Corpus Delectable

Sixteen

I knocked on the door matter-of-factly.

I listened for the rustle of a bed spring, the pad of a foot. I waited for him to say, “Who’s there?”

If he was in the room, I was set to snap the lock and kick the door open, using my heel as a pile driver. I was ready to show him the business end of the .38 before he had a chance to do a thing about it.

Nothing happened. I tried again, laying my knuckles a little harder against the door, just in case he was in the John and hadn’t heard the first knock.

The room and hallway remained silent. The sweat on my face felt as if a brief ray of sunlight had touched it. He’d had everything his own way so far, been able to call the shots. I was past due for a break.

While I still enjoyed solitude in the hallway, I slipped the key ring from my pocket and separated the thin steel from the keys. I worked the steel carefully into a hairline crack where the door molding was attached. I watched the steel disappear, felt it make contact with the beveled metal latch of the spring lock.

Applying pressure, I sensed the spring beginning to yield. The steel was sliding across the sloping end of the latch, forcing it back. It clicked softly.

Leaving the steel where it was to keep the latch from jumping back into its hasp, I turned the doorknob. The door opened quietly. I removed the steel and returned it to my pocket.

I slid inside the room, closed the door, letting the lock function.

I stood a moment while my eyes got used to the dim illumination that came from outside neon and streetlight glow.

Probing with a miniature pocket flashlight, I started a circuit of the layout. Physically, the surroundings were what I’d expected, typical drab room in a drab hotel. The furnishings were heavy, solid, but old and scarred and scorched in spots from careless cigarettes. The counterpane and curtains were limp and dingy. Water gathered lazily and dripped from worn faucets in the bathroom.

I let the thin finger of light linger in the bathroom washbasin. There were stains in the bottom of the pitted porcelain bowl. Not rust stains. Someone had built a small fire in the basin and later washed away whatever had been burned. I wondered if it had been Jean Putnam’s diary.

Coming from the bath, I crossed the bedroom to the closet and swung the door open. Like the rest of the abode, the closet reflected the habits of a man reasonably neat and orderly in his personal habits. Suits and slacks were carefully hung. On the floor were two pairs of shoes, clean and modestly shined.

As I swung the suits aside, the light beam jerked up short. In the back of the closet was a woman’s silk print dress. Next to it was a very sheer black negligee with filmy lace across the bosom, a garment designed to enhance erotic play.

I found the remainder of her things at the chest of drawers, a few of her cosmetics tidily arranged on top, changes of panties, bras, hose, and shoes in the uppermost drawer. The remainder of the chest was given over to McJunkin’s apparel — shirts, underwear, socks. The two bottom drawers were empty.

Whoever she was, I decided, she didn’t live here full time, not unless she had a very skimpy wardrobe. I pegged her as a regular visitor who’d left here the bare necessities to freshen up.

From the chest, the flashlight ray swung to the bedside table. Next to the lamp was a stack of folded newspapers, the accumulation of several days. The top one was creased to expose an account of Jean Putnam’s murder. I lifted the first paper. The one beneath told the tale of the death by violence of Lura Thackery. McJunkin’s bedtime reading when he didn’t have a visitor to entertain him...

A shrill bell chattered suddenly in the silence. As I turned, the flash beam pinwheeled to come to rest on the bureau where the phone reposed. The old man on the switchboard at the desk downstairs gave it a long try, paused, and let the phone blast a second time.

Then he must have told the caller that McJunkin wasn’t in his room. The phone didn’t ring again.

I resumed movement, flicking the light into the waste-basket, which was snugged against the wall beside the bureau.

With the barrel of the .38, I pushed aside laundry shirt wrappers, discarded magazines. Near the bottom of the container I saw red leatherette.

Bending a little lower, I dipped my hand all the way and pulled out the covers of a small book. I slapped the dust of old cigarette ashes from it, laid it face down on the bureau, and played the light over it. The entire contents had been ripped out. On the broken and bent leatherette cover were two initials in gold: J. P.

While I was standing there looking at the remains of Jean Putnam’s diary, I heard a key rattle in the lock. I peeled around from the bureau and put the dingy wallpaper against my back. I turned off the miniature flash and dropped it in my pocket as he twisted his key in the lock.

The door swung open, covering me. He entered the room with heavy, solid footsteps.

The muscles across my belly pulled flat and hard. A faint singing sensation flowed along my nerves as McJunkin’s bulk came into view.

He’d heeled the door closed, reached for the light switch, the movement turning him squarely away from me. The door latch and light switch clicked simultaneously.

While his hand was still on the switch, I put the barrel of the .38 against the nape of his neck.

“Friend,” I said, “if the wheel keeps turning, a new number is bound to come up.”

He held it right there, his half-twisted, arm-extended position having some of the aspects of a Rodin statue.

“Rivers,” he said.

“Check.”

I patted his armpits and kidneys. He wore a revolver in a shoulder holster on his left side. I reached around him, lifted the gun, and jammed it in my hip pocket.

Energy and sensation began returning to his muscles. He turned slowly and carefully. For the first time we were face to face. His mug shots had been accurate. He was big, rangy, flat-bellied. With a strong-boned, good-looking face marred only by the thin white scar along his jawbone, he looked like a one-time college football player — which he was — who’d gone on to reach middle age in a rugged, outdoors field of endeavor — which he hadn’t.

The thinning brown hair over the broad forehead caught the light dully. The hazel eyes reflected it like hard, polished chips of resin.

“You’d better make the most of this,” he said quietly. “You won’t be telling any grandchildren about it.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’m not alone, you know.”

“My primary interest,” I said. “We’ll talk about this person who made the contract with you.”

“What contract?” He turned toward the bureau and reached for a cigarette package. I hit him across the knuckles with the gun barrel. He jerked his hand back. An expression of pain flicked across his face. Then he laughed thinly, lifted his knuckles to his mouth, and sucked off the flecks of blood.

“You can do this any way you like, McJunkin. The hard way. The reasonable way.”

He gave me a hooded glance, walked to the bed, and sat on the edge of it. With the long years of experience behind him, he was cool and collected. He’d been in and out of too many tight spots to believe in the finality of defeat.

“You’re not talking to a punk kid, Rivers.”

“You convinced me of that at the very start,” I said.

“I got rights.”

“Have you? I remember seeing your rights carted off in the meat wagon, McJunkin.”

He sat brooding. “I ought to castrate the sonofabitch who gave you this room number.”

I put the gun barrel under his chin and tipped his head up.

“Glom the truth, McJunkin. You’ve dealt with lenient or corrupt judges, charitable juries, do-gooders on parole boards for so long you feel the ultimate disaster can’t really happen to you. It can. It has.”

“What will it get you? It won’t bring the dead chicks back.”

“Then they’ll have company, McJunkin.”

“And where will you be?”

“Around,” I said.

“Not for long. There are others like me, and plenty of money to hire them. You got icky ideas, Rivers, a cluckhead way of looking at things.”

“Coming from you, thanks for the compliment.”

“I’m thinking of the best thing for everybody.” He swallowed against the pressure of the gun barrel. “It’s not too late. You want your tail in a coffin or sitting on velvet? I can talk to my principal. I think I can swing it. Nobody wants to keep this thing stirred up. The quicker we close the book on it, the better.”

“I’m hard of hearing, McJunkin.”

“The ailment can be fixed.”

“Are you the doctor?”

“Why not?” he said. “Just repeat what Jean Putnam and Lura Thackery said to you. Mention how long Jean was able to talk before she died.”

“How much do you think she talked?”

“Not much,” he said. “She didn’t spell it out, or you’d have broken it by now. But the catch is, she reached you. She started you on the Claverys and the Sigmons. She got you into it, and as long as you’re in it, you’re dangerous. It’s a chance we can’t take.”

“You’ve no choice left about taking chances, McJunkin.”

“I think you got it twisted, friend. I’m offering you a brand-new, and very final chance. To step aside. To do nothing. How many people can set a price on doing nothing?”

“I like to stay busy,” I said.

“Be busy in style. Write your own ticket. Buy yourself a dozen chicks. Take a trip around the world.”

Very gently, he lifted his hand, touched my wrist, eased the force of the gun barrel from his chin.

“Think about it for a minute,” he said. “We’re professionals, you and me. We sell the same products, nerve and muscle and service.”

“To a different clientele, McJunkin. For different reasons.”

“Okay. I won’t argue the point. You work one side of the street; I work the other. We lock horns: it’s in the line of business. Nothing personal. You shoot at a guy one day; maybe you want to protect him the next. Depends on the setup. All a matter of business.”

“Think I need your protection, McJunkin?”

“Maybe we got a mutual need, mutual interests. There’s more money involved than you could count in half a dozen lifetimes, Rivers. A little of the small change will set you up for a long time to come.”

“For doing nothing,” I said.

“Just change teams, Rivers.”

“You got worms in the wrinkles of your brain, McJunkin.”

“Then I got the most plentiful parasites in the world. Only difference is, I don’t hide mine behind fancy words and a hypocritical front. I’m what I am, Rivers, and I never go back on a deal. You can trust me when it comes to business. Once you’re in, we’ll have to trust each other.”

“No sale, McJunkin.”

The hazel eyes clouded with confusion, the inability to comprehend that it all wasn’t as clear and reasonable to me as it was to him.

“Maybe I didn’t make this clear,” he said.

“Very.”

“Then I don’t dig,” he said. “Right now, whatever you do to me, you got a one-way ticket to nowhere. You can trade it for plush. What’s holding you back?”

“If you were capable of understanding, McJunkin, you wouldn’t need an explanation.”

“Man, what else can I say?”

“One word,” I said.

He shook his head. A quiet sadness came to his husky face. “You know I can’t.”

“His name, McJunkin. Or hers.”

“I made a deal, Rivers.”

“I’m unmaking it,” I said. “My only out is to reach your principal before a parade of McJunkins stops me from being a danger.”

“I offered you the smart way out. You’re too dumb to like money.”

“I like it very much,” I said, “but not as much as my own life. You offered me a sure way to set myself up. The choice isn’t mine — but yours. Which will it be? Me? Or your principal?”

He seemed to pull down inside of himself, becoming a dumb animal prepared to endure suffering. His answer was in his silence.