Death of a City Read online

He was still thinking about it when he became conscious of the light on the switchboard. It was really weird. Number forty-six.

  George pushed the plug in and said, “Yes, Mr. Jackson?”

  “Would you be good enough to have my car sent around. Ask the garage to check the gas and oil and fill it up. I would like to have it downstairs at seven-forty-five. Right?”

  “Are you checking out, sir?"

  “I told you I am checking out in the morning. Can I count on the car for seven-forty-five for sure?”

  “I’ll see that it is there, Mr. Jackson.”

  “Oh, and one other thing. What time does the local radio station have its next newscast?”

  George’s eyes went to the clock at the far side of the lobby.

  “You’ve just missed the five-to-seven,” he said. “The next one will be at five to eight. Nothing much is happening, except the weather is going to be even hotter tomorrow.”

  “Thanks. And be sure the car is here at seven-forty-five.”

  5 DUMMY Morton twisted the brown paper around the weed with his right hand, lifted it to his thick, purple lips and sealed it. He flicked a solid-gold Dunhill lighter to a blue flame and drew in his breath deeply, exhaled slowly.

  “Man,” he said, “the tea these cats palm off on you today, you almost just as well go out and harvest grass.”

  The girl looked at him and said, “Baby, that is grass. Don’ hog it; hand it over.”

  He took a second, long, slow puff and handed her the cigarette. Reaching over, he turned the knob on the portable transistor set and the rock came in louder and he shook his head, sucking in his lips.

  “This town! My God, anybody tol’ me I’d be caught dead in a cemetery like this for a solid month, I’d a said they was crazy. You the only thing I see here makes any sense whatever, an’ if you don’ hand back that stem in a second, you won’t be making sense much longer."

  She stared at him through sulky-half-closed eyes and her left hand reached across the bed and she caressed him in a casual, but oddly sensual way.

  “You right,” she said. “This town stinks. I should know. I been living in it sixteen years. Since the day I was born. So what you doing here? Why’d you come here anyway? And what we waitin’ for?”

  “I come here to find you, honey,” Dummy said. He looked at the solid-gold watch on his left wrist. “We ain’t waitin’ much longer. I read it seven-forty. An hour. Maybe two. Then we blow. Jus’ one thing. You dam’ sure about that ol’ man of yours? I don’ want him cuttin’ in now an’ I just have to spend another hour or two.”

  “I told you, honey, that that cat made the seven-o’clock shift. You so damned worried, why didn’t you have me meet you at your place?”

  Dummy shook his head sadly and handed her back the butt. His soft brown eyes were dreamy when he spoke.

  "You know, honey,” he said, “even for a small-town chick, you really stupid. I already told you I checked out. I’m packed and I’m set to cut. I just got one more chore to perform.”

  "One more chore. So why the hell don’ you tell me what you doin’ here in the first place? What these chores you been performing anyway?”

  “I been performin’ chores that bring in the loot, baby. The kind of loot that’s taking you and me to Mexico. To a place where we really can live, baby. Live like the Goddamn white people live.”

  “White people! My God, man, we niggers! Didn’t you ever learn that?” The words came out in a sneer. "Anyway, who wants to live like white folk. Who wants to even be white folk? That’s what you been preachin’ while you been here in town. That’s about all I been hearin’ you say.”

  "I didn't say I want to be white. I jus’ said I want to live like they

  live."

  “You probably want a white broad, too.”

  He shook his head, smiled.

  “You kiddin’?” he said. “I had white girls. Twenty-dollar bill, any black boy can have a white girl. Got news for you, chick. They nothin'. Nothin’ at all. Cold, dead. Guess that’s why they white. They corpses. That’s the thing which first convinced me white men are downright stupid. They think we want their women. Good God! Might want to humiliate them, but not at those prices, baby. We just want the kind of money that gets ’em. And me, Dummy Morton, I’m gettin’ that dough.”

  “You still haven’t tol’ me how.”

  “I’m not about to. Just be satisfied. I’m takin’ you away from ol’ sixty-five a week. I’m takin’ you where the only important color is the color of you money.”

  “I know, baby. An’ I’m anxious to get goin’.”

  “We’ll go. You just got to do this one thing.”

  "I still don’t quite get it. You sure now, sure that these boys, these white apes ain’t really goin’ knock me over? I don’t mind bein’ fucked, but gang-fucked ..

  “Honey, I tol’ you. You ain’t goin’ be fucked by anybody ’cept me. you do just what I say. We get out of the car and, when I give the s'gn, you start screamin’. Tear you dam’ blouse off the way I said

  an' start yellin’. ‘Rape!’ Tha’s the word. ‘Rape!’ I just wan’ hear it i loud and clear an’ I wan’ everybody in sight to hear it. Then I drag you back in that little ol’ souped-up Chevie of mine and, while everyone’s tryin’ figure out what all the yellin’ an’ fussin’s 'bout,

  you an’ me, baby, are on our way west and south.”

  Dummy hitched over on his side and reached his right hand

  in his pocket. It came out with his fingers twined around a sheaf of crumpled bills.

  “Smallest one’s a fifty,” he said. “For this, even if you was gang-fucked, it would be worth it.”

  6 SHE was expecting the call sometime after six o’clock Vermont time, because her mother couldn't see the sense of wasting money and saying things before six that she could say after six at approximately half the price. It had nothing to do with her being a New Englander, it was just a matter of good common sense.

  It was, however, annoying. Carlton had particularly asked her to meet him at half-past seven and this barely gave her time to get dressed and drive out to the country club, where they planned to have dinner before showing up at the Mertilhs later in the evening. Had the small town in Vermont accepted Daylight Saving Time, which was a matter of routine in the rest of the country, it would have presented no problem. But six o’clock for her mother was seven o’clock in Oakdale.

  Of course, with anyone but her mother, the problem would have been simple. She would merely have made the call from her end. Or she could have had her mother call her at the club. But Mrs. Highland Simpson Vargle was neither a completely normal person nor a normal mother. She was a Vermont Simpson and she had her own ideas as to how things should be done.

  Her hand, holding the lipstick at the corner of her mouth, hesitated for a second and she looked into the reflection of her own cornflower eyes in the mirror on the makeup table and she smiled wryly. She could still hear her mother’s half-amused, half-annoyed New England voice.

  “Just like your father, dear. Impractical. Always wanting to

  wander off to some exotic, foreign place to pursue some romantic, impractical dream.”

  She knew it was hopeless, but she’d been unable to avoid answering.

  “But, Mother,” she’d said, “Oakdale is hardly foreign. It is the United States, after all. Not even the Deep South, when it comes to that. And after all, I can’t really say I think working with children in a slum area is exactly either romantic or particularly impractical. After all, this is what I have trained for and ..

  “Perhaps for someone else,” her mother had said. “But Caroline, you are a Simpson. Simpson women, when they finish school, get married and settle down and raise families. They find some nice boy and from a nice family and ..

  “Simpson women,” Caroline interrupted, “do what their hearts tell them to do. Or at least you did, Mother. If you hadn’t, I am quite sure you would never have married Father. After all, a Welshman, an
artist, living on the Left Bank in Paris ...”

  “I married your father because I was in love with him. In any case, what I did and what you do ...”

  “Right at the moment,” Caroline again interrupted, “I am in love with the work I am doing. Anyway, it is only for a year. I am still young and I have plenty of time to..

  “Just like your father,” Mrs. Simpson repeated. “He was young until the day he was killed in the Congo, although he’d already celebrated his sixtieth birthday. He never did grow up.” She sighed and smiled thinly and shook her head to wipe out the memory.

  “Oh well, you will do as you want no matter what I say. The way he always did. So go to your little Southern hamlet and nursemaid your little delinquents if you must.”

  “Oakdale is hardly a little Southern hamlet,” Caroline said smiling back at her mother. “It is a city of more than a hundred thousand people. And merely because the children I will be working with are underprivileged and come from broken homes doesn’t mean that they are necessarily delinquent.”

  “Of course not, darling,” her mother said, and suddenly smiled and reached across to pat her hand. “Of course not. So spend your year and do what you must do. Just be careful you don’t become too involved. I don’t want you dragging home with some t young Southern hillbilly in tow. You are, as I say, your father’s

  daughter and ..

  Caroline laughed.

  “My father married a very nice conservative New England girl,” she said. “It was you, Mother, who defied the conventions.”

  “Then don’t be like your mother, dear. Come home and find some nice young man from your own circle. From what I have seen of Southern men ...”

  “I’m going to Oakdale to work with children, not to look for a husband or lover,” Caroline said.

  “Don’t be vulgar, dear.”

  Once more Caroline Simpson Vargle looked at her own reflection in the mirror and this time she laughed outright. She had come to the South to work with underprivileged children, but the fact was that she had also done exactly what she said she was not going to do. She had found herself a young Southern lover and, if she had anything at all to say about it, he was also going to be her husband. She doubted very much, however, if she would ever be bringing him back to Vermont in tow. She doubted if anyone could ever get Carlton Asmore to leave Oakdale, a city which it was quite clear he loved only second to Caroline herself.

  The telephone rang and she picked up the receiver. She listened a moment and then she said: “Just fine, Mother. No, nothing, nothing unusual at all. Outside of the heat, nothing ever does happen in Oakdale—Oakdale went to sleep around the turn of the century and it hasn’t awakened yet.”

  She listened again for several moments and then said, “No, nothing at all. I have everything I need. I’m quite happy, happy and contented. Yes, yes, quite well. Hot, yes, but probably about the healthiest place in America to live. About the only thing which could happen to you here would be to trip over a magnolia blossom.”

  They spoke for a few more moments and then she said goodbye and hung up. Quickly she finished dressing and left the small two-room apartment and drove her Volkswagen out toward the country club.

  She heard the distant wail of the fire sirens coming from somewhere near the center of the city as she turned into the blue-stone gravel drive leading to the clubhouse.

  She heard the wail of the sirens off in the distance and, although the sound registered somewhere in the back of her mind, her brain was too occupied with her private thoughts for it to have any real meaning.

  She was thinking of the evening ahead and of the plans she had already made for it. Of her trip to the doctor’s office that afternoon and of her embarrassment when she had asked to be fitted for the diaphragm and he had showed her howto insert it into her vagina. The embarrassment had overridden the sense of physical discomfort and even now, as she subconsciously squirmed in the seat of the car, she was very much aware of it nestling inside of her body.

  At least she could take some measure of relief in the thought that at least Carlton would be pleased. It would relieve him of the necessity of using the condoms which she knew interferred with his own sense of total satisfaction in their sexual relationship. The pill, of course, would have been better, but he had been adamant when they had discussed it. Somewhere or other he had read that the pill was potentially dangerous and he had not wanted her to take any chances. She smiled, thinking about it. She had agreed with him, although secretly she considered the pill completely safe. But during her social work she had advised any number of young women and girls to use the pill and she knew that frequently they gained weight.

  She could, of course, have had her own way. Carlton would have gone along with anything she wanted. He always did. It was really odd how he had changed, once they decided they were actually in love with each other. That the affair would end in marriage. They had both changed.

  In the beginning, it was she who had been shy and embarrassed. Hesitant. Carlton had been the aggressive one, the one who un-blushingly suggested they sleep together. But then, after that first hme, everything had changed. At the remembrance of that first n'ght, she was unable to avoid blushing. He had been so sure of himself and she had been so damned naive. Well, it really wasn’t

  surprising. After ail, in spite of her technical knowledge and her 4 broad-minded attitude, she had been a virgin. And knowledge was

  hardly a substitute for experience.

  From the very beginning, after those first few dates which had ended up in their playing at lovemaking like a couple of highschool children, she had known that things simply couldn’t go on that way. That she must either break it off or succumb.

  What a typical little New England prude she had been. Kissing him, letting him fondle her, hold her breasts, half-lie across her body until she could feel him grow erect as he became increasingly excited. And then pulling away, fending him off. Going into a near panic as his hand, moving along the inside of her thigh reached higher and sought her out. That night in the seat of his car when, parked in front of her apartment, he had suddenly shocked her when he used that phrase. She was still embarrassed as she remembered his words.

  He had suddenly pulled away from her and, speaking in a cold, bitter voice which she barely recognized, said, “You know what you are, Caroline? You are what we used to refer to, when I was a lot younger, as a cock-teaser. What’s the matter with you anyway? You pretend to be a broad-minded, modern, emancipated woman and you act like a Goddamned schoolgirl. What the hell do you think is wrong with sex? If you think it is dirty, or unnatural, or in someway evil, then why the hell don’t you just get out of this car and go upstairs to your apartment and get your kicks playing with yourself, if that’s what you do to find satisfaction? And I’ll go on home and take a cold shower and we can forget the whole thing.”

  She had been so utterly shocked at the sudden vulgarity that for a moment she had been able only to gasp.

  He’d reached over and opened the door of the car at her side and, almost in a daze, she had stepped to the street. And then, caught somewhere between surprise and shock and anger, she’d turned back and her own words had come out without her actually thinking about what she was saying.

  “I am not a New England prude,” she said. “I am not a—that thing you called me. And I do not think there is anything dirty or

  evil about sex. If you want to know what I think about sex, and about you, well, just get out of that car and come upstairs with me. And you won’t have to go home and take a cold shower.”

  Fifteen minutes later she lay naked in the darkened bedroom under his body and she did her best not to cry out as he gradually forced himself into her, giving her intense pain as his rubber-sheathed penis penetrated her vaginal passage and finally thrust against and burst the tissue of her hymen.

  In spite of the physical pain, she still felt a wild sense of vicarious satisfaction as his tense body pounded up and down on her own and
he ultimately reached an orgasm. They lay there then for mindless minutes, his hands still holding her firm buttocks, opened mouths still pressed together, her own arms holding his suddenly relaxed body tight against her own body as her hands gently caressed his neck and shoulders.

  Before he left, he told her that he loved her and that he wanted to marry her. The sight of the blood on the sheets shocked him and he had felt bad and apologized for hurting her. But she had put her hand over his lips to stop his words and, forcing a half laugh, had tried to reassure him, telling him that he had nothing to regret and that, thank God, she at least was no longer a virgin.

  That had been the first time and, since then, there had been many others. And tonight, again they would end up in bed and this time, thanks to that good doctor, she would be able to give him even more pleasure. And this was the night that he’d told her he had a surprise for her, something that he hoped would make her happy.

  She suspected what it was. She’d seen him leaving Small’s Jewelry Store shortly after noon that same day.

  two

  1 THE suite was unusual in that it not only consisted of a residential apartment, it also contained an oak-paneled business office. It was on the second floor of a once elegant residential hotel in the West Fifties, just off the Avenue of the Americas—which New York cab drivers still refer to as Sixth Avenue.

  The hotel was no longer considered elegant, but it was still expensive, despite the fact that it was old-fashioned and outdated and that the two lower floors were solidly devoted to offices, occupied by small advertising agencies, professional men such as certified public accountants and consulting engineers and people who free-lanced in the communications business. The upper floors are still used as residences.

  This particular suite consisted of five rooms, one a kitchen which was never used, and two baths. The outside door had been installed by the current tenant and, unknown to the agents or owners of the building, was double mahogany with a hardened-steel lining. The legend centered about two-thirds of the way up in gold leaf read, “Floyd Oarpender Imports-Exports.”