Negative of a Nude

by Charles E. Fritch

  Only when I laugh, I thought idiotically, but I wasn’t in the mood for resurrecting clichés. I had a lot of questions to ask Cherry, but I wasn’t in condition for that either. I had to get out of there, and fast, before the tottering world left me completely. I shoved the gun in my holster and stumbled for the door, the hypo still in my hand.

  “Don’t go, Mark. You’re hurt. I’ll take care of you.”

  I was sure she would. She’d take care of me so I wouldn’t hurt any more. Maybe give me a stiffer Scotch and water. Then maybe try the hypo again. I wasn’t buying it. Cherry might be on my side, but I couldn’t afford the chance. I had to get to a safer place to pass out.

  The music was still going and, somehow, so was I. I kept putting one foot in front of the other until I’d gone out of the bedroom, across the living room. I grabbed my coat from the couch, pulled it on, shoved the hypo in a pocket. I went through the open doorway leading to the outside world. The cool night air felt good, and I clutched at the balcony railing to inhale some of it. Then I went on down the stairs, holding onto the railing to keep from falling head first.

  Lights were going on in some of the other apartments, and even across the street, and I could hear voices asking questions. I got in the Chevvy and switched on the motor and started off.

  I had to get away. I didn’t know where I was going. My apartment, I thought, but that was miles away. Lenny’s. But that was miles away, too. Everyplace I wanted to go was miles away. Damn it! I thought angrily, don’t they build places nearby anymore.

  Out there beyond the windshield the world was a dark, blurry place. I should turn on the lights, but where were the lights? It was dangerous to drive, but it was more dangerous to stay where I was. Mr. Closet might not have run home. He might be nearby, watching, waiting. I could feel fear like a sour taste in my mouth. I was wondering what was in that hypodermic needle.

  A telephone pole got in my way. I wondered why they put telephone poles in the middle of the street, and then I hit it. I must have been going all of five miles an hour. Then I fell out of the car, pulled myself to my feet, and started walking. I recalled that walking was a good thing for people who’d taken too many sleeping tablets, so I walked. Besides, I had to get to a telephone. Call Lenny. Good old Lenny. Lenny would pick me up, take me to his place, and I’d sleep for a million years.

  I felt sick, but I knew I was going to feel a lot sicker. I paused by somebody’s hedge and stuck my finger down my throat. It wasn’t very polite, but it worked. I hoped the drug was lying on the sidewalk with the rest of my stomach.

  I didn’t feel any better, though, and the world wasn’t getting any clearer. I took about ten more steps in the direction of nowhere and collapsed on somebody’s front lawn like a sack of garbage, and the lights went out, all the way.

  The dream was back again.

  I was lying on the bed and my body was drenched with sweat. My eyes watered and through the blur I saw Lenny standing over me. I twisted and squirmed, trying to get comfortable. I clenched my fists, rubbed at my eyes, slammed my fists into the pillow. My nostrils were filled with burning rubber. My skin itched, my body ached in every muscle.

  I threw myself from the bed, feeling sick. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to die. I wanted to get to that locked door. I’d kick the habit some other time. But right now I needed a jolt. I needed it bad. But Lenny was barring my way. Lenny looking grim and determined with my police stick in his hand. I’d kill Lenny if I had to. I lunged at him. He swung. My head exploded. Darkness was merciful…

  It took a long time to reach bottom. I kept falling slowly and turning in the darkness, and there were faces coming out of the darkness toward me. There was Mr. Abernathy with a gun, and there was Mr. Orangutan with his bare hands, and Cherry was there with a glass of bubbling Scotch and water for me, and Mr. Closet who kept trying to jab me with a hypo filled with blood. It was all pretty frantic, and I thought I’d never reach the end of the pit. But it came up and I lay there on the cold ground, shivering into wakefulness.

  I opened my eyes to a sky sprinkled with stars. The ground was damp and uncomfortable beneath me, and I knew if I didn’t want triple pneumonia I’d have to pull my aching body into a sitting position, then into a standing position, then into a walking position.

  It wasn’t easy, but I managed each of these operations and began wandering down the darkened streets. I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but the nap seemed to have done me some good. There was a gas station at the end of the block. The station was closed, but it had a telephone booth beside it.

  I dialed Lenny’s number, and after three rings, a sleepy voice answered.

  “Lenny,” I said wearily, “this is Mark. Please don’t ask any questions. Just come out here and pick me up, will you?” I squinted at the streetsigns and told him where. Then I hung up and went out on the curb to wait.

  I felt in my pockets and dragged out the hypodermic needle and looked at it in the streetlight. It was half-full of a colorless substance resembling water. I wondered how full it had been. I also wondered what it contained—a sleeping drug, maybe poison, or even—

  I shivered at the sudden thought. I’d used hypos before, and they’d contained a colorless liquid. I shoved the hypo in my pocket and the thought from my mind.

  I pulled out the picture of Eloise. It was slightly crinkled where I’d rolled over on it, but no one had drawn mustaches on it, so I put that back in my pocket among the other souvenirs.

  I wondered if Mr. Orangutan could also be Mr. Closet. I wondered if he’d searched Cherry’s apartment before she came home and then waited for me. I wondered if Cherry had been in on the whole thing. Maybe she didn’t have the thirty-five millimeter film, after all. But she was the only one who could have had it, outside of Mr. Abernathy himself. And Mr. Abernathy wouldn’t have come in while I was telephoning and swipe the film and then come back in and accuse me of having it. It didn’t figure.

  I was doing a lot of wondering lately that wasn’t doing me a bit of good. One thing was sure: I’d have to see Cherry Collins again. I thought about how she looked in her apartment and the bedroom before the lights went out. I’d have to ask her a few pertinent questions about the way she mixed a Scotch and water. And why?

  Lenny must have barreled all the way from Culver City. His Ford came angling up the grade toward me, and he slid over on the seat to open the door. I crawled in. He swung the car from the curb, glancing sideways at me.

  “You look a little mussed up. Abernathy give you trouble, Mark?”

  “Abernathy, one of his gorillas, and maybe somebody else, too. It’s been a busy day.”

  “Care to talk about it? We could have a coffee someplace and—”

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I feel like tomorrow’s laundry. I’d just like to go home and sack out.”

  “Sure, Mark,” he said, and pointed the car in the direction of Westchester.

  Lenny didn’t look exactly like a daisy either. I’d apparently gotten him out of a sound sleep, and he hadn’t fully recovered. His blond hair was half combed, with a wayward cowlick pointing toward the North Star, and he looked like he’d stuffed his frail body into the nearest handy shirt and trousers in order to come to my rescue. It wasn’t the first time.

  We rode in silence. I didn’t want to talk about it then and there, and I was grateful to Lenny for understanding. It was five-thirty when he let me off at my apartment. He said, “Mark, be careful.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  He drove away. Good old Lenny, I thought. He’d been like a mother hen to me ever since he helped me kick the habit.

  I checked the mail and found two ads for grocery stores having their weekly big sales, a bill from a dentist and a letter without a return address. My address was typewritten, and the envelope was mailed from Hollywood. I opened that one.

  It contained one thing, an index card that said: LAY OFF THE DUTTON CASE. OR ELSE.

  I put the letter carefully back into the envelo
pe, put the envelope in my pocket next to the picture of Eloise, and decided to worry about it some other time. Lay off or else what? I wondered. Did it have any connection with the spiked drink, the clobbering, the attempt at injection. Right then I didn’t care.

  I started up the stairs, fumbled for my key. I had the door wide open before I noticed the light was on inside. I dropped to the floor, pulling at the gun on my belt.

  “My, my,” Lieutenant MacPherson said, hardly glancing at me from my overstuffed chair where he was reading one of my magazines, “aren’t we jittery.”

  I’ve never been overjoyed to see MacPherson, but I did feel relieved. And mad. I got up, trying to gather my shattered dignity.

  “What the hell are you doing in my apartment, MacPherson?” I demanded.

  “I knew you’d have to come home sooner or later, Wonderboy.” He stuck a Sherlock Holmes pipe in his mouth and made a ritual out of lighting it. “Where’ve you been all this time? The public library closes at nine.”

  “Where I’ve been is none of your business,” I told him. “Now get out of here and let me get some sleep.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said calmly, “and not for the first time either. It is my business, and I think we’d better go along to the station. I have a few questions for you, and you’d better have a few answers for me.”

  “Look, Mac, I don’t know what trumped-up charge you’re trying to force on me, but whatever it is, it can wait. I’ve got to take a shower.”

  “You won’t smell any cleaner to me, Wonderboy.” He smiled humorlessly, his eyes noting my disheveled appearance. “Jake gave you a struggle, I see.”

  “Do you have a warrant, MacPherson?” I said.

  “Technicalities,” he sighed, brushing it aside with his pipe. He reached inside his coat.

  “Never mind,” I said. “What’s this with Jake Richey?”

  “You never did like him, did you?”

  “I hate his guts, if you must know.” Then it dawned on me. MacPherson was using the past tense. “What are you driving at?”

  “Okay, Wonderboy,” he said coldly, the smile gone. “You know the answer to that one better than I do, but just for the record I’ll spell it out for you. Jake Richey’s been murdered, and you’ve been elected suspect number one!”

  Chapter Eight

  SO THERE I WAS. In the middle of my own apartment at five-thirty of a particularly grim Sunday morning, standing like a drugstore Indian with his mouth open.

  Jake Richey was dead, and I was being accused of it. The idea was ridiculous and annoying.

  “Let’s take a ride down to headquarters,” MacPherson suggested casually, “and have ourselves a little chat.”

  “At this hour? You’re out of your mind!”

  MacPherson’s eyes took on a hopeful gleam. “Do I understand you’re attempting to resist arrest, Wonderboy?”

  I sighed defeat. “Okay, Mac, at least let me dash some cold water on my face.”

  “Make it fast. Oh yes, and one formality, if you please.” He held out his hand. I took my .38 special from my belt holster and gave it to him. Then I headed for the bathroom. I closed the door behind me and slipped the catch. I went over to the washbasin and turned on the water full blast. There was a bag of bath salts on the side of the tub. I took it, unfastened the string holding the top together, and poured the powder into the sink. I never did care to smell like a gardenia, anyway.

  The hypodermic, the pornographic picture of Eloise, and the threatening note all fitted very cozily together in the plastic bag. The string made a tight, waterproof connection, with a little string left over.

  I flushed the toilet and removed the top of the tank quickly and as quietly as I could. Then I tied the bag at the bottom and replaced the porcelain top. Hypodermic needles full of unidentified substances and pornographic pictures aren’t the sort of things a guy likes to get arrested with. Murder is charge enough.

  I did splash some cold water on my face and was drying when MacPherson said through the closed door, “Make it snappy. And don’t try to make an escape down the drain, either.”

  “Very funny, MacPherson,” I said. I opened the door. “Okay, let’s get it over with.”

  The squad car had been parked down the street about a hundred feet. There were two men waiting for us. MacPherson guided me into the back seat, and he sat up front with the driver, a young clean-cut type I didn’t know. In an evening full of surprises, there was a pleasant one finally when I saw who was sitting next to me.

  “Paul,” I said.

  “Hello, Mark,” he said quietly.

  Paul Williams and I had started out on the force together, but after my “resignation” we hadn’t kept in touch.

  “I see you’re not in uniform,” I said. “What are they taking you in for?”

  “I’m a detective now, Mark.”

  “I suspected it. I hope police work hasn’t made you lose your sense of humor.”

  “It isn’t funny.”

  “No,” I admitted, “it certainly isn’t. How’d it happen? To Jake, I mean?”

  Before he could answer, MacPherson turned in his seat. “Maybe you don’t understand the situation, Wonderboy. We are the law, not you. We do the questioning, you do the answering. Got that straight?”

  “Sure, Mac,” I said. “You do the questioning, and I do the answering. Right? Fine. Now, how did Jake Richey get it?”

  MacPherson’s lips curled around his pipe. “He got it the way you gave it to him,” he said.

  “I didn’t do it, Mac.”

  MacPherson removed the pipe from between his beefy lips and looked like a beagle that’s just swallowed the cat. “Now, that is a disappointment. I know if you really did kill him, you’d be the first to confess it to me and my gentlemen officers. This means we’ve disturbed your sleep for nothing.”

  “You can’t hold me,” I said.

  “You know better than that,” MacPherson said. “We can hold you for questioning, if nothing else. And then maybe we can get you for jaywalking, loitering, or spitting on the sidewalk—”

  “I don’t loiter or spit on the sidewalk or steal apples either,” I said. “Those are privileges reserved for police lieutenants.”

  MacPherson’s comic face turned purple. Then, he shrugged. “We’ll find a way to put you where you belong, Wonderboy, never fear. Now do us the favor of keeping quiet. I must meditate the means of dragging the truth from your lying body.”

  He meant it, too. I was once a member of his flock and I’d turned out to be the black sheep. He never forgave me for it, and apparently he never intended to.

  The rest of the ride to the station was in silence, but my thoughts rode swift and fast. I had a lot of past sins, but murdering Jake Richey wasn’t one of them. I had an alibi, of course. I was with Cherry for most of the evening, until I got clobbered. It would be just my luck to have Jake Richey murdered sometime during the hours I was waltzing in dreamland. At the club I was with him only a few minutes, but I could have gone back to pump a bullet in him or knife him or do whatever had been done to the guy. I’d have to ask MacPherson that, and also who put the finger on me. The lieutenant must have turned mental cartwheels of joy at the news of Jake’s death.

  We arrived at the station, and I was marched into MacPherson’s office, a detective on either side of me. MacPherson settled himself behind the massive mahogany desk and motioned me down. Or rather, he motioned the detectives behind me to make me sit down. I shrugged off a hand that grasped my shoulder.

  I sat down.

  MacPherson tapped ashes from his pipe into the wastepaper basket. “You boys can leave us alone now,” he said. The two boys left.

  MacPherson made another ritual of stuffing the pipebowl with tobacco from a pouch he pulled from his pocket. Then he lit the tobacco, slowly, methodically, and sat back in his chair, puffing lazily. Almost as an afterthought, he reached in his shoulder holster and brought out a .38 service pistol, which he placed before him on the polish
ed desk.

  “Now,” he said, “suppose you tell me about it, Wonderboy. From the beginning.”

  “Well,” I began, “it all started about thirty—no, make that twenty-nine years six months ago. I was born of poor but humble parents in a little town—”

  MacPherson’s contented look disappeared. With a swift motion belying his beefiness he extended himself across the expanse of desk and slapped me hard with his ham-like hand. The blow stung, and I reacted automatically. I came out of the chair, prepared to pound him through his desk.

  But he’d returned to his chair, and the .38 was in his hand. I settled back in the chair, fingering my stinging jaw. I tried to relax.

  “Now, then,” he continued, tenting his fingers over the revolver on his desk, “maybe you’d like to tell me why you murdered Jake Richey.”

  “I didn’t murder him,” I said stubbornly.

  “We are not discussing whether you murdered him or not,” MacPherson pointed out. “You were overheard threatening to kill him. What I want to know is why? Was it because of that girl trouble you and he had a while back? You got his kid sister pregnant, wasn’t it, and killed her with a car?”

  “That’s a lie!”

  I nearly came out of the chair a second time, but MacPherson had untented his fingers and one hand rested on the pistol. I calmed down.

  “Edie was a good, sweet girl,” I said. “I liked her, but I never touched her. There are some things even I won’t do. As for the accident—”

  “Accident?” MacPherson’s brows crept up. “You don’t seem to be too accurate in your details this morning, Wonderboy. Just for the record, I suppose you have an alibi for last night?”

  “I was with a girl named Cherry Collins,” I said, adding, “a client.”

  MacPherson considered this bit of information. “In her apartment, no doubt. Well, we’ll check it out. You have her address and phone number?”

  I gave him the card Cherry had left at my place. I’d remember where she lived. MacPherson glanced at the writing on the back of the card and seemed to find it amusing.