Smile No More

by James A. Moore

  “You have a guest.”

  Carver turned around and saw Wilkins. “What do you have for me?”

  Wilkins leaned in and spoke in a whisper. “The social security number you gave me belongs to Lawrence Oliver of Queens, New York. It’s a fake.”

  Carver stood up. “Can you excuse me for a moment, Ms. Natchez?”

  The girl smiled and nodded, relieved to avoid being questioned any more. Seemed that was almost always the case when the person being grilled was guilty or innocent. Maybe that was what had set off his alarms about Booker. The man didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

  He looked at Wilkins. “Find Booker. Now.”

  The dark-haired cop nodded and took off at a fast walk. Carver picked up his cell phone and called Captain Jeffries, the man in charge of the massive interview session.

  “Jeffries.” The answer was terse. If Carver had to guess, Jeffries was as sick of talking to suspects as he was.

  “John Booker, one of the backstage guys, is running around with a false ID.”

  “Grab him.”

  “Already working on it.”

  “Excellent. Get a few uniforms to help you look and get him now.”

  There was no guarantee that Booker was connected to the murders, but a false ID was almost a guarantee that he was doing something he shouldn’t have been.

  “I’ll keep you posted.” He hung up the phone and headed for the hallway around the same time the screaming started.

  Carver turned to the left and saw Wilkins staggering backwards, heading straight toward him and away from John Booker.

  Booker was grinning ear to ear, and shaking blood from the blade in his left hand.

  Wilkins lost his balance and fell down, which was when Carver saw the open wound across the officer’s face. A hard slash had cut the uniformed cop from the left side of his hairline all the way down to the right side of his chin. Loose flaps of skin were held apart by the blood flow and the man was trying to cover his face.

  Carver drew his weapon and aimed it at Booker. “DROP IT!” His voice boomed down the corridor and several of the people coming to investigate the first scream backed away as soon as they saw the pistol Carver was aiming.

  Booker raised his hands over his head and opened the fingers wide. There was no knife. Carver had seen it a second before, but now the hands were empty, though the left was still covered in blood. “Drop what?”

  “Don’t you move! Don’t you fucking move!”

  Two more cops were coming up behind Booker now, and they moved with the proper caution. Booker never blinked, even when they pinned him against the wall and started frisking him. The grin on his face grew even wider, if anything.

  Carver grabbed for his radio and called in that an officer was down. Booker looked his way, the cold blue eyes that had unsettled him earlier for their lack of emotion now showing a wild amusement that was completely inappropriate.

  “Guess you found out about the fake name, huh?”

  “Read that asshole his rights!” Carver leaned down over the fallen officer and pulled on a set of gloves. Sometimes it was good to be prepared for investigating a scene and, in this case, it meant he could try to hold the wound together with sterile hands.

  “Don’t move, Wilkins. I’ve got an ambulance on the way.”

  Wilkins tried to speak but the severed sections of his mouth wouldn’t form the proper shapes. Carver hushed him and then looked around for something, anything, to staunch the flow. The girl he’d been interviewing handed him a thick wad of tissue papers. She’d stepped into the hallway when he wasn’t looking. He nodded a thanks and started pressing the tissues to Wilkins’s ruined face. Wilkins let out a few screams and Michael couldn’t blame him.

  He got luckier than he expected. He’d forgotten there were medics already on the scene, but somebody had alerted them anyway. One of the men he’d been questioning an hour earlier and another man he’d never seen before urged him and the dancer aside and pulled open a first aid kit they brought with them. Chalk one bonus point to the show.

  Wilkins let out several screams as they began working on him, and Carver looked away. He wasn’t normally that squeamish, but when the victim was someone he knew it unsettled him.

  “Go back into the room, please, Ms. Natchez.” She nodded her head, her eyes as wide as saucers, and did exactly as she was told.

  He looked back toward Booker and scowled. There were other cops around, or he might have seriously considered just shooting the bastard and saving everyone a lot of paperwork.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Booker?”

  “Not a thing.” The smile was still there, unsettling in its intensity.

  “Why did you attack Wilkins?”

  “He started it.”

  Carver could feel his blood pressure surge, and saw the edges of his vision sliding into red. “Get him away from me.”

  The two uniforms nodded and started to drag Booker away. Before they’d gone four paces, both of the cops let out startled gasps.

  Carver had been checking on Wilkins, watching the medics as they worked, but he looked back at Booker and his escorts just as Booker stepped away and revealed the handcuffs locking the two offers together at the wrists.

  “Who’s got the most guns now, Detective?” Carver swallowed and looked at the two service pieces aimed in his direction. Before he could so much as open his mouth, bullets were flying through the air around him. The wall to his left exploded as missiles slammed into it. Another bullet whizzed past his head as he started to duck. More bullets might have gone past, but he couldn’t hear them over the loud cracks of the pistols being fired again and again.

  Carver dropped to the ground, his heart pounding as loudly as the walls that took more bullets. The crazy bastard wasn’t aiming for him; he was just unloading the weapons.

  A second later, Booker dropped both pistols and then started backing away, his grin flashing brightly in the smoke-filled air. Carver scrambled to stand up and to take aim at the man. The two uniforms blocked over half of his view as they cringed down and tried to cover their heads, their arms locked together by handcuffs that Carver had seen on Booker’s wrists only a few moments earlier.

  How the hell did he do that?

  Carver shook the idea away and charged, “Duck your stupid asses!” The cops did their best to listen and he hurtled over them in pursuit of John Booker. The man he was after didn’t stand still and make it easy; instead he turned tail and ran.

  There was no way in hell he could shoot at the man. The hallway wasn’t narrow but it also wasn’t empty. There were people sticking their heads out of doors in every direction and a few of them were actually stepping into the hall to get a better look.

  Booker went around a corner and Carver lowered his head and charged. A moron on his left started moving in front of him and rather than bother with talking he simply knocked the man to the side. He wasn’t a big man, but he didn’t need to be. He knew how to hit. The guy he hit slammed into the wall with a squawk of protest just as Carver went around the corner.

  Booker was waiting for him with his fist drawn back. Carver hadn’t expected that, and what happened was his own fault as far as he was concerned. Michael tried to backpedal and never made it. The man’s fist slammed him square in his jaw and took all of the fight right out of him. He stumbled backward as he tried to recover his senses, but there wasn’t a chance to compensate before the man was on him again.

  Booker’s foot shot straight up between his legs and slammed into his testicles, hard. Only a second after that, he was down on his knees and Booker was running again.

  Sucker punched and twice at that, Michael Carver tried to get back to his feet and failed as the man vanished around another corner.

  There was going to be hell to pay for letting the perp get away, and he knew he deserved every single flame that came along to roast his ass.

  ***

  Tia waited almost an hour before the detective came bac
k to talk with her. His expression spoke volumes, as did the large bruise growing on his chin. She’d heard the scuffle outside of the room and she might have even gone to investigate, but the sound of gunfire convinced her to stay exactly where she was. She’d almost decided that he was done with her and it was time to leave, but there was still a lot of commotion in the hallway and she didn’t want to give any of the officers a reason to so much as look at her funny.

  That didn’t change the fact that she really, really had to pee.

  Detective Carver was average height, with dark red hair and the sort of face that was easily forgettable. It wasn’t that he was unattractive, just not very remarkable. The growing mark on his chin and jaw was the most outstanding feature on his face, but his expression, which had merely been bored earlier, was now enough to ensure that she’d remember him for a long time.

  “Are you alright?”

  He tried to smile for her and failed. “I’ll live.” He sighed as he sat down in his chair.

  “Ms. Natchez, what can you tell me about John Booker?”

  Tia frowned. The name meant nothing to her. “I don’t know the name, but I haven’t been here for long. Was he the man you were arresting?”

  The man nodded at her. “I was afraid you’d say that.” He did his best with a second smile, but he was already a hundred miles away, she could see that in his eyes. “Thanks for your time, Ms. Natchez. We’ll contact you if we have any more questions.”

  “Is that officer all right?”

  “Wilkins?”

  “Is he the one that got cut?”

  “Yeah. We don’t know much yet. They took him away in an ambulance.”

  She still had to pee, so finally she nodded her head and scurried out of the room and down the hallway. She didn’t let herself stop and look at the bullet holes in the walls, floor and ceiling. She’d seen enough of them growing up, anyway.

  The closest restroom was public and clearly marked for women, so she was surprised when she opened the door and saw the pile of men’s clothing on the ground.

  Tia stepped closer to the jeans and shirt and then stepped back. Even from ten feet away she could see the blood on the front of the shirt and the other things she tried not to remember.

  Two minutes later, she was bringing Detective Carver to examine the clothing. He brought a few extra uniforms with him to help in the investigation.

  She wasn’t supposed to hear, she wasn’t supposed to know anything, but one of the men in blue let it out before Carver or anyone else could stop him. “Why would he take off his clothes?” The man looked closer at the pile of fabric and frowned. “Is that skin?”

  Carver looked in the man’s direction and snapped “Shut up, Palmer!”

  Tia took the look the detective sent her way as a hint and left the room.

  It wasn’t that far to the next restroom, and she knew if she tried really hard she could avoid messing in her pants.

  She made it, but just barely.

  Life on the Road: Part Six

  Funny how word gets around, isn’t it? We left the town where Miriam was assaulted and Alexander Halston left with us. It was like Carter said, no one could press charges against Halston but the man who made the initial claim and after a very small amount of time, he realized how much he had to lose if he decided to seek indictment.

  We moved on, and in the process, I got to know Doreen Miles a bit better. On the second night of traveling, I made a point of investigating her trailer. It was a modern affair, and nondescript. Most of the trailers had posters of the different performers, or something to let you know that whosoever was inside was someone to be admired. Doreen’s was simply covered in sheets of aluminum.

  I must have stood outside of her place for half an hour, trying to get up the nerve to introduce myself. Oh, you can bet I got spotted and you can believe it when I tell you there were a few comments made. Everyone at the carnival knew who owned that trailer and I don’t doubt a few men had tried to get to know the woman inside a bit better.

  After staring at the closed door for far too long, I lost my courage and turned away.

  From inside the trailer, I heard her voice for the first time. “I don’t bite, you know.”

  I stared at the door for a moment and willed it to disappear. I didn’t know quite how to answer her.

  “I-Hello.”

  “Hello yourself.”

  She opened the door and I stared at her like an imbecile. She was exactly as pretty as I remembered. My tongue promptly tied itself into knots.

  “Um.”

  “You’re Cecil, right?”

  I nodded, mostly because it seemed safer than opening my mouth.

  “I saw you the other day, when you took over for Alex. You were amazing.”

  “I was?” I felt the blood rush through my face.

  Doreen smiled, and I swear to you, I heard birds singing.

  “You were. You looked so confident!”

  “It was the make up.” I looked down at the ground because then, at least, I could stand to speak to her. “It’s not me they’re looking at, it’s the clown.”

  “I should try that some time.” Her voice was a little rueful. I could see where the problem came in.

  I smiled and nodded. “Maybe you should. Then you could, you know, get out more.”

  “Yeah? Got any spare make-up?”

  I nodded my head. “Yeah, hang on and I’ll go get it.”

  Five minutes later, I was in her trailer, and standing next to the most amazing woman I’d ever seen. I didn’t touch her. To be honest, I think I was afraid I’d burn if I touched her. Instead, I showed her how to put on the make-up and I told her that each clown face had to be unique. She smeared her face with the titanium white base and then added on comically full lips that did nothing at all to hide how perfect the lips underneath them were. She added thick eyebrows of blue and painted on a series of tiny stars under each eye. To finish off the face, she borrowed my red, bulbous nose. In the end, she looked preposterous, and I found I could look at her and talk to her like she was just another person.

  She didn’t scare the crap out of me.

  We were due in the next town the following day, and unlike other times, she decided she would walk down the main street with the rest of us. I don’t know who was more excited, her or me.

  Strange how things turn out sometimes, isn’t it? In the long run it wasn’t Doreen that caused the troubles in Hapsburg. It was just the town itself.

  When we arrived in Hapsburg, Ohio, I felt the tension in the air. There were few people who looked at all happy to see us. Even the few who showed a little excitement at the idea of a circus tried to hide the fact.

  Carter did his tumbles and I did my tricks, but there was no applause from the people who watched. Doreen, who had been so very excited about being a clown lost the smile under her painted lips and replaced it with a puzzled frown. Most of the rubes watching us looked away and in a few cases they even closed their shop doors on Main Street, as if we might somehow be contagious.

  When the parade was done winding through town and had returned to the fields, Alex stood outside the tent and shook his head. He stared in the direction of town several times and frowned more deeply each time.

  Finally he spoke. “Take it down. We’re not staying.”

  I was stunned. Oh, I’d felt the unusual tension in the air, but to take down the entire tent and never see a single customer? It seemed like madness to me.

  I opened my mouth to say something and was rewarded by Carter’s elbow striking my side sharply. When I looked his way, he frowned and shook his head. I got the message.

  Tents always go down faster than they go up. We had the entire affair stowed away before the sun set. Unfortunately, that was all we managed to do before darkness slipped in and held us prisoner.

  We were given a quick dinner of half-warmed stew and told to watch ourselves. A lot of folks locked themselves in their wagons and cars and called it done. Not al
l of us. Some of us sat out and played cards, instead. Others, myself included, took to practicing our tricks as quietly as possible and looking out into the night.

  I didn’t know what to expect, and I didn’t feel like being surprised.

  I didn’t know what had happened in the town before, or what they’d heard about us, but something had the locals riled up, and I for one didn’t like the feeling at all.

  The night was dark and the sky was gloomy with low lying clouds that hid away the moon and the stars. The air was still, and the only sounds we heard for the first few hours were the insects in the fields and the noises of seventy odd people sitting in the stillness. There were a few laughs, but only a few.

  It was unsettling and I felt myself get more and more agitated, because I knew something would happen before the night ended and, damn it, I wanted whatever was coming our way to get to us and be done with it.

  I had to wait until midnight before we heard the trucks coming our way. Not one or two, but a dozen, and each of them carried men in white sheets and hoods. I knew the Ku Klux Klan. I knew their methods and I understood their reasoning. Despite what anyone might have heard, the Klan didn’t just exist in the southern states. They were everywhere, or close enough that it didn’t matter. The Klan believed that the only way to save their way of life was to drive anyone who caught their attention out of their back yards. Blacks were taking jobs, so they had to go. Asians were guilty by association: they could be Japanese and therefore enemies. World War Two was done, but the end of the war left a whole slew of people who were as scared of the Yellow Scourge as they were of the Communists who could be hiding anywhere, even in the house next door. I can’t explain it better than that. The Klansmen believed they were protecting themselves and their neighbors. I knew their type all too well, and I could remember the occasions when my father had come back from meeting with his friends and then pulled out the white sheet he’d had altered for when he had to make a point.