Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter

by Tinsley, Theodore A.

  Fitz’s hinging knees dropped him under the rip of the bullet. He sat squatting on his thighs for an instant like a Russian dancer. He fired only once from that strained pose. His bullet hit just below Pelman’s navel and tunneled outward near the top of his spine. Pelman hit the floor. He was stone dead.

  “That’s that,” Tracy said in a tired voice. “I didn’t really have an ounce of proof to convict Pelman. All I had was the knowledge that he was guilty. You’d have one hell of a time getting a grand jury to indict him, Fitz.”

  “What about that code he used? I thought you said—”

  “Pure bluff. That’s why I didn’t tell you Pelman was guilty until he got here. I was afraid you’d lose your head and order Sergeant Killan to arrest him before he left Spane’s. He’d have time to think things over and to make you prove your case. Even with the code, it would have been a toss-up to nail him for Spane’s murder.”

  Tracy drew a deep breath.

  “However, I think that if you turn Pelman’s labor columns for the past six months over to the police cryptography division, you’ll be able to crack the code and find out what he was doing. He probably used it in conjunction with Spane to get in touch with gunmen to do specific jobs. In that way he could get in touch with lots of gunnies and strike breakers who were lying low to avoid the police. He wouldn’t be caught meeting any of them. It was a clever business. No doubt he ordered Durensky’s slugging that way, too. And fomented all that strike trouble.”

  Vera sobbed faintly. Tracy flushed as he turned toward her.

  “I hope you’ll forgive me for that word I called you a little while ago. It was done only to force a break for myself. You had a gun on me. You were sure I was a crook, like Fitz here and everybody else in town.”

  Fitzgerald grinned sheepishly. “Could you blame me, Jerry? You were giving me such an infernal run-around! Even at that, I never really thought. … ”

  Tracy’s smile was rueful. “You’re a liar, but I can’t blame you, old-timer. For a while tonight I was beginning to believe, myself, that I was a crook with a dual personality or something. Vera will tell you that I—”

  Vera didn’t say anything. She was folded tightly in Roy Chanler’s straining arms, her lips crushed against his.

  “No more limericks,” Tracy said.

  Fitz nodded approvingly. “That limerick that Jack Davy recited was the craziest junk I ever heard:

  “A Bolivian princess named Paca,

  Liked to float nude on Lake Titicaca.

  But the trouble with that

  Was the gal got so fat—

  “How do you s’pose the damn thing really ends?” he asked wistfully.

  MAKE IT MURDER

  Jerry Tracy sleuths

  THE JEWELER’S CLOCK ON the corner said twenty after ten as Jerry Tracy walked eastward toward the bright sunlit glitter of the elevated. He blinked and thought wistfully of his dim penthouse bedroom. If he had any sense he’d still be asleep, relaxed in naked comfort between silken sheets, taking the morning sunlight on hearsay. Trouble was, Jerry couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking uneasily of a cute little blonde with an awful soprano voice. The kid called herself Vivian La Grange. Her stage name was a fair measure of her intelligence. She came from Altoona, or maybe it was Bridgeport. She had everything but talent and brains.

  Tracy had never heard of Vivian until the night he had dropped in at the leased theater where the Paragon Broadcasting Corporation put on its big audience programs. Ned Carlisle had pestered Jerry for weeks to give the Sparkling Soapsud Amateurs some publicity in his Broadway column. If you own a radio you know the Soapsud Hour—the man with the zither, the fellow who imitates roosters and railroad trains, the over-eager soloists. A warning bell to choke off the worst; twenty-five bucks and a chance at a vaudeville job for the winner.

  This Vivian La Grange had won. Ned Carlisle’s kindliness had made the radio audience forget her squeaky voice. The at an Amateur Hour kill real winner should have been the zither man. But Carlisle’s mike conversation with the tremulous Vivian had dramatized her personality, had built up her ambitious hopes; and his word picture of her shy beauty sold the girl to the unseen listeners.

  Honesty made Jerry Tracy tell the truth in his famous tabloid column. He went a bit further than he actually intended. The pompous commercial announcements of the Soapsud Hour had always irritated Tracy, and this time he allowed his sharp wit to run away with his judgment. He shot a brilliantly amusing broadside at the soap company, but his barbed attack brought down Vivian. She played two nightmarish days in a New Carlisle vaudeville unit and was laughed off the stage.

  She took it pretty hard. A reporter on a rival sheet wrote up the girl’s two-bit tragedy in a way that made Tracy look like a heel. He didn’t mind the unpleasant kickback from people who hated his guts and were glad of an excuse to boot his reputation. Jerry Tracy could take that. But he was afraid little Vivian La Grange couldn’t. He couldn’t put the memory of her pale, frightened face out of his mind. He’d feel a lot better if she were on a train bound for Altoona—or wherever the hell she really belonged.

  That was why Jerry Tracy had crawled out into raw sunlight at the filthy hour of ten A.M. Ten was when the bank opened. He cashed a check for a hundred and took it in five twenties. He had found out where Vivian lived, and he walked hesitantly up the grimy front stoop of the rooming house. He wasn’t sure whether he’d run into tears, stony silence, or a poke in the jaw. He felt guilty enough to hope that the girl would sock him.

  You could stand in that dim ground-floor hallway and know that you were in a cheap theatrical rooming house west of Broadway. A front door never locked; a coin box telephone; numbers scrawled in pencil on the flowered wallpaper; a cabbage smell from the basement; ugly green carpet on a staircase that squeaked at every step.

  A list of names in the hallway showed that Vivian lived at the top floor rear. Tracy rapped on her door and got no answer. The continued silence made him suddenly scared. He didn’t realize he was sniffing until he caught himself staring at the gas bracket in the hall. There was no smell of gas, however; the bracket was capped and useless, a relic from an earlier era. Nor were the cracks of Vivian’s door stopped up with paper, as Tracy for an instant had feared. It was his conscience that was sniffing, not his nose.

  He rattled the loose knob, and to his surprise the door yielded. It was not locked as he had supposed.

  Vivian La Grange was in bed. She was staring at Tracy, but she didn’t say anything. There was a gun clenched in her right hand and a gaping wound at her temple. Her cheek, her throat and one smooth breast were sticky with blood. Her body was nude.

  Tracy said, “Jees!”

  It took guts to move forward. Vivian’s left hand lay stiffly open at the edge of the counterpane. Two pieces of paper had fallen to the floor. One was a clipping of Tracy’s column from the Daily Planet—the one in which he had made brilliant mockery of the Soapsud Hour. The other was a note written in pencil.

  Tracy didn’t attempt to pick up either of them. He felt packed in ice from his lips to the pit of his belly. His toe pushed the note tremulously apart from the column clipping. Bending, he read it where it lay on the floor.

  “Tell Mr. Tracy I can take it. You get courage in the dark. I’m passing out like Tracy predicted—stripped and broke. But it’s a lot more fun than living in Altoona.”

  Tracy had hurt plenty of people in his long career on Broadway. Killed a few, too, if you counted the ones who had gone to the electric chair as a result of Tracy’s unofficial hook-up with Inspector Fitzgerald of the Homicide Division. But this was the first time in his life Jerry Tracy had consciously hurt someone who couldn’t strike back. Nausea crawled at the back of his throat.

  This poor little blond jackanapes on the bed had pulled the trigger that killed her; but it was Tracy’s merciless wisecracks that had cocked the gun.

  He was almost grateful when the scream came from the doorway behind him. It wrenched him out of
horror. He had left the door wide open. A fat, untidy looking woman was standing there. Tracy guessed she was the landlady.

  She fled, still screaming. Roomers were stirring behind closed doors as Tracy darted for the stairs. He remembered the telephone in the lower hall. By the time he reached it, the landlady was out on the sidewalk, making shrill echoes like a dog that had been run over.

  Tracy dropped a fumbling nickel in the phone slot and called police headquarters. The rasp in his voice got him Inspector Fitzgerald in a hurry. He said things that left him out of breath. He added, gaspingly: “Do me a favor, Fitz. I’m in a stinking mess. Keep reporters out of this for a while.”

  A second nickel connected him with Ned Carlisle’s suite of offices in the Wickersham Building. The kindly, booming-voiced impresario of the Sparkling Soapsud Hour wasn’t in. Like Tracy, he seldom stirred before noon.

  “Quick, sister! Get me Hal Bruce! Tell him it’s Jerry Tracy!”

  The noise outside the vestibule quieted suddenly. The swift slap-slap of a policeman’s brogans became audible. Bruce was Ned Carlisle’s executive assistant. He did all the routine work on the Amateur Hour and supervised the show.

  “Hello, Jerry. What’s the matter?”

  Tracy told him in four words.

  “What!” Bruce sounded stunned. “No!”

  “Keep it under the hat, will you, Hal? And get over here!”

  The vestibule door crashed open. The cop had a gun in his white-gloved hand. He dove at Tracy like a four-ton truck.

  “That’s him!” the landlady shrieked. “That’s the guy!” She had a mouthful of gold teeth.

  The cop’s hand thumped Tracy’s pockets and probed his armpits with bruising emphasis. He was a young cop, pretty excited.

  “Who were you trying to phone?”

  “Police headquarters,” Tracy said. “Inspector Fitzgerald is on the way here now.” He added, a bit more evenly: “Take it easy, officer. This is a suicide, not a kill. Reach into my inside pocket and you’ll find my press card. I’m Jerry Tracy.”

  The cop hesitated. Tracy’s imported suit and his custom-shod feet impressed the policeman. And there was something about the nasal voice of this well dressed little guy that made the cop recognize the crisp-toned Broadway and Hollywood radio gossip to which he and his wife listened every Saturday night.

  Another patrolman arrived in the vestibule. Faces peered behind him. He swung about and slammed the door. “Keep those dopes outside,” Tracy’s captor said. “There’s a dead girl upstairs, but this guy claims it’s suicide. Says he’s Jerry Tracy and he phoned Inspector Fitzgerald about it. Better give Homicide a quick buzz.”

  The second cop was flabby around the jaw-line, but there was nothing flabby about his voice in the transmitter. He seemed disappointed when he hung up. “Inspector Fitzgerald is on the way over here. Switchboard says Jerry Tracy made the call.”

  The hefty landlady tried to follow them upstairs. She was still yelling vindictively at the columnist.

  “Keep that noisy cow down here,” Tracy snapped.

  “Cow, is it?” she shrieked. “Why, you little rat, if I’d given you the eye ten years ago you’d have eaten outa my hand. You killed that poor girl upstairs, and if you think I’m afraid to—”

  Her mouthings faded below him. There were people peering from room doors, but they withdrew at sight of Tracy’s stony face and the gun in the cop’s hand. Doors closed discreetly all the way up as if it were a game. Mind your own business! If they grab you as a witness, give ’em a fake name! The jungle creed of Manhattan. …

  The cop took one look at Vivian La Grange and whistled. He shut the door. Tracy walked stiffly over to the bed and lifted the loose edge of the coverlet from the foot of the mattress.

  “Don’t touch anything!” the cop growled. “Let her stay the way she is.”

  The girl’s nudity was like cold wax. Tracy let the coverlet fall gently across her. The cop didn’t remove it.

  Inspector Fitzgerald brought Sergeant Killan with him. Two more cops came in. Fitz read the suicide note and the clipping from Tracy’s column. Sergeant Killan whispered, and one of the cops took a post in the hallway outside the door.

  Tracy didn’t pay any attention. He was sitting hunched forward in a chair, his jaws knuckled between his clenched fists. Except for a small scatter rug near the bed, the floor was bare. The boards were painted a dark brown that was almost black.

  Fitzgerald showed the suicide note and the column clipping to Sergeant Killan. Both men stared briefly at each other. They were old friends of Tracy’s. Fitz touched the hunch columnist on the shoulder.

  “It’s tough, Jerry. Suicides always are.”

  “Did you read the note?”

  “Yeah. I wouldn’t worry about that, if I were you.” Fitzgerald’s voice was soothing. He was a tall man with a thick mop of gray hair and broad shoulders that stooped a little. His deep blue eyes looked ten years younger than the rest of him.

  “G’wan home and get yourself a drink, Jerry,” Killan said gruffly.

  He was shorter and heavier than Fitz. He had a head like a cobblestone and a mouth like a slit in a mailbox.

  There were footsteps in the hallway outside, followed by the murmur of voices. Then the door opened and two men came in.

  The paunchy, middle-aged man with the gold watch chain was Hal Bruce whom Tracy had summoned from Ned Carlisle’s office to help identify the dead girl.

  Bruce’s eyes glanced toward the sheeted corpse on the bed and then veered quickly toward Tracy. The horror in Bruce’s face changed to sympathetic awareness of the plight Tracy was in. Hal was a man who could sense things like that. A nice guy.

  He crossed the room toward the columnist, his left foot dragging with a perceptible limp. He and Tracy shook hands. Ten years ago Hal Bruce’s name meant far more than a production understudy for Ned Carlisle. Hal had been the greatest tap dancer on the stage. Arthritis had stiffened that left leg of his, ended his career as a dancer. He was as cheerful now in the minor role fate had handed him, as he had been when two nimble feet had made the name Hal Bruce a synonym for “Tops” on stage and screen. And “Tops” had meant twenty-five hundred a week. Now he was getting two fifty—and no one had ever heard him complain.

  Tracy didn’t recall the other man who’d come in with Hal until he smiled. Then he recognized the even white teeth. He was Freddie Colling, the announcer who read the commercial for the Soap Hour. Like most big air shows, Ned Carlisle used his own announcer.

  Colling’s twisted smile was a nervous grimace. He strode across the room and bent over the pathetic, partly draped body on the bed. He made a small nasty sound in the back of his throat, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Tracy’s identified her,” Fitz said. “All we want is your confirmation.”

  Colling whirled suddenly. There were tears in his eyes and his face was like flint. With a single leap he was over Tracy’s chair.

  “You dirty rat! You and your —— column!”

  His fist crashed into Tracy’s face, driving his head against the back of the chair. Tracy made no effort to retaliate. Blood dripped from his nose. Somebody yanked the enraged announcer back on his heels. Somebody else smothered his wildly flailing fists. Sergeant Killan shoved him into a corner none too gently. The trembling announcer stopped struggling suddenly.

  “O.K. I’ll quit. I’m sorry.” Tracy watched the announcer over the stained handkerchief he held bunched against his nose. Colling’s rage seemed overdone. He had snapped out of it too easily. The thing smacked of ham acting. Tracy had never exchanged two words with the guy, but he knew his type. There wasn’t an ounce of real emotion in him. He was too conscious of his white teeth and his dimples.

  Tracy transferred his doubt of Colling to the suicide set-up itself. Things Jerry hadn’t thought about before began to bother him. Except for the ghastly pun in the note Vivian had left, there was no sane reason why she should have stripped herself before she crashed a bullet th
rough her brain. The strip act wasn’t in character. And the note was too patly ironic to fit a desperate little dumb-bell from Altoona.

  Murder? The word swept through Tracy’s mind like a cleansing gust of cold wind. He eyed the wall over the bed. There was an electric fixture above the ledge of an imitation mantel-piece. The fixture contained two light sockets. Both sockets were empty. The unscrewed bulbs lay underneath it on the mantelpiece.

  “Why do you suppose she did that?” Tracy asked Fitzgerald.

  “She wrote: ‘You get courage in the dark’,” Fitz reminded Tracy somberly. “Women are like that. She was probably scared to death. The feel of the gun in her hand, the cold muzzle up against—” Fitz shut up. Sergeant Killan said softly, “Look, Jerry—why don’t you go on home?”

  “Why didn’t Vivian just turn off those lights? Don’t you think that’s a hell of a funny way to make a room dark—unscrew two bulbs and lay ’em on the mantel-piece?”

  “It’s suicide, Jerry. You’re only kidding yourself.”

  “Have you done anything about fingerprints?”

  “What’s the use?” Killan said. “We’ll feet a sackful when the photographer arrives. Prints of the kid, prints of the landlady and the window-washer, prints of the kid’s latest boy friend.” He flushed and added hastily: “I don’t mean anything nasty by that.”

  Fitzgerald laid a friendly hand on the columnist’s shoulder.

  “A murder would suit me as much as you, Jerry. I know exactly how you feel.”

  “I’ll stick around a while,” Tracy said. Hal Bruce was over at the window, looking down into the back yard. Colling stayed in the corner where Killan had shoved him after his outburst. Tracy teetered on his chair, lifting and dropping the front legs with a mechanical rocking motion of his hips. His downward side gaze nicked suddenly toward one of the chair’s raised legs.