by Otto Penzler
And there are unhappy stories. One of the bright young talents who sold his first story to Black Mask while still a law student at Stanford, Norbert Davis (1909-1949), had so much writing success so quickly that he didn’t bother to take the bar exam. As quickly as he could produce a new story, it sold—first to the pulps, then to the higher-paying slicks like The Saturday Evening Post. Combining the excitement of a fast-moving mystery with humor, there seemed to be no limit to his potential.
Several marriages went bad, his agent died unexpectedly, and the slicks started to reject some of his work. Having turned his back on the pulps where he got his start, he felt it would condemn him as a failure to return to those pages. At the age of forty, he closed his garage door, started his car engine, and died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
“You’ll Die Laughing” was first published in the November 1940 issue of Black Mask. This is its first book appearance.
You’ll Die Laughing
Norbert Davis
She kept the door almost closed. “And who do you think you are, sonny boy?”
A soft-hearted loan-shark ‘s legman
learns—the hard way—never to buy
a strange blonde a hamburger or
complain if the neighbor’s radio
blasts too long and loud
CHAPTER ONE
BLOOD FROM TURNIPS
E WAS A short pudgy man, and he looked faintly benign even now with his eyes almost closed and his lips twisted awry with the effort of his breathing. He had silver-white hair that curled in smooth exact waves. It was almost dawn and it was bitter cold.
The outer door of the apartment lobby was open, and the wind made a sharp hurrying sound in the dark empty canyon of the street outside.
The pudgy man was sitting on the tiled floor of the lobby with his back against the wall, resting there, his stubby legs outspread in front of him. After a long time he began to move again, pushing his body away from the wall, turning very slowly and laboriously. His breath sounded short and sharp with the effort, but he made it and rested at last on his hands and knees.
He began to crawl toward the door and there was something inexorable about his slow stubborn progress. He opened the door wider, fumbling blindly ahead of him, and crawled out into the street.
The wind whooped down and slapped the folds of his long blue overcoat tight around his legs, pushed with impatient hands as if to hurry him. But he crawled down the steps very slowly, one by one, and reached the sidewalk and turned and made his inching patient way down the hill toward the wan glow of the street light on the corner.
Behind him, the apartment lobby was empty and cold, with the wind pushing at the half-open door and making the hinges complain in fitful little squeaks. On the wall at the spot where the pudgy man had leaned his back there was an irregular smear of blood, bright red and glistening with a sinister light all of its own.
Dave Bly had hurried as much as he could, but it was after six o’clock in the evening when he came in from the street and trotted up the long dingy flight of stairs to the second story of the office building.
Janet was still waiting for him and he could hear the tap-tap-tap of her typewriter. He whistled once and heard the typewriter stop with a faint ping, saw her slim shadow through the frosted glass as she got up from her desk and started to put on her hat.
Bly ran on up a second flight of stairs to the third floor, hurrying now, with the thought of the interview ahead making something shrink inside him. He went down the third-floor corridor toward the lighted door at the end. The letters on its glass panel were squat and fat and dignified, and they made the legend—
J. S. CROZIER
PERSONAL LOANS
Bly opened the door and went into the narrow outer office. The door into the private office was open and J. S. Crozier’s harsh voice came through it.
“Bly, is that you?”
“Yes, sir.”
A swivel chair squeaked and then J. S. Crozier came to the door and said: “Well, you’re late enough.”
“I had to do quite a lot of running around.”
“Let’s see what you got.”
Bly handed him a neat sheaf of checks and bills and the typewritten list of delinquent debtors. J. S. Crozier thumbed through the bills and checks, and the light overhead made dark shadowed trenches of the lines in his face. He had a thick solid body that he carried stiffly erect. He wore rimless glasses that magnified his eyes into colorless blobs and a toupee that was a bulging mat of black hair so artificial it was grotesque.
“Forty-three dollars!” he said, throwing the sheaf of bills on Bly’s desk. “And half these checks will bounce. That’s not much to show for a day’s work, Bly.”
“No, sir.”
J. S. Crozier flicked his finger at the typewritten list. “And what’s the matter with this Mrs. Tremaine? She’s been delinquent for six weeks. Did you see her?”
“She’s had a serious operation. She’s in the hospital.”
“Well, why didn’t you try there?”
“I did,” said Bly. He hadn’t, but he knew better than to try to explain why. “They wouldn’t let me see her.”
“Oh, they wouldn’t! When will they?”
“Next week.”
“Huh! Well, you get in there to see her as soon as you can, and you tell her that if she doesn’t pay up her loan—plus the back compound interest and the delinquent collection fee—she might just as well stay in the hospital because she won’t have any furniture to come home to.”
“All right.”
J. S. Crozier grinned at him. “Haven’t got your heart in this, have you, Bly? A little on the squeamish side, eh?”
Bly didn’t say anything. J. S. Crozier kept grinning at him and he let his colorless eyes move slowly from Bly’s shoes, which were beginning to crack through the polish across the toes, up along the shabby topcoat to Bly’s face, pale and a little drawn with pinched lines of strain around his mouth.
“I can’t afford to be squeamish, Bly. Maybe you can.”
Bly didn’t answer, and J. S. Crozier said reflectively: “I’m disappointed in your work, Bly. Perhaps you aren’t suited to such a menial task. Are you contemplating a change soon?”
“No,” said Bly.
“Perhaps you’d better think about it. Although I understand jobs are very hard to find these days … Very hard, Bly.”
Bly was quivering with a feeling of sick hopeless anger. He tried to hide it, tried so hard that the muscles of his face seemed wooden, but he knew he wasn’t succeeding. J. S. Crozier chuckled knowingly. He kept Bly standing there for a full minute, and then he said with the undertone of the chuckle still in his voice: “That’s all, Bly. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” Bly said thickly.
J. S. Crozier let him get almost to the door. “Oh, Bly.”
Bly turned. “Yes?”
“This janitor at your place. This Gus Find-ley. He’s been delinquent for three weeks now. Get something out of him tonight.”
“I’ll try.”
“No,” J. S. Crozier said gently. “Don’t try, Bly. Do it. I feel that you have a responsibility there. He mentioned your name when he applied for the loan, so naturally I had confidence in his ability to pay. Get some money from him tonight.”
Bly went out and closed the door. Janet was waiting there, a slim small girl with her face white and anxious for him under the dark brim of her hat. She took his arm, and Bly leaned heavily against her, his throat so thick with the choking anger that gripped him that he couldn’t breathe. He pulled himself upright in a second and started walking because he knew J. S. Crozier would be listening for his footsteps and grinning. Janet walked close beside him. They went down the steps, and Bly’s anger loosened and became a sick despair.
“He knew you were there waiting, Janet. That’s why he talked so loud. So you could hear him bawl me out.”
“I know, dear. Never mind.”
“Every day he does something like
that. He knows I wouldn’t do his dirty work for half a minute if I could find something else. I wouldn’t anyway—I’d starve first—if it weren’t for you and Bill and—and hoping….”
They were in the street now and she was standing small and straight beside him, looking up into his face. “We’ll go on hoping, Dave.”
“For how long?” Bly demanded bitterly. “How long?”
“Forever, if we have to,” said Janet quietly.
Bly stared down at her. “Thank you,” he said in a whisper. “Thank you for you, my dear.” He grinned wryly. “Well, I’m through crying in my beer for the moment. Shall we go squander our money on Dirty Dan’s thirty-five cent de luxe dinner?”
CHAPTER TWO
THE BLONDE IN 107
T WAS after ten when Bly got to the apartment building where he lived, and he had to use his key to open the entrance door. The air was thick and sluggish inside the small lobby, full of a wrangling jangle of sound made by a radio being played overly loud in one of the apartments upstairs.
Bly went on a diagonal across the lobby, rapped lightly on a door beside the staircase. He could hear limping steps inside coming across a bare floor, and then Gus Findley opened the door and peered nearsightedly at him.
“Hello, Mr. Bly. You come in?”
Bly shook his head. “No thanks, Gus. I hate to ask you, but how about the money you owe on that loan you got from Crozier?”
Gus Findley had a tired resigned smile. “No, Mr. Bly. I’m sorry. I ain’t got it.”
Bly nodded slowly. “All right, Gus.”
“I honest ain’t got it.”
“I know. Gus, why did you borrow money from him?”
“I thought you worked for him, Mr. Bly. I thought he’s all right if you work for him.”
Bly said: “He’s a shark, Gus. That contract you signed carries over a hundred percent interest. It doesn’t show on the contract as interest, but there it is.”
“It don’t make no difference, Mr. Bly. You shouldn’t feel bad. I couldn’t read very well anyway, that fine print, with my eyes not so good. I had to have the money for the hospital. My sister’s boy got an operation.”
“Why didn’t he go to the clinic—on charity?”
“No,” Gus said gently. “No. I couldn’t have him do that. Not my sister’s boy. You know how it is.”
“Sure,” said Bly.
Gus moved his thin, stooped shoulders. “Now he’s got to have cod liver’s oil and special milk and tonics. It costs so much I ain’t got none left for Mr. Crozier. I ain’t tryin’ to cheat him, Mr. Bly. I’ll pay as soon as I can.”
“Sure, Gus,” said Bly wearily, knowing that as soon as Gus could wouldn’t be soon enough for J. S. Crozier. It would be the same bitter story again—garnishment of the major part of Gus’s meager salary, attachment of what few sticks of furniture he owned. And more humiliation for Bly. J. S. Crozier would never miss the chance of making Bly serve the papers on Gus.
The lobby seemed colder and darker. The muffled wrangle of the radio went on unceasingly and a woman’s laughter sounded through it, thin and hysterical.
“Someone having a party?” Bly asked.
Gus nodded gloomily. “Yeah. That one below you—that Patricia Fitzgerald. She is no good. Six or eight complaints about the noise I got already. I called her up a couple of times and it don’t do no good. I got the misery in my back and I don’t like to climb them stairs. Would you maybe stop and ask her to keep quiet, Mr. Bly?”
“Sure,” said Bly. “Sorry about your back, Gus.”
Gus shrugged fatalistically. “Sometimes it’s worse than others. How is your brother, Mr. Bly? The one that’s in college.”
Bly grinned suddenly. “Bill? Just swell. He’s a smart kid. Going to graduate this year, and already they’ve offered him a job teaching in the college.”
“Good,” said Gus, pleased. “That’s good. Then maybe, when you don’t have to send him money, you can marry that nice little lady I seen you with.”
“I hope so,” Bly said. “But first I’ve got to get Bill through college. That’s why I’m hanging on to this lousy job with Crozier so hard. I can’t lose it now, just when Bill’s all set to graduate. After he does, then I can take a chance on looking for another—something decent.”
“Sure, sure,” said Gus. “And you’ll find it, too.”
“If there is one, I will,” Bly said grimly. “Well, I’ll run up and see if I can tune that party down. So long, Gus.”
He went up the grimy shadowed stairs and down the long hall above. The noise of the radio was much louder here, packing itself deafeningly in between the narrow walls until it was one continued formless blare. Bly stopped before the door through which it was coming and hammered emphatically on the panels.
The woman’s shrill thin laughter came faintly to him. Bly waited for a while and then began to kick the bottom of the door in a regular thumping cadence. He kept it up for almost two minutes before the door opened.
Patricia Fitzgerald, if that was her real name, was a tall thin blonde. She must have been pretty once, but she looked haggard now and wearily defiant, and there was a reckless twist to her full-lipped mouth. She was drunk enough to be slightly unsteady on her feet. Her bright hair was mussed untidily and she was wearing what looked like a black fur mitten on her right hand.
“Well?” she said over the blast of the radio.
Bly said: “Do you have to play it that loud?”
She kept the door almost closed. “And who do you think you are, sonny boy?”
“I’m just the poor dope that lives above you. Will you turn that radio down a little, please?”
She considered it, swaying slightly, watching Bly with eyes that were owlishly serious. “If I turn it down will you do a favor for me, huh?”
“What?” Bly asked.
“You wait.” She closed the door.
The sound of the radio suddenly went down to a thin sweet trickle of music and the hall seemed empty without its unbearable noise.
Patricia Fitzgerald opened the door again. She no longer wore the black mitten. She was jingling some change in her right hand.
“You know where Doc’s Hamburger Shack is—over two blocks on Third?”
Bly nodded. “Yes.”
“You be a nice guy and run over there and get me a couple of hamburgers. If you do I won’t make any more noise.”
“O.K.,” Bly agreed.
She gave him the change. “You tell Doc these hamburgers are for me. He knows me and he knows how I like ‘em. You tell him my name and tell him they’re for me. Will you?”
“All right.”
“Be sure and tell him they’re for me.”
“Sure, sure,” said Bly. “Just keep the radio turned down like it is and everything will be dandy.”
“Hurry up, fella,” said Patricia Fitzgerald, and neither her eyes nor her voice were blurred now.
Bly nodded patiently. He went back down the hall, down the stairs and across the lobby. The last thing he heard as he opened the front door was Patricia Fitzgerald’s laughter, sounding high and hysterical without the radio to muffle it.
Doc’s Hamburger Shack was a white squat building on the corner of a weed-grown lot. Its moisture-steamed windows beamed out cheerily at the night, and when Bly opened the door the odor of frying meat and coffee swirled about his head tantalizingly.
Doc was leaning against the cash register. He was gaunt and tall and he had a bald perspiring head and a limply bedraggled mustache.
There was only one other customer. He was sitting at the far end of the counter. He was a short pudgy man and he looked pleasantly benign, sitting there relaxed with a cup of coffee on the counter in front of him. He had silver-white hair that curled in smooth exact waves. He watched Bly, sitting perfectly still, not moving anything but his round blandly innocent eyes.
“Hello, Doc,” Bly said, sitting down at the counter and reaching for the crumpled evening paper on it. “I want a cou
ple of hamburgers to go. They’re not for me. They’re for a blonde by the name of Patricia Fitzgerald who lives over in my apartment house. She said you’d know just how she wanted them fixed.”
Doc put his hand up and tugged at one draggled end of his mustache. “Patricia Fitzgerald? Lives at the Marton Arms? Apartment 107?”
Bly nodded, engrossed in the sports page. “Yeah.”
“She send you over?”
“Sure,” said Bly.
“She tell you to give her name?”
Bly looked up. “Well, certainly.”
“O.K.,” said Doc. “O.K.” He plopped two pats of meat on the grill and then sauntered casually down the counter and leaned across it in front of the pudgy man.
Bly went on reading his favorite sports column. The hamburger sizzled busily. Doc came sauntering back to the grill and began to prepare a couple of buns.
Bly had finished his sports column and was hunting through the paper for the comics when a siren began to growl somewhere near. After a while it died down and then another started up from a different direction.
“Must be a fire around here,” Bly observed.
“Naw,” said Doc. “Them’s police sirens. Fire sirens have a higher tone.” He put a paper sack on the counter. “Here’s your ‘burgers, all wrapped up. Be careful of ‘em. She don’t like ‘em mussed up at all.”
“O.K.,” Bly said. He paid Doc with the change Patricia Fitzgerald had given him and went to the door.
The pudgy man was sipping at his coffee, but he was watching Bly calculatingly over the rim of his cup.
HERE were several cars parked in front of the apartment building and one of them was a blue sedan with a long glittering radio antenna strung across its sloping top. Bly no more than half noticed it, and its identity didn’t register on him until he unlocked the front door of the apartment house and very nearly bumped into a policeman who was standing just inside the entryway.
