Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007
- Автор: Baldwin Barry, Campbell Melodie
- Год: 2007
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN:0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007». Краткое содержание книги:
“Do you live here?” the plainclothed officer asked.
“Yes!”
“I need to know your name.”
German handed him his wallet. He felt his heart sinking.
“The woman inside, Angelina Ruiz. Was she...”
“My... my... wife.”
The words were difficult for him to say because they weren’t true at a time when they should have been.
He grabbed the officer’s arm.
“Please! Please! Oh, God! Is she all right?”
The officer stared at him without answering, and that alone was answer enough.
Angelina Ruiz had been beaten to death. The apartment’s door had not been forced. Someone had knocked, and Angelina had opened the door innocently.
The pain in German’s heart was inconsolable. He could not tear away the thought of the terror and pain she must have felt as one or more animals inflicted their torturous attack on her.
They had taken her away from him, taken away their joy and deprived them of what they would have become. The one thing that she wanted from him, and the one thing that he had withheld, was his name. Now she would never share it. It was a failing that he could never correct. He wanted to die with her because now he truly had nothing.
Weeks passed without any abatement from the pain in German’s heart. He wandered through his life seeking refuge in the repetitiveness of routine. He could find no solace and no answers to the questions that plagued him. He remained inconsolable. He came to work late and left early, with only the goodwill of those who cared to keep his head above water.
The four men who had frequented The Royce and raised his suspicions had strangely disappeared. That and the knowledge he held from his army days saddled him with paranoia. He couldn’t escape the thought that they may have been involved somehow in Angelina’s death. It was all the more terrible because he had come to believe that her fate might have been intended for him.
It all coalesced in his mind on a single rain-soaked day when his trek to work carried him past a storefront that he had seen a thousand times. He jogged under the awning of the store in hopes that the shower would soon pass. He looked at his watch and realized that he would be late again. A tiny semblance of reason had begun to return to his psyche. He knew that he couldn’t continue his life in this manner forever.
He looked absentmindedly at the display in the plate glass window. It was a tobacco store where men could buy coffee and Cuban cigars. He looked into the store and locked his gaze on another pair of eyes staring back at him. The balding man with the staccato voice watched with an enigmatic smile.
German shook all over, and it wasn’t the cold that made him shiver. He stepped up to the door as suddenly raging emotions threatened to consume him. The door was locked. He jerked at the knob to no avail. The balding man turned and casually walked to the back of the store and out of German’s field of vision.
German pounded on the glass before realizing that other pedestrians were observing his agitated behavior. If he kept this up, someone would call the cops. He made a mental note of the store’s location before he stepped back into the rain. He would be back.
Leonard Royce was waiting when German arrived, and the expression on his face told German that things were not well.
“German, I’m gonna have to let you go,” he announced.
Reality was suddenly thrust onto German. He had known that this would eventually come, and he had been trying to pull himself together, albeit too late.
“Leonard, I... I really need this job. I’m sorry, but things...”
“I been tryin’ to go easy on you, German ‘cause I know what you been goin’ through,” Royce interrupted. “But you don’t come to work on time, and when you get here, you’re rude to the customers. I’m losin’ business, German, and don’t nobody else want to work with you.”
“You don’t know what’s been going on, Leonard, but it’s worse than you think.”
“How much worse could it be?”
German hadn’t talked to anyone about this. He had kept it inside partly out of fear of how he would be perceived. Now, however, he was desperate. He needed to have Leonard Royce understand because he needed this job. He told him about the four white men who had come there every week. He told him about his suspicions. He told Royce that Angelina’s death made no sense unless she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but how could she be at the wrong place in her own home? It only made sense if she was the inadvertent victim and not the intended victim. That meant the intended victim had to be German Johnson himself.
Leonard chewed on a Cuban cigar. He fondled it, puffed, and chewed again.
“Did you tell that to the police?” Royce asked.
“Have you forgotten where we live?” German asked. “This is Harlem. What do you think is gonna happen if I say some well-dressed white man broke into a colored waiter’s place to murder his wife for no explainable reason?”
Royce leaned back in his chair and looked at German for the first time. He had been avoiding eye contact with German, as if embarrassed by what he had to do. Now the tautness in his face relaxed into an expression of calm, as if some burden had been lifted.
“Why don’t you talk to this fella?” he finally said.
He handed German a scrap of paper on which he had scribbled a name and phone number.
“Who’s he?”
“He’s related to Sam Joseph, and I hear he has an interest in things like you just told me about.”
“Thanks. Thanks, man!”
German jumped to his feet and grabbed Leonard’s hand.
Leonard started looking away again.
“You’re welcome, man,” Leonard replied.
German released his hand and perused the scrap of paper.
“You still can’t work here no more,” Leonard said.
He fidgeted with a fountain pen while German stared silently with disbelief.
“Leonard, I...”
“I don’t want to talk about it no more, German. I feel sorry for you, but you need to go somewhere else.”
Leonard’s tone dismissed him.
German backed out of the room silently. He didn’t understand, but he didn’t have to understand. He had screwed up again. He had tried to lean on friendship when he should have been doing his job. Leonard was still staring at his own hands when German finally closed the door.
The name on the paper was Francis Waxman. German called the man and arranged to meet him the following day. He had plenty of time since he no longer had a job.
Waxman lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where people who looked like German Johnson were rarely seen unless they were working. Waxman appeared to be in his late thirties, with swarthy features and an abundance of dark curly hair. He had the kind of appearance that made his ethnicity ambiguous, although his speech pattern was decidedly Caucasian.
Waxman’s apartment was cluttered with boxes, folders, and papers that took up most of his visible living space. It seemed obvious to German that Waxman was single. No self-respecting woman would abuse such an elegant space like that.
“What is it that you think I can do for you, Mr. Johnson?” Waxman asked.
“I’m not sure,” German replied. “What do you do?”
Waxman smiled.
“This and that,” he replied with smug humor. “My uncle didn’t know you, but he said his friend Mr. Royce mentioned that you had problems that may have related to your military activities.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I was in the Ninety-Fifth.”
“An engineering unit,” Waxman interjected. “Road builders... the Alaskan Highway.”
“That was later. I wasn’t with them then. I was in Ethiopia in ‘41.”
Waxman suddenly sat up straight.