by Ed Gorman
"I know it's a lot to ask and it's really unfair - because we won't be doing anything or anything - but I really just need to be held. You ever get like that? Where you just ache to have somebody hold you like you're a little kid?"
"Nah," I lied, "I never felt like that."
"I'm really down, McCain. Please just be near me."
***
She cried, wept, sobbed, shrieked, gasped, wailed, moaned, and once even screamed. And I'm not using a thesaurus here, either.
I had a lot of what you call mixed emotions - which usually means, in my experience, that you don't much care for what someone is doing. I guess I was jealous, mostly. It sure would be nice if she cared enough about me to do any of the things listed above. On the other hand, when I was being more rational about it, I saw we were in the same fix. Stu, the selfish prick, had broken her heart and she had broken mine.
About half an hour after we stretched out on the bed, she went to sleep. There were two things wrong with this by my calculations. One was that my arm was under her head and was already numb. The other was that, because of the angle of my useless arm, I was pressed against her backside and every time she squirmed even a little bit - well, I'll let you imagine the rest for yourself.
It happened about an hour into our little emotional sojourn on the bed. I was dozing off; my arm by now had atrophied. My dad had a good saw. We could save hospital money and just do the amputation ourselves. It'd be like pruning a tree.
I was dozing and not aware and -
And then she was facing me and kissing me, and when I tried to say something she inserted her tongue in my mouth to shut me up. And then a moment of terror. All those years I'd loved her so much and wanted her so badly, what if, in the moment when it was about to happen, I couldn't -
As she started to strip away the shirt she was wearing, I realized that certain parts of my body weren't responding the way they should. Here, just twenty minutes ago I couldn't get the damned thing to behave itself, and now -
But then we were kissing again and her silken fingers moved down my stomach. A brief touch was all it took and then - thank God - I was ready.
***
"Well," she said afterward, in the darkness. "Was it worth the wait?"
I felt so many different things - exultation, simple love, complex love, and a terrible fear that now I'd never get over her; I'd actually slept with her and was hooked for life, like poor old shambling Lon Chaney Jr. in all those werewolf movies - that I wasn't quite sure what to say. But I knew what she wanted me to say, so I said it. "God, are you kidding. It was wonderful."
"I taste all right?"
"You tasted fine."
"I really try to keep myself clean. Some girls I know don't even try."
"You taste great."
She snuggled close to me beneath the covers. It would have been a completely heady moment except for the fact that I really really needed to empty ye olde bladder. "You're a very good lover, McCain."
"Thanks."
"You make sure the girl's having a good time. Stu doesn't care at all. Very selfish."
"He looks like the kind."
"He does?"
"I was joking."
"Oh."
I just kept thinking about how badly I needed to pee. But I also kept thinking that this might be my one and only night with Pamela. Ever. So I could hardly get up and walk to the john and ruin the moment, could I?
"He also can't last very long."
She was doing what we all do when we've been hurt. Diminish the person who has hurt us. By the end of the night, Stu would be this guy with skin like alligator hide and connections to a satanic cult.
"Plus his breath - whew. It's pretty rank."
"He sounds ducky."
"Your breath is excellent, McCain."
"Excellent," I said. "Now there's a nice word for breath. The Excellent Breath Award goes to Sam McCain. Maybe Connie Francis could present it to me on Bandstand some afternoon."
"Really. It is. And I'm not just saying that."
We lay there for a time, silently. She was thinking of him and I was thinking of her. And then the cats hit the bed and then we were all tangled up together: the beautiful Pamela, Tasha, Crystal, and Tess. There was a plethora of new scents and sounds for them to take in. Tasha is particularly responsive to voices and Pamela has a nice one, throaty but refined. Tess presented me with a pretty good view of her butt several times. Crystal made sure my chin was clean, and Tasha thoughtfully lay on my head in case I was getting cold.
Pamela said, "You ever wish the night would never end?"
"Sometimes."
"This is one of those nights. I'd like to stay right here in this bed with you and your cats forever. Never be dawn again. It feels so safe here."
Translate to I don't have to deal with my feelings for Stu tonight; I can just float along in this bed. It's a beautiful escape. I knew that's what she was feeling because it's what I was feeling too. If we could just stay here forever - and if this was the final night, never to be daylight again - how simple and lucky my life would be. Especially if I got to go to the bathroom soon.
"And it's not like I don't have feelings for you," she said.
This was the part I wasn't going to like. You know, where she tried to rationalize herself out of love with Stu and into love with me. It was sort of like trying hard to fall in love with your hamster.
"And it's not like you're not a lot of fun.
"And it's not like you're ugly or anything.
"And it's not like you don't have a future.
"And it's not like you wouldn't be a good provider and a wonderful father.
"And it's not like you'd ever cheat on me or start drinking or beat me or anything."
And then she fell to crying again because she was so miserable at the prospect of marrying me, she couldn't face it.
I decided that this was a good time to get up and take my whizz. I'd pretty much used up all my sobbing patter anyway. There there now; hey, hey, c'mon, you'll feel a lot better in the morning; hey, this isn't like you, you're a fighter; you don't give up just because Stu decided to go back to his wife.
I had just set foot on the floor when the phone rang. She went right on crying and the cats were glad to see me get up and go. More room for them to stretch out.
I picked up the phone and this voice said hello and my first reaction - and I'm serious - was that it was a joke. I'll just give you the dialogue and stand back out of the way.
"Hello."
"McCain?"
"Yes."
"McCain, this is Stu Grant. I know this is a little awkward but - is Pamela there?"
"Pamela?"
"Yes. I - need to talk to her."
"Is that for me?"
"Just a second, Stu. Yeah, it's for you."
"Did you say 'Stu'? My God, is that Stu on the phone?"
"I know this is awkward for you, McCain. I really appreciate you putting her on the line."
"Oh, God, please bring the phone over here. I can't believe he'd call here."
"Just a second, Stu."
That's how it started. She wrapped the sheet around her, very primlike, and sat on the edge of the bed, and I handed her the phone. Then she pointed to the nightstand and my cigarettes. I lighted a Lucky for her. Then she said, "Stu, just a minute." Then, "Thanks very much, McCain. I really appreciate this." Which meant, Get the hell out of here, McCain, so I can talk in private. It was one of those moments when I wish my folks hadn't raised me to be so polite. I mean, I should've told both of them where to go. But if you're raised to be polite, you can't quite get the words out, break the social contract that way. "Really appreciate this," she said again, to scoot me on my way.
Talk about the world's most appreciating couple. He appreciated. She appreciated. It was a real orgy of appreciation all the way around.
SIX
Well, if nothing else, I finally got to take my pee.
I sort of cleaned up, too. This gave
me an excuse to run the water so it wouldn't seem as if I was trying to eavesdrop. Something was up, that was for sure, him calling here this way.
I had a shirt and some jeans hanging in the john closet. After I shaved and brushed my teeth and combed my hair, I put them on and slid my feet into my old penny loafers. I bought them in 1948 in the boys' department at Adams' Department Store downtown. And for doing so, I got a cellophane envelope containing six Batman comic books. You can't get bargains like that anymore. I was fourteen at the time and the shoes still fit eleven years later. That should tell you something about my size.
When I turned the water off and the light out, I heard something terrifying. The sound of Pamela throwing her clothes on so she could leave me.
I cleared my throat and strolled out into the moonlight-traced apartment.
She was dressed. Standing in the middle of the floor, wobbling around on one foot so she could pull on her other shoe.
"Oh, God, McCain. It's all so crazy."
Yeah, I thought, I'll bet it is.
"You know what he said?"
She was going to tell me anyway.
"He's picking me up at my house in half an hour. I'm supposed to pack two suitcases. We're moving to Chicago. Tonight! He said things'd just be too hard for us here. The way people would put us down and everything. He said we need a fresh start. He's going to marry me, McCain! He's going to marry me!"
Then she was throwing her arms around me and hugging me and sort of leading us in a native dance of joy and celebration. And I hated her and I loved her and I wanted her again and I hated her and I loved her. But I couldn't blame her exactly, either. She'd waited for him just about as long as I'd waited for her. It was like dying standing there; my whole life with her came tumbling back. The walks home to the Knolls in autumn. Seeing her in her first two-piece at the public swimming pool. Holding hands as we ice skated in the winter. All the corny cards and sappy letters I'd sent her. And now it was all done, all over.
Then, at last, she was tender. "Tonight'll be our little secret, McCain. And I'll never forget it. You were so sweet and gentle with me. You're going to make somebody a great little husband, you really are."
We were back to the World's Most Boring Husband. With the qualifying "little" thrown in.
Her last kiss was passionate and tender and made me ready to go again. But to no avail. She was at the door saying, "Boy, you really should find out what that smell is. I think your intruder left something behind."
***
I turned on the lights. I figured I couldn't feel any worse. He/she/they had done a good job as tossing standards go. The kitchen floor was covered with mounds of flour, sugar, coffee, salt. That's about as far as I got. I didn't want to see any more of the mess. Not right now. I took what was left of the whiskey and sat in the armchair and drank and smoked and thought up all the neat things I'd say to Pamela and Stu Grant the next time I saw them. Boy, would they be sorry they'd taken advantage of my good nature. And then there was the ultimate daydream: it's midnight on a rainy evening and there's a knock on my back door and there stands Pamela, drenched and sobbing. As soon as she sees me, she throws her arms around me and says, "I ran all the way back from Chicago! I love you, McCain, I love you!" I know it's corny, but you know how it is when you fantasize. When I was little, I used to pretend I was Batman, so I guess my fantasies have gotten a little more realistic. Except for that running all the way from Chicago bit, at least.
My fantasies ran out just about the same time the whiskey did. And I was down to three cigarettes. I was starting to get cold.
And that's when the smell really started getting to me. It was pretty awful, but I'd been in so much turmoil. Given everything else that was going on, a smell wasn't much to worry about.
I hadn't checked any of the closets. I took the flashlight from next to the bedroom and went looking for the source of the stench.
If you've read more than three detective novels, you've probably already figured out what I was about to discover. It was in the second closet I looked in. In the back. Under a pile of clothes.
The more clothes I pulled off, the worse the smell got.
And then, there he was.
Karl Rivers. Or whatever his name really was. Dead.
From what I could see, somebody had hit him pretty hard with something pretty heavy on the side of the head. A blunt instrument, as Agatha Christie would describe it.
The smell was coming from his bowels and his blood. He wore the same gray Brooks Brothers suit he'd had on back at the college. His eyes were closed. His fingers were claws.
"Aw, shit," I said.
There was no way around it. I would have to pick up the phone and call Cliffie Sykes Jr.
PART 2
SEVEN
"So there you are," Cliffie said to me, forty-three and a half minutes later, in the midst of the melee that was my apartment.
"So there I am," I said.
"Standing in the doorway of your apartment."
"Standing in the doorway of my apartment."
"And you see that your place has been tossed."
We all must've gone to the same movies. Everybody knew what tossed meant.
"And I see that the place has been tossed."
"And you didn't think there might be a dead guy in your apartment?"
"Why would I think there's a dead guy in my apartment?"
"A dead - may I remind you? - FBI man."
"Pamela was here and we had some things to talk about."
"So you didn't think there might be a dead guy in the closet?"
"No. I didn't think there might be a blue buffalo in my closet, either. I told you, Pamela and I had personal things to discuss."
"What things?"
"Personal things. Things that don't have anything to do with this."
"I'll be the judge of that."
I sighed. "She and a friend were having some troubles. She needed to talk about it."
"What friend?"
"What difference does it make what friend? Just a friend is all."
"Male or female?"
"God, Sykes, what's the difference?"
Two things interrupted our little verbal dance. Deputy Henry Regennitter came pounding up the back steps shouting - this is now around 1 a.m. and people are trying to sleep: all those, anyway, not encircling the emergency vehicles downstairs - and the phone rang.
I leapt for the phone, suspecting who it might be. Cliffie probably wouldn't let me talk to her if he got it.
"No such agent," Esme Anne Whitney said to me, in a sleepy, brandied voice. "I was going to call Edgar in the morning and ask him to check it out for me. But Clyde - and this is between us - is a much nicer guy when you wake him up in the middle of the night." I suppose I could've asked her how she would have come to know that particular fact, but all I said, ever the gentleman, was, "Anything else?"
Deputy Regennitter had found something, and Cliffie and Deputy Roger Weed were examining it carefully - i.e., handing it back and forth and getting their fingerprints all over it. I'm smarter than that. After I got my law degree and realized I couldn't support myself in Black River Falls as an attorney - at least not right out of the chute - I took Judge Whitney's advice and went back to the U of Iowa and took several criminology courses and got my private investigator's license. And one of the first things they teach you in private eye school - right after you learn about which kind of trench coat to buy and all the variations on the private eye's secret handshake - is to be very careful how you handle evidence. It's all right to soak it, jump up and down on it, or even lick it if you're so inclined, but they do urge one never to muck it up with one's own fingerprints if at all possible. Cliffie must not have been in class that day.
"Oh, yes," the Judge said, very enthused now. "One other bit of tantalizing information. Rivers - his real name was Andrew Wylie - was let go from the Agency because of his activities with some far-right organizations. The Agency was so concerned about him t
hey kept track of him after he left Washington. He went to work for an outfit called America First. They've been active in stirring up trouble with small-town school boards: getting teachers fired, taking certain books out of school libraries, starting whispering campaigns about certain prominent citizens. And guess who the outfit's representative in Black River Falls is? And the man Rivers contacted when he got here three days ago? Jeff Cronin."
"McCain, who the hell you talking to?" Cliffie said.
"I'd better go," I said to the Judge. "And you know, sometimes you almost sound like a liberal."
"Good Lord, that's the vilest thing anybody's ever said to me." She hung up.
Cliffie came over, bearing gifts.
"Regennitter found this in the garage," Cliffie said, proudly pushing it toward me. "The killer must've tossed it there when he was making his getaway." He made it sound as if we were in a Hopalong Cassidy movie.
There wasn't much doubt it had been used as a weapon. There was relatively fresh blood, small tufts of hair, and the mucus-like gray matter of the human brain.
"It's mine," I said.
Cliffie grinned. "You like Pat Boone? I thought you only liked coon music - Chuck Berry and that crowd."
"Always the poet, aren't you, Cliffie?"
"Don't call me Cliffie."
"Then don't call people coons. You ever heard of the civil rights movement?"
Cliffie smirked at Deputy Roger Weed. "Oh, I heard of it, all right. I figure Martin Luther King's got about six months before somebody starts usin' him for target practice."
Hopeless.
"The bust is mine, Cliffie."
"Bust?"
"That's what it's called: a bust." A bust of Pat Boone, with God Bless Rock-and-Roll inscribed along the bottom. Weighed about three pounds. Mary Travers, the girl I probably would've married if it hadn't been for Pamela, bought it for me as a joke, knowing how much I hated Pat Boone. I explained this to Cliffie.