Lawrence Block: Chip Harrison Scores Again

The trouble with the truth was that it just didn’t sound true enough. And by the time he unlocked my cell door and came on in, I had thought up a few ways to improve it.

“Well, now,” he said. “I guess you ain’t precisely Johnny Dillinger after all. Your fingerprints didn’t ring any bells and nobody up in Washington got too excited about your description.”

I had been a little worried that I might still be wanted in Indiana for statutory rape, but I guess that got straightened out somewhere along the way. I knew my fingerprints had never gotten on file.

(Until now.)

“But that seems to make you what they call an unknown quantity, boy.” He clucked his tongue. “Chip Harrison. That some kind of a nickname?”

“It’s my real name.”

“Your folks handed you that, did they? Where are they now?”

“They were killed in an auto crash a little over a year ago.”

“Any other kinfolk?”

“None.”

“And no way on earth to prove you’re who you say you are. No identification at all.”

“My wallet was stolen. In New York.”

He looked at me.

“They got my wallet and my suitcase. I was on my way to Florida. To Miami, I couldn’t stand it in New York with the weather and the kind of people you meet up there. I had my ticket bought and I was on my way to the bus station when they jumped me.”

“Jumped you?”

“Three big buck niggers,” I said. “One of them held a razor to my throat. I think you can still see the nick. Then one of the others hit me a few times in the stomach. They got my watch and my wallet and my suitcase, they even got the change out of my pocket. I had the ticket in my shoe.”

“That was good thinking,” he said. “You go to the police?”

“In New York? What good would that do?”

“I hear tell it’s another country up there.”

“More like another world. If you tell those New York police you’ve been robbed, they act like you’re wasting their time.” Which was true enough, incidentally. When I had a place in the East Village, somebody kicked the door in one day and robbed me, which was actually one big reason why I didn’t have anything but the clothes on my back. I wasn’t there at the time, and there had never been anyone holding a razor to my throat, but you can see that the story had elements of truth to it. It was sort of a matter of arranging the truth so that it made sense.

“So all I had was the ticket,” I went on. “I had sixty-two dollars left after I bought my ticket, but they got it when they got the wallet. I figured it would be plenty to keep me going until I found work in Miami. A fellow was telling me there were plenty of jobs down there. At those hotels.”

“That the kind of work you did in New York?”

“No, I was bussing tables in a cafeteria.” I actually did that for a day once, in a cafeteria on Second Avenue. That job ended when I dropped a tray. They took it for granted that you would drop a tray now and then, but not on a customer. “But from what I heard you didn’t need much experience to hire on as a bellhop or something.”

He was nodding. He didn’t really look like that Dodge commercial anymore.

“After they robbed me,” I said, “I didn’t know what to do. I just knew I had to get out of New York.”

“No place for a white man.”

“That’s the truth,” I said. “Dope addicts and niggers and long-haired radicals and I don’t know what else. And being robbed and all, I just wanted to get away from there. But I didn’t want to go to Miami with no money at all. I figured I’d starve before I got settled. So I worked out how much money I would need and traded my ticket so that I could get as close as possible to Miami and still have a few dollars left to live on.”

“And that’s how you picked Bordentown. I was wondering about that.”

“I guess it would have been better to stop further north. In North Carolina, say, because that would have left me with more money. But I wanted to get as far as I could, and anyway my mother was from South Carolina originally—”

“Is that a fact?”

“She was born in Charleston. Her maiden name was Ryder. But there’s no family left now.”

“I didn’t think you seemed like the typical Yankee.”

“Well, I’ve always lived in the North. But I never felt, you know, that it was really home to me.”

We went on like this for a while, and he got less and less like that Dodge commercial and I got more and more South Carolina into my voice. I didn’t want to get carried away and lay it on too thick, but as long as it was going over well I figured it was worth staying with. He wanted to know about my plans. I said I would just try to find work in Bordentown. There weren’t many jobs, he said. Ever since the space people closed their operations in Savolia, jobs were tight all over the area. Especially in the winter, when there was no farm work to speak of. I said I was willing to do just about anything, and as soon as I had money saved I could go down to Miami.

“Don’t want to go anywhere without some identification,” he said. “You’d get the same reception anywhere. First police officer who sets eyes on you wouldn’t have no choice but to lock you up. I suspect you can write away for certain things. Driver’s license, for example.”

“I never had one.”

“Draft card, for certain. This day and age you don’t want to go anywhere without a draft card.”

“I’m only seventeen,” I said. On my eighteenth birthday I had decided that it wouldn’t hurt to stay seventeen as long as possible. It seemed to me that if you didn’t get around to registering for the draft you wouldn’t have to make any Big Decision as to whether or not you would burn your draft card.

“Need a social security card,” he said. “You must of had one, I guess. Recollect the number?”

I didn’t.

“Easier to go ahead and get a new one, then. You try writing to them for a replacement and those fellows in Washington, they’ll be a year getting back to you. I could tell you stories about those people up there. What else you’ll need is a Sheriff’s ID Card. I’ll fix you up with one of those. At least we can do that without going through a passel of red tape. You just apply for a social security card down to the courthouse, and on the form you put that you never had one before. That’s the easiest way to go about it. Not entirely legal, but in police work you learn that there’s laws and there’s laws. Know what I mean?”

“Laws to help people and laws to get in people’s way?”

“I guess you understand my meaning, boy.” He looked at me and I looked back at him, deciding that he was a pretty nice guy. He clucked his tongue again. “Reckon you could do with a bath and a change of clothes,” he said. “Or with running what clothes you got through the washing machine. The wife can do that while you’re in the tub.” I almost said I didn’t have a wife. Then I realized we were talking about his wife, and his washing machine, and his tub.

“Like to had me wondering when you pulled those drawers out of your pocket last night. I sat up wondering what kind of damned fool pervert carries his underwear in his pocket. Guess they must of been chafing you some on that bus ride. How long were you on that bus?”

“On to forty hours.”

He clucked again. “And eating in those greasy diners, were you? Fifty cents for a hamburger sandwich and you have to hunt for the meat, and fifteen cents for coffee. That’s not but brown water. Never had a real Southern breakfast up there, did you?”

“No.”

“Grits and eggs and fries and sausage and coffee that the spoon stands up in? I guess they don’t know how to eat up there. What’s that Northern food like?”