Rafferty

by Bill S. Ballinger

  The bellboy, who had watched the search with interest, could restrain his curiosity no longer. ‘What were you lookin’ for?’ he asked.

  Rafferty irritably glanced at his face and lit a cigarette. ‘A twenty-foot alligator escaped from the Bronx Zoo,’ he said. ‘I thought maybe it might be up here.’ The bellboy followed him back to the lobby in silence.

  Rafferty stopped at the desk once more. ‘Did Ackerman leave anything with you to keep in the safe?’ he asked the clerk.

  ‘No,’ he replied.

  ‘Take a look anyway. Maybe he left it with somebody else,’ said Rafferty. The clerk complied, but returned with the information that the safe held nothing for Room 897 or Ackerman. ‘All right,’ said Rafferty, ‘just one more question. I want to talk to the porter. Have him come over.’ The clerk phoned the checkroom, and in a moment an elderly, wiry old man reported to the desk.

  ‘Do you have an uncalled-for package in the checkroom which was left there sometime between February fifteenth and the eighteenth by a man named Ackerman who was staying in Room 897?’ he asked the porter.

  ‘Nope,’ replied the porter promptly, ‘I ain’t got nothing over a week old in the checkroom...’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rafferty. He turned to the clerk. ‘I’ll be back later,’ he said. ‘I may have to do some looking around.’

  ‘I hope it won’t disturb the guests,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I’d better tell Mr. Holts, the manager...’

  ‘Okay, tell him,’ said Rafferty. ‘There’s nothing to get upset about. I’m not looking for anybody, and there won’t be any unfavorable publicity for the hotel. I’m not trying to make a pinch. All I’m trying to do is find some way to get in touch with Ackerman.’

  ‘Oh.’ The clerk was relieved. ‘I’m quite sure it’ll be all right.’

  ‘You’re not kidding!’ said Rafferty. He strode out of the hotel.

  Walking halfway down the block, he turned into a small bar, irritably ordering a drink. Rafferty felt no triumph in having located Stack’s room. Instead, he was conscious only of the fatigue which was grinding him down, wearing him out; and the thought of the additional work remaining to be done brought him close to despair. Within the last month he had started to drink rather heavily; not as an escape from the increasing lassitude in his mind but from the growing weight of weariness which slowed the muscles of his legs, dragging at his footsteps, sometimes piercing his head with headaches. The liquor, running untasted down his throat, brought him no surcease; it did, however, give him the energy to carry on. He must be careful, he often told himself; people were beginning to notice his drinking. Feinberg had; it was a good thing Feinberg was friendly to him. He was tough on the surface, but underneath Feinberg was a good guy. He didn’t talk much and left his men alone as long as they did their jobs. Rafferty had played it cagey; he’d kept up on his job; completed his assignments; did his work... and so Feinberg hadn’t a chance to complain. He liked Feinberg, too. Feinberg had been friendly, and embarrassed at the same time, when he had talked to him about drinking. It just meant he had to be more careful in the future. He couldn’t afford to push it to Feinberg’s attention too often. Feinberg was too smart.

  ‘You’re not supposed to drink on duty, Emmet,’ Feinberg had said. He wasn’t accusing, simply stating a fact.

  ‘I know it,’ Rafferty replied. ‘I had a drink before I came on duty.’

  ‘It doesn’t look well for an officer to do it. Watch it, will you?’

  ‘Sure,’ Rafferty said. ‘But what I do on my own time is my business.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. You know that as well as anybody else. A cop’s a cop twenty-four hours a day.’

  ‘You got any complaints about my work?’ Rafferty’s voice was hard and flat.

  Feinberg looked at him, surprised. ‘You’re a hell of a good man,’ he paid patiently. ‘I don’t want to lose you... that’s all.’

  ‘You won’t,’ replied Rafferty brusquely; then he had been ashamed.

  Remembering, he ordered another drink and forced his mind back to Stack’s hotel. It was getting constantly more difficult for him to concentrate, to keep his trained mind on the problem confronting him. For many days, now, time had an increasing tendency to become confused. One day slipped smoothly into another... his desk, the reports, the departmental routine, the cases... they moved and shifted, superimposing themselves over each other, blending into the days and nights he had spent in the subway stations, searching the blocks around the Park Avenue apartment and the hotels... the countless, unidentified hotels. That, however, was all over now. He had found Stack’s hotel. And in finding it, his mind told him that he had nearly reached the end of his search, although he could not explain this conviction... this hunch. Perhaps he had unearthed a bit of information which he did not consciously recognize for its own intrinsic value. Possibly it was staring him in the face and he was too tired to see it; subconsciously another part of his mind had seen it, and revaluated it... urging him to see it too.

  He twisted his thoughts with the thumbscrew of his will, forcing the desk clerk back into the focus of his memory. He went over his information carefully. Stack had checked in without luggage. Was he carrying a package? The clerk hadn’t mentioned one. If he had not been carrying luggage and had been carrying a package, the clerk would have remembered. So the money wasn’t on him when Stack signed into the hotel.

  Wait a minute! That can’t be assumed. What is the basis for assuming that it must be a large package? It could be a small package, a small envelope he carried in his pocket...

  Rafferty considered it again. There was something here which was important. A small package, a very small package or envelope? That must mean something. Although Rafferty instinctively sensed the swinging of a red lantern of danger in his reasoning, he was helpless to define it. If it was a small envelope or package, all it mean was that Stack could have hidden it in the hotel. It indicated that Rafferty must start searching in the hotel again... the basement, the engine rooms, the writing rooms, the halls on the floor where Stack lived, the stair wells, and all the countless, innumerable, myriad places where the money might be hidden.

  Rafferty sighed wearily. He might as well get started. But first, he decided, he would have another drink.

  June, and the breeze after the nights turn dusky, becomes the delicate breath of desire which caresses the cheek, and explores the ear... urging and probing with shivers of delight. The moon rises over the Palisades, a flaming torch of golden honey, and the city turns to its seven hundred thousand times a thousand loves. During the day, women, lovely ornamented flowers of artificiality, sally forth on Fifth Avenue from the great hotels, airing tiny French poodles which toe dance like ballerinas on pedicured paws. June passed unnoticed, however, in the bowels of the Gedney Hotel, where Rafferty inched along daily... pursuing a small package or... a small envelope. Until one night, near the end of the month, the magic of June reached him, deep within the hotel, and the stirrings in his heart brought him out into the streets again. It was June, the same June it was a year ago, and he would go to see Rose again. The urging of his heart outshouted the memories of his mind, and he had half forgotten—and now put away completely—the unpleasant reality of his last visit with her. She would laugh and throw her arms around him, and kiss him on the mouth with rosy lips; he would bury his face in her breasts, and taste the salt of her skin.

  But the girl who answered his knock at the door was not Rose. It was Viola Vane. She hesitated in the doorway, and fear washed her face, leaving it pale and whitely drawn. Hastily he shoved her aside and walked into the room, where one twin bed had been removed and only a single bed remained. The furniture had been rearranged, and a small radio in a plastic cabinet sat on a table and played softly in the night. The room puzzled him and he seemed to shake his head, ridding it of the old picture. ‘Where’s Rose?’ he asked.

  The girl remained by the door, keeping it open, following him nervously with her eyes. ‘She’s not here,’ she
said; ‘you can see for yourself. She moved away.’

  ‘Where’d she go?’

  ‘I don’t know. She decided to move... and so she left. That’s all.’

  Rafferty dropped silently into a chair, holding his head in his hands. The reality of Rose’s absence had pierced briefly the delusions befogging his mind. Her sudden loss gripped him with terror. He had lived the past months believing she was here, sustained by the knowledge that he could see her again when he wished. He had been content to bury himself in his temporary loneliness and continue his search for the gold which would save his world. He had rejected the harsh reality of truth, subsisting, instead, on fables of his own devising. And now, with the money so close, Rose was gone. ‘Why’d she go?’ he asked. His voice held no threat, no strength... only a helpless bewilderment.

  What she read in his face or heard in his voice or perhaps a combination of both gave Viola Vane confidence to talk to him. In the face of his evident grief, she lost her fear, and she returned to the center of the room. ‘She just couldn’t make it,’ she said. At the question in his eyes, uncomprehending, she continued. ‘When she moved in here with me, she had a little money. So we split the cost of the place. At first, she didn’t feel like working, and I could sort of understand it... you know, breaking up with a fellow and all that.’ She looked at Rafferty uneasily, but he remained silent. ‘Well, just before you came here last time, she was about out of money and had decided she’d better go back to work. She’d even gone around and looked up a couple of agents. Then after you showed up and busted her nose... she never got over it.’

  ‘I... broke... her... nose?’ Rafferty’s face was unbelieving.

  ‘You sure did! It was an awful mess...’

  ‘I wouldn’t hurt Rose...’

  ‘Brother, you really fixed it...’

  Rafferty looked at his great hands anxiously, searching back through the memories of that night. ‘I slapped her,’ he said. ‘I got... sore, and slapped her. But I didn’t mean to hurt her.’ He stopped and turned his hands, spreading his fingers on his knees. He shook his head. ‘I didn’t know I hurt her. I wouldn’t have harmed a hair on her head.’

  ‘Well, you busted her nose wide open,’ said Viola firmly. ‘After that, there wasn’t any use in trying to see agents or get a job. With a face like that nobody’d pay a dime to see her. So she just got in the habit of staying home, here, in bed.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her,’ repeated Rafferty, wonderingly.

  ‘It finally got so I was paying the rent and buying all the groceries and taking care of the room and waiting on her. It just got too much. I just couldn’t do it any longer. So... well, after all, this was my room... so I told her I thought maybe she’d better move...’

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her,’ Rafferty said. ‘I’ll get a doctor... and get her nose fixed up... just as good as it was before.’

  ‘I don’t think it’d do any good,’ replied Viola gently. ‘I don’t think she cares about her nose any more.’

  ‘I’ll have the money... in just a few days. She can go to the best doctor in town.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘She can have anything she wants.’

  Viola looked at him with pity. ‘The best thing to do is just leave her alone,’ she said. ‘From what she said, she never wants to see you again.’

  ‘Yes, she does,’ said Rafferty. ‘She’s just saying that. But when I get the—when I get everything all fixed up, she’ll want to see me again, plenty.’ Abruptly he arose from his chair.’ Where’d she move?’ he asked.

  ‘She moved in with a girl named Nona Markey. I got her address around somewhere. The day she left, Rose asked me to have her suitcases sent over. She left Nona’s number for me to send ’em to. I sent them, and she still owes me three bucks for doing it.’ Viola walked to a small, stained writing desk and looked through a drawer full of bills, envelopes, and scraps of paper. Finally she handed a scrawled address, on the back of an advertising post card, to Rafferty. ‘Here it is,’ she said.

  Rafferty, however, did not go to see Rose that night. Walking into the darkness, with Rose’s address in his pocket, a degree of security had returned to him. He was content with knowing of Rose’s whereabouts; once again, the fact that she was still in the city and he could see her by simply getting a cab satisfied him temporarily. He was filled with remorse that he had struck and disfigured her, and the discovery of her plight quickened the urgency to find Stack’s money, but reality had returned to Rafferty sufficiently for him to realize that it was hopeless to see her without a solution.

  The money, of course, was the solution to all their problems. With it, he would find a surgeon and buy back Rose’s beauty; with it, he could purchase his freedom from Katherine and his family; with it, he would resign from the force, and he and Rose would start life over again... in Florida or California or Arizona. But until he had the money, it was useless to see her. They would only argue, and there was nothing he could do for her... give her money, get a doctor, or take her away.

  He returned, with renewed energy, to his search at the Gedney. He drove himself relentlessly, spending every available moment at the hotel; begrudging even the few extra minutes of riding the subways to return home to sleep. He began staying away from Brooklyn at night, sleeping in the back room of a saloon on Third Avenue. It was run by a friend of his, a big, garrulous man named Vince Korum, a former prize fighter and ex-fireman. Behind the narrow barroom, filled with the odors of sawdust and the sweet-sour smell of beer, was a back room with a double-decked bunk, where Korum spent his few leisure hours away from the bar. This room he gladly shared with Rafferty, who would appear at two or three o’clock in the morning... pale, dirty, and exhausted from his labors. After locking the bar for the night, they would lie upon the bunks, passing a bottle back and forth, and sometimes Rafferty would talk to his friend. He would not speak openly and direct, and it is entirely possible that he had lost the ability to do so at that time, but circuitously, edging near to the subject that obsessed him, then drawing away and talking in parables.

  Once he said, ‘Vince, you know it’s funny how a guy can go through life and be happy, when he doesn’t know what he wants. Everybody in the whole goddamned world keeps telling you, ‘Make up your mind what you want, then get it’. But it seems to me that as soon as you decide what you want, then that thing immediately becomes impossible to get. Or at least so hard to get that you kill yourself trying to get it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Korum, taking a pull on his bottle, ‘I guess maybe ignorance is bliss. Me? I’m blissful.’

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ said Rafferty. ‘What I mean is that when you have something, it doesn’t seem important. If you don’t have something—and you assign importance to it— then you never seem to get it. If you don’t want it, you can have all you can handle...’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Korum.

  ‘Well, for instance, you take a guy that’s inherited a lot of dough. He has dough all of his life; to him it isn’t very important, and he doesn’t worry about it... and he keeps on making more dough without hardly trying.’

  ‘That ain’t a very good example,’ said Korum thoughtfully.’ They say dough makes dough...’

  ‘Okay,’ said Rafferty. ‘Here’s another one. You notice some guy is married to a beautiful woman. His wife, he takes her for granted. When he steps out, he always steps out with other beautiful women. Or take a guy who runs around with a beautiful dame; when he breaks up with her, he always seems to get another one just as good looking. While other guys never go out with a real fancy-looking gal in their life.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ said Korum.

  ‘If you do,’ replied Rafferty, ‘you know more than I do. I don’t know what I mean any more. I think I used to, but not any more. Once I was a good Catholic; hell, I’ve even got a brother who’s a priest. And for a long time I was a pretty good police officer. But not any more, Vince, not any more.’

  ‘What in hell are you talking about?
You getting drunk?’

  ‘No,’ replied Rafferty, ‘I’m not drunk. What I mean is this: The Church has laws, see? There’s no fooling around about them. They’re clear and straight and plain. You do this; you don’t do that! If you break a Church law, it’s a sin. It’s pretty simple as long as you believe in the Church. The Church can’t make you live right, or obey its laws. All it can do is threaten you with what happens after you’re dead. If you believe in the Church, you obey the laws. If you don’t believe in it, the Church hasn’t one damned hold on you...’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Korum,’ how about a drink?’

  ‘It’s the same way with the law... man’s law... the law of the State. You do this; you don’t do that. If you break a State law... it’s a crime. As long as you believe in the State, you believe you’ll get punished... thirty days to life imprisonment. Or the hot seat. But if you don’t believe in the State, you figure it won’t catch you, so you do as you please anyway.’ He paused, and then added, ‘You’d be surprised how many people get away with it...’

  ‘You got to believe in both of ’em,’ said Korum.

  ‘That doesn’t do any good either,’ said Rafferty. ‘Neither the Church nor the State gives a damn about each other. The Church says, “Thou shalt worship no other God but me” and the State doesn’t care if you want to worship a rattlesnake. The Church says “Thou shalt not kill” and the State says it is okay under certain conditions...’

  ‘So, what’s the answer?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rafferty,’ I don’t know. Maybe there’s a third law... a sort of natural, moral law that you have to be born with. It takes the other two sets of laws, and melts them together... with itself, the sense of right and wrong... and you’ve got something that’s workable.’ He rolled over on his side, and pulled the sheet to his shoulders. ‘I’m going to sleep,’ he said.