The Lucky Stiff

by Craig Rice

  This was their wedding anniversary. He couldn’t even remember which one. It didn’t really matter. All that mattered was the waking up every morning and seeing her long, silky hair spread out on the pillow, and her face, childlike in sleep, nestled in her arm. Coffee in the sunroom in the morning, Helene in her violet chiffon negligee or her fluffy white robe, or her bandanna sun-suit, or, on special occasions, the blue satin house pajamas she’d been wearing the first time they had met.

  “Helene,” he said, “every time I look at you I feel as if someone had just given my heart a hot-foot.”

  Her eyes warmed. “Darling,” she whispered, “I didn’t know you were a poet!” This time her hand reached out for his, and it wasn’t icy cold.

  Jake Justus, ex-reporter, ex-press agent, and, as he occasionally reminded himself, definitely ex-amateur detective, sighed again. Happily, this time. That unpleasant knot of anxiety in his stomach went away for a moment. After all, why should he worry? He was married to Helene, and he owned the Casino.

  Across the table, Helene looked at him thoughtfully over the rim of her glass. There was a Look Jake got on his face when something bothered him. She could tell. He ran his fingers through his sandy red hair and twisted it into knots. He scowled. He wrinkled his nose. He lit cigarette after cigarette, and crushed each one after a few puffs. He looked at something millions of miles away, and said, “Yes?” in an absent-minded voice when you asked him a question.

  Her fingers tightened on his. She whispered, “Jake. Darling.”

  Jake blinked and said, “Yes?” And then, “What?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Helene said.

  She knew from experience it wasn’t any use saying, “What’s the matter?” She’d only get a vague smile and a perfectly worthless assurance that nothing was the matter. After all, she reminded herself, she shouldn’t worry. She had everything in the world to make her happy, including—especially—Jake. Just to look at his pleasant, homely, freckled face made her spine feel like a marimba in a rhumba band.

  But she wasn’t happy. Perhaps it was because a girl she’d never met, never even seen except in newspaper pictures, was going to the electric chair at midnight.

  “Dance?” Jake said. He might have been speaking to a casual acquaintance, to an extra woman at a big and boring party.

  “No, thanks,” Helene said in the same tone.

  Jake lit another cigarette. He didn’t really feel like dancing. Not with the thought that kept coming back into his mind in spite of the sight of Helene and the touch of her fingers. It would have been like—yes, like dancing on a new grave.

  Forget it, he told himself grimly. You probably couldn’t have done anything, anyway. Think about your wedding anniversary, think about Helene, think about the Casino. Think about everything else in the world.

  The Casino. That was something worth thinking about. Jake looked around the big, softly lighted room; at the tables, the bar, the dance floor, the stage. The Casino had seen a lot of changes in its lifetime. First, a swank gambling joint, with the barest pretense of a night club for window dressing. Next, an exclusive night club with a dance floor the size of a prize ring, special entertainment in the bar, and the gambling discreetly moved upstairs. Then Jake had won it on a bet. Now the Casino, considerably remodeled, boasted the biggest dance floor in the Middle West, the best bands, the best entertainers, and was a place where a guy could bring his girl and have one whale of a good time for under five bucks, including taxi fare. It was making money, too.

  He remembered the opening night of the new Casino. There had been worries on his mind then, too, but not like this one. A simple little matter of owing a lot of money, due on a day when he couldn’t possibly pay it. That worry seemed pretty silly right now. And opening night had been something special, the place jammed with customers and crawling with celebrities of one sort or another. Big Joe Childers had had the table right over there, next to the dance floor, with his gorgeous girl friend Anna Marie—

  Forget it!

  For a moment Jake was afraid he’d said it out loud. He hoped that he’d only felt the shudder that racked his long, lean body, that he’d only imagined the cold sweat on his forehead. Most of all he hoped that Helene hadn’t noticed anything.

  “Jake, darling,” Helene said. “There must be something you can do.”

  He looked at her and tried to pretend he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “It’s after eleven,” Helene said. “Jake, telephone somebody. Get the mayor. Get the governor. Get Malone.”

  “Too late,” Jake said.

  “There’s nearly forty minutes,” Helene said. The skin around her lips was white.

  “The mayor couldn’t do any good,” Jake said. “I don’t know the governor. And I haven’t the faintest idea where Malone is.” He was talking as calmly as he could, in spite of that feeling in his stomach, as though someone had left a tray of ice cubes in it.

  “Don’t you care?”

  “Stop being sentimental,” Jake said coldly.

  “I’m very sorry,” Helene said, even more coldly.

  Music ended, dancers stood still on the floor clapping wildly for more music. The beating of their hands sounded like rainfall. The band leader shook his head, smiling, and the pianist struck off a few chords. The floor emptied, and the lights changed.

  “How can anyone dance, now, tonight?” Helene whispered.

  Jake pretended he didn’t hear.

  There were a few minutes of quiet before the floor show started, just long enough for the waiters to pick up and deliver orders. Then a fanfare from the band, another change of lights, a few bars of music, and Milly Dale slipped out from between the curtains, tiny, sleek, smiling, tossing her long dark hair back from her shoulders. The applause drowned out the band for a moment, then Milly Dale began to sing in her deep, sultry voice, and the big room grew still.

  When I’m sitting in the gloom

  Of my lonely little room—

  Jake turned his back to the stage and tried to forget the first time he’d heard that song, in the Old Haywire Club, now the Orchid Bowl, sung by a girl with an untrained, off-key voice, a girl with tawny hair and big, gray-blue, almost smoky, eyes. He signaled the waiter for two more vodka collins, then looked at his wrist watch. Twenty-five minutes to twelve.

  The audience objected loudly to Milly Dale’s leaving the stage, but they calmed down a little when the chorus romped down the steps onto the dance floor. They howled appreciatively at the comedians who followed the chorus. Then Milly Dale came back, in a black satin dress that fitted her like adhesive tape, struck a pose, and began to sing:

  Dear jury,

  It you think I’m the girl with the gun,

  You can search me.

  Dear jury—

  “Jake!” Helene whispered, “I’ve just remembered—Jake listen—”

  “You can tell me when we get home,” Jake said. He rose. “Finish your drink and let’s get out of here.” His voice was harsh.

  Helene took one quick glance at his face, slid her wrap over her shoulders, and rose without another word.

  They paused for a moment at the bar. Milly Dale had gone through half of her strip act before an imaginary jury and was now down to the black satin bathing suit.

  If you think I hid those letters,

  Try and find them,

  If you think I—

  “Darling,” Helene said. “That song. Doesn’t it remind’ you of something—”

  “It does,” Jake said, “and shut up.” It reminded him of that off-key voice. He said to the bartender, “A double rye, and quick.”

  Helene glanced at him and added to the bartender, “Same for me, and please have our car brought around to the side door.”

  When they left Milly Dale’s voice followed them.

  Dear jury—

  If you—

  “Hell!” Jake said, and slammed the car door when they got in.

  There was silence all the way to th
e apartment building, all the way through the lobby and up the elevator. Once inside the apartment Helene let the dark green wool cape slide off her shoulders. “Coffee?” she asked. “Champagne? Or just a drink?”

  “Never mind,” Jake said. He walked across the room and turned on the radio for the late news broadcast.

  There was the buzz as the radio warmed up, and a commercial for a credit dentist. The station break, then the news announcer.

  “Anna Marie St. Clair died in the electric chair at one minute after midnight this morning, with a smile on her lips—”

  Jake switched it off and sank down on the couch.

  “She was innocent,” Helene whispered. “I could have proved it.”

  “A drink,” Jake said. “Get me a drink.”

  He downed the glass of rye she put in his hand. Then he looked up at the pleasant, familiar room. There were flowers everywhere, the flowers he’d ordered and picked out for this occasion. There was, he knew, champagne being iced in the kitchenette. There was Helene in her pale green dress.

  He hadn’t wanted their wedding anniversary to be like this. He’d wanted roses and champagne and laughter.

  If only he could tell Helene the whole story. Anna Marie. The Clark Street saloon on the night of the murder. But he couldn’t. Not even to Helene could he give away the reason why he’d kept his mouth shut all these weeks.

  She looked at him, at the silent radio, and back at him again. Suddenly she caught her breath. So that was it. Helene made several unpleasant remarks to herself about being both tactless and an idiot.

  “Jake. Darling.” She sat down beside him. He looked at her, his eyes full of misery.

  “Don’t think about it. Don’t brood about it. It’s all over and done with.” She paused to light a cigarette for him. “After all, you said yourself there wasn’t anything we—you—could have done.”

  Jake turned away. “That’s just the trouble,” he said. “There was.”

  Chapter Three

  “You had us in a spot,” Jesse Conway said, “and you know it. We had to give in to your crazy scheme. But what’s in your mind? What comes next?”

  “I don’t know,” Anna Marie said lightly. She sounded as though she didn’t care.

  She looked out through the window of Jesse Conway’s limousine at the lights of Chicago’s streets flashing by. Funny to see lights again. Lights and people and automobiles. There was the marquee of a theater. Perhaps tomorrow she’d go to a movie. Funny to be able to go to a movie. Funny to be out of the cell. Funny to be alive at all.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Quarter of eleven,” Jesse Conway said. “Now, look here, Anna Marie—”

  “In an hour and fifteen minutes,” she said with a little laugh, “I’ll be dead.”

  Jesse Conway started to speak, changed his mind, and shrugged his shoulders. At last he said, “Well, where do you want to go?”

  “My apartment first,” Anna Marie said. “I suppose I can still get in.”

  Jesse Conway cleared his throat in an embarrassed fashion. “I still have the key, you know. Tomorrow I was to go in and get all your clothes, and send them to your Aunt Bess out in Grove Junction.”

  “I remember,” Anna Marie said coldly, “and you can go ahead as per schedule. Only I’m afraid Aunt Bess will have to wait.” She was silent for a few minutes, thinking. “I’ll find a safe hide-out in the morning. You can bring me the clothes and some other things, and money. I don’t suppose I can touch my own dough.”

  “Hardly,” Jesse Conway said.

  Anna Marie laughed. “That’s the hell of being a ghost. Oh, well. You can advance me whatever I need, and I’ll give it back to you when I’m through with this monkey business.”

  “Whatever you say,” he said wearily. “But why the hide-out? Nobody’ll try to take you back to jail.”

  “Because ghosts never appear in the daytime,” she told him.

  The car stopped in front of a modest apartment building. The street was dark and deserted, but Anna Marie glanced around for possible spectators before she crossed the sidewalk. Jesse Conway unlocked a side entrance on the ground floor and turned on the lights. Anna Marie paused just inside the door and looked.

  There was a thin film of dust on the yellow brocade love seat, with its wickedly simpering carved cupids. There was dust on the thick pile carpet, on the deep-cushioned chairs, and on the built-in bar. Some news photographer had left a flash bulb on the gilt coffee table.

  “Big Joe Childers did me proud,” Anna Marie said. “Too bad some son-of-a-bitch killed him.”

  She told Jesse Conway to wait for her and went on into the bedroom, which she had perversely decorated with muslin and dimity, a young girl’s four-poster bed, hooked rugs, and big, pale pink ribbon bows on the curtains. In it, her flamboyant beauty stood out like a firecracker in an old-fashioned garden, and she knew it.

  While Jesse Conway waited impatiently and apprehensively in the next room, she poured handfuls of perfumed salts into the tub, ran in steaming water, and took a long, luxurious bath. Then she dressed, slowly and meticulously, reveling as much in the privacy as in the comforts of her room. To bathe and dress without one of those weasel-eyed female wardens watching—that was something!

  Half an hour later she came back into the living room. Jesse Conway looked up, and gasped.

  She wore a close-fitting, obviously costly, pale gray suit. The jacket was collarless, and fastened at her throat with a dull gold clasp. The skirt flared very slightly between her hip and her knee. Her tiny slippers were gray, and her incredibly sheer stockings were the exact color of her skin. There was a little gray pillbox hat on her tawny head, and from it floated an immense, graceful, bright pink veil. She carried bright pink gloves, and the purse under her arm was made of wide, diagonal stripes of pink suede and gold kid.

  “Good God!” Jesse Conway said. Then he took out his handkerchief, sponged his brow, and said, “But that’s the—those are the clothes—”

  “It’s what I had on the night I was supposed to have shot Big Joe,” she said, smiling. “Becoming outfit, isn’t it?”

  Jesse Conway said, “Very.” He looked at her again, closely. She’d made up her lovely face so that it was very pale. The lipstick she’d used was almost lavender. There was a deep smudge of purplish eye shadow on her lids.

  “You look white as death,” Jesse Conway said. He bit the last word off suddenly.

  “That’s the idea,” Anna Marie told him. “Now give me about twenty bucks and you can tell me good night. Tomorrow come in and get all my clothes out of here, and all the make-up and stuff I left on top of the dresser. I’ll let you know where to send it, along with some more money.”

  He rose and stood looking at her, twisting his hat brim between his fingers. At last he said, “Anna Marie, you’re insane.”

  “Maybe,” she said lightly. She shrugged her shoulders, took a cigarette from her pink enamel case and lit it. “People have been known to go insane, waiting for weeks to be led to the electric chair.” She blew out a cloud of smoke and looked at him through it, her eyes narrowed. “And you know, I bet you’d never have come near me tonight except for that lucky accident of the confession—which you had nothing to do with.”

  He tried to meet her eyes, failed, and sank down on the yellow brocade love seat, looking at the floor, wordless. Anna Marie stood for a moment, watching him. It was hard not to feel sorry for a man who seemed so anxious, so dejected—and so guilty.

  Jesse Conway was middle-aged, well dressed, and dignified. His hair was gray, but it was still heavy, and carefully brushed. He had a handsome, deeply lined face, though the eyes were just a trifle bloodshot, and the lips twitched ever so little when they should have been in repose. A fine figure of a man, his friends said.

  “Believe me,” he muttered, “believe me, Anna Marie, it was none of my doing. I couldn’t help it. I knew you were being framed.”

  “And you helped them frame me,” sh
e said without bitterness, almost gaily. “My own lawyer.”

  “No,” he said, looking at the floor. “No, that isn’t true. But my hands were tied, and you know it. Why, you were convicted before I was even engaged as your lawyer. And even then”—he crumpled a handkerchief between his palms, looked away—“you had the wrong lawyer, that’s all.”

  Anna Marie remembered the weeks spent in the death cell and laughed harshly. “That’s no news to me.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said dully. “That isn’t what I meant at all. There’s one lawyer who might have spared you this. He’s not afraid of anything or anybody. They say he’s as crooked as a worm in an apple, but nobody can buy him if he doesn’t want to be bought. At your trial the judge and the jury were fixed, but even with that he might have come up with something. I even thought”—he paused—“it’s a damned shame that”—paused again and finally said, looking up, “I mean John J. Malone.”

  Anna Marie frowned. She sat down on the arm of a chair, swinging her foot. “I’ve heard about him.”

  “He’s a little guy,” Jesse Conway said, “short and stocky, with dark hair and a red face. Always looks mussed up. He’s a souse and a dame chaser and a gambler, but he’s a damn smart lawyer.”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding slowly. “That’s the one.”

  “He hangs out in Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar,” Jesse Conway said. “He’s got an office somewhere on Washington Street. The address is in the phone book, in case you ever need him.” He smiled mirthlessly. “As you probably will, if you do what I think you’re going to do.”

  “I’m not going to do any murders,” Anna Marie said. She stood up and tucked her purse under her arm. Then she, too, smiled. “Unless scaring people to death counts as murder.” Her eyes softened suddenly, almost with pity. “What are you being so damn helpful for?”

  The gray-haired man looked past her, his face haggard, his hands clenched together between his knees. “Because,” he said hoarsely. “Because. Today, all day. It was a kind of murder, you know. They were murdering you. And nothing I could do, not one damn thing.” He sucked in his breath sharply. “It was an accident, you know. The confession. It just happened that way. It was a lucky accident.”