A Deadly Affair (14 page)

I tried shouting back I could hold, but my voice was lost as two radio cars came racing into the block. But I could hold … Mother of God how I could hold on now! Even if
la jara
below were waiting to send me to the electric chair, I was happy to see them!

The street was filling with uniformed cops. One was climbing up the boom while others were doing something to the body in the cab. For a terrible second the cable began to move up, then it stopped abruptly. I heard London yell, “… then stay the hell away from there! Move him again and we’ll be liable to start this damn thing. Did you call for the fire boys? Yeah, of course, the Emergency Squad too!”

The cop on the boom was now as high as I was on the hook. He was a young fellow with very red hair. He had torn his uniform in climbing. He tried to reach out and grab the cable, pull me to the boom, but I was too far away. He called out, “Give me your hand.”

I tried but my blood had turned to glue: my hands were stuck to the hook. The young policeman told me, “Okay, don’t attempt to move. Just hold on and we’ll have you down.” He pulled a roll of rope from some place behind him, like a magician. Tying one end to the boom, he threw the rope at me.

It struck me a sharp crack on the side but I simply could not move my hands to grab it. Watching it fall to the ground made my head hurt, or perhaps it was the blood rushing to the rear of my skull from hanging upside down so long.

The young cop called down for a long stick. There seemed to be a lull below. The police were all standing around idly. A car braked to a bad stop and a man rushed out and began taking pictures of me. I watched his flash going off like small firecrackers on Three Kings Day. I doubted if he had enough light to take the pictures.

London called up in Spanish, “Hold on, Jose. Ladder will be here any second!”

I whispered, “Talk English.”

Heralded by the sad wail of a siren, a long hook and ladder truck turned into the street, its powerful headlights making the scene all yellow. There was a moment of confusion—until they moved the photographer’s car. But firemen came racing under me and then a dark circle appeared like magic: they were holding a net.

London called up in Spanish, “Do not let go or jump, if you can help it, Jose. This is but a safety measure. The ladder is coming.”

The big truck moved under me on one side of the street, going up on the sidewalk, and a long ladder began rising, like a grey helping hand. A fireman with a red face was coming up the ladder at the same time. I let go of the hook with my feet and touched only air … then my shoes hit the sweet rung of the ladder. The fireman called out, “Don’t move yet, boy!”

I wanted to laugh. Despite all the big efforts they were making for me, I was still a “boy” to them. I told him, my voice suddenly strong, “I can make it okay.”

He was directly under me now, I felt his fingers around my waist. He said, “Not with them hands of yours.”

I tried to let go of the hook but could not. Gathering what was left of my strength, I yanked my hands from the hook, leaving blood and skin sticking to the steel. For a flash of a second, over the pain shooting down my arms,
I
wondered if after all this
I
had now ruined the “evidence.”

The fireman was hugging me against the ladder, his red face next to mine. He said, “Go down slow and don’t worry.”

The movement of my legs brought sharp pain to my hips.
I
said,
“I
can make it. Let go of me.” Somehow it was important to show all these
blancos
, with their lights and cameras on me,
I
did not have to be carried down like a captured monkey.

The fireman told me, “Now take it easy, boy, let me do it.”

My crotch and left leg went aflame.
I
knew we were going down the ladder … and then
I
drifted away, alone, into the gentle night.
I
felt myself being floated along on a sea of many hands.

T
HINGS HAPPENED SO
fast when
I
came to,
I
truly did not know which end was up. First,
I
was lying in an ambulance, and there was Helen’s anxious and sweet tan face at my side.
I
felt numb and stiff all over.
A
man with bushy hair and a sort of odd, pushed-in face, with his white coat open at the collar and showing a lot of hair on his little chest—a doctor—was telling Helen, “You bring him to the hospital tomorrow for another check, and maybe
I
’ll take the stitches from his lip then. While
I
’m fairly sure he hasn’t any internal injuries, he is suffering from intense shock and loss of blood. Keep the bandages on until he comes to the hospital and see they don’t get wet. Now, as soon as he reaches his bed, give him one of these pills, and let him sleep as long as possible. Even around the clock, and wait another day to bring him to the hospital. As for food—”

“Where is Henry?” I cut in and my own voice sounded strange, my lower lip no longer seemed a part of me.

Helen bent down and kissed me, my skin coming alive where her hot lips touched it. She said, “He is waiting at the police station, with Louisa and a woman cop. Everything is fine. They caught the killer—although it was all an accident …”

“Please, talking tires him,” the doctor said.

“I want to hear … It does not tire me that much,” I began, but I really did drift off into sleep.

When I next opened my eyes I was still lying on a stretcher, but in the police station. My hands were thickly bandaged, so were my arms and part of my face. The same doctor was there; Helen was holding a sleeping Henry, and Louisa and May Simmons were standing around. I started to stand up but the doctor placed a hand on my shoulder, said, “Better you rest …”

“No, I want to at least sit up,” I said, in my odd voice, and I did. I felt a pain where my legs meet and saw my underwear and pants were in shreds, my middle and thighs bandaged like a mummy.

“How do you feel?”

“Good. Except down there.” I pointed toward my crotch and he said, “Be careful not to touch your hands against anything. Don’t worry, you still have a full set of tools below. Be sore for a while, but otherwise usable.”

The stretcher was so low it was uncomfortable sitting and I stood up, a slash of pain crossing my middle. The doc said, “Bravo, but don’t overdo things.”

I turned to Helen. “Am I free to go?”

“I guess so. Detective London is busy in there.”

I tried to tuck Henry under his fat chin but Helen drew away, said, “You’re not to touch anything with your hands. I guess we can leave, they know where we are if they want us.”

“We’ll wait. I want to get this over—forever.” I glanced at Louisa: she was smiling even if her face was damp with tears. May Simmons was fingering her rosary again, her lips moving. Something in her face had changed … a kind of youngness was in it now. The tense lines were still there, but somehow they no longer seemed lines of despair but more of a driving kind of tenseness. In fact, although she still looked terribly tired, I even thought she didn’t seem as stooped as before. I turned back to Louisa. “Why are you here? Who is watching your kids?”

“A neighbor. Ah, of course you don’t know the news-they found my Leon! He was killed in a truck accident up in Boston eight months ago. Jose, can you imagine, they say I will get about a thousand bucks from Social Security, also a monthly sum until the kids reach eighteen. Mrs. Simons thinks I can even sue the truck firm, since Leon was working there. Anyway, now I’ll move out of the dump; perhaps into a project, if we don’t move in with you.”

That corny silver lining of the cloud, I thought. In death Leon did what he was unable to do in life—take care of his kids. Louisa’s last words suddenly caught up with my mind. “Move in with me?”

“That’s if we buy May’s house,” Helen said, but the tone of her voice told me it was something she didn’t want. I prayed Helen would not start arguing here—before the others—about us moving upstate to her land. “May is willing to either sell or rent us the house now, after the cellar is repaired. Lawyers have been around her like flies, say she has a million dollar suit against the house wrecking company….”

A door opened and a man was carried out on another stretcher, a thin dirty blanket up to his pale, unshaven, face. It was a moment before I recognized him: the drunk in the cellar hoping for rain. London and the young cop, his uniform still torn, walked with the stretcher as far as the precinct entrance. Inside the room they had come from I saw Artie at a desk, his head wrapped in bandages. London looked very tired. I wondered if the young cop had to pay for his ripped uniform.

From the door London came over to me. I raised my bandaged mitts, half expecting a poke in the face. He grinned. “That was a nice Judo chop you hit me. Figured on catching it all on my shoulder, but you were too fast.”

I still kept my hands up and Helen said, “Stop it, Jose. He’s your friend … understands why you hit him.”

“I bet.”

The long expression which means Helen is getting up steam crossed her face. “Jose, it’s time you dropped that worn-out chip on your shoulder against all … you know. As I keep telling you, there are good and bad …”

“Later you will tell me,” I said, my eyes still on London.

London said, in Spanish, “She is right, Jose. And you should consider her idea about moving upstate. At least look into it.”

“My wife and I will discuss that later,” I told him in English, full of a weary fury at Helen for bringing him into our personal business.

Perhaps he saw what I thought on my face for he said, “If it wasn’t for your smart wife, you’d be dead now. She called us—”

“I couldn’t stand worrying,” Helen cut in, her eyes looking at me softly. “It’s cockeyed to try things alone, so I … had to go to the police.”

I relaxed and grinned at her. As usual I was confused. London had risked his life for me, the young cop had torn an expensive uniform, and Artie had a broken head. All for me. Yet I also felt anger at them all. If I had not been a
Latino
they would have believed my story, never have put me through the wringer. I felt both anger and shame. I suddenly recalled a line of Luis Muñoz Marin my father liked to quote. “Wisdom is what makes you ashamed and what makes you proud.” Wisdom? I was not certain I had gained any knowledge from all that had happened. But there was some shame in my thoughts. They
had
gone through danger for me … even if they had also put me in that same danger. I was far too tired to think it out.

London shrugged his wide shoulders, rubbed the two day whiskers on his solid chin. He said, “I’m going to give you some advice, even if you don’t pay any attention to it. Your wife is right, you can’t go on being suspicious of all of … us. I’m a police officer, I damn well know you islanders are being rooked up here. But every new group went through the same thing. The Germans, the Irish, Italians, the Jews. My grandfather died of TB working in a stinking East Side sweat shop. I’m not saying it’s right, or has to be, Joey, but only that it takes time. There must be an adjustment on both sides. Unfortunately, due to air travel, the Puerto Rican influx has been faster and greater than the others….

“The guy you carried out, he was the
one?”
I asked, far too weary for any lecture about myself from him.

London nodded. “Pick and shovel laborer. The crane operator was a buddy, had been showing him how to work the machine. Figured in time he might work his way up. When the strike was called the day before yesterday, this fellow hung around and decided to practice—try his hand at the crane. The fool didn’t know what he was doing. The crane got out of control—he hooked Harry by a tragic freak. Strictly an accident. Then the guy panicked, yanked the wrong lever, lifting Harry and banging him against the side of the factory. Harry fell onto the warehouse roof. Doc says Harry was dead seconds after the hook tore into him on the handball court. Anyway, this dumb slob managed to work the big crane back to its first position, climbed out of the cab unseen, and went off on a roaring drunk. How did you ever come up with the crane idea, Joey?”

“No wonder he was praying for rain—to wash the blood off the hook!” I said, thinking aloud.

“You know him?” Suspicion returned with a rush to London’s voice.

“No. But I stumbled upon him in one of the cellars, among the leveled buildings, this afternoon … yesterday,” I said, confused on the time. “He was drunk and kept asking if it looked like rain. That’s all.”

“The fool was only facing manslaughter, now it’s attempted murder—if he lives. But what made you think of the crane?”

“Seeing a fisherman jerking his line, down on the Drive. Sent his eel high up into a tree. When I noticed the hook on the crane, well, how else could Harry have possibly been flung up on the roof?”

London yawned. “We tried the crane deal for size, too, but let it go when we checked the regular operator and found he hadn’t left his apartment that morning. So it was those fishermen. We saw you down on the Lower Drive talking to Helen, of course.”

“You knew all the time where I was?”

“Hell, never go hiding in bushes. One of our squad had to stop the post cop from running you in. Easy to spot a joker running about the bushes, in a city.” London gave me another tired grin as he pulled out his pipe. He made a face at it and stuck the pipe back in his pocket. “Sick of this; must have smoked up a whole damn pound of tobacco. Sure I knew, that’s why I left myself open for you to sock me and take off: it was what we wanted. We had a tail on you every step of the way. You see, Joey, I really don’t hate Spanish. If I … was the kind of a guy you think I am, I could have gunned you down. You gave me the perfect excuse.”

“Why did you lie about Rastello not having heard me? Why did you torture me with the thought my baby was alone?”

Helen said, “Hon, must you start all that … now?”

London shrugged again. “No, best he gets it off his mind. I’ll tell you why, Joey, it’s part of my job. I knew Rastello was blind soon as you mentioned the folded money. Coins they can easily feel the difference, but paper dough they fold. And don’t forget, he never said he heard
you
at the playground, merely that he heard two men playing ball. Look, from the jump I felt you didn’t do it. This was far too complicated a crime for you to do,
amigo.”

I tried to wet my swollen and numb lip. These
blancos
—in the same sentence they can call me a friend and a dummy! “Detective, why do you not come right out and say that being a stupid Puerto Rican I couldn’t have even done any crime but a mugging!”

“Joey, lay off me. I’ve had a rough night, too,” London said.

Helen cut in with, “I think we should go now, if we can.”

“Sure, you can leave any time. I’ll have a squad car ride you home,” London told her.

“We’ll get a cab,” I said.

London laughed out loud. “Come on, Joey, relax a little. I admit I was rough on you, but then look at things from where I was standing. First of all, it was only when morning came and the blood spot was seen on the factory wall, that I was certain you couldn’t have done it—alone. Also, it was all a weirdie from the go: you coming in with the crazy bit about fat Harry vanishing from the handball court, which I thought was all in your mind. Then we find the battered corpse. The point I’m making is, we haven’t much time to give each case. I’m not handing you a song and dance, or excuses, when I say the police are overworked, so we have to take any short cuts. Listen, kid, remember what I said about taking the exam for the force? In a week or so, soon as you’re better, come to see me. While I can’t give you any inside dope or pull strings, I can tell you what to study. I’m trying to say, when you’re a police officer you’ll understand what we’re up against. Every job has its lousy side. After all, I didn’t beat you or rough you up, even though I did try to trick you. Joey, you understand what I’m getting at? I’m too bushed to explain it any clearer.”

“Yeah.” I nodded at Helen and we started for the door. Walking was painful but it felt good to be leaving. London and his smooth explanations! If Helen was not with me I would have reminded him of the terrible things he said about her, all the dirty cracks. The hell with him: it was over.

London called after us, “Remember, drop in to see me—any time. And please, use the squad car waiting for you.”

“We will,” Helen told him.

Walking through the arched doorway of the old precinct house, Henry still asleep in her arms, I winked at my Helen and whispered, “You were very right about one thing, and about this I will take your advice: being a
la jara
—a cop—they can keep
that
job!”