Death Trance

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I don’t know. What proof you got that you are who you say you are?’

  Randolph took out his wallet and showed Jimmy the Rib his credit cards and his driver’s licence. Jimmy the Rib examined them with exaggerated intensity and then turned the plastic leaf in the centre of the wallet, where he discovered the photograph of Marmie and the children that Randolph always carried with him.

  ‘This your family?’ he asked. ‘The family they wasted?’

  Randolph nodded without speaking.

  Jimmy the Rib returned Randolph’s wallet and said, ‘Come on through. I don’t want nobody to see us talking out here.’

  Randolph followed him through the bead curtain, past the entrance to a dimly lit bar where men and women were sitting on bar stools drinking and listening to a blues sextet in shiny mohair suits. Then Jimmy the Rib opened a door at the end of the corridor and showed Randolph into an untidy office. There were tattered posters on the walls showing blues concerts and riverboat parties and jazz festivals. On the desk there was an ashtray crammed with cigar butts, and a minstrel money box.

  Jimmy the Rib closed the door with the point of his cane. ‘I hope you come here prepared to pay,’ he said.

  ‘I brought five hundred dollars in cash, all unmarked bills,’ Randolph said. ‘If the information turns out to be worth more, I’ll pay more.’

  ‘These are dangerous people we’re discussing here,’ said Jimmy the Rib. He sniffed, the dry, thumping sniff of the regular cocaine user. These are people who don’t take kindly to no fooling around. The only generosity I ever knowed these people to demonstrate is when they feed the fish. And I don’t have to clarify to you what with.’

  Randolph took out an envelope and handed it to Jimmy the Rib without a word.

  Jimmy lifted the flap, moistened the edge of his thumb and riffled through the bills with cautious satisfaction.

  ‘There’s a gang of real hard men working in town,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the opposite wall as if that would somehow absolve him from the guilt of snitching.

  ‘They don’t bother with the street scene; they don’t have their hand in dope or hookers or shakedowns or anything like that. They’re not Eye-talians either. They work for big business, and all they do is make sure that anybody who don’t agree with what their bosses want gets to change their mind.’

  ‘Do you know who they are?’ Randolph asked softly.

  There’s four or five of them, not always the same guys. The only name I heard is Reece, and he’s supposed to be some spaced-out veteran from Cambodia or someplace like that, a frightening man from what I hear tell. I don’t know any of the others, and as you can guess, they don’t actually advertise themselves on WMKW.’

  ‘What evidence do you have that these are the men who killed my family?’ asked Randolph.

  ‘Nothing you could tell to a judge,’ Jimmy the Rib replied. ‘But your taxi-driving friend, Stanley Vergo, put the word out all around town that he was listening for who wasted your family up in Canada, and a friend of mine from the airport called me last night and said he’s seen something of interest and since he didn’t trust no whites, maybe I could pass it on for him in exchange for a piece of the money Stanley Vergo said you was prepared to pay for such news. My friend works as a skycap, and on Monday afternoon he saw four men take an American Airlines flight to Quebec, and the reason he noticed them was that, number A, they was very hard-looking dudes indeed, definitely not your Memphis Theological Seminary boys’ choir, and, number B, he recognized one of their faces from six or seven years back in the Shelby County Penal Farm, when he himself was serving a small amount of time for rescuing Cadillacs from their unappreciative owners. He couldn’t recall this dude’s name but he remembered that he was tough as all shit and that it was not considered wise to irritate him in any way.’

  Randolph said, ‘Your friend is very observant. If I can check the passenger list for the flight they took, I might be close to finding out who the murderers are.’

  ‘Listen to this,’ Jimmy the Rib said solemnly. These characters are absolutely no fun whatsoever. You don’t know the streets and you don’t know who’s who. Take my advice and let the police do the work for you. And that’s the first and only recommendation I’m ever going to give the pigs in my whole natural life.’

  ‘Well, I’m supposed to be talking to Chief Moyne tomorrow,’ Randolph said.

  ‘I guess nobody gets all the breaks,’ Jimmy the Rib commiserated.

  Randolph held out his hand. Thank you anyway for telling me what you know.’

  Thanks for the lettuce,’ Jimmy the Rib replied, holding up the money. Then he showed Randolph out to the staircase. ‘If I should hear of anything more,’ he said, ‘could you still be interested?’

  ‘All you have to do is call me at Clare Cottonseed. I’ll make it worth your while.’

  ‘Take care, Mr Clare.’

  ‘I will. And if you do see Stanley Vergo, tell him I’ve been here.’

  ‘You have my assurance.’

  Randolph caught a taxi on the corner of Beale and Danny Thomas Boulevard. The taxi driver was a silent black with hair shaved flat on top and an earring made out of tigers’ teeth. Randolph leaned forward and asked him, ‘Are you on the radio?’

  The driver turned his head and stared at him.

  ‘I said, are you on the radio?’ Randolph repeated.

  The driver lifted his microphone. ‘What this look like? Electric toothbrush?’

  ‘You can do me a favour,’ Randolph said. ‘Call your base and ask them if they can contact a driver named Stanley Vergo. Can you do that?’

  ‘Stanley whut?’

  ‘Stanley Vergo. Will you do that, please? I just want to know where he is.’

  ‘Okay, man.’ The driver switched on his microphone and called, ‘Victor One, Victor One.’

  After a while a crackly voice said, ‘Victor One.’

  ‘Victor One, this is Zebra Three. Fare wants to know where a hackie name of Stanley Vertigo is at. Can you assist?’

  ‘You mean Stanley Vergo?’

  ‘Vertigo, Vergo, whatever.’

  There was a lengthy silence while the cab driver turned onto Linden Boulevard, heading east, and approached the busy intersection with the Dr Martin Luther King Expressway. Traffic streamed through the night like red and white corpuscles flowing through the darkness of the human body.

  After a few minutes, the cab company’s controller came back on the air. ‘Zebra Three, I’ve been calling Stanley Vergo for you. Can’t raise him. He’s supposed to be working tonight but maybe he’s taking his break. Last word I heard from him was round about eight o’clock on Monroe, when he finished a delivery for the Medical Center.’

  ‘Long coffee break,’ the cab driver remarked laconically, clipping the microphone back onto the instrument panel.

  ‘Yes,’ Randolph agreed. He sat back, feeling his sticky shirt cling to his skin. He was worried now. If Reece and his men were really as vicious as Jimmy the Rib had suggested, if they were the men who had killed and tortured Marmie and the children, there was no question but that they would deal equally violently with anyone they believed to be a threat. And who could be more of a threat than somebody like Stanley, driving around town dropping the word everywhere he went that he was interested in knowing who the Clare-family killers might have been?

  ‘You say something?’ the cab driver asked.

  ‘No, I think I was praying out loud.’

  ‘For money?’

  ‘For somebody’s health.’

  With sudden and unexpected good humour, the cab driver said, ‘I heard a joke about that the other day. There was these two black brothers, you know, and they bought guns and they went out to assassinate Ronald Reagan. Well, they was waiting in ambush outside his hotel but a whole day went by and Reagan didn’t appear. So one of the brothers turns to the other and says, “Hey, I hope nothing’s happened to him.’”

  Randolph managed a faint smile.
/>   ‘That’s some joke, huh?’ the cab driver asked. ‘“I hope nothing’s happened to him.”

  Isn’t that something?’

  As soon as he reached home, Randolph called for Charles to bring him a drink and then went through to the library. He switched on the desk lamp, took out his black leather telephone book and looked up Chief Moyne’s private number at police headquarters on Poplar. Chief Moyne answered almost immediately, sounding as if his mouth was full of food.

  ‘Dennis? This is Randolph Clare. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’

  ‘Not at all, Randolph. I was snatching myself a little late supper, that’s all. Some of Obleo’s wieners, to go.’

  ‘Dennis, I think I need your help.’

  ‘You name it,’ Chief Moyne replied. ‘We’re going to be meeting tomorrow in any case, aren’t we, when they fly your poor family back from Quebec?’

  ‘Yes,’ Randolph said. ‘And this is connected with what happened up there. I’ve just been given some information that the killings may possibly have been connected with four men from Memphis.’

  ‘From Memphis?’ Chief Moyne echoed. ‘What kind of information?’

  ‘Well, I’ve heard that some of the big-business interests in this city keep a small army of what you might call hired persuaders. One of the men is supposed to be a Vietnam vet named Reece. At least one of the others has a criminal record.

  Apparently these men are employed to enforce whatever commercial policies their bosses consider to be to their best advantage, and anyone who argues with these business bigwigs is liable to find himself in more trouble than he can handle.’

  There was a pause and then Chief Moyne said, ‘Randolph, I’m chief of police here in Memphis and I’ve never heard of any hired army, not like you describe it. I mean, you’re a businessman yourself. Have you ever heard of such a thing before?’

  ‘I can’t say that I have. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’

  ‘You’re right. It doesn’t mean that at all. But it kind of makes it less likely, wouldn’t you say? A hired army going around bullying people into keeping their prices fixed or whatever? That doesn’t ring true, Randolph. Not in an orderly business community like Memphis. Who told you such a thing?’

  I'm sorry, I promised to keep his name confidential.’

  ‘Did you pay him money?’

  ‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did. Five hundred dollars.’

  ‘Then I’m afraid that for all your business acumen, Randolph, you’ve been taken.

  Somebody’s taken advantage of your grief and stung you.’

  Randolph insisted, ‘All the same, Dennis, four men killed my family, and four men were seen leaving Memphis airport on Monday afternoon before the killing with tickets for Quebec. One of these men was a known criminal and something of a head case, from what I can gather.’

  ‘Randolph, I’m sorry, but scores of men left scores of airports all over the country on Monday afternoon and headed for Quebec, and there were plenty of men already in Quebec who might equally have carried out this crime. It’s very important that you don’t start playing Sherlock Holmes. You’ll only wind up upsetting yourself, aggravating your grief, and quite apart from that, you could seriously jeopardize the official police investigation without even realizing it.’

  Charles came in with a whisky for Randolph on a silver tray. He set it down on the table, bowed in that old-fashioned way of his and then withdrew.

  Chief Moyne said, ‘It would be a genuine help, Randolph, if you could tell me the name of your informant. I could check his story to see if any of it holds water, and if it does, well, we could pursue it in the proper way, with the full assistance of the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d appreciate a visit from the police, especially if he knew I was the one who tipped you off.’

  ‘Come on now, Randolph, your name doesn’t even have to come into it. We can talk to him on any pretext we like. Out-of-date licence plate, failure to have his automobile tested, anything.’

  ‘Well …’ Randolph hesitated. ‘He did advise me himself to talk to the police.’

  ‘In that case, I may have misjudged him,’ said Chief Moyne genially. ‘He may not be a rip-off artist after all. But it’s essential for me to check out his story one way or another. I mean, if there is some kind of secret army working on behalf of some of our big businesses, I think it’s time I knew about it, don’t you?’

  ‘I guess you’re right,’ Randolph conceded. The man’s name is Jimmy the Rib. At least that’s the name I was given. I met him at a blues club called the Walker Rooms on Beale Street.’

  ‘So, Jimmy the Rib, huh?’ Chief Moyne repeated. ‘It’s been a while since I’ve heard anything out of him.’

  ‘You know him?’ Randolph asked.

  ‘Everybody downtown knows Jimmy the Rib. He’s an unpredictable man. You were lucky you didn’t upset him in any way.’

  ‘He seemed quite affable to me.’

  ‘Well, you must have caught him in a good mood. When he’s roused, he has an unpleasant habit of thrusting knives up between people’s legs.’

  Randolph said, ‘In that case, you just make damn sure he doesn’t know it was me who tipped you off.’ He was only half-joking.

  Chief Moyne laughed, his mouth crowded with wiener. ‘Believe me, Randolph, from this moment on, you don’t have anything to worry about.’

  Randolph exchanged a few more pleasantries with Chief Moyne and then hung up.

  He eased back in his chair and swirled his whisky around in its glass. He was beginning to feel tired but the prospect of going upstairs to bed was bleaker than he could bear. He could tolerate his newly imposed loneliness during the day, when there were matters to occupy his attention, but the past two nights had been almost intolerably silent and sad. Last night he had awakened just after the moon had set, when the house was at its stillest and darkest, and the reflection in Marmie’s dressing-table mirror had gleamed like a silvery window through to another world, where shadows moved like living people. He had listened and listened, and the most overwhelming thing of all had been the silence. No breathing next to him, no breathing in the children’s rooms. A house of silence and empty beds. A house in which death had pressed its finger against the lips of memory and whispered, ‘Sssh!’

  He had just raised his glass of whisky to his lips when the telephone rang.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Mr Clare? This is Dr Ambara of the Mount Moriah Clinic. I understand from Suzie that you were interested in getting in touch with me.’

  Randolph sat up straight and put down his glass. ‘As a matter of fact, Dr Ambara, I was. In fact, I was thinking of calling you later this evening. Suzie said you didn’t usually get home until late.’

  ‘How are you, Mr Clare?’

  ‘Coping, just about. I’m fortunate that my work keeps me pretty busy.’

  Dr Ambara said, That is not always fortunate. You must not forget to be sad for your lost family, you know.’

  That was one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Your grief?’ asked Dr Ambara. It was clear from the evasive tone in his voice that he was trying to divert the conversation from the subject of reincarnation and of talking to the dead.

  ‘I wanted to discuss the possibility of seeing my family again.’

  ‘Well, yes, I thought as much,’ said Dr Ambara. ‘But would it be possible for me to dissuade you from following this course? I have to warn you that there are very great dangers involved, not only to yourself but to others. Possibly to your loved ones as well.’

  ‘But it can be done? There is a chance I might see them?’

  Dr Ambara was silent. Then he said, ‘We will have to meet to talk about this properly.

  Are you free tomorrow? Meet me at the Dixon Gardens at eleven.’ He hesitated again and then said, ‘Should you change your mind between now and tomorrow when we meet, please believe me when I s
ay that it will be better for everybody concerned. When you explore the regions of death, Mr Clare, you open a two-way door, a door that can let things in but that can also let things out.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  They met beside a cascade of scarlet azaleas, azaleas as scarlet as freshly splashed blood, in a silvery morning fog the sun had not yet dissipated. The formal gardens covered nearly seventeen acres. Along every path there were flowering magnolias as white as wax, and willows that sadly trailed their branches through the fog like the hair of drowning brides.

  Randolph thought, as he watched the tourists moving through the gardens, Last Year at Marienbad, a stylized film from a 1960s art-house movie. He felt dislocated, not only by the fog but by tiredness and grief, and by the memories that crowded around him every waking minute of the day. He had dreamed of Marmie and the children again last night, a dream in which they had been beckoning him to join them at a table set with white plates. They had been singing, or chanting, and their voices had been echoing and high-pitched, like the voices of children heard at the far end of a tunnel. He had approached the table and looked down at the plates, and on each of them there had been human organs: a heart, a lung, a liver, all of them garnished with herbs and flowers as if part of a gruesome, ritual meal. An unhallowed Seder, with the bitterest of bitter herbs and the sourest of wines.

  He had awakened sweating and shaking, with his sheets twisted around his legs like a rope.

  Dr Ambara arrived precisely on time, walking out of the fog in a grey mohair suit that looked as if it had been tailored for him in six hours flat in Okinawa. Under his jacket he wore a white turtleneck sweater. His eyes were tinted by orange sunglasses and under his arm he carried a copy of the Commercial Appeal. His silky moustache had been clipped since the last time Randolph had seen him.

  ‘Well, Mr Clare,’ he said, extending his hand, ‘I was afraid that you might be here.’

  Randolph solemnly shook his hand, which was limp and damp, the hand of a man who was making no attempt to prove anything about his masculinity or his sincerity.