by John Farris
Headlights a quarter of a mile up the road toward town. A lone car, but still it was turning into a party. He was lit up by the truck's headlights behind him. Truck blocking the bridge, blowing steam from the radiator and leaking oil. Well Goddamn.
Giles ran back to the pickup, laid the shotgun on the seat beside him. He needed valuable seconds to ease the truck back onto the planks. By then the other car had reached the place where the road narrowed to one lane for the bridge crossing. He shifted into reverse and began backing up. Let them go on by, keep his face hidden. Then, when he had the bridge to himself again, drive back and finish the boy.
But he had momentarily forgotten about the tell-tale bike lying wrecked on the bridge. And his engine was overheating.
Torn up it was, Bobby Gambier recognized Alex's Schwinn bicycle even as Ramses said, "Looks like there's been an accident."
"God, it's Alex," Bobby said with a thickening of fear in his throat. He stopped a few feet short of the bridge, staring at the pickup truck that was backing away from the scene. He heard gears grinding; the driver was having transmission problems. Apparently he couldn't move his smoking truck any direction but reverse.
"Flashlight's clamped under the dash," Bobby said to Ramses. "See if you can find Alex. He must have gone off the bridge. I need to find out what that son of a bitch in the pickup had to do with this!"
Ramses got out of the Packard, moving fast for a man of his age and in a terminal condition. Bobby gunned the Packard across the rumbling bridge straight at the retreating truck. Now the other driver was pouring it on, zigzagging backward at nearly forty miles an hour on narrow blacktop. Bobby flashed the Packard's high beams to try to get him to stop and increased his own speed. Flash, flash. He could make out the driver, head turned halfway around as he steered erratically. The smoke around his beat-up truck was blue-black. Burning oil; Bobby could smell it as he put his Packard almost nose to nose with the runaway Chevy truck.
The driver looked around at Bobby, his face grim in the headlights. Then he picked up what looked like a sawed-off shotgun from the seat beside him. Bobby panic-stopped. The pickup slewed around on the road in its own spilling oil and ran out of control up the embankment to one side of the road, stopping when it hung up on the half-rotted stump of an osage orange tree that had fallen years ago. The truck was tilted to one side at an angle of about fifteen degrees, left front wheel spinning aimlessly off the ground.
Bobby and the Chevy driver sat still for several seconds, eyeing each other through the dust and smoke settling out of the air. Bobby reached for the short-nosed .44 Bulldog he always had in the Packard and slipped out the door, crouching.
"Deputy sheriff! Climb out of there; you're under arrest! I want to see hands, see your hands!"
What he saw was the downhill slant of the shotgun barrels as the door on the driver's side creaked open. Half of a hatted man in silhouette. Bobby ducked lower as a slug from the shotgun blew out part of the Packard's windshield and ripped open the seat on the driver's side. Bobby darted out past the front fender and shot twice from his crouch, dumped the shotgun man on his back, sending him in a slide past his smoking truck on thick leaf mold and other woodsy detritus.
Bobby straightened slowly, revolver in a two-handed grip, ears ringing. Adrenaline was giving him a kick. The sky was flecked with birds chased from their high roosts by the gunplay.
"Christ, I'm shot!" the man hollered. "Don't shoot again, I'm done!"
"Get your hands in the air where I can see them."
"Christ no, I can't do it. Shoulder's smashed all to hell. Got me down low too. I can't move at all."
"You got one good hand on that shotgun. Slide it on down the slope away from you!"
Bobby heard him groan; then the shotgun slithered a couple of yards as the man weakly pushed it away from him. "Is that it?"
"Yes, sir, that be all. Don't have 'nother piece on me."
"I'm coming, and you better not be a liar."
"No, sir. You did me good. Can't feel my right arm nor nothing below my belt buckle."
Bobby picked up the shotgun and looked at the face of the man who had tried to kill him. Although he was going into shock, he still seemed like a tough guy. That frequent-offender look.
"What's your name?"
"Giles. Jim Giles."
"You wanted for anything, Giles?"
"No."
"Did you run over my brother on his bike back there at the bridge?"
Giles was breathing heavily. "Your brother?"
"What I said, partner."
"There was a boy. In my way. Didn't see him. It were purely accidental."
"Then why did you try to drive away, throw down on me with this twelve-gauge? I'm not buying it, Giles."
"Night's turned cold, hain't it?" His eyes acquired an electric sheen of terror as a notion of his mortality veered through his brain. "I'm cold all over."
"You're going to the hospital. Just hold on, Giles."
Bobby heard Ramses shout from the ravine beneath the bridge, his voice echoing. Bobby shouted back.
"I'm okay! Did you find Alex?"
"He's here! Concussion. But he's conscious."
Giles licked his lips again, and a momentary confused expression resolved into bleak amusement.
"That's a lucky boy. Yes sir. Uncommon lucky, I'd say."
While Bobby was cleaning up at three-thirty in the morning, the shower curtains around the tub parted a few inches in the middle and Cecily looked in, a little puffy under the eyes from sleep. She looked him up and down thoughtfully. "The man of my dreams," she said. "Which is the only place I see much of you lately."
"I shot a man tonight," Bobby said.
"Oh?" Cecily said, holding the curtains tight around her face so that not much of her hair or nightgown would get wet. "Is he dead?"
"Smashed pelvis, broken shoulder. He was in surgery at the hospital the last I heard of him."
"What did he do?"
Bobby told her.
"Oh my God! How bad is Alex hurt?"
"Concussion, some stitches. X-rays didn't show anything. He's sedated and in a semiprivate room until they decide to let him go. Thursday would be my guess. Giles, he'll go straight back to the joint when he can travel to finish a twenty-year term with another five or six tossed in for good measure. Soap my back? Don't see any pimples, do you?"
"I'll get all wet." She yawned.
"Put on a shower cap and climb in here with me."
"Why didn't I think of that?"
She closed the curtains. Through the mist Bobby could see Cecily's shadowy profile as she shucked her nightgown and tucked her hair beneath the, shower cap. He felt deliriously in love with her. As for her nude body, seeing it again was as wonderful as the first time. Matter of fact, that had been in the shower too, in a motor court outside of Jackson two months before the wedding.
Bobby pulled her against him as soon as she had her footing inside the tub.
"Do I need to wash that too?" she said, a fingertip on the head of his erect penis.
"No. You ready?"
"Not yet. I need a minute. I've never seen you like this, Bobby. You're just all snap, crackle, and pop. Is it from shooting that guy?" Looking up at him, beads of water on her long lashes, finding allure in this new aspect of his maleness.
"Partly, I guess. It was an experience, I can tell you. Did I say who he was?"
"Mr. Giles?"
"He's Leland Howard's man."
"And you think he deliberately ran over Alex? Why?"
"Between you and me," Bobby said, closing her lips gently with thumb and forefinger. "Alex was hanging out at Mally Shaw's the night Leland Howard raped her. Howard, or maybe it was Giles, must have seen him there."
"Leland Howard did what?"
"And Alex witnessed the rape."
"This is beginning to sound like big trouble," she said, fingers of one hand plucking at the hairs on his chest while with her other hand she worked his penis between her
thighs as if it were a rolling pin. Her lips parted in a dreamy smile. Trouble could wait.
"Leland Howard will be in town later today. At my request."
"What can you do to him?"
"It's already taken care of. He won't go to jail; I don't have enough on him. And I want to keep Alex out of it. Even if Howard sidesteps an indictment, he'll be smelling so bad by week's end the party will have to dump his ass."
"Well then, are you going to be in a jam with Luther?"
"No, honey. I'll get the riot act, but as long as I don't leave shit on his doorstep . . ."
Cecily put her lips against Bobby's ear.
"Thirty seconds," she said.
"I'll just step out and get a towel."
"Uh uh don't. I want you to screw me straight out of the shower, wet and naked in our bed."
"Why, Cecily Jeanine; who taught you that kind of shockin' talk?"
"You did. Twenty seconds, Booger, and I don't mean one second longer."
ELEVEN
Sledgehammer
A Bedful of Naked Miss Americas
Mally Says Hello
At eleven twenty-six Wednesday morning, Leland Howard landed in a small plane at the Jackson, Tennessee, airport, forty-three miles north of Evening Shade. He was met by a motorcade escorted by state troopers. His rescue team, spread out in sedans and a limo, included the senior partner of the Memphis firm Speer Fain Culverhouse, Gipson Culverhouse, Jr.; two junior partners in the firm, Sinclair Judkins and Ray Villapando, both sharp young guys adroit at dealing with unfortunate circumstances while under pressure; and two legal secretaries. Also with them was Culverhouse's personal PR man and his pet political columnist from the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the state's most influential newspaper.
Leland Howard arrived moderately disheveled and bleary-eyed from lack of sleep: three miserable nights in a row. He and Gipson got into the limousine, where they were assured of maximum privacy. Culverhouse was a massive man, six-seven and three hundred pounds. Flowing white hair, a look of unimpeachable veracity and deep wisdom. He didn't just address jurors; he took them into his arms (figuratively) and cuddled them, gently solicitating fealty. The same with his clients.
The motorcade was stationary for twenty minutes while Leland spilled his guts to Culverhouse about the Mally Shaw mess, the mistakes he'd made. Broke down sobbing at the end of his recitation.
His lawyer said not a word, only stroked an interesting mole to one side of his lowermost chin as if he were petting a gerbil. In the twenty minutes with his client he rarely blinked even in disbelief or disapproval. Then he handed the blubbering Leland his pocket handkerchief. He opened the door on his side of the limo, and sunlight flooded them both.
"I brought you a fresh shirt, change of linen, and choice of suiting," Culverhouse said. "The occasion does not call for white today. I feel the dark blue, double-breasted, chalk-stripe suit is best for your appearance at the Evening Shade Sheriff's Office and subsequent press conference. There are eye drops, Benzedrine, painkiller, and an electric shaver in the valise one of the girls will give to you. And brush your teeth, Leland. You're eating too much candy."
"Where are you going?" Leland cried.
"To dictate a confession, sir."
"Oh my God!"
"Nothing to fear," Gipson Culverhouse said. He seldom smiled but often he would twinkle. "This is an easy one. I thought you were in real straits. You will be back on the stump tomorrow morning, with no wear and tear on your reputation. Enjoy yourself in Washington, sir. Fabulous town. Don't get there often enough myself."
Ramses Valjean got off the creaky elevator on the second floor of Evening Shade's community hospital carrying a duffel bag and a Christmas-decorated tin of cookies fresh-baked by Rhoda that morning. The hospital was old, underfunded, and looked it. A brick oven in summertime, a sieve to the north winds in winter. A Negro porter was mopping the pockmarked linoleum, amber from accumulated paste wax, in front of the nurses' station in an alcove opposite the elevator. There were wilted and dead flowers on a shelf of his cleaning cart. The wet mop looked virulently unclean.
The charge nurse, Mrs. India Breedlove, looked up at Ramses, not prepared to be hostile but steadfastly indifferent to his presence. A standing fan behind her riffled the paperwork on her clipboard. She did some writing with an old Waterman that had inked her fingers.
After a while she said, "Just put them there on the side of the desk," referring to the cookie tin. "Who did you say they were for?"
"I am not a delivery boy. My name is Dr. Ramses Valjean, and you have a young patient of mine on this floor."
India Breedlove was one of those doughty country women, heavyset but not fat, complexion like a speckled hen's egg, somewhat gone to seed in long service to the ill and suffering. Fallen arches an excellent bet, Ramses thought, and from the way she held herself, she had a bad sacroiliac. Thrombosed veins in her legs, of course. He had known so many like her.
"There's no colored up here," India said, sharp with him now. "Your people are in the temporary building out by the 'cinerator."
Ramses had seen the building when Cecily Gambier dropped him off. Temporary since the Spanish-American War.
"A hellhole, no doubt," he said mildly.
The old man mopping linoleum gave him a look. Mrs. India Breedlove crossed her beefy arms.
"Like it or not, that will be where you will find any patient of yours; that is, if you are a medical professional."
Ramses put down the duffel bag and handed India one of Bobby's embossed business cards. Sheriff's Department. Bobby had written on the back, Please extend to Dr. Valjean of Paris, France, every courtesy.
"Well," India said. "Paris, France. You don't say. I hear tell they treat you people differently over there."
Ramses smiled nostalgically. "How is Alex doing today, Nurse Breedlove?"
"Oh! Alex Gambier. Dr. Wheeliss saw him already this morning. Headache was his worst complaint. A little blood in his bedpan. But he kept his breakfast down and went back to sleep. You know where to find his chart. Room 217 . . . Doctor."
Ramses thanked her and went down the stifling hall with its bluish fluorescent illumination at half-past noon and opened the door to a semiprivate room occupied for now only by Alex. He was lying partly upright in the bed nearest the window. On the south side of the building the August sun wasn't a big problem. The opaque green shade was half-drawn, the window up. Small table fan pushing the swelter around, sharp flavor of recent bedpan feces, alcohol, medicinals.
Alex's eyes were closed. Some hair over his left ear had been shaved away to allow for six stitches. Other, unbandaged cuts on his face and neck had been daubed with orange Mercurochrome. He had salve on his abused lower lip. His hands were slack at his sides.
Ramses set the duffel bag on a chair and picked up the chart from the foot of Alex's bed, spent a few seconds scanning vital signs. When he looked up again, Alex's eyes, bloodshot, were open, staring at him.
Ramses smiled. "Looks as if you'll pull through okay. Another twenty-four hours in hospital should do it. How's the headache?"
Alex blinked and winced, looked at the pitcher of water on the bedside table. Ramses poured him some in a clean glass and held the glass for him while he drank
"Mrs. Gambier dropped me off, but she'll be back to visit you in a little while. Brendan had an appointment with his pediatrician. She sent a change of clothes for you. Rhoda baked cookies."
Question in Alex's eyes. Several questions, rapid-fire as he blinked.
"You would like to know what happened. A man named James Giles, employed by Mr. Leland Howard—" Alex held up a hand. He knew all that. Ramses nodded. "Bobby and I came along shortly after Giles ran you down on your bicycle. You ended up in the ravine below that dangerous little bridge on the way to—you remember that as well?" Alex grimaced. "You were semiconscious when I climbed down there to check for signs of life. Bobby pursued Mr. Giles. It was necessary for Bobby to shoot the man in order to arrest him
."
Whoa!
"He wounded Giles twice. A desperate character, it would seem, was our Mr. Giles. On parole, serving a long prison sentence. He's recuperating here following surgery to repair his pelvis. He also lost a considerable volume of blood. Oh, Bobby asked me to apologize for him because he's having a very busy day. He'll be by once he's had his talk with Mr. Leland Howard in his office this afternoon. Mr. Howard's political future appears to have acquired considerable tarnish. Bobby is ready to, as he put it this morning, 'tie the can to his tail.'"
That earned a smile from Alex.
"The sad part is, not enough evidence exists to put him behind bars unless Mr. Giles implicates him. Which he has little reason to do."
Alex's smile vanished.
"But we must accept what satisfaction we can get."
Alex raised his head from the pillow for a few seconds, moved it weakly side to side. He made writing motions with his hand.
Ramses fished a notebook from his coat pocket and offered it to Alex with his fountain pen. Alex scribbled furiously. Ramses moved closer to the night side of the bed and looked down at the pad where Alex had written Mally will take care L.H. And underlined the words twice.
"Well . . . whatever does lie beyond the grave, I'm afraid supernatural revenge is the stuff of the stones you enjoy. What was the name of the horse in your western tale? Silver Ghost? I very much enjoyed reading—"
Alex had torn the top page off the pad and was writing again.
She's here still here!
Ramses looked into Alex's hazy, bloodshot eyes as if for a sign of head trauma that he had overlooked a few hours ago. "I don't know what you mean, Alex."
Mallys at Cole Cross. Depot. Saw her Sun. night. Mon. What day is this?
"It's Wednesday afternoon," Ramses said quietly. Alex's face had reddened from excitement or stress. He was writing again.
