Rafferty

by Bill S. Ballinger

  ‘Beat it, Emmet... please, beat it.’ Her voice was a monotone.’

  ‘You don’t understand. Rose. What it’s been like...’

  ‘Beat it!’ Her tone was the same monotonous singsong. ‘Beat it, Emmet, please.’

  Helpless before the passiveness of her defense, he swung his hand impulsively, in a swift gesture of resentment and frustration, striking her face with its open palm. The sound of the blow, abrupt and heavy, filled the room with violence. Viola Vane, startled, cried aloud, as Rafferty turned on his heel and walked blindly from the room. Rose lay quietly on her bed, and silently turned away her head, while blood streamed from her nose, flowing over the pillow.

  There was silence in the room after he had gone. Finally it was broken by Viola. ‘Dig him!’ she said, ‘that louse! Did he hurt you bad?’

  ‘I think he broke my nose,’ said Rose.

  ‘Oh, my God! I’ll get you a cold towel!’ Viola left her bed and hurried to the bathroom, returning with a hotel towel which had been soaked in cold water. ‘Here!’ she urged. ‘Put it on your face; it’ll stop the bleeding. Maybe it ain’t broken,’ she added hopefully.

  ‘It’s broken,’ said Rose, despairing. ‘I heard it snap.’ She buried her face in the wet, cold cloth.

  ‘I’d better get a doctor,’ said Viola.

  ‘That won’t do any good now,’ said Rose. ‘I’ll see one later...’ She threw the blood-soaked pillow to the floor and stretched out flat on the bed, the towel to her face. ‘Turn out the light, will you, Viola?’ she asked.

  Viola crossed the floor and turned the wall switch, plunging the room into darkness. Then she, too, returned to her bed. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, the room returned to reality. She turned on her side and spoke to Rose.’ I’m awfully sorry, honey,’ she said.

  ‘It’s better this way,’ said Rose. ‘Now he should know we’re all through. I was afraid he’d come back... and he did. With it out of his system, maybe he’ll forget all about me... and leave me alone.’

  ‘I bet you hate him.’

  ‘No, I don’t hate him. I just want to forget him. If you hate someone, you’ve got to keep remembering him. I want to forget Emmet, and forget everything else that goes with him.’ She was silent for a long moment, and Viola could hear her heavy breathing, as the memories returned to Rose. ‘Listen, Viola,’ she said finally, ‘I’ve got to tell you something. I keep thinking about it and hearing it, and then at night I dream about it. It’s getting so it’s driving me out of my mind...

  ‘When I was a little kid, I was living up in Washington. Once in a while, in the summer, some of us kids would ride out to the edge of town to play on Saturdays. We lived downtown, and it was real nice to get out where there weren’t any buildings and streets, and where there was some grass and trees. Well, one day three or four of us went out... three boys and me, and I guess we were maybe ten or eleven years old. We were poking around in some grass, when one of the boys found a rabbit.

  ‘It looked like maybe the rabbit had been caught by a dog, or anyway it might have stepped in a trap, because its back two feet had been chewed completely off. It’s legs were still there, but it didn’t have any paws. When it stood up, it wobbled on its back two stumps, and when it tried to run it’d fall over on its side and kick like it was still running. The boys thought it was funny and kept poking it with sticks, and it’d fall over and keep moving like it was running. I remember it was a big rabbit, and it was brown and had a white sort of vest. But what I remember, worst, was its great big eyes, rolling around and around in its head, real wild with fear.

  ‘After a while, the kids got tired of playing with it and started beating it with their sticks. The sticks weren’t very big, and so it took quite a while for the kids to kill it. Then finally, just before it died it started to make sounds... it sounded like it was screaming. It was awful...’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Viola.

  ‘The night Eddie was shot, he was wounded in the shoulder first, and he was lying on the floor, and just before he got shot the second time, he started screaming... and he sounded like the rabbit.’ She paused, sucking her breath, ‘or maybe, really, the rabbit sounded like Eddie. It’s all mixed up and confused now. But I keep hearing the rabbit... or hearing Eddie... and it’s enough to drive you crazy. And then at night, I dream I see Eddie dragging himself around like the rabbit... you know, pulling himself by the arms, and his feet trailing along behind him... and screaming...’ She lay quietly, talking to the ceiling. ‘Sometimes I don’t think I can stand it any more,’ she added.

  ‘You better get a job,’ said Viola, ‘or at least a new boy friend. You’d be surprised how that helps...’

  Rose didn’t answer.

  Rafferty was convinced that the missing money was not hidden in the vicinity of the Park Avenue apartment. He had searched the building thoroughly, and had extended his examination to a block on each side of the premises. He believed that the hiding place of the money must be in an easily discoverable spot. If Stack was carrying the money with him the night he went to Rose’s apartment, he would have no preconceived idea as to where he might leave it. He might see such a spot while approaching the building, or he might find one in the building itself. But the hiding place would be immediately available, and Rafferty had not found the money in such likely places he had discovered.

  His failure did not discourage him, however. Rather, it served only to further inflame his obsession to find it. Each moment of his day and night, he resolved the problem in his mind. Each step of Stack’s known movements in New York he reconstructed and examined under the magnification of his own mind; moment by moment, he re-enacted the few hours of the known days of the escaping criminal. The key pieces to the mosaic of Stack’s actions were still missing. Having started with the known positions of Stack’s activities, Rafferty must now continue into the realm of the unknown.

  Obviously, Stack had stayed one night, probably two nights, possibly three nights in New York. The problem was: where? If he stayed in one of the thousand half-forgotten rooming-houses, like the one where Luke stayed, the problem was compounded beyond solution. On the other hand, Rafferty did not believe that Stack would elect to stay in such a place, and he had a certain logic to sustain this belief. The reputation of a strange and unknown roominghouse is a mercurial quality, depending on the activities of the week-to-week roomers. Many of the guests are subjects of periodical police raids and roundups; others may live peacefully for months only to erupt in a sudden violence, resulting in a police call and investigation. Stack, on the run, could not risk any outside chance of being seen by the police. Furthermore, among a small and limited number of roomers, he would be more easily remembered by the landlady than he would be in the larger sifting mass of faces in a hotel. And there was one final factor which Rafferty believed important: in a rooming-house there was no safe place to keep his money. The rooms were open to daily prying on the part of the landlady, and the locks on the doors were usually old, loose, and obsolete.

  Consequently, Rafferty reached the decision that Stack had checked into a hotel above the Thirties and below the Fifties in Manhattan. In the Thirties were mostly small business hotels in which he might be conspicuous, and above the Fifties the hotels grew elegant and he would be equally conspicuous. Satisfied with his reasoning, Rafferty drew up a list of the scores of hotels which were neither large nor small, which did not qualify as first class, and which remained in good standing with the police. Armed with a picture of Stack, his police credentials, and one important piece of information, Rafferty began making his calls on the hotels. The piece of information, which he believed to be important, was the fact that Stack had checked into the hotel, he had not checked out after Friday, February 18. It was on that Friday night he was killed, and it was reasonable to believe that he would have remained overnight at the hotel until Saturday when he was to leave on the Abaco.

  As the rounds of the hotels continued, they quickly became blurred names,
with blurred lobbies in Rafferty’s mind. Early in the morning before going on duty, late at night after duty, half hours and hours snatched from lunch times, he would stalk across the narrow lobby of a hotel, and display his credentials to the clerk behind the desk. ‘Police,’ he said, while the faceless, nameless clerk nodded and he placed the picture of Stack, face up, on the desk. ‘Do you remember a man who looked like this checking in the hotel sometime between February fifteenth and February eighteenth?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said the clerk looking at the picture closely, ‘I don’! remember.’

  ‘Does he look familiar?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the clerk; ‘all faces begin to look familiar after a while. What was his name?’

  ‘His name isn’t important,’ replied Rafferty. ‘He wouldn’t have been using his own name. There’s just one thing more. If this guy checked in, it’s possible he never checked out. You’d have closed his room out yourself.’

  ‘I don’t recall doing that,’ replied the clerk.

  ‘Okay,’ Rafferty shrugged and returned the picture to his pocket, ‘but I want you to look up your records anyway. Do it now. See if you closed out a room, without a checkout, the nights of February eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth.’

  In a few minutes the clerk returned shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘we don’t have any record of a close-out...’

  On the way out of the hotel, Rafferty would stop by the checkroom, and talk with the porter. ‘Any packages that haven’t been called for?’ he asked.

  ‘Not lately...’

  ‘Anything since last February?’

  Usually there was nothing; occasionally there would be an unclaimed hat or umbrella, and once there was a shabby brown suitcase, and Rafferty’s hopes leaped, but it turned out to be filled with nothing but women’s clothes.

  April and its days of warm soft rains, which drenched the streets of Manhattan each year with new promises of spring, turned into May. And May wore the leafy finery of grass and trees in Central Park, and the freshly scrubbed faces of the buildings smiled in the sunlight. The harbour came alive and listened attentively to the seductive voices of the great queens of the seas, flying their pennants, dancing and mincing on white-capped carpets of royal blue.

  And Rafferty continued his quest, with a growing coldness in his mind, and ice in his heart. His brother, Father Sean Rafferty, moved to New York to teach at St. Thaddeus’s Seminary, and on Sunday afternoons Sean would take dinner with the family in Brooklyn. Sean, a simple, gentle, and understanding man, realized there was an unknown and terrible thing eating into the life of his brother. With the privilege of family, and the authority of a priest, he sometimes attempted to probe within the thoughts of this brother he no longer knew. ‘Man, man,’ he said, ‘you’re working too hard. You’re half sick!’

  Rafferty, fretful of Sean’s kindly intrusion, and resentful of the time he was losing from his search, was hard pressed to conceal his anger. ‘It’s nothing... I’veworked harder than this...’

  ‘What does it matter,’ asked Sean gently, ‘if you gain the world and...’

  ‘Who’s trying to gain anything, Sean?’ Emmet interrupted. He rubbed the dry palms of his hands wearily against each other. ‘There aren’t enough hours in the day.’

  ‘There’s something bothering you, Emmet. I’ve noticed it. Katherine has noticed it too...’

  ‘To hell with it!’ Emmet slapped his hand down on the table and rose to his feet angrily. ‘Is that all you’ve got to do? You and Katherine to talk about me behind my back?’

  ‘It must be true,’ said Father Sean slowly and with logic: ‘otherwise you wouldn’t be angry. Only a man faced with an unpleasant truth becomes angry...’

  ‘Have it your way,’ said Emmet. He walked to the door, picking up his hat. ‘I’ve got to get downtown. I’ve got some things to do.’

  Although Rafferty could walk away from Sean, he could not walk away from Sean’s thoughts. From Sunday to Sunday Sean’s concern for his brother grew, but he was helpless to penetrate the wall of reserve which surrounded Emmet. With rare discernment, he realized that the unknown problem bothering Emmet was of a magnitude he could not unearth without Emmet’s help. Sean attempted to explain this to [Catherine without increasing her anxiety.

  ‘Some things a man has to think about first, before he can talk about them,’ he explained quietly.

  ‘Emmet’s always been quiet,’ Catherine replied, ‘but he’s never been like this before.’

  ‘When he’s ready, he’ll talk,’ Sean said confidently.

  ‘But what can it be? What’s bothering him?’ Katherine began to cry softly. ‘I don’t think it has anything to do with me...’

  ‘I’m sure it hasn’t,’ but in his heart, Sean was not sure. ‘A policeman’s life is not a pleasant one,’ he continued slowly. ‘Certainly it is a necessary one, and without him we would have nothing but chaos. Perhaps it’s the seeing only the bad side of life, the lost and the hopeless... that makes him turn within himself and become unhappy.’ He spread his hands gently. ‘I’ve heard of many officers who were unable to stand it longer... and to save themselves had to resign from the force...’

  Katherine shook her head. ‘Not Emmet,’ she said. ‘He’s strong!’ She looked at her husband’s brother, appealing to his understanding. ‘The two of us know him better than anyone else. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then we know he’s strong!’

  ‘Yes, he is strong,’ agreed Sean, ‘but sometimes a man’s very strength can be his own weakness...’

  ‘I don’t understand...’

  ‘A strong man is inclined to believe his strength goes on forever. He will sometimes try to lift more than he can carry...’

  ‘But what is it, Sean? What is Emmet trying to carry?’

  ‘I don’t know...’

  ‘Then we must find out!’

  ‘No,’ replied Sean gently. ‘We must not try to find out. It will accomplish nothing.’ He paused and considered his words carefully, before continuing. ‘If we did find out, it would only add to Emmet’s burden—and there’s nothing we can do to change his mind. Our only hope is that he will tell us of his own free will.’

  ‘But we could help him!’

  ‘I’m afraid that no one can help Emmet—except himself,’ Sean looked away from Katherine, ‘and God!’ he added softly.

  ‘I’ll pray,’ said Katherine, ‘I’ll pray!’

  ‘As will I,’ replied Father Sean Rafferty. He crossed himself, and silently hoped their prayers would not be too late.

  Rafferty made his rounds now without his topcoat. With his guns in his pocket and at the shoulder, his suits hanging loosely on him, his gray hat pulled tightly over his forehead, he stalked through the doors of innumerable hotels. It was in the last week of May, however, that he found the lead for which he was searching. He had walked into a small hotel, no different from the scores of others he had entered, and had shown Stack’s photograph to the clerk.

  ‘Yes,’ said the clerk, hesitating briefly, ‘I think I’ve seen him before...’

  ‘What makes you think so?’

  ‘Just a second, let me check the dates you gave me. I think it’s the same guy, if the dates are right.’ Rafferty stood beside the desk, waiting impatiently, keeping tight rein on the exultation rising in his chest. The clerk returned. ‘Yes,’ he affirmed, ‘it’s the same guy. He checked in here on February fifteenth and paid for his room in advance through the nineteenth. He never came back to check out.’

  ‘How come you remember him so well?’ asked Rafferty cautiously.

  ‘It’s like this,’ said the clerk. ‘When he came in, he didn’t have any baggage. Which was all right, because he paid in advance. He said that his luggage had gotten mixed up on the train and gone to California by mistake... and he wanted to know where he could get some new clothes fast... and cheap. I’ve got an uncle who has a clothing store down near Times Square, so I gave him
a pitch for my uncle, and a card to introduce him...’

  ‘You make a commission on it?’ asked Rafferty.

  ‘I was supposed to,’ replied the clerk, ‘but he never paid for the clothes. He went down all right and bought a suit and some shirts. The suit had to be altered a little, which would take a day or two. He paid a few bucks down, but he never went back for the suit.’

  ‘What name was he using?’

  ‘Wait a minute, I’ll look it up.’ The clerk returned to his files and riffled through them quickly. ‘Here,’ he said, pulling out a card.’ Edward Ackerman.’

  Rafferty nodded. It made sense. His full name had been Edward Ackerman Stack. Criminals usually follow a pattern in the selection of their aliases, selecting either the same combination of initials or the surnames of their mothers and wives or other family names. It is difficult to react to a completely new name, and it is also hard to remember. Many criminals have pointed a finger of suspicion at themselves by failing to answer promptly to a new alias. Consequently, they prefer to keep their own first names, and select surnames with which they are familiar. A middle name is considered excellent for this purpose.

  ‘What room was he in?’

  The clerk referred to the card. ‘Eight ninety-seven.’

  ‘Anyone in there now?’

  ‘It’s occupied, but I’ll see.’ The clerk picked up the phone and called the room. Finally, he replaced the receiver. ‘No one answers,’ he said.

  ‘Okay,’ said Rafferty. ‘I want to see it.’

  ‘I can’t leave the desk,’ said the clerk, ‘but I’ll send you up with a bellboy.’

  Room 897 was the ordinary, small, impersonal hotel room. Rafferty had little hope of finding anything of interest in it, but he searched carefully. A suitcase, open and containing the clothes of the present guest, rested on a low rack at the foot of the bed. Rafferty did not touch it, ignoring it completely. He did, however, carefully inspect the drawers in the dresser and writing desk, the clothes closet, the shelf in the closet, the bed and mattress, and the bathroom. He removed the top of the marbelized water tank on the toilet, and plunged his hand in it, groping through the mechanism. He looked through the metal medicine cabinet, and tapped the pipes. Back in the bedroom, he searched behind the pictures, and felt the hems of the drapes at the windows. Removing his shoes, he walked in his stocking feet over each inch of surface of the carpeted floor. Lacing his shoes, he told the bellboy. ‘Okay, son, let’s go.’