by B A Black
“Mars,” the voice outside demands. Forceful, authoritative. “Open up.”
Houston knows the voice. A glance at the clock tells Houston that it’s only a quarter past five. He sighs.
Why is Detective Exeter pounding on my door at this obscene hour? Is he hoping to catch me with my pants down so he’ll have dirt to hold hostage against the material I got yesterday? If so, it might be an effective technique.
“Just a minute,” Houston calls, raising his voice to be heard over the second round of pounding. Then, lower, “Christ.”
Sal twists the blankets around his shoulders and bolts for the couch, Houston yanks on his discarded pants from the night before. The rest will have to pass. Given that Exeter is knocking before six in the morning, he can’t expect spit and polish.
Houston pulls the door open just a few inches in the middle of the third round of pounding and squints out into the lit hallway.
Exeter’s stern features look hard and serious, half enshadowed beneath his hat. Houston doesn’t think he looks like he’s had any sleep. There’s no sign of victory on Exeter’s face, no attempt to look around Houston into his apartment—just a certain urgency that means some of Houston’s anger fades.
“What is it, Ex?” he asks.
“It’s your man, Mars. He’s turned up,” Exeter says. He doesn’t ask to come in, but in a strangely hesitant motion he pulls his his hat off, holding it by the brim in front of his chest in uncertain hands.
“You didn’t come pounding on my door to tell me he showed up at home, safe and sound, at five a.m.,” Houston says, heart sinking.
“He’s dead,” Exeter says. The hat turns a half revolution in his hands as Houston processes the news. “They found him out back of the Sappho this morning, about an hour ago. Folks are remembering you looking for him last night.”
“Folks like you?” Houston asks, guarded.
Exeter shakes his head. “You know I have to stay out of this. It’s not my case. I gotta keep my name away from it.”
The hat makes another revolution. Houston understands why he’s come.
“It’s bad,” Exeter says. “You got an alibi? You know they’re going to try to close this up quick, pin it where they can so they can wash their hands of it.”
“Yes,” Houston says, though he can’t know for sure how it will hold up against the fine police work of Exeter’s compatriots. “I got a contract with his wife, too.”
“Poor bastard,” Exeter says, with uncommon sympathy.
“You want a cup of coffee, Ex?” Houston says, offering the olive branch. He’s not sure what he’ll do if Exeter says yes.
“No,” Exeter says, jamming his hat back onto his head—backwards at first before he hastily rights it—as if repulsed by the very idea. “I just thought you should know. Uh. In case, uh—well. In case.”
Houston thinks there might even be some truth in that, though it’s an aside to the roundabout request to leave Detective Exeter out of any stories to do with the Sappho.
“Thanks, Ex.”
“You better not mention it,” Exeter warns. He jabs a thick finger at Houston’s chest as if scolding an errant school child. There’s the attitude that Houston’s come to know.
Houston makes no promises, and Exeter turns to go. As usual he’s come in and turned Houston’s life over like a con emptying out a silverware drawer onto the kitchen floor, then left with as little care as the bull trotting out of the china shop. Houston closes the door behind him.
Sal’s up when Houston turns, looking sober in the pre-dawn light. “What would you have told him if he came in?”
“The truth,” Houston says. “Or parts of it—that I scraped you up out of an opium den last night and I’m worried about a relapse.”
“Alright, alright,” Sal says, waving Houston off with his hand before he goes searching around the pile of clothes from last night.
“Did you hear what he said?”
“Yeah, I heard him,” Sal picks up his discarded suit coat off the floor, fishing his mostly empty pack of Lucky Strikes out of the pocket where he keeps his conscience. “What do you want to do about it?”
“I guess I should phone Mrs. Winsome.”
4.
She seems almost to expect the news when Houston phones her from the booth up the street—no patrol officer has made it out to her estate yet.
“He’s not alright, is he?” she asks, sounding tired.
“No, ma’am,” Houston says. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but he’s gone. I just got the news from a police detective.”
Houston sits there with the receiver between his shoulder and ear for her long moments of stunned silence.
“Where did they say they found him?” she asks.
“In the Levee, Mrs. Winsome,” Houston thinks that’s specific enough. “He was in an alley between two buildings. The police should have more details for you.”
“How did he die?” Her voice seems small, adrift through the phone lines, like an unmoored boat.
“I’m not sure, ma’am,” Houston admits carefully. “I haven’t seen the body.”
“I’m sorry, Detective Mars, but then how do you know it’s him?” she asks with a hint of sharp, hysterical hope.
“I have it from a credible source,” Houston says. Instinctively, Houston knows it is; Charlie’s been missing too long to hope otherwise. “I thought it’d be better if you knew right away.”
She makes a breathy sound into the phone—perhaps a sob—but quickly masters herself.
“You’re right, of course,” she says with only a faint waver in her tone. “It will be all over the newspapers if…”
She sighs, letting the sentence go unfinished. “Was I too naive? Did he do this to himself, Detective Mars, out of sadness or desperation?”
“I’m not sure. I’m inclined to believe he didn’t.”
“Was it murder?” she asks, though it is almost rhetorical.
“I’d need to see the body,” Houston says. Exeter asked about an alibi, but they couldn’t know the cause of death yet. “Would you like me to meet you at the morgue, Mrs. Winsome?”
Someone taps on the booth glass behind him, and Houston turns to see a man in a well-pressed suit two years out of date at the head of a queue for the phone booth. The man taps the face of his watch impatiently. Houston ignores him, turning back toward the mouthpiece of the phone.
“Yes. Please, Detective Mars, if you will. If they really did find him where you say they did I need to know that somebody will look into his death without trying to sweep it under the rug.”
“Alright, Mrs. Winsome,” Houston says, sympathetic. “Are the police there yet?”
“A car just pulled up.”
Someone taps on the glass again. Houston turns to glare at the impatient man. He shows his watch again. Five ‘till six. What’s he need so bad on a Sunday before church?
“Mr. Mars?”
“I’ll head up to the morgue now, Mrs. Winsome. Just make sure they know you’re expecting me.”
“I will, Detective Mars,” she says, then hesitates. Houston hears her doorbell sound in the background. “Thank you, detective. That’s them.”
He terminates the call, putting the ear-piece back in the cradle. The door opens behind him.
“Jeez, buddy,” the businessman says, giving Houston a dirty look as he elbows past him into the booth. “What took you so long, huh? Phone call to China?”
“I had to tell a woman she’s a widow,” Houston tells him, and slams the phone booth door shut behind him.
◆◆◆
Upstairs in Houston’s apartment, Sal is drinking new coffee out of yesterday’s dirty cup. There’s a guarded expression on his face as Houston enters.
“How’d she take it?” Sal asks as Houston pours himself a cup and puts it steaming into the icebox.
“About as well as you can,” Houston washes his face and neck in the kitchen sink, and pulls fresh clothes out of the closet. He hops o
ne-legged into fresh pressed trousers.
“Where are you going?”
“The morgue. Get dressed.”
“We’re still on the case?” Sal asks, making no move to do as Houston instructs.
“If it’s a murder, you think anyone from the department will work it for more than five minutes?”
“Houston, just tell me you aren’t taking this too personal.”
Houston finishes buttoning his shirt up, and gets his coffee out of the fridge cool enough to gulp down. “Mrs. Winsome asked me to stay on. If it’s not a murder we can let go, but there’s been a foul smell from Denmark for this whole case, partner, and I’d sure like to know what it is.”
Sal doesn’t seem to have anything to say to that, and stands in Houston’s kitchen watching him swallow coffee at a doubletime pace.
“Get dressed, Sal,” Houston reminds. “I need you to go up to where they found the body.”
“The scene of the crime?”
“The scene of the dump, anyway,” Houston mutters. He yanks on his vest.
“I gotta wear yesterday’s suit.”
“Go home and change. It’s on the way,” Houston pulls out a good tie, making sure to knot it as neatly as he can. It seems respectful for what is likely to be his first and only meeting with Charlie. “But so help me, Sal, stay out of Lee-Lee’s.”
Sal gives Houston a dark look, but he doesn’t fight about it. He drags his rumpled clothes up from the floor and puts them back on. “This is not how I pictured this Sunday.”
“What?” Houston asks, grinning his best rakish smile. “You’re gonna miss church?”
“Alright wiseguy, I’ll meet you at the office after I’ve had a look at the crime scene. Should I be worried about Exeter?”
“If he’s smart, he’ll stay as far away from the case as he can.”
“If only my partner could have such wisdom,” Sal laments, getting his shoes on.
◆◆◆
Cook County Morgue is a plain, squat building sitting at the corner of Polk and Wood street, with big windows that show nothing of the inside but blackness. Houston waits by the back entrance—the scarred dock where the ambulance will come and deposit the last earthly remains of Charlie Winsome. The snow’s piled up at the corners of the raised dock, stained in places with what looks like blood. Inside, Mrs. Winsome is waiting with a carefully attentive patrol officer. Houston has made his presence known, then come out back to give her some space.
He wants to catch the ambulance drivers, ask them how they felt about Charlie’s death. Houston stares at the neutral bricks and smokes until his eyes and thoughts go out of focus.
Where is the key to this case? Where has Charles been until now?
Houston stays out of the way as the ambulance pulls up, and while the two operators lift the body—it is a strangely long shape, tapering toward either end, wrapped in a white sheet and balanced on a stretcher—up in through the gaping black door.
“You got a lot to do today fellas?” Houston asks, getting a better look at them as they return. Their white coveralls aren’t stained.
“It’s early yet,” the driver says. “Cold night. We’ll have a couple of frozen bums for sure.”
Houston offers them each a Chesterfield, a gesture of good faith.
The driver takes two, tucking the second over his ear like a pencil and accepting Houston’s book of matches. “Thanks, pal. You waiting for somebody?”
“Yeah. Charles Winsome,” Houston says.
“He just went in,” the second man tells Houston, jerking an indicative thumb over his shoulder. He got out of the right hand side of the ambulance with a sour expression on his face that hasn’t left it.
“You’re not a reporter are you?” the driver asks, looking disgusted.
“No sir,” Houston says, showing his P.I.license. “I’m working for Mrs. Winsome.”
The second man, who Houston is coming to think of as “Righty”, snickers cruelly. “Well it ain’t a good morning for her, pal. They found her old man outside that fag joint. Gave me the creeps having to go within 100 feet of that place, and the way he was dressed...”
Houston takes a deep drag of his cigarette. “Was he murdered?”
“Who cares?” Righty says, belligerent.
“Wife does,” Houston tells him.
“Body was stiff when we got there,” the driver says, clinical without personal opinion added. “Not rigor, but frozen. I dunno about murder, but I’ve done this a while. Looked like the body had been in the water.”
“The water? But that’s five miles from the lake,” Houston says, surprised.
“Sure,” the driver says. “We pulled him out of an alley, but go in and look like you don’t know where the body came from, pal. You’ll see what I mean.”
“But no sign of foul play?” Houston asks.
Righty snickers again—a mean sound that makes Houston want to turn his cigarette around and jam the burning end up his nose. “He played foul, alright. With where we found him—”
“Shut up, Lenny. Jesus,” the driver tells him, angry.
“Aw, Jeez, Mac.”
The driver, Mac, gives his colleague a look that would curdle milk. “Just ‘cause nobody respected you a day in your life doesn’t mean you should disrespect the dead. They’re about the only people who can’t tell you what a piece of shit you are.”
Mac takes a long drag on the cigarette while Lenny descends into a small, dark stormcloud. Houston is grateful beyond what he can express.
“I lost my damn train of thought,” Mac says, eyes drifting up toward the gray overhanging sky as he seems to gather them.
“Was he shot or stabbed?” Houston prompts.
“Nah. I don’t think so. You’d get better out of the coroner—the body was too cold and too bad to even bother looking for a pulse, let alone checking for other injuries,” Mac says. “But what do I know? I just drive the car.”
“Thanks,” Houston says.
“Why are you out here anyway, pal?” Mac asks. “If you’re on the payroll, all the answers are inside.”
“I wanted Mrs. Winsome to have a moment alone,” Houston drops the filter of his finished cigarette in the snow and steps on it to be sure. He hoists himself up on the dock and prepares to let himself in the way corpses enter. “And I always like a second opinion. You guys saw him on the ground. Sometimes that tells a different story than on the slab.”
◆◆◆
Inside, Mrs. Winsome has conquered her tears. There is a mascara-stained handkerchief in her hands and dark patches over the sockets of her eyes, red at the edges from crying.
“Detective,” she says, then seems at a loss.
Houston sees a quiet anger, almost a rage beneath her mourning and loss. If anyone’s said anything in her presence like Lenny did to him, Houston understands her feelings. He feels for her; it won’t get better, not if the press gets on this.
“Mrs. Winsome,” he says, reaching for her hands, gently—a gesture meant to assure her she’s not completely alone. She lets him take her hands with the handkerchief still in them, leaving a wet patch against his palm.
“It’s him. I hoped there’d be some mistake, that we’d get down here and it wouldn’t be.”
“I’m sorry,” Houston tells her, and he means it.
“He’s still wearing his ring,” she says in a quiet tone that almost gets eaten up by the white walls of the morgue’s privacy room. “And...”
Mrs. Winsome pulls away then, and sits down in the chair with fresh tears in her eyes and new anger on her features. “Well, detective, you’d better just see for yourself.”
Her tone is bitter, angry. Houston thinks that whatever “it” is, he’s not going to like it. He leaves Mrs. Winsome with her grief and heads into the holding room. It’s as cold in here as it is outside, and Houston quickly closes the door into the waiting room before he lets all of the warm air out.
There are several bodies laid out on the tilting autops
y tables, awaiting attention or identification. They are each politely covered in sheets, but Houston quickly identifies the one he’s looking for by the peculiar shape it makes, stretched out and long as if the arms were fully extended over his head.
“Hello?” Houston calls when he sees no sign of the coroner. On Sundays, usually this is a morose man by the name of Clarence Whelk. “Clarence?”
No answer. Remembering the warnings he got from both Mac and Mrs. Winsome, Houston approaches the body carefully, like whatever killed Mr. Winsome is catching.
Houston takes a deep breath and holds it against any odor that might waft up when he pulls the sheet back, and he carefully untangles it from the uplifted hands and face of the corpse, folding it back no further than the neck. The arms are flung upward over his head like he was dragged—or, Houston supposes, died reaching desperately for the surface.
His first impression of Charlie’s face is of a sickeningly pale cast to the skin which looks swollen and somehow deflated; the fingers are each almost as thick as two of Houston’s own but the skin is wrinkled and sagging where it meets the palms, even frozen as it is currently.
The face is worse. Houston can only barely see any resemblance to the picture in his pocket—the eyelids have swollen mostly closed, the mouth almost bursting open around a massive tongue. A fine white froth is frozen over the nose, pressed against the lips by the swollen tongue, and for a moment Houston almost mistakes it for snow. Leaning closer, he knows it for what it is. Pulmonary oedema—mucus foam made as a body tried to block water out of the lungs.
Mac’s right; this body has been in the water.
Something makes Houston look twice at the grotesquely twisted and agonized features. The cheeks are garishly red, the eyelids darker than they would be just from bruising. Makeup?
“Can I help you?” a voice barks from behind Houston. As he straightens up in startlement, Houston almost slips on the puddle his shoes left on the tile floor.
“Jeez, Clarence,” he says, clutching a hand over his racing heart as he turns to face the coroner. “Give a guy a heart attack, why don’t you?”