Peerless Detective, page 29
Witnesses would be good right now, Billy thought.
“So your mother and Frank Hannah, they—what?”
“They had an understanding. And I knew about it. I used to dream that Uncle Frank would divorce his tramp of a wife and marry my Ma. And he would be my father.”
“Some father,” Harry said, and Billy understood that Harry was deliberately baiting him.
That old death wish thing, huh, Boss?
Moncrief stiffened. “He was the greatest man I ever knew. I would have been—”
“Oh, save it. He murdered two unarmed people and then shot himself so he wouldn’t have to face the music. Don’t tell me about his ‘greatness.’ Cowardly prick.”
Something changed in Moncrief’s face, and he drew a long slender knife from inside his jacket. Billy looked up the path and saw the gay couple in a passionate embrace, oblivious to anything but each other. No help there.
Moncrief muttered something Billy couldn’t hear and moved toward Harry, and then Billy was running, racing as he had not run since boyhood. The breath caught in his chest as he tried to close the distance between them. Harry was on his feet now and backing away, but Moncrief was on him, catlike, and slashed at him. The blade tore through Harry’s sleeve and drew blood, and Moncrief nodded.
“This is how it goes, Strummer.”
He moved forward with the knife and Harry was moving back awkwardly, holding his bloody arm.
Billy ran and as he ran he saw it all in a blur—Harry bleeding, Moncrief slashing and then turning slightly as he noticed Billy bearing down on him, Harry stumbling back onto the grass, Moncrief tripping momentarily over a tree root, and Billy thought his heart would burst with urgency. He heard himself shouting, screaming Moncrief’s name, and as Moncrief faced him, Billy leapt on him. Moncrief swiped at him with the knife and Billy felt the sting as it slashed him through his jacket. But he caught Moncrief high and took him to the ground. They scrambled to their feet and Moncrief faced him.
Moncrief took one step toward Billy, and from the corner of his eye Billy saw the homeless man rouse himself from his bench—rousing himself and pointing a gun and yelling, “Freeze, you cocksucker.”
Dutch Lindner. Dutch stood some thirty feet away holding a gun in a shooter’s stance. For a second, Billy thought Moncrief would charge the old cop. Then Moncrief began running toward the far side of the pond. Dutch fired a shot that missed and Billy began pursuit, then stopped as Moncrief himself was stopped by new trouble. The gay lovers blocked his way. Then they began walking toward him, faster now, sure of themselves—Fornier and Cribb.
Moncrief ran a few steps away from the pond, and then stopped as a tall figure emerged from behind a tree—Leo.
Billy looked from Leo to Fornier and Cribb, and back to Dutch, and nearly laughed in spite of himself.
They closed on Moncrief then, and Moncrief turned his attention back to Harry, just in time for Harry to smack him in the side of the face with a rock. Moncrief staggered and Harry hit him again, and Moncrief went down, cut at his hairline and over one eye.
Moncrief scrambled to his feet, left eye squinting against the bleeding. He held the knife out before him and seemed to be talking to himself, muttering something under his breath.
Harry stood his ground and Billy and Leo moved up beside him. They advanced to the edge of the pond, the four of them, Dutch, Harry, Leo, and Billy, and Moncrief backed away toward the pond.
For a moment no one spoke. Then Dutch said, “Toss the knife.”
Moncrief said, “Fuck you, fuck all of you,” and then he turned and leapt into the pond.
“Oh, you don’t want to do that,” Harry said as Moncrief splashed into the dark water, seemed to bounce, then stumbled to his feet.
Dutch let out a short bark of a laugh.
Moncrief righted himself, one side of his face covered in mud. He stood there in water only to his waist. He stared around him at the water, as though the pond had betrayed him. He said “Shit!” and Billy thought he’d never heard a man impart such feeling into a single syllable.
Leo laughed and looked at Billy. “You see, it’s not an actual lagoon. You want to drown yourself, you got to go to the lake and jump off the rocks. But not here.”
They stared at Moncrief, who had begun walking off through the shallow water, knife still in hand. A crowd began to gather now, watching Moncrief make his way to the larger of the darkly-wooded islands at the far side of the pond, where no doubt the police would come to take him off. Somewhere in the distance, Billy heard a siren.
Fornier and Cribb approached Harry.
“He got you, huh?” Fornier said.
“I’m all right. I owe you. The both of you.”
“That’s right,” Cribb said, but Fornier just patted Harry on the shoulder and said, “Come on, Dennis. I’m hungry.”
Cribb caught Billy’s eye, nodded, and was off.
“Not so dramatic, huh, Bill?” Harry said. “Not like the movies.”
“In the movies,” Dutch said, “There’s usually a speech, the villain makes a fine speech.”
“I’m thinking Doris was right. You could have gotten killed,” Billy said. He pointed to the wound in Harry’s upper arm.
“Forget it. Looks like he got you, too, Bill. You all right?”
Billy looked down at the bloodied front of his jacket. He pushed away the material—a long cut, bloody but not deep, across his stomach. He shook his head. “I just bought this jacket.”
“You cut this a little too fine, Harry,” Dutch said, and Harry shrugged and gave a sideways nod, conceding the point.
“You had me convinced you were drunk there, Boss,” Billy said.
“You know I never drink when I work.”
Dutch looked at Harry’s arm. “You need to get that looked at.” Then he looked at Billy. “The botha you.”
“It’s okay,” Harry said. “I know a guy.”
They waited in the gathering dusk and watched as the police improvised a means to get at Moncrief on the island. They commandeered two of the zoo rowboats and rowed their way to the far end of the pond for a small invasion of Moncrief’s island. Predictably, he fought them off like a bloodied animal, swiping with his knife, then coming at them with a rock and finally hurling a bottle he found there. In the end he charged back into the water, where an enterprising cop knocked him flat with an oar.
As they walked toward Clark Street, Billy turned to Harry.
“Fornier and Cribb. I was surprised to see them.”
“I called in an old marker. They’re all right, Fornier and Cribb.”
“And they’re good. I thought it was a couple of, you know, gay guys making out.”
Harry raised his eyebrows and gave him a long look.
Billy blinked. “Oh. So that part wasn’t—”
Harry smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “It’s a big world out there, Bill.”
Dutch drove Billy and Harry to a nearby hospital for their wounds, and while they were waiting for medical attention, the cops brought in Moncrief. Blood streamed down his face from several scalp wounds, and one eye was closed and swollen like a plum. But he wasn’t through, cuffs or no. He swung wildly at the nearest police officer, kicked at an orderly, spat at a nurse, tried to push a gurney into a cop, and he was still wrestling and screaming when they carted him off.
The cut on Billy’s chest took eight stitches. He caught a cab, suddenly exhausted. A block from his place he asked the cabbie to turn back to Clark Street. The diner was busy with late-night traffic, and he could see Millie taking orders, laughing at a customer’s joke. He caught the driver’s eyes in the rear-view mirror and realized how he looked, a guy with a bloody shirt and torn jacket. He shook his head and had the driver take him home. The cabbie did his best to make small talk, but looked clearly relieved when he was able to drop Billy off.
TWENTY-FOUR
Things of Value
The next morning Billy arrived at a darkened office. When he put his hand on the knob he realized that the door was open. Harry Strummer sat inside with the shades drawn and the lights off. His cigarette made a small point of orange light in the center of the dark.
“Hello, Bill. You’re here early.”
“Do you want the lights on?”
“No. But you can pull up the shades, let the world in.”
The bright light of morning flooded the room, making Harry wince. The cool morning air cut through the smoke. Billy set down his coffee and looked over at Doris’s desk, strangely tidy, the chair pushed all the way in and the top clear of anything that had a connection to Doris. Her radio was gone.
Billy bit back the impulse to say something. He went to the window and looked out at the morning traffic on Wells Street. Then he glanced at Doris’s desk again.
“She’s gone, Bill. And by now, long gone.”
“She left town?”
Harry took a puff, blew out smoke, pondered the question, shrugged. “Me. She left me. She has ended our—whatever word you can apply to this thing we had—she has ended it the only way she knows how, by putting space between us. So, yeah, she left town.”
“Do you have any idea where she is?”
“Oh, I have some idea, but I also know she wants me to understand that she is gone, so if I know Doris, and there’s nobody in my whole life I ever got to know better than Doris, she will deliberately avoid the very places where it would make the most sense for her to go. She has broken her patterns.”
“You know that for sure?”
“More or less.”
“You checked out her place, her apartment?”
“Yeah. But I didn’t have to, I knew what I’d find. She cleared out, took everything she could carry with her and left the rest. You know, she lived in a rented room, furnished. She told me she was never going to get another apartment until she knew for sure she was going to stay for good. She had too many times in her life when she thought she had something and it turned out to be nothing.”
Harry made a little wave. “Like now. Like with me.”
“This stuff with Moncrief, it all spooked her.”
“Nah. I mean, of course it spooked her a little, but that wouldn’t be why she’d leave. This is about me, about how I went about handling all of it.”
Harry ground his cigarette into the ashtray.
“She wanted me to show her that she meant something, that it was, you know, more important than handling this asshole with his need for vengeance.”
“It?” Billy shook his head at the concept of Harry Strummer suddenly gone inarticulate. “You mean, your thing with Doris, that it?”
Harry gave a silent laugh. “Yeah. That’s what I mean, ‘my thing with Doris.’ All the different aspects of my life, all the situations I’ve ever been in, all the relationships and friendships and love affairs, you add them all up and they more or less make up a life. In my case, in the background, through all of those times, there is Doris, always a part of it for what seems like my whole life. Kid, I have trouble remembering a time when she wasn’t in my life. Even when I was with somebody else, she was always there, I was always aware of where she was and who she was with and what was happening in her life. And when I look back at those times, I can almost see us watching each other from a distance, and we’re both thinking the same thing: all this other stuff is temporary, and you and I know how this will all end up. Always, we were both always thinking that.”
“So you and Doris, I mean—you love Doris.”
Harry gave him a surprised look. “Of course. Sure, I do. I guess I always have. Always.”
“And she loves you.”
“Used to.”
“People don’t just stop loving somebody.”
Harry gave him a rueful smile. “No, huh? You got it all figured out? Well, maybe they don’t. But sometimes they move on. They cut their losses and move on and that’s what she’s doing.”
“So what are you going to do, Harry?”
Harry looked around the office and frowned. He made a dismissive gesture with the cigarette.
“Look at this,” he said, as though he hadn’t heard Billy’s question. “This is what I’ve got. I’ve got this little two-by-four room as my ‘place of business.’ I’m forty-nine years old and I live in a room smaller than this place. I’ve got a car with a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it. This is all I’ve got to show for my time on the planet.”
“Is that how we do it now? We judge people by the size of the place they live in? Or the mileage on their beater? Because if that’s so, then I’m in the shitter, Harry. I live in a, like, a cubicle. My car’s a ’Vette, but it exists only in my daydreams.”
“You’re a kid. You have all kinds of time to accomplish things. You made it in the big city, for starters.”
Billy waved him off. “Go out there on that street where you know everybody, just grab the first guy who says hello to you and give them that speech you just gave me. See if that’s how they see you.”
Harry just shook his head and walked over to the window. He leaned on the windowsill and peered out and puffed at his cigarette. Billy watched him for a moment and then it struck him that a person could be said to live in a wider space, not just wherever he hung his hat at night.
“That’s your place in the world, Harry. Right there, where you’re looking, that’s where Harry Strummer lives. You’re like the Mayor of Wells Street. That little room, that’s just where you sleep.”
Harry turned, still leaning on the windowsill, and smiled over his shoulder. He mouthed the Mayor of Wells Street and shook his head.
“So what are you going to do, Harry?” Billy said again.
“Nothing. I can’t go after her.”
“Why not?”
Harry turned now. “You just went through that. How’d it turn out for you?”
“Different story. Mine was a daydream. I gave up. She didn’t love me. I think yours does.”
“I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
Harry returned to his desk and sat down. For a long moment neither one said anything. Then Harry pulled his notepad over to him and began making a list. Without looking, Billy understood what he was doing.
“You ought to be able to do this. It’s what you do for other people.”
Harry nodded absently. “She’ll make it difficult. Maybe impossible.”
“Maybe. Maybe she won’t. What do I know?”
Harry smiled. “You know a lot, for a rube from Lansing, Michigan.”
Harry paused, scratched his forehead with the end of the pen. He looked around the office.
“Leo’s in Florida. He won’t be back for a while. He’s got family down there, and you didn’t hear this from me, but I think he’s got a woman down there, too. Don’t be surprised if he comes back married or something. Anyhow—”
He looked Billy in the eye.
“I don’t know what your plans are, Bill.”
“I don’t have any.”
That part was more perfectly true than anything he could say. He had no plans now. He was a free agent once more like the guy who had rolled in on the midnight Greyhound back in May.
“But I thought I’d stick around. I like it here.”
“What about—I don’t know what your situation is.”
“Don’t have one.”
After a while, Harry had to ask. “That other girl—”
Billy looked away.
“What?”
“That’s—” He caught himself about to say done—it’s finished. He shrugged.
“Well. I’m sorry. She seemed like a nice girl.”
“She’s a nice girl, all right.”
Harry looked around the office again.
“I could use somebody—”
“Yeah, I’ll hold down the fort. While you’re, you know, until you’re back.”
“Thanks, Bill.” He smiled as though a new thought had struck. “You’ll be the entire agency.”
“Yeah. I’ll be Peerless Detective.”
“Might be a while.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
• • •
They had a cup of coffee together in a small restaurant up the street. Harry chain-smoked and drew up a list of business matters to be tended to, made notes on two cases.
“I’m renting a car. You can use mine. Just don’t crack it up.”
When they left, Harry patted him on the shoulder.
“I’ll be talking to you.”
Harry headed up Wells Street to his car and Billy paused to watch him. He walked head down, clearly tired, the old limp magnified. For a moment, Billy could imagine Harry Strummer finished, an old man shuffling through a crowded sidewalk unnoticed by the people around him. Then a young black guy loading cases of wine onto a two-wheel dolly called out to him and Harry waved, and a young waitress rushed out of a restaurant and they greeted one another and Harry said something to make her laugh. A cop car slowed down, and the cop riding shotgun called out to Harry and now it was Harry’s turn to laugh. He waved the cops off and went to his car, and now he was walking straight-backed with quick sure steps, a fellow with a purpose. He paused to wipe something from the hood of his car, and Billy saw that he was smiling.
• • •
Billy Fox saw the irony in all of it, that just when he thought he had an idea of who he was, and just when he’d found a place where he thought he belonged, he found himself awash in uncertainty. He spent much of that weekend in endless walking through the warm September days and the cool nights, making great looping circuits of streets and neighborhoods he’d never seen trying to decide what to do. Twice he let his path take him past the diner on Clark Street, and each time he slowed down, hoping for a chance meeting of the eyes, a chance to read her face. On Sunday evening, he went by the diner and saw that she was not working, and without really having a plan, he headed for her street.
An ice cream truck had parked on the corner and drawn a crowd, mostly kids holding their money in sweaty fists and smiling up at the pictures on the truck. On an impulse, Billy slipped into line and when it was his turn, ordered two ice cream bars.
