The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy

by Mike Ashley

  Funny, I thought Goldwyn was dead. Maybe he wasn’t.

  Johnny took the news of his impending stardom with total unconcern. He moved to the couch and sat down, yawning. “Detweiler? Don’t think I ever laid eyes on the man. What’d he do?”

  “Nothing. Just routine.” Obviously he thought I was a police detective. No point in changing his mind. “Where was he last night when the Herndon woman died?”

  “In his room, I think. I heard his typewriter. He wasn’t feeling well,” Lorraine Nesbitt said. Then she sucked air through her teeth and clamped her fingers to her scarlet lips. “Do you think he had something to do with that?”

  Detweiler had broken his pattern. He didn’t have an alibi. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Oh, Lorraine,” Johnny grumbled.

  I turned to him. “Do you know where Detweiler was?”

  He shrugged. “No idea.”

  “They why are you so sure he had nothing to do with it?”

  “She committed suicide.”

  “How do you know for sure?”

  “The door was bolted from the inside. They had to break it down to get in.”

  “What about the window? Was it locked too?”

  “No. The window was open. But it has bars on it. No way anybody could get in.”

  “When I couldn’t get her to answer my knock last night, I went around to the window and looked in. She was lying there with blood all over.” She began to sniffle. Johnny got up and put his arms around her. He looked at me, grinned, and shrugged.

  “Do you have a vacancy?” I asked, getting a whiz-bang idea.

  “Yes,” she said, the sniffles disappearing instantly. “I have two. Actually three but I can’t rent Miss Herndon’s room for a few days – until someone claims her things.”

  “I’d like to rent the one closest to number seven,” I said.

  I wasn’t lucky enough to get number six or eight, but I did get five. Lorraine Nesbitt’s nameless, dingy apartment court was a fleabag. Number five was one room with a closet, a tiny kitchen, and a tiny bath – identical with the other nine units she assured me. With a good deal of tugging and grunting the couch turned into a lumpy bed. The refrigerator looked as if someone had spilled a bottle of Br’er Rabbit back in 1938 and hadn’t cleaned it up yet. The stove looked like a lube rack. Well, I sighed, it was only for three days. I had to pay a month’s rent in advance anyway, but I put it down as a bribe to keep Lorraine’s and Johnny’s mouths shut about my being a detective.

  I moved in enough clothes for three days, some sheets and pillows, took another look at the kitchen and decided to eat out. I took a jug of Lysol to the bathroom and crossed my fingers. Miss Tremaine brought up the bank statement and humphed a few times.

  Number five had one door and four windows – identical to the other nine, Lorraine assured me. The door had a heavy-duty bolt that couldn’t be fastened or unfastened from the outside. The window beside the door didn’t open at all and wasn’t intended to. The bathroom and kitchen windows cranked out and were tall and skinny, about twenty-four by six. The other living room window, opposite the door, slid upward. The iron bars bolted to the frame were so rusted I doubted if they could be removed without ripping out the whole window. It appeared Andrew Detweiler had another perfect alibi after all – along with the rest of the world.

  I stood outside number seven suddenly feeling like a teenager about to pick up his first date. I could hear Detweiler’s typewriter tickety-ticking away inside. Okay, Mallory, this is what you’ve been breaking your neck on for a week.

  I knocked on the door.

  I heard the typewriter stop ticking and the scrape of a chair being scooted back. I didn’t hear anything else for fifteen or twenty seconds, and I wondered what he was doing. Then the bolt was drawn and the door opened.

  He was buttoning his shirt. That must have been the delay; he wouldn’t want anyone to see him with his shirt off. Everything I’d been told about him was true. He wasn’t very tall; the top of his head came to my nose. He was dark, though not as dark as I’d expected. I couldn’t place his ancestry. It certainly wasn’t Latin-American and I didn’t think it was Slavic. His features were soft, without the angularity usually found in Mediterranean races. His hair wasn’t quite black. It wasn’t exactly long and it wasn’t exactly short. His clothes were nondescript. Everything about him was neutral – except his face. It was just about as Lorraine Nesbitt had described it. If you called central casting and asked for a male angel, you’d get Andrew Detweiler in a blond wig. His body was slim and well-formed – from where I was standing I couldn’t see the hump and you’d never know there was one. I had a glimpse of his bare chest as he buttoned his shirt. It wasn’t muscular but it was very well made. He was very healthy-looking – pink and flushed with health, though slightly pale, as if he didn’t get out in the sun much. His dark eyes were astounding. If you blocked out the rest of the face, leaving nothing but the eyes, you’d swear he was no more than four years old. You’ve seen little kids with those big, guileless, unguarded, inquiring eyes, haven’t you?

  “Yes?” he asked.

  I smiled. “Hello. I’m Bert Mallory. I just moved in to number five. Miss Nesbitt tells me you like to play gin.”

  “Yes,” he said, grinning. “Come on in.”

  He turned to move out of the way and I saw the hump. I don’t know how to describe what I felt. I suddenly had a hurting in my gut. I felt the same unfairness and sadness the others had, the way you would feel about any beautiful thing with one overwhelming flaw.

  “I’m not disturbing you, am I? I heard the typewriter.” The room was indeed identical to mine, though it looked a hundred percent more livable. I couldn’t put my finger on what he had done to it to make it that way. Maybe it was just the semidarkness. He had the curtains tightly closed and one lamp lit beside the typewriter.

  “Yeah, I was working on a story, but I’d rather play gin.” He grinned, open and artless. “If I could make money playing gin, I wouldn’t write.”

  “Lots of people make money playing gin.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t. I’m too unlucky.”

  He certainly had a right to say that, but there was no self-pity, just an observation. Then he looked at me with slightly distressed eyes. “You…ah…didn’t want to play for money, did you?”

  “Not at all,” I said and his eyes cleared. “What kind of stories do you write?”

  “Oh, all kinds.” He shrugged. “Fantasy mostly.”

  “Do you sell them?”

  “Most of ’em.”

  “I don’t recall seeing your name anywhere. Miss Nesbitt said it was Andrew Detweiler?”

  He nodded. “I use another name. You probably wouldn’t know it either. It’s not exactly a household word.” His eyes said he’d really rather not tell me what it was. He had a slight accent, a sort of soft slowness, not exactly a drawl and not exactly Deep South. He shoved the typewriter over and pulled out a deck of cards.

  “Where’re you from?” I asked. “I don’t place the accent.”

  He grinned and shuffled the cards. “North Carolina. Back in the Blue Ridge.”

  We cut and I dealt. “How long have you been in Hollywood?”

  “About two months.”

  “How do you like it?”

  He grinned his beguiling grin and picked up my discard. “It’s very…unusual. Have you lived here very long, Mr Mallory?”

  “Bert. All my life. I was born in Inglewood. My mother still lives there.”

  “It must be…unusual…to live in the same place all your life.”

  “You move around a lot?”

  “Yeah. Gin.”

  I laughed. “I thought you were unlucky.”

  “If we were playing for money, I wouldn’t be able to do anything right.”

  We played gin the rest of the afternoon and talked – talked a lot. Detweiler seemed eager to talk or, at least, eager to have someone to talk with. He never told me anything that would connect hi
m to nine deaths, mostly about where he’d been, things he’d read. He read a lot, just about anything he could get his hands on. I got the impression he hadn’t really lived life so much as he’d read it, that all the things he knew about had never physically affected him. He was like an insulated island. Life flowed around him but never touched him. I wondered if the hump on his back made that much difference, if it made him such a green monkey he’d had to retreat into his insular existence. Practically everyone I talked to liked him, mixed with varying portions of pity, to be sure, but liking nevertheless. Harry Spinner had liked him, but had discovered something “peculiar” about him; Birdie Pawlowicz, Maurice Milian, David Fowler, Lorraine Nesbitt, they all liked him.

  And, God damn it, I liked him too.

  At midnight I was still awake, sitting in number five in my jockey shorts with the light out and the door open. I listened to the ticking of the Detweiler boy’s typewriter and the muffled roar of Los Angeles. And thought, and thought, and thought. And got nowhere.

  Someone walked by the door, quietly and carefully. I leaned my head out. It was Johnny Peacock. He moved down the line of bungalows silent as a shadow. He turned south when he reached the sidewalk. Going to Selma or the Boulevard to turn a trick and make a few extra bucks. Lorraine must keep tight purse strings. Better watch it, kid. If she finds out, you’ll be back on the streets again. And you haven’t got too many years left where you can make good money by just gettin’ it up.

  I dropped in at the office for a while Friday morning and checked the first-of-the-month bills. Miss Tremaine had a list of new prospective clients. “Tell everyone I can’t get to anything till Monday.”

  She nodded in disapproval. “Mr Bloomfeld called.”

  “Did you get my report?”

  “Yes. He was very pleased, but he wants the man’s name.”

  “Tell him I’ll get back on it Monday.”

  “Mrs Bushyager called. Her sister and Mr Bushyager are still missing.”

  “Tell her I’ll get on it Monday.” She opened her mouth. “If you say anything about my bank account, I’ll put Spanish fly in your Ovaltine.” She didn’t humph, she giggled. I wonder how many points that is?

  That afternoon I played gin with the Detweiler boy. He was genuinely glad to see me, like a friendly puppy. I was beginning to feel like a son of a bitch.

  He hadn’t mentioned North Carolina except that once the day before, and I was extremely interested in all subjects he wanted to avoid. “What’s it like in the Blue Ridge? Coon huntin’ and moonshine?”

  He grinned and blitzed me. “Yeah, I guess. Most of the things you read about it are pretty nearly true. It’s really a different world back in there, with almost no contact with the outside.”

  “How far in did you live?”

  “About as far as you can get without comin’ out the other side. Did you know most of the people never heard of television or movies and some of ’em don’t even know the name of the President? Most of ’em never been more than thirty miles from the place they were born, never saw an electric light? You wouldn’t believe it. But it’s more than just things that’re different. People are different, think different – like a foreign country.” He shrugged. “I guess it’ll all be gone before too long though. Things keep creepin’ closer and closer. Did you know I never went to school?” he said, grinning. “Not a day of my life. I didn’t wear shoes till I was ten. You wouldn’t believe it.” He shook his head, remembering. “Always kinda wished I coulda gone to school,” he murmured softly.

  “Why did you leave?”

  “No reason to stay. When I was eight, my parents were killed in a fire. Our house burned down. I was taken in by a balmy old woman who lived not far away. I had some kin, but they didn’t want me.” He looked at me, trusting me. “They’re pretty superstitious back in there, you know. Thought I was…marked. Anyway, the old woman took me in. She was a midwife, but she fancied herself a witch or something. Always making me drink some mess she’d brewed up. She fed me, clothed me, educated me, after a fashion, tried to teach me all her conjures, but I never could take ’em seriously.” He grinned sheepishly. “I did chores for her and eventually became a sort of assistant, I guess. I helped her birth babies…I mean, deliver babies a couple of times, but that didn’t last long. The parents were afraid me bein’ around might mark the baby. She taught me to read and I couldn’t stop. She had a lot of books she’d dredged up somewhere, more of ’em published before the First World War. I read a complete set of encyclopedias – published in 1911.”

  I laughed.

  His eyes clouded. “Then she…died. I was fifteen, so I left. I did odd jobs and kept reading. Then I wrote a story and sent it to a magazine. They bought it; paid me fifty dollars. Thought I was rich, so I wrote another one. Since then I’ve been travelling around and writing. I’ve got an agent who takes care of everything, and so all I do is just write.”

  Detweiler’s flush of health was wearing off that afternoon. He wasn’t ill, just beginning to feel like the rest of us mortals. And I was feeling my resolve begin to crumble. It was hard to believe this beguiling kid could possibly be involved in a string of bloody deaths. Maybe it was just a series of unbelievable coincidences. Yeah, “unbelievable” was the key word. He had to be involved unless the laws of probability had broken down completely. Yet I could swear Detweiler wasn’t putting on an act. His guileless innocence was real, damn it, real.

  Saturday morning, the third day since Miss Herndon died, I had a talk with Lorraine and Johnny. If Detweiler wanted to play cards or something that night, I wanted them to agree and suggest I be a fourth. If he didn’t bring it up, I would, but I had a feeling he would want his usual alibi this time.

  Detweiler left his room that afternoon for the first time since I’d been there. He went north on Las Palmas, dropped a large manila envelope in the mailbox (the story he’d been working on, I guess), and bought groceries at the supermarket on Highland. Did that mean he wasn’t planning to move? I had a sudden pang in my belly. What if he was staying because of his friendship with me? I felt more like a son of a bitch every minute.

  Johnny Peacock came by an hour later acting very conspiratorial. Detweiler had suggested a bridge game that night, but Johnny didn’t play bridge, and so they settled on Scrabble.

  I dropped by number seven. The typewriter had been put away, but the cards and score pad were still on the table. His suitcase was on the floor by the couch. It was riveted cowhide of a vintage I hadn’t seen since I was a kid. Though it wore a mellow patina of age, it had been preserved with neat’s-foot oil and loving care. I may have been mistaken about his not moving.

  Detweiler wasn’t feeling well at all. He was pale and drawn and fidgety. His eyelids were heavy and his speech was faintly blurred. I’m sure he was in pain, but he tried to act as if nothing were wrong.

  “Are you sure you feel like playing Scrabble tonight?” I asked.

  He gave me a cheerful, if slightly strained, smile. “Oh, sure. I’m all right. I’ll be fine in the morning.”

  “Do you think you ought to play?”

  “Yeah, it…takes my mind off my…ah…headache. Don’t worry about it. I have these spells all the time. They always go away.”

  “How long have you had them?”

  “Since… I was a kid.” He grinned. “You think it was one of those brews the old witch-woman gave me caused it? Maybe I could sue for malpractice.”

  “Have you ever seen a doctor? A real doctor?”

  “Once.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  He shrugged. “Oh, nothing much. Take two aspirin, drink lots of liquids, get plenty of rest, that sort of thing.” He didn’t want to talk about it. “It always goes away.”

  “What if one time it doesn’t?”

  He looked at me with an expression I’d never seen before and I knew why Lorraine said he had a lost, doomed look. “Well, we can’t live forever, can we? Are you ready to go?”

  The
game started out like a Marx Brothers routine. Lorraine and Johnny acted like two canaries playing Scrabble with the cat, but Detweiler was so normal and unconcerned they soon settled down. Conversation was tense and ragged at first until Lorraine got off on her “career” and kept us entertained and laughing. She had known a lot of famous people and was a fountain of anecdotes, most of them funny and libelous. Detweiler proved quickly to be the best player, but Johnny, to my surprise, was no slouch. Lorraine played dismally but she didn’t seem to mind.

  I would have enjoyed the evening thoroughly if I hadn’t known someone nearby was dead or dying.

  After about two hours, in which Detweiler grew progressively more ill, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. While I was away from the table, I palmed Lorraine’s master key.

  In another half hour I said I had to call it a night. I had to get up early the next morning. I always spent Sunday with my mother in Inglewood. My mother was touring Yucatán at the time, but that was neither here nor there.

  I looked at Johnny. He nodded. He was to make sure Detweiler stayed at least another twenty minutes and then follow him when he did leave. If he went anywhere but his apartment, he was to come and let me know, quick.

  I let myself into number seven with the master key. The drapes were closed, and so I took a chance and turned on the bathroom light. Detweiler’s possessions were meager. Eight shirts, six pairs of pants, and a light jacket hung in the closet. The shirts and jacket had been altered to allow for the hump. Except for that, the closet was bare. The bathroom contained nothing out of the ordinary – just about the same as mine. The kitchen had one plastic plate, one plastic cup, one plastic glass, one plastic bowl, one small folding skillet, one small folding sauce pan, one metal spoon, one metal fork, and a medium-sized kitchen knife. All of it together would barely fill a shoebox.

  The suitcase, still beside the couch, hadn’t been unpacked – except for the clothes hanging in the closet and the kitchen utensils. There was underwear, socks, an extra pair of shoes, an unopened ream of paper, a bunch of other stuff necessary for writing, and a dozen or so paperbacks. The books were rubber-stamped with the name of a used-book store on Santa Monica Boulevard. They were a mixture: science fiction, mysteries, biographies, philosophy, several by Colin Wilson.