The Walking Wounded Read online

  purpose. The hem of the corset was cut upward in a V, outlining each buttock baldly and

  boldly. Never have I felt sillier or as terrified. The manacles clattered noisily along the

  iron bar of the rail as I tried to dodge backwards, away from him.

  He came on, no longer talking, no more explanations or arguments.

  The debate, the breathing time was over.

  It was Pay Day for him. Final Curtain for me.

  Behind his wide shoulders and lank-haired head, I could have sworn I saw the

  ghost of Dolores Ainsley. Laughing, goading, pushing him on. There were echoes of

  ghoulish, vulgar laughter in the room.

  It was Mother's Day for Jo Malmedy.

  The day he had waited for all his life. Since he was a child.

  And he wasn't going to be gentle with me.

  His sanity depended upon my dying. So did his freedom, now.

  No more. No less.

  And he wanted to go on living. Go on writing. Suddenly, he sprang up before me, larger than a magnified monster, and the

  twin hypodermics shot at me. Coming on like express trains.

  The rump shot wasn't important anymore.

  He'd inject me anywhere he could.

  Knock me out and then hang me.

  It wouldn't be a nice way to die.

  Not even sado-masochistically-fetishistically speaking.

  Death in a blue room would be a large horselaugh, too.

  Anyway you looked at it.

  The perfect Marx Brothers touch to finish the whole awful joke.

  The capper for two people who never should have met.

  In this life, or the next. "We all write at our own level

  of understanding…"

  Flannery O'Connor

  TOMB SERVICE

  You always have to do something when Death walks up to you and you do have a

  second or two to acknowledge the introduction. Standing up or lying down, you have to

  take your best shot.

  With Jo Malmedy charging me in the cramped space of the tub and the distance

  between its porcelain parapet and the side wall, I took it. On a wing, a prayer, and a

  kick from the grave itself.

  I had edged along the shower rail as far as I could, making him close in after me.

  I halted when I had to. At the back wall, where the nozzles, faucets and levers of the

  water system jutted out like so many chrome trophies from the blue panorama of hotel

  wealth. As corseted and mummified as I was, I managed to hook my right leg upward as

  far as it could go, angle it around the HOT faucet and give the damn thing a full halfturn. Then I jangled back the way I had come, kneeing Malmedy as I went and trundling

  past him like an overweighted knight in armor. The corset was just as confining and

  hampering. I was moving with an elephantine speed and grace.

  The metal cuffs clanged, grated and seemed to shoot sparks as I broke past Jo

  Malmedy. I felt rather than saw him collide with my own body. There was a stabbing,

  sudden pin-prick, a sensation of a needle, but it could have been my imagination. And

  then there was no time to even think about that. The miracle I had wanted was ready for

  me. For me and him, too. The shower spout, sleek and shining, emitted a bursting,

  roaring waterfall of rushing, steaming spray. No drought-plagued farmer ever felt about

  water as I did at that particular second. The world danced with jubilation. I think I

  shouted. I'm not sure. The cataracting roar drowned out all sounds. All except Jo

  Malmedy's fierce, blurted scream. Of agony, surprise and naked terror. I had butted

  him with my hip and he had tried to duck back, hadn't made it, the hands holding the

  hypodermics limiting the use of his arms to check his fall because he had wanted to hang

  onto them without breaking them. And it had cost him. The rim of the slick tub had

  toppled him, half-in, half-out, with his legs still braced to the bathroom floor. But the

  movement had placed him head and shoulders directly under the angled spray above him.

  He caught the whole deluge.

  It wasn't scalding water but it obviously was hot enough to do the job. The job I

  wanted. To occupy him while I did some other things.

  He was still yelling, dropping the twin syringes and they broke noiselessly on the

  porcelain bottom of the tub, swept up by the water. He tried to push away now, his

  long-Jesus hair unkempt, plastered to his skull, fighting to get back, away from the steaming shower fall. It wasn't easy. He slipped and slid, trying to duck over. I couldn't

  wait anymore. I couldn't afford to think about the hot water, either. As hot as it might

  be. Salvation had come at a moment's notice. You had to grab the chance.

  I trundled back along the iron shower rail, on my own private electric trolley line,

  arms up like a Simon Says parody. Just as he shoved desperately back from the hissing,

  steaming spray, gasping and choking like a landed fish. Shaking his drenched hair, the

  seersucker suit a wrinkled laugh. The hot water touched me and burned. In all that

  roaring confusion, tumultuous meeting of two walking nightmares---Jo Malmedy and

  me---a last ditch effort ought to come with water. Somehow, it seemed the most

  appropriate thing in the whole wide world.

  He saw me coming. In a shooting flash of realization. And awe.

  First there was the back of his head, then his broad-planed face whirling to

  confront me. Opened wide, dumbfounded, almost frightened. There was no more time

  to see anything else. Not even his wild green eyes.

  For one charged instant, I swung my trussed-up body off the floor of the tub,

  using the locked hands above the iron railing to pendulum myself. I didn't consider my

  weight for a moment. The shower curtain rail was a permanent fixture. And that was all

  the time I took. To ram full-tilt, swinging madly like a runaway derrick crane, head-on

  into his rather good-looking young face. There's no way of saying Excuse Me to a

  murderous killer. No way at all---there wasn't even room for sorrow or regret in me,

  because he had driven all that out with his shooting of Marcel Alevoinne. Orphan or not,

  Dolores or not, it was me or him.

  The oldest ploy in the books. For anybody and everybody. Self. There was a heart-stopping thud and crunch, a blur of crimson, and then a tidal

  wave of stinging, flaming water and no more. I had ploughed into him like an enraged

  bull and I could have been a stone wall, for all the difference. The blue room, steaming

  and hissing, took on all crazy kinds of colors. I shot back along the iron railing, my

  hands raw and bleeding, my wrists crying out in agony. I throbbed.

  And the roaring water pounded and there was a huddled mass on the floor

  between the porcelain tub and the narrow space before the side wall. Jo Malmedy was a

  crumpled heap of meaningless angles and distortions. Through a blur, I could only see

  the back of his head. He was too far away from me to slide down the line again to see if

  he was dead or know just how long he would be unconscious. There was long one thing

  left to do. The only thing that could make sense, give or take an insane notion. I did it.

  Through the seething hot water, the blazing burble of continual spray, I

  managed to kick the HOT faucet shut again. Clouds of steam engulfed me, sauna style,

  as I wobbled forward, wincing all the way. I found the tub lever which would hold the

  water in without letting it go down the drain. I kicked that open, locking it
in place.

  Then I did a repeat on the HOT nozzle and got back as fast as my bruised muscles would

  allow. The lights of the room were beginning to weave and bob. A flickering, unreal,

  pale blue glow. I didn't guess anymore about the one hypodermic needle. He had nailed

  me with it, obviously. My eyes were playing tricks. Objects were weaving--Jo

  Malmedy looked like he was moving---I shook my head---it wouldn't clear---the world

  was starting to dance. Far-off music seemed to penetrate the inner part of my ears. But it

  wasn't music, of course, It was the return of the hissing, rushing, steaming water. I

  would have kicked myself if I could have. But the corset didn't go away. It wasn't a bad dream. Why hadn't I turned on the COLD? It would have served my purpose just as

  well--

  I started to laugh.

  A mixture of hysteria, pain and laudanum in equal parts.

  I couldn't stop laughing.

  Malmedy was right, the poor, blind bastard.

  It was an idiotic world. An insane one. The cockeyed caravan that I liked to call

  it, out of Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels.

  Because---suppose--

  Just suppose---Malmedy wasn't dead, was only unconscious and the water I had

  turned on again, as hot as it was, was enough to wake him up again. Long before the

  tub would fill with water, then overflow, and race out into the main room and under the

  door and maybe seep down to the rooms below where somebody would complain and

  somebody from the hotel staff would get anxious enough to telephone and then when

  they didn't get any answer, finally, finally, mind you, come banging on the room door

  to inquire just what the hell was Mr. Carl Denham, of Hollywood, California, doing in

  the bathroom that required that amount of water?

  It was funny, thinking about it. Screamingly funny.

  Especially in a blue room which wouldn't stand still, which kept changing shape

  and size and wiggled and waggled like a cooch dancer in an old carnival tent show. I

  laughed some more about that, too.

  There was no Jo Malmedy.

  There had never been a Dolores Ainsley. Certainly not an Alma Wheeler who loved me and who I loved and then she went

  away for a long time and got killed in some tornado blowing across the country. Who

  made all that up?

  Not me, certainly. It was him. The guy on the floor. The kid with the vivid

  imagination who wrote incredible plays and outfitted his dreams with fantastic props.

  Like bondage corsets and hypodermic needles and silencer-pistols. Jesus---what an

  imagination!

  All around me, the watery world pounded and roared on. Steaming and hissing.

  Filling the atmosphere with flying spray and vapor. A great warmth closed over me. Not

  hot and angry and painful. But sweet-smelling, like bars of fresh laundry soap and

  foamy suds. And soft and filmy, like the silken undergarments of a woman you might be

  crazy about.

  Laudanum days-and-nights possessed me. Pipe dreams.

  And I was laughing again.

  Then maybe crying, too.

  It wasn't easy to tell in all that water.

  I was in a nightclub somewhere. I couldn't see the crowd. I could only hear the

  music and spot a cone of yellow light. Under the flood-lit glare, a tall, sexily-curvy,

  long-haired blonde came out in a sequined evening gown and began to sing. Her mouth

  was very red, her eyes were very sad and there was something very familiar about her.

  But there was a smile on her lips and a throb in her voice, which was low and husky, as

  she began to sing her love song. It was a strange number. Hot a standard at all. I was sure I had never heard it

  before. Still, the blonde was great to look at.

  And her voice wasn't bad either: The Question of the moment is

  Her's or His?

  And my distress

  As a mistress

  Is that you're always between a mister and a mattress. I filled my sweaters at an early age

  My figure has always been the Rage

  I've always been 'built' and blonde and smart But men made jokes that broke my heart.

  What's a girl to do

  When she dreams of you

  And you never show up?

  What's a girl to crave

  With nothing left to save

  And you never grow up?

  I began to squirm uncomfortably in my seat. The blonde was coming toward me.

  The spotlight was moving with her. She looked more familiar than ever. Like a famous

  movie star. Or---I got tired of waiting for you….. What's a girl to do

  When Love's a witch's brew She can never throw up?

  I got tired to waiting…. For you…….

  The tall, long-haired blonde came closer. The red mouth widened, the sad eyes

  blinked back the tears. The smile never left the carmine lips. There was a roaring in my

  ears. My heart was thumping. What's a girl to do

  When she yearns for you And you never…..

  I pushed back from my chair, turning, running off into the night. The tall, long

  haired blonde did not follow me.

  They never can.

  In your dreams.

  And nightmares.

  And you can't go back upstairs to tell the Almas anything anymore. "I'm a money player, Owen. I'll deliver

  when the chips are down on the board."

  Brian Donlevy

  YOU CAN'T KISS A CORPSE

  Q: Sorry about this. Last time around the block, Noon. The D.A.'s office wants

  this nice and neat. Without the loose ends.

  A: No sweat, Di Gregorio. You have your job to do.

  Q: Vince. We're friends. Remember?

  A: Sure What's the matter with me?

  Q: Neat trick with the bathtub. Saved your hide. You know that water went

  down two whole floors?

  A: As long as it worked. The hotel can check its plumbing while they're at it.

  And all the little cracks and holes in the plaster--

  Q: You okay? You look a little funny.

  A: I'll live. How's Malmedy? Q: He'll live too. To take the whole count. You can press charges, if you want

  to. Though the Murder One for the writer will sew him up good and proper.

  A: He doesn't need my two cents. Forget my end.

  Q: You broke his nose and gave him a compound fracture of the skull. But from

  what you told us---the routine with the shower curtain rail---and hitting him head-on like

  that---I don't see how he lived through it.

  A: He was a man with a dream. A vision. They're hard to kill, Vince.

  Q: That so? You don't prove it by me. No dreamer can stop a .45 slug tearing

  through his chest. Like this Alevoinne, huh? He was a big dreamer from what I hear.

  And a bit of a tough nut, too.

  A: That was different. He happened to get in the way. Between me and what

  Malmedy had planned for me.

  Q: Do you know a woman named Valerie Wales?

  A: Not lately. Why?

  Q: Material witness. From Boston. A blue-blood. Malmedy shacked up with

  her in his Tudor Place address. She's turned over a batch of notes that Malmedy made

  while he was lining you up for the hit. You want to read them?

  A: No. I've got enough bad dreams already.

  Q: Suit yourself. You want to see Malmedy?

  A: No, again.

  Q: That's good. He doesn't want to see you, either. He said you'd understand

  that. Do you, Noon?

  A: It's the only thing I do understand about this whole lousy mess.
Q: What's this Carl Denham alias you used at Essex House? That mean

  anything?

  A: Only that I've see King Kong about fifty times and loved every minute of it.

  Why?

  Q: We're putting it in your record. For future use. So find yourself another set of

  handles.

  A: Thanks. I will.

  Q: You may be called at the trial. You may not. Depends on the lawyer the kid

  gets. He might want to drag this whole Dolores Ainsley business back in as a motive.

  You know the routine---the unwritten law---like a guy catching his best pal with the wife.

  After all, you did kill Jo Malmedy's old lady. Even if it was accidental, line of duty and

  over twenty years ago.

  A: Sure, Vince. I'll stay in touch.

  Q: Good boy. You've been a big help in all this, Noon. We appreciate it. I

  appreciate it. I'll tell Monks when he gets back. He likes to get good report cards on you.

  A: I know he does. We all through now?

  Q: Just one more thing.

  A: Hit me.

  Q: Keep your nose clean, Noon. All the time.

  A: Sure, Vince. Why not?

  Q: That's the boy. Show Mr. Noon the door, Connolly.

  A: Goodbye, Vince. It's been keen.

  Q: Sure, Shamus. Anything you say. After Lieutenant Di Gregorio turned me loose, with the official blessings of the

  New York Police Department, I left the gingerbread buildings of Headquarters and took

  a quiet cab down to the Battery. There was no sun that day and it seemed altogether

  fitting and proper. I was in the middle of a wake, anyway.

  A silent requiem to the Dead.

  They still were running the ferries out to the island where the tall lady of stone,

  lined with copper, green with the march of the years, stands high and proud in the

  harbor. They don't call it Bedloe's Island anymore; it's Liberty Island now, in honor of

  those millions of unwashed and poor and homeless who were cast adrift on these United

  States. The huddled masses of Lazarus' lovely poem.

  There was a Golden Door out in that harbor.

  I wanted to see the Lady again. I had to. After twenty years. After that killing

  shot down a winding flight of metal stairs. The ancient bullet which had sent a modern

  avenger off into the night after a man he liked, really didn't hate and yet had to destroy.

  Warm winds fanned over the water, my tie fluttered as I stood in the bow of the