Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  I didn’t know exactly what I had expected to find. I’d been looking for something—anything—that might tie up Briggs, or Elkins, or Roberts, or Mrs. Franner with a motive that would make sense in the killing of the old millionaire. I didn’t find anything. I didn’t even uncover any scent of a nameless guy who might have it in for Dilweg enough to stick a scissors in his heart.

  The only thing that intrigued me was the fact that everybody in the case seemed to be tied up in some way with East St. Louis. Carson Roberts had his Handicap Haven there, Dilweg had got his start there, Mrs. Franner lived there, and Joe Briggs ran a landscape engineering outfit there. Maybe it might pay off to check the East St. Louis angle.

  By the time I got back to the office, the Journal extras were on the street and Marge’s eyes were bugged out as she read the big black headlines:

  MILLIONAIRE MURDERED!

  She was wriggling that top-flight torso of hers in ecstasy and I wished I had been a better salesman for the idea of eggs and toast with her across a breakfast table.

  “Mr. Starch!” she warbled at me. “Isn’t it thrilling?”

  “Your grandmother’s antimacassar,” I said. “Slip your gears into high and get me the police commissioner of East St. Louis, pronto. Mr. John Webster, otherwise known as Jawn.”

  In five minutes I was talking long distance to a guy that knew more crooks than you could shake a stick at. And the tough ones tried their best to steer clear of his bailiwick. I knew a trigger that beat up his gal because she drove him through the burg once when he was drunk and not able to sit behind the wheel.

  “Jawn,” I told the commissioner over the phone, “do me a favor and keep your eyes peeled for the three-fifty I.C. There might be a jackpot on it. Forty years old, looks thirty-five; shape like Sheridan, gams like Grable, and a yen for men. The old matrimonial racket. Six Gs and a millionaire murder. Elsberry Dilweg. The name the dame used here was Mrs. Lilli Franner.” I gave him a full description I’d got from John Elkins, then I said, “I’ll be seeing you in a few hours, Jawn, and buy you a short beer.”

  I talked Marge into loaning me her jaloppy. I pointed the radiator south on 66 and kept her perking until I pulled up in front of the city hall down in East St. Louis. Jawn Webster was glad to see me, but he sloshed cold water all over my hopes of finding Lilli Franner so I could collect two Cs from Elkins.

  “My boys,” he told me, “have covered every train and every bus into this burg. We’ve worked the hotels and the motor courts. We had men on bridges into Saint Looey, just in case she by-passed us. No soap. Where’d you get the brainstorm that she’d hightail it down here?”

  “The butler she flimflammed says she came from here in answer to an ad in a matrimonial magazine. And she left a note for her amour saying she’d gone to Duluth. So, with six Gs in her poke, I figured she might go in the opposite direction.”

  A guy came in the office, chewing on a toothpick.

  “Boss,” he said to Webster, “the boys tell me that Lilli Mason is back in town. Just got back in a car, with a guy. You don’t suppose Lilli could have taken a flyer in high finance? One name or another wouldn’t make any difference to Lilli.”

  Webster grinned. “Lilli is put together pretty good. Could be. With a chassis like hers, she could even make Starch thaw out. We might make a call on her.”

  “You intrigue me, Jawn,” I said. “You’re the second guy that’s described her wheelbase as out of this world. Maybe I better take a gander.”

  Jawn didn’t like the idea. “Better let my boys bring her in. She runs a call joint and I think there’s a few crap tables in some of the back rooms. There might be some blackjacks around.”

  “Tell me where, Jawn. I know this burg pretty well. No use of you flushing out quail if we haven’t located the right bush.”

  He told me, and I got in Marge’s jaloppy and rode about eight blocks.

  Lilli Mason’s place was a two-story frame, clean and tidy and freshly painted. It had a little patch of lawn in front, where a stone Negro was aiming a stone hose in the direction of the front gate. The little porch was nearly hidden with climbing green vines.

  The door opened to my push on the bell and a tall gal with chalk-white skin smiled at me.

  “Come in,” she said, and she made a casual effort to pull her skin-tight wrapper together.

  I walked in and took a gander around. It was clean and nice but the air smelled like maybe the windows hadn’t been open for twenty years.

  I grinned. “Sister,” I said, “you can go right on with your other work. I want to see Lilli Mason.”

  “You’re a cop,” she said, like she’d say “You’re a worm.” Her eyes got wide and her smile went down the drain.

  “You catch on quick. Where’s Lilli?”

  “Upstairs. Second door on the right side of the hall.”

  The gal left me like I was a leper and went into a big room that was evidently a reception room for customers and left me to walk up the carpeted stairs. I heard a buzzer pop off above me, and I wondered if my wrapper-clad friend had warned Lilli that trouble was on the way up.

  I walked down the hall to the second door on the right. It was in a little jog and just beyond the door was a sharp angle in the hall. It was pretty dark and awful quiet. I looked around for any rubber-heeled guys with blackjacks, then I rapped my knuckles on the door panel.

  A voice—a real nice voice said, “Who is it, please?”

  I listened to a little devil in me and said, “Open up, baby, and feast your hungry eyes on Little Lord Fauntleroy.”

  The door opened and I caught my breath. A guy just don’t expect to see stuff like that just by opening a door.

  I took hold of the door jamb. Lilli Mason was quite a package. She was tall and willowy and her skin was white and firm. Maybe what she had was forty years old but she’d taken pretty good care of it. She had dark hair and dark eyes.

  That wasn’t all she had. It was the way she was put together. All she had on was a bra and a pair of panties, only partly concealed by a robe that was as effective as barbed wire. It protected the property but it didn’t obstruct the view.

  She smiled at me and her teeth were something, too.

  “Put your eyes back in their sockets, mister, and come in. We’re all friendly here.”

  I said, “I’d rather you’d put on some more clothes and come with me, Lilli. Lilli Franner. We got a little talking to do about six Gs and a pair of paper shears and a dead millionaire.”

  She was scared. Her right hand went to her throat and her robe fell open. Maybe that’s what took my mind off my business. Maybe that’s why I didn’t hear anybody on the carpet behind me.

  Something slammed against the base of my skull. Red and green lights and paper shears and girls in loose robes danced a dizzy jig in my brain. I felt myself folding up at the knees. The floor came up and hit me, hard. A vision of September Morn shivering ankle deep in blood stamped my brain.

  Then I passed out, cold.

  CHAPTER IV

  HANDICAP HAVEN

  Before I saw Lilli Franner again, a couple of hours had passed. It was five minutes of eight and the lights in the ceiling hurt my eyes. I was sitting in a leather chair in Jawn Webster’s office in the city hall, rubbing my fingers over a bruise on the back of my skull, near my right ear.

  Webster told me I had been sleeping in that chair, after they dragged me in from my encounter with the sap in Lilli Mason’s boudoir. I was all right, he told me, according to the doctor.

  Fleming Morf had come down to East St. Louis in a squad car at eighty miles an hour when Webster had notified him that they had picked up Lilli Franner and her boy friend. And one of Webster’s plainclothesmen, a guy he called Dave, stood by the hall door now, his strong white teeth gnawing on a toothpick.

  There was a rap on the door and Dave opened it. Lilli Franner walked in, escorted by a uniformed cop. I knew that shape and that face, even if it was the first time I’d seen her with so many clo
thes on.

  She came in and Dave closed the door behind her, grinning.

  Lilli saw me. Her eyes laughed. Her lids had a kind of reptilian look to them. Lilli could be plenty tough, even when she was laughing.

  Tough enough to stick scissors in anybody.

  “You can put your eyes back in your sockets, mister,” she said to me.

  I knew what she meant. I got red in the face and I felt of that bruise on my dome.

  “Lilli,” Webster said, “you’re facing some tough raps. Not only theft, or working a con game, but murder. Changed your mind? Want to come clean?”

  “Copper,” Lilli said, “you’re missing the head pin. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re too polite, John,” Morf broke in. “Slap her teeth in!” Then he said to Lilli, “Listen! You lifted six grand off John Elkins. We expect to get it back. And we want a good alibi or we’ll put you in the clink for killing Elsberry Dilweg. First off, where’s Elkins’ six grand?”

  Lilli didn’t scare easy. “I told Webster and I’m telling you. I ain’t talkin’ till I get a lawyer. Put me in the clink and see if I care. I’ll get sprung so fast it’ll curl your hair.”

  Webster spread his hands wide in resignation.

  He looked at me. “Got any ideas, Bill?”

  I felt the bump on my head. “Let Morf take her back and put her in the hoosegow. Along with the guy that conked me. Whoever he is.”

  Webster grinned and explained to Morf, “Our impetuous friend here got himself conked on the noggin while he was enjoying an eyeful of Lilli. Lucky I’d put Dave on Starch’s tail. Dave nabbed Lilli and her boy friend before Starch had hit the floor.”

  Webster made a signal to the uniformed cop.

  “Bring in her boy friend. Maybe we can make him talk.”

  Dave went out, too, and Morf squirmed in his seat. He pounded his horny palm on the arm of his chair.

  “Give me ten minutes alone with him,” he growled, “and I’ll slug him into talking.”

  The door opened and Dave and the cop came back, with a guy between them. I sat straight up in my chair. The guy was about five-eight. He was chunky, but catlike and quick. His nose was like a button stitched in the middle of a brown face.

  I gawked at Webster and Dave. “Is this the dame’s boy friend? Is this the guy that slugged me?”

  “Right,” Webster said. “Ever see him before?”

  “See him before!” I yelped. “He’s the guy that Dilweg hired me to trace under the name of Charles Bryce, Junior. And all the while he was working for Dilweg under the name of Joe Briggs. Can you tie that?”

  Morf wouldn’t let me steal the show. He got up and stuck his mug up close to Briggs.

  “You’re on the spot, lover,” he said. “My boys nosed around back home and they found out that a guy in a four-door Chevvy picked up a dame with a classy chassis just about the time Dilweg was bumped off. And Elkins, the butler, said you was at the place in the morning. I figure you waited around for Elkins to leave the mansion so the coast was clear, then you killed Dilweg, and brought the dame down here.”

  Briggs’ face didn’t change. He was calm enough, for a guy faced with a murder rap.

  “Why would I want to kill the old man?” he said. “I was working for him.”

  “Elkins kind of intimated that Dilweg fired you.”

  “He hired me to landscape the oil company’s property here in East St. Louis. I left some of my crew at his place to finish the job on the weeping willow.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I admit I waited across the street from Dilweg’s for Lilli. I brought her down here in my car. But I didn’t know the kind of business she was in, and I didn’t know about her con game with Elkins. She told me Starch was a suitor who had been annoying her. That’s why I slugged him.”

  I broke in to Webster.

  “Did you give Lilli’s joint the once over?” I asked.

  I was getting anxious about Elkins’ six grand. If I got that back I stood to be two Cs to the good.

  “We couldn’t have done a better job with a vacuum cleaner,” Webster said. “But we didn’t find hide nor hair of Elkins’ dough.”

  Morf wasn’t done yet and he put the coal on the fire that made me hate him.

  “So there ain’t no reason why you’d kill Dilweg, eh?” he said to Briggs. “I ain’t the sap that Starch is, Briggs. He trailed you all over the State of Illinois and never tumbled to the truth. I did. I checked the papers for a lot of years back. Your old man was sent to the pen by Dilweg when he was the prosecutor down here. That’s why you changed your name from Charles Bryce, Junior, to Joe Briggs when you entered Aggie College. And that’s why you scissored Dilweg. To get even with him for sending your old man to the pen. Revenge, pure and simple.”

  Briggs didn’t scare easy. He was as calm as calm. “Why would I wait fifteen years to kill him and rob him. Revenge don’t stay hot that long.”

  Morf chortled. “That’s enough.” He said to Webster, “We’ll hold this cookie till a better suspect comes along. The newspapers held back on the robbery angle. The only way Briggs could know that Dilweg’s safe was cleaned out was because he cleaned it out himself. I’ll take him back and shove him in the clink. We’ll make an open and shut case.”

  “Is there anything more logical than to think that a millionaire’s murder might have money connected with it?” Briggs said.

  “Morf,” I said, “I don’t think Briggs stuck Dilweg.”

  Morf glared. “You’d miss clues on your upper lip, right under your nose. You didn’t even know Briggs’ old man was a convict, railroaded by Dilweg.”

  “Something else I do know, Big Shot. I know that Carson Roberts and I flushed a guy out of Dilweg’s closet right after we found his body. That guy wasn’t Briggs. Until we find that guy, we won’t come up with Dilweg’s killer.”

  “Phooey!” Morf snorted. “I’ll pin it on Briggs and the dame.”

  “Homicide’s your headache. I’m hunting for Elkins’ six grand. And I’ve got an idea I’m going to make a chump out of you. I’ll have a little talk with Carson Roberts over at the Handicap Haven and we’ll come up with a dozen reasons why Briggs couldn’t have killed Dilweg.”

  I walked over to Handicap Haven, Inc. It was only three blocks from the city hall. It was a big rambling building of unfaced brick, three stories high. Almost all of the windows in the joint were lighted, but the light seemed dim, like somebody was saving electricity. I don’t suppose a blind guy, though, can tell the difference between a forty watt bulb and a thousand watter.

  I pushed the buzzer and a guy with thick glasses opened the door a little way so I could see inside. It wasn’t too clean or too light. He looked funny when he saw me.

  “I thought I told you—” he said. Then he grinned and said, “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else. Somebody who has been asking for Mr. Roberts two or three times and I don’t think Mr. Roberts ought to see him. I think his life might be in danger.”

  I had butterflies inside me. “Danger? Why?”

  He opened the door wide. “Come in,” he said, “and I’ll take you to Mr. Roberts.”

  I couldn’t see his eyes behind those thick-lensed metal-rimmed glasses of his but I followed him down the hall to a door marked “Office.” There was a familiar look about him, but I couldn’t peg him exactly. The rims on his glasses made him look like—an owl. He was as nervous as a cat on a tin roof.

  “Who is the guy that’s been trying to see Roberts?” I asked.

  He said it simply, but it hit me right between the eyes. “John Elkins, Mr. Dilweg’s butler.”

  He seemed to enjoy my shock. Then he said, “Follow me.”

  “What gives?” I said. “This is the office right here, ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said, “but Mr. Roberts isn’t there right now.”

  I followed him down the hall about fifteen feet and he opened a door and held it for me. I walked into a dirty room with a table and a bed a
nd a dresser. It was empty. Roberts wasn’t there. I whirled around.

  “What is this?”

  Thick Glasses had shut the door behind him and flicked the key in the lock. His hands were in the pockets of his brown jacket. The metal ring was missing from the left side at his waist. I knew well enough I’d grabbed that ring off the guy we’d flushed out of Dilweg’s closet.

  I cussed myself for being such a sap. I grinned at him, but my stomach was brushing my backbone.

  “Go ahead and shoot, killer!” I said. “You can fry only once for killing Dilweg. Killing me won’t raise the ante.”

  He took his hands out of his pockets. He didn’t have a gun. I swallowed my heart and it started beating again.

  He smiled, but it was a nervous grimace. “I didn’t kill Dilweg, Mr. Starch. I proved it to Mr. Roberts and I can prove it to you.”

  “How’d you know my name?”

  “I saw your picture in the paper with Mr. Roberts and Mr. Morf, and Elkins.”

  I couldn’t get the proper pitch. “We found Dilweg’s body and a couple minutes later we flush you out of a closet and you ran like the devil,” I said. “Were you waiting for your portal to portal pay? Or did you hide there when we came into the house and interrupted your getaway?”

  “I’ll tell you the whole thing and you can use your own judgment,” Thick Glasses said. “I’m Blake Hobson. I was technician fifth class in the Army. I got burned around the eyes on Okinawa. I came back and found out that fifteen acres and a shack I owned had been bought by Dilweg for back taxes while I was in the Army.”

  “Wait a minute, bub. There was a moratorium on Service men’s debts.”

  “I know. And I had eighteen months to reclaim and pay up before Dilweg got a clear title. But Dilweg took over while I was gone, sunk an oil well and brought it in. When I came back from Service I took a job with Mr. Roberts here. Then I went to see Dilweg about my land.”

  “And grabbed the first thing that came to hand—a paper shears—and stuck him with it. Losing an oil well is a good motive for murder.”