Peeper (2 page)

“You going to let me have the camera or not?”

“You got six hundred bucks?”

“Hell, Vinnie, it ain't worth fifty. The shutter sticks and the flash don't work.”

“When you left it here you said you paid two hundred for it.”

“Listen, if I give you fifty can I have it for an hour?”

“Cash?”

“No, I thought I'd put it on the Gold Card. Jesus.”

“'Cause that last check you wrote bounced from here to Lansing.”

“Vinnie.”

“I'll bring it up. You better have fifty in your hand.”

Ralph broke the connection. Talking to Vinnie was like playing handball in a fish tank. Absently he pocketed a sterling silver ashtray he found on the night table.

Vinnie sounded like a professional wrestler and looked like the house eunuch. He had a round, perfectly bald head, round eyes, a round nose, mouth, and body, and when he walked he always stuck the sole of his foot out at an angle like a character in a comic strip. A childhood illness had claimed all his hair; Ralph had a bet with the bookie on his floor that Vinnie's crotch was hairless as well, but so far neither had had the opportunity to collect, nor wanted to. He stood in the hallway wearing a fuzzy yellow robe and dangling the camera, an old black Canon, from its strap at his side. “Where's the fifty?”

Ralph separated two twenties and a ten from his roll and laid them in the landlord's fat palm.

“That's some choke,” Vinnie said. “If you went and hit the lottery, remember you're into me for six yards.”

“Just give me the camera.”

He gave it to him. “Where's Lyla?”

“Working late.”

“Thought she worked at home.”

“Not this morning.” Ralph tested the focus. “You didn't see me go out last night, did you?”

“Seen you go out, heard you come in. About one o'clock, it was. That hat don't go with your pajamas.”

“Anybody come back with me?”

“Sure, Cybill Shepherd and that Winger dame. The one in
An Officer and a Gentleman
. I guess you, forgot.”

“Go to bed, Vinnie. I'll get this back to you later.”

“Maybe I better come in and look around. It ain't like Lyla to be out this time of the morning. She could get raped.”

Ralph blocked the door. “That'd come under theft of services.” He held up another ten. “Night-night, Vinnie.”

“Happy photography.” Vinnie took it and left.

“Don't forget to credit me,” Ralph called after him.

He opened the back of the camera. Half the roll of film was exposed. After some thought he remembered it contained shots of Mrs. Wayne County Supervisor Horace Powell and a supermarket stock clerk named Hashmi. He had had plans for the pictures, but then Powell had been forced to resign over a kickback scheme involving sanitation-removal contracts and Ralph had not bothered to develop the roll. He deplored the escalating corruption in local government.

In the bedroom he turned on both lamps and adjusted the shades so that their light shone full upon Monsignor Breame's congested countenance. The fat priest looked as if he were scowling in the confessional. Opening the closet, Ralph flipped through the negligees hanging there until he came to one he especially liked, a see-through tangerine number with lace on the bodice, and arranged it at the foot of the bed along with a matching pair of panties he found in Lyla's dresser with
WELCOME ABOARD U.S.S. JOYTRAIL
embroidered in red above the crotch. Then he stepped back to survey the scene. It looked too contrived. He picked up the panties and hung them on the bedpost. “Perfect.”

He took a dozen pictures from different angles, finishing the roll with an artsy shot from the foot of the bed that made the monsignor look like a corpulent Frankensiein, then put the roll in his pocket and went back downstairs to stash the camera in his apartment. Vinnie could sue him for it. Ralph had been ducking process servers since he was twenty.

Back at Lyla's he put away the negligee and panties and straightened the lampshades. Just then the door buzzer sounded.

“Poteet?”

The man was tall and gaunt, with a complexion like damp pulp and hair of no identifiable color, cropped down almost to stubble. His feet were large in black oxfords and he had big hands with scrubbed nails like a mortician's. He had on a black coat buttoned to the neck. His eyes had no whites and Ralph thought he looked like an early martyr.

“Yeah. You're from Steelcase?”

“I'm Carpenter.”

That was the name the bishop had given him. He stepped aside and the man went straight into the bedroom without looking around. Once there he took in the scene.

“Lots of light.”

“You ever been in a dark room with a stiff?” Ralph asked.

“A time or two. Is there a back stairs?”

“Just a fire escape. It ain't been used in thirty years. I wouldn't try to carry a grudge down it.”

Carpenter studied the corpse. “He's bigger than I thought.”

“You bring a hand truck?”

“No.” He lifted the monsignor's bare arm from the bedspread and let it drop. “Help me dress him while he still bends.”

“Who said we have to dress him?”

“Trust me. You don't want to carry a naked body down two flights of stairs.”

“You talk like you done it before. What was it you said you do for the bishop?”

“I didn't say. The figure was a hundred dollars.” Carpenter produced two fifties from a flat wallet. Cold fingers touched Ralph's as the bills changed hands.

“Well, what the hell.”

The monsignor's clothes consisted of an ordinary gray suit cut for an extraordinary figure, a white dress shirt, and striped boxer shorts draped over a chair. He wore only a rosary around his huge neck. Carpenter got the corpse's right arm into a shirt sleeve and, grunting, lifted the upper body by the shoulders for Ralph to manage the other. The monsignor groaned.

Ralph leaped back, colliding with a wall. “He ain't dead!”

“Air trapped in the lungs. They always do that. Put his shirt on.”

“You put it on. We'll split the hundred.”

“You want to hold him up?”

Ralph edged forward and picked up the other sleeve.

The job took half an hour, long enough for Ralph to trade his loathing for exhaustion. The trousers were the hardest: Ralph, the only one of the pair with the necessary bulk, had to push the massive body onto its side and brace his shoulder against it while Carpenter finished tugging them on. They tied the monsignor's shoelaces and helped him into his suitcoat.

Ralph plopped into the chair and got out his handkerchief. “I wish Ma was here. She wanted me to get closer to the Church.”

“Head or feet?”

He looked at Carpenter, who still had his coat on, buttoned all the way up. “Don't you stop to sweat?”

“I'm not paid to. It'll be getting light in an hour.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Ralph took the feet. They knocked over a lamp and a cheap portable color TV, got the body into the hallway, and dragged its heels across the runner onto the staircase landing, where they stood it against the wall. Just then an old woman in a white babushka and black leather jacket came up the stairs carrying a purse the size of a valise.

Ralph, propping up the monsignor with a hand under his arm, smiled. “Good morning, Mrs. Gelatto. How was work?”

She stopped two steps down from the landing, reached into her purse, and put on a pair of tilted glasses with rhinestones on the frames. She peered through the thick lenses.

“Oh, it's you. Who's that with you?”

“Just a couple of friends. They're on their way home.”

“You shouldn't let the fat one drive. He can't hardly stand up.”

“We won't, Mrs. Gelatto.”

“He looks dead. You boys should eat when you drink. It ain't healthy on an empty stomach.”

Ralph made a sickly smile. “Well, good night, Mrs. Gelatto.”

“Mr. Gelatto, he ate pickles. He said the dill absorbed all the intoxicants. The undertaker didn't even have to embalm him.”

“We'll remember that. Good night, Mrs. Gelatto.”

“He was a drinking man, but he was faithful.”

“I'm sure he was. Good night.”

“He didn't have no choice. Who'd sleep with a man smells like the kosher plate?”

“Ha-ha. Well, good night.”

“Just be sure he don't drive.”

“We'll call a cab.”

“Better call a truck. Hee-hee.” She put away her glasses, mounted the landing, and let herself through a door down the hall.

“Mrs. Gelatto,” Ralph told Carpenter. “She cleans two floors of the Penobscot Building nights.”

“Think she suspects anything?”

“She can't see to the end of her mop.”

“Okay, give me a hand. We've got to turn him to get him down the stairs.”

“Can't we just roll him down? I got a medical problem.”

“Better a hernia than postmortem bruises.”

Once again, Ralph wondered what Carpenter did for the bishop. He was beginning not to enjoy his company.

The monsignor was getting stiff. Ralph put a headlock on him from behind—saying, “Excuse me, Father”—and, bearing most of the weight, backed down a step and then another while Carpenter held up the feet to keep from snagging the heels on what was left of the staircase runner. They stopped every few steps to rest. Ralph's nose was in the monsignor's collar most of the time, long enough for him to develop a lasting distaste for Old Spice.

Coming off the second-floor landing, his foot slipped. He felt himself toppling, tried to slow the descent by hitting the wall, managed to squash himself between the wall and his burden, said, “Woof!” and let go his grip.

“Catch him!” Carpenter barked. Ralph caught him.

Executing a graceful pirouette, the monsignor tipped forward down the stairwell with Ralph embracing him from behind. Ralph landed on top and tobogganed down the steps and through the narrow linoleum foyer, coming to rest with a crash against the heavy steel fire door that led to the street.

Carpenter joined them at the bottom. “Nice catch.”

Ralph, sprawled atop the corpse, said, “I think I got a postmortem bruise.”

Chapter 3

The car parked in the loading zone in front of the adult bookstore was a midnight-blue Buick station wagon, full size. It looked black under the streetlight, and Ralph thought at first it was a hearse. He stood in the open doorway while Carpenter checked the street. Monsignor Breame lay on his face at Ralph's feet with his suitcoat rucked up under his arms. Ralph thought of a
National Geographic
special he had seen once when
Gilligan's Island
was preempted, about whales that beached themselves. He wondered with a grunt where he'd put his truss.

“Clear.” Carpenter looked gaunter than ever and scarcely more alive than the monsignor under the forty-watt bulb in the foyer. “We'll put him in the front seat on the passenger's side.”

“Why not in back?”

“It'd look like I was carrying a corpse. Besides, I need to see out the back window.”

Ralph thought it would be more fun to put him behind the wheel, but said nothing. The door on the passenger's side was open. They cradle-carried him across the sidewalk—Ralph waddling now and sucking in his breath with each step—sat him on the seat, got his feet inside, and poked and shoved and pulled him by his lapels into an upright position facing the windshield. Carpenter adjusted the dead man's clothing and buckled the shoulder harness, straining it to its limits.

“Peaceful, ain't he?” Ralph's voice sounded a trifle high to his own ears.

“Watch him while I go up and make sure we didn't forget anything.”

“Where in hell would he go? Sorry, Father.”

“Just watch him.” Carpenter went inside.

The street was chilly. Ralph closed the monsignor's door and went around and climbed into the driver's seat, drawing that door shut. After a minute he cranked down the window to let out the Old Spice. Just then a police officer came around the corner testing doorknobs.

Ralph said shit and slid down in the seat. The officer came over and shone a flashlight in his face.

“Something I can help you with, sir?”

Ralph sat up. “No sir, Officer, sir. I'm just waiting for my friend. He forgot his coat. Sir.”

The officer directed his flashlight past Ralph, who shifted his position to prevent the shaft from falling on the monsignor's face. “Sir, is your other friend asleep or passed out?”

“He's hypoglycemic. I warned him not to have that second slice of lemon meringue.”

“Looks like it was the whole pie.”

The flashlight's angle changed. Ralph leaned forward, then sat back when the officer moved it that way. The beam shifted forward again, then darted back. Ralph was caught leaning in the wrong direction while the light settled on the monsignor's mauve profile. It rested there a long time.

“Does your friend need medical help, sir? He doesn't look so good.”

“No sir, Officer, sir. A few hours' sleep and he'll be fine. That's why we're taking him home, my other friend and me. Sir.”

“Sir, are you making fun of the way I talk?”

“No, sir. I mean no.”

The officer sucked a cheek. He was in his twenties, with a clean jaw and a sandy moustache and flat pale eyes under the squared visor of his cap.

“Wake him up,” he said.

“Oh, you don't want me to do that.” He bit back another
sir
.

“I said wake him up. If you can. Your friend looks dead to me.”

“Dead?” Ralph arranged his face into a grin he knew was tortured. “Dead, that's a ripe one. Ha-ha, dead.”

“Let's hear him laugh.”

“He don't have much of a sense of humor.”

“Or any other kind.” The officer retreated a step and rested a hand on his revolver. “Get out of the car.”