Ed Lacy - The Woman Aroused

“Then can you tell me how I'd go about finding out this information?”

“It's worse than hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. We play a great jigsaw puzzle game here every day, with human lives, and happiness as the missing piece,” the young lady said, enjoying her own dramatics. “You have very little information to go on, besides the picture. Hamburg was badly bombed, there are very few records to be found there now. You say her last name is Unbekant. Are you sure it isn't Unbekannt?”

“It might be the soldier—my brother—misspelled the name in his letters.”

She smiled. “My dear man, in that case the girl may have been... how shall I say... stringing the soldier along. Look at the picture, this girl is well fed, she was a long time removed from any DP camp, if she ever was in one, when this photo was taken. Also, Unbekannt means unknown in German, which is hardly a surname, although it isn't impossible.

I had a sinking feeling she was right, I was getting no place: Unbekannt might have been the first German word that came to Hank's mind, and if it meant unknown...? I said, “How would you suggest I go about finding out the information, then?”

“Bravo, you don't give up easily,” she said.

“What?”

“Have you any money?” Her eyes swept over my clothes.

“A little. How much would you want?”

She grinned, showing nice teeth. “My dear sir, I do not want any money. If you can spend about a thousand dollars, I'd suggest you have copies of the picture made, place an ad in various German papers—abroad and here—offer a reward of about one hundred dollars. I'll warn you in advance, it will be difficult to do that from this end, I mean it will be better if you have somebody you can trust place the ads in Germany, the money exchange and the general unsettled conditions, you understand. And once the ads are placed you will receive many false answers, some from outright charlatans. It will require much correspondence and patience on your part, possibly even a trip to Germany. And after all that trouble, you may never find the people, or you could be very lucky and find the girl after the first ad. Also, you can never tell in what part of the world you'll find her.”

“Ill think it over. Where can I find a list of the various papers?” I asked.

“Advertising agencies in Yorkville will be glad to handle it for you, only pick one you can trust. I'd, use one that has started since the war. And demand to see copies of all the ads.”

I said thank you and as I was leaving she called after me, with a wise smile, “You soldiers are all alike. If you liked the girl that much, why didn't you bring her back with you instead of waiting all these years?”

“That's right,” I said, although it took me several minutes to figure out what she meant. Outside, I looked at myself in a store-window mirror, pleased she thought me young enough to have been a soldier.

You see I tried—maybe not as hard as I should have, but I tried to help Lee. My relations with her had changed—on my part. I no longer felt at all clever in having her around, although I told myself I hadn't done anything to hurt her. And of course in bed I could hardly touch her: I could picture all the soldiers, Nazi and American, who had made her so mechanically capable—and sexless.

Lee didn't change. She ate when I told her to, danced now and then, and sat around with that blank look on her face. It was the beginning of October and a little cool, so at least she didn't sit around in the nude much. I still dressed her smartly, took her out to dinner, to the night clubs and movies, and of course I still gave her the hundred every week, which she hid.

Now and then I went back to questioning her about her family, which usually ended up in my not getting any new information and Lee becoming hysterical. Mostly we walked and ate in silence. I had plenty of time to myself, did a lot of reading, and started dunking about doing some writing. I fooled around with the alcohol-has-turned-to-water idea, without getting anywhere. But I did a short story about a dancer who loses his legs in the war and his effort to get back to normal by learning to dance on his artificial legs. To my surprise I sold the yarn for a hundred bucks. I looked around for another subject to write about... and saw Lee. I started her story and it came slowly, but it came along.

For some strange reason, I wanted to see Flo. I suppose I wanted to tell somebody—anybody—about the mess I was in. (Not that I would have ever told Flo.) I tried calling her once or twice, but she hung up on me. When I sent her Henderson's October rent, I sent an orchid with the check, but I didn't hear from her.

However, I heard quite suddenly from her brother—Eddie. He called me one afternoon at the office, asked, “George, I need a hell of a favor. Can you bring me thirty dollars?”

“Sure. I'll send you a check....”

“I need it now, immediately. I'm in a doctor's office. I've been... stabbed,” he whispered quickly. He gave me the name of the doctor, and a Madison Avenue address. I cashed a check, took a cab up there.

The address turned out to be East Harlem, the doctor an elderly Porto Rican. Eddie was stripped to the waist, and the doctor was helping him dress. The kid's shirt was bloody. One shoulder was covered with neat bandages and there was white tape over one side of his jaw. Eddie looked very pale.

I paid the doctor who assured me Eddie was okay, the cuts had been cleanly stitched. He said that after a few days rest, Eddie would be as “good as new.”

We took a cab from his office and when I asked Eddie what had happened, he nodded toward the driver and didn't say a word. We changed cabs and it suddenly dawned on me Eddie had given the driver my address. I said, “We can't go there. I have a girl there. How about your place?”

“Sure,” he said, and gave the driver his address.

He lived in a tiny room on the West Side, with a chest of drawers, a narrow bed, and one chair. There was a pile of books in one corner and a tiny radio perched on top of them. I propped him up in bed, said, “Soon as you rest, I'll take you to another doctor, be on the safe....”

“Why? Because this doc's skin is dark? No, I'm all right, just a little weak. And another doctor might report knife wounds to the police. I don't know what the law is on that. This one understands.”

“Understands what? What the devil happened?”

“What happened is that we're making our country an impossible place to live in. This atmosphere of suspicion and fear... we're all casualties of the cold war.”

“Eddie, without speeches, what happened to you?”

He stared at me, said softly, “That's a new way of dismissing things—everything is a speech. George, are you really cynical, or merely ignorant—if you'll excuse the word? I'll tell you what happened: I was wounded once fighting fascism in Europe, now I've been wounded fighting fascism again, here, right in New York.”

“Kid, stop soap-boxing me. We don't have fascism in New York, or in America. You've been reading the Daily Worker too much. I'll admit that some...”

“George, were you as naive as this before you started working for the oil company?”

“I suppose so. Let's both stop this. What happened to you?”

Eddie said, “I was canvassing for the ALP congressman up there, and some paid hoodlum stabbed me. Simple as that—the pattern of violence is always the simple one.”

“Look, Eddie, I never considered myself overbright, but neither am I an outright moron. What in God's name were you doing canvassing over in East Harlem? If you needed the money...”

“George, nobody was paying me. I knew that the candidate was one of the few men in Congress aware of the menace of fascism. That's why the papers have been attacking him so vehemently. For the last few weeks I've been working over there, as a volunteer, along with hundreds of other people from offices and unions.”