“When I make a locate, I check and follow through. This could be my subject.”
“Was,” said the big man with a sigh.
“He’s not here?”
“He’s dead, Conacher. He knocked himself off a couple of hours ago. Jumped into the ice, off Riggs Channel, about a half mile from here. Stiff as a mackerel when we dragged him out.”
CHAPTER 3
“Come back in an hour,” the cop said “The county dicks will be through with Vicki by then.”
“Where’s the body?”
“Town Hall. Behind the main building’s the morgue.”
I drove slowly down the block feeling the black tide of tragedy sweep over me. On the lawn there was a wrought-iron sign, the work of a craftsman, an original creation featuring a rooster crowing. A black rooster. The symbolism grabbed at my throat, setting up a panic in me. Yet I didn’t move the car any faster. At the edge of the town, beyond the railroad tracks, the morgue held the answer to my question. There was a reluctance in me to learn that answer. Death stood over the ridge of bare trees, waiting for me. In the quiet road, the white cloud fell faster, a curtain of mystic gloom. I was seeing Mike against the background of snow. I was remembering my old friend in all his better moments, during the good times when we were the closest companions. I struggled to hold fast to the brighter pictures. I fought to keep Mike Smith alive in my mind, praying that the corpse in the morgue might be somebody else.
But the bloated figure on the slab was Mike, all right.
His head was lacerated around the cheeks and brows, where his drifting body had struck the pilings. Or had somebody hit him before he drowned? Had somebody pushed him into the canal?
“He got the cuts after he drowned,” the attendant said. “The coroner said he jumped in on his own. But he was loaded with liquor, all right. He must have been cockeyed when he decided to end it all.”
“They’re calling it suicide?”
“They’re thinking of it.”
I didn’t stay to argue. The sight of Mike wouldn’t allow me the pause. The morgue was a black hole in a black building, a closet for the dead; a chamber of horrors for me now. I sat in the car, staring into myself, working the angles, listening to the sound of my heart pounding against my ears. He couldn’t have killed himself. Not Mike Smith. It didn’t figure for a man of boyish joys to leave his world that easily. Mike would have held tight to living. Mike would have clawed and clutched at this mortal coil, fighting the hard fight before going away. His perpetual youthfulness allowed for no sudden panic, no sudden yearning for limbo. I saw him clearly in the bright lenses of my inner mind, the same fresh personality, the same lad I last joked with a year ago.
The car was becoming a deep freeze. I had sat for too long. My foot found the starter and my iced hands wheeled me down Chadwick Lane, to the main road and the town’s gas station.
“Sure I knew Mailer,” said the station owner. “Too bad about him knocking himself off. Nice, friendly guy, he was. Full of pep. Full of ginger all the time. Never figured him to be the type wants to kill himself.”
“You knew his wife?”
“And how. Funny thing now, she always did the driving.”
“What’s funny about that?”
“Don’t happen much, does it? Mailer’s wife always took the wheel. Always came in to gas up. He didn’t seem interested in the car much. Way I see it, maybe he wasn’t mechanical-minded.”
“He wasn’t depressed lately?”
“Hell, no. How could he be? With a wife that good-looking? He’d have to be crazy.”
There was a lone bar and grill on the main drag, a place festooned with anchors and ship’s equipment, rigged in the conventional pattern for appealing to the nautical in the neighborhood. It was labeled The Porthole. The owner stood behind the bar, a wordy character equipped with a snapshot memory and a recording-machine ear.
“Mailer?” he asked himself. “Sure I knew him. Not good, but I knew him. Steady customer, he was. Him and his wife.”
“How steady would that be?”
“This place gets a family crowd, you know what I mean? All of them locals, only once in a while somebody’ll come in off the road, but not often. The town people, they’re at home here. Take a look around. See what I mean?”
I saw what he meant. The bar was crowded to the rails and the small restaurant beyond showed no bare spots in the eating department.
“Good food does it, too,” said the owner. “Brings ’em back every time. This Mailer guy and his wife, they’re no different from the rest. I got hundreds just like him come in for a regular dinner once a week, maybe on Saturdays, maybe on Fridays when I got the fresh-broiled fish. On that charcoal rack over there.”
“Mailer was in here tonight?”
“Sure he was, him and his wife. What a dame that one is.”
“They always came in together?”
“Every time. Looked to me maybe they didn’t have no friends in town. Not real close friends, like for drinking.”
“He ever come in alone?”
The owner scratched his chin and rubbed the bar with his rag, trying for an honest memory. “Not that I recollect. The way I see it, those two moved around like they were real happy. You know what I mean? Or maybe they didn’t trust each other out of sight, as the saying goes.”
“You ever hear them fight?” I asked.
“Don’t make me laugh. Quietest people I ever saw. Even with a load on.”
“Tell me what happened tonight.”
He leaned over the bar and shouted: “Herb!”
One of the waiters stuck his head out from behind the kitchen door and then came hurrying through the tables—an eager type. “Talk to this man here, Herb,” said the owner. “You were making drinks when the Mailers came in tonight, right? Tell this man what you told the county dicks. I was out with the little woman, buying us some fresh crabs for tomorrow’s blue plate dinner. Every Friday, like I said, we get a big fish crowd—”
“About tonight,” I asked the waiter. “When did they come in?”
“Pretty early, it was,” said the waiter. “Came in for cocktails, a couple of Scotches, the way they always did. But Mailer looked like he had a load on when he came in. You know how it is, you can tell with some kinds of drinkers.”
“How could you tell?”
“Why, he didn’t act friendly, like he always did. He took his wife over there to their table, where they always sat. They were talking it up together, real fast. And mean. The dame was kind of frowning at him and yakking it up, which was funny because I never did see her talk. At all. So I figured maybe she had a couple too, which is none of my business anyhow. But I noticed him when he got up to leave. He rolled out of here after only four Scotches. He was real lit then. The blonde sits for a while, staring at the door. She really looks mad, too. Then she got up and asked me for the name of the taxi station down at the railroad. She went to the phone and called a cab and left after that. She looked mad enough to spit. That was all. That was the beginning of it and the end of it. The poor sucker must have drove down to the dock and jumped in after that.”
“His wife,” I said. “You heard her call the cab?”
“Si Flamm drove her. Oh, she called the cab, all right. Si drove her home.”
“She say anything at all to Si?”
“Not a word. You know something, that dame’s queer. I never did see anyone quiet as her. Well, still waters run deep, as the feller says.”
“The feller also says something about a pot calling a kettle,” I told him. “You ever hear that one?”
“Oh, sure, mister, sure.” The waiter licked his lips on it, tasting the sour juice of his inner regrets. “Listen, I don’t know her at all. Not even her first name.”
“Maybe it’s all for the best.”
I drove back down Chadwick
Lane, muttering sly curses at the typical yokel state of mind about drama in the small towns. They would enjoy the plight of the beautiful blonde for the next six months. They would taste the sweet flavor of it on their gossiping tongues, speculating what went on with the Mailers, inventing theories, creating spicy yarns, working the thing over from tongue to any listening ear until the case of the drowned man became a legend to which they would point with a kind of pride. Vicki would have to leave town soon.
The house was almost dark when I arrived. The same small lamp glowed in the front window. I detoured up the garage path and took a right turn on the small open porch, holding myself in close to the wall to escape the freezing wind. Then I was up close to the big picture window that faced the marshes.
The room inside was like something out of a furniture ad, a dream room fixed to sell coziness and warmth and the joys of domestic living. On the far wall, an ancient coach-lamp glowed with an amber tint, the only light in the place, but just enough to promote the unreal quality of the scene before me. Scene? There was only one actress on this suburban stage. A blonde girl lay on the maple couch opposite the fireplace, her body gracefully draped against the colorful cushions. In the dramatic gloom, the pale light made her blonde hair shine and sparkle with storybook sheen.
This would be Vicki. She was dozing, her head deep in a pillow, her classic body covered only with a red housecoat, the belt loose at her hips, the neck wide open so that my eyes couldn’t help but pause to appreciate the niceties of her torso. Her right arm hung limp over the edge of the couch. She breathed regularly, lost in the deep pit of sleep. Lying that way, she was an impossible beauty, a dozing model, a blonde made for the peace and quiet of the mattress. I wondered whether she had dosed herself with liquor to attain her peaceful nap. Only a few hours ago Mike Smith had died. How could she rest so easily? I thought of the recent past, the rigors of meeting the county dicks. Somebody might have given her a sleeping pill. A friendly local doctor? Or did she do the job herself, by way of the liquor cabinet?
My mind shivered and shook in rhythm with my freezing body. The wind whipped at me here. It was time for movement. A quick burst of energy took me around the side of the house and up the back steps. The kitchen door was unlocked and I eased myself inside. The little kitchen stank of a combination of smells—unwashed dishes and uncleaned ash trays combined with the tight, ripe odor of trapped air.
There was a door to the hall on the right side of the kitchen, a small corridor that brought me in view of the living room. The blonde still slept. From this side of her I could see the glass on the carpet, under her limp hand—and the bottle of liquor. She had dosed herself with Scotch.
The room on the south side of the little cottage drew me with an uncompromising attraction. In this corner, from the outside, a layout might exist for a practicing artist. The window was large and low and the light would be good for drawing. It would be the best corner in the house for Mike. From here he could look out over the marshes, enjoying the outdoors as he labored over his artistic chores.
I was right. The room breathed with creative endeavor, a hideaway replete with all the equipment an artist like Mike Smith might gather around him. The large drawing board was placed directly before the window. It gave me a chill to recognize the pattern of Mike’s personality here. He had always preferred a simple bridge lamp for working at night. There was a wrought-iron lamp pulled close to the side of his table. Mike favored the fine arts as decoration for his intimate workshop. In this room there were several fine reproductions tacked on a cork bulletin board on the wall opposite the artist’s seat, a large Toulouse-Lautrec poster, a magnificent Goya etching and a startling abstraction by some fresh and recent talent.
My eyes searched the room for something more definite, some clue that would scream Mike’s name to me, some intimate link to my memory that would settle the bubbling unrest in me. I opened the door to the hall all the way so that the glow from the living room might light this den for me. Then I went to work in the small desk, rummaging quickly, running my fingers through the accumulated debris most artists seem to gather in their work. I abandoned the desk and went next to a long, low cabinet under the window. Here were stored the papers for finished work, the illustration boards and ink Bristols found in every cartoonist’s supply chest.
But my roving hand found something else. There was a large portfolio buried under the stack of sheets. I slipped it out and opened it on the rug near the hall.
Mike Smith! Now there could be no doubt of his identity here! I was staring down at a bundle of proofs from the famous Caleb Straight comic strip, a collection of dailies and Sunday pages from out of the past. He had saved these, the way all artists clip and file samples of their work. Even in the gloom, the smooth and effortless style of Mike’s drawing came through to me. He had done a masterful job working for Luke Yorke.
I was about to return the clippings to the portfolio when my free hand felt another group of drawings down there. These were done on Bristol board, an original presentation. Another comic strip? I lifted the top drawing off the pile and studied it in the hall.
Here was the first day in a new comic strip adventure, the preliminary cartooning for another syndicated effort. Out of the distant past, I remembered the method of presentation for this sort of venture. The figures were skillfully inked to a finished perfection in each panel. But there was no lettering in the balloons, only the feeble and tentative penciling to mark the spot for the professional letterer to do his job. The pattern of action in the figures held me. Who was the main character? The cute and sexy little wren in this, the very first day of the strip? It would be following the rules of good story construction to feature the hero or heroine here.
I didn’t have time for further analysis.
Because Vicki was stirring on the couch in the living room. I heard her shift her weight and I moved quickly back into the studio to replace the portfolio.
Then I slipped through the kitchen. Behind me, Vicki’s movements were more deliberate now. I heard her yawn, a silky sigh, loaded with sleepiness. I didn’t wait for further symptoms of her coming alive.
I ran around the side of the house and leaned on the bell.
Vicki greeted me drowsily.
“No more,” she said, brushing her yellow hair away from her eyes. “Please, I can’t talk to you now.”
“Listen,” I said, “I’m an old friend of your husband’s.”
“A friend? From where?”
“From way back. I knew him when.”
She managed a weak smile, more a reflex than a meaningful grimace. She would be the type to smile quickly—a happy girl, a blonde who skimmed the surface emotionally. She brushed the stray locks away from her eyes again. They were slightly pink from tears, the sort of discoloration that shows easily on the fair-skinned. She stepped back to let me in, not knowing how to send me away.
“Sit down,” she said. “I can’t see you this way.”
Her body was a masterpiece of planning, even under the casual red robe. In the quick moment of her leaving, in the flash of her hips and legs across the room, her whole frame sang of sex, an easy, rhythmic movement that would set the wolves howling on any street in the world.
Then she was gone and I was alone and wandering the small room, not knowing where to begin with my little game. The cottage was furnished in impeccable taste, old colonial all the way, but not the Antique Shoppe kind. Someone in this household had lived with art for a long time. I wandered the room, scanning the bookshelves, the long line of art books surrounding the fireplace—the Abrams tomes on the ancients and the moderns, the portfolios of Klee and Miro and Picasso. On the pine-paneled wall opposite the picture window somebody had hung a gallery of paintings, all the best reproductions out of the most modern museums, plus a few originals done in a flat and impressionistic scheme. They were signed M. M., views of the shore and the sand that sparkled with fr
esh, original color.
The lowest line of shelving caught my eye. Here were the source books of the cartoonist’s trade; the collections of Arno and Steig, Webster and Canif. There was a complete set of Best Cartoons of the Year and a few dozen important research volumes usually found in the homes of working comic men.
I opened an old edition of Best Cartoons and found a spidery inscription on the title page:
To Mike, one of the best pen-and-inkers on earth—
With great affection,
Larry Lariar
Vicki returned.
“Nice collection of books,” I said.
“He loved them. He loved to keep collecting books.”
“Did he paint these pictures, too?”
“On our honeymoon,” Vicki said. She had on a tight and teasing blouse, too brightly orange for the whitish sheen of her hair. She might have been a Scandinavian queen if she had known how to dress the part. She had the frame of a peasant, but the ensemble she wore emphasized her generous curves, stopping your eye at the important points of interest. Nothing on earth could ever screen the innate womanliness of her figure. She would look sexy in a strait jacket. “Down in Florida,” she was saying. “Sarasota.”
“How long ago was that?”
“I guess it’s just a year,” she said. Some fickle memory rose up to make her look away from me. She sniffled into her handkerchief. “Just a year next week.”
“And then you came here to live?”
“I thought you said you knew him?”
“I said it.”
“You didn’t know we were married?”
“I haven’t seen him in a long time.” She went to the window and opened a maple chest and held up a bottle. When I nodded she mixed me a drink. I said, “None of Mike’s old friends have seen much of him.”
“Mike?”
“Your husband,” I said. “Mike Smith.”
Kiss and Kill Page 20
