CHAPTER THIRTY: A Dead Man Can’t Talk
Blair opened his eyes to the discordant snoring of the men around him. The smell of full bowels and foot odor was intense. As he sat up, the little cot’s springs whined inconsolably. Horace was facing the wall and snoring loudest of all; his reverberations were the only ones that didn’t bother Blair because he found solace in the familiarity of it.
The cool, cement floor came as a relief to Blair’s feet. The air in the shelter was stifling, and his tee shirt clung to his body like second skin. It didn’t take him long to figure out why he’d awakened. He had to urinate, and he had to do it now.
Without putting on a pair of the socks that Johnny had given him, Blair merely slipped on his Loafers. Bare bulbs lining the walls showed him the way. On the ceiling in the hall, the bright, fluorescent tubes were enough to make him squint, so he raised a hand to shield his eyes. A clock on the wall read two-thirty-five.
All of the bathrooms were in the basement. The steps creaked under Blair’s feet as he descended. At the base of the stairs, he fumbled for the light switch and managed to turn it on, but the light was dim. As a courtesy, he knocked when he reached the bathroom door and then pushed it open. Some of the dirty, white paint peels fell to the ash-burned tile on the floor as he closed the door behind him.
Emptying his bladder was a major undertaking, and all the waiting gave him more than enough time to examine the bathroom. Toilet tissue sitting on a wood-splintered shelf was the only thing that looked new.
The room smelled like a mixture of rust, dust, and mold. There were black smears all over the floor and walls, probably hardened feces. Spiders had taken up residence in every crevice, occupying webs under the sinks, behind the door, in the four corners of the walls, and even in the shower stalls. Faucet handles and the metal around the drains were all corroded brown with green speckles.
Because the fan didn’t work, the air was damp. The floor was wet; the plastic shower curtains hadn’t fully contained the jets of water. A small hole gnawed in the wall under a towel rack suggested the presence of other species, even though pets weren’t allowed on the premises. Blair took comfort in the fact that the hole was a small one.
After squeezing out the last drop of urine, he pushed down the rusty handle to flush the toilet. Pipes clanked when he turned on the spigot to wash his hands, and the water smelled like chlorine. Some of the tenants had missed the bowl, so that an umber puddle had accumulated behind the commode. As the toilet sputtered, a wad of tissue floated back to the top. It soon came to rest in its usual spot, dead center.
When Blair opened the bathroom door, his heart sank. Detective Smitty and Officer Follen were waiting for him in the hallway. Follen shoved him back into the bathroom. Tall and broad-shouldered, Follen was a strong man. He forced Blair to the floor, and then took him by the hair and by the scruff of the neck and held his head over the water in the toilet. Blair wasn’t crazy about having his face pressed against some of the filthiest crud he’d ever seen.
Follen pushed Blair’s cheek against the seat so hard, he thought that his mandible would crack. His cry of pain only encouraged the policeman to shove him harder against the porcelain. He even stuck his knee in Blair’s back. “What’s the matter, bum?” Follen said. “Was your handout soup too salty tonight?”
“Now that you mention it….”
“Shut up! Don’t speak unless I tell you to!”
“You asked the question.”
Practically sitting on top of Blair, Follen’s two hundred pounds was driving Blair’s face deeper into the toilet. “The stones…! Where are they?”
Blair answered him with a grunt.
“Where are the rubies, you son of a bitch!”
Trying to gurgle an answer, Blair wasn’t able to open his mouth wide enough to speak. By now his ear, lips, and chin were all conforming to the oval shape of the seat. Finally easing up, Follen took his knee out of Blair’s back, but insisted on knowing, “Where are they?”
Gasping for breath, Blair clutched his throat and cooed. Although the pressure had been eased, the pain lingered. “Smith,” he said, panting as he turned to the detective, “did you cut yourself shaving? You ought to change the blade because you look like hell.”
Follen took Blair by the hair again and rammed his head against the porcelain. Now Blair understood the term “seeing stars.” He saw plenty.
“Don’t kill him,” Detective Smith said. “Not here.” Smith was standing just outside the bathroom, both of his hands against the frame of the bathroom door. He glanced over his shoulder. His physique casted a mighty shadow, blocking out the light from the hall like an eclipse.
“We don’t want to hurt you, Vaughn,” Smith said. “You know what we want.”
“Yeah. You want to quit your day jobs. Well, you can just forget it.”
“You’ll be squealing in a different key after I get through with you,” Follen told him, giving Blair a quick kick in the ribs.
“A dead man can’t talk,” Smith said, his breathing labored and raspy from the excess weight he was carrying on his five-foot, eight-inch frame.
“Yeah, but a crippled one can. What’s your pleasure, bub?” To emphasize the point, Follen pressed Blair harder against the toilet.
“Follen,” Blair said, pausing to cough, “kiss my ass.”
After that exchange, Blair thought Follen would kill him for sure but Smith intervened, holding the beat cop back. Follen’s composure slipped from irritated to highly offended as he took his hands away from Blair. Angry with Detective Smith for pulling rank, he took the time to tell him so. While both men were preoccupied, Blair got up, grabbed the heavy, porcelain slab covering the tank behind the toilet seat, and then swung it in their general direction.
A direct bull’s-eye between Follen’s shoulder blades made him stumble forward and fall out of the bathroom. Although moaning and groaning, he looked as if he needed more persuasion, so Blair went after him, bashing him two, three, maybe four more times with the cover until it dropped him. Smith must’ve gotten scared because he pulled out a piece, probably a .45, and yelled, “Police officer down! Police officer down!” as if that gave him the green light to shoot at everything in sight. Blair took off running down the hall and then up the stairs, trying to lose himself in the darkness and amid row upon row of endless cots.
“Vaughn!” Smitty said, making it to the top of the stairs but huffing and puffing like a freight train. “Stop or I’ll shoot!” In all the excitement, he fired the gun three times, but he seemed to be aiming too high. It had been he who reasoned a few minutes ago that a dead man couldn’t talk. Now that he was mad, Blair was hoping that would still keep that in mind.
The moment the first shot was fired, everyone who’d been asleep dove out of bed and rolled under their cots. They wanted to see nothing, to hear nothing, and, most of all, to get hit by nothing. Yesterday afternoon Blair had watched a guy get beaten senseless and didn’t do a thing to stop it from happening. Now it was everyone else’s turn to watch him get shot at and do nothing to help him.
Shelter guards started running away at the first sign of trouble. Smith was playing Rambo to the hilt, switching on the lights and knocking over cots, bags, knapsacks, and everything else that got in his way.
When the lights came on, Blair crouched down beside a footlocker. As Smith drew closer, the only thing Blair could think about was Vanessa Cravat’s smile. Watching Vanessa was like sleeping in on a Saturday morning, or having a bright, clear day after a week of rain. Witnessing the senseless deaths of Thomas and Ingrid, and then learning the devastating truth about Mercedes, Blair knew that he needed something positive to dwell on for a change. All that he could hope for was to stay alive long enough to see Vanessa smile again.
The last cot Smith came upon was the one belonging to the Hispanic man. Although everyone in sight had fallen to the floor the minute the fight started involving gunplay, the Fort Worth native remained curled up on his mattress. Smith picked up a couple
of shoes and sent them sailing off one after the other ahead of him. Most likely, he’d seen Blair’s feet sticking out from behind the trunk because one of the sneakers hit him on the leg. Now the second one flew off as if it had a mind of its own and bumped into the Texan’s cot, hitting his picture of Betty Boop. Betty fell over with a tap against the floor.
“Vaughn, you’re in deep now,” Smith said, coming closer with his gun drawn. “Lie face down on the floor and stretch your arms away from your body. Now!”
Blair did as he was told. It was hot as hell, but he was shivering. The cement floor felt cold beneath him. All he could think about was what Vanessa was doing at that moment. Was she asleep and if so, was she dreaming? What was she dreaming about? What things did she enjoy? Who would be the one to tell her if any harm should come to him? Staring off into space, he could almost see her standing by Cynthia’s grave in a plain, black dress with the wind pressing its pleats tight against the calves of her legs.
The crack of glass startled Blair; for an instant, he thought he’d been shot. Lifting up enough to see, he remembered the framed picture which had fallen to the floor. Smith stepped on it as he advanced. Not even bothering to see what was underfoot, he lifted the .45 and aimed it right between Blair’s eyes. “I said get your head down! Now!”
Even though Blair did so without hesitating, Smith got down on one knee and put the barrel of the gun flush against the base of Blair’s skull. Smith frisked him and then pulled out a pair of handcuffs. “Cuff me, will you, you drunk-ass bastard?” he said. “I’ll show you who you’re dealing with!”
Before Smith had the chance to put the cuffs on Blair, his attention settled on the giant Hispanic fellow approaching him with the broken likeness of Betty Boop in his hand. Jagged pieces of glass sticking out from the frame didn’t deter the guy from squeezing it hard enough to draw blood from his fingers, and it spattered against the floor in radiating blotches. When Smith saw him coming, he pointed the gun at him.
“Stay back,” Smith said. “This is police business.”
Old Tex didn’t listen; he just kept on coming.
Smith fired the gun as a warning, dropping his magazine count down by four. “Halt, or I’ll shoot,” he warned, but the Texan didn’t miss a step.
Smith discharged his weapon again, hitting Tex in the chest. the big man stepped back when his body took the bullet, but he didn’t drop. Smith shot him again in the shoulder. The Hispanic man suddenly scrambled forward, frightening Smith. As Smith aimed for the man’s head, his hands shook enough to make him miss his mark by three very long inches, only grazing the Texan’s temple. A click, click, click of the gun must have left the peace officer with a sinking feeling, since until then he hadn’t realized that there would be no time to reload.
The Fort Worth native reached down and grabbed Smith’s flabby neck and then pulled him to his feet by it. With an enormous right hand, the Hispanic clutched the detective so tight, Blair swore that the scabs on his face would pop off. While holding Smith with one hand, Tex raised his left elbow and jabbed the good detective in the nose with it. The force of the blow snapped the policeman’s head back, and his eyes rolled up and then out of sight. His face looked bloated as his arms dropped and his body went limp. And when Smith’s body fell down with a thud, everyone knew that bird was never going to fly again.
As Blair stood up, Horace came out from the shadows. “You all right?” Horace asked him.
“I feel a lot better than that lawman over there.”
“A cop layin’ belly up with a neck broke damn near in two…. This is all gonna end real soon, Blair.”
“There’s another cop in the basement with his head split open.” Blair glanced at Horace. “He tripped on the stairs.”
Blair and Horace paused as the Hispanic man turned to them. While everyone else was still sucking up dust balls under cots, Blair and Horace were standing out in the open, right where Tex could see them.
The Hispanic seemed drained from the early hour and from all the excitement. And perhaps he was drained from being minus about a pint and a half of blood which was gushing out on the floor. He looked downright pitiful. Soon he turned around and headed back to his cot, still clutching the broken frame in his massive, left paw. Blood and broken glass trailed behind him as he walked along, and he only stopped once to trace the gouges in the eight-by-ten glossy with his finger.
“Son of a bitch broke my picture,” he affirmed, holding Betty close to his chest. Tex laid down again and curled up in a fetal position, his bed sheets slowly turning a handsome shade of crimson.
Blair squatted beside Detective Smith and started going through his pockets. Horace looked on, saying, “Never get outta bed in the middle of the night in a shelter, and never sleep too sound.”
“Now he tells me.”
“You wouldn’ta had to get up, if you hadn’ta drunk so damn much water.”
“The soup was too salty. I kept telling you that.”
“Mine wasn’t. You telling me they spiked your soup? They wanted you to go to the can?”
“Looks like it. Hold on,” Blair said, pulling one of Calvin Maxwell’s office cards from Smith’s pocket. The card had a smiling molar wearing a cute, little top hat on it. “Maxwell and Associates, P. C.,” Blair read from the card. On the back was Calvin Maxwell’s home address and phone number penciled in, but it wasn’t in his handwriting.
“What now?” Horace said, reading the card from over Blair’s shoulder.
“It’s time to give Cal Maxwell a visit. And I’m not leaving him until I get some answers.”