City of Saints

by Andrew Hunt

  “I have to figure out a way to tell my wife,” I said, poking the vanilla-ice-cream-saturated banana from side to side with my fork. “I’m worried about how she’s going to take it.”

  “You think she’ll flip her lid?”

  “That’s the thing,” I said. “I know she’ll be sweet about it. She’ll remind me she’s getting a teacher’s salary and everything will be fine. Then she’ll probably hug me.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” said Roscoe.

  “Yeah, but I’ll be ashamed of myself,” I said. “And my brothers … Oh, good heavens, my brothers.”

  Roscoe pushed his picked-over plate aside and reached for his can of smoking tobacco. It took him less than thirty seconds to roll a cigarette. He slipped the end between his lips and lit the tip; it crackled orange. He blew smoke at the ceiling. “Tell you what, Art, I’ll have a word with Ballard. I bet you’ll be working out of Public Safety this time Monday morning.”

  Seeing my hands tremble, Roscoe grimaced as he flipped ash into a glass ashtray. “You alright?”

  “Scared,” I said. “Petrified, if you really want to know. What if this is it? What if I turn out to be one of those fellas I read about in the newspaper who can’t ever find work again? There was a story just the other day in the Telegram about a man in Washington state who—”

  I stopped. The words seemed too grim to speak.

  “Who what?”

  I slid my dish away and sighed. “He couldn’t find work, and he shot his whole family. Then he turned his shotgun on himself and—”

  “Knock it off, Art,” said Roscoe. “Things aren’t as bad as all that. Look at it this way: Seymour Considine is in a pine box on a train heading to Asbury Park, New Jersey, where his widow is waiting to identify his remains. Sure, he was a prick, but getting carved up like that and then that being the last thing you ever experience in your life … Shit almighty. Now there’s someone I feel sorry for. But you, Art, you’ve got a daughter, a son, and a wife who all love you. Plus, you’ve got all that reward dough from Pfalzgraf. Ten G’s. That should hold you over for a little while.”

  “I gave it to my mother,” I said, blinking wearily at him.

  He reared his head back. “Huh?”

  “I figured she needed it more than I did.”

  “Hmm.” His eyebrows shot up. “Well, you know what they say about one good deed. Maybe she’ll divvy it up with you. Point is, Art, there’s no way you’re gonna end up like that cocksucker in Washington. Christ, I bet you’ll live to be an old geezer, ass parked on a rocking chair on a front porch somewhere, bird nests in your beard, watching your great-grandkids running around the yard and playing in the sprinklers. You’ll see.”

  I smiled at him. “That’s awfully nice of you to say.”

  He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, and the weight of my stare got to him. He looked at me and said, “What?”

  “How come you changed your mind?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The other night, at the Great Salt Lake, you said you didn’t want to get mixed up in this,” I said. “I was just wondering. Why the change of heart?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and began twirling a bottle of Heinz ketchup. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  He shook his head and kept his focus on that ketchup bottle. “Before I became a cop, I used to be a strikebreaker, on the payroll of a company called Donovan and Sons. I was hired muscle.”

  He leaned back against the booth seat and finally made eye contact with me. “Eleven years ago—1919, it was—me and a bunch of my pals were hired by the lumber bosses up in Centralia, Washington. Centralia was a crazy place in them days. The radicals in the IWW had their guys up there, stirring the pot, calling on lumber workers to join the One Big Union. When I jumped off the train in Centralia, I was like a kid in a candy store. All them labor agitators just waiting to be drubbed. And I was the one gonna do most of the drubbing.”

  He sipped coffee and looked at the cash register. “It was the first anniversary of Armistice Day, and we got to drinking—me and my buddies, along with some rowdies from the American Legion. Fuck, we were getting blotto and we wanted blood. All hell broke loose in Centralia. Guys fighting, breaking glass, lighting shit on fire, shooting guns. There was supposed to be a big parade in town, but it got cut short. Place was a real mess. Brawls went on for hours. It got to be nighttime, and a bunch of us gathered outside the IWW hall and beat the shit out of anyone we thought was a Red. One of the radical lumberjacks was a fella named Wesley Everest. A real kook. He still wore his army uniform issued to him when he was a doughboy in the war. We chased his ass down, and the crazy bastard tried to ford the Skookumchuck. He got panicky out in the middle of the river when he saw us coming, so he took out a gun and shot and killed a Legion fella. I don’t think he meant to do it. He was scared. Scared as hell. Shit, any of us’d be if we were in his shoes. The sheriff showed up in time and hauled Everest to jail, but the strikebreakers and Legion boys were so crazy drunk we took the law into our own hands. We broke into the jail and pulled Everest out of his cell. We drove him way out to a bridge that crossed the Chehalis. He was bawling like a baby, and I think he shit his britches. The bunch of us ended up beating him within an inch of his life, until he screamed like a woman and begged us to put him out of his misery. Then we put a rope around his neck and hanged him from the bridge. Right there on the spot.”

  Roscoe stared down at the table, scratched his chin, and bit his lower lip. “At the time, I thought it was funny—but something happened I didn’t expect.”

  “What?”

  “A few days later, I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of Wesley Everest screaming. And that started happening every night. Every fuckin’ night, without fail. The crazy thing is, the screaming isn’t in my mind, either. It’s as if the sonofabitch is right there in the room next to me, screaming the way he did when we beat him. Eleven years of this. Wesley Everest screams and I sit up in bed, sweating, shaking, and I can’t go back to sleep. Hell, I don’t want to go back to sleep after hearing that sound.”

  His words got to me. At that point in my life, I still had no idea men and women were capable of doing such things to each other. These depths of depravity were terra incognita for me. He gulped down the rest of his coffee and slammed his cup on the table. I thought he wanted me to say something, but how could I respond? What could I possibly say? Then I realized that he probably didn’t want me to say a word. Someone who’d listen—that’s what he wanted.

  He said, “I keep thinking that if I do something to make things right, maybe that prick will quit screaming in my ear every night.”

  He chuckled and stuck a toothpick in his mouth, counting out coins to pay for his hamburger. “I guess you could say I changed my mind for selfish reasons,” he said. “All the fuck I want is a good night’s sleep.”

  I gave him a minute to spread out his money on the table, and then I said, “Clara wants you to come to dinner at our house sometime. You and…” I hesitated. “Whoever it is you live with.”

  He laughed as that toothpick danced on his lip. “Tell her I said thanks. Maybe I’ll take you up on it some other time.”

  “Fair enough.”

  He plunked a few extra coins on the table. “I’ll cover yours, Art. This one time. C’mon, let’s drift. This Pfalzgraf case isn’t going to solve itself.”

  I don’t know why, but Roscoe’s violent tale soothed me like nothing else that morning.

  Twenty-one

  The tray of ham reached my plate, and I nailed a slice with the carving fork. Dinnertime at the Oveson homestead in American Fork, following prayers, kicked off with food making the rounds as voices overlapped with voices. Silverware clanked, and food commentary flared up. I glanced over my shoulder at the children’s table, and Sarah Jane took a break from giggling with her cousins to give me a wave. She wasn’t at the age where I embarrassed her yet. I waved my fo
rk back at her and gave her a little smile. Hi bobbed up and down in his high chair, sticking peas and tiny pieces of ham in his mouth with his fist.

  Sitting at the table, poking at my food with my fork, I was preoccupied with my experiences of the past few days: telling Clara I lost my job (as expected, she hugged me and told me everything would be alright); making fruitless phone calls from my home and chasing down a bunch of dead-end clues with Roscoe; visiting the employment agency in search of something even vaguely resembling law enforcement work, only to be told there were no jobs to be found. I left that grim place Friday afternoon feeling worse than ever. On Saturday, Roscoe telephoned me at home to tell me he was going to follow up on a lead in the Pfalzgraf case. He didn’t want to say anything over the telephone because of party lines, but he’d call me soon and tell me whether it panned out.

  Grant broke my train of thought when he leaned over his plate, eyes on me. “There’s an opening in my office.”

  I was chewing potatoes au gratin and washed them down with gulps of milk. Clara shot me a nervous look, fearing I’d start a quarrel with Grant. I wiped off my milk mustache and said, “Oh yeah? Do tell. What is it?”

  “Dispatcher,” he said. “Now hear me out, little brother. Everybody who starts out at the PPD”—PPD meant Provo Police Department—“begins at dispatch. You’ll love it because there are plenty of big changes in store. I read in the latest issue of Police Gazette that the Chicago police are already talking about installing two-way radios in their patrol cars. Can you imagine that? It won’t be long before they make it out here and we can finally get rid of those annoying call boxes. When that happens, being a dispatcher is going to be the most thrilling job on the force.”

  I pierced a pearl onion with a prong of my fork. “Dispatch, huh?”

  He pursed his lips and nodded. “You have to start somewhere. Dispatch is where I started. If it was good enough for me, I’m sure it’s good enough for you.”

  “I already worked dispatch for two years,” I said. “Remember? All those promises of a beat never went anywhere.”

  “No one’s forcing you to take it, kid,” he said. “But if I was in your shoes, the last thing I’d want is my wife bringing home the bacon.”

  Grant’s wife, Bess, chimed in. “You two can sell your house in Salt Lake and move to Provo. It’s so much nicer down here. There’s less crime, less auto traffic, and there aren’t as many vagrants. And fewer Mexicans!” She closed her eyes and chuckled merrily, then turned serious. “I don’t see why anybody would want to live in Salt Lake when Provo is so much cleaner.”

  Clara dipped her head, but her eyes still watched my every move.

  Mom tried to change the subject. “Frank has his work cut out for him. Don’t you, Frank?”

  Frank smacked his tongue along his molars. “It’s this darn Hoover visit. It’s still three months away, but there are a thousand tiny details we have to work out with the Secret Service Division, the municipal people, and the president’s press secretary.”

  One of Frank’s sons sitting at the children’s table said, “Do we get to meet President Hoover, Pop?”

  Frank rocked his head back and forth vigorously. “Anybody in this family who wants to meet President Hoover will get the chance. And if you all want, you can have your picture taken with him. A bunch of us Bureau fellows will be posing with him in the rotunda of the state capitol.”

  Bess ignored Frank and all the chatter about Herbert Hoover. “You’ll love it here. It’s a much nicer place to raise a family. You could buy a bungalow up the street. That way, we’d all live closer together. Clara, we could trade recipes.”

  Clara mustered a smile and a slow nod but went back to watching me—nervous that Grant was prodding me toward a fight.

  “How say you, Art?” asked Grant. “Might we expect you at the station tomorrow?”

  At that moment, Dad’s platitudes raced through my mind and prevented me from saying something I knew I’d regret. Choose your battles carefully. This isn’t the time or place. Don’t let your foes pick your fights for you.

  Dad also had what he called “the twenty-four-hour rule.” The idea is, when you feel yourself getting steamed, wait twenty-four hours before expressing your outrage. If in twenty-four hours the anger is still simmering, then say what is on your mind, but not before.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Clara beat me to it.

  “We have no desire to move to Provo. Salt Lake is perfectly safe. The auto traffic isn’t too congested. Sure, we have vagrants, but every town does. We’re in a depression, even though President Hoover is pretending we aren’t. Most of the Mexicans I know are decent people, just like the rest of us. All things considered, I think we’ll stay in Salt Lake City. Don’t you agree, Art?”

  “Yeah. I agree.”

  We smiled lovingly at each other. The room fell silent after that. Her words seemed to have killed the conversation, at least until Mom said, “Who wants some pie?”

  * * *

  When we walked in the door, with me carrying my sleeping son in my arms, the telephone was ringing. I handed the boy to Clara, and Sarah Jane shot past me, to turn on the radio. I picked up the candlestick telephone and raised the receiver to my ear and transmitter to my mouth. “Hello.”

  “Art. Buddy here.”

  “Buddy!” I said, smiling. “I didn’t see you in church this morning. How’s every little thing?”

  “Roscoe Lund has been shot. He may not make it through the night.”

  I dropped the telephone on the floor in shock. Clara entered the room. “I just put him to bed, so we can all listen … Art. Are you OK?”

  “It’s Roscoe,” I said. “He’s in the hospital. He might … He might…”

  “Go,” said Clara. “I’ll look after the kids. You go as fast as you can.”

  Moments later, I was racing up the steep Avenue roads as quickly as my car would take me, sending up clouds of dust in neighborhoods of bungalows and streets with high trees. As I rounded a corner, the LDS Hospital came into view.

  The five-story building sat high on a hill, at the corner of Eighth Avenue and C Street, overlooking the valley. When construction was completed twenty-five years ago, it was called the Dr. W. H. Groves LDS Hospital, after the wealthy English dentist who bequeathed the money to build it. That was too much of a mouthful, and the locals knocked the dentist’s name off and just called it the LDS Hospital. Behind the building was a dirt patch where drivers parked their autos in long rows. I skidded to a halt, shut off my car, and ran so fast to the hospital doors my Stetson fell off my head and I had to stop and pick it up. I pushed through the swinging glass and steel doors into the lobby, which—thankfully—wasn’t very full.

  “May I help you?” said a kind-faced woman in her fifties.

  I leaned against the counter, trying to catch my breath, and managed to say, “Roscoe Lund. What room is he in?”

  She checked a typewritten list in front of her. “Emergency care. This floor. Room one-oh-eight. Go straight back down this hall and turn right.”

  I walked fast down the hall, swerving around gurneys and medical personnel dressed in white. I passed under a big sign with red block lettering that read EMERGENCY CARE. Room 108—eight rooms away—couldn’t come fast enough.

  A police officer, uniformed and armed, stood guard at the door. Inside, two other policemen in black stood on either side of the bed as a doctor in a white coat jotted notes on sheets of paper attacked to a clipboard. Beside him, a nurse in a cap and white dress looked over his shoulder at his notations. Near the window, Detective Buddy Hawkins leaned against the wall, arms folded, watching the doctor’s every move. Over in a corner, Detective Wit Dunaway sat in a chair, his right leg propped up on his left knee. When Hawkins saw me walk in, he moved around the foot of the bed, coming toward me.

  Roscoe’s brawny body was lying on the hospital bed, eyes closed, head bandaged, upper body elevated. Gauze covered his chest and his left upper arm and shoulder.
Most of his facial color was gone, and his lips appeared parched. The urge to weep was great, but I fought it.

  “I’ll need a few of you to clear out,” said the doctor, a middle-aged man with thinning brown hair and a lean face. “We need space in here.”

  Buddy motioned for me to follow him out into the hall.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  “He was leaving the Grand Central market on Ninth and Main, about midnight last night. End of his shift. The parking lot was mostly empty, and an auto rolled up out of the darkness and opened fire. Luckily, a store clerk acted fast and called the hospital. The ambulance boys brought Lund in conscious. Doc had to sedate him to remove the bullets.”

  “How many times was he shot?”

  “Dr. Morrison said three times, although he only had to remove two bullets. One of them apparently grazed his head. He’s lucky it didn’t enter his skull. He was hit in two other places—the left bicep and chest, up near his left shoulder, so it missed his lungs and heart.”

  “Why didn’t someone call me last night?” I asked.

  “The doctor was operating on Roscoe through the night,” Buddy said. “Wit and I have been going nonstop since early this morning, chasing down leads. We don’t have much to go on. Tire tracks, and not very good ones at that. I wasn’t even going to call you, because I heard Cannon fired you. Sorry to hear about that. Tough break, Art. Then earlier today, Roscoe regained consciousness briefly and started calling out your name.”

  “My name?”

  “Over and over. ‘Where’s Art? I need him.’ I figured I’d better call you and see if you knew anything about this.”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea.”

  Buddy’s expression turned thoughtful, as if he were mulling over something meaningful. “If you were to cooperate with this investigation, Art, I could put in a good word with my superiors. I can’t promise anything, but maybe if there were an entry-level opening in the department…”

  “What do you want to know?”