by David Daniel
“All right.”
“Now go help Heinz load the luggage.”
I felt the swirl of cold as the front door opened and closed. I reached the turn and could see down into the foyer. Basil Devlin sat in an ornate chair, facing away from me at an angle. He had changed out of his pajamas and robe and was wearing a topcoat and a cashmere muffler and a fur hat. His legs were wrapped in his plaid blanket.
I was ten feet from the bottom when the door opened again. A beech leaf skated across the parquet. A big man stepped in rubbing his hands together. He was wearing an Orioles batting helmet, and I recognized him as the Boog Powell look-alike who had been washing Devlin’s Mercedes.
“Well, shit!” he said when he saw me.
Basil Devlin turned. The skin on his face tightened, and for a moment I could see how he had looked as an awkward and love-smitten man, out of his element with a working-class girl half his age who sang jazz. In a weary voice, he said, “Finish him, Gene.”
Without a word the big guy reached into a corner behind a Chinese urn and produced a Louisville Slugger. He came across the foyer and started up the stairs. When he got to a point several steps below me, he swung. He didn’t swing hard. I leaned back—not tough to do, since I was mostly falling—and just managed to hold myself up. The bat knocked a divot out of the wooden banister. I backed up another few steps.
Gene swung again, harder, and this time I did fall and sat down on the carpet runner as the bat fanned past my face. Getting up was hard labor. I backed up farther. My head had started to swim again.
The big guy climbed another step. He was playing with me, liking it, and probably would’ve backed me all the way to the top, but below, from his chair in the foyer, Devlin said, “Goddammit, hurry!”
Gene lifted the bat to his shoulder. Time to hit a homer. Gripping the railing as tightly as I could, I hiked myself up and kicked. My foot made the sound a fastball makes smacking a catcher’s mitt. The big guy gave a wordless huff of breath. His eyes bugged. Then, arms pinwheeling, still clutching the bat, he fell backward. The helmet sprang away and he banged over every step, gaining momentum. At the bottom he somersaulted and caromed off the iron rail of the escalator chair and lay still. Devlin and I both stared, waiting. But I could see by the angle of the guy’s thick neck that he wouldn’t see another spring.
Ploddingly I started down the stairs. Devlin got up from his chair. The plaid blanket fell to the floor, and with it the portrait of Betty Crown. The glass in the art deco frame shattered. He stared down at the portrait a moment; then, slowly, he sank back into the chair.
“Time to call the cops,” I said.
34
SO MONDAY AFTERNOON I drove them to the airport. Jerry Corbin sat in the backseat, dictating memos to an aide. Beside me in front Chelsea read aloud from the Boston newspaper accounts: “‘Aiding the efforts of Lowell Police was Private Investigator Alex Rasmussen, who a Jer-Cor publicist said was helpful in guaranteeing the television star’s safety.’”
I caught Corbin’s eye in the mirror. “Helpful?”
He laughed. “Well, you know how it is. There’s a lot of fuzz and just one of you, and I suspect they watch a lot more TV.” He bent forward and clapped my shoulder. “Hey, I made sure they spelled your name right.”
Chelsea said, “They got it wrong.”
“What’re you talking?” Corbin took the newspaper. “I gave the reporter your card.”
Chelsea looked at me and smiled.
“At least you got the cops to can the idea of yanking my license,” I said. “That’s worth plenty. Droney isn’t my biggest fan.”
“That guy. He’s the kind of guy, you were a kid at scout camp, he’d come around in the night and take a leak on your campfire. I told him he could end up monologue fodder if he didn’t shape up.”
Earlier Corbin had met with Professor Westrake, and they had forged a kind of peace. Gripaldi was still in the hospital, eagerly telling everyone who’d listen how it felt to get shot. The Sun was planning a feature on him. The videotaped Gong Show premiere had voluntarily been pulled from broadcast by Corbin, but the story of his heroism under fire was out and he was riding a wave of good press. The network had given a green light to do the series, and the first show was dedicated to the memory of Justin Ross. So things had worked out, kind of.
“Dev’s case is a sad one,” Corbin said. He had visited Basil Devlin at the Middlesex County jail. “Dev talked about the great ladder of being. How my family were shanty Irish and rightfully servants for his family because his had come over earlier and had made more money. But each successive wave of immigrants, he claims, has been less and less willing to assume its rightful rung, wanting to start at the top. It creates only disorder, he says, and according to him, I encourage it. I represent all of the media for him. Imagine. Kind of makes a fella proud.”
I dropped them at their airline and went over to central parking, then hiked back to the concourse. When you’re Jerry Corbin, you don’t wait on airport lines. He and Chelsea were already in the departures corridor where the metal detectors stood. Jerry was surrounded by people in airline blazers, all laughing at a gag I missed. Probably the swami joke. When he’d shaken their hands and they’d gone, he waved me over. From a carry-on case he pulled out a dark blue beret. “A little gift,” he said.
I looked at it. “How’d you know I wanted a fedora?”
He grinned and handed the beret to Chelsea. “That’s for you, dear. You make a father proud.” She put it on. She looked great. “And for you, amigo…”
It was a gray Stetson snap-brim, with a satin band and a little red cockade, an eighty-dollar job. I put it on and adjusted the brim. “Sharp,” Jerry said.
“Definitely,” Chelsea agreed.
“Pshaw,” I said.
Corbin tugged his topcoat straight. “Okay. I’m not good at these things. Parting generally means I end up paying someone alimony. Though you’ve got some dough coming, too.” He raised his hand to God.
“Whenever,” I said.
He squeezed my hand. “You know you’ve always got friends in warm places. Come visit.”
He went on through, wisecracking with the security people. He headed for the departure gates and didn’t look back.
Chelsea said, “He likes you.”
“Can you blame him?” I said. “Yeah. It’s mutual.”
“He’d love you to come out and take a job. He told me.”
“I don’t do well with earthquakes. Anyway, you two have got some catching up to do.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “It’s going to be interesting. I kind of wish you’d come, but I understand.”
“This is my home turf. It don’t take a shamus to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy woild…”
Chelsea stood close to me. I could see her mother and her father in her features, and a whole lot more besides. Her eyes were as green and as moist as spring—except where I was going to be spring wasn’t coming; winter was. I put my good arm around her and hugged her. She hugged back.
“Yowch!”
“Sorry. I forgot you’re taped up.”
We looked at each other for a long count, then she went down the sloped corridor after her father, stylish in her beret and long leather coat. She didn’t look back, either. It ran in the family. I went outside and over to central parking, but I didn’t get my car yet. I climbed to the roof deck.
Cold slashing rain had come in overnight, the spin-off from a storm over the Atlantic, stripping the last leaves from the trees and leaving the sky a deep, polished blue. In the distance, a V of Canada geese winged purposefully south. Autumn was gone. The Old Farmer said snow by Thanksgiving, and I believed him. I stood there in the chill November wind awhile, glad for the new hat. I watched planes grumble into the air. Maybe one of them was theirs.
I drove back through the tunnel and found a phonebooth in the North End and dialed the number for the Harvard Office of Alumni A
ffairs. When Judy Bishop answered, I said, “Who played Johnny Morrison in The Blue Dahlia?”
“Rasmussen.”
“Close,” I said. “It was Alan Ladd. I need some information.”
She gave her throaty laugh. “Naturally. Go ahead.”
“You doing anything later?”
“That’s easy. No. Something else?”
I thought a moment and said, “You still like guys in hats?”
Also by David Daniel
The Heaven Stone
The Tuesday Man
Ark
About the Author
David Daniel has been a carpenter, a clam digger, a tennis pro, and an assistant in the Harvard Medical School neuropathology lab. He currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and at Middlesex Academy Charter School. His new book of short stories is called Six Off 66. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Also by David Daniel
About the Author
Copyright
THE SKELLY MAN. Copyright © 1995 by David Daniel. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
First edition: September 1995
eISBN 9781250162250
First eBook edition: February 2017
