Browning Without a Cause

by Peter Corris

  This was the opportunity I'd been hoping for. I furrowed my brow. 'It's a long time ago and I've moved around a good deal. I'm not sure.'

  'Who was your physician?'

  Firm ground. 'Old "Spot" Barclay. A great guy, but he's long dead, god rest his soul.' This doctor had a slightly preachy look to him, so I threw that in for good measure and it didn't seem to do any harm. 'My wife might be able to find them,' I went on, 'if I could get a message to her…'

  'That might be possible. I'll see what I can do. Meantime, 185, back to the ward with you for a rest and we'll start the tests tomorrow.'

  'The tests, what do they consist of?'

  'Oh, just taking some blood samples for a start. Nothing too drastic. We'll know the result inside a week.'

  Not a bad start. 'And if it is there, what then?'

  He clapped me on the shoulder and I allowed myself to rock back a little although he was a weedy little type I could've snapped in two. 'We can handle it. Clear it up in no time in a man with a constitution like yours. Don't worry.'

  'Thanks, doctor.'

  I was escorted back to the ward and made sure to move slowly and take frequent rests. Back when I had TB I remember that shortness of breath and physical weakness were part of the problem.

  The guard wasn't sympathetic. 'Bad news?'

  'Maybe.'

  'Tough. One of the guys in your ward died this morning. You could be next.'

  I ignored that and moved even more slowly until he was hissing with impatience.

  Back in the ward the atmosphere was gloomy. There were two unoccupied beds — mine and the one immediately opposite. Joe 'Knuckleball' Faulkner. He was a lifer in the true sense of the word — sentenced in the late 1920s when he was a few days short of his twenty-first birthday for the murder of a policeman, he'd served over thirty years and must have played thousands of games of prison baseball — hence his nickname. He'd chewed tobacco incessantly the whole of the time he was inside and the cancer ate his throat out quickly and then took its time about the rest of him. The other men were a collection of long-term prisoners, a couple of them soldiers, serving time for crimes of violence. One had heart trouble, one had cancer and the other complaints I forget.

  'Hey, Dick,' the other cancer sufferer said, striving hard to be tough and buoyant, 'you playing in the big league now?'

  I was going by the name of Dick Kelly and had told them I was in for shooting an officer. It seemed to be something they could all understand. I shrugged and lit a cigarette, equally tough. 'Could be. Lung trouble, maybe.'

  'Naw, they can fix that shit. Let's play cards. Winner buys some juju juice for a toast to the old 'Knuckleball'.'

  The next day I was given a pen and paper and instructed to write to my wife asking her to find the medical records. She was to send them to a post office box in Kansas City. Tricky stuff. Louise, of course, wouldn't have the faintest idea of what I was talking about. That didn't worry me — all I wanted to do was tell her where I was and beg her to do something to get me out. But how?

  'Any of you boys know anything about invisible ink?'

  'Lemon juice,' one said.

  I nodded. 'Yeah, I just happen to have a lemon here with me. Thanks.'

  The heart patient, a morose type focussed hard on his impending death, sat up in bed, momentarily interested. 'You got all you need. Piss'll do it, providing it gets looked at in a couple of days in a dry climate.'

  I wrote a straightforward message to Louise asking her to look for the records of my treatment for tuberculosis in Montana in 1935 and asking her to forward them to the address designated. I said I was well and hoped to see her soon. No further explanations as per orders. I pissed into a cup, sharpened a match and wrote as thickly as I could at the bottom of the page:

  Louise — I am in Leavenworth prison. Tell Bobby Silk he'll made a million out of the story if he can get me out. Relying on you, all my love, Dick.

  The words disappeared and I handed the paper and pen over to the guard. It felt like sealing a message in a bottle and chucking it into the sea. I wonder if that has ever worked?

  They took some blood and ran their tests. I continued not to eat and to smoke as much as I could. I felt sick all right — sick with hope that alternated with despair. The doctor told me that the tests were 'ambiguous' and would have to be done again. Ok by me, although the company in the ward was beginning to get me down. A few days later a guard opened the door and beckoned me forward. I threw down my cards and shuffled over in my slippers and pyjamas. I realised I was becoming an invalid despite myself.

  'More tests?'

  He looked at me with distaste. 'Shave yourself and get your clothes on. You've got a visitor.'

  25

  'HI there, Dick. Nice try.'

  The man waiting for me in the otherwise empty visiting room was FBI agent Burgess. Brown suit this time but otherwise everything just exactly as it should be. He had a slim briefcase on the desk in front of him and a packet of Chesterfield cigarettes. He wasn't smoking and he didn't get up to shake my hand. In fact he hardly moved at all. Disappointment flooded through me but I tried not to show it. I dropped into the chair opposite him and reached for the cigarettes. The guard stepped forward but Burgess gave him a nod and he pulled back. Another nod and he left the room. Burgess opened the briefcase and took out my letter to Louise.

  'Like I say — nice try.'

  I shrugged and lit the cigarette. After the prison-issue plug it tasted as if it had been cured in honey. My time on the silence wing came in handy — I decided to let Burgess do all the talking, at least at first.

  'You reckon your story's worth a million? You're wrong. It isn't worth a plugged nickel.'

  I shrugged again and went on smoking. He was here talking to me and that had to mean something.

  'In fact, you haven't got a story. All you've got is a chance to stay alive by keeping your mouth shut.'

  It was time to speak. 'I wouldn't call rotting in here being alive. You want to try it some time, Burgess. It'd be valuable experience for you.'

  'You dumb ass. I'm not talking about Leavenworth. I'm talking about the outside. Being free.'

  I glanced around to make sure the guard had closed the door. Then I looked under the table and overhead at the light. Burgess stared at me as if I'd gone mad, but I was looking for wires, microphones, tape machines.

  'What the hell are you doing?'

  I leaned closer to him, so close I could smell his shaving cologne and the oil he put on his hair. 'Has it happened then?' I whispered. 'We don't get to listen to the news in here and the only magazines I see are Ring Illustrated and Hot Rods.'

  I wasn't looking forward to being, at however a long and protected remove, the man who killed Lucky Luciano, but I knew that if I stayed in the prison I'd die anyway of boredom or rotgut liquor.

  Burgess put the letter carefully away in his briefcase and took out a newspaper. It was the Washington Post and it was open on the second page and folded to show the headline: LUCIANO ARRESTED IN SICILY. There was a photograph of Charley Lucky flanked by two Italian cops wearing big guns. Luciano didn't look too worried. Quite by accident, my eye dropped to another headline: BRITISH COMMANDOS TO FIGHT IN CYPRUS. At it again.

  It might sound dumb, but I had trouble taking in the significance of the item about Luciano. I was overwhelmed by the fact of the newspaper itself. I wanted to grab it and read everything on every page, study every photograph, catch up on the football scores and see who was fighting who.

  'I don't get it,' I said, reaching for another cigarette.

  Burgess took one himself and lit it, leaving me to light my own. 'You're off the hook, Browning. Luciano got wind of what was in store for him and he got out of Mexico pronto. They picked him up in Italy, but that won't worry him none.'

  I nodded. 'He doesn't look upset.'

  'He owns more cops there than a dog has fleas.'

  More even than he owns here, I was thinking. Someone had to have tipped him
off. But it wasn't the moment to make the comment.

  'So you don't need your patsy?'

  'That's right. Now we've only got one little problem — this idea of yours to sell your story.'

  'I was desperate,' I said. 'It was just something I said to get my agent fired up. He wouldn't help me unless he thought there was a buck in it.'

  'We understand. Still, there's a worry in some circles. Pity we don't have that limey thing — the official secrets act. We could get you to sign that and shut you up forever.'

  'I won't say anything. You have my word.'

  I tried to say this with force and conviction which is hard to do when you're wearing prison denims, have your hair cut like a boot-camp rookie and haven't had a decent meal in weeks. Burgess snorted and took some more papers from his bag.

  'I wouldn't piss on your word. To me, you're a bum and I'd plant you in a desert under a cactus if I was running things. But I'm not so here's what's going to happen. You're going to sign these papers.' He detached some sheets and thrust them at me. 'They're back-dated and they induct you in the lowest possible rank in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Then you sign these.' He hammered his fist on another set of forms. 'That discharges you as of now. With no pension or benefits I might add. As a former member of the FBI you're forbidden to publish anything relating to your service in the Bureau without express permission from the Director. Mr Hoover ain't likely to do that.'

  'I suppose not. But this can't work. I'm bound to be asked questions about the Luciano thing, driving him to Mexico.'

  Burgess shook his head. 'Case of mistaken identity. We got the cover-up all in place. It's old news already and if you deny everything the news hounds lose interest.'

  'Why are you doing this for me.'

  He sneered and laughed at the same time, not easy to do, but the effect is to leave you in no doubt about your worm status. 'None of it's for you. There's a bigger game which you don't know about and never will.'

  'I agree to this and then I'm out?'

  'As soon as they can process your ass through the system here. And Browning, the penalty for violation of this regulation is ten years in the Federal penitentiary. Guess where that time would most likely be spent?'

  Burgess produced a pen from his jacket, uncapped it and handed it to me. I signed the first set of papers in three of four places marked with a cross. I put the pen down, looked at him and grinned. We're colleagues, Mr Burgess.'

  'You're insulting me. Sign the others before I break your fuckin' nose.'

  'Just one thing. I'm not leaving here with you. I didn't like that remark about the desert. I want independent transport.'

  'I wouldn't walk you to the door, Browning. I'm out of here as soon as you sign. You'll get a bus ticket good for seventy-two hours to any state in the country.'

  I signed and he gathered up the papers. 'Leave me the Post,' I said. 'I want to hear how Ike's hitting his long irons these days.'

  He snatched the paper and tucked it away. 'You got no respect. I'm real sorry this plan didn't work. I reckon you'd have been feeding the fishes within days.'

  'That's what I think, too,' I said.

  I wasn't sure I was clear of the lime pit until I was escorted to the clearing room in the administration block — one of the places I could see from the hospital ward window. The grass and flower beds looked even better close up. I signed some more documents and was surprised to discover that I'd earned thirty-eight dollars and forty-three cents for the work I'd done in gaol. But Burgess and McAlpine had cleaned everything out of my room in Marfa, including my ready cash, amounting to more than six hundred dollars so I wasn't going to have to beg a meal on the outside. The only thing missing was the .38. Within an hour of suffering Burgess' last insult, I was dressed in my own clothes, which hung very loosely on my gaunt frame, and standing outside the prison waiting for a ride into town. I never heard any more about my blood tests.

  It was a fine evening, I remember, but I wouldn't have cared if the rain had been coming down along with snow, sleet and a fifty mile an hour wind. A prison truck dropped me at the bus depot, but I did what every released convict who hasn't got religion or lost his mind while in the joint does first thing — I went straight to the nearest bar. The neon Budweiser sign flickering in the dying light was one of the prettiest things I'd ever seen, and the smell of beer, smoke and sweat was like French perfume after the disinfectant and stale air of the prison. I ordered a beer and double shot of whisky and drank them slowly, savouring every drop.

  There was a glass-fronted case of cigars behind the bar and I bought six panatellas, lit up and began what has been nearly thirty years of devoted cigar smoking.

  The bar was slowly filling up and getting noisy and I knew I should phone Louise before the din got too loud. But the first drinks had been so good. I ordered another shot and chaser. I felt the prison odour lifting off me and had an impulse to straighten my shoulders and stand tall. I realised that I'd been slumping more and more each day. A man standing next to me sniggered as I pulled myself erect.

  'When you get out, buddy?'

  I looked at him carefully. I was still thinking in prison terms — could this guy hurt me? Could I use him? He was middle-aged, balding, fat-gutted. A working stiff, construction maybe or a truck-driver. Harmless. I had a strong impulse to talk to someone, anyone.

  'Just now.'

  'How long you serve?'

  'Not long but way too long.'

  He nodded and looked down into his beer. The pink bald spot at the crown of his head made him seem innocent and vulnerable or even trustworthy, like a priest. I wanted to tell him all about it and had to take a long pull on the whisky to stop myself. What if he was a plant, put right there to see if I could keep my mouth shut?

  He sighed. 'I was inside myself once. Sure was a bad time. I remember…'

  But I'd downed my shot, stuck my cigar in my mouth and was moving away towards the phone holding my beer in a shaking hand. I was about to drop the dime when I had a sort of nightmare vision that the place was full of FBI men and that the barman — a stocky, bullet-headed character — was J. Edgar Hoover's brother. I had to get out of there. Probably it was just the effects of the rich cigar and potent liquor on a much-abused nervous system.

  I used the ticket they'd given me to catch a Greyhound to Denver. Then it was over the Rockies and down to Las Vegas and on to LA, paying my own way. As best I could without getting thrown off as a pervert or madman, I inspected every person on that bus, suspecting a G-man's badge behind every lapel. Everyone, that is, except the coloured people sitting at the back. This was long before the FBI started recruiting blacks and Hispanics. Most of the passengers rushed off to gamble during the two-hour stopover in Las Vegas but not me. I still couldn't quite believe that I'd got out of the mess and that the FBI wasn't setting me up in some way. I went to a diner and ordered a big meal which I ate with nothing to drink but coffee. I wasn't taking any chances of letting my guard down while drunk. I sat with my back to a wall, jumped when the waitress brought the coffee, stared at everyone who came in and twitched when anyone looked at me. Of course, because I was behaving so strangely, plenty did.

  I went through the same suspicious routine before the run to Los Angeles, moving around the bus, trying to detect undercover men. The fact that it was night and most of the passengers fell asleep almost straight away didn't help. I told myself I was on a path to the nuthouse if I kept this up and tried to settle my nerves by reading my way through the bunch of papers and magazines I'd bought at the bus station. There were riots in India and Argentina but the fighting had stopped in the Middle East. The German novelist, Thomas Mann, none of whose books I'd read, needless to say, had died at eighty. Good innings. The writing game seems to be good for longevity, which may be why I've taken it up, in a sense.54

  Somehow this information comforted and reassured me. The world was still the same place, still crazy, a mixture of fun and fury. Nevertheless I nearly went through the roo
f as I felt a tap on my shoulder, just as I was drifting off to sleep.

  'Mind if I have the sports page, bud?'

  A man wearing a string tie and a ten gallon hat was bending over me, breathing bourbon fumes into my face. He smiled, showing a gold tooth.

  'I see there's a story about Rocky fighting old Archie.55 You a fight fan?'

  'Yes, yes, sure I am,' I stammered. 'Yeah, take it. It's all yours.'

  'Thanks, bud.'

  I believed him. That natural and ordinary interest was all he wanted to satisfy. He was what he appeared to be, completely uninterested in me except as a guy who happened to have a newspaper. This simple exchange did me a lot of good and I fell asleep and stayed under until we rolled into LA on a clear, bright morning the way they used to be back then and haven't been for twenty years.

  I strolled into the depot and went to a washroom to freshen up before calling Louise. What I saw in the mirror was a stranger — gaunt, crop-headed, pale-skinned, with a furtive, haunted look. Such hair as the prison barber had left was almost completely white as was my two-day beard. My teeth were stained yellow from the excessive smoking. In the three months since I'd left Hollywood I'd aged twenty years and I looked like an old man.

  26

  CAN'T let Louise see me like this. As Richard Kelly, I checked into a good hotel off Hollywood Boulevard and set about restoring the damage. I went to a dentist, had my teeth cleaned and some other restorative work done. Putting on a bit of condition was no problem — regular decent meals with plenty of beer, wine and bourbon would take care of that most agreeably. Los Angeles was definitely the place for male cosmeticising. A hairdressing establishment in Beverly Hills dyed and shaped my too-short but still thick hair and eyebrows, leaving a distinguished amount of grey at the temples. They gave me a manicure and a facial that helped to smooth away some of the effects of manual labour, poor diet and squinting in bad lights.

  Clothes were the next priority. None of the stuff I'd worn in Texas fitted me or would do. I threw the lot away except the comfortable boots and bought a sports outfit and a suit, a couple of shirts, ties, three pairs of socks and shoes and two new hats. All this took about a week. The hotel had a swimming pool and I spent as much time in the sun as possible, re-acquiring the tan I was famous for. By the end of that time my funds were getting very low. Losing fifteen years and gaining ten pounds hadn't come cheap.