Dead Man's Hand - A Mini-Mystery

The thumping on my door was too loud to be a potential client and too long and insistent to be the police. I dragged myself out of bed, grabbed my Sig Sauer and went to stand by the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Bumpy Miller,” he said from outside. “Let me in, man.”

Bumpy was lucky I was sleeping alone that night. If Cindy was there she’d have told me to shoot him. I’ll cop to being tempted myself.

“What the hell would make me want to open my door to a gambler and a hustler like you at two-thirty in the morning?”

“Let’s see,” he said. “A dead body, four guys who could go to jail where only one ought to, and five large if you can figure out who the one is.”

Well, Bumpy had the right answer. There are only three things I could think of that would get me pulling on my black suit at that hour: a corpse, a puzzle and a nice fee.

Inside of fifteen minutes Bumpy was knocking on another door with me standing beside him. Bumpy was a little guy with a bald head and a little scar over his right eye. Still he got respect because of the monster opening the door. Bruise got his nickname because he was so black he was almost blue. But when you’re five inches over my six feet and pushing 300 pounds, nobody laughs at you.

A poker table dominated the room, but there were no chips, just stacks of cash. I knew the two guys still sitting. Freddie was a West Indian fancy man with a bad attitude and, from what I could see from the table, bad luck at cards. Victor was a loose cannon the gangs called on from time to time to correct a member’s behavior. Victor was good at making people see things his way. He liked blades and he liked fire. I didn’t like him.

“What the hell?” Victor said, getting half out of his seat. Bumpy waved him back down.

“Gentleman, I called Hannibal Jones here because I trust him, and you both know he’s honest. You also know that if five-oh comes in here and looks in that bedroom we’re all going down, just because of our history. So I say, he goes in there and tries to figure out who the real trouble maker is. Then that guy goes with Hannibal to see The Man, and the rest of us go home.”

“This is bull,” Freddie started to say, but Bruise took a step in his direction and he shut right up.

“So who’s the fifth player?” I asked.

“It’s Gant,” Bumpy said, pushing the bedroom door open. “Or it WAS Gant.”

Gant was tall and lanky, and on that night wore a dark blue suit and alligator shoes. His kinky hair had hints of gray at the temples and when I’d seen him before he always had a ready smile, not the lethal leer most pimps wear. Slumped in that chair he didn’t look like he had smiled in weeks.

I pulled on my gloves and stepped closer. He had a rock the size of a cat’s eye marble on his left hand and a fountain pen clutched tight in his right. His Rolex was still on his wrists so nobody tried to rob him at least. A hastily-scrawled suicide note lay on the bed’s side table. Twenties and fifties were splayed across the bed and on the floor. I lifted his left hand and let if go. It fell limply. No rigor. In fact, he was the most relaxed dead man I ever saw.

“And you know it wasn’t suicide, because…?” I asked Bumpy, who never walked past the doorway.

“Cause why the hell would Gant kill himself?” Bumpy said. “He been winning all night. Winning, and grinning. Then he comes in here and never comes out. But now, if you think he might have really offed hisself, we’ll just head on home and you can be the one who found him. Same fee.”

I chuckled, and stared checking the area around the body. “Who really found him?”

“That was Freddie,” Bumpy said. “Little fool damn near pissed his pants.”

“And nobody came in here since?” I asked, fishing in the trash. Didn’t see much, but there was a little medicine bottle. I wondered what Gant might have been taking.

“Not a soul,” Bumpy said. “Bruise saw to that.”

The bottle might have held any number of possible drugs, since it had no label, but my nose told me it probably also held something more than Gant bargained for.

“If it was suicide, he did it right,” I said. “I got the bitter almond smell of cyanide here.”

“Naw, I seen Gant swallow pills out of that bottle before,” Bumpy said. “They was for his blood pressure he said. I nodded and looked again at Gant’s face, so relaxed in death. I dropped the bottle back in the little trash basket and brushed past Bumpy. I was tired and didn’t want to make this an all-night affair.

“So, Bumpy, did you collect from everybody else for my fee?”

“Damn right he did,” Victor said.

“Fine,” I said. “Pay me, Bumpy. Then you and the boys can go home. Except for Freddie here. He goes with me.”

“What?” Freddie said, jumping to his feet. “How can you do that? Victor here is a stone killer, every body knows that. And Bumpy, he’s so slick, and he sure hates losing all night at his own poker game.”

“Well, I sure ain’t mad at you,” Bumpy said, “but I am curious how you can be so sure Freddie did Gant in.”

“Then let me give you all a little forensics lesson,” I said. “Cyanide is such nasty stuff because it’s actually a nerve agent. If you swallow that stuff, death comes pretty damn fast but first you go into convulsions. After that, your body goes completely limp. All the muscles relax.”

“So what?” Freddie said. “When I saw Gant he looked pretty limp to me. Dead limp.”

“Yeah, probably so,” I said. “But you had to go and get dramatic and fake a suicide. You wrote a sloppy note, and that was okay. But then you had to get fancy and stick a pen in his hand.”

Freddie dropped back in his chair, white as a West Indian ghost, but I kept talking.

“Guess you didn’t know it, but after death by cyanide there’s no way in hell he could have held on to a pen through the convulsions and even if he did, when his body relaxes his hand would have dropped it. And since you found him and nobody else went in the room, you’re the only one who could have pushed that pen into his hand. Now Bumpy, how about making that anonymous call, and I’ll baby-sit Freddy here until the cops show up.”