The Skelly Man

by David Daniel

  “Thanks,” I said, and was tempted to whisper that I’d helped get him his job, but that might have made him self-conscious.

  The suite was even grander than the one Chelsea Nash occupied. There was the big main room with a balcony facing the canal, the French doors of which were open now, a soft breeze moving through them, stirring chintz drapes. A hallway led to other rooms. I guessed the crowd at twenty, an assortment of show-biz types by the looks of them. The doorman stood out by just a little. Nancye Tuttle, who writes entertainment news for the Sun was there, in her element. To one side, on a long table, was a spread of food and champagne. I went over and took a plate for something to do. The centerpiece was a cornucopia fashioned of braided bread, spilling out a medley of fresh vegetables and fruits. The guests had ignored them; I did, too. I used toothpicks to spear a few cocktail franks.

  “Alex, good. I’m glad you’re here.”

  Justin Ross had detached himself from the guests. We shook hands. He had on a cowboy suit in pale gray denim, with a blue bandanna knotted at the neck, and his ostrich-hide boots.

  “Where’d you find Austin Tayshus?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  I pointed a toothpick at the doorman.

  “He’s something, isn’t he? We got him through an agency in Los Angeles.”

  “He works for a detective agency?”

  “A talent agency. His name is Phil Gripaldi. He does stunt work. We could have had a Mr. T look-alike.”

  “But why draw attention?” I said.

  “Is he a problem?”

  “I wish it were a black belt for karate holding up his pants, instead of lavender braces. Has he got any training—besides Method acting, I mean?”

  “He’s big.”

  I frowned. “Maybe the getup will keep the focus away from Mr. Corbin. It’s working so far. Where is he?”

  “Jerry? We’ll get to that.” Ross lowered his voice. “Have you learned anything yet?”

  I said I hadn’t. I wanted to ask him the same question—I assumed I hadn’t been called up here just to party, and nobody was breaking their neck to introduce me around or get me a drink—but Ross appeared eager to get to something else. I trailed him into a small adjacent room, where a short roly-poly fellow with a mustache and a rumpled suit sat munching a sandwich as he poked a calculator. There was also a fax machine, a photocopier, and several telephones. Ross introduced the man as Jer-Cor’s accountant, Morrie Vining. Give him a floppy white hat, and he was the little guy on the take-out pizza box. He eyed me a moment, then was back at it, crunching long strings of figures that seemed to come out of his head as continuously as the tongue of paper tape curling from his machine. As Ross led me away, I asked, “Was that a calculating look he gave me?”

  “If anyone in the entourage spent a quarter on a pay toilet today, Morrie’s got it figured in the P and L. He keeps tight charts.”

  “I’ll bet they’re pie charts.”

  Ross knocked on a door, opened it and peered in, then nodded me through behind him. Five people were standing around a large TV set up on a table along with a VCR. They were drinking champagne and watching something on the screen, which faced away from me. The lone woman was Chelsea Nash. She was wearing black pants and a hot-pink blazer, and in heels was as tall as all but one man in the group. They glanced over. It was the tallest man—the oldest—who said gruffly, “What?”

  Ross said, “Uh, gentlemen, can we have a few minutes?”

  The three younger men excused themselves, measuring me with looks as they filed past. Ross shut the door behind them and led me over. Chelsea Nash snapped off the TV and VCR. Ross said, “Jerry, I’d like you to meet Alex Rasmussen. Alex, say hi to Jerry Corbin.”

  Cathode-ray magic had fooled me again. On-screen, Jerry Corbin looked rangy and fit, projecting a healthy, happy image; a man who, despite life’s vicissitudes, never lacked good humor. Standing three feet from me now, as we shook hands, sans makeup and trick lighting, he had a pallor that, for a Southern Californian, meant work. He wasn’t smiling, either. On the tube, the large-boned frame was robust; but there was a sedentary softness to him in person, accentuated by his height. And the suit—from the collection that bore his name, I guessed—was rumpled. Still, in spite of the details, he was a presence. He radiated something that was bigger than he. I squared my own shoulders. “Hello,” I said.

  “Alex, welcome aboard.” We shook hands. Corbin’s grip was firm, his gaze overbright. “You know Chelsea.”

  “Yes,” I said. I glanced her way but she wasn’t looking.

  “What’re you drinking?”

  “Am I working?”

  “Light duty. We’re getting acquainted. Champagne?”

  “Beer, if you’ve got it.”

  “Chelsea, honey, a beer for the man—and find the key for that damn machine there and get me a Dewar’s, would you?”

  He motioned Justin Ross and me over to a sitting area. With horror I saw the chairs were the big marshmallow jobs. The expressions on Corbin’s and Ross’s face told me it was a first for them. We made small talk a moment, and by the time we stopped sinking I had a Mill City ale in my hand. Chelsea took two nip bottles from the mini-bar, got ice and a rocks glass and fixed a practiced double, which she handed to Corbin. Smart woman that she was, she drew up a wooden chair to sit in. When Corbin had taken a healthy knock of Scotch, he said, “Got that note?”

  Ross produced it and handed it to me. Same format as the other two: cutout words pasted onto industrial-grade paper toweling. This time they were inside a pumpkin outlined in orange crayon. The words said: W. F.’s Stockholm address. You won’t even hear it.

  Ross said, “It came last night.”

  Corbin said, “Shit, I don’t mind being hassled—I get paid enough, I expect it—but at least the sonofabitch could make sense.”

  “You have the envelope?” I leaned forward to get some movement in the chair.

  Ross passed it over. It was addressed to Corbin here at the hotel, marked HOLD FOR ADDRESSEE. Inked on the corner, overlapping the stamp, was a clear cancellation mark: Cambridge, MA, with an 02141 zip code and yesterday’s date.

  “Know anyone in Cambridge?” I asked.

  The three of them exchanged a glance. Corbin said, “Not really.”

  “Sweden?”

  “No.”

  “Who or what’s W. F.?”

  Shrugs. I looked at the note again and had an image of someone sitting at a kitchen table in a pool of faint light, cutting words, pasting the backs and sticking them to the paper, then using a fat orange crayon. The someone was just a shadowy figure.

  Corbin said, “What do you think?”

  “Does anything in any of the notes make sense? How about ‘Boneyard’?”

  “Nothing.”

  I glanced at Chelsea, but she kept her green eyes elsewhere. Since I’d entered, she had been ignoring me studiously. I said, “I think you should call the cops.”

  Corbin didn’t jump on me. In fact, he didn’t speak at all. He glanced at his watch. It was Justin Ross who, fingering the bandanna around his neck, said, “Mr. Rasmussen, do you know anything about the mass media?”

  Just call me Marshmallow McLuhan, I thought. I said, “Enough to understand your wish to avoid bad publicity right now.”

  “Damn right,” Ross said. “So if I were to go to the local police with the notes, this moment, what do you think they’d say?”

  “You? In person? Probably ‘yippee yi yo ky yay,’” I said. “But you’re right. There’s no guarantee they would or could keep it quiet.”

  Corbin grinned. “Yeah, and the Godfather of Insomniacs could go straight to the ash can without getting a chance to be King Gong. So for now, and until further notice, the existence of the notes remains known only to this group. How swear ye?” He raised his glass and looked at Ross, then at Chelsea, and finally at me, and we all gave assent. “Good. And now—to success, all around.”

  Chelsea fixed another course of dri
nks; only one nip in Jerry Corbin’s glass this time. She and Ross stayed with fizzy water. Corbin said, “To old friends. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of whatchamacallit.”

  He drank and laughed, and we all did. The mood grew convivial. He had that gift of making people feel happy, and although I sensed that surface good cheer and booze were part of it, I liked the man. It was clear the others did also. When we’d finished one more round, I got out of the chair. If I didn’t then, I’d have to sleep in it. I tugged my suit coat straight. “Will you need me to stay at the hotel while you’re in town?” I asked.

  Corbin waved his arm. “It’s early yet. Have another drink.”

  “I’ll take a rain check, Mr. Corbin. It may be early Pacific time, but I’ve been here all day.”

  Justin Ross rose, too. Corbin struggled a moment with his chair, then gave up and stayed put. Ross said, “I think we’re okay for tonight. We can hash out arrangements tomorrow, and if it makes sense, you could stay here.”

  “Or you could all come over to my place,” I said.

  Corbin got his hands on the remote tuner and activated the TV set. The late weather was on. “Let’s get on with the show,” he said in a slightly thick voice. “The monologue, at least. The guests are dog meat, as usual, but the monologue’ll get ’em.”

  Justin Ross ushered me out. In the main room of the suite, the crowd had thinned. Nancye Tuttle had her notepad and was talking to Phil Gripaldi, he of the purple suspenders. She knew a story when she saw one. I got my hat. I tried to catch Chelsea’s eye, but she was speaking to Morrie, the accountant. As I headed down the plush corridor, I could hear Ross in full voice, rallying the troops, marching them into the master bedroom to catch The Good Night Show. One big happy family.

  * * *

  Passing through the hotel lobby I heard a jumpy piano rendition of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” On an easel by the lounge door was a placard with a glossy publicity photo. “LIMITED ENGAGEMENT,” the copy said, “THE INIMITABLE STYLINGS OF MARTIN AT THE BALDWIN.” I was going past when a voice I knew said, “Slumming?”

  Ed St. Onge was leaning against a pillar, his hands in his pockets. He had on one of his vintage suits: pinch waist and flared cuffs. Give him a ruffled shirt, and he could have been a skip from Carnaby Street, on the lam the past twenty-five years. His cheeks were shadowed to the same dark hue as his mustache, and there were bags under his eyes.

  “I suppose you’re being a good doctor making late rounds,” I said.

  “I’m done for the day. Been working on that assault over at the university. There’s a puzzler.” He said this without changing anything in his expression, including the lock his eyes had on mine.

  “And you probably figured you’d lay it out for me and get an easy solve,” I said.

  He nodded toward the lounge. “One for the road?”

  I wanted to pass, but his being there by chance at that hour was about as likely as my being mistaken for Christopher Reeve.

  The lounge light was softer, though “magical” would have been going too far. Most of the patrons were business overnighters, no more stoned than Jerry Corbin. A guy with black hair, who might have been the older brother of the guy in the glossy, was seated in a spotlight at a baby grand with a big snifter on top for tips. Seeing us come in, he raised his eyebrows and smiled. The song became “I Say a Little Prayer for You.” St. Onge and I sat at the bar. He ordered V.O. and a Bud. I stayed with Mill City and began nibbling from a bowl of spicy cocktail mix.

  Puffing smoke, St. Onge said, “Figure, the Murphy woman wasn’t carrying her purse, and she’s not the type you want to tackle—she’s an exercise nut. Everybody thinks the world of her. So ‘why?’ is the question.”

  “You been able to ask her?” I said.

  “The doctors want to give her another day or two before we talk.”

  “Well, I’m glad she’s going to be okay,” I said. I offered him the bowl of spicy peanuts and pretzels.

  He scowled. “Stuff gives me more gas than Exxon.”

  I snatched the bowl away. He drank beer, then set the glass down and hit the V.O. I told him it was supposed to go in the other direction.

  “Hard to see in this light,” he said. “Besides, I’m a little giddy tonight. Being in the vicinity of stars does that to me.”

  I didn’t bite.

  “This isn’t your kind of joint,” he said. “Not at four bucks a toss.”

  “I like to play fast and loose with the cocktail mix.”

  “Your client is Jerry Corbin. You been upstairs tucking him in?”

  “Jerry Corbin? From The Good Night Show?”

  “Knock off the crap, Rasmussen. The TV news people were crawling on him at the airport tonight. He’s here. The desk confirmed it. What’s he got you doing, peeping on one of his exes to try to ease an alimony sting?”

  “The Jerry Corbin?” I repeated.

  He waited. He was good at waiting. I listened to the music a moment. “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” Martin at the Baldwin was good, too; he actually remembered enough Burt Bacharach tunes to put together a medley, and it sounded fine. “Okay, Corbin hired me,” I said. “But don’t be coy, Ed. What you’re really asking is if there’s a connection with the attack on the woman at the university.”

  He crushed out his cigarette. “And?”

  “You think I’d hold out on you if it was important that you know?”

  He ran that one for a moment, then made a movement with the side of his mouth that I think meant acceptance. The set ended and Martin walked by, glancing a question my way as he passed.

  “Prospective client?” St. Onge said.

  “Shamus to the stars.”

  He finished his beer and set the mug down. I didn’t ask him if he wanted another. He said, “Okay, we’ll assume it’s coincidence. If Corbin is making news, I want it all to be good. I happen to like the guy. He’s my favorite comedian, along with Red Skelton and Jerry Lewis. But I don’t want cute going on in my city. You follow me?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But you left out Benny Hill.”

  After St. Onge was gone, I ordered a black coffee and drank it slowly. Back at the Baldwin, Martin slipped into a new medley: city songs this time. Chicago, New York, San Francisco. I didn’t strain my ear listening for Lowell. On my way out, I stuffed a buck into the snifter.

  8

  WHEN I HAD fetched my car from the hotel garage, I didn’t go home. Never mind that it was long past midnight and I’d been working all day. St. Onge had put a fishhook in my brain.

  Across the city, I parked on University Avenue and started to walk. The campus was still, hushed in the autumn fog, which swirled around the sodium lamps and made a sighing carpet of the leaves underfoot. Impelled by a new curiosity, I moved along branching paths. I saw no students, not even sober ones. At last, I spotted the building I wanted. It was dark and locked, but I had expected that. What I didn’t expect, as I made my way around the side, was to see someone coming out of the rear door by the old locker room where someone had attacked Florence Murphy yesterday morning. The person was wearing a coat with a drawn-up hood, pointed on top like a cowl.

  “Excuse me,” I called.

  I might as well have said, “Give me your wallet.” The person vaulted over a railing and started to run. Debating for just a moment, I went after him.

  The path wove among clumps of bushes. In the fitful lamplight, I could see the person running ahead, the pointed hood giving him an alien look. He never glanced back. Coffee, beer and party mix sloshed in my stomach. Fallen leaves made my footing uncertain, but I didn’t push it. I’d been doing fifteen to twenty miles a week for years; unless he did more, over the long distance he was mine.

  When he reached University Avenue, he cut around a parked van. A car alarm went off, startling him. He darted across the road. The alarm was one of those sonic smorgasbords. As I reached the van, the siren went to whistles.

  I got across the road and reentered the darke
ned campus. Through the trees I saw the person disappear around the side of a building. The sloping ground brought me into a grove of pines, angling down alongside Pawtucket Boulevard. Across that was the river. In the grove, where only random shafts of light got through, I couldn’t make out the contour of the ground. Our footsteps shushed through pine needles. I wondered what I’d do when I caught him. Far behind, the car alarm provided a fading sound track: banshee wails, wolf howls, falling bombs.

  The ground dropped abruptly, and my pelvis jarred against my diaphragm and lungs with a whoof. I just managed to keep my balance. I struggled on for a few more strides, but I had to stop. When I emerged from the trees, walking now, my quarry was gone.

  Disappointed, I stood listening for retreating footsteps. Who was he? Why had he been there? I thought about going back to the alumni building, but I had grown aware of another sound, one that was part of the night around me. It was a low, mechanical humming. I moved toward it, going around big clumps of bushes. Farther on, the trees ended. I saw a vapor lamp, aswirl in the mist like an occluded eye. I skied halfway down an embankment overgrown with goldenrod and sumac. At the bottom I came to a squat building made of yellow brick, which I realized was the source of the humming sound. The campus steam plant.

  I peered through a large window covered with wire mesh. Just enough light fed through from outside to reveal ductwork and a huge old boiler. There was an outside stairwell, with a metal-sheathed door at the bottom. I went down and pulled the handle, feeling my heart catch as the door grated open over dead leaves.

  The room was dominated by the boiler, a massive asbestos-covered monster, with ducts running off from it like tentacles. Beyond it I could just make out a dark corridor. Somewhere faint music was playing. I edged ahead, one hand extended to catch spiderwebs and the occasional low-hanging pipe. As I rounded the boiler, a weak light came on. I whirled to see a figure lurch toward me.

  “What’s goin’ on?” he cried, swinging something above his head.

  I got my hands up. “Whoa!”

  He edged into the light of a naked bulb, and I saw he was a shriveled fellow in work pants and a dark sweatshirt. The sweatshirt’s hood was hanging loose, but he hadn’t been doing any running. He looked eighty. What he was holding was a rolled newspaper. He lowered it. “Like to have scared the pants off me,” he said in a rusty voice.