Dutch Curridge Page 14

  "I don't have any desire to be the new sheriff in town, Curridge," Merkley said. "I have more power right where I am."

  I sat and worked on my Jack and Dr Pepper. And I tried to work out what Merkley's motivation was in telling me all of this. Was it to make Stubblefield look bad? Surely, if he knew the location of my favorite bar, he knew I already liked Stub about as much as a kick in the sack. Was it an attempt to make himself look good? If that was the case, it was a half-assed attempt at best, and I could see no motive for that either.

  I couldn't even tell whether he took my suggestion to help in the Whitey Calhoun case seriously, though it appeared that he might have. At least a little bit.

  "So why are you here?" I said.

  "Like I told you," he said, "I was in the neighborhood. And I promised I would get back with you, right?"

  "The man keeps his promises," Heck said.

  "But," I said, "nothing at all on the Whitey Calhoun case."

  "As a friend, if you were on the wrong track, don't you think I would tell you?" Merkley said.

  "About like you did with that record I was looking for," I said.

  "Look friend," he said, leaning in close, "I'm an old man. I can barely wipe my own ass anymore. I'm too tired to fight my own battles. That's why I bring help with me." He nodded at the other two, who had meanwhile noted the change in tone and were giving him the courtesy of pretending not to listen.

  "When you come steppin' into my place, I not only knew who you were, I knew what you were comin' after. And I didn't want to get involved. It don't matter what I know, what I can or can't tell you. I'm not involved, and I don't care to be."

  "But what about the boy's momma?" I said. "She would like to know."

  "Lots of boys' mommas would like to know lots of things," he said. "Most of it, they wouldn't really benefit by learning."

  Merkley seemed annoyed when Patrick made him pay up for his beer, looking at him as if to say, "do you realize who I am?"

  But he paid up, left a generous tip and dragged his tired old ass out of the bar and disappeared into the night. The walls of the place seemed to sigh in relief when he did.

  As he sidled out behind him, Lieutenant Charlie Heck looked back over his shoulder.

  "The only reason the Sheriff hasn't had you behind bars this whole damn time is walking out the door right in front of you. Mr. Merkley wants you to do it."

  "Do what exactly?" I said.

  "Do your job," he said. "Just do your job."

  I sat there and wondered if I should have pushed the old man a little harder. I had had him on my own playing field. Then again, if he had kept me out of jail, maybe I should have been a little nicer. Why the hell had he done such a thing? Patrick said it was because he knew I wasn't guilty. Simple as that.

  Sometimes I think he's right. Things work out to be fairly simple. Other times I'm pretty sure things in this life are complicated as all get out. Alto told me one time that the trick is to see things simple with one eye and complicated with the other. It balances the mind, he said.

  The older I get, the more I tend to shut my complicated eye and let the simple one do the seeing. It may be unbalanced, but I have less headaches.

  46

  For years, Terrell had been called the North Texas Lunatic Asylum, and that's still what it was. Most of the people that got placed there were termed "incurably insane.” It was the place they put the real crazies, or the unfortunates, as they were referred to there, to get them out of sight.

  The place looked like a cross between an old Spanish mission and a Nazi encampment compound, a detail which would have warmed Dandy's heart, no doubt. We drove up the winding drive to the place late on an afternoon, we being Ruthie Nell, Slant, Alto and me. We had driven through Dallas, stopping off once to see where Bonnie Parker was buried and again to see the house that Alto grew up in. We parked in front of the main building, one that would have dwarfed any in downtown Fort Worth.

  "And that's just to hold the ones from North Texas,” I said.

  Entering the ward for the male unfortunates, on the right side of the building, was like entering a whole other world.

  A pasty white man with a head worse than Slant's walked right up like he'd been waiting all day for me.

  "Doctor,” he said, "My wife and boys still haven't brought the crops into town, and it's getting late outside. Don't you think I should go and check on them?”

  Others were singing and laughing and talking, sometimes to each other, sometimes to no one. Dandy, I thought, must be the most unfortunate of them all.

  "They're going to get your friend,” an attendant fully decked out in a cadet's uniform said. "It'll be a minute or two. Make yourself at home.” I wondered if he even thought about what he was saying.

  Ruthie Nell made small talk with him and found out his family was from Weatherford. I asked if he remembered the bomber crashing there in '45. He said he'd been in high school when it happened, and he'd carried around a piece of the plane for years before finally losing it in a poker game on an army base in Alexandria, Louisiana.

  "You're not serious about wanting Mr. O'Bannon to go home with you,” said an identically dressed cadet whose nametag said

  Rodwick and whose authority seemed rooted in a clipboard that he carried close to his body.

  "I'm not?” I said.

  "I'm afraid that's completely out of the question,” he said. "Your friend would have an exceedingly difficult time if he were returned to civilian life at this point.”

  "He's been here less than a month,” I said.

  "Sir, we have a long standing tradition of caring for the needs of war veterans,” he said. "Believe it or not, we were providing our services for veterans of the Civil War.”

  I wanted to tell him that, from the looks of things, some of the patients appeared to have been there for that long, and the fact that they were still in such a rough shape didn't speak highly of the hospital's services. I knew Ruthie would get angry with me for causing trouble, so I didn't.

  "I just wanna talk to my friend, if you don't mind,” I said. "I don't believe there's anything illegal about that."

  "That's fine,” Rodwick said, "but if you talk with him about the possibility of getting out, we will have to suspend all further visitation privileges pending review.”

  By the time Dandy showed up, we'd made arrangements to visit with him in the garden which lay due west of the building, still in the light of the waning sun and away from the chilly shadows skirting the rest of the building. Our new pal Rodwick came along, acting as chaperone. I lit up a cigarette and offered Dandy one.

  "What a dive you got here,” I said.

  "It's damn good to see you, too, Dutch” he said.

  "You making out okay?” Ruthie said.

  "Just ducky,” Dandy said.

  We caught him up with the situation, picking Kimble's report apart and putting it back together a couple of times. Dandy was able to contribute a few new pieces of the puzzle.

  "I hid out in a tree, not far from the back tunnel. Least ways until they hauled your ass away,” he said, remembering the night at the Top O' The Hill. "Then I tried to get into the main building, but it was padlocked and I was out of ammo. I don't remember what I did that night, but next day, I ran into one of Stubblefield's boys downtown and realized they didn't suspect me at all. They either thought you was alone or maybe it was Slant with you. So I talk to 'em and end up coming back in to the department and asking for my old job back.”

  By this point, I was thinking he really was crazy. But I said nothing.

  "Well, not my old job,” he said. "I thought maybe I'd get a desk job, hang around the place and pick up a paycheck. Most of all, I was going behind enemy lines to find out what they'd done with your Calhoun boy. It didn't take no time to find out. They had him locked up, and somebody had knocked the ever-living Jesus of Nazareth out of him. Dry gulched him somethin' awful. At first, Stub told me they'd found him that way. Picked him up in Qua
lity Grove where a bunch of guys were beating eleven shades of shit out of him. I didn't buy it.

  Later, Deputy Kimble told me what really happened. By then, I think Calhoun must have died, but I didn't know it. They stopped letting me go back there. I did know it when Kimble shot himself. All hell broke loose that day. Stub almost deputized me back onto the force. I think he was gettin' paranoid.

  Yeah, he brought me into his office and told me he had a special assignment for me. With Kimble shooting himself in the face, Stub knew it was gonna be a closed casket funeral. He wanted to know if I could help him get Calhoun buried in the same casket with Kimble. I said hell, no. I didn't even know Calhoun was dead. That's when I first found out. Anyway, I found out what he had in mind and wasn't havin' any of it. I told him he'd lost his damn mind. Which he thought was funny as all get out.”

  "So when you told Lynch about Calhoun being buried in Kimble's casket,” I said, "you really believed he'd gone ahead and done it.”

  "He told me he was gonna do it, said he didn't need me to get the job done anyhow,” Dandy said, "and later, he told me he'd done it just fine without any help from anybody. Why wouldn't I believe him?”

  "It never occurred to you he was lyin,' settin' you up,” I said.

  "Yeah, well, maybe it did,” he said. "I pretty much didn't believe myself when I told that story to Judge Lynch.”

  "Well, why in hell did you do it then?" I said.

  "I think the sheriff wanted me to," he said. "And I was kind of hoping they might send me off somewheres."

  To hear Dandy tell it, he had grown tired of Fort Worth, tired of his daily routine, and had merely played the game for a one-way ticket to new environs.

  "But you ended up here," Slant said.

  "It's kind of like being back in the war," he said. "It's almost like none of this other stuff even happened."

  It did seem like he was right back in the enemy camp, far as I could tell. Of course, I couldn't let on that I even knew about all of that.

  "I have a question,” Ruthie Nell said. "What the hell did you mean when you said you took care of Whitey Calhoun? Exactly how did you take care of him?”

  "Just like I said. I did what I had to do,” Dandy said. "Whenever Stub wasn't around, I'd take a wet towel back there and wipe his face down. Take him some soup and spoon it into him. Like feeding a baby bird. Else, I'd just talk to him, tell him to hang on and I'd get him out. If I'd known, I'd of gone on and got 'im out right then. Least ways, I would of tried.”

  "Seemed like he was getting' stronger?” I said.

  "Seemed like he was believin' in me,” Dandy said. "He asked, didn't I know you, Dutch. When I said we was old war buddies, he seemed to start trusting whatever it was I was tellin' him."

  We left Dandy in the care of Rodwick, who insisted that he was in better hands there than he would be anywhere else. I was having trouble believing, but I knew it was a fight for another day.

  On the way back to town, I told Ruthie that I had been thinking about stopping by Fast Mike's, just to see what kind of deal he might make me. I was putting a lot of miles on the old Chummy, and I knew its days were numbered.

  She thought I should go on and trade it in for a Ford V-8. A shiny black one. It seemed like a good idea to me.

  "It might even impress Barbara Kimble,” she said.

  I told Ruthie she was crazy. Barbara Kimble was too. Hell, Stubblefield was obviously incurably insane. I couldn't see much difference between the folks inside the walls of Terrell and the ones on the outside. We were all a load of unfortunates, far as I could see.

  47

  Lewis Freeman met me and Ruthie at the Deal on a Saturday afternoon. I wanted to see "Wages Of Fear," but it was no longer playing, so I bought tickets to "Shane." People say it's a classic movie. I hated it. Alan Ladd was supposed to be some tough guy like John Wayne in "The Quiet Man," but all he did was dance around and splash people in the face with his drink. By the time we got to the scene where the kid was yelling at Shane to come back, come back, I was yelling at him to let the goddamn bastard go.

  Lewis was too nervous to enjoy the show anyway. The Deal was the only theater in town that was open to both negros and whites, but the negros were expected to sit upstairs. That was fine by me and Ruthie. You could see the screen better up there, and you could look down and watch the people below whenever the show got dull.

  When the show was over, we went back to the Chummy, and I got the record out.

  "I wasn't able to do everything," I said. "I'd love to be able to hand you a wad of cash, but I did manage to find this."

  Lewis turned it over and over, looking at it from all sides, as if the Lord's favorite drinking cup had materialized right there in his hands.

  "Pray Children If You Want to Go to Heaven," he said.

  "I guess that's an extra one for your troubles," I said.

  "I remember my daddy singing that to us when we were just kids," Lewis said.

  "I expect he'll be as happy to see this as you are," Ruthie said.

  "Oh no, ma'am," he said. "My daddy would tear it to a hundred pieces. He don't sing no more. Don't wanna hear nothin' of it."

  Ruthie looked like she was going to sit down and cry.

  "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said. "I assumed you wanted it for him."

  "Well, I do, ma'am, in a way," Lewis said. "I suppose I want to get back the part of my daddy that I done lost. Maybe have it around for my own little boy."

  "You have a son?" Ruthie said.

  "Yes, indeed I do," Lewis said. "He's three years old. Everyone says he's the spitting image of me."

  I apologized to him again for not coming up with anything else. I assured him that Verbal and Nobel didn't have a penny to their name, that they didn't even have a plot of land to call home. I didn't mention my conversation with Peg the Pirate McDermott. Didn't see any sense in it. For all I knew, Lewis' dad and uncle were exactly who they claimed to be. And if they weren't, they might as well have been.

  When Lewis Freeman left that day, he might have been headed back for Arkansas. I never saw him around the Rose Room again, never heard anybody mention his name. I never did even listen to that record, something I've regretted a time or two along the way.

  When we pulled away in the Chummy that late afternoon, I was feeling good enough to go out and make a night of it.

  "Where shall we go?" Ruthie said.

  "I don't care," I said. "You pick."

  "Wanna go home?" she said.

  "I'm always at home," I said. "I never leave."

  With Ruthie stretched out next to me and the city stretched out in front of me, I was one lucky man, and I knew it.

  48

  Verbal and Noble Whitaker were hungry, so I took them over to Tootie's for breakfast. The waitress, a young freckle faced girl named Geneva steered us to my usual table and took our orders.

  "I need to hear more from you guys on this Whitey Calhoun case,” I said. "So word on the street is he's dead.”

  "That's the word,” Noble said.

  "Any idea what was done to him, where the body is, anything at all?” I said.

  "They say some white mens beat him to death,” Noble said. "For rapin' that white gal.”

  I started to explain that he hadn't raped anyone, but they were probably aware of that. They lived in a world where, anytime a negro laid down with a white woman, it had a tendency to end up being rape. Kinda like day had a tendency to turn to night.

  Geneva came by with coffee, and Noble and me took ours black. Verbal stirred half a bowl of cream into his, until it faded out to about the color of my arm.

  "Think anybody knows where the body is?” I said.

  Noble shook his head.

  "I heard tell they chopped that boy up so fine, you could be lookin' at 'im right now and not see 'im,” Verbal said.

  "Any reason to think it's true?” I said.

  "Any for thinkin' it's not?” Verbal said.

  He said that one guy claimed to
have seen Whitey boarding a Greyhound bus the same morning Miss Vita got the phone call. Noble said it was the same guy who swore he had once shared a bus ride from Texas to Washington D.C. with General Eisenhower, conferring on war philosophies and different methods of defeating the Russians the entire way. Nobody could find any reason to think this guy had ever left the state of Texas.

  "You hear all kinds of shit on the street,” Noble said. "Word on the street don't mean nothin.'” I told them that I had to follow every halfway legitimate lead I could find, at that point.

  "Some says that crazy man snuck him out the back door of the jail an' his momma's hidin' him out over at her place right now,” Verbal said.

  "Why in hell would they think a thing like that?” I said.

  I worked through a long list of scenarios in my head. Sometimes I had him off in some northern town, maybe Chicago, working a job as a bicycle messenger or a gas station attendant, saving money for the day he could mail Miss Vita a one way ticket. Or I'd get an urge to drop by Fleck's and ask if anybody had come by and ordered a tomato juice lately.

  I continued to hear all kinds of shit on the street. No doubt, some of it was true. That's the thing. Most times, the truth can be a bigger pile of it than anything.

  Before I left them there that day, I had one last nagging question.

  "One more thing," I said. "Either of you guys ever hear of a song called 'I Got Your Ice Cold Nu Grape'?"

  Questions about death and mayhem on Ninth Street didn't faze them one iota. This one clearly caught them by surprise.

  "That's our song," Noble finally said, after they both stammered around like they couldn't get their mouths to work right.

  "That's what I heard," I said. "I got an old guitar out in the car. You reckon, we went out and got it, I might talk you into playing it for me?"

  They played it three or four times, to get it just right. And it was a good song too. By the fourth time, I was singing right along with it. I left the guitar there for them. I knew they didn't have a damn thing between them. Not besides stories and songs anyway.