You Can't Kill a Corpse

by Louis Trimble

  She choked and gagged and finally wiped her eyes. Clane waited. She looked at him, flushed and angry. She said, “Now that you’re through being masterful you can tell me why you ordered me here.”

  “I want to know if you killed Wickett,” Clane said. He drew a straight chair close and sat down. “I didn’t ask you in to make love to you.”

  She went haughtily stiff and then relaxed, smiling at him. “You don’t flatter me, do you?”

  It was bad coquetry. Clane ignored it. He said, “Did you kill Wickett?”

  “No. Why should I?”

  “The police will probably be asking that one,” he said. “Did your old man kill him?”

  Her hands tightened on the arms of the chair. “No,” she said. “They’ll think he did but he didn’t! When he left Anthony was still alive!”

  “And when you left?”

  “When I left? I wasn’t at Anthony’s place!”

  “But you know he was killed? Your father told you, I suppose. Only he left before Wickett died. Don’t waste my time, Miss Morgan. You were seen at Wickett’s.”

  “By whom?”

  Clane said, “That is my business.”

  “I was not there!”

  Clane shrugged and stood up. He went to the bed and picked up the gun, holding it in his hand so she could see it. “This,” he said, “is the same caliber gun that killed Wickett. It may be the same caliber gun that killed Blake Watson. It’s probably the same caliber gun that will hang someone.” He glanced down at it. “There is still a serial number on it. It can be traced to the owner.” His eyes met hers until she dropped her gaze. “There are a lot of things, Miss Morgan, that spell trouble for your family. A gun, a body—two bodies.

  “You’re asking Pryor to put his wolves onto you.”

  “As long as we’re innocent,” she began, “there won’t be …”

  “Can it!” Clane snorted. “My God, haven’t you got over what you were taught in school yet? Innocent! What has that to do with it? This is murder. This is politics. Your father was at Wickett’s office today. He was at his home tonight. You were at his home tonight.”

  “And so, Mr. Clane,” she said with heavy sweetness, “were you.”

  “Thank God I was,” he said.

  She stood up. “If you’ve finished, I’ll go home.”

  Clane was forced to admire her nerve. She was a lousy actress but she was sticking to her role. He hoped she could beat out the cops. He said, “I was hired to do a job. I’ll do it, Miss Morgan. In spite of you. I’d like your help, but …”

  “Don’t humble yourself,” she said calmly. She walked past him to the door.

  Clane grinned. It tickled him, that crack. He reached the door ahead of her. “How did you get in here?”

  “A pass key,” she said “Hotel locks aren’t difficult.”

  “Try to go out without being seen. And take a message for me, will you?”

  “A message?”

  “Tell your father I’ll trade him a cigar case for one of his cigars.”

  Clane closed the door gently on her sheet-white face. He went back and sat on the bed.

  He was drinking another burbon and smoking sourly when the knock came on the door. He rose. “Yeah?”

  “Message, Mr. Clane.”

  “Come again,” Clane said.

  “All right, call the desk and ask them.”

  Clane opened the door. He had one hand on the doorknob and the other cocked into a fist. When he saw the elevator boy who had brought him up he dropped his arm. “Come on in.”

  The boy stepped in cautiously. “The dame gone?”

  “Maybe you earn big tips that way,” Clane said.

  The boy grinned at him. “Thorne’s orders. This message is strictly private.”

  “I was waiting for it,” Clane said. “Paul Grando seemed to have scared your clerk.”

  “Thorne doesn’t tell his business in front of Grando.”

  “All right, the message?”

  “Call Thorne,” the boy said. “Call Dunlop 4432.”

  Clane waited until the sound of the elevator descending told him the boy was gone. He picked up the phone and put in the call. Thorne’s heavy voice answered, “Thorne talking.”

  Clane said, “Calling Dunlop 4432 on order. What the hell?”

  “This is my private line,” Thorne said. “What held you up?”

  “Bodies,” Clane told him. “I’m in the moving business. Any excitement yet?”

  “About what?”

  Clane wondered if Thorne was playing dumb or if he actually was dumb. “What’s this call for?” he demanded.

  “Clane,” Thorne said heavily, “I want you to spend the night here.”

  “It’s three o’clock in the morning,” Clane said. “What night?”

  “Now. Come on. Take a cab. Bring your overnight bag with you.”

  Clane thought, “Thorne is just playing dumb.” He said, “Give me ten minutes.”

  He hung up, took another quick drink and went to work. He packed his one suitcase with pajamas, toothbrush, and razor. He emptied his leather toilet kit of everything and into it he put the cigar case, clippings, the two fifty-dollar bills, the .32, and the frank photo of Natalie. He snapped the case shut and put it under his arm.

  He was nearly to the door when there was a soft, rapid knock. Clane stepped closer. “Yeah?”

  “I want to talk to you,” a voice said. There was the suggestion of a whine in it. “This is important.”

  “So am I—to Clane,” Clane muttered. “Fat chance,” he said aloud.

  “May name’s Castle,” the voice continued. “J. B. Castle. Lemme in.”

  Clane pursed his lips in a silent whistle. He stepped behind the door, putting his hand on the .25 in his coat pocket. With the other hand he reached out and turned the key. “Walk in,” he said. “Hands high.”

  The door came open and a man shuffled into the room. His hands were above his head. Clane could see them shake. He waited until the man reached the center of the room. Then he said, “All right. Stop there.” He shut the door and locked it. He walked up to his visitor and patted the pockets of his seedy gray suit.

  “Relax,” Clane said.

  J. B. Castle turned around. He had been a tall man once, tall and broad. But now he was wasted so that he stooped and what flesh there was on his face hung sagging from his cheeks and under his neck. His hair was gray, what there was of it, and he wore no hat. There were red veins in his prominent nose and his once straight lips were flabby and loose. He looked at Clane through bloodshot, faded blue eyes.

  Clane felt sick “Sit down,” he said. This man had once been on top, running a big business. Castle sat on the edge of the easy chair and tried to stare at Clane. But his eyes wouldn’t stay put. His hands were shaking.

  Clane went to the bureau. “Will this do you any good?” He poured some whiskey in the bathroom tumbler. He handed the glass to Castle.

  Castle took it neat and quick without making a face. “Doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “It doesn’t taste any more. I don’t even feel it.”

  “I’m out of canned heat,” Clane said. “And what’s so damned important at three in the morning?”

  Castle’s voice held a strong whine when he said, “Once I was a big shot in this town.” His loose lips shook as he tried to stare defensively at Clane. “Certan guys put me where I am.”

  “You had no guts,” Clane said brutally. He was in a hurry; he had no time for a sob story.

  “You don’t understand, Castle said. “It’s circumstances, that’s all. They get a man down and then jump on him. Jump and then kick. I got lots of kicks…. Gimme a drink.”

  Clane poured him another, the glass nearly half full this time. Ruefully he watched his bourbon go down quickly and apparently without effect. “Take it and get the hell out,” Clane said. “Do your crying some place else.”

  Castle set down the glass. “I’m not crying,” he said in the same whining voic
e. “I’m telling you. And this is important. To you.”

  Clane watched him take a bedraggled pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his stained coat. Castle fumbled with shaking hands, trying to light a match. Clane didn’t move; he just let the man work at it.

  “What you got to sell?” Clane demanded.

  “Information,” Castle said. He finally struck the match against his shoe sole and brought the flame waveringly to the end of his cigarette. “With affidavits. I’m going to kick back. I been taking it; now I’ll give it for a while. When a man is down he hasn’t got a chance. All he gets is …”

  “Kicks,” Clane said wearily. “What do I do with these affidavits?”

  The liquor seemed to be taking effect on Castle now. He looked almost shrewdly at Clane. “James Clane,” he said, “just walks into Dunlop and stumbles into a nice job. He’s in with the big shots his first night in town. Coincidence is a funny thing, isn’t it, Clane?”

  “Sure,” Clane sad. “I laugh like hell sometimes.”

  “I know who you are,” Castle said. His whine took on a conspiratorial tone. “I know what you’re doing. I saw your technique at the riot yesterday and it got me thinking. I went to the library and looked up some stuff. Pre-war papers. Interesting.”

  Clane moved toward Castle, half threateningly. “Get out, bum. Try it on someone else. Cadge your drinking money off a real sucker.”

  Castle shrank back in the chair. His voice was all whine again. “Never give a man a chance. Once he’s down all he gets is …” Clane cocked a fist and Castle said, “I’m selling you something, Clane. Do you want to put the mayor up before a grand jury? The mayor and his pals?”

  Clane dropped his fist. “Why not sell it to Morgan? Or Thorne?”

  Castle managed a weak, sourish smile. “Morgan won’t soil himself with it. He’s trying to play honest with Pryor. He even thinks Thorne is a shining crusader.”

  “Sell it to Thorne,” Clane said.

  “I wouldn’t trust Thorne with it.”

  “He’s electing Morgan, isn’t he?”

  Castle said almost bitterly, “He sold his paper down the river—and me with it. I ran that sheet. I lived it and fed it. I gave it transfusions out of my own heart. By God, when he and Wickett got through with me I …”

  “Got kicked,” Clane said. “So you hate Thorne.”

  “No. Thorne is all right. I just don’t trust him,” Castle said. “I don’t trust any man. You’re new. You’re doing a job. I’ll sell you something to help do that job. That’s all. A man can do something once in a while without getting …”

  Clane said, “You mean if you sell to one side or the other you get a slug in the guts. Someone would tip it off. But me, Clane, I keep my mouth shut.”

  “You would,” Castle said. “I’ll give you the works for a hundred bucks. It isn’t much but that’s all I want. To see a few guys hamstrung and a hundred bucks. I want to pay them back and have enough to celebrate when they get it. I want …”

  “You’re wearing the record out,” Clane said. “I’ll listen if I get my hundred dollars worth. But cut the crap. I’m in a hurry.”

  “It’s all in writing,” Castle said. “I deliver it; I don’t talk.” He stood up a little straighter now. “You give me enough now for a couple of shots and a meal. I’ll bring you your money’s worth tomorrow.”

  Clane said, “I’ll give you five. Get a bath and a shave and a haircut. You look lousy to me. I’ll heave you out of the place if you don’t smell better.” He passed Castle a five-dollar bill.

  “I know a place,” Castle said. He shuffled toward the door. He turned and looked back at Clane. “You’ll get more than any other hundred bucks can buy. I swear it. I’m sick of being booted around by those …”

  “Get out of here,” Clane said savagely.

  Castle unlocked the door and went shakily into the hall. He shut the door behind him. Clane waited until he heard the distant sound of the freight elevator descending. He wondered if anyone ever used the front entrance to Thorne’s hotel.

  He took a drink before he left the room. J. B. Castle made him sick. He wondered whether he had been taken for five dollars or whether affidavits would come to him tomorrow. And then he wondered how long Castle would live if someone found he was peddling information. And just how long would Jim Clane walk around after it was discovered whom Castle had sold to?

  That was a pleasant thought. Clane picked up the leather toilet case, his bag, and started out. This time he made it. He went out the back way as the elevator boy had suggested, taking the freight elevator to the main floor and going into the alley. At the side entrance of the hotel he found a cab.

  To the driver he said, “Who you voting for?”

  The man glanced back at him. “Thorne.”

  “He isn’t running.”

  “Okay,” the driver said. “A rose by any other name—Shakespeare.”

  Clane relaxed. “Drive to the depot,” he said. He was pleased with Dunlop. It was full of people he felt he knew. The kind he had always depended on for the small things in his jobs. Most towns of that size were as barren of these people as they were of thoughts. He switched on the dome light of the cab and looked at the driver’s license which was posted on the back of the seat.

  The photo of a flat-nosed, wide-mouthed man stared at Clane. Beneath it was the driver’s number and his name, “Anton Kravitky.”

  Clane said, “Is this your picture?”

  The driver pulled into a loading zone at the depot and then turned around in the seat. “Don’t it look like me?”

  Clane had to admit it did, down to a slightly punch-drunk air. He said, “Is that your station by the hotel?”

  “Midnight on,” the driver said.

  “I may have to remember that,” Clane told him. He climbed out of the cab. “Wait,” he said.

  He went inside the depot, leaving his suitcase behind him. It was an old building, high-domed and filled with the ghostly light and emptiness only public building can have in the early hours of the morning. Clane felt conspicuous and that annoyed him. His footsteps made exaggeratedly hollow sounds on the stone flooring and he felt as if the few clerks, porters and janitors visible were all watching him.

  He crossed the room to a bank of storage lockers. Dropping in a dime, he received a key from a slot. He opened the locker and put the leather case inside. Ten cents was cheap enough security for twenty-four hours, he thought. It was a simple ruse that any cop could catch. But he hoped that the cops weren’t looking for ruses as yet. At least not from Clane. He went back to the cab.

  He gave Ed Thorne’s address to the driver and then settled back, lighting a cigarette. The driver whistled softly as he swung away from the curb.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, bud,” he said. “Not even a voter should wake Thorne up at this time of day.”

  Thorne’s up,” Clane said. “I’m Clane. He’s waiting for me.” He didn’t say it because he wanted to glorify himself before Anton Kravitky but because he wanted to see how Kravitky reacted to having Clane as a passenger.

  Clane was under no delusions as to his own prominence in Dunlop. The so-called riot was still fresh enough to make him news. Kravitky whistled again. “Boy,” he said. “I shoulda missed my sleep and seen Pryor’s face. I shoulda seen it.”

  “He turned pink,” Clane said. “So you liked that, huh?”

  “Boy,” Kravitky said. “Lots of guys liked it. Thorne liked it, I’ll bet.”

  “He didn’t squawk about it,” Clane said easily. The cab went around one of the hill’s tight curbs and he was thrown against one side. He straightened with a grunt. “Take it easy,” he said.

  “This ain’t nothing,” the driver said. “You oughta see me come back down.” He wheeled the cab hard around a sharp turn and bounced it straight as it threatened to ride over on two wheels. “I’d know these streets blindfolded.”

  Clane sighed. He wasn’t in the mood to listen to a loquacious cab
driver. And this one seemed to be on his way toward a harangue. Clane said, “I’ll remember that.”

  “On duty at midnight,” Kravitky said. “I’m off Mondays. You want to see the town, let me know.”

  “Meaning Casey Street?” Clane asked. He braced himself and rode a third hard curve easily.

  “Anything you want.” The cab pulled up sharply in front of Ed Thorne’s mansion. “Up to the door?”

  “I’ll walk from the street,” Clane said. He clambered out, taking his suitcase. He gave the driver five dollars and waved aside the change. “See you,” he told him.

  He walked jauntily, feeling pretty good. Cab drivers could be assets, he had found before. This one appeared to be no exception.

  Thorne was waiting on the porch for Clane. They stepped inside together and walked a dimly lighted hallway to Thorne’s study. The fireplace still had a bunring log in it and Thorne went up to warm his hands. He had a cigar in his teeth. Clane sniffed at it.

  “Smells good,” he said.

  “Fifty cents,” Thorne told him. “Here.”

  Clane lit the cigar. He set it down. “Too strong for me. I’ll stick to cigarettes.”

  He was watching Thorne but the big man showed no particular interest. He was studying the fire and suddenly he swung on Clane. “I hired you because I figured I could trust you.”

  “Mutual,” Clane said.

  Thorne grunted at him. “Trust includes a lot of things, Clane. Among them not asking too many questions.”

  Clane eased over to a bookcase and rested indolently against it. “Sure,” he said.

  “Come on, then,” Thorne said abruptly. “Bring your suitcase.” He led the way through a side door and up a rear stairway to the second floor. He went down a long hall, past the broad front stairs, stopping before a door at the far end on the left side.

  “My room is at the other end,” he said. “Natalie is across the hall from me. This is your room. Bath next to it. Got that?”

  “What for?” Clane demanded. He felt annoyed at the sharp line of apprehension running down his back.