The Big Book of Reel Murders

by Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (epub)

  Luise Fischer sipped and coughed.

  “Want a chaser?” Link asked.

  “No, I thank you,” she said. “This is very good. I caught a little cold from the rain.”

  She held the glass in her hand, but did not drink again.

  Brazil said: “I left my car out front. I ought to bury it.”

  “I’ll take care of that, kid,” Link promised.

  “And I’ll want somebody to see what’s happening up Mile Valley way.”

  Link wagged his head up and down. “Harry Klaus is the mouthpiece for you. I’ll phone him.”

  “And we both want some clothes.”

  Luise Fischer spoke: “First I must sell these rings.”

  Link’s pale eyes glistened. He moistened his lips and said: “I know the—”

  “That can wait a day,” Brazil said. “They’re not hot, Donny. You don’t have to fence them.”

  Donny seemed disappointed.

  The woman said: “But I have no money for clothes until—”

  Brazil said: “We’ve got enough for that.”

  Donny, watching the woman, addressed Brazil: “And you know I can always dig up some for you, kid.”

  “Thanks. We’ll see.” Brazil held out his empty glass, and when it had been filled said: “Hide the car, Donny.”

  “Sure.” The blond man went to the telephone in an alcove and called a number.

  Brazil emptied his glass. “Tired?” he asked.

  She rose, went over to him, took the whiskey glass out of his hand, and put it on the table with her own, which was still almost full.

  He chuckled, asked: “Had enough trouble with drunks last night?”

  “Yes,” she replied, not smiling, and returned to her chair.

  Donny was speaking into the telephone: “Hello, Duke?…Listen; this is Donny. There’s a ride standing outside my joint.” He described Brazil’s coupé. “Will you stash it for me?…Yes…Better switch the plates too….Yes, right away, will you?…Right.” He hung up the receiver and turned back to the others, saying: “Voily!”

  “Donny!” Fan called from elsewhere in the flat.

  “Coming!” He went out.

  Brazil leaned toward Luise Fischer and spoke in a low voice: “Don’t give him the rings.”

  She stared at him in surprise. “But why?”

  “He’ll gyp you to hell and gone.”

  “You mean he will cheat me?”

  He nodded, grinning.

  “But you say he is your friend. You are trusting him now.”

  “He’s O.K. on a deal like this,” he assured her. “He’d never turn anybody up. But dough’s different. Anyhow, even if he didn’t trim you, anybody he sold them to would think they were stolen and wouldn’t give half of what they’re worth.”

  “Then he is a—” She hesitated.

  “A crook. We were cellmates a while.”

  She frowned and said: “I do not like this.”

  Fan came to the door, smiling, and said: “Breakfast is served.”

  In the passageway Brazil turned and took a tentative step toward the front door, but checked himself when he caught Luise Fischer’s eye and, grinning a bit sheepishly, followed her and the blonde woman into the dining room.

  Fan would not sit down with them. “I can’t eat this early,” she told Luise Fischer. “I’ll get you a hot bath ready and fix your bed, because I know you’re all in and’ll be ready to fall over as soon as you’re done.”

  She went out, paying no attention to Luise Fischer’s polite remonstrances.

  Donny stuck a fork into a small sausage and said: “Now about them rings. I can—”

  “That can wait,” Brazil said. “We’ve got enough to go on a while.”

  “Maybe; but it’s just as well to have a getaway stake ready in case you need it all of a sudden.” Donny put the sausage into his mouth. “And you can’t have too big a one.”

  He chewed vigorously. “Now, for instance, you take the case of Shuffling Ben Devlin. You remember Ben? He was in the carpenter shop. Remember? The big guy with the gam?”

  “I remember,” Brazil replied without enthusiasm.

  Donny stabbed another sausage. “Well, Ben was in a place called Finehaven once and—”

  “He was in a place called the pen when we knew him,” Brazil said.

  “Sure; that’s what I’m telling you. It was all on account of Ben thought—”

  Fan came in. “Everything’s ready whenever you are,” she told Luise Fischer.

  Luise Fischer put down her coffee cup and rose. “It is a lovely breakfast,” she said, “but I am too tired to eat much.”

  As she left the room Donny was beginning again: “It was all on account of—”

  Fan took her to a room in the rear of the flat where there was a wide wooden bed with smooth white covers turned down. A white nightgown and a red wrapper lay on the bed. On the floor there was a pair of slippers. The blonde woman halted at the door and gestured with one pink hand. “If there’s anything else you need, just sing out. The bathroom’s just across the hall and I turned the water on.”

  “Thank you,” Luise Fischer said; “you are very kind. I am imposing on you most—”

  Fan patted her shoulder. “No friend of Brazil’s can ever impose on me, darling. Now, you get your bath and a good sleep, and if there’s anything you want, yell.” She went out and shut the door.

  Luise Fischer, standing just inside the door, looked slowly, carefully around the cheaply furnished room, and then, going to the side of the bed, began to take off her clothes. When she had finished she put on the red wrapper and the slippers and, carrying the nightgown over her arm, crossed the hallway to the bathroom. The bathroom was warm with steam. She ran cold water into the tub while she took the bandages off her knee and ankle.

  After she had bathed she found fresh bandages in the cabinet over the basin, and rewrapped her knee but not her ankle. Then she put on nightgown, wrapper, and slippers, and returned to the bedroom. Brazil was there, standing with his back to her, looking out a window.

  He did not turn around. Smoke from his cigarette drifted back past his head.

  She shut the door slowly and leaned against it, the faintest of contemptuous smiles curving her mobile lips.

  He did not move.

  She went slowly to the bed and sat on the side farthest from him. She did not look at him but at a picture of a horse on the wall. Her face was proud and cold. She said: “I am what I am, but I pay my debts.” This time the deliberate calmness of her voice was insolence. “I brought this trouble to you. Well, now, if you can find any use for me—” She shrugged.

  He turned from the window without haste. His copperish eyes, his face were expressionless. He said: “O.K.” He rubbed the fire of his cigarette out in an ashtray on the dressing table and came around the bed to her.

  She stood up straight and tall, awaiting him.

  He stood close to her for a moment, looking at her with eyes that weighed her beauty as impersonally as if she had been inanimate. Then he pushed her head back rudely and kissed her.

  She made neither sound nor movement of her own, submitting completely to his caress, and when he released her and stepped back, her face was as unaffected, as masklike, as his.

  He shook his head slowly. “No, you’re no good at your job.” And suddenly his eyes were burning and he had her in his arms and she was clinging to him and laughing softly in her throat while he kissed her mouth and cheeks and eyes and forehead.

  Donny opened the door and came in. He leered knowingly at them as they stepped apart, and said: “I just phoned Klaus. He’ll be over as soon’s he’s had breakfast.”

  “O.K.,” Brazil said.

  Donny, still leering
, withdrew, shutting the door.

  “Who is this Klaus?” Luise Fischer asked.

  “Lawyer,” Brazil replied absent-mindedly. He was scowling thoughtfully at the floor. “I guess he’s our best bet, though I’ve heard things about him that—” He broke off impatiently. “When you’re in a jam you have to take your chances.” His scowl deepened. “And the best you can expect is the worst of it.”

  She took his hand and said earnestly: “Let us go away from here. I do not like these people. I do not trust them.”

  His face cleared and he put an arm around her again, but abruptly turned his attention to the door when a bell rang beyond it.

  There was a pause; then Donny’s guarded voice could be heard asking: “Who is it?”

  The answer could not be heard.

  Donny’s voice, raised a little: “Who?”

  Nothing was heard for a short while after that. The silence was broken by the creaking of a floorboard just outside the bedroom door. The door was opened by Donny. His pinched face was a caricature of alertness. “Bulls,” he whispered. “Take the window.” He was swollen with importance.

  Brazil’s face jerked around to Luise Fischer.

  “Go!” she cried, pushing him toward the window. “I will be all right.”

  “Sure,” Donny said; “me and Fan’ll take care of her. Beat it, kid, and slip us the word when you can. Got enough dough?”

  “Uh-huh.” Brazil was kissing Luise Fischer.

  “Go, go!” she gasped.

  His sallow face was phlegmatic. He was laconic. “Be seeing you,” he said, and pushed up the window. His foot was over the sill by the time the window was completely raised. His other foot followed the first immediately, and, turning on his chest, he lowered himself, grinning cheerfully at Luise Fischer for an instant before he dropped out of sight.

  She ran to the window and looked down. He was rising from among weeds in the unkempt back yard. His head turned quickly from right to left. Moving with a swiftness that seemed mere unhesitancy, he went to the left-hand fence, up it, and over into the next-door yard.

  Donny took her arm and pulled her from the window. “Stay away from there. You’ll tip his mitt. He’s all right, though Christ help the copper he runs into—if they’re close.”

  Something heavy was pounding on the flat’s front door. A heavy, authoritative voice came through: “Open up!”

  Donny sneered in the general direction of the front door. “I guess I better let ’em in or they’ll be making toothpicks of my front gate.” He seemed to be enjoying the situation.

  She stared at him with blank eyes.

  He looked at her, looked at the floor and at her again, and said defensively: “Look—I love the guy. I love him!”

  The pounding on the front door became louder.

  “I guess I better,” Donny said, and went out.

  Through the open window came the sound of a shot. She ran to the window and, hands on sill, leaned far out.

  Fifty feet to the left, on the top of a fence that divided the long row of back yards from the alley behind, Brazil was poised, crouching. As Luise Fischer looked, another shot sounded and Brazil fell down out of sight into the alley behind the fence. She caught her breath with a sob.

  The pounding on the flat’s front door suddenly stopped. She drew her head in through the window. She took her hands from the sill. Her face was an automaton’s. She pulled the window down without seeming conscious of what she was doing, and was standing in the center of the room looking critically at her fingernails when a tired-faced huge man in wrinkled clothes appeared in the doorway.

  He asked: “Where’s he at?”

  She looked up at him from her fingernails as she had looked at her fingernails. “Who?”

  He sighed wearily. “Brazil.” He went to a closet door, opened it. “You the Fischer woman?” He shut the door and moved toward the window, looking around the room, not at her, with little apparent interest.

  “I am Luise Fischer,” she said to his back.

  He raised the window and leaned out. “How’s it, Tom?” he called to someone below. Whatever answer he received was inaudible in the room.

  Luise Fischer put attentiveness off her face as he turned to her. “I ain’t had breakfast yet,” he said.

  Donny’s voice came through the doorway from another part of the flat: “I tell you I don’t know where he’s gone to. He just dropped the dame here and hightailed. He didn’t tell me nothing. He—”

  A metallic voice said, “I bet you!” disagreeably. There was the sound of a blow.

  Donny’s voice: “If I did know I wouldn’t tell you, you big crum! Now sock me again.”

  The metallic voice: “If that’s what you want.” There was the sound of another blow.

  Fan’s voice, shrill with anger, screamed, “Stop that, you—” and ceased abruptly.

  The huge man went to the bedroom door and called toward the front of the flat: “Never mind, Ray.” He addressed Luise Fischer: “Get some clothes on.”

  “Why?” she asked coolly.

  “They want you back in Mile Valley.”

  “For what?” She did not seem to think it was true.

  “I don’t know,” he grumbled impatiently. “This ain’t my job. We’re just picking you up for them. Something about some rings that belonged to a guy’s mother and disappeared from the house the same time you did.”

  She held up her hands and stared at the rings. “But they didn’t. He bought them for me in Paris and—”

  The huge man scowled wearily. “Well, don’t argue with me about it. It’s none of my business. Where was this fellow Brazil meaning to go when he left here?”

  “I do not know.” She took a step forward, holding out her hand in an appealing gesture. “Is he—”

  “Nobody ever does,” he complained, ignoring the question he had interrupted. “Get your clothes on.” He held a hand out to her. “Better let me take care of the junk.”

  She hesitated, then slipped the rings from her fingers and dropped them into his hand.

  “Shake it up,” he said. “I ain’t had breakfast yet.” He went out and shut the door.

  She dressed hurriedly in the clothes she had taken off a short while before, though she did not again put on the one stocking she had worn down from Brazil’s house. When she had finished, she went quietly, with a backward glance at the closed door, to the window, and began slowly, cautiously, to raise the sash.

  The tired-faced huge man opened the door. “Good thing I was peeping through the keyhole,” he said patiently. “Now come on.”

  Fan came into the room behind him. Her face was very pink; her voice was shrill. “What’re you picking on her for?” she demanded. “She didn’t do anything. Why don’t you—”

  “Stop it, stop it,” the huge man begged. His weariness seemed to have become almost unbearable. “I’m only a copper told to bring her in on a larceny charge. I got nothing to do with it, don’t know anything about it.”

  “It is all right, Mrs. Link,” Luise Fischer said with dignity. “It will be all right.”

  “But you can’t go like that,” Fan protested, and turned to the huge man. “You got to let her put on some decent clothes.”

  He sighed and nodded. “Anything, if you’ll only hurry it up and stop arguing with me.”

  Fan hurried out.

  Luise Fischer addressed the huge man: “He too is charged with larceny?”

  He sighed. “Maybe one thing, maybe another,” he said spiritlessly.

  She said: “He has done nothing.”

  “Well, I haven’t neither,” he complained.

  Fan came in with some clothes, a blue suit and hat, dark slippers, stockings, and a white blouse.

  “Just keep the do
or open,” the huge man said. He went out of the room and stood leaning against an opposite wall, where he could see the windows in the bedroom.

  Luise Fischer changed her clothes, with Fan’s assistance, in a corner of the room where they were hidden from him.

  “Did they catch him?” Fan whispered.

  “I do not know.”

  “I don’t think they did.”

  “I hope they did not.”

  Fan was kneeling in front of Luise Fischer, putting on her stockings. “Don’t let them make you talk till you’ve seen Harry Klaus,” she whispered rapidly. “You tell them he’s your lawyer and you got to see him first. We’ll send him down and he’ll get you out all right.” She looked up abruptly. “You didn’t cop them, did you?”

  “Steal the rings?” Luise Fischer asked in surprise.

  “I didn’t think so,” the blonde woman said. “So you won’t have to—”

  The huge man’s weary voice came to them: “Come on—cut out the barbering and get into the duds.”

  Fan said: “Go take a run at yourself.”

  Luise Fischer carried her borrowed hat to the looking-glass and put it on; then, smoothing down the suit, looked at her reflection. The clothes did not fit her so badly as might have been expected.

  Fan said: “You look swell.”

  The man outside the door said: “Come on.”

  Luise Fischer turned to Fan. “Goodbye, and I—”

  The blonde woman put her arms around her. “There’s nothing to say, and you’ll be back here in a couple of hours. Harry’ll show those saps they can’t put anything like this over on you.”

  The huge man said: “Come on.”

  Luise Fischer joined him and they went toward the front of the flat.

  As they passed the living-room door Donny, rising from the sofa, called cheerfully: “Don’t let them worry you, baby. We’ll—”

  A tall man in brown put a hand over Donny’s face and pushed him back on the sofa.

  Luise Fischer and the huge man went out. A police-department automobile was standing in front of the house where Brazil had left his coupé. A dozen or more adults and children were standing around it, solemnly watching the door through which she came.