'No, ma'am, I don't. But I thought his involvement might lead me to someone who might lead me to someone who… well, that's the way we investigate.'
'I see. This is very upsetting.'
'Ma'am, if you wish, if you'd feel more comfortable, possibly you'd care to call your attorney. Possibly if you will let me continue this conversation, you'd feel more comfortable in his office instead of your home. I'm very sorry I misrepresented myself. It was unethical. But I'm under great pressure to get a fix on that place, in order to help my friend.'
'My attorney won't be necessary, Mr. Vincent. I'm simply going to reassert that you must leave. My husband was a saint, a hero, a martyr.
He died giving his life for his country. Were you in the war?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'Well, that's something.'
'I was an artillery officer.'
'So you shot cannons at Germans or Japanese. Well, my husband was in battle too, only he shot microscopic cannons at germs and parasites and worms. I will not let you defame him. Please, leave, or I shall have to call the police.'
'Yes, ma'am.'
Sam got up, wooden-faced, and walked to the door. He had certainly blown this one and would be fortunate to get out of Baltimore without getting arrested. But he had to try one last thing.
'Ma'am, you'll forgive me, but one question I have is that in one of the letters, your husband expressed sorrow over ' baby'?'
'Mr. Vincent! How dare you! How dare you? I was taught that people from the South are gracious, and yet you ask me the most personal questions imaginable. I will call the police if you don't please leave at once.'
'I'm very sorry, ma'am.'
'You should be very sorry. My husband was a great man and that was part of his greatness, his capacity to forgive. He had a terrible disappointment. I cannot have children. It is nobody's fault, so you may not believe anything ill of him. Do you understand? You cannot believe anything ill of my husband.'
'Yes ma'am. I'm going to leave now.'
But he didn't, and his crudeness produced a crude treasure. It was an old prosecutor's trick; he hated himself for using it. But it worked: to ask someone highborn a lowborn question, one notable for its lack of taste and sensitivity. It frequently shocked such people into tears, and before they realized they had lost control of their emotions, they blurted something out that no amount of torture could otherwise have produced.
'I cannot have children,' she said, 'because I contacted a virulent venereal disease in my early twenties; I was a month pregnant at the time. My husband worked feverishly to help me and save the child, but it couldn't be done. He blamed himself for my misfortune.'
'Ma'am, I'm very sorry. It's none of my?Ma'am, I can't believe that you contracted something so?'
'I was raped, Mr. Vincent. One night, late. In Asia. It was very violent.'
'I'm very sorry.'
'The disease killed my baby, it killed all the babies I would have. It was the cruelty of the world, and a perfect example of the sort of tragedy that my husband gave up his life to prevent. Now please leave.'
'Yes, ma'am.'
Earl watched and waited, but there was no approach. He thought: maybe it's a trick. Maybe it was part of Fish's psychological war against him, just to whet his appetite and get his hopes up, then to let him down.
And he cursed himself for letting the little bastard get to him. He tried hard to pretend he didn't feel crushing disappointment when lights-off and lockdown hit at ten and the place settled into wheezing darkness. He waited in the dark, and the more he waited, the angrier he became, and he realized the fury was a form of medication against the despair he was beginning to feel. you got yourself into a goddamn fix, partner, was what he couldn't admit feeling. But he knew he felt it just the same. For the first time in his life, he was very close to feeling beaten down and broken.
Sleep came roughly after too much time and too many pictures in his mind of other places and other lives he had lived and would never live again.
But it came, and if he dreamed he didn't know it or remember it, because the next thing he felt, something bit him.
Goddamn!
It jerked him awake, some little insect or mouse where it shouldn't be, on the side that was down on the mattress. Now how the hell Another bolt of discomfort came, and his mind settled down enough to put two and two together properly: he realized it wasn't a bite so much as a poke, up against him from the other side of the mattress.
He leaned over his bunk and saw some kind of rod extended up from the floorboards, where it had poked him awake. There was somebody down there.
He slipped off the bunk and put his mouth to the crack in the floorboard.
'Yeah?'
'You crawl to the third window, eastern side.'
And that was all.
Earl low-crawled, listening to the snores and the groans and the farts.
He made it without a problem and wondered what was in store for him there. And then he felt the floor drop out, as one board was removed from beneath. He waited until another came out, and he had enough room to snake through.
'You come on,' Fish whispered.
Fish rose and took him around back, so that he was invisible to the men in the closest tower with the searchlight that commandeered the Ape House, yet too far in the dark to be spotted by any of the other towers.
'We be okay here,' said the old man. 'The patrol don't come back this way fo' half a hour.' 'You said you could get me out.'
'Didn't say that. Said I knows the way out. Maybe you man enough to make it, maybe you ain't. Took five fellas out. Four be dead. One got out.
That too much a risk fo' you? One in five. It ain't easy.
Fact, it's the hardest goddamn thing you ever done, and I'm bettin' you been in the war something fierce. Harder than that even. You want me to go on? Or you want me to disappear and you can go back to waiting for Moon to slit your belly or Bigboy take you to the Whipping House.'
'Why?
'said Earl.
'Why what?'
'Why you get me out? You hate me. I'm the white boy. Everybody in this place hates me.'
'You got that right. I was sent up here by white boys just like everybody else in here. And we do hate you. You done us so wrong and you ain't even got no idea. You took us over here in chains and we in chains still. You fuck our women and make ' whores, and when we gets angry you be actin' all su-prised. You keep us poor and weak and set it up to crush the life out of us, and you pretend it be fo' our own good, ' we too stupid to be otherwise. So onliest thing fo' us be: yes suh; no suhl Yassuh, with a big coon-ass smile and bright white teeth. Y'all like our white teeth.' 'Sorry I asked.'
'I pick you ' of two things. I heard first off you kep' your fingers on Junior's artery, keep him from bleeding out. He was my sister's boy. So I owe you.'
'You don't owe me nothing. I'd do that for any man.'
'Way my haid work, I owe you. Second is, as I say, to do this thing it takes a bucket of guts. Not many have it. Even brave men, strong men, hard men, they don't have it. It's a motherfucker. It's a big old royal-ass motherfucker.'
'I don't have that kind of stuff, old man.'
'Oh, I'd bet you does. You just got to make me two promises, that's all.'
'So what are they?'
