by Craig Rice
“Then you are … ?” My mouth was too dry to speak. He had taken a step closer to me and I could feel his hot breath on my face.
“I am the stripper strangler,” he said. Then he smiled. “Amusing title: stripper strangler. I like that.” He laughed quietly. “I like the other touch, too; strangled with her own G string.”
“But it wasn’t her own G string. It was Jannine’s.”
He looked at me narrowly. The smile left his face.
“It was her new plush-lined one,” I added. “She said she dropped it on the steps and …”
“And I found it.”
“You tried to kill me during the raid, too, didn’t you?”
He shook his head.
“Yes you did,” I insisted, as though it were very important to get that straight. “When the lights went out backstage you tried to kill me with your hands.”
“I turned the lights out, but I didn’t mean to kill you. Not then. When you screamed I knew I had the wrong neck.”
My hands felt wet and sticky. Something pressed hard against my palm. I realized it was my lipstick. I moved my hand and touched my powder puff, an eyeliner. Then I felt the little scissorlike gadget that I used to curl my eyelashes.
My dressmaker’s shears! They should be on my shelf! They were strong and sharp. My hand trembled as I felt for them. I was afraid Stachi could read my mind as my hands touched the useless things on the shelf.
“The Princess saw me,” he was saying. “She walked by the door as I stood behind La Verne’s chair. She saw me with my hands on La Verne’s neck, but La Verne was …”
A sudden change came over his face, a startled expression. Then he nodded his head. A strand of dusty gray hair fell over his eye.
“Now I know,” he said. He looked at me strangely, as though he were going to tell me something. Then he changed his mind.
“Where were you hiding?” I asked.
I didn’t want to know. I just wanted him to keep talking until I could feel the curved handles of my scissors. The thought of what I’d do with them when I found them frightened me. Would I have the courage, the strength to use them?
Stachi glanced at the wardrobe sheet. My eyes followed him.
“I stood behind that curtain,” he said. The costumes made bulges in the cretonne almost as if someone was there then.
Stachi’s voice went on. “The body was in the closet when Jake put the wax on the door. I watched him. Once I thought he heard me. Then I would have had to kill him. But he went away and as I was getting ready to leave the room, someone else came in.”
From the way he looked at me I knew that I was the someone.
“I thought you saw me,” he said, and I shook my head.
There was something cool and curved against my right hand. I moved my fingers until they were close to the handle. My scissors!
“It must have been more difficult with the Princess,” I said. The effort to keep the excitement from my voice made my chest hurt. I could feel beads of perspiration roll down my face.
“The Princess was easy,” Stachi said.
My hands held the scissors tightly. When he turns his head, I thought, I’ll pick them up and …
“I waited until everyone had left for dinner. Then I called to her. ‘There’s someone here to see you,’ I said, and when she got to the top step, I slipped the string around her neck. She didn’t even struggle; just gasped and began falling. I had to hold the string tightly or she would have rolled down the stairs. That’s when she cut her arm—on a nail sticking up from the floor.”
“But the prop-room door was locked,” I said. “How did you get her body into the Gazeeka Box?”
He put his hand—the one that nothing glittered in—to his pocket and pulled out a bunch of keys. Without taking his eyes from me, he twirled them on his finger.
“Night watchmen and doormen always have these, you know,” he said.
“Of course. How stupid of the police not to think of that.”
If only he’d take his eyes from me! If I could distract him in some way! Suddenly I remembered a movie I had seen. An actor was in a spot just like this. He had looked quickly over the man’s shoulder and, when the man turned, he struck.
I turned my head and stared past Stachi. I’ve never tried to act as well before in my life. I think I even opened my mouth as if I were going to speak.
Then Stachi laughed!
I laughed, too, but hysterically. I expected him to say that he had seen the same movie. Then it seemed that there were two murderers facing me. I stopped laughing.
“Have you thought of what you’re going to do with my body?” I asked.
“Yes, I have.” His words seemed to run together. Or was it because my head was spinning so?
“I’m curious,” I managed to say. I thought of what Biff had said when we were leaving the theater through the basement. “It would be a good place to hide a body.”
“The coal chute, maybe?” I asked. Stachi shook his head.
“The pile of scenery under the stairs?”
“Guess again. You’re getting warm.” He eyed me playfully. Then, with a little chuckle, he said, “I’ll give you a hint. What is it that stands like a woman, dresses like a woman, but isn’t a woman?”
I stared at him silently.
“Oh, come now. Surely you can guess that?” He looked at Sarah Jane sitting stiffly at the make-up shelf.
“Now can you guess?” he asked with a grin.
I nodded stupidly and he told me how funny it would be when the girls found out that Sarah Jane was really a corpse.
“I’ll have to brace your body in some way to keep it from falling, but with the sheet thrown over it, they may not discover you for some time.”
My hand dropped the scissors. They fell noiselessly on the shelf and I watched the hands coming nearer to my throat. They were long, thin hands, and they had big blue veins that stood out. Something sparkled in one of them.
From a distance a voice was saying, “You’ll be dressed in a white sheet like a wedding gown, and there will be diamonds around your throat, diamonds cutting into your neck.”
Then there were many hands, all with big blue veins, and each hand held something that sparkled.
“When the others find you it will be very funny.”
I felt something touch my throat very gently. Then I heard a little laugh.
“Very, very funny.”
Chapter Nineteen
The theater was full of hands, thin, veined hands. They were all applauding. I was on.
“Always a mother but never a bride, that is my doleful admission. An actress at heart, I went wrong from the start by giving the groom an audition.”
“Stop rehearsing your lyrics, Punkin, and drink a little of this.” The voice was familiar and the coat my nose pressed into smelled of tobacco and Old Grand.
“Oh, Biff! He said he was going to prop me up in a corner. He said it was going to be funny …” I didn’t want to cry, but I couldn’t help it.
Biff patted my face with a wet towel and put a glass of water under my lips. “We heard him, Punkin. He was doing his own version of Uncle Don: ‘Now, if little Johnny on his seventh birthday will look under the sheet, he will find a present; a nice corpse.’”
That made me cry louder. “Please, Biff, this is serious.”
“O.K., honey, you be serious and I’ll be Roebuck. Don’t cry. It’s all over now. No more bodies, no more murders, no more nothing.”
“Then you got him?” I couldn’t see very well, but I got the impression that Biff was grinning from ear to ear.
“Yes, Punkin, we got him. We were waiting right there and the very minute we thought you were in trouble, we grabbed him.”
I became aware of the anxious faces staring down at me. I realized I was on the floor again, and I realized something else!
I stood up and faced Biff. “I want a straight answer, yes or no,” I said slowly. “Were you within calling distance when that
madman was scaring the pants off me?”
Biff stopped grinning. “He wasn’t a madman. He …”
“Wasn’t?” I looked from Biff to the Sergeant, then to Jiggers. Mike Brannen was there, too. He took up the grinning where Biff left off.
“Yep. He’s a past tenser all right,” he said cheerfully.
Then I hadn’t dropped the scissors!
Mike started giving me a detailed description as I tried to go out of the room.
“You’d never think such a skinny guy could hold so much blood. Boy, it spurted like a fountain. His whole throat was ripped wide open.”
When I reached the landing, Biff held my arm. “Don’t go out there, honey,” he said. “You had enough excitement to last you for a while. They’re carting the body off to the morgue and, well, it ain’t pretty.”
Biff still held the glass of water. When I tried to drink it I choked.
Biff said, “We got a full confession before he done himself in. Not that we needed it, but …”
“He killed himself?” This time I almost fainted from relief.
Biff led me back into the dressing room and pulled out a chair for me. Mike was still on the same conversation, and Biff asked him to be quiet for a minute.
“Get Gyp a drink,” he said. “Here, honey, put your feet up.” He pulled over a chair and put a pillow under my legs.
Mike brought the bottle out from behind the mirror and poured three drinks. Then he looked at the Sergeant and divided his own drink between Biff and me.
I enjoyed the attention; I might as well face it. The drink made me feel warm and happy. The Sergeant reminded me of my grandfather again, and even Mike Brannen looked handsome.
I had been hoping the Sergeant would take his policemen and go so the three of us could have another drink, when he closed the notebook he had been writing in.
“Well,” he said, “that closes the case.” Then he held out his hand to Biff. “Thank you, young man.”
When their hands met it was a tossup which one was the worse actor. Biff had an expression on his face as though he were screen testing for a Dick Tracy past and the Sergeant was playing “Joe Generous.” If he’d rehearsed it for six weeks, he couldn’t have read his next line with more hamlike sincerity.
“If it hadn’t been for your keen brain and quick eye, this might very well have had a different ending.”
They both looked at me significantly. I know I should have given them my sad eye, but I couldn’t. The Sergeant was a little disappointed. He wanted a three-cornered scene and I failed him, so he turned back to Biff.
“Remember, if you want a job on the force, get in touch with me.” As they shook again, the Sergeant managed a laugh so much like Edward Arnold’s that it was all I could do to keep from howling. Then he started for the door.
With one hand on the knob, he turned and paused a moment. Building up for an exit hand, I thought. I was right. The timing was wrong, but the line was there.
“You will be asked to appear at the inquest.”
“That does it!” I shouted, hitting the side of my head with the heel of my hand. “What a couple of hamolas! What corn, right off the cob.”
I laughed so hard that Mike began slapping me on the back. He waited to speak until the door closed behind the Sergeant and the policemen.
“Aw, Gyp, you shouldn’ta laughed at the chief like that. He meant it, honest. If it hadn’t been for Biff putting two and two together with that picture, they never woulda caught that murderin’ rat.” He looked at Biff and his voice was reverent. “He’s a hero, that’s what he is, a real hero.”
Biff, still wearing the Dick Tracy face, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Well, Punkin here deserves some credit,” he admitted.
“Now, that’s damn generous of you.”
Biff wasn’t sure how I meant it. “I mean, if you hadn’t asked him all those questions, it woulda been tougher for us.”
“I know how you meant it, dear.”
Mike could see the danger signals. His three days backstage in a burlesque theater had taught him not to ignore cues.
“Tell her about the picture, Biff.” He turned to me. “Boy, this’ll kill ya.”
“Oh, that was nothing,” Biff began modestly. “The cops just ignored the most obvious clew in the whole case. I—well—I took care of it for ’em.” He leaned back in the chair and put his thumbs through his suspenders.
“When the picture of La Verne’s mother is missing it gets to be important to me. So in my own quiet way I find out what La Verne’s name was. Not that phony La Verne handle, but her real name. Guess what it was?”
“Brenda Goldblatt?”
Biff scowled. “No. It’s Stacciaro. Get it?”
“No. Give it to me again. Right from the beginning.”
“Stacciaro. Stachi. See?”
“Oh, yes!” I said a little sarcastically. “La Verne’s real name was Stacc—-something. So that makes her Stachi’s relative, daughter. No, granddaughter. He was too old to be her father. Anyway, he’s her grandfather. His daughter got in wrong and had an illegitimate daughter and it was La Verne.
“Stachi gets mad and disowns his daughter. Then she and La Verne almost starve to death until La Verne gets a job in burlesque and when Stachi finds out who she is he decides he’s got to kill her because death is better than dishonor.”
I brushed my hands and leaned back in my chair. If I’d had suspenders, I would have put my thumbs through them. Instead I reached for my drink.
“That’s right!” Biff stared at me with admiration. “Howja know?”
That’s when I spilled my drink all over my lap.
Biff started drying my dress with a make-up towel. “How did you figure it out?” he asked.
I took the towel from him and carefully placed it on the shelf. “Look, Biff,” I said quietly and calmly. “I just had a nerve-wracking experience. I just went through hell. I damn near got my neck bent by a guy who has already killed two women. I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
Then I turned to Mike. “Hand me my purse, please.”
I took out my garter belt with the stockings still hanging from it and began unhooking them. Then I kicked off my slippers and pulled on my hose.
Mike stared at me as though he’d never seen a woman put on a stocking. His face turned red when I straightened a seam.
“It’s the truth,” he said. “He told me so hisself. Just before he stuck the butcher knife in his throat. You know that knife that hangs in the wings on the tin sign, ‘In case of fire cut this rope’?”
I didn’t answer him.
“The rope that lets in the asbestos curtain,” he added importantly. “Well, that’s the knife he does it with. I was right there and he was so calm and quiet nobody had an idea of what was on his mind. All of a sudden-like he grabs it and the blood spurts! Boy, did he bleed! And was we cops surprised?”
Biff spoke up quickly. “Come on, let’s get out of here or we’ll miss the free feed at the Ringside.”
I threw him a look of gratitude and we hurried out of the theater.
They discussed the other aspects of the case as we walked up the alley. I deliberately hurried on ahead of them. It wasn’t the talk that upset me so. I can hardly explain it, but my heart hurt for Stachi; the sort of hurt I got when I looked at Dolly.
Biff whistled for a cab, and when it pulled up I started to get in. Then I heard the end of what Mike had been saying.
“Sure enough, the stuff was right there in his pocket.”
I got out of the cab. “What stuff?” I asked.
Biff and Mike looked at each other as though they thought I had gone out of my mind. “La Verne’s stock in the theater,” Biff said.
“Oh. I’m sorry; for your sakes, that is. It would have made a much better script if it had been dope. Now the papers can only say, ‘Strangler strips strip of stocks.’”
The cab driver stuck his head out of the front window. “Are you or ain’tchu?�
� he asked in the same tone I had used with Biff and Mike.
“Are I or ain’t I what?” I asked coldly.
“Are you or ain’tchu going to ride in my nice automobile?”
I was being pushed firmly into the cab and Biff was apologizing to the driver. Mike said, “I’ll get out of my uniform and meet you at the Ringside. Tell Alice I’ll be a little late, will ya?”
“Don’t forget to pick up the Chinaman,” Biff replied. Then he slammed the door and called out to the chauffeur, “The Ringside Bar and Grill on Forty-eighth Street.”
He pulled down the jump seat in front of me. “Put your feet up, Punkin,” he said. “It doesn’t make the meter tick any more, so you might as well enjoy all the comforts.”
He lit two cigarettes and handed me one. He put his hand through the leather strap near the window and relaxed. Taxicabs always give me a luxurious feeling, but Biff was overdoing it. If he’d had a fat stomach, he would have made a perfect model for a Gropper cartoon of The Capitalist.
He chortled.
“What?”
“I was just thinking of that line of yours; ‘Strangler strips strip of stock.’”
I chortled too. “It does sound good,” I admitted.
“Yeah, it’s a damn shame they can’t use it.”
I had been through too much to get it right away. I puffed away at my cigarette lazily. Then I sat up. “Why can’t they use it?” I asked.
“It’s a swell line. Only you see, Stachi didn’t kill La Verne.”
Chapter Twenty
“Funniest part of all,” he said, “is Stachi thinking he killed her, too. Not once does he get wise that he twists the neck for nothing. Not once does he know that she has enough poison in her to kill off an army of …”
“Poison?”
“Sure. Cyanide of something.” Biff looked at me, a long, searching look. “Didn’t you know that?”
My voice shook, but I managed to tell him that it was a great big surprise. In fact, I was flabbergasted.
“And here I was afraid the Sergeant gave it away,” Biff mused. “I was sure of it when he asked Dolly if they didn’t have a drink and make up. Then that broken glass he picked up under La Verne’s make-up shelf; damn fool puts it right on the desk with everybody in the room.”
