The Devil's Own Rag Doll (28 page)

I made my way into the kitchen and sat at the table, contemplating the jar of apricots and the prick and balls in the other jar. I stared for a time at the rudely cut flesh, whitening now at the edges, the stirred-up sediment collecting softly at the bottom. Estelle Hardiman had described Hardiman's relationship to Jane as
unnatural.
If I had been well rested, if I had not gone without food for so long, my mind would have been clearer—and I would probably never have let the thought form: Roger Hardiman had been putting the sex to Jane. She had kicked him hard the best way she knew, by running around with the darkies, and it had gotten her killed.

Lucy was Hardiman's child … Estelle Hardiman knew about Anna, perhaps had always known … she had given Anna some money … Could she have known about Anna and me? Had Anna been talking?

I saw stars as I tried to jerk my head around. I stood up, dragged a kitchen chair over to the sink, climbed onto it, and carefully removed a piece of crown molding from the top of the cabinet over the sink. I squeezed my hand between the cabinet and the soffit and pulled out the envelope. Though there was no sense in looking—I could tell from the weight of the envelope that the pictures of Hardiman were gone—I opened it. The only thing inside was a little map showing the location of Hardiman's place by the lake. Even the picture of my father and the lynched boy had been taken. I turned again and peered into the hole over the cabinet. I saw the money I had taken from Lloyd, untouched.

My legs buckled as I hopped down from the chair, and I fell to my knees. I crawled to the living room.
It's cooler down here,
I thought.
The heat isn't so bad next to the floor.
I let my head drop, felt the back of my neck twinge in sharp pain, then subside, stretch out, relax. I dropped to my elbows, rolled onto my shoulder, and then lay flat on my stomach with my face pressed into the design of the worn rug. I slept.

CHAPTER 16

Saturday, June 19

They say that your mind works while you sleep, and your dreams can tell you something about your life, but when I woke up that morning after a few hours of dead sleep, I could remember only blackness. What brought me to waking was the searing ache at the back of my head, which seemed like the scream of a forgotten teapot on the stove. Though I had no memory of it, I had made my way to the sofa during the night, and when I opened my eye, I saw sunlight streaming through my open front door. Whatever effect the long, tiring events of the previous day had had on me, whatever I had learned or accomplished, it all meant nothing. I lay on the couch, wiping at the drool that escaped my mouth, and felt simply disgusted by the whole thing.

Gradually I warmed up. Clearly I had moved forward in clearing up the mess of my life—if not forward, at least
somewhere.
At least I could say that I had
done something.
Though I still could not find the optimism to put on a happy face or the presence of mind to pull all the elements of the situation together sensibly, I felt at least that I might be able to find a place to stand and think about things for a time. I could assemble a fair tally of what I had gained and lost, and of what I might stand to gain if I could hold myself together for a concerted effort. Thoughts of Pease need no longer trouble me, and it seemed that Anna and her little girl were now beyond my reach and hopefully beyond my concern. I had lost the photographs of Hardiman, it was true, but at least I had gained some information from the woman about Hardiman's cottage. I might doubt her motives, but I was reasonably certain that the information would be useful. Though I despaired of ever fully understanding what was happening to me, the feeble theory I had cobbled together about the connection between Rix, Frye, Sherrill, and the rest seemed at least now to be self-evidently true. It cut down some on the foul mood that had settled on me.

But then there was the thought of Eileen. I wanted her. I wanted to make a happy life with her. And just at this time, when everything else seemed to be falling apart as it never had during the simpler time in my life, I felt the bitter joke: I had never really wanted anything more than steady work and food enough to quiet my belly. Now that I had been surprised by a glimpse of that happy life, it was clear that I was farther than I had ever been from a chance at such a thing. The Legion mess, Bobby's death, the propositions from Jenkins and Lloyd and Estelle Hardiman, worries about Johnson and Mitchell and especially Walker, and my own galling guilt combined to leave me in a far greater pool of blood than I had ever known before. It seemed that my newly roused desire for a portion of real living had somehow brought all these troubles upon me. I could remember carefree days, but I doubted I'd see them again. I could not see any way to clear up all the troubles that plagued me, and—damn me to hell—I could not see a way to stop myself from caring.

Since it was a Saturday, the scene at police headquarters was more hectic than usual in the lobby. There were fewer officers and secretaries to handle the greater number of complaints walking in from the street, citizens too lazy to find the time during the week to air their petty beefs and gripes, now more surly than usual as they watched their weekend time slipping away in waiting. I walked through the unruly crowd, feeling light and awake but with a foulness of mood that made everything seem a shade closer to black. I found the stairs and went straight down to the little room, where Walker and Johnson sat in close conversation. I leaned in close.

“We're no longer looking for Pease,” I said.

The two patrolmen looked up at me.

“Walker, what did you get out of Brunell?” I asked.

Walker said nothing. He glanced toward Johnson and then back at me. I swear I wanted to shoot the both of them.

“What?” I said. “Damn idiots, what is it?”

“Jesus, Pete, you look like a toilet,” said Johnson. “When's the last time you ate?”

“What the hell,” I said. “I got a couple girlyfriends now? Just tell me what you got out of Brunell.”

“Well,” Walker said, starting slowly. “He doesn't seem to know much. He's in the business of making money, and he doesn't get too particular about where his merchandise comes from.”

“Did you get the feeling he was putting anything over on you? Was he nervous?”

“Well, he was plenty nervous,” said Walker. “But it wasn't from talking to me. I think that we can say it was from the mob of folks gathered out on the walk, all set to string him up.”

“What's that?”

“When I got there, Brunell was holed up inside, had all the shades drawn, you know. There was a mob of colored folk there, I guess they had got to talkin' among themselves. A regular character from the Valley named Willie Tompkins was firing them up—bug-eyed fella, been brought in drunk and disorderly many a time, but generally harmless. Excitable. He'd been pushing them all to smash in Pops's windows, not wanting to do any of it himself. Now, Willie Tompkins isn't much, on his own. But some of those men, if they get lathered up, they've been known to listen to some pretty paltry ideas. I guess all the men down there had some real complaint. They figured out it was something in the soda pop Brunell was selling that was making them all—” Walker glanced at Johnson, who pressed back a smile. “They were all having problems in the bedroom, if I'm getting it right, and they were steamed enough about it to want to burn Pops out of his place.”

“Something in the soda?” I turned it over in my head, and then I turned it over some more. Something in the soda was giving the men problems in the bedroom. “That strikes me funny,” I said.

“Well, Detective,” said Walker, “you don't let a laugh get away from you, do you?”

I guess I just stared at him. “No,” I said.

“I'll tell you, though,” said Walker, “from the way those boys were swarming around Brunell's store, you could see they weren't tickled any. Some men take a lot of stock in that sort of thing, and just the sort that would be hanging around on the corner and drinking soda pop all day. They had been drinking that soda pop for months, and now just lately it seemed to hit them all in the same way, down in the pants.”

Johnson said, “It seems like more than a coincidence with all this other trouble we've been having.”

I could see that Walker was trying to get something from me. “Johnson,” I said, “did the rationing boys come and pick up all that sugar from Bobby's place?”

“I phoned,” said Johnson, “and we hightailed it out of there. I never said who I was. But I guess they ran down to pick it up pretty quick.”

“Well, don't say anything to them about it.” I liked the thought of the rationing boys going limp from skimming tainted sugar. The way it might spread out, that big pile of sugar, it made me wish I'd thought of it.

“They were after Pops because he's what they call high yellow, you know,” said Walker. “They figure that since he could pass for white if he wanted to, he's in with the white folks somehow, trying to kill off the colored folks by hitting them at home, you see? I can tell you, they weren't any too happy with me helping out old Pops. If they weren't all a bunch of cowards, I'da been in it pretty thick.”

I was nodding at Walker's words, just nodding.

“So you can see that Pops doesn't have much to say about all of it?” Walker said.

I fixed my eye on him. “You didn't bring him in?”

“I brought him in for a time,” Walker said. “Just to keep his head attached to his shoulders. Then I let him go. I expect he's halfway gone by now.”

“Jesus Christ, Walker! How are we supposed to find out what's going on if you keep letting go all of our witnesses?”

Walker said calmly, “It was clear to me that Pops didn't know anything, and it wasn't in our best interest to hold him here. He's a prominent businessman in the Valley, after all.”

I glared at Walker's presumption for a time, but it just made my head throb even more. It occurred to me for the first time that Walker might already know about Pease and Noggle and the fire at the shack. Was he closing up ranks now, setting himself in opposition to me?

“Pete,” Johnson said, trying to cool things down. “The captain wants to see you upstairs. He says if you try to duck out, it'll be your head.” He looked at Walker and then said to me, “Maybe I shouldn't ask, but why aren't we looking for Pease anymore?”

I eyed them both. “Because I said we aren't. Is that all right with the both of you? Do you think we ought to take a vote on it?”

The patrolmen averted their eyes. “That's all right,” said Johnson.

“Because we can vote if you want to,” I said. “All those in favor of replacing Pete Caudill in charge of the investigation, raise your hands.”

“Take it easy, Detective,” said Walker. “We're just looking after our own selves a little bit.”

I stared at Walker, not angrily, but with relief that the colored man should talk to me frankly.

“Fair enough, I guess,” I said. “Let me say it this way: Pease is somewhere where he won't be found any time soon. And I know for a fact that he couldn't tell us anything we need to know about the men we're really after.”

Both men looked up at me briefly, then set their jaws and adopted a slack expression. Their eyelids lowered, and they began working bits of their breakfast from between their teeth.

“Okay, Pete,” said Johnson, “but maybe you can tell us a little more about what's going on here. Just for our own sakes, like Walker says.”

“Been talking, eh? Good. I don't want you talking to anyone else about any of it. Not anybody, see? And Johnson, I don't want you running up to Mitchell with anything unless you pass it by me, see?”

He shrugged his shoulders as if dumbfounded.

I drew up a chair and leaned close. “Maybe I'm too dumb to put it all together. It looks like somebody's trying to rustle things up with the colored boys down in the Valley and in Black Bottom. Somebody's killing people, white folks, colored folks. Lloyd's mixed up in it somehow. So you can see it's something heavier than just a few crackers with a grudge. That ain't all of it, but it's enough to tell you that you better watch your backsides. I expect that some real heat is in the works.”

“What would anybody stand to gain in all of it?” asked Johnson.

“Even when things get burned to the ground, somebody makes a profit,” said Walker.

“I don't give a damn about any of that,” I said. “My aim is to put a stop to it however I can. It won't be pretty. Now, you all can figure out for yourselves how wrapped up in it you want to get.”

There was a long silence. The men looked each other over and finally nodded.

“Now, Johnson, I've scribbled a few things down here for you to look into.”

“Not the library again?”

“Library, city hall, whatever. It's important. Did you come up with anything about Sherrill?”

Johnson shook his head. “Nothing in the papers, no property records, nothing. I think it must be an assumed name.”

“All right,” I said, “that's going to have to do. I've got something else, a little more personal. If either one of you catch wind of my nephew Alex, if you see him, you bring him in here to me. Just hold him in a cell till I can have a word with him, even if it means he has to spend a night or two here. I'll probably be back here again later today.”

“Pete,” said Johnson, “the captain did tell us to send you up to see him. Important, I guess. He said to mention the word ‘noggle,' but I'm not sure that is a word.”

My mouth notched toward grimness. I wondered when Johnson had decided it was all right to call me Pete. “Listen, Johnson,” I said. “No matter how far down in the gutter it looks like I'm getting, no matter how stupid you think I am or how unprofessional my police work might get, you don't call me by my given name. You can keep calling me Detective. How does that sit with you?”