The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (20 page)

Not much. But it was a beginning.

He began to cruise the streets. He had to drive slowly, for fear he would miss the house.
If
it still existed. Up one street, and down another.

After a few days it became a nightmare. His eyes ached from watching not only both sides of each street, but the traffic ahead. He put innumerable miles on the car. And one by one he crossed off the sections he had covered.
The North End. The Eastwood Section. Hungry Hill. Riverside Heights. The Pilgrim Square Section. Winchester. Manor Park. The South End
.

Some of the streets were solid with apartments, and he drove through them swiftly. Others were obviously new developments. Still others were hodgepodges, a mixture of the old and the new. He saw a number of two-family houses, but none that remotely resembled the house of his dream.

The Belmont Boulevard Section. The Oak Avenue Neighborhood. The Central Avenue Area
.

By the third day, he realized the futility of what he was doing. More and more he was convinced that the house no longer existed. But grimly he hung on. He had to remind himself that this was his last chance. He had no other options, no way to back check any of the other dreams.

On the sixth day, he stopped the car on a street in the Armory section. He sat there for a long time, resting his head on the wheel. He was bone weary, and in the middle of a black depression. He
told himself that perhaps he was better off not finding that damned house. After all, he had been messing around in something he didn’t really understand. And even if he found the house and, through it, his identity, there was no guarantee he would like it. It could be hideous. It was possible that if he took the cover off this particular Pandora’s box, he might start screaming.

He made up his mind then to go back to his hotel and take the first plane to Los Angeles.
Goodbye, J. C., whoever you were
. Enough was enough. Hall Bentley would be disappointed, of course. Well, that was just too damned bad. As for himself, he’d just have to stay curious for the rest of his life. Now he felt relieved. He wouldn’t have to play the horrendous role Bentley had pictured. Let someone else bring messages to the world. It occurred to him now, that deep in his unconscious he had really
wanted
to fail all along.

He felt better now. He started the car.

He was on the opposite side of town from where his hotel was located. Checking his map, he found a shorter way to get back. Instead of going down Highland Avenue, with all its lights and traffic, he could cut through Albemarle Street and hit a main artery called Bridge Avenue. This would lead him directly to the downtown section and his hotel.

At the junction of Albemarle and Bridge he found himself in a Negro section. A solid ghetto of blacks. He had gone only a few blocks down Bridge when, suddenly, he stopped the car. His skin began to prickle. He knew he had been there before. He recognized the red brick school building down the street. The big gas station on the corner. And opposite the gas station, a small shopping area that looked familiar. Very familiar. There was a supermarket there now, and a pizza parlor, and a bar called Hi-de-Ho. But he seemed to remember, through the gauze of some veil, a candy store, a shoe repair shop, a bakery. The signpost said: Almont Street.

This was my old neighborhood. This was where I lived. This was my street
.

He had no doubt about it. He simply knew it. It had never occurred to him to look in this area. He had overlooked the fact that white neighborhoods often changed radically during the years, some of them becoming all black. And he knew that old houses in slum neighborhoods often were the last to be torn down. They simply deteriorated until even the ghetto tenants abandoned them.

Dimly he heard the raucous blast of automobile horns behind him. Angry voices shouted at him. He became aware that he had stopped the car in the middle of the street. He drove to the next street, went back, and like a homing pigeon headed down Almont.

Then he saw it. The third house from the corner, on the left-hand side.

No. 28 Almont Street. It had aged tremendously. The white stucco was stained and cracked. Someone had painted the rotting shingles white, but the paint was peeling, exposing the brown underneath. The wooden frames around the windows were warped and weather-beaten. The neat lawn he remembered was now a tangle of weeds and crabgrass. The whole place was shabby, neglected.

He stopped the car at the curb directly in front of the house and sat there, staring at the house. He hardly noticed the three black men sitting on the upper step of the rotting porch. They were watching him intently, their faces hostile. Finally one of them got to his feet and walked slowly down the broken sidewalk toward him. He was a huge, hulking black with great, hairy arms. He stuck his head through the open window of the car.

“Whut you want, man?”

“Nothing.”

“Whut you stopping here for, then?”

“Just looking.”

“Lookin’ for
whut?
”

“That your house?”

“Yeah.”

“How long have you been living there?”

“Man, who are you? What in shit are you doin’ here? You the fuzz or somethin’?”

“No.” The black man was glaring at him. He felt the man was on the verge of opening the door and yanking him out. The other two men sauntered forward now. They stared at him coldly. Other blacks, passing by, stopped to watch what was going on. He was aware of their hostility too. “All I want to know is …”

“You don’t want to know nothin’, whitey. An’ I ain’t about to tell you nothin’. This ain’t no place for honkies to be. Come around here askin’ questions. Don’t put me on you’re not the fuzz. Man, I can smell chicken shit like you a mile away. Now, get your ass out of here if you don’t want to get hurt …”

Someone was pounding on the back window. He heard the clank of a rock as it hit the car. The crowd began to press in on the car. He was a stranger on their turf, and a white one, too. He started the car and drove off. He knew he was close now.

He found the real estate office three blocks farther down, on Bridge Avenue.

It was a one-woman office. She was about sixty, fat and wheezy.

“No. 28 Almont? Yes, I know the house. We’ve bought and sold it once or twice over the years. We’ve done the same with almost every house along Almont, Bryant, and Baldwin. Happens when you’ve been in business in the neighborhood for—well, a good forty years.” She shrugged. “Of course the neighborhood’s changed. You can see that for yourself. We don’t do much in that area anymore …”

“I wonder if you could give me some information about the place?”

She stared at him incredulously. “You’re interested in
buying
it?”

“No. It’s something else. Would you happen to know who lived there back in the thirties, or maybe in the early forties?”

“Not offhand. That’s going pretty far back.”

“I know.”

“We do have a sales record of a lot of houses in the neighborhood, going way back. Owners, mortgage arrangements, and so on. If we had any transaction on 28 Almont, and I think we did, it’d be there. She peered at him suspiciously. “You the FBI? A private investigator or something?”

“No. It’s just a personal matter. I’m trying to find out who lived there about that time. If you’d look it up, I’d appreciate it.”

She hesitated a moment. Then: “It might take a minute or two.”

“I’ll wait.”

She went into a room in the rear of the office area. He heard a file drawer opening. He sat down and waited. It was close in the office, and very warm. He felt the perspiration ooze through the shirt under his jacket. He sat there staring through the window at the traffic moving along Bridge Avenue. It seemed to him that he waited in that red leatherette chair forever. Actually, it was only two minutes.

She came out carrying a file. She seated herself at the desk, shuffled through the file, and took out a paper. Her eyesight was poor, and she brought the paper close to her eyes.

“Let’s see. 1952 to 1955. An Italian family lived there then. Rovelli. All this was before that neighborhood went black, of course. And before them, a family named O’Malley. 1948 to 1952. Right. We bought it for the O’Malleys. I remember it now. Bought it from a man named Chapin.”

“Chapin?”

“Ralph R. Chapin, it says here. Seller. Owner of record. Occupied the house for a long time. Lived in it all through the thirties, early forties. That’s the area you’re interested in, I guess.”

“Would you happen to know anything else about the Chapin family?”

She stared at him. “Such as what?”

“I don’t know. Who the other members of the family were …”

“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have the faintest idea …” Then, suddenly,
she snapped her fingers. Her eyes widened. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I
do
remember now. There was a son….”

“You remember his name?”

“Jeff. That was it. Jeff Chapin. It’s short for Jeffrey, I guess.”

“Jeffrey Chapin.”

“Yes. Only reason I’d remember it in a million years was because he came from this neighborhood and got his name in all the papers. But if he’s the one you’re looking for, you’d better forget it.”

“Yes?”

“He’s long dead. He was drowned swimming in Lake Nipmuck.”

After a long time Peter heard himself say, “Do you remember the year this happened?”

“No. I couldn’t even come close. But as I said, it was in all the papers.”

The
Riverside Daily News
was housed in a modernistic building, all glass and stainless steel. It was only five blocks from his hotel.

The sign in the lobby read: Morgue and Library. Third Floor.

The morgue was a large windowless room. Shelf after shelf carried bound volumes of the
News
, labeled by the volume, month, and year. The librarian was an elderly man, thin and anemic looking. He sat at an old beat-up desk, its edges scarred with the burns of a thousand cigarette butts. The desk was covered with newspapers and clippings. Both the man and the desk fit the place.

“What did you say the name was?”

“Jeff Chapin. Jeffrey, probably.”

“And the date?”

“I don’t know.”

“The year?”

“I don’t know that, either. He died sometime back in the forties. Drowned at Lake Nipmuck. I know the story was carried in the
News
at that time.”

“You said the forties?”

“That’s right, the forties.” He paused. “Is there any way you might be able to find it?”

“Well, sir, you don’t give me much to go on. We might and we might not. Depends whether he was well known around town. You know, a prominent person. A lot depends on the space and coverage he got. If the deceased was a nobody, I’d say you’d have no chance. You
could
go through ten years of daily newspapers, but you wouldn’t like that very much. On the other hand, if the deceased had some kind of public name, we might have him in our obit file.”

“Obit file?”

“Obituary file. We keep a list of people who died, year by year. Issue and date. Just in case any of our reporters need it for research or back reference. If you’ve got a little time, I could check that out.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

The librarian turned to a shelf on the wall just behind the desk. It was lined with a series of battered reference notebooks. He picked out one marked “1940–1950.” The pages were tabbed, year by year. He opened the notebook. Peter could see the names of the deceased listed in alphabetical order.

“Jeffrey Chapin. Jeffrey Chapin …”

The librarian ran his finger quickly down the page. Nothing for 1940. He turned the page again. Nothing for 1941. Nor 1942. 1943. 1944. 1945 …

1946.

“Got it,” said the librarian suddenly. “You’re in luck.”

“Yes?”

The librarian pointed to the notation. “See? Jeffrey Chapin. Issue, September 27, 1946. Page one.”

“How do I get the issue?”

“Follow me.”

He led Peter through row after row of stacks, each crammed with the tall clothbound volumes. Finally he stopped.

“Here we are. September 1946.”

He took down the volume. It was heavy. He wheezed as he carried it to a battered table around which were a number of chairs. He dropped the volume onto the table. “You’ll find his obit in here. Put it back when you’re through with it. Okay?”

Peter nodded. The librarian shuffled off. It was dark in the room. He turned on the desk lamp on the table.

He sat there staring at the big clothbound volume crammed with newspapers. For a while he could not bring himself to open it. He was afraid to open it. Finally, with trembling fingers, he opened the cover and turned to the issue of September 27. Page one.

The paper was yellowed with time, the print a little faded. Then he saw the story. And there was a picture to go with it.