Long Time No See (18 page)

“I used to know some members of the Hawks, yes,” Roxanne said. “But that was a long time ago.” Her voice was soft; it sounded almost nostalgic.

“May we come in, please?” Carella said. “We’d like to ask you some questions about the gang.”

“Yes, all right,” she said, and stepped aside to let them into the apartment.

The place was still with late-afternoon sunlight that streamed bleakly through the kitchen window and touched the hanging potted plants with silver. She led them into a modestly furnished living room, and beckoned gracefully to the two easy chairs that sat on either side of a color television set. She herself sat on the sofa opposite them, pulling her legs up under her Indian-fashion, the caftan tented over her knees.

“What is it you want to know?” she asked.

“We’d like you to tell us what happened just before Christmas twelve years ago,” Carella said.

“Oh my,” she said, and laughed suddenly. “We were all children then.”

“I realize that,” Carella said. “But can you remember anything important that happened around that time?”

“Important?” she said, and raised her shoulders expressively, rather like a dancer, her hands opening wide to further expand upon the theme of places and events too distant to recall.

It occurred to Carella that Lloyd Baxter and Roxanne Hardy were two of the most strikingly good-looking people he’d ever met. It seemed a pity they hadn’t chosen to remain together—

The cop suddenly took over.
Why
hadn’t they chosen to stay together? Was it because Lloyd had allowed the rape? Or was it because she’d invited it?

“It would have been something very important,” Carella said, and felt suddenly as though he were playing Twenty Questions. Meyer caught his eyes. They both acknowledged silently and at once that the time had come to quit pussyfooting around. “Mrs. Hardy,” Carella said, “were you raped shortly before Christmas twelve years ago?”

“What?” she said.

“Raped,” he said.

“Yes, I heard you,” she said. “My,” she said. “Raped,” she said. “No,” she said. “Never. Not twelve years ago, and not ever.” Her eyes met his. “
Should
I have been?”

“Jimmy Harris said you were.”

“Ah, Jimmy Harris.”

“Yes. He said four members of the Hawks strong-armed Lloyd Baxter and then forced themselves upon you.”

“Lloyd? Have you met Lloyd? No one strong-arms Lloyd. No, sir. Not Lloyd.”

“Mrs. Hardy, if this never happened…Where do you suppose Jimmy got the idea?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and smiled pleasantly, and Carella knew at once that she was lying. Until this moment, she’d been speaking the truth, but now the smile was false, the eyes above the smile were not smiling with it, she was lying. Meyer knew she was lying, too; the men glanced at each other, and separately wondered who was going to attack the lie first.

Meyer stepped in delicately. “Do you think Jimmy made the whole thing up?” he asked.

“I really don’t know,” Roxanne said.

“Your being raped, I mean.”

“Yes, I understand. I don’t know why Jimmy told you something like that.”

“He didn’t tell
us
.”

“He didn’t? You said—”

“He told his doctor.”

“Well…” Roxanne let the word trail. She shrugged. “I don’t know why he did that,” she said.

“Seems a pretty strange thing to invent, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it certainly does. What kind of doctor was this? A shrink?”

“Yes.”

“A prison shrink?”

“No. An Army doctor.”

“Mm,” she said, and shrugged again.

“Mrs. Hardy,” Carella said, “how well did you know Jimmy Harris?”

“Same as the other boys,” she said.

“The other boys in the gang?”

“Yes. Well, the club. They called it a club. It
was
a club, I guess.”

“About two dozen boys altogether, is that right?”

“Well, there were others all over Diamondback.”

“But two dozen in the immediate gang.”

“Yes.”

“And you knew Jimmy about as well as you knew any of the others.”

“Yes.”

She was still lying. He knew she was lying, damn it. He looked at Meyer; Meyer knew it, too. They weren’t going to let go of this. They were going to sit here and talk her blue in the face till they found out why she was lying.

“Would you say you were friendly with him?” Meyer asked.

“Jimmy? Oh yes. But I was Lloyd’s girlfriend, you understand.”

“Yes, we understand that.”

“So I only knew the other boys casually, you see.”

“Mm,” Meyer said.

“The way your wife—are you married?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“Yes,” Carella said.

“Well, the way your wives would know other detectives you might work with, the same as that.”

“That’s the way you knew Jimmy Harris.”

“Yes.”

“You thought of yourself as Lloyd’s wife, is that it?”

“Well, no not his
wife
,” she said, and laughed. The laugh was phony; it had none of the genuine resonance of her earlier laughter. She was still lying, there was still something she was hiding. “But we
did
have an understanding with each other. We were
going
with each other, you see.”

“What does that mean?” Carella asked. “No other girls in Lloyd’s life…”

“That’s right.”

“And no other boys in yours?”

“Exactly.”

“It seems strange, though, that Jimmy would come up with this story about the boys’ having raped you.”

“It certainly does,” Roxanne said, and laughed again. This time the laugh ended almost before it escaped her throat.

“Did he ever…?” Carella said, and cut himself short. “No, forget it.”

“What were you about to say?” Meyer said, playing the straight man.

“I just wondered…Mrs. Hardy, Jimmy never made a
pass
at you, did he?”

“No,” she said. “No, never.”

Another lie. Her eyes would not even meet his now.

“Never, huh?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course I’m sure. I was Lloyd’s girlfriend, you understand.”

“Yes, I understand that.”

“I was faithful to Lloyd.”

“Yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean
Jimmy
was faithful to him. Do you see what I mean, Mrs. Hardy? If Jimmy ever approached you—”

“No, he didn’t.”

“—sexually, then perhaps that might account for what he told his doctor.”

“Why is this important to you?” she asked suddenly.

“Because Jimmy Harris is dead, and we don’t know who killed him,” Carella said.

She was silent for several moments. Then she said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Mrs. Hardy…If anything ever happened between you and Jimmy, or between you and any of the other boys on the Hawks, anything that might have prompted someone to start thinking of revenge or retribution—”

“No,” she said, and shook her head.

“Nothing happened.”

“Something
did
happen,” she said. “But no one knew. Only Jimmy knew. And me.”

“Could you tell us what it was, please?”

“It won’t help you. No one knew.”

She looked at them for a long time, not saying anything, debating silently whether or not she wished to reveal whatever secret she had carried for the past twelve years. She nodded then, and said in a voice almost a whisper, “It was raining. It was very cold outside, it seemed as if it should be snowing…”

Her voice, as she spoke, seemed to become more and more Jamaican, as though the closer she came to the memory of that day twelve years ago, the more she became the seventeen-year-old girl she then was. As they listened, the present dissolved into the past, only to become the present again—a
different
present, but an immediate one nonetheless; whatever had happened in that basement room so long ago seemed to be happening here and now, this instant.

It is raining.

She is surprised by the rain, she thinks it should be snowing at this time of year, it’s so cold outside. But it’s raining instead, there is thunder and lightning. The lightning flashes illuminate the painted basement windows high on the cinder-block walls. Thunder crashes everywhere around them. They are alone in the basement room. It is 4:00 in the afternoon on the Wednesday before Christmas.

They are alone here by chance. She has come looking for Lloyd, but there’s only Jimmy standing by the record player with a stack of records in his hands. The cinder-block wall is painted a blue paler than the streaked midnight blue that covers the windows. Lightning flashes again, thunder sounds. Jimmy puts a record on the turntable. He tells her the other guys are right this minute in the Hermanos clubhouse, over in Spictown, negotiating a truce. He’d have gone with them, he says, but his mother cut her hand, he had to rush her to the hospital. Lightning again, the bellow of thunder. Cut herself decorating the Christmas tree, he says. The music is soft and slow and insinuating. The thunder booms its counterpoint.

“You want to dance?” he says.

She knows at once that she should refuse. She is Lloyd’s woman. If Lloyd comes back unexpectedly and finds them dancing together, there will be serious trouble. She knows this. She knows they will hurt her, she knows she can expect no mercy from Lloyd, the code is the code, they will whip her till she bleeds. Last summer, when they caught one of the Auxils talking to a Hermanos on the street, they stripped her to the waist, tied her to the post, and the sergeant at arms gave her twenty lashes. She whimpered at first, and then began screaming each time the whip raised another welt on her back, the welts opening at last and beginning to bleed. They threw her out in the gutter, threw her blouse and brassiere out after her, told her to go to the Hermanos if she liked them so much.

That was last summer, but this is now, and this will be worse. This will be dancing with a brother when Lloyd isn’t around. Be different if he was here, nothing would be said of it. But he is not here, she is alone with Jimmy, and she is frightened because she understands the danger. But it is exactly the danger that attracts her.

She laughs nervously and says, “Sure, why not?”

Jimmy takes her in his arms. The music is slow, they dance very close. He is excited, she can feel him through his trousers and through her skirt. They are dancing fish, he is socking it to her, grinding against her. There is more thunder. She is still frightened, but he is holding her very tight, and she is getting excited herself. She laughs again. Her panties are wet, she is dripping wet under her skirt. The record ends, the needle clicks and clicks and clicks in the retaining grooves. He releases her suddenly and walks to the record player, and lifts the arm from the record. There is silence, and then lightning streaks the painted windows again, and thunder crashes. He walks to the door.

She stands motionless in the center of the room near the post. She is afraid they will tie her to the post with her hands behind her back. This is a serious offense, she is afraid they will whip her across her naked breasts. She knows of a girl in another gang who was whipped that way for the offense of adultery. The offense is clearly lettered on the rules chart that hangs on the clubhouse wall. Adultery. She is about to make love to a brother, but she is Lloyd’s woman, and that is adultery, and they will hurt her badly for it. They will hurt Jimmy, too. They will force him to run the gauntlet, hitting him with chains and pipes as he runs between his brothers lined up on either side of him.

And when it is all over and done with, when they’ve given her the fifty lashes, she’s certain she’ll receive in punishment, fifty or maybe a hundred because she’s the president’s woman, across her naked breasts, the sergeant at arms methodically and deliberately beating her with the seven-thonged whip; when they’ve forced Jimmy through the gauntlet and have left him bruised and bleeding and unconscious on the ground, why, then both of them will be thrown out of the club to fend for themselves. The club is their insurance in a hostile world of enemy camps that grow like toad-stools in the surrounding streets. There is no help from the Law in these streets, there is no help from parents who are scrounging for the big white dollar out there, there is only aid and comfort from your brothers and sisters in the clubs.

If you don’t belong to a club, you are anybody’s.

If you’re a boy, you’re anybody’s to beat up on, anybody’s to rob, anybody’s to cut or burn or snuff. If you’re a girl, you’re anybody’s to hurt, anybody’s to fuck, anybody’s to do with what they want. This is the city. You need insurance here. Belonging to the Hawks’ auxiliary is her insurance, and she is about to have it canceled only because she is a stupid bitch. She knows she’s being dumb, she knows that. But she wants Jimmy Harris, and she suspects she’s maybe wanted him from the first time he began coming on six months back, and she began looking the other way and making believe it wasn’t happening. It was happening, all right. It is happening right now. He is locking the basement door, double-locking it like he’s expecting a raid from a hundred gangs, putting the chain on it in the bargain, and then coming back to where she’s standing, and grabbing her tight, and kissing her hard on the mouth till she has to pull away to catch her breath.

His hands are all over her. He unbuttons her blouse, he touches her breasts, he slides his hands under her skirt and up over her thighs, he grabs her ass tight in nylon panties, she is getting dizzy standing there in the middle of the room. She falls limp against the post, and he does it to her standing there against the post. Rips her panties. Tears them in his hands, rips them away from where she’s wet and waiting, unzips his fly and sticks it in her. He comes almost the minute he’s inside her, and she screams and comes with him, the hell with the Hawks, the hell with Lloyd, the hell with the whole world. They grab each other like it’s the weekend ending, they cling to each other there against the post in the middle of the basement, the lightning and thunder crashing around them. She begins crying. He begins crying, too, and then makes her promise she won’t ever tell anybody in the world that he cried.