The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  “Not that I was asked either, Kelly,” the M. E. said. “But he’s got evidence under his nails he clawed somebody before he made his jump across the Styx. Well, you can have him for the deep freeze unit.” He snapped his bag shut.

  “With all these clues, Kelly,” Willie said, “you should expect Margaret O’Brien to clear this up before lunch tomorrer.”

  “Make out we never drunk no beer together t’night,” Satchelfoot flared up. “I should get my dome examined.”

  “It’ll never be possible,” Willie countered. “No X-ray that powerful ever has been invented yet. You would wreck a pneumatic drill. I’ll watch the papers to see how far you git with this just as if I didn’t know.”

  “Get lost, beetlehead!” Satchelfoot snapped.

  HE next afternoon Willie Klump called an assistant D.A. he knew and

  inquired as to the identity of the corpse. “We ain’t got a thing, Klump,” he was

  told. “There was prints on that note but they don’t seem t’ be on file nowheres. Up t’ now nobody has identified the stiff. Looks like a gang victim. . . . Say, Willie, why not come downtown an’ see an ol’ friend. I could use some laughs.”

  “There ain’t no new stories goin’

  around,” Willie said. “Oh, I get it. Listen, you—”

  William Klump went downtown anyway, early the next morning. Mr. Bullfinch, the sub D.A. announced that Kelly had made an arrest that might stick.

  “I would believe you if you said the Russians threw a veto away,” Willie said aghast. “Drive by ag’in a little slower.”

  “Yeah, a call come in from a cop lived in an apartment next to the empty lot,” Bullfinch explained. “He got up with a jumpin’ wisdom tooth an’ happened t’ look out the winder. He sees a jaloppy parked across the street by the big vacant lot an’ bein’ a cop first last an’ always pulled on some clothes and went out to get a gander. He is a few yards from the sedan when it pulls away, but he gets the numbers on the license plate. Kelly traced the number through the motor vehicle bureau an’ found out the jaloppy belonged to Big Grip Gargan, a bettin’ commissioner, of all people. As Big Grip has been known to chastise certain gees quite roughly—”

  “That took a lot of headwork on

  Kelly’s part, didn’t it?” Willie sniffed. “Well, Satchelfoot did trail Gargan an’

  bring him in, Willie,” Bullfinch said. “An’ the big slob said he was drivin’ past that vacant lot at between two and three a. m. an’ got a cramp and had to park until he got his marbles back. There wasn’t any scratches on him, though, but there could be on his confederate. Kelly says he’ll grill the identity of his accessory out of Big Grip, give him time.”

  “I would say the cops have a head start,” Willie admitted begrudgingly. “Then that mush note didn’t mean a thing.”

  “Exhibit A?” Bullfinch snorted. “Nah. There it is in the waste basket.”

  Willie did not know himself why he bothered to retrieve it at the time, but he did. He spread it open and idly perused it for a moment. Then he gasped as if a little gremlin had got wedged somewhere in his windpipe. Mr. Bullfinch became alarmed and reached for the phone.

  “Poisoned food I bet, Klump. They been makin’ a drive against unsanitary eatin’ places, but—”

  Willie stared at the following written words:

  Dear luver buy. Sure, I’m still that way uver my big hunk of manpuwer. Why, natch, we have a date fur Wednesday night at eight u’cluck. Luts of luve. Sugarface

  Willie choked out, “No; it can’t be! Yeah, curned beef an’ curn un the cub, but—”

  Mr. Bullfinch got up and sidled toward the door. Once he had it opened he started running. Willie grabbed up his hat and hurried out himself, and he was halfway uptown before he realized he had the billet doux clutched in his big right fist. Ten minutes later the familiar smell of Finnerty’s Homelike Cafe struck him flat in the kisser, and then he heard the lumpy waitress tell him to amscray.

  Willie pulled himself together. “Maybe you don’t know I’m a private detective, sister!”

  “I wouldn’t care a pantie offen a lamb chop if you was a general of ‘em, Buster. Beat it, you chiseler! Sure, we found that tin badge that time.”

  “Yeah?” Willie asked. “Well, who was it banged out them menus on the typewriter is all I want t’ know?”

  “Who?” the waitress snapped. “The babe who was the cashier here. She quit over a week ago. I guess that boy frien’ she had finally got her in a night club like he promised.”

  “Boy friend?”

  “Why sure, you lemonhead. There still are such things, thank heavens. This guy was some kind of a big operator an’ was

  named Eddie Muzzell. I seen him come in a dozen times. He always lef’ me a buck tip.”

  “You got that typewriter?” Willie yelped.

  “Nah. It was Dreena’s. We usta letter the bills of fare by han’ but nobody could hardly read ‘em an’ Dreena says it would look classier if we should type ‘em out, so she bought along the LaCorona an’ knocked ‘em off.”

  “Also with a Roscoe,” Willie said abstractedly.

  “Wha-a-a-a-a?”

  “I said somethin’? Look, what is the babe’s real name an’ where does she live?”

  “Dreena Del Roye. I never knew where she hung out, Buster. An’ why ast me all these questions? You’d think she murdered somebody!”

  “Ha, wouldn’t you?” Willie sniffed. “Now what you got t’ do, sister, is come down to the morgue an’ identify a corpse whicht I am positive is Eddie Muzzell an’ whicht can’t be put in a cemetery until it is. Why, you could get your pitcher in the paper because of this.”

  “I could?” The lumpy femme took off her apron and tossed it aside. “Wait’ll I change, big boy. Won’t take more’n a minute.”

  ILLIE sat down at a table and went to work with a pencil as if his thoughts were not soon put into writing they might just as well not have cut loose

  from his noggin.

  No.1. “The papers, come to think of it, mentioned the mash note found in the defunct character’s watch, and if the pip of an ex-cashier was as smart as she should be, she would—

  A big hand dropped to Willie’s shoulder. “Why, you punk stool pigeon! Dirtyin’ up a clean cloth wit’ a pencil, too! Awright, one—two—three—”

  “Leave go of him, Biff!” the waitress yelped. “He happens t’ be a frien’ of mine.”

  “You’re fired, Flossie!”

  “No kiddin’? Where’n I send you the reward? Come ah-h-hn, Sugar. Also I might tell you how crumby this joint really is.” She took Willie by the arm. “Let’s get out of here, huh?”

  “It is my fondest wish,” Willie choked out, sputtering and coughing.

  Down at the stiff repository the waitress took a gander at a specimen, wheezed out, “It’s him—it’s Eddie Muzzell,” and swooned. A hovering newspaper legman hurried to a public utility coop and feverishly spun the dial.

  Willie fanned the lumpy doll with his hat, led her out and to the nearest subway kiosk, and gave her a nickel. Then he went to a phone and called Mr. Bullfinch.

  “Yeah,” he told the assistant D.A., “Eddie Muzzell. I am told he was in the chips. I would have them grill Big Grip Gargan an’ make him confess now. Most likely a lot of racketeers’ll reckernize Eddie’s name an’ we’ll get the lowdown on him.”

  “Thanks, Willie. I’ll tell the D.A. you’re cooperatin’.”

  “Tell him I am also broke.”

  Certain underworld characters admitted they had heard of Eddie Muzzell but stated emphatically that he was not in any of their enterprises. “Bosco” Spumoni, bubble-gum vending machine monopolizer, claimed Eddie owned a fifty- and-hundred-buck club meatball named “Kayo” Dilley.

  Willie was downtown when Satchelfoot grilled Big Grip Gargan. The betting biggie
snarled and waxed indignant.

  “Never heard of the punk! I know personal every gee on my pay roll an’ you think I’d do the job myself if there was a doublecrossin’ employee had t’ be knocked off? Go ahead an’ ast me questions as I got nothin’ else t’ do. You try an’ prove nothin’.”

  “Kelly has been doin’ that for years,” Willie said, and went out. He had to look for a dame. “Hah,” he said to himself, “Eddie couldn’t have made his roll even on quiz programs. The waitress said he . . . There is one thing I must do.”

  The president of the Hawkeye forgot that one thing for a while, though. He went uptown to see Bosco Spumoni who told him Eddie Muzzell used to live in two rooms in a modest apartment hotel just off Lincoln Square. Willie went to that place and found cops holding off a mob trying to get into the place.

  “They’re tryin’ t’ rent the two rooms,”

  one gendarme hurriedly explained.

  Willie finally got in to see the super an hour later. He was told that Dreena Del Roye had also lived there, but had moved out some time ago. She left no forwarding address.

  William Klump made his way to his office and did the thing he’d almost forgotten to do. He consulted a classified directory and then started calling places where typewriters were bought, sold and repaired. He guessed he had called six dozen places within the space of an hour. They would all check up and call him back, they assured him. He was getting groggy as he conversed with the seventy- third prospect.

  “Y-yeah, a portable doll with a brunette keyboard,” he droned out. “This typewriter has eyes like Hedy LaMarr but her o’s are cut down t’ u’s. Dreena La Corona—yeah, a Del Roye typewriter.”

  “I think you’re batty,” the man said, and hung up.

  Willie felt a little empty inside and went to an old filing cabinet and found a three-day-old cruller in a paper bag. He ate half of it, then picked up a stack of correspondence he had been trying to laugh off for three days. Each one said he would please remit. The deadline on most of them were as close to him as his skivvies. Suddenly he took paper and pencil and started a letter to the custodian of all the clams he had ever gleaned out of the Hawkeye Detective Agency.

  Dear Gert: I got to have a hundred and fifty bucks right off as I am desperate. I will not have no roof over my head and will also be evicted from my office. I will be ruined. If I don’t git the hundred and fifty by return mail I swear I’ll—

  E could not make up his mind right away as to just how he would plan

  his own demise so he took time out to make a pot of coffee. He plugged in the hot plate and then placed it on his desk.

  “I could jump out the winder,” he mumbled as he measured out the java. “But I’m scairt of high places. I could tell her I will take poison or would turn on some gas.”

  Willie turned his attention to finishing his own dunning missive while the jamoch perked. Then he heard the door open and swung around in his chair.

  Two citizens nodded to him. One was a male who looked like an ad man of distinction who had switched to Calvert. He had a waxed mustache, big shoulders and just the right amount of white at his temples. The party of the second part was a female, a platinum blonde wearing a short fur Benny and a skirt that was a shame considering the kind of gams she had been endowed with. She had a wide mouth which was well shellacked and a pair of eyes that stirred the sleeping butterflies in the Klump diaphragm.

  “You are Mr. Klump?”

  Willie nodded, surreptitiously tugged at an electric juice cord and shoved a big

  dictionary against the hot plate.

  “But what is the idea snappin’ that Yales lock?” Willie got up slowly. The dame was smirking at him. “It is a mistake whatever it is, as I never saw either of you in my whole life.”

  The doll closed the transom. “See, darlin’?” she said to the male. “I told you he wouldn’t recognize me.”

  “Who-o-o are you?” Willie choked, as the male citizen displayed a very ugly- looking Roscoe.

  “Tell him, Baby.”

  “Remember Finnerty’s Homelike

  Cafe, Junior?” the doll tossed at Willie.

  Willie tried not to. He also told himself he was crazy to think this glamour puss was Dreena Del Roye.

  “What a dumb jerk,” the converted platinum blonde purred as she walked toward Willie’s desk.

  The big character motioned Willie toward a wall where there was no window. “You think after I heard about the note they found in Eddie Muzzell’s watch, I’d sit an’ wait for the cops to come with the wagon?” The doll sat down on the side of the private dick’s desk and took a cigarette case out of her beaded handbag, selected a

  long coffin nail and touched it off.

  “I will scream for help,” Willie said in a voice that seemed filtered through mud.

  Mocking laughter.

  “You wrote somethin’ on a tablecloth at Finnerty’s,” the cheesecake number said. “Who did you think would see it— the F. B. I.? The big slob named Biff gave me a buzz at a certain place he knew he might find me. He don’t know from nothin’ but he had a hunch after what happened to Eddie I might be in a spot. So he tipped me off to what you scribbled just in case. Maxie, this Keystone Comedy flatfoot, is almost too dumb t’ be real.”

  “But we don’t take no chances he has done somethin’ by accident, Baby. He’s

  gotta go!”

  “You ain’t kiddin’, honey,” the blonde said, and idly picked up the letter Willie had been writing.

  She read it in a hurry, stared wide-eyed at Willie, then laughed gloatingly. The president of the Hawkeye wondered if this was the Inner Sanctum.

  “Maxie,” the blonde said, “this is our out. This dumb ox wrote it for us. A suicide note.”

  “Wha-a-a-a-a-a-a?”

  Willie became petrified and he slapped both hands against the sides of his whirling noggin.

  “Oh, only I could think of doin’ this t’me!”

  The dame read aloud to Maxie. Maxie shook his head incredulously, then laughed mostly under his belt.

  “Oh, brother, what a setup!”

  Dreena Del Roye’s peepers shot lancets at Willie.

  “Thought I was a dumb babe, huh? I wouldn’t think after they found that note on Eddie you cops would maybe trace that typewriter with the bum ‘u’ on it? Guess you don’t know how much me an’ Maxie have got at stake, you mental runt! Sure, I think back. They found a tin badge on you the day you washed the dirty dishes, Klump. Then after Biff tipped me off snoopin’ was bein’ done, I said I’ll beat

  ‘em to the punch. Like Mahoomit I didn’t wait for no mountain to fall on this kid.”

  “She’s a smart number, Klump,” Maxie grinned. “She says the cops’ll call typewriter places an’ check who’s brung in a La Corona to get fixed an’ that her address would be left there. I’m a lucky guy awright.”

  “Thanks, honey,” the dame said. “Let’s git this over with.”

  “You won’t git away with it,” Willie said.

  The gee named Maxie said, “Sit down

  in your ol’ chair, Klump, as that is where you are t’ blow your brains out.”

  “What brains, Maxie?” the ex-cashier taunted. “I’ll bet the joint’ll be filled with sawdust. We ought t’ tell the punk why we got t’ do this.”

  “I will, Baby. You see, pal, Dreena was only workin’ at Finnerty’s while certain heat got took off,” Maxie boasted. “Eddie Muzzell also had a sideline an’ his managin’ a dumb meatball was only winder dressin’ to keep the cops thinkin’ he was legit. But maybe you recall maybe six or eight months ago a swanky joint on Park Avenue was touched for sixty grand worth of jewels. Well, take a look at the brains behind it. Some gorgeous package, ain’t she?”

  Willie took a gander at the doll. He had to admit she was. It occurred to him that the only other bit
of fluff he would ever ogle would be stringing a harp or preening her wings, and his spinal column began a La Conga.

  “Yeah, an’ she an’ Eddie had t’ lay low until the heat was off an’ t’ line up fences would handle the rocks,” Maxie went on.

  Willie had to ask, “But why was Eddie

  Muzzell knocked off?”

  Dreena Del Roye stifled a yawn and consulted her wristwatch. “I’ll answer that one, Maxie,” she said. “It seems Eddie crossed me by hocking one of the baubles behind my back. Then I meet Maxie and I know even if Eddie had kept his nose clean I would of got rid of him.”

  “Sure, Klump. Look at me an’ then think of Eddie’s pan,” Maxie grinned. “A swell gal like Dreena deserves the best. I guess I was just born lucky. Here I fall into sixty grand and git me a million-dollar baby at the same time. Yeah, we eased Eddie off an’ took him for a ride an’ dumped him.”

  Willie looked at Maxie’s right hand

  and saw the healed scars.

  “Sure, he rushed me just as I was goin’ t’ let him have it, Klump,” Maxie snapped. “We wrestled for a sec an’ he nearly made me drop the Roscoe, but I got him. Tell me if I’m wrong, Klump. A private flatfoot hides most things he finds out from real cops as why should he let them in on secrets, huh? I bet they don’t know from nothin’ about us downtown.”

  “You are a fiend,” Willie gulped, and wished he could tell Maxie he was wrong.

  “Okay, let’s git it over with, Maxie.” “Get in the chair, Klump. Baby, when

  I give you the office, you drop that big book on the floor, see?”

  “I’m ready. Hurry up.”

  Willie Klump staggered to his chair and fell into it. He could hear the splash of oars and the popular tune the River Styx ferryman hummed as the shores of Never- Never-Come-Back-Land came closer. And he had given his assassins a perfect alibi and wished he’d busted his writing arm a week ago.

  The dame with the platinum blonde wig took her place and reached for Webster’s best seller. Willie knew that Maxie’s mustache was a fake, too, and that the signs of age around the mugg’s ears were also misleading.