Murder Straight Up

3

The medical examiner was holding a plastic bag up. Inside it was a white tube with the name FIBERALL across its front.

“Edelman, I’ll bet you a steak dinner at Farrady’s that this is how he ingested the cyanide,” the M.E. said. His name was Sullivan. He was one of those doctors who didn’t look like a doctor. Shabby clothes. Bald pate but dandruff anyway. Dirty nails. “Laxative,” Edelman said.

I was back in the studio. The place still resembled a telethon. The press from other channels were in now. They managed to convey the impression that this was a big deal for them. Getting to spy on the competition. The cops had only just begun. Rolls of film were being shot. Pounds of fingerprint powder were being dusted. Yards of cotton tape were being measured off. Dozens of plastic bags were being filled with items that seemed to have no bearing whatsoever on a murder investigation. But that’s usually what did it for a prosecuting attorney. Some arcane little piece of physical evidence. For cops it was informers. Without informers, homicide cops would be out of business, all the clue-solving TV shows to the contrary.

“A laxative,” Edelman was saying. “Christ.”

“And judging from a quick look inside, I’d say that whoever did it really dropped a large amount in here, too,” Sullivan said.

“Wouldn’t he taste it?” Edelman asked.

“You ever use this stuff?”

Edelman shook his head.

“A dog could take a crap in it and you wouldn’t notice it,” Sullivan said poetically. Then he said “Hey!” abruptly to an intern doing something that was apparently not up to Sullivan’s standards.

“God, I’d hate to have that guy for a boss,” Edelman said when Sullivan reached the young intern and started chewing on him. Then he turned back to me. “So, you pick anything up during your week here?”

“Not really.”

“Nobody who really hated this guy?”

I shrugged. “It’s like any other type of show biz. They probably all hated him. He had the job they all wanted.”

“Sound like nice folks.”

“Probably not any worse or any better than anybody else.”

He took out a pipe, put it in his mouth. It was a prop. He had given up Chesterfields ten years ago, and since then, teething-ring style, he’d adopted one of those fancy two-colored pipes. This one was red and yellow. You almost expected to see bubbles wafting up out of it. Everybody called it his ‘toy pipe.’ “I had a very pleasant conversation with Robert Fitzgerald earlier tonight.”

“I just met the man.”

“He seems to be of the opinion that you and the plumber, whose name is Fletcher, should be castrated and then set on fire.”

I sighed. “Yeah. That’s the impression I got.” I shook my head. “I should have gotten him.”

“Huh?”

I had muttered to myself. A sure sign of shame. I cleared my throat. “I said I should have gotten him.”

“The kid?”

I nodded. “Not that I’m sure he did it.”

“He’ll do till somebody better comes along.”

I felt singularly inept. “I just should have gotten him.”

“Hell, no big deal.”

“It will be to Federated Security.”

“What do those guys know?” He grinned wickedly. “They’re just a bunch of guys who couldn’t make the cut as real cops.”

“Thanks.”

“Not you, Dwyer. You’re a real cop.”

“Gee, this is sort of like being knighted.”

He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “How’s that woman you were seeing?”

“Donna Harris?”

“Yeah.”

“Seeing a shrink.”

He looked confused.

“Her ex-husband’s in the picture again. Wants her back. She can’t decide what to do. So she’s seeing a shrink.”

“Does that mean she can’t see you?”

I shrugged, trying to appear far more indifferent than I actually felt about it. That’s a holdover from high school — not wanting the other guy to know how much you care about a certain girl. “It just means we’re kind of not, uh, tied down to each other. You know?”

“Yeah, I know.” He frowned. Tapped my stomach again. “You got a gut. Now you need a wife.”

“You sure make suburbia sound nice, Martin. Sit around with the little woman and stare at your gut.”

He laughed. “I worry about you, Dwyer. I really do.” For all his joking, he was being serious. He did worry about me.

My shift had officially ended half an hour ago. There was no reason to stay around. By morning Robert Fitzgerald would have lodged an official complaint. By noon I would most likely be filling out job applications. Federated had an ongoing contract with Channel 3; they wouldn’t jeopardize it by keeping me on payroll. They would make a very big thing to Fitzgerald about getting rid of me. I would have done exactly the same thing.

A ring of gawkers, kept at bay by police barricades, stood bathed in whirling blue and red and yellow emergency lights. There had been many more of them a while ago, but it was nearing midnight now and the wind was harsh and the novelty was wearing off. A dead local anchorman will not hold your interest nearly as long as a dead network TV star, for instance. And a dead network TV star will not hold your interest as long as a dead bona fide movie star. When you look at it in terms of a pecking order, the universe does make sense.

I recognized a couple of the patrolmen who were drinking coffee out of thermos cups between thick gloved hands. We waved to each other, and for a moment I got sentimental as shit about being a cop. I had had some good times before an appearance in a public-service spot as a cop (what else?) got me interested in acting and led eventually to the breakup of my marriage and my leaving the force. I still couldn’t say it, couldn’t say, “I’m an actor,” when people asked me what I did. I just said, “Security man.” Sounds a lot saner.

My car was parked around the side of the building. The wind was strong enough to make me tilt into it to keep from being knocked over. I had my evening planned. Three or four beers, a sandwich made from the salami, tomatoes, mayo and dark bread in my kitchen, and then a late movie. The Asphalt Jungle was on KTBS. A crusher. A fucking crusher.

By the time I reached my car, a rusted symbol of the days when everybody wanted small Japanese imports, my mind was already tracking back to the murder.

I just kept remembering the froth around his mouth. His bugged-out eyes. His twisted, imploring hands. Damn it.

Channel 3 is located on the northwestern edge of the city. Encircling the new building are woods dense enough to get lost in. Just beyond the eerie touch of the mercury vapors lay trees that formed a virtual wall. And that was where I saw the flash. I was tired enough, and stressed enough from thinking about losing my job, to discount it as nothing more than a piece of stray paper tumbling in the wind.

I got inside my car, the dome light almost lurid in the night; turned on the local jazz station, which was playing one of the best collaborations ever, J. J. Johnson and André Previn playing the music of Kurt Weill; and was just backing out when I saw it again in the rearview mirror. The flash. I knew now it was not a piece of paper but rather a human being darting in and out behind the trees.

From my cop days I knew that the best thing I had going was the element of surprise.

I continued backing out, but when my car angled toward the woods to my left, I slammed open the door and pulled myself out.

Within two steps, I was running.

All of us have these hotdog fantasies. I’m no different. I’d like to rescue beautiful blondes and be amply rewarded, too. But what I was probably thinking about right now was that I was going to find some mysterious person who was lurking about in the woods and turn that person in, thereby solving the murder of David Curtis. No beautiful blondes in this case. It would just mean that I wouldn’t have to find another job.

Even though I jog, running through a wintry wood-scape at midnight is far tougher on the knees and hips than a track or even concrete. Especially when you’ve got low branches trying to dismember you every so often.

The deeper we went, the darker it got.

By now I had gotten a good enough glimpse of the person to know two things: one, it was a girl, and two, it was a blond teenager. Definitely not the kid I’d seen earlier this evening.

She flashed in and out of sight, between trees, behind tall undergrowth, tripping once, regaining her footing, tripping again, then disappearing again. This went on for ten minutes. She must have had rubber lungs.

Twice I stopped to catch my breath, to feel the sweat stand on my otherwise cold body. Then I started running again. We were headed up a steep incline, on the other side of which I could see the glow of lights from a boulevard below.

Once she turned and looked back at me, and in that moment I realized how pretty she was. Even sweat-slicked and desperate, she was fetching.

She fell again and this time let out a loud curse that was mixed with a sob. She was near the top of the hill, lost briefly behind some brambles, then scrambling on her hands and knees to the top of the rise. We were in an area where dead leaves from last fall stank sourly from drying rainwater.

Then she was gone.

It was like watching a parachutist do her stuff. One moment she’s at the crest of the rise and then her hands are going up in some kind of free fall, and then she’s vanished.

She would be fast footing it downhill, down to the boulevard, where a ride could be waiting or a ride could be obtained.

She wasn’t going to get away from me. Not this one.

I came to the top of the rise myself and looked down onto a wide avenue where two lanes of cars moved in each direction with a kind of frustrated allegiance to the speed laws. This street was heavily patrolled. More than one teenager had lost his license on this street. I’d plied this concrete myself in a ’fifty-nine Chevy.

She was at the curb now, running alongside the oncoming traffic with her thumb out. The cars were an unending stream of glistening colors and headlights, like something glimpsed in fast-motion photography. Her blond hair flying, she looked almost posed against this backdrop, like an inexplicably erotic image on MTV.

I didn’t actually see her get hit. Only heard brakes screeching on. And her scream.

By the time I looked up, scrambling down the hill, I saw her grab her leg and fall to the roadside. The way she twisted back and forth, her pain was obvious.

The car, a new Dodge convertible, had stopped, and a suburban-looking guy was running around the front of it.

“Hey!” I yelled, sensing what he was about to do.

They both looked up at me as if I’d just fired a shot. Then she screamed something at him, something lost in the roar of the traffic, something that was not too difficult for me to imagine (he’s chasing me, help me, get me out of here), and then he had his arm around her waist and was helping her quickly into his car.

“No! Stop!” I yelled, running down the rest of the hill to the pavement.

But by the time I reached the concrete, the convertible was tearing away from the scene, the tires literally smoking.

What a hell of a cop I was. For the second time that night, somebody had eluded me, while a poor bastard of a newsman lay poisoned in the studios of Channel 3 and there was a dim chance that I had played at least some role in his death.