Death Trance

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Stanley suspiciously.

  Then you will know that the name Memphis means “the city of good abode.” And in the city of good abode, we expect all our fellow citizens to abide with each other in peace and harmony. Unfortunately, Mr Clare does not seem to want to do that. For the sake of his own personal wealth, he is destroying all the careful and caring work the Cottonseed Association has contributed to the cottonseed business in particular and to the city of Memphis in general. And you - you, Stanley - you took his money and agreed to help him.’

  ‘What if I did?’ asked Stanley. ‘You said yourself that he ain’t doin’ nothin’ against the law. It’s free trade, that’s all. And free trade’s guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States, both in particular and in general.’

  Waverley Graceworthy stepped forward and jabbed his finger at Stanley. ‘You better listen to me. You don’t even know the meaning of the words “free trade.” You were planning to meet Mr Clare tonight, weren’t you? And you were going to give him certain information regarding the killing of his family. Isn’t that true?’

  ‘Ah, bullshit,’ Stanley retorted. ‘You guys, you’re all wind. You don’t even got the guts to show your faces, half of you. If I was planning to talk to Mr Clare tonight, that’s my business.’

  He turned around, sorted out his ignition key and climbed back into the taxi. Just as he was about to insert the key, he felt a sharp prick against the side of his neck. The Italian was leaning over him, his knife levelled at Stanley’s jugular vein.

  Waverley Graceworthy came around to the side of the car and ordered, ‘Get out. I haven’t finished with you yet. I want to know what it was that you were intending to tell Mr Clare tonight. In full, no omissions.’

  Stanley hesitated but then the Italian dug the knife into his neck a fraction deeper and called, ‘Say the word, Mr Graceworthy.’

  Stanley climbed out of the cab again. ‘Give me the keys,’ Waverley Graceworthy ordered, and when Stanley failed to hand them over as quickly as the little man would have liked, ‘The keys, damn it!’

  ‘Now, just one question,’ Waverley Graceworthy said quietly once he was clasping the keys in the palm of his hand. ‘Who do you think killed the Clare family, and why, and who told you?’

  ‘I ain’t sayin’ nothin’,’ Stanley replied. He turned to Chief Moyne and called in a harsh voice, ‘You’re a police officer, Chief, isn’t that so? You know that nobody has to say nothin’, not unless they got theirselves an attorney.’

  Chief Moyne gave a bland smile, the smile of a man for whom everything in life is direct and easily solved. These gentlemen here will act as your attorneys,’ he said, nodding towards the four men in masks.

  ‘Are you going to answer my question?’ Waverley Graceworthy asked. ‘Otherwise, I promise you, you are going to suffer.’

  Stanley’s pores suddenly sprang out with a welter of fresh sweat. It was the only indication he had of how frightened he actually was since his mind had already closed down its more sensitive circuits and the challenging voice coming from his mouth seemed to belong to somebody else altogether. He felt as if he were two Stanleys: one who was almost terrified into insensibility, the other who was bragging and foolhardy and loud-mouthed and kept pulling the terrified Stanley deeper and deeper into trouble.

  ‘Do you know who killed the Clare family?’ Waverley Graceworthy demanded.

  ‘I don’t have to say nothin’, and even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Who does know if you don’t know?’

  ‘Oh, plenty of people know, and by the end of tonight, plenty more people are going to know, so what are you so worried about? Don’t tell me that it was you and this gang of pie-dish faces over here.’

  Instantly Chief Moyne snapped his fingers. The masked men stepped forward and seized Stanley by the arms. He was too fat and too slow to resist. They folded his hands forward and then pressed them relentlessly against the joints of his wrists until he roared out loud.

  ‘Now then,’ said Waverley Graceworthy, ‘do you happen to know who killed the Clare family?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Stanley said, sweating and sobered. ‘I promise you, sir, I was never made a party to that information, sir.’

  ‘But you were supposed to be meeting Mr Clare this evening to discuss the matter.’

  ‘All I was going to do, sir, was to introduce him to an individual who told me he knew who done it. And that’s the truth, so help me dear Lord, that’s the one-hundred-per cent absolute truth.’

  Waverley Graceworthy nodded and rubbed his hands again. Then he said, This …other individual … can you tell me his name?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Stanley could hear his captors breathing roughly behind their masks. ‘I swore by Almighty God that I would never tell his name.’

  ‘But you do know his name, even though you have sworn never to tell it?’

  Stanley did not reply but tried to struggle against the men who were holding him.

  They pressed his hands again, more forcibly this time, and he gritted his teeth and grunted in pain, ‘Duh!’ and stopped struggling.

  ‘You know his name?’ Waverley Graceworthy repeated. Stanley nodded.

  ‘Well,’ said Waverley Graceworthy, ‘in spite of your pledge, I need to know this individual’s name. It’s very important for everybody concerned, for the good of the city and the welfare of those who labour in the cottonseed business.’

  ‘I swore,’ said Stanley desperately. ‘If he ever finds out it was me, Jesus, he’ll kill me.’

  Then you are caught between Scylla and Charybdis,’ Waverley Graceworthy smiled.

  ‘What in hell does that mean?’

  ‘It means that you have two equally unpalatable options. Your friend will kill you if you tell and we will kill you if you don’t.’

  Stanley thrashed and kicked and finally collapsed to his knees on the cinders, the masked men still holding him. ‘Chief Moyne!’ he shouted. ‘Did you hear that, Chief Moyne? That was a threat against my life! You can’t tell me that threatenin’ anybody’s life is legal!’

  Chief Moyne thrust his thumbs into his wide brown belt and looked the other way, out across Lake McKellar towards the generating plant.

  Then one of the masked men hooked his forearm under Stanley’s chin and slowly forced him backwards until he was lying on the cinders, spread-eagled. Another man held Stanley’s hands above his head, while another held his legs. The fourth disappeared from view for a moment and returned hefting a gleaming machete that looked as if it had been bought from a discount sports store just half an hour earlier.

  ‘What in the name of Christ are you doing?’ Stanley screamed. He wrestled and writhed, but the three masked men held him firmly to the ground.

  Waverley Graceworthy appeared in Stanley’s line of sight. One of the spotlights from the generating plant was momentarily reflected in his glasses and his hair shone white against the starry sky.

  ‘Now, Stanley,’ he said, ‘you must listen to this. None of us are violent men. We abhor physical coercion, isn’t that right, Chief Moyne? But it is our duty to make sure that the cottonseed industry thrives, and the cottonseed industry is more important than individual lives. Yours, my friend, included.’

  ‘What are you goin’ to do?’ Stanley gasped hoarsely. ‘Are you goin’ to kill me or what? For Christ’s sake, have mercy! I didn’t do nothin’.’

  ‘Ah, but you did. You agreed to betray the sacred trust of your passengers, those who believe that they can sit in the back of a taxi and talk about anything and everything without their conversations being passed on, and you betrayed that sacred trust for money. In fact, I believe that I can quite rightly call you a Judas.’

  ‘What, Judas? What the hell are you talkin’ about?

  You’re crazy. Do you know that? You’re right out of your fuckin’ tree!’

  Waverley Graceworthy stood up straight as if he were about to sing in church. In his impeccable Southern accent, he said
, ‘You have a choice now, Stanley. Either you tell me who you intended to introduce tonight to Randolph Clare or I will have to ask this gentleman to hurt you. He will hurt you so badly that within a half-hour you will require emergency medical treatment. We will not summon this treatment, however, unless you agree to give us this individual’s name.’

  Stanley tried to lick his lips with a tongue that was dry like tweed. He looked up at the shining machete, so new that every thumbprint showed on its blade, and he looked at the faceless man holding it. Then he thought of Jimmy the Rib: black, wild-eyed, skeletally thin, with a heroin habit that could have bought him a brand-new Cadillac every week. Jimmy the Rib would stick a two-foot-long Bowie knife up your backside when you were least expecting it, and he never forgot, and he never forgave. Stanley had thought he was being smart and brave when he had persuaded Jimmy to talk to Randolph Clare. He had not counted on Waverley Graceworthy and the forces of law and order.

  Jimmy the Rib would kill him without any hesitation whatever. But these people, what would they do? They must be bluffing. How could the Chief of Police stand around here and witness murder? That just didn’t make sense. And Waverley Graceworthy was a one-time councillor and a distinguished county commissioner. Men of this social standing were not going to murder a perfectly innocent taxi driver in the middle of the night just because he wouldn’t tell them somebody’s name. Or would they?

  ‘Believe me,’ said Stanley, ‘I just can’t tell you who he is.’

  ‘You have five seconds,’ Waverley Graceworthy said quietly.

  ‘I can’t tell you! Do you know what he does to people who let him down? He’s a crazy man. He killed his best friend and his girlfriend all in the same night, and both the same way. A Bowie knife, two feet long, straight up between the legs.’

  ‘Two seconds,’ said Waverley Graceworthy. ‘One.’ Then, ‘None.’

  The man with the machete leaned forward and tugged open the buttons of Stanley’s shirt as swiftly as if he were tugging weeds from a garden. He pulled back Stanley’s shirt-tails to reveal Stanley’s soft, protuberant stomach.

  ‘What are you goin’ to -‘ Stanley began, but he did not even have time to think about it. The masked man swung the machete diagonally across Stanley’s stomach, slashing it with crimson, and then suddenly Stanley’s intestines bulged out of the cut and poured onto the ground beside him with a plop like thick paint from a bucket.

  Stanley was too shocked to even scream. The masked men who had been holding his arms released him and he jerked up his head and stared down at his stomach in horror. Then, gasping, he grabbed handfuls of the slippery red-and-white tubes and tried to push them back inside his body.

  Waverley Graceworthy watched him placidly.

  ‘You ki … you killed me,’ Stanley panted. ‘You killed me, for Christ’s sake.’

  Waverley Graceworthy removed his glasses and idly polished them with his pocket handkerchief.

  ‘It is possible that you will survive if medical emergency units reach you soon enough,’ he said. ‘They have excellent facilities at the Memphis Medical Center, so they tell me. We don’t mind paying for your medical expenses.’ He paused and then added, ‘If you give us the name.’

  ‘Name?’ Stanley asked in desperation. He let go of his guts; they were covered with grit now and he knew that he should not try to put them back until they were washed.

  Better to let them lie there until the medics arrived. His head sank back onto the ash and he stared up at the stars, wondering where on earth he was and what was happening to him. His heart seemed to be beating like a man walking through a forest and hitting each tree trunk with a baseball bat. Bang, bang, bang, bang, regular and slow.

  The name,’ somebody repeated.

  The name? he thought. What name? He couldn’t even think of his own name, let alone anybody else’s. His stomach felt cold and strange, and every time he breathed in and out, he gurgled. It occurred to him that he had been hurt very badly and that he was going to die. The fringes of the sky seemed to be darkening and in the outer circle of his vision, the stars appeared to be winking out. When the very last star was gone, he would be dead, and what a release that would be. He would never have to drive that goddam taxi, never again; he would be happy.

  He had never known happiness, not real happiness. Now he was quite sure that he was going to find out what it was.

  The name,’ the voice kept insisting. Tell us the name.’

  He licked his lips again and coughed. His mouth was filled with something salty and sticky.

  The name,’ the voice urged. The voice was close now, as if somebody were bending over him.

  ‘I’m … dying,’ he said, and the thought gave him a peculiar sense of satisfaction, as if he were doing something pleasant and exciting that none of the people standing around him could do.

  ‘Stanley,’ the voice demanded. This is your last chance. Tell us the name.’

  Stanley opened his eyes and focused blurrily on Waverley Graceworthy, who was kneeling in the cinders next to him in his thousand-dollar suit. He had forgotten who Waverley Graceworthy was or what he was doing here, but he seemed to remember that they had been talking about death. Well, there was one person for sure who wasn’t dead, no matter what everybody said about him. There was one person who was hidin’ away someplace for sure, fishin’ and meditatin’ and havin’ one whale of a time.

  With one blood-streaked hand, Stanley managed to beckon Waverley Graceworthy even closer. Then he clutched at the lapel of the old man’s suit, bubbled blood at him and cried out harshly, ‘Elvis Presley!’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  At six minutes to nine, Randolph’s taxi drew up outside the Walker Rooms on Beale Street and Randolph paid the driver and climbed out. The night was hot and sticky and there was music in the air, although the Beale Street of nineteen eighty-four was nothing like the Beale Street that W. C. Handy and B. B. King and Rufus Thomas had known. This was the Beale Street National Historic Preservation District, a sanitized version of the Beale Street that had once been, the Beale Street of blues clubs and whores and tangled trolley-car cables. The black high-steppers had long since gone, in their shiny top hats and tails and their ladies on their arms. So had the farmers in their straw hats and bibs. Hulbert’s Lo-Down Hounds had not been heard here since the Forties, and even the Old Daisy Theater had become an ‘historic, interpretative centre.’

  Still, the Walker Rooms retained something of their post-war sleaze. There was a red-flashing neon sign outside saying ‘Blues, Food,’ and Randolph had to climb a narrow, worn-out staircase to the second floor, where an air-conditioning unit was rattling asthmatically and a black girl with dreadlocks and a tight white sleeveless T-shirt was sitting at a plywood desk silently bopping to a Walkman stereo. On the wall there was a Michael Jackson calendar with torn edges and a sign saying ‘Occupancy By More Than 123 Persons Forbidden By Law.’

  Randolph stood awkward and tall and white-faced in his buff-coloured Bijan suit and told the girl, ‘I’m looking for Stanley Vergo.’

  ‘Ain’t never heard of him,’ the girl replied laconically.

  The sound of blues came leaking out through a beaded curtain next to the girl’s desk.

  If Beale Street could talk, if Beale Street could talk, Married men would have to take up their beds and walk, Except one or two, who never drink booze, And the blind man on the corner who sings the Beale Street Blues.

  Randolph said, ‘Jimmy the Rib?’

  ‘Jimmy the Rib? What you want with Jimmy the Rib?’

  ‘Stanley Verge’s a cab driver. He said he was going to introduce me to Jimmy the Rib.’

  The black girl took the stereo headphones out of her ears and stared at Randolph seriously. ‘You ain’t the man?’

  ‘Do I look like the man?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘Nobody never can tell these days. There was a time the man always had the decency to look his part, or at least to smell like what he was. But you, what could you b
e? Rich or poor, honest or crooked? Who knows?’

  ‘Is Jimmy here?’ Randolph asked.

  The girl said, ‘Wait up, will you?’ and pranced her way through the beaded curtain.

  Randolph heard laughter and smelled the split-pea aroma of marijuana; he wished he had brought his pipe with him, although he was conscious that it would have made him look more like Fred Mac-Murray than ever. He remembered Marmie’s telling him not to look so staid. ‘Your joints are all rusted up,’ she used to say, laughing. ‘Relax, for goodness’ sake, and enjoy yourself.’

  If only Marmie were alive now, he thought, instead of cold and blind and dead in a coffin in Quebec.

  The black girl took a long time in returning. When she did, she went straight to her desk without even looking at Randolph, hooked in her earphones and went on bopping. Randolph waited patiently for three or four minutes and then the bead curtain rattled and a tall, skeletally thin black man emerged, wearing a dusty black suit with wide lapels and a black Derby hat. His fingers were covered in silver rings, most of them in the form of skulls, and he carried a cane with a silver-skull knob on top of it.

  He looked Randolph up and down in the way any black man had the right to look any white man up and down when he ventured into Beale Street. Then he rapped his cane on the floor seven or eight times and said, ‘This ain’t right.’

  ‘Are you Jimmy the Rib?’ Randolph asked.

  ‘What if I am?’

  ‘My name’s Randolph Clare. I was supposed to meet Stanley Vergo here.’

  ‘Well, Stanley Vergo ain’t here.’

  Randolph anxiously rubbed the side of his neck. ‘Could we still talk? Stanley said you had some information I might be interested in.’