Corpus Delectable

Seven

Some time later, the phone rang. I growled in my throat, padded to the phone, and picked it up.

“Carruthers matched a fingerprint,” Steve Ivey said excitedly.

“So soon?”

“We didn’t have to bother Washington, Ed. We’ve got our boy on file right here in Tampa.”

My hand curled hard on the phone. “At least that’s a break.”

“You said it! Ready for the run-down, Ed?”

“Ready.” My throat grew slightly dry.

“His name is Ben McJunkin,” Ivey said. “Ben as in the London clock. McJunkin as in—”

“I’ve got the name,” I cut in. “Have you picked him up yet?”

“We’ve got a city-wide on him.”

“Which should really rile him,” I said. “Haven’t you any good news?”

“It gets worse before it gets better,” Ivey said dolefully. “He’s a particularly mean one.”

“Give it to me,” I said.

“Straight out of our records, Ed.” The lieutenant cleared his throat. “Ben McJunkin. Born March three, nineteen-two-one, Middlebury, Michigan. His father was a moderately successful grocer, comfortably middle class. As a youngster, Ben McJunkin was exposed to all the positive elements as recommended by child counselors and authorities. Good home. Security. Proper food and parental training. Not spoiled. Not deprived. In spite of it all, young Ben started getting in trouble before he was out of his teens.

“An older Ben played college football, was potentially a great star. They had to kick him off the squad for excessive brutality and keeping company with known gamblers and underworld characters. McJunkin dropped out of college in his junior year. He beat up, brutally, an assistant coach as a good-by gesture.

“Following his fling at college, Ben was in and out of a series of minor scrapes. Then he enlisted in the Marines in World War Two. He was one hell of a fighting man with a taste for carnage approaching the point of raw sadism. He capped off his military venture with a dishonorable discharge.

“In the ensuing years, Ben McJunkin has hardened into the pattern of the habitual and incorrigible criminal. He’s run hot cars, wet-backed aliens across the Rio Grande, organized for a union of questionable legality, headed up a squad of hijackers. You name it, and it’s in his record, including suspicion of robbery and murder. He was tried on these counts and acquitted for lack of evidence and refusal of witnesses to testify.”

“Then he’s never been nailed?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Convicted and sentenced twice. Once on a charge of felonious assault, also for burglary.”

“Then why the hell isn’t he in the pokey where he belongs, Steve?”

“Parole boards. Twice paroled. Surprise you?”

“Like I would be surprised if the sun doesn’t come up tomorrow,” I said. “What’s the local pitch?”

“He’s been in and out of Tampa often,” Steve said.

“Apparently he likes the winter climate and enjoys connections with underworld characters who drift south with the seasons. He ramrodded a bolita numbers racket here for a while. Nearly got polished off, too.”

“What happened?”

“He got carved up,” Steve said. “He was carried into an emergency room leaking blood in a dozen places. It was apparently the work of a colored sidekick with whom McJunkin had disagreed over the way the bolita take was cut. There wasn’t enough evidence at the time to hold the Negro.

“A week after Ben McJunkin had convalesced, the colored yegg was found floating in Tampa Bay with a school of little fishes making lunch of his face.”

“And not enough evidence there to hold McJunkin, I suppose,” I said.

Steve was quietly miffed. “We have to go by the rules, Ed. You know that.”

“Sure,” I said. “Well, what do I look for?”

“Ben McJunkin’s mug shot shows a big, good-looking guy,” Steve said. “He’s six feet, weights about two hundred, flat-bellied and solid. He’s got a strong-boned, almost handsome face, hazel eyes, and dark-brown hair which is just beginning to thin. He has a thin white scar along his jawbone, right side, souvenir of his colored pal. He dresses well, like a substantial businessman of early middle age who has nothing to worry about. His personal habits are neat, orderly, clean. He likes women, doesn’t booze to excess, and if he’s ever made it with pot, we don’t know it.”

“I’ll drop by for a copy of the mug shot,” I said. “It’ll be waiting. Ed... I’d say that Ben McJunkin started in life with a sadistic streak that yearned for a thrill. But violence no longer holds excitement or a thrill for him. It has become a way of life.”

“Thanks for the warning, Steve.” I dropped the phone in its cradle slowly, without reassurance.

The couch creaked as Myrtle Higgins stirred. She looked at me with eyes heavy with a question, her face almost bovine. “The police, Ed?”

I nodded.

“Have they identified him?” she asked. “A guy by the name of McJunkin.”

“Have they got him yet?”

“No,” I said, “and it’s not going to be like picking up a cocky young punk. This guy is a real pro with a thorough education — and I wish to hell I could put the members of a couple of parole boards in my shoes right now...”

Myrtle swung her feet to the floor and sat thinking for several minutes. She reached for a cigarette, lighted it slowly, and brushed the dark-blond hair from her temples with her fingertips.

She looked at me carefully. “Well... too bad. Party’s over.” She stood up, sensuality fading from the lush lines of her body, and patted my cheek. “Call me a cab, Ed.”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Not now, in the middle of the night.”

“Yes, now,” she said. “No more drink, no more fun, not tonight, Ed. This Ben McJunkin... he’s too big a shadow over this apartment right now.” She flicked my chin. “It’s deep, hard, and cold in your eyes, Ed, and I don’t like to look at them. So fetch me a cab, huh?”

“If you insist on going,” I said, “I’ll take you home.”

“Nuts. You don’t have to feel obligated. I’ll be okay.”

After she was gone, I stretched on the daybed and stared in the darkness at the ceiling. By and by I was able to make out individual cracks. A dirty-looking gray light had stolen over the world outside. I punched my pillow, closed my eyes with resolve. And when I thought it was impossible, I drifted to sleep.

I was awake by eight o’clock, bathed, dressed and refueled with a breakfast of Cuban sausage, fried eggs, and black coffee the consistency of thin tar.

Most of the day was a slow-motion script taken from a routine report. I was here and there and all around in Ybor City, in the gin mills, the back rooms, the social clubs with Spanish names, the shops and stalls with their tourist-bait displays of alligator bags, beads, bangles, beaten-silver jewelry, guaraches.

I talked with characters in all shades from Nordic snow to African ebony. No longer faceless, his signature on my doorknob, the name of Ben McJunkin, assassin, became a web creeping across Ybor City. And Ybor City, I knew, saw the matter in that stark simplicity that is the height of all sophistication: The Moment of Truth approaches for Ed Rivers or Ben McJunkin. Which do we prefer in our midst?

Leaving the familiar, I drove to the rare feudal splendor of Señora Isabella’s hacienda. Elena Sigmon responded to my knock. I wondered if she and her father were alone in the huge house, making do without servants.

Elena looked a bit older than her years today, showing the wear and tear of a long party. Clad in a sloppily loose T-shirt and tight shorts, her lean body sagged tiredly. A paleness lurked in her small pixie face. Her feathery, sun-bleached hair was carelessly combed. Her puffy eyes showed some irritation as she looked at me.

“Haven’t they put you back under a rock yet?”

“There wasn’t room,” I said. “Couldn’t squeeze me in. Your poah ole pappy here?”

She quirked a brow coolly at me, thought briefly. Then with the sinewy motion that reminded me of a lean little snake gliding across a warm stone, she turned and led the way into the expanses of the living room.

“Papa dear,” she yelled, “the Cro-Magnon is on the loose again.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m trying hard to like you too.”

“Don’t strain yourself. There are too many things you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes you need only a few brush strokes to make a picture.”

On her way toward a table where there were various breeds of liquor, she jerked to a stop. “I didn’t know you were so interested in me.”

“Deeply,” I said.

“But the portrait, you know, depends on the artist and his interpretation, as much as on the subject.”

“I haven’t been talking to the wrong people,” I said, “and I try to see below the tint to the right color.”

“And who are these right people you’ve talked with?”

“Uh-uh,” I said.

Her wide, expressive mouth twisted into a pout. “So keep your stinking little secrets and see if I care!”

She poured a drink, the neck of the bottle chattering against the glass. Without looking at me, she said, “Tell me about this picture you see.”

“I’d rather not get personal.”

“I insist,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “You’re part front.”

“Only part?”

“We all have two faces. A public face — a secret face.”

“And what do you think of my public face, Mr. Rivers?” She slid toward me, a drink in her hand, a spark of interest in her eyes.

“Spoiled. Self-centered. Vicious.”

“And unprincipled?”

“Why not?” I asked.

“My! Do you also read palms? Let’s get to my other face.”

“Maybe it isn’t clear, Elena — even to you.”

The level of the liquid in her glass quivered. An old, hard wisdom came to her eyes. She turned suddenly and spoke toward the far wall: “You say one thing and mean the opposite, don’t you?”

“If you’d admit what you see, maybe you wouldn’t have to drink so much.”

“Listen,” she said thinly. “Nobody asked for your advice. I drink because I want to.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And I want to drink, drink, drink! I want to be pickled. I want to get drunk and stay that way.”

“It wouldn’t change the image of your father.”

With her back still to me, she said, “I like the image. I like it fine.”

“Sure. You enjoyed being alone in Caracas, receiving news that your grandmother Isabella had died in Tampa. It was just great, going up to a mountain cottage in that moment and finding your father there with Ginny Jameson.”

Her shoulders stiffened. “You do get around, don’t you? What do you know about Ginny Jameson?”

“I gather that she was a call girl operating in the upper crust in Caracas, the latest on your father’s little picnic when you walked in on them.”

“You go to hell, Rivers!”

“It’s too crowded. Too many people trying to get there.”

“Meaning me, I suppose?”

“You’ll have to answer that yourself,” I said. “But there isn’t enough booze in the world to drown certain kinds of memories.”

“How would you know?”

Her question caused the brief eruption of memory of the dark, nightmarish years that had finally burned out in an Ybor City alley and on the docks of Port Tampa, where the labor was hard. “I read about it in a textbook,” I said.

“It must have been a heavy one.”

“It was. It says you inevitably reach a point where you got to do one of two things: die — or take hold of your bootstraps.”

“Who wears boots, you nosy lug?”

“Try them on for size, Elena. You can’t go back and keep the bomb from exploding. You can’t reverse the clock or change the brain that conceived the bomb in Venezuela. Why don’t you admit you’re alone with your father, that the others are gone, your mother and grandfather when a timing device clicked inside a bomb, and finally your grandmother Isabella, who tried very hard to run away?”

The back of her shoulders made a small motion. She turned, and I saw that she was laughing.

“You think that’s what bothers me?” she said, her voice rising with a cold, hard laugh. “You really think it? Man, you don’t know from nothing!”