The operator said, “Uhp. … Excuse me, sir.” The car departed. Tracy walked towards the ornate portal of the very funny, the very, very laughable Mr. Zigger.
Zigger’s door seemed to be one of those mysterious and little understood masterpieces of art and industry. To Tracy it looked exactly like a Welsh rarebit of chromium and glass. In the lower left-hand corner was a something or other in faded brown and sepia that might be an Italian primitive—or maybe the Zigger coat of arms. The bell was a chromium chain attached to a long metal gadget that looked like a polished walking-beam.
Tracy eyed it with a mild amazement. He reached out his a hand to yank the contraption. Before he could yank he heard a fumbling sound on the inside of the door and he stepped back and waited.
The door opened. A dry little voice like a petulant cricket said peevishly: “Come on, Phil. … Jeese, do I feel nnyyyyyyah!”
Willie Zigger appeared suddenly. Spick-and-span except for his eyes. His beady little eyes looked pale and rumpled. He saw Tracy standing there looking at him and his jaw dropped.
“Oh—hello.”
“Hello, Willie—you big old famous comedian.”
They eyed each other warily. No love lost between these two. Both about the same height, same build; except that Jerry Tracy was too busy at his Planet office to have the time to build up those mousy looking things under the eyes. Also, his jaw was less fleshy, his hands noticeably steadier.
A distant voice growled indistinctly: “Right with you, Willie.”
“Hurry it up, Phil.” Zigger sneered pleasantly at the newspaper columnist “Nice of you to call, Tracy. My old pal and well-wisher. Tracy the great! Helper of the afflicted; scourge of all rascals. … You weesh something, my firaaaand?”
“Yeah. Let’s all turn around again, Willie. And go back inside. I want to talk to you.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t be bothered. I’m busy. Got a show on at nine-thirty.”
“I heard it last week. It was lousy.”
“Glad to hear it. Give it a nice roast in your column, will you, pal?” Zigger’s pale eyes were blazing but he laughed pleasantly. “A roast I could use, my fraaaand. Maybe bear down on Moe with it. Moe’s got a funny idea that his scripts are good. Maybe I could chisel him a little on that guaranteed cut of his.”
The glass door behind him clicked shut. Zigger grinned at the sound. The strained look left his eyes.
“All set, Phil?”
“Yeah.” Phil glanced at Tracy without much expression. A sandy-haired mastiff of a man in oversize Chesterfield, dark derby, grey mocha gloves.
Zigger stepped forward past Tracy. Tracy shoved him backward on his heels.
“I said in,” he growled. “Not out, Willie.”
“Who’s this nosey monkey?” Phil queried mildly.
He inserted four fingers without any violence inside Tracy’s coat collar. He tightened the fingers and anchored Tracy rigidly on tiptoe.
“Shall I slough him right here or downstairs?”
The radio comic licked his lips. “Downstairs, Phil. We’ll take him down in the elevator. When you get lout on the sidewalk, kick this nosey little —— about eight blocks!”
“Only eight?” Phil grumbled. He grinned a little. It was the first time an expression of any kind had appeared on his oatmeal countenance.
“Wait,” Tracy said. He twisted his head painfully so he could look sidewise at Zigger. “Hadn’t you better listen to my news flash before you do something foolish?”
“Can you gimme your news in about two words?” Zigger smirked.
“Sure I can. Capital R for Ruthie. Capital B for Brenner.”
He watched the radio comic wilt. The smirk lingered stiffly on Willie’s mouth but the face changed like putty. Seemed to slip a little. For a second his face drained absolutely white, then the blood came back and made it muddy and patchy looking. The pale eyes bulged with panic—and a crawling hate.
“Let him alone, Phil,” Zigger whispered. “Let go of him.”
Phil let go reluctantly. The columnist stood there, rubbing his neck to take away the paralyzing stiffness.
“Unlock the door, Phil,” Zigger said. “We’re going back inside.”
“But—hey! The broadcast! What about that dress rehearsal?”
“It’ll have to wait,” He glared stonily at Tracy. “Inside, pal.”
His glossily shod feet led the way to an ornate, high-ceilinged living-room. The massive Phil brought up the rear with a plunk-plunk of his oversize shoes that made glasses rattle.
“I got a hunch,” Zigger told Tracy slowly, “that you’ve shot your mouth off once too often. I think I’m gonna let Phil do something to you right here. Something permanent!”
“You always were a dope,” Tracy jeered. “I knew all about your layout here—all about that nasty plug-ugly in the derby—before I walked in here. Do you think I’m the kind of sap who looks for a gas-leak with a lighted match? Grow up, Stupid!”
“You’re not kidding me, Tracy. You thought you’d catch me here alone.”
“You think that’s the way I work?” Jerry chuckled. “I can see that you don’t.”
“He’s bluffing,” Phil snorted. “The little mugg is handing you a line.”
Zigger glared uncertainly at Tracy. “Okey. What’s your out?”
“A big guy named Fitz—Inspector Fitzgerald to you. Fitz knows I came over here to get a couple of answers. Fitz has a date with me in about an hour. He’ll get very curious if I fail to show up after seeing you.”
Phil kept watching the Daily Planet columnist with an eye like a hawk. “The guy is bluffing,” he said again. “He’s trying to talk himself out of a spot.”
“Keep on thinking so,” Jerry murmured.
Zigger hesitated, licked his dry lips.
“All right, wise guy. What do you know about Ruthie Brenner?”
“Plenty. Where is she now?”
“Why ask me?”
“Because you’re the guy that knows.”
“Who says so?”
“The kid’s mother, Willie. Annie Brenner.”
Zigger’s laughter was raucous, jeering.
“That old harridan? Is she out of the can again? Next time she bothers me, I’ll have her shoved in the booby-hatch where she belongs. Her and that dippy yarn she’s trying to peddle! I tell you, the old tramp is a nut, Jerry.”
“Forget that Jerry stuff,” the columnist said evenly. “Or I’ll hang one right on your lip—Phil or no Phil.” He lit a cigarette very deliberately and sat down. “If you think for one minute that I’m moving out of this phoney-looking dump of yours before you tell me where Ruthie Brenner is—you’re crazy in the head.”
“I don’t know a thing about her. Never heard of the kid.”
Tracy smiled at him. Grimly. “Kid is correct, Willie. She wasn’t quite sixteen the night you sneaked her away—along with Mrs. Brenner’s savings. That was about a year and a half ago—before a lucky radio break put those weasel hips of yours in the butter-tub. … I’ve panned you plenty in my column because I know exactly what you are. But, by the Lord, what I’ve done before won’t be a nickel’s! worth to what I’ll do to you now—if you don’t tell me damned quickly where Ruthie Brenner is. Is she here?”
The radio comic smoothed his patent-leather hair with a trembling palm.
“Okey,” he said softly. “You’re a smart guy. I won’t try to kid you, see? I’ll tell you what I know about Ruthie; and it ain’t a hell of a lot. But, pal—brother—sweetheart—” His eyes flamed briefly and then got cold with hate, “—if I were you, I’d forget right away about bothering me or my sponsor. I’m in the jack, palsie walsie—got plenty of friends. A few grand peeled off my bankroll could start the worms chewing on you tonight. So don’t get me sore or somebody is apt to find you in a vacant lot—without a face.”
“I’m still asking for it, Willie. Where’s the girl?”
Zigger didn’t reply for a moment.
“I did know her,” he admitted finally. “That part’s okey enough. But the stuff about me running off with Ruthie is the bunk. Matter of fact, the kid was a pretty hot little tamale. She followed me the next day, see? Blew into Philly with that pocketbook you’ve been squawking about—”
“How did you know about the pocketbook?” Tracy asked him gently. “I didn’t squawk about a pocketbook. I didn’t even mention it.”
“—so the kid blew into Philly like I said and hunted me up at my hotel. Plopped herself into my lap and said: ‘Let’s go places together, honey. You and me both.’ Honest to Gawd, I was so surprised you could have knocked me over with a feather.”
“Yeah. So I imagine,” Tracy murmured. “Where is she? Here?”
The stolid bodyguard over by the door shifted his feet uneasily. “This guy oughta be handled,” he suggested harshly. “The guy knows too much.”
Zigger shook a harassed finger at him.
“You keep out of this, Phil. Tracy’s a regular guy. He knows Gawd’s truth when he hears it.”
“I know liars, too. Where’s Ruthie? Do you want me to put that question on wax and play it all night long?”
“I told you once. I don’t know where she is.”
“When did you see her last?”
“Oh—about—say, two months or so after she breezed into Philly and told me she was—”
“Skip that, you liar. What happened then?”
“The usual thing.” Zigger grinned in jaunty man-of-the-world manner. “The kid was too hot to handle. Two timed me almost from the start. I paid her off and told her to scram.”
“Just a sixteen-year-old bum, eh? But you were big-hearted and paid her off.”
“Yep.” Zigger shook his head mournfully. “Now you can see how it gets me sore when that old hophead with the henna hair butts in on me when I’m tops in radio—and tries to finger me for some hush-hush about that tramp daughter of hers.”
Tracy got up and squashed out his cigarette in an enormous lacquered tray. He stood there, a queer half smile on his lips.
“Didn’t you ever worry about Ruthie? Wonder, maybe, what happened to her?”
“Why should I worry, pal? I paid for everything she offered me.”
“And that, Willie, was—what?”
“Cheapest thing in the world,” Zigger grinned. “All she had to offer was—”
Tracy sprang forward as Zigger’s lips framed the word. His lean fist smashed the comedian squarely on the mouth, drove him backward with blood spurting from a split lip. Tracy’s own face was a taut mask of fury and contempt. He heard the rumbling shout of Zigger’s bodyguard and disregarded it to get in another blow. Again his skinned knuckles pumped pistonlike into Zigger’s bloody mouth. As it landed, something smashed against Tracy’s skull. A flame seemed to spout suddenly inside the columnist’s head. Zigger’s face, the room, the world itself, spun into invisibility—into nothingness. …
For the space of sixty seconds or so the room was dead quiet. Then the body-guard grunted. The wet slobber of Zigger’s breathing became audible. He pushed Phil’s protecting arm away from him. He was watching the motionless body on the rug, staring at it with a terrified fascination.
“You’ve killed him, Phil. You’ve cracked his neck.”
“Nope,” Phil said. “Didn’t sock him hard enough for that. I sorta figured you wouldn’t want the guy croaked right here in your own dump.”
His gruff voice was melancholy, tinged with a vague regret. …
Jerry Tracy groaned faintly. He could hear the faint slur of voices; a meaningless murmur of sound that seemed to drift unintelligently into his ears from a vast distance away. He tried to open his eyes but the lids felt heavy as lead. A sudden phrase pricked through the film of his stupor and made sense in his dulled mind. He lay very still on the rug, his eyes tightly closed.
“—come to any minute,” the harsh voice repeated.
Phil. The big guy. Talking to Willie Zigger. Urging something.
“—pretty lousy any way you roll the dice. The guy’s got you in a tough spot, no kiddin’. He don’t look to me like he scares worth a dime—and he sure hates your guts.”
“How about lugging him out of here?” the cricket voice of Zigger whined tremulously. “Can’t you dump him somewhere, Phil?”
“Sure I can dump him. And what good’ll that do? I tell yuh, this guy is all wound up to squawk! If he ever finds out what happened to that kid, he’ll squawk, you right off the airwaves—into the gutter … and you damn’ well know it.”
Zigger moaned softly. “What’ll we do?”
“Croak him! Stiffen him somewhere and shove him face down in a hole in the ground. Then start the dirty rumors flying. The guy’s got plenty of enemies. You can handle that part all right. But Tracy has to be dead—and no foolin’! And if we’re ever gonna do the job, he’ll never be wrapped up for the worms no prettier than he is right now.”
Zigger groaned again.
“Whaddye say?” Phil persisted. “The car is waiting at the curb downstairs. I can coke up this gink so that he’ll walk out with us like a little man.”
“Anderson and the elevator operator will remember that he was here.”
“So what? You got dough. Plenty of it. Who’s gonna pin anything on you? We met Tracy okey—sure—but we dropped him off somewhere, see? Any old place we wanta make up. And zooie!—he musta taken it on the lam right after he left us, for any one of a million dirty reasons. … Who’s gonna know the truth? You ain’t talking. And neither am I.”
“Yeah? How do I know you ain’t talking?”
“That’s a chance you gotta take, pal,” Phil chuckled. “I got no kick coming. You been buttering my mitt pretty swell.” His voice hardened. “Nope. I don’t see no sense in anything except a quick bump for this nosy little —— of a newspaper columnist.”
Silence. Tracy lay rigidly on the rug, eyes closed, muscles relaxed. He thought of Butch, waiting like a dope downstairs in that cold alley. Why hadn’t he warned Butch to bust in if there was any undue delay? Too late now. … Butch was probably down at the corner, gulping a hot chocolate.
“What time is it?” Zigger’s voice quavered.
Phil told him.
“My gawd! We’ve missed the dress! It must be half over.”
“Yeah. And we’ll miss the show if we don’t get busy. Won’t that be nice? We done that before—remember the night I couldn’t sober you up—and what the sponsor said?”
“Come on!” Zigger’s voice cracked with nervous apprehension. “What are we standing here for? Grab him! Stick him in a closet somewhere. I—I gotta have time to think this out He’ll keep till after the show, won’t he?”
“He sure will. Git outa the way a minute.”
Fleshy hooks sunk into Tracy’s body. He sailed lightly aloft. The pad-pad of Phil’s feet traveled with him. He heard the creak of a door opening. Suddenly the hands left him and a hard wooden floor hit him in the face. Fiery pinwheels whirled dizzily in his brain. He smothered a groan with clenched teeth.
“Still out like a light,” Phil’s voice chuckled. “Just can’t take it.”
The closet door slammed. A key turned in the lock. Slowly Tracy’s eyes opened. He was in total darkness and something soft and invisible was tickling his bruised face. He touched it and brushed it away. It felt like the hem of a silken robe. A woman’s? Ruthie’s? Was she in the penthouse, hidden away somewhere—a prisoner? An icy little whisper in his brain said ‘no’ to that. There had been something in Phil’s gruff snarl, something in the abject terror of Willie Zigger that made the Planet’s star columnist feel sick at heart. Ruthie Brenner wasn’t in the picture any more; Tracy was almost sure of it. And that meant. … He refused to follow the thought any further.
He got to his knees in the closet and fingered the clothing behind him. The thing that had tickled him was a silken dressing-gown; a man’s. He brushed sweat from his eyes. The closet
was getting beastly hot. He tried to lunge at the locked door with his shoulder, to burst it open. No use. … Maybe if he knocked rhythmically, maybe if the girl was still alive, still in the apartment somewhere. … Knock, knock, knock. … He gritted his teeth and kept it up. For what seemed like an idiotic century of time.
And then, suddenly, he heard an echo. Bump, bump. … An echoing answer to the sound from his own bruised knuckles. Away off somewhere. Very faint. Still he was sure of it.
Crash. … A tinkling slither of sound. That was glass smashing! Who the devil was breaking glass?
“Jerry! Hey, Boss! For the luvva Mike, where are yuh? Hey—are yuh in here, Boss?”
Tracy quivered with delight as he heard the muted sound of the familiar bellow. Butch! The big fellow had more brains than Jerry himself! He had gotten worried about the delay and had come up on his own hook. Busted right in through that fantastic glass door out front!
The sweating columnist pounded fiercely with his fist on the inner panel of the closet door. He heard the click of the turning key. Butch caught his employer as Tracy fell helplessly out into the room.
“Hey! What goes on? Jeeze—take it easy! You’ve been gone over, what I mean. A lump on your skull like an apple!”
“Quick! We’ve got to get out of here. … Wait! Let’s take a quick look around first. See if there’s a girl locked up somewhere in this penthouse. Come on!”
He skipped nimbly away like an erratic monkey. Together the two men searched every inch of the place. Women’s clothes—plenty of ’em, pink, indiscreet and frothy—but no woman. Not a sign or a trace of Ruthie Brenner.
Butch grinned suddenly at his boss.
“Was you worried any about them two guys?” he asked amiably. “They’re downstairs.”
“Huh?”
“Two guys. A little punk in a grey fedora. A big punk in a doiby. I hit the big guy foist. He looked like he might be kinda mean—and I didn’t want no long argument with him.”
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 24
