Rainy City

by Earl Emerson

  “How did people know these things?”

  “Melissa didn’t, care who knew. She’d tell you if you asked her.”

  “When did she marry this fella, Burton?”

  “I don’t know. I lost touch for a few years. Three years ago? Four years? About the time I moved into your basement. She dated him off and on ever since I knew her. But I always had the feeling there was nothing hot and heavy to it. You know, one of those guys a girl keeps on the back burner for a weekend when nothing else turns up.”

  “Just like you and me?”

  Kathy squinted at me and thrust her fingers into my ribs through my cocoa-colored ski coat. “Give me a break,” she said.

  “So what do these people do for a living?”

  “Burton’s a poet.”

  “Are you talking `poet,’ as in poetry?”

  “He’s a real poet. He’s been published in everything, even the Atlantic. He’s quite good.”

  “Does he find that puts bread and butter on the table?”

  I asked, semi-facetiously. I had written some poetry once.

  “Unless they’ve changed, they don’t have a lot of bread and butter on the table. They’re on food stamps. Burton works parttime when he can get it. Last I heard, he worked this summer for a month in Alaska doing something with crabs. But that was months ago and he hasn’t had anything since. Melissa keeps the house together. She used to work at a dime store down the street from their place. Recently, I think she was out of work.”

  “Did she graduate?”

  “About the time Angel was born. She’s got a teaching certificate. You know about how valuable they are these days. That and fifty cents will get her downtown on the bus.”

  “What’s your feeling on this? You never explained what you think will happen. The premonition.”

  “You don’t want to hear it.”

  “But I do. I trust your feelings. You may not always be right on the button, but you’ve been close enough to make a believer out of me. If you said it was time to sell my mother, I’d have to pack her up and stick an ad in the Times.”

  For several moments Kathy debated whether or not to articulate her thoughts, then decided against it. “We’ll find her and then things will work out.”

  “Okay, but if both Burton and her father don’t want me screwing around, it’s no deal. It’s tough enough locating someone when you have the family pitching for you. With the family on the other team? No deal.”

  “Are you good at finding people, Thomas?”

  “I’m good.”

  Kathy lapsed into a world of her own and I suppose I started thinking about my dog’s assassin. Perhaps someone thought the mutt was Kathy’s. Maybe some pervert was after her. I decided to break up the somber mood by switching on the Bible thumpers. Though she had been raised in a strict religious atmosphere, Kathy had forsaken all organized worship and loved to mock her past. The radio dial was loaded with proselytizing preachers on this cloudy, windswept Sunday.

  “What if Burton’s not home?” Kathy asked suddenly.

  “Sunday morning?” I looked at my watch. “Not yet nine-thirty? Are you kidding me? And miss Brother Andy Bob? Even the mayor is home in front of the tube. Hallelujah, Brother! Amen, Sister! Praise de Lord Jesus!”

  I rolled the dial and tuned in several evangelical speakers. Each seemed more vociferous and impassioned than the last. Everyone had Sunday fever. After a block, Kathy caught the infection and we were swamping the cab with amens! and hallelujahs! Kathy giggled like a child concealing a pocketful of snitched cookies. It’s contagious when someone you know and are fond of laughs with you. Anyone hearing us would have thought we had both gone over the wall at Western State, one of the local loony bins. Kathy sang out, “Praise the Lord, kiss the devil, and shine my boots!”

  The mirth stopped when we got to the street the Nadiskys lived on.

  I swerved in the nick of time. It was one of the new, smaller Cadillacs swooshing up the street toward us. The other driver was determined not to give an inch.

  Hunched over the steering wheel of the oncoming vehicle was a large, angry man. He had grizzled hair and bushy caterpillar eyebrows. The speeding Cadillac was crowded with faces, among them a middle-aged woman, a small towheaded girl in her lap.

  When a car comes at you fast enough to kill everyone involved, you don’t have much of a chance to reconnoiter. All I saw clearly was a strobe-light glimpse of the infant blonde. She looked as if she were in a state of shock, as if Santa had just puked on her. She sucked her thumb madly, a tattered blanket pressed up against the opposite side of her face creating a giant, formless ear muff.

  Kathy pulled her hands off the dashboard where she had impulsively reached to brace for an accident. “That was Angel.”

  “Melissa’s kid?”

  She nodded. “I think that was her grandfather at the wheel.”

  “If he eats like he drives he’ll choke to death.”

  The Nadisky homestead was around the corner a block away. The houses were all tiny, cramped, squarish, but it was easy to single out the Nadisky place. It was the only yard where the grass grew past your knees. The only place that had an overturned, rusted wheelbarrow canted against the front porch. The only bungalow with water-spotted sheets tacked in the windows where drapes should have been. The only house on the block where the front door stood wide open.

  A late-model, tan sedan was parked at the curb, the motor chugging, puffballs of exhaust meandering up the sidewalk. More out of habit than reflex, I stopped behind the sedan and scrawled the license number down on the tablet I kept in the glove box.

  “Is that their car?” I asked, realizing even as I spoke that the spanking-new undented sedan did not match the condition of the house, or the rest of what I’d gleaned about Burton and Melissa.

  Kathy was already on her way up the stairs toward the front stoop, a clown on the run. “They don’t own a car,” she said over her shoulder. “Burton doesn’t drive.”

  I scooted across the truck seat but didn’t catch Kathy until she had already plumbed deep into the residence. It was cold inside, as if the door had been open for a spell. The living room was a shambles, not dirty so much as messy, littered with children’s toys, clothes and sections of the Sunday newspaper. I caught up with Kathy at the entrance to the bedroom—just in time to keep her from taking a blow to the mouth. It was quite a little scene.

  Holder was there. So was Burton. Holder wore a nattily tailored sportscoat, slacks and handmade Italian shoes. He stood facing three-quarters away from the doorway, backhanding the hell out of Burton Nadisky. I had seen Holder at work before. He loved violence. He was the sort of guy who ate popcorn raw. There were, few people he couldn’t slam across the room using the back of his hand, probably me included.

  “Stay down,” ordered Holder.

  Burton was splayed across a tangle of bloodstained sheets, his face looking like a piss-poor club fighter’s last performance. Holder was a mulatto, six-foot-three, about two-twenty, an impeccable dresser. He had been a boxer once. He was a good eight inches taller than the disheveled Burton.

  Scrabbling off the bed, Burton lurched to the open doorway. His face was crimson. As if swatting a fly, Holder slammed him onto the floor. The impact made a sickening crunch.

  “Now stay down, boy. Don’t you know da score?”

  Moving like a sack of rocks, Burton sniffled and began to roll over, presumably so he could crawl, the last vestiges of strength sapped from his trembling legs.

  “Leave him alone!” shouted Kathy. She was gutsy—but stupid. Holder would knock her into next Tuesday.

  She prepared to pounce on Holder. She might have made a little headway. She might have reached almost to his armpit before he broke her jaw. Already, I could see him doubling up his enormous fist.

  I grasped Kathy around her slender waist and flung her to the right of the doorway. Nothing less would have dissuaded her. I had forgotten how little she weighed.

  “Stay out
of this,” I commanded. Kathy shook her head, cleared the cobwebs and looked at me the way a cat who had been kicked off the dinner table might.

  A lump was noticeable in the center of Holder’s back under the tight-fitting turquoise sportscoat, a lump which corresponded to the spot in which some people carry their hip holsters. Holder was too dangerous to mess with. He had been only partially aware of us in the doorway, his mind dwelling on other things, but now we were fodder for the machine.

  Burton Nadisky managed to worm his way to my feet. Holder moved to drag him back.

  “Uh uh uh,” I said, putting more menace into my voice than either I or Holder had expected. “Enough is enough. Burton, you don’t want to go out there. Your daughter is long gone.” He sank his head to the floor, giving out a low groan.

  “Holder? If you want to stop this man from catching his in-laws, why not go out and move that car in front? That’s the only thing he could possibly use. Burton here doesn’t own a car. You think he’s going to catch them on foot?”

  Holder glowered at me darkly, straining to recall my name. We had clashed on a case about a year earlier. He was awful with names. He snapped his fingers repeatedly as I picked up a wire clothes hanger from the rubble. I said, “Black. Thomas Black.”

  “You’re da private eye who messed wid dat divorce case a mine.”

  “Good memory.”

  “I owe you on dat one.” He was trying hard to recall precisely how much he owed me. If I was lucky, he wouldn’t resuscitate the entire story.

  I fiddled with the wire coat hanger and twisted it into a long shepherd’s crook.

  “I’m sure your employer would love for you to stay here and stir up all sorts of trouble. We’ve got friends coming right behind us. It might work out better if you left now. What do you think?”

  The mention of additional friends goaded Holder. More people meant more witnesses. He was already cutting it too close. He stepped gingerly over Nadisky and strode past me like a man carrying a mess in his britches. He stopped and stared quizzically at Kathy, who was still on the floor, her red bulb nose askew. Holder conjured up a queer, disjointed face and used it on her. You’d think the man had never seen a clown before.

  When he turned to walk out of the house, I fish-poled the wire coat hanger out and dropped the sharp crook of it into his coat pocket. As he kept walking, the hanger ripped the pocket off his coat. I let go of the wire. It swung from the remnants of his pocket for a moment and then tinkled onto the floor. Holder swirled around, his eyes tiny dots of brown death.

  “Sorry,” I said, smiling smugly. He examined the pocket flapping at his hip. I wouldn’t be the bull that locked horns with him, but I’d be the gnat that made his ass itch.

  “Isn’t that Dave and Jim outside right now?” blurted Kathy, thinking quickly.

  Holder glared at me.

  “Ain’t life a bitch,” I said.

  Holder considered the situation, then marched through the front door without bothering to hold the pieces of his gaudy sportscoat together. A spectre in tattered turquoise. ?

  Chapter Three

  BURTON’S MOANS WERE THE SORT THAT HURT TO LISTEN TO in the beginning, then rapidly became irksome, then disgusting, and finally, nauseating. Kathy realized it as soon as I did and scurried into the bathroom where I heard water running. When she returned with a damp washcloth, her crooked clown nose had been fixed.

  I strode to the front door and closed it as Holder drove off. I waved but he didn’t see it. “Be like that,” I said.

  When I turned around, Kathy was daubing at Burton’s smeared face with the washcloth. It took him a while to come down from whatever ragged cloud he was hugging and focus on Kathy.

  “You…who? Oh, Kathy. I didn’t recognize you.” Holder’s drubbing had swollen one lip, torn a small patch out of his cheek. Holder invariably wore large rings. Nice guy.

  Dressed in a pair of faded jeans and nothing else, his back against the doorjamb in the bedroom, Burton rolled his face away from Kathy’s washcloth and began weeping.

  “They took Angel,” he sobbed. “They took my Angel. That big…” He racked his brain for a fit word to describe Holder. “…turkey.”

  He was talking around the puffy lip expertly now, a quick study. Perhaps he had taken pastings before.

  “Why did they take your daughter?” I asked.

  “It was Melissa’s folks. They said I was an unfit parent. That they would get a court order.”

  “Fat chance,” said Kathy. “Legally, it’s almost impossible to take a child away from its parents. What they did, actually, was kidnap her. We’re going to file a complaint right away. Don’t worry, Burt, we’ll get her back.”

  “I don’t know,” said Burton Nadisky, rolling his head from side to side, defeated before the battle had begun. “They said I could visit. If I got a lawyer and tried anything fancy, they said they’d skip the country with her.”

  “Sure. They know they’re in the wrong.”

  “They’ve get an awful lot of money,” conceded Burton. “I suppose they could go anywhere they wanted.”

  “Tip your head back,” said Kathy, wiping his nose. “Thomas, this bleeding isn’t going to stop. Do you know what to do?”

  “No,” I lied. “Why don’t you take my truck? Ballard Hospital is down the street. They’ll know how to stop it.”

  As the three of us stuffed him into a shirt and some battered hiking boots, I could see why he’d been such a pushover for Holder. Burton Nadisky was five-seven, blond, fair-complexioned and was built like a last-place marathon runner. My guess was he had been last place in everything he had ever attempted in a gym class. He wasn’t fat, merely soft. And there was certain gentleness to his manner that was evident immediately, in his eyes, even in the way he breathed and spoke. His words burbled out softly like those of a sleepy child.

  “He told me to stay down,” said Burton, tears runneling off his pink cheeks. “But I had to try. My Angel. He hit me and I got up. He hit me every time I got up.”

  “You did what you thought was proper,” said Kathy. “Angel will be fine with her grandparents until we can get her back. By the way, Burt, this is Thomas Black, my landlord and my friend.” I liked the way she said that.

  Burton looked at me with new eyes. He poked his limp paw out to shake but withdrew it when he realized it was dappled with blood.

  “I’ll wait here,” I said, “in case they come back.” “Sure, sure,” said Burton, genially. “And make yourself at home. The TV works now. We’ve got eggs in the fridge. Help yourself. Whatever is mine is yours.” He said it as if it were an expression he used frequently. I spied a photo of his pretty wife sitting atop the Zenith and wondered if she were the same way.

  Propped up by Kathy, he hobbled away. When they got to the front door, I jangled my truck keys and tossed them to her. She caught them neatly in one fist. As a storm lumbered across the sky, they drove away slowly.

  Too nice to suspect that I would plunder his house, Burton had left me in total trust. It was a trust I betrayed immediately. In order to locate his wife, it was best that I knew everything, even things he wouldn’t freely divulge.

  I scoured the house like a freeloading relative searching for penny rolls. He had about sixteen dollars in crumpled ones in plain sight on the dresser top. There were no penny rolls. Their checkbook had been drawn down to zero for a week or so. I scanned the list of places they bad written checks to. It was easy to distinguish the different handwritings. His was large, rounded and careless. Hers was almost neurotically cramped and precise, every loop closed. The messy house was not her doing. Not likely.

  He had scrawled his last check for five dollars to the food bank. The guy couldn’t afford socks, but he was tithing his money, doling it out to people who probably had more than he did. Her last check had been written eight days earlier to Tradewell. It was all pretty mundane, until I saw the fifty-dollar entry to the Hopewell Clinic. The Hopewell was a low-cost mental health center on
Capital Hill. Her handwriting. I wondered, had they gone in for marriage counseling? If so, she was probably just another routine runaway housewife.

  The refrigerator harbored eight brown eggs in the door, a full jug of cultured milk and half a slab of margarine. The rest of the shelves were bare. They didn’t even own a squirt bottle of mustard. A shopping list and a booklet of food stamps sat next to the toaster. I had the feeling the kid ate and the father went without. The dishes in the sink corresponded to that. One plate. Someone had eaten an omelet and toast that morning and imbibed the last drops of orange juice.

  Scattered across the kitchen table were the pages of a partially completed poem. I sat down and studied it.

  It reminded me of Poe’s “Annabel Lee” and was dedicated to “Melissa, my only love.” I wished I could write like he did. I hadn’t read such embarrassing and touching lines since school. Geez, Burton adored her. It turned a different light on him.

  Outside, in the backyard, a small plot had been spaded up and was blanketed with layer upon layer of soggy leaves, probably garnered from the local park. I could envision a blonde woman and a blonde tot dragging them home in plastic garbage sacks. The flattened dregs of a pile some little feet had twittered through lay like a pyre in the center of the lawn.

  In the living room, I picked up the Sears family photos off the Zenith and examined a pastel Burton and a pastel Melissa.

  Once in a while I saw couples like them strolling down a shopping mall. Burton and Melissa were one of those strange twosomes who looked like brother and sister. Same bone structure. Same coloring. Same blonde hair, same bland facial expression. Usually those couples consisted of two extremely shy people who had seen nothing to fear in a near mirror image of themselves. Angel resembled a younger sibling instead of a daughter.

  Melissa was a slightly built, blue-eyed blonde, wearing her long, straight hair parted in the center. If I hadn’t known she was married and had a three-year-old and was missing—if hadn’t heard that she had been a tramp and didn’t think there was a good chance that she was screwy—I could have fallen in love with her. Any man could have.