The Devil's Own Rag Doll Read online

  I had not been used to making words about something like that, even though I’d seen worse, and plenty of it. The girl was dead, and any thought of making a happier life for her would have to be put to rest, too. Part of me heard Bobby quietly closing the door behind us, and another part thought, Nothing will be simple again for a long, long time.

  CHAPTER 2

  The day had been too long and too hot, so I smoothed my hair back with my palms and pressed my white handkerchief over my forehead and nose to wipe off the oily sheen that had collected. As I sat in the car with Bobby on the long circular drive of Roger Hardiman’s mansion, I could see stiff-postured shadows moving across the great windows.

  “Listen, Pete, try to be polite in there,” said Bobby. “You have to know how to talk to people. Just let me take it. Let me do the talking.”

  I felt lousy enough that I wanted to stab someone with my bitterness. “I guess this means I won’t ever see my thirty-five bucks,” I said.

  “Jesus, Pete, don’t say anything about that. We’ll be lucky if we keep our jobs after this.”

  “That girl was out of luck before we came anywhere near that place,” I told him.

  “You’re not getting the point here, Pete. It doesn’t matter what we could have done. That girl is dead and we’re mixed up in it. If Hardiman decides pull the rug out from under us, all he has to do is give the word to Old Man Lloyd and we’re finished. Finished.”

  “All right, Bobby,” I said. “Don’t think I don’t feel bad about the girl. I feel like hell about it. But Hardiman can shove his money up his ass if he thinks I’m going to take the heat for it. He should have been looking after his own. Some big shooter if he can’t keep track of his own little girl.”

  “All right, all right, I hear you,” said Bobby. “Let’s just go in and see if I can smooth things out a little bit.”

  By sticking with Bobby, I was walking into a mess. I just shrugged and put my hat back onto my head. She’s gone, I thought. All the way gone.

  Since the heat of the day hadn’t yet settled in like it would later in the summer, the evening had brought a cool breeze off Lake St. Clair. I thought that maybe the moneyed folks here in Grosse Pointe had managed somehow to bring the cooler weather with them when they moved out of Detroit. Downtown, the high buildings and parking lots and wide paved streets seemed to trap the heat in a way that the lush lawns of the Pointes did not. I was not envious, exactly, of the big homes and the fancy automobiles. It was too much work and trouble to maintain all of it. But I’d take the money without the mess; money would let me live like I wanted to.

  We walked over the cobbles of Hardiman’s drive and up the steps to the vestibule. Bobby lifted a shaky hand toward the knocker. The doors opened inward suddenly, and a well-dressed man with a medical bag brushed past us. He didn’t even have to look at us to decide that we weren’t worth looking at. Inside, a colored servant woman looked at us with bright eyes.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  Bobby said, “We’re—”

  “Let them in, Louise,” boomed a deep voice from within.

  She stepped back from the door and dropped her head a bit, but stole an oddly curious glance at my face as I passed. When I turned to look at her, she met my eye and smiled a little with her mouth—but kept the same look of bright interest in her eyes, like she was looking to remember. In truth, since I’d never had a servant, I didn’t know how to take it. Was a servant supposed to look you in the eye like that? So I gave her the dead-eye and turned away.

  I took in the place all at once. This is what she had to think of as a home, I thought. The glittering chandelier, the wide, sweeping staircase, the dark wood paneling, and the rich leather furniture made me think it was a put-on, a mockup like a set from Gone With the Wind. But I knew that this house was the real thing, and much older than the motion picture. She couldn’t even put her feet up in a place like this without worrying about wrecking something.

  “Step this way, detectives,” said Roger Hardiman, who stood at a set of double doors leading to his library.

  As Bobby and I stepped through the doors, I looked Hardiman over. He was like an aging Ivy Leaguer, his blond hair gone to dull straw and traces of gray, pushed back in pretty waves from his forehead. His skin was red from too much drink and, I guessed, too much worry about getting somewhere. He was not quite as tall as Bobby but cut a better figure. His suit was cut precisely to his flat shoulders, and the trousers broke neatly over his shiny wing tips.

  We all walked to a circle of leather armchairs and sat down. Hardiman sat down, too but got up immediately and walked to a cabinet to fix himself a drink.

  “So,” he said, “Swope, maybe you can tell me how I’m going to explain all this to my wife.”

  “Well, sir, first let me say that you have my most heartfelt sympathy, and I—”

  “Swope, you ass, you’re not a friend of mine! I don’t look to you for sympathy! What I want to hear is how, in a city like this, with all the law enforcement we have, and with all the legal apparatus in place, all the industry and all the commerce, how could such a thing have happened to that little girl?”

  “Well, I—”

  “You understand that Jane was our only daughter and the youngest of our children. My wife and I still have our two sons, whom we love dearly, but a girl—try as you might not to have favorites—Jane was the apple of our eye.” Hardiman raised his tumbler and sipped, keeping a steely glare on Bobby.

  I set my jaw and sank back in my chair, watching intently. That was how they got you. From the moment you walked in the door, the money on one side of the table made it so that any blame to be passed around was going to fall your way. It never mattered that you hadn’t before that moment played any part in it. Even if you were in on the same side with the money, as long as they had it and you didn’t, you could never make it an even game.

  And money was worth more than that. Hardiman had to be a good bit older than me, but his skin looked young, aside from the alcohol damage. There was a soundness to his teeth and his bones and a clarity to his eyes that brought home to me what might be bought with money. It was easy to imagine that the rich were not different, but I noted Hardiman’s way of talking, how he controlled what was coming out of his mouth, how it sounded so full but gave away nothing. Maybe it was the real advantage of a good education.

  Bobby drew in a deep breath. I could see that he was rattled, and yet there was always a certain shrewdness to him. He began to speak slowly. “It’s a messy business, sir. A tragedy, I would say. But I can say, at least, that the people I’ve called in to take care of it will act with the greatest discretion. And Detective Caudill and I will get to the bottom of it, you can be sure.”

  Hardiman sucked the rest of his whiskey through the ice and set the tumbler down. “Think of what you’ve done so far as the last botched job you’ll be allowed.” He stopped for a moment to judge how his speech was hitting us. “Now, I’ve lost a little girl, and this grieves me deeply. I’ve invested so much in Jane’s upbringing. But there is also a war to be won, and I’m sure you know how crucial Lloyd Motors is to the effort. So it should go without saying that you and your—your pirate friend here must find a way to perfection of effort from this point forward. And I’ll hold you responsible if some sort of justice—”

  A muffled commotion from the foyer cut off the rest of his blather. Raised voices struck the doors like dampened blows, and then the doors opened suddenly. A woman I guessed to be Mrs. Hardiman came in, followed by Louise, the servant, who was flustered now, her lips pressed thin. Bobby and I stood up.

  “Dear, you must introduce me to our guests.”

  “You should rest,” said Hardiman. “You shouldn’t be walking.” He stepped toward her, his jaw set, his blue eyes glittering. “Louise will help you to your room.”

  She waved him off and flounced into a chair, her eyes bleary. I could see that the doctor had underestimated her constitution.

  “Fix
me something, will you, dear?” she said. She sat like a shaky ballerina at the edge of her chair and regarded Bobby and me. She passed right over Bobby, but when she looked at me, something like a tight school of fish or a flock of pigeons angled in her eyes. She was angry, she was amused, she might have cried—all at once. She said, “The police, are you? I’m Estelle Hardiman.”

  “Well, ma’am, I’m Detective Robert Swope, and this is, may I introduce my partner, Detective Caudill.”

  “I see. Sit down, please. Please. Good. Louise, just go.” She fluttered her thin fingers at Louise. “Close the door behind you.”

  Hardiman brought her a drink, Scotch on the rocks, watered down a bit.

  She said, “So you’re the gentlemen who found my daughter?”

  Bobby looked at Hardiman.

  “My husband tries to keep things from me,” she said. “One of the many things he does not do well.”

  “You’ll understand that my wife is not herself tonight,” said Hardiman. “She is usually more reserved.”

  Mrs. Hardiman stood up and said, “I carried Jane for nine months. And delivered her breech. You see, she was a difficult child from the moment she was conceived.” She choked down a bitter laugh, kept it locked inside. “You detectives don’t know much about childbirth, I suppose. It isn’t often brought up in polite conversation, at least in mixed company. But you see, I am a woman who insists on being treated with respect. I believe in marriage as a partnership. Roger doesn’t keep things from me, because he knows I’d make his life a living hell if he did.” She teetered and looked over our faces, then pulled a slim silver cigarette case from somewhere in her dress. She put her hand on my arm, leaned close, put a cigarette to her lips, and murmured, “You look like a man who could give a woman a light.”

  I raised my eyebrows and slowly shook my head. I pulled my left hand from my pocket and tipped the palm upward, empty, making sure she took a good look.

  Bobby stood up and fumbled with his lighter until the lady managed to catch the flame. He sat down gingerly and rubbed his thumb over the silver case, looking for a place to cut into the conversation.

  “Well,” said Mrs. Hardiman, “my little girl is gone. Taken from me by a madman, I suppose.”

  “Estelle,” said Hardiman, “perhaps liquor isn’t the thing just now.” He made a halfhearted motion to take the glass from her.

  “It’s just the thing,” she said. “Nothing else will do.” Her rings clacked on the tumbler as she tipped it back and sucked out a mouthful of whiskey.

  I watched her delicate throat bobbing, watched the movement of her blue veins beneath the pale whispery skin. She might still have passed as beautiful but seemed to have lost her vitality unevenly—bits of flabby flesh contrasted with the odd dazzle in her eyes, and she had quick way of moving, even with the influence of whatever the doctor had given her. I moved my eye slowly back and forth between Hardiman and the woman.

  Mrs. Hardiman glanced at me, her eyes just shy of control. “Oh, dear, I’m afraid Mr.—Cudgel, is it? Mr. Cudgel doesn’t approve. Do you think I’m entirely without feeling for my daughter, Mr. Cudgel? Do I seem cold to you?”

  “Ah,” said Bobby, “I’m sure Detective Caudill doesn’t have anything to say about that.”

  “I venture to say, Mr. Cudgel, that you can’t begin to appreciate what’s been lost here. Am I right? Do you know yourself?” She was a slender woman, and small, and half broken down, but still she turned something my way that made me think she knew how to wreck things.

  I met Estelle Hardiman’s eyes for a moment without letting her pull anything out of me. Then I turned my head slowly and stared blankly at her husband. You could see that she had more than a little something on him, and you can bet I was taking careful note of how he was handling her.

  “It’s a delicate situation,” said Bobby. “It’s going to take—”

  “Shut up, you idiot!” Hardiman walked to his desk and shook the ink down into his fountain pen. He scrawled a note on a half-sheet of letterhead, folded it, and handed it to Bobby. “Detectives,” he said, gesturing toward the doors, “I suppose you can find your way out. It’s been a long day, and I should see to it that my wife gets her rest.”

  We stood up and walked toward the library doors. Bobby placed his hat on his head, then turned to the woman and lifted it slightly. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said. I kept walking.

  Darkness had fallen, and a chorus of crickets sang out from all over the green, leafy estates of Grosse Pointe. I was thinking about Hardiman’s liquor cabinet as I slid into the car. It was obvious that he got a lot of use out of it. Since I couldn’t make much out of the situation in the house, I kept from thinking about it. It was like stepping into a whole other world, where the usual rules for dealing with people had been warped, where gin might not be gin and whiskey not whiskey, where names on bottles might not say anything about what was inside. It had only been from lack of imagination that I could not see before how things might have been hard for Jane, why she might have wanted to get out of the Hardiman house.

  Bobby sat down next to me and opened the paper. “Grosse Pointe Shooting Club, noon,” he read.

  “Well,” I said bitterly, “it’s a cinch they won’t be feeding us any lunch over there.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Friday, June 11

  Morning? No sun yet peeping around the shades, I thought. What kind of jackass would telephone in the middle of the night like this?

  I stumbled from bed, working my jaw, stretching my neck. Rubbing the eye in a bad attempt to see my way to the telephone in the living room. I picked it up. “Yah?”

  “Jesus, Pete, how much sleep do you need?”

  “Bobby.” I stretched my mouth open painfully as wide as I could.

  “Time to wake up, pretty boy. Things got deeper after you cut out for your beauty sleep.”

  “Is it five o’clock like I think it is? Anything new happen that you couldn’t wait till seven to tell me about?” My jaws slowly loosened from the night’s grinding.

  Bobby said, “Listen, Pete, this is serious. The Old Man himself called Captain Mitchell last night, wants to know what the hell’s going on.”

  “Who called? Jeffries?”

  “You think I’d’ve been up all night if it was just the mayor? The Old Man. Jasper Lloyd himself called, cussed Mitchell out till his ears were bleeding.”

  “So?”

  “So that means you’d better get your ass moving. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. I hung up the phone and made a quick breakfast: coffee and four fat slices of toast with butter. Then I ran a rag over my face and combed my black hair straight back. I worked up a little lather and brushed it onto my cheeks for a quick shave. Then I considered myself in the mirror: pale, a good build but getting thicker around the middle, jowls getting heavy, teeth okay, a soft pink empty space where my eye had been. With the maimed hand I squeezed the water from the rag and carefully wiped and dabbed away the goop that gathered each night in the cavity.

  As I waited on the front steps for Bobby, I considered it lucky that school had just let out for the summer. I wouldn’t have to suffer the Catholic schoolgirls as they passed me on their way to class, wouldn’t have to endure their discomfort at my presence. They were good girls, for the most part, living in their own little world. Something like me, I guess, they didn’t usually have to think about. Something older, and hard, and cut up some. Young Jane Hardiman had only laid eyes on me the one brief time, but she wasn’t put off, and had even reached up to touch my face. It was an odd thing to do. Thoughts of the girl drew me on to a crashing remembrance of the trouble we had stumbled into.

  I drew a deep breath and then let it pass through clenched teeth. Maybe it’s better to live alone, I thought. For me at least—better not to have to haggle about small things every day. Imagine Hardiman having to deal with that woman every day of his life. You could go through a fortune just figuring ways to ke
ep yourself away from her. I found myself at thirty-five with regret and a bit of relief. Never married and starting to get to the age where it wouldn’t be expected anymore. I could think of it as one less responsibility to shoulder, one less obstacle between me and a simpler life.

  Simplicity.

  I tried to think of the exact time I’d crossed over the line to where I could no longer keep everything straight in my head. Maybe as a young man I’d just been better at ignoring all the things outside my immediate circle of concern. I’d done all right for myself, even during the lean years before the war. Now it seemed that for every problem I worked on with my full attention, two more popped up, so that I was always behind in what I needed to do. It was a terrible feeling, waking up in the morning already in the hole.

  And now, burned into my mind’s eye: a young rich girl I never really knew, violated, jagged end of a cracked broomstick jutting out of her. Skin torn from her neck by a garrote. But what clenched at my gut was the way she had been set up like a picture show on the sofa, with her legs spread open toward the door, so that whoever walked in would get it right in the eye. You could do a bad thing because you were stupid or weak or afraid, sure—in every city, every day, it was bound to happen. When I saw that girl, though, something cold got into me, like I had come down with the plague.

  What did it matter to me? After all, I knew nothing about her, and I realized I was a dope for hoping she’d recognize me. I tried hard not to take it personally, like a family thing. But I could not. It wasn’t just the doing of it, it was the rawness of the show, like spit in the face.