Эд Горман - Riders on the Storm

This morning I walked into the lobby with two tens and two twenties in my pocket. I went immediately to the head bellboy. He had a very bald head, a rangy body, and eyes that appeared to have knowledge of every sin ever committed by mankind. His nametag, hanging on the breast pocket of his blue-and-white uniform, read: CHARLES.

“Help you, sir?”

“You didn’t happen to work last night, by any chance?”

We stood to one side of the main desk. Two female clerks in blazers were saying how much they’d wanted to watch the parade, which was starting in less than an hour.

Charles said, “Yesterday was my long day. I worked until about eleven last night.”

“You see anything odd going on? Maybe somebody who looked like he might be trouble?”

“Well, I saw the guy who had some drinks with Mr. Niven in the bar. If that’s what you’re wondering about.”

“What time was this?”

“Later on. Nine thirtyish. He didn’t look right to me.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“The way he looked. A lot of our traffic is salespeople. We have a nice-sized ballroom for small conventions. You know the kind of people I’m talking about. Suits, ties, suitcases, briefcases. Business guys. This guy — six-two, maybe up to six-four. Tan suede suit coat which is two hundred a pop easy. Brown sports shirt under it. Brown slacks. West Coast kinda look, if you know what I mean. And he walks in and the look he gives me. I’m a piece of shit. You ever get a look like that?”

“Maybe once or twice.” Or three or four hundred times.

“He walks like he’s gonna attack somebody.”

“Lot of black curly hair?”

“How’dya guess?”

“Lucky, I guess. So then what happened?”

“He goes in the bar and maybe an hour later he comes out with Niven. They walk over to the elevator and that’s the last I see of them.”

“You remember Niven’s room number?”

“Three twenty-six.”

I gave him one of the tens.

I rode to the third floor with a pair of older salesmen who were blaming the decline in their business on hippies. From what I could tell they sold shoes wholesale.

“They don’t even take baths that often. Why are they going to give a shit about shoes that really support their feet?”

“I just wish I was getting as much sex as those bastards get.”

“I just wish they were wearing out shoes when they were getting it.”

When the doors opened to the third floor a man smiled at me and I smiled at him. It was Chief You-Can-Call-Me-Paul Foster.

As soon as the doors closed behind me, he said, “Let me see if my psychic powers are working today. You’re here to check out the room of a man named Niven. I believe the first name is Gordon.”

“A legend in my business.”

“Would that business be lawyer or investigator?”

“I’m sure you already know the answer to that.”

“The hospital tells me that he’d suffered a stroke a while back. This sure as hell couldn’t be any good for him.”

“He’s a nice guy. And I wasn’t exaggerating about him being a legend.”

“I see. I’m told that Mr. Niven has been in town for two days. I assume you ran into him?”

“Excuse me.” A man approached, checking his watch, his sweaty face suggesting that he’d overslept. He moved us aside and then practically dove onto the elevator when it opened up.

After the doors closed again, I said, “Yeah, I did run into him.”

“A prominent private investigator comes to our little community at the same time one of our most prominent citizens is murdered. Am I wrong in seeing a possible connection?”

“He was here before Donovan was murdered.”

Then he struck. “You really piss me off.” The anger came on like summer heat lightning; a flare in the eyes and now pure hot fury in the voice. “You should have called me and told me about Niven. I’ve given you some leeway here because I expect you to keep me informed.”

He was cop with all cops’ privileges and powers. I told him most of the truth. “He wouldn’t tell me why he’s in town but it is peculiar that he got here right before Donovan got murdered.”

“You’ve got quite a vocabulary, McCain. ‘Peculiar’ doesn’t cover it and you know it.”

Niven could still have been tailing Valerie Donovan for reasons having nothing to do with her husband’s murder. I didn’t believe that and Foster wouldn’t either. But I wanted to keep the photograph to myself.

“He was supposed to die. Niven. The way he was worked over.”

We stood aside for more folks in need of the elevator.

When we were alone again, he said, “We now have two people in the hospital.”

“I thought of that myself.”

“According to you, two people who are completely unrelated to Donovan’s murder.”

“I didn’t say that. Exactly.”

“He’s coming around. Your friend Cullen.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“Chiefs of police they keep informed. Not private investigators.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“The shrink is saying possibly later this afternoon. He emphasizes ‘possibly.’”

“As his lawyer, I’d like to be there if you interview him.”

“Comes in handy, doesn’t it? The P.I. gets to sit in on the interrogation because he’s a lawyer. But I don’t have to allow it.”

“Are you really that pissed off at me?”

But he said nothing. Just pressed the button for the elevator.

When the doors opened he stepped aboard.

The doors closed.

Senator O’Shay, even though he might hopefully be on his way out, still had undeniable power.

He had managed to commandeer the city council, the police department, and one of our high schools to make certain that his cynical parade came off.

I had all sorts of principled reasons not to go have a look — I’m rarely happier than when I feel principled — but I walked over four blocks to the large Presbyterian church that the parade was just now passing by.

Marching band music has always embarrassed me for some reason. It’s so damned big . But along with the embarrassment is a thrill I hate admitting to.

Heat and clamor and mothers hanging on to their little ones so they wouldn’t burst into the street and dads with kids’ legs wrapped around their shoulders and young couples wooing to the enormous tinny music as if it was a love song.

I looked at the faces. The faces of war. Just about everybody was in this war, either by participating directly or having a family member, near or distant, over there. You could tell the people who had soldiers over there, especially the women. Some of them cried and some of them held up their children as if to be blessed by all the people in the parade. They needed to be bound up in the swaddling clothes of what devious politicians called patriotism. Patriotism could calm your anxiety sometimes; patriotism could rock you to sleep at night; and most importantly, patriotism could quell your doubts about the worthiness of this war. My kind of patriotism — the patriotism of my generation — probably didn’t count because we had as many questions as we had answers.

There weren’t any floats. There hadn’t been time for that. But there was a band in bright yellow uniforms, the drumline, the pomp or pomposity (your choice) of the plumed drum major. And there were convertibles, new and shiny ones on loan from the most important local dealers, and there was the mayor riding on the back of one of them followed by two uniformed soldiers on the back of another, and then a flatbed truck with a few soldiers in wheelchairs and a few more missing arms or legs. Seeing them paraded this way infuriated me and then when I saw the maroon Caddy convertible with O’Shay on the back of it I thought of what those men on the flatbed had suffered at the hands of this man and I had that fleeting Lee Harvey Oswald thought that was so much in the air these days — bang bang bang and no more O’Shay. But there were thousands and thousands more of him in our government. Ike called it the military-industrial complex but nobody had paid him much attention. And I was just a three-beer fantasy killer anyway. There were millions of us these days. With the murder of JFK, assassination was a popular game with many political daydreamers.