Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  I walked into Art Stebber’s office hoping to get my pocketbook filled.

  “Hello, Art.” I said.

  He looked up from the dummy of the next Colossal Detective, and nodded. “Hi, Larry.”

  Behind him, Johnnie Lane, associate Editor of the Alliance pulps, grinned at me through his thick-lensed glasses. Johnnie always blames his poor eyesight on the task of wading through reams of jumbled wordage that I turn in. I should tell Johnnie about some of his own stuff. I don’t because I don’t buy from him. It’s the other way around.

  “What’s the good news?” Johnnie asked.

  I plunked the manuscript I was carrying down on Art’s desk. Art looked at the envelope with baby-blue eyes and feigned astonishment.

  “I hope to hell you’re not bringing in a story, Larry,” he said. I’m way over my quota for the month!”

  I grinned. There wasn’t anything else to do. This announcement always put me in my place. “Nice day out,” I countered.

  Johnnie reached over and pulled the manuscript from the envelope. He dropped it in front of Art and I could see them both grimace. “Murder Takes A Hayride!” Art squawked.

  “Fifteen thousand words! How the hell can you write fifteen thousand words around such a title?” Johnnie thumbed through a couple of chapters. “Hell of a job of typing—haven’t you any pity on an editor? No wonder I’m going blind!”

  I dropped into a chair beside Art’s desk and fished out a cigarette. Johnnie snagged one for himself before I could pocket the pack.

  “Thanks, Larry,” he said grinning. “Got a match?”

  I held a light to his smoke and blithely asked: “How are you fixed for lungs?”

  Johnnie coughed.

  “If I keep smoking these weeds of yours, I’ll need a new set!”

  I switched my gaze over to Art. He was sitting back in his chair looking sober as all getout. He was looking at me with those dreamy blue eyes of his and I had the feeling he was looking right through me. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was. Art has been toying with science, fantasy and detective fiction for so long that he has developed an editorial hypnosis all of his own.

  “I hope you don’t expect me to read this thing. I’m busy as the devil.”

  Art’s three pulps are all quarterly now because of the paper shortage. That means he has one magazine to get out every month. He can slap it together in a week. That leaves three weeks to figure out his bowling average, occasionally filter through the unrush mail, and spend a couple hours a day down in the coffee shop. He grinned “But I don’t see what the gas has to do with it,” I said suddenly. He knew what I was thinking.

  “I suppose you’ll want a fast check.” he said. Behind him, Johnnie scoffed. “If this yarn is as bad as the last one he turned in, he owes us some dough!”

  “Look, Johnnie,” I put on my best trying-to-please-the-baby routine and pointed to the door, “if you’ll be a nice little boy and go back to mutilating some of my masterpieces you’ve got on your desk, I’ll buy you an all-day sucker when I leave.”

  Johnnie thumbed his nose at me and started to walk out. I called after him. “Is Frank Haskell in today?”

  He shook his head. “He left a little while ago.”

  Haskell belongs to the Chicago Pulpateers, and is a good writer, even if he does turn his stuff out in longhand. We’ve been after him to learn to use a typewriter and for the past month he’d been using one of the spare machines in Johnnie’s office. I turned back to Art, who had suddenly started reading my yarn. My fingers were crossed.

  Three cigarettes and a half hour later Art shuffled the manuscript back together and put a clip on it. I looked at him hopefully. I was thinking of the three hundred bucks waiting for me.

  Art shook his head. “I’m sorry, Larry, I can’t use this one.”

  My heart hit the bottom of my shoes. “Huh? You’re not joking, Art? What’s the matter, isn’t it a good yarn?”

  “I didn’t say that. Sure it’s a good yarn. Some of the best writing you’ve done yet. Trouble is I just bought a yarn from Hank Sayler using the same idea. If I had seen yours first . . .”

  I was looking out the window and trying to control the nerves that were jumping inside me. Sayler! This wasn’t the first time he’d stolen an idea of mine and jumped a sale on me. I thought back to the last meeting of the Pulpateers over at Vince Parker’s house when I had talked over my idea for Hayride. Sayler had been there. Now he had my three hundred bucks.

  “Sayler got my idea last week, Art, at our last meeting!”

  I guess I nearly screamed the words out. Art shook his head.

  “I’m sorry about this, Larry. I’ve been suspicious of him for some time. I’ll put the clamp on him from now on.” I nodded glumly. But that didn’t help matters any. I’d lost another week’s output. Art could see it on my face. He looked at his watch.

  “Just about time for lunch, Larry. Care to join me?—I can put through an advance during the lunch hour if you need it.”

  I shook my head. “Thanks just the same, Art; I can manage until next week. Besides, I’ve got a luncheon date with Betty Kane.” I could manage, all right. But it was going to be a tough squeeze. I knew I’d have to work like hell to get another story out before my bills got too high. An advance would have looked pretty good. Maybe I had too much pride.

  I left Stebber’s office with the manuscript back under my arm. I was walking down the corridor with my eyes on the plaid pattern of inlaid tile when somebody loomed in front of me.

  “Hello, Mr. Colter. Just leaving?”

  I looked up and saw George Weldon, a tall, scrawny youth with a sallow complexion, standing there in the hall. I was in no mood to be bothered with Weldon. He was one of the ardent followers of the Alliance pulps and had a collection of the magazines dating back to the first issues. Technically guys like Weldon were known as fans, but Weldon was also a tyro writer—he had the urge to write, but had never sold anything. He was always pestering me with his crazy ideas for fantasy yarns, and more than once I thought he was going to suggest moving right in my flat. God knows he was over there enough.

  “Hello, Weldon,” I answered, and paused, mainly because he was in my way.

  “You in a hurry, Mr. Colter? I got a couple ideas I’d like to talk over with you. You going home?”

  “Sorry, Weldon, I’m too busy. And I’m not going home. See you again.”

  I sailed around him and walked to the elevator. I knew he was standing there watching me, with that peculiar expression of dreaminess that was always in his eyes. The kid always impressed me as a little neurotic. But now all I could think about was a guy named Sayler. Not even the thought of meeting Betty helped. The elevator door opened.

  She was waiting for me outside of the City News Bureau on North Clark. I picked her out of the crowd like an incandescent bulb glowing among a mass of candles. That’s how she looked to me. She has the purest gold hair that I’ve ever seen short of the sun. And when you add a peaches and cream skin with a dash of hazy blue eyes and curves that Lana Turner herself hasn’t got . . . well, you’ve got a good picture of the girl I planned to marry. She started out to be a model but ended up as a feature writer for the News Bureau. She could write the story of my life anytime she wanted.

  “Hi, kitten.”

  She flashed me a smile and hooked her arm through mine. I had to hold the manuscript in my other hand.

  “What’s the matter, Larry, does Art want some revision?”

  I didn’t feel like talking about it. “Let’s eat, kitten. Henrici’s?”

  She nodded and for the first time I noticed the shiny lines under her eyes. Lines that only tears could have made.

  “You’ve been crying,” I said flatly. She pretended she didn’t hear me and turned her eyes away.

  It was only a short walk to Henrici’s. We turned east on Randolph and I shouldered us through the noon rush crowd that only Chicago’s Loop can produce. It was like a steady stream of cattle run
ning down the chutes at Armour’s on the South Side, with all the noise and rattle of taxis, street cars and the el thrown in for good measure. The inside of Henrici’s was a relief.

  We got a table off to the side and after ordering, I repeated my question.

  “You’ve been crying, kitten. What’s wrong?” She pulled out a powder puff and mirror and went to work. Then she asked for a cigarette. It was a stall. She wouldn’t look at me. “Come on, spill it,” I said.

  She looked at me for a long moment, and her eyes were suddenly wistful. I remembered at that moment the first time I met her over at a party Art Stebber threw. I had just come to Chicago after selling five straight yarns in a row to Stebber. It was kind of an introduction to the Chicago Pulpateers. Betty Kane didn’t write for Stebber, but she knew him through Hank Sayler. Sayler had brought her to the party. I’d often wondered what she saw in him. She was good, clean, everything a man wants in a woman. Sayler was just the opposite. I never asked her about it. There are some things you don’t ask.

  “Larry, I’d like to tell you something.”

  She broke in on my thoughts, and it was almost as if she had read my mind. I nodded.

  “You won’t like it, Larry.”

  “I don’t like beer, kitten, but I drink it.” I could see her take a deep breath.

  “Larry, you remember the first time we met—at Art’s home?”

  I had just been thinking about it. I nodded again.

  “Larry, you remember, Hank Sayler brought me to the party. You knew I had been seeing him for some time.”

  I was trying to figure out what she was trying to say. I almost felt like a confessor about to hear some secret sin from the past. I didn’t like thinking that.

  “I was just finding out about Hank, Larry. In the beginning he was sweet, and every inch a man. I didn’t know at the time it was only an act . . .”

  That was Sayler. Sayler. Why the hell should he be brought up again? I hated him at that moment. For everything he had done to me, to others, and now—

  “When I met you, Larry, I saw just what kind of a man Hank Sayler really was. He couldn’t be honest even with himself. I’ve regretted every minute I ever spent with him. And now those letters . . .”

  “Letters?” I couldn’t keep the word back. What was she trying to say?

  “Hank had gone out to California to talk over the movie rights on his Vanishing Thief series, and during the month he was out there, before the deal fell through, I wrote him some letters.”

  I sat there waiting. The waitress came up and I studied the tablecloth while she put the food on the table. After she left I looked back at Betty. She wasn’t touching her food and there was a mistiness in her eyes that shouldn’t have been there.

  “I said some things in those letters that—well—I didn’t know about him, Larry, and now he wants to break things up between you and me, and he threatens—”

  Her voice almost broke. I sat there looking at her and wanted to leap across the table and take her in my arms. She was afraid not for herself, but for what I might think!

  “Kitten,” I gripped her small cool fingers in my hand across the table, “I wouldn’t give a hoot if he screamed those letters from the Wrigley Building! Do you think anything that rat could do or say about you would make any difference to me? Don’t worry, I’ll get those letters, and give him something in exchange. I have a score that’s going to be settled with Sayler myself!”

  She frowned. And her eyes rested on the envelope I had been carrying. I told her what had happened.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I’m going over and beat hell out of him. He’s had it coming for a long time. And then I’m going to cram those letters down his throat!”

  “Larry, I don’t want you to go over there.”

  I looked closely at her. It didn’t click in my mind. “What did you say? I’d like to know why not?”

  “In the first place, Larry, it won’t do you any good to start a fight with him—you’d only get yourself into trouble. Why don’t you and Vince Parker and Frank Haskell see that he’s kicked out of the Pulpateers. Art Stebber and Johnnie Lane must know what is going on too. Won’t they help?”

  I thought back to what Art had said a little earlier about putting the squeeze on Sayler. She was probably right; it would only cause trouble, but there was the matter of—

  “Besides, Larry, I want to handle those letters myself. That would be just what Hank would like to have you do, come over and make a scene about me. He’d spread it all over town, and I don’t want that to happen. I’ll see him tomorrow morning.”

  “Damn it, kitten, I don’t want you going over to see Sayler. That rat might try anything—I won’t have it!”

  “I want it that way,” she said softly.

  What’s a guy going to do. She kept looking at me with that hazy misty blue gaze of hers that could turn my heartstrings into jumbled chords of emotion. I looked down at my food. It was growing cold on the plate. But I wasn’t hungry.

  “You win,” I said. “I’ll talk to Vince this afternoon. But something is going to be done.” She was smiling now. I liked that. “I’ll see you tonight, huh?”

  She nodded, and it was like a halo of gold bobbing before my eyes. “You better eat something now.” she said.

  I found part of my appetite.

  CHAPTER II

  The Fight

  Vince Parker lived just east of Broadway on Diversey. I got off the bus at Broadway and footed back a half block to the apartment hotel. Vince answered the door. “Hello, Larry! What’s up?”

  He seemed surprised to see me. I didn’t answer but walked into his basement flat and threw myself into a chair. Behind me I heard him close the door.

  There was a funny odor in the room. Smelled like something halfway between a rotten egg and an open garbage can. I looked toward the door leading to the rear of the flat and sniffed.

  Parker let out a short laugh and ran his fingers through an unkempt mass of limpid black hair. He was a tall, bony fellow, with a persistent boyish stare looking out at you from behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. His shirt collar was open and there were brownish streaks running down his sleeves.

  “I’ve been making a little hydrogen sulphide,” he apologized.

  I wasn’t surprised. You had to expect that when you came over to Vince Parker’s. Chemistry was his hobby and he had a sizable laboratory in what was supposed to be a kitchen. He was always fooling around back there when he wasn’t writing. Frank Haskell always said that there were only two things in Parker’s life, and both of them were formulas. One he used to turn out wordage; the other to turn out substances that science hadn’t got around to yet. Stebber added that both of them smelled.

  “So I notice,” I said, not trying to hide the grimace that was screwing up my nose. This was only a mild example of what Vince could do.

  “I’ll open a window,” he said.

  “Might not be a bad idea.” I replied, pulling out a handkerchief and blowing vigorously. I often wondered how Parker got away with this stuff in an apartment hotel. At any rate they managed to keep him in the basement.

  “I guess it did smell a little,” he said sheepishly.

  I could almost breathe now. “That’s putting it mildly,” I said.

  “How come you’re not working?” he asked, folding his six-foot-three into a low-slung lounge chair.

  “I was working. But not for myself. Seems as if my checks find their way into Hank Sayler’s pockets.”

  He looked at me with a frown. “Huh?”

  I glanced over at his desk beside the window. His Royal standard had a half-typed sheet of bond in it. “Better put a padlock on that, Vince, from now on.”

  I could see the question written all over his face. I pointed to my manuscript which lay on an end table where I had dropped it. The doorbell rang.

  “Just a second, Larry,” he said. He lifted himself lazily from the chair and stalked over to
the door. Frank Haskell walked in.

  “Hi, twerps.”

  Haskell is a short lean fellow in his early thirties, with prematurely gray hair. He’s a flashy dresser, and today sported a loud plaid sport jacket with creamy slacks and saddle shoes. A corduroy knockabout was tilted at a jaunty angle over his right ear.

  “I could say something,” I countered, sweeping my eyes up and down him with a sad shake of my head.

  “Don’t bother, chum, you’re just jealous.” He grinned and tossed his hat into my lap. He sniffed. “What’s been going on in here?”

  I motioned over to Vince who had settled himself back in the lounge chair. “He’s been at it again.”

  “Oh. Thought it might have been something else.”

  “Don’t be funny. I’m not in a joking mood.” I followed him with my eyes as he walked over to Vince’s desk and picked up the half-finished manuscript. Vince pulled my gaze away.

  “What were you going to say just before Frank came, Larry?”

  I pointed to the envelope containing my story. “In there lie fifteen thousand words of some of the best detective writing I’ve done. You remember last week at our meeting I discussed my Hayride plot? Well, that’s it.”

  “Why so glum? It’ll net you around three hundred, won’t it?” Vince cut in.

  “It would have if Hank Sayler hadn’t taken the idea and wrote the yarn himself. Stebber bought his piece. I’m out the three hundred and a full week’s work!”

  Vince took off his glasses and said: “Well, I’ll be damned!”

  Over by the desk, Frank Haskell was looking at me with his mouth hanging open.

  “Why, the dirty dog! The same thing happened to me a couple of months ago, but I thought it was just a coincidence!”

  “It wasn’t. This is the third idea he’s stolen on me. I’m fed up!” I said hotly.