But Not For Me Read online

  “Well, that went well,” I said to my Plymouth as we pulled around the corner into the courthouse’s parking lot. The courthouse, open for less than a month, stood tall and proud on the east side of downtown. Crafted of expertly-masoned local limestone block and glass, the building towered more than twenty stories high. Bas-relief Greek-looking figures circled its base. Pretty classy. The dearth of cars in the lot indicated a slow day in the halls of justice. I left my .38 under the seat and walked in. Inside the courthouse, the blindfolded justice lady inlaid into the marble floor pointed the way to Judge Boyd’s office. In his office, a flesh and blood lady who wasn’t blindfolded told me the judge was in.

  “Is he expecting you, Mr. …?” she asked. She looked tired. It was late afternoon, and her day was almost over.

  “I’m Phil Morris, ma’am. And no, he isn’t expecting me. Would you tell the judge that I’m here about Tom Holloway Junior? I work for his father.”

  She perked up at that. “Oh, Tommy! He’s such a nice young man. Where has he been this week? I hope he’s not ill.”

  “No, ma’am. He’s not. If the judge can spare a few minutes, Tommy’s father and I would appreciate it.”

  She hopped up and walked into the inner office without knocking. She returned before I had a chance to light a smoke.

  “Judge Boyd will see you now, Mr. Morris.”

  As soon as I walked through his doorway, the judge rose, circled around his desk and met me three steps inside the door. He grabbed my hand and shook it like he wanted to yank it off—pretty spry for a man who sits behind a desk all day. The guy had a wide, square jaw that looked like it could take a punch. He sported thick-lensed spectacles that magnified his pale blue eyes.

  “Judge Boyd, it’s a pleasure.”

  “Likewise, Mr. Morris. Your reputation precedes you.”

  “Reputation, Judge? I’m not sure I follow.”

  He smiled and his big owl eyes glowed. “Call me Malcolm. Mr. Morris, you’ve sent a number of defendants into our courtrooms, and also, I understand, several into Union Cemetery. I have to say that your track record is considerably better than the police.”

  I was beginning to like this guy. “Well, Judge …”

  “Malcolm. Call me Malcolm.”

  “Well, Malcolm, the police have to mess with uniforms and badges and—”

  “The law, Mr. Morris?”

  “I was going to say police regulations.” I was smiling big. “I suppose it is easier to take shortcuts if you’re not a cop, though I’ve seen them twist the law a bit when it suits them. But sometimes all those badges and uniforms get in the way.”

  He laughed, gave my back a strong swat and told me to take a seat. The judge didn’t go back behind his desk, but took the chair across from me, leaned forward, hands folded and elbows on his thighs.

  “You’re here about young Tom.”

  “That’s right,” I leaned forward too. “You know he’s missing?”

  “I do.”

  “What can you tell me, Judge?”

  “Nothing about his disappearance I’m afraid, Mr. Morris.” He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. His shiny black wingtips were spotless. “He worked here last Tuesday. I had him researching a case for Judge Templeton on a brewery in the bottoms that reopened after the Cullen-Harrison Act passed Congress last year. It seems there was some misunderstanding about the definition of 3.2% beer.” He shrugged and said, “Now that Prohibition has been repealed you’d think the charges would be dropped. But I guess the D.A. has an ax he wants sharpened.” His eyes twinkled and his grin grew. “And it’s an election year.”

  “Did Tommy seem normal that day? Jumpy or upset about anything?” I asked him as I pulled out my cigarettes. I offered him one and he declined. This time my thumbnail fired the match. The judge’s eyebrows rose appreciatively.

  “Same old Tommy, no different from any other day.”

  “What kind of clerk has he been?”

  “A good one—surprised the hell out of me. He works four days a week, Monday through Thursday. Tommy’s dad and I are close friends, and I gave his boy a job as a favor, against my better judgment.” He shook his head.

  “Hell, Tommy was a calamity two years ago—booze, women, brawling, gambling, you name it.” Boyd’s hands flailed about at as he spoke. “Sometimes Tommy still comes in bleary-eyed and hung-over, but he’s punctual, and works hard even when he looks like hell. And like his father, he’s sharp, picks things up quickly.”

  “Know anyone who might have it in for the kid?”

  He laughed, and his laughter lasted awhile. Still smiling at the question, he replied, “I don’t know if there’s anyone in the police department or the district attorney’s office who wouldn’t like to see young Tom take a fall. But they’d have to be bold or crazy to physically act on that animosity and chance angering Tom’s poppa.”

  I ground the butt of my Lucky Strike in a brass Jackson County Democratic Party ashtray on his desk. “Mr. Holloway mentioned the kids Tom runs around with. He wasn’t very flattering. Could they be involved in some kind of foul play?”

  “Certainly. I don’t personally know that crowd, although I expect that a few of them have shown up in our courtrooms. According to Big Tom, they’re mostly mobsters’ kids, Mr. Morris.”

  “Call me Phil, Malcolm.”

  “Well, all right; damn fine idea, Phil.” He stood and walked around behind his desk and slid the bottom left drawer open, reached in and thunked a bottle on the desktop. “It’s five till five, and this place is closing up shop. I’ve got this bottle of McCormick Corn Whiskey. They’ve been making the finest corn liquor in Missouri since before the Civil War.” He raised the bottle. “What say we have us a nip?”

  “I’d admire that, Malcolm.” Two glasses with Democrat donkeys on them appeared. Judge Boyd expertly poured three fingers in each. We sipped our drinks.

  The Judge went on. “Big Tom once told me that someday the boy’s crowd would get him killed or into some kind of trouble that he couldn’t get the boy out of. That’s why Big Tom was pleased the boy had so readily taken to law clerking for our judges.

  Then the judge threw me a curve ball. It began when he asked if there had been any ransom demands.

  “The father says no.” I lit up another Lucky.

  “Do you believe him?” The judge’s expression made it evident that he had his doubts.

  “Yeah, I do. I don’t know the man, but I’m a pretty good judge of when a guy’s being square with me. I’d say he was on the level.”

  “All right, but as you work out the details of your search for the boy, don’t rule out Big Tom’s associates.”

  I told the judge I expected a man of Holloway’s stature must have stomped on a lot of feet to climb that high, and that I had considered his enemies might try to get to the father through the son.

  “Not just enemies—creditors.”

  The judge’s response caught me in mid-inhale and had me coughing saliva and smoke across the room.

  He swirled the whiskey in his glass while he waited for my hacking to die down a bit. “Tom has some rather sizable debts, and I’m afraid some of his markers are owned by unsavory people.”

  I gulped air and waved my butt for him to continue.

  “You see, Phil, Tom has a fondness for the horses, and as long as I’ve known him, he’s bet them modestly, well within his means. About five years ago he made a quarter-million dollars on a twenty-five to one long shot.” The judge smiled at me.

  “Tom bragged to everyone at social gatherings about his big score. The long-shot seemed a bigger deal to him than anything he’d ever accomplished. He would belt out that laugh of his and thunder, ‘If only I’d bet more, I’d be a rich man today,’ and then he’d laugh some more. Everyone at those gatherings would join in.

  “But he has been—betting more, that is—and chasing his losses. I’m afraid his debts are bigger now than the assets he can easily liquidate.”

  I
sipped my drink. It wasn’t Jim Beam, but not bad. “How did you learn about his gambling debts?”

  “Tom is a very good friend. And I hear things.”

  “Are these gambling debts owed to local folks, or to out-of-town organizations?”

  “That I don’t know. But from the size of the debts, I expect that it’s both. And Tom is a very proud man. He hates to lose, and hates just as much to be indebted to anyone.”

  “You think someone might have snatched Tommy because of the money his father owes?”

  “I don’t think about that. That’s your job. I’m only providing information. I’m saying that if Tommy’s not off gallivanting somewhere—and I wouldn’t rule that out—then one must consider both his and his father’s enemies. And also his father’s creditors.” He pulled his pocket watch from of his vest and flipped it open.

  “Now it’s getting late, and I really have some business to finish. Susan expects me home on time today.” He stood and so did I. “Bottoms up.” We both downed our drinks and I mashed my cigarette in his ashtray.

  “Yeah, and I’ve got a dog at home who’s hungry, and probably has his hind legs crossed. Thanks for your time, Judge.”

  “It’s Malcolm. And if there is anything else we here can do to help, let me know. We’re very fond of the boy.”

  I beat it out of there and back to the Plymouth. It was almost 5 p.m. I hadn’t asked Mrs. Potter, my landlady, to walk Sammy that afternoon, thinking I’d go straight back to my place after gabbing with Holloway. Sammy, my Labrador, probably felt pissed in every sense of the word.

  As the Plymouth pulled off the Paseo and slipped into my regular space, my landlady, Lucille Potter ran out of her first floor flat yelling something I couldn’t understand and waving her arms. I shut off the engine and opened the door just as she arrived at the curb. Mrs. Potter, a big woman, grabbed my arms as I swung the door shut, and tried to use my brains as castanets. She screamed “Hurry! Hurry!” I clamped onto her arms, held her firmly and told her to settle down. She didn’t. She raved on unintelligibly. I’m not the kind of guy who goes around slapping dames; I slapped her—not hard—more like a calming tap.

  Mrs. Potter released my arms and laid her open hands on my chest. Her frizzy gray bun stuck out every which way and there were tears tucked into the wrinkles under her eyes. She pressed her left palm on her cheek where I’d smacked her.

  “Phil, something’s wrong upstairs in your flat. Sammy started barking and raising a ruckus. I heard him growl and snarl at something, at somebody, and I heard crashing and banging. Then Sammy yelped something terrible. I just now called the police. Oh, Phil, I think someone’s hurt Sammy.”

  “It’ll be okay, Mrs. Potter.” I reached across the seat and retrieved my .38 Special. “You stay here and wait for the cops. Tell them I went up and that I have a gun.”

  At the sidewalk, I stuck my thumb and middle finger in my mouth and whistled. I did that every day when I came home and within a few seconds Sammy’s front paws and his big puss would slap up against the window above. No Sammy this time. At the building, I carefully opened the door to the hallway and slid inside, no one in the foyer. My heart wanted to rush up the stairs and throw open the door. My head explained to the heart that’s the way a fella gets plugged. We compromised. At the base of the stairs, I cased the landing and what I could see of the second floor. I hurried up to the landing and swiveled the .38 around ready to burn powder at anything that moved. Nothing did. I held my breath. Me and the .38 ran up the last twelve steps. The hall was empty.

  The strike plate on my door lay on the floor; the wood around it was in splinters and the door was ajar maybe four inches. With my piece at eye level, I swung the door open. The front room lay in shambles. I stood still and listened. Heavy rapid breathing came from the kitchen. It wasn’t human. Five steps took me to the alcove and I stepped in, wheeling the .38 ninety degrees. Sammy lay panting in a pool of blood, my blood-coated kitchen carving knife on the floor near him. Two pairs of bloody footprints headed through the kitchen to the back hall.

  I wanted to drop to my knees and help my dog, but the two invaders were about to learn payback. Heedlessly, I ran down the hall and swung my rod into the bathroom. Nothing. They were in the bedroom and with the noise I’d made they must be ready for me. But I couldn’t wait for the cops; I had to get back to Sammy. The bloody footprints had dissipated, and they’d been replaced by quarter-sized spats of blood, probably human. Sammy had done some damage of his own. The bedroom door was open wide. Cold air blew in the open window by the bed. Someone’s blood smeared the sill. The room and the closet were empty. The bastards had dropped twelve feet to the alley. I stuck my head and my gun hand outside but there was no sight of them in the growing darkness.

  I hurried back to the kitchen. Sammy was dead. On the icebox lettered in blood were four words – STAY OUT OF IT. I missed the message the first time. I looked down at my brave dog and knelt in his blood, and I stroked him and scratched his ears as I had done every day for five years.

  The cabinet above the sink held a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam. I sat at the kitchen table and pulled the liquid straight from the bottle, feeling the sweet burn, mesmerized by the blood droplets trailing from the word “Stay.” I hadn’t cried when my cop father was killed by a drunken two-bit drifter, or when my mother died three years later of influenza soon after my seventeenth birthday, but I did then. At the same time, a knife-sharp anger grew with the grief. Somebody was going to pay.

  By the time the cops arrived, I’d wiped the icebox clean and wrapped Sammy in my bed sheet. Below, Mrs. Potter paced the lawn in full-blown hysterics, but I was cold and calm as arctic ice. I told the cops that it seemed to be a burglary gone haywire, and my guard dog surprised them and sunk his teeth into at least one of them before they killed him. My dog must have raised such a racket they hadn’t taken anything, I suggested. I didn’t tell them that the guard dog was also my best friend.

  One of the officers, Mackey was his name, offered to take the body to the animal shelter for disposal. He also offered his sympathy, and said, “I don’t know which would be worse, Mr. Morris, losing my wife or my dog.”

  “I don’t have a wife, Officer Mackey,” and then told him I would take care of Sammy myself.

  After the cops left, I got Mrs. Potter settled back in her flat—she loved that dog too—and called a locksmith to set me up with something temporary until I could get the door frame repaired. In a daze, I tidied up some. Sammy remained wrapped in the middle of the kitchen. I cleaned the floor around him. The locksmith showed up about eight. I had chewed and swallowed half a sandwich without tasting whatever I had put on it. The level in my Jim Beam bourbon bottle had lowered itself five inches.

  Later that night, I opened a second bottle, dragged my feet to the davenport and sat staring at the pile of cold ashes in the fireplace. The rush of alcohol relieved the sting of grief as it always had. But I knew relief was temporary. Sometime around midnight feeling returned as anger and sorrow, and it rose like bile in my throat. I thought of how Sammy had been a surrogate for my mother and father, and for a woman to love. With him, I felt and expressed long dormant feelings. And the mutt returned them three-fold.

  My father was an Emporia, Kansas policeman—a good man. A man people liked. He was the man who taught me how to play ball, play it well, and when I became the only 13-year-old on the town men’s team, I could see the pride in his eyes. He dreamed that one day I would play left field for his beloved St. Louis Cardinals. And I played hard for him.

  One Saturday, a rare patrol duty Saturday for my father, our men’s team traveled on Mr. Perrin’s flatbed Ford to play our arch rivals, the Newton Railroaders. They had a tough team that played hard and drank hard afterward. We beat them 5 – 3, and for the first time I had gotten three hits, all singles, and also stole two bases. After the game, I drank my first beer, and my second, and more. I can still taste the vomit I spewed in the alley behind the Newton American Legion Hal
l and hear the laughter of both teams when I returned. With pride and amidst more laughter, I washed away its acid taste by downing another beer.

  During the long drive back to Emporia, I listened to the men sing songs. I laid on my back gazing at the Milky Way’s creamy stripe as it split the sky in half. My dad was not a teetotaler, but rather a firm believer of everything in moderation. I remember trying to clear my head in order to plot an explanation, for he would surely find out, and I owed it to him to make sure he heard it from me.

  I picked up the bottle by its neck and walked back into the kitchen where I unfolded the bed-sheet and stared down at Sammy’s blood-caked body. His tongue lolled absurdly from his mouth. I set the bottle on the table and tried to return his tongue to its rightful position. Rigor-mortis had begun and my alcohol addled hands couldn’t accomplish the task, so I pulled the sheet back over him.

  I couldn’t bear to look at my father in his casket a few days after that Newton game. The others did, but I kept my distance. I’ve always regretted that. And I never had to explain my first drunk because while we drove back that night, another drunk, some plastered itinerant, stabbed him from behind as my father tried to break up a bar brawl. I lost my love of baseball when I lost my father.

  Standing over Sammy, bitterness welled—and anger; bitterness at my misfortune, anger at my inability to take it like a man. I heaved the bottle against the far wall and watched glass shards spray the room. Sammy’s shroud now twinkled with tiny sparkling stars spread across its white and umber surface. For a few moments, I gaped at the caramel liquid trickle down the wall, trying to see some sign, some way to cope.

  I shook my head and went to bed.

  I couldn’t sleep. I thought of my mother, who loved dogs. She taught English at the Emporia State Teachers College and nurtured a love of reading in me. That, too, died with my father. And his death took the starch out of my mother. Three years later, when the Spanish flu epidemic found her, she was ready to go, didn’t even fight it. I watched her die. My mother would have loved Sammy and would have kept him safe. She wouldn’t have been pleased at how I turned out. Not pleased at all.