by Craig Rice
“Naturally,” Proudfoot said, “I should be delighted if you were able to discover, and to hand over to the proper authorities, the perpetrator of this heinous crime.”
Malone said, “Wow!” and then, “You don’t fool me, brother. You’ve got yourself a soft snap as this Bertha babe’s trustee, and don’t try to tell me you’re doing it because you knew her old man by his first name. There’s a fat per cent connected with it, and of course if any money should stick to your fingers now and then, you can always lick it off. If Bertha should bow out via the electric chair, you’d be right down in the pickle jar, because you’d have to look for another job, and at your age that mightn’t be such a cinch. So, you hire me to find her, find a dope to pin the murder on, save her neck and your income.”
Abner Proudfoot rose and stood, holding his black derby in one hand and his black brief case in the other. He said, “I find your attitude most reprehensible, Mr. Malone. I am afraid that we must consider our arrangement terminated.”
Malone didn’t get up. He relit his cigar and said, “Oh, no, bub, you hired me, but you can’t fire me. Because I’ve got your check in my pocket, and if you stop payment on it, I’ll sue you, and think how embarrassing that would be. Besides, it isn’t your money, anyway. And if I don’t do this little job for you, you’re going to be in a hell of a fix.”
For a minute Abner Proudfoot stared at him. Then he said, “There is something in what you say, Mr. Malone. I feel that I must retract my statement of a moment ago.”
“Now you’re talking,” Malone said. He rose, went to the writing desk, and started pawing through it. “Just for the fun of it, bub, let’s put it in writing.” He pulled out a sheet of letter paper, took his fountain pen out of his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and handed it over. “Just put it this way. I, Abner Proudfoot, as trustee for Bertha Morrison, née Lutts, do promise to pay to John Joseph Malone the sum of four thousand five hundred dollars, in the event of the said Bertha Morrison, née Lutts, being found and proved innocent of the murder committed in suite 713 of the St. Jacques Hotel on the night of April eighth. And sign it.”
Abner Proudfoot frowned, took the pen, and wrote, Malone prompting him now and then. He signed the paper with a flourish, recapped the pen, and returned it. “I doubt very much, however,” he said, “if, in view of its informal terminology, that paper could be construed as a legal document, should it ever be brought into court.”
“Buddy,” Malone said, “you let me worry about that. And if this little document ever gets into court, I’ll drop dead from surprise and it won’t matter anyway.” He folded the paper carefully and tucked it in his pocket, next to the check. “You know I think we’re going to get along swell.”
There was a knock at the door, and Malone jumped up to answer it. It was Helene. A pale-gray woolen evening cape, embroidered with silver thread and reaching to the floor, hung from her shoulders. A paler-gray chiffon dinner dress clung to her like a cloud of cigarette smoke, a dress that was powdered with minute rhinestones. Her hair was sleek and shining, the color of honey, and her delicate-featured, patrician face was white under its make-up. There was a big silver bangle just below her slender throat. “Ah, yes,” Malone said. He turned to Mr. Proudfoot, “This is Cleopatra Carmichael, one of my concubines.” He smiled at Helene and said, “Carmelite, my dear, this is Mr. Abyssinia McSnitch, my great-great-grandfather.”
Abner Proudfoot mumbled something, and Helene just stared. Malone said, “Don’t mind her not speaking to you, poor child, she was born deaf and dumb. Well, it’s been nice seeing you again, uncle Ed, and be sure to open the door before you go out.”
Abner Proudfoot picked up his brief case for the second time. Again his face threatened to crack into a smile. “I am convinced that I was not misinformed as to your abilities, Mr. Malone,” he said. “I feel sure that our relationship will be a happy and profitable one. Good night.” He bowed elaborately to Helene and went out.
Helene waited until she heard the elevator door close down the hall before she said, “For the love of Mike—”
“A client of mine,” Malone said, “a harmless madman, but a lovable one.”
“Malone, Jake isn’t back yet. It’s seven o’clock.”
“Oh, hell,” Malone said, “he probably got drunk and he’s sleeping under a bar somewhere.”
“Jake couldn’t get that drunk in nine hours.”
“All right, he’s out with another girl.” He was relieved to see that this time she definitely looked more angry than alarmed. “Listen,” he said, picking up his topcoat, “tell me something. If you were headstrong, and a creature of whims, and you’d just beaten, strangled, and decapitated another babe just for the hell of it, where would you head for?”
“The elevator,” Helene said promptly, “and then the lobby, and then the bar.”
“Then that’s where we’re headed,” Malone said. “The elevator, the lobby, and the bar. Because we’re a couple of bloodhounds. And if we don’t reach that last-mentioned place soon, I’m going to begin to bark.”
11. On the Trail
The evening was not an unqualified success in the matter of taking Helene’s mind off Jake’s unexplained absence. She pointed out at intervals that she was not worried, but Malone observed that she ate only approximately ten per cent of her dinner.
Tracing Dennis Morrison’s progress of the night before was considerably more successful. The night bartender in the small bar of the St. Jacques (Malone didn’t like him any better than the day bartender) remembered him well. He’d come in about eight o’clock, drunk three whisky sours and two straight bourbons, got into conversation with someone at the bar, and drifted out—nine or thereabouts, the bartender thought. No, he hadn’t recognized the man Dennis had conversed with. He couldn’t say what kind of mood Dennis had been in. “I am not hired as no psychologist,” he added with wounded dignity. “I am hired to serve drinks.”
Helene decided that they would have dinner right there at the St. Jacques. Not that it really mattered, she explained casually, but it would make it easier for Jake to join them if he arrived in time. They lingered over coffee and brandy for an extra half-hour, on the same theory. Jake did not arrive. They left.
The night club down the street that had been Dennis Morrison’s first stop was of the intimate, underlighted and unventilated variety. It was also crowded, but they managed to be squeezed in at a table the size of a piano stool. Malone ordered two ryes, lit a cigar, looked around the room, and reflected that the murals would make him terribly nervous after about six drinks. Helene located the waiter who had served Dennis Morrison the night before and started to work on him, a process which was interrupted by the floor show. It was exactly like every other floor show Malone had seen in his life. He did manage to find out the name of the cute little redhead in the chorus, but he wasn’t sure how to get acquainted with her. New York techniques might be different from those employed in Chicago.
Helene telephoned the hotel to see if Jake had come in yet. He hadn’t. Fortunately the floor show was over and the waiter came back before she had much chance to brood about it.
Dennis Morrison had come in a little after nine, in the company of a tallish man in a brown suit. “He seemed a little high,” the waiter said, “but more nervous than high, if you know what I mean. He didn’t pay much attention to the floor show and kept looking at his watch. He acted as if he was waiting to keep a date.”
“He was,” Malone said.
“Well, he had a few drinks and he felt better,” the waiter said. “He was drinking brandy and champagne. I guess his friend went home, I didn’t notice him go. Your friend paid the check when he left. After he’d been here awhile he got acquainted with the party at the next table and joined them.” Malone reflected that that was not surprising. It was practically impossible not to get acquainted with the party at any next table, in this place. Right now, a thinnish girl at his left had her elbow poked into his ribs, and a plump man on his right was lea
ning on his shoulder.
“He left with them,” the waiter went on. “I heard one of them suggest going to El Morocco, but of course I don’t know if they did or not. There were six of them. One of the women was blonde and she had on a green dress. They were all feeling pretty happy.”
“Were the men in dinner jackets?” Helene asked.
The waiter thought a minute, then shook his head. “Nope.”
Malone sighed. He paid the check, wondering as he did so if he’d been drinking rye or distilled platinum.
They traced Dennis Morrison to El Morocco, to Monte Carlo, where Helene called up the hotel again, to the 1-2-3 Club, where Malone switched from rye to gin, to the Stork Club, to Copacabana, where it appeared that Dennis had deserted his new friends and wandered off by himself. The first thing to do, Helene declared, was to try all the places within easy stumbling distance. Malone suggested that a better idea was to go home and sleep, but he was promptly squelched.
Dennis Morrison had not been seen at the Savoy Plaza or the Persian Room, but he was well remembered at Café Society Uptown, where he’d been thrown out. The trail seemed lost, but it was picked up again in a bar about fifteen blocks away, on West Forty-ninth Street, and followed to another bar on Broadway below Forty-sixth Street. Malone began to feel a little more at home; indeed, in the second bar he felt that he could switch to a cheaper gin. It wasn’t that he was economizing; he just liked the taste better. The bartender not only remembered Dennis Morrison, but suggested that his next stop had probably been Marty’s Bar and Grill, on Eighth Avenue.
At Marty’s Bar and Grill Helene called the hotel again and learned that Jake had not come in. Malone organized a quartet to sing The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls, and Marty remembered that Dennis Morrison had come in about quarter to two, bought drinks for the house and several for himself to celebrate his marriage, and left half an hour later, headed in a more or less northerly direction. He suggested inquiring at the Idle Hour, half a block up the street. The bartender at the Idle Hour was very helpful. Dennis Morrison had been in, sometime after two, celebrating his marriage. “I never thought he’d marry her,” the bartender commented, “but he fooled us all. Nice, pretty girl, too. I put him in a taxi about half-past two or quarter to three. Wait a minute, I think I can find the taxi for you. The driver’s a friend of mine.”
While they waited, Malone experimented with pouring his gin into a glass of beer and drinking the results, and got into a fight with one of the customers over the relative honesty of New York and Chicago cops, gaining a cut on his lip and losing his necktie in the process. The bartender threw out the customer and said to Helene, “Louie shouldn’t of said that to your friend. And any friend of yours, lady, is a friend of mine. The next one is on the house.”
The taxi driver said, “Yeah, I picked him up here. Yeah, thanks, I will. Just a short one though. I quit work in another hour and my old lady’s allergic to the smell of alcohol.” He’d picked up Dennis Morrison at quarter to three and driven him around for nearly an hour. They’d stopped at an all-night drugstore, where Dennis had bought a pint of bourbon, and then they’d driven through Central Park, while Dennis discoursed on love and marriage, and sipped at his bourbon, ending up by flinging the bottle through the cab window at the General Sherman statue. “We damned near got pinched,” the driver said. He’d left his passenger at the St. Jacques at quarter to four.
“And that’s where you’re going to take us and leave us,” Malone said, “at”—he consulted his watch—“quarter after four.”
“Jake will surely be there,” Helene said, “by the time we are.” Jake was not.
Malone went into the bathroom and held a cold washcloth against his swollen lip for a few minutes. Then he poured himself a pickup drink from one of the bottles on the shelf, rearranged his collar, and smoothed down his hair. By the time he came back Helene had finished calling the hospitals. He said, “Stop worrying,” again, and she said, “Who the hell’s worrying?” Then she picked up the phone again and said, “Get me the morgue.” Jake wasn’t there. “He’s been kidnaped,” she said in a thin little voice.
“For the love of Mike,” Malone said. “He’s probably socked a policeman and been thrown in jail.”
He watched her thoughtfully as she picked up the telephone again. She looked very tired and young and pale. And helpless. She was, he knew, about as helpless as a company of marines, but the sight of her still tied a knot somewhere between his stomach and his heart.
She called police headquarters. They had no record of any Jake Justus. She hung up the phone and said slowly, “Malone, do you think we ought to report him missing?”
“No!” Malone said. He added, a little more mildly, “There’s no telling where Jake may be or what he may be up to. But there’s always a better than even chance he might not appreciate having the cops out looking for him. At least wait till morning, and get some sleep first.”
“I’m not—sleepy,” Helene said, her eyelids drooping. She lit a cigarette, dropped it in the ash tray, and left it there.
Malone looked at his watch. It was four-forty. “After all,” he said, “you were awake all last night, too.”
“Do you think I could settle down and go to sleep with Jake missing?” Helene said drowsily. “I’m going to sit right here by the phone in case he calls, and wait for him.”
“Fine,” Malone said. “In that case, I’m going to wait with you.”
He watched her going to sleep, slowly, little by little, and fighting it all the way, like a small child on Christmas Eve. Her eyes closed and then opened again fast, and she said, “I’m going to wait for Jake.” She smothered a yawn, lit another cigarette, and abandoned it in the ash tray. And then at last her delicate eyelids fell shut and didn’t open again. Malone waited for a full ten minutes. She didn’t stir so much as an eyelash. Finally he picked her up from her chair by the telephone table and carried her to the sofa. He went into the bedroom and brought back a pillow and a big satin-covered comforter. He slipped the pillow under her head, took off her shoes and tucked the comforter around her. She half opened her eyes for a moment and whispered, “Jake.” Malone stood still, holding his breath, until he was sure she was not going to wake again. Then he emptied the ash tray, opened the window, and tiptoed out, pausing at the door for one last look at Helene.
If Jake was just out on a bender, he reflected, closing the door softly, then a certain red-haired ex-press agent was going to get one hell of a punch in the nose from a certain lawyer named Malone, when he did show up. And if he wasn’t just out on a bender—Jake was all right. Nothing could have happened to Jake. Nothing ever had. He’d been missing before and turned up alive and well. He would this time. He had to.
Malone realized that he felt wide-awake and restless, the usual result of being overtired. The little hotel room, for all its skillful interior decoration, didn’t appeal to him. Maybe he could go out and look for Jake. A fine idea, but this was New York, not Chicago. Where in blazes would he look? Maybe he could find an all-night bar. That was no good, all by himself in a strange city. Besides, he’d been in enough bars already. Maybe he ought to call up that cute redhead from the chorus. Very good, only he didn’t have her telephone number, just her name. Maybe he just ought to go to bed and catch up on his sleep.
The elevator opened, and Malone stepped in. The elevator boy winked at him and carried him past his floor. After the one other passenger in the car got off, the boy grinned at Malone and said, “Are you the gentleman who was looking for a poker game?”
Malone wrestled with temptation for just thirty seconds, during which he told himself that his having been taken for someone else was obviously a lucky sign, that it was, after all, only five o’clock, and that he still had $437 in his wallet. “Boy,” he said happily, after thirty seconds. “You not only read my mind, you write it.”
12. “I Want to See Arthur Peterson”
“This is not complete failure,” Jake kept telling him
self during the ride in the squad car. “It’s only a temporary setback.” It wasn’t a comfortable ride. He was wedged in between O’Brien and Birnbaum, manacled to the latter. In front of him, Schultz sat beside a silent, alarmed, and bewildered Wildavine Williams. His prospects weren’t comfortable, either. He was going to have a lot of explaining to do.
“Watch him, Birnbaum,” O’Brien said. “He’s one of those moor-ons.”
Wildavine said, “This is all some ridiculous mistake. I shall see to it that a full report reaches the newspapers.”
“The mistake,” Birnbaum told her, “was when you put your name and address on the envelope of that threatening letter.”
“I assure you,” she said stiffly, “my uncle George will hear all the particulars of this outrage, and he is the best lawyer in Plattevile, Wisconsin.”
“Do write him,” O’Brien said. “You probably owe him a letter, anyway. Only,” he added, “you’d better not threaten him in it, because the police in Platteville may not be as friendly and easy to get along with as we are.”
She sniffed and was silent. “Yeah, but listen,” Schultz said in a worried voice, “the dame she wrote the t’reatenin’ letter to wasn’t the dame who got murdered.”
“Shut up, Schultz,” Birnbaum said. “You talk too much.”
“Yeah, but wait a minute, fellas,” Schultz said. “How’d this guy get into the apartment while we was searching it, and then how’d he get down here ahead of us? That’s what I want to know.”
“I manifested myself,” Jake said in a sepulchral tone. “I’m really not a magazine salesman, I’m the spirit of the murdered woman, and I can appear and disappear whenever I choose.”
O’Brien crossed himself and then said hastily, “Shut up, you.”
Jake said, “Boo!”
“See what I mean?” O’Brien said to Birnbaum. “The guy’s a moor-on.”
