which he inserted in the man's satchel before sending him on his way again.
'Don't know how long he'll last,' growled Sam as we pulled away from the curb and headed north. 'I went through two guys already. All of 'em too old and sometimes too drunk. Damn! Looks like we closin' down. All I get is old broken-down cops.'
I thought of those big pistol cartridges with the fancy tips, trying to imagine what kind of horrendous wound channel a doctored slug like that would leave in its victim. Not that the plain old undoctored ones wouldn't do plenty. What Sam had done was illegal, but I wasn't going to mention it. I let it drop from my mind. Then I thought of those pushy salesmen who had bothered him before we arrived. I asked him how long they'd hung around. When he answered that it was quite a while, it set me to thinking.
As soon as we got into Lowell we headed straight for Johnny's apartment in the gray house. It was locked and sealed, and even Sam did not have the key, but all we wanted to do was lead the dog up and down the outside stairs a few times to fix the scent firmly in his mind. As soon as Popeye was led into the stairwell he began to whine and carry on. He bounded up the stairs, almost pulling Sam off his feet, and whined and scratched to get in. It was sad to see- rather like the movie of Lassie who travels all across the Highlands to sleep finally on her master's grave. We hung around the stairway for another fifteen minutes so the big pug-ugly pooch would know what we were looking for. Then we got back in the car and went over to the old blown-out factory where we'd found Andy's body in the rubble of the chimney. All the way there Popeye was fawning over Mary; couldn't get enough of her. Sam told me he was worried the dog had lost his mind.
We climbed up the rubble mound in the chimney with the big dog on a lead. He sniffed around but showed no further interest. We assumed then that neither Johnny nor his pouch had been near there. We walked into the big building itself and cruised the first floor, which was empty. The dog showed no interest and didn't even pause, except to lift his leg and leave an odoriferous sign that said in dog talk: Hey, all you cute bitches, I am a swell stud and will make you thrilled and happy. Follow this smell and you can't go wrong. P.S. You other guys beat it or I'll rearrange your face and body.
He spent a lot of time doing this routine, and growling when he sniffed a smell he didn't like. Nix on floor one.
On to floor two. We climbed the musty stairway at the end of the building. It stank of stale urine, dust, and mildew. Faint, shafts of sunlight came in through ancient grimy windows. There was no old machinery on this floor, but it was strewn with discarded furniture: ancient desks and chairs, timekeepers' booths, homemade footstools and cabinets. The rancid odors seemed to delight the dog, which didn't surprise me. Our doggies love dirty socks and underwear. Still, Popeye showed no recognition sign. On to the third floor, which contained some old carding machinery and canvas bins with dolly wheels on them for moving the wool. None of the items had seen service in a long, long time. From the far dark corners of the gloomy place came the flutter of wings hitting glass and wood, the dry skitter of rodent feet, and faint twitterings. We saw a group of old stinky matresses that smelled of vomit. Wino haven in the abandoned factory- a place of refuge from street toughs and cops. We cruised the place and struck out.
'Don't look like pay dirt, Doc,' said Sam.
I looked out of one of the windows. We were high up. I admitted to Sam and Mary it was a long shot. I knew the Lowell and state cops had given the building a going-over too. just before we started back down I noticed two more buildings that seemed deserted. They were big as well. Not as big as the mill we stood in, but big. I peeked lower and saw a wire fence separating us from them. I dismissed the whole thing from my mind. But then I saw a break in the fence which led to a bridge which was almost hidden by locust and sumac trees. The yards connected. And those other buildings were sixty yards farther away from any street. It made me think.
With a huff the giant dog was beside me looking out, his paws on the rotten sill. He huffed and puffed with heat, his tongue lolling out the side of his wide black mouth. It looked like a two-pound slab of used bubble gum.
'We goin' now?'
'Yeah, c'mon, Charlie. It's a bust. Sam, I'll buy you a beer at Johnny's old bar.'
So we left the big mill and walked out onto the cracked and buckled asphalt. Mary took the lead from Sam and walked the dog. I had them follow me to the fence, then to the opening and the bridge beyond. They protested, but I convinced them to try once more. The bridge spanned a stagnant canal once used to provide water power and barge transport. Now the water was dead quiet and thick with duckweed and scum. We walked over the small bridge in dark shade, then over gravel that crackled beneath our feet. I still carried the blackthorn walking stick, which I thumped along the ground. When we got to the door of the first building Mary announced she'd had enough of traipsing through depressing old buildings. She sat down on a concrete pier to wait. We went inside.
This building was full of machinery. Rows and rows of it, all covered with the grease-soaked lint. All of it old and fuzzy-wuzzy. It looked as if the people just stopped work one afternoon and never came back. Nobody had cleaned up. Cotton and wool waste still littered the floor, black with dirt and age. Some bobbins and spindles were still in place. Old time cards with inky fingerprints were scattered all over. We walked through the rows of frozen metal, looking at scores, hundreds of things meant and made to move: worm and drive gears, wheels, cranks, ratchets, rollers, belts, levers,
swing arms, hinges, drive shafts… all still and grease-clogged. We saw the embossed names of manufacturers on the knitting and spinning machinery: E. HASTINGS amp; SONS, MILLENOCKET, MAINE;. D.R. WHITNEY, WORCHESTER, MASS. KOEB-LENTZ BROTHERS, TORRINGTON, CONN. All still and silent.
This was it, then: the underside. Or what was left of it. This was the New England not presented in the college catalogues and travel brochures. The one hidden in towns like Lowell, Lawrence, Manchester, and Fall River. Places where there weren't colleges, lawns, and quaint inns, but factories. And in England too, in many cities with identical names that were described by George Orwell and Jack London. And places worked in by people like Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a shoe trimmer and a rope spinner who worked in factories just like these in the towns of Stoughton and Plymouth.
'Kinda spooky, eh Doc? Can't wait to get out of here and dive into a beer. How 'bout you?'
'Let's cruise the next two floors and beat it. I'm getting the creeps in here.'
It was on the second floor, almost dead in the center of all the rows of machinery, that we first heard it.
The dog reacted first, freezing and half-lifting his right front foot. His nose was lifted, and a low growl rose in his throat, the back of his neck turning dark with raised fur. We all stood still and listened. It was a distant pounding. It sounded deep and heavy, not the sound of a light hammer driving a nail. Popeye backed up two steps and raised his big head still more. The blank stare was fixed on the ceiling twenty feet ahead of us. Sam whispered to the dog and we crept forward until we were directly beneath the sound. It was a muted clanging that came at regular, slow intervals. After each clang came a softer sound, like heavy raindrops on a shingle roof.
Sam whispered: 'Somebody up there breakin' through the wall. Hammer and cold chisel, then plaster and masonry fallin' on the floor.'
'Yep. Let's sneak up there.'
'Let's not.'
'C'mon, fraidy-cat,' I said, and holding the cane up, I began a slow, tiptoeing, silent, George M. Cohan stage shuffle down; the grimy factory aisle. All I needed was a hat. I'm a Yankee Doodle daoauoaan-deeee…
Sam looked at me as if I were crazy.
I'm a Yankee Doodle boyyyyy… The song was playing slowly in my head as I crept along the floor as quiet as a cat. Right above me came a big thump. Dropped the hammer. Why? Then footsteps, slow and steady, walking toward the outside of the building. Toward the windows
… I quickstepped it to the windows and looked out. Down below, Mary was still sitting on the concrete pier, bored. She had one leg cocked up and her hands clasped around her knee, like Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel. She turned and waved, but I something made me uneasy. I realized she wasn't looking at me; she was looking ten feet above me. She waved again, smiling. There was no sound from above. I tilted open the big metal frame of the pivot window and waved down at her. She saw me and frowned. I held my forefinger to my mouth, but it was too late.
'Charlie? Then who's that?' she yelled, pointing over my head. I repeated the shhhhhh sign and motioned for her to move away, to get lost. She jumped up off the concrete and began a brisk walk through the yard. More footsteps from above, quicker this time, then back again to the windows. Mary was now out of sight. More steps and clanking of metal. Clanking, not pounding. Putting the tools in a bag? What? Sam and I walked toward the
