Ed McBain - Long Time No See

“What does that mean?” Carella asked. “No other girls in Lloyd’s life...”

“That’s right.”

“And no other boys in yours?”

“Exactly.”

“It seems strange, though, that Jimmy would come up with this story about the boys’ having raped you.” “It certainly does,” Roxanne said, and laughed again. This time the laugh ended almost before it escaped her throat.

“Did he ever—?” Carella said, and cut himself short. “No, forget it.”

“What were you about to say?” Meyer said, playing the straight man.

“I just wondered... Mrs. Hardy, Jimmy never made a pass at you, did he?”

“No,” she said, “No, never.”

Another lie. Her eyes would not even meet his now.

“Never, huh?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course I’m sure. I was Lloyd’s girl friend, you understand.”

“Yes, I understand that.”

“I was faithful to Lloyd.”

“Yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Jimmy was faithful to him. Do you see what I mean, Mrs. Hardy? If Jimmy ever approached you—”

“No, he didn’t.”

“—sexually, then perhaps that might account for what he told his doctor.”

“Why is this important to you?” she asked suddenly.

“Because Jimmy Harris is dead, and we don’t know who killed him,” Carella said.

She was silent for several moments. Then she said, “rm sorry to hear that.”

“Mrs. Hardy... if anything ever happened between you and Jimmy, or between you and any of the other boys on the Hawks, anything that might have prompted someone to start thinking of revenge or retribution—”

“No,” she said, and shook her head.

“Nothing happened?”

“Something did happen,” she said. “But no one knew. Only Jimmy knew. And me.”

“Could you tell us what it was, please?”

“It won’t help you. No one knew.”

She looked at them for a long time, not saying anything, debating silently whether or not she wished to reveal whatever secret she had carried for the past twelve years. She nodded then, and said in a voice almost a whisper. “It was raining. It was very cold outside, it seemed as if it should be snowing...”

Her voice, as she spoke, seemed to become more and more Jamaican, as though the closer she came to the memory of that day twelve years ago, the more she became the seventeen-year-old girl she then was. As they listened, the present dissolved into the past, only to become the present again — a different present, but an immediate one nonetheless; whatever had happened in that basement room so long ago seemed to be happening here and now, this instant.

It is raining.

She is surprised by the rain, she thinks it should be snowing at this time of year, it’s so cold outside. But it’s raining instead, there is thunder and lightning. The lightning flashes illuminate the painted basement windows high on the cinder-block walls. Thunder crashes everywhere around them. They are alone in the basement room. It is four o’clock in the afternoon on the Wednesday before Christmas.

They are alone here by chance. She has come looking for Lloyd, but there’s only Jimmy standing by the record player with a stack of records in his hands. The cinder-block wall is painted a blue paler than the streaked midnight-blue that covers the windows. Lightning flashes again, thunder sounds. Jimmy puts a record on the turntable. He tells her the other guys are right this minute in the Hermanos clubhouse, over in Spic-town, negotiating a truce. He’d have gone with them, he says, but his mother cut her hand, he had to rush her to the hospital. Lightning again, the bellow of thunder. Cut herself decorating the Christmas tree, he says. The music is soft and slow and insinuating. The thunder booms its counterpoint.

You want to dance? he says.

She knows at once that she should refuse. She is Lloyd’s woman. If Lloyd comes back unexpectedly and finds them dancing together, there will- be serious trouble. She knows this. She knows they will hurt her, she knows she can expect no mercy from Lloyd, the code is the code, they will whip her till she bleeds. Last summer, when they caught one of the Auxils talking to a Hermanos on the street, they stripped her to the waist, tied her to the post, and the sergeant at arms gave her twenty lashes. She whimpered at first, and then began screaming each time the whip raised another welt on her back, the welts opening at last and beginning to bleed. They threw her out in the gutter, threw her blouse and brassiere out after her, told her to go to the Hermanos she liked them so much.

That was last summer, but this is now, and this will be worse. This will be dancing with a brother when Lloyd isn’t around. Be different if he was here, nothing would be said of it. But he is not here, she is alone with Jimmy, and she is frightened because she understands the danger. But it is exactly the danger that attracts her.

She laughs nervously and says Sure, why not?

Jimmy takes her in his arms. The music is slow, they dance very close. He is excited, she can feel him through his trousers and through her skirt. They are dancing fish, he is socking it to her, grinding against her. There is more thunder. She is still frightened, but he is holding her very tight, and she is getting excited herself. She laughs again. Her panties are wet, she is dripping wet under her skirt. The record ends, the needle clicks and clicks and clicks in the retaining grooves. He releases her suddenly and walks to the record player, and lifts the arm from the record. There is silence, and then lightning streaks the painted windows again, and thunder crashes. He walks to the door.

She stands motionless in the center of the room near the post. She is afraid they will tie her to the post with her hands behind her back. This is a serious offense, she is afraid they will whip her across her naked breasts. She knows of a girl in another gang who was whipped that way for the offense of adultery. The offense is clearly lettered on the rules chart that hangs on the clubhouse wall. Adultery. She is about to make love to a brother, but she is Lloyd’s woman, and that is adultery, and they will hurt her badly for it. They will hurt Jimmy, too. They will force him to run the gauntlet, hitting him with chains and pipes as he runs between his brothers lined up on either side of him.

And when it is all over and done with, when they’ve given her the fifty lashes she’s certain she’ll receive in punishment, fifty of maybe a hundred because she’s the president’s woman, across her naked breasts, the sergeant at arms methodically and deliberately beating her with the seven-thonged whip; when they’ve forced Jimmy through the gauntlet and have left him bruised and bleeding and unconscious on the ground, why, then both of them will be thrown out of the club to fend for themselves. The club is their insurance in a hostile world of enemy camps that grow like toadstools in the surrounding streets. There is no help from the Law in these streets, there is no help from parents who are scrounging for the big white dollar out there, there is only aid and comfort from your brothers and sisters in the clubs.

If you don’t belong to a club, you are anybody’s.

If you’re a boy, you’re anybody’s to beat up on, anybody’s to rob, anybody’s to cut or bum or snuff. If you’re a girl, you’re anybody’s to hurt, anybody’s to fuck, anybody’s to do with what they want. This is the city. You need insurance here. Belonging to the Hawks’ auxiliary is her insurance, and she is about to have it canceled only because she is a stupid bitch. She knows she’s being dumb, she knows that. But she wants Jimmy Harris, and she suspects she’s maybe wanted him from the first time he began coming on six months back, and she began looking the other way and making believe it wasn’t happening. It was happening, all right. It is happening right now. He is locking the basement door, double-locking it like he’s expecting a raid from a hundred gangs, putting the chain on it in the bargain, and then coming back to where she’s standing, and grabbing her tight, and kissing her hard on the mouth till she has to pull away to catch her breath.