Time's Witness (24 page)

She wiped the corner of her mouth with a surprising daintiness. She said, “Women last longer.” The thought appeared to cheer her up a bit.

Downtown, not a proverbial creature was stirring. Stores were closed, their shelves stripped bare. Everybody’d gone home with however much they could haul or charge. Even in my business, business is slow the night before Christmas. Hiram Davies, at the night desk browsing through his Bible under the mistletoe, attributed the half-empty holding cells to the spirit of God.

“Right, Hiram. But like the song says, why can’t we have Christmas every day of the year? Don’t you think it's kind of laissez-faire of the Lord to slough off the way He does, the other three hundred and sixty-four? He worked for me, I’d fire His butt.”

Davies’ thin neck moved inside the starched collar as he carefully placed the attached string of ribbon in his Bible to save his place. Then he closed the book and looked at me, his eyes big and earnest behind the old gold glasses. “Cuddy Mangum…”

Well, that was a shock; he hadn’t called me by name since I’d first outranked him when I made lieutenant. “Um hum?”

He took a long breath. “You’re a smart man. Smarter than me, I know that…” He took another breath. “But if you think making fun of God shows how smart you are, well I’m here to tell you, in my opinion, the one you’re really making fun of is just yourself.” He pulled off his glasses defiantly, blinking hard. “That's my opinion, and you can go ahead and fire me if you want to.”

His face was red, and the fact is, so was mine. We stared at each other, then I nodded at him, and reached over the desk. He flinched—I don’t know what he thought I was going to do, maybe rip off his stripes—but I put my hand over his for a second (his was trembling). I said, “Hiram, in my opinion, I suspect maybe you’re right.” I stepped back, took a notepad, wrote on it. “Now, you think you could locate some old shift logs for me? Bobby Pym, Winston Russell. Also a couple of arrest records. Billy Gilchrist's, and you
remember a guy we shipped to Delaware, called himself Moonfoot Butler?”

Still stirred up by his unprecedented challenge, Davies looped his glasses back over his long-lobed ears, and patted down the careful strands of white hair. He smoothed the piece of paper gently. “Butler.”

“Right. Moonfoot. Long-legged guy, they called him that ’cause he had these high bouncy steps like he was walking on the moon?”

The old Hiram was back, shoulders stiff, chin tight. “Arthur Butler. Two convictions for grand larceny, one four years ago; one, seven, maybe eight.”

“Hiram, I love you.”

He ignored my grin. “And something funny. What was it now?” Davies pushed slowly at the nose bar of his glasses. Finally he nodded. “Yes, Haver Tobacco Company, a warehouse robbery, that's what it was. We pulled him in on it. But they dropped the case. Officer on the scene said he’d seen a suspect run off, but couldn’t make the ID. Said it wasn’t Butler.”

I slapped a drumroll on the desk top. “Sergeant Davies, not only would I
never
fire you, not only would I never
allow
you to retire, I’d like to kiss you under the mistletoe! And you can tell me who that officer was, I swear I’m
gonna
kiss you.”

His lips pinched tight as if trying to escape the thought. “Don’t remember.”

“You sure you’re not lying to keep me from kissing you?”

“Captain Mangum, I have as many faults as the next man, but
I’m not a liar, I never
—”

“Oh, Hiram, calm down. Go pull that Haver robbery file. I’m gonna bet you ten dollars that officer's Bobby Pym or Winston Russell. Okay, okay, you’re not a bettor either. How ’bout this? If I’m right, you’ll call Officer White ‘Nancy’ to her face. If I’m wrong, well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll go to church next Sunday. How's that? Deal?”

It took him a while to weigh the sin of gambling against a chance to save a soul, and I was proud of him. He said okay.

So, I guess I’m going to church next Sunday. Because the officer's name was Purley Newsome, Russell and Pym's little tagalong.

Martha was glad to be home; I mean she's got the run of the department, and her own private suite in the back seat of the Oldsmobile, bed and all, but home's where the munchies are. Listening to a new compact disc of Vivaldi (country's not the
only
sound I like), I changed into jeans and the sweatshirt Justin gave me last Christmas. Here's what's printed down its front:

Policeman,
constable, peace officer,

detective, arm of the law, inspector,

flic, gendarme, carabiniere
,

bailiff, catchpole, beagle, beadle,

reeve, tipstaff, bobbie,

peeler, cop, copper, narc,

trooper, John Law, bull, flatfoot,

gumshoe, shamus, dick, fuzz, pig,

the Law.

Then Mrs. Mitchell had some fried chicken, and I nuked some frozen enchiladas, and then we lay on the carpet looking at my Christmas tree lights, and at the old crèche with its headless Joseph and its one wise man staring behind him for those two missing kings of Orient-are, like maybe they’d fallen off their camels back in some quicksand, or maybe they’d lost heart in their pal's plan to chase a star across the Sahara, and turned around.

Now, the truth is, what I really felt like doing was reading the files Hiram Davies had found, and the folder Andy Brookside had slipped me before shutting my car door in my face. But I made myself put them down on the glass coffee table, under a lead minié ball I’d dug up at the Bentonville battlefield. What with its being Christmas Eve, and everybody accusing me of an addiction to work, I figured I’d go cold turkey—at least for the night. So I looked up “Holiday Drinks” in my bartender's guide, made myself a pitcher of eggnog, and turned on my downstairs TV, which is in a wall shelf with my CD, FM tuner, VCR, beer bottle collection dating back to college, and 2,765 alphabetized books that I counted one night when I was real depressed. I’d hate for Andy Brookside to know it, but I’ve got another TV up in my bedroom, in another wall shelf, with more books, plus my, what I call, rocks collection—these are stones, gravel, bricks, little broken bits of the past I’ve picked up
loose in my travels, from rubble heaps of historical significance, like the ground around the Acropolis and Cheops's tomb.

For an hour, I lay on my wall-to-wall by the tree and clicked at the channels with my remote control. The Pope was in St. Peter's, Billy Graham was in Berlin, and the late-night comics all had reruns. And no
Chainsaw Massacres
tonight. Movie stations had gone spiritual (
Song of Bernadette, The Robe
), or classical (
How to
Marry a Millionaire, The Great Caruso
), or seasonal. I sipped eggnog,
which I don’t much like, and flipped from old Scrooge getting terrorized by a peek at his own tombstone, to little Natalie Wood shaking down Kris Kringle for a house in the suburbs, to Gary Cooper just about jumping off the top of a building so he won’t let down the John Doe clubs who’d had faith in his suicide vow. By the time I caught up with
It's a Wonderful Life
, Jimmy Stewart had pretty near gotten the message from his angel that—however puny, broke, and wasted he might be feeling—without him, his sweet small town would have turned into an urban combat zone. I confess it was a personal fantasy of mine that the same might be true of Hillston without me.

Now here's something else I don’t think I ever told a soul: I’m a sucker for angel movies.
Angels in the Outfield, I Married an Angel
,
The Bishop's Wife, Heaven Can Wait
—I’ve seen them all. I love it
when Claude Rains and Cary Grant and James Mason pop down from Above to fix things. I love
It's a Wonderful Life.
I even get the sniffles when all Jimmy Stewart's neighbors show up with cash on Christmas Eve so he won’t lose the building and loan and go to jail. So when my doorbell rang, I was blowing my nose. I clicked off the set, scuffed over in my socks, wondering who’d come calling at midnight. I admit I had a rush of hot irrational hope that Andy Brookside had disappeared in his Cessna, and Lee had driven to River Rise to tell me about it. When you watch movies, things like that seem possible.

But life's not a movie, and it wasn’t Lee. Squinting through the chained gap, I saw a stranger—a pretty woman about my age, also in jeans and sweatshirt (except hers didn’t have thirty synonyms for “cop” on it), and also sniffling; at least, her eyelashes looked wet. She had the greenest eyes I ever saw; they sort of tipped up at the
ends. And very black hair in a loose ponytail. She had a screwdriver in each hand—not the kind you drink. I said, “You want to put those away? Somebody tried to kill me with a screwdriver once.”

“Really?” She looked at the tools, then squeezed them down in her jeans’ pocket. She glanced at my door plate. “Are you C.R. Mangum?”

“Yep.”

“I’m Nora Howard. I’m sorry to bother you this late, but I’m next door, 2-B—”

“TV too loud?”

“Oh no. The thing is, I just moved in a few weeks ago, and I looked out on my patio and saw your lights were on. What I need is a smaller Phillips screwdriver. Do you happen to have one? I think I’m just going to drink down a can of Dran-o if you don’t.”

Despite her violent turn of phrase, I decided she probably wasn’t fixing to stab me, so I flipped the chain and invited her in.

I peered across the foyer; she’d left her door open, and a bright-colored Indian teepee looked to be taking up most of her living room. “What happened to Henry and Dennis? 2-B? The landscape architects?”

“I’m subletting. They broke up. You didn’t know they left?”

“I guess I’ve been pretty busy.” Well, I’d miss the smell of their nouvelle cuisine, but not their affection for obscure muscials.

Nora Howard explained that she’d been trying to assemble her daughter's bicycle for the last three hours. “This is my first Christmas as a single Santa, and let me tell you, a sixty-eight-page instructions manual is a humbling experience.” Then she frowned at me. “Say, are you okay? I probably busted in on something. I’m really sorry.”

“
It's a Wonderful Life.
” I pointed at the TV.

“Oh.” She grinned, and gestured at her wet lashes. “Me too!” In the kitchen I found her a small Phillips screwdriver. “Bless you, C.R. Mangum.”

“Most people call me Cuddy.”

“Do you like it?”

“Not much, but it's better than Cudberth.”

She nodded. “That's true. My family used to call me Angie; I
never liked it. That was my middle name, Angela. Nora Angela Carippini.”

“Aha. The restaurant?”

“It's my older brother's.” Then she frowned again. “Do you all wear those shirts?”

“Pardon?”

“Hillston policemen? Mrs. Falliwell—3-A?—she was telling me about you. You’re the chief of police. I thought you’d be about sixty.”

“Sometimes I think I am.”

She laughed. “Oh boy! I know that feeling.”

I opened my refrigerator. “Do you like eggnog?”

She squinched up her face. “Actually, I hate it.”

I nodded. “It's
horrible
, isn’t it?”

She was looking over my shoulder into the refrigerator. “Look, I know Laura—my daughter—would say, ‘Mom, you’re embarrassing me,
jeez!
,’ but is that a tub of Kentucky Fried Chicken in there? I’ll trade you a glass of white Chianti for a wing, and
one
question about ‘Figure 30-b’ in this assembly manual.” She studied my face for a moment. “You’re sorry you answered your door.”

Well, in a way, I was. I’d been looking forward to a bath and a book. But conceit's always been my stumbling block. One look at those two hundred loose bike parts, I figured she’d be up all night, whereas I never met instructions I couldn’t translate into objects as fast as I could read, and I’m a fast reader.

So that's how I ended up on a strange floor bolting a reflector to a pink fender when Mario Lanza sang in Christmas with “Joy to the World.” Nora's daughter Laura was ten. The teepee was for her son Brian, who was five. They were upstairs sleeping, unless they were faking it, waiting for dawn. Nora had lived with her husband, Warren, in Texas, where he’d worked for NASA. He’d died of meningitis almost a year ago. She’d come to Hillston because her brother and sister-in-law, who’d moved here a long while back to open the restaurant, thought it was a great place to raise children. And she did like Hillston. The only problem was she wasn’t licensed to practice in North Carolina.

I said, “Practice what?”

She said, “The Law. Just like it says on your shirt.”

Justin and Alice always invite me for Christmas breakfast. Well, we start at breakfast, and by the time Alice finishes opening all the presents Justin's bought her, it's time for lunch. She keeps begging him not to buy her so many, and he keeps hinting that she ought to buy him more, if she's so embarrassed by us just watching her make her way around the tree where he's stacked up the boxes. Myself, I gave him a record and her a book. I’m not all that imaginative when it comes to presents. Alice gave me a sweater. Justin gave me a piece of the stone-carved pediment from the old statehouse, a pair of pink Argyle socks, a videotape of
The Maltese Falcon
, and an honest-to-God signed studio photograph of Patsy Cline that who knows where he got it or how much it cost.