Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  Haskell was shuffling Vince’s manuscript back together. He put on the title sheet, and I saw him jump.

  “What the hell!”

  Vince looked over at him. “What’s the matter?”

  “Where did you get this title?” Frank pointed to the caps halfway down the first page.

  “You’ll Die Laughing?” Vince said frowning. “Why, where do you think I got it? It’s an idea I’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks. I mentioned it when we met over at your place last month.”

  “Do you know where I’ve been this morning?” Haskell asked. We shook our heads.

  “I’ve been over to Hank Sayler’s. He was just finishing a yarn and getting it ready to bring over to Art Stebber in the morning. It was a story called You’ll Die Laughing!”

  Vince Parker jumped from his chair. He was trembling and for a minute I thought he was going to have a fit. He grabbed the manuscript from Haskell’s fingers.

  “Is this on the level, Frank?” Haskell nodded. I got to my feet.

  “Now you know how I feel about that rat!” I said savagely. “What are we going to do? Personally I’d like to beat hell out of him. Maybe worse!”

  Vince was walking slowly up and down the room. Haskell was standing over by the desk, his hands in his pockets, his face lined with thought. Suddenly he laughed. A short, mock laugh.

  “You’ll Die Laughing! Too bad we can’t make his wish come true!”

  I fished a cigarette out of my pocket and lit up. As the match flamed I could see Vince. He had stopped in front of the lounge chair and was staring off in the distance. He had put his glasses back on.

  “You’ll Die Laughing. You’ll Die Laughing!” He kept repeating the words and looking down at his unfinished story. I had a funny feeling running up and down my back. I had never seen Parker like this before. It was as if the boyish pleasures of life that were so much a part of him had suddenly run out like acid eating through a cardboard flask.

  “Snap out of it, Vince!” I said sharply.

  He looked at me. I didn’t know him. There was a light in his eyes I had never seen before. It made me shudder.

  “If you fellows don’t mind, I’d like to be alone for a while,” he said simply.

  I looked over at Frank. He shrugged his shoulders, and wasn’t smiling.

  “Art’s putting the squeeze on Sayler, Vince,” I said. “That’ll help.”

  He didn’t hear me. He just kept looking down at his story. I could see his fingers tremble. I knew how he felt.

  “How about having dinner with Betty and me tonight?” I asked him. He didn’t answer. I looked at Haskell. He was motioning toward the door. I picked up my script and turned once more.

  “We’ll be at Helsing’s around nine,” I told him.

  “Come on, Larry, let him alone,” Frank called from the hall.

  I left.

  Betty was her old self again in the evening. She was laughing and seemed to have forgotten about what had happened.

  We had dinner at a little place on Madison, where the food is good, the service swell, and the prices low. Vince didn’t show up, but I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t tell Betty about him. It would only have spoiled our night.

  We walked around for a while, down State to Jackson, over to Wabash, and down again to Randolph. We picked out about ten different sets of furniture along the way. I almost forgot about Sayler.

  Helsing’s was crowded, as usual. But there were still a few tables left, off to the right of the bar. We got a booth behind the tables where we could watch the floorshow, which goes on continuously, and sat sipping old-fashioneds. I was content to sit there and watch her.

  “You’re very quiet, Larry.” She was smiling over the top of her old-fashioned.

  “The scenery’s too nice for comment,” I answered. She laughed.

  The Mimic trio came on, three fellows who, by use of a hidden phonograph and loudspeaker, imitated the Andrews Sisters and the Ink Spots. They were good. I didn’t see Vince Parker until he bumped against our booth. I could see he had a couple of drinks under his belt. Behind him Frank Haskell winked at me.

  “Hello, Vince,” I said lightly. “Have a seat and join the party. You too, Frank.”

  “Hi folks! Hi, Bettsie girl! Let’s have fun!” Betty smiled, but I could see the question in her eyes as she glanced over at me.

  “Hello, Vince.” She looked up at him and nodded to Frank. “Out celebrating?”

  “That’s right. Out celebrating!”

  I pulled him down on the seat beside me. Frank slipped over beside Betty. Jake caught my signal over behind the bar, and a couple more drinks were on the way.

  “What’s the big occasion, Vince? Did you write a best seller?” Betty asked before I could veer the conversation off.

  “Ha ha! Yep, I’m a writer’s writer—I write for a writer!”

  I looked over at Frank. He shrugged his shoulders. Jake came up with the drinks.

  “Get us another round, Jake old boy!” Vince popped out and took a big swallow. “Easy on the bitters and heavy on the rye!”

  “Maybe you ought to take it easy,” I told him. He looked at me with a laugh.

  “What’s the matter, Larry? You should be on a bender a hell of a lot more than me! He got you too, didn’t he?”

  I could see the frown on Betty’s face as she listened. I could have kicked Parker in the pants.

  “Why don’t you forget about it, Vince,” Frank cut in.

  “Forget?” Vince shook his head solemnly. “I don’t forget, and he’ll be sorry, you wait!”

  “Would somebody mind telling me what is going on here?” Betty asked, glancing rapidly at the three of us.

  I let out a sigh. “Sayler pulled the same trick on Vince that he did to me.”

  “You mean he took one of Vince’s plots . . .” Vince clinked his glass roughly on the table.

  “That’s right. But he ain’t going to get away with it! I’ll fix him!”

  “Oh!” Betty said sharply.

  I looked at her. But she wasn’t looking at any of us. She was starting off toward the bar, and her eyes were wide. I looked.

  Hank Sayler was standing there with George Weldon. They must have just come in. And they saw us.

  “Speak of the devil!” Frank Haskell muttered.

  Sayler had been drinking. He was leaning against the bar, a stool shoved aside, with his fingers hooked into his belt. He was a big man with sharp, good-looking features and a mop of well-groomed blond hair. The lighting wasn’t very bright, but I could see that his eyes were bleary, even at that distance. Beside him Weldon was talking earnestly, but Sayler waved him away. He started for our booth.

  I looked over at Betty. The color had drained from her face and she was very pale. “Ignore him!” she burst out.

  “Huh?” Vince suddenly followed our gaze and saw Sayler walking up. Sayler wasn’t drunk enough to wobble, but he lurched as he came through the tables.

  “Well, well! Having a little party, folks?” I looked away. But Frank stared up at him. “Beat it, Hank. You’re not wanted.”

  “What’s that?” Sayler was leaning over us now, hanging on with one hand to the side rail beside Vince Parker. Vince was sitting very quiet. But his lips were thin white lines.

  “You dirty swine!” The words hissed from between his tightly compressed lips. “Whose money are you drinking on tonight?”

  I gripped Vince’s arm tightly. Sayler continued to grin.

  “What the hell have you got to kick about, do you have a monopoly on ideas?”

  Vince was struggling to pull away from me. I stared at Sayler and tried to keep my emotions back. “Get out of here, Sayler!”

  He ran a hand through his blond hair and laughed. “So our Don Juan is sore at me too!” I saw him flick his gaze over to Betty. She was looking down at the table and her fingers were white around the glass she was holding.

  “You’re going to be nice to me, aren’t you, Betty?” he said
mockingly. “After all, we have a little secret, don’t we?”

  That did it. I let go of Vince’s arm and smashed my fist into Sayler’s mouth.

  He staggered back and bumped into a table. People started to look around. Then he was coming back at our booth, the grin gone, a snarl of hate in its place.

  Somehow I managed to get around Vince. He was trying to get up but I shoved him back. Sayler hit me before I could get clear of the booth, and I landed up with a sharp pain in my back against the connecting partition.

  Anger, hot searing anger. Hate, deep burning hate. They rushed through me like a tidal wave. All I knew was that I wanted to hurt Sayler. Smash him. Kill him.

  I felt his heavy fists thudding into me as I staggered back from the booth. Then I had my balance again. I drove a hard one right into his mouth. Another and another. He fell back. I lowered my head and smashed into him, bowling him over into a crowded table. Women started screaming.

  Then I was on top of him and pounding my fists into his face. He tried to throw me off but I clung like a leech, tearing, smashing, beating him into a pulp. He was limp beneath me but I kept on. Somebody grabbed me from behind.

  “For God’s sake, Larry, he’s had enough!” Frank Haskell dragged me back. I was weak and trembling. My coat was torn across the front and I could feel a warm wetness around my mouth.

  “Let’s get out of here!” I said.

  The place was in an uproar. People were crowded up against the bar, caught behind the overturned tables. I could see Jake going for a phone. I grabbed Betty by the arm and hustled her to the door. I forgot about Vince and Frank, I pulled the door open and as we went through I could see George Weldon standing over by the bar, staring at me, his mouth open, with that funny dreamy look in his eyes.

  I hailed a taxi outside on State Street.

  CHAPTER III

  The Laughing Death

  I didn’t sleep very well that night. After I took Betty home and turned in myself, I expected every minute to hear the doorbell ring with a couple of cops waiting outside to pick me up for inciting a riot. If I ever have a will, I’ll remember Jake in it. As a bartender he’s certainly a good friend.

  The morning dragged slowly. I had a cup of coffee down at the corner drug store and then pulled out the typewriter to do some work.

  Ideas wouldn’t come. I kept seeing Hank Sayler, limp and beaten on the floor, and while it was a nice soul-satisfying thought, it didn’t produce wordage. I had a half a pack of cigarettes smoked when I looked at the clock amid the litter of my desk. It was a quarter past nine.

  I reached for the phone and called the City News Bureau. Betty wasn’t in yet. Then I remembered.

  I sat back and got sick inside. She had said yesterday that she was going to see Sayler this morning about those letters. And I had beat hell out of him only the night before.

  I kicked a couple of chairs around finding my hat and slammed out the door. The open transom rattled under the impact and I looked back expecting a shower of glass on my head. Then I was out on the street, hurrying for a bus.

  Hank Sayler lived in a three flat building on Belmont just east of Broadway. I got off the Sheridan Road bus and footed it over to his address.

  He lived on the first floor at the end of the hall. The hall was empty. I was thinking of all the things I’d do to Sayler if he had gotten tough with Betty. I could see his door was ajar. I went in without knocking.

  Betty wasn’t there. Sayler was.

  He was lying on the floor beside his desk. He had a black eye and swollen lips. His eyes were open, staring, laughing. His whole face, puffed and swollen, had a foolish grin on it.

  He also had a hole in the side of his head.

  I got sick. He was dead. Dead. Blood still seeped into the rug beneath him. And then I started to tremble.

  Betty! Where was she? Had she been here?

  Had she killed—

  I looked around the room. Sayler had one arm outstretched. His hand was touching the edge of the desk. On the desk his typewriter was uncovered and a sheet of bond was rolled halfway up the platen. It was the first page of a story he had just started. Dimly my mind caught the title: Vanguards of Eros. Then I hear a gasp behind me.

  “Good God!”

  I whirled. George Weldon stood in the doorway, his mouth hanging slack, his eyes wide, horrified.

  “Is—is he dead?”

  All I could do was nod. He walked slowly into the room, his tall gangly figure slouched over as he peered horrified down at Sayler’s body. Then his eyes rose and met mine. The way he looked at me brought a shudder scurrying up and down my spine. I could see it in his eyes. It was just as if he were saying: You killed him!

  “Don’t get any funny ideas, Weldon!” I snapped. “I just got here too. He was like this when I walked in a few minutes ago.”

  I could see that he didn’t believe me. And I couldn’t very well blame him. My mind raced back to the previous night. Weldon had been at the bar when I fought with Sayler. Others had seen the fight too. It would look as if I had done it. As if I had shot—Shot!

  “Where’s the gun?” I heard Weldon say suddenly. It was as if he had read my thoughts.

  “Look!” He pointed to the floor beside the desk. I walked around the body. Next to the desk lay a foot-long metal cylinder.

  “What’s that?” Weldon said shakily.

  I could feel my jaws tighten. I knew what it was.

  “It’s a gas cylinder,” I said.

  “Gas?” Weldon looked at me puzzledly. “But he’s been shot!”

  I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to do anything but get the hell out. My mind was all mixed up. First all I could think about was Betty—she had said she was coming over here. Where was she? Had she been here? And now the gas cylinder.

  “You crazy fool!” I snapped. “Don’t you know better than to pick that up—it may have fingerprints on it.”

  Weldon didn’t seem to hear me. He was turning the cylinder over in his hands. There were some figures stamped on the side. “N2O,” he said. N2O. Nitrous Oxide. Laughing Gas. The words pounded through my mind. Laughing gas. I looked down at Sayler’s corpse. I saw the foolish grin on his features, his bruised and swollen features. Laughing gas. Laughing—

  The thought struck me like a spray of cold water. “Good Lord!” I muttered. For I was thinking of some other words—You’ll Die Laughing!

  “Whoever killed him left this behind! It wasn’t you, Colter, was it?”

  I heard Weldon talking and looked up at him. My eyes had been riveted to the grinning features of the dead man.

  “No,” I said slowly. “I didn’t kill him. But—”

  “But we both know who did—don’t we!”

  The horror had left Weldon’s eyes now. He was excited and his hands shook as he hefted the gas cylinder.

  “Whom do we know that would have something like this—a chemical ready to use?”

  I knew. I knew that he knew. It was so obvious. I started walking for the desk even as Weldon said in a low voice: “Vince Parker has a chem lab. Vince Parker would have gases and things . . .”

  Vince Parker. Yes, Vince had a lab. But there was something else, a manuscript. Frank Haskell had said Sayler was getting it ready to bring in to Stebber today. Where was this manuscript?

  I searched the top of Sayler’s desk. There wasn’t any story. Either Sayler had put it away, or someone else had taken it.

  “What are you looking for?” I heard Weldon ask. “Is it this?”

  He was pointing to a small blue ribbon lying beside the typewriter. A small blue ribbon on a man’s desk.

  “That’s a funny thing for Sayler to have lying around,” Weldon said.

  He didn’t know how funny it was. A small blue ribbon—the kind that could fit around a packet of letters.

  Sudden fury ran through me. I felt a hate for Sayler that I never had felt possible before. This man had never been any good. Now, even after death he was making it possible
to ruin the lives of people he had never stopped at hurting.

  “The rat—death was too good for him!” I muttered aloud.

  Weldon suddenly began to shake. “What are we going to do? What if somebody should walk in and find us like this—it would look pretty bad!”

  It would look worse than bad. But where was the gun? My eyes searched over the room. There wasn’t any.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Weldon was scared now. “I only came over to talk about a story idea—I don’t want any part of murder!”

  I looked at him, and almost felt like smiling. “Your fingerprints are all over that gas cylinder, Weldon. You’re a part of it whether you want to be or not.”

  He looked down at the nitrous oxide tube that he was still holding. He nearly dropped it. His eyes were wide as he glanced up at me.

  “Look, Mr. Colter—I know Sayler was a louse. I heard about what he was doing to you fellows. He deserved to die—whoever did it—but I don’t want to get in this—maybe it would even help if I took this cylinder and hid it—then Parker wouldn’t have to worry, and—”

  He was babbling like a school boy caught stealing green apples from a farmer’s tree and trying to talk himself out of a tanning. But it suddenly dawned on me that maybe it would be a good idea.

  “Listen, Weldon,” I said coldly. “Both you and I could get in a pretty bad spot if anybody found us here like this. The police are very touchy about people touching evidence. If you can keep your trap shut, and want to help Parker out at the same time, go ahead and ditch the gas drum. But remember one thing—we were never here!”

  I had the blue ribbon in my pocket when we walked out the door.

  “Hello, Vince,” I said, and walked into his basement flat. I walked in, shut the door and stood there staring.

  Betty was sitting on the couch. Both of them had smiles on their faces.

  “This is a fine time for humor!” I said angrily. I was thinking how it seemed as if everybody had been staring at me all the way over from Sayler’s. I had been careful about leaving. Weldon had gone out first. There were few people on the street and nobody, luckily, had entered the building. But once out the door I could feel eyes on me. All the way I had been thinking about Parker and Betty. Wondering, hoping it wasn’t true—and here they both were, happy about the whole thing.