Gentle Murderer

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “Would you happen to remember any of the boys involved, Miss Hanrahan, maybe a little fellow who happened to get badly beaten?”

  “That’s twenty-five years ago and there was a few of them got bloodied up. Do you know the boy’s name, Father?”

  If I knew his name … the priest thought. “The name escapes me, Miss Hanrahan. But he probably wasn’t as big as the rest of the boys. It was about the time of his first Communion, and he got a prayerbook for the occasion. It might even have been around the time of the bishop’s letter. He lost the prayerbook because he was fighting. Then later, his mother wanted him to be a priest …”

  “Wanted him to be!” Miss Hanrahan interrupted. “She sent him away to be one. Mary Brandon. I can see her as clear as if she was sitting there where you are this minute.”

  Which, Father Duffy realized, was clearer than he could see Miss Hanrahan for that instant. It could be all wrong, of course, but he prayed that it was not.

  “Mary Brandon. God knows what ever became of the poor woman. She had but the one son and a man for a husband I wouldn’t wish on the devil for company in hell. Father, I know of nothing filthier in this world than a drunken man when he’s filthy. That was Big Tim Brandon. There wasn’t a clean word came out of his mouth when he was drunk, nor a kind one when he was sober. He worked in the railroad yards in them days. And every time he got paid he headed out into the hills and filled up on the bootleg stuff. It was prohibition then. And Mary was as gentle a soul as you ever met. She did beautiful sewing. It was her kept the boy and herself alive. I’m sure he never gave her a cent. He wrote to her folks in Ireland, you know, when she was a slip of a girl, and she came over a greenhorn and married him. I’ll say this for Mary, there was never a word of complaint on her lips. And the things they say he used to do to her. I wouldn’t repeat them to a priest.”

  “The boy,” Father Duffy said. “What became of him?”

  “Well, the time you were thinking about, him getting beat up? God knows, the both of them were beat up by the father often enough and never a word, but when Father McGohey took the prayerbook away from little Tim—Big Tim and Little Tim we called them—when he took the prayerbook, Mary came up here and gave him a tongue-lashing to do him the rest of his days, priest or no priest It was my notion afterwards that Mary herself went to the bishop but I never let on. What’s the use making more trouble when there’s trouble enough already. Do you see, Father?”

  “I see,” Father Duffy said, seeing only that here was a beginning for a hard and bitter life for a boy when his mother came to his defense among competitive youngsters.

  “Little Tim was a bright little thing, awful bookish we used to say, and he was terrible religious. He was never an altar boy, his mother feeling that way about Father McGohey, but there wasn’t a morning him and her didn’t come to Mass, except when the father was home. The boy’d come alone then. And after church them days, if there wasn’t school, he’d go off wandering in the hills. He didn’t want to be home when the father was there, you see, and the other kids didn’t care much for him.

  “When he got older, fourteen or fifteen maybe, Mary was all the time writing to one order after another to see if they’d take him in to study for the priesthood. She wouldn’t ask Father McGohey. But what she doesn’t know to this day, if she’s alive—it was Father McGohey wrote to a seminary out in Indiana some place and got them to write to her saying if her boy had a vocation they’d be glad to have him. All they wanted was the recommendation of the parish priest. She came up then and asked. Father McGohey never let on, and he wrote a fine letter. I remember the boy going off on the bus. He had the look of the angels about him.”

  “How old was he then?”

  “No more than fifteen. And we never saw sign of him since to know whether or not he was ordained.”

  “That would have been about 1932 or ’33, wouldn’t it?”

  “It was the depression, I know that. Oh, and I know prohibition was over. Big Tim was drunk at the Sunshine Inn the very day his boy left. When the bus drove by there he threw his glass through the window.”

  Father Duffy sighed. It was small wonder the old woman remembered the Brandons. He had expected a rotten story. Now he began to wonder about Big Tim. He doubted that he would get that part of it from Miss Hanrahan. But a man didn’t debase himself like that with no reason at all.

  “What happened to the parents, Miss Hanrahan?”

  “The funny thing, Father. Big Tim seemed to pull himself together for a while after the boy was gone. He’d even come to church with her of a Sunday. But he was too far gone. He took to drink again and he was all the time drooling tobacco juice down the sides of his mouth. Terrible it looked. Disgusting …”

  “… If I could only keep my mouth clean …” Father Duffy remembered the words in the confessional, the description of the dream.

  “And Mary got kind of queer and strait-laced. Wouldn’t wear anything but black. To make an end of the story, Big Tim was lying drunk on the tracks one night and a train went over him. Killed him dead. The boy never came home for the funeral. And it wasn’t long after that Mary went out to live with her sister in Chicago. Maybe a year or so later it was, I got a queer letter from her. She said she wanted to give me her address in case Little Tim was ever looking for her. Wasn’t that a strange thing, Father, and him in Indiana, the next state to Chicago?”

  Father Duffy nodded. “Do you have the address?”

  “I think I can find it for you, Father. It came right when Father McGohey died and I put it with the parish records he left. But the boy never came back.”

  19

  IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when Father Duffy left Miss Hanrahan. He had tea after all and hot soda biscuits. He visited the church and Father McGohey’s grave, and then Tim Brandon’s who died June 5, 1934. All the while he turned over in his mind what he had learned of the Brandons. Was it enough to return to New York with the name, Tim Brandon? Knowing his name, could he find him? He envisioned himself asking after him from one street corner to the next. And finding him, what could he say to move him? What did he know of Tim Brandon except as a child and then as a frenzied man who committed a murder he had not intended? In confiding his sin to him, he confided his life. What did he know of that life? And what, as a priest, was his first obligation? To see that the murderer surrendered to civil authority? No. His first obligation was to help a penitent save his immortal soul, to account before God for his life.

  Leaving the cemetery and waving good-bye to Miss Hanrahan, who watched him forlornly from the window, Father Duffy returned to the railroad station. He learned that a west-bound train would leave between six and seven. It would connect with a Chicago train at midnight in Pittsburgh. He bought his ticket and walked through the town again. Several men lounged on the porch of a general store. Some of them tipped their hats. They watched him enter the store, and one among them bade him time of day.

  In the store he bought a postcard and addressed it to Father Gonzales. He wrote: “Greetings! Seeing America. See you next week.” Reading it, he wondered if it sounded as hollow as he felt it did. His intention was to suggest that he was enjoying his vacation. Outdoors again, he inquired the direction to the post office.

  “I’ll be going up by there on my way home, Father,” one of the men said. “I’ll be glad to take it.”

  “I’ve got an hour or two to kill, thanks. I’ll walk it up.”

  The man shrugged. “If you got nothing better to do, come on back and jaw with us for a while.”

  He mailed the card and accepted the invitation. One of the men started to get up to give him a chair. He waved him back to his place and sat down on the steps. There were four men there, two of them old-timers, and the others of no particular age under forty. A shaggy Airedale roused himself and came over to sniff at his shoes,

  “That dog likes the smell of traveling feet,” one of the men said. “He don’t travel much himself no more but he still likes the notion of it.” />
  “I kind of feel that way about it myself,” the priest said.

  “Missionary?”

  “No. I’m just on vacation.”

  One of the men offered him a cigarette. He accepted.

  “The Evangelicals had a missionary in here Saturday night,” the man said. “We used to have a lot of ’em come round in the old days. They don’t have the same fire no more, either. I guess they figure what’s left here ain’t worth striking the match to.”

  One of the old-timers took his pipe from his mouth. “You and Pete wouldn’t remember it,” he said, motioning to the younger man, “but there was a gal used to come in here every summer. They’d pitch her a platform up on Chisholm’s Corner. A disciple of Aimee McPherson I think she was. I never heard so many ways to perdition as she could reel off.”

  “The Bible’s full of them,” Father Duffy said.

  “She had some that weren’t in the Bible. I’ll take my oath on that. And you can’t tell me she’d been saved from all of them. Why, she wasn’t nineteen years old …”

  The conversation drifted from one evangelist to another, the roads leading to salvation, and those away from it. It was some minutes later that the priest brought them around to talk about temperance preachers.

  “You a temperance man, Father?” one of the men asked.

  “I take a drink now and then if there’s no one around that’s going to be scandalized at it. In moderation it’s all right. But I’ve known a lot of homes where drinking brought nothing but misery.”

  “Yea, that’s a fact,” one of the young men said.

  “I’ve known men who could drink their paycheck in one night,” the priest said.

  “And borrow on their next,” someone added.

  Once more the old-timer took his pipe from his mouth. “You young ones wouldn’t remember him, but I don’t think there ever was a man could drink like Big Tim Brandon. I seen that man stand in the Sunshine and drink down a quart bottle without moving excepting maybe one foot so he wouldn’t spit tobacco on it.”

  “I remember him,” a younger one said. “I was in school just ahead of his kid. He went off to be a priest. That was the day …”

  “Am I telling the story or you?” the old man interrupted. “I was in the Sunshine that day, standing elbow to elbow with Big Tim. The Sunshine’s the tavern, Father.” He nodded, apparently in its direction. “Tim stood there waiting for that kid to leave town, just waiting. And when he saw the bus pull out of the station he said a terrible thing. I ain’t ever repeated it and I don’t aim to now. Big Tim’s dead and the kid ain’t showed up since. As far as I’m concerned I think he had reason for his drinking, but I ain’t going to argue it with no one.”

  “You didn’t tell the most important part, Andy. He picked up a bottle from the bar and pitched it through the plate glass window when the bus passed.”

  “As far as I’m concerned that ain’t the most important part.” Andy leaned over the porch and spat in the dust. There were a few seconds of silence while, the priest thought, each of them went over in his mind what he remembered of the Brandons.

  Finally the other of the old men explained, “The mother was awful fond of the boy, Father. The two of them went to church a lot. I don’t mean that’s bad. Hell, I don’t know exactly what I do mean. She just wasn’t the right woman for Tim Brandon. How did we get talking about Tim, anyway?”

  “I mentioned drinking,” Father Duffy said.

  Andy tilted his chair onto an even keel and got up. “I ain’t saying Tim Brandon was a good man. He wasn’t. But he was just a lot of man. He should of bred fifteen kids, not just one scrawny runt. Now I’m going up to my supper. Good day to you, Father.”

  They watched him shuffle up the dusty street. The other man of his age nodded after him. “Andy laid out fifty dollars of his own money for Big Tim’s coffin. His old lady didn’t speak to him for a month. Women just don’t see things that way.”

  20

  SERGEANT GOLDSMITH LINGERED A moment on the street outside a Greenwich Village night club. He didn’t look like a patron, he thought, and he felt less like one. He had not been home since nine o’clock that morning. A few minutes earlier he had called his wife and half-heartedly suggested that she meet him. He was grateful when she decided that he would get through earlier without her. He pushed through the swinging door and went downstairs.

  It was a small basement club with the tables close together, the music hot, and the air-conditioning sharp. The patrons had a hearty camaraderie with one another, even the out-of-towners who had been tipped off that this was the place to look for many a star-in-the-making.

  Goldsmith checked his hat and pushed his way to the bar. He ordered a drink and watched the patrons through the mirror. He wondered if some of them ever saw the light of day.

  “What time does the show come on?” he asked the bartender.

  “Any time now. Any time at all.”

  A lugubrious patron on the next bar stool eyed the detective. “You from out of town?”

  “Nope. Born and raised here.” Goldsmith sipped his drink. He could have done nicely without conversation.

  “Then how come you don’t know when the floor show starts?”

  “They neglected that in my education.”

  “Ha!” the man said, shoving his glass to the bartender. He turned to Goldsmith. “Did you go to college?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ah,” the drunk said wisely, “that accounts for it. The only damn thing I learned there—never miss a floor show. But they also taught me to be careful I wasn’t the one who gave the floor show.” He weighed each word carefully. “Made a solitary drinker of me.” Suddenly he grabbed Goldsmith’s arm. “Hey, get a load of that flaxen doll. Oh hell; she’s gone.”

  Even as the man was speaking, Goldsmith caught sight of the woman before she ducked back behind the drapes. “You’ll see her,” he said. “That’s Liza Tracy.”

  “The one in the picture upstairs? Naw. The picture’s a kid.”

  “Retouching,” Goldsmith said.

  “Little Liza looks like she’s had all the retouching she can stand. Don’t they have any fresh ones in New York?”

  Goldsmith sighed. He was very tired. “The shipment was late this week.”

  The head waiter herded the patrons back against the walls, and the orchestra leader took the microphone to the center of the floor. A spotlight picked him up, and tried out a variety of color gelatins on him. Meanwhile the pianist improvised sweet and melancholy tunes, the themes of each reaching farther back through the years.

  The drunk chuckled. He held his hands out and moved them slowly together. “He makes me feel just like Alice in Wonderland.”

  Goldsmith laughed. As the drunk described it, he understood the feeling perfectly. The varying lights heightened the illusion. “He’s setting the mood for Liza. You’re supposed to be getting nostalgic.”

  “If he doesn’t stop soon, I won’t be here. I was in short pants when that tune was popular. Was Liza around then?”

  “She was probably getting her first big break—in some speakeasy.”

  “Holy mother. I take back what I said about the retouching. When I get to be her age, I want to go to her barber.”

  Stories and imitations from the master of ceremonies began the show. He warmed up the crowd and then introduced in turn a folk singer on a high stool, three Calypso singers, a boy who made baby-talk on the harmonica. The floor was completely darkened then. A trombone sounded mournfully, its cry heightening as a blue spotlight shivered across the floor and trembled on the drapes. Liza Tracy slid from behind the black curtain and made her sequined entrance on a high note. The applause rippled while she held it. She rolled the blues and her hips from one table to the next. There was gravel in her low notes and the brittleness of ice in the high ones. She worked hard. So did the audience, never quite with her for all their heartiness. When she was done they applauded a beautiful memory, and if it wasn’t quite the mem
ory of Liza Tracy, it was one of someone like her. As soon as she was off they clamored for a quick round of drinks.

  “That’s something that was and ain’t no more,” the drunk said profoundly. “They should have left it in the picture frame. Excuse me.” He made his way to the rest room.

  Goldsmith waited until the dance floor was crowded. Then he pushed through to the m.c. “I’d like to see Miss Tracy,” he said. “Where’s her dressing room?”

  “Why don’t you set her up to a drink? I tell you, boss, she’d love it. Not too many. She’s got to go on again. But a couple of drinks, you know. Morale. Right out where people can see she’s human. They’re scared of her.”

  “I’d rather talk to her first in her dressing room.”

  “Okay, boss. But you’ll find it chummy back there.”

  It was chummy. She shared one small room with the Calypso trio. She came to the door when the m.c. called her.

  “Thanks,” Goldsmith said. He waited until the m.c. left. “I’d like to buy you a drink, Miss Tracy. Up the street.”

  “How far up the street?”

  “You can name it.”

  She weighed the offer for a few seconds. “Give me ten minutes.”

  The detective collected his hat and waited for her at the entrance. He waved at the drunk who had returned to the bar, and wondered what he would think seeing them leave together. If he ever met the guy again he thought it would be fun to tell him Liza was his sister.

  Miss Tracy came and Goldsmith tipped his hat to the drunk and opened the door for Liza. Her high heels clacked up the steps ahead of him. She had nice legs, he noticed.

  Not until they were settled in the booth of a near-by tavern did she say a word except “Scotch” to the bartender as they passed. She downed the drink as soon as it was served. Goldsmith made a remark about the show having been an experience. She gave him a dirty look. When he poured his drink into her glass she accepted it.