Sleight of Hand
by Lamont A. Turner
part 1
Doctor Alonzo stood next to me, staring at the crushed throat of the corpse, his expression revealing nothing of his feelings or opinions, if he had any. Having watched the doctor conduct his examination, and having waited in patience for nearly twenty minutes while the doctor stood there like a statue, I grabbed the dead man’s jacket from where it hung on the back of a chair, and draped it over the corpse’s face.
“We wouldn’t want you turning to stone, Doctor,” I said, being sure to let a little of the exasperation I felt seep out.
“A Gorgon would be less fantastic,” replied Alonzo. “Whatever crushed this man’s throat was incredibly powerful. I wouldn’t be surprised if some mechanical contrivance had been employed.”
I lifted the coat and looked again at the mangled neck. “So you’re saying this was done after he was dead?”
“Not at all,” responded the doctor.
“But surely he must have been unconscious when his throat was crushed. There are no other marks on the body, at least none I can see. You’re suggesting he let somebody stomp on his neck without putting up a struggle?”
“He could have been surprised,” the doctor suggested.
“That would rule out your mechanical contrivance theory. I can’t see him sitting there while somebody put his throat in a vise.”
Alonzo frowned, but said nothing.
The dead man had been tentatively identified as William Roseau, a maintenance worker at one of those government installations no one is supposed to know about. The secrecy impeded the investigation considerably. No one would even confirm Roseau had been employed with the government. It was even gently suggested I let the matter lie, misplace the case files or, better yet, drop dead. This didn’t jell with my inquisitive nature. I don’t tend to ignore murders, no matter how much my feelings get hurt. Besides, I was looking into it as a favor to Glenn Kraft, my contact man in the Police Department. A private detective needs all the friends he can get, and Glenn had always been a good one, tossing me tips as well as clients.
I had no clues as to the motive of the crime and wasn’t even certain of the method in which it had been committed. Furthermore, I suspected the late Mr. Roseau had been in a position of greater importance than my sole clue to his profession, a name badge identifying him as a maintenance worker with level four clearance, whatever that meant.
The badge had been found on the floor not far from the body, and it had been partially melted. Here was another conundrum. Why would someone go to the trouble to melt away a portion of the card when it would have been easy enough to have taken it? I concluded that the card had not belonged to Mr. Roseau but had been dropped by the killer and that it had been damaged at some earlier time. Until I knew one way or the other, he would still be Roseau. It seemed more polite than referring to him as “the stiff.”
About three weeks after the murder, while on another field trip to the cooler, Alonzo presented me with a plastic bag containing a man’s head. It appeared to be partially melted.
“A friend of yours?” I asked, handing the head back to Alonzo who scowled at me for my lack of imagination.
“This once belonged to Mr. Roseau,” he said, dangling the bag under my nose. “It fell off.”
“So? There wasn’t much to hold it on, now was there? What happened to his face?”
“The head fell off because the remaining tissue of the neck disintegrated along with most of the rest of him.” Seeing that I failed to grasp the importance of this, he smiled, happy for his moment of perceived superiority. “When I first examined the body, I thought the flesh of the damaged area looked seared.”
“It was burnt?”
“That is what ‘seared’ usually denotes,” he said, setting the head in a tray on a table. “Sometimes I wonder if Steve isn’t the real brains of your little organization.”
“Go on.”
“The burns looked odd, and I wasn’t sure what to make of them, so I decided to say nothing until I had examined the corpse more thoroughly.”
“And?”
“And I am still not sure what to make of it. I had some tests run, but the results were inconclusive. The burns were consistent with a certain type, but there was no residual radiation. However, upon examining the body this morning, I found the damaged area had disintegrated into a white powdery substance. This process seems to be spreading throughout the corpse, and I suspect by this time tomorrow we will have nothing but a pile of dust to examine. One things for certain though: this man is — or rather was — Roseau. The government sent us a set of prints.”
My next stop was police headquarters. I headed straight to the evidence room and asked the clerk to retrieve the name badge. Glenn had pretty much abandoned the case after finding out the government was involved, but had instructed his men to give me whatever I wanted. After several minutes, the clerk returned to his desk, checked the file number in the log book, and then disappeared again. This time I waited a good deal longer before he returned, empty-handed and abashed.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Doverman. The evidence you requested must have been filed incorrectly.”
“It’s missing?”
“For the moment. I’m sure I can track it once I find the code number for the evidence in its place. I guess the two numbers got switched.”
“What’s in its place?”
“It looks like some kind of residue, kind of a powder.”
After examining the bag of dust, and noticing the remains of the metal clip that had once been affixed to the name badge, I told the clerk, who was much relieved to learn he wouldn’t be spending the afternoon checking code numbers, to send the powder to the lab. I was sure the lab boys wouldn’t know what to make of it, but maybe they would find some clue as to why the little evidence I had was vanishing.
* * *
I was in my office, pacing in the usual spot in front of my desk, when the witness was ushered in by Steve, my receptionist, handyman, and all-around go-to guy. I’d hoped to be like the detectives in the movies and hire a pretty girl I could have a torrid affair with, but Steve was the only one who’d answered my ad, showing up about a week after I took up the Roseau case.
Having served a stint with Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms before being sidelined by a bum ticker, he was overqualified, but he insisted he just wanted to keep up on the law and order game while enduring his forced retirement. I tried to explain what I was doing was more along the lines of a game of hide and seek, but he said it would suffice.
“She wants to talk to you alone,” Steve growled between clenched teeth. I could tell he didn’t approve of my guest. “It concerns the McDaniel case.” I nodded and waved him away.
She told me she’d heard I was looking for information on the murder of a man named Don McDaniel. I had her sit down, and studied her while she fidgeted with her purse. As witnesses go, she wasn’t the kind one wants to put on the stand; junkies aren’t particularly credible, but I wanted to hug her nevertheless. I remembered her from my brief stint as a cop on the Vice unit. She was only about twenty-five, but she looked forty.
“I believe we’ve met before,” I said. “Carla, right?” Carla nodded and I suspected her face turned a little red under the thick mascara. “Don’t worry. I’m not with Vice anymore. I’ve been promoted to self-employed,” I said, smiling. “All I’m concerned with is what you know about the murder.”
At the mention of the murder, she began to shake, and I realized it wasn’t just because it was past time for her afternoon fix. I pulled the pint of bourbon and a glass from my desk drawer and poured some for her. Her hand shook so violently I wasn’t sure she would be able to lift the glass to her mouth, but she managed. I filled the glass again.
“What was your relationship with the deceased?” I asked, turning away from her so she wouldn’t have to look at me when she answered.
“He was a john,” she replied.
“He must have been a regular for you to have been in his apartment,” I said, turning to face her.
“No,” she replied, “he just wanted it that way.”
“Kind of unusual isn’t it? You should know better than that by now.”
“It was a slow night, and he was throwing a lot of money around. I bend the rules sometimes if they pay extra.”
“Was he high?”
“Drunk. He didn’t seem the stoner type.”
“OK, tell me about it.”
She looked longingly at the empty glass, and I poured the rest of the fifth into it. After she drained it, she looked me in the eye, and said, “The killer had no arms.” For a moment she searched my face, then, finding no sign of reproach, she repeated, “The killer had no arms.”
“Go on,” I said nodding.
“You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you,” I reassured her. “Now tell me what happened.”
“We were on the couch, when someone rang the bell. My client yelled, ‘Who is it?’ but nobody answered. When the bell rang again, I was told to go in the next room while he answered the door. At first I wasn’t watching, but I thought the guy he let in sounded kinda weird, so I peeked out. That’s when I saw he had no arms.”
“What else did you notice about him?”
“He was about regular size, just average, and his hair was short,” she said. “I think it was gray, but I don’t remember for sure. He wore a shirt with the sleeves ripped off. That’s what I remember the most. It was kinda weird the way he’d left them all ratty and tore up like that. Anyways, my guy kept asking who he was, and what he wanted, and the armless guy kept telling him he already knew. Finally, this card jumps out of the armless guy’s pocket, and floats in the air. I swear!”
“Then what happened?”
“Then my client got scared. Wouldn’t you? He started to walk away from the man, but suddenly he just stops, and starts to shake, and he makes this choking sound.”
“Where was the armless man when this was happening?”
“He was standing right behind him, laughing.” She hugged herself to still the trembling. It didn’t work. I let her rock back and forth in the chair for a minute, and then asked her to continue.
She looked at me like she’d just noticed me for the first time, shook her head, then rocked some more. Finally, she released her grip on herself, to tap her long nails on the desk.
“You don’t believe me,” she said. “They must have found my prints. You think I killed him.”
“I think nothing of the sort.”
“You weren’t looking for me?”
“No. Now please tell me what happened after you saw the man laugh.”
“I hid. I hid between the bed and the wall until I heard the door close, and I figured the armless man was gone. Then I went out, and saw the john was dead. He was staring up at me with his eyes all bugged out and his throat was all crushed like somebody had run it over with a car. It made me sick.”
“What did you do next?”
“I was afraid everyone would think I did it, so I tried to wipe my prints off of anything I remembered touching, and I left. Then, last night I saw the guy. At least I thought I did.”
“You saw the armless man last night?”
“I could swear it was him, only now he had arms. Maybe they were fake, I don’t know. He was wearing yellow gloves. And he did have gray hair. I’m sure of it now. He didn’t look that old, but he had gray hair. He tried to pick up one of the other girls, but I called her away and warned her. She just laughed at me, but when she went back he was gone.”
McDaniel’s daughter was paying me good money to find out why he wouldn’t be coming to Christmas dinner any more, and so far all I had to tell her was her dad liked his hookers on the crazy side.
* * *
That afternoon I stopped by the crime scene along with an apartment manager who yawned a lot and liked to stand too close, but she was too pretty for me to mind being crowded. The doorbell of the murdered man’s apartment didn’t quite line up with the hole it was set in. I pressed it, and heard it buzz.
“Why’d you replace the doorbell?” I asked Sleeping Beauty, who seemed more invested in breathing on my neck than in holding shut the pink bathrobe over the black panties that, along with the pink slippers, completed her ensemble.
At first she’d seemed put off at having her sleep interrupted so I could look at the murdered man’s apartment, but she seemed to be warming up to me. Maybe she realized that knocking on the door of her apartment on the floor below, the one with the sign that said “Apartment Manager,” wasn’t that out of line at one in the afternoon.
“It had a short or something,” she said, running delicate fingers through her tousled brown mane, fluffing up the spots where the pillow had done the most damage. “The tenant in the next unit kept complaining it was going off for no reason, keeping him up all night.”
“This happen before or after the murder?” I asked.
“Right after,” she said. “The walls are pretty thin, and Mr. Laski, the tenant who complained, is a pain in the ass. Personally, I was hoping the maintenance man would take his time getting to it. If it ran off Mr. Laski all the better, but I’m just the property manager here. What I want doesn’t matter.”
“Know if Laski was home the night of the murder?” I asked.
“Probably,” she said with a shrug. “As far as I know, the old bastard never leaves his apartment. I doubt if you’ll get much out of him. I heard he gave the police a pretty tough time.”
I found Laski’s door and leaned on the buzzer until a purple-faced troll with pants pulled up to his chest and his shirt collar buttoned tight around his thick red neck appeared.
“Why are you ringing my bell?” Laski bellowed, leaning so hard on his cane I was waiting for it to go through the floor. I had to phrase my question just right if I didn’t want to end up kissing the door.
“I’m investigating the murder of the man who lived next to you,” I said apologetically. “I’m sorry for your loss. I heard the two of you were pretty close.”
He wasn’t about to let that stand. I wondered what would burst first, the veins throbbing at his temples or the button of his shirt collar. He raised his cane and waved it at me.
“He was a goddamned pervert!” he shouted. “Keeping me up all night entertaining his whores! Getting into fights with guys whose wives he was screwing! I’m glad he’s dead. At least now I might be able to get some sleep!”
“Did you hear anything unusual the night he was killed?” I asked, using my sleeve to wipe his spittle from my face.
“I already said all this to the cops,” he said. “I heard him talking to one of his whores, and then one of the guys he’d been fighting with the other day showed up and there was a bunch of noise. After that, I took a pill and stopped listening.”
“The man you heard had been here before?”
“That’s what I said,” he growled. “I guess my ears are a lot better than yours.”
“Hear anything they said with those good ears of yours?” I asked.
“No, I was trying to tune it out. It was just a bunch of noise. Now do you mind getting lost and leaving me alone?”
I didn’t mind at all. I’d gotten everything I was going to get from him. As the door slammed shut, I heard a soft chuckle.
“I warned you,” said the pretty property manager. “The guy’s a pain. He’s right about McDaniel, though; he was a pervert.”
I left her there after learning her name was Marcy and that the last two digits of her phone number were the same as the number of her apartment.
* * *
Copyright © 2021 by Lamont A. Turner
