Reach the Shining River (15 page)

26.

Emmett had a street kid run into Billy Christie’s and give it the once over. It was eleven-thirty on Monday morning, the saloon’s slowest time of the week. He retreated to the other side of the street and waited in a dusty doorway. A harsh sun shone through thin cloud, warming the shoulders of his dark suitcoat and draping the faded buildings in shadowless light.

The kid came out. “He’s there.”

“By himself?”

“He’s reading the paper. In a booth at the back.”

He gave the kid a nickel and went inside. Fat Jack Harte had a copy of the
Journal
spread across the table, open to the sports section. A half-drunk pint of Guinness sat beside his left hand.

As Emmett approached, the big man peered sourly above half-moon reading glasses, the tangled white hairs of his eyebrows inching upwards.

Emmett signaled to the barman. “Two pints, Larry.”

Fat Jack drained his pint, cleared his throat, and spat between his thick legs into the sawdust. “Well,” he said gruffly, “look who’s falling off the wagon.”

Emmett shrugged.

“Seeing the light, counselor?” Fat Jack said.

He settled in opposite and crossed his hands on the table. Behind the bar a radio was tuned to “Amos ‘n’ Andy”. “I need some advice, Jack.”

Jack folded the newspaper and wedged it into the space between his leg and the wall. “Begob, how the mighty have fallen.”

“Is that how you greet another Irishman?”

“Fuck off, Sonny Boy.”

The saloon door swung wide and Redser Malone stumbled in, moist-lipped and blinking, and made his way to the bar. “Look,” Emmett said. “I know there’s no love lost between us, but you’ve been good to my old man.”

“Still good to him.”

“Well, he needs all the help he can get these days.”

“That he does. From every quarter.”

Larry brought the pints and set them on the table. Emmett watched the porter settle. God, how he used to love this stuff. Two years since his last drink. Maybe that’s why things went so wrong with Fay. Him trying to be someone he wasn’t.

“Sláinte, Jack,” he said, drinking deeply and licking the foam from his lip.

Fat Jack left his pint where it was.

“Word on the street,” Emmett said with a level voice, “is that a colored boy was kidnapped from his schoolyard. A week ago today.”

“I would have thought the street was silent from ten floors up.”

“You should come up and visit some time. It’s a hell of a view.”

“I prefer ground level.”

Redser loudly ordered a ball of malt and a chaser, then waved stiffly in their direction. Jack ignored him. “I’m asking myself,” Emmett said, “who would want to kidnap a Negro boy in broad daylight? And why?”

“Why indeed.”

“Unless he knows something.”

“I thought you were here to ask for advice, not to blather on like a niggerlover.”

Jack’s eye had a shine to it. Nothing pleased him more than letting fly with insults.

Emmett lifted and resettled his glass. “A few years ago my old man told me about the time you went to Ireland.”

“Did he, now?” Jack said.

“He said you sold your business and gave all the proceeds to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. That you were in Dublin for a year.”

Jack drank from the fresh pint. “I’ll tell you one thing for nothing: there were no niggers in Dublin.”

“No? I would have thought there were. I would’ve thought that was why you coughed up the dough.”

“Well, now, there’s the difference between us.”

“Whatever the difference, I know that if this kid isn’t back in his home within a few days then all hell is going to break loose in this town. These people don’t like being kept down any more than we Irish do.”

Jack spat again on the floor. “I don’t need any history lessons from the likes of you,” he said. “This town was built by the sweat and blood of men like your father. It’s run by those who know when to talk and when to raise the sword. It will not be intimidated by a few niggers who think that just because they saw a month’s worth of action in France they know how to fight a battle.”

Jack’s face was rough and sagging, with deep creases and fleshy lips that shaped words as if they were spitballs.

“I wish I had your confidence.”

“You should wish you had a lot more. You should wish you still lived where people know the value of friendship and a man’s word.” He jerked his chin up. His mouth was flecked with spittle. “Like your old man.”

“Leave me and my old man out of it,” Emmett said quietly. “And name one person who doubts my word.”

Jack smiled, cradling his pint. “You want advice, I’ll give you some: tell that tupenny sidekick you have working for you to keep his mouth shut. The whole goddamned police department knows he’s snooping around. The boy never could hold his drink.” He pointed at Emmett’s near-empty glass. “You’ll have another,” he said.

Emmett’s head was swimming with the unfamiliar buzz. “I won’t,” he said, rising.

“No, I don’t suppose you will.”

Jack shouted for another pint, donned his reading glasses, and respread the newspaper on the table as if he were alone.

As Emmett walked out he heard Jack say, scarcely audible, “Danny Farrell. Department of Child Welfare.”

When he looked back, Jack was mouthing the words of a sports story, his forefinger gliding beneath the type like a schoolboy’s.

*

Farrell’s office was a windowless cube on the ground floor of the old City Hall, where the smaller cogs in the machine toiled. He was white-haired and stooped, with pale, shaking hands dense with liver spots. Like any Pendergast appointee, he had no time for outsiders.

Emmett started low key, giving him plenty of opportunity to bluff himself into a corner. At first he was evasive and aloof. Emmett kept prodding. It wasn’t long before Farrell lost his temper.

“How would I know?” he snapped.

“Like I said, a boy has been abducted.”

“And like I told
you
, that’s a matter for the police.”

“Of course it is,” Emmett said, slowly showing his hand, “and the Missouri Statutes stipulate that all crimes involving minors get reported to your department within twenty-four hours.”

He leaned sideways in his chair, sizing up Emmett’s suit and wingtips. “Where’d you say you were from?”

“I didn’t.”

“Charlie Johnson send you down here?”

Emmett waited for a moment and said, “The last time I saw Charlie Johnson was at his indictment.”

Farrell shuffled some papers. His sleeves were rolled in the heat of the office and the loose skin of his elbows looked parched and painful. “Could be the file’s still on its way over.”

“Danny.” Emmett reached across the desk and smacked the riffling papers to the desk. Farrell wouldn’t look him in the eye. “The incident happened a week ago.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” Farrell said.

“Maybe you’d like to come down to the courthouse and tell Harry Fleming just exactly what it is you don’t know.”

Farrell’s hands were all over the place: picking lint from his clothes, smoothing his tie, rubbing his badly shaven chin. “Why don’t I make a call,” he said.

“Yeah. Why don’t you.”

While he was out, Emmett scanned the papers on the desk – all routine forms from charitable organizations and adoption agencies. The desk drawers were empty except for a half pint of whiskey and a dirty glass. Emmett loosened his collar; the room was so close his upper lip had beaded in sweat.

Farrell returned and said stiffly, “Seems like there was something of a mix-up. A boy answering to your description has been at Nolan Farms since last Tuesday.”

“Is that right?”

“A runaway, so I’ve been told.”

“What are we going to do about it?”

He checked his watch. “I’ll order a car.”

*

Nolan Farms was a reformatory ten miles east of the city on the grounds of an old Spanish mission. It was where the soft cases were sent and included a dairy farm where the boys worked part-time and a school run by priests. Not a bad place, as such places went.

On the way out Emmett sat in front, beside the driver. The sun had penetrated the dirty clouds and lit the brown hills with shafts like church light. Farrell chattered nervously behind him. “It’s easy to lose track of these kids. With the curfew and such, they get picked up and brought in and passed from pillar to post. Maybe they see things down the station that a kid shouldn’t see. Anyhow, when you go to process them, they clam up. Can’t remember their own names, never mind where they live. Too damn scared to talk.”

“Are you telling me that Wardell Gray was picked up on a curfew violation?”

“Could be – if it’s him. Or maybe he was truant.”

“He was taken from his school playground. During
recess
.”

“Runaway. That’s what the report says.”

Emmett waved impatiently. “Who was the arresting officer?”

“That seems to be unclear.”

“Is there anything that isn’t unclear?”

Farrell stared out the window at the passing cottonwoods. “People have no idea,” he muttered. “No idea at all.”

The reformatory superintendent met them at the entrance. Another machine functionary and jumpy as a colt. His teeth were stained yellow and his eyes flicked back and forth as he spoke.

“I’m going to need a release form,” he said. “Signed by the proper authority.”

“Farrell here will sign,” Emmett said.

“No can do. City staff can only release boys in cases where there is a legal guardian on record.”

“Wardell Gray has a legal guardian. His mother, I believe that would be.”

“Not on the record.”

“Why hasn’t she been contacted?”

The super looked at Farrell, who shrugged. They both knew the bind they were in. Let the kid go and there would be hell to pay at City Hall. But stonewalling would be worse.

“Bring the kid here,” Emmett said.

The super did not move or speak. Farrell was looking out the window, letting the guy twist in the wind. They could hear the dairy cows lowing.

“Listen,” Emmett said. “Either I leave here with the kid or I leave with you.”

“Me?”

“The County Prosecutor will need you to explain why I’ve returned empty-handed.”

The super left and returned five minutes later with a young priest and the boy, who was light-skinned, with a large, round forehead, frightened eyes, and closely cropped hair. He clutched the priest’s hand and was breathing quickly.

Emmett hunkered down and looked the kid in the eye. “Wardell,” he said.

“He hasn’t spoken since he arrived here,” the priest said. His pale Irish eyes glanced from Wardell to the super.

“Give us some privacy,” Emmett said to the other men.

“This is highly irregular,” the super said.

Emmett stared him down, and the two men left.

As soon as they were gone, the priest spoke to Wardell and had him sit in the most comfortable chair in the room. “He does not have the most pleasant associations with this office,” he said to Emmett in an Irish accent.

“I’m here to bring him home,” Emmett said. He smiled at Wardell. “Back to his mother.”

The blankness in Wardell’s face did not change.

“Hasn’t said a word?”

“The odd remark to myself. Never when the boss is around.”

“About who brought him here, or what happened?”

The priest shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

Wardell was picking at the ragged skin around his fingernails.

“How would you like to take a ride, Father?”

The priest nodded in the direction of where the super had gone.

“Don’t worry about him,” Emmett said.

27.

The car ran smooth over the blacktop. Wardell silently named the trees as they passed. Sycamore and cypress. Hackberry, hickory, honey locust. And towering high in the low sun, his favorites, the yellow-leaved cottonwoods. Father Houlihan told him these names. Taught him how to milk a cow, too.

Behind the trees was a field of corn stubble. “Look over there,” Father Houlihan said, pointing.

A gasoline tractor pulled a flatbed wagon. Closer in, a Negro field hand stared at the car. He held an axe in his hands.

“It’s mostly horses they’d be using in this area,” the priest said in his funny voice.

Mr. Whelan smoothed his hair with his hand and said, “Nice to see someone prospering, dust bowl and all.”

After a while they could see the city in the distance. Wardell’s belly went all funny, like had to go to the privy. His hands shook. Father Houlihan reached across the seat and touched his arm.

“Your mother’s waiting for you,” the priest said.

“Yes sir.”

He watched the landscape whiz by. The hills moved up and down in a blur. In his mind, someone was running through the trees, keeping up with the car. Up and over the hills he went. Nothing could stop him. Not fences or ditches or groves of trees. Wardell watched him and his stomach felt better. The runner turned his head and winked at him. It was Satch, Satchel Paige, strong and fast and in control.

*

Mr. Whelan and Mr. Watkins went into the parlor and shut the door behind them. Mrs. Watkins took Wardell into the kitchen. She petted him and made funny noises and her eyes were shiny. Father Houlihan sat at the table.

“Would you like some coffee, Reverend? Or perhaps some lemonade?”

“I’m grand, Mrs. Watkins. But maybe the boy would like some.”

She bent over and kissed Wardell. All kind of smells came off her: perfume and soap and powder. Not the simple smell of his mama.

“Who gave you these clothes?” she asked him, straightening the cotton vest he wore.

“The clothes he arrived in are over there,” the priest said, pointing at a paper bag near the door. “What he’s wearing is what we gave him.”

Mrs. Watkins pulled at her dress and shook her head. Wardell hunched on the wooden chair, his hands between his knees.

“He’s been properly cared for,” Father Houlihan said. “Fed well and kept clean.”

Tears ran down her cheeks. “Why?” she said.

He lifted his hands. It was like he was going to cry too. “I didn’t know. Isn’t that right, Wardell?”

Wardell said nothing.

The door to the kitchen opened and the men walked in. Mr. Watkins had put on his jacket and Mr. Whelan had his hand on his shoulder.

“It’s up to his mother,” Mr. Watkins said.

“But you can put in a good word.”

“I could.”

Mr. Whelan shook Wardell’s hand. His face was serious and scrunched up, like he was going to make a speech. But all he said was good-bye. The priest touched his hair and gave him a picture of St. Theresa.

After they were gone, Mr. Watkins stood at the kitchen window for a long time, staring into the street. The grandfather clock in the sitting room chimed five times.

He took his gold watch from his jacket pocket and reset the time. “What are you waiting for?” his wife said to him.

He took his handkerchief from his pocket and used it to pat Wardell’s face.

“C’mon, son,” he said. “Let’s take you home to your mama.”