The Case of the Singing Sword (The Billibub Baddings Mysteries)

by Tee Morris

  My world. A funny choice of words there, Mick.

  “Let me tell you something, pal: My world is definitely not for the faint-of-heart.”

  “How so?”

  Ever see a guy in full armor bitten in two by a low-flying dragon?

  “It’s complicated, Mick. Very complicated.” I slurped down one of the longer noodles and chewed on it for a moment while eyeballing Mick. I wasn’t going to get off the hook that easily. “Okay, I could probably get away with telling you this. Those troglodytes who paid your place a visit earlier?”

  “You mean…” And then Mick leaned in, his voice dropping to his detective’s whisper. “Moran’s boys?”

  “Yeah,” I whispered back. “Those guys. They’re not going to be bugging your establishment in the future.”

  Mick cocked his head to one side. “Now how can you be so sure?”

  “Well, when I had dinner with Capone…”

  “Capone!” he shouted, causing many of his diners to stop and look our way.

  “And this,” I nodded, giving my chicken soup a break and picking up a still-warm slice of the sandwich, “is exactly why you are not a detective, but still one of the best cooks in town.”

  I took an orc-sized bite of the ham-and-cheese (as I had worked up a healthy appetite from the night before), and in about my third chew I paused. I gave another chew. My next one was a bit slower, and I could feel a somewhat pensive look creeping across my face.

  Mick noticed. “Billi?”

  “Well, okay, maybe not the best cook anymore,” I said, my mouth still full of sandwich.

  “Problem with the sandwich?”

  I nodded. “You got the melt-in-your-mouth part right,” I replied, chewing as I spoke, “and this is definitely cheese, but it ain’t cheddar…and this ham tastes a lot like salami.”

  “What?!?”

  He immediately tore the second half of the sandwich apart. “I swear,” he growled, “sometimes I wish I wasn’t a sucker for the hardships!”

  I swallowed down the first bite. Couldn’t help it. I was hungry. “Well, it’s not a bad taste, just unique. Guess nobody said anything because you are the master of the chili. They probably thought you were trying something different.”

  “I am,” he grumbled. “His name is Petro. Good kid, but a little lacking in communication skills. He tends to be hanging on to the ways of the Old Country, know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” I chuckled, venturing another bite of the odd-tasting sandwich. “I know.” This time, it was harder to finish. I turned back to the soup. “So, this kid charmed his way into a job, huh?”

  “Well, he whipped that soup together, and I was pretty impressed, so I told him what I wanted for this Sunday, but he kept insisting on the salami instead of just plain ol’ ham. And I got a little gruff with him and he started saying why it should be salami and not ham, and the longer he argued with me, the more Italian he threw in. We got to a point where that was all he was speaking!”

  “That’s my Mick,” I said with a grin. “Lord and master of his castle, but still willing to let the servants get in the last word!”

  “Well, I didn’t think I was letting him get the last word,” Mick scoffed. “I didn’t understand a damn word of that Italian. It was all Greek to me.”

  Now there was a new one on me. “Come again?”

  “Oh, another saying you’re not familiar with, huh?” he chuckled. “Well, unless you’re really educated or you’re from Greece, you can’t understand Greek. Right? So if you don’t understand something, we say, ‘it’s all Greek to me.’”

  I sat there, noodling through the quirky saying. It’s all Greek to me. If no one else understands it, it’s all Greek. But what about the other way around? You stick with a language near and dear to you because no one else understands it. The Italians. The Chinese. Even I do it sometimes. Why? Because it’s all Greek to everyone else. Everyone else, save for those few who know Greek. It’s all Greek to me. Heh, that’s a good one.

  Holy shit.

  I slapped a Lincoln on the bar. “Keep the change.”

  Mick blinked. “Billi, I just flipped through the other half of your sandwich as if it were a good book. I owe you.”

  I adjusted my fedora and hopped down from my barstool. “No, my friend, I’m the one who owes you!”

  “For what?”

  “For a bit of higher education from the streets,” I smiled, tipping my hat to him. “Talk to you later!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Not the Same Ol’ Song & Dance

  It’s always tough to get a cab on Sundays, but pay a cabbie enough moolah and they will take a priest to the gates of Hell and back in time for morning Mass. When my ride finally arrived two blocks away (the second shift from Miller and Jackson, Inc. was parked across the street, so I had to take the back door and a few shortcuts to my pickup point), I made a quick stop at my office before rolling back up to the corner of 21st and Clarendon, where I had been “a friend of Lou’s” and talked at length with Daphnie of the book-balancing and grundle’malking talents.

  For another twenty, I had my cabbie leave the motor running. If my suspicions were true, I would need this driver’s talents on call. That hourglass of borrowed time I pictured the night before was pouring a lot faster now.

  I pounded on the speakeasy door, my breath still labored from the sprint across the street and down the alleyway. The hatch slid back and there was my favorite doorman, peering out and then down to see me.

  “Y’got balls,” he slurred through his still-healing jaw.

  “Nice to know there are some things in this world we can agree on. Now we can either make this easy, or I can break your other jaw so you got a matching set. Open the friggin’ door!”

  In case the dink had a good grip on his heater this time, I used the awkward silence to enlighten him. “Look, pal, if you call your boss, he will tell you that filling me with lead would be a colossally bad career move on your part. If you want to enjoy a permanent early retirement, be my guest.”

  As he peered through the peephole at me, thinking about calling me on my dare, I could see the hourglass’ bottom chamber continue to fill.

  “I ain’t got time to dick around!” I exploded. “Either pop me or let me in!”

  The peephole lid shut, the door latch slid back, and there he was staring at me, the red in his face growing like the fire of an oncoming missile launched from a distant catapult.

  Of course, I had to fan the flames. “I hate to ask you for a favor, mac, but is Daphnie around?”

  “Y’gotta be kiddin’ me…”

  I took that abrupt answer as his trollish way of saying, “No, Mr. Baddings, I’m not going to help you.” So dismissing the door troll, I took the detour to the stage where the band and showgirls put on productions that stretched well into the wee small hours of the evening. There were fresh scuff marks crisscrossing older scuff marks—the only remnants of a grand spectacle of jazz and flappers, all set on a stage where I barely had room to change my mind.

  “Y’got ten minutes, Short Stuff!” came the doorman, summoning up his courage now that I was a good distance away.

  There was no point in haggling with this dink like some common peddler at an open bazaar. Ten minutes was really all I could spare, anyway, so I had to make this time count.

  I climbed up the small riser and walked around the stage for a moment, following the scuff marks as best as I could. At certain points in between where feet had been, there were gouges in the stage. I lowered myself to one knee, probing the tiny pinpricks in the wood with my fingertips. Whatever props were causing this kind of damage on a nightly basis were gradually drilling holes and cutting grooves into the stage. The damage was everywhere, but carefully sweeping the riser with my hand, I could tell they were happening within close proximity of one another.

  “Lookin’ for an audition, little fellah?” asked a voice behind me.

  She wasn’t as busty and curvaceous as Daphnie, bu
t even in her modest street clothes, she boasted a fine athletic frame. (Her dress hemline was also high enough to give me a nice look at her defined calves). Although the bags under her eyes were so deep that groceries could be carried in them, there was still an impish glimmer in her dark gaze and an edge in her attitude.

  I also felt my smile get a bit brighter. The girl was a redhead. Nice.

  “Well, I don’t think I would look quite right in the outfits you girls wear,” I said, giving her a playful wink. “Been a long night, I gather?”

  “If only you were to slip into my shoes, pal. Last night was murder,” she huffed as she pulled a box of cigarettes from the inside pocket of her coat. I struck a flame for her, to which she nodded as she took her first drag. “Thanks,” she said, blowing the smoke over my head. “So, you a talent scout or an undercover Fed?”

  “If I answer with the first, you’re going to be a lot nicer with me, aren’t you?”

  She chuckled as I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. “Billi Baddings. Private eye.”

  “Glenda.”

  “Hey, Casanova,” the door troll howled across the club, “Five minutes!”

  Glenda lifted a thin eyebrow as she looked over to him, and then turned back to me. “Let me guess. You’re the guy who did that to Bruiser?”

  “Bruiser?” I asked.

  I shot a glance of my own at the doorman (for which I got a scowl and a tapping of his wristwatch in return). “Well,” I said with a shrug, “I guess the nickname suits him now.”

  I took a seat on the riser, looking up at the flapper with my charming Baddings smile. “I’m on a case that keeps bringing me back to this club. Just so you don’t worry yourself over whom you’re swapping words with, I’m not working for the Feds. All I’m doing is asking a few questions. Not the kind of questions that get people arrested.”

  Glenda’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “How about getting people canned?”

  “That all depends on the questions I ask,” I replied with a gruff laugh.

  “If you’re investigating something that happened here, try investigating where the hell Daphnie was last night!”

  Bingo. “Oh, Daphnie was AWOL last night?”

  “Yeah, me and the rest of the girls were covering for her last night. Third time this month, too! Little bitch better watch herself. She may be in with the management, balancing the books and all, but we lowly entertainers aren’t so attached to the Dancing Bookkeeper.” She took a quick drag before continuing her rant. “She didn’t bother calling or anything, and so here we are trying to make up for this gaping hole in our number.”

  I was about to fire off another question, but out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement at the door. Bruiser’s wrist came up to his face again, his eyes fixed on his wristwatch. That dumb mook was actually counting down the last minute of the ten granted to me out of the goodness of his heart.

  “Listen, Glenda,” I said, still watching Bruiser mouthing the seconds. “You wouldn’t happen to know another way out of here, would you?”

  “Sure, I was just about to head out that way myself. But,” she sighed heavily, “this will mean you’ll be buying me breakfast from the bakery.”

  “The bakery?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled, taking a final drag of her cigarette. As Glenda crushed the butt out with her sole, she called out to the Bruiser, “I’m taking him out the front door, okay?”

  Bruiser grunted, which I recognized as a troll’s “yes.” He didn’t seem to mind the fact I was leaving through the secret door. Instead of being relieved about my leaving he appeared distracted. He kept turning his head back to the main door while trying to make certain I was well on my way out of there.

  “The secret door to this place opens up to a bakery,” Glenda spoke over her shoulder, leading me past dressing rooms and storerooms all lined with brick. No sound getting through these walls. “Poor guy running our front really wasn’t happy about getting mixed up with us, you know? He resented getting bullied into this racket by the mob. He was all upset and rude to us until he started getting our business. It started with the hostesses wanting to offer up some nice desserts and pastries that go well with our cocktails. Then we had folks coming in and out, noticing this guy’s work in both directions. Now he’s just turning a blind eye, hoping the Feds don’t come barging through his store to arrest his upscale customers.”

  “So Bruiser’s okay with me leaving by this route?”

  “He’s definitely okay with it this morning. We’re having some friends from Canada coming in for a brief stay.”

  No wonder Bruiser was so accommodating, nerve-wrecked, and hostile all in the same lumbering breath that he took with me. He couldn’t afford my miniature innards decorating the alleyway on the same day that a truckload of Canada’s best was scheduled to arrive. As badly as his damaged pride screamed for retribution, the shipment took priority. Guess I picked the right day to pay Bruiser’s post a visit. But this was just the Luck of the Apprentice again, still with me as it was in my own flop last night. I couldn’t help but wonder when that luck would run out…and when it did, how bad of a mark it was going to leave on me.

  Glenda led me to a thick wall, an apparent dead end, and pointed to a brick just above her head. The cement around it was loosened, deliberately chiseled out so the brick would act as a latch. “Just give this a tap,” she smiled, looking down at me.

  I raised an eyebrow at her command. “You want to try that again, sister?”

  Despite the futility of her request, she motioned again to the brick above her head. Then, as she looked down at me again, I saw the light go on in her eyes. Miss Sleepyhead finally figured it out.

  “Oh yeah,” she laughed nervously, a slight blush coming to her cheeks, “Sorry.”

  She reached up and a latch from somewhere inside that wall sounded with a dull thud and the entire wall now served as a doorway to an establishment rich in the smells of hot bread, fresh pastries, and strong coffee. (Guess the “poor guy” running the place had resigned himself to milking this unbidden opportunity for all it was worth.)

  Once we were both in the storeroom, Glenda slowly pushed the hatch shut. “We have to be quiet,” she whispered. “Just in case he’s got early risers. And we have to make sure we hear the catch.”

  I nodded.

  Yeah, the old swinging-wall trick. Damn, that brought back some fun memories of trekking through abandoned keeps in my youth: trying to find those secret passages, praying that we didn’t come across any tourists trapped in these trick hatches, laughing when we would hear about groups of these dinks suiting up in their best armor to go rummaging through castle ruins and dungeons for buried treasure, sacred relics, or charmed weapons.

  Stupid tourists. Didn’t any of them ever stop to think that maybe these sites were abandoned for a reason?

  With a dull cka-thick, the shelf unit now blended in with the rest of the wall again. We then tiptoed through the small storeroom and peered out into the bakery where only a short, portly man in a modest grey sweater and slacks, protected from his craft by a stained apron, quietly took count of the various rolls and loaves on display.

  Glenda cleared her throat in the storeroom, twice, and then we entered into the store from behind his counter.

  The baker just looked at us quietly, sizing me up while slowly stroking his thick black mustache. As I was a dwarf, there was not much to size up, but I’m sure he was asking himself what other sideshow attraction was going to walk out of his storeroom this morning. He shook his head and muttered something under his breath as he resumed taking inventory.

  “Good morning, Sunshine,” Glenda beamed, completely oblivious to the look in this baker’s eyes. “How’s about two coffees and a couple of croissants to go?”

  I hoped Glenda was better at dancing than she was at reading people. While my money was as good as anyone else’s, I could see in the old man’s body language that we were the last people he wanted to serve. Before he became
involved with Capone’s speakeasy, he probably knew all of his customers by first name. And no doubt, they were more than customers, but loyal friends who were willing to cut breaks for one another when needed. Now his real bread and butter were nameless, faceless, privileged speakeasy customers and Organization members who wouldn’t come to his aid if it ever hit the fan, be it the Feds, cops, or Capone himself. If he ratted out the Mob, his next business would involve undertakers and coffin makers. If he continued to play against the G, he faced every day having everything he built taken away. They—both Capone and the Feds—threatened to shut down his American Dream, and now he was trapped.

  “Thanks, Gorgeous.” Glenda smiled to the storekeeper. This bimbo was starting to lose points with me real quick. She didn’t even bother to learn this guy’s name? “See you later!” she sang out as the door closed behind us.

  The sun was about to hit high noon—a blessing in itself, because there was a slight March chill lingering in the air. Maybe those golden rays would warm up the Windy City just a hint.

  “So, Glenda, tell me,” I said, taking a sip of the old man’s coffee. Strong. “Does Bruiser always work the door?”

  “Mondays and Tuesdays are his nights off.”

  “And yours as well?”

  “I’m an honest working girl!” She scoffed. “I’m here, along with the musicians. Every night we can get, although right now we’re all taking a couple of nights off and then starting final rehearsals for the new show.”

  “So maybe you wouldn’t mind a little guy like me getting an upfront seat one night? From the looks of that dance floor, you girls really put on some number!”

  “Oh yeah, this last one’s been a big hit with our regulars, but it was hell on the stage.” She smiled, a bit of self-pride giving life to her tired expression. “Once the new stage is put in, we’ll start our new revue. Just send word backstage that you’re in the house, and I’ll have a place for you up front and close. Too bad you missed the last show, ’cause I’m going to miss that one. We literally tore up the stage with those dance numbers!”