Read Online What You Have Left: The Turner Trilogy by James Sallis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: James Sallis
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description matched my brother’s. Dave pulled down prints, and they matched too.”
“I sent the bulletin,” Don Lee said. “We put prints out on the wire, too, but nothing came back.”
“We have a set taken on one of Carl’s admissions to a psychiatric hospital, expressly for the hospital’s own use, never broadcast. Sheriff Lansdale’s people compared them for us.”
Later, in the back room of Dunne’s Funeral Parlor, which doubled as morgue, standing beside her father with one hand lightly on his shoulder, Sarah Hazelwood said, “Yes. That’s Carl,” and looked—not quickly or nervously but cautiously—from Adrienne to her father. Everyone bearing up as well as could be expected. Better, actually, given the circumstances.
“So there’s one of us poor bastards put to rest, at least,” Doc Oldham said. He sipped coffee, then, frowning, sniffed the mug. It bore the photo of a man’s face that, when hot liquid got poured in, by degrees became a skull. “Damn milk went south at least a day ago. I wanted butter-milk, I’d of ordered up cornbread to go with it.”
“They said back home he’d sit out on the porch half the morning waiting for the mail to come.”
“So you were right,” Bates said. “About him thinking he was a postman. Wouldn’t think he’d be likely to be getting much mail.”
“But he could have. That’s what it was all about. Anticipation, promise. Like the world’s holding its breath, and for just that one moment anything can happen, anything’s possible.”
“Doesn’t sound like his life was exactly awash with possible.”
“Okay, okay. Business you had here is over,” Doc Oldham suddenly announced. “Anybody alive, able to move, you’re out of here—now. Dead folk and me’ve got work to do.”
Chapter Fourteen
RANDY WAS the funniest man I ever knew. Back there at first, all those “hair’ll last long as roaches and cigarette butts” remarks, I tried to keep up with him, even managed to do so for a while, but it flat wore me out. Before Randy came along, I’d had a clutch of temporary partners, among them Gardner, who died in a cheap motel listening to a prostitute’s sad tale, and Bill, who I think may have said thirty words to me the whole time, twenty of those the day he cold-cocked Sammy Lee Davis when we found all those kids left alone; then I’d worked by myself again for a while. Randy was supposed to be temporary, too. Maybe the desk jockeys forgot where they put him, or maybe after Randy and I’d been together a few weeks they just up and decided what the hell, it ain’t broke. . . .
Boy was Jewish, God help him, problematic those days outside the shelter of owning, say, a jewelry or furniture store, but not even God proved much help to other cops who decided to make it an issue. They’d find themselves with new nicknames they couldn’t shake off, enough jokes at their expense to bury them alive.
From the first, though, for reasons I never understood and still don’t, I was somehow exempt.
“Pawnshop’s right around this corner,” I told him the first night we rolled out together. Following up on a double murder, possibly a murder-suicide, we had a long night of knocking-on-doors-and-asking-questions to look forward to. Car had the rearview mirror ducttaped to the side, and the seat jumped track whenever I hit the brakes. He made no secret of his heritage. Nor was I what you’d call a beacon of charity those days—and already he was wearing me down. “Want I should drop you?”
After a moment he said in perfect black dialect, “Nawsir. I be trying to ’similate.”
Fact is, we got along great. The standing joke between us got to be if we didn’t know better we might have thought the Captains knew what they were up to when they put us together. Guaranteed a laugh anywhere cops were.
And cops were most everywhere we went. Dinner at Nick’s before going in on second watch, D-D’s Diner noon-time days, breakfast at
“I sent the bulletin,” Don Lee said. “We put prints out on the wire, too, but nothing came back.”
“We have a set taken on one of Carl’s admissions to a psychiatric hospital, expressly for the hospital’s own use, never broadcast. Sheriff Lansdale’s people compared them for us.”
Later, in the back room of Dunne’s Funeral Parlor, which doubled as morgue, standing beside her father with one hand lightly on his shoulder, Sarah Hazelwood said, “Yes. That’s Carl,” and looked—not quickly or nervously but cautiously—from Adrienne to her father. Everyone bearing up as well as could be expected. Better, actually, given the circumstances.
“So there’s one of us poor bastards put to rest, at least,” Doc Oldham said. He sipped coffee, then, frowning, sniffed the mug. It bore the photo of a man’s face that, when hot liquid got poured in, by degrees became a skull. “Damn milk went south at least a day ago. I wanted butter-milk, I’d of ordered up cornbread to go with it.”
“They said back home he’d sit out on the porch half the morning waiting for the mail to come.”
“So you were right,” Bates said. “About him thinking he was a postman. Wouldn’t think he’d be likely to be getting much mail.”
“But he could have. That’s what it was all about. Anticipation, promise. Like the world’s holding its breath, and for just that one moment anything can happen, anything’s possible.”
“Doesn’t sound like his life was exactly awash with possible.”
“Okay, okay. Business you had here is over,” Doc Oldham suddenly announced. “Anybody alive, able to move, you’re out of here—now. Dead folk and me’ve got work to do.”
Chapter Fourteen
RANDY WAS the funniest man I ever knew. Back there at first, all those “hair’ll last long as roaches and cigarette butts” remarks, I tried to keep up with him, even managed to do so for a while, but it flat wore me out. Before Randy came along, I’d had a clutch of temporary partners, among them Gardner, who died in a cheap motel listening to a prostitute’s sad tale, and Bill, who I think may have said thirty words to me the whole time, twenty of those the day he cold-cocked Sammy Lee Davis when we found all those kids left alone; then I’d worked by myself again for a while. Randy was supposed to be temporary, too. Maybe the desk jockeys forgot where they put him, or maybe after Randy and I’d been together a few weeks they just up and decided what the hell, it ain’t broke. . . .
Boy was Jewish, God help him, problematic those days outside the shelter of owning, say, a jewelry or furniture store, but not even God proved much help to other cops who decided to make it an issue. They’d find themselves with new nicknames they couldn’t shake off, enough jokes at their expense to bury them alive.
From the first, though, for reasons I never understood and still don’t, I was somehow exempt.
“Pawnshop’s right around this corner,” I told him the first night we rolled out together. Following up on a double murder, possibly a murder-suicide, we had a long night of knocking-on-doors-and-asking-questions to look forward to. Car had the rearview mirror ducttaped to the side, and the seat jumped track whenever I hit the brakes. He made no secret of his heritage. Nor was I what you’d call a beacon of charity those days—and already he was wearing me down. “Want I should drop you?”
After a moment he said in perfect black dialect, “Nawsir. I be trying to ’similate.”
Fact is, we got along great. The standing joke between us got to be if we didn’t know better we might have thought the Captains knew what they were up to when they put us together. Guaranteed a laugh anywhere cops were.
And cops were most everywhere we went. Dinner at Nick’s before going in on second watch, D-D’s Diner noon-time days, breakfast at
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