Umney's Last Case by Stephen King Read Free Book Online Page B

haunted house. It had to do with the Demmicks. The reason they'd been so
    quiet last night was because dead
    people don't engage in marital spats--it's one of those rules, like the one that says
    crap rolls downhill, that you can
    pretty much count on through thick and thin. >From almost the first moment I'd met
    him, I'd sensed there was a violent
    temper under George's urbane top layer, and that there might be a sharp-clawed bitch
    lurking in the shadows behind
    Gloria Demmick's pretty face and daffy demeanor. They were just a little too Cole
    Porter to be true, if you see what I
    mean. And now I was somehow sure that George had finally snapped and killed his wife .
    . . probably their yappy
    Welsh Corgi, as well. Gloria might be sitting propped up in the bathroom corner
    between the shower and the toilet
    right now, her face black, her eyes bulging like old dull marbles, her tongue
    protruding between her blue lips. The dog
    was lying with its head in her lap and a wire coathanger twisted around its neck, its
    shrill bark stilled forever. And
    George? Dead on the bed with Gloria's bottle of Veronals--now empty--standing beside
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    him on the night-table. No
    more parties, no more jitterbugging at Al Arif, no more frothy upper-class murder
    cases in Palm Desert or Beverly
    Glen. They were cooling off now, drawing flies, growing pale under their fashionable
    poolside tans.
    George and Gloria Demmick, who had died inside this man's machine. Who had died inside
    this man's head.
    ``You did one lousy job of not scaring me,'' I said, and immediately wondered if it
    would have been possible for him to
    do a good one. Ask yourself this: how do you get a person ready to meet God? I'll bet
    even Moses got a little hot under
    the robe when he saw that bush start to glow, and I'm nothing but a shamus who works
    for forty a day plus expenses.
    ``How Like a Fallen Angel was the Mavis Weld story. The name, Mavis Weld, is from a
    novel called The Little Sister
    By Raymond Chandler.'' He looked at me with a kind of troubled uncertainty that had
    some small whiff of guilt in it.
    `Ìt's an hommage.'' He said the first syllable so it rhymed with Rome.
    ``Bully for you,'' I said, ``but the guy's name rings no bells.''
    `Òf course not. In your world--which is my version of L.A., of course --Chandler
    never existed. Nevertheless, I've
    used all sorts of names from his books in mine. The Fulwider Building is where
    Chandler's detective, Philip Marlowe,
    had his office. Vernon Klein . . . Peoria Smith . . . and Clyde Umney, of course. That
    was the name of the lawyer in
    Playback.''
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    `Ànd you call those things hommages?''
    ``That's right.''
    `Ìf you say so, but it sounds like a fancy word for plain old copying to me.'' But it
    made me feel funny, knowing that
    my name had been made up by a man I'd never heard of in a world I'd never dreamed of.
    Landry had the good grace to flush, but his eyes didn't drop.
    `Àll right; perhaps I did do a little pilfering. Certainly I adopted Chandler's style
    for my own, but I'm hardly the first;
    Ross Macdonald did the same thing in the fifties and sixties, Robert Parker did it in
    the seventies and eighties, and the
    critics decked them with laurel leaves for it. Besides, Chandler learned from Hammett
    and Hemingway, not to mention
    pulp-writers like--''
    I held up my hand. ``Let's skip the lit class and get down to the bottom line. This is
    crazy, but--'' My eyes drifted to
    the picture of Roosevelt, from there they went to the eerily blank blotter, and from
    there they went back to the haggard
    face on the other side of the desk. ``--but let's say I believe it. What are you doing
    here? What did you come for?''
    Except I already knew. I detect for a living, but the answer to that one came from my
    heart, not my head.
    `Ì came for you.''
    ``For