by Craig Rice
“Until it was opened onstage!” Russell gasped.
“No, I had to reline it,” Jake said. He was fingering a hammer that hung from a hook on his overalls. There was red paint on the handle.
Or was it blood? I shuddered as the thought occurred to me.
“But that isn’t what I wanted to say.” Jake faltered before he went on. “What I mean is, I was in the prop room all through the show. A lot of stuff wasn’t ready for the show today and everybody was gripin’. They couldn’t of put no body in that box or I woulda seen ’em doing it.”
“The body wasn’t placed in the box during the performance,” the Sergeant said patiently. “The Princess wasn’t murdered until five-thirty or six. The show was over at five-twelve.”
Jake nodded helplessly. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I mean. You said six to eight. Well, when the show was over, everybody went to eat. I didn’t go out until later, but I only went to the corner. I got me some coffee, and, well, dammit, nobody coulda put her in the box at no time! When I left the room, I locked it!” His puzzled face broke into a frown.
The Sergeant leaned forward. “Wasn’t that unusual?”
Jake nodded. “Had to keep it locked. Someone was stealing all my props. Only a week ago when we wuz doing the restaurant bit, I lost all my dishes that we use in the scene. A certain comic—I won’t mention no names—walked outta here with a bundle so big he could hardly carry it. Well, sir, I get to thinking about that bundle, see? So the next night I gets me a glimpse of the same comic. This time the bundle’s bigger, and me with no dishes for the scene. So I goes up to this comic and I says: ‘What you got in that package?’ He turns white as a ghost. ‘Laundry,’ he says. Laundry! Why that guy never had more than one shirt at a time in his life!”
Mandy, who had been staring at nothing in the corner of the room, jumped up.
“That’s a lie!” he shouted.
“What’s a lie?” Jake demanded. “That you stole my dishes or that you got only one shirt?”
Mandy lapsed into an injured silence. I knew that he hadn’t really stolen the dishes. They always got broken during the scene and he just took the broken ones and mended them. Then, when the new ones arrived, he switched them.
Jake was like an old woman about his silly props, anyway. That was the first time he had actually accused Mandy of stealing them, though, and he was mad all over again.
“When that bundle went crashing to the floor it didn’t sound like no laundry,” he added belligerently.
“And that is why the prop room is kept locked?” the Sergeant asked.
“That, and other instances damn similar,” Jake said.
The Sergeant waited a moment, then said, “You take your job very seriously, don’t you?”
Jake thumped a fist on the rickety table. “Damn right I do. There ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do for H. I. Moss. He did me a turn once and I won’t never forget it.”
The Sergeant asked what the “turn” was and Jake told him about the time Moss let him have five hundred dollars. Seems Jake’s wife was sick, had to go to Arizona, and, without Jake even asking for it, the money was in his pay envelope.
“It’s things like that you can’t never repay,” Jake added simply.
“Sometimes a person can find a way,” the Sergeant said.
Jake looked at him quickly. His thin, wiry body trembled. “Whaddya mean by that?”
“I mean that if you knew a certain person was blackmailing this benefactor, you would find it easy to, shall I say dispose, of the blackmailer? Justification, you would say to yourself, but it would still be murder!”
Jake jumped back as though he’d been shot. “I didn’t do it!” he cried. “I told her to get out but I didn’t kill her. At first I didn’t recognize her; when I did I told her I knew who she was and she said ‘So what?’ Then she told me he begged her to come back. I knew it was a lie; those rich clothes and her airs and all. I accused her of blackmail and she laughed at me.”
“Where were you at six?” the Sergeant snapped.
“I wuz eating. Brought my dinner with me in a lunch box.”
“With whom?”
“I wuz—alone.” Jake’s shoulders slumped and he let his head fall forward. “But I didn’t kill her,” he mumbled.
I believed him. Jake a murderer? Never!
The Sergeant was of a different mind. He fired questions at the prop man until it’s a wonder Jake didn’t admit it just to get rid of him.
He stuck to his story, though. He ate his lunch-box dinner immediately after the show and then he went to the corner drugstore and had a cup of coffee. After that he came back to the theater.
“You went directly to the prop room?” the Sergeant asked.
“Yes—that is—yes, I did.”
I couldn’t stand it any longer. It would have been better if the police had actually third-degreed him.
“Look, I know I’m butting in, but I can’t help it.”
The Sergeant looked at me quizzically.
“Even if you think Jake had a motive to kill the Princess, that doesn’t explain La Verne’s death. You said yourself that it looked like one murderer.”
The Sergeant asked one of the policemen to give him a box. It was a lunch box, the ordinary kind with a rounded top, made out of green tin. The Sergeant placed it on the table.
“Is this yours?” he asked Jake.
“Wait a minute! Don’t answer that!” Gee Gee suddenly shouted. “It’s another trick.” Then to the Sergeant: “All those boxes look alike. How could he tell if it was his or not?”
“I think he will identify it,” was all the Sergeant said. And he was right.
“I know it from that dent in the side,” Jake added tonelessly. Gee Gee groaned.
The Sergeant was taking something from the box, a square of cardboard, like a playing card. I wasn’t close enough to the table to get a good look at it, but Sandra spoke up.
“That’s La Verne’s picture of her …” Then she realized what she had said and stopped short.
“Yes, it’s the missing picture. It was found in this box that Jake identifies as his.”
“I found it! Honest to Gawd, I found it!” Jake tried to snatch the picture from the Sergeant’s hand. “It was on the steps the night they found La Verne dead. When I went up to put the wax on the door, that’s when I found it. I was going to turn it in, but then I heard all the stink about it being stolen and I got scared. You can’t arrest me for having a picture I found on the steps!”
He turned to Biff. “They can’t, can they?”
Biff patted him on the shoulder, but before he could speak, the Sergeant said:
“We weren’t thinking of arresting you—yet. We just want the whole, unvarnished truth. Now, let’s see …” He went through the papers again.
His papers were beginning to remind me of Russell’s brief case. I think they were just props he used to make himself feel important. He found one piece that seemed to interest him.
After staring at it, he said, “Was the picture the only thing you found on the steps?”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t see a frame? Or, perhaps, a piece of paper folded like a contract?”
“Nope.”
The Sergeant was about to dismiss him; at least he looked as though there were nothing else on his mind, when Jake suddenly said, “Stachi can tell ya. Him and the Hermit was sitting right in the stage entrance. They musta seen me.”
“The Hermit?” the Sergeant said. “Who is that?”
“He’s the guy that handles the flies. They call him the Hermit ’cause he’s sorta cooped up like. Him and Stachi are sitting there talking when I … No, by golly! The Hermit wasn’t there. I got it mixed up with the time the two girls had the fight.”
Jake scratched his ear and then he rubbed his thin face with a paint-smeared hand. “I guess I’m going nuts or something,” he said apologetically. “I didn’t see ’em that time at all.”
“You might ha
ve seen me.”
At first I didn’t know where the voice came from. Then I saw Stachi. He was standing in the doorway.
“I was sitting in my chair dozing.” As he spoke he walked into the room. It wasn’t until he got into the light that I got a good look at him.
The veins on his forehead were swollen and blue. His maroon sweater was unraveled at the elbow. Around his neck he wore a soiled piece of flannel with a safety pin holding it on. There was an odor of carbolic acid about him that reminded me of a hospital.
“He passed me at the door,” he said. “I was dozing, as I told you, but I saw him go upstairs for a moment. When he came down, I saw him stoop and pick up something.” He shrugged. “It might have been the picture.”
Tiny beads of perspiration made Stachi’s face glisten. As he spoke he seemed to sway on his feet.
“You’re ill,” I said. “Let me get you something; an aspirin or something.” I had half risen and Stachi took a step backward.
“No,” he said, “I’m all right.” He turned to leave and the Sergeant spoke for the first time.
“Just a moment,” he said kindly. “You say you were dozing. Could anyone have passed you at the door while you were asleep? Coming in or going out, I mean?”
Stachi turned and faced him. He hesitated a bit before answering. “I said I was dozing, not asleep. My job is to stay there, so I didn’t leave the door all evening.”
“Then you would have known if someone passed you?”
“Certainly. There was no one.”
When he left, one of the policemen put out a hand to stop him, but the Sergeant shook his head. “I’ll talk to him later,” he said, and the policeman relaxed.
It was Alice’s policeman! I hadn’t recognized him in his uniform. He glanced rather sheepishly around the room. Then his eyes met hers and he smiled.
Alice tried to smile back, but gave up in a flood of tears. She had torn a wispy hanky to shreds and she dabbed at her eyes with the rag.
If a cop was ever torn between love and duty, it was Mike Brannen at that moment. He looked from the Sergeant to Alice. Love won.
“There, there, angel flower. Don’t cry.” He walked over to her and handed her a handkerchief the size of a bed sheet. With an apologetic look at the Sergeant, he patted her blond head.
Alice sniffed a coy thank you and tossed a half-defiant, half-triumphant look around the room.
“He’s hooked good,” Gee Gee mumbled. Alice managed to smile, a serene smile.
Chapter Fourteen
“Hey! I got a C.O.D. package for Gypsy Rose Lee!” The loud voice of the call boy penetrated the dressing room. “It’s from Dazian’s,” he added, as though that made everything all right.
“My material for next week’s wardrobe,” I explained. “I’ll be just a moment. May I go?”
The Sergeant told me to hurry back.
As I came downstairs the call boy was goggle-eyed with curiosity. He was peering into the room.
“Did they find the body in here?” he asked breathlessly.
“No, but I don’t want to talk about it.” When I saw the disappointment on his face I added, “She was in the Gazeeka Box.”
He gave me the package and a slip to sign. “Gazeeka Box, eh. Was she … ?”
“That’s all,” I said sternly.
He started to grumble. “All the guys in the drugstore keep askin’ me questions and I don’t know nothin’. And me here all the time, too. It’s unfair discrimination, that’s what.” He was still complaining as he left me.
The heavy package rested on a chair. Knowing that the materials were wrapped in the butcher’s paper gave me a sense of reality. I had four costumes to make for the new show. Tomorrow I’ll start work on them, I thought. Then I wondered, wondered if I’d be alive to wear them. Alive to make them, for that matter.
It was a grisly thought but I couldn’t help it. The entire theater held a sense of doom. I knew somehow we hadn’t seen the end of the murders.
A scuffling noise on the stairs reminded me that I had been told to hurry. A strange cop was halfway down when I met him.
“The Sergeant wants to …” He stopped. His eyes caught sight of someone climbing down the rungs on the brick wall. He drew his gun and shouted, “Stop! Stop where you are!”
I tried to grab his arm and tell him it was only the Hermit, but he was yelling so loud he didn’t hear me.
Hermie was so startled he lost his footing. One leg hung from under the bar; the other shook weakly. He looked like a toy dangling on a Christmas tree.
“It’s all right, Hermie!” I yelled and ran downstairs to help him.
He had steadied himself by the time I crossed to backstage and was slowly descending. The policeman, still pointing his gun, waited until he reached the bottom rung. In the semidarkness Hermie’s blanched face turned to me.
“Thanks. I was scared for a minute.” Then to the policeman: “Ain’t a man got a right to go home without having his innards frightened out of him?”
“When there’s two murders in a joint in two days, nobody’s got a right to nothing.” He took Hermie’s arm and led him toward the stairs.
I started to follow them when I saw the light. It was in the flies and it flashed once and then went off!
“Wait,” I said. “Look up there. A light just went on and off.” I pointed and they both looked up.
There was nothing but darkness; the light had gone.
“It may go again,” I said.
The cop looked at me skeptically. Hermie shook his head.
“Couldn’t be no light. I put ’em out,” he said. “Always careful about that.”
Was it my imagination, or did he seem particularly anxious for us to leave? He walked on ahead. The policeman hesitated a moment, then followed him.
“It looked like a flashlight,” I insisted.
“Look, lady,” the cop said slowly. “We got a lot of trouble. We got a murderer, maybe two of ’em to find. So all right! It was a flashlight. Now come along. We been gone long enough.”
While he was talking I remembered something, something I saw the night La Verne was murdered. I brushed the Hermit and the cop aside and flew upstairs. When I arrived in the room I was too out of breath to speak.
The Sergeant asked me to sit down but I couldn’t. I was too excited.
“The night La Verne was murdered, I …”
Everybody was staring at me. Biff had rushed to the sink and was bringing me a glass of water. His hand shook so that the glass was empty when he thrust it at me and suddenly I felt that what I had to say wasn’t important enough for all the attention.
“Well, it probably wasn’t much,” I said falteringly. “Only when Biff and I went out on the landing to call the Hermit to the party—that was the night La Verne was found—Hermie said he didn’t want to come all the way down, but he would take some beer. So Biff went back to the room to get it …”
“That’s right,” Biff agreed. “I got two bottles for him.”
“It was when Biff was in the room that I saw the elevator coming down and when it hit the side of the wall I saw something flash.”
The Sergeant looked at the policeman who held Hermie.
“I thought at the time it was a piece of fringe.”
I was getting only half the Sergeant’s attention. The policeman looked at him knowingly. “Just now she seen lights, so she says. I didn’t see nothing,” he said.
“I did see a light. And the night La Verne was murdered I saw a piece of the G string that she was strangled with!” I hadn’t meant to go quite that far but the disbelief on the cop’s face was too irritating. “That’s what was hanging on the elevator,” I said with assurance.
I don’t think anyone would have believed me if it hadn’t been for the flyman breaking down.
“I don’t know a thing about it, honest I don’t.” Then he collapsed in the cop’s arms. “He told me if I let on he was up there he’d blow my brains out. He had a gun and I kn
ew he’d do it. But I was going to tell tonight; I couldn’t stand it any longer. He’s still up there. That’s what the light was.”
The Sergeant waited for the Hermit to go on, but the poor guy was scared to death. Just kept mumbling, “He’s got a gun, a gun.”
“Who has a gun?” the policeman asked.
Hermie looked at him blankly. “I don’t know. I never seen him before.” He was still crying in terror when the Sergeant ordered his men to bring the man down.
“Wait!” Hermie suddenly pulled himself together. “There’s two ways to get up there. If half the police cover this side of the stage and the others use the opposite rungs we can trap him.”
Biff and the two comics, Mandy and Joey, followed the cops. I watched them from the balcony.
Hermie was explaining how there was a catwalk that extended from one side of the stage to the other. “It’s purty narrow,” he said. “We only use it when we got scenery repairs and there ain’t nothing to hang on to, so you better let me go in the lead.”
“For a guy that was paralyzed with fear a minute ago, he certainly is making like a hero now,” Gee Gee whispered in my ear. She was standing behind me on the balcony. “Did he say who it was?” she asked and I said no. But I had a darn good idea.
I had to lean over the rail to see Biff. He was on his way up. He was going to climb the rungs to the flies.
“Biff!” I screamed. “Don’t go! He has a gun and …”
“Listen!” Gee Gee’s long nails dug in the flesh of my arm.
A voice was coming from the ceiling of the theater. “You ain’t gonna fry me! I ain’t gonna take no hot squat!”
The voice was Louie’s!
Then the Sergeant spoke. “We got you covered, so come down quietly.”
Across the stage, the police were cautiously scaling the wall. They were using one hand to hang on with; the other held a gun.
One cop called to Louie, “Throw down your gun and surrender!”
Louie’s answer was a bullet. It was the first time I’d ever heard a pistol shot. It didn’t bang; it sort of whizzed. Then there was a crack.
“Must have hit the brick wall,” Gee Gee muttered.
