Michael Lister - Soldier 02 - The Big Beyond (4 page)

Chapter 8

T
hat night, Clip was awakened by Pookie, a cousin who stayed with him sometimes, with the news that a cop was at the front door asking to see him.

“Asking or demanding?” Clip asked.

“I ’on’t know. Why?”

“Need to know if trouble’s waiting for me out there.”

“Clip, po-leese always be trouble.”

“Good point,” Clip said, removing the revolver from the table beside his bed and shoving it in the back of his suspendered pants.

Clip’s shack in Shine Town was tiny, and it didn’t take him long to get to the front door.

Located in the easternmost section of St. Andrews originally known as East End, Shine Town was the Negro community named after a big moonshiner named Shine who moved in after the mill closed, and made and sold rum. Before him, back when it was East End, a man named Thompson ran a saw mill. Lumber from the head of East Bay was floated down to the head of Massalina Bayou, and the mill workers lived in homes built by the mill owner, known as the quarters.

Clip stepped outside to see a thick-bodied middle-aged white man in a day-wrinkled shirt. Weary and in serious need of a shave, the cop didn’t appear to pose much of a threat.

Didn’t mean he didn’t.

“You Clipper Jones?”

“I is, but I didn’t know she was white.”

“Huh?”

“Nothin’. What you want?”

“Got a message for Jimmy Riley.”

“Then send him a telegram.”

“It’s important. His old partner Pete is missing and I need to talk to him. I need his help.”

“Who’s help? What was that name again?”

“Look, it’s on the level. I swear it. I want to talk to Jimmy. I’m gonna ask for his help, not arrest him. I know he hasn’t killed anybody.”

The look Clip gave him made him amend his statement.

“I mean I know he’s not guilty of murder.”

Clip smiled.

“Will you take me to him?”

“What’s your name?”

“Rogers. Delton Rogers. Used to work with Jimmy back when he and Pete were partners. I’m a friend.”

“I know all his friends and none of ’em is cops. Same as the rest of us.”

“Tell you what. You give Jimmy the message. No harm in that. He’ll want to hear what I have to say. Just let him decide. Give him the message.”

“See,” Clip said. “Tol’ you all you needed was a telegram.”

L
ater that night, I convinced Ruth Ann to drive me in her ’41 Ford Club Coupe to my old office at the Parker Detective Agency.

We were smoking Chesterfields and the car was filled with smoke.

The November night was cold, and in addition to her woolen Reefer coat, Ruth Ann wore a plaid head kerchief with a self-fringe, just a bit of her blond hair visible just above her forehead.

Downtown was a dichotomy. Since the war began, many of the places on the main drag were open all night, but just one block away in any direction it was deserted—empty streets bathed in pale moonlight, dew-dampened surfaces shimmering silently, parking lots, businesses, alleyways barren, appearing suddenly and abruptly abandoned.

Our offices were in a walkup on Harrison just down from the Tennessee House and Ritz Theater, where Hitchcock’s
Shadow of a Doubt
was playing at the moment, and it was as haunted for me as any other place on the planet. Haunted in the way the little house in the Cove where I had my arm blown off was.

Headlights on dim, the top halves painted black, we crept around a while, searching for signs of cops and the perfect place to park, as Tommy Dorsey sang “In the Blue of the Evening.”

Deciding breaking into the old building from the back was best, we eased down Grace, beams followed closely by car body piercing the low flung fog.

Ray Parker, the guy whose agency it had been, was a big, squarish former Pinkerton who had been like a father to me—right up until I had killed him.

Creeping up the back stairs while Ruth Ann waited in the car, I trailed the bobbing little beam down the hallway to July’s desk.

July.

Our Rosie-the-riveter receptionist had worn her hair in a short feather-cut, pin curls around her ears and on top of her head, and had been as cute as someone’s yappy little puppy. She had worked hard, worshipped Ray, and wanted nothing more than to be Nancy Drew.

Her desk looked untouched, the strewn papers in the same place as the night I had searched through them to find her murderer.

I pictured her there, two-finger typing, answering the phone with attitude, filling in logs, sorting through ration tickets. Though not too many years younger than me, she had seemed like such a kid,
had been
such a kid.

The hours we had spent together in this dingy little place.

She and Ray both dead.

It was hard to believe what once had been an impressive agency was down to a wounded, one-armed, lovesick sap wanted by the police.

I stood at the door to my office, taking it in, the small circle of light falling on stacks of books, a dusty old chess set, an uncluttered desk and uncomfortable chair, a few unhung paintings on the floor, a General Electric shelf-charging portable radio, a Motorola Spinet with records stacked around it, and around and among it all, the fingerprint powder and evidence markers and police-trampled appearance that even in the dark whispered it was a crime scene.

When I looked at my chair, pushed back from my desk and at an odd angle, an old empty wooden chair was all I saw, but as I looked at anything else in the room, in my periphery I would see July’s lifeless, crumpled body slumped in it.

Ghosts.

July’s death haunted me but good, but it was Lauren’s presence here that most affected me. It was here, in this small room she had first walked into my life, the scent of Paris perfume wafting up from the wake behind her.

She had disarmed me with her disconcerting honesty, unconventional beauty, and her complete lack of pretense and illusion.

My desire for her had been instant and incomprehensible.

Beneath her dark brown hair, combed smooth across the top and hanging in soft curls above her shoulders, worn lower on the right side of her face to conceal the burns, her otherwise flawless skin seemed nearly too perfect, the almond eyes beneath the razor-sharp eyebrows nearly too dark, too deep, too … Nearly, but not too.

“Of the infidelity cases you investigate, how many of the people turn out to be cheating?” she had asked.

“Nearly all.”

“Really?”

“Most people don’t come to us the first time they have suspicions.”

“So what percentage?”

I shrugged.

Her silhouette-style black dress emphasized her trim waist and narrow hips and grew broad above her breasts. The war had made stockings mostly a thing of the past, but her dress showed plenty of pale leg beneath black silk stockings, the backs of which had seams running down them. The rest of the girls had to go bare-legged and draw seams down the back of their legs with black eyeliner to give the illusion of stockings, but not Mrs. Harry Lewis. Her justification for this pass from this small wartime sacrifice was that they helped conceal the burn scars on her legs.

Her two-tone, thick high heels brought together the black of her dress, its white collar and highlights, and the white of her gauntlet gloves and clutch bag.

“How many? I want to know.”

“It’s hard to say.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“A few years,” I said.

Gracefully, she crossed her long, shapely legs and straightened out her skirt. Her movements were as smooth and elegant as the silk stockings gripping her gams. They were dark, but you could still make out the burns down her right leg if you knew where to look.

“So, of the cases
you’ve
worked, how many were guilty of cheating?”

“All of them,” I said.

Her eyes widened. She then exhaled heavily and fell back into her chair, the expression on her face a curious one, as if I had just shared a strange good news.

“So the fact that I’m here almost guarantees my husband is cheating.”

“Do you love your husband?”

“Very much.”

“If he
is
cheating, are you going to leave him?”

She shook her head.

“Then don’t do this.”

“I’ve got to,” she said.

“Why? Why do you want to know?”

“I love my husband, Mr. Riley.”

“So don’t—”

“Like a father,” she said. “I’m not
in
love with him—not like a wife. I care about him a great deal. I owe him … well, everything. But if I knew he had someone …”

She had trailed off, but seemed to need to say more, so I waited.

“It would be a great comfort to me.”

Standing in the darkened doorway now, her words not only echoed through the room, but through me.

And her words were what I was here for.

Easing inside, I stepped carefully, as if avoiding apparitions, making my way over to the phonograph and removing the recordings Ann Everett had secretly made of Lauren’s counseling sessions, forced to pocket my light in order to carry them.

Records clutched to my chest with my left hand, I stumbled out into the hallway, along the corridor, and back down the stairs.

Reaching the door, I realized I was going to have a problem opening it when the only arm I had was holding the records, but then a guy with a gun stepped out of the dark alcove and suddenly I had more pressing problems to worry about.

Chapter 9

“H
iya, solider,” he said, pressing the pistol into the small of my back. “Whatta you say we take a rittle stroll?”

“Sure,” I said. “I could use some air.”

“Then ret’s take in some air.”

There seemed to be something faintly foreign, even exotic in his accent, but he was speaking so softly I couldn’t be sure, every syllable snaking out of his mouth in whispered hisses.

We stepped out of the building, off the concrete pad, and into the parking lot, and I heard him gently close the door behind us.

A few random desultory sounds came across the buildings from some of the all-night activities on Harrison, but back here it was desolate and dark, our footfalls and the soft whistle of the wind the only noises.

“We headed anywhere in particular?” I asked. “Or just strolling?”

“Hang a reft.”

I did, all the while hoping Ruth Ann wouldn’t see us and try to intervene.

Glancing over to the right side of the lot where she was parked, I could see she was asleep behind the wheel, her head tilted back on the seat at an angle.

At the far edge of the opposite side of the parking lot in a dark corner beneath an oak tree, a Studebaker sat idling, its evanescent exhaust coiling up a few feet before vanishing into the damp night air.

As we neared it, I could see that the vehicle was in pristine condition, appearing nearly new though it had been almost a year since the company had abandoned regular passenger car production. The final civilian car had rolled off the assembly line in January of ’42. The fact that it had painted trim meant it was a special Blackout edition and was among the last to be produced.

“Who’s in the car?” I asked.

“Man with a job for you.”

“That he’s gonna offer to me at gunpoint?”

“He’s really hoping you’a take it.”

“I’m seriously considering it,” I said. “I really am.”

He laughed.

The car was a six-passenger Presidential Deluxe-style Land Cruiser with a black roof, whitewall tires, which were extremely rare right now, and a back glass with ventilating wings.

When we reached it, the man behind me stepped around and opened the back door.

I took a step back.

He was a short, thin kid who looked to be in his late teens. He had no hat on and his thick bowl-cut black hair looked like a melted record atop his head.

He was Japanese.

“Didn’t get enough of us at Pearl Harbor?” I said. “Taking us out one by one now?”

He waved me into the car with the small gun and I climbed inside. When he closed the door, any ambient light from the street vanished and I was alone in the dark with what looked to be an older version of the kid who was now leaning on the car looking in at us.

“I … ah … had ah nothing to do with the attack,” he said. “I am American citizen just rike you.”

I didn’t respond.

“Ah … you … have ah … no doubt heard about the murders.”

He kept his gaze straight ahead and spoke very softly.

“I’ve been a little out of circulation,” I said, “but I’ve heard a thing or two … read a few more in the paper. For all I know some of them may even be true.”

“Young women,” he said.

He didn’t say anything else right away, but I waited, knowing there was more to come.

“Butchered.”

The kid leaning against the car shook out a smoke and lit it, his little revolver dangling from his finger as he did.

“Beautiful girls ah hacked into ah pieces.”

The report in the paper indicated that the murders had been particularly brutal, but there was no mention of anything like that. Was he exaggerating or did he know more than was being printed?

“The investigation ah being conducted by the ah porice is yielding nothing,” he said. “Which mean they ah either ah incompetent or ah corrupt.”

“A little over a year ago I was one of them,” I said, “and I can tell you they’re neither.”

He reached up and turned on a light, and when my eyes had adjusted I could see that he was a thick middle-aged Japanese man with thick black hair and thick orangish skin. He was togged to the bricks in a three-button tan Glen Plaid sports coat and solid medium brown wool slacks with pleats and cuffs, a hand-painted tie in a thick Windsor knot, and brown and tan wingtips.

“Whato other ah expranation is there?”

“They haven’t caught a break in the case yet. They will. What’s your interest? Why’re you telling me all this?”

“Niece. Missing. Sister daughter. You find outo if she ah one of his ah victims. If not, you find her.”

If he was making any effort to melt into Uncle Sam’s big pot, I couldn’t tell it, the way he spoke only adding to the alien nature of his presence here.

“There’ no agency anymore,” I said. “I’m in no condition to work a case even if there was.”

“I know what ah happen. What you did. What condition you ah in.”

“I’m wanted by the police for a little murder of my own.”

“That make you ah more quarified, not ress. Same as us. We cannot go to porice. If we did they ah send us back to ah Manzanar. Even if we could, they no care for ah Jap girl.”

“I could be the most qualified person on the planet,” I said. “I’m not doing it. I can’t.”

“I’m ah noto asahking.”

On cue, the kid tapped the glass with the barrel of the gun, smoke curling up from his cigarette, backlit by a streetlamp as he did.

“So,” I said, “I ah taka the case or you ah kill me?”

“No. Starto with sreeping girl in ah car. Then brother. Mother. Father. Nigger friend. Then ah you.”

I didn’t respond.

“You go talk to niece mother. Sister. You say I ah sent.”

“I don’t even know who you are.”

“Tell her brother send. Car ah pick you up ah here tomorrow ah night. You be here or ah girl get it.”

“Then ah,” I said, “I’ll ah be here.”