Law and Order Page 3

  “Don’t shake your head at me, you bitch,” he told her and grabbed her heavy face, held it still.

  “You don’t understand, baby,” she said. The lazy slurred speech, not alarmed, reconciled, explained. “I been trying to tell you something, man, but you ain’t listening.” Her voice breathed into his face with the hot steaming smell of her. She moved from him, a step away, looked down at her own body. “Okay, man, see for yourself, then.”

  She held the robe wide from her naked body, showed herself to him. She hooked her thumbs inside the narrow band of elastic which encircled her waist and she jutted her pelvis forward. He watched, repelled, fascinated, drawn by the openness with which she displayed the stained sanitary napkin. He was appalled by her frankness; more appalled by the quickening of his own lust.

  It was some primal force, unknown, unknowable, that made the hot flesh within his hand swell and throb, pound with blood toward the blood he had seen, whose tantalizing pungent odor entered his nostrils with the familiar earthiness of an animal beckoning him. It was the powerful awareness of the presence of that forbidden blood tha drove him toward her again.

  There was a different tone in her voice now, something urgent, bordering on fear. “Hey, listen there a minute, man. Ain’t what you think. Ain’t the monthly blues, honey. See, I had to get me this operation. Got me socked up and this old woman down the street, she done this job on me just two days ago.” She turned, lifted the glass, held it for him to see, to confirm her story. “See, I been drinking gin steady.” She swallowed hugely, eyes closed, head tossed back, then jerked forward to assure him. “Well, you know I don’t drink like this. But she didn’t do me so good, that old woman, and I got me plenny pain and trouble.” The slurring voice tightened and she seemed suddenly, starkly sober. “Hey, man, you ain’t listenin’ what I been telling you. I been hurt pretty bad. I been cut up inside.”

  He heard nothing but the sound of her voice; not her words; not her plea; not her meaning. He reached out and ripped the wrapper from her. The pleading sound reached some dark corner of his need; he responded in a rough, hoarse, grating voice, and this too, this hard sound of himself, was what he needed.

  “Don’t give me no shit, Lola. We done it before when you were like this.”

  Bodily memory of that other time overwhelmed him. One hand felt his own flesh, smooth, swelling, burning. His other hand tore the narrow elastic band from her body, tossed the bloody napkin with its reeking gelatinous fumes away from her.

  “No, no, that was different Please, oh, God, no, listen, I’m all tore up inside.”

  He responded relentlessly to the begging panic sound of her with his own deep-throated unbearable hardness. “Stand still, you whore. I’m gonna come out the other bloody side of you. Damn it, stand still!”

  His hand dug at the wire-strong hairy wetness of her body, fingers felt the heavy pollution of blood. His eyes locked tight. He inhaled the terrible blackness of every part of her and he tried to plunge into her body, but she moved, writhed away. Brutally, he grabbed at a firm full breast and twisted.

  Her words fell about his head, her mouth touched his ear, the wetness of her pleas fell about his cheeks, his neck, as she tried to fight him off. “Oh, Gawd, no, Gawd, no, Gawd, no!”

  Over and over, it seemed, the phrase was repeated. He heard the breaking of glass, somewhere. She held up a jagged slash of glass before his eyes but he didn’t see it. It disappeared from his view too swiftly, just the faint vapor of gin drifted into his awareness and the moist and rubbery feel of her flesh within his fingers and the feel of his own slippery hardness meeting her.

  The woman’s muffled scream covered his own terrible gasp but he knew he had made some strangulated sound. He felt sound travel through his chest and throat, felt it inside his mouth. Not a sound of pain; there was no real pain, just an instantaneous numbness which shot down his thighs and into his navel and filled his groin.

  The flesh within his hand, his flesh, changed; no longer hard and firm and throbbing.

  Brian O’Malley raised his right hand to his face, stared at the bloody mutilated part of his body in total nonrecognition and disbelief. He looked dumbly at the gushing blood which spouted through his opened fly, ran ceaselessly down his legs. He clutched both hands over the open wound, pressed the severed flesh back into place, moved his head slowly from side to side, would not look down, could not view the nightmare come true.

  “No. No. No. No.”

  It was a prayer, a plea, an incantation.

  “Please. Please. Please. Please.”

  The girl watched him in horror and she moaned with him, mistook his careful, glassy-eyed movement toward her, and, to save herself from whatever she feared of him at this point, she lunged once more with the jagged piece of broken glass and ripped open Brian O’Malley’s jugular vein.

  She moved blindly backwards from what she had done, from the new fountain of blood, from the terrible cackling sound of the dying man. As she moved, she shook her head, whispered, much as he had done, “No. No. No. No.” Tried to deny reality. She covered her eyes with both of her arms, threw her head back, her arms high in the air over her head.

  As she took another step back, her thighs hit against the window sill and her large body stumbled backwards, fell backwards, crashed backwards through the opened window. Lola Jason landed four stories below with a sharp crash into the garbage-laden air shaft of the tenement house.

  THREE

  AARON LEVINE STARED VACANTLY through the windshield of the patrol car, transfixed by a spot of light which was reflected from his own dimmed headlights on the shiny bumper of the Dodge in front of him. Enclosed in a magic childhood incantation, he was protected from whatever dangers the surly, unpleasant Sergeant O’Malley might inflict.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Levine, taken totally by surprise, twisted to his left and was confronted by the anger and suspicion of a ranking officer. A lieutenant? A captain? Which?

  “Just...sitting here, Captain.” The higher rank was safer. It was strange, some part of Aaron’s brain, the spectator, remote and removed from events, noted how automatically he had chosen the higher rank even in the middle of his terror.

  The face which glared from the window of the precinct patrol car directly beside him was large, broad, topped by unruly red eyebrows. The lips, set into the heavy face, were thin and pulled back, almost animal-like, in tight anger.

  “You’re from the Twenty-eighth and you’re ‘just sitting’ in my precinct?”

  A foreign invader. My God, I’m a foreign invader. Aaron literally could not think of anything to say. For the past fifteen minutes, he had been trying to think up excuses should just such an event occur. But he was not devious. He had failed to come up with a single plausible or even implausible reason for this gross departmental violation and so had let himself lapse into vacuity and magic.

  The captain spoke to his driver, then heavily pulled himself from his car and leaned in to examine Aaron’s face with a narrow-eyed look of accusation that made guilt roil in the pit of Aaron’s stomach.

  “Who is it you’re driving for?”

  The captain’s voice had a familiar, baiting quality; the hard grating assurance of a man who knew everything and you’d better not try to kid him.

  There must be some accepted and acceptable response besides the truth. But Aaron, his brain racing over the emptiness of his experience, could only search fruitlessly and finally admit the truth.

  “For Sergeant O’Malley. Sergeant Brian O’Malley.”

  Aaron Levine felt the vaporous guilt solidify now. He was now an informer and would be forever marked informer. He had violated a code he did not understand, would never understand, had not been made a party to and did not even know for sure existed.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, that stupid son of a bitch. Did he go up to that nigger whore’s apartment?”

  The captain’s tone changed. There was a definite relaxing of the suspic
ious belligerence. Still tight, still hard, there was beneath his words a sense of amused scorn. Aaron didn’t know what to answer and kept his mouth locked.

  The captain, grossly fat, stuck his face close to Aaron’s. “He’ll never learn to stay away from trouble. Well, maybe it’s for the best I go myself.”

  Aaron nodded dumbly.

  The captain considered Aaron for a moment. He was a miserable-looking policeman and hardly could meet his eye. “Take it easy, lad,” the captain said. “You only done what your sergeant told you to do. I’ll straighten out the sergeant. You just keep your mouth shut about this. Got that now?”

  It was what everyone kept telling him: Keep your mouth shut.

  “Yes, sir, Captain.”

  Again the captain regarded him and this time he frowned. “What’s your name anyway, officer?”

  Aaron felt nailed: identified now. “Patrolman Aaron Levine, sir.”

  The captain’s lips pulled back into what was probably a smile. “Aaron Levine is it? Mother of God, we’ve got us an Aaron Levine. And driving for Brian. Well, well.” He leaned heavily close. “Keep your nose clean and your mouth shut, son.”

  “I will. Oh, I will,” Aaron assured him and the captain, assured, left.

  The precinct patrol car backed into the space behind Aaron. The driver had given no sign of friendliness, he was no commiserator. That’s okay, Aaron thought; I’m not looking for friends. Just to get out of here. Idly, nervously trying not to think of the moment when he would be alone in the car with Sergeant O’Malley again, he turned the radio up a bit.

  The captain’s voice, hollow, loud, strange, filled the air. At first, Aaron didn’t know where it was coming from; then he got out of the car and looked up.

  “Charlie! Charlie, for the love of God, come up here. In a hurry!”

  The other policeman ran toward the tenement and Aaron started after him, but a second later, the captain’s head reappeared and his voice ordered, “You. You get back in your car and don’t leave it!”

  That’s okay with me, Aaron thought; I don’t want any part of it. He nibbled on a piece of cuticle around the edge of his left index finger, bit too deeply, felt a sharp needle of pain. God, he wished they were on their way back to the precinct house. It was nearly time for the tour to end. He never thought that filthy precinct would feel like home, but it was where he wanted to be right now.

  The voice from the radio speaker was thin but insistent and caught his attention through the heavy customary static by its urgency. Patrolman Aaron Levine leaned forward and strained to pick out the words.

  “Assist patrolman. Armed robbery in progress. All cars in vicinity of Lenox Avenue and 131st Street respond immediately. Approach with caution. Two armed men.”

  Words penetrated: liquor store; two armed men; patrolman in need of assistance; approach with caution; all cars in vicinity. The call was being repeated as Aaron turned the key, turned over the motor. He left Sergeant O’Malley to the fat captain and the patrolman named Charlie. He gave no thought whatever to what he was riding toward. He knew only that he wanted to get away from whatever O’Malley had become involved in.

  Patrolman Charles Gannon could not take it in. He could not make sense of what he saw and he turned his face, mouth opened, to Captain Peter Hennessy.

  “Get a blanket,” the captain told him, and when he failed to move, the captain’s heavy hand shoved him toward a closet or another small room, Gannon couldn’t distinguish which. “Look in there, look around, there must be a blanket somewhere. Move, man, move!”

  Gannon dragged a thin gray blanket from beneath a cot. The yellow light cast by the single bulb moved and swung in crazy directions as the cord became tangled somehow in the captain’s hand. Captain Hennessy reached up to steady it, burned his fingers, cursed. The light cast terrible crazy patterns over the blood-covered body of Brian O’Malley.

  “Is he dead?” Gannon asked stupidly. Of course, he knew Brian was dead. Not just the frozen eyes, the heavy pools of blood, but everything about him spelled death.

  Captain Hennessy didn’t bother to answer. He bent, breathed short heavy gasps, motioned to Gannon. “Get him on the blanket, for God’s sake. We’ve got to get him out of here.”

  That seemed the necessary and urgent and vital thing. Charlie Gannon, completely unaware of the mess on his own uniform, lifted O’Malley’s head and shoulders, felt the captain lift the dead legs. They placed the body on the blanket, which Gannon pulled close and neatly tucked in loose edges. Charlie bit the tip of his tongue in concentration; he wanted to make the bundle firm and secure and tight.

  “Stand up now, Charlie. Stand up, man, and listen to me.”

  Captain Hennessy’s face was red with exertion but there was a yellow circle around his mouth and his lips had an almost bluish cast in the peculiar light.

  “Did you see what she did to Brian?” Charlie Gannon nodded; he had seen blood. He wasn’t sure, exactly, what else he’d seen. “We’ve got to get him out of here completely. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Charlie?”

  Charlie Gannon nodded, then stopped, then slowly shook his head from side to side. He was a slight, wiry man, and when he looked at the captain, he had to lean back somewhat. “What is it that happened here, anyway, Cap?” Some slow and terrible realization of unnamable deeds began to fill him. His small eyes began to rotate as though to encompass the event.

  Captain Hennessy cut him off swiftly. His hands grasped the collar of Gannon’s jacket and jerked at him so that they stared into each other’s eyes.

  “We’ve got to get Brian out of here. The black whore who did this to him is down in the alley. I don’t know what went on here and I don’t want to find out. The thing is, we’ve got to get Brian out of here. Whatever happened didn’t happen here, Charlie. You got that now, lad? Good boy, good boy.” He released Gannon and nodded.

  “Yes, Captain, you’re right, you’re right. Let’s get him out.”

  Gannon was very strong. His small size was deceptive. “I can manage him nicely,” he said, speaking to the bundle on the floor. He braced his legs, balanced as the weight was placed across his back and shoulders, swayed a moment, balanced again. Irrationally, Gannon said, “I could have been a fireman had I chosen, Captain. Did you know that? But instead I chose the Department.”

  Hennessy went first, shielding the patrolman and the dead sergeant with the bulk of his own body. His voice was murderous and he roared at the few dark curious faces which peered from behind slightly opened doors. “Get the fuck back inside, you bastards, or I’ll take a club to your skulls.” They believed him and doors closed quickly. He slammed the butt of his jack against a door or two, just to be sure they believed him.

  He turned once at the sound of a door reopening and Gannon stumbled into him and nearly lost his burden. The sight of the stumbling policeman, the strangeness of the lurchings of the large captain, terrified whoever had ventured to look and the door slammed and locked above them.

  They reached street level, and in the dark, the captain leaned against the hall wall for a moment and said to Gannon, though more to himself, “Let me think now, let me think a minute. Oh, Jesus, let me think a minute.”

  There was no one on the street. The patrol car stood, empty and dark and waiting. He walked quickly to it, opened the back door, scanned the block, signaled to Gannon, then stood back and watched as the patrolman placed the body in the back of the car.

  Captain Hennessy settled into the front seat without glancing behind him. He heard a soft hiccupping from Gannon, who grasped the steering wheel with both hands, stared straight ahead and asked him, almost querulously, “What are we to do with him, Captain? Now we’ve got him, what are we to do with him?”

  “Shut up and let me think, will you, just shut up, Charlie.”

  He stared straight ahead into the empty space before them, then turned to face Gannon and said, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, where the hell is the sheeny?”

  The sound was no
t as loud as when he practiced shooting targets in the firing range. There the report of his revolver was enlarged by the closed-in area and echoed and re-echoed inside his head. But here the noise was dissipated by the openness of the street and sounded like firecrackers or a car backfiring or a kid’s cap gun.

  Patrolman Levine held the heavy .38 in his right hand, carefully kept his finger off the trigger. He crouched behind his patrol car, bounced on his long legs just enough to enable him to see into the liquor store. There was one other patrol car beside his and the occupants of that car, two patrolmen, lay sprawled on the sidewalk outside the liquor store. Through the brightly lit window, in his quick bouncing rise and then crouch, Aaron saw another policeman inside the store, on his back. Dead, from what Aaron, in some cool, dispassionate judgment, could determine. With a surprising, shocking sense of recognition, he had a quick glimpse of the two gunmen: the two Negroes who had sat in Horowitz’ candy store, hunched over coffee cups. That made it all the more unreal: he recognized them. How could they have caused all this carnage?

  Carnage. It was the word that formed inside Aaron’s brain. He could see blood, inside the store, where the owner was probably dead or dying; outside, the policemen. One of the Negroes, Aaron observed in a quick bounce, was bleeding from a wounded arm; in one split-second observation, Aaron saw blood oozing between the man’s fingers as he held the wound.

  There was a soft, low moan, a whimper which drifted from one of the policemen on the sidewalk. He’s alive; he needs help. Aaron wanted to stand up, hold up his hands: fins. Hey, guys, fins, time out, let me see to this guy, okay. He’s out of it, okay. As though this was all just some kind of game and not real and he would play peacemaker or referee or whatever. But the sense of crazy reality kept him from standing up, from approaching the wounded man.

  There were the two Negroes. Aaron wondered why they hadn’t thought to turn out the lights in the liquor store. The lights blazed and every time the men moved he could catch a glimpse of them. He tried not to wonder anything at all about them; he slid his long body along the gutter; he became sharply aware of the smell of dog dirt on his clothing. The policeman began to cry now, to mumble and sob the way a confused child would. Aaron felt a new surge of emotion now: anger. Hey, listen, you bastards, this guy is really hurt. Enough is enough.