by McBain, Ed
“Take your hands off me! Blow!”
The smile dropped from Sand’s mouth. His lips tightened, and he flicked angrily at his nose. He seemed about to say something further when the band began a slow melody, startling Johnny, because he hadn’t known the musicians were back on the stand already. The lights in the club dimmed, and Sands started to move away from Johnny. Johnny reached out suddenly and caught him by the elbow.
“Stick around, Sands.”
“Man, you jus’ tole me to—”
“Stick around. I can’t see the phone booths in the dark.”
Sands chuckled again as a dim blue light suffused the small floor. A line of girls snaked its way from behind the bandstand. The girls wore wispy bras and G strings, and the blue light caught their sequined costumes and blinked across the club glitteringly. The girls carried small black hatboxes in their hands. They held the hatboxes aloft as they moved across the floor, lifting them over their heads as if they were making an offering to some deity up there someplace. The girls had been chosen by Sary for their busts and their legs. In the darkness, Johnny saw Sands wet his lips.
The girls wiggled their hips and then formed a semicircle across the club, hiding the bandstand. The music stopped dead, and an amber spot scurried across the floor and then tacked itself to the curtain on the left of the bandstand.
Cindy Matthews was standing in the amber spot.
Cindy Matthews was fully clothed, but when the spot hit her, the club went suddenly silent. She leaned against the curtain like a panther ready to pounce. She was light-skinned, lighter than Johnny, with high cheekbones and the full flaring nostrils of a Negress. Her mouth was wide and sensuous, slashed now with lipstick. She wore her hair close to her head, giving an incongruous sophistication to the almost animal look of her face. She wore a flowing black gown that molded every line of her body. The gown’s cape reached to her throat, billowing out where her breasts interrupted the straight tight line of the silk. Her ankles showed beneath the hem of the gown, and her feet were in black high-heeled pumps, sequined to catch the beam of the amber spot.
She wore long black gloves, reaching to the elbow, and she put both hands on her hips now and came onto the floor, standing in front of the almost nude chorus as the musicians waited. She smiled a dazzling smile and then began taking off the gloves. At the same instant, the girls behind her got to their knees. They put the hatboxes on the floor and took off the lids, moving together—or almost together—while Cindy peeled off the gloves. And as she peeled, the chorus removed gloves from the hatboxes and began pulling them on, working in reverse, so that when Cindy dropped her second glove to her feet, the girls in the chorus were wearing gloves on both hands.
“She gasses me,” Hank Sands whispered. “Man, she really—”
“Shut up,” Johnny whispered back.
The music had started again. It was not a torturous kind of music, and there was no suggestion of sensuality in it. Cindy’s dance was not that kind of dance. If it had been that kind of dance, that obviously titillating bump-and-grind thing, the cops might have been willing to ignore it, and Sary Morgan might have saved the monthly payoff. But it was not that. She performed no acrobatics with the curtain. After the one warm smile she flashed at her audience, she smiled no more. She was totally unaware of the audience, the music, and the chorus behind her.
It was almost as if a crowd of people had gathered behind a screen in her bedroom. Cindy Matthews had come home from a ball, and Cindy Matthews was now undressing for bed. And while she undressed, the girls behind her dressed, but no one was watching the girls behind her. Every eye in the joint was on Cindy Matthews. There was no catcalling and no whistling. There was a respectful silence, because all these people were in Cindy’s own bedroom, behind that screen in the corner, and they didn’t want to make any noise lest she find out they were there.
Cindy was just a woman taking off her clothes.
She was nothing more and nothing less. She was exciting only in the way a beautiful woman can be exciting performing this simplest of tasks.
And that’s why Sary paid off the cops. Once you saw Cindy Matthews undress, you could stuff all the bumps and grinds into an old top hat and dump it in the Harlem River.
There was no coyness in her routine. There was no attempt to tease. There was only a sinuous gracefulness, an intimacy that made every man in the place feel she was undressing for him alone, an intimacy that made every female spectator feel vastly inadequate.
She started with the gloves, and then she removed the cape at the top of her dress, revealing rounded shoulders and a low-cut gown with a deep, soft hollow between her breasts. She kept on her shoes, but she began unbuttoning the side of the gown, one button at a time, revealing the curve of her calf, and then her knee, and then part of her thigh, and then she stopped unbuttoning and reached behind her for the zipper at the back of her dress.
She turned as she lowered the zipper, and the audience watched the tightness of the dress across her buttocks, and then their eyes fled to her hand on the zipper as it lowered slowly, the dress parting in a wide V over the smooth tan flesh of her back. The girls behind her stepped into their gowns, began pulling them up over ankle and calf and knee and thigh, hiding the sequined G strings.
Cindy lowered the zipper until it reached the base of her spine, until the tight band of the G string showed above her buttocks. The biting slender line of her brassiere cut into her back, and she whirled suddenly, catching the bodice of her gown before it fell. She looked up and toward the back of the club, and that was when she saw Johnny.
He knew she’d seen him. He saw the sudden flash in her eyes, and then the flash died and she went through the rest of her dance, but he knew she’d seen him.
She dropped the gown away from her breasts, showing the filmy, sequined bra that encased them. She crossed her arms over her waist, holding up the gown, embracing herself with her head thrown back, her breasts tilted and high. And then she, brought her hands away from her body, and the gown slipped down over her wide hips, dropped below her naval, slithered past the sequined G string, fell to her feet in a black lifeless heap. She stood there for a moment, her gaze on the floor, a woman unaware, a woman full-breasted and long-legged, standing in high-heeled pumps, wearing only a bra and a G string, bathed in an amber light.
And then she reached behind her for the clasp of her bra, and the girls behind her, fully dressed now, threw their gloved hands upward as the brassiere fell from Cindy’s firm breasts.
There was a sudden blackout, and when the lights came on again, the stage was as naked as Cindy had been. The applause burst from a hundred pairs of hands, shattering the stillness of the club. Johnny listened to the applause, and he felt a mixture of emotions: pride because the applause was for his Cindy; anger because the applause was cheering the lust she’d aroused.
“Mmmm-mmmm,” Sands said. “Man, I like to get a piece of that.”
“Sands, you slimy bastard, I’m going to—”
“Hesh now, man. You doan want to ’tract ’tention, do you?”
“Just keep your dirty mind off Cindy, that’s all.”
“Li’l hard to do that when she undressin’ out there,” Sands said, smiling. “Here she comes now, boy, all dressed up. She a quick dresser, ain’ she?” Sands paused. “She a even quicker undresser, I bet.”
He saw Cindy weaving her way through the club. She walked proudly, with her shoulders back, wearing a simple cocktail dress now. There was serious look on her face, and her lips were held tightly together, but she walked with unhurried grace.
“Cut out,” Johnny said to Sands.
“Want to say hello to Cindy,” Sands said stubbornly, not moving.
She came to Johnny quickly, and her eyes searched his face.
“Are you all right?” she asked breathlessly.
“I got cut,” he said. He remembered Sands abruptly. He turned to face him, and he saw Sands’ eyes on the bodice of Cindy’s dress, and he felt
his fist clench.
“Hello, Cindy,” Sands said.
“Hello, Hank,” she said wearily.
“Mighty nice dance out there.”
“Thank you.”
“Like to make my blood boil.”
“Get the hell out of here, Sands,” Johnny said.
“Why, sure thing, man. Glad to o-blige.” Sands laughed shrilly and squeezed past Cindy, his hand brushing her thigh lightly.
“That sonovabitch,” Johnny said.
“Never mind him. You said you got cut. Is it all right now?”
“I stopped the bleeding. Honey, I need a place to stay. I thought …”
Cindy reached into the front of her gown. “Here’s a key to my place. Go there, Johnny. It’ll be all right. You’ll be safe.”
“The cops. What’d they—”
“Nothing. I told them we’d broke up.”
“You shouldn’t have said that, honey.”
“It was the only thing to do, Johnny. This way, they won’t bother me again, maybe. Johnny, I don’t trust Hank. I think you’d better go before …”
“Honey, I didn’t kill him. You know that, don’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Cindy said softly.
“I know it doesn’t, but I wanted you to know anyway. I didn’t kill Luis.”
“All right,” Cindy said. “That’s good enough for me.”
Johnny smiled. “I like your dance too, Cindy.”
“Go, Johnny. Please. The cops may walk in any minute.”
“You’ll be home later?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ll wait up for you.”
“All right. Hurry, Johnny, please.”
“Cindy?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
“All right.”
“No, I mean it. I love you.”
“I know, Johnny.” She glanced over her shoulder and then reached up suddenly, finding his mouth with her own. She kissed him fleetingly, hardly a kiss at all, only a brushing of lips.
“Hurry, darling. I’ll see you later. There’s food in the icebox.” She smiled abruptly. “Take care of yourself. I love you.”
She squeezed his hand and then walked to the bar, and he watched her go. He felt the key in the palm of his hand, closed his fingers on it, and left the club quickly.
He caught a cab on the next corner, and the cab took him up Lenox and then over to Seventh Avenue and 142nd Street. He got out at the corner, paid and tipped the cabbie, and was starting up the street when he saw the white-topped squad car parked in front of Cindy’s building.
The sight of the car was like a knife in the ribs. He viciously slammed his fist into the open palm of his other hand. The door of the squad car opened, and Johnny looked at it only once more and then turned and ran.
Eight
Sergeant David Trachetti wondered just why the hell he was knocking himself out. He stepped out of the squad car and onto the asphalt, holding the door open.
“This’ll only be a few minutes, Stan,” he said.
“Take all the time you need,” the uniformed cop behind the wheel said.
Trachetti nodded and slammed the door shut, then walked around the grille of the car to the sidewalk. He checked the address on his pad with the one over the door, and then he started up the steps to the stoop.
An old couple was sitting on the stoop, huddled against the cold. He wondered why anyone in his right mind would sit outside on a night like this, and he nodded briefly as he passed the couple. The couple did not nod back. They stared at him hostilely. He was white, and he was a cop, and that made him a double menace. Trachetti felt the coldness of their stares at the back of his neck, and he wondered again why the hell he was bothering. Did any of them appreciate it? Hell, he might very well get knifed, just the way Palazzo had said he would.
Well, to hell with Palazzo. There was such a thing as carrying it too far. What the hell, if the kid was out there thinking he was wanted for a kill, somebody should tell him he was cleared. The girl had said she and Lane had broken up, but her eyes had denied the lie. If anyone knew where the kid was, she did. He’d tell her they’d caught the killer, and then let her get the word to her boy friend. That was the sensible thing to do, wasn’t it? All right, maybe it wasn’t the sensible thing to do. Maybe he should have sat back at the precinct, where it was nice and warm. Maybe he should have sat on his behind there and listened to the tired jokes the boys were telling. Or there was still the Nunzio case, and the prints he’d given the lab boys, and he could have gone down there to see what they’d made on it. They hardly ever got a make from prints, though, so there wasn’t much sense to that. And besides, if bothered him, this Johnny Lane thing.
He struck a match and glanced down the long row of mailboxes. As in most apartment buildings in Harlem, there were three and four surnames on each letter box. He found the box marked C. Matthews. Apartment 42. He shook out the match and climbed the stairs.
The numbers on the door must have been bright and new at one time. They were tarnished and bent now, and the 2 dangled from one screw.
He looked for a bell button, and when he found there was none, he used his knuckles on the door. He rapped lightly because it was late at night, and he didn’t want to cause more disturbance than he had to. When he got no answer, he rapped again.
“Miss Matthews?” he called softly.
A door opened, but it wasn’t the door he knocked on. A man in his undershirt came out into the hallway, two doors down from Cindy’s.
“Whutcha want?” he asked.
“I’m looking for Miss Matthews,” Trachetti said. “Cynthia Matthews. Would you know if she’s home?”
“She ain’t home,” the man said. He continued to stare at Trachetti suspiciously.
“Do you know where she is?”
“No,” the man lied.
“I’m not trying to harm her. I want—”
“I don’t know where she is,” the man said.
“You’re sure she’s not home?”
“She ain’t home,” the man said.
“Well. Thank you.”
The man walked into his apartment and slammed the door behind him, and Trachetti listened to the slam in the dim hallway, and he couldn’t say he blamed the man very much. Still, he was trying to do the girl a favor. I mean, he thought, what the hell. I came here to help her.
Did she work nights? He wished he’d checked her card more carefully. He’d scanned it quickly for her address, before Palazzo could catch him at it and make some crack, and now he’d made a trip for nothing.
Oh, what the hell. What the hell is a man supposed to do, anyway?
He walked down the steps quickly and out onto the stoop. The old man and woman were still sitting there, breathing the cold November air. Trachetti saw the hostility in their eyes, and then he turned his head away and went to the squad car.
“I drew a blank,” he said to the driver.
The driver shrugged and opened the door for Trachetti.
Johnny knocked on the closed door urgently, and when he realized there was a bell, he saved his knuckles and pressed his forefinger against the button. He could hear the sound of laughter inside the apartment, and then the sound of the bell knifing the laughter, cutting it off. He kept his finger on the button and inside he heard Barney Knowles shout, “All right, stop leanin’ on the damn thing!”
He shouldn’t have done that, he shouldn’t have leaned on the bell. The one thing he didn’t want to do was get Barney sore at him. With the cops at Cindy’s place, he needed Barney again. Barney would know what to do.
He heard Barney’s heavy footsteps inside, and then someone laughed again, and then the door snapped back, and the chain pulled taut, and he saw Barney’s face, plastered with a smile that dropped suddenly, leaving a mouth open in a small O.
“Johnny, for God’s sake—”
“I had to come back. Believe me, Barney, I wouldn’t have if I—”
Barney was already shaking his head. His eyes said no even before his mouth did. “Kid, go away. Now look, I’m not kidding. The answer is no. Whatever you want, it’s no.”
“Barney, I ain’t got a place to stay. I can’t walk the streets. They’ll pick me up, sure as hell.”
“Well, you can’t stay here, kid. Now look, let’s be sensible about this. I mean, even if you—”
“Who is it, Barney?” The Flower called from the living room.
Barney hesitated. “Nobody, Flower.”
“Must be somebody,” The Flower called back.
“Now you done it,” Barney said. “Goddamnit, now you done it!”
“Hey, Barney!” The Flower yelled, “Who is it?”
“Look, kid,” Barney said hastily, “I gave you a fin. Use it. Here, here’s another five. Get a room someplace. That’ll keep you off the streets. Kid, I can’t do no more than that for you. Now, here, take this. Come on, kid.”
“How can I get a room? Don’t you think the cops are checking all the hotels and rooming joints? Barney, I wouldn’t be here if I could’ve taken a room. I got dough, that ain’t a problem.”
“You need any help, Barney?” The Flower called, and Johnny heard the scrape of a chair, and then footsteps approaching the door.
“Oh, Lord,” Barney muttered. He sighed heavily and then reached for the chain, pulling the door wide. “Come on in,” he said wearily.
Johnny went into the apartment just as The Flower came from the living room. The Flower looked Johnny over and then asked, “Who’s this, Barney?” At the same time his hand casually strayed to the lapel of his jacket, and Johnny saw the bulge of his shoulder holster under the cut of his suit.
“He’s on the run,” Barney said, deciding to play it straight.
“Oh?” The Flower’s eyebrows rose in interest. “What you done, kid?”
“Nothing,” Johnny answered. “They think I killed Luis the Spic, but I didn’t.”
There was the sound of another chair being shoved back in the living room, and then more footsteps. Anthony Bart poked his head around the corner.
