The Listener

by Robert McCammon

  At that, Orchid’s spine stiffened. She seemed to draw up a couple of inches and in the ruddy lamplight her face in an instant had become a cold mask.

  She said, “He’ll never be like his daddy.”

  It was much later that night, as Curtis was lying in bed in his room, that the voice came—faintly, a whisper from far away…:Hello back to ya:.

  Now, as he absorbed the memory of that encounter nine years ago, Curtis pedalled off Congo Square, stopped his bicycle and cart directly in front of a small but neatly-kept white shotgun shack on St. Ann Street, walked up two concrete steps and knocked at the door.

  There was no answer.

  Curtis knocked again. “Mr. Crable?” he called. Then, a little louder: “Mr. Crable? It’s Curtis! You all right?”

  Was there a muffled sound of movement within? A car had just gone past, so it was hard to tell.

  Suddenly came from behind the door what might have once been a hard old voice from the grave of time, but now time had caught up with it and strangled it and it was a pitiful trembling thing.

  “Go away, Curtis. Please. Jus’ go on away.”

  “What’s wrong, sir?” He didn’t slur the word. “Are you sick?”

  “Go ’way.”

  “Can’t, sir. I was sent to see about you and that’s what I’m gonna do. You can stay behind that door but I’m not leavin’ ’til I’ve seen you.” Curtis waited. After a few more seconds he said, “Open the door, sir. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

  He waited a bit longer, balled up his fist and was prepared to keep knocking until the cows came home. But then a lock was turned, the door opened, and a man who resembled Wendell Crable but who had gone gray-fleshed, sunken-eyed and sickly peered out, squinting, into the sunlight.

  Ol’ Crab did not look at Curtis. He cast his gaze downward and then he backed away from the door as if the light were painful. “Come on, then,” he said. “Best lock that bike up, we got some people ’round here steal it in a snap.”

  Curtis spent a moment taking the chain and lock out of the cart and securing the bicycle around a drainpipe that came down the side of the house from the roof. He entered the dimness of the front room and was hit by the smells of burned food and stale cigarette smoke. All the blinds at the windows were drawn, but from between the slats shards of light lay on the floor like a broken mirror of golden glass. Ol’ Crab continued to retreat until he eased himself down into a brown chair beside which stood a table bearing a half-empty bottle of Four Roses whiskey and a glass nearly empty. A green ceramic ashtray was piled high with the burned butts of hand-rolled cigarettes, and one was still sending up tendrils of smoke.

  Curtis closed the door at his back. While his eyes fully adjusted to the gloom, he could make out that Ol’ Crab was wearing a white shirt left to flag around his underdrawers, because the master of the Redcaps was wearing no trousers. On Ol’ Crab’s feet were ancient leather slippers, worn down by the years. His legs were stretched out before him and he was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, his face offered toward the ceiling.

  “I think you burned somethin’,” Curtis said; in truth he was shocked at this sight and didn’t know what else to say, because never in his life could he ever have imagined seeing Mr. Crable in such a state as this.

  “Tried to bake some cornbread.” Ol’ Crab opened his eyes, picked up the smoldering cigarette and drew from it. “Didn’t go too well.”

  “Mr. Crable…what’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong,” he repeated, staring at nothing. “The world is wrong, Curtis. It’s a bad place. It just…lulls you along, day-by-day, and then…when you’re figurin’ ever’thin’ is goin’ smooth and easy and you see where you’re goin’ for the rest of your days…then…then…it hits you.” The seamed face turned and the hollowed eyes took him in. The mouth smiled a shade, but it was an awful thing to witness. “I got a Western Union telegram last night. Time was seventeen minutes after eight. I never got a Western Union telegram before in my whole life. Well, I got one last night!” The weary voice cracked; he stuck the cigarette into the hideous smile and then stared up at the ceiling. “I got one,” he said, very softly, and Curtis saw the tears begin to roll slowly down his cheeks.

  Curtis pulled another chair over beside him and sat down. He thought it best to be quiet, and just to listen.

  “Telegram!” Ol’ Crab said suddenly, as if awakening with a start from a near-slumber. “Lord God…Jesus…a telegram. Gave me a number to call. Up there in Chicago.” He reached for the glass of whiskey, drank a swallow and put it back on the table. Curtis noted that also on the table was the small framed photograph of a smiling little girl dressed up as if for Sunday service.

  “They say it was a bumb,” Ol’ Crab explained, but he was holding the cigarette close before his face and it was as if he were speaking to that instead of to the other person in the room. “Timebumb in a car…parked at the curb. Up there in Chicago, yesterday mornin’. Blew up…took her as she was comin’ out of the laundry. She always liked her clothes to be clean and neat. Fresh. You know? She say, ‘Daddy, what good’s a daisy if it’s not fresh?’ Her mama and me, we knew she was gonna be somebody. Go places. Daisy was a schoolteacher up there. You see?”

  “Yes sir,” Curtis said, and he had known Ol’ Crab had a daughter and a wife who’d passed away with cancer some six years ago, but he’d gotten that from other people because Mr. Crable was not one to talk freely about himself.

  “Took her,” Ol’ Crab went on. “Took four others too…hurt six or eight more, he told me. Why’d he tell me that? So I wouldn’t think I was bearin’ all the pain in the world? Said they think it was either gangsters, or the Unions, or them Fascism people, whatever they are. Do you reckon it really matters, Curtis?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Damn right it don’t. You know, I never got a Western Union telegram before, not in my whole life.”

  Curtis nodded, and Ol’ Crab drank again and smoked the cigarette down to where Curtis feared for the old sinewy fingers that wrote the schedules and ran the show.

  When Ol’ Crab put a hand to his face and let out a moan that sounded like someone’s end of the world, he trembled and began to sob, brokenly, like any child might whose trust in the fairness of life had been shattered. Curtis watched the cigarette stub fall to the rug. He picked it up and crushed it out in the ashtray. Then he started to put a hand on the old man’s arm, hesitated because he didn’t know if it was proper or not due to their different stations, but he decided it was right and he did it anyway.

  Ol’ Crab put his arms around Curtis, and he held the young man tight as he cried.

  Curtis put his arms around Mr. Crable’s shoulders. His heart was sorrowed. He knew he could tell Mr. Crable that the Good Father promised a wonderful afterlife in Heaven, and that all who loved each other and were separated in this world would be rejoined on the golden shore; he knew he could tell Mr. Crable that already his daughter was waiting for him, and preparing him a place in the land beyond…but he did not say any of these things because he knew also that Mr. Crable was a religious man and even so there were mysteries about the permissions of the Good Father that no human being could explain, and one of them was why on a late August morning a timebomb in Chicago had been allowed to explode and kill a woman from New Orleans who was there to help children learn and grow.

  Curtis thought that Mr. Crable knew he would be seeing his Daisy again—and maybe in the next few years—but the pain of loss was a terrible thing, and it would not be denied. Therefore Curtis remained silent, as Ol’ Crab sobbed some of his grief away, but from the sound of it there was a whole lot more grief to be shed.

  The telephone on a little table across the room began to ring.

  “No,” Ol’ Crab said, his voice mangled, against Curtis’s shoulder. “No.”

  “Could be them callin’ from Chicago,” Curtis told him.

  “Said…they’d call me later in the week…after they mad
e arrangements. Arrangements, they called it.”

  The telephone continued to ring. If it wasn’t Chicago, Curtis knew who it must be. “Let me answer it, sir.” When Ol’ Crab made no further protest, Curtis gently pulled himself free, got up and picked up the receiver. “Crable residence.”

  It was who he’d suspected. “Mayhew? What’s wrong there?”

  “Um…well suh, Mr. Crable’s feelin’ poorly.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He…pardon me, suh, but I’ll tell you when I get back. Can I ask a favor, suh? Since Mr. Crable is feelin’ so poorly, could he have a day or two off?”

  “A day or two?”

  “Yes suh. I think he needs it. And also…a day or two off with full pay. I think that would be the right thing.”

  “Oh, you think so?” It was spoken with a bite of sarcasm around the nub of a cigar.

  “I do,” Curtis answered, and in his voice was the same quiet firmness with which he repaired family quarrels, hurt feelings and broken hearts when asked to not only listen, but to act.

  There stretched a silence.

  Then: “All right. Two days with full pay. Tell him. And tell Wendell…we need him here. We can’t run this place without him.”

  “Thank you, suh. I will.”

  When he hung up the phone, Curtis sat down beside Ol’ Crab again, took his hands, looked him in the face and told him he was going to go into the kitchen and cook him some food, and what might he be wanting for lunch? It took awhile for Mr. Crable to answer, but then he said he had some black bean soup left over from yesterday, and Curtis could warm that up if it wasn’t too much trouble, and he could chop up some celery and a grandaddy-sized onion and put that in the pot, and if it wasn’t too much trouble could Curtis stay awhile and take a bowl of soup with him?

  Curtis said there was nothing he would like to do better than that. After lunch and before he returned to his work Curtis would ride the five blocks to Mr. Crable’s church, which was two blocks further north than his own, and let somebody know they should come stay with him awhile.

  The morning moved on. Trains came and went at Union Station, bringing people in and carrying them away. The city breathed and lived in its own way, as all cities do, while a pot of black bean soup bubbled on a stove in a small house on St. Ann Street.

  Twelve.

  Nope, two hundred thousand bucks was not gonna be enough.

  It was Pearly’s thought as he drove the Ford south along First Street with the mansions of the wealthy on either side. The sun was going down, the shadows getting longer. The time was near six-thirty, and Pearly was on his way to his engagement with the Ludenmeres. He had changed his sweat-damp white shirt for another white shirt but he still wore the dark blue suit, the tie and the fedora, his detective’s getup; he had removed his shoulder-holster and in the glovebox was the .38 revolver, loaded with six slugs.

  Damn! he thought. There was some big fuckin’ money on this street. He was convinced that anybody who could afford such sprawling edifices as these in this country’s sorry economic condition had to be doing something crooked. Had to be. He would lay odds that Ludenmere was paying somebody off under the table for that government contract, or he was blackmailing some bureaucrat, probably used his own private dick to dig up the dirt. Nobody could be clean who lived like this. He passed between castles with upraised turrets and plantation houses with columns in front as thick around as his car. The windows of the upper floors under the high roofs caught the last of the sun’s glare and threw it back into Pearly’s eyes. Palm trees, oaks and willows shared space on the manicured green lawns, at least the parts he could see beyond the gates because just about every house was protected by stone or brick walls seven or eight feet high, some of the walls adorned with a further dense protection of ivy vines. Occasionally he saw a sign that said Beware Of Dog. The paved driveways beyond the wrought-iron gates curved away from the street into the private lap of luxury. White and yellow stone, red brick, ornamentations of enamelled squares and intricately-patterned tiles, paint jobs that Pearly was sure cost more money than he’d ever seen in his life…it was fuckin’ obscene, is what it was, he thought, and for that reason two hundred thousand dollars was not going to be nearly enough.

  There it was. On one of the gates, down near the bottom in small brass numerals so as to be oh-so-properly restrained in this neighborhood of gaudy showmanship: 1419.

  The moment had arrived. Pearly found himself trembling a little inside. He was sweating again under his shirt. If he screwed up any bitty-bit, they were done and he might have to fight his way out of that beautiful pile of bones, which he could see beyond the gates and through the surrounding oaks was two stories done up in the plantation-house style, all white. The front porch—veranda, was it called?—at the top of the stairs looked as big as a fancy hotel’s ballroom.

  He had to be very, very careful now; he would have to use every instinct and talent he had, and particularly be careful around Clay Hartley, the chauffeur and ex-Houston cop. The more he thought about Hartley, the more nervous he got. Would an ex-cop smell the scent of a kidnap plot? Would he be able to look with his eagle eyes at a Shreveport detective and immediately see a grifter who was holding onto his nerves by his chewed-up fingernails?

  He realized he was about to learn the answers because, as he stopped the car at the gate and stepped out, a man in a black uniform, a pale blue shirt and wearing a chauffeur’s cap came out from behind the white stone wall that protected the Ludenmere estate.

  “Detective Parr,” the man said, speaking in a gravelly voice that carried the extra dusty grit of a heavy Texas accent. “Clay Hartley. Came down to meet you, save you ringin’ to get in.” Hartley nodded toward a button set in the wall next to the gate. Above the button was a cradle holding an ear-cone style of telephone receiver and a metal speaker grill. It was the first Pearly had ever seen of anything like that and he knew it must’ve cost an enormous bundle. He felt sweat at the back of his neck. Hartley was unbolting and opening the gate. Its hinges made no noise.

  “Drive on in and stop. I’ll ride up to the house with you,” the ex-cop said.

  “Sure.” Had Pearly heard his voice quaver? “Sure thing,” he said, more strongly to disguise the fault, and immediately wished he had not because he didn’t want to overplay. He got in the car. He could still put the Ford in reverse and take off. He could just drive to Mexico himself, find some work down there and—

  No, this was his work. This had always been his work. He was married to this life, for better or for worse, and he’d taken a lot of shit from the bitch so now it was time for her to pay up. Which, by God, she was going to do by way of this rich sonofabitch with two ripe kids to be plucked like fruit off a low-hanging branch.

  He set his teeth, put the car in forward gear, and drove through the open gate. He stopped and waited while Hartley closed and locked the soundless iron, and then the passenger side door opened and the ex-cop slid in across the gray cloth.

  Pearly glanced at Hartley and got a shock. He hadn’t seen it before, but the man had a long scar trailing from the corner of his left eye down almost to the line of his jaw. The left eye had a dull falsity about it; the thing stared straight ahead, even as the right eye moved in its socket. A glass eye, Pearly realized; well, he thought, don’t that beat all? At least they were the same color of brown, but he bet the kiddies liked dreamin’ about that fish-eye when midnight came callin’.

  “Problem?” Hartley asked, because Pearly had delayed a half-second too long.

  “Nope.” Pearly pressed the accelerator and the Ford rolled on.

  “Mr. Ludenmere told me the whole story,” Hartley drawled.

  The whole story. Pearly didn’t think he liked the way that sounded. He forged ahead. “What do you think?”

  Hartley didn’t answer. In the space of two heartbeats Pearly summed up his impressions of the cowboy cop turned chauffeur. How the man could drive with one blind eye was beyond Pearly, but
obviously Ludenmere thought highly enough of his skills to put the lives of his wife, children and himself in those gnarled-knuckled hands. Whoever came up with the word rawboned had this slimjim in mind. Pearly figured him for a tough piece of leather about fifty years old, and for sure the man’s flesh had begun to resemble old leather. Hartley had a craggy face with a hooked nose and a chin that looked like it was made out of iron. The good eye and the glass imitation were both sunken down in nests of sun-dried wrinkles. Pearly glanced again at the scar. Must’ve had the whole side of his face ripped open at some time, he thought. Tough line of work, bein’ a cop in Houston.

  “Belleau Wood,” Hartley suddenly said.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re lookin’ at my scar. Heard your neck crick. Battle of Belleau Wood, June 6th of 1918.”

  “Oh. What hit you?”

  “Piece of an artillery shell, size of a dime. Laid me open real good.”

  Pearly had to ask it. “Your eye. I mean…does it bother you?”

  “Nope. Doesn’t bother the children, either, if that’s what you’re askin’. Does it bother you?”

  “I’m fine with it.”

  Hartley said no more until the car had pulled up on the circular drive before the house’s front steps. When Pearly cut the engine, Hartley made a grumble that must’ve meant he was about to speak. “What you told Mr. Ludenmere,” he said. “I’m of two minds on it.”

  Pearly waited. The hot engine ticked…ticked…ticked.

  “About tellin’ the police here,” Hartley went on. “Seems they could help protect the children, put a watch on the house day and night. That would be a good thing. Then again…I get what your department is thinkin’, considerin’ all the kidnappin’ goin’ on. So I say let it rest as it is, for now.” He turned his head toward Pearly, who found himself not wanting to look into the glass eye but the damned cold and starey thing compelled him. “I’ll tell you true,” Hartley said. “Anybody touches those children on my watch, I’ll kill ’em straight off, forget the courtroom and the prison. I was a Marine gunnery sergeant, won three ribbons in competition for accuracy with a pistol. And if you’re wonderin’…a person compensates for what they call monocular vision.”