Flying Crows (23 page)

Randy wanted out of here. He extended his right hand to Jules Perkins and thanked him for his time and patience. They had been at this now for almost an hour.

Perkins took Randy's hand and held it. “OK, now it's time for your part of the deal. What's up? Why are you here?”

Randy had had a few minutes to work on his story. “We had a woman in a nursing home who said a man—this Birdie Carlucci I was asking about—gave her a deathbed confession about having seen the massacre. The captain asked me to check it out if it interested me. I had just read your book so it interested me. That's all.”

Jules Perkins squeezed Randy's right hand even tighter. “What did the dying man say, for crissake?”

“He said he was just a kid and he happened to be riding his bike south on Main that morning—you know, along the eastern side of Union Station—and he happened to glance up and see two men with high-powered rifles shooting down from the roof of the station into the front parking lot.”

Perkins dropped Randy's hand as if it were trash. “That's impossible— and ridiculous. Slugs from pistols and tommy guns and pellets from shotguns were found at the scene, but no rifle slugs. Not a one. It didn't happen. I can't tell you the number of crazy stories like that the cops and the feds ran down. I did a few myself. There was a Travelers Aid woman who claimed she saw three nuns that morning right outside during the shooting who must have seen everything. She said the nuns were wearing those wide flying-white hats. Thousands of investigator man-hours were eaten up at convents and parochial schools all over the area looking for those three nuns. The woman made 'em up. I can't believe some dying guy used up his last breaths to invent some sharpshooters on the roof. It's nonsense. I would have expected KCPD detectives to have more pressing and plausible business to tend to.”

Randy made one of those people-do-the-strangest-things kind of shrugs.

“Too bad your dying man wasn't that phony
Star
boy who was the lookout that morning—assuming there even was such a kid,” said Perkins.

Randy responded with a smile and a nod as he closed the door behind him.

If he had been the type of person who was inclined to leap and shout for joy, that's exactly what Randy Benton would have done the moment he was outside on Ward Parkway.

Instead, he drove a few blocks south, turned down a street to a small park, stopped his car, went over to a bench, pulled out his cell phone, and called the group residence in Kenwood.

He recognized the voice of the woman who answered as the one who had handled his visit a few weeks ago.

“I'm just checking in—wondering how Mr. Carlucci is doing,” he said, after identifying himself. “I was thinking about coming out today and paying him another visit.”

“You're too late for that,” said the woman. “He left us night before last.”

“Left? Where did he go, for God's sake?”

“Either heaven or hell, but I don't know if it was for God's sake.”

Randy felt something welling up inside him. Part of it was anger. He wanted to yell at somebody, throw something across the park—or out a window.

“I just can't believe it. I can't believe it.”

“Believe it, Lieutenant. We buried him yesterday—at a cemetery out here.”

When she didn't hear anything in response from Randy after several seconds, she said, “He went peacefully in his sleep.”

Randy still said nothing.

The woman at the residence, clearly exasperated, hung up after saying, “You know something? Everything they say about you cops is right on. Is being weird part of the job description?”

Randy closed the cover on his phone and, with nothing conscious in mind other than to calm himself down, he started thinking back to when all this began. He went back a few days, one week, two weeks, a month, six weeks, more, until he came to that day of the Union Station inspection when he first met Birdie Carlucci. Or, more correctly, a man who said he was Birdie Carlucci. There was no telling now what his real name was or where he came from. Or what he was doing at Union Station on June 17, 1933. Or who, if anybody, he was working for. Or what he saw.

Randy figured that Carlucci—that old man—died ten weeks almost to the day after they found him cowering in the corner of the old Harvey House's condiments and spices room. Did he die like a fish does when taken out of water? Or like a crow does when he can no longer fly?

Ten weeks. If Jules Perkins hadn't been out of town and Randy had been able to talk to him earlier, maybe he really could have gotten the old man to talk, to clear up everything once and for all.

If Randy Benton had been a man with an explosive temper, which he was, he would have tossed that cell phone across the park as hard and as far as he could.

Which he did.

XXI

JOSH

SOMERSET

1933

Josh mostly kept his eyes focused on what was passing by his window from the moment The Flying Crow eased away from Track 3 and then creaked slowly out of the Union Station yards.

Go back as a real person with your head high, not as a cowering thief.

Those words from Will Mitchell were among many that reverberated with the clicking and swaying of the train as it picked up speed on its way south from Kansas City. Josh had a window seat just forward of center in the second of three chair cars. This was Josh's first ride in so modern and luxurious a railroad car. The few train trips he took before coming to Somerset had been in small, noisy, lurching, bare coaches. On this trip he found the seats, covered in a green material that resembled velvet, strikingly plush and comfortable. The brass door handles and silver chrome luggage racks, as well as the side and roof paneling of light beige wood, glistened with care and polish. This was definitely a head-high way to travel.

There had been only one disruption.

“You going to Texas too?” asked a stupid idiot sitting next to Josh when they left Union Station. “I'm going to hop a freighter in Port Arthur and work my way to Honduras or somewhere—who knows where.” He was young, dressed in work clothes that looked homemade, not cleanly shaved or, from his odor, freshly bathed.

But who and what this man was didn't matter. At this moment, Josh wouldn't have wanted to talk to the fanciest, cleanest, smartest person in the world. His wish was to sit here and enjoy, second by second, minute by minute, what he assumed would be his last look at any part of the outside world.

So he only gave a quick glance and mumbled, “I'm just going to Somerset.”

“Somerset? That's where the loony bin is, isn't it?” said the fool. “My mom always yelled she'd ship me off in a straitjacket to Somerset when I acted up crazy. Why you going to Somerset?”

Josh wanted his privacy, his moments of silence and thought, more than anything else right now. There were other seats where this guy could sit—two or three were unoccupied in this car alone.

“I
was
shipped off to Somerset in a straitjacket,” Josh whispered, flipping his eyes up, down, and to each side in a way that he hoped made him appear weird and crazed. “I was released as cured a few months ago, but I've had a relapse so I'm going back before I kill and eat even more people.”

It seemed to Josh that everything in and about the kid froze.

“I sometimes thought and acted like I was a lion,” Josh added, still in a whisper. “I mauled people to death and then even ate parts of a few of them—the noses and ears are particularly tasteful.”

His companion shot up from his seat as if he'd been given a hot foot and backed away down the aisle without saying another word.

Traveling straight as the crow flies, Josh returned to his thoughts and to watching the Missouri countryside pass by. He considered Will Mitchell's point about returning to Somerset as a real person. Not possible, doctor. I am not a real person, not anymore. What does it mean to be such a thing anyhow? Was that dumb kid who just ran away a real person? What about Streamliner? And Lawrence? The bushwhackers? How could a real person whack people in the head with bats? And the doctors? Shooting electricity through people and cutting out brains and looking at them to see what was in there to make somebody a lunatic?

No more thinking about any of that. Not now. Once back at Somerset, he would have plenty of time to consider such things, most particularly when compared to what the alternative was for Joshua Alan Lancaster. Somerset or death: It was that simple.

There, out the window, was a little schoolhouse. White. Wooden. No kids outside. They had gone home for the day and would be back tomorrow. Poor Streamliner. . . .

But that was something else he could think about some other day.

Birdie. What a quick, smart, delightful kid! He smelled so bad the first time we met, that day during rocking time. He'll do great as a real person in the world. With the girls for sure. They really do like him. Maybe he'll become a doctor, a great one like Will Mitchell. Or maybe a lawyer or a preacher. I would go to hear him preach. No, I wouldn't. Forget being a preacher. I don't like preachers. They're too sure of themselves. How can people be really sure of themselves in this world? There's so much that can go wrong. Or just different from what you planned, or hoped, or prayed. Maybe Birdie will write books. That's it! I wish I had said that to him. I would love to go into the library and pull down one of his books from the shelf and read it. I can't imagine knowing somebody personally who wrote a book. Wonder what Birdie would write about? Probably not anything too serious. Maybe he could write a love story about one of the girls he's known. Not Sister Hilda! Leave her alone, Birdie! Don't see her, don't talk to her—don't write a love book about her. . . .

“Hummer! Next stop Hummer, Missouri!”

It was the conductor, walking through the car. Josh had seen him only once, shortly after they pulled away from Union Station. He had welcomed Josh aboard, took Josh's ticket, punched it three times with the snap of a silver punch he pulled from a leather holster, and placed a small cardboard receipt on the edge of the baggage rack above. The conductor was a cheerful little man in a dark blue uniform and cap with a shiny gold K.C.S. CONDUCTOR badge. Josh decided not to ask if he knew about the lunatic at Somerset who got that special northbound Flying Crow slow-down and whistle-blowing every Thursday morning.

The Hummer station house was right in front of Josh's window when the train stopped. It was small, made of rough gray stone. Josh watched three passengers board and five others leave the train. One of the passengers who got off was a young woman in a long brown coat. A man in a gray suit and hat ran to her. They hugged, he took her suitcase, and they walked away holding hands. Josh had read about things like that in the Somerset library's books. He wondered what it would be like to meet a woman at a train station, hug her with all your might, take her luggage, and walk away with one of her hands in yours. Thinking about it didn't make him sad, only curious. He had a life at Somerset that was what he deserved and that was that.

The train began its slow, chugging creep away from the Hummer station.

As the building disappeared from his sight, Josh thought again to the incredible glories of the Union Station back in Kansas City. All of those people doing so many things at once, going to and from so many places on so many trains run by so many railroads. And the Harvey House lunchroom. It really was like a church. He had never in all his life had pancakes like those, and he knew he never would again. This had certainly been some incredible day since he left Somerset on the back of a train like this one.

Here came the conductor down the aisle from the front of the car. Josh had seen him out on the Hummer platform, assisting both the arriving and departing passengers. Now he was looking right at Josh. “Next stop is Somerset, sir.” Sir?
Sir!
Doesn't he know I'm not a real person? Hasn't he figured out that I'm an escaped lunatic on his way back to the asylum? Was that the first time anybody ever called me
sir
? It was the flash of a thought and it passed. Because it didn't matter.

The conductor paused to take Josh's ticket receipt down from the luggage rack. “Please exit from the front of the car.”

Josh promised to do so.

He tried to think of other things as he felt and heard the train slowing down. Somerset was just a few minutes away now. He so much wanted to leave this train, end this momentous day, with something special or different or new or unusual on his mind. Something more important than whether he had ever been called
sir
before.

“Somerset! Next stop Somerset, Missouri!” called the conductor, as he passed through the car again.

Josh stood up and followed him toward the front, as ordered.

His mind remained free of a new or important thought, and in less than a minute the train was stopped dead still in front of the Somerset station, a brown wooden building barely half the size of the one in Hummer.

The conductor put a step stool down on the platform. “Thanks for riding with us,” he said, as Josh stepped on the stool and then off and away. Maybe Birdie could be a railway conductor. No, forget that. He'd be in trouble all the time for going after the women passengers.

Josh raised his right hand and waved. Good-bye, Flying Crow. The train began its noisy move out of the station on its way to Texas.

“Hey, Josh, bud! Is that you?”

Josh turned to see a guy in white coming his way. It was a bushwhacker. Well, here we go. But as he got closer he saw that it was Jack. Thank God. Jack, the good bushwhacker, the one from New Zealand who used his fists instead of a Somerset Slugger, a soft rope instead of hard leather straps.

“They all said you'd come back, but I didn't know,” Jack said, once he got right up to Josh. He was carrying a small cardboard box of something he had clearly just bought in town. It looked like office supplies: pencils, rubber bands, and the like. The Flying Crow was gone, having left behind only the smell of burning coal and the blare of its whistle, growing fainter as it rode farther south down the track.

“Is that Birdie kid with you?” Jack asked.

Josh shook his head.

“They all said he wouldn't come back,” Jack said, “but they said you had no choice.”

Without another word, they walked off together across the tracks toward Confederate Hill and the asylum.

Josh looked ahead, and all he could see was the red bricks and turrets and white-framed windows of Old Main. The people of Somerset were certainly right to call it Sunset. It blocked out everything, not just the sun. Josh was struck by how big a building it was, larger even than the Union Station in Kansas City. That amazed him, now that he thought about it, and caused him to conclude that it's what a building is used for that counts, not the size. Size has nothing to do with being grand or beautiful.

Now, that was something new and different to think about, even if it wasn't very important.

“We already put a new guy—some bud from over at Springfield—in Birdie's bed in the ward,” Jack said. They were walking side by side, almost nonchalantly, up the long curved gravel path alongside the main road toward the front gate and onto the asylum grounds.

“What about my bed?” Josh asked.

“It's waiting for you just the way you left it.”

The arched white wooden gate was now in sight. It was wide and tall enough for a large truck to enter and was covered from the ground, up both sides and across the top, in vines of red roses. Someone might mistake it for the entrance to a park or a rich man's estate rather than a lunatic asylum.

Josh decided not to hold that thought. He decided to return to thinking about the sizes of buildings.

But Jack put a hand on Josh's shoulder. They were now ten yards away from the gate.

“Josh, there's one thing I gotta do before we go in there, and I'm betting you know what it is.”

He would have lost the bet. Josh, his mind still not where it probably should have been upon returning to Somerset, had no idea what he was talking about. He had forgotten for a moment that he had to be a lunatic in order to stay alive.

Jack must have read that in Josh's reaction, because he said, “You're an escaped patient, bud. They'd never understand the two of us strolling in together like this. So I've got to make it look like I captured you. I need to use my restraining rope.”

Josh made no effort to resist as Jack took his soft rope and wrapped it around around Josh's chest and stomach four times, holding his arms hard down against his sides.

“All right, then, bud, let's go.”

They took a step forward together as Jack asked, “You know, several of us wonder a lot if you're really crazy anymore. You sure don't act it most of the time. Why they keep you here—”

Josh pulled his arms as hard as he could against the ropes. He rolled his eyes back in his head and screamed, “Let me go! I'm drowning in the blood! Let me go! Here comes Bloody Bill!” He sat down on the ground and kicked his feet like a child.

“Hey, there, Josh, I can't take you inside in the middle of you having a fit.”

Josh put his head between his legs and screamed. “Bloody Bill Anderson's going to scalp me! Help me! Help me!”

“I don't want to hurt you, bud, but a job's a job.”

Josh felt a jarring, painful blow from a soft fist to the side of his head. He blinked his eyes a few times, twisted his head back and forth, and, with Jack's help, stood up.

The fit had passed.

With Jack behind him, Josh walked on through the gate for the rest of his life.