The Paul Cain Omnibus: Every Crime Story and the Novel Fast One as Originally Published (Black Mask)

by Paul Cain

  “He could fly.”

  Brennan nodded slightly. “We can check on that.” He was silent a little while and then he said slowly: “If it wasn’t suicide, and if Harley and Antony can establish alibis—you know who’s going to hold the bag, don’t you?”

  Joice Colt stood staring vacantly down at him.

  “Little Joice,” Brennan went on. “The DA can make a swell show out of your prison record, and the fact that Harley dumped you for Barbara—and you discovering the body… .”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Joice Colt laughed a little, without mirth.

  Brennan nodded. “Uh-huh. Would you like to tell a jury of twelve good men and true how ridiculous it is?” He got up and went to the telephone, asked the operator to get the city desk of the Eagle, call him back. He leaned against the wall and smiled sleepily at Joice Colt. “I think we’d better vote for suicide for the time being,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  She nodded abstractedly, went to one of the low chairs and sat down.

  The phone rang and Brennan picked it up, said: “Hello, Johnnie. Barbara Antony, Lou Antony’s wife, bumped herself off in her room at the Valmouth… . Yeah… . Strychnine, I think… . There are a lot of angles. One of them is that Lou got out of Atlanta this morning. Have somebody call the office in Atlanta and check on him—whether he took a train, or flew, or what have you… . Yeah, Ed Harley’s another angle, but you’d better soft-pedal that. Make it suicide for now—I’m going to work on it and whip out a swell feature for tomorrow—save the spot page. An’ Johnnie, call Centre Street right away—have ’em send Freberg if he’s there—he’s the brightest boy on their whole doggone detective force; which isn’t saying a hell of a lot… . Uh-huh. So long.”

  Brennan hung up the receiver, took a shiny leather cigar-case out of his breast pocket, took out a cigar and stuck it into his mouth. He started back to his chair and then someone knocked at the door; he glanced at Joice Colt, turned and went to the door, opened it. A man with a blue silk handkerchief covering the lower part of his face stood in the doorway. He was a very tall, heavily shouldered man and he held a short automatic waist high in front of him.

  Brennan looked at the automatic, said: “How do you do?” slowly.

  The man came into the room and Brennan backed up; Joice Colt stood up and put one hand to her mouth. The man closed the door and stood with his back to it for a moment, then went swiftly to Brennan, jabbed the automatic viciously into his stomach. Brennan started to put up his hands and the man grabbed his shoulder suddenly, spun him half around, crashed the barrel of the automatic down hard against the back of his head.

  Brennan saw Joice Colt’s white drained face. He heard her scream. Then his vision dulled and his knees gave way and he fell forward heavily.

  He heard Freberg’s voice before he opened his eyes, recognized the nasal Scandinavian drawl. Freberg was saying: “Get a report of what’s in her insides before you do anything else. Then swear out a warrant for the Colt gal—I want her picked up tonight… .”

  Brennan opened his eyes; Freberg was bending over him. There was another man standing in the doorway. The other man said: “Okay,” and went out and closed the door.

  Freberg was a slight blond man, about thirty-five. He grinned at Brennan, slid his arm under Brennan’s shoulders and pulled him up, held a dark brown pint bottle to his mouth. Brennan put up his hands and held the bottle, took a long drink. He glanced at the bed and saw that the Antony girl had been taken away; he and Freberg were alone in the room.

  Brennan handed the bottle back to Freberg, said: “Oi jamina—my head!”

  “Uh-huh.” Freberg took a drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Who did it?”

  “Carnera.”

  “I know—I know.” Freberg put the cork into the bottle and tucked it into his hip pocket. “What did he look like?” Brennan got laboriously to his feet, sank into one of the chairs. He noticed that the tumbler was no longer on the table, the carpet between the table and the wall glittered with splinters of green glass. He leaned forward and held his head in his hands.

  He said: “Big guy—black hair. He had a handkerchief draped over his pan.”

  Freberg sat down in the other chair.

  Brennan asked: “What happened to Colt?”

  Freberg shrugged. “Was she here when the big fella slapped you down?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “When I got here,” Freberg went on, “the house dick was shooing away a lot of innocent bystanders. It seems somebody screamed in here and the guy in the next room called downstairs, and when the dick came up with a passkey he found the Antony gal very dead, and you, cold with that egg on the back of your head.”

  “Nobody else?”

  Freberg shook his head. “Nobody else.” He leaned back and tilted his hat back and scratched his head. “The doc figured her to have been dead about an hour. What happened?”

  Brennan straightened up, said: “Give me another shot of that.”

  Freberg took the bottle out of his pocket and handed it to Brennan. Brennan took a long drink and put the bottle on the table.

  “She killed herself,” he said. “Strychnine, I guess… .”

  Freberg smiled, nodded.

  “Colt came in and found her, dead. Colt called Ed Harley but he wasn’t in the hotel. She went downstairs to figure things out and ran into me in the drug store. I came up with her, and called Johnnie with the story and told him to call you.”

  “An’ Carnera?”

  “He came in and shoved a rod into my guts and then clipped me before I knew what it was all about.”

  “He don’t fit into the suicide picture very well, does he?” Freberg lighted a cigarette, leaned back again and stared skeptically at Brennan.

  Brennan did not answer.

  Freberg said: “Listen. Joice Colt left the hotel about five-thirty this evening. Before she went out she shook up a highball for Barbara Antony that had enough strychnine in it to kill the National Guard. She came back about a quarter of seven—as near as the elevator boy can figure—and found out how well it had worked, and then she got scared. She called Harley to plant the idea with him that Barbara had committed suicide. Harley wasn’t in. She didn’t know whether to call the police or to take it on the lam. While she was trying to make up her mind she ran into you, and you looked like a swell sucker to plant the suicide angle with… .”

  Brennan said slowly: “You’re crazy, Gus. That’s full of holes. In the first place, Joice was Barbara’s pal—what the hell would she want to poison her for? …”

  “Don’t give me that.” Freberg was leaning forward scowling. “Colt hated Barbara for taking Harley away from her.”

  Brennan said: “Oh. How did you know about that?”

  “Harley told me.”

  Brennan nodded slowly, ponderously, with mock seriousness. “When?”

  “A little while ago—he was up here while you were out.”

  Brennan nodded again. “So Mister Harley told you that? And because Mister Harley owns this joint and a string of clubs, and has a sixteen-inch bankroll, and wields a lot of influence, you take his lousy steer and want to nail Joice for this?” Brennan’s tone was elaborately ironic.

  Freberg said: “Don’t be a damned fool.”

  Brennan’s smile was very thin. “What about Lou Antony getting out of Atlanta this morning?”

  “I’ve got a tracer on him. He’s the reason the play looked so good to Colt. It’d look like Barbara killed herself because she was scared of Antony.”

  “Uh-huh.” Brennan shook his head disgustedly. “What about the guy that bopped me? Does he fit into your murder picture any better than he fits into my suicide picture?”

  Freberg said: “I don’t care about him. He was probably in some kind of cahoots with Colt… .”

  Brennan stood up, walke
d to the window, back. He said: “Lousy! I didn’t think such stupidity was possible!” He said it very emphatically.

  Freberg started to speak but Brennan interrupted him. “What the hell makes you so sure it wasn’t suicide?”

  Freberg said, as if he was making a great effort to speak deliberately, gently: “For one thing, there isn’t a sign of anything in here or in Barbara’s room that strychnine could have been in. For another thing… .”

  The phone rang. Freberg answered it, stood with the receiver at his ear, silent except for an occasional grunted affirmative. He finally said: “Okay—call you back,” hung up and grinned coldly at Brennan. “Antony caught the noon train out of Atlanta,” he said. “That train doesn’t get in until some time around eight tomorrow morning. So Antony’s out.” Freberg’s grin broadened. “And this strychnine—Somebody forced it down her throat, or stood over her with a club. How do you like that?”

  Brennan said: “I like that fine. That gets us to the point.”

  “What point?”

  “Harley.”

  Freberg shook his head slowly, “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking sense. Your Mister Harley rubbed Barbara because he was afraid she’d squawk to Antony about the way he’d treated her.” Brennan was almost shouting; his eyes were hot, intent. “Harley stuffed that strychnine into her while Joice Colt was out. He figured that with Barbara out of the way he could bluff Antony into believing that the talk about him and Barbara was a lot of hooey.”

  Freberg shook his head again. He said: “Harley was at the Glass Slipper from five o’clock on—until he came back here and talked to me.”

  Brennan’s laugh dripped sarcasm. “So he told you that, too, did he?” he said. “I don’t suppose you went to the trouble to check on it. Mister Harley is too big a man to check on… .”

  Freberg stood up slowly. He said: “Listen, Brennan—when I want a two-by-four reporter to tell me what to do an’ what not to do I’ll send for you.” His voice was low, his words clear, distinct.

  Brennan stared at him incredulously. “Do you mean you’re going to railroad Colt?”

  “I’m not going to railroad anybody. I think she’s guilty as hell. I’m going to pick her up and let her railroad herself. And I don’t need any lousy newsdog to tell me what to do and what not to do.”

  Brennan’s face got a little white. “No?” he said slowly. “But sometimes a lousy newsdog has intelligence at least a grade above a lousy dog’s son of a flatfoot.”

  Freberg’s face was blank. He raised his head slowly and looked at Brennan and his blue eyes were cold and impersonal. He moved slightly sidewise then he lunged suddenly forward, there was sharp smack as his fist crashed into Brennan’s face.

  Brennan moved very swiftly. He caught Freberg by the throat with his right hand drew his left far back and snapped it suddenly forward; he could feel his hard fist sink into the soft pallor of Freberg’s face. Freberg crashed into the wall, sank slowly to the floor.

  Brennan stood with his feet wide apart, looking down at Freberg a little while. Then he picked up his hat and put it on and went to the door. He glanced back at Freberg once, expressionlessly, then he went out and closed the door. In the elevator he took out his watch, noticed that the crystal was broken. It was ten minutes after eight.

  In the Eagle’s city room, Brennan leaned across the littered desk and waggled his finger at Johnson, the City Editor.

  “I told you to have ’em send Freberg because he was the brightest boy they had—and so help me, he’s the prize dope of the season.” He straightened up. “I wanted you to know. From now on that bastard is on the wrong side of our list.”

  Johnson was a squarely built pink-faced man. He peered at Brennan through thick tortoise shell glasses, said acidly: “I’ve asked you to lay off coppers for the last time, Cy. Don’t you realize that a paper like the Eagle owes its existence to the goodwill of the people like Freberg—the Police Department?”

  Brennan smiled. He said softly: “Listen, Johnnie—have we ever gone very far wrong playing my hunches?”

  “There’ll be a first time.”

  Brennan leaned across the desk again, started intently at Johnson. “I’m going to stick Ed Harley for the Antony gal’s murder,” he said quietly. “That’s our spot page story for the early Sunday edition—I’ll have it finished ahead of the noon deadline tomorrow. I’m going to clean up the details tonight, an’ make the case tight if I have to choke a confession out of Harley. This is the strongest hunch I’ve had in years and I’m going to play it if I have to make a monkey out of Freberg, an’ the Police Department, an’ the whole damned city government.”

  Johnson shook his head sadly. “It sounds swell,” he said, “but why the hell do you pick yourself such a tough one? Harley has an awful drag.”

  Brennan said: “I like ’em tough.”

  As he turned to go a short, sharp-faced man crossed in front of him, sat down sidewise on the edge of Johnson’s desk, said: “Hi, Cy.”

  Brennan nodded, “Hi, Frank.” He started away.

  The short man asked: “What did you hit Freberg with—an axe?”

  Brennan turned. His eyes were wide, innocent.

  “He came into the Station a minute ago with his face in a sling,” the short man went on. “He talked to the chief a little while and then three or four of those bastards came out and threw me out on my ear. They said to never darken their door again, or words to that effect.” He turned to Johnson. “They told me to tell you what you could do with the Eagle, too.”

  Johnson was glaring at Brennan. He said slowly, incredulously: “Did you hit Freberg?”

  Brennan nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  Johnson said, “That’s bad!” with deep feeling.

  “Self-defense.” Brennan made a wide and inclusive gesture with his hands.

  The short man sang in a high, cracked voice: “He calls it self defense, but Freberg will probably call it assault and battery… .”

  Brennan scowled at the short man. “Freberg won’t call it,” he snapped. “I know where he buries the bodies. That’s why he took Hunch the beating I gave him in the first place.” He grinned. “One reason.”

  Johnson shouted: “What the hell’s that got to do with it? I don’t care if they hang you! I’ve got a paper to get out—how am I going to do it without a Police Department tie-up?”

  Brennan raised his eyes and his arms towards the ceiling in a melodramatic appeal to heaven. Then he leaned across the desk, spoke slowly, with infinite patience:

  “Listen, Johnnie, I’m bringing you the scoop of the season—a story so big, an’ so hot, that you can write your own ticket.” He paused dramatically. “Do you think the police force is going to be in a position to discriminate against the Eagle after this story breaks—after the Eagle has made ’em look silly at their own racket?” He straightened up. “Why, you can throw five lines of credit their way and have ’em eating out of your hand!”

  Johnson was staring morosely at the desk.

  Brennan turned his head, snarled at the short man: “You don’t know what I’m talking about do you, Stupid?” He went around the corner of the desk, emphasized his words with a big blunt finger against the short man’s chest. “Ed Harley killed Barbara Antony—or had her killed. Get that fact planted in your skull so you won’t forget it, because there’s an angle of it I want you to work on. Now that they’ve kicked you out of the police station an’ you haven’t any place to play pinochle, you might as well go to work.”

  He turned back to Johnson. “I think Harley slipped up on the glass he gave Barbara the whiskey and strychnine in—maybe he got excited or scared or heard somebody coming. Anyway the glass was there when I went up—it had fallen out of her hand and rolled under the bed, and it probably had a few more fingerprints than Barbara’s on it. I figure that Harley got to
worrying about it and sent the big guy who slapped me down up to attend to it. You knew about the big guy, didn’t you?”

  Johnson nodded.

  The short man said: “I phoned in about him when Freberg called in from the hotel to report it.”

  Brennan went on to Johnson: “The glass was smashed when I came to.” He paused a moment, then said: “I want Frankie”—he jerked his head towards the short man—“to work on the big fella—see if he can get a line on him. We ought to be able to tie him up with Harley… .”

  Johnson said: “Okay. This is your show—an’ it better be good.”

  Brennan turned to emphasize again his words with a finger against the short man’s chest. “About six feet, two—or three. Very dark skin—black hair—pretty good clothes. He has a couple very deep lines between his eyes.” Brennan put his hand up and drew two lines down his forehead with his finger.

  The short man bobbed his head, glanced at Johnson, turned and walked away down the big room between the double file of desks.

  Brennan looked after him a moment then turned to smile down at Johnson. “Don’t look so sad, Johnnie,” he said. “If you’re scared you’re going to miss something from Centre Street we can stage a battle. You can fire me, an’ then call up the chief an’ tell him about it—tell him you’ve hung the can on me and the Eagle will be aces again.”

  Johnson’s face brightened a little. He said: “That’s not a bad idea.” Then he added, ominously: “You know it’ll be on the square if this Harley angle doesn’t work, don’t you?”

  Brennan grinned. “I’m betting my job that Harley rubbed Barbara,” he said. “An’ the hunch is so hot I’ll make you a little side bet—my life.”

  Johnson smiled faintly, nodded. Then he stood up suddenly, shouted:

  “Brennan—you’re fired! I’m damned tired of getting jammed up with the police on your account!”

  Everyone in the big room turned to stare at them.

  Brennan’s long, heavy face hardened: his eyes were cold, steady. He said slowly: “Okay, Johnnie.” Then he turned and went down the long room towards his desk in the corner near the door.