The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

  “Yeah, sure. Most of us Irish know now we got gypped. But those hunkies—I hear they’re still going for it. They refuse to believe that Roberts is a crook. That phoney prince keeps them bulled.”

  “Prince? You mean Prince Peter Strogovich?”

  “Yeah, the guy with the fancy duds,” he says.

  “He claims to be a Serbian prince.” I laugh. “I’ll bet he gives his fellow countrymen a good line. Like to hear him some time.”

  “Why don’t you go to one of their meetings, then? I think tonight is the Serbians’ night. They hold their meeting at some hall on Halsted Street, near North Avenue.”

  “Say, what’s this Roberts guy look like?” I ask.

  “That’s the funny part of it. No one knows. He never came to his office here. A dame ran it for him. When the cops came in one day, she just went out and never came back.”

  “Cagy, huh? Well, so long, sucker!”

  “So long, sucker!”

  When I get out of the Rookery Building I walk over to Adams Street and go into a saloon and have two good hookers of rye. I need them. This set-up is the screwiest I’ve ever run across in all my life.

  Promissory notes, five bucks apiece…. Serbians.

  I have another snort, then go back to the office of AAA, on Wells near Randolph. Betty has just come from getting her hair done. I give it the once-over. “Like it?” she asked.

  It’s set in the new up-and-at-’em style. “You dames get screwier every day,” I tell her.

  “Is that so?” she says, coldly. “Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t get my hair done for j/#z/.”

  It’s an idea I haven’t thought about before, but I make a mental note of it. Inside his private office, Oscar Berger rubs his hands together. He can do it better than a Maxwell Street clothing merchant.

  “Well, how many did you find?”

  “One, but I got some good leads on two more.”

  “Only one, and such good prospects!”

  “Nuts, Berger,” I say to him, “they’re as tough as any others and you know it. Look, tell me something, ever hear of a crook by the name of W. C. Roberts?”

  “Yeah, sure. Haven’t you? But maybe that case broke when you were on your vacation.”

  “It must have. What’d Roberts do?”

  “Nothing much. Except swindle about five thousand hunkies in this man’s town. He’s an inventor, see, or claims to be one. He gets a bunch of these hunkies together and tells them he invented four-wheel brakes for automobiles, but Henry Ford or General Motors swiped the patent from him. He invented wireless, but Marconi gypped him out of the patent. So what? So he wants to sue Henry Ford and General Motors. But lawsuits cost money and that’s what he hasn’t got much of. So he gets the hunkies to finance the lawsuits. Mr. Roberts gives them notes. They lend him ten bucks now, they get five thousand when he collects from the big shots.”

  “How much does he collect?”

  Berger screws up his mouth. “Ten or fifteen billion. Boxcar numbers.”

  “And the chumps fall for it?”

  “They like it! According to the papers, ten or fifteen thousand hunkies kicked in from five to a hundred bucks per each.”

  “And Roberts skipped?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “That depends. If the suckers were milked dry, maybe. But I understand there’s a lot of Bulgarians and Serbians and such still believe in Roberts.”

  “Oh, sure, that’s the sweet part of it. Roberts warned them even before the law jumped on him, that he was expecting something like that. On account of Mr. Ford, Westinghouse and Edison owning the cops and sicking them on him. Slick guy, this Roberts.”

  “Yeah? What’d he look like?”

  “That’s the funny part of it. No one knows. He doesn’t show himself. When the cops tried to get him, they discovered that no one would even admit ever having seen him.”

  “Not bad,” I say, “not bad at all.”

  Oscar Berger gives me the once-over. “What’s your interest in this? Roberts didn’t put the bite into you, did he?”

  “No. When someone offers me over four per cent interest I know he’s crooked. Not that I’d ever get enough to invest at four per cent.”

  When I come out of Berger’s office, Betty is putting lipstick on her mouth. “All right, sister,” I say to her, “I’m going to give you a break tonight. Where do you live?”

  “At 4898 Winthrop, but if you come up you’re traveling just for the exercise.”

  “I like exercise,” I tell her. “I’ll be there at seven.”

  “I won’t be home…. What’ll I wear?”

  Nice girl, Betty. “Nothing fancy. We’ll go to some quiet spot.”

  STILL have the best part of my hundred bucks the Serbian prince had given me. I get a haircut and a shave and I have a bite at Harding’s Grill I on Madison. Then I take a ) taxi to 4898 Winthrop Avenue, which is a block north of Lawrence and one east of Broadway.

  The place is a second-rate apartment hotel. They won’t let me upstairs without being announced and when I get Betty on the phone she says she’ll be right down.

  She’s down in five minutes. I almost don’t recognize her. She’s wearing a silver evening dress that must have cost her at least a month’s pay. Her hair’s brushed soft and shiny.

  She certainly doesn’t look like the type of girl who’d work for a sleezy outfit like AAA. I say to her: “You look very interesting.”

  “You never noticed it before,” she says. “How could I? All the time I’m working for Triple A I’ve got a grouch. Skip tracing is a lousy business.”

  “I’m figuring on quitting myself,” Betty says. “One of your chumps came into the office last week. He was a big fellow, but he bawled like a baby. You were going to garnishee his wages unless he paid ten dollars a month on a cheap piano he bought for his daughter who wanted to be a musician, but changed her mind and eloped with a greaseball.”

  “Nix,” I say. “Let me forget skip tracing for one night. I dream about it.”

  “All right. Where we going?”

  “A little place I discovered,” I tell her. “You’ve never seen one like it.”

  I flag a taxi. Betty looks at me suspiciously when I give the driver the address, but she doesn’t make any comment until we climb out on Halsted Street, down near North Avenue.

  She looks around while I pay the driver. “What is this, one of your jokes?”

  We’re in front of a dump that has a sign on the window. “Plennert’s Cafe. Lodge Hall for Rent.”

  “No. A fellow told me this place would be interesting.”

  The cafe is a cheap saloon. You have to go through the saloon to get into the lodge hall, in the rear.

  Betty’s game, I’ve got to say that for her. We go through the saloon into the lodge hall. There are rows of folding chairs set up in the hall and most of them are filled with men, women and kids. You can cut the smoke.

  Almost all the men in the place are dark complected. Some of them have to shave twice a day. The women are swarthy, too, although here and there you can see a blonde, just by way of contrast.

  Betty comes in for a lot of gawking. She’s glad when I pull her down in a seat near the rear.

  “What is this?” she whispers to me. Her face is red and I know she doesn’t like it any too well.

  I say, “This is a patriotic meeting of the Sons and Daughters of Serbia. Look, up there on the platform, there’s something you’ll never see again—a Serbian prince.”

  Yeah, Prince Peter. He’s pouring out a glass of water on a speaker’s stand and the way some of the Serbs on the platform stand around, you can tell that they think a lot of Prince Pete.

  There are about eight men on the platform and one woman. The woman is as big as three of the men. Yeah, she’s the amazon who keeps the confectionery store on Sedgwick Street. She’s sitting on a stout wooden bench near the side of the stage, where she can watch Prince Pete. She’s pretty interested in him.

 
; The prince drinks his water and holds up his hands. The room becomes as still as a cemetery at midnight.

  “My country people,” the prince says in English. And then he starts jabbering in the damnedest language. He sounds off for ten minutes and I don’t understand a word of it—until everyone in the place begins clapping hands and cheering and one or two of the younger fellows yell in English:

  “The hell with Henry Ford! The hell with General Motors! We’ll stick with Mr. Roberts!”

  “Fun, isn’t it?” I say to Betty, next to me.

  “Is it? I suppose this is your idea of a joke.”

  “Not at all. You see in this room about two hundred of the choicest suckers in the city of Chicago. And do they like it? Listen to them.”

  About twenty or thirty of the Serbians climb up onto the platform. Prince Pete gives them some aristocratic condescension and they like it. Every one of them.

  “You want to see the prince’s monocle?” I ask Betty. “Wait here a minute.”

  I push through the crowd and climb up on the platform.

  “Hello, Prince,” I say to his royal highness.

  Sure enough, the monocle comes out. He gets it out of his fancy vest and sticks it into his eye. Then he says: “Ah, Mister Cragg! How do you do?”

  “Fine. And you—you’re doing all right yourself, I see.”

  He drops his voice. “You have information for me, yes?”

  “I have information, no. But I’ve got a clue. Another day or two—”

  “Good! You let me know damn quick, yes? This,” he shrugs deprecatingly, “it is part of the game. You understand?”

  “Yeah, sure, I understand.”

  I go back to Betty. “Well, you got enough?”

  “Oh, no,” she replies sweetly. “I’d like to attend another patriotic meeting. How about the Bulgarians, haven’t they got one tonight?”

  “No, theirs is Thursday. But there’s a beer stube over on North Avenue—”

  She gets up quick. In the saloon, the amazon gets up from a chair and grabs my arm. “You’re the man was in my store this afternoon,” she says.

  I try to take my arm out of her grip and can’t. “That’s right, I wanted to buy a detective magazine. Uh, you got it for me?”

  “Don’t try to kid me, young man,” she snaps at me. “I’m not as dumb as I look. I saw you talking to the Prince. That’s why I came out here. What’s he up to?”

  I take hold of her wrist and this time she lets me take it off my arm. “Sorry, madam,” I tell her. “The affair between the prince and myself is confidential.”

  Her eyes leave me for a second and she sizes up Betty. “This your girl?”

  “Uh-huh. Why?”

  “You’re a cop,” she says. “I can always smell one. You’re a private dick. And you’re working for the Prince. Well, I want you to do a little job for me. And I’ll pay you twice what he paid you.”

  “He’s paying me a grand.”

  “That’s a lie! Pete hasn’t got that kind of money. I’ll give you six hundred.” She’s wearing a tweed suit that would have made a fine tent for Mr. Ringling’s biggest elephant. She digs a fist into a pocket and brings out a roll of bills. She counts out six hundred dollars, in fifties.

  “Here, now tell me what the Prince hired you for?”

  I struck the word ethics out of my dictionary when I became a skip tracer. But Betty is breathing down my neck. I say to the fat woman. “That’s against the rules. A dick never betrays a confidence.”

  Her piggish eyes glint like they had that afternoon when she’d got sore at me. She says, “All right, you don’t have to tell me that. I think I can guess. But I want you to work for me just the same. I think Pete’s two-timing me.”

  “Two-timing you?”

  She shows her teeth. They are as big as a horse’s. “He’s got a woman somewhere. I want you to shadow him.”

  “And then? After I see him with the dame?”

  “You give me her name and address, that’s all. I’ll do the rest.”

  She would, too. She’d probably snatch the woman bald-headed. But that isn’t my worry. Not yet. I say to the amazon: “Oke, I’ll work for you.”

  “Start tonight. Shadow the Prince. I—I can’t do it myself.” She scowls. “I’m too conspicuous … my size.”

  Betty pokes me in the back with her fist, but I pretend not to notice. “All right, Miss—”

  “Kelly, Mamie Kelly. You know my address. When you get results, give me a buzz on the phone.”

  She waddles out of the saloon and about two second later, the prince comes in. He catches up with Betty and me at the door says, “Ah, Mr. Cragg!” and looks at Betty like she was modeling lingerie. But he doesn’t stop.

  HEN we get outside, he’s waving his yellow cane at a taxi cab. By luck there’s another parked across the street. Even though it is facing the wrong way, I want it and want it bad. I grab hold of Betty’s wrist. “Come on!” She jerks away. “What’re you going to do? You louse, you can’t double-cross your—your client, like that.”

  “Double-cross, hell!” I snort. “That’s the only game the prince understands. We’re following him!”

  I drag her across the street and heave her into the cab. “Follow that yellow taxi!” I tell the driver. “Five bucks if you keep on his tail.”

  “For ten bucks, I’ll run him down!” says the cabby.

  He makes a beautiful U turn, just missing a street car. Then we are off, up Halsted Street.

  “Some fun,” Betty says to me. But she doesn’t mean it.

  I grin at her. “Now, kid, you got to take the good with the bad. I work like a dog all week for Oscar Berger. I do things that make me ashamed to look in a mirror and what do I get? Twenty, maybe thirty measly bucks a week. And now comes a chance to make some real dough—and you squawk!”

  “It’s dirty money,” she says.

  I reach into my pocket and pull out Tony Druhar’s five thousand dollar promissory note. “Look, Betty, I almost got thrown in the can this morning, because a guy was killed. I found this on his body.”

  She looks at the piece of paper. “Why, it’s an I.O.U. for five thousand dollars!”

  “Uh-huh, and every one of these Serbians tonight has at least one chunk of paper like this. Prince Pete’s one of the higher-ups in as lousy a racket I ever heard of. That’s why I’m working on all these angles. I’d do it even if I wasn’t getting a cent.”

  Well, maybe I would at that. But I know it is a lot more fun doing with a flock of fifties in my pocket, and the promise of some more.

  It goes over. Betty hands the note back to me and her eyes are shining. “I didn’t understand, Sam. I think—I think you’re swell!”

  “So’re you, kid!” I say. I throw my arm about her. And then the cab stops all of a sudden and the driver yells, “Here, buddy!”

  “What? Where is he?”

  “He just went into The Red Mill.”

  I look around and see that we are on Lawrence near Broadway. I climb out of the cab and help Betty, then hand the cabby a five dollar bill.

  I say to Betty, “Maybe we’ll get a chance to do some of that dancing you wanted.”

  We go inside and the headwaiter looks at Betty’s silver evening dress and gives me a big smile. “Good evening, sir. A table near the front?”

  “Umm,” I say, looking around as if night clubs were regular stuff with me. “Something not too public, if you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  He starts off down the side along the booths. At the fourth booth I stop. “Well, well, Prince!”

  He’s in the booth with as dizzy a blonde as I ever saw. He looks up at me and the monocle almost falls from his eye. “You!” he says.

  “Yeah, me. Ain’t it a coincidence?”

  Then he sees Betty and catches hold of himself. He comes to his feet and bows. I say: “Betty, allow me to introduce his royal highness, Prince Peter Strogovich … or something.”

  So help
me, he takes her hand and kisses it. Then he says, “But won’t you join us? Ah, Mitzi, this is my old friend, Mr. Cragg. And Miss—”

  “Betty Marshall.”

  The headwaiter is disappointed. He’s losing a tip. I wave him away. “We’re joining our friends.”

  Mitzi is giving Betty the once-over. She says, bluntly: “I saw him first.”

  “My eyes aren’t very good,” Betty gives her back.

  It’s over the Prince’s head. He gives Betty an eye-massage, his face still sad, but lecherous. “That is a beautiful dress you are wearing, Miss Marshall.”

  I say, “Ain’t it? Look, Betty, your nose is shiny. Why don’t you and Mitzi go spruce up?”

  “I was just going to do that,” Betty says. “Coming along, Mitzi?”

  Mitzi gives me a dirty look, but she gets up. When the girls are gone, the prince says to me, “She is charming, no?”

  “She’s only my secretary. Her steady is a prize fighter, who’s very jealous. And now that we’ve got that cleared away, let’s talk business. You’ve been holding out on me, Prince. You want me to find W. C. Roberts and all the time you’re working for him.”

  “Of course I am working for him. But I do not know Mr. Roberts. I have never seen him. Always, he sends me just letters.”

  “What about the dough you collect from these hunkies, these countrymen of yours.”

  “I send it to him, all! Then he mail me the commission, ten per cent.”

  “A very likely story. You collect from these people and mail it to Roberts. He trusts you?”

  The prince scowls sadly. “That is the trouble. He does not trust me. One time, just for a joke, you know, I send him not as much money as I collect. Next week I get the letter from him. He know how much I have hold out.”

  “Ah, he’s got a spotter. Someone who goes to the meetings and checks up on you. Right?”

  The prince shrugs wearily. “That is what I think. But I do not know who it is. I have try to find out and I cannot.”

  I make a guess. “Maybe the spotter’s name was Tony Druhar!”

  The prince gets sore about that. “What you mean by that, Mr. Cragg?”

  “Nothing. I was just joking.”