Wax Apple Page 18

  Rose was saying nothing now, but she was still on her feet, and she closed a hand tight on Molly’s shoulder. I saw the touch stiffen Molly, and she slowly shook her head and said, “We didn’t do any of it. We wouldn’t do things like that.”

  I didn’t know what to say next, how to reach her, and while I was still trying to think, George Bartholomew said, “Molly, I never laughed at you. Don’t you remember? When that table went over, I was right at the next table, and I jumped right up and brushed that coffee off your lap with my napkin. Don’t you remember that? I never laughed at you, Molly, and look.” His hand, a thin hand with rabbity movements, went up to touch his cheek. “Look what you did to my face,” he said.

  “Oh,” Molly said, more a groan than a word, and her face crumpled, and she dropped her head forward onto folded arms. Her shoulders looked huge, and they shook with sobs, and through the crying, muffled by her arms, we still could hear what she was saying, over and over:

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  26

  WEDNESDAY, THE SECOND of July. No humidity, no rain, no hovering clouds, only a high beautiful blue sky, a warm sun and a pleasant breeze. I was alone in the house, having called Kate when I’d come home from Kendrick last Friday and told her that she and Bill should stay at least a full month out there on Long Island. Of course I’d be all right, I told her, and she finally agreed.

  Yesterday the doctor gave me a smaller cast, leaving both my elbow and wrist free, so that now I could keep my arm in a sling and ever wear normal clothing instead of being limited to pajama tops. The itching was still fierce, but that was supposed to be a good sign. At least, they said it was.

  The explanations with Captain Yoncker had lasted most of last Thursday afternoon and evening, so I hadn’t been able to leave until the afternoon train on Friday. But they’d taken an affidavit from me, which would do in lieu of my presence at the inquest, and when I did leave Kendrick it was for good.

  Rose had gone on denying the truth for nearly an hour after Molly’d broken down, and then she too confessed. Each woman tried to claim the lion’s share of the blame for herself, but the official attitude was to apportion it evenly. Both would wind up back in asylums, probably for good.

  The house had been fine to come home to, silent and restful after the pain and suffering of The Midway, but hampered by my bad arm I’d been unable to do much of anything and I’d been getting restless and edgy. I half-wanted to call Kate and ask her to come in for a day or two, but I knew she would react by calling off the vacation entirely, so I stayed away from the phone. I watched television, read, and had obscure uncomfortable dreams about the residents of The Midway, people who were fading more quickly from my waking mind than my sleeping mind. The weather was changeable all weekend, and then on Tuesday I got the smaller cast, and Wednesday was a beautiful day, and I stood on the back porch looking at my wall.

  I hadn’t worked on it for quite a while. It would fill the time, the way it always did, but here was my blasted right arm, useless. I didn’t dare try to work with it, that would only delay the time when it would be healed and useful again.

  One-handed? I looked out at the wall, inching up out of the ground all the way around my back yard, ten inches wide, an unbroken line for three sides, with the house forming the fourth wall. I wouldn’t be able to dig one-handed, of course, but what about laying bricks? It would be slower, but I cared nothing about speed, I had no deadlines to meet. All I had to do was one step at a time, all left-handed. It was at least worth a try.

  And it worked. I got into old clothes and went out in the yard and the only difficult part really was preparing the mortar, but once that was done the rest was almost easy. Pick up the trowel, put down the trowel. Pick up a brick, put down the brick. Pick up the trowel, put down the trowel. Pick up a brick, put down the brick. The sun was warm, the air was fresh, the bricks were a beautiful color in the sunlight.

  I’d sleep without dreams tonight.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Mitchell Tobin Mysteries

  If it is possible to be neutral about a subject such as astrology, I am neutral. None of the characters in this book expresses my opinion on the subject, primarily because I have no opinion. In my personal head, astrology is filed—along with the Tarot deck, the I Ching and a dozen other pre-scientific disciplines—in the drawer labeled MAYBE.

  For those interested in the subject, the natal horoscopes in this book are legitimate, drawn up for dates and places of birth chosen at random. The progressed readings were chosen for their applicability to the plot, but all are possible for those natal horoscopes at one time or another.

  The birth information on the principal characters in this book:

  Ronald Cornell Atlanta, Georgia August 25, 1939 7:20 P.M.

  Jamie Dearborn Omaha, Nebraska April 11, 1942 6:10 A.M.

  Henry Koberberg New York, N.Y. July 12, 1933 9:15 A.M.

  Cary Lane Los Angeles, Calif. February 3, 1941 10:00 P.M.

  Bruce Maundy New York, N.Y. March 28, 1943 11:25 P.M.

  David Poumon Toronto, Ont., Can. June 5, 1945 10:35 A.M.

  Stewart Remington New York, N.Y. April 22, 1929 3:15 A.M.

  Leo Ross Long Island, N.Y. February 27, 1937 11:55 A.M.

  Jerry Weissman Frankfurt, Germany November 26, 1950 2:20 P.M.

  Again, this book is meant neither as an attack upon astrology nor as a defense of astrology, but only as a fiction to be—I hope—enjoyed.

  Tucker Coe

  February, 1970

  1

  I WAS IN THE basement, digging, when Ronald Cornell first appeared. I was alone in the house—Bill was at school and Kate was off to her part-time job in the department store—and the first I knew he was there was when a soft male voice called down the cellar stairs, “Hello? Is anyone home?”

  For just a second I felt a chill up my back that had more to do with the irrational fears of childhood than anything else. I was standing knee-deep in a freshly dug hole, my surroundings as poorly lit by bare bulbs as most basements, and a stranger had suddenly appeared at the head of the stairs—the only exit.

  From where I was, I couldn’t see him. I automatically took a tighter grip on the shovel as I called, “What is it?”

  “Mr. Tobin? Mr. Mitchell Tobin?”

  Wasn’t this the way people used to be called to Heaven—or to Hell—in those horror movies I used to see on Saturday afternoons as a boy? Aware of the foolishness of my reaction, but stupidly unable to do anything about it, I shouted, more forcefully than I’d intended, “What do you want?”

  He started down the stairs. My view was from the far wall across the open stairs, so I could see as much of him as was below the level of the basement ceiling, and what came into sight first were his shoes; they were brown, with brass buckles. Leather and metal both gleamed in the yellow light.

  He was saying, in his soft and frail-sounding voice, “I’m sorry to bother you. I rang the bell. The door wasn’t locked, so I thought perhaps there was something wrong.”

  His trousers were plaid, in shades of green and brown. They flared below the knee. It was snowing out—this was January 7th, winter’s fist was firmly clenched—but there was no sign of bad weather on his shoes or trousers. Nor on the dark green silk socks that showed between.

  I stepped up out of the hole, but kept my grip on the shovel. There was nothing rational in my mind at all, nothing but confusion.

  His jacket was tan, a bit darker than the usual color of camel’s-hair coats, and seemed to be of some very soft material, like cashmere. It was fitted very tightly at the waist, and flared out below, making him look as though he had large soft hips.

  There were simple wooden railings on both sides of the staircase, and now his hand appeared, resting on the rail nearer me. Like everything else about him, the hand was soft-looking, the fingers somewhat thick and blunt. Emerging from the end of his jacket sleeve, over his wrist, was a ruffled white lace shirt cuff.

>   Only a few seconds had gone by since he’d started down the stairs, and he continued to talk as he came: “I hope you don’t mind my barging in like this. I suppose I should have called first, but I was afraid you’d say no, and I really am desperate.”

  Desperate? He didn’t sound desperate. Or was I, filled with my own foolish first impressions, simply unable to hear the overtones in his voice?

  He wore a fluffy ascot, in shades of rust and green. But now he had descended far enough for me to see his face, and all at once I knew who—or that is to say what—he was. I leaned the shovel against the cement wall, and took a step toward him.

  I was never assigned to the Vice Squad, but in the course of my eighteen years as a New York City cop I had inevitably gotten to know quite a bit about the local homosexual community: the more common stereotypes in which they appear, and the kinds of individuals who prey upon them.

  My visitor was a type I recognized at once; what I thought of as the Bruised. Slender, weak-looking, with a delicate round head that was balding in a way he surely found embarrassing, he wore the (habitual?) self-deprecating apologetic smile of the person who doesn’t expect anyone else to take his pain seriously. This is the kind of queer that is found beaten and robbed in parks, in public restrooms and empty alleys; they seldom want to press charges, even on those rare occasions when their attacker is picked up. Occasionally they are found dead. Something in them, perhaps their very vulnerability, so palpable and total, seems to evoke a wild savagery in their attackers, and the deaths are often terrible.

  But the clothing was all wrong for the pattern. This type, the Bruised, is normally employed as a clerk in some large corporation or somewhere in Civil Service, and dresses appropriately in drab conservatism. This one’s clothing belonged to a different category entirely; what a friend of mine on the force used to call the Creative Queen. I wasn’t sufficiently knowledgeable on the subject to be sure, but from my television talk-show viewing I thought it a safe guess that my visitor’s clothing was as current and “in” as it was possible to be.

  He was saying, as he reached the bottom of the stairs, “Please forgive me if I seem pushy. I just didn’t know where else to turn.”

  I said, “What did you want?” I was feeling irritable now, partly at having been interrupted in my digging, partly at having so foolishly frightened myself, and I made no attempt to keep my annoyance out of my voice.

  He began to blink, very rapidly, and to flutter his hands in front of himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I’m interrupting—I’ll come back if it would be better—I don’t mean to, I know you’re busy.” And he gestured vaguely at the hole behind me.

  I had forgotten how easy it was to panic people like this. Homosexuals of the Bruised type usually are the result of a violently dominating father, and they tend to crumple at any demonstration of harsh authority. I was immediately embarrassed at what I’d done, and tried to make amends. “I’m digging a sub-basement,” I said, feeling the need to explain myself. “For storage. There’s no rush on it.”

  “I could come back another time,” he said. One buckled shoe was already back up on the lowest step.

  “No, you’re here now. What’s the problem?”

  “Thank you.” He tried a tentative smile, but kept on blinking. “Uh—Well.” The frightened smile flashed on and off again. “Now that I’m here, I don’t know where to start.”

  “With your name,” I suggested.

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry! My name’s Ronald Cornell. I live on Remsen Street, over in Brooklyn Heights?”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Yes. I have a little shop over there. A male boutique?” He tended, I could see, to make statements as though they were questions. People who live in two worlds—immigrants, homosexuals, some criminal types, some show-business types—often develop that mannerism as a result of talking so often to people outside their own tight sphere.

  “A men’s clothing store,” I said now, to show him I understood what a male boutique was. (I also understood now the contradiction between his face and his clothing.)

  “Something like that,” he said, and I nodded to indicate I understood that there were undoubtedly crucial differences between a male boutique and a men’s clothing store. “My place,” he said, “is called Jammer?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know it.”

  “It’s just a little neighborhood shop,” he said, as though that were the reason.

  “You have a problem with the store?” I couldn’t understand yet what he was doing here.

  “No, it’s my—” The blinking started again, more violently than before, and an expression of remembered agony dragged his face into downward arcs. “My partner,” he said.

  “In the store?”

  “Yes. Everywhere,”

  He hadn’t made that one a question, but I nodded anyway. “I understand. What about him? What’s his name?”

  “Jamie. Jamie Dearbuh—” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, forgive me. His name is Dearborn. Jamie Dearborn.” And he looked at me with such desolation that I suddenly realized there had to be death in it somewhere. Nothing else gives human eyes quite that expression of loss.

  I said, as gently as I could, “What happened?”

  “He said it was the Changeable Sailor. Is that a police term?”

  “The Changeable Sailor? I never heard the phrase before.”

  “I wasn’t sure if he’d made it up or not,” he said, and gave a quick nervous smile that made no sense.

  I said, “Who made it up? Jamie?”

  “No, the detective.” He shook his head, the nervous smile twitching on and off, and made vague indefinite movements with his hands. “I’m sorry, I know I’m saying this all wrong, you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. It’s just that I don’t want to say the main thing, you see, that’s what it is, about Jamie being, you know, dead.” He looked away from me, smiling blindly at the stairs.

  I said, “When did this happen?”

  “Last weekend. Saturday.”

  Today was Wednesday; no wonder the wound was still fresh. I said, “The police say a sailor did it?”

  “No. Not exactly.” His hands folded across his waist, and the fingers of his right hand began to twitch at the lace over his left wrist. Head down, watching his fingers move, he said, “I wish he could explain it to you himself. Manzoni. Detective Manzoni.” He looked quickly at me. “Do you know him?”

  “No, I don’t. What was it he said about the sailor?”

  “He said—” Cornell looked down at his twitching fingers again, and talked to them. “He said it happens all the time. He said a sailor gets off a ship in New York, he’s been weeks or months at sea, he’s only got one night on shore, and he wants a woman. So he goes to bars, and he drinks, and he doesn’t find a woman, and finally a—someone tries to pick him up. Some boy.” A quick look at me, and away. “Some homosexual, you see.”

  “Yes,” I said. I knew where the story was going.

  “And the sailor,” he went on, “decides to go with the boy. Because he can’t find a woman, and he doesn’t want his time on shore to be a complete waste, and something is better than nothing. And they go to the boy’s place, or somewhere else, somewhere private, and then the sailor changes his mind and gets mad because things didn’t work out the way he wanted, and he takes it out on the boy. He beats up the boy. And sometimes he kills him.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That’s what he called the Changeable Sailor,” Cornell said. “Manzoni did.”

  “A good enough name for him,” I said. “That kind of thing does happen.”

  “But not to Jamie!” Cornell cried, and was suddenly staring directly at me, all his pain on the surface. “To me, that could happen to me if I didn’t have—if Jamie hadn’t come into—But not to him.” He scrabbled into his inside jacket pocket, saying, “Here, look at this. You’ll see. It isn’t possible, it just isn’t possible.”

  He ca
me out at last with a page torn from some glossy magazine, folded over twice. Hurriedly, but almost reverently, he unfolded it and handed it over. His eyes were shining.

  I took the page and looked at it. It was a full-page ad from a clothing manufacturer, for the same style of apparel as that being worn by Cornell. The bottom quarter of the ad had copy, black lettering on white, but the top three quarters was a full-color photograph of a young man standing in a dramatic pose on a huge boulder in a field. In the background, a herd of horses was running pell-mell from right to left.

  The young man was a Negro, with very light skin: milk-chocolate. He was lean and graceful, with the body and stance of a dancer. His face was handsome, firm-jawed, strong-looking, and at the same time quite obviously homosexual. His hair was worn in the natural style lately popular, but not to any wild excess.

  This was the Creative Queen, this was the one for whom this clothing was made. The difference between Ronald Cornell, fidgeting awkwardly and looking both forlorn and ridiculous in his finery, and the young man in this photograph, who wore the equivalent finery as naturally and appropriately as any cavalier, was cruel and complete.

  I looked up from the picture to see Cornell gazing hopefully at me, his expression for some reason expectant. Then I understood; the lover awaiting admiration for his beloved.

  I said, “This is Jamie?”

  “You see it’s not possible,” he said. “You see he wouldn’t pick up a sailor.”

  “Or anyone else? Did he never do anything like that?”

  “Jamie?” I handed him back the picture; he turned it so he could look at it, and said, “Jamie could have anybody he wanted. He didn’t have to go after strangers, they all wanted Jamie.” He looked at me again and shook his head. “Jamie never cruised,” he said. “He never did.”

  “All right.” I thought I knew now what it was all about, and I said, “But I suppose this Detective …”

  “Manzoni.”

  “Yes. I suppose he’s satisfied with his sailor theory, and isn’t looking around for anybody else.”