The Devil's Own Rag Doll (3 page)

We were heading to the west side, a little pocket around Wyoming where they let the dark folks stay.
She's somewhere in the city,
I thought.
She could be anywhere.

“Take it easy, Bobby,” I said. “You're driving like a rumrunner.”

“I tell you, Pete, what a town! It's taking the war to show the world what's really important. Detroit steel! We've got to think ahead to what's going to happen after this whole Hitler thing blows over. We should put our money where it'll make a little something for us. You think Chrysler or the Dodge brothers or Jasper Lloyd sat around waiting for things to happen? No! Got to stay ahead of the game!”

Bobby made himself at home as he drove. When he didn't need it for the clutch, he hiked his left foot up onto the seat and rested his knee against the open window. He put the old Chevy through a workout, drove six blocks the wrong way down John R, clipped the mirror off a new Lloyd City Cruiser parked on the corner at Harper. He eyed the crowds flashing by full of women shopping and running out for lunch dressed in office wear. “This is the place to be, all right. Anybody could get laid in this town. I'd bet my ass on it, even a three-letter man could get laid around here!” He glanced at me and rapped two bony knuckles onto my chest. “Hell, even a one-eyed gimp could get some action now and again if he put his mind to it. You should get out a little more, that's my take on the whole matter.”

“You talk like a woman sometimes,” I said. “Just talk and more talk.”

“I'm always ready for action,” said Bobby. “Trouble is I get nothing but dragging feet whenever I try to scare something up.”

“Okay, I got you.” I let my face go slack. The last thing I thought I needed was Bobby Swope's advice on how to improve my social life. “How should it go with Pease?”

“You're the man with the rough-stuff experience, Pete.” Bobby ditched his butt out the window and fumbled for another smoke. “But see, think of it this way. Pease is a known felon from the auto beef in St. Louis, and he's been known to carry a weapon. He might also be found in possession of a small quantity of an illicit substance, namely a little packet of reefer”—he patted the inside pocket of his jacket—“if he gives us any trouble. That won't look bad if we end up having to make a report of all this. So you can use your discretion about the persuasive stuff.”

“What about the girl?” I asked. “If she's that type, she'll be back over as soon as things cool down.”

“I call that job security, Pete,” said Bobby. He tapped a finger three times against his forehead, leaving three white marks on his skin that took their time coming back to pink. “I'm always thinking ahead.”

I wondered if Captain Mitchell had expected that his new detective would receive such errant guidance when he paired me with Bobby to learn the ropes and get a handle on procedure. Mitchell was hard to figure, but he was not a fool. It had been such a surprise that I had done so well on the detective's exam that nobody in the brass knew what the hell to do with me. They all knew me as a pug, a big lug, and I guess people in general don't want to go to the trouble of thinking twice about anything if they don't have to. In fact, I wasn't sure myself why I took the exam in the first place. Bobby had told me that it seemed like somebody higher up was pulling some strings, maybe on account of my old man's popularity. So there I was with Bobby, so full of go-go-go, and I just fell into the rough stuff because it felt comfortable. I knew I could throw a scare. But it isn't easy to change into another man, and I wondered if I'd ever get to be much of a thinking detective.

Trying to feel Bobby out, I said, “You're saying it would be okay to bust his nose?”

“Okay with me,” said Bobby.

“Break a couple fingers?”

“That'll hurt.” Bobby grinned and flicked his butt out the window, half smoked.

“Break his arm?”

“Well, we don't want to make too much of a fuss, after all.”

“I got you.”

I guess I was happy enough just to do what I was told. Maybe that was the one thing about me that always rattled my old man. He was looking for a little initiative out of me, and he never found it. I guess I took the detective exam as a nod to him. Sure, he would have wanted it. What you go through with your family works on you, underground, no matter how much you try to tell yourself that you've put all of it behind you. My old man used to talk about freedom and independence—and he seemed to want to hold on to an idea about this country like he was an immigrant. But freedom, as I had it figured, was just a way of saying that you were responsible for what you did every minute of the day. You had to decide all along what you should do. It could tire you out from thinking. So when it came down to it, I had always been willing to be told what to do, as long as it wasn't too far out of line.

But nobody would ever tell you exactly what they wanted. Bobby was an example: I could bite my way closer to a picture of the situation by asking questions, and sooner or later I'd get an idea where the lines were drawn. But Bobby liked to hint around, to wink and lay a finger to the side of his nose. For Bobby, the lines were always part of a negotiation; they could always be shifted or ignored if a better deal showed up, especially if they weren't drawn in anything firmer than sand in the first place.

It was a bit of a drive to get to the little colored section on the west side. As we rolled toward Pease's apartment building, we pulled a lot of eyeballs from their business in the overcrowded district. The rows of small apartment buildings, though generally made of brick, dropped bits of spalled masonry and crumbling mortar to the walk. Everything sat too close to the road. Along the edge where the concrete met the buildings and in all the cracks in the sidewalks, weeds poked up and spilled out in fronds to catch sun and water. In between the small businesses, a few rickety wood houses stood, all with big porches on the upper and lower flats. These were filled generally with older folks and very young children, and I could feel them staring. I guessed the colored folks were probably tired of the shit that seemed always to roll their way.

Bobby crept along the curb, casing Pease's building. It was like all the rest; the windows were open to let the feeble breeze through, and yet the blinds were drawn shut to keep out the sun. I thought,
Why would she want to come to such a filthy place? What in her private-school life of leisure could make her want to dirty herself this way?
Roger Hardiman should have had enough money, I imagined, to keep his family from falling apart. I checked my mind from wondering too much about what Jane and Pease might be doing inside, or what kind of fussy talk it must bring up in the district to see a white girl going up to a colored man's apartment. It was only a job for us. We had not been hired to involve ourselves any more than we had to, and yet I found myself gritting my teeth and squeezing my hands into fists. Maybe the girl would turn out to be a foul-mouthed shrew, and we'd have to drag her kicking and screaming back to the car. But I was stirred up with feeling, with jealousy or anger or an odd protective instinct, and I did not want to put a reason to it. I was glad when Bobby parked next to a hydrant and killed the motor.

“Some joint, ah?” he said. From the outside, from the street, it wasn't easy to see anything wrong. Colored kids were just out of school for the summer, running and screaming, ripping up the tiny patches of grass, and scrawny old gents sat on benches and chairs and tried to soak up warmth into their dry bones. But when we stepped into the cramped vestibule and scanned the mailboxes for Pease's name, I knew something was up. I could smell every onion that had ever been cooked in the building. The odor hung in the air, seeping from the soggy, piss-grade lumber of the trim and doors and from the plaster flaking from the ceiling.
The air just isn't moving,
I thought. It was like the hush that falls over a room after somebody sends glass crashing to the floor. Blood came up in my face, and my scalp bristled.

Bobby tapped one of the boxes: Pearson, scrawled in uppercase letters in smudged pencil, a name Pease had used in St. Louis. Second floor, straight shot toward the back. Bobby took the stairs at the front of the building, and I walked through the dim hallway to the back stairs, feeling my shoulders brush against the walls. As I thumped up the steps, colored boys began to pass me on the way down, creeping along the rail with their eyes put aside, the only sound the swish of their too-big trousers. One by one they went. Then, as I got to the top, the last of them tried to push past me. I grabbed the boy's bony arm and jerked him back hard enough to make him yelp.

I judged him to be no more than thirteen, tall for his age. His bones seemed recently grown and now waited for the flesh to catch up. He couldn't stop his big wet eyes from staring at my eye patch. I almost let him go.

“What's going on here, boy?” I said, growling and pulling the boy close to me.

“I don't know nothin',” he said, too scared to wriggle or pull away.

“What's your name, boy?” I could see the boy's eyes begin to skitter. “Don't lie to me!”

“Joshua.”

“You know Donny Pease?”

The name lit up the boy's eyes, but before I could say any more, Bobby's voice boomed in the still air. “Caudill! God damn it, Caudill!”

I pushed the boy aside and hoofed it double time to Pease's door, pulling out my revolver as I went.

I couldn't see anything at first because Bobby stood just inside the doorway. The heavy revolver at his side seemed to stretch his arm, so that his white wrist stuck out from his sleeve. He had pulled off his hat, showing the few black hairs he had left on his prematurely balding head. I shouldered him aside with my pistol up, thinking—if I was thinking of anything—that I could protect him from whatever was inside.

But it was too late for protecting, and more trouble than a gun could blast away: Young Jane Hardiman sat sprawled on the couch, her legs spread, her pleated skirt pulled up to her chin, and dried blood covering all but a few glimpses of the pale skin on her thighs. It seemed like a big wind had blasted her there. Seeing her arranged that way, facing the door, with her hair flying up and stiff from dried blood, I felt like I ought to run berserk. My teeth gnashed together, my lips pulled back, and the blood ran into my arms and hands; I would have squeezed off a shot into the ceiling if the pistol had not been so close to my face.

I had not been used to making words about something like that, even though I'd seen worse, and plenty of it. The girl was dead, and any thought of making a happier life for her would have to be put to rest, too. Part of me heard Bobby quietly closing the door behind us, and another part thought,
Nothing will be simple again for a long, long time.

CHAPTER 2

The day had been too long and too hot, so I smoothed my hair back with my palms and pressed my white handkerchief over my forehead and nose to wipe off the oily sheen that had collected. As I sat in the car with Bobby on the long circular drive of Roger Hardiman's mansion, I could see stiff-postured shadows moving across the great windows.

“Listen, Pete, try to be polite in there,” said Bobby. “You have to know how to talk to people. Just let me take it. Let me do the talking.”

I felt lousy enough that I wanted to stab someone with my bitterness. “I guess this means I won't ever see my thirty-five bucks,” I said.

“Jesus, Pete, don't say anything about that. We'll be lucky if we keep our jobs after this.”

“That girl was out of luck before we came anywhere near that place,” I told him.

“You're not getting the point here, Pete. It doesn't matter what we
could
have done. That girl is dead and we're mixed up in it. If Hardiman decides pull the rug out from under us, all he has to do is give the word to Old Man Lloyd and we're finished. Finished.”

“All right, Bobby,” I said. “Don't think I don't feel bad about the girl. I feel like hell about it. But Hardiman can shove his money up his ass if he thinks I'm going to take the heat for it. He should have been looking after his own. Some big shooter if he can't keep track of his own little girl.”

“All right, all right, I hear you,” said Bobby. “Let's just go in and see if I can smooth things out a little bit.”

By sticking with Bobby, I was walking into a mess. I just shrugged and put my hat back onto my head.
She's gone,
I thought.
All the way gone.

Since the heat of the day hadn't yet settled in like it would later in the summer, the evening had brought a cool breeze off Lake St. Clair. I thought that maybe the moneyed folks here in Grosse Pointe had managed somehow to bring the cooler weather with them when they moved out of Detroit. Downtown, the high buildings and parking lots and wide paved streets seemed to trap the heat in a way that the lush lawns of the Pointes did not. I was not envious, exactly, of the big homes and the fancy automobiles. It was too much work and trouble to maintain all of it. But I'd take the money without the mess; money would let me live like I wanted to.

We walked over the cobbles of Hardiman's drive and up the steps to the vestibule. Bobby lifted a shaky hand toward the knocker. The doors opened inward suddenly, and a well-dressed man with a medical bag brushed past us. He didn't even have to look at us to decide that we weren't worth looking at. Inside, a colored servant woman looked at us with bright eyes.

“May I help you?” she said.

Bobby said, “We're—”

“Let them in, Louise,” boomed a deep voice from within.

She stepped back from the door and dropped her head a bit, but stole an oddly curious glance at my face as I passed. When I turned to look at her, she met my eye and smiled a little with her mouth—but kept the same look of bright interest in her eyes, like she was looking to remember. In truth, since I'd never had a servant, I didn't know how to take it. Was a servant supposed to look you in the eye like that? So I gave her the dead-eye and turned away.