The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  “Why did you kill the lady goose come up with the gold eggs, Shorty?”

  “Because she never give me none of it,” Bartholomew griped. “She had two grand stashed away in her vanity table an’ I knew she got five C’s that night. After I knocked her off, I dropped that pitcher on the floor as I knew you’d recognize it, Klump, an’ would tip the real cops off.”

  “Real cops?” Willie flared. “Satchelfoot, leave me punch him, huh?”

  “Leave me have a good laugh, Willie,” Kelly snorted. “How in the heck do you git mixed up in things like this?”

  “This Roscoe of Bartholomew’s is a thirty-eight, Kelly,” Hardhat Hafey pointed out.

  “Oh, it is the one snuffed out that dame,” Fusty sighed. “I got three of the marked hun’red buck bills left here in my pocket. I never thought that sucker would ever do nothin’ like that. With a wife ownin’ a million bucks an’ all—well, it is what I git for not doin’ like ma used t’ say. Go t’ Sunday School reg’lar.”

  “They got a high-chair up at Sing Sing, Satchelfoot?” Willie wanted to know. “To toast this little criminal would only take a couple dry cells, maybe. The State saves dough.”

  Gertrude Mudgett was sitting in the back room of the precinct house when they arrived with Bartholomew to put him up for the night. Gertie had a billy club, Willie observed, as he stepped into the room. “Don’t go blamin’ me this time,” he said fast. “You grabbed that fee money I didn’t know was hot. After you hear how a blonde got paid off for hoggin’ all the take it should be a lesson to you, Gert. Anyways

  you gettin’ tossed in the hoosegow helped solve the Fusty killin’. You’ll get your pitcher in the papers.”

  “They already took ‘em!” Gertie howled. “An’ here I been sittin’ waitin’ for my excessory whicht they said was you to git brought in on a shutter. In case you was still alive I borrowed a club! Willie, what was that you said about the Fusty—?”

  “The Boston citizen is innocent,” Willie said. “It was Mrs. Fusty’s husband knocked her off. You an’ me broke the case, Gert!”

  The photographers hopped in from out of nowhere. “Hold it, you two!” a fat boy said, and then there was a flash. “Again, please, huh? You had your hand over your face, Klump.”

  “Yeah, I am rememberin’ how a doll framed Amberson G. Cronkite,” Willie sniffed, and ducked out a back door.

  It required the combined efforts of two cops, Satchelfoot Kelly, and two photogs to take the billy clubs away from Gertie Mudgett. Satchelfoot did not try too hard.

  KLUMP A LA CARTE

  Late one afternoon three very prim looking members of the distaff side entered the office of the

  Hawkeye Detective Agency, Inc., William J. Klump, president. Willie could only furnish two chairs so he had to dust off the top of an old iron safe for the third person, which was appropriate enough, the old doll being half the magnitude of a harbor tug.

  “I have kept my business offices as small as this on purpose as too much publisticy gits you well known with the crooks. I also try not to look like a detective.”

  “You have to try?” The skinny one wearing the fur boa sniffed.

  The corpulent one got down to business. “We are representatives of the Women’s Third Avenue Civic Improvement and Guardians of the Public Health, Mr. Klump. I am Mrs. Alburnham O’Hooley, the president. These ladies are Mrs. Hildebrand Smeck and Miss Robena Prish. We have been trying to make certain restaurants and delicatessens adhere to the sanitary code, but can’t seem to get no cooperation from the police. We have appointed a vigilante committee to get results.”

  “Where do I come in?” Willie asked, and quickly covered a comic book with his hat.

  “There is one restaurant we can’t seem to get the goods on,” Miss Prish nasaled. “We know conditions there are abdominal and—”

  “Natch,” Willie interrupted, and Mrs. O’Hooley glared at him.

  “Let me do the talkin’, Robena,” Mrs. O’Hooley said. “She means it’s a disgrace, Klump. We are willin’ to pay a fair fee for somebody to git the goods on that joint— er place.”

  “I see,” Willie said. “About twenty- five bucks?”

  The three crusaders ogled each other. Mrs. O’Hooley said, “All in favor of hirin’ Mr. Klump signify by the usual sign. Opposed? None! Motion carried.”

  “Ten dollars in advance,” Willie said. “The rest when I produce, huh?”

  “Okay,” Mrs. O’Hooley said. “But you write us out a recipe.”

  “What quick and dirty is it, ladies?”

  the shamus asked:

  “Finnerty’s Homelike Cafe,” Miss Prish said. “We should warn you. If they should suspect who you are they might be very rough. Of course we’ll pay a hospital bill within reason.”

  “Includin’ one transfusion if needed,” Mrs. Smeck said.

  “I’ll have a report within twenty-four hours,” Willie said. “It is a privilege to take a part in civil improvement, girls.”

  WILLIE, when the three old dolls had departed, pocketed the ten clam advance and picked up the phone. He got in touch with Gertie Mudgett at a certain

  beauty salon.

  “Gert, this is Willie. Look, somethin’ has come up. Business. I will not be able to put on the nosebag with you t’night. Don’t git sore.”

  “Who is?” Gertie yelped. “Always you look fer an argument, Willie. An’ don’t think you’re dispensible an’ I will suffer until I see you ag’in. Anyways, leave me hang up as I got an old bag under the drier an’ she’s almos’ done. Have a good time with the blonde.”

  “Look, Gert, it is no bl . . . Huh, she hung up.” Willie pawed at his face and sighed deeply. “That is dames for you. You are innercent an’ they want to believe otherwise. You git guilty an’ they beat your brains out. You got more chancet of winnin’ in a crooked dice game.”

  At six-thirty, William Klump entered Finnerty’s Homelike Cafe on Third and Forty-seventh and selected a table as near to the swinging door of the kitchen as possible. Preliminary observations convinced the private dick that the three old babes had good cause to suspect that flies or thumbs were more often than not in the Finnerty soup. The pies behind the counter were exposed, and a formation of winged creatures were circling over the coconut custard preparatory to strafing it. A counterman chewed on the remains of a poisonous looking stogie as he served the stool brigade.

  A lumpy henna-tressed cupcake came to Willie’s table and leaned against it.

  “Whatchagonnahave?”

  Willie judged that the babe’s apron had not been laundered since Pearl Harbor. He picked up the menu, shook crumbs from same and gandered the setup du jour. “The veal cutlet ain’t bad,” the waitress said.

  Willie scratched his noggin, looked up. “Who typed this—a Litheranium or a Jugo Slob? Curned beef. Cudfish an’ curn on the cub. Purk chups. Cuttage cheese an’ ulive san’wich? An’ apricuts. An’—”

  “Look, Buster, the typewriter was used has an ‘o’ busted in halves,” the waitress sniffed. “I ain’t got no time to fix it with no pencil. Take your time as I just love standin’ here like I was the Stature of Liberty holdin’ a torch.”

  “I’ll take the cutlet,” Willie said testily.

  He asked himself how he was going to get into the kitchen.

  “Huh,” he answered himself, “that is going to be easy.”

  Then he saw a very big eyeful traipsing past. The sloe-eyed, lissome brunette ended up in the cashier’s cage where she hauled out a compact and went to work trying to improve on a face that had no room for same. Appeared next a male character as big as the husband of a certain famous female golfer and he went over to the cage to slyly smooch with the taker of the tariff. It was very plain to see why Finnerty got his share of the customers.

  Willie shared his observation with the waitress when she appeared with the
cutlet that looked like a sun-curled shingle off a stable roof.

  “Yeah, the boss ain’t so dumb, mister. Wanna beer?”

  Willie acquiesced, then attacked the cutlet. In the bilious-looking gravy camouflaging it he found a burnt match and lost his appetite. He ordered a piece of soggy lemon-meringue and found little ticket-punchings stuck to the egg-white. He ca1led the waitress and asked for the check. When he got it, he told her he had lost his wallet somewhere.

  “An’ I’m goin’ to give you a chancet

  to use another ol’ gag, Buster,” the waitress said. “The black eye you’ll have in a minute was got from runnin’ into a door. Hey, Biff!”

  The large citizen hurried over. “A moocher,” the waitress said. “Finnerty won’t like it if you t’row him out through the plate glass like you did the las’ one. I’ll open the door wide.”

  Willie said, “Let’s arbitrate, huh? I desire t’ do the right thing like washin’ a few dishes an’—”

  “Not bad,” the waitress said. “One of our’n quit an hour ago, Biff. The sink is loaded t’ the gills.”

  “Okay, Junior,” the big character growled. “Foller me!”

  Five minutes later William Klump’s arms, as far up as his biceps, were as red as two brick chimneys. The private flatfoot made mental notes as he worked, hoping to remember at least one out of every six by the time he reported to his clients. He was pretty sure he’d bear one incident in mind, that one about the big mouse biting him when he reached for more soap flakes. He got a glimpse of a big pot of soup and asked what was floating around on top, was told they were croutons.

  “With wings?” Willie wanted to know, and ducked a vicious swipe of a chef’s cleaver.

  FOUR hours later William Klump limped out of Finnerty’s Homelike Cafe promising grim reprisal, the clatter of sudsy crockery in his noggin, his diaphragm all of a flutter as a result of the compote of the smells in Finnerty’s kitchen. At the corner of Lexington and Forty-ninth he went into a tight spin and caught at a lamp-post, and a passer-by with a sugary voice and the new hemline gave him a helping hand. The little chickadee was helping Willie toward the nearest drug store when a cab pulled up.

  Out stepped Gertrude Mudgett and

  Aloysius “Satchelfoot” Kelly.

  “Plastered,” Satchelfoot diagnosed elatedly. “What did I tell you, Gert! He was with a broad. Willie, you nogood—”

  William Klump was immediately shocked out of all traces of vertigo when Gertie swung at the good Samaritaness.

  “Look, lemme explain, Gert!” he howled. “I can prove—”

  Gertrude Mudgett missed. A counter punch caught her right on the chops and both her earrings popped loose. Satchelfoot Kelly caught her under the arms and held her up while she wangled a partial plate back into place, and watched Willie run for his life.

  “Okay, sister,” the deliverer of the haymaker said. “You want t’ go a couple more rounds later, I’m athletic director of a Y. W. C. A. I am leavin’ my card.”

  “Huh,” Satchelfoot philosophized, “Napoleon was the firs’ t’ find out, Gert.” He eased her to the sidewalk and propped her up against the side of a meat market. “How’s about leavin’ me call a cab?” he said to the winner.

  “That would be kind of you, I’m sure,” the maid said, and let Satchelfoot have her arm. “A girl feels so defenseless this time of night.”

  A cab pulled up, drove away. Gertrude Mudgett got to her feet and pushed her hat from in front of her eye. Vowing to remove two citizens from the tax rolls, gripped by a Lucrezia Borgia complex, she groped toward the nearest underground. . .

  In his room William Klump wondered how he was going to raise the scratch to get him as far away from the States as the Arctic Circle. Only there, he knew, would he be reasonably safe. The worry dew oozed out all over Willie. Finnerty’s was now only a bad dream that had been and gone. This was a nightmare that hadn’t as yet really whipped itself up. He would be guilty until Gertie proved him innocent, which she never could and never would.

  “We’re stalemates,” he choked out. “What’ll I do? If I can answer that I should try for double or no thin’. Of all the worst breaks can’t be fixed up with a splint—”

  Willie piled the dresser against the door and made sure the window was locked.

  For three days Willie Klump moved about town as furtively as a cottontail lost in a timber overrun by hungry wolves. He disguised his voice when he answered the phone. Once it was Satchelfoot.

  “Jus’ checkin’ up, Willie. How’ve you lived this long? I checked on Gert. She got a license t’ pack a rod.”

  And Mrs. O’Hooley came to call.

  “We had the place raided, Klump,” she snapped. “That report you sent in must of been a fake. There ain’t a cleaner place in town! We want the ten dollars back or we’ll notify the cops.”

  Willie sighed, and paid. When Mrs. O’Hooley had gone, he snapped his fingers.

  “Now I know where that badge of mine went. They got wise at Finnerty’s as maybe they went through my coat while I was washin’ dishes. I got a good mind t’ quit this business.”

  Four more days went by. Then Gertie’s voice sounded in the receiver of Willie’s phone when he picked it up one afternoon. “Oh, Willie, how can you forgive me? That dame come to see me an’ tol’ how it was an’ proved she wa’n’t with you that night an’ we are now good frien’s an’ she is goin’ t’ give me boxin’ an’ wraslin’

  lessons. Ain’t that swell?”

  “It is great, ha ha!” Willie gulped.

  “You poor darlin’, Willie. Only you could ever git in such a compermisin’ mess anyways. You must practice doin’ it. If your fambly had a coat of arms it was an eightball rampart on a field of poison iv’ry. When will I see you?”

  “I’ll call you later,” Willie sighed, and hung up. “I am glad she did not make frien’s with a knife thrower,” he told himself. . . .

  EXT morning, Willie was going through his mail which consisted of

  one circular letter ballyhooing a new mag when Aloysius Kelly entered the office. He wore a patch over his left eye.

  “She sent me a package in the mail an’ I figgered it was a present I sent her las’ Chris’mas, Willie. I opened a box an whammo, it was a jack-in-the-box with a hunk of lead for a noggin. I says I will see Willie an’ tell him I was a heel.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself with past tense, Satchelfoot,” Willie sniffed. “I would trust you as far as I could throw the city hall with one hand.”

  “Oh, let bygones go by,” Kelly said. “I would like to take you out for some beers, Willie. I know where is the best corned beef an’ cabbage in town, too.”

  William Klump’s spirit told him to tell Kelly he could go where he wouldn’t need matches, but his flesh, not having been fortified by many calories the past forty- eight hours, was vulnerable.

  “Okay, Satchelfoot. I am willin’ t’ give you one more chance.”

  They subwayed down to a bar and grill in the Houston Street neighborhood and were engaged in resuming diplomatic relations when a waiter came after Satchelfoot.

  “It’s Headquarters, Kelly. Looks like the Commish has t’ git another sucker for a pinochle game. Why would anybody call you otherwise?”

  The bonafide slewfoot hiked to the phone booth, spent a minute and a half inside it, then rushed back to the table.

  “Willie, now I can show you I want t’

  be frien’s. The Homicide Squad is on its

  way to a big empty lot at a Hunert an’ Twenty-sixth Street where somebody found a corpse. You can go, too.”

  “You think I wouldn’t follow you?” Willie sniffed, and gave himself a last faceful of corned beef. “You would ring me in on the rub-out of some stewbum that don’t mean nothin’.”

  Less than half an hour later, Willie was with half a dozen other co
ps appraising the remains of a citizen who was clad in very nice haberdashery. The rigor mortis expert judged that the unfortunate character had been defunct for close to seventeen hours, and stated that he had been shooed off for keeps by a Betsy of approximately thirty- eight caliber.

  “He ain’t no bum,” Kelly said, as he frisked the remains. “The criminal person or persons emptied his pockets of all identification. Awright, take flash pitchers of the scene, men.”

  The deceased was lying prone and when he was turned over, Kelly found the watch.

  “An’ ol’ model gold turnip,” he said. “The guy must of carried it fer sedimental reasons as he also had a wristwatch as you can see by the stripe on his wrist. A huntin’ case watch. Could be an inscription inside it. Leave me a loan of your penknife, Willie.”

  Kelly got the watch open and something fell out of it and landed at his feet. A small sheet of thin paper folded twice. He picked it up and had a cop center a flash on it.

  “Just a mush note,” he said. “Don’t’

  mean nothin’ as it is signed only by

  ‘Sugarface.’ Lissen. ‘Dear loover buy. Sure, I’m still that way oover my big hunk of manpower. What makes yuyu think different? Why, natch, we have a date fer Wednesday at eight yoocluck. Loots of loove.’ What kind of baby talk is that, huh?”

  “Or is it you can’t read,” Willie said. “Well, there may be prints of felons on file on that billy duke, so don’t throw it away, Kelly. The deceased was a handsome gee in a sinister sort of way, huh? Was toted to this lot in a jaloppy, as look at the lint on his worsted suit from a sedan Smyrna.”

  “I was goin’ t’ mention that,” Satchelfoot said irritably. “Anyways you got too much t’ say for a B pitcher shamus. When we want your advice we’ll ast for it, Willie.”