Cold Was The Ground

by B A Black

“You come get this case worked for real—not just written off—and I'll forget I even know your name,” Houston promises.

  “I honestly wish I believed that. Where's the body?”

  Houston gives him the address.

  “I can't take a case way out there, that's a different precinct!”

  “You never had any trouble taking cases from me.”

  “Sure. You're not a cop. You're a damn bounty hunter.”

  “Find a way, Ex,” Houston says. “Tell 'em you got a tip and thought it would be a waste of time so you checked on it yourself. Tell 'em a little birdie sent you if that's what it takes.”

  “I'll tell 'em it was the green men from Mars,” Exeter groans, and Houston hears the phone slam down into the cradle. He lets himself out of the phone booth to find Sal apologizing to the clerk for the delay.

  “Sorry,” Houston chimes in, as they're ushered out. “It was an important call.”

  Outside, the darkness has come on early and the cold air seems to scrub the first sticky, unpleasant layer of manipulation off Houston's skin. He lights a Chesterfield and Sal drops his half-finished Coke in the trash.

  “Is he gonna do it?” Sal asks.

  “I think so,” Houston says, pulling open the door of Sal's car and fetching the blankets out to bundle up. “I didn't give him much choice.”

  ◆◆◆

  The wind has subsided as they follow the shore back north into Chicago proper, and Houston watches the stars and their reflections on the still surface of the water where it isn't frozen. He's tired. It was an early morning, a long day that promises to stretch longer still. It's a purer cold this time, crystal sharp. Houston keeps his hands close, beneath the blanket.

  “Don't think about it,” Sal says.

  “About—?” Houston asks, tearing his thoughts up from the depths.

  “The body.”

  An image of drying rust-colored blood and black lace splashes over Houston's thoughts like mud from under the wheels of a taxi. “Hellishly hard not to.”

  “You think they re-dressed him?” Sal asks.

  “Doubt it. But I think we'd find—if we had a chance to look—that Mr. Winsome was wearing Phillips' wardrobe.”

  “I guess Eddie was the dress-up type,” Sal says.

  “We're still up against why. Someone's going a long way to be sure this is obvious.”

  “Very obvious. Enough that the whole affair gets swept under the carpet so no one gets muddy names in the papers.”

  “It's also a convenient motive—but I wonder if that's the only one. Money calls out.”

  “Money or no money, the motive here is hate—at least part of it,” Sal says. “What I saw in there was brutal, partner. I don't want to run up against whoever did it unexpectedly.”

  Sal pauses. Time passes between the ice of the lake and the sky.

  “They cut his dick off, did you see that?”

  “I didn't look that close,” Houston admits. “I saw it was bad.”

  “I wish I hadn't.”

  “What else did you see?”

  “Blood. Violence. Whoever did it—well, they considered their victim less than human, and they were sure, if they showed the world a specific picture, that the world was going to agree.”

  “Righteousness?”

  Sal hisses through his teeth. “What murder doesn't boil down to righteousness or crackpot craziness?”

  “The ones done for greed?”

  “That's righteousness,” Sal tells him. “Someone's convinced they deserve the money more than the other person deserves to live.”

  The city grows around them again, slow and steady as the silence that sits thoughtfully with them in the car. Sal clicks on the Motorola to fill the quiet with the evening news and Houston reaches out across the seat to cover Sal's gloved hand briefly where it rests, cold, at his side. For a moment, Sal looks down at their joined hands, instead of at the road. Then he curls their fingers together.

  The news covers the death of Charles Winsome in a very short piece, naming it as an accidental freezing death and warning citizens of how cold the night to come would be.

  Sal whistles. It's a faltering half-frozen sound. “Six degrees.”

  “Shit,” Houston says.

  “What?”

  “The cat.”

  “Chop Suey?”

  “That's not his name.”

  “Alright. What about the cat?”

  “I gotta go home and let him in.”

  Sal shakes his head. “You got a soft heart, partner.”

  “It's freezing out. Below, even. You wouldn't want to be left outside, either.”

  Sal doesn't argue any further. “What about our client?”

  “You can let me out at my place and go on. I'll catch a bus or take a taxi up once I've fed the cat and shut him in.”

  “Alright,” Sal says, taking the turn. “I guess I can keep the place nailed down until you can get there.”

  “Thanks,” Houston says. Then, “Sorry.”

  “Ah, it's alright. I guess it's a little lucky you got a thing for strays.”

  Houston laughs. He puts the blanket over Sal's lap when he gets out in front of his apartment building. The air is almost crystaline cold—it hurts to breathe too deeply. Houston takes the steps up with extreme care. He can feel the ice below the coating of old snow.

  Inside, the floor is a mess of melting slush with big men's footprints prevailing. Houston frowns at the dangerous mess, but supposes he shouldn't leave Sal alone too long at Mrs. Winsome's. He has lousy bedside manner.

  Across the foyer, Miss Malone's door cracks open as Houston assesses the scene. The barrel of a gun peeks out.

  “It's alright, Miss Malone, it's just—“

  The gunshot shatters the silence and Houston's arm in the same instant. He recoils, instinctive, noticing that the barrel shoved through the doorway does not belong to Miss Malone's ancient revolver but instead holds the wicked profile he'd grown familiar with in the war. A Colt M1911, fully automatic and following Houston's recoil to line up for another shot. Houston has to get out of the boxed-in entryway, has to make the doors.

  He slams into the front door as the second shot rings out, tearing through his shoulder this time, and then he's out into the cold, feet sliding treacherously on the icy cement stairs before he goes over and down, trying to twist himself midair as the third shot chases him with a thunderous boom that shatters the glass of the door behind him and flies so near by his head he can hear the whine of the bullet passing. He knows that the fall's the only thing that saved him.

  The first impact almost lets Houston catch himself, his fingers catching and nearly—nearly—holding on to the frozen wrought-iron railing before his numb arm and the jarring pain of forward momentum sends him crashing the rest of the way down, his head smashing against the bottom-most stair and snapping his teeth closed with a crunch, filling his head with bright-spark pain and nauseating light.

  Houston comes to a stop on the frozen ground and all he can do with the ringing in his mind, his skull a struck bell of resonating sound and pressure, is taste the blood filling his mouth.

  6.

  Consciousness comes back slowly. Houston's tongue finds the stiff thread of sutures in his cheek, the heavy buzz of opiates transforming the angry, pulsating hive of hornets in his skull to something survivable. He feels as if his internals have been scooped out and reassigned at random to new locations.

  Has someone shelled the medical tent?

  Gradually, his mind ascends from the war, now ten years gone and re-acquaints with the year 1930.

  “Houston?” Sal's voice.

  “Say,” Houston croaks, throat dry. “I hope you caught that guy.”

  Sal makes a fuzzy image that doesn't want to wholly resolve to clarity in front of his eyes. He's perched, anxious, on a stool at Houston's bedside.

  “Sad to say I didn't, partner,” Sal tells him, earnest. “I'd have shot him dead.”

  “Can't sa
y I'd have minded. Is Miss Malone okay?”

  “Your neighbor? Sure, she's roughed up a little and madder than a bag of cats, but she's okay.”

  Houston feels better to know that much at least, though he's been run through the ringer. He pauses to assess. Behind the pounding in his head, there's an ache in his arm and shoulder—now casted and held up at his side in traction. “How bad is it?”

  “The arm?”

  “The whole package.”

  “Well, your shoulder's shot up, but that's the least of it. A bullet struck and broke your humerus, and you got a concussion from the sidewalk. Doc says it's survivable. Your golf game might never be the same.”

  “I don't play golf.”

  “Don't you carry a gun?” Sal asks, tone turning serious now.

  “I was never any good with one.”

  “Hobbes,” Sal breathes, the depth of feeling in one syllable suggesting he's had an agonizing few hours. Houston wonders if it's been enlightening for him. The spiteful feeling passes quickly.

  “What about Mrs. Winsome?” Houston asks, to help the moment pass. He realizes he’s not sure how long it’s been. “What day is it?”

  “I dragged her all the way here. She's in the waiting room, worried,” Sal says, recovering his composure. “It’s Monday afternoon, you were out awhile after surgery. Soon as I got the call, I came. Should I call anyone from your family?”

  The very thought plummets a like a lead weight in Houston’s belly.

  “No,” he says, “Either they wouldn't come or they would and I'd wish they hadn't.”

  Sal doesn't question it.

  “When do I get out of here?” Houston asks.

  “You're only barely not talking to the walls. A couple of hours ago you asked the nurse how long she knew she loved you.”

  Embarrassment crawls over Houston's body, touching his face with hot fingers.”It's just my arm.”

  “And your head, don't forget that.”

  Houston's not sure how he could forget it. It's pounding—not the quick pangs of hangover, but slow, relentless, hard thuds as if a blacksmith was at work on the inside of his skull. Sal's hand, he realizes, is tucked against his own good fingers. Houston lifts them and curls his hand around Sal's.

  “I could use a smoke,” Houston sighs.

  “I thought you were trying to quit.”

  “I only quit when I can't afford it.”

  “That’s why I thought you were trying to quit,” Sal chuckles. “Probably better not to smoke in your hospital bed.”

  Too much oxygen, Houston knows. He saw one fool orderly launch himself explosively from this life into the next during the war. After that, he placed a little more stock in warnings.

  “I'm glad you're back with us, Detective Mars,” a voice intrudes—Mrs. Winsome appearing beyond the edge of the curtain that gives the illusion of privacy from others on the ward.

  Sal's hand withdraws from Houston's in a slow, defensive slide, as if he doesn’t want to call attention to the motion.

  “I hope I didn't ruin your evening completely,” Houston says, sheepish.

  “On the contrary, it seems your warning was quite in earnest,” she answers. “There have been an awful lot of men in danger these last few days, but I'm not sure I quite know why.”

  Sal explains, “We think Eddie—Edward Phillips, I mean—was part of the initial cover-up. He clearly knew something that the killer didn't want anyone to know. Maybe they thought he'd already told us. There’s no faster way to make sure the police don’t want to ask any questions than to set it up so they’ll get uncomfortable just looking at it.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she says, leaning her hip against the side table. “Police investigation has practically evaporated for Charlie’s case. They’ll do anything to avoid embarrassing people, especially people with money. The Phillips family may like it that way.”

  “Or maybe it's something they want to quietly go away,” Houston muses. He sits up, suddenly inspired.

  Pain lances through him from collarbone to fingertips. Houston grunts, but manages not to swear in front of Mrs. Winsome. Nausea rolls over him at the change of position, and he subsides back in a defeated motion, vision spinning and gray at the edges.

  “Houston,” Sal calls him back, concern in his voice. “Just stay still.”

  Houston, compelled by an inability to do otherwise for several long moments, follows his orders.

  “Mrs. Winsome,” he manages when he's composed himself again. “How was your husband's relation with his brothers?”

  She has pulled up a chair on the other side of the bed from Sal, settling into it with a tired gesture. She doesn't seem surprised by the question.

  “I don't think either of them were too happy about having another brother. Especially a brother so much younger—where Arthur Jr. wouldn't be in the house to get him under heel like he did Robert.”

  “Well it also meant a divide in inheritance didn't it?” Sal asks, arrowing straight to the point.

  “Sure,” she says. “But not a big one. They were interested in the business and Charlie wasn't. Between the two of them, they got seventy five percent of the inheritance—a massive sum of money, honestly. They never seemed all that upset by the ten percent he got.”

  “Only ten?” Sal prompts.

  “Some also went to longtime business associates,” Mrs. Winsome says. “And a little to Charlie’s mother, too, to keep her comfortable. Poor dear.”

  “Where is she now?” Houston asks, curious and saddened. If Mrs. Winsome is going through hell, Houston can only imagine how difficult the loss was for his mother.

  “The Sanitarium, I'm afraid,” Mrs. Winsome says. “Her mind began to slip early. No use in telling her. I've been to see her twice and she's certain her Charlie is still in grade school.”

  She sighs, a sign of long suffering and sadness. “Do you think it was his brothers, detectives? It seems so cold and heartless. It's hard to think anybody who knew him could have done it.”

  “That's my instinct at the moment,” Houston tells her. He doesn't add that's where the evidence lays—two of them strong-arming Edward Phillips into a cover-up, before covering that up by killing Eddie, too.

  She nods once, without a single waver, seeming to believe it. It'll be a hell of a thing to prove, though.

  ◆◆◆

  That night, in the empty depths of the hospital, Houston looks up at the stained white ceiling. The smell of disinfectant wafts up strongly from the floor, the room so completely sterile that Houston's only company is his thoughts.

  He considers his next actions. Perhaps, if he were a wiser man, Houston would lay here with his arm up in traction until it healed properly. They had a fairly satisfactory answer to the case and a very thorough warning to leave it alone. Would the Winsome brothers try again? There is more risk now in trying to completely wrap up all the loose ends than to let their threats hold the targets silent.

  Houston isn't afraid of them. Though they found his place so quickly and didn’t hesitate to try and kill him, it only rouses a certain ire in him. It’s a callow, careless disregard for human life in a time when life is already cold and harsh. It resolves Houston's anger into a sharp, well-honed point.

  Maybe it would be smarter to walk away from the case before he is laid up more permanently than even this. But two men are dead—brutally, heartlessly dead. Houston, unwise and dangerous as it is, has to know why.

  And he sure as hell isn't going to get the answers from the circular water stains spread over the ceiling.

  Houston sits up, ignoring the pain in his arm and collarbone, the throb receding slowly from his head. He slips his casted arm free of the traction device, sure that each rattle is cacophonously loud, that every metallic protest will bring a nurse running to try and stop him.

  A dozen scenes from penny dreadfuls of women in white coats plunging needles full of knock-out juice into the unwilling arms of patients play on the white screen of hi
s imagination.

  He gets free of the contraption without alerting any nurses—psycho or otherwise. His arm feels heavy and stiff without the support. The weight of it seeming to drag on his injured collarbone relentlessly like the anchor of the yacht dragging over the lake bottom—seeking hold and stillness, catching painfully on every motion.

  Houston grips his elbow with the opposite hand to help hoist it up as he looks for his clothes. His coat's a wreck, shot through in two places and bloody, with a cut in the back and one sleeve dangling by threads. The shirt is nowhere to be found. His pants and other personal effects are intact. Cleaned, packaged in drycleaner paper and a sack akin to a grocery bag.

  For all that, the bloodstains still show on his pants. His wallet still has ten dollars cash in it.

  “There is still some good in the world,” he mutters, tucking the wallet into his pants pocket with his good hand.

  He puts his battered coat on over the hospital gown the best he can. Somewhere, he can hear the rising and falling drone of a radio, broadcasting a repeat of a sports event from earlier in the day.

  Houston sits on the edge of his hospital gurney and pulls his winter boots onto his sockless feet, one at a time. He can't tie the laces one-handed, so he pulls them as tight as he can and jams them in under the tongue.

  A check of the hall reveals it to be empty. At a glance, Houston might pass for a departing visitor or an inquisitive bum looking for a fix. A closer inspection of the cast showing through his dangling and shredded sleeve would reveal the truth of his escape.

  He thinks only of his next goal, then. Houston can see a red lettered “EXIT” stencilled over a door at one end of it. Goal.

  In between, a sign juts into the hall from above a door frame, reading “Nurse Station”. No such welcoming exit sign waits over the double doors at the other end of the hall, so Houston proceeds with caution. He's not sure what his plan is once he gets down to the street. It seems too far away to deal with. First, he must make it to the door.

  He draws himself up tall, and walks like he has a purpose. He needn't have bothered; the nurses are all deep in conversation between themselves, some knitting in the downtime. He passes at a brisk pace and draws no attention.