Fly Me to the Morgue

‘Sorry, Mr G.’ He put it away.

‘Where’d you find him?’ Bing asked, as we walked.

‘I had to poke around a bit, but I found him in one of the stalls. They covered him with hay, but they didn’t do a good job.’

‘They wanted him to be found?’ I asked.

‘Maybe.’

We entered. There was a horse standing in a stall, staring balefully at us. No other horses were around. This one was bigger than the ones in the corral.

‘That it?’ I asked. ‘The horse?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bing said, looking unnerved. ‘Could be.’

‘Where is he, Jerry?’

‘Over here.’

We started over and then I stopped.

‘How bad?’

‘Bad.’

‘Why don’t you stay here, Bing?’ I said.

‘What, you think I’m squeamish?’ he asked, already looking a little green around the gills.

‘Why take a chance?’ I asked.

‘Good point. I’ll go and look at that horse.’

‘Good idea.’

I followed Jerry to another, empty stall.

Empty except for a battered, bloody man.

‘Do we know that’s him?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘You go through his pockets?’

‘No, Mr G. I found him and went to tell you. Ya want me to?’

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Let’s see if it’s him before we call the cops.’

‘We gotta call the cops?’

I turned and looked at Bing, who was bent over, checking the horse’s legs.

‘Let’s talk about that later, too.’

Jerry bent over the body. The man was lying face down in the hay. Jerry went into his jeans, came out with a wallet.

‘License, and credit cards in the name Christopher Arnold,’ he said.

‘Put it back.’

He did and stood up.

‘What’s it look like, Jerry?’

‘Like somebody went at him with something,’ he said. ‘A two-by-four, a baseball bat, a tire iron . . .’

‘Hey guys?’ Bing called. We both looked over at him. ‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s him,’ I said. ‘Chris Arnold. Somebody beat him to death.’

‘Jesus.’

We backed away from the stall and joined Bing.

‘Wow,’ Jerry said. ‘That looks like a thoroughbred. Good formation, looks about three. You want to buy a three year old, Mr C?’

‘I’d buy a horse who looked like he could win, no matter what age,’ he said.

‘This one would never get you to the triple crown.’

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘Because they’re over for this year. And next year this horse will be four.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ Bing said. ‘In fact, none of this really matters if that’s Chris Arnold. What do we do now?’

‘We have two options,’ I said.

‘What are they?’

‘We can get in the car and get out of here, or we call the cops.’

‘What do you suggest?’ Bing asked.

‘We get outta here,’ Jerry said.

‘We should call the cops,’ I said.

‘Mr G.,’ Jerry said. ‘The car.’

‘What about it? The tracks would be kinda hard to wipe out.’

‘No, not your car,’ he said. ‘The other car. The one that passed us.’

‘Ohhh, yeah.’

‘You mean, they saw us?’ Bing asked.

‘Well, they probably saw us the way we saw them,’ I said. ‘But I think what Jerry means is, somebody in that car could’ve been the killer.’

‘Oh.’

‘Bing, this is gonna be your call,’ I said. ‘There’s bound to be publicity.’

‘But if we leave, there might be somebody who knows that we were supposed to meet today.’

I shrugged.

‘We can say you couldn’t make it. You called to reschedule, and nobody answered.’

‘But they’d still want to question me, right?’ He looked at Jerry. ‘Right?’

‘Mr C., if he’s got your name in an appointment book or somethin’, yeah, they’ll still wanna talk to ya.’

‘And I’d have to lie – I mean, if I didn’t want them to know I was here.’

‘Well, yeah,’ Jerry said.

Bing rubbed his chin and said, ‘I don’t know how good I’d be at that.’

‘Ain’t you ever lied before?’ Jerry asked.

‘Yeah, but not to the police. And you don’t want to be here for the cops, right, Jerry?’

‘I’d rather not, Mr C.’

‘We could just leave this poor joker here to be found by someone else,’ I said.

‘Have you boys done this sort of thing before?’ Bing asked. ‘I mean, with some of the stuff you’ve done for Dino and Frank?’

Jerry and I exchanged a glance. I knew he was wondering, like I was, how much Bing knew, and who had told him.

‘Let’s just say we did whatever was necessary,’ I said.

‘OK,’ Bing said, ‘I shouldn’t’ve asked. Forget it. Let’s just decide what we’re going to do in this instance.’

If it had been just Jerry and me there would have been no problem. We’d walked away from dead bodies before. But with Bing Crosby involved, we had to do the right thing. Keep everything on the up-and-up.

‘Bing,’ I said, ‘the fact is we haven’t done anything wrong here.’

‘That’s true.’

‘They’ll talk to you, they’ll question me and Jerry a little more because we’ve been through this before. But you, they’ll probably just let you go back to the hotel.’

‘Well, I don’t want you boys to get into trouble.’

‘Don’t worry, Mr C.,’ Jerry said. ‘We can handle the cops.’

‘Well, then . . . where should we do this from? Drive back to civilization? I mean, this being the scene of the crime and all.’

‘I think we can risk calling the police from the house,’ I said. ‘Jerry, maybe you should wait here and . . . watch the body.’

‘Wouldn’t want him to get up and walk away,’ Jerry said. ‘Would we?’