Halloween Candy by Douglas Clegg Read Free Book Online Page A

area.”

    “We got to take you to another bar.”

    “You buying?” he asked her.
    70

    “Yeah sure. You got a place up here?” Beth nodded towards the flophouse apartments beyond the streetlamp.

    Fazzo nodded. “Renting it for thirty-five years. Number 265.”

    Paul shined his flashlight all over Fazzo. “I don’t see any blood on him.”

    “It’s the piss,” Beth whispered, “someone reported it as blood. It happens sometimes. Poor old guy.”

    Beth escorted Fazzo to the car. She turned and nodded towards Paul; he took the signal. He went over to the back staircase. The door was open. He walked inside--the carpeting was damp and stank of mildew. A junkie sat six steps up, skinny to the bone, leaning against the peeling wallpaper, muttering some junkie incantation. Paul stepped around him. The hallway above was narrow, its paint all but stripped off by time. The smell of curry--someone was cooking, and it permeated the hall. When he got to 265, he knocked. The door was already ajar, and his fist opened it on the first knock.
    71

    There was a light somewhere to the back of the apartment. Paul called out to see if anyone was there. He gagged when he inhaled the fetid air.

    All he could see were shadows and shapes, as if the old guy’s furniture had been swathed in dropcloths. He felt along the wall for the light switch. When he found it, he turned on the light. It was a twentyfive watt bulb which fizzled to life from the center of the living room ceiling. Its light barely illuminated the ceiling itself. The chairs and couch in the room were covered with old newspapers, some of them damp from urine. The old man hadn’t even bothered to make it to the bathroom anymore. There was human excrement behind the couch. Empty whiskey bottles along the floor in front of the television set.

    Paul didn’t notice the strong stink once he’d stayed in the apartment for a few minutes.

    Beth arrived at that point. “I got him cuffed, not that he needs it. He fell asleep as soon as I sat him down in the car. Jesus!” She covered her mouth and nose. “I thought he’d been living on the street.” Her eyes widened as she took in the other sights.
    72

    “Look at this,” Paul pointed to the windowsill, shining his flashlight across it.

    It was black with dead flies, two or three layers thick.

    He continued on to the kitchen. “Should I open the fridge, you think?”

    “Sure,” Beth said. “Looks like Fazzo the Fabulous is going to end up in state hospital for awhile. What the hell?” She picked something up off a shelf and held it up. “Paul, look at this.”

    In her hands, what looked like a wig with long, thin hair. “You think Fazzo steps out on Saturday night in pearls and pumps?”

    Paul shook his head, and turned back to the refrigerator. He opened the door, slowly. A blue light within it came on. The refrigerator was stacked three trays high with old meat--clotted steaks, green hamburger, what looked like a roast with a fine coating of mold on it. “Shit,” he said, noticing the flies that were dead and stuck against the wet film that glazed the shinier cuts of meat. “This guy’s lost it. He’s not just a drunk. He needs serious help.”

    Beth walked into the bathroom, and started laughing. 73

    “What’s up?” he asked, moving around the boxes in the kitchen. Paul glanced to the open door.

    The bathroom light was bright.

    “It’s clean in here. It’s so clean you can eat off it. It must be the one room he never goes in.” Beth leaned through the open doorway and gestured for Paul to come around the corner. “This is amazing.”

    Paul almost tripped over a long-dead plant as he made it over to where she stood.

    The bathroom mirror was sparkling, as was the toilet, the pink tiles. Blue and pink guest soap were laid out in fake seashells on either side of the brass spigots of the faucet.

    Written in lipstick on the mirror: a phone number.

    For a second, he thought he saw something