From inside one of the gates a man began to groan with sudden fervor.
Gill paused. “Oh, stop it, Billings,” he said pleasantly. “Be a good boy.”
The boy was an elderly Negro with a tobacco-stained beard and white hair that reached his shoulders. “Them prunes I had for breakfast, they’s setting hard on my belly like billiard balls.”
“Can that phony dialect. Last time you were here you were talking like a Yale man.”
“I’se rumblin inside.”
“I’ll give you something in a little while.”
“Listen. Come here and listen, white boy.”
“I can’t now, Billings. I’m busy.”
“Listen. I’se full of sin. It’s rumblin round my belly. Oh, sweet Jesus stop that rumblin, stop clackin them billiard balls in my insides.”
“There aren’t any billiard balls in your insides,” Gill said. “It’s gas.”
“I’m only an old nigger full of sin, sweet Jesus, no one to turn to ceptin you. Now they’s gonna cut off my hair, cut off my beard, they’s gonna take away what’s rightfully mine, saying I got lice. I never had a lice, Lord, all I got’s the rumblin.”
“Haven’t you heard, Billings? Everybody’s wearing their hair short these days, even the women.”
“You’ll be crawlin through the fires of hell, white boy, and I’ll be ridin into heaven.” The old Negro rolled over on his cot and, face to the wall, he resumed his low melodious groaning.
Gill turned away with a shrug and went on down the hall.
The fourth room had its original oak door, but a small rectangular peephole had been cut out at eye level. Gill looked in through the peephole before he unlocked the door.
The shades were drawn and the room was almost in darkness, so that only light-colored objects were visible at first, the bed, basin, a covered trash container, a white chair lying overturned in the corner, and above the chair Loftus’ face. He had grown enormously during the night. His face reached nearly to the ceiling.
The old Negro was groaning to sweet Jesus and Gill was breathing like a tired horse, and there was a rattle of branches against the windowpane.
Gill crossed the room and pulled up the shade. Then he went to the corner and touched one of Loftus’ dangling hands. Loftus began to swing very slowly back and forth as if a wind was rocking him.
“It’s not my fault,” Gill said. “If they want to die bad enough you can’t stop them. It’s not my fault. I gave him the sedatives and he promised he’d take them and go to sleep.”
He’d kept one part of his promise, Meecham thought, but the two yellow capsules were still lying on the metal table beside the bed.
“White boy, you there, white boy? I’se been talkin to the Lord, white boy, and he says you’re full of sin, says you oughtn’t give a poor old nigger prunes for breakfast. You listenin, boy?”
“How could I have stopped him?” Gill said. “How could I? Maybe all night while he was talking, he was making plans, looking around trying to see what he could use.”
The room had nothing in it that was sharp or pointed, nothing that could be broken to form a cutting edge; even the light bulbs were inaccessible. But Loftus, like other desperate men, found a way. He pried the wire handle off the trash container and attached it to a ventilation hole in the wall near the ceiling. To the handle he fastened a twisted strip torn off the gray hospital blanket from his bed. Standing on the chair he tied the other end of the strip around his neck. He stood there like that, perhaps a minute, perhaps an hour, before he shoved the chair away with his foot.
He had died quietly, without a fight. On the white wall behind him there were no marks of feet kicking in anguish or struggling to get a hold on the wall to ease the pressure around his neck. There were no scratches or fingernail marks on his throat. It was as if he had died by willing, before the twisted strip of blanket had time to cut off his air.
His face was not discolored, and though his mouth was slightly open, his tongue didn’t protrude. He looked quite tranquil, as if the long night that he’d been dreading had turned out well and the dreams it held were pleasant. Its shadows were without terror, and its streets were the same strange streets that Birdie had walked along.
“I hears you, white boy, I hears you talkin and whisperin. You get down on your knees and ask the sweet Jesus to loose the devil in you standin in there whisperin and laughin bout a poor old nigger’s insides.”
Gill wheeled around suddenly and screamed toward the open door: “Shut up! Shut up, I tell you!”
“Whisperin and laughin...”
“Shut up, goddam it!”
“Cursin and yellin and whisperin...”
“I’ll come in and brain you, goddam it!”
“Threatenin, threatenin a poor old man that’s full of sins and lice and gonna have his hair cut off. Get down on your knees, white boy, and ask for the devil to loose you.”
Gill stood with his fists pressed against his ribs, the color draining out of his knuckles. “All right, Billings,” he said at last. “I got down and the devil loosed me.”
“Sing Hallelujah.”
“Hallelujah,” Gill said, with the tears streaming down his face. “Hallelujah.”
17
The street was still five stories down, but the sky seemed closer than it had during the morning. Now at twilight it pressed against the window of Meecham’s office, a shapeless changing mass, the color of bruised flesh.
Mrs. Christy was gone for the day, and the telephone was ringing. There was a typewritten note propped against the lamp on Meecham’s desk and he read it before he reached for the phone.
“E.J.M: Following calls came in. 11:35 Cordwink. 12:10 Mrs. Hamilton, no message. 1:15 Mr. Geo. Loesser, will call back. 1:4 °Checker Cab, motion for new trial denied. 3:10 Miss McDaniels can’t find her copy of will. 3:15 Sweeney Dry Cleaners, rug shrinkage unavoidable and refuse to settle. 3:45 Mrs. Alistair re trust deed. 4:05 Mr. Loesser, call him at 5-5988 before six. 4:33 Mr. Post won’t be in tomorrow. L. E. Christy.”
He picked up the phone. “Hello, Meecham speaking.”
“This is George Loesser, Mr. Meecham. I may be wrong, but I think we met a year or so ago at a convention in Chicago.” Loesser spoke in a thin nervous voice with a slight New England accent. “Does that ring a bell?”
“It could,” Meecham said. He hadn’t been to a convention for ten years. “Bring me up to date a little.”
“Absolutely. Well, right now I’m with a Detroit firm, Lewenstein, Adler and Birch. The reason I’m in town is that I had to meet a client at the airport this morning and then I drove her over here. My client happens to be very interested in seeing you.”
“As a lawyer?”
“Not at all,” Loesser said sharply. “My firm handles all her affairs. This is quite a different matter, a personal one. She would like to talk to you because the Sheriff mentioned your name in connection with Virginia Barkeley. You were looking after Mrs. Barkeley’s interests, weren’t you?”
“For a time.”
“My client is Lily Margolis.”
“Oh.”
“As you may know, she was in Lima visiting her sister at the time of Mr. Margolis’ death.”
“I knew that, yes.”
“She returned as soon as she could. She’s been with the Sheriff this morning and part of the afternoon. She hadn’t anything much to tell him, of course. It was just a formality.”
“If she’s seen Cordwink, why does she want to see me?”
“Frankly, I don’t know.” Loesser sounded sincerely puzzled. “Curiosity, probably. Cordwink didn’t tell her a great deal, and you know women, they like details, never get sick of details. That’s understandable, of course, in Lily’s case. She’s never come up against anything like this before. She’s led a very sheltered life, you might say, and this business has been a great shock to her emotionally, mainly because of the children. Naturally I’ve done my best to keep her and the children out of the papers.”