Herzog (36 page)

    "Did you see his face?"

    "No *the face I didn't see." The taxi rattled into Broadway, and sped toward Wall Street.

    "Where, on Lexington?"

    "Like the sixties."

    "What was the fellow doing?"

    "Kissing a broad in a red dress. That's why I didn't see the face. And what I mean kissing to Was it you?"

    "It must have been me."

    "How do you like that!" Valdepenas slapped the wheel.

    "Boy! Out of millions. I took a guy from La Guardia, over the Triboro and the East River Drive and left him off at Seventy-second and Lexington. I seen you kissing a broad and then I get you two hours afterwards."

    "Like catching the fish that swallowed the queen's ring," said Herzog.

    Valdepenas turned slightly to look at Herzog over his shoulder. "That was a real nice-looking broad. Stacked! Terrific! Your wife?"

    "No, I'm not married. She's not married."

    "Well, boy, you're all right. When I get old I'm going to be doing just like you. Why stop! And believe you me, I stay away from young chicks already.

    You waste your time with a broad under twenty-five. I quit on that type. A woman over thirty-five is just beginning to be serious. That's the kind that puts down the best stuff.... Where are you going?"

    "The City Courthouse."

    "You a lawyer? A cop?"

    "How could I be a detective in this coat?"

    "Hombre, detectives even go in drag now.

    What do I care! Listen to me. I got real burned up at a young chick last month. She just lies on the bed chewing gum and reading a magazine.

    Like comshe's saying "Do me something!" I said, "Listen, Teddy's here. What's this gum?

    Magazines?"' She said, "All right, let's get it over." How's that for an attitude! I said, "In my hack, that's where I hurry. You ought to get a punch in the teeth for talkin" like that."

    And I'll tell you something. She was a no-good lay.

    A broad eighteen don't know even how to shit!"

    Herzog laughed, largely from astonishment.

    "That's right, ain't it?" said Valdepenas. "You ain't no kid."

    "No, I'm not."

    "A woman over forty really appreciates..."

    They were at Broadway and Houston. A boozer, stubble-faced, jaws strong and arrogant, waited with a filthy rag to wipe the windshields of passing cars, holding out his hand for tips. "Look how that bum operates here," said Valdepenas.

    "He smears the glass. The fat guys pay out.

    They shiver in their pupick. They're scared not to.

    I seen these Bowery slobs spit on cars. They better not lay a hand on my hack. I keep a tire tool right here, boy. I'd bust the sonofabitch on the head!"

    On slanting Broadway lay the heavy shadow of summer. Second-hand desks and swivel chairs, old green filing cases were exposed on the sidewalk- aquarium green, dill-pickle green. And now financial New York closed in, ponderous and sunless. Just below was Trinity Church. Herzog remembered that he had promised to show Marco the grave of Alexander Hamilton.

    He had described to him the duel with Burr, the bloody body of Hamilton brought back on a summer morning in the bottom of a boat.

    Marco listened, pale and steady, his freckled Herzog face revealing little. Marco never seemed to wonder at the immense (the appalling!) collection of facts in his father's head. At the aquarium Herzog supplied the classification of fish scales-"the ctenoid, the placoid..." He knew where the coelacanth had been caught, the anatomy of a lobster's stomach. He offered all this to his son-we must stop this, Herzog decided-guilty conduct, an overemotional father, a bad example. I try too hard with him.

    Valdepenas was still talking when Moses paid him.

    He answered cheerfully, but by rote. He had stopped listening. Oratorical lechery, momentarily amusing. "Keep sockin" away, Doc."

    "See you again, Valdepenas."

    He turned to face the vast gray court building.

    Dust swirled on the broad stairway, the stone was worn. Going up, Herzog found a bouquet of violets, dropped from the hand of a woman. Perhaps a bride. Little perfume remained in them, but they made him remember Massachusetts-Ludeyville.

    By now the peonies were wide open, the mock-orange bushes fragrant. Madeleine sprayed the lavatory with syringa deodorant. These violets smelled to him like female tears. He gave them burial in a trashcan, hoping they had not dropped from a disappointed hand. He went through the four-bladed revolving door into the lobby, fishing in his shirt pocket for the folded slip of paper with Wachsel's phone number. It was still too early to call. Simkin and his client hadn't had time enough to get downtown.

    With time on his hands Herzog wandered in the huge dark corridors upstairs where swinging padded doors with small oval windows led into courtrooms. He peered into one of these; the broad mahogany seats looked restful. He entered, respectfully removing his hat and nodding at the magistrate, who took no notice of him. Broad and bald, all face, deep voiced, resting his fist on documents-Mr. Judge.

    The chamber, with ornate ceiling, was immense, the walls buff but somber. When one of the police attendants opened the door behind the bench you saw the bars of the detention cells. Herzog crossed his legs (with a certain style: his elegance never deserted him even when he scratched himself), and, dark-eyed, attentive, averted his face slightly as he prepared to listen, a tendency inherited from his mother.

    Very little seemed at first to be happening. A small group of lawyers and clients almost casually talked things over, arranged details. Raising his voice, the magistrate interrupted.

    "But just a minute, here. Do you say...?"

    "He says..."

    "Let me hear the man himself. Do you say...?"

    "No, sir, I don't."

    The magistrate demanded, "Well what do you mean, then? Counsel, what is this supposed to mean?"

    "My client's plea is still the same-not guilty."

    "I did not..."

    "Mistuh judge, he did," a Negro voice said, without insistence.

    "... Dragged this man, drunk, off St.

    Nicholas Avenue, into the cellar of premises at-what is the exact address? With intention to rob." This was the magistrate's overriding basso; he had a broad New York accent.

    From behind, Herzog was now able to make out the defendant in this case. He was the Negro in filthy brown pants. His legs appeared to be trembling with nervous strength. He might have been about to run a race; he even crouched slightly, in the big cocoa-brown pants, as if at the starting line. But about ten feet before him were the shining prison bars. The plaintiff wore a bandage on his head.

    "How much money did you have in your pocket?"

    "Sixty-eight cents, your honor," the bandaged man said.

    "And did he force you to enter the basement?"

    The defendant said, "No, suh."

    "I didn't ask you. Now keep your mouth shut."

    The magistrate was vexed.

    The injured man now turned his bandaged head.

    Herzog saw a black, dry, elderly face, eyes red-rimmed. "No suh. He said he given me a drink."

    "Did you know him?"

    "No, suh, but he was given me a drink."

    "And you went with this stranger to the cellar at- address? Bailiff, where are those papers?"

    Moses now became aware how the magistrate diverted himself and the courtroom loafers with a show of temperament. These were dull routines otherwise.

    "What happened down in the cellar?" He studied the forms the bailiff had passed him.

    "He hit me."

    "Without warning? Where was he standing, behind you?"

    "I couldn't see. The blood started to comin' down.

    In my eyes. I couldn't see."

    Those tense legs desired their freedom. They were ready for flight.

    "And he took the sixty-eight cents?"

    "I grabbed him and started in to holler. Then he give me another lick."

    "What did you hit this man with?"

    "Your honor, my client denies that he struck him," the lawyer said. "They are acquaintances. They were out drinking together."

    The black face, framed in bandages, heavy-lipped, dry, eyes red, stared at the lawyer. "I don't know him."

    "Any of those blows might have killed this fellow."

    "Assault with intent to rob," Herzog heard. The magistrate added, "I assume plaintiff was drunk to begin with."

    That is-his blood was well thinned with whisky as it dropped into the coal dust. Whisky-blood was bound to be shed in some such way. The criminal began to go, the same wolfish tension within his voluminous, ridiculous pants. The cop, with pads of police fat on his cheeks, looked almost kindly as he led him to the cells. Lard-faced, he held the door open and sent him on his way with a pat on the shoulder.

    A new group stood before the magistrate, a plainclothesman testifying. "At seven-thirty-eight p. m. at a urinal in the lower level men's lavatory, Grand Central Station... this man (name given) standing in the adjacent space reached over and placed his hand upon my organ of sex at the same time saying..." The detective, a specialist in men's toilets, Herzog thought, loitering there, a bait. By the speed and expertness of the testimony you knew it was routine.

    "I therefore arrested him for violations...." Before the plainclothesman had finished listing the ordinances by number, the magistrate was saying, "Guilty-not guilty?"

    The offender was a tall young foreigner; a German.

    His passport was shown. He wore a long brown leather coat tightly belted, and his small head was covered with curls; his brow was red. He turned out to be an intern in a Brooklyn hospital. Here the magistrate surprised Herzog, who had taken him for the ordinary gross, grunting, ignorant political magistrate, putting on an act for the idlers on the benches (including Herzog). But, both hands tugging at the neck of his black robe, demonstrating by this gesture, thought Herzog, that he wanted the accused man's lawyer to stop, he said, "Better advise your client if he pleads guilty he'll never practice medicine in the U. s. a."

    That mass of flesh rising from the opening of the magistrate's black cloth, nearly eyeless, or whale-eyed, was, after all, a human head. The hollow, ignorant voice, a human voice. You don't destroy a man's career because he yielded to an impulse in that ponderous stinking cavern below Grand Central, in the cloaca of the city, where no mind can be sure of stability, where policemen (perhaps themselves that way given) tempt and trap poor souls. Valdepenas had reminded him that cops now went in drag to lure muggers, or mashers, and if they could become transvestites in the name of the law, what else would they think of! The deeper creativity of police imagination... He opposed this perverse development in law enforcement. Sexual practices of any sort, provided they didn't disturb the peace, provided they didn't injure minor children, were a private matter. Except for the children. Never children. There one must be strict.

    Meanwhile he watched keenly. The case of the intern was continued, and the principals in an attempted robbery appeared at the bar. The prisoner was a boy; though his face was curiously lined, some of its grooves feminine, others masculine enough. He wore a soiled green shirt. His dyed hair was long, stiff, dirty. He had pale round eyes and he smiled with empty-no, worse than empty-cheerfulness. His voice, when he answered questions, was high-pitched, ice-cold, thoroughly drilled in its affectations.

    "Name?"

    "Which name, your honor?"

    "Your own name."

    "My boy's-name or my girl's-name?"

    "Oh, I see...." The magistrate, alerted by this, swept the courtroom, rounding up his audience with his glance.

    Now hear this.

    Moses leaned forward. "Well, which are you, a boy or a girl?"

    The cold voice said, "It depends what people want me for. Some want a boy, and others a girl"

    "Want what?"

    "Want sex, your honor."

    "Well, what's your boy's-name?"

    "Aleck, your honor. Otherwise I'm Alice."

    "Where do you work?"

    "Along Third Avenue, in the bars. I just sit there."

    "Is that how you make your living?"

    "Your honor, I'm a prostitute."

    Idlers, lawyers, policemen grinning, and the magistrate himself relishing the scene deeply-only one stout woman standing by with bare, heavy arms did not participate in this. "Wouldn't it be better for your business if you washed?" the magistrate said. Oh, these actors! thought Moses. Actors all!

    "Filth makes it better, judge." The icy soprano voice was unexpectedly sharp and prompt. The magistrate showed intense satisfaction. He brought his large hands together, asking, "Well, what's the charge?"

    "Attempted holdup with toy pistol Fourteenth Street Notions and Drygds. He told the cashier to hand over the money and she struck him and disarmed him."

    "A toy! Where's the cashier?"

    She was the stout woman with the thick arms. Her head was dense with graying quills. Her shoulders were thick.

    Earnestness seemed to madden her pug-nosed face.

    "That's me, your honor. Marie Poont."

    "Marie? You're a brave woman, Marie, and a quick thinker. Tell us how it happened."

    "He only made in his pocket like a gun, and gave me a bag to fill with money." A heavy and simple spirit, Herzog saw; a mesomorph, in the catchword; the immortal soul encased in this somatic vault. "I knew it was a trick."

    "What did you do?"

    "I have a baseball bat, your honor. The store sells them. I gave a slam on the arm."

    "Good for you! Is this what happened, Aleck?"

    "Yes sir," he answered in his clear, chill voice. Herzog tried to guess the secret of this alert cheerfulness. What view of things was this Aleck advancing? He seemed to be giving the world comedy for comedy, joke for joke. With his dyed hair, like the winter-beaten wool of a sheep, and his round eyes, traces of mascara still on them, the tight provocative pants, and something sheep-like, too, even about his vengeful merriment, he was a dream actor. With his bad fantasy he defied a bad reality, subliminally asserting to the magistrate, "Your authority and my degeneracy are one and the same."