Judge Cooper skimmed the rest of the documents and stood up. “My curiosity has gotten the better of me. Why don’t you continue conning these documents and arrange to have copies made? I’m going to look into the Index of Deeds and find out where he got that house from.”
With that, he left the chamber.
12
Matthew Willow was putting copies of the Lermonx will into his attaché case when the judge returned. He nodded at Willow and shook a finger at him. Wordlessly, he went to the Index of Wills and Testaments and opened it. He found the volume he sought on the shelves and lifted it down. A moment later he had it open and was reading it. He turned at last and looked at Willow, frowning. Then he beckoned.
“Your Eric Lermonx inherited the house from the first Eric Lermonx.”
“Oh.” Willow was losing interest in the Eric Lermonxes and the Weeks House.
Then he saw the judge’s finger tapping on the page. He leaned down and looked.
“. . . to my nephew, Eric Tully alias Lermonx.”
“Tully!” said Willow. “What's that mean—alias Lermonx?” The judge raised his head and looked him in the eyes. “Bastardy,” he said.
13
Judge Cooper led Willow quickly through three different offices of the building. First he took him to a docket of court cases. He searched the bastardy cases for the approximate year of Lermonx's birth. When he found the name, he looked at Willow, holding his finger on it.
“Margaret Tully,” read Willow. “Eric Lermonx was her illegitimate son?”
Judge Cooper shrugged and went down to the archives. A short time later he had the court summary of the case. In 1779 Margaret Tully was brought before court on charges of having given birth to a child out of wedlock. She named as the father Eric Lermonx, glass maker.
Willow sat himself slowly down, frowning. “Any issue from Eric Lermonx would be bona fide descendants of Joseph Tully of London.”
The judge nodded. “But. Well, Willow, I guess I moved too fast. The uncle gave Eric that house because of the young man’s incurable shyness around women. He hoped the house would make the nephew a worthy catch for the young ladies of the community. It didn’t work, Willow. Lermonx died a girl-shy bachelor.”
14
“There are,” said Aunt Eta, “very few things worth lying awake nights worrying about. And insanity isn’t one of them. At least not for you, Peter.” She lifted the cherry from her Manhattan by its stem and put it in her mouth.
Richardson looked at her. “I just may be mad as the March wind, Aunt Eta.”
“Peter. Peter.” She dropped the stem in the ashtray. “There are only us two chickens left of our immediate Richardson branch, so—to mix two metaphors—it’s difficult for me to prove it to you, but there were no nuts in our family tree. Damn, I made a bad pun. Charlie would have killed me. Howsomever, my advice to you, dear Peter, is multiply. Find a healthy country girl with broad hips and beget. Skip these gaunt thin-boned New York tarts, Peter. That’s what was wrong with that Bonny. She was so busy dashing around in her costumes to show off her starving bones, how could you have ever gotten her pregnant even if she wanted to? Your trouble is you have nothing to worry about except yourself. If you don’t do something soon, you’re going to come down with a whole range of psychosomatic diseases. When your Uncle Charlie died, for two years the loneliness nearly drove me crazy. I used to wake up at night, sure I was having a heart attack. I thought I was suffocating, you see? Well, soon enough, I ‘got wise,’ to use Charlie’s favorite expression, and get busy.” Aunt Eta shook a finger at him. “Loneliness is a killer. It’s a disease with a million disguises.”
She pulled a large sagging handbag onto her lap and groped a hand into it. She extracted a small jar of maraschino cherries and removed the cap. She pulled out three cherries by the stems and lowered them into the Manhattan.
Richardson watched disinterestedly.
“Any brain tumors?”
She smirked at him. “My God, Peter, you’re like a hypochondriac on a shopping spree. Insanity. Brain tumors. Look. I can go back at least three, possibly four generations of Richardsons. There were some accidental deaths. There were two who died in childbirth. Infections and fevers killed some others... but the bulk of them just plain wore out and died. In their eighties and nineties. No brain tumors and no one in the nut house.” She lifted one of the cherries from her drink and ate it. She cocked an eye at him while she chewed, then reached out and touched his arm. “Saturday’s child,” she said. “Lift up your head and be cheerful. Get out of that building you’re in and that neighborhood. Get away from the memories and the unhappiness and you'll be miraculously cured. Take it from dear old Aunt Eta. I’ve been around a lot longer than you. There’s no such thing as ghosts and hauntings and that nonsense.”
He shrugged unhappily.
“Tell you what, Peter. Why don’t you move in with me for a few weeks? We’ll scout out an apartment for you, move your junk in, then we’ll take off for the leaky roof racetrack circuit. My God, I haven’t had a good junket since Charlie died—I can talk you deaf, dumb and blind about horses for a few weeks. Such stories. I ought to write a book about it. I Remember. That’s the title. And I do remember. I remember that fantastic year when Citation took the triple crown—1948. I can shut my eyes and see him running. Breathtaking animal. I can tell you what jockey was up. I can tell you Citation’s time in all three, the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont. I can tell you every horse in the field for the three races.” She nodded her head. “Sad days too. I remember when Tim Tam broke his leg at Belmont a half mile from the finish and ran on three legs. And finished second! I cried for him for days. When we get back home, you’ll be stone deaf. Won’t hear any more funny noises. Okay?”
“How about my mother’s side of the family?”
“Oh, the Daweses? Good stock. Yankee. Vermonters and upstate New Yorkers. Lots of lawyers in that family—and farmers. There was a horse breeder too. Not thoroughbreds. But fine cavalry horses—roughneck animals, tough as old shoes. But no tumors. Let’s see. How many Daweses did I know? Your mother, her brothers and sisters; come to think of it, there’s a lot of them still around. I knew your grandparents and a bunch of their relatives. People drop out of sight. That’s what getting old is really all about. People disappear left and right and one day you can’t find anybody who knew you when you were young.” She poked the third cherry into her mouth almost angrily. “Damn it, don’t get me started on that old-age stuff. Let’s see— Oh, Peter, this is silly! The Daweses were a long-lived lot, too. No mental disorders, no mysterious illnesses. Oh, this is silly. Why don't you ask Billy Dawes? He’s still up in Poughkeepsie, I’m sure. He was always big on that genealogy stuff.
He probably can trace the Daweses back to Europe in 1066 or something. Oh, Peter, kick it—the whole thing. Let’s take off for Florida and forget the damned Daweses and Richardsons. They’re all dead and buried anyway.”
See-saw, Marjorie Dawes.
15
The wrecker’s ball described a classic parabola as the swaying boom led it to the point of contact on the wall. The ball hit and thundered in air. The wall bowed in and the bricks shot apart as the ball carried through the wall. The wall was staggered, weakened; then in a slow tilt it fell in on itself, and a cloud of mortar and brickdust ascended, roiling above the building.
Behind the wrecker, another tractor crane was at work with a giant clamshell, picking up tons of debris and dropping them into dump trucks. It seemed to be eating the shattered buildings.
The wrecker’s foreman strolled down the abandoned street to the next block. He was thickly padded in clothing, mittens, hood and yellow hard hat. His practiced eye estimated the work in hours and quarter hours. He looked at his clipboard that showed the diagrams of water mains, gas mains, sewer lines and electric cable ways.
The corner building contained a grocery store. Waite’s. He walked into the shop, looked around, peered into the old storage room in
the rear and walked back out on the street.
Number 1028 stood next to the grocery, a three-story brown-stone with double doors and large windows. It was the classic Brooklyn row house. The foreman ascended the steps and pushed both of the glass doors. They slowly swung inward. He strolled through the rooms of the first floor, following a common row house floor plan he could draw in his sleep. He went to the cellar, scanned the water meter, gas meter and electric control box, then ascended the cellar steps, walked along the hallway to the front hallway. He turned at the newel post and climbed the chestnut staircase to the second floor. At the landing he turned and walked toward the front of the building, peering into the bedrooms and the bath as he went. At the turning of the stairs to the third floor, the condition of the walls struck him, and he started up the stairs, paused and swallowed. Weird. He slipped his crowbar from a loop in his leather tool belt, pressed his hard hat down further and climbed the stairs, stamping his feet loudly.
At the landing at the top of the stairs, the foreman stopped in awe, gazing at the walls in the fast fading light of the winter day.
It was perfectly still inside the building. The sound of the tumbling walls and the tractor engines was remote. The building seemed suspended, frozen in a permanent moment of time. In the middle of the room stood a pressure-type white-gasoline lamp with mantles. It was out.
With his foot, the foreman pushed the door open fully. Near the closet, he saw a shadowed form in the semidusk of the floor. He stepped closer. Then he backed a step, turned, and strode out of the room. He reached the landing and hurried down the stairs. He ran along the hallway of the second floor and took the next flight of stairs down two at a time. He ran through the front doors and down the brownstone steps and turned.
“Goddamnedest thing I ever saw in my whole life,” he said aloud, and scurried directly across the quadrangle, a distance of more than four blocks. He hurried in a shuffling trot, holding his clipboard in one hand and the crowbar in the other. His shoes squeaked in the frozen snow.
At the other side of the quadrangle was an old saloon and he hurried up to it. He pushed open the door and stepped in. Warm air touched his face and he smelled the familiar saloon odor of stale beer. His heart was pounding and he had to take several deep breaths before he could talk. The men at the bar stood wordlessly looking at him and at the open door behind him. Bitter cold air was pouring into the saloon. Someone stepped over to it and shoved it shut with his foot.
No one said a word. No one smoked. No one drank. They waited, suspended, all eyes on the foreman’s face.
“Goddamnedest thing,” he said at last. “Never saw anything like it before.” He doubled himself over the bar, puffing heavily and trying to dislodge the stitch in his side. “Listen,” he said
to the bartender-owner. “Better call the police. There’s a stiff in one of the empty houses.”
The bartender stared at him solemnly. “Dead?”
“Dead? He’s frozen stiff.”
“Did you check him?”
“Huh? Check him? What do you mean, check him? He’s frozen hard as this goddamn crowbar. Blue lips. And the skin on his face is frozen and covered with frost. Give me a double hooker of whiskey.”
The bartender poured the double into a glass almost as a reflex action. “That doesn’t mean he’s dead. I was on the North Atlantic run for more winters than I want to count and I saw them in gun tubs, with them screaming Atlantic rollers going and the wind right off the North Pole. You’d have bet your life they were dead in there, frozen, but they got up and walked to breakfast nice as you please.”
He got a dime from the till and handed it to a regular. “Here, John. Give a call to the cops. What’s the number of the building?”
The foreman consulted his clipboard. “Right next to Waite’s,” he said. “Ten twenty-eight.”
“Tell them to bring an ambulance,” said the owner. He snatched a bottle of brandy from the bar and stepped into his living room just off the bar. After several moments he returned with his overcoat and hat and several blankets. His wife appeared right behind him.
“Button that damned coat, now,” she said to him. “No sense catching your death, too.” She went behind the bar, and her measuring eye scanned the level of liquids in the glasses of the patrons.
The owner left. He shut the door behind him and began the long walk across the quadrangle. The foreman downed the drink and started for the door.
“Hey,” called a patron. “What did you see?”
“You’ll never believe it in all your born days.” The foreman stepped through the saloon door and hurried after the owner.
In the great expanse of flatness, the two men walked together toward 1028.
The owner shifted the life-giving bottle of brandy to a pocket of his overcoat and shifted the blankets to his other arm.
They walked in silence, hurrying, their twin breaths pluming rhythmically in the frosty air.
It was nearly dark.
16
The sound of the siren carried clear and thin when the owner and the foreman reached the front doors of 1028. “Damnedest thing you ever saw,” mumbled the foreman.
“Third floor you say?” asked the owner.
“Yeah. Third floor.”
The owner hurried up the steps. Behind him strayed the foreman, carrying the crowbar before him.
Last light was touching the ceilings of the building. The owner reached the top of the first flight and turned, moving quickly along the gritty-floored hallway. He turned to ascend the second flight and paused involuntarily, one foot in the air, arrested. He gazed at the wall of the staircase and at the wall at the head of the stairs.
Then he shut his mouth purposefully and stamped up the steps. The room was nearly dark when he entered it. The gasoline lantern just showed its green cap, looking in the darkness like a merry gnome. The owner stepped past the lamp and fumbled at his coat pocket. He struggled with it for several moments. “Hot damn it,” he cried at his pocket. “Let go of it.”
The flashlight came free with an abrupt fling of his arm. Through his gloved fingers, he worked at the sliding switch of the flashlight. It snapped up and he quickly aimed it at the form on the floor. He studied it for a moment, then leaned still closer.
Down in the street, the siren shrilled.
The owner pulled off a glove and laid the back of his hand on the throat of the man. He shook his head. “Dear God in heaven, have mercy on our souls,” he muttered. “The man is frozen like a stone.”
The corpse lay on its side, legs drawn up, hands thrust between the thighs, hugely like a giant baby. The face was a mask of white frost. The clothes consisted of an old zippered jacket, a shirt and a pair of trousers. The feet were in a pair of paint-splattered work shoes.
Coarse shoes scraped and thumped on the stairwell below. Voices intruded on the frozen silence of the house. Two policemen called up the staircase. “Where is it?”
“It’s up here,” said the foreman.
Other shoes and other voices now bumped and scraped up the stairs. The truck drivers and the operator of the cranes hurried up the stairs. All of them, policemen and construction workers, paused in silence and stared at the walls, then at the corpse. One of the policemen knelt beside the corpse and placed a warm pink hand on the corpse’s throat. “Wheeee. He’s been here for a few days. It’s going to take a long time to thaw him out. Anyone know who he is?”
“Dear God,” said the owner, “I’ve poured many a beer down that throat, and I’ve knelt beside him at mass on Sunday more than once.”
The policeman turned and looked at him. “What’s his name?”
“Goulart. Ozzie Goulart.”
17
Richardson watched Bobby Pew prepare to go home. Pew pulled on his salt-caked rubbers, took off his jacket, put on a sweater, put his jacket back on, wrapped his scarf around his throat, and struggled into a pile-lined quilted parka. He drew the hood up over his head and pulled the zipper shut along th
e crown of his head.
He watched Richardson watching him. He smiled. “This is part of my war against that bus to Flushing. I used to wait for it in conventional clothes. And when the bus finally came, the driver would get out, tilt me over like a frozen codfish and lean me in the comer of the bus.” He strolled over to Richardson’s office, smirking. “The only bad part about it is getting downstairs. By the time the elevator gets me to the first floor, it’s a raging inferno inside this parka. But I don’t care.” He saluted Richardson casually and walked to the front office door, bearing his attaché case. “One thing, I'll never freeze to death.”
Richardson was alone. He leaned back in his chair and looked at his coat. No reason to stay. No reason to go. He got up and put on his overcoat, then turned and looked at his attaché case, packed, ready to go for its nightly subway ride, lumpishly lying on his desk. He reached for it. Then the phone rang.
He looked at it speculatively, guessing. He let it ring again. He hesitated. It rang again. He brushed a hand in air at it and pulled the case off the desk. He turned and walked purposefully through the main office room. The phone rang again. He reached the front door and opened it. The phone rang again.
Richardson sighed. He put down the case on the floor and walked back reluctantly to his office. Maybe it would stop ringing before he got to it.
He entered his office, leaned over the desk and picked it up.
“Hello.”
He listened. And frowned. And sagged. And struggled around the edge of his desk and sat down. He bowed his head, still listening.
“Oh my God,” he said.
18
The cars down in the street went on as before. The pedestrians walked stiffly, shivering, to the subway entrances. As before. The shop windows threw out their rectangles of light on the snow-streaked sidewalks as before. And lights all over the borough in strings and clusters winked warmly in the winter night. As before.
Everything went on as before, flatly indifferent. Even the telephone on his desk remained perversely unchanged. Richardson stood at his window, still in his overcoat, remembering the night he’d stood in the middle of those empty lots looking at the Waite’s Groceries sign. He should have followed his instinct and gone over to the row of buildings. He could have. But the cold put him off. Something to haunt him for the rest of his life.
The Search for Joseph Tully Page 12