Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery
Read Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery Online
Authors: Dallas Murphy
L O V E R M A N
Also by Dallas Murphy
Lush Life
Don't Explain
Apparent Wind
Rounding the Horn
To Follow the Water
Plain Sailing
To the Denmark Strait
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 Dallas Murphy
ISBN: 1941298036
ISBN 13: 9781941298039
Published by Brash Books, LLC
12120 State Line #253
Leawood, Kansas 66209
For Marie
M
y thanks to Marie Murphy, Donald Wollner, Barbara Sirota, Joslyn Pine, Louis Serrante, Terry Williams, Vincent Fantozzi, Ray Hayes, Pete McNamara, Barbara Weted Fay, and especially Eugenia Leftwich.
ONE
M
ORE THAN MOST anything else, I liked to do nothing. Peace to me was to pull my Morris chair over to the western window, prop my heels on the sill and, entranced, listen to several hours of selected jazz while I watched the tugboats, masthead lights of red and green, maneuver on the Hudson. I'd smoke a thin bone for concentration and soar with giants out over the black river. King, Count, Duke, Prez, Major, Fats (both), Chu, Trane, Diz, Chick, Sonny, Bird, Bud, Cootie, and their colleagues—I've flown with them all. My dog Jellyroll shares my enthusiasm. When the wattage kicks in, he curls up on his Adirondack Spruce Bough Dog Bed and licks his parts with contentment. My taste in jazz is eclectic, but I believe Jellyroll digs bop best of all.
That's what we were doing when they pounded on my door with evil news, and contentment vanished for a long, long time. I peeped out the view hole. Two men, one huge and bullnecked, stood in the hall. The shoulders of their coats were rain-darkened, and water dripped from their hat brims.
"Arthur Deemer," demanded the huge one.
"Yes?"
"Police officers."
That's what I thought. If these two showed up at your Halloween party, you wouldn't wonder what they were supposed to be. The giant flashed his shield at the peephole and said, "We want to ask you some questions."
Questions? What kind of questions? Surely hard-bitten types like these didn't waste taxpayer dollars busting indolents like me for smoking a bone over "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things."
"Are you going to open up or what?"
Surely
. I opened up.
"Detective Cobb," the giant said about himself, "and this is Detective Loccatuchi," a sensibly sized man who nodded at me, a gesture that, when compared to the look on Cobb's face, seemed warm and giving. I nodded back at him. Then they sniffed the guilty air. It seemed to hit them like a felonious assault.
"I, uh, was just listening to some music. Jazz. You know, very American. John Coltrane. Elvin Jones on drums, McCoy Tyner on—"
"You wanna turn it down," Cobb shouted over a soaring tenor solo.
"Down?" I shouted. "Sure. Absolutely."
I don't keep a lot of furniture in the living room. Just my Morris chair. I like to keep the acoustics clean. Jellyroll sniffed the arresting officers' shoes while the officers looked with unmasked suspicion at my bereft living room.
"You gonna turn it down or not?"
"Oh. Absolutely." I hopped to it.
"Hey, Dave," said Loccatuchi, "check this dog. He looks just like the R-r-ruff Dog."
"Huh?"
"The R-r-ruff Dog. From TV."
"That
is
the R-r-ruff Dog," I said helpfully.
"No shit?"
"None," I swore.
It's best I make this clear up front: I live off my dog. I'm not the breadwinner here. Jellyroll is. Jellyroll is the exclusive spokes-dog for R-r-ruff Dog Food, his happy face printed on millions of boxes distributed nationwide, not to mention the TV commercials in which Jellyroll says, "R-r-ruff! The
full-flavor food!" He's also an actor. He played the title dog in
Blinky's on the Case
, a Disney rip-off that drew them in by the droves. We'll continue to pull down big bucks from that one for years to come. It was just sold to cable television. Jellyroll smiles, that's what makes him commercial. We pass a toddler and his mom on the street and the kid will say, "Look, Mommy, that dog's smiling." That smiling face has made us financially untroubled, but sometimes I suspect that Jellyroll doesn't entirely respect me.
"Wait till the wife hears about this. She loves the R-r-ruff Dog," said Loccatuchi, now down on his knees to ruffle Jellyroll's ears.
Cobb clearly didn't like dogs any better than he liked jazz. "We're from homicide, Mr. Deemer. Manhattan South Homicide."
"Homicide?"
"A Miss Billie Burke was murdered tonight." Just like that he said it, no color, no attitude one way or the other, routine. "I believe you knew her."
I sagged into the Morris chair. My knees just packed up on me.
"Did you know her?"
I heard his question, but it came from a long way off, like an FM radio station fifty miles down the road.
"You were lovers, right?"
I nodded.
"Do you know her residence to be 47 Sullivan Street?"
"Yes. Is that where it happened?"
"Looks like it. A neighbor called when he observed water running under Miss Burke's front door. We entered and found her tied hand and foot, you know, like hog-tied. She was drowned in her bathtub. Tell me, Mr. Deemer, did she have strange sexual habits?"
"No."
"The neighbors say there was a lot of loud talk in her apartment. A lot of people coming and going on the stairs tonight. Was she a professional?"
"A what?"
"Prostitute."
"Of course not."
"What about drugs?"
"No drugs."
"Where were you tonight?"
"Come on, you don't think—"
"It's just routine," said Loccatuchi in a voice that had some feelings to it.
"I was here."
"You sat around all night and blew dope by yourself, that it?"
I began to cry. Jellyroll came over and set his chin on my knee to ask what the matter was. Dogs have emotional lives far more complex than calluses like Cobb could ever envisage. He stood there in his raincoat and watched me cry as if I were just another of life's annoying little delays, like crosstown traffic.
"You were lovers, you and her?"
"Yes. I just said so."
"How long?"
"About three years, but she left a year ago."
"You lived together?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Here."
"Why'd she leave?"
"She got sick of being with me." That wasn't exactly true, but it was all I could manage.
"So you're saying you haven't seen her in a year?"
"No, I've seen her. We have lunch." I looked forward each week to those lunches, but often Billie had to cancel because of commitments. I seldom had any commitments.
"We found your picture on her dresser."
"You did?"
"Does that surprise you?"
"Yes."
"Why did you pay her the sum of"—he consulted a black leather notebook—"of $2,158.68 each month?"
"For Jellyroll."
"What?"
"This dog. Jellyroll."
"Is that his name?" asked Loccatuchi. "Jellyroll? That's cute."
"He used to be Billie's dog."
"That's a lot of money for a dog."
"This dog makes a lot of money."
"You mean on TV?"
"And movies," said Loccatuchi. "Blinky."
"So how'd you arrive at the sum of $2,158.68?"
"That's what Billie wanted. I think it was a kind of a joke."
"I don't get it."
"Because it's not a round number."
"So how long have you been paying her that figure?"
"A year."
"Since she left?"
I nodded.
"That adds up to real money as the time goes by."
I saw what he was driving at, the bastard. "No, it doesn't," I said. "Jellyroll makes more than that most every week."
"Wow," said Loccatuchi.
"Who was Miss Burke seeing over the last year?"
"I don't know."
"Do you know anyone with reason to kill her?"
"No."
"A neighbor told us she had a father in Hollywood, works in the movie business. That right?"