The Wrong Case

by James Crumley

  “Don’t tell me, man.”

  “Christ. Where was he getting his goods?”

  “He didn’t say, but I can guess.”

  “Guess.”

  “From a cop, man. He was dealing high-grade junk, French probably, certainly not Mexican, and there ain’t been nothing but Mexican junk coming through for over a year. So find the last big bust around here before they bought off the poppy farmers and look in the evidence locker and you’ll probably find milk sugar instead of junk.”

  “That’s lovely. What’s dealing have to do with killing himself?” I asked.

  “Probably nothing. Just a nice way to go out.”

  “You don’t think there’s any chance that whoever he was dealing for might have helped him? Maybe they started worrying that the kid was too crazy to deal with. Something like that.”

  “Doesn’t sound right, man. Whoever’s controlling the junk is strictly amateur, small potatoes all the way. And this is just a one-shot operation. As soon as the supply runs out, that’s the end of the junkie plague in Meriwether.”

  “Jamison would be happy to know that,” I said.

  “He’d be happy to know lots of things, man, that he ain’t ever gonna know.”

  “Just kidding,” I said.

  “Not funny, man.”

  “Anything else I should know?”

  “How should I know,” he said, looking away from me.

  “Did you see him any that last week?”

  “A few times.”

  “What sort of shape was he in?”

  “Terrible. He took that old man’s death really hard, man—I mean, he was down, way down, and really freaky at the same time. Cut his hair and shaved off his beard, threw away all his guns and cowboy clothes. He and that old man musta been tight.”

  “I wonder what that means,” I said, more to myself than Reese, but he answered anyway.

  “Who knows, man, and who cares. They’re both dead.”

  “You’re a real joy, Reese,” I said. “I’m gonna go piss and think about it.”

  “You one of those guys who thinks best with his pecker in his hand?”

  “You guessed it.”

  —

  When I came back from the john, all I had was an inventory of aches and pains, and all I knew was what I read on the walls. Some ambitious soul in Stone River desired sexual congress with a broad spectrum of humankind. Jews, niggers, hippies and other long-haired and/or hairy apes and freaks. A-rabs, Chinks, congressmen, the former governor of our state, and the past four Presidents. Russians, commies and, for reasons undeclared, people from North Dakota. But the writer lacked the courage of his convictions: he didn’t leave a telephone number.

  Mindy had finally been conquered by the machine and stood beside Reese at the bar. He didn’t look as happy as he had when I left.

  “What did you find out, man?” he asked.

  “That I hurt all over.”

  “Me too. Let’s split.”

  “I need a drink,” I said.

  “Have mine, man,” he said, and I did.

  Eleven

  On the way back to the farm, we were silent, Mindy coming off her high and Reese sunk into his own thoughts. I didn’t have anything to say because I didn’t know what to think. The new role I had to think of the Duffy kid playing, a heroin dealer, made it difficult to keep the various pictures of him together. The whiskey and the small whimpers of pain echoing about my body didn’t help. I touched Mindy’s thigh, and she leaned her head against my shoulder, falling asleep quickly. Reese glanced at her, then at me, shaking his head.

  “Take what you got, man, and forget the rest,” he said as we pulled into the driveway, but I didn’t answer.

  In the distance, muffled by the thick cloud cover, thunder grumbled, and the rain fell steadily now on the green fields and meadows. The lower slopes of the mountains, vaguely visible through the rain, seemed massive, hinting at the weight of the peaks hidden in the clouds, and the landscape seemed fallow and patient in the sodden air, ready to burst with growth when the sun returned.

  “Tell your friends I’m sorry for the trouble,” I told Reese as we parked in front of the farm house.

  “Yeah. Don’t worry about it, man.”

  “Thanks for the information.”

  “Thanks for the drinks.”

  “Sure. Next time you’re in town…” I said without finishing.

  Reese nodded vaguely, lifted his hand but didn’t wave, making no commitments, except to the new life before him. As he walked slowly toward the house, his head bowed against the rain and his injured hand slung into the bib of his overalls, I wondered how many new lives a man could stand.

  “How’d it go?” Mindy asked shyly.

  “Terrible.”

  “You mean, after all that, he didn’t—”

  “He told me lots of things,” I interrupted, “none of which I wanted to hear.”

  “Sorry, man,” she sighed. “How you doin’?”

  “Okay. There’s no need to be sorry.”

  “I am anyway,” she said. She flattened her palm against my thigh and rubbed it with long, slow strokes, back and forth, as if she were polishing my pants. “That was an awful fight.”

  “Right,” I muttered. “I lost.”

  “Whatcha gonna do now?” she asked, watching her hand on my leg.

  “I don’t know,” I said frankly. “Go back to town maybe. Find a new life. Who knows.”

  “Maybe you oughta hit the road, man. That’s good sometimes.”

  “I guess I’d better go back to town,” I said, thinking about obligations I neither wanted nor understood.

  “I could go with you,” she said in a bright and casual voice. “I don’t eat much.”

  When I looked at her, she was grinning. I buried my face against her; she smelled of rain and stones glistening damply in a pine grove, of moss and pitch, of easy silence. I closed my eyes tightly, held her, trying. But in the dim light of my waking dream, Helen stood there, her red hair glowing like an exotic flower in a rain forest, her naked body shimmering like a white-hot flame in the faint daylight.

  “I could go with you,” she repeated, her small hand holding my neck, the fingers pressing warmly into tired muscles.

  “Thanks,” I said, pulling away. “You’re a sweet lady, and we had a nice afternoon, and I guess I owe you—”

  “Nobody owes anybody anything,” she said quietly.

  “Yeah, I guess not. Whatever, I’ve still got too damn many things to do.”

  “Start by sleeping off this drunk,” she said, smiling.

  “I’m not—” I started to say, then realized I was drunk.

  “Hey, man, I didn’t mean to bum you out.”

  “That’s okay. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yeah, well, if I don’t see you again, old man, have a nice life,” she said, then pressed her lips to mine.

  “Hey, you still need some money?”

  “Naw, I guess not. Maybe I’ll crash up here for a few days. Guess it won’t kill me to step in pigshit, huh.” She smiled once more, touched my thigh with the back of her hand. “Take care, huh.”

  “You too,” I said.

  She slipped out the door and ran quickly through the rain. In the middle of the lawn, she stopped, turned back, pointing her finger directly into the murky sky.

  “It’s raining, old man,” she shouted gaily, “go to work!” A broad and happy smile lighted her face, as if she were immensely proud of remembering what she had said earlier.

  But as I drove away I remembered what she had said about remembering and getting old.

  —

  Driving back toward Meriwether through the gray rain, I did another white and cracked another beer, cursing myself for a fool. The memory of Mindy’s body, as smooth and clean as an ax handle, took its place among the other bruises and scrapes. It might not have lasted too long—one day she would have gone for a walk in the park and never come back—but it might have been pea
ceful while it lasted. For an instant, I resented Helen Duffy almost as if she were a wife, a frumpy duty between me and the fleeting pleasures of young girls. But that wasn’t fair. I had made my choice when I took the case. But I didn’t want to tell her that her little brother had borrowed money from her to set himself up as a heroin dealer. I didn’t mind lying, but I wished I had a shot of whiskey to prop up the beer—that might make the lie more imaginative.

  That was the first thing I had to do, I thought as I sipped beer and dodged traffic on the rain-slick highway. And there were other things, too, irons in various fires. Bills to pay, my bar tab especially, and Simon to feed, and queues of winos who depended on me for an occasional drink. I had to make a living somehow, which meant I had to check with Freddy and Dynamite so I could fake it with Nickie. So much to do. It seemed years since I had sweated honestly or slept without being drunk; my body seemed to have already forgotten the three-week interlude of sobriety. That was another duty, to dry out again. And fences to mend. Dick Diamond. And I had promised Hildy Ernst I would drop by, at least to say hello and good-bye, maybe, and I should find out what Muffin wanted with his odd message.

  I cracked another beer, confident now. I could handle it, damn right, whatever happened, even without a shot of whiskey. Helen Duffy wasn’t the only woman in the world, not by a long sight—no, there was whiskey to drink and women to love, a world of both, enough for weeks, maybe even years, maybe even thirteen years until my father’s trust fell finally to me, then I could sprawl in the silken laps of luxury, loll grandly about foreign beaches finally, dawdle with expensive whores, droves of exotic dusky women, maidens with conical breasts and wide, happy mouths, and there were tall, cool drinks I’d never had, a life to live like a king, so much to wait for, so much to do, yes, and…

  But the first thing on my new agenda was to sober up. And quickly. Find a normal voice and steady eye with which to confront the highway patrolman who was following me, his harsh blue lights whipping through the gloomy late-afternoon light. Either sober up quickly or hope I knew him.

  As we both climbed out of our cars, I saw that he was a guy I had worked with in the sheriff’s department some years before. I seemed to remember that he didn’t actively dislike me. Once before, he had found me sleeping in my rig, parked in the interstate highway median, stinking of whiskey and vomit, and he had let me drive home without a ticket. But as he strode toward me his face seemed angry beneath the brim of his campaign hat.

  “Are you drunk again, Milo? I thought you were going to drive all the way to town before you saw my lights. I was afraid to hit the siren, didn’t want to wake you up or anything.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking.”

  “Well, next time drink less before you start thinking,” he said, a small smile moving about his face, so I knew I would be all right. “Say, I just got a call. They want you in town.”

  “Who?”

  “Jamison.”

  “What the hell’s he want?”

  “Well,” he said, then paused, his face suddenly still and blank, a look I remembered too well the feel of. Dead, his face said. “Bad news.”

  “Who?”

  “Simon. I’m sorry, Milo.”

  “Shit.” That was the only thing I could think to say as the blessed numbness that precedes grief settled into my guts. “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?” I asked, thinking the old fart must have wandered in front of another car. “When?”

  “The call came in about ten minutes ago. Some address over on Lincoln, I don’t remember the number, but I’ve got it written down,” he said, heading back to his unit.

  “That’s okay. I know where it is.”

  “I’m sorry I had to be the one,” he said, shifting about in the rain.

  “I know the feeling. Forget it.”

  “Hey, I’m going the other way, but you take it easy on the way to town, okay?”

  “Sure,” I answered. I tried, but it didn’t help. The corpse driving my rig had a heavy foot, and we went to town like a blizzard wind, coldly cursing the old fart every step of the way.

  —

  Four uniformed policemen kept the curious crowd of old folks and long-haired kids at bay, but they nodded me through. The open front of the house looked like a stage, the curtain raised for the first act, the actors waiting for the star’s entrance. Two lab men bustled about their work, moving like energetic cleaning women. Jamison and a plain-clothes cop I didn’t know stood next to Amos Swift in a small arc about the body, the cloud of blue smoke from Amos’s cigar hanging over them.

  Simon lay on his side on the living-room floor near the stairs, lay on his side, his knotted and feeble hands still clutching the four-foot splinter of banister that skewered his body front to back. It had entered just below the sternum and exited beneath the right scapula. The heavy tweed overcoat humped over his back, a short stub, black with blood, exposed. In front, on the pale, varnished wood, long bloody scrawls marked his hands’ futile struggle to extract the splinter. His eyes were open, his lower lip bitten through, and his shoes had left curved scrapes on the floorboards. Because of the damp, heavy air, the stench of blood and urine and feces hung in the air like dark smoke. Simon was right: I turned my head away.

  Out the side window, I saw the old woman next door standing at her side window. She caught my eye, waved coyly, white fingers wriggling like grubs. In the ashen light, her gaudy mouth glowed like a neon sign. I couldn’t look at her either.

  “What happened?” I asked. I had wanted to be sober; now I was.

  Nobody answered. A long silence flooded the room, perfected by the small crowd noises and the quiet sweep of rain. Amos mangled his cigar, his teeth loudly crushing the tobacco. He muttered something, but Jamison remained silent, not looking at me but watching the lab crew, his thumb rubbing at a short, gnawed stub of a pencil. It looked like Simon’s, but Jamison stuffed it into his shirt pocket as if it was his. I looked for the red notebook, but it wasn’t visible.

  Finally, the other detective broke the silence:

  “Looks like he was drunk, maybe looking for a dry place to sleep it off, and…”

  Then he saw Jamison glaring at him with the hardened face he usually reserved for me and his voice ran down like a tired toy.

  “Dammit, Milo, I’m sorry,” Jamison said. “Right now it looks like an accident, but we’ll make sure what it was before we say.”

  “Don’t make any promises you aren’t smart enough to keep,” I said. He gave me a hard look too, but didn’t say anything. We both knew how much time and money would go into the investigation of a wino’s death unless it was clearly homicide.

  “You stay out of this, Milo,” he said.

  “Out of what? An accident? Sure.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Great,” I said. “I mean it too.”

  “What was he doing here? Was he helping you with the Duffy thing?”

  “Simon was just an old drunk, Lieutenant. The last I saw of him was in Mahoney’s. He was writing a letter and drinking.”

  “Don’t try to shit me, Milo. If I find out he was here helping you, I’ll have your ass. I mean it. Don’t lie to me.”

  “Why should I lie?”

  “Because you think you’re smarter than me,” he said. It sounded like an old complaint, but this was the first time I had heard it.

  “I just have more time, Jamison. That’s all.”

  “Milo, if you put your face into police business or withhold evidence, you won’t have any time at all.”

  “I’m scared to death.”

  “Aw, dammit, Milo,” he muttered, too tired to hassle me. “This won’t get you anything but trouble.”

  “What’s new?”

  “Nothing, nothing’s ever new.”

  “What have you got so far?” I asked.

  “Not much. If it wasn’t an accident, the only person I know strong enough to do that is Reese, so we’ve got an APB out for him.
For questioning.”

  “Pull it in,” I said. “I spent the afternoon with him.”

  “That what happened to your eye?”

  “Sorta.”

  “Told you he was a hard one.”

  “You were right.”

  “Did he give you anything?” he asked.

  “No. What have you got here? Besides a wasted APB.”

  “Where the hell do you get off asking me that? Who the hell do you think you are?” he asked, angry again, his voice booming, his face red. The two lab men glanced at him. “Goddammit, Milo, someday—”

  “Someday’s ass. Either tell me what you’ve got so far, or I’ll go down to the station and buy it, and you damn well know it.”

  “Hey,” the other cop said, moving toward me, but Jamison looked at him again, and he shut up and stopped.

  “Okay. It isn’t much anyway,” he said, rubbing his pale face. “No signs that the body was moved, no prints on the banister worth a damn, no evidence that anybody else was in here with him, except half the neighborhood.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “Two kids. Boy and girl. Said they came in to get out of the rain, but I’d guess they needed some lumber or maybe a quiet place to smoke dope and ball. At least they called it in, which is amazing. They were really scared, Milo, and still are, so I believe them.”

  “They see anybody?”

  He gave me a disgusted look, and I gave it back.

  “All right. No. Not in the house. They said there was another longhair on the sidewalk. Maybe he came out of the house, maybe he didn’t.”

  “Get a description?”

  “Sure. Long black hair and beard,” he said. “How many people you know fit that description, Milo?”

  “No details, no guesses?”

  “Might have been an older guy. The girl said he walked like an older dude. No, she said he didn’t walk like a kid.”

  “Clothes?” I asked.

  “Who knows? He wasn’t naked; they might have noticed that. The girl said she had a feeling as they passed him that he was a narc.”

  “Why?”

  “Let’s see,” Jamison said, consulting his little notebook. “She said, ‘Too neat to be a freak,’ whatever that means.”