The Right Murder

by Craig Rice

  “Didn’t he know the police had taken it away?”

  “He didn’t even know the police had found it. Remember he was passed out cold all that time.”

  “Oh,” Malone said. “That’s who you have stowed away back there. Ross McLaurin.”

  “Who the devil did you think it was? Shirley Temple?”

  “But Ross McLaurin couldn’t have murdered anybody,” Malone said. “He was drunk.”

  “People can do funny things when they’re drunk. I remember once—”

  “Never mind,” Malone said hastily. “I mean he’d passed out. The Allen girl said she went to call him, and he was as cold as a clam.”

  “He could have been giving himself an alibi, couldn’t he? Or he could have come to after she left. People do.”

  “Did he tell you he’d murdered Tuesday?”

  “He seemed to have a vague impression he’d murdered several people, but he wasn’t just sure who they were. One of them sounded like Gerald Tuesday to me. He confided that he didn’t know the people he’d murdered.”

  “My God,” Malone said. “You’ve kidnaped a lunatic.”

  “No, a drunk. There’s a distinction.” She turned north on Franklin Street, dark and deserted at this hour.

  “Let’s not quibble, but how did you happen to kidnap him? Was it an accident?”

  “Not entirely. My first thought was to bring him to you, so he couldn’t go babbling his story to some perfect stranger. It would be a shame to have him fall into the hands of the police. He’s such a nice boy, and I think Lotus Allen is in love with him. You feel very sympathetic about people in love when your own love life has just been ended.”

  Malone made a rude, raucous noise with his lips and tongue.

  “I mean it,” Helene said indignantly.

  “So do I,” Malone said, “but go on with your story. Begin with where you decided to bring this guy to me.”

  “He seemed to want a drink, so I told him I’d just looked and there wasn’t one in the house. I knew I couldn’t get him to come along quietly and see you, in the mental condition he was in, but I felt pretty sure he’d go out with me to look for a bar, and he did.”

  “Where did the car come into this?”

  “The car was a gift from providence.”

  Malone sighed. “The police are going to have one terrible time arresting providence. Go on.”

  “We started walking down Bellevue Place, and I saw this car standing at the curb with the keys in it. ‘Here’s my car,’ says I, ‘hop in.’ He hopped in and away we went. Then I made the error of trying to explain to him where we were going, and he objected. Rather strenuously, too. I couldn’t have him jumping out of the car in the middle of Michigan Avenue, so I took my slipper off and conked him one with the heel. He’s been peaceful as a child ever since. I drove up an alley and shoved him over into the back seat and covered him with a blanket. That brings us up to date, and what do we do now?”

  “We might try returning your kidnap victim and your stolen car,” Malone said coldly.

  “That’s no good. He’s my property and I won’t let him go. And we need the car. My own is in the garage of the apartment building where Jake and I were going to live.” She was silent for a few minutes. “I know what we’ll do. We’ll get my car and return this one, and take this guy up to that apartment. I still have a key to it.”

  “Good God, no,” Malone said. “You can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I know that building. They’re fussy as the devil about having kidnap victims kept there.”

  She snorted indignantly. “Damn it, Malone, we’ve got to take him somewhere.”

  “Why?” Malone asked plaintively. “Maybe when I get a look at him I won’t like him.”

  “He’ll stumble into a policeman and get arrested for murder. Besides, I have a hunch that murder had something to do with Mona McClane. After all, it happened in her house, even if she couldn’t have done it. I want to find out what this guy knows. I think my idea of taking him up to that apartment is a good one, and I’m going to do it.”

  “No!” Malone said. It was almost a roar. “It’s too risky.”

  “Then you think of something.”

  “Get rid of the car first,” Malone said. “You may get pinched at any street corner.”

  “The police probably don’t even know it’s been stolen yet.”

  The little lawyer sighed. “That’s easy enough to find out. Park in the first alley you come to, and I’ll telephone.”

  She found one halfway up the next block. Malone went into a corner drugstore, bought a slug, called the police, and wanted to know if a dark-green Buick sedan bearing the license plates 607–871 had been reported stolen.

  It had.

  Malone said, “Well, I’m calling from a store at 63rd and Cottage Grove. The car is in the neighborhood. I thought the men in it were acting suspiciously and that the car might have been stolen to use in a holdup. Yes, four men. No, I didn’t get a good enough look at them to describe them. They just went west on 63rd. My name? Tuesday. Gerald Tuesday.” He hung up fast and ran back to the car.

  “Yes, the car’s hot. We have to get rid of it. Let me think a minute.”

  Helene picked up the bottle on the seat beside her and took a drink. Then she handed the bottle to Malone. “I feel better. Let me think for a while.”

  There was a brief silence. The man in the back seat moaned slightly and murmured something that might have been either “mother” or “murder.”

  “I guess our friend is waking up,” Helene said. Suddenly she sat up. “I do have an idea. I know the bartender in a place over on Huron Street, not a block from here. This guy isn’t heavy. I think the two of us can haul him that far.” She climbed out of the car and opened the door to the back seat.

  Malone sighed and followed her. “Then what?”

  “You’ll see. Help me get him out of here. And don’t forget the gin. I took it with me just in case.”

  Malone looked happy for the first time. “Say,” he said, “that’s an idea. I could use a case. Maybe this drunken lunatic is it.”

  When Ross McLaurin was stood upright and firmly supported, his feet moved. Conveying him turned out to be a simple matter of guiding him and keeping him from falling on his face. By the time they reached the end of the alley, he was muttering something under his breath. Malone caught the word “dying” and leaned close to him, anxious to hear the rest. Ten paces farther he realized their prisoner was reciting Kipling’s Boots.

  A few steps more, and Helene joined in. Malone, having a vague fear of attracting attention to himself by his silence, decided to recite along with them. His contribution was rendered less valuable by the fact that he could only remember the refrain. Besides, he consoled himself, it wasn’t good poetry, anyway.

  They reached the last line of Boots and the corner bar at the same moment. It was a small place, more intimate than ornate, decorated with stuffed birds and animals. Malone noticed the tail of a stuffed squirrel, waving lightly, and shuddered, before he discovered it was directly in the path of an electric fan.

  All they wanted was a taxi with an honest driver, Helene explained to the bartender, addressing him familiarly as “Armen.” Before the words were out of her mouth, five taxi drivers ranged along the bar offered their services.

  It ended with Helene picking their names out of a hat selecting one, and explaining their friend needed to be taken home, as anyone could see.

  Well, maybe just one quick one, while they waited for the cab to be driven around to the front door.

  Five minutes and two drinks later they were in a cab headed for the Drive.

  “Toward the Loop,” Helene directed.

  Malone said in a low voice, “I seem to be in this whether I like it or not. In the past I’ve often kept witnesses hidden out in my hotel; the management is always very helpful.” He called to the driver, “Stop at a drugstore, I want to make a phone call.”


  He returned to report that the management would have the room next to his ready. They would take the unconscious man in at the side entrance and up the freight elevator without any trouble.

  “Now I know why you’re considered a damned good lawyer,” Helene said admiringly.

  “It’s people like you that make damned good lawyers necessary,” Malone said in a cross voice. He added, “I also called the police and told them a dark-green Buick sedan, license number 607–871, was parked in an alley just off St. Clair Street. The owner just might want to use his car.”

  At that moment their prisoner woke up about two degrees more. “Want to talk to police,” he reported.

  “Sure,” Helene said soothingly, “but you want a drink first.”

  “That’s right. Want a drink.”

  “For the love of Mike, give him one,” Helene said.

  Malone held the gin bottle to their prisoner’s lips as long as he dared without actually drowning the man. There was a faint, gurgling sound, a little, satisfied sigh, and a reassuringly peaceful silence.

  The taxi driver and a bellboy evidently accustomed to Malone’s occasional troubles with witnesses carried the slumbering man to the freight elevator. Malone and the bellboy put him to bed.

  “Now,” Malone said, when the boy had gone, “you go home.”

  “Try and make me, after all the trouble I went to bringing him here.”

  She gazed sympathetically at the young man on the bed He seemed little more than a boy, sleeping like a tired child. He was slender and not tall, with a pale, handsome face, and wavy blond hair that tumbled loosely over his forehead.

  Suddenly he stirred, moaned softly, murmured something undistinguishable, and opened his eyes. They were blue eyes, young and guileless, and apparently aware of what was going on. Before Helene or Malone could move, he was sitting up in bed.

  “I killed two men,” he said thickly but intelligibly. “I don’t know who they were or why I killed them. But I know I must have killed them. With a knife. I don’t understand it.”

  He stared up at the two watching him as though their faces might give him some explanation. He rubbed the palm of his left hand on his forehead.

  “I can’t remember.”

  Then he lay back on the pillow and went to sleep.

  “There, you see?” Malone said after a moment. “We won’t get anything out of him till he’s sobered up. In the meantime, if both of you are found inexplicably missing from Mona McClane’s—”

  Helene sighed regretfully. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll go home. But I’ll be back here tomorrow. He ought to be sobered up enough to talk by that time.”

  “He will be,” Malone said grimly. “Can you get into Mona McClane’s without waking up the whole house?”

  “Easily. Mona gives all her house guests keys to the side door.”

  He nodded approvingly. “Go on home, then, and get some sleep.”

  She paused at the door. “Take good care of him, Malone. He does look so goddamned young.” She was gone.

  Malone looked at the figure on the bed. It was going to be a long and arduous job. He glanced at his watch. Three o’clock. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d missed a night’s sleep in a good cause.

  He phoned a detailed order to the drugstore, called the restaurant to send up pots of coffee at hourly intervals, went into his own room, and collected the remaining quart of rye. That was for himself.

  For only a moment he wrestled with temptation. Perhaps just an hour’s sleep—

  No, sleep would have to wait. He sighed heavily and regretfully, took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, went into the bathroom, and began filling the tub with ice-cold water.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was eight in the morning when Malone called Maggie and told her he probably wouldn’t show up at the office till afternoon, if at all. In the meantime, she could reach him at his hotel. By that time Ross McLaurin was sleeping, but it was the normal, sober sleep of pure exhaustion. Then he phoned Jake, and arranged to meet him at Gordon’s for breakfast, at nine.

  Jake hung up the receiver and sat on the edge of his bed, one sock on, the other dangling from his hand. Malone’s telephone call had found him awake. He had, in fact, been awake all night.

  He put on the other sock slowly and thoughtfully, without noticing that it was inside out. The apartment was a mess. In twenty-four hours he had managed to make it look like the bottom of a squirrel cage. What it needed now was a woman’s hand. He had come to this original conclusion at two o’clock that morning.

  Jake put on one shoe, tied it, and then decided to straighten up the apartment. He picked up a mass of shirts, underwear, and socks, about half of them clean, from the floor and dumped them out of sight in a bureau drawer. He assembled a heap of yesterday’s newspapers knee-high around the wastebasket.

  The living room, with its long windows and deep, cushiony chairs, had been designed for cheerfulness and informal comfort. To Jake it looked about as cheerful as a lonely stretch of swampland in a fog. A thin, gray January rain slid down the windows, curtaining the room to a gloomy half-darkness. Chairs and tables all seemed to be in the wrong places. On every table was a revolting little litter of empty match folders, tiny scraps of waste-paper, crumpled cigarette packages, and overflowing ash trays. Jake’s tie hung limply over a bridge lamp, his overcoat was flung over one end of the sofa. There were unread magazines everywhere, a half-empty bottle of Scotch was on the floor beside the biggest chair, and a full bottle of gin stood on the bookcase.

  Jake stood in the middle of the desolation and remembered. Helene, at the party here in this room, the day of their marriage. It had been at that party Mona McClane had made her damned bet. Helene, in the big blue chair by the window. Helene mixing a drink in the kitchenette. Helene adjusting her hat by the mirror near the door. Helene everywhere. Jake decided not to clean up the apartment. The hell with it.

  He felt terrible.

  The two of them could have had a swell time here in this apartment.

  He poured himself three quarters of an inch of Scotch, went back to the bedroom, and put on the other shoe.

  Twenty minutes later he faced Malone across a table in Gordon’s.

  “I hope you had a better night’s sleep than I did,” Jake growled.

  Malone started to say he hadn’t had any kind of night’s sleep, good or bad, thought better of it, and said, “Sure, swell.”

  After the waiter had gone, Jake looked at his watch. He said, “When it’s nine o’clock here, it’s nine o’clock in Havana, too. I suppose Helene is just waking up now.”

  Malone heard the last words, said, “She was—” and caught himself just in time. “More likely she’s just getting to bed. What do you care?”

  “I don’t,” Jake said grimly. “Funny, though, that you didn’t get a postcard from her.”

  “Nobody ever has time to send postcards from Havana,” Malone said, pouring cream lavishly into his coffee. “I don’t see why they even bother to sell postcards down there.” He stirred vigorously. “Maybe I ought to drop her a note and tell her you’re looking well.”

  Jake dropped his spoon with a noisy clatter. “Look here, Malone. If you do write to Helene now, or any other time, I don’t want you to mention me at all. Not even mention my name. See?”

  “Sure, sure, sure,” the lawyer said hastily. “Why don’t you make up with her?”

  “You go to hell and mind your own business.”

  “Both, or do I get a choice?”

  Malone sipped his coffee and pondered the problem of the day. Helene would show up before long to help pry evidence from Ross McLaurin. Somehow Jake had to be kept out of the way for the time being. A vague idea began to form slowly in his mind.

  Jake stared gloomily at his omelet. “That damned woman!”

  “Helene?”

  “No, Mona McClane. Yesterday I checked up on all the homicides between the day she made that bet and the present.” He drew a
soiled and wrinkled paper from his pocket. “There were eleven. Two of those we know about.* Five can be checked off because the slayers have been picked up—routine stuff like stickups and tavern brawls. Of the remaining four, one is a Negro found up an alley off 41st Street, with his throat cut, one is a laundry driver named Oscar Zaudtke who was dragged from his truck and slugged, and the other two were your unidentified guy who was stabbed on New Year’s Eve and Mr. Tuesday.” He put the list back in his pocket.

  “I doubt if Mona McClane cut the Negro’s throat or slugged the laundry driver,” Malone said. “Your list isn’t very promising.”

  Jake sighed, cut a square inch off his omelet, picked it up on his fork, and put it down again. “Those two I named last would be very promising, only they don’t conform to the terms of the bet.”

  “Shot down in the public streets, with plenty of witnesses,” Malone murmured.

  “Witnesses!” Jake shoved the omelet to one side, once and for all. “Those two guys. The unidentified one and Tuesday. I know now who they were and why they died.”

  Malone strangled on his coffee. “I wish people wouldn’t startle me. All right, who were they?”

  “They—were the witnesses!” Jake said triumphantly.

  “Maybe I’m just backward, but I don’t get it.”

  “Mona committed her murder according to specifications. These two guys witnessed it. Then they started blackmailing her, or threatening to expose her, and she had to do them in.”

  “A very pretty notion,” Malone said, “but where’s the original corpse?”

  “Damn it, I don’t know,” Jake said angrily. “Maybe it hasn’t been discovered yet.”

  “A murder done right out in public, as the bet specified, and the corpse still lying around undiscovered?”

  “A corpse can be moved, and witnesses can be bribed.”

  “Suit yourself,” the lawyer said wearily. “All you have to do is search the Chicago area for a lost and unknown corpse. Maybe you’d better check up on Milwaukee too, and Gary. There weren’t any specifications about locale.”