Umney's Last Case

Stephen King "Umney's Last Case"

The rains are over. The hills are still green and in the valley across the Hollywood

hills you can see snow on the high

mountains. The fur stores are advertising their annual sales. The call houses that

specialize in sixteen-year-old virgins

are doing a land-office business. And in Beverly Hills the jacaranda trees are

beginning to bloom.

Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister

I. The News from Peoria.

It was one of those spring mornings so L.A.-perfect you keep expecting to see that

little trademark

symbol--(R)--stamped on it somewhere. The exhaust of the vehicles passing on Sunset

smelled faintly of oleander, the

oleander was lightly perfumed with exhaust, and the sky overhead was as clear as a

hardshell Baptist's conscience.

Peoria Smith, the blind paperboy, was standing in his accustomed place on the corner

of Sunset and Laurel, and if that

didn't mean God was in His heaven and all was jake with the world, I didn't know what

did.

Yet since I'd swung my feet out of bed that morning at the unaccustomed hour of 7:30

a.m., things had felt a little

off-kilter, somehow; a tad woozy around the edges. It was only as I was shaving --or

at least showing those pesky

bristles the razor in an effort to scare them into submission--that I realized part of

the reason why. Although I'd been

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

up reading until at least two, I hadn't heard the Demmicks roll in, squiffed to the

earlobes and trading those snappy

one-liners that apparently form the basis of their marriage.

Nor had I heard Buster, and that was maybe even odder. Buster, the Demmicks' Welsh

Corgi, has a high-pitched bark

that goes through your head like slivers of glass, and he uses it as much as he can.

Also, he's the jealous type. He lets

loose with one of his shrill barking squalls every time George and Gloria clinch, and

when they aren't zinging each

other like a couple of vaudeville comedians, George and Gloria usually are clinching.

I've gone to sleep on more than

one occasion listening to them giggle while that mutt prances around their feet going

yarkyarkyark and wondering how

difficult it would be to strangle a muscular, medium-sized dog with a length of pianowire.

Last night, however, the

Demmicks' apartment had been as quiet as the grave. It was passing strange, but a long

way from earth-shattering; the

Demmicks weren't exactly your perfect life-on-a-timetable couple at the best of times.

Peoria Smith was all right, though--chipper as a chipmunk, just as always, and he'd

recognized me by my walk even

though it was at least an hour before my usual time. He was wearing a baggy CalTech

sweatshirt that came down to his

thighs and a pair of corduroy knickers that showed off his scabby knees. His hated

white cane leaned casually against

the side of the card-table he did business on.

``Say, Mr. Umney! Howza kid?''

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Peoria's dark glasses glinted in the morning sunlight, and as he turned toward the

sound of my step with my copy of the

L.A. Times held up in front of him, I had a momentary unsettling thought: it was as if

someone had drilled two big

black holes into his face. I shivered the thought off my back, thinking that maybe the

time had come to cut out the

before-bedtime shot of rye. Either that or double the dose.

Hitler was on the front of the Times, as he so often was these days. This time it was

something about Austria. I thought,

and not for the first time, how at home that pale face and limp forelock would have

looked on a post-office bulletin

board.

``The kid is just about okay, Peoria,'' I said. `Ìn fact, the kid is as fine as fresh

paint on an outhouse wall.''

I dropped a dime into the Corona box resting atop Peoria's stack of newspapers. The

Times is a three-center, and

over-priced at that, but I've been dropping that same chip into Peoria's change-box

since time out of mind. He's a good

kid, and making good grades in school--I took it on myself to check that last year,

after he'd helped me out on the

Weld case. If Peoria hadn't shown up on Harris Brunner's houseboat when he did, I'd

still be trying to swim with my

feet cemented into a kerosene drum, somewhere off Malibu. To say I owe him a lot is an

understatement.

In the course of that particular investigation (Peoria Smith, not Harris Brunner and

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Mavis Weld), I even found out the

kid's real name, although wild horses wouldn't have dragged it out of me. Peoria's

father took a permanent

coffee-break out a ninth-floor office window on Black Friday, his mother's the only

white frail working in that goofy

Chinese laundry down on La Punta, and the kid's blind. With all that, does the world

need to know they hung Francis on

him when he was too young to fight back? The defense rests.

If anything really juicy happened the night before, you almost always find it on the

front page of the Times, left side,

just below the fold. I turned the newspaper over and saw that a bandleader of the

Cuban persuasion had suffered a heart

attack while dancing with his female vocalist at The Carousel in Burbank. He died an

hour later at L.A. General. I had

some sympathy for the maestro's widow, but none for the man himself. My opinion is

that people who go dancing in

Burbank deserve what they get.

I opened to the sports section to see how Brooklyn had done in their doubleheader with

the Cards the day before. ``How

about you, Peoria? Everyone holding their own in your castle? Moats and battlements

all in good repair?''

`Ì'll say, Mr. Umney! Oh, boy!''

Something in his voice caught my attention, and I lowered the paper to take a closer

look at him. When I did, I saw

what a gilt-edged shamus like me should have seen right away: the kid was all but

busting with happiness.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

``You look like somebody just gave you six tickets to the first game of the World

Series,'' I said. ``What's the buzz,

Peoria?''

``My mom hit the lottery down in Tijuana!'' he said. ``Forty thousand bucks! We're

rich, brother! Rich!''

I gave him a grin he couldn't see and ruffled his hair. It popped his cowlick up, but

what the hell. ``Whoa, hold the

phone. How old are you, Peoria?''

``Twelve in May. You know that, Mr. Umney, you gave me a polo-shirt. But I don't see

what that has to do with--''

``Twelve's old enough to know that sometimes people get what they want to happen mixed

up with what actually does

happen. That's all I meant.''

`Ìf you're talkin about daydreams, you're right--I do know all about em,'' Peoria

said, running his hands over the back

of his head in an effort to make his cowlick lie down again, ``but this ain't no

daydream, Mr. Umney. It's real! My

Uncle Fred went down and picked up the cash yest'y afternoon. He brought it back in

the saddlebag of his Vinnie! I

smelled it! Hell, I rolled in it! It was spread all over my mom's bed! Richest feeling

I ever had, let me tell you-forty-froggin-thousand smackers!''

``Twelve may be old enough to know the difference between daydreams and what's real,

but it's not old enough for that

kind of talk,'' I said. It sounded good--I'm sure the Legion of Decency would have

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

approved two thousand per

cent--but my mouth was running on automatic pilot, and I barely heard what was coming

out of it. I was too busy

trying to get my brain wrapped around what he'd just told me. Of one thing I was

absolutely positive: he'd made a

mistake. He must have made a mistake, because if it was true, then Peoria wouldn't be

standing here anymore when I

came by on my way to my office in the Fulwider Building. And that just couldn't be.

I found my mind returning to the Demmicks, who for the first time in recorded history

hadn't played any of their

big-band records at full volume before retiring, and to Buster, who for the first time

in recorded history hadn't greeted

the sound of George's latchkey turning in the lock with a fusillade of barks. The

thought that something was off-kilter

returned, and it was stronger this time.

Meanwhile, Peoria was looking at me with an expression I'd never expected to see on

his honest, open face: sulky

irritation mixed with exasperated humor. It was the way a kid looks at a windbag uncle

who's told all his stories, even

the boring ones, three or four times.

`Àin't you picking up on this newsflash, Mr. Umney? We're rich! My mom ain't going to

have to press shirts for that

damned old Lee Ho anymore, and I ain't going to have to sell papers on the corner

anymore, shiverin when it rains in

the winter and havin to suck up to those nutty old bags who work down at Bilder's. I

can quit actin like I died and went

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

to heaven every time some blowhard leaves me a nickel tip.''

I started a little at that, but what the hell--I wasn't a nickel man. I left Peoria

seven cents, day in and day out. Unless I

was too broke to afford it, of course, but in my business an occasional stony stretch

comes with the territory.

``Maybe we ought to go up to Blondie's and have a cup of java,'' I said. ``Talk this

thing over.''

``Can't. It's closed.''

``Blondie's? The hell you say!''

But Peoria couldn't be bothered with such mundane stuff as the coffee shop up the

street. ``You ain't heard the best, Mr.

Umney! My Uncle Fred knows a doctor up in Frisco--a specialist--who thinks he can do

something about my eyes.''

He turned his face up to mine. Below the cheaters and his too-thin nose, his lips were

trembling. ``He says it might not

be the optic nerves after all, and if it's not, there's an operation . . . I don't

understand all the technical stuff, but I could

see again, Mr. Umney!'' He reached out for me blindly . . . well, of course he did.

How else could he reach out? `Ì

could see again!''

He clutched at me, and I gripped his hands and squeezed them briefly before pushing

them gently away. There was ink

on his fingers, and I'd been feeling so good when I got up that I'd put on my new

chalk worsted. Hot for summer, of

course, but the whole city is air-conditioned these days, and besides, I was feeling

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

naturally cool. I didn't feel so cool

now. Peoria was looking up at me, his thin and somehow perfect newsboy's face

troubled. A little breeze--scented

with oleander and exhaust--ruffled his cowlick, and I realized that I could see it

because he wasn't wearing his tweed

cap. He looked somehow naked without it, and why not? Every newsboy should wear a

tweed cap, just like every

shoeshine boy should wear a beanie cocked way back on his head.

``What's the matter, Mr. Umney? I thought you'd be happy. Jeepers, I didn't have to

come out here to this lousy corner

today, you know, but I did--I even got here early, because I kinda had an idea you'd

get here early. I thought you'd be

happy, my mom hittin the lottery and me gettin a chance at an operation, but you

ain't.'' Now his voice trembled with

resentment. ``You ain't!''

``Yes I am,'' I said, and I wanted to be happy--part of me did, anyway--but the bitch

of it was that he was mostly

right. Because it meant things would change, you see, and things weren't supposed to

change. Peoria Smith was

supposed to be right here, year in and year out, with that perfect cap of his tilted