*
“Finished with that damned report, Riley?”
“Almost, Cap.”
“Let it go till you get back from this one. Go with Carson over to 919 Whig Street. Family trouble of some kind—couldn’t get much out of the dame over the phone.”
And it would turn out at 919 Wing Street that the old man had come home drunk and pugnacious, but he was now asleep and you couldn’t wake him with an ax. And Riley would have to listen to three-quarters of an hour of tirade, never getting any further than, “Yes, lady, but—”
Right after lunch—
“Riley, got a nice juicy assignment for you this afternoon.”
“Yeah, Cap?” Riley wouldn’t like the tone of that one.
“Pickpockets working out at Luna Park. You and Wolters go out there. Walk around the boardwalk all afternoon. If you get any, turn ‘em over to the harness boys out there and keep on walking around. Phone in at five.”
And Cap Mason’s eye would say, “Just squawk, Riley. Just squawk.” And Riley would know he didn’t dare because Mason didn’t like him and being third cousin of the mayor wasn’t everything. In fact, it wasn’t much, since Mayor Crandall hardly knew him. He’d got him the job, but he wouldn’t help him hold it.
Five o’clock and the aching pain that had been Riley would hobble for a home-bound bus (and probably have to stand all the way) and then stop in at Greasy Joe’s on the corner to eat too much again.
Then, in his room, he’d take off his heavy brogans and groan as he wriggled his toes. Tonight, he’d stay home.
But by the time he’d sat on the uncomfortable edge of the bathtub for half an hour soaking his feet, they felt better, and he didn’t feel sleepy any more, and it was so darn lonesome up here in his room all alone—He wouldn’t stay late this time.
But raw whisky would warm out of his guts the logy, lead-like feeling that had been there since lunch. And time doesn’t exist when you’re playing cards. All of a sudden, one o’clock.
“R 3.45” in the well-thumbed notebook.
One-thirty to bed, with the bed rocking gently, and five and a quarter hours to sleep before the alarm clock went off like a bomb, and the fly-specked wallpaper and then greasy soggy eggs for breakfast, and assembly.
Sleepy, head fuzzy, dull-aching stomach, and Oh Lord, his feet!
If only Cap Mason didn’t—
“Hey Riley. Ramsey’s warehouse, fast. Some stock’s missing, and get the lead out of—” That was the life of Riley.
*
But the death of Riley; that was something. Hundreds of people saw it, thousands heard it, and millions read about it and talked about it.
It came about on a hot June afternoon that should have been in August, for the sun was blazing and the pavements underfoot—under Riley’s tender feet—were hot enough to fry the very soles of Riley’s shoes.
Riley had been dreading that afternoon for weeks, for it was the afternoon of the election parade, with the Governor of the state in town campaigning for re-election on the same ticket as Mayor Crandall, also running, and all the other local officers.
Everybody running except Riley, it seemed to him. And Riley would have to walk.
“Riley and Carson; one of you’ll walk on each side of the car the Governor and the Mayor ride in. And keep your eyes open, see?”
“Yeah,” sighed Riley.
“Not that we’re expecting trouble,” said Cap Mason, “but we don’t want you mugs walking along looking like you were asleep on your feet. And after the parade—”
After the parade, thought Riley, he’d probably just curl up and die. He didn’t guess it might be sooner than that, and high heroism was farthest from his mind, unless it was high heroism for him to walk alongside that car at all. And maybe it was.
Heroism is a funny thing; it happens suddenly and unexpectedly sometimes.
Cap Mason was always glad afterward that he’d relented a little at eleven o’clock. Riley had just come in from his fifth hike since eight o’clock. And Riley’s face couldn’t have looked any longer without his chin scraping the floor.
Mason looked at him and shook his head. For the glory of the department he didn’t want Riley falling flat on his face three blocks from the start of the parade.
“Riley,” he said, “the parade assembles at two; you know where. You’re free till then, and if you feel like you look, you better rest up.”
Riley, who felt twice as bad as he looked, said, “Thanks, Cap,” and staggered out.
Not far, just to the nearest tavern. A cool glass of beer was what he needed, and to hell with lunch. To hell even with standing at a bar. In defiance of all precedent, he sat down alone at a table and let the bartender come to him.
“Hi, Riley,” said the bartender. “Kind of hot, ain’t it?”
“Yeah,” said Riley reminded again of his misery. “Bring me a shot and a beer.”
He hadn’t meant to order the shot, on an empty stomach. Particularly, he hadn’t meant for Baldy to bring the whisky bottle and leave it on the table.
Even then, he didn’t intend to pour himself a second one, until he’d drunk the first. Or the third until he’d drunk the second.
Baldy brought him another beer. “Hell of a hot day,” Baldy said, “gonna watch the parade?”
“Yeah,” said Riley bitterly. “I’m gonna watch the parade.”
“Me, too. I’ll close for an hour. My daughter’s in it.”
“Yeah?”
“In the Civic Virtue float.” Baldy grinned. “Got a cute little costume comes down to here.”
“The hell,” said Riley. He hoped the float in question would be in range of his vision. Maybe it’d help him keep his mind off his arches.
“Forty girls on that float,” Baldy told him. “One of Crandall’s daughters—she’d be a relative of yours, wouldn’t she?”
“Fourth cousin,” said Riley proudly.
“And the Governor’s daughter!” said Baldy proudly.
“Nuh-uh. Say, you mean a Crandall girl and the Governor’s daughter are going to be in a float with costumes like them? I dunno the Governor, but I wouldn’t think Crandall’d let a girl of his.”
“Why not?”
“Uh—it ain’t modest, or Crandall wouldn’t think so. Didn’t he close down the only burleycue show in town just because—”
Baldy was laughing. “You kidding me, Riley? The oldest girl on that float is ten—that’s the Crandall kid. My kid’s seven; they had contests in the first grades of all the schools for the brightest girls, to decide for places on that float.”
“Oh,” said Riley. He didn’t care now whether the float was in his range of vision or not.
“Want a sandwich, maybe, Riley?”
“Nuh-uh,” said Riley. “I ain’t hungry.”
More customers came in and Baldy went back to the bar.
Riley thought he could take one more without showing it. His head felt a bit better now, and his stomach bothered him less. With infinite care he lifted his feet off the floor and onto a chair. They hurt less that way. Why, he wondered, did people have to have feet? Worms and snakes got along without them. Riley wished he was a worm or a snake.
Or a bird, even. Birds have feet but they can get places without having to walk on them.
So, for that matter, could people with money enough to afford cars. But even if he had a car of his own, he thought, Cap Mason would give him mostly assignments he’d have to do on foot. Like the parade—
And at the thought of the parade, Riley had another drink.
“Gonna close up now, Riley,” said Baldy.
“Huh?”
“Yeah, the parade. Told you I was going to close an hour or so. It’s about starting and I want to see it. Want to come along?”
Riley looked at the clock and the clock said it was two.
Riley stood up and ran like hell out of the door and toward the block back of the city hall where his section of the parade was to form.
; He was so scared he forgot all about his feet while he ran. He forgot the drinks, he forgot the heat. He just ran.
Fortunately for Riley, no parade—since the victorious return of the Roman legions from Gaul—has ever started on time. Riley got there just as the car was starting.
He stopped running and started to walk. His job was safe, and what little breath there was left in him exhaled in one grand sigh of happiness before everything hit him at once.
The heat, the whisky, and his corns and bunions. Not to mention his arches. That four-block sprint from Baldy’s to the parade’s starting point was just what those four things needed. His suit was wet with sweat, his head went in circles, and his feet—as he started that three-mile walk-were as boils at the ends of his wobbly legs.
He kept one hand on the handle of the car door to guide him so he could walk straight. And by that means he walked straight. For a while, blindly. Blindly because of the pain of his feet and because the perspiration ran down his forehead into his eyes and he was too utterly horribly miserable to reach up and wipe it off.
There in the back of the car were the two most important men in town, the mayor and the governor, each with a silk hat in his hand, bowing and smiling, but Riley never saw them.
Nor did he see the Civic Virtue float just ahead, with forty pretty little girls from six to ten years old posed ever so cutely in a papiermache wonderland. It was a beauty, that float, even though its virtue as symbolism may have been a bit obscure. But what does that matter? The forty kids were cute in their own right, and if girls under ten haven’t Civic Virtue, then who has?
For blocks, Riley didn’t even see the paving underfoot, nor the crowds at the sidewalk’s edge, nor hear the cheers or the stirring martial music of the band just ahead of the float. He just walked, and if the car alongside which he plodded had been driven off the end of a dock, Riley would have walked right with it into the water. And not cared.
Down Commercial Street to Dane Avenue, past the courthouse and the public library. The glaring sun was baking the alcohol out of him as sweat, and he wiped his eyes and could see.
Past Cordevan Park and onto Saratoga Street where beyond the crowded sidewalk ran the railroad tracks with puffing little switch engines trying to drown out the band ahead.
Maybe it was the noise that fully wakened Riley. He saw the float ahead of him and heard the band and found he was walking in time to it.
Then he looked across at the sidewalk, and suddenly stopped walking. Suddenly he ran, diagonally forward toward the curb and plowed his way ruthlessly through the people standing there five or six deep. Not many noticed him; most were looking at the Governor, smiling and waving his silk top hat. Those he jostled aside noticed him, of course, and a few others. The governor looked curiously at the sudden dereliction of his bodyguard—and then smiled again and kept on waving his hat.
The mayor, smiling the other way, hadn’t noticed at all.
Then from back of the sidewalk somewhere came the tin can, arcing high through the air over the heads of the people lining the curb. A tin can with a bright tomato label, a very ordinary-looking tin can that anyone could have carried under his arm without arousing suspicion, it he had so carried it that its too great weight would not be noticed, and kept downward the end with the little fuse.
A nice job, that fuse. Sputtering away in a little hollow tubular coil flat against the end of the can. Encased so that, once lighted, it couldn’t be pulled out to render the bomb a dud.
High through the air it arced toward the car of the mayor and the governor. Not a bad throw, but not a good one. If it hadn’t glanced off the light pole it would have hit the radiator of the car at which it was aimed.
But it did glance off the light pole and landed, with a thud that told of iron or lead within the tin, smack in the middle of the float of Civic Virtue.
In the middle of a group of forty little girls from six to ten years old it landed and sputtered.
There were others—besides the little girls—nearer to it than Riley, but none of them moved faster, nor started off so suddenly.
Only a few had seen Riley charge his way through the people at the curb, but hundreds saw him charge his way back. Those in his way at the curb were scattered like ninepins and it is told that his progress from the curb to the float was like nothing but a streak of blue serge. Just a streak, that’s all.
He didn’t try to pick up the bomb; he fell upon it, flat, pinning it between his body and the floor of the float. A fifth of a second later, it exploded.
Yes, hundreds saw the death of Riley. Thousands—those lining the streets for blocks away—heard it. And millions, through the newspapers and the radio, heard of it.
Not one of the children in the float had been seriously injured.
It was a fine funeral they gave Riley, don’t doubt it. There were four carloads of flowers to follow the hearse. And to speak at his funeral, a mayor and a governor each of whom had a daughter whose life Riley had saved. You’d be surprised how many relatives forty little girls can have, and how many friends Riley turned out to have, now that he was a well-known hero.
It was a fine sight, that funeral. With a police guard of honor, and only a fraction of the crowd able to get into the biggest cathedral in town. Hundreds of cars driving to the cemetery, including the cars of all the important city officials. They closed the courthouse and the city hall.
The mayor himself, a wealthy man, paid for the funeral.
A popular subscription engineered by the leading newspaper financed the statue to go in City Hall Square. And since the dedication of the new park was scheduled for the following night, with the governor to do the dedicating, they had no trouble naming it Riley Park.
A lot of ink it got, the death of Riley. Glory and to spare, with an election coming up and Riley a relative of the mayor and a member in good standing of the political party in power. To hear some of the speeches, you’d think it was the party that had dived on that bomb instead of Riley.
A hero’s death and a niche secure in Carter City’s hall of fame forever. What more could any man want?
And then two days after the funeral and two days before the election, a man walked into Mayor Crandall’s office. A big man who limped painfully and looked much bedraggled as though he’d slept for several nights in his blue serge suit with the shining buttons.
Crandall looked up.
“Uh—Mr. Crandall—” said the big man.
“Ri—” Crandall bit off his words and, almost, his tongue with them. He got up and shut the door.
“Uh, Mr. Crandall,” said the big man. “I-uh—know I’m going to be fired the minute I report back to headquarters, but honest I’m sorry as hell and it won’t happen again if you can tell ‘em to give me one more chance.”
Crandall was breathing hard. He said, “Anyone see you come in here to my office?”
“Uh—no. I came here first thing. Mr. Crandall, the minute I got back. They’d rolled me, see? So I didn’t have money nor identification either, and I hadda walk back except for one lift, and—Can I sit down, Mr. Crandall?”
The mayor, without taking his eyes off the apparition before him, picked up the phone on his desk and said to someone, “Send Inspector Brady up here, quick.”
Then he took a deep breath and said, “Sit down.”
Riley sat down. Rather, he almost fell into the chair. He said, “I shouldn’t ever have drunk on an empty stomach just before the parade, but I had two drinks—just two—and then all that heat and the marching hit me, and—”
The door opened and closed. Inspector Brady stood back of the chair, only the back of Riley’s head in his range of vision.
Crandall said, “Brady, how far have you got on that bombing?”
“We know now who did it, Mayor. Screwball named Wessa. Crazy. We found the proof in his room that he made the bomb. But he’s taken it on the lam. We’re putting out his description all over the country. We’ll get him.”
“Y
eah?” said Mayor Crandall. “Inspector, there’s a friend of yours here.”
Riley stood up and turned around. Brady’s mouth fell open.
“Listen, Inspector,” Riley said plaintively, “I was just telling Mr. Crandall. It was the heat and the marching and everything. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help—”
“You didn’t go after the guy with the bomb?”
“What bomb?”
Mayor Crandall cleared his throat. He said, “Brady, was this Wessa about the size and build of Riley, and could he have been wearing a blue serge suit?”
The inspector nodded slowly. “My Lord, Crandall, you mean it was him we buried? That he threw his bomb at your car and then when he saw it ricochet into the float among all the kids, he ran after it and—? Oh, God!”
Crandall turned again to Riley. He said, “But man, it’s been four days. Where on earth—?”
“It was the heat hit me Mayor; honest. I’d had only two or three drinks. But it hit me sudden, and I had to yorck, and I couldn’t do that out in front of all those people, so I ran into the freight yard there and climbed into an empty. And I was dizzy and fell, and got up and then the car musta started with a jerk and I hit my head on the wall of it, and when I came to again it was dark and the train was going like a bat out of hell so I couldn’t get off till the next morning. And somebody’d rolled me while I was out, my badge and wallet and everything. I didn’t have nothing in my pockets but a handkerchief, and honest, I had a hell of a time getting back here. But I’m sorry, and I won’t ever again take even one drink on duty. If I’m not fired.”
Mayor Crandall laced his fingers and looked at Inspector Brady and Brady stared back at Crandall.
Crandall said, almost as though he was talking to himself, “We’ll be the laughingstock of the whole damn country. Riley Park. Statues. Four hundred and fifteen floral pieces. Our campaign speeches. We’ll be laughed out of office; they won’t even have to vote. The Governor—” He cleared his throat.
“What about the Governor?” Brady asked, horrified.
Crandall shuddered. He said, “We’ll have to leave town, Brady. Leave the state, the country. Grow beards and live in caves in the Amazon Valley. Unless—unless—”
Mostly Murder Page 20
