Pale Horse Coming (26 page)

S
AM
wished he could take the cab straight to Friendship Airport, plunk down some more of Davis Trugood’s money, and fly to Little Rock aboard that big United DC-4. He wanted that desperately. It would be so much easier.

But the duty part of him, that nagging little monster inside that would not ever leave him in peace, would not permit such indulgence. Which is why he found himself, feeling like a condemned murderer, hunting for the courage to knock upon the widow Stone’s door in the beautiful old apartment building outside Druid Hill Park.

He tried twice, three times, and then a fourth, knew he’d manage it on the fifth, but before he could find out if that were true or not, the door opened.

Dressed for a summer outing, purse in hand, she was stunned.

“Why, Mr. Vincent! What on earth are you doing here?”

“Ah, ma’am, I had—” he stammered.

“Oh dear. The news is bad?”

“I don’t know what the news is. I really don’t know what it is.”

“You had better come in, then.”

He followed her back to the living room and sat in the same chair he had sat in a day or so ago.

“So, Mr. Vincent?”

“Well, ma’am, straight out, you see, that isn’t your husband in that casket.”

At first it seemed she didn’t understand. She blinked, twice, and swallowed, once, and then said, “I’m afraid I don’t quite—”

“Ma’am, it’s not him. It’s a Negro male, much younger.”

“Are you telling me my husband is alive?”

“No, ma’am. I am only telling you that he is not in his casket; someone else is. What that means, I don’t know. Possibly it’s a terrible mistake made by somebody at an Army mortuary back in nineteen forty-five. Possibly, it’s—well, I can’t even begin to imagine what it is.”

“Good heavens.”

“Ma’am, is there any—well, ma’am, I am by profession a prosecutor and I proceed by blunt methods. So if I may be blunt, is there anything in your husband’s life or character that would suggest his capacity to become mixed up in something not quite aboveboard?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I’m just groping for explanations here, Mrs. Stone, and I—”

“Are you imputing that David Stone, the medical researcher and heroic savior to the world’s beleaguered and benighted, that he is involved in some criminal activity?”

“No, ma’am, I’m—”

“Mr. Vincent, I may have to ask you to leave. This is very upsetting to me.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m just trying to get a fix on all this. I’m just trying to—”

“You’re not here for the reasons you said, are you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“That whole business about the fortune. That was all a lie, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Sir, you are despicable.”

“I do not deny that.”

“Really, you have to leave. Immediately.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. This is so unfortunate.”

“It’s more than unfortunate, Mr. Vincent, if even that is your name, it may be criminal.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“So tell me, finally, after it’s all over: Why are you here?”

“In truth, I began working for another attorney in Chicago, and I was investigating the death or disappearance of a Negro man at what was your husband’s medical station. Not during his tenure, but somewhat later. That is, recently. I journeyed down there, and barely escaped with my life. It’s something of an American disgrace. And even as I speak to you, a good man who rescued me may be dead for his assistance. I have a private compact now with my conscience to find out what is going on in Thebes, Mississippi. I’m sorry I lied. I’m not in this for money or financial gain or anything. But I am very concerned about my friend, and until I find out about him, I am making it my business to learn everything about Thebes that I can. Your husband’s name came into it from a governmental source in Washington, but all the files have disappeared. So I was working from this end.”

“You think my husband was involved in the murder of a man?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t. But I thought his involvement might lead me to someone who might lead me to someone who…well, that’s the way we investigate.”

“I see. This is very upsetting.”

“Ma’am, if you wish, if you’d feel more comfortable, possibly you’d care to call your attorney. Possibly if you will let me continue this conversation, you’d feel more comfortable in his office instead of your home. I’m very sorry I misrepresented myself. It was unethical. But I’m under great pressure to get a fix on that place, in order to help my friend.”

“My attorney won’t be necessary, Mr. Vincent. I’m simply going to reassert that you must leave. My husband was a saint, a hero, a martyr. He died giving his life for his country. Were you in the war?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“I was an artillery officer.”

“So you shot cannons at Germans or Japanese. Well, my husband was in battle too, only he shot microscopic cannons at germs and parasites and worms. I will not let you defame him. Please, leave, or I shall have to call the police.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sam got up, wooden-faced, and walked to the door. He had certainly blown this one and would be fortunate to get out of Baltimore without getting arrested. But he had to try one last thing.

“Ma’am, you’ll forgive me, but one question I have is that in one of the letters, your husband expressed sorrow over ‘the baby’—”

“
Mr. Vincent!
How dare you! How
dare
you? I was taught that people from the South are gracious, and yet you ask me the most personal questions imaginable. I will call the police if you don’t please leave at once.”

“I’m very sorry, ma’am.”

“You should be
very
sorry. My husband was a great man and that was part of his greatness, his capacity to forgive. He had a terrible disappointment. I cannot have children. It is nobody’s fault, so you may not believe anything ill of him. Do you understand? You cannot believe anything ill of my husband.”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m going to leave now.”

But he didn’t, and his crudeness produced a crude treasure. It was an old prosecutor’s trick; he hated himself for using it. But it worked: to ask someone highborn a lowborn question, one notable for its lack of taste and sensitivity. It frequently shocked such people into tears, and before they realized they had lost control of their emotions, they blurted something out that no amount of torture could otherwise have produced.

“I cannot have children,” she said, “because I contracted a virulent venereal disease in my early twenties; I was a month pregnant at the time. My husband worked feverishly to help me and save the child, but it couldn’t be done. He blamed himself for my misfortune.”

“Ma’am, I’m very sorry. It’s none of my—Ma’am, I can’t believe that
you
contracted something so—”

“I was raped, Mr. Vincent. One night, late. In Asia. It was very violent.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“The disease killed my baby, it killed all the babies I would have. It was the cruelty of the world, and a perfect example of the sort of tragedy that my husband gave up his life to prevent. Now please leave.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

E
ARL
watched and waited, but there was no approach. He thought: maybe it’s a trick. Maybe it was part of Fish’s psychological war against him, just to whet his appetite and get his hopes up, then to let him down.

And he cursed himself for letting the little bastard get to him. He tried hard to pretend he didn’t feel crushing disappointment when lights-off and lock-down hit at ten and the place settled into wheezing darkness. He waited in the dark, and the more he waited, the angrier he became, and he realized the fury was a form of medication against the despair he was beginning to feel.

You got yourself into a goddamn fix, partner,
was what he couldn’t admit feeling. But he knew he felt it just the same. For the first time in his life, he was very close to feeling beaten down and broken.

Sleep came roughly after too much time and too many pictures in his mind of other places and other lives he had lived and would never live again. But it came, and if he dreamed he didn’t know it or remember it, because the next thing he felt, something bit him.

Goddamn!

It jerked him awake, some little insect or mouse where it shouldn’t be, on the side that was down on the mattress. Now how the hell—

Another bolt of discomfort came, and his mind settled down enough to put two and two together properly: he realized it wasn’t a bite so much as a poke, up against him from the other side of the mattress.

He leaned over his bunk and saw some kind of rod extended up from the floorboards, where it had poked him awake. There was somebody down there.

He slipped off the bunk and put his mouth to the crack in the floorboard.

“Yeah?”

“You crawl to the third window, eastern side.”

And that was all.

Earl low-crawled, listening to the snores and the groans and the farts. He made it without a problem and wondered what was in store for him there. And then he felt the floor drop out, as one board was removed from beneath. He waited until another came out, and he had enough room to snake through.

“You come on,” Fish whispered.

Fish rose and took him around back, so that he was invisible to the men in the closest tower with the searchlight that commandeered the Ape House, yet too far in the dark to be spotted by any of the other towers.

“We be okay here,” said the old man. “The patrol don’t come back this way fo’ half a hour.”

“You said you could get me out.”

“Didn’t say that. Said I knows the way out. Maybe you man enough to make it, maybe you ain’t. Took five fellas out. Four be dead. One got out. That too much a risk fo’ you? One in five. It ain’t easy. Fact, it’s the hardest goddamn thing you ever done, and I’m bettin’ you been in the war something fierce. Harder than that even. You want me to go on? Or you want me to disappear and you can go back to waiting for Moon to slit your belly or Bigboy take you to the Whipping House.”

“Why?” said Earl.

“Why what?”

“Why you get me out? You hate me. I’m the white boy. Everybody in this place hates me.”

“You got that right. I was sent up here by white boys just like everybody else in here. And we do hate you. You done us so wrong and you ain’t even got no idea. You took us over here in chains and we in chains still. You fuck our women and make ’em whores, and when we gets angry you be actin’ all su-prised. You keep us poor and weak and set it up to crush the life out of us, and you pretend it be fo’ our own good, ’cause we too stupid to be otherwise. So onliest thing fo’ us be: yes suh; no suh! Yassuh, with a big coon-ass smile and bright white teeth. Y’all like our white teeth.”

“Sorry I asked.”

“I pick you ’cause of two things. I heard first off you kep’ your fingers on Junior’s artery, keep him from bleeding out. He was my sister’s boy. So I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me nothing. I’d do that for any man.”

“Way my haid work, I owe you. Second is, as I say, to do this thing it takes a bucket of guts. Not many have it. Even brave men, strong men, hard men, they don’t have it. It’s a motherfucker. It’s a big old royal-ass motherfucker.”

“I don’t have that kind of stuff, old man.”

“Oh, I’d bet you does. You just got to make me two promises, that’s all.”

“So what are they?”

“Tell you later. I get you out, I tell you.”

“I ain’t promising no promises I don’t know about.”

“You’ll make these promises. All them other fellas done it, and one them out now, living high on the hog.”

“Just tell me where this is going.”

“It’s simple. All you got to do is open this.”

The old man handed him a brass lock, an almost antique thing that weighed nearly a pound. It was tighter than hell. Earl pulled and felt no give at all in the connection between the hasp and the lock body. He tried to examine it in the darkness, and felt for buttons or screws but touched only rivets. He tried to put his finger into the keyhole underneath it, and of course made no progress at all.

“I can’t do it. Nobody could do it.”

“Gimme,” said Fish.

Earl handed it over, saw it disappear in the old man’s hands. There seemed to be some fiddling, maybe a massaging, and in two seconds, the lock came sprung with a barely audible metallic snap.

“Jesus,” said Earl. “You do that bare-handed?”

“You pick it,” the old man said, displaying a pin about two inches long. “It take practice, but when you learn it, you can git her open in about two seconds.”

“Yeah, fine, except where do I get the pick?”

“See, that’s it. That’s why I touched your hand. You got enough callus to carry it now. You couldn’t done it till now.”

Earl watched as the old man made the pin disappear into the ridge of callus that decorated his horny old palm. He turned and looked at his own hands and saw that yes, now they were ridged with a hard pad of deadened, accumulated skin, where healing skin had covered broken blisters but come out tough as leather gum. It was a dead zone, one of God’s few kindnesses to those who worked hard with their hands.

“Gimme that paw, boy.”

Earl put out his left hand and felt not pain but pressure. The pin punctured his hand and rode across the palm. There it was, tightly held.

“You got to practice. I give you the lock. You practice every night. You got to get the pin out, get it into the lock. You make a ‘H.’ You feel the softness of the tumblers. You get the two on the left, cross over, git the two on the right. Do it blindfolded. Do it at night. When the time comes, you won’t be able to see what’s going on.”

“I’ll be in a darkened cell?”

“No. You be at the bottom of the river. You be drowning. You make a mistake, white boy, and the hundred pounds of cement that lock chain to you keep you down there and you be drownded dead in thirty seconds.”

E
ARL
worked the lock every night in the dark. Out with the pin, a swift movement to the keyhole, no wasted motion, the insertion, then the delicacy of it all: feeling the tension in the tired spring-driven tumblers, trying to duplicate the pressure of a key against them, finding the right progression until at last the thing would pop.

The first night he never got it open.

You goddamn worthless scum,
he called himself mercilessly the next day.

The second night he finally felt it move a bit and got close to getting it open.

The third night it came open by the second hour.

The fourth night by twenty minutes.

Only got to get another nineteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds off that time.

He worked and worked until at last a poke came in the night.

He slithered to the floorboards and out.

“You do it?”

“I got it down to thirty seconds now. We best do this thing soon, else these guards are going to beat me to death. Or Moon will be back.”

“Moon be back day after tomorrow. He cut you first thing, white boy. Firstest thing. Ain’t no nother possibility ’bout it. He cut you bad and deep, and fuck you bleeding. He want to be fucking you as you pass.”

“Christ.”

“You up to killing him first?”

“It ain’t my style a bit.”

“You pussy, boy.”

“Done my share of killing. You don’t know the killing I done. You got no idea. Nobody here does. But if I fight this guy, and even if I whip him, he’s going to hurt me bad, and I can’t do this thing, right?”

“That’s right. So it’s got to be tomorrow. Now I tell you the rest of it.”

Earl braced himself.

“You tell Section Boss tomorrow first thing: You talk to Bigboy. You broken. You tell ’em what they want. Yeah, they gos, gits Bigboy. He drive up in his shiny new Hudson car.”

“If I tell ’em who I am, they kill me.”

“I knows. So here’s what it be. When Bigboy drive up, you’ll feel Tangle Eye gittin’ close to you.”

“Who’s Tangle Eye?”

“Big yeller convict. One eye go strange. Tangle Eye. A ax man. Best ax man in Mississippi.”

“Yeah?”

“You slip down. Tangle Eye, he give yo’ wrist chain a whack right where it clip to the bracelet, right hand. Yo’ hands free. But you hold that chain tight so nobody don’t see it.”

“Yeah.”

“Now come the fun part. You be called up out de hole. You g’wan over to Bigboy, and when he smile at you you pop him hard. You pop him so bad you break out his teeth and his nose. You hit him bad.”

“That is the fun part. Only problem: it gets me killed.”

“No, it don’t. It do git you beat. Gits you so beat you wish you dead. But they don’t kill you. They don’t even make you unconscious. They won’t whack yo’ haid. They bang yo’ ribs, yo’ gut, yo’ kidneys, yo’ legs. Have a good ol’ time with them sticks.”

“This don’t sound like no fun at all.”

“You want out?”

“Ain’t there no other way?”

“This be the only way you beat them dogs. No other way. The dogs run you down if you try to bust out through the bayou or the piney woods. Dogs rip you up right good. So you listen here to the hard part.”

“Go on.”

“You got to
humiliate
Bigboy. Make him so mad he forget hisself. So he kill you just fo’ his own pleasure. This is how they kill at Thebes. They take you to what they call the Drowning House.”

“Lots of houses at Thebes.”

“It’s a city of houses, you got that right. At the Drowning House, they chain you to a cement block. It’s locked with that lock you done been working with. Nightfall, they take you out on de river. They likes to hear ’em beg and cry and plead. Makes ’em feel powerful and strong. They gots a special boat. Boat got a door in the side. Git out there, the cement block goes over. You go with it.”

Earl thought about this. He remembered the long walk in on Tarawa, with the Jap tracers skating over the surface of the water and the pack on his back dragging him down. He shuddered involuntarily at the horror of the memory.

“You in the water. You got yo’ thirty seconds. You get that lock off. Oh, one thing. I forgot to ask. You can swim, can’t you? White boys swim good, I hears. I can swim good, ’cause I raised on the Mississip. Hey, why you think they call me Fish?”

“I can swim okay. Ain’t no Johnny Weissmuller.”

“Who?”

“You know, that Tar—. Never mind. Yeah, I can swim.”

“You can’t come to de surface fast, and break it and suck in the air. You gots to swim away underwater, come to the surface slow, be gentle when you gits to it. Otherwise they hear you, ’cept they havin’ too much fun to notice usually. You swim in, real slow and quiet. Follow them to their shore, ’cause otherwise you be real mixed up. You swim to the wrong shore, I can’t help you none. Got it?”

“Where do I go?”

“Swim upriver maybe quarter mile. Look for a flash. That’ll be me with a old carbide lamp. You come ashore there. You rest up couple of days, I’ll set you free with a compass. It’s a straight run to the tracks twenty-five miles out, you hops a freight and back you go. I got some money fo’ you. No dogs trackin’ you, no mens with guns and trigger fingers all twitchy-like, nothin’. They think you daid. They seen you go into the dark river. They don’t know nothing. You home free. They never come after you. You got that life of yours back and you do wif it whatever you want.”

Earl could think of nothing to say.

“But even if we get that far, then you gots them two promises. You make them, or I swim you back out there and chain you to that rock again.”