The Flower-Covered Corpse

by Michael Avallone

  "Fink . . ." he gurgled, the pain making tears sprout in his eyes. "Rat bastard fink. . . ."

  "Just wanted you to think it all over," I said, looking down at him. "What was I supposed to do? Stand there and let you go for my jugular vein?"

  He glared up at me. He would have been a nice-looking kid except for the disposition that made a mockery of his face. What right has cynicism and brutality to live in a teen-age boy? He was mum, too.

  "So long, Joe Violets. I'm cutting out. But one piece of advice. You tell Brother Crown, Truth Ruth and this Temple Kreshna-Rukka jazz to stay the hell away from me. I don't want any part of it. You got that straight or shall I kick you again?"

  He grovelled before me, desperately covering himself. Fright had sprung into his face again. But he wouldn't beg. He could only hate.

  "Fuzz . . ." he said thickly. "You're my bag . . . now . . . I'm going to get you. . . ."

  "Sure you will. But you ought to be in college or working for a living. Even Vietnam, if it comes to that. Walking around the Village with a sticker isn't my idea of how to win friends and influence people."

  "Damn you," he said.

  "Sure," I agreed, holstering the .45 and measuring the degree of activity the little fight had generated. A beat cop would be coming any second. "That's the answer. The easy answer. Screw everything you don't understand or want to understand. But just remember this. I could have kicked you so hard that you wouldn't be good for a woman again. Not ever. Not even that skinny valentine of yours, Truth Ruth. But I didn't. I gave you the flat side of my shoe, not the point. You'll live to run and play another day. Just don't play with knives."

  "Buzz off!" he suddenly screamed at me. "Get the hell away from me! Don't tell me how to live my life—"

  I didn't. Not anymore.

  I buzzed off, leaving him on the sidewalk, turning green with worry and nausea. Clearing out just before some of the braver souls in the coffee shops and stores across the street decided to run up and play the Good Samaritan. It was always like that Nobody comes to Trouble when they're needed. Only after the returns are in. Ask Kitty Genovese when you see her.

  There was a cab cruising slowly on Sixth, just as the movie house was letting out. I joined the throng, merging with them until I jumped out of the mass for the cab.

  The cold night air was clearing my head now. The bright lights of Manhattan and the blaze of neon didn't hurt my eyes anymore. I gave the driver the address of my little grey home on Central Park West and settled back against his cushions. There was a crumpled Camel in my mouth but all the way home I forgot to light it.

  It had been the cockamamiest evening of them all. A date with Jean Martha, a movie bet with Memo Morgan, the Grass Gardens and Strobe lights, flamed-out youth and sudden death and a wild, whacky time in the Temple Kreshna-Rukka. Brother Tod Crown and his desire to find a mysterious Guru named Louis La Rosa. Truth Ruth and her ridiculous sexual life and then that mad drop into a bottomless room. Greenwich Village and three hippies with knives. Joe Violets and his strange passions and ideas.

  Had he thrown the lights when Truth Ruth was ready to give her all? I didn't know. All I knew was that all of the madness and insanity had been crammed into five short hours. If I'd had five hours to live, I couldn't have lived them more completely. That is, not counting love and food.

  Like they say in the pitchman's credo, it was only the beginning, folks, only the beginning.

  The cab taking me home was riding me straight to the nuthouse.

  A psychedelic laughing academy with a membership that included some of the most sober citizens of New York, 1968.

  It was also the night the Sanitation Department was on strike for more money. What else? Garbage cans and the right to stink.

  It was the night that a flying saucer was seen in the foothills of New Jersey. Martians and wild-guesses about other planets.

  It was the night that a young movie star who wasn't as good as he wanted to be took too many pills from the wrong kind of bottle. Giving the hyenas who do the death watch bit over Hollywood another chance to cackle and howl.

  It was the night that three thousand Vietcongs strolled over a Vietnamese village and left a couple of hundred corpses behind for the following U.S. Army to find. The war and Inhumanity.

  It was the night that unfrocked priests were all over the TV dials, advocating Truth and the right to worship as you pleased. Selling their own brand of salvation and snake oil.

  It was the night that Mayor Lindsay found out that Governor Rockefeller really had some ideas about being President of these United States.

  It was the night that Sinatra had pneumonia.

  It was the night that Mia Farrow flew to India to see her own personal Guru.

  It was the night where the temperature was seven degrees above zero, registering a new low of three in the weather tower in the heart of Central Park.

  It was also the night when Louis La Rosa was murdered.

  Chapter Six

  ED NOON IS ALIVE AND WELL

  AND LIVING IN

  NEW YORK CITY

  □ There was a beat cop parked on the door of the building. Pete, the first friendly face I saw that night, gave me the high-sign as I shivered out of the cab. He didn't have to. Somebody had been worrying about me. I didn't have to guess who. Pete is your friendly neighbourhood doorman. Dogs love him.

  The cop opened the glass door and followed me right into the lobby. My Central Park West hideout is a tall building just off the green park, complete with well-lit lobby, good elevators and tenants who minded their own business. At least nobody had complained about a detective living in the place, yet.

  "You Ed Noon?" the cop asked in an unhurried way. He was a new-generation big. High, wide-shouldered, clean-cut Maybe twenty-four at the most. He made me feel old just looking at him.

  "Uh huh."

  "Where you been?"

  "Times Square."

  "Doing what?"

  I showed him my teeth. He had walked me up to the elevator door and watched me punch the UP button. I wasn't going to get rid of him so easy, young blood or not.

  "What's on your mind, officer?"

  He showed me his teeth. They were a helluva lot whiter than mine.

  "You're supposed to be kidnapped, Mr. Noon. There was an APB on you all night. There still will be until I call in and tell them you're walking around as nice as you please. You look mussed up some but hell, I suppose you have a good answer for that."

  The elevator was far away. On the tenth floor. I studied the cop. "I'll make a trade. You tell me. And I'll tell you. Deal?"

  He shrugged and the buttons on his big chest glinted, almost matching an intelligent twinkle in his blue eyes.

  "A woman you were with tonight phoned in. Said you were snatched. Right outside that place that blew up tonight. The Grass Gardens. A discotheque or something. For the kids. I'm with the Twentieth Precinct. Some Homicide Captain called my Sergeant. Asked us to assign a man here in case you showed up. I'm him. Carmody. Now you do the talking, huh? They tell me you're hot stuff. One of the hottest outside a uniform. I'll buy that. You look the part. So tell me what happened. I do have to make out a report you know."

  "Sure." I thought fast. Mike Monks had put out a red alert, all right. But I wasn't sure exactly what to tell this rookie cop. After all, who could make sense out of it? Monks wasn't going to buy any of it when I had to tell him in the morning.

  The cop pyramided his fingers, waiting for me to talk.

  "I told you, Officer Carmody. Times Square. I went to the movies. Saw Bonnie and Clyde and all I can think of right now is Faye Dunaway is the girl of my dreams."

  "Sure. A looker. But what about the girl who reported you were snatched? Dragged into a Caddie and driven off by a tall dark man. Friend of yours?"

  "Is that what this is all about?" I grinned with what I hoped was disarmament. "That's Crown. Pal of mine. There wasn't anything I could do about that mess at the club. So Crown and I went to
the movies. He likes Faye Dunaway too."

  "That so? Then why didn't he drive you home? You got here by cab."

  "He had to catch a train at Grand Central."

  "What did he do with the Caddie?"

  "Parked it. Friar's Garage. On Forty Fifth. Check it out if you want to."

  Officer Carmody laughed. His blue eyes twinkled again.

  "Do I look that young? I haven't believed a word you said since we started talking. No skin off my nose, though. You're safe and that's all. We can scratch the APB now. Only stay put until tomorrow. I'll ring in and if there are any further instructions, I'll be back. In either case, you'll be hearing from us."

  I managed a soft salute. "Yes, sir."

  "Cut the comedy," he growled suddenly.

  "Okay I will. What's the scoop on the club and that explosion?"

  "Can't say. I only started on my eights at ten o'clock. I have waited that long for you to show. Nobody talks much around the precinct. There were a few deaths, though. Sounds like a home-made bomb. You go to bed now," he said sternly, poking a finger at me. "And no fooling."

  "You got a deal. Good night, Carmody."

  "Sure," he said, turned on his heel and shouldered out through the lobby door. Pete watched him go, a trifle goggle-eyed. Pete has never seen so many policemen since I moved into his building. The way I stay out of jail awes him slightly.

  "Ed—" Pete had come over, whispering. "I didn't want to say anything while the bull was here."

  "Such as?"

  The elevator car had finally made a landing.

  "Miss Mercer is upstairs. In your apartment. I never saw her so worried."

  I frowned. "What time did she get here?"

  "About nine-thirty. Just before the bull showed up. Is it all right?"

  "You bet. You could give her the keys to the city and it would be all right with me. Was she alone?"

  Now, Pete frowned.

  "Sure. I never saw her with anybody but you."

  "Good man. Pleasant dreams, Pete. See you tomorrow."

  Going up in the unoccupied self-service Otis, I wondered why Melissa Mercer had invaded her boss's apartment in the dead of night. It couldn't have been the missing persons alarm. It had to have been too early for that unless Monks had called her.

  It was something to think about.

  When I finally made the safety of the interior of the place I called home, I didn't have to wonder about it anymore.

  Melissa Mercer rushed into my arms with a rustle of silk and an individual scent of crushed flowers and clean rainwater. She works for me as a secretary but like the gag goes, she was more than a secretary. She is also a Negro.

  "Oh, Ed," she wailed, "where the hell have you been?"

  "A funny thing happened to me on the way to a dinner date—"

  "Stop clowning. You okay?" She pushed back from me, scanning my face and general appearance. She winced, seeing the slight collection of bruises I had picked up at the Grass Gardens and the Temple Kreshna-Rukka.

  "A shower will straighten me out. Why the hearts and flowers, Mel?"

  "Captain Monks phoned me. After I left the office. About eight thirty. Jean Martha had told him what happened at that club. The one that was dynamited. Monks wanted to know if I had heard from you. What could I tell him? You never tell me anything! You could have been dead, couldn't you?"

  "I could. Anything left to drink in this place?"

  She nodded, a slight smile creasing one of the loveliest faces that has ever adorned a woman. "I'll build you one. Now don't you disappear again."

  "Not a chance."

  I flopped down on the long lounge in what is laughingly called the living-room. First, I double-latched the door. I peeled out of my rumpled coat, loosened my tie and kicked my shoes off. I didn't unharness the .45. It felt comfortable tucked under my left armpit. Memories of Brother Crown, Truth Ruth, Joe Violets and his Switchblade Three were too fresh.

  Melissa had turned down all the lights and found a good music station on the old relic of a radio parked on the mantelpiece before the glazed mirror. The apartment was large and comfortable but I had done very little with it. I'd lived too long with the just-a-place-to-hang-my-hat syndrome.

  I kept thinking mostly about the Grass Gardens and why anyone would blow up a joint where the kids hung out to get their kicks. But with the woods literally crawling with organizations, movements, riots and New Orders, it could have been anything. I toyed with the Black Muslim concept and didn't know whether to discard it or not. Stranger things had happened in a City suddenly gone berserk with Civil Rights wars and confusions. And I was certainly going to have to look up all I could find about that darling group of brotherhood that gathered at the Temple Kreshna-Rukka and burned sandalwood and played with flickering Strobe lights and listened to a mysterious, missing Guru named Louis La Rosa.

  My drink was a Beefeater martini. Mel had fashioned it with loving hands. There was a large green olive bobbing in its murky depths.

  She joined me. Only hers was less potent.

  "You look nice," I said. She did. Her slender, full-busted figure was wrapped in a middie skirt of dark blue that continued upward to a pair of straps that were parted by a pleated, puffy shirtwaist with flared sleeves. Her exquisite face, touched by the lushness of copper and mounted with her own individual hairstyling that was something between bangs and Cleopatra, was as much of a knockout as ever. I forgot all about Faye Dunaway.

  "You look terrible," she said. "Scratch on your cheek. Lump on your forehead."

  "Give me your two weeks notice and go into modelling. You'd make five times what I'm paying you."

  "Sure. And then what would happen to you? You'd be dead of malnutrition and lack of sleep. You just don't know how to take care of yourself, Noon."

  "You said it, Mercer. Ever wonder how I got along before you showed up?"

  "Don't rub it in," she sighed. "I always wonder about that. Now let's hear it. The whole story. You had a date with Jean and then you—"

  I laughed. The martini felt good, as usual. I was really comfortable for the only time that night.

  "You ever hear of Louis La Rosa?"

  "No," she said. "Am I supposed to?"

  "I don't know. If you had mentioned his name to me last week I would have thought of the spaghetti crowd. But after tonight, I see him in a different light. He's a Guru who runs a temple of some joking kind and is lording it over a bunch of young jerks who are looking for the answers to everything. I don't know if he uses drugs, snake oil or religion or Carter's Liver pills. But I'll have to find out. Correction. You will. Tomorrow I've got a busy day lined up for you."

  "Guru? You mean one of these bearded jokers who sell meditation and all that stuff? Like with the Beatles and Mia Farrow?"

  "Check. Ever see the movie Gunga Din?"

  "Long time ago. I was a kid. Why?"

  "A fine actor named Eduardo Cianelli played a Guru in that flick. He led about ten thousand Thugs against the British Empire. An assassin organization. Only time I ever saw the word. See what I mean? He even committed suicide—in the picture—jumping into a pit of cobras. That was his message: The greatest thing is to die for what you believe in. If this La Rosa is on the level and selling that kind of medicine to the younger generation, it bothers me. Just imagine what kind of power that could be."

  She shivered. "Fun City rides again."

  "Uh huh."

  "You going to tell me about tonight? I have a right to know if I'm going to go to your funeral and be out of a job next week. A girl can't be too careful."

  "You're heartless but I love you. Okay. About tonight—I met Memo Morgan in Downey's. Just before I had the date with the lady. It seems he made a bet, a movie bet with—"

  The phone rang. In the pleasant quiet of the living-room, the sound had emergency, trouble and sudden death written all over it. After all, it was after midnight. A new day had started.

  Nobody was calling me up to wish me Happy Birthday and I had n
o Aunt Amelia suddenly arriving at the airport from faraway places. Mel looked at me. The phone kept on ringing.

  I think even Mike Monks would have waited until morning if it wasn't anything important.

  But Alexander Graham Bell's invention is one of those things that never goes away if it really wants you. Trouble is like that, too.

  "Aren't you going to answer it, Ed?"

  "Yeah. Just pushing off the inevitable for as long as possible. This has bad news. Listen to that sound. You can hear it."

  "How can you be so sure?"

  "Don't be foolish, Mel." I scooped the receiver to my ear and twirled my martini glass. "If this is the Fred Astaire studio giving me free dance lessons again, I'll buy you a fur coat."

  "Suits me."

  "Shoot," I said into the mouthpiece and closed my eyes. Melissa laughed but there was a fine edge of worry in the sound.

  "If that could be done over telephones," the gruff voice of Mike Monks barked, "you would have been dead years ago. Ed, I want to see you first thing in the morning."

  "You work fast," I said drily. "Couldn't you have called me in the morning? I do have an office, you know."

  "One in which you are seldom found," he reminded me. "Skip the formal routine, Ed. You know you have about a million questions to answer about tonight. I'll save your time and mine. We'll talk about it in the morning."

  I sighed. "How could you be sure you weren't waking me up from a sound sleep?" I wanted to be sure just exactly how much he did know about my activities that evening.

  He laughed. An unfriendly laugh.

  "Let's not lose our heads, Mr. Noon. I know you too well. Just come up with some good answers for tomorrow. And have yourself a swell alibi for Louis La Rosa, too."

  The little man in my head that knows about such things did a nervous leap between my temples. Alexander Graham Bell rides again.

  "Louis who?"

  Captain Michael Monks, just before he hung up on me, delivered himself of one enormous horse laugh.

  "Louis La Rosa," he hah-hahed, "was killed tonight. Found hanging from a meat hook in a butcher shop just off Mac Dougal Street. And if you don't know who he is, you better have a good explanation of just why we found your P.I. card in the pockets of the suit he was wearing. Ten o'clock, Ed. Don't be late."