The Search for Joseph Tully

by William H Hallahan

  She sat with her hands in her lap. "I’m not—ah. Well.”

  "No tricks,” said Richardson.

  Clabber’s shoulders sagged. "Come on. I didn’t come out on a night like this for fraternity-house tricks. Why don’t you take a look around here—no trapdoors or magic-lantern shows. No spooky noises.”

  "Maybe,” said Anna Quist, “nothing will happen.”

  "Let’s sit over here,” said Clabber.

  5

  Anna Quist sat down in a small straight-backed upholstered chair with her back to the drapes that covered her windows. She watched Clabber put out the several lamps. Then Clabber and Richardson sat down in straight-backed wooden chairs from the dining room.

  Anna Quist put both hands on the table. She extended her left hand to Albert Clabber and he took it. Their clasped hands rested on the table. She extended her right hand to Richardson. He hastily took it, then saw Clabber’s left hand being extended to him. He grasped it. Now all six hands were clasped and resting on the table. The room was in darkness save for the small candle in the red vigil cup at the center of the table.

  Albert Clabber’s hand was cold to the touch. It felt hard and dry. It gripped Richardson’s hand almost too firmly. Clabber

  was intent on the sitting. His face was white and faint, with both eyes shut. His lips were firmly shut

  Anna Quist's hand was so small it was like a child’s—or like a small paw. The fingers were cold and her grip was pliant and trusting. Richardson realized he felt great sympathy for her, a deep sorrow. Her vulnerability was frightening.

  He felt her fingers stir in his palm. “That’s better,” she said. “Much better.” Her face was pale and featureless and her eyes were shut, calmly, patiently, as though in sleep.

  Richardson looked from one face to the other. Nothing happened. He tried to clear his mind. He felt, instead, a sadness. He sighed. The sadness was deeper and he shut both eyes. He felt Anna Quist’s fingers stirring in his palm again. They had become warmed from the heat of his hand. It was all so very sad. The sense of depression was frightening and he opened his eyes. Neither Anna Quist nor Albert Clabber was aware. Enough, thought Richardson. Too much sadness, an overwhelming depression unlike anything he’d ever felt before. He opened his mouth to speak.

  Anna Quist’s hand stopped him. It slowly closed around his four fingers. More. More. Extraordinary strength now. He was astonished by the grip. He began to pull his hand away from the terrible strength, the shooting pain. Then, it ceased. The hand grip relaxed.

  Richardson looked at her. Anna Quist had slumped in her chair, her head turned downward and inclined toward one shoulder. It rested on the upholstered chair back. There was a deep crease between her eyes—a deep furious frown.

  Richardson looked at Clabber. Both of Clabber’s eyes were open and staring at him. He made a shushing shape with his lips and reshut his eyes.

  Richardson waited. It was as before, except for Anna Quist’s resting head. The depression he felt continued. He sighed. Anna Quist’s small, harmless, defenseless hand was overwhelmingly depressing.

  Clabber’s hand stirred, then rested—a light firm grip.

  Richardson shut his eyes and sighed again.

  Anna Quist’s hand moved again. The grip became firmer, now more aggressive. Emphatic. The whole character of the hand and the grip had changed. The hand now emanated authority.

  She turned her head upward, still resting it on the chair back. The mouth had become a pronounced, implacable downward crescent. She grunted a deep baritone grunt.

  “Ohhh, a dreadful thing,” she said. Her voice was deep; the accent was Corkian Irish. "Dear God in heaven, the man is stark raving mad. The food relief that they all babble about is a pittance. The blight covers everything. There’s not a whole potato from one side of the country to the other. The people have nought to put in their mouths. Starving they are—in the roadways, by the thousands. And him listening only to the Orangemen, worried about the cost of feeding the starving. Billy Peel. Orange Peel is his right name.”

  Richardson watched her face with fascination. It hardly looked like her. The voice was strong and masculine, commanding .. . with a heavy slurring, typically rising, Cork accent.

  Richardson glanced at Clabber. Clabber’s eyes were open. His face was angry and he was looking at Anna Quist’s face. “Brother Brendan,” he whispered.

  “Now. Now. Just the first stanza,” said Anna Quist.

  “Omnia tempus habent,” crooned Anna Quist, “et suis spa-tiis transeunt universa sub caelo. Tempus nascendi et tempus moriendi—and a time to save the Irish from starvation.”

  Clabber sighed and gazed heavenward.

  “Ah, Clabber, Clabber, Clabber,” came Mrs. Quist’s brogue. “It’s always the same questions with you, over and over. Even when you get the answer, you ask the question again. There’s one here who knew you. Says to watch your datives and ablatives or you’ll never make it to the seminary. Carthy. Maeve. Greenwood Lake. An easy door to step through. Defeated again. Omnia tempus habent. A grown man living on a potato diet will consume more than twenty pounds a day. Can’t you just picture a man starving to death in his earthen home with his family and along comes the constabulary with a piece of paper and drags the starving bodies out on the roadway and leaves them there for nonpayment of land rent. By order of the landowner snug somewhere in England. Now when you multiply that by the millions—Clabber, can you draw?”

  Clabber’s head snapped up. His eyes were open and alert and he studied Anna Quist’s sagging face. She was breathing adenoidally and slowly turning her head as if in pain. Clabber flicked a glance at Richardson, then looked back to Anna Quist. She strengthened her grip on Richardson’s hand and banged it thrice on the table, restlessly. “Draw. Draw. Miss Mocksun is going to give you a D in Art.”

  Clabber lowered his gaze, waited, listening expectantly, like a man with his ear to a radio. Anna Quist’s hand relaxed, as though in sleep.

  “Maeve. Greenwood Lake. You are in grave danger.”

  Anna Quist’s hand became increasingly restless. It rolled from side to side and her expression became pained. “No more,” she said. “No more.” She raised her hand, and with it, Richardson’s, and pounded them on the table angrily. He felt again that supernatural grip and cried out. Her grip relaxed.

  A moment later Anna Quist opened her eyes.

  6

  The first part of the ride back home was agony for Albert Clabber. After the three painful blocks of jogging, during which the incessant wind drove a mortal chill into his thin body, he had to ride in a frozen car waiting for the car’s engine to warm up enough to operate the hot-air heater.

  Richardson felt the seat shaking from Clabber’s shivers.

  He aimed the car back down Ocean Avenue and was caught by a red light He sat watching the temperature gauge on his dashboard. It rose slowly—still far from the operation zone. Clabber made no conversation. He concentrated on the cold, feeling it, intimidated by it, menaced by the wind that howled at his window. He was shuddering violently.

  At last Richardson pushed the heater button, and a flood of hot air rushed into the automobile. Clabber yanked off his gloves and washed his skinny hands in the jet of warmth. After a few miles, he pulled off his army boots and held each one in the path of the flowing hot air. He was still washing himself in warmth when Richardson pulled up at his front door.

  “It’s just twenty feet to your front door,” said Richardson. “I’ll call you,” said Clabber. “I want to talk to you.” He quickly laced up his boots, thrust his hands into his gloves and held his front door key at the ready. “See you.”

  He jumped out of the car and into his apartment house.

  7

  When Richardson arrived home, he opened the door to his apartment, snapped on the overhead light and walked directly to the wall next to his fireplace. His eyes scanned the half dozen framed photographs that hung there. He found the picture of his mother and aunt.

&n
bsp; He wondered if Anna Quist had studied the picture when she’d come to the cocktail party.

  In white ink down in the comer, his aunt had written: “Maeve and me. Lake Greenwood, 1931.”

  You are all in grave danger.

  8

  The tapping sound captured his attention.

  Richardson walked curiously to a window and looked out. The quadrangle was lit with moonlight. Pinto patches of snow glowed in an ethereal silver. In the midst of the quadrangle stood the tractor, not fifty yards from Brevoort House. It seemed to be crouching like a sphinx and contemplating the house. The boom was raised and aimed like a great club. The ball sat on the ground.

  A long cable with a length of chain tapped against the boom. Tapped. On the frozen metal, shaken by the bitter wind. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound was so cold under that pale moonlight. So alone and godforsaken cold. It made him ache inside.

  Richardson went to the cabinet and poured himself two inches of brandy. He sat down in his chair and sipped it, feeling the warmth thaw the chill inside him.

  It was all a fraud. Somehow, someone was getting to him. Thimble-rigged trompe Voeil, a shell-game. Tape recorders— something.

  But it always came down to the same questions: Why? Who would want to kill him or bend his mind? Old ground. Tiresome old ground: what he owned no one would invest great time and effort into stealing.

  A legacy? A secret fortune from an unknown relative? Richardson sighed and drank some more brandy. The chill was leaving him.

  He had to think about moving. He had to find an apartment.

  He sat with the glass of brandy, thinking about moving and hearing the tap-tap-tapping of the frozen chain on the metal boom. Homeless and alone.

  9

  The fence was so real.

  It was drawn iron picket fencing. Black and frozen with cold. His hands were in gloves. Mittens. Black leather mittens that belonged to Clabber. The mittens kept the flesh of his hands from sticking to the frozen metal.

  He was cold. So cold he was shivering. The shivering was so violent it vibrated on the fence. He had to get down—get to some warmth, or he’d freeze. Safety down at the ground.

  Richardson felt drowsy in the chair, and he knew, as always, he had to climb down the fence to sleep. How could an idea become so obsessive that he couldn’t not think about it—had to comply even though he knew he was imagining the fence, imagining the cold, imagining the gloves and the shivering.

  Only, it was so real. He was truly freezing to death on that fence in that wintry blast of wind.

  He began to clamber down. Familiarly with practice.

  He was so tired. So spent. So cold. Emotionally drained. He thought of his mother. Anna Quist had slipped a fake message to him. But that didn’t fit the innocence and sincerity of her child-hand. Nothing added up.

  He hurried his feet, climbing down faster now. Slid the shoe arch down along the drawn iron bar until it reached a crosspiece. Stood on it and slid the other shoe down along the drawn iron bar until it reached the crosspiece. Down. Down. Down. Crosspiece after crosspiece. The cold and wind were numbing him. He had to move faster. His hands would slip soon. He passed between other fences, descended below their rows of waiting malevolent spikes.

  He was nearing the bottom. He was sure. He looked down. There was that strange road. Black cobbles. A humpbacked road. Rutted. In darkness, it paraded away to invisibility. There was a moon, a cold moon. And shapes. Trees? Too dark to see. He was coming down faster now. Where was warmth? Was there a building?

  He looked down. He saw—he saw a figure. A man: a friar. A babbling friar mumbling Eccelsiastes. Omnia tempus habent. Brother Brendan. And now he saw another figure: the man in the derby. A long face. Aquiline. Sour eyes under a craggy brow. Sullen, sunken cheeks under high cheekbones. Thin, pursed lips. And the derby. A racetrack tout? English, possibly? There were now other figures there. Lumpish, dark brown and shadowed. Cowled.

  The man in the derby stood next to a wicker trunk. He reached down to open the lid.

  Richardson knew what was in that basket. Only he couldn’t remember. He began to moan and scrabble back up the fencing. Leaden feet, not fast enough.

  The man in the derby had the basket hasp open. He lifted the lid. A brown cassock rose as though swelling with pumped air. It rose straight out of the basket and strode quickly across the black cobblestone roadway to the fence and began to climb. It climbed with incredible speed right after him.

  The cowl was lifted up and looking at him, closing fast. Richardson cried out when he saw the inside of the cowl. A glowing skeletal face. It screamed a high piercing scream at him.

  And he screamed back. It had reached him.

  10

  He found himself standing in the middle of the living room. He was bent at the waist and swinging his arms, ape-fashion, crying terrified grunts like an ape. Every time he swung his fending arm, it emitted a familiar sound.

  Whoosh!

  He was standing in the middle of his living room, gasping, struggling for breath. He was near exhaustion and he stood trembling. He let himself sink slowly to the floor to sit cross-legged. He lay back finally and stretched fully on the rug.

  Enough. Enough. He could stand no more.

  He was wet. Soaked. And he was terribly thirsty. He went to the kitchen and turned on the taps. He bathed his face in his cupped hands, then drank from them, deeply.

  He found a dish towel and wiped his face and neck with it. Then he went back to the living room and got his sweater and jacket and overcoat and scarves and gloves.

  He carried them in his arms to the doorway and opened it. He stepped into the hallway. Dark. Completely dark. He listened. Then he groped along the wall and found the light switch. He pushed it.

  Lights went on down the two staircases and he stepped quickly down, hurrying, still wet, still panting, frightened and spent.

  In the vestibule, he crossed quickly to the front door. Gou-lart’s cat cried from the cellar. Pale eyes in the dark cellar. He descended the outside steps to his car and threw the clothes on the front seat. He felt the freezing wind congealing the sweat on his skin.

  The wind rapped the tractor chain. Tap, tap, tap. Cold. Cold. So cold.

  11

  As he drove, he dressed. His body temperature dropped rapidly. The frozen steering wheel drew all the heat from his hands. He fought two arms into the sweater, then stuffed his head through the neck opening. He got the two scarves around his neck, forced the sweatered arm through the sleeve of his suit jacket. The car was drifting dangerously. He straightened it and found the other sleeve opening of the jacket. He forced his arm through it, then began to work on his overcoat.

  “Stop stop stop!” he shouted at himself. He pulled over to the curb. Now, with deliberate slowness, he adjusted the sweater, pulling it down in the back where it had rolled. Then he drew

  the sweater sleeves down from his forearms where they'd bunched, adjusted his jacket and put his heavy overcoat on, smoothed it and buttoned it.

  When he got back into the car, he was shivering again. He felt tormented beyond endurance. And he realized that he was being irrational.

  His apartment door had been left standing wide open.

  12

  Clabber's apartment lights were on.

  Richardson parked the car and strode up the steps. He opened the outer door and studied a row of mailboxes with doorbells.

  He found the name: Clabber, A. He pushed the button.

  He heard himself breathing heavily through his open mouth. He shut it. Then he looked down at his clothing, absently fumbling for his necktie. He was still out of breath.

  The door opened. Clabber's expression was a mixture of surprise and irritation.

  “Ah," said Richardson. He lurched through the partly opened hallway door and into the inner vestibule. “Just the guy I want to see."

  “Wait. Wait," said Clabber. He groped an ineffectual hand after Richardson. The inner door banged shut and Clabber hastened a
fter Richardson.

  “Waitwaitwait!”

  “Wait my royal Irish ass, Clabber. I want to talk to you.” He strode down the hallway toward an opened apartment door. The light within looked like sanctuary to him.

  Clabber got a hand on his arm just as he reached the doorway. “Now wait, Richardson.”

  Richardson stopped. There was a man in Clabber's apartment. Sitting in a chair in the kitchen. A huge man. Very familiar. Where?

  Richardson touched his lips doubtfully. Then he had it.

  Abel Navarre. The dead detective.

  Richardson began to back away. He vaguely brushed Clabber’s hands away, backing down the hall. Abel Navarre stood up.

  “It’s okay!” cried Clabber. “Okay, okay. Calm down. Calm down. It’s okay. Get ahold of yourself, Richardson.”

  Richardson looked wonderingly into Clabber's eyes. “Who? mere? I don't-”

  “It’s all right. All right. It’s all easily explained.” He got a firm grip on Richardson’s arm.

  Richardson stepped reluctantly into his apartment. Abel Navarre attempted a weak smile, his huge arms dangling limply, awkwardly at his sides.

  “Here,” commanded Clabber. “Sit down here.”

  Richardson sagged down. “I’m going crazy. I’m cracking up. I’m so thirsty. So thirsty.”

  “Okay, okay, okay. You’re not cracking up. Just relax and hold tight. I’ll get you some water.” Clabber scurried to his kitchen and turned on the spigot. In a moment he was back with a dripping glass of water. Richardson drank it eagerly.

  “More. More.”

  Clabber hurried back to the kitchen and returned with another tumblerful of water. Navarre sat slowly down. Richardson had begun to study him.

  “Here. Now. Wait.” Clabber stumbled around a sprawl of cardboard cartons. Richardson noticed the bookshelves. Long, long bookshelves. Clabber had already shelved many of his volumes. He bent over a carton and scrabbled at the contents, then prized out a bottle wrapped in newsprint. He held it up and squinted at the label. He stepped over and around cartons back to Richardson. “Here. Hold that glass up.”