The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (74 page)

“Karas?”

“Fifteen grand, Howie, at least. Maybe more. These aren’t ordinary; they’re something special. Sure, Karas – I didn’t tell you everything, because it didn’t matter then, when I said I thought maybe he had some racket – not dope. He handles stones, only stones. Gonzales might have heard of him, might have been trying to contact him through Mame.”

I thought about fifteen thousand dollars, and I thought about going back to Chicago. Billie said, “Mexico, Howie. In Mexico we can live like kings – like a king and queen – for five years for that much.”

And stop drinking, straighten out? Billie said, “Howie, shall I take these to Karas right now so we can leave quick?” She was flushed, breathing hard, staring at me pleadingly.

“Yes,” I said. She kissed me, hard, and gathered them up.

At the doorway, hand on the knob. “Howie, were you kidding when you said you were in love with a girl named Honor in Chicago? I mean, is there a real girl named that, or did you just mean—?”

“I was kidding, Billie the Kid.”

The door closed.

Her heels clicked down the wooden hall. I poured myself a drink, a long one, and didn’t bother to chill it with ice cubes. Yes, I’d known a girl named Honor in Chicago, once, but – . . .
but that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead
.

I drank my drink and waited.

Twenty minutes later, I heard Billie’s returning footsteps in the hall.

When I got through telling the sergeant at Central Homicide about it, he said to sit tight and not touch anything, that somebody would be right over. I told him I wouldn’t even breathe any more than was absolutely necessary and put back the receiver and went into the reception room to take another look at the body.

He was at the far end of the couch, slumped in a sitting position, with his chin on his chest and an arm hanging down. A wick of iron-gray hair made a curve against the waxen skin of a high forehead, his half-open eyes showed far too much white, and a trickle of dark blood had traced a crooked line below one corner of a slack-lipped mouth. His coat hung open, letting me see a circular red stain under the pocket of a soiled white shirt. From the center of the stain protruded the brown bone handle of a switchblade knife.

I moved over to lean against the window frame and light a cigarette. It was one of those foggy wet mornings we get early in April, with a chill wind off the lake and the sky as dull as a deodorant commercial. Umbrellas blossomed along the walks eight floors below and long lines of cars slithered past with a hooded look.

I stood there breathing smoke and staring at the dead man. He was nobody I had ever seen before. He wore a handsomely tailored suit coat of gray flannel, dirty brown gabardine slacks spattered with green paint and an oil stain across one knee, and brown bench-made shoes. His shirt was open at the throat, showing a fringe of dark hair, and he wasn’t wearing a tie.

The rummage-sale air of those slacks bothered me. This was no Skid Row fugitive. His nails had that cared-for look, his face, even in death, held a vague air of respectability, and they didn’t trim hair that way at barber college.

I bent down and turned back the left side of his coat. The edge of a black wallet showed in the inner pocket. That was where I stopped. This was cop business. Let the boys who were paid for it paw the corpse.

A black satin label winked up at me. I put my eyes close enough to read the stitched letters in it. A C G – in a kind of Old English script. The letters seemed too big to be simply a personal monogram, but then there’s no accounting for tastes.

I let the lapel drop back to the way I had found it. The dead man didn’t seem to care either way. Something glistened palely between the frayed cuffs and the tops of the custom-made shoes. I said, “Huh?” out loud and bent down to make sure.

No mistake. It made no sense but there it was. The pale white shine was naked flesh.

The dead man wasn’t wearing socks.

Detective Sergeant Lund said, “Right smack-dab through the old ticker. He never even had time to clear his throat. Not this guy.”

His curiously soft voice held a kind of grim respect. He straightened up and backed away a couple of steps and took off his hat and shook rainwater from it onto the carpet and stared thoughtfully at me out of gunmetal eyes.

I moved a shoulder and said nothing. At the wicker table across the room the two plainclothes men were unshipping tape measures and flash-bulbs and fingerprint kits. Rain tapped the glass behind me with icy fingers.

“Your turn, Pine,” Lund said in the same soft voice.

“He was like that when I came in,” I said promptly. I looked at my strapwatch. “Exactly thirty-two minutes ago.”

“How’d he get in here?”

“I usually leave the reception room unlocked, in case I have a client and the client cares to wait.”

One corner of his mouth moved up faintly. “Somebody sure wanted this guy to wait, hey?”

I shrugged. He took a turn along the room and back again, hands deep in the pockets of his topcoat. Abruptly he said. “It says on your door you’re a private dick. This a client?”

“No. I never saw him before.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know.”

“No identification on him?”

“I didn’t look. The sergeant at Central said not to.”

He seemed mildly astonished. “A man dies in your office and you don’t even show a little healthy curiosity? Don’t be afraid of me, Pine. I haven’t chewed off anybody’s arm in over a week.”

“I obey the law,” I said mildly.

“Well, well,” he said. He grinned suddenly, and after a moment I grinned back. Mine was no phonier than his. He snapped a thumb lightly against the point of his narrow chin a time or two while thinking a secret thought, then turned back to the body.

He went through the pockets with the deft delicacy of a professional dip. The blood, the knife handle, the sightless eyes meant about half as much to him as last week’s laundry. When he straightened again there was a small neat pile of personal effects on one of the couch pillows and the dead man’s pockets were as empty as his eyes.

The wallet was on top. Lund speared it, flipped it open. The transparent identification panels were empty, as was the bill compartment. Shoved into the latter, however, were three or four cards. Lund looked them over slowly and carefully, his thick brows drawn into a lazy V above his long, pointed nose.

“Credit cards on a couple Loop hotels,” he said, almost to himself. “Plus one of these identification cards you get with a wallet. According to what it says here, this guy is Franklin Andrus, 5861 Winthrop Avenue. One business card. It calls him a sales representative for the Reliable Amusement Machine Corporation, Dayton, Ohio. No telephone shown and nobody listed to notify. Any of this mean anything to you, Mr Pine?”

“Sorry.”

“Uh-huh. You ain’t playing this too close, are you?”

“I’m not even in the game,” I said.

“Initials in his coat don’t agree with the name on these here cards. That must mean something, hey?”

I stared at the bridge of his nose. “His coat and somebody else’s cards. Or his cards and somebody else’s coat. Or neither. Or both.”

His mouth hardened. “You trying to kid me, mister?”

“I guess that would be pretty hard to do, Sergeant.”

He turned on his heel and went through the communicating door to my inner office, still carrying the wallet. He didn’t bother to shut it, and through the opening I could see him reach for the phone without sitting down and dial a number with quick hard stabs of a forefinger. What he said when he got his party was too low-voiced for me to catch.

Two minutes later, he was back. He scooped up the stuff from the couch and said, “Let’s talk, hey? Let’s us try out that nice private office of yours.”

I followed him in and drew up the Venetian blind and opened the window a crack to let out the smell of yesterday’s cigarettes. On the outer ledge four pigeons were organizing a bombing raid. Lund shoved the phone and ashtray aside, dumped his collection on the desk pad and snapped on the lamp. I sat down behind the desk and watched him pull up the customer’s chair across from me.

I got out my cigarettes. He took one, sniffed at it for no reason I knew of and struck a match for us both. He leaned back and hooked an arm over the chair back and put his dull gray eyes on me.

“Nice and cozy,” he said. “All the comforts. Too bad they’re not all like this.”

“I could turn on the radio,” I said. “Maybe get a little dance music.”

He grunted with mild amusement. All the narrow-eyed suspicion had been tucked out of sight. He drew on his cigarette and blew a long blue plume of smoke at the ceiling. Another minute and he’d have his shoes off.

He let his gaze drift about the dingy office, taking in the Varga calendar, the filing cases, the worn tan linoleum. He said, “The place could stand a little paint, hey?”

“You drumming up business for your day off?” I asked.

That got another grunt out of him. “You sound kind of on the excited side, Pine. Don’t be like that. You wouldn’t be the first private boy got a customer shot out from under him, so to speak.”

I felt my face burn. “He’s not a customer. I told you that.”

“I guess you did, at that,” he said calmly. “It don’t mean I have to believe it. Client getting pushed right in your own office don’t look so good, hey? What the newshounds call a bad press.”

I bit down on my teeth. “You just having fun, Sergeant, or does all this lead somewhere?”

“Why, we’re just talking,” he said mildly. “Just killing time, you might say, until the coroner shows up. That and looking over the rest of what the guy had on him.”

He stuck out an untidy finger and poked at the pile. Besides the wallet, there were several small square transparent envelopes, some loose change, a pocket comb, and a small pair of gold tweezers.

He brought his eyes up to stare coldly at me, his mellow mood gone as quickly as it had arrived. He said harshly, “Let’s lay off the clowning around, mister. You were working for him. I want to know doing what.”

“I wouldn’t bother to lie to you,” I said. “I never saw the guy before in my life, I never talked to him on the phone, or got a letter from him. Period.”

His sneer was a foot wide. “Jesus, you must think I’m green!”

“I’m not doing any thinking,” I said.

“I hope to tell you, you aren’t. Listen, I can book you, brother!”

“For what?”

“Obstructing justice, resisting an officer, indecent exposure. What the hell do you care? I’m saying I can book you!”

I didn’t say anything. Some of the angry color faded slowly from his high cheeks. Finally he sighed heavily and picked up the necktie and gave it a savage jerk between his square hands and threw it down again.

“Nuts,” he said pettishly. “I don’t want to fight with you. I’m trying to do a job. All I want is a little cooperation. This guy just don’t walk in here blind. You’re a private dick, or so your door says. Your job is people in trouble. I say it’s too damn big a coincidence him picking your office to get knocked off in. Go on, tell me I’m wrong.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” I said. “I’m saying what I’ve already said. He’s a stranger to me. He could have come in here to get out of the wet or to sell me a slot machine or to just sit down and rest his arches. I admit he might have come here to hire me. It has happened, although not often enough. Maybe somebody didn’t want him spilling any touchy secrets to me, and fixed him so he couldn’t.”

“But you never saw him before?”

“You’re beginning to get the idea,” I said.

“Go ahead,” he said bitterly. “Crack wise. Get out the office bottle and toss off three inches of Scotch without a chaser and spit in my eye. That’s the way you private eyes do it on TV eight times a night.”

“I don’t have an office bottle,” I said.

The sound of the reception-room door opening and closing cut off what Lund was about to say. A short plump man went past the half-open door of the inner office, carrying a black bag. Lund got up without a word and went out there, leaving me where I sat.

Some time passed. Quite a lot of time. The murmur of voices from the next room went on and on. Flash bulbs made soundless explosions of light and a small vacuum cleaner whirred. I stayed where I was and burned a lot of tobacco and crossed my legs and dangled my foot and listened to the April rain and thought my thoughts.

Thoughts about a man who might still be alive if I hadn’t slept an hour later than usual. A man with mismatched clothing and no socks and an empty wallet. A man who would want to go on living, even in an age when living was complicated and not very rewarding. A man who had managed for fifty-odd years to hang on to the only life he’d ever be given to live before a switchblade knife and a strong hand combined to pinch it off.

I went on sitting. The rain went on falling. It was so dark for April.

After a while the corridor door opened to let in two men in white coats. They carried a long wicker basket between them. They passed my door without looking in. There was more indistinct murmuring, then a young voice said, “Easy with them legs, Eddie,” and the basket was taken out again. It was harder to carry the second time.

Sergeant Lund walked in, his face expressionless. He sat down heavily and lighted a cigarette and waved out the match and continued to hold it. He said, “Andrus died between eight-thirty and ten. The elevator man don’t recall bringing him up. What time did you get here?”

“Ten-thirty, about. Few minutes either way.”

“You wouldn’t happen to own a switchblade knife, hey?”

“With a brown bone handle?” I said.

He bent the used match and dropped it in the general vicinity of the ashtray. “Seven-inch blade,” he muttered. “Like a goddam bayonet.” He put the cigarette in a corner of his mouth and left it there. “This is a real cute killing, Pine. You notice how Andrus was dressed?”

“No socks,” I said.

“That isn’t the half of it, brother. New coat, old pants, fancy shoes. No hat and no topcoat. In weather like this? What’s the sense?”