The Long Count (14 page)

Finishing the vodka, she fetched the bottle and poured another. She fetched her cigarettes and an ashtray and lit a couple of incense sticks. Reading the note again her gaze drifted to the telephone, then she considered the open door to the hallway and her bedroom. Switching on the lamp, she was on her hands and knees by the bed reaching for an old shoe box she kept underneath. Clasping the box to her breast, she moved to the window where she checked the street outside, but all was quiet.

Back in the living room she poured another shot from the vodka bottle and lit another cigarette before settling it in the ashtray. She opened the box, tissue paper covering a whole stack of photographs. Carefully she lifted the paper out.

With reverence almost, she cast her eye across the images. Dozens and dozens of them, she traced fingers over the topmost few, locating one of three young nurses in uniform together with another woman wearing a pale-colored dress. There was a sense of excitement, the exuberance of youth perhaps, illuminating their faces. Her hand shook as she placed the photograph on the coffee table and sought another: a nurse by herself this time, she was wearing the same crisp white uniform and folded cap, the picture taken on the steps of an old colonial mansion. Rummaging in the box once more she found another picture taken in the exact same spot, only this time it was of the three nurses.

Placing those two on the hearth she found one more and her hand was trembling again as she considered two of the three nurses. One of them was very slightly built, blonde and pale, the size of her eyes her most striking feature.

On her feet once more, she paced to the window where she stood close to the curtain. The sound of a car approaching lifted from outside and she listened with the vodka glass gripped in one hand and her other arm about her waist. She waited, ears pricked, but the car drove right past the house without slowing and carried on up the street. Eyes closed now, she stood there a minute longer
and then she went back to her bedroom. Opening the nightstand drawer her gaze settled on a piece of brushed velvet. It was wrapped around another photograph, only this one was framed in gold, and for long time she just stared at it. Fingers brushing the glass, the tears that had gathered slipped onto her cheeks as she placed the photograph back in the drawer.

He jumped off the freight train as it rolled towards the switching yard. A couple of hobos squatted in the box car with him, one keeping to the shadows wearing fatigues from Korea with the name
Venice
stitched above the pocket.

From the yard he made his way on foot, skirting the downtown district where skyscrapers were built in a mix of concrete and pale-colored stone. He walked right past the Holiday Inn where Sam Cooke had been arrested, and asked directions to Bellevue Sanatorium from a newspaper vendor working a stand on the corner of Moor Street.

A black man in his sixties, he looked down from his battered counter. ‘Bellevue?’ he said. ‘What you want to go there for? That ain’t a hospital, it’s a prison for basket cases.’

‘I’m visiting somebody.’ His tone was as terse as the vendor’s incredulous.

The black man lifted a palm. ‘All right, all right, no need to get all jacked up. It ain’t the kind place most folks ask for.’

‘Well, I ain’t most folks and I’m asking. Now do you know where it’s at or not?’

‘Sure I know where it’s at and I hope you-all is driving. Mister, Bellevue’s in Virginia Park and that’s a distance if you be walking.’

Making his way around back of the news stand he went inside and clubbed the man over the head with the butt of his pistol.

Moments later a woman and her two children approached the stand. They asked for Hershey bars and bottles of soda and he served them. Taking their money he placed the dollar bill in the metal cashbox while the black man lay unconscious and bleeding.
Without a word he handed the woman her change, then reached for the latch that held the board up. Locking it from the inside, he emptied the cashbox before wiping the blood from his boots where it seeped from the vendor’s skull. From a hook behind the cash box he grabbed a set of car keys with an Oldsmobile fob attached to them.

Outside he stuffed the pistol in his waistband and buttoned his jacket. The stains were much worse now though, and they were a lot fresher. Back inside the news stand, he hunted down a cloth and bottle of detergent the old guy probably used for his counter. No longer red, the stains were just dark and wet and he went in search of the Olds.

A station wagon with wood panels working both sides, it was parked around the corner between a Plymouth and a bull-nosed Ford. Automatic transmission with a shift on the column, pressing his foot on the brake, he worked the lever up and down. There was not much gas in the car but he had twenty-seven dollars and change from the cashbox, and when he tapped the gauge on the dashboard the level reached a little higher.

For a while he sat there staring through the windshield then he opened the glove box, rooted around for a moment before closing it again and searched the pocket in the door.

He found a faded, well-thumbed street map, laid it across the steering wheel and located the park the old man had mentioned, tracing his finger where Ockley Drive formed an S bend running east to west.

There were a few houses scattered here and there but it was not built-up. No boundary to the park itself but the brick buildings in the center were gathered inside a ten-foot wall. Carefully he scouted the area; driving Ockley first he made his way around the S bend and spotted what looked like a back entrance to the hospital. A dozen or so cars were parked in a small lot that opened just a few yards from an access track that was laid with pea gravel. Making a
loop of the parking lot, he considered the handful of aging vehicles.

Heading onto Ockley again, he drove east from the park and about a mile further he pulled in and turned the car. Now he drove back, passing that access road and pulling around the loop at the northern section of parkland. He could see the wall. Beyond it the height of the building carried at least six floors and he stopped on the side of the road. Sitting there he ran his tongue across his lips and adjusted the barrel of the pistol where it dug into his groin.

He drove on, completing the loop, and made a left where Ockley met Fairfield Avenue. About a block south he came to a stand of thickly leafed poplars that bordered the entrance to a driveway. There was a signpost out front, though it said nothing about the inmates being criminally insane. It only read
Bellevue
just as the sign in the Piney Woods had said nothing but
Trinity
.

Again he pulled over. Then he backed up and drove between the trees all the way to where the walls grew up, broken by a set of iron gates. It was just like Trinity, only these gates were fronted by a red-and-white vehicle barrier with a guard sitting in a wooden hut. Beyond the hut he could see another parking lot that housed a much better class of vehicle. Before he got to the hut he swung the Olds around the turning circle and lifted a hand to acknowledge the guard.

Back on Fairfield, he considered the dashboard clock. It was early evening now and he made for the gravelled lot where the less salubrious-looking vehicles were parked. Sliding the Olds into a space he switched off the motor and sat staring at the banks of trees.

After a while he got out and went around to the back of the car. There was not much in the trunk: an old raincoat that was too big for him, the toolkit and spare wheel. There was also a heavy-duty tow rope and a long-handled shovel. He took a few moments to consider the contents then he closed the tailgate and made his way across the parking lot to another stand of poplars where he could
see the back entrance to the hospital. A steel gate set in the stone wall. Chewing on a thumbnail, he leaned against the trunk of a tree.

He was still there when darkness enveloped the copse. Sitting cross-legged in the shadows with the Levi unbuttoned and the pistol in his hand, he watched as the gate in the wall opened and a few members of the hospital staff filtered through. A couple of orderlies, two young nurses walking side-by-side smoking cigarettes, he could smell the stench where it wafted.

The number of cars in the parking lot gradually dwindled and still he sat where he was. Then the gate opened and closed once more and this time he glimpsed the bulk of a big man shouldering his way through the trees. He gripped the pistol that bit more tightly, watching as the man shuffled down the path wearing a white housecoat and green T-shirt. On his feet he had a pair of tennis shoes.

Silently he got up. He stood beside the oak tree and looked on as the big man headed for the parking lot. There were only three cars left now and one of them was the newspaper vendor’s Olds. Ten feet back he had the gun levelled at hip height as the orderly searched his pockets for keys. Another step and Briers stiffened. He stood very still. Then he turned and his gaze fixed on the gun. Neither of them spoke. He stood there peering at the big man through the gloom of the trees and Briers looked back, much taller, much bigger built, his eyes still fastened on the gun. Indicating where the Oldsmobile was parked he tossed Briers the keys.

‘Right there,’ he pointed with the pistol. ‘The tailgate, open it for me.’

Briers did as he was told, swinging the rear door wide before he looked back. Gesturing with the pistol, he told him to fetch the long-handled shovel and Briers did that. He told him to fetch the tow rope as well. Briers hesitated, his gaze once more on the pistol before he turned and bent for the rope.

With the flat of the shovel he smashed the big man across the head. Briers buckled; a moan escaping his lips he toppled forward so he slumped over the lip of the trunk. Voices sounded from further down the path. Throwing the shovel into the car, he reached for Briers’s legs and managed to lift him, heft his legs around and shove his bulk in the back. He just about had the door closed before two nurses appeared through the trees.

Side-by-side they walked up the path making for the last two cars and he heard their voices clearly.

‘Charlie’s car’s still there,’ one of them said. ‘I thought I saw him leave.’

That voice: listening to that voice he stood absolutely still. He was peering through the darkness as the two women came alongside and there she was with her dark hair pinned back under her cap. Nurse Nancy and another much younger woman, they walked right past the Oldsmobile but they did not see him in the shadows and they did not spot the unconscious man in the back.

He watched them. He started after them. Two paces, three, then he stopped, with the gun gripped in one hand and the other bunched in a fist. Now he just stood there watching as they both got in one car and Nancy backed out of the parking spot. He watched as she pulled away. He watched till the tail lights were no more than a glow.

Briers remained slumped in the back of the station wagon and when he got behind the wheel he could hear his childlike moans. He drove south of the city into woodland and marsh. He drove asphalt till he found dirt, then he took that dirt deep into cypress and live oak where Spanish moss seemed to list in the breeze. Finally he came to a clearing on the edge of slack water where an old cabin jutted from the shadows. Pulling over, he allowed the car to idle for a moment as Briers let out another moan.

Shutting off the engine he left the headlights on and they coated the walls of the cabin in a whitened wash. Walking round to the
back of the car he had the gun in his waistband as he opened the trunk. Briers looked up but his gaze was thick and he was breathing heavily. He could sit just about and he perched precariously on the tailgate. Then he tumbled. Like a tree being felled, he tried to save himself by throwing out a leg but it couldn’t take his weight and he sprawled in the dirt.

Standing back from the car he looked down at Briers but did not reach for the gun. Instead he sought the shovel and held it loosely at his side. He sat on the tailgate with the door pressed wide, the shovel across his lap, one foot on the ground and the other swinging back and forth. He looked down on the big man where he lay with his back to him, bathed in the crimson glow of the tail lights.

‘What do you want?’ Somehow Briers was talking, his voice overloud, the sound bouncing off the trees. ‘For pity’s sake.’ With another moan he managed to get one elbow underneath and rolled over so they faced each other.

Still cradling the shovel, he stared across the flattened marsh.

‘Where is she?’

‘Where is who? Who’re you talking about?’ Briers’s breathing was ragged, a sucking sound in his chest.

‘You know who I’m talking about. Where is she?’ Still that one leg dangled, perched as he was on the tailgate, like a pendulum it drifted back and forth. ‘Where did she run to?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know who you’re talking about.’

Sliding off the tailgate he was on his feet. ‘I asked you where she is.’

‘And I told you I don’t know.’ Briers lifted a hand. ‘I swear to God, I don’t know who she is.’

Like a scythe he swung the shovel. It cut through the stillness and caught Briers’s hand. Blood flew, two fingers sliced through the knuckle, like a child the big man screamed.

‘For God’s sake, none of this is my fault. I was only there to keep
an eye on you.’ Features contorted he was clutching his shattered hand. ‘I wasn’t the one brought you to Trinity. I wasn’t the one sat you down. I didn’t know anything about it. I followed orders. I only did what I was told.’

‘Where is she?’ he asked again.

‘I don’t know.’ Briers was sobbing, clutching his hand under his arm, he lay on his side with his cheek in the dirt. ‘I don’t know who you’re talking about.’

On his heels he had the gun in his hand and he worked the barrel across Briers’s cheek.

‘Sure you do. You were there, the three of you. I saw Ms Gavin and Nancy in the other room.’

Briers twisted his head to the side. ‘It was nothing to do with us. We had no idea what Beale was planning or what he was going to do.’

He peered beyond Briers to the cabin wall. ‘It was you who brought me to that room. It was you had me sit down and it was you who brought her in.’ He leaned closer to Briers still. ‘I told you what would happen. I swore I’d kill you all and I will.’

On his feet again he paced back and forth, criss-crossing the pale bands thrown out by the Oldsmobile’s headlights. ‘Tell me where she is. I’m not going to wait all night. I’m done here so tell me where she is.’

‘I can’t,’ Briers whimpered. ‘I can’t tell you where she is because I don’t know who she is.’

‘You’re lying.’ He was on him again, legs astride he had him by the collar of his soiled white coat. ‘Don’t you lie to me. I’m sick of people lying to me. Don’t lie to me, Briers. Not anymore.’ He pressed his face very close. ‘I saw Nancy walking by just now and if I didn’t already have your ass in the trunk I’d have gone for her right then. I’m not going to stop. I’m not going to stop till I get what I want and I meant everything I said. If you don’t tell me what I want to know I’ll go ask Nancy.’

‘She doesn’t know,’ Briers said. ‘Nancy doesn’t know and neither did Mary-Beth.’

‘She knew all right. She had to know because she kept the records.’ He bent close. ‘Only she didn’t tell me.’ He lifted Briers by the collar before slamming his head in the dirt.

Briers cried out, teeth raking his lips, his eyes rolling right over so the whites were clearly visible.

‘Did you hear what I said? I almost had it out of her but I was squeezing her throat so hard she was gone before she could say.’

‘I can’t help you,’ Briers wailed. ‘I don’t know where she is. I don’t know anything about her.’

With a sigh he rose to his full height. Weighing the pistol in a palm he dug it into his pants. Then he looked down at Briers again and he looked at the long-handled shovel. He seemed to consider for a moment. Then he picked up the shovel and as he swung the big man sobbed where he lay.