The Corpse Next Door

by John Farris

  Holding the good comfortable weight of her against me as she cried I remembered last night, on the edge of the deep silent river. I had taken her there, to my river, where I liked to go and sit on a beached log beside the eddying water and look to the bluffs on the other side and think. The river-washed sand had been fine and smooth. It had been warm and quiet and very dark and there had been a strange terror about being close to the great moving river, so that it seemed almost inevitable we would lie close and eagerly, bonded by the searing kisses. I knew, as a man will know, that she wanted more, much more . . .

  She’s not a piece, Gulliver.

  Yet she had been prepared for me. She had been prepared to receive me, prepared in a way nice young girls usually are not.

  I understood that on the Ridge life is hard and uncertain and there is an attitude of get it while you can. Lust is solid beneath the surface of restless lives and chastity doesn’t exist where there is no reason for it to.

  Yes, I knew Stella, yet I didn’t know her. I didn’t know why it had been that way on the bank of the river. Now she squirmed and sobbed in my arms.

  “Bill . . . Bill, the poor little guy . . .”

  “There’s nothing you can do.”

  She turned away from me and rubbed at her reddened eyes. “He was such a little kid,” she said. The violence of her grief had given her hiccups. “Such a little . . . underweight kid. He never had a break, Bill. Never . . . had one goddam tiny break in his whole . . . goddam life.”

  She stood up awkwardly and sniffed and rubbed the back of her hand against her eyes and walked out of the bedroom, down the hall to the bath.

  I went to the window and looked out, at the acre or so of dumped trash where the city was trying to create a fill, at the patchwork fields beyond and the fringe of trees bounding the river.

  I felt as though I had no business being there, in her room, with the hard gun at my side and the badge in my pocket. A Ridge boy had died, and I was intruding on the wrenching grief of someone who had cared for him, who had recognized his consuming need for being wanted and protected. Well, I was a cop. I had put on the badge and I was right. Those, like Jimmy Herne, who made my work, were wrong. It was the only way I could think, the way all of us had to think. When you started making excuses for them, wondering why, your effectiveness as a cop goes. That’s what Gulliver had told me, and probably it was the truth. Never give them a break, Bill. When you start giving them a break, they’ll kill you. One way or another. That’s what Gulliver had said, many times.

  Yet I had tried to help Jimmy Herne, in a small way; not because I was sorry for him, but because of Stella.

  I had to think about her, and the four days, about her instinctive dislike for me because of the badge, the dislike that had disappeared, until the fulfillment for both of us, last night. I had to wonder if it had been for both of us . . .

  Stella returned. Her eyes had dried and there was a tight expression on her face. I tried to think of something to say, some small words of comfort. I couldn’t.

  She sat on the bed again, her legs spread beneath the slip, her shoulders rounded. “He hated prison,” she said, as if remembering every thing about him was important. “He nearly went crazy those eight months in the reformatory. He said he’d never go back. Never. He used to talk when he was staying with me. He’d sit and talk about what he was going to do. He wasn’t full of crap any more about being a big man, about the jobs he would pull. He was almost humble, wanting to find a good job and stick with it, become useful. He used to get that scared look every time he thought about the reformatory. Not just ordinary scared. When Mr. Smithell heard about him from the parole board, I thought that—well, that it would be okay.”

  She got up and went to the dresser and picked up her comb. She pulled it through the thick mane of hair, combing it down over her eyes.

  “Maybe what happened was best,” I said. “His lawyer was working for him, Stella. But he couldn’t have done much better for Jimmy than a life term.”

  She whipped the comb from her hair and flung it at me. I was startled by the cold fury in her eyes. She stood spraddle-legged with her breasts outthrust, fists hard near her thighs.

  “No!” she yelled. “It wasn’t for the best because Jimmy didn’t do it! He wasn’t any more guilty than I am and he’d be free right now instead of dead if it wasn’t for that dirty Gulliver!”

  I took her by the shoulders. “Stella, Jimmy confessed. He confessed because he was guilty and he knew it and you know it.”

  “Confession,” she said, as if she were going to spit. Her voice trembled. “I know all about confessions like that. The last time I visited Jimmy he could hardly move or talk to me. He kept getting his words mixed up. You think I’m simple? I know what goes on in the basement uptown. I’ve seen others who came out of there. Jimmy confessed because he didn’t have any choice. Gulliver beat him to a pulp.”

  “Shut up,” I said, my teeth together. “Shut up, unless you can prove it!” I could feel the deep pressure of unreasoning anger rising against her and I knew I was hurting her as she twisted under my hands.

  “Why don’t you tell me it’s not true?”

  I glared at her.

  “Because you can’t,” she almost yelled. “Because Gulliver did beat him. Jimmy was just a kid who couldn’t fight back. Gulliver needed a sucker and he picked on Jimmy and now Jimmy’s dead!”

  I released her, turned up the radio, then kicked the door shut, trying to control my rage. “Jimmy cleaned out Smithell’s jewelry box, stripped his wallet and took his watch,” I said monotonously. “Then he ran for it. That doesn’t sound very innocent to me.”

  “You know why he ran,” she cried, fresh tears in her eyes. “He came home from the picture show and Smithell was dead on the floor and he knew you lousy cops would try to pin it on him.”

  I stood very close to her. “Now you said it. Why don’t you finish? I’m one of those lousy cops. I suppose you think I hit the kid too. I suppose you think I beat on him when Gulliver was tired. Is that what you think?”

  “Maybe you did! If he was so guilty you didn’t have to beat him to find out!” she sobbed. She stepped back and hit me hard in the face with her open palm. It really rocked me. Her eyes brimmed. She hit me again, almost swinging from the heels, then staggered to the bed, fell across it.

  “Ah, Bill,” she said. “Ah, Bill, he was such a sweet little kid. If you knew him like I did . . .”

  I rubbed my face gently where she had hit me. I went to her and sat beside her and put my arm across her shoulders.

  After a while she sat up on the bed, put her arms around her knees. She looked at me uncertainly. “Are you angry?”

  “Little idiot,” I said.

  “I was so hurt,” she said. “It’s always been like that, when I’m hurt.”

  “I know. You had to hit something.”

  “Bill, you wouldn’t lie to me.”

  “About what?”

  “Did Gulliver hit him?”

  “Is it important now?”

  “Yes,” she said, “it is. I know Jimmy’s dead, and nothing can change that. But I want to know why he died.”

  I seized one of her hands and held it. “You’ve got to remember how it must have been with him, Stella. You believed in him. He knew how disappointed you were. Maybe he couldn’t take that.”

  “Yes, I guess so,” she said remotely. I wondered how much Jimmy had talked to her. A silence gathered between us, a silence I didn’t like. Then she said softly, “Did he? Gulliver?”

  “For Christ’s sake,” I said. Then I said, “Yes, I suppose he did. Gulliver is a tough violent man, Stella. He’s been a cop all his life. Sometimes he gets fed up with all the dirty people. Sometimes he loses his temper and hits a man in custody.”

  “Were you with him when he was questioning Jimmy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see him hit Jimmy?”

  I didn’t like the calm way she was speaking, and
I didn’t like being forced into a lie, into an expression of loyalty for Gulliver I didn’t feel.

  “No,” I said, thinking of the movement of Gulliver’s stocky body, the hands going out, the hard splatting sounds as his palms rocked Jimmy’s head.

  Come on, Jimmy, I got enough right now to turn you over to the county attorney, but I want to make good and sure. Tell me you killed him.

  No. No. No. No. No.

  Where did you get that thirty bucks, Jimmy?

  He gave it to me—to buy a suit.

  I guess you wanted more. I guess that’s it, isn’t it Jimmy?

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t see him hit Jimmy.”

  She propped herself on one elbow and looked at me. “Bill,” she said earnestly, “do you honestly believe Jimmy was guilty?”

  I looked at her for a long time. “Yes,” I said quietly. “Yes, Stella. I think Jimmy killed him.”

  Her eyes closed and she settled back against the pillow. “Bill,” she said, “I’d like to be alone now.”

  I touched her leg but she didn’t respond. I got off the bed and lit a cigarette. She didn’t move or look at me.

  “When will I see you again?”

  “I don’t know, Bill,” she said, as if it didn’t matter at all, had never mattered. “I don’t know.”

  I left her then, beginning to feel a restless anger I couldn’t define.

  2

  THAT night I was having a drink in the bar of Roxy Marko’s place on Highway 44 when Miller Starkey came over.

  “Evening, Sergeant,” he said amiably, sliding onto a stool next to mine.

  I wasn’t particularly interested in talking to him, or to anyone else, but I returned his greeting.

  “Whiskey sour, Max,” he advised the bartender. “Buy you a drink, Sergeant?”

  “This’ll hold me for a while, Mr. Starkey. How are the girls?”

  “Fine. Fine.” He beamed at me. He was proud of his two girls. “Pootsie—that’s Alice, you know—is expecting again. And Juanita is president of her sorority up at State.”

  I nodded. The Starkey girls were famous in Cheyney. Born a year apart, they had raised hell from the cradle on, growing boisterous and beautiful. The last time I had seen them together they were under arrest on a shoplifting charge. Gulliver and Starkey had held a fast conference and the girls weren’t booked. Charges were subsequently dropped.

  In return for this favor, Starkey allowed police personnel to buy everything in his men’s shop, the best in town, for twenty-five percent off. It meant, to me and to most of the others, the difference between feeling almost dressed and well dressed on the same salary.

  Miller Starkey was unimpressively built, very near-sighted, with gray hair that stuck straight up from his scalp about four inches. It was hard to imagine how he could have been responsible for the Starkey women.

  Max delivered the whiskey sour and Starkey fondled the glass before drinking, smiling. He smiles all the time. I suppose it’s a mannerism. Like nose-picking.

  “So Jimmy Herne committed suicide,” he said. “I guess that wraps up the case, doesn’t it, Sergeant?”

  “As far as we’re concerned it was already wrapped up.”

  He lost some of his man-to-man chumminess. “Certainly. I only meant—” He poked in embarrassment at his glass.

  The small bar was cool and uncrowded. To my left were glass panels partially covered with soft blue drapes and on the other side of the glass was the dining room, almost filled to capacity despite the fact that it was past nine o’clock.

  “You know, I . . . I wanted to talk to you about Mr. Smithell,” Starkey said.

  “How’s that, Mr. Starkey?”

  The smile again. “It’s this way. Mr. Smithell owed rather a large bill at the time of—his death—and I don’t quite know . . .”

  “Oh. I wouldn’t worry about that, Mr. Starkey. See Nordin Kaylor and I’m sure he’ll take care of it.” Nordin Kaylor had been Smithell’s partner in two Cheyney automobile agencies.

  “Certainly. I should have thought of that.” The unreal whiteness of his false teeth touched the rim of the glass. “I knew Mr. Smithell had only lived in Cheyney about three years and had no relatives here, so you understand . . .”

  I looked toward the dining room just as Roxy Marko was passing. He noticed me and waved, so I lifted my glass in his direction.

  “It seems as if there’s no gratitude in the world,” Starkey said. “Here Mr. Smithell was willing to take on a boy who had been in the reformatory, let him live in his house, pay him a good salary. Probably the boy was planning all along to rob him when the opportunity arose. Did you ever learn the full story, Sergeant? The papers were so vague . . .”

  He looked at me avidly over his glass, perhaps anticipating a party that week, a group of his friends discussing the same subject, himself saying casually, “Now, Sergeant Randall told me . . .”

  “His confession was very complete,” I said. I didn’t say that Gulliver had written it and Jimmy had contributed only his signature.

  You returned to the house about eleven, after the picture show. And he was asleep. You figured it was as good a time as any. But you didn’t figure he’d wake up. You had to hit him. You didn’t mean to hit him so hard. Then you took the watch and money along with the jewelry. Three thousand bucks worth. You didn’t know he was dead when you packed your stuff and beat it, did you? Later when you found out how hot you were you got rid of the jewelry and watch, dumped them in the river somewhere. That’s how it was, huh, Jimmy? Just sign here, boy, and we’ll leave you alone.

  “The very day . . .” Starkey said.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m afraid my mind was wondering.” His smile looked like it had been stepped on. “I just said that the very day Jimmy killed him, Mr. Smithell was planning to buy Jimmy a new suit.”

  I felt vaguely apprehensive. “Did you read that in the paper, Mr. Starkey?”

  “Why—no. Mr. Smithell called me that afternoon, before he was murdered, told me Jimmy was coming in next day for a fitting. He wanted me to sort of influence the boy’s choice so Jimmy wouldn’t come home with anything drastic in color or style.”

  I took a longer swallow of my drink than usual and never tasted it. “I see. Was he going to charge it?”

  “No. He told me that he’d given the money to Jimmy. Thirty dollars. He didn’t want the boy picking out something too expensive, so he thought it might make Jimmy feel more responsible if he paid for it himself.”

  Starkey looked past me with an expression of mock surprise. “Well, here comes my wife. I thought maybe she’d fallen in.” He chuckled. “Thanks for the advice, Sergeant. Drop by the store some time this week. We’ve received a shipment of those pastel shirts you like so much.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Starkey.” I sat there after he had left, feeling a slow gathering sickness in my stomach, a sickness that couldn’t be vomited up. I gulped the rest of the drink and looked at myself in the mirror behind the bar. I was ugly this night.

  Someone tapped my shoulder. “Excuse me.”

  I turned and looked at a waiter.

  “Mr. Marko sent me, Sergeant Randall. He’d like for you to have a drink with him in his office.”

  I wanted to say no, say that I had to go somewhere, away from the pressure I was feeling, like lazy tightening coils. But there was no way I could refuse.

  I left the bar and crossed the foyer, went up a flight of stairs to Roxy’s office. I knocked and was invited in.

  As soon as I opened the door I saw Gulliver inside.

  He was sitting in one of Roxy’s big white leather chairs with his shoes off and a drink in his hand. He smiled peacefully at me.

  “Hello, Chief. Roxy,” I said, nodding. Roxy was fixing himself a drink at his desk. He looked at me inquisitively.

  “Bill?”

  “Bourbon over ice, a little sparkling.”

  “A man of simple tastes,” Gulliver said. I could tell he was in a mellow mood. He li
fted his glass at me and winked. “Ten years old. Roxy’s putting on the dog tonight.”

  Roxy smiled slightly. He’s a small man, about five feet five, with a gentle expression that never seems to change. He has gleaming copper-colored hair and a small mustache, and there are clusters of freckles around his eyes, growing darker with age.

  He handed me my drink and waved me to a chair. Roxy enjoys luxury. The office walls are padded halfway to the ceiling with the same white leather as the chairs carry, and on one corner stretches a curved sofa that is part of the wall.

  On one wall hangs a large oil painting of a nude man and woman. It’s Gulliver’s favorite picture. I’ve seen him sit in that chair and look at the picture for half an hour, pouring drinks into his belly, and at the end of that time a little smile will start and he’ll laugh his head off and then he won’t look at the picture for a while. I’ve never seen Roxy look at it.

  “How did the Francis girl take it this afternoon?” Gulliver said.

  I looked at him. His eyes were guileless.

  “Pretty hard,” I said. “They were close, as people are in that part of town. She was hoping, all the time, that something could be done. She didn’t really believe it, but she was hoping.”

  “She’s a fighter,” Gulliver said sympathetically. “Lot of backbone. Not like Jimmy.” He shook his head and sighed. “I always hate to see a good fighter beaten.”

  Roxy drank silently behind his desk, watching us almost shyly. He takes his whiskey in a shot glass along with a larger glass of ice and soda, drinking some of the soda, then throwing a little whiskey on top of it.

  Gulliver stretched happily, one hand on his belly, the belly with the deceptive slab of fat and the corded muscles underneath. He looked at the picture and his lips were full and heavy at the corners, his eyes a little restive. He drank slowly. Gulliver has a liquor stomach, lined with sponges. He can throw down better than a pint of whiskey and he won’t look drunk, if you don’t know what to look for. Then he’ll put the bottle down and fold his hands over his stomach and sleep for twenty-four hours, unless somebody sets him on fire. But he wasn’t drinking that fast tonight and I knew, the different sort of way he was looking at the picture, that tonight maybe it would be Alise, the big red-headed one who liked to go down fighting. Roxy was a good friend. He was big, maybe the biggest, in local politics. He owned six gin mills besides this place, the big tourist court and restaurant, and other odds and ends, like Alise. In an hour, maybe, Gulliver would feel the whiskey he was drinking so slowly now, feel it just right, and he would look at Roxy and Roxy would pick up the phone. Not that it was that kind of tourist court. It was just that Roxy was such a good friend.