Corpus Delectable

by Talmage Powell

  “This have to do with Jean’s appointment with me?”

  “I don’t know,” Lura said.

  “When Jean died, she murmured one word. ‘Incense.’ Mean anything to you?” “No.”

  “Jean discovered the disappearance of an old brief case belonging to Señora Isabella. She mention that?”

  Lura started to speak; then a stricken look came to her eyes. “You’re being dishonest,” she accused. “You don’t have any real regard for Jean or me. You’re trying to pick me, use me!”

  “And help you if I can.”

  She stood up. “You’d better go. And you can help me most by keeping your visit here confidential.”

  “You know,” I said, “the sand starts to smother, if you bury your head too deep. Somebody besides me might decide you know more than you’re telling.”

  “No, no! I’ve done nothing to get hurt, and I don’t intend doing anything. I don’t know the answers you’re after, I tell you!”

  “Very well. Have it your way, Lura.”

  I started to turn toward the door. She caught my hand. “Why do you want to frighten me?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “I’m merely telling you that you can trust me.”

  “I haven’t found it a very trustworthy world, Mr. Rivers. When one’s own parents …”

  “But you’re a grown-up woman now,” I said. “No matter how callous your parents were, you’re old enough to realize they were, after all, individuals with weaknesses like the rest of us. They probably never realized what they were doing to you.”

  Her lips curled. “I’ve heard that kind of talk before.”

  “You should listen.”

  “So spake a psychiatrist once,” she said bitterly. “It cut no ice, made no difference.”

  “I’ll leave my card,” I said. “You can get in touch with me if you change your mind.”

  “I won’t,” she said.

  “You never know. Anyway, you’re going to have to talk to the police.”

  “I’ll tell them the same thing I’ve told you, Mr. Rivers. I’m not in it. It’s not my fight. I won’t become involved.”

  “So much for friendship,” I said. “So much for Jean Putnam.”

  I went to the door and let myself out. Behind the closed door, a desolate, lonely child began weeping in guilt, terror, and despair.

  The old building where I live was, as always, a bit musty, bone-dry from years of baking in the endless sun, the lingering smell of spicy Cuban cooking in the dim hallways. I went up to my apartment on the second floor and keyed the door open. Inside, I reached for the light switch beside the door. When I clicked the switch, nothing happened. The room remained gloomy, lighted only by the faint street glow that filtered in.

  The breath gusted out of me. Before I could move, a cool circle of metal touched the back of my neck.

  “It’s hair-triggered, friend,” he said softly.

  Six

  “That’s fine,” he added, “you’re smart not to move a muscle. But now you can. The arm muscles, friend. Easy and slow. Lock the fingers behind the head.”

  The pressure of the gun barrel faded as he eased safely back. I made motions with the numbness of my arms and twined the fingers at the back of my neck. “Who are you?”

  “Little Jack Horner, friend, waiting in a corner, after I found a handy fire-escape window.”

  “You did a thorough job on Jean Putnam,” I said.

  “Not thorough enough. Not fast enough. Not the kind of job I like to do, friend, and usually do.”

  “Would it make any difference to tell you that Jean Putnam didn’t have time to say anything?”

  “She reached you, friend. She had time.”

  “She didn’t talk,” I said.

  “Maybe she didn’t make sense because you haven’t added her up yet.”

  “But she didn’t speak, I tell you!”

  “What else could you say, friend?” he asked with a sigh.

  Little tics of feeling were returning to my arms and knees. “You’ll never get out of the building.”

  “Come on, now,” He laughed softly. “This is the time of gay Gasparilla. Nobody’s paying any attention to what happens in this tired old building.”

  “You got it all figured,” I said.

  “Sure. It’s my turn now, friend. You missed your turn today when the big opening parade was passing on Franklin Street. I knew you were behind me in the crowds, waiting for one of those hats to turn and tip you that a nervous guy was under it. But I don’t get nervous, friend.”

  “Just an old pro.”

  “Not so old. But I know my business. You muff a turn, friend, you don’t get another.”

  The snout of the gun prodded my back, pushing me a few feet deeper in the room.

  “What’s it going to look like?” I asked.

  “You really want to know?”

  “Why not?”

  “How about an ordinary accident in the bathtub, friend? You slip, crack your head, and drown. I lay the gun against your skull, strip you down, lay you out in the tub like Sleeping Beauty, and start the water. You won’t feel a thing after the first bust on the head, friend. You’ve been hit on the head before.”

  My body stiffened, started to turn. The gun jabbed me hard, making me wince.

  “Or I can make it tough,” he said quietly. “Gut-shoot you, but good. It don’t make much difference to me. Because you’re for free, friend. Understand? After the first kill, the rest are all for free. You kill one or a hundred, they can only burn you once. It’s like you got a license.”

  The bathroom doorway was a dark rectangle in the gloom. Doorway to a grave.

  He was cool, confident, taking his time, letting me cover the last few feet of my life under my own power. He knew there was no chance of dropping my laced fingers from the nape of my neck and pulling a gun before a silenced slug broke my spine. He had figured all the angles known to him.

  But history and cemeteries are full of wise punks. At the base of my neck, my fingers had inched down. They touched the flat handle of the razor-sharp blade sheathed at my nape.

  I didn’t want to do it. I was so scared my spit glands had dried up.

  I steeled myself with a clinching argument: Rivers, what have you got to lose?

  As the knife slid free, I threw myself down and to one side. A man of experience, he didn’t let the move rattle him. He was prepared. He danced backward to give himself room, to ensure himself from any flailing arms or legs. He thought he was still in control and had plenty of time.

  “Okay,” he said quietly. He was swinging the gun with deliberate care, intending to make his first shot the last one.

  My arm was snapping forward the second my body hit the floor. I didn’t expect the throw to be perfect. I was depending on the instinctive reaction of my screwed-tight nerves and muscles. I needed luck.

  He didn’t know the knife existed until it glinted at him in the gloom. His startled cry mingled with the raw sound of the blade driving hungrily into flesh, blood, and bone high on his left shoulder.

  He was briefly rattled, finally. As the blade hit him, his trigger finger reacted. The slug knocked splinters in my face.

  I’d rolled right on into the bathroom. I pulled upright, my side pressing against the covering protrusion of the door jamb. The .38 was a comforting weight in my hand.

  We waited, he in the bed-sitting room, me in the john, the door frame separating us. From the street came the faint echoes of a strolling orchestra playing a gay Spanish melody.

  “Friend,” I mimicked, “I got all night.”

  His silenced gun made a muffled handclap. Paint sprayed from the edge of the door casing.

  “I don’t mind,” he said almost gently. “I’m getting paid for overtime.”

  “You can talk about it with the Homicide lieutenant who’s coming over to discuss the Jean Putnam case.”

  “You can’t bug me, friend.”

  “I’m not trying,” I said. “St
ick around and see.” Strangely, I’d never before noticed how cramped, small, and smotheringly hot the bathroom really was.

  “If anybody was coming, friend, you wouldn’t talk about it. Nobody’s coming. Just you and me, shut away from a world that’s having fun.”

  His words almost covered the faint protest of a door hinge. I realized he’d used his voice to cover the sound of careful movement.

  I peeled around the bathroom door frame. Nothing happened. I rushed across the bed-sitting room toward the closed hallway door. My hand stabbed at the door almost before I thought.

  But without touching anything I jerked my hand back as if the doorknob were hot. Flicking a handkerchief from my pocket, I draped the knob, then touched the cloth with the tips of my fingers to open the door.

  The corridor was empty. I took the stairs down to the vestibule two at a time. On the front stoop I stopped short, looking at the street.

  For a second I had a reasonless hatred for Gasparilla and all the fun connected with it. I wanted to shout down the noisy crowds whose numbers concealed a murderer.

  Angrily, my eyes swept the scene for a man I’d never really seen. Then I wheeled about, hurried up to the apartment. Leaving the door open, I jerked up the phone and dialed police headquarters.

  The on-duty sergeant jacked in the switchboard. Trying to keep the shakes out of my voice, I briefed him on what had happened. He had it on short wave by the time I’d replaced the phone.

  Waiting for them, I moved restlessly, slid a chair under the lighting fixture, mounted it and tightened the bulb he’d loosened.

  He was inclined to planning and carrying out his plans in cut-and-dried fashion, the Unknown Party. He didn’t like to improvise. Both times, when he’d had to improvise, he’d made his exit.

  As I stepped off the chair, somebody punched the buzzer button in the vestibule. I went to the top of the stairs and looked down. I saw the bold, voluptuous lines of Myrtle Higgins in the vestibule.

  She came up the stairs slowly. The dim lighting in the hallway lent her a touch of mystery that for a moment deepened all those surface qualities into near loveliness.

  “You didn’t keep your promise and call information,” she said.

  “Come in, and I’ll give you my excuses.”

  “During Gasparilla, there are excuses for dashing a poor girl’s hopes?”

  I took her arm and steered her into the apartment. “Don’t touch the doorknob,” I said. “A man had to grab it and I’m curious to see what he left.”

  She gave me a sharp look. “What are you talking about, Ed? What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Very glad.” I meant it. Myrtle Higgins was a smooth, ivory candle with a wick that needed a flame to transform it. I’m male, and human. I sensed what it would be like, and I wondered if I was the man who could spark the flame.

  She crinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”

  “I’m afraid it’s burned gunpowder.”

  She looked at me quickly. “You mean the kind that makes bullets?”

  “It wasn’t popcorn.”

  “Ed, I don’t know if I should be fooling around with you. I thought the murderer was after Jean Putnam, not you. What are you, a walking time bomb?”

  Homicide Lieutenant Steve Ivey had phrased it differently. But “rat bait” or “time bomb,” it added to the same, and I decided not to talk Myrtle into sticking around against her will.

  She seemed to sense my attitude. She thought the whole thing over for a full minute. Then a challenging smile touched her lips. “Maybe I like excitement — and you’re prepared if he tries to come back, aren’t you?”

  “I won’t make any rash promises,” I said.

  “Okay, so the decision is mine alone.” She looked me over slowly from head to foot. “I think I’ll stick around.”

  We both turned as heavy footsteps clumped up the stairs. Lieutenant Steve Ivey had been called from his dinner. He headed a small phalanx of people from headquarters.

  There was grave concern on Ivey’s full, bulldoggish face, and not for having missed his meal. “Are you okay, Ed?”

  “Thanks to nobody but myself,” I said. “The bait was here. The rat came. The trap didn’t spring.” “You get a look at him?”

  “Even less than the last time. Do you know Miss Higgins?”

  Ivey took off his coconut straw, exposing the creamy globe of his bald pate. “Hello there,” he said.

  “Hi,” Myrtle said. She seated herself on the edge of the daybed that also served as a couch here in the bed-sitting room.

  To me, she added, “I met the lieutenant this afternoon.”

  “We’re trying hard for leads, Ed,” Steve said. “Talking with everybody connected with Jean Putnam. She, and Miss Higgins here, both worked for Señora Isabella Sorolla y Batione, who died just a — ’

  “I know,” I said. “I’m not Samson — and I was hoping for more action and less jawbone of the ass.”

  A young plainclothes dick named Gonzales crowded behind Ivey. “You know our problems, Ed.”

  I let out a sigh. “Sure,” I said. “And recriminations won’t catch the punk.”

  I looked past Gonzales’ wiry stature to Carruthers. “You bring your pinky powder?”

  “Ed, you know I’m addicted to the stuff.” Carruthers had an accent as thick as boiled sorghum. He and Gonzales as kids had gone to the same public schools, but you’d never believe it, listening to the contrast in the way they talked.

  I walked to the hallway door.

  “The punk had to take a good, firm grip on the doorknob,” I told Carruthers. “You keep the thought in mind that I damn near paid with my life for the fingerprints on that knob.”

  Renewed interest jolted through the room like an electric current.

  “Good going, Ed,” Ivey said. “If a yegg handles air, Carruthers is the guy to lift the prints.”

  “Fine,” I said. “If the prints are on file. If the punk has ever been printed.”

  The Rivers-apartment phase of the investigation fanned through the bed-sitting room and bathroom while Carruthers knelt almost reverently at the doorknob. He opened his black bag, started taking out phials and liquids and powders, squares of paper and camel’s hair brushes. He carried more junk than an old-time peddler.

  Myrtle watched as I recounted my experience to Ivey. It was all taken down by Perone, while Morgan carefully extracted the slug from the framing of the John door.

  As Ivey departed with his crew, I followed him to the door.

  “You may have given us something concrete,” Steve said. “Carruthers is wallowing in prints off the doorknob. Yours are on file, along with your gun permit and license. Needless to say, I’ll phone the minute we know anything.” He moved to the top of the stairs, paused with his hand on the bannister.

  “Ed … I’m thankful you were carrying the knife.” “I’m a little happy about it myself. Good night, Steve.”

  I closed the door behind officialdom and moved toward the daybed.

  Myrtle sighed. “You’re having a lousy Gasparilla, Ed.”

  “Let’s brighten it up.”

  “Why not? You look like you need a drink. I know I do.”

  “I’m a beer man,” I said, “but I sometimes have a bottle around.”

  I went in the kitchenette, scrounged up a nearly full fifth. I poured tall ones. Myrtle and I drank. The smell of gunpowder faded from the apartment. Myrtle wore a musty kind of perfume.

  She turned on the clock radio, tuning in soft music.

  “Much better than the crowds, Ed,” she said, settling herself on the couch.

  “I think so.”

  “Why don’t you get out of this Putnam thing?”

  “Not a chance. I’m in too deep.”

  She took my hand, pulled me down beside her. “You could take a little trip.”

  “And start looking for another job?”

  “All right, then,” she said almost angrily. “Pour me an
other drink.”

  We lowered the level of the fifth considerably. Humming softly, she began unbuttoning my shirt. I didn’t protest.

  With the shirt peeled off, she seemed to like the sight of sloping shoulders. She tickled the brown mat on my chest. Then she stood up.

  “Stretch out,” she said, “on your stomach.” “Yes, nurse.”

  I obeyed the order. Her fingers came down as light as feathers, trailing across my back. She knew how to soothe away the kinks from a long, hard day. I grunted in pure comfort as she began kneading the muscles on my upper arms, across my shoulders. Her fingers got stronger, becoming urgent. As a masseuse, she became less professional, but much more interesting.

  I rolled onto my back, looking at her. The dark-blond hair was loose about her cheeks. The component parts of her hadn’t fused. There was still something missing. But she was beautiful enough.

  I slid my fingers into the light coppery hair and pulled her face down toward me. With my other hand I tipped her full-featured face so that the light knocked the shadows from it. The surface, physical perfection remained a shell.

  “Why do you look at me like that, Ed?”

  “It bugs me,” I said.

  “What does?”

  “Something we needn’t talk about.” I pulled her face down to mine to make contact. “We needn’t talk at all.” And we didn’t. Her lips were too hot for words.

  Seven

  Some time later, the phone rang. I growled in my throat, padded to the phone, and picked it up.

  “Carruthers matched a fingerprint,” Steve Ivey said excitedly.

  “So soon?”

  “We didn’t have to bother Washington, Ed. We’ve got our boy on file right here in Tampa.”

  My hand curled hard on the phone. “At least that’s a break.”

  “You said it! Ready for the run-down, Ed?”

  “Ready.” My throat grew slightly dry.

  “His name is Ben McJunkin,” Ivey said. “Ben as in the London clock. McJunkin as in — “