The Corpse in My Office
© 2024 by Walter Reimer

Thumbnail art by  RockBaker

Two.


I have to do something. It’d look bad if someone came into the building early and found me lugging a stiff out.

Okay.

I clean up the puddle around my chair, go to the hot plate and brew some coffee, and it’s getting close to three in the morning when, after two cups of joe, I pick up the pawset on my phone and dial 0. No cigarettes, though. I think my last coffin nail’s sitting dead in the ashtray.

And I’m not so far gone as to root around and piece a smoke together from the butts.

“Operator,” comes a femme’s voice, bored and officious.

“Hey, Harriet,” I say.

“That you, Ernie?”

“Yeah, it's me. Look, I need you to call the cops and tell 'em to bring a meat wagon, okay?”

“Really? Who’d ya shoot?”

“Nobody. Tell ‘em I ain't going anywhere.”

“Okay. What’s your number?”

“My number?” I have to think, and thinking hurts a little right now. “Um, VOland 0-7480.”

“Got it. Soundin’ a little rough, honey.”

“Yeah, thanks, Harriet.” I drop the pawset back into its cradle, take another pull at my third cup of coffee, and look at the weasel in the dog collar. “What's the matter, Padre?” I ask. “What brought you here?”

“All very good questions,” the Defense Attorney said.

“Yeah, but he ain’t talkin’,” I mumble.

I’m on my fourth cup of coffee when someone raps on the door. I set the mug down and walk over as another knock makes the frosted window glass rattle. “Police! Open up!”

I open the door – hm, unlocked – and I’m eye-to-eye with a fox. He’s dressed in a cheap suit and a rain-soaked overcoat and fedora. Behind him’s a taller wolf, dressed pretty much the same way, with two guys in police blue behind him.

Have to give it to the fox. He starts right in. “You Ernest Dawson?”

I make a show of squinting at the sign on the window. “That’s what it says. Where’s your badge?”

Next thing I know, I’m whirled around and my back’s against the wall and the fox has both paws on my shirt and I can smell what he had to eat last. Pew, garlic and onions. “Don’t give us no crap, Dawson,” the fox growls at me.

“Back off him, Carl,” the wolf says as he saunters in. He waves a paw and the uniforms come inside. “Hi, Ernie.”

“Hi, Alex.” Alex Farkas is an old pal from my cop days. “How’s Lisa and the kids?”

“Doing okay.” He has his paws in the pockets of his overcoat. “What – I said, Carl, let him go.” The fox growls, but does what he’s told. “What happened, Ernie?” Alex asks.

I take a moment to straighten my shirt. “The stiff’s over there,” and I wave in that direction. “Woke up around two-fifteen to find this weasel sitting on my couch. Hole in his head.”

“You shoot him?” the fox asks, looking like he’d run me in on general principles.

“No.”

He sniffs and his grin turns nasty. “You sure?”

I glance at Alex. “Where’d you dig up Junior Boy Scout here?” I ask, jerking a thumb at the fox.

The fox crests at me, and Alex says, “Detective Sergeant Stutz, meet Ernie Dawson. He carried a badge, back in the day.”

“Carries a bottle nowadays, from the smell of him,” Stutz says.

“Carl’s a little green, but he asks good questions,” and Alex gives me the eye. “So? Any answers?”

I shake my head. “Nah. I use a forty-five, and since the wall’s not painted with the weasel’s brains, it wasn’t me that iced him.” I shrug. “Besides, my gun’s not here.”

Alex raises an eyebrow. “Where is it?”

“Lehmann’s Pawn, over on Delaney,” I say, and I fish a piece of paper out of a pocket and hold it up. “Pawned it two days ago.” I flicked the paper away before Stutz could grab it out of my paw and put it back in my pocket. “Ah, ah, ah. Don’t be a grabby little kit.”

“We’ll be checking that,” Stutz grumbles.

“Be my guest. Lehmann’s an honest guy.”

“Ain’t nobody else here, Lieutenant,” one of the uniforms says to Alex while the fox goes over to get a look at the body.

“Okay,” Alex says. “Go downstairs and keep an eye out for the coroner.” The uniform nods and he’s out the door, and Alex steps in close to me. He takes out a pack and a lighter and offers me a smoke. A true friend is a joy forever, or something like that. “Ernie, you okay?” he asks.

I light up, and after a deep drag I say, “Me? Yeah, I’m – “

“No, you’re not. I hear a few things about you, Ernie. Drinking more often than not, no jobs, talking to yourself – “

I eye him. “Worried I might end up dead, Alex?”

He puts a paw on my shoulder. “I just worry about you, Ernie.”

“I’ll be okay.”

“I hope so.” We start heading for my desk. “So, you didn’t kill him.”

“Nope.” I stub out the smoke into the ashtray.

“How’d he get in here?”

I twitch my whiskers and tail. “Office door was unlocked, so I either let him in or he came in himself.”

Again, he eyes me. “Any idea when?”

“Sometime after supper, I guess.” I shrug.

“What’d he want you for?”

“Dunno. Don’t recall much.”

“Hm.” Alex glances around the office. “If you didn’t kill him, any ideas who might have?”

“Dunno. Is Lee Quan out of prison yet? The Kolodny Brothers?”

“Bill and Davy are still upstate,” Alex says, “and I’ll check around on Lee.” He glanced at Stutz as the fox straightens up from searching the body.

“George Ferguson, priest, on the Archbishop’s payroll,” Stutz says.

I raise my eyebrows and play it cagey. “Nice work, if you can get it.”

Alex puts a palm over his eyes, dragging it down his muzzle. “Just what I don’t need. I’ll have to call the Chief in the morning.”

“Politics?” I ask.

He nods. “More than you know. His Eminence’s a big wheel in the city, you know that.”

“Yeah, I know it enough to be glad my folks raised me Presbyterian.” We turned as a pair of white-clad orderlies wrestle a stretcher through the door. One spots the stiff and crosses himself before they start getting ready to move dead George.

“You, uh, search the body?” Stutz asks me, while glancing at Alex.

“Yeah, I, uh, did,” I say in the same insinuating tone he’s using. “I haven’t forgotten how to do that.”

He waves the wallet. “This all he had on him?” I nod, but he doesn’t look too convinced.

“Had you any idea who killed him?” the Prosecutor asked.

“Dunno, but I’ll find out.”

“What’s that?” Alex asks.

I look at both of them. “What?”

“You were talking to yourself, Ernie,” Alex says.

“Heh. Guess I was. I’ll find out who offed him.”

Stutz snorts. “You? Drunken sot like you’d be lucky to find your tail with both paws and a road map.”

“If you do, Ernie,” Alex says before I decide that Stutz looks better with his snout smeared all over his face, “be careful, okay? I’m worried about you.”

I smile at him and thump his shoulder with a fist, friendly-like. “Don’t worry, Alex. I ain’t dead yet – “

“Yet,” Stutz says with a nasty grin.

I give him a look. Having to talk with this snot-nose is sobering me up, or maybe it’s the coffee.

I’m not much liking it.

Alex and his vulpine shadow take some notes before they go out to the car and bring up a camera. Still raining outside, but no thunder or lightning. They get pictures of the weasel before the orderlies load him onto the stretcher and take him out of the room.

I close the office door after them and slump against the wall.

God, my head hurts.

I glance at the clock, and it’s now after seven in the morning. Well, time for Ernie to get on the job.

There were three more empty bottles of Old Panther in the wastepaper basket by my desk. So that’s where they went. Still, I do have a couple bottles hiding in quiet places here and there, so if I need a belt I won’t have to pay for one.

Time for a shower, and some breakfast, and I can get started.



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