(Day One)
I was sober.
I’d never been to Tom Holloway’s place before. Not much call for a guy like me hanging out on Ward Parkway, Kansas City’s money street. In this ritzy neighborhood, Holloway’s place still stood out like diamond earrings on a stockyard steer.
I sat in Holloway’s library. All around me were books, floor to ceiling. More books than you could count, enough that it would take a lug a lifetime to read them, and it had a fella wondering if they were all for show.
Three flicks of the match on my thumbnail brought no flame, but the sole of my shoe did the trick. My lips got busy shooting cigarette smoke rings at the bookshelves while I wondered why a man who owns the cops, the elected officials, J.C. Nichols and just about every other businessman in Kansas City would call for a small-time private dick. In 1934, Tom Holloway was God, and God wanted to talk to me.
Fifteen minutes earlier, a brute of a man had answered my knock on the place’s oversized door. His shoulders were so broad he’d have to turn sideways to enter a place built for an average Joe. He had deep-set green eyes that clashed with his carroty hair and freckles. His clothes were tailored and immaculate, though he must have weighed two-hundred fifty pounds, a butler’s suit tailored by a tentmaker.
“Yes, sir?” The palooka spoke with a refined Irish accent. I noticed a bulge in the front of his pants underneath his suit coat. I figured it was a large caliber revolver, not a part of your standard manservant’s garb.
“I’m Philip Morris. I have an appointment with Mr. Holloway.”
“Of course, sir, please come in. May I take your overcoat and hat?” I handed them over and he hung them on a coat rack made from buck antlers by the door. He asked me to wait in the foyer and trotted up a wide oak staircase. A grandfather clock that was as big as the butler kept me company, clacking out the seconds. As I waited, a young blonde in a dark sparkly dress walked past at the top of the stairs top looking pretty swell from forty feet. She didn’t glance my way and disappeared down the hall.
When the butler returned, he nimbly danced down the stairs, and even with his belt bulge, he moved as if somebody had sewed Fred Astaire’s legs on him. He led me into the library and told me to make myself comfortable.
The library looked like a rich guy’s would. There were bookshelves on three walls and two large paintings on the fourth, oak-paneled wall. I floated across plush burgundy carpet and took a gander at the paintings, both by local boys who had made good, John Curry and Tom Benton. I was working on my second cigarette when Astaire showed again. “Mr. Holloway will be a few more moments, Mr. Morris. May I get you anything, a drink perhaps?”
Now he was talking. But I surprised myself. “No, thanks,” my voice said.
“As you wish.” He turned to leave.
“Say, what do they call you?” I asked.
He stopped and turned, “Hannerty, sir. Will there be anything else?”
“Yeah, Mr. Hannerty. In the future, you might want to pack your rod in the back of your belt. Otherwise, a fella might think you were happy to see him.” His expression remained unchanged, but his emerald eyes sparkled. Or maybe it was just the light.
“Thank you, sir. Will that be all?”
“Yeah Hannerty, thanks.”
I dragged myself out of the plush leather chair and took a lap around the room. One wall held shelves of law books. But Holloway was in the construction game—and he collected politicians. Folks say the no-bid construction contracts for the Power and Light Building and the new courthouse lined both Holloway’s pockets and those of the elected officials in them. And it was said that the foundations of those projects held their share of his enemies’ skeletons—literally. So what was with all the law books?
I moved on to a shelf of fiction. There at eye level was Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the one book I saw that I had actually read. It was about rich people like Holloway. His dough didn’t come from old money like Tom and Daisy in the book. Holloway got his power and money from political favors and from building skyscrapers. Everybody knew he was not a guy to cross. I ground my cigarette in a nearby pedestal ashtray and pulled out the book. It looked new, unread.
As I flipped pages, footsteps sounded behind me. I slapped the book closed, slid it back into its place and turned to the door. The sparkly blonde strode in like she owned the place.
Her lips were shiny and blood-red, and she smiled like she just ate a canary. “Hmm…do you know how to read? Or were you just looking for pictures?”
“Both, I suppose,” I said as she approached. Her cobalt sequined dress squiggled in all the right places, and it was cut low in the front, very low.
“You the Holloway librarian?” I asked.
“No, I’m the Holloway daughter, Colleen.” She stopped in front of me, hands on hips, close enough to touch. She was tall and could look me level in the eyes but mine refused to stay there, they fell down into the pale, deep valley of her neckline.
“You one of my father’s henchmen?”
“Well, sister, I’m a man, but I’m nobody’s hench.”
She smiled at that. “So what’s your story, Mr. …?”
“Morris, Philip Morris.”
She laughed. “Like the cigarette?”
“Yeah, doll, like the cigarette.” I’d heard that one plenty. It was my father’s idea of a big joke, a joke that got tired three decades ago. I told her that I was an investigator while my eyes gave her the up-and-down. She was put together real well.
“Say, what’s the matter? Can’t you look me in the eyes?”
“Sister, that dress makes it hard for a guy to focus on your face, pretty as it is.” She wrinkled her nose. She was not angry.
“Call me Colleen,” she said. “What brings you here, Mr. Morris? Is it about Tommy?”
“Don’t know. Your father asked me to come down and have a chat. Should I know Tommy?”
She took my arm, held it firm, and guided me to a tan leather couch. As we walked, she pressed my elbow against her breast. The pressure opened the gown’s neckline even more. The view was terrific. She tugged me down next to her and said, “This is a long story. Tommy’s my kid brother.”
She said that Tommy’s twenty-first birthday – October 13th – was less than a week away, but that no one had seen or heard from him in seven days. He’d been born after Colleen’s parents thought they were done having kids. They had better things to do than raise another one, and Tommy grew up pretty wild. She laid out a few tales, some of them real good, about just how wild. Then two years ago Tommy became interested in law and settled down some. She joked that he’d spent so much time in court with attorneys that he thought he might become one himself. He got a job and took some pre-law classes at the University of Kansas City, east of the Plaza. And that was when Mr. Holloway walked in.
“I see you’ve met Colleen, Mr. Morris.” Holloway was a big, well-dressed man. He’d gone a little soft in the middle but looked as if he could still tote girders. I rose to offer my hand, but he stopped and stood over his daughter.
“Colleen, I think your mother wants you upstairs,” he said in a deep baritone.
“What’s she want, Daddy?”
“Why don’t you go see while I talk to Mr. Morris?” It wasn’t a question and the way she popped up, she took the hint.
Without offering a handshake he walked over to a dark oak desk and pulled open a drawer. “Can I offer you a drink, Mr. Morris?”
“I’ll have one if you are,” I said.
“I never drink before 5:00.”
“Me neither,” I lied.
He shut the drawer and sat down at the desk. I took the chair across from him. With elbows on his desk and hands clasped as if in prayer, he began. “My son, Tom Jr., is missing. He has been for over a week.”
“Have you talked to the police?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Holloway?”
His eyes rolled up like he suddenly found something interesting on the ceiling. He brought them back down to me and spoke slowly as if he were explaining the workings of an internal combustion engine to a schoolgirl. “To answer your question, I have not contacted them. My son has a checkered history with our city’s finest. There are some on the force who don’t think much of Tom. They have watched my lawyers and money extract him from trouble numerous times. And young Tom has an arrogance, a sense of entitlement about him.”
Holloway looked me straight in the eyes and smiled coldly. “I don’t know where he gets that.” I kept my face blank.
Holloway broke his gaze, opened a drawer and pulled out two cigars. He offered me one and I accepted. It was Cuban. I reached into my match pocket but Holloway already had a gold-plated lighter ready. We puffed a bit and the air between us grew cloudy. It was one damn fine cigar. Holloway went on.
“So you see, Mr. Morris, some in the police department might wish ill of my boy. And I must consider the possibility that if foul play is involved, well, someone on the force might be behind it.”
“Why’d you call me, Mr. Holloway?”
“You have a reputation of getting things done, Mr. Morris. And the word is you know how to keep a client’s business under wraps.”
“I appreciate the kind words. What exactly do you want from me?” I am not one to waste time with pleasantries.
“I want you to find Tom Jr., and failing that, to find what has become of him. I’m prepared to offer you one thousand dollars just to look, no strings, plus expenses. And there’s a five thousand dollar bonus if you can locate him—or discover how and by whom he has been eliminated.”
That kind of dough wasn’t coffee and donuts. I wondered if taking this job on board might be a steamer trunk full of trouble. But trouble didn’t scare me and having a big shot like Holloway on a man’s client list might do wonders for that guy’s business. At the same time, I wondered what kind of guy thinks in terms of elimination when someone may have murdered his kid?
“When did you last see your son, Mr. Holloway?”
“Last Tuesday morning Tom left for work. He arrived at the courthouse and worked the day there. Sometimes Tom comes straight home and sometimes he has a few drinks with his friends, hits the jazz clubs, and comes home late. But Tuesday he never came home at all, and no one acknowledges having seen him after he left work.”
“Where does he work?”
“He’s been clerking for the Jackson County Presiding Judge, Judge Boyd.”
“Is that Malcolm Boyd?”
“Yes, do you know him?”
“Nope. Heard of him—seems like a square guy.”
“He is. He’s a top-notch jurist and a good friend.”
I asked the obvious question: “Is kidnapping a possibility?”
“Yes.”
“But nobody’s contacted you about ransom. Is that right?”
“That is correct.”
“You mentioned Tom Jr. had some outs with the law. Any drugs or rackets?”
Holloway’s eyes flashed anger. “No,” he said. “His problems have been with booze, and his temper, and the scum he runs with.” He still glared, his shoulders hunched and his hands gripping his desk as if he might leap over it and try to strangle me.
I took a long draw on the Cuban and exhaled a wispy cloud that hovered above us. “May I ask who those scum might be?”
“Mr. Morris, if you decide to take the case, more information will be provided to you tomorrow by Mr. Hannerty. Are you prepared to accept or decline my offer now, or would you like to give me your answer in the morning? Either way, I am a busy man and must offer you good day.”
“I’m your man, Mr. Holloway.”
He opened the cigar drawer and pulled out a band of C-notes, counted out ten and slid them across the desk. “I will, of course, pay any reasonable expenses, regardless of whether you find my boy or not. Please keep careful records.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Holloway.”
“And I will expect you to keep me posted on your progress.”
“Noted.” I began to wonder if this whole deal might be lousy with trouble. But a thousand dollars with a shot at five more was a pretty fair lick.
“Come by at eleven tomorrow morning, and Mr. Hannerty will provide you the names of my son’s associates. He will answer any other questions you may have. I really must attend to other duties now.” We both stood. I ground my half-smoked cigar into his ashtray. He hung on to his.
“One last question, Mr. Holloway.” His nostrils flared as he turned. “Is it possible that your Tom ran off somewhere for a week of fun and dames?”
He nodded. “That is possible and might have been likely a few years ago. But he’s settled down lately, and Tom hasn’t missed a day of work since Judge Boyd hired him.”
“Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Hannerty will expect you at eleven tomorrow.” He turned and strode to the door. “You may show yourself out. Good day.”
I assumed he was talking to me and was set to shake on the deal but his hand was never offered.
As I walked to my car, I wondered why, if he was so worried about the kid, he’d blow this whole day off before he gave me what I needed to find the boy. Time counted if the kid had been snatched.
When I drove out of Holloway’s winding, maple-lined driveway onto northbound Ward Parkway, a black sedan pulled out from 55th street and settled in a hundred feet behind me—either an amateur’s tail or a coincidence.
Two men rode in the front seat, their black hats pulled down low. They might be trouble boys or even plain clothes coppers from what Holloway said, or maybe they were just two square citizens heading downtown. Once the Parkway caught up with Brush Creek, I began making random turns along the south side of the creek. The sedan dropped back but stayed behind me. That ruled out the squares.
I decided I’d try to catch Judge Boyd at the courthouse so I could ask him about his privileged young clerk. And I’d see if these gentlemen planned to tail me all the way to the county courthouse steps.
The sedan stuck behind me through downtown to the courthouse. I pulled my Plymouth to the curb. The car cruised by slowly. Both men looked away and the passenger tilted his hat to cover his face. They pulled over a half block down 12th Street. These guys had my attention. The judge could wait. I made sure there was no traffic and steered back out onto Twelfth. I slowed to a stop in the eastbound lane next to them, pulled the brake, reached over and rolled down the passenger side window. At the same time, I grabbed my .38 and held it low, out of sight.
“Howdy, fellas,” I said with a smile. “Can I help you boys?”
They looked at each other. Then the pug-faced passenger tipped his hat back and replied, “I don’t know. Why do you ask, Mr. …”
“Morris, Philip.”
“Oh, like the cigarette?” the chubby driver cackled at his own joke and looked to the one who had an oddly flat face.
“Yeah, smart guy, like the cigarette. You boys followed me all the way from Brush Creek. I figured maybe there was something I might help you with.”
Flat Face must have been the brains, such as they were. “Well, Mr. Philip Morris, we thought we might help you stay healthy.”
I told the two goons that I held my health in high esteem and would appreciate any pointers they might offer. They looked at each other. Then Flat Face puffed his chest up like a balloon and said, “We noticed you had some business with Mr. Holloway this afternoon, Philip. We think that it would be very good for your health if your business had been concluded with that visit and that you should have nothing more to do with the man or his family.” With a smug expression, he opened his coat and let me see his piece for emphasis.
“And who might you boys represent with this friendly advice?”
“Let’s just say we represent your family doctor,” he said.
“What a coincidence, boys, I’ve got some advice for you.” I produced some smugness of my own. “I’ve got a rod in my hand and it’s just below the window and I’m a pretty good shot. For the sake of your own health, why don’t you start up that sedan and drive away?” I wiggled the tip of the barrel above the window’s line of view. “And it would also be good for your health if I didn’t see you again. And if you should ever run into me again, you boys better be ready to tussle. Do we understand each other, gentlemen?”
The driver turned to his pal. Flat Face held both hands up by his shoulders, letting me know he wouldn’t test my aim.
“Okay, have it your way, tough guy,” he said. “But I don’t think your family doctor is going to be happy with your decision.” The driver started up the sedan and put it into gear. Flat Face pulled his hat back down, and with a grim look said, “Oh we’ll see each other again, Mr. Morris. Count on it.” He touched his hat brim and they drove away.
“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 Hall 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.