Corpus Delectable

by Talmage Powell

  “But I have long felt that money was very cold payment, señor. My brother … he works now every day. The prospect of prison worked a change in him. Now I have the chance to do something for you.” He paused, took a breath, called on his courage. “I understand you have been seeking an individual.”

  “Yes,” I said, a tightness crawling into my throat. “Yes, I have.”

  “You try the San Salvador Hotel, room four-oh-four.”

  “I will.”

  “You must not ask me how I know this, Señor Ed. I would have to lie to you. I have no wish to do that.” “No questions, Pepe.”

  “We in bars overhear many things. We are told things by lips loose from alcohol.”

  “I understand, Pepe. You have no need to worry. No one will ever know where my information came from.”

  “Gracias, señor. One more thing, he has watchful friends who will warn him of activity, of the police. He will not return to the room, if warned. You will fail — and perhaps not again have the chance to locate him.”

  “I see,” I said, a brief pulse moving through my gut.

  “I wish it could be different for you, Señor Ed. But tasks do not always arrange themselves most conveniently. When it is all over, stop by my bar. A drink on the house will be waiting.”

  Fifteen

  When I turned from the phone, Myrtle was studying me carefully. Her eyes went a shade darker. Her lips became redder and heavier as the background skin turned whiter. She shook her head from side to side, the dark-blond hair splashing across her cheeks. “No,” she said softly. “No, no, no!”

  I slid the .38 from under the waistband of my pants and started checking it. I had a replacement blade for the one McJunkin had carried out of here the other night in his tissues, but I wasn’t counting on the knife at all now. McJunkin had already had experience with it.

  Myrtle took a slow step toward me, unable to tear her gaze from my face. “I won’t let you go, Ed!”

  “I have to go.”

  “With the police?”

  “It won’t work that way,” I said. “I need — and want — to do this one alone.”

  “Where is McJunkin, Ed?” “On the moon.”

  “I’m no dainty-fingered hothouse plant! Don’t treat me like one!”

  “Just wait here,” I said. “You can drink your drink.”

  “I don’t want a drink. Not now. I’m going with you.” “You’re nuts, Myrtle.”

  “I won’t sit and wait. So help me, Ed, I won’t just sit.”

  “Then try the TV. They’re broadcasting a Gasparilla beauty pageant on a local station tonight.”

  As I moved, she reversed directions, going backward, keeping herself between me and the door.

  “Who called you, Ed?”

  “A man named Pepe.”

  “There are a million Pepes!”

  “Just a few thousand in Ybor City. Anyway, it wouldn’t do you any good if you knew which Pepe. You couldn’t trace me that way. He’d tell you nothing.”

  The door pressed against her back. Tears came to her eyes. “You want me to beg, Ed?”

  “You know I don’t.”

  Her moist gaze worked into every detail of my face. A faint change came to her, a hint of the depths beyond the molded surface perfection. For a second the physical shell was almost lifted to the plane of rare beauty.

  “Cut it out,” I said. “You’re not looking at me for the last time.”

  “You’re a fool, Ed.”

  I touched her shoulder. “Don’t make me push you to one side.”

  “You’ll have to if you go. Why do you have to be such a fool!”

  “Give me an alternative,” I said. “I want an alternative. I’m a scared fool looking for an alternative.”

  The force of my hand increased, sliding her across the face of the door. There was resistance in her; then it melted out of her.

  As I opened the door, she said bitterly, “Your mother should have had an abortion!” She wheeled away, crossed the room, and picked up her drink. She was working on it seriously when I closed the door behind me.

  The crowded streets, the lights, the sounds of a city at play slid by the car as the minutes passed. Then ahead was an old neon with some of the letters dead and others quivering. The glass tubing spelled out “San Salvador Hotel.”

  I parked a block away, around the next corner. I sat there for a minute or two with thoughts running through my head, the weight of the .38 against my belly, and the desire not to get out of the car strong inside me.

  I got out, felt the pavement beneath my feet, and watched the car door swing closed.

  I walked slowly but without hesitation to the corner. Traffic swished endlessly. A group of laughing young people came out of a club, flowed around me, and chattered in Spanish while they waited for the light to change.

  It’s fifty-fifty, I thought. McJunkin is either in his room right now, or he isn’t. I don’t want him to be. I want him to be out munching beans and peppers or working on a steak. I want him to walk into the room and find me there. And this is the best time of day to take the chance. No calling the hotel or asking any questions that will be brought to his attention and give him warning. Straight to his room. Play the odds. Pretty favorable odds, at that. If he’s there, he won’t know anyone is coming.

  If it isn’t a trap … If he didn’t get to Pepe Tortugas and force Pepe to make the call … No … Pepe sounded right. There is a sound a man makes when a gun is at his head.

  While my brain kicked thoughts around like french fries in a deep frier of boiling grease, my feet took me casually toward the San Salvador. As I went past, I studied the lobby without turning my head. It was the rundown showplace of a once-fine hotel. The chandelier was grimy and partly lighted. The potted palms were dusty, with missing fronds. The ancient leather couches and chairs showed lumps and low places. The gloomy and bedraggled room was empty except for an old man working behind the desk.

  A few yards beyond the hotel a dark alley formed a break between the buildings. I walked quietly into the alley, went twenty yards, and stood with my back against the rough brick side of the hotel where the shadows combined to form a pool of absolute blackness.

  I made the best possible use of the next ten minutes by staying perfectly still and watching the mouth of the alley.

  Satisfied that no one had noticed me enter, I moved deeper into the alley. A very few of the rooms overhead were lighted. From one came the sound of two old geezers in sudden argument. I translated enough of their Spanish to gather that they were about to come to blows over a game of dominoes.

  They kept at it, getting a little louder. It began to bug me. Shut up, I thought; it isn’t that important … Go back to your game … Two old men come to blows and the cops come … Cops come and Ben McJunkin doesn’t come home tonight …

  You see how it was, how it goes. You move into the warped world of the Ben McJunkins and nothing remains quite normal. The argument of two old men you’ve never seen can postpone a meeting tonight, and tomorrow may be too late. Tomorrow McJunkin might have figured a way to get to you.

  I looked up at the lighted window, lips thinned and flat against my teeth. In the manner of Spaniards, the two old men stopped it as suddenly as they had begun it. Quietness returned to the alley.

  “Thanks,” I muttered in the direction of the window two stories overhead.

  I started moving again, locating the service door a few yards farther on. Without striking a light I explored the lock with my fingertips. It was old, as old as the building. Opening the lock would have been duck soup — but there were heavy studs near it, indicating a chain or heavy bolt inside.

  With the back door ruled out, I reversed my field a few steps and paused at the fire escape. The prospect of using it didn’t make me happy. I had to go four stories up. During that time, I’d be limned against the night sky. The odds were very long against it, but no guarantee that someone passing on the street wouldn’t glance down the alley
and see the shadow of a prowling man on the escape.

  I flexed my knees and leaped upward with hands raised high. My fingers were short of their goal by inches. I landed with a soft thud. I took a moment to relax my arm and leg muscles. I put a real punch behind the next jump.

  Rough metal touched my fingers. My body was swinging clear of the ground. The hinged counterbalanced section of the escape began to lower under my weight.

  The end of the section thudded to rest on the alley. I stood on the steel slats of the bottom step to keep the counter weight from raising the section. I didn’t move right away, listening to make sure the soft but unusual sounds had attracted no attention.

  I moved up to the first landing, taking my handkerchief in my hand. I used the handkerchief for a pad as I grasped the weathered braided metal cable that ran through a pulley to connect the counter weight to the free-swinging end of the escape.

  Braking the pull of the weight, I let the swinging bottom section rise silently to a horizontal position. Again I waited, my back pressed against the building there at first-floor level.

  With the alley continuing quiet and peaceful, I started up. I stayed close to the building where I was less likely to be seen and where the old metal of the escape protested least under my weight. As I climbed, flakes of rust shivered loose from the thin steel webbing and trickled in little showers to the alley below. The rust motes struck with the grainy sound of sifting sand, but to my heightened senses, it sounded like bricks were falling.

  When I reached the fourth-floor level I experienced the luxury of a long, deep breath. A feeble corridor light glowed beyond the window, which was open against the warmth. A sluggish breeze stirred, billowing the edges of grayish curtains through the window.

  I let the curtain edge catch on my finger and took a look inside. The corridor was short, an emergency exit connecting to the main hallway.

  I put my rump on the window sill, swung my legs across, and ducked in. When the hotel had basked proudly in its shine of newness, the carpeting had been superb, wall to wall, padded thickly. Now it was threadbare, composed in part of dust that had accumulated over the years. It still deadened the sound of footfalls.

  I endured a tight moment as I stepped into the main hallway, which was at right angles to the service hall. Overhead a small red light marked the emergency exit.

  I turned to the left, making a random choice. Glancing at the numbers on the first two doors I passed, I saw that they got higher.

  I turned and started in the other direction, toward 404. A door opened just in front of me. A woman came out of her room, gave me hardly a glance, went to the elevator, and punched a button. I heard the faint reverberations as the ancient self-service elevator rattled upward.

  I reached 404 but didn’t stop. I walked to the far end of the corridor, came to a halt, and went through the motions of a man searching for keys.

  The stinking elevator was bumbling toward its destination by inches. The woman was beginning to be aware of me, looking away quickly when I glanced at her.

  I made as if I was fitting a key in the door and the elevator finally reached the end of its journey. Hesitant creaks marked the opening of the elevator door. The woman got aboard, and the cage started down.

  Alone in the corridor, I spun and moved to McJunkin’s room. A thin sweat spread a cold touch across my forehead. I slid my hand to the waistband of my pants and curled my fingers around the butt of the .38.

  Sixteen

  I knocked on the door matter-of-factly.

  I listened for the rustle of a bed spring, the pad of a foot. I waited for him to say, “Who’s there?”

  If he was in the room, I was set to snap the lock and kick the door open, using my heel as a pile driver. I was ready to show him the business end of the .38 before he had a chance to do a thing about it.

  Nothing happened. I tried again, laying my knuckles a little harder against the door, just in case he was in the John and hadn’t heard the first knock.

  The room and hallway remained silent. The sweat on my face felt as if a brief ray of sunlight had touched it. He’d had everything his own way so far, been able to call the shots. I was past due for a break.

  While I still enjoyed solitude in the hallway, I slipped the key ring from my pocket and separated the thin steel from the keys. I worked the steel carefully into a hairline crack where the door molding was attached. I watched the steel disappear, felt it make contact with the beveled metal latch of the spring lock.

  Applying pressure, I sensed the spring beginning to yield. The steel was sliding across the sloping end of the latch, forcing it back. It clicked softly.

  Leaving the steel where it was to keep the latch from jumping back into its hasp, I turned the doorknob. The door opened quietly. I removed the steel and returned it to my pocket.

  I slid inside the room, closed the door, letting the lock function.

  I stood a moment while my eyes got used to the dim illumination that came from outside neon and streetlight glow.

  Probing with a miniature pocket flashlight, I started a circuit of the layout. Physically, the surroundings were what I’d expected, typical drab room in a drab hotel. The furnishings were heavy, solid, but old and scarred and scorched in spots from careless cigarettes. The counterpane and curtains were limp and dingy. Water gathered lazily and dripped from worn faucets in the bathroom.

  I let the thin finger of light linger in the bathroom washbasin. There were stains in the bottom of the pitted porcelain bowl. Not rust stains. Someone had built a small fire in the basin and later washed away whatever had been burned. I wondered if it had been Jean Putnam’s diary.

  Coming from the bath, I crossed the bedroom to the closet and swung the door open. Like the rest of the abode, the closet reflected the habits of a man reasonably neat and orderly in his personal habits. Suits and slacks were carefully hung. On the floor were two pairs of shoes, clean and modestly shined.

  As I swung the suits aside, the light beam jerked up short. In the back of the closet was a woman’s silk print dress. Next to it was a very sheer black negligee with filmy lace across the bosom, a garment designed to enhance erotic play.

  I found the remainder of her things at the chest of drawers, a few of her cosmetics tidily arranged on top, changes of panties, bras, hose, and shoes in the uppermost drawer. The remainder of the chest was given over to McJunkin’s apparel — shirts, underwear, socks. The two bottom drawers were empty.

  Whoever she was, I decided, she didn’t live here full time, not unless she had a very skimpy wardrobe. I pegged her as a regular visitor who’d left here the bare necessities to freshen up.

  From the chest, the flashlight ray swung to the bedside table. Next to the lamp was a stack of folded newspapers, the accumulation of several days. The top one was creased to expose an account of Jean Putnam’s murder. I lifted the first paper. The one beneath told the tale of the death by violence of Lura Thackery. McJunkin’s bedtime reading when he didn’t have a visitor to entertain him …

  A shrill bell chattered suddenly in the silence. As I turned, the flash beam pinwheeled to come to rest on the bureau where the phone reposed. The old man on the switchboard at the desk downstairs gave it a long try, paused, and let the phone blast a second time.

  Then he must have told the caller that McJunkin wasn’t in his room. The phone didn’t ring again.

  I resumed movement, flicking the light into the waste-basket, which was snugged against the wall beside the bureau.

  With the barrel of the .38, I pushed aside laundry shirt wrappers, discarded magazines. Near the bottom of the container I saw red leatherette.

  Bending a little lower, I dipped my hand all the way and pulled out the covers of a small book. I slapped the dust of old cigarette ashes from it, laid it face down on the bureau, and played the light over it. The entire contents had been ripped out. On the broken and bent leatherette cover were two initials in gold: J. P.

  While I was standing there looki
ng at the remains of Jean Putnam’s diary, I heard a key rattle in the lock. I peeled around from the bureau and put the dingy wallpaper against my back. I turned off the miniature flash and dropped it in my pocket as he twisted his key in the lock.

  The door swung open, covering me. He entered the room with heavy, solid footsteps.

  The muscles across my belly pulled flat and hard. A faint singing sensation flowed along my nerves as McJunkin’s bulk came into view.

  He’d heeled the door closed, reached for the light switch, the movement turning him squarely away from me. The door latch and light switch clicked simultaneously.

  While his hand was still on the switch, I put the barrel of the .38 against the nape of his neck.

  “Friend,” I said, “if the wheel keeps turning, a new number is bound to come up.”

  He held it right there, his half-twisted, arm-extended position having some of the aspects of a Rodin statue.

  “Rivers,” he said.

  “Check.”

  I patted his armpits and kidneys. He wore a revolver in a shoulder holster on his left side. I reached around him, lifted the gun, and jammed it in my hip pocket.

  Energy and sensation began returning to his muscles. He turned slowly and carefully. For the first time we were face to face. His mug shots had been accurate. He was big, rangy, flat-bellied. With a strong-boned, good-looking face marred only by the thin white scar along his jawbone, he looked like a one-time college football player — which he was — who’d gone on to reach middle age in a rugged, outdoors field of endeavor — which he hadn’t.

  The thinning brown hair over the broad forehead caught the light dully. The hazel eyes reflected it like hard, polished chips of resin.

  “You’d better make the most of this,” he said quietly. “You won’t be telling any grandchildren about it.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I’m not alone, you know.”

  “My primary interest,” I said. “We’ll talk about this person who made the contract with you.”

  “What contract?” He turned toward the bureau and reached for a cigarette package. I hit him across the knuckles with the gun barrel. He jerked his hand back. An expression of pain flicked across his face. Then he laughed thinly, lifted his knuckles to his mouth, and sucked off the flecks of blood.