Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter

by Tinsley, Theodore A.

  It was Inspector Fitzgerald and he was crimson with rage. He walked straight up to the Daily Planet’s columnist and tapped him on the chest with a rigid forefinger. The tap rocked Tracy on his heels.

  “What was the idea of lying to me?”

  “Take it easy, Fitz. I didn’t lie.”

  “You held back, didn’t you? You never told me a damn word about a girl being at the scene of the murder. You kept your lying trap shut.”

  “I’m sorry. I had reasons.”

  “Reasons?” Fritz was mad clear through. “You’re a double-crossing little louse! I’ve a good mind to toss you in the can as an accessory after the fact.”

  “Do as you please,” Tracy said.

  His own lips were white. He was in the wrong and he knew it. Fitz had always played fair with him and he with Fitz—up to tonight. It was a two-way gentleman’s agreement, with mutual trust on both sides. The fact that Tracy had broken the agreement filled him with a bitter and illogical hatred of Fitz and his bull voice. All he could realize was that he had been pushed around from the moment he had arrived at the fair grounds. Now Fitz was doing the pushing!

  Tracy could have broken the tension by a frank admission of his mistake in judgment. He could have told Fitz how he had started the mess by trying to cover up the peculiar actions of Harold Shipley and his daughter Barbara. Fitz knew enough about the ramifications of newspaper business to understand, even if he didn’t sympathize with, the efforts of a loyal columnist to protect from scandal an important business associate of the Daily Planet’s owner.

  But Tracy was as sore as Fitz.

  “I held back because I didn’t want you messing things up.”

  “That’s fine.” Fitz’s tone dripped with sarcasm. “The little two-timer has a private clue! Do you mind telling a dumb old-line cop who killed Huston?”

  “Solve your own cases!” Tracy flashed. “I’m through!”

  Fitz blocked his lunge toward the door.

  “Wait a minute! Where’s your car parked?”

  “In the west field at the Fountain Lake gate.”

  “Go over there and wait for me. Don’t try to drive away if you’ve an ounce of sense left.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  Tracy hesitated. Fitz’s heavy paw reached out leisurely and shoved Richard Field aside from his sister. Allen Webb moved protectingly in front of the girl.

  “You can’t do this,” Webb said. “You’ve got no proof. I’ll tie you up with a court order before morning. I’ll have Marjorie out of custody and make you sorry that you ever—”

  “Stand aside,” Fitz grated, “or I’ll hang one on your jaw.”

  Webb moved aside. Fitz’s hand touched Marjorie’s quivering arm.

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  He walked Marjorie down the corridor to the exit. A police runabout was parked outside. The arrest didn’t attract very much attention. A few people stared as the car started, but the bulk of the late evening crowd were on the other side of Fountain Lake where the final firework’s display was making the sky gay with an inferno of noise and color.

  “Remember what I said about trying to leave the grounds!” Fitz yelled to Tracy.

  The police car rolled swiftly away toward headquarters in the Administration Building’s annex.

  Richard Field looked like a man in a nightmare. He stumbled away in the wake of Fitz’s dwindling tail light.

  Webb didn’t follow him. He turned to Tracy and there was mockery in his low tone.

  “You’re not kidding me with that stuff about Marjorie and her swimming suit. She had no more to do with Huston’s death than I did.”

  “I didn’t accuse you.”

  “No? You must have a damned short memory. I told you where to look if you want a solution of the murder.”

  “You mean Lundy?”

  “Yes. Lundy’s no ordinary two-bit politician. He has a big stake in controlling and profiting from the Midport underworld. He and Harold Shipley are hand in glove, in spite of the fake reform crusade that Shipley’s newspaper had been bluffing about with George Huston as a special investigator. My guess is that Huston got out of hand and made himself a nuisance. So Huston’s dead.”

  “And?”

  “And Shipley and his daughter are back in the Waldorf, protected by a sap who calls himself a newspaper man. Eric Lundy tosses you a fellow named Allen Webb and a poor little swimming girl—and you swallow the bait.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Inspector Fitzgerald that?”

  “I’m telling you.”

  “You’re wasting a lot of time, aren’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought you were in a hurry to get a legal writ to free Marjorie?”

  “Maybe I’ve decided that it’s better to let her remain in custody for the present.”

  He didn’t explain the remark. With the air of a man with all the time in the world, Allen Webb struck a match and lit a cigarette. Tracy shrugged and left him. Webb was still standing outside the Aquacade Building the last Tracy saw of him, an erect figure jostled by the crowd that was beginning to drift toward the exits of the fair grounds. The last boom of the fireworks had finished. The amusement area was beginning to quiet down.

  T>racy went to the parking lot where he had left his sedan. There were still plenty of cars ranged in long dark rows under the sparse glitter of overhead lights. Tracy was glad of a quiet spot to sit down and think. His anger at Fitz had evaporated. He knew that he was in the wrong.

  He located his car and tapped at the locked door to wake up Butch. Butch was Tracy’s valet, handyman and bodyguard. A lop-eared ex-pug, he had the mind of a ten-year-old. Tracy had left him curled up in the rear seat of the sedan reading a comic magazine by the glow of the dome light. Butch preferred Popeye the Sailor to wandering around the Fair.

  “I’ve seen this joint,” he had told Tracy wearily, “and there’s nothin’ to it. Now if it was Coney Island, at least yuh could take in a real, honest-to-Gawd girl show where everythin’ ain’t so highbrow an’ stuff. Me, I’ll stick to Pop-eye.”

  He must have changed his mind. Tracy made sure the locked car was empty by lighting a match and peering into the dark interior. Butch was gone and with him were the keys of the car.

  Tracy sat down on the running board and dropped his head in his hands. The more he thought about the mess into which he had dragged himself, the more he was convinced that he had the correct slant on Huston’s murder. He was certain now that Marjorie was innocent! Not by reason of anything she had said or done, but because of a simple physical fact which Tracy had forgotten in the rush of circumstances that had followed the tragedy in the museum garden.

  He felt suddenly weary. Raising his tired face, he lifted both arms and stretched.

  “Don’t move!” a voice warned. “Keep those hands up!”

  The voice was a menacing whisper. It came from behind the shield of a white cape that shrouded the figure. All Tracy could see was the shadowy sheen of bare legs, a partial glimpse of a pale face under a rubber bathing cap. The dark red of rouged lips was the only spot of color in that frightened countenance.

  Tracy didn’t have to look at the back of the white cape to know what was spelled there.

  “The Aquacade girl!” he breathed.

  His eyes stayed on the gun. He remained very still. He was smart enough to realize from the gun’s uneven wobble that this was no professional killer, but an amateur in crime. A wrong move on his part would snap the tension of his captor and send a bullet ripping into his belly.

  “Take off your shoes and socks,” the whisper warned.

  The order puzzled Tracy but there was nothing to do but obey. Slowly he unlaced his shoes and removed his socks. The concrete felt cold and scratchy under his bare feet.

  “I want your pants too!”

  For an instant he hesitated. He tried to remember if he had picked up anything in that garden behind th
e Babylonian Building, something so trivial that it might have escaped his memory. He knew he hadn’t. There was nothing in his trouser pockets except some small change and a handkerchief. What good would the theft of his pants do a murderer except to keep him from pursuing? He couldn’t fanthom the motive behind the holdup. The gun gestured fiercely. Reluctantly Tracy removed his pants and kicked them with a bare foot across the concrete toward his captor. In an instant the discarded trousers were snatched up. The figure turned and ran. The faint thud-thud of rubber-soled shoes vanished down a black aisle between the rows of darkened cars.

  Tracy came out of his daze. He went racing after his foe with a yell that raised a wild echo in the darkness. He saw a vague blob of whiteness wiggle between two cars and cut sharply to the right. He pounded after the fugitive, wincing as his bare feet slapped against the hard pavement.

  The crack of a pistol brought him to a quick halt. Almost before he saw the flash of the gun and heard the report, he was conscious of a buzzing past his hunched shoulder. Another bee whizzed over his ducking head as Jerry threw himself flat to the ground.

  Rolling over, he saw the caped figure sprint out of sight on the side of the parking lot that faced the fair grounds. The gun was still in one of the fugitive’s clenched hands, but the other hand was empty. She had hurled Tracy’s pants away somewhere in the darkness.

  By the time Tracy had regained his feet, footsteps were pounding toward him from an aisle in the rear. He thought he recognized the flat slap-slap of those soles. He yelled shrilly. “Butch! Is that you? Hurry up!”

  It wasn’t Butch. It was a tall, broad-shouldered guy with a voice like a file and a gun as big as a house.

  “Don’t move, punk, or I’ll drop you!”

  Tracy took one look at the Stetson hat and the bronzed, clean-shaven face under it. His heart quailed. It was the same rookie cop who had nabbed Tracy in the museum garden.

  The cop didn’t like Tracy. He had made what he had thought was a legitimate pinch in a big murder case. Tracy had made him look bad by having an in with Inspector Fitzgerald and talking himself out of trouble. Now this wise little Broadway sharpie was in a spot, the possibilities of which made the cop’s eyes narrow with unpleasant satisfaction.

  “So it’s you again, eh? What’s the latest alibi? Taking a little athletic run-around in your drawers because you’re a fresh air fiend? Shooting off a gun to liven things up? Or are you just one of these eccentric guys?”

  Tracy was mad enough to chew nails.

  “Listen, dope! I haven’t got a gun. I’ve been held up. A woman fired a couple of slugs at me. She—”

  “A woman, eh?”

  He twisted expert fingers in Tracy’s collar and anchored him.

  “What were you doing sitting around with a woman in your underpants? Whose car were you in?”

  “My own, blast you. And I wasn’t in the car. I was on the running-board when she—”

  “That’s one for the book,” the cop said with a nasty chuckle. “So you’re the running-board type, eh? Okay, we’ll find out about this.”

  He dragged his prisoner toward the lighted exit of the parking lot. Tracy hopped unevenly along beside him, caught in a grasp that felt like a steel vise. The uproar had attracted a lot of people. More were coming at every step.

  Jerry Tracy looked like a fashion plate from the waist up and not so good from the waist down. In the privacy of his bedroom he had rather fancied the brilliantly striped silk shorts he had paid good money for in an exclusive Fifth Avenue shop. But in the cool darkness of a parking lot, gawked at by men, giggled at by women, those bright little panties were not exactly an asset to his dignity.

  Tracy wasn’t cold any longer. He was sweating with the realization that the most envied and successful scandal columnist in New York—the great Jerry Tracy of the Daily Planet—had been caught in public with his pants off! If anyone recognized him—

  “Let go of me!” he whispered fiercely. “I tell you I was held up! I—”

  The cop sounded smug. He raised his voice for the benefit of the crowd.

  “Shut up and save it for the sergeant. Forget about the woman. In a sex case the man is all we want!”

  There was an instant murmur from the crowd.

  “A sex case!” someone whispered. It ran through the crowd like a foaming rivulet. “Some guy got caught with his pants off in a parked car. A sex case!”

  It was hard for the cop to shove a way toward the telephone he was heading for. A man ducked close to Tracy from the mob in front. He took one look at the cringing prisoner and then let out a wild yell.

  “Hold him!” he told the cop. “I’ll make the charge against him! The girl he lured here is my niece. Wait a minute, I’ve got the proof in my car!”

  He dashed off like a maniac. The cop halted. Tracy tried to rip free. The cop clouted him. Tracy’s face was the sick-ish green of overripe cheese. He had recognized the man who had darted away and was now racing back. It was Ed Mullhauser, an ace cameraman of the Daily Star. The editor of the Star had been gunning for Tracy for years.

  It was no good yelling. In the uproar no one heard a word of what Tracy was shouting. They thought he was caught with the goods and making a desperate effort to break away from the law. When he tried to duck his face close to the cop’s broad chest, Ed Mullhauser spoiled it with a warning bellow.

  “Make him face me! He knows I can prove what he was up to!”

  The cop obliged. Ed had a beautiful little candid job under the flap of his coat. He yanked it out and aimed with the skill of a man trained for spot news pictures. A bulb atop the camera made a brief blinding flash. The cop and every one else saw black for an instant. Then Ed took to his heels.

  By the time the cop realized he had been foxed, Ed’s car was out in Grand Central Parkway and heading at a nice clip toward the Triboro Bridge and Manhattan. Tracy didn’t need a map to know that a swell photo of Tracy without pants, shoes or socks, held a fighting prisoner in the brawny grasp of a World’s Fair cop, was on its arrow-swift way to the art department of the Daily Star.

  He quit struggling. He was a frozen hunk of despair when Inspector Fitzgerald showed up a few minutes later and fixed him with a bleak, accusing eye.

  “What the hell have you been doing?”

  Tracy told him with shrill fury. For an instant Fitz looked thunderstruck. Then he frowned. A few curt words released Tracy from the grip of the disappointed cop. The crowd was shoved back. Fitz seemed to have forgotten his anger at Tracy’s earlier behavior. He looked completely puzzled.

  “What makes you think that this pants-stealing stunt gives Marjorie Field an alibi for the Huston kill?” Fitz said in answer to Tracy’s excited cry.

  “Because Marjorie is already in custody! She’s under arrest.”

  “She isn’t,” Fitz said. “I released her almost at once. I got hold of the wardrobe mistress and the guy in charge of the Aquacade show. They proved the girl’s story that she was in the last performance—the one that was going on while Huston was killed. So I released her.”

  Tracy stared at him, his mind grappling with this utterly unexpected development.

  “Why should she steal your pants?” Fitz continued. “Were you holding back another clue from me?”

  “No.” Tracy’s face was flushed, but his eyes were as steady as Fitz’s. “I’m through holding back, Fitz. The only reason she took those pants was to keep me from chasing her.”

  “You know where she went?”

  “No, I don’t. But she didn’t take my pants with her. She threw them away somewhere before she vanished. I think maybe I know how to find them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve got to find an unlocked car, or one with an open rumble.” His eyes were a-gleam with sudden excitement. He forgot about his embarrassing lack of attire. With Fitz at his heels he darted in and out the rows of parked cars, hunting swiftly. The search didn’t take long. There were not many cars with open rumbles. Tracy�
�s search ended near the side of the lot that faced the fair grounds. Fitz watched him while he went methodically through the pockets of his trousers.

  “Anything missing?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “But why?” Fitz’s face was blank,

  “An alibi stunt that went wrong,” Tracy said. “The hold-up was an attempt to give Marjorie Field an alibi. The killer thought she was in police custody. That’s why the stunt was pulled. Marjorie’s premature release spoiled a desperate trick to clear a gal who had nothing whatever to do with Huston’s murder.”

  “I wonder if Barbara Shipley and her father went straight home to The Waldorf,” Fitz said softly. “Did you see them leave the grounds?”

  Tracy shook his head. “I told them they could get a taxicab at the gate.”

  Tracy was folding his pants up into a careful bundle.

  “You’re not figuring on fingerprints, are you?” Fitz asked doubtfully. “The chances of getting anything from cloth are remote.”

  Tracy smiled bleakly.

  “I’m figuring on the fear of fingerprints,” he said. “These trousers are light-weave mohair that might conceivably show a print. At any rate that’s what the killer will think, I hope. I’ve got an idea.”

  His voice raced.

  “Take the pants with you to the Administration Building. Have someone wrap ’em up carefully and make the bundle look damned official. Then get on the telephone and put a guard at every exit gate of the fair grounds.”

  “Who do you want picked up?”

  “A bunch of damned visiting firemen from a Middle-West town called Midport. One of them is a slick, cold-as-ice politician named Eric Lundy. Be careful about him. He probably packs a gun. Another is a lawyer named Allen Webb. Then I’ll want Marjorie Field and her brother Richard. They’re probably hanging around here somewhere like a couple of scared rabbits.”

  “You know what you’re doing?” Fitz asked briefly.

  “Yes.”

  They stared at each other with steady eyes. Fitz was satisfied. He nodded.

  “Okay. Gimme a description of Lundy and Webb. What about Shipley and his daughter?”