by Craig Rice
“So that’s what they look like with the feathers on,” Bingo murmured. “It’s good and dead, all right.”
“Ran right out into the road,” Handsome said. “I tried to miss it, but I couldn’t. Turkeys are dumb. I read an article once in a Sunday supplement. May 3rd, 1939. It was on page two, continued on page nine, left-hand column. Right across from it was an article about head-hunters.”
“Wonderful,” Bingo said. “What page was the article about head-hunters continued on?”
“Fourteen,” Handsome said, puzzled. “Why?”
“Nothing,” Bingo said. “I just wondered if you knew.” As long as he’d known Handsome, the latter’s memory continued to fascinate him. He looked down at the mangled mass of feathers. “Did it hurt the car?”
“Scratched one fender a little,” Handsome said. “I can fix it.” He poked at the turkey with the toe of one shoe. “What shall we do with it?”
“Pay for it,” Bingo whispered. “Here comes the owner.” He prodded Handsome with one elbow and said, “Shut up and let me do the talking.” It was a totally unnecessary admonition.
A tall, thin, irate man in overalls was advancing from across the road, where a noisy herd of turkeys milled about in a fenced-in yard. Beyond the yard was a small, unpainted, and weather-beaten shanty.
“I’ll have the law on you,” Bingo shouted when the farmer was halfway across the road, “letting these birds run wild. They’re a menace to life and property. We might have smashed up our car. We might have been killed. I’ve got a good notion to sue you.”
The farmer came to a stop beside the car. He looked down at the ruined turkey. He spat accurately at a clump of weeds beside the road. Then he said, “Ten bucks.”
“Ten bucks!” Bingo gasped. “It’ll take more than ten bucks to repair the damage to our car. Look at that front fender. Look at that scratch.” He turned to Handsome, “How much is it going to cost to get that fixed?”
“Why,” Handsome began, dazed, “I can—”
Bingo interrupted Handsome just in time. “It’s going to cost plenty, I can tell you,” he said to the farmer. “And you’re going to have to pay for it. Letting these turkeys run all over the road! You ought to be arrested.”
The farmer spat again. “Ten bucks.”
“Perfect nonsense,” Bingo said wrathfully. “Look, I’m not going to make any trouble for you this time. But you’d better be warned—”
“Guess I oughta call the sheriff,” the farmer said.
Bingo snorted indignantly and opened the car door.
“Guess I oughta call the deputy in the town up ahead,” the farmer said. He might have been talking to himself. “Ten bucks.”
Bingo sighed. He was set back, but he wasn’t licked. “You can’t tell me that mangy old bird was worth ten bucks.”
“That was a prize turkey,” the farmer said sadly. “Must of got over the fence.”
“How do you know it was a prize turkey,” Bingo challenged him. “All those turkeys look alike to me.”
“They’re all prize turkeys,” he was told. “All them birds in there. Come November, I’ll get ten bucks apiece for the bunch of them.”
Bingo looked across at the herd. It looked to him like a lot of turkeys. At ten bucks a head. Maybe farmers didn’t have such a hard life, after all.
Handsome looked at his watch. “Bingo, if we’re going to get to a good hotel tonight—” he began anxiously.
“All right,” Bingo said. He took out his wallet and took out a ten-dollar bill. “I won’t argue with him. What’s ten bucks to us?” He handed it over. “You must make a pretty nice thing out of this turkey raising.”
“Sure do,” the farmer said. “I got five hundred birds there. Come three, four weeks from now, I’ll sell ’em for ten bucks apiece.” He sighed. “And right now I’d sell the whole bunch for two thousand bucks. My mother’s real sick, back in Grove Falls, Illinois, and I oughta be with her. But I can’t leave my turkeys.”
“You’d lose a lot of money,” Bingo said.
The farmer shrugged his shoulders. “She may not live more’n a couple of weeks. I’d sell my whole place here, turkeys, house, and all, for a couple thousand dollars. And three, four weeks from now, them turkeys will bring ten bucks apiece. All prize birds, every one of them.”
“Here, have a cigar,” Bingo said. “Are turkeys very hard to take care of?”
“No trouble at all,” the farmer said. “Just gotta watch ’em. Throw a little feed out once or twice a day. I got a month’s supply of feed back of the house there.”
“Bingo!” Handsome said in a low, warning voice.
Bingo didn’t hear him. He was gazing thoughtfully at the herd of all prize turkeys that would bring ten bucks apiece in three or four weeks. That wasn’t such a long time—
“Two thousand dollars is a pretty high price,” he said thoughtfully.
“If it was spot cash,” the farmer said, “I might take less.”
Bingo sat down on the running board of the roadster, and motioned the farmer to sit beside him. “Now,” he said, “you’re beginning to talk sense.”
*The Sunday Pigeon Murders.
CHAPTER TWO
“You never ran a turkey farm in your life,” Handsome said.
“Never mind,” Bingo said. “It’s only for a few weeks. And we’ll land in Hollywood with five thousand dollars instead of twelve hundred. You can run the car up back of the house.”
“Just as you say,” Handsome said unhappily. He got in and started the motor.
“And there’s no work to it,” Bingo added. “We’ll have ourselves a pleasant little vacation here, loaf around a few weeks, and sell the turkeys and beat it. Maybe we’ll sell the house and lot too, if we can get anything for it. All we have to do is throw out a little feed once or twice a day.”
“That Sunday supplement article,” Handsome muttered, “said turkeys were terrible hard to raise. They get scared easy, and they stampede and get smothered.”
“We’re not going to scare them,” Bingo said. “We’re going to make four thousand dollars pure profit, for a few weeks’ time. I got the whole works for a thousand dollars.”
Handsome sighed, and started the car up toward the unpainted shanty. Bingo followed slowly on foot, inspecting his property. It was going to be a dull and tiresome few weeks, but for four thousand dollars profit, it would be worth it. Certainly, when it meant landing in Hollywood with that much cash on hand, to re-establish the International Foto, Motion Picture, and Television Corporation of America.
The turkey yard was small—about, Bingo guessed, a quarter the size of a city block, and fenced in with heavy wire. In it the turkeys milled about, contentedly scratching and feeding. A little gold mine, he thought happily.
He went on up to the shanty from which the last owner had carried a battered straw suitcase to an even more battered Model A Ford. “Everything else in the house,” the ex-owner said, “you can keep, and welcome.”
At the time, Bingo had considered it a very decent attitude. Now, peering in through the doorway, he began to wonder. There were a couple of sagging bunks covered with ragged old blankets, a table and a couple of battered chairs, some chipped white dishes, and a rusty little stove where a smoke-smudged gray enamel coffeepot and a dirty frying pan sat side by side. There was an upturned packing box in one corner, on top of it an enamel washbasin half full of dirty water. Ancient burlap bags were tacked over the windows by way of shades. An oil lamp stood on a shelf. There was a half sack of potatoes leaning against a wall and the remains of a side of bacon hanging from a hook in the ceiling.
Still, it was the first home Bingo Riggs had ever owned, and though it was to be only a temporary one, he gazed at it with a kind of wonder and excitement. The rented rooms in which he’d spent most of his life might have had a few more conveniences in the way of plumbing, electricity, and furniture, but they’d still been rented rooms, subject to the whims of frequently difficult landladies. This
might be a dirty old shanty, but it belonged to him alone. Well—to him and to Handsome.
Handsome finished parking the car, walked in the door, and stood, looking around. He didn’t say a word.
“Maybe you’d better clean it up a little,” Bingo said. “And air it out a little, too.” He went to the door and breathed deeply. “I guess I’d better feed our turkeys. Where’d he say that stuff was?”
“Out back of the house,” Handsome said. He rolled up his sleeves and picked up a pail. “Wonder if there’s any soap.”
After a brief search, Bingo located a small sack of grain. He guessed that that must be the turkey feed. It didn’t look like much with which to feed five hundred prize birds over a period of several weeks, but the previous owner must have known what he was talking about. Bingo gazed at it dubiously. An evil-eyed cat came out from under the shanty, leered at him maliciously, and scooted off across the yard. He began to feel a little apprehensive about the venture.
He took a pinch of grain out of the sack, walked timidly to the turkey yard, and poked his hand through the fence. The turkeys ignored him. He opened the gate, went in, and offered the grain to the nearest hen. She squawked, and fled.
It occurred to him that if every one of these unreasonable creatures had to be fed by hand, it was going to take a long time. Besides, he didn’t know just how much to feed each one. They looked terribly big. Maybe he’d better ask Handsome.
“I don’t think you feed them by hand,” Handsome said. “I think you just throw it at them.”
Bingo took a full handful of grain, went back through the gate, wound up, and threw. It happened to hit a large gobbler full in the face. He made an indignant noise and charged straight at Bingo, who skinned up the nearest available tree faster than he’d ever thought he could climb, and yelled for Handsome. The gobbler waltzed around and around the tree, sputtering turkey profanity.
Bingo began to feel that nursing five hundred turkeys for five weeks wasn’t going to be as simple as it sounded. Not even for a four-thousand-dollar profit.
Handsome raced out of the house and grabbed the gate. The enraged turkey flung himself at the gate, protesting against the new intruder.
“Don’t let him intimidate you,” Bingo called from the tree.
The entire herd began to mill around excitedly. In the resulting din, Bingo and Handsome failed to notice a large produce truck pull into the driveway and stop. Bingo retreated another few inches up the tree.
A big, red-faced man in overalls got out of the truck and strode over to the fence. “Quit scaring my turkeys!” he bellowed at the top of his voice.
“They’re not your turkeys,” Bingo bellowed back. “They’re my turkeys. Our turkeys. And I’m not scaring them. How do I get down from here?”
“Jump!” Handsome yelled. He threw a small stone at the noisy gobbler. Bingo jumped, and made it to the gate in three bounds.
He slammed the gate behind him, took out his handkerchief, and mopped his brow. “Nervous brute, isn’t he?” he said, nodding toward the still spluttering gobbler.
“I’ll have the law on you,” the red-faced man said. “Trespassing and scaring my turkeys. Where’s Gus?”
“Gus?” Bingo asked.
The red-faced man jerked a thumb toward the shanty. “He lives here. Where is he?”
“Oh, he’s gone,” Bingo said. “We bought the place from him, my partner and I. I’m Mr. Riggs, and this is Mr. Kusak. You must be one of our neighbors. Nice of you to call.” Suddenly his eyes narrowed. “What’s that you said about your turkeys?”
“These,” the visitor said, waving a hand toward the turkey yard. “These here turkeys. My turkeys. I just came up with the truck to start moving ’em. Gus ain’t been looking after ’em right.”
“You must be mistaken,” Bingo said. A cold, unpleasant feeling was beginning to spread outward from the pit of his stomach. “We just bought these turkeys. From—Gus.”
The red-faced man blinked. “Gus couldn’t of sold you no turkeys,” he said, “because Gus didn’t own no turkeys to sell. All he owns is the shanty and about half an acre, and that ain’t rightfully his, he just come and lived there. Never been much account, Gus ain’t.”
“Maybe we’d better talk this over,” Bingo said. He avoided Handsome’s eyes. “Have a cigar, Mr.—”
“Thanks, I will. Name’s Halvorsen, Chris Halvorsen.” He bit off the end of the cigar. “How come Gus sold you them turkeys when he didn’t own them turkeys in the first place?”
“That’s what I’m beginning to wonder,” Bingo said. He was beginning to know the answer, too. “But my partner here is a witness. This Gus sold us the place and five hundred turkeys for a thousand dollars. He said they’d sell for ten dollars apiece in a few weeks.”
Chris Halvorsen stared at him, and then began to laugh. He laughed louder than Bingo had ever heard anyone laugh in his life. He laughed until he coughed, and then coughed until he cried. He slapped his huge thighs, and wrapped his arms around his massive chest.
“Something must be very funny,” Bingo said coldly.
“In the first place,” Halvorsen said, “if them turkeys fetch more’n two, three dollars apiece when they’re full grown, it’ll be a good price. In the second place there ain’t five hundred, there’s only about two hundred. In the third place, they’re my turkeys anyhow, Gus was just looking after ’em.” He choked, and mopped his red face, “You city fellas!”
Bingo and Handsome looked at each other for a long moment. Bingo looked at the maroon roadster, parked behind the shanty. Well, they still had the car, and about a hundred and eighty dollars, and the calfskin luggage. They could make it to Hollywood. Everybody made a bad investment once in a while.
“That Gus!” Chris Halvorsen finished wiping his face and stuffed the handkerchief into his back pocket. He shook his head, and drew a long breath.
“We better all drive into Thursday,” he said. “We better go talk to the sheriff.”
CHAPTER THREE
Henry Judson, the sheriff of Thursday County, was a small, thin, gray-haired man with a rooster neck and a rasping voice. He wore a blue-serge suit which was a little too large for him and a wide-brimmed gray felt hat. His office was in the first floor of the two-story county jail, next door to the courthouse, a block west of Main Street.
He too seemed to think that the sale of Chris Halvorsen’s turkey herd was not only funny but a good stroke of business—however illegal—on the part of Gus.
“If we could find him—” Bingo began hopefully.
“I’ll send out an alarm,” Sheriff Judson said. “But, Lord, he’s probably clear over into Nebraska by now. You’ll never see him again.”
He pulled a printed form out of a desk drawer and began filling it in. “What was his last name?”
“Search me,” Chris Halvorsen said. “All I ever called him was just Gus.”
“Me too,” the sheriff said. “I’ll just put down ‘Known as Gus, last name unknown,’ and a description.”
“He was about five foot eleven and he weighed about a hundred and sixty,” Handsome said. “Bald head with a little sort of brown-colored hair around the edge. Blue eyes and a lot of freckles. He had a mole on his chin and a three-cornered scar on his left hand. His nose was a little crooked, toward the right, and he had a receding chin.”
“You’ve got a good eye,” the sheriff said admiringly.
“I’ve got a memory,” Handsome said, with becoming modesty.
The sheriff wrote down the description.
“But,” Bingo said. He gulped. “Who was he?”
“I dunno,” the sheriff said. “Just Gus. He just showed up here, ’bout three, four years ago.”
“Closer to five, Hank,” Chris Halvorsen said.
“Guess it was, at that,” the sheriff agreed. “Nice, good-natured fella. That place up on the county road been standing vacant since Herman Stoltz went off to Des Moines, in ’36. Gus just moved in and lived there. Never bothered an
ybody. Did odd jobs now and then.”
“I give him ten dollars a month to keep that herd of turkeys for me,” Chris Halvorsen said. “He didn’t do very good, though. Gus was a good hand with chickens, but not turkeys.”
The sheriff chuckled. “Gus used to keep a bunch of old hens there,” he said. “Too tough t’eat and too old t’lay. He’d shoo ’em out on the road when cars came along the curve, and if the fella driving the car was a city fella, he’d always claim it was a prize hen that won blue ribbons at the county fair, and get ten bucks. Made a good thing out of it, too, especially vacation season.”
Bingo and Handsome’s glances met over the sheriff’s head. Neither of them said a word.
“Well,” the sheriff said, “we’ll try to pick him up for you, but don’t be too disappointed if we can’t find him.” He put away his pen. “He sold you the house and lot too, huh? Well, I guess nobody’ll care if you stay there. Less’n Herman Stoltz comes back.”
“He won’t come back,” Chris Halvorsen said. “Last I heard he was moved to Keokuk and working in a garage there. Anyways, it wasn’t his house to begin with.”
“That’s right, come t’think of it,” the sheriff said. “Fella that owned it first was in a big bank robbery ten or fifteen years ago. Coupla hundred thousand dollars was took. He was a fella name of Engan, Chuck Engan. Died in jail, and nobody knew who owned the house, so Herman Stoltz moved in, and after he moved to Des Moines, Gus moved in. Now I guess it belongs to you boys. Ain’t much of a house, though.”
“I’ll move them turkeys out in the morning,” Chris Halvorsen said. “Too dark to monkey with ’em now.”
Bingo sighed, and said nothing. It wasn’t the loss of his original investment that worried him, but the loss of the prospective profit. Not every day in the year brought an opportunity to turn one thousand dollars into five. Still, once they were out in Hollywood—
The telephone on the sheriff’s desk began to ring. He answered it, listened a minute, said, “Oke,” and hung up. Then he called loudly, “Herb! Earl!” A couple of tanned-faced young men came in from the next room. The sheriff said, “Five, six guys busted out of state’s prison and stole a car. Somebody just spotted ’em going through Lima Junction, coming this way.” He turned to the big, red-faced farmer. “Chris, you’re a deputy. You better come along.”
