Fear Itself

7

THE LARGE ROOM WAS STIFLING, filled with sunlight pouring in from at least a half-dozen closed, unshaded windows. The walls were yellow cream and the carpet royal blue. The ash furniture was heavy and bright. Glass-door cabinets exhibited fine china and porcelain knickknacks. Copies of Renaissance paintings in ornate gold frames hung here and there. A glossy finished dining table in the middle of the room supported a large vase with at least three dozen long-stemmed, once-red roses displayed like peacock feathers.

The only problem was that the roses had blackened and died and the hot room smelled sour.

I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly. Maybe some envelope or receipt that would give me and Fearless a line on Kit Mitchell. Just something so that when the police came down on Fearless he could give them a lead.

I could have been arrested for burglary, but I only planned to spend five minutes searching.

The first thing I did was to locate the fire escape. Then I leaned the back of a chair under the front doorknob. If somebody tried to get in I could be down in the street and off before they saw my face.

The dining room had a wide doorway, with no doors attached, which connected it to a living room that was two steps down. This room was also yellow and blue with windows and light. The paintings here had the same garish frames, but these copies were from the Postimpressionist period. Cézanne and Lautrec, Manet and Monet, but no Van Gogh or Gauguin. I knew about paintings. I once got a whole boxful of art books discarded by the Santa Monica library. They were mostly in black and white and had been thrown out in favor of the color plates found in newer texts.

There were no books or bookshelves anywhere in Mr. Wexler’s home.

There was a swinging door that was partly open. The temperature in that apartment must have been at least ninety-five degrees, but the wedge holding the door ajar made me cold enough to crave a sweater.

The foot that kept the door from closing was bare, connected to a large white man with a butcher’s knife buried in his chest. All he wore was a pair of brand-new blue jeans. His arms and legs went in all directions. His eyes were open and he was beginning to stink. His wrists were bruised and bloody, as if he had been struggling with tight bonds. There was a balled-up knot of white cloth wedged in his mouth. The open mouth, puffed-out cheeks, and bulging eyes made him look somewhat like a gasping fish.

My first instinct was to run. I even turned and took three steps. But then I stopped myself. The man was obviously dead. From the smell he had been there awhile. A killer wouldn’t stay around the body, I thought. And I’d seen worse. Less than a year before, I’d searched a room full of slaughtered men, looking for the fingertip that Fearless had gotten shot off.

The man was partly on his side, so I didn’t have to move him much to get the wallet out of his back pocket. There was a driver’s license for a Lawrence Wexler.

“Hercules,” I said to no one.

He was big enough for a Hercules. Well over six feet and bulky with both muscle and fat. And he was bloated from many hours of being dead in that heat. There were bruises and burns all down his right arm. I suppose he gave up whatever information it was that he had before the left arm had to be mutilated.

The wallet was real alligator. Even back then it had to cost fifty dollars or more. It held three twenty-dollar bills and a packet of business cards bound together by a rubber band. There were liquor stores, furniture movers, and Madame Ethel’s Beauty Supply among the cards. There were also six business cards for the same man—Lawrence Wexler. It seemed that he was a salesman for Cars-O-Plenty, a used automobile business.

My stomach started churning and I ran to find a bathroom. I told myself to wait, but the call of nature was too strong. A door leading from the kitchen went into a small toilet. Seated there on the commode, I placed the wallet on the floor before me. Madame Ethel’s sounded familiar to me, but at first I couldn’t place it. Then I remembered that Kit had done a delivery for that company.

I considered taking the wallet with me. I didn’t care about the money but maybe there was something in there that I needed.

But what if I got caught?

I’d tell the truth.

That thought made me laugh.

It seemed like I was on the commode for hours. The fear in my gut was worse than many intestinal viruses I had contracted. I felt relieved and weakened when the bout was through. I’d had enough time to check everything, so I just took one of Wexler’s business cards and returned the wallet to the dead man’s pocket.

I passed through the house wiping every surface that I had touched and many that I might have touched. I put the dining room chair back in its place and moved out of Suite P4 with less fuss than a butterfly leaving a dank cave.

I made it down the stairs without taking a breath. I was at the swinging doors to the back alley entrance when a man yelled, “Hey you!”

I turned, seeing a tall and slender white man dressed all in white. He wasn’t a cook but it certainly was a uniform he was wearing.

“Yes sir,” I said. The words just came out of me. Betrayed by four centuries of training, but I didn’t worry about that right then.

“Who are you?” the white man asked.

He had a pencil-thin mustache and a crooked face, though you could see by the tilt of his brimless hat that he thought he was handsome. There was a thin gold band on the ring finger of his left hand.

“Cort Stillman,” I said, hoping that he didn’t wonder about a Negro named Cort.

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for a Mr. John Stover.” I handed over the blue envelope.

Lance Wexler’s business card felt like a bomb in my pocket.

“There’s no John Stover living here,” he said, twisting his already ugly mouth. “And even if there was, what are you doing out back?”

“The lady out front said that there was no Stover. And I told her that I knew that he was staying with a woman on the fourth floor. That’s what they said when they brought the package in. You know it’s my job to make sure the package gets to the man it was addressed to. They told me at the front desk that they wouldn’t take it, so I came in the back way to sneak up and knock on some doors.”

Sweat dripped down my spine. I hoped that my face was still dry.

“Let’s go down to the front desk and ask them about this,” the man said.

He was taller than I and probably stronger. At any rate, I’m not good at hand-to-hand combat. No good at fighting, period. I looked around, hoping for a miracle.

I found it on his feet. I was sure that there weren’t three men in six square miles wearing that particular hue of tan shoe.

“Listen, Warren,” I said. “We could do each other a favor here.”

“How you know my name?”

“If they call my boss and tell him that I snuck in like this, he’d be forced to fire me. You know I cain’t have that,” I said, ignoring his question.

“How you know my name, man?”

“And there’s a certain young lady who would be very thankful that you kept it quiet about what you were doin’ to her up on the roof.”

Old Warren turned as white as his jacket.

“I don’t know if she’s married, but I bet your young wife might be upset with you bein’ unemployed and a cheat all at once.”

Warren looked like he wanted to hurt me, so I grabbed the envelope from his hand and walked out through the swinging doors, leaving him to consider the consequences of lust.