A Touch of Infinity (14 page)

“Great,” Suzie said. “That's just great, Harvey. Here we are with a dead seven-foot-long blonde with oversized mammaries, and now what?”

“I think you ought to cover her up,” Harvey suggested meekly.

“You're damn right I'm going to cover her up!” And Suzie marched off to the bedroom and returned with a blanket which just about fitted the enormous body.

“What do I do now?” Harvey wondered.

“Put her back where you got her from.”

“You must be kidding.”

“Try it,” said a new Suzie, cold and nasty. “If you can take things like this out of the air, maybe you can put them back.”

“How? Just suppose you tell me how, being such a great smart-ass about everything else.”

“I'm not a prevert.”

“You mean pervert. Who's a pervert? That's a hell of a thing to say.”

Suzie swept the blanket aside. “Look at her.”

“All right, I've seen her. Now what do we do with her?”

“What do
you
do.”

“OK, OK—what do I do?”

“Lift her up and put her back.”

“Where?”

“Wherever you take these damn things from, back with your lousy water rolls and Danish pastry.”

Harvey shook his head. “We been married a long time, Suzie. I never heard you talk like that before.”

“You never made me a present of a seven-foot dead blonde before.”

“I guess not,” Harvey agreed, reaching out and obtaining a prune Danish.

“What's that for?”

“I want to see if I can put it back.”

“Look, Harvey,” Suzie said; her voice softening a little, “it's no use putting back a prune Danish. You got to put back big Bertha there.” Harvey, meanwhile, was stabbing the air with the prune Danish. “Harvey—forget the Danish.”

He let go of it, hoping and praying that it would return to whatever unknown had produced it, but instead it dropped with a wet plop on one of the huge breasts, dripping its soft prune filling all over the beautiful oversized mammary. Harvey ran for a napkin, wiped frantically, and only made the situation worse. Suzie joined him with a wet sponge and a handful of paper towels.

“Let me do it, Harvey.”

She cleaned up the mess while Harvey managed to heave one of the long, meaty legs into the air. “Put her back,” he said. “Suzie, I could never lift her. It would take one of those hoist cranes. She must weigh two hundred and fifty pounds.”

“I suppose that's what you always wanted. Do you know, she's as cold as ice.”

“Do you suppose I killed her?” he asked woefully.

“I don't know. I think I'll telephone Dave.”

“Why?”

“He'll know what to do.”

“As far as I am concerned, your brother Dave can drop dead.”

“Like this one. Sure. Wish me dead too.”

“I never wished you dead. I am talking about your brother, Dave.”

“At least he'd have an idea.”

“So have I,” Harvey said. “My idea is very simple and right on it. Call the cops.”

“What? Harvey, are you out of your ever-loving mind? She's dead. You made her dead. You killed her.”

“So I made her dead. What do we do? Cut her up and flush her down the toilet? Neither of us can stand the sight of blood. Do we dump her in an empty lot? Even with your lousy brother Dave, we couldn't lift her up.”

“Harvey,” she pleaded, “let's think about it.”

They thought about it, and then Harvey called the cops.

A dead body, Harvey discovered, was a communal enterprise. Nine men prowled around the little apartment. Eight of them were ambulance attendants, uniformed officers, fingerprint expert, medical examiner, photographer, etc. The ninth was a heavy-shouldered man in plain clothes, whose name was Lieutenant Serpio, who told everyone else what to do, and who never smiled. Harvey and Suzie sat on the couch and watched him.

“All right, take her out,” said Serpio.

They tried.

“Never saw the like of it,” the Medical Examiner was muttering. “She's seven feet tall if she's an inch.”

“Kelly, don't stand there on your feet, give them a hand!” Serpio said to one of the uniformed cops.

Kelly joined with the ambulance attendants, and with the help of another cop they got the oversized blonde onto a stretcher. She hung over either end as they staggered through the door with her, and Suzie said to her husband:

“You're not a pervert, Harvey. You're just a lousy male chauvinist. I have been thinking about you. You are a sexist pig”

“That's great,” Harvey agreed. “I never did anything to anyone, and the whole world falls on me.”

“You are a sexist pig,” she repeated.

“I find it hard to think of myself that way.”

“Just try. You'll get used to it.”

“What did she die from, Doc?” Lieutenant Serpio asked the Medical Examiner.

“God knows. Maybe she broke her back carrying that bust around. I'll go downtown and chop her up a little, and I'll let you know.”

The apartment cleared out. Only Serpio and a single uniformed cop remained. Serpio stood in front of Harvey and Suzie, staring at them thoughtfully.

“Tell me again,” he said.

“I told you.”

“Tell me again. I got plenty of time. In twenty years of practicing my profession in this town, I thought I had seen everything. Not so. This enlivens my work and gives me a new attitude. Now who is she?”

“I don't know.”

“Where did she come from?”

“I took her out of the air.”

“I know. You took her out of the air. I could send you down to Bellevue, only I am intrigued. Do you make a habit out of taking things out of the air?”

“No, sir,” Harvey answered politely. “Only since this morning.”

“What about you?” he said to Suzie. “Do you take hings out of the air?”

She shook her head. “It's Harvey's gift.”

“What else does Harvey take out of the air?” the Lieutenant asked patiently.

“Danish.”

“Danish?”

“Danish pastry with prune filling,” Harvey explained.

The Lieutenant considered this. “I see. Tell me, Mr. Kepplemen, why Danish pastry with prune filling—if it's not too much to ask?”

“I can explain that,” Suzie put in. “You see, we were down in Baltimore—”

“Let him explain.”

“I like it,” Harvey said.

“What about Baltimore?”

“They make it very good down there,” Harvey said.

“Danish pastry?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now do you want to tell me who the blonde is?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you want to tell me how she died?”

“I don't know.”

“The doctor says she's been dead for hours. When did she come here?”

“I told you.”

“Where are her clothes, Harvey?”

“I told you. I got her just the way she was.”

“All right, Harvey,” the Lieutenant said with a sigh. “I am going to have to arrest you and your wife and take you downtown, because with an explanation like this, I have absolutely no alternative. Now I am going to tell you your rights. No, the hell with that. Tell you what, Harvey—you and your wife come downtown with me, and we'll let the arrest sit for a while, and we'll see if the boys downstairs figured out what she died from. How does that grab you?”

Harvey and Suzie nodded bleakly.

On the way down to Centre Street, they sat in the back seat of Lieutenant Serpio's car and argued in whispers.

“Show him with a Danish,” Suzie kept whispering.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don't want to.”

“Well, he doesn't believe you. That's plain enough. If you take out a Danish, maybe he'll believe you.”

“No.”

“A hamburger?”

“No.”

Lieutenant Serpio led them into an office where there were a lot of cops in uniform and some not in uniform, and he led them to a bench and said, with some solicitude, “Both of you sit down right here, and just take it easy and don't get nervous. You want anything, you ask that fella over there by the desk.”

Then he went over to the desk and spoke softly to the cop behind it for a minute or so; and then the cop behind the desk came over to Suzie and Harvey and said, “Now just take it easy, and don't get nervous, and everything's going to be all right. You want a prune Danish, Harvey?”

“Why?”

“If you're hungry. Nothing to it. I send the kid out for it, and in five minutes you got a prune Danish. How about it?”

“No,” replied Harvey.

“I think we ought to call our lawyer,” said Suzie.

The cop went away, and Harvey asked her whom she expected to call, since they never had a lawyer.

“I don't know, Harvey. Somebody always calls a lawyer. I'm scared.”

“Either they think I am crazy or they think I am a murderer. That's the way it goes. I wish I had never seen that lousy brother of yours.”

“Harvey, you took the Danish out of the air before my brother set foot in the house.”

“That's right, I did,” said Harvey.

At which moment the Medical Examiner sat facing both Lieutenant Serpio and the Chief of Detectives, and said to them, “It is not a murder because that large blond tomato was never alive.”

“I'm a busy man,” said the Chief of Detectives. “I have eleven homicides tonight—just tonight on a Sunday night, not to mention two suicides. So don't confuse me.”

“I'm confused.”

“Good. Now what have you got on that dead blonde?”

“She is only dead in a technical sense. As I said, she was never alive. She is the incredible construction of a bewildered Dr. Frankenstein or some kind of nut. Mostly on the outside she is all right, except that whoever put her together forgot her toenails. Inside, she has no heart, no kidneys, no liver, no lungs, no circulatory system, and practically no blood, and what blood she has is not blood, because nothing she has is like what it's supposed to be.”

“Then what's inside of her?” Serpio demanded.

“Mostly a sort of crude beefsteak.”

“Just what in hell are you talking about?” demanded the Chief of Detectives.

“You got me,” said the Medical Examiner.

“Come on, come on, I bring you a dead seven-foot blonde that makes you wish you were a single basketball player even when she's dead, and you tell me she never was alive. I seen many tomatoes that are more dead than alive, but there has to be a time when they're alive.”

“Not this one. She hasn't even a proper backbone, so she could not have stood up to save her life, and I think I'll write a paper about her, and if I do I'll get it published in England. You know, it's a funny thing, you can get a paper like that published in England and it commands respect. Not here. By the way, where did you get her?”

“Serpio brought her in.”

“Naked?”

“Just like she is,” Serpio said. “We found her on the floor, stretched out like a lox, in the apartment of two people whose name is Kepplemen. He's an accountant. I got them upstairs.”

“Did you charge them?”

“With what?”

“Absolutely beautiful,” said the Medical Examiner. “You know, you go on with this lousy job for years and nothing really interesting ever comes your way. Now did they say where she came from?”

“This Harvey Kepplemen,” Serpio replied, watching the Chief of Detectives, “says he took her out of the air.”

“Oh?”

“Serpio, what the hell are you talking about?” from the Chief of Detectives.

“That's what he says. He says he takes prune Danish out of the air, and he got her from the same place.”

“Prune Danish?”

“Danish pastry.”

“All right,” the Chief of Detectives said. “I got to figure you're sane and you're not drunk. If you're insane, you get a rest cure. If you're drunk, you get canned. So bring them both to my office.”

“I got to be there,” said the Medical Examiner. “I just got to be there.”

This time Serpio called Harvey Mr. Kepplemen. “Mr. Kepplemen,” he said politely, “the Chief of Detectives wants to see you in his office.”

“I'm tired,” Suzie complained.

“Just a little longer, and maybe we can clear this up—how about that, Mrs. Kepplemen?”

“I want you to know,” Harvey said, “that nothing like this ever happened to me before. I have good references. I have worked for the same firm for sixteen years.”

“We know that, Mr. Kepplemen. It won't take long.”

A few minutes later they were all gathered in the office of the Chief of Detectives, Harvey and Suzie, Serpio, the Chief of Detectives, and the Medical Examiner. The Chief of Detectives poured coffee.

“Go ahead, Mr. and Mrs. Kepplemen,” he said. “You've had a long day.” His voice was gentle and comforting. “By the way, I am told that you can take Danish pastry out of the air. I can send out for some, but why do that if you can take it out of the air. Right?”

“Well—”

“Harvey doesn't really like to take things out of the air,” Suzie said. “He has a feeling that it's wrong. Isn't that so, Harvey?”

“Well,” Harvey said uneasily, “well—I mean that all my life I never had a talent for anything. My mother was Ruth Kepplemen …” He hesitated, looking from face to face.

“Go on, Harvey,” said the Chief of Detectives. “Whatever you want to tell us.”

“Well, she was an artist. I mean she painted lots of pictures, and she kept telling her friends, Harvey hasn't a creative bone in his body—”

“About the Danish, Harvey?”

“Well, Suzie and I were driving through Baltimore—”

“Detective Serpio told me about that. I was thinking that here we all are with coffee, and it's past midnight, and maybe you'd like to reach out into the air and get us some prune Danish.”