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A Curl of Scar
By C.B. Calsing
Gray snow lay in the gutter, littered with cigarette butts and wadded-up, damp newspapers. Langston watched it all as he passed and wondered how long this winter would last. It seemed to just drag on and on, like a seventy-eight played too slow. He wished someone would up the tempo. The temperatures reminded him of his time in the trenches -- cold water seeping through every crack and seam, no way to escape it. He grimaced and wondered what the weather was like in Palm Beach.
He got off the jitney and wandered into the cold labyrinth of a dying downtown. In the evenings, weak light wept from the dingy windows of speakeasies and jukejoints, but now the very buildings seemed to sag with a bleary-eyed hangover made worse by the bitter cold. Langston hugged himself through his moth-eaten overcoat and pulled his fedora, broken at the crown, farther down over his ears.
A few blocks deeper in and Langston let himself in to a coldwater walk-up. He nodded to the clerk -- a formality -- and the clerk nodded back. He knew Langston well enough, didn’t even bother to stop him and pat him down. Sure, Langston carried, but his revolver had rusted years ago. He lugged it around more for show than anything. As he climbed the stairs up to a certain doorway, he began to argue with himself as to whether this would be entirely a business visit. He had the dull ache about him -- more than just the cold -- radiating from the shrapnel-flecked cluster of scar tissue over his left shoulder. It could easily be fixed by a little M, but that would bring the fuzzy warmth over his mind and body, and he needed to stay sharp for the case. The dead girl deserved that at least.
At the top of the stairs, standing in front of a door that someone had very neatly written HERE on in yellow chalk, Langston stopped. A single gas sconce flickered in the hallway. Even his office had an electric light. He shook his head, shuffled his feet a few times as he examined the scuffed toes of his oxfords, and then knocked three times, in sharp, quick succession, on the door, right over the R.
Langston could hear the small shutter that closed over the peephole slide aside. He waited a moment. Then the door swung open. A girl, Sal, leaned against the edge, a stained silk gown draped over her protruding-boned body. She sniffed as her watery gaze traveled up and down his body. She sniffed again. Despite the cold, she wore no shoes, stockings, or slippers. Her thin, red-painted toes gripped the bare wood beneath her feet, rooting her. Langston thought she must worry she’d float away to hold the ground like she did.
“Hey, Pierpont,” she said, sniffed, then let go of the door and stumbled back. She turned her willowy body and then collapsed onto a davenport like a bundle of sticks. Sitting next to her, smoking a pipe, sat Terrance.
He looked at Langston, smiled. “How’re shakes?” His voice sort of dripped out of him slow, like cold sap. Terrance wasn’t one of those stuck-up dealers that didn’t partake of his own product. Clearly now he had a little bit of an edge on him. Langston sat down in a rickety chair opposite the couch. He didn’t bother removing his hat.
“I need you to level with me,” Langston said. He reached into his inside pocket and took out an envelope of tobacco and some rolling papers.
“The stuff I gave you last time was the elephant’s eyebrows.” Terrance sat up straighter, tapped his pipe out on the coffee table, and then rested his elbows on his bent knees.
Langston smiled, focused on rolling his cigarette. “That’s not what I’m here about.” He put the tobacco away, shoved the cigarette between his lips, and then took out a lighter from another pocket. He lit the cigarette and relished even that small flicker of heat in the room. “I need to know where to find DeVoss.” DeVoss -- a fellow dope fiend that frequented Terrance -- and his daughter had killed a girl. Made her overdose, the police had said, in order to steal the wad of cash she’d been flashing around a gin mill. The mother had hired Langston to find out whether DeVoss or his bouncing baby girl had been the one with the finger on the plunger. The mother wanted revenge, since the courts had failed to convict either and they both walked..
Terrance leaned back and huffed a laugh. “Don’t know from nothing. Haven’t seen him or the girl since the acquittal.”
“Bologna.”
“It’s true,” Sal added lazily.
“Come on,” Langston said, then took a drag off his cigarette.
“I got maybe one thing.”
“Tell me.”
“I seen him and the girl at a speakeasy on Forty-fifth. Maybe it wasn’t the only time he’d stopped in, you know?”
Langston nodded. He stubbed out his butt on the table next to Terrance’s pipe. “But he’s not getting his dope here anymore?”
“Doesn’t have the jack.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.
Langston nodded again. “Forty-fifth, you say?”
“Stubby’s place.”
Langston knew Stubby at least, but last time he’d been in that neck of the woods, the place had been a luncheonette. Best grilled cheese in the city. “Thanks.”
“Little something for the road?”
Out of nowhere, Terrance had produced a small vial of clear liquid. He held it up, perched between two pale fingers.
Langston shivered. He stood and headed for the door. “Thanks for the lead,” he said, and then let himself out. In the hallway, he took a moment to try to get control over his body. Every cell screamed at him to go back in, snatch that M from Terrance, and hightail it home, but he couldn’t. Not now. He rubbed the old wound on his shoulder and looked down at his trench watch. He headed down the stairs. There’d be no harm in trotting over to Stubby’s now, even if he didn’t open until later.
He nodded to the clerk again as he left and pushed out into the cold afternoon. Langston elected to walk to Stubby’s. The bracing chill would maybe keep his mind clear, make him a little sharper. Though this case didn’t seem to exactly challenge his skills as a detective. Track down a guy, get him to confess to something he can’t be tried for again. Why the old lady had wasted money on him rather than just finding some longshoreman who wasn’t getting enough overtime, he didn’t know.
He rolled another cigarette and smoked it as he walked. He stopped into a coffee shop and bought a cup of coffee, drank it quickly, and then continued his walk. He didn’t feel hungry. The winter sun had already started dipping behind the walls of the buildings by the time he’d reached Stubby’s. The front windows were shuttered; a large padlock and chain kept the front doors closed.
Langston looked up and down the street, then headed for the mouth of a nearby alley. He stood there for a moment, staring in at the gathering gloom. He could hear heavy breathing, glass rattling.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed for the end of the alley. A manhole cover stood open, and out of its vacuum, crates of booze emerged, hefted overhead by strong arms. Another man took them from the subterranean exit. He carried them through an open door into the back of Stubby’s.
“Hey,” Langston said as he approached.
The head of the man in the sewer appeared over the lip of the manhole. “What do you want?”
The one who’d carried the crates into the building came out. Langston blinked. He looked like some big palooka. Definitely not employed for his intellectual power. Definitely not the kind of birds that used to run the luncheonette with Stubby back in the day.
“I’m looking for Stubby.” Langston took a few more steps toward them, trying to show they couldn’t intimidate him.
“Who says?”
“Tell him Pierpont’s here.”
“How we know you’re not some bull?”
“Do I look like a cop, really?” Langston pressed, “He here or not?”
The others exchanged glances. Then the palooka jerked his head toward the backdoor. Langston followed him in, though the supply room, and into the bar. Stubby -- so called for the arm he lost in the Great War -- wiped the surface down with a gray cloth, stained and dirty like the snow outside -- Like everything in this city. He glanced up, and a genuine smile of welcome crossed his face. “Pierpont!”
“Hey, Cap.” Langston leaned across the bar and accepted a one-armed hug from Stubby.
He took a seat on a bar stool -- right at the same counter where he used to order tomato soup and egg creams, and accepted a drink from Stubby. He winced as it burned a trail down his throat. “What is this?”
Stubby laughed. “A little coffin varnish we get in cheap. Don’t think I’d waste the good stuff on an old dick like you.”
“I’m actually here on a case.”
“Go figure. I don’t see you in a pig’s year, and then here you are.”
“Yeah, you seen the DeVoss guy around?”
Stubby laughed again. “Hang out for a bit and you’re sure to see him. He comes in every night, pandering that daughter of his for M or a few snorts.”
The idea turned Langston’s stomach. “You don’t say?”
“I kick him out, but...” Stubby shrugged, and the stump moved up and down uselessly beneath the cuff of his dress shirt. “He makes more bother than it’s worth. ‘Fraid he’ll give me away.” He paused. “Mess with that trial, huh?” He poured another shot for Langston, and while he prepared the speakeasy for its evening opening, they talked about the Somme and trench foot and the plagues of frogs they both remembered.
Langston moved to a stool in the corner and watched the entrance. No one came in through the front door. Sewer Man and Palooka let them in the back. People from the front would think this building just another closed-down diner.
The speed with which the one-armed bartender slung booze impressed Langston. He kept the customers happy with his easy going manner, and he clearly made more money at this than he had making sandwiches.
“That’s him,” Stubby told Langston finally, but Langston didn’t need the hint.
DeVoss came in, a skinny, pale girl following, a quiff that made Sal look like a healthy, uptown debutante. DeVoss clearly had the screaming meemies; he needed dope. The daughter -- Bonnie, Langston remembered -- appeared even worse off.
They perched on stools next to Langston, and he could feel the tension thrumming from their bodies. They were in a bad way, a way he never got.
DeVoss turned his bleary eyes on Langston and offered him a weak smile. His teeth appeared gray and black, his gums receded, his lips thin and wrinkled. Langston felt like a regular Sheik in comparison.
He wrinkled his nose. He could detect that subtle smell of rot -- of phlegm and soured scabs -- coming off both of them. Langston picked up his drink and sniffed the acrid liquor, hoping to burn their stench from his nostrils.
“She’s yours for a sawbuck.” DeVoss’s voice issued like gases from a corpse.
“Not interested.”
“Buy an old man a drink then? For a drink she’ll sit with you.”
Langston sighed. He’d expected a challenge at least. No such luck. “Stop playing, DeVoss. You know me.”
Langston tipped his head to look full-on in DeVoss’s face. He pushed the brim of his fedora back too. DeVoss eyes lit with a sort of disappointed recognition. “Sure, sure. Over at Terrance’s.”
“That’s it.”
“Say, don’t ‘spose you could set us up, for old time’s sake?”
“How ‘bout I buy you a drink, and we talk?”
“Good enough for now.”
Langston signaled Stubby, and the bartender filled their three glasses with the same rotgut.
It didn’t take much from Langston’s expense account to get the old man and his daughter to start talking about the trial. From there, he led them back through their garbled and hazy memories to the night of the girl’s death. Bonnie started to sob softly, her narrow shoulders shaking with the effort of it, as if her skin had a hard time keeping a hive of bees inside her.
But at that point, neither blamed the other. In fact, they claimed they were both innocent, that they’d been so hopped up that they didn’t even remember giving M to the girl that had died in their care. She’d been zozzled, passed out as soon as they got her to the flop house. They took her money, went out to buy dope, came back, and shot up themselves.
DeVoss’s voice had a tinge of nostalgia as he talked about the dope that night. He remembered warmth and a bright white glow that enveloped them. A feeling of peace like he’d never had. “I used to think the first time had been the greatest, but...” He shook his head. “We saw angels, man. I’ve never had dope that good. Keep trying to find it again.”
“Was it from Terrance?”
DeVoss shrugged and got back to his story. By the time they’d come around, she’d been dead.
Langston didn’t believe that was all there was to it, but tears had flushed out DeVoss’s gummy eyes, and Bonnie now lay with her head against the bar, an arm curled around her head protectively.
Langston settled up with Stubby and headed out into the alley.
As he left, he passed a woman going in. She wore a fur-collared coat and her unfashionably long hair piled up in an elaborate mess of twists. “Nice night,” she said, her voice a clear, resonant bell in the sharp air.
“Yeah,” Langston said. He turned to watch her receding back. She filled out dress in a way most of the flappers would find obscene, but that was a healthy girl. Langston smiled, until -- as she crossed the threshold into the lit bar -- he saw an odd curl of scar tissue across her neck. He wondered how such a pretty girl could get something so bad.
Langston trudged into the morgue, his dirty handkerchief held over his mouth. Even the residual smell of the place reminded him too much of the trenches to make it tolerable. Doc Spector stood next to a slab table at the far end, his hands in the pockets of his blood-bespecked lab coat. Gold-rimmed glasses sat on his nose.
“Stubby told me to expect a visit from you,” Doc said as Langston stopped in front of him.
“Can you help?”
“Come on.” Doc jerked his head toward another door.
He led Langston into his office. On the desk lay a half-eaten sandwich and a big, ragged envelope.
Doc sat behind the desk and motioned for Langston to sit down too. He did and lowered his handkerchief.
“I didn’t do the work myself, but something about the case -- from what I heard of it -- didn’t sit right with me. I don’t think the DeVosses did it, even if it was just an accident and they weren’t trying to shake the girl down.”
“I don’t think they did it either.”
“Then what?”
Langston took a deep breath through his mouth. He had no more leads. Occam's razor said one of the two DeVosses did it, but Langston kept going back to DeVoss’s story, about the light and the warmth. “If you lab-rats can’t figure it out, how do you expect me to?”
“It’s what you do.”
“Can I have the file?”
“No more use to us.” Doc hefted the enveloped and passed it to Langston. “I’d like to know what happened.”
“I’ll let you know when I find out.” Langston stood. He took a look at the sandwich on the table and thought about getting lunch, but then when he went back out into the morgue, the smell changed his mind.
Sitting at his desk later that day -- the room so cold he had to keep his coat on -- Langston pored over the pictures, the notes, but nothing came to him. His cup of coffee had gone cold, the cream creating a scum on the top. He pulled out a magnifying glass and looked for details in the photographs, clues that could tell him anything. She had one needle track on the inside of her arm. So she had shot up at least once, but close scrutiny didn’t show any other bruises or scars, so she hadn’t made a habit of it, and Langston couldn’t tell how old the track was.
In one picture, Langston saw something that jogged a memory: her corpse, laid out face down on the autopsy table. A wound beneath the fringe of hair right at her neck. A curling, red burn -- maybe. Odd. But the shape...
Langston pushed back and stared up at the ceiling. He’d seen the shape suggested there. He just needed to remember where and when.
He picked up the photo and headed out to the store on the corner. They had a phone he could use. He called down to the coroner, got Doc on the phone, and asked him about the wound. Doc left him waiting on the line while he went and talked to man who’d done the examination.
When he came back to the phone, he said, “Perimortem. The guy thought it was a burn, like from a radiator or maybe a tool used by a hairdresser. No damage underneath, so it didn’t happen with any force. He disregarded it. Nothing recovered at the crime scene caused it, the suspects didn’t possess anything that matched the pattern, and it didn’t appear to contribute to her death.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
Langston hung up and stared at the picture. Then it finally occurred to him. Stubby’s. The girl in alley with the mess of hair, the curling scar on the back of her neck. Her scar was this wound, healed over.
Langston stood there, pondering the meaning, arguing with himself as to whether the commonality meant anything at all in regards to the crime. He glanced down at his trench watch. Something tickled at the back of his mind. He didn’t want to ignore it. If he could find her, he could ask what had caused this wound and at least put this part of the mystery -- relevant or not -- to rest.
He took a jitney to Stubby’s and Sewer Man and Palooka greeted him like an old friend.
He sat at the bar again. No sign of the DeVosses tonight, but he didn’t care much about them at this point.
“Can’t afford to see you this often, Pierpont,” Stubby said as he set a drink down in front of Langston.
“Don’t worry.” He sipped, swallowed. “I need a little more information from you.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Last time I came in, I saw a girl in alley. Curly haired, healthy glow about her.”
Stubby’s lip curled up on one side.
“Scar on her neck.”
Stubby nodded. “My Marjorie. Tends bar for me late. Sweet thing.”
“She’ll be in tonight?”
“Sure. Round ten.”
Langston lowered his voice. “She ever tell you about that scar?”
Stubby jerked his head no.
“I’ll just wait on her then, if you don’t mind.”
Things couldn’t get much easier than this, Langston mused. Would someone walk up to him next and say, “I killed the woman”? Probably not, but he keenly felt as if he were on some kind of roll. While he waited, he ate a dubious meat sandwich that would have tasted wonderful if Stubby still ran this place as a lunch counter, but instead it made him slightly ill.
Sure enough, around ten Marjorie glided in. Langston couldn’t think of another word to describe the way she crossed the room. She moved behind the bar, tied an apron around her waist, and made a quick survey of the stock and the customers. Langston admired the glint of intelligence in her eye, the elegant curve of her jaw.
He didn’t talk to her right away, but watched her work, smile, and talk with the customers. He could tell she felt comfortable there, and the patrons liked her fine. He realized he’d probably like her too.
“Need another, sweetheart?” she asked when she made it to his end of the bar.
“Nah, but I’d like to talk to you when you get a second.”
“Half the boys in here would.” She winked at him as she cleared his glass and washed it off, then wiped it dry.
“This is about a case I’m working,” he told her. “I’m a detective. An old friend of Stubby’s actually. I was there when he lost his arm. Bits of it all over me.” He laughed, hoping to put her at her ease, but he’d never been very good at that when it came to women.
She looked at him as if he’d grown a horn from his forehead. “Anyway, I’m working,” she said, and she moved down the bar again to fill glasses and chastise a couple for getting too frisky.
When she traveled his way again, he asked, “What about breakfast?”
“What about it?”
“Can I buy you some when you get off?”
“Look, I don’t even know your name.”
“Langston. I need your help. A girl died. I need to know how.”
“Probably ‘cause she left a bar with someone like you.”
The barb stung, but Langston couldn’t deny the kernel of truth about it. He forced a laugh again. “Seriously, she shares a certain characteristic with you.” He rubbed his hand against the back of his neck suggestively. He saw recognition flash in her eyes.
“I’ll be cleaned up by six. Come back then.”
Langston tipped his hat and left. He paid full price for a cab back to his apartment so he could get a few hours’ sleep, and then hired another to take him back to Stubby’s. He stood in the alley just as the sun began to rise over the bones of the city. He smoked a cigarette and waited.
Marjorie came out of the back of the bar looking like she had enough energy to make it through another shift of work. She seemed fresh despite being on her feet all night. Langston admired her openly as she strode toward him.
“There’s a place round the corner,” she told him, “by the trolley line. You can take me there.” She headed off, and he followed her, a pace behind the entire way.
The woman working the counter and the cook seemed to know Marjorie. She and Langston took stools at the counter, and two hot cups of coffee immediately appeared. Langston added cream to his, but Marjorie picked hers up and drank half the cup, black, without the heat seeming to bother her. She ordered a plate of hash; Langston got hotcakes. While they waited, she began to talk.
“I don’t often tell people what happened.”
“Any reason for that?”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out when you’re done listening.” She smiled thinly. “I grew up on a farm in Iowa, believe it or not.”
Langston didn’t. She seemed all hard city to him, but it did explain the strength she carried about with her.
“Well, one night, I was walking home late after tracking down a lamb that had gone missing. No moon. Just me and that lamb and a long stretch of dirt road. I could see the lights of the house ahead of me. Knew Mama had my dinner warm on the stove for me. It was a nice night, and I remember the warmth of the lamb against the back of my neck. I carried him slung over like that, you know?”
She paused as the waitress set food down in front of them.
“You believe in strange things, Mr...?”
“Langston’s fine, like I said.”
“You believe in strange things, Langston?” She speared a piece of potato, put it in her mouth, chewed thoughtfully. “Ghosts, vampires, God?”
“Maybe.” Langston had seen enough in the trenches to know there was more to heaven and earth that was dreamed of in his philosophies.
“What about...” She swallowed.
Ah, she’s come to the tricky part.
She inhaled, exhaled, and then rubbed the back of her neck -- right over the scar -- as if she had grown stiff. “Martians?” She twisted her face into a sour expression, one that told Langston she hated the idea. “Moon men?”
“You mean like in A Trip to the Moon?” He’d seen the movie in France during the war.
She wrinkled her nose, clearly remembering the film from her own youth. “I guess. But...worse.”
She set down her fork. “They took me...” She extended her index finger and jabbed it toward the ceiling. “Up there in some kind of ship. It felt good at first. All bright and warm.”
Langston thought about DeVoss and his elusive, amazing dope. It fit. Maybe they’d fallen under the influence of some space ray or something.
“Thought God had come for me,” Marjorie went on, “but then... They did things to me.” She shivered, set down her fork, and pushed her plate away. “That’s where the scar came from.”
Langston thought for a moment that she had to be loony, but would she look so uncomfortable about it if she had made the story up? “So if a girl had the same scar...?”
Marjorie shrugged. “I’ve never met anyone else like me. But boy would I like to.” Realization dawned. “She died though, didn’t she?”
“Was it...difficult, what they did to you?”
She expelled a breath. “I was sick for weeks. Mama didn’t think I’d walk again. I imagine someone with a weaker constitution would probably not make it.”
Langston finished his pancakes and paid the bill. He saw Marjorie to her trolley and shook her hand.
He stood in the cold, pale winter sunlight on the crowded city street for a while. He didn’t know what to do with the information.
But he did have two witnesses. Maybe if he told them what he’d heard from Marjorie, they’d admit something. Or remember it more clearly. Angels, DeVoss has said. Langston wondered if these angels had big bug eyes and antennae.
He remembered he’d seen an address in his file for DeVoss. Yet another flophouse in downtown. Langston caught a trolley back to his office, found the address, and then went to the building.
He waited out front for a few moments. His eyes felt gritty. He didn’t usually get up this early. He doubted DeVoss would be awake either. But then he headed up the stairs to the apartment the address had indicated as being DeVoss last known residence.
He knocked and waited.
No one answered, but he could hear hushed voices and shuffling inside.
“DeVoss, it’s Langston Pierpont, from Terrance’s.” He knocked again, hard. “We need to talk ”
A bullet ripped through the door, splintering the cheap wood and slamming into the plaster behind Langston’s right shoulder, missing him by inches. He dove sideways onto the floor and pulled out his revolver.
“He can’t have his dope back!” DeVoss screamed from inside.
Langston shook his head. Maybe not the best thing to associate himself with Terrence. Particularly if DeVoss had stolen from there. But he hadn’t known.
“I’m here about the girl, goddammit.” He took a few deep breaths, trying to study his nerves.
The door swung open. DeVoss, wild eyed, stared down at Langston.
“Tell me about the angels,” Langston said.
DeVoss began to cry. “I don’t know why they took her instead of me. Why wasn’t I good enough? Why didn’t they take me?” He dropped the gun and fell to his knees.
Langston knew the answer. DeVoss and his daughter were broken, infected with a sickness that tainted their minds and their bodies. Even he could smell it here, now. The girl, though, had just been a little drunk, a little wasted. But fresh otherwise. Strong, even, like Marjorie had been.
Just not strong enough.
Langston watched the old man cry and sob. Then he turned and left for the street.
People heading to work milled around him, and he felt lost, confronted with a solution to a problem he didn’t expect. How did he go back to the dead girl’s mother and tell her this?
He shoved his hands in his pocket and started to walk. He’d take a few blocks to clear is head, formulate what to say. A bartender at a speakeasy I know of says your daughter most likely got experimented on by aliens. That’s what killed her. Not them two junkies.They saw the aliens. Swear to it. Thought the darn things were angels.
Langston looked up at the watery blue sky and wondered about other worlds, what kinds of creatures lived in the craters of the moon or on the seas of Mars. He shook his head and finally climbed on a trolley headed toward uptown. Best get it all over with. He’d tell her there was no way of knowing how her daughter had died. Junkies, you know? So hopped up. Don’t know the living from the dead. He’d shake his head sadly, excuse her from paying, and go home.
Better than the alternative.
