The Listener

by Robert McCammon

  “This felon,” Pearly went on, congratulating himself on his spur-of-the-moment use of that word, “operates in a circle of others equally as fucked-up as he is, and I hope you’ll excuse the term but that’s how I describe him.”

  Ludenmere nodded.

  I’ve got him, Pearly thought. Ginger had done her homework on him well…the ex-LSU basketball athlete was known to curse a blue streak when it pleased him, and now man-to-man they were on the same earthy level of communication.

  “So this bastard wants a deal,” said Pearly. “What he’s heard on the grapevine about the plot to take your children, for a reduced sentence.”

  “What’s he heard?”

  “Right now he’s playin’ it tight-lipped.”

  “So you don’t know if he’s tellin’ the truth or not?”

  “Not for sure.” Pearly paused for effect, and then he said, “Would you want to take the chance he’s lyin’?”

  Ludenmere gave no reply. He looked at his hands before him on the blotter, the fingers working his knuckles almost as if they were moving without effort or accord from their owner.

  “The reason we’re so up in arms on this,” Pearly said, in a quieter voice, “is that this piece of shit could’ve chosen anybody to lie about. There are plenty of public figures in Shreveport he could’ve said were targets of a kidnappin’ plot…or their children were. If he was lyin’, why did he choose your family to lie about?”

  “Because I’m goddamned rich, that’s why. And sometimes it’s a burden, I’ll tell you that right now. But Jesus Christ, is that all you have to go on? This sonofabitch tryin’ to stay out of Angola?”

  “Not all. He’s mentioned some names we know. One of them we believe was an accomplice in the kidnappin’ of a doctor’s wife last year in Arkansas. Also, he’s told us some interestin’ facts about other burglaries in the area…helpin’ us nail a few fellas we’ve been lookin’ for before somebody got hurt. He says he’ll tell us more when the D.A. agrees to a deal, and that’s where it stands right now.”

  “These names you know. Why don’t you pick ’em up and grill the hell out of ’em?”

  “We’re lookin’, sir. Just a matter of time, we’ll run ’em to ground.”

  Ludenmere sat back in his chair. “My God,” he said softly, as if the enormity of this had just dawned on him. “Kidnap my children?”

  “Such things happen, this day and age,” Pearly said, and looking at the fresh lines of concern on the man’s face and his dazed expression made Pearly wish he could take out his gun and blow this shining example of Louisiana businessman into the next world. How stupid Ludenmere was, to think he was so smart! This was like setting up a blind man to walk off a cliff believing he was going to get new eyes if he just stepped down a little.

  In the next instant Ludenmere returned to his senses and the powerful force of his personality rushed back. His voice was harsh when he spoke. “You’ve got the police here workin’ with you, correct?”

  “Ah,” said Pearly. “Here’s the problem with that.” He took hold of the empty chair in front of Ludenmere’s desk, turned it around so the backrest was facing Ludenmere, and sat down. Now came the moment where everything was riding on Pearly’s talents. Ginger had also supplied this story, but it was up to Pearly to make it work. If it didn’t, he figured he could still get out of the building with his skin on. He said calmly and quietly, “We don’t want to involve the police here.”

  “What?”

  “Same reason I didn’t show my badge to anybody. We want to keep this quiet.” Pearly continued on before Ludenmere could open his mouth again. “Chief Bazer has given this over to Captain Arlen, Chief of Detectives. Captain Arlen gave it to me to come here, make contact and to be in charge on this end. The one thing we do not want, sir, is for this to get into any newspaper.”

  He had to pause for a few seconds, in which his mind shook the framework of the assembly he and Ginger had constructed and found it to be sound. He crossed his arms before himself on the backrest. “We can control the reporters in Shreveport,” he said, “but we can’t control ’em here. I doubt if you could either, and this is the kind of story that could get blown up and on the wires real quick.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “It might be. Say this bastard’s spinnin’ a lie. Okay. But somebody out there reads about it and gets the idea he might try for your kids himself. Or somebody else somewhere who’s never given a thought about kidnappin’ anybody decides maybe he wants to give it a shot. That’s how these things happen. One copycats another, especially if their mark is so…so goddamned rich,” Pearly said, and added a thin smile. “But these days the mark doesn’t have to be so rich,” he said. “Anybody who’s got a family could be taken off the street at any time, and I’m here to tell you it’s done—or tried—nearly every day.”

  From Ludenmere there was no reaction. For an instant Pearly thought he hadn’t been convincing enough and he tensed up…and then Ludenmere gave the slightest nod, and Pearly relaxed again.

  “Our department,” he went on, “doesn’t want to be responsible for plantin’ the seed of any more kidnappin’s. Not in this state or any other. So, like I say, we can control the penpushers in Shreveport, but not here. We just don’t want this thing to escalate, especially before we get the names we need.” He checked his wristwatch; it was time now to start what might be the most dangerous part of his visit today. “I need to check in with the captain,” he said. “Mind if I get a long-distance operator?” He nodded toward the telephone on the desktop beside Ludenmere’s left hand.

  Ludenmere pressed a button on his intercom. “Alice, connect my line with long-distance.”

  In about fifteen seconds the secretary came back with, “On the line, sir.”

  Pearly picked up the receiver. His palms were damp. If this didn’t work, the jig was up. “Operator,” he said, “give me Shreveport, Orchard 7-1572.” He waited, listening to the various clicks as the circuits were connected. His heart was beating harder. The phone started ringing.

  Once…twice…pick up, damn it, he thought, and then she answered: “Shreveport Police Department. Do you have an emergency?”

  That had been in case Ludenmere had wanted to make the call himself. Pearly said, “Ruth, this is John Parr. Let me speak to Captain Arlen, please.”

  “One minute, John,” she replied, playing her part very well indeed.

  There was a short pause. When Donnie came on the line, it was with a single, “Yeah?”

  “Captain, I’m here with Jack Ludenmere. I’ve explained the situation. Did you have anything you wanted to tell him?” Even though Donnie was silent, Pearly said, “Yes sir,” and handed the receiver to the man behind the desk.

  Now, Pearly knew, it was up to that damned young hothead. Less than an hour after Donnie had arrived at the train station, he and Ginger had been snarling back and forth at each other in the car on the drive back to Shreveport because the kid was supposed to bring a hundred bucks to add to the pot and had only brought thirty-two dollars and seventy-four cents, all he could steal from his mother’s shoebox. If Donnie didn’t handle this right—even with Ginger standing behind him in the hallway of the Hotel Clementine with the kid speaking into the payphone’s receiver—the whole thing could go down in flames, and Pearly realized he might not know it until he sensed that Ludenmere had smelled the smoke.

  But for the moment, Ludenmere was listening. Then he said, “Thank you, captain. This thing has thrown me for a damned loop. Yes, I appreciate it. Right, I will.”

  Pearly knew what the spiel was supposed to be, if Donnie stuck to the script. Sorry to spring this on you. It’s serious business. Detective Parr is a good man, he’ll do his best. We all will, you can count on it.

  Suddenly Ludenmere threw a wrench into the machine: “Mind if I ask what happened to Ray Culley?”

  Pearly felt his hard-beating heart go up into his throat; he had the sensation of being in a car that had very abruptly lost bo
th its steering and its brakes going sixty miles an hour on a rainslick road.

  “I ask because Chief Culley was my scoutmaster when I was a kid,” Ludenmere said into the phone. “I guess he retired a few years back?”

  Pearly waited through a silence. He hoped Donnie was saying something on the other end.

  Then Ludenmere said, “I figured he might go south, because he enjoyed his fishin’. Sure, sure. Thanks for lookin’ into this thing. I hope nothing comes of it.” He offered the receiver to Pearly. “He wants to speak to you again.”

  “Yes sir?” Pearly asked into the phone.

  “I’m sweatin’ fuckin’ bullets,” Donnie said.

  “I will, sir. Thank you.”

  “Kiss my ass,” Donnie replied, and he hung up.

  Pearly returned the receiver to its cradle. He was going to have to throw a fit when he got back to Shreveport, and he figured Ginger was already scalding Donnie’s butt. What if an operator had been listening in? You never knew.

  “He sounds like a tough bird,” said Ludenmere.

  “He is.” Pearly wanted to probe a little, to make sure the man hadn’t smelled any whiff of smoke. “You say Chief Culley was your scoutmaster? He was gone when I signed up.”

  “How long’ve you been there?”

  “Goin’ on three years. I was on that Butterfly Man case in April. After that, I figure I can take anything.”

  “Yeah, I read about it. Damn gruesome.” Ludenmere frowned at the telephone. “I meant to ask your captain if I could tell anybody about this. My family or anybody. Christ…my wife—Jane—she’s nervous anyway and she would worry herself to death. I can’t tell her, for sure. My lawyer was in here just awhile ago. Can I tell him?”

  Pearly realized he had to be definitive, because he didn’t want Ludenmere dialing that number on the card, and the card had to be left with him. That damn card represented eight passes through Pearly’s printer before Ginger had said she thought it looked clean enough to show anybody with good eyes and good sense. “Word I got from the captain yesterday,” he said, “was that the more people who know about this, the more likely the paper’ll get hold of it. It’s up to you, of course, but my suggestion is that you keep it to yourself for at least a few days.” He decided to quickly switch gears. “Do you have a bodyguard on the payroll?”

  “My chauffeur. His name’s Clay Hartley, he was a police officer in Houston a few years back. He’s trained in firearms and he keeps a pistol in the glovebox.”

  “Does he live on your premises?”

  “Got an apartment above the garage. He takes the kids and Jane wherever they need to go.”

  “That’s good,” Pearly said, but he was thinking the opposite. Still, it was to be expected and at least there weren’t multiple bodyguards to worry about. It was time for him to get a move on; it was pressing his luck to stick around here much longer. He stood up. “Borrow a pen?” he asked, and Ludenmere gave him one.

  Pearly turned his identification card over, uncapped the fountain pen, and began to write.

  “I’m at the King Louis Hotel on Broad Street. Room Sixteen.” King Louis, Rm 16, he wrote. “No phone in the room, but you can reach me through the front desk.” He slid the card across the blotter toward Ludenmere. “I’m to stick here until Captain Arlen orders me back to Shreveport, and I’m to check in with him every few hours. Somethin’ might break, one way or the other, in the next day or two.”

  “The King Louis is a dump, isn’t it?” Ludenmere asked. “Let me pay for a hotel with a phone in the room.”

  “Thank you, sir, but no. Policy forbids that…and, anyway, if my fiancee found out I was livin’ high in New Orleans with her in Bossier City, I’d never hear the end of it.” Pearly offered a disarming smile, but just with his mouth. The money that was pooled between himself, Ginger and Donnie for this job could only go so far, and a fancy hotel would be unseemly anyway for a Shreveport dick. He took his hat off the rack and gave the vista of the docks and the steamships another appraisal. Two hundred thousand dollars? Looking at this chump’s setup, it might not be nearly enough.

  Ludenmere stood up. “What’re you doin’ for supper?”

  The question threw him for a couple of seconds. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “If you can’t—or won’t—let me pay for your hotel, then at least come to my house for supper tonight. It’s 1419 First Street, in the Garden District. Come on over about six-thirty and ring at the gate. You can meet my wife and the children.”

  “Ah,” Pearly said; he hadn’t anticipated this, but it was a good step forward. “Well…okay, but surely you’re not gonna introduce me as a Shreveport detective?”

  “You’ll be a business associate. That’s all that needs to be said.”

  “Fine.” Pearly shook the man’s outstretched hand. “I’ll see you at six-thirty. I may have more news by then.”

  “Um…you probably shouldn’t bring your gun,” Ludenmere said.

  “Don’t fret,” Pearly answered. “I’ll just be there to enjoy the meal.” And, he thought, to take stock of the brats, the ex-cop-turned-chauffeur, the nervous wife, the house and the whole shebang. Plus he’d be getting a decent meal instead of eating from cans and having the occasional bologna sandwich. So, as Ginger might’ve said, Enjoy the ride, Pearly, and while you’re at it put yourself in the driver’s seat.

  “Thanks again, John,” Ludenmere said.

  Detective John Parr nodded, put his hat on and left the office.

  Ludenmere sat down. He stared for a moment at the opposite wall. A pulse beat at his right temple and his eyes were hooded. He turned Parr’s card over and ran his fingers across the lettering. Then he pressed the TALK button on his intercom and told Alice to get him the long-distance operator.

  Eleven.

  As a man calling himself Detective Parr was getting into his black Ford sedan parked on Washington Avenue after his meeting at Ludenmere’s office, Curtis was pedalling his bicycle toward Congo Square in the Treme on an urgent mission.

  When he’d gotten to work this morning, he’d been collared by both Cricket and Brightboy on his way to the locker room. Bossman wantin’ to see you soon as you got in, Cricket said in his deep-throated rumble, punctuated by the clickings of his false teeth. Said not to change your street-clothes, just go on up.

  So it was that barely three minutes after stowing his bicycle and cart in the locker room, he was standing within the upstairs office with the green-tinted glass, and the heavy-hipped and bald-headed boss of the whole Union Station asked him around the stub of a cigar if he knew where Wendell Crable lived, over on St. Ann Street just past Congo Square. Curtis had said he did, he’d passed the house many times.

  Wendell didn’t come in this mornin’, the bossman had said. He don’t answer his telephone, neither. Get on over there and find out what’s wrong.

  It was shocking news. As far as Curtis knew, Ol’ Crab had never missed a day. Therefore as Curtis—wearing his street clothes of tan trousers and a blue-and-green-checked shirt—pedalled as furiously as his legs could handle along his usual route, he was sure that something was very wrong with Ol’ Crab. Just yesterday Mr. Crable had complained of indigestion, saying that he thought a pork chop he’d eaten the night before at Mandy’s Kitchen Cafe had come back to kick him in the gut. Curtis hoped it was just indigestion, but he’d read that heart attacks could sneak up on a person in that kind of disguise.

  He diverted from his route to aim toward Ol’ Crab’s house, and crossing St. Peter Street he entered the nearly sacred ground of Congo Square. Some of it was grassy, but in most places the grass had been stomped flat to the dirt by the feet of generations of the slaves and their children and their children’s children. They had thronged here by their thousands since the early 1800s to hold markets, meet together, play music, dance and sometimes by the flame of torches and the light of the moon offer frenzies to the voodoo gods. Now, as Curtis pedalled across the Square and squirrels darted out of his way
to get back to their nests in the overhanging oaks, he heard the beat of drums and the crash of cymbals. He saw that a lone drummer had set his kit up in the shade to pound out a rhythm while nearby an old woman sold apples and oranges from a cart, and beside the cart was a lounge chair she’d put out to recline in under the leafy branches.

  Congo Square was indeed nearly sacred to the residents of the Treme, and particularly so for Curtis…but not for any reason the others might share.

  His mind drifted back in an instant to an evening in May of 1923, the sun just sinking to the west and the blue shadows beginning to crawl across the Square, and here and there a lamp burning as if to mark a path for his eleven-year-old self and his mama, who had hold of his hand and was pulling him along to a place he did not wish to go.

  On that evening, too, a drum was beating but at a distance; it was a low thumping sound off on the other side of the Square, and over there the younger Curtis could see torches burning and the shapes of figures moving about…but slowly, as if seen in the thickness of a fever dream. Orchid pulled him on toward their destination. It was where she’d been told to go by the young woman in the bright red headwrap who’d come to the house that past Sunday afternoon.

  Curtis was a child, but he surely knew what this was about.

  I want to know, his mama had said to the young woman who came to visit, if my boy is crazy in the head or not.

  He don’t look crazy, the young woman had said after a brief inspection.

  He hears voices, Orchid had answered. Sometimes they ain’t even in English, and he cain’t understand ’em. Other times he hears ’em clear enough. This has been goin’ on for two years now, and it ain’t gettin’ no better. Mercy, mercy, I’m already a sick woman and this thing is puttin’ me in my grave.

  On that May evening in 1923, Orchid had pulled Curtis toward the eastern side of Congo Square, where the oaks stood tall with gnarled intertwining limbs that must’ve been old when the first slave touched a drum and dreamed of the green hills of Africa. In the deepening twilight Curtis could make out three figures beneath one of the trees; they were illuminated by the ruddy glow of a pair of oil lamps set upon a small card table. Two of the figures were sitting in canvas chairs and one was standing, and in another moment Curtis saw who they were and his legs froze up. His heart pounded and his heels dug into the earth but at that time—nine long years ago—his mama still had some strength and determination, and she hauled him along like a flopping catfish on the end of a five-fingered hook.