by Otto Penzler
Stag Party
Charles G. Booth
1
STIRRING HIS COFFEE McFee—Blue Shield Detective Agency—thought he had seen the girl somewhere. She had dull red hair. She had a subtle red mouth and experienced eyes with green lights in them. That was plenty. But over her provocative beauty, lay a hard sophistication as brightly polished as new nickel.
McFee said, “You ought to be in pictures.”
“I’ve been in pictures.” Her voice was husky. “That’s where you’ve seen me.”
“No, it isn’t,” McFee said. “Sit down. Coffee?”
“Black.”
The girl let herself drop into the chair on the other side of the table. Her wrap fell back. She wore an evening gown of jade green velvet and a necklace of square-cut emeralds. Her eyes were guarded but urgent; desperate, perhaps.
Abruptly, she asked, “Do I look like a fool?”
“I dunno what a fool looks like.” McFee finished his apple pie, sugared his coffee. His movements, the flow of his words, the level staring of his V-thatched, somber eyes were as precisely balanced as the timing of a clock. The girl was restlessly tapping the table pedestal with a green satin pump when McFee asked: Some’dy tell you I was here?”
“Jules—at the door. He’s been with Cato’s ever since I can remember.”
A waiter came, drew the booth curtains, went away. McFee gave the girl a cigarette. A flame came into each of her eyes and she began to pelt him with little hard bullets of words.
“I am Irene Mayo. Ranee Damon and I were dining here one night and Ranee pointed you out. He said, ‘That’s McFee, the Blue Shield operative.’ Jules told us you often dropped in for coffee around midnight—”
McFee muttered, “Coffee and Cato’s apple pie.”
“Yes. That’s what Jules told us. And Ranee said, ‘Irene, if you ever run into a jam get McFee.’ So I knew if you were here—”
“What sort of jam you in?”
“I don’t know.” The girl stared at the ruddy vitality of McFee, shivered. “Ranee and I left my apartment—the St. Regis—around eleven. We were going to the Cockatoo for supper and some dancing, but we didn’t get there.”
“Pretty close,” McFee said.
She nodded. “Ranee had just turned into Carter, from Second, when he saw Sam Mel-rose—”
“That’s funny,” McFee said. He tapped a newspaper beside his coffee cup. “The Trib says Melrose is aboard Larry Knudson’s yacht. Has been all week.”
Irene Mayo flared out, “That’s what Ranee said. That’s why he went after him. Melrose has been evading the Grand Jury ever since they opened up that Shelldon scandal. Ranee said they couldn’t serve him.”
“I dunno that indicting him’ll do any good,” McFee muttered, frowning. “Sam took the town over when Gaylord rubbed out, and he’s got his hooks in deep. Damon saw Melrose and went after him, you said—”
“Into the Gaiety Theatre. Ranee parked on Second. The house was dark—after eleven—”
McFee cut in, “Melrose owns the Gaiety now.”
“Ranee told me. He said he’d be back in fifteen minutes—less, maybe. But he had to see Melrose.” The girl’s green eyes dilated a little. “I waited an hour and fifteen minutes. He didn’t come back. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I went to the lobby doors. They were locked. The box office was locked. I could see into the theatre. It was dark.”
McFee said, “You tried the alley fire exits?”
“I didn’t think of those. But why would Ranee—”
The girl stared at McFee with terrified eyes. “Nothing can have happened—I mean, Melrose wouldn’t dare—”
“I dunno, Sam Melrose—”
McFee saw the girl’s red mouth lose its subtlety in the sharp twitching of the lip muscles. He stood up. “Put that coffee under your belt and stay here till I come back.”
2
McFee crossed Third and went down Carter. A late street car rumbled somewhere along Brant, but the town was quiet. He walked fast for half a block.
Cato’s had been at Third and Carter when the town was young and the Gaiety Theatre had billed Martin Thomas in Othello and William Gillette in Sherlock Holmes. That had been before business moved west and the corner had gone pawn shop and fire sale, and buttoned itself on to Chinatown. Second and Carter’s had been McFee’s nursery. Cato’s hadn’t moved because Signor Cato and Papa Dubois had known the value of tradition to the restaurant business, and because M. Papoulas, the present proprietor, also knew it. But Cato’s had kept its head up. The Gaiety had gone burleycue.
McFee tried the lobby doors. They were tight. The interior of the theatre was black. Light from the street seeped into the lobby. On the walls were life-sized tinted photographs of the girls. A legend under one of them said Mabel Leclair. She Knocked ‘Em Cold on Broadway.
An alley separated the Gaiety Building from the Palace Hotel at Second. The Gaiety had two exit doors in the north side of the alley. On the south side the Palace had a service entrance. Instead of turning into the alley, McFee went to where Maggie O’Day had her ten-by-four hole-in-the-wall in the hotel building. She was putting her stock away. McFee bought a pack of cigarettes.
He said, “Seen Sam Melrose lately, Maggie?”
She was a little dark witch of a woman with rouged cheek bones and tragic purple-brown eyes. Like McFee and the Gaiety girls, she belonged to the picture. Always had. In the Gaiety’s Olga Nethersole-melodrama days, she had played minor parts. That had been about the time the late Senator Gaylord was coming into power. Things had happened, and she had gone to singing in Sullivan’s saloon on Second, until a street car accident had crippled her hip. Now she leaned on a crutch in her hole-in-the-wall and shook dice with the dicks and the Gaiety girls. Midnight or later she rolled herself home in a wheel chair she kept in the Gaiety alley.
“Sam’s getting up in the world,” the old woman answered.
“See him go into the Gaiety a while back?”
“Sam go into the Gaiety—” The old woman’s voice thinned into silence. She stared at McFee. “It wasn’t Sam I saw … It wasn’t Sam—” And then, vehemently, “I can’t be seeing everybody….”
McFee said gently, “You better go home, Maggie.”
He turned into the Gaiety alley, barked his shin against Maggie O’Day’s wheel chair. He tried the nearer exit door. It was unbolted. The door creaked as McFee pulled on it. He slipped inside.
The darkness fell all around McFee. It had a hot, smothering touch. It plucked at his eyeballs. He chewed a cigarette, listened. Vague murmurings were audible. The sort of noises that haunt old theatres. Dead voices…. Sara Kendleton, Martin Thomas, Mrs. Fiske, Edwin South. But that sort of thing didn’t touch McFee. He knew the Gaiety for the rattletrap barn it was and waited, his hat on the back of his head and his ears wide open.
Suddenly he was on his toes.
The sound coming towards him was a human sound. It came down the side aisle from the stage end. It was a rustling sound, like dead leaves in a wind; then it identified itself as the slow slurring of a body dragging exhaustedly over a flat surface. Against a wall. Over a floor. It stopped. The taut quietness that followed throttled McFee. A groan flowed through the darkness, a low strangling cough. The slurring sound was resumed. It was closer now, but there was a bitter-end exhaustion in it.
McFee, chewing his cigarette, felt at the gun and the flashlight in his pocket. He took three steps forward, his arms spread wide.
The man pitched forward and fell against his chest.
McFee slid him down to the floor of the aisle. The man’s chest was wet. He felt a warm stickiness on his hands. He made light, spread it over the man’s face. It was Ranee Damon. His eyes were wide open, fixed in horror; his lips were bloodless. McFee felt at the heart.
Damon was dead.
McFee muttered, “He’s been a while dying.”
The hole was in the chest. A good deal of blood had flowed.
Damon was arou
nd thirty, a dark, debonair lad with straight hair as black as Maggie O’Day’s had once been. His bright eloquence, the bold ardor of his restless eyes, had stepped him along. The late Senator Gaylord (Senator by courtesy) had placed him in the District Attorney’s office. Damon had become a key man. You had to figure on him. But his mouth was lax.
“The boys’ll have to plant a new in-man,” McFee said. He sniffed the odor of gin. “Party, I guess.” And then, “Well, well! Rubbed out doing his little stunt!”
McFee had lifted Damon’s left arm. The fingers clutched a tangle of five-century notes. Ten ofthem.
A trail of blood spots on the aisle floor led backstage. The wall was smeared where Damon had fought his way agonizingly along it. McFee followed the sign, back of the boxes, up a short stair, through a door into the backstage. A dingy curtain shut him off from the house. He stood under the drops, among a bedroom set, and waved his light. Damon had crawled across the stage into the wing, where a final resurgence of life lifted him up.
Entering the dressing room from which Damon had come, McFee saw high, fly-blown walls that pictured the evolution of the burley-cue girl. He had appreciated it on previous occasions. A quart bottle of gin, two-thirds empty, stood on a rickety dressing table, two glasses beside it. He did not touch them. A table lamp lay on the floor, broken. Dancing costumes lay about. A rug was turned up.
Make-up material had been swept off the dressing table—powder, crimson grease paint, lipstick, eyebrow buffer. The tube of grease paint had been stepped on by someone, burst open. The stuff smeared the floor. It looked like coagulated blood.
Near the door lay a .32 automatic pistol. One shell had been ejected.
McFee went back to the aisle.
Irene Mayo was kneeling beside the body.
3
McFee said, “I’m sorry, sister.”
The cold beam of his torch made her eyes look enormous in her white, drawn face. Her mouth quivered. She pressed her hand against it, stifled a sob. But after a moment she said dully, “He would have been governor some day.”
McFee answered moodily, “Damon had the makings.” He stared down into the girl’s uplifted eyes, at the purple shadows beneath them. The emeralds at her throat blazed coldly. He added, “If it’s in a man’s blood you can’t stop him.”
“Unless you kill him.” The girl spoke passionately. “It’s in me, too, but there’s more than that in me. If it’s the last thing I do—”
McFee cut in, “You saw Melrose?”
“No—” The girl hesitated, her eyes hardening. “But Ranee saw him. Ranee said—” Her eyes fell apprehensively. “I don’t understand about that money—”
“Were you in love with Damon?”
“I don’t know.” She spoke slowly. “I liked him. He took me around a lot. He was a dear— yes, I did love him!” She rocked distractedly, said in a frenzy, “I’ll spend every dollar I have to get Melrose.”
“Good kid.”
“Are you with me, McFee?”
Instead of replying, McFee put out his flash, said softly, “There’s someone in the house.”
The girl stood up, moved close to him, her wrap drawn tightly around her body. Her breath fanned McFee’s cheeks. Neither of them moved. McFee pushed the girl flat against the wall.
“Stay here,” he whispered.
“McFee—”
“Easy, sister.”
McFee took off his shoes. He felt for his gun, went up the sloping aisle on the balls of his feet. A rustling sound became audible, quieted. He reached the top of the aisle, turned, felt his way towards the foyer. McFee sniffed. Perfume. Thick, too. He grinned, put away his gun. A door was on his right—the manager’s office. He turned into the room.
McFee stopped. Someone was breathing heavily. He heard a sob—suppressed. A floor board creaked. McFee thought he located the woman. He took three steps forward, his arms wide apart, as when he had gone to meet Ranee Damon. Caught the glitter of a necklace. As he flung one arm around the woman’s neck, he slammed the other against her mouth and shut off her scream. She fought, but McFee held her.
He said softly, “One yip and I’ll blow you in two.”
The woman became quiet. McFee removed his hand.
“Lemme go, McFee,” she said huskily.
“Leclair—swell! Anyb’dy else on the party?”
“Ranee Damon—” The woman leaned on McFee’s arm. “Oh, my God!” she wept. “Damon—that’s all—”
Mabel Leclair’s blond beauty was unconfined and too abundant. The petulant immaturity of her features ran at odds with the hardness in her round blue eyes. She presented a scanty negligee effect.
McFee asked, “That kind of a party?”
The woman’s hands and negligee were bloody. She looked down at them and went sick. McFee directed the light into her eyes. “Sit down,” he said. She fell moaning into a chair.
McFee snapped a desk lamp switch. The room contained a shabby desk, chairs, a safe, a water cooler and a couch. The dingy walls were a photograph album burleycue theme.
From the door Irene Mayo cried out, “She killed him—”
“I did not!” the Leclair woman screamed, and jumped up. “What you doing here? What’d I kill him for? We were having a party—oh—” The blood on her hands sickened her again. She wiped them on her negligee. She thrust her hands behind her back, shut her eyes, rocked her head. “Get me a drink,” she whimpered, and fell into the chair.
“You had plenty, sister. What kind of party?”
“Just a party, McFee.” She tried to smile wisely. “Ranee dropped in to see me—”
Irene Mayo cut in, “That’s a lie!”
“You think so?” The Leclair woman spoke wickedly. “Kid, I never seen the buttercup I couldn’t pick. And I’ve picked ‘em from Broadway west.”
McFee said harshly, “Got anything to say before I call the cops?”
“Wait a minute, Handsome.” The woman’s eyes took fright again, but she seemed to be listening,too. “Lemme tell you. Ranee was drinking some. Not much. I hadn’t touched it. Honest, McFee—well, mebbe I had a coupla quick ones, but I wasn’t lit. I’m telling you, McFee. I was standing in front of the dressing table. Ranee was standing beside me, next to the couch. He heard some’dy on the stage. The door was open—the backstage was dark. Ranee turned around. And that’s when he got it. Right in the chest. I saw the flash—that’s all. McFee, I’m telling you! He spun round—kind of. I caught him—” The woman shuddered, shut her eyes.
“Yes?” said McFee.
“He was bleeding—” She wrung her hands. “He slid out of my arms—slow. I thought he’d never drop. The look in his eyes knocked me cuckoo. I fainted. When I came to—” She covered her face.
“When you came to—”
“It was dark. We’d busted the lamp, falling. McFee, he wasn’t dead. He was groaning somewhere. I lit a match. He’d dragged himself out backstage. He wouldn’t quit crawling. I was scared to switch on the lights—” McFee’s cold eyes alarmed the woman. She reiterated desperately. “I’m giving you the straight of it. Ranee and me—”
“What you here for?”
“To phone the cops.”
“Did you phone ‘em?”
“No. You came in. I was scared stiff. I thought it might be Ranee’s murderer coming back—”
“Phone anyb’dy?”
“No.” The woman stared at McFee, the listening look in her eyes. “I didn’t phone anybody.”
McFee said, “You’re a liar.” He picked up the desk telephone. The receiver was moist. Leclair stared at McFee. “Who’d you call?”
“Go roll your hoop.”
Irene Mayo leaned against the wall, a little to the left of the door. Her eyes were tragic and scornful. McFee was about to unhook the telephone when she gestured warningly.
In the foyer a man said, “Put that telephone down, McFee.”
Mabel Leclair laughed.
4
The man moved into the la
ne of light that flowed out of the office. It was Joe Metz, who ran the Spanish Shawl Club, a Melrose enterprise. McFee threw a glance at the red-headed girl. She seemed to understand what was in his mind.
McFee flung the telephone at the desk lamp. Glass shattered. The room went dark. Leclair screamed. McFee dropped behind the desk.
Joe Metz called, “You birds cover those exits. Smoke him, if you have to … McFee!”
The latter, feeling around for the telephone, said, “Speaking.”
“I’ve got three of the boys with me. Nice boys. Boys you’ve played ball with—” Metz was inside the room now. “They don’t wanna hurt you—”
McFee answered, “You’ll have me crying pretty soon.” Prone on his stomach, he found the instrument, put the receiver to his ear, his lips to the mouthpiece. “Tell me some more, Joe.”
Central did not respond.
Mabel Leclair ejaculated, “He’s got the telephone, Joe!”
“That’s all right,” Metz drawled. “I’ve cut the wire. How about sitting in a little game, McFee?”
“Speak your piece,” McFee said, and then: “I got a gun on the door.”
“Handsome, it’s this way,” Metz said. “Sam Melrose has named the next district attorney— Claude Dietrich. Now the Gaiety’s a Melrose house and Sam don’t want a deputy district attorney dying in it two months before election. So we gotta get Damon away. But that’s not the half of it.” Metz spoke with a careful spacing of his words. “Damon was in a position to get Sam something he hadda have, election coming on. So Sam turned Blondy loose on the boy—Sam has more swell ideas than a tabloid editor. Damon was a nut for the frills. He fell for Leclair like a bucket of bricks. Blondy makes a deal with Damon. The boy’s taken money before. Taking five grand from Blondy is duck soup—”
McFee said, “Five grand for what?”
“Oh, some photographs, an affidavit, a letter Melrose wrote, a coupla cancelled checks, some testimony from a lad that died—the usual junk.”
