He turned pages slowly, looking for crime stories, found one headlined WIFE GETS THE FREEZE.
A spokeswoman for the County Sheriff’s Department announced today that a charge of murder would be brought against Lester Clines of Miami, described as a “three-foot four-inch midget” who had recently been working as a drummer at a Coconut Grove strip club.
While living in Miami for the past four years, Clines continued to pay rent on a bungalow on Gardenville Road in Gibsonton up until December of last year. When his checks stopped coming, the landlord initiated eviction proceedings, which resulted in the charge being filed against the 56-year-old Clines, who is alleged to have clubbed his wife to death and then stuffed her into a 2½-cubic-foot freezer sometime in 1976.
Sheriff’s deputies were removing furniture from the Gardenville Road house last week, the spokeswoman announced, when they discovered the freezer.
“It had a slight odor to it. We were hoping it was spoiled meat but it turned out to be a body,” she added.
Sources close to the Coroner’s Office report that it took three days for the body to thaw sufficiently to permit a positive identification.
Karl had trouble picturing the body as a solid block cast in the shape of a freezer compartment, frost in the eyelashes, arms and legs all contorted to fit in the small space. Mrs. Clines must have been a petite woman. Maybe even an all-out miniature like her husband.
He turned more pages, browsing through an item on a pharmacist’s attempt to cross the Pacific in a rowboat, a recipe for stuffed cabbage. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Lester Clines, the little drummer boy. It was really a comedy story if you looked at it hard — this midget laying down a bump-and-grind rhythm, while miles away his wife slept forever with her head on an ice tray.
It happened then, the slight turn of the wheel, the click. Karl remembered an article from one of his treasure magazines about a tiny coon bandleader with a hump on his back, a drummer, too, who’d stashed away a fortune. Drumming midgets, secret hiding places. It was a sign for sure, unmistakable as a thunderbolt.
He rushed to the shelf where he kept his back issues hearing wind in his ears, feeling like a mystery force had him by the nostrils and was pulling him on. It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for: “Jazzman’s Fortune.” There was a muddy picture of Chick Webb; small all right, nothing but a nappy little head visible above his drum kit.
“… Harlem rumor mill was alive with stories of a fortune in cash and jewels secreted somewhere in Webb’s sumptuous town-house.”
With a pair of scissors Karl snipped out both articles, reread them while he brewed a pot of coffee. He sharpened his pencil, found paper to write on and sat down with a hot cup and the sense of profuse anticipation that comes only to the chosen, to begin research.
He drew a line down the center of the page, opposed facts and guesses at facts on either side. This is how it looked:
LESTER CLINES
CHICK WEBB
Drummer in band
Ditto
Midget
Small with deformity
Murdered wife
Unmarried (?)
Miami
New York (Born down South?)
Rental property
Owned own home, real estate investor
Secretive
Ditto
Possible coon (?)
Definite coon
So what? In frustration Karl snapped the pencil in half. But he was no less convinced that he’d been sent a message, that there was a reason these two stories had fused in his mind. He was messing around at the dry surface of things, that was the problem. These men were like elves who came in the night to take his hand and lead him to a pot of gold. Elves were mischievous; they liked to tease. They didn’t just give their secrets away, but made you jump through hoops and solve riddles. He’d need a fresh approach. He’d need to attack at a deeper level. If he opened himself up, stayed quiet and passive, something might come to him.
Karl decided to sleep on it. Literally. Sandwiching the snipped-out pages around his lucky silver dollar, he sealed them in an envelope which he put under his pillow.
“Come on, elves,” he whispered, “come on into my sleep…. And bring your drums along.”
He thumbed his eyes shut and counted to a hundred. And as he’d done as a kid, when from the dim refuge of his narrow bunk he’d whirled around the Indy track like a fireball and drunk champagne from smooth white breasts in Victory Lane, Karl dreamed what he wanted to….
Old gray house. Moonlight on waxy leaves. Giggling in the hedges and small, dark animal shapes coming at him in the dark, Chick and Lester on all fours. They roll on the ground like they’re scratching fleas, poke at him with silver drumsticks. Chick is like an old eggplant, wrinkled and bulbous and black. Lester has colorless eyes and tiny hands. He stomp-dances while Chick limps. They say, “Don’t be afraid of the peewees,” and pull him inside the house where floors are slanted and stairs end in midair. They beat a rolling rumble on the baseboard with their sticks. Chick stands on his head; his hump is a searchlight shining into a corner where walls meet at an impossible angle. Lester pulls him back outside through a window, makes trilling bird noises. Chick is tapping out a waltz on his own head and they sing:
Ask us where is this there
We say not up our sleeves
We say down in the leaves
The sticks leave their hands like bullets, making phosphorescent trails in the air. Giggling again, the peewees somersault away into the black …
Good cash flow today, an upsurge in the seasonal trade. Kids had been coming in all afternoon to buy water pistols and baseball cards and bubblegum shaped like little running shoes. This kind of brisk selling was a natural mood-elevator for Ray Holstein.
“I know kids,” he said around a mouthful of peanut brittle. “Been in their vicinity near all my life. You expect they’ll get wild when the end of the school year comes in sight. But this, this … You know how much we could do with a minimal lunch counter setup? Those little termites would be in here every day chewing up hot dogs and soda and cupcakes. Dollar here, fifty cents there, ice cream, maybe even some little microwave pizzas. We could double the gross, I’m telling you. I know these kids. You can study them like the weather.”
Tildy came away from the window where she’d been evaluating her reflection with several brown-to-purple shades of lip gloss that had just come in. “Instead of telling me, Ray, you should just do it.”
“Would that I could, Soileau, would that I could. But I’m just the caretaker here and got no right to make any modifications. Follow the plan, that’s all the home office people want from me.”
“And you never get tired of that.”
“Whatever you think, I’m no damn robot, Soileau. I got ideas of my own. Why the hell not? I got a college degree and I read the papers. Just driving along in my car or loading the dishwasher and I’ll get an idea about something. Maybe I’ve been working up to it all along, but it’ll just come into my mind, you know?”
“So you’ve been having ideas.” The way Tildy rocked her head, fingered her throat, made it seem like she was talking about a medical condition. “What is on your mind, Ray?”
Holstein started fiddling with things on the counter, lining them up, pressing down with the palm of his hand. “Sure, make a joke out of it. Everybody’s a skeptic today. Leave town for a few days and your wife assumes you were banging some chick. Tell a kid about work, improving himself, being part of a team, and he laughs in your face.” Crushing the cardboard pop-up display over a tray of disposable lighters. “Everybody’s got a sneer on and they wonder why things don’t work. Maybe if there was a little more faith in people we could finally get out from under all this shit we live with.”