*
With all the barnyard animals having been set off into scuffling and babble, announcing his presence with a knock on the door seemed almost superfluous; still, he did it anyway, nice and loud, for farmers were entitled to keep firearms and gangsters could use them without compunction, which would make for a particularly dangerous man about the house.
The farm was ten miles out of Sacksville and Hope intended to walk it when he was done, suspecting an abandoned stolen car was far more risky than a moving one, even one parked off a dark, seldom used track: they seemed to have a way of crying out for a help, of demanding attention, especially ones that could be linked to bank robberies.
There was no immediate response to Hope’s presence, so he knocked again. A door hinge wobbled. Still nothing. Even though there were lights on behind the curtains of the modest sized farmhouse, it was not too early for a farmer to be asleep, or for a Chicago hoodlum to be dead drunk.
The door, however, abruptly flew open at last and the face behind it was large and had a big doorknob of a nose. The man’s fifty something years were it etched by chisel into a prominent forehead he further exposed by flicking away the few strands of his thinning fringe. His neck was a deflated bag of baggy skin and hardly seemed up to the job of supporting a head so sizable. The eyes were cool and dangerous.
‘What the hell do you want?’ he said in a thick Chicago drawl. ‘Knock on a door in these parts and it better be a matter of life and death.‘
‘Life and death, you say?’ Hope leaned forward and knocked on the door again.
‘Think you’re smart, hey?’
‘Probably, but brains doesn’t have anything to do with it.’
‘You talk like the city.’ The man spat onto the porch. ‘You ain’t from around here, are you?’
‘Neither are you. But I know where.’
‘Alright, well come in. And I am not inviting you, I’m telling you.’ He opened the door wide. ‘Hurry up, it’s fuckin’ cold.’
The first step in stank of cat piss. Then the house opened up into a master class of plainness. The sagging sofa chairs, faded floral wallpaper, cheaply framed landscape prints, scratched and chipped wardrobes and the mantlepiece stacked with cigarette packets, simply couldn’t summon anything amongst themselves worthy of a second look, which was fine unless you happened to live there.
‘Take a seat,’ the man barked in the living room.
Hope was a step behind and his second look at him was devoted to trying to work out where he might be hiding his weapons. He knew he was not the only one who packed a bag full of guns when he changed neighbourhoods. He dropped into the nearest sofa chair, sinking down low with the worn out springs, and as the door was being closed, he took the opportunity to run his fingers down behind the cushions, not in the search of loose change but rather for guns, knives or bullets. All he got to show for it, however, was lint clogging his fingernails.
‘Alright, you say you know me,’ said the man as he walked across the room and lowered into a vacant sofa chair with all the trepidation of entering a scalding hot bath. ‘So spit it out.’
Hope took heart in the man’s apparent bad back and his sinking into the chair below the waist: not much chance of a lunging attack in such circumstances.
‘Your name is Livingston Fitch,’ Hope said, ‘which, fortunately for you, sounds nothing like your various monikers back in Chicago.’
‘Monikers?’ The man, who did not deny his name was Livingstone and had become inquisitive despite himself.
‘Let Em’ Pray Joe, Boom Livvy...for starters.’
Just hearing those names again was enough to put a grin on Fitch’s face. Not that it softened the overall impression.
‘I am at a disadvantage,’ he said. ‘You are calling me all these names and I don’t have a single name for you real or otherwise.’
‘I can give you a name if you’d like. But it won’t be anything like the truth.’
‘I don’t give a shit about the truth. I want to know if I’ve heard of you or not.’
Hope shook his head.
‘So, you’re not a name but you play the game.’
‘More or less.’
‘In Chicago?’
‘Here and there. Mostly New York.’
‘I should be flattered that I’ve been heard of so far and wide.’
‘I’m surprised you took the risk of using your real name.’
‘I’m not here incognito. In fact, the real purpose of being here is to show I can live with my name free of monikers and the kind of activities that earn them. That’s why I have not even thought of knee capping you yet. It’s not what farmers do.’
‘What do farmers do? Are you sure you even know?’
Fitch shrugged it off. ‘It is the same as being a mobster. You hire other people to get their hands dirty.’
‘Good for you. But if there is any of that other kind of dirty work that needs doing, you’re on your own here.’
Fitch’s eyes locked on him in a death stare. ‘You are here to make a move? Is that it? Some mug hire you to settle an old score?’
‘I ain’t here to put one over you. I ain’t afraid of you either. What I’m doing here more closely resembles police work than the other side of the ditch. You want to become the good farmer, this is your chance to practice the greater good.’
Fitch held his temper with visible effort and said through gritted teeth, ‘Go on then. Fire away.’
‘A girl named Alison Monet was murdered in the woods not far from here. Raped and strangled. The perpetrator has not been brought to justice. You were questioned as a possible suspect by the detective in charge of the case, a Detective Oswald.’
Flitch’s voice remained unflappably calm. ‘Was I?’
‘A witness saw someone driving in a real hurry not far from the murder scene of the day in question. The description given resembled you enough to raise official suspicion.’
‘You are particularly well informed. My compliments. But I get the feeling you know things like you want something.’
‘I want to know if you murdered Alison Monet.’
‘I will not make fun of you out of respect for the girl but how would this work? Did you bring a bible for me to swear on? People like me would only put greasy marks on the Good Book. Instead, I carry weapons. Guns, knives, knuckle dusters.’
‘I’m not carrying anything.’
Fitch sneered. ‘And you came here talking murder?’
‘Why did you come here? Why would you be running from Chicago and taking your name with you?’
‘Why would I tell you?’
‘You want to be normal? Then you’ve got to start worrying about the freaks. I ain’t here to dust for prints. And no one’s innocent until proven guilty. This town has forsaken that privilege.’
‘You sound like one of the freaks,’ Fitch gnarled.
‘I never said you shouldn’t worry about me. Anyway, I’ll start the ball rolling by telling you some truth.’
‘Go on then.’
‘I’ve got my eye on some real badness in town. I was all set to go pay them some comeuppance when your name, which was in a police record, suddenly rang a bell. So, before I give Sacksville a fresh coat of blood I thought I should at least find out what a Chicago heavy was doing in town.’
Fitch sighed. ‘Normally I wouldn’t be so accommodating. In other words, I’d bury you out with the turnips. But I’ve been feeling awfully homesick lately. And you’re the closest thing to Chicago I’ve encountered in a long time. So, I’ll tell you something in good faith and then you’ll be on your way. Agreed?’
Hope nodded.
‘I lived a violent life in Chicago. Done some ugly things. Things that if you’d done them to a pooch you’d be taken to an asylum ‘cause they were things that someone of sound mind would not be capable of. But I was capable and I was doing them to people. I wasn’t special, I was just from Chicago.
> ‘Then one day in a spaghetti bar -Tonio’s was the joint - I bumped into my high school sweetheart. It had been thirty five years and yet we recognised each other in a flash. We got to talking, then we met the next day at the same place and we really got to talking. If the police could bottle the way I was feeling, they could solve a lot of crime, for I simply couldn’t tell her a lie. I confided everything to her. Every miserable thing I’d done until she physically couldn’t listen anymore.’
‘Sounds like a fun date.’
Fitch glowered. ‘People in Chicago are careful about not being that smart.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘Shall I go on or would you like to skip to a dance?’
‘No, I’d like to know how it turned out.’
‘She was a widow. I was in a dead marriage. We both felt we were made for each other. We both felt it back in high school. If I hadn’t dropped out early to be in the gangs, things might have been different. No point crying over hard choices. My girl, May, gave me a stark one. If I wanted to be with her I had to break free of the rackets. Live a clean life. Do my best to make amends for all my wretchedness.’ He grinned a crooked grin that Hope suspected was the last thing many a victim had seen. ‘I’m so reformed these days I’m not even out drinking with my man in the barn. What’s more, I’m not going to call him in here and have him do a number on you just to have you eat your words through a mouth of broken teeth. It would have occurred without a second thought in the days before May. It makes me more vulnerable to attack but also less of a target.’
‘You have your man in the barn?’
‘He followed me all the way from Chicago only to banish himself there. The one loyal friend I have. He has dirtied his hands for my benefit on many occasions and now I am trying to teach him the soil has more uses than just packing on enemies.’ Fitch straightened up and sank further into his couch. ‘Before you leave, allow me to pass on an observation. You walk in here against a gangster like me and you’ve got to know if a fight breaks out it’s going to be for keeps and any smart punter would have an each way bet. It’s your party, so why would you only give yourself half a chance? It’s reckless. The first time I get to hear your name will be when people are discussing the gory death you had, that’s what I’m predicting for you.’
‘Bet on it?’
Fitch sneered. ‘That’s another thing May has had me give up. Even when the odds are so inviting.’
Hope looked around him for any traces of May apart from what he was hearing about her.
Fitch seemed to sense it and said quickly, ‘It’s only love keeps a man running an even keel. That’s what I’ve learned. If cops really wanted to rehabilitate criminals, they wouldn’t send them to Rikers, but rather to a tropical island populated by half naked women. Well, that’s where they should’ve sent me.’ He laughed with his teeth getting caught on his lips. When the laughter ended his teeth were still there. He shook his head disapprovingly at Hope. ‘Reckless. Are you a man on the wrong side of love or are you just incapable of feeling it?’ He held up a hand to indicate he did not want a reply. ‘Coming here like this, you really could get yourself hurt. You know Chicago heavies are so desensitised to death that they’ve got to spice it up just to get a taste. They get to the point where they’re shooting people’s brains out on the streets in broad daylight and yet are startled when bystanders start screaming.’
‘But they don’t get much further than that point. They start making mistakes.’
‘Except the ones smart enough to see it coming and clear out of town. And you simply want to look me in the eye and ask me if I brutalised some girl in the forest? Whether the answer is yes or no, you could still pay with your life.’
Hope shrugged. ‘Especially, if the answer is yes.’
Fitch stared some more. ‘Do you drink whiskey? Is that answer yes?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well, excuse me a moment.’ Fitch disappeared into the kitchen where he banged around a few moments before returning with two glasses and plenty of ice to lift the golden liquid up off the bottom. He handed one of the glasses over and returned to his sofa. He seemed to be enjoying himself, not the slightest pretense of a farmer in his commanding demeanour.
‘You could be what I’m looking for. As long as I’m not what you’re looking for. Let’s chew the air on that right now.’
Hope sipped at the whiskey, enjoying the mix of temperatures. ‘I don’t think you are what I’m looking for.’
‘And if I searched you, I wouldn’t find you armed?’
‘No.’
‘You might be lying but I can’t see it on your face. That’s what counts. Look, thirty years in the game, I saw lots of things that were wrong. Very wrong. Some things can’t be fixed because that’s just the way the world is. Like the people like me. The people like you. Other things though can be fixed. Like whoever touched that girl. I know things like that. Not that particular thing exactly. But plenty of things just like it. I was hoping I would forget about them out here on the farm. But I haven’t. In fact, they’re the reason I sometimes wake up hanging sideways out of the bed.’
‘You could tell the cops.’
‘As you say, they’d just dust for prints.’
‘Then get a bigger bed.’
‘I’ve been thinking perhaps if I employed someone to go take care of these things I know it would be fair repentance for the life I’ve lived. Most my compatriots have had jail time for their repentance. But I was smarter. That hasn’t been my fate.’ He dampened his lips with the whiskey and puckered like it was lipstick.
‘You offering me a job?’
‘I believe I am.’
‘To clear your conscience? With extreme violence?’
Fitch smiled. ‘And I won’t have to worry about what happens to you because you sure as hell don’t.’
‘I see.’
‘There are things I know that really should be straightened out. And May would approve.’ He wetted his lips again. ‘But we need not settle anything right at this moment. You have your hands full already. So, let’s see how you go with it. If you don’t make it, I can at least be proud of myself for having come up with the proposal. Staying alive, however, will force me to put my money where my mouth is. In your case it would be worth it. I mean, there aren’t too many players around who know people without being known themselves. Most act like all they’re in the rackets for is a reputation. And they get so well known they finish up just another number in the Illinois penal system.’
‘Fool on them,’ said Hope and started the awkward process of shaking himself from the couch. ‘I’ve had worse offers. But, like you say, I’ve got my hands full at the moment. Let’s see if there’s anything left after that.’
‘Anything left of what?’
With a well refined use of his elbows, Fitch was up on his feet and ready to accompany Hope to the door. His face was finally starting to loosen up. Hope got the feeling he did not have anything left to say.