The Vulture (8 page)

I stepped into the trap. She wanted me. She wanted a man. She needed someone to caress her and do the thing to her she had been trying to get all that liquor to do. She wanted me to
do what the fat boy couldn't do for her, if he did anything at all. Cool Spade, I thought. The man has done it again. His program is so together that not only is he getting the leg that he's after, but stuff that he didn't even know he was in line for. The main man is pulling another fast one on the world. Poor silly bitch can't resist the reputation and the coolness that this nigger wears like another vine. Goddamn! Goddamn a silly-ass Spade and all the idiocy that it represents! Goddamn motherfuckin’ make-believe people! They ain’ out here and they wouldn't dare try to pull all that cool shit in the middle of 17th Street with the P.R.’s on one corner and the whiteys on another and them right in the motherfuckin’ middle! Goddamn! There was no point in getting into a thing about saving the princess from the fat ogre. All I had really been doing was trying to screw John's piece of tail. I had needed that just for myself to prove to me that I was the MAN, while John was just another two-bit dealer. He would never be another Spade. All Debbie had been was just another piece of ass!

I sat in the corner of the Cobra and drank a Jack D. and listened to Ray Charles sing about crying. Listen to the blind man see.

Time.
The word comes through the turnstiles of your mind, ringing that bell that attracts your attention like the warning bell near the end of a line on a typewriter. Time is here; then it is gone. I remember the first day I learned the meaning of the word
gone.
I had found my grandmother dead.
Gone
meant no tomorrow.
Gone
meant over. Dead meant that you, who had been
something
, were now nothing. That was the first time I saw a body lowered into the ground while people cried. I cried too, because I realized that I would someday die, and I was afraid of death. No longer was death a shootout in a cowboy movie or Christians being eaten alive in a Roman arena by toothless lions. It was the end of everything.

Time is also supposed to be the great healer. In the weeks
that followed, I knew that John Lee would give me a chance to explain to him. I was sure that John would be man enough to sit down and listen to what I had to say, but he seemed to avoid me as though he knew that talking with me would be fatal for his ideals. It never occurred to me that he might sense the truth and just not want to hear. I never thought that he would rather believe something that was wrong than to find out the truth about the woman he called ‘love,’ but I was no student of the mind. John held Debbie the way I held Crystal, free of blame. To find out that Debbie never really wanted him would have been to discover that the solid ground he walked on was really only sand.

July 9, / 8:29 P.M.

I didn't travel the same roads I had once traveled. The corner Spade had become the missing link, and instead of greetings on the block, I heard whispers being thrown past, talk of my former deeds, as though I were a ghost instead of a man. I was looking down on the corner from my window when the phone rang.

‘Eddie?’

‘Yeah, Crys.’ Her voice was shaking.

‘I've got to see you,’ she said.

‘Yeah, baby, tomorrow, jus’ like we planned.’

‘Now! . . . Not tomorrow or next week or whenever. Now!’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I'll be right there.’ I dropped the receiver and then picked it up again. I dialed Smoky, hoping that he wasn't gone for the rounds. I told Smoky that there was a family emergency and asked him if he could make my rounds for me. He said that he would, and I thanked him.

I ran out into the street dressed as I was. Blue jeans and a sweatshirt was all that I wore. Not my general street thing at all. I hailed a cab as it rolled down Ninth Avenue. All sorts of
things grabbed my middle as I remembered the urgent, pleading tone in Crystal's voice. I had never heard anything like that from her, even during our infrequent arguments.

The cab made fairly good time, but nothing like the instant teleportation that I wanted. We were going down-town on Avenue D just off 14th Street when I told him to halt. I tossed him two bucks for the dollar-and-a-half lift and made it inside. In the elevator I lit a cigarette and wiped my sunglasses clean.

Progress was slow in the elevator. Riis projects had been around a long time, and the elevator was a part of the history it represented. I thought about what it would be like inside with Crystal. I'd try a ‘Hey, baby,’ and see how that got over.

As I knocked at the door, a flash of fear shot through me. In spite of the exterior thing that I was trying to get together, I was nervous. I could feel cold drops of sweat forming in my armpits and trickling down my side. I shivered involuntarily.

Crystal opened the door, and I stepped in, false smile in place. I stooped to peck her on the cheek, but she moved out of range. It was only ten before nine, but the house was silent and empty, like a tomb.

Crystal had been crying. The attempt she had made to straighten herself out had not been worth the effort. Her eyes were puffed and red, and the little lipstick that she used was uneven. I had been shocked to see her looking like that. I forgot the part I was supposed to be playing. She handed me a letter as we walked through the hall to the living room. I reopened it where the seal had been originally broken and read it.

I pretended to keep reading even after I had finished. My mind was gone. I couldn't even stop and focus on the written words in order to salvage the deeper meaning. Surely this was not what the author had been trying to say. It was some sort of code, some kind of trick. This was a lie!

‘You believe this?’ I asked Crystal.

‘Why would she lie?’

‘Do you believe it? That's what I'm asking you,’ I yelled.

‘Yes, I do. I believe every word of it.’ Crystal's eyes clouded, and she started sobbing again. She stretched out on the sofa and turned her back on me. I wanted to lean over and hold her and comfort her, but my feet were embedded in rock. I couldn't pull them free of their position.

I looked around the dimly lit room. The only light was the one directly behind me that I had used to read the letter. I wanted Crystal's mother and little brother there. The only jury I had before me were the silent furniture sentinels, who could only observe. I needed people.

I saw Mrs Amos sitting in the corner easy chair where she usually sat during my visits, making small talk and waiting for Crystal to come out and entertain her guest.

‘Mrs Amos,’ I was saying. ‘You know me. This is Eddie. Remember Christmas when we all went shopping together and I bought you the house shoes and the sweater? Don't you remember me?’ Mrs Amos sat unmoving in the corner. Unmoving and unblinking and unbreathing. ‘Why in the hell don't you say something, Mrs Amos? God, what's wrong with you?’

Crystal's little brother, Mack, was sitting at his mother's feet playing with a section of an electric train.

‘Hey! Mack! This is Eddie. I'm like a big brother to you, Mack. I took you to the movies and the zoo, and I gave you that train. I'm yo’ boy! Mack? Well, at least look up at me and act like you know me. Doesn't anybody here know me?’

I glanced down at the letter again and looked to the crying girl on the couch. I realized with a start that there was no one else in the room.

Dear Crystal,

How are you? Perhaps you are wondering already about this letter. Perhaps I should not be telling you this. Most likely the letter will make you absolutely no difference. I
am writing because you need to know that the man you are probably sleeping with, Eddie Shannon, is going to be the father of my child. When I told him this, he laughed and said ‘So what?’ In a few times that I saw you, you struck me as a very nice girl who would probably fall for a guy like Eddie, just as I did. You raised questions in my mind very often, but Eddie assured me that you and he were just good friends. It was only recently that I learned that he was using both of us for play toys. I am telling you all of this because you probably think that Eddie will marry you if something goes wrong. That's what I thought. My life is all messed up as a result of this. I will have to raise a child without a father. I have moved away from home. I could never live with my family after this. Please do as you see fit, but remember that I warned you of it all for your own good.

Debbie Clark

Crystal continued to lie on the sofa, sniffing. Some sort of wall had sprung up between us. I could only shake my head silently. My mind would not permit my body to do the things I needed to do. I was helpless and hopeless. I balled up the letter and tossed it to the floor. I took the envelope and put it in my pocket, and without so much as a good-bye, I went through the door and down to the street below. I cast one single glance back to her window as I started uptown on foot. The lights were out in the apartment. It was all over.

I was back on the block in twenty minutes with my head still spinning and the atmosphere of the world pressing down on me like a bleak moment in one of Edgar Allan Poe's nightmare classics.

I stopped at Delores’ house on 13th Street and Eighth Avenue. Delores was Crystal's cousin, but she was also Debbie's best friend. There was another mystery involved with everything
now. Delores met me at the door and ushered me through to the living room with a smile that I quickly erased.

‘Where's Debbie?’ I asked point blank.

‘How should I know? At home, I guess.’

‘Look, Delores,’ I was speaking with my teeth clenched and my voice barely above a whisper. ‘I'm gonna find her if it takes me the rest of my life. You had damn well better tell me if you know anything ‘cause if I should ever find out you knew an’ sent me huntin’ turkey, I'll beat you until yo’ own mama wouldn't recognize you. An’ yo’ boyfrien’ ain't bad enough to stop me.’

‘She's in Baltimore,’ Delores said.

I knew that to be true. I had taken the letter envelope and seen: ‘Baltimore, Maryland July 8, 1969.’ I needed an address in Baltimore.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘I don't know.’

‘Look here,’ I said. ‘Yo’ bes’ frien’ gits knocked up, an’ I ask you where she's at, an’ you say you don’ know. Girl, you mus’ think I'm crazy!’

‘She has friends,’ Delores said. Her eyes were pleading with me not to ask her any more questions, but I didn't care.

‘And that's where she's havin’ the kid?’

‘She's gonna have an abortion.’

I was completely out of everything. I needed a drink, but I didn't trust Delores out of my sight. I could hear her parents running off at the mouth about some TV show they must have been watching in the next room. I could barely see the girl through the sunglasses. I took them off.

‘That cost money,’ I breathed.

‘She had almost five hundred dollars when she left.’

I whistled out loud. ‘Is that enough?’

‘I don't know,’ was the reply.

‘Who's she stayin’ with?’ I asked.

‘She's stayin’ with Faye Garrison.’ The conversation was
becoming thick and weighted. Delores kept throwing suspicious stares back over her shoulder toward the door that separated us from her parents.

‘Where do . . .’ I began.

‘Spade, stop!’ For the first time Delores raised her voice, and I looked to the door. ‘I don't know everything! I've already told you more than I should have. That wasn't really any of my business! I don't know how you're mixed up in any of this, but anything you're involved in is always bad and ugly. I told Crystal to leave you alone! You know how tight Crys and I are . . . Now you come in here askin’ me about Debbie when I've just seen Debbie leave here four days ago with more money than I've ever seen in my life. You're a rotten bastard, Spade. I wish you were dead!’ She ran from the room and slammed the door behind her. Her father looked out into the living room and saw me.

‘You know how women are,’ I grinned.

He didn't say anything at all. He simply sat looking through the wedge he had made until I closed the door behind me. At the corner store I bought another pack of cigarettes, a paper, and a sports book. Once inside my apartment, I showered and shaved, then donned new clothes. I checked myself out in the mirror as I made the front door. New shirt and silk pants, plus a white raincoat and alligator shoes that started at sixty-five bucks. I caught a cab to the Port Authority at 41st Street and was entering the terminal when they announced my bus; 10:15 P.M. to Baltimore.

Baltimore, Maryland / July 10 / 2:30 A.M.

Nine o'clock hits Baltimore like a nightstick. All of the facilities of the central nervous system go immediately off duty. I arrived during the time each day when morning and night are colliding
just offstage. The lords of the night are not yet fully prepared to relinquish their confiscated territory. The night people on the planet Earth are sullenly aroused by a knock at the door atop the solar system. It is the sun. Several stars are involved in a mutiny, and little by little the sun robs the moon of all his subjects. The moon dreams of recapturing the stray night lights, and he fades either east or west to recall them. It is daybreak.

I stood in the Baltimore bus terminal watching the beginning of the fray near the other side of heaven. I checked the city phone book looking for the name I knew would connect me with Faye Garrison. There was only one such name, and I prayed that I could find it.

I stopped at the name O.T. That had been Oscar Taylor Garrison's initials. Faye had been a go-go girl at a dive called El Sombrero on 20th Street and Eighth Avenue. The owner had been O. T. (On Time) Garrison, who bought another place in Baltimore, where he and Faye moved. All of this came back to me when I saw his name and address listed.

I jumped into a cab outside the terminal. The warm air assaulted me after my sit in the air-conditioned coolness of the bus. I gave the driver the address on Royal Street and then settled back, watching the sleeping city flash past the windows. Sleep was closing in on me. Lights changed: Red-yellow-green-yellow-red. The initial anxiety I had had was wearing off. The tense feeling that had choked at my bowels was releasing me to the warm womb of drowsiness and ease. I thought I might need to see Debbie because I had lost Crystal, and there was no doubt in my mind that Crystal was lost to me. Crystal had been a great part of me. She had replaced the love I lost when
my mother died. My father and I had been enemies. We stood opposite in terms of everything. My mother had been sort of like a mediator who struck agreements for us, so that it was possible for us to live together under the same roof. Crystal had been my love. She gave me the kind of love that cannot be measured in the amount of fear you command, because fear cannot be a mother for true love. The love that supplements reality when your goals become hazy and obscure.