Basket Case (18 page)

Again the computer bleeps imploringly.

"Aren't you sweating to death in that getup?" I ask her.

"Don't worry, it's comin' off soon enough. This one here"—Janet motions over her shoulder toward the PC—"is Ronnie from Riverside. His deal is boots, panties, bra and assault rifle. He's been hopin' I lose the bra and panties, but he's in for a major letdown. Anyhow, the setup is: I'm in the middle of a DEA raid on a Colombian drug lord's mansion when I suddenly decide to sneak a quick shower, like that makes sense. What I don't know is that one of the bad guys—Ronnie, of course—is hidin' in the Jacuzzi, spying on me. This'll drag on for an hour."

"Oh well. Four bucks a minute," I say brightly.

"Only for a few more months," Janet says. "That's how long Mr. Chickle says it's gonna take to get the inheritance."

"If Cleo doesn't contest the will."

"Mr. Chickle thinks she won't. He knows her lawyer."

"And most of the probate judges," I add, "on a first-name basis."

"Jimmy always looked out for me," Janet says tenderly. "Now he's gone and he's still lookin' out for me."

Ronnie from Riverside beeps again.

"Shit." Janet plugs in the light rack and the living room goes white with glare. She tugs the knit hood down over her face and positions the gas mask. This is my cue to leave.

"So, what should we do about the story?" I ask. "You don't have to decide this minute. Sleep on it and we'll talk over the weekend."

Janet's reply is muffled by the hood and the mask, but I can still make out the words. I wish I couldn't.

"What story?" she says.

I'm lying in bed with the lights off, listening to A Painful Burning Sensation, the last album recorded by Jimmy and the Slut Puppies.

Jimmy's voice sounds huge because at the time he was huge, 240-plus pounds of post-rehab voracity. Then he totally changed his life and wound up dying buff, the eternal male dream. Jimmy didn't plan it that way, checking out at thirty-nine, but fans will remember him more fondly for being tanned and fit at the end. Most celebrities would kill to die looking so fine.

Baby, you're a fool to count on yours truly,

I'm a self-centered, self-absorbed, self-abused boy.

My love goes where it pleases, and pleases who gets it,

Don't cry, beg or pray, you'll just get me annoyed.

That's the chorus of a cut called "Slithering Love," and I can visualize Jimmy sneering when he sings "annoyed," dragging the word into three syllables, the way Jagger might. What I enjoy about the Slut Puppies is that most of their songs were base, unpretentious, simple-minded fun. Even the blatantly derivative ones—"Slithering Love" owes everything to "Under My Thumb"—had an appealing, self-deprecatory pose. The more I hear of his records, the more I believe I would have liked Jimmy Stoma as a person.

And I'm still not convinced he drowned accidentally. Unfortunately, as long as I'm the only one with such doubts I've got nothing to put in the newspaper.

Which leaves me back on the obituary beat, under Emma's leery watch. On Monday I'll begin to write the MacArthur Polk opus, and she should be pleasantly surprised by my enthusiasm. I haven't told her what the old coot has asked me to do, or that I've decided to play along. It no longer matters whether Polk is insane or not; without the Jimmy Stoma story, I'm unglued and adrift. I need something to reach for, a filament of hope…

I must've fallen asleep because the Slut Puppies are no longer singing when I open my eyes. The apartment is dark and quiet except for the sound of someone jiggling the doorknob. Occasionally Juan lets himself in, so I shout his name and command him to go away. Emma probably told him she slugged me, so he's come to appraise my nose and perhaps scold me for the toenail-peeking incident.

"Even a deviate deserves privacy!" I holler, and soon the rattling ceases.

But no departing footfalls are heard on the walkway, so I boost myself to a sitting position and listen hard. I swear I hear breathing other than my own.

I swing my legs out of bed, pad to the doorway and peer around the corner. Immediately I wish I hadn't, because a fist connects solidly with my jawbone. I would gladly fall down except that a second, upward-driving blow has found my rib cage, momentarily suspending me. This is the work of large arcing punches, nothing like Emma's economical left cross. When my head finally hits the floor I squeeze my eyes closed and lay motionless, the cleverest move I've made all day.

The intruder pokes me with a heavy shoe but I don't move. Pain shrieks from every muscle. The man grabs a handful of hair and lifts my head. Next thing I know: blackness and the smell of damp wool. I've been blindfolded.

A ripping noise is followed by a fumbling attempt to tape my wrists behind my back. Terror would be a logical reaction, but for now I concentrate on appearing limp and unconscious. Meanwhile, the intruder roots through the place, yanking out drawers, flinging open cabinets and closets. This shouldn't take long, as my apartment is small and there's hardly anything worth stealing. I find myself feeling smug about having pitched the television off the balcony, thus depriving my visiting dirtbag of at least forty bucks from the corner pawnshop.

But something doesn't add up. I know from covering the police beat that burglars don't usually do fourth-story jobs because it's hard to be stealthy hauling computers, fax machines and home-entertainment components down multiple flights of stairs. Burglars generally prefer first-floor apartments with sliding glass doors. Now, a jewel thief doesn't worry about a building's height because everything he's stealing fits inside a pocket or a pillowcase, but only the most optimistic or uninformed jewel thief would target the one-bedroom flat of a bachelor. I don't even own a matching set of cuff links.

Whoever the intruder is, he definitely needs a refresher course in duct-taping. Two minutes and I've twisted my hands free and undone the blindfold. But now what? I feel like I've been run over by a cement truck, so I'm not especially keen to get up. Besides, the apartment is woefully short of weapons.

On the other hand, I'm extremely curious and more than slightly hacked off. In two days I've been roughed up and punched out more than I have in the last twenty-five years. Plus I can hear the fucker in the bedroom, rummaging through my socks and boxer shorts and books…

Next thing I know, I'm groping down the hallway toward the kitchen. Furtively I tug open the freezer door and reach into the compartment. There, wedged beneath the ice cream bars and a two-pound bag of frozen Gulf shrimp, reposes Colonel Tom. My digging fingers locate the frosted coil of his tail, which makes a suitable handle. With a yank I dislodge the lifeless lizard from his arctic bier, loosing a crashing cascade of ice.

The broad shadow of the panting intruder materializes at the kitchen entrance—I can imagine his puzzlement when he sees me at the refrigerator instead of the telephone. With a growl he steps forward and is immediately halted by a smart blow to the forehead. With its tail curled, the dead monitor lizard is roughly the length of a sawed-off fungo bat, and stout enough to require a firm two-handed swing. I whack the intruder once more and he sinks to his knees.

Slinging both arms around my waist, he tries to pull me down. I take another wild cut but I slip on ice chips. As I fall, the frozen lizard flies from my hand and skids across the floor. Bucking in the intruder's brutish hug, I'm choked by a whiff of cologne that jolts me back to that moment in the elevator with the widow Stomarti's coppery-haired male caller. The overripe scent is unmistakable, though the man in my apartment is shorter and stockier than Cleo Rio's boyfriend. As for hair, the intruder has none—and squirts like a greased egg out of my feeble headlock.

The kitchen is embarrassingly cramped, unsuitable for a life-or-death struggle. We roll around the linoleum like a couple of drunken circus bears until, by blind luck, my left hand comes to rest on the as-yet-unthawed Colonel Tom. I resume whaling at the bald guy with a manic resolve—if he is Cleo's neckless bodyguard, a gun will be close at hand. No sense in holding back.

Groaning, the intruder shields himself with one arm and begins punching robotically with the other; an effective technique, it turns out. A blow catches me flush on the tip of my nose, the same nose earlier tenderized by Emma, and I black out from the pain.

Honestly I didn't expect to wake up. I expected to be shot dead, "execution-style" (as we're fond of saying in the news biz). But I awaken alive and alone, curled in a puddle of blood so bounteous that it cannot be entirely my own. Crimson bootprints mark the intruder's wobbly path from the kitchen to the living room and out the front door.

Gingerly I strip off my sticky clothes and head for the shower; every square inch of me stings or throbs, but at least the bleeding has stopped. Toweling off, I notice a stranger with a misshapen face scowling from the mirror.

One advantage to living the spartan life, it's easy to clean up after a looting. In thirty minutes the place is put back together, and nothing is missing except my laptop. Stored on the hard drive were a couple of canned obits—a railroad tycoon and some retired opera soprano—but that's no big deal; I'd already wired electronic copies to my terminal in the newsroom.

The most unsavory chore is disposing of Colonel Tom, who was soundly pulped in the altercation. Snugly I wrap his cold, scaly form in an old bedsheet and lob it from the balcony. The bundle tumbles into a Dumpster, four stories below, where it lands with a muted thwock. Instantly I regret the toss, for there's a sturdy knock on the door and I find myself unarmed and defenseless. The knocking persists, and eventually a flat male voice identifies itself as an authority figure.

Cops!

Neighbors, none of whom have ever shown an interest in my personal affairs, apparently heard the commotion in my kitchen and alerted the police. I open the front door to see not one but two men of similar age and stature, neither in uniform. I'm poised to slam the door when one of them flashes a badge.

"Detective Hill," he says. "And this is Detective Goldman."

Obviously I appear thoroughly puzzled, because Detective Hill adds: "We're from Homicide, Mr. Tagger."

Numbly I step back, my arms falling slack at my sides. Apparently I've killed a man with a frozen lizard.

"It was self-defense!" I protest. "He broke in while I was sleeping… "

The cops exchange perplexed glances. The talker, Hill, asks what in the name of Jesus Christ I'm babbling about.

"The dead guy! The one who busted into my place."

Hill peers over my shoulder, scoping out the tidiness of my modest living quarters. "Mr. Burns broke into this apartment? Tonight?"

"You're damn right he… who?"

"John Dillinger Burns," he says. "Otherwise known as Jay."

"No! No, this guy was bald," I blabber, "it wasn't Jay Burns. I know Jay Burns. No way."

"Yeah, that woulda been some nifty trick," says Detective Goldman, breaking his silence, "since we just saw Mr. Burns laid out at the county morgue."

"He's been dead since early this morning," Detective Hill adds informatively. "What would you know about that, Mr. Tagger?"

"Not a damn thing." My voice is a dry croak.

"Really?" Hill is holding something inches in front of my eyes, something pinched between his thumb and forefinger. It's a business card from the Union-Register. My name is printed on it.

"Burns had this in his pocket," Detective Hill explains, "when his body was found."

"Now, why would that be?" his partner inquires.

"And what happened to your face, Mr. Tagger?" Hill asks.

Me, I don't panic.

"Officers," I say, "I wish to report a burglary."

15

Emma's couch is too short for my legs.

She tugs down the sheet to cover my feet and fits a pillow under my head. She informs me I've suffered a mild concussion, a diagnosis based on the fact I got dizzy, vomited and fainted on her doorstep. She tells me she went to nursing school for two years before switching to journalism, and I say she would have made an outstanding nurse. She appraises my rubescent schnozz guiltily, so I assure her that somebody else punched me harder than she did.

It's one in the morning and Radiohead is playing on Emma's stereo, a neat surprise.

In her wire-rimmed reading glasses she sits cross-legged in an armchair, the calico cat on her lap. She's wearing tennis socklets so I can't scope out her toes. I squeeze my eyelids shut and wish for this murderous headache to abate. In the meantime I'm telling Emma about my scuffle aboard the Rio Rio with Jay Burns, who seven hours later was found dead behind a tackle shop on the Pelican Causeway. A bait truck loaded with finger mullet backed up over the ex-Slut Puppy, whose ponytailed gourd had been resting inopportunely beneath the vehicle's right rear wheel. How his head had gotten there was the question that brought detectives Hill and Goldman to my apartment. Hill believed that Jay Burns, being clinically intoxicated, probably passed out in that fateful location. Goldman, however, speculated that an assailant might have clobbered Jay Burns and purposely placed him beneath the truck. The medical examiner offered no insight; so pulverized was the keyboardist's skull that it was impossible to discern if he'd been bludgeoned prior to being run over.