But how could I find Sherrill? How could I do anything? All I knew was that they were all smarter than me. I had bungled and botched everything I had put my hand to so far. I had killed the two blond boys, but that was only a sign of how meatheaded they were. Frye would surely have killed me if not for Toby Thrumm—poor Toby Thrumm, who figured I was worth saving even after I’d busted his nose. It all made me very tired. What had I ever done right? My father was gone, Tommy was gone, Bobby was gone, my sister Eliza was gone, Jane Hardiman was gone. Maybe Alex was gone for good, too.
I’m the one who drove him away, I thought. Eileen knows it, too.
Whatever catastrophe had been planned for the impending summer, whatever specific trouble Sherrill had in the works, I knew it was beyond my feeble power to help. He had been working with sense and purpose all along, and I had been fumbling stupidly after him. Briefly I thought of chasing down Rix or Hardiman, even Frank Carter or Jasper Lloyd, but it wasn’t hard to give up on each idea. I was through. Though I had not earned it, I was ready to take a day of rest and wait for my end to find me.
It would have been a beautiful Sunday, really, except for the pressing heat. There was not a cloud in the clear blue sky, and there was a little breeze to keep the air from fouling. But the last day of spring seemed like a day in August. It was as if the earth had moved a bit closer to the sun. Would the government be afraid to tell us if such a thing had happened? From my school days I dimly remembered something about the way the earth went around the sun. Would tomorrow be the longest day of the year?
It will be for me, I thought.
I had been sitting in my car for almost an hour, mulling things over and sipping bottles of beer pulled from a tin bucket of ice on the far end of the seat. I thought it might actually be pleasant along the river, maybe on Belle Isle, but I knew that on a Sunday all the decent places to relax on the water would be packed with people, hot and snappish from bumping elbows. And I wasn’t feeling sociable. So I just sat there with all the windows down, sat and stared out the windshield and over the rounded hood. Some of the neighborhood kids were blowing off firecrackers, too eager to hold their stash till the Fourth of July. I watched them idly and remembered all the things I had wanted to rip up as a boy.
How will it go? I wondered. Would the whole city go up in flames, or had Sherrill just paid off a bunch of crackers to storm the colored sections of Detroit? I had never given much attention to all the Bible-thumping preachers who’d tried to save me over the years, and so I could not form a picture of the fire and brimstone that seemed impossible to stop. The only smart move left for me was to take the money and sail my old car as far away from the city as I could. But I never went.
I’ve been playing the sap all along, I thought. If they need me for the final hand, they can come and find me.
I fired up the car and slipped it into gear. I pulled away from the curb and held the icy bucket to keep it from falling as I turned the corners and made my way to Eileen’s house, two blocks away. I guess I had been intending to drive there all along. She was sitting on the top step of the porch as I came up, her hair tied up with a scarf, wearing a white dress that showed her shoulders. She squinted and tipped her head a bit as I approached.
I sat down near to her, a step lower. For what seemed like a long time, we said nothing. Though it was inching along toward evening already, I thought the sun might burn her pale skin if she continued to sit there. But it seemed unimportant. We did not touch.
Two big sedans rumbled onto the lazy street, one from Campau and one from up the block. They stopped on either side of the street in front of the house. I stood up and stepped down to the walk in alarm as well-dressed colored men poured out of the autos. They walked toward us in a semicircle. I kept my elbows tight to my sides and my hands in my pockets, so it wouldn’t be obvious that I’d left the shoulder harness in the car with my revolver.
Horace Jenkins stepped to the front of the men with a businesslike smile. “Beautiful day, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Caudill?”
“I’d say it’s too hot for this kind of trouble.”
“There’s no trouble here, Detective. There’s no need to look on the dark side of everything that comes your way. You might even say we’ve arrived with a mind to stave off trouble.”
“What’s with the mob, then?” I counted eight men altogether, but just a couple of them hard enough to matter.
“We are a group of men who love the Lord, that’s all.” Jenkins caught Eileen’s eye and touched the brim of his pale gray hat. “We’ve just finished a little business at the church. There is strength in numbers, as they say.”
“Where’s your little monkey Noggle?”
“We take care of our own,” said Jenkins. “Mr. Noggle has had a run of bad luck, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
“Bad luck, my ass.”
“Mr. Caudill, it’s the Lord’s day. And there is a lady present.”
“What do you want here, Jenkins? Does it look like I want to get friendly with you? Do you have a reason for dragging all this riffraff up to the nicer side of town?”
“Mr. Caudill, a little polite conversation wouldn’t hurt you. It’s the cornerstone of civility. I might ask after your health, as it seems obvious you’ve had a run of bad luck of your own. But I can see that you are busy, so I’ll be brief.” Jenkins stepped close to me and spoke softly. “You should have accepted our help earlier,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“A few moments ago, I received news that Roger Hardiman was taking his supper alone, just a few blocks from here, at the Pigeon Club, a place I believe the police know well.”
“You heard from who?”
“Detective, there are colored folks all throughout this city of ours, cooking, sweeping floors, mending clothes, parking cars. You shouldn’t believe that we’re any less intelligent or capable than white folks. A skin of color can make a person almost invisible in a way. We hear things, we see things,” he said, sweeping his arm broadly. “Just as all the neighbors here peeping through their curtains can see a group of Negro men before you.”
“Well,” I murmured, “I don’t care anything about it.”
“I think you do. I think you must care,” said Jenkins. “You have family to think of, just like the rest of us.”
“Your people—have you heard anything about my nephew?”
“I’m sorry,” said Jenkins. “Nothing.”
“Well,” I said, scrambling for footing in the conversation, “what’s your interest in all of this? What’s your profit?”
“The future of this city and the condition of race relations are of great concern to me,” said Jenkins. “I’d like to leave something for my children to be proud of.”
“That’s fancy talking,” I said. “If you know so much, why don’t you go roust Hardiman yourself?”
“We all have a place in this world, Detective. The Lord provides it for us. All we have to do is listen.”
I lowered my eye for a moment and considered. Jenkins was right; I’d have to go after Hardiman, shake him up a little. It was my place to go. It looked like I had the choice: I could lay off chasing Sherrill, quit the force, find some kind of regular work, and see where things went with Eileen. We could make a good start with the money outside the city, where they were putting up cheap little houses on nice plots of land. We could at least make a go at being happy.
But then maybe the unsettled business would continue to eat away at me from the inside, and I’d go early to my grave anyway, hacking up my lungs like Frank Carter. Maybe Sherrill and his cronies would gain enough footing to spread throughout Michigan and Ohio and Indiana and even up into Canada, like a cancer in the heart of the nation that should have been cut out early. Even if I couldn’t ever understand the whole tangled story about my father and Lloyd and Sherrill and Frye and Rix, Tommy and Bobby and Thrumm and Jane Hardiman, it seemed clear that I was mixed up in all of it, and reasonably there was no one else who could try to p
ull the plug on the whole sordid operation. I saw the choice before me: I could pick up now with Eileen and try to leave the troubles behind, or I could get down to the dirty business with Sherrill and Hardiman and probably die in the trying.
In truth there was no such choice. I could not simply choose between settling down with Eileen and chasing after Sherrill. What I had been after all along was a sense of myself as a good man, a whole man. Like any man, I guess, I had always understood at the back of my mind that there was such a thing as right and wrong. I had put off the decision to fall to the good side for too long. Now that time and misfortune had taken my youth, the task for me had become perhaps too great. But there was no choice for me; I could not rest anywhere unless I found a way to feel comfortable in my own skin.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I said quietly.
“Nobody does,” Jenkins said. “There’s still time. The trick of living is never to give up.”
I turned my back to Jenkins and looked toward Eileen. She stood atop the porch with her feet close together and her arms crossed over her chest. She looked down coldly on the lot of us. I managed to get my feet up a few of the steps and leaned close to her.
“You should lock your doors,” I said weakly.
“Why should it matter now?”
“It’s a new moon tonight,” I said. “Bad luck.”
She did not seem angry exactly, but it was clear that she wanted to close herself off from me. I turned slowly from her, and my feet began to trudge back down the steps.
“Pete,” she said, catching the shoulder of my jacket—Tommy’s jacket. She pressed her lips quickly to my scratchy cheek. She whispered into my ear, “He’s all I have in this world, Pete.”
“I know it,” I said. I thought—for an instant—that maybe I could make up for the loss of her only son with the remainder of the money Lloyd had given me. The idea shamed me so much that I felt my face go red. I was dirty, I was crooked, I was ugly, sometimes I felt sick in the head. I tried to take another step away from her, but she held fast to the jacket.
She hissed into my ear, “You’re already a good man.”
I stepped down to the walk until I was close to Jenkins and his gang.
“You won’t see it,” Eileen called after me.
“You’ll have to go on out of here,” I said to Jenkins. “I can’t leave her here with all of you.”
Jenkins measured his response. “We’re not animals, Mr. Caudill.”
It was true; as I looked over the colored gang standing before me, I could see that they each carried their own share of worry and trouble.
“Fair enough,” I said. “But you’re still strangers to me.”
“We’ll take our leave, then,” said Jenkins.
They turned and slipped into the cars. After they had gone, I walked slowly to my own car and drove off without looking back at Eileen.
* * *
As Johnson and I sat sweating in my car outside the Pigeon Club, the baking sun brought up a stench of stale beer from all the bottles rolling on the floor.
“Think we should just walk in?”
“Don’t think about eating now, Johnson,” I said. I had with some regret pulled the young man from the safety of his grandmother’s house just as he sat down to an enormous supper.
Johnson grinned. “I bet they have some good eats in there. Good booze, too.” He shot a sidewise glance at me. “If you go for that sort of thing.”
“There’s a ham sandwich in the glove box,” I said.
Johnson opened the box, rummaged around, and pulled out the mason jar that I had placed there. He held it up to the light, his face blank and uncomprehending. The dark genitals swirled slowly, inches from his face. When he finally understood what he was holding, Johnson’s hand shook a little and he placed the jar gently on the dash.
“Jesus, Detective, is that what you did to Pease?”
“It ain’t Pease. I got an early Christmas present. Just put it back in the box.” I felt like I had worked out enough banter for the day. We had been waiting almost an hour for Hardiman to appear. I squinted first at the red brick of the Pigeon Club, warm and orange in the low sun, and then at Hardiman’s gleaming Lloyd Cruiser, parked by the valet just a few steps from the door. The place had been a speakeasy in the old days, one of the untouchable speaks reserved for the mayor and his cronies, the auto barons and their robber friends, steel and rail magnates visiting from New York, Chicago, or Pittsburgh. I had been inside it just once, when a patron had stabbed a cigarette girl with a fork after she had slapped him, stabbed her twice in her fat thigh. There was a tremendous ruckus before I managed to settle it by squeezing five dollars from the patron for the girl. By the time I left, the girl was back on the man’s lap, pressing a napkin daintily onto her punctures.
Finally Hardiman sauntered out. He pulled out sunglasses against the brightness and snapped his fingers for an attendant. Though I didn’t figure Hardiman for a big tipper, the boy jumped up and ran back to the big Cruiser, really just a few steps away. I heard the engine roar to life and then saw the gleaming black auto pull to the stoop before the club. Hardiman got in and pulled the boat out into the street.
I followed for a block or two. I was not sure that Hardiman would pull over if I set out the flasher and used the siren. If he ran, it would attract too much attention to a questionable stop; besides, my old jalopy might not be able to keep up with the powerful roadster. But after Hardiman’s car washed around the corner and turned east, I decided to risk it. I pulled up close to the rear bumper, set the flasher on the dashboard, and cranked the siren briefly. Hardiman pulled over.
I saw the door open a crack and Hardiman’s glossy wing tip drop to the pavement. “Go get him, Johnson. I don’t want him to see me just yet.”
“Wh-what should I say?”
“Dammit, Johnson, just go!”
Johnson was in his street clothes but had remembered to bring along his badge. He hurried out of the car and stopped Hardiman’s arrogant rush. I knew Hardiman wouldn’t be able to see me, because the sun was shining right on the back of my head. Since it was Sunday, all the shops lining the street were closed and the street was empty except for a few stray cars. I popped the leather strap that held my revolver in the shoulder rig.
Johnson wasn’t doing well. I saw from the postures of the two men that he was getting the short end of it. Hardiman tipped back his head and let out a big laugh; his white teeth flashed. In an instant, Johnson tipped his shoulder, swiveled his hips, and slammed a neat uppercut just under Hardiman’s ribs.
I scrambled from the car. “Jesus Christ, Johnson, what are you doing?” Hardiman heaved and gasped, doubled over, trying to get back the breath Johnson’s punch had stolen.
“He was getting funny with me.” Johnson stood like a skinny rooster, defiant and angry, unsure of his footing.
“I can handle the rough end,” I said. Still, I thought, that punch was a little something, right on the money.
Hardiman managed a hoarse whisper. “You’re through in this town, both of you. Do you know what they do to cops in the slammer?”
“Any idea what they do with fellows who like little girls?” I asked. “And don’t think I don’t know the rest of it.”
“You’ve got nothing on me,” said Hardiman, leveling his gaze at me behind his glasses. “Because I haven’t done anything.”
I backhanded the sunglasses from Hardiman’s pale, leering face, putting some knuckle into it. “You’re through talking, Hardiman. I’m through and I know it. That means I can do whatever I want now. I can piss on whoever I want and get away with it, just like you.”
“You can’t do anything to—”
I pulled the mason jar from my coat pocket and brought it sharply to the side of Hardiman’s head, shattering it and dousing him with formaldehyde. The rubbery genitals bounced down from his shoulders and off his hands as he brought them up. When they hit the pavement, they wiggled a bit and stopped against Har
diman’s shoe. He kicked them away.
“What the hell is this?” he sputtered.
“That’s Pease’s balls, just like you wanted,” I said. “Now where’s my money?”
“You can’t—I’m not giving you any money, you—”
I backhanded him again, spraying formaldehyde in a glittering halo. “I told you not to talk any more, see?” I looked around and saw that cars were beginning to slow as they passed. “Johnson,” I said, “do you know offhand if formaldehyde is flammable?”
Hardiman’s face, already pale, went green, and his eyes seemed to shrink back into his face.
“Should I get some matches from the car?” Johnson made a step.
“That’s all right for now, Johnson, I was just thinking. Now you,” I said, pulling my revolver discreetly from the rig and stepping close to Hardiman, “you get in and sit behind the wheel. We’re taking a little trip.” I nudged Hardiman toward the black roadster, shouldered him toward the door. “Johnson, you sit up front with Mr. Nothing, here.”
We all got into Hardiman’s car, me in back, directly behind the driver’s seat. Hardiman started the engine with trembling hands and pulled away from the curb.
The Devil's Own Rag Doll Page 25