Lady in the Lake(33)

I suppose they think that I should be considering retirement. I will be sixty-nine this fall. Perhaps this party was a hint. But I don’t take hints, don’t worry about odd looks, muttered criticisms that I may or may not be meant to hear. If someone has something to say to me, he can say it to my face. I am not ready to go. I have not planned my funeral. Not even staring into the barrel of a gun, as I did with that man who pretended to be a messenger of God but was just a procurer of young women—not even that moment prompted me to plan for my funeral. Why would I do it now? I intend to live a good long while. My legacy will be much more than simply being first.

That’s what I was trying to explain to that reporter, so very tentative for someone well into her thirties. (One thing about white people, it’s very easy to fix their ages. Their skin tells their age as surely as a tree’s rings reveal its age.) Ah, well, I was new on this job when I was forty. I suppose it’s never too late to start a career. Maybe I’ll start a third one when I leave here. I would be a good preacher, I think. But I prefer doing, as opposed to exhorting others to do. Maybe there’s a business or a charity I can start, based on my annual practice of assembling holiday baskets. But I won’t use the Lady Law name. That would be undignified. The name will retire with me.

The next day, when the afternoon paper comes out, my photo is inside, only a few paragraphs attached, and the girl has misquoted me in spots. But one of the Northwest patrol officers, Ferdinand Platt, stops me in the hall, asks me questions, rather frivolous ones to my mind. What did I think of the article? Was I pleased with it? I told him the truth, that I was not much interested in articles about myself, that there had been many over the years. Why, my name was appearing in print long before I was a police officer, for my work with Woman’s Christian Temperance Union chapters nationwide. In my opinion, alcohol is one of the great evils of our age. Drugs, too, of course, but alcohol is legal. When I drive past the Carling plant on the Beltway, I smell more than scorched hops. That is the odor of destroyed, broken families. I have testified before the Kefauver Committee about the danger of narcotics, but alcohol is even worse, in terms of the costs it exacts. Yes, I understand the paradox of prohibition. I was an adult woman then. I saw what happened. But I’m not sure making it legal was the solution.

That young Ferdinand probably thinks it a grand thing to be in a newspaper. He is a handsome man, a little too handsome for his own good. According to talk, he also is too cozy with certain men in our community, a particular bad man who tries to hide behind good men. Shell Gordon is a disgrace. He owns the place on Pennsylvania Avenue, the second-rate establishment where the girls are forced to wear those terrible outfits. Ferdie Platt goes there, according to the talk I hear, knows the people who frequent it. A small vice, relative to the other sins of this department.

Besides, it might even be the mark of a good policeman. The Shell Gordons of the world, criminals though they may be, have a rooting interest in maintaining order. Mayhem and criminality are their purview, theirs to pursue and organize, and they will not tolerate freelancers. I know the people at the club tried, in the early days of the investigation, to help police figure out what happened to Cleo Sherwood. Her parents are good people. I don’t know how the girl turned out the way she did. It’s my understanding that she began running wild when she was a teenager. Some girls are simply too pretty for their own good and they don’t know what to do with it. I was never a pretty woman, but I do not think it is vanity to say that I am attractive enough. Well turned out, with a good complexion. Mr. Whyte has never complained.

It’s a shame I never met young Cleo. I’m sure I could have helped her find the right path.





So you met Lady Law




So you met Lady Law, Maddie Schwartz. I knew her, when I was a child. Everyone in that neighborhood knew her. She was the one who comforted me when your future husband made me cry. Milton made lots of children cry. Did you know that? He was a miserable fat boy, sitting in his family’s corner grocery, studying his books. I was only six years old, a first grader, and this college boy decided to taunt me because he heard another child use my nickname, Cleo. My real name is Eunetta. Can you blame me for preferring Cleo?

The nickname had been bestowed by other children, as nicknames usually are. I suppose some people anoint themselves, but that’s a little sad, isn’t it? We were studying the ancient Egyptians and there was a drawing of Cleopatra, in profile. A boy, thinking he was mocking me, said, “Miz Henderson, this looks like Cleo, her with her nose always up in the air.” My nose is—was—beautiful. Straight, delicate, perfectly formed. It was like walking around with a ten-carat diamond, only no one could take it from me. So people tried to make me feel bad about it, tried to pretend that my beauty was ugliness, that up was down, black was white. But their teasing couldn’t get to me because they couldn’t mask their envy. I had light eyes and a pretty mouth and slanting cheekbones. But, really, it was my nose that organized everything, made me beautiful. I never had an awkward phase, conceited as that might sound. Maybe I should have. Men started coming around way too early, when I was fourteen, fifteen, and by the time I was twenty-one, I was tired of fighting them off. That’s how I ended up with two babies and no husbands.

Soon I simply was Cleo; no one remembered “Eunetta,” and no one realized they had saved me from the one ugly thing about me. I didn’t think about it twice until the day that Milton heard my cousin use my name in his parents’ store: “Whatcha gonna get with your pennies, Cleo?” Uncle Box had been to visit. He wasn’t our uncle and I don’t know why he was called Box and I don’t know what ever happened to him. All we knew at the time was that he came and he went, and when he came, it was like a party, a party for no reason, the best kind of party. The children got money while my father glowered in the corner. My father hated parties, fun, anything that suggested that we might enjoy our time on this earth.