While I'm crouching there with the knife sweating in my hand and my heart beating so loud I can hardly hear the tapping Dick is making, the kitchen door to the downstairs flat opens up and Mrs. Fidel, who's hard-of-hearing but has good eyes, puts out the empties for the milk man. I'm dying should she look up and see me. She doesn't and goes back inside.
I stick my head through the back window and tell Dick the hell with it. He grabs a carton of cigarettes and a big box of hard candy. We go down to the freight yards to divvy it out. The cigarettes is all right, but the candy is stale old penny candy that tastes like soap.
It's the last time Dick and me ever try to do anything like that. But Eddie, who, maybe because he didn't have the scare I had, tries it on his own an other time. He robs an auto supply and gets away with it. Pretty soon he steals so many times without getting caught, he thinks his life is charmed.
Then he gets caught and tried and sentenced. By this time I got some influence. I give out plenty of markers and call in plenty more. It busts my accounts all over town, but I get him on a work release program and quick probation. I get him a job in the morgue, which he likes.
I got his marker for life.
He's as cheery as ever when he comes out of the locker room wearing his white coat. "What can I do you?" Eddie says.
"You got a dead girl in a drawer."
"I got lots."
"This is the one that got blown up over to Sperry Avenue."
"That one was so young and good-looking it's a shame," he says.
I don't ask him if it ain't a shame should somebody young and ugly or old and used up gets blown away.
"Can I see?" I says.
"Whatever you want. Follow me."
We go into the room with all the brushed steel drawers stacked along one wall. He goes to one of them and pulls it out. She's under a green sheet. He strips it almost all the way down to her ankles. She's been autopsied and that ain't very pretty . . .
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph."
. . . but they have put her back together so at least her face looks . . . maybe not like she's sleeping, but maybe not so bad.
Her face is hard, though, with them tight little lines like razor cuts around her mouth. Like women get who've been used too much, too soon. Even dead, she looks like she's frowning, warning the world that she'll fight if it ain't careful.
"Can I read the medical examiner's report?"
"No, you can't."
"Hey, Eddie," I says.
For such a small matter I don't want to remind him of the debt he owes me. That ain't how it's done.
"I would if I could, but I can't," he says. "It walked away."
"Lost?"
"Strayed or stolen," he says. "I'd bet on stolen."
"You read her report?" I asks.
"I read them all," Eddie says, grinning, having had his tease at my expense. "I got time on my hands."
"What killed her?"
"What do you think?"
"A bullet."
Eddie points to the little round hole in the middle of a bruise, right under her left breast, toward the center of the chest.
"Where's the bullet?" I asks.
"Gone with the wind, the same like the report. How did you figure it was gunshot? It ain't in the papers."
"A little bird told me," I says.
"The little bird got a name?"
"For a minute I thought it was you, Eddie."
He shakes his head. "It would've been if I knew you was interested," he says. "But how would I know?"
"Cover her up," I says.
Eddie pulls up the sheet and covers her body up to the neck. For a minute she looks peaceful like Mrs. Klutzman looked, then Eddie pulls the sheet up over her face.
THIRTEEN
I go down to the clinic on Sperry. The Right-to-Lifers are still marching outside, but there's only three of them. The redheaded lady with the mole is one. She hurries over to me and shoves a membership blank under my nose.
"Five dollars to join a holy crusade."
"A couple days ago you gave a friend of mine five dollars to join."
"Did I?"
"Why did you do that?"
"Because I got ten dollars for every new crusader I signed up."
"How's that?"
"Mr. Asbach needed names to make a case with some heavy contributors."
"He doesn't need them anymore?"
"We hit the news," she says, as though stunned at my lack of sophistication about media matters.
"So now I got to pay to get in?" I says.
"You want to get in?"
"If I join, where does my five dollars go?"
"For printing circulars. For making signs."
"For making bombs?" I says.
"I know you," she says. "You threatened Mr. Asbach. . . the man is a saint. You lied to me. You told me you was one of us."
"We're all one in the Lord," I says.
"Are you a Christian?"
"You're damned right," I says.
"You ain't a Catholic?"
"Catholics ain't Christian?"
"Is the Pope a Polack?"
"Can we talk?"
"About what?"
"About maybe I should take out a membership, maybe four or five."
She swivels her head around and pops her eyes to see if the other marchers have heard me mention such riches.
"Over here," she says, and scuttles over to the telephone pole with her sign dragging behind her like it was a busted rudder.
"Tell me the truth," she says, "you really don't want to join this bunch, do you?"
"Tell me the truth," I says, "you really don't give a damn, do you? This is a living for you, ain't it?"
"A supplement to my income, which ain't much," she says.
"Who else do you march for?"
"Anyone who lets me solicit memberships."
"How do you split?"
"Fifty-fifty sometimes. Sometimes I pay a flat and take what I take. It depends."
"Like sometimes you even pay half of what the organizer pays you for a member like you did the other day?"
"Only when it's slow. You're such a fast learner I should maybe make you a partner," she says sarcastically.
"So what's the new arrangement you got with Asbach now that he don't need to pay for numbers?"
"Fifty-fifty."
"Fifty-fifty of five is lunch money. Fifty-fifty of twenty or twenty-five is an abuse to your good nature."
"You see it that way, too?"
"I do. Who wants to be a joiner anyway? I pay you four memberships. You keep the memberships."
"Make it five memberships."
I hand her two tens and a five.
"What can I do you?"
"This Asbach—"
"The man is a saint. Hey." She grins like a child. "You started my tape."
"You got a hell of an act," I says. "This Asbach . . . where was he when the bomb went off?"
"Not here. That what you want to know? Not here, but he was here before the bomb went off."
"How long before?"
"Half an hour. Make it forty-five minutes. I count while I march. He stopped by to tell us to fight the good fight. The two-faced sonofabitch."
"Two-faced? How two-faced?"
"Here he's got us stomping around pestering poor women who got caught and want to get rid of a burden. It ain't easy for most of them. It hurts them in the heart. You can tell. You can see it in their eyes."
"Two-faced?" I says, reminding her.
"He's shouting and screaming about what these poor girls done and how they got caught because they was too lazy . . ."
She maybe means innocent or trusting, but there's no way for her to say a soft thing like that, because she's afraid she'll get laughed at.
". . . and he's got a tart in the back of the cab. He's off to lay on his back while we got to stand on our feet."
"Did Asbach go inside the clinic?"
"No."
"Did Asbach talk to anyon
e except you people on the street?"
"No."
"Look," I says. "You take maybe a quarter pound of Epsom salts, your feet ache, and put it in a pan of hot water with some thyme and sage like you use for stuffing. Let me tell you, it'll do wonders."
"I'll try it," she says, and her hand comes out with my bills in it, like she's touched by my concern for her feet and is even thinking about giving me back my twenty-five. Before she can catch herself doing a dumb thing, I close my hand around her fingers and smile at her.
"And maybe buy yourself a pair of sheepskin slippers."
"Hey," she says, "you're all right."
"Vote Democrat," I says.
What the hell, a vote for the party is a vote for the party, even if I don't know if she lives in my precinct.
I go inside.
Chapman is stripped to his skivvy shirt. He's got arms like pipe stems wrapped in thongs. While I watch, he picks up a sheet of wallboard like it was made of tissue paper and lays it against the studs of a partition. A small woman, who's wearing a tool belt, starts swinging a hammer and nailing the panel like she knows what she's doing. She does a long row like she's tapping out a tune.
He turns around, taking a step and reaching for the next piece of board like he's a dancer. He pauses when he sees me. "Is there something else?" he says.
The woman eyes me up and down. She has a pretty face like a moon with pink spots of color on her cheeks.
"This is my wife, Gloria," Chapman says.
I put out my hand. "I'm Jim Flannery," I says.
She pulls off her work glove and sticks out her hand, which is warm and dry and solid as a stone. She takes off the bandanna that covers her hair and shakes her head. Masses of black curls come tumbling down around her face.
"Thank you," Chapman says.
"For what?"
"For not acting surprised. For not wincing."
"I ain't going to like you," I says, "you keep on acting grateful."
"It's that or be mad all the time," Gloria says. "Cal can't make up his mind."
"I got the same trouble and I ain't black," I says.
"So, what can I do for you?" Chapman says.
"I want you should identify somebody for me."
"Who?"
"The guy who you saw entering the waiting room as you passed through the hall on your way to your office."
"Is he in custody?"
"What for? I know where he lives. I just want you to look."
"Right now?"
"No, it can wait for a little. How about tonight? How about you and your wife come over to my place and have supper with me and my friend? We can go over to the Twenty-fifth, where this guy lives, after we eat."
Chapman hesitates, like he's not particularly anxious to get social with me.
"Mary Ellen Dunne is my friend," I says, "and we can leave the ladies to talk while we go have a look."
Chapman smiles. It's nice and open and friendly. "Hey, don't tell me," he says. "You mean to say you're going out with Mary Ellen Dunne?"
"In a manner of speaking," I says. "That knock you down?"
"Well, no, but it's like getting a seal of approval stamped on your forehead, so far as I'm concerned, if Mary Ellen Dunne trusts you. She reads people's hearts."
"What time?" Gloria says.
I look at my watch. "Six?" I says.
"That's all right."
I take off my coat and hat and put them on a chair. Chapman watches me as though he's amused and startled. I roll up my sleeves.
"That's a good suit," Gloria says.
"You sure you want to do this?" Chapman says. "It's hard work for a man who isn't used to it."
"You're a doctor. You used to it?"
"I've done more than my share."
"What do you think, I was born with a cigar in my mouth, a derby on my head, a ten-dollar payoff in one hand and a ballot in the other?"
When I tell Mary that Chapman and his wife is coming for supper, she smiles and asks me what I told them about us.
"Nothing."
"Are we hiding?" she asks.
"No. I just don't think who we tell, except for my father, that we're living together, is only up to me. You got a say."
"Well, say it or don't say it, Gloria will know even if Dr. Chapman doesn't."
"Doctor? Is that what you're going to call him? Is that what I'm supposed to call him?"
"Professional courtesy," Mary says. "It's a habit."
"I know."
"I suppose, since it's social, we'll call him Calvin."
"You call him Calvin, I'll call him Cal," I says.
They arrive right on the dot. Gloria's got a little bunch of flowers. Chapman's got a bottle of wine in a paper sack. Everybody is happy, also shy.
Gloria is happy because when a white woman marries a black man she's going to see more black faces than white all the time.
Chapman is happy because he hopes maybe the world ain't always going to be black and white like it was when his mother works scrubbing floors day and night to get him through school. Maybe our generation; and the ones coming right after, will be color blind.
Mary is happy because she's got a secret she wants the world to know and these people will be kind messengers.
I'm happy because it's like we've been married some time, and here we are having a couple over for supper, and the flat looks better then I remember it ever looking.
"So, let's eat," I says. "You like Irish stew?"
"Hungarian goulash," Mary says.
When he finishes his second plate, Chapman says, "That is the best hotpot I've tasted in a long time."
That, I guess, is how different people make friends.
Mary won't stay behind when I say Chapman and me is going over to the Twenty-fifth so Chapman can have a look at Ciccone.
We can't leave Gloria behind all on her own, so we all go down to the Twenty-fifth together in Chapman's car, which has got more room than mine. It takes guts to do what he's doing. It's all right a black should maybe drive through this part of the Twenty-fifth, but to get out and walk even from the curb to a door ain't such a good idea. If anything, having a black mayor makes it worse for the blacks in certain wards and parts of wards. Addison, the pimp, is a special case. He's useful.
Somebody's playing the pinball machine in the candy store. Upstairs a woman laughs like a parrot. I knock on the door of Ciccone's flat.
The door opens up, and the smell and heat like wet wash hits me in the face again. Ciccone stands there in his underwear.
"Why do you bother me?" he says. "Am I a freak? You selling tickets for people should look at me? Why do you bring a nigger to my house?"
"You work for any black man who pays you a tenner."
"It was twenty," Ciccone says.
"It was ten, so don't get smart," I says.
"That's the man in the waiting room," Chapman says.
"That isn't the man I saw in the corridor," Mary says.
"You've got a bad mouth," Gloria says.
Ciccone slams the door in my face.
We start back to the car.
"Wait a minute," I says. "I got a question I got to ask from somebody upstairs. You wait in the car." I look at Chapman. "I mean wait in the car."
Upstairs, Jessie's eye is at the Judas hole the minute I knock. This time she opens the door right away.
"I didn't get to ask you the favor," she says.
"So ask me," I says.
"I forget what it was, but I'll think about it."
"Jessie, you pick gum wrappers off the street. You collect string. You can't let a bargain pass you by. You think I owe you a favor because you open a door even when you got no favor to ask. I give you my marker. You can call it in any time inside of a month."
"You keep poking and nosing, you won't live that long," Jessie says.
"Will you mourn for me?" I says.
"I'll pee on your grave," she says.
I go down the hall and open the door to Addis
on's office without knocking. He's grinning at a white whore who's sitting on his lap. His hand is on her tit.
"Don't do that," I says, "I got to ask you a question."
"Didn't Velletri give you the word?"
"Did you call him the other night?"
He don't say nothing, but stands up so the whore has to scramble to stay on her feet. She goes away without him having to say go away.
"Are you going to call him again?" I says.
"I got orders," he says.
"What game are you playing?"
"What do you mean?"
"YOU sent your brother down to give me Helen Caplet's name."
"If you think that, what does it tell you?" he says.
"That maybe it's you who fell for a whore."
"You're a joke, Flannery."
"So what about the other thing you tell me?"
"What other thing?"
"The bullet in Helen Caplet's chest."
"Oh, my," he says, and he flashes me his white, white smile. "You're just trying that on. I don't tell you nothing."
"I got an ear like a musician. I play the harmonica. I read your name in your whispers, but it only just come to me when I'm standing downstairs. It was you on the phone."
He stands up, bored with me and my tricks. "Hey," he says, waving his pink palm in my face, "take what you think you got."
"One more question?"
"I got no more answers."
"Favor for favor. You answer my question, I don't tell Velletri you talk out of both sides of your mouth."
He stares at me like I'm dirt he intends to some day wipe off his shoe. "You ought to clean the wax out of your ears. I don't tell you about no bullet in Helen because I don't know about no bullet in Helen."
"There's a guy named Joe Asbach . . ."
"Yeah, he's a customer. He comes around."
"Is he more than a customer?"
Addison has the trick of lifting his eyebrows, too.
"Do you give customers the right to take your women out on approval?" I says.
The Junkyard Dog (Jimmy Flannery Mysteries Book 1) Page 7
