by Jerry eBooks
THE END
TIME TO KILL
Leo Hoban
Fifteen hundred bucks to cart a wooden dummy across the continent! It sounded mad, but madder still was the murder that stalked Mike Grady when he took the job!
THERE I was, sitting in my office in Manhattan and minding my own business, when the bald-headed guy walked in and tossed five C notes on my battered desk.
If there had been any business save my own to mind, I probably would have been more particular. But five C’s—when you were just contemplating if Shanty Sam around the corner would go on the arm for another couple of hamburgers—definitely was real kush.
So when he put the valise, about four-by-three feet, on my desk alongside the five centuries, Mike Grady wasn’t in any mood to argue.
“Just deliver this to me in the St. Francis in San Francisco,” he said. “There’s nothing hot about it. It’s only a piece of wood, harmless and inanimate.”
Boy, what a soft touch this was, boy, oh boy!
“What’s in it?”
“A dummy,” he mumbled. “Just a dummy. One of those things a ventriloquist uses. You know—a dummy?”
“Sure,” I said. “Dummies. I know them—lots of ’em.”
“Well, deliver it safely and I’ll pay you one thousand more—provided it’s safe delivery, of course.”
“Of course,” I nodded, my eyes still being riveted on the five C’s. “But why don’t you take it to ‘Frisco yourself?”
He shifted feet on that one, studied the flyspecks on the ceiling, and said: “People, you know, lose things . . . on trains . . . they’re very careless. And there’s a radio program this—er—dummy must sound off on. He’s very important. Let’s say like Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen, He rates. He’s worth about five thousand a week. He must be delivered safely. Fifteen hundred is not much to get it across country.”
Well, that seemed logical enough. What harm would there be in a dummy? Who would want it? Where would be the danger? A dummy cannot hurt anyone.
I gave some thought to that, but the main thought was that Shanty Sam and his hamburgers had been outgamed in the stretch by a miraculous five C’s that represented steaks—big, luscious ones.
“It’s a deal,” I said, holding out my hand. “He’ll be in San Francisco in five days.”
The guy gave me one of those enigmatic grins, bobbed his head, and departed.
Just before the door closed a voice from the valise said: “Sucker. I’m going to knock off a guy!” I grabbed the valise, shook it—and its weight seemed heavy enough to be an actual body.
I began to sweat. The locks on the valise wouldn’t open; I wasn’t sure just what I had in there. The voice had sounded too human to be a dummy’s—yet it was out of this world.
On top of it—although stupid—I’m a conscientious private dick. I’d committed myself to safe delivery of the valise—so the only thing was to follow through.
The five C’s and the thought of steak had a great deal to do with that decision. I picked up the valise, pocketed the dough, and was humming “California Here I Come” as I left the office and headed for the elevator.
I pressed the down buzzer and turned around, still humming. A short and nonchalant—almost demure guy—a vicious scar running down his right cheek—sauntered up to the elevator, I turned from him shifting the valise from right to left hand. To all appearances he wasn’t dangerous.
That shift of hands saved my life; a knife, aimed at my ribs, made a slight ripping sound as it went into the top corner of the valise.
I whirled. The mug—looking disconcerted, shoved his feet out like a runner sliding into second. I went down, clenching the valise against my chest. The mug’s foot lifted once, lashed out catching me flush on the chin. The world spun, I felt him tug at the valise, but hung on. The elevator hissed to a stop and the mug’s feet pattered swiftly down the hallway. I got up, groggily.
The elevator man said: “Service ain’t so bad that tenants gotta go ‘round lying on floors. What’s the idea, Mister?”
I GOT on the elevator, looked at the valise and also wondered.
Here had been attempted murder. For what? A wooden-headed, wooden-bodied image of nothing in particular, created for nothing more than amusement to the multitudes.
Or was he? The hunch was inborn that the thing in the valise was far more than that. There was something about him—or it—that called for killing.
Kill! Kill! Kill!
It kept going through my mind—dumb Mike Grady, a dick who is always a step or two behind current events. I just seem to get those kind of cases, like a kid gets cereal for breakfast. He protests a little too late, and to no avail.
But five C’s is five hunnert (in Brooklyn) and five hunnert to me, coming from Brooklyn, was five more than the ten more I would get in San Francisco.
So I grabbed a train.
Well, everything was okay—peaceful like—until we rolled into Denver on the Transcontinental.
Boy! Had I met a blonde! She had stumbled into my compartment accidentally.
We had a twenty-minute stopover—and the blonde said she wanted some fresh oranges. The oranges on the train seemed fresh to me, but for a nice dame like the blonde maybe they weren’t fresh enough. A dumb dick like me gets along with those kind any time—especially when he’s got dough in the kick and time to kill.
I walked up 17th Street, bought a dozen oranges, and walked back under the Welcome Arch leading to the station plaza.
It happened when I was going down the ramp to the trains.
I was blissfully unaware of the crowds shoving this-and-that way around. After all, I just was killing time. We were still a good day and a half from San Francisco. I was thinking about the blonde. In a day and a half-anything can happen.
It did.
A tall, skinny guy in a down-pulled beaverskin stepped up to me as I was going down the ramp. I side-stepped, quick-like, pulling up the valise. I bumped right into an old and fat dame. She was puffing up the ramp and had her head down, plunging like a fullback bent on making three yards to goal.
Her shoulder smashed into the orange bag, splitting it, and the oranges went here and there, rolling down the ramp. I bent over, balancing the valise, trying to rescue one for my blonde doll.
That’s when I found out that this time to kill between trains was the McCoy. A slug went “whoof’ right past where my head had been, smashed through the valise, and pinged against the wall to my right.
I pivoted, bending low, and got a quick glimpse of the mug in the black beaverskin triggering his silenced revolver—and getting no result. That’s one thing about silencers—half the time they’ll jam after the first shot.
Bent on a tackle, I jumped forward.
I didn’t make it, landing flush on my puss instead, driven there by a wicked rabbit punch. My chin smacked the concrete, and there was a small blackout until I rolled over on my back and looked up at the fat dame who was ready to wallop me again with her umbrella.
A guy grabbed the umbrella and said: “Wotinell, lady? Why conk the guy?”
“The fresh thing!” she shrilled, pulling an orange from her bodice. “The nasty fresh thing! And me a respectable woman! I was only minding my own business.”
She was struggling to bring down the umbrella again, but the guy holding the other end of it had it bent back over her shoulder and was giving me the bad eye.
I turned over on one elbow and reached for the shoulder holster. The mug in the beaverskin was backing away in the crowd. He gave me one frightened glance and swung behind the gaping apes that were ringing me in—and then was gone.
WHEN I did get my gun clear my pal on the other end of the umbrella nonchalantly kicked the automatic out of my mitt. His knee prodded the fat dame on the caboose, shunting her to the sidelines.
“Get up,” he barked, and I found myself looking into the business end of a .38 police positive.
I’m dumb, but I’ve been around long enough to
know when a serene-eyed guy can be dangerous and too calm for other people’s good. And I didn’t want any part of this guy. He was too calm.
I got up, very cautiously.
Being sensible, I couldn’t mention that I didn’t know the mug who had missed with the slug, that there was no reason for him to take a crack at me, that I’d never been in Denver before.
“What’s it all about?” he said. “A man takes a punch, eh?”
That was my out. He didn’t know about the silenced bullet, and I wouldn’t tell him. That would have meant an investigation of several hours; the train was due to leave in five minutes.
So I played it smart, pulled out my wallet, and showed credentials as a New York private detective.
“I’ve been looking for a guy—a guy that had a want on him.”
“What guy?”
I thought quick. “We’ve got him as Michael Eagle, a Brooklyn hood. It might be something else, but we got him as Eagle.”
“Never heard of him. What did he do?”
“Liquor hi-jacker,” I croaked. “Maybe there’s some murder mixed up in it.”
He made up his mind suddenly. “Okay, son. Go after him. Your train’s about ready to pull off.”
I went, lugging the valise.
Now I’m not one that worries as a rule, but the small hole in one side of the valise—and a larger hole to starboard—had me worried. After all, instructions had been to deliver it intact—and unharmed.
Already the outer casing had been slashed with a knife; and now a slug had gone entirely through it. And in all my experiences I’ve never known of a slug passing through something that didn’t do some harm. It’s a habit, a vicious habit, like eating tacks and nails.
I was thinking about this—and the other half of my $1000 retainer flying out of the window on a fatalistic strike—when I pushed open the compartment door just as the train jerked and got underway.
I saw the blonde first, watched her eyebrows skate upward and her full mouth flatten out and her eyes open in amazement. It penetrated my dull noggin that this amazement wasn’t all ersatz. There could be only one answer—and it wasn’t the fact that I lacked a bag of oranges.
She hadn’t expected me to come back!
That was it. So it hadn’t been my battered puss—said not to be too unhandsome—that had prompted her to pick me up. She had put me on the spot with that gag about the oranges. She’d expected a few squirts to come my way, and those squirts weren’t supposed to be orange juice.
It didn’t make sense—even to a smart dick, and I wasn’t smart. I admit it. I just slog along in my bemused fashion, knowing that crime eventually stops like an inferior horse running on cocaine. And I’m usually right, given sufficient time and provided I’m lucky enough to be alive when the payoff numbers go up.
I put the riddled valise down, kicked the door shut and started toward the blonde. I didn’t know just what I was going to do save get answers to questions.
“So,” a voice said from the compartment seat partly obscured when the door was open, “they shot Count von Mike?” The words didn’t make sense right away, but they stabbed prodding fingers into my mind and started whispers playing hide-and-seek among practically dormant cells. Count von Mike was an important somebody, but just who he was or why he was important was not at all important right then.
But the bald-headed, nattily-dressed guy sitting there was important—in a lousy sort of way—being no less than my employer.
I cannot say my mind was in turmoil, for it isn’t capable of much more than a lazy spin, which is practically high gear for me.
It shifted into high gear. Gradually it dawned upon me that he had known that possession of the valise called for murder—and had set me up as a stooge in a shooting gallery while he watched safely from the sidelines.
IN ADDITION it was apparent that he knew the blonde; they were not just chance acquaintances.
The whole setup was cockeyed. What point was there in hiring a shamus to deliver a valise, then having an accomplice see to it that the valise is not delivered safely?
In my language there’s only one way to find out such riddles.
I reached down, my left hand hooked onto his vest and shirt and he came upward. When he was up far enough my right backhanded him across his jowls four times before I permitted him to drop to the compartment seat.
At the first blow the blonde screamed and jumped forward. I kicked her feet from under her and when the lug dropped I turned to see what else she needed.
She was still on the floor, looking mad. A little automatic in her hand pointed at me, looking very mad—ominously and dangerously so.
It brought me to an abrupt halt.
She got up slowly, the gun holding steady. “Sit down, brains,” she said, “and listen to a fairy tale. Lugs like you have to learn the facts of life sometime.” I sat down abruptly. Nobody could have done anything else and stayed alive. Her eyes were rocks and she knew how to handle a gat.
“Okay, sister,” I said. “I’ve been put on the spot twice—once by the jerk, and once by you; and I want to know why.”
“There’s going to be a murder. You were just supposed to help it along.”
“I—help—murder—”
“A nice clean murder—a piperoo. You wouldn’t have been involved in any manner.”
“Now listen, sister. Murder is murder; you don’t get messed up in those things without getting yourself messed. On top of it, the victim is me. Two tries have proven that.”
“I’m really sorry.” She actually looked sad. “It wasn’t meant to be that way. Why didn’t you just let them have Count von Mike?”
“My job was to see that he was delivered safely. And whoinell, sister, is Count von Mike?”
“Remember any Sing Sing broadcasts?”
I got it then, got it good. Several years back there had been a comedy trio—one a dummy—who dominated two stooges. It was clever stuff—especially clever coming from a pen.
“You mean this guy?” I pointed to the guy out cold on the compartment seat. “And that?” My toe kicked the valise.
“Cut it out, chum,” the valise growled. “This is no fun.”
I took a quick look at the blonde—and, so help me, she laughed. “The Count’s a really rough guy. He’s very touchy, too.”
“And spooky.”
“Not so spooky—just tough,” the guy said, sitting erect on the compartment seat. The backhands seemed to be forgotten, and apparently hadn’t phased him too much.
He was looking at the holes in the valise, and I looked too—and shuddered. I was convinced that there was a human inside the valise. The voice had been as clear as that.
The shudders were not for the five C’s I wouldn’t get now, but the idea of lugging some midget around in a valise—and having him punctured when practically in my arms was repugnant. Also the cops toss guys in the can—and can them in steel for the duration—until they can explain why a guy should be in a valise in the first place and shot in the second place. And I couldn’t explain.
The boss jerked his thumb at the valise and said, “Give me Count van Mike.”
I couldn’t help it, but my hands were clammy and shaking when I grabbed the handle of the valise. I wasn’t quite sure what I would find inside, but curiosity had me on a merry-go-round.
I NOTICED the boss’ eyes as I bent over, turning the caboose to the blonde and the gat. His eyes were old and tired and sad. The hentracks around them looked like a barnyard after a rain. It came to me that such sadness was of many years’ duration.
When I placed the valise on the boss’ lap, he sighed and his breath was enough to send all distillery stocks skyrocketing. He was corncockeyed, a boozed-bosky, a lush-lalapalooza. And he was crying, the tears squeezing from his eyes, shuttling down the furrows of his cheeks, and making regular transfers from his chin to his flowing Oxford tie.
“Take a good, long look, brother,” the blonde said. “Don’t you know him?”
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I took another look—and didn’t know him. “Maybe if he was wearing a toupee?” the blonde suggested.
Thus picturing him in my mind’s eye—I got him. And holy Moses! It was the famed movie and radio ventriloquist, Harry Jergin. It was stupid that I had not recognized him before.
Now I knew what I had been carrying in the valise. He was known as Count von Mike in Sing Sing—but to the nation’s audiences he was Charles Clunley—a humorous, mild-mannered dummy who was perpetually in trouble.
His trouble was real now; he was involved in attempted murder.
Jergin unlocked the valise and seated the dummy upon his lap. He caressed it and bent his head to its plastic one. There were two holes—one small, one large—in the dummy’s head where the slug had passed through.
He was wearing a morning coat, a high top hat and a monocle. Jergin’s hand fondly went down the back of the coat until it reached the aperture in the dummy’s spine.
The dummy’s mouth opened and its head swiveled and he looked up at Jergin.
“Jergin!” it said accusingly. “You’re a murderer!”
“I’m not,” Jergin whispered. “It’s just your imagination.”
“Imagination, hell! This hole through my head isn’t imagination. Damn it all, man, it’s a fact, an actuality! A bullet did it, a bullet you had shot at me. It’s your own fault. You engineered the whole thing.”
“I did nothing of the sort. I wouldn’t have you knocked off for anything in the world. Who deliberately would have holes punched in a meal ticket?”
“You would!” the Count whispered. And, so help me, that tricky and inanimate face actually was sorrowful and accusing.
Jergin looked down upon it in a shame-faced manner, and tears again started to roll down his cheeks.
“If it wasn’t for this dumb dick,” the dummy said, nodding at me, “I would have been kidnapped.”
Jergin’s hand raised too late to stop the last few words.
This was too much, far too much for a dumb detective. It came to me that Jergin was a slave to the dummy, that Jergin was a repressive, as the docs call it. And the dummy actually was an honest Jergin speaking Jergin’s mind as he himself was afraid to do, yet apparently unable to control himself.
