by Hank Janson
7
She looked pretty in the morning with her hair rumpled and her dark eyes trying to blink away the sleep. ‘You’ve come back, honey,’ she said. There was a sexy throb in her voice and she looked at me in the kinda way that suggested she’d been dreaming I was in her arms and had awakened to find it was true.
‘I want you, honey,’ I said.
‘That’s nice,’ she said, and her voice was like hot syrup. She looked me over sleepily but approvingly, and lazily scratched her thigh.
I tried not looking at her. Even though I had all those ideas burning in my mind, she was liable to distract me.
She was one of those dames with ultra-modern ideas on dress and clothing. She hadn’t bothered to put on a negligee and was wearing just her nightie. It was the latest type. Blue, transparent georgette, and as short as a man’s jacket. It just managed to keep her covered when she raised her arms above her head. And she was raising her arms above her head and yawning right then.
I took a grip on myself. ‘This is business, Lulu,’ I said. ‘Serious business. You’ve gotta got dressed and come with me down to the office.’
‘Aw, honey,’ she protested. ‘Can’t we curl up together and get warm first of all?’
‘Honey,’ I said, ‘you do what I want now, and I’ll do what you want some time later. That’s a promise.’
Her eyes sparkled. ‘Promise?’
I nodded, ‘Yeah. Promise.’
‘Come and help me dress, then.’
I went across to the bedroom door, stood there while she fumbled in the wardrobe. The ache in my head was splitting my brain apart. I couldn’t even enjoy watching her fitting frilly things around her supple limbs.
‘I’ve gotta have some coffee,’ I croaked. ‘Where’s the kitchen?’
‘Aw, honey. I like you to watch me.’
‘Later,’ I said. I held my hand to my burning head. ‘I’ve gotta have coffee.’
‘Okay,’ she conceded grudgingly. ‘Help yourself. Round to your right. Have you forgotten already?’
‘Hurry,’ I said. ‘It’s important.’
I’d brewed some coffee by the time she got dressed. I sipped the coffee and she pivoted on one dainty foot, inviting my opinion of her dress.
It was a nice dress, flared skirt and drawn taut across her belly.
‘Forget about that,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to give some evidence. Important evidence.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Evidence? Police?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This isn’t a police matter. This is for the paper. My paper.’
Her eyes were still wide. ‘What kind of evidence?’
‘Keep this under your hat,’ I said. ‘This is just between you and me. Now I want you to remember back. Last night Skinner fought Burden. You remember?’
She nodded.
‘Skinner dropped his fountain pen. You picked it up. It was a gold fountain pen. You remember what it was like?’
She crinkled up her brow. ‘It had the initials C S on it,’ she said. ‘The clip was broken, too.’
‘That’s the girl,’ I said delightedly. ‘You’d recognise it if you saw it again?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Now,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to help me here. I want you to be very thoughtful about it. Skinner had gone to the bathroom to clean up his face after being punched by Burden. You put the fountain pen on the mantelpiece. Right?’
She nodded. Her eyes were still wide.
‘Later on, Skinner went home. After he’d gone, you pointed out to me that he’d left the fountain pen behind. Right?’
She nodded again.
‘There’s no doubt in your mind about that? He went home and left the fountain pen on the mantelpiece. Right?’
‘I remember it all,’ she said.
‘That’s fine,’ I said. ‘Now I want you to come to the Chronicle with me and repeat what you’ve just told me. Understand?’
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll repeat it. Just the way you told me.’
‘That’s the idea,’ I said.
‘But …’ she began doubtfully.
‘No buts,’ I interrupted. ‘All you’ve gotta do is repeat all I’ve just told you. And you know that’s true, don’t you?’
She nodded.
I sighed thankfully. ‘That’s all then, honey. Now don’t get your lines mixed.’
‘You don’t want me to say anything that isn’t true, do you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want you to say just what you’ve just said. You know that’s true. That’s all I want you to say. That’s important.’
‘All right, Hank,’ she said quietly. ‘Do we come back here afterwards?’
‘Did you ever manage to stop out of bed longer than three hours at a stretch?’
‘Often,’ she said. She smiled wickedly. ‘But not from choice.’
I finished my coffee. ‘Come on,’ I growled. ‘Let’s get going.’
The office was in an uproar when we got there. The old man had been yelling all over for me. I steered Lulu across the newsroom, holding her arm, pushing her in front of me. She gave saucy looks at all the other guys there and was greeted by a chorus of whistles. She liked that. She squared her shoulders, thrust out her chest another two inches and rolled her hips.
‘Cut that out,’ I said grimly. ‘We’re here on business. Remember?’
I steered her into the Chief’s office, carefully closed the door behind me.
He glanced up, frowning, and growled: ‘What in hell is this about, Janson?’
‘Meet Lulu,’ I said. I steered her across to a chair by the side of him.
She sat there, smiling sweetly, with her legs crossed, showing her knees and underskirt.
‘Get this dame outta here, Janson!’ he growled. ‘I’ve gotta few things to say to you.’
‘Hold it, Chief,’ I said. ‘Hold everything. This is gonna be the biggest thing you ever handled.’
I leaned over his desk, pressed buttons on his intercom. I got through to Dane, asked him to come down to the office.
The Chief’s face was red, his cheeks puffed like he was full of air and about to burst. ‘What in hell you doing, Janson?’ he yelled. ‘We’ve got three-quarters of an hour to make deadline and we haven’t a thing ready. Get that dame out of here and get busy.’
I tipped my fedora off my forehead with my forefinger, sat on the edge of his desk and grinned at him. ‘You’re gonna thank me, Chief,’ I said.
‘Thank you! What for?’ His fist pounded on the desk. ‘You’re driving me out of business.’
‘Chief,’ I said earnestly, ‘this is a scoop to make all other scoops look like peanuts. This is a scoop that’ll –’
Dane came in. ‘What’s biting you, Hank?’ he began as he opened the door.
‘Lock the door behind you,’ I said.
He arched his eyebrows in perplexity. But he did what I told him. ‘Burden’s been murdered,’ I said shortly.
Dane’s face was unemotional as he walked across the room towards me, but the Chief leaned forward, suddenly interested, his blue eyes blazing in excitement. ‘Hugh Burden?’
‘That’s the guy,’ I said.
The Chief reached for the telephone.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘What do you think I am doing?’ he rapped. ‘Clearing the front page for the spread.’
I knocked the telephone out of his hand. ‘Just listen for five minutes, will you, dope?’ I said. ‘You won’t want the whole front page, you’ll want the whole paper! This is a real scoop!’
‘Hank,’ he said earnestly, ‘if this is another of your wildcat schemes …’
‘Are you going to listen?’ I asked.
He glared at me, relaxed, sat back in his chair and looped his thumbs in his pants suspenders. His blue eyes stared at me levelly. ‘Okay, Janson,’ he growled. ‘Make it good.’
‘Burden w
as murdered last night,’ I said. ‘A knife in his ribs. There were 80 people at the party and the number of guys that would like to kill Burden would make an army. Sharp’s working on it, but he hasn’t a clue.’ I touched my lips tenderly. ‘He’s been working on me, too.’
‘He’s got good sense, that guy,’ said the Chief.
‘Sharp’s just about the dumbest dick on the force. And the Chronicle’s just about the best paper there is to get the news.’
‘You trying to sell me this paper?’ demanded the Chief.
‘I’m gonna sell it for you,’ I said. ‘We’re gonna rocket the sales. We’re gonna get people buying the Chronicle every day. They’ll trample one another down in the rush to buy.’
‘Nice work,’ he jeered. ‘What do you do? Wave a wand?’
I leaned forward across the table, emphasised everything I said with my forefinger. ‘Burden’s been murdered. That’s big news. It happened just a few hours ago. The cops haven’t a lead. They don’t even know it was somebody at the party who’s guilty. They’ll follow it up for weeks – and probably get nowhere.’
‘How does that help us?’
‘Because,’ I said slowly, ‘because the Chronicle knows right now who the murder is.’
Dane’s face went white. He interjected suddenly: ‘What are you talking about, Janson? How can you know?’
I looked at him steadily. ‘I’ll prove it in a minute,’ I said. ‘But first let me give you the idea. The idea that’ll sell the Chronicle.’
The Chief glanced at his watch. ‘You’ve been talking two minutes,’ he said. ‘You’ve got three minutes more.’
I talked quickly. ‘The Chronicle announces the murder of Burden with all the details. At the same time, the Chronicle announces it knows the identity of the murderer.
‘But the Chronicle also says it cannot prove the identity of the murderer. Net yet. But, to show good faith, the Chronicle has sealed the name of the murderer in a safety vault. If the police find the murderer and convict him, and if the name in the safety vault as given by the Chronicle is not the name of the real murderer, then the Chronicle will make a donation of two hundred grand to any charity the police care to name.’
‘You’re crazy,’ muttered the Chief.
I ignored him. ‘But, on the other hand,’ I went on, ‘the Chronicle states that it is going all out to get proof of the guilt of the murderer. If the Chronicle furnishes evidence of guilt to the police, then it is entitled to consider itself more capable than the police force and the most up-to-date and factual newspaper in Chicago today.’
Dane said nervously: ‘What d’you mean about proof, Hank? How can you have proof that the police haven’t got?’
The Chief leaned forward. There was a gleam of interest in his eyes. ‘Hank,’ he said, ‘You really have got something there. If we could show up the police that way, produce evidence before they did and get the public interested, our sales would go up.’
‘It’s in the bag,’ I told him. ‘I know who committed the murder. I can prove it now. But we don’t have to prove it now. We can string it out a bit. Every day we write up a little more. There’s no point in putting the finger on the guy right now. Get the public good and steamed up so they’re buying every copy as it comes off the press. That’s the way to do it. And then, just at the right moment, we’ll step in, produce our evidence and say we just discovered it.’
The Chief snapped his fingers. ‘Janson,’ he said, ‘if this comes off, you’ll earn yourself a bonus and a month’s holiday.’
‘It’ll come off,’ I said. ‘It’ll come off all right!’
‘Can you prove this?’ asked Dane. His voice sounded anxious.
‘She can help me prove it,’ I said, looking at Lulu. ‘But we’ve gotta trust her.’
The Chief looked at her earnestly. ‘Can we trust you?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Oh, sure! You can trust me.’
‘How much does it take to trust you? A coupla thousand bucks?’
She smiled coyly, dropped her eyes and then gave me an up-and-under look. ‘I’ve got money of my own,’ she said artfully. ‘But I kinda like Hank.’
The Chief glanced at me, and there was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. ‘You mean you’d do anything to help Hank – just so long as he’s real nice to you?’
‘He is real nice,’ she asserted. ‘I just want him to stay that way.’
I gulped hard. I said quickly: ‘Well, it’s between us four then. It mustn’t go any further.’
‘I know what you’re gonna say,’ said Lulu quickly. ‘You’re gonna say that Charles Skinner murdered Burden.’
I gaped at her. ‘How did you know?’
‘I just put two and two together,’ she said simply.
I shrugged at the Chief. ‘She’s in on it, anyway. We’ve just gotta rely on her keeping her mouth shut.’
I told them everything. The way the fight had started, the way Skinner had dropped his pen after the fight. The way he had gone home leaving his pen on the mantelpiece. Then I told them how I called back later at Dorothy’s apartment and found it empty, the bed unslept in while she’d gone to the druggists for a sleeping draught. It was obvious she was covering up for Skinner.
And then Lulu told her part. Just the way I’d asked her to tell it. And that beyond a doubt proved that Skinner had been back in Burden’s house that night.
‘It’s an open and shut case,’ I finished.
‘Everything seems fixed,’ said the Chief.
Dane said quietly, ‘He doesn’t look a killer.’
‘Killers don’t usually look killers,’ I pointed out. ‘Otherwise people would be on their guard against them.’
The Chief reached for the phone. This time I didn’t interfere. He gave instructions for the pages to be cleared and prepared for a new set-up.
He hung up looked at me and said: ‘All right, get going, Janson, headlines on the front page: The Chronicle Challenges the Police.’
‘That’s the stuff,’ I said approvingly
‘Put Burden on page two,’ he said. ‘Famous Playwright Stabbed. Build it up big. Give it everything you’ve got. Make it sound genuine. Say a reward will be given to anyone who is able to give information that will help prove the guilt of the murderer. There’ll be a ceremony this afternoon. Say the Editor of the paper himself will deposit the name of the murderer in the safety vault while watched by important police officials who have been requested to attend.’
I rubbed my hands with satisfaction. ‘The biggest scoop of all time,’ I said. I looked at Dane. He was white-faced, biting his lip. ‘What the hell are you so gloomy about?’ I asked.
‘I had a bad night,’ he said ‘Didn’t sleep much.’ Then he suddenly burst out: ‘All I can say is, it’s rough on Skinner. If a guy could get away with killing Burden I reckon he’s entitled to. Do we have to put the finger on him?’
‘No,’ I said levelly. ‘We don’t have to put the finger on him. But he can’t get away with it, Dane. He’s not the kinda guy to get away with it. It’s gonna be on his conscience for the rest of his life. Right now we can do far more for Skinner than by keeping him in the clear. We can build up sympathy for Skinner and criticise Burden. When we finally put the finger on Skinner we can throw everything in his lap. He’ll probably get manslaughter. Maybe with leniency he’d just get two years. And after that he’d come out, a free man, nothing on his conscience. He’d be able to face the world again without having a guilty secret.’
‘Yeah,’ said Dane doubtfully. ‘I guess that’s right.’ He didn’t sound very convinced.
‘By the way,’ I said, ‘where were you last night?’
‘Jeepers, Hank,’ said the Chief. ‘Get going, will ya? Those machines downstairs are waiting. Get going, will ya?’
I made a dash for the door. Lulu came running after me. ‘Wait for me, Hank,’ she cried.
The Chief cleared his throat. ‘Lulu,’ he said, and his
voice was soft and kindly. When she heard him call to her that way she stopped, turned around with a sickly, dreamy look in her eyes, and smiled at him. Momentarily she forgot about me.
The Chief cleared his throat again, worked some more soap into his voice and patted the chair next to him. ‘Come and sit down, honey,’ he said. ‘Let’s you and I have a little chat, huh?’ He flashed me a quick look as though to say, Get going, Hank, I’ll look after her.
I closed the door behind me, chuckling to myself. Dane came out with me.
‘I’ll cover the Burden story if you’ll do the rest,’ he offered.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That’ll help a lot.’
One and a quarter hours later, I leaned back in my chair, mopped my forehead and took the first good breath I’d had since I’d started. Downstairs the machines were beginning to revolve, churning out the Chronicle’s challenge to the police. The challenge that would cost the Chronicle two hundred grand if it wasn’t successful.
‘Thanks, Dane,’ I said. ‘You helped out fine.’
‘That’s okay,’ he said. His face was still white and there was a strange look in his eyes. He nodded towards the Chief’s office and said: ‘Better see how he’s making out.’
I went across, opened the Chief’s door. He was sitting there with a sickly look on his face. He was pressed back in his chair, looking nervous and anxious. Lulu was sitting as close to him as she could get her chair. Her voice rippled like a babbling brook. She was telling him about an operation she’d had. Judging by the way her clothes were rucked up, she was trying to show him, too.
He looked up at me thankfully, like a drowning man who’s been thrown a lifebelt. ‘Have you done it?’
I nodded.
He breathed a deep sigh of relief. ‘Take the day off, Hank,’ he said. ‘See the young lady home. Get the little bitch out of here!’
He’d said the last sentence without thinking. She turned around to him quickly with a look of shocked surprise on her face, ‘What was that, darling?’
He stammered: ‘I said “Get the little witch a beer”.’
‘Oh,’ she said. She smiled at him, reassured. ‘Just for one moment I thought you said something horrid.’
