The Lucky Stiff

by Craig Rice

  “Sure,” Anna Marie said, “and I’m a lucky stiff.” Suddenly she laughed. “That’s funny, you know. I’m a lucky stiff.” She gave Jesse Conway a quick pat on the shoulder, walked to the door and flung it open. “Well, let’s go, ghost.”

  The air outside was fresh and moist and cool. For a moment Anna Marie stood on the sidewalk, breathing deeply. Free, now. You know, free. Breathe the air, go to a movie, ride on busses, have fun, raise hell. Free, and alive. Just being alive, that wasn’t so bad either. She looked at her watch.

  Fifteen minutes to midnight.

  She turned to the white-faced, shaken man. For a moment she’d felt pity for him. Now her heart hardened again.

  If it hadn’t been for that lucky accident, right at this moment she’d be in her cell, waiting for the footsteps in the corridor. She was alive now, and free, but it wasn’t because of him.

  “This insane scheme of yours,” he mumbled. “Had to consent to it. Got us all on the spot, and you know it.” His hand reached out to grasp the doorpost. “For God’s sake, Anna Marie,” he said, his voice rising desperately, “you’re free, it’s all over, it was all a mistake. If you want money I can get it for you, plenty of it. You’re young, you’re beautiful, you can have a happy life—” his voice trailed off into a gasping whisper. “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing illegal,” she said. She looked at her watch. “In twelve minutes they’ll inform the newspapers that I went to the chair with a smile on my lips. Then you’re going to give out to the newspaper boys with that confession.” Just one side of her mouth smiled. “It’ll make a nice story. Girl executed for the murder she didn’t do. Anna Marie St. Clair died at midnight, and then—”

  “Don’t!” Jesse Conway said. “I won’t do it. I won’t, I tell you.”

  “Oh, yes you will,” she said. “You’ve got to. Or you and a lot of your friends are going to be very sorry. Give out with your confession story, Jesse Conway, but not until after the warden releases his statement. Or maybe you’ll have ghosts in your attic, too.”

  She walked out to the edge of the curb and stood waving for a taxi. It seemed to her as though the blood was moving in her veins for the first time in all these weeks. There weren’t going to be any footsteps in the corridor. No march to the electric chair. No wisecrack to spring from her lips at the last minute. The whole thing had been one hell of a bad dream—but she hadn’t dreamed it.

  A cab rolled up to the curb, the driver reached out and opened the door. Anna Marie paused, one foot on the step, then turned back to look at Jesse Conway.

  He looked sick, old. Somehow he managed to cross the sidewalk with slow, shambling steps, managed to hold the door for her, to help her in with what seemed like a travesty of courtliness.

  “Wait. Anna Marie,” he said. It was a tortured whisper.

  She smiled at him through the open cab door. Then she looked at her watch again.

  “In eight minutes now,” she said, “I’ll be dead.”

  She threw herself back against the seat cushions and closed her eyes. A few blocks later she sat upright and called to the driver. Her face was bright, almost gay, and her voice was as clear as a bell.

  “Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar,” she said.

  Chapter Four

  “Leave him alone,” Joe the Angel said, polishing a glass and putting it away back of the bar. “He’s brooding.”

  It was an unnecessary caution. Anyone with half an eye could see that John J. Malone was brooding, sitting there alone at the far end of the bar, his head propped up on his right hand, his left hand nursing a glass of gin. The little lawyer’s face was melancholy. One more gin and he’d probably burst into tears.

  The tactful customers of Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar were leaving him to his sorrows. The bar stools on each side of him were empty. No one knew why John J. Malone was brooding, but the voices in the bar were unusually soft, and no one played the juke box.

  Malone stirred and signaled to Joe the Angel, who came hurrying over. He pointed to his empty glass.

  “Maybe you’d better just leave the bottle right here,” Malone said. “I’m holding a wake.”

  Joe the Angel clucked sympathetically. “Friend or relative?”

  “Neither,” Malone said, shaking his head. “No one I ever met. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Joe the Angel looked at him, sighed, and went away, leaving the bottle. It was true that he didn’t understand, but then Irishmen like John J. Malone were subject to moods.

  Malone looked up at the clock, winced, and looked away again. One minute to twelve. They’d have taken her into the death chamber now, and strapped her into the chair. He hoped she wasn’t frightened, too terribly frightened. In a few more seconds now they’d turn on the infernal thing. He hoped it wouldn’t hurt.

  John J. Malone, criminal lawyer, went through this period of suffering whenever a convicted murderer went to the chair or was carried off to jail for life imprisonment. For that matter, he didn’t like to see anyone go to jail for even the most minor offense against law and order.

  The suffering had nothing to do with a lack of respect for law and order. Nor with any antisocial attitude toward crime. It wasn’t even because he was a criminal lawyer and, as a matter of professional pride, always felt that if he’d been the condemned person’s lawyer, the trial would have gone otherwise. It was simply that he always felt so damned sorry for the person going to jail or the electric chair, deservedly or not.

  In this case, however, his suffering was unusually acute. In the first place the criminal was a woman, and John J. Malone had a deep-seated sense of gallantry which made the execution of a woman impolite, immoral, and unthinkable. In the second, he’d fallen in love with the newspaper pictures of Anna Marie St. Clair. He’d dreamed about her nightly during all these weeks leading up to her execution. And, finally, he had a horrible, and uncomfortable conviction that she was innocent.

  He poured another gin and reviewed the circumstances of the case for the hundredth time. Anna Marie St. Clair had been provided for, lavishly, by Big Joe Childers. Possibly she’d been in love with him, though John J. Malone hoped not.

  The day of the murder Anna Marie St. Clair had been informed, anonymously, that Big Joe was keeping company with another girl and was about to desert Anna Marie St. Clair. She’d admitted that at the trial, and admitted that she’d been upset, in fact, sore as hell.

  She’d made a date with Big Joe to have it out with him. They’d met in one of the private rooms of a Clark Street bar.

  According to a number of witnesses, the two had quarreled violently. At the height of the quarrel there had been the sound of a shot. People had rushed into the private room, to find Big Joe stretched out on the floor, and Anna Marie St. Clair standing over him, her face white, the gun in her hand.

  Her story had been that, while they were quarreling, a man—she couldn’t describe him, she hadn’t had a good enough look at him—had rushed into the room, shot Big Joe, thrust the gun into her hand, and rushed out again.

  Obviously, the district attorney had said, not only a falsehood but a ridiculous one.

  The gun wasn’t Big Joe Childers’. In fact, it was well known that Big Joe never carried a gun. That made it a premeditated crime.

  The presence of Big Joe’s widow in the courtroom hadn’t helped Anna Marie’s case any, either. Malone scowled at the thought of Eva Childers. She’d worn simple, inexpensive, almost shabby clothes. She’d been the perfect gentle, heartbroken, and helpless widow. Malone knew that she was a rich woman with social pretensions, and hard as nails.

  If he’d been Anna Marie’s lawyer, he never would have let her wear those gorgeous, becoming, and obviously costly outfits. He’d have gotten the Widow Childers on the stand and somehow managed to show her up for what she was. He’d have—oh, he’d have done a lot of things.

  John J. Malone sighed into his gin. Every time he thought about the case, it seemed to him that there was some one thi
ng that proved Anna Marie’s story to be true. Only he couldn’t put his finger on it. If he could have, perhaps he could have done something to save her. This time, though, his brains had failed him—and failed her. It was too late now. He looked up at the clock again and realized he’d been musing for an hour. It was all over now. A boy came in selling newspapers. John J. Malone bought one, almost against his will, and spread it out on the bar in front of him. Suddenly his whole body stiffened, his face whitened.

  Anna Marie St. Clair had died in the electric chair at midnight. Less than half an hour later a dying gangster’s confession had proved her innocence.

  He had been right. Her story had been true. And it was too late, too late.

  John J. Malone reached for the gin bottle, then pushed it away from him. He felt stunned and sick; the room displayed just a faint inclination to reel. Not because of the gin, either.

  Through the blur in front of his eyes he saw Joe the Angel’s face. He looked at it for a moment while it slowly came into focus, and while the room settled down again. Joe the Angel was white as a piece of chalk, his eyes looked like brown marbles. He was looking at something beside John J. Malone.

  A soft voice said, “A double bourbon and water please.” Joe the Angel nodded as though he were hypnotized. He mumbled something and rushed to fill the order.

  John J. Malone turned slowly on the bar stool.

  There she was.

  It took a minute for his brain to function again. In that minute his eyes took in every detail of her pale face and wraithlike hands, her light, shining hair. He watched while she mixed the bourbon and water and drank it. He observed her clothes, the gray suit, the tiny hat with the veil, the gloves, and suddenly realized in what newspaper picture he’s seen them. In that moment she turned and smiled at him.

  “No you don’t!” John J. Malone said. He slid off the bar stool, overturning his glass, grabbed the gin bottle, and fled into the back room of Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar.

  He sank into the farthest booth and sat there shuddering, his face in his hands. When he looked up again she was across the table from him, smiling.

  “Go away,” John J. Malone said. “Go away. You’re not there. I’m drunk. It’s a hallucination. Go away. I didn’t do anything to you, did I? You know I didn’t do anything to you. I could have saved your life.” He drew a long, shivering breath.

  “You didn’t do anything to me,” she whispered, “but you can help me now. You want to help me, don’t you?”

  “Anything,” John J. Malone said. In the half-lighted booth, through the blur before his eyes, she seemed misty, all gray and shadows, and more beautiful than ever. “I’ll do anything,” John J. Malone repeated, and buried his head in his arms.

  When he looked up again, she was gone.

  Reason was what he needed, the lawyer told himself. Cold, hardheaded reason. And a breath of fresh air. And a long period of total abstinence.

  He rose by bracing both hands against the table, caught his breath, and managed to walk out into the bar with a show of nonchalance. It was strangely quiet. Everyone seemed to be looking at him.

  Malone nodded to Joe the Angel and said, “Put it on my bill.” He started for the door.

  “Wait a minute,” Joe the Angel said hoarsely. “Where is she?”

  “She?” Malone repeated. “Have you been seeing things?” Get a grip on yourself, he thought. There is such a thing as mass hallucination. He’d read about it once. “Good night, Joe.”

  But there on the bar was the glass from which she’d drunk her bourbon and water. Malone stared at it for a horrified moment, and fled out to the sidewalk, leaving a white-faced Joe the Angel, who promptly sent all his customers home, closed up his bar for the first time in nine years, and headed for the nearest church.

  She was there, smiling at him, out on the sidewalk, beside the open door of a waiting taxicab.

  Suddenly John J. Malone’s fear left him. Anna Marie St. Clair was so beautiful. And she needed his help. She wasn’t there to harm him or to frighten him; she was there because she needed him. And he was still in love with her.

  He found himself smiling at her as he got into the taxi. He felt numb, numb all over, his skin was cold and damp, but he wasn’t frightened.

  “Where do you live?” she whispered.

  Automatically he gave the name of the Loop hotel where he’d lived so many years. His heart began beating so hard he was afraid it might burst. She was going home with him, just as she had in a few of the more spectacular of his dreams.

  Then he leaned forward and told the driver to go to the side entrance, the one near the freight elevator. The desk clerk in the hotel had been a trifle difficult lately, and he might not realize that Malone’s companion was an illusion.

  John J. Malone almost forgot that fact himself as he paid the cab driver, ushered Anna Marie St. Clair through the side door, and rode with her up the freight elevator. For the moment, she was just the most beautiful girl in the world.

  He’d hung the “DO NOT DISTURB” sign on his door, locked the door, tossed his hat on the dresser, and said, “Can I give you a drink, dear?” before he remembered.

  She was misty and lovely, standing there dressed in gray and pink and gold, smiling at him, encouraging him, perhaps even liking him.

  He knew he should be afraid, but he wasn’t.

  “I like you, Mr. Malone,” Anna Marie St. Clair said. There was a warm, almost an alive, note in her voice.

  Malone stood there, looking at her, at every detail of her costume, the gray suit with its collarless neck and slightly flaring skirt, the tiny gray shoes, the skin-colored stockings, the hat, the veil, the purse, the gloves. Then suddenly it was as though an electric light bulb had flashed on in his brain.

  “Now I know,” he said hoarsely. “Now I know why you couldn’t have killed him. The one thing I needed to realize. The proof. I can see it, now.” He took a step nearer to her. “I can prove that you didn’t kill him.” Then there was a sob in his throat. “I could have proved it, I mean,” he said, as he reached for her.

  Chapter Five

  He’d dreamed the whole thing.

  The realization was a great relief to John J. Malone, lying there in bed with his eyes still closed. Because there were only two alternatives to its having been a dream, and he couldn’t face either of them, especially at this hour in the morning. It didn’t happen, he thought, and he wasn’t crazy. Just a dream.

  He regretted having wakened from it. It had been a beautiful dream, and an ecstatic one. “For a little while,” he whispered, “I thought you were really here.”

  “I’m still here,” a soft voice said, not very far away.

  John J. Malone opened his eyes and sat bolt upright, clutching the sheet around his shoulders. There she was, Anna Marie St. Clair, sitting in the one easy chair, wrapped in his old bathrobe, her tawny hair loose over her shoulders, sipping a cup of coffee. And there on the floor was the newspaper, telling how Anna Marie St. Clair had been electrocuted last night at twelve.

  “I phoned downstairs for coffee,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind. You’d probably like some yourself.” She poured out a second cup and handed it to him.

  He took it automatically and drank it, still staring at her, while his mind slowly snapped back into focus. Suddenly the empty cup slid from his fingers and rolled down to the floor, unnoticed.

  “You had a double,” he said. “I mean, she had a double. You were identical twins.”

  She laughed pleasantly and lit a cigarette. “Nothing like that. I’m Anna Marie.”

  Malone crossed himself hastily and instinctively. Then he looked at her for a moment. Some of the details of what he’d considered to be a bright and colorful dream began to come back to him. “You’re no ghost,” he said, almost accusingly.

  She laughed again. “Of course not,” she said. “I never was one.” Her face grew sober. “I’m terribly sorry, really. But I couldn’t resist. I had to find out what t
he effect would be. If people would—believe in me. Really, you’ve no idea how glad I am that you did.”

  “But damn it,” Malone said crossly, “you looked—” his eyes narrowed. Her face had been white, dead white, her eyes enormous and shadowy, her lovely mouth almost blue. Now, though there was a faint prison pallor on her smooth cheeks, her skin was alive and glowing, her lips red, her eyes bright. “Make-up!” he said. “For the love of Mike—”

  He grabbed the newspaper, read hastily through the story of how Anna Marie St. Clair had died at midnight, a smile on her lips, protesting to the last that she was innocent.

  “All right,” he said. “Tell me.” His voice was hoarse.

  “The confession got there in time,” she said. “Lucky, isn’t it, that they broke the news to me before they gave it to the newspapers.”

  She told him the rest of it. The trial, the bland assurances that she had nothing to worry about, the verdict and the sentence, the appeal for a new trial, automatically refused, the long weeks in prison when no one, not even Jesse Conway, had come to see her and when she couldn’t get in touch with anyone.

  Malone already knew all the legal details, he’d read them again and again in the newspapers. And what she’d thought, and felt, during those weeks was something he’d not only guessed at, but lived through with her.

  She told him about what she’d thought were going to be her last few hours alive, and the walk to the warden’s office, and what had happened there.

  “Now,” she said, “I’m a ghost.” She glanced at the tiny platinum watch on her wrist and said, “And a damned hungry one. It’s eleven o’clock.”

  “I’m hungry, too,” Malone said. He reached for the phone and said, “What do you want?”

  “Anything, as long as it isn’t lukewarm oatmeal, dry toast, and thin coffee.”