So Nude, So Dead (22 page)

But he hadn’t died. He hadn’t dropped dead. It had been three days without a fix, and he was still alive. Why not another three days? Did it get worse? How much worse could it get? If he had help. Jeannie. Maybe Jeannie.

“No!” he shouted. “I don’t want it!”

Babs stared at him incredulously. “What?”

“I don’t want it. Neither, neither of you. You or the heroin. I’m calling the police, Babs. I don’t want it, do you understand?” He was bellowing now, trying to convince himself as well as Babs. “I don’t want it. God damn it, I don’t want it!”

Her eyes narrowed against the whiteness of her face. Her skin seemed to have stretched tight over her cheekbones, and her lips skinned back over her teeth.

“I’m not asking anymore, Ray. You’re taking it whether you want it or not!”

Her face was an ugly thing as she came slowly forward, the needle poised for a strike, her thumb on the plunger. He wondered how he could have thought she was beautiful, wondered how he could have found anything in her to love. He watched the needle approach him, and he suddenly caught at her arm, swinging her around sharply. Her head snapped back and she dropped the needle. She scrabbled for it on the rug, and he kicked it away with his foot. She crouched on the floor, her eyes flaming hatred, her breast heaving, her nails digging into the carpet.

“You cheap hophead,” she screamed. “You lousy cheap bastard!”

All the revulsion he felt for her welled up into his throat. All the horror and degradation of the drug choked him, clouded his eyes with blind rage. He reached down and yanked her to her feet. He looked at her for a brief instant as she kept screaming at him, and then he drove his fist into her face, hard, feeling the bones yield to his knuckles. It was the first time he’d ever hit a woman.

She collapsed to the floor and he stood over her, panting. Beside her on the floor lay the hypodermic.

He reached down for it, and his fingers responded to the familiar grip of the tube. His eyes wandered over the heroin, opened in surprise as he read the markings inside the tube.

There was enough heroin inside that glass cylinder to kill a bull! Far more than the two grains that made up a lethal dose. She was going to fix him, all right. This was to be the big fix, and there would never have been another one for Ray. He looked at the cylinder again, and a smile crossed his face.

He dropped the hypo to the rug, smashed it beneath his heel. The heroin made a large blot on the rug, spreading beneath his shoe.

He stared at the shattered syringe, then walked to the phone and dialed the operator.

“Give me the police,” he said.

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THE GUTTER AND THE GRAVE.

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Die Hard

The bar was the kind of dimly lit outhouse you find in any rundown neighborhood, except that it was a little more ragged around the edges. There were blue and white streamers crowding the ceiling, arranged in a criss-cross pattern strung up in celebration of some local hero’s return a long time ago. The mirror behind the bar was cracked, and it lifted one half of my face higher than the other. A little to the right of the bar was a door with a sign that cutely said,
Little Boys.
The odor seeping through the woodwork wasn’t half as cute.

A few stumblebums were spilled over the tables in the joint like a troupe of marionettes with cut strings. I was the only guy standing besides the bartender, and if events followed their customary pattern, I wouldn’t be standing long. That’s the beauty of a perpetual bender. You know just when you’ve had all that you can hold, and you go on from there.

I lifted the shot glass from the bar, and went on from there. When I put the glass down, he was standing by my elbow, a hopeful expression on his face. “Mr. Cordell?” he asked.

He was a little man with a little voice, one of the many stamped from the mold, one of those subway-strappers. He had a round face with a long nose that tried its damnedest to peer into his mouth. His lips were thin and narrow, and his eyes were carrying luggage, heavy luggage.

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m Cordell.”

He hesitated, looking over his shoulder, and then fastened two pale blue eyes on my face. “I…I understand you’re a private detective,” he said.

I turned my back to him and studied the empty shot glass. “You understand wrong, mister,” I said.

“I need help,” he went on, “for my son. My son.”

“I’m not a detective,” I told him, my voice rising slightly. I signaled for the bartender, and he nodded at me from the other end of the bar. The small man moved closer to me.

“My son,” he said. “He’s an addict.”

“That’s too bad,” I told him, my voice tired.

“I want you to stop them, the ones who made him that way, the ones who keep giving him that…that…filth!”

“You’re asking me to stop the tide, mister,” I said. “I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. Leave me alone, will you?”

“Please,” he said. “I…”

“Look, mister, I’m not interested. Shove off. Blow.”

His eyes slitted, and for just one moment the small man became a big man, an outraged man. “What kind of person are you, anyway?” he asked. His voice was thin and tight. “I need your help. I come to you for help. I need you, do you understand?”

The effort seemed to weaken him. He slumped against the bar, pulling a soiled handkerchief from his hip pocket and wiping it across his forehead.

“I can’t help you,” I said, my voice a little gentler. I was wondering what the hell was keeping the bartender. “I’m not a private detective anymore. My license has been revoked, understand? I can’t practice in this state anymore.”

He stared at me, his head making little nodding movements. When I’d finished speaking, he said, “My son doesn’t know about licenses. He knows only the needle. To take the needle away, you don’t need a fancy piece of paper.”

“No,” I agreed. “You need a hell of a lot more than that.”

“You’ll help me then?”

“No!”

He seemed astonished. He opened his hands and his eyes simultaneously and asked, “But why? Why not? Why can’t…”

I banged my glass on the bar and yelled, “Hey, bartender, what the hell are you doing, fermenting it?” I turned to face the little man fully then, and my voice was very low when I spoke. “Mister,” I said, “you’re wasting your time. I’m not interested, don’t you see? Not in your son, or anybody’s son. Not even in my own mother’s son. Please understand and just leave me alone. Go back to your nice little apartment and get the hell out of this cruddy dive. Just go. Do me a favor. Go.”

All color drained out of his face. His head pulled in like a turtle’s and he murmured, “It’s no use, then. No use.” He turned and headed for the door just as the bartender ambled over.

“Give me another of the same,” I said. I didn’t watch the little man leave. I watched the bartender instead, and I watched the way the whisky spilled from the neck of the bottle over the lip of the glass.

The pistol shots were rapid and short. Two in a row. Two short cracks like the beat of a stick against a snare drum rim. I lifted my head and turned it toward the door just in time to see the small man reach out for the door jamb. He fell against his own hand and began dropping toward the floor slowly, like a blob of butter sliding down a knife. A streak of crimson followed his body down the length of the jamb, and then he collapsed on the floor in a lifeless little ball.

I ran over to the door and threw it wide. The street outside was dark, covered with a filmy rain slick, dimly lighted by a solitary lamppost on the corner. I could hear the staccato click of heels running against asphalt, dying out against the blackness of the city.

I turned back to the small man. The bartender was already leaning over him. “You know him?” he asked.

“No.”

“Looks to me like you knew him.”

I reached up and grabbed the front of the bartender’s shirt, twisting it in my fist. “I said I don’t know him. Just remember that. When the cops crawl out of the woodwork, just remember I never saw this guy in my life.” I pulled his face down to mine. “Remember?”

“I’ll remember,” he said.

“Good. Go mix a Pink Lady or something.” I shoved him away from me and he walked back to the bar, a sulky look on his face.

I felt for a pulse, knowing damn well I wouldn’t find one. I took out the small man’s wallet then, and found a driver’s license made out to Peter D’Allessio. I memorized his address, then put the license back into the wallet. I turned the plastic leaves, saw several pictures of a nice-looking kid with a prominent nose and light-colored eyes. D’Allessio’s son, I figured. The addict. He didn’t look like an addict. He had a full face and a big smile spread over it. His teeth were strong and even. I snapped the wallet shut and put it back into D’Allessio’s pocket, even though he wouldn’t be needing anything in that wallet again.

I passed the bartender and went straight to the phone. I dropped a dime in and then dialed the big O for Operator.

“Your call, please,” she said in a crisp voice.

“Give me the police.”

“Do you wish to report a crime?”

“No, a strawberry festival.”

“What?”

“For Pete’s sake, get me the police.”

I sat in the booth until a tired voice said, “Twelfth Precinct, Cassidy.”

“I want to report a murder.”

His voice got businesslike. “Where?”

I told him.

“Did you witness it?”

“No. I saw the guy die, but I didn’t see who did it.”

“May I have your name, sir?”

“No,” I said, and hung up.

That was that. My hands were washed. I left the booth and walked straight out of the bar, not looking down at D’Allessio. It was dark in the street, and I hesitated for a moment, wondering where to go now, wondering what to do next. Another bar? Sure, why not? I started walking, and I could hear the moan of the police sirens in the distance as they closed in on the remains of a little man who’d had a big problem.

* * *

She found me at my hotel the next morning. I was lying there with the sheet pulled over my face when the knock sounded on the door.

“Who is it?” I called, the effort starting the little hammers going inside my head. I tried sitting up.

“You don’t know me.”

“What do you want, then?”

“I want to talk to you.”

I shrugged and called, “It should be open. Walk in.” She stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. She was small and dark, with her hair pulled tight against the side of her face and caught in a ponytail at the back of her neck. Her face was a narrow oval that framed deep brown eyes and a straight nose. Her lips were well shaped. She wore a white blouse open at the throat, revealing the firm, subtle rise of the young breasts that filled out the blouse.

“Mr. Cordell?” she asked.

“What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you about Jerry D’Allessio.”

“Oh, nuts.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

“Sister, call off the hounds. First the old man and now…”

She moved across the room and stopped near the bed. “Was Mr. D’Allessio…did he contact you, too?”

“He did. He did that.”

“He’s dead. You know he’s dead?”

“I know.”

“They did it, Mr. Cordell. They knew he was trying to do something about Jerry. They wanted to shut him up.”

“They shut him up fine,” I said. I rubbed a hand over the bristle on my chin. “Listen, who’s giving me free publicity? Who’s parking you people on my doorstep? I’m curious.”

Her eyes were serious when she answered, “Everybody knows about you, Mr. Cordell.”

“Then you also know I’m no longer practicing. I’m out of business. We held the clearance sale a long while back.”

“You’re talking about your wife, aren’t you?”

It startled me. It startled the hell out of me because she said it so calmly and because it split a raw wound wide open.

“I think you’d better get the hell out of here,” I said.

“It’s no secret, so there’s nothing to hide,” she went on. “It was in all the papers.”

“Are you leaving or do you get kicked out on your can?”

Her eyes leveled on mine, and she said, “Don’t play it hard, Cordell. I don’t scare.”

“Look…”

“So your wife was playing around,” she said sharply. “So what? You should live in our neighborhood. The wives who
don’t
play around are either crippled or dead.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. I was beginning to tense up. I was beginning to want to smash things.