David Bishop - The Original Alibi

At seven, with the morning sun tussling with the hang-around fog, Fidge called to say the department had reached the manager of the restaurant at his home. Surprisingly, Cory Jackson still worked there after eleven years. The manager told Fidge the address we had for Jackson was no longer good. The manager had not known the new address by memory but he had it in his office in the back of the restaurant. Fidge would meet the manager there in an hour. He also told him to hang out his help wanted sign. I couldn’t tag along, official police business and all. At this point, there was nothing that clearly drew a line between the old Corrigan case and last night’s murder of Cory Jackson. My hanging around while Fidge worked this case would do nothing but suggest that line existed.

I decided I’d beat it over to the address the Whittaker case file carried for Cory Jackson and sniff around before the cops shagged the old address, if they ever did. The murder of Cory Jackson would not be a high profile case. Well, not unless it got tied back to the Corrigan murder and by extension to General Whittaker, one of Long Beach’s most storied residents.

Jackson’s old address was a tired building on the sand along an old road near Seal Beach, south of Long Beach. From the street I could see an opening for a double carport with one vehicle inside. As I approached on foot, a lamp shining through an upstairs window revealed living quarters over the carport which appeared to be that same size. A set of stairs went up the side of the building past a rusty metal mailbox that hung crooked just below a porch light filled with cobwebs, but no bulb. The stairs were gloomy, but the morning sun from the east had already cracked open the new day. The air still felt cold. The fog wet. A gull screeched as I put my foot on the first stair.

According to the restaurant manager, Cory Jackson didn’t live here any longer. Of course we knew that to be true. In point of fact, Cory now bunked in the County Coroner’s office. But someone was inside. I decided to proceed cautiously and avoid provoking someone who might be an innocent citizen. At least until I knew more.

The door bell didn’t work. I flipped on the tape recorder in my jacket pocket and knocked, loudly, which wasn’t hard. The screen door, warped from the damp air, and dried by the wind and salt, no longer fit the doorway, so it rattled and banged from a normal knock. My knock exceeded normal.

The upper third of the door was a filthy glass panel shrouded with what had once been a white curtain. After a moment, the silhouette of a man’s head blocked some of the faint light that made its way through the smeary coating on the glass.

“Who is it?” the blurry figure said through the door.

“Cory Jackson?”

“He’s not here. I don’t know the guy. Go away.”

For starters, this guy wasn’t too bright. He had begun talking before he finished thinking about what he didn’t want to say. “I’m not going away,” I hollered back. “And your door won’t keep me out.”

He pulled the door open. I didn’t hear any metal, so it had not been locked. He stood on the other side of the screen door wearing a pair of black drawstring sweatpants and a yellow v-neck t-shirt. I couldn’t tell if the color was how it came when he bought it, or had yellowed through a devoted avoidance of laundering. He wore dirty white athletic socks and no shoes. The way the sock fabric twisted in front of his toes told me he was right handed. People make hard turns with greater pressure on the more coordinated leg, thus the sock on that foot bunches up and twists more. He looked close to thirty, but beyond it. His left sleeve, rolled up on top of his shoulder, held a pack of smokes.

“Who am I talking to?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter-”

“It does to me,” I said interrupting him. “You know Jackson and we’re going to talk so don’t make this harder on yourself than you need to.”

“You the cops?”

“No. And that’s the good and bad parts.”

“What’s good about it?”

“The good part’s to my advantage. I don’t have to waste time doing things by the book or respecting your rights or any of that crap. That’s also the bad part. That part’s yours.”

I grabbed the little handle on the screen door and rattled it until he slapped the hook out of the eye screw and pushed it out toward me. I walked right at him until he gave ground and backed up into the clearing in the center of the main room. A sort of brown contemporary couch, liberally stained, stood against the far wall, fronted by an early American coffee table. A blue Naugahyde chair sat to the side. The light that had filtered through the window came from a milk glass up-lamp that sat in the corner behind the blue chair. His decorator favored the style of mix-and-match-nothing.

“How do you know Cory Jackson and where is he?”

“I don’t know where he is. He don’t live here no more. Lives alone in a studio unit a couple blocks from the restaurant he works at.”

“You were rooming with Cory back when he testified about seeing Eddie Whittaker kill his fiancee. Let’s start with why he lied about that.” In fact, I didn’t know if they roomed together then or not. I made it a presumptive statement. He didn’t disagree so it was true.

“Hey. He saw the dude. Least he said he did. No reason to lie.”

“What’s your name?”

“Quirt. Quirt Brown.”

I walked over to the table and picked up his wallet. His driver’s license confirmed his name, Quirt Brown. “Quirt?” I said, with an inflection that asked, where had that come from.

“My parents were John Wayne fans. Quirt was the name of one of his characters.”

“Hey,” I said while still looking in his wallet. “Look at the bright side. No one gets you confused with anyone else and it’s easy to pronounce and spell, well, pronounce anyway.” When I turned back he had moved closer and his right hand held a gun.

“Okay, pal. Who the hell are you and why are you here asking about Cory?”

Quirt wasn’t a big man but he had big hands with longish fingers, webbed together the way hands come, like linked sausages with transplanted fingernails.

I stuck my thumbs in my waistband. “Now why did ya wanna go and do that? We were having a friendly little chat. No reason to go hostile.”

“Now I ask the questions,” he said.

“Quirt, a man’s got to learn his limits, and when he knows them he’s got to live within them.”

“I don’t wanna hear that shit. Who are you and why are you here?”

“My name’s Carson. Kit Carson. I’m working my way through college selling magazine subscriptions. We got whatever you want. Mysteries, sci-fi, erotica, handyman mags, you name a hankering, I got a subscription fer ya.”

“Okay, wise guy. Let me see your wallet.”

I pulled my left thumb out of my waistband and reached around to the left side of my rump, my right thumb staying cinched in behind my belt. As I brought my wallet around slowly, I dropped it. When he reflectively glanced down, I thrust my right hand out from my waistband with maximum force and jammed the flat of my palm against the finger side of his gun. I also slammed my left hand against the outside of the wrist. The timing resulted in nearly simultaneous blows, each driving against the force of the other. He involuntarily straightened his fingers. The move also drove his hand away from me, which was good in the event he somehow got the trigger pulled. He didn’t. His gun was now in my hand.

“Okay. I’ve got the gun and everything you thought you controlled is now gone, or dripping down your leg.”

“What do you want from me?”

“All of it. Why Cory Jackson lied about Eddie Whittaker. And who paid him to tell that lie. That’ll do for starters.”