The Company Man

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Hayes awoke to the sting of alcohol in his nostrils. Everything around him was a muted roar, throbbing and pulsing. There was a cold ache where his sinuses met his throat. Then he moaned and he heard his voice faintly as though it were coming from the next room and he opened his eyes.

He was lying on a bed, surrounded by white curtains. Clean white daylight fell in rays upon the bedsheets in his lap. Through the cracks in the curtains he could see people darting past, wearing white. He guessed he was in the Hamilton, the big, well-trafficked hospital on the edge of the Shanties. It was a hospital of fairly low repute, as it saw more than its fair share of questionable wounds and the staff could be paid to keep quiet about them. It was also rumored they ran a small drug trade, though Hayes had once been personally frustrated to learn those rumors were not true.

He held his hand up in front of his face and snapped his fingers. He could hear it, very faintly. Then he checked his joints, his hands, his elbows, his knees and ankles. They seemed to be working. He checked his face and couldn’t feel any lacerations, but the linen bandages around his ears were troubling. Then he surreptitiously eased a hand down toward his crotch, found that everything familiar was still there, and lay back.

The curtain twitched. A nurse stuck her head through and said something to him but he couldn’t catch much of it. Then she checked his bandages. She nodded and leaned close and said, “You probably can’t hear well right now. One of your eardrums burst, you’ll have diminished hearing for a while but it should come back eventually.”

Hayes let loose a long string of swears. They must have been louder than he intended because the nurse recoiled slightly. Then she asked, “Is there anything you need?”

“A fucking cigarette,” he told her. She made a soundless sigh and walked away.

He lay in bed for a few more minutes before the curtain opened again and Garvey sidled in. He looked at Hayes’s head and grimaced.

“Your bedside manners are terrible,” said Hayes.

“Not so loud,” said Garvey. “Can you hear me?”

“Somewhat. Where am I? The Hamilton?”

“Yeah. You’ve been here nearly a day. You should get good treatment, they know me here. They’ll be surprised I’m not here to see some weasel or a denner with five rounds in his legs.”

“Cigarette?” asked Hayes hopefully.

Garvey reached in his pocket and took two out of his tin. First he lit Hayes’s, then his own.

“What’s going on?” Hayes asked, exhaling. “Where’s Samantha? Is she all right?”

Garvey was silent a while, thinking. Then he said, “She’s fine. That’s what they told me, at least. I missed her. They let her out before you, about a day ago.” He coughed. “You had some sort of… I don’t know. It looked like you were in a coma. It wasn’t the ear thing. You were attacked, you know, but Samantha didn’t see you catch any blows to the head. Did you fall and hit it on something?”

“I fell. Didn’t hit it on anything. I think…”

“Think what?”

That it was almost like an attack, thought Hayes, but he waved the question away. “Never mind. What was that thing? That thing we saw?”

Garvey pulled up a chair. He sat down beside Hayes and pulled his tie loose and took off his hat. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

Hayes described it, word for word. From Peggy in the jewelry shop to when they saw the twitching thing walking toward them in the street. He even described the attack he’d had, the sense of grief and sadness and fury that brought him to his knees. Garvey nodded along, his face growing wearier and wearier as he listened. At the end he said, “You shouldn’t have gone there. Once you had the name and address you should have come straight to me.”

“I should have,” Hayes said. “Probably. Yes.”

“You should have given me everything you had on Skiller the second you knew anything.”

“I was trying to help.”

“Damn it, Hayes,” he said angrily. “We could have jumped on this. I could have jumped on this. Time matters in these things, damn you.”

Hayes frowned as he looked Garvey over. The skin under his eyes was dark, like little smears of coal. His hair was oily and unbrushed and his collar was a faint yellow.

“What’s going on?” Hayes asked. “What’s wrong?”

Garvey sighed again and rubbed his face. Then he stood and took off his coat, moving slowly and unsteadily. He sat back down and stared into the linens on the bed and said, “It’s surfaced.”

“What has?”

“Our killer,” he said. “There’s been two more murders. In a jailhouse this time. Northeastern District Jailhouse.”

“Oh, God,” said Hayes, and lay back.

“Yeah. In Newton.”

It had happened two nights ago, he said. The very night Hayes and Samantha had been attacked outside Skiller’s tenement. He had gotten the call at three in the morning, just as the aching swirls of a hangover were beginning to settle in. He had woken and pulled on whichever clothes he could find, not knowing he’d be wearing them for the next forty hours, and dragged himself down to Newton, where a crowd was already forming.

Charles Denton and Michael Huffy. Two scummy little tennie weasels from deep in Dockland. Both had a long record of breaking and entering and one charge of assault. Put most of an ice pick in a cornerstore shopkeeper who had walked in on them filching cigarettes. Spent a few years in the Hill, got out for good behavior. That night they’d hopped a trolley down to Newton for the high and righteous purpose of throwing rocks and bottles at the cars and passersby, chivalrous gentlemen indeed. Then they were caught, roughed up a little after they stoutly resisted arrest, and tossed in the drunk tank at around midnight.

That was the last anyone ever saw of them. By two-thirty a.m. they were dead and no longer recognizable. Only way to tell it was them was from the front desk log books.

Garvey had walked into the jailhouse to find it was in a shape similar to that of the Bridgedale trolley. Two of the on-duty officers were completely deaf, a third partially. Garvey had followed the trail of destruction back to where the jail cell was blown in. This time a paperweight had been used to hammer off the lock. Inside had been the two winners of the evening, the lucky boys who had gone out looking to hassle some townies and instead had gotten a few worlds of hurt for their troubles.

A tin plate had been the weapon of choice for the occasion. Used the edge like an axe and bent the damn thing like it had been chewed up by a machine. Huffy and Denton didn’t have much in the way of faces afterwards, just the backs and bases of their skulls and a bit of their ears, just a bit. Garvey probably would never forget the moment when he had been slowly walking up the hall to the jail cell, making a note of each of the items found disturbed along the way, and had spotted something twinkling and golden and squatted to look carefully at the object before realizing it was a golden tooth, still stuck in the remains of most of a man’s jaw, a quarter-inch of lip smiling right below its shine.

Garvey had kept hope at first, which was dumb of him. Huffy and Denton both had unsavory records, but nothing in the way of legitimate employment. Just some idiots who had never developed brains past the delinquent days of seventeen or so. But then he had spoken to some known associates of the fellows and learned with a sinking heart that why yes, they had recently found steady work, and where else but at the McNaughton Vulcanization Plant as loaders? And most certainly, they had come into contact with the burgeoning union movement, and had become reformed, passionate men, suddenly reinvigorated and moralized upon realizing the strife of the lower classes.

“No tattoo, though,” said Garvey to Hayes. “So that’s something. Or maybe it’s nothing, at this hour I don’t know shit.”

“So the policemen in the jail didn’t see anything?”

“Same thing as the conductor. They heard a noise, blacked out. Woke up an indeterminate time later to find the place in ruins. Whatever it was, it tore the jailhouse up something fierce.” He sniffed. “There was one more thing, though. There was blood on the outside of the cell door that was broken into.”

“Not Huffy’s or Denton’s?”

“I don’t think so. Wouldn’t make sense, from that angle. I think he or she or whatever the fuck it is hurt themselves. I sent a few uniforms out to hospitals to see if there were any strange injuries. Something on the hand, probably. Nothing, of course. This bastard case won’t go down that easy, it was dumb of me to think it would.”

“How’s the public handling it?”

“Bad. Bad as hell. We’re under fire and no doubt about it. No one’s paying attention to the deafened officers, no one cares if the two bodies once lived a lifetime of sheer fucking stupidity. No, they just see two union men, dead in Newton, slaughtered under police supervision. Jesus Christ, sometimes I wish America would just shit this city into the ocean and be done with it. Harry Mills over at The Freedom is screaming his head off about it.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“Yeah. Saying it’s the beginnings of a blood feud, says that every man in a pair of brogans can barely expect to sleep well tonight. Someone found out that the two men were beaten before their incarceration. Well, of course they got beaten, Denton tried to bite off a patrolman’s fingers. They were lucky they weren’t here in the Hammy, with you. Not that they’re lucky now or anything. But that doesn’t matter. People are throwing rocks at officers out there. Shouting at us as we walk by. The Freedom isn’t alone, Benby in The Times is starting to question us, and the goddamn mayor is starting to listen. Or starting to pretend he’s listening, everyone fucking knows he’s funded by, hell, I don’t know, some suit at the Nail. They say McNaughton’s figured out a way to murder people from miles away. Murder whoever they want.” He looked sideways at Hayes. “They say McNaughton has a monster working for it.”

“It’s not a monster,” said Hayes dismissively. “If it is the killer.”

“Then what was it?”

“I don’t know. Something. But not a monster. What did Samantha say?”

“She says pretty much the same thing as you. It was like a person, a person who couldn’t stop moving. It was spotted again, you know. People said they saw a ghost, way out in Lynn. Shuddering under the moonlight and screaming, or something like screaming. From their testimonies that would have only been a few minutes before the murders.”

“That can’t be right,” said Hayes.

“It’s what they said. It crossed the city in a handful of minutes.”

“They’re wrong. It’s bullshit. You’ve chased bullshit witnesses before, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Of course. Things like that aren’t real.”

“You both saw it,” Garvey insisted. “You both heard it and were nearly deafened. It’s the same thing, whatever it is. We’re still tracking down the other thugs that tried to beat your head in but if we find them, which I doubt we will, we’ll probably hear the same thing.”

“Are you seriously considering the scenario of a boogeyman running around murdering unioners?”

“No. No boogeyman. Just something. Someone, maybe. How, I don’t know. What, I don’t know.”

“Oh, please, Garvey. Don’t be stupid.”

Garvey clenched a fist and bit the knuckle. Then he took a breath and said, “Listen, you bastard. Look around you for once. We live in a city powered by thunderstorms along with the usual coal and oil and what have you. The things your company makes here are things the entire world fucking wants. Things that can fly and never have to land. Cranes with arms and legs that can build a whole town in a week. And you. They have you, you crazy bastard. Whatever you are. I’ve lived here all my life and by now I’m willing to believe a lot.”

Hayes shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. It can still be explained. Somehow.”

“Then explain it. Explain to me what’s happening.”

“Someone’s mad. Maybe at the unions, maybe just at these men. I know you love the how and not being able to figure this one out is fucking you up but good, Garv-”

“Of course it is!” cried Garvey. “Eleven people, sorry, thirteen people drop dead within a very small space of time, no sign of resistance, no sign of alarm or of a struggle! How does that happen?”

“I don’t know yet, some sort of bomb or gas!” said Hayes.

“That makes this sound planned, and this wasn’t planned. All the evidence points to anger, to a stupid crime.”

“Not all the evidence, just everything you want to look at.”

Garvey fell silent at that. He sat down and buried his face in his hands and breathed deep.

“We have to find the link,” said Hayes. “These people were murdered for a reason, and we need to find out why.”

“The link is your company. That’s what the link is.”

“It isn’t. Or it isn’t just that.”

“You want to talk about stunning bombs and gases, who do we know who makes that?”

“I’m telling you, Brightly has no idea what’s happening. Evans, either. I’d know.”

Garvey looked at him coldly. “Would you?”

Hayes sat up in his linens. He leaned forward and glared at him. “What?” he asked. “What’s that?”

“Would you actually know?” Garvey said. “Are you still that under control, even?”

“Oh, here we are. Here, I know why I must have misheard you,” Hayes said, and he ripped the bandages from his ear. “There, now.” He cupped one hand to the bloodied side of his head and said, “All right, what was that, Donald? What was that you said to me? Because I know it wasn’t what I thought you said, I know it had to be-”

“Be reasonable!” shouted Garvey suddenly. He got to his feet, fists at his side. “You’re having fainting spells! Swilling opium at every chance you have! You forget to give me Skiller, you fucking forget, and now I’m stuck chasing more bodies and I missed something that may have helped keep my whole damn Department from looking like common thugs for your company! For your company, for your fucking company!”

“All right, you want something?” said Hayes, sitting further up in his bed. “You want to look at something? Look at Tazz! Look at the unions! If the papers are saying you’re thugs, why isn’t Tazz? Why hasn’t the figurehead for this whole damn movement weighed in on what’s happening? Or have I missed something? Has he piped up?”

A nurse rushed in, drawn by the commotion. She raised her hands and clasped the air as if she were trying to strangle out the noise itself. “Gentlemen, you have to-”

“Have I missed something in the past two days? Have I?” asked Hayes.

“-You really must-”

“Hayes…” said Garvey.

“Come on, Garv, tell me. Tell me that.”

The nurse pressed on Hayes’s chest, murmuring to sit back, to please sit back.

“Come on, Garv,” Hayes kept on. “Go on, tell me I’m wrong.”

Garvey shook his head. “All right. No. He hasn’t. He hasn’t said a damn word.”

“Not a word!” shouted Hayes. “Not a fucking word! How’d I know? Huh? How did I know that one?”

“ Please be quiet,” pleaded the nurse. “You absolutely-”

“All right,” said Hayes to her. He put his hands in the air, surrendering. “All right. We’ll be quiet. We’ll be good little boys. Now run along. Run along and go cut on someone for me, would you?”

The nurse glared at him, then turned around and stormed out. Garvey and Hayes sat back down and they both stared into their laps.

“What did you find on Tazz?” asked Hayes finally. “Tell me that. You went to Savron, didn’t you? Went up to the Hill and tugged on your guard friend’s coat, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“And what’d you find there? What’d you dig up?”

“Almost nothing,” admitted Garvey. “Which wasn’t what I wanted.”

He had gone there the day Hayes and Samantha had seen Mr. Skiller’s lodgings, he said, just before the new murders. He’d surprised Weigel, who said he never thought he’d see Garvey again. They’d once worked Robbery together, way back when Garvey was just cutting his teeth and they both thought being a cop would be grand fun. But Weigel had found the realities and complexities of police work a little too daunting, and so had taken up a job as a guard for the state, as he found that work much more direct and satisfying. According to the records, Weigel had been stationed at Savron when Mickey Tazz first got thrown in.

Which is where the problem came in. Weigel had heard of Tazz, naturally. Everyone knew a little about him. But he’d been stunned to hear any news that Tazz had been at Savron at all, let alone when he was keeping watch. If anything, Weigel had said, Tazz was there before him, years before him, before anyone here, because that’d be something you’d hear about, wouldn’t it?

Garvey had agreed and then produced a bottle of whiskey, and the two men sipped and bullshitted each other. Eventually he’d persuaded Weigel to check and they both walked down to the records in the basement. Weigel, slightly drunk and dubious of Garvey’s suspicions, reluctantly began digging, and after a little less than twenty minutes they found what Garvey was looking for, to Weigel’s amazement. Michael Tazarian, a happy denizen of Savron Hill from 1912 to 1917, South Sector C, Cell 145, under Corporal Dobbs. Who, of course, Weigel barely knew of. The man had retired two years ago, he said. He had no idea where he’d be, they weren’t exactly buddies.

From there the file was nothing but framework. Nothing but scraps and locations. Behavior reports, none. A bare handful of appeal hearings and even those pretty skinny. Physical reports, nonexistent. Tazz’s stay in the Hill had been a quiet one.

“No one’s that clean,” said Garvey. “No one passes through Savron and leaves that tiny of a paper trail.”

“No,” said Hayes, thinking. “No one ever does. Think there was anything missing?”

“I can’t say. Had all the essentials. It was weird, though. Weigel asked the other guards if they remembered him. Some said they did, a little.”

“But they weren’t sure.”

“Not sure, no.”

“Hm. I’ll want those records, if you can get them. Give them to Sam for me. We’ll store them somewhere for further examination.”

“Why?”

“Skeletons in the closet,” said Hayes. “Everyone has a few misdeeds in their past. And if those records turn out to be lying, then Tazz’s must be pretty sizable, wouldn’t you say?”

“How are you going to come at it?”

“By asking him,” Hayes said simply.

Garvey laughed. “He’s in hiding. You said it yourself. No one knows where he is. How do you plan to crack that?”

“You leave that to me. What are you going to do?”

“Get what I can on Skiller from Samantha. She’s going to be turning it in at Central later today. Then I’ll work that and I’ll keep working the trolley and the tennie murders. Just keep working it until I’ve worked it to death and then I’ll take the corpse apart. And yeah, I’ll catch other murders in the meantime. Pile them up if I have to. Can’t work them, this is priority.”

“What will your squad think of that?”

“What they usually think. That I’m fucking odd. For working alone and working with you, and working directly under Collins. And they won’t like me for it, but what are you going to do.”

“Hm,” said Hayes contemplatively. “You know, I remember the first time I was quite impressed with you, Garv.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes. That rifle robbery down close to Blanton. Old man had been shot three times and someone spotted a boy running away with an ancient Winchester. Fucking cowboy gun. But you had no other witnesses and nothing to go by. So you trawled every gun shop in town, legal and otherwise. Took you a few weeks, and I don’t know how you kept it as quiet as you did, but you did. So you got word of a Winchester belonging to some wharf rat down at the docks, something he had taken out to show off to the other firearm fans, and when you couldn’t win a warrant you sat on the house in the freezing cold, day and night, for four days. And then the little bastard tried again. Caught kicking in the door of some old biddy’s house, cowboy rifle in hand. He folded like a wet napkin once you sat him down in the cells. Then you caught a cold and were bedridden with a fever for a week after. I thought you wouldn’t make it. Remember that?”

“Yeah.”

“That was good. Good police work. Just working it to death, something always shakes loose, yes?”

“Sometimes. Other times not.”

“Think something will shake loose here?”

“I don’t know.” He took his hat and ran a finger along the brim. Then he said, “Thanks, by the way.”

“For what?”

“For identifying my John Doe. For finding him and his boy. I appreciate that.”

“All part of the fun.”

Garvey stood and made to leave, then he stopped and looked back at Hayes from the edge of the curtain, eyes hooded and wounded all at once.

“What?” said Hayes.

“You know, if you stopped chasing the dragon for a while you’d do a better job,” he said.

“Fuck you,” said Hayes. He turned his face away.

“You would, you know.”

“If I didn’t take my medicine I wouldn’t be able to work. My head would burn up.”

Garvey nodded, thinking. Then said, “No. It’s not that.”

“Fuck you. What do you know?”

“I know that you were going to the dens long before you ever had an attack,” said Garvey. “So it must just mean you don’t care about the work that much.”

Then he walked away and left Hayes to sit in his bed. It may have been his ears but the sound seemed to die away until everything was silent.