Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery

by Dallas Murphy

  She had no color at all. Even her lips, slightly parted but utterly neutral of expression, were chalky white. Her short black hair, still wet, curled in scallops and wisps on her white forehead, the contrast was shattering. I stood staring at her face. I saw that these weren't drawers at all; they were merely racks with no sides. Inside the dead lay unseparated in their common stink. I remembered her laugh, how the skin around her eyes wrinkled and danced as if she were squinting into the sun. Her laughter, particularly when I could cause it, always made me glad to be near. Her right eye was half open, but only the white showed, the pupil rolled back forever. The other one, the eye with the fleck of gold, was closed. Cobb didn't need to ask if I knew her or not.

  "What was her real name?"

  "What?"

  "Billie Burke. That wasn't her real name, was it?"

  "Yes," I said, and I reached up and closed her right eye with my index finger. Cobb made a reflex move to stop me, but it was done. Billie's face was as cold as a bathtub. Cobb folded the green sheet over her, and that was the end of it.

  The black guy pushed the drawer shut. I watched her naked feet, which had been so ticklish, pass under my face and disappear.

  When we returned to the anteroom, Loccatuchi was sitting on the table thumbing through a skin magazine. The swollen white guy hadn't moved. Loccatuchi stood up and handed me a piece of paper. "Sign here, please. It's a statement that you saw and positively identified her." I signed. "Thank you. I'll get a car going uptown for you."

  "No, thanks," I said, "I'll take a cab. Just get me out of here."

  "Mr. Deemer—" said Cobb.

  I turned to him. He straddled a chair and sat down. I didn't like the look in his eye. "Stick around town where we can find you."

  "You don't think I did that, do you?"

  "Not really. But unsolved murder in my precinct, especially of women, pisses me off. Call me old-fashioned. I don't know enough right now. I hate not knowing enough, and if you're not around when I have a question, that'll piss me off, too."

  "Okay, detective. But do you have to be such a nasty fucking prick?"

  "You're not the first to ask."

  "Thanks for the ID, Mr. Deemer," said his partner.

  Jellyroll sniffed my pants leg for a hint of where I'd been. I wondered if I smelled of death and if he knew the smell in some dark atavistic way. I began to cry again. Jellyroll loved Billie, too. She had saved his life. He was a sick little worm-eaten puff of fur when she rescued him from the pound. I sat down on the floor beside him and sobbed into the hair on the back of his neck. He licked my face, and we sat there for a long time in the dark.

  My apartment is on the twelfth floor overlooking Riverside Park and the Hudson beyond. No streetlight filters up this high, not even reflection, and no one had seen the moon for two weeks. A total absence of light—except for a tiny blinking red one on my answering machine. When I'm feeling reclusive, in a solitary jazz mood, I can go days without answering the phone. Jellyroll has lost gigs because I've wanted to keep at bay the world below, and if things had been normal, I might have ignored that pulsing red light. But nothing was normal. I got up and played the waiting message:

  "Hi, Artie, it's me." Christ, it was! It was Billie! "Are you there, Artie?...No? Okay. It's about nine Sunday night. I'm going to my studio. Please meet me there even if it's late. I've got something to give you. Please come. It's important. I'll see you, Artie." For a mindless instant I thought I would see her, that this night was some kind of mistake. All I had to do was hop the Number 2 train and she'd be waiting, angry, maybe, because it had taken me so long, but alive.

  I rewound and played the tape again, then twice more. Jellyroll sat beside me and seemed to listen. What if I had taken her call? I would have met her at her studio, and she might have missed her killer. Or I might have fought him off. No, I tried to tell myself, I wasn't in her life deeply enough anymore to be responsible for it.

  TWO

  THE DAWN CAME up sunless and rainy. I had fallen asleep only an hour earlier. I had tried everything to cause sleep, a couple of bones, bourbon. I tried reading about the Civil War, but I couldn't concentrate on General Beauregard's movements along the Rappahannock, and the carnage of Second Manassas took me near despair.

  I dressed for the endless rain in rubber boots and an army poncho and took Jellyroll for a walk in Riverside Park. Knowing something was wrong, he hung close and did not stalk squirrels.

  When Billie left a year ago, she said life with me was too easy, that it was sapping her ambition. I told her life could be harder. I could attend law school nights in the Bronx; I could take a day job with a major corporation and work weekends loading concrete blocks. She thought I was kidding. Dreamy moments, I had even considered the fanciful future, fatherhood, domesticity, rustic summers in an Adirondack cottage, the young ones splashing in the lake. I held out hope that one day she would return. I didn't believe that business about sapped ambition, but I didn't press her. She'd come back one day, and then it wouldn't matter. I helped her move her stuff to Sullivan Street, and the moving done, she said she hoped I'd take Jellyroll, since there were no grassy parks in the Village. That wasn't the real reason either. We both knew that by then Jellyroll had become my dog. Dog owning in Manhattan is such demanding work that it almost requires the absence of ambition.

  It was April 29, Duke Ellington's birthday, but it didn't feel like spring at all. New buds were nothing more than stunted little kernels on the tips of wintry branches. Jellyroll and I waded through the mud and the wind all the way up to Grant's Tomb. Grant rests beside his beloved wife beneath a marble dome on its own little island in the traffic. Poor Ulysses S. He was not a drunken lout; he was a brilliant, sensitive general prone to bouts with melancholy over the nature of his profession, which he expressed in letters to his wife. Those written after the slaughter at Cold Harbor are particularly heartbreaking. Jellyroll peed on a shiny black cannon, shook himself, and looked into my eyes. His said, what are we going to do now?

  Suddenly I knew what I'd do. I didn't weigh the pros and cons, view alternatives from each perspective, then, as usual, do nothing. I would get whatever it was Billie wanted to give me last night. She meant it for me. It was mine. Jellyroll cocked his head suspiciously. There were problems, all right. What was it, this thing she wanted me to have? Could I carry it on my person, or would I need a U-Haul? Would I recognize it when I saw it? I decided that whatever it was would be in her studio where she'd wanted to meet me. I had no key to the studio, but I knew where she kept a spare set of keys. Hanging on a nail by her kitchen door in her apartment, where she was murdered.

  I would need to enter surreptitiously and leave without a trace. How? I needed an experienced person, someone familiar with criminal technique. But I didn't know anybody with those credentials. Except my lawyer.

  My lawyer had been evicted from his office several months ago, but he was never there anyway. I called the pool hall. The deskman, Davey, told me, yeah, he was there all right. He was playing nine-ball for twenty bucks a game with Too Louis, a porky scumbag who at forty lived with his mother, who probably paid him to hang around the pool hall instead of around her.

  Jerome's Billiard & Snooker Academy, East Fourteenth Street, third floor, up a set of granite stairs worn concave by the tread of academicians, a red flashing neon sign that said _iILLIARDS. I could hear the magic click and fall of phenolic spheres and the gasps of pain when they didn't fall. I inhaled nostalgically. I gave up The Game a while back. It's far too demanding and, like life, too revealing of character flaws. But I missed it. I even felt a twinge of sadness when I saw my old cue stick. My lawyer was leaning on it morosely.

  A small clot of spectators, some who didn't give a damn, some who only pretended not to, others who openly settled up side bets and talked out the comers of their mouths. Regulars, most of them, bored, looking for action of any sort, nodded at me. Among the spectators stood Winky, by the drinking fountain. They called him Winky because h
e had this savage tic in his left eye that screwed up the whole side of his face, the result, someone unreliable had told me, of his father's attempt to kill him with a cue stick when he was four.

  "Your friend's a dumb fuck, Artie," said Winky.

  "I know."

  "He's spottin' Too Louis the seven ball and the break for twenty a game. Is that dumb fuck or what? How come we don't see you no more?"

  "I've been working hard."

  "The SPCA's gonna get yer ass under the Dog Labor Act."

  Too Louis was taking aim on the seven ball, his pay ball, a long-rail cut with a danger of scratching in the side, but he missed it. He left the seven hanging in front of the corner pocket. The eight was about to fall in the opposite pocket of its own accord, and the nine, my lawyer's pay ball, was a duck in the side. My lawyer stepped to the table.

  "Think you can handle that, pal?" asked Too Louis too loudly.

  "I can handle anything you got, Louis," replied my lawyer. "Except your person."

  "A fin says he don't get out from there, the dumb fuck," said Winky out the comer of his mouth.

  "Winky, a child could get out from there."

  "He can't get out with a crowbar."

  "Okay, a fin," I said.

  My lawyer stroked the seven, stopping the cue ball neatly, shot the eight in with a touch of high right English and rolled down for the nine, straight in the side. He aimed, stroked it—and missed. It jawed between the points of the pocket, where it died. Too Louis giggled, hiked up his seeds, waddled to the table, thighs chafing, and pounded it in. I handed Winky his fin. "Dumb fuck," he muttered.

  Winky had a point. Was this the man I came to consult on a delicate matter of criminal advice, a man who gives away a bad spot to a shark, then gags the pay ball straight in the side? My lawyer let two tens flutter to the table, where Too Louis scooped them up with fingers more like toes. "Wanna go again?" he asked my lawyer. "Yer only eighty bucks down. Yer comin' back." His eyes were all greed. If my lawyer had said yes, I would have walked.

  "No thanks. Go out and buy yourself a truckload of Cheetos."

  The spectators dispersed in search of new action.

  "Hello, Counselor," I said.

  "Artie. Did you happen to see me miss that duck?"

  "Yes."

  "It must be this cue of yours."

  "Warped, huh?"

  "How else to explain it?"

  "I need your advice."

  "Do you mean in the legal sense?"

  "No, in the illegal sense."

  "Step into my office. Hey, Davey, can I use the office for consultation with a client?" he called to the deskman.

  Davey nodded. "Good shot."

  My lawyer led me around the back of the desk area and through a door that I knew led to the repair shop. A naked light bulb bounced on the end of its cord when my lawyer pulled the string. There were stacks of disabled cues piled against the back wall along with buckets, mops, and brooms. The room smelled of glue. We sat on the workbench, careful to avoid disturbing a lovely custom cue clamped in the vise.

  "Do you remember Billie Burke?" I asked.

  "Sure. Took pictures of bums. You two used to be thick."

  "She was murdered last night."

  "Did you do it?"

  "Of course not."

  "As your attorney, I'm behooved to ask."

  "I got a phone message from her shortly before she was killed. She said she had something to give me."

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know."

  "No?"

  "No, but I want it."

  "Where is it?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "Bit vague on the specifics."

  "It might be in her studio. There's a set of keys to the studio in her apartment, but that's where she was killed."

  "Are you telling me you want to break into the scene of a murder in order to steal property belonging to the deceased?"

  "That about it."

  "Forget the whole thing and smoke some of this."

  "Well, thanks anyway," and I got off the workbench.

  "Where is this apartment?" my lawyer asked.

  "Sullivan Street."

  "Old building or new building?"

  "Old."

  "Elevator?"

  "No, stairs."

  "What floor?"

  "Fifth."

  "Doorman?"

  "No."

  "Street door locked?"

  "Yes."

  "Basement?"

  "Yes."

  "Fire escape?"

  "Not on her side. Wait, there's a dumbwaiter."

  "A dumbwaiter? Where?"

  "In the basement. It runs from the basement through each apartment. I just remembered, they use it for garbage."

  "As your attorney, I advise you to eschew narrow places."

  THREE

  I LURKED UNDER the leaky awning of a gelato stand across the street from Billie's apartment house, one of those long, narrow five-story buildings common to the neighborhood. If you look closely, you notice that each has its own touch of character. Billie's has stone-sculpted stag heads, each different, mounted under the windowsills. I thought about those things to repress my sick fear.

  I wore a pair of Con Edison coveralls from the trunk of my lawyer's car, where he keeps phony uniforms. If Winky could have seen me then, he would have said, dumb fuck, and he would have been right. It's not too late, I told myself. You haven't done anything crazy yet, it's not too late to catch the IRT at Sheridan Square, change to the express at Fourteenth, and in twenty-five minutes be plugged into a classic like "Good-bye, Porkpie Hat." An identification tag in a clear plastic pocket was pinned to my heart. I was Tyrone Washington, Inspector #5533. My glasses fogged up.

  I looked both ways. It was getting dark. People were coming home from work. No one looked suspicious except me. I was lurking under this awning in a Con Ed suit. In New York you don't pay attention to people who seem to be heading somewhere. That's one reason why the pace is so quick. I moved on, two blocks north toward NYU. I didn't see anybody who looked like a cop. But how the hell would I know he was a cop if he was trying not to look like one? I passed a short, wrinkled Italian woman in a black dress, black shoes and army boots, which, for all I knew, could be the best disguise on the force.

  I turned around and walked directly to Billie's stoop, where I pretended to check the address in a tiny notebook that didn't exist. I tried the door, but of course it was locked. Now I'd have to ring someone's bell. Tyrone Washington here to inspect the old boiler.

  "Can I help you?"

  "Haw!"

  "Didn't mean to scare you. Guess we're all jumpy right now." It was a little man about sixty. The second-best disguise on the force? No, I remembered him. With Billie, I'd passed him several times on the stairs. He squinted at me. He wore a shapeless yellow slicker with the hood up. He looked like a fire hydrant. "We had a killing here last night."

  "A killing. Gee."

  "Yep. Woman up on five. She was a wild one."

  "Look, your boiler's due for inspection. It'll take about an hour."

  "I didn't know Con Ed inspected boilers."

  "Oh, yes."

  "I ain't had any heat lately."

  "I'll check it out."

  "Who the hell should need heat in springtime? Gettin' nastier every year. It's the Second Ice Age we're lookin' at here." He opened the door, and I followed him in. He led me down the hall and showed me the stairway to the basement. I started down, and he made to follow.

  "I'm sorry, sir, but insurance regulations prohibit tenants from the scene of an inspection."

  "In-surance. Biggest bunch of grifters in the world. My wife fell in a pit over on Bleecker. You think they paid?"

  I pretended to begin my inspection.

  "Dirty grifters," he said, and then he walked away.

  There it was beside the boiler, the ancient dumbwaiter. The door, an unpainted plywood replacement of the original, hung open. I knelt down and peere
d up the shaft. It was pitch-black and stunk of wet plaster and rotten fruit, but I folded myself in and pulled the door closed behind me. I stood up in the little box—like a miniature sandbox, and I could feel naked brick at either shoulder. Something touched my face. I waved it away. A roach? A rat? I waited for my eyes to adjust, but they wouldn't adjust to total darkness. Fool! Moron! I'd brought no flashlight!

  That thing touched my face again. I knocked it away. It didn't feel like something alive. I reached out slowly and grasped it. Rope. There would have to be rope. I stood there sweating in my Con Ed overalls and tried to have a talk with myself. Think, I told myself. Think or go home. I ignored the fact that if I really had thought, I would have gone home.

  Which rope takes it up? I was thinking clearly enough to understand that there had to be two ropes. I pulled a rope at random. I pulled a lot of rope before I moved upward with a lurch. I kept pulling and began to ascend steadily up the smelly crypt. A thin bar of light appeared at eye level, and I stopped pulling. I listened. Someone was rattling pots and pans. Of course. This would be the first floor. That's how I could tell what floor I was on, just count the bars of light coming from people's kitchens. I pulled onward and upward. The light passed out of sight, and I began to notice that this whole apparatus was creaking and groaning like the soundtrack to Billy Budd. What if the rope should pack it in? It wasn't built for this kind of weight. What if right now it was unraveling down to a single strand like a cartoon rope? Then that would be it for Tyrone Washington, and the dirty in-surance grifters wouldn't pay a dime to bury the dumb fuck.

  Another light bar appeared and passed. I felt something squishy beneath my boot, but I kept pulling myself deeper into this reverse mineshaft. Another light, then another, passed beneath me. That made four. One more. My stop. But it didn't appear. I should be there by now. Wait. There would be no light in Billie's kitchen. The lower four were full of living people cooking something special, telling each other about their day. But Billie wasn't in. I felt the wall for a break in the brick, for the wooden door. It was directly in front of me. The door was barely two feet square. I lowered myself until it was at about waist level and pushed on the door, but it wouldn't open. Was it locked? Was there some kind of hook? I hadn't come this far to be impeded by a piece of plywood. I kicked it out. It was hardly brighter in Billie's kitchen than in the mineshaft.