Die Laughing: 5 Comic Crime Novels

by Steve Brewer

  When he was certain no one was watching him, he crossed the street. Then he began strolling casually toward the Dunleavy house. Before he got there, he took a look all around him, then ducked around the side of the house to the back.

  I got out of my car and crossed the street. I walked quickly down to the Dunleavy house. As I walked by the far corner, I glanced in the direction my buddy had gone. There was no sign of him. He had disappeared around back.

  I didn’t want the guy to see me, but I sure as hell wanted to know what he was trying to do. I figured the backyards of the houses must all connect, so I walked past the next house and then detoured into its backyard.

  There were fences, as I’d figured, but you could see over ’em and through ’em. Two fences away, there was my buddy the Weasel, standing on his tiptoes and peering into a back window of the Dunleavy house.

  I stood there and watched. I hoped nobody would come out the back door of the house and yell at me. Fortunately, nobody did. I wouldn’t have minded if someone had come out the back door and yelled at the Weasel. In fact, it might have been even kind of fun. But nobody did that, either.

  After a while, something must have happened. I could tell, ’cause the Weasel started getting excited. He stopped looking in the window and started looking all around him. He spotted an apple box under the back porch. He pulled it out, dragged it over to the window. He stood up on it. I saw him take something out of his jacket pocket. He held it up to his eye, which was now level with the window.

  Now I’ve had bum hunches before, and my luck as a gambler hadn’t been too good this trip, but I’d have been willing to bet you a nickel he was taking pictures.

  After a while, the Weasel stuck the presumed camera back in his jacket, hopped down from the box, stashed the box back under the porch, and scuttled out from behind the house.

  I crept along the side of my house to the front. Just as I got there, the Weasel came darting across the street to his car. He hopped in and pulled out.

  I had to run to my car, too. The Weasel was going at a good clip, and I didn’t want to let him get away.

  The Weasel got onto 30 East, heading for downtown Atlantic City. He drove to Atlantic Avenue, pulled into a meter, and got out. I pulled up next to a fire plug half a block away and watched. Either there was time on the meter, or the Weasel was willing to take a chance, ’cause he didn’t put any money in it. He got out of the car carrying what looked to me like a camera bag, and went into a Photomat.

  Thinking about the meter started associations in my mind, made me realize I was only a few blocks away from Harold’s office. I wondered if he was in it.

  The Weasel came back out of the Photomat, got in his car and pulled out. I pulled out and tagged along behind.

  In midtown stop-and-go traffic there was nothing suspicious about my being right behind him, so I was able to pull up close and get his license number. I wrote it down.

  The Weasel kept on going out Atlantic Avenue. I had no idea where he was going, and I didn’t really care, unless it was back to the Dunleavy house. The direction he was going said he wasn’t. Every block seemed to confirm the opinion. I followed him until Atlantic Avenue turned into Ventnor, followed him another twenty blocks, and let it go at that.

  I turned around and drove back to Absecon, to the Dunleavy house. The tree surgeon’s truck was gone. The station wagon was still there.

  I had a notion to go up and ring the front doorbell. “Excuse me, miss, I’m taking a survey, and—” I quickly put it out of my mind. MacAullif didn’t want that, and I didn’t want that. The low profile, the man on the periphery, that’s me.

  I turned around, drove back to Atlantic City, and took up my station in front of Harold’s office.

  I called Rosenberg & Stone. Wendy/Cheryl was hopping mad. She bawled me out for a couple of minutes, then put me on hold. A minute later, Richard Rosenberg’s voice exploded in my ear.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he screamed. “I tell you to call in, I want you to call in! You don’t do it, you’re losing me business, you’re costing me money, you’re a drain on the firm—”

  He went on in that vein for some time, then gave me back to Wendy/Cheryl to get my assignments.

  There were none. My not calling in had had no effect on anything. It was just the principle of the thing.

  I hung up and called MacAullif.

  “Anything stirring?” he asked.

  “Maybe a little. I want you to trace a license plate number for me.

  “You got something?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not what you want.”

  “What?”

  “It appears I’m not the only game in town.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I think there’s another detective on the case.”

  “What!?”

  “I think there’s—”

  “I heard you, I heard you. What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I spotted another tail.”

  “You’re kidding! On Harold?”

  “No. On your daughter.”

  “What the hell!”

  “I don’t make the news, I just report it. The best I can determine, there is a private detective following your daughter. He tailed her this morning when she took the kid to school. He kept her under surveillance until she went home. At present he seems to have quit.”

  I couldn’t tell MacAullif about the pictures and the tree surgeon. I didn’t have the heart. I know he’s a cop and all that, but he’s also a father, and I figured there’s some things a father just doesn’t want to hear.

  “So what’s the idea?” said MacAullif.

  “I don’t know. I’m just reporting the facts. The thing is, I figure the guy must be a private dick, and I’d like to confirm it and tag who he is. So can you trace the license number?”

  “It’s a Jersey plate?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That makes it harder.”

  “Sure, but you got connections. I’m sure you can do it. Just pull a few strings. It’s your daughter, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I know, I know,” MacAullif said. “Yeah, I can do it. It’s just I don’t want anyone knowing about it.”

  “O.K., get on it,” I said. “I’ll call you back in half an hour.”

  “I don’t know if I can do it that fast.”

  “Give it a try.”

  MacAullif gave it a good one. When I called back a half an hour later he had the information. The car was registered to a Joseph T. Steerwell. MacAullif gave me the guy’s address, and it was the direction I’d seen him driving off in. He also gave me his phone number, height, weight, birth date—the whole shmear. The description fit close enough. It was the Weasel all right.

  And he was a licensed private detective.

  10.

  I MUST ADMIT (and often do) that as a private detective I leave a lot to be desired. I am not the swiftest thing in the world. In fact, I am often pretty slow on the uptake, and I have a problem sometimes putting two and two together and making four. So I must confess, it was not until after I got off the phone with MacAullif that I got an idea any other detective would have had years ago.

  The address MacAullif had given me for the Weasel would be his home address.

  Not the address of his office.

  I walked over to Tennessee Avenue and went to the building where I’d trailed Harold the day before. I went inside and looked at the call board. Sure enough, there on the fourth floor, hidden in among all the lawyers and stockbrokers and real estate agents, was the Minton Detective Agency.

  I got in the elevator and went up to the fourth floor. I walked down the hall and found 421. It looked like a detective agency. It had a frosted glass door like the ones you see in the movies. My office in Manhattan has a door of solid wood. I always think of it as one of my failings.

  I pushed the door open and walked in. I found myself in a small reception area with doors leading off fro
m it. A matronly secretary was sitting at a desk typing something. She continued typing without looking up. I figured she was just trying to get to the end of the line. I waited.

  I waited long enough for her to have gotten to the end of several lines. When she started in on a new paragraph, I said, “Excuse me.”

  She murmured, “Ah, shit!” grabbed and eraser, and glared at me. “Yes,” she hissed.

  I gave her my best smile. “Joe Steerwell?”

  “Out for the day,” she snapped, and immediately turned to attack the page in the typewriter.

  I went out the door, wondering if the secretary could be considered an improvement over Wendy and Cheryl or just a change. I decided I would have to observe her for accuracy before I could make a proper judgment.

  I also went out with my obvious theory having been tested and having proven true.

  Harold Dunleavy had hired the Weasel to spy on his wife.

  I went back to my post outside Harold’s office and called MacAullif.

  He was surprised to hear from me again so soon.

  “Hey, I’m interested and all that,” he said, “but I happen to have three homicide investigations going. What do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything. I just thought you’d like to know. There’s every indication that yesterday afternoon your son-in-law hired this detective Steerwell to spy on your daughter.”

  “What do you mean, every indication?”

  I told MacAullif what had happened. He wasn’t pleased.

  “Why didn’t you check this out yesterday?” he said, irritably.

  “I didn’t know about it yesterday.”

  “You knew he went into the building.”

  “It was a building of stockbrokers. It was logical that was where he was going.”

  “You can’t always go by what’s logical. You have to consider all possibilities.”

  “How? I couldn’t get in the elevator with him. You didn’t want him to see me.”

  “You should have read the whole call board.”

  “I thought I did.”

  “You thought wrong. You’ve been bitching to me about how nothing’s happening and how bored you are. Here’s the one thing that happened that you could have checked on, and you didn’t do it.”

  I was getting pissed off. “I’m sorry,” I said. I didn’t sound sorry. “Perhaps you should hire a real detective, in whom you’d have more confidence. I believe I suggested that to begin with. In case you decide to, I would recommend the Minton Agency. They have the advantage of already being familiar with the case.”

  There was a pause.

  “I’m sorry,” MacAullif said. “It’s personal, and I’m not thinking rationally. It’s just that if I’d known about this, I could have called Barbara and warned her.”

  “How? What would you have said? What would you have told her? How could you have known?”

  “I don’t know. I told you I’m not thinking rationally. So, this guy Harold hired—this Steerwell—how long was he on the job?”

  “He was there when I got there at seven-fifty this morning. He knocked off around noon.”

  “You sure he’s not still lurking around?”

  “Pretty sure. I tailed him out of town. He was heading in the direction of the address you gave me, so I assume he went home. I’ll double-check, though.”

  “Do that. Now this morning—you’re sure nothing happened?”

  I hated to mislead MacAullif, but I felt I had to. And it wasn’t just his being a father and my not wanting to hurt him and all that. You see, I have another serious failing as a private detective: I hate being a tattle-tale.

  I didn’t want to tell on Barbara.

  “Nothing significant.”

  “That’s strange,” MacAullif said.

  “What is?”

  “If nothing happened, why would Steerwell knock off at noon? It doesn’t make any sense. It only makes sense if something happened and he got what he came for.”

  MacAullif was back in form. And just when I didn’t need him to be.

  “Maybe Harold only hired him till noon.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It might from Harold’s standpoint. We don’t have all the facts.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” MacAullif said. “I should call and warn her.”

  “If you’re gonna do that, you might as well let me ring the front doorbell and say, ‘Hi, I’m the private dick hired by your father to keep an eye on you and your husband.’ ’Cause if you tell her, you gotta tell her how you know. And if you can come up with a good enough reason aside from the truth, you win the Golden Turkey award.”

  MacAullif exhaled into the phone. “I see your point.”

  “So, would you like me to talk to her?”

  “No.”

  “Then I wouldn’t call her. But it’s up to you. It’s your daughter and your case. I’m just along for the ride.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” MacAullif said. “You’re doing me a favor. I appreciate it. I’m sorry if I seem ungrateful.”

  “Forget it. The thing is, what do you want me to do?”

  There was a pause. Then MacAullif said, “Just what you’ve been doing.”

  I refrained from dancing for joy.

  “Except now you’ve got two jobs: keeping tabs on Harold and keeping this private dick away from my daughter.”

  “The latter might require personal contact.”

  “Don’t let it.”

  “I may have no choice.”

  “All right. But call me first.”

  “I may not have time.”

  “Make time.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I may run into a situation where I have to either let your daughter walk into a trap or warn her. It could require an instant decision. So I need yours now.”

  “That’s bullshit,” MacAullif said, irritably. “How can I answer that? It would depend on the circumstances. You say a trap. What kind of trap? How serious would the consequences be? You see what I mean?”

  “I see,” I said, innocently. “You’re telling me to use my best judgment.”

  There was a long pause. “Yes, of course I am,” MacAullif said. “You can’t imagine how stupid this makes me feel, not being able to think straight. Yeah, use your best judgment, and let me know the minute anything breaks.”

  I assured MacAullif I would and hung up the phone.

  Well, great, I thought. Now I have two draggy, impossible jobs instead of one. Plus I’m holding out on MacAullif and he probably suspects it. Plus the fact that I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m going to do.

  Aside from that, it’s going great.

  I got in the car and drove out to the Dunleavy house. The station wagon was in the garage, and there was no sign of the Weasel.

  I drove back to Harold’s office. Some inconsiderate person had taken my parking space. I found another one a half a dozen meters down the block. I dropped the inevitable quarter in the meter, making my usual futile vow to get dimes, and walked back to the pay phone on the corner.

  It was three o’clock, and I wasn’t looking for any more trouble. I called Rosenberg & Stone.

  It was a good thing I did. Wendy/Cheryl had a new case for me. An actual sign-up, right in Atlantic City. Wendy/Cheryl was vague on the specifics of the case, but it seemed a Floyd Watson on Connecticut Avenue had broken his leg, and some friend of his had called in and asked for a lawyer. Floyd had no phone, but he’d be home all day, and Wendy/Cheryl had assured the friend that I’d be right over.

  I didn’t want to go and leave Harold unguarded, but a quick look at the map showed Connecticut Avenue to be only a dozen blocks away. I figured I could zip over and sign the guy up before Harold got off work.

  I got in my car and drove over. The address turned out to be on a block of row-houses in terrible repair. People were sitting out on the old wooden porches of most of them, and children were playing out front.

  There was no one in front of mine
, and I could see why. It was easily the worst of the lot. The front of the house was a wreck. It wasn’t just a question of peeling paint, as it had been at Raymon Ortega’s. Boards were coming off the wall here. The windows were nonexistent—there was nothing left, not even the frame. The door was also gone. Well, at least I’d have no problem getting in.

  I went up on the little front porch. Half of it had rotted away. The remaining boards were splintered and cracked. I made my way cautiously to the door and peered in.

  The hallway was full of rubbish. It was hard to believe anyone lived here. It was also hard to believe such a place existed, right under the shadow of the casinos in the city of gold.

  I picked my way through the rubble to the stair. Wendy/Cheryl had said second floor. There were no lights and it was hard to see. The only light came from the front door. It was still enough to see that the stairs were a disaster. All of the steps were cracked and one of them was actually missing. There was no handrail.

  Going up the stairs was an adventure. I had my briefcase, so I only had one free hand. I leaned against the side wall, and made my way up the stairs. I was careful to keep my feet near the wall, where presumably the risers were, and away from the suspicious-looking middle of the steps.

  I reached the top of the stairs. There was an open door in front of me leading to a small room in the back of the house. Sunlight was streaming through the window. Just to one side, out of the glare of the light, was a mattress on the floor.

  An old black man lay on the mattress, his right leg encased in a hip-length cast. His eyes were closed, and his face was contorted in pain.

  “Floyd Watson?” I said.

  He opened his eyes and saw me. His eyes took on some light. He actually raised up on one elbow.

  “You a doctor?” he grunted.

  “No,” I said. “I’m from the lawyers’ office.”

  “Aw, shit,” he moaned, and sank back on the bed again.

  It wasn’t the most cordial greeting I’ve ever gotten, but I wasn’t about to fault a man in pain.