by Rod Reynolds
I parked outside the Arlington and went inside to the telephone kiosks, deciding what I was going to tell Lizzie. Secrets and half-truths had destroyed my first marriage, so after Texarkana, I’d made a promise to myself that I’d always be honest with her – even about the things I was ashamed of. Except this time, I had nothing to hide for my own benefit; at issue was how much I could tell her without making her worry.
I called her at work. One of the Journal’s subs answered and put Lizzie on the line; just hearing her speak gave me a lift.
‘I’m glad you called. I was starting to think maybe you’d gotten sidetracked along the way.’
‘No, I made it just fine. I was going to call yesterday but I got caught up in some things.’
‘Is everything all right? Your voice – you sound tired.’
‘Yeah, I’m swell, doll. It’s—’ She’d know if I was equivocating, so I came right out with it. ‘Jimmy Robinson is dead.’
‘What? How?’
‘There was a fire in his lodgings before I got here. He didn’t make it out.’
She said nothing at first and I could tell she was conflicted. She hated Robinson for the way he’d treated her sister, but she’d accepted his motivations when I told her the full story, and she knew his confession to me went some way to helping expose the truth in the end. More than that, she was too good a person to be vindictive. ‘That’s awful. Was he— Was it an accident?’
‘That’s what the fire department say.’
She let out a breath, sounded like relief. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie. I know this trip was important to you.’
I pressed my hand against the side of the booth, the varnished wood tacky under my palm. ‘I’m not convinced.’
She met it with silence, the way I knew she would. She was no fool, seeing through me right away.
‘I can’t prove it, but I think there’s more to it.’
Her voice had acquired an edge when she spoke again. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know yet.’ I braced myself against the kiosk. I told her about the car and the papers in the trunk. I told her about the photograph. ‘Far as I can tell, they’re his case notes on the murders he was investigating.’
‘I don’t understand. How does that prove the fire wasn’t an accident?’
‘Instinct.’ I closed my eyes, feeling the conversation getting away from me.
‘That’s all of it?’ She sounded incredulous.
‘No. I can’t put it into words. Something’s not right here. The evidence he’s collected, the murders – what if Robinson got close to uncovering something and they killed him for it?’
‘Who are you talking about when you say they?’ Static came over the line. ‘You’re talking like—’ She took a breath. ‘You’re talking like you’re back in Texarkana.’
‘Lizzie—’
‘Please don’t try to tell me that’s not how you’re thinking, Charlie. I can hear it in your voice.’
‘I have to know.’
‘Why? Why can’t you just leave it in the past and walk away?’
‘It’s all too convenient. Robinson told me he made a mistake, and now he’s dead in an accident? You don’t buy that any more than I do.’
‘I have no opinion on it, Charlie. I don’t care. I just want my husband to come home safe.’
‘If there’s nothing going on here, then I’m in no danger.’ I regretted saying it straightaway, not sure how I’d slipped into trying to checkmate her with logic. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come off like that.’
She took a slow breath and I knew I’d hurt her – too proud to let it show any other way. ‘Are you calling to tell me you’re not coming home?’
‘Two days. I’m taking two days to see what I can dig up. If I don’t have anything by then, I’ll come right back.’ I felt disingenuous as I blurted it; yesterday’s resolution, made redundant by what I’d found out since. Already playing games with the truth.
‘On the strength of a hunch? You don’t have to be the hero this time. You have nothing to prove.’
‘I need you to know—’
‘Charlie, you have nothing to prove to me.’
I started to say that I owed it to Robinson, but I clammed up because that wasn’t it. I thought about why I was so determined to chase this, and I realised my wife had come to it long before I had: it was because of Texarkana. Because it was all connected; if not directly, then at least in how I saw myself. I’d nearly died six months ago trying to prove to myself I wasn’t a coward; if I walked away now, how much of that was I giving back again? ‘Nothing could stop me from coming home, remember that. I’ll call you soon.’
I didn’t hang up, wanting to hear her tell me she understood, or at least she wasn’t mad. When she didn’t say anything right away, I thought she was going to wait me out with the silent treatment, but instead, after a few seconds passed, she said, ‘I love you, Charlie. Please be safe.’
Chapter Five
Clay Tucker told me Robinson had been in Hot Springs almost three weeks. What did he do in that time? Who did he talk to? And how did it relate to the woman in the photograph? Still wary of showing my hand to Layfield, I decided to go back to Duke’s to press Tucker on those questions, certain he knew more than he was letting on.
When I got there, though, the doors were still locked and there was no sign of him. I looked along the street; aside from the diner where Robinson had stashed his car, it was a mix of bars, low-rent hotels and private residences. Not content to kick my heels, I started working along block-to-block, asking if anyone remembered Jimmy.
I had no photograph of him to show, and the only description I could give was sketchy – and months out of date. I flashed the picture of the woman in every joint I stopped in, but got bupkis on her – no signs of recognition at all. Most every establishment I went in had an upstairs parlour or rooms, offering gambling or girls.
I was almost to the end of the street when I hit on something. It was in a bar called the Keystone; the tender gave his name as Leke, and nodded along when I reeled off Robinson’s description.
‘Yeah, I know the man,’ he said. ‘Came by here on occasion.’
‘You have a conversation with him ever?’
‘Not worth a damn, he wasn’t no talker. Besides, what he did say was fair bleak.’
‘Are you thinking of something specific?’
The man leaned on his elbows over the bar top. ‘I’d seen him around a couple weeks, and he’d been in before, so I asked him what all brought him to Hot Springs. Wasn’t meaning to pry – most folk don’t stay in town that long is all, couple days, so I was curious, you know?’ He rubbed his nose with his knuckle. ‘Anyhow, when I did, he put his glass down and said, “I’m fixing to drink until it does for me.”
‘I thought he was fooling, so I asked him why in the world he’d want to do that. He put a look on me would cut glass, and that’s when I knew he weren’t.’ He pointed at his own eyes with two fingers, for emphasis. ‘Said to me he’d seen too many bad things and he was through with it all. I told him to put the whiskey away, see how it looked in the morning, but he didn’t look like he was listening. Tell by the smell of him he was liquored up already, so I let him alone after that. I thought maybe he was a veteran still getting his head turned up the right way.’
‘When was this?’
He scratched his left cheek. ‘Three, four days ago.’
I started to think about a timeline of Robinson’s movements. ‘Can you say which?’
‘Today’s Saturday?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘Then Tuesday, I think.’
‘What time did you see him? Approximately?’
He closed one eye, thinking. ‘It was light outside so I’d hazard at afternoon.’
Tuesday was the day of the fire. Robinson on a mid-afternoon drunk, supposedly talking suicidal, hours before he died in the blaze. A third possibility emerging: could Robinson have set the fire in his room on purpose?
I tried sw
itching gears. ‘You said you saw him around some. Ever see him talking with anyone?’
‘So many questions, mister, must make you thirsty. You oughta take a drink to keep your throat oiled.’
I took his meaning and slipped a bill across the bar, asked for a coffee.
He folded it into his shirt pocket, placed a blue mug in front of me and poured. ‘You say this fella died in the fire down at Duke’s?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So what’s behind all these questions? He owe you money?’
I tried the coffee. It was cold and stewed. ‘Something like that.’
‘Have to ask you to elaborate on that “something”.’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Answer the question first.’
I pushed the coffee slowly to one side. ‘He was a friend of mine. I want to know what he was doing here and what happened to him.’
‘All right.’ The bartender looked at me hard as if he was trying to make me confess something. Then he said, ‘Reason I ask, I seen him with someone and I ain’t of a mind to put a stranger onto her if I think you gonna bring trouble to her door.’
I leaned forward, my forearms on the bar. ‘I didn’t come in here shouting the odds, did I?’
He rose up to his full height, easily topping six feet. ‘No, sir, you didn’t. But now you been fair warned.’
‘Noted.’
‘All right. I was outside taking the liquor delivery, so this would be Monday. Saw your man coming down the street talking with Ella Borland, used to work around here. I only took notice because I know her a bit – he was just another face at the time. Wasn’t till he came in here the next day I remembered it was him I seen her with.’
I had my notebook out and was scribbling the name. ‘You know where I can find her?’
He pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘Nope. You could try Clay Tucker. Owns Duke’s, he might tell you. Maybe.’
‘Why him?’
He looked at me as if I was being stupid. ‘She used to work there.’
I knocked on the bar as a thank you. ‘You know where I can find Tucker? He wasn’t there a while ago.’
He shrugged. ‘He ain’t there, who knows?’
I took the photograph of the dead woman from my pocket. ‘Any chance you can tell me who she is?’
He squinted, then shook his head. ‘No one I know. What’s it to you?’
‘Forget it. Thanks for the pointer.’
*
I steamrolled back to Duke’s determined to wait out Clay Tucker, feeling like he’d been playing games with me. I wondered if he knew about Robinson stepping out with this Borland woman and that’s why I’d got the feeling he was holding out on me. I tried not to let anger take over, put myself in his shoes – I was a stranger asking questions about a dead man; why would he drag her name into it?
Turned out there was no call to wait on him. The saloon was open when I got there and Tucker was inside, pushing a broom again. He looked up when he saw me come in, startled, as though I’d caught him doing something he shouldn’t.
‘You back again,’ he said, his tone flat.
‘I’d appreciate five more minutes of your time. Couple things I forgot to ask you earlier on.’
‘Look, I don’t mean to be inhospitable, but I got my hands full here right now.’ He gestured to the debris all around him. ‘Don’t know what else I can tell you.’
‘The name Ella Borland familiar to you?’
He hesitated and it looked like he was thinking to say no, but then he got smart and said, ‘Sure.’
‘I heard tell my friend might have passed some time with her. I’d like to talk with her about it.’
He shrugged, pulled a face as though he didn’t know what it had to do with him. He was more jittery than when I’d seen him earlier. ‘What I told you before, about the diner. You try that place already?’
The change of subject didn’t go unnoticed. ‘Yes.’
‘You find out anything?’
I shook my head. ‘Turns out Jimmy drank a lot of coffee.’
He bulged his cheek with his tongue as he nodded along. ‘Sorry about that.’
He wasn’t, and the muscles in his face relaxed just enough to suggest relief.
‘What about Ella Borland? I’d appreciate if you could tell me where I could find her.’
‘Best I can do is tell you she used to live out by the water somewhere. But that was a time ago.’
‘When she worked here?’
He blanched, obviously surprised I knew that part. He gave a small nod. ‘Long time ago.’
I had a thought to grease him with a five spot, but remembered the state of my finances and decided to try another route. ‘Why do I get the feeling you knew Jimmy was talking to this woman?’
‘What?’
‘Did you see them here together?’
‘Why would you think that?’ Tucker laid his broom against the wall and went behind the bar to pick up his coffee. I wondered if he just wanted to put the bar between us – or if he had a weapon stashed back there for protection.
‘Because you coiled up like a spring soon as I mentioned her name.’
He eyed me as if he was deciding what to do, the tension in the room sparking now.
‘I’m not here to cause anyone trouble,’ I said. ‘Tell me where I can find her and we can all go about our day.’
His hands dipped out of sight and I readied for him to come at me. But instead of reaching for a weapon, he braced himself on the counter under the bar and hung his head. ‘Look, I seen them here together, so what? I didn’t want to tell you nothing because I ain’t one to put the bad word on a dead man.’
‘How’s that?’
I heard him drumming his fingers. ‘Used to be them rooms upstairs was for a different purpose. Ella worked up there, back then – you catch my meaning?’
Robinson and a working girl. Maybe something, maybe nothing – but the only living lead I had. ‘Yeah, I understand just fine. How can I talk to her?’
He looked up again now. ‘I’m telling you straight, I don’t know where she lives no more. Your friend brought her here one time, but I ain’t seen her since.’ He held his hands up in frustration. ‘And to save you asking, I’ll just tell you I ain’t spoke to her when she was here.’
‘Tell me how I find her. Give me a place to start.’
He sagged and I knew I had him on the run. ‘You might could try Maxine at the Star-Vue Hotel.’ He blew out a breath. ‘That’s as good as I can do. But don’t tell her I sent you, right?’
‘What does Maxine look like?’
‘Brown hair, had it pinned up last time I saw her. Too much rouge.’
‘Nothing more than that?’
He shrugged, spreading his hands.
A description that matched half the women in the state. I searched his face; his nerves were shot over something, and everything that came out of his mouth sounded like a lie – made him hard to read. ‘All right.’ I rubbed my nose, the smell bothering me again. ‘Can you tell me when you saw Robinson and Borland together?’
‘Yeah, I can tell you that. It was last weekend – Saturday night.’
I tried to get it all straight in my head. Last Thursday was when I’d first heard from Robinson. Saturday and Monday, he was seen with the Borland woman. I’d spoken to him again on the Monday afternoon, telling him I’d come to Hot Springs. He’d sounded relieved. Then by Tuesday he was supposedly talking about drinking himself to death in the Keystone bar, and hours later he was dead.
I couldn’t get a fix on his state of mind. My first thought was could something bad have happened late Monday or sometime Tuesday? ‘What about Tuesday, the night of the fire,’ I said, ‘you speak to Jimmy beforehand when he was down here drinking?’
He hooked a thumb behind the strap of his overall, edging back towards composure. ‘We been over this.’
‘Anything? Think about it.’
‘Beyond “Howdy” and “What�
�ll you have to drink?” not a damn thing.’
‘He didn’t say anything strange to you?’
‘He didn’t say nothing at all.’
‘How was his mood?’
‘Mister, you can ask me a hundred times and a hundred ways, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know. He sat here, he drank, and I ain’t barely paid him no mind. Long as I see the president’s picture on a bill, I keep the drinks coming and no more.’ He turned his back and plunged his mug into a sink of water.
Robinson talking about taking his own life on the same day he died was troubling – but I couldn’t imagine him doing it. And there were surer ways to take your own life than starting a fire. For his part, seemed like Clay Tucker wanted to wash his hands of the whole mess – but I couldn’t decide whether he was holding anything more back.
I whipped the photograph from my pocket and held it up so he could see it in the mirror behind the backbar. ‘You’re going to tell me you don’t know who she is, but I want you to think hard about it before you do. Take a real good look.’
He looked at it in the reflection, then turned and studied it up close. He shook his head. ‘You already know what I’m’a say, so what you want me to tell you?’
‘My friend was here three weeks. The way you talk, you’d think he was a ghost – never uttered a word, never left a mark. Floated through walls.’
‘Case you ain’t noticed, I had a lot on my mind.’ He looked at the ceiling and ran his hand through his hair, leaving a greasy tuft standing. Then he shook his head, his eyes downcast as though he were reconsidering. He took the pen from his shirt pocket, held it out to me. ‘Leave your particulars. I remember anything more, I’ll be in touch.’
I ripped a scrap of paper from my notepad and scribbled my name and the name of the motel on it. I placed it on the counter, pinning it with my finger. ‘You do that.’
I went out the door and walked a little way down the street, feeling uneasy about the whole conversation. My instincts made me double back. I peered through the window of Duke’s, staying out of sight. The broom was on the floor now, as if it had been thrown there, and Clay Tucker was leaning on his elbows on the bar, rubbing his temples.