I staggered rubber-kneed into the bathroom and filled the washbowl up, and sloshed it into my eyes, and ducked my whole face in it, and strewed it across the back of my neck. After I got through doing that I felt a little better. Not a lot, though.
I went back to my room and combed my soaked hair and started to get dressed. If I’d had a job I would have been out of it by now, I’d overslept so long. But I didn’t have one anyway, so it didn’t make any difference.
Just after I’d got my shoes and trousers on, Mildred knocked on the door. She’d heard me moving around, I guess. I told her to come in. I was ashamed to look at her, but only I knew the real reason why, she didn’t. She looked in and said, “Hello, Tommy. I guess you had a drink or two too many last night.”
I thought, “I only wish it was that!” I was sorrier than ever the thing had happened.
“I understand how it is, it helps to take your mind off your troubles once in awhile.” Then she rested a hand on my arm for a minute, to show she didn’t mean it for criticism. “But don’t do too much of it, Tommy. It doesn’t make it any easier to get a job. I’ll fix you some coffee, that’ll brace you up.”
She was my older sister. She was swell. I was not only living with her, but she’d even been keeping me in pocket money since I’d been out of a job. She went out again, and I went ahead with my dressing.
First I was going to put on a clean shirt, but I thought I better not be too extravagant while I was out of work, so I decided I’d stick to the old one a day more. The way it was folded or rumpled must have hidden the stain. I only saw it after I had the shirt on, and tucked into my belt, and was buttoning it down in front of the glass. It was brown, a sort of splashy stain in front.
I stared at it in a sort of paralyzed horror. I don’t think I moved for about two minutes flat. Finally I touched it, and where it was brown it was stiff. Good and stiff. “What’d you do, have some trouble in here? Look at the blood all over your shirt!” It rang in my ears again. So that part of it was real at least, it hadn’t been just a snow-mirage.
All right, it was real. But it had to come from somewhere. It didn’t just appear from nowhere, like a miraculous stigmata. I pulled it up out of my belt, and hoisted my undershirt, and scanned my body, all around the lower ribs. There wasn’t a scratch on me anywhere. I looked higher up, on my chest. I even rolled up my sleeves and looked at both arms. There wasn’t a nick anywhere on my skin. And whatever had bled that much must have been a pretty good-sized gash.
So it had come from someone else.
I finished dressing. I kept talking it into myself that it meant nothing. “Somebody you were with cut himself on something. You don’t remember it, that’s all. How’d it get on me, then? Well, maybe you were lurching around. You leaned up against someone, or someone did against you. You better quit thinking about it. You want to hang onto your self-control, don’t you? Then quit thinking about it.”
Which was a lot easier said than done, but I finished up my dressing, put on my coat. The last stage of all was what everyone’s last stage usually is. To put my change, matches, keys, whatever loose accessories there were, back into my pockets where they belonged. Even in last night’s befogged condition, habit had been strong enough to assert itself. The stuff was dumped out on top of the bureau, the way I always found it every morning. I started collecting it item by item, dropping each category into the particular pocket where it belonged. Three nickels and a dime. (I’d started out with thirty-five cents last night, I distinctly remembered that, so I must have spent a dime sometime during the course of the night; I couldn’t remember doing it.) A withered package that contained one last cigarette—broken into two sections from pocket-pressure. I put one into my mouth, threw the other away. And last of all, my keys; one that Mildred and Denny had given me to the apartment here, and the other a little jigger that opened my valise.
This time I didn’t stand staring in frozen horror. The half-cigarette fell from my relaxed lips to the floor, and I lurched forward, steadied myself by gripping the front edge of the bureau. I stayed that way, sort of hunched-over, goggling down at it. There was one key too many there. There were three keys staring me in the face, and up to last night I had only had two. There was a strange key there mixed-up with my own two now, a key that didn’t belong to me, a key I’d never seen before. Or at least, only in a—snow-flurry.
It wasn’t one of these modern, brass, safety lock keys, it was an old-fashioned iron thing, dun-colored, with an elongated stem and two teeth at the end of it shaped like a buzzsaw. The kind of a key used in an old-fashioned house, that has old-fashioned rooms with old-fashioned doors.
It was an interior key. I mean, you could see it wasn’t for an outside door, a street door, but for some door on the inside of a house—a room door or a closet door.
That gave me a shot in the arm, that last word. I straightened up from my leap-frog position and did things around the room fast. First I gave it the benefit of the doubt—although I knew already as sure as I was born I’d never seen it before in my life, it didn’t belong around here. I went over to my own closet with it, to try it on that. It wouldn’t go in, because the closet’s own key was sticking out, blocking the keyhole. Then I went to my room-door with it, but there wasn’t anywhere on that to try it. It had no lock at all, it closed on a little horizontal bolt run into a hole. There wasn’t anyplace else for me to match it up with. That brass safety-lock key there was the one to the outside door.
It came from somewhere outside. Somewhere in a dope-dream.
Then the panic came on again from last night, only now it was worse, because this was broad daylight and now I was in my right senses. I swung out my valise and kicked the lid up. I didn’t have much to pack, so it didn’t take long. But everything there was to pack, I packed.
I’d gotten halfway down the short little hall with my bag in my hand when Mildred looked out at the back and saw me. She gave a little moaning protest, ran after me. “No, Tommy—what’re you doing?”
“I’ve got to go. Don’t stop me, I’ve got to get out of here.”
“No, Tommy—what is it?” She took the valise and set it down. I let her. I didn’t want to go myself, that was why I stood there undecided. But yet, I knew I couldn’t stay—now.
“I’ve got to, I tell you!”
“But why? Where? You have no money.” She took me by the arm and coaxed me into the kitchen. “At least drink a cup of coffee before you go, don’t leave like this; I just made it fresh.”
It was just a stall, she only wanted to gain time. I knew that, but I slumped into a chair anyway, and cradled my head, and leaned way over my own lap, staring down at the floor.
I heard her slip out to the phone when she thought I wasn’t noticing, but I didn’t try to interfere. I heard her saying in a guarded voice, “Denny, will you come home right away? See if you can get relieved from duty and come home right away—it’s very important.”
He was a detective. In one way, I wanted to talk to him very much. In another way, I didn’t.
I guess I must have wanted to more than I didn’t want to, because I was still sitting there when he showed up. He got there very quickly, not more than ten or fifteen minutes after she’d phoned him.
He came striding in looking worried, and shied his hat offside at the seat of a chair. He was a slow moving, even tempered guy as a rule, misleadingly genial on the surface, hard as nails inside. Mildred and I, of course, only saw him when he was off duty, we hadn’t had much chance to see the latter quality in him. I only suspected it was there, without being sure. I had him sized up for the kind of man would give you a break if you deserved one, crack down on you like granite if you didn’t.
He addressed himself to her first. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s Tommy,” she said. “He packed his things and wants to leave. You better talk to him, Denny. I’ll leave the t
wo of you alone if you want me to.”
“No,” he said. “Come on, we’ll go in your room, Tom.” He brought the bag in with him, and he closed the door after the two of us.
He sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at me, waiting. I stayed up. Nothing came, so finally he said patiently, “What’s the matter, kid?”
I gave it to him right away. What was the good of paying it out slow? I said, “Last night I think I killed a man.”
He churned that around in his mind for a minute, without taking his eyes off me. Then he said, “You think? Listen, that’s a thing you usually can be pretty certain of. You either did or didn’t. Now which is it?”
“I was kind of fuzzy at the time.”
“Well who was he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did it happen?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“You don’t know where or who or if—” He gave me a half-rebuking, half-whimsical look. “I don’t get it, Tom. You don’t look yourself today. You look a little funny. And you sure sound a whole lot that way.”
“Yes, that’s it,” I said bitterly. “I better start from the first and try to tell you as much as I can.”
“You better,” he agreed drily.
“There won’t be very much. At 11:30 last night I was standing on a corner waiting to cross with the light, when a guy I knew by sight happened along. I don’t know who he is or where I knew him from; just that I’d seen his face someplace before, fellow named Joe. I told him I was down in the dumps and he said I needed cheering up. He asked me to come with him and like a sap I went.
“I can remember that much clearly. He took me to some apartment where there was a big party going on. I don’t even know just where that was—down on one of the side streets off Kent Boulevard somewhere. I didn’t know anyone there, and I can’t remember that he bothered introducing me. They seemed a sort of free-and-easy bunch, no questions asked; it was almost like open house, new people kept showing up all the time and old ones leaving. He left, and when I tried to go with him, he gave me some excuse and shoved off alone, leaving me there.
“From then on it gets all woozy. It was late and there were fewer people left. The lights got dimmer and the place got quieter, people talking in whispers. There was some guy with a white scar along his jaw. I remember he seemed to be watching me for a long while. Finally he came over and offered me something—”
This was the part that was hardest to tell him, but I had to if he was to make any sense out of it.
“Offered you what?” he said when I stopped.
“I thought it was a headache powder first. He told me to stick my thumb out, and he sifted it onto the nail, from a little paper.”
He just asked the question with his eyes this time. I looked down at the floor. “Coke,” I murmured half-audibly.
“You damn fool,” he said bitterly. “You ought to have your head examined!”
“I was feeling low; I thought if it would make me forget my troubles for even half an hour it would be worth it. You don’t know what it’s like to be without a job for weeks and months, to mooch off your relatives—”
“Well, get drunk then, if you have to,” he said scathingly. “Get so pie-eyed you fall down flat on your face; I’ll pay your liquor bill myself! But if you ever go for that stuff again, I’ll break your jaw!”
Again was good. There didn’t have to be a next time, all the damage had been done the first time. I finished up the rest of it. It came easier once I’d gotten past that point. “—and I piled stuff up in front of it, and I beat it out of there, and I don’t remember getting home.”
He hinged his palm up and down on his knee once or twice before he said anything. “Well, whaddya expect if you go monkeying around like that,” he growled finally, “to dream of honeysuckle and roses? It’s a wonder you didn’t imagine you stuffed six dead guys into a closet instead of just one.”
“But do you think that’s what got me rattled?” I expostulated. I held my head tight between both hands. “I found the key on the bureau when I got dressed a little while ago! And his blood on my shirt!” I hauled it out and waved it at him. I pitched the key down and it went clunk! and bounced once and then lay still.
And his face showed me I’d made my point. He picked the key up first and turned it over and over. You could tell he wasn’t so much looking at it as thinking the whole thing over. Then he traced a fingernail back and forth across the stain once or twice. Also absent-mindedly. “A knife,” he murmured. “A bullet-wound wouldn’t have bled that much—not on you. Can you remember a knife? Can you remember holding one? Have you looked—around here?”
I shuddered. “Don’t tell me I brought that back here with me too!”
He flipped up both thumbs out of his entwined hands. “After all, you brought the key, didn’t you?”
He got up from the bed, I suppose to look for it around the room. And then he didn’t have to, it was there. His getting up unearthed it. The bedsprings he’d been pressing down twanged out, settled into place again. Something fell through to the floor with a small, soft thud as they did so. Something that had evidently been sheathed between them and the mattress all night. He picked up a scabbard of tightly folded newspaper, with a brown spot or two on it. He opened it and there it was. With one of those trick blades that spring out of the hilt. Not even cleaned off.
All he said was, “This don’t look so good, does it, Tom?”
I stared at it. “I don’t even remember slipping it under there. It isn’t mine, I never owned it, carried it—” I took a couple of crazy half-turns around the room without getting anywhere. “You haven’t told me yet what I’m going to do.”
“I’ll tell you what you’re not going to do; you’re not going to lam out. You’re going to stay right here until we find out just what this thing is.” He rewrapped the knife, this time in a large handkerchief of his own. “Here’s how it goes. There’s a possibility, and a damn good one, that there’s some guy stuffed in a closet, in some room of some house, somewhere in this city at this very minute—and that you killed him last night under the influence of cocaine. Now he’s going to be found sooner or later. From one hour to the next he’s going to be found. And we’ve got to find him first, do you get that? We’ve got to know ahead of time, before it breaks, whether you did kill him or not.” He stepped up and grabbed me hard by the shoulder. “Now if you did, you’re going to take the knock for it, I’m telling you that here and now. That’s the way I play. But if you didn’t—” he opened his hand and let my shoulder go; “we’ve got to get to him first, otherwise I’ll never be able to clear you.”
“I think I did, Denny,” I breathed low. “I think I did—but I’m not sure.”
“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. And I’m pulling for you; for Mildred’s sake, and yours—and even my own. I don’t exactly hate you, you know.”
“Thanks, Denny.” I gripped hands with him for a minute. “If it turns out it was me, I’m game, I’m willing to—”
But he had no more time for loving-cups. He was on a case now. He took out an envelope and a pencil stub so worn down that the lead-point practically started right out of the eraser. He sat down, turned over one foot, and began to use the side of his shoe for a writing-board. He used the back of the envelope to jot on.
“What are you doing?” I asked, half-terrified in spite of myself by these preliminaries to police activity, even though they were still confined to my own bedroom.
“I always plot out my line of investigation ahead of time.” He showed me what he’d written.
1. ‘Joe.’
2. Whereabouts of party-flat.
3. Man with white scar.
4. Location of room with singing walls.
“See the idea? One leads into the other consecutively. Interlocking steps. I
t’ll save a lot of time and energy. ‘Joe’ gives us the party-flat, the party-flat gives us the man with the scar, the man with the scar gives us the room with the singing walls. That gives us a closet with a dead man in it you either did or did not kill. A lot of dicks I know would try to jump straight from the starting point to the closet with the body in it. And land exactly in the middle of nowhere. My way may seem more roundabout, but it’s really the surer and quicker way.”
He put the envelope away. “Now we disregard everything else and concentrate on ‘Joe’ first. Until we’ve isolated ‘Joe,’ none of the other factors exist for us. Now sit down a minute and just think about ‘Joe,’ to the exclusion of everything else. His whole connection with it occurred before you were stupefied by that damnable stuff, so it shouldn’t be as hard as what comes later.”
It shouldn’t, but it was.
“You absolutely can’t place him, don’t know where you had seen him before?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Let me see if I can’t build him up for myself, then. What’d he talk about on the way over to this place? You didn’t just walk side by side in stony silence.”
“No.”
“Well gimme some of that. Maybe I can get a line on him from that.”
I dredged my mind futilely. Disconnected snatches were all that would come back, it hadn’t been an important conversation.
“He said, ‘Aw, don’t think you’re the only one has troubles. Look at me, I’m working but I might just as well not be. A lot I get out of it! Caged up all day, for a lousy fifteen a week.’ ”
“And didn’t you ask him what his job was?”
“No. He seemed to take it for granted I knew all about him, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by letting him see I hardly remembered him from Adam. Besides, I didn’t particularly care anyway, I had my own worries on my mind.”
“Well is that all he said the whole way over?”
“That’s all that amounted to anything. The rest were just irrelevant remarks that people make to one another strolling along the street, like ‘Did you see that blonde just passed?’ and ‘Boy, there’s a car I’d like to own!’ ”
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 60