Mrs. Pollifax Pursued

by Dorothy Gilman

  "Yeah, just bumps and grinds, they're real strict in this state. Anywhere these days, mostly."

  "With that figure," said Mrs. Pollifax frankly, "I should think you'd be in show business. Broadway, I mean. Aren't you wasted on a carnival?"

  Shannon Summer laughed contentedly. "Oh, this is the life for me, I like to move. . . . Move move move is my motto. I got booked once in a revue in New York, and staying in one place drove me crazy. Besides, I got lonesome. This is like family."

  Struck by what she said, Mrs. Pollifax realized that she ought to be writing it down, and brought out notebook and pen.

  "Do I get my picture in the papers?" asked Shannon.

  Mrs. Pollifax found herself embarrassed at telling a blatant untruth but she said smoothly, "Probably, yes, but not until the last day I'm here; he can't be spared until then."

  "Here only one day?" pouted Shannon. "Honey, you can bet your aunt's fanny it'll rain. Is he good looking?"

  "I'm sure of it," Mrs. Pollifax told her, fingers crossed.

  "Good. Are the fuzz—police—still poking around?"

  "Their car's still parked on the midway."

  Shannon's eyes turned mournful. "Pretty tough on that guy Lazlo. Frankly I never seen him until he was on that stretcher. Hi, Boozy Tim," she called.

  Mrs. Pollifax turned to meet Boozy Tim and couldn't help but smile. He was a toothless, wizened, joyful little man wearing a baseball cap set at a jaunty angle. He grinned and tipped his cap to her.

  "Boozy Tim," said Shannon with authority, "has met God."

  "I beg your pardon?" said Mrs. Pollifax.

  "Yes ma'am," said Boozy Tim, twinkling at her. "Met with God. He come to me—me, Boozy Tim. Talked to me, too."

  "Tell her," Shannon said. "Tell her."

  Boozy Tim nudged his way onto the arm of Shannon's chair and lifted his arms dramatically. "He come to me all gold, a gold cloud, like how things look on a misty day, fuzzy, you know? and shimmering all over. And he lifted his arms to me—" He nodded eagerly. "Like this. And he told me things."

  "Private things," Shannon announced, nodding.

  "Yes ma'am. And I never took a drop of liquor again, no need for it after that."

  "No," whispered Mrs. Pollifax, mesmerized by the radiance of him as he spoke. "Not after that."

  He pointed a finger at her. "You're Emmy Reed," he said, and winked at her. "Come to make a story about us."

  She admitted to this, wondering what his wink meant, and if he knew very well that she was an impostor. Shannon had said "he knows everything" and perhaps he did, but she could only return his delighted smile without skepticism: how else, she wondered, could one respond to such a happy little man? "I'd better be about my business," she said, rising, "but I feel very privileged to have met you, Boozy Tim, and perhaps—perhaps we can talk again later?"

  "Yes ma'am," he said, beaming at her. "Pleased to meet you." He tipped his hat again as she left them to head for the Snake Woman's trailer, hoping the snakes had now been fed their rats or mice, or whatever it was that gave snakes pleasure. She had lifted her hand to knock on the closed door when a buzz of electronic static interrupted the calm of the afternoon and a loudspeaker sprang into life.

  A harsh voice battled the static to say, "This is Willie here. .. . No tear-down tonight, the police won't let us go. Not anybody, not until they finish their investigation. A hell of a bad show for us, but there it is. . . ."

  A smoother voice followed: "This is Detective-Lieutenant Allbright to say we are sorry for this inconvenience. However," he explained firmly, "we can't allow you to move on to a town sixty miles away until our investigation into the near-murder of one of your people has been completed. Anybody leaving will be stopped and arrested. Thank you."

  Behind her Mrs. Pollifax heard Shannon say, "What the hell's going on? A roustabout gets hurt and the fuzz never care, and what about Willie? Posters out, the next lot rented and pegged, the squeeze fixed by the patch .. ."

  Mrs. Pollifax shook her head with a smile at this new vocabulary and knocked on the door facing her. She could hear voices arguing; she knocked again.

  The door was flung open by an angry, dark young man with black hair and mustache. Behind him Mrs. Pollifax glimpsed a faded blonde woman who shouted at him, "I told you we should have left last night, I told you—"

  Mrs. Pollifax said politely, "How do you do, I'm—"

  She was not allowed to finish. The man said, "Sorry, lady, we're leaving... . Throw me the keys, Elda—keys."

  A set of keys flew through the air, and gripping them he slammed the door behind him and raced to the cab that pulled the trailer. Mrs. Pollifax retreated as the motor roared, the trailer backed a few feet, moved out of the circle and tore off across the field, bouncing over ruts and hillocks.

  Obviously it was the police announcement that had sent the Snake Woman and her companion in full flight, which in itself, thought Mrs. Pollifax, was certainly very interesting. She wondered if they would succeed in making their escape over the fields or if the police had anticipated just such a move before the announcement. In any case the Snake Woman had just earned an asterisk beside her name on the list that Willie had given her, and Mrs. Pollifax set out to find the Spin the Wheel booth and to see whether its proprietor Lubo would earn an asterisk, too, or just a plain check beside his name.

  12

  Crossing the midway, Mrs. Pollifax noticed Willie talking sternly to Boozy Tim next to the transformer; when she glanced back the two men were just disappearing into Willie's trailer. More booths—or joints, as Willie called them— had begun opening up as the afternoon progressed; the man painting his sign was climbing down from his ladder, and she was relieved to see that farther down the midway Lubo's Spin the Wheel was unshuttered and occupied. The booth was difficult to miss: a flashy banner shouted SPIN THE ARROW! VALUABLE PRIZES VALUABLE! and in somewhat smaller but no less garish colors: Win a TV! Win a VCR! FUN FUN FUN!

  The man behind the counter didn't look fun at all; she guessed him to be in his thirties, with a face as still as a pool of unruffled water. Not expressionless, she decided, but guarded and watchful, and the dark eyes that lifted as she neared him were so piercing they produced the effect of an electrical shock: she felt measured, analyzed, X-rayed, categorized, and all this with a riveting stillness that was unnerving. She wondered if they were the eyes of a Mephistopheles, a mystic, or a murderer.

  "You must be Lubo," she said cheerfully. "Willie's given me permission to spend a few days with the carnival, I'm doing a feature story for my newspaper."

  "What paper?" he asked abruptly.

  "Portland Gazette," she fired back.

  "Never heard of it."

  Nor had she, but to match his machine-gun style of shooting out words she said crisply, "It's new."

  A tight perfunctory smile twitched the corners of his mouth; she doubted that he believed her. "So?"

  Notebook in hand she said, "So I'd like to ask how long you've been working in carnivals, Mr. Lubo, and has it always been with Spin the Wheel? And do you enjoy the life?"

  He shrugged. "Don't know yet."

  "That new?"

  "That new."

  She smiled politely. "What made you decide to join Willie's Traveling Show?"

  "Needed work." His eyes were studying her with an intensity that made her uncomfortable.

  She scribbled a few words, nodding. "Interesting . . . May I ask what line of work you were in before?"

  Without expression he said, "No."

  "You're not exactly giving me feature-story material," she told him frankly, meeting his eyes, and with a pleasant smile added, "Not exactly forthcoming, are you?"

  "No," he said.

  She nodded. "Thanks anyway," and walked away, still scribbling on her notepad but adding now: Lubo, cultured voice, intelligent, expensive-looking Rolex watch, new at carnivals, not precisely hostile but definitely neither communicative nor friendly. Eyes a bit scary.

  The Cat-Rack boot
h was still closed. As she returned to her trailer she saw that the Snake Woman's long brown mobile home was in place again, ignominiously turned back by the police, apparently, and its red curtains tightly drawn as if to close out the world. Not an auspicious moment for an interview, decided Mrs. Pollifax, and continued on to the trailer that she and Kadi shared.

  She found Kadi crouched on her bunk trying on the black stockings and shoes for the six o'clock opening. "They pinch," she said, taking a few steps in the shoes. "But aren't they pretty?"

  "Yes indeed, and at least you needn't walk in them," pointed out Mrs. Pollifax. "Do more sketching? I was wondering if you remember enough of Sammy's roommate to sketch him for me, and Sammy, too."

  Kadi smiled. "I don't have to sketch Sammy, I've a snapshot of him." Reaching into her knapsack she pulled out a wallet and then a photograph. "Here's Sammy."

  It was a group snapshot, taken under a hot sun: three black faces, three white. Kadi said, "That's my mother and father—and Rakia, the head nurse, and Tiamoko, my dad's assistant—and me—and that's Sammy at the far end."

  Obviously it had been taken some years ago; Kadi looked fourteen or fifteen at most, and very small next to Sammy, who was a sturdy and attractive teenager with a broad smile on his face, but she found herself more interested in Kadi's parents. They stood in front of a shadeless cement-block building with a sign that read: mankhwala nyumba. "What does that mean?" she asked, pointing.

  "Medicine house."

  "Why were they shot, Kadi?" she asked gently.

  Her face totally without expression, Kadi said, "Because someone betrayed them, they were accused of helping too much the people wanting change, they were shot as spies."

  Yes, they would have helped, thought Mrs. Pollifax, studying the two of them: Mrs. Hopkirk with her plain strong face, Dr. Hopkirk erect, reserved, with eyes and brows that matched Kadi's. Never for them the easy life or the easy choice, by the look of them and their surroundings, but it was Kadi who must be protected now.

  When she handed back the photograph she noticed that Kadi didn't look at it again—or dared not. "Thank you," she told her with a smile. "And now it's surely time for early dinner, isn't it.7 I intend to try one of those 'biggest hotdogs in the USA'—how about it?"

  "Oh, yes" Kadi said, and they headed companionably to the grab-joint.

  six o'clock Mrs. Pollifax stood in the field outside the en-trance and watched the carnival spring into life. Over the ticket booth loomed a proscenium on which spotlights played across giant words proclaiming WILLIE'S TRAVELING SHOW OF FUN AND MIRTH, Games! Prizes! Rides! Shows! Behind her the field was filling with cars and trucks, and people—townies, she remembered—were pouring in, abandoning for this night their televisions and VCRs to see live entertainment. On the platform next to the entrance the talker was shouting, "Hully, hully, hully .., a world of treats for you tonight, folks. Two lush and beautiful gals straight from Paris France do the Dance of the Seven Veils that'll knock your eyes out, I can tell you! And Elda the Snake Woman with her ten live and dangerous snakes you won't see anywhere but here at Willie's . . , and don't miss Jasna the Knife-Thrower—she might miss tonight, ladies and gentlemen, she might miss!"

  His booming voice was supplanted by others as Mrs. Pollifax walked past the ticket booth, confiding that she was 'with it' and proceeded onto the midway, braced against the waves of sound that had blossomed all at once to transform the midway into a promise of adventure and excitement. The ferris wheel had begun turning, the thumping music of the merry-go-round formed a backdrop to lighten the heart, and passing the concessions the voices competed in mounting volume for attention . . . "Hey, mister . . . Hey, pretty girl! . . . Hey, tall guy . ., step right up, ladies, try your luck! Cotton candy here, cotton candy here ... !"

  And somewhere among these people, she reminded herself, was a murderer, unless Lazlo's attacker had walked through those same gates, cleverly drawn a crowd and dashed away as soon as the deed was done. A possibility, conceded Mrs. Pollifax, but surely with so many carnies at work it would have needed more than one visit to the carnival to locate this Lazlo who had quietly collected tickets at the merry-go-round. Willie, encountered earlier on the midway, reported the police had already checked the three motels in the area and had found one traveling salesman who had not left his motel at night, and three families with small children. In these small towns strangers were noticed, and motels had few guests in April. If Lazlo was important enough to have been tucked away here by the Department, she thought it more likely the carnival had been infiltrated—there was that "Hey Rube," for instance—and whoever "they" were, they would not have been careless; there would have been a plan worked out to precisely fit the circumstances.

  And the circumstances at a carnival, she thought wryly, were exotic and surely daunting.

  What she refused to consider was the carnival's cover being blown as a safe house; she couldn't bear to think of all these people losing their jobs and Willie his traveling show.

  I'm becoming hooked, she thought with a smile.

  Pogo's shooting gallery already had a cluster of young men and boys around it. As she passed Lubo and his Spin the Wheel she slowed, and then stopped to admire his technique: he was still the same Lubo, speaking with rapid-fire crispness into his microphone but softly, in a low voice, and so confidentially that passersby stopped to hear what he was saying. "The odds are eight to one," he was almost whispering into his mike. "Try the wheel, beat the odds, I dare you . . . Mathematically you'll find this game is ..."

  She walked on, wondering if Lubo could be the one. She would do what she could for Willie, at least until Cyrus came home and until Kadi was safe, but she saw no likelihood of unearthing a suspect in only a few days. She could readily understand that Willie had no time to prowl about and investigate, whereas she was free to wander and observe, but she was also a stranger to these people. She might, of course, be less threatening to them than the police, who had been circulating all day; they were still here, but less obtrusively; she had noticed one of their cars parked behind the trailers not far from where the plane had landed and she supposed a few plainclothesmen might be roaming the midway.

  The Ten-in-One was just opening and a tall thin man was testing the microphone on the bally platform. She stopped, eager to see Kadi's performance no matter how invisibly she performed. The talker cleared his throat, called out, "Over here, friends, step this way, folks!" and began describing the delights awaiting them in the side-show tent. To emphasize this, Shannon and Zilka made their entrance on the platform to a flurry of shrill whistles; they were all legs and long hair, with everything in between scanty, sequined, and glittering. El Flamo joined them brandishing a flaming torch, followed by the Professor and Tatiana, her red hair set off by black tights. Last of all came the Snake Woman, so ignominiously returned to Willie's by the police. She was introduced with one huge snake in her arms and another wrapped around her neck. Brave woman, thought Mrs. Pollifax, looking at her closely, but not a happy one, she decided: not even the heavy eye make-up could quite distract from the anxious, haunted expression in her eyes. Going on forty, summed up Mrs. Pollifax: faded blonde hair badly curled and lips too red. Only when she held up one of the snakes did her face change, become tender and younger as if the snake in her hands gave her more contentment than any human.

  Mrs. Pollifax walked inside, and for the ensuing thirty-five minutes she watched as Jasna coolly aimed and threw her long and deadly knives at her father standing against a distant backboard; saw the Snake Woman talk to her snakes, play with them, give a running commentary about them, heard them hiss alarmingly, and appreciated her finale when she draped all ten snakes around her. She watched the Professor draw eggs out of a hat and rainbow-colored scarves out of his ear, and she was pleased to see that he successfully sawed Tatiana and Kadi in half.

  It was following this that she found Boozy Tim standing beside her. He said, "Willie tole me I should talk to you

  now."
/>
  "Oh, good," she said, "I've been wanting to talk to you, too, you know so much and I so little."

  "Yes'm," he said, beaming at her. "Happen to know why you're here, and mum's the word."

  Leaving the midway they moved into the shadows back of one of the booths, where she turned to face him. "Boozy Tim, can you tell me anything about last night? Were you in the crowd when the man was knifed?"

  "Yes'm," he said, nodding.

  "Anywhere near?"

  "Yes'm."

  "Did you notice anything? See any of it? See anyone near Lazlo when it happened?"

  Boozy Tim sighed. "Well, like I tole Willie—he had me in his office this afternoon—I didn't see anything really, except—"

  She said quickly, "Except?"

  He made a face. "Just a man with a white beard, like I tole Willie. Wouldn't have noticed him at all except he stepped on my foot. Never saw his face but—" He frowned, puzzled. "Something familiar about him. Something."

  "Like what?" she asked.

  He hesitated. "Don't rightly know, Emmy. Just saw the beard as he turned sideways, away from me. Didn't see his face. Maybe the way he held his shoulders. Or his nose. Or his head, maybe."

  "What was he wearing?"

  He shook his head. "Wasn't much light down there, all those people squeezed in a huddle. Dressed like a townie, I'd say, black sweater, black windbreaker. Only saw him quick— sideways, and then his back."

  "He didn't apologize for stepping on your foot?"

  Boozy Tim shook his head. "In a hurry. No."

  In a hurry ... "You told Willie this?"

  "Yep, except I didn't think of it right away."

  "Did you notice anyone else near Lazlo?"

  Again he shook his head. "Didn't even know Lazlo was up ahead of me 'til he just sunk to the ground and somebody screamed."

  "Who screamed?" she asked.

  "Lady who runs the hanky panky near the gate—she come over to see what the 'Hey Rube' was all about, excepting there warn't no reason for any 'Hey Rube' at all, it turned out."