The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “I’m talking about the news press,” said Monty. “If the critics like you, I’m going to keep you. You and Joe. At my expense.”

  “Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to leave Joe in jail? He’s an awful hearty eater.”

  “You and Joe are my big gamble. Your cowboy music is solid and I’ve got a bet that I’ll have you lined up for a concert at the Hall of Arts before the season’s over. You two can do it if you’ll work with me.”

  “You can call the tunes, Monty. Well sing ’em.”

  “That’s the talk. You put that over with your long-legged pal and we’ll get back in the groove.” Monty downed his drink and paid the bill.

  It was two o’clock by the time I got into the jail with Joe’s guitar. One cop was dozing over a crossword puzzle, and another farther down the corridor was snoring gently in a tilted-back chair. According to the cell numbers Joe was parked right around the next corner, I figured.

  My figuring was busted in on by a voice that made me jerk my hands up in the air.

  “Keep ’em up, Mister.”

  But the voice wasn’t meant for me. It came from around the corner. A nice little girl’s voice, and I thinks to myself, Oh-oh, so this is the kind of bandits they have in the city.

  I hadn’t even been seen, but I acted on a hunch and draped myself on the floor, rested my head back on the guitar, and closed my eyes as if I was just a part of the jail scenery. It made me feel safer about listening in on this bandit act.

  “Now, Mister,” the girl around the corner said, “fork over that turban.” Joe’s voice sounded in an uneasy mutter. “Darned glad to get rid of the thing. Feels like a prickly pear inside my coat doin’ an’ old-fashioned hoe- down. Are you sure you want it?”

  “Without any monkeyshines. This gun’s nervous.”

  “It oughta be plumb scairt with all these cops around. A good-lookin’ gal like you shouldn’t be totin’ a gun,” said Joe, in a slow, sugary drawl. I squinted one eye open, knowing this gal must be an awful good-looker or Joe would never talk in that tone. Joe never figgered himself to be much of a ladies’ man. He said, very sweet-like, “Before I give you this turban—what you gonna do with it?”

  “I’ve got to have it—to square myself. My boss thinks I made it wrong. But I didn’t know about those little creatures—”

  “Creatures? What kind of creatures?”

  “Haven’t you seen them?”

  “I don’t getcha,” said Joe. “You mean this turban is full of fleas? Is that why old lady Constanza—”

  “Not fleas. Something much bigger. As big as tadpoles—but you wouldn’t understand. Here, give it to me.”

  “You take the turban and the tadpoles,” said Joe, “and I’ll take the artillery.”

  I heard the girl gasp. “Why, you—”

  “Sssh! You better trot on home,” Joe warned. “There might be a sleepwalker among these cops.”

  The girl’s footsteps clattered angrily around my corner. She gave a little jump of surprise and hurried past me, and my eyes snapped open for a good look. No kidding, that gal was a good- looker, with the kind of face and figure that do well at bathing beauty contests, and with a lot of fluffy yellow hair that bounced against her shoulders as she walked.

  I rounded the corner and leaned the guitar against the bars.

  “Hi, Joe,” I said. “Hi and so long.”

  “Come back here,” Joe barked. “Haven’t time,” I said. “I’ve got a date with a gal bandit.”

  “I’ve seen her before,” said Joe.

  That made me stop and turn back for a minute, because I thought the very same thing.

  “Do you know where we saw her?”

  “Sure. She runs the elevator in the Hall of Arts. She’s the one that took you and Monty and me up to see about getting a studio to practice in.”

  Joe was right, and I must admit I was surprised at his good memory, because I had thought this big city had him so dazzled he didn’t know from which side to mount a street car. Now I saw that he was as clever at remembering faces as he was at stealing horses.

  “What do you think she wanted with that turban, Joe?”

  “I think her boss must have sent her here after it,” Joe said. He scratched his ribs. “I wonder if any of those tadpoles got into my clothes.”

  “Tadpoles don’t live in turbans,” I said. “You shouldn’t have let that thing go. We could have made a couple swell neckercheeves out of it. It’s ours by right.”

  “It was mine,” said Joe, “and I gave it to her. Come back here. Where you goin’ ?”

  “I figure I’ll find out what happens to that thing,” I said. “Stay right where you are, Joe. Play yourself a lullaby, and Monty will spring you tomorrow. So long.”

  CHAPTER II

  A Night of Moon Street

  My taxi closed in on the big blue limousine, and a stop-light put me right alongside. The couple in the back seat of the limousine didn’t notice me because the were busy unwinding the turban and inspecting it under the dome light.

  I could almost hear what they were saying; it was plain this pretty yellow-haired elevator girl was scared over what she’d been made to do. The fellow was a heavy-jowled old cuss with a partly bald head, surrounded by a bank of blue-black hair as thick as mud. He was built like an ox, with an oversize neck that melted into massive shoulders, and his starchy collar and dress suit didn’t keep him from looking like a second cousin to a gorilla. A sort of Japanesey gorilla, with high-powered executive manners.

  Was this her boss, I wondered. He was pretty hard-boiled about the turban incident, it seemed, and this led me to suspect he had some connection with the Taggart Costumers who had furnished the costumes for the concert.

  He passed the bright colored goods across the light and frowned at it.

  “I don’t see a thing,” he growled. “It looks all clear to me.”

  “Then she can’t blame us, can she, Mr. Taggart? It was just her imagination.”

  “They got away,” he said.

  The traffic light changed and his chauffeur called back, “Straight ahead, Mr. Taggart?”

  I slipped a bill to my taxi driver, and he got the idea. On the next six stoplights he moved up beside the blue limousine so close that I could have autographed Taggart’s bald head. I’d catch a few words of their conversation, then off we’d go—and the traffic through these business blocks was still thick enough at this hour of the night that they didn’t notice us.

  “That fellow Taggart must like these four blocks,” said my taxi driver. “This is the third time around.”

  The rectangle we kept driving around took in one block of the skyline buildings facing the park and ran in four blocks deep, through the heart of the business district. Certain landmarks were getting as familiar as the old corral gate back. home. Facing the park from Park Avenue and Moon Street was the Taggart Building, twenty-two stories of it, with more ornaments up the facade than a Japanese temple. At the street level and upward to the height of two or three stories, the front was lighted with parallel lines of colored neons that followed the curve of the pagoda-shaped entrances and windows. All this fancy Oriental architecture was more conspicuous than beautiful.

  You might have thought that a place of this sort would have earned a few brickbats in the Second World War. However, it was all quite new and may have been built in the five years since the war ended. Even so, it seemed to me a pretty nervy idea of Taggart to use so much Japanese architecture, and I spoke to my taxi driver about it.

  “Taggart has lots of money,” he said.

  “What’s his nationality? Is he an American?”

  “Naturalized—but who knows? . . . Yes, he’s lived here in the city for a long time. Got his start as an Oriental importer, I’ve heard. It’s hard to say how much he’s worth today.”

  With this sidelight I studied the face of this man Taggart with new interest each time a stoplight or a Slow sign brought my taxi abreast. There was something doggoned strange ab
out a man’s spending the night this way, driving round and round, quarreling or arguing with this pretty girl, who seemed obliged to sit there in the car with him and listen.

  Once, as we approached the colored neons of Moon and Park Avenue, he was trying to hug her. That was when I told my driver to stop and let me transfer—but I changed my mind just then, because something she said (which I couldn’t hear) made him behave himself. He sat back in his corner like a sullen child.

  Each time we passed the corner of Moon and Park he looked back at his building and kept looking all the way down the block. There were other buildings—why didn’t he look at them?

  There was, for example, the Hall of Arts.

  It was a long, low, greystone building, only twelve or fourteen stories high at the domed towers at either end and as wide as some of your modern state capital buildings.

  The Hall of Arts faced Park Avenue and offered one of the most impressive facades along the skyline drive. Here in the deep of the night it was rather gloomy looking, because there weren’t more than a dozen of its hundreds of windows lighted. But there were all- night floodlights on the big bronze statues of armored knights that guarded the arched entrances at each end.

  Again I called on my taxi driver for information.

  “As long as they were spreading this Hall of Arts over such a wide area, why didn’t they fill out the whole length of the block with it?”

  “It’s a long block,” said my driver. “Besides, this Taggart Building was already there on the corner. When it came to finding room for the Hall of Arts they couldn’t buy up more than three-fourths of the block. Ever hear of Mr. Bondpopper?”

  “Who might Mr. Bondpopper be?”

  “One of the richest ginks in the country, Fat and white-haired and always laughing. He gives his money away right and left. He’s one of the biggest contributors to these operas and art shows. They say he tried to buy out this corner of Taggart’s, but there was some sort of hitch.”

  “You can’t blame Taggart,” I said, “for hanging onto a corner like Moon and Park.”

  “That’s what I say,” said the driver. “There’s only so much space on Moon Street. There’s only so much on Park Street. Taggart’s properties run west on Moon from the corner, and he wants more.”

  “Does he own many buildings along these four west blocks?”

  “I couldn’t say how many,” said the driver. “If I knew real estate I wouldn’t be coaxin’ this taxi along. He owns scads of property, I’ve heard. But he’s like everyone else—they all want more. Mr. Bondpopper would like more space along the front, here—” he pointed south down the Park Avenue skyline. “And there’s Montzingo who would like to buy up more front footage up the street to the north. Of course, everything east of us belongs to the city. It’s park all the way to the waterfront.”

  “Montzingo?” I asked. “Is that the bachelor millionaire?”

  “Uh-huh—Walter. He was an All- American fullback. Now he’s big business all right, but he doesn’t take himself as serious as some of these other big shots. Too busy playing around.”

  “I know Monty,” I said. “He’s the fellow who brought my pal Joe and me to the city. Hey! Watch it there!”

  The driver did a skillful maneuver to nose out three other taxicabs and come in behind the blue limousine, which was coming to a stop along the curb. We stopped, as if waiting for the traffic to move on, and so we got in on Taggart’s pick-up. His voice was as hearty as any county-seat politician’s on election day.

  “Why, hello, hello, if it isn’t the commissioner himself!”

  The rotund, bespectacled commissioner and his two starchy gentlemen friends were evidently just winding up a session of night-clubbing. They stepped up to the blue limousine and there was a lot of handshaking and palaver, and you’d have thought Taggart was just taxiing this pretty female employee home after an unusually long day at the office.

  “Get in, gentlemen. I’ll give you a lift . . . Certainly, we’re going your way.”

  My taxi driver had made a pretense of trying to get past, and now we skimmed back into the line of traffic. The blue limousine loaded up and came alongside.

  Again we gave it the lead, and once more, believe it or not, we were off on the same old course around the rectangle.

  I was about to groan, “Take me home; they’re all drunk and they’ll go round in circles all night.”

  But something happened just then to. make me swallow my words and drown my thoughts.

  It was a flash of light at the corner of Moon and Park.

  “See that?” my driver barked. “What was that?”

  “An electric wire must have broken down,” I said.

  “Wire, hell,” the driver gulped. “The damned doors are falling down.”

  Believe me, here was something to see. Something was happening right at the front of the Taggart Building that sent a bunch of those colored neons crashing out into the street. All at once I almost forgot the blue limousine. I almost forgot the girl—but not quite.

  “Step on it, driver. I’ve got to see what that smash-up’s all about.”

  “We’re stopping right here,” the driver growled. “Look’s to me like the damned street’s caving in.”

  CHAPTER III

  Turban Creatures

  I jumped out of the taxi, threw a bill to the driver and was on my way to the scene of action before the cop on the corner could blow his whistle.

  And what do you think? Half a thousand people were there ahead of me. Ten minutes later there would be three or four thousand. There’s something that Joe and I had to talk about afterward, by the way.

  Out on the prairie where we came from, a crowd of a couple thousand or so is something that has to be planned and worked up with a promise of some lively entertainment and a handout of grub; or, if it’s a political speech—beers or watermelons. If you’re a rancher you’ve got to know there’s something in the air or you’re not going to run the plow into the shed and turn the team out to pasture and milk the cows early and jump into the car for a fifty-mile spin over to Squashville to help make a crowd.

  But here it was a couple of hours before dawn, when all civilized folks are supposed to be sleeping, and what happens? A bit of sidewalk falls through and some bright lights start crashing to the sidewalk, and almost before the policeman can clamp his teeth over his whistle there’s a whole mob of people on the scene.

  There was a traffic jam and a pedestrian jam and all the excitement of a fire or a hailstorm.

  But I didn’t quite forget the blue limousine.

  “Gentlemen, this is extraordinary!”

  Those booming words escaped the lips of this man Taggart, right beside me, and they caught in my ears. I didn’t know why. Somehow they just didn’t sound like what you’d expect a man to say when he’s really surprised. They sounded like a set speech.

  I put on my brakes like a racing hound in a cartoon comedy.

  It was a funny flash of thought that came to me just then. I had an intuition—or, as Joe would put it, a spark of ignition—that this big blusterer named Taggart had somehow set the stage for this job.

  What it meant I hadn’t the slightest idea. But it was a cinch he’d been riding around these blocks waiting for something. And it was five to one he had put off this something until he had this city commissioner right by his side to be an eye-witness.

  “Gentlemen, this is extraordinary!”

  By gollies, he’d rehearsed that. He was ushering the commissioner out of the car and the other two men followed. Up the street they went, and Taggart had more booming words on the tip of his tongue.

  “Gentlemen, the city engineers have done that with all their haphazard utility tunnels. They’ve cut the foundations right out from under my buildings, I’m telling you. This is going to cost the taxpayers a pretty penny.”

  Off they went to elbow their way into the gathering throng.

  Meanwhile, as I say, I had put on the brakes like the hound
in the comedy and pulled up to a short stop. There was still that pretty gal in the blue limousine. It seemed that her escorts forgot her the minute Taggart’s doorsteps and pagoda entrances started shaking down.

  As for me, I took one look up the sides of the twenty-two-story building and saw that the main structure was sitting as solid as Pike’s Peak, and then I knew.’

  “It’s a fake, lady,” I said. “Some screwball has loosened a couple of bolts. It’s a fake. Don’t you agree with me, lady?”

  This pretty gal turned her wide-open eyes from the scene of smoke and dust, which was all that was left to see from this angle, and she gave me a look that made her eyes narrow.

  “I don’t believe I know you.”

  “Sure you know me. I’m Cowboy Steve—Steve and Joe, the Cowboy Songsters, you know—Monty Montzingo’s prodigies. Hey, don’t be afraid of me.”

  For some strange reason this girl jumped to the conclusion that I had come to recover Joe’s turban, evidently. She still had the bright colored thing in her hands, but the instant I said “Steve and Joe” she turned into a bandit again, A guilty one. A bandit with one purpose—to get away with Constanza’s crazy turban.

  She chucked the thing inside her coat and made for the opposite door of the limousine.

  “Hey, lady, one of the tadpoles dropped off!”

  What was I saying?

  I gulped and swallowed my words, and my eyes bulged out. It’s a funny thing—that bit of talk about little creatures had almost shot over my head because somehow it sounded so strange. You’d hardly suppose an old-time opera star like this Constanza would even have fleas, let alone tadpoles. And so I hadn’t made anything out of this talk—and I knew this girl and Taggart hadn’t seen anything when they held the turban to the light.

  But here and now I saw one of the things. And this yellow-haired elevator girl bandit was seeing it too, the instant she looked back.

  And by my spurs and chaps, brother, believe it or not, the doggoned thing was seeing us!