The Fabulous Clipjoint

by Fredric Brown

  “No, the policy is a standard straight-life form, with the name and amount and date filled in. Pasted inside it is a photostatic copy of the application for the policy — but the original of that photostat is here in this file. You may see that if you wish.”

  He handed Uncle Am the file, opened to a form filled in with pen and ink, and I walked over behind Uncle Am’s chair so I could read it over his shoulder. I made a mental note of the date of the application, and the signature of the agent who sold it — Paul B. Anderz.

  Uncle Am asked, “Do you know if this agent, Anderz, is still working out of your Gary office?”

  “No, I don’t. We can write them and find out.”

  Uncle Am said, “Never mind, thanks anyway. You’ll want a copy of the death certificate, of course?”

  “Yes, before we can issue a check to the beneficiary. This young man’s mother, I take it.”

  “His stepmother.” Uncle Am handed back the folder and stood up. “Thanks a lot. Oh, by the way — was the policy paid quarterly?”

  The manager did some leafing through the folder again. He said, “Yes, after the first payment. He paid a year’s premium in advance with the original application.”

  Uncle Am thanked him again, and we left.

  “Gary?” I asked.

  “Yeah. We can get there on the el, can’t we?”

  “Less than an hour, I think.” I thought for a minute. “Gosh, less than an hour from the Loop, and yet I never went back there after we left.”

  “Did Wally or Madge ever go back? For a visit, or anything?”

  I thought, and then shook my head. “Not that I remember. I don’t believe any of us ever went back there. Of course, I was only thirteen when we came from there to Chicago, but I think I’d remember.”

  “Tell me — wait, let’s wait till we’re on the train.”

  He didn’t say any more till we had a seat on the Gary Express. Then he said, “All right, kid, let go. Relax, and tell me everything you can remember about Gary.”

  I said, “I went to Twelfth Street School. So did Gardie. I was in the eighth grade and she was in the fourth. When we left, I mean. We lived in a little frame house on Holman Street,three blocks from the school. The school had a band, and I wanted to get in it. They lent instruments and I borrowed a trombone. I was getting so I could read simple stuff on it, but Mom hated it. She called it ‘that damn horn,’ and I had to go out in the woodshed to practice. Then when we came to Chicago we lived in a flat and I couldn’t have practiced even if Mom had liked it, so I —”

  “Forget the trombone,” Uncle Am said. “Get back to Gary.” I said, “We had a car part of the time, and part of the time we didn’t. Pop worked at two or three different printing shops at one time or another. He was out of work for a while with arthritis in his arms and we went way in debt. I don’t think we ever quite got out. I have a hunch we left so suddenly because we were running out on some of the debts we still had.”

  “You left suddenly?”

  “It seems to me we did. I mean, I don’t remember it being talked over. All of a sudden the van was there loading our furniture, and Pop had a job in Chicago and we had to leave right — Wait a minute —”

  “Take your time, kid. I think you’re getting at something. My God, Ed, what a sap I’ve been.”

  “You? How?”

  He laughed. “I’ve been overlooking my best witness because I was too close to see him. Forget it. Get back to Gary.”

  I said, “I remember now. Something that was funny at the time, but I’d clean forgotten until I started talking about moving. I didn’t know we were moving to Chicago until we got here. Pop said we were moving to Joliet; that’s about twenty-five miles from Gary, same as Chicago, but west instead of north-west, and I remember telling all my kid friends we were going to Joliet — and then it turned out to be Chicago. Pop said he’d got a good job in Chicago and changed his mind about taking the one in Joliet. I remember, it seemed kind of funny to me, even then.”

  Uncle Am had his eyes closed. He said, “Go on, kid. Dig as deep as you can. You’re doing swell.”

  “After we got to Chicago, we moved in right where we’re still living. But Pop couldn’t have been telling the truth about the job in Chicago, because he was around home the first few weeks after we came to Chi. Not all the time; but enough so I know he wasn’t working. Then he got the job at Elwood Press.”

  “Back to Gary, kid. You keep ending up in Chicago.”

  “Well, we did,” I said. “What do you want? The time Gardie had the mumps, or what?”

  “I guess we can do without that. But keep on trying. Dig way down.”

  I said, “I remember vaguely something about a court. I can’t remember what.”

  “Some creditor get a judgment against you?”

  “That could be. I don’t remember. I don’t think Pop was working the last week or two we were in Gary. But I don’t remember whether he’d lost a job or been laid off, or what. Say, that was the week he took all of us to the circus.”

  Uncle Am nodded. “And you sat in the reserved seats.”

  “Yeah, we — What made you say that?”

  “Don’t you see what you’ve been telling me, kid? Take what we learned at the insurance company this morning and use it as one piece of a jigsaw, use the little things you’ve been giving me as other pieces, and what do you get?”

  I said, “We lammed out of Gary. We moved suddenly and without telling anybody where we were going. We even left a false trail. But it was just because we owed so much, wasn’t it?”

  “Kid, I’ll bet you a buck. You figure out what stores you dealt with while you were there. You’ll remember the grocery, anyway. Go round today and ask ’em — I’ll bet you a buck Wally paid off everything he owed in cash before you left.”

  “How could he, if he was out of work? Hell, we were broke most of the time. And — Oh-oh.”

  “You begin to see it, Ed?”

  “The insurance policy,” I said. “It was about that time he took it out. And he paid a year’s premium in cash, in advance. On five thousand, that’d run over a hundred bucks. And he’d have needed cash to pay for getting moved to Chicago, and paying rent on the new place.”

  “And,” said Uncle Am, “living a few weeks without working in Gary and a few weeks before he started working in Chicago. And taking the whole kaboodle of you to the circus. Now that you’re on the track, what can you add?”

  I said, “Gardie and I got some new clothes to start school in Chicago. You’d win the buck, Uncle Am. He had a windfall, and it must have been at least three weeks before we left Gary. And if you’re right that he’d have paid off debts out of it, it must have been — ummm — at least five hundred bucks, maybe even a thousand.”

  Uncle Am said, “I’ll settle for it being a thousand. Wally’d have paid off those debts. He was funny that way. Well, kid, here comes Gary. We’ll see what we can find out.”

  We went for a phone book right at the station, and first we looked up the office of the Central Mutual. Uncle Am went into the phone booth to call them.

  He came out looking disappointed. He said, “Anderz isn’t with ’em any more. He quit about three years ago. Last they’d heard of him he was in Springfield, Illinois.”

  I said, “That’s pretty far — a hundred and fifty miles. But look, maybe he’s got a phone in his own name. It’s an unusual enough name; we could try.”

  Uncle Am said, “I don’t think we’ll even bother, kid. The more I think of it, the less I think of it. I mean, Wally wouldn’t have told him anything. He wouldn’t have told him where his windfall came from. He’d have had to give him some reason for not wanting the premium notices mailed to him, but I’ll bet ten, five and even t
hat it wouldn’t be the real reason. I think we’ve got a better lead.”

  “Who?”

  “You, Ed. I want you to do some more thinking. Do you remember how to get out to where you used to live?”

  I nodded. “East End car; you catch it a block from here.”

  We rode out and I remembered the corner where we got off. Hardly a thing had changed. The same drugstore was on the corner there, and in the block and a half we had to walk from the car, hardly a building had changed.

  The house was across the street. It was smaller than I remembered, and it was badly in need of paint. It couldn’t have been painted since we’d lived there.

  I said, “The fence is different. We used to have a higher one.”

  Uncle Am chuckled. He said, “Look at it again, kid.”

  I did, and it was an old fence all right. It made me feel funny to realize that I remembered that fence as being chest-high. It wasn’t the fence that had changed; it was me.

  We crossed the street.

  I put my hand on the fence, and a big police dog came running out from the side of the house. It wasn’t barking; it meant business. I pulled my hand back, and the dog didn’t jump the fence. It stopped, growling.

  I said, “Looks like I’m not welcome there any more.”

  We walked on past, slowly, the dog keeping pace with us inside the fence. I kept looking at the house. It was pretty much of a mess; the porch was sagging and the wooden steps were crooked and one of them was broken. The yard was littered with junk.

  We kept on walking. The grocery down on the corner still had the same name on the window. I said, “Let’s go in.”

  The man who came to wait on us looked familiar, but I got that funny feeling again. He was a little man; he should have been a big one. Outside of that, I recognized him, all right.

  I asked for cigarettes and then said, “Remember me, Mr. Hagendorf? I used to live down the block.”

  He looked at me closely. After a few seconds he said, “Not the Hunter boy, are you?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Ed Hunter.”

  He said, “I’ll be damned.” He put out his hand. “You moving back in the neighborhood?”

  “No,” I told him. “But my uncle’s moving near here. This is my uncle, Mr. Hagendorf, Ambrose Hunter. He’s going to live near here. I thought I’d bring him in and introduce him to you.”

  Uncle Am shook hands with the grocer and said, “Yeah, Ed told me I ought to deal here. Thought I might open an account.”

  Hagendorf said, “We don’t do much credit business, but I guess it’s all right.” He grinned at me. He said, “Your dad sure got me in the red sometimes, but he paid it off before he left.”

  I said, “It was a pretty big bill, wasn’t it?”

  “High as it had ever been. Something over a hundred bucks; I forget exactly. But he paid it off, all right. How are things going in Joliet, Ed?”

  “Pretty good,” I told him. “Well, we’ll be seeing you, Mr. Hagendorf.”

  We went out and I said, “You sure pick ’em, Uncle Am. Are you the seventh son of a seventh son? And thanks for being quick on the uptake in there. I thought if we could find out without coming right out and asking —”

  “Sure, Well, kid —?”

  I said, “You go on over to the car line. Wait for me by the drugstore.”

  Alone, I walked a couple of times around the block. I kept across the street from our house when I went by, so the dog wouldn’t distract me by keeping pace along the fence. I stopped and leaned against a tree where I could watch the house, and see the windows of the upper front room where I’d slept, the windows of the dining room.

  I wanted to cry, a little bit, but I swallowed the lump in my throat and let myself go back and remember things. I tried to keep my mind on the last month we’d been there.

  One of those last weeks, it came to me, Pop hadn’t been working, exactly. Yet he’d been gone. For a few days he’d been gone day and night, doing something. Not out of town, or was it? No.

  I had it, and wondered why I hadn’t remembered before. Maybe because, for some reason, it had never been talked about afterwards. It seemed to me that Pop had gone out of his way not to mention it again, now that I remembered.

  I went over to where Uncle Am was waiting under the awning of the drugstore. There was a streetcar coming. I just nodded to him and we caught the car.

  As we rode back downtown I told him. “Jury duty. Pop was on a jury a little while before we left.”

  “What kind of a case, kid?”

  “I don’t know. He never talked about it. We can look up in the files at a newspaper and see what was going on then. I guess that’s why I forgot it; we never talked about it.”

  He looked at his watch. “We’ll get downtown about noon. You can phone this Bunny Wilson about the listing first.”

  We got a lot of change so I could keep dropping coins if I had to; and I called Bunny. I made the call from a quiet hotel lobby and left the booth door open so Uncle Am could hear.

  Bunny said, “I got it for you, Ed. It’s in the name of Raymond, Apartment Forty-three, Milan Towers. That’s an apartment hotel on Ontario Street over between Michigan Boulevard and the Lake.”

  I said, “I think I know where it is. Thanks to hell and back, Bunny.”

  “Don’t mention it, Ed. I wish I could help you more. If there’s anything I can do, at all, let me know. I’ll even take a night off work, any time you say. How you coming? Say, when Mrs. Horth called me just now she said it was long distance. Where you calling from?”

  “Gary,” I told him. “We came here to see a guy named Anderz who sold Pop that insurance policy.”

  “What policy, Ed?”

  I forgot I hadn’t told him about it. I told him, and he said,”I’ll be damned, Ed. Well, that’s good news for Madge. I was worried how she’d get along. That’ll help out plenty, getting her started on her own. Did you see the guy you mentioned?”

  “No, Andrez moved to Springfield. We aren’t going to follow him. Probably wouldn’t find out anything anyway. We’re coming back. Well, thanks again and so long.”

  At the Gary Times office we got them to show us the back volume covering the date we were looking for.

  It wasn’t any hunt at all. It was on the front page. That was the week of the trial of Steve Reynolds for bank robbery. The trial had lasted three days and had ended in a verdict of guilty. He’d drawn life. One Harry Reynolds, his brother, had been a witness for the defense and had tried to alibi him. Obviously the alibi had not been believed, but for some reason not appearing in the newspapers there hadn’t been any prosecution for perjury.

  The defense attorney had been Schweinberg, a notorious mouthpiece for crooks who, I recalled, had been disbarred about a year ago.

  There were photographs with the day-by-day accounts of the trial. One of Steve Reynolds. One of Harry. I studied them until I was sure I’d know them, especially Harry.

  We finished and gave back the bound volume. We thanked them and left.

  Uncle Am said, “I think we can go back to Chicago now, Ed. We don’t know the details, but we got enough. We can guess most of the rest.”

  I asked, “What can’t we guess?”

  “Why he could wait three weeks after the trial before he lammed. Look, here’s how I read it. Wally gets put on the Reynolds jury. This Schweinberg was disbarred for bribing jurors; that was his racket. Somehow he got to Wally and gave him a thousand bucks, more or less, to vote acquittal. He couldn’t have hoped for anything more than to split the jury and get a mistrial, from the evidence.

  “Wally took it — and crossed him up. Wally had nerve, all right; he might have done that. Hell, he must have. He got about a thousand from somewhere. Righ
t after the trial he uses part of it for an insurance policy — one big enough to carry Madge till you kids were through school. Then he lammed out of Gary and covered his trail so they couldn’t find him. I don’t know why he waited three weeks; there must have been something protected him for that long. Maybe they did hold Harry Reynolds for a while, intending him to get a stretch for perjury or as an accessory, then let him go. And with Harry loose, Wally would know he’d be gunned for.”

  I asked, “Do you suppose Mom knew about it?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “She must have known part of it. My guess is she didn’t know much. We know he didn’t tell her about the insurance policy he took out. Maybe she didn’t know any of it. He could have told her he hit on a policy ticket to account for having extra dough. Maybe he let her think you were ducking Gary to run out on those old bills — he could have paid them without her knowing it.”

  I said, “It doesn’t make sense, does it? He’s honest enough to pay bills he could have run out on, since he was running anyway, but still he takes money from gangsters for a bribe —”

  “Ah, that’s the difference, kid. The way Wally’d figure it, it isn’t dishonest to cheat a crook. Hell, I don’t know if he was right or wrong about that; I don’t care. It took plenty of guts to take dough for a thing like that and not deliver.”

  We didn’t talk much, riding back to Chicago.

  In the Loop, we transferred to a Howard Express and got off at Grand. I said, “I better go home and take a bath and put on clean clothes. I feel sticky.”

  Uncle Am nodded. He said, “Look, kid, we can’t keep on forever without sleeping, either. You do that and take a nap, too. It’s about two o’clock. Get a little sleep and come to the hotel around seven or eight. We’ll take a look at the Milan Towers this evening, but we don’t want to be dopey when we do it.”

  At our place, I went on upstairs and Uncle Am kept on over toward the Wacker.

  The door was locked and I had to let myself in with my key. I was just as glad nobody was home. I had a bath and was in bed within twenty minutes. I set my alarm for seven.