Dead Man’s Blues

by Ray Celestin

  ‘Then why did you let me come here?’

  ‘We have something planned tonight. Something we wanted you out of the way for. When you called suggesting to meet, well, it was a happy coincidence. For us. Plus we didn’t know if you’d told Capone about us. Judging from your little speech back there, you haven’t.’

  ‘And the New York connection?’

  Coulton shrugged. ‘So you know who I’m buying from in New York? That won’t matter when you’re dead.’

  And he grinned, and Dante knew that there was no point talking to the man, that he had badly misjudged the situation, and his thoughts crept to his backup plan, to the Saturday Night Special stitched into his hat.

  ‘What about the girl? You could let her go,’ said Dante. ‘Do what you want with me, but let her go.’

  Coulton sighed. ‘She’s just been witness to our meeting,’ he said. ‘What can I do?’ And he raised his hands suggesting there was nothing to be done, and Dante’s heart sank and a grim resolution filled his being. Coulton’s hands were in the air: the furthest they had been from the gun on his desk the whole time they’d been speaking.

  Dante’s eyes darted from the man’s hands to the man’s gun, calculating the distance, and Coulton frowned, followed Dante’s gaze, sensed something was up. The old man lurched forward, grabbing for his Colt. Dante ripped the snub-nose from his hat and fired it twice. The first shot shattered the window; the second left a penny-sized hole in the old man’s forehead, and a bewildered expression on his face. He slumped onto the desktop, his fingers an inch or so from his gun. Then the window exploded outwards in a roar, glass fragments sucked out into the night, the papers rising up from the desk and swirling into the air, Loretta screaming over the rush of the wind.

  Dante leapt forward and grabbed the Colt from Coulton’s desk and spun about just as Sacco and the muscle burst in, guns raised, and a deafening volley of bullets rattled around the room. The two men dropped to the floor and Dante felt a wave of relief, and then he felt the dullness in his gut and wondered why he was pushed up against the desk, and he looked down and saw the bullethole in his shirt, the blood pumping out of it, and for some reason all he could think to focus on as the pain cascaded through his body was the voice of the commentator over the roar of the wind . . .

  Cuts have formed above Dempsey’s eyes. His face is swollen, he’s bleeding from his mouth . . .

  Then he was on the floor, and somewhere in the distance Loretta was screaming. He could see Sacco and the other man splayed out on the floor, and the perspective lines began to swirl, the world beginning to tumble. He closed his eyes and there was the roar of the wind. He heard a bell ringing, a crowd somewhere cheering, frantic voices.

  And the round ends, and Teddy Haines is quick to smear Vaseline all over Dempsey’s face . . .

  Then a woman’s voice, a woman’s hands helping him up and he opened his eyes and saw the room in disarray, his view lopsided. Loretta was dragging him to the door, now just a wooden frame holding a hundred glass shards.

  Dante fumbled about in his pocket, slippery with blood, and pulled out his lighter and waved it about for Loretta to take. She frowned a moment, then caught his meaning. She left him leaning against the frame of the glass door and she went over to the drinks stand and poured a decanter of whiskey over the sofa, then used the lighter to set it on fire.

  Dante turned his head to watch, and he caught a glimpse of Coulton, slumped over the desk, the papers on it soaking up his blood. Then the sofa was aflame, and the carpet, and the paintings nailed to the wall, the horsemen and hunting parties and the green hills they were riding over, all turning to black in the blaze.

  Loretta put her arm under Dante’s shoulder and they hobbled through the glass-fanged mouth of the shattered door. They stepped into the corridor, and the third man was there, pinning himself against the wall, crying.

  ‘Please don’t kill me . . . Please . . . I’m just a secretary . . . Please . . .’ Dante looked at the man, at how red his good eye was, raw and streaming tears, and how his glass eye was still perfectly clear, and how bizarre that was.

  ‘Please don’t kill me . . .’

  They left him there, sobbing in a fit of despair, and they moved off, Loretta following the signs for the elevator. Dante shook his head.

  The service elevator . . .

  And he wasn’t sure if he’d said it out loud until they changed direction, heading the other way down the long dark corridor. They reached a wall and slumped against it and Loretta was bashing a button on the wall and there was a wrenching sound as the elevator came to life, and when the doors opened and they stepped inside, Dante saw the great blood smear on the wall where he’d been slumped, and he looked down and saw his shirt and trousers were red, blood congealing in clots in the spaces between the laces of his shoes, and he knew he was dead, but that maybe he had saved Loretta.

  He slumped against one of the metal panels that lined the interior of the elevator, and slid down it till he was sitting on the floor. The burning sensation in his stomach seared through the shock and he realized his hands were cupped around the hole in his gut and he thought of pregnant women, cupping their hands around new life.

  Loretta had tears falling down her face and he realized he didn’t have much time and he realized he was muttering, babbling, slurring. He fumbled the car keys from his pocket, raised them up, saw a drop of blood drip off the end of them as he held them aloft.

  . . . Leave me here – run away – there’s men in the cars in front – there’ll be glass on the street from the window – go round the back – and run . . .

  He wondered if he’d actually said the words, or just thought them. He babbled on, muttering, and he wondered if she’d heard him, if she’d get away. If he’d told her what Sacco’s car looked like.

  And at some point there was a great thud and the vibrations stopped. The lights flickered off, and then on again, and he saw he was alone in the elevator, and his stomach was no longer hurting, and then the great mechanism started up again and he moved on, past the ground floor, past the basement, continuing on into the darkness, falling through the universe to the city of ghosts entombed in the past, to join his parents and his siblings and his wife, all of them waiting for him at his sister’s graduation party.

  CONCLUSION

  CODA

  ‘You were best. You fought a smart fight, kid.’

  JACK DEMPSEY TO GENE TUNNEY

  ON LOSING THE LONG COUNT FIGHT,

  SOLDIER FIELD, CHICAGO

  Chicago Herald Tribune

  THE WORLD’S GREATEST NEWSPAPER

  TUNNEY WINS BY DECISION

  NEWS SUMMARY

  Tunney wins decision by unanimous verdict of judges. Page 1.

  James O’Donnell Bennett describes intense drama of battle. Page 1.

  Dempsey camp protest slow count in seventh round. Page 1.

  Society women and shop girls go see, and learn all about fighting. Page 2.

  Tunney 11-to-10 choice in fistic mart at eleventh hour. Page 4.

  Hits and misses all looked alike from the way-back seats. Page 5.

  Trains, planes and autos bring fans to fight. Page 5.

  CROWD SCREAMS AT TENSE DRAMA AS GENE RISES

  (A page of pictures of the fight, showing the action in the various rounds, is on page 3.)

  BY JAMES O’DONNELL BENNETT

  In a prize fight with terrific ebb and flow in it Gene Tunney held his world’s championship against Jack Dempsey’s ferocious assaults on Soldier’s Field last night. The moment of high drama came in the seventh round at 10:34 when Dempsey knocked Tunney down to a count of nine, but referee Dave Barry was accused of starting the count late as under new rules . . .

  PINKERTON’S NATIONAL DETECTIVE AGENCY, INC.

  FOUNDED BY ALLAN PINKERTON, 1850

  ALLAN PINKERTON, NEW YORK

  OFFICES:

  137 South Wells Street,

  Chicago, July 16th, 1928

  Disci
plinary hearing: #1928-C-IL-04b

  Operatives: Davis, Ida #713, Talbot, Michael #442

  Dear Sir and Madam,

  We write to inform you of the decision of the disciplinary hearing held on July 13th into your conduct with regards to case #103-455-28 – H. Van Haren.

  The arbiters decided that on all counts the claims of gross misconduct and willful disregard of orders were valid, and the hearing recommended dismissal; a recommendation which was taken up by the Executive Committee.

  This ruling is not subject to appeal and enforcement is immediate. Any personal possessions left in your former offices will be forwarded to you by post. We would like to remind you that the privacy agreements you signed at the commencement of your employment with the firm are binding in perpetuity.

  Respectfully,

  David G. Trainor,

  Chair, Executive Committee

  PINKERTON’S NATIONAL DETECTIVE AGENCY

  WE NEVER SLEEP

  58

  Michael took the eight-fifteen Wolverine out to Ann Arbor, and from there he caught a taxi the last six miles to where the asylum was located, on the Huron River, a little outside Ypsilanti. When he arrived at the building, a pleasant-looking, neo-classical mansion, the doctor was on the steps to meet him. He was in his fifties, bearded and portly, and he greeted Michael with a cautious smile and a firm handshake, before leading him through reception, up some stairs, and down a maze of corridors.

  He described the facility’s unique character, how it was funded through the School of Medicine at Michigan University, the groundbreaking research that was conducted there; trying to underline, Michael saw, that if anything they spoke about became public, it would cause harm to the institution, and the vulnerable patients they were trying so hard to treat.

  It had taken weeks of research to find the place. The day after Coulton and Severyn had died and Ida had been hospitalized, Michael had been informed that they were being suspended from the Pinkertons, pending a disciplinary hearing. So he had called up Walker and explained to him what he wanted to do, and Walker had presented him with a six-week contract that attached him to the State’s Attorney’s office as a temporary investigator. It meant he could conduct his research with the weight of the SA behind him, and that sped things up no end, as did the fact that Charles Coulton Senior’s business empire had been left in a tattered and tangled mess. With the man dead, and his son and business secretary missing, and his office burned down, a swarm of lawyers had taken control of his estate, and it was to them that Michael made his semi-official requests.

  He pored over the dead man’s accounts, discovered he’d made an endowment to the university, and that his secretary had taken a trip out there the day after Gwendolyn died. He went through the employee records, found the relevant driver and interviewed him; he confirmed the trip, the timing, the passengers, and the bonus he’d received for keeping his mouth shut.

  After that it was just a case of coercing the people that ran the asylum into talking to him. He called the university and gave them a story about Coulton’s death and his suspected criminality, and said that an official probe into his financial affairs was underway, including looking at any charitable endowments the man had made. He sent them a request letter on government-headed paper, and received in return a list of the asylum’s employees. These he ran through the Bureau of Identification in Chicago, and the Bureau of Investigation in Washington, and he found a match – one of the doctors at the facility had an outstanding arrest warrant from California, having been caught, thirty years earlier, peddling abortion drugs to prostitutes in Santa Barbara, just a few months after he’d graduated from UCLA.

  Michael called him and explained the situation, that all he wanted in return for not telling the university administration about his outstanding warrant for the distribution of abortifacient drugs was some information on one of his patients. The doctor agreed, and Michael booked a ticket on the Wolverine, and twenty-four hours later the doctor was leading him down the corridors of the asylum, looking only faintly put out to be in the company of the man who was blackmailing him.

  They stopped at a locked and bolted door that reminded Michael of a solitary-confinement cell, and he noted the slate square to one side, with the patient’s name written on it in chalk: Charles Cooper. The doctor opened up the viewing hatch, and Michael stepped forward to peer inside.

  It was a nice cell, as far as cells went: it had a bed in it and a barred window looking out onto the river and the cornfields beyond, a table and a bucket, and walls painted a soothing shade of pale green. And then Michael noticed the force-feeding chair in the corner, with buckles at its feet and on its arms, and blocks either side of the headrest, making it look like an electric chair.

  He turned his gaze from the chair to the bed, where, lying down, in a straitjacket and pyjamas, was Charles Coulton Junior. His head was propped up on a pillow, allowing Michael to see his face, or what was left of it. Arturo Vargas had not exaggerated when he said that Coulton had been left unrecognizable after Benny Roebuck had smashed a champagne bottle into his face. Great scars pitted his skin and his nose had been partly sliced off, and there was an awful, lopsided quality to the structure of what was left. Michael doubted even the boy’s closest friends would recognize him.

  And in the midst of all that scarred, lumpen flesh were two hollows where a pair of eyes should have been.

  ‘The eyes?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Infected. They were removed in the trauma center.’

  So Roebuck had blinded Coulton, causing Severyn to exact revenge when he finally caught up with the man in the alleyway. Maybe because of the angle of Coulton’s head, it looked to Michael as if he was staring at the ceiling above him, at the waves of dust floating about in the afternoon sunlight. He made no motion the whole time Michael was studying him, seemed completely oblivious to the world, and Michael wondered how much of it was catalepsy and how much of it was medication.

  He took a last look at the killer of Gwendolyn Van Haren, the boy onto whom Coulton Senior had pinned his dreams of an empire, and he stepped away from the viewing grate, and the doctor closed it gently.

  ‘We can talk in my office,’ he said.

  Ten minutes later they were sitting in a bright room which, like Coulton’s cell, had a view over the river and cornfields. A secretary had brought them cups of mint tea and the scent of it filled the air.

  ‘I’m not in charge of his case,’ said the doctor, ‘but after your call, I looked at the boy’s case notes, spoke to my colleagues and acquainted myself with his history.’

  Michael nodded and looked at the man, and he tried to match up the fifty-something bearded doctor with the graduate in California thirty years previously who had been caught selling abortions to prostitutes.

  ‘What is it you’d like to know?’ he asked Michael.

  ‘Is there a chance he’ll ever leave here?’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll ever be cured, if that’s what you’re asking. If you decide to reveal his identity he might be sent to another facility, but I doubt he’ll ever end up in a prison, even if he’s tried for the girl’s murder. No judge would send him anywhere but a hospital. He’s catatonic, may as well be in a coma. We have to force-feed him, clean him up. He’s doubly incontinent. I’ve never heard of a single instance of someone coming back to normal function after such a complete shutdown.’

  ‘And who’s paying for him to be here?’

  ‘The boy’s care will be paid for out of the endowment – a certain portion of it is ring-fenced for the patients here, and there’s a good few years of it still to run. After that, if there’s no financing left, he’ll be put into a state lunatic asylum. They’re building a new one over in Ypsilanti.’

  ‘So he’ll always be like that? How I saw him in the cell?’

  ‘We prefer to call them rooms. But yes, he’s yet to show any lucidity. Like I said, if we didn’t feed him, he’d starve. In that respect, he’s only a danger to himself
.’

  ‘You have any idea what caused it?’

  The doctor shifted in his seat. ‘There’s perhaps something you don’t know about the boy. This isn’t the first time he’s been a patient here. This is his third visit. He stayed here briefly during his time at college, when his homosexual tendencies became apparent. Then he came again more recently, a year ago, after he’d suffered a nervous collapse. We treated him with psychoanalysis and electro-shock therapy. My colleague in charge of his case, Dr Munroe, has built up a comprehensive psychopathology of the boy. If you’d like, I could précis it?’

  ‘Please . . .’

  ‘The patient has been through a number of significant traumas. The death of his mother in childbirth meant he grew up motherless with a father who blamed him for her death. Then came the manifestation of his homosexual tendencies, and his experiences during the war. These most recent traumas – the death of his fiancee, and the facial injuries – were, to put it in layman’s terms, the final straw. Most of Dr Munroe’s notes deal with the relationship to the patient’s father. He raised the patient to be cultured, literate, genteel, and then lambasted him for possessing those very same qualities, blaming them for what he saw as his son’s spoiled, enfeebled nature, his effeminacy. On the one hand he was criticized for being too soft, but when he tried to act like his father, replicated his roughness, he was criticized for being uncouth.

  ‘And so the patient grew up confused, unloved, unable to reconcile the two contradictory people his father wanted him to be. He began engaging in behavior patterns designed to display and prove his masculinity – troublemaking at school, volunteering to fight in the war in Europe, associating with low-lifes. In the war he met Lloyd Severyn, the criminal type the patient had already been attracted to in the past. With Severyn he was accepted by someone similar to his father, and this assuaged some of his feelings of worthlessness, the patient seeing him as a bridge between the two worlds he’d always been torn between. The patient’s wishes to become involved in the father’s schemes stem from this, too, I suppose. That need to live up to those expectations.