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Carny kill

Page 10

by Robert Edmond Alter


  "I just want to get you alone for about five minutes, smart bastard," he said. He manhandled me on down the steps.

  My wind was back by the time I reached the ground but I was still in sicky shape. Indistinguishable faces kept shifting by me in the flash-splintered dark. Everybody was talking but nothing they said made sense. And then Ferris was standing in front of me and he looked about as happy as Abe Lincoln did when they told him what had happened at Bull Run.

  "Take that john's gun for a minute," I said to him. "I want to see him about something."

  "Save the static for later," Ferris said. "What about that over there?"

  "The sonofabitch gut-jabbed me!" I said. "If you don't-"

  "Shut up!" Ferris yelled at me. "I said what about that?" He was pointing toward the base of the tree. I turned and looked. A couple of people stepped out of the way and I saw a little dark shape lying crumpled on the ground.

  It was a very still little shape and it had small, pointed features and its eyes were open and sparking with reflected light and they seemed to be staring at me.

  He wasn't wearing his apesuit, but Cheeta was dead just the same.

  I was sitting at the table in the bunkhouse and a nice cop was feeding me black coffee. Other cops and plainclothes dicks kept coming and going while Ferris was trying to take his brooding stroll, and after he'd collided with a couple of them he blew up and yelled why didn't they all get the hell outside for five minutes, huh?

  When we were alone he came over to the table and showed me his temper scowl.

  "You sober enough to talk now? You want to tell papa about it?"

  "Sober now, yeah. The whole trouble is I was too screaming drunk to know anything about it at the time. And how I ever got that bombed on half a jug of gin I'll never know."

  "We'll worry about it some time," he said. "Let's worry about this midget now."

  "I didn't push him," I said.

  "Did I say it was murder?" he said.

  "You're working up to it," I said.

  He walked away. He didn't look happy.

  "Let's take first things first so we'll know where we stand. I can turn in one of two reports and there will be no kickback. Suicide or accident."

  He looked at me. I said nothing.

  "What don't you like about the first one?" he asked.

  I gave it a little thought.

  "Well-I don't know the statistics on what percentage of midgets commit suicide, but I'll bet a buck it's mighty low. I can't ever remember hearing or reading about a suicide midget. Could be they have something inherently against self-destruction inside them. Know what I mean? The way colored people have an instinctive fear of dogs, or the way you never see a drunk Jap."

  "Granny talk," Ferris said. "Come on. Why didn't he kill himself?"

  "Because he was afraid," I said. "I don't mean of life- catching VD or losing his money on the stock market. It was a physical fear for his life. I've seen guys like him in Korea. They're usually the ones who break and run. And a scared man who is running for his life doesn't stop to take it himself."

  "And Terry Orme was scared?"

  "Yeah. I had a long talk with him a couple of nights back. He didn't say it but he was scared witless. Don't ask me what of. I don't know. Then early this morning he came into the tree house and tried to wake me. Said he had to talk to me. Said he had trouble. It doesn't add up to suicide within the same hour."

  "Too bad you were such a drunken slob you couldn't help him." Ferris said it the way he meant it. Disgusted.

  I said nothing. I took out a cigarette and rolled it between my fingers. He strolled over and thumbnailed a match for me.

  "What don't you like about the second one?" he asked.

  "That's the easy way out for you," I said. "Nobody would ever question it because it seems so logical. He was always climbing trees, and everybody knows that if you climb trees long enough the odds are you'll finally fall on your ass."

  "So what's wrong with it?"

  "One thing-the little bastard was good at it. He could climb like a monkey, and I've never heard of a monkey having an accident."

  "Let's not go into the statistics again, huh?"

  I knew what he was trying to do. Bait me. The way the inspector of police had played the student-murderer in _Crime and Punishment_. He was pretending to seek my assistance, hoping I'd reveal one card too many in my hand. I turned clam.

  "All right, you tell me. Why didn't he fall-accidentally?" Ferris switched tactics in midstream. Now he was the harassed dick in the middle of a bewildering case.

  "Maybe he did. Goddammit to hell I don't known. If it hadn't been for Cochrane's murder I'd never give Orme's death a second thought. Accident. Period. But…"

  "But Cochrane's murder looks like a frame for his wife and I used to be married to his wife and I have a five-yearold strike against my name and Terry Orme and I were roomies up in the tree house and I've admitted we were both up there alone just before he took the big leap. Right?"

  He looked at me. "Food for thought, ain't it?"

  I actually admired Ferris. That's the truth. Plenty of dicks would look at poor little Terry Orme's body and write it off as an accident. These same hotshots would glance at the evidence against May and haul her off on a Murder One rap, and sit back to collect their medals.

  But Ferris wasn't satisfied with the easy way. There was something about the whole thing that had a red-herring smell to it and his nose didn't much like the scent.

  "So how much thought have you given it?" I asked him.

  "Quite a bit," he admitted. He took a short circular stroll and came back to me again.

  "Funny how handy you are whenever a body turns up. Have you noticed that too?"

  I smiled and shook my head at him.

  "You're trying to put the cart before the horse, Ferris. I'm never found standing by my lone over the body. Somebody else always spots bingo before I arrive. There must have been twenty ghouls gawking over Orme's body before I made my grand entrance. Who was it by the way who drew the lucky ticket this morning?"

  "An old friend of yours. William H. Duff."

  The initial haunted me but I couldn't think why just then.

  "Bill? What was he doing around here in those wee hours?"

  "Said he was looking for you. Wondering what you were up to. Said he'd found you out in the middle of the Swamp Ride a few hours earlier, snooping around with a flashlight."

  Ferris' voice turned casual.

  "Any special little thing you were looking for, Thaxton?"

  "Good old Bill," I said. "We should make a team."

  "I said-"

  "I heard you. No, nothing special. Just working out an idea I had."

  Ferris spread himself with sarcasm.

  "Oh, well, don't tell me about it. I'm only struggling on a mere murder case. The more information that's withheld from me the better I like it. Makes my little chore more interesting. Creates more of a challenge."

  I told him about my rowboat and lake theory.

  He just grunted and nodded but I could see it appealed to him. I could also see that he felt like saying a dirty word because he hadn't thought of it himself. And I knew I was right when he went to the door and told one of his storm troopers to scout him up a map of the place.

  "You were talking about how somebody else always finds the bodies before you do," he said to me. Funny thing- that Jimmy Bently, the freckle-faced kid who found Cochrane's body? He's not around any more."

  "No? What happened to him?"

  "Dunno. I wanted to check with him on some little point last night. So when I send a cop to go find him he comes back and says they say Bently up and quit yesterday. No notice, nothing. Just gone."

  Ferris hadn't decided to lead me by the ear to the nearest jail, so I was still a free agent. I should have been working at my shell stand but nobody around there seemed to take much notice of me one way or another, so I had something I wanted to do on my own.

  I went over
to the payroll office and asked for Freckles' home address. They didn't want to give it to me at first, but after a bit of con I convinced them I was a friend of his and owed him a sawbuck and I wanted to be certain he got it before he took off for parts unknown.

  The address they forked over didn't mean a thing to me and a nice young thing explained to me that it was back in the pine woods near some swamp or other. Not far from Neverland.

  I went around to the rear of the nautch show and knocked on the door and a raven-haired, sloe-eyed piece in bra and panties and highheels opened the door and stood there patiently while I filled up my eyes and then she asked, "Finished?"

  I said yes and thanked her and asked could I now see Billie for a minute?

  "Billie! Man to see you. Better bring your boxing gloves."

  Billie was wearing the same next to nothing outfit except that she had a kimono over it. I told her I wanted to borrow her MG for a couple of hours.

  "Date?" She said it kidding, but I could see she really wanted to know.

  "Uh-uh. I want to look up one of the Swamp Ride ops who quit yesterday. Just an idea I'm playing around with."

  "You mean about the murders, Thax?"

  "The law hasn't said it's plural yet, Billie. Terry might have had an accident, you know."

  "Sure, I know. But the word is already around that it wasn't an accident. That he was pushed."

  "Who's spreading the word? Bill Duff?" I was feeling mean and it must have showed. Billie gave me an odd look.

  "Thax-what's wrong, honey? You act funny."

  I shrugged. "Beats me. Though something's wrong all right, but I'm damned if I know what. At first it was pretty obvious that someone was out to make a patsy of May. But lately I've got the feeling that I'm being slowly pushed into a blind corner."

  "Wait for me," Billie said "I'll put on some clothes. I'm going with you."

  "What about your job?"

  "What about it? I'm quitting, aren't I? To hell with 'em."

  I had a smoke while I waited for her. One of the rummy sweep-up men shuffled up and bummed one off me and wondered where a man could find a drink at that hour, looking hopefully at me, and then slumped off dejectedly, and then Billie came out in an expensive blue suit and we left the lot.

  12

  Billie knew where to go. I drove the MG. She sat deep in the red-leather bucket- seat with her head back on the folded tonneau and watched the sky. The wind made persistent little snatches at her candy-floss hair. It was just like platinum in the bright lemon sun.

  We followed the feminine curve of the shore for a few miles. The narrow strip of pale white beach was off on our left and it looked lonely and end-of-the-woridish with its continuous line of surf quietly foaming like milk. Now and then we would come to a stand of royal palms and we would see a straggly clutter of meager huts nestled among the smooth boles. Fishermen shanties. Maybe some artists.

  "Poor folks," Billie said with complacent satisfaction. "Can't live in the nice plushy Mediterranean like us." She smiled and curved her body toward mine and took my right arm possessively.

  I decided I could wait to see Freckles.

  We pulled into a blue-shadowed palm grove and parked in front of a deserted shack. The shack was shingle-sided and the shingles were very old and weathered and bowed. A battered dishpan hung from a nail on one wall and the window panes were opaque with scum and two of them were missing and had been replaced with age-curling squares of cardboard. A tall mending rack adrape with old rotting nets and corks stood at the north corner of the shanty, and in the blaze of noon the scene looked like a prize-winning photograph from one of the camera magazines.

  "Come on," Billie said. "Let's go swimming."

  "No suits," I reminded her.

  "Who cares? Nobody's around."

  She started stepping out of her clothes. I got so rattled I nearly fouled my zipper. I hesitated a moment in my shorts to see if she meant to go in in her bra and panties, but she didn't. She shed them with a quick smooth practiced precision and tossed them into one of the bucket-seats.

  I couldn't help glancing at her underwear. They were nylon and they were very white and clean and I was very glad. I'm funny that way.

  Say you meet a beautiful woman. That urgent something that is physical and yet not wholly physical and so must always go nameless sparks between you. You are both modern and sophisticated with adulthood and so you skip over that magical transitory period that other less worldly people observe which lies between the meeting and the bed. She undresses before you and she is graceful and careful and intimate about it and your passion is what the mountain was to Mallory. It must be satisfied.

  And then you notice that her bra-strap is soiled.

  What happens to your love? To your passion? And why?

  I've seen it happen before. To me. And I never knew why. But this time I didn't have to worry about it. I reached for Billie.

  "No," she said. "The sea first. The sea on our bodies."

  She went away at a run, like a sea-sprite, her tan lithe legs flickering back and forth, back and forth in the sun, her hair like a shining white helmet. I went after her. I felt a little silly that way-running without any shorts on-but it was certainly time I got in the water. Who the hell knew when some idiot might drive by? My goodness, George, look at that disgusting man on the beach who isn't wearing any clothes! Yes, dear, but look at what he is wearing.

  I raced across the incurve of the beach, over the lacerating hotfoot sand and took a flat-out dive into the glassy water. It was perfect. Not cold, not warm. It was invigorating and clean. I came up and looked around for Billie.

  She was wading in the tropic bay. She waded until water came over her breasts and then she threw herself forward and began to swim, doing it easily with a flowing, rhythmic overhand stroke, her head half under, mouth half filled with water all the time.

  She swam in the direction of the path where the sunlight lay white as scattered moonstones on the blue water. I started after her.

  "Hey!" I called. "Where are you off to?"

  Billie stopped swimming and looked around happily and her wet face was like a tear-blurred shine of something very beautiful and precious.

  "It's glorious!" she called to me. "It's like the Mediterranean. It's like our whole future is going to be!"

  Right at that moment there was only about fifteen minutes of our immediate future that intrigued me. I caught up to her and took her hand.

  "C'mon, Billie. Let's go back to that deserted shack."

  "No," she said. "It wouldn't be glorious there. Here, Thax. Right here."

  She threw her wet arms around my neck and kissed me. If she didn't mind drowning, neither did I. Not at that exact moment.

  That afternoon we drove into a remote little settlement which was a bend in a country road by land and the flowing of one swamp lake into another by water.

  There was a turpentine still and a general store and a huddle of shanties which crouched back under the cabbage palms and the pawpaw trees. Old Negresses had brought baskets of fruit, vegetables, tortoise eggs and black beans to sell under the shade of a tupelo. They closed up market in the afternoon by simply packing off their merchandise on their heads. The owner of the general store didn't seem too happy with the arrangement.

  "Damn nigras," he growled. "They'd undersell a giveaway sample."

  I said ain't that a shame and asked where the Bentlys lived.

  He was a beak-faced man in a wrinkled shirt and he gave me a sour look.

  "You sound like a Northern fella. I suppose you're one of those damn nigger-lovers."

  "I've never tried it. How is it?"

  He gave me a baleful look and said, "Bentlys' is over there."

  What he meant was a place just across a gallberry flat. It was a farmhouse and it had a simple grace of line, low and rambling and one-storied, and it had gone gray and cracked for want of paint. There was a tin roof and it was mostly rust, and the porch barely left you enough room to pass i
n front of the broken-backed wicker chairs.

  It was Freckles' brawny brother-in-law who came to the door and he was about as cooperative as a wounded grizzly.

  "Naw, you can't see Jimmy. He don't want a see nobody."

  "I'm a friend of his," I said. "Just tell him it's Thaxton from Neverland. The guy who lives in the tree house."

  "He don't want to see nobody from Neverland," the brawny one informed me. "Is that plain or do I got to show you?"

  I had an idea he could show me. He looked like a mighty burly boy. I scratched my nose and wondered what I should say next. Then a girl from _Tobacco Road_ came out on the porch with a bottle of beer in her hand and gave us all a flat look. She was actually something to see, bare dirty feet and all. Her voice was just about as you-all as they come.

  "So mebbe he is a friend a Jimmy's, Flem. Why not let him say?"

  Flem got hot about it.

  "He said he didn't want to see nobody, LouElla. Hit don't mean a damn to me, but that's what he said, didn't he?"

  "Well, mebbe this one is a friend." LouElla looked at Billie and upped her bottle of beer. Then she looked at me. "Y'all just saying you're Jimmy's friend, mister, or you another cop?"

  "Ask him," I suggested.

  LouElla had another swig. "What do you do at that Neverland-besides live in a tree?"

  I grinned at her and said "Step up, gents, step up. One and all. The line forms on the right. Stagger up in wheelbarrows and roll away in limousines. The farmer wins and the gambler loses. Right here, right here, folks, to join the sightseeing party that starts immediately under the parental guidance of the Bay of Bengal. See the morals-shattering hoochykooch girls in their naughty naughty native dance. See the nautch girls brought at great expense from the sandswept deserts of the Sahara, each and every one with a movement like the Sultan's dromedary. See that intrepid swamp explorer James Q (for Cute) Bently. See him enter the jungle of howling beasts like Daniel come to judgment. See how the gators crawl on their bellies like snakes in the bottom of a DT's empty glass. See the savage denizens of the swamp cower before his manly gaze. The laughing hyena that eats once a week, drinks once a month, sleeps with his wife once a year. What the hell he's got to laugh about nobody knows."

 

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