Wisdom of the Bones

by Paul Christopher

  ‘One more thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did either Price or Schwager recently redecorate the apartment? Paint, rugs, that kind of thing?’

  ‘Not that I know of. Are we finished?’

  ‘For the time be—’

  Futrelle hung up before Ray could finish the sentence. He went back to the kitchen and began leafing through Schwager’s address book. Since it was Schwager who found him, the name and number would surely be in the address book. There were twenty G’s listed in the book, their names neatly printed along with the phone numbers, but with nothing to indicate which were friends and which were business acquaintances. He decided to take a different approach and went back to the telephone, this time taking his own notebook. He found Betty Finch’s number listed under her husband Frank’s name and dialled. Frank answered on the second ring, the chaotic sounds of his several children screeching and screaming in the background.

  ‘Hi, Frank, Ray Duval.’

  ‘After my wife again?’ A huge guffawing laugh followed.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Good. Take her. Big pain in the patootie anyway.’ He turned away from the receiver and bellowed Betty’s name. A few seconds later she came on the extension and her husband hung up.

  ‘It’s Ray.’

  ‘Oh God, you want something else and me up to my armpits in laundry.’

  ‘Frank thinks I want your body.’

  ‘I wish you’d take it. He sure as hell doesn’t pay much attention to it.’ Ray had been hearing the same banter between them for years. Frank Finch was a six-foot-five interstate trucker and Betty was a five-foot-two Kewpie doll who seemed to have no trouble keeping her man in line. The fact that they had five kids and another on the way suggested that Betty’s comment about Frank not paying much attention to her body wasn’t accurate. At one time Betty had been an ambulance dispatcher at Dallas Methodist, which was where she and Ray met, back when he was a patrolman. Fifteen years ago she’d transferred over to a supervisory position at the telephone company and she was by far his best contact there.

  ‘You want me to do something illegal again, don’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not sure if it’s illegal or not. I need to find out about a new telephone account.’

  ‘What’s the name?’

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  ‘Helpful, aren’t you?’ Betty sighed. ‘Residential or commercial?’

  ‘Commercial.’

  ‘A little better. What’s the name of the business?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Jeez, Louise, give me a hand here!’

  ‘It’s a bookbinder, doing custom work. Antique stuff. I think his name starts with a G.’

  ‘Is this important?’

  ‘Life and death, Betty, and I’m not blowing smoke.’

  ‘Please tell me I’m not getting into the Kennedy thing.’

  ‘Everybody’s starting to ask me that.’

  ‘I hear the FBI’s taking people into custody as material witnesses and then no one sees them again. Some bums out by the tracks behind Dealey Plaza got picked up and no one’s seen them since. Some guy went to Parkland in an ambulance just before it happened and now he’s gone too.’ Like caterpillar to great black butterfly Dallas was being transformed from Texas cow town to the centre of some universe awhirl in clouds of death and conspiracy. Come to Dallas and die.

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Is this the Kennedy thing, Ray?’

  ‘No. Scout’s honour.’

  ‘All right. Give me ten minutes. You at home?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘Back at you.’

  It was eight minutes, not ten. ‘Ray?’

  ‘Betty. Find anything?’

  ‘Only one binding company opened up shop in Dallas in the last four months. Name is Gerritson Fine Binding. Owner is William Joseph Gerritson.’ William Cooper. Koop. William Joseph Gerritson. Charming Billy.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Marilla Street. Down where the rail yards and the old cemeteries meet.’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘Telephone or address?’

  ‘Both.’ Betty rhymed them off and Ray jotted them down in his notebook.

  ‘There’s another one,’ said Betty.

  ‘Another what?’

  ‘Gerritson. Mrs William Joseph. According to the exchange she lives in Oak Cliff.’

  ‘Better give me those numbers as well.’ Betty did. Ray thanked her for her help and hung up. He stared down at the page in his notebook. Charming Billy with a wife and kids didn’t fit into the puzzle at all; in fact it threw it completely out of whack. He tried to imagine a man who could slice up little girls and then go home to a bowl of yummy Campbell’s Cream of Tomato Soup with the missus, watch Captain Kangaroo with the kids and play golf at Bob-O-Links on Sunday. He knew it was getting away from him at the worst possible time, knew his theory was falling into little pieces, and unless he could stitch it back together it was going to be too late and Zinnia Brant was going to die a terrible death because he was missing something as plain as the nose on his face.

  What was it Rena’s mother had said?

  The wisdom of the bones. Maybe it wasn’t working for him or maybe it didn’t exist or maybe he just wasn’t listening hard enough to what it was trying to tell him.

  Or maybe he didn’t care.

  Ignoring his notebook he reached down onto the shelf below the phone and pulled out the White Pages. He went through it, flipping pages hard until he found the page and the number he needed. He dumped the White Pages back onto the shelf and dialled.

  ‘Bill Harcourt.’

  ‘Ray Duval.’

  ‘You’re phoning me at home now? Jeez! I already made the list for you. Took it to police headquarters myself this afternoon. Left it with the desk sergeant.’

  ‘Never saw it.’

  ‘Did my best, Detective.’

  ‘You have a copy with you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I do. In my briefcase. Hang on.’

  Ray waited. A minute later the Chevy dealer was back on the line.

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Find the G’s.’

  ‘Okay, just a sec.’ Another moment passed and Ray could hear pages flipping. ‘G. Okay, what now?’

  ‘Look for the name Gerritson.’

  ‘Spell it.’

  Ray did.

  ‘Not here.’

  ‘It has to be!’ Ray said furiously. He could feel the vein in his neck swelling hard and his breath began to hitch. He couldn’t be wrong. ‘Look again.’

  ‘I can look until my eyes bug out. No Gerritson. Goes from German, Edgar to Gettler, Martin.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Why don’t you try Hertz? They rent them.’

  ‘Christ, that must be it. Thanks.’ Ray hung up and scratched the name HERTZ down in big letters, filling up half a page in his notebook, then underlined it and threw in an exclamation mark. Why own the vehicle you kidnap little girls in? Why not just rent? It would take days to track down Gerritson’s rental of the Corvan. He’d just have to take it as a given for the moment. There was no time to waste double-checking now. He went back into the kitchen, threw on his rig and his jacket then headed out into the rain.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Old City Cemetery, the Jewish, Odd Fellows and Masonic Cemeteries were a group of four burying grounds bordered by South Akard Street, Desoto Street and Masonic Avenue, located a few blocks south of the downtown district. The cemeteries, dating back to the time when Dallas was little more than a frontier town, lay long forgotten and forlorn in an out-of-the-way cul-de-sac surrounded by warehouses, squatters’ shotgun shacks and dilapidated rooming houses that provided accommodation for some of Dallas’s less-fortunate prostitutes.

  The Jewish Cemetery was the best preserved and best taken care of, surrounded by a black-painted wrought-iron fence. The Old City Cemetery, or what was left of it, was guarded by a small cott
age with a weather-beaten American flag on a pole in front of it. The cottage was occupied by an elderly watchman hired by the city whose only real job was to raise and lower the flag each morning and evening.

  Behind the cottage was the overgrown remains of the Odd Fellows and Masonic cemeteries, which had once looked down over the now-vanished Santa Fe Rail Yards. The centrepiece of the forgotten quadrant was a thirty-foot-fluted granite column topped by a huge stone eagle, wings spread, dedicated in 1918 to all the members of the Fraternal Order of Eagles who died in the Great War.

  To the rare visitor the most surprising thing about the monument was its continued existence intact, still standing after almost half a century of pollution and vandalism had run rampant through the rest of the area. There had been various groups and committees trying to salvage and rejuvenate the old graveyards since Ray had come home from his adventures in Europe, but everyone knew that land in Dallas these days was far too valuable to be left to the dead and it was inevitable that the eagle would eventually fall in the name of progress.

  Where Marilla Street curved up to Young Street, a flat-roofed, three-storey brick-and-stone warehouse had been crammed into a small triangular space not included in the original land grant deeded by the Odd Fellows and the Masons. Originally built as a machine shop for the nearby Santa Fe Rail Yards, it had lain vacant since the end of the Second World War, when the yards had been moved downslope towards the narrow Trinity River, closer to the edge of downtown. With buildings like the Old Courthouse, the Thomas Block and the Life Building screening the squalid area from view, the warehouse and the other buildings around it were almost invisible.

  Ray drove south on Akard, coming at the warehouse the long way round, turning off Akard onto Short Street, little more than an alley with small factories and clothing warehouses on one side and a row of sagging-roof town houses on the other. At least a third of the decrepit houses were clearly abandoned and several had been burnt out, leaving holes like a gap-toothed grin in the row.

  He parked the Bel Air at the end of the street, leaving the engine running for a minute, letting the wipers slap back and forth as he took in the warehouse address he’d been given by Betty Finch. Number 9 Marilla Street had a rough sandstone first level, topped by two more of brick. All of it was being darkened by the steady shower and the last of the evening sun. It was longer than it was wide, the windows facing Marilla Street done up like bay windows on a house. A white-on-black sign had been painted up the corner of the building facing Ray and the Bel Air: COMMUTATOR. There were two chimney stacks and an air vent poking up from the roof. On the main floor, taking up the corner of the warehouse, was a large-windowed storefront or office, the windows painted black halfway up to the top. There was a narrow recessed door leading into the office and a rough brick patch where there had once been a door on the side of the building facing its narrow, packed-dirt parking lot. The lot was empty and so was the curb in front of the building. No cars. No white Corvan.

  Procedure said that he should find a telephone and call for backup to help him raid the warehouse but after his dressing down by Fritz it was unlikely anyone would come to his aid; besides, he didn’t have any of the paperwork he needed to go busting into the place. On a Sunday it was unlikely he was going to get it. All too late, but that would be the right thing to do, the cop thing to do, the safe thing to do.

  To go into the warehouse alone was more than foolish, it was possibly a fatal act. The windshield slapped and wiped, slapped and wiped, leaving a long streak in the centre where the rubber had frayed and worn down. He put his hand over his chest and let his body speak to him in quiet whispers. Each incident, each movement, each risk was anguish now, bringing fear up into his despairing chest. Death was personal now, no longer something in the future; it was attached to him like a shadowy dream, a part of him, waiting to be summoned up at the final moment.

  He switched off the engine and got out of the car anyway, his hair instantly matting down with the rain, the heavy droplets smearing his vision. He wiped his face and looked around, seeing no one, a tiny flicker of memory rising like a bright star and fading from sight almost before he realised it was there.

  It was the fourth of August 1944 and the First Army had finally broken from the beaches at Essay. Alone, separated from his men, Ray Duval lay in the soft cover of fallen leaves and small plants that covered the floor of the Foret de Sever, a mile or so north of their target, the tiny village of St Pois. Ray knew they held the line from Fortain to a junction with the Second Army just north of Vire but at that moment he felt utterly alone, dreadfully aware of his singularity and the fact that no one in the entire world had the slightest idea where he was right now and few people, if any, cared. Even a cough or a sneeze from some other soldier nearby would have been enough to keep his terror in check but there was nothing except the sounds of birds and the rich graveyard smell of the soil an inch from his face.

  Ray slipped back into the car, popped open the glove compartment and rummaged around in it until he found what he was looking for: eight inches of a thin metal ruler, the lopped off end wrapped with electrical tape so he didn’t cut himself. He slipped the steel strip into the inside pocket of his jacket, climbed out of the car again and locked it. He looked around again – there wasn’t another soul to be seen. Over the roofs towards downtown there were only the darkened windows of office buildings. The sounds of traffic were muted by the rain and the mourning city. Alone in his dream, Ray knew he might as well have been walking across the mountains of the moon.

  Crossing the street, his heavy, waterlogged legs taking him towards COMMUTATOR and what perhaps might lie inside the wet-stained building, he could hear the sneering tone of Paul Futrelle’s surprise at him seemingly knowing Cicero. Well, he knew a bit of appropriate William Butler Yeats too:

  I balanced all, brought all to mind,

  The years to come seemed waste of breath

  A waste of breath the years behind

  In balance with this life, this death.

  He smiled. Who was he trying to kid; he wasn’t that much of a hero, although he was contemplating his own death, just like Yeats’s ‘Irish Airman.’ He reached the sidewalk and stepped up over the crumbling curb, his eyes fixed on the narrow door of the storefront. It was painted black from the inside like the window but all the way to the top so there was no way of seeing what lay beyond. Without even bothering to look around the rainswept street to see if anyone was watching, Ray took out his metal strip and ran it down the outside of the door frame until it reached the lock. He waggled the strip up and down gently and the door popped open. If the metal strip hadn’t worked he would have put his elbow to the glass.

  He put the strip back in his inside pocket and took the Browning out of its shoulder rig as he pushed open the door with his free hand. He sensed no movement or any danger in the darkness beyond so he stepped forward, his hand brushing the wall on his left for a light switch. Eventually he found it, an old-fashioned brass toggle. He flipped it up and closed the door behind him. Overhead two old-fashioned pan lights with green glass shades flickered on, throwing a pale weak light down into the room.

  Ray found himself standing directly in front of a broad wooden counter that ran three-quarters of the way across the room with an opening on the left. There was a modern cash register to the right of the opening and a rack of three-ring student binders beside it. Ray put the Browning down on the counter, pulled one of the binders out of its wire rack and leafed through it. Inside, slotted into plastic protective covers, were photographs of various binding types and examples of book repairs with before and after pictures on opposite leaves. Ray closed the binder and picked up one of the business cards stacked on a small brass tray.

  WILLIAM GERRITSON

  Fine Binding, Gilt Work

  Antiquarian Book Repair

  There was a Brooklyn, New York, address and phone number neatly crossed out and an inked Dallas address and phone number that matched the ones given t
o him by Betty Finch. He stared into the area behind the counter and saw a neatly laid out shop with a heavy wooden bench running almost the whole length of the room. Above it was a long pegboard rack that held the tools of Charming Billy’s trade: knives, needles, oil stones, a huge pair of heavy shears, a collection of tinned iron plates to put between the leaves of books when they were being rethreaded, weights, a variety of saws, hand drills and drill bits and a collection of small, almost jewel-like planes.

  On the bench itself was a large vice, a pair of lamps on swinging armatures and, at one end, a lying press, used for holding books and individual parts of books being glued, and a sewing frame for stitching the separate signatures of paper together to make the finished book. Ray could also see a small stack of old books off to one side, waiting to be worked on, as well as one that had already been taken apart, its various pieces spread out in front of a tall stool. The whole bench was obviously made to be used with the bookbinder standing.

  To the right of the bench, pushed up against the wall, was a small table with some kind of special vice that held a book spine towards the person working on it. To the left, in a custom-made holder, were a dozen or so wooden-handled engraving tools with long U-shaped chisel blades for cutting into the leather. These were the instruments that had created the delicate U-shaped killing wounds in the eyes of his victims. There was a book of dull-looking gold leaf beside the vice-like object and far off to one side, bathed in the light from a green gooseneck lamp, was a family photograph of a young blonde woman, her hair cut in a bob, and two smiling children under her arm, one a boy of eight or nine, the other a girl of twelve or so.

  Without any warning, a square of wood in the centre of the floor came up soundlessly as a trapdoor opened. A man in his fifties stepped up into the studio, several large squares of leather interwoven with sheets of dark green felt in his hand. He looked startled to see anyone in the shop and stopped cold, half in and half out of the trapdoor opening.