Black Night Falling (13 page)

‘Ward Mills, the Texas-side police chief.’ Sherman’s old boss and Bailey’s partner in crime. All along, the man I considered most likely to have initiated the cover-up. ‘What you ask for?’

‘Just filling in the blanks.’

He fixed me with a look and broke it again just as quickly. I wondered if he was trying to coax me into an admission, or maybe himself. All the truth lay in things unsaid.

Then he slid the picture back to his side of the table. ‘Let me show this to some of the others at the paper. I wouldn’t hold your breath, but maybe someone else’ll know something.’

On reflex, I shot my hand out to stop him from picking it up.

He looked up, shocked by the sudden movement. ‘What?’

I studied his face and his eyes, looking for a clue to his intentions. His expression showed only surprise. ‘How about I come with you?’

‘Come with me? I just got off, I ain’t going back there now.’

‘Please, Sid. It’ll take you a half an hour.’

He took a deep breath. ‘Goddamn. All right, but you ain’t coming with me.’

We stared at each other over the tabletop, the picture frozen between us, and I felt like I was inching towards a canyon’s edge.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’ll get it back to you safe.’

I lifted my fingers to free it. ‘How soon?’

He took the picture, slipped it into his breast pocket and glanced at his watch. ‘Let’s say eight. Here again.’

I nodded and thanked him, slipping out of the booth.

Ninety minutes. Enough time for him to set any kind of trap, if that’s what he had in mind.

I ran lists in my head – trust him or don’t. In his favour: he’d known I was in Hot Springs – he could have alerted the Texarkana cops and sent them after me any time. And his reaction to the picture seemed genuine – a stranger to him. Still I wasn’t convinced. He spoke in elliptical terms, seeming to prod at my secrets. And he addressed me with a warmth that invited disclosure – and wasn’t in keeping with our previous dealings.

I cruised the streets, trying to keep my nerves under control by staying mobile. I ended up at Lizzie’s old house. I couldn’t say what made me go there; maybe I was just looking for comfort in the place that had the strongest connection to her. The drapes were closed and the yard overgrown; a decaying shell that had once been a loving home, its inhabitants picked off by fate until only my wife was left. I thought about her, stuck in our shattered bungalow in California, and wondered how much more she could endure.

I was torn about calling her when it was pre-dawn still in California, but standing in the shadow of the life she’d had ripped away sent my feelings haywire. I went back to Union Station ahead of time and grabbed a telephone.

She surprised me by answering right away.

‘Did you sleep any?’

‘Not so well. I was . . . Well, anyway.’

‘You can say it. Anyone would be unnerved after—’

‘I won’t let these men have control over me that way. I’m fine.’

I closed my eyes, all the things I wanted to say lost in my guilt.

‘Anyway, distract me. Tell me what you’re doing now.’

I could see the sign on the Hotel Mason in the distance; it felt like I was rifling her room while she was making coffee in the kitchen. ‘Same as always, chasing down leads.’

‘You’re terrible at ducking me, Charlie.’

‘I’m not ducking you. I’ll tell you everything when I have it. On my life.’

‘I don’t care for that expression.’

A train sounded its horn, a dying moan. I stared out across the crowds, agitated, fearful of what the next meeting with Hansen would bring. ‘I should keep moving. I’ll call again—’

‘Wait a moment. With everything going on I forgot to tell you yesterday – I started looking into that man you asked me about.’

‘Tindall?’

‘Yes. I spoke to Sal, he was very helpful.’

I looked at the clock above the platform entrances – still a half-hour to burn. ‘Give me the gist.’

‘Sal said he remembered some of it and he checked the archive for the rest.’ She took a breath, as though getting it all straight in her head. ‘He said the way the
Examiner
reported it, Governor Roosevelt ran Tindall out of the city a dozen years ago – part of his crackdown on racketeering. Sal didn’t sound impressed with that and said to tell you, “
The whole jive was bogus, just a springboard for FDR’s White House run
.”’ There was amusement in her voice as she reeled the line off, and it heartened me. ‘He said the real story was that this Tindall fellow was forced to leave after he murdered a rival of his, a man he said was called “Mad Dog” Vincent Coll. Sal speculated that the authorities conspired with certain criminal figures to see him gone.’

I was impressed with how assured she came off. Suggestions of collusion between the authorities and criminal bosses should have been shocking, but when I thought about what she knew, what she’d seen firsthand, I realised it was nothing new to her. ‘That’s good work. Did he say anything else?’

‘Only that it seems he accepted his removal because he dropped out of sight after that. No one could recall his name featuring in the New York papers after about nineteen thirty-three. I’ve enlisted Mr Edwards at the
Journal
to help me see if I can turn up anything on what he’s been doing in the intervening years.’

‘Bunny Edwards? What did that cost you?’

‘A week’s worth of pot roasts – he doesn’t know I can’t cook worth a lick. He’s been very accommodating, actually.’

I looked towards the station entrance. ‘Look, don’t trouble yourself with any more for now. Take some time—’

‘Wait, there was one other thing. When I told him where you were, Sal said the name of the town was familiar. He checked and he said Charlie Luciano was arrested there in ’thirty-six. He asked if that was pertinent.’

She said the name with familiarity. ‘Lucky Luciano? How do you come to know who he is?’

‘He worked for Arnold Rothstein, that man who fixed the World Series. I’m from Texarkana, Charlie, not the moon.’

‘Sorry.’ The most famous gangster in America, picked up in a backwater like Hot Springs. The same town Bugsy Siegel had been visiting for a decade or more. A confluence that screamed there was a story there – just not the one I was chasing.

The clock moved to twenty before the hour. ‘I should go. I’ll call again as soon as I have news. Will you be all right?’

‘You don’t need to worry about me, Charlie. I’m doing enough of that for two.’

She didn’t mean it to, but the line stung way past when I hung up.

I went outside to the lot and moved the car to where I could monitor the coffee shop again. I watched for anything unusual, swearing to myself that I’d blow the meet and get out of town at the first sign of a trap. A city police black-and-white rolled by and I started the engine, ready to take off, but it kept moving, never slowing or stopping.

Hansen came down the street on time and went inside. He was carrying a large satchel. I let a few more minutes tick by, then went into the station behind me and called the coffee shop. The waitress who answered didn’t know Hansen by name, but she managed to pick him out when I described him, and called him to the phone.

‘Who’s that?’

‘It’s me, Sid. Change of plan. Meet me in the station, at the ticket office. Right now.’

‘What the hell?’

I hung up and ran back outside. I peered from behind the car, watching for him. He came out of the coffee shop and turned towards the station, looking irritated, then crossed the street. He was alone, and did nothing to make me suspect the cops were waiting nearby. I watched until he entered the ticket hall, going in the Arkansas-side door, and then I made my own way through the Texas door and followed him across the concourse at a distance. The station was busy now, lines forming by the ticket windows, men hurrying to catch trains, and he didn’t see me.

I looped around and came up on his blindside. ‘Sid.’

He whipped around, startled. ‘Hell, Yates, what you creeping around for? What was wrong with the last place?’

I put my hand out. ‘Where’s the photo?’

He tilted his head as he reached into his pocket, thrown by my urgency. He pulled it out and forked it over. ‘Here.’

I glanced at it, making sure it was the same one, then put it away. ‘Any luck?’

He rubbed the corner of his mouth with his forefinger. ‘Some. I ain’t got a name for you, don’t get your hopes up.’

I looked around, nerves stretched. ‘Go on.’

‘But I got a lead on her for you. One of the fellas recognised her, told me she used to work at Pine Street Hospital.’

The name resonated; the last place Lizzie’s sister, Alice, was seen alive. ‘How can that be? What you said before, about remembering if there’d been—’

‘I know, and I’m at a loss to explain it. I asked two of the other subs, making sure I ain’t crazy, but they said the same – there weren’t no other murders then.’

An echo of what I’d encountered in Hot Springs when I first picked up Robinson’s trail. Solved murders and non-existent murders, no apparent connection between them. I thought about my actions that morning, fear and paranoia riding me, and wondered if this was how Robinson behaved in his final days. ‘Thanks, it’s a help anyway. I’ll see you.’

As I turned to go he stopped me, his hand on my forearm. ‘I got something else for you.’

The satchel he’d been carrying was by his feet; he picked it up and shoved it into my chest, making me take it.

‘What’s this?’

He swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. ‘It’s everything was in Jimmy’s desk. Ain’t much, but . . . I don’t know, maybe it’ll be some help.’ I unfastened the bag slowly and looked in. I saw a mass of papers, the top one showing Robinson’s familiar scrawl. ‘Just do me one favour and don’t tell no one it was me gave it to you.’

I looked up from the bag and saw he was glancing around, nervous. ‘Why are you giving me this?’

He moistened his lips. ‘Soon as you told me about that fire, I knew it weren’t no accident. Ain’t a doubt in my mind.’ My skin tingled. ‘I cleared his effects out the day you called, and I been sweating on what to do with them.’

‘Have you been through it all?’

He shook his head. ‘I ain’t a fool; I know there’s more to certain stories than what was told, and there ain’t a chance Horace Bailey and Jack Sherman went out to Winfield Callaway’s house in the middle of the night on account of a goddamn burglary.’ He paused, his jaw muscles tensing. ‘Someone left a message for Jimmy, tipped him to go out there that morning. Someone I think knew what was really going on.’

My message. He was staring at me hard and I fought to keep my legs still. ‘Did he go?’

He didn’t answer. He glanced down at the bag then locked on my eyes again. ‘I got a wife, I got children, I got a home, so I don’t care to know any more than what made the papers. But that don’t mean I can stomach it when a man like Jimmy winds up dead. You understand me?’

I looked at him, his emotions showing at last – fear and anger, but relief as well, airing thoughts he’d clearly been holding close. ‘Did Jimmy ever talk about the murders afterward? Or about Callaway and Bailey?’

He shook his head, his eyes still roving around the concourse. ‘Not much. Sometimes when he’d taken a drink, he’d start talking oblique, saying things ain’t made a lot of sense to me, but . . .’ He took his hat off and ran his sleeve over his eyes. ‘Like I said, ain’t proud of it, but some of us put our own concerns first and didn’t want to hear no more.’

‘Do you remember any of what he said?’

‘No.’ He took a step back from me. ‘Look, I’m not like you and Jimmy, I’m about as far out on a limb as I can handle. I hope you figure out what happened.’

He turned and disappeared into the crowd.

I stood there clutching the bag, faces swarming around me, a blur of civilians and soldiers, all going about their
own concerns
. If what Hansen said was true, the cover-up was nothing like the monolith I’d imagined, everyone that mattered in on it and working to maintain the fabrication. The reality I saw now was simpler, more human – a lie crafted by someone at the top, and enough people looking the other way, out of fear or self-interest, to let it perpetuate. And when I thought of it that way, Jimmy Robinson felt more and more like the last person you’d want loose with an inkling of the truth.

I hightailed it to Pine Street Hospital with my eyes glued to the rearview, looking for cops or anyone else following me, a feeling like I was getting deeper and deeper into the woods.

I parked on the street out front and looked at the satchel on the seat next to me. I dragged it over and opened it, finally feeling like I had a few seconds’ breathing space to do so. I shook the contents out, a stack of photographs spilling over into the footwell. I reached down to pick them up first and found myself looking at pictures of a face I knew: Ella Borland. They were candid shots, Borland apparently not aware she was being photographed. One showed her going into Duke’s, another her walking along the street – looked like Bathhouse Row. In another she was talking to a man outside the Southern Club. Different outfits suggested different times and places – dolled up like a dime store starlet in one, wearing a sober green dress in another. I looked through them again, realised they were all summer numbers she wore – must have been taken earlier in the year. I studied the last image and recognised the newsboy cap on the man she was talking to – William Tindall. I gazed at it a moment, remembering the two being in the Southern Club at the same time when I saw her dancing there. I closed my eyes, mulling the thought, trying to get a fix on what Robinson would have seen in these shots. Then I set them aside and started picking through the rest of the pile.

The papers were a mix – some typewritten, some in cursive. There were drafts of pieces Robinson was writing, office memos, meeting notes – no names or details that leapt off the page at me at first glance. One discrepancy I did notice: these notes included full names, not initials, and identifiable headings –
Jennings Robbery
,
Beating on 4th
.
I started to get the feeling this was everyday business he’d left behind when he took off for Hot Springs.

Which made the Borland photographs even more incongruous. I found more as I picked through, a similar style to the others, her not looking at the camera in any of them. A variety of outfits and locations. He’d been following her for weeks, capturing her movements on film. The only reason I could think for why he’d do that was that he was suspicious of her.

At the bottom of the pile, a different set of pictures – older, showing creases and frayed corners. There were ten or so, most blurry, a hand partially blocking the lens in some. Scenes of commotion. The images I could make out showed a crowd of men, some of them identifiable by their uniforms as police officers, a building in the background. I leafed through, my thoughts still on the Borland shots. I was about to put them back in the bag when recognition came to me. Not a building – a house. Winfield Callaway’s. Photographs from the scene of his murder. Proof that Robinson did go there that morning. A question lingering as to how much he saw and what he did with it.

I stuffed the papers and photographs away and got out, the bag slung over my shoulder. I crossed the grounds in front of the hospital, the whitewashed walls a dull grey under the heavy sky.

Past the entrance, I followed a corridor until I came to a ward off to the right – a long room with six beds on either side, five of them occupied. There was a nurse stationed behind a desk at the far end; I went up to her, taking the picture of the unidentified woman from my pocket. ‘Ma’am, my name’s Yates. I’m looking for information on this lady. I’m led to believe she worked here. Do you happen to know her at all?’

The nurse looked at the picture, then at me, shaking her head. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I only started here a couple weeks ago.’

I thanked her and moved on, went back out into the corridor looking for another nurse. I repeated the same rigmarole three more times before I found someone who recognised her.

‘That’s Ginny.’ The nurse set her pen down and looked up at me. ‘Are you with the police?’

‘No, I’m a reporter. I’m—’

Her eyes darted back to the papers she was working on. ‘We’re not supposed to talk to reporters.’

‘On who’s say-so, miss?’

‘It’s hospital policy.’

‘Please, if you have any information at all about her, I’d sure appreciate it. What was her surname?’

‘Sir, Ginny died some time ago, I really don’t think—’

‘How did she die?’

She looked up at me again now, frowning. ‘She took her own life. That’s as much as I know about it.’ I went to press her, but she cut me off. ‘Please, you should take this up with hospital management.’

‘If you could just tell me her surname, I’ll be out of your hair.’

A second nurse appeared at the side of the desk. She was older, had a bearing about her that said she was in charge. ‘Nurse Henley, is everything all right here?’

The nurse in front of me reddened. I turned to the newcomer. ‘I was just asking about the woman in this picture.’ I held it up. ‘Did you happen to know Ginny, ma’am?’

The younger nurse looked up again, about to protest, but the boss nurse held a hand out to silence her. ‘What is this about?’

‘I’m a reporter. A friend of mine was investigating your colleague’s death—’

‘Reporters are asked to direct their enquiries to the manager’s office. The
Chronicle
men all know that, I’m surprised you don’t.’

‘Time is against me, ma’am.’

‘That may be the case, sir, but it doesn’t change procedure, so please see yourself out. Otherwise I’ll have someone escort you.’

A man in one of the beds behind me cried out in pain, and the younger woman took the opportunity to escape. The boss nurse had her hands on her hips and was glaring at me; I was about to move on when she checked over my shoulder, then mouthed, ‘
Outside, two minutes
,’ her expression never changing. I inclined my head, her movement so quick I wasn’t certain I’d lip-read it right, but she raised her eyebrows just enough to underscore the point. I whipped around and made for the exit.

Coming out into the daylight, I looked back inside for the nurse, but there was no sign of her. I wondered if she’d played a neat trick to get rid of me. I turned and looked out across the grounds, jumpy, giving her a minute more to show, trying to untangle the implications of the woman in the photograph taking her own life. Not murdered. As I stood there, my eyes laid upon my car and I flinched: a police cruiser was idling behind it.

I slid back into the shadow of the entranceway and watched as the officer stepped out, double-checked the registration plate, and walked around to the driver’s side. He carried on, circling the car, then looked up and over towards the hospital and where I stood.

I froze. He was fifty yards or more away, and still it felt like he was looking right at me. He looked away again and pulled out his notebook, scribbled something down.

My heart kicked in again and I started to move my feet, my legs like stilts. Then I felt a hand on my arm. I pulled away on reflex, about to run.

‘Who are you?’

A woman’s voice. I whirled around and saw the boss nurse, standing close. I glanced from her to the cop and back again, stepping to the side so I was completely out of sight from the street. ‘I’m a reporter.’ I was about to say my name but I stopped myself, trying to remember if I’d given it to the younger nurse before, picturing the cop sauntering inside looking for me. ‘I’m here about your colleague Ginny, I want to know what happened to her.’ The words came fast, running into one another.

‘You look unwell. Is something the matter?’

‘I’m fine, ma’am. Ginny – did you know her at all?’

‘I won’t have you troubling those girls in there. Not after what happened.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘Your friend that was investigating her death – he have mousey blonde hair, head like a cinder block? That the one?’

Jimmy Robinson.
‘Yes.’

She grimaced and looked away, shaking her head. ‘Why is he interested in her death?’

‘I don’t know, ma’am. How did you come to know him?’

‘I don’t know him, but I remember him bugging Ginny plenty. He showed up here all the time, even after all the other reporters stopped coming, never let her alone. He’s hard to miss.’

Lightning went through me, ‘
other reporters
’
jolting the connection into view. ‘When was this?’

‘Earlier in the year. You know about the killings we had here?’

Her face went out of focus and her voice seemed to fall away, the connection whole and complete now, my breath running short. I said the words: ‘Did Ginny nurse Alice Anderson?’

She nodded once, her face a question mark. ‘I think you ought to tell me just what your interest is here.’

The conversation with Jimmy was seared into my memory. A telephone call with him shortly after Alice had disappeared. Him telling me one of the nurses at the hospital had seen a man she swore was a cop hanging around Alice’s room that day. A man I figured was sent to snatch her. Ginny had to be Robinson’s source – and now she was dead. ‘Why did Ginny kill herself?’

‘How would I know? I’ll tell you this much, though, I always thought it had something to do with that man hounding her. Smelled of liquor, all the time, and—’

‘He’s dead.’

She stopped with her mouth half-open. I glanced over to the cop again; he’d climbed back into his cruiser and was moving it around the corner. Smart – wait me out instead of come hunting. I turned back to the nurse. ‘You won’t ever see me again, I promise. Just tell me her surname.’

She looked at me a long moment. ‘What happened to him?’

‘He died in a fire.’

‘An accident?’

‘No.’

Her eyes darted to one side, and she blinked in rapid succession. ‘Does that strike you as a coincidence?’

‘No, ma’am, it doesn’t.’

She brought her hand to her mouth and touched her lip. ‘Kolkhorst. Ginny Kolkhorst. She hated having a Kraut name.’ She looked at me again now, all her surety gone. ‘I always thought there was something strange about her passing like that. That’s why I didn’t want anyone to see me talking to you back there.’

‘Why do you say strange?’

‘It’s not something normal folk do, is it? Throw themselves off of a bridge and . . .’ She reached for the wall, steadying herself.

‘Do you have reason to doubt she took her own life?’

‘Only the common sense the Lord blessed me with. What does this mean?’

‘I don’t know, but that’s what I’m trying to figure out. Did Miss Kolkhorst have any family?’

She hesitated, her expression making me realise she was suddenly afraid of me. ‘I don’t . . . I don’t know.’

‘Ma’am, my only interest is the truth. I promise.’

She looked at me a long moment, then said, ‘I think she lived with her folks. I don’t know the address.’ She took hold of my shoulder. ‘Mister, are we in danger?’ She inclined her head to the hospital building.

‘Not if you go back inside, and go about your business like this conversation never happened. Tell the other nurse to do the same.’

‘Why? Who would come asking?’

‘The men who killed my friend.’ The words I left unspoken: and who may have killed yours.