“I’ll be damned!” said the newspaper columnist. “A nice, smooth lecture. Where did you go to school, Mac?” His eyes narrowed. “You smell ’em and you hear ’em. Is that it?”
“Mostly smell,” said the harsh whisper. “Close your eyes some time and try it. You’ll drop about half your friends. In the dark thieves stink and so do liars … Move on brother; you’re discouraging charity.”
“Okey, Central,” Tracy said coolly. “Put me through for another call.”
He fished leisurely in his pocket and dropped another coin in the cup. The beggar’s finger swiftly filched it and stowed it away.
“How long have you been on this grift?” Tracy asked him.
“Not as long as you, brother. You’re sitting pretty.”
That made Tracy laugh. “How do you know?”
“For one thing, you’re too free and easy with your quarters. For another, you stink of highballs and silk underwear. You belong on this street; you’ve got the damned Broadway whine in your voice. Laugh now and tell me I’m guessing. You’re one of the boys and you’ve got plenty of easy cash and you don’t work very hard.”
“Let’s have some more professor,” Jerry said. “Bring your lecture right up to date. What do I work at?”
The blind man shivered suddenly. “—— I’m cold!” His teeth chattered.
Jerry reached out and took hold of the wet sleeve. “Let’s move over to a doorway. I’m still interested. A buck says you can’t tell me what I work at.”
You’re a persistent louse, aren’t you?” the beggar sneered.
He allowed Tracy to guide him across the slushy sidewalk. He walked with short, shuffling steps, his crook-handled cane swinging loosely from the bend of his arm.
“You’re offering me a buck if I call the turn on your racket?”
“That’s right.”
The man chuckled. “That eliminates one guess. You’re not a card and dice man or you’d have made it a straight bet—made me risk a buck of my own.”
He closed his dead eyes with a muttered oath.
“Let me concentrate … One of the boys. Broadway native. An actor, maybe … Or a newspaper man?”
“You’re asking me?” Tracy clipped pertly. He was watching the man with narrowed, incredulous eyes.
“Shut up! I’m thinking. I think I’m going to say newspaper … You don’t smell like an actor. You have the vaudeville whine all right, but you talk tight like a mouse-trap. And you’re more interested in me than you. That doesn’t sound like an actor … You heard me say ‘sir’ and wondered at my choice of sex. An actor might wonder but he’d let it go at that. A newspaperman would stop and ask questions. They’re curious lice … Well?”
His eyes opened wide again with their level, disconcerting stare.
“Is that the final guess?” Tracy asked him.
“That’s the final guess.”
Tracy folded a dollar bill lengthwise and slipped it between the stiffly extended fingers.
“Satisfied?” said the harsh voice.
“Yeah.”
“You’re a liar,” the blind man sneered. “You’re still wondering about me and my smooth line. You’ve had your money’s worth; now you’d like to stay a while and hear the customary story of how I first came to lose my virtue.”
“How did you?”
“Not on Broadway.”
“Where are you from?”
“Kentucky,” He laughed with a horrible jocularity. “I was born in Mammoth Cave. Catch wise, Mister? Just an underground fish.”
Tracy shuddered. “You’re cold-blooded, all right.”
“Just blind, Mister,” the voice grated.
“What’s your name?”
“None of your damn’ business … Wait, I’ll be fair; after all, you paid cash on the nail … You called me professor. All right, my name is Jefferson Brick. I used to be a professor of chemistry in a Protestant Episcopal university. I lost my eyesight in a laboratory explosion. I left home because I didn’t care to be a burden on my beautiful young wife. Besides, I knew she was secretly in love with the professor of history, who was a man of independent wealth and very handsome in a sinister way. So I took a tin cup from the pantry and stole away in the night … Try that on your city editor. It’s not true, of course. But it wouldn’t be a bad bet for the movies.”
His bearded lips twitched haggardly.
“And in number two yarn,” Tracy suggested with a grin, “you’re probably Sergeant Amos J. Sparrowcock in a shell-hole on the Ourq with bullets whining overhead—”
The columnist ducked his head back with a distant grunt. The blind man had lashed out wildly with a clenched fist that caught the newspaperman flush on the mouth. They scuffled clumsily together in the dark doorway and Tracy caught at the arms and held them tight.
He panted: “What’s the idea of that, you mug?”
The man stopped struggling suddenly and Jerry let go of his arms.
“You son of a ——!” the beggar whispered softly. He bent down and felt with his hands for his fallen cane. Tracy let him alone. The beggar turned unerringly and took a swift tapping step towards the sidewalk where icy rain blew and pedestrians slopped through the gray slush.
Tracy blocked him off. “Listen a minute, will yuh?”
“Let me alone! Let me go or I’ll smash you with the cane!”
“Oh, no, you won’t. Who do you think you are—Gyp the Blood?”
His captive gave a short despairing cry. His blank eyes seemed to bulge from his head. The columnist’s own eyes were gleaming. He could use this fella—this blind monkey with the wise ears and the accurate nose. Jerry always played hunches—and he had a hunch right in front of him cornered tight in a wet doorway.
It’d be worth a little dough to get a hard-boiled nose-and-ear verdict on Daisy. That babe had Tracy worried. He wasn’t sure about her. Ad he had to be sure! If she was on the level and he broke her story in the column—good ——! what a story! And verification all over every sheet in the town in three days. —! he’d slay Manhattan with the hottest news prophecy since Croker left for Ireland.
But if Daisy was a double-crossing little liar … The thought made him sweat. If little Daisy happened to be a patient, dewy-eyed Judas, working in cahoots with Tom Hoyt of the Sphere. … They’d laugh Tracy off the earth and the Daily Planet would be caught belly deep in libel …
“Let me go!” the blind man snarled.
“Will you shut up a minute? Look. … I’m making you a proposition.”
“Lemme go!”
“All you have to do is listen to someone while she’s talking—a woman, see? In my office, not two blocks away. Twenty-five bucks for you. In advance. Right now and in your mitt.”
“Lemme go!”
“Jeeze, I’ll smack you in a minute! Listen, all I want is a verdict on this dame. Is she crooked or straight? Is she a louse or the best friend I’ve got? She has something to peddle, with no proof except her unsupported word. Twenty-five bucks—two tens and a five—and all you do is listen and say yes or no when she’s done. She’s as smart as hell, blind man!”
There was a pause.
“What’s your own personal opinion?” said the other man sullenly.
“I don’t know. I’ve been checking and re-checking and snooping—and I’m still absolutely—”
“Blind?” said the beggar in his razor-thin murmur.
The fellow’s bitter self-torture made Jerry’s fists clench with a helpless, impotent anger.
“—— you sure love to pick a the scab, don’t you?
“As long as I can bleed, I’ll know I’m still alive. That’s horrible, isn’t it? … Now go ahead and tell me all about Helen Keller. Nice ladies with a candy peppermint smell press my hand on an average of twice a week and tell me all about her.”
“And?”
“She was born blind, wasn’t she?”
“What of it?”
“I wasn’t,” said the dusty murmur.
There was a silence. Tracy took a deep breath. “Will it make you feel any better if I bust out crying?” he said brutally. “Let’s go back to business. I don’t think you’re a bum and I do think you got brain. Wanta sell out for twenty-five bucks?”
“Two tens and a five, you said.”
“Yeah.”
“You might slip me singles. I couldn’t tell.”
“That’s your problem,” Tracy said. “Sniff hard and tell me whether I’m an insect or an angel.”
“You’re a louse, all right … Which one is the five?”
Tracy laid the bill in his palm. He folded it and stowed it away. He put the two tens in another pocket.
His blank eyes rolled vacantly towards the newspaperman.
“Better tell me what it’s all about, hadn’t you?”
“Not in a wet doorway, sonny. Grab hold of my arm … And for —— sake, throw that tin cup down the sewer and I’ll buy you a new one.”
They stepped out from the doorway’s shelter and plodded southward through the slippery slush. Of the two, the blind man had the surer footing.
Butch—the faithful Butch of the cauliflower ears and the oversize feet—was lolling in the outer office of Tracy’s Time Square hideout. He pinched out his butt and stretched massively, yawning like a hippo. He stared at Tracy’s brown-bearded companion without much change in his leaden eyes.
“Any phone calls?” Tracy asked him.
“Nothin’ fancy. Just chopped meat. There was a drunk in a speako that Hennessey thought maybe might—”
“Hell with him. I got a frill coming here pretty soon. You know her. She’ll breeze right by you when she comes in. Let her breeze.”
“Okey, Boss.” He rolled his big head lazily toward the columnist’s sodden companion.
“Who’s the pencil merchant?”
Tracy ignored the query and grinned. “Let’s have a quick tintype of Butch,” he suggested.
The blind man’s lip curled. “Quarts of blood,” he said thickly. “Offal. A prehistoric brain.”
“Oh, yeah?” Butch gagged helplessly for an oath and then gave up the struggle. “Is zat so?” He growled. “Yuh don’t tell me!”
Tracy led the blind man into his private cubby and closed the door. He took off his companion’s hat and overcoat and hung them up on a hook in the corner. He swept a phone book to the floor and swept the empty chair close to his desk. He prodded the back of the man’s knees with the chair edge and the blind man sat down.
The columnist felt suddenly diffident, uncomfortable.
“Have a cigarette? Or is that—er—”
“It is. Don’t worry; I’m used to it. People don’t smoke much in the dark. Inhaling helps, but not much … You don’t believe me, do you?”
Tracy looked incredulous. “I don’t get you on that. I’ve done it myself plenty.”
“Try it without your optic nerve sometime, my friend. Or just close your eyes so you can’t see the red glow when you draw. It’s not quite—satisfactory.” He said the word purringly. With a brief wrench of a smile. “I’d rather you didn’t light up until the girl I’m going to listen to has gone. And please don’t offer her a smoke. I’d like an unblurred impression. What’s her name?”
“Daisy Crandall. I’ll give you the scenario right now.”
The Planet’s columnist leaned forward.
“I’ve known her for six months. She works on another paper—the Sphere. Tom Hoyt’s sheet. I wouldn’t trust Tom for a drink of water. There’s no query on him—he’s the town’s dirtiest so-and-so. We’ll talk about Daisy who works on his paper. A sweet kid, or I’m cock-eyed. I like her plenty and she me. For six months she’s been giving me news tips, good ones—selling out Tom Hoyt, if you like, but giving ’em to me, not selling ’em. For six months, see? Not a kick-back or a libel suit, and I’m taking her word on every item she hands me.”
The blind man’s eyes were closed. He made no comment. Tracy reached for his cigarettes, swore faintly, and shoved the case back in his pocket.
“She’s dug me up a scandal tip. I’ve got it in the desk here right now. Smoking under hatches. Hot as hell. The story is due to break in three days—Daisy’s unsupported word for that—and when it breaks old man MacMadden will be sorry he ever canned his Gazette of departed memory … You gotta get the picture clearly—I’m talking about a ripe news prediction—my column breaks the tape three days ahead of the gun, get me? Hell, I’ll read you the working squib!”
He unlocked a drawer in his steel desk, took out a sheet of paper on which was typed a long single-spaced paragraph. He read the thing aloud:
What a lovely little dancer of Park Avenue, the Lido and the more expensive musical comedy stages is about to cross the Equator and go native, by request? What middle-aged husband is about to go into the public laundry business? Blame it all on the vogue for sun-tan, folks. But in this case they do say, so they do, that the sun-tan came straight from Harlem. The little lady’s male parent turns out to be as chocolate as a Hershey bar. The husband’s lawyers—and what lawyers!—have Uncle Tom dotted and signed and under key somewhere between here and Cincinnati. The dancer still thinks he’s safely hidden in West 137th Street. The egg will be cracked in three days. Phooey! See you in the courtroom. Or do you go for our more colorful dirt?
He put the thing back in the drawer. “That’s a rough outline of the tip. The question is—”
The blind man nodded and said slowly: “What a filthy dung-fly you are! What a slimy roach! And sweet little Daisy? Where does she fit in?”
Jerry smiled wanly.
“Why get nasty? She’s newspaper. So am I. If you pinch either of us we’ll turn black and blue. We’re human sweetheart.”
“True enough,” the beggar said. “Add me too. We’re all members of the—damned human race aren’t we?”
He relaxed after a moment and the thin hand unclenched in his lap.
“Just what are you afraid of? Don’t you trust the girl?”
“Listen,” Tracy said nervously. “There’s Tom Hoyt to consider; the owner of the Sphere, the guy she works for. He’s as wise as a family of foxes, and if he got a chance he’d like to burn my and the Planet to death with matches—one at a time. Six months would be a half minute to that guy if he thought he could frame me. He knows I’m a sucker for women. It’d be a slow, careful build-up.”
“Verify the tip yourself.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing lately? Layin’ dead drunk in a cellar somewhere? No sale on that angle. Or should I crash the dancer’s penthouse with a big lead pencil, tip my hat, and ask her if she’s a dinge?”
“What’s your friend Daisy say?”
“She says it’s absolutely the McCoy. She’s seen the documents—won’t tell me how or where. She says the divorce suit will be filed in three days.”
“But you don’t trust her.”
Jerry snarled irritably. “Don’t keep saying that! I do! Look—do you see what’ll happen if I print the squib and there’s no suit filed—just a plant? I’m no guinzo peanut vendor. I’m Jerry Tracy. There’s lots of people would commute in from China to see me fired out like a monkey and plastered for criminal libel. I can understand where this damned Gloria—never mind her name—but I can understand just how she’d help the plant along so she could go into a courtroom with a battery of lawyers headed by Moe Steeger, and bare her back and flanks and weep for the sound cameras. She’d love it—provided she’s lily-white and Daisy’s a liar.”
“Why not wait three days and see?”
“Because I want to print that squib!” Tracy said fiercely. “It’s my business to predict the blow-off!”
The man with the maimed eyes laughed at him with a grim and quiet mockery.
“And you tell all this,” he murmured, “to a blind bum with a tin cup. You don’t trust Daisy and you want me to listen to her. I’m to make the great decision because I’m blind and can smell thieves and hear them lie … Well, I’ve smelt plent
y. You’ll get your money’s worth; I have a wide gutter practice … I don’t see yet why you’ve honored me with your confidence. I might double-cross you and tap-tap my way to your pal Tom Hoyt if I think the girl is telling the truth.”
“Stop clowning or you’ll have me in stitches.” Tracy told him morosely. “No matter what happens you’ll go with Butch to a nice quiet place and stay there three days at my expense. How’s that, professor? Incidentally, you’re not kidding me a nickel’s worth. You usta be a professor, didn’t you? I’ve got that yarn of your tabbed. Too slick to be all fiction. Coupla fact nuggets in the story, hey? And I’m not forgetting you pasted me in the jaw when I mentioned bullets—or was it shrapnel?”
He watched the man’s knuckles whiten as the thin hand closed into a fist. They were staring at each other when they heard Butch’s ponderous feet scrape suddenly in the outer room. The unseen bodyguard’s voice roared a playful announcement. “Hello, Babe! Lookin’ for somebody?”
There was a pause. The blind man was still staring at Tracy. Then he said with grinding effort: “Why not ask the faithful Butch about—my personal—history? He might be psychic.”
The door opened and a girl came in.
She said, smilingly: “Hello, Jerry m’lad.”
“Hello, kid.”
The blind man sat forward in his chair. He was bent over a little, with his eyes closed tightly. Daisy gave him a quick puzzled glanced. She looked interrogatively at Jerry.
She was small, birdlike, rather pretty. Gray eyes and a wide mouth. A pert hat at a frivolous angle. Her heavy coat was damp, her loose galoshes shiny with moisture.
“Got your call, m’lad,” Daisy said. “Anything new?” She looked at the man in the chair while Jerry took her coat.
“He’s a friend of mine,” Tracy said. He grimaced slightly. “Mr. Peter Mole.”
“Not a bedtime-story man! What is this, a gag rehearsal?”
She swished forward with a smile.
“Wake up, brother. I’m being introduced.”
He opened his eyes and looked at her. She stopped dead, with a quick indrawn breath.
“Oh! I—I beg your pardon … I didn’t—I’m sorry.”
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 8
