The Devil's Own Rag Doll (25 page)

I had been ready to turn back but felt no real pleasure at having guessed things correctly. Somehow I felt that my steps were not my own, that I was being drawn forward into a game set up just for me. What I needed was a shot of whiskey to settle my thoughts. I considered going to fetch the bottle from the car but decided against it, for fear that the booze would rip into my empty stomach. When I turned to check the window nearest the grate, one of a bank of little panes reaching up ten feet above the sill, I found it unlocked, of course, and just about big enough for a child or a small man to slip through on the run. I pictured it in my mind: The runt hoofed it for a couple blocks, trotted up to the window, pushed it in, rolled over the sill, closed it up, and picked up the grate and made it underground.

I leaned over and tested the weight of the grate. Not so heavy for me, but I would have figured a little guy would have a hard time picking it up—unless someone was there to help him. A quick scan of the surrounding floor told me that wasn't likely.
So he must be strong—stronger than you'd expect,
I thought.
Make a note of it.

I stooped and laced the fingers of my good hand into the middle of the square of grating and lifted it away from the sunken bay in the floor. Quietly, I leaned it against the wall and then lowered myself into the deep trough until my shoes crunched on the dried chemicals that glittered like jewels at the bottom of a well. I could see that the trough fell away from the building through a flat opening barely large enough to squeeze through. Thinking that the wad of money hidden at home could buy me a new suit of clothes, I got down flat on my belly and peered into the darkness. The flashlight was weak, but I could see that there was a drop-off just the other side of the opening, maybe another six feet down. It seemed that a wider corridor led away from the well. It looked tight, but I thought I could squeeze through the opening and down to the lower corridor. Feet first, and covered now in dust, rat shit, and crystallized chemical residue, I lowered myself down till my feet landed on a round metal grate. Faintly, I could hear water moving far below.

I regretted the noise I made getting down into the narrow passage. I imagined a nest of vipers or rats springing to life, surrounding and overwhelming me, but when I stopped for a moment to gain my bearings, I heard nothing but my own raspy breath and the blood pounding in my ears. It seemed fitting to imagine a whole network of nigger-killing bastards skulking under the city; but what I saw in the feeble glow of the flashlight looked cramped and plain, like a maintenance passage between sewer lines or an old tunnel left over from Prohibition days, a way to get out during a raid. They were all over the city, I knew, and I expected that the narrow passage would lead only to a manhole in the street or to a shack at the edge of the property.

Before I started out down the passage, I closed my eye and tried to picture which direction I would be heading above the ground. I had twisted myself around so much inside the building that I could not decide. I wondered if I would be able to climb back up into the trough inside the building if the tunnel didn't lead anywhere. Without anything to step up on or a place to get a good grip, I knew I was in some trouble if there wasn't any other way out. I thought I might die down underground, and it flashed through my mind that I'd be reduced to screaming for help before that happened. From what I could see from the flashlight, there weren't any piles of bones stacked up anywhere.
If the rats can survive down here,
I thought,
so can I.

As I stooped forward, I realized that I had forgotten my hat in the car.
Bad luck for me today,
I thought.

I kept the light at my feet as I crept forward. The passage went on for a dozen yards, a dozen more, and seemed to be sinking slowly, graded down away from the mill. In the dim glow I could make out a turn a few more yards ahead. It seemed like I was moving yards at a time, but I might have been moving only inches. The walls were smooth and damp, slimy with condensation, and I braced myself with my free hand because the floor was slick under my hard soles. As I neared the corner, the flashlight began to go. I turned it to my face and shook it: a brief flare, then darkness. I stood there like a dope for a minute, choking down the panic; I had always been afraid of enclosed spaces. But as my vision adjusted, I realized that the darkness was not complete. A meager light seemed to bounce along the corridor, reflected from beyond another corner some distance ahead.

I stooped to place the flashlight gently on the ground, then drew my gun and inched forward as quietly as I knew how. When I drew near to the light that seemed to swirl like fog at the next corner, I heard it: a low rumbling, not clear enough to sound in the ears but felt in the belly. I stood for a moment before I realized what it was.
Snoring,
I thought.
Bastard's sleeping like a baby.

I stepped softly toward the light, trying to judge how far I had come from the carpet mill's perimeter. Maybe it was because of the missing eye, or maybe I had always been bad at such things. I could not even guess where I was. But as I moved forward, I decided what I'd do. Listen good, bust in, shoot 'em up, fall back down the corridor and up into the old building if I couldn't get them all. I almost laughed. Not much of a plan, but simple.

As I drew near, the snoring abruptly stopped. I heard someone drop his feet to the floor—no shoes—and the deep, heavy breathing of a man still half asleep. There was no other sound, no sign of any other man. From someplace behind me, I heard the faint scratching of a rat scurrying along, maybe checking to see if the flashlight would be good to eat. I crept forward at an achingly slow pace, trying to time my footfalls to the man's breathing. The corridor opened up into a room, and the dim light that filtered into it came from narrow windows high up on the walls. The man was holed up in someone's cellar.

When I was as sure as I was going to get that no one else was around, I curled myself around the corner till I could see the cot where the man sat scratching himself. The funk of the place burned sharply in my nostrils: piss and grease, sweat and beer. I took two steps toward the man and realized that the darkness of his skin was not merely shadow but pigment. I raised my gun and drew a bead.

“Pease,” I said, my voice a gargle.

Donny Pease turned toward me with a world of weariness in his expression. “One-eyed fool,” he said.

I extended the gun to arm's length and began to shuffle angrily toward him. “Go ahead and move, Pease. One good eye means I got real good aim now.”

“I ain't goin' nowhere.” There was a dull glimmer in his eyes. “You got me, I see.”

I hurried around the cot to get a clearer view of Pease's hands. As I stepped forward to put the barrel of my gun to Pease's neck, the light seemed to spark like lightning for a moment and my head snapped forward. My knees buckled; I wanted to piss. Before the light faded entirely, I crumpled toward the cot and my eye caught a close view of the flaking skin of Pease's knees.
The floor is cool,
I thought,
dry packed dirt.
I remember that the familiar smell of that dirt floor gave me a sweet feeling before I blacked out.

*   *   *

In the dark, I felt a sharp pain at my knee. Maybe a cramp but—growing sharper and clearer.

I came to with a jerk and tried to lash my leg away from the sharp thing, but I could not move it at all. I snapped my head from side to side, trying to clear the cobwebs. There was a snicker and a lower chuckle, and I sensed a small figure skipping away from me. Still I could not see; my left arm was immobilized, and my right was cuffed to something heavy. Both legs were bound tight. I felt I had to fight to catch my breath. After a moment, I realized that a burlap sack covered my head.

There were figures around me: two, maybe a third, quiet behind me. Skittering before me, nervous and excited, was a man I guessed to be the runt. He came close and stuck me in the leg again—something like the tip of an ice pick welded onto some brass knucks. I strained and lifted myself in the chair I was bound to. But my right wrist was handcuffed to something heavy and metal and my legs could not move, so I sat back down rather than fall on my face.

Snickering laughter from the runt, giggling.
A retard, maybe, a head case.
My stomach, already churning and empty, heaved up a bit more from the general air of him.

“Fairy,” I croaked.

The heel of the runt's little shoe cracked into my chest and sent the wind out of my lungs. The force of it tipped the chair back onto two legs for a moment.

“All right, Mr. Frye. We don't want to make Mr. Caudill uncomfortable.”

I bobbed my head from side to side, trying to form a picture of the room from the spangled light I could see through the holes in the rough fabric. I felt warmth oozing from both legs just above my knees, blood trickling down the inside of my baggy trousers and along my calf and into my shoe.
Nothing serious,
I thought.
The fairy likes to poke his little pin into things.

“You trouble me, Mr. Caudill. You disrupt my timetable. I suppose it's
Detective
Caudill, now, is it not?”

A snicker from the runt, and a raspy gut-laugh from a seated man to my right; dark, probably Pease. I heard a low grunt and heavy breathing directly behind me. That made three, plus the man who had spoken. Though the conversational tone was quite different from the speech I had heard in the old barn, I knew it was Sherrill. I could not guess where I was. If I had been unconscious, they might have taken me anywhere; I might have only been taken upstairs from the cellar. If it was some sort of hiding place, there might have been any number of rednecks lounging about in other rooms. I tried to let all the tension out of my arms, tried to save my strength.

“I apologize for my associate's behavior. You see, it's a grim business we're in, and he takes his amusement where he can.” Sherrill took a step into the room. “You really should take better care of your weapon, Detective. This revolver is filthy. That makes it, perhaps, untrustworthy, as liable to kill the owner as anyone else. And yet I've heard you're quite a marksman.”

Maybe my mind was filling in what my eye couldn't see, but I could make out his stooped figure in outline, leaning against a cabinet, waving the gun like it weighed too much for him.

I said, “Sherrill, is it? I heard you were dead.”

“Clearly you are in receipt of bad information.”

I worked my left arm and my legs. I was in a wooden chair. It could be broken, I knew, but my right wrist was handcuffed to something heavy and immovable; so if I broke free, I'd still be stuck.

“I believe the barrel of this thing has been bent! How can you shoot, Mr. Caudill, with a pistol so untrue? Is this the gun you used when you shot that little Negro boy in the neck?”

I said nothing, but I hoped he could feel the heat coming off me.

“Have I heard the story right, Mr. Caudill? You did shoot him in the neck, didn't you? For my money, that's the way to do it. I've seen a darky or two dispatched to hell with a shot to the neck. A true shot will sever the spinal cord, and the whole animal just flops over like a pile of soiled laundry. With only a fair shot, he'll at the least be discouraged from sassing you. Isn't that right, Mr. Pease?”

“I guess,” said Pease.

“Mr. Pease is just waiting for the money he's been promised. When he gets it, I suppose he'll be on his way down to Dixie and his kin and all the little pickaninnies he's fathered. What's your feeling about the Negro situation, Detective?”

I thought for a moment, then murmured, “Pease, you know he's going to shoot you with that gun.”

There was a moment of deep quiet, then the hiss of Pease's pent-up breath being expelled through his clenched teeth. I heard a rustle and guessed Pease was going for a gun; but of course he wasn't fast enough. Two quick shots sounded in the little room, followed by another, more studied one, and Pease let out a gurgling breath and slipped from his chair to the floor.

“We've been keeping an eye on you, Detective. We took note of your stroll in the park with Reverend Jenkins this morning. Touching. And we note that you've taken up with your brother's widow. That shows a surprising Old Testament flair, something I hadn't expected from you, Mr. Caudill.”

I tried to remember if I had heard a gun hit the floor when Pease dropped, tried to judge how far away it would be or if it was still inside Pease's coat.

“What is your feeling about all those good white men fighting each other over there while the Negroes are moving right into their houses and bedding down their women at home? Not talking? Your father found his tongue when we strung him up. Couldn't stop talking, point of fact. He begged for his life like a woman. Shat in his pants, sorry to say, lost every shred of dignity he might have fancied toward the end.”

I thought,
At least it means they're afraid of me, trussing me up like this.

“It would be easy to think of me as a sort of monster, wouldn't it, Mr. Caudill? It's easy to fool yourself about things. That's how we can tell the weaklings, the cowards, from the brave men we all hoped to be as boys. Weaklings and cowards always shy away from making difficult decisions. When something true stares you in the face, you want to run away, don't you? You can think of me what you wish, but deep in that charcoal soul of yours, you are certain that I am right. You loathe the mud people just as I do. You'd like to do something about it, but you won't. You're a coward, simply. When was the last time you let yourself touch one? Have you ever touched a colored man, except in anger? That Hardiman girl was a Negro-loving whore. Your father was a Negro-loving whore for that pimp Lloyd. And I think you know why I'll shed no tears for your partner's misfortunate demise. Some things just aren't done or even spoken of, no matter how crude the company.”