by John Dunning
I ran my tongue along my split lip and I thought, Kill the son of a bitch now and worry no more. But I waited, God knows why.
Josephine’s voice was the only sound in the room. Then Dante’s voice rose from nowhere. “Man, this is bullshit. What the hell are we doing with this stuff? We’re wasting our time.”
I couldn’t see Carl’s face, couldn’t tell if he agreed or begged to differ. A moment later he said, “We’ve been through her things. There’s nothing else there. Whatever she’s got, the answer’s got to be on these tapes. Why else would they get ready to haul freight out of there and just take this box?”
“It’s all bullshit: just some cock-and-bull travelogue from a hundred years ago.”
“There’s a lot of tape here,” Carl said. “It’ll take time to hear it all and know what’s here.”
“For you to hear it all. Me, I got better things to do.”
“That’s okay, I’ll take it home and spend the day with it.”
“Don’t you get it yet? This is all it is, there’s nothing else to hear.”
“Maybe, but it’s got to be done. Anyway, I got a feeling all of a sudden, like we’d better not sit around here too long. Where the hell did Harlow go for that coffee?”
Dante laughed. “What, are you afraid they’ll sic the cops on us? Those two ain’t callin’ nobody, pal; I made sure of that.”
“Still, there’s no sense taking a chance.”
Carl began putting things away: the tape player in its case, the notes and cassettes in their cardboard box. Dante got up from his chair and came around the table. I had less than twenty seconds to make my move. If you wait long enough for something to get better, it doesn’t, but it happens to you anyway.
I slipped around the bookcase toward the office door. Dante’s radar, if he had it, was off tonight: he had turned toward the far wall, looking up at a clock that I could now see said quarter to five. Dawn must be breaking, I thought irrelevantly. All over town people are getting up, taking showers, getting dressed, making love. That’s what all the normal people are doing. In those two seconds I saw a parade of women from my life: Rita McKinley…Trish Aan-dahl…Erin. The ones I had and the ones I hadn’t.
I had to get his gun: my top priority. He wore it inside his coat, well back on the left side. That’s how I remembered it and I hoped I was right.
Carl came through the door and walked right past me. I couldn’t see it but I knew he’d be carrying Koko’s box and I had to get that too before he had a chance to run with it. The gun and the box, with no time-outs in between for a Tennessee waltz with Dante.
It took Dante hours to clear the door. In real time he was just two steps behind Carl, I was standing to his right, and in that half second I think he saw me. If he did, his reaction was lost between darkness and disbelief. He never broke stride till I hit him. I threw the hardest right I had, a jawbreaker. He was still standing as my hand frisked along his belt for the gun. He tried to lurch forward with his hands up and I got him on the other side with a good left. I jerked his gun free and it slipped, clattering on the floor as he went down. I let his face say hello to my kneecap in his free fall and I pivoted and kicked the gun away and ripped the box out of Carl’s hand.
“Hello, asshole,” I said seductively. “Welcome to hell.”
Carl made a pitiful whimpering noise. “W-wait a minute,” he croaked.
“Y-you w-wait a minute. Here’s something to suck on while you wait.” I hit him in the mouth and he joined Dante on the floor.
I shivered. That was way too easy.
Then I heard the car door slam. This would be Dante Jr., the one named Harlow coming back from wherever he’d gone, just when they were about to give up on him. I felt a wild surge of crazy elation as I stepped up to meet him.
He opened the door. I could see by the moonlight that he was carrying three giant Styrofoam coffee cups in a little cardboard tray.
“Hi, Harlow, make mine black,” I said, and I clobbered him.
Coffee flew everywhere. Its first stop was on Harlow’s face, but he never felt it.
I stood trembling. “Sons of bitches.”
Dante groaned. I turned on the light and saw him trying to get to his feet. I threw the gunnysack over his head and kicked his legs out from under him, banging his head on the floor.
Prudence told me to get the hell out of there. I had what I’d come for but the elation was gone. There hadn’t been much satisfaction in the love taps I’d given them, not after what they’d done to me. Besides, I had a blood enemy now and I should at least try to impress him.
I leaned over him. “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure. Cliff Janeway from Denver. We haven’t been introduced, but I’m the poor, shivering bastard you scared half to death in here yesterday. And you would be the rough-and-tough Mr. Dante.”
He tried to roll over again and I kicked him hard enough to break his hip. “Don’t do that, Dante. Not unless you want a lot more pain than you pricks gave me.”
I leaned over and talked to him through the burlap. “I’ll bet you’re thinking right now how much fun it’ll be when you kill me. Big mistake if you are, because two things will happen if you try it. First,I will kill you if I ever see your face again. I will kill you the minute I see you, in a dark alley or a Pizza Hut or in a crowd at Rockefeller Center.”
I cocked the gun and put it against his head. “How do you like this? Do you like the feel of it?”
I cracked him on the temple, hard enough to sting. “Just in case you do manage to kill me, here’s the other thing you can look forward to. A pal of mine—a fellow I won’t name but he’s way tougher than I am—has already been put on your case. If anything happens to me—anything,Dante—your ass is grass. If I get a hangnail and get hit by a truck while I’m standing in the street trying to chew it, you can assume the fetal position right then and kiss your ass good-bye. You’ll be dead in twenty-four hours.”
I breathed down at him. “You’d better hope I live a good, long life, Elmer.”
I stuck the gun in my belt, grabbed a handful of burlap, and hauled him to his feet. “That goes for Koko as well.”
Suddenly in a new fit of rage I ripped off the gunnysack and got him with a brutal open-hander that slammed him into the wall. “That’s for Koko. Touch her again and I’ll cut your heart out.”
We stood two feet apart, seething primal hatred. Slowly I backed to the door. “Remember, you only get one warning and this was it.”
I picked up the box, slipped out of the room, and hustled down the alley, where Koko waited with the motor running.
18
She listened to my account with her eyes wide open and I gave it to her straight. She touched my battered face and said my name. “Oh Cliff. Oh God, Cliff, what a night.” Almost a full minute later, she said, “May I call you Cliff?”
I laughed painfully. “You really are a piece of work, Ms. Bujak.”
We were sitting in some common breakfast joint well away from downtown. She had struggled mightily to find something she could eat and I had eaten whatever came out of the dingy-looking kitchen. I was working on my third cup of real coffee.
“I thought you were a bookseller. I thought you were a scholar. Then you come out here and turn into some warrior straight from the Middle Ages.”
I smiled and she said, “I meant that in a good way.”
“I know how you meant it.”
“Does it make you uneasy, being a hero?”
“Nah. My favorite song is ‘The Impossible Dream.’ But it’s got to be sung in a deep baritone, not some wimpy tenor. I heard a tenor try to do it once. Disgraceful performance. Comical, in fact.” I drank some coffee. “A good bass could really do it up right.”
She smiled, almost lovingly, I thought, and said, “Do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“A comedy routine whenever someone tries to say nice things about you?”
I shrugged. “You haven’t even seen my old
bullet wounds yet.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about.”
It was fun being her hero but the fun soon went away. She still didn’t understand what had just happened. To her the story was over. We had won.
So I told her. “I wasn’t trying to impress you, Koko. You need to know what you’re up against. Everything I did to Dante was calculated for an effect.”
“Sounds like you’re not sure it’ll work.”
I didn’t have a quick-and-easy answer for that. I sipped my coffee.
“Like maybe you’re afraid you’ve put me at some kind of risk.”
“You were already at risk. I just hope I didn’t make it worse.”
“What choice did we have?”
“Slink away in the night and let them keep your stuff.”
She flushed and shook her head. “No way.”
I liked her decisiveness but Boot Hill is full of decisive heroes. Vast new questions yawned before us.
“They may try to kill us. Does that change your mind?”
She shook her head, this time a little tentatively. But a no is a no, I thought. I said, “I don’t think you should go home. Not till I have a better read on it.”
She looked solemn at this news. I had her focused now.
“Where will I go?” Almost in the same breath she said, “Maybe I’ll go to Charleston. Sooner or later I’ll have to, I told you that. Maybe this would be a good time.”
I felt nothing but relief at this news. “Maybe it would. Maybe I’ll even go with you.”
She brightened. “Do that,” she said. “Please do.”
“Why not? It looks like I’m finished in Baltimore. I think my cover has been blown.”
“If I find what I hope to find down there, it might help you as well.”
“Want to give me a hint?”
“You can listen on the plane. Charlie tells it better than I do.”
I paid the tab and we retrieved her car.
“Can’t I even go home for some clothes?”
“I wouldn’t. Not just yet.”
“How long am I supposed to hide out like this?”
“Not forever. If something doesn’t happen after a while, I’ll force his hand.”
We made a quick swing by my hotel, got my stuff, and headed toward the airport.
“Is the tape player still in the box?”
“Yep. It’s even got earphones.”
We didn’t say any more till the unmistakable signs of runways and aviation rose up around us. She went to long-term parking and we got a shuttle to the terminal.
“What do you really think they’ll do about us?”
“I don’t know. Dante’s an animal. I gave him my best shot.”
“What do you think, though?”
In the end I still didn’t know. “Maybe it’s fifty-fifty. If I had to lay money…I don’t know. I’m just glad you’re getting out of here.”
We got on standby to Atlanta. From there we could get passage on Soapbox Airways to the coast.
“You must put on the world’s greatest bluff,” she said at some point.
But my silence told another story.
“You weren’t bluffing.”
“You don’t bluff a guy like Dante.”
“You would kill him.”
“He’s lucky he’s still alive and I hope he knows it.”
“What about your other promise?”
“He’d better believe that one too.” I looked at her sadly, hating the notion that I was becoming a tarnished hero. “Don’t ask questions if you don’t want to know the answers, Koko.”
“How do you know people like that? People you can just call up and order someone killed?”
“Please,” I said impatiently. “I am not a friend of killers. We’re talking about an old boyhood chum. He went his way, I went mine, but he still thinks he owes me. Something that happened long ago when we were kids. Maybe now I’ll let him get that off his chest.”
After a while I said, “I’m not ordering Dante killed. He’ll be fine as long as we’re fine. If anything happens to him, he does it to himself.”
But I still didn’t call Vinnie. Something in my heart wouldn’t let me.
Instead I called Erin and got her answering machine. “Hi,” I said. “I’m out of town. Not sure when I’ll be back, but we need to talk. Leave a message on my machine.”
No jokes this time around.
An hour later Koko and I looked down on the East Coast from 35,000 feet. She got out the player and rigged me up, picking among half a dozen fat folders and two dozen recorded tapes until she found what she wanted. “This is the best one. This is Charlie. All we’ll ever have of him.”
The tape began to play—an old man’s voice, recounting the times of his life. An old man’s voice, but as I listened the tone sounded vaguely familiar.
“Is that…Josephine?”
“Just listen. She’s trying to tell us what he told her—and what she read in his journal years ago.”
I looked at her.
“There’s nothing supernatural about this. Jo was in a deep trance that day. And this is what he told her. This is it, word for word. It’s been stored there in her head for eighty years. She’s even trying to tell it in his voice.”
“What’d she say when you played it back for her?”
“Nothing. She just cried.”
She pushed the rewind button and ran it back to the beginning.
“You’ll hear me on here, asking a few questions. All the rest is Charlie. Just forget me and listen. Just sit and listen and keep an open mind.”
A hissing sound came through the earphones; then, Koko’s voice.
“Who are you? What’s your name?”
There was a pause, followed by the high-pitched voice of a child.
“Josephine.”
“Josephine who?”
“Josephine Crane. My friends call me Jo.J-o, like in Little Women. ”
“That’s a good, strong name. May I call you Jo?”
“Yes, of course.”
“How old are you, Jo?”
“It’s my birthday. I’m nine years old.”
“What day is this?”
“September third, nineteen hundred and four.”
“You sound very grown-up for your age.”
“Thank you.”
Another pause. Then Koko said, “Do you want to tell me about your grandfather?”
“What do you want to know?”
“What’s his name? We can start there.”
“Charles. Charles Edward Warren.”
“Tell me a little about his life.”
Now came a long pause. The tape went on hissing for two or three minutes. At that point there was a click followed by several bumps, then Koko’s voice came across in a whisper.
“I’ve moved the microphone back from Josephine’s presence to add a footnote and a description of what’s happening. She seems to be trying to gather her thoughts. Her face is very relaxed, more so than when I have asked this question in the past. Today I will ask her to tell me more about her grandfather’s life, but she can’t go outside her own persona unless she is relating something she personally has heard or read. I would expect her to be limited to what she knew about him at that age, but at times she seems to go far beyond her stated age. She has knowledge and uses words that I would not expect her to know at nine. I think what she’s giving me here are things she has heard him say about himself, coupled with what she read in his own diary after his death.”
From some distance I could hear the child’s voice. There was more scurrying as Koko moved the microphone closer.
“I’m sorry…I missed that.”
“I asked where you went,” Jo said.
“Nowhere, I just needed to move something. Can you tell me about Charlie now?”
There was a pause. I heard a labored breath.
“He’s retired now. When he was younger he was a draftsman. That’s a mapmaker, yo
u know. He says it was a good trade then, there was so much expansion. He worked as a cartographer in and around Baltimore all his life.”
“For a time he worked for the government in Washington, is that correct?”
“Yes.” Another long pause. “He was in the War Department during the administration of President James Buchanan.”
“What were his interests?”
“In his youth…long ago…he liked opera and history, philosophy, nature. He was a bird fancier. Eventually he became an accomplished ornithologist—good enough to write a book and several scientific pamphlets. He liked playing card games. Poker with his pocket money and whist for fun.”
“His picture reminds me of a college professor.”
“He is often told that. My mother sometimes says so.”
“What else can you tell me about him?”
“Ummm…he’s a book collector.”
“Is that how he discovered Richard Burton?”
“Yes. He knew about Mr. Burton long before they met. Even then he had copies of Richard’s earliest books. Some of them went through many editions and lots of revision, but Grandfather always wanted the first British editions. When there were reprints with textual changes, he collected both. We have all those books, with notations in Mr. Burton’s own hand. Grandfather also kept a thirty-year correspondence. The letters referred to the texts, to Mr. Burton’s problems with his publishers, and to his joys and frustrations in writing his books. From 1861 onward, Grandfather had a standing order, with a request that Mr. Burton himself send two copies of each new work as it came off the press, or as soon thereafter as possible. This he did for more than twenty-five years.”
“Can you tell me how he met Mr. Burton and what they did in May of 1860?”
There was another long breath. “They went to Charleston.”