Country music twang; sitcom robot laughter; slap and tickle, thrust and groan—all the familiar sounds of motel life behind those heavy dusty faded curtains and loose doors a ten-year-old could open if you gave him a few minutes.
I used my old Cub Scout pocket knife. Best eighty-nine cents I’d ever spent. I was inside in less than thirty seconds.
I used a penlight to look around. There was a briefcase that didn’t reveal a lor besides his taste in reading. Three western paperbacks by Luke Short. At least he had good taste in frontier stories.
I found what I wanted in a manila envelope. I sat down in a chair and lighted a cigarette and started looking through all the clippings. In case he decided to burst through the door, I put my .38 in my lap.
There was, it seemed, a magic act known as “The Majestic Magic-ans.” Judging by the clippings, they played every kind of venue there was, from the seamier lounges in Vegas to VFW halls in Beloit, Wisconsin. Most of the clippings weren’t reviews, just notices that “The Majestic Magic-ans” were about to or had appeared there.
There were two reviews and both of them were moderately favorable as to the magic part of the show but almost lascivious when it came to the male reviewer discussing the “beautiful assistant Shandra.” She sure as hell was beautiful, especially half-naked in her Magic-ans costume. The only time I’d seen her she was dead back there in the bomb shelter.
The magician was a plucky little guy in a cheap tux and a top hat. According to the reviews his name was Michael Reeves and Shandra was his sister. I knew him, of course, as Hastings the bounty hunter. Seeing them together in the newspaper photos I saw, for the first time, a family resemblance. General shape of head; the shape of the eyes. On her the physical details were beautiful; on him they were undefined, unfinished somehow, not long enough in the kiln perhaps, the way a little kid’s face is unfinished.
In the back of the envelope were several glossies of various luminaries standing with the Magic-ans. They ran to TV stars who no longer had shows to sports stars who didn’t get in the game as much as they used to. The men always managed to have a possessive arm slung around Shandra’s neck. One of them—and this made me laugh out loud—was quite obviously peering down her very low-cut gown. All the glossies were scribbled with all the usual show-biz bullshit accolades. “Greatest magic act I’ve ever seen!” “To two dear friends!” I wished just one of them would have been honest and said, “I’d pay a million bucks to get into your knickers, Shandra!” You know, break the monotony of all the hype and get to the real subject at hand.
I had to take a leak and so I did. And while I was standing there at the john I smelled it. There’s no other odor like it.
I got done, zipped up, washed my hands in the rusty sink, turned around and faced the narrow closet door. He probably hadn’t taken to smelling too bad when the owner’s daughter made a quick sweep of the room earlier. And there would have been no reason for her to look in the closet.
I took a deep breath and opened the closet door and damned if he didn’t fall straight out at me the way closeted corpses always did in “Abbott and Costello” movies.
I pushed him back inside quickly. Propping up corpses is way down on my list of things that give me pleasure, right next to emptying bedpans and listening to Paul Harvey.
But I still had to hold him up with one hand while I used my penlight to find the wound that had killed him. Didn’t take long. Somebody had used something heavy to smash in the back left side of his head. Wouldn’t take all that much.
I had to slam the door shut quick so he wouldn’t fall out again. I heard his forehead bounce off the inside of the door. If he hadn’t been dead, he sure was now.
Then I went to the phone and dialed the police station. The dispatcher, who was a good guy, told me all about the body in the bomb shelter and said that every cop on the shift was out there except for Lonesome Bob Tehearn who was, by any reckoning, in the fates-worse-than-death category when you wanted help with a murder investigation. But I needed somebody to come out here, listen to my story, and then take over.
“Well, I’ll see if I can find him. You know, Lonesome Bob takes an awful lot of naps,” the dispatcher said, “and sometimes he sleeps right through my calls.”
“Well, if you can wake him up, please send him over here.”
“I’ll do what I can, McCain. But it may take a little while. Especially if he’s at the park. He’s got this little nook there where he really sacks out. I like it better when he just pulls into an alley downtown. The teenagers usually spot him and start throwing stuff at his car. That way he don’t sleep so long.”
Lonesome Bob Tehearn was Cliffie’s first cousin, in case you’re wondering how he’d lasted so long on the force.
Lonesome Bob arrived thirty-five minutes later. He was a tall, lanky hound dog of a man with stooped shoulders and a grin he grinned frequently and seemingly for no reason at all. He was also the proud owner of a truckload of cheap after-shave. It was so strong that if you ever stood downwind of it, tears would start streaming down your cheeks.
He got the name “Lonesome Bob” in the days after World War II when he found himself being asked to be the best man at the wedding of the girl he’d been engaged to all the time he was overseas. The groom had formerly been Bob’s best friend, a 4-F’er on account of an old knee injury. Or so he said, his uncle on the draft board notwithstanding.
For reasons unfathomable to most of our species, Lonesome Bob accepted, thus making everybody at the wedding extremely nervous as they waited for him to pull out a gun and kill the bride and groom. But no such thing happened.
Lonesome Bob had never married. He lived in a small cabin a mile out of town, the exterior walls being decorated with license plates from all over the world. Most folks couldn’t stand to go inside Lonesome Bob’s cabin because of all the squirrel meat he fried and ate. Lonesome Bob liked to say that eating squirrel took care of two of his passions—hunting and eating.
People tell me that squirrel meat tastes pretty good but I’ve never been able to get close enough to it to find out. The stench’ll make blood start firing from your ears.
While Lonesome Bob went in and looked at Hastings, or whatever his real name was, I called my apartment to see how the beautiful Pamela Forrest was doing.
Doing pretty well, I thought the instant she said hello. She was drunk and giggly. I’d gotten over being mad at her. She hadn’t humiliated me all those years; I had humiliated me all those years. Not her problem that I was foolish enough to hang on to the bumper while her car dragged me over burning coals and broken glass. I was trying to be rational and reasonable about all those heartbroken years I’d spent pursuing her because I’d decided that sleeping with her tonight sounded pretty damned good. Bygones be bygones and all that. At least until dawn.
“Hey! Sam baby!”
Sam baby? “You sound like you’re in a pretty good mood.”
“Best mood I’ve been in a long time.” Then she hiccoughed. “God, am I bombed.”
“Gee, really. I hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re so—what’s the word?”
“Sarcastic?”
“Yeah. Right. Sarcastic.”
“Well, I was worrying you might be depressed or something was why I called. But you seem to be doing all right.”
Then she got coy, playful. I’d never heard her be coy and playful before. I actually hated coy and playful. “Wait’ll you get here, Sam baby. You’re gonna be surprised.” And before I could say anything: “And you know what else, Sam baby?”