The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  “It is wonderful pot roast, huh?”

  “It is tray chick,” Gertie said, settling back. “I wonder do they serve patty defoy grass here.”

  “Look under salads,” Willie said.

  A miracle took place. They walked out voluntarily, with a full course dinner warming their meridians.

  “Congrats, pal,” the headwaiter whispered to Willie. “For a minute you had me worried.”

  “Oh, I’m sure on the ball now, Willie,” Gertie said as they walked toward the nearest cinema. “Big shots are callin’ me for appertments. I want you to acquire more polish, Willie, or elst my bein’ with you will ruin my business.”

  “I will buy a carnation tomorrer,” Willie said. “An’ a can of shoe polish. I will even buy a pair of cloth-topped shoes with pointed toes, but nobody can make me eat snails. This is awful silly, Gert. You can’t make a mink purse out of a chow’s ear.”

  “That did it, William Klump!” Gertie yelped. “You go your way and I’ll go mine!”

  “That was only a figment of speech!” Willie yelped back. “You are just trying to

  shake me an’ not pay me back my dough. You are a Delilah, only worst, as she only trimmed Samson’s locks, an’ they’d grow in ag’in. Twenty-dollar bills don’t have roots.”

  “It is heart balm coming to me, Willie

  Klump,” Gertie yelled.

  Willie, when the sound of Gertie’s high French heels had died going down subway stairs, knew his chances of retrieving his lettuce were nil, not half as good as Gertie’s accent. He went to his rooming house and sat and brooded, and had to get out of there when he realized his mind was too interested in some mouse poison he had in a bureau drawer.

  He walked and walked, but no matter where he went, he found himself still behind the eight-ball. At midnight he was about to step into a beanery for a cup of coffee when a police car siren shook his ear-drums. He spun around, saw it scorch past, and turn on two wheels at the next corner.

  Willie started running. Tires squealed, so he knew the jaloppy had stopped not far away.

  The commotion was taking place about a block from a neon sign that said,

  “HUBBA HUBBA CLUB.”

  Willie recognized a familiar but repulsive face he had more than one reason to remember. Aloysius Satchelfoot Kelly had taken over and was pushing the crowd around.

  “Stan’ back! Give ‘im air!”

  “Why?” a voice sneered. “He can’t breathe it.”

  “He might need it, though,” Willie said. “All depends on how long the stiff’s been here. Somebody git murdered?”

  Satchelfoot banged his hat down on the walk, not a foot from a very inert citizen.

  “You again! Willie, you are either a

  zombie or a ghoul, as you are always around when I pick up a corpse. I’m warnin’ you, you keep away. You make one false move an’—”

  “Here we go again,” Willie said. “This is a better show than they got over there at the Hubba Hubba.”

  Kelly ground his teeth closer to the nerves and went to work. He picked up an old slouch hat.

  “Initials A.K.,” he said.

  “Your hat, Satchelfoot.” Willie laughed and sat down on a hydrant. “Put it on or you’ll catch lumbago.”

  The diagnostician of the defunct arrived and looked the body over.

  “Death due to some blunt instrument,” he said. “I figure this gee has only been dead about fifteen minutes. H-m-m, name’s Hubert Wigg. Wearin’ a tux, so must of come out of the hot spot.”

  “I’ll do the ‘detectin’,” Satchelfoot said. “May I cut in?”

  NOTHER character in soup and fish shouldered his way through two cops

  and bent over Wigg. He had a long, thin, dark face and patent-leather hair.

  “They got ‘im,” the man said.

  “Awright, you know all about it, hah?” Kelly said. “Who rubbed him out?”

  “How’d I know? I am Mandy Costi, an’ Wigg worked fer me. He was a bouncer an’ escorted Venay Benuta around the corner, where she lives, between her numbers. Somebody come runnin’ an’ said they saw a pair of gees sock Wigg and push the girl in a cab an’ drive off. I come as quick as I could. Nobody was mad at Hubert, an’ the doll is a warbler and has no rich relatives, so why should they grab her?”

  “I’ll ast the questions, Bub,” Kelly said. “Venay Benuta. Yeah, I heard her sing over the raddio. She packs ‘em in the Hubba Hubba, Twitchell says. She would have plenty of wolves droolin’ at her heels,

  wouldn’t she, pal? Some guy got brushed off an’ won’t take no for an answer.”

  Willie Klump sniffed, and leaned over, and picked up a bedraggled carnation from the gutter. There was a little pin with a pink head rammed through the stem. Willie tossed the wilting posy away and put the pin in his cravat. Satchelfoot Kelly’s boys combed the area and found no clues. They could not think of a better motive for the liquidation than Kelly’s.

  “Not a thing to go on,” Kelly groaned. “They should never let concrete

  harden,” Willie said. “Then killers would leave footprints like actors do in that Chinese theatre in Hollywood.”

  “I am in no mood for your guff, Willie,” Satchelfoot yelped. “If they only got that cab’s license!”

  “If you don’t need me no more, I beg to be excused,” Willie said.

  “Keep walkin’ east an’ don’t stop even when you git to the river,” Kelly snarled.

  “Sensitive person,” Willie said to a cop, then ambled away.

  Willie forgot about the Hubba Hubba and the Grim Reaper the next morning. He breakfasted on a stale cinnamon bun in his office, washed it down with Nescafe, then planned his collection agency.

  He thought of a muskrat-dyed mink coat which would have purchased a dozen bicycles and became a little nauseated. Well, he could start out from scratch with a sign on his back. He would get up a letter and have it mimeographed. He started scribbling. After a while he held up the finished product. It read:

  Announcing The Advent of The Hawkeye Detective Agency Into Collecting Bills. No Bad Debt Too Small or Too Tough! Let Us Pickle Your Dead Beets! Our Rates Ten Percent And Up! Act Now And Don’t Put Off Today What Is Due You Tomorrow. William J. Klump, President.

  “That sounds good,” Willie said.

  He went out for lunch and bought a tabloid. There was a picture of the hot spot canary on the front page and a story that jogged Willie’s memory a little. The Hubba Hubba had once been known as the El Clippo, a joint considered by night club addicts as a flea-bag. Mandy Costi had taken it over and renovated it, to say nothing of fumigation, and it had been Mandy’s luck to discover Venay Benuta singing on top of a Steinway in a Sixth Avenue loud and dirty.

  The doll had a voice that was low and husky, like a warning buoy in the harbor, but it had that quality which was poison to housewives and eager little mouses waiting at the church. Venay drew the customers like a magnet snares a pin, and it was quite apparent that Mandy’s oasis would soon be one of the largest purchasers of red ink if the cops did not rescue her from the bad, bad boys.

  “The El Clippo,” Willie said. “Huh, I took Gert there oncet, an’ we got bounced as I was short that evenin’. I have a scar to prove it, too. Gert hit the waiter over the scalp with a tray and swung on an ex- wrestler who tossed the undesirables out. I remember the cops arrived and took us both to the cooler. Who was it run that joint? What difference does it make? It says here there is no clues as to the identity of the kidnapers, an’ that Mandy is at a loss to give the D.A. a motive as Venay was the quiet, home-lovin’ type. Mandy didn’t suspect no competitives as he was pals with them all.”

  HAT afternoon Willie inserted an ad in a newspaper. He had a water-cooler for

  sale. He figured whatever he got for it would defray the expenses of mimeographing.

 
; “Dames!” he choked out when he accepted seven-fifty for the cooler just before closing time.

  Three days later, a letter came in the mail from an undertaking parlor. They wanted to see Willie about collecting a bad debt. Willie went up to the other side of the Harlem River, walked through a loft filled with bye-bye hampers and entered an office. He asked for a Mr. Berriam.

  “Here,” a beetle-browed citizen said. “You from the collection agency? Here, take this bill. You’d think a guy would pay up cheerful buyin’ a box for a mother-in- law. He still owes forty-nine fifty on the coffin an’ he only paid sixty. There’s his address.”

  Willie lost no time. He was standing in front of a door in a tenement on One Hundred and Seventh Street, just twenty minutes later. A big character in his undershirt opened the door and nearly blew Willie back to the stairway with a “Whadda ya want?”

  “You are Patrick G. O’Gatty?” “Maybe you expected Van Johnson?” “Er, it is about a bill you owe,” Willie

  said. “For a casket. It seems it slipped your mind.”

  “So that ghost wrapper is puttin’ the hooks to me, hah? Listen, beetlehead, that crate wa’n’t worth ten bucks as it was only made of beaver-board. Go dig it up an’ take it back, an’ don’t never put no bee on me ag’in or your relatives’ll be payin’ for one, too!”

  Wham! The door slammed in Willie’s face, but literally. Willie was sure his proboscis resembled a stepped-on over-ripe peach as he staggered away. Well, he said philosophically, you can’t win them all. Better luck next time.

  Willie wrote Mr. Berriam a letter. He told the mortician that Mr. O’Gatty had been willing to return the article, which seemed all right and only fair as people were allowed to return pianos, radios, ice- boxes, etc. The letter Willie got in reply was one he did not think advisable to use as

  a testimonial.

  “I could have him arrested if I turned this over to the post-office,” Willie said. “This business ain’t as easy as it looked at first, but I will I quit? I should, but I won’t.”

  The door opened, and Willie quickly crumpled up the letter.

  “From Hedy LaMarr maybe?”

  Willie looked around and saw

  Satchelfoot.

  “Wait’ll I open the window,” he said. “The air is bad in here.”

  “Let’s stop hatin’ each other,” Kelly said, and sat down. “We could use each other to mutual advantage, Willie. You got any ideas on why they kidnaped that canary?”

  “I’d forgot about it,” Willie said. “It could be a publisticy stunt, like them rich babes who lose diamonds they never did.”

  “I thought of that, too,” Kelly said. “Look, you been lucky at times with cases, an’ I says what can we lose if we cut Willie Klump in? The D.A. says for me to tell you he will welcome any corporation on your part an’ will see you get renumerated.”

  “Is that good?” Willie asked.

  “He means dough,” Satchelfoot sighed. “Well, gimme a lead,” Willie said. “They’re ain’t any,” Kelly snapped. “You are very big-hearted, you an’ the

  D.A.,” Willie said, off the alkaline side. “You would give away knives without no blades. If I find anythin’, I’ll let you know.”

  “I just did what the D.A. ast me to,” Kelly sniffed. “You don’t think I’d come to you for nothin’?”

  “That is just what you’d git,” Willie said. “You seen Gertie?”

  Kelly grinned. “Oui, M’sewer. Imagine that broad posin’ as a French mouse. I have got as much chancet of passin’ off as Shirley Temple.”

  “I will not sit here an’ let you—”

  “Awright, Willie,” Kelly yelped. “If you only knew what she called you. Oh, brother!”

  “I know them all,” Willie said. “If she thought up anythin’ worst, they are in French. Anyway, I do not wish to discuss my interment affairs.”

  Satchelfoot Kelly paused to read the new lettering on Willie’s door, laughed out loud, and went out.

  EWSPAPERS kept the Hubba Hubba rub out and kidnaping as hot as a pistol. The cops kept calling on Mandy Costi, accusing him of holding back a ransom note, as whoever heard of a kidnaping without one? Mandy kept insisting that he knew no more than the cops, which would never qualify him as a Rhodes scholar. Satchelfoot Kelly was quoted in one journal, space apparently

  being as plentiful as G.I’s in college.

  We believe Costi is not cooperating with the police. He has a reason, maybe, because his night club looks like a bus stop at Cranberry Bend, Vermont, at two in the morning these nights. Getting this Benuta back in a shroud wouldn’t pull him out of the red.

  “Kelly is settin’ journalism back fifty years,” Willie said with contempt as he tossed the tabloid onto a pile of comic books in a corner of his office. “This is a funny case though.”

  At the beginning of another working day William Klump went through his mail. One letter asked for contributions from the altruistic minded to a fund which would insure a pint of milk every day for anemic Madagascarans. The other letter was from a Lexington Avenue Florist, I. Bloom. Mr. Bloom wanted to see Willie right away about collecting a sizable bill.

  The president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency hiked over to the flower shop and had to wait for Bloom. He sat

  near a little desk where husbands, sweethearts, etc., wrote sentimental notes on little cards. There was a paper box at Willie’s elbow, filled with little pins with pink heads. Willie asked a blonde about them.

  “They’re to pin flowers on lapels, of courst. We got pink heads on ‘em as then people know where the flower come from without astin’. Good advertisin’. We got an agreement with other florists not to use the same color.”

  Willie sighed and removed his stickpin. It wasn’t very exclusive, he thought. Then Mr. I. Bloom came in and he led Willie into his little office.

  “Such chiselers nowadays, Mr. Klump! Not all of them are sculptures. Here I have it a bill five months old for just carnations only. You get fifteen per cent if you can loosen this character up. I warn you, he is very unreasonable. Here is his card.”

  Willie read it aloud:

  ANCIL V. GAZELLI

  One Hundred Six West Sixty-Eighth Street.

  IMPORTER.

  “I give you twenty per cent, Klump.” “It is a deal,” Willie said.

  Pins with pink heads. Gazelli. The light on the switchboard in Willie’s noggin blinked and buzzed, but still he did not plug in. He pocketed the bill which was for eighty-seven dollars and fifty cents and made his way crosstown and up a dozen blocks. Arriving at the address, Willie found that it was an unimpressive pueblo of about eleven stories. He had a chance to recover, he thought, if he was thrown out of an eighth story window. He still wished he had an auto with his name on it.

  “Well,” Willie said, “this will make or break the Klump collection agency,” and went inside.

  He took a self-service squeaky elevator

  to the floor where apartment 7-C should be and walked down a long hall. He paused in front of a door, then rapped with his knuckles. For a few moments there was no answer. Willie was positive he heard subdued voices. He knocked more authoritatively. “Keep your shirt on!” somebody said then.

  The door opened. Willie put his foot over the sill and the door was banged against it. Willie let out a painful yowl and the citizen grabbed him and pulled him inside.

  “You want I should git evicted with such a house shortage?” the host snapped. He stared at Willie, his beady eyes half- drawn. “Say, you look familiar!”

  Willie looked at his prospect. “You

  Ancil Gazelli?”

  “Yeah! What’s it to you?”

  The private detective looked at the carnation in Gazelli’s buttonhole and the light in his dome blinked brighter and buzzed a little louder. He looked at Gazelli again. “You look like som
ebody, too. You are familiar to me in an uncomfortable sort of way. I come here to collect a flower bill.”

  “Huh?” Gazelli grinned. “What chancet you think you got?”

  “Fifty-fifty,” Willie said. “You do or you don’t.”

  E THOUGHT this Gazelli was getting more familiar than ever. The Latin

  was a suave-looking gee and had certainly never walked up four flights for the suit he wore. With that plaid, you never got a baseball bat. Willie felt a chill coming on. He wanted his dough and a quick out.

  “How about it, Mr. Gazelli? Le’s clean up this little matter of Mr. Bloom’s, yeah?”

  “Phooey,” Gazelli said.

  “That is not the right attitude,” Willie sniffed. “It is a honest debt. Think of the expense of all the little pink pin heads

  alone.”

  “I seen you somewhere before.” “Could be I was there,” Willie gulped. He happened to jar something loose

  from the table with his elbow, he was beginning to shake that much. He leaned forward to pick it up and a size ten shoe covered his fingers. But Willie could see the big gold initials on the doll’s reticule. “V. B.”

  “Git off my hand,” Willie said. “What is the idea?”

  “I’m trying to figure that out myself, Bub,” Gazelli said, and his eyes were getting like Karloff’s. “You wasn’t always a bill collector.”

  “So what?” Willie choked out. “Mr. Truman wa’n’t always a President. Look, I’ll come back next week when you are more flush, huh?”

  “You take me for a pinhead, Klump? Klump—that name is—you ain’t so dumb as you look, as nobody could possibly be. You know who belongs to the handbag, hah?”

  “I have no idea,” Willie protested. “It is none of my business if you are havin’ a tater-tate with somebody’s wife or—”

  “Come on out, Venay, as this punk is wise.”