Выбрать главу

Standing on the front stoop of the building, he realized that Harlem, on its surface at least, was as well-ordered and nonviolent as any other community in the city. True, you could not equate a Harlem tenement with an apartment building on Sutton Place. You could not simply discount the fire escapes cluttered with the paraphernalia of living, could not easily ignore the lots covered with rubble, the flies crawling over the meat in the window of the butcher shop, the poverty which sprang from every darkened doorway. But the tempo here, the feel, was not much different from what you would find anywhere else in the city. These were people going about their daily tasks. There was no trace of a violent undercurrent running through the life of the community — not now there wasn’t, not at ten o’clock on a sunny morning in midsummer. Then why did violence erupt here? Why did three kids from Italian Harlem, three blocks and three thousand miles away, stride into this street and take the life of an innocent blind boy? He could not lay it all at the doorstep of racial misunderstanding. He had the feeling that this was only a symptom and not the disease itself. Then what was the disease, and what caused it? And if the three boys who killed were diseased, were sick, was the state justified in eliminating them from society?

The question startled him.

What else can you do? he asked himself. You don’t allow lepers to roam the streets, do you?

No. But you don’t kill them either, he reasoned. And even though no cure is known, you nonetheless keep searching for a cure.

Come on, he told himself. You’re not a psychologist, and you’re not a sociologist. You’re a lawyer. You’re concerned with the legal aspects of crime. You’re concerned with punishing the guilty.

The guilty, he thought.

He sighed and looked at his watch. Five minutes had gone by. He lighted another cigarette. He was flicking away the match when a young sailor came out of the building, squaring his white hat.

“Nice day, huh?” the sailor said.

“Lovely,” Hank answered, and he thought he could now safely assume that Louisa Ortega was free to talk to him.

“Man, I’m hungry,” the sailor said. “I ain’t had breakfast yet. Any good places to eat around here?”

Hank shrugged. “You can try a Hundred Twenty-fifth Street,” he said.

“Thanks. Which way is that?”

“Uptown. That way.” Hank pointed.

“Thanks a lot, Mac,” the sailor said. He paused on the stoop. “You, uh, going up there?”

“Yes,” Hank said.

The sailor winked. “You better have breakfast first. You’re gonna need all the strength you got.”

“I’ve already had breakfast,” Hank said, smiling.

“Okay,” the sailor said. “Well, I be seeing you. Stay out of jail.” And he walked off toward Park Avenue.

Hank put out his cigarette and went upstairs again. This time Louisa opened the door for him. She was wearing a flowered pink wrapper belted at the waist. Her long black hair hung over her shoulders. She wore no make-up and no shoes. Her face was thin, but her body was well curved, and she smiled somewhat embarrassedly and said, “Come een,” and Hank entered the apartment.

“I’m sorry I keep you waitin’,” the girl said. She closed the door behind him.

“That’s quite all right,” Hank said.

“Si’ down,” Louisa said.

He looked around the room. A rumpled, unmade bed was against one wall. A rickety wooden table and two wooden chairs rested against the opposite wall alongside an old gas refrigerator and a sink.

“The bed is mos’ comfortable,” she said. “Si’ there.”

He went to the bed and sat on the edge of it. The girl sat at the other end, pulling her legs up under her.

“I’m tired,” she said. “I di’n get to sleep all night. He was bodder me every fi’ minutes.” She paused. With complete frankness, she said, “I’m a hooker, you know.”

“I assumed.”

“Sí.” She shrugged. “Iss nothin’ wrong with hookin’. I radder sell my body than sell dope or somethin’. Verdad?

“How old are you, Louisa?” Hank asked.

“Nineteen,” she said.

“Do you live with your parents?”

“I got no parents. I come here from dee islan’ to stay with my aunt. Then I move out. I like it better to be free, entiende?

“Yes, I understand.”

“Iss nothin’ wrong with hookin’,” Louisa said again.

“That’s your personal affair,” Hank said, “and it doesn’t concern me. I want to know only what happened on the night of July tenth. The night Rafael Morrez was killed.”

Sí, sí. Pobrecito. He wass a nice kid. I remember once he wass up here when I wass with a frien’. He wass play his music. It wass very dark in the apar’ment, an’ my frien’ an’ me we wass on the bed, an’ Ralphie he wass play his music.” She chuckled. “I think maybe he got a little excited, Ralphie.”

Hank listened and wondered what weight the testimony of an admitted prostitute would carry with a jury.

“I give him one free one time,” Louisa said. “Ralphie, I mean. He wass a good kid. Iss not his fault he wass born blind, verdad?

“What happened on the night he was killed?”

“Well, we were si’n downstairs on the stoop. Me, an’ Ralphie, an’ this other girl — she’s a hooker, too, her name is Terry. She’s a Spanish girl, too. She’s older than me, abou’ twenty-two, I guess. She wass suppose to meet one of her friens a little later. An’ it looked like it wass rain soon, you know? So we were si’n there, her an’ me, talking. An’ Ralphie was on the bottom step, jus’ listening. He wass a good kid.”

“What were you talking about?”

“Well, Terry wass tellin’ me what happened to her with a cop of the Vice Squad, how that happened that afternoon.”

“What did she say?”

“Well, let me see. I remember the sky wass gettin’ dark all at once...”

(The clouds are banking high over the Hudson, spreading in a black canopy over the tenements of Spanish Harlem. A wind is starting in the canyon, sweeping through the street. It lifts the skirts of the two girls standing on the front stoop, talking in Spanish. Louisa is fully made up now, but she does not look cheap or garish. Neither does Terry. Both are well-dressed, perhaps two of the best-dressed girls in Harlem. Both look fresh, both look passionate, with a dark-eyed, dark-haired exotic beauty that promises much to the seeker of erotica. It is common knowledge along this street that they are prostitutes. The boys have very little to do with Terry or Louisa, except to bandy sex talk about. The boys consider it beneath them to sleep with a prostitute, and even the virgin boys on the Horsemen would rather pretend to experience than to find that experience with a prostitute. The girls’ friends are usually men who drift uptown because they have heard you can find girls like Louisa and Terry in Spanish Harlem. They very often go home with something more than a gratified sex appetite. Muggings are common in the streets of Harlem, and a man who has come there for sex is not likely to complain later to the police about a criminal assault. The girls do not encourage the muggings, nor are they affiliated with the muggers. Theirs is a strict business operation, a body for a bill. They euphemistically, and in an unbusinesslike way, refer to their bed partners as “friends.” This applies to anyone with whom they commit the act of intercourse, except the man they happen to be living with at the moment, if they are indeed living with anyone. This person serves as part-time pimp and part-time lover. He is referred to as “my old man.” Some of the girls’ friends are respectable businessmen from New Rochelle or the suburbs of Long Island, but they are never entertained in Spanish Harlem. These men are visited at various places of assignation throughout the city. One of Louisa’s friends is a book publisher who maintains an apartment in Greenwich Village away from his large home in Roslyn. He likes the fresh young look about Louisa. Terry can remember going on a party in the stockroom of a machine-parts factory in the Bronx. There was no bed. She entertained twelve men, one after the other, on a blanket spread on the stockroom floor.