The element of chance, of adventure, of risk, so fascinated me that I would have traded professions with no one. And it is safe to say that no one would have traded professions with me. It is surprising how many people can make use of a dead man, however! This odd profession of mine had only one real drawback. I had to trust someone to bring me back to life after I was “dead.”
For this little item, I very naturally needed a medico, and it was the curious adventure of the humorous gangster which provided me with a real find in this way. It was always a task to locate the right person. Although I was mixed up with nothing crooked I could not employ any doctor imbued with high faluting notions of professional ethics; such a man was too risky an equation.
Coming to a mid-western city I followed my usual procedure of inserting a blind advertisement in newspapers, and then scouting around for the right man to work with me. In this instance I found him in the person of one Dr. Roesche, a young fellow of German extraction.
Roesche had brains, he was conscientious, and he was hard up. I liked him from the start, because he refused point-blank to touch anything shady, and when he heard of my business he turned me down cold. He would only change his mind when I had convinced him that I was considering nothing of an illegal character, and wanted nothing from him that would conflict with professional ethics.
“I need you to administer a hypodermic; no more,” I told him, and then frankly set my case before him, showing that my heart was on the right side instead of the left. “It has a very slow beat, too. More correctly, no beat at all. It flutters rather than beats, so there’s no pulse to mention. They tell me it’s nothing very rare.”
“Auricular Fibrilation,” and he nodded. “And a barrel chest, I see. The heart isn’t against the ribs—why, the stethoscope doesn’t bring it up a bit!”
From a professional standpoint, he was keenly interested. Also, we got on well together. Once he consented to work with me, he was full of ideas. Instead of the chance drug I used to put me to sleep, he suggested an improvement on it. The upshot was that I got the idea of a permanent partnership, and he was not averse to it.
“You’ll have to show me where there’s any money in it, though,” he said cautiously.
“Come on back to my hotel, then. Stop at the newspaper offices on the way, pick up the answers to my advertisement, and you’ll see quick enough.”
We did just this, and reached my hotel with a dozen replies to examine.
Half of them I weeded out as crank letters, others as involving something crooked. Then I picked up one and read it aloud:
“Dear Sir:
“Your advertisement may be a fake, but if not, I can use you. Believe it or not, my purpose is on the level and my money legitimate. If you want to talk business, give me a ring at this number. Yours for eternity,
“Dion Caffery.”
When he heard the writer’s name, Roesche uttered a grunt.
“You don’t know of him? Then you’d better get acquainted with this town, Bronson. He runs a big flower shop on Seneca Avenue and lives in the apartment house overhead; in fact he owns it. His name used to be Cafferelli, but he changed it to Caffery.”
I looked at him, puzzled. “Well? What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, only he runs about half the rackets in the city, and he’s in on the liquor game. In fact, the worst kind of a gangster.”
This happened some years ago, during prohibition.
“Suppose we hear what he has to say?” I suggested. “The letter sounds interesting; even if the interview comes to nothing. I’d like to meet such a man.”
Roesche assented with a shrug, and I called Caffery. To my surprise he had a very pleasant voice, and immediately agreed to drop in and see me.
I WAS more surprised when he showed up. He was heavily built but well dressed, and had pleasant, intelligent features with twinkling dark eyes. When I had introduced my partner, he looked from one to the other of us, whimsically.
“Just what kind of a gag is this?” he demanded. “Do I talk before witnesses?”
“You do if you want to talk,” I said firmly. “If your proposition has anything crooked about it, then save it for somebody else. Dr. Roesche has to be in on the affair, as I can’t work without him.”
He broke into a hearty laugh, produced cigars, and dropped into a chair.
“You’re all right, Bronson. Now, can you play dead enough so a doctor will pronounce you dead?”
“A good many have certified to it already.”
“Just how is the trick worked? Loosen up with the details. They might not fit in with what I want.”
I briefly indicated my abilities, and he nodded and leaned back in his chair, fully satisfied.
“Good. You’ll do. What do you charge?”
“The fee depends entirely on the job,” I said. “Frankly, I’m not sure I’d want to work for you, Caffery.”
“And if you did, you’d make me pay big, eh?” He chuckled, displaying no resentment of my attitude. “Fair enough. I’ll set the fee at ten thousand cash in advance. The work is to play a little joke on my wife and some of my friends. I want to pretend to kill you, and have some fun with the presence of a corpse.”
I frowned at him. “Let’s have straight talk, Caffery. In your business, which is no secret, why would you want an imitation corpse? I should think you could pick up a real one at a cheaper price.”
He looked at me with a puzzled expression, and then smiled.
“Oh, I see! You have the conventional idea about what you call gangsters, eh? Well, Bronson, brush ’em all away. Give me credit for a little intelligence. I’m a pretty good business man, and I have average sense. I don’t go around emptying a rod at anyone who looks cross-eyed at me; in fact, I’ve never killed anyone in my life. However, it’s high time that I did, and that’s where you come in. Forget your moving picture notions of bad men, will you? I’m not running a barrel house or a low den of iniquity. I’m running a business, and I’m at the top of it.”
How much of his talk was blarney and how much was true, I’m not sure to this day, but it was impressive. His easy good humor, his intelligence, carried it over. I was inclined to believe his words, and felt ashamed of my own hazy notions about a gangster chief.
“Now, here’s the proposition,” he said, and sobered. In fact, he took on a look of worry; his eyes lost their humorous glimmer and became very earnest. “I’m too good-natured for my job, and that’s no joke. My crowd is tough, sure. I’ve got to impress them. And chiefly, I’ve got to impress my wife. Nelly’s a darling, but she just can’t get out of the habit of flirting. Not that she means wrong by it, mind; just a habit. But it’s got to stop.”
I was startled.
“I don’t like your idea,” I said bluntly. “If you want to kill somebody, why should you, of all people, want to fake it?”
He made a helpless gesture. “D’you think I’m a fool? Murder is murder, Bronson. Can’t you get it into your head that I’m no killer, that I don’t want to spend my life in stir, that I’ve got enough brains to be something better than a gunman?”
Once more, contact with realities put to shame my vague conceptions of gangsters. This man was no crude, cold-hearted monster.
“Make your proposal, Caffery. I’ll take it or leave it.”
“Fair enough; here it is. Tomorrow night, I’m throwing a party at the Bon Ton Club. You come along there, wander in, and I’ll greet you like an old friend. Play up to Nelly. She’ll fall for you, strong; I’ll say you’re just in from New York, on a visit. I’ll skip out with the boys, on business, and leave you to bring her home. When you get there, I’ll be waiting. I’ll rip into you for trying to play around with her and fire a blank, and you keel over. Her brother is a doctor and lives upstairs. If he finds you dead, I’ll horse around and raise hell with everybody, and so forth. I’ll have you carried into a back room. Dr. Roesch can be hidden there and fetch you around and sneak you out the back way, and everything�
�s jake. The boys never will wise up to how I disposed of the body.”
Joke? Maybe yes, and maybe not. He was too earnest about it.
I could see now that he had told the exact truth about himself. He was no killer, and his crowd probably knew it. He was clever enough to realize his shortcomings and conquer them by using his brains.
Behind this was the picture of a man trying to hold his wife—if she was his wife. As a matter of fact, she was nothing of the kind; I learned this, later on. But Caffery was dead in love with her all the same. He would have married her, except that she had a husband already and could not get rid of him. Caffery was simply crazy about her, but the people with whom they associated, the life they led, the way she acted, had him in torment on the anxious seat.
“Suppose the cartridge in your gun should turn out to have a bullet in it?” I suggested uneasily. He grunted.
“Oh, hell! Roesche can see to that himself. He’ll be in the apartment at the time.”
I looked at Roesche, questioningly. Ten thousand dollars was a lot of money. And there was nothing illegal about this. To my look, he shrugged and made answer.
“It’s your funeral, Bronson; and literally, maybe. I think it’s a risky business. But you’re the one to decide. I’m willing to take it on if you are.”
“Yes, you ought to be,” I said unhappily. Then I looked at Caffery. “Two things about your scheme are bad. First, there’d be no bullet hole when my body was examined. That is, I hope there’d be none.”
He chuckled, and his eyes twinkled again.
“The unpleasant possibility sticks in your craw, eh? But you’re right. Besides, there’s the noise. How’s this, now! I'll use a big persuader, stuffed with cotton instead of lead. Give you one crack, and finish you, and proud of it. Suit you better?”
“Much better,” I said with relief. “The second thing is that it wouldn’t be logical to go off your head and kill a man, just because you let him bring your wife home. That is, a man you haven’t seen for a long time, until that evening.”
“'Right,” he agreed instantly, and plunged into the business with all the ardor of a small boy planning a parlor masquerade. He was amused and tickled by the whole thing. “I tell you, Bronson! Put off the party to Saturday night—see? On Friday night, I’ll be at the Bon Ton for dinner, with Nelly and a couple of the boys. You drop in and meet us then, and play up a bit to Nelly—make it plenty strong. I’ll invite you to the party the next night, which will be all jake. And on the way home I’ll do enough talking about how you played up to Nelly, so things will look right when I blow you down. How’s that? And is it yes or no?”
Under the circumstances, it could be nothing else than yes. Now that the blank cartridge business was out, the thing did not look so bad; in fact, I had already taken much riskier jobs than this.
So we buckled down to it then and there, settling all details and getting everything thoroughly understood, even to a floor plan of Caffery’s apartment. And Caffery counted out five crisp thousand-dollar bills. The balance would be paid on Friday night.
“There’s just one thing to guard against,” I said in conclusion. “You mustn’t let your doctor hold a mirror to my breath; that would give me away. Stop that at any cost, even if you have to call Roesche right in. That’s one test I can’t guard against.”
“Right,” said Caffery, and departed grinning.
The racketeer angle was not pleasant, but Roesche agreed with me that we now had the program foolproof. He had slightly changed the drug I used, so that any physical reflexes were more completely eliminated, and that same day he insisted on making a test with me. I submitted, and he was more than delighted by the results.
“It’s marvelous, Bronson,” he told me afterward. “With your eyes taken care of by the drops, and no mirror test, you’ll get by with anything except a prolonged critical examination. Still, I’m uncertain about two things. First, the ultimate result on your health.”
“Is that any worse than the ultimate result of a driving business life on any man?”
“Well, no,” he agreed. “But what about the legal aspect of your stunt?”
I laughed at this, for I had long ago settled all such argument.
“Look it up; it’s no crime, Roesche. That is, as I play the game. I might be arrested for attempting suicide, but I could beat out such a charge easily.”
This was true. After he talked with a lawyer, his last doubt was settled.
WHEN I walked into the Bon Ton on Friday evening, I was nervous enough. The place was a flashy one, the crowd was large and well dressed, the orchestra banged heavily. I heard a yell, and Caffery came rushing toward me. He gripped me by both hands, hailed me lustily as “good old Mike Leary,” and dragged me to his table.
It was a big one in the center of the place. His wife and four other men sat there, and I was given a chair beside Nelly. I had little to do except follow the lead of Caffery, who asked no delicate questions, and was soon at my ease. That is, outwardly.
Nelly Caffery, as she was generally known, was a genuine blonde. She was vivacious, young, impudent and saucy, and ablaze with life. The homage of men was the very breath of existence to her, and it was no trouble at all to fall into my role of admiring male.
But those other four men—well, they were young too, young and sleek and gay enough. They made me think of something my uncle said after he got home from South America and was talking about his travels and adventures.
“A real bad man don’t usually look bad, but if a man’s living on a hair-trigger it always shows in one place. His eyes. They go into you.”
That was the way with these young men. Their eyes drifted into me. Dark eyes, for they all had Italian names. Their eyes would question me, then shift to Nelly or to Caffery.
We danced, we drank, we laughed and joked and enjoyed ourselves. Had it not been for the deference paid Caffery on every side, the men who spoke to him, the curious glances cast at him, I could hardly have believed that I was sitting with racketeers. There was no rough talk of any kind. Even Nelly, except for her conspicuous diamonds, seemed no more than a carefree, light-hearted girl intent on pleasure; and so she was.
Caffery entered into his part with an impish glee. Under the spur of his delighted abandon, he showed himself a roaring boon companion; but there was iron in him just the same. He was no fool. When he urged me to go on and dance with Nelly, he gave her a hot shot under cover of a laugh.
“Look out for her, Mike! Remember that a woman never has any principles, or if she has any, she calls ’em something else.”
This was over Nelly’s head, however. She was not long on brains.
She was flattered by my obvious attention, by my swift interest in her, and tried hard to pump me about myself. She was one of those women who think themselves very deep, who have a “Why?” for everything as though in search of hidden motives, who set themselves to understand a man with their eyes and lips better than he understands himself; they are usually fools. Such vapid, doll-like beauties usually fancy themselves very subtle, and I suppose they find many a sap who falls for their pretty ways.
I could see that Caffery had Nelly sized up just right. She was not bad; she did not have enough sense to be bad. But flirtation was inborn within her. She simply could not help snuggling in my arms as we danced, and putting her face close to mine, and drinking in all my flattery until her eyes sparkled like stars.
So, from Caffery’s viewpoint, the evening passed off most successfully, but the party broke up early.
“What are you doing tomorrow night, Mike?” exclaimed Caffery, before we left. “Come on and join us here about eight. We’ll throw you a real party and run it into Sunday morning if you say the word!”
I hesitated and looked at Nelly. She begged me to accept, and I made it quite obvious that I accepted only because she wanted it. In fact, I was afraid I had overplayed my hand a bit.
But no. Caffery telephoned me half an hour later, and was positively
chortling.
“Put it on thick tomorrow night, right from the start,” he ordered. “I’ll be called away early, then take the boys home. I’ll be waiting when you get there.”
“Don’t wait too long, then,” I said. “I have to put some stuff in my eyes, and it pretty near blinds me when it takes effect.”
“I get you. Better wear a gun, for the looks of it.”
“A gun? I haven’t any.”
“Then I’ll slip you one at the table,” and he rang off, chuckling.
I did not appreciate his humor at all. Even less did I appreciate it on Saturday morning, when Dr. Roesche walked in and got me out of bed to read a newspaper. He waved it at me.
“Open war threatens!” he declaimed, grandiloquently.
“War?” and I yawned. “Where?”
“Right here. Caffery and Rafello factions; gangster’s war. Boy, I’m glad you got full pay in advance, last night! Here, read this.”
It was not pleasant reading; I did not understand half of it, except that Caffery and some other racketeer had fallen out. However, it could not very well affect me, and I said so. Even if it did, I had taken Caffery’s money and must go through with the play.
“Remember what he said about never having killed anybody?” said Roesche. “I bet he knew this was coming. He’s pulling some rough stuff with you, to impress his own men; that was true enough. I’m glad tonight ends our connection with that outfit.”
I was more than glad. I was delighted. The idea of lying dead to the world while warring gangsters pumped lead into me and made me an actual corpse, haunted me. Roesche was none too happy either as evening approached. Caffery had decided that upon leaving the Bon Ton with his friends, he would pick up Roesche and plant him in the back room, unknown to his henchmen. And poor Roesche, less accustomed to risks than I was, did not like the notion at all; still, he could not help himself.
Adventures of a Professional Corpse Page 5
