The Corpse Next Door Read online

  And I had a feeling, looking at Gulliver, that I wanted to destroy the mood he was constructing, that I was going to anyway, because the good whiskey hadn’t rinsed the dead metal taste of fear from my mouth.

  “You know, Bill,” Gulliver said, “I shouldn’t have said what I did this afternoon. About the Francis girl. I don’t blame you for maybe getting a little peeved. Forget what I said about Foundry Road. I’ll have one of the patrol cars drive by. Not much use in it, anyway. Kids are going to get their snatch, one way or another.”

  He gave me that smile, so I would feel all warm and good and gee-Chief-you-mean-I’m-part-of-the-team-again?

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Gulliver got up and walked over to Roxy’s desk, helped himself to the whiskey. “Say, Bill, when was it that soldier came in?”

  “The one who beefed about dropping three hundred bucks in that poker game at the Regal? Monday night, I think.”

  “Yeah.” Gulliver looked at Roxy. “We’ve had some kickbacks lately, Roxy. Nothing serious. A couple of soldiers who dropped their rolls and wanted to start something. But if somebody from Fort McHale gets took in one of your games and goes to his C.O. I’m liable to hear from the Provost.”

  “Some people are just unlucky at poker, Sam,” Roxy said. “You know that. If everybody won I’d be out of business.”

  I couldn’t see his eyes where I was sitting, but I knew they were as bright and cold as morning sunlight on pond ice, despite his soft, almost whispering voice. A lot of people who thought they knew Roxy had never looked directly into those eyes. You could interpret Roxy a lot of different ways. I had my own ideas about him. So did Gulliver. He handled Roxy carefully. He had heard the story, too.

  “Sure, I know,” Gulliver said. “It was just the usual sour grapes routine. But trouble could start. Maybe you ought to get in touch with your steerer down at the Fort. Bring him up here for a little talk. Make sure he’s more careful who he sends this way. Then if somebody drops a wad he won’t kick because he has sense enough to know it wasn’t his night.”

  Roxy nodded. “I guess I’d better. Thanks for telling me, Sam.”

  I had no taste for that kind of talk. It was part of the discontent I had felt for a long time, the arrangements Gulliver had, with Miller Starkey, with Roxy. I suppose there was nothing wrong with us taking advantage of Starkey’s discount. It was no secret in town. And there was nothing wrong with Roxy’s poker games in the hotel, although not so many people knew about that. Or the women outside the bus station and servicemen’s center, who dressed well and were discreet about it and you would never guess what they were. They paid by the month, to Gulliver, and had helped finance a new squad car. There was nothing really wrong, you could argue, because no money went into private pockets. But I felt the discontent, because the Starkey girls liked to drive fast, and some day there might be a wreck, and Starkey would remind Gulliver of the discount. And I remembered the look in Roxy’s eyes, as if he were seeing something a long way off, a bigger and better Roxy, and I remembered the story. I wondered if anybody could really handle Roxy, as Gulliver said he could.

  “I had a talk with Miller Starkey downstairs,” I said.

  Gulliver dropped clear cylinders of fresh ice into his new drink. “How’s the old man getting along?”

  “All right, I guess. He wanted to talk about Jimmy Herne.”

  “He would,” Gulliver said, tasting his drink, then adding a touch of sparkling.

  “He said that Smithell called him the afternoon before he was murdered. Smithell told Starkey he was sending Jimmy Herne in next day to buy a suit. Jimmy had the money. He was going to learn responsibility by paying for it himself.”

  Gulliver was about to say something, but didn’t. The mood had been as light and slender as fine blonde hair and I had snapped it. He was concentrating on recalling it but I knew he wouldn’t.

  “He had thirty bucks to buy the suit with,” I said.

  Gulliver went back to his chair. Roxy watched both of us as if he were peeking through a keyhole.

  “Ah, let’s forget about Smithell and the kid, for God’s sake,” Gulliver said. “I put in a hard week’s work on that one. It’s finished. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Jimmy had exactly thirty bucks in his pocket when he was picked up,” I said stubbornly, trying to make him see it.

  It’s a funny thing about Gulliver. When he’s starting to burn, he tries to flex that stiff left wrist. The harder he tries, the madder he gets, because it only moves a quarter-inch in any direction. He was trying to flex it now, looking at it with shiny intent eyes.

  “Now, listen, Bill. I don’t know why you keep talking after I told you to shut—to keep still. Roxy’s our host and I don”t want to bother him with police business. I’m telling you to forget it.”

  Maybe I wouldn’t have kept on then, but he picked exactly the wrong tone to use, bawling me out like I was a kid. “Jimmy said he got the thirty bucks to buy a suit. It looks like he was telling the truth. Maybe he was telling the truth about the other things. Maybe he didn’t kill Smithell.” I threw in the last without even thinking, because I was getting sore.

  Gulliver gave me a furious look. He stood up, leaving his drink on the floor. “All right, if you’re not going to shut up I’ll get out of here. I don’t know what gets into you, Bill. I just want a quiet little evening and you go and spoil the whole goddam thing. I don’t know what’s the matter with you, Bill.”

  Roxy said, “Sam, do you want me to call—”

  “No!” Gulliver raged. “I’m too upset for any pigeon plucking tonight. I’m just going to get the hell out of here.”

  He started for the door and was halfway across the rug when he remembered he had left his shoes in front of the chair. He hesitated, then turned around and went back for them. He carried the shoes in one hand and made for the door and I felt a laugh coming. I suppressed it because there is nothing funny about Gulliver when he’s angry.

  The door closed behind him and there was a loaded silence that slowly became weary.

  I drank from my glass, feeling sort of ridiculous and a little bit sorry. “Well, I’ve got to open my goddam mouth,” I said. “I’m sorry, Roxy.”

  “You ought to be,” Roxy said, but his voice, as usual, was mild. “I suppose it’s none of my business, but you ought to forget about it, Bill. Or take it up with him later. You picked a bad time.”

  “I know.”

  Roxy went through his ritual of putting a little whiskey down. “We were talking about you, Bill, before you came up. Gulliver likes you, Bill. He really likes you. And respects you, too. He knows you’ve got the guts to stand up to him. But you shouldn’t overdo it. I don’t know much about the case you and Sam have been working on. I know he was satisfied that the case was closed. You seem intent on reopening it.”

  “Look, Roxy,” I said, “I’m a cop. I’m supposed to keep an open mind about the cases I investigate. Jimmy Herne confessed he killed Smithell. I don’t think he would have said one word about killing the old man if he hadn’t done it, because he had everything to lose. Gulliver worked on him, though. Nothing unusual. But he worked on him. I don’t know how much the kid could take. I don’t know if he could have been made under duress to confess a murder he didn’t commit. I thought the kid was guilty. I still think so. I learned tonight that one of the statements Jimmy made, about where he got the money, stands up. That’s all. I was just telling Gulliver. Maybe I said more than necessary. He shouldn’t have told me to keep my mouth shut in front of you.”

  “Let’s forget it, Bill. Sam will cool off. I was saying, Bill, that he likes you. We were talking about Endicott earlier.”

  Endicott had been assistant chief of police until his death two month ago. “Yeah?”

  “Gulliver thinks you could fill that job and retain your present duties—for forty dollars a month more.”

  “It would be nice,” I said, surprised.

  Roxy smiled. “You’ve g
ot a good future in Cheyney, Bill. I thought you’d like to know. That’s why I’m cautioning you not to assert yourself so much with Gulliver. Not that you should let yourself be pushed around. You know.”

  “I think so.”

  “If you’re staying for dinner,” Roxy said, “I’ll call down to Rudy and have him put your steak on.”

  While he was on the phone, I went to his desk and mixed myself another drink, not thinking about Gulliver now, but about Roxy, who thought I had a good future in Cheyney. Roxy with the eyes of cold purpose. I was lucky to be so popular with everybody.

  LATER, WHEN I WAS LEAVING, I WALKED OVER TO THE SHED-like bungalow that housed some of Roxy’s kitchen help and a couple of chambermaids who cleaned up in the motel. One of them had been involved in some petty thefts on the grounds a couple of months before, but I had let her off after she had restored the pilfered property to the transient guest, who didn’t want to be delayed by pressing charges.

  I got her to step outside with me. She was a gray, wispy woman on the other side of fifty. “Been behaving yourself, Barbara?”

  “Oh, sure, Sergeant. Sure I have. I’ll never do anything like that again.”

  “Look, Barbara. You have a set of master keys, don’t you? I mean, you have to get into all the cabins and rooms and places.”

  “Sure. I have a set and so does the other girl.”

  “Does she clean Roxy’s office, or do you?”

  “I do. Buts—”

  “I just want the key for an hour or so. I’ll get it right back to you. Nobody will know.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that, Sergeant!”

  “You want me to mention about that stealing? You want me to tell Roxy, or maybe Chief Gulliver?”

  She said nothing more. I drove the key over to a hardware retailer in Rocky Spring, a friend of mine. Rocky Spring lies about twenty miles south on the highway, and by the time I got there my friend had gone to bed. I woke him, got him to go to his store. There he duplicated the key for me, and I drove back to Cheyney, returning the original to old Barbara.

  THERE IS AN OLD BLACKTOP ROAD SOUTH OF ROXY’S PLACE that is a quick way into town. It winds for four miles through farmland and is called Foundry Road because of an old ironworks built along it somewhere. The kids like the road because it’s always dark and rarely used and there are many dirt side roads.

  Heat lightning glimmered in the thick clouds over the river valley to the north and there was a musty wet smell of rain in the air as I drove along the road, away from Roxy’s. As I took a curve my headlights revealed a truck pulled almost off the road. A man stood beside the truck. I slowed as I saw the car in the ditch on the other side.

  I pulled across the road and parked facing the truck. It was carrying a load of furniture with a tarpaulin stretched tight and lashed to the body. The Negro driver leaned against the front fender and watched me come with a tight sick expression.

  I showed him the badge and he looked at it without eagerness. A few drops of rain were falling. The shoulders of the road were already soft from a rain the night before.

  “What happened?”

  He waved his hand at the ditch on the opposite side. “That car came roarin’ at me ninety miles a second. Straight at me, officer. I pulled clean off the road and he pulled out, too. I never heard such a noise. He musta laid down fifty feet of rubber. He went into that soft shoulder and couldn’t bring it back. Went nose down into that ditch. Not more’n half a minute ago.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  His throat moved darkly as he swallowed. “I don’t know. I’m afraid to go and look. He went over with an awful whump. I thought I saw one of ’em throwed out.”

  I swore to myself. “All right. You got a flashlight in that rig?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get it and stand back of my car. If anybody comes along slow him down. I’ll go down and count the pieces.”

  He walked toward the cab of the truck, his feet heavy. “Oh, God,” he moaned. There was more rain, falling straight down, silently.

  I went to my car, a ’53 Oldsmobile, the down payment on which I had paid out of what I had saved buying clothes at Starkey’s, got a slicker from the back seat and a flashlight from the dash compartment. I crossed the highway and started down the steep slope of the ditch.

  There was a woman in slacks lying face up on the bank about halfway into the ditch. Her face was bloodless. I kneeled beside her and let the light play over her. She was out cold, but nothing seemed to be broken. Her breathing was all right.

  I turned my light on the car, a new black Chrysler, wedged in at the bottom of the ditch between the two steep sides. The light fell on a man leaning against the side of the Chrysler, holding his stomach with one hand. There was a dark cut on his forehead.

  I walked up to him, holding the light in his face. He was good-looking, with lean jaws and heavy eyebrows and a wide mouth. His gray eyes were dulled from fright or pain. I recognized him right away.

  “Hurt?” I asked him.

  “Steering wheel caught me in the gut,” he said carefully, as if he wasn’t quite sure he would be able to talk without pain. “Not too hard. Knocked the wind out of me. I think I cut my head.”

  “You did. It doesn’t look bad.” I stepped closer to him. He was breathing with his mouth open, and I could smell the whiskey he had been tucking away. He didn’t look drunk, though.

  “That’s some breath you got there,” I said. “It should go point one five on the drunkometer, easy.”

  “Who are you?” he said suspiciously.

  “Sergeant Randall, Cheyney police.”

  “Jesus,” he said sardonically, “am I lucky tonight.” He still held his stomach. “Why don’t you go away and let somebody else rescue me?”

  “How fast were you traveling, hot rod?”

  “Too fast. I know. Listen, I’m not drunk. I’ve had a couple, but I’m not drunk. I could handle the car. I could handle it all right. It was the soft shoulder that did the damage.”

  “Yeah.”

  His voice strengthened as he became angry. “Hell, nobody was hurt, so why make a fuss?”

  “You ought to see the look on the face of that colored boy you almost ran down. Ask him why the fuss. Ask the lady. She’s not taking a nap up there.”

  He seemed almost disgusted. “She got panicky when we started to slide. Jerked the door open and bailed out. She probably passed out when she hit, that’s all.”

  His forehead was wrinkled. He passed a hand over his eyes and straightened up uncertainly. He took his hand away from his belly and nothing fell out so he turned around and leaned into the car and took something off the front seat. It was a half-full fifth of whiskey.

  As he brought it up I reached out and took it away from him, put it in my raincoat pocket. He seemed about thirty years old or so but he looked like a kid when he got indignant.

  “The driver’s license,” I said.

  He leaned against the side of the car again. “I guess it’s time for you to learn something,” he told me, with a smug look in his eyes that said I was sure going to fall over when I heard it.

  “I know,” I said. “You’re Nathan Hale Fisher, you’re a selectman of Cheyney Township, and you’re liable to be Works Commissioner come next election. And also your family is a big deal in these parts.”

  His face sagged a little as I spoiled his surprise. He rubbed a hand over his slack jaw. “Wait a minute. I’m a little fuzzy here. What was that name again?”

  “Randall.”

  “You the detective was in charge of that Smithell mess?”

  “The same.”

  He nodded gloomily. “Sure. Listen. I know it by heart. ‘Well, I noticed lights on over at the Smithell house. It was about midnight, I guess. I thought he hadn’t gone to bed. I was worried about the ring my wife had given me, so I . . .’ Will you please give me my bottle back for a second before you impound it?”

  “Sure.” I took the bottle out of my raincoat po
cket, pulled the cork and let the whiskey spill out on the ground. He reached for it but I held the bottle out of the way until it was empty. Then I gave it to him. He took it with a sort of sneer and threw it away.

  He put a hand on the fender of his car. “Now how the hell am I going to get this out of here?” he said. Falling rain had plastered his black hair against his forehead.

  “Don’t you think we ought to see about the lady?”

  He blinked. His eyes were full of some terrible pain. “Leave her alone,” he said, with weary unconcern. “She’s no better than the mud she’s lying in.”

  I looked at him for a few seconds. He was grinding his back teeth together. He held one hand tight to his temples.

  “Pickup?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. I found her in one of Roxy’s joints.”

  “You know Roxy Marko?”

  He held up two fingers together. “Like this,” he said.

  I turned away from him and walked up the bank toward the woman, slipping some in the mud. The rain had brought her to and she looked up at me, scared, her face and hair sodden, her slacks tight on her legs. She moaned, front teeth edging over her underlip.

  “You all right, lady?”

  “I’m dying,” she said. “I’m dying.”

  “Why don’t you try to get up?” I said. She smelled worse than Fisher.

  “No,” she said. “I’m dying.”

  “Come on,” I said. “This is no place for it. Come on and get up.”

  “I got a pain,” she said. She put her hand on her abdomen. “I got a pain here.”