Ruth Ann stood on the aluminum ladder stool and fitted a roll of paper towels on a rack beside the window over the kitchen sink. The dishes in the sink floated in sudsy water. So did the plastic wrapper from the paper towels. Dave and Cecil went to the outside kitchen door.
“Goodbye,” Ruth Ann said.
“Wait a second,” Molloy said. He held the edge of the wooden door. “Did Mr. Smithers contact you?”
“I’ve been out of town,” Dave said. “Who is Smithers?”
“Oh, shit,” Molloy said. “You don’t know him? He was here last night, suppertime. Said it was about Paul’s insurance. Wanted to talk to Angie. Asked the same questions you did. I told him you’d already been here. He said it was a communications mixup, and apologized and left. Tall guy, thin, bald.” Molloy studied Dave. “Must be big bucks in checking insurance claims. He drove a Mercedes.”
“Did it leave here on its wheels?” Cecil said.
“The gangs were busy at the church,” Molloy said.
Dave said, “Have you got Smithers’s card?”
“He didn’t give me one. I showed him yours. I think he put it in his pocket. What’s it all about?”
Dave tugged at the doorknob. Molloy let the door go. Dave swung it open, pushed the screen door, stepped out and down. “I’ll tell you when I have a chance to look into it. It’s probably as he says.” Dave watched Cecil lope to the garage and raise the warped door. “Just a mixup. I was hired from outside. He’s probably from inside.” Dave lifted a hand, started to turn away.
“Maybe.” Molloy stood holding the screen door open, beer can in his hand. “But there’s one funny thing. Angie told me. Smithers went to the restaurant, Cappuccino’s, right? Where she works? He ordered dinner, but he didn’t eat it. All he did was ask her questions.”
11
HE STOPPED THE VAN behind the cinder-block church through whose thin yellow paint the shadowy street-gang placa showed. An old gray Ford LTD sedan waited back here. It was beautifully kept, not a dent in it, the paint glossy as new. Dave switched off the engine of the van and sat for a moment beside Cecil, looking at the walnut grove. Under the trees, the long picnic tables lay on their sides. Steel folding chairs had been overturned. Among the branches, lights had been strung. Many of the sockets showed splintered stumps of bulb. One string had come down and trailed on the ground among paper plates and plastic utensils that glinted in the dying daylight. Raw wood shone through the torn bark of trees, pale white. The leaves of trees hung tattered. Round green walnut husks strewed the ground.
“Machine guns?” Cecil said.
“God knows.” Dave climbed down from the van. In the evening hush, music came from the church—piano, voices. Cecil stood listening. Dave pressed the bell push beside the rectory door, over the weathered business card of Luther Prentice, D.D. But it was Mrs. Prentice who came to the door. She didn’t look so tall now. Maybe it was the black dress. She looked old and weary. “I came,” Dave said, “to tell you that I’m shocked and sorry this happened. Can I help in any way?” He glanced toward the trees. “I might have been here, you know. Reverend Prentice invited me.”
She made a grim sound. “It’s as well you weren’t.”
Still standing beside the van, his face turned toward the music, Cecil sang softly to himself, “‘Amazing grace, how—’”
“They are rehearsing,” Mrs. Prentice said, and came out to stand on the step. “For the funeral. It will be a communal funeral. Five dead, you know. One minute eating, laughing, having a fine time. Next minute, dead on the ground in their own blood.”
“The boys from The Edge?”
A bitter smile moved her mouth. “It was supposed to be them. That was what they came for. But it was only two of them got hit at all.” She looked quickly at Dave. “I mean that’s terrible enough. But they will be all right. The ones who died—they were just in the way.”
“That’s where your husband is?” Dave said. “With the families?”
She nodded. “A mother dead, not thirty years old, three little children left behind. A boy fourteen, could play any instrument you put in his hands. A wonderful, talented boy with such a marvelous future ahead of him in this world. We need all the beauty we can get, it seems to me.” A black handbag was in her hand. She dug in it for a handkerchief and touched her wet eyes. “I know I wasn’t meant to understand Our Father, but sometimes I wish He would let me understand. An old man going, like Mr. Jackson, that’s not so hard. But that fine young boy, and the others in the sunshine of their days. We needed them here.”
“What was the reason for the raid?” Dave said.
“Reason?” Her laugh was bleak. “The Edge boys were bound to be here, weren’t they, and they wouldn’t be expecting a fight, wouldn’t be ready for it. Hatred’s the only reason I can give you. But it seems as though hatred is enough.” She looked at the watch on her thin wrist. “You must excuse me now. I have a good many visits to make at the hospital.” She pulled the house door shut. Her eyes begged Dave for an answer. “Where did they get guns like that, that fire so fast, so many bullets it seemed like rain?”
“Guns are big business these days,” Dave said. “Did you see Silencio Ruiz? Do you know him when you see him?”
“Oh, yes.” She stepped past Dave and unlocked the gray car. “They are saying on the news that he led the raid.” She bent to get into the car, then straightened and rolled down the window of the open door. “They are saying no such things happened while he was away in prison.” She took the handkerchief from her bag again, and stooped a little, and waved the handkerchief inside the car, as if to stir the air that had baked itself in there. “They are saying he must have got them the guns—something he learned in prison.”
Dave stared. “And you don’t think so?”
“He was trying to stop them” She got into the car, behind the steering wheel, and stretched across to roll down the window on the passenger side. Sweat broke out on her face, and she wiped it with the handkerchief. “Car gets so hot. I don’t remember when we ever had weather like this.”
Dave frowned down at her, his hands on the window ledge of the car door. “Why would he try to stop them? He was their leader.”
“Used to be, I know.” She dug keys from the handbag in her lap, set the handbag beside her on the seat, fitted the key into the ignition lock. “But, you see, he didn’t come with them.” She turned the key. The engine started. It ran so quietly it sounded new. She looked up at Dave. “He came from the street. He ran in amongst the tables. Now I don’t understand but a little bit of Spanish, but the way he was waving his arms at them and shouting and the expression on his face—it was plain to me he wanted them to stop. Wonder is he wasn’t killed himself.”
“Did you report this to Lieutenant Salazar?”
She managed a wan smile. “He said I was mistaken.” The parking brake made a clunk when she released it with her foot. Her hand came out to take the inside door latch. Dave let go of the door and stepped back. “I was not mistaken. I was here. And I know what I saw.” She pulled the door shut. “I was right there, at the corner of the house, with a fresh platter of barbecued wings. I wasn’t in the line of fire. I didn’t have to crouch down under the tables like the rest. I saw. I saw it all. And he was trying to stop them.” She gave her head a sorry shake. “But it seems I was the only one who did, and one old black woman’s word is not enough.” She glanced at her watch again. “Oh, dear. I am very late. I must go. Excuse me.”
“Just one more minute.” Dave put on his glasses, drew a leather folder from his jacket, leaned on the hot hood of the car, and wrote a check. He tore it from the pad and handed it to her. She blinked in surprise. Putting away the folder, he said, “I’ve made it out to the church. You see that whoever needs it gets it, all right?”
She read the check and her eyes widened. “But this is a great deal of money.” She stared at him, openmouthed.
He smiled. “Money isn’t what it used to be.”
&nbs
p; She laughed. “Truly. When I was a little girl in Georgia, my whole family could have lived for a year on this.” She folded the check and tucked it into her purse. She looked at him solemnly. “Bless you,” she said.
Cecil said, “Excuse me, but the Edge boys, the wounded ones, will they be in that hospital too?”
“Mrs. Prentice,” Dave said, “this is my associate, Cecil Harris.”
She nodded. “Yes. And if it’s like last night and this morning, the others will be there too, the ones that weren’t hurt, and some that didn’t come to the picnic at all. They’ll be in the rooms, in the halls, guarding their friends, seeing that nothing more happen to them. The authorities don’t like it, but they’re afraid to order them out.”
“Oh, yes, I saw it.” De Witt Gifford had painted his face. Rouge was thick on the wrinkled cheekbones above his beard. In the murky light of the attic it looked black. So did the slash of red that was his mouth. He had shaved off his eyebrows and drawn them thin and high and arched. Blue paint was above his curious eyes. Out in the daylight, he had looked like the bearded lady left behind by some circus that had pulled up stakes and departed town fifty years ago. His hat, this time, was a high-crowned blue-black straw, entangled in netting. He pulled it off and tossed it on the bed as his motor-chair whined past. Its wheels bumped him into the tower. “From here there’s quite a good view. Of course, the walnut trees interfered. I couldn’t see it all. But I saw enough. It was horrible.”
“It was the gang you sponsored,” Dave said. “You bought them those green jackets.”
“Don’t throw my follies up to me,” Gifford said. “I can’t change the past. Good God. The only philanthropic gesture in my selfish life, and look what it gets me.” He picked the big binoculars up off the windowsill and peered through them out the clean, curved glass. “Obloquy. Well, I assure you, I am not to blame for that raid. I am sickened by it. Absolutely revolted.”
“The jackets weren’t your only philanthropic gesture,” Dave said. “There was another. You bailed Silencio Ruiz out of jail after his arrest for holding up that supermarket. You hired a high-priced defense attorney for him.”
Gifford sat motionless in slim, ragged silhouette against the dying light of the hot day. He seemed not to breathe. Then he breathed, but he did not turn. “No wonder you can afford the clothes you wear and the cars you drive. You are very good at your work. Did they tell you these things downtown? Or was it Bruce Kilgore?”
“He figures his vow of silence isn’t sacred anymore. In his estimation, you didn’t keep your end of the bargain. You see, he thinks Silencio blew up Paul Myers’s truck. And he’s not alone. The Sheriff thinks so too.”
Gifford set the binoculars down and turned. The backlight of the windows made a scarecrow halo of his white hair and beard. “And you? I really don’t give a hoot what Kilgore thinks. He’s a clod. The police are”—he shrugged bony shoulders under a moth-eaten afghan—“we all know what the police are. What do you think? That I would find interesting.”
Dave smiled. “I think I’d like a drink. You?”
Gifford’s laugh was a crackle of dead leaves. “Of course. When wouldn’t I? You know where the bottles are, I believe?”
Dave switched on lights in the tidy kitchen. Two plates drained in the rubber rack beside the small sink. Two forks lay there also, and two spoons. Two blue pottery bowls drained upside down. In the sink, with water standing in them, were aluminum-foil trays that had held, at a guess, frozen enchiladas. The water was chili red. Dave found glasses, ice cubes, Scotch, switched off the light, returned to the tower with the drinks. He put one in Gifford’s claw, and with his own drink sat on the Empire couch with its threadbare Spanish shawl. The cushioning of the couch made dry sounds under him like very brittle straw.
“Lieutenant Salazar reasons this way,” he said. “No sooner is Silencio out of prison than Paul Myers is murdered. And where is Silencio? Nobody knows. He sees his parents only once, fails to report to his parole officer, sees nothing of his gang. He vanishes. That is suspicious.”
“Thank you for the drink.” Gifford held it to his mouth and sipped from it, small sips, one every few seconds. He was gazing out the window. “It was not quite, I think, the most shocking thing I ever saw. No, it wouldn’t be, would it? Nothing can shock us as things do in childhood. I told you how I used to creep down by the creek at night. Interesting things went on down there under the oaks and in the brush close to the water. I remember it had rained for days. Then the storm passed and we had a glorious day. That night, the stars were bright, the moon was very full. It shone on me and woke me, and I crept out. The house was asleep. The ground, of course, was still wet. So I thought no one would be out there, making love as they liked to do. There’d be nothing interesting to watch. Nothing educational.
“But there was. A young woman—a girl, really, as I see her now—probably fifteen, sixteen. I was perhaps ten or eleven. And something seemed to be wrong with her. I was vastly ignorant. She was all alone, half hidden in the undergrowth, writhing on the ground, moaning, whimpering to herself. In Spanish. Prayers. I won’t go on with the details. She was giving birth. I can’t tell you how dumbfounded I was when this wet, struggling thing came from her in the moonlight. The scream she gave is still in my ears. I understood and didn’t understand. I turned my face away. I’m afraid I threw up.
“And when I looked again, she was on her feet, clutching the baby. It was gasping, crying. Like a sick cat. And she ran down to the creek with it. And without a sound, without a moment’s pause, she threw it into the rushing water. I heard a scream and looked around to see who it was, but of course it was me, wasn’t it? It frightened the girl. She ran away, slipping, sliding, falling.
“I rushed down to the creek, stumbled in up to my waist. The current was very strong. I wanted to save the baby. I couldn’t see it. I called and called. As if a newborn child would know it was being called to. I knelt in the rocks and splashed around for it with my hands. But I didn’t find it. It was gone. The creek had it.”
“Sounds like a dream,” Dave said. “You sure it wasn’t a dream?”
“I hoped so, next morning. But my clothes were still wet. And they found the baby. Miles downstream. The story was in the newspaper. I clipped it out and kept it. I suppose I still have it somewhere. They never found the girl. My God, she’s an old woman by now. Or dead. At my time of life, you look around, and everyone you ever knew is dead. My glass is empty.”
Dave rose and took the glass. “Silencio’s gang killed five people. Not one of them was a member of The Edge.”
“It’s not Silencio’s gang,” Gifford said sharply.
“He was there. The minister’s wife says so. You saw it too. Wasn’t he there?”
“If I were Silencio,” Gifford said, “I should be hiding somewhere. He must know they believe he killed Paul Myers. He’s such an obvious suspect. He’d be a fool to add to his troubles by leading that raid.”
“Mrs. Prentice says he was trying to stop it. The Sheriff won’t believe her. She needs a backup. Silencio needs a backup. You sure you didn’t see what she saw?”
“I told you.” Gifford motioned at the window. “The tree-tops. I only got glimpses. But Silencio didn’t lead that raid. He was through with gangs. Prison cured him of that. He came to see me, briefly, the day he returned from San Quentin. He told me, and I believed him. Now could I have my drink?”
Dave fetched it. “Last night at six, a tall, bald man in a Mercedes stopped at Myers’s. You notice fine cars. Did you see it? Did you happen to get the license number?”
Gifford drank from his glass. “I was watching the church, the walnut grove.”
Going out through the shadows of the garret, Dave jerked his head aside to avoid the pale canvas corner of the old life raft. The elevator creaked him down to the deserted pantry. He stood frowning while the elevator door slid shut. He listened. No dogs whined or snuffled behind closed doors. The looming old house stood hollow, silent
, empty of life. He walked out into the hallway beside the great, gloomy staircase, thinking his footfalls might rouse the dogs. No such thing.
He opened doors and peered into shrouded rooms that breathed dust, mildew, neglect at him. He went back the way he had come and into the gaunt, disused kitchen. It smelled of dogs. He crossed scuffed linoleum, pulled open a door, and found himself on a screened porch where an old oaken icebox lurked, and an old Maytag washer with gray, crumbling wringers. A strong latch was on the screen door. A pair of bolts of bright new metal. But not fastened. He pushed the door open. Wooden steps, frail with age, went down to what must once have been the kitchen garden Gifford had mentioned—where there was always fresh mint. It was weeds and creepers now, matted, brittle.
Beyond it, a hurricane fence crossed, barbwire-topped. And a few yards farther off, an old stable building reared up, jigsaw work along its eaves, slats broken out of its cupola. The stable door stood open. The glare of the setting sun was in Dave’s eyes, but he thought he saw movement inside the stable. He waited, squinting, straining his ears. But the building was too far off. He started to take a step down, then thought better of it. It looked to him as if the gate in the fence was ajar. The stable and the yard were probably where the dogs stayed when not on duty. He didn’t want to meet the dogs. He stepped back onto the porch and was just letting the screen door fall shut when he heard a dog bark.
A man yelped, “Lady, no! Damn it, come back here.”
Out the stable door, dragging a large, heavy, green paper sack, came a big, lean Doberman. The man appeared. He was slender, brown-skinned, curly-haired. He lunged for the sack, grabbed it, tugged, and the sack split open. Kibbled dog food rattled on the hard ground. The young man took a laughing swing at the dog, who dodged away. The young man hung for a moment on hands and knees, wagging his head in amused despair over the spilled food, the torn sack—then jumped to his feet and went back into the stable. He spoke the dog’s name, but she didn’t respond. She stood at the fence, staring through at Dave.
Nightwork Page 9
