He looked at the tense face of Chaim Acosta, where exultation and resignation blended as they must in a man who knows at last the pattern of his life, and realized that Chaim’s memory, too, went as far as the thirty-first chapter.
And there isn’t a word in the Bible as to what became of the ass, thought Mule Malloy, and started the bleep up the rise.
The Anomaly of the Empty Man
“This is for you,” Inspector Abrahams announced wryly. Another screwy one.”
I was late and out of breath. I’d somehow got entangled on Market Street with the Downtown Merchants’ Association annual parade, and for a while it looked like I’d be spending the day surrounded by gigantic balloon-parodies of humanity. But it takes more than rubber Gullivers to hold me up when Inspector Abrahams announces that he’s got a case of the kind he labels “for Lamb.”
And San Francisco’s the city for them to happen in. Nobody anywhere else ever had such a motive for murder as the butler Frank Miller in 1896, or such an idea of how to execute a bank robbery as the zany Mr. Will in 1952. Take a look at Joe Jackson’s San Francisco Murders, and you’ll see that we can achieve a flavor all our own. And when we do, Abrahams lets me in on it.
Abrahams didn’t add any explanation. He just opened the door of the apartment. I went in ahead of him. It was a place I could have liked it if it hadn’t been for what was on the floor.
Two walls were mostly windows. One gave a good view of the Golden Gate. From the other, on a fine day, you could see the Farallones, and it was a fine day.
The other two walls were records and a record player. I’d heard of the Stam-baugh collection of early operatic recordings. If I’d been there on any other errand, my mouth would have watered at the prospect of listening to lost great voices.
“If you can get a story out of this that makes sense,” the Inspector grunted, “you’re welcome to it—at the usual fee.” Which was a dinner at Lupo’s Pizzeria, complete with pizza Carus’s, tomatoes with fresh basil and sour French bread to mop up the inspired sauce of Lupo’s special calamari (squids to you). “Everything’s just the way we found it.”
I looked at the unfinished highball, now almost colorless with all its ice melted and its soda flat. I looked at the cylindrical ash of the cigarette which had burned itself out. I looked at the vacuum cleaner—a shockingly utilitarian object in this set for gracious living. I looked at the record player, still switched on, still making its methodical seventy-eight revolutions per minute, though there was no record on the turntable.
Then I managed to look again at the thing on the floor.
It was worse than a body. It was like a tasteless bloodless parody of the usual occupant of the spot marked X. Clothes scattered in disorder seem normal—even more normal, perhaps, in a bachelor apartment than clothes properly hung in closets. But this . . .
Above the neck of the dressing gown lay the spectacles. The sleeves of the shirt were inside the sleeves of the dressing gown. The shirt was buttoned, even to the collar, and the foulard tie was knotted tight up against the collar button. The tails of the shirt were tucked properly into the zipped-up, properly belted trousers. Below the trouser cuffs lay the shoes, at a lifelike angle, with the tops of the socks emerging from them.
“And there’s an undershirt under the shirt,” Inspector Abrahams muttered disconsolately, “and shorts inside the pants. Complete outfit: what the well-dressed man will wear. Only no man in them.”
It was as though James Stambaugh had been attacked by some solvent which eats away only flesh and leaves all the inanimate articles. Or as though some hyperspatial suction had drawn the living man out of his wardrobe, leaving his sartorial shell behind him.
I said, “Can I dirty an ashtray in this scene?”
Abrahams nodded. “I was just keeping it for you to see. We’ve got our pictures.” While I lit up, he crossed to the record player and switched it off. “Damned whirligig gets on my nerves.”
“Whole damned setup gets on mine,” I said. “It’s like a strip-tease version of the Mary Celeste. Only the strip wasn’t a gradual tease; just abruptly, whoosh!, a man’s gone. One minute he’s comfortably dressed in his apartment, smoking, drinking, playing records. The next he’s stark naked—and where and doing what?”
Abrahams pulled at his nose, which didn’t need lengthening. “We had the Japanese valet check the wardrobe. Every article of clothing James Stambaugh owned is still here in the apartment.”
“Who found him?” I asked.
“Kaguchi. The valet. He had last night off. He let himself in this morning, to prepare coffee and prairie oysters as usual. He found this.”
“Blood?” I ventured.
Abrahams shook his head.
“Visitors?”
“Ten apartments in this building. Three of them had parties last night. You can figure how much help the elevator man was.”
“The drink?”
“We took a sample to the lab. Nothing but the best scotch.”
I frowned at the vacuum cleaner. “What’s that doing out here? It ought to live in a closet.”
“Puzzled Kaguchi too. He even says it was still a little warm when he found it, like it had been used. But we looked in the bag. I assure you Stambaugh didn’t get sucked in there.”
“Motive?”
“Gay dog, our Mr. Stambaugh. Maybe you read Herb Caen’s gossip column too? And Kaguchi gave us a little fill-in. Brothers, fathers, husbands . . . Too many motives.”
“But why this way?” I brooded. “Get rid of him, sure. But why leave this hollow husk . . . ?”
“Not just why, Lamb. How.”
“How? That should be easy enough to—”
“Try it. Try fitting sleeves into sleeves, pants into pants, so they’re as smooth
