Voices in the Dark

by Andrew Coburn

  The ending flattened Morgan, and he had to force himself from the sofa, his thoughts burdened with the conviction he lacked the stuffing for his job. A sense of fraud followed him to the refrigerator, in which nothing looked appetizing. When the phone rang, he was heavy on his feet, each step a stamp.

  It was Beverly Gunner.

  “The man in the picture. Dudley. I know who he is.”

  The receiver wedged between his jaw and shoulder, Morgan shook cornflakes into a chipped bowl. “What does it prove?”

  Her voice trembled. “You’re the policeman, James.”

  He did not have the heart to disabuse her.

  • • •

  One side of his face empty, Paul Gunner gazed up asymmetrically at his elder son and spoke in the crippled voice. “She comes here, you know what to do.”

  “Yes, Papa,” Gustav replied, prideful his father had chosen to speak privately to him, without Herman.

  “You don’t want her to get you.”

  “She won’t get up the stairs, Papa. I’ll see to that.”

  “Your papa’s helpless,” Gunner said, his voice wavering.

  “You’ll get better!”

  “I know numbers.” Gunner’s eyes were teary. “I know the odds.”

  “Don’t cry, Papa.”

  “You boys will get everything.”

  A few moments later Herman came into the room. His face hung out like an apology for being there. “How’s Papa?”

  “Leave us alone,” Gustav said.

  The male nurse appeared, displaced both boys, and looked down at the bed. “How are we doing, Mr. Gunner?”

  Gunner didn’t respond.

  Isabel Williams stood splendidly straight, extended a hand, and said in a charming voice, “A pleasure to meet you, though I must say I’ve never been interviewed by a policeman. You look much too pleasant to be one.” She led him into a small sitting room off the vestibule, where there was privacy, cushioned captain’s chairs, and vases of wildflowers.

  Seated, Chief Morgan said, “It’s very nice here.”

  She smiled through the seamless glaze of her stretched face. “Never has an inmate lived so comfortably. Almost obscene, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You’re not confined.”

  “Not in the sense you mean.” She leaned forward in her chair, an elbow propped on her knee. The low top of her dress revealed modest breasts the pale yellow of certain apples, the nipples the button caps of mushrooms. The scent of her perfume fanned out. “If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you, Chief Morgan? Older, I suspect, than you look.”

  “I’m vain about my age,” he said.

  “ Ah, like me. I won’t ask you to guess my age.” She sat back, crossing her legs and exhibiting the waxy smoothness on her knees. “What is it you want to know about Dudley?”

  “What’s his full name?”

  “I’m not sure I ever knew.”

  “Dudley his first or his last name?”

  “Could be either.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “A frivolous man — effete, to my mind — and a born liar. He claims he went to Harvard, which is pure bullshit. He lives in a fantasy world, though I’ll admit he’s clever, clever enough to sponge off my daughter. Pains me to say this, but she’s also a fruitcake. Do you have children, Chief Morgan?”

  “No.”

  “You’re fortunate. What in the world do you want with Dudley? Beverly Gunner was very mysterious passing around that picture. I’m afraid she’s in her own world too.”

  “Dudley claims he kills children.”

  “Sounds like something the silly ass would say. What can I tell you? He enjoys shocking people.”

  “He claims he does it for money.”

  “Bully for him. It would be the first time he earned a dime of his own.”

  “Then you don’t believe a word of it?”

  “No, but it’s interesting you do.”

  “I didn’t say I did,” Morgan said, shifting in the chair. “Could he have known Harley Bodine?”

  “I don’t know any Harley Bodine.”

  “Paul Gunner?”

  “Hilda’s son? Yes, indeed, some time ago when my daughter visited me more. Dudley used to tag along and wait in the lobby. He was never shy about introducing himself. Paul Gunner during his visits took a shine to him. God knows what they talked about, but I’m sure Dudley amused him. I remember thinking a genius and an idiot. They go together.”

  Morgan, quiet for an extended moment, said, “Do you have Dudley’s address?”

  “You’d have to ask my daughter.”

  “May I have her number?”

  He provided a ballpoint and a slip of paper. The paper was a cash register receipt, on the face of which she jotted a Boston number. “You won’t upset her?”

  A stillness hung over his face. “I promise.”

  “Does this have anything to do with Hilda’s granddaughter?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s not hard to put two and two together, though don’t be surprised if you come up with five.”

  “I usually do,” Morgan said.

  • • •

  Sitting uneasily on a bench in the Public Garden, Regina Smith frequently consulted her watch to give passersby the impression that time mattered to her. Only the useless and forsaken sat alone on public benches and watched bits and pieces of life float by. It bothered her that strangers might think her devoid of destination and purpose. Her worst fear growing up was being thought common.

  A poorly dressed man shambled up the walkway with a face in danger of being a mere skull. Auschwitz and AIDS, each at the same time, popped into her head. Christ, let it not be him. A trash barrel abruptly occupied him. A noisy passel of children paraded by, two women in their midst. Then someone dropped down beside her. She glimpsed a boyish tousle of gray locks and crested buttons on a blue blazer, which looked brand-new.

  “Beautiful day,” he said.

  That was what he was supposed to say whether the day was that way or not. “If it doesn’t rain.” She said that on her own. Then: “Dudley?”

  He dimpled when he smiled. “I would have liked to have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but it wasn’t there.”

  A number of overly fed men and women tramped by, one after the other, as if obesity were contagious and epidemic. “I don’t need explanations,” she said.

  “Do you have the money?”

  She had booty from her first marriage, wise investments she had converted to cold cash, contained in a weighty accordion folder secured by sturdy laces. She passed it over, and he undid the laces, reached inside, and rubbed a thumb over one of the bands of bills as if to determine authenticity.

  “The correct amount, I presume.” He placed the folder beside him. “I believe we’re in business. I may have questions.”

  “You won’t.”

  “If he has an automobile, I’d like you to disable it.”

  She looked at him coldly.

  “It’s really not that tricky,” he said. “I’ll tell you how.”

  • • •

  In his office, with a feeling he was winding inward, Chief Morgan rang up the Boston number and got a woman’s voice, quite pleasant, somewhat professional. He said, “Miss Williams, my name is James Morgan. I’m the police chief in Bensington. Your mother gave me your number.”

  “She’s all right, isn’t she?”

  “She’s fine. She said you could tell me the address of your friend Dudley.”

  “I could have,” Mary Williams said without hesitation, “but I haven’t seen him since last spring. He was living here, you see.”

  “You don’t know where he is now?”

  “I wish I did. He left owing me money. I attract the wrong kind of men, my mother probably told you that. What has he done?”

  Morgan let a pencil slide from his grasp. “Would you know his full name?”

  “He was rather theatrical. Dudley was al
l he went by.”

  “Where’s he from?”

  “I don’t know. He told many stories.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “In the Public Garden. I do tend to pick up strays. I have one now. You haven’t told me what Dudley’s done.”

  “I merely want to talk to him.”

  “I wish I could help you.”

  “I may get back to you.”

  “Please do.”

  Morgan, loosening his shirt, made another phone call and learned from a man identifying himself as a nurse that Paul Gunner had suffered a stroke. The pencil he had allowed to escape he retrieved and broke in two. He stepped from his office and sank into a chair alongside Meg O’Brien’s desk.

  “What’s happening, James?”

  “Too much,” he said, “and not enough.”

  16

  THE SUN FLOODED THE FRONT ROOM AND RACED THROUGH May Hutchins’s hair, in which she had let the gray creep back. Roland’s ashes were in a brown paper parcel, as if delivered in the mail. Everett Drinkwater, the undertaker, had placed the parcel beside Roland’s picture on the table near the window. She had not wanted the ashes in the house but eventually had come around. “Not much to show for him, is there?” she said.

  Seated on the sofa, Drinkwater said, “The shame of it, May, is he wasn’t that old.”

  “He was running on failing batteries,” she said, her eye moving to the picture.

  “Death does what it wants,” Reverend Stottle said from an armchair. She had served sherry, which he appreciated. His second glass, which he held by the stem, had begotten a mood, one not all that different from Drinkwater’s.

  Drinkwater, who usually didn’t like to explore the subject, said, “The greatest mystery in the world is what it’s like to be dead. I still haven’t figured it out.”

  “He didn’t have enough fuel in him to continue the fight,” May said. She sat herself in a chair near the reverend, diagonal to Drinkwater, and unknowingly flaunted her legs.

  “In death,” the reverend said, “one joins the speed of light. In near-death experiences the light is glorious. In death it’s blinding.”

  “Then how do we see God?” Drinkwater asked.

  “There’s no need.”

  May had left her sherry glass somewhere and didn’t feel like fetching it. Drinkwater, divining the bind, lifted himself from the sofa and retrieved it for her. He also freshened the reverend’s glass and his own. “When I was a girl,” May said, “I saw Jesus in a dream. I’ve never forgotten it, but I wonder if he’ll remember me. I’ve changed so.”

  “Age is a disguise,” Reverend Stottle said. “When you enter the kingdom of heaven, you can tear the mask off and be that girl again.”

  “When I die,” Drinkwater said, “what are they going to do for me in heaven? If they give me my teeth back, I’ll settle for that.”

  May put her glass aside and brought her hands together under her chin. “My daughter’s upset because I had him cremated.”

  “It was your choice,” the reverend said.

  “My son is even more upset. He won’t speak to me.”

  “You can’t please everybody.”

  Drinkwater said, “There are some who say you come back.”

  “Reincarnation is just another word for recycling,” Reverend Stottle said. “So it’s quite possible.”

  May’s head swayed to one side, as if overtaken by consuming passivity. “I was a giddy piece of ass, that’s what I was.”

  Drinkwater pretended he hadn’t heard. Reverend Stottle said, “The idiot exists in all of us.”

  “A woman does what she has to do, even if it’s wrong. You men wouldn’t understand. Too many differences between us.”

  “The only difference, May, is between the legs. Everett and I have stubs, you have an ellipsis.”

  “What’s an ellipsis?”

  “This is getting a bit thick,” Drinkwater said, and cleared his throat. “I think caskets should be womb-shaped so that the deceased may be placed in the fetal position. This would not only return the person to his beginnings but suggest the anticipation of rebirth.”

  May put her hands to her head. “You were right the first time, Everett. This is too much.” She stretched an arm. “Will one of you help me up?”

  Drinkwater was the gentleman, though the effort put a strain on his back. A kind of strangeness came over May, who stood flat-footed, her gaze inward.

  “When you lose your mate,” she said, “you have nothing to look forward to.”

  Reverend Stottle, on his feet, said, “Only if you let yourself think that way.”

  Her face was in sunlight streaming through two windows. Emotions had obliterated one mask and were revealing another. “Please,” she said, “the two of you get out of here.”

  • • •

  The bed was cranked up, hiking Paul Gunner’s head and shoulders. His left arm drooped uselessly while the right struggled for strength. “Let me help,” Harley Bodine said and gripped the wrist. With supreme effort, the pen loose in his curved hand, Gunner affixed a signature, little more than a hen track, to a redrawn will, to which the male nurse was a witness. Bodine notarized it. The nurse left.

  “I have no patience for this,” Gunner murmured. His large, loose face lacked texture, as if the essential oil were gone from the skin. “About the other matter.”

  “You’d better be sure about that,” Bodine said.

  “You have it on paper?”

  “Yes.”

  “You fix it up, tighten the language.” The voice swerved away from itself, then straggled back. “If I could do it in equations, I wouldn’t need you.”

  “You’ll need me even more afterward,” Bodine said. “For the boys.”

  “They’ll carry on my name. Gustav has my brain.”

  Bodine lowered the top of the bed, which was like lowering a shrine. Gunner’s pajamas were gold-trimmed, the breast pocket monogrammed. Bodine said, “You understand I can’t implicate myself.”

  “Time comes, just put it in my hand.”

  Bodine’s expression, remote, impersonal, softened. “The least I can do,” he said.

  • • •

  The three of them, early risers. From her studio window, with a morning song of emotion, Mary Williams watched the sun creep through the Boston sky. It was like paint on a canvas. Her mood altered when she heard Dudley go out, a whistle on his lips. Moments later, his regimen of push-ups and sit-ups cut short, Soldier came into the studio.

  “He goes out, where’s he go all day? What’s he do?”

  “He has friends,” she lied, for truth was an enemy. It could wrap you into a bundle of nerves.

  “One of these days he won’t come back. Somebody will run him over.”

  That was merely one of several scenarios, by far not the worst, running through her mind. The worst could wake her in the night, only Soldier to cling to. She said, “One of these days it’ll be over.”

  “You got me, Mary. Forever, if you want.”

  “What’s ‘forever,’ Soldier? Ten years, twelve?”

  “I take care of myself. You want, I’ll live to be ninety. I could go to a hundred.” He stepped toward her, his head rearing out of a gray athletic shirt, his jaws shaved close. “There’s another factor. With me, you’re a woman. With him, you’re not. You want to deny that?”

  Much later in the day, she walked the length of Charles Street and around the corner to the Harvard Gardens, where the bar was busy and most of the booths occupied. She caught sight of a nurse’s uniform in a rear booth, strode to it, and slipped into the opposing seat. “I’m Mary Williams. Thank you for being here.”

  The nurse, Lydia, said, “Your call surprised me.” The work-worn uniform gave her a vague resemblance to a rumpled bride. Her hair, blends of brown, was whipped back and gripped in the snarl of a rubber band. “That’s white wine if you want it. I don’t have much time.”

  “I won’t waste it. Was Soldier good to you?
”

  “You want me to give a reference, is that it?”

  The other booths were noisy. She didn’t want to raise her voice, so she leaned over a wineglass, nearly tipping it. “I need to know. Was he good to you?”

  “He knew where he stood with me. He filled a temporary need, and then he got on my nerves. I wasn’t good to him.”

  She trusted the face and, entranced by the hard play of bones, wished she could sketch it. Maybe later, from memory. “Thank you,” she said.

  Lydia gathered herself to go. “What is it, Mary Williams? You in love with him or something?”

  She took out money for wine neither of them had touched. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “Then you could do worse.”

  • • •

  His car on the blink, Anthony Smith was one of many waiting on Main Street near the academy for a Boston bus. It was a soft and sunny, irresponsible day, slightly breezy. A student he knew distorted the corner of his mouth with a hooked finger to amuse his girlfriend. Two faculty wives, slight of figure but robust in voice, were sharing thoughts. Beyond them all, a man he didn’t know but had seen on campus, a new teacher perhaps, smiled at him. Then the bus came.

  He met his stepsister in South Station, where she arrived from Connecticut by Amtrak. She flew into his arms, her overnight bag tumbling between them. They kissed, they hugged. “Did you miss me, Tony?” He’d missed her much more than he’d thought he would. He’d missed her the way he would have one of his arms. “Do you have a place for us?”

  “Marriott Long Wharf,” he said. “We can walk there.”

  The room was high up, and the large window overlooked the murk of the harbor, the white stillness of pleasure boats, the ribbed archways of Christopher Columbus Park, the beaded glitter of traffic on the Central Artery, and the shooting sapphire lights of a police cruiser. Patricia said, “I don’t want ever to lose you. Don’t let them do anything.”