by Gerald Duff
“Yeah, that’s what you said then. Anything to stick on to that?”
“Nope,” Nova said. “A little blood from the perp, like we saw then, but nothing else we found since. I don’t see help for you from anything we ran into.”
“Thing is,” J.W. said. “I need to find me something to talk about, you understand, for the boss’s benefit.”
“You want some progress to report, I suppose is what you’re saying.”
“You got that right. I need some progress bad. At least the boss does, because his boss does, and the councilwoman riding his ass, she needs to hear something to shut her up a little bit. I need to get creative.”
“I wish I could help you, Sergeant,” Nova Hebert said, snapping the rolled-up part of first one rubber glove, then the other one against her wrist as she stood facing J.W. in the big room full of steel tables. J.W. could hear water running somewhere, but he couldn’t tell where from. “Nothing new, though, to tell you.”
“Nomar Garciaparra,” J.W. heard himself say, as he watched the lady M.E. with all those curls pushed into a hairnet, looking up at him.
“What?”
“The way you’re messing with your gloves,” J.W. said. “Doing first the one, then the other with your hands. It’s like Nomar up at bat, the way how he does when he’s getting set for the pitch to come.”
“Yeah,” Nova Hebert said. “But Nomar’s working with Velcro, hearing that nice ripping sound every time he pulls it loose. That’s a lot more satisfying than these rubber gloves.”
“The Red Birds are in town tonight,” J.W. said. “I can get tickets.”
“All right,” Nova Hebert said. “You want to meet me at the main gate about 6:30?”
“Catch batting practice?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s always the best part. Getting ready for the game to start up. Watching it crank.”
“Yeah,” J.W. said, watching Nova Hebert turn and walk back down the aisle between the steel tables in all that cold air of the morgue. “Oh, yeah.”
Then he heard himself speak up, louder this time so Nova could hear him well enough to stop and turn back to see what he wanted, her hair making a little thrash as her head moved. Lord, have mercy, he said to himself. Here I go again.
“Couldn’t we start a little earlier, say combine this baseball game with a drink or two first at a nice little place not far from the ballpark? It’s right down there close by,” J. W. said, hearing the beg in his voice.
“I don’t see why not,” Nova said. “You want to meet me there? What time?”
“Happy hour starts early there,” J. W. answered, thinking that happy hour has already started, if she only knew.
“I’ll be there if you will,” she said, turning back toward the corridor but letting J.W. see her still looking at him as she did.
“I will,” he said. “I sure will.”
FIFTEEN
J.W. and Major Dalbey
Major Dalbey was asking J.W. Ragsdale to perform a task not in his official job description, but J.W. didn’t want to say that to the Major, of course, not even as a joke. Arguing about an assignment on the basis of what category it did or didn’t fit into was so damned pencil-necked that the thought of it made J.W. want to break something. Nothing big or worth much, but something. But even breaking some object, say a clock radio, or a water glass, or some kind of a knick knack, that in itself was also pencil-neck behavior, in J.W.’s estimation, and he was disappointed in himself to realize he was thinking about such an action. Going in this direction, the next thing would a crying jag.
So J.W. just kept his mouth shut and looked at the Major, who kept sliding his eyes off to one side and then the other as J.W. stared at him. It’s a funny thing, J.W. thought, that when you’re in the right you can stand to look full into somebody’s eye and when you’re shucking and jiving you can’t force yourself to stare at a fixed point to save your life.
If you’re normal, that is, J.W. amended his observation. If you’re a psycho or a sociopath or a politician or a pencil-necked paper-pusher, nothing you ever do can bother you enough to make you look off from somebody else looking at you. I’ll have to ask Tyrone about that, J.W. promised himself, see if I can’t stir up an argument about the matter.
“Hell, J.W.,” Major Dalbey was saying, “I ain’t asked you to kill somebody, so why are you sitting there like a bump on a log, not saying a damn word?”
“If you’d asked me to kill somebody,” J.W. said, “that wouldn’t a surprised me near as much as what you did ask. I might not’ve accepted the assignment, but I would’ve admitted it was more in my line of work here in the Memphis police department.”
“You ought to take this as a compliment, J.W.,” Major Dalbey said, “the fact that your name came to my mind just as soon as the Chief unloaded this mess on me.”
“You know, you’re right, Major,” J.W., “now I think about it. If I turn my head just a little to the side and squint the eye opposite, I can understand and appreciate the honor you trying to pay me. I see I have failed to comprehend it, up until just fifteen seconds ago. It thrills my heart.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Major Dalbey said. “Ha ha and all that shit. Here’s what it comes down to, like I tried to tell you.”
“All right,” J.W. said. “Sing that song one more time, Major, and I’ll see if I can come up with the words to fit the tune.”
“Tell you what, J.W., I will, and I’ll tell you this, too. If you can get the lid back on the bottle, I’ll send you down into Mississippi to pick up an old boy at the Panola County jail for transfer to Memphis, and I won’t look for you back here for three or four days. You can leave for the job that early.”
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” J.W. said. “I can feel my mind beginning to get around this thing already, like the tappets on a eight cylinder Buick starting to smooth out when you pour STP in the crankcase and it running.”
“That’s something you probably used to do, all right. Here’s the deal. Ovetta Bichette has been approached by one of her constituents in her ward all concerned, and so Ovetta’s asking for this favor from the Chief.”
Major Dalbey paused and looked up at the ceiling of his office, the expression on his face that of a man who’s just told somebody the good news that always attends the bad and is now delivering the other part. “No, now let me get it straight. She’s demanding this favor from the Chief, and he’s of course handed it to me, so I’m coming to you, J.W., hat in hand.”
“It do roll downhill, don’t it?” J.W.said. “Every time. Who is this constituent of Ovetta’s? A landlord in South Memphis? A crack dealer? What? A working girl?”
“No, she is legit, a nice lady who’s a licensed practical nurse at Methodist. See, she’s got this boy she ain’t seen for long enough that she’s worried. Her name is Marie McNeill, and the boy is a student at Memphis Central High School, name of Randall Eugene McNeill. The mama’s afraid something bad’s happened to him.”
“Oh, so he’s the crack dealer,” J.W. said. “Not the constituent nurse.”
“Nuh uh,” Major Dalbey said. “It ain’t that easy. The boy is an academic type student, according to the councilwoman, makes straight A’s and plays chess on the school team and all that kind of stuff. Intellectual type kid.”
“I ain’t buying it. I bet he don’t even know how to play checkers right.”
“All I know is he’s a missing person as far as his mama and Ovetta Bichette see it, and the Chief wants us to look into it and give it high priority and not assign it to some uniform who don’t know how to do it and will screw it up.”
“I ain’t handled a missing crackhead kid case since I signed on to this outfit, Major,” J.W. said. “Naw, take that back. I never dealt with anything like that, unless there was a killing connected to it.”
“I know, I know,” the Major said. “But we got to give the Chief something to work with, and I’m asking you to come up with some kind of story to get him
off my back. Just, you know, go over there to Central High, talk to the principal or dean or whatever they call them school cops now, poke around a little, and then you can take a little vacation in the Delta.”
“Soon as I get that done,” J.W. said, “get the chess playing crackhead located and get you told so you can tell the Chief and he can tell Bitchhead, I can take off for Panola County for five or six days. That’s the deal?”
“Three or four, I said,” Major Dalbey said. “I ain’t giving you a furlough, J.W.”
“Who’s this old boy I pick up for transport to Memphis on the fourth day, then?”
“He just jumped bail when they were fixing to try him for hitting a fellow too hard upside the head with a baseball bat. Nothing to him.”
“A real baseball bat?”
“Yeah. This’un’s a white power nut. That bunch he runs with call themselves Batboys for Freedom. Some shit like that.”
“He’ll be interesting to talk to, I do expect,” J.W. said. “He’ll make that ninety miles to Memphis pass fast, discussing social problems and batting averages and all like that.”
“Let me know what you find out soon as you do, J.W.,” Major Dalbey said. “Ovetta is just all over the Chief. He tells me it’s all he can do not to clock her right in his office, except he’d lose his job.”
“And his pension,” J.W. said. “Damn, Bitchhead do stay busy, don’t she?”
“Don’t call her that, goddamn it, J.W. I know you’re trying to condition me so I’ll get mixed up and say that out loud myself just when I ought not to. But, yeah, Ovetta Bichette stays busy all right. It’s a fulltime job being the councilwoman with a conscience, fighting for her people every fucking minute of the day.”
“That’s the tag she’s using now? Councilwoman with a conscience?” J.W. said. “Lord have mercy.”
“Yeah, but at least she ain’t done what that one up there in St. Louis did.”
“You mean the potty thing in the council chambers?” J.W. said. “I read about that in the paper.”
“It was little potty, not big,” Major Dalbey said. “And they held up quilts and tablecloths and stuff to hide her when she was relieving herself in that waste basket.”
“So you really couldn’t tell if she was doing it or not there in the council meeting,” J.W. said. “Could’ve been just grandstanding.”
“You couldn’t see it, no, but you probably could’ve heard her doing it, if everybody wasn’t hollering and stuff when the councilwoman was doing her business in St. Louis.”
“St. Louis has always been ahead of Memphis,” J.W. said, “in city government matters. I expect it’ll be a year or two before some councilperson drops trou in Memphis while they’re trying to keep the floor during a council debate.”
“They won’t be nobody holding up quilts and sheets in Memphis to hide it,” Major Dalbey said. “I flat guarantee you it’ll be right out in the open.”
“Like I said,” J.W. said, heading for the door out of Major Dalbey’s office, “St. Louis is way yonder ahead of us in government etiquette. I’m going over to Central High School and get my vacation started.”
Transporting a prisoner back from Panola County, Mississippi, to Memphis would justify his using a city vehicle for the trip, J.W. considered as he made his way out of the Midtown station, and that was a temptation. There’d be no need to worry about stress on his old Buick or whether the car was up to driving three-hundred miles back and forth and around and about before the visit to the home country was over and done. Anything went wrong, all would be jake.
But using a city police vehicle meant there’d be no reimbursement for mileage like there would be for his old Buick, and that was an advantage not to be lightly given up. He could make money on the deal at 42 cents per mile, J.W. knew, even with a Texas Republican in the White House and gasoline prices out the roof. He’d do the Buick, J.W. told himself, keep good records and earn a few dollars, not push the Century too hard, and it’d probably make it there and back.
J.W. drove to Memphis Central High School whistling the old blues number about the crawling king snake and letting himself think just a little about Nova Hebert. “I’m a crawling king snake,” J.W. sang out loud as he pulled into a visitor’s parking space at Central High. “And you know I rule my den.”
***
The principal’s office was at the end of the hall to the right, and after J.W. Ragsdale had showed his credentials to the guard at the only unchained entrance to Memphis Central High and by doing that avoided having to pass muster on the metal detector, he made his way through a slow-moving stream of young people toward the administrative nerve center of the compound.
The students he worked his way around and through were like all inmates of a correctional facility, he noted, the weaker ones wary and avoiding eye contact with the alpha males, the predators taking up more space than necessary as they looked from side to side, inspecting the herd for possible prey when conditions were right, and the old cons moving in separate bubbles of their own, all hope for release or change long given up, their gazes now permanently set on something in the middle distance only they could see.
The primary difference between the population moving to other various assignments in the halls of Memphis Central High and ones in the state penitentiary in Nashville or in the facility at Brushy Mountain was that the sexual punks at Central High were female. Their dress was more colorful and varied, J.W. considered, but the females of Central High had no edge over the punks in the State of Tennessee’s penal system as far as grace of movement and attention to personal appearance.
A woman on display is a woman on display, J.W. judged with genuine satisfaction, no matter what sex she is.
After a couple of minutes sitting on a hard chair in the outer office of the principal’s suite, J.W. was told by a hardbitten woman behind the counter, an old hand at controlling miscreants by the looks of her, that he could go into the main office of the warden, though she didn’t use that title, naturally.
“Sergeant Ragsdale,” the principal said, coming out from behind his desk, hand extended for the obligatory Midsouth handshake, “I’m pleased to meet you.”
“Well, thanks,” J.W. said. “It’s been a long time since I had to go to the principal’s office for a conference.”
The principal laughed broadly, trained as he was to please, and said something about things being different these days in the public school systems from what they’d been when he and J.W. were working their way through the educational process.
“What can I do for you, Sergeant? I assume it’s in reference to one of our Central High students, your visit, of course. Is it a drug or weapon possession charge?”
“No, just a missing person report I’ve been asked to follow up on, that’s all,” J.W. said. “I’m from the homicide division, but that don’t mean anything this trip. This is all just kind of unofficial, looking to see what you can tell me about one of your kids here at Central who’s not showed up at home for a couple of days.”
“That’s too usual a story, Sergeant,” the principal said. “Which young man or woman is this? I can certainly let you know what the attendance records show.”
“It’s a boy,” J.W. said, “name of McNeill. Randall Eugene McNeill. His mama is all worried, and she’s got word to us about the situation by means of some folks.”
“Randall Eugene,” the principal said, beginning to shake his head slowly from side to side to side. He lifted a forefinger to his mouth and tapped sadly at his lips as he looked down at the floor. The principal’s manicure, J.W. noticed, was perfect.
“One of our better students, I must say, in the gifted and talented program, and I do know he’s not been in attendance for the last day and a half or so, because he missed participating with our chess team in a tournament. He’s ranked number two on Central’s team, and the coach has been really upset by his absence.”
“Chess,” J.W. said. “My boss said the boy plays chess.”
“He certainly does. He and Gerhard Menzel, an exchange student from Germany, are undefeated this year in the city. Why, Sergeant, they just rolled over the M.U.S. team only last week.”
“Memphis University School, huh?” J.W. said. “We kicked their butts in football back in high school. I didn’t know M.U.S. was sorry in chess, too.”
“Got any idea where the McNeill kid might be, Mr. Templeton?” J.W. went on. “Who does he run with here at Central?”
“He’s not really that social,” Principal Templeton said, “that I’ve noticed, but I do see him now and then with some rather surprising companions.”
“How’s that you mean? Surprising how?’
“Well, we do have, like all schools, an element in the student body we’re not too proud of. A few of those are the ones I’ve seen Randall Eugene with, you understand.”
“That’s just who I want to talk to, then, I expect,” J.W. said, pulling out a notepad and patting his pocket for something to write with. “What’s these boys’ name? Are they hooked up in a gang?”
“Gang affiliation is not allowed at Central High School, Sergeant Ragsdale,” the principal said. “We won’t tolerate it.”
“I appreciate that attitude,” J.W. said. “I ain’t got no use for the little gangsters, neither. But tell me something. How do you stop them from forming up? It’s been my experience they’re like a blood clot. You don’t know where it starts from or when it comes together, but it’s hell when it shows up and gives you a stroke.”
“We work hard on it, Sergeant,” the principal said, his voice falling into a tone and pattern familiar to J.W., one he’d experienced on many occasions in meetings and workshops and task force conferences. The speaker was deeply in love with what he was saying, and it was constitutionally impossible for him to keep that emotion out of sight.
“What we’ve done is to allow a substitute for what the gang-related impulse represents in the maturing adolescent, particularly in summer school with a diverse group. We have honors students and at-risk students in a mix in the summer term.”