Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter

by Tinsley, Theodore A.

  “Take it easy, Emil!” Selma croaked, her eyes glassy with fear. “Don’t shoot the guy in my flat, for God’s sake!”

  “Turn around, stupid,” the voice ordered.

  Tracy turned. Death was shining at him out of Emil’s fishy eyes. Greed, ruthlessness, murder. … No mistaking the gloating satisfaction in those eyes.

  “You killed Phil Clement,” Jerry breathed. “Not Selma. Not Lois. You.”

  “Sure I killed him. So what?”

  “Shut up, you damn’ fool!” Selma hissed.

  Emil’s chuckle was not pleasant. “This guy is so close to bein’ dead that it don’t matter much what I say. I killed Clement, and I’m gonna kill you. How d’yuh like that, Mr. Jerry Tracy? The smart guy! The wise little cluck from Broadway! Too smart to look in the dumbwaiter shaft before shootin’ off his rat mouth!”

  Tracy forced himself to smile. “I guess you’re a pretty smart guy at that, Emil,” he said in a slow, persuasive voice.

  “You’re damned right I am.”

  “How did you work the murder job? You sure made a monkey out of me. Fooled me completely.”

  Emil kept the gun steadily aimed, but he smirked with pleased vanity. “A cinch,” he sneered. “Brains done it. Selma fixed up a fake love note that got Clement into the dancer’s apartment. He fell for it like a sap. He was nuts about the señorita.”

  “Be careful, Emil,” the maid said faintly. “This guy is smart. He’s trying to pump you.”

  “This guy is gonna be dead in about two minutes.” His grin widened. “All right, smart guy. I was in the apartment and fixed him and got out again. What more do you want?”

  “Yeah—but why kill the guy?”

  “Plenty reasons to do it, kid,” Emil said cockily, “and if you want more, the stunt was for Selma to accuse this dizzy dancer of the murder the minute she saw the body in her bedroom and yell for the cops.”

  “But the old lady gummed that scheme,” Tracy suggested tonelessly.

  “Yeah. The old lady was too tough for Selma to handle. She stuck the body in a trunk and scrammed with it. Can you imagine that?”

  “I can’t imagine it,” Tracy said faintly. He eyed the killer and allowed his tensed muscles to relax. A leap forward to wrest the gun from the watchful Emil would be sheer suicide. His own gun was on the floor. Sweat gathered in tiny beads on Tracy’s pale forehead. He knew Fitz could never make it in time. He felt a sick horror at the pit of his stomach.

  Emil’s smile hardened. He gestured briefly towards his pale girl friend. “C’mere, Selma.”

  She moved stiffly. She looked uneasy, frightened.

  “Take this rod and—” His hand swung suddenly sidewise and the weapon crashed with horrible impact against Selma’s skull. She crumpled to the floor without a sound.

  “What’s the idea of that?” Jerry whispered thickly.

  “The idea, stupid, is to git rid of people I don’t need no more. You first and then Selma. Nice?”

  “You can’t get away with it.”

  “No? Git moving! Through that hall. Into the kitchen. … Right! Now git over by the window. Sit down on the sill.”

  The window sash was already raised. Tracy, obeying the menace of the leveled gun, sat down. He snaked his eyes outward and downward for an instant—and knew he was doomed. The window faced a narrow, five-story air-shaft. There was a blank brick wall opposite. There were windows all the way down below the kitchen; but Tracy, remembering the empty name-plates in the vestibule, felt a sick shudder.

  “Tough, ain’t it?” Emil said. “We gotta wait for an El train to settle you—but Selma’ll be easy. She’ll go down like a bag of laundry.” He grinned with ghastly humor. “You kin hold on to the window-sill if you like, while you’re waitin’.”

  The dusk outside had deepened to chilly darkness. Away off in the darkness Jerry could hear a faint rumbling. It grew rapidly to the metallic clatter of a speeding El train.

  “So long, stupid,” Emil said.

  As the roar of the passing train became a clamor that shook the ancient tenement, the killer’s fingers tightened.

  A woman screamed shrilly. A bullet whizzed past Emil and shattered the glass above Tracy’s bent head.

  A wave of hot, incredulous joy swept through the columnist’s body as he recognized the face of the woman with the gun. He dived headlong from the sill as the startled murderer whirled. For an instant all three of them were inextricably tangled on the kitchen floor: Tracy, Emil—and Lois Malloy.

  A kick from Emil sent Lois bouncing against the wall in a moaning huddle. The man whirled to fire into Tracy’s face, but the columnist’s fist was already whizzing. It caught Emil on the Adam’s apple and paralyzed his throat with pain. He dropped his gun, sprang frantically to recover it. Tracy’s foot kicked it spinning towards the wall, where it rebounded towards Lois.

  The dancer was hurt and badly rattled. Swaying there on her knees, she scooped up the gun with her left hand, but to Tracy’s horror, instead of firing at the plunging Emil, she threw the weapon out the open window—and her own after it!

  The two men tripped over her and went down in a flailing fury of fists and feet. Tracy fought like a silent, tight-lipped demon, his mind ablaze with a single thought: his own gun! Lying on the living-room floor where he had dropped it!

  A smash on the jaw rocked him groggily, but he managed to dig his face desperately against Emil’s neck and get the hold he wanted. He let Emil’s own weight do the trick. A slight bend of the knees, the sudden instant of leverage he had learned on the gym mat from Artie McGovern himself—and the snarling murderer flew over Jerry’s head and landed on the floor with a jarring impact.

  Jerry dived out of the kitchen like a lean arrow, but Emil beat him to it.

  Emil had ducked back, picked up Tracy’s gun. He fired as Jerry appeared. A long sliver of wood jerked outward from the casing of the doorway. The panting columnist tripped over the unconscious body of Selma and fell in an awkward heap on his hands and knees. He was up in an instant, rigid with fear, his heart pounding inside his dry throat.

  He saw Emil leering at him.

  Emil was standing quite still, legs planted apart, barely five feet away. Tracy could see the black muzzle of the gun, the tautness of Emil’s knuckles, the pressure of his bent forefinger on the trigger.

  In that split second of eternity all fear whipped away from the mind of the doomed columnist. He thought with a kind of hypnotized clarity: “I’m gonna die. … He’s gonna kill me. … ”

  There was no horror in the thought; only a puzzled incredulity. Not someone else! Jerry Tracy!

  The gun exploded. Tracy heard the racketing roar. He was still standing there, glassy-eyed—and unhurt! Maybe it didn’t hurt when you got killed. … Then he realized that Emil’s bullet had slanted astonishingly upward, not straight into his own stiffened flesh. There was a ragged hole in the plaster ceiling and Emil was falling limply forward. He landed on his face and lay there, full length on the floor.

  Tracy could see the blood gushing sluggishly from Emil’s back. A pair of legs seemed to be walking towards the columnist out of a dream. They were queer legs—blue serge pants that seemed to end in fuzzy nothingness at the hips—until a brisk palm slapped Tracy’s face with stinging emphasis and brought him back to sanity.

  He was gaping stupidly at Inspector Fitzgerald. There was a big blue gun in Fitz’ paw and a faint haze of smoke at the muzzle.

  “Hey—wake up!” Fitz barked. “You all right?”

  “Yeah. … I—I guess so.”

  “I shot him right through the kidney. Another second, Jerry, and you’d have been cold meat. Why didn’t you duck when I yelled?”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  Fitz grinned shakily. “Lord, I let out a yelp like a steamboat whistle! And you just stood there!”

  “How—how did you get in?”

  “Fire-escape. Same way the girl did. We were right behind her, the sergeant and myself. Afraid she’
d spoil the whole business. Killan tried to grab her, but she’s as quick as an antelope. Up and in before we could do a thing. Damned glad it worked out that way. Otherwise you’d be deader than hell. I’m not kidding.”

  Tracy drew a long, shuddering breath. He still felt very woozy as he turned his head. Lois Malloy was in the living-room doorway, white-lipped, rigid. He saw her gazing fearfully at the body of Emil and the senseless huddle of Selma. The sight of this slim, courageous girl brought reason back to the fuddled columnist. Lois had saved his life! She wasn’t a rotten little coward! He’d been completely wrong about her from the very start!

  He walked slowly towards her, laid a hand on her smooth arm.

  “Beat it, babe,” he told her gently. “You can’t afford to show in this mess. Leave it for me to handle.”

  She shook her head. Her dark eyes never left his for an instant. They were deep, unsmiling, very lovely. “How about you, Jerry? You’re in this thing yourself.”

  “I’m okey. Fitz knows about most of it already. Thank God, it was Fitz’ bullet that finished Emil. I’m in the clear. So are you, if you beat it right away—before a lot of reporters come smelling around like a pack of hungry hyenas.”

  “There’s a fire-escape in the rear,” Inspector Fitzgerald suggested dryly. “If you both want to do a quick fade, it’s all right with me. I can use all the credit this case is worth. I’ll tell the news-hounds I broke this case on an anonymous tip. … You’ve got about two minutes if you two want to dodge headlines.”

  “Thanks, Fitz,” Tracy muttered. “You’re a prince.”

  He seized the dancer’s arm, hurried her to the rear of the apartment. The window was still open. He swung her slim weight up in his arms and helped her to the fire-escape platform. In the darkness there was nothing visible except the blank brick wall opposite and the shadowy dimness of a backyard far below.

  They stood there for an instant in the darkness—a couple of clear-eyed square shooters. Human to the core, both of them.

  “Why did you pretend to be such a rotten little tramp, Lois? You deliberately made me think you were out to frame your own mother.”

  She nodded ruefully. “The mule in me, Jerry. I was playing it close for a showdown; letting whoever was in it think it was running all their way. I was trying desperately for a lead, but I was almost ready to call copper when you barged in. You made me damned mad for one thing. You called me dirt right off the bat. Remember? I won’t take that from anyone.

  “For another thing, what you did gave me more time. And I was hurt enough and stubborn enough to want to go on playing it my way without you. Of course I was wrong and rotten. I knew it all the time. Well, that’s me.”

  Lois Malloy drew a deep breath.

  “It was really Sweetie’s own idea for me to live alone. She wanted me to prove myself—alone. She was always ready to step in, if I—I seemed to be failing.”

  “Failing?” Jerry whispered huskily. “I never want to meet anyone finer than you, Lois. You and Sweetie make a grand pair of thoroughbreds.”

  He swung her impulsively towards him. His voice was suddenly eager, boyish. “How would you like to drive out to the suburbs—right now? Is it a go? We’ll pick up a birthday cake—”

  “And some birthday candles—”

  “And we’ll give Sweetie the best damned—”

  “Oh, Jerry. … Come on—hurry!”

  STORM SIGNAL

  Jerry Tracy is featured for a murder and suicide set

  TOMMY FLEETER FEINTED WITH his right; his left hand moved so fast that the glove seemed almost invisible. Yet Jerry Tracy ducked and the jab missed his face and slid across his shoulder. He countered instantly, but Fleeter took it without effort on his elbow.

  They were off in a corner of the big barnlike structure, and nobody was paying much attention to them. Jerry was dressed in full length woolen tights and soft-soled gym shoes.

  Ordinarily it was fun to try to lay a glove on the lean and phantomlike bald head of the ex-lightweight champ; but today the Daily Planet’s little columnist was panting and puzzled. Fleeter’s face wore a faintly vicious scowl. He was putting steam into his jabs, stinging Tracy. Acting as though he was sore about something.

  Jerry noticed him peering across the gym and his own face turned briefly. His eyes widened as he caught a glimpse of the girl. Instantly Fleeter’s left banged against his face and filled his brain with sheet lightning. His heels went up in the air and he flew off the edge of the heavy wrestling mat and banged the polished floor with the back of his head.

  Fleeter bent over him, helped him up with an impassive face. “You left yourself wide open, kid.”

  He didn’t apologize as he usually did. He grinned mechanically and motioned to a handler. The man unlaced the columnist’s soggy gloves.

  “You sore at me, Tommy?” the columnist asked quietly.

  “Nope.”

  “Worried about something?”

  “Nope.”

  The gymnasium owner tightened his lips and avoided Tracy’s eyes. He picked up a medicine ball that someone had left carelessly out on the floor and replaced it alongside the wall.

  The girl who had been the unconscious cause of Tracy’s black eye was still lounging over near the rowing machine. She saw Tracy coming towards her and she turned her back, pretended to watch a guy lifting weights. She was rather a flamboyant little dame, full bosomed, dark-eyed, sullenly beautiful. Broadway knew her as Tess Roland, the creamiest torch singer that ever raised prickles on a male spine. Jerry always called her Storm Signal. She was nineteen and had been married twice. Her first husband had been shot by gangsters, her second was supposed to have committed suicide.

  There were few dames tough enough to give Tracy goose pimples. Tess was one of ’em. She was bad luck for a lot of guys—and she’d been staring in a funny, fixed way at the back of Fleeter’s bald head, her face like a thundercloud. Jerry had a grim feeling that Tess wasn’t in the gym for fun. Her nasty tongue and her quick temper were usually to be found in hotcha parlors or in the ornate penthouses of the more successful of the gun gentry.

  He tapped her lightly on the backbone with his forefinger. She turned leisurely and her red lips curled with a sneer of cold contempt.

  “Hello, Snipe. Where did you get the shiner?”

  “You gave it to me.”

  “Huh?”

  “Skip it, Storm Signal.”

  “Listen, I’ll crown you if you keep calling me that.”

  Tracy’s glance was just as hard as hers. “You don’t look natural in a gym. You’ve never been here before. Wherever you show, it’s tough luck for somebody. You’ve got Tommy sore—or scared. I’m not sure yet.”

  “So what?”

  “Lay off him, Storm Signal. He’s a friend of mine. I like his wife, his three kids—but most of all, I like Tommy. I thought I’d tell you.”

  “Thanks. Any friend of yours is tops with me.” Her lovely voice grated with rage, “How about keeping your nose outa my business, you cheap little keyhole peeker? Any time I want to talk to Fleeter, you don’t stop me, see? If you try, I’ll make good on a promise and slide you into a cemetery.”

  Tracy shrugged, smiled. There was anger in his eyes, hate in hers. She turned with an insolent writhe of her hips and walked straight across to where Fleeter was standing.

  Tracy hesitated. He didn’t want to butt in on a pal’s private affairs, but Tommy had acted damned queer all through their friendly bout. His gloves had lashed out at Tracy with punishing force. Jerry knew Fleeter’s quick temper and had wondered what was the matter. Now he was sure he knew. The Storm Signal was up to something dirty.

  Paul Yager had been in the gym earlier, giving Fleeter a quiet little buzz in a corner. He had looked worried and had beat it when Tracy had walked up with a grin and a handshake. Yager was tops with both Tracy and Fleeter, He had only one weakness—he was nuts about Tess. Had he been warning Tommy about this unexpected visit of the glamorous Storm Signal, o
r was the torch singer cooking up something dirty that involved both Fleeter and Yager? She had never made any bones about the fact that she regarded Yager as an amorous pest in her life.

  Jerry Tracy tightened his lips. He walked coolly over to where Tess Roland was whispering at the ear of the rigid faced gym owner. She stopped whispering the moment she saw him, but Tracy’s sharp ears caught the last sentence or two. “I tell you, you’re in a spot, Mister! Don’t pay a damned bit of attention to anything Tracy tells you!”

  She gave the columnist a triumphant, malicious smile and her heels clacked down the length of the gym floor with Fleeter pacing beside her. Fleeter’s face was absolutely wooden.

  Shivering, Tracy descended cold iron steps to the locker room and peeled off his soaked tights. “Want a rubdown, Mr. Tracy?” Otto called from his smelly cubby as the columnist padded naked and pink towards the showers.

  “Not today, Otto. I’m in a hurry.”

  Twenty minutes later he crossed the gymnasium like a brisk little fashion-plate and entered Tommy Fleeter’s private office. Clancy was the only one around.

  “Hello, Mike. Where’s Tommy?”

  “I dunno. He breezed.”

  “That’s funny. I wanted to see him.” Jerry added sharply. “What’s the matter with you?”

  Clancy was staring curiously at him. “Tommy said he wanted to see you—to ask you something. And he was sore as hell. He went downstairs to look for you and when he came back he said you’d gone, slammed into your clothes without a shower and taken a runout. I never seen him so worked up. I know he couldn’t a meant it, Mr. Tracy, but he said you were afraid to talk to him.”

  “What—the hell! He must’ve rim down and right up again. Didn’t even look in the showers where I was. What was the matter with him anyway?”

  “Search me. He chased me out then while he made a phone call. When I came back he was white as a sheet. He’d got into his street clothes and started for the door. I ask him what’s eatin’ him. He don’t say a word. I try to touch him on the arm and then he swings at me and slams the door behind him. He don’t come back.”