Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

Schroder hangs up. Before he can say anything, his phone starts to ring again. He rolls his eyes and gives an apologetic smile. I head out onto the porch where the crowd has swelled. I learn one of them is Bernard Walsh, the man who found the body. He’s wearing a shirt and tie, and either Bernard is magnetic or he loves badges because there are at least two dozen of them attached to the lapel of his suit jacket. I introduce myself and lead him further from the porch, to where there’s no angle of the view inside. We stand beneath an oak tree that’s three storeys high with a trunk the width of a compact car. It shelters us from the few spits of rain coming down. Walsh is holding a cup of tea that is half gone and looks stone cold. He’s shaken up and tells me he hasn’t seen anything like this since the war-and he’s old enough to be talking about any war in the last century.

“I mean, Jesus, it makes no sense. It just makes no sense,” Walsh says. “Herb, Herb was a good guy. A real gentleman. Who the hell would want to hurt Herb?”

“Run through it for me.”

“Run through what for you?”

“You finding him. What happened? He didn’t show up somewhere? Why’d you go inside? You always go inside, or was his door open?”

“This place, don’t you for one second think we don’t know what this is. I used to be a photographer, came out of the war and needed something to do that didn’t involve people screaming. I worked for plenty of papers, saw plenty of things. Once I had to do a photo shoot of a slaughterhouse, and the cows were lined up for hundreds of feet, and at the head of that line they were getting shot in the forehead, you know? And the cows, each time they heard that cattle bolt gun go off, they knew. They were braying and panicking because they each knew their buddies were getting killed and they were next to get butchered. That feeling is here too, not in the same sense, and maybe one day in forty years you’ll know what I mean. This place, it’s like a lottery out here, you know what I mean? All of us gambling on who’s going to be the next to go. All of us losing our buddies and knowing we’re the next to go, but slap me seven ways from stupid, the way Herb went, ah hell, we know we’re all cattle facing the bolt gun but this. .’

He doesn’t finish, he gives it a few seconds of thought before moving on, and I let him talk and burn off the tension. “We play chess against each other. There’s a few of us-we have an ongoing tournament in the community. We’re all about as good as each other, or about as bad as each other depending on who you ask. Mick, Mick was the best, but he don’t know it anymore. He don’t know much, his mind has turned to mush. Hell, he nearly choked to death a few months back on a pawn. I’ve seen people lose their minds and I’ll keep on seeing it. Herb, see, Herb lost his wife about, oh, going on maybe eight or nine years now.” He holds his hand up to his head as if receiving a psychic link, maybe to Herb’s wife, because suddenly he goes, “It was ten years. I remember now. Ten years next month. Or was it last month? Thing is, Detective, when you get to the age we are, time has this way of. . how should I say this. . well, time has a way of fucking with you.”

“So, Mr. Walsh,” I say, cutting in before he moves on to the next thought. “Why’d-”

“Call me Bernie,” he says, “everybody else does and I don’t see no reason you should be different.”

“Okay, Bernie, I take it Herb didn’t show up for the chess game?”

“He always calls if he can’t make it. We all do. You know, it’s just common sense, right? Place like this, it’s only a matter of time before we’re heading upstairs to chat with the Big Guy. Only I wish He’d picked a different time for Herb, and I sure wish He’d picked a better way for him to go.”

“What time was this?”

“Seven o’clock,” he says.

I glance at my watch. It’s now nine-thirty.

“I got here and started knocking, and when he didn’t answer, I let myself in. Normally he’ll answer, but when people don’t answer in a place like this, well, it gets your mind running, son, it makes you think it’s time to dust off your funeral suit,” he says, looking at my suit, my funeral suit. “I thought and prayed at the same time, Detective-thought he’d be asleep, prayed I wasn’t going to find him as stiff as a board in his bed. I guess. . I guess in a way the second part of that prayer was answered.”

“The door was unlocked?”

“I have a key. It was locked.”

“And the lights and TV, they were already on?”

“Yeah, Herb always watches the news, you know? He hated reporters, God, there ain’t a single journalist he’d spit on if they were on fire, except for a couple of the girls on the news at night, you know, the ones who can deliver the worst news and still look sexy doing it. Jesus,” he says, and he starts to cry, “tonight they’re going to be talking about Herb. They’re going to look just as sexy and. . and. . Christ,” he says, and he tips the rest of his tea into the garden. “I feel so old and. . and. .” he shakes his head. “And so useless.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to catch the guy who did this.”

He’s still looking down at the tea he just threw away, and at the contact of my hand he looks back up. “I’ve seen a lot, Detective,” Bernard says. “I’ve fought for this country. I’ve seen men die, good, loyal men have exploded in front of me, their goddamn guts and limbs flying everywhere. One second they’re there, the next they’re just soup on the ground.” He shakes his head. “Let me tell you this, Detective-I sure as shit felt safer in that world than I do in Christchurch.”

“When did you last see him?”

His face has gone red and he wipes at the tears. “I see him pretty much every day. It’s not like there’s much to do around here by yourself except be lonely or die,” he says, and then he smiles at the bleakness of the world before his face tightens as the loss of his friend comes crashing down around him. “Shit,” he says. “I. . I. . ah, shit.”

“You saw him today?”

“Huh? What? Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. He came over about four and we watched some horse racing on TV.” He smiles. “We like to gamble a little, not that it does us any good. I mean, sometimes we’ll place. .”

“What time did he leave?” I ask.

“What time? I don’t know. Probably around five, I guess. He had to get back for dinner. It’s an option for us, we can either have our meals provided or we can cook them ourselves. Herb was pretty stubborn that way. He felt a man should always be able to put his own food on the table. But he was getting old and he knew his limitations. He’d let them bring him dinner, but he was adamant on making his own breakfast and lunch. So he had to be back in time for his dinner.”

Herb had eaten most of his dinner, which means the person who delivered it would have been and gone, but they’re still going to be somebody we need to talk to.

“You walk with him when he left?”

“Walk with him? Why would I walk with him?”

“So he left around five and that’s it.”

“That was it, until. . you know, until I found him at seven.”

“You see anybody hanging around yesterday or today?”

“What, like somebody suspicious? People don’t tend to hang around here, son. If anything people like to stay away. Herb’s kids sure as hell liked to, just like my own do. You give them everything and this is how they repay you, by sticking you into. .”

“Herb have a run in with anybody? Any arguments?”

“Jesus, what kind of argument would you need to have to end up like that? Anyway, everybody liked Herb. Everybody.”