The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  “Okay, Klump, turn your dome to the side a little as I don’t want t’ mess you up with two shots,” Maxie said a little impatiently. “I’ll just lean forward like this, Baby, an’ git him up clost as it has t’ be suicide.”

  “Stop makin’ a speech, Maxie, an’ give it t’ the punk!” Willie shut his eyes and shuddered, and thought, “Why she could some day be somebody’s mother!”

  Maxie leaned forward and pressed his left hand down against Willie Klump’s hot plate and then he let out a great roar of pain that lifted Willie right out of his chair and popped his eyes open A Betsy

  clattered to the floor and then Willie suddenly realized the heat really wasn’t off the criminal persons, and he sprang into action.

  The blonde blister also recovered surprisingly fast and threw the big wordy tome at the Klump coco. It grazed Willie’s pate and put a blur in front of his face for a few seconds, but he fell right on the liquidator and dug in as far as the linoleum rug would permit.

  “Get him, Maxie!” the doll screeched and covered Willie and got both her fists filled with his corn-colored hair, and pulled.

  The tears streamed from Willie’s glimmers as he lifted himself up like a bucking bronco and threw the babe loose. He rolled over on his back and saw big Maxie diving for him and he wondered if he’d go through the floor and into the lap of a stenog in the office below.

  ELF-PRESERVATION was the first law Nature had passed and Willie was

  for it a hundred per cent and so he brought up both feet when Maxie was about to make a three-point landing, and kicked very vigorously. Oomp! Willie’s Size Twelve brogans got Maxie plumb in the breadbasket and the big crook did a halfspin and landed on the floor with his nose down.

  The fake blonde still had fight and some moxey left in her, and Willie saw her winding up with the empty beer bottle just as he flipped over on his stomach again and got his hand on the artillery. The bottle just missed the Klump cranium, hit the wall and came up with a billiard shot that ended just above Maxie’s left ear.

  “Shot or I’ll stoop!” Willie yelled, just as half of New York seemed to be trying to break in.

  Dreena Del Roye legged it to an open window, looked out, changed her mind.

  “The devil with it,” she gulped. “I’ll sing for the Commonwealth!” She sat on the sill and gaped at the Betsy Willie had pointed right at her bra, and then the door gave way.

  A big elevator man was in the van wielding a fireax. Next came a big cop, and five characters who believed in peace in our time.

  “What goes on?” the cop yowled. “What would you expect in a detective

  agency—a sugar maple party?” Willie managed to articulate. “Watch these two dishonest citizens close as they rubbed out Eddie Muzzell. An’ the doll here with half her wig off was in on a sixty-grand jewel haul not so long ago. They come here t’ rub me out.” Willie went over and looked at the floor plug where he’d connected the hot plate. “Hah, it wasn’t quite disconnected an’ give off with enough juice t’ keep the life-saver hot. Maxie could not shake a pair of dice for a month at least and anyways where he will end up won’t have just a poor connection. I think I have the gat washed up Eddie Muzzell.”

  The decided blonde put up quite a fuss before consenting to accompany the limbs of the law. She had an eye now that matched her real hair and an ear almost as red as her kisser.

  Maxie owned up to be an ex-con who had been dabbling in a little burglary. His last name at the moment was Luza, he said.

  “Spelt with a ‘o’ and ‘u’?” Willie grinned. “It looks like that was a hot menu I picked up that day in Finnerty’s huh? Who’ll have a cup of coffee, as the plate is still hot.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Dreena said dolefully, “even if it has t’ be true. I’ll talk!”

  Downtown, sometime afterward, Willie sat in the real D.A.’s office feeling sorry for Satchelfoot Kelly who was sitting at a desk trying to figure it out with pencil and paper. Kelly had eaten half the pencil before he gave up.

  He said before he groped his way out into the hall, “I am goin’ on a lost weekend an’ hope it stays lost with me. He’d be president t’day, instead of Harry, if only he’d been born the village idiot.” Kelly slammed the door.

  “Jealousy must be awful t’ have, D.A.” Willie grinned. “How much reward did you say I’d git from the Park Avenue citizens? A thousan’ bucks?”

  The D.A. brushed spots away from his eyes. “Yeah, Willie. How do you do it?”

  “As if I knew,” Willie sniffed and reached for his hat.

  As if anybody knew.

  STUCK WITH THE EVIDENCE

  ALOYSIUS “Satchelfoot” Kelly came into the office of the Hawkeye Detective Agency, Inc.,

  one afternoon with his crying towel. Satchelfoot looked as fed up with the world as the dove of peace and Willie Klump knew the flatfoot had to be very low in spirits indeed to come to him for comfort.

  “You could of saved a nickel subway fare by goin’ to a dictionary, Satchelfoot,” Willie needled. “As far as you are concerned, sympathy is just a word with me. It is because that pretty matron was sprung by the grand jury, ain’t it? For oncet it looked like you had picked up a candidate for the sizzle sofa and was already countin’ the volts. Then blooey as of usual.”

  “I’ll throwaway my badge,” Kelly griped. “That tomater was as guilty as a fox with chicken feathers in its teeth, and she beat the true bill by buyin’ a false alibi.”

  Willie poked at his right ear. “Begin ag’in, Satchelfoot. Come up a little slower, huh?”

  “Awright, let’s start where they found the body of her husband,” Satchelfoot growled. “He has been shot by a thirty- eight caliber slug and nobody is around sittin’ up with him when the cops git there. We grill the elevator man at the apartment house and he says he didn’t remember seein’ Mrs. Ferdinand Fingly durin’ the time when the rubout could of been committed. Anyways the Fingly flat was on the third floor and some citizens walked up or down. He did remember seein’ a dame wearin’ a heavy veil and a coat he never saw on Mrs. Fingly.”

  “So far everythin’ is very clear,” Willie sniffed. “Like I was tryin’ to look through a bowl of gravy.”

  “Lemme finish,” Kelly yelped. “We pick up the babe around nine p.m. when she gets to the flat. She sees the thing with the sheet over it an’ faints. After we bring her to we ask why she did it. She says she was at the movies since six-thirty. The corpse expert said Fingly was erased around seven or after. We ast what movie.

  ‘Looie’s Fifty-Ninth,’ she says, and right quick I ask what is showin’ there. She takes too much time out and I know I got her. She can’t think of either B pitcher, Willie. We book her.”

  ILLIE Klump refreshed himself by taking another gander at

  Satchelfoot’s gloomy phiz.

  “All that, I know,” Willie said. “It comes out that Mrs. Fingly’s ardor for her spouse had hit the deep freeze and she’d met a buddin’ young crooner who already had a wife tryin’ to understand him, but couldn’t. So she attempted to shield the Romeo, but he would have none of it, and came to the D.A. and established Mrs. Fingly was in his lodgin’s durin’ when

  Fingly was rubbed out. The crooner’s ball and chain attacked the pretty widow when she was sprung and it took four big strong policemen to remove her mitts from Mrs. Fingly’s lily-white throat. Mrs. Fingly assured the doll after first aid that her interest in the would-be-Como was simply professional and plutonic and she wanted to see him reach the top. That is all, huh?”

  “I says she is guilty,” Satchelfoot iterated.

  “Right there is the proof of her absolute innocence,” Willie sniffed. “But it is odd there are no other suspects. Only a citizen Fingly fired from his office a week before and he happened to be in Detroit lookin’ for a job at the time of the slaughter.”

  “Maybe you didn’ he
ar Fingly was about broke at the time of his death, hah?” Satchelfoot continued. “He was insured for fifty grand only three months ago.”

  “Yeah? Willie inquired. “A lawyer—

  broke?”

  “He liked the hayburners and thought he was a wow with the pasteboards,” Kelly snapped. “Mrs. Fingly says all she has besides the insurance is some stock she owns and must liquidate like Fingly was. So a bunch of lemonheads on the gran’ jury look at her pretty pan, her gams, and agree she couldn’t do such a dastardly deed. No wonder crime pays. I ought to quit.”

  “Nobody in town will argue that point,” Willie sniffed. “They paid Mrs. Fingly the insurance yet, Satchelfoot?”

  “They have not. They ain’t as dumb as citizens on grand juries, Willie. You wait and see as she ain’t in the clear no more’n a plumber with his arm caught in a drain pipe.”

  Willie nodded. “I admit the insurance angle don’t smell like lavender salts, Satchelfoot. Well, I’m a busy man, and my time is valuable. A client might come in and want that chair.”

  “I’ll get that babe in one yet,”

  Satchelfoot said. “You wait and see, Willie!”

  “Hurry it up, then,” the shamus quipped. “I ain’t gittin’ any younger.”

  When Satchelfoot had nearly slammed the door loose from its frosted glass, Willie sighed and looked through the papers on his desk. There were a few newspaper clippings there he’d thought might lead him to an honest dollar or two. They had to do with missing persons, infidelity, and hot jewelry. He had phoned some of the citizens involved and promised them quick results. Well anyway, they’d said they’d get in touch if all other means failed.

  “This one,” Willie mumbled, as he picked up a clipping bearing a half-tone and four sticks of lower case, “looks like rank publicity to me. A cute number awright, and blonde. Stage doll. Came into her apartment and a guy jumped out and knocked her as cold as a polar bear’s nose. Stole jewelry valued at twenty grand. One item a diamond brooch made up like three bows of ribbons all put together. Worth eight thousand clams. Huh!”

  Willie picked up another tabloid clipping. He picked up the phone, dialed a number. A woman’s voice answered and it sounded like long fingernails being drawn along the side of a rusty saw.

  “Yes, this is Mrs. Herkimer Younce,” the voice said. “I don’t lissen t’ no radio pograms.”

  “Hah, this is the Hawkeye Detective Agency,” Willie said. “You find your missin’ husband yet? Why not let me I try, if you haven’t?”

  “Are you kiddin’, Buster? Looks like you didn’ see the next day’s paper. I know where he is, which is in a hospital in two plaster casts as he showed the next mornin’ with a babe’s compact in his pocket. G’by!”

  “I wonder how long it would take a guy to learn a different business,” Willie

  sighed, and opened up his desk drawer and brought forth a stale jelly doughnut. “I wish I had a magic lantern to rub.”

  ILLIE rubbed his noggin instead. Then his door opened and he turned

  to see a very delectable package of femininity close it behind her. She wore a short fur coat that even Willie knew was no relation to the rabbit family and a hat that would have even helped his girl, Gertie Mudgett, get a new look. It was the red cherry atop a peach parfait. Her hair was the touch of caramel. What a dish! And Willie wondered at himself for assuming he had ogled this wren before.

  “Mr. Klump?”

  The silvery and sugary voice moved Willie’s Adam’s apple up and down and twitched his ears.

  “I’m sure lucky to be him,” he said, and got up quickly and dusted off the spare chair. He helped her into it as if she’d been made of blown glass and nearly fell on his face getting to his own. “Ah—er—now, madam,” he finally choked out. “What is your problem? You want your husband followed, huh?”

  “I am afraid even you couldn’t do that, Mr. Klump,” the client said. “You see he is dead. I am Mrs. Ferdinand Fingly.”

  “Yes, I see what you mean, ha-ha—

  wha-a-a-t?”

  “Now, now, Mr. Klump, don’t let me scare you,” the widow said. “I am not a homicidal maniac. Of course if you don’t wish to take my case, I can go elsewhere.”

  “Don’t mind me,” Willie said hastily. “I just got over a breakdown and—why, I never figgered you was guilty.”

  Mrs. Fingly thanked Willie sweetly, then waited until the president of the Hawkeye gulped down two aspirins. “It is this way, Mr. Klump. I am being driven to distraction by the press. It is because, I suppose, that I’m a—er—that I photograph

  well. A pretty widow still wearing the cloak of suspicion—made to order for tabloid newspapers.”

  “You ain’t no old bag,” Willie agreed. “It must be awful to be dead and have a wife like you.”

  Mrs. Fingly batted her pretty eyes and reached up quickly to straighten her hat. “That wasn’t bad, Mr. Klump—ha.”

  “Er, where do I come in?” Willie forced out.

  “I need a person for a bodyguard,” Mrs. Fingly said. “Someone to keep undesirable persons away from me, to push a cameraman in the face if need be. I’m so unprotected, Mr. Klump.”

  “Why—er—I am not one to desert one of the weak sex at such a time,” Willie said.

  “Then you’ll be at my apartment tomorrow? Oh, there’ll be a third person there. A maid I just took on.” The widow smiled. “About your fee, Mr. Klump. My husband’s affairs are quite hopeless and the insurance people still want more proof that—”

  “Ten dollars a day,” Willie said.

  “That is very reasonable and I hope I can meet it,” the comely client said, dabbing at her eyes with a hanky. “However, I’ll pay you somehow.”

  “It is a deal,” Willie said, and took his client’s arm and escorted her to the door. Willie wondered what kind of powder he was sniffing when he closed the door, gun or face. He had little beads on his roundish face when he fell into his chair. Only a few days ago he’d listened to a radio thriller wherein a pretty tomato had been declared innocent of arsenic poisoning and it ended up by four other characters biting the almond before she was led screeching to the State goofy house. “Well, I’ll be on my guard,” Willie stoutly assured himself. “It wasn’t only yesterday I heard about the birds and bees.”

  The phone rang and Willie knew who wanted him before he picked it up. Even a public utility gadget seemed to reflect Gertrude Mudgett’s inimitable personality.

  “Hello, Willie,” she said. “Guess what

  Thursday is?”

  “Your birthday,” Willie gambled, and won.

  “Oh, you thoughtful darlin’,” Gertie cooed. “I knew you wouldn’t forgit so I bought me two tickets out of your money for a show. It is a mellerdrama at the Boothby, Willie. ‘The Milkman Only Rings Oncet’.”

  HE waited for comment from Willie

  Klump who flinched back.

  “Great,” he said. “I knew I would surprise you.”

  “Don’t forgit we got a winder shippin’ date tomorrer morning, Willie,” Gertie said.

  “Oh, oh, I got me a client,” Willie said. “I got to report first thing in the A.M. Who do you think?”

  “Not Harry Truman, Willie?”

  “Don’t be silly. It is Mrs. Ferdinand

  Fingly, Gert.”

  “Never heard of the—what-a-a-t? That murd’ress, Willie? Don’t!”

  “It is to protect her from the press,” Willie said.

  “Who’ll pertect you?” Gertie asked. “That dame was guilty like everybody thinks. She’ll insure you as a bodyguard and then you’ll be just cold meat. That pretty face is foolin’ you, too. You resign right away.”

  “You forget I have to eat,” Willie said. “I’ll call you tomorrer night and report.”

  “Look, Willie—!”

  “Sorry, an
other client is here,” Willie said, and hung up. He shook his head.

  “I am closer to gittin’ murdered every day with her and she knows it,” he sighed. “Well, I better go home and press up my

  new suit and find a clean shirt. I got to be representable seein’ it is the high brackets I am in.”

  At nine o’clock the next morning, William J. Klump rang the bell of an apartment on East Thirty-Second Street.

  A dish that was not Mrs. Fingly opened up and peered out at him. Willie’s cowlick twanged under his hat. This babe had coppery locks and a face that would look well on a beer ad.

  “We got a vacuum cleaner and have started three characters in at college already with magazines,” the maid said. “Git lost, Buster.”

  “There is a mistake,” Willie said. “I am

  Mr. Klump who—”

  “No, it can’t be,” the chick said. “Not this big a mistake. I’ll call Mrs. Fingly.”

  “I never saw worst manners,” Willie bridled. “I shall report you, sister.”

  “Take off your hat,” the maid snapped. Willie sat down. He was reaching for a

  copy of a current mag when his employer appeared. Mrs. Fingly wore a housecoat of a very sleek material that did things for her she really did not need. Her hair-do looked different without a hat. There were little gold rosettes in her ear-lobes. She held out her hand to Willie and he took it. The maid seemed dazed.

  “Oh, I’m so glad you arrived, Mr. Klump,” Mrs. Fingly said dulcetly. “Three newspapers have called up already and I refused interviews.”

  “I see,” Willie said. “Leave them try and prosecute you, Ma’am.”

  “Bring Mr. Klump some coffee, Lucretia,” Mrs. Fingly said, and Willie wished Satchelfoot Kelley could see him now.

  “Make it two doughnuts,” Willie said. The shamus was finishing his first cup