“Now what’s he gonna do… start breaking up the furniture?”
Step is sitting open-legged on a plain wooden chair. His jaw, long and sallow, is propped up by a half-clenched fist, hard-balanced from the knee.
He removes his hat and produces a crumpled pack of Wagon Wheel cigarettes from his breast coat pocket.
“The son of a bitch looks like he could rip off my arm,” he thinks.
Dickerson takes one of the cigarettes between two fingers but doesn’t light it or put it in his mouth.
Step takes off his hat and covers the other knee with it.
“Go on. Light it up, will ya? Stick it in your face and strike the match. You’ll feel better and so will I. The room will first fill with the smell of sulfur, then a haze of filthy smoke. No noise, just puffing and maybe later the low murmur of two male voices – the same two that are always heard in this room at this time of night. No shouting and few harsh words. No laughing dames or grunting fat men. Just two guys talking over their affairs in the early hours of evening. Everything will seem close to normal – everything except that poor slob’s body slumped over the floor boards, that is.”
Dickerson is now pacing, or looks like he wants to start pacing, but instead just shifts his weight from one foot to the other in what could pass for a stage dance step if it weren’t for his neck stiffening up, his throat gulping down soup spoons of saliva, his eyes jerking up and over into their corners.
“I’ve got an idea, Step.”
Step lowers his head to put his hat back on and keeps it low, looking at the floor. Near the wall lie a crumpled white lab coat, dark checked pants and slip-on leather shoes – almost slippers really. The face is chubby and yellow. One of the lenses of the dark-framed glasses has a spider web crack across it, all white and chipped like ice. The other lens is frozen in time, a window with an eye wide open, stark, dark and oriental.
…
Earlier that evening, Step had gone out for some tobacco, stopping in, as he sometimes did, at the establishment of Mr. Harry A. Christian.
It was Monday, and the latest girlie magazines from India would be in stock. Homely, sheet-bound women being groped, slapped, and half unwrapped by a salacious mustachioed uncle or the like. All portrayed in glossy still shots, with captions in Eastern English: “Shut up now you whore or else,” and “Tell your father and you die.”
Step would sometimes peruse these periodicals with no particular intent. “It amused him,” was all you could say regarding his motivation.
On this particular occasion, the cash register is being manned by a large tinsel-haired fellow with clumsy hands, but Harry soon appears from the back, his large eyes rising above the horizon of his wire-framed spectacles.
“Hello, Mr. Step. So nice to see you this evening.”
“Hello, Harry.”
“What is it that I can do for you?” says the proprietor, his eyes coming alive, taking in the man, the opportunity at hand.
Step buys a small package of Red Man tobacco and pretends he doesn’t notice Christian sticking the freshly printed edition of Delhi Delights into the brown paper bag. Moments later he’s out on the street looking for a liquor store. The pavement’s wet and shiny, so he can almost see himself stalking along it under the street lamps.
…
Dickerson knew that they’d come looking for Woo. How could it be otherwise? And he’d be a prime suspect. Woo had lots of patients, and many were violent. But who else would he be meeting in this flat? They could have been interrogating The Ferret, who’d pulled a switch blade and slashed the unsuspecting shrink… but there are no stab wounds. Also, The Ferret couldn’t wield a butter knife without cutting himself. What about Josh Davies? It was certainly believable. Add a little post mortem mutilation, and you could fit him to the crime like a sleek evening dress. Ha, Davies, the septuagenarian transvestite! But Step would never go for it. Too messy, and he’d be certified as an accomplice.
“I guess I’ll just leave the body here till I can think of something better. There’s no helping it…”
“Take it easy, Dirk. These things happen. Call it a professional hazard,” says Step.
“Shut up and give me a pinch of that Red Man.”
Step tears off a corner from the plastic pouch and sprinkles a bit of its contents into his partner’s outstretched hand.
Dickerson, now crouched over Woo, with his wingtips just inches from the blood from the corner of his mouth, begins to stuff the tobacco into Woo’s nose and ears.
Step looks on with vague interest.
“Crazy son of a bitch, I should have expected as much. First it was The Ferret fantasies, then the firing, and now he whacks Woo in a fit. Not that I feel sorry for the Chinaman. I feel sorry for me. So what do I do: Say I’m going for some more Red Man and not come back? No, I can just see him lurking the backstreets of Podil, asking to be caught. His own wife might turn him in. Sorry sap! Anyway, it’s first things first, and that means getting rid of the stiff before the cleaning lady arrives.”
…
Back at the store:
“I think that guy pinched a fresh copy of Delhi Delights,” says Publowsky.
“Oh, and how would you know such a thing?”
“Well, they come 12 in a stack, and now there are only 10, but he only bought one, and I’m not sure he even paid for that.”
“Then we’re one short in the porn department, aren’t we? One short of family filth and undisguised sin, but I think we’ll do ok at the end of the day.”
Filed December 24, 2014