by Craig Rice
“If you say so,” Handsome said. He carried the jars and bottles to a convenient cupboard and put them away. There was an opened quart of a very fine whisky in the cupboard, and Bingo looked at it speculatively. No, he told himself, that wouldn’t be right. It wasn’t honest to steal a dead guy’s whisky, even if that guy had died owing you a half of a half million bucks.
When they went back to the living room, the kitchen looked completely undisturbed, even to the note on the table.
“But look, Bingo,” Handsome said suddenly. “Now that Mr. Penneyth’s dead, what are we going to do with Mr. Pigeon?”
Bingo sighed. “I was just thinking of that. That’s why I think maybe we’d better leave Mr. Penneyth in the icebox for a while. It’s a good safe place. Because maybe we don’t want to have his murder discovered just yet.”
“If you don’t want him to be discovered,” Handsome said, “he won’t be. He’ll keep a long time in that icebox.” He paused, scowled, and added, “But I still don’t know what we’re going to do with Mr. Pigeon.”
“We don’t want him to be discovered either,” Bingo said. “Handsome, there’s only one thing to do. We gotta find out who will collect that half-million bucks with Mr. Penneyth dead, and offer him the same split.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, offer him an opportunity to invest in the International Foto, Motion Picture, and Television Corporation of America.”
“If I was gonna get all that dough if Mr. Penneyth was dead,” Handsome muttered, “I betcha I’d have killed Mr. Penneyth.”
“Sometimes,” Bingo said, “you have ideas.”
He paused just inside the living room, looking around. “If the cops don’t find out that this Penneyth guy has been murdered, there won’t be any stink raised. But if they do, there’s an even chance that they may get to the guilty party before we do. Then we wouldn’t be able to make a deal with him.”
“So you don’t want his body to be discovered,” Handsome said, nodding.
“That’s right.” Bingo cleared his throat a second time. “Not that I want to—defeat the cause of justice, or anything like that. As I look at it, we’re serving justice, if we take half the dough, after this unknown character murdered Mr. Penneyth to get it, and maybe would murder Mr. Pigeon too, if he could find him. Besides, as far as justice is concerned, this Penneyth appears to have been a very evil type of party and he’s probably better off murdered anyway.”
“If you say so,” Handsome said, “it’s O.K.”
Bingo sighed, and began pawing through the papers on the disordered desk. “All we gotta do is find out who that individual is who’ll get all that dough. Oh, and also find our letter and take it out of here.”
Fifteen minutes later the desk and the apartment looked as though they had been searched not only for the letter and the information, but also for termites. And Bingo and Handsome stared at each other, bewildered and a little worried.
“Well,” Handsome said, “we know he had a lot of girl friends and they wrote very warm letters.”
“Fervent,” Bingo said, “but ungrammatical. And his lawyer was some guy named Rufus Hardstone. I wrote it down. But that’s all. And our letter isn’t here.”
Handsome blinked. “Somebody must have took it away. Maybe the murderer.”
“No,” Bingo said, “the murderer wouldn’t have been here when it came. But somebody got it. And now, by gravy, we have got to keep this guy’s murder a secret. At least until we can get back that letter. Or else we’ll probably end up arguing with a jury.” He looked at Handsome and said quickly, “Don’t worry. I’ll manage.”
“Oh sure,” Handsome said, “you always manage. Now let’s get out of here.”
They went down the stairs, through the tiny hallway, and into the street. Bingo was deep in thought. There seemed to be so many problems ahead. Finding who’d collect that insurance premium now. Making a deal. Doing something about Mr. Penneyth, who couldn’t be left in that icebox indefinitely. Oh well, he told himself, he’d think of something.
There was one more problem, however, an unexpected one, waiting for him on the sidewalk in front of the apartment building.
A big black car was standing at the curb. Bingo glanced at it, paying little attention, and headed toward the park, Handsome at his side. Suddenly he heard a footfall behind him and, in the same instant, felt the business end of a gun, hard against his ribs.
“Hop in that car, both of you,” a voice said, “and make it snappy. Because we’ve been waiting for you for a long, long time.”
CHAPTER SIX
“It’s a lovely night for a nice drive,” Bingo said, as the black sedan turned into Central Park. “I sure appreciate it.”
“Cut out the small talk,” snapped the man with the gun. “Where is he?”
Bingo nearly said, “In the icebox.” He caught himself just in time and said, “You mean the babe’s husband? He’s in Detroit. You don’t think we’d been visiting her if he was in town.” He kicked Handsome on the ankle.
“Who was visiting what babe with which husband?” the man with the gun asked.
“Who wants to know?” Bingo said. “Hell, you’re asking questions and we haven’t been formally introduced yet.”
“Just call me Mac,” the man said. “Now tell me what babe.”
“The one we were visiting,” Handsome said, “and her friend.”
“That’s right,” Bingo said. “Her friend’s name was Mabel. Do you know Mabel?”
The man who called himself Mac reached out and slapped Bingo across the mouth, not hard.
“That was very rude of you,” Bingo said in a hurt voice.
“Talk straight,” Mac snarled. “I don’t know Mabel and I don’t want to know Mabel.”
Handsome said, “She’s a very nice girl. She wouldn’t want to know you.”
Mac said, “Shut up, you!” And to Bingo, “I haven’t got time to fool. Where is he?”
“You mean Genevieve’s husband?” Bingo asked innocently.
“Who the hell is Genevieve?” Mac demanded.
Bingo sighed, and said very patiently, “She’s a friend of Mabel.”
“For Crissake,” the man who was driving said, “maybe we got the wrong guys.”
“You’re damned right you have,” Bingo said. He drew in his breath, and said as pompously as he could, “May I ask what is the meaning of this outrage? Can’t a couple of gentlemanly individuals call on a couple of lady friends without being picked up by a couple of lugs?”
“Where were these lady friends?” the man who was driving the car asked.
“Where the devil would you expect them to be?” Bingo said. “In their apartment, of course. Right back in the building where you picked us up in front of it.”
“Who were they?” Mac asked. He added quickly, “No, don’t tell me. Mabel and Genevieve. Let’s not get into that again. Which apartment?”
“The top floor,” Bingo said promptly. He prayed silently that the gunmen didn’t know who did live on the top floor.
“Jeez,” Mac said to the man driving the car, “maybe we have got the wrong guys.” He moved the gun a half inch away. Another inch, Bingo thought, and maybe they could make a break for it, if talking their way out didn’t work.
“What’s your name, pal?” the driver asked Bingo.
“McGillicuddy,” Bingo said, “J. McGillicuddy.” He added, “Who were you looking for?”
“A guy named Riggs,” the driver said, “who’d’ve been at Harkness Penneyth’s place.”
“Penneyth,” Bingo repeated slowly, “Penneyth. Oh, sure. He’s the man who lives on the second floor of the building. Short, stocky fellow, with curly black hair.”
“Huh-uh,” Mac said. “He’s tall and thin, and his hair’s gray.”
“Oh,” Bingo said chattily. “I saw a short, stocky guy with black hair go in the apartment once, and I thought he must be Mr. Penneyth. Who is this Penneyth, anyway?” The gunmen weren’t going to get any information from him,
but maybe he’d weasel a little out of them.
“He sells Chinese antiques,” Mac said.
The driver said, “Say, we can’t go on driving these guys around the park all night. We gotta get back there and pick up the right ones.”
Bingo smothered a sigh of relief.
“I’m sorry we bothered you, pal,” Mac said. “Just a little mistake. Can we drop you any particular place?”
Bingo started to give his address, then caught himself quickly and said, “The corner of Seventy-second Street and Central Park West.” He decided, too, he wouldn’t ask any more questions. Mac and his companion didn’t seem to be the chatty type.
The big sedan drove up to the curb. As Bingo and Handsome got out, the man named Mac hurled one more query at them. “Say, while you were there, did you happen to see anybody go in or out of Mr. Penneyth’s apartment?”
Bingo paused, one foot still on the running board, “How’s that again?”
“You were in the apartment right above,” the man said. “If you’d been looking out the window when somebody was going in the building—”
Bingo sniffed indignantly. “With a couple of babes like Mabel and Genevieve,” he said scornfully, “you don’t think we spent the evening looking out the window!” He started up the street, Handsome at his side. After a moment the big car passed them, going up the street. Bingo took off his hat and wiped off his brow.
“I liked Mabel,” Handsome said wistfully.
Bingo said, “I liked Genevieve better.”
They walked a few steps, and then Handsome said, “You could have told ’em we lived at Eighty-first and Central Park instead of Seventy-second. My feet are tired.”
“I don’t want them driving around our neighborhood looking for us,” Bingo said, “when they find out there isn’t any Mabel and Genevieve.” He stopped suddenly, with a warning motion at Handsome.
A car had just pulled up to the curb beside them. This one was a pale-gray convertible, with its top down. The girl at the wheel was June Logan.
“Hop in, boys,” she said. “I’ll ride you home.”
“Thanks,” Bingo said. He got in the middle, Handsome climbed in after him and slammed the door shut. “We just live a few blocks up the street.”
“That’s fine,” the girl said. “I’m glad I found you.” She started the car, and it leaped forward.
“Which reminds me,” Bingo said suddenly. “How did you find us, and why did you try?”
“Leave it that I couldn’t wait to see you again,” she said sharply. “And finding you was no trouble. All I had to do was follow those goons’ car.”
Bingo felt a sudden cold wave going down his back. He said, “Wait a minute.” Just then the car swerved off Central Park West and turned into one of the park drives. “Hey. Where are you going?”
“Just for a ride,” she said. There was something in her voice that Bingo distinctly didn’t like.
“Oh,” Bingo said. “One of those things. Second time it’s happened this evening, too.”
“A rare coincidence,” the girl said.
Handsome looked bewildered and unhappy. “What’s going on?”
“You boys don’t think you fooled me, do you?” June said. “Friends of Harkness Penneyth! That bastard never had any friends. And if he was going on a trip, why couldn’t he take his own suitcases to the station instead of sending you for them?”
Bingo sighed. “You’re being very difficult,” he complained.
“Talk,” she commanded. “And don’t try to give me that suitcase gag again.”
“All right,” he said stiffly. “We just dropped by to pay Mr. Penneyth a little social call. But he wasn’t in. So when you came in, I thought we’d better give you some explanation for our being there—”
“There may be worse liars in the world,” she said, “but I never met one of them. Are you in this with Mac and his pal? Because if you are, watch out for them. They’ll cut you out on the short end.”
“I never saw either of them before in my life,” Bingo said.
She glanced at him. “Then what did they want with you? I was watching down the street when you got into their car, so I followed.”
Bingo said with great dignity, “It was a pure case of mistaken identity. They had us confused with some individual named Riggs.”
“Oh.” She glanced at him again. “He’s the man who wrote that blackmail letter.”
“Imagine anyone doing a thing like that,” Handsome said virtuously.
The girl sighed. “I see I can’t learn anything from you guys, I might as well take you home.” She turned into a lane toward Central Park West. “You seem pretty smart. Why don’t you try an easier and more profitable racket than burglary.”
“Such as?” Bingo said.
“I’ll name several,” she told him, “next time we meet. Where do you live?”
“The Museum of Natural History, Central Park West and Seventy-ninth Street,” Bingo said. “They keep us in the same gallery with the kadoodah birds.”
“Oh, that’s the way you want to play, is it?” she said, almost angrily. She stepped hard on the gas, came out of the park above Seventy-ninth Street, and turned down Central Park West. “All right, that’s where I’ll leave you.”
The car stopped directly in front of the museum. Handsome was out and on the sidewalk almost before it had stopped, Bingo right behind him.
“Good night, boys,” she called. “Give my love to the other kadoodah birds.” She stepped on the gas and was gone. Bingo watched her car as it slowed down and turned the corner into Seventy-sixth Street.
“That’s a one-way street,” Handsome said.
“She’s only going one way,” Bingo said grimly. “Our way. Bet you she’s turning around fast and parking, ready to sneak out and trail us to where we live.” He paused and sighed. “I like June.”
“You like all the women,” Handsome said gloomily. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The gray roadster was parked about a hundred yards from Central Park West, on Seventy-eighth Street. Bingo and Handsome crossed Seventy-eighth Street briskly, going south. Sixty seconds later the roadster turned into Central Park West, going very slowly, keeping about a block behind the pair.
“Very amateurish,” Bingo said critically. “Very, very amateurish.”
Handsome shook his head and sighed. “She sure is anxious to find out where we’re going. This makes two times she’s followed us. I wonder why.”
“Maybe she murdered Harkness Penneyth and wants to know if we’ve found it out,” Bingo said. “Or maybe she knows he’s been murdered and wants to find out if we did it. Or else, maybe she knows about Mr. Pigeon and wants to cut into the dough.”
“Could be,” Handsome conceded.
“There’s only one other possible reason,” Bingo said. He lit a cigarette and snapped the match into the street. “One of us is irresistible. And I hope it’s me.”
There was a big apartment hotel down the street. Bingo headed for it, marching through the doors the uniformed doorman held for him as though he owned the place and Handsome was his vice-president. From the corner of his eye he could see the gray roadster slowing to a stop about half a block up the street.
“This is very amateurish too,” Bingo said, “but it ought to turn the trick.”
“He led the way through the lobby, down a corridor, and into a soft-lighted cocktail bar. The cocktail bar had an exit into the side street. Bingo glanced regretfully at the array of bottles back of the bar and went on out to the street, Handsome beside him.
When he collected his half of that insurance payment, Bingo promised himself, he’d come back to that cocktail bar.
They stuck to side streets on the way back to the rooming house. There was no sign anywhere of the light-gray roadster.
“I never thought I’d have to go to such lengths to get rid of a girl,” Bingo said.
Handsome shook his head. “You’d be surprised
how hard some of them are to get rid of.”
Bingo glanced at his partner’s profile and his curly dark hair. “I was speaking strictly for myself, not you,” he said.
He was silent during the rest of the walk, deep in thought. It had started out as a simple little business venture, keeping the Sunday Pigeon out of sight until Harkness Penneyth could collect five hundred thousand dollars from the insurance company and split it with the International Foto, Motion Picture, and Television Corporation of America. But that simple little business venture had seemed to become involved with a lot of things, and Bingo had an unhappy suspicion that Mr. Penneyth’s murder was the least of them.
Obviously, the two gunmen had more than a passing interest in the late Mr. Penneyth. Obviously too, they had found and carried away that letter. Maybe Mac or his pal had made that telephone call and, later, invited them to come right up to Mr. Penneyth’s apartment. Bingo tried to remember what the voice had sounded like. It could have belonged to Mac, or to the driver of the car, but he couldn’t be sure. It could as easily have belonged to someone else. It was just a voice.
Bingo scowled and kicked viciously at an unoffending stone lying on the pavement. If the person who would get that half-million bucks, with Harkness Penneyth dead, had done the murder, that simplified his own little problem. Find that person and you’d find the murderer. He felt a sudden, uncomfortable twinge at the reflection that a person who’d murdered Harkness Penneyth for a half-million bucks might easily murder someone else to keep it intact. Oh, well, he’d cope with that when he came to it.
But what in blazes did a couple of gunmen have to do with it? They’d hardly be next in line for the insurance payment—unless Mr. Penneyth had been very indiscriminate in his choice of heirs. Perhaps they’d tumbled to the situation and had decided to chisel in. Bingo sniffed indignantly. Imagine doing a thing like that! Or maybe it was some little private affair of Mr. Penneyth’s. You never knew who was mixed up with whom, these days.
“I just remembered who that guy was,” Handsome said suddenly, “the one who was driving the car. He turned around once.” He paused. “Funny how I always remember faces.”
