The Collected Ed Gorman Volume 2 - Moving Coffin

by Ed Gorman

  I had just closed and locked the door of my apartment, and was about to hang my suitcoat in the front closet, when I heard it. Sometimes odd sounds identify themselves readily, other times you have to guess what they are. This was the former. The unmistakable noise a bureau drawer makes when it’s being closed with no particular finesse.

  About two seconds after I heard it, I walked right into the coffee table in front of the couch. That made a louder sound than closing the bureau drawer did.

  Somebody was in my apartment, somebody who hadn’t heard me come in apparently, but who now knew for sure that I was home.

  I wasn’t feeling brave. What I decided to do was get to the door, run down the hall to the stairs and then get outside. The intruder had only two ways to get out. He could take the same path I did or he could climb out the bedroom window and go down the fire escape.

  About the time I was punching in numbers on my cell, he’d be escaping. But so be it. That was better than confronting him, whoever he was.

  But before I got three steps toward the front door, I found out who he was.

  He came out of the bedroom with a .45 in his hand. I’m no gun expert but the paper runs a syndicated gun column once a month. When I run out of other stuff to read in the john, I turn to the gun column. The only thing left after that is Religious News.

  He wore a white button-down shirt and chinos. His blonde hair, graying at the edges now, was expensively cut. There was something private school about him. But then there always had been. It had always made him stand out in the Chicago jazz clubs where I listened to him play. He’d been damned good. I hoped he wasn’t as good with a gun as he was a horn.

  “Hi, Sam. You probably don’t remember me.”

  “Sure, I do, Manning. You were always in the clubs with Osborne. Sniffing around all those chicks who used to laugh at you.”

  “You just talked yourself out of an invitation to my next birthday party.”

  “Shut up and give me the music.”

  “What music?”

  I was coy because I didn’t know what else to be. Facing the gun put me into a state of denial. If I kept things light, the gun might not actually come into play. But I knew I couldn’t stay coy long. My bowels were doing terrible things and my right hand was twitching.

  He started walking toward me. “I killed your friend Osborne. And I’ll be happy to kill you, too.” He shook his head as if in pity. “He was so lame he had to steal my material. I suppose you’ve got the same thing in mind. But it’s not going to happen because you’re going to turn those songs over and right now.”

  He moved so fast, so unexpectedly, I didn’t have a chance to ready myself. He grabbed me by the wrist and flung me up against the apartment door.

  I slammed my head so hard I acted on instinct. I cracked him hard across the jaw with my right fist. My knee was coming up hard when he pounded me on the jaw with the barrel. That opened a painful wound, a wound that shut me down at least temporarily.

  “Where the hell’s that music?”

  “In the closet.”

  “I looked in the closet.”

  “It’s under the rug. In a hiding place. You have to know where to look.”

  He poked the muzzle of the .45 into my forehead. “Then we’ll go get it. And right now.”

  As he yanked me away from the door, using my wrist again, I thought I heard some faint noise but then I didn’t have any time to figure out what it was because he was shoving me across the living room toward the bedroom.

  “I worked hard on those songs,” he said, “and that schmuck friend of yours gets all the credit. He wins a Grammy. A Grammy—on my work.”

  He was talking to himself more than he was to me. He words were familiar to him. I’ll bet he’d said them to himself a thousand times over the years he was running, seeing Osborne on TV, hearing him on the radio, staring up at his banner in music departments. But he couldn’t come forward, of course. Not ever.

  I wanted another crack at him. Either my pride or my death wish had kicked in. I was assuming he was going to kill me. The thought was so overwhelming I couldn’t deal with it. The only thing I could cling to was the hope that I’d get my hands on him. I wasn’t tough but I was tougher than he was.

  He pushed me into the walk-in closet so that I scraped my head against the doorframe. That only increased my now unreasoning need to hurt him. Really hurt him.

  There was no sense in trying to deceive or dissuade him in any way. Not even any reason to stall. He wanted his songs. He would have his songs. “I have to take my keys out of my trouser pocket,” I said, down on my hands and knees in the far corner of the closet. I’d pushed all the clothes back in the other direction so finding the hidey hole wouldn’t be any problem.

  “Why?”

  “I use a key to pull up the carpet edge.”

  “Just watch what you do. You understand?”

  That wasn’t worth answering. I took my keys out slowly and with great delicacy. I even held them up for him to see. “Keys. No reason to get excited.”

  “Just get the songs.”

  The carpet lies flat against the wall. A knife can pull it up easily. Below the carpet there is a trap-door-like compartment the size of a hardcover book. It runs twice that length inside.

  “This could be a set-up,” he said. “Maybe you’ve got a gun down there.”

  “Yeah. Or a tank.”

  By this time I’d guessed that his state of extreme agitation owed to a cocaine addiction that wasn’t working out very well at the moment.

  “Just calm down, all right? There’s no gun, there’s no knife, there’s not even a rock. It’s just a place to put valuables. So don’t start shooting yet, all right? At least let me get the songs out first.”

  The denial state was wearing off. I was sweating so much that drops were standing on my face as well as my arms and chest and legs. He was going to kill me. I’d never been up against that particular fear before and wasn’t quite sure what to do. I knew that in a few minutes I’d start begging for my life. All the smart-guy patter had left me. I didn’t want to beg but I would.

  Actually retrieving the songs was anti-climactic. I unhinged the trap door. I pulled it up. I reached down inside. I felt the papers. I gripped them. I lifted them up.

  He snapped them out of my hand before I could turn around and hand them to him. “Even if you copy them, it won’t matter. I have the originals. I can prove I wrote them. I don’t give a damn about royalties. I just want the credit I deserve.”

  “If you contact anybody, the cops’ll be able to track you.”

  “No, they won’t. Not if I use a lawyer to verify how old these pages are. And not if the lawyer makes the presentation to the right people. He can tell them where I was. But I’ll be long gone before the cops can find me. Now get up and go over to that bed and lie face down.”

  I struggled to my feet, trying to avoid cracking my head against the clothes bar. I got turned around and walked out of the closet.

  At first I didn’t realize the significance of him having me lie down. Maybe he’d just bind and gag me, leave me for the super to find me sometime.

  But as my knees came in contact with the mattress, I glanced at the pillows at the head of the bed and knew what he had in mind. The pillows would absorb the noise of the gunshots. The bedroom window opened on the fire escape. Simple. He’d been gone seconds after shooting me.

  He hit me so hard across the back of the head that I was unconscious for a few moments there. I wasn’t completely conscious when I felt the pillows being slapped across my shoulders and neck. The jab of the barrel against my skull jolted me. He was going to do just what I’d imagined. Execute me, the pillows muffling the noise.

  I wish I could tell you exactly what happened next. But I was face down, two pillows covered the back of my head, and my ears were still ringing painfully from where he’d struck me with the gun.

  A familiar voice shouted: “Reed! Leave him alone!”

/>   And then Reed started swearing. The pressure from his hand on the pillow vanished. And then two guns started blasting away.

  All the stuff you hear on the screen, this was nothing like it. The gunshots don’t thunder, they bark. And they come so hard and fast, they sound like they’re spitting. And they smell. And there’s so much clamor between the cursing and the screaming that it’s impossible to make even a good guess at what’s going on—without seeing it, I mean.

  Then it was done. I heard a body hit the floor. A heavy, ugly noise.

  I flung the pillows from the back of my head and jerked myself to my feet. And there she was in the doorway. Slumped against it, as if totally exhausted. For a long moment, the gun dangled from her fingers, then she let it drop to the floor.

  The one and only Dulcy Tremont.

  “I went downstairs and got the super to give me the key. I’d been at the door, listening to it all. I brought the Chinese over which, by the way, is getting cold in the hallway. I called the cops on my cell. Listen—you can hear the sirens now. But I was afraid he’d kill you by the time they got here. So I came in and—”

  She nodded to the man on the floor. She’d shot him twice in the head. He wasn’t pretty anymore. The odd thing was that even in death, though, he looked arrogant. That isn’t real easy to do.

  And then the cops were piling up the stairs, shouting. And she was falling into my arms, crying. And everything was crazy in the most exciting way of my life.

  6

  “Ever sleep with her?”

  “Nah.”

  “Ever come close?”

  “Not really.”

  “But you went out with her?”

  “Well, it’s kind’ve a long story. Kinda personal, too.”

  “Man, she is some beautiful chick. And she can sing, too. And those songs she writes—”

  I didn’t know his name. I never knew any of their names. But when I’d be in one of the jazz clubs in Chicago, the bartender would invariably tell the guy on the bar stool next to me that I’d known the one and only Dulcy Tremont.

  Tonight we all had a special treat. She was on Jay Leno. Two songs. Sam Reed’s songs, of course.

  This place had one of those huge screens. She looked so impeccably beautiful all I could think of was Grace Kelly at the exact peak of her beauty.

  In all the confusion in my apartment after the shoot-out, I didn’t see her take the songs. Didn’t even really think about them until the next morning. I hadn’t mentioned them to the cops. I’d told them Reed had it in for me because he thought I’d slept with his girl friend, too, the way he’d thought Osborne had.

  So when I called her apartment and got no answer, I went to work expecting to find her there. But her secretary told me that she’d quit. That she’d given the police all the information they’d needed. She’d also given them her sister’s address in Los Angeles. The secretary said it wasn’t very far from Malibu.

  That was a year-and-a-half ago.

  You probably thought you had this ending figured out. You know, all nice and pat. Dulcy and I hand over the songs, good citizens that we are; and then start an office romance at the paper, which is now presided over by a happily married Cal Rawlins; and then find a nice little starter house for ourselves somewhere on the edge of the boonies and then fill her tummy with the first of two or three kids.

  That’s what I figured, too. I called her somewhere around a hundred times the first three months she was staying with her sister. I even flew out there. But within twenty-fours she got a judge to issue a restraining order against me.

  As I say, that was a year-and-a-half ago. Next month, we’ll see if she wins any of the four Grammys she’s up for. And in the fall, we’ll see how good her acting skills are. She’s got the third lead in a Julia Roberts picture. The tabloids call her “Demolition Dulcy” because of all the homes and hearts she’s wrecked. Her fans seem to love the imperious side of her nature. They’ve very forgiving of her ways and wiles.

  “Maybe you should go out and visit her some time,” the guy next to me said. “Maybe she’d take you to some of those Hollywood parties.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Those Hollywood parties.”

  Then he clapped me on the back. God, I hate being clapped on the back. “And who knows, you go out there and spend a little time with her, maybe you’ll finally get lucky and get in her knickers.”

  7

  The legal charge was assault and battery. Cost me $500 and a night in the drunk tank. His dental bill was another $1,000. But it was worth it. Well worth it. I really hate getting clapped on the back that way.

  PRISONERS

  For Gail Cross

  I am in my sister’s small room with its posters of Madonna and Tiffany. Sis is fourteen. Already tall, already pretty. Dressed in jeans and a blue t-shirt. Boys call and come over constantly. She wants nothing to do with boys.

  Her back is to me. She will not turn around. I sit on the edge of her bed, touching my hand to her shoulder. She smells warm, of sleep. I say, “Sis listen to me.”

  She says nothing. She almost always says nothing.

  “He wants to see you Sis.”

  Nothing.

  “When he called last weekend—you were all he talked about. He even started crying when you wouldn’t come to the phone Sis. He really did.”

  Nothing.

  “Please, Sis. Please put on some good clothes and get ready ‘cause we’ve got to leave in ten minutes. We’ve got to get there on time and you know it.” I lean over so I can see her face.

  She tucks her face into her pillow.

  She doesn’t want me to see that she is crying.

  “Now you go and get ready Sis. You go and get ready, all right?”

  “I don’t know who she thinks she is,” Ma says when I go downstairs. “Too good to go and see her own father.”

  As she talks Ma is packing a big brown grocery sack. Into it go a cornucopia of goodies—three cartons of Lucky Strike filters, three packages of Hershey bars, two bottles of Ban roll-on deodorant, three Louis L’Amour paperbacks as well as all the stuff that’s there already.

  Ma looks up at me. I’ve seen pictures of her when she was a young woman. She was a beauty. But that was before she started putting on weight and her hair started thinning and she stopped caring about how she dressed and all. “She going to go with us?”

  “She says not.”

  “Just who does she think she is?”

  “Calm down Ma. If she doesn’t want to go, we’ll just go ahead without her.”

  “What do we tell your Dad?”

  “Tell him she’s got the flu?”

  “The way she had the flu the last six times?”

  “She’s gone a few times.”

  “Yeah twice out of the whole year he’s been there.”

  “Well.”

  “How do you think he feels? He gets all excited thinking he’s going to see her and then she doesn’t show up. How do you think he feels? She’s his own flesh and blood.”

  I sigh. Ma’s none too healthy and getting worked up this way doesn’t do her any good. “I better go and call Riley.”

  “That’s it. Go call Riley. Leave me here alone to worry about what we’re going to tell your Dad.”

  “You know how Riley is. He appreciates a call.”

  “You don’t care about me no more than your selfish sister does.”

  I go out to the living room where the phone sits on the end table I picked up at Goodwill last Christmastime. A lot of people don’t like to shop at Goodwill, embarrassed about going in there and all. The only thing I don’t like is the smell. All those old clothes hanging. Sometimes I wonder if you opened up a grave if it wouldn’t smell like Goodwill.

  I call K-Mart, which is where I work as a manager trainee while I’m finishing off my retail degree at the junior college. My girlfriend Karen works at K-Mart too. “Riley?”

  “Hey, Tom.”

  “How’re things going in my department?”
A couple months ago Riley, who is the assistant manager over the whole store, put me in charge of the automotive department.

  “Good great.”

  “Good. I was worried.” Karen always says she’s proud ‘cause I worry so much about my job. Karen says it proves I’m responsible. Karen says one of the reasons she loves me so much is ‘cause I’m responsible. I guess I’d rather have her love me for my blue eyes or something but of course I don’t say anything because Karen can get crabby about strange things sometimes.

  “You go and see your old man today, huh?” Riley says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Hell of a way to spend your day off.”

  “It’s not so bad. You get used to it.”

  “Any word on when he gets out?”

  “Be a year or so yet. Being his second time in and all.”

  “You’re a hell of a kid Tom I ever tell you that before?”

  “Yeah you did Riley and I appreciate it.” Riley is a year older than me but sometimes he likes to pretend he’s my uncle or something. But he means well and, like I told him, I appreciate it. Like when Dad’s name was in the paper for the burglary and everything. The people at K-Mart all saw it and started treating me funny. But not Riley. He’d walk up and down the aisles with me and even put his arm on my shoulder like we were the best buddies in the whole world or something. In the coffee room this fat woman made a crack about it and Riley got mad and said, “Why don’t you shut your fucking mouth, Shirley?” Nobody said anything more about my Dad after that. Of course poor Sis had it a lot worse than me at Catholic school. She had it real bad. Some of those kids really got vicious. A lot of nights I’d lay awake thinking of all the things I wanted to do to those kids. I’d do it with my hands too, wouldn’t even use weapons.