Madball

by Fredric Brown

  He spoke quickly under his breath. "We better not go in together, Dolly. But I want to tell you something. You go in first, take a table away from anyone else."

  He saw her slight nod and stopped long enough to let her go in alone. When he entered a minute later he saw to his relief that the place was almost empty. Aside from Dolly at a table way back, Barney King was the only other customer and he was sitting at the counter. He said hi to Barney and then went back and sat down at a table next to Dolly's but not even facing her. He faced, though, so he could watch the entrance and could also keep an eye on Barney and on Hank, who was now waddling over to take their orders. When Hank had gone away again and was out of earshot back of the counter, he said, just loudly enough so Dolly could hear but his voice wouldn't reach Barney or Hank, "Don't look toward me, Dolly, but listen. I'm going to reach over and drop something in your lap. Look at it, but look under the edge of the table."

  He made sure both Barney and Hank still had their backs toward him, took a quick look at the entrance, and then stood up and leaned across far enough to toss into Dolly's lap the tight roll of bills, still with the rubber band around it just as he'd taken it from Irby's pocket. He hadn't even counted it, but it had looked like several hundred dollars.

  Watching the entrance again he heard the faint sound of the rubber band and then a gasp from Dolly. Her voice was a whisper. "What's this for?"

  "Count it and I'll tell you."

  Counting it would clear up any misapprehension Dolly might have about what he was trying to buy, at any rate, and he was curious himself to know just how much he'd given her. He took a quick glance at her to be sure she was counting it below the edge of the table; she was.

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide. "Two hundred and forty. What in hell-"

  "Shhh, put it away quick. And don't look at me."

  "But what's it for?"

  "For forgetting you saw me on the midway tonight - and especially what I had in my hand."

  "But - oh!"

  The oh showed she'd just remembered what he'd been holding when he'd stepped out in front of her, and that she guessed now what he must have used it for.

  Hank was coming over with their orders, a hamburger and coffee for Dolly and coffee for him, bringing them both at once to save a trip. He collected from each of them and then went back.

  Then, "A deal?" he asked Dolly quietly.

  Her voice was low, almost a whisper, but it sounded hard. "Damn right it's a deal. And I don't care who you killed back there."

  "It wasn't Leon."

  "I know; he's asleep. I wish - Well, anyway this is getaway money. I can get away from that son of a bitch now."

  He'd suspected she felt that way; he was glad to be sure of it. Because it meant she wouldn't share the money - and the secret along with it - with Leon.

  He said, "Then be sure you don't let him find that money, kid. And he might be awake when you go back. If you're smart you'll stash it somewhere first."

  That was all he could do and now he wanted to get away as fast as he could, get back to his trailer and be in bed there before anybody found the body and raised an alarm. He finished his coffee as quickly as he could without burning himself and hurried back to the trailer.

  He felt satisfied with what he'd done and glad he hadn't had a chance to kill Dolly. She was a good kid; she'd keep her mouth shut now.

  Even without the bribe she wouldn't have been too likely, now that he thought of it, to go to the cops with her story. Carneys don't talk to cops about other carneys. But she would probably have talked to someone about it, Quintana or someone else, and the story, if it spread far enough, would have reached the cops eventually. But the money would keep her completely silent now.

  He slept the moment his head touched the pillow.

  CHAPTER THREE

  DR. MAGUS WOKE. Someone was shaking him, saying, "Doc, Doc," in a frantic whisper. A woman's voice; it sounded like that of Maybelle Seeley of the posing show.

  "Go 'way," he said. "If I wake up you won't be there."

  "Doc, this is Maybelle. I need you."

  He was sure he was awake now. He rolled over on the bedroll and found he'd rolled against her knees; she was kneeling there beside him, a shadow in the dimness.

  "You need me?" he said. "With hundreds of younger men on the lot, you need an old coot like me?"

  The light tone, he knew, would calm her.

  "Doc, somebody killed Mack Irby. I need your help." He sat up. "Mack Irby? When? How?"

  "It - it must have been about half an hour ago. They hit him over the head with something. The back of his head is - ugh."

  He put an arm across her shoulders, pulled her down to a sitting position beside him. "Take it easy, gal. Where do you come in? Were you with him?"

  "We were in Jesse's sleeping top. Mack rented it for all night. About half an hour ago we ran out of whisky and he pulled on his clothes and said he'd wake Pop and get us some. He crawled out under the flap and didn't come back. When it got to be a long time - my saying it was half an hour's just a guess - I got to remembering that I'd heard a kind of thunk sound just after he left and I got thinking he - well, maybe fell and hit his head. So I crawled out to look and there he was dead, just outside."

  "Are you sure it wasn't a fall?"

  "Yeah. It couldn't of been a fall, Doc."

  "Had he been rolled? Wait, before you answer any more questions, you can use a drink if you haven't had one since you and he ran out. And I can too."

  "Don't turn on a light, Doc. Somebody might find him any minute and-"

  "I won't. I can find it in the dark." He groped his way to the foot locker, found the bottle and brought it back. He waited until they'd each taken a drink from it.

  "All right now, was he rolled?"

  "I - I don't -" Then defiantly. "Yes, he was. I wanted to know that too so I felt in his pockets. Just change. He usually carried his paper money in a roll but there wasn't any roll in his pants pockets. Or in his coat. He'd left his coat inside and I crawled back in and felt in it too. There was a folder that felt like it was traveler's checks, but it wasn't money."

  "Ummm, he was rolled then, Maybelle. He'd have had more money on him in cash than just change. Who knows you were there with him?"

  "Nobody, Doc, unless somebody saw me go in there and I don't think they did. And I didn't tell anybody. Unless he did, in advance before I went there and he was waiting for me."

  "I doubt if he told anyone. Mack kept his business to himself, Maybelle. But he must have come around to the posing show to look you up and make the date. Didn't anyone see him talking to you there?"

  "Huh-uh. He caught my eye from the outside of the tip, while we was ballying, and pointed around in back. After I got in, I ducked under the back canvas and we talked there."

  "Good. Then they'll probably never get to you."

  "Doc, they will, somehow. They'll know he had somebody there, he wouldn't of rented it just for himself, would he? And they'll find out it wasn't McGlassen or Trixie and-" Doc had his arm around her again and he felt her shiver. "Doc, I did tell both of them I had a heavy date tonight, after I saw Mack. They both hate me, one of them will cross me up with the cops if I try to say I was in my bunk, so I'll have to tell them I was with somebody, somebody who'll back up my story."

  Dr. Magus smiled gently into the darkness. "A light begins to dawn. A lovely light." He cleared his throat.

  "And far be it from me, my dear, to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially when the gift horse is so shapely a filly, but-"

  "Yes, Doc?"

  "Why is it so important to you to keep out of it? I mean, isn't the safest thing for you to do to go right now and wake up John Eckhart - he bunks right in the office car - and have him report the, ah, incident?"

  "Doc, you couldn't of had much experience with cops if you think they'd let me off that easy. I been in trouble before, got a record - not much of a record but-"

  "What for?"

 
; "Just shoplifting. But three or four times and one time I had over a hundred bucks worth of stuff on me and that made it grand larceny instead of petty. I did six months for that. Doc, they'll throw the book at me. They won't figure I hit him over the head, no, but they'll figure I fingered him for whoever did kill him!"

  "Right you are, Maybelle, I see it now. And on your own story, if you told them the truth, they could book you on a morals charge and use that to keep you on ice. But Maybelle, before I stick my neck out you don't mind if I doubt your word for a moment on one little thing?"

  "I didn't kill him, Doc. And I don't know who did."

  "Those two little points I do not doubt, my dear. I know you better than that. You are not a killer and you would not help one. But when it comes to money, money is something else again. Mack might or might not have been rolled before you, ah, looked to see. Or his money have been in his coat, or at least part of it might have been. And the killer had no access to his coat pockets, whereas you admit you looked through them. And since it would be more dangerous for me to give you an alibi if you have any Mack Irby money than if you haven't, will you overcome your maidenly modesty while I make one thousand per cent sure that you are not concealing so much as a sawbuck?"

  She giggled a little. "Okay, Doc. It won't take you long to find out, me wearing only shoes and a wrapper."

  "Good, and I remove the shoes first to save the best till last. No, nothing in the shoes. And now the wrapper ... No, nothing. And now, keeping firmly in mind that money could be concealed, at least conceivably, upon any part of the body by being fastened down with adhesive tape, and that a tightly folded bill can be concealed, well, almost anywhere, and that it is too dark for me to see-" He missed no inch of surface, no nook or cranny. Maybelle giggled again. "Doc, no police matron ever gave me a search like that."

  "No police matron would have the same ulterior motive. And you have no money on you but I found something just the same. I found how badly I want to give you an alibi for tonight. So if necessity arises wearing a blue uniform we shall say you slept here with me all night - and tell only half a lie. Oh, my dear-"

  And Maybelle, all of whose amours had been with younger and less experienced men, learned a few things that night that she had never known before.

  Young lust and then experienced lechery, with a murder in between. All in all, quite a night.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  UNDER BLANKETS in the chill of early dawn, Dolly Quintana lay beside her husband, trembling not from cold but from fear. Fear of the very thought of what he would do to her if she ran away and he came after and found her. Not fear of death; she wouldn't be afraid to die, at least not to die a clean death, but killing wasn't what Leon had promised to do if she ever even tried to run away from him. It was acid. Acid thrown into her face to blind her and disfigure her so no other man would ever want her or touch her. She'd be blind and horrible looking and she wouldn't even be able to earn her living and she'd have to live out her life in eternal darkness in some institution, only she'd kill herself first - but that would be worse, harder to do, than if Leon killed her, and there'd be the pain and horror of the acid too. And he'd find her somewhere, sometime, no matter how far she ran or where she hid. He'd keep hunting till he found her. He was crazy jealous, really crazy.

  She'd been so fiercely happy when Evans had given her that money, that two hundred and forty dollars, and now she lay there wishing that he hadn't. Because the money meant freedom but now she was finding out that she didn't have the courage to take it. The money was torture if all it did was show her her own cowardice.

  But Leon wasn't bluffing about that acid. He had it, kept it in that horrible green bottle in his trunk. And if she took the bottle with her if she ran away that would only make her crazier. He'd get more, ten times as much, and come after her with it.

  And if she didn't run away now the money was a danger. Oh God, if he found that money. He'd never believe anything she told him, the truth or a lie, about how she got it and even if he did he'd beat her anyway for holding out on him. There'd been the time when she'd found that purse with a five dollar bill in it and she'd thrown the purse away and kept the bill and had tucked it in her bra only Leon had found it because something - probably he'd been watching the bally for the model show or maybe looking at some of those books with dirty pictures he'd told her Evans had - had made him want her in the daytime and he'd almost torn the clothes off her instead of letting her undress herself so he'd found the money, and he'd beaten her up instead of laying her and he'd accused her of whoring and he might have killed her if she hadn't managed to get him to listen long enough to tell him about the purse and he'd gone to see if it was where she said she'd thrown it and thank God it was still there, a woman's little red purse just like she'd described it so he believed her finally about that but still wouldn't believe she hadn't told him about it because she'd wanted to buy him a present for a surprise, and he said she'd had the beating coming anyway for holding out on him, and that had been over only five dollars and this was two hundred and forty. He might even kill her for that instead of just beating her, but anyway there'd been one good thing about that beating the day he'd found the five dollars he'd never got around to doing what he'd started to do to her, there was a call to bally first, and he'd have probably hurt her worse doing that to her when he felt that way than he'd hurt her beating her, he hadn't been so bad that way at first but now he never enjoyed having her unless he was hurting her. Oh, she'd loved him at first and had even enjoyed being hurt a little, just a little, when he had her but it kept getting worse all the time like his jealousy and now there wasn't any love left for him, just fear, and she hated it every time he touched her only she had to pretend or else, oh God wouldn't it be wonderful just once to have a man make love to her and treat her gently, why almost anybody on the lot even that Evans, he'd killed somebody tonight but he'd be gentler with her than Leon, anybody on the lot if only she dared, but especially Joe Linder, she could really love Joe Linder, and he wanted her too, she could tell, she could feel it just the way he looked at her any time Leon wasn't watching his face, she could feel his wanting her and it was a good kind of wanting, if only she could live with him instead of Leon, or even one night but don't even think about it because it couldn't be, forget it. God, it would be awful if Leon found that money but he wouldn't because she'd taken Evans' advice and stashed it before she'd come back here, not in too good a place and somebody might find it there before she could get it but at least nobody would know it was she who hid it there, and tomorrow, today rather, when Leon went into town like he'd said he was going to buy a new silk shirt - he always wore bright colored silk shirts for his act - she could get the money back from its temporary hiding place if it was still there and with time to do it she could hide it in a place where he'd never find it in a million years, and right in his own trunk not hers because she knew he sometimes looked through her trunk when she wasn't there, but he had that old cornet of his at the bottom of his trunk, the one he used to play a long time ago, he hadn't touched it for years and it was broken too but he kept it at the bottom of his trunk because he was superstitious about it for some reason and the roll of bills would slip right down in the horn and-

  There was a babble of voices from outside the canvas, quite a distance away. It sounded like a lot of people all talking at once and excitedly. Leon must have been partly awake because he heard it too and sat up.

  "What the hell's that?" he asked.

  And Suddenly Dolly had an idea what it might be because those voices could come from behind the penny arcade top and it had been near there that she'd seen Evans with the tent stake before he'd turned around and thrown it back into the darkness. So now she'd know soon whom he'd killed back there last night. She hoped it wasn't someone she knew and liked. It occurred to her now - she hadn't even wondered before - that it could even have been Joe Linder. God, dear God, don't let it be Joe Linder.

  She said, "I don't know, Leon. Want m
e to go see?" She didn't want to go see but she offered to because then he'd probably say no; if she didn't offer he'd probably tell her to go.

  "You stay here," he growled. "I'll see what's going on."

  He pulled on trousers and a shirt and went under the canvas sidewall. He was gone ten or fifteen minutes. When he came back he started to undress to get back under the blankets and didn't say anything till she asked him what had happened.

  "Mack Irby," he said. "The guy that was talker for the unborn show until he was in that accident a couple months ago. Somebody killed him and rolled him."

  "I remember him. But I didn't know he was back."

  "I didn't either. They say he just got back, late last night. Now shut up. I want to get another couple hours sleep. It's only five o'clock."

  He lay down and then sat up again suddenly, staring at her. "Say, you here in bed all last night?"

  "Sure, Leon. Why?"

  "Because he'd had some dame with him in Jesse Rau's sleeping top, that's why. Nobody knows who it was. I was just wondering."

  "Well, you can stop wondering. It sure as hell wasn't me. I didn't even know the guy except by sight and I didn't even know he was back."

  "All right, all right."

  He lay down again, apparently satisfied. But she shivered, knowing that now - unless it came out who really had been with Mack Irby - he'd brood about it all day and suspect more and more that it had been she.

  Why, she wondered suddenly, had Evans killed Mack Irby? For money? Was the money he had given her money he'd taken off the man he killed? But that would hardly be it; Evans made too good money to kill a man to pick his pockets. Lived in a trailer of his own and had a good income. No, it must have been over a woman. Leon had said that Irby'd had a woman with him in Rau's sleeping top. Well, it wasn't any business of hers. Evans must have had some good reason, and even if he hadn't given her that money, she'd probably not tell anybody.

  She had enough worries of her own, and Mack Irby had been nothing to her. She knew who he was; that's all.