Umney's Last Case (5 page)

been tossed out a third-story window. It's been an eventful life, all right, but

nothing in it had ever scared me the way

the smell of that cologne and that soft footstep scared me.

My head seemed to weigh at least six hundred pounds.

``Clyde,'' a voice said. A voice I'd never heard before, a voice I nevertheless knew

as well as my own. Just that one

word and the weight of my head went up to an even ton.

``Get outta here, whoever you are,'' I said without looking up. ``Joint's closed.''

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And something made me add, ``For

renovations.''

``Bad day, Clyde?''

Was there sympathy in that voice? I thought maybe there was, and somehow that made

things worse. Whoever this mug

was, I didn't want his sympathy. Something told me that his sympathy would be more

dangerous than his hate.

``Not so bad,'' I said, supporting my heavy, aching head with the palms of my hands

and looking down at my

desk-blotter for all I was worth. Written in the upper lefthand corner was Mavis

Weld's number. I sent my eyes tracing

over it again and again--BEverley 6-4214. Keeping my eyes on the blotter seemed like a

good idea. I didn't know who

my visitor was, but I knew I didn't want to see him. Right then it was the only thing

I did know.

`Ì think maybe you're being a little . . . disingenuous, shall we say?'' the voice

asked, and it was sympathy, all right; the

sound of it made my stomach curl up into something that felt like a quivering fist

soaked with acid. There was a creak

as he dropped into the client's chair.

`Ì don't exactly know what that word means, but by all means, let's say it,'' I

agreed. `Ànd now that we have, why

don't you rise up righteous, Moggins, and shift on out of here. I'm thinking of taking

a sick day. I can do that without

much argument, you see, because I'm the boss. Neat, the way things work out sometimes,

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isn't it?''

`Ì suppose so. Look at me, Clyde.''

My heart stuttered but my head stayed down and my eyes kept tracing over BEverley 6 4214. Part of me wondered if

hell was hot enough for Mavis Weld. When I spoke, my voice came out steady. I was

surprised but grateful. `Ìn fact, I

might take a whole year of sick days. In Carmel, maybe. Sit out on the deck with the

American Mercury in my lap and

watch the big ones come in from Hawaii.''

``Look at me.''

I didn't want to, but my head came up just the same. He was sitting in the client's

chair where Mavis had once sat, and

Ardis McGill, and Big Tom Hatfield. Even Vernon Klein had sat there once, when he got

those pictures of his daughter

wearing nothing but an opium grin and her birthday suit. Sitting there with the same

patch of California sun slanting

across his features--features I most certainly had seen before. The last time had been

less than an hour ago, in my

bathroom mirror. I'd been scraping a Gillette Blue Blade over them.

The expression of sympathy in his eyes--in my eyes--was the most hideous thing I'd

ever seen, and when he held out

his hand--held outmy hand--I felt a sudden urge to wheel around in my swivel chair,

get to my feet, and go running

straight out my seventh-floor office window. I think I might even have done it, if I

hadn't been so confused, so totally

lost. I've read the word unmanned plenty of times--it's a favorite of the pulp-smiths

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and sob-sisters--but this was the

first time I'd ever actually felt that way.

Suddenly the office darkened. The day had been perfectly clear, I would have sworn to

that, but a cloud had crossed the

sun just the same. The man on the other side of the desk was at least ten years older

than I was, maybe fifteen, his hair

almost completely white while mine was still almost all black, but that didn't change

the simple fact--no matter what

he was calling himself or how old he looked, he was me. Had I thought his voice

sounded familiar? Sure. The way your

own voice sounds familiar--although not quite the way it sounds inside your own head-when you hear it on a

recording.

He picked my limp hand up off the desk, shook it with the briskness of a real-estate

agent on the make, then dropped it

again. It hit the desk-blotter with a plop, landing on Mavis Weld's telephone number.

When I raised my fingers, I saw

that Mavis's number was gone. In fact, all the numbers I'd scratched on the blotter

over the years were gone. It was as

clear as . . . well, as clear as a hardshell Baptist's conscience.

``Jesus,'' I croaked. ``Jesus Christ.''

``Not at all,'' the older version of me sitting in the client's chair on the other

side of the desk said. ``Landry. Samuel D.

Landry. At your service.''

_______________________________________________________________________

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V. An Interview with God.

Even as rattled as I was, it only took me two or three seconds to place the name,

probably because I'd heard it such a

short time ago. According to Painter Number Two, Samuel Landry was the reason why the

long dark hall leading to my

office was soon going to be oyster white. Landry was the owner of the Fulwider

Building.

A crazy idea suddenly occurred to me, but its patent craziness did nothing to dim the

sudden blaze of hope which

accompanied it. They--whoever they are--say that everyone on the face of the earth

has a double. Maybe Landry was

mine. Maybe we were identical twins, unrelated doubles who had somehow been born to

different parents and ten or

fifteen years out of step in time with each other. The idea did nothing to explain the

rest of the day's high weirdness,

but it was something to hang onto, damn it.

``What can I do for you, Mr. Landry?'' I asked. I was trying like hell, but my voice

was no longer quite steady. `Ìf it's

about the lease, you'll have to give me a day or two to get squared around. It seems

my secretary just discovered she had

pressing business back home in Armpit, Idaho.''

Landry paid absolutely no attention to this feeble effort on my part to shift the

focus of the conversation. ``Yes,'' he

said in a musing tone of voice, `Ì imagine it's been the granddaddy of bad days . . .

and it's my fault. I'm sorry,

Clyde--really. Meeting you in person has been . . . well, not what I expected. Not at

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all. For one thing, I like you quite

a bit better than I expected to. But there's no going back now.'' And he fetched a

deep sigh. I didn't like the sound of it

very much.

``What do you mean by that?'' My voice was trembling worse than ever now, and the

blaze of hope was dying. Lack of

oxygen inside the cave-in site which had once been my brain seemed to be the cause.

He didn't answer right away. He leaned over instead, and grasped the handle of the

slim leather case leaning against the

front leg of the client's chair. The initials stamped on it were S.D.L., and I deduced

that my weird visitor had brought it

in with him. I didn't win the Shamus of the Year Award in 1934 and '35 for nothing,

you know.

I had never seen a case quite like it in my life--it was too small and too slim to be

a briefcase, and it was fastened not

with buckles and straps but with a zipper. I'd never seen a zipper quite like this

one, either, now that I thought about it.

The teeth were extremely tiny, and they hardly looked like metal at all.

But the oddities only began with Landry's luggage. Even setting aside his uncanny

older-brother resemblance to me,

Landry looked like no businessman I'd ever seen in my life, and certainly not one

prosperous enough to own the

Fulwider Building. It's not the Ritz, granted, but it is in downtown L.A., and my

client (if that was what he was) looked

like an Okie on a good day, one which had included a bath and a shave.

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He was wearing blue jeans pants, for one thing, and a pair of sneakers on his feet . .

. except they didn't look like any

sneakers I'd ever seen before. They were great big clumpy things. What they really

looked like were the shoes Boris

Karloff wears as part of his Frankenstein get-up, and if they were made of canvas, I'd

eat my favorite Fedora. The

word written up the sides in red script looked like the name of a dish on a Chinese

carry-out menu: REEBOK.

I looked down at the blotter which had once been covered with a tangle of telephone

numbers, and suddenly realized

that I could no longer remember Mavis Weld's, although I must have called it a billion

times only this past winter. That

feeling of dread intensified.

``Mister,'' I said, `Ì wish you'd state your business and get out of here. Come to

think of it, why don't you skip the

talking and just go right to the getting-out part?''

He smiled . . . tiredly, I thought. That was the other thing. The face above the plain

open-collared white shirt looked

terribly tired. Terribly sad, as well. It said the man who owned it had been through

things I couldn't even dream of. I

felt some sympathy for my visitor, but what I mostly felt was fear. And anger. Because

it was my face, too, and the

bastard had apparently gone a long way toward wearing it out.

``Sorry, Clyde,'' he said. ``No can do.''

He put his hand on that tiny, cunning zipper, and all at once Landry opening that case

was the last thing in the world I

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wanted. To stop him I said, ``Do you always go visiting your tenants dressed like a

guy who makes his living following

the cabbage crop? What are you, one of those eccentric millionaires?''

`Ì'm eccentric, all right,'' he said. `Ànd it won't do you any good to draw this

business out, Clyde.''

``What gave you that ide--''

Then he said the thing I'd been dreading, and put out the last tiny flicker of hope at

the same time. `Ì know all your

ideas, Clyde. After all, I'm you.''

I licked my lips and forced myself to speak; anything to keep him from yanking that

zipper. Anything at all. My voice

came out husky, but at least it did come out.

``Yeah, I noticed the resemblance. I'm not familiar with the cologne, though. I'm an

Old Spice man, myself.''

His thumb and finger remained pinched on the zipper, but he didn't pull it. At least

not yet.

``But you like this,'' he said with perfect assurance, `ànd you'd use it if you could

get it down at the Rexall on the

corner, wouldn't you? Unfortunately, you can't. It's Aramis, and it won't be invented

for another forty years or so.'' He

glanced down at his weird, ugly basketball shoes. ``Like my sneakers.''

``The devil you say.''

``Well, yes, I suppose the devil might come into it somewhere,'' Landry said, and he

didn't smile.

``Where are you from?''

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`Ì thought you knew.'' Landry pulled the zipper, revealing a rectangular gadget made

of some smooth plastic. It was

the same color the seventh-floor hall was going to be by the time the sun went down.

I'd never seen anything like it.

There was no brand name on it, just something that must have been a serial number: T 1000. Landry lifted it out of its

carrying case, thumbed the catches on the sides, and lifted the hinged top to reveal

something that looked like the

telescreen in a Buck Rogers movie. `Ì come from the future,'' Landry said. ``Just

like in a pulp magazine story.''

``You come from Sunnyland Sanitarium, more like it,'' I croaked.

``But not exactly like a pulp science-fiction story,'' he went on, ignoring what I'd

said. ``No, not exactly.'' He pushed a

button on the side of the plastic case. There was a faint whirring sound from inside

the gadget, followed by a brief,

whistling beep. The thing sitting on his lap looked like some strange stenographer's

machine . . . and I had an idea that

that wasn't far from the truth.

He looked up at me and said, ``What was your father's name, Clyde?''

I looked at him for a moment, resisting an urge to lick my lips again. The room was

still dark, the sun still behind some

cloud that hadn't even been in sight when I came in off the street. Landry's face

seemed to float in the gloom like an

old, shrivelled balloon.

``What's that got to do with the price of cucumbers in Monrovia?'' I asked.

``You don't know, do you?''

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