The Long Count

by JM Gulvin

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘His reaction was neither what I was hoping for nor what I was expecting.’ Glancing at Nancy he sighed. ‘I can’t tell you exactly what I thought would happen because this is the coalface, right? There are no givens when it’s the mind you’re treating, and especially someone with his condition.’

  ‘A condition very few other doctors even accept exists,’ Nancy said.

  ‘Nancy, just because someone doesn’t accept something does not mean it doesn’t exist. History is littered with examples. Pushing the boundaries is the very nature of what we do. He was upset, of course he was. I knew there would be a reaction, and if there had been even the slightest indication of violence in his past I would never have made the suggestion.’ With an open palm he gestured. ‘Look, I know how this appears but it’s nothing more than a tragic coincidence. You’ve nothing to be concerned about. None of us do. Mary-Beth’s death was nothing to do with what happened at Trinity.’

  There was silence between them after that, the only sounds those that lifted from the grounds outside. Nancy was fidgeting a little where she sat. Next to her Briers was staring at the floor.

  Finally Nancy spoke. ‘Nothing to worry about, is that what you really think? I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it at all. Mary-Beth was murdered, and however you want to try and dress it up we all know who it was that killed her. You heard him that night. You heard what he said. He meant it, all of it, and he’s making good on his promise.’

  When they were gone Beale went back to his desk where he sat staring into space. Eventually he seemed to come to and retrieved his keys from the top drawer. Fetching the address book from the safe once more, he dialled the number he had called a couple of days previously. His eyes were hooded, brow cut in fine lines; he worked a hand through his hair.

  ‘I’m sorry to call you again,’ he said when she answered the phone. ‘But I had to. Something’s happened. There’s something you need to know.’

  *

  It was a little less than two hundred miles from the Bowen house to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the skies were dark by the time Quarrie hit the city. A little cooler than in Texas, he had the address Austin had given him written on a slip of paper posted in his wallet.

  Leaving the highway, he drove the downtown area on North Main Street and from there he was on the old part of the road coming up on Cain’s Ballroom. Usually anybody driving this way could see the neon glittering from way back where, but for some reason the sign on the roof wasn’t lighted.

  He had been to Cain’s once before, just after he got home from Korea when he and Mary-Clare had only recently started dating. The ballroom was world famous for swing and honky-tonk, and Mary-Clare could swing dance better than anyone. Not much more than a warehouse really, a facade constructed in adobe brick, inside it was one large room under a shallow pitch with a polished wooden floor and a bar. Driving all the way up from Amarillo one Saturday, they had danced into Sunday morning.

  The old place had not changed. It looked no different now to how it had back then, only then the street had been heaving with people and that roof sign could be seen from a mile away. Tonight there was nobody on the street and only the red-and-white livery out front indicated that the place was open.

  Quarrie pulled over just a couple of buildings south and he was weary after driving from Louisiana to the Bowen house and from the Bowen house all the way up here. On the sidewalk he stretched his legs, wearing his Carhartt with the Ranger’s star still pinned on the breast. For old time’s sake maybe, he pushed open the saloon style doors.

  Only a handful of couples on the floor, the walls decked with old photos of jazzmen and country stars from the thirties. Two people were serving behind the bar, a younger guy in a black shirt with rhinestone stitching and a woman of around fifty with dark hair she had tied in a plait. A little lined around the eyes, there was something about her that felt familiar but Quarrie could not say what it was. With a smile he took a seat on a stool and indicated the coffee pot on the warmer.

  ‘Been a long drive,’ he said. ‘How about pouring me some of that coffee?’

  The woman wiped the patch of bar space in front of him and glanced at the star in a wheel on his breast. She did not say anything. She just fetched a cup for the coffee.

  Taking a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket Quarrie shook one out, tamped the inscribed end against the heel of his thumb and the woman passed him an ashtray.

  ‘Not so busy tonight?’ he said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘The last time I was here was fifteen years back and you couldn’t move for people bopping.’

  ‘Fifteen years is a long time.’ The woman stated. ‘A lot can happen in fifteen years, and that was before Elvis and Jerry Lee.’ Looking beyond him to the all but empty floor she wagged her head little sadly. ‘Nobody wants to dance like they used to anymore, not even in Oklahoma.’

  Swivelling round on his stool Quarrie too gazed across the empty floor. And for a moment his wife was in his arms, back in the days when she had still been his girlfriend. He allowed the memory to cling as he sipped the coffee.

  ‘They used to tell us that floor right there had springs under her, the way she seemed to move so much when we were dancing.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘That was just a rumor. The floor isn’t sprung, it’s regular hardwood; the way it moved was on account of the weight of the people.’

  ‘That all it was? No kidding.’ Lighting his cigarette, Quarrie snapped his Zippo closed then laid it on top of his package of Camels.

  The woman indicated his badge as somehow he knew she was going to. ‘You’re from Texas and this is Oklahoma. Not that it’s any of my business, but what’re you doing up here?’

  Quarrie held her eye. ‘Actually I’m looking for someone.’ He glanced down at the star. ‘Guess I forgot to take this off when I crossed the state line.’ Shifting his weight he sought the wallet in his jeans pocket and took out the slip of paper. ‘I have an address right here and I don’t think it’s too far away so maybe you could help me find it?’

  The woman considered the address and tugged her lip with her teeth. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s just a few blocks from here. Carry on up North Main and take a left at the light. Keep going and you’ll come to it.’

  She left him to his coffee, making her way down the bar to the guy in the rhinestone stitching. Quarrie saw them exchange a few words and the young man peered at him over the woman’s shoulder. Spinning the slip of paper around with the tip of his finger, Quarrie slipped it back in his wallet.

  Outside he turned up his collar, climbed into the car and drove the underpass on North Main as far as the red light where the woman had told him to make the turn. Locating the block, he switched off the engine and considered his surroundings. Small properties, single-story, they were built in fading clapboard and he was reminded of the street where Mary-Beth had been murdered.

  1433 was set back from the road, not much more than a cottage really with a tiny yard out front and in close proximity to its neighbor. No lights in the house, though one was burning above the stoop. Checking the address against the slip of paper, he got out of the vehicle.

  Crossing the pitted asphalt he walked the lawn to the stoop. A solid front door, there were curtains drawn across all the windows. He knocked but received no answer. Knocking again he still got no answer so he walked around to the back, found the kitchen door and knocked again. He could see no lights in any of the windows: the whole place was in darkness. Back at the car he scribbled a note then slipped it under the kitchen door.

  *

  With Cain’s not busy enough for both bartenders, the woman left just a few minutes after Quarrie. Buttoning her coat, she went out the back way to her eleven-year-old VW Bug, pale blue with a vinyl section to the roof that folded to let the sun in. She drove home, taking the long route up North Main to the light and another block from there. When she got to her street she parked a few houses away. Sitting behind the wheel with her
hands clasped in her lap, she watched the Ranger walk all the way around her place before going back to his car. Perched on the edge of the driver’s seat with the door open, he seemed to be writing something down. She watched him walk around back of the house again, disappearing from view before he returned to the car. This time he started the engine. He drove right past the VW but she was lying across the front seats so he could not see her. She lay there until she could no longer hear the sound of his car and then she pulled into her driveway.

  In the kitchen she saw the note he had left pushed half under the door. She stared at it, fingers stiff and her eyes puckered at the corners. She did not pick it up. Instead she opened the freezer compartment on her Frigidaire and took out a bottle of vodka. Collecting a tumbler from the closet above the sink, she poured a shot and drank it down and then she poured another. From her purse she took a pack of Lucky Strikes housed in a snap-to wallet and lit one. Finally she picked up his note and read how he needed to talk to her. He would try and call on the phone later and be back again in the morning.

  Taking her glass through to the living room, she made sure the curtains were pulled all the way across so there was no gap at all before she switched on the lamps. Placing the note on the coffee table she sat down on the couch where a multi-colored throw was gathered. For an age she stared at the fireplace, the room adorned with Native American symbols, dream catchers and medicine wheels hung as if to ward off evil spirits.

  Finishing the vodka, she fetched the bottle and poured another. She fetched her cigarettes and an ashtray and lit a couple of incense sticks. Reading the note again her gaze drifted to the telephone, then she considered the open door to the hallway and her bedroom. Switching on the lamp, she was on her hands and knees by the bed reaching for an old shoe box she kept underneath. Clasping the box to her breast, she moved to the window where she checked the street outside, but all was quiet.

  Back in the living room she poured another shot from the vodka bottle and lit another cigarette before settling it in the ashtray. She opened the box, tissue paper covering a whole stack of photographs. Carefully she lifted the paper out.

  With reverence almost, she cast her eye across the images. Dozens and dozens of them, she traced fingers over the topmost few, locating one of three young nurses in uniform together with another woman wearing a pale-colored dress. There was a sense of excitement, the exuberance of youth perhaps, illuminating their faces. Her hand shook as she placed the photograph on the coffee table and sought another: a nurse by herself this time, she was wearing the same crisp white uniform and folded cap, the picture taken on the steps of an old colonial mansion. Rummaging in the box once more she found another picture taken in the exact same spot, only this time it was of the three nurses.

  Placing those two on the hearth she found one more and her hand was trembling again as she considered two of the three nurses. One of them was very slightly built, blonde and pale, the size of her eyes her most striking feature.

  On her feet once more, she paced to the window where she stood close to the curtain. The sound of a car approaching lifted from outside and she listened with the vodka glass gripped in one hand and her other arm about her waist. She waited, ears pricked, but the car drove right past the house without slowing and carried on up the street. Eyes closed now, she stood there a minute longer and then she went back to her bedroom. Opening the nightstand drawer her gaze settled on a piece of brushed velvet. It was wrapped around another photograph, only this one was framed in gold, and for long time she just stared at it. Fingers brushing the glass, the tears that had gathered slipped onto her cheeks as she placed the photograph back in the drawer.

  Twenty-two

  He jumped off the freight train as it rolled towards the switching yard. A couple of hobos squatted in the box car with him, one keeping to the shadows wearing fatigues from Korea with the name Venice stitched above the pocket.

  From the yard he made his way on foot, skirting the downtown district where skyscrapers were built in a mix of concrete and pale-colored stone. He walked right past the Holiday Inn where Sam Cooke had been arrested, and asked directions to Bellevue Sanatorium from a newspaper vendor working a stand on the corner of Moor Street.

  A black man in his sixties, he looked down from his battered counter. ‘Bellevue?’ he said. ‘What you want to go there for? That ain’t a hospital, it’s a prison for basket cases.’

  ‘I’m visiting somebody.’ His tone was as terse as the vendor’s incredulous.

  The black man lifted a palm. ‘All right, all right, no need to get all jacked up. It ain’t the kind place most folks ask for.’

  ‘Well, I ain’t most folks and I’m asking. Now do you know where it’s at or not?’

  ‘Sure I know where it’s at and I hope you-all is driving. Mister, Bellevue’s in Virginia Park and that’s a distance if you be walking.’

  Making his way around back of the news stand he went inside and clubbed the man over the head with the butt of his pistol.

  Moments later a woman and her two children approached the stand. They asked for Hershey bars and bottles of soda and he served them. Taking their money he placed the dollar bill in the metal cashbox while the black man lay unconscious and bleeding. Without a word he handed the woman her change, then reached for the latch that held the board up. Locking it from the inside, he emptied the cashbox before wiping the blood from his boots where it seeped from the vendor’s skull. From a hook behind the cash box he grabbed a set of car keys with an Oldsmobile fob attached to them.

  Outside he stuffed the pistol in his waistband and buttoned his jacket. The stains were much worse now though, and they were a lot fresher. Back inside the news stand, he hunted down a cloth and bottle of detergent the old guy probably used for his counter. No longer red, the stains were just dark and wet and he went in search of the Olds.

  A station wagon with wood panels working both sides, it was parked around the corner between a Plymouth and a bull-nosed Ford. Automatic transmission with a shift on the column, pressing his foot on the brake, he worked the lever up and down. There was not much gas in the car but he had twenty-seven dollars and change from the cashbox, and when he tapped the gauge on the dashboard the level reached a little higher.

  For a while he sat there staring through the windshield then he opened the glove box, rooted around for a moment before closing it again and searched the pocket in the door.

  He found a faded, well-thumbed street map, laid it across the steering wheel and located the park the old man had mentioned, tracing his finger where Ockley Drive formed an S bend running east to west.

  There were a few houses scattered here and there but it was not built-up. No boundary to the park itself but the brick buildings in the center were gathered inside a ten-foot wall. Carefully he scouted the area; driving Ockley first he made his way around the S bend and spotted what looked like a back entrance to the hospital. A dozen or so cars were parked in a small lot that opened just a few yards from an access track that was laid with pea gravel. Making a loop of the parking lot, he considered the handful of aging vehicles.

  Heading onto Ockley again, he drove east from the park and about a mile further he pulled in and turned the car. Now he drove back, passing that access road and pulling around the loop at the northern section of parkland. He could see the wall. Beyond it the height of the building carried at least six floors and he stopped on the side of the road. Sitting there he ran his tongue across his lips and adjusted the barrel of the pistol where it dug into his groin.

  He drove on, completing the loop, and made a left where Ockley met Fairfield Avenue. About a block south he came to a stand of thickly leafed poplars that bordered the entrance to a driveway. There was a signpost out front, though it said nothing about the inmates being criminally insane. It only read Bellevue just as the sign in the Piney Woods had said nothing but Trinity.

  Again he pulled over. Then he backed up and drove between the trees all the way to where the walls
grew up, broken by a set of iron gates. It was just like Trinity, only these gates were fronted by a red-and-white vehicle barrier with a guard sitting in a wooden hut. Beyond the hut he could see another parking lot that housed a much better class of vehicle. Before he got to the hut he swung the Olds around the turning circle and lifted a hand to acknowledge the guard.

  Back on Fairfield, he considered the dashboard clock. It was early evening now and he made for the gravelled lot where the less salubrious-looking vehicles were parked. Sliding the Olds into a space he switched off the motor and sat staring at the banks of trees.

  After a while he got out and went around to the back of the car. There was not much in the trunk: an old raincoat that was too big for him, the toolkit and spare wheel. There was also a heavy-duty tow rope and a long-handled shovel. He took a few moments to consider the contents then he closed the tailgate and made his way across the parking lot to another stand of poplars where he could see the back entrance to the hospital. A steel gate set in the stone wall. Chewing on a thumbnail, he leaned against the trunk of a tree.

  He was still there when darkness enveloped the copse. Sitting cross-legged in the shadows with the Levi unbuttoned and the pistol in his hand, he watched as the gate in the wall opened and a few members of the hospital staff filtered through. A couple of orderlies, two young nurses walking side-by-side smoking cigarettes, he could smell the stench where it wafted.

  The number of cars in the parking lot gradually dwindled and still he sat where he was. Then the gate opened and closed once more and this time he glimpsed the bulk of a big man shouldering his way through the trees. He gripped the pistol that bit more tightly, watching as the man shuffled down the path wearing a white housecoat and green T-shirt. On his feet he had a pair of tennis shoes.

  Silently he got up. He stood beside the oak tree and looked on as the big man headed for the parking lot. There were only three cars left now and one of them was the newspaper vendor’s Olds. Ten feet back he had the gun levelled at hip height as the orderly searched his pockets for keys. Another step and Briers stiffened. He stood very still. Then he turned and his gaze fixed on the gun. Neither of them spoke. He stood there peering at the big man through the gloom of the trees and Briers looked back, much taller, much bigger built, his eyes still fastened on the gun. Indicating where the Oldsmobile was parked he tossed Briers the keys.