Mourn The Living

by Collins, Max Allan

  “He isn’t what I’d call wild.”

  “But . . . isn’t he . . . a gangster?”

  “The deadliest weapon Sid Tisor ever held was a pencil.”

  “Oh. Well, anyway, Irene and I used to be quite close. You have to be, to live together, share an apartment and all. Both of us were artistic, using that same balcony studio in the apartment. Some of those paintings on the apartment walls are hers. Once in a while she wouldn’t show up at night, she’d sleep over with some guy or other—no special one, there were several—but that was no big deal, I’m no virgin either. It was just this year that it started getting kind of bad. Not with guys or anything. It was when she started getting in tight with some of these would-be hippies. I went along with a lot of it, because some of these people are witty and pretty articulate. Fun to be with. For example, they meet upstairs here during the day, and put articles and cartoons and stuff together and put out a weekly underground-style newspaper, called the Third Eye.”

  “What you’re trying to say is they’re not idiots.”

  “Right. I’m friendly with some of them. If you leaf through some back copies of the Eye you’ll see some of my artwork. But not all of these Chelsey hippies are well, benign. Some of them are hangers-on, bums, drop-outs, acid-heads. Like this Broome creep who runs the band here. Irene fell in with characters like Broome this last month or so, and I saw less and less of her . . . she was experimenting that final week or so, with pills mostly. And she kept saying, threatening kind of, that she was going to try an LSD trip.”

  “And?”

  “She did, I guess.”

  “You think it was suicide?”

  “Her death? I think it was an accident.”

  “Oh.”

  “You sound almost disappointed, Earl.”

  “To tell you the truth, Vicki, I don’t give a damn one way or another. I’m just doing Sid Tisor a favor.”

  She looked at him, shocked for a moment. “But you knew her, didn’t you? Don’t you care what happened to her?”

  He shrugged. “She’s dead. It begins and ends there. Nothing brings her back, it’s all a waste of time.”

  She squinted at him, obviously straining to figure him out. “You came to this stinking little town to risk your life when you think it’s a waste of time?”

  Nolan drew on the cigarette. “You don’t understand. It’s a debt I’m paying. Also, there’s a chance for me to make some money off the local hoods. But I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for Sid Tisor. He cares, and that’s what counts.”

  “Because you owe him.”

  “Because I owe him.”

  Their meals were brought to them and they ate casually, speaking very little. She watched him, beginning to understand him better.

  He paid the check and they went upstairs.

  3

  THE LARGE gymnasium-sized room was filled with cigarette smoke, unpleasant odors and grubbily dressed kids. Nolan stood with Vicki at the entrance and looked around, over the bobbing heads.

  The black concrete walls were covered with psychedelic designs, vari-colored, abstract, formless but somehow sensual, done in fluorescent paints. The lighting consisted of rows of tubular black-light hanging from the ceiling; a strobe the size of a garbage can lid was suspended from the ceiling’s center, but it was turned off at the moment. At one end of the room, to the left of the double doors, was a shabby-looking bar with an over-head sign that read “Beer Garden.” It was open for business but serving soft drinks only. The other end of the room was engulfed by a huge, high-ceilinged stage piled with rock group equipment.

  “Let’s take a look,” Nolan said.

  Vicki nodded agreement and pushed through the crowd with Nolan till they reached the foot of the stage.

  On stage were three massive amplifiers that looked to Nolan like black refrigerators. A double set of drums was perched on a tall platform, and various guitars were lying about as if discarded. An organ, red and black with chrome legs, faced out to the audience showing its reverse color black and white keyboard. Boom stands extended microphones over the organ and drums, and upright stands held three other mikes for the guitarists and lead singer. The voice amplification was evidently hooked up to two large horns the size of those found in football stadiums.

  Vicki said, “You look at that stuff as though you know something about it.”

  “I do,” Nolan told her. “Been everything from bouncer to manager in all kinds of clubs. You get to know musicians and their equipment.”

  “What does that equipment tell you?”

  “They have money,” he said, “and they’re going to be too goddamn loud.”

  She laughed and a voice from behind them said, “That, my friend, is a matter of opinion.”

  They turned and faced a six-foot figure resembling a coat-rack hung with garish clothes. The coat-rack spoke again, in a thick, unconvincing British accent. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to the gent, Miss Trask?”

  She began to answer, but Nolan shushed her. “I can guess,” he said, looking the coat-rack up and down.

  The boy was emaciated, the sunken-cheeked Rolling Stone type that shouted drug use. His hair was kinky-curly and ratted, making him look like a freaked-out Little Orphan Annie. His face was a collection of acne past and present, and the sunkenness of his cheeks was accented by a pointed nose and deep-socketed eyes that were a glazed sky-blue. He wore a grimy scarlet turtleneck with an orange fluorescent vest and a tarnished gold peace sign hung around his neck on a sweat-stained leather thong. His pants were black-and-white checked and hung loose, bell-bottomed, coming in skin-tight at the crotch.

  “You’re Broome.”

  A yellow smile flashed amiably. “Right you are, man.”

  “Who picks out your threads,” Nolan asked, gesturing at Broome’s outfit, “Stevie Wonder?”

  Broome’s laugh was as phony as his English accent. “You can’t bum me out, dad. I groove out at everything, everybody, everywhere. Bum me out? No way—I’m too happy, man.”

  Nolan looked into Broome’s filmy, dilated eyes and silently agreed. “When you play your next set?”

  Broome pulled a sleeve back, searched his wrist frantically for his watch, which turned out to be vintage Mickey Mouse on a loose strap. “In five, man, in five.”

  Vicki pointed Nolan to the stage where the rest of Broome’s band was onstage already, four boys just as freakishly attired as Broome but apparently less wigged-out—they were tuning up, generally preparing to begin their next set. Teeny-boppers crowded in around the stage, shoving to get as close to the band as possible, and consequently pushing Nolan, Vicki and Broome into a corner to the left of the stage.

  Broome was small-talking with Vicki and getting a cold- shoulder in return, Nolan having turned his back on both of them to watch the band set up. From the corner of his eye Nolan saw Broome light up a joint.

  Nolan said, “That one of the things that makes you so happy?”

  Broome lifted his shoulders and set them back down. “It helps a little, dad, you know?”

  “I know.”

  Broome spoke to Vicki. “I didn’t catch your friend’s name, love. What is it?”

  “His name is Webb,” she told him. “Earl Webb.”

  Broome looked at Nolan and something flickered behind the gone eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, he said, “I hear you get around, Mr. Webb, is that right? Do you get around?”

  “I get around. How about you, Broome? Ever hear of Irene Tisor?”

  Broome’s face tightened like a fist. “Maybe I have, Mr. Webb, maybe I have. So what?”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “She’s dead, haven’t you heard?”

  “I heard.” Nolan smiled, the phony smile this time. “You just smoke that stuff, or do you sell it, too?”

  “Hey, dad, I’m a musician.”

  “Yeah, right. Who sold Irene Tisor that hit of acid? Whose music was she dancing to when she did her swan dive
into the concrete?”

  Broome dropped his joint to the floor and stomped it out, his face a scowl and in one motion thrust his middle finger in Nolan’s face defiantly.

  “Make love not war,” Nolan reminded him.

  Broome farted with his mouth and hopped up onto the stage, joining his band, keeping an aloof air when speaking to the other members, and mumbled “One, two, test” into his mike. He gave the band four beats with his booted heel and they roared into a long, loud freaky version of a rhythm and blues number called “In the Midnight Hour.” The amps screamed as if in pain, emitting feedback and distortion, while Broome tried to sound black, crouching over the microphone, as if making a kind of obscene love to it. The Gurus, his four man back-up band, seemed vaguely embarrassed by him, with the exception of the bass player, a blond youngster who wore a page-boy.

  Toward the middle of the first number, somebody turned on the ceiling strobe, which flickered, flashed, making everything look like an acid-head’s version of a silent movie.

  Nolan said, close to her ear, “I’ve had enough. I won’t get anything out of Broome. Not in public.”

  Vicki followed Nolan as he burrowed through the crowd toward the doors. Above the deafening music she shouted, “Didn’t you get anything out of this evening?”

  Nolan waited till they were in the hallway with the double-doors closed behind them before he answered. “I got a few things out of it. Saw some pot being smoked, and not just Broome. Did you smell it? Bittersweet, kind of. And I’d put a thousand bucks down that Broome is an addict.”

  “An addict? Can you get addicted to LSD?”

  “LSD, my ass. He’s riding the big horse. Heroin.”

  “Heroin? Are you kidding?”

  “I don’t kid much, Vicki. He may have Mickey Mouse on his wrist, but he’s got needle tracks on his arm.”

  They moved back through the hallway, past the ex-pug who still didn’t recognize Nolan, and out into the open air. Just as they started to walk away from the Eye, Nolan spotted a familiar face—Lyn Parks, whom he’d last seen in her apartment, as she sat naked, painting a flower ’round her navel. As she went through the door she caught Nolan’s eye; she said nothing but her smile said everything.

  Touch of jealousy in her voice, Vicki said, “They all give you the eye don’t they, teeny-boppers on up?”

  “Sure,” Nolan said. “Even Broome.”

  They walked back to the Lincoln and drove to Nolan’s motel.

  4

  NOLAN PULLED the Lincoln up to the Travel Nest’s office, where through the glass he could see Barnes, the manager, at the desk inside.

  “I’m going to pick up some of my things,” he told Vicki, “and see to it the manager keeps my room vacant and my name on the register for the next few days.”

  “But you’ll really be staying with me?” she asked.

  “Right.”

  She leaned forward and caught his arm as he began to get out of the car. He glanced back and she moved forward and they kissed. A brief kiss, with a touch of warmth, of promise. He squeezed her thigh and climbed out of the Lincoln.

  He had barely gone through the door and into the motel office when an ashen-faced Barnes started babbling.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Webb, they made me let them in, believe me, I couldn’t help it. . . .”

  Nolan grabbed him by the lapel. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Those policemen . . . they made me let them in. . . .”

  “What policemen?”

  “The officers who searched your room last night!”

  Nolan said, “Plainclothes? One tall and fat, the other short and dressed for shit?”

  “That’s right, that’s them.”

  Tulip and Dinneck. That was how they had gotten into his room last night, before the pool skirmish. He hadn’t bothered to check with Barnes; he’d assumed Dinneck and Tulip had gotten in on their own.

  “Why the hell did you let ’em in?”

  “They had a search warrant . . . I . . . I couldn’t refuse them.”

  Nolan let him go. Of course. Of course they’d have a warrant. That financial secretary of George’s, that Elliot, had a cousin for a police chief. A guy named Saunders. No trouble getting Dinneck and Tulip a police cover and a search warrant.

  “Okay,” Nolan said. “It wasn’t your fault. But you should’ve told me about it later.”

  Barnes was dripping sweat; his bald blushing head looked like a shiny, water-pearled apple. “I was afraid, Mr. Webb, I’ll . . . I’ll tell you the truth. They told me you were a killer, a dangerous psychopath.”

  Knowing that Barnes was high-strung, scared easily and would bite almost any line fed him, Nolan leaned over the desk and looked the manager in the eye.

  “What I’m about to tell you is confidential, Mr. Barnes,” he said. “I need your sacred oath that you won’t repeat the following to anyone.”

  Barnes was confused, but he nodded.

  Nolan continued. “I’m an FBI special agent, investigating the illegal sale of hallucinatory drugs here in Chelsey.”

  Nolan could see in Barnes’ face that he bought it. It rang true to Barnes; there was a lot of funny business about drugs in Chelsey. He believed Nolan.

  Just as Nolan was ready to hand more FBI bullshit to him, Barnes’ eyes lit up like flares and he began to shake.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Have . . . have you been up to your room yet? You have, haven’t you, Mr. Webb?” Barnes shook like a bridegroom at a shotgun wedding.

  “No, I haven’t. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Then you better get up there quick! I told you they made me do it!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They came in again tonight, didn’t you know? I thought that was why you barged in here!”

  He grabbed Barnes by the lapel again. “When?”

  “Ten minutes before you came in, Mr. Webb . . . I thought you knew. . . .”

  “Damn!”

  Nolan turned and ran to the door, spoke over his shoulder to Barnes. “Keep everybody away from that room as long as you can. No cops—they’re crooked!”

  “Should I call your superiors . . .”

  “Don’t phone anybody, don’t do anything. Just keep your mouth shut.”

  Nolan flew out of the office, sprinted to the Lincoln and pulled open the door. “I got visitors in my room, Vicki. Sit tight till I get back. Be alert and make a fast exit if things start looking grim.”

  He left her with her mouth open, left before she could stop him to ask questions. He ran lightly across the motel lot and stood in an empty parking space beneath the balcony of his room. He looked up. The lights were on inside, shadows moved behind the curtained windows of the French doors leading from balcony to room. Nolan put his hands in the iron grating and his grip crumbled the crisp brown remains of the vined flowers that had climbed the trellis before the air had chilled. He tested the grating and it felt firm. He inched up slowly, the metal X’s cutting into his hands; only the very ends of his shoe toes would fit into the X’s, and they provided unsure footing. He edged his way up the iron trellis and in a minute and a half that seemed much longer, he found himself parallel to the balcony.

  Clamping one hand tightly in one of the grating openings, Nolan withdrew his .38 from the under-arm holster and slipped one leg up and over the side of the balcony. He fought for balance, shifted his weight and landed on the balcony cat-silent.

  Nolan faced the four-windowed French doors and watched the shifting shadows on the curtains. He peered through the crack between the doors and saw Dinneck sitting in a chair with his back to Nolan, tossing things from a suitcase over his shoulders, angry because he wasn’t finding anything. Tulip had stripped the bed and was in the process of gutting the mattress with a stiletto.

  Dumb bastards, Nolan thought. The room hadn’t told them anything the night before and tonight wouldn’t be any different. Well, a little different maybe.
>
  Nolan slammed his shoulder into the French doors and they snapped open. He kicked Dinneck’s chair in the seat, turning it over on him. Nolan leapt on the chair, heard bones and wood crack simultaneously, and sat on it, pinning Dinneck beneath. He leveled the .38 at Tulip, who stopped frozen, knife over mattress, with the bug-eyed expression of a punk caught stealing hub-caps.

  “Raise them, Tulip,” Nolan ordered. “Slow and easy and no games with the knife.”

  If Nolan hadn’t mentioned the stiletto, Tulip probably wouldn’t have remembered it, but Nolan had and Tulip did. Like a reflex Tulip whipped the knife behind his ear and let it fly. Nolan ducked, losing control of the overturned chair, and hit the floor. Behind him the stiletto quivered in the wood paneling. Nolan fired the .38 at a fleeing Tulip, caught him in the arm with the shot, which spun him around and sat him down.

  That put Dinneck out of Nolan’s mind just long enough for the man to crawl out from under the smashed chair and step up behind Nolan.

  And when Nolan remembered Dinneck, it was too late to matter. He turned and saw the toe coming at his face and when he tried to turn away it caught him in the temple and things went black.

  He woke thirty-some seconds later and stared into the barrel of his .38, which was now in Dinneck’s hand. Tulip was sitting a few feet away on the partially gutted bed, whimpering, mumbling. “Need it, Dinneck, I tell ya I need it bad . . . let’s just finish him and get out, huh? What d’ya say?”

  Nolan looked past the gun barrel and into Dinneck’s cold, uncompromising eyes.

  Nolan said, “What’s Tulip need, Dinneck?”

  “Shut up.”

  Tulip was rubbing his mutilated arm. The bullet had caught him in the lower shoulder and he was stroking below the wound. The blood from his shoulder was all over his hands and partially on his tear-streaked face, where he’d tried to wipe the moisture from his eyes. He was moaning, “I need some, gotta shoot up, need it bad, real bad. . . .”

  “He need a fix, Dinneck?” Nolan asked.

  “Shut your goddamn mouth, Webb.”