The Corpse Next Door

by John Farris

  When I sorted my thoughts after things had quieted down I saw Mother Garrett scrambling around in her purse. Arlene raced down the stairs, launching a kick that tore the purse from her grasp. He fell on top of her. She shrieked vilely and speared one of his eyes with a finger.

  He crawled around and around on the floor, his eye squinted shut, cursing hysterically. She kicked for his weak spot, but the kick was weak and the pointed heel dug harmlessly into his stomach. He grabbed her shoe and wrenched it from her foot. He tucked his face against his chest so she couldn’t get at it easy, clawed his way up her body and grabbed her by the blouse, tearing it and her brassiere completely from her body as she whirled and staggered to her feet. He followed, hit her in the jaw with his fist. She moaned, hurt, and her hands dropped. He held her by the hair with one hand, slapped her viciously, right and left. He let her drop. She kneeled on the floor, holding herself, her skirt pulled down around her thighs.

  “Teach . . . you . . .” Arlene muttered, squirming his body aimlessly, his feet planted. He held a hand over his injured eye. His mouth was twisted in pain. Hair hung over his forehead.

  He stumbled toward the wounded hood lying in pain against the stairs, kneeled beside him, found a blackjack in one of the man’s pockets. He jerked the man’s head up by the hair and, ignoring the man’s quick plea, used the leather sap across his chin.

  Arlene waved the sap in the air. “My eye, my eye! I ought to kill her.”

  I took hold of his shoulder.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “Let’s shag out of here, man.”

  We trotted up the stairs.

  In the hallway the Chinese girl leaned against the phone stand, dialing with an unsteady finger. Arlene stopped long enough to hurl her out of the way, rip the phone from the wall.

  He dove for the kitchen door, me following. We crossed the kitchen fast and he put his shoulder against the screen door opening on the back porch, banging it wide, and we leaped into the yard, ignoring the back steps. He ran toward the alley. I saw my car, the headlights bright moons in the darkness.

  “Where’s Nathan?” I yelled.

  “In the heap. Move the feet, man!”

  Two doors of the Oldsmobile were open. Arlene and I scrambled inside and Karis dug out, spraying gravel against the high board fence on the other side of the alley. Behind us, in the house, rose a tentative scream. Lights were on all over the place. I glanced back at Arlene. He was still holding a hand to his eye. Beside him, Nathan slept blissfully, his head rolling as Karis wrestled the wheel.

  “Took care of one phone,” Arlene panted. “Probably others.”

  My breath was scorching my throat. “Think they’ll sic the cops on us?”

  “No. Not worth while. Let’s get some distance anyway, honey baby.” He sucked in air. “Old bitch blinded me. I’m hurt. Really hurt.”

  “Let’s see,” I said. Karis swung left, screechingly, onto the highway, ignoring a yellow light. I took a swift look at her. Her lips were molded into a hard line. There was perspiration on her forehead. She seemed slightly stunned, but she was handling the car all right.

  I put the light in Arlene’s face and he took his hand away. The flesh around the hurt eye was swelling. The lid was puffy. He pulled it up part way. The white of his eye was splotched with red, and there was a thin scratch near the pupil. I turned the light off.

  “She missed her gouge job,” I told him. “Scratch on the cornea, capillaries burst. It’ll hurt like hell for a few days, and may be pretty dangerous. We’ll drop you off at the hospital in Cheyney to get it taken care of right. Thanks for the help. How’d you know I was hot-boxed?”

  “Saw ’em drive up. Figured the pretty Chinese had snapped out of it and would tell ’em. That was nice shooting, man. You’re okay, man. In my book.”

  “I heard that shooting,” Karis choked. “God—”

  I put my hand on her arm. “It’s okay,” I said gently. “If you want me to, I’ll drive.”

  “No. I’ll be all right. I was scared, Bill. When the guns went off. You don’t know!”

  The Olds whipped through the night. I stayed close to Karis, my fingers gripping her arm lightly. Little by little I could feel the tension leaving her. Once she glanced over her shoulder at Nathan. Then she smiled at me, gratefully, her teeth pale in the darkness.

  I DROPPED THE LAST OF THE PHOTOGRAPHS IN A GARBAGE can in the kitchen of the Fisher home and added a burning match. The smut burned brightly in the middle of the floor for several minutes, became ashes.

  Karis came in while the flames were still high and watched the blaze intently. “You burned all of them?” she said, her tongue touching dry lips. Her face was lined with fatigue, and there was a gray smudge of cigarette ash on her cheek.

  I nodded. I still kept one of the photographs, one in which Nathan appeared, in my coat pocket, but it would be burned soon, too.

  Karis swallowed hard several times. She began to cry without sound, looking down at the floor like a child who has dropped an ice cream cone on the sidewalk.

  I guided her to a bright yellow chair and she sat down, sobbing hopelessly in the outrageously cheerful breakfast nook, her face pressed against crossed forearms. She smelled faintly as if she had been cleaning up the bathroom after Nathan.

  Between sobs, she said, “He had another headache when I put him to bed. Oh, Bill. What am I going to do? What can I do?”

  “You can’t be his keeper. If he wants to go to hell so bad, he’ll get there in spite of you.”

  “I’ve got to do something. Something! Bill, you don’t understand. I love my brother. I can’t bear to see him go on like this.”

  “Could a psychiatrist help?”

  “Yes. I think. I don’t know. I brought up the subject once. He raged at me. Said there was nothing wrong with him. Said he was just tired.” She laughed convulsively. “Tired.”

  She looked around the kitchen, seeking some answer to her despair. “All our life we lived here. Dad died a long time ago. Mother was practically an invalid. Nathan and I, we were each other’s family. We played together, all the time. I love my brother. I don’t . . . I don’t want to see him ruin himself.”

  “He has the answer,” I said. “Kelly. That’s what’s eating him.”

  She pressed her hands together, her eyes filled with stark hate. “Kelly Anne? Maybe. Kelley Anne was his weakness. She never cared for him. She spoiled everything she came into contact with. Like a fungus. She blighted his integrity. She must have caused this—this feeling of inadequacy he has. She could do it.” Her eyes closed almost painfully, and she leaned her face against her arms again.

  I pulled her chair back and picked her up in my arms. She hid her face from me, crying against my neck, her lips open and moist.

  “Come on, big girl. You need a good night’s rest.”

  “I can walk.”

  “You’re barefoot. I’ll carry you. No charge.”

  I turned off the kitchen light and carried her to the stairs. She was tall, but didn’t weigh much. As I climbed the steps she began to nuzzle my neck, and I was glad to put her down in the bedroom.

  She smiled up at me from the bed, passed a hand over her crisp black hair. “I’m all dirty and sweaty. Bill—before you leave, get me a washrag from the bath. And a glass of water and an aspirin, too, please.”

  I crossed to the bathroom, found a lavender cloth in the linen closet, put it in the wash basin to soak up hot water while I hunted an aspirin. I gathered up cloth and glass and aspirin and started back into the bedroom.

  Karis was opening the bottom drawer of her dresser, her back toward the door of the bath. Her dress with the playing card prints was on the bed along with her other things. I retreated into the bath, put the washcloth under the water again to make sure it would be warm enough, tapped my fingers against the basin, ran the venetian blind up and down a couple of times just for the hell of it. I returned to the bedroom. Karis had put on a candy-striped night shirt and was propped up in bed,
holding the covers against her stomach.

  She took the water and aspirin gratefully, patted at her face with the wash cloth. I sat on the edge of the bed and touched the back of her hand. “See you tomorrow, kid.”

  She smiled at me and locked her fingers around my neck and kissed me, not playfully.

  “Don’t,” I said, almost incoherently. “Don’t. Please.”

  “You can’t leave me now,” she said, and she wasn’t smiling. “Please, Bill. Stay with me, just for a little while. I’m scared all the time.”

  I took her hands from my neck, feeling a tremor in them. “Karis, I . . .”

  She drew me closer to her, her head against my arm. Her face was pale and very still, her eyes closed. Her breathing was very quick, then slowed gradually and deepened. I put an arm around her shoulders, put my face to hers.

  “No,” she said softly and contentedly. “You won’t leave.”

  7

  IT WAS four o’clock in the morning before I made it to Roxy’s. The motel courtyard was parked solid with cars, so I left mine in the drive and went upstairs. Roxy has a small apartment on the second tier of his bar.

  He came to the door after a while, wearing passionate pink pajamas. He still had sleep in his eye.

  “Glad you made it, Bill. C’min. Be awake in a minute. Have a seat. You look weak in the knees.”

  In the large living room I sat myself in a low chair across from the studio bed where Roxy had been sleeping. He went to the bath, washed his face and combed his hair, came back looking surprisingly brisk.

  “I can put on some coffee . . .”

  “Don’t think so, Roxy.”

  “Cigarette?”

  I made a face.

  “What kept you?”

  I shook my head. “We brought him back. That’s all that matters.”

  “Donny phoned in earlier. You had trouble.”

  “Some. We left a couple of hurt people behind. That Arlene. They had me. He came through in a big way.”

  Roxy sat on the side of the bed. “He was at the hospital when he phoned. Something about his eye. They were giving him shots. He’s earned himself a bonus tonight. So have you.” I let that one ride.

  “What kind of shape was Nathan in?”

  “Drunk. I think he woke up when Karis was putting him to bed. He had another bad headache.”

  “You’ve been over at the Fisher house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Donny said there were pictures.”

  “Somebody was taking snapshots from the closet. He had a full view of the bed.” I took out the one remaining photo, the one I had saved for Roxy. He got up from the studio bed and took the picture cautiously.

  “I burned the rest,” I said. “I must have brought home a bushel of pictures like that. I didn’t want to take a chance on missing any of Nathan.”

  “Interesting,” Roxy said, looking at the photo. He turned and walked slowly toward an old slant-top desk beside double windows.

  I took a cigarette lighter from a low buffet table near the chair and flicked it on. “Roxy.”

  He looked at me.

  “Better burn it,” I said. “The wrong people might get hold of it.”

  A trace of annoyance crept into his eyes before being obliterated by a smile that was a little too warm and friendly to be convincing. “Yes. Certainly.” He came toward me almost regretfully and handed over the picture. I touched the flame to it without looking. I had seen too much of Nathan and his poor frantic efforts to reaffirm his looted manhood.

  When the flame began to warm my fingers I dropped the charring fragments into an ashtray, stirred the ashes with a fingertip after they had cooled some. Roxy watched me silently.

  “You spent a lot of time with her this evening,” he said in soft tones.

  “Yeah.”

  “The two of you sorted through those pictures?”

  “No. Karis didn’t see them. She was upstairs with Nathan.”

  “Did you make it with her tonight, Bill?”

  “What?”

  He looked reflectively at his hands. “She’s a lovely girl. Tall, graceful. She can be strong as iron. I know. I know how it is with girls like her. I happened to be in the right place at the right time once. With her, I mean. I was surprised. Afterward, I had a taste in my mouth. Like dark warm blood.”

  “Roxy!”

  He gave me a look of some astonishment. “I’m sorry, Bill. I supposed—well, I supposed you thought she was entirely amateur. I just thought I’d mention the way it is with her. I have nothing against Karis. I hardly know her. It’s not her fault.”

  He turned away and went to the windows, walking stiffly. I put my face in my hands and listened to the beat inside my head. I was tired. I knew I was liable to say almost anything. It was a dangerous feeling.

  Roxy said, “A silly thing to be talking about. There are more important matters we need to discuss.”

  “Like what?”

  “I saw Sam Gulliver today.”

  “Oh.”

  We looked at each other, Roxy regarding me with faint speculation, wondering if I were still a bargain. He was ready to make up his mind either way.

  “I got suspended,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “He tell you why?”

  Roxy made a movement with his hand. “The Jimmy Herne thing. Sam seemed pretty upset. He seemed to think you’re trying to undermine him.” I saw the beginning of a doubt in Roxy’s eyes that could mean anything.

  “Roxy, the other night a body was discovered in the basement of Jimmy Herne’s employer, Leland Smithell. The point is, during our investigations we proved Smithell a murderer and thief, and we turned up other information that strongly indicates Jimmy Herne didn’t kill Smithell, that he was the victim of a neat frame. I took this evidence to Gulliver, expecting him at least to look into it further. He didn’t.”

  Roxy considered this. “What do you think you can do, Bill?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t make Gulliver reopen the case. But I’ll do something.”

  He turned his head away from me disapprovingly. “I told you once that it would only bring you trouble if you went out of your way to antagonize him.”

  He leaned against the slant-top desk. “Besides, if you’re right, Bill, you share Gulliver’s blame.”

  “You’re not telling me anything.”

  Roxy smoothed a few errant hairs in his mustache with his little finger. “Gulliver’s had three good years in Cheyney,” he said reflectively. “There’s nothing dishonest about Sam. But he has no refinement of thought or personality. Crude men make mistakes, and their mistakes make them useless. I think the good years are over for Sam Gulliver.”

  He opened a drawer of the desk and took out a fountain pen and checkbook. He wrote out the check and brought it over to me, offered it with a shy smile.

  I took it, looked at it. The check was for five hundred dollars. I felt a weary urge to laugh. I had just found out how much I was worth. I tried to think what five hundred dollars meant to me. I decided it meant nothing, not when it came from Roxy. I gave back the check.

  “I’m not for sale, Roxy.”

  He looked properly puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean. It’s just a little thank-you note. For helping Nathan tonight.”

  “I didn’t help Nathan,” I said. “I’m not qualified. He’s a sick baby boy. You better talk to him, Roxy, or he won’t be good to anybody.”

  Roxy folded the check slowly, and put it in the pocket of his pajamas. He seemed oblivious of my warning about Nathan. “I’ll keep this. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

  “No. What I did wasn’t for you and wasn’t for Nathan. You don’t need help and Nathan’s beyond it. I was trying to help Karis.”

  I closed my eyes, remembering her asleep on the bed, sleeping like a child, breathing deeply. She was very lovely, but I knew there was a remoteness in me she could never reach. That no woman would ever reach again.

  He no
dded understandingly. “She is rather satisfying. Even passionate.”

  “Stop talking about her.” I got to my feet, swayed a little. It would have been easy to fall on my face and stay there for twenty-four hours. “What do you want with Nathan anyway?” I said recklessly. “Are you really interested in his career, or is he just another potentially useful little knicknack like Dr. Einhorn and his wonderful bottle?”

  DR. EINHORN WAS TWO HOURS LATE. HIS WAITING ROOM filled slowly with patients, who shuffled in uncertainly with their complaints and ailments and sat tensely in formidable wooden chairs as if listening for a scream.

  He came in about ten and distributed apologies. I cornered him before he could go into conference with his office nurse, showed him the badge, requested a few words. He sighed. He was very busy. But he took me to his office and shut the door.

  “What can I do for you, Randall?” he said, putting himself in an old swivel chair behind his desk. He wore a brown suit with russet threads and a black string tie. Two deep lines clutched at his large dry mouth like small ice tongs, and there were pads of finely wrinkled skin under his sad eyes. He didn’t look well.

  “I understand Nathan Fisher is one of your patients,” I said.

  He nodded. “I’ve been the family physician for some fifteen years now. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  I chose a chair near the desk. Dr. Einhorn said, “What is your interest in Nathan?”

  “I don’t know him very well. But I’ve seen enough of him to guess he’s heading for a crack-up. He goes on periodic drunks. He has violent headaches. He takes up with prostitutes. I wouldn’t care one way or another, except for his sister.”

  He leaned back in the chair, studying me. “I understand, then, this visit isn’t an official one.”

  “No. But don’t close up on me, doctor.”

  He slid open a desk drawer, took out a small box, removed two capsules from the box. He swallowed them, wincing slightly. He replaced the box.

  “What is it you want to know? You think I can, or will, tell you what’s wrong with Nathan?”