The Corpse Next Door

by John Farris

  When we reached the right street I parked in front of the drug store. In a church nearby the congregation sang unevenly, above the low threatening sound of thunder.

  “How do we work it?” I said. “You sure he’s still inside?”

  “I’m sure,” Arlene said, patting his cheek lightly. He took out a package of gum, showed it around, took a stick for himself. “Getting in is easy. After that we just see how far we can push a bluff. You got your tin plate with you?”

  I nodded.

  Arlene went on, “I don’t think it’ll impress anybody much, but you never know.” He touched the clipped edges of Karis’ hair with a finger. His breath was on her cheek. “This doll here complicates things. I hadn’t counted her in. She can’t stay in the car. An unescorted dame can’t sit in this neighborhood five minutes without getting picked up by the cops. They keep the streets swept clean. Shows you how well organized this burg is. On second thought, she might come in handy. What time is it?”

  “Seven twenty-two.”

  Arlene put his narrow chin on his chest. He was thinking out loud. “It shouldn’t take us longer than twenty minutes to get Fisher out.” He took Karis’ hand in his own and looked at her searchingly. “Honey baby, will you do what ol’ Donny says? I want you to go in the drug store and wait until seven forty-five. Then drive to the east end of the alley”—he pointed—“and wait until you see three flashes.” He opened the glove compartment and felt around for my flashlight. “From this. Then come batting down the alley and pick us up. Will you do that for Donny, honey?”

  “Okay,” Karis said dryly. She was beginning to get scared.

  Donny patted her knee. “Good girl. Maybe when Donny brings your brother to you, you’ll show Donny how much you appreciate—”

  “Come on, lover,” I said. “She’ll think your feet are cold.”

  He gave me a smooth look of dislike, and the smile came and went like lightning flashing. I handed Karis the keys. She put a hand on my sleeve. “Bill—”

  “I’ll take good care of him, honey,” Donny said. “Don’t you fret about it.”

  Donny and I walked down the street toward the Oakdale Rooms. I could see the sign on a post near the sidewalk. Reasonable, it said. Rooms. I could smell the stale fruitiness of the gum Arlene was chewing. He hummed softly. “What a chick,” he said once.

  We went up the short walk to the small front porch. There was another sign, hand-lettered, beside the door. No military personnel, please, it advised.

  “These people cater to the best,” Arlene said. “There are cribs over on the other side of town for the five-buck trade.”

  He rang the bell and we waited, standing around with the air of innocent expectancy it seemed proper to assume.

  A small, delicate-waisted Chinese girl in a light blue maid’s uniform opened the door.

  “Please, come in,” she said.

  We marched into the foyer. There was a cheerful carpet covering the floor. The walls were painted light green and showed a few pictures, Audubon prints and the like. A radio played softly.

  She took us to some kind of waiting room, with curtained doorways at each end. It was very still, and there was a faintly salty smell. This room was a little more spicy, with pictures of almost-undressed girls on the carnelian walls, each pose calculated to make a man think hard about what was upstairs, without spoiling the surprise. Red is supposed to be a sensuous color, too.

  Magazines were lying around oh end tables, featuring nearly nude studies. The girls themselves, I knew, when they entered after an appropriate time lapse, would wear tight-fitting pajamas, slashed here and there to show a bare leg and hip and navel, or diaphanous gowns which obscured all but hid nothing. If you weren’t in heat after this and the wash job upstairs, they called the undertaker.

  “You wait,” the little Chinese said. “Go bring girls. Have drink, if you wish.”

  “Where’s Mother Garrett?” Donny said.

  The Chinese hesitated perceptibly. Her eyes were mute. “Not here. I go bring girls.” She turned toward the curtains at the far end of the room.

  “Wait a minute,” Donny said, tight-lipped, “and knock off that goddam pigeon talk. We want to talk to you.”

  She stopped but didn’t turn. “What the hell do you want, buster?”

  Arlene nodded at me, and I took out my badge. The girl moved her head enough to get one large shiny eye on it.

  “A hackie brought a guy in here about four this morning,” Arlene said. “He’s still here. We want him.”

  She seemed to sigh a little. “You small-town clowns should know better than to try a pitch like this. Beat it while you still got your skins.” She took two firm steps toward the curtains.

  Arlene’s eyes were narrow gashes, but the grin showed, evilly. “We can do it the hard way.”

  She gave him a small scornful smile and kept walking. Arlene moved slickly, without sound. He grasped her from behind, lifted her from the floor as if she were a large doll. He had a hand over her mouth. The other hand worked on her. She writhed, jerked suddenly, and a hard sick sound got past Arlene’s broad hand. She jerked again, and stopped kicking.

  “You going to behave?” he said in her ear.

  She nodded.

  He put her on the floor, held one of her wrists. Half her forearm was lost in his grip.

  “Where’s Fisher?”

  “Yvonne’s room.”

  “Take us.”

  “Think you’re tough?” she gasped. “Think you’re tough? Goddam sonuvabitching . . .”

  “And keep those Frisco accents soft or—”

  “Oahu,” she snorted contemptuously, pulling her arm free and turning. “I was born in . . .”

  He swung the edge of his palm against the back of her neck, just below the hanging shiny black hair, and she slipped quietly to the floor.

  “Too much noise,” Arlene said.

  He picked her up quickly and draped her over one shoulder without effort. He went through the curtains and I followed. We were in a paneled hallway, with a wide flight of stairs on the left and three doors to the right.

  “One straight ahead is the kitchen,” he grunted. He picked out one of the other doors and opened it. “Think this is the basement. Good.” He ducked his shoulder and the Chinese girl rolled off. I heard her flop down the steps, in the darkness. Arlene shut the door.

  “Upstairs,” he said. He had a comb in his hand, and he ran it through his hair several times. He tugged at his coat.

  A blonde girl with an unbelievable bosom came around the bend in the stairs. She was in pajamas. The pajamas were trying, anyway.

  She blinked at us. “Looking for someone?” There was a big space between her front teeth.

  Arlene said, “Where is Yvonne’s pad?”

  “Upstairs, to the left, two doors down. I think she’s entertaining.”

  We squeezed past her. Arlene gave her stuck-out backside a slap, and she giggled mechanically.

  We counted our way to Yvonne’s room and knocked quietly. Somewhere in the house the strings of a guitar were being thoughtfully explored.

  “Busy,” we heard, through the door.

  We went in anyway. It was a small neat room, with lavatory separate, and a closet door across from that. A double bed took up much of the space. Yvonne sat in an easy chair near the bed—another creamy blonde like the one on the stairs—reading. She was naked, except for a pair of socks on her feet. Nathan was sprawled face down on the rumpled bed. He was dressed the same as the girl, except he wasn’t wearing socks.

  She looked up from the book, not too surprised. Maybe she was in demand. “I said I was busy, boys.”

  “He’s the one we want,” Arlene said. I shut the door. The girl turned the book face down in her lap and looked at us. Arlene grasped Nathan by the shoulders, tried to sit him up. Nathan’s mouth hung open, but his eyes stayed shut. He reeked. There was a nearly empty fifth of whiskey on a small table next to the bed.

  Arlene let h
im drop. “What the hell did you do that with?” he asked he girl.

  She got up languidly, went to the bed, looked at Nathan and laughed. “I separate the men from the boys.”

  “How much has he had to drink?” I said.

  “Lots. He was drunk when he came. I worked the first load out of him, but he about killed my bottle a while back. He’ll be dead for hours. Mother Garrett isn’t going to like me talking to you.”

  “This for her,” Arlene said, gesturing. “Where is she?”

  “At church, I suppose. She always goes to the 7:15 service on Sunday night.” She closed her eyes wearily. “Jesus, I’m bored.”

  Arlene grunted and began picking up Nathan’s clothes from the floor. The girl looked at me as if she wanted conversation.

  “He was restless all night,” she said. “I didn’t seem to help him any. He kept threshing around in his sleep and talking about somebody named Kelly. He asked Kelly to forgive him. I caught that much. There’s something inside him that’s trying to come out.” She looked at me as if I could explain.

  I shook my head once. A ventilating louver beside the closet door caught my eye. I went over and looked at it. I opened the closet door.

  “Oh, Nathan, boy, please try to cooperate a little,” Donny said as he wrestled with the limp Fisher, trying to dress him.

  “I’d help you,” the girl said, “but like I said, Mother Garrett won’t like it.”

  I went into the closet and stood on tiptoe to look through the louvered vent. It afforded a good view of the bed. I ran my fingers around the rear wall of the closet, found a sliding panel. This led into another closet in the next room. I went back into the room Nathan occupied.

  Arlene had Nathan’s shirt on him, partly buttoned. He held Nathan in a sitting position on the edge of the bed with one hand. With the other he forced Nathan’s right foot into a shoe.

  The girl was looking at me and yawning. “Why so unhappy?” she said.

  “Who’s been taking pictures?”

  She looked blankly at me. “Pictures?”

  “Through the air vent,” I said. “Don’t give me a stall. I know what the side take on home movies is in a pad like this one.” I unbottoned my coat and pushed it back far enough so she could see the butt of the .45.

  “Say,” she said. “Say.”

  “Is there a darkroom in the house?”

  “Mother Garrett,” she began weakly, not taking her eyes from the gun. “Mother Garrett won’t . . .”

  “You’re not saying the right words.” I looked at my watch. We had been inside fourteen minutes. “Come on, where is it?” I reached down and pulled her from the chair by the arm.

  “I . . . I can’t . . . I . . .”

  I began to twist the arm. She bent almost double, raising one foot off the floor. “Oh . . . you hurt . . . oh . . .”

  “Where is it?”

  “In . . . in the basement—don’t—don’t . . .”

  “Was somebody taking pictures today?”

  “Yes, yes. God . . .”

  “You know who your guest is?”

  “No. And I don’t care.”

  “Sit down.” I thrust her toward the chair.

  “But don’t get comfortable,” Arlene said. He had finished dressing Nathan. “Put on a robe or something and show me out of here. The back way.”

  “I’m going after the darkroom,” I said. “I’ll join you later.”

  “Okay, but snap it up. That maid won’t stay cold forever.” He gave me the big grin. With the scent of the place in his nostrils, he was nervous as a satyr.

  I left the room as Donny was shouldering Nathan. Melancholy chords from the guitar still sounded from somewhere. I raced down the steps without encountering anyone.

  There was a small landing at the top of the basement stairs. I carry around a small flashlight, about the size and weight of a fountain pen. I took it out and started down the steps into the solid blackness of the basement.

  I flashed the light around as much as I dared but didn’t see the Chinese girl. I couldn’t take time to worry about her.

  The stairs divided near the basement floor, forming a rough T with the main flight, and there was a small deck with a railing at the juncture of the steps. I stood there for a few slow seconds, trying to adjust to the darkness.

  Finally I exposed the beam of the flashlight and let it drift across the stained concrete floor, over packing crates, old furniture, cold furnace. A pair of oblique yellow eyes gleamed at me as a sleek brown cat near the furnace looked up from a saucer of sardines.

  In one corner of the basement I saw a small structure fashioned of two frame walls at right angles to the basement walls. In case I was wondering, a neat sign on the door of the little room said: DARKROOM—keep out when door is shut.

  I found my way over to it, using the flashlight sparingly, and edged the door open. A small balding man was bent over a sink inside, swishing prints in a shallow pan, his skin and clothing blood red. I stepped inside, stumbling over a raised floor. He turned in the crimson gloom, a small fat devil with ferret eyes. He reached beneath his black rubber apron. I jammed him against one wall as he pulled his knife, and it jarred from his fingers. Neither of us uttered a sound. I hit him below the heart and he slid to the floor.

  It was hot in the little room and I could smell myself. In a small dusty mirror over the sink my face glistened wetly, eyes slitted and secretive, mouth drawn tight in a fiery skull.

  There were prints and negatives of nudes everywhere, stacked on the sink, pinned to a length of wire to dry. There were small rolls of movie film. I looked at nothing, just grabbed all photos which showed men and women in the close harmony of love and stuffed my pockets full. The photographer lay sprawled against the wall, head lolling on one shoulder. One eyelid hadn’t completely closed.

  He watched me.

  The faucet dripped nervously.

  Hurriedly I searched through the accumulation of pornography. When my pockets were full, I stuffed the pictures inside my shirt. I realized suddenly I couldn’t take them all. There was a filing cabinet drawer full of prints and negatives. I didn’t know which were recent. I stacked them together, ripped them, crumpled the pieces. Sweat rolled down my face. The drawer was empty, the floor littered. I shut the drawer.

  I eased the stubborn door of the darkroom open, looked outside.

  It was even blacker than I remembered.

  I started toward the stairs. My shoes scuffled twice on the concrete floor. I walked slowly, afraid to use the flashlight. I remembered the red eye of the photographer, how he had watched me. Maybe he hadn’t been unconscious. I could sense him walking behind me, stealthily. My breath panicked in my throat.

  I was near the stairs. I had to use the flashlight now, so I wouldn’t stumble over them. My thumb had trouble with the button.

  I turned it on.

  A white, disembodied face wavered above me. It was a man’s face.

  He blinked.

  He looked down at me.

  I stepped back, my body numb and chill from shock.

  Lights jumped on all over the basement. The shock diminished slowly. Two men stood side by side on the deck near the basement floor. The taller one had a gun. He rested his weight on one forearm against the railing, and his revolver pointed negligently at the floor.

  A woman stood at the bottom of the steps, her hand over a light switch on the railing. Her hair was white-blonde, neatly waved. She was a handsome woman, about forty-five, with shrewd dark eyes, and expertly made up to hide bad skin. She looked coldly at me.

  The two men waited, disinterestedly alert. The taller man watched me steadily, as if wondering how I should be killed. He had already decided that I was going to be killed.

  “Church over already?” was all I could say. I was scared spitless.

  “See if he’s got a gun, Rorry,” she said.

  The shorter man, who had a large bulky body on short narrow legs, flexed his fingers. It was as far as he g
ot.

  “Don’t touch him, you bastards,” Arlene said from the top of the stairs. All eyes went to him.

  Donny crouched; his coat was stretched tightly over his muscled shoulders, his face a grimace of strain. The tall man brought the gun up swiftly, one hand gripping the railing tightly. I reached for my own gun. Donny was an absurdly easy target, and in the tight close seconds before death would erupt I wondered bleakly if he had lost his mind. Then I realized what he was doing.

  They saw, too, just as the heavy icebox toppled and fell toward them. The top hit one of the steps, and the icebox skidded crazily and turned sideways, rolled over and over down the stairs, making an unholy racket, all in the space of three quick heartbeats.

  Both men gaped at the descending refrigerator a split second too long. They turned in panic and met each other. The taller one, who had quicker reflexes, jumped backward and toppled over the rail to the floor six feet below. The other tried to turn and claw his way over the railing. The tumbling mass of steel caught up with him and smashed him through the railing with a harsh ripping sound of old wood. He screamed thickly once, most of his body pressed to the floor beneath the weight of the refrigerator, his arms waving wildly as if he were trying to swim; then a gigantic convulsion left him limp and unconscious.

  The other man still clutched his gun. He was crouched slightly with his arm outstretched, sighting Arlene. This boy knew what it was about. I threw back my coat, pulling the .45, knowing I didn’t have time to do anything but empty the gun in his direction. Arlene was screaming frantically. I started shooting as the barrel nosed up. I got lucky with two of them. Through the haze of smoke I saw his forearm smashed somewhere near the elbow and his own revolver jumped and disappeared, as if he had said the magic word and committed it to limbo. In the same instant another slug caught him in the side and he jerked, walked forward two tipsy steps with his mouth open and fell forward to the steps, crying loudly.

  My other slugs had ricocheted from the concrete walls with ear-splitting trills to punctuate the echoing blasts from the .45. I was lucky I didn’t get one of my own slugs back, the size of a quarter after gouging the walls. My brain was slightly dizzy. It’s no joke to empty a .45 in a closed room within three seconds. A little bit like walking too close to a speeding locomotive while somebody smacks the back of your head with a board.