P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

Louis had the Ardmore badge out before he took a step toward the man. “I’m with the police. I need to talk to you.”

The guy’s eyed flicked to the badge and up to Louis’s eyes. “How I know that’s real?” He had retreated behind the sagging screen like it could offer some protection.

Louis took a breath. “It’s real.”

The man was in his early sixties, his scrawny, scabbed arms hanging from the sleeveless white T-shirt, his face mottled with whiskers and spots.

“I’m looking for a man named Buddy Ives,” Louis said.

“Don’t know him.”

“Are you Maury?”

“Yeah. I’m the owner here.”

“Ives was living here as of 1986. Think hard.”

The man shook his head. “I said I don’t know him.”

Louis pulled Ives’s picture from his coat pocket and held it out. “Think harder.”

The man stared at Louis for a moment, then let his eyes flick to the photo before they came back to Louis’s face. “Ives. . okay, yeah, he was here. But he ain’t now.”

“When did he leave?”

“Well, it was hot, I remember that, ’cause he was bitching at me to fix his AC and I told him I wasn’t gonna do shit until he paid his rent. He wouldn’t leave, so I let just let him sweat his balls off up there until he couldn’t take it anymore and just left one night.”

“You have any idea where he went?”

“He didn’t say and I didn’t care.”

Louis stuck the photo back in his coat. “What can you tell me about him?”

“He was a dirtbag.”

“How about being a little more specific.”

“He drank and did drugs. That’s dirtbag enough in my book.”

“How long did he live here?”

The man had to think about that one. “’Bout two years?”

“Did he have a job?”

“Yeah, at first. That’s the only reason I rented to him. He showed me a pay stub from Uniroyal. But it didn’t last long. He was in jail once or twice, too, I remember.”

“What else do you remember?” Louis asked.

“He was real sick once.” The old man folded his scarred arms over his chest against the cold. “Don’t know what was wrong with him but it was bad, real bad. I called the amblance but he wouldn’t go. Just laid there and screamed that nobody was gonna stick him in a hospital. He almost died up there. It was nuts. . ”

Louis had to ask. “Was he?”

“Was he what?”

“Nuts. Was Ives nuts?”

The man’s skinny shoulders hunched up. “How the hell should I know? Lots of guys come through here that are a little off in the head, but if they keep quiet and pay their rent I don’t ask.” He shrugged again. “Ives didn’t seem any more nuts than anybody else.”

“What about visitors?”

“What? Women? Nah, never saw him with one.” The man’s eyes shot up to Louis’s face. “Wait, there was one time. I remember one time he did bring some woman back here.”

“You remember anything about it?”

“Hell yes,” the old man said. “I was down here watching Carson and heard them go up the stairs, her laughing and all liquored up. Then I heard some yelling and figured they was just having a good time. Next thing I know, she comes flying down the stairs.”

“What happened?” Louis asked.

“I went out to the hall and she was screaming and holding on to her dress that was all ripped up. Her face was bleeding. But she was mad and cussing up the stairs to wheres he was standing.”

He stopped, shaking his head. Louis waited.

“I didn’t want to get in the middle of that one, so I was glad when she just ran out the door. Never heard a woman use language like that, yelling that he. .”

The old man paused, looking suddenly at Louis.

“Yelling what?”

“She was yelling that he couldn’t. . not. . you know, couldn’t get a woodie.”

Louis stared at him.

The man stared back. “You know, a hard-on, a stiffy, a-”

“I know,” Louis said. “Could I see his room?”

“Huh? What for? I had to throw everything out and repaint the whole place when the guy left. I got somebody new in there now.”

“Did Ives leave anything?”

“Yeah, a mess. Garbage, needles on the damn floor, and shit on the walls.”

Louis was about to ask another question but he paused. “He put shit on the walls?”

“Not just shit. . shit. Like real shit. And he didn’t just put it there, he wrote with it.”

“Wrote what?”

“He wrote ‘fuck you, Maury’ with his damn handprint next to it.”

The man’s face colored and Louis knew it was from anger, not embarrassment.

“He must have been nuts. Anyone that would do that is nuts, right?”

“Probably,” Louis said. “Thanks. You’ve been helpful.”

Louis started back to the Impala.

“Hey, you catch the crazy bastard, tell him he owes me money!” Maury yelled from the porch.

Louis’s mind was locked on Buddy Ives as he drove. Now that he was sure Ives had been the one to leave the bloody handprint in E Building, he knew there was no choice. He had to turn Ives’s name over to Bloom.

He stopped for a traffic light and looked up. Where the hell was he? His brain had been so locked on Ives, he had driven fifteen minutes in the opposite direction from the freeway back to Plymouth.

He looked for a sign on the desolate street of liquor stores and vacant shops. Something familiar loomed in the corner of his vision. Through the swipe of the wipers, the image became clearer-a red brick building. It was boarded up and covered with graffiti, but a trace of its old elegance lingered in the slate mansard roof and the twin clock towers.

Suddenly, he knew exactly where he was. He was at the intersection of Grand River and Greenfield, staring at the old Montgomery Ward department store. Across the street was another decaying hulk-the old Federal store.

He stared at the sad buildings as a memory came clicking into high relief. There used to be a Kresges next to “Monkey Wards” and he had shoplifted candy there once.

A horn blared behind, startling him. He drove on across Grand River. Two blocks down, he made a sharp right turn.

It was a residential area of brick colonials and bungalows with bare old maples arching high overhead. He drove slowly down the deserted street, staring at the homes. So many were boarded up, a few burned out or with foreclosure windows on them. Everything looked alien to him, yet oddly familiar.

He passed a hulking red brick school enclosed in a high chain-link fence.

Jesus. He could remember. John Burns Elementary. He could remember sitting mute in a classroom and a fight on the playground.

He drove on. Then, there it was on the bent street sign: STRATHMOOR. He turned left and inched the Impala forward. He stopped. Leaning forward on the steering wheel, he stared out the windshield.

It was the house. That much he was sure of. A red brick place with a steep-pitched roof and two gargantuan evergreens guarding the front door.

It was the evergreens that he recognized. He remembered going up the snow-covered walk and how they blotted out the sun as he went between them.

Things were coming back to him now, things he had thought long lost in the shadows of his boy-brain. The long bus ride from Mississippi sitting next to a strange woman. Now he knew she was from social services, but then she had been just a fat white woman who smelled of the tuna sandwiches she ate.

Another woman’s face swam into his head. Black, thin. A distant aunt. . the person the white woman left him with. He remembered that tired black face and all the kids in her house and how she yelled at them. And how she took him by the shoulders and told him she didn’t have enough for him, too.