Of Mice and Murderers

by John Stockmyer

  The way clear at last, Z picked up his satchel, opened it, by feel found his blackjack and put it in a coat pocket, snapped shut the case, and slipped inside the house where, certain there was nothing left to stop him, he padded like a midnight menace through the laundry room ... the lighted kitchen ... a dark dining room ... living room ... guest room ... library --walls of books. Piano.

  Until, valise in hand, a shadow blending in with shadows, he approached a spacious, lighted recreation room at the back.

  Edging an eye around the side of the archway leading to that room, he saw the lumpish contractor's back, the man sitting on a comfortable-looking riot-of-large-pink-and-white-flowers-on-solid-black-fabric sofa.

  Along the back of the divan (on Z's side) was a dark, wood credenza with "pretties" on it: figurines, vases of cut flowers, small pictures in filigreed frames. Beyond the couch, facing the room from either side, were deeply upholstered, bright red chairs, their legs skirted in the same vermilion fabric. End tables between the sofa and chairs completed the conversational grouping, one table sporting a red lacquer lamp, the other, a lamp of sparkling faceted crystal, both lamps switched on, their light softened by white pleated shades.

  Leaded windows dominated the blush-pink outside wall to the left, the windows decorated with bunched half-drapes of floral-patterned fabric.

  No glassed in break front on the far wall.

  Good!

  Flush with the dark oak floor across the room was an arched, open-fronted fireplace, Z seeing ashes inside and a burned-rusty, cast-iron grate. To the right of the hearth were brass fire implements -- tongs, brush, leather bellows -- held upright in a shiny, golden stand.

  What looked like two impressionist paintings in gilt frames had been hung on the right end wall. Seemed to him to be either second-rate paintings or first-rate prints.

  The room's cathedral "spire" soared another story -- the first floor "ceiling" marked by horizontal, open, brown-stained beams.

  Z was particularly interested in the fireplace on the far wall and in a white-painted, cast iron radiator adjacent to it. Steam heat? Perhaps the home wasn't as new as he'd thought: only looked that way because of loving, detailed maintenance. He inhaled delicately. Yes. There was a light paint smell about the place.

  Could there be a doubt that a professional had "done" this freshly redecorated room? On the other hand, it took a special kind of courage for a young wife to let herself be guided by an expert's judgment. Perhaps the little lady wasn't as shallow as he thought. More than ever, he was glad she'd found somewhere else to be on this icy January night, a sensitive woman apt to be traumatized by being hog-tied by a hulking, hooded terrorist.

  Even a cursory examination of the place told Z the room could not reflect the "taste" of Maddox, the dumpy man's paunch showing even from the back; not that hairy-gorilla-in-a-beer-stained-undershirt plunked down on the flowered sofa; not this coarse, balding piece of fatty meat; not this bull-necked redneck -- sucking beer while leafing through a girly magazine ....

  Something else caught Z's attention.

  Another ... odor.

  Besides belched beer, the room gave off the smell of ... flowers ... and ... of furniture polish.

  So! The Ford of this afternoon belonged, not to a maid, but to the cleaning woman.

  It always pleased him to be able to snap in every piece of a detective puzzle.

  Maddox hadn't heard a thing, of course. Nor was there a glassed-in piece of furniture -- Z had checked -- in which Maddox could glimpse the wavering reflection of an assailant, weighted sap in hand, skulking up behind him.

  Careful appraisal making Z sure of his invincibility, two soft steps and a quick tap over Maddox's right ear had Z opening the detective case to get down to business. (For the young wife's sake, Z hoped the beer the man spilled didn't make a permanent stain on the pretty couch.)

  As for the job itself, the first difficulty was getting the fat man's clothes off; shirt, pants no difficulty but proving easier to take a razor to the man's "jockey" underwear than to slip his "unmentionables" off over his awkwardly sprawling arms and legs.

  What as hard, was dragging Maddox off the couch and over to the fireplace. Why was it that "dead" weight was so much heavier than "live"?

  No problem getting a rope end tied around the man's ankles, or tossing the rest of the coil over the center of the beam just in front of the fireplace.

  What presented the most difficult part of the operation (a squared-off beam making a poor pulley,) was hoisting the man's limp body off the floor.

  Finally, though, after considerable strain, Z had hauled the man high enough for Z's purposes, Z lashing the other end of the stretched, sharply slanted rope to the radiator in the corner.

  The rope tied off, he had the man where he wanted him -- strung-up so that, while Maddox's hands dangled far enough to touch the wood parquet in front of the fireplace, his head cleared the floor by a couple of feet.

  After that, Z tore up the porno magazine Maddox had been reading, crumpled its pages and stuffed them under the fireplace grill. Finding wood in a built-in storage bin in the hearth wall, Z put some kindling on the grate, then a generous pallet of split oak logs.

  To neaten up the place, he finished by tossing in what was left of the man's clothing, placing Maddox's steel-toed work boots on top of the firewood.

  As a final preparation, Z got the half-pint Mason jar of gasoline from his suitcase and screwed off the flimsy top, setting both the lid and the open jar beside the hearth.

  By this time sweating from all these preparations -- his black ski mask unbearably hot and scratchy -- Z was impatient for the man to wake up so Z could reason with him (one more time) before things got serious. Z liked to provide even cheaters with more chances than a hard life had given him.

  It was even possible, he believed, to end it here. Experience had shown that the men he'd stripped buck naked and tied up by the heels were often more cooperative than they might have been under other circumstances.

  As for Maddox, the man had started to twitch -- a good sign. He'd also begun to move his arms, his hands dragging on the shiny floor.

  "Son' a bitch," were the first words Maddox uttered, said groggily, thickly. By degrees, the man was waking up, the strange look on his reddened, upside-down face saying that the contractor was at a loss to explain how he'd come to be hanging from the ceiling like an albino bat.

  It was time, Z squatting down so Maddox could see Z's black-hooded bulk.

  "Sir," he rasped, still trying to be polite, the rough purr of his voice sounding even stranger through the loosely knitted mask, "you owe me three thousand dollars." No sense bringing in Calder's name. Z never tied a client to any action the cops might view suspiciously -- part of the Zapolska code.

  "What?" Maddox was rolling his eyes, not yet fully recovered.

  Z could afford to wait.

  Another half-minute serving to bring the man around, Z could tell that the contractor's thought processes had now shifted, if not to fear, at least to thoughtful consideration of his circumstances.

  "Time to settle up, you piece of shit!"

  Z checked himself immediately. There was no reason to get angry. It was just that he'd gone to considerable trouble to motivate this man.

  Z also knew that part of the reason he was feeling snappish was that his knee had begun to ache in earnest. Scrambling through the garage window had been punishing, to say nothing of the lacerating strain his ligaments had undergone in stringing up Maddox's rubbery thick body.

  "You've got money in the house."

  Though Z was guessing, it was a good guess. A cheat like Maddox would want his "resources" in cash, to keep from paying income tax. "Get it and we stop the game."

  "You son of a bitch!" the man shouted in his rough, used-to-cursing-at-his-men, outdoors voice.

  With that, he spit, only Z's superior reflexes allowing Z to duck in time.

  Spirit.

  The man had spirit.


  Z hated that -- Z feeling his temper fray its leash.

  But ... was able to calm himself.

  "The police'll get you!"

  Police? At least this explained why the man was so belligerent, Maddox under the delusion that Z could not have broken into the house without tripping one of the home's elaborate burglar systems, silent alarm to the police station, all that.

  Z had seen the alarms, of course: the perimeter sensors attached to the doors and windows -- the Buzztop door stopper.

  "You can forget the cops," Z rasped soberly. "I knocked out your security."

  As for the man, he just hung there, his paunch looking ridiculous as it flopped down (up?) on his chest -- not the only part of him that looked ridiculous dangling upside down.

  "Instead, we play the game. Turn your head and you'll see you're almost in the fireplace." The man refused to even try to move.

  Choosing to ignore Maddox's insolence, Z continued.

  "I'm going to make a fire. Already got it laid."

  Maddox's curiosity aroused at last, he twisted to get an upside-down look in the fireplace.

  With that, Z bent over (keeping his bad knee out of the contractor's sight,) picked up the jar of gasoline he'd put by the hearth, and splashed gas on the kindling. For effect, hurled in the empty jar, the glass shattering nosily on the grill and firebrick.

  Taking one of the extra long, fireplace matches from the mantel, a scratch on the inside grate was all it took to touch off the acrid-smelling gasoline, a blue flame roaring up, the kindling immediately crackling into life.

  "Hey!" cried Maddox, the man using his hands to "walk" himself backward until he was holding his upper (lower?) body as far from the flames as possible, as far as he could and still keep his palms on the floor to balance himself.

  "Good. That's one thing you can do. May get tired, though."

  A change of expression on Maddox's lumpy face said the man was catching on, Maddox now paying attention, something in his upside-down eyes that said Maddox might soon be more reasonable. (The bulging blood veins in his neck and on the man's weathered forehead were nothing but the result of being upside down so long.)

  "There's a better way to keep from getting roasted -- at least for now," Z added, anticipating the man's limited options. "You ever read 'The Pit and the Pendulum'?" The man didn't answer, perhaps because he'd already discovered that holding himself back from the burgeoning flames was a losing strategy. "Here. Let me help."

  Bending down, Z grabbed a handful of what was left of the man's gray-flecked hair, hauled Maddox a reasonable distance to the side, then let him go, Maddox swinging past the fireplace like a wrong-way Tarzan.

  Stopping at the top of the arc on the other side of the hearth, the contractor swept back again, past the blazing wood, his pivoting body fanning the flames to new brightness.

  Maddox had also begun a slow rotation, winding up in one direction until the rope unwound him in the other.

  Roast more evenly that way.

  "Better keep swinging," Z advised. "Slow down and you get a permanent tan."

  Though by this time the builder had begun to make moaning sounds, the man still said nothing.

  The contractor twirling on the rope, first one way, then the other, at the same time swinging back and forth before the growing, fascinating fire, almost put Z in a trance. First one way. Then the other. ......

  But in ever shortening crescents, Maddox's head spending more time in front of the fire on each successive swing, the fire more respectable by the second, the charred edges of the split oak glowing with hardwood heat.

  This fire was beautiful to watch. And it smelled good, too. Nothing but the best in seasoned oak for the criminal element.

  "I've got to go," Z wheezed. "But I'll be back after awhile; to see if you need basting."

  "Wait!" Maddox cried.

  The rest had gone smoothly enough. First, Z had taken pictures of the man as he swung so gracefully before the fire, the photos to be circulated should Maddox continue to be troublesome. Elbert Orledge Maddox the Second was not the kind of man who'd enjoy having these kind of "bondage" pictures spread around.

  After that, sure enough, Maddox had told Z about a wall safe hidden behind the traditional picture in the library, Z cutting Maddox down so Maddox could work the combination. The man having a bad case of the shakes, taking awhile.

  But a rewarding "while" as it turned out, the safe stuffed with stacks of rubber-banded bills. (Z's little joke about Z being from the IRS hadn't even produced a chuckle from the man. Among Maddox's other unattractive qualities was his lack of humor.)

  Two thousand for Z's client, Dr. Calder, plus an additional thousand for Z's fee -- a sum that was fair. Why should Professor Calder -- the victim -- have to stand the expense of hiring a private eye to catch this criminal? (While P.I.s without Z's standards would have taken the bundle, Z counted out only what Maddox owed: the legal three thousand.)

  Tying Maddox up again, Z left the man on the recreation room floor, the other end of the rope knotted to the radiator. He even suggested that Maddox might think of a way to get a coal out of the fireplace; use it to burn through the rope to set himself free. (If the man got loose on his own, it would spare his little woman from having to learn what had happened in her absence.)

  A half-hour later, Z was home and taking a long, knee-relieving soak in water as hot as he could stand it, Z having time, at last, to judge that the evening had gone well. The good guy had gotten justice; the bad guy had been made to pay.

  Viewed right, since Maddox didn't know what future illegality on his part might make those pictures surface, the snapshots Z took had done a work of rehabilitation.

  All things considered, a satisfying conclusion to the Calder case.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 2

  Z came awake with a bad, thick taste in his mouth -- just another trick that age played on you. He hadn't slept well, though he'd gotten more sleep than if he'd persuaded Susan to invite him over. Too busy for him. She was always too busy these days. Big Bob Zapolska. The big Z. High school hero in the long ago. Had dropped another pass.

  More awake, he remembered to reach for the bottle of aspirin on the stand, groped out a quantity of pills; managed to get them in his mouth. Crunching up the aspirin, he swallowed the acid powder with the first spit of the morning.

  Though it'd been a full day since the Maddox break-in, his knee still felt bad, a bum knee his excuse for not yet seeing Dr. Calder.

  He yawned, the sour bite of the aspirin helping him to wake up.

  As soon as the pain killer took hold, he'd be ready to face the day.

  Lying there, he reflected that, except for woman trouble, things were going as well as they ever did. He'd made money from the Calder case, for instance. A small job, to be sure. Low class P. I.'s not hired to hunt for the killer who'd strangled ladies of the evening in Gilliam park, the man croaking as many hookers as Jack the Ripper. (Of course, seven murders meant less in Kansas City than in London, Londoners not in the habit of gunning down the innocent.)

  It wasn't like the detective novels said, that the P.I. got the hard cases, the ones the cops had muffed. It was more like a private detective scavenging jobs no one wanted (like being hired to join the search party for the runaway who turned up dead in a Johnson County field.)

  It didn't really matter, though. He liked the detective business more than any of the lifting jobs he'd had since high school. For one thing, a little checking on possible clients meant you didn't have to work for bastards.

  Z moved his left knee. Better give the aspirin another couple of minutes.

  He looked at his watch, eyes still blurry. Eight o'clock? Nine? He couldn't tell in the winter light of his bedroom's north window. Maybe, when his eyes had a chance to clear, he'd be able to see those wiggly dial numbers.

  If he could keep from thinking about Susan, this was going to be the day he'd collect the rest of his money from the security client; from tha
t secretary at Bateman College. Ogden. Beth Ogden.

  Good-looking for a woman Z's age -- but nervous. Too scary to be living all alone way out there. Still, she hadn't liked his suggestion to sell her barn of a farm house and move into a security apartment. Sentimental about the old homestead, he guessed. She said she'd just inherited it.

  Most security installers would have put in deadbolts right away, deadbolts the kind of lock all his customers knew about. But, flighty as the woman was, he'd tried to do his best for her peace of mind by telling her she'd be just as safe if she propped chair backs under the doorknobs, front door and back. While he concentrated on buttoning up the rest of her house.

  He'd have normally put in a silent alarm to the cops. It was just that, out in the country like she was, an "Injun" could shoot a dozen like her and ride off before the cavalry arrived. So he'd started by putting bars over the windows: the fancy filigreed steel ones, all vines and flowers, but bars none the less; first, over the windows that needed it most, the first-floor windows, then the windows on second, then on third. Bolted all the steel work from inside.

  Not wanting to think about standing on a long ladder with his bum knee, he'd been fortunate to be able to do the job from inside. (Stiff and painful, he could live with. Having his knee give way while three floors up .... Enough said.)

  He'd installed peepholes in the doors.

  All he had to do now was buy deadbolts for the front and rear doors and collect the money for his labor, the lady then able to put her chairs under the dining room table where they belonged.

  Short of living in a vault (something he didn't tell Ms. Ogden,) there was no way to be completely safe. As a boy, he remembered reading about Japan, how the people there lived in houses with rice paper walls. At the time, he'd thought how stupid the Japs must be -- this was before the word Jap changed its meaning to Jewish American Princess -- to think they were protected by paper panels. As an adult in the P.I. business, he'd come to realize that any house could be cracked.

  The steel window filigree he'd installed for the lady would slow somebody down, at least. Give the lady time to call 911. (He'd also taken the trouble to bury the phone line so nobody could cut it.)