The Flower-Covered Corpse

by Michael Avallone

  The click of the receiver in my ear was just a little less noisy than a pistol shot. I hung up, too. I stared at the phone.

  Melissa Mercer stared at me. Her smile was weak.

  "Bad news?"

  "Yeah," I agreed. "The moles are working underground again."

  The real trouble was that I didn't know who the moles were.

  We shacked up for the night. Tandem in the big bed that faced the park. It was a nice place to sleep. When morning came, the dawn filtered right down from an uninterrupted sky and washed you with clear light. The darkness before the dawn was beautiful, too. When there were stars, you felt like you were on the moon, counting diamonds.

  Melissa liked to snuggle. Her body was remarkably long and cool when it was flattened against me. She had been up-in-Edward's-room many times. Don't laugh. I loved her. I always had. She was humanity with all the blessings that are supposed to be built in but seldom are.

  The wrongo world was just too narrow and dark a place to make sensible plans in. So we had each other when the spirit moved us. She had more sense than I did from the very beginning. Knocking down all my second thoughts, thin-skinned Victorianism and latent hope that every-girl-should-be-married.

  "Ed?"

  "Yeah."

  "When did you notice your P.I. card was missing?"

  "I didn't. I was too busy all night dodging weirdos to look into my wallet once. But it had to have been lifted at the Temple when I was sleeping it off."

  I had managed to fill her in on what happened, somewhere between the pyjama game and the pillow talk. She had listened to it all with her usual clear-eyed intensity. She hardly ever missed a beat.

  "What do you think happened?"

  "The list of suspects is pretty small. It has to be Brother Crown, that twig Ruth or her admirer, Joe Violets. One of them had to have pinched the card, gone out and got Louis and planted it on him to park the kill on my front door. Don't ask me why. I don't know. And that reminds me."

  "Of what?"

  "Morgan. He'll know about La Rosa. The way he ran out of Downey's when Crown mentioned the name. I think I'd better talk to Memo again."

  "Such a funny man."

  "Who me?"

  "No, silly. Morgan. Those clothes. That memory game of his. Is he for real, Ed?"

  "The realest. He can look at a page of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, read it once, close the book and recite out loud exactly what was there. Try him some time."

  I felt her shudder against me. Her perfectly-sculpted thighs snaked over me. "No thank you. I leave the weirdos to you."

  I laughed. "Does that include you too?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Aren't you a little weird, Mel? Shacking up with your lily white employer while at least a thousand fine Negro bucks are yours for the asking?"

  "Shut up," she said.

  "Okay. I will."

  "You're not going to lecture me again, are you? Cause if you are, I will hand in my two weeks notice."

  "Before you go—"

  "What?"

  "Kiss me, you fool."

  She did.

  It was one of those hot poker jobs that poets, writers and well-hung men can understand. You just have to lie back and take it but while you're doing that, a roaring bonfire ignites somewhere in your stomach and you're through.

  It's all over. Finished. Done.

  Her lips brought the jungle and temple bells and sandalwood back into business. Tom-toms throbbed all around. My skin danced.

  She closed her hands over me, her eyes no more than a wink away from my face in the darkness.

  "Now who's weird . . . ?" she breathed huskily against my chest.

  I forgot about the murder rap hanging over me and paid some attention to her.

  That was very easy to do.

  "Oh, Ed," she moaned. "Why is it always like this?"

  "I don't know," I said. I really didn't.

  But she did.

  "I love you, ofay . . . that's why."

  "Me too," I said.

  I slept badly that night. I dreamed I went to see one of those underground atrocities lensed by Andy Warhol. Joan Baez was the voice on the sound track, singing anti-war ballads and selling revolt while Dr. Spock played the lead role in the film. Going around in his shorts, slapping babies and spouting a Peace programme that didn't allow five cents worth of effort for any fight-against-Reds point of view. There were about a million naked teenagers in the plot, all burning draft cards and sounding like Hitler's people shouting their lungs out on the Wilhelmstrasse as the swastika went by. Some of the teenagers looked like Joe Violets, Truth Ruth and Brother Tod Crown.

  Dream?

  It was a nightmare, movie-style.

  Chapter Seven

  THE AWE SPICES

  □ The office of Captain Michael Monks, Homicide Department, hadn't improved one iota since my last visit. The framed portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson, the carefully stretched American Flag and several four-drawer steel filing cabinets still kept company with the most cluttered desk in or out of bureaucracy. Monks has never been cursed with neatness from the physical standpoint Only his mind was neat. He was all cop. He had been all cop for something like twenty-five years. Right after War Two, he had plunged into the Police Academy bag and come up with an apple pie in each hand. He and the force were made for each other. I had known him since his salad days when his title was Lieutenant. We both had splashed a lot of water under the bridge since then.

  He liked me. Like a father or an older brother, I guess. There was just no other explanation for the charity he had dished out to me as I got in his official hair case after case. Friend or not, my record was good. The cop blood in both of us made us brothers.

  From behind his mountain of memoranda and stacked file folders, he glared sweetly at me. His tie was the usual thick monstrosity, red with white stripes and his face was the same old, gnarled and weathered coat of arms. He has a glorious nose. Nice and thick and it smells lies, foul weather and murder like no other sniffer on Centre Street.

  It was ten o'clock on the button and one of his uniformed flunkies had ushered me in, gestured me to the seat on the other side of the Captain's desk and trotted out. Monks appreciated punctuality. He hates to be kept waiting.

  "I didn't kill Louis La Rosa," I said mildly.

  "Do tell." Monks batted a big hand at an invisible fly and rumbled in his chest. February motes of sunlight slipped through the window behind him, slicing through the slatted blinds. It was still a cold day and I had driven Melissa Mercer to the mouse auditorium early. I'd given her enough work to keep her busy until I got back. First, she was going to call Jean Martha to tell her I was okay and then she was going to make an appointment with Memo Morgan and after that, it was open season on Louis La Rosa. I wanted to know a lot more about him.

  "You have any idea who killed him, Mike?"

  "Somebody who knows how to use a garrote. Long strand of wire wrapped so tight around his fat neck we had to cut it off."

  I heard a temple bell in my head.

  "Oh, Thugs, lift up your faces to the light that shines from Kali's throne—"

  "Come again?"

  "Just thinking out loud. Go on. I'm listening." Garrote style. Cianelli, Gunga Din and the cult of Thuggee. They killed that way; with strangler's cords, burial picks and a toast to Kali, the Goddess of Destruction. But there was no use cluttering up Monks' mind with that kind of esoteric jazz. Not just yet.

  "The butcher shop's a small store. Big freezing department in the back. Somebody busted the lock on the rear door to get in and parked La Rosa on one of the meat hooks. Some job."

  "What does that mean?"

  Monks grinned sourly. "I forgot. You didn't kill him. Don't know him. Never saw him. Well, he's about three hundred pounds, looks like Buddha with a beard and dressed that way too. Long robe with big sleeves. Would have taken two healthy guys or a circus strong man to have lifted him on to that hook."

  "How was he hanging from t
he hook?"

  "The wire. Back end of it was looped over the hook. You know how they hang full steers? Like that. His weight really made the front part of the wire bite into his neck."

  "Before or after?"

  Monks shook his head. "Always thinking, huh? You're right. He was killed by the wire cutting into his neck while he was hung up, unconscious or awake. But alive. His mitts were tied behind him with leather thongs. Helluva way to go. The worst kind of a hanging."

  I got a quick image and pushed it out of my mind. I lit a Camel, putting a blue ring of smoke between me and the desk.

  "Do I get to see the remains?"

  "Sure. He was carrying your P.I. card. You're entitled. Look, Ed." He leaned across his pile of official business and regarded me soberly. "I know you don't go around killing gurus or anybody. But facts are facts. He had your card tucked in the pocket of his suit—"

  "Suit? What happened to the robes?"

  "He wore this robe outfit," Monks explained almost wearily, "over one of the fanciest suits you ever saw. A Petrocelli. A grey Italian silk. See what I mean? Maybe he was a slob and a phony who worked a cult business with this new kid business—but he was a business man. The best kind. Whoever killed him didn't touch a thing that he was carrying. Wallet with some five hundred bucks in it—genuine alligator leather, at that. A diary and notebook with addresses in it. Some two hundred names. Quite a list. Some of the biggest and most sober citizens in town. Bankers, real estate people, civic leaders. Some show business folks. Maybe he had dealings with them, maybe he didn't. We're checking some of them out now. As well as this whole Temple thing he had going in the Village. We knew about La Rosa. About his organization so we've been watching him. There were some scrapes about dope. The Narcotics Squad ran in a few of his flower people for using LSD. Marijuana. The usual routine. But this is the biggest stink yet. You remember how that rich girl from Connecticut was killed last year in that orgy-dope-love case on Avenue B."

  "Yeah." I did remember. The flower people who wanted to love everybody had become wide open targets and fair game for every bum and pervert and just plain con man in the City. The cops had had to double their efforts in the Village, East Village and assorted hippie centres to protect the new generation of Love People.

  "You're thinking," Monks squinted at me, suspiciously. "What about?"

  "Is Memo Morgan's name in La Rosa's book?"

  "It is. Why?"

  "Just wondering. Nobody's more Broadway than that character."

  Monks steepled his fingers and took a deep breath.

  "How long have I known you? Fifteen, sixteen years? Since you got involved in that Dolores deal. Your big girl friend with the diamonds. Okay. So I know you. And I also know that since you walked into this office you haven't told me a single thing about yesterday. What you did, who you saw and what you were doing when that discotheque blew up—"

  "It's not a discotheque," I said. "They have a real live band. Plays real music, too. You should have heard Don't Run Your Damn Hands All Over Me! I know you liked Mairzy Doats but—"

  "The Grass Gardens," Monks said stiffly, ignoring me, "was one of the places which Louis La Rosa backed up as angel. Him and some of these millionaires listed in his notebook."

  "That is interesting," I admitted.

  "Thank you. Now what I'm getting at is I want completely detailed report on your activities of yesterday. I won't run in a police steno on you to take it all down. You see, I just want a good reason not to hold you as a material witness in this Murder One so that the D.A.'s office will be satisfied. You understand me, Ed?"

  "I understand, and Darling, you are not to blame."

  "Jeeziz, will you cut the comedy? You're too old now for talking like a TV dick."

  He was right.

  So I told him all about the adventures of the night before; I left out nothing. There was no case for me, no fee, I didn't have a client except myself and my own neck. I didn't owe anybody protection. Monks fumed, harrumphed and scowled but he made notes on the big pad before him. Jotting down the names and the places. Jean Martha, Tod Crown, Memo Morgan, Truth Ruth, the Temple Kreshna-Rukka, the beat cop named Carmody and even the cabbie's name. The one who had taken me from the Village to Central Park West. As force of habit, I had looked at the licence permit with the photo on the front seat that faces the occupant of the rear. The cabbie's name was an unusual one, easy to remember. Peter Paul.

  He also pencilled in Joe Violets and his two playmates though I didn't know their names. Monks loved and trusted me but he would check my story out thoroughly. It was the only way to run a homicide department.

  "That's it, Ed?" Monks dropped the pencil.

  "That's it. Now what about the Gardens?"

  He shrugged. "The Bomb Squad calls it a home-made job. Wasn't half as bad as it must have looked or sounded. Somebody planted a stick of dynamite within the lobby, right over the chandelier. Set it with a cheap watch. When it went off, it brought the ceiling down, started a fire and all the kids inside stampeded. The blast itself wasn't really fatal. What happened after that was. A young dame named Marcia Wedley broke her neck in the rush and some skinny boy—Rodney Wilson—ran right into the flames, shouting something about "End the war in Vietnam!" First degree burns over eighty per cent of his body. He died on the way to Roosevelt Hospital. Other than that, a few broken bones and one fractured pelvis case. Girl named Iris Murphy. It could have been a lot worse. There were a couple of hundred kids in that place."

  "There were. And some of them were high on acid and marijuana. Like Rodney Wilson. He might have been the one who was wriggling all over the dance floor when Jean and I left."

  He nodded. "What about her?"

  "Clean as a whistle. A perfect date. She wouldn't kill a cockroach unless you convinced her she was saving the world for democracy."

  "She struck me that way when she phoned in about you being snatched. If you married her and settled down, you wouldn't have to see me so often to straighten out your messed up life, would you?"

  "Please, Michael, not today. We'll save my soul some other time. Do you buy what I told you?"

  He sneered. "I got a choice?" He reached over to the phone on his desk, juggling the receiver to his ear. I looked at the burnt end of my butt while he made some arrangements about going down to the morgue. I'd been there before. It was three floors below where Monks was sitting. Large, airy, lined with steel drawers that slid cut on rollers. Rollers that slid the slabs that held the sheeted remains of what had once been living, breathing human beings. I hated the place.

  Monks hung up the phone, brushed at his tie and got to his feet "Come on. We'll take a look. I'll get back to these leads you gave me later. This Temple. It's about Eve blocks from the butcher shop. La Rosa was found by a beat cop around midnight. The shop looked suspicious so he went in. The M.E. pegs the kill around that time, give or take fifteen minutes. I called you as soon as I saw your card."

  Which gave nobody an alibi. Midnight I was explaining myself to the cop Carmody in the lobby of my building. Where was everybody?

  There was a hum of silence in the office.

  Outside in the corridors, I knew that patrolmen, orderlies and Department personnel were hurrying back and forth on whatever errands there might be, but you couldn't hear them. Only a far-off clatter of a typewriter could be heard.

  The city outside the windows was locked with the sunny but cold clamp of February. I joined Monks at the office door. He held it open for me and the invisible typewriter suddenly sounded like a machine gun.

  "According to your story, Ed, there's only about three people who could have stolen your P.I. card. Crown, the skinny broad and this punk kid, Joe Violets."

  "That would be about it."

  "You're sure you had it before you ran into this bunch?"

  "I'm sure. Earlier that night when I was in Le Alpi with Jean Martha having dinner, I was showing her some stuff in my wallet and picture case. I remember seeing the card."

/>   Monks had one last comment before we went down to see Louis La Rosa.

  "How's the food in that joint?"

  "If you like eye-teye food, splendid."

  He grunted and we took the staircase just to the left of his office. The typewriter stopped clattering. A woman laughed.

  Footsteps clicked along the corridor behind us.

  It killed you. Even a police station has all the noises and sounds that characterize a typical office building.

  I kept thinking of Louis La Rosa getting murdered at midnight.

  I killed my cigarette on the steps leading down.

  There was one attendant on duty in the morgue room. When he saw Monks, he nodded and went back to reading his newspaper. It was the morning Times, the edition that had carried no news about La Rosa's murder but had page oned the explosion at the Grass Gardens. The Guru's finish had happened too late to make the bulldog editions. That would come later, with the juicy pictures, the exploitative commentaries and another review of the whole scene on drugs, the new generation and youth movements that were sweeping the country.

  Monks found the drawer, numbered and labelled with a face plate set in a metal bracket. He waited for me to get on the other side of the cabinet before sliding the drawer out. La Rosa's compartment was in the third row of files, two up from the floor, three down from the top. There was that particular aura of coolness and clamminess in the room. But it could have been the ninety per cent mental feeling you brought in with you. Morgues have that effect on everybody.

  Louis La Rosa stared up at us.

  The eyes were open.

  Monks restrained a curse and gave a dirty look to the caretaker who was buried in his newspaper. I crouched over the corpse, taking in everything I could at a glance.

  A white sheet, more like canvas than cotton, was pulled up to La Rosa's mountainous chest, drawn tightly across his breasts. Monks had pegged him accurately. A Buddha with a beard. His skull was round, hairless and finely veined. The beard was a short, spade-firm thing that poked into the atmosphere. His mouth, eyes and nose were meaningless cherubic staples of a face that most of the time must have looked all sweetness and light in life. It was hard to tell about the eyes. They had that fixed glassiness and lack of expression that makes them really look like marbles. Blue marbles this time. La Rosa's bulk, like Buddha, was pudgy, bloated and lardish, even in the rigor mortis condition.