THE GHOST DETECTIVE: Boston

by Thomas Kennedy Lowenstein

  “Can I come see you?” Alice asked.

  “Of course,” Sam said. “Of course. Let me tell you how to get here.”

  She listened to the directions and drove again. Sam was sitting on the stoop of his building. The wind caught his hair. He looked worried and cold. Alice parked got out of the van and paused.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, hugging her.

  “Me too,” she said into his neck. She pulled back and tried to smile and felt damp and greasy and ugly. She followed him up to his apartment. It was shadowy and bare; the TV was on without sound.

  “I need a new place,” Sam said. “Isn’t that great timing? Quit job, move out.” He laughed a little.

  Out at his father’s Mrs. Atlee was dying, slowly, gasping; here Sam could think of months and years. Everyone would move on from each other, measuring time, weighing feelings, Mrs. Atlee from Phillip, from her father, South from his father, all moving on and then someday cut free entirely, time and distance and energy without measure.

  “I wish I could meet her,” Alice whispered.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “I know she’d want to meet you. She’s been asking when I was going to bring you.”

  Alice stared out the window.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The Land

  Ernest Pinchbeck, glancing in a mirror above the mahogany side table, adjusted his tie and smoothed his hair into place. He looked around Gowen’s office, which was high-ceilinged, filled with oriental rugs and shiny wood furniture.

  “Yes, well, shall we proceed?” Gowen asked from behind his desk. He leaned back in his leather chair and forced a smile.

  “Of course,” Pinchbeck said. “I have a family to consider. That’s the only reason I’m thinking of selling the land, you know—and I hate to do it. It’s been in my family for a hundred years.”

  Gowen’s eyes flashed blue. “Of course it has,” he said. “You must be very attached to it.”

  “Yes, of course, we are,” Ernest said. He sat in an armchair and checked his watch. “I particularly hate to see that land developed,” he added.

  Gowen stood up, smiling, smoothing his sport coat into place with long fingers. “You hate nothing of the sort,” he said.

  “Excuse me?” Pinchbeck said.

  “Sir, you hate nothing of the sort,” Gowen said. “You have come here to raise the asking price, have you not?”

  “I ask only what’s fair. I have my family to—”

  “Yes, indeed, your family.” Gowen sat down again. “How much additional—security—does your family require?” he asked.

  “Not a prohibitive amount, I can assure you.”

  Gowen’s fingers wrapped tightly around a pen as he listened to the new figure. He would give the man the extra money, or some portion of it. But the last minute change was insulting. He made a counter offer.

  “I’ll have to give it some thought,” Pinchbeck said, standing up.

  “Excuse me?” Gowen asked.

  “It’s just been in the family so long, my wife…. It’s hard to imagine giving it up.” Pinchbeck pulled on his overcoat and started to open the door.

  “Mr. Pinchbeck,” Gowen snapped. “Do you know how your family came to acquire that piece of land?”

  “Why, yes,” Pinchbeck said. “My wife’s grandfather inherited it years ago.”

  “Indeed,” Gowen said. “In 1919, sir. Or should I say, in 1915?”

  “Huh? What difference does that make? Her family used to have a small cabin there, for the summers. Nice place.”

  Gowen nodded and relaxed his grip on the pen. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you, then.”

  “Yes, it shouldn’t be long,” Pinchbeck said.

  He left the room, breathing deeply, wondering if his wife had been able to get the deed from the old man.

  Natalie Pinchbeck sat in a dim room beside a large hospital bed fitted with pulleys, levers, and straps. She could just make out her grandfather’s wrinkled and pale face, with protruding eyes over which diaphanous lids had a moment ago slid shut.

  “Gunny?” she whispered.

  “He’s asleep, Mom,” Ann said.

  “Can we go?” Russell asked. He was pacing.

  “No, we cannot,” Natalie said. She adjusted her coat.

  “Mom, he’s not going to wake up,” Ann said.

  Natalie leaned closer to him. “Gunny?” she whispered again. How could she tell Ernest she hadn’t gotten the deed when he’d gone to stall Gowen just so she could?

  Very slowly the eyelids opened, showing large black dots in red-streaked yellow orbs. A strand of gray hair hung over the rounded forehead, which descended to a flat nose and cheeks lined like a mosaic on the floor of a Roman ruin. The mouth was twisted at one corner so it never seemed fully closed, and a blue pajama shirt had slipped to one side, revealing gray chest hair and jutting bones.

  “Gunny? Gunny?” Ann said loudly. “It’s us. Can you hear us?”

  “Hello, Gunny,” Russell called.

  A nurse came in from the hallway and adjusted the old man’s pillows. Natalie slid her chair closer and took one of his cold hands in her own.

  “Ernest so wanted to be here, too, Gunny,” she said. “He is always asking after you.”

  The eyes slid over to take her in.

  “Do you remember—Ernest wanted me to ask you about the deed,” she said. “Do you remember the deed we talked to you about?”

  The eyes closed again. The mouth worked at swallowing and a white spot of foam appeared at the frozen corner.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” the nurse said, her red round face a setting sun in the dim room.

  Natalie let go of her grandfather’s hand and was still for a moment, perplexed. “Your father really needed that deed,” she said to no one in particular.

  Her children were at the door.

  “Goodbye, Gunny,” Ann called.

  “Bye!” Russell called. “Let’s go, Mom,” he added.

  “Yes,” Natalie said, standing up. She patted her grandfather’s hand and told him she’d visit again soon. Ernest would be angry about the deed. The market was so good now, and she wanted the old man to live ten more years, didn’t she? So they needed to get the deed from him. She stared at the tiny figure in the bed. He couldn’t have been tall, even before he shrank. Old people shrank. It was awful to think of. She left.

  The eyes opened quickly and a moan passed from the twisted lips. One hand rose a few inches into the air before falling back to the mattress.

  “I know, I know,” the nurse said, stroking the bald head. “Sleep now. Sleep.”

  She clicked off the light on the bedside table and left the room, closing the door behind her. But in the dark the yellow eyes, open and bulging, glowered at the ceiling.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Hospital

  In the small parlor in the Beacon Club South sat in an armchair, sipping scotch and water. His hair, usually pomaded in place, hung forward over his eyes, which were yellow with heat and red-rimmed with anger. His cheeks, pudgy and colorless, reflected the glimmer of the fire into which he was staring. The walls jumped with flame and shadow; the dark ship in the painting above the fireplace, pitching in a spray of wave and sky, seemed to move slowly from left to right.

  The door opened and Sam entered, stepping softly on the crimson and gold rug.

  “Come in,” South said quietly. “Come in and sit down, Sam.”

  Sam took a chair opposite South’s and sat on the edge of it.

  “How are you, Sam?” South asked without looking up from the fire. “Would you like a drink? For God’s sake, have a drink.”

  “Ok,” Sam said.

  A woman in black appeared at his elbow and nodded once as he ordered. Sam stared at South.

  South’s eyes flitted up. “Did you bring the papers I asked you to bring?”

  Sam nodded.

  “We’re just waiting for McParland,” South said. He push
ed his hair from his eyes and sipped again.

  The woman reappeared with Sam’s drink. He had a long sip, thinking of how hoarse and sad South had sounded on the phone.

  “Hammond is alive,” South said in a whisper. “Hammond is alive. My God, Sam.”

  Sam frowned. “I don’t follow you,” he said.

  “Eighty-two extra years,” South said. “Eighty-two. And not just him alive, but me like this. Me.”

  “Hammond?” Sam said. “Hammond—your Hammond? It’s not possible.” He drank again. After the last couple of weeks, what did “not possible” mean?

  “Yes, alive,” South said. “And we’re going to pay him a visit. Do you know what he was when I met him, Sam?” South’s voice cracked. “Do you know?”

  Sam shook his head. McParland entered, carrying his hat, his hair slick.

  “Good. McParland,” South said, glancing. “I want you to hear this, too. Would you like a drink?”

  McParland slouched into a chair. “We don’t have long, South,” he said. He had swallowed laudanum before leaving the hotel and each shadow, each shimmer of light seemed to him sharp, distinct.

  “Shut up and have a drink,” South said. “We have as long as we need. Do you know where I met Hammond, McParland? I was about to tell the boy, but why don’t you.”

  “Hank’s,” McParland said. He ordered a drink.

  “That’s right,” South said. He pressed his lips together. “McParland was hired by my father to follow me. Quite a comedown in the world, don’t you think, for the greatest detective of his generation, from battling the Molly Maguires to chasing—what did Daddy tell you I was, McParland? An invert? Could he bring himself to say the word? A lover of other women?” His anger was rust, churning next to him.

  Sam drank.

  “Do go on, McParland,” South said. “What was Hammond when you—well, I almost said ‘met him’ but you never really did that, did you? When you first, what shall we say, observed him?”

  “He was a friend of yours,” McParland said.

  The bony woman appeared with a tray of drinks. Her face was set like a chalk cliff.

  “No, McParland, your memory is poor,” South said. “He was no friend of mine at that point. Or maybe you thought so, brilliant detective that you were. Is that what you told Daddy? No. That part of the story you don’t know, McParland. You don’t know that when I met that boy he was nothing but a hobo and a—what is the word today, Sam? Faggot. But I made him a friend. I made him my estate manager. Do you know that part of the story, McParland? Or what did you think when you heard I’d run off? Just a couple of queers having an argument, probably.”

  “I never heard,” McParland said.

  South turned to him. “You what?” he said.

  “I never heard about it. I went west after your father died.”

  South took a cigarette from a silver box on the coffee table and leaned his head back against his chair.

  “We should go,” McParland said.

  “McParland is right about where I met Hammond,” South said, lighting his cigarette. “At Hank’s. Hank ran a bar near Scollay Square. The whole neighborhood’s gone now, they cleared it all away to make that monstrous city hall. It used to be you could go there if you—well, in tiny little puritan Boston, you could go to Scollay Square and get what you needed. Hank ran a bar down there where you could be what you wanted.” South looked at Sam and quickly back to the fire. His jaw trembled. He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed his forehead. Tense through, he thought, as if he were pure electricity.

  “That’s where I met Hammond,” South said, his voice a shadow. “I went there with my friend Norma. She just enjoyed wearing men’s clothes, that’s all. Today no one would even notice her.” He waved his cigarette as if brushing something aside. “The first time I met Hammond he got into an argument with Hank about paying for lunch. That’s how far down he was. This ignorant, belligerent little man -- little boy, he was 17 -- arguing about paying for his lunch. I felt sorry for him. Honest to God, I felt sorry for him. And I felt guilty about—I felt sorry for myself. I was constantly searching for penance to perform. Constantly asking God to forgive me. Why? I don’t know. I was as He made me and He made me guilty. So I wanted to help.

  “The next time I saw Hammond—maybe it wasn’t the very next time, I don’t remember, but before long I asked him if he wanted work. Daddy had died and I had started my treatments. My moustache began to grow in and then it looked right to dress as a man. It had felt right all along, but we were not so convinced back then that feeling right was important. He helped me buy suits. He told me he was a normal man. I told him I was a normal man, too. That was the first time I saw him smile. He had a nice smile. I didn’t care what he wore or who he liked to sleep with, if he could help me care for my dogs.

  “So he helped me at a show in Mechanic’s Hall, here in Boston. My Harriet—my clumber spaniel—was only a pup then, and we didn’t win anything. When Daddy’s estate was finally settled—I had to fight my brothers for my share, but when it was done I bought my house and built my kennels. I was so tired of Boston. Hammond moved down and lived in the caretaker’s cottage and took care of the dogs and managed the estate for me when I was too sick to work or was up in Boston for my treatments. I would bring the powder back with me sometimes and he would sit by my bed, feeding me. He would listen to me.

  “In the beginning he helped me with everything. We worked the dogs together, we traveled to shows together. He came to the Westminster show with me—oh, that awful Von Eckstein won. With Daddy gone—with Daddy gone I wore men’s clothing more and more, I could wear what I wanted. I was dead to the rest of the family anyway.

  “But Hammond—he—the more I gave him, the more money he had, the better his station in life, the more he developed—well, he had a nasty side, a temper, and it came out more. When I met him he had the anger of the oppressed, as if he were striking back at the world in self-defense. By the end, though, he was cruel, asking me what was wrong with me one day, feeding me soup the next. Hitting me one day, stroking my hair the next.”

  South’s voice disappeared. He cleared his throat.

  “Of course, I know why he—why he apologized as he did, why he lied. He was in my will by then and if he fell out it was back to Scollay Square for him. I once came back from Boston sooner than I had intended to. It was a beautiful summer day, warm, all the woods and fields in full flower. Just lovely. I couldn’t find Jamie—I couldn’t find Hammond anywhere so I went to his cottage and he and this other boy, some local who delivered milk sometimes, he was Hammond’s age, were lying on that filthy couch without shirts on. Just lying at opposite ends with their legs intertwined. I didn’t see them do anything but when I knocked Hammond jumped up and he was nervous all day. The next week he made a point of waking me up late one night—by accident, I was to believe—by coming up to the main house with a young woman, stomping around, searching for whiskey. She was a whore, everyone in town knew that. I felt he was making a point. The fact was, I didn’t care with whom he slept.

  “After that, it got worse. He began to hate me, and I to hate him in return. Fairly soon, it was plain to both of us, and he began to think how to kill me. I am sure of it. I came up to Boston to change my will. I was absolutely going to do it. I should have stayed in Boston but I went back. I just did not believe—I did not imagine that he would actually hurt me. One never imagines that one will actually come to harm.”

  South smoked and drank the watery dregs from his glass. “Until it is too late,” he added. “Do you know where he buried me, McParland? No? In those woods, in my woods, beside an old stone wall. Not too far in, either. He knew no one would look for a long time. No one would notice I was gone.”

  Sam thought of South’s first visit to his office, of Alice and Mrs. Atlee. What now?

  “Let’s go,” McParland said, standing. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Yes,” South said. “Let’s.”

/>   The bony woman held the door for them. They walked slowly through the main parlor. An elderly man with a newspaper in his lap dozed in front of a fire.

  Sam’s heels clicked on the marble floor. He felt angry at being involved in this, scared at how little of life he seemed to know—nothing, nothing at all—and penitent, as if this were the most somber happening of his life and he somehow ought to be grateful for it.

  They paused just outside the gate.

  “This way,” McParland said. He started downhill on the narrow sidewalk. The townhouses cast bands of yellow light into the dark street, the streetlamps cast circles; to their left the lit stripes of the paths through the Common were deserted.

  “Sam,” South said, slowing his pace so that McParland went ahead. “Very good of you to be here, really.” He stumbled on a brick that stuck up from the sidewalk. “My God, I’m frail,” he said. “That hurt.”

  “What will you say to him?” Sam asked.

  “Do you know how I fought my brothers for that land?” South asked. “They tried to take it from me, as if father wouldn’t have wanted me to have it if he’d—if he’d had a chance to rewrite his will before he died.”

  Ahead, McParland had reached the bottom of the hill and looked back, waiting in a cone of streetlight. He watched them approach and, when he was sure they were close enough to see which way he went, turned right and walked along a low, dark street, filled with couples arm in arm and rich people in shiny cars. He liked this street, always had—old buildings with crooked doorways, cobblestones, small side streets branching off from either side. Now the buildings were filled with restaurants and antique dealers. Hadn’t it always been so? He couldn’t remember. The water had come to the very edge of the street at one point, before being filled in for that road along the river. Even now there were very few of the brightly-lit signs of which modern people seemed so enamored.

  “You know,” South said as he and Sam turned the corner. “I originally came to you only to find out who owned it now—to whom he had sold or left it. I had no idea.”