Night Squad (12 page)

      “Them picture shows. You know, them tear-jerkers for the women.”

      She turned away from him. “It's no use telling you anything. You're too far away from what's real.”

      “Or maybe too close.”

      She took a very deep breath and put her hands on her hips. For a moment she stood with her back to him, her head lifted and her shoulders erect. Then her arms fell limply at her sides, her shoulders drooped. It was as though something heavy was pressing down on her.

      Corey lifted himself from the chair and went to the window. He stood looking out at the rain. He said, “How long you been married to him?”

      “Seven months.”

      “And before that—?”

      “Well, I hadn't known him long.”

      “How long?”

      “A few weeks,” she said.

      Some mist was clouding the window. He wiped it away with his hand and peered out at the rain. It had subsided and there was a slow, quiet drizzle that sounded like fingers tapping softly on drums.
Ain't nothing jazzy in that sound
, he thought. That sound is on the heartache side.
Goes along with the color of the sky up there, that dark gray making everything dark gray down here.

      And through the dreary drumming of the rain he heard her saying, ”—met him one day in a restaurant across the street from Chatworth Leather. I was working there then. So anyway, I was in the restaurant sitting at the counter and having coffee and he sits down beside me and—”

      “Skip that,” Corey cut in. “I didn't ask how you happened to meet him.”

      “I thought maybe you wanted to know.”

      “Why should I wanna know?” he muttered. “What the hell do I care how you met him or where you met him? I don't even wanna hear about that.”

      “Why not?”

      Corey couldn't answer. He kept looking out at the rain.

      “Why not?” she asked again. “Ain't that what you're here for? To find out about him? To check on him?”

      He winced. He said to himself,
you walked right into that one.
And then, turning away from the window, wanting to look at her but knowing he couldn't, knowing he mustn't show what he was feeling, he affected a detached frown and said, “I'm checking only what I think is important.”

      “For city hall.”

      “That's right.”

      “For the records only.”

      “That's right.”

      “For the official report on the investigation—”

      “That's absolutely right,” he said, and turned and looked at her and saw she was smiling thinly. Her eyes were drills going into his head. He turned quickly and faced the window again.

      He heard himself saying, “All right, go ahead and tell it.”

      “Well, like I said, we met when I was working at Chatworth Leather—”

      “Hold it,” he cut in. “How come you're not working there now?”

      “He don't want me to work.”

      “Any special reason?”

      “Like what?”

      “Like maybe you're knocked up.”

      “You asking me?”

      “I'm asking you,” he said. “You knocked up?”

      “No,” she said. And then, “You wanna make a note of that?”

      “For what?”

      “For city hall. For the records. For the official report on the investigation.”

      Corey winced again. Then he turned slowly and showed her the lazy smile. He murmured, “I'll tell you why he don't want you to work. It looks better this way. It always looks better when the wife stays at home where she belongs.”

      Lillian moved toward a chair and sagged into it.

      The lazy smile thinned just a trifle as Corey queried, “How long has he been out?”

      She didn't answer.

      “How long has he been out?”

      “Over a year.”

      “What was he in for?”

      “Manslaughter.” Her head lowered. And then, looking up, “But he wasn't guilty—”

      “Of course not.”

      “He swore to me—”

      “Of course.”

      “He was only trying to protect himself.”

      “Sure, sure,” Corey purred. Then his voice tightened. “What was the weapon?”

      “His hands. Just his hands. He's never carried a weapon. He's not a thug.”

      Corey chuckled softly.

      “Damn you,” she gritted. “I'm telling you he's straight, he's decent—”

      “You think so?” The lazy smile probed ever so gently. “You really think so?”

      She started to get up from the chair, then slumped back into it and stared at the floor. Her eyes were saying,
I don't know what to think.
She made another effort and managed to lift herself from the chair. She breathed in through her teeth and said, “A factory worker, a man who sweats for every nickel he earns, who slaves in a tannery from nine to five—”

      “In the daytime,” Corey said. And then, jabbing lightly, “What happens at night?”

      She stood there breathing hard.

      Corey said, “You can't answer that. You don't have the answer. You got no idea where he goes at night, and night after night you sit here wondering. You look at the floor, you look at the walls, and you wonder.”

      “Stop it.”

      “You wonder what goes on while you look at the clock, let's say it's midnight already, and he ain't home yet. Then it's two in the morning and then it's three—”

      “Stop it.”

      “And maybe three-thirty or four, he comes walking in, and you're waiting up. You ask him where he's been. Chances are you don't get an answer. If there's any answer at all, it's just some words coming out of his mouth; like he went for a walk or he went to play dominoes and lost track of the time. Or maybe he tells you—”

      “No matter what he tells me, it's all right.”

      “She stands there and says it's all right. Then later she'll be at the Hangout, sitting alone and drinking beer.”

      “God damn you,” she hissed. “Get out. Get outta here.”

      He went to the door and opened it. The sound of the rain came in. “Be seeing you,” he said.

      Then he was in the backyard, stepping over muddy puddles, going through the rain toward the alley leading to Ingersoll Street.

      In the alley he saw them coming. There were three. They seemed to appear from nowhere; but he knew they'd been waiting in a doorway, waiting until he was halfway down the alley.

      They were coming slowly. In the semi-darkness he squinted through the curtain of rain, focusing hard on their faces. He told himself he didn't know these three, he'd never seen them before.

      As they came closer, one of them showed a gun, not aiming it, just lifting it for display. Corey sighed, then looked behind him. Sure enough there were two more coming from the other end of the alley, and one had a gun.

      I think we got a problem here , Corey said to himself.

      He lifted his hands shoulder high, palms open. Then he turned, faced the two and walked toward them. They came to a stop and stood waiting for him. The one with the gun was tall and heavy and looked in his middle twenties. Corey had never seen him before. The one who stood beside him was colored, also tall, not quite so heavy. Corey peered at the Negro man and decided he'd never seen him before.

      Walking slowly toward the two, Corey heard the footsteps of the three coming in behind him. He kept the same pace, but lengthened his stride just a little to give himself more time before the three arrived. He came to where the two were waiting and pasted a grimace of cold fury onto his face, aiming it at the colored man.

      Corey said to him, “I been lookin' for you, Creighton.”

      “My name ain't Creighton,” the colored man said.

      “Don't gimme that—”

      “He said his name ain't Creighton.” The one with the gun spoke quietly, then raised the gun so that the muzzle was just a few inches away from Corey's chest.

      Corey didn't seem to notice the gun. He showed his teeth to the colored man and said, “You're Creighton, and you and me are gonna talk—”

      Then he made a move toward the colored man and the one with the gun reached out to push him back. He feinted a swipe at the man's hand, still looking at the Negro, making it appear that his only thought was an obsession to get back at the man named Creighton. This happened very fast. The three coming in from behind were still moving slowly and were about twenty feet away when Corey started to lunge toward the colored man. The one with the gun said, “What are you doing? You a lunatic or something?” and Corey swerved in that instant, his fist hitting the gunman in the throat, his other hand closing on the gunman's wrist, twisting it hard. The gunman gurgled and the gun fell from his hand. The colored man made a grab for Corey and missed, then yelled at the three who were coming in running, “Don't—don't—don't shoot.”

      There was no shooting. There was no way to get a shot at Corey without the possibility of the bullet hitting the other two. Both of them were grabbing for Corey, but he wriggled away and ran down the alley.

      He ran very fast, cut around the corner of the house, then across the backyard. He was thinking, you gotta make it to Ingersoll, gotta find another alley and get through it and make Ingersoll before they—

      At that moment he heard them shouting and cursing in a conference, the loudest voice declaring, “—do it my way. We split and you two get on Ingersoll. You see him comin' out of an alley, you'll be ready and you'll get him.”

That's intelligent
, Corey approved. Then he switched his own thinking away from Ingersoll and looked in the other direction where all the backyards gave way to the swamplands.

      You can't go in there , he thought. You get in them swamplands it's a hundred-to-one you won't get out. You know them swamplands.

      Sure as hell you know them swamplands, and you know what can happen in there. Especially when it gets dark and you can't see where you're going. Another thing, this rain. This rain, it ain't no light drizzle anymore. It rains like this, it's really raining; and the swamplands sit lower than the neighborhood, so all the water from the gutters goes into them holes and slimy pools out there, along with the overflow from the goddam river. You remember one time some years ago there were kids out playing in them swamplands, and it started to rain, and then it was a heavy rain, and it got dark. And a few days later a searching party went in, and the search went on for weeks, but it was no use. Then another time some grown-ups, who shoulda had more sense and woulda had more sense if they were sober, got to fooling around. And for some idiotic reason they wandered in there; it was six of them, or seven I think. Anyway you remember it was during a spell of heavy rain and again the searching party went in and again it was no use. So according to that—

      His thoughts were interrupted. He heard a shot and he threw himself into the mud, landing facedown, then twisting and looking back to see three of them running across the backyards. He pulled the police pistol from his belt and fired without aiming, just to let them know he had a gun. He fired again, and they fired back at him. All three of them fired as they scattered for cover behind trash barrels, rubbish cans.

It's gonna hafta be the swamplands , he told himself. You can't try for Ingersoll, and you can't try for no back doors, either. It's a cinch all them back doors are locked. Just look at the lights goin' out in them windows, like they're tellin' you they don't wanna know from nothin'. They got their own worries.

      So it's gonna be the swamplands. It's gotta be the swamplands, jim. There ain't no other place for you to go. But Jesus Christ, what a setup. What a mess.

      He grimaced wryly, shaking his head slowly as he rested, facedown in the mud, about thirty yards away from the edge of the swamplands.

      Some mud got into his mouth and he wiped it away from his teeth. He thought about the two who were waiting on Ingersoll.
But they won't just stay there and wait
, he told himself.
What they'll do, they'll join the party when the deal goes down and you make your break for the swamplands. They'll hear the shooting in there, and they'll come running to put in their two cents. You mean their two guns. And two added to three makes five. It's gonna be five guns on your tail, and you won't be no rabbit in there. You can't move fast like a rabbit in all that ooze and muck and guck. You're gonna hafta move like a night crawler. Like a blind night crawler, considering how dark it's getting now.

      Well, maybe that's a break for you, that dark sky getting darker. Them five guns can't aim at what they can't see. But you know they can aim at what they hear, and you go stumbling into a ditch or tumble into one of them pools, they'll hear that and they'll—

      All right, cut this noise. Just cut it, will you? You'll handle the aggravation when you come to it. What you better do now, and I mean right now, is get rolling, and fast.