Disappearing Acts (7 page)

As Meat watched, a face appeared in one of the upstairs windows. The face disappeared at once, as if someone had ducked out of sight.

Marcie Mullet? Meat thought. Could she have hidden from Chico Jones? That was everyone's first instinct—to hide from a policeman. Well, she might not hide from him, Meat. After all, he had something that belonged to her.

He went quickly up the walkway to the house. He opened the front door, which wasn't locked, and peered into the lobby. No one was there.

Slowly he mounted the stairs, taking them one by one. He felt as if he were doing something illegal, but, he told himself, he was just going up to see if Marcie Mullet was home because, see, he had her wallet and wanted to return it.

The door to apartment seven was open. Meat stuck his head inside.

“Marcie?” he called. “Miss Mullet?” That was better.

The man he and Herculeah had met last night said, “She's gone. A policeman was just here and I opened the door for him. I have a key. And look at the place.”

The room was a mess—clothes everywhere. Meat took in the display in silence. He was genuinely shocked, not just at the tumble of clothing but at the size of the garments. There were bras capable of holding two melons, and skirts like collapsed tents. He forced himself to look away and up at the man.

“Did she always keep her room like this?” Meat asked.

“I wouldn't know. This is the first time I've been inside.”

“But you know her?”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Was she—” he glanced at the bra—“was she a ... large girl?”

“Oh, yeah.”

He glanced around the room again. “Maybe somebody broke in and was looking for something and tore the place up.”

“It's possible.”

“Well, if you see her—”

“That's not likely.”

“I know, but if you do, tell her I've got her wallet.”

“What's your name?”

“Meat McMannis.”

The man pulled the door to, locked it, and paused. “I heard somebody in here last night—late. It didn't sound like her—lots of fast movement. I thought maybe it was that boyfriend of hers—the funny one.”

“Funny how?” Meat asked. “I mean, funny ha-ha or funny weird?”

The man gave it some thought.

“Both,” he said.

 

 

After that, Meat went back down the steps and out into the sunlight. He didn't want to go home, because there wasn't anything to do there but hear the bad news from Herculeah.

He decided to walk past Funny Bonz. He wouldn't go inside—just stroll past.

To reinforce the decision, he said to himself, “I will not go inside. No matter how tempted I am, I will not go inside.”

The first time he passed the building, he gave it a glancing look. It appeared empty. He walked to the corner and crossed the street. This time he paused to put his foot on a fire hydrant, check his shoelaces, and take a better look.

No lights were on. Nobody was there.

“It wouldn't hurt,” he said to himself, “to just see if the alley door is locked.”

He crossed the street and went up the darkened alley. There was something about the alley that filled him with dread. “If I were Herculeah, my hair would be frizzling.”

He paused at the door. “I will not go inside. No matter how tempted I am, I will not go inside.”

As he spoke sternly to himself, his hand, moving as if on its own, reached out and turned the doorknob.

For the past hour Herculeah had been steeling herself to face Meat and show him the pictures. It helped her to remember what her father had said.

“You have to show him the pictures, hon. You don't have any choice.”

“But, Dad, he thinks of his father as this tremendous person.”

“Well,” her father nodded at the pictures in Herculeah's hands, “he's tremendous, all right.”

“Oh, Dad, don't try to be funny. Help me.”

“Herculeah, you've always told me that the most important thing to Meat was knowing who his father is.”

“But—”

“You told me he went to Madame Rosa to have her try and find him.”

“All Madame Rosa told him was she saw shoes.”

Again he indicated the snapshots. “There you go.”

Herculeah looked down at the shoes in the pictures and grimaced.

“And he went to have his dad's handwriting analyzed. Herculeah, your best friend is frantic for word of his father, and you have not got the right to keep it from him.”

She went through the pictures one more time, then put them facedown on the table. She started for the front door.

The message light on the answering machine was blinking. Herculeah crossed the room and punched Play, even though she might have been stalling for time.

The message was from Meat.

“Herculeah, I'm going back to Broadview to look for Marcie Mullet. If you don't want to come with me, fine! I'll go alone. Good-bye.”

He had to be back by now, she thought. Squaring her shoulders, she crossed the street and rang the bell.

Mrs. McMannis opened the door. “Can Meat come over to my house?” Herculeah asked. “I've got something to show him.”

“Meat's not here.”

“Oh.”

“He went out a little while ago and hasn't come back. What's going on?”

“I don't know.”

Mrs. McMannis gave her a suspicious look. “I think you do.”

Herculeah shrugged. She could feel Mrs. Mac's sharp eyes watching her as she crossed the street. At the steps to her house, Herculeah paused.

Meat might be at Marcie Mullet's apartment right now, she thought. What if my dad got an urgent call and Meat's there alone? What if the murderer's there? Meat could be in real trouble.

She thought of the photos inside.

“Double trouble,” she said.

Herculeah tried the front door of Funny Bonz. It was locked.

She knew Meat was inside.

She knocked at the door. “Meat?”

No answer.

The man at the apartment had told her that Meat had left there over a half hour ago. He had not gone home, so he must have come here.

And, Herculeah reminded himself, Meat was not the kind of person who could take care of himself in a scary situation, not the way she could.

She peered through the glass beside the door. She could see nothing. She thought she heard voices. She knocked again. “Is anybody there?”

No answer.

She remembered a side entrance—Meat had said something about a door on the alley.

Moving quickly, she skirted the building and turned into the alley. The walls of the buildings on either side were so covered with spray paint and graffiti that they were a tangle of letters. Only an occasional word leaped out at her—“Spider” ... “Zippo” ... “Beware of” ...

The Dumpster at the end of the alley had been spray-painted too, so that it blended into the background, almost camouflaged.

Her steps slowed as she approached the door. Her hair had begun to frizzle.

She turned the doorknob. The door opened quietly—she had almost expected it to creak. Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside.

Herculeah moved silently up the few steps and stood in the hall. Suddenly she heard voices to the left.

Herculeah glanced around. Her hair had doubled in size now and she knew she didn't want to be found here in this dark hall.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw a door. JANITOR, the sign said. Herculeah opened it and slipped inside.

It was a closet of cleaning supplies. Herculeah stood there, scarcely breathing, and when she did, she almost choked on the menthol smell of urinal cakes and damp dry-mops and kerosene rags.

Now the voices were closer. Two people were coming down the hall. Men.

Herculeah could make out what they were saying.

“You mean the body's still here? You didn't get rid of it?”

“I thought it was gone. Man, you have a dead body on your hands and then it's gone, you don't go looking for it. I thought I was in the clear.”

“If I'm gonna help, I gotta know what's going on.”

“Right. Last night some kid goes to the john and comes back. This is a funny kid, but not intentionally. He walks out on the stage. His face was like this.”

Herculeah knew he was probably twisting his face, Jim Carrey-like, into Meat's. The other man gave a short, reluctant laugh, as if he couldn't help himself.

“The kid goes, ‘There's a girl in the men's bathroom.'”

The voice was so like Meat's that Herculeah was glad he wasn't here to hear it.

“The class starts grinning. They, me, everybody, we think he's doing a routine. Then he goes, ‘And she's dead.' Everybody's looking at everybody else to see if they got it. They think they've missed something.

“Anyway, I go back, check the rest room out and, man, there really is a body. It's a kid was in my class last time, back for more—thinks he's ready for the big time.”

“And?”

“And, okay, I panicked, there's no other word for it, and my adrenaline was pumping so fast. I got that body out of there and into the closet in minutes. Okay, I should have called the police, but the last thing I need right now is a dead body in the bathroom. I got enough dead bodies sitting in the audience every night. And this club has got to work. I owe money to people you do not want to owe money to—so I got the body out of there.”

“And?”

“And I hid it.”

Herculeah swallowed. The men's voices were just outside the janitor's door now.

“Where?”

“The first place I could find.”

There was a silence, and in that awful moment, Herculeah imagined the men's faces turning to the janitor's closet. Her blood froze. They were going to open the door and find not a dead body but her.

Then the realization hit with the force of a hammer. They would find her and the body. The body was here. In the closet with her.

It had to be on the floor behind her. Not again! she thought with growing horror. The body she'd found at Dead Oaks had left her with a dread of it ever happening again. She began to tremble.

She remembered now that in that brief moment before she closed the closet door, she had been aware of something. It hadn't registered then—perhaps it had been some clothes on a coatrack or some old cleaning rags. She hadn't paid much attention.

She should have.

Now she knew the truth. There was a dead body in those clothes.

She felt a scream building within her.

Yes, she thought. Yes! She would scream, burst open the door, dash past the startled men, and be outside before they could stop her.

Before she could put the plan into effect, a hand from the back of the closet reached out and clamped over her mouth.

Herculeah remained in a state of shock. The hand was still across her mouth as the conversation in the hall continued.

“Yeah, the closet. It was the nearest hiding place. So I get through the class somehow and I come back here and I open the closet. Man, the body's gone. I mean, ‘I ain't got nobody!'” He burst into song. “‘How lucky can you get?'” Another song.

Then he got serious. “I figure whoever killed the guy came back and removed the body or maybe I dreamed it or maybe—hey, it's April Fool.

“Then thirty minutes ago I go out to the Dumpster and—yeah, somebody had moved the body, but not far enough. Come on, I'll show you.”

Herculeah waited, trembling, until the men's voices disappeared down the steps and out into the alley. In a burst of fright and energy, she thrust open the door.

She swerved to face—

Meat. Meat!

“You? You! What were you doing in there?” she asked.

“Same as you—hiding. I was looking around—same as you—and Mike came out to use the phone. I hid, and I was just getting enough nerve to come out when you came in.”

“Do you realize how you scared me?”

“I was a bit scared myself.”

“I mean, I had just realized the dead body was in the closet with me!”

“The body's out in the alley.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

Herculeah gave one last glance of apprehension over her shoulder at the closet door.

“Why would anybody go to the trouble of dragging a body out into the alley?”

“I don't know.”

Meat's tone of voice said he didn't know and didn't particularly care.

“Are the men out there?”

Meat glanced through the glass in the door.

“Yes.”

“Where's the phone? Where's the phone you were talking about?”

Listlessly Meat nodded toward the pay phone at the end of the hall.

“Money! Money!”

Meat reached in his pocket and held out a handful of change.

Herculeah made her selection.

Meat didn't ask who she was going to call. It didn't matter. Nothing did.

She told him anyway. “I'm calling my dad. I've got to get him before those clowns move the body. I've got his car phone number for emergencies.”

She put in a coin and dialed.

‘Dad, hi, it's me. I'm at Funny Bonz. How far away are you?“