The Ragtime Kid

by Larry Karp

  A considerable number of women did such, and it gave Brun creeps. To punch a hole in his bellybutton, they’d have to tie him down pretty tight. So, all right, her first name was Sallie. And come to think about it, maybe her last name really was Rudolph. An awful lot of drummers did have lady friends along their sales routes, and not all those ladies were single. If Freitag’s picture was in the woman’s locket, that didn’t necessarily mean the wedding ring on her finger came from him.

  “We also don’t know whether that was her suitcase, rather than a companion’s,” Higdon said. “Or one borrowed from a friend—someone who might be able to shed some light about who she was and why she was here.”

  Fitzgerald put up a finger, like he was on the verge of spouting a bright idea, but then he stopped and murmured, “Oh, of course. I see. Those possibilities never occurred to me. I’m sorry, Mr. Higdon, but I really saw no need to take particular notice of anything in that room. And quite frankly, sir, I was eager to get out and into the hallway, for it did occur to me that this attractive young woman might have been involved in some sort of…illegal activity.”

  Higdon pursed lips. “All right. How long do you estimate it was between the time you left the registration desk and went upstairs, until you returned?”

  Fitzgerald started off like a house afire. “Oh, certainly not more than five minutes…” But then, of a sudden, he looked like someone who’d just taken a shot to the side of his head from a sap. “I don’t know whether the desk clerk will be able to corroborate that. When I came downstairs, he was quite busy, talking to another couple checking in, and with two more people waiting behind them. I don’t know that he saw me.”

  “We’ll check it out,” said Higdon. “Just one more thing for now.”

  Fitzgerald’s jaw drooped. Brun thought the poor man might just melt onto the floor. Higdon’s last question and his own clumsy response seemed to have unglued him. The man had no backbone, Brun thought and kind as he’d been to Brun, the boy felt an embarrassing inclination to slap him across the cheek.

  “Have you notified your family about this situation?”

  That activated Fitzgerald in a hurry. “Oh, no. No, I haven’t.” He waved both hands, as if trying to brush off a particularly pesky flock of gnats. “I mustn’t…you mustn’t… My wife comes from a very fine family, quite well-to-do. I’m afraid she…they…wouldn’t understand.”

  “But Mr. Fitzgerald. Soon or late, you are going to have to tell them. Don’t you think it would be best—”

  “No!” The gnats around Fitzgerald’s head suddenly became hornets. “Mr. Higdon, I’m completely innocent of these terrible charges, and I pray you will move quickly to have me exonerated, such that my wife and her family—and my employer—will never hear these sordid details.”

  Mr. Higdon stood a moment and stared. Finally, he said, “I’ll do my best.”

  Fitzgerald stepped forward and took his hand between his own two. “I shall be forever grateful, sir.”

  ***

  As they walked away from the jail, Higdon asked Brun whether he’d heard anything that struck him as possibly important. The boy shook his head. “Nothing particular. But I think I’m even surer he didn’t kill that woman.”

  Higdon muttered something about not being able to understand the workings of the mind of the Southern gentry. “I don’t know whether I ought to give that man a pat on the shoulder or a swift, hard kick to the behind.” Brun told him he understood. The boy felt considerably better about having wanted to slap Fitzgerald’s face just a few minutes before.

  Higdon slowed his pace, then stopped and scratched at his chin. “What time are you supposed to be at Mr. Stark’s for dinner?”

  “He said one o’clock.”

  Higdon checked his pocket watch. “It’s getting on to that, so you’d better be on your way. Don’t want to make a bad impression, do you?”

  “No, sir. And thank you.”

  “I’ll walk down to Fifth with you.”

  At the corner of Fifth, Brun stood a moment and watched Higdon go off southward on Ohio. He regretted his dinner appointment, thought whatever Higdon was up to would be interesting. On the other hand, no way to know whether the lawyer would have asked him along. In any event, getting into music publishing on the ground floor wasn’t anything to turn your nose up at. Sometimes, you can’t lose for winning. He turned onto Fifth, walked briskly down the block to Stark’s.

  ***

  Ten minutes later, Higdon turned off Ohio onto Broadway Boulevard, a wide thoroughfare lined by the large and elegant houses of the well-to-do. Half a block east, he turned again, this time onto a slate walkway, then up six marble stairs to the colonnade entryway of a grand home of stone and marble. Around the corner, he could see a shiny Studebaker carriage under shelter at the turning point of a circular drive. He knew as well as he knew his own name that Higdon, rather than Hastain, would never be cut in script above the knocker on the door of this sort of house. Money makes the world go round, as his fianceé so often reminded him, and getting involved in the affairs of unfortunates didn’t pay the rent or put food on the table. He smiled, then rapped the knocker.

  A man-servant, a slim, hairless fellow with the face of a beagle, opened the door and greeted Higdon with considerable warmth. “Mr. Higdon, always a pleasure to see you. I suppose you’d like to talk with Mr. Hastain.”

  “If he’s back from church, Jennings. And not busy.”

  “He’d rarely be too busy to talk to you, Mr. Higdon. He’s in his library. Why don’t you just come along, and I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  Higdon followed the butler past a wide marble stairway, then down a long paneled hallway, past paintings of sourpussed Hastain ancestors. They stopped before an open doorway, stained glass to either side. Jennings walked in, and a few seconds later, out charged Bud Hastain, the servant behind him. Bud always put Higdon in mind of a grownup version of the boy in that book by Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn. Hastain grinned, then gave Higdon’s hand a vigorous shake. “Well, Bob, this is an unexpected pleasure to brighten a tedious Sunday. What brings you here?”

  “I need some help, Bud. With that Fitzgerald case.”

  “Of course. Come on in.”

  Hastain and Higdon walked into the library. Jennings shut the door behind them. Hastain strode to the big mahogany desk and lowered himself into his armchair; Higdon took a chair opposite. The early afternoon sun coming through the stained glass window to Hastain’s left set colored lights dancing across the papers on the desk.

  “All right, then, Bob. What’s going on?” Hastain’s tone was somewhere between the growl of a bear and the purr of a mountain cat.

  Pleasantries now clearly at an end, Higdon told Hastain about his recent talk with Fitzgerald, then said, “Bud, I really don’t think he did it. And there may be more to the situation than we’ve considered. That new boy in town, Brun Campbell, who’s boarding with me and working for John Stark? He told me Fitzgerald doesn’t just work for Procter and Gamble. He’s here to evaluate whether P and G should set up a subsidiary plant, a big one, in Sedalia.”

  Hastain had been leaning back comfortably in his chair, but now he sat straight up.

  “So we might do well to get him out as soon as possible,” Higdon continued. “He’s said nothing to his family yet, or to his employer. But how long can that go on? What’s going to happen when P and G gets wind that the man they sent to Sedalia is in jail and charged, probably falsely, with murdering a young woman?”

  Hastain slammed a fist onto the desk; a letter-opener jumped to the floor. “Christ Almighty, it won’t be just P and G either, will it? That sort of word gets around in a hurry. Let something like this get out, and a dozen State Fairs won’t do us any good.” Hastain put a hand to his temple. “All the businesses John Bothwell’s been courting like fair maidens will run like hell, and Sedalia will be just another word for Podunk. I’d go down to the jail myself and get the man out,
but I’m not mayor any more. And if I even mention that notion to Walter, he’d have a fit, probably in public, and we’d have a scandal on our hands beyond containment.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking,” said Higdon. “Look, Bud—the woman was found early Wednesday morning on a roadside near the train terminal. Walter estimated the time of death as between eight and eleven the evening before, but a patrolman walked that beat about eleven-thirty, and didn’t find the body. So she might have been killed somewhere else. And she was registered at the Kaiser Hotel.”

  Hastain’s grin started a comeback.

  Higdon leaned forward to press his point. “All I want is to look around the Kaiser for a bit. See whether I can find anything that might help my client, maybe even exonerate him. But John Kaiser’s bristly enough that I don’t think he’ll want me snooping around his place, as he’d probably put it. Afraid it’ll hurt his business.”

  “No question there.” Hastain pointed a finger like a schoolteacher making sure a snappy but careless student really did get the point. “But what if you find something at Kaiser’s that implicates the man?”

  “That might not be so bad either. If Fitzgerald really is guilty, the onus is no longer on the city, which would put P and G on the defensive. They’d probably lean over backward to make it right with us.”

  Hastain smiled. “Bob, I trained you well.” He pushed away from the desk and got to his feet. “We do want to see justice done, don’t we? Let’s go.”

  ***

  Hastain and Higdon walked up to the reception desk at Kaiser’s Hotel, where a man about Hastain’s age but half his weight perched on a stool. Green garters held up his shirt sleeves; he peered at his visitors through wire-rim glasses balanced on a long narrow nose. A huge Adam’s-apple bobbed up, down, up again in his throat. “’Afternoon, Mr. Hastain,” the man squeaked.

  “Good afternoon, John,” Hastain rumbled.

  John Kaiser’s Adam’s-apple took another trip up, then down. Higdon thought he looked like a nearsighted possum, trapped by dogs. “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

  Hastain swept an arm in Higdon’s direction. “You know Bob Higdon, I’m sure. My former associate.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes. Of course.” If Kaiser’s hands were flint and steel, he’d have had a blaze going on his counter.

  “Well, Bob is representing Mr. Fitzgerald, the man they’ve accused of murdering that unfortunate woman in your hotel. He wants to look around the room she was in.”

  “Oh. Well, I can certainly understand… But don’t you think perhaps…” Higdon hoped the man wouldn’t swallow his tongue. “I mean… Don’t you need a warrant to search a hotel room? And wouldn’t this properly be a police matter? Perhaps you ought to speak with Captain Love.”

  Hastain’s bearing put Higdon in mind of a cat catching sight of a small white rabbit. But the lawyer’s speech was friendly as could be, Missouri drawl broadening with every line he spoke. “Well, John, sure. Bob could get a warrant. But there would be some delays then, don’t you think?”

  Hastain paused long enough to force an answer. Kaiser swallowed again, then nodded his head and said, “Yeah…yep. Guess I’d have to say there would be. Papers to fill out and all that.”

  “And the longer the delay, the colder the trail to a killer gets. Now, John, I want you to suppose Mr. Fitzgerald is innocent. He’s rushed to trial, convicted, and executed. And then the killer strikes a second time, maybe more than once. What do you suppose that would do to business in Sedalia, having some nut loose, strangling women right and left? What would it do to the hotel business? Not to mention what would happen to business at one particular hotel, if word got out that the proprietor refused to let Fitzgerald’s lawyer look the place over when there was still time to find the real killer. That was a respectable woman who was killed—the way she was dressed? And she was wearing a wedding ring. Hell, John, that could have been your wife. And it still could be, if we’ve got the wrong man in the county cooler. You ever think of that?”

  Kaiser worked his rear end back on his stool, as far as he could from Hastain, but the lawyer propped his hands on the counter, leaned forward, and barked, “What room was the woman in?”

  “Two-oh-four.” Higdon could hardly hear Kaiser’s voice. The hotel-keeper reached back toward a row of pigeonholes behind him, some with message slips, some with keys, but halfway there, it stopped. “What am I supposed to say to Captain Love if he complains I shouldn’t have let Mr. Higdon up there?”

  “Just send him to me,” Hastain said.

  Kaiser handed the room key to Higdon like it was a dead mouse he’d picked up out of the corner. Hastain thanked him, then said goodbye to Higdon, and went off through the lobby and out the door.

  Higdon took the stairs two at a time, opened the door to Room 204, walked in, looked around. The floor was dark wood, nicely polished. To his left, a neatly made iron-frame bed, just this side of a cedar clothes closet. To the right, a small pine desk and chair, and a pine dresser. On the far wall, between two windows, stood the customary wash table and basin, towels on a rack. Higdon cleared his throat. Nothing unusual.

  The lawyer walked slowly around the room, lifted the mattress off the bed, peered into the empty clothes closet, inspected the far corners. He opened, then shut, the four desk drawers, then the three dresser drawers. Nothing. He squatted to peer under the bed. Not even dust balls. He walked to the window, pulled it open, peered out. Nothing. The fire escape was at the corner of the building, some twenty yards down. He shook his head, pulled the window shut, and went back to the lobby. Seeing him, Kaiser put on his twisted smile. “Find anything?”

  Higdon shrugged. “Not really. But let me just check a couple of points. Friday night, when all this happened, were you at the desk, or was the night clerk here?”

  “It was me,” Kaiser said. “Ed Sawyer was supposed to work, but he claimed he was sick. A man owns a business, what’s he going to do, huh?”

  Higdon was all sympathy. “The buck always stops with the owner, doesn’t it?”

  “You ain’t a-kidding, Bob. Busier’n hell that night—”

  “That’s what Mr. Fitzgerald said. He told me that was why he took the young woman up to the room himself.”

  Kaiser’s face said he wasn’t going to sit still and be accused of neglecting his duties. “He didn’t have to do it. If he could’ve waited a minute or two, Pee Wee would’ve been back, the bellhop. Then him or I would’ve taken her upstairs just fine. But what I think is, he wanted to do it himself—figured once he got her into the room he could stop her crying and get on with whatever his business was. But she must’ve turned him down, or made him some kind of trouble, so he killed her. That’s the way I see it.”

  “That’s a possibility,” Higdon said, smooth and cool as custard. “How long do you think he was up there altogether?”

  “Well, that I don’t know, running back and forth the way I was. I’m betting when he came back down, he watched and waited ’til I was out of the way or not lookin’. Then he ran on out, the little fancy-pants.”

  “Did you see anyone acting funny, John? In the lobby or around the desk?”

  “Funny?” Kaiser gave Higdon the fish eye. “God almighty, didn’t I already tell you I was running my bee-hind off? When do you think I’d have had any time to see funny business?”

  “You saw Mr. Fitzgerald, and thought what he did was a little different.”

  Kaiser slammed a pencil down to the counter. His glasses fell forward to near the end of his nose; his purse-string lips twitched. “Judas Priest, Bob—how many times I gotta tell you I can’t help you any? Now, would you please be so kind as to let a man get his work done? You’ve already taken up more of my time than I can afford.”

  “All right, John. Thanks for letting me look around.”

  Kaiser wiped his lips with a finger, then said, “Don’t thank me, Bob. Thank Bud Hastain.”

  “I did,” said Hig
don. “And I will again.” He tipped his Panama, and turned.

  “Maybe some day you’ll stand on your own two feet,” Kaiser shouted after him. “’Stead of hiding under Bud Hastain’s skirts.”

  Higdon told himself no point getting into a pissing contest with a skunk. Better use of his time to stop at Walter Overstreet’s on the way home, ask a couple of questions.

  ***

  From his bedroom, Isaac heard his dog bark, then a scraping sound from out back of the house. He left off tying his tie, grabbed his old Smith and Wesson from the night-table, tiptoed to the edge of the doorway and flattened himself against the wall, pistol up and ready. Probably just an animal looking for food, but a colored man who wanted to see the next sunrise didn’t take much of anything for granted.

  For the thousandth time he told himself he was a fool to leave all that growth behind his little back yard to shelter any varmint, human or otherwise, that might want to sneak into his place. But when he’d brought Mae here and bought the house for her, she wouldn’t hear of cutting down the trees and clearing the brush. She called it their own private forest, told him it put her in mind of the woods she loved walking through near her childhood house in Kentucky. Eight years now since she died having Belinda, but Isaac still couldn’t bring himself to cut down a single tree.

  One tap, then a second, then Isaac heard the outside door open. He peered around the corner into the kitchen. Emil Alteneder stood in the middle of the room, looking every which way, all the while holding a nasty wooden club at the ready. As he began to move in Isaac’s direction, the colored man leveled the pistol and stepped quickly into the doorway. Alteneder’s eyes bugged at the point-blank Smith and Wesson. He staggered back a step.

  “Drop it,” Isaac said. “Now.”

  Alteneder’s surprise passed quickly. He raised the club. “You ain’t gonna shoot me,” he said. “Nigger shoots a white man, he don’t get further’n the next tree.”