by Craig Rice
“Oh, he’s gone,” Bingo said. “We bought the place from him, my partner and I. I’m Mr. Riggs, and this is Mr. Kusak. You must be one of our neighbors. Nice of you to call.” Suddenly his eyes narrowed. “What’s that you said about your turkeys?”
“These,” the visitor said, waving a hand toward the turkey yard. “These here turkeys. My turkeys. I just came up with the truck to start moving ’em. Gus ain’t been looking after ’em right.”
“You must be mistaken,” Bingo said. A cold, unpleasant feeling was beginning to spread outward from the pit of his stomach. “We just bought these turkeys. From—Gus.”
The red-faced man blinked. “Gus couldn’t of sold you no turkeys,” he said, “because Gus didn’t own no turkeys to sell. All he owns is the shanty and about half an acre, and that ain’t rightfully his, he just come and lived there. Never been much account, Gus ain’t.”
“Maybe we’d better talk this over,” Bingo said. He avoided Handsome’s eyes. “Have a cigar, Mr.—”
“Thanks, I will. Name’s Halvorsen, Chris Halvorsen.” He bit off the end of the cigar. “How come Gus sold you them turkeys when he didn’t own them turkeys in the first place?”
“That’s what I’m beginning to wonder,” Bingo said. He was beginning to know the answer, too. “But my partner here is a witness. This Gus sold us the place and five hundred turkeys for a thousand dollars. He said they’d sell for ten dollars apiece in a few weeks.”
Chris Halvorsen stared at him, and then began to laugh. He laughed louder than Bingo had ever heard anyone laugh in his life. He laughed until he coughed, and then coughed until he cried. He slapped his huge thighs, and wrapped his arms around his massive chest.
“Something must be very funny,” Bingo said coldly.
“In the first place,” Halvorsen said, “if them turkeys fetch more’n two, three dollars apiece when they’re full grown, it’ll be a good price. In the second place there ain’t five hundred, there’s only about two hundred. In the third place, they’re my turkeys anyhow, Gus was just looking after ’em.” He choked, and mopped his red face, “You city fellas!”
Bingo and Handsome looked at each other for a long moment. Bingo looked at the maroon roadster, parked behind the shanty. Well, they still had the car, and about a hundred and eighty dollars, and the calfskin luggage. They could make it to Hollywood. Everybody made a bad investment once in a while.
“That Gus!” Chris Halvorsen finished wiping his face and stuffed the handkerchief into his back pocket. He shook his head, and drew a long breath.
“We better all drive into Thursday,” he said. “We better go talk to the sheriff.”
CHAPTER THREE
Henry Judson, the sheriff of Thursday County, was a small, thin, gray-haired man with a rooster neck and a rasping voice. He wore a blue-serge suit which was a little too large for him and a wide-brimmed gray felt hat. His office was in the first floor of the two-story county jail, next door to the courthouse, a block west of Main Street.
He too seemed to think that the sale of Chris Halvorsen’s turkey herd was not only funny but a good stroke of business—however illegal—on the part of Gus.
“If we could find him—” Bingo began hopefully.
“I’ll send out an alarm,” Sheriff Judson said. “But, Lord, he’s probably clear over into Nebraska by now. You’ll never see him again.”
He pulled a printed form out of a desk drawer and began filling it in. “What was his last name?”
“Search me,” Chris Halvorsen said. “All I ever called him was just Gus.”
“Me too,” the sheriff said. “I’ll just put down ‘Known as Gus, last name unknown,’ and a description.”
“He was about five foot eleven and he weighed about a hundred and sixty,” Handsome said. “Bald head with a little sort of brown-colored hair around the edge. Blue eyes and a lot of freckles. He had a mole on his chin and a three-cornered scar on his left hand. His nose was a little crooked, toward the right, and he had a receding chin.”
“You’ve got a good eye,” the sheriff said admiringly.
“I’ve got a memory,” Handsome said, with becoming modesty.
The sheriff wrote down the description.
“But,” Bingo said. He gulped. “Who was he?”
“I dunno,” the sheriff said. “Just Gus. He just showed up here, ’bout three, four years ago.”
“Closer to five, Hank,” Chris Halvorsen said.
“Guess it was, at that,” the sheriff agreed. “Nice, good-natured fella. That place up on the county road been standing vacant since Herman Stoltz went off to Des Moines, in ’36. Gus just moved in and lived there. Never bothered anybody. Did odd jobs now and then.”
“I give him ten dollars a month to keep that herd of turkeys for me,” Chris Halvorsen said. “He didn’t do very good, though. Gus was a good hand with chickens, but not turkeys.”
The sheriff chuckled. “Gus used to keep a bunch of old hens there,” he said. “Too tough t’eat and too old t’lay. He’d shoo ’em out on the road when cars came along the curve, and if the fella driving the car was a city fella, he’d always claim it was a prize hen that won blue ribbons at the county fair, and get ten bucks. Made a good thing out of it, too, especially vacation season.”
Bingo and Handsome’s glances met over the sheriff’s head. Neither of them said a word.
“Well,” the sheriff said, “we’ll try to pick him up for you, but don’t be too disappointed if we can’t find him.” He put away his pen. “He sold you the house and lot too, huh? Well, I guess nobody’ll care if you stay there. Less’n Herman Stoltz comes back.”
“He won’t come back,” Chris Halvorsen said. “Last I heard he was moved to Keokuk and working in a garage there. Anyways, it wasn’t his house to begin with.”
“That’s right, come t’think of it,” the sheriff said. “Fella that owned it first was in a big bank robbery ten or fifteen years ago. Coupla hundred thousand dollars was took. He was a fella name of Engan, Chuck Engan. Died in jail, and nobody knew who owned the house, so Herman Stoltz moved in, and after he moved to Des Moines, Gus moved in. Now I guess it belongs to you boys. Ain’t much of a house, though.”
“I’ll move them turkeys out in the morning,” Chris Halvorsen said. “Too dark to monkey with ’em now.”
Bingo sighed, and said nothing. It wasn’t the loss of his original investment that worried him, but the loss of the prospective profit. Not every day in the year brought an opportunity to turn one thousand dollars into five. Still, once they were out in Hollywood—
The telephone on the sheriff’s desk began to ring. He answered it, listened a minute, said, “Oke,” and hung up. Then he called loudly, “Herb! Earl!” A couple of tanned-faced young men came in from the next room. The sheriff said, “Five, six guys busted out of state’s prison and stole a car. Somebody just spotted ’em going through Lima Junction, coming this way.” He turned to the big, red-faced farmer. “Chris, you’re a deputy. You better come along.”
“You bet,” Chris said. “Lemme park the truck out back of the jail. It’s got a coupla milk cans in back. And I’ll phone home I won’t be there for supper.” He paused at the door and said to Bingo and Handsome, “You look after them turkeys overnight. I’ll be around in the morning.”
Sheriff Judson tucked one gun into his belt holster and another under his arm. The two tanned-faced young men worked with quiet and deadly efficiency, getting a county police car out of the jail garage, getting a machine gun out of the office safe, telephoning other deputies to watch the roads.
“These guys killed a guard up to the prison,” the sheriff said, sticking a package of cigarettes in his coat pocket. “Fella name of Sampson.”
“There were some Sampsons used to live up near Clear Lake,” the young man named Herb said.
“Can’t be the same family,” the sheriff said. “Those Sampsons moved to California in ’35. Sold their place to a family named Stoppenbach, from Illinois.” He wa
lked to the door, paused to yell, “Ollie! Watch the phone!” and went out.
Bingo and Handsome looked at each other. “That was an emergency,” Handsome said. “He just happened to forget we were here.”
“Ours was an emergency, too,” Bingo said gloomily. He led the way out to the courthouse yard, a broad, pleasant expanse of green grass and old maple trees.
The sun had set, and the twilight was fading to a dreary gray. There was a faint chill in the early autumn air. Thursday, Iowa, seemed like a tiresome place to be.
“Don’t worry about it,” Handsome said. “Those turkeys would probably have been a lot of trouble, anyhow. Probably we couldn’t of raised more’n a dozen. I remember that article said they were awful delicate. Even if they don’t get sick, they get scared to death.”
“You shut up,” Bingo said gratefully and affectionately. “I wonder if we can buy a meal somewhere in this town.”
The only restaurant turned out to be the Crescent Café, in the second block up Main Street. Handsome parked the roadster and they went in.
“Roast beef with brown gravy, roast pork with applesauce, hamburger steak, veal stew, and Spanish omelet,” Bingo predicted gloomily as they went in the door. He’d been looking at restaurant menus all the way from New Jersey.
He was right. He was also right in his later prediction that the roast beef would be stringy and pale gray, the gravy greasy, and the mashed potatoes watery. The apple pie had a tough lower crust and not very much apple. The coffee was flavorless and not very warm.
It was dark when they left the café and took a look up and down Main Street. There was one movie, showing a double feature, Westerns. The rest of the street was deserted.
“This town may be named Thursday,” Bingo said, “but it looks like a rainy Monday to me. Let’s shove on to Des Moines and get a good bed in a good hotel.” He slid into the car and slammed the door.
“We own that house,” Handsome said unhappily. “We might as well sleep in it tonight. It’ll save one hotel bill.” He started the motor and shoved in the clutch. “Besides,” he added, “Mr. Halvorsen wants us to look after his turkeys.”
“The hell with Mr. Halvorsen,” Bingo growled. “The hell with his turkeys. The hell with Thursday.” He paused. Chris Halvorsen was a decent guy, and those were valuable turkeys. It was a long drive to Des Moines, and it was late. Besides, he’d never slept under a roof he owned, especially a roof that had cost a thousand dollars. Some day he’d be saying to some wide-eyed, impressionable and beautiful girl, “Once I spent a thousand dollars just for a place to sleep overnight.”
He leaned back against the maroon cushions and said, “Oh, O.K. But in the morning I’m going to send Chris Halvorsen a bill for playing nursemaid to his damned turkeys, while he goes out chasing escaped convicts.”
Handsome said nothing, tactfully.
“Besides,” Bingo added, “they’ll probably keep us awake all night, yelping.”
“Turkeys don’t yelp,” Handsome said, swinging the car around the curve. “They gobble.”
“By me, they yelp,” Bingo said sulkily.
Handsome slowed down around the last curve, turned up the bumpy driveway, and stopped behind the little shanty. Bingo climbed out, looked at the sky, and stretched. The sky was clear. The air was very still.
“Maybe they’re all asleep,” he said. “Maybe they’ll stay asleep till morning.”
“I’ll take the flashlight in and light the oil lamp,” Handsome said.
Bingo strolled around the shanty, whistling under his breath. He’d lost a thousand dollars, plus the chance to make four thousand more—and half of it Handsome’s, too—and he’d had a terrible dinner. Still, he felt a certain warm glow of satisfaction. Even if he only slept in it for one night, and then never saw it again, he owned a house.
Funny, how quiet those turkeys had become, all of a sudden.
He came to the fence, paused, and peered through. Suddenly his hands tightened on the top of the gate.
There weren’t any turkeys in the yard. Not any turkeys at all.
Bingo stared for a moment, not believing it. Then he turned and raced wildly back to the shanty. At the corner he almost collided with Handsome. “The turkeys—” he began, and stopped.
Handsome’s face was pale in the dim glow from the flashlight. His hands were shaking. He said, “You’d better look, Bingo, you’d better look in the house. In there.”
“Now what?” Bingo said. He grabbed the flashlight and strode to the door of the shanty.
“See!” Handsome said.
There was a man lying on the floor. He was a well-dressed man, in a black broadcloth suit, a white shirt, and a flowing black tie. He had a neat dark beard, heavy dark hair, and a thin, handsome face. One of his hands clutched a small looseleaf notebook from which the pages had been ripped. There was a small, round bullethole in the center of his forehead, and a look of terrible surprise in his glazed, wide-open, and motionless eyes.
Bingo shoved the flashlight back in Handsome’s limp hand and staggered outside. “I told you,” he said, in a dazed whisper, “we should have gone to Des Moines.”
“Get in the car,” Handsome said, “and we will.”
Bingo didn’t seem to hear him. He stood for a moment, drawing long, almost gasping breaths. At last he said, “No, we won’t. Handsome, what was the name of that sheriff?”
CHAPTER FOUR
“You can’t arrest us,” Bingo said indignantly. “There’s no law that says it’s a crime to discover a body. You oughta be grateful to us for reporting it to you.”
Sheriff Henry Judson aimed, successfully, at a tarnished brass cuspidor in the corner. “I don’t know who the fella was,” he said. “And I don’t know who you are. Only you moved into that shanty and right away the fella was killed in it. That’s enough to make me plenty suspicious.”
“Now, look,” Bingo said. “We don’t know who he was either. We never saw him before. And we got an alibi.”
“What alibi?” the sheriff said skeptically.
“Well, after you left us—” Bingo paused. “Say, did you connect with those escaped convicts?”
“Uh-uh.” The sheriff shook his head sadly. “They must of turned off just beyond Lima Junction. I got deputies watching the roads, but I don’t think I’ll get ’em.”
“Maybe one of the escaped convicts killed this guy,” Bingo said hopefully.
The sheriff spat again, just as accurately. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Bingo said. “But you can find out. I’ve had a little experience in things like this. Not that I’m a professional detective or anything—” He cleared his throat modestly. “First thing to do is find out who this guy was, and then you can find out who wanted to kill him, and why.”
“Sounds like a lot of work,” the sheriff said. He called loudly, “Herb! Earl!” and the two tanned young men came into the office. “Say, either of you ever see this guy that was murdered before? Know who he is?”
Herb said, “Nope,” and Earl said, “Not me.” The sheriff sighed and said, “See?”
“Well, somebody knows who he was,” Bingo said. This sheriff office, he reflected, was certainly a long way away from the New York Police Department!
Herb and Earl went away. The sheriff said, “Go on. What alibi?”
“After you left us,” Bingo repeated, “we went out and got some dinner. At the Crescent Café.”
“You didn’t have a very good dinner, then,” the sheriff commented. “But, it’s the only restaurant in town.”
“We found that out,” Bingo said acidly. “Well, then we looked around to see if there was a show in town. And there wasn’t anything except a couple of Western pictures at some theater—the—the—”
“The Elite,” Handsome said.
“One of ’em’s a dandy,” the sheriff said. “Roy Rogers. Saw it last night.”
“Maybe we should have gone to it,” Bingo said, “but we didn’t. We went back to the shanty
and found—this murdered guy. So we came right into town to inform you.”
“That’s no alibi,” the sheriff said. “Because, how do I know this fella was killed while you were still downtown or maybe on the way home, and not after you got there?”
“The medical examiner can fix the time of death,” Bingo said coldly.
“We ain’t got a medical examiner,” the sheriff said. “We got a coroner, but he’s away on a fishing trip and, anyway, he’s a vet. Charlie Hodges down to the undertaking parlor says the body was still warm when he went up to get it. So maybe you’d better get you another alibi.”
Handsome frowned unhappily. Bingo had said, “Let me do the talking.” But things didn’t seem to be going as smoothly as they should. He had all the confidence in the world in Bingo, but—
“Look, Mr. Sheriff,” he said diffidently. “If we’d of shot that fella, do you think we’d of come all the way back here and told you he was dead?”
“Well,” the sheriff said, “well, no.”
Bingo beamed. “Took the words right out of my mouth. If we’d killed him, wouldn’t we have hopped in our car and gotten away as fast as we could, considering that his body might not have been found for days and by that time we’d be in Hollywood? Wouldn’t we have done that?”
“Well,” the sheriff said, “yes.”
“There you are,” Bingo said cheerfully. “You can see for yourself we didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Well,” the sheriff said uncertainly, “it’s like this. Will Sims said I should arrest you on suspicion, and he’s the county attorney. I been sheriff a coupla years—hay and grain dealer, that’s my business—and I figure he knows more about it’n I do. He’s on his way down here—he was up to Clear Lake, he’s a boss of some kind of boys’ summer camp—and I ain’t gonna do a thing till he gets here.”
“Very wise of you,” Bingo said. “I’m sure he’ll understand the situation. How is the hay and grain business here, anyway?”
“Oh, fine,” Henry Judson said. “I handle seed and manure, too. Cleared a tidy little amount last year. Never would have bothered running for sheriff, excepting Gene Fisher—he’s in the legislature—figured I’d help the whole party ticket, account of knowing all the farm voters. I don’t mind being sheriff, specially since I can run the hay and grain business on the side, but I do get awful sick of living in the jail.”
