A Show of Hands

by David Crossman

  “Here, here, now!” Matty fumed as she bustled into the room. “Who do you think you are, busting into a woman’s home like this!” She turned to Crisp. “I called Luther Kingsbury,” she said, then, turning to the intruders, added, “he’s the police.”

  “We’re from the Rockland Telegraph,” said the reporter, thus apparently absolved of the civilities common to the rest of society.

  “Oh,” said Matty. She never missed an issue of the Telegraph. Unconsciously she primped her hair and straightened her apron, just in case. “Oh, well. What do you say, Winston?” she asked, a little flustered. “They’re from the Telegraph.”

  “I’ll be all right, Matty,” Crisp said.

  “Just look at this room!” Matty cried. Immediately she began putting things right.

  “That won’t be necessary, ma’am,” said the photographer. “We’ll just be getting close-ups.”

  Her words were wasted. “What are these people going to say to their friends, Winston? They’re going to think we don’t know how to keep house on the island.”

  “Really,” said the reporter as he ushered Matty to the door, “we won’t breathe a word.”

  “Well,” said Matty, already on the landing with the door closing behind her. “If it’s all right with Winston.”

  “I’m sure it is,” said the reporter as he lifted the little wrought-iron latch into place. Then he returned to his seat. It showed the power of the media, Crisp thought, that Matty hadn’t even noticed his sitting on her great-grandfather’s chair.

  “Now then,” continued the reporter, “word is that you were locked in a freezer. Tell us about it. Why? How? By whom? That kind of thing.”

  “Why?” said Crisp, with a senile little tilt of the head.

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to know all that?”

  Danny was speechless. Not so the photographer. She was a woman. Women are sensitive to these things. She understood the problem. She came to the bedside and, lowering herself on one knee, patted Crisp’s hand and spoke to him as if his lights had all gone out. “We’re from the paper, Mr. Crisp—”

  “Professor,” Danny reminded her.

  Solicitousness was one thing; deviation from the facts was something else. “He’s not a professor,” said the woman. “That’s just a nickname. I asked around.”

  “Maybe he likes it,” said Danny.

  Crisp had been looking from one to the other of them during the exchange and, inwardly, was shaking his head. Externally, he nodded only slightly.

  “All right, all right,” she relented. “Professor, I’m Bobbie Wheelright, and this is Danny Levinson. We’re from the Rockland Telegraph, and we want to ask you a few questions about what happened to you.”

  Crisp held up the hand with the missing finger. “You mean this?”

  “Yes,” said Danny. Now they were getting somewhere, he thought.

  “I had an accident,” said Crisp matter-of-factly.

  “What do you mean?” said Danny. He shut off the tape recorder. “We heard you were locked in a freezer up at the McKenniston place.”

  “I was.”

  Levinson turned on the tape recorder and spoke a little louder. “You were locked in a freezer up at the McKenniston place. Is that right?”

  “That’s correct,” said Crisp.

  “By who?”

  “Whom.”

  “Whom,” said Levinson. “Someone locked you in?”

  Crisp looked surprised. “They did?”

  Levinson’s thin veneer of professional hauteur was fading rapidly. “They say someone locked you in the freezer, then turned on the generator.”

  “Dangerous,” said Crisp, scratching his head and looking bewildered. “Somebody could get hurt that way.”

  “Somebody did,” said Ms. Wheelright. She was speaking even more loudly than Levinson. “Wilbert Sanborn’s dead.”

  Wilbert, thought Crisp. Mostly did have a name, after all. He preferred Mostly. “Was he in the freezer?”

  “What?”

  Crisp’s eyes were watery and distant as he turned them to the camerawoman. “How did Mostly get in the freezer?”

  “Mostly?” echoed the woman.

  It was Levinson’s turn to toss in a lifeline. “That was Sanborn’s nickname,” he said. “Everyone on the island’s got one.”

  That was true, Crisp reflected. They should do a story on nicknames. He could guarantee it would be much more interesting than the one they’d get from him.

  “Nobody locked him in the freezer,” said Ms. Wheelright. “He drove off a cliff. What’s he talking about?”

  Levinson shrugged. “You get the picture, I’ll get the story.” The woman’s face disappeared behind the camera with a comment Crisp really couldn’t make out but seemed to be directed at her partner. “Listen, Professor, ” Levinson resumed, “we’ve got a noon deadline. Help us out here, will you?” Crisp tilted his head to the other side. “How did you get locked in the freezer?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Crisp.

  “Who do you think did it?”

  “What makes you think someone did?”

  “Our sources said—”

  “What sources?”

  “I can’t reveal that.”

  Crisp rested his chin on his chest. “Poor Mostly.” He raised his eyes. “I don’t remember his being in the freezer.”

  Levinson stood up abruptly, folded his notebook, looked at his watch, and began pacing the room. “The biggest story to hit the midcoast in forty years, and our only witness is an imbecile,” he whispered to the photographer. “Listen, Mr. Crisp—”

  “Professor,” the woman reminded him snottily.

  “Mister,” Levinson volleyed. “Our sources said someone locked you in the freezer, then hit this Sanborn fellow over the head with a heavy object, put him in the golf cart, drove him to the edge of the cliff, and . . .” He used sign language to illustrate. “The question is, who would have done it, and why? Was it the same person who locked you in?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Crisp. His voice was weak and gravelly. Mostly’s autopsy must be finished, and these people knew the results before he did. Good sources. “I was in the freezer.”

  “You didn’t see anything?”

  “I saw the door close.”

  “Then?”

  “Then it got cold.”

  “So,” said Levinson, warming to his task. “Somebody turned on the compressor.”

  “Generator,” Crisp corrected.

  “Generator. Then you passed out?” said Levinson. He was writing furiously, and Crisp wondered whether he’d presupposed an answer.

  “Lost consciousness,” Crisp amended.

  “Same thing. Then?”

  “Then?” said Crisp.

  “What happened next?”

  “I don’t know,” Crisp replied. He had to concentrate to keep from smiling. “I was unconscious.”

  Levinson sat down as abruptly as he’d stood up. “I mean—” The flash went off. “Hey! Wait a minute, will you?”

  “Sorry,” said Wheelright, though she didn’t seem to mean it.

  Levinson rubbed his eyes. “I hate that,” he said. Willing enough to subject others to it, though, thought Crisp. “Where was I? The freezer?” He looked at his notes. “Oh, yeah. You were asleep. What happened when you woke up?”

  “I found out I was alive,” Crisp replied thoughtfully.

  Levinson propped his palm on his leg, stuck out his elbow at a forty-five-degree angle from his body, dropped the glasses down on his nose, and leveled a severe gaze at him. “Mr. Crisp. You’re not being helpful. How do you expect us to get the story if you won’t get serious?”

  Even Crisp, poet that he was, could not find the words to convey how little he cared whether or not they got their story. He did wonder, though, where they got their facts. Before one can plug a leak, one must determine the size of the hole.

  “I’m very serious,” he said. “After that, I w
as in the hospital.” A brief silence punctuated the statement as Levinson scratched it down.

  “What about the buttons?”

  Crisp was startled. Although his expression didn’t change, his eyes did. Ms. Wheelright, focusing for a close-up at that instant, was so alarmed by their sudden clarity and coldness that she failed to take the picture. By the time she gained her senses, the look had gone, in its place a benign, almost witless mask. “Buttons?” he said distractedly.

  “Some buttons were just sent to Augusta for analysis. Do you know anything about them? Where did they come from? Did you lose some buttons while you were in the freezer?”

  Crisp made some sounds in the back of his throat. His eyes became soft and dreamy. “We used to play that when I was a kid. ‘Button, button . . . who’s got the button?’ Mamy Harding always had it. If you caught her behind the oriental screen, she’d let you kiss her for a penny.”

  “This is getting more like the twilight zone every minute,” Levinson commented under his breath. “Listen, Professor, one last question. Concentrate, will you? Who could possibly want you dead?”

  No one who knew where he was. “You mean who would want Mostly dead, don’t you?”

  “You were the one locked in the freezer!” Levinson shouted in exasperation. “Sanborn was killed because he saw who did it!”

  “Of course,” Crisp said slowly, “if you look at it another way, what if I was locked in the freezer to keep from identifying Mostly’s killer?” His grandfather had been right; he’d have made a great lawyer. “After all, he’s the one who’s dead.” More’s the pity. “I’m very tired. I think if you want to know anything else, ask your source. He seems to know more than I do.”

  “She,” said Levinson. His need to be the one correcting, at that instant, overwhelmed his journalistic common sense.

  If Sangé Timor had been this easy, there would be one less set of bones in Crisp’s closet. Of course, there would be other little Timors scurrying from hole to hole in northwest Turkey, popping out of shadows now and then, to swear to lies or slit people’s throats.

  Wheelright dropped the camera onto her chest with a thud. It wouldn’t have thudded on Matty’s chest. Sarah Quinn’s either, for that matter. “Danny! I can’t believe you—”

  “I want to go to sleep,” said Crisp, his voice etched with fatigue. “I just want to sleep. Forget about it.” He closed his eyes and let his head drop to one side.

  Levinson collected his reportorial paraphernalia and stood up. “I don’t think he heard—”

  “Of course he heard,” Wheelright scolded. She tossed her things into a leather case and stepped briskly toward the door. Levinson, his tail between his legs, was at heel.

  “No, I mean, he didn’t understand. Look at him. He’s sound asleep.”

  “Did you see the look in his eyes when you mentioned the buttons?”

  Levinson shrugged. “Probably had gas.”

  “He scares me.”

  “Who? Him?”

  “You didn’t see what I saw. Lucky for you he’s half deaf.”

  “Don’t tell Mitch, okay?”

  As the door closed, Crisp’s eyes opened. Determined people, armed with a little knowledge and a lot of ink, scared him. Things were unpredictable enough without these bulls upsetting the china. Still, music can be played on any instrument, provided it’s tuned properly. And someone was playing them beautifully. Crisp had little doubt that, should he find that person, he would find much more than an informer.

  It had been a fruitful interview. Everything had changed, of course.

  A land mine had exploded under Private First Class Timothy Hill. Crisp had watched as the gangly young man was propelled about thirty feet in the air and landed in the lower branches of a tree. Shaken, understandably, but completely unharmed. Freak things like that happen in war, especially in a place like the Ardennes, littered with explosive debris from two world wars. But fate wasn’t finished with Private Hill. As he jumped down, the trigger of his M14, which was still strapped around his shoulder, caught on a branch and released a round of ammunition at a nearby rock, from which it ricocheted into his chest.

  Crisp had never seen so much blood. He watched unblinking as a nineteen-year-old medic performed emergency surgery to dislodge the bullet from the left ventricle and patch up the gaping hole left by the flattened bullet.

  Hill was conscious throughout. Crisp didn’t know if there had been any anesthetic available. None was asked for. None was offered. The medic poured alcohol over the wound while Private Hill bit on his rifle strap, praying and cursing and screaming out of the corners of his mouth.

  Now, all these years later, Crisp realized that that image had crystallized his concept of bravery. As he looked at the bottle of pain medication on his bedside table, longing for the relief that a pill or two would bring, he remembered that young soldier and forbade himself the comfort. He would be brave.

  At the same time, he knew that Matty would be up any minute. She’d discover that he hadn’t taken his 11:30. She’d scold him; he’d complain. She’d fuss; he’d refuse. She’d insist; he’d relent. Then, absolved of cowardice, he’d “be a good soldier” and take his medicine. Relief.

  Maybe Private Hill would have behaved differently if Matty had been on the battlefield. Of course, she wouldn’t have allowed all those bombs lying about in the first place. One should clean up after a war.

  Matty was late.

  Leeman Russell, on the other hand, was right on time. “Professor?” he said, opening the door just enough to poke his head in and get a good look, just in case Crisp was asleep. He couldn’t tell the gang at the poolroom he hadn’t seen anything. “It’s me,” he said, lest there be any doubt. “Okay if I come in for a minute?” He was in by this time. “How’re you doin’?” He stepped tentatively toward the bed. If only Tim Hill had been as tentative. “Jeez, don’t you look some awful!”

  “Truth in advertising, Leeman,” said Crisp. “It’s good to see you. Have a seat.” He gestured toward the corner of the bed. Leeman took a seat. “I feel every bit as bad as I look.”

  “Jeez,” Leeman reiterated. This time he was looking at Crisp’s bandaged hand. “I bet that’s some rough, losin’ a finger like that at your age.”

  “Not easy at any age, I should imagine.” Crisp held up his hand so they could both have a better look at it.

  “No,” Leeman agreed. “But you had it a lot longer than someone who ain’t so old.”

  He had a point.

  “Makes it harder to get used to. Hurt much?”

  “Just between you and me, Leeman,” Crisp confided, “it hurts like blazes.”

  “Shoot!” said Leeman. “I forgot them goshdarn flowers.”

  “Flowers?”

  “The girls up to the store got together this little basket. Some flowers in it. Candy, too . . . like they got down to the hardware store. Card. Stuff like that. I left it down in the car.”

  “Maybe you could bring it up before you leave.”

  This arrangement left something to be desired. “I hate walkin’ up all them stairs again,” Leeman concluded. “I’ll just give it to Matty. She comes up to see you, don’t she?”

  Crisp smiled and nodded. “Quite often.” She was still late.

  “Good. Then she can bring it up one of these times.” Leeman tried to steal a peek at Crisp’s toes, but they were covered by the blanket. “Where is she anyways?”

  “Matty?” said Crisp. “She’s not downstairs?”

  Leeman shook his head. “Nope. I didn’t see her.”

  “Strange.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Leeman. “Jeez, you look some awful.”

  “So I gather.”

  “One finger and two toes, wasn’t it?”

  Crisp wondered if the Rockland Telegraph hired stringers. “One finger and two toes,” said Crisp.

  “Froze off, was they?”

  “I guess you could say that,” said Crisp. “Frostbite. The
y had to amputate.”

  Leeman nodded. “Some talk downtown.”

  “I can imagine,” said Crisp. It was easy to do.

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” Leeman offered. It must have killed him to say it.

  “That’s all right. I don’t mind telling you.” Talking would take his mind off the pain. A thought occurred to him. “In fact, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. You might be able to help me out.”

  “About . . . that?” said Leeman, pointing at Crisp’s finger. This was almost too good to be true.

  “Not really,” said Crisp. “It’s about Amanda Murphy.”

  “Even better,” Leeman said aloud, though he hadn’t meant to.

  “The attorney general has asked me to investigate.”

  Leeman bounced off the bed as if he’d been stung. “I knew it!” he said. “I know all about your work with the gov’ment, you know.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure,” Leeman affirmed. “You worked with the NSA.”

  “And what did I do there?” Crisp inquired gently. It was never safe to assume the obvious . . . about anyone.

  “Oh, well, I don’t know specifics, if that’s what you mean,” said Leeman, a little flustered. “Just that you was . . . that you worked there. They do codes and stuff?”

  Crisp’s reflexes relaxed. “That’s right. That kind of thing.”

  “Stands to reason then,” said Leeman cryptically.

  “What stands to reason?”

  “Well, that they’d call you in on all this business,” said Leeman. He was warming to his subject, and Crisp was only too happy to apply a little kindling. What Leeman knew, the town knew, and vice versa. “Police around here ain’t equipped to handle this kind of thing.” He tapped his temple. “You know what I mean? This girl—”

  “Amanda Murphy.”

  “Amanda Murphy. Right. Dyin’ the way she did, and all that business of diggin’ up Andy Calderwood. I knew there was somethin’ going on!

  “Hey! I bet that’s why somebody locked you in that freezer, ’cause you was gettin’ too close to somethin’!” He stared at Crisp and lowered his voice. “They was tryin’ to kill you, you know.”