Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  The butler came to the door, holding a pair of low-heeled walking shoes. They had been badly burned.

  “They were in the furnace,” he said. “Only there was no fire. Just one somebody tried to build.”

  Johnny West moved across the room and grabbed the shoes.

  “I’m going to find that cobbler,” he said. “Get him out of bed if I have to.” He turned and faced the people in the room. “When I come back I’m going to arrest a killer!”

  He asked Grant the name of the cobbler, then he turned to Dorothy and said: “I don’t suppose you’d like to come with me? In this rain?”

  It wasn’t necessary for her to answer. Relief shone in her eyes as she rose from the divan. The eyes of everyone were on her as she walked out of the room. She ran upstairs for her coat, then came down and found Johnny West waiting for her at the front door.

  “Ready?”

  “Yes,” she said, and the door opened, and she moved out into the rain and the wind.

  JOHNNY opened the door of his car and she climbed in. The car was a police coupe. His gloved hand moved from the wheel and he turned a switch. Police reports growled in through a loud-speaker. He reached the end of the driveway and turned into a dark road. The wheels spun as the car picked up speed.

  “Scared?” he said.

  “Some.”

  “It’ll be all over pretty soon. You’d hate anything like this again, wouldn’t you? Suspense. No guarantee how things are going to turn out. Maybe losing sometimes.”

  “Losing?”

  “Death,” he said. Then: “There’s trouble in Portchester. They told me tonight at the station.”

  “What is it?”

  “Murder. You see? It never ends. I may have to go.”

  She looked up, startled.

  He kept both hands on the wheel, and his eyes were on the road straight ahead. But his face had hardened in a set smile.

  “They keep me jumping,” he said. They swung left suddenly on Mamaroneck Avenue. Banks stood on the corners, like book ends for the shops and stores that marched up a little incline to the Playhouse Theatre, then sagged downhill another three blocks to the railroad station. This one street, from the banks to the station, was the entire business section.

  Johnny parked in front of a low frame building.

  “Do you want to wait or . . . no, I guess you’d better not.”

  She got out and they crossed the wet sidewalk to a cobbler shop. It was closed up tight, but there was a one-family apartment above it, and light trickled from behind the drawn curtains. Johnny West rang. He looked down at Dorothy.

  “Think you’ll like it?”

  “I think so,” she said. “It—it’s different.”

  “We wouldn’t live in this district,” he said. “We’d live out—probably in Harbor Heights.”

  Her hands were in the pockets of her slicker and she was shivering.

  “I like Spanish stucco,” she said.

  He rang again. “There’s one on Knickerbocker. An elegant place—used to belong to. . . But I guess it’d be too steep.” He kept his thumb on the bell.

  There was sound presently, then the lights went on in the shoe repair shop. An old man came to the door and pulled back the shade, cupping his hands on either side of his eyes to peer out.

  Johnny took a flashlight out of his pocket and turned it up into his own face.

  The old man nodded and smiled, and opened the door.

  “Come in, West,” he said. “Come in.”

  VIII

  JOHNNY ushered Dorothy ahead of him and entered. They pushed the door shut against the rain. The stoop-shouldered cobbler was dry-washing his hands.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “You had a pair of shoes belonging to Mrs. Rhea Davis? They came in last Thursday.”

  “Yes, I had those,” said the cobbler. “Walking shoes. Heel off one. I fixed it, put new laces in both of them, and shined them.”

  “Do you remember who came and got them?”

  The old man scratched his head. “Let me see—I should know that. Yes, I remember now. She sent a boy over after them. A kid about twelve or thirteen.

  Johnny looked disappointed. “What day was that?”

  “Saturday afternoon. About four.”

  Johnny West nodded. “Remember anything about the kid?”

  “Well, I’ve seen him before somewhere. I know that. He must be the youngster of one of my customers. But you know. You don’t pay much attention to kids. They’re in and out all day. Off-hand, I’d say he had kinda black hair, and freckles around his nose. Right nice-looking kid.”

  Johnny pushed back his felt hat, leaned against the door and folded his arms. For a moment he said nothing, then:

  “Would you know him if you saw him again?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know your customers by name?”

  “All of them that’s been in more than twice or three times I do.”

  “Could you recognize the names from the Mamaroneck telephone pamphlet?”

  “Most of them.”

  Johnny pushed himself away from the door. “All right. Go up and be getting your hat and coat on. I’ll send a couple of men over here and you’ll go around with them to every name and address you can recognize out of the telephone book. Find out if they have any kids. If they have, get them out of bed and look them over. When you find the right one call me at Rhea Davis’ house.”

  “But,” the old man whined, “I can’t go out on a night like this.”

  Johnny’s teeth were set. “You’ve got to. It’s perhaps the difference between arresting a killer tonight and not arresting one, because whoever hired that kid to get the shoes Saturday, is the murderer of Mrs. Davis.”

  Johnny West opened the door. “Come on, Dorothy.”

  They were presently on the Boston Post Road, retracing their route.

  Dorothy felt the new tenseness in the atmosphere the moment she walked into the house. Johnny shrugged off his slicker and hung it up, then went into the study to telephone the station about men to take the cobbler around, so that she was left alone. The walled-in quiet oppressed her. She saw Clifton sprawled back, halfway over the divan, smoking a cigarette, and looking more pale than she had ever seen him look.

  “Hello,” he grunted huskily. “How’s the country air? How’s the pigs and the chickens? You didn’t run up to Harrison and get married, did you? We were thinking of throwing a party for you, if you did.” He waved out his hand and flicked cigarette ashes on the floor. She knew he was bitter with hysteria.

  “It’ll all be over pretty soon,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Too bad it isn’t Christmas. They could strip me and cut my throat and hang me on a Christmas tree. I bet I’d look pretty. I’d hang out my tongue and leave my eyes open. That’d be a sight, wouldn’t it?”

  “Not unless they put a play in one of your hands and a torch in the other,” Mike Wiggam said, coming into the room.

  Wiggam sat down and Dorothy left. She went upstairs, taking off her coat and hat and hanging them up, and then she went to the mirror to inspect her makeup, but she was too nervous and wrought up to care.

  A man cried out agonizingly. It was from somewhere below.

  She rushed to the broken banister and looked down. She was in time to see Grant sinking to the floor. Blood was gushing down the back of his head. His arms were flayed out as he hit, and lay still. She had seen no other person there in the foyer.

  She pressed the palms of her hands to her temples and screamed . . .

  GRANT was not dead. There was a chance for him. He was bleeding too freely for them to move him out of the house. They had put him on the divan. A doctor was there. He was there, on one knee, wrapping white bandages around Grant’s head, and Johnny West was standing over him asking:

  “Is he—is he okay?”

  “He may be all right,” said the doctor.

  Betty stood at the head of the divan looking down at G
rant, and Roy was at the door, fumbling with his chauffeur’s cap. Clifton was walking up and down as though, with his disarrayed and curly black hair, he were a madman. Sam Tulley was standing beside West, saying, “The poor boy—the poor boy,” and Mike Wiggam, the only calm one in the room, was slouched in a chair nursing a highball. Mrs. O’Malley was in the hall sobbing as though Grant were her son, though Dorothy knew Mrs. O’Malley cried only because she was afraid for herself. The butler was running back and forth on errands for the doctor.

  “Another hour of this,” Clifton roared, “and you can take us all away and lock us up in strait jackets! If you’re a cop, why don’t you do something besides standing around?”

  “It’s a funny blow,” the doctor said, “Almost as though—” He stopped.

  “Go on,” said West. “Almost as though what?”

  “Well, I’d rather not say at this time.”

  “You’ve got to!”

  The doctor looked at Johnny West coldly.

  “I don’t work for the police,” he said.

  West’s jaw tightened. “Will he live?”

  “I think so.”

  “You mean there’s a chance he won’t?”

  “There is. But the odds are with his living.”

  Johnny tossed his head backward. “All right. You can get out.”

  “Yeah,” said Mike Wiggam, “this is our own private hades. Misery don’t like company.”

  The doctor snapped shut his bag and hurried out of the room. A policeman came in and stood quietly at the door. Dorothy saw a plainclothes man moving back and forth in the hall. Johnny was tightening the vise. He kept looking down at Grant, and then he went out of the room. He came back at once, departed again.

  “He’s playing games,” said Wiggam.

  “Yeah,” snorted Clifton. “Imagine. The sap spends his life playing games like these.”

  “He’s only doing his duty,” said Tulley tritely. “Every officer is pledged—”

  Clifton whirled on him. “Shuddup, will you? I’m sick of listening to you and your patter. I’ve wanted to tell you, and tonight’s as good a time as any. I think you’re a bloated, yapping toad.”

  Tulley shrank away from the unexpected attack.

  “Leave him alone!” said Dorothy.

  Clifton turned toward her. “Who’s talking? The gingham girl? Little Miss Muffett?”

  “Keep still, Clifton,” said Dorothy, “or I’ll slap your face. I’ll slap it until you’re black and blue.”

  He laughed bitterly.

  Roy moved into the room now. “Betty,” he said.

  Betty Smyth had been stooping over Grant and now she looked up. Both Clifton and Tulley watched her. She rose until she was erect and she stood very stiffly. Grant was inert on the divan at her side. Roy sensed the change in her and stopped, halfway into the room. There was silence. Roy put on his cap, shoving it back on his head. His lips were thin.

  “Coming with me? I think we can both pack now. We’ll be able to go soon.” That wasn’t what he had intended to say to her. Obviously he was making up words as he went along.

  Betty said: “I’m not going.”

  DOROTHY saw the flush creep into his cheeks.

  Betty moved forward. “I’m not going, do you hear? Nothing you can say will make me.”

  “You are,” said Roy. “You’re just—”

  “I’m not going,” Betty repeated, then: “Did you do that to Grant? Did you hit him?”

  “You know I didn’t!”

  She kept staring at Roy. “I hate you,” she said. “You’ve made a fool of me. You’ve made me seem ridiculous. You’ve blinded me to the man I loved. You’ve lied to me. You forced your attentions on me in the beginning. You made me listen to you. You worked on my sympathy. It was a campaign. I was crazy not to see it. Crazy, Roy! It took this to make me see it.”

  “You’re going,” he said. “You’re going with me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You didn’t have to listen,” he went on. “With a word you could have put me in my place as a chauffeur. But you wanted to listen. You were bored. You were looking for romance. You wanted to flirt. You wanted to play with emotion. But you didn’t want to get burned. That’s why you’re backing down now. At the last minute you want to run the other way. But you can’t.”

  She kept looking at him. “This is the end,” she said.

  “Oh, no. This is the beginning. If you think you can go this far and—”

  “Then it’s a settlement you want? It’s cash you really want? That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Roy’s fist was doubled, and he lunged out suddenly and hit Betty squarely across the face. She reeled backward, fell into a chair and crashed to the floor in a sitting-down position. Blood trickled from both her nose and mouth. Dorothy was biting her fist. The men in the room were stunned. Roy looked down at Dorothy, his hands unclenching. Clifton came to life then. He picked up a chair and threw it at Roy.

  Roy saw the chair and fended it off with his arms, grabbing it and smashing it to the floor. In crazy rage, Clifton rushed for him. He drove Roy back to the wall, held him with one hand, and hit him with the other. He kept hitting him. Roy didn’t try to fight back. When Clifton stepped backward Roy’s face was a pulp.

  Johnny West appeared in the doorway just then.

  Clifton paid no attention to him. Dorothy was helping Betty into a chair and he turned toward her.

  “If this is a pay-off,” he said, “let’s make it a good one. Let’s have a second-act curtain that’ll send them into the aisles screaming. Let’s quit being ashamed of the things we feel. I’m talking to you, Dorothy. I love you. In front of all these people and that cheap, second-rate, small-town detective I love you and I’ll be damned before I see you dropped off in a town like this, like a milk can off the four o’clock freight!” She stared at him.

  “I played games with Sherry. Okay. So what? You were busy acting. But you were always there. You were always with me. Night after night on that rat-eaten stage on Seventeenth Street. We rehearsed together. We planned together. We schemed together. We didn’t call it love. We didn’t call it anything. It took this, damn near losing you, to make me see that I couldn’t give you up! You fit into ‘Saturday’ because I wrote it for you. You fit into everything else I do. You’re part of Clifton Dell and you can’t stop being part of Clifton Dell. Not now or any time. This half-wit woman. This gigolo chauffeur. They had to show me what I’m been feeling.”

  “Are you through, Clifton?”

  He stared at her. He dropped his hands. “Yes, I’m through,” he said.

  JOHNNY WEST was still at the door.

  He was shaking. Grant stirred on the divan. Betty leaped from her chair and went to him. She knelt by his side.

  Johnny said. “Primarily I’m concerned with murder. Not emotion. I’ve never seen a wackier bunch of people in all my life. You brawl. You rave. I’ve never been in a legitimate theater and I’ll never go into one now. Dorothy’s staying here with me. But it’s murder now. I don’t want any more of this—this—.” He drew breath into his lungs. “Grant was slugged—if he was slugged—for a reason.”

  Wiggam still sat in his chair cupping the highball.

  “Why do you say ‘if,’ Mr. Tracy—ah—I mean, Mr. West?”

  Johnny put a cigarette between his lips. He didn’t answer.

  Dorothy glanced at Grant. Something had suddenly struck home. If Grant had been slugged—and she doubted that he had inflicted the blow on himself to point suspicion elsewhere—he had been knocked out, or murder had been attempted, to keep quiet something vital he knew that would point out the killer. This suddenly meant something to her. But she could not for the life of her remember what it was.

  She went over everything in her mind, slowly, methodically. First, the first time she had seen Johnny, the very first questioning. Grant had been missing. Betty had said Grant was upstairs “with a man seeing about some of Mother’s effects.” Next, the time th
ey had gathered at Mrs. Davis’ bedside, the loose talk, something Grant had said.

  Was it Wiggam who had said, “Summer is for beer” ? Beer. That statement. It was tying something together. Her lips moved half in a whisper although she was scarcely conscious of it. “Summer is made for beer.”

  She repeated it to herself. Everyone else in the room was occupied.

  Johnny West was saying: “Someone has just come in. In the other room. This is the pay-off.” Mike Wiggam was sipping at the highball. Clifton was standing with his back turned. Mrs. O’Malley was still in the hall. Roy was still against the wall, bloody, limp. Betty was kneeling beside Grant. Sam Tulley was in one corner in a large easy chair. “Summer,” Dorothy thought, “is made for beer . . .” Grant slugged . . . Summer is made for—

  She was aware suddenly of two eyes directed on her. Two livid, narrowed eyes. They drew her attention. They were magnets. Her lips stopped moving. She realized somebody had heard her whisper. She was paralyzed with fear.

  She looked into those eyes. She saw the face that lifted out from them. The pale skin. The flabby cheeks. The thick lips. Sam Tulley. Sam Tulley sitting there, staring at her; and now she saw the gun he held just under his coat. She saw the black muzzle of it pointing directly at her.

  Beer. “Grant and I stood at the corner bar Monday drinking it until we’d bust, didn’t we, old man?”

  Monday . . . Monday . . . Monday. The words pounded with a crushing effect at her brain.

  No one saw. No one noticed. No one cared. Dorothy could not move. Her hands were like ice. Those eyes kept watching her. No one wanted to pay any attention to Sam Tulley. He was dull. He was flat. He was yesterday’s joke. He was 1925 slang. He was death.

  She just sat there. Betty was nursing Grant. Roy was standing. Clifton was . . . But Johnny West was talking. He talked slowly. His voice droned. There was a cigarette in his mouth. His eyes were dark. His hair was wavy. His face was white. He was talking—talking. He was saying:

  “So this is the wind-up, the finis, and as I said at the start, I’m sorry for any discomfort I’ve had to cause any of you. It’s just that a cop has a job to do.”