast together,” he said, “and then you’ll try to check on Lois again, at least see if you can locate the kid. And I’ll take the train in to O’Riley’s office.”

  “If I didn’t think it would hurt you too much, I’d sit on you so you couldn’t go anywhere today.”

  He felt his annoyance dissipate, and he pretended to be considering her suggestion.

  “Maybe we can try that tonight,” he said.

  * * * *

  “Lipp, why don’t you do yourself a favor and let me send you to a hospital.” O’Riley offered his wolf smile, full fanged. “Of course, I’m terribly sorry for what happened to you, but you can’t expect me to know anything about it.”

  Seymour straightened himself in the plush chair, wishing that it offered more support for his back, and leaned his arms on O’Riley’s polished desk.

  “I don’t know what I expect,” he said slowly. “I was hoping for some simple, straight-up truth. Maybe I came to the wrong place.”

  O’Riley chuckled. He was unflappable. Seymour had to give him that. He would be very difficult in court, Seymour thought. The prosecutor seemed to be right with him.

  “You know,” he said, “I was also wondering what it would be like facing you. I rather like the idea.”

  “What makes you think that was on my mind?”

  “The look on your face. I’ve seen it before.” O’Riley closed his eyes in self-satisfaction for a moment. “Many times.”

  “Gas,” Seymour said.

  O’Riley focused on him.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said.

  “The look you were just meditating on,” Seymour said slowly, “it was gas.”

  “I see,” O’Riley muttered. He picked a paper out of a stack on the side of his desk and shoved it toward Seymour. “In the interests of full disclosure, counselor,” he said.

  Seymour scanned the documents, which constituted the medical examiner’s report, items recovered from the scene listed by place of origin, scrapings from the victim’s neck, her abdomen, her vagina.

  “It’s wonderful,” he said, “how a human being becomes the repository for evidence, all classified from head to toe.”

  “An autopsy is much worse, organs slapped on a table, weighed, poked at.” For once, O’Riley seemed to be voicing a straight thought.

  Seymour ran his finger down the list.

  “Well, in this case, an autopsy would have clarified some things. Like cause of death.”

  The prosecutor did not hesitate.

  “In this game, we play the cards we are dealt. There was no way our Mr. Goode was going to sit still for an autopsy. Oh, we could have gotten one, but you know.”

  “Yes, I do, the clock is ticking, election less than a week away, and all those TV spots to be written and shot.” He studied the prosecutor’s face. “Speaking of time, you know, are you charging Junior or not? You can’t hold him much more, or are you preparing his makeup?”

  “One step at a time, counselor,” O’Riley soothed. “I’ve just gotten this material, and as you have noted, regrettably, it’s inconclusive in some respects. Semen removed from her seems to have come from two different individuals.”

  “Emily did get around. Even if it were only Junior’s, it wouldn’t prove much,” Seymour responded.

  “As long as it wasn’t her husband’s we have something. And we do have some hard stuff here. Cause of death appears to be strangulation, although the abdominal wounds cannot be ruled out. That, plus all the circumstantial stuff.” He shoved a list of names in front of Seymour. “The start of a witness list,” he said.

  Seymour did not look at the paper.

  “What’s the tune we’re dancing to O’Riley? Charge my man or let him walk.”

  “The tune, I’m afraid, is one you’re not going to want to hear. We have, as you know in our custody, a Pedro Rivera who, we believed, killed a John, and this same Mr. Rivera, when apprehended, had in his possession a credit card belonging to one Seymour Lipp.”

  “Apparently Mr. Rivera gets around, too.”

  O’Riley smiled.

  “As do you, apparently.”

  “You know that’s a piece of fluff. There are a dozen ways he could have come into possession of a card I lost. With my wallet,
weeks ago.”

  O’Riley’s face hardened.

  “You do know how fluff plays in the tabloids and on the tube.”

  “What is it exactly that you want?”

  “That’s better. Your client to negotiate. Quickly.”

  “Failing that?”

  “We’ll charge him with everything I can think of.” The prosecutor’s tone was flat.

  “That’s a crap shoot, and you know it. I can hold up DNA sampling of Junior for a long time.”

  O’Riley shrugged.

  “I don’t have too many other options at this point.”

  “Yes, you do, one more.” Seymour pointed to the medical examiner’s report. “You didn’t mention the tissue under the broken fingernails.”

  “I didn’t mention it because it doesn’t match anything else found on the body.”

  “But I know what it does match to.”

  O’Riley’s eyes widened.

  “Haven’t you guessed?” Seymour asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “And Rosenberg is on that one.”

  “Only problem,” Seymour said, “is Mr. Gomez has an explanation.”

  O’Riley sat back in his chair as though contemplating an item he might purchase if the price were right.

  “A good one?” he asked.

  Seymour shrugged.

  “I can’t buy it absolutely.”

  O’Riley leaned forward.

  “Maybe you won’t have to,” he said.

  * * * *

  Seymour rummaged through the refrigerator and discovered a container of lo mein. He opened it up and smelled it, then he dumped it into a pot with a little water, and put it on a low heat. He lay down on the sofa, thinking that he would just close his eyes until the food was ready, but he awoke to Rosalie’s lips on his forehead.

  “Your dinner has melted into the pot,” she said. “Anyway I’ve brought us some pizza.” She took Seymour’s hand.

  “I haven’t been able to find a trace of Lois, or the baby.” She paused. “Well, that’s not exactly true.”

  Seymour took her wrist and squeezed.

  “Well,” he demanded.

  She stepped back, and now her eyes flashed.

  “If it’s so damned important to you, what’s happened to her, why don’t you track her down yourself. You must know how I feel about her, and this whole business. If it weren’t for Junior, and the baby, I’d let her fall off the side of the earth. God, I’d even push her over the edge.”

  The blood rushed to his head, and he realized that not only was he angry that she would attack him, but he was also ashamed. His guilt rose in his throat, like a hot lump of half-digested food. What could he expect from her, after all. Was she Saint Rosalie? They were more than lovers. The strands of the knot that joined them twined through their lives. He knew that Junior and Lois loomed as dark shadows for both of them, but what he had not admitted, even to himself until this moment, was that Lois’ shadow was more than a darkening screen. It called to him in the black reddened by lust. That is why he had sent Rosalie, with no concern for her feelings, to look after Lois. To protect himself. The lump in his throat coalesced, hard and bitter. He pulled Rosalie to him and embraced her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Then you do understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then,” she said. “I believe you do. And I’ll try again tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to. If it costs too much.”

  Her jaw set in determination.

  “There’s my niece. She’s still an innocent. I’m doing it for her. Understand that. Not for you, or for us. For her.”

  He waited, but when she remained quiet, he asked.

  “What did you find out?”

  She shrugged.

  “Like, I said, not much. The place was locked tight, curtains drawn. I asked the kids hanging out in front, but they didn’t have anything to say. Except one. He smirked a little, muttered something about a dog, a very large dog. So I walked around the house, and I heard this thud against the back door, like it was going to be knocked off its hinges, and then the thing began to bark and growl, you know, the way guard dogs do. So I left.”

  “Let’s work this mess out a step at a time,” he said. “If I read O’Riley right, he’s not going to charge your brother.”

  “He’s going to go after Gomez?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  She nodded, her eyes clear and determined.

  “What’s the problem, then? You can’t believe that story he told you, that at the least you know is a lie, the part about Emily and you. Right?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Then, if that’s the case, let O’Riley do his job. And Junior will be out, your accounts will be squared, and we can move on. Together.”

  “Is it that easy?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, her eyes averted, “I wish it were.”

  * * * *

  After dinner, they sat at the kitchen table. Seymour sipped his coffee with one hand while drumming the table with the other. Rosalie’s face was tight with a slight tremor on her lips She took his free hand to her breast.

  “Maybe,” she said, “ we should just let it be.”

  He had had the same thought but he had dismissed the idea in the recognition that he was unable to state more than one simple fact of which he could be sure. He knew that Emily Levine was dead, but in his mind, Goode, O’Riley, and, of course, Junior, had become an unholy trinity, each pulling on a separate string that yanked him in a different direction. He wanted to rely on Rosalie as a fixed center among the disparate pressures, but her suggestion now unsettled him.

  “I just can’t do that,” he said. “I didn’t tell you before, but I stopped at my office before I came home, and I went down to the basement where I met the new night custodian. He showed me the spot on the floor where she lay, and he told me that his boss had told him to scrub that damned floor clean, but he said, somehow, no matter how hard he scrubbed the stains wouldn’t come out. Now he just mops around that spot. Won’t go near it.”

  Anger flashed on Rosalie’s face.

  “Has it occurred to you that everybody else seems more than willing to mop around that spot and to go on with their lives?”

  “Sure, it has.” He heard the tension in his voice and decided to let it pick his words. “The question is, are you one of those?”

  “How can you think that?” She shifted her weight away from him. “What I’m saying is that we have our lives to think of. Together.” She paused. “Don’t we?”

  He closed the distance between them, her words like a light in the darkness of his suspicion, but not strong enough to dispel all the shadows. It would have to be, he told himself, enough.

  * * * *

  Rosalie had insisted that they try again to track down Lois and the baby. “We can agree on that, can’t we?” she had demanded. “If nothing else, we have to try to find my niece.”

  However, when they stood in front of the house, their way into the alley leading to the basement apartment was blocked by a muscular teenager, one that Seymour recognized from previous visits. He had placed himself in their path, and a few of his younger brothers and sisters or friends stood behind him. They did not look like they intended to be moved.

  “Let me try,” Rosalie said. “At least I know his name.”

  “Martin, you remember me. I’m Rosalie Constantino. We just want to see how the baby is.” She turned to Seymour. “You remembered the present, didn’t you.” She smiled at the teenager. “You know it’s her birthday coming up soon.”

  “Don’t be jivin’ me. Her birthday don’t come for two, three months. ‘Sides, don’t be callin’ me no Martin. Folks ‘round here be callin’ me Hercules. You hear what I’m sayin’?”

  “So much for the friendly approach,” Rosalie whispered to Seymour.

  “Okay, Hercules,” Seymour said with a heavy emphasis on the middle syllable of the name, “now, let’s
try it a different way.” He moved his body to within an inch of Hercules. He was a little taller than the teenager, and he stared down at him. “You got a problem with us walking around to the back?”

  Hercules held his ground.

  “No, I ain’t got no problem,” he drawled. “I’m lookin’ at a man with a problem.”

  Seymour shifted his weight forward so that he pressed against Hercules’ chest.

  “I’m about out of patience,” he said. “Now, we’re going back, the easy way, or the hard way, doesn’t make any difference to me, but it might to you.”

  Hercules’ body stiffened and he pushed Seymour back.

  “Now, don’t be lookin’ for no trouble. The lady said nobody goes back there.”

  “What’s it your business?” Seymour growled.

  “Maybe it ain’t, and maybe it is, and maybe I do her a favor, and she be doin’ Hercules, doin’ him real good.” He leered, and rubbed his crotch. Seymour exploded. He brought his knee up hard into Hercules’ groin and then lowered his shoulders into him. The teenager staggered back, and while he was off balance Seymour grabbed him by the throat. Hercules started to struggle but Seymour increased the pressure.

  “A little more and you’ll stop breathing,” he said.

  “Back off, man, I don’t mean you no hurt.”

  Seymour relaxed his grip on Hercules’ throat and shoved him back so that he landed sitting on the top of a garbage pile.

  “Don’t says as I didn’t warn you. Maybe the lady’s busy. With your Daddy.”

  Seymour hurled himself at Hercules who scrambled to get off the pail. Before he could, Seymour took his shoulders and pushed down.

  “You got a bad mouth, friend,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to wear your balls for a bowtie.”

  Hercules contented himself with a scowl, and Seymour and Rosalie walked up the alley. The other kids separated slowly before them.

  “She ain’t home,” Hercules called after them. “Ain’t been home a couple of days. Just the damned dog howling, and the baby screamin’.”

  Seymour stared at Hercules for a second and then ran to the back of the house. Rosalie was a step behind him. He stopped when he reached the storm doors leading down to the basement. They were unlocked, and he threw them open. He started down the stairs and heard the dog growl and then thud against the lower door. He hurled himself against it and pain shot through his chest. He sat down on the bottom step and Rosalie crouched beside him.