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

by Unknown

  Lippy shrugged. “Lots of people, I guess. Just the same, that doesn’t happen every day. You suppose it’s tied up some way with the blonde’s murder?”

  “I don’t know. I do know I gotta get the hell out of here before the cops come to see who lit the firecracker.”

  The bedroom door opened and a tall, elderly lady with iron gray hair, still pretty, walked into the room in a negligee. Her face was a mask of fear.

  “Lippy, are you all right? What happened?”

  “It’s OK, honey. Go back to bed. And don’t worry. It’s all over now.”

  I moved to the door.

  “If you get any hot ideas, give me a ring at the Perry Hotel on Bush Street. I’ll be registered under the name of Jones. Needless to say, don’t mention I was here.”

  Lippy nodded. “Sorry I got you into this, Pete. I—”

  I looked at the poor old guy standing there with his wife, scared and miserable.

  “Forget it.”

  As I left the apartment I heard sirens screaming in the night. A streetcar was passing, almost empty, and I swung myself on. I got off on Bush Street and registered at the Perry Hotel. I went to my room and flopped on the bed.

  I couldn’t sleep. I lit a cigarette and watched a flashing neon sign play on the ceiling. On and off, on and off. The shadow of the fire escape began to look like a gallows. I swung my feet over the side of the bed.

  The redhead had been lying. About what, I didn’t know. But she had been lying, and she was the missing link. Lippy hadn’t killed the blonde; the redhead probably hadn’t either, but she knew who had. I looked at my watch. It was one a.m.

  The 411 Club was still crowded. The last show was almost over and the redhead was singing. She saw me and faltered on a note. When the song was over and the applause had stopped, she walked swiftly through the cigarette smoke to my table.

  “I thought you’d gone.”

  “I liked your performance so much in the first show that I decided I’d catch the second one.”

  “Yeah.” She sat down again. I was surprised, and wary, but I ordered her a drink. She sipped it carefully, watching me with the clear, green eyes.

  “I get off after the show,” she said finally. “Sometimes this job bores me so much that I feel as if I have to go out afterwards.”

  Well, I’ll be damned, I thought. Little Red Riding Hood asking the wolf in.

  “Is that so?”

  “I guess when you’re off duty you like to go out too?”

  “Sometimes.”

  She looked into my face suddenly. There was fear in her eyes, and an almost pathetic hope.

  “Will you take me somewhere after the show?”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. Someplace for a drink. Anywhere we can have a good time.”

  I thought of the cops crowding the town, working overtime. Looking for me. The redhead was frightened of something, and I wanted to know what it was, but it was no time to start painting the town red.

  “No,” I said. “Not tonight. What’s frightening you?”

  She looked up and laughed. “Frightening me? Don’t be silly. I might ask you the same thing. Or don’t you like redheads?”

  “I like redheads, when they come clean with me. Not when they hide things.”

  She laughed nervously. “Well, this makes the first time in a long while that I’ve asked for a date and been turned down.” She stood up, smiling, but the fear was still in her eyes. “Drop in some day when you’re not working on a case—then I can turn you down.”

  She was off to the dressing room and I was alone. I wondered what had frightened her. Conscience? Maybe she couldn’t bear to be alone. And yet, the strangler had been a man—a woman wouldn’t have had the strength. And the handkerchief in the blonde’s hand—it had been not a woman’s but a man’s handkerchief.

  The handkerchief. It had been clean, freshly ironed. Not a handkerchief that had come out of a hip pocket. A handkerchief that had come out of a breast pocket.

  I ordered another drink.

  Who wears a handkerchief in his breast pocket, nowadays? Flashy dressers. Dudes.

  Dudes. Dude Wallon? But Wallon was dead. At least, the paper had said he was dead. But was he? Who had identified him? The blonde had gone East with him. Had she identified the body? A guy like that, permanently erased from the police files, can start all over again. He can take care of all the people who have anything on him and begin a whole new life. From scratch.

  Two people who had something on Dude were the blonde and Lippy. The Reno murder. And where would Dude go if he came back West, if he returned from the grave? To a girl who had been in love with him—the redhead. He could hide away with her and take care of his old friends, one at a time. The blonde was gone, and somebody had taken a shot at Lippy. With Lippy dead the books would be closed and Dude could breathe freely.

  Except for the redhead.

  The redhead had been frightened. She hadn’t wanted to go home. She’d been trying to tell me something all the time, thinking I was a cop. And I hadn’t listened.

  I shoved my chair away from the table and started for the stage. A waiter barred my way. He said, “No visitors backstage.” I gave him a ten and he stepped aside.

  I walked through the wings and down the corridor. I found a door with a star on it and the name Flame Doreen scrawled beneath it in chalk. I knocked. There was no answer. I opened the door and looked in. The room was a mess, but there was no one there.

  I moved further down the hall and heard voices. I knocked on another door and opened it. There was a moment of silence. The room was filled with the girls from the chorus, in various stages of undress. A luscious young blonde looked at me blandly.

  “Show’s over, mister. Don’t you knock?”

  “I have to find out Miss Doreen’s address.”

  The girls looked at me coldly. I pulled out my wallet and flashed the deputy’s badge. The blonde shrugged.

  “What’s she done now? She lives at the Manchester Arms, on Wright Street.”

  “Thanks. And sorry.” I walked swiftly out the back door and grabbed a taxi.

  The Manchester Arms was a cheap apartment with all the trimmings. I asked the doorman for Miss Doreen’s apartment and he winked at me sympathetically.

  “It’s 3A, brother, but you’re a little late. There’s a guy been up there all day, and he’s still there.”

  “Personal friend of mine,” I said, walking into the elevator.

  I got off at the third floor and wandered down the hall, looking at the door numbers. When I came to 3A I stopped. Voices murmured inside. I put my ear to the door. I couldn’t hear a word. I slipped the Police Special out of my pocket and lifted my hand to ring. Then I heard it—a low, desperate cry: “Dude—no!”

  It was all I needed. I backed against the far wall and launched myself against the door. It was a cheap lock; it snapped easily. I crashed the door open and went on through.

  A big guy, handsome, with a bronzed, hard face and curly blond hair, was leaning over a chair. His face was turned my way, frozen in fear and surprise. His hand flashed toward his coat. As he straightened I glimpsed the redhead lying sprawled on the chair.

  “Hold it,” I said. He hesitated. I stepped toward him and relieved him of a gun from a shoulder holster. The girl on the chair moaned and her eyelids flickered.

  “Not this time, brother,” I said. “The legal limit on murder is one a day.”

  He spit out a curse. I didn’t like the way he did it so I let him have it, backhanded across the mouth. “You don’t make out as well with men as you do with women, do you, Dude?”

  He watched me, his eyes glittering. The redhead sat up, holding her throat.

  “I knew it,” she whispered. “That’s why I didn’t want to come back. I knew it.…”

  “Call the cops, honey,” I said. “Tell ’em it’s Butler. Quick, before I lose control of this gun.”

  I motioned toward Wallon with the gun. “I wish I
had time to work you over, Wallon. I’m afraid the cops are gonna be kind of inhibited. But you’re going to get the gas chamber anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “Try and prove something, buddy. Try it.”

  “Where’s your handkerchief?” I asked. He looked at his breast pocket and turned white. I said: “You should have checked that before you left the blonde. I assume it has laundry marks on it—it shouldn’t be very hard to prove.”

  There was a long silence and then footsteps down the hall. The gray-haired inspector stuck his head through the door. He saw me and whipped out his gun.

  I said, “I’m working late, Inspector. Here’s your man.”

  “Yeah? You’re my man, brother. Put down that gun.”

  I nodded. “Watch him, Inspector. He’s Dude Wallon.” I tossed the gun on the floor.

  The inspector’s eyes bugged at the name. He hesitated.

  I caught a swift movement from Dude. His hand flashed to his hip pocket and an automatic appeared from nowhere. He grabbed at the redhead and yanked her in front of him. “Outa my way,” he whispered. “Outa my way.”

  The inspector’s eyes glinted. Carefully he put away his gun. Wallon moved toward the door, shielding himself behind the girl. My heart sank. If he got away, he’d get me if he had to track me to the end of the world. And as for the redhead—it would be curtains for her.

  Wallon’s face relaxed into a grin. “So long, you,” he said to me. “I’ll be seein’ you again.” He stepped into the hall.

  There was the roar of a forty-five down the hall and Wallon’s face froze incredulously. Slowly he turned, and suddenly crumpled to the floor. Footsteps hurried down the corridor. It was the big cop I’d slugged in the elevator. He kneeled by the corpse and turned it over. He looked up, his face a mask of horror.

  “This isn’t Butler!”

  “That’s right, son,” said the inspector. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just as good.”

  “Better,” I said. “Much better.”

  I turned to the redhead. She was white-faced and shaking like a leaf.

  “Now, honey,” I said. “About that drink you wanted. I know a place.…”

  The Sound of the Shot

  Dale Clark

  RONALD KAYSER (1905–1988), who wrote under the pseudonym Dale Clark, was born in a small town in the Midwest. At various times, he took jobs as a lumberyard worker, reporter, private detective, house-to-house salesman, editor, and creative writing teacher, but remained throughout his life a prolific writer.

  In addition to more than a half dozen novels—Focus on Murder (1943), The Narrow Cell (1944), The Red Rods (1946), Mambo to Murder (1955), A Run for the Money (1956), Death Wore Fins (1959), and Country Coffins (1961)—Clark wrote more than four hundred stories for both the pulps and the more prestigious slick magazines such as Collier’s, Liberty, and This Week.

  Many of his stories are set in Southern California, where he spent most of his writing life. Although he inevitably created a wide range of characters, an unusually high percentage of them have an interest in contemporary technology. A forest ranger’s station is jammed full of highly technical devices; Doc Judson, a detective-cum-criminalist, speaks frequently of the need for scientific methodology, though it is mainly limited to ballistics; the best-named of Clark’s series characters, Highland Park Price (High Price), has amassed a collection of high-tech toys that seldom work because he is too cheap to buy new ones or reputable brands. In these comical private-eye yarns, High Price gouges his clients, frequently using blackmail.

  “The Sound of the Shot” was published in the September 1946 issue.

  The Sound of the Shot

  Dale Clark

  AN O’HANNA NOVELETTE

  Manager Endicott was in a spot—his Hollywood beauty contest had turned into a frame-up flesh show. Someone had brought in a murder package, all wrapped up in a special hand-loaded wildcat cartridge. The movie moguls were muttering, the beauties were bothered, and he was sure the paying guests were saying: “Oh yes, San Alpa—what a lovely place to come and get yourself murdered!”

  CHAPTER ONE

  PIN-UPS ON PARADE

  HE WAS A STUNNING brunette swathed in a form-hugging beach coat, Eva Tarkey. Her eyes were sultry, incensed. She stormed, “I’ve been robbed! Somebody stole the top to my bathing suit! I’m being cheated out of my chance for the movie contract!”

  The girl with her was a stunning redhead named Lola Lofting. She was just as angry. She said: “I was robbed worse. I came to get undressed, and somebody had stolen my entire swim-suit—and I’m the one who was practically a cinch to win the movie contract!”

  Both girls were standing in the San Alpa resort hotel office, telling their troubles to Endicott, the thin-faced, graying manager of the million-dollar California mountain-top spa.

  Endicott reared back in his swivel chair, and made motions like a man fighting bees. “I can’t help it! I can’t be responsible for lost swim-suits. You girls will have to argue that out with Mr. O’Hanna here—he’s the head of the stolen goods department.”

  Mike O’Hanna was the house dick. He pointed this out. “I’m hired to be a hotel detective. This pin-up parade happens to be your pet baby.”

  This was true. Endicott had dreamed up the bathing beauty contest as a publicity stunt. He figured half the Sunday papers in the land would run rotogravure shots of the lucky lass who got crowned Queen of San Alpa. It would tie in nicely with the management’s advertising campaign to extol the colossal San Alpa golf course, warmed salt-water plunges, and miles of scenic horseback and hiking trails. Eventually, it would lure flocks of well-heeled tourists into the de luxe fifteen-dollar-a-day-on-up hotel rooms.

  Moreover, Endicott had foreseen this publicity stunt would cost hardly anything. San Alpa’s clientele included lots of Hollywood film folks who came up for the week-ends, and Endicott had buttonholed Gus Lambert, the Mogul Films producer, and talked him into providing a thirteen-week contract for the winning girl. Endicott had argued astutely that a lot of free publicity in the newspapers and news-reels wouldn’t hurt Mogul Films, either.

  Gus Lambert had fallen for it, had even consented to act as judge of the beauty and talent on display. Endicott planned to have an afternoon promenade in swim-suits around the outdoor pool, and then in the evening the contestants could don low-cut gowns and go on as a special attraction instead of the usual Palomar Room floorshow. That way, the management would gain two entertainments for the paying guests.

  As for the girls, naturally it wouldn’t be necessary to hire them to try to win a crack at a movie career. Several dozen ambitious lovelies, Endicott had hoped, would be glad to pay their own expenses to San Alpa.

  That’s what he had hoped. What he actually got was several hundred of them. From early morning, girls had been unloading out of buses, or chugging up in jalopies, or arriving as hitchhikers. It had been necessary to close off one of the big dining-rooms and convert it into an emergency dressing-room where two hundred contestants could primp, powder and change into their costumes.

  But it hadn’t been possible to lock them up in that room until the three p.m. parade started, of course. What happened was, they had parked their overnight cases or suitcases in the dressing-room and then turned themselves loose on the lobby, the grounds and the golf course. Quite a few of them had brought picnic lunches, littering the practically hand-manicured lawns with waxed paper and Dixie cups. Others had just trusted to luck, figuring some of the gold-plated, male paying guests would be glad to buy a girl a lunch.

  Endicott had heard complaints about the lunch papers being wind-wafted over the golf course. He had listened to other complaints from the female paying guests—the idea of turning San Alpa over to a flock of painted hussies, common car-hops or worse, making eyes at decent women’s husbands and fiancés and sons in the lobby! There had been complaints about chewing gum parked on the hotel furniture, too.

  And now this—this stolen swim-suit business
…

  Endicott had taken about all he could take. He glared at O’Hanna, said: “O.K., it was my idea, but you don’t have to rub it in! You’ll have to attend to these minor details, Mike. This thing’s due to start in fifteen minutes, and I have to see Gus Lambert, I have to—”

  The redheaded Lola Lofting cut in: “Yeah, and what about me? What happens if my swim-suit isn’t found in the next fifteen minutes?”

  Endicott shrugged. “You’ll have to drop out of the contest, that’s all. You certainly can’t take your place in the parade without a bathing suit on.”

  “That’s what you think.” Her voice was deadly.

  Endicott was appalled. “Why, you wouldn’t dare—you couldn’t—Mike, you gotta stop her!”

  Eva Tarkey tossed her brunet head. “Maybe she won’t dare, but I’m telling you—there’ll be no beauty contest today unless I’m in it.”

  O’Hanna’s Irish-gray eyes hardened a trifle. In the swank, snooty elegance of San Alpa, an old-style hard-hatted lobby cop would have been as out of place as muskets in a modernized army. O’Hanna wore casual flannels like any paying guest, and could have passed as a vacationing playboy—until trouble started.

  He said: “Let’s drop the melodrama, you’re not being screen-tested for a B picture yet. Suppose you just tell me what happened, and I’ll go to work on it.”

  “How do we know what happened?” the redhead griped. “We left our stuff in the dressing-room, and when we came back it was gone—swiped, so we couldn’t enter the contest.”

  The brunette’s dark eyes gleamed. “And, big boy, I meant what I said. I paid bus fare all the way down from San Francisco, and either I’m in the parade—or the whole damn thing is coming to a quick, sudden stop.”

  This time he ignored the threat, used the opening instead. “You’re from San Francisco, too?” O’Hanna asked the redhead.

  Lola Lofting denied it. “No, I’m a Diego girl.”

  “You two’d never met before? So it probably wasn’t a case of somebody trying to get even with the pair of you,” O’Hanna mused. “Well, come on.”