The Fabulous Clipjoint

by Fredric Brown

  It wouldn’t be just like it fell, of course. It would have been kicked around by people walking through the alley, trucks driving through. It was broken finer now, and scattered more. But right around here, the center of the area where the glass was, would be where the bottles were dropped.

  My uncle said, “Here’s a piece with part of a label. We can see if it’s the brand Kaufman sells.”

  I took it and walked out under the street light at the end of the alley. I said, “It’s part of a Topaz label. I’ve seen thousands of ’em on beer Pop’s brought home. Kaufman has a Topaz sign, but it’s an awful common beer around here. It wouldn’t prove it for sure.”

  He came over and we stood looking both ways on Franklin Street. An el train went by almost right over our heads. A long one, it must have been a North Shore train. It sounded as loud as the end of the world.

  A noise loud enough, I thought, to cover revolver shots — let alone the noise a man would make falling, even with beer bottles. That might have been why it happened here, near this end of the alley, instead of back in the middle where it was darker. Noise counted, too, along with darkness. When they got here, the killer closing up behind Pop, the el had come by. Even if Pop had yelled for help, the noise of the el would have made it a whisper.

  I looked at the store fronts on either side of the alley. One was a plumbing supplies shop. The other was vacant. It seemed to have been vacant a long time; the glass was too dirty to see through.

  My uncle said, “Well, Ed.”

  “Sure. I guess this is — is all we can do tonight.”

  We walked down Franklin to Erie and across to Wells.

  My uncle said, “I just figured what’s wrong with me. I’m hungry as hell. I haven’t eaten since noon and you haven’t eaten since about two o’clock. Let’s go over to Clark for some grub.”

  We went to an all-night barbecue place.

  I wasn’t hungry until I took a bite out of a pork barbecue sandwich, and then I gobbled it down, the French fries and the slaw too. We each ordered a second one.

  My uncle asked, while we waited, “Ed, what are you heading for?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He said, “I mean what are you going to do with yourself? During the next fifty-odd years.”

  The answer was so obvious I had to think it over. I said, “Nothing much, I guess. I’m an apprentice printer. I can take up linotype when I’m a little farther on my apprenticeship. Or I can be a hand-man. Printing’s a good trade.”

  “I suppose it is. Going to stay in Chicago?”

  “I haven’t thought about it,” I told him. “I’m not going to leave right away. After I finish my apprenticeship, I’m a journeyman. I can work anywhere.”

  He said, “A trade’s a good thing. But get the trade, don’t let it get you. The same with — Oh, hell, I’m not Dutch. I’m talking like a Dutch uncle.”

  He grinned. He’d been going to say, the same with women. He knew that I knew it and so he didn’t have to say it. I was glad he gave me credit for that much sense.

  He asked instead, “What do you dream, Ed?”

  I looked at him; he was serious. I asked, “Is this the mittcamp lay? Or are you psychoanalyzing me?”

  “It’s the same difference.”

  I said, “This morning I dreamed I was reaching through a hockshop window to pick up a trombone. Gardie came skipping rope along the sidewalk and I woke up before I got the trombone. Now I suppose you know all about me, huh?”

  He chuckled. “That would be shooting a sitting duck, Ed. Two ducks with one bullet. Watch out for one of those ducks. You know which one I mean.”

  “I guess I do.”

  “She’s poison, kid, for a guy like you. Just like Madge was — Skip it. What’s about the trom? Ever play one?”

  “Not to speak of. In sophomore year at high I borrowed one of the school board’s. I was going to learn so I could get in the band. But some of the neighbors squawked, and I guess it did make a hell of a noise. When you live in a flat — Mom didn’t like it, either.”

  The guy behind the counter brought our second sandwiches. I wasn’t so hungery now. With the stuff on the side, it looked awfully big. I ate a few of the French fries first.

  Then I lifted the lid off the barbecue sandwich and tilted the ketchup bottle and let it gurgle on thick.

  It looked like —

  I smacked down the lid of the sandwich and tried to think away from what it looked like. But I was back in the alley. I didn’t even know if there’d been blood; maybe there hadn’t. You can hit to kill without drawing blood.

  But I thought of Pop’s head matted with blood and a blot of blood there on the rough brick of the alley last night — now soaked in, worn off or washed away. Would they have washed it away? Hell, there probably hadn’t been any blood.

  But the thought of that sandwich was making me sick. Unless I could get my mind off it. I closed my eyes and was repeating the first nonsense that came into my mind to keep from thinking. It was one, two, three, O’Leary; four, five, six, O’Leary —

  After a few seconds I knew I’d won and I wasn’t going to be sick. But I looked around at Uncle Ambrose and kept my eyes off the counter.

  I said, “Say, maybe Mom’s waiting up for me. We never thought to tell her we’d be late. It’s after one.”

  He said, “My God, I forgot it too. Golly, I hope she isn’t. You better get home fast.”

  I told him I didn’t want the rest of my second barbecue anyway, and he’d almost finished his. We parted right outside; he went north to the Wacker and I hurried home to Wells Street.

  Mom had left a light on for me in the inner hall, but she hadn’t waited up. The door of her room was dark. I was glad. I didn’t want to have to explain and apologize, and if she’d been waiting up, worried, she might have blamed Uncle Ambrose.

  I go to bed quickly and quietly. I must have gone to sleep the first instant I closed my eyes.

  When I woke up, something was funny in the room. Different. It was morning as usual and again the room was hot and close. It took me a minute or two, lying there, to realize that the difference was that my alarm clock wasn’t ticking. I hadn’t wound or set it.

  I don’t know why it mattered much what time it was, but I wanted to know. I got up and walked out to look at the kitchen clock. It was one minute after seven.

  Funny, I thought; I waked up at just the usual time. Without even a clock running in my room.

  Nobody else was awake. Gardie’s door was open and her pajama tops were off again. I hurried past.

  I set and wound my alarm clock and lay down again. I might as well sleep another hour or two, I thought, if I can. But I couldn’t go back to sleep; I couldn’t even get sleepy.

  The flat was awfully quiet. There didn’t seem to be much noise even outside this morning, except when an el car went by on Franklin every few minutes.

  The ticking of the clock got louder and louder.

  This morning I don’t have to wake Pop, I thought. I’ll never wake him again. Nobody will.

  I got up and dressed.

  On my way through to the kitchen I stopped in the doorway of Gardie’s room and looked in. I thought, she wants me to look; I want to look, so why shouldn’t I? I knew the answer damn well.

  Maybe I was looking for a counter-irritant for the cold feeling about not having to wake up Pop. Maybe a cold feeling and a hot one ought to cancel out. They didn’t, exactly, but after half a minute I got disgusted with myself and went on out to the kitchen.

  I made coffee and sat drinking it. I wondered what I was going to do to fill in the morning. Uncle Ambrose would sleep late; being with a carney he’d be used to sleeping late. Anyway there wasn’t much to do about the inves
tigation until after the inquest. And then, until after the funeral.

  Besides, in the light of morning now, it seemed a bit silly. A fat little man with a moustache and a wet-behind-the-ears kid thinking they could find, out of all Chicago, the heister who had got away with a job.

  I thought about the homicide man with the faded red hair and the tired eyes. We’d bought him for a hundred dollars, or Uncle Ambrose thought we had. He’d been partly right anyhow; Bassett had taken the money.

  I heard bare feet padding, and Gardie came out into the kitchen in her pajamas. The tops, too. The toenails of her bare feet were painted.

  She said, “Morning, Eddie. Cup coffee?”

  She yawned and then stretched like a sleek kitten. Her claws were in.

  I got another cup and poured, and she sat down across the table.

  She said, “Gee, the inquest’s today.” She sounded excited about it. Like she would say, “Gee, the football game’s today.”

  I said, “I wonder if they’ll want me to testify. I don’t know to what.”

  “No, Eddie, I don’t think so. Just Mom and me, they said.”

  “Why you?”

  “Identification. I was the one really identified him first. Mom almost fainted again at the parlors, at Heiden’s. They didn’t want her to faint, so I said I’d look. Later when she was a little calmer, after the detective, Mr. Bassett, had talked to her, she wanted to look too, and they let her.”

  I asked, “How did they find out who he was? I mean, he couldn’t have had identification left on him or they’d have been up here in the middle of the night, after they found him.”

  “Bobby knew him. Bobby Reinhart.”

  “Who’s Bobby Reinhart?” “He works for Mr. Heiden. He’s learning the undertaking business. I’ve gone out with him a few times. He knew Pop by sight. He came to work at seven, and told them right away who it was, as soon as he went in the — the morgue room.”

  “Oh,” I said. I placed the guy now. A slick-looking little punk, about sixteen or seventeen. He greased his hair and had always worn his best clothes to school. He thought he was a woman-killer and pretty hot stuff.

  It made me a little sick to think of him maybe helping work on Pop’s body.

  We finished the coffee, and Gardie rinsed out the cups and then went back to her room to dress. I heard Mom getting up.

  I went in the living room and picked up a magazine. It was starting to rain outside, a slow steady drizzle.

  It was a detective magazine. I started a story and it was about a rich man who was found dead in his hotel suite, with a noose of yellow silk rope around his neck, but he’d been poisoned. There were lots of suspects, all with motives. His secretary at whom he’d been making passes, a nephew who inherited, a racketeer who owed him money, the secretary’s fiancé. In the third chapter they’d just about pinned it on the racketeer and then he’s murdered. There’s a yellow silk cord around his neck and he’s been strangled, but not with the silk cord.

  I put down the book. Nuts, I thought, murder isn’t like that.

  Murder is like this.

  For some reason, I got to remembering the time Pop took me to the aquarium. I don’t know how I remembered that; I was only about six years old then, or maybe five. My mother had been alive then, but she hadn’t gone with us. I remember Pop and I laughing a lot together at the expressions on the faces of some of the fishes, the surprised astonished look on the faces of some of them that had round open mouths.

  Now that I thought about it, Pop had laughed a lot in those days.

  Gardie told Mom she was going to a girl friend’s house and would be back by noon.

  It rained all morning.

  At the inquest, it seemed you mostly sat around and waited for it to start. It was in the main hall at Heiden’s mortuary. There hadn’t been any sign out “Inquest Today” but word must have got around, because there were quite a few people there. There were seats for about forty and they were all taken.

  Uncle Ambrose was there, in the back row on one side. He’d tipped me a wink and then pretended not to know me. I let myself get separated from Mom and Gardie and took a seat near the back on the other side of the room.

  A little man with gold-rimmed glasses was fussing around, up front. He was the deputy coroner in charge. I found out later his name was Wheeler. He looked hot and fussy and annoyed, and in a hurry to get things started and get them over with.

  Bassett was there, and other cops, one in uniform, the others not. There was a man with a long thin nose who looked like a professional gambler.

  There were six men in chairs lined up along one side of the front of the hall.

  Finally, whatever was holding up things must have been settled. The deputy coroner rapped with a gavel and things quieted down. He wanted to know if there was any objection to any of the six men who had been chosen as jurors. There wasn’t. He wanted to know, of them, whether they had known a man named Wallace Hunter, whether they knew the circumstances of his death or had discussed the case with anyone, whether there was any reason why they couldn’t render a fair and impartial verdict on the evidence they would hear. He got negatives and headshakes on all counts.

  Then he took the six of them into the morgue to view the body of the deceased, and then to be sworn.

  It was very formal, in an informal sort of way.

  It was corny. It was like a bad movie.

  When that was all out of the way, he wanted to know if there was a member of the family of the deceased present. Mom got up and went forward. She held up her right hand and mumbled something back when something was mumbled at her.

  Her name, her address, her occupation, her relation to the deceased. She had seen the body and identified it as that of her husband.

  A lot of questions about Pop; his occupation, place of employment, residence, how long he’d lived there and all that sort of thing.

  “When did you last see your husband alive, Mrs. Hunter?”

  “Thursday night, somewhere about nine o’clock. When he went out.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “N-no. He just said he was going down for a glass of beer. I figured Clark Street.”

  “Did he go out like that often, alone?”

  “Well — yes.”

  “How often?”

  “Once or twice a week.”

  “And usually stayed out — how late?”

  “Around midnight usually. Sometimes later. One or two o’clock.”

  “How much money did he have with him Thursday night?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Twenty or thirty dollars. Wednesday was payday.”

  “You can’t say any closer than that?”

  “No. He gave me twenty-five dollars Wednesday night. That was for groceries and — and household expenses. He always kept the rest. He paid rent and gas and light bills and things like that.”

  “He had no enemies that you know of, Mrs. Hunter?”

  “No, none-at all.”

  “Think carefully. You know of no one who would — would have cause to hate him?”

  Mom said, “No. Nobody at all.”

  “Nor anyone who would benefit financially from his death?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean, did he have any money, did he have an interest in any business or venture?”

  “No.”

  “Did he carry any insurance? Or was any insurance carried on him?”

  “No. He suggested it once. I said no, that we ought to put the money that would go for premiums in the bank instead. Only we didn’t.”

  “Thursday night, Mrs. Hunter, did you wait up for him?”

  “I did, yes, for a while. Then I decided he was going to be late and I went to
sleep.”

  “When your husband had been drinking, Mrs. Hunter, would you say he was — well, careless about taking chances such as walking down alleys or in dangerous neighborhoods, things like that?”

  “I’m afraid he was, yes. He was held up before, twice. The last time a year ago.”

  “But he wasn’t injured? He didn’t attempt to defend himself?”

  “No. He was just held up.” I listened closely now. That was news to me. Nobody had told me Pop had been held up before, not even once. Then something fitted. A year ago he’d said he’d lost his wallet; he’d had to get a new social security card and union card. Probably he’d just figured it was none of my business how he’d lost it.

  The deputy coroner was asking if any of the police present wanted to ask any further questions. Nobody did, and he told Mom she could go back to her seat.

  He said, “I understand we have a further identification. Miss Hildegarde Hunter has also identified the deceased. Is she present?”

  Gardie got up and went through the rigmarole. She sat down in the chair and crossed her legs. She didn’t have to adjust her skirt; it was short enough already.

  They didn’t ask her anything except about having identified Pop. You could tell she was disappointed when she went back to her seat beside Mom.

  They put one of the plain-clothes men on the stand next. He was a squard-car cop. He and his partner had found the body.

  They’d been driving south, just cruising slowly, on Franklin Street under the el at two o’clock and the alley was dark there and they’d flashed their spotlight in it and seen him lying there.

  “He was dead when you reached him?’

  “Yes. Been dead about an hour maybe.”

  “You looked for identification?”

  “Yes. He didn’t have any wallet or watch or anything. He’d been cleaned. There was some change in his pocket. Sixty-five cents.”

  “It was dark enough back where he lay that anyone walking by would not have seen him?”

  “I guess not. There’s a street light on Franklin at that end of the alley, but it was out. We reported that too, afterward, and they put in a new bulb. Or said they were going to.”