Uncivil Seasons

by Michael Malone

  But I chose public office. I chose the police.

  Ironically, it was a remark of Rowell’s at my father’s grave that confirmed my desire. He said, “What you’ve done grieves me, but I can’t say it surprises me. I was a solicitor too long for anything to surprise me. In that building, there’re no mysteries in the end.”

  After my training, I was rushed through promotions because that’s what Captain Fulcher thought the Dollards wanted him to do. And I knew they wouldn’t tell Fulcher anything different. They had to hold me up out of the mud, because I was wrapped in the flag of their name.

  I had never wanted to be a lawyer. I didn’t want to prosecute crime, or to defend it. I simply wanted to solve the mystery. I wanted to pull down my visor and on a common field ride to where mystery contracted to an instant, like the crack! of splintering wood, where no one knows from what castles the jousters have come, and justice is a blind queen on a dais who cannot see the coats of arms on their shields.

  Detection was to me a knight, whereas law was only a squire to my people. A loyal, discreet British butler. And I had read enough mysteries to know how often the butler turns out in the end to be the villain.

  What Mr. Briggs Cadmean meant me to remember was that I was indebted to that butler’s discretion, nevertheless. I had been sheltered by his family service. When Cadmean reached over my chair and held up before my face my empty whiskey glass and didn’t say a thing, he meant that when I had come home from what my family referred to only as “the mountains,” the circle had stood by me, in a ring. And they expected that courtesy returned.

  Rowell liked to make speeches to me. “You have a duty to this family. You have inherited a sacred trust, and that is the honor of serving your state. Don’t you feel that, Jay?”

  Well, now I did.

  Chapter 12

  “Listen here, Lieutenant. Whatever your name is, y’all got no right to come in here and harass me! They could fire my ass, called off the line by the police like that in front of everybody and his goddamn brother. Y’all think just because I’m nobody and a woman, it’s open season on Charlene Pope. First Mangum, now you. And you really want to do something for me, you get that baby Preston’s big brothers off my back. I don’t belong to the goddamn Popes!”

  “Savile.”

  “What?”

  “My name is Lieutenant Savile.”

  “Listen, right this minute, far as I care your name’s Lieutenant Shithead, and I don’t care if you think I think so either.”

  Charlene and I were having our talk inside a Plexiglas cubicle from which her elderly shift manager observed the floor; he’d politely offered to go away to buy himself a Coca-Cola.

  It was almost ten o’clock at night by the time I’d left my empty glass beside Mr. Cadmean’s models and driven across Hillston to stand here looking at the originals. Beyond the window the great hall of machines kept whirring and clattering, even at this hour, blending, carding, combing. Fed by their workers, the huge looms tirelessly kept weaving Cadmean’s cloth.

  Charlene (her bleached white-yellow hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wearing a smock over jeans and an orange mohair sweater) was in the same mood I’d seen her in on Maple Street. Now she also had purplish pouches under her eyes and a large scab in the corner of her lip.

  Suggesting she sit down, which she wouldn’t, and offering her a cigarette, I said, “I’m not trying to harass you.”

  “Sure, what do you call this? I smoke my own.” She proved it by pulling a pack of Marlboros from her pocket and flicking her plastic lighter on in front of the match I was holding out.

  “I’m trying to find out why you’d called us yesterday and said your husband was responsible for the fight at By-Ways Massage.”

  “You tell me,” she mumbled.

  “Does that mean you wish you hadn’t?”

  She shot a fast stream of smoke out of the side of her mouth; she was watching the men and women moving about in the plant beyond the glass, as if she thought one of them might suddenly turn on us with a machine gun.

  I said, “One thing I can assume is, you wanted us to come over there and see that silverware. There’re easier ways to leave your husband, aren’t there, than getting him arrested for murder?”

  “Don’t you start saying I did things when I didn’t do them.”

  “What things didn’t you do?” I noticed a man with prematurely white hair and a black moustache staring in at us as he went by. Turning her back, Charlene hurried to stand on the other side of a tall file cabinet where she wouldn’t be as easily seen.

  I said, “Well, we don’t much think Preston committed the Dollard murder.”

  “Fine.” She was smoking faster than anyone I’d ever seen, holding in her other hand the little tin ashtray she’d snatched off the desk quick as a shoplifter. “I could care less, but fine.”

  “Or the robbery. We don’t think his big brothers did it either.”

  “How come? Don’t put it past them, mister. I could tell you stuff about the Pope boys.” She went back to her cigarette.

  “No doubt. Incidentally, what was it you took out of your husband’s bureau drawer when you left on the spur of the moment in the van yesterday?”

  Veins bulged in her neck “Did that prick tell you I stole that money?! Goddamn him! That was $675 I won in Atlantic City on our vacation, and we were saving to go to the beach this summer and it belonged to me and I took it. And just let me see Preston tell me to my face I stole that money!”

  “Preston didn’t say you stole it.”

  Confused, she stopped her cigarette midway to her mouth, and I pointed at it. “Did you know, somebody who didn’t live at the Dollards’ left a Marlboro butt in their driveway the night of the murder?”

  She blustered, “So?”

  “Mrs. Pope, was that silverware there in the bathroom when you got to the house, or did you put it there? And, if you put it there—for whatever marital cause—where did you find it?”

  She stabbed out her cigarette hard enough to shred it. “I’m not talking to you. I never killed a fucking fly. Y’all are off the wall.”

  Outside, the throbbing noise was endlessly the same. I came around to lean on the metal desk across from her. “Nobody said you killed anyone. Your, I guess, former sister-in-law Paula told us—”

  “Paula!” With a jerk she knocked two cigarettes out of her pack; they fell to the floor and I picked them up.

  “Paula told us she doesn’t think you knew that silver belonged to the victim.”

  Charlene let me light her cigarette this time; her eyes, black as pea coal, had gotten glittery with fear.

  I said, “I wonder if you came across the silver and figured it was stolen and thought you’d get back at Preston for causes I can certainly imagine. If you don’t want to come talk to him, all right. All I want from you, Charlene, is where you got the sacks.”

  She was whispering now. “I never saw it.”

  “That’s not true, is it? I should and will pull you in, Charlene, but I don’t want to have to.”

  “Please. Listen to me, Mr. Savile. Y’all got to leave me alone! Please! I never saw it.”

  “Do you remember where you were the night Mrs. Dollard was killed? A week ago Sunday?”

  Her teeth scraping across her lower lip pulled the scab off so a line of blood the color of her lipstick started down her chin. “I was with a guy called Luster Hudson the whole night, out at his place. Preston and I are separated. Luster can tell you I was there. He’s in the mountains now, delivering some dogs.”

  “You remember that far back? I don’t think I would.”

  “Listen, you sure would if the fucking cops—” She stopped and wiped at the blood with her fingers. I handed her the handkerchief in my jacket pocket; she just stared at it. I said, “Here,” and took it and pressed it against her mouth.

  Behind us the door swung open, and a small young woman with short red curls and hostile blue eyes charged in yelling, “What’s
going on here?” Above her jeans she wore a too-large sweatshirt with a badge identifying her as a union representative named Alice “Red” MacLeod. She couldn’t have been more than five one or two in her work boots, but she seemed to be under the impression that she was a great deal larger as she elbowed me away from Charlene and repeated, “Okay, what are you doing to her?”

  I said, “Pardon me, I’m Detective Lieutenant Savile. I’m speaking here with Mrs. Pope.”

  “What about?” In her huge sweatshirt she looked like a high school student on a stage crew, but there was none of that swollen adolescent blankness in her attractive face.

  “It doesn’t concern,” I looked down at her badge, “the union.”

  She spun around. “What happened to your mouth, Charlene?”

  Dabbing with the handkerchief, Charlene shook her head, her eyes miserable. “Nothing. I bit my lip. He’s just asking me about Preston, the guy I’m married to, but, like I told you, I moved out. It’s nothing, honest. Okay?” She looked at me. “Can I go now? Give me a break, how ’bout. Okay?”

  Alice MacLeod said, “You don’t have to talk to him, do you understand?” Then she wheeled on me, leading with her tilted chin. “What do you want with her?”

  “I don’t see how it’s your business, Miss…MacLeod.”

  “Anything on my floor on my shift is my business.” Her voice was North Carolina, but farther west, mountain sharp.

  I said, “Mrs. Pope, the best thing you can do for yourself, listen to me, is cooperate with us voluntarily.”

  Miss MacLeod pulled Charlene away by the arm. “Do you want a lawyer?” Charlene shook her head no.

  Going to the door, I told Charlene, “We’re finished for now. If you don’t think I’m trying to help, wait ’til you meet my chief.”

  She nodded, without meaning it, and I left.

  I’d gotten all the way outside and was tugging the collar of my overcoat up over my ears to start the walk past all the railcars and trucks bringing Cadmean raw fibers to weave and taking what he wove away to sell, and past all the hundreds of cars his workers had bought with the money he paid them for making him so much more; I was still standing there staring up at the disinterested stars his daughter studied when I was jabbed in the back by the fingers of Alice “Red” MacLeod, who still wanted to know what was going on.

  Her breath clouded around her face, one of those British schoolchild faces, freckled milk, one of those faces brought over from Scotland’s Highlands by vanquished followers of Bonnie Prince Charlie, a stubborn fighter’s face. “Is Charlene in trouble?”

  “She has information involving a murder.”

  “What murder?”

  “Mrs. Rowell Dollard’s.”

  She sucked in the cold air.

  “Yes. The best advice you can give her is to tell us what she knows.”

  “She’s scared out of her wits.”

  “Of what?”

  “What do you think?! Of you. What’s your name again?” It was not a friendly question.

  “Savile. Justin Savile.” I took off my glove, found my wallet, and showed her my identification, which she examined studiously. I said, “You’re going to freeze out here. Would you like to step back inside and I’ll explain, if you’re really interested in helping Mrs. Pope.”

  “Tell me here.”

  I told her that Preston was being held for possession of stolen property thought to be connected with the homicide. She listened, frowning up at me, her fists balled under her crossed arms. “Okay,” she nodded when I finished, “I’m going to talk to her.” She spun away, then back around. “Sorry I jumped down your throat. I don’t like cops.”

  “Why not? We’re workers too.”

  “Depends on what you’re working for.”

  “Mind if I ask, is Red a political nickname, or does it refer to your hair?”

  She studied my face.

  I smiled. “Or your temper?”

  A puff of air blew from her mouth. “All three,” she said. “Bye.” And was gone.

  Behind me the lights of C&W spread across the night like a small town. Old buildings, saw-toothed at their roofs with skylights, hooked on to the new, flat buildings Cadmean didn’t like. Other buildings were under construction, their scaffolding bare. Huge spider-tanks were painted pretty colors and inscribed with their owners’ initials. High smokestacks spit out the waste of power.

  Spits up fire, I thought. Sister Resurrection’s fiery furnace. The dragon spits up fire, and down it rain.

  Chapter 13

  It was only when I opened the door to my house and realized that all the lights were on and the heat had been turned up to at least eighty and the shower was running hard up on the top floor, that I remembered that Susan Whetstone had told me she was coming over. My rapping on the tub’s glass stall, as she had apparently not been able to hear me until then, in no way appeared to startle her. The impenetrability of Susan’s composure continued to impress me. Both hands still lathering her hair, she said, “Where have you been?”

  I said, “You sound like we’re married, which only you are.”

  She said, “I can’t hear you,” and slid the door closed.

  I walked back down to the first floor and ate two jars of yogurt and a muffin while reading the day’s junk mail and bills. I swallowed four aspirin with some tomato juice, turned down the thermostat, picked up Susan’s mink coat, which was spread open on my couch, and her suede boots, which were toppled over in the middle of the rug; I shut off the lights, climbed the stairs, took off my clothes, and went back into the bathroom. The shower didn’t stop until I was brushing my teeth, staring at the red streaks in my eyes.

  “Where have you been?” Susan said again.

  “Working on the Dollard case. Tell me again, Susan. You can’t think of anything else Cloris said to you that night at the play except she had a stomachache?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, her stomach hurt, and wasn’t the play good, and when was Lawry coming back.”

  “Why’d she ask that?”

  “Well, she didn’t know about us, if that’s what you mean. She said something like, ‘I think he’s annoyed with me.’”

  “Annoyed with you?”

  “No, with her.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows, sugar.”

  “Was she upset, was she joking, was—”

  “Not back to this again! I told you, she just yapped at me a few seconds at intermission.” Susan dropped the balled-up wash-cloth to the floor of the tub. “Who cares.”

  “Seems to me the conversation would stick in your mind a little better considering the woman was murdered an hour later.”

  “Considering I’m not a psychic, how was I supposed to know that at the time!” Susan stood in the tub, appraising with thumb and forefinger the girth of her waist, the hang of her upper arm, the firmness of her inner thigh. Her thighs were brown and slender. All of a sudden, they reminded me, distressingly reminded me of one hot August afternoon—it must have been the summer of my seventh birthday—when my father was driving us up to Virginia to visit his parents. I had yielded the front seat to my younger brother, Vaughan, and had fallen asleep in the back; my head on my mother’s lap, at the cuff of her red-and-white-dotted shorts. I woke up, my cheek sticky hot and stuck to the skin of her thighs. My eyes opened on a magnified world of gold-haired skin, whose tanning over the summer months had been an assiduous undertaking, discussed at length. (“Oh, Rowell, here you are already black as a berry, and I still look like an absolute fish!”) I pulled away from her thigh and saw the red imprint I’d left, and the stain of saliva that darkened her shorts. Then I lay my head down again in a new place, shivering with the pleasure of the cool, sinking soft flesh. I kept still there, pretending sleep, until finally she carefully slid away from me, and picked up her book.

  In the bathroom mirror, now, my adult face flushed with blood. I couldn’t stand here naked, looking at a naked woman, and thinking about my mother’s thig
hs. I turned away to wrap a towel around me. Susan was saying, “All right? I talked to Lawry right after I got home from the play. There was a message on the service to call him back and I did. All right? I said, ‘Why does Cloris Dollard think you’re mad at her?’ and he said he had no idea why. All right?”

  “I’m trying to find out what her mood was, Susan.”

  “Her mood! What’s her mood got to do with a robber hitting her over the head? Justin, come on. Anyhow, why are we talking about it? I know, it’s your job. You better watch out, sugar. You’re beginning to remind me of my husband.”

  I rinsed out my mouth and spat. “I thought you loved Lawry.”

  “I do…So, I thought you had this case all solved. People were saying at Patty’s tonight that they heard on the news you all had arrested some creep. Meanwhile, that has got to be the most boring party I’ve gone to in a month.” She tilted her head, twisting water from her hair.

  Susan had tan blond hair and sharp, beautiful bones and a perfected body kept the same tan blond color throughout the year by regular exposure to various beaches. Naked, she looked as if she were wearing a white bikini. I handed her one towel that she wrapped around her hair, and one that she tucked in over her breasts.

  She said, “Laurel Fanshaw got blotto and puked all over the kitchen.”

  “Charming.”

  “She said she’d felt like throwing up ever since she got pregnant. She gave Patty a gorgeous Marimekko wall hanging. I don’t see why they wanted to give Patty another bridal shower anyhow; she’s already been divorced twice.”

  “If Patty has a tag sale, let me know, would you? I could use some more pillows and sheets.”

  “Funny man. And how’s your funny partner, Mr. Mangum, the good ole boy? Were you two out together, I bet?”

  “Cuddy’s fine. Why are you so hostile, you think maybe we’ve gone gay?”

  “Funny, funny. That man is so fake.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Oh, forget it.” She stepped out of the tub.