Mike Reuther - Return to Dead City

by Mike Reuther

  By the time she turned her full attention on me she was anything but ready to deal with a part-time boyfriend. Still in her bathrobe, her hair disheveled, and her face showing all the elements of someone who wanted to collapse, it was plain the kids had done a job on her today. I knew there would be hell to pay.

  “You could have called first you know?”

  I’d seen her happier. She stood with her arms folded, her eyes boring through me.

  “You know how it is with us law and order guys. We shoot first and ask permission for female companionship later.”

  Cute wasn’t in tonight. I could feel those power mower eyes cutting a huge swath right through the inside of me. “Can I come in?”

  She threw me just the hint of a smile. “You got ten minutes. I got a Frenchman coming over.”

  “Those Frenchies know all the right moves. What do you say I come back later. We can try out what Pierre taught you?”

  “Not on your life brother. Anything after my Frenchie leaves me stale.”

  I grinned like an idiot. “We can’t have that. Bad for the digestive tract.” I stepped into the apartment and leaned into her for a kiss but she offered me only cheek. We exchanged long appraising looks.

  “First the shit lover boy.”

  “Now why should I clean up your mess?”

  “Because you helped create this one stud.”

  After performing my janitorial duty, I settled onto Pat’s couch while she put the kids to bed. Her apartment wasn’t much. What had once been a servant’s quarters as part of some lumber baron’s sprawling residence was small for a divorcee with three young kids to raise. The living room was big enough, I suppose. It was a high-ceilinged job with one of those cheap chandeliers hanging down into the middle of the room. There was even a fireplace, though the chimney had been closed off long ago. Most of Pat’s furniture was secondhand including the couch I was on. The thing was in bad need of reupholstering, and the springs were shot, but it was comfortable if nothing else. Many were the times I ended up spending the night on it rather than with Pat in her bed. Pat had this idea that the kids needed to be protected from any notions that their mommy found it necessary to make whoopy with their “Uncle Cozzy.” That never stopped me from sneaking into her room and having my way with her after the kids were tucked away. “If this were to become a more permanent relationship the bedroom arrangements would be a lot better,” she said. Those words were becoming more frequent as of late, and they were beginning to grate on me like a Barry Manilow song. My brain said drop this gal like a bad heroin habit. But it was something else that kept me coming back to Pat several times a week.

  I watched her move down the hall from the kids’ bedroom to the small walk-in kitchen. Despite having mothered three kids, and having traveled a road with more than its share of bumps, Pat was still a package that could make men’s eyes turn. She came out of the kitchen with coffee and my usual drink of Scotch before settling onto the couch beside me.

  “You’re some hostess there Veranda.” I said as I sipped from my drink.

  Pat frowned and concentrated on the TV. A wife was being slapped around by a husband. Another one of Hollywood’s abuse-of-the-week stories.

  “I’d have dropped my robe, but I know how you private dicks like to do everything yourselves.”

  She was smiling behind her coffee cup.

  I put down my drink and moved right up against her. I could feel her body stir beneath the robe.

  “Not so fast bud. I’m the mother of three children and a lady to boot.”

  “One out of two ain’t bad.”

  She pushed me away and assumed a snotty princess look. “What do you mean I’m not a lady?”

  “Heh. Heh. Who needs a lady when you can have Veranda the Vamp.”

  “You shit.”

  She made no huge effort to fight the long kiss that came next. We were both hot for each other all right. She let out a sigh as I eased her back on the sofa and got a hand inside her robe.

  “The kids are still awake,” she whispered.

  “So am I.”

  She gave me a push and wiggled out from under me. Play time could wait. She arranged herself on the couch and studied me over her coffee cup. “So tell me about your day.” She knew about the murder, but I filled her in on the details.

  “So who called you to take the case?”

  I shrugged. “That’s a good question. It was a man but he never identified himself.”

  “So you’re more or less working on this case on your own?”

  “It looks that way. At least for now.”

  She shook her head and smiled.

  “What?”

  “You’re broke as it is. Now you’re taking on a case with no hope of receiving any fee.”

  “Not broke exactly. I still got about a month’s worth of severance pay coming from my old job. Besides, I may deep-six this case real quick. It doesn’t look like anyone had any real reason to kill our hometown hero.”

  “Free you up to pursue the wandering husbands?”

  “Heh. Heh. You know any Veranda?”

  Pat threw me a knowing look. She leaned toward me then and crossed her legs to expose a healthy sampling of thigh.

  “I’ll never tell,” she said.

  I allowed myself a long look. We both got up slowly and with our arms about each other we walked toward her bedroom.

  “It’s all fairly simple gentlemen. A knife wound in the upper back portion of the body resulting in trauma, massive tissue damage and substantial bleeding.”

  The coroner brought the white sheet over the body of Lance Miller. A Centre Town detective named McNish stood beside me watching the coroner slide the body back into the cold gray slot that would serve as a temporary roosting spot for the dead ballplayer. Class, you might say, had just ended.

  I had a few questions though.

  “You didn’t mention anything about the knife. Did the blade have a smooth edge?

  The coroner shot me a look that could have frozen a polar bear. He was a meticulous kind of guy with a wiry little mustache, steel rim glasses and the somber, unwavering approach to his job of one who has seen more than his share of death. Grins and giggles were out of the guy’s league. He glanced at McNish before turning his gaze on me.

  “Absolutely Mr. Crager.” He held me with that stoney-eyed look.

  “So what gives doc?”

  “I beg your pardon?” He stood facing me in his white smock with his arms neatly folded.

  “The blade doc. It wasn’t serrated?”

  “That would be correct.”

  “Was it a hunting knife?”

  He turned to McNish. “I don’t hunt Detective McNish. Therefore, I can not reasonably conclude that the assault weapon was in fact an instrument normally used for carving wild game.”

  “Any evidence that the blade was twisted or turned when it penetrated the skin?” I asked.

  The good doctor’s patience had grown thin. “As I stated previously,” he said with a sigh. “All evidence indicates that the knife was plunged into the back of the victim with a single thrust. An autopsy, I’m quite sure, will bear this out.” He looked from McNish to me. “Will that be all gentlemen?”

  “Just one thing doc,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Who writes your punch lines?”

  “I beg your…”

  “Your delivery. It could use some work too.”

  I left him standing there with his mouth open.

  It was only natural to next track down Giles Hampton, but up to this point I’d been unable to find either the professor or his female companion, Jeannette. I’d made several calls over the past couple days to the guy’s place, but all I’d been able to get was an answering machine. And at Ocyl College, where he taught, his secretary informed me Hampton rarely checked into his office over the summer. I called a cab and had the driver take me by Hampton’s digs. Even if he wasn’t home I wanted to check out his residence.

>   A fine mist began to fall as the cabbie dropped me off before a stone house at the very end of a dark street. There was nothing really remarkable about the place sitting as did in this slightly upscale neighborhood. However, it was set apart by the other tidy, comfortable two-story dwellings by its unkempt and forbidden appearance. Trees, shrubs and other untamed growth strangled the place. It looked to be the home of a recluse. A cracked, flagstone walk led to the front door - a massive oak job with a great big lion’s head knocker that probably went fifty pounds. It was dark inside, so figuring no one was home I jimmied the door open with a pocket knife I carried and let myself in. I got out a flashlight to get my bearings.

  I found myself standing in a short hallway leading off on either side to rooms. The room off to the left was the larger of the two. There, my light caught a stone fireplace with an oval rug spread out before it. Some logs were piled at the base of the hearth and some pokers on either side of the fireplace. It was when I worked the light to both sides of the fireplace that I saw what dominated the room: stacks of books from the floor to the ceiling ran across the entire length of one wall. It was one hell of a library. But that wasn’t all. Volumes were everywhere: spilling off smaller bookcases in other parts of the room, a few strewn here and there about the floor and also piled in haphazard heaps upon a loveseat in a corner of the room. Still more books could be found on the mantle and on a coffee table before a couch.

  Making my way to the couch, I couldn’t help but kick a few of the books along the way. I was making no real attempt to be quiet. I was sure there was no one home. Just to keep from alerting a nosey neighbor though, I conducted my business with the flashlight.

  Hampton was deep into the serious literature. That was for damn sure. On the coffee table were copies of Ulysses, War and Peace, The Stranger, Crime and Punishment and The Trial. And those were just the titles I recognized. But I wasn’t here to lose myself in the world’s great books. I moved the beam of the flashlight over the books. On the table amidst this vast collection of literature was a stack of letters. I turned the stack over. All of them sealed and stamped, the envelopes were addressed to various schools: Amherst College in Massachusetts, Bates College in Maine and other colleges I recognized from the New England region. Either Hampton was pushing for another job at a more prestigious school or he was keeping up a steady stream of communication with some former colleagues. Then I hit pay dirt. On the edge of the table was a book with an envelope protruding from its pages. It was addressed to Lance Miller. I stuffed it into my coat pocket. The contents of it, I was sure, would later prove to contain more than a little interesting reading. I made special note of the book, A Critical Appraisal of Twentieth Century Naturalist Authors.

  I continued to run my light over the table. Finding nothing of interest, I began to leaf through some of the books. Three more letters were concealed between the covers of some of the volumes. Each of the letters had been sent to Hampton from Ivy League schools. I took time to read all three. They were all form letters advising Hampton that he had been turned down for each of the teaching positions for which he’d applied. Apparently Ocyl College fell short of his academic standards, and he was now setting his sights on bigger things. Or maybe he just wanted the hell out of Centre Town. I didn’t have much of a clue how these prissy academic types contemplated wiping their rear ends let alone considered their next career moves. What was clear was that Hampton had started knocking on the hallowed doors of the big Ivies, and finding them less than eager to embrace him into their snooty embraces, was now working his way down to the less exclusive schools.

  After replacing the letters back inside the books I sat back on the couch and listened to the rain. The couch was a sturdy job that swallowed me up into its deep-cushioned comfort. For the longest time I just sat there in the dark moving my light around the room as I listened to the rain pound off the roof. What had started earlier in the evening as drizzle was now a full-fledged storm. I welcomed it. Though I’d been back in Centre Town for only a couple of months, the rain still sounded strange after all those years in the arid Southwest.

  Albuquerque. Long hot nights patrolling that desert boom town. Sipping cold beers at the Mexicali Cafe after work. The warm summer breezes off the desert reaching me on the restaurant’s patio as Juanita, the slim waitress with the coconut skin and the high husky laugh, brought me another beer. Above me a galaxy of stars sprinkled across a sky of black velvet looked close enough to touch. Hell. I could have retired in that southwestern haven. But then…A little Mexican boy, the scurrying of drug dealers through rooms of a house and the cacophony of Spanish voices…the barrel of a gun pointed at me, and the blast of gunfire.

  “Who’s there?”

  A dark figure stood on the staircase landing just off the hallway across the room.

  “You stay right there,” he said in a quivering voice. The figure moved uneasily down the steps and into the hallway. I was on my feet, but it was just as well I didn’t make a run for it. In the next instant I was bathed in light and staring at the butt end of a revolver.

  Chapter 5

  “You’re an intruder sir.”

  It took me about five seconds to realize the worst I might get out of this was a verbal lashing. The guy was out of his element. That was for damn sure. He was trying hard to keep his voice from faltering, and it was all he could do to keep both his bony hands around the puny .22 pistol he had trained on me.

  He was this thin, almost emaciated guy with a sallow complexion and a little brush mustache. The red bathrobe he wore fell to just above the scrawniest pair of chicken legs I’d ever seen. All in all, I guess you could say he was a pathetic version of David Niven. If not for the gun I might have walked across the room and slapped him silly. It took some will power to keep from doing just that. I was convinced the twit didn’t have a clue about how to use a firearm.

  “Identify yourself sir.”

  He had gained some control of his voice, but it was plain he would have much rather been in front of a class discussing the symbolism behind Moby Dick than holding a gun on yours truly. He held the gun so tightly that the knuckles on his hands had turned white. Right then, I decided to see how far I could push him.

  “What’s it worth to you?” I asked.

  The chicken legs buckled for an instant, and it seemed to take all his strength in his hands to keep the gun steady.

  “I could shoot you sir. You are, after all, an intruder in my home.”

  “A home? Is that what you call this place. I could have sworn I was in a flea market.”

  “Who is it Giles?” It was a woman’s voice from the stairway area.

  “I don’t know Jeannette. A burglar perhaps. Get on the phone and summon the police.” I heard her footsteps move away upstairs.

  “You’re wasting your time with the cops.”

  “You’re wasting my time sir.” He moved toward me a couple of steps. “Get your hands up.”

  I slowly brought them up but not without allowing myself a wise-guy grin.

  “Now,” he added, pointing to the couch with the gun. “Sit down.”

  He moved out of the hallway and into the living room still holding the gun on me. I decided to comply with the guy. Sort of anyway. Instead of taking a seat on the couch as he’d demanded, I reclined on the damn thing as if I was settling in for a ball game and a snooze. It was obvious now he didn’t know quite what to do with me next. I decided to turn up the juice a bit. “Mind if I smoke?” I said, reaching into my pants pocket.

  “Keep those hands where I can see them,” he screamed, fumbling with the gun.

  “Don’t get nervous Pop. I just wanted …”

  “Never mind that. If you wish to smoke. I’ll have Jeannette bring you one of my cigars.”

  “Phew. Forget that noise. Cigars give me diarrhea.”

  That nearly caused him to smile. “Oh really.”

  “Yeah. That smoke gets in my bowels. It’s like someone blowing steam up my ass.”
>
  “How perfectly revolting.”

  He seemed to grow a little easier then. Relaxing his grip on the gun, he carefully set himself down into a nearby chair where he sat studying me.

  “So now what,” I said. “We smoke a peace pipe and become blood brothers?”

  “Hardly. You’re still an intruder here.”

  “Would it ease your bladder any if I told you I was an Amway salesman?”

  He shook his head and frowned.

  “So what’s all this,” I said, looking around the room, “a setting for the Ladies Tuesday Morning Book Club?”

  “Hardly. Books are my livelihood. I’m chair of the Department of Literature at Ocyl College.”

  “A high calling I’m sure.”

  “It’s certainly above that of a cheap, petty burglar,” he sneered.

  “Heh. Heh. I guess it wouldn’t make your day to know that I was a detective.”

  The remark caused him to stare blankly at me.

  “Giles?” It was the woman again.

  “Yes. Jeannette.”

  “The storm must have knocked the lines down. I can’t get through.”

  I thought for sure he’d faint. For a moment he stared hard at the floor.

  “Heh. Heh. So now what do you do Pop?”

  “Stop calling me that,” he snapped.

  “Sure Pop. But with the police not coming you better think of what you’ll do with me.”

  “L-l-look…Your still my prisoner.” Once again, he had both hands wrapped tightly about the gun and trained on me. Only now he was on the very edge of his seat and appearing not too steady.

  “Prisoner. Whew. You mean like kinky bondage. You and me and the little lady upstairs.”

  He shot out of his seat. “That will be quite enough sir.”

  That did it. I got up too and moved slowly toward him. The barrel of the gun began to droop. He still had both hands around the weapon but with each step the barrel lowered more. About five feet away from him I stuck out my hand. “C’mon Pop. Be a nice boy and give me the piece.”