Transgressions

by Ed McBain

  ARCHIBALD LAWLESS,

  ANARCHIST AT LARGE:

  WALKING THE LINE

  Walter Mosley

  1

  I saw the first ad on a Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal.

  REQUIRED: SCRIBE

  A. LAWLESS IN THE TESSLA BUILDING

  The next notice appeared on Thursday in the classified section of the daily New York Times.

  AAL LTD. SEEKS SCRIBE

  APPLY AT OFFICES IN TESSLA BUILDING

  Then, the next week, on the back page of the Village Voice and in the classified section of the Amsterdam News.

  SCRIBE SOUGHT KL-5-8713

  The last ads gave no address but I knew that it had to be put there by A. Lawless at AAL Ltd. in the Tessla Building. I called and got an answering machine.

  “If you are applying for the position leave your name and number,” a throaty woman’s voice said. “And please let us know where you heard about the position.”

  Then came the tone.

  “Felix Orlean,” I said. I gave my phone number and added, “I saw your ad in the Times, the Journal, the Amsterdan News, and the Village Voice.”

  Much later that night, hours after I’d gone to sleep, the phone rang giving me a sudden fright. I was sure that my mother or father had gotten sick down home. I grabbed the phone and whined, “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Mr. Orlean?” He said or-leen not or-le-ahn as I pronounce my name.

  “Yes? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, son,” he sad in a deep gravelly voice that reminded me of Wallace Beery from the old films. “Why would you think something’s wrong?”

  “What time is it?”

  “I just went through the tape,” he said. “You were the only one who saw all four ads. Do you read all those New York papers?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The Washington Post too. And the International Herald Tribune when I can get it.”

  I turned on the light next to my bed to see the clock but was blinded by the glare.

  “Are you a student?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “At Columbia.” If I had been more awake I wouldn’t have been so open.

  “Come to the office this morning,” he said. “I’ll be in by five but you don’t have to get there till ten to six.”

  “Huh?”

  He hung up and my eyesight cleared enough to see that it was three forty-five.

  I wondered what kind of man did his work at that time. And what would possess him to call a potential employee hours before the sun came up? Was he crazy? Must be, I thought. Of course I had no intention of going to his office at six A.M. or at any other time. I turned out the light and pulled the covers up to my chin but sleep did not return.

  I had been intrigued for days about the job description of scribe. I had thought it was just a fancy way to say secretary who takes dictation. But after the call I wasn’t so sure. Who was A. Lawless? Was it that cool woman’s voice on the answering machine? No. It had to be the raspy late-night caller.

  What kind of job could it be?

  “It’s too bad yo’ daddy and them named you Felix,” Aunt Alberta, the Ninth Ward fence, said to me once. And when I asked her why she said, “ ‘Cause that’s a cartoon cat and we all know what curiosity do for a cat.”

  I loved my Aunt Alberta. She’s the one who encouraged me when I wanted to come up to New York to study journalism. My parents had always planned on me becoming a lawyer like my father, and his father. Even my great grandfather had studied law, although he wasn’t able to get a license to practice in Louisiana. In those days colored lawyers, even extremely light ones, were rare down south.

  My father had harangued me for a week to stop my foolishness and make a decision about which law school to attend. I finally told him that Alberta thought it was a good idea for me to try journalism.

  “And how would you know what Alberta thinks?” he asked. My father is a big man but I’m just small, taking after the men on my mother’s side.

  “I asked her,” I said shaking a little under the shadow of JP Orlean.

  “You what?”

  “I went down to the county jail and saw her, poppa.” I closed my eyes involuntarily, expecting to be knocked on my can.

  I had been hit by my father before. He was a violent man. Stern but fair, my mother used to say. But I never saw what was fair about whipping a child with a strap until red welts rose up all over his body.

  “I thought I told you that Alberta Hadity is no longer to be considered family,” my father said in a voice as quiet as the breeze.

  And that was my chance. After twenty-one years of obeying my father, or lying to him, the gate was open. All I had to do was stay quiet. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut and he would see it as insubordination.

  I looked down at his brown shoes. Blutcher’s we called them down south. They’re known as wing tips in New York. Chub Wilkie, I knew, had shined those shoes that morning. He shined my father’s shoes every week day morning. JP used to say that Chub Wilkie was the finest man in the law building where he practiced. But he never invited Mr. Wilkie to dinner as he did the law partners at Hermann, Bledsoe, and Orlean.

  Mr. Wilkie was too dark-skinned and too poor to be seen on our social level.

  My father and mother were no more than cafe au lait in their coloring. My sister and I were lighter even than that.

  “Well?” my father said. I could feel the weight of his stare on my neck.

  It was a great concession for him to ask anything of me. I was supposed to say that I was sorry, that I would never speak to my felon auntie again. The words formed in my mouth but I kept my teeth clamped down on them.

  “I expect you out of the house before your mother returns home,” he said.

  But still he hesitated.

  I knew that he expected me to fold, to gasp out an apology and beg for his indulgence. I had always lived at home, never worked a day in my life. But as dependent as I was on my father I was just as stubborn too.

  After another minute the shoes carried him from the family den. I looked up and out of the glass doors that led to the garden at the back of the house. I knew then that it would be the last time I ever saw my mother’s orchid and lily garden.

  I almost yelled for joy.

  After reliving my exile from the Orlean family sleep was impossible. At five I got out of bed and went to the tiny kitchen that separated my room from my soccer-star roommate, Lonnie McKay. I heated water in a saucepan instead of the kettle so as not to wake him.

  Lonnie had a full scholarship in the engineering school for captaining the fledgling Columbia Ciceros (pronounced by those in the know as Kickeros). I had to borrow the thirty thousand dollars a year and then get part-time jobs to pay the outrageous rent and for anything else I might need—like instant coffee.

  I poured the hot water and mixed in the freeze-dried flakes. The coffee was bitter and yet tasteless but that was all right by me. The bitter taste was my life, that’s what I was thinking.

  And then I looked up.

  The long red velvet curtain that covered Lonnie’s doorway fluttered and a young woman walked through. There was only the small forty-watt bulb lighting the kitchen but I could see that she was naked except for the tan bikini panties. An inch shorter than I with smallish but shapely breasts. Her hair was long curly brown and her eyes were large. She was slender and pale skinned but somehow I knew that she was a colored woman, girl really—not more than nineteen. When she saw me she smiled, crossed her hands over her breasts, and sat down on the chair across from where I was standing.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling with false modesty.

  “Hi.” I looked away to hide my embarrassment.

  “You must be Felix.”

  Forcing my head back I looked her in the eye. Eyes. They were light brown and laughing, full of life and encouraging me to stay where I was, not to run back to my room which is what I wanted to do more than anything.

  “Yes,” I
said. I stepped forward and held out my hand like I always did when someone called me by name.

  She looked at my hand, hesitated, then shifted, managing to keep her modesty and take my hand at the same time.

  “Arrett,” she said. “I’m a friend of Lonnie’s.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said.

  We stared at each other for a moment, and then a moment more. Arrett seemed to be suppressing a laugh. I would have loved to see that laugh.

  “Why are you up so early?” she asked.

  “Going to apply for a job,” I said. And there it was. My future was sealed. A near naked woman stumbling across my path in the early hours of the morning and I was thrown out of my orbit. My whole life had changed because of a girl I’d probably never see again.

  Mr. Lawless would have said that it was my fate, that the moment he heard my light New Orleans drawl he knew that we were meant to come together.

  “What kind of job?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  She grinned and I felt my heart swell up in my chest.

  A sound issued from Lonnie’s room. It might have been her name.

  “He wants me,” she said. It was almost a question.

  I almost said, don’t go.

  “Ari,” Lonnie called from behind the red curtain.

  She got up, forgetting her modesty, and said, “We’ll see each other at school,” and then ran through the red fabric into my roommate’s den.

  I sat down and considered going back to bed. But then Lonnie’s first sigh of pleasure pierced the air. I hurried to my room, dressed and left the apartment before they could fill the house with their love.

  2

  The Tessla building is on West 38th Street. It’s not the biggest building in midtown Manhattan but it’s up there. Sixty-nine stories. The glass doors are modern but the lobby is thirties art deco to the max. Black, white, and red tiles of marble cover the floor in vaguely Egyptian designs. The marble on the walls is gray and light blue. A huge painting behind the guard’s stone counter is of a bare-breasted, golden skinned Joan of Arc leading her French army out of a sun that you just know represents God.

  “Yes?” the guard asked me. “Can I help you?”

  “AAL Limited,” I said.

  The man behind the counter was African, I believed. His features were purely Negroid. The round head and almost almond shaped eyes, the dark skin had no blemishes and his lips seemed chiseled they were so perfect. My sister went out with a man like this for two weeks once and our parents decided to send her to Paris for two years. She was still there for all that I knew.

  The man’s eyes rose as a smile curved his sensual mouth.

  “Mr. Lawless wants to see you?”

  “I guess,” I said. “He said to get here by ten to six.”

  “That’s Mr. Lawless. No visitors after five fifty-five. He told me that himself,” the guard said, sounding a little like he’d learned to speak English from an Englishman. “What do you do?”

  “I’m a student,” I said. “I study journalism.”

  This answer seemed to disappoint the young guard. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say, too bad.

  “Fifty-two eleven,” he said. “Take the last elevator on the right. It’s the only one we have working this early.”

  It was a utility elevator. Thick matting like gray bedspreads were hung over the walls to protect them from harm when heavy objects were moved. I pushed the button and the door closed but there was no sense of motion. A couple of times I looked up at the small screen that should have shown the floors as they passed by but the number was stuck at twelve.

  Finally, after a long interval the doors opened and I got out wondering if I was on the right floor. The walls were painted the palest possible green and the floor was tiled with white stone veined in violet and dark jade. Two arrows on the wall opposite the elevator door pointed in either direction. Right was 5220 to 5244 and left was 5200 to 5219.

  I turned left. After I passed the first few offices I realized that the door at the dead end of the hall was my destination.

  That door was different than the rest. From the distance it seemed to be boarded up as if it were under construction or condemned. Five or six weathered boards were nailed into place, lengthwise but not neatly at all. Two shorter boards were nailed across these, more or less vertically. There was something that I couldn’t discern hanging midway down the left side of the door.

  I passed Tweed’s Beads and then Thunderstruck, Personal Dating Service. I was wondering what other kind of date there was, other than personal that is, when I realized that the object hanging from the door at the end of the hall was a handmade doll with a black face and a striped yellow and red dress. The dress was painted on the cylindrical body made from a toilet paper roll or something like that.

  The voodoo doll stopped me for moment. I’d seen many such fetishes in Louisiana. They’re all over the French Quarter, for tourists mainly. But hanging there, from that boarded-up door, the mani-ßkin took on a sinister air.

  What the hell was a voodoo doll doing there on the fifty-second floor of a skyscraper in New York City?

  I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath through my nostrils. Then I walked forward.

  There wasn’t any doorknob or door that I could see. Just the grayed planking nailed to either side of the doorway covering something black and wooden behind. The doll had a slack grin painted on her round head. She seemed to be leering at me.

  “Go on,” I said to the doll.

  I rapped on the boards.

  No answer.

  After a reasonable pause I knocked again.

  No answer.

  My fear of the doll was quickly being replaced by fury. What kind of trick was being played on me? Was the guard downstairs in on it? Did Lonnie put Arrett out there to run me out of the house?

  My fingernails were pressing hard against my palms when a voice said, “Who’s out there?”

  There was no mistaking that raspy tone.

  “Mr. Lawless?”

  “Orleen?”

  “Yes. I mean yes sir.” The latter was added because I was raised on good manners down home.

  The door opened into the room, which surprised me. The planks were arranged to give the illusion of a boarded-up portal but really they were cut to allow the door, boards and all, to open inward.

  The man standing there before me had no double in the present day world or in history. He stood a solid six three or four with skin that was deep amber. His hair, which was mostly dark brown and gray, had some reddish highlights twined into a forest of thick dreadlocks that went straight out nine inches from his head, sagging only slightly. The hair resembled a royal headdress, maybe even a crown of thorns but Mr. A. Lawless was no victim. His chest and shoulders were unusually broad even for a man his size. His eyes were small and deep set. The forehead was round and his high cheekbones cut strong slanting lines down to his chin which gave his face a definite heart shape. There was no facial hair and no wrinkles except at the corners of his eyes.

  His stomach protruded from his open fatigue jacket but it didn’t sag or seem soft against the buttoned-up rose colored shirt. His pants were tan and shapeless. His big feet were bare.

  A. Lawless was forty-five or maybe sixty. But even a rowdy with a baseball bat would have thought twice before taking a swing at him.

  “Orleen?” he asked me again.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Come in, come.” He gestured with hands that were small compared to the rest of the him. But that only reminded me of stories I’d read about the Brown Bomber, Joe Louis. He had small hands too.

  Mr. Lawless went around me to close the boarded door. He threw three bolts down the side and then flipped down a bronze piece of metal at the base that served a buttress against anyone forcing their way in.

  “Just so we don’t have any unwanted guests,” he said. Then he led the way back to the interior.

  I followed my host throug
h a moderate sized room that had a dark wood floor and wooden furniture that wasn’t of this century or the last. Just a couple of tables with a chair and a cushionless couch. The thick pieces had seen a lot of use in the past hundred years or so but they were well varnished and sturdy.

  There were two doors at the back of the room. Straight ahead was a frosted glass door that had no writing on it. Immediately to the left was an oak door upon which the word STORAGE was stenciled in highlighted gold lettering.

  We went through the untitled glass door into a smallish room that I figured to be his office. At the back of the room was a window that had an unobstructed view of the Hudson River and New Jersey beyond. It was about six and the sun was just falling upon our misty neighbor state. There was a dark wood swivel chair next to the window, behind a small desk which was only large enough for the laptop computer that sat on it.

  The room was filled with a musky odor that, while neither sweet nor sour, carried a pleasant notion. This odor I later came to associate with Archibald Lawless’s life. He pervaded any situation with his presence and half-civilized genius.

  The wall to my left had a series of shelves that held various oddities. There was a crusty old toy chest and a child’s baby doll with a red sash around its throat. There was a rattlesnake suspended in fluid in a large jar, a parchment scroll tied with string, a replica of a human skull, a small stuffed animal (I didn’t know what species at the time), and a necklace: a piece of costume jewelry in a plastic case held up by a W-shaped metal frame. This necklace was made up of gaudy pieces of glass representing emeralds and rubies mainly, with a ribbon of fake diamonds snaking through. There were other pieces on the shelves but that’s all I was able to make out on first sight.