Thinning the Turkey Herd, page 14
part #4 of Jimmy Flannery Series
We think that one over. I drive up in front of my building and park the car.
"Well, we're home, Alfie. Now, Mary's here, but she could be taking a nap before we go to the funeral. I ain't going to tell you how to play it. I'd never ask you to make yourself a fool. But a little smile maybe wouldn't hurt."
I pick up the daffodils, which are a little the worse for traveling around without water, and get out of the car. I go around the other side and open the door for Alfie and he hops out.
"You got to do a little something before we go inside?" I say.
He goes over to the telephone pole and lifts his leg.
"Well, okay. We got that done all right."
I look around to see if Stanley's around. Because, if Stanley's around, he'll make such a fuss word'll get back to the landlord sure as hell. I go up the stairs to my door with Alfie trotting at my heels.
"I got an idea," I say. "Can you hold these?"
I put the stems of the daffodils into his mouth. He holds them very easy and don't squash down on them.
"So, sit right here," I say, and point to the spot right in front of the door. Then I ring the bell and duck off to the side.
When Mary opens the door she's wearing her robe. "What in heaven's name?" she says.
Then I show myself.
"Who's this?" Mary says with a big grin all over her face.
"This's Alfie. He brought you a present."
"Who does he belong to?"
"That's up to you."
She stoops down and takes the daffodils out of Alfie's mouth, not even mentioning anything about the landlord. Alfie's tail starts to wag and he smiles and moves a little closer to her. She puts her arms around his neck and he looks up at me like he's asking me what am I doing there spying on a tender moment.
We go inside.
"We can make him a bed by the hot-water heater," Mary says. "You better get ready for the funeral. I've already had my bath."
By the time I'm showered and dressed, Mary's in her dark suit and hat.
There's a knock on the door.
When I open it up, Stanley's standing there.
"I hear you got a dog, Jimbly," he says. "You wan' I should take it for a walk?"
TWENTY-EIGHT
Doing what I do, I attend too many funerals.
Janet's keeping this one very simple. No viewing the body in the casket. No chapel ceremony. Just a gathering at the graveside over to Graceland and a few words before they put Joyce Lombardi in the ground.
There's maybe a dozen and a half people there besides Janet, Mary, and me. Kropotkin, Mrs. Warren, Mr. and Mrs. Frazier, Wilkie, Miller, and a hard-eyed bleached blond standing next to him who I figure could be his wife. There's a little man who looks very Jewish and five women who are plainly Latino. It looks like maybe Joyce had made the acquaintances of the people in the zipper factory, or maybe they was just showing their respects for a dead neighbor they hardly even knew. The way it was in the old days.
Also there's a very smartly dressed older woman and three young ones who are beautiful enough to be models and probably are.
While the minister's saying Godspeed and something nice about the dead woman, Kropotkin sidles over and stands next to me.
"You see that pretty old hen with the pretty young chickens?" he mumbles.
"Turkeys," I say, without thinking.
"What?"
"Never mind. So, what about her?"
"She's the one who came looking for Joyce the day after she disappeared."
"Who's the one standing next to Miller?"
"That's his wife."
"Did she know Joyce Lombardi?"
"I don't know. Could be. She came around the studio every now and then. That's how come we got introduced."
"And the little man with the Latino women?"
"Mr. Manules, owns the zipper factory, and some of his machine operators."
So, I was right about everybody, but what did that get me?
After everybody who wants to throws a handful of dirt on top of the coffin, the little groups around the grave side start breaking up. Mr. Manules herds his workers down the slope to a van and the woman with the herd of beauties starts toward a rented limousine.
I go down on a line that'll cross theirs.
"Excuse me," I say.
The older woman turns to me and sets her feet like she's posing. The younger women take positions six feet away in a semicircle, their feet turned out a little too, one leg in front, of the other like a bunch of big beautiful birds. It all comes so natural.
"Was you a friend of Joyce Lombardi's?" I say.
"I was her agent," she says.
"Was you over to her apartment looking for her the day before she was found?"
"I went there two days before the announcement was made in the papers and on television."
"Thank you," I say.
She touches my sleeve. "Are you a policeman?"
"No, but I'm trying to help them find who done it."
She looks at the pretty bunch of women standing there, lifting their heads. Their hair, all different colors, blows around their smooth cheeks and softly painted mouths when the breeze springs up off the grassy hillside.
"I pray that you do," she says very soft. "There's a terrible amount of danger that goes along with the gift of beauty."
She turns away and the proud, lovely creatures step their way carefully down to the big black rented car with the rented liveried chauffeur waiting with his hand on the latch of the door.
I go back up the hill to Kropotkin.
"Do me a favor," I say, "go say something to Miller."
I'm a step or two behind him when he reaches the photographer and starts talking to him. I move so I can shake Mrs. Miller's hand and move her off a little ways.
"I didn't know Joyce too good," I say. "Are you a relative?"
"I'm Connie Miller. My husband owns the photography studio in the same building that Joyce lived in," she says, looking at me with one plucked eyebrow raised high.
I'm not saying that every person's history and nature is written on their faces. But there's some who give you a pretty good idea of who and what they are by even a quick look at their eyes and nose and mouth. Connie Miller looks like the kind of woman men would say was hell in bed. She's also the kind that could cut your throat and never blink. She's got the kind of mouth you want to fall into, even though you know she can bite nails in half, and the kind of eyes that's always half-laughing at you.
"Then you was a friend of Joyce's?" I say.
"I met her once or twice. I think Jerry took some pictures of her."
"But you weren't friends?"
She starts walking down the slope with me alongside her, leaving her husband and Kropotkin behind.
"Do I look like a mouse?" she says.
"How's that?"
"You don't look like a cat. So, stop playing the game."
"I'm willing if you are."
"I've got no game to play."
"You've got a husband who maybe strays."
She laughs and covers her mouth like she don't want to let it out and maybe fall down and roll around the ground. "If he could learn something from it, I'd probably tell him to be my guest. Just so long as he brought it home afterward. If you're trying to make the case that Jerry had anything to do with Joyce's death, that he killed her during a lovers' quarrel or something, you're barking up the wrong tree. Jerry has troubles that way."
"What way?"
"With his equipment. He can't always make it work. Especially I don't think he could make it work with anybody except me."
I'm thinking that a thing like that could give a man an even better reason to go into a rage if a woman was to laugh at him, but I don't say it.
"Still asking questions, Flannery?" Miller says, walking up behind us.
"Just exchanging condolences with your wife."
TWENTY-NINE
"You going to take Alfie for a walk before bed?" Mary says when she sees me putting on my jacket and tucking my watch cap into my back pocket.
"I thought I would."
Alfie's up and standing at my knee, ready, willing, and raring to go.
"I'll maybe be an hour or even a little bit more. I thought I'd show Alfie the whole neighborhood in case he ever gets out one day and has to find his way home. Maybe we'll stroll all the way down to the river."
"Where are you going, Jimmy?" Mary says, giving me the eye.
"I told Willy Dink I'd meet him around the corner and tell him how I was doing about getting his creatures out of the pound."
"That's all you're going to do?"
"That's all I had in mind."
"So, how did you do at the pound?"
"Not sensational. They made a price. If Willy Dink paid it, he'd have to sell his truck and go out of business."
A little sympathy frown pops up between her pretty eyes.
"And that's all you're going to do for an hour, maybe a little more?"
"Well, I thought. . ."
"I don't want to know. If you tell me what you have in mind, I'll only worry. So don't tell me. Just be careful."
"I got Alfie to watch out for me."
Alfie tries to look mean and trots out the door and down the stairs alongside me like he's carrying my sword. Willy Dink's sitting on the running board of his truck, waiting for me. His yellow eyes are shining, reflecting the dim light of the street lamp. I wonder can he see in the dark.
"Hello, Mr. Flannery," he says. "How do we stand?"
"Not so good. They want six hundred dollars."
He whooshes with his lips like a radiator valve letting go. Then he reaches out and scratches Alfie behind the ear.
"Nice pup."
"We get along."
"So I guess that's that," Willy Dink says, getting up with great effort and limping around to the driver's side of the cab.
"You hurt your leg?"
He gives me a look like what kind of a man am I not to understand somebody can limp from a wound to the spirit just like he can from an injury to the body. He drags himself up behind the wheel like he'll never be himself again.
"Can this machine go over twenty miles an hour?" I say, jumping in beside him.
"It can do plenty."
"Let's go, Alfie," I say, and Alfie jumps on my lap. "Get over to Maywood. Don't get stopped by a cop, but don't drag your foot either."
"What are we going to do?"
"We're going to spring your chicken."
Willy Dink knows more back roads without traffic lights and cops than Dunleavy. We're over to Maywood and the Animal Control pound in half the time it took me. I tell him to cut his engine when we're half a block away and coast in close, but not too close, to the main building, over where there's some heavy shadows.
Alfie starts to tremble when he gets a whiff of the dogs and cats. He looks at me like he's asking me did I change my mind and am I tossing him back into the soup. I give him a hug and he licks my nose. He's not scared anymore. There's some industrial lights outside the building, but there ain't lights shining out from inside fronting on the parking area, and the ones they have got are pretty dim.
"You got a hat?" I say.
Willy Dink reaches back and takes a greasy old felt from behind the seat.
"No, one something like this," I say, taking out the knitted watch cap and pulling it down over my face.
"I ain't got nothing like that. How could I see walking around like that?"
I poke my fingers where the eyeholes should be, taking it off and cut them out with my penknife.
"Like that," I say, "I tried talking your animals out of there. I tried bribing them out for a reasonable price. Now, we're going to set them free."
"My God, you'd break the law to help me?"
"It don't mean I'm in love with you, Willy Dink, so don't remind me again or I might have second thoughts."
He reaches back and comes up with one of them big cardboard buckets for taking out chicken dinners.
"My supper," he says, borrowing my knife and cutting out eyeholes for hisself.
He turns it upside down and jams it down over his ears. Lucky he's got such a small head or it'd never fit.
I put my ruined watch cap back and pull it down to my neck.
"You stay here, Alfie. Anybody comes you give us the word. Okay?"
I swear he practically nods.
"We could be sneaky and look for a way in," I say as Willy Dink and me walk up to the front door, "but, I tell you, I don't think this calls for sneaky. It calls for bold."
"Whatever you say, mon capitaine."
"Give me a break, Willy Dink. This ain't a movie. This is serious business."
Henry Hackinaw is sitting behind the counter with his feet up and a book in his lap. He's fast asleep with his mouth open. I can see a wad of chewing gum caught in the well of his lip.
I give Willy Dink the finger on the lip and we tiptoe over to the door that goes into the hall with all the cages. I got my hand on the knob and I stick my mouth up close to Willy's cardboard bucket.
"Once we get inside," I say in a whisper, "we got to be fast. You get Timmy, Max, and Hershel. I'll get the chicken, the armadillo, and the raccoon."
"I better. . ."
I grab his arm. Trying to whisper inside the bucket is a waste of time. His voice booms out like he's using a megaphone. Hackinaw stirs but don't wake up.
Willy Dink takes off the bucket and says, "I better take Shirley."
"Who?"
"The raccoon. She can be very mean with strangers."
"Okay, then I'll take Timmy. We'll gather them up and go out the other end of the building to the breeze way. Ready?"
"Ready."
"Put your bucket back on."
Just like I figure, the minute I open the door and we step inside, the dogs are awake and raising hell. If anybody pulls up outside and Alfie does give the warning, who could hear it?
I hit the lights and some brights go on. I point to the small cages. "There's your snake and your raccoon," I say, while I'm opening up another cage and snatching out the armadillo. I grab the chicken next, which lets out a terrible squawk and gives me a shot on the nose.
"You dumb chicken. I'm trying to save your life."
It flies out of the cage and lands on my shoulder, digging its claws into me like I'm a roost in a henhouse. I see Willy Dink's got his snake around his neck, his ferret on his shoulder, and is just picking up his raccoon like she was a baby. I tuck the armadillo under my arm like a football and run down to the end where Timmy's in his cage. I stoop down and open it up. He rushes out and bites me on the ankle just to let me know he ain't forgiven or forgot that I left him to sweat it out a whole day.
The door by the office slams open. Hackinaw yells, "Hey, you!"
I look back and there's Willy Dink just finishing up opening every cage he can get his paws on. The place is swarming with dogs and cats, every one of them looking for a way out. I open the door to the breezeway and run. Willy Dink's right behind me. And this pack of dogs and cats is all around us, getting under our feet.
We get to the truck and pile in, Willy Dink's animals in the back, except for Timmy, who hops in the front and gives Alfie the evil eye.
"Move," I say, shoving Timmy over. Alfie jumps in my lap and looks at Timmy like he's saying, "It's your truck but this is my human."
We get out of there fast.
Willy Dink lets me off in front of the house and thanks me.
Mary's waiting up. She sees the torn leg on my trousers and the smear of blood on my sock. "What happened to you?" she says.
"One of the condemned prisoners I saved bit me."
THIRTY
I read a lot. All kinds of books. You'd be surprised.
What it seems to me is that the big thinkers are always trying to figure out what's normal about this or that so they got something to build their theories on.
I can understand that. I mean how can you figure if the problem of illegitimate babies is getting worse without you know how many there was last year, or ten years, or fifty years ago?
How do you know if you're losing ground, gaining ground, or running dead even without you know how much a man in your job made last year, ten years, fifty years ago?
Of course you got to figure in inflation, deflation, stagflation, and a different mix in the basket of commodities what makes up the standard-of-living index, or the cost-of-living index, or the gross-national-product report.
You've also got to reckon in when something becomes a necessity and ain't a luxury anymore. Like a telephone, or a television set, or tires with fifty-thousand-mile guarantees.
It gets very complicated and, even if you can work your way through it and come up with a number, what're you going to do with the number you got?"
I mean you tell a young woman with five kids and no husband, a buck in her pocket, and no roof over her head that she's the result of a shift in the kind of choices society is making, she's got every right to scream in your face and cry on your tie.
It looks to me like society, whatever you want to call the whole bunch of us, lives and acts according to charts and graphs what tell us something about these trends they keep talking about, but every single one of us lives from one good-luck day to the next bad-luck day, from a good experience to a bad experience. You ask a fella how's he doing and it all depends on what foot he's standing on.
"You take murder," I say out loud.
Alfie looks at me, ready to listen. It's morning and we're going over to Morgan and West Washington. It makes me feel good having somebody to talk to.
"I mean what's average when it comes to murder? You look at it one way, you got to admit that anyone commits murder, I mean willful homicide, has got to be off his tree. Right? Even if you kill somebody in a fit of temper, you got to say you was crazy when you done it. Right? Now, there's all kinds of circumstances. There's like diminished capacity which means you could be crazy with drink, crazy with drugs, or just plain crazy. There's provocation. This sucker what you blow away is pushing you and pushing you, or he's attacking your wife, or hurting your kid. And you see red. You go a little nuts. There's self-defense. Even then, I got to say, you're probably crazy with fear. So if crazy is a defense for committing murder, everybody convicted of it should be put in a hospital, nobody should ever go to jail, let alone be executed. You understand what I'm getting at?"
