by Craig Rice
“Yes is the word for it,” Bingo said, trying to sound as amiable as possible.
“Excellent,” Rinaldo said. “Then I shall help you. Why do you not borrow from our friend?” He waved at Mr. Pigeon’s coat. “You can put it back most easily before he even discovers that it has ever been gone.”
“No, no, no,” Bingo said, “we can’t do that. You must understand.” He drew a long breath. “We have kidnaped Mr. Pigeon.”
Rinaldo nodded, blew the ashes from his cigarette, and said, “Yes, that I know.”
“Well,” Bingo said, “there’s a certain etiquette about these things. It is not etiquette to borrow money from a gentleman who you have just kidnaped, see?”
“Oh,” Rinaldo said. He nodded slowly as he drew it out. “That is unfortunate. Because our friend, he is always happy to lend to the unfortunate, even when he does not know about it.” He sat for a moment, scowling. Then he looked up hopefully. “Baby. She works. She will have money.”
“It’s the same thing,” Bingo explained patiently. “Etiquette, I mean. A person can’t borrow money off of a girl.”
It took a few minutes to get that point of etiquette clear in Rinaldo’s mind. When at last he did have it clear, he slid off the edge of the table where he’d been sitting, crushed out the cigarette, and said, “In that case, I will get money for you, this morning.”
He said it with such a serene air of confidence that neither Bingo nor Handsome asked how.
“Because you are my friends,” Rinaldo said, “and the friends of my friend. And now it is time for breakfast, and I am very hungry.” He went on into the other room. Bingo shoved the dollar bill at Handsome. “Get stuff for breakfast,” he said. “Get a lot of stuff for breakfast. Bacon, and everything else. Cigarettes, too. Spend it all, if you have to.”
There was something about Rinaldo that filled him with confidence.
It was a magnificent breakfast. Little Mr. Pigeon pinned a dish towel around his waist for an apron, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work with the eggs, the bacon, the raw tomatoes, and the onion. The result—Bingo wasn’t sure if it was an omelet or stuff called ambrosia—was something long to be remembered.
Then Rinaldo rose from the table, brushed his suit, borrowed Bingo’s best necktie, and started out, promising, with a long ardent oath, to return with funds. And Bingo felt perfectly sure that he would.
He sat back in the rocking chair and smoked a cigarette while Handsome and Mr. Pigeon did the breakfast dishes, feeling happy, comfortable, and full of good will. It had been such a superior breakfast, and that last cup of coffee had been just the crowning touch.
They were a family now, a little family. He and Handsome and Rinaldo and Mr. Pigeon. With an unpleasant little shock, he realized suddenly that, after Sunday, Mr. Pigeon wouldn’t be with them any more. After the insurance payment was made, they’d have to turn him loose.
Still, Mr. Pigeon didn’t have any family of his own. Maybe he’d like to go on staying with them, and go into the business as a partner. They’d have a much better place to live, too, and someone to wash the breakfast dishes. He closed his eyes and began to design their new home on a lavish and expensive scale.
There was a knock at the door and Baby came in. She had on a bright print house coat, and her hair was tied up with a red bandanna that covered the curling pins. There was just a faint gleam of cold cream on her face. She looked very beautiful.
Her first words were, “Where’s Rinaldo?”
“He’s gone out to attend to some business,” Bingo said coldly. He looked indignant. “You might have waited for us at the Swan Club and let us bring you home.”
This time she looked indignant. “With a blonde floozy in a big car bringing you home?”
“That was purely business,” Bingo said severely.
Baby sniffed. “I suppose your sitting with her for an hour and a half in Morrie Gelberg’s tavern was purely business, too.”
“Sure it was,” Handsome said, as though he was surprised at the question.
“And how did you know she drove us home?” Bingo asked suddenly.
“Joe Brennan, the doorman, called me up and told me,” she said. “He’s a friend of mine, Joe is.”
Bingo thought of Joe Brennan, the doorman at the Swan Club, and hated him.
Little Mr. Pigeon caught Bingo’s eye and winked at him, as though to say, “When they act jealous, you know they’re interested.” Bingo winked back, and, somehow, felt much better.
Baby glared at him and said, “And there you sit, in the best chair, looking like visiting royalty, and letting poor Mr. Pigeon wash the dishes.”
Bingo felt a twinge of guilt, but before he could speak, Mr. Pigeon said mildly, “He never gets them quite clean. Besides,” he added, putting his head on one side and giving Baby a winsome smile, “I like to wash dishes.”
Baby tossed her head. “It seems to me you like doing everything that has to be done and that nobody else likes to do.” Then she turned to Bingo and said with icy dignity, “I came up here to have a private conversation with you, Mr. Riggs.”
“O.K.,” Bingo said, rising from his chair. He felt a warning shiver down his spine. “But my friends call me Bingo and my girl friends call me sweetheart.” He rolled his eyes.
“I’ll sweetheart you,” she snapped.
Out in the hall, she looked as worried as she was indignant. A judicious blending of the two.
“Bingo,” she said, “Ma wants to see you. She”—Baby drew a long breath—“she says she isn’t running a charity flophouse where you can bring in all your unemployed friends. And, she says—”
“We only owe her seventeen-fifty,” Bingo said. “Why, that’s nothing.”
“Not to Ma,” Baby said.
Bingo sighed. “All right. I’ll come right down and see her.”
Baby looked at him, and the worry won out over the indignation, “Bingo,” she said slowly, “I know it’s only for a few days, and if in the meantime you need a little ready cash, you know I’ve been saving some of my salary, and—”
Temptation worked on Bingo for just fifteen seconds and then gave up. He said, “Thanks, Baby, but we don’t need it. And the Riggses have never borrowed dough from girls.”
She looked very little and cute and pretty, with one hair curler beginning to work out from under her bandanna, and the cold cream shining on her nose, with that small frown between her eyebrows, and a half smile beginning to curl the ends of her mouth.
He grabbed her by the chin and kissed her.
She gasped, “Why Bingo Riggs!” and fled down the stairs.
Bingo called himself a variety of names, none of them pleasant. The idea, kissing Handsome’s girl, just because Handsome never got up the nerve to do it himself!
Just the same, he wanted Handsome to go downstairs with him for the conference with Ma. Ma had a weakness for Handsome.
He opened the door, called Handsome, and told Mr. Pigeon they’d be right back.
“It’s Ma,” he told Handsome on the way downstairs. He didn’t need to say anything more.
Ma didn’t look in a good mood. Everything about her, from the dyed black pompadour to the rustling folds of her bright-blue taffeta dressing gown, even to the corset steels that showed faintly through the dressing gown when she walked, expressed a grim determination.
“I’ve been very patient with you,” she began.
It was a discouraging beginning. Bingo had heard it before. He could see that she was deliberately avoiding Handsome’s hurt gaze and the helpless little-boy look on his face as she talked.
“But I’m a poor woman,” she went on. “This rooming house is my only means of livelihood. I have my bills to meet too, and you can’t give pretty excuses to the gas and electric company.”
“Now, Ma,” Bingo said in his most placating manner. “If you’ll only wait till tomorrow, I’ll not just give you the back rent, but four weeks in advance.” He would, too, with the money Leonora Penneyth wo
uld give him that night.
You could almost see Ma hardening her heart. “If I had just five cents,” she said, “for every time you’ve said that, I could give you your rent free and throw in your breakfast.” She folded her arms across her blue taffeta bosom. “You’ll pay up by one o’clock, or out you go.”
Obviously, she was in no mood to be argued with.
Between Bingo’s cajoling, and Handsome’s unhappy brown eyes, she finally agreed to accept ten dollars, on account, and to wait until three o’clock.
As they went into the hall, Bingo fingered the seventy-nine cents in his pocket and said a silent prayer for Rinaldo.
They were just halfway up the stairs when the telephone rang. It was for Bingo.
He raced down the stairs, his heart pounding. Maybe something had happened to Rinaldo. Maybe—hell, maybe anything.
He took a firm grip on the receiver, drew a long breath and finally managed to say, “Hello?”
Leonora Penneyth’s voice came over the wire. “Hello, Bingo Riggs. I’m sorry about last night. But I’m a lot sorrier about some other things.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
It took a moment or so for Bingo’s heart to come back from the bottom of his shoes. His first thought had been that she’d changed her mind about the money. Then as he slowly began to realize that she hadn’t, he found that he could breathe again.
“Listen,” she said. “Frankly, I meant to cheat you boys. I had exactly the same idea you did, and I was going to cash in exactly the same way. Then Wilkins, God help him, gave the show away.”
Wilkins. Who the hell was Wilkins? Oh sure, he was Mr. Penneyth’s servant.
“And you guys,” she said, “caught our bird. Know what I mean?”
“Yep,” Bingo said.
“But I wasn’t going to do business with you,” she said. “I was going to try to gyp you. After all, that Stone was trying to chisel in too, and you were just too much. Know what I mean?”
“Absolutely,” Bingo said.
“But then I changed my mind,” she said. “After last night. Because you boys were very swell to me, in every way, know what I mean?”
“Sure,” Bingo said.
“So,” she said, “that’s the way it is. I just wanted you to know, you’re my pals now, and I never go back on my pals.” There was a moment’s pause, and then she said, “Only honest now, tell me. How are you going to fix it so I’ll get the whole amount?”
“We’ll have to tell you that later,” Bingo said. “Know what I mean?”
It might have been a faint giggle that came over the phone. “See you tonight,” she said. “Same time, same place.” She hung up.
Bingo put the receiver on its hook gently, almost gingerly. He started up the stairs, waved to Handsome to go on up, and took one step at a time, slowly, deep in thought.
The person who’d get Mr. Penneyth’s dough, with him dead, was obviously the person who had killed him. But that person was Leonora Penneyth and, in spite of her faults, she was a very fine individual. That created a problem.
And what had she meant by that crack, “How are you going to fix it—?”
Oh, well, he’d find out about that tonight.
Meanwhile, there were more immediate worries. Seventy-nine cents didn’t go very far in providing the materials for lunch. Twelve o’clock, one o’clock, and finally two o’clock passed.
Maybe Rinaldo had changed his mind, or maybe he hadn’t been successful, or maybe he’d been run over by a truck.
At exactly two-seventeen, Rinaldo returned, looking pleased. He drew Bingo and Handsome into the “other” room and handed Bingo a five, two ones, and a half dollar.
“I found my friend,” Rinaldo announced triumphantly. “It was sad that he had no money, not at all. But he did have his watch that was given to him by his uncle. I regret that the pawnbroker would not give me more for it, but that may be because I do not speak it very good, English.”
Bingo picked up the seven-fifty and said, “You mean to say you hocked some other guy’s watch?”
“Why not?” Rinaldo said expansively. “It was the watch of my friend.”
Somehow it didn’t seem exactly etiquette to ask whether or not the friend knew about it and had given his consent.
“Well,” Bingo said at last, “we can make it, Handsome, if we hock the other camera.”
Handsome didn’t say anything, and Bingo tried to avoid seeing the wounded look on his face.
“We won’t be using it till tomorrow anyway,” Bingo went on, fast, “and tomorrow morning we’ll have twenty-five hundred bucks to throw around. Hell, we can buy ten new cameras if we want to.”
“O.K., Bingo,” Handsome said. “If you say so.”
“And you’d better take it to Uncle Max,” Bingo said quickly. “Last time, I only got four-fifty on it; maybe you can get five. You know Uncle Max. And hurry.”
It was exactly four minutes to three when he gave ten dollars to an almost effusively grateful Ma. That left a grand total of two dollars and forty-five cents, after what had been spent for lunch.
Bingo devoted the afternoon to making extravagant plans for spending the money he’d get from Leonora Penneyth tonight. Orchids for Baby, roses for Ma. Paying the rent. Getting the cameras out of hock and buying a new one for Handsome as a surprise. Bringing home roasting chickens for Mr. Pigeon to fix. A hell of a swell present for Rinaldo. That suit with the thin pin stripe.
Mr. Pigeon suggested things to buy for dinner that cost exactly eighty cents. It was a masterpiece of a dinner, too. Bingo would never have believed that anything like that could be accomplished with ordinary stew beef and a little garlic.
At five minutes after eight, Bingo and Handsome walked over to the Eighty-sixth Street subway station. Bingo was wearing his green and purple hand-woven necktie. He felt he owed it to the occasion.
Both of them were unusually silent, all the way to the Fourteenth Street station. Bingo felt a constantly mounting excitement, every nerve in his body seemed to be jumping, and the blood was playing leapfrog in his veins.
Twenty-five hundred bucks was nothing compared to two hundred and fifty thousand, just a fly in the bucket, or a drop in the ointment, or whatever the expression was. But it was more dough than he’d ever had at any one time. More, it would close the deal about Mr. Pigeon. The rest was just a matter of waiting.
They’d gotten the letter back from Steve Stone and destroyed it. Leonora Penneyth was going to make a deal with them. Everything was going to be O.K. now. Now and forever.
Only, there was still Mr. Penneyth’s body, there in the refrigerator. Something had to be done about that. Oh, well, an anonymous phone call to the police would fix it. Somebody had murdered the gangster, Art Frank, too, and the lawyer, Rufus Hardstone. That somebody was still running around loose.
Too, that somebody was the person who’d get Mr. Penneyth’s dough.
“I’m damned if I’m going to turn Leonora Penneyth over to the police,” he told himself furiously. Maybe he’d even tip her off, too. Anyway, he’d leave the whole problem to the police. “What the hell do we pay taxes for?” he said aloud.
Apparently Handsome didn’t hear him. Handsome had been walking slowly, his eyes on the sidewalk, his brows knit. At last he said, “Say, Bingo. I just thought of something.”
“Ummmmph?” Bingo said, half lost in his own thoughts.
“That dame, she called us up this morning.”
“Sure,” Bingo said. “She said everything was O.K.”
“Well,” Handsome said, “how did she get our telephone number?”
Bingo didn’t say anything. They walked half a block. Then he said, “It was on that letter we sent to Mr. Penneyth. She must’ve seen it and wrote the number down.”
“Oh,” Handsome said, drawing a deep breath. “But then, Bingo, she must’ve been there the time he was murdered, and if she murdered him, why was she still hanging around by the time our letter came, and if she wasn’t—”
“You worry too much,” Bingo said angrily.
“Sorry,” Handsome said apologetically. “Did I do wrong?”
“Stop thinking,” Bingo said.
They walked the rest of the way in silence.
There weren’t any bells in the lobby of the apartment house. The door to the inner lobby stood open, and the self-service elevator was waiting in the hall.
Bingo remembered where the apartment was with no difficulty. He rapped on the slightly ajar door, and it fell open.
“I guess she ain’t here yet,” Bingo said. “I guess she meant for us to come right in and wait for her.”
The lights were on in the living room, that same, soft, rosy glow. There was a light on in the bedroom, too, showing through the half-open door.
Bingo stood just inside the living room for a moment. Then he decided to explore a little. He got as far as the bedroom and then called suddenly, “Handsome!”
The blonde babe, Leonora Penneyth, was sprawled across the big, ornate bed like a sack of potatoes in the basement of Uncle Herman’s grocery store back in Brooklyn. From that little distance Bingo could see where the knife had gone in through the pale-blue chiffon, but he didn’t want to look closer.
Through the drumming in his ears he heard Handsome’s voice. “She’s dead.” His own voice seemed to come from a long way off, as he said, “She can’t be dead.” And then there was a little pause, and he heard his own voice again, still coming from that great distance, saying, “But she is.”
Just as Harkness Penneyth had been.
“This is where we came in,” he said. There wasn’t going to be any twenty-five hundred bucks. There wasn’t going to be any two hundred and fifty thousand, either. Somehow, that didn’t seem important now, beside the fact that Leonora Penneyth had been murdered. She’d been unhappy as hell, she hadn’t really wanted to live, but just the same—“And,” Bingo said to Handsome, in the same far-off voice, “This is where we go out, too. This is where we quit.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Now tell it all over again, from the beginning,” Mr. Pigeon said quietly. “And put in every single little detail. Even if it doesn’t seem important, put it in.”
