When Graveyards Yawn by G. Wells Taylor (popular books to read txt) 📖

I was in a hallway in a rundown building in Gritburg. Elmo waited outside in our new car. It was a rusty remake of the Chrysler 2000, long lost cousin to our deceased Newport; it was also a wreck but it had only cost two hundred dollars. I had to use up a good deal of my savings and got nothing on the trade in. The old car had been so riddled with bullet holes you could have used it to grate cheese. I was certain the new car was stolen. I had to call in an old debt to get one that Willieboy couldn’t trace. I knew a back alley machinist who worked over boosted cars. Saul Wise. I had snapped pictures of his wife humping their dentist, doctor, and a young kid in an alleyway. Funny thing about Saul: he didn’t get mad, just excited as he put the photos away for later viewing. He also didn’t pay me all he owed. That was how I got a good deal on the car. Elmo finally shook anyone who might be tailing us with a white-knuckle turn on the far side of a streetcar. The new Chrysler performed well for a wreck.

Elmo was downstairs admiring it, while I waited inside for a blind superintendent to open the door to a room. I wore my clown outfit, but had managed to disguise myself somewhat with a compromise of fedora and a long gray overcoat that I had picked up at the Salvation Army. The time was about six o’clock. The streetlights had just buzzed to life. It was Friday. The weekend had arrived. Those who could afford it would be whisking away from town on bullet trains to their cottages in the north—all nine of them. Authority maintained special animal-free preserves for such purposes.

“Joost a minoot!” The little fat blind man said. He was bent over at the lock clicking his tongue and working his way through an enormous ring of keys. I looked down at the back of his head in an eerie half-light from a dim bulb over the stairs. His hair was slicked back with a concoction that smelled of axle grease, lard and rosehips. I tried breathing through my mouth but found I could taste it. “Der, der, der, der—ah!” That had become his mantra. He had only got my spirits up the first ten times he had said it. This was the fifteenth.

“Maybe you could put a light bulb out here,” I said impatiently. “You may not be blind after all.”

“Joost a minoot!” More jangling. “Der, der, der, der—ah!”

I steadied my temper by running a finger over the lettering on the door. It was painted in plain script in an arch. Owen Grey Private Investigations.

I’d found Grey’s office number in a phone book at a drugstore where Elmo had dropped me off to eat. Simple as that. He worked at 299 Gritburg in the Horowitz building. I called the number. The phone rang and rang. I called the superintendent of the building, the same fellow who was saying, “Der, der, der, der—ah!” again. He had been all but unintelligible on the phone, but I did make out that an Owen Grey rented an office in the Horowitz building. I hadn’t been able to find a place of residence for Grey. I’d have to take a trip to the hall of records when I decided it warranted the risk of being so exposed.

I’d gone into the superintendent’s office and quickly bribed him with twenty dollars. When I told him I was a detective, he got all secret agent-like, lowered his head and hunched his shoulders. He slinked around the office. I half-expected him to turn his collar up. Apparently he observed some unwritten detective brotherhood because he seemed quite willing to help. Boredom probably and life after the Change made too many demands upon sanity to allow long periods of introspection. I assumed that the isolation had already pushed him over the edge. Judging from his demeanor and his appearance, I guessed he had not been visited by a living human—or a dead one for that matter—for months, just renters, all business or avoidance. He had not laid eyes on Grey in two years.

“Der, der, der, der—Ah ha!” he cried, and the door swung open. He gestured with a broad hand. “Der, now as simple as dat! You take a look around, Mizter Wiltclown. I weel be beck at my offiss.”

“Yeah, simple as that.” I nodded my thanks, then entered. The waiting room stank of neglect. The carpet had that slightly sticky feel of one that had long gone without a cleaning. Mold and dust. A lengthy wooden bench stretched along one wall. A small coffee table stood in front of it with a number of old magazines. I glanced at their dates. Two years old—January of ‘48. Across from me was an inner door. I walked to it, grabbed the brass knob and entered.

I found a small office inside. Everything was covered with dust. Three black filing cabinets lined one wall like senators at a photo opportunity. A large desk sat before a window shuttered with blinds. An empty ashtray had been placed on it to the left beneath a lamp. I crossed to the desk and snapped the light on. Nothing. I grabbed the cord. It came free. I crawled behind the desk and jammed the plug in at an awkward angle. The light came on. I stood up. A large well-padded leather chair sat behind the desk. I ignored it and pulled on the first filing cabinet drawer I came to.

It was unlocked and empty. I tried the next drawer. Empty as well. I knew it would be. The fact that the lamp cord was pulled out told me that. No one in his right mind would plug the thing in more than once. The place had been frisked, that was obvious. And whoever had done it had said the hell with the lamp cord. Everything else had been put away nicely. The files were taken. That told me that whoever searched the room had done so without authorization from the higher-ups and had to do the methodical investigation of the case files somewhere else.

I tried the other drawers. Nothing. I sauntered over to the desk and dropped into the chair. The action was answered by a distinctive crushed clink of broken glass. I reached into the crack between the cushion and the arm with my right hand, and cut the first and second fingers. Someone hadn’t cleaned up completely. Sucking blood from the wound, I detected the slightest smell of whiskey. The glass ground beneath me.

I pulled open the top drawer and found it empty. There was a deep, broad one on my right, I pulled that open. A dark brown bottle of whiskey rolled into the light. I smiled at it. Old friend. I grabbed it and set it on the desk in front of me. It was about quarter-full. I read Canadian Club beneath my bloody fingerprints. I took a handkerchief from my overcoat and bound it. Not a bad cut, but it would be messy for a while. I grabbed the bottle, twisted the top off, sniffed, then upended and drank half of it. The whiskey burned my throat, but I loved the sensation. I belched absentmindedly, then crossed and uncrossed my legs, rolling the bottle around in my lap.

I studied the office and wondered what had happened to Grey. There were no plaques or diplomas on the walls. The two pictures were of a mallard duck and the other a pair of Canada Geese. So he liked his wildfowl, maybe a hunter in the good old days when you could shoot a duck without being murdered by the flock. Then I had a strange sensation—a powerful feeling of familiarity. Things seemed a little pat, too predictable. Grey’s was very much like my own office. But I was a detective. He was a detective. Our offices were decorated in Detective style. All function and mold.

I lifted the bottle and drained it. My belly started burning at the last gulp. I lowered the bottle, but noticed a silhouette of something through the brown glass. I peered in, then flipped the bottle. In the slight depression on the bottom, there was a small neatly folded envelope. It had been flattened thoroughly and taped into the recess. I suppressed a grin; I repressed a Eureka! I congratulated my boozehound’s nose.

First I licked any remaining blood from my fingers and then dried them on the leg of my coverall. I flicked the tape loose with a fingernail and pulled the envelope free. I set the bottle down and moved my chair close under the light. Gingerly, I pulled the envelope apart. A key fell onto the desk blotter with a muffled rattle. I picked it up. It was a key to a locker. Someone had stamped ‘Greasetown Transit’ on it. The terminal was not far off. I would go there.