Free Yellow Dog Contract by Ross Thomas Page B

eyebrows somewhere before. But all I got was a glimpse of the back of his head. There was a round, white bald spot in his crown about the size of a cookie.
    I went on up the stairs to the third floor trying to remember where I had seen the man before. Quane’s apartment, number six, seemed to be toward the back, to my right. I started down the hall. It had the smell of sour milk and Spanish spices. When I reached number six I found the door open. Not much. Just an inch or so. I knocked, but when nobody said anything and nothing happened I went in.
    The place wasn’t much of a love nest. It was merely a kitchen to the right and a bathroom to the left. The furnishings were simple, almost rudimentary. There was a table of Formica and chrome, which I think they still call dinettes, and four matching chairs. It looked fairly new as did the sofa, which was the kind that could be made into a bed. On the floor was a cheap rug. A green one.
    There were a couple of other chairs, a lamp or two, and in front of the sofa was a coffee table. On it was a phone, the black push-button kind. Next to the phone was a full cup of black coffee with a saucer and a spoon.
    I said, “Max?” and then I said, “Anybody home?”
    I was looking toward the kitchen, thinking that Quane perhaps had forgotten the cream or the sugar for his coffee. There was a sound to my left. I looked. Max Quane came out of the bathroom.
    He came out slowly, on his hands and knees, crawling, although he looked as if he might just be learning how to crawl, the way a baby learns. He was crawling toward the phone. It was hard. The phone was far away, at least eight feet, perhaps even nine. Quane made a yard, crawling on his hands and knees. Then he stopped crawling and collapsed on the green rug, facing my way, his gray eyes open and staring up at me although I don’t think they really saw me. I don’t think they saw anything.
    Ear to ear. That’s how throats are cut. “His throat was cut from ear to ear.” I had read it many times, but I couldn’t remember where. Max Quane’s throat had been cut, but whoever had done it must not have been much of a reader, because he hadn’t bothered about ear to ear. There was a deep, short slash on each side of Quane’s throat. The slashes had reached the big arteries. There was a lot of blood on Quane, and he had left a trail of it on the green rug as he had tried to learn how to crawl all over again and had made a yard before he had quit trying and died.
    The rest of the blood must have been in the bathroom and I remember thinking that it would be easier to clean up there. It wasn’t much of a thought, but I wasn’t thinking too clearly. I stood there, not moving, staring down at Quane. He stared back up at me, or seemed to, but his eyes didn’t move and they didn’t blink and after a moment or so I knelt down and felt for his pulse, but I didn’t find any. I hadn’t really expected to.
    I rose and went into the kitchen. There was nobody there. Just a kettle and a jar of Yuban instant coffee and a box of sugar cubes. I felt the kettle. It was warm, nearly hot. I made myself go look into the bathroom. There are five quarts of blood in the human body, but there seemed to be more than that in the bathroom. It was all over everything, the tub, the toilet, the sink, the floor, even the walls.
    Bathrooms are where you go when you’re going to be sick. But I couldn’t go in there so I hurried back into the kitchen and threw up in the sink. After that I ran some cold water and washed my face and dried it with a paper towel.
    I went back into the living room, skirting Max Quane, trying not to look at him, but not succeeding. I moved toward the phone that rested on the coffee table next to the cup and the saucer and the spoon. I was going to use the phone to call the police and tell them that Max Quane was dead.
    It was then that I really saw the spoon. I