They thanked Detective Richard Jones for his time, and went to look up the long-ago sweethearts at their separate last-known addresses.
834 North Eighty-ninth was a four-story brown-stone with wrought-iron railings flanking the front stoop. They found a mailbox-listing for Lloyd Baxter in apartment 22, rang the bell, and got an answering buzz almost at once. The interior hallway was spotlessly clean; in fact, it smelled of disinfectant. The linoleum on the steps was worn and patched, but- it, too, had been scrubbed to within an inch of its tired life. A gleaming window on the first-floor let in frosty November sunlight. They continued climbing, Meyer puffing audibly and blaming it on his hangover, until they came to the second floor. There were only two doors on the landing, one opposite the other. They knocked on the door to apartment 22, and the door opened instantly.
The black man who looked out at them was perhaps six-feet four inches tall, wearing only belted trousers and looking very much like a magazine ad extolling the merits of weight lifting. Bare-chested and barefooted, broad-shouldered and strikingly handsome, he looked out at the two detectives in clear surprise, eyebrows raising at first and then coming together into a frown.
“Yeah, what is it?” he said, obviously annoyed.
“Police,” Carella said, and showed him the shield. “Are you Lloyd Baxter?”
“I’m Lloyd Baxter. What now?”
“All right for us to come in?”
“What’s the beef? I’m gainfully employed, I go see my P.O. when I’m sposed to, and I ain’t so much as spit on the sidewalk in months.”
“No beef,” Meyer said.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“We have some questions.”
“About what?”
“About something that happened twelve years ago.” “I can hardly remember what happened twelve minutes ago.”
“Is it okay for us to come in?”
“I’m expecting somebody,” Baxter said. “I thought it was her at the door, matter of fact.”
“We won’t be long.”
“I got to get dressed,” he said, and looked at his watch.
“You can dress while we talk.”
“Well,” he said reluctantly, “come on in, then.” They stepped inside and he closed the door behind them and led them through the apartment into a bedroom on the street side. The room was simply furnished — bed, dresser, a pair of night stands, a few lamps. Baxter took a clean white shirt from one of the dresser drawers and began unbuttoning it. “So what are the questions?” he said.
“Know anybody named Jimmy Harris?”
“Yeah. Man, this really must be twelve years ago. I haven’t seen him since he got drafted.”
“Christmastime twelve years ago,” Carella said. “Does that ring a bell?”
“No. What kind of bell is it supposed to ring?”
“A girl named Roxanne Dumas.”
“Yeah,” Baxter said, and nodded, and put on the shirt. “What about her?”
“Was she your girl friend?”
“Yeah. But, man, that’s ancient history. She got married while I was upstate doing time. Guy named Schoolhouse Hardy.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“Six, seven years ago,” Baxter said. He was buttoning the shirt now, obviously pressed for time, glancing at his watch and then going back to the buttoning again.
“Do you remember what happened in the Hawks’ clubhouse twelve years ago?”
“No, what happened?” Baxter asked, and tucked the shirt into his trousers. He zipped up his fly, tightened his belt, and then walked swiftly to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Searching there for a moment, he found a pair of blue socks a shade darker than the trousers he was wearing, sat on the bed, and began putting them on.
“You remember dancing with Roxanne?”
“I was always dancing with Roxanne. She was my woman. I don’t understand this,” Baxter said, looking up, one sock on, the other in his hands. “What’s supposed to have happened, man?”
“Do you remember a record with drums on it?”
“Come on, man, every record I ever heard’s got drums on it.”
“You were dancing with Roxanne and there were five other boys in the room. You told them to quit watching you. You told them to go upstairs.”
Baxter was pulling the other sock onto his foot now. He looked up again, clearly puzzled. “Yeah?” he said.
“Do you remember?”
“No.”
“The boys said they were tired. The Hawks had been rumbling with another gang...”
“We were always rumbling with other gangs. Man, I still don’t get what you’re after.”
“The boys grabbed you and held you against a basement post.”
“The boys grabbed me?” Baxter said, and burst out laughing. “You talking about me?” he said, still laughing, and rose from the bed and walked toward the closet. “Take an army to grab me and hold me against no post. I been this big since I was fourteen, ain’t nobody ever grabbed me but the motherfuckin cop who busted me, and he was holdin a cannon in his fist. Ain’t nobody on the Hawks ever grabbed Lloyd Baxter and messed with him. Be some busted legs, they even thought about it. Be some bodies strewn all over the sidewalk,” Baxter said, shaking his head in utter disbelief, and opening the closet door and taking from the floor there a pair of black patent-leather shoes. “Where’d you get this shit, man? Whoever told you anything like that?”
“Jimmy Harris.”
“Told you some cats in the club jumped me?”
“Told his doctor.”
“Why’d he tell a doctor no shit like that?”
“You’re saying it didn’t happen?”
“You bet your ass that’s what I’m saying,” Baxter said, plainly insulted by the very notion. He sat on the edge of the bed again and began putting on his shoes.
Carella looked at Meyer. Meyer shrugged. “We have reason to believe Roxanne Dumas was raped in that basement room twelve years ago,” Carella said.
“What?” Baxter said, and burst out laughing again. “Man, these are fairy tales, you understand me? These are pipe dreams.”
“She didn't get raped, is that what you’re saying?”
“Who’d rape her, man, would you tell me? If you knew Roxanne was my woman, would you rape her, man? Would you even wink at her, man?” Baxter stood up again.
The detectives watched him as he went to the closet for a tie. They were both thinking they would not have winked at Baxter’s girl friend. Baxter made his selection, a simple blue-and-red-striped silk rep, lifted the collar of the shirt, slipped the tie around his neck, and began knotting it.
“So none of this happened, is that it?” Carella said.
“None of it, man.”
“You’re sure you’re remembering correctly?”
“I’m sure.”
“Then why would Jimmy have said it happened?”
“Man, I guess you got to go ask Jimmy.”
There was no asking Jimmy, not any more there wasn’t.
But there still remained the lady in question, Roxanne Hardy nee Dumas, who — if indeed she had been raped — could be considered an unimpeachable source of information on the subject. If she had not been raped, Carella didn’t know what to think. Neither did Meyer. Of the two, Carella was perhaps more psychologically oriented than his partner, but both men were conditioned to believe — after having seen films like The Three Faces of Eve and David and Lisa, and Spellbound and Marnie, and any one of a thousand television dramas depicting mental patients who were severe catatonics standing in comers with their faces to the wall till some understanding psychiatrist unlocked the past for them and let the sunshine in on the trauma that was causing all their pain — after having seen mental rehabilitation happen dramatically and suddenly once the patient knew what was bugging him, Meyer and Carella were both ready to accept Lemarre’s contention that Jimmy’s nightmares were rooted in Roxanne’s rape twelve years ago. Except that now Lloyd Baxter had told them there’d been no rape, been no such event that might have irritated a man Lloyd’s size and caused him to break you in itty-bitty pieces.