The Devil's Own Rag Doll (10 page)

Saturday, June 12

Things were getting so snarled that I wasn't sleeping right. I didn't want to get out of bed, but the pressure in my bladder forced me up, and I shuffled into the bathroom to relieve it.

As I stood before the toilet, I thought,
It always comes at you sideways, blindsides you.
Then a laugh like gravel worked up from my belly. Blindsided, so to say. Letting down a heavy stream of piss, I brought to mind a time when I felt like I could do what I wanted. Or maybe I just didn't want so much in those days. The first couple of years on the force, I was big and swaggering, I looked good in the uniform, and I knew the punks wouldn't sass me when I walked by swinging the nightstick. It was still Prohibition, and everybody was drinking twice as much as they do now that it's legal. It's the only time in my life I ever really drank much.

I didn't need to know much about what was going on in those days, just had to worry about what was happening under my nose. Right before my eyes. The bigger picture was a problem for lawyers, politicians, or rich folks who could afford to make the effort. You had a beat to take care of, a clear area of responsibility, and you could go home to another life at the end of the shift. The rumrunners could bump each other off, and that was not a problem unless it spilled over to the civilians or unless it became incriminating to some judge or elected official. Later, during the lean years, when folks broke the law a little to bring home some bread for their families, you could look the other way.

Now it was different. I didn't remember the other war being this way. Though I had been just a kid, it seemed over before it began. I could not remember worrying during that war, even though my own father had gone over for a time. But this new one seemed to have sucked something vital out of the city. All the good men had gone off to fight Jerry and the Japs. All the men who could see what had to be done had gone off to do it, leaving a makeshift crew of decrepit grandfathers, 4-F rejects, head cases, and teenagers to hold things together till the storm blew over. All the buildings were the same. The streets, the stink, and the muddy river still rolled along as before, but the city tottered somehow. From my black view, it seemed at the brink of collapse. While all the whole men were off fighting the enemies overseas—the ones you could pick out easily—the rest of us were left to sort out the lurking demons living beneath the husk of the city and inside our own skins.

Well. I had kissed my brother's wife. My dead brother's wife. Widow. So what? A moment of hunger had flared up and I had quickly snuffed it out, or at least pushed it below the surface again to pop up another time.

I washed up and ran a dull razor over my cheeks. I let the nicks bleed till they dried over and cleaned the blood off with a rag after I finished dressing. It was too early, I knew, to expect Bobby to pull around the corner, blaring the horn. So I sat in the kitchen and waited for the coffee to percolate. There was nothing left to eat, no eggs and no sausage, not even bread for toast. When the coffee looked dark enough, I poured out a cup and sipped without tasting, staring across the table with my head propped on my bad hand.

Well,
I thought,
it's done. I've been kidding myself, I guess. Maybe that's what's been eating the boy. He could see it coming. He can't help seeing me as a duller and meaner version of his father. So how does this work?
I wondered. And then I thought,
It doesn't. It doesn't go forward until this thing with the Hardiman girl is straightened out.
Something deep and messy had been stirred up, and Bobby and I were into it. I'd put whatever I could into figuring it out and going along with Bobby—night and day if necessary—until the whole thing was in the ground. And then we'd see what was left. I thought I would call Eileen later in the day and tell her to hold on for a time, to let her know the clumsy kiss hadn't been a shove to get myself moving in the opposite direction. The Hardiman mess might veer toward the sort of trouble that involved blood and beatings and bullets, I knew; and in the unforgiving morning light, I thought to myself that there was something more frightening to me about dealing with Eileen and all the emotional entanglement than about facing another man's gun.

I swore I could feel the hot trickle of the coffee all the way down my gullet and into my stomach.
That's another thing,
I thought. When I was a kid, my digestion was always good, no matter what I ate or when I ate it.
Enough of that. Straighten things out, let the lesser things fall away, and maybe the old stomach'll even out, too.
I downed the last of my cup and filled it again, then grabbed my coat and hat and went out to the porch to wait for Bobby.

*   *   *

“Chesterfields, Pete,” said Bobby, considering the cigarette he held between bony fingers as he drove. “Know what they taste like to me? Just like
chocolate cake.
Can't live without 'em. Wouldn't want to.”

“I don't see it,” I said. “I don't like chocolate cake.” I thumbed through the files from the coroner's inquest that Bobby had obtained late the night before. I forced myself to look at the photographs long enough to burn the images into my memory. Atop the pile of grisly pictures, there was a studio head shot of Jane Hardiman. I thought the photo might have been made for a debutante's ball. You could see the darkness in her, the anger, even with the lovely smile on her lips and the way the studio lighting fell down over her wavy pressed hair. Her eyes were calm and reminded me of the Rembrandt pictures I used to look at as a boy. Like one of those pictures the sad old painter had made of himself toward the end of his time, she seemed to look out onto the world with living eyes. The photograph, without color or breath, was more lively than my paltry memory of our brief meeting.
You should have known,
her eyes seemed to say—a trick of my sorry mind. She was dead; she was clearly gone, as I had seen too plainly for myself, and it was only ink and paper before me now.

“That's why I always give two bits to the kid collecting for the cigarette fund for the boys over there, see? 'Cause I'd be crawling the walls in two minutes if I ever ran out.”

“Shut up, will you? I can't read and listen to your flapping gooms at the same time.” I scanned the written report. Cause of death: suffocation, evidence of garrote around neck, though several dozen superficial knife wounds had been carved into the girl, most prior to death. Carpet fibers mashed into all the wet and bloody places. No trace of semen but severe damage to genitals and anus, presumably from the broken-off broom handle found protruding from vagina. It had not been quick. It had not been done in a fit of passion or stupidity or jealousy. I read the worst parts over and over until I could carry the girl's violation deep in the pit of my belly. I wanted to let it stain me enough so that I wouldn't have to think when the time came for action.

Finally I looked up from the papers—I could not afford to lose the use of my only eye. I looked over at my partner and noted the darkness under his eyes, deepening to black toward the base of his bony nose. I said, “Jesus, Bobby, you look like a toilet.”

“Time enough for sleep in the grave.”

“If you don't sleep, you won't be able to do anything right. You've got to give the old carcass a chance to catch up.”

“Black coffee and Chesterfields, that's what I need,” Bobby replied, smiling thinly. “Listen, Pete, maybe you don't understand how serious all this could be for us.”

“I got it fine.”

“I mean that somebody, almost anybody here, if he had a mind to, could make real trouble for us. Just takes one call to the Old Man and we'd be in it up to our chins.”

“Like Hardiman? What's he got to gain by rolling on us?”

Bobby stretched his long fingers over the top of the steering wheel. “I don't worry about Hardiman so much. See, he's in it up to his neck already, and there are some things that just can't be smoothed over, no matter how much money you might have. I'm being funny now, when I shouldn't. But you know, I usually walk around with half a feeling that everybody is out to get me. That just helps to keep me alert to what's going on. In the usual case, though, I might joke about it, but it's not really so true—got me? In regular times, there's always somebody you can count on being in your corner. With what we're stepping into now, though, who can say?”

“You think Mitchell's on the funny side somehow?” I asked. “In a tough spot like this, he gives us what to work with? Johnson and Walker?”

“You can bet,” said Bobby, “that Mitchell's got other pots going on the back burners. But I don't worry that much about him. I've made my place skating over the top of things—I'm a slippery guy and all of that. But this here … it seems like the heat is melting things. We don't have a place to stand.”

My brain continued to plod along, as if I had ever been able to get to the bottom of any problem by a simple process of going through the elements one by one. “Well,” I said, “Johnson seems like a good kid. But Walker's hard to read.”

“You've got to figure that Walker—and every other colored officer on the force—knows what you did to that colored boy. That's still a raw spot. You've got to understand that it's always going to figure in the social situation.” Bobby scratched at his stubbly chin. “But that's neither here nor there. What I'm thinking, and what's been bothering me, is that something's going on and nobody wants to say what it is. It's like we're being set up for something.”

“Sure, you got it right. You and me, huh? Who'd be better for the job? We can do all the dirty work, and we've both been under the bridge enough to take the heat if it comes down to that. Who'll miss us if it doesn't fall to the good side? Just now the big fish are taking notice of us, that's all. Maybe we've been lucky it didn't catch up to us before now.” I felt a dry pang of hunger work through my gut. “Or it could be that you're spooked because you need some sleep. What do you think, Mitchell isn't telling us something? Then why would he send his own nephew to get mixed up in it?”

Bobby said, “Maybe Johnson isn't on the level.”

“Nah,” I said, “that kid's a Boy Scout if I ever saw one. But I'll tell you what. You take Walker aside and see what he's found out. He's not likely to spill too much with me around anyway. I'll take Johnson and see what's what.”

“Pete,” he said, sliding to a stop at the curb, “I have to take the blame for dragging you into this. I honestly thought—”

“We're partners, aren't we?” I took a long look down Beaubien at the spectral figures already hustling to their offices. So early in the day, and the heat already made everything waver like a mirage over the concrete. “Just make sure you get me out of it.”

*   *   *

“Jesus, Johnson, I told you to scratch that notebook,” I said. I stood with my foot on the dressing bench while Johnson smoothed his tie. We were alone in the locker room except for the attendant, who puttered out of earshot, fixing a mop head to a handle.

“I know,” he said. “But it makes me look official. When I'm talking to someone, if I'm writing, they get an idea that I might give them a ticket or something. When they know they haven't done anything I can arrest them for, sometimes they talk a little funny. You know how it is. But a ticket, well, they know that's going to cost them something, and they might not think I'm so funny after all.”

“Don't get too smart too soon, Johnson. That notebook won't do you any good if some big nigger decides to knock a sap across your skull.”

I studied Johnson's smooth face. The young patrolman was different from the boys I had hired in with so many years ago. Back then it was a good job for a big boy to try out for. Maybe times had changed. In the old days, it wasn't a full day if you hadn't cracked a wino or a racket boy with your nightstick. Simple fear let you do your job and let the decent folks know they'd better stay decent. But I could see that Johnson would never walk a beat in the way that it used to be done. He didn't look like he'd smack anybody's mouth just for being lippy. Still, he'd grown up with his father as the sheriff in Kalkaska, and the men from the lumber camps up that way weren't soft. He must have seen some of that.

I said, “What's the story with you and Walker?”

“As I think about it now, I should've let Walker go in by himself first, to see if he could shake something loose. But we both went in together, so we didn't get much. I don't think even Walker, by himself … you know how it is.”

“How is it?” I asked.

“Even though he's one of theirs, so to speak, even though he's a colored man, when he steps up wearing that uniform, they clam up on him. I think it's even worse for him than me.” Johnson stopped to think. “We didn't have much in the way of colored folks where I grew up. We had Indians.”

“Listen, Johnson,” I said, “this isn't a job where you can afford to be soft.”

“I know that, Detective. I don't intend to let anyone get the best of me. But I just keep thinking about different ways to get around the problem.”

“Things have been bad between the Negroes and the police since long before you were born. You've got a lot of ideas now, and maybe you're thinking you'll be able to do a little something about it. That's all right. From where I'm sitting, I know you'll get over that.” I leaned closer to him. “But for now, what we're worried about is cleaning up this little mess without going down the toilet ourselves. I expect you'll do what you're told so I don't get shot in my ass while you're off talking or thinking somewhere.”

“I can follow orders.”

“I expect you can follow orders,” I said. “I don't care about that. But I get the feeling lately that I'm stepping into a big heap of something smelly. I aim to come out on my feet. Can I count on you to help me out with that?”