The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse

by Michael Avallone

  It made almost a human being out of me.

  Nobody sent me flowers or candy or junk like that. Not even a word game. So I passed the hours by stripping the .45 beneath my pillow. I detail-stripped it, scrubbed it and practised a Gary Cooper spin until my fingers ached. The nurse made faces when she saw the greasy mess I’d made on the sheets oiling the gun. But she changed the sheets without comment and I had to marvel how nicely she put up with me. I couldn’t fall in love with her, though. She was old enough to be my mother.

  The days were easy but the nights were hard.

  For one thing, the wounds would act up and I’d twitch and get restless and smoke too much. Way too much.

  And me and my mind and my thoughts would be alone in the dark. It was rough. The faces of the two Chinese kids would come back to me. That and the blank, staring face of that poor blind bastard. Then I’d hear the gun going off and all those crazy mixed-up screams. And the kids would be squalling in pain and fear and my body would get warm and bleeding again with the memory. It was rough, all right. I’d rather die than go through that again.

  I thought of Tom Long, the father of Tania and Titi. Titi was dead now and Tania was a cripple. And one thought kept stabbing at me until my head hurt. What could I say to him when I saw him? How can you make it up to a man whose family you’ve destroyed in the space of a few minutes?

  I could rationalize, sure. I did rationalize. I didn’t pull the trigger of the Tommy gun. I didn’t mean the kids to get hurt. I always bought them things, didn’t I? Like lollipops and laughs. It wasn’t my fault that they had come between me and the tough customers who were out to get me.

  It made a lot of sense all right, those arguments. But try telling them to yourself in the small hours of the night when you’re all alone on a hospital bed, and see if it makes you feel any better.

  Mike Monks was a freqent visitor. But he’d been shooting blanks too. The department hadn’t come up with a thing. The blind man was a nobody. A vagrant named Roger Rafferty who had been thirty-nine, friendless and alone. He’d roomed in a two-by-four on West 34th Street and made a living begging in the streets and panhandling in the subway. A man with a lousy five-dollar-a-week room and no past or present that added up to much. Now he didn’t even have a future and Potter’s Field had made practically an unknown soldier of him. Soldier was right. He was a casualty. A casualty of the battlefields of Manhattan.

  “Did you go to see Tom Long?” I had to ask Monks that question.

  Monks made a grim noise in his throat.

  “Poor guy. He’s more dead than alive. Buttoned up like a clam. Can’t say I expected anything else. He’s a widower too. Wife died five years ago in an automobile accident. The kids were all he had. That and his laundry business, which isn’t exactly booming. But he earns a living at it.”

  “What about the little girl – Tania?”

  Monks smiled.

  “I never realized Chinese kids were so cute before. Like dolls.” His smile disappeared. “She’s okay. As far as it goes. Arm still stiff. Otherwise, she’s taking it just like her old man. God, sometimes you think they aren’t human. No tears, no wailing, no nothing. Just poker faces.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Poker faces. But flesh and blood all the same. Just like you. Just like me.”

  “Sure,” he agreed. “Nobody’s saying any different.” He changed the subject. “Well, you’ll have your walking papers tomorrow. Why don’t you go to Florida or something? You need a tan real bad.”

  “The tan will have to keep. I’ve got things to do.”

  “No, Ed –” he began.

  “What, Mike?”

  “Forget it. Drop in to see me when you’re up to it.”

  “Sure.”

  He went to the door. “Take care of yourself. This was as close as you’ll ever get.”

  “I know that, Mike. And thanks for the visits. Kept me from snapping my cap.”

  He didn’t say anything to that and left. The door closed softly behind him. Suddenly, the room became unbearable. I couldn’t wait any more.

  I eased myself to a sitting position and pawed the sheets away from me. I swung my feet gently to the floor. I took several deep breaths, feeling the taut clasp of the bandages to my side.

  I was looking around for my clothes when the nurse walked in with my afternoon meal. She nearly dropped the tray when she saw what I was up to. She started yelling a lot of things about hospital procedure and why a sick man shouldn’t be out of bed and all that helpful nonsense but I wasn’t listening.

  By the time she was rushing back with a doctor, I was on my unsteady way to the main floor and the outside world, that wonderful outside that had sunshine and birds and beautiful girls in it. That and something else – sudden death.

  FOUR

  West 56th Street looked as good as Shangri-La. Maybe it was being in the hospital, maybe it was the very close flapping of the wings of the angel of death. Maybe it was my head. But it sure was good to see the same old neighbourhood again.

  I got out of the cab that had brought me, paid off the driver and took a good look around, like a tourist seeing Rome for the first time. The neighbourhood hadn’t changed. Same old garbage pails, same old brownstones. Same old hotel fronts and cafeterias and restaurants. Nedick’s was still on the corner. A typical New York crosstown street, with all the virtues and all the faults. Variety and monotony walking hand in hand and comfort nowhere in sight. Not real solid comfort.

  But the building was still there. My office was still there. Across the street Kelly’s soft-drink emporium still squatted between the apartment house and the office building. Kelly was closed. It would be another hour before he started selling drinks again.

  Tom Long’s hand laundry was open, though. Wide open. I could see the dirty yellow lights in his window as I stiff-legged it towards his store front. I had to see Tom Long before I did another solitary thing.

  Tom Long was alone in the small store. His back was to me, hunched over, ironing a newly laundered shirt. The smell and the sounds and the sights were the same. If you’ve been in one Chinese laundry you’ve been in them all. A door lets you into a square areaway with a counter separating you from the rear where the family works and lives. Throw in a Chinese wall calendar with a pretty Chinese girl holding a gay parasol, and shelves full of brown corded packages with laundry tickets tied to them, and you get the picture in one take. Then there is the smell of the steam iron and warm sudsy water. A hot, sweaty aroma. But it’s clean. Tom also took in dry-cleaning to help pay the rent.

  The doorbell tinkled behind me and Tom Long turned. He was chewing on something and his hand was still closed around the steam iron. I had time for only two crazy thoughts. Tania and Titi weren’t frolicking on the floor as they usually were. And the colour of the month for the laundry tickets was green, green as my gills felt.

  “Hello, Tom,” I said, feeling my heart hammer a little.

  Tom Long stopped chewing, the cud stopping on the right side of his smooth, unwrinkled face. His Oriental composure faded in one enormous blink. Then it returned.

  “You go way,” he said without inflection. “Bad hurt. Need rest.”

  “Tom,” I said gently. “I came to talk to you as a friend, and maybe to help –”

  “No help needed,” he growled in his throat. “You go. Go now.” He raised the iron. The name Long meant nothing. He was so small I could have stuck him in my hip pocket, but he was a giant now. He was a father righteous in anger and he had a hot iron and I had just got out of a hospital bed.

  “We have to talk, Tom. It’s important.” I placed my hand on the counter. “We have to find out who did this thing and why. Please –”

  “No!” he suddenly screamed, the dam inside of him breaking. “You go! No need talk! Me want no more trouble!”

  I shook my head. “It’s not easy talking to you, Tom. I know how you must feel, but –”

  I had underestimated him or I had pushed him too far. Or the stra
in had been too great. Either way, he suddenly let out a fierce Chinese oath that didn’t require translation and the hand that held the steam iron swung at me wildly. Up and down.

  I had a bad second getting out of the way. My stiff muscles still weren’t working like a team. But get out of the way I did. The iron came down on the narrow counter where my hand had been, and banged like a piano hitting the sidewalk from the fourth floor. Wood splintered and steam hissed.

  Then Tom Long collapsed into a sobbing heap alongside the iron, his face in his scrubbed fingers, his shoulders heaving. I couldn’t say a thing.

  In the silence, broken only by his dry, racking sobs, I upended the iron so it wouldn’t burn a hole in the counter, and walked out of the store. I couldn’t blame Tom Long for feeling the way he did. Tania and Titi had been two kids in a million. And I sure had loused up the Long family tree.

  Remorse was like acid in my throat. I wanted to get upstairs fast. There was a bottle of something in my desk that was going to wash it out of my system before I went nuts. I couldn’t remember what the stuff was but right at that moment in my life iodine would have been too good for me.

  My building was deserted as usual when I walked in. Same narrow dingy hallways. Same lack of care in the upkeep. The peeling wallpaper looked worse than ever. I buzzed for the elevator, trying to keep my mind out of turmoil and off the stiff ache in my side. My wounds were healing, but I felt as if I were stitched together like a rag doll. And Tom Long hadn’t helped me feel any better. Oh, I was ready for a drunken toot all right. This was my night to howl.

  I nearly did. Howl I mean. Not like a drunk. Like a wolf.

  The elevator door opened and a girl flounced out angrily.

  She almost knocked my eyes out. She was fully clothed, but she might as well have been wearing nothing. She wore clothes nakedly. I’m not sure just what she was wearing but I am sure about the rest of her. Her hair was blonde, her eyes were blue. She was a stunner in furs.

  She was sex like in the Monroe calendar. She was S-E-X in caps and all spelled out. And more.

  She didn’t go by me either. She stopped and rammed her painted fingers into hips as curved and full as a horse’s flanks and eyed me scornfully.

  “Well – are you him?” Her eyelashes reached out to grab me. “You must be. You look like a detective. At least you look like you can spell your own name. Can you spell your own name?”

  I grinned. She was nice to look at and she was bawling me out. But not like Tom Long. The difference was so welcome I was lapping it up like a hungry cat.

  “N-O-O-N,” I spelled. “I can even spell it backwards, for you.”

  She went back into the elevator. “Fine,” she snapped. She wasn’t a dame that wasted any time. “Haven’t you got a secretary, buster? I can’t hang around joints till you decide to come back. You’re lucky I ran into you. I wouldn’t have come back and you would have missed a fat fee.”

  I squeezed into the car next to her and punched the 3 button. The doors closed and the car started up. I’ll tell you one thing. I knew I was in a car with a woman. She had an aura that was all female, tigress type. And it wasn’t perfume or nail polish that did it either. This one made Gina and Sophia and Ekberg look like schoolgirls in nice white middy blouses.

  I asked the one question worth asking.

  “What do you need a private dective for, lady?”

  She snorted. A feminine snort with a rolling bustline beneath it.

  “I need a bodyguard, buster. A real good bodyguard who’ll keep his hands off me while he keeps everybody else’s hands off. Got me? I’ll pay you so much money it’ll make your head swim.”

  The car stopped. The doors opened. I looked at her. Took a good look. She had a figure and face that a man dreams about when he’s a small boy, hungers for when he’s a man and dismisses as sheer fantasy when he finds it just doesn’t exist. Because nobody can paint the way your brain can. And when it comes to imagination, most guys are Michelangelos.

  Even old Mike would have approved of this number. He would have drunk his oils if she had asked him to in a nice way. But first impressions stick. I had an idea this doll never did anything in a nice way.

  “Well, Noon. Do you want the job or don’t you?”

  “I want the job,” I said. “I need money. Real bad. But first you’ll have to start behaving yourself. I’m not a flunkey or a jerk or a guy with dirty hands. I don’t like the chips on your shoulders and I don’t give a damn for your ‘You men are all alike’ attitude. My name isn’t Buster or Mister or Hey You. It’s Ed. A nice old-fashioned name my mother picked out for me. So if you still think I’m your man, come right into my office. Otherwise, go to hell. Not necessarily with my blessings, either.”

  I walked towards my office, fishing for my keys. Right then I didn’t care if she followed or not. I was tired and sick and disgusted. Tom Long’s words had left angry little knives in me.

  I was already sitting at the desk hitting the bottle when she put her back to the door and leaned against it.

  “Well, well, well,” she breathed. “A rugged individual. The man I’ve always dreamed about.”

  “Me and Davy Crockett,” I sighed. “Well, do you want a drink or don’t you?”

  She was starting to come back with a nasty reply. Then she changed her mind and rumba-ed towards the desk. She smiled, a dangerous smile, the kind that was supposed to curl the toes inside my shoes. Then she let me have it. Her hand flicked and flashed like a whip in the hands of a very expert lion tamer.

  I had ducked Tom Long’s hot iron. But her hot hand was something else again. And I really was out of condition.

  I took her five fingers right across the face. It was no contest. She hit me and I took it.

  What she did next was worse. Far worse.

  She took something out of the folds of her fur coat and pointed it at me. The something was a .45. She looked as if she knew what a .45 was for.

  Her red lips spread out in a mocking smile.

  “Pushover,” she sneered. “Like taking candy from a baby.”

  FIVE

  “I’m no baby, lady,” I said. “But I am a cripple.”

  Her eyes above the nose of the .45 crinkled almost good-naturedly. But her rasping comeback put her right in character again.

  “You’ll have me bawling in a minute.” She moved in closer, her burlesque queen hips undulating like twin snakes. “Now, don’t stall. Don’t get cute. Don’t even waste my time and yours by lying. Where is it?”

  I looked at her. There was only one answer to that. A question. I asked it.

  “Where is what? If you’ve lost a bobby pin or misplaced your bra –”

  She jabbed the gun so viciously in my direction I almost jumped reflexively. Even though she was a good seven feet across from me.

  “I’ll say it once, Noon. Just once. The Chinaman hasn’t got it. We haven’t got it. You were with the kids when it happened. I saw you go into his shop when you drove up. That leaves me only one bright idea. Hand it over.”

  I stared at her now. She was blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful and the three-quarter-length fur coat was no imitation. I didn’t get it. The .45 was just not the matching accessory for such a doll, or such an outfit. But it was too soon after my hospital siege. My brain was unfuzzing slowly.

  “I haven’t got anything on me but my suit and a bunch of Band-aids. You’re welcome to them both.”

  “Don’t stall, I said.”

  “Listen, lady –”

  “I’m warning you, Noon.”

  “Would you mind telling me what the hell you’re looking for?”

  “Okay, wise guy.” She was breathing hard now. And her eyes were shining. But not with pleasure. “You like the hospital so much I’ll send you right back there.” Her fingers moved and the hammer of the .45 fell back with a click of noise like a firecracker going off in an empty hallway.

  I stood up. I didn’t do it fast because I couldn’t have anyway. I was moving wit
h all the smoothness of a rusty spring these days. I didn’t like the idea of being shot while I was sitting down. It’s harder to hit a moving target anyway.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Shoot me, and then what have you got? A lot of noise and a corpse and the cops coming on the run.”

  Her coarse laugh charged out of her throat. “Game guy, eh? Okay, big boy. So I don’t kill you because I can’t afford it and I don’t know where you put it. But I can mark you up. Mark you up good. Then you’ll want to tell me in a hurry. What do you say now?”

  “You sure are sweet. Tell me – have you always been so sweet?”

  Her smile vanished. “From Missouri, is that it? Okay. I’ll play it your way.” Before I could figure out what my way was, her hand and arm had travelled like Clyde Beatty again. The hard barrel of the .45 raked across my right hand, left it red and stinging. I choked back a howl of agony, kept myself from jerking my hand to my mouth. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

  Her breathing was scratchy. “How’s that? Want more?”

  I looked at her stonily. “Before you’re finished with me, I’m going to kick hell out of that round bottom of yours. And before we have the second chorus, would you mind telling me, even though I’m supposed to know, just what it is that I have that you want so badly?”

  She stopped short, catching herself from taking a swing at my other hand. Her breasts heaved under the furs and the overheads glinted sunlight off her golden blonde head. She was heap plenty woman all right, but one of the un-nicest dames I’d met yet. Her eyes were mean. They would always be mean. They were mean right now.

  “What do you take me for?” she snarled. “A First of May or something? You’re no dope. No angel either. Why the hell are you clowning around? You figure on cutting in, that it? Want to make some real scratch in a hurry. Buster, I’m asking you for the last time. Where is it?”