Ed McBain - Long Time No See

The directory was frayed and frazzled, but it told them there were thirty-three Lessers (thirty-three, count ’em, thirty-three) in Isola, fourteen of which were clearly business establishments like Lesser Drafting Service, Inc., Lesser Marine and Lesser Volkswagen, which left nineteen Lessers to go, and none of them named Harriet. There were two H. Lessers in the directory. They tried calling them first. One was a Helen and the other was a Hortense. It was not until almost three that they discovered a Harriet Lesser who was the wife of a Charles Lesser and who (hallelujah!) owned The Beauty Hut. They told her who they were and what they wanted, and she gave them Roxanne Hardy’s new address. They got into Carella’s car again, and drove downtown and crosstown, arriving at her apartment at twelve minutes past the hour.

The woman who opened the door was tall and lissome, with a smooth pecan-colored complexion and luminous brown eyes that looked puzzled now by the presence of two white men on her doorstep. She was wearing a striped caftan that flowed about her body like a huge sail in the wind, tight across her abundant breasts, flaring out below to end just above her ankles and her bare feet.

“Yes?” she said.

“Mrs. Hardy?” Carella said.

“Yes?”

“Police,” he said, and showed her the shield.

She examined it without interest. The puzzlement left her eyes and a look of mild curiosity replaced it — a slight lifting of one eyebrow, a bemused expression about the mouth.

“May we come in?” Carella asked.

“For what purpose, Officer?” she said, and there was in her voice the lilt she’d brought with her from Jamaica seventeen years before, when she was still a girl of twelve unfamiliar with the ways of any city bigger than Kingston.

Carella didn’t know quite how to put his question. Should he ask her flat out if she’d been raped twelve years ago by four assorted members of the Hawks? He might have done just that, if Lloyd Baxter hadn’t seemed quite so certain that nothing of the sort had happened. Instead, he said, “Mrs. Hardy, I understand you have some knowledge of a street gang called the Hawks,” and realized at once that he was referring to carnal knowledge, and again wondered about the subterranean workings of his own mind, and by extension, Jimmy’s. If Jimmy hadn't witnessed a rape, then what the hell had traumatized him: The recurring nightmares hadn’t come out of thin air, they were rooted somewhere in his unconscious. All right — where?

“I used to know some members of the Hawks, yes,” Roxanne said. “But that was a long time ago.” Her voice was soft; it sounded almost nostalgic.

“May we come in, please?” Carella said. “We’d like to ask you some questions about the gang.”

“Yes, all right,” she said, and stepped aside to let them into the apartment.

The place was still with late afternoon sunlight that streamed bleakly through the kitchen window and touched the hanging potted plants with silver. She led them into a modestly furnished living room, and beckoned gracefully to the two easy chairs that sat on either side of a color television set. She herself sat on the sofa opposite them, pulling her legs up under her Indian-fashion, the caftan tented over her knees.

“What is it you want to know?” she asked.

“We’d like you to tell us what happened just before Christmas twelve years ago,” Carella said.

“Oh, my,” she said, and laughed suddenly. “We were all children then.”

“I realize that,” Carella said. “But can you remember anything important that happened around that time?

“Important?” she said, and raised her shoulders expressively, rather like a dancer, her hands opening wide to further expand upon the theme of places and events too distant to recall.

It occurred to Carella that Lloyd Baxter and Roxanne Hardy were two of the most strikingly good-looking people he’d ever met. It seemed a pity they hadn’t chosen to remain together — The cop suddenly took over. Why hadn’t they chosen to stay together? Was it because Lloyd had allowed the rape? Or was it because she’d invited it?

“It would have been something very important,” Carella said, and felt suddenly as though he were playing Twenty Questions. Meyer caught his eyes. They both acknowledged silently and at once that the time had come to quit pussyfooting around. “Mrs. Hardy,” Carella said, “were you raped shortly before Christmas twelve years ago?”

“What?” she said.

“Raped,” he said.

“Yes, I heard you,” she said. “My,” she said. “Raped,” she said. “No,” she said. “Never. Not twelve years ago, and not ever.” Her eyes met his. “Should I have been?”

“Jimmy Harris said you were.”

“Ah, Jimmy Harris.”

“Yes. He said four members of the Hawks strong-armed Lloyd Baxter and then forced themselves upon you.”

“Lloyd? Have you met Lloyd? No one strong-arms Lloyd. No, sir. Not Lloyd.”

“Mrs. Hardy, if this never happened... where do you suppose Jimmy got the idea?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and smiled pleasantly, and Carella knew at once that she was lying. Until this moment, she’d been speaking the truth, but now the smile was false, the eyes above the smile were not smiling with it, she was lying. Meyer knew she was lying, too; the men glanced at each other, and separately wondered who was going to attack the lie first.

Meyer stepped in delicately. “Do you think Jimmy made the whole thing up?” he asked.

“I really don’t know,” Roxanne said.

“Your being raped, I mean.”

“Yes, I understand. I don’t know why Jimmy told you something like that.”

“He didn’t tell us.”

“He didn’t? You said...”

“He told his doctor.”

“Well... Roxanne let the word trail. She shrugged. “I don’t know why he did that,” she said.

“Seems a pretty strange thing to invent, doesn’t it?” “Yes, it certainly does. What kind of doctor was this? A shrink?”

“Yes.”

“A prison shrink?”

“No. An Army doctor.”

“Mm,” she said, and shrugged again.

“Mrs. Hardy,” Carella said, “how well did you know Jimmy Harris?”

“Same as the other boys,” she said.

“The other boys in the gang?”

“Yes. Well, the club. They called it a club. It was a club, I guess.”

“About two dozen boys altogther, is that right?” “Well, there were others all over Diamondback.”

“But two dozen in the immediate gang.”

“Yes.”

“And you knew Jimmy about as well as you knew any of the others.”

“Yes.”

She was still lying. He knew she was lying, damn it. He looked at Meyer; Meyer knew it, too. They weren’t going to let go of this. They were going to sit here and talk her blue in the face till they found out why she was lying.

“Would you say you were friendly with him?” Meyer asked.

“Jimmy? Oh, yes. But I was Lloyd’s girl friend, you understand.”

“Yes, we understand that.”

“So I only knew the other boys casually, you see.”

“Mm,” Meyer said.

“The way your wife— Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“And you?”

“Yes,” Carella said.

“Well, the way your wives would know other detectives you might work with, the same as that.”

“That’s the way you knew Jimmy Harris.”

“Yes.”

“You thought of yourself as Lloyd’s wife, is that it?”

“Well, no not his wife, ” she said, and laughed. The laugh was phony; it had none of the genuine resonance of her earlier laughter. She was still lying, there was still something she was hiding. “But we did have an understanding with each other. We were going with each other, you see.”