by Bob Bickford
“We can't just let this go,” Raines said. “Even you have to understand that.”
“I don't have to understand anything,” I said. “If this is a frame-up, it's about the clumsiest one I've ever heard of.”
The table top was brick-colored, some kind of Bakelite covered with random scratches. They looked like letters, but they didn't spell anything.
They had finally taken the handcuffs off. We were inside the Santa Teresa County lockup, about five miles outside of the city. It troubled me that I had been taken here instead of the police station downtown. Rex Raines' demeanor alarmed me. Every trace of the man I considered a friend, or at least a friendly party, was gone. His usually amiable face set itself in an expression that was nearly hostile. There were two other suits in the room, and the district attorney would be along shortly.
“You've had it in for Sal Cleveland since his wife died,” he said. “You've told anyone who would listen to you that he killed her and got away with it.”
“He did kill her,” I said. “And she wasn't his wife, not anymore. He absolutely killed her.”
“Says who? A crazy woman?” he yelled. “He had an alibi. We checked it...I checked it. He didn't do it. He had a million opportunities if that's what he wanted to do. He didn't just happen to be on the same highway at three in the morning, run her off the road and shoot her.”
“That's exactly what he did.”
“We all know what he is!” he shouted. “We all know who he is! If he killed his wife, she would just have disappeared. He has people. She'd just be gone, and no one would ever have found her. She was leaving town anyway, right? You've been listening to a crazy woman, and you've lost your own senses, too.”
“Annie Kahlo isn't crazy!” I shouted.
My voice echoed against the cement walls. They were painted white and rose to the high ceiling with only a grated window near the top. The echo brought home to me the possibility of confinement here.
“She isn't crazy,” I said again, more softly. “Neither am I.”
“Two of Cleveland's guys were found dead in the alley behind your office.” Raines said. His voice lowered. He looked suddenly exhausted. “I gave you a pass on that one, Nate. I went to bat for you. No one was very sorry to see them dead, and it was maybe circumstantial it happened there. This is different.”
“Do you think I'm stupid? Do you think I would shoot someone in my own office, with a gun from my desk drawer? And then call you?”
He eyed me steadily.
“Who else would shoot someone in your office?” he asked. “With your gun? A person employed by someone you've held an open grudge against?”
He scraped his chair back on the concrete floor and stood up. The suits followed him to the door. He turned back just before he went out. “I'll talk to the D.A. in a little while,” he said. “I think you're going to need a lawyer, Nate. I'm sorry, believe me.”
The door closed behind them and I was left alone in the concrete room. Four walls, a high ceiling, one window, two chairs, the table and a heavy steel door that I knew was locked. I supposed it served as some kind of a meeting room, but it was as close to a jail cell as I wanted to come. I felt the first stirrings of claustrophobia and panic.
I sat for twenty minutes, waiting for something to happen to me. I had been a cop. What I did now was a little grayer, in terms of the law, but I had never been so firmly on the other side of the fence. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that Annie Kahlo would be alone, a sitting duck, with me locked up. She fancied herself tough and independent, and in many respects she was. But she wasn't tough enough—not against Cleveland's crew.
A key rattled the lock and the door swung open. The cop named Earnswood stepped into the room and the guard started to pull it closed behind him.
“Leave it open,” he said. “I'm leaving with this man.”
He was a splash of color in the cement cube. He wore a light green suit with a peach colored tie, and his shoes and hat were saddle tan. His washed-out were the same faded blue I remembered, but today they were bloodshot. Their bulge seemed more prominent. He put his hands on the table and leaned down close to my face. “I'm bringing you one last chance,” he said.
His breath was terrible. “You don't look like you've been getting much sleep, Earnswood,” I said. “Something bothering you?”
“You're a wise guy,” he answered. “They told me you were nothing but a smart mouth. You're a two-bit, washed-up gumshoe who couldn't make it as a police officer in St. Louis, and couldn't do the job you were asked to in Honolulu. You're not doing any better with a private license.”
“I do pretty good at stepping on toes. Why am I stepping on yours?”
“You want out of here, or not?”
“Why?” I asked. “So Cleveland can kill me himself? Is that what he told you?”
He stood up straight. “Last chance,” he said. “You playing ball, or not?”
I looked up at the barred grille on the high window. I knew I could be in rooms like this for a long, long time. Either Sal Cleveland meant to deal with me himself, or else someone was very worried about what I might say if I started talking to a judge. It didn't matter; Earnswood represented my only way out of here.
“I'm playing ball,” I said.
I followed him to the door and out. We were in some kind of administrative area with no cells. Earnswood nodded curtly to the guards we passed. We reached an area with a long counter. Uniforms moved around behind it and I saw Rex Raines. He looked at me disgustedly and headed for the door. I figured I had lost a friend.
“Here's your ticket out of deep water,” Earnswood said from beside me. “You're going to go home and forget about the new friends you've made the past few weeks. Go chase divorces and sit in your cheap office and try to stay alive. Understood?”
He gave me a little push toward the counter. He gave the uniform my name, signed a paper.
“Keep your mouth shut,” he said. “Amuse yourself with something else. Next time, I won't throw away the key. I'll eat it. This is the last time we'll speak to each other.”
He nodded curtly and left. I scribbled my signature where they told me to. The sergeant behind the counter shoved across my wallet and keys without looking at me.
“Where's my gun?” I asked.
“No gun. This is what I have, so guess what? It's what you have.”
“Swell,” I said. “Thanks for nothing.”
I wasn't going to see the Browning again. My spare pistol was now a murder weapon, so it certainly wasn't in my desk drawer at the office any more. I would have to go naked until I could round up something else. Given Sal Cleveland's likely reaction to the death of Mary Raw, that wouldn’t be a good idea for very long.
“How am I supposed to get back to town?” I asked.
“Beats me,” he shrugged. “Walk. That's what most do.”
I walked down the drive to the frontage road. The late afternoon sun was sinking fast but still hot, and the institutional plantings along the drive were dry and wilted. I wished I'd asked directions to a water fountain before I started out. I had barely started the long walk to Santa Teresa when I heard the whine of a motor approaching from behind.
The car was an old hump-backed Packard, painted a pale blue that made me think of ghosts. The sound of gravel crunching under its white-walled tires was louder than the gentle tick of its engine. It came to a stop, and the figure behind the steering wheel waited, perfectly still. I opened the passenger door, leaned in and caught the odor of poison.
“Get in, Mister Crowe. I'll drive you back to the city.”
He was as lanky and pale as I remembered. I got in, closed the door, and the car moved back onto the road. He drove slowly and carefully. The fragrance of almonds and marzipan was intense and I looked for the window crank. As though he could read my mind, Fin waggled a long index finger in the negative, so I put my hand back in my lap. The clock on the dashboard was dead; the hands were stopped at three minutes p
ast three o' clock.
“Did you keep my card, Mister Crowe?”
“The six of spades? I think I have it somewhere.”
He nodded. “Wise of you. Keep it with you in case you ever want to talk to me.”
There was a trace of the East Coast in his voice; Massachusetts perhaps. I tried to place it, and decided it didn't really matter. “Why should I want to talk to you, Mister Fin?”
“Just Fin, if you please. Just Fin.” He glanced over at me, and then back at the road. “Sixes are nines upside down, or did you realize that already? Six is nine dans un déguisement, à l'envers…often as not. I would tell you to be careful, but I've already tried, and careful isn't something you know about. You blunder and persist. Am I right, Mister Crowe?”
“If you say so.”
“Oh, I do say so,” he sighed. “I do say so, and I like you. I've tried to warn you away from the Kahlo woman and her unfortunate young sister...the little mummy. There's a lot of Egypt in all of this, have you noticed? If you can read the signs.”
The smell in the car and the sound of his voice were giving me a headache. They had taken my gun away at the jail, which was too bad. If I'd had it, I could have shot him and got out. He smiled as though he could read my mind, and opened the map compartment. He removed a pistol wrapped in a handkerchief and handed it to me. I turned it over to look at it.
“The cops gave you my gun?” I asked. “How'd you manage that?”
“Where there are cards, there are tricks, Mister Crowe. Don't underestimate what I can do.”
We reached the city limits, and we didn't say anything else while he wheeled the car into downtown Santa Teresa. It was strangely quiet. The sun was down and lights flickered on, but the streets were almost empty. A dozen blocks later, he pulled the car to the curb in front of the Hi-lo Club and waited for me to get out.
“This is probably the last place I want to be,” I said.
“The death of the unfortunate Mrs. Raw is going to upset Mister Cleveland a great deal,” he said. “If you act very quickly, you might surprise him, before he surprises you.”
“Whose side are you on, anyway?”
He looked delighted, and took his hands from the steering wheel to rub his palms together. “Ever the detective,” he chortled. “How I enjoy my conversations with you. I shall be very sorry when Mister Cleveland succeeds in killing you.”
He peered at me with a sudden solemnity that was almost comic. “He was very fond of Mrs. Raw, you know. A man like that might appear to be hardened and without feeling, but strange affections often run deep. Now that she's departed, found cold and bleeding in your office, he will very certainly kill you.”
“I know he's going to take a shot at it,” I said.
“He's very good at it,” he said. “Killing people.”
“I've heard that.”
“Yet you persist, Mister Crowe. You persist. It makes me so very sad. What will make you stop, I wonder? Whatever will make you stop?”
I pulled on the door handle and got out. On the sidewalk, I slipped the gun into my pocket and leaned back into the car. The aqua-colored sign across the front of the Hi-lo Club buzzed gently. The neon light shimmered. It looked a little like it was underwater, even in the daytime.
“Annie Kahlo's in a mess,” I said. “That's why I persist.”
“The Kahlo woman has drawn her cards,” he said. “You have nothing to say about it.”
“I have plenty to say about it. As long as she's in the wind, I won't stop...ever. Understand that?”
“It's all just wind,” he said. “Wind blowing through sanatoriums and empty bedrooms and bare trees. I don't let it bother me, Mister Crowe. Fig's a dance.”
I closed the door. He waggled his fingers at me. I didn't return the wave, and the Packard pulled away. At the next corner, it turned and disappeared, taking away its strange driver and his marzipan odor of poison.
If Fin was expecting to deliver me into the lion’s den, it didn’t happen. Cleveland wasn’t waiting for me. The sidewalk outside the Hi-lo Club was deserted. The place hadn’t opened for the evening, and nobody came out to ask me if I had killed Mary Raw. Maybe the news hadn’t travelled this far, yet. I figured Cleveland would blame me for her death, sooner or later, but I was going to have to wait for that trouble to find me.
I slung my jacket over my shoulder and walked home in last of the warm afternoon.
-Twenty Two-
The sun was just about gone, and the water in the canal turned lavender. The breeze from the coast smelled of lemons, and felt strange, someplace different from Santa Teresa on a Thursday night. I had never been to India, but I thought it might be something like this. I looked around for elephants and didn’t see any.
I told Annie that Mary Raw was dead. I mentioned that she'd been shot, but I didn't see any point in going into a lot of detail about it. She leaned on the cement railing and listened. She looked at the water and the passers-by, and I knew she didn’t see any of it. When I finished, neither of us talked for a while.
“I got a letter once,” she finally said. “From a man. He wanted something that I didn’t want to give him. I sent him back a note, and asked him not to write to me anymore. He didn’t.”
A woman came across the bridge, walking a very small dog. She glanced at Annie, pulled on the leash, and hurried her steps a little a she passed us. I started to speak, thought the better of my question, and then asked it anyway. “What did he want?”
“Me,” she said. “He wanted me.”
“Are we talking about Sal Cleveland?”
Without taking her elbows from the rail, she thumbed her hair behind her ear. She looked over at me. Even in the twilight, her almond eyes were impossibly dark. Her voice dropped, and I had to lean closer to hear her.
“Yes,” she said. “That's who we're talking about. When I moved back here to Santa Teresa last year, he didn't find me. I found him.”
I felt like I stood at the edge of something very high, and the smallest gust of air might blow me off. I stayed very still and waited for her to go on.
“All these years later I came back here. I found out where he lived and I wrote to him and told him that I thought I’d made a mistake. I told him that I’d changed my mind.”
“What did he say?” My voice sounded hoarse. I didn’t want to hear what she said.
“He didn’t answer,” she said. “Not a word. I wrote another letter, a month or two later. He didn’t answer that one either. I grieved.”
She straightened up, rummaged in the shoulder bag, came up with her dark glasses and put them on. She turned toward me. “Isn’t that silly?” she asked. “I hadn't seen him since I was a girl. I didn’t really even know him in the first place. Silly…but I grieved. How could I be so upset?”
I thought about it. “Maybe it wasn’t him you grieved over.” I said. “Maybe it was you. There’s almost no time. It’s too short. We’re only here for a little bit, and then we have to leave. We grieve over the things we didn’t get a chance to see, the things we never did.”
“…that we should have done?”
“How are we supposed to know?” I shrugged.
“We’re tourists,” she said. “We don’t get to stay.”
I nodded.
“This whole thing is my fault,” she said. “He killed my father, and he might as well have killed my sister. I still wanted him and look what it's caused. Maybe he's not the monster. Maybe I am.”
“Things are usually more complicated than they seem, Annie. I can vouch for that. I can promise you're no monster.”
The air shaded into purple as the water gave up its color. The light wind was turning cool. A rustling noise grew around us and over our heads, and the dusk was suddenly full of the sound of wings. A colony of bats poured out from beneath the bridge. They paused and spun and fluttered above us, a black pinwheel against the coming night. All at once, they swirled together, dipped, and then the sky was empty again.
“What do they call that?” she gestured. “What do they call that many of them at the same time?”
“A cloud,” I answered. “A cloud of bats.”
She took my arm.
“A cloud of bats,” she said. “I like that. I like it a lot.”
I walked Annie home, and waited until she had locked the front door behind her. She didn't invite me in. I was still restless, and I looked at my watch. It said just past nine o'clock, and I hadn't eaten since the sandwich at lunch. It had been a long day, and I felt famished.
I walked to the Camel Diner to get a hamburger, or the blue plate if it seemed edible. The place was nearly empty. Roxanne was at her station and she came to the table. I hadn't been in since Rex Raines had told me the cops were happy with Cleveland's alibi for the night of his wife's murder. I had stormed out, and now I felt bad about it.
“You going to eat what you order tonight?” she asked. “Or just pay for it and walk out? Save me going back and forth to the kitchen if you are.”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “I was rude.”
Her look softened.
“You weren't rude,” she said. “You don't know how to be rude. I just worried a little about you. The guy with you looked like a cop, sort of.”
“He is a cop. He told me something I didn't want to hear. No excuse for brushing you off.”
“Everyone has problems.” She took out her pad and pencil. “You were always real friendly with me, and I appreciate it. Have the meatloaf tonight.”
I nodded, grateful she had taken the small decision out of my hands. I felt battered by the day. I wondered what it would be like to have a wife again; someone to lean on sometimes. I had been married once, before the war. I had met her on the job in St. Louis. She was a nursing student and the dormitory she lived in got burglarized. She had walked in on the robber, who had fled, but she was badly shaken when I arrived in response to the prowler call.
She was sweet and pretty, and the courtship was done in a matter of weeks. We picked a house and a church, in that order. Within a month of her vows, she realized her mistake had been spectacular. We were two decent people with nothing in common. She was appalled by my job, and I found her presence bewildering. She was discouraged by the financial and social prospects for a cop's wife. She complained that our only friends were other police couples, and I didn't see anything wrong with that.
