In this chapter, we meet a personality from Law's past. We also explore another memory about David.
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NOTE: Check out my other stories in the Sci-fi / Fantasy Section Crown Vic to a Parallel World From Whence I Came Stolen Love
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Wasted Life a Law Edwards Mystery by Sam Stefanik
19 The Last of David
A short walk later, Herbert Marshall led Bea and I into a beige box with a grey-painted steel table in the center and three grey-painted steel chairs. I guessed that the same enemy of color had decorated all the police stations. Marshall called the beige box `Interrogation Room Two.'
I thought the man looked good for a sixty-four-year-old cop. His rotund figure, bushy white beard, and gold half-glasses gave him a disturbing likeness to the very benign Christmas figure Bea had compared him to. He was happy to see me and greeted us boisterously.
"Edwards," he boomed when the door was shut, "you still a fag?"
Marshall's teasing made me feel like I'd been tossed back in time to when I reported to him as a detective. I still hated the word he used, but I long ago learned that Marshall said what he said out of friendship and not out of hate. I answered him the way I might have done when we still worked together. "I'm as queer as you are fat, Captain." I said and grinned at his teasing fun.
"That's pretty queer." Marshall smiled back at me and patted his big belly. "You ever find out who beat up those rednecks in '29?"
That was another joke between us, a dark one. Marshall knew very well who beat up those rednecks. Again, I answered him like I might have done years before. "Probably the same guy who killed that rapist in '27."
"Maybe." Marshall said as the nature of his smile soured a little.
He changed his manner to become apologetic and directed his attention to Bea. "I am sorry Miss Arlott, you must excuse two old friends for carrying on. I haven't seen Law in several years. He was a good detective...is a good detective. You're lucky to be working with him. What can I do for you?"
We told Marshall the story of Preston's death, and how it was ruled a suicide by an idiot. We also explained what we found out about the horserace prediction system. The old man agreed with my line of reasoning, that gamblers or mobsters had likely killed Preston, but he couldn't offer any help to identify who may have done it. He shook his head at me.
"I don't know anyone that kills with a .22. That's not much gun. You have to be good to kill with a little gun like that. It could have been a professional from out of town, but they wouldn't have had time to call in a professional that fast. He may have already been here, but that would be a big coincidence. I'll check around, look in some open cases and some unsolved stuff. If there's someone new around, I want to know about it. I may be in missing-persons, but I still have my hand well into the detective's squad. If you turn something up, or if you need real help, you call me."
Marshall gave his condolences to Bea and promised to have a word with the supervisor of the 41st district about the conclusions of Little Nicky the idiot. We said `goodbye' and left.
Soon, Bea and I were back on the street, walking west with no destination. I'd pinned my hopes on some help from Marshall. Since he hadn't been able to offer any, I wasn't sure what to do next. I brooded as we walked and hoped for inspiration.
Bea broke the prolonged silence between us. "Mister Marshall knows that you're a homosexual and doesn't care." She said as a question.
"He's one of those rare people. Marshall isn't even a racist. He takes everyone as they come and judges no one except on whether they do the right things or not. He's a very broad-minded man."
"That's nice, more people should be like him."
"I agree."
Bea asked a fresh question about Marshall; one I was less comfortable with. "What was that about rednecks and a rapist?"
I paused before I said anything because I wasn't sure how to answer Bea's question. I wasn't sure if I could answer it. I gave her part of an answer and brooded about the rest. "I can't tell you about the rapist. That secret doesn't belong to me."
I considered whether Bea could handle the story about the rednecks who'd brutalized David. I remembered that she hadn't liked the way I'd treated the counter man at the hotel Preston died in, but she hadn't objected when I kicked Allen Harris' feet from under him. I decided that what Bea and I had been through together earned her the right to an answer for her question. I told the story.
"There were four men. I called them rednecks, but they were just guys. These four men were members of a club that called themselves `decency crusaders.' In the evenings, they'd dress in black hoods and patrol the streets of the Whitman neighborhood near the waterfront. They'd beat on anyone they didn't like. All four of them attacked a man I knew because he was like me. They beat him so badly, he had to be hospitalized.
"I found out who they were and hunted them down, one at a time. When I found them, I returned the violence they'd given the man I knew. I told Marshall before I did it. When the beatings were reported, he wrote the cases off as unsolved muggings."
Bea was shocked. "That kind old man didn't stop you?"
I felt bad to dispel the `kind old man' myth, but it had to be done. "Trust me, any resemblance Herbert Marshall may have to Santa Clause is purely coincidental. That man is a career policeman and a realist. He knew my friend would never get justice. As far as the courts are concerned, a fag deserves anything that happens to him, including death. The only way to even the score was for me to do what I did. What should I have done?"
"I don't know." Bea admitted and retreated into her thoughts.
Her silence gave me time to think. Old memories loomed large in my mind.
David was in the hospital for almost a week. They released him on Thursday morning. I saw him back to the relative safety of Madam Mitch's and told him to stay in his room.
Mitch had used her underworld connections to find out who had brutalized David. I planned my revenge for after David was safely out of the city. Mitch didn't like that I'd threatened her, and she told me as much when she gave me the names. I apologized with no sincerity. Mitch knew the apology was bullshit, but she appreciated the respect implied in the fact that I'd bothered to offer it. After that, she and I settled into an uneasy peace.
With David safe, I ran several errands. I bought a train ticket for the next day to Billings, Montana and got five thousand dollars from the bank, plus a couple hundred for David to live on until he found a place to buy. I picked up some new clothes for him, a suitcase, another pair of suspenders from Chalmers Leathers, and brought everything to him. David and I ate dinner together in his room while he talked about Montana like a kid would talk about Candy Mountain. At sundown, I left so he could rest.
I was back early the next day. David was cleaned-up and dressed in a white buttoned-down shirt and black slacks that were held up by the new suspenders. Aside from the purple shiner he still wore, he looked like a tall Mormon getting ready to go on a pilgrimage. We took a taxi to Broad Street Train Station, found the right platform, and sat to wait.
David thought my urgency at getting him out of Philadelphia was silly. He wanted to stay around for another week or so. He thought it would be better if he could hole up at Mitch's to heal before he took the trip to Montana. I think he also wanted time to show me his gratitude for the money I'd given him.
I was tempted to let him, sorely tempted. I assumed that David's gratitude would involve some kind of physical appreciation. I wanted David. I wanted him badly, but I knew that if I touched him, my touch would soil him. I didn't want to do that, and the longer he stayed, the greater the chance became that I would. I needed him to leave. I wouldn't be easy in my mind until he was safely out of the city and away from its violence. I included myself in that violence. I insisted David leave as soon as he could, and he gave into my demand.
That's why he and I sat together on the platform as I smoked and as David idly rubbed his rough hands together. The callouses on his hands added a sandpaper scratch to the murmur of voices around us. David asked a question that sounded like it had been on his mind a while. "Law, why do people do things like what they did to me? Why is the world...I don't know, mean?"
I knew the answer to his question, but I hated to tell it to someone so young and pure. I felt like I was getting ready to disillusion a child. In some ways, that's exactly what I was about to do. I told David what my life had taught me. "The world is mean because the world is full of people, and people are full of hate."
David recoiled at my answer. He rubbed his hands together faster and harder like he wanted to start a fire between them. "Not everyone hates." He objected.
"Yes, they do. Anything men don't understand, anything different or extreme, they fear, and what they fear they hate. Not all of them lash out. The ones that don't, they vent their hate with prejudice."
David shook his head, rubbed his knees, and pressed his palms together again. "That's a terrible way to look at the world."
David was right, but it was the only way I knew. I even agreed with him. "You're right, it is a terrible way to look at things, but it's the truth. Man is the only animal that commits violence against others because of the way he feels about them. When a fox kills a rabbit, it's not because the fox hates the rabbit. The fox is hungry. The rabbit doesn't even hate the fox for killing it. It will fight for its life, but not with animosity. Men are different. Men hate."
I rested my voice and thought about how to explain my point in a way that someone as sheltered as David could grasp the concept. Some statistics I'd learned long ago presented themselves in my memory.
"Did you know that forty million people died in The Great War? Can you imagine that? Forty million people, all dead because of fear, ignorance, and hate. There are less than two million people in this city. That means every man, woman, and child in Philadelphia would have to die twenty times to equal the senseless waste of that conflict. And what did anyone win? Not a damn thing. The whole world bought new maps and went back to business as usual."
I finished with the world and made the violence more personal for David. "What did the men who hurt you get from it? Nothing. I could almost accept their actions if violent acts were like bullets that could be spent. If one man needed to get beaten-up so four others could release their evil; it still wouldn't be right, but the outcome would be better. At least the world would get something positive for the violence, but that's not how it works. The men who attacked you, they still hate the same way they did before, and they will commit the same act over and over until someone stops them."
I drew on my cigar and blew the smoke across the platform. I grew tired of the misery of hard facts and tried to end my story on a positive note. "It's good you're getting away from here. Go to the wide open. Live for yourself and only let people who love you come close. Keep everyone else far away."
David didn't say anything. I didn't know what he thought of my words because he didn't tell me. Silence settled between us, and time passed. The minutes and seconds ticked by until five minutes after the train was due. Five minutes late, the train panted into the station and stopped. I stood from the bench to offer to carry David's suitcase for him.
David struggled from the bench onto his feet and said something crazy. He raised his hazel eyes to mine and said something so mad, I barely understood the words. "Come with me." He said.
I thought I'd heard him wrong. "What?"
He said it again. "Come with me, Law."
For a split-second, everything inside cried out for me to accept his offer and get on the train. My rational mind stepped in and squashed the impulse. "I can't."
"Why not?" David demanded in the harshest voice I'd ever heard him use. "What's keeping you here? Do you care about anything here? Does anyone here care about you? Come with me and we can build the farm together. Out there, no one can judge us if there's no one around. It'll be our own world, our own kingdom. We'll name it after the madam and you and me can both be kings there."
I almost wept at the generosity of what David was asking. I almost wept at the offer of himself. Instead, I saw all the reasons the arrangement he suggested would never work. I raised the most important objection of all. "You don't love me, David. You don't even know me, not really. I'm not a good person like you think I am. I wouldn't be good for you."
"I'll learn to love you." David promised.
I refused again. "No. It's impossible. Please don't ask me again."
David forced a lonely smile onto his face. The smile he wore was almost as sad as the one he'd worn the morning after the night I'd met him. He dropped his suitcase and grabbed me in a hug. That hug was the first time we'd had physical contact. David wrapped his long, muscular arms completely around my body and crushed me against him. I dropped my cigar from my hand and returned the embrace very carefully because I didn't want to hurt his body that hadn't healed yet.
The train whistle sounded, and the conductor shouted, `all aboard.' David tightened his arms around my body and whispered in my ear. "I'll never forget you, Law. I'll never forget the hero I met in the Kingdom of Keystone. The greatest hero of all, MY Hero of Law and Order." David broke away from me. He grabbed his suitcase and ran for the train with as much speed as his injured body would allow. He boarded without looking back.
I lowered myself onto the bench and waited. The train snorted steam and chugged. The great, linked drive wheels spun against the rails. They gained traction and propelled the train from the station and took David from my life. I waited until he was long gone. I waited until I couldn't feel the ghost of his embrace against my body anymore. Then I left.
Bea cleared her throat. The sound snatched me from my memory. "I guess you did what you had to, and those men got what they deserved."
I was glad she could see it the way I saw it. "There just wasn't any other way."