City of the Dead

by Herbert Lieberman

  »12«

  8:40 P.M. A THIRD-FLOOR LOFT IN A WAREHOUSE ON VARICK STREET.

  Francis Xavier Haggard stands cross-armed and pensive before a high, crumbling plaster wall, studying the curious motto scrawled there.

  The letters, sprayed on graffiti-style in tall, wavery blood-red letters, cover the full length of the wall and run from nearly floor to ceiling. A spray can of Red Devil paint lies on its side, empty and discarded, at the foot of the wall beneath the motto.

  THE DAY OF THE MUFFLED OAR IS COMING

  Haggard’s pebbly blue eyes fasten thoughtfully on the words, trying to decipher their cryptic, somewhat portentous message. He appears to be a man deep in reverie.

  Behind him two young people hover silently in an open doorway. One, a short, stocky, powerfully built Greek man by the name of Tsacrios, mid-twenties, darkly handsome, with tempestuous curly hair and sullen eyes; the other, a lithesome black girl called Cynthia, with the bone structure and lineaments of a fashion model. Leaning against the jamb, she wears a man’s silk paisley robe cinctured tightly around the waist with a tasseled sash, and, quite apparent, nothing else beneath. Their faces convey a mixture of distrust and fear.

  The detective turns from the wall, then commences his slow leonine prowl through the awful chaos of the loft. The place gives the impression of a violent ransacking, drawers ripped out, feminine apparel strewn across the floor, broken furniture, shattered lamps, ceramic crockery and ashtrays hurled violently against the wall, in some places punctured plaster.

  There are two small army cots where people have recently lain. Onto these the contents of dozens of tubes of vibrantly colored acrylic paints have been squirted, dripped, and oozed, creating on the tumbled sheets and blankets a violent lunatic pattern. Mingled into this frenzy are the remains of dozens of fine horsehair brushes, all shattered and broken, then stretchers and canvas, battered and slashed irretrievably.

  Haggard moves farther into the loft, stooping beneath joists and pipes beaded with cold dripping water, ducking to avoid naked hanging light bulbs. His prowl moves him toward the gloomy shadows in the rear of the loft. Here he finds curtained off, without the grace of a door, a dismal but clean little privy revealing someone’s recent pathetic efforts to beautify it by attempting to cover up a soot-blackened window with a pretty bamboo shade.

  Outside of that is a tiny, makeshift alcove containing a small electric stove and a zinc-plated sink with a wood plank shelf above it lined with jars of instant coffee, peanut butter, jam, powdered milk, a soap cleanser, Ritz crackers, and two biscuit tins. Beneath the sink lies the crumpled, maggoty body of a small black-and-white mongrel dog, muzzle sticky with blood.

  Stooping and weaving his way beneath joists and pipes, Haggard completes his slow circumambulation of the loft, arriving once more at the heap of nameless debris in the center of the loft. With the two young people still watching him from the doorway, he pokes with the tip of his shoe through the wreckage, a graveyard junk heap of paintings, dozens of them, in shreds and tatters, as if the stretchers had been smashed brutally and each canvas very deliberately punched through, then ground under heel.

  The violence in evidence there has a maniacal look about it. The devastation is total, absolute. But it is still possible to describe the shape and content of many of the paintings, all of which appear to have a distinctly nautical motif—seas and skies, both tranquil and stormy, beaches, sand dunes, driftwood, marine flora, storm-weathered shacks, nets, dead fish washed up on the shore, the wrecked hulls of old beached scows, barnacle-encrusted, shattered, peeling, tumid bellies turned upward toward the sun.

  One there in all this frenzied heap catches Haggard’s eye. A lone figure at twilight, a man in shorts and skivvy, standing hip-high in boiling surf, caught just at that moment when his great surf pole, brought back as far as it will go, quivers in the space of that second just before it will be hurled forward like a lash. There’s something in that lone figure on the beach consigned to what appears a perpetual twilight, something about the powerful shoulders, that intransigent, ramrod carriage with the sea wind beating inland against him, fluttering his garments, something in that figure that the detective recognizes. The bottom left-hand corner of the painting is signed in a tiny, unassertive orthography—Emily Winslow.

  “I hope you get the bastard.”

  A voice shatters Haggard’s inward ruminations. He turns to the stocky young Greek in the open doorway with the pretty black girl hovering just behind him.

  “When you get him I’d appreciate your letting me know. Unofficially, of course, just before you pick him up. I’d like to have a few moments alone with Warren. See the poor little mutt back there?”

  “Yeah. I saw him.” Haggard gazes ruefully at the young man with the round, cherubic face of a Quattrocento prince. Pulling the crumpled DD13 out of his inside pocket he walks toward him. “You’re sure now this is the girl we’re talking about?”

  The two young people glance at the photograph on the police form.

  “That’s her all right,” says Tsacrios. “Looks a little younger there. But that’s her all right—isn’t it, Cyn?”

  “That’s her. No mistake. We never called her Lauren though. We called her Emily.”

  “Emily Winslow?” Haggard stares down at the girl. “That’s right,” the girl replies, a little rattled by the intensity of his gaze.

  “How long she live here?”

  The young man scratches the back of his head. “Oh, maybe three, four months. She looked like the kinda chick moved around a lot. Know what I mean?”

  Haggard gazes at him quizzically.

  “Like she never unpacked her things,” the girl adds by way of explanation. “Never seemed settled. Like she was always ready to move on at a moment’s notice.”

  “Frightened, scared like a rabbit, you know,” Tsacrios offers sympathetically. “Sweet kid though. Kind of person who looks like she had a lotta hard luck.”

  The detective nods, then pauses. “And you say you heard all this ruckus going on last night—”

  “Around seven-thirty, eight o’clock. Somewhere like that. Right, Cyn?”

  “Yeah—somewhere like that.” The pretty black girl stares at Haggard with almost hypnotic fascination. “Some awful ruckus.”

  “Whyn’t you call the cops?”

  “Oh, man—hey—cops—” The young Greek half turns, thumps his forehead with the palm of his hand, then turns back. “Like if we called cops every time that kinda thing went on—”

  “It went on often?”

  “Often? Hey, man—like every other night. He used to beat up on her.”

  “He hit her?”

  “Sure he hit her. Banged her around plenty. Right, Cyn?”

  The girl gazes wide-eyed around the shattered desolation of the room. “Man, it was awful. I mean, like the screaming and crying.”

  “You don’t know his last name, do you? This”—he glances downward at his notes—“Warren?”

  “That’s all I know. She used to call him Warren. Right, Cyn?”

  “That’s right—Warren. Some of those other cats who used to come around here—like his friends. They used to call him something like Keedro.”

  “Keedro?” Haggard jots the name down. “Sounds Spanish.”

  “No, man.” Tsacrios shakes his head emphatically. “He was no Spanish. I know Spanish. This guy was no Spanish. He was more like Midwestern. Fair—blond. Lots of hard r’s. Funny little steel-rimmed glasses. Wasn’t from anywhere around here.”

  “How old?”

  “Late twenties, early thirties, wouldn’t you say, Cyn?”

  “Yeah—thirty, maybe thirty-one or -two. Nice-looking. Very refined, sort of. Like I mean I can see what she saw in him. But those eyes, man—”

  “What about them?”

  “Crazy.” The girl shudders and ties the robe sash more tightly around her. “Crazy. Scare you to look into them eyes, right, Tony? And that voice. Quiet, man. So quiet. So gentle, ri
ght, Tony?”

  “Yeah. Very gentle. Only he liked to beat up on chicks. Get the picture?”

  “Yeah.” Haggard scribbles in his notebook. “I get the picture. Where’d she meet this guy anyway?”

  Tsacrios glances at the black girl. “Who knows? Probably one of the coffeehouses. She used to spend some time over there at night. This creep Warren used to haunt those joints. Sit around there all night snowing the dumb little uptown chicks with a lot of fancy talk about the ‘people’s revolution’—Angst, Schmerz, and Weltanschauung. You know, the bit Then he’d screw ’em and take their money.”

  Haggard lifts his light-gray Borsalino and scratches the back of his head. Something gnaws and nibbles at him. Something in the story that doesn’t jibe for him. When at last he speaks, he speaks out loud, but more to himself than to the two young people watching him. “I don’t get it. This girl—Lauren—Emily—she was fairly sophisticated. I don’t see her swallowing that kind of routine.”

  “Right. You’re right.” The black girl nods eagerly. “But like I say, he had something. And when he was around, like she was stoned. Didn’t think straight.”

  “Or maybe she was scared of him,” Haggard “dreams on out loud, “but didn’t know how to get rid of him.”

  “Could be.” Tsacrios shrugs. “Like I say, he liked to beat up on the chicks. Did somethin’ for him. Once he came downstairs while I was out, started to mess around with Cynthia here. She pushed him and he was gettin’ ready to bust her when I walked in.”

  Haggard smiles, seeing the sudden animation in the young Greek’s eyes.

  “I grabbed him by the collar and threw him out the front door. Told him if I ever found him down there again I’d bust his ass. Never said a word. Not a peep out of him. Just went and that was that. Like I say, without those flunkies around, he was nothin’. Right outta the funnies.”

  “Didn’t seem too funny to me,” says Cynthia. “Especially the heater. Like I never found that too funny at all.” Haggard’s brow cocks. “He carried a gun?”

  “Gun?” the young man snorts, does his half turn and thumps his forehead. “Guns, mister. Plural guns. Mucho guns. That was all part of the image. Always had one strapped on under his jacket. Sit quiet just holding a gun and thinking. Never said a word. Just sat there. You wondered what he was thinking. When all his pals were up here stomping around in berets and combat boots waving guns and doing their number about the Fascist pigs and corporate enemies, this guy’d just sit there quietlike and think.”

  “Who were these pals?”

  “Creeps.” Cynthia makes a face of revulsion. “Loafers and hangers-on. The free-lunch crowd. Just sit around all day with their guns and talk about the ‘people’s war.’ But not even smart—good—talk. Just dumb. Real dumb. Like crazy.”

  “Couple of them came up here once with dynamite,” Tsacrios mutters.

  “Dynamite?”

  “Yeah, man—like I’m tellin’ you. Sticks of dynamite.” Once more Haggard’s small, beady eyes glide over the graffiti-scrawled wall: THE DAY OF THE MUFFLED OAR IS COMING.

  “This Warren,” he says after a moment, “he have some kind of job? Do anything for a living?”

  “Used to call himself an editor.” Tsacrios laughs scornfully.

  “An editor?”

  “Yeah. Some kind of underground press or something. But I never seen no paper he ever put out. Did you, Cyn?” The girl shrugs. “Creepy cat. But like I say, I can see what she saw there. He had something. A kind of excitement. And like when he spoke—” The girl breaks off, unable to find the precise word. “I don’t know—Very quiet—his eyes kinda slow—like you could almost believe him.”

  “If you didn’t listen too carefully.” The young Greek scowls. “If you thought about it for a little while, then it got to be pretty stupid. But this kid, this Emily—what’s her real name again?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Haggard says. “Keep talking.”

  “Well anyway, this chick—he had her completely snowed. Took all her money.”

  “Where’d she get her money?” The detective seizes on the word.

  “From the paintings, man.” Tsacrios strides across the littered floor to the mound of wrecked, battered canvases and glares down at them. “That’s why I’d like to get my hands on him.”

  “You mean she was selling this stuff?” Haggard asks. “Selling? Man, she was just beginning to hit All over the place. Had a gallery. Clients. People with money interested in her. That’s why he hadda go bust this all up.” Tsacrios kneels down by the wreckage, prodding it tenderly with a finger, an expression of irretrievable loss on his face. “Now ain’t that a shame? Pretty things. He just couldn’t stand it. She was painting good. Real good. And he and that phony underground rag of his were a total bust. Used to call her painting ‘bourgeois.’ Every other word out of this creep’s mouth was ‘bourgeois.’ Said the people who bought her paintings were ‘bourgeois’ and they got the money to buy the paintings from robbing ‘the people.’ So, of course, he felt justified in taking whatever money she made from painting to return to ‘the people.’”

  “I don’t figure ‘the people’ ever saw too much of it,” Cynthia says.

  Haggard nods. “You said something about a gallery?”

  “Sure, she had a gallery uptown.”

  “Know which one?”

  “Nope. East Side someplace. Pretty posh. You know which one, Cyn?”

  The girl shakes her head, gazing at Haggard forlornly. “Don’t worry about that,” the detective says. “I’ll find the gallery. What I’m concerned about now is where he took her. You don’t have any ideas, do you?”

  He glances back and forth from one to the other, his fierce eagle glance causing them uneasiness.

  “All I know,” says the girl at last, “is that wherever it was, she didn’t want to go there. He dragged her outta here.”

  “Him and his pals?”

  “Yeah. He come over here last night with three of them. We heard all this screaming and fighting. Things crashing on the floor.”

  “You didn’t go up?”

  “No, man.” The Greek does his half turn. “Like I told you, when you hear that kind of stuff six, seven nights a week, after a while you stop hearin’ it. And anyway”—he looks away, eyes lowered and ashamed—“there were three, four of them. And they’re real creeps. Guns and everything.”

  “Can’t say I blame you.” Haggard snaps his notebook shut.

  Tsacrios glances at the girl a moment, abashed, a little contrite. “She wanted me to go up and try and stop them. You live long enough you learn to keep your nose out of where it don’t belong. But if I ever see him again, minus the flunkies—”

  “Sure,” says Haggard. “I understand. Got a phone I can use?”

  “Downstairs in the studio,” Tsacrios mutters.

  “Studio?”

  “Yeah—I got a loft below. I’m a sculptor.”

  Downstairs, a few moments later, Haggard stands in another loft with the exact same long-high-wide configuration of the demolished studio above. This, too, is an artist’s studio but’ it looks more like the back room of an auto-body shop. Strewn about the place in various stages of dismemberment are the remains of what must be at least a dozen fatal collisions—smashed fenders, demolished hoods, detached doors, rusty universals and drive shafts, grillworks—rewelded and tortured into writhing shapes, tall, spikelike trees, brittle sea flora, long, spiny pincushion shapes, and delicate weblike filigree, all wrought of chrome and hammered steel.

  “Right back there”—the young Greek waves vaguely at the shadows in the rear—“on the wall.” He leads the bewildered detective through a maze of devastation—ghastly wreckage, acetylene torches, riveting guns, welding masks, long, white rubber hoses depending like vines from the ceiling, screwed into huge green metal tanks of pure oxygen.

  “Help yourself.” Tsacrios propels Haggard forward into the shadows, then at a point turns and leaves him, weary and perplexed, bes
ide a wall phone.

  In a matter of moments, he has dialed the 17th Precinct and is speaking directly to the desk sergeant. “Hello—Wershba?—I’m down here on Varick Street. Yeah, you were right. This is the place all right, but the girl’s blown.” Swiftly he describes the situation and everything he’s seen here. “What I need quick is a rundown on everything you’ve got on this New World Militia bunch. I want names, prior arrest records, fingerprints—anything you got. Particularly some guy by the name of Warren. No, no surname. All I got is Warren. Caucasian. Medium height. Sandy hair. Mid-twenties to early thirties. Glasses. Active in revolutionary activities. Might be Middle Western. See what the Feds have. Also, any of these other guys you can lay hands on—pull ’em in for questioning. There’s an awful mess here and, frankly, it looks bad. This Warren character has taken the girl. Yeah—sometime last night. We’ll need a couple of lab guys down here right away. See what kind of prints they can lift off all this mess. Also, I want a rundown on every art gallery—that’s right, Wershba-—art gallery. Art—a—r—t. All galleries, midtown area, East Side,, that know of or that have ever dealt with an artist called Emily Winslow. And, Wershba—listen to me. Listen hard. Not a word to anyone. This is the Chief’s kid. That’s right—Konig’s daughter. So don’t blab it around. He’s not to know a thing till we’ve got something more definite. From what I’ve seen up here, and from everything I just heard, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

  In the center of the studio area once again, Haggard stands dwarfed and mute before a 1953 Oldsmobile grill-work that has been unraveled by means of blowtorches and refashioned into what appears to be a chromium hat-rack. A small white tag identifies it as KINETIC APOCALYPSE #3. He lifts his Borsalino again and scratches the back of his head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “What’s what supposed to mean?” Tsacrios glances up from a struggle with the cork of a half-gallon bottle of Chianti.