Dead Folks' blues d-1

by Steven Womack

  Then he was off me.

  As soon as I felt my body relieved of his mass, I went completely limp, as weak as a newborn. I hadn’t realized I’d been pushing so hard against him, but every muscle must have been locked tight. I was exhausted to the point of nausea.

  I heard a scraping across the linoleum, then the creaking of the floor as the man who weighed over a sixth of a ton settled into a ten-dollar kitchen chair. I raised my head, and in the dusty silver shafts breaking through the kitchen window I saw Bubba Hayes at my table, his elbows propped up, his head in his hand.

  He sobbed. I stared at him slack jawed for a moment, a three-hundred-pound criminal sitting at my kitchen table crying. Who’d have thought? I rolled over on my side, pushed against the floor, and painfully rotated up onto my haunches. I pulled my knees up into my chest, stretching, trying to figure out how many ribs were broken, feeling alertly for the sharp pain in my chest that might indicate a punctured lung.

  Get a grip, I told myself, and brought my arms behind me and pushed myself up into a kneeling position.

  The room spun around me. I was apparently overreaching myself once again. I leaned across the floor, grabbed one of the other kitchen chairs, and pulled it toward me. Then I climbed into it, feeling the soft vinyl pad beneath my butt, glad to be up off the hard cold floor.

  “So what’s next?” I asked, still panting. I felt a sharp cramp in my right side and massaged my ribs with my left hand, trying to work it out. With the other hand, I grabbed a dish towel off the kitchen table and ran it across my face as gently as I could. It came away with an ugly dark smear, but it was a mostly dry smear. I sniffed, feeling for the sensation of wet on my face. Nothing; my nose had clotted.

  Bubba raised his head. Even in the darkness, I could see the filmy reflection off his eyeballs like sharp points of light. I was glad the lights were off; if I saw the look on his face, I probably would have been frightened into paralysis.

  “I want the man who did this,” he said, his voice like a bulldozer in low gear pulling a hill. There was no evangelical flair in his voice, no theatrics, just cold, murderous rage. I was glad I didn’t kill Mr. Kennedy for more reasons than just the law.

  “Well, you ain’t got him yet,” I said. “Why did you have Mr. Kennedy following me?”

  “Mr. Kennedy was following several people. You were just one of them.”

  “What were you doing? Playing private eye yourself?”

  Bubba dropped his hands to the kitchen table. It shook like I’d dropped a thawed frozen turkey on it.

  “I wanted to know what’s going on. It’s bad for business when people think they can get whacked for owing Bubba money. I’m a moral man. I don’t kill people. I give them what they want.”

  Yeah, right, I thought: the same old tired argument they all use. Call it sin if you want, call it vice. But don’t call it victimless. But I wasn’t about to say that to Bubba. “So who else was he following?”

  Bubba turned away from me. He was heaving and panting now himself, overcome with either emotion or exertion. I neither knew nor cared which.

  “I trusted Mr. Kennedy. He was on his own.”

  “So you don’t know who else he’d been trailing?”

  “I intend to find out. And when I do …”

  A silence as threatening and cold as any I’d ever endured lay between us. I felt sorry for whoever killed Mr. Kennedy. If the killer were lucky, the law would get him before Bubba could, and all he’d have to face was the electric chair.

  Now he had me thinking. Why would somebody kill Mr. Kennedy?

  “There’re only two reasons somebody would have killed him,” I said.

  “And?”

  “One, Mr. Kennedy was getting close to figuring out who killed Conrad Fletcher. Two, Mr. Kennedy was getting close to someone who was getting close to finding out who killed Fletcher. And they killed Mr. Kennedy to keep control of the situation.”

  “You ain’t making sense, boy.”

  “No, think about it.” I stood up, energized by the notion that maybe I was closer to figuring this out than I had imagined. One thing was certain: if reason number one was not the motive for killing Mr. Kennedy, then reason number two almost had to revolve around me. There was nobody else out there.

  “Except for the police,” I said, “I’m the only one who’s actively looking for Conrad’s murderer. If I’m getting close, then the killer’s going to have to play his hand. But he has to play his hand when it suits him. And with Mr. Kennedy in the picture, there was one more thing he’d have to control. With Mr. Kennedy out of the way, it’s just me and the killer.

  “To paraphrase a disgustingly racist, politically incorrect saying,” I ventured after a moment, “Mr. Kennedy was the Ubangi in the fuel supply.”

  The Reverend Bubba Hayes swiveled in the tiny chrome and vinyl kitchen chair, a squeal cutting the air from where the legs screwed into the base. If the chair didn’t give way with him on it, it might last the night. But it’d never be the same again.

  “I don’t completely understand what you’re saying, boy.” Then there was silence for a moment, until he spoke again. “But what I do understand makes sense.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate through the pain and the fatigue.

  “Something’s wrong here,” I said. “And I’m not seeing it. I’m closer than I realize. Don’t you see, Bubba? I’m close. The answer’s out there, and I’m just not seeing it.”

  He said something, but by then I wasn’t paying attention anymore. I stood up and rubbed my temples. Damn, it’s here somewhere. I know it is.

  It’s got to be.

  22

  Bubba Hayes’s last remark before he left at three A.M. was that if he found out I had anything to do with Mr. Kennedy’s death, he was going to make damn sure I was looking out at the world from inside a dog food can.

  Talk about raising the stakes. I knew I didn’t have anything to do with Mr. Kennedy’s death, but now I had to convince Bubba. And while I’m at it, I should work on convincing the Metro Homicide Squad I didn’t kill Fletcher. Spellman had announced to the media I was no longer a suspect. But the police, I knew from hard experience, could be less than forthright.

  Everybody thinks I killed somebody. Wonder if I can get my old job back.

  Not to sound like a Pollyanna, but one bonus did come from Bubba’s nocturnal visit: the realization that I wasn’t as far off the mark as I thought. That was good. On the other hand, I’d personally seen two dead bodies that were the result of the killer’s handiwork, and if he killed once, he’d kill again. Maybe me. That was bad.

  Suddenly, I had this sensation that I was dealing with some really serious stuff. I don’t know why, but up to now it felt on some level like a game to me. I go up, I go down, I go all around, chasing after something as if it’s some kind of 3-D, real-time version of Clue. Colonel Mustard did it with the pipe wrench in the drawing room.

  Only this time, if you lose the game, Colonel Mustard does you. And it’s for real.

  That dose of reality kept me up all night. When Bubba finally plodded down the metal staircase to Mrs. Hawkins’s backyard, thankfully not pulling the side of the house down as he went, I pushed the door to and leaned a chair against it, figuring I’d repair the splintered doorjamb tomorrow. Then I checked all the windows. I settled into bed, but as close as I could get to sleep, it may as well’ve been in the next county.

  Finally, around six, I rolled out of the sack and made a pot of coffee. I looked in the mirror and saw that my nose was still swollen, with a few disgusting flakes of dried blood on my cheek, a little more mixed in with my hair. There’d been a little blood seepage as well from the closure strips on the back of my head. Damn, that thing was never going to heal if people didn’t stop slamming me around like a fifty-pound sack of dried dog food.

  Dog food, again. Bad joke.

  I cranked the shower up full blast and stood under the spray until the hot water ran out. Every muscle in my
body, it seemed, ached. I was hurting in places I hadn’t hurt since I’d gone out for football my freshman year at prep school. All it took was two workouts; I never came back for the third. My father called me a quitter, until the coach told him I was, at 125 pounds, the smallest kid he’d ever seen go out for varsity football, and he was surprised I made it through two days.

  I’d felt like a quitter last night as well, at least until Bubba Hayes showed up and had the unfathomable kindness to beat some sense into me. He’d never know what a favor he’d done, and while somewhere inside there was part of me that wanted to tie him down and jump on his head for an hour or two, I was strangely grateful to him.

  Put back together as well as I could be, I finished the coffee and headed to the hospital. I had no idea if Jane Collingswood was still on duty or not. I knew residents pulled some god-awful shifts, so I figured she might be there. I was going to hunt her down, and Zitin, too. It was time to get some answers.

  There was the usual midday construction on the freeway; I could see as I crossed the Shelby Street Bridge that traffic was backed up in both directions all the way to the horizon. I decided to skip that experience and threaded my way through the downtown traffic, up past the Union Rescue Mission, just over from the downtown bus terminal, and maneuvered my way onto Broadway. There was construction there as well, with traffic slowed to walking speed. The Ford began overheating, the indicator moving up fast toward the “oh, hell” range. I loosened my tie, having already thrown my jacket into the seat next to me. I rolled my shirtsleeves up past my elbow. Life went on like that for nearly forty minutes before I found a parking space six blocks from the hospital.

  Lack of sleep, physical abuse, urban stress-by the time I walked into the air-conditioned lobby of the medical center, I was a dripping mess. By now, I pretty well knew my way around, so I walked past the lobby, down a hall, turned left onto a corridor that looked as long as a football stadium, and walked about twenty minutes. At the end of the hall, two closed beige metal doors supported a sign that said EMERGENCY ROOM-AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and below that ALL OTHERS USE OUTSIDE ENTRANCE.

  I walked out a glass door and into the heat. A curved drive wide enough for ambulances three abreast ran from the street, under a concrete canopy, and back out onto the street. The drive was empty save for one quiet orange and white van that had emblazoned on the side in blue paint: PARAMEDIC EXTRICATION UNIT.

  I didn’t even want to speculate on that one. I walked past the van onto the breezeway that led up to a series of glass doors, the same ones I’d gone through what seemed so many nights before, back when life was simpler and nobody was threatening to kill me, jail me, fill-in-the-blank me.

  The emergency room was its usual buzz. The E.R. people seemed frenetic, even when there was only a couple of patients waiting around with skateboard injuries. Stress junkies, they’ve got to be. Otherwise, they’d never last.

  The calm, suited woman in the middle of this maelstrom sat behind a high circular desk with a row of clipboards set out in front of her. I walked up to the counter and leaned over to look at her.

  “You’ll have to fill out these forms, sir,” she said before I had a chance to open my mouth.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “We can’t do anything for you, sir, until you fill out these forms.”

  “I-”

  “Sir, you must fill out these forms before we can help you.” She reached over, grabbed a clipboard with a Bic pen and a stack of papers already loaded, and thrust it at me. “Please cooperate.”

  I must have looked desperately in need of medical care. I was sure having trouble getting through to this woman on any other level.

  “Ma’am,” I said, pulling out my license, flipping my badge at her, then shutting the case before she had a chance to examine it. “Harry Denton. I’m a detective, and I’m looking for Dr. Jane Collingswood. She went on E.R. rotation last night. If she’s still here, I’d like to see her.”

  She appraised me for a moment, but she didn’t ask to see the license again. “Have a seat over there, Detective, and I’ll see if I can locate her.”

  I took a seat in the waiting area, my gut doing a bump and grind at the thought that I’d once again borderline impersonated a police officer. If these people assumed I was a cop, that was their problem. Spellman, however, probably wouldn’t see it that way.

  For about ten minutes, I thumbed through a two-year-old copy of Reader’s Digest. Then the woman behind the counter stood up.

  “Things have gotten a little quiet down here today, Detective,” she said. “Dr. Collingswood’s on a break, in the third floor doctor’s lounge.”

  I stood up and flipped the magazine onto the table. “Thanks,” I said, turning my back on her before she got a better look at me than she already had.

  Back inside the main building, I trekked to the lobby and up to the information desk. The fat lady behind the desk had wires coming out of her everywhere: headphones, telephone mike, Walkman.

  “Third floor doctor’s lounge,” I said. “This way?” I pointed down the hall.

  “Sorry, sir. Doctor’s lounge is restricted.”

  “I know that,” I said irritably, “I’m Dr. Evans, Neurosurgery. I just got confused out here. Now which way is it?”

  “Oh, yes, Dr. Evans. Follow the red line around to the second bank of elevators. Go up to three, take a right.”

  I turned around and walked away from her. Doctor’s aren’t known for passing out polite thank-yous to just anybody. Upstairs, I stepped out of the elevators and took a right, down past the nurse’s station, a row of offices, what may have been a classroom, and stopped in front of a door with a plate on it that read DOCTOR’S LOUNGE-AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  I’d had enough of that authorized personnel crap. I took out my license and looked at it. Yep, I’m authorized.

  I pushed open the door and stepped in. The room was dark, cool, with a color television, floor model, flickering silently away in the corner. It was a comfortable room: subdued, pastel-blue carpet, heavily padded and equally heavily used sofas lining the walls, with the center of the large room occupied by wooden tables and cafeteria chairs. There were two sleeping bodies on the sofas, backs to the rest of the room, the wrinkled white of lab coats rising slowly up and down in breathing rhythm.

  Jane Collingswood sat at a table, back to me, sipping something out of a Styrofoam cup and flipping through a magazine. She hadn’t moved when I walked in. I padded slowly up behind her and stopped.

  “What, you couldn’t sleep?” I asked, my voice low.

  She twisted around in the chair. It was comforting to see that even someone as attractive as Jane Collingswood could occasionally look as if she’d been on a bender. Her skin was pale in the unflattering light, her face drawn, her eyes sunken and bloodshot. I’d heard they put doctors through hell just to see if they can take it. I guess it’s true. No wonder so many of them are jerks; like being a freaking Marine or something.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. It would have been a demand if she’d had the energy.

  “Looking for you,” I said, walking around the table and taking a seat across from her. She frowned, the motion of her jaw pulling lines on her skin. Her eyes darkened, and she shook her head slightly.

  “Mr.… what was your name again?”

  “Harry.”

  “Well, Mr. Harry, I’m thirty-three hours into a seventy-two hour pull. I’m trying to get a little time alone because tonight’s Friday night, and sometime around ten thirty this evening we expect to see some casualties.”

  “I don’t know how you docs do this stuff,” I said. “I didn’t sleep last night, and I feel like somebody stuffed me in a microwave and punched all the buttons at once.”

  She almost smiled, but the weight of her lips was too heavy a burden to manage. “Right now, Mr. Harry, I don’t know how we manage either. But I certainly don’t have time to fool with you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  I t
hought for a second. Even if she killed Fletcher, and I was beginning to think she had just enough inner strength to do it, I sympathized with her. But I needed to push.

  “Tell me about you and Conrad Fletcher.”

  The magazine fell from her hands, slid down her lap, and onto the floor. “What makes you think there’s anything to tell?”

  “C’mon, Jane. I like you. You’re bright, determined, dedicated. And not to sound too much like a sexist, you’re damnably attractive. Trust me, I know these things.”

  This time, she did smile. “You can flatter me all you like. There’s nothing to tell.”

  “I know he was harassing you. I know he wanted to sleep with you. And I know he was threatening your position here at the hospital.”

  She blanched. “How did you-”

  “And I know that Albert Zitin’s in love with you. And I know he wanted to protect you from Fletcher. What I don’t know is how much he protected you. Or, for that matter, did you need protecting at all? Frankly, you look like you can pretty well take care of yourself.”

  “I can’t believe you’d think-”

  “Okay, so I don’t know how medical school works, and I don’t know how doctors become doctors, at least not every little step of the way. But I do know that supervisors in residencies have a lot of stroke, and a recommendation from a doctor, who’s a respected member of the staff as well as chief of something or other, that you get kicked out of a program will-”

  “Get you kicked out of the program.” She finished the sentence for me, then sighed exhaustedly. She folded her arms on the table in front of her and nestled her head in the crooks of her arms. Her black hair splayed out over the table, long and straight. I resisted the urge to pat her on the head.

  “And sooner or later, if they haven’t already, the Metro detectives will learn what’s been going on. And when they do, they’ll ask questions you won’t have any option about answering.”

  She leaned back in the chair. She seemed, more than anything else, weary, beyond feeling, beyond pain, even, perhaps, beyond anguish.