The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  Sam made muffled moaning sounds like a man who has bet next week’s pay on the favorite and watched him run last.

  “And now there’s somebody else up here, some nut with a gun who thinks I did the killing.… No, I never saw either of ’em before. You better phone Lieutenant Murphy.”

  I hung up and the tall man and I stood there looking at one another. With his left hand he reached in his pocket and got out an ivory-tipped cigarette and a gold lighter and lit up. He never took his eyes off me and he never moved the gun.

  Someone knocked on the door. I thought it was the house dick. The tall man said, “Come in,” but the door was already opening, a woman coming through, saying, “Art, darling, I’ve—” and then she stumbled over the body.

  She screamed. It wasn’t a loud cry. It was choked, like a man trying to yell after a horse has kicked him in the belly. Her eyes got too big for their sockets and I thought they were going to spill over. Her face got so white the make-up looked like smeared blood. She staggered back against the wall.

  The tall man snapped at her, “Whom were you looking for?” You could be certain he said “whom” because that’s the way he pronounced words.

  The woman didn’t say anything. She just stared at the corpse as though she was going to be sick.

  “You were looking for Mr. McCracken?”

  She looked up at him, and then at me. She was breathing hard. She was still frightened, but her face wasn’t so twisted with fear anymore and I began to notice that she was good-looking, very good-looking indeed, if you like redheads, and I do. Blondes, brunettes, and redheads. She was a little tall for me, slender, but full where she should be. She had a kind of bright, show-off beauty, and my guess was she’d been a chorus girl.

  “Yes,” she said after a while. “David McCracken.”

  “You’re lying!” the tall man snapped. He sounded damn sure of himself.

  And about that time the house dick came in, and a few minutes later Lieutenant Murphy and a whole flock of boys from Headquarters.

  Now the fun would begin. Fun for everyone but me.

  The tall man pointed at me and told them, “I knocked on the door and entered and found this man with the bloody knife in his hand.”

  urphy is a big man with pink cheeks and pale, heavy-lidded eyes, and a brother-in-law who is a politician, or else he never would have got on the force, no less be a lieutenant. When he looked at me I knew he was still remembering a sure thing I had given him a couple of weeks back. The sure thing had run fourth. (That’s the hell of being connected with the track; persons keep after you to put them onto something, and if you don’t they hate you for a cheapskate, and if you do—and it comes in—they forget you; and if it doesn’t come home, they say you touted them wrong intentionally. Hell, if I could find one really sure thing a season, I wouldn’t be working for a living.)

  I said, “Now look, Pete. I never saw this guy on the floor before in my life. I didn’t kill him. Why don’t you ask this tall bird what he’s doing here and what he’s carrying a gun for?”

  The tall man said his name was Linden Blumberry and he was from Boston. “I am Mr. David McCracken’s lawyer and the administrator of his estate. For several weeks I have been trying to persuade Mr. McCracken to come to Boston to complete the sale of some bonds of his for which I have obtained an offer. For some strange reason he has refused to come there. So I came to him.”

  “Carrying a gun?” I said.

  He looked down a thin nose at me before he decided to answer. “And a certified check for five thousand dollars to complete the sale. Of course I carried a gun.”

  I told Murphy about McCracken’s niece, and how I had come up to his room and knocked on the door, which was ajar, I said, and which swung open when I knocked; and from there I went on with the exact truth.

  Murphy snorted and the fingerprint man said, from the next room, “Only one set of prints on this knife, I think, Lieutenant. I can make sure after I get it down to Headquarters.” And that set would be mine!

  The M.E. said the dead man had been killed sometime within the last forty minutes, and Murphy looked at me and nodded his head.

  The red-headed girl said her name was Nell Parker, and she had known McCracken in New York, had written to him occasionally. She had come south for the winter, arriving in New Orleans that very day, and had called on McCracken.

  Both she and Mr. Linden Blumberry said they had never seen the dead man before.

  Murphy had the hotel manager and Sam, the night clerk, in the room by now. Sam looked worried. “I didn’t give anybody the key to Mr. McCracken’s room,” he kept saying. “I don’t know how the door could have been opened.”

  “You didn’t have any idea that Sandy Rice was coming up here?” Murphy asked.

  “No, sir. There’ve been lots of persons phoning and asking about Mr. McCracken lately, but I just told them he wasn’t in. I would have told this gentleman,” he nodded toward Linden Blumberry, “when he asked for Mr. McCracken’s room number, but he walked off before I could explain.”

  “What did you think Sandy Rice wanted with McCracken?”

  “Well, Sandy used to play poker up here sometimes, I think. I—” Sam began to stammer; and Murphy started looking at me with his mouth grinning and his pale eyes cold.

  “Gambling,” he said. He had it all worked out now. Somehow the gambling would furnish a motive; and I’d practically been caught in the act of murder. They’d make a cinch case out of it. I’d have a chance like a three-legged mule in a match race with Johnstown.

  “Damn it!” I said. “Let’s get Mary up here and she’ll tell you—”

  “Mary?” Murphy asked.

  “McCracken’s niece, you idiot. She’s downstairs in the lobby. She’ll tell you what I was doing.”

  He told the other cops to keep their eyes on Blumberry and the red-headed girl and the corpse, and we would be right back. We rode down on the elevator. Pete said, “I lost twenty bucks on that pig you touted me on. I hope to Gawd you try something cute.”

  There wasn’t any need to argue with him. He wasn’t much better than a half-wit anyway.

  We started across the lobby. I couldn’t see Mary anywhere. “Where is she?” Pete said.

  A man and woman in evening clothes passed us. The woman wore one of these dresses without any shoulder straps at all—the kind that looks like it has already started to fall off and is halfway gone. Pete said, “My Gawd! Look at that!” and turned to watch.

  It was then I saw another couple going out the street door at the far end of the lobby. Mary and David McCracken! I started to run after them.

  Halfway across the lobby, I heard Pete bellow, just a roar of sound at first, changing into, “Hey! Hey, you!” and of all things, “Halt!”

  Mary and Dave McCracken were already out of sight, but I wasn’t going to lose them. I kept going.

  I was running, five yards from the door, the Negro doorman staring at me and at Pete, who was following across the lobby. All at once the Negro’s face went a sort of ash gray and he went straight up and came down running. At the same time a hole popped in the door—and then I heard the shot. I hadn’t thought that idiot Pete would shoot, but now I was going too fast to stop. The second bullet whined at my ear as I plunged down the steps.

  A quarter block down the lighted street I saw McCracken helping Mary into an automobile. She had stopped, half in and half out, and was staring back toward the sound of the shots. I yelled, “Hey! Wait!”

  McCracken shoved her. He shoved her so hard she must have bounced against the other side of the car. He dived after her.

  I saw I couldn’t catch him on foot, so I angled for one of the cabs lined up in front of the hotel. Behind me there was a crash as Pete Murphy came through the hotel door, waving his gun. The driver of the cab I was going for took one look and went out the other side and I jumped under the wheel. I got the taxi going just as that half-witted cop let go with another bullet. I heard it smack into the r
ear of the car.

  There was only one car between McCracken and me. I figured I’d catch him easy enough. By this time I was mad as hell, getting shoved around and accused of murder and shot at. I put my foot down hard on the gas.

  The streetlight was green, and McCracken went straight across Canal into Dauphine Street. I knew I had him. He was going the wrong way on a one-way street. The first block was almost empty of traffic, but if he turned, he’d have to slow down; and if he went straight, he’d jam up in traffic.

  And then my motor gave a couple of sputs and died. Pete Murphy had shot a hole in the gas tank. My luck with McCracken was holding steady. Less than a block behind me cops were blowing whistles and running and waving guns and people were yelling.

  I left the taxi where it stopped. In fact, I left it before it stopped.

  he joint I picked was called The Purple Door. I had never been there but once, and nobody knew me, and they had closed booths along the rear wall. I went past the bar, across what they called a dance floor where a three-piece Negro orchestra was blowing its lungs out, and into a booth. I sat down and one of the house girls sat down opposite me.

  “Run along,” I said. “I got trouble.”

  “You waiting for one of the other girls?”

  “I’m waiting for a drink.”

  “Well, you want to buy me one, don’t you?”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t. I just want to sit here and do some deep thinking.”

  A waiter stuck his head in the booth and the girl said, “Hey, Doug, this guy don’t want to buy me a drink.”

  “What’s he want?” Doug demanded. “Hold his own hand? You can do that outside, squirt.”

  I was deciding that with the cops looking for me I would be less conspicuous in the French Quarter with a girl than without one, so I said, “All right, I’ll buy her a drink. What you want, baby?”

  “I know what she wants,” Doug said. “What about you?”

  “A Roman punch.”

  “A what?”

  “If the bartender don’t know how to make it, tell him to look it up. He can read, can’t he?”

  Doug spat out of one corner of his mouth. “What difference’s it to you? You ain’t big enough to complain.”

  He went off and the girl said, “It’s a cold night, ain’t it?” and I didn’t say anything. I had a lot of hard thinking to do. I had a murder charge hanging over me and I was guilty of stealing a taxi. I had run away from the scene of the crime and Pete Murphy would be sure I was guilty; once he got me in jail, that would be the end of it. From there to the hot seat would be shorter than the road from the betting ring to the poorhouse. Once they got me in jail it would all be over—so I had to keep out of jail and learn who had murdered the man in the hotel room— and I didn’t even know who the murdered man was!

  The waiter brought our drinks. He looked at my Roman punch and at me and shook his head and went away again. The girl said, “My Lord! What’s in there beside a fruit salad?”

  “A mixture. Raspberry syrup, lemon juice, orange juice, curaçao, rum, and brandy. I like the brandy.”

  “I been working in this joint for six months,” she said, “and this is the first time I ever thought I got the best of it by drinking this colored water they serve us girls.”

  I said, “Uh,” and went back to figuring what I had ahead of me. I couldn’t go home, because the cops would be watching the place, and I couldn’t go to the track tomorrow because they’d be there too. I tried to think of Mary’s last name and I couldn’t remember it—and she hadn’t told me which hotel she was staying in. But obviously the thing to do was find her and McCracken, because I felt sure McCracken would at least know the corpse in his hotel room. But how to find McCracken?

  The waiter stuck his head in the door. “You ready for a drink, buddy? That ain’t a park bench you’re setting on.”

  The girl said, “I’ll take another one.”

  “A brandy flip,” I said.

  The waiter brought it and when I took a sip the girl said, “You’re drunker than I thought you were; you wouldn’t drink that thing sober.”

  “I like it. There’s nothing in it but hot ale and egg and sugar and nutmeg and brandy.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You’re one of these straight whiskey drinkers, huh?”

  I said, “I love to buy you whiskey, or that colored water they serve you girls for whiskey. But I’d love it better if you kept quiet. I got some thinking to do.”

  “It’s oke with me. I get paid by the drink.”

  “It’s a wonder that pink water don’t rot your stomach out,” I said, and then went back to my thinking. I tried to remember everything that had ever happened to me which had any connection with David McCracken. It was a dismal list, all bad. I tried to remember everything that had happened tonight from the time Mary rang my doorbell and asked if I could find her uncle. I thought about this a while and said to the girl:

  “Excuse me, baby, but I got to make a phone call. Just wait for me.”

  The Negro orchestra was blowing so loud it shook the phone booth, but I finally got Sam, the hotel clerk. He was an inquisitive cuss, and I figured that by this time he would know everything the police did. I asked him if the cops had identified the corpse.

  “Sure,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “You just answer questions and one of these days I’ll give you a winner.”

  He said the stiff was identified as a Roscoe Jancey, a member of a New York brokerage firm.

  “How much money did he have on him?” I asked.

  “Fourteen bucks and twenty cents. But at the St. Charles—that’s where he was staying—he’d put five hundred in the safe.”

  “Did he have any big certified checks on him, or in the safe?”

  “There’s none listed,” Sam said. “What’s your idea?”

  “That lanky Boston lawyer, Linden Blumberry, brought down a big check for McCracken. And you said the dead man was a broker. I thought maybe he’d brought one too.”

  Sam was quiet a moment before he said, “He didn’t bring the one Mr. Blumberry had. That was on a Boston firm and had to be countersigned by Blumberry himself.”

  “Not that one,” I said. “But there may be some damn fool who wanted to steal the one he did bring.” And I hung up and went back to the booth and finished my brandy flip.

  The waiter stuck his head in and looked at the empty glass, and then at me with some new respect. He said, “Little man, what now?”

  “A metropolitan cocktail.”

  The girl said, “When you make mine this time, use the big eyedropper to put the liquor in my water. I got to have something to help me stand up under this guy’s conversation. I swear to Gawd he’s about to talk my ear off.”

  Doug brought the drinks back and put mine gently on the table. “I’ll bring the lilies with the next one,” he said. The guy underestimated me.

  “You don’t have to worry as long as I stick to straight brandy,” I said. “I always stick to brandy when I’m drinking fairly steady.”

  “Oh,” the girl said. “So that’s straight brandy?”

  “With gum syrup, caroni bitters, and French vermouth thrown in,” the waiter said. “The bartender’s sprained his back looking under the shelf for bottles that ain’t had the dust off ’em since he bought this place.” He closed the booth door and went away.

  The girl said, “How’d you ever learn the names of all them drinks? You read ’em in a book somewhere? Or’d you used to be a bartender?”

  “I used to be a jockey,” I said. “I was raised around horses; I never had more than two bits at a time until I was sixteen and started riding; and all at once I was in the big money. Of course, after three years I was too heavy and out of the money again, but when I had it, I had plenty. I had to train most of the time, but on Saturday nights I’d go out with the other jockeys and, because we didn’t know any better, we’d order whatever looked the fanciest and cost the most. I got to where I liked
the things.”

  She said, “I been drinking this pink water a long time, but I ain’t got to like it yet.”

  “Won’t they let you drink anything else?”

  “Yeah, if the customer’ll buy it. But this is almost all profit and I get a bigger cut off one of these than off something costs more. Besides, you can drink these all night.”

  That reminded me that I couldn’t sit here gossiping all night, so I started figuring on my problem again. But I didn’t get anywhere. I wanted to find McCracken and I didn’t know how to go about it … until about fifteen minutes later, when I got my first break. The door of the booth opened and there was the rat-faced private detective named Dud Harris, the same guy who’d been beside me at the track the first time I ever saw McCracken.

  He grinned and showed his rat teeth and said, “I am a very smart detective, Sandy. I am indeed the smartest detective in Lousiana. I find you in ten minutes when all the cops in New Orleans are sitting around waiting for you in other places. I am very smart indeed.” He was very pleased with himself.

  “If you’re so damn smart,” I said, “why can’t you see I’ve got company?” There wasn’t any sense in spreading the news that the cops were looking for me.

  “Do not worry about her. My car is outside, so let us depart. I have news for you.” I’m not lying; that’s the way he talked. In Omaha once I saw an amateur play where the characters talked the way Dud Harris did, but, in addition, Dud always had his pointed teeth sticking down below his narrow, mustached lip. He was one of these people you want to sock without knowing why. But he was smart, and if he said he had news, it was probably worthwhile. Anything right then was worth trying.

  e drove down St. Louis to Canal and out toward Lake Pontchartrain. I asked how he’d found me.

  “I have been talking with our mutual friend, the night clerk, Sam. He told me you had phoned.”

  “I didn’t tell him where I was.”

  “No. But Sam is a very observing young man, though not smart. He said you were calling from an establishment which had a very loud and raucous band. I concluded it would not be any of the places you frequent, because you feared the police would be looking for you there. And yet I thought you would be in the Quarter. I found you in the third dive I investigated.”