Authors: Michael Malone
“Bad?” I called.
“Nothing permanent, but it doesn’t sound pretty. Contusions, abrasions, hematoma, as per usual. Mankind! My car’s out front.”
I couldn’t tell if the sky was 5:30 dusk or dawn; the snowdrifts looked higher now, and the tree branches sagged with white weight. I yelled at his back, “Is it tonight or tomorrow?”
Cuddy swiveled back around. Wearing his neon-shiny parka in all that white, he looked like an astronaut on the moon. He said, “General, don’t talk crazy when I’m working so hard to persuade people you’re sane.”
“Is it 5:30 P.M.?”
“More or less. Come on! I’ve got four more cases besides this one, you know. This crime-doesn’t-pay notion has never really gotten across to the populace. I’ll wait in the car. Martha wouldn’t come. She can’t take the weather. Probably home biting the professor. She’s jealous.”
As his heavy Oldsmobile crunched out through the snow, he said, “Don’t you ever change your clothes? Want a Big Mac?” His hand rummaged in the bag beside him and brought out the dripping hamburger.
I said, “What happened to Charlene?”
“Okay, okay. Desk clerk, real pisspot at the Interstate Budget Motel, heard her screaming. ’Course, he hated to intrude, he hears so many folks screaming out there, so he turns up his TV. Then this pickup zooms off, cutting right through his boxwood shrubs, so now he goes to check, because screams is one thing, and shrubs is another. So, when he notices the room door’s open and the heat’s escaping, he strolls on in and sees Charlene on the floor between the beds, and so he calls us in case she’s dead, and we ask him why he didn’t bother to let us know. He’s mostly torn up about who’s going to pay for all this breakage and who’s going to clean up all this blood. And I say, ‘You are,’ and then I sort of accidentally drive over some more of his boxwoods backing out in a hurry.”
“How do you know it was Hudson?”
“Description matches: big, blond, ox-headed, and pig-eyed. Plus the plates match. He checked in there last night as ‘L. Smith.’ Catchy. Sounds like he was flashing a wallet as fat as Woodrow Clenny’s on Saturday night.” Woodrow Clenny was a legendary Hillston pimp, whose throat had been cut years back by one of his employees. Cuddy said, “So he shows at the Budget and then Charlene shows later in her van. Ask me why she went. I’ll say this, when our pal Paula told us Charlene wasn’t as dumb as Preston, she gave her too much credit.”
“Hudson. Did you get him?”
“Nope. Three cars out looking. We leaned on the guy that’s been feeding his dogs, but he swears all he knows is Luster says he’s going to Asheville, and he pays him to feed them. We got a man on this guy anyhow. Well, too bad Little Preston didn’t torch Luster’s bike when Luster was sitting on it. Isn’t that B.M. good, referring to the Big Mac, naturally?”
It was at least making me feel better than I had in a while.
Cuddy said, “I passed our coin to Ken Moize. It fits the description in Mrs. Cadmean’s letter.”
“And the one on Bainton Ames’s list?”
“Yep. Worth more now, lot more, than Ames paid for it. Mr. Ratcher Phelps would weep to know the appreciation.” Cheeks sucked in, he slurped at the semisolid milkshake through the straw. “And I wired a photo of the coin down to that Mr. Bogue in Atlanta to confirm. And let’s see, what else. Mrs. Cadmean had no liquor, no drugs in her system. She made no toll call to North Hillston inviting your uncle over. Don’t throw up your racquet yet, but I do believe Solicitor Moize is coming your way on the senator. Dick Cohen wouldn’t go for suicide; filed his report ‘open, pending investigation.’ So, really all we need now is for Dollard to make a full confession, and we’ve got him.”
“How is Rowell?”
“Resting. No visitors. Fulcher tried hard to keep the newsboys out of the cookie bowl about Dollard’s even being out there at the Cadmean lodge, but somebody (it wasn’t you, was it?) leaked it to Bubba Percy at
The Star
.” Steering with one skinny hand down the blank, unrutted road, he dumped a fistful of french fries into his mouth.
“How’s Briggs doing, Cuddy?”
“Oh, okay. Like I say, still at my place. After she got back to the lodge, she didn’t feel up to staying out there alone. And I don’t want to crowd her right now, so mind if I pass the night on that rickety couch with the catpaw feet of yours? If Lunchbreak’s coming over for a snack, I’ll step out in the yard.”
“Fine.”
“Junior Briggs’s daddy called out there to the lodge after you left, huffing and puffing and tried to make her come stay with him at his house.” Cuddy shook his head and sighed.
I said, “He wants her back.”
“Well, hey, he ain’t gonna get her.”
“Who is, you?”
Frowning, he looked over at me. “That bother you? Let’s get straight, General.” His eyes stayed on me, asking me.
“No,” I said. “Damn it, will you watch the road! It doesn’t bother me a bit.”
He grinned. “Why the hell not? You got a nerve not being dismal. I’ll tell you this, when God got around to making that woman, He’d finally figured out how to do it. He was
inspired
that morning. Then He fell into a slump and came up with Lunchbreak.”
“Talk about sounding like a Loretta Lynn song! Do you
want
me to fight you for her?”
“Hell, no. You’re too good-looking and rich. Well, I thought you were rich. ’Course, now you’re out of a job and gone crazy and let your clothes get all messy, I guess maybe I could take you on. Holy shit!” Suddenly he twisted the steering wheel. “Look at that Buick! That joker’s lost it! Jackknifing, look at that, with the brake pedal to the floor!” Cuddy slowed, pumping gingerly, until the wide car ahead of us managed to spin out of its circle without leaving the road. “No chains, no brains,” Cuddy snapped. “So hey, Mister Preppie, we gonna duel or what?”
“If Briggs is gettable, go get her, Cyrano.”
“Say who?”
“Don’t kid me, Cudberth, you already slipped up and told me you had an M.A.”
“Well, that’s true, but I didn’t get it in French drammer of the
fan de sickle
. And anyhow, you want to know what a big nose really means?”
“It means jocular. Take the turn, take the turn, you’re passing the hospital!”
Charlene’s room was crowded. There were two other patients in it, both elderly, one watching
The Merv Griffin Show
and the other telling her to turn it off. Around Charlene’s bed were Paula Burgwin, Graham Pope, and Dickey Pope. No doubt Preston Pope would have been there too if Cuddy had been able to talk Fulcher into releasing the suspect into his custody for the visit. But the law had Preston now. The grand jury had gone ahead with their indictment of the youngest Pope for the murder of Cloris Dollard; bail was set at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which was a lot more CBs and cigarettes than Graham and Dickey had in stock to offer a bondsman as collateral. Joe Lieberman hadn’t even tried to negotiate.
By the bed, Graham, hairy and bear-big, was shouting. “Now, God damn it, Charlene, you tell me who did this to you and I’m gonna kill the son of a bitch!”
“I’m gonna kill him too,” said Dickey from the other side of the tilted bed. He had a comb and a pair of pliers sticking out of the pocket of a black satin cowboy shirt with roses sewn across the yoke. Any inconsistency between their vaunts to avenge Charlene now, and the fact that, only days ago, both these Popes had described her to us as the whoring bitch whose head they planned to bash in—for breaking Preston’s heart, and then squealing on him to the cops for pure spite—was obviously not troublesome to either.
In the chair beside the bed, Paula Burgwin, plump and teary, sat holding Charlene’s hand. Charlene’s face on the snowy pillow was red with cuts and bruises except for where a white bandage swaddled her nose. Hard red lines were painfully distinct across her throat. The worst was her eyes—they were gorged with blood so red that no white showed, and black circles puffed around their sockets. Her right hand was in a cast. Paula kept patting her left one.
I had to swallow a few times before I said, “Christ, Cuddy,” and they all looked at us coming into the room.
Graham puffed up in his huge down vest. “Y’all get out of here!”
“Get out of here!” echoed Dickey.
Tears ran over the sides of Paula’s round cheeks. She said, “They want to help, is all.”
“Shit!” Graham was wheezing like a bellows. “Help send my little brother to the chair. Mangum, they get my brother, I’m gonna kill you, I’m telling you now.”
“Kill ’em both,” Dickey said. “Let’s bash ’em, come on!”
“Call the police!” shrieked the old woman in the next bed, her stick-thin arm waving her IV tube so jerkily I had to grab at the swaying stand. I stepped over and told her, “It’s all right, ma’am. We
are
the police. Excuse us, please.” And I pulled closed the white ring-curtain that partitioned the room.
Cuddy said, “Graham, cut this shit. The sad fact is, Preston has signed a statement that he picked up that silverware on Wade.”
“It ain’t true. He never saw it. He knows better’n lie to me.”
Cuddy nodded fast. “I wish he’d known better’n tell so many different stories to Captain Fulcher downtown, ’cause it does have a way of giving the impression of a lie.”
Graham weaved toward Charlene. “He did it for this goddamn bitch here. Trying to save her ungrateful whoring ass. Excuse me, Paula.”
Cuddy whistled. “For Charlene? That’s noble. That’s not brainy, but that’s noble. You hear that, Charlene?” He moved to the bedhead now and spoke softly. “Lord, lord, Charlene. I’m real sorry. Now, I want to hear you tell me who did this to you.”
Graham yelled, “She won’t tell us. I swear she’s in on the goddamn fix.”
Charlene’s lips moved stiffly until she could whisper, “Get fucked, Graham.”
Cuddy smiled. “That’s my girl! You haven’t lost your sweet-talking ways. Now, how did this bad mess happen?”
She stared at the ceiling. Finally she managed to mumble, “I went to bed and I woke up this way.”
Cuddy said, “Come on, tell me, because the fact is, I already know.”
Her head moved slowly, painfully, away from us, and the hand in the plaster cast hid her face.
Cuddy said again, “Come on, sweetheart; after Luster finished showing you what a real man he was, where did he go?”
Now Graham swelled almost to the ceiling. “Luster! God damn it, I knew it!”
“Let’s go get him,” hollered Dickey.
I blocked the door while Cuddy called, “Whoaa, boys. Back up.”
“Are you sure you’re the police?” came the reedy voice from behind the curtain. “I think I ought to call the nurse.”
“Go ahead,” Paula snapped. “I sure can’t get her to come for me.”
I asked Graham, “Do you know where Luster Hudson is? Because we don’t.”
“He’s no place where I can’t find him!”
“Graham!” Paula stood up, tugging down on her sweater, then raising her small pretty hands so the charms jingled high as her voice, “Graham! You listen to me for once. What good’s getting killed gonna do?”
Dickey said, “Paula, cram it, who asked you?”
Graham knocked him on the back of the head. “Shut your mouth, Dickey!” Then he tried to hug Paula, rumbling, “Little lady, don’t you worry about me.”
She said, “I’m not, you damn goon.”
“She’s just all upset,” Graham explained to us. “Paula has a heart just as soft as a little baby bird.”
Paula replied, “It’s not as soft as your head.”
Finally we succeeded in pushing the Pope men out into the hall, and I said to Graham, “All right, if you find Hudson, you’ll call Mangum, deal?”
Dickey sneered. “Y’all bring a bag to put the pieces in, and bring one that don’t leak.”
Graham said, “Dickey, will you shut your mouth? Now, listen here to me, Mangum. Charlene planted that crap on Preston. I know it. I talked to him serious today, and he never saw it. The way I see it now is Luster made her do it.”
I said, “I’m getting the same feeling.”
Graham swayed back and forth above our heads, his hair and beard brown, shiny tangles. “So, here it is. I’m gonna find Luster Hudson for you, and I’m gonna leave that son of a bitch just about enough teeth to talk through to tell you he made her do it. And then you send me Preston home! Come on, Dickey!” Down the green hall they stomped, twice the size of the old women in robes who clutched the arms of bored nurses and shuffled, inch-by-inch along, trying by constant motion to keep away from death. I watched them, lit a cigarette, and slumped against the wall. Finally, I said, “Hell. It fits. The beating, the money. I think Graham’s telling the truth about Preston; Preston’s covering for Charlene.”
“Yep, Preston’s the Duke of Windsor, okay. Well, getting your Harley incinerated and even the
tips
of your fingers shaved off could make a fellow less churlish than Prince Luster want to get even. Okay, if Luster and Charlene planted it, did they know who it belonged to? And you see that
NO SMOKING
sign?”
I told Cuddy about the encounter with Sister Resurrection and her intimation that she’d found the earring at the Tucson Lounge, “According to Preston, remember, that’s where Luster and Charlene hung out every night.”
Cuddy said, “Them and every other honky-tonk freak in Hillston. You better put that cigarette out before a nurse asks me to arrest you.”
“Well, I don’t think Charlene knew about the murder until she heard it on TV, just like Paula said. Question is, what about Luster? Where’d he get all that cash the motel clerk saw?”
“Selling dogs?”
I felt sick. “It was just robbery all along.”
“Hold on.” He yanked at his hair for a minute. “Dollard might still have unloaded the stuff. Or, Luster could have been working for Dollard. Or for somebody.”
“Or Luster could have killed Cloris all on his own. You just saw his hands dented into Charlene’s throat in there!”
Cuddy nodded. “He’s mean enough. And dumb enough.”
I thumped back hard against the wall.
“Calm down,” Cuddy muttered. “Now, another thing is, this could all be separate from what happened to Joanna Cadmean, or what happened to Bainton Ames, too, okay? And maybe it’s not separate. We don’t know.” He went back into the room, and, crushing out my cigarette on the sole of my shoe, I followed him.