Robert Bennett - The Company Man

“Jack?”

“Something like that.”

“All right,” said Garvey. Then he bade her good day and went back to his car and sat, thinking. He looked at the photo of the dead man, then shook his head and said, “Christ. A kid,” and sighed.

Being a policeman of any type in Evesden meant you saw a lot of things, many strange, some funny, and plenty terrible. You armed yourself with a strong dose of black humor and used it to belittle the sights you saw, to make the tragedies and stupidities trivial and easy to handle. A friendly, joking discussion between average police, or possibly the medical personnel they worked with, would probably shock or outrage any outsider who hadn’t yet had a taste. One popular joke was to discuss victims as if they were plumbing, noting leaks and broken U-bends and pointing out the areas that needed soldering. Usually the victim wound up being a toilet in these bizarre, comedic metaphors.

But no matter what anyone had seen, no matter how many bodies they’d filed or marked off, the mere presence of a child changed things. Delivering news to families, and especially about children, aged a man in ways unseen by the naked eye. And cracking the plumbing routine about a dropped child was unthinkable. Any police who dared bandy a joke of any kind about in such a situation would probably wind up with a whaling. A murdered-child case was a curse, the worst possible event, changing the demeanor and very workings of the Department for weeks. The fraternal greetings gave way to furtive nods, and the detective stuck with it was practically considered the victim of a terminal illness. Conversations died when he came near, and he’d find himself receiving earnest condolences and whispers of good luck. One detective, Wolcott, had received a child case as his very first on the job. It had never gotten filed, and Wolcott had been removed from the Department after he was found weeping at his desk a year in, the child’s name still on the bronzed list on the wall. Garvey heard he was working a beat now, dropped back to being a regular uniform. So it went with such poisonous tragedies.

While Garvey couldn’t say if the boy, Jack, was in any danger or involved in any way, it still left a bad taste in his mouth. The man had been poor, Garvey could tell that just from looking at him, and if the old lady was right he’d made his home in the Shanties, a rough neighborhood if ever there was one. God only knew what would happen if the boy went looking for him when he didn’t come home. Abandonment was common in the Shanties, but that didn’t make it any less brutal. Garvey hoped the boy had a mother out there, and that the John Doe’s murder had nothing to do with his family.

He rubbed at his eyes and leaned his head back and sighed. After a while he slept.

He awoke with a start, sitting up at a harsh tapping noise. He peered out the window to see a patrolman standing there, half-stooped and waiting.

“Fuck’s sake,” said Garvey. “Leave me alone.”

The patrolman kept tapping. Garvey swore and pulled out his badge and slapped it up against the glass. The patrolman shrugged and Garvey rolled down the window.

“What? What the hell do you want?” he said.

“Detective Garvey?” asked the patrolman.

“Yeah?”

“My name’s Clemmons. You’re needed, right away.”

“By who?”

“Lieutenant Collins. He needs you in the Shanties. Something’s happened.”

“Collins?” said Garvey. “Why does he need me?”

“He just said to find anyone. Anyone.”

Garvey blinked the sleep away and squinted at the patrolman. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-two. He was pale and clammy and Garvey noticed his lips and fingers were trembling. He smelled faintly of vomit.

“What happened?” asked Garvey.

“I can’t say, sir. You’d have to see it for yourself.”

“Something bad?”

“You’d… you’d have to see it for yourself,” he said again.

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

“I didn’t. I’ve been driving around for an hour in this neighborhood. I just happened to find you. You want to follow me?”

“Where to?”

“On Bridgedale. It’s the trolley station, sir.”

“All right.”

The patrolman started walking back toward his little car. Garvey stuck his head out the window. “Can’t you at least give me a hint?” he called. “Something? Anything?”

The patrolman did not seem to hear him. He climbed into his car and it shook as it started and Garvey followed it down toward Bridgedale.

Three blocks in they came upon the crowd. Throngs of people stood in the street, gawking down toward the corner at the trolley station. Garvey and the patrolman tried to nose their cars through but gave up and got out to push through on foot. Eventually they came to a fence of patrolmen with batons and truncheons, nervously handling their weapons and calling to get back. Garvey pushed past them to where the trolley station steps yawned open. Down on the station floor a half-dozen uniforms and detectives were pacing back and forth, looking off at something Garvey could not see.

As he went down the stairs the stench of the trolley tunnels embraced him, a scent of sewage and coal-tinged smoke. The strange, dry breezes that always surged through the lines played with his hat and tie, prodding them this way and that. He clapped his hat on his head and spotted Collins standing under one of the stark white station lamps, nodding as a patrol sergeant gave him a bad rundown. Garvey had always hated the trolley station lights, specifically how they looked just like street lamps but somehow misplaced here, far under the earth. It was as though the designer had tried to make this strange underground normal and in doing so had made it even stranger. An average street scene, but trapped in eternal night.

When Collins saw him he said, “Oh, thank Christ.”

Garvey approached, worried. His lieutenant rarely expressed gratitude or fondness for any of his detectives. “You called for me, sir?”

Collins waved away the sergeant. “I called for anyone. But it’s a damn good thing they found you. I could use someone decent around here.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

Collins considered it. There was a queer look on his face. It took Garvey a moment to realize he was terrified. “Well,” he said. “I suppose you’d better come and see for yourself.”

Collins led him left, down through the empty station and past the deserted ticket booths and newspaper stands. It was like some subterranean ghost town, yet there at the far end was a ring of officers standing clear of something dark and still at the end of the platform. After a while Garvey realized it was a trolley. He had never seen one without its lights on.

All of the other officers were watching it silently. They kept their electric torches off as though the thing were asleep and they feared its waking. A low rumble filled the tunnel end, the faraway passing of other trolleys and trains. Garvey felt blood pumping in his ears as they walked toward it. He could see shapes and forms slumped up against the glass of the trolley, but he could not make them out. As he neared he smelled an electric copper scent that stuck to the back of his throat like a film. Blood, he figured, very fresh.

One of the uniforms shook his head as Garvey and Collins walked by. “Just came out of nowhere,” he said. “Sailing out of the dark, like a ghost ship.”

“What is it?” said Garvey. “Who’s on it?”

“No one,” said Collins. “Or at least, no one anymore.” Collins flicked on his torch and kept the beam on the dusty platform floor as he braced himself. Then he lifted it and let it glance over the trolley door. It did not show everything, but it showed enough. Garvey saw human forms slouched on the seats, red tongues sprouting from their backs or heads and running down in tendrils to spread across the seats or floor, other corpses curled around the trolley bars. Some were slumped against the glass, their skin as pale as sea foam. His eyes traced over where the crimson and rust-colored pools melted with the shadows, where the fingers and arms became motley tangles. It felt impossible to tell them apart, to distinguish where one ended and the others began. Trapped in that little trolley car, their ruined faces and figures seemed to blend into one another until they were one red-and-white mass laid out on the creaking seats. Then Collins switched the light out and they were shrouded once more.