Miss Lizzie (22 page)

“Saw him coming out of the Burton place. With my own eyes.”

“Actually saw him coming out of the house?”

“Coming down the porch. Bold as brass at first, and then he saw me and got all shifty-eyed the way they do. Wouldn't look me in the face when he passed me. I knew right away he was up to no good.”

“Does he know you?”

“Course he does.”

Mr. Slocum turned to me. “Amanda, do you know if your stepmother ordered a chicken for Tuesday?”

“I don't think so. But Charlie could've come by to see if we wanted one. He did that sometimes. Really, he wouldn't hurt anyone.”

Mr. Slocum asked Hornsby, “Have you told the police what you saw?”

“Not yet. I will, though. You can bet on it. Then I saw in the papers yesterday about the reward. Thought I might as well do myself some good while I do my duty. Someone's gotta do something. Take a stand.”

“Against what?” asked Mr. Slocum.

“The niggers. All they do is cause trouble. Look at Chicago.” Two years before, Chicago had been torn apart by a race riot that began when white bathers had stoned a young black boy who swam, unwitting, across the invisible line that segregated the Lake Michigan beach. The boy had drowned. Over the next week, fifteen whites and twenty-three blacks were killed, and the U.S. army was called in as a peace-keeping force.

“They come floodin' up here from the South like locusts,” said Hornsby. “They want our jobs, they want our women.”

“According,” said Miss Lizzie, speaking for the first time, “to whom?”

Hornsby looked at her. “Common knowledge.”

She pursed her lips. “Common indeed.”

“Mr. Hornsby,” said Mr. Slocum, “you wouldn't be, by any chance, a member of the Invisible Empire?”

“I'm a Kleagle,” said Hornsby. A Kleagle (as Mr. Slo cum later explained) was a representative of, and sold memberships in, the Ku Klux Klan. “And proud of it. Someone's got to do something to save this country from the niggers and the Jews. The nigger population, right here in town, has doubled since before the war.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Slocum. “From ten to twenty. And correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Hornsby, but aren't you from thè South yourself?”

“So what?” Hornsby said. “I came up here to get away from their kind. Raise my family where the living was clean and pure. And now look. Niggers everywhere. Killing white women in broad daylight.”

“I think,” said Miss Lizzie, “that we've heard enough. Thank you for coming, Mr. Hornsby.”

Hornsby uncrossed his arms and put them along the arms of the chair. He looked at Mr. Slocum, at Miss Lizzie, at Boyle, who smiled pleasantly at him, smoke trailing from his nostrils. “I shoulda known,” Hornsby said. “I shoulda known you'd try to screw me outta the money.”

Mr. Slocum calmly said, “Thank you for coming, Hornsby.”

Hornsby glared at him. “You a nigger lover, Slocum? I hear you Harvard boys are like that, when you're not too busy lovin' each other.”

Boyle put his cigarette carefully into the ashtray, then stood up. “Okay, ace,” he said. “Time to get back to the padded room and count your toes.”

Hornsby stood to face him. “Whatta we got here? 'Nother nigger lover?”

“Nah,” said Boyle. “I'm a nigger. I'm passing.” He jerked his head toward the door. “Out.”

“You gonna make me, fatboy?” His knobby hands opened and closed.

Boyle smiled sleepily. He was a head shorter than Hornsby. “That'll be swell,” he said. “I haven't stomped a moron before lunch in almost a week.”

Hornsby swung his big right fist. I have never seen anyone move as quickly as Boyle did then. He stepped forward, caught Hornsby's swing on his left forearm, then smashed his own right fist, swiftly, twice, at Hornsby's face, driving the big man back. His left arm slipped away from Hornsby's right and the fist crashed down on Hornsby's jaw. The big man's head jerked back and he sat down, legs asprawl. His nose was bleeding and his eyes were dazed.

Boyle came around, grabbed him by the left arm, tugged him effortlessly to his feet, and held him there. “Gotta watch those carpets, ace. They slip, you can take a nasty fall.”

Hornsby had his hand to his mouth. He said, “You knocked a tooth loose, you son of a bitch.”

“Put it under your pillow,” said Boyle. “Maybe you can pick up some pocket change.”

Hornsby yanked his arm free. “You gonna be sorry, fatboy.”

“Sure. See you in the funny papers.” He stabbed his thumb over his shoulder. “Be missing.”

Hornsby, his eyes narrowed, looked around the room. “You people all gonna be sorry.”

Boyle took a step forward. “You looking for some more change?”

Hornsby edged back, still unsteady on his feet. He glanced around the room again, then turned and walked, swaying slightly, to the door. He opened it, looked back to Boyle, and said, “I'll see you again, fat-boy.”

Boyle smiled. “Be a treat, ace.”

As Hornsby left, Boyle returned to his chair. He sat down and stared at his right hand while he flexed it for a moment, opened and closed, opened and closed, as if making sure that everything still worked. Apparently, everything did. He shook it once, as though it were wet, then plucked his Fatima from the ashtray and said to Miss Lizzie, “Sorry about that. Didn't look like he wanted to go.”

Miss Lizzie smiled. “No apology is necessary, Mr. Boyle. I'm very grateful that you handled it as you did. And for doing so without damaging any of the furniture. You do have,” she added, “a very nice jab.”

Boyle grinned behind a cone of smoke. “Thanks.”

I said, “You were great, Mr. Boyle.”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “A lucky punch.”

“I'd like to add my thanks as well,” said Mr. Slocum, smiling. “For your springing so quickly into action in defense of my honor.”

“Hey.” Boyle grinned. “No sweat, counselor. Professional courtesy.” He looked at Miss Lizzie. “Okay. Where do you want me to start?”

“I think, as I said before, that you should begin with Mrs. Burton's friends here in town. I'm sure Amanda can give you a list of them. I realize that it's going to be difficult, but perhaps one of them does know something about this blackmail.”

“Alleged blackmail,” said Mr. Slocum.

She nodded. “If you like.”

Boyle asked her, “You want me to talk to this Charlie, the guy Hornsby was gassing about? The chicken guy?”

“I think it might be a good idea, yes. From what I know him of him, Amanda is right. He couldn't have been responsible for Mrs. Burton's death. But according to your good friend Mr. Hornsby, Charlie was in the neighborhood at the time. It may be that he saw something.”

“According to Hornsby,” said Boyle, “Charlie wasn't the only guy in the neighborhood at the time.”

“Yes,” said Miss Lizzie. “I realize that. Hornsby has admitted, obviously, that he was there himself. But can you think of a single reason why he might kill Mrs. Burton?”

“Not yet,” admitted Boyle. “But I'll keep working on it.”

After the meeting, Mr. Slocum returned to his office, Miss Lizzie went upstairs—to read, she said—and Boyle sat with me in the parlor, writing down in his notebook the names of Audrey's acquaintances. There were not many. Mrs. Mortimer; Mrs. Sheehy, the local milliner; Mrs. Maybrick, who was spending, with her banker husband, her first summer at the shore; and Mrs. Marlowe.

“But Mrs. Marlowe hasn't come by much lately,” I told him.

“Why's that?” Boyle asked, looking up from the notebook.

“I don't know. Maybe she hasn't been feeling well. She's real old, almost eighty, and she has a hard time moving around.”

“Who is this Miss Marlowe?”

“She's sort of the important lady here in town. She has a big lawn party every year, at the end of the summer, and everyone wants to go. Do you know what I mean?”

He nodded. “The big cigar. Your stepmother ever go over to her house?”

“She used to, at the beginning of the summer, but I don't think she's gone there for a while.”

“How long a while are we talking?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe a month. Do you think it's important?”

“Dunno. Have to find out, looks like. Anybody else you can think of?”

“No, not really. Audrey didn't have too many friends.”

“Yeah.” He folded the notebook, slipped it into his inside jacket pocket. “Okay, kid, thanks.”

“Mr. Boyle?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you can find out who killed Audrey?”

“I dunno, kid. Gonna give it a try. But usually, see, it's the cops work these things out best.” He took a drag of his Fatima.

“But they think my brother did it.”

“Because he took off,” he said, exhaling: “Someone takes off, right after a murder, the cops gotta get concerned. Only natural. But don't sweat it. Soon as he turns up again, he'll set 'em straight.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Sure I do. Seen it happen a million times.”

I nodded, grateful for the reassurance. “I guess you've been a Pinkerton man for a long time.”

“Forever,” he said, and sucked on the Fatima again.

“Did you ever shoot anybody?”

“Shot
at
a guy or two. Never hit 'em. Not much good with guns.”

“You're a really good boxer, though.”

“Nah.”

“But I saw you, with that man Hornsby.”

“Hornsby's not much. Ten years ago, maybe. Right now he's coasting on history.”

“But he looks really strong.”

“Maybe. But he's not tough.”

“They aren't the same thing?”

He shook his head. “Strong is outside. Tough is inside.”

“You mean a person can be tough without being strong?”

“Happens all the time.” He grinned. “Miz Borden now. Not all that strong, probably, but tough as a bag of nails.”

“She's really been good to me.”

He nodded. “She's a piece of work, all right.”

“She didn't do it,
did
she, Mr. Boyle?”

He inhaled on his cigarette. “Do what?”

“You know. Back in Fall River.”

He shrugged. “Jury acquitted her.”

“But some people still think she did it.”

He shook his head again. “You can't worry about that stuff. You gotta deal with people the way they deal with you. They treat you fair, you treat them fair. Simple.”

“What about if they
don't
treat you fair?”

“Then you treat 'em the same way.”

I considered this for a moment. “I guess,” I said, “you've got to be pretty tough to do that.”

“Sometimes.” He smiled. “Sometimes you just gotta be smart.”

“Do you think Mr. Slocum is tough?”

He leaned forward, tapped his cigarette into the ashtray, leaned back. “I think he's smart,” he said. He shrugged. “Being tough isn't something lawyers gotta worry about, generally. Small town like this, subject probably never comes up.”

“You think he's not tough just because he lives in a small town?”

He grinned. “Hey. I didn't say that. Maybe he's tough, maybe he isn't. No way of telling.”

“You can tell if Miss Lizzie is tough or not.”

He laughed. “You'd make a good lawyer yourself, kid. I guess you like him, huh?”

“Like who?” I could feel my face flushing elaborately.

Laughing again, he said, “Don't worry. Secret's safe with me. I—”

He looked off to the left. Someone was knocking at the front door.

I sprang from my seat. “Excuse me,” I said. “I've got to see who that is.”

Boyle jammed his cigarette into the pile of butts filling the ashtray, then stood up, still grinning. “That's okay. I gotta go anyway. Come on, I'll walk you to the door.”