The Devil's Own Rag Doll (27 page)

As I approached my house, air raid sirens began to moan. My headlamps carved a tunnel through darkness as the lights in every house blinked out for the drill. I was too tired to bear it. I trudged toward my door and did not care to check if anyone might be waiting in the dark for me. I flipped on the lights and let my hunger pull me through the kitchen and into the small pantry. Stooping down to the lower shelves, I saw a few cans of beans and a jar of preserved apricots from the old woman across the street. Something seemed unfamiliar far in the back corner, and an odd bit of hope came up that I might have forgotten something tasty back there, something worth heating up and eating. The jar was dark, and I thought that probably the seal had broken. But there was no smell. I leaned in until I felt the shelf cutting into my chest. With the tips of my fingers, I was able to drag the jar close. I held it up to the light, swirled it. Even with the exhausted dullness of my mind and the itch of my dry eye, there was no mistaking it:
Hell if that ain't a nigger's dick,
I thought.
Balls, too. I know I didn't get that down at Baker's Market.
With a sigh, I carried the jar of particulars and the jar of apricots to my table and sat down. I stared dreamily for a time at the hacked-off flesh turning slowly in the jar and had to guess that it had been stewing in the formaldehyde for many years. It was like a relic or an antique, something a proud hillbilly might pass down to his young'uns as a badge of family honor. Now somebody had put it into my cupboard, trying to make me look—I found I could not imagine anymore where all the stupid pranks might lead me.

A sharp, cutting rap at the front door jerked me to attention and raised my anger. I bulled to the door and whipped it open.

“What?”

“It's an air raid. Lights out.”

I sized up the air patrol officer: short, fat, bloated and red in the face, his soft neck drooping over his tight collar. He wore a white helmet and slapped a white nightstick into the palm of his left hand.

“Beat it, you pig, or I'll shove that stick up your fat ass.”

The man's jaw dropped and snapped back up with a shake of his wattles. He stepped backward from the porch, muttering, “It's a big fine, Mr. Smarty.”

I closed the door and stepped slowly toward my apricots. Before I could reach the kitchen, I heard another knock at the door, softer. I wheeled and pulled my revolver from the rig, opened the door, and thrust out the muzzle.

“Ho! Ho! Take it easy, Mr. Caudill!”

I saw a tall colored man skip a step backward. His pink palms flew up. The gray wool of his hair peeked from under a chauffeur's cap.

“Mrs. Hardiman, she wants a word with you.” He gestured toward the long black Lloyd Town Car that stood two houses down.

We walked to the car, and the chauffeur opened the door for me. I peeked in before entering to see that it was indeed a woman inside. The chauffeur closed the door after me and then stepped a few feet away from the car, politely, not quite out of earshot.

“Oh, God,” she said. “What's that smell? Kerosene?”

“Some kind of lotion,” I said. “Like your pretty husband might use.”

“Mr. Caudill, oh, dear, you're a fright to look at.”

I rubbed my bad hand over the thick black stubble that covered my jaw. “I am.” I saw her blue eyes glittering, and I pulled in the thick smoke from her filtered cigarette—it filled me like food somehow.

“Well,” she said, “I won't keep you. I've just come to tell you who killed my poor Jane.” She turned away and exhaled rich smoke through the open window. “It was my husband.”

I held myself still for a moment, wondering what new game was being played at my expense. I peered at her and struggled to see what her eyes were doing in the darkness.

“Lady,” I said, “I don't know why you brought yourself all the way down to the slums to tell me that kind of a story.”

“Oh,” she said, “I know he would never dirty his hands personally. But it was him, you shouldn't doubt it.”

“I do doubt it. But what I'm wondering is—and lady, you can see I'm dead on my feet here, right?” I tilted my head and wondered what sort of monster I looked like to her. “What I'm wondering is, why would you want to tell me about it even if it was true?”

“I should have thought you could use the help, since you haven't made any progress to speak of.”

“Don't worry yourself,” I said. “We'll get to the bottom of it. But go ahead and try your story out on me anyway. Why would your husband kill his own daughter?”

“Perhaps, Mr. Caudill, as a police officer, you've seen many things I haven't. You are accustomed to wallowing in the seedier side of things. But can't you imagine that there might be some things, some people who might be hurt, deeply hurt, by things that ladies in my society mustn't speak of? You've met my husband, haven't you? What was your impression?”

“He's a good shot with a long barrel.”

“Is that as far as your powers of observation can take you?”

“He doesn't like niggers,” I said, loud enough for the chauffeur to hear. “He's got a picture of himself as a big man.”

“Yes.” She slid the tip of her cigarette out the window and gently rolled it along the edge of the glass until the ash fell. She looked toward the porch of the bungalow next to mine and fell silent.

I felt the cogs in my head grinding dully. Hardiman hated niggers, he could handle a shotgun, he felt himself going places. The lady had lost a daughter the hard way. And at once it hit me, a deadened flush of what, at a better time, might have passed for pity.

“So you're trying to say,” I said softly, “that your husband had his own daughter killed because she was running with a dark crowd.”

“You can put it that way if you want to,” she said.

“How would you put it?”

“Well, Mr. Caudill. You're unattached, unmarried—for the best, I'd say. You've a stunted sense of paternity. But try to imagine how you'd feel if you lost someone dear to you, perhaps a younger sister. You don't strike me as a delicate man. To put it delicately, though, I might suggest that my husband felt
unnaturally
possessive toward my daughter Jane.”

My anger flared up, and I tried to clamp down on it. Here—was this woman talking to me about my sister Eliza? Could she really know anything about that? Or was she sensibly talking down to me, trying to help me to feel what I ought to feel if I wasn't a monster? I worked my jaws and swallowed hard. The day had been so long and tiring that I could not remember just what day it was. I let the pieces fall together in my mind. Of course Hardiman felt like he owned Jane; he acted like he owned or could own everything in the world. I could imagine that Hardiman had some acquaintance with the runt and his thugs from the earlier days when Lloyd was struggling with the unions. It wouldn't be a stretch to guess that he could hire them to take care of a wayward daughter, one who had kicked him hard in the only place he had any feeling.

“I never allowed myself to believe that Roger Hardiman married me for love, you see. Forgive me—you are poor. You're enough of a man to hear me tell you that, or have I mistaken you for someone else? Furthermore, I should say that you'll always be poor—or at least that you could never mount up enough money in your lifetime to make yourself into something else. There are circles here in Detroit, and across the country, in which you may never travel, do you understand?”

“Lady,” I said, “all this just rolls off of me.”

“Mr. Caudill, I can trace my family back to the
Mayflower.
We arrived here in Detroit in 1813.”

Things seemed fizzy and soft at the edges. I said, “You're practically royalty.”

She was too cool to be amused. “My husband has aspirations, you see. For the greater family's sake, I support him in those aspirations.”

“And it wouldn't be good to have a daughter running around the dark side of town. It would be some sticky mess if she decided to spill her guts about the whole thing. It would be hard to cover up something like that. It could stop up a man's arse-perations entirely.”

I felt like I was getting to something, but I couldn't see it all together. If Hardiman had some kind of involvement in the killing of the girl, then he had hired Bobby and me just to find Pease and kill him—or just to set us up as likely fools to hang it all on. Jasper Lloyd had plainly engaged me for the nasty task of chasing down Sherrill. I had become a piece of hired meat. Now the lady was trying to work me up for something, too.

“I have no intention of leaving my husband.”

“That's your business,” I said.

“Some things, Mr. Caudill, can't be changed. Some things can't be forgiven. I have faith that one day, when all is said and done, my husband will face some justice for what he's done in this life.”

“Just what do you want from me, lady? You want me to see to that justice, is that it?”

“I forbid it!”

“You wha—you
forbid
it?” I felt the clutching of a chuckle in my belly. “Lady, you've got some nerve coming over here after the day I've had.”

“Never mind my husband. In fact, I'm charging you with his welfare. If you or anyone else should harm even a hair on his head, I'll see to it that you live the rest of your life in misery. As I say, my family has been in Detroit for generations. Almost every sitting judge in the county is related to me or is a friend of the family. You must know also that we count as close friends the publishers of all the papers in this city. We can make you out to be any kind of monster we want you to be. A shame, a disgrace to your family, a coward. So you'll regret it, Mr. Caudill, if you think of trying anything with my husband.”

“Why the hell did you come over here to tell me he killed your daughter if you didn't want me to do anything about it?”

“There are other things.” She paused. “Roger doesn't think I know about the other things. Or perhaps he knows but trusts that I'll do what's necessary for the family name. There is a house up along the lake, where he keeps his harlots from time to time. My driver can show you where it is.”

“Is he up there?” I thought of my jar of apricots and the pickled nuts and felt myself struggling to breathe.

“No. He won't be anywhere near there. He's in Washington for a few days.”

“Who's up there?”

“It's rather secluded. Rustic, you might say. Just the place for hiding out—for someone unnatural—or for a sort of societal outcast. You get my meaning. But that's not really something I care to discuss. You can call it a favor.” She pulled the butt of her cigarette from the holder with two slender fingers and slipped it out the window. “I've also come to tell you something you seem too thick to have guessed on your own.”

“Spill it, lady. This is getting tired now.”

“Your partner's wife, pretty thing, and her daughter—Lucy, is it? You're a crude man, Mr. Caudill, rough at the edges, really, but surely the arithmetic of your schoolboy days hasn't left you entirely?”

“Spell it out for me anyway,” I said.

“Did you know Mr. Swope when he was first married? It's a simple subtraction: You know the age of the girl, and you know how many years they were married. You might have put it together yourself, if you'd take more of an interest in people.”

I worked the numbers dully, and after a moment began to understand.

“So the child isn't Bobby's,” I said. “Why does that concern you?”

“I don't suppose your limited education has exposed you to the study of genetics. What's the likelihood of a dark-haired woman giving birth to a girl with curly blonde hair?”

I said, “I think I'm starting to follow you now.” An image floated up in my mind of Hardiman's wavy blond hair fluffing up like a cockatoo, snapping forward from the thrust of my fist on his face. Spelling it out for myself like a bad movie script, I could see how it might have worked out: After Anna's brother died, she was alone, and she needed someone to watch out for her. She started out with Hardiman, and her little girl Lucy was
his
—an heir and an embarrassment to the Hardiman name. Bobby had managed to get her clear of that mess. It was just what Bobby needed to throw the scent of perfume off of himself. The photographs gave him the leverage he needed with Hardiman.

“Mr. Caudill, something about your childlike nature is rather charming. If your hygiene should tidy up a bit, you'd be quite attractive, in an animal sort of way. The missing parts rather lend something to the mystique, don't you think? Or perhaps I've been reading too many potboilers.”

“Lady—”

“Don't think of it! I only suggest it because—what would Roger think!” She opened her cigarette case and found it empty. “I've no rancor for the woman. It was a desperate time for her, I suppose. One trades on what one holds of value. My concern is for the girl and for any unusual or untoward interest my husband might take in her. I've given them a little money to make a new start somewhere. I ask you not to try to locate her, wherever she goes.”

I was finally at a loss for words. I left the car and trudged back to my house, instinctively trying to ignore the literal sense of everything Mrs. Hardiman had told me. The lady wanted Anna gone, sure. Maybe because she hated Anna, maybe because a bastard child running around might snarl Hardiman's chances at the number one spot at Lloyd Motors, or maybe because the woman had some genuine concern for Lucy and could not have choked down her husband's behavior a second time. Then, too, as Bobby would have noted, it was a question of money. Little Lucy was worth money in the same way that the queer pictures of Hardiman could have been.

I heard the big Lloyd's engine fire up and drive away. The only light in my house came from the bare bulb over the kitchen table, casting a warm and yellow glow into the living room, where I stood with my hand on the back of the old overstuffed chair. My fatigue seemed to swell up my sinuses and press in my ears. I felt everything buzzing faintly.