Wilde West (14 page)

Another bout of passion provided an additional distraction. He had become persuaded that he was too deeply sunk in this marvelous lassitude ever to function sexually again, ever to want to; but Elizabeth McCourt Doe, with her cunning fingers and skillful mouth, proved him mistaken. Freddy rose, as it were, to the occasion and performed prodigies of valor and endurance.

Later, drained, growing a bit muddled, he had become distracted by their conversation.

He had said, almost to himself, “But I still fail to understand how all this happened.”

“I felt,” she said, “when I met you, that I already knew you completely.”

He smiled. “To be known completely is what everyone tells himself that he most desires. And what everyone, of course, secretly most dreads. You knew me from my poetry?”

“From your eyes.”

Again, he smiled. “Eyes can lie. They often do.”

“So does poetry.”

He laughed. “And what did you know from my eyes?”

She lifted his hand from her knee, kissed the knuckle of his thumb. “That you carried within you a great sadness.”

“Really?” he said, surprised and delighted. “You knew that?”

Now, lying in his bed at the hotel, he could recall that he had been so taken by her insight that he had prattled on for an hour, ecstatically, about his great sadness. He had talked about the deaths of his sister, his half sisters, his father; about his loneliness at public school, at Trinity, at Oxford. Finally he had become—how dreadful—almost maudlin. He was still sadly babbling away when they dressed; still babbling as they went back to the carriage.

He had grown silent only when he was alone in the carriage as she drove it—more sedately this time—through the gray light of early dawn. He had, now, only the vaguest memory of that journey; could recollect only in disjointed fragments his actual return to the hotel.

Had he in fact made a fool of himself? This would have been, in any circumstance, a disaster; in her presence, it would have been a catastrophe.

Or would it? For some reason he couldn't bring himself really to care.

How astounding. Had his love died so quickly?

He searched within himself for the passion, the heights and depths of it, that he had felt so strongly last night. He found only a dull lifeless discomfort that might have been merely the residue of the champagne. Or the opium.

Was passion like currency? Once spent, forever gone?

Perhaps this was the catastrophe.

Whatever the truth might be, certainly this morning he felt catastrophic. Parts of his body that had never experienced pain before experienced it now: his hair, for example; his eyelashes.

Fortunately he delivered no lecture until this evening. If he wished, and he wished it most fervently, he could stay in bed all day. He could lie there and attempt to reason out the peculiar evanescence of rapture.

Just then, as though to disprove this, a loud unpleasant rapping suddenly sounded at the door.

Henry? But he had told Henry he wouldn't be needing him until this evening.

The rapping came again. So emphatic it was that Oscar felt as though someone were pounding a fist against his temple.

Rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

He sat up, swung his legs off the bed, slipped his feet awkwardly into his slippers, fumbled his arms into the dressing gown.

Who would be so barbaric as to come calling at—he glanced at the clock on the dresser—nine o'clock?

Bang, bang, bang.

“Yes, yes, yes,” he mumbled, tying the gown's belt. He shuffled over to the door, unlocked it, jerked it open.

C
RIGSBY WALKS INTO MOLLY WOODS'S
room and closes the door behind him. The air is heavy with a dank, slaughterhouse stench. He looks around him and for a moment he cannot comprehend what it is he sees. For a moment, his mind is unable, or it refuses, to recognize what lies before it.

Something awesome and fearful sprawled upon the narrow blackened bed. Limp strips and bits of something strewn around the tiny room. Fragments of something clinging to the walls, the oval mirror, the sides of the rickety wooden dresser.

And when, abruptly, it all comes into focus, when he understands, his legs buckle and the blood drains from his face; and he knows, with an absolute conviction, that his life is forever changed. He knows that this room and the horror it holds will be with him, will reappear in sweat-soaked dreams and unbidden memories, until the day he dies.

He closes his eyes. He wants nothing now but to sink into the embrace of his absent wife, bury his face in her neck. He hears himself mutter her name: “
Clara.
”

He forces himself to open his eyes. To look again.

The thing on the bed, its upper half propped against the wall, was once Molly Woods. The thing wears a petticoat, pushed back to its waist, and its legs are drawn up. There is no skin or flesh on the legs: glistening white shinbones, a pair of round white kneecaps, white thighbones. Only the feet, splayed out against the bed, are intact. Each toenail, he notes, is painted red.

The flesh has been stripped, too, from the ribs, and between white arches of bone he can see a dull film of pink tissue.

The arms are peeled as well, from shoulder to wrist. The curled fingers of both hands—these, like the feet, intact—have been placed at the black savage rent in the belly, as though to make it appear, obscenely, that they are drawing back the wide lips of the awful wound.

The face is gone. The thick red hair, falling to the exposed shoulder bones, frames a leering skull from which empty sockets gape.

Grigsby takes a low shallow breath through his mouth. Deliberately, he moves his glance around the room.

The strips lying about are ribbons of flesh. They are everywhere: stuck to the walls, piled atop the mattress, dangling from the knobs of the dresser, arranged in careful coils along the floor, Four or five of them hang from the rim of the mirror like meat left to dry.

Grigsby looks at the table to his right. Exactly in its center is a small mound of flesh. It is a woman's breast. On either side of it, stuck to it with blackened dried blood, is a human ear.

Grigsby has seen enough. Has seen far too much. He stumbles to the door.

When he stepped outside, Grigsby sucked in a long deep breath. After Molly Woods's room, even the sooty, sulfurous air of Shantytown tasted as sweet as spring water.

Without a word, Hanrahan held out the tin flask of whiskey. Grigsby took it, unscrewed the cap, raised the flask to his lips and drank, holding his throat open so the liquor could reach his stomach more quickly. He lowered the flask and his body made a small, quick, involuntary shiver.

He could feel the watchful stares of the younger policemen. It was as though they were waiting for the words that would explain the violated thing lying on the bed inside, and the crazed, inhuman violence that had created it.

The words that could explain this, Grigsby knew, didn't exist.

He said to Hanrahan, “Need to talk to you for a minute, Gerry.”

Hanrahan glanced at the other policemen, turned back to Grigsby, nodded. Together the two of them walked away from Tolliver and Hacker until they were ten or twelve yards distant.

“Anybody see anything?” Grigsby asked.

Hanrahan shook his head. “You know better than that, Bob. No one ever sees nothin' in Shantytown.”

“You covered the street?”

“Not all of it. Waiting for Greaves now, we are.”

“He'll try to keep this under his hat.”

Hanrahan nodded. “Bad for business, a thing like this gets out.”

“You send for Doc Boynton?”

“I did.”

“Tell him I'd like to hear from him afterward. Soon as he finishes.”

Hanrahan nodded. “Greaves won't like it a-tall.”

“He won't if he knows about it.”

For a moment Hanrahan pursed his lips thoughtfully together. Then, “What's yer interest here, Bob? Where's the federal side come in, exactly?”

“Like I said, somethin' I'm working on.”

“And might ye be sharin' that with us one day?”

“When I got somethin' to share.”

“Playing it a bit close to the vest, ain't ye, Bob?”

“The way I always play it, Gerry.”

Hanrahan glanced back at Tolliver and Hacker, looked again to Grigsby. “Right you are, Bob. Time being, then, it's yer deal.”

Grigsby nodded. “'Predate it, Gerry.”

Hanrahan shrugged. “I owe ye one. Ye'd best make tracks, though. Before—ah, well. Too late. Here's himself arrivin' now.”

Grigsby turned. Drawn by four large black geldings whose sleek coats had been brushed until they gleamed like patent leather, the big black carriage rumbled down the narrow street. On the vehicle's door, gilded in ornate gothic script, were the words
CHIEF OF POLICE, CITY OF DENVER
.

The carriage stopped ten feet away from Grigsby and Hanrahan. The door opened and William J. Greaves stepped out. He was tall and broad-shouldered and, even now, despite the extra weight that good living had added to his frame, despite features that had somewhat blurred and thickened, he was still a striking man. His jet black mustache was artfully waxed and his curly black hair was theatrically silver at the temples, a color that was precisely matched by the fur lining at the collar of his elegantly tailored black wool topcoat.

He looked like everything a chief of police should be, very smart, completely fearless, and totally incorruptible; and he was, Grigsby knew, only very smart. In Denver, Grigsby had once told Clara, it wasn't just the cream that rose to the top. The scum did, too.

Greaves glanced down at the muddy ground, grimaced with distaste, looked up and saw Hanrahan and Grigsby. The grimace became an angry frown.

Stepping down from the carriage behind him came Harlan Brubaker, assistant to the chief. Brubaker was Greaves's bagman. He collected the protection money from the saloons and gambling halls, the brothels and opium dens. He was a short, officious, ferret-faced man who was wearing a fur-lined topcoat identical to Greaves's. The two men were the same age, midforties, but the difference in their size and the similarity of their dress made them look like prosperous father and promising son.

Greaves stepped onto the sidewalk and stalked up to Hanrahan. Pointing a blunt forefinger at Grigsby, he demanded, “What is this man doing here?”

“We were just discussin' that, Chief,” said Hanrahan.

“This is city business. He has no jurisdiction here.”

Hanrahan nodded. “Exactly, Chief. I just got finished ex-plainin' that very thing.”

Greaves's eyes narrowed. “You and Grigsby go way back, don't you, Sergeant. Rode for a while together. Texas Rangers, wasn't it?”

Hanrahan shrugged. “Years ago, that was. Can't hardly recall it a-tall now, Chief.”

“I certainly hope so. That dime-novel nonsense, cowboys and Indians and the wide open prairies—those days are gone, Sergeant. You're supposed to be a policeman now, working for the City of Denver. I hope, for your sake, that your loyalties haven't gotten confused.”