He’d used belts and clothesline to fasten her securely to one of the chairs. And he hadn’t been nice about it either. The belts were dug in cruelly into her rousing bust line and the arms lashed behind her back to the arms of the chair were bruised and swollen.
The gag thrust into her thin-lipped mouth was as filthy as a mechanic’s rag and she had worked it loose just enough for that low moan I’d heard. But at a hard cost. Blood was running down the corner of her poor mouth, staining the front of the same outfit I had seen her in yesterday. The fancy shirtwaist with the gold sequins. It would never be the same.
Neither would she.
Her eyes told me that even before I worked the gag off and said anything at all. Her eyes were glassy and dazed. Even her cute pony tail was riding almost side-saddle on her head. The skirt she wore was torn down on one side like an Apache dancer’s. She’d been given the rough treatment. And if there’s one thing I really go for it’s a guy who goes around roughing up the fair sex. I cursed as I swung her up in my arms and carried her over to a bed with noisy springs.
She was crying now. Low, soft sobs of fright mixed up with relief and some terrible thing that I obviously hadn’t heard yet. I cursed again. I curbed a terrible desire to walk over to the fallen doorman and kick him in the head.
“Easy, kid. Easy. It’s all right. We’re in control now. The Cavalry’s taken over and the big, bad Indians are all accounted for. Simmer down, now. I’ll get you some water–”
“Ed–” her voice literally staggered. “Oh, Ed–”
“Quiet. Nice and quiet. We can talk later. Now how about that water?”
I found the kitchen. Small, dirty and lousy with cockroaches. I chased two out of the drain, washed a glass, waited for it to cool, then filled the glass to the brim and went back into the equally dirty living room. I’m no Health Inspector but this tidy little layout made my nostrils curl and my stomach flip.
Lois Hunt was stretched out on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. But she wasn’t resting. Her breasts were heaving and her eyes wet with tears. I can’t say I was prepared for it. She’d impressed me as a pretty brassy article who’d taken plenty of bumps in her time but this bump had thrown her. There’s always a first time I guess.
She didn’t want the water. I took my handkerchief out, soaked it and mopped away some of the red around her mouth. She didn’t resist the Florence Nightingale in me but she didn’t show any enthusiasm either.
I sat down alongside her on the bed, keeping one eye on the Sleeping Ugly on the floor. I took out my butts, popped two in my mouth and lit them both. I gave her one.
It was the wrong thing to do. Lighting them that way I mean. She came alive. She stirred helplessly, every ounce of her trembling in awful memory.
“Bart always lit them that way–for us–I always thought it was so romantic–”
“It is,” I said kindly. “A man and a woman sharing something. Intimately.”
She hadn’t heard me. She was just rambling on.
“–all the time. Just before and just after we made love. Right after. I loved it. And now he’s dead and that, that–thing–on the floor there rapes me! I tried to stop him, I didn’t want–” Her voice stalled.
“Easy, Lois. Don’t talk about it. I savvy how you must feel.”
The look she flung at me was scornful.
“Do you, Buster? Do you really? Can you really understand what it’s like to have some filthy beast paw all over you, depraved, disgracing you–”
She went on and on. All the sordid, lousy details. And I just listened, saying nothing because nothing would have helped. Until finally there was nothing but crying again. Fierce, chest-racking, throat-choking sobs. She buried her face into the pillow and launched a thousand drips.
I didn’t feel funny at all. I was just dazed, my head spinning, my intellect stopped. I’d been behaving like a muscle-man for two days. Pure strength alone. My usually sharp thinking had been set back time-and-time-again by these dizzy, unpredictable turns the whole case had taken since Betty had first bounced in on me.
And now Lois Hunt, raped, and clearly set for a rubout too like her fat girl friend, had thrown another blind alley at me. What in hell was this all about?
I almost said it out loud. But I didn’t. I had other things to say. But I waited. Until Lois Hunt was finished with her big cry. The cry she would never have again. You can only cry that way just once. Once is enough in any lifetime.
“Lois.”
“Ah, forget about me, Buster.” She blew her nose. “I’m over it now. Guess I can laugh it off.”
“That’s the ticket. But there isn’t time for me to play Mr. Anthony. I’d like to but I can’t. This thing has gotten away from me completely and I’ve got to get some answers pretty soon or two things will definitely happen. I’ll be out of business and cutting out paper dolls up at Happy Dale.”
She laughed. It was bitter but it was a laugh.
“Sure. Shoot. Only I got a question too. Where do we go from here?”
I laughed this time. “Don’t anticipate. I don’t want to hit you cold with this if you don’t already know but–Betty is dead. Very dead. Somebody pushed her down the stairs of the place where she lived.”
Her nod surprised me. “I know,” she said low. “The Thing told me. I didn’t want to believe it at first but I had to. After he told me my number was up too. But he decided to have some fun before he got around to it–”
“There’s some consolation for you. You wouldn’t be better off dead.”
She shrugged, the old Lois coming back in her eyes. “Maybe. Who knows? So what else you dying to know, bright boy?”
“How soon did you leave Betty this morning after I did? It’s important.”
“Half hour or so. I helped her clean up, got dressed and came home. The Thing was waiting for me. Before I knew what hit me, he had me all tied up and had his fun–”
I cut in, wanting to keep her off that tack. “Did he say anything at all about his employers or why you had to be killed? Anything at all?”
She sneered. “He was too busy telling me how soft and sweet I was. The slob. Can’t I just hit him over the head once with a chair or something? I don’t want to kill him. I just want to cripple him–”
I made some rapid calculations. “Half hour. That makes it about eight thirty so she was alone between then and right up to the few minutes before Mason phoned in the kill. That was about quarter to ten I guess. Which leaves her open for the murderer for all that time. And the somebody who framed me with it knew I was dropping in on the police at ten. Cute, real cute.”
“Frame? What frame?”
I told her about the button. Her eyes widened.
“Hold on, Buster. My brain’s clearing. Why did you hightail it over here? You telling me you thought I hung it on you, that it? That’s great. I killed that poor fat slob by pushing her down a flight of stairs and tie it all up in a disgusting package by pinning it on you–” She shook her head. “Lois, kid. This just isn’t your day.”
“What the hell do you think it is for me?” I jumped off the bed, mad as thunder because I couldn’t deny it. “I’m going screwy from this case. Who’s who? Who wants Betty killed? Why do you have to be killed? Do you see something I don’t? Do you know something I don’t? Lois, if you like me at all, give me a break. What the hell was this all about? Sleep-Tite, I mean. Artel must have given you some inkling about what was coming off.”
Her tone got icy. “I told you just how it went, Buster. Bart and me were getting married and we were getting our hands on all the loose change we could.”
“Beans. Big beautiful beans. There’s got to be more than that. Didn’t he ever even drop that nasty word–narcotics–just once?”
“Narcotics?” Her look of bewilderment was too genuine to be feigned. “I don’t get you, Noon.”
“Don’t you? I’m talking about mattresses. A warehouse full of mattresses. But not stuffed with cotton. What nature has forgotten, Artel stuffs
with narcotics. Does that ring a bell?”
Her mouth flew open. “Noon, I swear I never knew a thing about it–” She slumped. “Narcotics. Wow. Even the mere idea sickens me. Bart couldn’t–”
There was no mercy in me. “Bart would and could. Let me tell you a beautiful bedtime story.” I told her the charming one about Bim Caesar and his being approached by Artel for purposes of distribution. Her eyes got wet again so I toned it down. After all, you can’t throw too much mud in a dead man’s face with the kith and kin looking on.
“So that’s it,” she muttered when I had it all wrapped up. “But I still don’t believe it.”
“Forget what you believe and don’t believe right now.” I stared at her hard. “Tell me about Betty Heck. All about her. What exactly was her job down at Sleep-Tite?”
She stared at me now. Hard. “Why is that so important?”
I hid my impatience. After all, she’d just been raped.
“Look, Lois. It is important. Betty was killed because she stumbled onto something dangerous. Something that was deadly knowledge for her to have but she wasn’t even aware of it. But our friends couldn’t take any chances. So they tried and tried and if at first–Come on. It may be the key to unlock the crazy door that’s haunting me.”
Lois shouldn’t have but she snickered.
“I can’t help it. All Betty did was test mattresses.”
“Okay. But what exactly did she do? I know a guy who’s a glass blower but I still don’t know what the hell he does. See what I mean?”
She nodded. “Uh-huh. I get you. Well, look. Betty was ideal for the job. She tested mattresses by actually lying on them. You know. To see if the springs rode easily. If the stuffing wasn’t lumpy, that it was evenly distributed. Believe me, Betts was ideal for the job. The double bed is our big item. And you know she weighed four-forty. Which more than spelled a man and wife. See? They saved a whole salary on her.”
“I see. She tested mattresses. She really did.” I tried to get something out of it. Could she have tumbled to the narcotics that way? But how did she and how come she didn’t realize the discrepancy or what had she done about it? It was needling me not knowing so I just filed it away until my head cleared.
Lois Hunt sniffed. “That help you?”
“Close but no cigar,” I admitted. “Here. Hold this. I want to wake up the Sleeping Ugly.” I gave her the long-barreled .32 and stepped toward the fallen doorman. He was showing signs of getting interested in life all over again. That was fine with me. I had plenty to ask him.
I straddled him and slapped him smartly twice. Once for each cheek. He groaned and jerked erect but my straddling legs held him down.
Up close, I still didn’t like his face. But he didn’t like mine either. His lips drew back and he gave me a snarl. The thirty-two teeth snarl.
“Nice,” I said. “Very nice. Thanks for cuing me, friend.” I slapped him twice more. He tried to twist away from beneath me but my legs had him good and Lois was standing right beside me with the .32 cocked. His eyes sought hers and logic set in. He started to sweat. I didn’t have to see Lois’ eyes to see what he was seeing in them.
He tried to growl up at me but all that came out was a whimper. I kept my face cold but with a funny, tight smile.
“You look like you got some sense, friend. So pay attention. I think you’ll admit that the lady here would be perfectly in her rights if she blew your head off your shoulders and scattered it all around this dirty floor. No court in the world could blame her and I’d make a swell character witness. So think about it. Think about it hard. Also, think about this. I’m the lady’s fiance. Think about what I’d like to do to you. Think real hard about that. Don’t say a word yet. Just think.”
He did. His face went nearly chalk-white and his thin-lidded eyes started to flutter desperately. But I didn’t feel sorry for him at all. I’m not exactly nuts about brute force and sex going hand in hand.
His tongue tried to clear his mouth so he could breathe better but it couldn’t quite make it. Fear had set up home in his face and plain old terror was subletting in his throat.
“You filthy bastard–” It hissed out of Lois Hunt without my even asking her. I hadn’t planned it that way exactly, meaning to sweat it out of our friend but it put extra glands in him, made him come alive and shook him of his paralysis.
“What–you want?” he horsed, a huge gulp escaping him. “I’ll talk–”
I unstraddled him and knelt alongside instead.
“Fine. Who set you up for this?”
He shook his head as if he didn’t understand me.
“Come on. Who told you to kidnap the lady here and do away with her?”
He flung himself loose from a tremendous tremor that had taken hold of him and subsided with a racked sigh.
“I’m just a mug. A neighborhood mug. I hire out for the right amount. I never saw the party that was putting up the money for the job. I swear it.”
I showed him my best scowl. “Come on. Don’t stall. I’m still plenty mad.”
His eyes popped. “Honest! That’s the way those things always go. I do the job and the interested party is outa the picture all the way. No kiddin’, mister. I pull jobs like this all the time–”
“Rape or murder?” Lois Hunt sneered. “Or maybe both.”
That shut him up good and he waited for me to talk again. But I was still scowling.
“Neighborhood mug, eh? What neighborhood?”
His look was beaten. “Houston Street. East side. I work outa Pete Kellan’s bar. Heard of them, haven’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I have.” That stopped me cold. He was probably telling the truth. Pete Kellan’s bar. Always the same. Hired guns and hired strong-arms to clean up other people’s dirty work. So if the cops made a pinch all they got was the arm not the person who had engineered it for a few dollars. Another stone wall. I suddenly felt tired. All I had under me was a paid hooligan who would know nothing about the narcotics or Artel’s murder or Betty or any of it. Just an interested party who was only interested in money. And other things.
I got to my feet. “Get up, friend.”
He scrambled to his feet hastily and stood staring at the both of us. But he was mainly concerned with Lois and his own .32 staring back at him, bore-first. His eyes were riveted on it.
“What are you going to do with me?” He wanted to know above everything else.
“I don’t know, friend. I’m pretty mad right now. Especially mad since you don’t know anything. And how do you think she feels?”
I let that bother him just long enough before I took pity on him. Then I moved into him fast, shot a punch into his mid-section and followed it up with a from-behind-the-head punch that sent him clear across the room into the wall. He bounced off it like a barrel bouncing down stone steps and took the floor hard. Lois Hunt screamed with pleasure. Just like a witch riding a broom.
“Save your lungs,” I snapped. “I did that for myself, not for you.” I didn’t wait for her come-back. I got down on one knee and frisked Jack The Raper. But thoroughly. I was dying for one lousy lead.
His pockets were an inventory of crime. He had the roll of dimes that make a fist as hard as a rock, a policeman’s billy and a switch-blade knife that was way out of bounds as to legal length. His fancy wallet had seventy three bucks in it. I pocketed that without remorse and paid some attention to a battered brown address book.
The address book I gave up for a bum job because it had nothing in it but girls’ names. The Raper seemed to be a Lothario of sorts. Anyway, I’d never heard of any of the girls.
Then I found what I was looking for. What I’d been counting on. The scrap of something that referred to tonight’s assignment.
It was a torn bit of paper, like an envelope, and scrawled across it was Lois Hunt’s name and the Columbus Avenue address. The Raper had torn a scrap from something larger to jot down the memo. I turned it over.
There was printing on the oth
er side. Not much of it either. The Raper had torn small. But I could make out … wanton soup … and a list of prices. I shoved the slip into my pocket and turned back to Lois Hunt again.
Her eyes were shining. I could see she’d gotten real physical pleasure out of what I had done to her assaulter. Just like the Roman woman watching a lion devour a Christian.
“What now, Buster?” She didn’t look quite sane anymore.
“We tie this Romeo up and get out of here. Get those belts and things from the chair. I want the cops to find him nice and quiet when they come.” I took the .32 from her right then and there and while her back was turned getting me the things I’d asked her for, I reloaded the .32 silently. I’d wanted to find out several things about Miss Lois Hunt and I had. To my great satisfaction. She still didn’t crack under fire and she hadn’t tried to pull a switch on me like she would have if she had really murdered Betty Heck.
She pitched in and between us we got the boy friend trussed tighter than a chicken going to market. Then I got Headquarters on the phone.
Hadley was back at his desk already, putting out the city-wide alarm for me. His voice told me as much.
I cut him short before his tracing routine got underway.
“Save it, Hadley. All of it. You’ll find a man in apartment 1A at 1213 Columbus Avenue. Got that? 1213 Columbus Avenue. I won’t be here when you arrive but I want you to hold him in one of your cells until I get in touch with you. Got all that or should I run through it once more?”
He managed to keep from blowing a gasket.
“And just why in hell should I ever listen to what you have to say–ever again?”
“I’ll tell you why. Because one hour from now I’m going to phone you again and I’ll want you to answer that call in a hurry. Because I’ll probably be sitting with a murderer. The murderer you seem to think is me.”
“Noon, you’ll never get away with–”
“1213 Columbus Avenue, Hadley. Apartment 1A. Don’t call me–I’ll call you.” I hung up just as he started to hit the ceiling.
Lois Hunt was tightening a belt buckle around her playmate and re-stuffing the gag in his twisted mouth. I grinned and took her by the arm.
The Case of the Bouncing Betty Page 12
