Phantom Nights (21 page)

"Don't say that! How do you think you know so damn much!"

Mally shuddered slightly and crossed her bare arms again.

"Another train's coming. Maybe this will be the one." She walked a few steps away from Alex, walked back. "No. Probably too soon for me. But the Crossing is busy tonight."

"What do you mean, 'busy'?"

"There are others here, just swarms of folks passing through. I can barely make them out myself. They ignore me. Guess we're all strangers everywhere, no matter what world we find ourselves in."

Alex shook his head unhappily, looking around the platform, empty to his eyes. There were tears on Mally's face. He heard a dog barking, and it raised hair on his forearms, the skin goosing up.

"We have to figure out what to do about Leland Howard."

"He doesn't matter to me now."

"That low-down polecat set his dogs on you! He deserves to be—I don't care if Bobby is scared to do anything; I'll do it myself!"

Mally looked worriedly at him.

"Your mind is tired, Alex. You've been through a lot this weekend. And it would be hard to beat what I suffered.

Will you let me rest now? It's time for both of us to take a break."

He wiped sweat from beneath his eyes, blinking. She was losing definition, like a streaky image on a rainstorm window.

"I'm not tired," he said sulkily. "I don't want you to go. I'll never see you again."

"Can't be sure of that, it's true. But for now, please let go of me."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't do this all by myself.
Let go
. Turn your back on me, walk away. Don't look around."

"
No
, Mally."

"Tomorrow night, then. Be waiting here when the
Dixie Traveler
returns. Stay away from it, hear? But take its power deep into the marrow of your bones. That's how you'll likely find me again."

"I don't—"

"And Alex?"

"What?" he said despairingly.

"Almost nobody ever scores even in a lifetime. Either you get better than you deserve or, like most folks, a whole lot worse. There's nothing you can do to Mr. Howard he won't do to himself eventually."

B
ernice Clauson came into the kitchen and said to Bobby and Cecily, who were going over household accounts and making out checks for the first-of-the-month bills, "There's a blind nigra man coming up your front walk. I think he must be blind. He has on those glasses they wear. A young man is with him, and he has a camera."

Cecily looked at Bobby, who shrugged and got up to go to the front door.

"Hello, Eddie," Bobby said, recognizing the
Defender
's man in Evening Shade as he walked outside on the porch. His hunch was that the older man was Mally Shaw's father with the French name from Nashville. He wore dark glasses all right, and his suit was too big on him.

"Dr. Valjean? Can't tell you how sorry I am about Mally; she was well liked here in Evening Shade. It's a terrible tragedy."'

"Thank you, Sheriff Gambier."

"Acting sheriff is all, rest of this week and the next. Eddie, you doing a story? You know I don't care for having my picture taken out of uniform."

"Yes sir, Sheriff Bobby, just carryin' it around gets to be a habit with me."

"Hot night. Would either of you like a drink of water?"

Ordinarily he wouldn't have made the gesture; Negroes didn't call socially on the Gambiers, and if there was some official although after-hours business to be done, it was a Sunday night and he didn't want them lingering. But under the circumstances Bobby felt that Dr. Ramses Valjean was deserving of the unusual courtesy.

Ramses turned him down, however, with a curt shake of his head.

"Well then, what's on your mind I can help you with?"

"I've come to ask you to accompany me to the Godsong and Wundall funeral home," Ramses said.

"Why should I do that, Dr. Valjean?"

"To view my daughter's body."

"Done that this morning."

"Let me make the assumption that you have not seen all that there is to see; of course you could not, sir, further assuming that you have no training in pathology."

"What are you getting at?"

"Among other things, although there can be no doubt that she was mauled to death by dogs, Mally could not have been killed where her body was found."

"How's that?" Bobby said, a moment ago feeling a little sleepy, now with a yellow caution light blinking in his head.

"It is so obvious that her body was moved there from another site, and that an effort was made to make it appear as if she were attacked in the Little Grove cemetery—a poor effort, by the way—it surprises me that no one in the sheriff's department has raised any questions about the attempted deception."

"Wait a minute." Bobby glanced at Eddie, whose eyes were wide, as if he were hearing Dr. Valjean's theory for the first time. "I was at Little Grove myself. Didn't see a thing would back up this sort of speculation. The ground had been trampled by dogs, and there was blood all over. Pieces of her clothing and—"

Ramses nodded. "Yes. Pieces of her flesh. I found what your deputies may have missed."

"Then what gives you any reason to suspect—"

"I can prove what I suspect, if you will accompany me to the funeral home, and if you are willing to accept the truth of my observations."

Eddie looked at Ramses and up at Bobby as if he couldn't believe this was going on, Bobby stone-faced now and certain he had just been called out by a new gunslinger in town, one who possibly held him in contempt. Colored man holding him in contempt. Eddie was forgetting how to breathe.

Bobby said, "I'll go with you." He looked at Eddie. "Eddie, go on home."

"All right, Sheriff Bobby."

"One word of this shows up in any newspaper across the state, one
whisper
gets back to me at the courthouse, I'll put a kink in your tooter."

"Oh no no no no. You can depend on me."

"You been standing there too long already."

"I'm gettin'," Eddie said, backing down the walk with a look of apology meant for Ramses. But Ramses seemed to have lost all awareness of him.

"I need to sit down," Ramses said in a quiet voice, and did so without permission, right there on the second step up to the porch, taking off his blindman's glasses with shaking fingers. The orbs of his eyes were yellow as egg yolk. Some hidden catastrophe of the flesh was etched on his grave handsome old face; seeing it gave Bobby pause before he went back into the house to let Cecily know where he was going.

W
hen Bobby saw Ramses Valjean's hand go to the handle on the front door of the passenger side of Bobby's Packard station wagon he was about to say something like
I don't drive colored folks around town in the front seat of my car.
No temper, just a casual statement of fact, as if Ramses was befuddled by events of the day and hadn't realized what he was about to do. But he heard in his head what it sounded like before the words came out, and, curiously, it occurred to him how he would sound to Ramses. Never in his life had Bobby had second thoughts about how he spoke to Negroes. Or care what any damn one of them thought of him. Because, except for a couple of noncoms raised in Harlem who had some of that jive-stepping manner even Southerners generally were amused by and could excuse them for, Bobby had never met a colored man who needed instruction concerning who he was and how he'd been born to behave. This made him uneasy. Ramses Valjean was a man of medicine and had achieved distinction in his field; that, in Bobby's opinion, entitled him to more respect than the average indentured farmer or the courthouse janitor. And his daughter had died a cruel death.

So what Bobby said was, as Ramses was opening the car door, "Like for you to take a seat in the back, Dr. Valjean."

Ramses said alter a few seconds, during which he was motionless but not hesitant, "As you wish." Not much inflection in his cultivated voice, certainly not a trace of arrogance. But Bobby felt as if he had just been scolded. Made to feel a little foolish. Then Ramses said, "I have always found it easier to talk to a man when I am, more or less, face to face. And obviously you are interested in what I have to say."

No denying. Sunday night, the Gambiers were as usual a little short of paycheck money to settle bills and would have to cash in another government bond before its time. Alex was giving him fits, and now Ramses Valjean had showed up and dumped a mess of an unknown size and complexity on his doorstep. He was both afraid and eager to hear more about it.

Bobby said wearily, "Okay, let's get this done," and nodded his permission for Ramses to occupy the front seat with him.

T
he woman Leland Howard took back to his hotel in Kingsport, Tennessee's Fort Henry Hotel was a devoted campaign worker, a divorcee who earned her living in the Sullivan County Clerk's office. Leland's friend and mentor Estes Kefauver had recommended her highly for a night's entertainment. Her name was Bitsy Beauregard. Mid-thirties, five feet nothing with frosted blonde hair and a dazzling jut of teeth that prevented her lips from ever quite closing, which gave her a look of unquenchable avidity. She had a fund of tacky chatter and wouldn't shut up even while she was taking his pants down. She carried some extra weight on her hips, but her breasts had a nice blush and were firm as wax fruit.

Bitsy proved herself to be sexually inventive, but to his mortification Leland just couldn't follow through. Both his mind and his blood were sluggish. Whenever Bitsy's sweaty efforts were about to pay off Leland would think of what had gone on between him and Mally Shaw less than twenty hours ago and his penis would slide limply away from Bitsy's fierce clutch.

As Leland was phobic and never gave head, Bitsy finally left the suite determined to act cheerfully nonchalant about his bungled fuck. But obviously she'd got herself plenty worked up and was about to go nuts. He had always satisfied his women with the girth of his member and his stamina; this singular failure, which he alibied as exhaustion from the rigors of the campaign trail, depressed Leland. He hoped she wouldn't tell on him the next time she was intimate with Estes.

He didn't have the stomach yet to take a drink. Figured a hot bath might relax him enough to sleep. He opened the taps and turned away from the tub to take a gloomy pee, and when he looked into the tub again he saw that the pipes had coughed rusty water like the color of Mally's blood washing off his own body the night before. It gave his heart such a wallop he nearly fainted.

Leland turned off the bathwater. Catching sight of himself in the mirror of a half-opened cabinet door, he stopped and stared as if he were a case of mistaken identity, no longer solar in his status. He breathed through his mouth as he shuffled back to the bedroom. Heart going like kettledrums. The side of his head where he'd been hit by Mally ached ferociously. The more air he sucked in, the more starved for oxygen he was. He fell across the four-poster bed. Panicked. He needed a doctor! But in spite of sickening pain he was wary of calling down to the front desk. Word would get out. There'd be something in the papers tomorrow.
Leland Howard stricken
. Everyone would be thinking heart attack. His man Jim Giles was already on the road back to Evening Shade. His campaign manager was in Oak Ridge with the campaign's advance man. There was no one he could call on for help.

Blood roiling in his ears. His heart would not slow down. Knock at the door. Leland staggered up and put on a robe. There was a middle-aged colored woman outside. "Everyone will know what you did," she said.

Leland backed away from the door. "
What?
"

She looked startled, afraid of him. He still smelled of another woman's perfume and pussy.

"Does you be wantin' me to turn down your bed?"

This time Leland heard her correctly.

"No. No, I was half-asleep already."

"Sorry for botherin' you then, Senator."

"That's all right."

She was halfway down the hall before he closed the door.

Calling him
Senator
. He felt revived, yanked out of the doldrums by her expression of respect. Well, he was all but there, and everybody knew it! Little more than a week to go. His closest primary rival trailed him by twelve points in the polls. Sinking like a leaky rowboat. Didn't matter a damn who the Republicans offered up in November. Steady course now, stick to the script, nothing to worry about.

Except for what Mally had known about him, and what she had done with the information his old man had provided to humble an unloved son.

Back in bed, he washed down three aspirin with warm Coca-Cola.

The preliminary search of Mally's house, by flashlight, hadn't turned up anything, but he knew Jim Giles was right. Even a small house like hers had so many rathole hiding places it would be necessary to take it apart board by board to find the incriminating documents.

Giles had come up with an ideal solution, and Leland agreed immediately.