Harlot's Moon

by Edward Gorman

  Pop takes a sudden right turn, the old pick-up rattling as he does so, and almost immediately Larry can smell the river. No smell like it on a July night. Heat and fish and dirty water, an oddly sweet-sour scent that is unlike anything he's smelled before.

  "You ready for a little coon huntin'?" Pop says, which is what he always says. And grins.

  Larry grins back. "Yeah, I sure am, Pop."

  He reaches down into the darkness and finds the rope. "You tie that knot the way I told ya to?"

  "I sure did, Pop."

  Pop grins. "Good boy."

  They're on dark side streets now so Pop decides to have himself a little swig from the flask.

  The houses in this area are small and shabby. Coon town, as Pop always calls it. Where the niggers live.

  Pop isn't crazy enough to go into the heart of it. He goes around it. There's a half block of taverns and a sandy road leading to a small section of trailers. This is on the outskirts of the area. White man'd have to be a crazy sumbitch to go in there at night.

  "Get it ready."

  "It's ready, Pop."

  They're abreast of the taverns now. Young blacks, about half with dread locks and half with shaved heads, stare sullenly at the pick-up truck as it floats by. Gangsta rap music snarls in the night. The cars parked along the streets all have decorations all over them, mud flaps and white fuzzy stuff on the steering wheels and all kinds of lights that blink on and off. Pop says you give a colored man a brand new Caddy, he'll have it junked up within twenty-four hours.

  Larry's mouth is dry now. He sure doesn't want to miss tonight. He sure doesn't.

  They leave the block of taverns and turn up toward the small park that sits way up high on the hill above the river.

  Larry and his Pop always work different areas of the city. They haven't been over here in some time. Last time they came to the city in fact they weren't coon hunting at all. They spray-painted a swastika on the front door of a synagogue.

  The thing is to find one alone. Around here, so close to their own kind and all, they feel safe. They're always walking around just the way white people do.

  They spot one.

  Kid. Not much older than Larry. Walking down from the darkened pavilion up there. Wearing Levi cutoffs and a sleeveless white T-shirt. So black he's almost invisible when he's out of the street light's range.

  This is actually kind of nice up here. Five, six degrees cooler, for one thing. For another, you can smell flowers and hear crickets. Kinda peaceful, actually.

  "Ready?" Pop says.

  "Ready."

  The thing is to swoop up fast like, before the kid even has time to offer the least resistance.

  He's walking on the right side of the road, perfect for Larry to lean out and do his job.

  "Here he comes," Pop says, as they swoop up right next to the kid.

  Larry half-jumps out of the window — the truck is still moving, though at around ten miles per hour — and throws the lasso around the kid's shoulders, just the way cowboys rope a steer.

  Perfect!

  The kid screams.

  They'll have to act fast or half the coons in Cedar Rapids'll be up here.

  Drag him fast up the street, that's the thing they have to do.

  The kid, who is a lot stronger than he looks, puts up a pretty good fight until Pop really floors it . . . and then the kid doesn't have a chance.

  He's jerked off his feet and flung to the ground.

  And then Pop starts dragging him, already hitting forty miles an hour.

  The kid is screaming and wailing and cussing as he's tugged along in the wake of the truck, his skin already suffering terrible friction burns, and his head slamming against the asphalt.

  Larry holds tight on the rope. He got the first part down perfect — throwing the rope and lassoing the coon real good — now he can't let down and let the rope slip out of his hands.

  At first, even though he's being pulled along, the kid fights back so Larry needs all his strength to keep hold of the rope.

  But after a few hundred yards . . . Larry can feel the coon losing his strength.

  The kid is still screaming and now in the darkness they can hear other colored voices shouting in fear and panic, wondering what's happening in their neighborhood.

  "Cut the rope!' Pop says.

  Larry's been holding his switchblade in his right hand. Now that Pop's given him the signal, Larry moves fast, snicking the blade open, and slashing through the rope. Moments later, Larry is smiling to himself and pulling the slit rope inside the truck.

  There won't be no beating tonight. No, sir. He did it just right.

  Pop is all concentration now, highballing it out of the black section of town, out north to where the river winds in the wind and moonlight, the shores all shaggy with pines, Pop says, "Undo that flash for me!"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You want a drink?"

  "Really?"

  "You done a man's work, you should get a man's pay."

  "Great!' Larry feels like he's eighteen years old or something.

  "Just don't tell your Mom, you hear me?"

  "Oh, I hear you, Pop," Larry says, this big shit-eatin' grin splittin' his face, "I hear ya real good."

  Larry can't ever remember being this happy, not even the time he found the five dollar bill in the parking lot of the baseball stadium.

  Not even then.

  They showed the coons, boy, they showed them real, real good.

  Chapter Seven

  The bar was over on the west side, near an industrial park. You didn't need to go inside to hear the country western jukebox, and you didn't need to be a sleuth to know that this was a place where ordinary middle-class people like me should fear to tread.

  There were maybe thirty motorcycles parked in front of the Death's Head Tavern. The skull and bones on the sign above the door matched the skull and bones on the T-shirts of the men and women inside.

  It was sort of like a western movie. As soon as I walked inside, everybody stopped talking and turned to glower at me. The women were just as scary as the men. If you counted up all the tattoos in this place, the number would probably reach the 1,500 mark. To say nothing of scars, broken noses, glass eyes and artificial limbs. Born to be wild.

  The bar was darker than night, with the only real light coming from the illuminated tiers of bottles behind the bar, the revolving Bud clock above the bar, the jukebox and a lone bulb over the pool table.

  A guy who looked like Captain Hook on steroids said, "I'd say you were in the wrong place, dude."

  His buddies all laughed so hard their tattoos jiggled on their biceps. So did all the knives and chains they wore warrior-style on their bodies.

  "You hear what I said?" Captain Hook asked when I didn't turn around and run away.

  "I'm supposed to meet somebody here," I said.

  There was an open slot along the bar so I filled it. The bartender looked pretty much like his clientele. Long, scraggly hair, sleeveless black T-shirt, and a face that was almost ludicrously mean.

  "You just don't dig, do you, man?" the bartender said. "I ain't gonna serve you. Now get your ass out of here."

  "I'll have a beer," I said. "Draft beer. Bud."

  I knew I was yammering. I was scared. And I was pissed. Gilhooley had apparently set me up for some kind of practical joke.

  I first met Gilhooley one long-ago morning in ROTC at the University of Iowa. This was back when ROTC was still mandatory, though the entire program would be scrapped a year later.

  Gilhooley was the only ROTC cadet dressed in full blue uniform with a copy of Marxist Dialectic in his hand.

  He hasn't changed much. To him, the sweetest days in memory will always be those times when the streets of Iowa City were packed with angry student demonstrators. The night the ROTC building was burned to the ground is the most hallowed of all evenings.

  I like to remind Gilhooley as often as possible that I'm a registered Republican.

&nbs
p; These days, Gilhooley edits an Iowa historical magazine, and does research for a number of law firms and investigative agencies. Gilhooley can give you all sorts of information nobody else can seem to find.

  He's especially good at background checks. That's why I was meeting him — to give him some work. But he'd apparently decided he wanted to pull one of his practical jokes by sending me into a hell-hole like this one.

  Captain Hook grabbed me, spun me around and was just pulling his arm back, ready to shatter my face with his fist, when I heard a toilet flush and then heard a squeaky-hinged door open up.

  "Kill the sumbitch," one of Hook's buddies said.

  "Break his face," said one of the ladies' auxiliary.

  "Make him a soprano," said one guy over by the jukebox. I was trying to figure out the best way to remove myself from Captain Hook's grasp when a familiar voice said, "Hey, Payne, I see you met my buddies here."

  "You know this creep?" Captain Hook demanded when Gilhooley appeared in the light from the Bud clock.

  "Sure I know him. He's all right."

  "He looks like a narc," Captain Hook said.

  "Nah," Gilhooley said. "He used to be a fed but now he's private. I told him to meet me here."

  Captain Hook glowered at me a little more then let go of my shirt.

  "Hey, c'mon now, let's everybody have a beer," Gilhooley said. "And my buddy Payne here will buy it."

  A kind of cheer went up, the jukebox kicked on, and the bartender started setting up cans of beer along the bar. Free beer. Unless your name was Payne.

  "Hey," Gilhooley said to me. "I want you to meet my friends, Robert."

  There was a semi-circle of them fanned out around us.

  Captain Hook said, "Gilhooley here's been tellin' us all about Chairman Mao and shit like that."

  "Chairman Mao was one cool dude," said one of the other bikers.

  "Power to the people, man," said another.

  "Fucking capitalist pigs, man," said yet another.

  Somehow, Gilhooley had managed to turn all these bikers into Maoists. It was just like living in Iowa City in 1968. Gilhooley had found heaven.

  "Hey, Robert, I want you to meet my friends," he said again.

  Four or five guys stuck their hands out. Now that they knew I was with Chairman Gilhooley, their opinion of me had changed.

  "Robert, this is Pig Face, this is Gravel Pit, this is Long Dong, this is Knuckle Duster, and this is Snake Lips."

  "Hey," they all said.

  "Hey right back," I said.

  "These guys are committed," Gilhooley said. "Not like those candy-asses we went to college with. These guys will never sell out, will you, Pig Face?"

  "Right on," said Gravel Pit.

  "Right fucking on," said Long Dong.

  I led Gilhooley down to the end of the bar so we could talk alone.

  "You idiot," I said.

  "Idiot? What're you talking about, man?"

  "Bringing me into a dump like this."

  "Dump? These guys are real revolutionaries, Robert. Maoists."

  "Right."

  "They are, man."

  "If they're such revolutionaries, ask them what they think about black people or feminists or gays."

  "I'm bringing them along real slow," Gilhooley said. "We'll get to all that stuff later."

  Right. For the time being you'll just concentrate on the fun stuff, huh? Burning down buildings and shooting capitalists? I haven't heard that many people say "Right on" since the last time Jim Morrison exposed himself on stage."

  I forced myself to take a few deep breaths. To chill out, as Gilhooley called it.

  I looked across at him and shook my head. I'd spent twenty years trying to hate him and I couldn't. Not quite. Buried in all the rhetoric and melodrama was a decent guy, one who genuinely cared about people less fortunate than himself. Unfortunately, he saw the cure for all our problems only in isms, most notably any ism that had as its sworn enemy the United States.

  One other thing about Gilhooley: for a somewhat gangly, red-topped forty-three-year-old, he sure spends a lot of time with a lot of women. Maybe my generation of men has blanded out now that we're middle-aged. Or maybe certain women just like Gilhooley's passion, misplaced as it frequently is. Whatever the reason, Gilhooley sees more than his share of females.

  "So what's the job?" he said.

  I told him about the murder. And about the people involved. The Wilsons. Steve Gray, Father Ryan.

  "A hurry on this?"

  "As much as possible."

  "I should be able to get to it pretty fast."

  "I'd really appreciate it."

  "That's pretty strange, that priest dying in a motel room."

  "Yes, it is strange. They're just starting a fund-drive. This didn't come as real good news."

  "At least it gets them a little publicity."

  "You always find the bright spot, don't you?"

  "Huh?"

  "Never mind, Gilhooley. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

  Felice made us a dinner of vegetarian burgers and green beans. We alternated nights making meals.

  Afterward, I went into the spare bedroom I use as my den and sat down at the table to study the copy of the clippings we'd found in Father Daly's room. I turned on the computer.

  Then I laid the Xerox of the two newspaper clippings out in front of me and read them as I ate.

  WOMAN SLAIN IN BOWKER PARK

  Cedar Rapids Police identified the woman found stabbed to death in Bowker Park Tuesday night as Tawanna Jackson. Her eyes had been cut out.

  Friends are baffled as to what Jackson was doing in the park, adding to the speculation that she was killed elsewhere and dropped in the park.

  The clipping went on to say that close friends of Jackson's had said that she had been acting 'stressed out' lately, though none offered an explanation of why.

  MAN'S BODY FOUND IN CAR

  Police Chief Michael Conroy held a press conference Thursday afternoon to confirm the name of the homicide victim discovered the night before. He had been stabbed to death, and his left ear had been cut off.

  Conroy said that Ronald Swanson, 56, of Cedar Rapids, was found in the front seat of his car where it was parked behind the Lariat Lounge on A Ave N.W.

  Tavern patrons said that Swanson had spent three hours in the tavern and had been drinking heavily.

  The story concluded by noting that Swanson was an insurance company executive and a father of three. Services were pending.

  Interesting.

  Tawanna Jackson's eyes had been cut out. Ronald Swanson's ear had been cut off. And Father Daly's tongue had been cut out. There had to be a connection here.

  The FBI taught me to analyze crimes, to do psychological profiles on criminals from what they did and didn't do, from what they left behind and what they took with them. Now, automatically, whenever I hear of a crime I start analyzing on the basis of what I know: what kind of person would have done this?

  Why?

  When a murdered man's possessions included news stories about two other murdered people, there ought to be a connection. There was something nagging my brain but staying just out of reach. And I wasn't surprised. Count up the sleep I'd had in the last two days and it didn't add up to much. It was time to rest, let the back of my mind work on those niggling things and bring them to the surface.

  The phone rang just as I was carrying the dishes over to the sink.

  My classically-striped cat Tasha was on the couch waiting for me to join her for a few hours of TV watching. Crystal and Tess, the other two cats, were lying side by side in the armchair, sleeping.

  I sat down on the couch, lifted Tasha up on to my lap, and then answered the phone.

  "Hello?"

  Silence.

  "Hello?"

  If they don't identify themselves after the second hello, I always hang up. I hung up.

  Tasha and I watched some old sit-coms on Nick At Nite and then I went in and got ready to go to be
d, where Felice already was.

  The phone rang again.

  This time I picked it up on the nightstand next to the bed.

  "Hello?"

  Silence.

  "Hello?"

  Still nothing.

  I hung up. Now Felice was propped up on one elbow, looking at me.

  I shook my head. Don't answer.

  Okay. She flattened herself under the cover again, but I didn't think she went back to sleep.

  When I came out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, my mouth smarting from the nuclear mouthwash I use, the phone rang once again.

  This time when I picked up, I said nothing.

  Finally, a woman said: "Hello."

  "Who is this?"

  "I'd like to speak with Mr. Payne."

  "Who is this?"

  Silence.

  "My name is Eleanor Wilson. Ellie."

  "This is Robert Payne. Did you call here earlier?"

  Hesitation. Then: "Yes. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have hung up those times. I was just - nervous."

  "What can I do for you, Mrs Wilson?"

  "You sound angry. I'm sorry we got off on the wrong foot."

  We always like to think that the beautiful ones are self-possessed and in control. She was anything but.

  "I'm afraid to say — well, what I called to say."

  "I'm not an ogre, Mrs Wilson. Just say it."

  "Call me Ellie. Please."

  I sighed. "Ellie, look. Why don't you just get to the point and then we'll see if there's any way I can help you."