Trouble in Rooster Paradise

by T. W. Emory

  “I was reading Sten’s Black Mask magazine in the crapper yesterday. I got a wonderful idea for the opening of the second act. Walter, let’s have Penny innocently flounce into an opium den.”

  “Innocently flounce is a bit oxymoronic, Nora,” Walter said.

  “Huh?”

  “What I mean is, it sounds a bit contradictory. Perhaps we should have Penny innocently wander instead of flounce.”

  “Whatever,” she said waving the matter aside with her hand.

  “Aunt Nora,” Sten said, “I thought you had Penny the prisoner of a white slaver ring.”

  “I did. She escaped. Her cherry still intact.”

  Walter sat across from Mrs. Berger. He cleared his throat and said, “Nora, about Penny’s escape from the white slavers …. When she expresses her gratitude to her deliverers for saving her from a fate worse than death … I think the word ‘maidenhead,’ or perhaps ‘hymen,’ would serve better than ‘cherry.’ I do wish we could discuss this some more before we go any further.”

  “No, no, Walter. It sounds just fine the way it is now. It’s realer somehow,” said Mrs. Berger.

  “But consider your potential audience, Nora.”

  “Why, Walter Pangborn, no girl I ever knew would have said ‘mainhead’ to a police commissioner and a bunch of flatfeet. As for ‘hymen,’ I doubt one stripper in a thousand knows the word exists even.”

  Walter reluctantly conceded the point and resumed picking at a half slice of cantaloupe. He definitely had a hangover.

  I hadn’t gotten plastered, so except for a little grogginess, I felt pretty good. At least I thought so until a plate hit the floor with a jarring crash that united us all in a moment of keen misery.

  My temples felt like they were imploding.

  Walter winced.

  Mrs. Berger moaned at the loss and scolded her nephew for breaking the plate.

  Sten just held his head in his cigarette hand as he reached for the broom with the other.

  “Help yourself to some cantaloupe, Gunnar. Shurfine had ’em two for thirty-nine cents,” said Mrs. Berger.

  I was working up to a bowl of Rice Krispies, but I did as she suggested and sat down at the table. Sten joined us after he swept up the debris.

  “Walter, if a woman you loved were to innocently flounce into an opium den, how would you feel?”

  “Nora, wouldn’t it be better to stick with what you personally know?” Walter asked.

  “Nonsense, Walter. What’s the fun in that?”

  “Well … we at least need to have a smoother transition. I really think we should go back and rework the last two scenes of act one.”

  “Oh, those scenes are perfect, Walter. They’re just fine.”

  “But Nora, there are a few details that I fear will shatter your audience’s suspension of disbelief. And—”

  “Hell’s bells and whistles, Walter. The people watching will know it’s just a play. We’re not fooling nobody. Besides, there’s nothing we can’t fix up later. Remember, it’s supposed to be a love story and adventure both. We got to keep it moving. And you got to agree that if a shapely little bombshell like Penny flounces into a den full of drug-crazed Chinamen and assorted white riffraff, something exciting is bound to explode. The audience will love it. Trust me, Walter.”

  Sten winked at me and chimed in, “I don’t know, Aunt Nora. I think a bunch of opium-eaters would be too hopped up to even take notice of a dollface like Penny. Why not keep her with the white slavers a little while longer?”

  “Sten Larson, if we left our pretty Penny with those hard guys one moment longer, it’d be ground rations for her for sure.” She went on for a few minutes rehashing Penny’s past, her innocence, the mistakes she’d made, the doctor who treated her for the clap, the luck he brought her.

  How the virgin Penny got gonorrhea was a mystery I never asked about. Some things you just accept as is. It’s easier that way. At times it seemed like Penny was real—at least as real as Betty Grable or Rita Hayworth.

  Mrs. Berger gingerly daubed the corners of her mouth with a napkin. Having finished her toast, she put a Chesterfield in her ivory holder and lit up.

  “You know, you really need to slow down and chew your food more, Gunnar,” Mrs. Berger said after I’d gobbled down half my cantaloupe. “You’ll live a longer, more vital life. And it’ll keep lead in your pencil,” she added with a salacious grin.

  I humored her as usual. I slowed my intake down to a bare nibble and began chewing rapidly. I noticed Walter ruminating with careful precision. He was a devoted Fletcherite, but only when our landlady was in the room.

  Sten relished in his dissent, unblushingly bolting his scrambled eggs. After each forkful he’d quickly mash away with his tongue before each shameless gulp. He winked at me defiantly. His cigarette smoldered on the edge of his saucer.

  “You’re looking mighty relaxed this morning, Gunnar,” Sten whispered between gulps. “Did you get your ashes hauled last night or something?”

  “Or something,” I said through a mouthful of orange pulp.

  “Sten, that colon of yours is going to clog up and explode one of these days,” his aunt said, getting up to pour herself a cup of coffee.

  Sten puffed up his cheeks like a blowfish. Walter and I tried not to laugh. Mrs. Berger playfully whacked Sten on the head as she came back to the table, causing him to let out a blast of air.

  “It’s no joking matter,” she went on. “Had your Uncle Otto listened to me and chewed his portions better, he’d still be alive today. I’m certain of it.”

  No one argued the point. Not even Sten. But he continued to shovel and gulp, unaffected by his aunt’s withering look—that look a zealot reserves for the unabashed nonconformist. Even though Walter and I were mere nominal Fletcherites, it kept us safe for the time being. Walter had accurately summed up our situation on an earlier occasion:

  “Thomas Jefferson wisely wrote, old top, that uniformity and coercion made half the populace fools and the other half hypocrites. When it comes to Fletcherism, I’m afraid you and I are, undeniably, hypocrites.”

  Most of the time I just felt like a fool.

  As Walter and I got up from the table, Mrs. Berger beamed up at me, saying, “I made a batch of taffy yesterday afternoon, Gunnar. Be sure to grab a handful before you head out the door. Pass ’em out to people you know. Just tell ’em to eat around the little strip of paper. That idea about stuffing each piece with a fortune didn’t work out like I hoped.”

  As we headed to the stairs, I heard my landlady ask, “Sten, are you sure you weren’t ever in an opium den? Not even once?”

  “There’s a couple dens down on King Street in Chinatown,” Sten said. “Hell, I’ll take you down there some night if you want to do a little research for the play.”

  “I’d love that. Yes. Research for the play.”

  Walter and I went upstairs. I figured he’d spend the day in his room, reading, soldier-painting, or doctoring the perils of pretty Penny.

  But the muse was not with Walter.

  I slapped some cologne on my face, put on my hat and coat, and was making ready to leave when Walter’s door opened. He was wearing his dark raincoat with the collar pulled up and his slouch hat in its usual position.

  “Walter. You’re dressed to go out.”

  He saw the surprise on my face. “I am indeed, Gunnar. You did me a kindness last night. I wish to repay it. I’d like to accompany you. Perhaps I can be of some small service.” He patted his left side, where I guessed his Lebel revolver was holstered.

  “Thanks, Walter, but you don’t owe me a thing.”

  “Oh, but I do.”

  I knew how much he hated to venture out during daylight hours. But he had a sort of pleading look in his eyes. He wanted to come with me. Maybe he even needed to.

  “Come on,” I said.

  Meredith Lane lived in the Capitol Hill district.

  The Ivy Lane Apartments might have had ivy growing around them at
one time, but no longer. Not unless you counted a sickly looking vine on a rickety trellis curled over the front door. But the lawn was trim, and all in all the building was well-kept and nice enough to look at.

  It had drizzled during the night and it was now foggy. The sun struggled to peek through the haze, but the feel in the air told me the rain would probably win out in the end.

  I parked my Chevy out in front. The sidewalks were still wet. I got out of the car on what my grandpa Sven would have called an uff-da note. As my feet took their first steps on the concrete I stopped short and half-skipped to avoid stepping on a slug making his slimy escape. In the process I lost my fedora. I’d done this slug dance before. It was either dance the dance or go directly from uff-da to ish-da. The Greeks aren’t the only ones with a word for it.

  “Ever thought of dance lessons at Veloz and Yolanda?” Walter asked. “I see in the paper that their summer rates will be low.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Light of feet, light of heart, old socks.”

  “Yeah, and you should write Burma Shave ads,” I said, picking up my hat. It had just missed the glossy trail left by the slug.

  Meredith’s apartment building was a four-story rectangular box on a side street off Cherry and smack-dab in a residential area. Built about 1900, it had probably seen some hodgepodge remodeling each decade thereafter. Its two large units per floor during its Victorian heyday had been converted to six smaller ones. It had a front and rear entrance and a staircase at each end.

  Walter and I entered the front lobby and were immediately hit with that stale fug no amount of paint, wallpaper, or Lysol can overcome and which residents become inured to.

  “Oh, the landlord is missing out on an opportunity here,” Walter said.

  “How’s that?” I asked as my nostrils relaxed their pucker.

  “He really ought to bottle and sell this aroma. I’m confident he could find a market for it among innovative museum curators—or perhaps vacationing archaeologists lonesome for their digs.”

  We passed the bank of mailboxes along the wall and made our way up rubber-treaded stairs.

  Walter’s scars were mostly covered, but he kept close to the wall on his right. We only passed one tenant—a chesty woman in early middle age who shot Walter a curious glance after giving me a friendly nod.

  Walter whispered, “It sounds like Miss Lane has been through quite a bit lately. Are you so sure this is a good idea?” By “this,” he meant his face. He’d wanted to stay in the car as a lookout.

  “Don’t worry. It’ll be fine,” I said. “Once I’ve explained you to her, and she gets past the initial shock, I think your bedside manner might actually help get her to open up.”

  I figured the third floor was mainly occupied by single women; feminine door decorations and competing wisps of perfume in the hallway presented a definite womanly character.

  I rapped on the door marked 304.

  No answer.

  I knocked again. No sound.

  I eagle-clawed the prismatic glass doorknob. It turned easily and I let us in and shut the door behind us. There was no sign that the lock had been jimmied or the door forced open. The light was on in the small foyer that was directly neighbored by a tiny bathroom.

  I called out for Meredith. Stillness.

  I drew my gun.

  I led Walter into the living room. We could readily see inside the kitchen and bedroom. They were average-sized rooms with high ceilings and walls that owed their shiny patina to countless layers of paint.

  Britt had told me Meredith lived alone. Small as her apartment was, I was a little surprised she could afford it on a salesgirl’s salary. I was more surprised by the expensive furnishings that didn’t exactly suit her digs. But I was downright shocked at the aftermath of the small tornado that had struck the place.

  Neither one of us moved from our spot. I made a quick visual sweep. In the living room, only her combination television-radio console was still standing—though it had been shifted from its location. A new armchair was overturned, and its jute under-fabric torn from the springs. The matching sofa had been similarly violated. Several books had their backs broken and their pages ripped. Pictures had been torn off the walls and the frames broken open. Vases and other knickknacks helped clutter the floor. The rug had been rolled up and flung to a corner. The kitchen was a jumble of dishtowels, silverware, plates, two pots and a pan, all tossed on the linoleum. From my glimpse of the bedroom it appeared to be a heap made up of clothes, a mattress, sheets, pillows, and down.

  “What do you make of this?” Walter asked. He’d drawn his Lebel but was putting it away.

  “I’d say the place was ransacked. Either that or Meredith’s housekeeper quit on her with a vengeance.”

  “Have you been imbibing the humor vapors, old thing?”

  Walter spotted her foot in the bedroom. Actually he saw a few toes peeking over the top of a big pillow. Our eyes followed the toes down a long, well-turned leg.

  The leg led us to Meredith.

  Chapter 12

  Meredith was on the other side of the chaotic heap. Like her friend Christine, she was in that familiar puppet-with-its-strings-cut position. She’d no longer be worrying about losing her looks with age. The nylon stocking cinched tight around her neck had seen to that.

  She was lying on the floor near the tasseled border of her bedroom carpet that had been rolled up against one wall. Her legs and arms were sprawled and bare. All she had on was a red satin chemise that had been torn wide open in front. Her red hair was tousled and tangled. Her full lips were parted and her eyes looked through and beyond us. Her face had the smoothed features that come with slackened muscles. There was no blood.

  The sight sickened me.

  “Meredith Lane, I presume,” said Walter.

  I nodded.

  “Gunnar, it takes several hours for rigor mortis. From start to finish, I mean.”

  I knelt down and touched her neck. It was cold.

  “She’s stiff as a board. For all I know she was killed yesterday or in the early hours of this morning. We’ll have to leave that detail for the medical boys.”

  It wasn’t likely that someone came in through a three-story window, but I checked for signs of break-in anyway. I found none.

  “The door has a peephole. She knew her killer, but freely let him in,” I said.

  “So she didn’t expect to be killed.”

  “Looks that way.”

  We both stood in the living room again. We were being careful not to touch anything, but continued to look around.

  “Any thoughts, Mr. Pangborn?”

  “If we’re dealing with the same fellow who killed Miss Johanson, then I’ll wager Miss Lane wasn’t raped. The murderer probably ripped open her chemise after she was dead to make it look like he’d had his way with her before he killed her.”

  “So then he tossed this place to make it also seem like robbery,” I said.

  “Yes, Gunnar, but tearing into the under-fabric of a chair indicates the murderer was looking for something, so it’s very likely that Miss Lane had something in her possession that he wanted. He may also have been trying to make her talk and she died before she could do so.”

  “Makes sense. So then he rifles through her stuff in search and tries to pass it off as the action of a prowler turned rapist.”

  “Precisely. Our man is given to ruses and misdirection.”

  I scanned the disarray again. “Well, Walter, whatever the killer was looking for, it had to be flat enough to slide under a rug or into a picture frame, and small enough to shove in a book. Let’s make our own search.”

  We were careful not to touch anything unless absolutely necessary, and then only while wearing one of Walter’s leather gloves.

  Your average house or apartment has numerous hiding places. We scouted the obvious ones first. Nothing in the toilet tank, and underneath the sinks yielded a big zilch.

  Next we checked hiding places the
killer might have missed that included possible false walls in closets, the tops of doors for keys, loose jambs, moldings or baseboards. Zip.

  I was in Meredith’s bedroom checking for loose floor covering when Walter called from the kitchen, “I think I’ve found something significant.”

  I’d started to get up off my knees when I also spotted something significant. It was a few feet to the right of Meredith’s body. The killer probably flicked it there just before he strangled her. It was a toothpick. It was bent in half and V-shaped. I didn’t touch it.

  I found Walter pulling a manila envelope from under a loose strip of linoleum that was cover to a small cranny and had been anchored by one leg of the small kitchen table.

  Walter handed me the envelope. I slit open its sealed edge with my penknife and took a quick peek inside.

  “Your wish came true, Walter.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We didn’t get it from Meredith’s mouth, exactly, but she did give us the piece of the puzzle we needed.” I stuffed the envelope inside my raincoat. “Let’s scoot with the loot, my friend.”

  “If you don’t mind, Gunnar, I’d much rather abscond to the nether region.”

  Chapter 13

  Seattle used to get a pretty bad rap for its rain, and it still does. But it actually rains less in Seattle than in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. We just have more cloudy days.

  Then, as now, no one ever mentioned the fog. The drizzles we got were nothing compared to the fog that rolled in off Elliott Bay. Sometimes our airports were socked in for days at a time. One time Sten Larson gave me a ride while carting a carload of friends to some shindig. For part of the way Sten had his buddy Kenny Flodine planted on the hood giving him signals with one hand while he pointed a flashlight with the other at the white shoulder line. Sten told me they did it all the time. It was so dense sometimes, it was sure to have made a Londoner homesick. Yet strangely, Seattle’s rain got the spotlight.

  The fog had lifted and the returning overnight drizzle had formed drops that merged into sheets when Walter and I left the Ivy Lane Apartments around noon that Saturday. We scampered out the back entrance that led to an alley. No one saw us leave as far as we could tell. In a meager attempt at obfuscation, we circled half the block in the rainstorm to get back to the Chevy. To any onlooker we were returning to our car from anywhere else but the Ivy Lane Apartments.