Umneys Last Case

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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--

® --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 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 piano-wire. 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?''

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. ``In 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 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?''

``I'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.

``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.''

``If 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 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

expressio

n 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.

``Ain'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

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©1993byStephenKing.Allrightsreserved.STEPHENKINGUMNEY’SLASTCASETherainsareover.ThehillsarestillgreenandinthevalleyacrosstheHollywoodhillsyoucanseesnowonthehighmountains.Thefurstoresareadvertisingtheirannualsales.Thecallhousesthatspecializeinsixteen-year-oldvirginsaredoingaland-officebusiness.AndinBe...

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