Sin In Their Blood - Ed Lacy

     I told Mady about the doc telling me we all have the germ in us, I'd probably picked it up before the army, but under the strain of combat, the bug had eaten into my lung. She wept as I talked and I didn't tell her what the psychiatrist said at the VA hospital in the States... that I'd willed the sickness—any sickness—on myself to get out of battle. Battle was a story-book word to him, an army-manual expression—he didn't know it meant killing women and kids. I didn't tell Mady about this because I wasn't sure I really believed it myself.

     It was nearly three when we got up, drank a lot of milk and ate cookies, took a shower together, like kids, and I said, “Mady, you're so tall and beautiful.”

     “I'm tall, but not really pretty.”

     “You are to me.”

     “Honestly?”

     “Honestly, you're the most beautiful girl in the world to me,” I told her and we kissed under the stream of water, and then as we were drying each other with rough towels she turned my head and I saw the two of us in the bathroom mirror and she laughed, “Matt, did you ever see a homelier couple!”

     “Never! That's why we each think the other is so good-looking.”

     “Matt, you are... well, beautiful.” .

     I burst out laughing and she said, “I mean it, you're a lot of man. Where did you get that build... those wonderful impossible shoulders?”

     “I'm soft now. Should have seen me before.”

     “You're lean and hard and big... like a fighter. When I was a kid I stole a picture of Max Baer from my brother Pete... was mad about his muscles.”

     “I used to be a pug. Pops stopped all that. Tell you about him some day.”

     “Your father?”

     “Naw. I don't remember my folks. Pops was a funny old bum. Let's skip the talk... the crackers and milk didn't do a thing for me. I'm hungry enough to eat this towel.”

     “But I do love your body. I'd like to take a picture of you in the nude—just as you are now.”

     I laughed and kissed her. She was a wonderful kid. I said, “That's a very womanly idea,” and she laughed till she cried.... Happy warm laughter and the warmth went deep inside me. For the first time in a year I felt at ease... happy.

     Mady cooked a light snack as I dressed. I took one of my pills—and my pulse and heartbeat were steady and normal, despite all the excitement I'd been through with Mady. After we ate I told her I was going into town and she asked, “Why?”

     “I'm getting curious about... things. That's a good sign for me. I used to make big dough as a private dick, maybe I'll make it again. We need money.”

     “I have to find a job. I'll look this afternoon while...”

     “Forget that.”

     “Why?” Mady asked, her eyes two warning signals.

     I kissed her. “Okay, honey, you go out and be womanly and work yourself, to the bone, if you wish.” I glanced at my watch. “I'll be back about five.”

     “If I'm not home, you'll know I'm out job-hunting. What do you want for supper?”

     “Steak.” I put ten bucks on the table. “A big thick juicy steak... if ten bucks will buy one these days.”

     We kissed again and I left and there was a bus nearing the corner and without thinking I sprinted toward it... and scared hell out of myself. But after I stopped puffing and huffing, I seemed okay.

     I dropped in to see Max. He looked worried, had for—gotten to shave half his chin. I asked, “What's cooking? You look bad—developing a conscience?”

     “A what? Where'd you get the shiner?”

     “Forget that. Wilson murders troubling you?”

     He picked at his teeth with a fingernail, said over his fingers, “That's history. My kids have a cold, kept me up all night with their coughing. Why, the Wilson case worrying you?”

     “Not exactly, but Saxton gets in my hair lately. I'm living with his girl.”

     Max stared at me for a thoughtful moment, laughed, slapped me that double pat on the back. “I knew you'd snap back. Now you're talking like the old Matt. Saw this Madeline when we questioned her, looks like...”

     “Never mind what she looks like, this is serious with me.”

     Max raised his heavy eyebrows. “Quick work, love at...”

     “Forget my romance. What about Saxton?”

     “Look, Matt, you've been a cop long enough to know we don't go looking for extra work. There's things about the Wilson job that might be re-examined—what case doesn't have bugs? But then it was a clean case, solved fast, looks good in the papers, on my record. And nobody hurt. That's the picture.”

     “You're getting old, Max.”

     He fidgeted around in his chair. “I'm not in love with Saxton's girl.”

     “That's it?”

     Max sighed. “Hell, Matt, I've no reason to go off on a goose chase.”

     “You know that suicide in the cabin was phony. Wilson hadn't lived there—the water was off.”

     Max sighed again and lumbered over to the file cabinet, took out a folder. He leafed through it for a moment, said, “Wrong, Matt. According to the report, it was on.”

     I grinned. “That proves I'm right.”

     “I told you I didn't get much shut-eye last night. What the hell does it prove?”

     “That Saxton is the killer. After I found the body, while I was waiting for you, I wanted a drink of water... time to take my vitamin pill and...” I stopped and looked at my watch. “I'm a pill behind now,” I said, shoveling a pill down my mouth and reaching for the water flask on his desk.

     Max yelled, “Hey, that water hasn't been changed since the last election. Get water in the can.”

     I swallowed the pill, cleared my throat. “The point is, up in the cabin when I wanted to get a drink I found the water shut.”

     “You want me to go to court on that evidence? Maybe Wilson shut it off before he hung himself.... Hell, I'll act, but get me something.”

     “It fits, Saxton came in with you—and in the excitement must have noticed the water was off and turned it on. It was something he overlooked. Also, that ham baloney about me finding the deed—you know that's a plant on his part.”

     “What's his motive?”

     He had me there. “I don't know. Except Saxton's a... a... I can't put it into the right words, but he's no good. He had a swell girl in Mady but he went out of his way to treat her like a two-bit whore.”

     “Told you, I'm not in love with his girl. Make you happy, slug him.”

     “Okay, bright boy, while we're talking of motives, what was Wilson's? You checked, everybody in town said they were a fine happy couple, everything to live for. Where's the motive there?”

     “Don't talk stupid. Who knows what really goes on between a man and a wife? They can look happy and still be hating each other's guts. Maybe Wilson blew his top? Who knows? He's dead, so is his wife, we'll never get the answer. Go ahead, Matt, find me something I can dig my teeth into and I'll bite.”

     I told him what he could dig his teeth into and he laughed, said I was the old Matt again, and I told him to go to hell and headed for the door. He came after me with that surprising speed Max can put on when he wants to.

     “Easy, Matt. I'm a cop with too many cases as it is. The Wilson case was a soft touch, maybe too soft, but I haven't time to dig deeper without a damn good reason. Saxton is a big apple in the community and I'm too old to start pounding a beat again. That's movie stuff. But I'll do what I can to help, if you want to work.”

     “What's the address of the Wilson maid?”

     “What's she got to do with it?” he asked, looking through the file again.

     “I don't know—yet,” I said as Max wrote her address on a piece of paper. I pocketed it and Max said, “Stick to loving the girl—it's more fun. Keep in touch with me, boy.”

     I said I would and went out.

     I took a bus to the “colored” section of town. This was several square blocks of old houses, mostly tenements, a few new houses, and a lot of stores and bars, some new and flashy, most of them crummy-looking despite their bright neon signs. At one time this had been a fairly swank residential neighborhood, then the swells had moved to another section of town—as the city expanded—and Irish immigrants had moved in, then the Jews and the Italians—I'd lived there when I was a kid for a while. Later a few factories had been built and Negroes moved in.

     Mrs. Samuels lived in a two-story wooden frame house and, when I rang, a little brown-skin kid opened the door and immediately yelled for her mother... a tall, dark woman who couldn't have been thirty and already had a worn look about her. When I asked for Mrs. Samuels she looked at me suspiciously, glanced at my eye, said, “She rooms here, but she ain't in. Out looking for a job.”

     “When's the best time to get her in?”

     “I don't know—she comes and goes.”

     I knew what she was thinking. “Look, I'm not a bill collector or a cop. I'm a friend of Mrs. Samuels and it's important I see her. Tell her I'll be back in the morning, and I want her to wait for me.”

     “Who shall I say called?”

     “She doesn't know my name.”

     “Thought you was her friend?”

     “I am, after a fashion. You know the name of everybody you're friendly with? I only met Mrs. Samuels once—when she was working for the Wilsons. Tell her Matt Ranzino called. Name won't mean a thing to her, but tell her to wait for me in the morning. If she misses a day's work, I'll make it up to her. Got that?”

     “You just told me—I can hear. I'll tell her.”

     “Thank you. I'll be back tomorrow—before noon.”

     I walked back to the bus stop. I was lucky when I was a cop—I was never assigned to this district like most rookies. It's a tough beat for any cop—white or colored. Whenever the brass or city hall wants to swell the records, they order a round-up in “dark town.” Since this happens most of the time, there's no love between the cops and the people—not that there ever really is in any section of town. Then, of course, you have some cops who are raised on hating Negroes, try to make history down there—and usually end up dead.

     It was a little after five when I reached the house and I was tired and hungry. I'd forgotten all about my afternoon nap. Mady was sitting in the living room and I could smell the whiskey before I saw her. She wasn't tanked, merely high. She said, “Hello, darling,” and grinned at me weakly.

     I kissed her lightly, tasting the whiskey. “Supper ready?”

     “Gee, Matt, I forgot all about that.”

     There was a heel of last night's bottle left and I poured that down the sink and she said, “You're angry with me.”

     “What if I am? I hate a liquor-head and I can't stand you drinking—it shows you're unhappy about something. What's the matter?”

     “Joe. I'm sorry I forgot about the steak. Go and get one now, still time to make a fine supper and...”

     “What's wrong with your brother?”

     “How do you know he's my brother?”

     I touched my sore eye. “We met yesterday. What's up?”

     “He's stony. Last night Ruthie, that's his wife, or do you know that too? She had a fainting spell last night and he had to get a doc. No money. He's in some kind of swindle, won't talk about it. Thinks I have Billy's insurance. Only I haven't.”

     “Spend it?” She didn't look like the kind that could have gone through ten grand in a year—certainly hadn't spent any of it on clothes.

     “He never took out any insurance. I didn't want him to. I don't know why, but insurance seemed to...to be an omen that he wouldn't return,” she added gently.

     Billy the cocky jerk, not even bothering about free insurance! I didn't believe Mady's “I didn't want him to” bunk. I asked, “What's Joe going to do?”

     “Wish I knew. He always used to brag about his job not being much but at least he had security and now.... I gave him what money I had. Told him to wire Pete, our younger brother, for a touch. I'm sorry, Matt, but I felt too low and beat down, I took a drink to relax and...”

     “And it's always the next drink that's the relaxer. Okay, go out and get us some supper,” I said, giving her another ten. “Can you make it to the store?”

     “Oh, I'm not drunk. Air will do me good.”

     She put on an old jacket and I stood at the window and watched this tall, gawky girl walk down the street, trying to hold herself in, walk steadily. There was something drab about her; she wore clothes the way you throw a towel around yourself as you rush from the shower to the phone. She was the type to grow fat and thick, maybe have a floppy Hitler-should-have-them-as-tonsils bosom. Yet, although my eyes called me a liar, she was beautiful, even voluptuous to me. It was almost funny—with Flo and the other sharp chicks I'd been fooled by their beauty, and it took me time to realize they didn't have much else, that beauty alone is empty as a gaudy paper bag. But with this clumsy kid I first went for her honesty, her warmth—and then suddenly realized she was a beauty. Maybe this is what they call love, I told myself, only one thing has to go— the bottle. A lush drives me wild.

     I stood there, thinking about Joe and how he probably had my ten bucks and what a poor slob he was, when I got a cute idea. I went to the phone and changed my mind. Harry was the kind of sharpie who might have his phones tapped and I didn't want the call traced here. Somehow his even knowing about Mady would dirty her. I went down to the corner drugstore and dialed, wondering if he'd be in at this hour. A whining voice said, “America! America!”