The Parlor City Boys

by Arno B. Zimmer

  “I know what you’re thinking, Woody. ‘There he goes again – off the deep end’. But I can’t help myself. I need to look beyond the ordinary, the obvious, you know what I mean? That’s all I see at home and it really scares me. No, my Uncle Harold is right. The answers are here – in these books – not sitting in a chair at home sipping one martini after another and reading Collier Magazine when I’m 40-years old. I won’t end up like that.” Jerry stopped abruptly as if he had gone too far, revealed too much.

  “No problem,” said Woody, thinking of Mr. Kosinsky, who never said a word when he came over to see Jerry. Always that thin smile with those liquid eyes that creeped him out. In fact, Woody couldn’t remember the last time he actually heard Jerry’s father speak. Jerry said more than once that his Mom did all the talking – and thinking – for both of his parents.

  Jerry had already retreated into a thick book, a clear sign that the conversation was over. “Movie starts at 4, buddy. We can meet in front a few minutes before if you’re coming,” said Woody softly as he walked away. If he had looked back, he would have seen that tears were welling up in his best friend’s eyes.

  ***

  After leaving the library, Woody started walking aimlessly and soon found himself on the edge of the creek that ran down to the river. The water was shallow and some rocks jutted out creating little ripples while others were flat, creating a sort of disjointed, crooked stone path across the water. The opposite side was overgrown in some spots with thick brush and Woody noticed a tent-like structure had been erected in the very spot he had seen the hobo a few days earlier. Just then, the flap on the tent moved and a shaggy figure emerged and stood in the opening, staring across at Woody. Transfixed, Woody stared back at the disheveled figure but neither of them moved. Woody observed his straggly, matted hair and full beard but was drawn quickly to the piercing blue eyes. After a few moments, the man pointed at Woody and then disappeared back into the makeshift enclosure. His movement jolted Woody and hesitating no longer, he turned and raced downtown, hoping that Jerry had changed his mind and would be waiting for him outside the theater.

  ***

  Up on Crazy Hill, Friday was the traditional day when the staff could get even with the public ward patients, many of them indigent, for making their week difficult or just inconvenient. Even the slightest infraction would not go unpunished.

  Roscoe Peterson along with three ward attendants shepherded a group of recalcitrant patients into the Day Room right after breakfast for the end of week ritual. Roscoe was still troubled by his discovery of Randall DePue’s body a week earlier and just didn’t have the stomach for what he knew would happen next. Plus, the visit from Det. Meacham was still on his mind and he sensed that he was not entirely in the clear yet. He wondered if the Detective had sensed that he had held back some important details about the day DePue died. Well, he would deal with that potential problem later. Right now, he just wanted to get through the day.

  The patients were lined up in two rows facing each other, most with stupefied looks on their faces while some of the newcomers were grinning for the last time that day – or any future Friday during their tenure at the Institute.

  Suddenly, the door flew open and Ward Chief Burt Grimsley strode in as if he were Gen. Patton ready to inspect the troops. Peterson and the other staff knew that Grimsley’s capricious mood – and his recollection of that week’s patient infractions - would determine how the next several hours unfolded.

  Grimsley walked between the rows of patients with his head down, as if studying the tile on the floor when the doors opened again and four tables were wheeled into the Day Room. Each one was covered with a heavy canvas cloth and buckets were lined up on top of each table with piles of folded sheets. Some of the patients started to squirm as the buckets were placed on the floor and the sloshing sound of water could be heard.

  Grimsley surveyed the group in front of him with his index finger on his lower lip, walking slowly, as if he contemplating serious matters. Then he stopped and called out names, telling those chosen to report either to the laundry or the kitchen. Peterson watched the satisfied faces of those who departed and just shook his head.

  Now Grimsley turned and scanned the two rows of remaining patients, barking out the names “Thurmond”, “Benoit”, “Atwater”, “Judd” in a staccato voice. On cue, the attendants stepped forward, firmly grasped the patients selected and guided them each to a table.

  Each patient stood mute and trembling as the sheets were dunked into the buckets , wrung out and spread on the tables. Then came the order from Grimsley to disrobe. Newcomers Thurmond and Benoit immediately complied but when the other two resisted they were forcibly stripped by the attendants.

  One patient at a time, the methodical Friday ritual continued under the watchful eye of Burt Grimsley. The patients who had been spared were directed to turn and face the four tables.

  The first to receive the “treatment” was Bill Thurmond. Wet towels were placed under his arms and between his legs as he started to tremble. Working quickly as a team, the three attendants then wrapped Thurmond tightly in the wet sheet and then the blanket, securing him with rope so that he looked like a giant mummy except that his head and feet were exposed.

  Benoit was complacent as well but Atwater and Judd tried to resist when their turns came, something Grimsley would remember for the future. When the process was finally completed and the four tables were wheeled out of the Day Room, Grimsley turned back to the remaining patients with a malevolent grin on his face.

  “Now listen carefully” he began in a slow, pedantic cadence. “Your treatment cannot succeed unless you are obedient. We demand obedience because you are either too stupid or too sick to understand what is best for you. It should also be clear by now what happens when you are not cooperative. We have to resort to a medical procedure known as hydrotherapy because there is simply no other way to get to people like Atwater and Judd. You will note that they are very agitated and that means their blood is hot. We have to cool it down. So, they will learn the hard way but it doesn’t have to be like this for the rest of you. After lunch, we will have our moral therapy session but for the remainder of the morning we want you to enjoy some planned activities here in the Day Room.” Grimsley completed his speech and marched out, leaving the ward attendants in charge.

  Down the hall in the Seclusion Room, all was dark as the four mummified figures on the tables shivered in fear and agony for another six hours. Not everyone knew that the buckets contained ice water and that the “wet packs”, as some called them, only qualified as approved therapy – instead of torture - simply because they were not dry. No medications were authorized for this truculent group, on direct orders from the Administrator. Even though the so-called infractions were minor, they had to feel their therapy intensely if they had any hope of being cured.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Saturday, July 16, 1955

  When Meacham got the call, he was headed out the door for the short ride to the Institute. Someone had seen Mike DeLong in Crater’s Tavern, a dive on the east side of town. Meacham would head there first. He had more than one reason to speak with Mike.

  Crater’s was a notorious hang-out for Parlor City’s small-time losers. Low-lifes of all kinds found a home there. Aptly named, all the human debris in and around Parlor City seemed to be sucked in by some overwhelming gravitational pull.

  Dirty and dimly lit, it appealed to any nefarious character who wanted to stay out of the light. In addition to the besotted, you could find your two-bit hustlers at Crater’s. Nothing big time just shady deals on everything from radios to aluminum siding to a cheap paint job for your house. Defective factory samples that didn’t make it to the store somehow turned up at Crater’s in a plain brown bag and eventually found a buyer. You could get anything at Crater’s if you asked or just hung around long enough – which most of the patrons did. The hustlers knew that drunks were easy prey if you caught them early enough in the day before
incoherence set in and only the money dried up.

  When Meacham arrived, DeLong was slumped in a back booth with an empty shot glass in front of him. His beer glass was knocked over but he was impervious to the slow, steady drip off the table onto his pants. Meacham asked the bartender to fill a pitcher with cold water. He poured it slowly on DeLong’s head until his eyes started to open. Suddenly, DeLong bolted upright.

  “It’s OK, Mike. Snap out of it. It’s me, Meacham. God, you’re a mess and you smell like a dead camel. Come on, You’ve got trouble all around you and we need to talk - now,” Meacham said forcefully as he gestured to the bartender for a shot, regretting what he was doing but knowing that it was his best chance to get DeLong’s blood flowing again. “Here, Mike. One last drink on the house. Knock it down fast. Then, we’re outta here.”

  DeLong looked at the liquid gold in Meacham’s hand and his eyes showed a flicker of life as he reached slowly for the glass with trembling fingers. Once more, he hoped he was at heaven’s door. Just one magical drink could get him there and maybe this was the one that would quench his spiritual thirst. DeLong knocked down the shot and waited to be transformed while Meacham looked at him with a mixture of pity and disgust.

  “All right, Mike,” Meacham said after a minute, “let’s get you cleaned up and put some coffee and food in you. After I’m through, life’s gonna get even harder when I drop you off at home.” Meacham pulled DeLong out of the booth onto unsteady legs and guided him from the shadows toward the light. A row of patrons slouched over the bar, staring blankly after DeLong, saw visions of themselves, shivered and looked away. A few recent arrivals were smirking, not realizing that they might be tapped on the shoulder all too soon.

  ***

  “Let’s go, Mike. You’ve soaked in the tub long enough. I’m not running a Turkish bathhouse here. Dry yourself off, get dressed and drag your sorry ass out here.” Meacham said through the bathroom door. He knew that DeLong was stalling and his patience was thinning. He had laid out clean clothes for DeLong hoping that, along with some food and coffee, they would bring some humanity back into this lost soul. Meacham also hoped that DeLong was feeling enough remorse and guilt right at this moment to perhaps open up and talk freely. He had to take advantage of this opportunity. Who could know where the next inevitable binge would take Mike DeLong.

  After a few minutes, during which dry heaving and retching emanated from the bathroom, an ashen-faced DeLong walked unsteadily into the kitchen, eyes down, and silently took a seat across the table from Meacham. “Mike, I am going to try to help but you have big time problems – and I’m not even talking about the booze. But first, you need to give me a reason to believe in you. There’s more coffee in the pot and I made some baloney sandwiches. You need something in your stomach besides rye.” Meacham waited for his warning to sink in before resuming as DeLong gingerly poured some coffee and then nibbled at a sandwich without looking up, visibly struggling to choke down the food.

  Meacham decided to start easy. “So, is Santimaw still acting like a pompous ass when Hawkins isn’t around?” he asked with an easy smile. “Yeah, he’s the same only fatter and more pompous than ever,” replied DeLong, starting to relax. “Oh, has Oscar Peterson been at the Institute for a while?” Meacham asked breezily. DeLong tensed up a little before responding. “He’s an orderly, Meach, been there for years. Never been caught but suspected of running contraband for some of the wealthy patients. You know, smuggles in their favorite booze for a price. Santimaw has been trying to trap him for some time now as if he was on the verge of cracking a big case. Why?”

  Meacham didn’t answer and abruptly shifted gears. “Tell me why you disappeared from the Institute on Wednesday. Did you show up drunk and just decide to walk away?” asked Meacham. DeLong began haltingly. “I came to work sober, Meach, and had no intention of drinking. Been fighting it hard the last two weeks. There was a message waiting for me when I punched in that Mr. Hawkins wanted to see me before my shift began. It seemed kind of strange at the time but away I went. When I get there, his assistant tells me he was called away on some emergency but to wait. I start to sit down in the entrance area but she tells me Mr. Hawkins wants me to wait in his office. When I explain that I’ll be late for my shift, she says that Hawkins has already called Santimaw. Then, she just walked away. Real snooty bitch. You’d think she ran the place.” DeLong paused to sip some coffee, not eager to continue but aware of Meacham’s steady gaze.

  “So I go into his office and stand for a while and then sit down when Hawkins still hasn’t shown after several minutes,” DeLong continued. “That’s when I noticed the bottle of rye on a table with a note stuck to it which said ‘Happy Birthday, Mike. Remember, moderation is the key’. I recognized Hawkins handwriting. My birthday’s tomorrow, by the way.” DeLong’s face went blank as his thoughts drifted elsewhere until Meacham said “And”?

  “Meach, he’s been counseling me for weeks now, right after work. Says I’ll never make it by trying to give up booze entirely, that I need the self-discipline to drink sociably like a man and that he is going to help me get there. It bothered me that Hawkins was actually encouraging me to drink, especially since I was feeling pretty good after going cold turkey, each day a little better. Anxious on occasion but no shakes after the first few days, no sweating at night, well, you wouldn’t know the feeling – a human being again. When I left the house that morning, Marge actually smiled at me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. Even my son started talking to me again. Anyway, so Hawkins hasn’t shown and its gotta be 20-30 minutes by now. That bottle of rye is staring at me and I start to stare back. So I decide to test myself like Hawkins was urging me to do. I can remember feeling confident as I broke the seal, Meach. Just a couple of hits, you know …..”

  DeLong trailed off and hung his head again, receding back into the depths of his misery when Meacham said soothingly but with inward rage toward Hawkins “OK, Mike, we’re going to work through this but you’ve got to give me more details. Think real hard, it’s important. What else happened in Hawkins’ office? Did you notice anything out of the ordinary? When did Hawkins return and what did he say?” Meacham knew he needed to press DeLong now and so he went on, “Did you snoop around the office, check things out? Open up drawers, cabinets – anything? Oh, I’m assuming that the shoes you’re wearing now are the same ones you wore that day, right?”

  “Yeah, these are the only decent shoes I own. There’s nothing to recall, Billy, there rarely is after it starts. Once in a while, I have a vague, dream-like sense that something happened but I never feel sure that it did. All I can tell you is that when I came to, I was sitting next to a tree in the park with a brown paper bag in my lap and a lump on the back of my head. I don’t remember leaving Hawkins’ office or even talking to him, if I even did.” Before DeLong could continue, Meacham interrupted with “Whoa, Mike, what time did you leave the park?”

  “Not sure but the sun was beating down on me something fierce so had to be around the middle of the afternoon. Why?” Delong asked, showing a little spark of life. Meacham bored in on DeLong and froze him with an intense look that he could not avoid. “What was in the bag, Mike? Tell me it was the bottle of rye from Hawkins’ office.”

  DeLong never looked up as he spoke in a soft but distinct voice. “Wish it was booze in this case but it was a Colt, one of those small jobs that fits in your pocket. And there were some loose bullets in the bottom of the bag. I didn’t check to see if it was loaded. Just dropped the bag near the tree and headed downtown. Next thing I remember is you standing over me at Crater’s.”

  Meacham felt a cold chill. “Stay put here, Mike. Don’t answer the telephone until you hear it ring twice then stop. If it rings again, that’s me calling so pick up. Don’t go to the door, in fact just stay in the backroom with the shades drawn. We go back a long way, Mike, but so help me god if you don’t do exactly as I say, I will make your life a living hell. Hawkins has been using you but that doesn’t change the
mess you’ve got yourself into and you don’t know the half of it. Can I count on you?” DeLong just nodded yes and sunk back into the chair, his hands covering his ashen face.

  “I’m locking the door, Mike”, said Meacham on the way out. “Eat something then get some sleep. You’ll need both before we’re through. And I need your shoes but don’t ask me why.” As Meacham headed for his car, he lit a camel and took a long drag as he repeated to himself “that son of a bitch Hawkins.”

  Before driving off, he called Sgt. Whipple to canvass the neighbors living on the edge of the park, hoping that someone could corroborate DeLong’s story.

  ***

  Woody waited outside the Vagabond Theater hoping that Jerry would show, anxious to tell him about his near encounter with the hobo. Kids were pouring in for what was a Friday afternoon Summer ritual in Parlor City - a double feature with newsreel and cartoons. If you had 50 cents, you were set for several hours of entertainment. He remembered the first time he went with Jerry. They were dropped off by Mrs. Kosinsky with strict instructions to wait out front afterwards until she picked them up even though it was only a ten block walk home. They had walked proudly into the theater with their little brown paper bags of penny candy which, if parceled out, would last the afternoon.