The Lucky Stiff

by Craig Rice

  Anna Marie giggled. It was a warm, reassuring giggle, and it made him feel much better. “An old friend of mine works in the weather bureau.”

  “Oh, of course,” Jake said. “And you got in touch with him via Ouija board.”

  Helene turned right, then left, and stopped the convertible in front of the apartment building whose address Malone had given her. “What now, Malone.”

  “Let me get out this stuff Mick Herman lent me,” Malone said, going through his pockets. “Smart guy, Mick. Married the daughter of one of the best locksmiths in the world. She was thirty-eight, a spinster, and looked like the other side of a mud fence, but he treated her like a princess and gave her everything her little heart desired. The lock hasn’t been made his keys and tools can’t open.”

  “Handy person to know,” Helene said. “But what do you want us to do?”

  “Park here where it’s fairly dark, wait for us, and watch for trouble,” Malone said.

  Anna Marie added, “The other apartment in the building is empty. If you see anyone going in, honk.”

  “I’ll do this,” Helene said, “with the horn.” She drummed out the first eight notes of the Habañera on the steering wheel. “And if someone does go in, and if I do do this”—she repeated the rhythm—“what next?”

  “Start your motor, hold the car in gear, and be ready for anything,” Malone said.

  “Meanwhile, you’ll be doing what?” Jake asked.

  “We’ll burn down that bridge when we come to it,” Malone said, helping Anna Marie out of the convertible.

  A moment later they disappeared into the building. Jake snuggled close to Helene’s shoulder. “Why did I marry a girl who loves trouble?” he complained.

  “Because I’m irresistible,” she told him. She sighed. “Jake, she is beautiful.”

  “M’m-h’m,” Jake said. “Not like you, though.”

  “I don’t blame Malone a bit.”

  “Huh? What about Malone?”

  “You mean you haven’t noticed?” Then a whisper. “Jake!”

  A short, slender man in a gabardine raincoat and snap-brim hat had paused in front of the apartment building, and started up the steps. Helene played the Habañera on the horn, started the motor, and put the car in gear. Jake held open the door.

  Moments passed. A lot of them.

  Suddenly Malone came down the steps, in a hurry. His round face was pale.

  “A man in a tan raincoat went into the house.”

  “Hell,” Malone said. He scowled. “We didn’t see or hear anybody. Never mind that now. Come inside.”

  Helene shut off the motor. They followed him across the sidewalk and into the building.

  One dim light showed in Anna Marie’s parlor, making it look as half-real and ghostly as Anna Marie herself. But it was bright enough to show Jesse Conway lying on the thick, pale blue carpet, a bullet hole in his forehead.

  “He’s been dead a long time,” Malone said.

  Jake stared at the body, and then at the little lawyer.

  “In case you don’t recognize him,” Malone added, “it’s Jesse Conway.”

  “No it isn’t,” Jake said suddenly. “That isn’t Jesse Conway. That’s—Ambersley!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Helene said, “Never mind the guy’s name and address right now. As far as I’m concerned, he can be Judge Crater.” Her voice was calm, but Malone suspected that her teeth were getting ready to chatter. “The B of 1 boys are pretty efficient. Let them find out who he was. We saw someone come in this house, and I have a hunch we ought to find out where he is, and what he’s doing.”

  “She’s right,” Malone said. He had an unpleasant feeling that in another minute his own teeth were going to chatter. “Jake, you want to go upstairs and take a look around?”

  “No,” Jake said firmly. “Do you?” He added, in a milder tone, “All right. We’ll both go.”

  The little lawyer said, “Well—but I think someone ought to stay here and protect the women.”

  Helene said one very rude word.

  “All right, all right,” Malone said hastily. “But I’d feel better if I had a gun. Anna Marie, you don’t happen to have one tucked away somewhere here?”

  She shook her head.

  “Gun!” Suddenly Helene’s eyes blazed blue fire. “Wait! Anna Marie! Don’t move!” She stood there for a moment, staring at Anna Marie. “Now I know!”

  “What?” It was Jake and Malone at once.

  She shook her head. “Never mind. It can wait. I won’t forget it again. This isn’t a time to discuss, it’s a time to act. And as soon as—”

  She stopped almost in the middle of a word. There were soft, slow footsteps coming down the stairs, and just a faint creaking of the stairs themselves. The footsteps came down the hall and paused just outside the door.

  “Duck!” Anna Marie hissed, pointing to the bedroom door. Jake, Helene, and Malone ducked, just as Anna Marie switched off the light.

  There was the sound of the door being slowly and cautiously tried, then of a key being slowly and cautiously inserted in the lock. They held their breaths.

  Through the crack in the bedroom door they could see the hall door opening, letting in a faint greenish light from the hall outside. They could see Anna Marie, a misty, pale gray figure. She seemed to be suspended in the air, almost a foot above the floor.

  The man in the tan gabardine raincoat shrieked, then fled. They could hear his racing footsteps on the sidewalk outside as he tore past.

  Anna Marie stepped down from the footstool, shut the door, turned on the light, and prophesied calmly, “He won’t be back. Not for a while.”

  “You have great presence of mind,” Jake said, wiping his brow. “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I,” said Malone.

  Helene said, “I do. He’s the young man who was in The Happy Days saloon this afternoon with Mrs. Childers. But what was he doing here? And why did he go upstairs first, instead of here?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Jake said. “All I know is, we promised Von Flanagan a corpse, and we’ve found him one. The one that called up and said he was being murdered, and added ‘Tell Malone—Anna Marie—’”

  “That’s right,” Malone said. He took out a cigar, started to unwrap it, glanced at the late Jesse Conway, and put it back in his pocket. “It can’t be anyone else. Jesse Conway knew that Anna Marie was alive. He knew she was going to get in touch with me. Furthermore, he tried to phone me and couldn’t reach me.”

  He scowled and said, “I never liked Jesse Conway much, but now I wish that he’d succeeded.”

  “Nobody could have saved his life,” Anna Marie whispered. “Not even you, Malone.”

  “I might not even have tried,” Malone said. He took the cigar out again and managed a nice compromise by unwrapping it and holding it unlighted. “But anyway, his fingerprints are probably on the telephone receiver and”—his eyes narrowed for a moment—“there’s even a chance that his murderer’s will be.”

  “I tell you, his name was Ambersley,” Jake said, a little wildly. “The guy I—” He started to say, “Paid off to,” caught himself in time, and finished, “—met that time I told you about.”

  “One and the same man,” Malone said, quickly and smoothly. “I should have recognized him from your description this afternoon.” He added, “But why did he get himself murdered in this particular apartment? Why was he here, and why was his murderer here?”

  “And why did the man in the tan raincoat go upstairs?” Helene demanded. “We’re getting a lot of whys and no wherefores, Malone.”

  The little lawyer turned to Anna Marie. “What was—what is—upstairs? Whose apartment?”

  “Nobody’s.” She sat down on the arm of a pale rose brocade chair. “Big Joe rented it. With me here, he wanted to have the whole building. Not that he was so damned exclusive, but you never know what you may draw in the way of neighbors.”
/>
  “Did he rent it just to keep it vacant?”

  “That was the main reason,” she told him, “but he did use it. He had a few odds and ends of furniture up there, and once in a while if he wanted to talk business with someone—in private—he’d arrange a meeting upstairs.”

  Malone scowled. “Let’s go up there and take a look.” He led the way into the hall and up the stairs.

  There was dust everywhere, thick gray dust, and cobwebs. Helene touched the stair rail once and drew her hand away, shuddering.

  The door to the upstairs apartment was not only unlocked, but partly ajar. Malone pushed it open a little wider and peered in cautiously. Beyond was a dark and frightening cavern. The little lawyer felt Anna Marie’s fingers tighten, ever so lightly, over his own. He turned his head and saw that Helene was very pale.

  “Come on in,” he said cheerfully. “Remember, it’s four of us against none of them. Only,” he added wistfully, “I wish we’d brought along a flashlight.”

  Anna Marie said, “The lights must be on here, if they’re on downstairs. The whole building is on one meter.”

  She reached around the doorjamb and clicked the switch. Lights blazed. She went on into the apartment, Jake and Helene close behind her.

  Malone gripped the edge of the door and stood there for a moment, his stomach contracting, his hands suddenly ice-cold. It was like seeing a stage set from which the furniture and props have been removed, the actors long since gone. Because it was the twin of Anna Marie’s apartment—and completely empty.

  After coming up from the rooms downstairs, it was like looking at the corpse of some familiar friend. There were the windows, there was the little fireplace, there were the alcoves above the bookshelves. But there were no draperies at the windows, no logs in the fireplace, no books on the shelves, no amusing little ornaments in the alcoves. And Anna Marie—he glanced at her.

  He shut his eyes and held tight to the edge of the door.

  “Malone!” Helene said sharply. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I—nothing!” He realized he’d started to say, “I thought I saw a ghost!” He opened his eyes, looked around and said, “Somebody has been doing a very nice job of searching.”

  There was dust here, too, but it had been recently and thoroughly disturbed. The drawers had been yanked out of the built-in window seat, and there were knife marks along its top. Similar knife marks showed around the window frames and sills and the edges of the doors.

  They went into the bedroom. It, too, was empty of furniture, but there were the same signs of a recent and desperate search. A built-in mirror had been wrenched off its frame. The pale green carpet had been ripped up from the floor. Malone noticed that the carpet looked new and unused. Anna Marie must have been telling the truth about the two apartments.

  In the bathroom the medicine cabinet had been pried from the wall. The toilet tank cover had been removed and not replaced.

  The kitchen was a shambles.

  “Someone has done a very nice job of searching,” Malone repeated admiringly. “Look, he even pried along the edge of the baseboards to see if any of them came loose.” He finally lit the cigar he’d been carrying. “Too bad he didn’t find what he was looking for.”

  “Do you know,” Helene demanded, “or are you guessing?”

  “With me,” Malone said, “a guess is as good as a gander.” He blew out his match, dropped it on the floor, and looked at it thoughtfully. “I might add, the guy in the raincoat didn’t do the searching job. He just stopped by to inspect it.”

  Jake sighed and said, “if you keep this up you’ll be competing with Dunninger. Or do you expect us to read your mind?”

  “It’s perfectly simple,” Malone said indignantly. “Mr. Raincoat, to give him a name, was only here a few minutes. This searching job must have taken a couple of hours, at the least. If whatever had been looked for had been found, no one would have come back. The guy who did the searching wouldn’t have come back, because he’d already done everything except tear the paper off the walls.”

  “Malone—” Helene began.

  “Shut up,” the little lawyer said pleasantry, waving her aside. “Don’t derail me when I’m on a train of thought.” His eyes narrowed. “Mr. Raincoat came back here to make sure that Mr. Searcher hadn’t missed a trick. As anyone with half an eye can see, he hadn’t. Therefore, Mr. Raincoat decided that the downstairs apartment should also be investigated.”

  He knocked a little ash off his cigar and said to Anna Marie, “What the devil did Big Joe have hidden around here? The Great Mogul diamond, a complete set of plans for blowing up the Tribune Tower, or a life pass on the El?”

  “I don’t know what he was hiding. It was none of my business.” Her white little face seemed to have turned to stone.

  Malone looked at her thoughtfully and said, “All right, the defense rests. Let’s go downstairs, where there’s a corpse to keep us company and a nice comfortable place to sit down.”

  “Wait a minute,” Helene said. “Malone, why did your Mr. Searcher come up here first?”

  “Maybe he believed there’s always room at the top,” Malone said. “Or maybe he was smart enough to have a better reason.” He flicked a nonexistent ash from his cigar by way of gesture. “He may have reasoned that Big Joe was a smart enough cookie to have his hidey-hole where his girl friend wouldn’t stumble on it accidentally or intentionally.” He shot a glance at Anna Marie and added, “Am I right?”

  “You’re right,” Anna Marie said harshly, “but he’s wrong.” She leaned against the doorjamb. Her face was like a shadow against the darkness. “Maybe you just don’t understand about guys like Big Joe. If a dog gets a bone there’s ten dogs after him. If a guy gets a sweet racket there’s fifty guys after him. And if he happens to have the kind of nature Big Joe had, he’s got to trust somebody, and if he can’t trust his girl friend, then who the hell—” She broke off suddenly.

  Malone said hastily, “We understand.” He chewed savagely on his cigar for a moment. “Then Big Joe did have a hiding place, and you do know where it is.”

  “Know!” Anna Marie laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. “I should know. Because I made it for him.” She sighed. “He told me that he wanted a good safe place to keep valuable papers, and sometimes money, a place nobody could find. He didn’t trust wall safes or movable floor boards or any of the usual places.”

  “From the looks of this room,” Jake said, “he had the right idea.”

  A wry smile crossed her face briefly. “This whole damn building could be torn apart, roof to basement, and no one would ever find what he was looking for. When Big Joe told me that, I remembered—in grandmother’s house, back in Grove Junction—”

  She paused. Her eyes softened. She smiled.

  “O.K., come downstairs. I’ll show you where it is.”

  “The important thing isn’t where,” Helene said, “but, what’s in it?”

  They all looked at Anna Marie.

  “I think he used to keep important business papers there,” she said, almost in a whisper. “And sometimes I think he kept money there, quite a lot of it. For a while he kept a diary, and he kept it there. But not long before he—before Ike Malloy shot him—he burned the diary. As far as I know, he never put anything else in the hiding place.”

  “As far as you know,” Malone repeated. “Didn’t you ever look?”

  “Of course not,” Anna Marie said. She sounded shocked. “Whatever he put there wasn’t any of my business.”

  Malone revised his opinion of Anna Marie. She was, he decided, one in two million.

  “Look, my dear,” he said. “It is your business now. There may be something there, something important. It might tell who murdered him and tried to frame you. That’s something you want to know.” He added, “You don’t need to show what you find there to us, or to anybody else, if you don’t want to.”

  Helene sighed and said, “This is a very pleasant tea party. But tempus
is fidgeting, and someone who doesn’t believe in ghosts may decide to search that downstairs apartment. And while this is no time to bring it up, Malone, you really ought to ring up Von Flanagan and tell him you’ve found his murder victim.”

  “Business before pleasure,” Malone told her. “A place for everything, and everything in its time. I say, let’s get the hell downstairs and find the missing emeralds. Besides, Anna Marie has to pack her other toothbrush.”

  At the door to Anna Marie’s apartment he paused and looked at her, one hand on the doorknob. He was remembering the fleeting expression on her face when she’d realized that Jesse Conway had tried to hush up the confession that had saved her life. It hadn’t been anger, or shock, or even surprise. It had been a kind of anguished sympathy for the once brilliant man who had been forced into a deal like that. And right now, Jesse Conway was lying dead on her pale blue carpet.

  “Maybe,” he began hesitatingly.

  “Don’t be a sentimental fool, Malone,” Helene said in an unexpectedly sharp voice.

  He glanced at Helene, saw that her blue eyes were very wide and bright, and that she had one arm linked through Anna Marie’s. He flung open the door and said, “Ladies first,” as he ushered them into the room.

  Anna Marie hurried into her bedroom and began tossing things into a suitcase, talking about the house in Grove Junction while she packed. It had been Grandmother’s house once. Grandmother’s husband had been a wealthy farmer, and the house was a good substantial one, with fine woodwork and the best of hardware. Glass knobs on the downstairs doors and furnace heat. Aunt Bess used to take her there to visit. Then Grandmother died, and Aunt Bess had expected to inherit a lot of money. But the old house was heavily mortgaged, and the hiding place had held only a garnet necklace and a pair of silver earrings.

  “Aunt Bess got the jewelry,” she finished, “and I learned how to make a hiding place nobody could find. Frankly, I think I got the best deal.”

  Malone had been prowling silently and restlessly around the living room, chewing on his dead cigar and being careful not to touch anything that would register a fingerprint. He took the suitcase she handed him and carried it out to the hall. Then she took a footstool to the kitchenette door, climbed up, and ran her fingers along the top of the door. A thin strip of wood lifted up.