Lyfeldt was a cross on the floor of the lobby, the mark of his own point of death, head bent at an impossible angle, gun flung a few feet from his flared fingers.
“Thank God,” sobbed Bunting.
Later he began to amend his reaction.
Detective Subur, British-trained and — accented, had courtesy he was deploying like a weapon. Beside him, pale and upset, Mokerjee, manager of the Tropique, kept darting glances at Porter Bunting as if unable to believe what he saw.
“Lyfeldt was a criminal,” Bunting repeated wearily. “What they call a hit man — a professional killer.”
Subur frowned in a good facsimile of puzzlement. “With great respect, sir, no. Mr. Lyfeldt was a salesman. He sold electrical goods. This I know, because until recently I was in our Immigration Department.
“Mr. Lyfeldt made several visits, and I personally checked his documents. He held full accreditation from our Board of Trade.”
Bunting sneered and shook his head. “Cover!”
“I doubt it, sir.” Subur might have been discussing cricket statistics. “Mr. Lyfeldt sold several consignments of radios to my uncle. They were shaped like fruits, as it might be — apples, bananas, oranges. Good radios. I assure you, the late lamented gentleman was a salesman.”
“But he had a gun!”
Subur’s smile was gleaming white, a positive sunburst. “Not exactly, sir. Not quite. It was a device for spraying the throat and bronchial passages and so forth. Mr. Lyfeldt suffered from breathing difficulties. It may have escaped your attention, but our climate is ever so very slightly humid. Poor Mr. Lyfeldt found it oppressive. Hence the sprayer. No known caliber — not a firearm of any form.”
Mokerjee blurted out, “Wicked lies! This man had arguments with Mr. Lyfeldt — burst into his bedroom and shouted at him.”
“Exactly,” Detective Subur murmured.
“I used his shower, that’s all!”
“But it was not your room.” Subur raised a languid, pink-palmed hand. “No matter. You were at odds with the deceased and, by your own admission, crept out at dead of night and in a stealthy, covert, one might say ambushing mode of conduct shoved him to perdition. Yes?”
“No! Well, in a way. No — he was hanging around outside my room!”
To Bunting’s surprise, Mokerjee nodded agreement. “Mr. Lyfeldt wanted to speak to you. He was terribly worried you might dismiss him — end his employment.”
Bunting mouthed feebly. “Fire him? I didn’t know the man!”
“Except for killing him,” Subur amended suavely.
“I’ve explained that.”
Frowning judiciously, Subur commented, “You have told me many things and explained nothing. What is this about ending the deceased’s employment?”
While Bunting gobbled helplessly, the manager burst out again. “Mr. Lyfeldt had a long chat with Mr. Trump, our nice English guest. After dinner.
“Then Mr. Trump went to catch his plane. Mr. Lyfeldt came to me, most agitated, asking if you were in your room, whether it was too late to disturb you. He had just learned that you had bought the Nadir Novelty Radio Company of New Orleans, and was anxious to apologize before you discharged him for arguing with you over his room.”
Head whirling, Bunting made a mosquito-shooing gesture. “This is lunacy! I wouldn’t buy a radio firm!”
He stopped with an audible gulp. Detective Subur noted a guilty tremor and leaned forward. Cases involving mercurial, ill-disciplined aliens were always good for local headlines. This madman Bunting was about to confess.
Porter Bunting was remembering why he hadn’t been pleased, right at the back of his mind, to meet Ronnie Trump. Itching powder, thumb-tacked chairs, short-sheeted beds...
The Last Trump had been a compulsive practical joker.
A Deal in Dust
by Dale L. Walker
Penn told Bailey he might have some important information...
Jack Penn smelled like a frycook and I wouldn’t want to eat where he worked. The effluvium of hot grease and onions that radiated from him was thick enough to slice with a spatula. Also, he dressed the part — a T-shirtful of belly hanging over the waist of white trousers. A hamburger and fries in white sneakers.
I saw him occasionally at Bronk’s, the saloon on Fourteenth and Apple where night workers tend to congregate before heading home to the sack. Bank guards, hospital workers, hack drivers, off-duty cops, and morning-newspaper people like me favor Bronk’s — mainly because it’s open, centrally located, and cheap. But people also like the proprietor-bartender, Leo Nagursky, a gnarly faced, fireplug-shaped former Chief Gunner’s Mate who serves unwatered booze and cold beer in glassware you can see through.
Although I didn’t know his name then, I talked with Jack Penn at Bronk’s twice. The first time he was standing kneading his hands under the hot-air dryer in the men’s room while I jabbed at the soap dispenser, trying to liberate a little of the latherless yellow slime that was clogging it.
“The Oilers took a bad licking from Pittsburgh Sunday, huh?” Penn said in my general direction.
“Huh?” I answered to his image in the mirror, identifying his odor and line of work.
“Why can’t the damn Cowboys be the ones playing the Steelers instead of Houston?” he said wistfully.
An Oiler fan? Here? I thought. “Yeah,” I said. “The Cowboys should have to play them.”
With that and a quick glance at me in the mirror, he pushed through the door, leaving some of the spoor behind.
The second and last time I spoke to him I was sitting on one of Bronk’s barstools, head propped on one hand, nursing a draft Bud and mindlessly watching a TV program called something like “Celebrity Challenge.” It consisted of grown men and women, together with ungrown boys and girls — all of them stars of various small-bore TV shows — klutzing around an obstacle course of some kind. The course was so rudimentary Sidney Greenstreet could have breezed through it without breathing hard, but an adult sports announcer was ooh-ing and aah-ing and asking serious questions of the sweating celebs as if he was covering the Munich games. It was stupid and embarrassing. Naturally, I was fascinated with it.
“Hey, excuse me,” a voice to my left said. “Are you Bailey? The Bailey that writes for the Sentinel?”
I swiveled my face on my palm to answer, but I knew who was talking to me. Sherlock used to leave Watson gaping by identifying people’s trades by the calluses on their thumbs or the ink on their cuffs. My deductive reasoning is a lot simpler — a whiff of grease and onions equals frycook.
“I’m Bailey,” I said to Penn. “How’d the Oilers do Sunday?”
“Huh?” He’d forgotten our previous conversation. “Oh, they beat hell out of the Bengals. What I wanted to say, though — I’d like to talk with you sometime. I read a story of yours and I might have something you’d be interested in.”
I’ve been a police reporter too long — twenty-seven years all told — to make the mistake of wondering what a frycook could have to tell me that I’d be interested in. Some of the best tips I’ve ever had have been from complete strangers who saw my byline and called me. And since the Sentinel sometimes runs a little half-column mug shot of me with my choicer stories, I’m recognized in a bar now and then.
But I did make a mistake with Penn, now that I think back on it. If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have been so snappish. Maybe I was anxious to get back to the poor man’s Olympics on TV — and maybe I’m getting old. You can’t rewrite history.