Michael Lister - Soldier 03 - The Big Hello (5 page)

By the time I was off the phone and stepping out of the booth, one of the two middle-aged cops was standing there.

“What gives, pal?” he said.

His dark suit covered a solid build––especially for a man his age––but in every other way he couldn’t have been more average. Average height. Average weight. Average looks. And I suspected average intelligence.

The other cop, a tall, thin man with a hairline that started about halfway back on his head, had Clip out of the car, the mounted spotlight on his windshield still shining in Clip’s face.

“One-eyed midnight over there,” the cop closest to me said, jerking his head in Clip’s direction. “He with you or threatening you?”

I looked over at Clip.

“Threatening me?” I asked.

“Looked to us like he was about to run you over with the car.”

“Mr. Jones is with me,” I said.

“Mr. Jones? Hear that Roy? That’s Mr. Jones you got there.”

“How do you do, Mr. Jones?” Roy asked.

Clip didn’t respond.

“Hey Sam, I’m not so sure Mr. Jones can speak. Maybe that eye ain’t all he’s missin’.”

“’Less the nigger got no tongue he better speak when spoken to,” Sam said to me in a low, mean voice.

I didn’t say anything.

“Ask ’im again, Roy,” Sam said.

“How do you do, Mr. Jones?”

“How do I do what?” Clip said.

“Sam, you hear this boy sassin’ me?”

“So what are you and Mr. Jones into out here on this dark night, pal?” Sam asked.

“Just making a phone call,” I said.

“Who you callin’? All decent folk are in bed at this hour.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I was talking to a cop.”

“You crackin’ wise with me, asshole?”

I shook my head. “Used to be one myself,” I said. “Just called my old boss at PCPD.”

I doubted that would carry any weight with him but I threw it in just the same. Maybe we’d get hassled less if he knew I used to be on the job.

“You was a cop? So why’d you quit?”

I guess he hadn’t noticed my arm yet.

“Cops,” I said.

“Yeah, I heard you,” he said. “Was asking why you quit being one?”

Guess I had been wrong about his intelligence being average too.

“Like I said, mostly other cops. You know the type. Slow. Stupid. Abusive bullies.”

“Why you––”

“Watch it, Sam,” Roy yelled, “the nigger’s got a gun.”

Roy withdrew his weapon and pointed it at Clip, pressing Clip against the car with his forearm while pointing his pistol at Clip’s head, the barrel a few inches from his good eye.

“You let your nigger carry a gun?” Sam asked me, withdrawing his gun and pointing it at me. “You packing?”

I nodded.

“Give up the heater, boy, and fast,” Roy was saying, “or that car behind you’s gonna have nigger brain splattered all over it.”

“Ain’t givin’ up my gun,” Clip said.

Here we go again.

“Hands up, bub,” Sam said to me, his gun not far from my chest. “You only got one,” he added in surprise.

“Impressive detecting,” I said. “I can’t understand why you haven’t made captain yet.”

“What’s it gonna be, boy?” Roy was asking Clip in a nervous, high-pitched voice. “Surrender your rod or the rest of your life. Up to you.”

So fast I wasn’t sure it happened at first, Clip grabbed Roy’s gun, hit him in the face with it, and had it pointing at him as he landed on the pavement.

“I thought of a third option,” Clip said.

I smiled.

“Sho get tired of playin’ cops and niggers all the time,” Clip said.

Sam jammed the barrel of his gun into my chest.

“No way you do that to me, pal,” he said. “No way.”

I nodded my agreement.

“Hey, you’re bleeding,” he said.

“Rough night.”

“You shot?”

“A while back,” I said. “Keep reopening it.”

He shook his head and we were quiet a moment, each of us waiting for what came next, standing still in the narrow shafts of feeble, limp light, beyond which nothing in the wide world was visible.

“What’s it gonna be, soldier?” he asked. “Hole in the chest or tell the nigger to drop his gun?”

“Neither,” another plainclothes cop said as he stepped out of the darkness and into our small band of light.

He was a broad, thick man. A nose that had been broken a time or two dominated a rough face beneath black hair with a slight wave in it.

“Shelby?” Sam said. “What the fuck? The nigger’s got a gun. Help me.”

“I’m here to help you,” he said. “Help you from getting yourself killed. Or worse.”

“What?”

“Take your partner and clear out. These men and I have a girl to find.”

“Shelby, I don’t know what the fuck’s got into you tonight but the nigger assaulted Roy and I’m takin’ ’em in.”

“You got any idea who you’re pointing that gun at?”

“Huh? Who? Just a one-armed asshole up to no good.”

“His dad’s the chief.”

“My dad’s dead,” I said, and even I could hear the residue of the wounded little boy lingering in my voice.

“Stepdad,” Shelby corrected.

“Chief Collins is your d––stepdad?”

I didn’t answer.

“Bet he wonders just what the hell happened to you.”

“Who told you about Collins?” I asked.

“You mean Dad?” Dana Shelby said with a big smile.

I knew Folsom wouldn’t unless he had to. He’d know how much I’d want to avoid the man and how much involving him would complicate what I was doing.

With Sam and Roy reluctantly gone, it was just the three of us now––me, Clip, and Shelby. We were standing in the empty street not far from our car.

“He did.”

“He knows we’re here?” I asked.

He shook his head. “While back,” he said. “Came up when you crashed your car into Johnston’s.”

I thought about that.

I had no idea he had even known I was in town. Had he told Mom? I felt a pang of guilt for how long it had been since I’d spoken to her––even longer than normal.

We weren’t close––hadn’t been since Dad died. She’d lost her way in the wake of his death. She had thought Darryl Collins would help her find it again. And maybe she was right. Her decision had done me no favors, but it didn’t mean it hadn’t her.

“He actually had a couple of the guys keeping an eye on you when you got snatched. Lost their jobs over it.”

I nodded.

Dana Shelby wasn’t just broad and thick. He was squarish too, his body build resembling that of Frankenstein. His complexion was darkish and smooth, his face handsome in spite of his nose having been broken.

“Aren’t exactly close, are y’all?” he said.

I smiled. “What’d he say?”

“Nothing all that bad. I just get the feeling from both of you that––”

“What’d he say?”

“Not much. Swear it. Worst thing was … Said you should’ve never been a cop to begin with. Figures that’s why you lost the limb. Said he thinks you did it because of what happened to your dad.”

“Did what?” I said. “What I did to get my arm blown off?”

“No,” he said. “Became a cop.”

“He have any insight into what vocation I’d be better suited for?”

“He did,” he said with a smile. “You know him. He’s got the only opinion that matters on everything.”

“So what’d he say?”

“Librarian, reporter, or some sort of social worker,” he said. “Way he said ’em … I didn’t take ’em to mean … Didn’t seem to be doing you a bad turn by sayin’ ’em.”

I nodded and we were quiet a moment.

He withdrew a pack of Camels from his coat pocket, shook one halfway out, and offered it to me. I shook my head. Without offering Clip one, he shook the cigarette the rest of the way out, returned the pack to his pocket, tapped it, lit it, and took a long draw from it.

“Forgot to offer Clip one,” I said.

He looked genuinely surprised then apologetic.

“Sorry soldier,” he said. “Didn’t even think about it. He want one?”

“Ask him.”

“You wanna smoke, boy?”

Clip shook his head.

“Meant nothing by it, partner,” he said. “Honest.”

I nodded.

“Put you in a spot to help us without telling Collins?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“Be a problem for you if he finds out?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“On account of what I owe Henry Folsom,” he said. “Could cost me my badge and it wouldn’t matter. He’s been holding a marker of mine for a while. Now he’s cashing it in.”

I nodded.

“Y’all are going to have to fill in a few holes for me, fellas,” he said. “All I know is that you want information on the murder at Johnston’s, help finding a girl that disappeared from there, and you’re looking for an army nurse there the night you was.”

“They were all there the night I was,” I said. “The night we arrived.”

“We?”

“Let’s go,” I said. “I’ll fill you in as we have time along the way. We can’t stop. Don’t need to slow down.”

He nodded. “Where you wanna start?”

“Whatcha got?” I asked.

“Case file on victim––Betty Jane Knox. Address on missing girl––Doris Perkins. Got a pal of mine chasing down a lead on the army nurse. He should have something for me––if there is anything to have––in just a few.”

The truth was I didn’t know what to do next. I just knew we were running out of time and I had to find her, had to do something. I just didn’t have the time to do something wrong.

I could feel myself begin to panic inside, could feel my center threatening to break apart. What should I do? What was the best way to find her? What was the best way to proceed?

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Let’s look at Betty Jane’s file on the way over to Doris Perkins’,” I said. “Then if the lead on the nurse pans out we’ll be ready to break off and deal with it.”

“You’re callin’ the shots,” Shelby said. “So it don’t matter none anyway, but not for nothing, it’s what I would’ve said do.”

I was riding with Dana Shelby in his unmarked, looking at the case file.

Clip was following us in our car.

Tallahassee seemed abandoned, its sidewalks rolled up and stowed, its citizens tucked away in their beds for the night, oblivious to the deeds being done in the dark.

Shelby’s cop car was so clean it seemed to never have been ridden in. I had been in squad cars with no clutter before, a few that even seemed unused in any kind of personal way, but nothing ever this immaculate.

“How long you been assigned this car?”

“Since day one. Why?”

“How long?”

“It’s a ’40, so nearly three years. Why?”

“Seems new.”

“Don’t care for clutter.”

“And not given to overstatement,” I said.

He didn’t seem to know how to respond, so he said, “Let me know you got any questions about the file.”

I returned my attention to it.

There wasn’t much in it and it didn’t take long to look over.

There was exactly nothing in the file. No suspects. No leads. No clues. No nothing.

“Elementary,” I said.

“Solve it already?”

“Just stating the obvious. That it’s obvious.”

He shot me a raised-eyebrow look then returned his gaze to the road.

We were on Old St. Augustine Road, Florida’s first highway, built in 1824 to link Pensacola and St. Augustine. The narrow, meandering two-lane cut out of the dense woods was as Old South as anything you could still see. Above us, seen in the streaks and flashes from the spill of headlights, a heavy canopy of oak and hickory formed a beautiful cover for the road, their large branches draped with thick gray curtains of Spanish moss.

“Obviously a hit,” I said.

“Which begs the question. Why’s a nurse at Johnston’s Sanatorium get taken out by a pro?”

“Y’all have any theories on that?”

He nodded. “Yeah. All the ones in the file.”

I laughed.

“Clearly we got no fuckin’ clue. You?”

I nodded. “As a matter of fact I do.”

“Spill it, pal. I could use some good news on this one.”

“It’s part of a cover-up,” I said. “So’s Doris being missing.”

“You talking spies and intrigue and wartime conspiracy shit?”

“Not exactly. Just a powerful man covering up his crimes––something he’s done his entire life.”

“Whatta you say you tell me the whole story.”

I did.

Well, much of it anyway.

When I was finished he said, “What is it about this girl, man? You gotta tell me.”

“It’s not just who she is,” I said. “It’s who we are together. It’s like finding your best self hidden in another person. It’s what home feels like after being lost at sea or left for dead in a desert. I’d had girlfriends before, had even been in love––a couple of times with great girls. The kind that make you happy and you make your wife. The very best of that is so far from this that it’s like you’re not even talking about the same thing.”

I kept on for a while and when I finished he remained motionless and speechless, and I could tell it was out of a kind of reverence and maybe even a little longing.

It was by far one of the best reactions I’d ever received. Most people were so awkward and self-conscious or cynical and incredulous they either condescended or over-sentimentalized.

***

Doris lived in a red brick bungalow off Baker Street. Her car, a white DeSoto coupe, was parked in the drive.

We parked behind it.

The house and yard were dark and looked deserted––papers piled up, mail overrunning the box, Christmas decorations turned over.

Clip joined us as we approached the house on foot.

“I’a go ’round to the back,” he said.

Shelby tapped on the front door, waited, then tried it. It was unlocked.

The moment the door opened, we could hear it.

The voice was unmistakable. Edward R. Murrow reporting from Great Britain. It was coming from an RCA radio-phonograph, the model the ads had said was the last produced before they went “all out” in war work.

The dark, still house. The disembodied voice. The scene was disconcerting.

And then we found a light. And turned off the radio. And then the house was so quiet, so still, it was even more disturbing.

Nothing in the smell of the place indicated we’d find Doris dead, but the house did have that unmistakable closed-up odor of abandonment, of still stale air and lifelessness, of the slow decay of another kind.

There was very little furniture, but what there was was nice. Floral designed couch and chair, textured wallpapers––all in muted and gray-tinged pinks, greens, and blues.

We looked around a few minutes, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

“No sign of foul play,” Shelby said. “Looks like she just walked out, left her car in the drive and her radio running in here.”

“And didn’t pack or take anything … except … Did you see her purse?”

He began looking around for it.

“Whatta you thinkin’?” he said. “She takes her purse, she just walked out, but if it’s still here she was forcibly taken?”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “But could point in one of those directions.”

“Here it is,” he said.

He had found her purse on the kitchen table partially beneath a newspaper and beside a stack of unopened mail.

“So,” he said. “She was probably taken.”

I nodded. “Probably.”

“But without a struggle.”

“Or one that was straightened back up.”

“Guy takes the time to straighten up any sign of struggle but leaves the radio on?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Car in the drive, radio on. Nobody knows she’s not home.”

“Why not leave a light on then?”

“He could’ve snatched her during the day,” I said. “She had just come in, clicks on the radio, sits down to go through the mail, and he grabs her. Or he did leave a light on and it burned out.”

Clip appeared in the back doorway.

“Hate to interrupt all the detecting you all doing,” he said, “but we got company.”