Pardon My Body

by Dale Bogard

  The lighting got better towards the center of the room but Klinger’s face didn’t. Two heavy vertical lines forked his forehead immediately above his veined, bony nose. He didn’t even look at us.

  He spoke to Cast-Eye again. “Turn round, mug,” he said. His voice was high-pitched and breathy.

  Cast-Eye turned slowly so that Klinger could see his face gradually coming into full focus. Cast-Eye whispered, “You didn’t know it was me.” The way he said it, it wasn’t a question.

  Klinger tipped his lips with his tongue. A funny look crossed his face and was gone. I thought he had decided something and was pleased about what he had decided.

  He said softly, “I didn’t know it was you, Tommy—but I’ve been looking for you.”

  O’Cassidy leaned his buttocks against the table and spread the palms of his hands on the surface.

  “Who is this bird, Klinger?” He asked it in a cold, even voice.

  Klinger went on not looking at us. He answered, “A loogan named Tommy Nello. He knows plenty. I been trailing him for two or three days.”

  I was watching Tommy Nello’s face. Something terrible was happening on it. He seemed to be struggling for words but when he found them they came out in an incoherent blur. “Why…you…you dirty double…”

  Klinger kept his big police gun steady in his right hand while he brought his left up in a swing. His huge sharp-knuckled fist smashed against Nello’s nose. I could hear the bone structure crack. Nello’s head slammed back as though it was going to jump off his shoulders. Then he pitched backwards and rolled on his side in the carpet, his hands clawing at his face.

  O’Cassidy took his hands off the table and stared at his nails. For a copper he kept them nice. His voice was quiet and gentle and deadly.

  “The guy was just going to say sumpin’, wasn’t he?”

  “Was he?” Klinger bared his yellow teeth a little.

  “I think so,” said Cass. “You stopped him. Why did you stop him?”

  Klinger’s face was suddenly livid. “You never liked me, O’Cassidy, but I’m on this goddamned case as well as you. I’ll play it my way.”

  “Yeah?” O’Cassidy seemed interested. “How will you play it when Tommy Nello can talk again?”

  Klinger sat on the side of a glass chair nursing his gun between his knees. “He ain’t gonna talk,” he said in an odd voice.

  O’Cassidy said, without looking up, “You’re tangled in this, aren’t you, Klinger?”

  Klinger went on nursing his gun. “I’m a police officer doing my duty,” he said slowly. “That’s how it is and that’s how it’s gonna stay. Check.”

  There was a little silence. Then O’Cassidy said without any emotion, “Nothing stays if a cop gets to being crooked. The Department don’t wear crooked cops.”

  Klinger laughed. It was a hard, dry sound. “We don’t want no scandal in the Department. We should take all possible steps to keep the name of the Department clean. That’s the phrase, ain’t it?”

  “Maybe this witness won’t care about the Department enough to keep from talking,” said Cass in that low voice.

  “The way I see it,” said Klinger softly, “we wrap this case up right now.” His lips parted again and a driblet of saliva glistened on his chin. “I don’t want that we should arrest this guy. He killed Bule and knifed the other birds. But we don’t take him in….”

  O’ Cassidy thrust his hands into his sagging pockets.

  “Then we wouldn’t have a witness,” he said.

  Klinger held his gun hard down on his knee. His long yellowed forefinger started to crook around the trigger.

  “That’s right,” he said, “we wouldn’t have no witness….”

  I knew O’Cassidy was going to move, but I wasn’t looking. I was looking at Tommy Nello. He had rolled half over on to his face, groaning a little the way you do when you have a splintered nose bone and a lot of blood in your mouth.

  I heard Klinger’s big gun boom and I saw Tommy Nello writhe on the floor. Then a small shiny blue gun jumped into his hand. There was a spurt of flame and a little crack and Klinger topped over backwards off the glass chair, his gun thudding across the carpet.

  Cass had jerked his service revolver out but it didn’t matter now. I went down on one knee and held Tommy up a little.

  He used his good eye to give me a faint look. He coughed once.

  “Klinger ain’t so smart,” he whispered. “He didn’t think I had that little .25 handbag gun. I give him his all right. He ate that one. Right through the mouth.”

  “Yeah,” I told him, “he ate it.”

  Tommy rested a hand on his stomach. He didn’t wince. “Goodbye, pal,” he said. “It’s been nice knowing you….”

  “Goodbye, Tommy,” I said, though I knew he wouldn’t hear.

  I got back on to my feet and walked to the glass table. Cass was putting his gun back in his underarm holster.

  “That about ties it,” he said slowly. “Looks like Klinger was right. This case is wrapped up now.”

  He leaned across the table. “I’ll call the D.A.,” he said. I didn’t say anything. I had too much on my mind.

  I drove slowly back to my apartment. It had rained a little and the roofs of the big parked cars on the drive were like shiny roaches. The traffic was as bad as ever but I hardly noticed. Traffic signals gonged but I hardly heard them. Maybe I broke a half-dozen city ordinances but I didn’t know anything about that either. Banningham and Grierson were dead. Bule was dead. Lucius Canting was dead. Now Tommy Nello had checked in, too. The case was all wrapped up and there was nothing more to do except go home, change your clothes and go out and get drunk and forget it.

  Okay, Bogard—why don’t you do just that? You wanted copy for your book, didn’t you? All right, so you’ve got it. Go out and get drunk and then go home and think how you’re going to put all this down in writing.

  Don’t kid yourself, Bogard. You know you can’t do that. The time hasn’t come. There’s still something else you have to know. That’s why your stomach feels empty and cold, isn’t it? Something you have to know for sure. Something you’d maybe rather not know. But you will. You have to go on with this, though you’re all loused-up inside and your stomach is sour and your heart is cold and miserable.

  I left the convertible on the corner of the block because there was a party going full blast in the groundfloor section of my apartment-house and four cars were parked out front. I walked slowly along the sidewalk, turned in through the main entrance and walked slowly over to the elevator.

  It wasn’t a night off for Bella and she called out, “Hi! Mr. Bogard.” Her voice sounded like it came from a long way off, and I was walking into the little cage before I realized that I hadn’t answered. I called back, “Hi! Bella,” touched the button and rode up to my floor.

  I flicked lights on, switched on the heater and shivered a little. I thought—baby, you can make this place as hot as a glasshouse and you’ll still be cold inside. I found a half-bottle of Scotch I didn’t know I had and drank it standing in the kitchenette. I began to feel a little better. I washed my hands and face, combed my hair and walked back into the living room and picked up the phone.

  Cornel Banningham said yes, this was Cornel Banningham and what could he do.

  I said bitterly, “You can pay my respects to Miss Casson. If she still wants any respect.”

  His voice took on an edge. “You’d better explain what that means, hadn’t you, Bogard?”

  I pulled myself together. “Don’t let it bother you,” I said. “I’m on the wrong side of the tracks tonight. Too many dead men.”

  He asked what that meant, too, and I told him.

  There was a silence. Then his voice came back. Quieter now. “That seems to be about all, doesn’t it? I mean Canting was the kingfish and now he’s gone.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “that’s the way it all works out. I think O’Cassidy has it figured that way. Canting had been blackmailing Grierson for years
. When Grierson wouldn’t lay it on the line anymore there was the danger he would start talking so he had to go. Canting had a lot of dough stashed away in the Falls City vice district. He had the coppers on his payroll. He could hire a killer from Falls City who wasn’t liable to be picked up by the cops here. Only the killer got knifed, too.”

  Banningham said, “Something wrong about that, isn’t there? I mean the case isn’t quite so open and shut as O’Cassidy thinks.”

  “If he really does figure it that way,” I answered.

  “Well, does he?”

  “I can’t tell what he thinks. He doesn’t talk. Most of the case is wrapped up, though.”

  “Most, Bogard—but not all.”

  “No,” I said, “not all.”

  “What comes next?”

  “What should?”

  “Who killed George Clark, for instance, and why.”

  “Maybe Tommy Nello was doing some private homicide.”

  “Maybe. Do you think that?”

  “No.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I’m trying not to think,” I said grimly. “I don’t like my thoughts.”

  There was another silence. Then Banningham said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. I’m marrying.”

  I was full of whisky but I was cold inside again. I didn’t speak.

  “You still there. Bogard?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m still here.”

  “I said I was getting married.”

  “That was what I thought you said.”

  “To Julia Casson.”

  “Give her my congratulations,” I heard a voice saying. It had to be my own voice because there was no one else in the room.

  Banningham said, “I can’t do that right now. She left just after you went. Something she wanted to attend to at her apartment.”

  I knew he was lying and why.

  Then I remembered what I meant to ask him. It was why I had called him.

  “That altered constitution of the company, where did you find it?”

  Banningham seemed eager to tell me, relieved that the talk had switched to something less personal and emotional. “It was in Grierson’s private safe at his office. He’d been very secret about it. Didn’t use the office typewriters. Must have done it at his home.”

  I heard my voice suddenly hit normal pitch again.

  “Yeah? How did you know that?”

  “He’d worked it out on a portable with one of those elite typefaces. Even the office doesn’t have an elite face.”

  This time the silence was at my end. Then I broke it.

  “Thanks for telling me,” I said. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  I hung up before he could ask me any questions. I didn’t have the answers. Or the answer. Because there was only one. In thirty minutes I would know whether it was the right one.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I WENT DOWN ON TO THE STREET and walked back to where I had left my car. I slid in against the wheel and sat still for a moment. I had a headache at the back of my skull which hurt when I moved. Yet my nerves were steady. They would need to be. I jerked a cigarette out of a pack, then put it back. I got both hands on the big wheel and started driving.

  It was quite a drive to where I was going, but I knew the way because I had been there before. Just once before. I wouldn’t be going there any more after this. I wouldn’t ever want to see it again. Unless I had everything figured out all wrong. I felt my mouth twist itself into a grin and I had nothing to grin about.

  The house was quiet when I got there. I needn’t have killed the motor and let the car glide the last fifty yards, but I wasn’t taking any chances. The door which led onto the driveway was shut. I slid a piece of celluloid between the wards of the lock and used a little pressure. The door moved silently upwards.

  I stepped in the hall and walked carefully up the heavy-carpeted stairway. The door I wanted was halfway down the corridor on the left. It was locked, like the other. I opened it the same way and marched in.

  When I had got it shut behind me I moved across in the dark to swing the window drapes shut. Then I turned the lights on. Though I had been to the house before I hadn’t been in this room. It was a nice room. Big, furnished the way a woman would have fixed it if she had style. The woman who lived in the house had style. I knew that. Maybe she would walk in through the door any minute now and I didn’t want that. Did I?

  I still didn’t know about that.

  I still didn’t know…

  The lounge had a thick Indian pile in cream and green laid on a wood block floor with a light oak grain. The big davenport was rust-colored. The furniture was modern but it didn’t shout at you. There was a baby grand piano in the window bay and a pile of music on a stool. The top piece said Bach. Evidence of a precisely mathematical mind. Or a logical mind? A lot of logic in this case. Yeah, the kind of logic I didn’t like.

  I stood in the center of the room and looked slowly around. There was just enough untidiness to show it was a place somebody lived in. Not a model room out of a furniture store window. A crushed cigarette lay in a glass tray. There was lipstick on it. Several books lay carelessly on a side table next the cream telephone. I let my gaze travel round the floor in the corners. Two pairs of shoes stood against the wainscoting back of the piano—a pair of high heels, a pair of tan wedgies. There didn’t seem much else. Except that there was a little recess by the fireplace and I couldn’t see into that from where I stood. I walked across the carpet and took a long hard look. It was there and I didn’t want to pick it up. That was why I kept on looking. But I had to pick it up. It was a neat thin metal case in dove gray, compact enough to slide into a dispatch case. I got hold of it and laid it on the side table. It was locked but the key was hanging from the grip by a slim length of green tape. I put the key into the little lock and turned.

  Then I had the lid off and was looking down at the natty little keyboard. I pressed on the keys with the flat of my hand and looked at the typeface. Then I stuck an old envelope in under the platen, turned it up and hit the J key. I went on typing. Another eleven letters which spelled two words. They came up in that elegant elite face just the way I had known they would.

  Just the way I had felt uneasy ever since I first saw those small white even teeth and the sudden hard look she gave me when she bared them. But I hadn’t known anything then. I just didn’t like the look which came and went. I had been a long time trying to believe that she had nothing to do with hoodlums and daggers—and poison. I had been a long time because I hadn’t wanted to believe that. And what could I prove now? That a change proposed in the constitution of a Wall Street corporation had been typed by her in her private apartment? But he had stashed it away in his safe, hadn’t he?

  I grinned mirthlessly. I didn’t really know anything. No, that wasn’t right. I knew everything. I knew it because I felt it in my bones. But I couldn’t prove a thing. Better go home, Bogard, and start drinking.

  So I sat down on the edge of a chair and lit a cigarette. I slid my right hand under my jacket and jerked the butt of my Luger out a little and flicked off the safety catch. The cigarette burned low and I dropped it in the tray beside hers. I walked over to the window and parted the drapes a little. Enough to look down onto the street. It was quiet. It was very quiet tonight in the borough of Queens.

  Then, suddenly, I knew she was in the room. I didn’t turn. I didn’t move. Nothing had happened to me except that the back of my neck was wet and I no longer had a stomach.

  She said in a calm little voice, “Turn around, Dale.”

  I turned slowly, both my hands held down with the palms spread outwards because that would be the way she would want it, and she was the girl with the gun.

  It wasn’t a little handbag gun. It was a Colt .44 caliber with a silencer screwed on the end. I figured it must be a very special silencer if she could fire through it without a blowback. She would know a lot about guns…and Task Force daggers.

  I sa
id, “I’ve turned, Julia. Where do we go from here?”

  For the second time I saw those little white teeth bared and the hard look. Only this time the look stayed.

  “You know, don’t you, Dale?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know. I’ve known for some time.”

  She sat on the arm of the davenport, lowering her body gently and holding the huge gun hard down on her nyloned knee, the way I had seen Klinger doing it.

  I took a little step towards her. The gun barrel jumped a fraction so that it was pointing straight at the place where I keep my damfool heart. I quit taking steps.

  “That’s right, Dale,” she said, “Don’t move again. Don’t do anything.”

  My collar was sticking to the back of my neck now, but I called up a crooked grin.

  “What do we do? Stand here all night?”

  “Not all night, Dale. Just for a little while.” Her voice was low and a little sad. “You have to die—you know that, don’t you?”

  I didn’t want to tell her I knew it.

  “I ought to fire the whole clip into you,” she went on, “but one slug will do it. It looks better that way. Self-defence. A lady defending herself in her own home. Good slush for the Grand Jury. They’ll eat it up.”

  I didn’t want to tell her I knew that, either. I said, “Why did you poison Banningham?”

  She reached for a cigarette with her free hand, stuck it into her mouth and lit it. She let out a long thin stream of smoke and spoke at the same time.

  “I was going to marry Grierson. He agreed to try to get the company’s constitution changed so that I would inherit his cut in the event of his death. That would have been not too long after he got me to the nuptial bed.”

  “But you had to get Banningham’s consent to the change, and he wouldn’t play ball,” I said.