Corpus Delectable

Talmage Powell

• Publisher: Prologue Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781440537158
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

Give her five minutes more, I thought...More than an hour had passed since Jean Putnam's voice had promised on the phone that she would be there. As I started back to my office I gave a final look down the corridor, and suddenly she was there, framed in the stairwell. She was dressed in a very fetching pirate costume, the purposely ragged bottoms of her scarlet pants reaching to just below the hips. Her legs were bare from there on down to black oilcloth boots. She hadn't moved, and a new sensation blew cold across the back of my neck. As I lunged for her she crumbled and fell backwards down the yawning stairwell. When I reached her on the next landing I saw that not all the redness was in her costume. A bullet had struck her in the back.

Six

“That’s fine,” he added, “you’re smart not to move a muscle. But now you can. The arm muscles, friend. Easy and slow. Lock the fingers behind the head.”

The pressure of the gun barrel faded as he eased safely back. I made motions with the numbness of my arms and twined the fingers at the back of my neck. “Who are you?”

“Little Jack Horner, friend, waiting in a corner, after I found a handy fire-escape window.”

“You did a thorough job on Jean Putnam,” I said.

“Not thorough enough. Not fast enough. Not the kind of job I like to do, friend, and usually do.”

“Would it make any difference to tell you that Jean Putnam didn’t have time to say anything?”

“She reached you, friend. She had time.”

“She didn’t talk,” I said.

“Maybe she didn’t make sense because you haven’t added her up yet.”

“But she didn’t speak, I tell you!”

“What else could you say, friend?” he asked with a sigh.

Little tics of feeling were returning to my arms and knees. “You’ll never get out of the building.”

“Come on, now,” He laughed softly. “This is the time of gay Gasparilla. Nobody’s paying any attention to what happens in this tired old building.”

“You got it all figured,” I said.

“Sure. It’s my turn now, friend. You missed your turn today when the big opening parade was passing on Franklin Street. I knew you were behind me in the crowds, waiting for one of those hats to turn and tip you that a nervous guy was under it. But I don’t get nervous, friend.”

“Just an old pro.”

“Not so old. But I know my business. You muff a turn, friend, you don’t get another.”

The snout of the gun prodded my back, pushing me a few feet deeper in the room.

“What’s it going to look like?” I asked.

“You really want to know?”

“Why not?”

“How about an ordinary accident in the bathtub, friend? You slip, crack your head, and drown. I lay the gun against your skull, strip you down, lay you out in the tub like Sleeping Beauty, and start the water. You won’t feel a thing after the first bust on the head, friend. You’ve been hit on the head before.”

My body stiffened, started to turn. The gun jabbed me hard, making me wince.

“Or I can make it tough,” he said quietly. “Gut-shoot you, but good. It don’t make much difference to me. Because you’re for free, friend. Understand? After the first kill, the rest are all for free. You kill one or a hundred, they can only burn you once. It’s like you got a license.”

The bathroom doorway was a dark rectangle in the gloom. Doorway to a grave.

He was cool, confident, taking his time, letting me cover the last few feet of my life under my own power. He knew there was no chance of dropping my laced fingers from the nape of my neck and pulling a gun before a silenced slug broke my spine. He had figured all the angles known to him.

But history and cemeteries are full of wise punks. At the base of my neck, my fingers had inched down. They touched the flat handle of the razor-sharp blade sheathed at my nape.

I didn’t want to do it. I was so scared my spit glands had dried up.

I steeled myself with a clinching argument: Rivers, what have you got to lose?

As the knife slid free, I threw myself down and to one side. A man of experience, he didn’t let the move rattle him. He was prepared. He danced backward to give himself room, to ensure himself from any flailing arms or legs. He thought he was still in control and had plenty of time.

“Okay,” he said quietly. He was swinging the gun with deliberate care, intending to make his first shot the last one.

My arm was snapping forward the second my body hit the floor. I didn’t expect the throw to be perfect. I was depending on the instinctive reaction of my screwed-tight nerves and muscles. I needed luck.

He didn’t know the knife existed until it glinted at him in the gloom. His startled cry mingled with the raw sound of the blade driving hungrily into flesh, blood, and bone high on his left shoulder.

He was briefly rattled, finally. As the blade hit him, his trigger finger reacted. The slug knocked splinters in my face.

I’d rolled right on into the bathroom. I pulled upright, my side pressing against the covering protrusion of the door jamb. The .38 was a comforting weight in my hand.

We waited, he in the bed-sitting room, me in the john, the door frame separating us. From the street came the faint echoes of a strolling orchestra playing a gay Spanish melody.

“Friend,” I mimicked, “I got all night.”

His silenced gun made a muffled handclap. Paint sprayed from the edge of the door casing.

“I don’t mind,” he said almost gently. “I’m getting paid for overtime.”

“You can talk about it with the Homicide lieutenant who’s coming over to discuss the Jean Putnam case.”

“You can’t bug me, friend.”

“I’m not trying,” I said. “Stick around and see.” Strangely, I’d never before noticed how cramped, small, and smotheringly hot the bathroom really was.

“If anybody was coming, friend, you wouldn’t talk about it. Nobody’s coming. Just you and me, shut away from a world that’s having fun.”

His words almost covered the faint protest of a door hinge. I realized he’d used his voice to cover the sound of careful movement.

I peeled around the bathroom door frame. Nothing happened. I rushed across the bed-sitting room toward the closed hallway door. My hand stabbed at the door almost before I thought.

But without touching anything I jerked my hand back as if the doorknob were hot. Flicking a handkerchief from my pocket, I draped the knob, then touched the cloth with the tips of my fingers to open the door.

The corridor was empty. I took the stairs down to the vestibule two at a time. On the front stoop I stopped short, looking at the street.

For a second I had a reasonless hatred for Gasparilla and all the fun connected with it. I wanted to shout down the noisy crowds whose numbers concealed a murderer.

Angrily, my eyes swept the scene for a man I’d never really seen. Then I wheeled about, hurried up to the apartment. Leaving the door open, I jerked up the phone and dialed police headquarters.

The on-duty sergeant jacked in the switchboard. Trying to keep the shakes out of my voice, I briefed him on what had happened. He had it on short wave by the time I’d replaced the phone.

Waiting for them, I moved restlessly, slid a chair under the lighting fixture, mounted it and tightened the bulb he’d loosened.

He was inclined to planning and carrying out his plans in cut-and-dried fashion, the Unknown Party. He didn’t like to improvise. Both times, when he’d had to improvise, he’d made his exit.

As I stepped off the chair, somebody punched the buzzer button in the vestibule. I went to the top of the stairs and looked down. I saw the bold, voluptuous lines of Myrtle Higgins in the vestibule.

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