It was sort of funny and sort of sad and sort of pathetic.
“What the hell is that?” Cliffie said.
From his fingers dangled a rosary.
“Don’t shoot me, all right?”
“Tell him you won’t shoot.”
He raised his bullhorn again. “You men put your weapons down!”
None of them looked happy about doing so.
Chalmers came slowly down from the cabin.
Arms stretched out for cuffs, black rosary beads hanging from his right hand.
When he reached me, he looked at my handcuffs and said, greatly disappointed, “How the hell you gonna help me, McCain? You’re handcuffed too.”
“Thanks for pointing that out,” I said.
Cliffie was magnanimous and let me drive myself back to town. Sans handcuffs.
Cliffie double-parked out front so everybody’d be sure to see him bringing in Chalmers. Just in case anybody was too dense to miss all his subtle machinations, he stood in the middle of the street with his bullhorn. He wanted an audience and got one immediately: decent folk in faded housedresses and work-worn factory pants and shirts and little kids squinting into the sun to see what dangerous specimen the chief had brought in this time.
He could have pulled up behind the building, of course, and nobody would have seen him.
“Stand back, everybody,” he said. “We’re bringing in a desperate criminal.”
Even the old ladies giggled about that one.
Desperate criminal. Cliffie loved melodrama almost as much as a keynote speaker on the Fourth of July.
He repeated himself: “Stand back, everybody.”
Then he handed the bullhorn to Billy, yanked his own sawed-off from the front seat, opened the back door, and said, “You take it nice and easy now.
You try anything, and your teeth are gonna be chewin’ lead.”
I hadn’t heard the “chewin’ lead” one before.
I hoped I didn’t have to hear it ever again.
Chalmers, pale, forlorn, about as dangerous as a ground squirrel, got out of the patrol car with his head hung low. Embarrassed.
Cliffie gave him a hard shove. Chalmers turned to glare at him. Cliffie shoved him again.
I grabbed his elbow. “What’s your problem?”
“He ain’t movin’ fast enough, counselor.
That’s my problem. Now take your hands off me.” And with that he gave me a shove too. I knew better than to push back. He had an audience. He’d love to put on a show with me as the foil.
Inside the police station, there was a lot of noise as shoes scuffled down the narrow, dusty hallway to the interrogation room. Keys jangled. Sam Brownes creaked. Men coughed.
Prisoners in the back shouted, wanting to know what was going on. The door to the cells was ajar. They wanted some kind of diversion. Cliffie wouldn’t let them have radios or magazines or books.
“How about opening a window?” I said.
“I’m sorry it don’t smell better for you, counselor,” Cliffie said.
It smelled of sweat, puke, and tobacco. It was a dingy little place not much bigger than a coffin.
There was a single overhead light and a card table with a wire Webcor tape recorder on it. There were also signed black-and-white publicity stills of Norman Vincent Peale and Richard Nixon.
Cliffie pushed the still-handcuffed Chalmers in a chair and sat next to the card table. He got the recorder turned on and rolling, and said, “I’m recording every word you’re going to say, Chalmers.
You understand?”
Chalmers looked at me. I nodded. Then he looked at Cliffie and nodded.
It was what you might expect. Cliffie came up with twenty different ways to ask the same question which was, basically, Why’d you kill them?
He was doing a terrible job. The County Attorney’s crew would have to interrogate Chalmers themselves.
He blubbered on.
It was forty-seven minutes exactly before Cliffie needed to go to the can. I needed to talk to Chalmers.
“I’ll be back,” Cliffie said. “Don’t you touch nothin’, counselor.”
We exchanged unfrly glances and he left.
I leaned over and whispered in Chalmers’s ear, “Who sends you the check every month?”
He looked surprised and shook his head.
“It’s important,” I said.
“No it’s not.”
That’s what I’d been trying to remember: the curious monthly check.
“It don’t have nothin’ to do with any of this.” He was whispering too.
“I think it does. Ellie isn’t your daughter.”
“Who told you that?”
I nodded to the machine.
He whispered again, “Who told you that?”
“I figured it out. Now I need to know where your check comes from.”
He looked as if he was considering telling me when Cliffie came back in.
“You didn’t try ‘n’ erase that machine, did you?”
“Cliffie, I wouldn’t try and erase the machine. I’d try and erase the tape.”
“You goddamned college boys.”
“Yeah, we’re taking over the world.”
“Shut up, now. We’re going back to the questions.”
Another thrilling half hour. Cliffie’d verbally lunge at Chalmers and I’d object; Cliffie’d lunge again, I’d object again. It was a dull little legal dance.
“You’re gonna need a lawyer, bub.”
“I got a lawyer,” Chalmers said.
“I mean a real one.”
“This is the comedy part of his act,” I said.
A knock at the door. A cop leaned in.
“The mayor says he needs to talk to you, Chief.”
“He say about what?”
“He never does, Chief.”
Cliffie sighed. “I finally start gettin’ somewhere with this killer I got here and the mayor calls.”
“Life’s tough,” I said, “when you’re a celebrity.”
“Someday I’ll celebrity you, McCain,”
Cliffie said, standing up, which is no easy task when you weigh what he does. “And don’t try and erase that”-he caught himself in time-? tape, either.”
“I’m proud of you, Cliffie.”
Another exchange of scowls and Cliffie was gone.
I started whispering again. “Who sends you the checks every month?”
“I don’t know. They’re just in my mailbox.” He looked angry. “It doesn’t have anything to do with these murders. You know what would happen to that kid if this town ever figured out who her real old man was?”
“Believe it or not, I think she’d like to know for herself. I think she could put up with anyone who made fun of her. And anyway, you’re underestimating people here. They’d be good to her. They’d understand.”
“I know a few who wouldn’t.”
“A few. But not many.”
He sighed and started to raise his hands to wipe his face. He’d forgotten about the handcuffs. “These damned things.”
“Tell me before Cliffie comes back,” I whispered. “Who sends you the checks?”
Footsteps in the hall. Cliffie’s steps, thunderous. Door being flung open.
And then, in that millisecond, Chalmers leaned close and told me.
Seventeen
For all the mixed reviews the Edsel had been getting, there sure were a lot of gawkers when I got over to Dick Keys’s that afternoon: farmers and townspeople alike, the farmers still raw red from summer sun, the townspeople wearing the kind of tans you only get on beaches.
Three salesmen were giving the same spiel at once, each a few sentences behind the other. They sounded like a ragged chorus.
I spent a few minutes looking one over, a convertible with enough horsepower to outrun any car the highway patrol put down on the pavement. The gadgetry got me. If I ever bought a new car, I’d want a Corvette or a
Thunderbird, stripped and ready for action. The interior control panel of the Edsel, with all its chrome gimmicks, was sort of comic.
“Dick around?” I asked one of the mechanics.
The guy streaked his white coverall with greasy fingers, yanked out a Cavalier, and torched a Zippo. In the middle of exhaling and coughing, he said, “He’ll be right back. He ran over to Uptown Auto to get Gil a new part.” He shook his head. “Best boss I ever had, except for the Navy. He ain’t afraid to pitch in, you know what I mean? Somethin’ needs to be done, he don’t care if he’s boss or not, he’ll do it.”