The Devil's Own Rag Doll (16 page)

“The world is not a place for old ladies anymore.”

“Well, I suppose that will be me one day, soon enough.” She tipped up her cup and held it thoughtfully to her lips, as if she could make the coffee cool down enough to sip just by thinking. She pursed her lips and blew, staring vacantly over my shoulder.

“Could be,” I said. “You get older before you know it.” I took a quick sip of the coffee and swallowed, clenching and reclenching my throat and coughing a little. “It's good you sent the girl away.”

She cradled the cup delicately in all her long fingers and brought her eyes to bear on me. “You're going to say something about Bobby. It's all right. I know what kind of things he was after.”

I drank more coffee and swallowed hard, glad for the whiskey.

“He was into some things he should not have been, I know.” Anna did not look at me directly. It seemed like she was looking at my neck or my jowls—whiskers I'd missed with the razor. “But he was a good man, a good husband in his way. Do you know what I mean? When we are children, we think we know so much. We can tell what is right and what is wrong. But when we are older, we cannot be right all the time. There is more to regret, always more as time goes by.”

“Don't make too much out of it,” I said. I looked down at the backs of my hands: hairy, nicked and scarred, callused, beefy and rounded but for the two biggest knuckles on each hand, which bulged out like goiters. “Anyway,” I said, “you don't have to say any more about it. All of that, I guess that's your business. You say too much.”

A flash of quickly subdued anger passed over her angular face. Maybe it was the German in her, something cold that made me think that her little speech had been some kind of act. My mind was too slow to reconsider everything like I should have, all the things that had to change their meaning because of what I now knew. I could see why Bobby and Anna might have hitched themselves together; but I couldn't see what the balances were or how it could work day after day, year after year.

“Well, what is it you want to know, Pete? What brings you here?” With two fingers crooked in the handle of her cup, she tossed back the rest of the coffee.

“Did Bobby ever say anything to you about a hiding place or a safe he had around the house?”

“Why?” She tipped the bottle and poured a finger of whiskey into her cup.

“I guess I figured a guy like Bobby might have a little something put away. It could be … some money or papers that might be worth a little something.”

“Well,” said Anna, narrowing her small dark eyes, “there is nothing like that, nothing that I know of. You know he left no will. He never told me about the police work or any other … business he had going.”

“The garage?”

“It's just … wood. There is no plaster or anything. But he might have hidden anything out there. I never cleaned it. But he didn't spend much time there.” She slowly sipped from the cup. I could see her pressing her tongue tight in her mouth, but she didn't wince from the straight whiskey. “He wasn't handy.”

Anger welled up in me. There was too much to consider, and the added element of sex skewed things. Her attitude seemed wrong but not in any way I could figure out. The thought flashed through my head that she might be some sort of enemy agent. I had heard from Bobby that she and her brother had fled Germany when the Nazis took over. Of course, it must have been a story already when Bobby first heard it, and Bobby had heard it, as I now let myself realize, doubtless from her. In fact, there was nothing about her past that I had ever bothered to verify. Had Bobby seen any photographs? I understood that the brother had been killed in an accident at one of the plants, but now it seemed that anything I had learned through Bobby needed more consideration.

Briefly I considered that Anna might somehow be involved in all of what was happening. Maybe she wanted Bobby dead because she was sick of living with it. But I reminded myself again that Bobby and I had stumbled onto the beating by pure chance. To believe anything else would mean that the whole world was against us. And that, I thought dryly, would leave little to do but to head out of the world snarling and flaming, lashing out against the most obviously rotten. It would be easier than thinking through it all.

“Maybe I shouldn't ask,” I said, “but I guess I need to know how he left you. There's nothing, no money put away anywhere?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head grimly. “He didn't leave us much. For all his ideas, there was not much to show. A bit of life insurance. Maybe we'll be able to keep the house or to eat. Not both.”

I poured a strong shot of whiskey into the dregs of my coffee and drank it all in a swallow. It seemed that I could swallow the whiskey well enough. I felt it fuming through my sinuses and burning down my gullet, and I liked the sharpness of it. I kept quiet for a moment, hoping my silence would make Anna nervous enough to spill something. She just stared absently out the window.

“So there's nothing that you know of, nothing stashed around here?” I stared hard at her.

“It isn't sensible to pretend about it, Pete. There's nothing. You think I haven't looked myself? We're alone here now. Of course I am willing to work,” she said, “but perhaps if I looked, I would find wherever I went that there is nothing suitable for me. You see?”

I wondered if the little bit of liquor could be working on me so quickly. Sometimes you don't know what the booze can do—but I can't lay it off on that. The way the whole thing was playing out, I could see what a dope I had been and still was, how anybody could dance around my fat head or tiptoe right past me. It brought up something foul in me, and I pictured my right hand knocking her down to the carefully scrubbed floor of her kitchen. I had that feeling you get when a smart guy is trying to put one over on you, working up a laugh for his buddies. But she wasn't playing to her buddies, and I felt how sharp it was that we were all alone in the house. When she reached across the old table to grasp my mangled hand, I drew it back, then reached out and grabbed her above the elbow. I stood up and my thighs lifted the table, tottering the glasses and the bottle of whiskey.

Maybe it was wrong. I guess I've done wronger things. With the three fingers of my left hand squeezing down to the bone of her skinny arm, we stumbled to the bedroom. I pushed her ahead of me to the center of the room, just to the edge of the bed, and watched while she undressed. She took everything off carefully, her thin fingers crawling like spiders over buttons and clasps. There was nothing like anger or desire in her face, nothing at all, and she didn't seem afraid of me.

I became two men. One watched with a weary eye, and found the workings of the muscles under her pale skin to be more interesting than the dark nipples and the dark patch of hair she exposed to me. The other man seemed to grow up from my legs, and I felt my prick stiffening inside my trousers, like the whiskey was a kind of fuel in my blood.

When she finished undressing, she did not pull down the bedclothes but climbed to the center of the small bed and lay on her back, looking calmly up at me but not at my face. She tipped one knee to the side, spreading her legs a little. I stepped to the edge of the bed, pulled my belt loose, and opened my fly just enough to let my baggy trousers and shorts fall. Then I shrugged out of my jacket and moved over her. I wasn't sure how it would go in. I squeezed my prick with one hand until it was stiff enough, and then, moving between her legs, I groped and guided the part of me into her.

We did not speak while I huffed away on top of her. The one Caudill watched her face carefully, watched her eyes rest on some spot on the ceiling, and he wondered what she was thinking about. He wondered if his trousers would be badly wrinkled, gathered as they were now above his shoes as his knees scrambled for traction over the silky lace of the bedcover. The other Caudill plunged into the warm wetness and felt glad of it, felt the give of her soft thighs and the rhythmic thump of her heels over the small of his back.

When I finished, she dropped her hand from my shoulder and let it fall lightly to the bed. Then finally she looked at me. I met her eyes, but there wasn't anything to communicate. I only rolled off her and dropped my legs over the edge of the bed. Quietly I sat for a few moments, thinking of nothing but the way my prick slowly drooped. Then I scanned the room and wondered if Bobby had ever shared it. Behind me, Anna slipped from the bed and began to gather her clothes. The rustling made me wonder what sort of transaction had taken place, if I could really understand the workings or be able to afford what it would cost. It wasn't much, after all, bodies pushing together. But things didn't always hold their meaning in the time or effort it took to make them happen. You could throw away your whole life with one stupid move.

I stood up and dragged my shorts and trousers up to my waist. As I fumbled to button myself up, I stared blankly at the wall just next to the bed.

“What's this?” I croaked, sliding my fingers over the uneven surface.

“That was a crèche,” murmured Anna. “The Catholics and their graven images. Bobby didn't like it. He covered it over.”

I rapped my knuckles up and down the plaster and heard nothing but hollow reverberations. Had I expected—what? Something to knock back in answer? But with an idle interest I pressed my thumb into the patch job near the bottom edge, pressed hard until my thumb cracked through. I kept pressing until I had made a hole wide enough for my fingers, then I pushed them through and felt along the bottom of the crèche. Nothing but bits of plaster, mouse droppings, and dust. Certainly nothing like a valise or satchel of money, nothing large enough to be of any value. I pushed my fingers in until I could feel the old wall at the back of the crèche. The tip of my middle finger pressed against something small and cool to the touch. With some fumbling, I managed to snare it between two blunt fingertips.

I pulled it out and rubbed it clean as I moved to the window. A key it was, a small one; in the bright light of the morning sun, I brought it to my eye. I could smell Anna's breath, coffee and the sharp bitterness of whiskey, as she struggled to get a view of what I had. Tiny numbers, burnished brass: the key to a safe-deposit box, I thought. And almost as quickly, I thought of another thing: This was the first time, as a detective, that I had actually found something I had set out to find.

*   *   *

There was a way to get into police headquarters through the garage, and I used it. I had heard the newspaper stories and the gossip about the runt since the news broke about Bobby. As with any case that made the papers, citizens had filed reports. The runt and his boys had been seen digging up an old lady's geraniums on the northern perimeter of the city; he was living on the top floor of an apartment building downriver, south and west of the city, playing that swing music too loud at all hours of the night. He was running a laundry down on Riopelle, stealing buttons off shirts. One lady was convinced that the police sketch printed in the paper was her husband, though he had been obese and bald when he ran off on her ten years earlier. People from the American Legion kept calling, insisting that the man was some sort of foreign agent sent to undermine the war effort. The two thugs were certain to be Nazi spies.

The slightly more reliable sources, other officers, had turned up nothing. I knew that some of the officers still on the force must have called themselves members of the Legion or the Klan at one time or another. The stories were as wild then as they were now, but it was said by many that the Legion had once claimed over a hundred thousand members in Michigan. Certainly few men on the force felt inclined to coddle niggers or anyone else. I began to wonder if I could count on anything from anybody on the blue side of the line.

Maybe somebody had caught wind of Bobby's leaning. Maybe I was too slow to see that some of my fellows had put it together this way: Some guys who hated niggers had sliced Bobby the queer. Bobby the queer, married to the
German.
Probably it wouldn't be worth any special effort to track down those boys, and it could be that some on the force would go out of their way to lose any information that turned up. As I walked into headquarters, I lifted my head to take a really good look over all the officers milling about. Aside from a few nods in greeting, they ignored me, as always. It made me think that maybe Mitchell was right to be so tight-lipped about everything.

I made my way down to the little room in the basement, where I found Johnson and Walker poring over books of old mug shots.

“Detective,” said Johnson.

“Johnson,” I said. “Walker.”

“We weren't sure you'd be coming in,” said Johnson. “Captain told us you had a few days coming.”

“Hell with that,” I said. “What do you have to tell me?”

“Roger Hardiman's secretary has been tying up the phone lines trying to call you. He was getting so hostile that I told Mary at the switchboard just to tell him that you're out of town for a few days. We thought you weren't coming in. Your sister-in-law Eileen called, too. She said for you to call, it's about the boy.”

At the mention of Eileen, my brow muscled down over my eye, and I tried to bluff away the stab of emotion. “Hell with that. What kind of luck did you have tracking down the bastards?”

Johnson looked at Walker. “Walker had a little talk with Horace Jenkins. Jenkins says—you tell him, Walker.”

I turned my head toward Walker.

“That's right. The Reverend Jenkins dropped a little information about Toby Thrumm. He says he doesn't know where Toby is right now. I can't say if he was lying or not, but I guess if Toby was anywhere in this town staying with colored folks, Reverend Jenkins would know about it. So we don't have any kind of way of finding Toby right now. But I also heard from Jenkins that old Toby was knocked about by two big fellas and a little guy—same as in Detective Swope's case. Toby thinks it was the little guy who whipped him up.”