The Case of the Little Green Men

by Mack Reynolds

  320 West Seventh Street was the most average-looking house in the United States, if that makes sense to you. It was red brick and wood and probably about twenty-five years old. It wasn’t going to get much older and be able to keep up decent pretenses; even a fairly recent coat of paint hadn’t completely disguised the fact that the lumber used in its construction could have been better grade. The foundation hadn’t exactly been tops either; there were cracks between some of the bricks. There was a futile attempt at a lawn, a sad-looking lilac bush to one side. While I stood there, a Monarch butterfly dragged wearily through the air and landed on a tired flower. It moved its wings up and down a few times, then took off again as though in disgust.

  I walked up the cracked concrete walk to the steps of the little house and knocked on the side of the screen door. The house door was open, homage to the day’s rapidly increasing temperature, but the screen was latched. I knocked again, louder.

  I could see her, then, coming down the hallway from the kitchen at the rear of the house. Her very appearance screamed mother. She was frail, faded, gray; stamped with the perpetual tiredness of the housewife serving a life term and who has never had quite enough security.

  I took off my hat and said, “Mrs. Shulman?”

  She wiped her hands on her apron and nodded. “Yes, I’m Mrs. Shulman.”

  I said, “I’d like to speak to you if I may.”

  Weariness came over her face and she sighed. “You’re from another of the newspapers?”

  I shook my head. “No, Mrs. Shulman, I’m not. I’m a detective.”

  She frowned. “But I’ve told Lieutenant Davis all I know already. He said I wouldn’t be bothered again unless it was very important. I — I — ” She was on the verge of breaking down.

  “I have a particular interest in the case,” I said hurriedly. “You see, I knew Harry.” I left it there for a minute; then, “I would like to talk to you.”

  She was tired, bone-tired. She said softly and slowly, “What difference does it make now? Harold is gone. It wouldn’t bring him back even though you caught this person who didn’t want Harold to live any more.”

  I said gently, “There’s one fault in your reasoning, Mrs. Shulman. I agree with you in principle: revenge is a worthless thing; but you see, there may be other Harrys — Harolds — and other parents. If your son’s murderer is allowed to go on he’ll find new victims. To protect itself, society must root out those persons capable of killing.”

  She reached out a worn hand and flicked the latch on the door. “Come in, please,” she said softly. She turned and led the way to the living room. I followed her, hat in hand.

  Undoubtedly, the Shulman family had been of the old school. The parlor was a show room; they had done their living in a large kitchen.

  She settled herself in an uncomfortable-looking easy chair, and folded her hands on her lap. I sat on the rust-colored mohair sofa, long from the mail-order house but showing little wear.

  “I’m sure that there isn’t anything I can add to what I told the other policemen,” she said, resignation in her voice.

  I didn’t answer that. I said, “Mrs. Shulman, the greatest difficulty seems to be finding a reason why anyone should want to kill Harry. You’ve probably heard of the old police adage: Find the motive. Usually, if you find out why a person was killed, you can fairly easily find out by whom he was killed.”

  She nodded wearily, “Yes, I know. Lieutenant Davis told me that they couldn’t discover a purpose for Harold’s — Harold’s — ”

  I went on hurriedly. “Then you can think of no reason why anyone should want him dead?”

  She shook her head. “No, Harold had no enemies at all. Mr. — ”

  “Knight,” I told her.

  “Mr. Knight, he was just a boy. Why, he hardly had any interests at all, aside from his reading and the science fiction club, and his job.”

  “Where did he work?”

  “Why, I’ve already told all this. Harold was fountain manager of the Rexall drug store on Stark and Tenth.”

  I took the list that Art Roget had given me and handed it to her. “Mrs. Shulman, do you recognize any of these names as anyone that Harry was particularly close to, or anyone he had business connections with — or even romantic ones?”

  She looked at the names. “Why, yes, I recognize some of these. Harold was treasurer of the Scylla Club, you know.” There was a faint trace of pride in that. “Let me see; here is Lester Zimmer. Lester used to come to dinner sometimes. And here is Ross Maddigan; Harold talked about him from time to time. And Arthur Roget, he’s been here for dinner, too. They used to put out a mimeographed little magazine together about two years ago, Lester and Arthur and Harold.”

  “Off-Trail Fantasy?” I suggested.

  “Oh, gracious, no. No, this was two magazines ago. Harold puts — did put — out his new magazine all by himself. He has a place of his own down in the cellar for his magazines and his mimeograph machine and things.”

  She looked again at the list. “I’m afraid that those are the only names I recogniize, Mr. Knight.”

  “You don’t see any that Harry might have been connected with outside of his Scylla Club membership? Someone …”

  Mrs. Shulman was shaking her head again. “No, I don’t believe so.”

  “About these names you have mentioned — Zimmer, Roget and Ross Maddigan — did Harry have any connection with them aside from their mutual interest in science fiction?”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Knight.”

  “You don’t believe that it might be possible that Harry found out something — something very important — about one of them?”

  “I can’t imagine such a thing. He hasn’t given any such indication around the house, and usually Harold told me just about everything.” She’d been holding up well thus far, but now I could see her defenses crumbling. I came quickly to my feet.

  “All right, Mrs. Shulman. Thank you very much. I’ll be going now. No, don’t bother; I can find my way out. Thank you again.”

  She had a handkerchief to her eyes as I left the room and made my way to the screen door. I felt like a heel. Who was I to break in on her sorrow?

  It was harder to find a cab this time. I told myself that I should have had the other one wait.

  Montgomery Boulevard was about three blocks south. I walked over to it, on the way trying to get something out of what Mrs. Shulman had told me. There wasn’t anything, at least not that I could put my finger on.

  I reached the boulevard and stood waiting for a cab or a bus. At last I hailed a cab and got in.

  The driver said, “Where to?” looking over his shoulder at me.

  I reached absently for my list of names. I read off Les Zimmer’s number, 632 Lafayette Avenue, and settled back.

  “What’s the matter, buddy,” the cabby said sarcastically, “you tired?”

  I didn’t get it.

  He swung the cab around the corner, drove up one block and half a block over and pulled up to the curb.

  I looked at my list again, and up at the street number. Les Zimmer lived about a block and a half away from Harry Shulman’s home.

  The driver looked back at me. “Thirty-five cents,” he said, sneering.

  To hell with trying to explain. I counted out exactly thirty-five cents and handed it to him. If he expected a tip, he could whistle for it.

  He snorted, shot into low gear and was off.

  I looked up at the Zimmer home. Possibly ten years newer, otherwise it was almost a duplicate of the Shulman house. There seemed to be a little more time and a little more money involved, too; not much, but some. A neater lawn, a fairly nice hedge fence.

  I went up the walk, rang the bell, and waited.

  He came finally, his hands dirty with printer’s ink, a printer’s apron around him to protect his clothes, and an impatient expression on his face. Another kid, perhaps twenty or so; Shulman’s age. His nose was too big and his eyes prominent and too sincere; hi
s ears stuck out from the side of his head like Bing Crosby’s. I remembered having seen him at Ross Maddigan’s party. He was one of those who had fumed against the use of pen-names.

  He opened the door and said, “I’m sorry, but I’m busy and the lady of the house …”

  Evidently he didn’t recognize me. “I’m not selling anything,” I told him. “My name’s Jeb Knight; I wanted to talk to you. You’re Les Zimmer, aren’t you?”

  He placed me now. “My name is Lester Zimmer, yes. You’re the private detective, aren’t you?” he said. His voice was a bit on the high side, something like Shulman’s. The two had more in common than science fiction; they could have been brothers.

  “That’s right,” I told him.

  For a minute, I thought he was going to close the door in my face, but then, suddenly, he opened it.

  “Come on in,” he said. “We’ll have to go down to the basement. I’ve got ink on the platen of my press and I can’t let it dry.” He led the way down a hall to a cellar door and then down a dozen steps to his sanctum. Evidently he’d taken the basement over lock stock and barrel for his hobby. The walls were lined with bookshelves he’d improvised from unfinished lumber; there were rows and rows of them, filled with pulp magazines.

  He had one manufactured bookcase, glass-enclosed, and obviously picked up at a second hand furniture shop. It was well laden with hard cover volumes, most of them on the thick and battered side.

  There were a dozen or so illustrations, obviously originals of art work that had appeared in the science fiction magazines — girls in scanty spacesuits, fantastic monsters being finished off with ray guns, time travelers finding themselves in the Roman arena. In one corner he had a small printing press, probably a six-by-nine, operated by a foot pedal arrangement. Near it was a rickety, ex-kitchen table with a flat piece of marble on it; his composing stone. Next to the table he had a home-made rack to hold half a dozen type cases which contained his scanty supply of type fonts.

  The press platen was moist with ink and there was a form in place. He’d been running something off when I interrupted him. I look around interestedly while he went back to his press and started pumping it again. He’d pick up a dodger-size sheet of newsprint with his right hand, insert it in the press; then, while his left hand was extracting the finished product and putting it on a pile to his left, his right hand would insert another. All this time, his foot pumped up and down rapidly. He was getting as much speed as if he’d had an electric motor.

  “You’ll have to pardon me,” he said, not very apologetically; “I’m running off some programs for the AnnCon.” He didn’t look up from his work to say it. “What can I do for you?”

  I stood next to him and watched. His hands worked beautifully, in and out, in and out; you’d think he would have crushed them between the bed and the heavy form of type, but he had his coordination down pat. I’d hate to try it with a bun on.

  I said, “Maddigan and Roget tell me you’re quite an authority on the possibility of alien life forms being on earth.”

  He snorted disgustedly, and repeated, “What can I do for you, Mr. Knight?” I got the antagonism in his voice now, but I didn’t understand it.

  I took a deep breath and said, “I’m investigating the possibility?”

  He stopped the press momentarily and looked over at me, his eyes earnest but unbelieving. He said, “I thought that was supposed to be a joke.”

  I said ruefully, “It was, two days ago. Roget and Maddigan seem to have changed their minds now.”

  He was too sincere to attempt to achieve sarcasm, but he expressed the nearest thing to it. “Isn’t it rather silly for a grown man to be investigating the presence of aliens from space?”

  I shrugged and got off a self-deprecating grin. “I’m a working man, Zimmer. I sell my time in return for money. If Maddigan and Roget want to buy my time and use it for hunting out men from Mars …”

  He looked at me, contempt growing in his expression. “You mean you’ll take money for anything — ”

  “Not quite,” I cut in, irritated.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr. Knight,” he said flatly. He turned back to his press and began pumping again. He reached with his right hand for a piece of the newsprint.

  “Look,” I told him, holding down my temper. “Art Roget says you’re tops in this hobby of collecting dope on aliens from space. I thought you could give me a line on …”

  “Sorry,” he told me. “Can you find your way out?”

  I looked at him in exasperation.

  He said, still without looking up from his work, “It’s one thing, making a hobby of finding evidence to indicate that space travel has already been achieved by intelligent life forms elsewhere in the universe; but when a disgusting murder has been committed, I can’t see that such methods of confusing the issue will help anyone involved, except possibly the murderer. Can you find your way out, Mr. Knight?”

  It was a pretty-effective brush-off, considering his youth.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It looked like every other small apartment hotel in the world, complete to the no vacancy sign outside and a pimply, adolescent-looking clerk at the desk. I estimated that a small apartment at the Wentworth would run about seventy-five a month. No more than that, or the tenant was being robbed.

  The clerk said, “Miss Sharp isn’t in.” He hadn’t rung, and I looked at him quizzically.

  He said, “She doesn’t return until nearly six; she’s at work. Miss Sharp has been with us for some time; she never gets home week days until nearly six.”

  I hadn’t asked him for all that, but it was all right. I said, “Where does she work?”

  He looked me over again, more carefully this time, taking in a suit that could soon use a pressing, and shoes that were beginning to show that they had seen endless shines and weren’t taking them so well any more.

  “I couldn’t say,” he said.

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

  “We don’t give out information about our guests.” His voice was stiff.

  I carry a badge pinned in my wallet. I flashed it quickly, returned the wallet to my pocket and said, “I’m a detective, son. Where does Miss Sharp work?”

  He looked at me levelly, “Let’s have another look at that buzzer.”

  I grinned at him. “Okay,” I said, “I’m a private eye; you don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t …”

  “I don’t, and won’t,” he said, satisfaction oozing from him.

  There was a phone on the side of the desk. I checked quickly with my list, then picked it up and dialed. I said, “Ross Maddigan? This is Jeb Knight. Listen, in a way I’ve changed my mind about this case … Yeah. I’ll see you later about it, probably tomorrow. But right now, could you tell me where Julie Sharp works? … No, of course not, but there were twenty-odd people there, and she was one of them … Of course, everybody … All right, see you later, thanks, Ross.”

  I hung up and turned back to the clerk. “You read too much Raymond Chandler,” I said complacently.

  “That will be a nickel for the call,” he told me, cold-panned.

  I grinned at him and flipped him his nickel. “You’ll probably see more of me from now on, chum.”

  “I can’t wait, shamus,” he said between his teeth.

  I started for the door. “What’d I tell you?” I said over my shoulder. “Too much reading about Philip Marlowe. Nobody ever calls anybody shamus outside of detective novels.”

  • • •

  The textile firm for which Julie Sharp was working was located in the Wyandotte Building which is just about as far north of City Center as the Kroll Building, which houses Lee and Knight, Private Investigations, is to the south. That’s the only similarity between the two buildings that I can think of. An elevator that zipped rather than rumbled, piloted by a uniformed little redhead who should have been in a chorus line, shot me up to the eighth floor in a matter of seconds. The elevator door opened out f
acing the heavy glass doors of Brandenburg and Sons.

  I entered and asked the neat number at the PBX where I could find Julie Sharp. She directed me down a short corridor and to a door which stated, simply, Joseph Brandenburg. Beyond it was a small anteroom containing a neat little desk, two or three heavy, dark red leather reception room chairs, and the woman I couldn’t get out of my mind.

  When I entered, she looked up from her typewriter, frowning slightly at first. Then her generous mouth broke into a smile of recognition and her eyebrows twitched mischievously.

  “Hi, shamus,” she greeted me.

  “Oh, no,” I grinned back at her, “I just got finished explaining that nobody ever really calls a private detective a shamus.”

  “Heavens, I’m disillusioned,” she said, then shot a quick glance down at her watch. “I suppose this has something to do with last night. I hate to be rude, uh — ” She was deciding what to call me.

  “Jeb,” I said.

  “ — but I’ll only be able to give you five minutes. Mr. Brandenburg …”

  “All right,” I told her. “Shouldn’t be bothering you during working hours anyway; perhaps I could see you later.”

  Her eyebrow went up. “This is business, I suppose.”

  I nodded very seriously.

  She took her hands away from the typewriter, checked something on the paper she’d been working at with her pencil, then turned back to me. “Very well,” she said, “sit down and tell me what I can do.”

  I sank into one of the leather chairs and said slowly, “I thought that being an outsider at that party might have given you a slightly different viewpoint. That you might have seen something that another would have let go by.”

  She frowned prettily and pursed her lips, but she didn’t say anything.

  “How well did you know Harry Shulman?” I asked her.

  She twitched one shoulder — once again, prettily. “I knew him just slightly, through Ross. He seemed to be a nice enough kid.”