The Hundredth Man

by J. A. Kerley

  I searched my memory for a quote from a long-ago poli-sci class and replied, ‘“Given the choice between a government without newspapers and newspapers without a government, I would not hesitate a moment to support the latter.””

  The old man studied my face as if memorizing it. He reached out and cradled my fingers, then bent at the waist, and touched his forehead to my hand. “I know the same songs as Thomas Jefferson,” he whispered.

  I could only nod, Of course.

  Harry explained what we were looking for. The old man led us through a maze of rooms, often sidestepping through particularly narrow passages, noses to yellowing newspapers. He had a curious way of walking, part skating, part jumping rock-to-rock across a stream. We stepped quickly to keep him in sight. The stacks we passed were in perfect alignment, folded papers stacked to alternate thinner edge and thicker fold. Had I a level, I suspect the top paper in any given stack would have centered the bubble.

  On the papers I saw names of Alabama papers from cities big and towns small: Mobile Register, Dothan Bugle, Jackson Daily News, Huntsville Times, Cullman Times.

  “New York Times?” I asked. “Washington Post?”

  He shook his head. “Not my responsibility.”

  We sidled up creaking stairs holding step-stacked copies of the Montgomery Advertiser dating back years. A brittle and yellow Richard Nixon leered from a front page. Light flicked on in a dark room and the old man led us to a foot-high newspaper stack in a corner.

  “Mobile News Beat he recited from a perfectly typed card in his head. “Published weekly on Thursday. First date of publication was May eleventh, 1996. Suspended publication on August seventeenth, 2002, due to financial difficulties. Purchased by a new owner last October and resumed publication.”

  Harry nodded. “We’d like to borrow the recent ones if possible.”

  The old man bowed again. “For you, Harry Nautilus, anything.”

  Harry bent to the papers and the old man whispered to me. “Five years ago I kept my work in Mobile. The city called it a public nuisance and a fire hazard and was going to take it to the dump. Harry Nautilus found this place and helped us move.” He snuck a speculative eye at Harry, then whispered, “He can be meaner than the devil, but sometimes he grows wings, this Harry Nautilus.”

  We retraced our haphazard passage, Harry carrying the short stack of News Beats flat across two upturned arms like a crown on a velvet pillow. The old man followed, nodding approvingly. We passed a short stack of papers that caught my eye and I picked up the top one. Turning to the man, I displayed the fresh copy of Le Monde and gave him a What’s this? eyebrow.

  “A guilty pleasure,” he said, smiling like the Mona Lisa.

  We returned to the office and evicted two pinochle-playing janitors from the small meeting room. I called Christell Olivet-Toliver for the codes on the personals ads. She was delighted when I told her we could lend her copies of Mobile News Beat going back to November, and didn’t question it when I asked if she’d iron them before returning them. I explained Christell’s alphanumeric coding to Harry and we began reviewing ads, starting with the most recent of Farrier’s responses.

  Harry stretched his arms out until the small print focused. “Two inches before I need glasses,” he said, and read the ad. ““Need a Friend. SWF, twenty-four, sks friendship first then maybe LTR w attractive fun-loving, honest man twenty-one to twenty-eight. Enjoys walks in park, dancing, snuggling, and I love the beach.” What’s LTR?”

  “Long-term relationship.”

  Harry grunted. “I figured it was short for ‘litter.” A singles way of saying they want to get married, settle down, and drop some pups.”

  “Farrier was a beach boy. He was probably responding to the beach reference in the ad.”

  Harry riffled through another paper, read. ‘“Soulmate Wanted. Active, Outgoing SWF twenty-seven w/blnde hair and brn eyes sks sweet soulmate for dinner, movies, moonlight hikes on the beach. Should be fit and enjoy working out. Friendship first, then … ?””

  “Beach again. Fitness aspect. Nothing stands out.”

  We went through the next four ads quickly. They were all basic clones of the first two in tone and interests, and I began to feel bricks smacking my forehead again. Harry picked up the last News Beat He snapped the paper open and let his finger drift down the page, reading silently. His finger stopped, retraced.

  “Sheeeee-it,” he whispered, and spun the paper 180 degrees, finger tapping the ad. I read it, and I knew that nightmares, like prayers, could be answered.

  New in Town and Looking for Someone Special SWF seeks SWM. I have an absolute crazy craving for a man 6’-6‘2”, 175-185pounds, 20-30years old. I love a smooth, clean, almost hairless chest, noticeable biceps, and hard round shoulders. No appendectomies or other scars. I love flat abs. I’m a SWF executive, 5’?”, 120 pounds, blond hair, long legs, and full breasted with lots of secret and special needs. If you’re in a relationship, I can be very discreet. If the above description fits you to a T, send letter, photo (nude or swimsuit please face doesn’t have to be in photograph if you’re shy), and phone please. All replies answered if received within a week.

  “Face doesn’t have to be in photograph,” Harry said,” cuz you ain’t gonna be wearing it very long.”

  “How many responses do you think he got?” I asked, amazed at the brazen recruitment.

  “The only qualification I got is the height,” Harry replied, “but I would have written back all day long.”

  “Terri’s got to be lying,” I said. “She met Nelson through the personals. Cutter did too.”

  Harry said, “Only two reasons to fib, bro, something to lose if you don’t or gain if you do.”

  This time Terri was more circumspect about letting us in, spending several seconds at the peephole before we heard the chain fall and dead bolt slide.

  “GCBC?” Harry whispered, meaning Good Cop-Bad Cop.

  “Always nice to revisit the classics. I call BC.”

  “Yes?” Terri said warily through a half-open door.

  “More questions,” I said. “Open up.”

  “Won’t take but a couple minutes, Miss Losidor,” Harry offered. “Then we’ll be on our way.”

  She led us to her kitchen. She’d stopped at a supermarket after work and was stashing groceries. “I told you everything the other day,” she said, tucking a twelve-pack of diet soda under the counter.

  I stood against the sink as Harry passed Terri items from the Winn-Dixie bags on the table. “We took the photos of Jerrold to the Game Club where you said you met Jerrold? and no one there remembered him. Could you tell us what your waitress or waiter looked like? We’ve got questions for them.”

  Terri stood on her tiptoes to put the peanut butter on a top shelf. “I don’t really remember, ah “

  “Miss Losider,” I said suddenly, “why didn’t you tell us you met Jerrold through the Personals section in the Mobile News Beat?”

  Her head snapped toward us and the p-butter went bouncing across the floor.

  “Love those plastic jars,” Harry said approvingly.

  Terri turned. “I met him at the Game Club. I told you that.”

  “You met him through the personals. I know it, Detective Nautilus knows it, and now we’re just waiting for someone to tell you.”

  Terri pondered a moment. Her head slumped forward and she rubbed her temples. The motion looked stolen from a high-school play.

  “You’re right,” she said, raising her head, doing pity-me eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry I’m right?”

  “I’m sorry for misleading you, I just …”

  “Just wanted to go to jail for obstruction of justice.”

  She studied her folded hands. “My mom always told me personals ads were for, well, people more interested in … sex than relationships. I was embarrassed.”

  “You write this stuff yourself or do you have comedians on staff?” I rolled my eyes and snickered wick
edly. Maybe that was in the high school play too.

  Harry said, “Be civil, Carson. It’s all in the open now.” “I’m getting tired of her filling my ears with shit.” “Hey, watch your language,” Terri snarled. “I fuckin’ live here.”

  I said, “Yep. You and Mr. Puff. Remember the last time we were here? Mr. Puff knocked some stuff over in the bedroom?”

  He eyes went wary. “He knocked a book off a shelf. Why?” “This the same Mr. Puff likes to wear his white hair kinda long and full, prefers his collar to be pretty pink?” “I don’t know what this has to do with ” “The same Mr. Puff we saw come in your door right after we left?”

  Terri Losidor’s mouth made shapes but not sounds. It took several seconds for them synch up. “You’re nosing in my personal life. It’s time you left.”

  I said, “Did you bag Jerrold after the money thing? Or did you keep seeing him?”

  She pointed to the door. “I want you both out.” “We’re here until I hear the truth,” I growled, moving into Losidor’s personal space. Her jutting jaw wanted to stay but her feet moved back.

  Harry patted my shoulder. “Carson, chill out and let Ms. Losidor and me talk a bit.”

  I leaned against the wall and pouted. Harry turned to Losidor. “We’re just trying to get our facts straight, ma’am.”

  Terri repeated her assertions, her routine nailed down to the word. The more time I spent with Terri, the more I saw her as softly innocuous on the outside, hard and driven inside. I wanted to cut to the core, see what lurked there. But we had no leverage: all we held were a couple pebbles with no idea what direction to throw them. I shouldered off the wall and chucked the largest one. “I’ll bet she knows what Jerry-boy was doing in Biloxi. And who he was doing it to.”

  The stone landed heavier than expected fear flickered in Terri’s eyes. She masked it with volume. “What in the hell? What are you talking about?”

  “Lady, I got three dead bodies and a killer crawling through the personals in the News Beat Why didn’t you tell us that’s where you found Smilin’ Jerry, the Love Machine.”

  She jabbed her finger at me in time with the words. “You … are … freaking … nuts!”

  Harry slipped between Terri and me. “Carson, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Go somewhere and relax.”

  Terri whined, Harry coddled, I backed to the counter. There was an ashtray on it, empty save for two lips ticked butts and something resembling an insect chrysalis, gray. I’d seen similar objects in ashtrays at the station. Terri was looking at Harry and I flicked the object with my fingernail.

  Amazement.

  It felt right. Could it be? I started to pick the thing up, but Terri angled my direction, still holding to her Game Club story.

  I thundered across crossed the kitchen and shouldered Harry aside.

  “I’ve had it with you, lady! You lie anymore and you’re gonna wake up in the slammer with MORE DYKES AROUND YOU THAN THE FUCKIN’ NETHERLANDS!”

  She shrieked and bolted for the bathroom. I returned to the counter, pocketed the object, and nodded at a wide-eyed Harry, Let’s haul ass. Losidor leaned around the door frame, shaking her fist and threatening lawyers if we weren’t gone in seconds. Harry showed her his palms as he backed away, pretending to pull me with him. “We’re leaving, Miss Losidor. Sorry about the inconvenience. My partner’s having a bad day, his ferret died this morning. Thanks for your time. Bye now.”

  We climbed into the car. “I don’t know what you were trying in there,” Harry said, “but it was Oscar quality. Miss Terri’s working a shuck. I smell it.”

  “Does it smell like this?” I asked, fishing the object from my pocket.

  Harry eyeballed it. “Dirty gum?”

  “Chewed newspaper, Harry,” I said, bouncing the dried wad in my palm. “Know anyone with that odd habit?”

  “You gonna start getting your mail here?” Briscoe Shelton asked. His door was chained and he peered between door and frame. He wore the same T-shirt and painter’s pants he’d worn the past two visits. Watching the same porn video as last time, by the sounds of it. The man needed a vacation from his life.

  “You mentioned seeing a guy with Nelson, someone hanging around now and then.”

  A moaning male from inside, “Oh, bay-bee you make me need to …” Shelton looked down and his neck reddened; capable of embarrassment, a surprise. I’d copied a photo of Burlew from the files and floated it just outside Shelton’s pupils.

  “This the guy?”

  A woman on the tape made a sound like yodeling. Shelton grimaced, talked louder. “Huh-nuh. Head’s too fat. He can see outta them slitty little eyes?”

  I slipped him the photo. “Study it. Be sure.”

  “Ain’t the one.” Shelton pushed it back. “Ugly bastard, ain’t he?”

  “Big and ugly. But uglier than he is big. And he’s damn big.”

  I put the photo in my pocket. The players on the tape were in contrapuntal harmony now; the male grunting, the female emitting monosyllabic imprecations.

  Shelton raised an eyebrow. “Big like a football player? That kind of big?”

  “Six three or so, two seventy maybe.”

  “I was chopping hedge over by Building B Nelson’s building and saw a guy getting into a car. Week back? Wouldn’t a thought twice ‘cept the guy was a gorilla. Didn’t see his face, he was either turned crosswise or back to me.”

  “You seen this woman?” I held up a publicity photo of Clair. Shelton took a long time studying it.

  “Huh-unh, nope. That I’d remember real good.”

  The female on the video vocalized a gale-force orgasm, the male trumpeting in her wake. Maybe I looked at Shelton with pity; he caught my eyes and glared. I thanked him and he slammed the door in my face. When I was almost outside he opened his door.

  “I don’t give a fuck what dirty things you think about me, Mr. Bigshot Detective,” he yelled down the hall, his voice breaking. “My wife’s in the hospital on one of them machines and I ain’t gonna cheat on her while she’s alive.”

  It was a long walk to the car.

  I drove through the morgue lot. When I didn’t see Clair’s shiny gold Lexus in its space, I parked and jogged inside. I discovered she’d been called to a scene in Mount Verson, but hadn’t planned on being gone long. I saw Will Lindy in his office and and stuck my head through his door, said good morning. Lindy’s office was large, furnished with filing and larger cabinets, a long credenza, television monitor, even its own pantry-sized record storage space. He turned from arranging videotapes on a large shelf. “You here to tell me the blamed thing’s been found?”

  “What’s been found?”

  “The table?” His eyes scanned my face. “You didn’t know? We had a thief last night.”

  “In here?”

  “Outside.” Lindy shook his head, amused and bewildered. “Somebody clipped an autopsy table from the loading dock.”

  “Who the hell’d want an autopsy table?”

  He shrugged. “It was in an unmarked box about the size of a refrigerator. Maybe that’s what the thieves thought they were getting. Love to see their faces when they open the box … if they even know what it is.”

  I pictured a bunch of crack heads eating at a gleaming table, wondering why it had gutters. “When’d you guys start doing autopsies on the loading dock?”

  He chuckled. “We didn’t have time to get it installed before the dedication; takes time to assemble and needs a plumber. It was going in this week. Anyway, that’s my problem. What can I help you with, Detective?”

  “I’d like to see the scheduling sheets from back in May.”

  He nodded. “Who was in and who was on-call?”

  “Those am the ones.”

  “One of the few files I don’t have. They’re what we call Prosector Activity Reports; Dr. Peltier keeps them.” He fetched a key from his desk and we ambled down the hall. I glanced out the window and didn’t see her car in the lot. He said, “You need the reports
for a case?”

  I sighed, a fellow worker burdened by tail-chase minutia. “Trying to determine a time line. No big deal.”

  “Good. Because they’re not set in stone. More to make sure everything’s covered. Dr. Peltier’s intense about making sure we’re completely staffed, vacations and professional days don’t overlap, that kind of thing. She spends a fair amount of time out of the office and wants everyone present and accounted for.”

  A large vase of fresh-cut flowers sat on Clair’s desk and perfumed her office. Lindy pulled the file from a locked cabinet and we crossed the hall to a copier room. Walter Huddleston hovered above the machine, copying various forms. I nodded and he tried to burn me down with his eyes before leaving.

  Lindy made my copy, returned the file, and went back to filing tapes. I turned the corner and saw Clair coming through the front door. The ladies’ room was behind me and I jumped inside. Five seconds later the door opened. I slipped into a stall and hopped up on the toilet, wondering what I’d say if Clair opened the door.

  “If I can cut the entry cleanly I’ll nail a nine-eight…”

  She took the first stall and was in and out in an efficient minute, simultaneously handling nature’s call and a call to her landscapes I slid outside, feeling less ashamed than I should have.

  I got in my car, set the schedule on my lap, and ran my finger down the dates.

  CHAPTER 24

  The back room of Mr. Cutter’s house was always safe and quiet, his second-favorite place in the world. The first was the boat, always the boat. Though the boat from his childhood looked different from the boat of today, they were the same. The universe pulled things way from you, spun them in circles, maybe changed their outsides, then set them in your path again.

  Like his boat. Like Mama.

  He felt like giggling. He rolled the chair forward and pressed controls, saw Mama talking lies to him, heard the slow and precise tone she loved. Then, with a few motions of his hand, he made her eat her words, suck them back into her head. He arranged the words however he wanted.

  Mama’s head moved toward him. He made it stop, then made it go backward. He would have loved to have spun her head on its lovely, hateful neck.