“I really don’t know,” Roxanne said.
“Your being raped, I mean.”
“Yes, I understand. I don’t know why Jimmy told you something like that.”
“He didn’t tell us.”
“He didn’t? You said...”
“He told his doctor.”
“Well... Roxanne let the word trail. She shrugged. “I don’t know why he did that,” she said.
“Seems a pretty strange thing to invent, doesn’t it?” “Yes, it certainly does. What kind of doctor was this? A shrink?”
“Yes.”
“A prison shrink?”
“No. An Army doctor.”
“Mm,” she said, and shrugged again.
“Mrs. Hardy,” Carella said, “how well did you know Jimmy Harris?”
“Same as the other boys,” she said.
“The other boys in the gang?”
“Yes. Well, the club. They called it a club. It was a club, I guess.”
“About two dozen boys altogther, is that right?” “Well, there were others all over Diamondback.”
“But two dozen in the immediate gang.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew Jimmy about as well as you knew any of the others.”
“Yes.”
She was still lying. He knew she was lying, damn it. He looked at Meyer; Meyer knew it, too. They weren’t going to let go of this. They were going to sit here and talk her blue in the face till they found out why she was lying.
“Would you say you were friendly with him?” Meyer asked.
“Jimmy? Oh, yes. But I was Lloyd’s girl friend, you understand.”
“Yes, we understand that.”
“So I only knew the other boys casually, you see.”
“Mm,” Meyer said.
“The way your wife— Are you married?”
“Yes.”
“And you?”
“Yes,” Carella said.
“Well, the way your wives would know other detectives you might work with, the same as that.”
“That’s the way you knew Jimmy Harris.”
“Yes.”
“You thought of yourself as Lloyd’s wife, is that it?”
“Well, no not his wife,” she said, and laughed. The laugh was phony; it had none of the genuine resonance of her earlier laughter. She was still lying, there was still something she was hiding. “But we did have an understanding with each other. We were going with each other, you see.”
“What does that mean?” Carella asked. “No other girls in Lloyd’s life...”
“That’s right.”
“And no other boys in yours?”
“Exactly.”
“It seems strange, though, that Jimmy would come up with this story about the boys’ having raped you.” “It certainly does,” Roxanne said, and laughed again. This time the laugh ended almost before it escaped her throat.
“Did he ever—?” Carella said, and cut himself short. “No, forget it.”
“What were you about to say?” Meyer said, playing the straight man.
“I just wondered... Mrs. Hardy, Jimmy never made a pass at you, did he?”
“No,” she said, “No, never.”
Another lie. Her eyes would not even meet his now.
“Never, huh?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. I was Lloyd’s girl friend, you understand.”
“Yes, I understand that.”
“I was faithful to Lloyd.”
“Yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Jimmy was faithful to him. Do you see what I mean, Mrs. Hardy? If Jimmy ever approached you—”
“No, he didn’t.”
“—sexually, then perhaps that might account for what he told his doctor.”
“Why is this important to you?” she asked suddenly.
“Because Jimmy Harris is dead, and we don’t know who killed him,” Carella said.
She was silent for several moments. Then she said, “rm sorry to hear that.”
“Mrs. Hardy... if anything ever happened between you and Jimmy, or between you and any of the other boys on the Hawks, anything that might have prompted someone to start thinking of revenge or retribution—”
“No,” she said, and shook her head.
“Nothing happened?”
“Something did happen,” she said. “But no one knew. Only Jimmy knew. And me.”
“Could you tell us what it was, please?”
“It won’t help you. No one knew.”
She looked at them for a long time, not saying anything, debating silently whether or not she wished to reveal whatever secret she had carried for the past twelve years. She nodded then, and said in a voice almost a whisper. “It was raining. It was very cold outside, it seemed as if it should be snowing...”
Her voice, as she spoke, seemed to become more and more Jamaican, as though the closer she came to the memory of that day twelve years ago, the more she became the seventeen-year-old girl she then was. As they listened, the present dissolved into the past, only to become the present again — a different present, but an immediate one nonetheless; whatever had happened in that basement room so long ago seemed to be happening here and now, this instant.
It is raining.
She is surprised by the rain, she thinks it should be snowing at this time of year, it’s so cold outside. But it’s raining instead, there is thunder and lightning. The lightning flashes illuminate the painted basement windows high on the cinder-block walls. Thunder crashes everywhere around them. They are alone in the basement room. It is four o’clock in the afternoon on the Wednesday before Christmas.
They are alone here by chance. She has come looking for Lloyd, but there’s only Jimmy standing by the record player with a stack of records in his hands. The cinder-block wall is painted a blue paler than the streaked midnight-blue that covers the windows. Lightning flashes again, thunder sounds. Jimmy puts a record on the turntable. He tells her the other guys are right this minute in the Hermanos clubhouse, over in Spic-town, negotiating a truce. He’d have gone with them, he says, but his mother cut her hand, he had to rush her to the hospital. Lightning again, the bellow of thunder. Cut herself decorating the Christmas tree, he says. The music is soft and slow and insinuating. The thunder booms its counterpoint.
You want to dance? he says.
She knows at once that she should refuse. She is Lloyd’s woman. If Lloyd comes back unexpectedly and finds them dancing together, there will- be serious trouble. She knows this. She knows they will hurt her, she knows she can expect no mercy from Lloyd, the code is the code, they will whip her till she bleeds. Last summer, when they caught one of the Auxils talking to a Hermanos on the street, they stripped her to the waist, tied her to the post, and the sergeant at arms gave her twenty lashes. She whimpered at first, and then began screaming each time the whip raised another welt on her back, the welts opening at last and beginning to bleed. They threw her out in the gutter, threw her blouse and brassiere out after her, told her to go to the Hermanos she liked them so much.
That was last summer, but this is now, and this will be worse. This will be dancing with a brother when Lloyd isn’t around. Be different if he was here, nothing would be said of it. But he is not here, she is alone with Jimmy, and she is frightened because she understands the danger. But it is exactly the danger that attracts her.
She laughs nervously and says Sure, why not?
Jimmy takes her in his arms. The music is slow, they dance very close. He is excited, she can feel him through his trousers and through her skirt. They are dancing fish, he is socking it to her, grinding against her. There is more thunder. She is still frightened, but he is holding her very tight, and she is getting excited herself. She laughs again. Her panties are wet, she is dripping wet under her skirt. The record ends, the needle clicks and clicks and clicks in the retaining grooves. He releases her suddenly and walks to the record player, and lifts the arm from the record. There is silence, and then lightning streaks the painted windows again, and thunder crashes. He walks to the door.