And little was exactly what Waldo was equipped to teach her.
Twice a week, after work, Rose stopped at the brown-stone house and climbed to the door of Waldo’s studio. There he taught her the absolute of the dance... the time step. She rehearsed it to the grinding victrola, dancing in her street shoes, wearing a cheap bathing suit she had purchased instead of rehearsal clothes. After the time step, came a few simple tap steps with boogy variations. Rose practiced furiously, because the end was in sight... there was little left to learn. Next the high kick, then the fan kick, and, finally, chainé turns.
After twelve lessons, over a period of six weeks, she had learned enough. She continued, however, to visit Waldo’s studio for three more trips, climbing the stairs, practicing the steps with him. As they danced, the gray indefiniteness of middle age fell from him, and he told her stories of Broadway... and Shubert Alley; the great and the near-great he had seen, and with whom he had worked on the stage.
After each lesson she gravely offered him her dollar, and he accepted it, sliding it quickly in his pocket, drawing his lip down tightly over his teeth. On the last night, giving him the money, she said, ‘I’m leaving for Los Angeles tomorrow, Waldo. I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing you for a while.’
‘Good luck, kid,’ he said. ‘Get what you want... and get it while you’re young.’
‘I owe you sixty dollars, Waldo,’ she replied. ‘I won’t forget it. I’ll send it to you just as soon as I get a job.’
‘Forget it,’ he said grandly. ‘You don’t owe me a penny. Some day I’ll be able to say I started out a star.’ But there was a look in his face, a hollowness in his eyes, that frightened her because she recognized the loneliness she saw there as a part of her loneliness too. And so she had taken him back to her boardinghouse room, and he had stayed the night. She hadn’t cared what the landlady would say, because she was leaving San Francisco the next day.
But she had never been able to forget Waldo entirely; she remembered with pity his flabby arms and girl-like body on legs of steel, his funny, half-crushed monkey face when he had taken out his teeth. She remembered, vividly too, the knocking on her door and the voice of her landlady... reviling and threatening, as the grimy light of dawn filtered into her room, unkindly touching Waldo’s frightened face and red-rimmed eyes.
In Los Angeles she had found a job in a four-girl chorus line, featured in a small Mexican night club. Mexicans like blondes, and within two weeks she had sent Waldo his sixty dollars.
These are some of the things you remember. But you don’t remember them if you can help it. You try to forget them. You take your life, what years you have left, and you attempt to shape it so nothing recalls these memories. By not remembering them, they no longer exist, because they exist only in your own mind. And without recall there is nothing. At the same time, however, they must never happen again. You must be very careful that they never happen again. And to accomplish this, it is necessary to say things and explain things.
But you can never explain such things... exactly... because certain things themselves cannot be explained, and because they are unexplainable, you must keep them to yourself. How then could she explain to Rafferty what she meant?
She closed the top of the suitcase, and turned back to Rafferty, pausing to light a cigarette. Finally she said, ‘Remember, way back when we first met? Remember all the things we talked about? And I said I wanted a few things out of life. You probably thought I was a gold digger... or crazy... or something...’
‘I gave you what you wanted,’ said Rafferty. ‘This apartment... a mink coat...’
She stopped him. ‘You gave me what you thought I wanted, but you never understood... ever. You gave me a mink coat! So what! Don’t you realize what I wanted was what the mink coat stood for? A good cloth coat will keep me as warm as a fur coat... but a mink coat stands for something!’
‘What?’
‘Love, and for a man it should stand for the pride of possessing a woman! And to a woman it should mean safety and protection and the idea that someone loves you so much that nothing but the best is good enough! And this apartment?’ She turned and surveyed the room, looking at it with disdain. ‘Was this home? With a year’s rent paid, was this security?’
‘You’re talking big!’ said Rafferty.
‘No, I’m not!’ She turned fiercely. ‘All I want is one little thing! One word I Respectability!’
Rafferty got up from the chair, standing heavily, his hands resting like weights in his overcoat pockets. ‘Where are you going to find all this you’ve been talking about?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied sincerely. ‘Except I know I won’t find it here, and I won’t find it with you.’
‘Okay.’ He pulled his hat down over his forehead, and walked to the living-room door. ‘I’ll talk to you later... when you’re feeling better...’
‘Don’t look for me,’ she said, ‘because you won’t find me.’
‘I’ll find you,’ Rafferty replied. ‘I’ll find you wherever you go.’ She listened to his footsteps resounding hollowly on the bare wooden floor of the living room. Then she heard the front door close behind him.
Chapter Thirteen
The woman was thin and frowsy and hawk-faced, with hair dyed to a flamingo red, and she stood before the locked door, in the narrow dark hall, regarding him suspiciously. ‘Go ahead and open it,’ Rafferty said.
Her voice replied in a high, nervous whine. ‘I’m telling you I ain’t seen him in over a week. He ain’t been around.’
‘Go ahead and open it,’ Rafferty repeated flatly.
‘He ain’t done nothing,’ she said. ‘I run a respectable place. He ain’t never been in no trouble with the cops.’
‘Do you open it, or do I kick it down?’ Rafferty’s voice was patient, relentless, and the woman made no further effort to escape its finality. She opened the door with a key, and Rafferty stepped inside the room, closing the door in her face. His hand moved to a switch beside the door, and in a moment the room was filled with a weak light.
This was Luke’s room, in the rear of a roominghouse lost in the wildness of New York’s lower East Side. And to it Luke would never find his way again. First Eddie Stack had found it. Now Rafferty had located it. This was the last known point, in the great city, where Rafferty could place Stack before he met him at Rose’s apartment. Stack had come here to find Luke; there was the possibility he was carrying the money when he came to the room and concealed it after he left, or he might have hidden it someplace before he arrived at Luke’s room. Regardless, however, this room was the central point from which Rafferty must begin searching... either forward with Stack’s movements, or back.
Rafferty’s eyes worked their way carefully around the room. It was neither any better nor any worse than scores of others he had searched. An unmade bed with tumbled sheets was pushed into one corner, next to a dresser. A sagging upholstered armchair, a commonplace wooden chair, and a small round table completed the furnishings of the room, which displayed no pictures and no lamps. He walked across the floor to the window, draped on each side by lace curtains starched as stiffly as cardboard with dirt and grime. Lifting the shade, he stared into a back yard filled with clotheslines, garbage pails, and rotting wooden fences. He pulled the shade down the length of the window and, shrugging, turned away.
Carefully he searched the room, rolling the carpet up the floor, turning the mattress on the bed, probing the pillows and the upholstered chair. He removed the drawers from the dresser, examining the undersides and the framework of the dresser’s cabinetry. The contents of the drawers he panned as carefully as a gold miner. In the closet, using a flash, he sounded the floor boards, the walls, and removed the high shelf. The single suit hanging in the closet disclosed nothing.
When he was through, the room had told him little, other than disclosing no evidence of violence and giving no clue of Stack’s visit. Rafferty did not try to hide the signs of his search; he switched off the
light, closed the door behind him, and walked out of the roominghouse.
Somewhere in the city was seventy-five thousand dollars... his for the finding. He looked at his watch; it was time to return to duty.
Rafferty was an expert in the science of the search. He knew each hiding place, obvious and obscure, each device favored by criminals in caching and disposing of their spoils. In the past, he had worked with the aid and support of the tremendous organization of which he was a member... drawing on manpower, brains, and money as he needed them. Now, he would have to work alone. He could give no hint either that he was searching or that the case of Eddie Stack was not closed for good. He could work only in the hours he was off duty and the days of liberty following his regular tours. Rafferty must match his brains, experience and patience with the cunning, caution, and opportunities of Stack. It was no longer the organization of law against crime, or even the organization of law against organized crime, but man against man; Rafferty against Stack.
In the days which passed after his visit to Luke’s room, Rafferty plotted the locations of the subway stations within a radius of twelve blocks of the room. Not knowing whether Stack approached Luke’s lodging on an uptown or a down train, he carefully investigated the platform areas on both sides of the tracks in the stations. He reasoned that a subway station might be the last possible, as well as the most easily available, hiding place either approaching or leaving Luke’s room, and Stack might have left his money concealed in one of them. Although some of the stations contained storage lockers, this fact did not interest Rafferty for several reasons; first, it was common knowledge that possessions left in a locker for forty-eight hours and not reclaimed are possessed by the locker company inspectors. Stack undoubtedly would know this; excluding all thoughts of a misadventure which might prevent his returning to the locker, still it was doubtful that he would risk that outside chance. Secondly, if the money had been found by the locker inspectors, the company would have notified the police immediately. Rafferty knew that no such report had been made.
Consequently, if the money had been hidden in one of the stations, it would be in a place of Stack’s own contriving. Rafferty spent his free hours in the stations, carrying a picture of Stack, talking to the news-stand dealers and showing them the picture. He could find no one who remembered seeing him. Rafferty spent long hours in the stations, pacing the platforms, minutely examining the walls for signs of loose tiles, searching the waiting benches... seat by seat, poking behind the waste containers, the gates, and turnstiles. He located and investigated the supporting ceiling beams and wall girders, prying into secluded niches and crannies formed for obscured reasons in the stations’ construction. But he did not find that for which he was searching.
As a matter of fact, he did not know exactly for what he was searching. Obviously, it was a package of some kind... probably tied in newspaper or brown wrapping paper. It might even be a large envelope or folder. The size would depend on the denomination of the bills; the larger the bills, the smaller the package. There was a possibility, too, that the money might be in a briefcase, or a small canvas overnight bag such as are sold in drugstores.
After searching the stations, he was convinced of two places where the money was not hidden: Luke’s room and the subways available to Luke’s room. His next search, logically, must center around the building on Park Avenue where Rose lived. It was entirely possible Stack had carried the money with him the night he visited Rose, hiding it as he approached the building, or after he had entered it, on the way to her apartment. Once more, Rafferty returned to the trail.
Days, however, grew into weeks as Rafferty continued his search. He had assumed a gigantic task, and the effects began to show in his face, which daily grew thinner and more taut, and in a heavy weariness which he carried with him. It is doubtful that in any other job Rafferty could have maintained his masquerade... both at home and in his department. The time element—missed dinners, returning to his home in the early morning hours, working on week ends, and disappearing on his forty-eight-hour leaves—was no reason for alarm to Katherine. She had become used, through the years, to the uncertain hours of the police whose time was entirely at the discretion of the department; and Rafferty, as an acting lieutenant, had additional responsibilities which usually stretched his eight-hour duty to ten, twelve, and even fourteen hours. Katherine had no suspicions, and neither had Feinberg. As Rafferty’s immediate and superior officer, Fein-berg left Emmet to his own work and, except where he directly assigned Rafferty to a case, normally maintained only routine supervision over him.
Rafferty soon discovered that the long and laborious times he devoted to his searching, in addition to the strain of his equally long regular hours, combined to sap his heretofore inexhaustible supply of strength. He spent little time at his home, and days passed in which he scarcely saw Katherine and the girls; returning to the apartment in Brooklyn long after they had retired, he arose early to secure a few extra hours for his search before reporting on duty. Eventually, of course, his tired mind, with its singleness of purpose, made little differentiation between Rose and the money. The two became one... a double symbol... of desire and success, the ultimate... the good life. The money was a touchstone with which to regain Rose; Rose regained, together with the money, was the final besting of Stack.
He was still searching the building on Park Avenue, exploring the subbasement and the basement, the boiler rooms, and the storage rooms, the hall corridors, the hall closets, the carpetings and the stair wells; the roof of the building and the elevator housing on the roof, the foot of the elevator shaft, and the roof of the elevator car; the service doors and the lobby; the outside of the building itself; the facade, the sunken service entrance in the side of the building, the oil intake, and the unloading ramp at the rear of the building. On this particular night, Rafferty had been in the apartment building nearly seven hours, searching without a stop, without eating, and midnight approached. Without thinking, he entered the elevator and pushed automatically the button for the sixth floor... the floor where Rose had lived. Standing in the elevator, he rode to its stop before realizing she was living there no longer. Suddenly the desire to see her again welled up within him irresistibly. The old memories broke his resolution not to see her until after he had found the money, and he found himself trembling in anticipation... hearing again the sound of her voice, visualizing the smile on her face. Abruptly, he pushed the button again, and returned to the lobby. Caught up in his excitement, he hurried to the street and hailed a cab.
Striding down the hall of a narrow leaning hotel in the West Forties, he stopped before a door, bringing his knuckles down hard on its wooden panel. From behind the door, a woman’s voice asked, ‘Who’s there?’ but he made no reply except to raise his hand and knock again. There was a pause, and he could feel the beating of his heart as the door opened and Rose stood in the darkness peering out at him with sleep-filled eyes, her silver-gilt hair hanging to her shoulders. It seemed to Rafferty that time had turned its hourglass over, and the sands ran back into the past, returning to the first night he had brought Rose home from her club to a similar shabby hotel.
Abruptly, in sudden recognition, Rose attempted to close the door, and the moment was shattered. Rafferty placed his foot against the jamb, holding the knob of the door in his hand. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.
‘I want to see you for a minute,’ he replied.
‘Call me in the morning,’ she said,’ it’s late...’
Rafferty leaned his weight against the door, forcing it against her, and she stepped back to regain her balance. As he pushed his way into the room, she reached behind her and turned the switch on the wall. Light burst into the room, and Rafferty saw the twin beds; one empty, the sheets twisted and turned back where Rose had left it to answer his knock; the other bed was occupied by Viola Vane. Viola was watching him, eyes opened wide and startled, and she clutched a sheet to her shoulders. Rose walked past him and stood by her
bed, facing him firmly. ‘Get out, Emmet,’ she ordered. ‘Get out and leave us alone, please...’
Her nearness assaulted Rafferty’s senses; he was conscious of her body sensually revealed through the thin, transparent nightgown, silhouetting the eternal, feminine triangle of her sex. His latent desire fanned suddenly into life, trapping him unexpectedly, leaving him helpless in the grip of its overpowering emotion, and he struggled against the mounting confusion of his thoughts. ‘I got to see you, Rose,’ he said thickly,’ I got to...’
Reading his eyes, interpreting his voice, Rose slipped quickly back into her bed, propping herself into a sitting position against the headboard, hugging a pillow to cover her breasts. ‘No, Emmet,’ she said, her voice thin and uneasy, ‘we’ve got nothing to talk about. Please go... and leave us alone.’
‘Tell her to get out!’ Rafferty motioned his head toward Viola Vane. ‘Ask her to beat it for half an hour...’
Viola turned frightened eyes to Rose. ‘No!’ Rose said defensively, her voice rising unsteadily. ‘She’s not going. If you make her go... I’m going, too!’
Surprisingly enough, Viola found her voice. ‘I don’t have to go,’ she said; ‘this is my room, too!’ Unprepared for her audacity, she looked away hurriedly from Rafferty.
Rafferty, however, had not heard her. His eyes held Rose unwaveringly. Walking to the bed, he stood looking down at her. ‘Rose,’ his voice pleading, ‘I have to talk to you... There’s plenty I got to tell you...’
Rose lowered her head to escape meeting the desire in his eyes. ‘No,’ she said emotionlessly, ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘About that money, Rose,’ he continued awkwardly.
‘I don’t want to hear about it.’
‘But you don’t know what I’m doing... how I’ve got it figured out.’
Rafferty Page 16
