by Ed Lacy
“Cut the smart act, Chico!” London grunted and punched me in the face. It wasn’t too much of a wallop: he lacked room to swing. But oh my God, how icy I became with fear! I knew then they thought I had killed Harry.
The punch made my face sting, but I didn’t notice it. Then the cold, scared feeling began to warm up deep inside me—into anger. How could they be so crazy? They knew I couldn’t possibly have killed Harry. Not only did I lack any reason, but I hadn’t seen him since he disappeared and … London with his “Chico” slop …. I knew where I stood now. They were framing me! How stupid I had been to go to the police station. I had reported Harry missing … something had happened, a Hispano man was around, they had a patsy! Oh how real it was!
No moving or buying a house now. The very least that would happen would be the loss of my job. We would need a good lawyer—that meant the end of Helen’s two thousand. She said it would never be good luck money. Damn, drunken Miguel was right, once we get almost clear of the crowded one room, the bugs and insecticide, the blancos have a way of trapping us.
London yawned and said to the other detective, “I feel pulled inside out, Artie. Wasn’t in the sack more than a minute, when the lieutenant phoned.” Glancing at me, he added in Spanish and English, “You people are a pain in my ass! Come up here to get on relief …”
“I am as much on relief as you are,” I cut in, my mind yelling at me to shut-up. “And what means ‘up here?’ Or isn’t this a part of our country, the USA?”
London hit me again, a slap on my ear and head, making more noise than it hurt. I said, “Go ahead, work me over! There are not only two of you brave ones, with about two hundred pounds on me, but your badges too!”
Artie, the one behind the wheel, dug his elbow into my side: that knocked all the air out of me and pained. He stopped the car, said, “I’ll shut his big mouth.”
“Come on, no time for that,” London said calmly, as if he hadn’t just hit me twice.
We drove on, me sandwiched in-between their hulks, sweating and suddenly feeling sick. I had this feeling I would never reach the police station alive if I said another word.
From then on, it was all a nightmare and all I could do was be patient until I awoke and Helen kissed me.
We didn’t go to any police station, we drove to the warehouse across from the handball courts. A gang of radio cars and an ambulance were parked outside. The iron back door was up and a policeman stood there, puffing on a cigarette. Despite all the cars, the place was very quiet … deathly quiet.
Before I could think, London yanked me out of the car, pushed me into the warehouse, shoved me into an elevator. Artie stood at my side, much taller, a cruel smile on his face. For a wild moment I wanted to swing on them … with luck I might floor both. Like I’d done with the teenagers. But the moment didn’t last long. I couldn’t take two of them, perhaps not even one. I tried anything like that and I would be dead for sure. Perhaps that was the chance they were waiting for. The morning papers full: “Puerto Rican Assaults Police … Killed!”
We came out on the roof. It was cool up there but it only made me shiver. A small crowd of white faces—cops, the ambulance doctor, the old watchman—turned to look at me. I was the star actor and it filled me with an unknown feeling of deep fear. As we walked toward the silent crowd, I saw Harry laying in the center of them. They had a bright light set up—on him.
He was still wearing his pigskin handball gloves and still stripped to the waist … but all bloody and busted up something terrible. Ribs, sharp pieces of bone, were sticking out like hunks of broken ivory through the dried blood and torn skin of his chest. He had a great hole in his stomach, and his head … it was as misshapen as a cracked hard-boiled egg. His fat face was all dried blood with the white nose bone showing, and some teeth hung from what must have been Harry’s mouth. I stared down at the ragged outline of his skull, bones breaking out all over him, the unnatural twist of one leg. I began to shake badly. Thunder rolled up inside me and I was falling through the stars of the night. I was being yanked out of frozen fox-hole in the Korean cold to the wild sound of Chinese horns….
I opened my eyes expecting to see Helen shaking me, but I was being flung through the air. Before I could scream I realized it was only London jerking me to my feet. He slapped my face, hard. I jammed my fists into my pants pockets. London yelled, “Your screwy handball story! You think we police are morons, would fall for that crock of bull? You got Harry up on this roof, beat him to death with a crowbar—or something—then thought you were playing it cute by coming to me, all innocent about wanting to make sure Harry’s keys and things weren’t stolen! Going for clever with a yarn about last seeing him run after the ball. Okay, bobo, the show is over—all I want from you now is some damn fast straight answers! Where’s the murder weapon?”
Still dazed, I vaguely heard the watchman say, “Excuse me, sir, but as I keep telling these other officers, nobody could get up here except by the rear elevator, and that’s been locked all yesterday. You see we only use it when a truck is being loaded or unloaded in the rear….”
Artie grunted at him to shut up, while London pushed me to one side, on the outskirts of the ring of light, as if trying to shove me out of the sound of the old man’s voice. London growled, “I ain’t staying up all night for nothing. What did you kill him with?”
“Kill? I never killed Harry. We were playing handball and he vanished as I told …”
In Spanish London called me the miserable unbathed son of a sick whore. The big louse could really speak good Spanish. His fist followed the words. This time he had his weight behind the blow … and foolishly, before all these witnesses, I wasn’t expecting to be hit. My feet went from under me and I sat hard on the rough roof, tasting my blood inside my mouth. Then I couldn’t control myself—and I suppose I no longer cared—I wet my pants like a baby. I heard some of them snicker but that didn’t matter. I had nothing to do but wait until the bad dream was over. You can’t change nightmares.
Actually, the punch jarred all the foggy cobwebs from my mind. Instead of jumping up. I got to my feet slowly, said coldly, “I can only tell you what I know, that which I have already told you. Also, I prefer you speak only English to me.”
“You prefer! What did you beat him with?”
“I never hit Harry. I told you …”
“The hell with what you told me, I want to hear about the murder weapon—now!” London was the new star of show, shouting his lines.
I said calmly, “I know nothing of a murder. Why should I kill Harry? How could I? How could I get him up here?
“Listen to me, you black monkey,” London began, speaking in Spanish, when a neatly dressed older man came over and said something in a low voice to him. London nodded, said, “Yes sir.” Then he told some of the uniformed police to keep searching the roof and surrounding area, to rope off the block. With London and Artie for bodyguards, I was hustled into the elevator and down, back into the squad car. This time they drove to the police station.
As in a movie I was taken to a small bare room, sat on a chair, and a light was turned on my face until my eyes ached and the rays seemed live electricity slicing into my head. London and this Artie took turns questioning me, but mostly London talked. He’d shake me when I tried to shut my eyes, but no more punches. That was good because at times I’d think: one more sock and I’ll lose my head, try to take them. Of course the big trouble was, after a time you get so mad you no longer give a damn. When I was boxing amateur I used to have the same trouble.
Now, in my nightmare, I thought of this as a bout, and told myself to keep remembering the basic rule of fighting: protect yourself at all times. No matter how tired or dizzy I was, I tried to keep my mental guard up, and was most careful of what I said. It was not too difficult, as long as I kept my head. I wasn’t lying, had nothing to hide or trip myself up on.
But the questions were all crazy. In some way they reminded me of this new jazz … fast, jerky, staccato
beat … yet all part of a kind of dizzy rhythm, if you listened to it long enough. London asked, “You were sore at Harry for sleeping with Louisa, weren’t you?”
“I didn’t think it was a good thing, but it was not any of my business. Who am I to tell her what to do?”
“What didn’t you think it wasn’t good? Because Harry was a North American?”
“No, because it is not good for a woman to pay food bills with her body.”
“How many times did you knock off Louisa? Were you jealous because she was your outside woman?”
I wanted to laugh, only it might get me a busted mouth. “Me? Louisa is my cousin.”
“So?” The sarcasm in his voice made me as mad as if I’d been struck by his fist.
There were the questions to make me lose my temper, and questions to trick me, like a feint in the ring. “You told Harry to stop seeing her and he refused. But where did you get the crowbar from? The one you clouted him with?”
“What crowbar?” I asked.
“Then what did you hit him with? Part of an iron beam from one of the wrecked houses? Some lead pipe? A slab of the wall?”
“I never hit him with anything.”
“Jose, you’re strong aren’t you?”
“I am in condition.”
“But not strong enough to swing an iron beam, I bet.”
“That would depend on the size … Look, I never saw any iron beam, never swung one.”
“After Harry changed his mind about selling you his house, and you got mad, how did you get him to go up on the warehouse roof?”
“We were never up there,” I said slowly. “Nor did we talk about the house yesterday. I told you, my wife hasn’t received the money yet. I’ve been turned down by a lot of apartment houses, and I never even spit on the guys, much less hit them. Harry hadn’t changed his mind.”
“But how did you pick the lock?”
I swung around like a sailboat in a new breeze. “Lock? What lock?”
“On the iron door at the back of the warehouse. Or did you carry him up the fire escape?”
“I keep telling you, I didn’t touch Harry, we were playing handball.” I wanted to ask how he thought I could possibly carry a fellow like Harry, about 180 pounds, up five or six flights of a fire escape? Or, was there a fire escape on the warehouse? But I knew that was the sucker move he was waiting for, start me arguing on things which didn’t matter—like forcing me to lead with my right.
“Playing handball is your story! You never were in the handball courts.
“Ask the sun-bather, that Frank Rastello,” I said.
London gave me a big grin, told me gently, “I already have. He says he never saw either you or Harry—ever.”
“He’s a liar!” I yelled. “Then he must be the one, be involved in this!”
“Yeah? Involved in what, Jose?”
“I don’t know, but he must have some reason for lying. Several times he was getting the sun while we were playing, why should he deny seeing us? Harry had his wallet, how could we have had it if Rastello hadn’t been in the playground?”
Then there would be the pauses, between the rounds rest, while London would lean against the wall and glare at me, puff on his pipe and fill the room with a sweet stink which made the other detective Artie, screw up his heavy face. Then London would come out jabbing with: “Perhaps you didn’t do it, didn’t know what was happening. That warehouse watchman, was he a friend of Louisa’s?”
“What, the old one? No.”
“Guy gets that age he’d be jealous of any bimbo he could get. So he told you to bring Harry up to the roof and before you knew what was happening …”
“Detective, I never saw the watchman before speaking to him yesterday, to ask if he’d seen Harry. I was never up on that roof until you took me there. Didn’t the old man say nobody could get up since the elevator was locked?”
“I’ll ask all questions! How do you know the elevator was locked?”
“Like I told you, I heard him say it, when you took me up on the roof.”
“You said Harry hit the ball over—did it go up on the roof?”
I shrugged, blinked my eyes at the light, seeing all kinds of colored circles and bright spots now. “I don’t know where the ball went, except over the wall. I don’t think anybody can hit a ball that high.”
“What did you go up to see Mrs. Simmons for last night? You been trying to make her?”
“No, no. I merely went up to see if Harry had returned.”
“Didn’t you expect Harry to be angry, when he found out you were after his wife?”
“I want no man’s wife. You saw my Helen, what more can any man ask?” I said.
“Mrs. Simmons says you said you happened to be in the neighborhood; why were you lying to her?”
“Well, I didn’t know if he was home or not and I didn’t want her to worry.”
“You mean you knew damn well where Harry was—dead on the roof!”
“No. That is not so,” I said calmly.
“If you only wanted to know if he was home, why didn’t you phone?”
“You were the one that said it would look bad to phone. Listen, Detective London, I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?”
“Jose, the dumber the crook the smarter he thinks he is. You think you’re a wiseguy, but you’re merely a dumb Marine Tiger!”
“A what?” the Artie one, who happened to be leaning against the wall at the moment, asked.
London gave him an annoyed look.” Before the plane service, all the Spies from the island used to come up here jammed into a boat called the Marine Tiger. So they call a hick fresh from the island, a Marine Tiger.”
I managed to close and rest my eyes for a moment while London was talking. If he wanted a lecture on the history of my island, he should have my father here. He had all the facts on his finger tips, an intelectual with a big mouth, a true bocon.
London shook me, to open my eyes to the sharp light. Like a fighter changing styles, he suddenly switched his attack. He said softly, “Jose, there’s no sense in acting un tofe hombre with me, I’m tougher. Nor is there any sense in lying. Why didn’t you tell me Louisa was Harry’s girl friend?”
“What had that to do with us playing handball? I have another cousin, in Ponce, Nina, to whom wrong has also been done—should I have mentioned her, too? Also, I do not know for a fact Louisa is—was—Harry’s girl. That is only filthy gossip.”
“But when she came to the handball courts yesterday, why didn’t you give her Harry’s money?”
“What? Louisa never came to the playgrounds.”
London sucked hard on his empty pipe. “Why did you go to see her last night? To figure out how to get rid of the body?”
“I went only to ask if she had seen him since the afternoon. I was worried about Harry.”
“Why were you worried? Did you know something had happened to him?”
“No, no. I wasn’t really worried. That is, I was … curious as to what had become of him. He was my friend, willing to sell me his house …”
“Crap! Mrs. Simmons told us Harry didn’t want to sell you the house, he was out to rook you!”
I shook my head, which gave me a bit of relief from the directness of the light. “That is not so. She is the one who was against selling to me. But if I had the down payment, the house would be mine this minute.”
“Yeah? You mean to tell me a bank would let a Puerto Rican mechanic take over a big mortgage on a house in a white area?”
I nodded: that gave no relief. “Harry was to carry the mortgage in his name. Listen, we hadn’t come to that point, gone into all the details.”
“But when he told you he had changed his mind, you got so angry you killed him!”
I groaned, or perhaps it was a weary moan. “No. And would killing him get me the house? I said we hadn’t reached the final—”
“So, you admit killing him!”
I’d left the kind of stupid openin
g he’d been waiting for. I said, “How can I admit what I have not done? Look, I want to see a lawyer.”
“A lawyer? Why, have you done something wrong?”
“No, but you are trying to twist my words. I keep telling you I didn’t kill Harry, or touch him. Would I have come running to the police if I had done something like that?”
“You were playing it smart—you thought!”
I shut up: there wasn’t anything to say. I tried looking at the floor to rest my eyes but London jerked my head up. Strangely, his hand on my chin was almost gentle. He was a smart one. If he whipped me the judge would be able to see the bruises. But a light in your eyes until it is like rays of red hot steel, the constant questioning … isn’t that also torture? But the bruises of the mind do not show….
“Jose,” London said, in Spanish, “the first time Leon came to the playgrounds—the first time not the last time—what did you two arrange?”
“Leon?”
“Christ, I’m talking about Louisa’s husband!” he screamed.
I wanted to smile: London was the one swinging wildly now. “I haven’t seen him in years. The truth is, I have only seen Leon maybe five or six times, all told.” I wanted to add, “And didn’t care for him at any time,” but kept my mouth shut.
“Do you know Mrs. Simmons has received threats because of thinking of selling the house to you? Didn’t Harry say that because of this trouble he had changed his mind? Didn’t you get angry and pick up a … something and break his head? Maybe you didn’t mean to kill him, only to hit him?”
“Harry told me nothing. Are the police giving Mrs. Simmons protection against such threats?”
Calling me a black dung-eater, London kicked at the legs of my chair, nearly knocking it over. “Don’t you worry about what we’re doing!” His voice broke with hoarseness.
Artie, who had been in and out of the room, or leaning silently against the wall, now came forward, told London, “Cut it out, Jack, you’re only scaring the kid. Getting yourself upset.” London mumbled something and left the room. Artie switched the light from my eyes, held out a cigarette. I shook my head. He said, “Go ahead, Chico, take a drag, it will relax you.”
