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Fiction 3, Chapters 1 & 2

Baby Rose and the Shaydjook

Prolog

SOUTH BROAD AREA - NEWARK, N.J.

"It's the Devil's work," one insisted.

"It's the Will of God," another maintained.

Nineteen thirty-six was not the best of times for that kind of argument. Not there in Newark, not in all of New Jersey, nor anywhere else.

Three old women sat around a small round table on a shaded South Street porch and discussed destiny in the record-breaking summer heat. Even though the three were sisters, there was only one thing common to all that wasn't superficial: their firm belief that the Great Depression __still hanging on for most people despite official proclamations__ was only the pale gray shadow of a deep black curse on them and theirs.

And it could be that they were right.

The eldest, a woman named Rose __in the center of the group__ was short and stout in her shapeless and faded house-dress. It was her rough hands that smoothly handled a deck of ordinary playing cards, the focus of all their attention. Her face had been badly battered regularly and her nose was flat, crushed against the rest with its underside piece missing. The thin wall of flesh between her right and left nostrils had been cut away.

Now she read the patterns of the other cards as they swirled around the deuce of clubs in various castings. Denied an education, Rose could read naught else. The sisters were Irish Travellers, a gypsy-like people that the Irish call "Tinkers." Survival, physical and cultural, had always taken precedence over education.

One of the three, the one rooting for the Devil __Winifred__ said to her, "You should've never thrown away the kippeens, girl. Look what it cost you."

Rose was embarrassed by the remark and snuck a peek at her other sister, Bridget __"Saint" Bridget behind her back__ who sniffed and crossed herself at the mere thought of the Devil's tools. In truth, discarding the kippeens had cost Rose almost everything including her life, not merely money. To regain a still-tortured soul.

Shelta __the Cant__ is the Traveller language and Kippeens is its word for Romany Gypsies, sometimes doing double-duty as a reference to the Tarot. Those exotic cards were what most dazzled the country people in her heyday. But Rose herself was more comfortable telling fortunes with an ordinary playing deck, without the Greater Arcana and the Tarot's grand names for its suits. Her talent for dookering __reading fortunes__ was a proven one, independent of ritual.

The change of venue also allowed her to mumble good Catholic prayers under her breath while she cast, prayers that would have shocked and offended the hypocrites who had once come to her to find out which of Satan's snares were waiting for them in their future. Such prayers were for priests; sacrilegious in good Christian eyes for those who pretended to the Devil's powers.

The kaleidoscopic patterns on the table were once more complete, and Rose's murmuring turned secular.

"He's over there, right across the river. He's there, I know he is. He's come back." Some indefinable emotion sharpened her gruff voice. "He's in terrible danger on this island but there's a bridge for him." Neither of Rose's sisters mistook the latter to mean an actual bridge. They knew the "island" to be a metaphor __though ignorant of the word itself__ in the tradition of Irish voyage myths, called Immrama.

The seeress in Rose spoke on, "Threes of threes...threes of threes...." Her hands swept through the patterns and then pulled several cards off the table. "So much death. If he stays, he dies. If he comes, he kills."

"Who?" Bridget asked.

Winifred gave her a scathing glance. "His father, you radj'd idjit."

The object of her scorn sniffed it aside, saying, "Send him away again, far away. He can mishlietu some other country, somewhere he can forget."

The other was merciless. "If he ain't forgot in fifteen years, even the sight of you won't make it happen."

But Rose nodded, seeming to agree with both that was all in the patterns and took the Two of Clubs off the table, along with the Five of Hearts and Jack of Spades. Her sisters thought that they knew well enough what those cards meant.

"Rozheen," murmured Bridget. "Baby Rose."

"A hardnyuck," whispered Winifred, referring to the Jack; meaning a man of arms, of violence.

"Needjaish! A shaydjook." Rose contradicted Winifred only.

A policeman! The very thought turned their world upside-down.

Chapter 1

In the legends of the Gautama,

the first men ate the earth,

and found it deliciously sweet.

BLACK HARLEM - NEW YORK, N.Y.

I am a lucky son of a gun, he thought, walking through the hot Harlem night. The world's my oyster. And since the first fifteen years of his life had been spent in Hell's Kitchen, his "oyster" sounded a bit like "erster" even in his thoughts.

Henry "Hank" Locknane was an easy-going man of twenty-seven years and looked it, despite the holstered gun at his side and the hickory nightstick spinning to and from his grip on its leather thong. If anyone had accused him of being a big splash in a small puddle, he would have readily agreed with an appreciative smile __highly content with his puddle.

Hank Locknane, he thought, might be a few pounds heaver than he had been before coming on the force, but the ten or twelve miles he covered on his beat five times a week __a little more actually, the shifts he worked could be a complicated business__ kept him in pretty good shape for a man with a taste for the good things in life.

Memories of the tough lean body he'd once had __working high steel__ might have disturbed another man. But not Locknane.

He considered himself to be a realist.

This current expression of his over-all satisfaction with life was occasioned by seductive thoughts of upcoming his vacation time. Only three more days and nights in the blue-flannel suffocation of the city and then he'd be away, gone, maybe swimming in the cool Atlantic off the beach at Ocean City, Maryland. Even in this heat wave, his luck had held true and he was on nights, twelve-to-eights.

With twenty-two days coming to him.

Bathing beauties...two-piece suits...cold beer.

He patted his stomach __considering the bathing beauties__ and thought he'd better lay off the corned beef lunches for a few days. Not too bad, though, all in all. . . . He could still clench his stomach muscles into a rock-hard shield when he wanted or needed to; he could still get down and do thirty or forty push-ups; his legs were still made of spring steel.

He could still__

Suddenly there was the stabbing sound of shattering glass behind him. His nightstick stopped spinning as he brought it up to eye-level and turned back. The black kid came out of nowhere in the night, caught in his grip even before Hank knew he wanted to grab him. No breath was wasted by either as the boy squirmed and bounced like a bundle of springs. Hank let the nightstick dangle and clutched a skinny arm, augmenting his left fist which was still wrapped in the fugitive's collar.

He had almost clubbed the boy out of sheer reflex.

"Mose...Mose."

The mournful call came from the other side of 133rd Street, the side away from the smashed glass.

After two years walking that beat, Locknane didn't have to look behind him to know that the little dynamo in his clutches had tossed a brick or a rock through Dickie Wells' front window. The old-time night-spot was a fixture on the street, between Lenox and Seventh Avenues.

"You're in trouble now, kid," Hank barked. He was trying to stun the wriggling boy with his voice, knowing how much it would hurt if he had to use his "come-along" on him.

"Mose?" The man still calling for the boy __presumably__ was closer now as captor and captive looked at each other for the first time under a street lamp at the corner of Seventh.

What an cute kid, Hank thought. He's so ugly, he's cute.

"Mose! What're you doing?" The approaching man looked slightly familiar to the policeman, more from his rhythmic gait than the dimly lit features. But that was to be expected perhaps after his five years of service in one part of Black Harlem or another; three of them in this precinct, the "Two-Five."

The boy suddenly yelled, "Massey, don' you be giving no names now."

Locknane realized that "Mose" was older than he had first thought, his voice firm at maybe eleven or twelve years old although he was only the size of an second-grader. The preoccupied policeman watched an older Negro walk up to him and the boy without feeling any sense of threat, such was the dignified manner of his approach and the gravity with which he studied Locknane and his captive.

Finally, the black man spoke to the boy. "What's your Grandma going to say, young man? Huh? She going to whip your behind for you whenever IF ever you get it out of the White Man's jail." He turned to Hank. "He's not a bad boy, Officer; just a little wild now and then."

Locknane peered back now into the lamplit, blue-black face. "I've seen you before. Down at the Yeah Man, I think. Right?"

"Yes sah, that's right. We been there and the Apollo, too. The boy, too."

The cop juggled the boy mentally, trying to fit him into the memory of some cute little kid tap-dancing on stage with a bunch of middle-aged men. Yes, it was the same kid, or at least Hank thought so. But the act wasn't Massey and Mose; that was for sure and the boy had looked a lot more pleasant on stage.

He looked down at his little prisoner.

"Why'd you break the window, kid?" he asked roughly. Mose just glared at him, resentful, even indignant. Locknane turned again toward the older man, who impressed him deeply although he couldn't pin down the exact reason. Truthfully, he felt a little lost in the alien landscape of that solemn black face with its elegant hairline mustache. Black on black.

"Massey" stared back, considering the officer's pale features at some length, wondering whether this white man could ever really understand the reason for the boy's hostility. He decided to take a chance on honesty. "You know what they called this street, sah?"

Locknane shrugged. "They sometimes call it Beale Street. I don't know why."

"No sah, the other name; what they used to call this stretch. They called it Jungle Alley."

At that Mose tried to kick Locknane and Hank had to slam him more or less gently against a wall. There are limits. "So?" The policeman wondered where all this was leading. His arms were getting tired now.

"So Dickie Wells' is the last one of them places round here now where white folks comes to 'slum,' sah, an watch the natives, you know." The Negro looked immensely, anciently sad.

"What's the matter? Did they fire the kid?" Right now, all Locknane wanted to do was get rid of the problem.

"No, sah. We was working downtown at a vaudeville, a mixed bill, and the boy had to put on the black face like the rest of us __had to make believe he was a white man making fun of Negro people or he don't get no work in this town outside of Black Harlem. He always thought it was a joke on white people. Today he found out different."

This was way too far afield for Locknane and he was getting impatient now. "So then he comes down here and throws a brick at this joint?"

"Yes sah. That's what he did an' we're real sorry an' he won't do it again."

Locknane gave the situation some thought. He still didn't have an inkling of why the kid had broken the window in the first place, so he had no faith that the act wouldn't be repeated the next time some strange notion got into his black head. And it wouldn't look good: this happening even once on his beat without a call in for the Black Maria to pick up a prisoner, preferably one with a busted skull.

If he let the boy go, he'd have to figure out something to write something in his notebook log before he called in the breakage; there was a call-box on the next block. If he didn't let him off, by the time they got through booking the kid, he'd be held for day court and Locknane would be testifying on his own time. Any delays in procedure and it could get even worse, cut into his vacation.

All for a crazy kid who didn't know when he was well off, a thousand times better off with his skills than most of the rest of his race.

And there had been lots of trouble and threats of more between the Italian merchants and the Negro population since Mussolini had invaded Ethiopia. Riots were threatening __and riots meant no vacation. It was worth pondering.

Still watching the white policeman closely, the older Negro had no doubt that everything he had said had been wasted on him. The other man could never understand the effects of all the indignities heaped on persons of color in the white man's world. And without the impossible price of a huge plate glass window, Mose might be in detention for as long as nine months. Lord above, he looks like a Mick, or maybe a German. God knows what'll happen to the boy in the Tombs, he thought bitterly.

To give Henry Locknane due credit, similar thoughts were running through his head now, replacing his initial irritation, even though he knew that the boy would have to be arraigned in Children's Court instead of the infamous Tombs. But the seemingly primitive mental processes of the black people he worked among were __as always__ completely inscrutable from a white cop's point of view.

Locknane had always tried to think of black-skinned persons as "Colored People" or "Negroes" out of consideration, so he didn't accidently insult them. He figured that they had enough troubles in their ignorance and poverty without having to deal with another overbearing, offensive cop.

The man called "Massey" thought he could read the policeman in front of him like a book, even in the dim light. The benign bigotry he found in that pasty face was no less offensive in the long run than the usual kind, but he wasn't fool enough to object if it would keep his nephew out of jail.

Then the person __not the cop__ holding Mose made a quick decision and handed him over to the other man. "Here, hang on to the boy for a minute."

His "deputy" knew the value of keeping silent at such a time.

But now it was the cop again __not the man__ who squatted down in front of the boy. "Listen to me, kid. I've seen your act and you've got enough talent for six white men. Do you want to spend a couple of years in jail? Do you?" He gently prodded the thin little stomach with his nightstick for emphasis.

The boy looked down at the sidewalk. There was something about the white man's eyes that told him not to lie. And he wanted to lie.

KRACKK!

Locknane slapped the stick once against the concrete sidewalk and the man holding Mose shook him and said "Look him in the eye, boy. Stand up for yourself." Mose's body had spasmed at the sight and sound of the nightstick and it took him a moment to look up, away from the deadly weapon.

The policeman was satisfied with the result: the man inside was ashamed that he had to frighten a little boy.

When he had eye contact again, Locknane the cop went on. "How about it? If you want to go to jail, I can't stop you. And if you want to be the best in the world at what you do, nobody else can stop you." He paused a moment to let that sink in. "You're the only one who can stop yourself from going as far as you want."

He held up again, letting the little guy get the idea on his own that he might get off if he behaved himself. The kid didn't exactly have a poker face. When Hank saw the hope starting to appear, he went on. "So I'm going to let you go now, Mose. But if you get into any more trouble, I'll make sure that you go to jail till you're an old man. Don't let me down now."

Mose was in no mood to be gracious just yet. "How you goin' to find me?"

Locknane gave the boy a tight mean grin. "You're a dancer, Mose, a great one. And you'll always be a dancer, no matter what else you do. The Tree __you know the Tree, don't you__ is on my beat. No matter what, you always have to come back to it and you know that's true."

The Tree of Hope stood in front of the Lafayette Theater, not two blocks away; part landmark, part talisman, part Blarney Stone for the black entertainment community. Mose's eyes widened absurdly. His respect for Locknane, the Gatekeeper of the Tree, vastly exceeded his respect for Locknane, the man or the cop.

So, when the patrolman shifted the nightstick and held out his right hand, Mose had to shake it solemnly with a great deal of apparent thought. And his uncle Massey smiled, thinking that Locknane wasn't the worst white man for them to run into that night even if he didn't know much of anything.

As they walked off, Mose said as much to him. "He don't know NUTHin' about being colored."

Locknane could still hear him in the stillness of the night but didn't take exception. The boy was right, he figured. That was the natural order of things.

The boy's uncle chuckled softly as they walked off. "He don't know much about us, but he knows what to do with what he does know, boy. The Tree of Hope," he laughed in relief, "The Man got you good there, Mose. You don't ever get a job again if you can't kiss the Tree."

Locknane smiled; pretty much satisfied, as usual.

Poor foolish man.

* * * * *

Oh, God! It's him again.

"How ya DOOin, partner."

"Okay, I guess. How are you doing, Nils?" Hank cringed a little internally at the thought of any other cops he knew overhearing this conversation. And they were in the precinct locker room. Him and the loudmouthed four-flusher that called him "partner" and didn't know how to take "No!!" for an answer.

Beat cop "Partners" were either rookies or their mentors and Hank in no way wanted to be associated with Nils Lundstrom in any professional capacity, much less either one of those.

Hank had a car and Nils didn't. That was the principal basis for their acquaintance.

Nils was unusual for a Swedish-American, looking exactly like a crooked cop __sleazy. He worked a plainclothes detail with the Hack Bureau, checking out taxis, so his pockets were always lumpy with loose bills.

Like many other cops with some seniority in Harlem, Hank Locknane himself was on the "pad." That meant he got a small slice of the monthly pay-offs from local small-time gamblers in the precinct. No harm, he figured. He gave the money to needy people __usually relatives__ anyway, so he didn't feel bad about it. You couldn't stop people playing the numbers or the horses.

But Nils was another matter. He dressed like a gambler, spent like a sailor and drank a little too much to keep his mouth shut when he should. A disaster waiting to happen. They had never been partners, not even classmates at the Academy; their classes had just graduated during the same summer and they had both been rookies for a while in the thirty-fourth, an "easy" precinct at the time for trainees to work in.

"What's up?" Hank asked, reluctantly. "I need to get home and get some sleep. I can't stick around."

"Wait till ya see this." The big Swede pulled a picture out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Hank. The print showed two young ladies standing by a railing, with an icy river or lake in the background. They both wore cloche hats and heavy coats in the snapshot so he couldn't really tell much about them.

Nils pointed to the picture. "The one on the left, Maura, is my girl __kinda__ and the other one is her cousin. Like her?"

Hank decided that there was something interesting about the way the cousin stood and the angle of her head, but the photo wasn't really clear enough or close enough to determine much more so he handed it back with a non-committal grunt. "Got to go. Maybe I'll see you around. Okay?" Those girls could have been broomsticks or elephants under coats like that.

"Wait a minute!" Nils protested. "Not so fast, partner. How'd you like to meet them for a drink; maybe dinner and some entertainment?"

"Not tonight, Nils. I'm too beat and I've got stuff to do all the way through Friday. Some other time, okay?" Hank felt like biting his tongue for having said "Friday." Sure enough; out it came, perfectly predictable.

"That's the best part," Nils whooped. "It's Saturday I'm talking about. Tell you what: It's my treat! I'll even buy the gas. We'll head up toward Connecticut; you know, to cool off. Maybe have dinner at one of them country inns." He winked and nudged Hank in the ribs with his elbow. "Maybe the girls will turn out to be the entertainment too, huh?"

Having known the loudmouthed Swede for almost five years off and on, Hank doubted that, along with the promise of gas money. And he himself, while not totally inexperienced, was accustomed to hearing more talk than seeing a lot of action in the romance category. These were modern times, of course, but it still was __well__ distasteful to flaunt the freedoms of the new age too publicly.

Nils gave him another dig. "Still living with your Mother?"

Hank growled something in return and the other man took it for acceptance.

"That's great. We got to pick them up at 3:00, at the Biltmore."

* * * * *

GRAND CENTRAL DISTRICT - NEW YORK, N.Y.

It took Hank a long hour of endless waiting to realize that there were two Biltmores, a theater and an hotel a half-mile apart. His companion, meanwhile, had filled that entire, tooth-grinding hour with a fulsome description of his new lady love and other improbable adventures.

The Biltmore Hotel was certainly the most likely rendezvous of the two, so he hadn't thought to question the Swede's designation. But it only took a few seconds, after the little hand on the hotel's clock turned to the "4," to evaluate Nils' intelligence and set off immediately for the theater, composing an apology the whole way. As the driver, Hank pretty well knew he was going to get the blame, especially after Nils got through explaining himself away. So he was prepared for disaster when they pulled up in front of the marquis on Forty-seventh, off Eighth Avenue.

He was in no way prepared for the bricks that fell on him.

A whole ton of them.

He forgot the apology; he couldn't force out a word.

Henry Locknane could only stare.

For a moment he thought that it was Olivia deHaviland standing there, but this vision had a fuller, more elegant, figure. Then he thought of Carole Lombard, but his heart was pounding now for a brunette, and Garbo herself was not feminine enough to be this woman.

Even after an hour on the hot pavement, she looked like a queen and the whole city was her palace.

His mind really didn't record any other distinctive thoughts until he found himself driving up the Saw Mill River Parkway __about an hour later__ with his vision sitting next to him and some unknown pair of imbeciles chattering away in the back seat of his 1934 Ford.

Her voice was very low, quiet but easily distinguished with a distinctive vibrato, and Henry slowly caught up with the conversation going on around him. The girls had attended the matinee show at the Biltmore earlier and had dissected the W.P.A. presentation ruthlessly. By the time he could think of a sensible question or comment, though, the subject was closed with the show commended for nothing but its price of admission.

"You're very quiet, Henry," the young lady finally said __to him alone.

Until that moment, Henry had always hated his name. He laughed, recovering a bit. "I have a lot to be quiet about." He snuck in a sideways glance, noting that her hair was brushed in an up-sweep under her cap and that she wore a net veil in the latest fashion.

"Really?" She sounded breathlessly interested.

So Henry Locknane spent the rest of the evening telling Rosemary __that was her name, he finally remembered__ his life story. He felt stupid, but he just couldn't remember her given or family name for the longest time. He had desperately prayed for one of their companions to address her so he could use her first name to tell her he loved her in the way he spoke it.

After remembering the elusive "Rosemary" on his own, he just resumed wishing that their companions would shut up. He hoped that he could eventually shut up as well.

"Really?"

By the time the evening was over, she knew everything about him and he still knew nothing about her except her name. His spine was tingling and he couldn't seem to say anything sensible on the drive back to the Biltmore, worried that she might not want to see him again.

He pushed out the words. "May I call you, sometime? Maybe next week?" Hank held out his hand to hold hers briefly, though he could sense out of the corner of his eye that Nils was apparently sucking out the cousin's tonsils and resting his hand lightly on the first swelling of her hip.

He thought such behavior out of place on this occasion; profane, if truth be told.

"I'm traveling at the moment." She seemed to smile as if that was a private joke. "But if you'll give me your number, I might give you a call the next time I'm in the city __if there's time."

Disappointed __realizing that this had to be an evasion__ he nevertheless fumbled in a panic through his pockets for a pen and then had to buy a magazine from a "newsy" on the corner for something to write his home telephone number on. He gave the scrap of paper to her but then snatched it back for a moment to write ~~Hank~~ Henry Q. on the top part.

Rosemary tucked the small slip into her purse without glancing at it. Hank couldn't help showing some of his disappointment.

She took mercy on him and smiled. "Perhaps some day this week? I'll be in the area for a bit. Not always in town, though. Visiting, you know."

He said, "Sure. I'd love to. Anytime. Please." He knew he was losing control. So what! He might never see her again.

There was a little devil in her smile now. "You'd better prepare your mother for a shock."

"What shock?" he was stupefied.

"A lady calling you up for a date. She'll think that you're quite the roué, Henry. Good night." She touched his cheek lightly with her gloved fingers. "I had a very nice time." And then she just walked away into the theater crowd, turning the corner at Eighth; disappearing.

His first rational thought was, My God! What a walk. The second was to ask himself exactly what the hell a roo-ay was. The third notion was to leave as soon as possible without disturbing his so-called "partner."

And as he left, Henry Locknane wondered about one thing only: when he would next see Rosemary____Quirk; that was it! Any thoughts of Maryland beaches had been forgotten, left in the dust.

And also left in the dust was any sense of self-satisfaction that the poor man had ever possessed. But it would be some time before that dissatisfaction __the back-side of hope__ began to gnaw at him.

He began to breathe again, on becoming aware that he had stopped doing so when she left.

Chapter 2

Our affection toward others creates a sort of

vantage or purchase which nothing will supply.

I can do that by another which I cannot do alone.

CENTRAL PARK WEST - NEW YORK, N.Y.

After watching her only son mope around their 92nd St. brownstone for three days, wasting his vacation, Annie Locknane finally forced an explanation out of him.

The first question after he had finished a sketchy narrative was, "Is she from a good Irish-Catholic family?" God knows, she thought, the name "Quirk" is spread wider and thinner than butter, from poxy English landlords to crazy-wild Tinkers.

"I don't know, Mom." He shrugged his shoulders. "I just know that I have to see her again."

The next impediment to a respectable marriage __Annie Connolly, twice-widowed, thought well ahead where respectability was concerned__ was, "How could she be a 'nice' girl, driving to some hotel in Connecticut with a man she just met?"

Henry answered the second question with impeccable __if highly skewed__ logic: that the lady in question was above such considerations, being royalty in effect, and that the man she had driven off with was not in fact some stranger with evil designs but Annie's very own son. If that was not evidence of the lady's good taste in moral fiber, and a compliment to Annie's upbringing, then nothing would serve to do so.

Henry's father had died in the first year of the boy's life and he had been reared by a single mother and three sisters during his formative years. So he was no stranger to the thrust and parry of feminine logic, as long as he was dealing with women of his own class.

But, of course, Rosemary Quirk was in a class all by herself. So Henry sighed and his mother brooded and his married sisters trembled with excitement at the very thought, while the placid telephone kept its own counsel for what seemed to be an eternity in the making.

By the way, Henry Locknane had one terrible flaw in his character __perhaps a perversion__ that was almost undetectable. All his life he had turned that character failing to his advantage.

Henry Locknane listened. And stored what he heard. Then analyzed that. And asked innocent and indirect questions. And remembered. People loved him for it, his ability to listen __his interest in them.

That affection often persisted only because he never shared his conclusions. He would nod; he would smile; he would sympathize. And if he had uncomplimentary thoughts about the tale-teller, he kept them to himself. If he found unintended humor in what was said, he laughed to himself. Deeply touched at times, he reassured the day and saved his tears for solitary night.

In that way, he led a secret life __one that he could find no polite way to share, and he had been raised to give politeness first priority. But in the mind of Henry Locknane, there was a courtroom, a Star Chamber without windows. Cases in that court could never be dismissed.

It was a very dangerous combination: a man with a genuine concern for others; a man with the cutting-tool mentality of an Inquisition prosecutor.

Perhaps a bit like the Invisible Man.

And now this beautiful woman was turning the tables on him.

* * * * *

KITCHENER STREET - EAST ORANGE, N.J.

"I don't care, Mama! He kept looking at me like a love-sick cow all night. He's a nice enough boy if you happen to want a boy who's almost thirty, but he's not going to be the man we need to help us find Michael."

Rosemary's resentful voice rang like a church bell in the still-humid evening air, perfectly audible to the five rocking-chaired matriarchs lined up along the front porch of Mrs. Balinski's Boarding House. It was a grayish brick building, five stories high.

The women paid no mind to her objections. They knew what they knew on good authority. It would not be inaccurate to think of them as a panel of medieval judges and of Rosemary as their intermediary with the outside world.

Confidentiality was not a problem; only Cant was spoken there and the ancient-looking women were all Irish Travellers, most still shulking but too old now to withstand the rigors of life on the open road. That's a difficult word to translate from the Cant. It means "peddling" literally, but refers generally to making a living as a Traveller, which is often a very general proposition indeed.

Whenever possible, it meant the men hiring out for day labor or small-time contracting. But mostly, in the Depression, it meant their women peddling inexpensive __even shoddy__ goods with a magnificent vocal pedigree from door to door or by the wayside.

They were not thieves, although their code of honor might not be yours. And Irish Travellers could be violent among their own, but that violence did not usually extend toward outsiders, or "country people."

Usually then. Not necessarily now.

Had any country hantel __non-Travellers__ been present, they would have wondered at the presence of a cynosure of modern femininity in the midst of an archaic coven. But this particular clan of nomads had been the favored occupants at Mrs. Balinski's for many years, most of them staying there only during the colder months. The fair-weather transients who filled their vacancies at other times were barely tolerated on any given day and promptly expelled every November, when the Traveller families would be returning to their winter quarters.

They always showed up with cash. They always paid their bill. They repaired what needed repair voluntarily and well. Meanwhile the country people carefully avoided trespass and kept to their reduced domain.

They were both up in her mother's larger room now, with its kitchenette. That room had a door to the adjoining one, the daughter's, which was only a bedroom. Her youngest daughter, Rosemary or Rozheen, was the only child still living with her.

Though, at almost twenty-two, Rosemary was considered shockingly long in the tooth for an unmarried woman by their standards.

Each room was as clean as could be, mostly due to the efforts of Rose Quirk __a finicky woman about such things. Rose also used her small kitchen like a conjuror, waving her arms, sprinkling powders, mumbling incantations, and producing miracles. Rosemary herself could not cook water without burning it, having been raised only to be a superior being.

She continued with her protests, "Henry Locknane is a mama's boy, with three sisters to stuff his face every time he gets hungry. He was lucky enough to get a safe job before the Crash and he'll hang on doing the same thing until the day he dies."

"What's his sisters' names, Rozheen?"

"I don't know why it matters, but they're Mary __Molly, they call her__ Margaret, that's Peggy, and Anne. See! I did a good job getting all that. The only problem was shutting him up."

"Don't be nasty. You live with your mother, too. Besides, he's the one, the shajook in the Patterns, daughter. I know it in my bones." Rose was adamant.

"You never even met him, Mama."

"Well, yes, I did." Rose looked disturbed, not triumphant, her eyes thoughtful.

The girl turned on her mother in sudden anger. "You set me up? You knew this happy fool and didn't tell me? What am I, a bone to toss to the dogs?" She stood trembling, arms akimbo, fists clenched on the sides of her hips.

Her mother tried to calm her. "The last time I saw the 'boy,' he really was a little boy, Daughter. Two years old. Your sisters were best friends with his sisters before you were born, before we moved on. You were born three years later when we lived in Hartford, in Connecticut."

Rosemary colored. "Maura and her boyfriend must think I'm a complete fool? How could you?"

"You don't understand anything," her mother said in a huff. "Maybe you are a plab, after all. I haven't heard the name of Henry Locknane in twenty-five years, Daughter. And I'd no notion of which shajook the flibbertigibbet's idjit boyfriend would bring along on a blind date for some ignorant girl from New Jersey who thinks because she dresses up good, she's better than everybody else who supported her and gave her the only chance to get out of this. . . ." Rose went on and on, but she was so short of breath that the remainder was not audible. She began sniffle and then to weep silently.

Rosemary __Baby Rose__ took her mother in her arms and held her there, pleading, "Please don't cry, Mama. I'm sorry. I don't understand, that's all. Please! Please don't cry."

She felt guilty because she was guilty.

Rosemary had often felt humiliation on behalf of her family when they were confronted by their so-called "betters," humiliation that they themselves did not feel, and she took that emotion to be shame.

She was ashamed of that shame as well.

* * * * *

UPPER CENTRAL PARK WEST - NEW YORK, N.Y.

"Uncle Hank!"

The boy threw himself down on the steps, to sit at his feet. Hank himself was sitting on the same steps below his front stoop, thinking what a ridiculous situation this was. He wasn't fooling anybody; whenever the telephone rang in the hall he raced to be the first to pick it up. The coin-operated public phone there was the only one for the whole family downstairs and all of the roomers in the upper floors.

And everybody was racing to get to the phone before him. The word was out.

"Yeah, Eddie. Watch out for those pants, huh?" Eddie was his sister Molly's oldest son, twelve. Her limited budget called for hand-me-downs for the kids' clothing; only there weren't any for the oldest boy and girl, so their uncle chipped in with some new clothes once in a while, naturally.

Today Eddie was wearing a faded __well-washed__ blue and white-striped polo shirt. His new brown pants were held up with a shiny leather belt. The turned-around baseball cap on top of his head and scuffed shoes __one with a broken, knotted lace__ on his feet, completed the urban urchin ensemble.

The gray cap read "GIANTS," and then "Polo Grounds" beneath that, both embroidered in red.

"Did'ya hear about Spain, Uncle Hennie? Did'ya? Huh?"

"What about it?" Something must have happened. Eddie's introduction was almost always "Can we go for a drive, Unk?"

"Africans invaded Spain," Eddie said. "I heard it on the radio." His uncle laughed. "I don't think so."

But Eddie insisted, "Yeah, they did. We was listening to Martin Block, when they came on with a bullet thing."

"That's 'we were listening'," Hank corrected, "and it's a 'bulletin', not a bullet thing."

"Okay! Okay, but they was invading Spain. Honest! It was on the radio and Pop said that if they get away with it, the niggers are going to come south of one-twenty-fifth."

Hank grimaced. "Watch your mouth, Eddie. You wouldn't like somebody calling you names just because you're Irish, would you?"

Eddie grinned at his uncle. "Which one? 'lousy Mick,' or 'shanty Irish b____" He had a big grin now, one that normally turned into an even bigger smile and a laugh that could stampede horses and dogs. It was three thousand miles from The Old Country, but the boy was at least as Irish as Paddy's Pig, and maybe more so.

"Enough! Enough. Here's a quarter. Go get today's Journal. See if there's anything in it about Spain." It was early afternoon, almost time for the bulldog edition of the Journal-American, an evening paper.

"How much change do ya want back, Unk?" The boy didn't drop the quarter into his pocket; he stuck the whole fist wrapped around it into the pocket. A lot of adults he knew worked a whole hour for not much more than a quarter.

"That's okay, Eddie. Get yourself an egg cream, whatever you want. But don't spoil your dinner or your mom will kill us both. And hurry back as soon as the paper hits the newsstand."

As Eddie ran off towards Columbus Ave., Henry Locknane went back to killing time, pinioned between the telephone inside and the world outside, hope and despair, heart-pounding energy and complete apathy.

He saw old Salvatore walking down the street and waved to him. The old street-sweeper had little English, but always gave him a friendly wave back and a gap-toothed smile; flattered to be noticed. Both the occupation and its dirt-brown uniform encouraged anonymity.

That anonymity was deceptive, though. Cops regularly got plenty of good tips from the invisible men who wheeled their carts with broom, shovel and can around the neighborhood, sweeping streets and cleaning up the little leftovers from dogs, horses, occasionally humans.

Over the next half-hour, several of their roomers joined him on the stoop while he waited. He nodded; that's all. The children of Irish landlords tend to feel self-conscious among tenants, as a matter of course.

Just as Eddy came bursting around the corner and running up the block with the newspaper, the telephone rang. Hank knew the call was for him, from Rosemary; just knew it.

And it was.

He almost crippled two paying tenants getting inside to the phone, but his sister Anne __who lived with her husband and children downstairs too__ beat him to it anyway.

Anne had the receiver up to her left ear and her right hand shielding the mouthpiece so he couldn't guess what she was saying into the telephone. She saw him coming and turned half away as though the call was for her.

Henry crowded her; sure that the call was his. She turned her back entirely for a moment and then gave up. "It's for you, Henry. Some woman, it seems." She flounced down the hall.

He put the receiver to his ear and spoke into the mouthpiece. "Hello?"

"Good afternoon, Henry. This is Rosemary. I hope this isn't a bad time to call."

"N_no! No! Not at all. This is perfect. It's good of you to call_____" Hank clenched his teeth to stop there before he made a complete ass out of himself.

Rosemary said, "I'm going to be in town tomorrow afternoon. Perhaps we might meet and have a late lunch near Central Park. The West Side would be the most convenient area for me since I'm coming into the city from East Hampton to Pennsylvania Station."

"What time can I pick you up?"

He heard her say, "About two? Would the box office at Carnegie Hall be all right? It's shady, in case one of us is delayed at all."

"I'll be early this time Rosemary. Depend on it."

"I will then. I'll look forward to seeing you then Henry. And by the way, I hope I didn't hurt your sister's feelings."

"She's pretty sturdy. Was she pestering you?"

"Not really. She was just curious about what I wanted with you."

Henry smiled. His mother or any of his sisters would have given Rosemary the entire third degree if she let them get away with it. "What did you tell her?"

"A little more privacy. So long for now, Henry. We'll talk tomorrow."

His heart hung up.

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You are at Fiction 3, Chapters 1 & 2