by James Sallis
“Check in tomorrow?” Tracy said.
“First thing.”
“Where are you staying?”
Since I was here on my own dime, I’d taken the cheapest room I could find, at Nu-Way Motel on the city’s outer rings. Each unit was painted a different pastel shade, mine what I could only think of as Pepto-Bismol pink. A stack of fifties magazines inside would not have surprised.
Walking Tracy Caulding to her blue Honda Civic, I gave her my location, room and phone number. “No need to write them down for you’s my guess,” I said, getting another glimpse of the smile that had lit up Sam’s office back at the station. From habit I looked in to clear the car, saw a ziggurat of textbooks on the back seat.
“What’s this? Not a dedicated law officer?”
She held up her hands, palm out, in mock surrender. “Got me dead to rights.”
“Graduate school, from the look of it.”
“I confess. M.A. in social work, six credits to go.”
She leaned back against the rear door, tugging at the silver-cuffed ear.
“Cop was the last thing I thought I’d be. From the time I was eleven, twelve years old, I was going to be a teacher. Nose forever in a book and all that. But I grew up in a trailer park, no way my parents could afford even local colleges. I had grand ambitions, though, applied all over the mid-South, even places like Tulane and Duke. Memphis State came through with a full scholarship. I had a job teaching sixth grade promised before I’d even graduated. Five weeks in, I walked away from it.”
She put her hand on my arm.
“Everything I’d taken for granted all those years was gone. I had no idea who I was, what I could do, and I had to work. Of a Sunday morning I was reading want ads when one at the very corner of the page caught my eye. Police badge to the left. Have a degree? it said. Want to make a difference?—or something equally lame. Another of the department’s periodic thrusts to improve its image. Wanted people with degrees, offered an accelerated training program for those who qualified. So here I am. Telling you way more than you wanted to know. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
She was in the car now, looking out.
“We should talk about counseling and social work sometime,” I said.
“Did a bit of it yourself, from what I hear.”
“More like I muddied the water.”
“So we should. Just don’t tell me I’m wrong, okay?” Hauling her seat belt across. “See you tomorrow, Turner.” Face in the rearview mirror as she drove away. Objects may be closer than they appear.
Back at the motel I punched my way through a thicket of numbers, 9 for an outside line, 1 for long distance, area code, credit-card number, personal code. Quite the modern lawman.
“Sheriff’s office.”
“Who’s speaking?”
“Rob Olson.”
“Trooper?”
“You bet. Who’s this?”
“Turner, up in Memphis.”
“The deputy, right?”
“Right. Don’t guess Lonnie’d be around this late, would he?”
“He’s always around. Though it might be best if you didn’t tell him I said that.” Miles and miles away, coffee got slurped. “Be here right this minute save he’s out to an accident. Told him I’d go but he wouldn’t hear of it. You hold a minute, Turner? Got someone on the other line.”
Then he was back.
“That’s Bates on line two. He’s at the hospital with an accident victim, wants to speak with you. Hold on, I’ll try to transfer you.”
Some time went by.
“Turner. You there? I can’t get this damn thing to work. And I think I just hung up on the sheriff. He’s still over to the hospital. You wanta call him there?”
He gave me the number, and I did.
“Those boys at the barracks are the best you’ll see at paperwork,” Lonnie said when I told him what happened. “Other things . . .”
Someone was there by him, complaining. I’d probably called in to the ER nurse’s station, which might be the only line functioning this time of night. The local hospital wasn’t a hell of a lot larger or more complicated than our office.
“Official police work,” he said. “Chill, Gladys.” Then to me: “So you’re still in Memphis. Any action?”
I filled him in on my visit. Connecting with Sam Hamill, meeting Tracy. Think I may have found out where to go to get what I’m looking for, I told him.
“That’s good. Quick.”
“I followed your advice.”
“Hamill put you and Tracy together knowing she’d give up the contact, he wouldn’t have to.” As always, Lonnie was a move ahead.
“Way I saw it, too.”
“So why the fancy footwork?”
“Maybe they figure I can take care of a problem they haven’t been able to.”
Lonnie was silent for a moment.
“In which case, since Hamill laid out the official face of the thing for you, even assigned an officer, the MPD can in no way be held responsible. Either you handle it and you’re home before anyone knows better—”
“Or I get, as our British friends say, nicked for the deed, in which case Sam and the MPD disclaim to their heart’s content.”
“Clean.”
“More than one way to get the job done.”
“Always. Damn! Now the goddamned beeper’s going off. Hang on.”
I heard voices behind, just out of range of intelligibility.
“Shirley checking in,” Lonnie said moments later.
“You’ve got a beeper now.”
“Simon has a band concert tomorrow, some kind of solo. Wife wanted to be sure I would make it, gave me hers.” Simon in buzz-cut and baggies was the older of two sons. The younger, Billy, despite the flag of multiple piercings, had no direction any of us could discern but was a sweetheart, maybe the closest thing to an innocent human being I’ve known.
“How’s June?”
“Cleared by her doctors and home with us. Mostly herself, but sometimes it’s like she’s not really there, she’s gone off someplace else.”
“Not surprising, with what she’s just been through.”
“I hope.”
“Give it time. Don Lee?”
“Stable, they keep telling me—though he hasn’t come round yet. Wait and see, they say, we just have to wait and see.”
Gladys was back, loudly demanding return of the phone he’d taken hostage. Lonnie ignored her.
“Trooper said you wanted to talk to me. What’s up?”
“May be nothing to it, but the accident I answered the call to?”
“Yes?”
“It got called in as a collision, but what happened was, Madge Gunderson passed out at the wheel and ran into a tree.”
“Madge okay?” Madge had been a not-so-secret drinker most of her life. Her husband Karel died last year, and since then, maybe from grief, maybe from the fact that she didn’t have to hide it anymore, the drinking had kind of got out of control.
“She will be. Just some gashes and the like. Looked worse than it is. This happened out on State Road 419. Woman driving behind her saw the whole thing, called it in on a cell phone.”
“Okay.”
“Woman’s from up Seattle way, just passing through. I thanked her, naturally, took her statement. Then she says, ‘You’re the sheriff?’ and when I say, ‘Right now I am,’ she asks does a man named Turner work with me.”
“Say what she wanted?”
“Not a word. Sat there smiling at her and waiting, all she did was smile back.”
“What’s she look like?”
“Late twenties, early thirties, light brown hair cut short, five-eight, one-thirty. Easy on the eye, as my old man would of said. Jeans and sweatshirt, kind with a hood, ankle-high black Reeboks.”
“Name?”
“J. T. Burke. That’s Burke with an e, and just the initials.”
No one I knew. Maybe a patient from my days as a counselor, was
my first thought. Though it was doubtful any patient could have traced me here, or would have reason to.
“Don’t suppose she said where she was headed.”
“Gave me that same smile when I asked.”
“That it, then?”
“Pretty much.”
“So give Gladys back her phone already.”
In exchange I gave him the name and location of my motel and my phone number, told him to call if he had any updates on Don Lee or happened to hear again from Ms. Burke.
CHAPTER SEVEN
COULDN’T SLEEP.
Out on the streets at 2 a.m. looking for an open restaurant. Back to city habits that quickly. Had my book, just needed light, coffee, maybe a sandwich. Do the Edward Hopper thing.
Dino’s Diner, half a mile in towards the city proper. “Open 24 hours” painted on the glass in foot-high blue letters. Also “Daily Specials” and “Hearty Breakfasts.” These in yellow.
“Getchu?” the waitress, Jaynie, said, handing over a much-splattered menu. “T’drink?”
Coffee. Definitely.
And received a reasonable facsimile of same, though it took some time. Peak hour, after all. Had to be three or four other patrons at least.
“Two scrambled, bacon, grits, biscuit,” I told Jaynie when my coffee came.
Eggs were rubber—no surprise there—bacon greasy and underdone, biscuit from a can. Here I am in the Deep South and I get a canned biscuit? On the other hand, the grits were amazing.
The book also disappointed. Three refills and I was done with it, wide margins, large type, pages read almost as quickly as I turned them. Novels tend to be short these days. Probably most of them should be even shorter. This one was about a doctor, child of the sixties and long a peace activist, who goes after the men who raped and killed his wife and disposes of them one by one. Title: Elective Surgery.
I took out my wallet, unfolded the notebook page Tracy Caulding had given me. Three addresses, none of which meant much to me. A lot of Lanes and Places, bird names the rage. Meadowlark Drive, Oriole Circle, like that. But just then a cab pulled up out front and the driver came in. Jaynie slapped a cup of coffee down before him without being asked. He was two stools away. One of those in-betweens you find all over the South, darkish skin, could be of Italian descent, Mediterranean, Caribbean, Creole. Fine features, a broad nose, gold eyes—like a cat’s. Wearing pleated khakis with enough starch to have held on to their crease though now well crumpled about the crotch, navy blue polo shirt, corduroy sport coat.
I caught his eye, asked “How’s it going?”
“Been better. Been worse, too.”
“And will be again.”
“Believe it.”
He pulled out a pack of Winstons, shook one loose and got it going. Then as an afterthought glanced my way, took the pack out again and offered me one. When I declined, he put the cigarettes back, held out his hand. We shook.
“Danel. Like Daniel without the i.”
“Turner. . . . Any chance you could help me with these?”
I slid the paper across. After a moment he looked up.
“From out of town, are you.”
I pled guilty.
“But you have business here.” He tapped at the paper.
Yes.
“Well, sir, this here ain’t part of Memphis at all, it’s another country. Birdland, some of us call it. Bunch of whitebread castles’s what it is. Some Johnny-come-lately builds him a house, next Johnny comes along and has to outdo him, build a bigger one. Kind of business that gets transacted out there, most people’d do best to stay away from. I’m guessing you’re not most people.”
“Can you give me directions?”
“Yeah, sure, I could do that. Or—” He threw back his coffee. “What the hell, it’s a slow night, I’ll run you out there.”
We struck a deal, I picked up the Chariot as he sat idling in the Nu-Way Motel parking lot, then pulled in behind and followed him to city’s edge. Here be dragons. We’d been cruising for close to thirty minutes, I figured, six or seven classics on whatever station I’d found by stabbing the Seek button—Buffalo Springfield (“There’s some-thing hap-pen-ing here . . .”), Bob Seger’s “Night Moves”—when Danel pulled his Checker cab onto the shoulder, a wide spot intended for rest stops, repairs, tire changes. I came alongside and we wound down windows.
“Here’s where I bail,” he said. “Place you’re looking for’s just around that bend. Don’t be lookin’ for the welcome mat to be out. Ain’t the kind to be expecting company up in there.”
I hoped not.
“Good luck, man.”
“Thanks for your help.” I’d paid him back at the diner. He had a good night.
“You’re welcome. Prob’ly ain’t done you no favor, though.”
I pulled back onto the road, along the curve, cut the engine to coast into a driveway inhabited by a black BMW and a gussied-up red Ford pickup, chrome pipes, calligraphic squiggle running from front fender to rear wheel well, driver’s-side spotlight. Backed out then and parked the Jeep a quarter-mile up the road, at another of those pull-offs.
The house was a castle, all right—like something imagined by Dr. Seuss. Classic middle-American tacky. Once in El Paso I’d seen a huge bedroom unit that looked to be marble but, when you touched it, turned out to be thin plastic. It was like that.
In the front room just off the entryway (as I peered through what I could only think of as eight-foot-tall wing windows) a large-screen TV was on, but there was no evidence of anyone in attendance. Action appeared to be centered in the kitchen—I’d come around to the back by then—where a card game and considerable beer consumption were taking place. Many longnecks had given their all. Bottles of bourbon and Scotch. One guy in a designer suit, two others in department-store distant cousins.
Newly awakened from its slumber in Glad bag and hand towel, the .38 Police Special felt strangely familiar to my hand.
One of the cheap-suit players was raking in chips as I came through the door. Undistracted, his counterpart pushed to his feet, gun halfway out as I shot. He fell back into his chair, which went over, as though its rear legs were a hinge, onto the floor. I’d tried for a shoulder, but it had been a while, and I hit further in on his chest. There was more blood than I’d have liked, too, but he’d be okay.
Thinking it over for a half-minute or so, the second cheap suit held up both hands, removed his Glock with finger and thumb and laid it on the table, just another poker chip.
Dean Atkison in his designer suit looked at his flunky with histrionic disgust and took a pull off his drink.
“Who the hell are you?” he said.
I was supposed to be watching him at that point, of course—cheap suit’s cue. He almost had the Glock in hand when I shot. His arm jerked, knocking the Glock to the floor, then went limp. He stood looking down at the arm that would no longer do what he willed it to do. His fingers kept on scrabbling, the way cat paws will when the cat’s asleep and dreaming of prey.
It was all coming back.
Atkison’s eyes went from his fallen soldiers to me.
“Be okay if I call for help for my boys here?”
“Go ahead.”
I stood by as he punched 911 into a cell phone, asked for paramedics, gave his address, and threatened the dispatcher. Thing about cell phones is you can’t slam the receiver down.
“Think we might attend to business now?”
“We don’t have any business.”
I whacked his knee with the gun, feeling skin tear and hearing something crunch. Blood welled through the expensive fabric. None of that should have happened.
“I live in a small town far away from here,” I said. “Not far enough, apparently. A few days ago you brought your garbage to it.”
He’d grabbed a hand towel off the table, was wrapping it around his knee.
“Paid some goddamn arrogant surgeon nine thousand to have that thing fixed, not six weeks ago. Now look at it.”
“A man named Judd Kurtz came through. He didn’t get through fast enough and wound up in jail. Then a couple of others came in his wake. None of them stayed.”
“And I should care what happened in Bumfuck?”
I walked to him, helped wrap the towel.
“I need to know who Judd Kurtz is. I need to know if he’s alive. And I need to know who the goons were who thought they could come into my town and tear it up.”
“That’s a lot of need.”
Pulling hard at the ends of the towel, I knotted them.
“I was in a state prison for seven years,” I told him. “I managed okay in there. There’s not much I won’t do.”
He looked down at his shattered knee. Blood seeped steadily into the towel.
“Looks like a fucking Kotex,” he said. “I’m a mess.” He shook his head. “I’m a mess—right?”
“It could be worse.”
He pulled a napkin towards him. Started to reach under his coat and stopped himself. “I’m just getting a pen, okay?”
I nodded, and he took a bright yellow Mont Blanc out of his coat pocket, wrote, passed the napkin across. Classic penmanship, the kind you don’t see anymore, all beautifully formed loops and curls—confounded by the absorbent napkin that blurred and feathered each fine, practiced stroke.
“My life’s not all that much, mind you,” he said, “but I’d like to know it doesn’t end here.”
I shook my head. Sirens of fire truck and ambulance were close by now.
Nodding towards the napkin, Atkison said, “You’ll find what you need there.”
What I needed right then was to go out the back door, and I did.
When first I held it, the gun had felt so familiar. The body has a memory all its own. I started the car, pulled the seat belt across and clicked it home. Slipped into gear. The body remembers where we’ve been even as the mind turns away. I eased off the clutch and pulled out, hot wires burning again within me, incandescent. Blinding.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MY FATHER’ S UNIFORM hung in the back of a closet at the front of our house, in an unused bedroom. I found it there one rainy Saturday afternoon. It smelled of mothballs—camphor, as I’d later learn. Again and again I ran my fingers over its scratchy, stiff material. Dad never talked about his army time, what he’d done. In my child’s mind I had him traversing deserts in Sherman tanks or diving fighter planes that looked much like Sopwith Camels through air thick with gunfire, smoke, and disintegrating aircraft. Much later, after his death, Mother told me he’d been a supply clerk.