The Lucky Stiff

by Craig Rice

  On a sudden impulse she called Malone’s office, looking at her watch as she reached for the receiver. After two o’clock. The little lawyer ought to be in now.

  Mr. Malone was on the other wire. Would Mrs. Justus care to wait?

  “No, thanks,” Helene said. “Just tell him I’m on my way down.”

  She went down the corridor and into the elevator, deep in thought. The operator remarked that it sure was a terrible day outside, and Helene absent-mindedly agreed with him, yes, it was warm for this time of year.

  Jake’s anxiety had begun before Big Joe Childers’ death, but it had something to do with Anna Marie St. Clair. Therefore, the murder was the starting point for thought.

  She paused at the desk long enough to ask if Mr. Justus had left a message as to where he was going and when he’d be back. Mr. Justus had not. Thank you, Ed. She went on out to the street and walked through the fog to where she’d parked the gray convertible the night before.

  What was the name of that saloon where Big Joe Childers had been killed?

  She sat for a moment behind the wheel, trying to remember. Happy something. She’d noticed that at the time of the murder, and had reflected that it hadn’t been a happy place for Big Joe. She’d noticed something else, too, at the time. She’d been reading the newspaper and looking at the pictures, and some one thing had struck her as proof that Anna Marie hadn’t shot Big Joe. Jake had shut her up and changed the subject quick. She’d become too concerned over the way Jake had spoken to think any more about the murder, and since then she’d never been able to remember what it was.

  That wasn’t important now, anyway, except as something to puzzle over in the long winter nights. Even if she could remember, it wouldn’t help Anna Marie now.

  She drove down to Division Street and turned into Clark, moving slowly through the fog. Happy Hour? No, that wasn’t it. She passed Bughouse Square, crossed Chicago Avenue. Clark Street was drearier than usual in the smoke-laden fog; pawnshops, cheap clothing stores, tawdry night spots, saloons.

  There it was. The Happy Days. Silly of her to have forgotten.

  She parked the convertible around the corner on Ontario Street.

  What on earth was she going to say or do when she got inside? March up to one of the waiters and say, “Look here, how is my husband mixed up in Joe Childers’ murder?” What the devil did she expect to see or find?

  Helene shivered in the damp air. A flashily dressed man looked at her hopefully. She pushed open the door to The Happy Days and told herself firmly one thing she expected to find was a drink.

  The Happy Days didn’t pretend to be anything but a cheap joint. A bar along one side of the big room. Brown-painted booths on the other. A few tables scattered in between. Pinkish lights. A juke box. A door at the end of the room leading to the “Private Dining Rooms,” the office, and the toilets. A sign over the bar reading, Whisky, 30¢ a drink. Double 50¢.” And, at this hour of the afternoon, very few customers. A bored-looking bartender sat reading the Racing Form.

  Just an ordinary North Clark Street joint. But Helene shivered again, this time it wasn’t from the fog. Nor even from the fact that Big Joe Childers had been murdered in one of those back rooms. Just something—she couldn’t tell what it was—indescribably sinister about this place.

  She slid onto one of the bar stools, said, “Hello,” in her brightest voice, and gave the bartender her best smile.

  He looked at her coldly and said, “Yeah?”

  “A double rye. Isn’t it a horrid day?”

  “Yeah.” He poured the rye, collected fifty cents, and proceeded to ignore her.

  “Tell me, didn’t you used to be at Brownie’s, on Division Street?”

  He shook his head.

  Helene smothered a sigh. She was justly famous for her way with bartenders, but she certainly wasn’t getting anywhere with this one.

  “That’s funny. I could have sworn I saw you there. Weren’t you there about a year ago?”

  He didn’t rise to the bait and say, “No, I was here a year ago.” He simply shook his head again.

  Helene sipped the rye. It wasn’t as bad as she had expected. “It must have been somewhere else then. Where were you about a year ago?”

  This time he looked up long enough to say, “Why?”

  “Just curiosity,” Helene said. She could feel her cheeks reddening. For a while she sat in silence, looking at the reflection of the dingy room in the bar mirror.

  At the far end of the bar was a morose young man drinking gin rickeys. One of the tables was occupied by a plump man with a newspaper and a bottle of beer. A couple were in one of the booths: a man with sleck, dark hair, a sallow face, and expensive clothes; a smallish woman in a black Persian lamb coat and a tiny black hat with bright green feathers. The woman’s face was hidden, but there was something vaguely familiar about the set of her shoulders and the way she carried her head. Helene puzzled over it for a moment and then dismissed the thought. It wasn’t likely anyone she knew would be in The Happy Days.

  There was a thickset, red-faced man lounging in a chair near the rear door. He, too, seemed curiously familiar. Helene regarded him for a while in the mirror. Stiff yellow hair, little blue eyes, a blotchy nose. Then she remembered. He had been an important witness at the trial of Anna Marie St. Clair. Helene felt a little flutter of excitement.

  The rye was about half gone when she had a sudden inspiration. She looked at her watch, shook it, and called out to the bartender. “Please, I’m afraid my watch has stopped. Do you know what time it is?”

  He looked at a clock back of the bar and said, “Ten after three.”

  “Oh, dear!”

  The tone she put into it did make him look at her.

  “Please—I was supposed to meet my husband here at two o’clock—I didn’t know my watch had stopped and I’m afraid I was late—do you know if he’s been in—and gone?”

  “Don’t know your husband,” the bartender said.

  “Oh, but your must. He’s tall and he’s got red hair and freckles. His name is”—she hesitated only a fraction of a second—“Jake Justus.”

  The bartender laid down his paper and looked at her silently for a long time. It was a look that Helene didn’t like. “Don’t know him.” There was another silence. “Maybe Jack knows him.” He rose, waddled out from behind the bar to confer in whispers with the red-faced man. He came back and said, “Jack don’t know him, either.”

  “Well, thank you,” Helene said.

  She saw the red-faced man start down the corridor towards the back rooms. The room seemed very still, and everyone in it was looking at her. The bartender. The plump man with the beer. The morose young man with the gin rickeys. The couple in the booth.

  If she were to walk across the room and out through the door, would anyone stop her? She wasn’t sure. She finished the rye, and it warmed her a little.

  Then she saw the face of the woman in the booth. Joe Childers’ widow.

  Her hunch had been right. For a moment she forgot about being afraid. Somehow, Jake was tied up with the murder of Big Joe Childers. Obviously, his name was known here. Mentioning the name of a perfect stranger wouldn’t cause all this commotion.

  The man named Jack came back and resumed his lounging. The couple went on with their conversation. The bartender turned to page three of the Racing Form. Everything seemed back to normal, then a man walked out from the back rooms, a man Helene recognized on sight. Bill McKeown.

  She’d had him pointed out to her a dozen times or more, the big, burly man who was so unexpectedly suave in dress and manner. He’d tried to buy the Casino once, and Jake had turned him down. He owned a lot of places, but she hadn’t imagined that The Happy Days might be one of them.

  When he came over to her side, she pretended, successfully, not to recognize him.

  “Were you looking for somebody?”

  Helene’s eyes could be wide, innocent pools. They were now, as she repeated the story she’d tol
d the bartender.

  “Justus?” He shook his handsome head. “Don’t know anyone of that name here.”

  “That’s funny,” Helene said in an anxious, almost childlike voice, “I thought he came here all the time.”

  “Sorry,” Bill McKeown said. “You must be in the wrong place.” His tone and his manner were friendly, but a glint in his eyes said, “You are in the wrong place, and you’d better get out right now.”

  “Oh,” Helene said. “I’m so sorry I troubled you.”

  “No trouble at all,” Bill McKeown said. He paused for just a moment at the door and said several words, with a gesture to Jack. The gesture, which Helene caught in the mirror of her compact, indicated that Helene was harmless.

  Helene waited until the bartender had served another gin rickey to the morose young man and a pair of bourbon highballs to the couple in the booth. Then she turned on her best smile.

  “I think I’ll wait a few minutes longer, just in case. Will you give me another double rye while I wait, please. And I believe I’ll sit over in a booth.”

  No one was paying much attention to her now. She walked across the room and slid into the booth behind Mrs. Childers in time to hear a fragment of conversation.

  “You’ve got to listen to reason.” That was Mrs. Childers.

  “Four murders.” That was the man.

  “Four?”

  “The girl was murdered, too. It’s a kind of murder.”

  The bartender paused for a moment on his way to Helene’s booth, and the conversation ended as though it had been on a radio suddenly clicked off. Helene said, “Thank you,” very sweetly as she paid the bartender, her heart wishing him all the bad luck in the world. A moment later the couple got up and left.

  Four murders. She knew of only two. Big Joe, and Anna Marie—because the man with Mrs. Childers had been right, that had been a kind of murder. Wait—there was Ike Malloy. But who had been the fourth victim?

  Was Jake all right?

  She lit a cigarette. Of course Jake was all right. Jake could take care of himself. He was in trouble, but he hadn’t been murdered, and she knew that by the same intuition by which she knew he was in trouble.

  The door to the corridor was ajar. From where she sat, she could see most of it, including doors to some of the private rooms. The newspaper account of how Ike Malloy had come in and out was pretty complete, but she wanted to see for herself. Well, that was easy to manage.

  Helene finished her drink, picked up her purse, walked over to the red-faced man, and said, “Where is the—?”

  He jerked his head toward the corridor and said, “Third door on your right.”

  There were two “Private Dining Rooms” on the right and one on the left. Helene peered in as she went by. This, the first on the right, was the one from which the “reliable witnesses” had heard the quarrel and the sound of the shot. The one on the left had been unoccupied when Big Joe was killed. It contained a round table, a sideboard, a number of chairs, and a green-shaded light. It looked well used, too. Helene wondered where all the poker players had been on the night of Big Joe’s murder.

  The room where Big Joe had been killed was small, soiled, and sordid. A table, a couple of chairs, a wicker floor lamp, a few ash trays, a lumpy couch with a faded cover, and a few gaudy pictures on the walls. Helene was satisfied with one quick glance.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d seen a room where someone had been killed. But there was something about this one that made her shudder. Big Joe had been a rich man, a lavish spender. He owned a five-acre estate in Highland Park, and when he came to the Casino he always acted as though he were slumming. And Anna Marie had been a girl who would have insisted on the best of everything.

  Why had they picked this tawdry room, in the rear of a cheap saloon, as a meeting place?

  Or had it been picked for them—without their knowledge?

  Who had picked it, and why?

  It had been damned bad stage setting on somebody’s part. That fact alone fairly yelled of a frame-up. What had been the matter with Anna Marie’s lawyer?

  There was a murmur of voices at the end of the corridor. Helene went on a few steps. There were two more doors on the right, marked with enameled signs. Ladies. Gentlemen. The door on the left was marked Office, and it was just slightly ajar. That was where the voices were coming from.

  “—and I don’t care if the song was specially written for you, you aren’t to sing it again, anywhere, understand?” That was Bill McKeown’s voice. A pause, and he went on, “I’m only trying to save you from a lot of trouble. See?”

  A feminine voice called Bill McKeown an objectionable name.

  “Don’t you lose your temper with me,” Bill McKeown said.

  There was a silence. On a sudden impulse Helene pushed open the door marked Office, Bill McKeown sat behind a grimy golden-oak desk. The angry and sulky girl who was slumped in the one armchair was Milly Dale. She didn’t look up.

  Helene muttered. “Sorry. I was looking for the—”

  “Across the hall,” Bill McKeown snapped.

  She said, “Thank you,” turned and entered the room labeled Ladies, and bolted the door. Suddenly she was scared, more scared than she had ever been in her life. Everything seemed to be tying up together. The murders, and everything else, certainly had something to do with The Happy Days. And here she was barricaded in the ladies’ room of The Happy Days, after having been entirely too nosy for her own good.

  She heard the corridor door close. There was a firm, deliberate sound to the closing. The face that looked back at her from the mirror was pale.

  It could still be her imagination, she told herself. Perhaps the door was customarily kept closed. Or it had blown shut. Perhaps no one was noticing her.

  There was one way to find out. She added a touch more lipstick, tilted the broad-brimmed hat to an even more gay angle. Then she went back into the corridor.

  The door to her right, leading to the alley, was padlocked and bolted. It had been, she remembered, the night Big Joe Childers died. A waiter working for The Happy Days had opened it and let in Ike Malloy, while a car waited in the alley. But no waiter was going to open it for her right now.

  She noticed that the door to the office was wide open, and the office was empty.

  Helene squared her shoulders, marched down the corridor, and tried the door. It opened. She walked through the bar and out to the sidewalk. No one stopped her. No one noticed her. A minute later she was in the convertible, lighting a cigarette.

  There had been something strange about that room when she passed through on her way out. A different bartender looked bored behind the bar; the man named Jack had been replaced by a thin boy with a pallid face; the two customers had disappeared, and several others had come in. True, bartenders and bouncers did go off duty, and customers did come and go, but it had been a very quick and complete change for so short a time.

  She started the convertible and headed for Michigan Avenue. At the same moment a black sedan slid away from the curb. Not until she’d reached State Street did she wonder if it was following her. A few experimental turns—Ohio, to Rush, to Huron, over to Wabash, back on Erie toward Michigan. The black sedan stayed discreetly half a block behind.

  Helene’s lovely mouth set in a firm line. She slammed on the brakes, and the black sedan slid up almost bumper to bumper. She couldn’t recognize the man at the wheel from what she saw in her rearview mirror, but there was no mistaking that hat with the bright green feathers.

  Losing the black sedan would be easy. She’d once lost the police department of the city of Chicago by the simple expedient of taking the lower level of the Michigan Avenue bridge. But Helene had a better idea. She drove at a leisurely pace down the Avenue, turned into the Loop, and stopped at Marshall Field’s, where an attendant took her car for parking.

  The great store was already a blaze of light and color with Christmas decorations. Helene stood behind an ornamental Christmas tree and wai
ted. A few seconds later the Widow Childers came in, and after that it was only a matter of playing hide-and-seek, or squirrel-around-the-tree.

  She was able to get a good look at Joe Childers’ widow. A pretty, early middle-aged, perfectly groomed woman who, right now, looked irritated and vexed.

  It wasn’t long before Eva Childers gave up and went out into Washington Street. This time, it was Helene who followed. The sidewalks were crowded, but the bright green feathers were like a beacon. Across State Street, straight on west past Dearborn and Clark. The building Eva Childers entered was a dingy one, with a soiled tile floor and one rickety wire-cage elevator.

  Helene waited until the elevator came down again. “Hello, Bill,” she said to the shabby old operator.

  He grinned at her. “Hi, Mrs. Justus. Going up?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. What floor did that woman go to—the one who just came in?”

  “Eleven, Mrs. Justus.”

  Helene said, “Thanks. I guess I will go up.”

  There were, she knew, three offices on floor eleven—two vacant and one occupied. The occupied one belonged to John J. Malone.

  Chapter Nine

  “The protection racket is a stinking one,” Malone said through a cloud of cigar smoke. “It’s making a guy pay for something he never gets. It’s blackmail when you haven’t done anything to be blackmailed for.” He paused and scowled sternly at Jake. “But, of course, when guys are dumb enough to fall for it—”

  Jake said, “All right, I’m dumb. But I thought you were smart. My mistake.”

  “You can take your choice,” Malone growled. “Keep your temper, or give me back that drink. When the muscle boys came around, why didn’t you tell them, in a delicate manner, exactly what they could do with their protection?”

  “Because,” Jake said, “that’s just what they wanted me to do.”

  There was a brief silence. Malone rose, strolled over to the window, gazed for a moment across the Loop roof tops. He relit his cigar and said, “Yes?”

  “The Casino makes a lot of money,” Jake said. “I could make a lot more if I wanted to run it a little differently, but I don’t. To some people, it could be a gold mine. To me, it’s just a little tiny gold mine, but it’s the only gold mine I’ve got. And if anything happened to it, I’d be just another press agent out of a job.”