Lady in the Lake(20)
We tell her we don’t mind.
On the drive downtown, I give her some advice: “You don’t have to talk to the press. It’s better if you don’t.”
“Why?”
“There’s a killer out there. The less he knows about what we know, the better. And in the meantime, until there’s an arrest, you’re the story.”
This seems to give her pause. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Not good or bad. But you can’t undo it, once it’s done. That’s all. They’re like dogs, reporters. They’ll scramble for any scrap they can get. And because there are so many of them, they’ll all want a different angle. The one who gets to you first, he’ll build you up. So the others will have to tear you down.”
“Tear me down? What have I done?” She seems really rattled now and I feel bad.
“Nothing. I’m just warning you—the reporters can make a good thing into a bad thing. That’s how they do.” A reporter did my dad dirty once. It didn’t come to anything in the end, but I learned a lesson from it.
We let her out at this old dump of an apartment building near the cathedral. I want to walk her upstairs, but she’s really firm. Almost too firm, like she thinks I’m going to try something, which is insulting. I’m just trying to fit together the pieces of her story. A son, so there was a husband at some point. Is the son grown? Could be, if she got a real early start. I can’t imagine a kid living in that apartment house. My wife and I, we live in a rowhouse near Patterson Park, but once the kids start coming—and they will, I know they will, we’ve just had bad luck—and I start moving up in the ranks, we’ll find a house farther out, with at least a little lawn. Kids need a yard, not that I ever had one. Anyway, what am I going to do, with Paul in the backseat, the patrol car due back at district before I can go home and get into bed next to my wife, who will be asleep, or pretending to be. She’s going through a phase where she doesn’t like to be touched. Her body has let her down and she thinks she’s let me down, but I don’t blame her, not a bit.
I grab a beer with Paul and some other guys, maybe play up our role in the discovery of Tessie Fine a little, which means downplaying what that Maddie lady and her friend did, but it was Paul’s flashlight that caught that piece of shoe, we were the professionals on the scene. Anyway, after I finish my one beer, it makes sense to go home by way of her apartment building, just because—I don’t know. I’m worried about her. That’s no place for a nice lady to live.
When I get there, a patrol car is parked out front. Now I’m really worried. Has something happened? Finding a body can do things to you, or so I’ve heard. It was my first, too. Anyway, I’m about to cross the street and go upstairs when I see a uniform, alone, come out the building—and get into that patrol car. And there’s no way, just no way, that guy can be legit.
Because he’s blacker than ink and the coloreds don’t get to use cars.
I make note of the license and the number. It’s from my district, Northwest. Tomorrow, I’ll start asking around, try to figure out why a car from Northwest District was parked outside Maddie Schwartz’s apartment at three in the morning.
And why some colored cop was coming from there in the middle of the night.
March 1966
March 1966
It was strange, moving through the world with a secret. Not Ferdie—Maddie thought of Ferdie as an arrangement, something she was obliged to keep to herself because of others’ prejudices. But only a handful of people—Judith, the police officers—knew she was the one who had found Tessie Fine. “Discovered by two passersby” was the way the newspapers framed it, while on television, the hosts, including Wallace Wright, said it was a “young couple.” Not wrong, yet not correct, either. And it wasn’t only that “young couple” led people to infer it was some boy-girl pair. Everything said made Maddie’s role in the discovery seem incidental. She had chosen the spot, it was her idea to head down that last trail, but you’d never have known that, reading and watching the news.
There had been no arrest yet, although Ferdie told her that there was a strong suspect, a clerk in the fish store. The clerk said the girl had been in his store and left immediately, but no one believed him.
And Maddie learned from Ferdie that she and Judith, if only briefly, had been “persons of interest.”
“What do you mean?” she asked as they drank beer in bed two days after the discovery of Tessie Fine’s body.
“First of all, homicide cops are always going to pay attention to people who find bodies. That’s just how they do their jobs. So here are these two women, walking down Cylburn Avenue coming on toward dusk—they thought you might be lesbians. Probably still think that.”
“I told them we were turned away from the search party and decided to go out on our own,” Maddie said. How could anyone think she was a lesbian? If she were, she would be like Lakey in The Group.
“Honey, if detectives believed everything people told them, they wouldn’t be very good at their jobs.” A beat. “I’d like to be a detective.”
“I’m sure you can do whatever you set your mind to.”
“The department’s segregated, Maddie. Negro cops walk patrols, maybe do undercover in narcotics. We can’t use cars. I don’t even have a radio, just a call-box key. Remember how we met?”