The Murder Megapack

by Talmage Powell

  I had just about talked Libby into a quick pastrami when I got a flash of a little chorine breaking out of the ranks and bobbing and weaving in the direction of our box.

  Her name was Bunny Dunlap. Before she had gone in for uplifting the American stage, Bunny, oddly enough, had manipulated plugs in one of the Orbit’s switchboards. Louie Springer had noticed her one day dealing out wrong numbers and decided she should have another line.

  So here she was in the new musical and steering straight for me.

  “Mr. Castle! I thought it was you from the time I first saw you!”

  Bunny dropped anchor. I could feel Libby stiffen, but I didn’t pay much attention. Bunny had a letter in her hand and the kid seemed as nervous and excited as a two-dollar race track bettor with a ticket on a hundred-to-one shot.

  Bunny’s lips twitched, her blue eyes had a funny, strained look in them and she seemed to be making an effort to keep from shaking off the half-yard of tulle she wore.

  I noticed she looked back over her shoulder before she leaned confidentially over the plush edge of the box.

  “Mr. Castle! Would you do me a big favor—for old time’s sake? Would you keep this letter for me, until later on?”

  Before I could say yes or say no she had shoved the envelope she carried into my hand and was sliding apprehensively away.

  “Well,” I heard Libby exclaim, “I like that! ‘For old time’s sake.’ How old, and what kind of time?”

  The envelope was blank. It had been recently sealed. There was still some moisture on the edge of the gummed flap. I put it in my side pocket, wondering what it was all about.

  “Johnny!” Libby opened up again. “You’re not listening. You said something about a sandwich.”

  “Come on.” I started to get up, but sat down suddenly as the lobby doors in the back of the playhouse burst open and in walked the local police force.

  At least, from the box, it looked like the entire Department. As a matter of fact it was mostly Captain Fred Mullin of Homicide, flanked on one side by Detective Larry Hartley and on the other by Ed Wheeler, who recently had been made a lieutenant!

  I stared, for I had not realized that Mullin and his pals were patrons of the arts. The way they busted in and the march down to the footlights, however, had a strange but familiar significance.

  More than once in the past I had come to grips with Captain Mullin. Mostly in matters of murder. The head of Homicide’s opinion of me wouldn’t have made family reading. My opinion of him couldn’t have been broadcast, either. In fact it had always been a case of hate at first glimpse. For both of us.

  I gripped the edge of the box, looking and listening. I heard Libby Hart’s sigh. I knew what was going through her mind. She was saying to herself, “Here it is again!”

  Mullin stopped at the orchestra pit and lifted a hand that looked like a boiled ham.

  “Who’s the head man around here?” he bellowed, in a voice any actor would have envied. Before he was answered, he continued, “Nobody leaves this here theater! I’ve got men at all the exits! Nobody moves until I say so—understand?”

  In the silence that followed you could have heard a penny drop from a Scotchman’s pocket.

  Swan Millard broke the quiet. The honey-locked soprano walked down to the footlights, shaded her eyes with a graceful hand and made Mullin the target for her look.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” she demanded.

  Mullin’s jaws sagged. Evidently the full majesty of his position hadn’t registered with the charm number peering at him.

  He glanced at Hartley. He glanced at Lieutenant Wheeler. Then he began to bristle.

  “What’s the meaning of it, she says?” he roared. “Murder in one of the dressing rooms and she asks questions!”

  I bobbed up like a cork. Libby made a grab to hold me. I slipped past her Fatal Apple nail polish and slid out of the box like a quarter horse leaving the stall gate.

  “Johnny!” Libby demanded. “Come back!”

  But it was an unfulfilled request, one of the few she ever made, too.

  The word “murder” always had a curious effect on me.

  Something like being bitten by a snake!

  Chapter II

  Empty Pocket

  Captain Mullin might have had the exits at the St. Regis blocked. But there wasn’t a cop at the baize door that led from the dark aisle outside the box directly to the stage.

  That door swung shut behind me. I almost collided with a stack of scenery piled twenty feet high. I went around the painted canvas, reaching the backdrop without interference.

  The entire company of “Let’s Have Music!” had congregated downstage. Even the scene shifters were listening to what Mullin was dealing out. Which left the way clear for me to go up the fireproof stairs leading to the tiers of dressing rooms.

  But if there were no members of the law to check me on stage, there were plenty at the first landing. Harrigan, six feet of authority with a badge to back it up, met me at the top of the stairs.

  “Just a minute, sonny. Where do you think you’re going?”

  I knew Harrigan, not well, but too well. A former member of the Riot Squad, he had gone from there to the Bomb Detail and finally into the sheltering arms of Homicide. A couple of times I had steered him on the proper way to lay bets on ice hockey tournaments. So that he could collect.

  Harrigan recognized me the next minute. Some of his scorch fizzed out. The big mitt he was about to shove in my face dropped to waist level.

  “Hello, Johnny,” he grunted.

  “One side, pal. Where’s the corpse?” I tried to make it sound light and entertaining.

  Harrigan looked doubtful. Then he must have remembered the sticks and blades would soon be back at the Garden. He nodded surreptitiously at a dressing room a little way down the tier. It had a gold star on the door.

  That meant it was Swan Millard’s dugout.

  “In there. Make it fast. Mullin’ll be around here any minute.”

  I didn’t need a second invitation.

  Two other plainclothes men gave me dubious glances, but didn’t throw in a stop. I opened the door of the dressing room and walked in on—death!

  The victim lay up against the north wall of the room. He was draped out along the surbase. He still wore his hat and a pained expression. There might have been a reason for that. A large circle of gore had welled out on the canary yellow of the room’s rug, dyeing it a deep and sullen red.

  For a minute the hat kept me from getting a good look. I moved in closer, not touching anything but letting the lights around the triple mirrors of a make-up table supply an unobstructed view.

  My second glance brought identification. It hit me all at once, fast and hard. I knew the party pushed up against the wall. So did a lot of other people—characters like Nick Rowen, “Sandy.” The Finger, Clifford, Harry Clark Shaffer, bad men Gus Gusman had wept for in the past.

  But Gusman was a dead fox now!

  I stared briefly at his thin, pinched, sallow face. It was clay gray. I looked at his prominent Adam’s apple, jutting out from his pipestem neck like a hot leather in a pickpocket’s coat. I let my eyes roam down over his slight, narrow figure and end up at his forty dollar English brogues.

  They must have been size 5A and were shined up like a drunk’s nose. I took it all in, Harrigan a foot behind me, breathing through his mouth.

  “You know this gent, Johnny?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Harrigan scratched his head. “He looks kind of familiar. But the skimmer throws me. I dasn’t touch until Doc Brunner steps in. But the expression on your pan says something.”

  “I’ll swap you.” I turned around. “Tell me what you know and I’ll furnish the identification.”

  Harrigan nodded. He said that about forty minutes before some anonymous somebody had telephoned Headquarters with the tip-off. It sounded authentic, and the main building had radioed one of the district’s prowl cars. They took a loo
k and then Mullin summoned his flock and trekked north.

  All that while I had dozed beside the luscious Libby, listening to music and the rumble of my unfed stomach!

  “He used to be Augustus Gusman,” I told Harrigan, and the other’s ears bent in my direction. “Fond memories of jumped bail bonds, damp handkerchiefs, loopholes and phony alibis.”

  Harrigan’s mouth opened. “Yeah? I knew I’d seen him somewhere! Well, I’ll be—”

  He didn’t finish. Out on the tier I heard Mullin coming along, flat feet and voice. He bustled in, squinted at me and went as red as a Times Square traffic light.

  “Who let you in?” Mullin barked.

  “It’s okay, Captain,” Harrigan hastened to interpose. “We just got an identification from him.”

  Mullin glared. His cold, granite-gray eyes, full of dislike and venom, stabbed me like a couple of stilettos. He stuck out his hand-hewn jaw, trying to think up something nasty enough to say. Then what Harrigan had mentioned began to penetrate.

  “Who is he?”

  The Captain asked it grudgingly. When I tossed off the name and business, Mullin narrowed his eyes and screwed his mouth into a twisted leer.

  “Gus Gusman, eh? I never saw him with his hat on before. And without teardrops on that thing he called a face. What did you kill him for, Castle?”

  “Strictly for laughs.” I wanted to make it sound humorous. “You know me—a murder a day. Anything for a gag.”

  “Yeah?” Mullin uncorked the bottle. “I’m sick and tired of finding you every time somebody gets dumped! You know something. Being a comic won’t help you any. I’ve a good mind to take you downtown and lay a hunk of hose on you!”

  “Unfortunately,” I told him, “I’ve got an atomic alibi. I came here with a lady and I’ve been sitting in full view of a hundred people since I arrived, in a stage box out front. Put your hose away, Captain. Remember, I represent the power of the press. I might add that I’m here in my official reportorial capacity.”

  That should have stopped him, but didn’t.

  “Yeah?” Mullin encored. “Since when does murder come under the heading of athletic amusements?”

  I didn’t have to answer that one. The next minute Brunner, bag in hand, blew in and went to work. I retired to the tier outside for a cigarette and the medical examiner’s findings.

  It wasn’t hard to hear the conversation in the dressing room from where I stood.

  “Dead about an hour,” Doc Brunner announced, after awhile. “Probably a thirty-eight. Through the jugular. Death was instantaneous. Or should have been. The lead’s still in there. I’ll have to go fishing later.”

  He added something about sending the basket up and left. I still stuck around. Gusman was good for a front page spread. But before I tuned in on the office, and Bill Jamison who took care of the Violence Department for the Orbit, I was anxious to pick up some side lights that might help Bill.

  Not much developed, however.

  What I did learn was that Mitzi, Swan Millard’s maid, opening the dressing room door had stumbled in on Gusman and promptly fainted. A scene shifter had seen her and was administering first aid when the two cops in the prowl car had barged in. But, according to my information, neither the scene shifter nor anyone else at the St. Regis had supplied the tip-off to Headquarters!

  I brooded over that. Maybe the murderer? Possibly the killer, after leaving the playhouse? Some gun with a warped sense of sardonic humor, handing the cops the place?

  Captain Mullin went into his act. It was all routine. The patter never changed. A quiz program that consumed valuable time and usually turned up little or nothing of any importance. But that was the way he operated and nobody could alter his stereotyped methods.

  Yet, oddly enough, Mullin usually bulled his way through to a successful case break. It took time, a lot of ponderous thought and a maximum of luck, but I had to give him his due. In his old-fashioned club-swinging, beat-‘em down, bludgeoning manner Mullin crashed through eventually.

  His Department had a pretty fair average of solutions to its credit. Though how they were arrived at, the fishy-eyed head man couldn’t have told you himself.

  My ears were still hanging out when the Captain happened to catch a glimpse of me. He broke off his interview to come out on the tier.

  “You still around, Castle?” He pulled out a watch some brass works had spent days putting together. He held it up and pointed a stubby finger at it. “You’ve got three minutes to get the heck outta here—unless you want to be taken in for obstructing justice. What’ll it be?”

  “Watch your blood pressure, Captain,” I murmured, and headed for the stairs.

  Down on the stage I remembered Libby. I went through the baize door, but the box we’d sat in was empty. Mullin’s men had herded the principals and chorus of “Let’s Have Music!” over to one side of the theater, where they could be taken up and interviewed in turn.

  I looked over there for a sign of Lib, didn’t get one, and steered for the lobby doors.

  Five minutes later I was in a corner drug store’s telephone booth with Jamison on the other end of the line.

  Then I started for the office, walking slowly and thoughtfully. Who had exterminated Gus Gusman? Maybe the Millard rib? She had had plenty of chance, in between costume changes. Undoubtedly she had plenty of reasons, too, even though the shyster had played angel and thousand-granded the show for her.

  If the glamorous Swan was innocent, then who had done it?

  Something hit me like a safe dropped out of a top floor window. I’d completely forgotten the cute little Bunny Dunlap, her shakes, and the letter she had given me to keep for her. All of a sudden I came out of a coma. Bunny’s agitation, the way she had looked back over her shoulder, the speed with which she had eased the envelope to me.

  From where I stood it began to smell like the little Dunlap babe had been meddling with murder—Gusman’s order for a pair of feathery wings!

  Quickly I slid a hand down toward my side coat pocket where I had stuck the chorine’s envelope for safe-keeping. My cigarettes were there, so were my keys. And three books of matches. But no envelope.

  That was gone—definitely and completely—like Gusman’s last breath!

  Yes, the envelope was gone, but—where?

  It wasn’t likely it had fallen out of my pocket. Had one of the cops lifted it in the dressing room of death? That wasn’t much good, either. But if it hadn’t dropped out, and if the law hadn’t helped themselves to it, how had it gone?

  It came like a zigzag of lightning.

  I remembered my dream girl stiffening beside me when Bunny had approached the box. I recalled the way Libby had fastened her inquisitive, dark eyes on the envelope. I remembered how she had watched me pocket it, in the right side pocket, the one next to her chair.

  Libby! That, I told myself, must be it. She had done the light-finger work!

  At the Orbit, I found Jamison had already left for the St. Regis. There was a lot of stuff on my desk marked “urgent.” I swept it into a top drawer and did some hard, fast thinking. That envelope, with whatever it contained, was important. Perhaps Miss Hart didn’t realize how much so. Perhaps Libby, in a touch of jealousy, had torn it up and thrown it to the winds. The thought was horrible.

  I reached for the desk telephone. That brought the dulcet tones of Beth Wheaton, the Sarah Bernhardt of the Bell System, gurgling in my ear.

  “Yes?”

  “Beth, do you remember Bunny Dunlap? The gal who used to sit out there beside you, making the same kind of mistakes you do?”

  “Wolf!” Beth said.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where she lives?”

  “Wolf!” she repeated.

  “Because,” I went on, “Miss Dunlap’s in a jam, or the reasonable facsimile of one. I’ve got to see her—and soon—or maybe the police will arrive first.”

  “Oh, it’s that way.” There was a minute’s delay. “Why don’t you try Personnel. They�
�ll have her address on file.

  “This is lame brain day.” I said. “Thanks for the cue.”

  Chapter III

  Callers

  Upon the third floor, I got what I wanted. That came out as “Bonita Dunlap, Telephone Operator,” with an address in the West Seventies. I took a copy of it, tried Libby at her boarding house, found she wasn’t there, and decided to make a personal call on the Dunlap chick, after a fast sandwich.

  The address tallied with the number on the double glass front doors of a narrow, mediocre apartment house not too far from Central Park. I supposed that Bunny lived there with her parents, probably supporting them in a style to which they had become accustomed. And there wasn’t much chance that she had moved since she had exchanged telephone numbers for song numbers. In rural Manhattan people didn’t move, because there was no place to move to.

  I found her name easily enough and rode a self-service elevator to the sixth floor. I rang the bell of Apartment 6F. I got immediate service. The door was opened—not by Bunny’s wrinkled mother. Nor by a snowy-haired father.

  Instead, I looked into a pair of long-lashed, violet eyes. They belonged to a cute little trick with corn-yellow hair, a streamlined figure and a pair of stems made to order for climbing bus steps.

  “Miss Dunlap home yet?”

  The violet eyes gave me quite a play. A lipsticked mouth went into a turned-up-at-the corners smile.

  “No, she isn’t. Friend of hers?”

  “For years. She used to work on the same paper with me.”

  “Oh, the Orbit.” The cute trick registered interest. “What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t. If you’ll let me come in and wait for Bunny, I’ll give you a copy of my autobiography.”

  “Sure.” She held the door wide. “Any friend of Bunny’s is a friend of mine. We share this rathole together. My name’s Della Roberts.”

  I followed her into a cheaply furnished living room that looked as if it hadn’t been dusted since the Great Flood. Articles of intimate apparel were strewn carelessly about. A pair of nylons were drying, pinned to the lower slat of a Venetian blind. Della Roberts pushed some lingerie aside and made room for me on a sofa that sagged in the middle.