Other Worlds, Better Lives, A Howard Waldrop Reader Selected Long Fiction 1989-2003

by Howard Waldrop

  Sgt. Hank came in. “Oh, hello Chief.”

  “Where’d this offense take place?” He tapped the book.

  “The Blondeau Tavern . . . uh, Station,” said the sergeant.

  “Oh.” That was just inside his jurisdiction, but since the Wilcox village council had passed a local ordinance against the consumption and sale of alcohol, there had been few arrests.

  “He probably got tanked somewhere in L.A. and got lost on the way home,” said Sgt. Hank. “Say, you hear about them fish Sgt. Fatty brought in?”

  “Yes, I did.” He glared at Sgt. Hank.

  “Oh. Okay. Oh, there’s a postal card that came in the Saturday mail from Captain Angus for us all. I left it on your desk.”

  “Tell me if any big trouble happens,” said Teeheezal. He went into the office and closed his door. Behind his desk was a big wicker rocking chair he’d had the village buy for him when he took the job early in the year. He sat down in it, took off his flat-billed cap, and put on his reading glasses.

  Angus had been the captain before him for twenty-two years; he’d retired and left to see some of the world. (He’d been one of the two original constables when Colonel Wilcox laid out the planned residential village.) Teeheezal had never met the man.

  He picked up the card—a view of Le Havre, France, from the docks. Teeheezal turned it over. It had a Canadian postmark, and one half had the address: The Boys in Blue, Police HQ, Wilcox, Calif. U.S.A. The message read:

  Well, took a boat. You might have read about it. Had a snowball fight on deck while waiting to get into the lifeboats. The flares sure were pretty. We were much overloaded by the time we were picked up. (Last time I take a boat named for some of the minor Greek godlings.) Will write again soon.

  —Angus

  PS: Pretty good dance band.

  Teeheezal looked through the rest of the mail; wanted posters for guys three thousand miles away, something from the attorney general of California, a couple of flyers for political races that had nothing to do with the village of Wilcox.

  The captain put his feet up on his desk, made sure they were nowhere near the kerosene lamp or the big red bellpull wired to the squad room, placed his glasses in their cases, arranged his Farmer John tuft beard to one side, clasped his fingers across his chest, and began to snore.

  The murder happened at the house of one of the curators, across the street from the museum.

  Patrolman Buster woke the captain up at his home at 4:00 a.m. The Los Angeles County coroner was already there when Teeheezal arrived on his horse.

  The door of the house had been broken down. The man had been strangled and then thrown back behind the bed where he lay twisted with one foot out the open windowsill.

  “Found him just like that, the neighbors did,” said Patrolman Buster. “Heard the ruckus, but by the time they got dressed and got here, who-ever did it was gone.”

  Teeheezal glanced out the broken door. The front of the museum across the way was lit with electric lighting.

  “Hmmm,” said the coroner, around the smoke from his El Cubano cigar. “They’s dust all over this guy’s py-jamas.” He looked around. “Part of a print on the bedroom doorjamb, and a spot on the floor.”

  Patrolman Buster said, “Hey! One on the front door. Looks like somebody popped it with a dirty towel.”

  The captain went back out on the front porch. He knelt down on the lawn, feeling with his hands.

  He spoke to the crowd that had gathered out front. “Who’s a neighbor here?” A man stepped out, waved. “He water his yard last night?”

  “Yeah, just after he got off work.”

  Teeheezal went to the street and lay down.

  “Buster, look here.” The patrolman flopped down beside him. “There’s some lighter dust on the gravel, see it?” Buster nodded his thin face. “Look over there, see?”

  “Looks like mud, Chief.” They crawled to the right to get another angle, jumped up, looking at the doorway of the museum.

  “Let’s get this place open,” said the chief.

  “I was just coming over; they called me about Fielding’s death, when your ruffians came barging in,” said the museum director, whose name was Carter Lord. “There was no need to rush me so.” He had on suit pants but a pajama top and a dressing gown.

  “Shake a leg, pops,” said Patrolman Buster.

  There was a sign on the wall near the entrance: The Treasures of Pharaoh Rut-en-tut-en, April 20–June 13.

  The doors were steel; there were two locks Lord had to open. On the inside was a long push bar that operated them both.

  “Don’t touch anything, but tell me if something’s out o’ place,” said Teeheezal.

  Lord used a handkerchief to turn on the light switches.

  He told them the layout of the place and the patrolmen took off in all directions.

  There were display cases everywhere, and ostrich-looking fans, a bunch of gaudy boxes, things that looked like coffins. On the walls were paintings of people wearing diapers, standing sideways. At one end of the hall was a big upright wooden case. Patrolman Buster pointed out two dabs of mud just inside the door, a couple of feet apart. Then another a little further on, leading toward the back, then nothing.

  Teeheezal looked around at all the shiny jewelry. “Rich guy?” he asked.

  “Priceless,” said Carter Lord. “Tomb goods, buried with him for the afterlife. The richest find yet in Egypt. We were very lucky to acquire it.”

  “How come you gettin’ it?”

  “We’re a small, but a growing museum. It was our expedition—the best untampered tomb. Though there were skeletons in the outer corridors, and the outside seal had been broken, I’m told. Grave robbers had broken in but evidently got no further.”

  “How come?”

  “Who knows?” asked Lord. “We’re dealing with four thousand five hundred years.”

  Patrolman Buster whistled.

  Teeheezal walked to the back. Inside the upright case was the gray swaddled shape of a man, twisted, his arms across his chest, one eye closed, a deep open hole where the other had been. Miles of gray curling ban-dages went round and round and round him, making him look like a cartoon patient in a lost hospital.

  “This the guy?”

  “Oh, heavens no,” said Carter Lord. “The Pharaoh Rut-en-tut-en’s mummy is on loan to the Field Museum in Chicago for study. This is probably some priest or minor noble who was buried for some reason with him. There were no markings on this case,” he said, knocking on the plain wooden case. “The pharaoh was in that nested three-box sarcophagus over there.”

  Teeheezal leaned closer. He reached down and touched the left foot of the thing. “Please don’t touch that,” said Carter Lord.

  The patrolmen returned from their search of the building. “Nobody here but us gendarmerie,” said Patrolman Rube.

  “C’mere, Rube,” said Teeheezal. “Reach down and touch this foot.”

  Rube looked into the box, jerked back. “Cripes! What an ugly! Which foot?”

  “Both.”

  He did. “So?”

  “One of them feel wet?”

  Rube scratched his head. “I’m not sure.”

  “I asked you to please not touch that,” said Carter Lord. “You’re dealing with very fragile, irreplaceable things here.”

  “He’s conducting a murder investigation here, bub,” said Patrolman Mack.

  “I understand that. But nothing here has committed murder, at least not for the last four thousand five hundred years. I’ll have to ask that you desist.”

  Teeheezal looked at the face of the thing again. It looked back at him with a deep open hole where one eye had been, the other closed. Just—

  The hair on Teeheezal’s neck stood up. “Go g
et the emergency gun from the wagon,” said the chief, not taking his eyes off the thing in the case.

  “I’ll have to insist that you leave now!” said Carter Lord.

  Teeheezal reached over and pulled up a settee with oxhorn arms on it and sat down, facing the thing. He continued to stare at it. Somebody put the big heavy revolver in his hand.

  “All you, go outside, except Rube. Rube, keep the door open so you can see me. Nobody do anything until I say so.”

  “That’s the last straw!” said Carter Lord. “Who do I call to get you to cease and desist?”

  “Take him where he can call the mayor, Buster.”

  Teeheezal stared and stared. The dead empty socket looked back at him. Nothing moved in the museum, for a long, long time. The revolver grew heavier and heavier. The chief’s eyes watered. The empty socket stared back, the arms lay motionless across the twisted chest. Teeheezal stared.

  “Rube!” he said after a long time. He heard the patrolman jerk awake.

  “Yeah, Chief?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, I think about now, Captain, that they’ve got the mayor all agitated, and a coupla aldermen, and five, maybe ten minutes ago somebody’s gonna have figured out that though the murder happened in Wilcox, right now you’re sitting in Los Angeles.”

  Without taking his eyes from the thing, Teeheezal asked, “Are you funnin’ me?”

  “I never fun about murder, Chief.”

  Three carloads of Los Angeles Police came around the corner on six wheels. They slammed to a stop, the noise of the hand-cranked sirens dying on the night. By now the crowd outside the place had grown to a couple of hundred.

  What greeted the eyes of the Los Angeles Police was the Wilcox police wagon with its four horses in harness, most of the force, a crowd, and a small fire on the museum lawn across the street from the murder house.

  Two legs were sticking sideways out of the fire. The wrappings flamed against the early morning light. Sparks rose up and swirled.

  The chief of the Los Angeles Police Department walked up to where the captain poked at the fire with the butt end of a spear. Carter Lord and the Wilcox mayor and a Los Angeles city councilman trailed behind the L.A. chief.

  “Hello, Bob,” said Teeheezal.

  With a pop and a flash of cinders, the legs fell the rest of the way into the fire, and the wrappings roared up to nothingness.

  “Teeheezal! What the hell do you think you’re doing!? Going out of your jurisdiction, no notification. It looks like you’re burning up Los Angeles City property here! Why didn’t you call us?”

  “Didn’t have time, Bob,” said Teeheezal. “I was in hot pursuit.”

  They all stood watching until the fire was out; then all climbed into their cars and wagons and drove away. The crowd dispersed, leaving Carter Lord in his dressing gown. With a sigh, he turned and went into the museum.

  1913

  If southern California had seasons, this would have been another late spring.

  Teeheezal was at his desk, reading a letter from his niece Katje from back in Pennsylvania, where all his family but him had been for six generations.

  There was a knock on his door. “What? What?” he yelled.

  Patrolman Al stuck his head in. “Another card from Captain Angus. The sergeant said to give it to you.”

  He handed it to Teeheezal and left swiftly. Patrolman Al had once been a circus acrobat, and the circus folded in Los Angeles city two years ago. He was a short thin wiry man, one of Teeheezal’s few smooth-shaven patrolmen.

  The card was a view of the Eiffel Tower, had a Paris postmark, with the usual address on the back right side. On the left:

  Well, went to the Ballet last night. You would of thought someone spit on the French flag. Russians jumpin’ around like Kansas City fools, frogs punching each other out, women sticking umbrellas up guys’ snouts. I been to a rodeo, a country fair, six picnics, and I have seen the Elephant, but this was pretty much the stupidest display of art appreciation I ever saw. Will write again soon.

  —Angus

  PS: Ooh-lah-lah!

  “Hmmph!” said Teeheezal. He got up and went out into the desk area. Sergeant Hank had a stack of picture frames on his desk corner. He was over at the wall under the pictures of the mayor and the village aldermen. He had a hammer and was marking five spots for nails on the plaster with the stub of a carpenter’s pencil.

  “What’s all this, then?” asked the Captain.

  “My pictures got in yesterday, Chief,” said Sgt. Hank. “I was going to put ’em up on this wall I have to stare at all day.”

  “Well, I can see how looking at the mayor’s no fun,” said Teeheezal. He picked up the top picture. It was a landscape. There was a guy chasing a deer in one corner, and some trees and teepees, and a bay, and a funny-shaped rock on a mountain in the distance.

  He looked at the second. The hill with the strange rock was in it, but people had on sheets, and there were guys drawing circles and squares in the dirt and talking in front of little temples and herding sheep. It looked to be by the same artist.

  “It’s not just paintings,” said Sgt. Hank, coming over to him. “It’s a series by Thomas Cole, the guy who started what’s referred to as the Hudson River School of painting way back in New York State, about eighty years ago. It’s called The Course of Empire. Them’s the first two—The Savage State and The Pastoral or Arcadian State. This next one’s called The Consummation of Empire—see, there’s this guy riding in a triumphal parade on an elephant, and there are these armies, all in this city like Rome or Carthage, it’s been built here, and they’re bringing stuff back from all over the world, and things are dandy.”

  Hank was more worked up than the chief had ever seen him. “But look at this next one, see, the jig is up. It’s called The Destruction of Empire. All them buildings are on fire, and there’s a rainstorm, and people like Mongols are killing everybody in them big wide avenues, and busting up statues and looting the big temples, and bridges are falling down, and there’s smoke everywhere.”

  Teeheezal saw the funny-shaped mountain was over in one corner of those two paintings.

  “Then there’s the last one, number five, The Ruins of Empire. Every-thing’s quiet and still, all the buildings are broken, the woods are taking back everything, it’s going back to the land. See, look there, there’s pelicans nesting on top of that broken column, and the place is getting covered with ivy and briers and stuff. I ordered all these from a museum back in New York City,” said Hank, proudly.

  Teeheezal was still looking at the last one.

  “And look,” said Sgt. Hank, going back to the first one. “It’s not just paintings, it’s philosophical. See, here in the first one, it’s just after dawn. Man’s in his infancy. So’s the day. Second one—pastoral, it’s midmorning. Con-summation—that’s at noon. First three paintings all bright and clear. But destruction—that’s in the afternoon, there’s storms and lightning. Like nature’s echoing what’s going on with mankind, see? And the last one. Sun’s almost set, but it’s clear again, peaceful, like, you know, Nature takes its time . . .”

  “Sgt. Hank,” said Teeheezal, “When a guy gets arrested and comes in here drunk and disorderly, the last thing he wants to be bothered by is some philosophy.”

  “But, Chief,” said Sgt. Hank, “it’s about the rise and fall of civili-zations . . .”

  “What the hell does running a police station have to do with civilization?” said Teeheezal. “You can hang one of ’em up. One at a time they look like nature views, and those don’t bother anybody.”

  “All right, Chief,” said Sgt. Hank.

  That day, it was the first one. When Teeheezal arrived for work the next day, it was the second. And after that, the third, and on through the five pictures,
one each day; then the sequence was repeated. Teeheezal never said a word. Neither did Hank.

  1914

  There had been murders three nights in a row in Los Angeles City when the day came for the Annual Wilcox Police vs. Firemen Baseball Picnic.

  The patrolmen were all playing stripped down to their undershirts and uniform pants, while the firemen had on real flannel baseball outfits that said Hot Papas across the back. It was late in the afternoon, late in the game, the firemen ahead seventeen to twelve in the eighth.

  They were playing in the park next to the observatory. The patrol wagon was unhitched from its horses; the fire wagon stood steaming with its horses still in harness. Everyone in Wilcox knew not to bother the police or fireman this one day of the year.

  Patrolman Al came to bat on his unicycle. He rolled into the batter’s box. Patrolman Mack was held on second, and Patrolman Billy was hugging third. The firemen started their chatter. The pitcher wound up, took a long stretch and fired his goof-ball from behind his back with his glove hand while his right arm went through a vicious fastball motion.

  Al connected with a meaty crack; the outfielders fell all over themselves and then charged toward the Bronson place. Al wheeled down to first with blinding speed, swung wide ignoring the fake from the second baseman, turned between second and third, balancing himself in a stop while he watched the right fielder come up with the ball on the first bounce four hundred feet away.

  He leaned almost to the ground, swung around, became a blur of pedals and pumping feet, passed third; the catcher got set, pounding his mitt, stretched out for the throw. The umpire leaned down, the ball bounced into the mitt, the catcher jerked around—