A Matter of Conviction

“Possibly.”

They were silent.

“But you aren’t sure?” she said.

“Half the island is still held by the Japanese,” he said. “There’ll be shooting. And planes probably.”

“Why did they pick you?” she said angrily. “It isn’t fair!”

He did not answer her. She faced him, looking up at him, and she said, very softly, “You’ll be all right, Hank.”

“Sure.”

“You will, darling. Whether they shoot or not, you’ll be all right. You’ll come back to Berlin. You have to, you see. I love you very much, and I couldn’t bear losing you.”

And suddenly he pulled her to him, and she could feel tension surging through his body like a sentient force.

“I need you,” he whispered. “I need you, Karin. Karin, I need you so much. I need you so much.”

And now even the sound of the planes was gone.

Eight

This was McNalley’s jungle.

It didn’t look like a jungle at all.

Hank had come down the long street, starting in Italian Harlem and walking west, retracing the steps of the three young killers on that night in July. Now, on Park Avenue, he walked into the market beneath the New York Central tracks, listening to the babble of voices around him. He felt as if he had truly entered a foreign land, but he felt no fear. He felt again, and very strongly, that the idea of three Harlems existing as separate territories was truly a myth. For, despite the change of language, despite the change of color — the Puerto Rican people ranged from white to tan to brown — despite the strange vegetables on the stalls and the religious and mystic pamphlets printed in Spanish, he felt that these people were no different from their neighbors to the east, or the west. In fact, they shared a common bond: poverty.

And yet he could, in part, understand McNalley’s fear. For here was, on the surface at least, the alien. What ominous words were being spoken in this foreign tongue? What malicious thoughts lurked behind these brown eyes? Here among the botanical herbs on the stalls, the hedionda, and maguey, and higuito, and corazón, here where the housewives haggled over the price of fruit and vegetables — “How much the guenepas? The chayote? The ají dulce, the mango, the pepino?” — here was another world, not a jungle certainly, but a world as far removed from Inwood as was Puerto Rico itself. Here, in a sense, was the unknown. And McNalley, the caveman squatting close to his protective fire, looked out into the darkness and wondered what terrible shapes lurked behind each bush, and he fed his own fear until he was trembling.

He walked to the exit at the end of the long tunnel and came out into sunlight again. On the corner of the street a butcher shop nestled beneath the tenement, its Carnicería sign advertising the meats resting on trays in the window. Alongside it was a bodega, cans of groceries stacked in the window, strings of peppers hanging overhead. He walked past the grocery and into the street where Rafael Morrez had been killed.

The people knew instantly that he was the law.

They sensed it with the instinct of people who have somehow discovered the law to be not their protector but their enemy. They allowed him a wide berth on the sidewalk. They watched him silently from the front stoops of the tenements. In the open lots strewn with rubbish, children looked up as he walked by. An old lady said something in Spanish, and the crone with her began laughing hysterically.

He found the stoop where Morrez had been sitting on the night he’d been killed. He checked the address again and then walked past a thin man in his undershirt who was sitting outside on a milk-bottle case. The man was smoking a long black cigar. The undershirt was stained with sweat. Hank paused in the hallway and struck a match, examining the mailboxes. Four of the boxes had been sprung from their locks. None of the boxes carried a name plate. He walked out onto the front stoop again.

“I’m looking for a girl named Louisa Ortega. Do you know where I—”

“No hablo Inglés,” the old man said.

“Por favor,” Hank said hesitantly. “Dónde está la muchacha Louisa Ortega?”

“No entiendo,” the man said, shaking his head.

Hank stared at him. His Spanish had been slow and halting, but certainly intelligible. And then he realized the man did not want to tell him.

“She’s not in any trouble,” Hank said. “It’s about Rafael Morrez.”

“Rafael?” the man said. He looked up at Hank. His brown eyes said nothing. “Rafael está muerto,” he said.

“Si, yo comprendo. I’m investigating. Soy investigator,” he said lamely, wondering if that were the Spanish word. The man looked at him blankly. “Habla Italiano?” Hank said, in a desperate thrust at establishing communication.

“No,” the man said. He shook his head. Then, in English, he added, “Go ’way. Don’ bodder me.”