Walk Hand IN Hand Into Extinction : Stories Inspired By True Detective

by Christoph Paul

  When January arrived they all sat around the table, Lemke and Captain Hoke smoking cigars, January wishing she had a butt. The summery air drifting in through a screen door had the salty smell of the surrounding wetlands.

  “Venison. For the Fourth,” Lemke said, gesturing toward the deer.

  January glanced at the animal then turned back to Lemke. She said, “You wanted to see me about something?”

  “I don’t want to hear your thoughts. I just want you to think them.”

  “What am I supposed to think?”

  “That could be you hanging in there. Airing out so to speak.”

  January glanced at the gutted, decapitated deer. “The deer’s out of season. What’s your point?”

  Olga in the kitchen, all three hundred pounds of her, bustling about, now using the meat cleaver on something. Chop. Chop. Chop. January thinking this is theatre.

  She said, “You might want to try this out in New Haven. I don’t think it’s ready for Broadway.”

  Captain Hoke pulled his chair close to hers, filled her view with his large, craggy face, not a hint of kindness in it, the man spending most of his adult life crafting that look.

  “Listen, Sweetheart. Any day now we could pay you off, put you in a limo and send you off to California where you can pursue a career in the movies.”

  “Like the other girls who disappeared, huh?”

  “That’s right. There’s quite a few out there in Hollywood. Trading blow jobs for bit parts.”

  “You ought to visit me once in a while, Hoke. Loosen up your tight ass. That is if you can get it up, which I doubt.”

  Hoke launched a stiff right hand knocking the girl over backwards in her chair. Creating a wooziness inside her head, her thoughts jumbled. But she forced herself to get up, straightened her chair, sat back down and smoothed her dark hair in place. Nothing to it.

  “You’re a manly man, aren’t you,” she said.

  Hoke’s face steaming. Lemke held up a restraining hand. There was no point in permanently damaging the girl. They still needed her.

  Lemke blew smoke in the direction of the whitetail. “Get Dick on board.”

  “Onboard? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “January, don’t bullshit me. You know what’s going on here. Dick needs to marry Melissa, even if it only lasts a few months.”

  “They’re first cousins, for Christ sake.”

  “I don’t care they’re brother and sister. He won’t listen to me, but he’s nuts about you. Convince him it’s only temporary. Tell him, he does this, he’ll never have to work another day in his life. Tell him you need him to do this.”

  Silence.

  Lemke said, “Get it done and life can be sweet, real sweet. Don’t and you could be hanging in that closet waiting for Olga.”

  Olga’s meat cleaver whacking away at something that used to be alive and well.

  January stopped in front of the door. The brass sign read Dill Docks Club, Manager. She knocked. Dick Hennessey let her in.

  “There’s something strange going on,” she said.

  “Strange,” Dick laughed. “That’s an understatement.”

  “I’m not talking about Melissa and Old Jake,” she said. “Something else, I can’t put my finger on. But maybe there’s a connection.”

  “Like what?”

  She said, “You’ve been in Lemke’s office downtown?”

  “A few times,” said Dick.

  “You know the layout?”

  “It’s a suite of individual offices. Lemke’s got the corner one. The big shot office. River view.”

  “Dick, Bob Moses is going to build a bridge here. Before it’s built, it needs roads leading to it. That means purchasing land, lots of it. Swamp land. Worthless at the moment. But could become very valuable. Particularly if Old Jake has his way with Melissa; he swings a deal through Shannahan and the Board of Estimate. The price gets jacked. There’s a lot of money at stake.”

  “Jake’s not getting Melissa. I won’t let it happen. For Christ sakes, the Bronx is not the fuckin’ Fiji Islands.”

  “Who owns that land, Dick? All that swamp land from Throgs Neck to Pelham Park?”

  “Flattop. Up until he died.”

  “Who’re Flattop’s heirs?”

  “He had no children.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I never heard of any.”

  “I have a friend used to be in the business,” said January. “She got a dose once too often and went for a real job. She cleans offices in the Empire State building.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “We go in there, dress like the cleaning crew. Take a look at his files. I want to see Flattop’s will.”

  “These guys can play rough.”

  “Dick, if they’re into eating the occasional nubile female, how much rougher can they get?”

  “Jan, this is an eating club, not a cannibal club. We don’t eat people here.”

  Silence.

  Dick hesitated, weighing consequences against possible gains. “When you want to do it?”

  “Tonight.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  “My life is in danger. And I think yours is too.”

  One AM, closing time at the Dill Docks Club.

  The poker game broke up and the members were escorted to their limousines, their liveried drivers standing around in the dark chewing tobacco, spitting, watching the fire flies illuminate the swamp lands, passing around a pint of Four Roses.

  Captain Hoke made his rounds of the girls’ rooms, chasing out one or two of the members who could never get enough. Then, for the first time ever, he checked on Dick.

  Dick sat reading in his sitting room, dressed in boxers, smoking, enjoying a Jameson on ice. The door opened suddenly and Hoke stepped inside his cop eyes darting as if something might be hiding there. Dick didn’t get up.

  “Time for bed, Kid,” Hoke grinned taking another step inside as if privileged.

  Dick put down his drink. “You want something?”

  “Just having a look.”

  “You had it. Get the fuck out.”

  “Dicky boy, we’re starting to wonder about you. You better straighten out. I’m telling you for your own good.”

  “I’m not the marrying type. If that’s a problem, Lemke can fire me. I’ll go back to humpin’ tie rods. Now get lost before I throw you out.”

  “Dick, don’t ever get in the way of the flow of money. That’s an unforgivable sin in this town.”

  Hoke backed out. Dick got up and watched the precinct commander in his starched white captain’s shirt walk the long, dim hall, opening doors and getting called out by the girls. At the end of the hall he disappeared down the stairs. Dick waited a minute. All quiet. He pulled on dungarees and a T-shirt and went to January’s room.

  They left by way of the kitchen, took a path thru the weeds that was dry when the tide was out and climbed the embankment to where Dick had his car hidden in the willows. In a minute they were on 177th Street heading for Bruckner Boulevard and the distant glow of Manhattan where the Empire State Building jutted majestically toward the sky.

  January’s friend Trudie let them in, gave them both grey coveralls. The high speed elevators shot them up to the offices of Rosen Rahilley and Lemke Attorneys and Counselors at Law. Big gold block letters hung on the wall like picture frames. No one at the black marble reception desk. They found Lemke’s office and searched around not finding anything except the safe.

  They stood for a moment staring at the thick, black safe that could withstand a bomb blast.

  “Let’s have a look in the file cabinets,” said January. She found a file on Flattop but there was nothing in it but general information, his legal name, address, business affairs. A secretary, not understanding much about security, had taped inside the file jacket a tiny manila envelope labelled: dead files, basement storage. The tiny envelope contained a key with a number stamped on it.

&n
bsp; They went downstairs and found Trudie. She examined the key and took them to a subbasement where there was a line of storage rooms, each one numbered. She found the correct door, turned the key and let them into a vault-like room with steel shelves containing storage cartons of dusty files. Trudie backed away, showing a little annoyance, complaining she could lose her job over this crap.

  January smiled, touched her shoulder. “We won’t be a minute. We’ll leave the uniforms by the elevators and let ourselves out.”

  “My boss went out to eat an hour ago. He’ll be back any minute. Don’t let him catch you. He’s a bastard. He’ll have you arrested for breaking and entering.”

  Inside the room, the shelved cardboard storage boxes were labelled by year. January drifted slowly between the rows of shelves.

  “What year did they put you in the Foundling Home?”

  “I was ten, 1938.”

  She found a carton with that year stenciled on it and pulled it out. Dick grabbed the weighty box and set it on the floor. January dug into it like a terrier, her fingers nimble, rifling through the file folders.

  She turned up a file labelled Foundling. Inside were newspaper clippings. Her eyes speed read the stories, not saying anything to Dick before she digested the content.

  She read aloud, “’Woman found cremated in remote section of the Bronx. Officers from the 45th Precinct found a funeral pyre and the burned remains of a young woman on a little used cinder road that passes through a series of marshes in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx. A source stated the body appeared to have been butchered before it was burned. Police refused to confirm or deny. A search of the surrounding marshland found a ten year old boy hiding in the reeds. He was reported to be mute and frightened. His identity was not available. Cops reported he was sent to a hospital asylum in Kings Park, Long Island for observation…’”

  January asked Dick, “Could that boy be you?” She was still scanning the newsprint, not looking at Dick. When he made no reply, she turned toward him.

  Dick had folded up on the floor.

  “Dick, what’s wrong?”

  “Christ, oh fuckin’ Christ,” was all Dick could get out, saying it over and over, his hands clamped on his head as if it might explode.

  She grabbed his shoulders, forcing him to look at her. “Pull yourself together.”

  “I’m trying. Jesus, it’s like getting run over by a truck.” His breath coming sharp and shallow. “I can almost see it. I can almost fuckin’ see it.”

  “You remember?”

  “I have dreams, nightmares. I’ve told you about them. But no memory. Unless you call feeling a memory. I can’t remember it in any normal way. It’s blurred in my mind. Something happened to the memory.”

  “But it is a memory, isn’t it? This was something you experienced?”

  “I think that’s me, that boy in the news.”

  January perused the rest of the article. “They took you to Kings Park. You know what they do there?”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “I’ve known girls, crazy girls, who were sent there. They came out they didn’t act crazy anymore. Just blank looks on their faces. They do electric shock there. They do lobotomies. They make bad memories go away.”

  “I don’t remember being there. Except in dreams, like tunnel vision. A green walled institution. A dismal, lonely feeling. Something’s twisted in my head. I can feel the memory, feel the fear, but I can’t fuckin’ see it. Only in dreams. It’s like being haunted by a ghost.

  “Do you want to stop?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a follow-up article. She read: Police are looking for a man, possibly the boy’s father.

  “Do they give a name?”

  “No. No names.”

  She was lying. She didn’t tell the name of the woman in the fire. The article read, - determined by dental records as Nora Hennessey. She worked as a psychiatric nurse in Pilgrim State Hospital. It is believed she was murdered, although an accidental death has not been ruled out.

  “How about the woman in the fire? Do they name her?”

  “No, I don’t see anything,” said January.

  January thumbed through more papers and there it was, an old copy of Flattop’s will. Superseded by a later copy but not destroyed. She was quiet for a moment, engrossed in reading

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Old documents.”

  She saw Dick’s name, Richard Hennessey, listed as executor and Melissa Horan as sole heir. It didn’t say Melissa was offspring of Flattop. But if she married Dick and then died, Dick would have right of survivorship and ownership of the real estate.

  Dick’s head rose and January quickly scanned the rest of the document. She didn’t think Dick could handle that bit of information. What she didn’t know is how the most recent copy of the will read. Is Dick still the executor? Would first-cousin marriage to Melissa be legal, if indeed that was Lemke’s plan? She took another look at the final pages of the will. It stated, Should there be no living heir the estate will be administered by the Lemke law firm.

  It appeared to January that Lemke would be much better off if Melissa and Dick were married – followed by Melissa’s sudden death. Then what? Right of Survivorship. Dick would have control of the land and its sale price. But how would Lemke gain control, if that was his aim?

  A sour scene with Lemke appeared in her mind, the man grabbing her, rushing her into Dick’s private quarters, Dick not around, the man in a sexual rage, bending her over the back of the sofa, pulling her hair back like a leash. Did that mean anything? She wondered, was he just violently fucking me? Or was it something more? A deliberate defilement. Of me? Or of Dick Hennessey? Or both of us?

  Dick was staring at her. She closed the flaps of the carton.

  “Put the carton back on the shelf. Let’s get out of here. I’m dying for a smoke, she said. She slipped the storage room key into her bra thinking she had to maneuver Dick. Get him on track. Do it right and she could take it all. Do it wrong and they’d both be dead.

  17

  FROM THE DUSTY MESA by David Busboom

  When I was six I met a hoodoo man.

  This was in the summer of 1958; my family was on vacation in Mississippi and we were exploring Vicksburg. While my parents window-shopped I stalked around their legs and watched the people on the sidewalk. That’s when I saw him at the end of the block.

  He was an old black man in an antique wooden wheelchair, with wiry legs no thicker than my own six-year-old limbs, and hard-looking arms wide as my torso, I guess from rolling himself around everywhere. He was facing the street, watching the cars go by, I thought, but when I took a step toward him he turned his head and looked at me like he’d known I was there the whole time. His scalp was covered in patches of thick, tight curls that were more black than grey, and his eyes smiled even though his mouth did not. One eye—the left—looked a little milky. The other was bright as glass.

  I went over to him then, told him hello in my meek six-year-old voice. I said my name was Tommy and he said his name was Moses and I saw his big yellow teeth. He had a soft, deep voice. I said did he mean Moses like from the Bible and he said yessuh and I said I never read the Bible but my mommy and daddy talked about it. He pointed a bony claw at my parents and said was that my mommy and daddy and I said yes and he said his mommy and daddy were slaves before he was born. I said what were they after he was born and he said his daddy was a corpse and his mommy was a magic woman and I said what’s a magic woman and he got real serious and said a vessel of The Masked Prophet.

  “Anythin’ you do is the plan of The Masked Prophet, understand,” he explained, “The Pallid One. He have somethin’ to do with everythin’ you do, if it’s good or bad, He have somethin’ to do with it. Jis what’s for you, you’ll get it.”

  “That sounds like God,” I said.

  “He’s a little like God, not quite as powerful, but a little more practical, maybe.” He paused thoughtfu
lly, searching for a way to explain. “Whenever I’m afraid of goin’ to Hell I read the Bible and pray to God. Whenever I’m afraid of someone doin’ me harm in this world I turn to The Masked Prophet. He came from way back yonder the time that the Bible’s Moses lived, before the Bible was written or the church found. But you won’t find Him in there.”

  “Why not?”

  He looked into my eyes, his right eye sharp. “Not sure myself, but I ‘spect it’s ‘cause the Bible says we was made in God’s image. The Masked Prophet ain’t that way. He says we more like fleas on a rat—but He still looks after us who know Him.” He added this last as though trying to be comforting; whether to me or himself, I don’t know.

  “What does he look like?”

  He frowned. “He’s big and thin, with long white robes. Terrible to look on; never seen His face, though, on account of that mask.”

  After that my parents noticed where I was and with whom I was talking and they pulled me away, apologizing to the old cripple for letting their child bother him but really thinking it was Moses who’d bothered me. They marched me swiftly away, warned me never to approach strangers—especially strangers like that—and we finished our vacation and went home to Chicago without mentioning it again.

  Over the years I forgot all about the hoodoo man and his strange words. I started reading true crime stories, smoking cigars, drinking whisky, chasing freckled girls and homicidal maniacs. I moved to Texas. I grew a moustache. I got married, shot at, divorced. I barely remembered that I’d ever even been to Mississippi.

  Now, crouching in the South Texas desert outside Raptor Mesa, Beretta in hand and almost thirteen years eligible for retirement, I have Moses on my mind.

  In quiet dusk, under the swollen moon, I am reborn. The Pallid One is in the wind, in the rocks, and I walk with Him among the blooming Opuntia. His eyes watch me from every direction, but they are not like the eyes of the old men at the hospital; no lust in His gaze, only pure love and warmth. I wonder if He will let me see Him tonight. He let me see Him once before, after the adicto, but He wouldn’t unmask for me. He said I must do more if I want to see His face. I do.