Terror at the Fair (A Snap Malek Mystery)

by Robert Goldsborough

"Listen, typewriter jockey, haven't I told you many times before that you are never, ever to bother me before one in the afternoon. I work nights, as you are very well aware."

  "Yes, and I also know exactly what kind of work you do. The only blisters you'll ever get in your so-called labors are on the fingertips of your dealing hand."

  "Have you called just to make sport of a tired old man?"

  "No, although you are one tempting target. Truth to tell, I'm phoning with a hard-to-refuse offer to buy you lunch."

  "Uh-oh, why do I suddenly feel like this lunch is somehow going to cost me?"

  "Don't be such a cynic, Pickles."

  "Any cynicism I might happen to have comes from knowing you for lo these many years. What's the deal?"

  "I'll tell you over lunch."

  "At that same old joint over on Wabash, the one near Headquarters?"

  "Oh no, sorry. I'm assigned to the Railroad Fair this summer, and–"

  "Ah, you mean the place where they're dying right and left?"

  "As usual, Pickles, you exaggerate."

  "Maybe, but it doesn't seem like the safest spot in town these days." He groaned. "All right, where should I meet you?"

  "The Fiesta dining car, at the Rock Island Railroad exhibit. It's a nice clean place, white tablecloths, hearty sandwiches–and they even come with pickles, kosher dills. See you at noon."

  "You mean I'm going to have to pay to get into your dag-blasted fair?"

  "I will reimburse you the princely admission fee, and the cab fare too. How's that for a deal?"

  "You're all heart, Snap. Although it's against my principles to take nourishment so early in the day, I'll see you at noon–or close to it."

  In fact, my watch read ten past twelve when Pickles Podgorny peered suspiciously into the Fiesta dining car from the door at one end. I waved him to my table.

  For those of you new to these narratives, Pickles is a Chicago fixture–as a former bookie and two-bit grifter, and, in his current line of work, a far-better-than-average poker player. Early in his checkered career, he ran afoul of the local gendarmes, mainly because of some small-time cons he ran. I met him more than a decade ago when he got himself pinched for operating a craps game in the back of a saloon only two blocks from Police Headquarters.

  Curious about what kind of guy would be nervy enough to rattle the dice right under the noses of the law, I went to his court hearing, wrote a feature about him (which never ran), and hooked him up with a lawyer who got him off with little more than a slap on the wrist and a stern lecture from the judge.

  As a result, Pickles, who now confines his gambling to poker, felt a certain debt to me–a debt I have cashed in on numerous times by taking advantage of the man's vast knowledge of the cast of characters who inhabit the city's seamy underbelly. In fairness, I have paid him for his knowledge and information, as I once again prepared to do.

  An unshaven Pickles, all five-feet-seven of him, slid into the chair opposite me and took off his flat cap, slapping it down on the starched white tablecloth. "Helluva place to get to, this fair," he grumbled, scratching a nose much too big for his face. "I never knew so many people liked trains. Can't see the attraction myself."

  "Well, thanks for coming at what for you is an ungodly hour. Let us order, then I'll tell you a story. By the way, as I mentioned on the phone, they have excellent dill pickles, and I'm willing to bet the waitress will give you an extra one if you ask her nicely."

  We ate our sandwiches in silence, and Pickles did indeed get an extra dill, which, given his nickname, is a high priority. Over coffee, he squinted at me, scowling. "All right, Mister Deadline-a-Minute, let's get to it. What's the angle?"

  "Ah, Pickles, I trust you enjoyed your corned beef on rye?"

  "Not bad. You know, when you told me on the horn you're working out here now, I suddenly put two and two together, even in the haze of just waking up far too soon. I read the papers. I know there've been a couple of stiffs here the last few days, and I sez to myself, 'Now just why would my old buddy Snap Malek be calling me out of the blue? Could it just maybe have something to do with one guy getting shot and another guy getting strangled?'"

  "You are indeed a perceptive man, Pickles. I have often said so."

  "Yeah, perceptive happens to be my middle name. So what?"

  "So, I'm looking for a man."

  "Would the police also be looking for said individual?"

  I nodded, sipping coffee. "You read the papers, so you know at least something about the shooting at the pageant here."

  "I know a little, but I have got this feeling you're going to tell me more."

  "I am. As you are aware, somebody put a live round in among the blank cartridges in one of the rifles used in the stagecoach robbery at the pageant they stage here several times a day."

  "Could have been an accident."

  "Could have, but you don't believe it for a minute, do you?"

  Pickles grinned. "'Course not. I just wanted to get a rise out of you. It worked."

  "Okay, score one for Chicago's reigning king of five-card stud. Three men had the job of loading the rifles before each show."

  "Let me guess. Right after the shooting, at least one of the guys lammed, not to be seen again."

  "Bingo. Precisely where you come into the story."

  "Not so fast, wordsmith. It'll take more than a free lunch, taxi money, and an admission ticket to this here fair to compensate for my valuable time."

  "Okay, you chiseler, here's a double sawbuck on top of what I already gave you for the round trip in a cab," I said, pulling a twenty from my wallet and setting it on the table in front of him. "Now can we continue talking?"

  He looked at the currency, sniffed, and pocketed it. "You know I'm worth more than that, but what the hell. For old times' sake…"

  "Old times' sake, my ass. You haven't done a thing yet, and you're twenty bucks ahead, plus a fat sandwich and two juicy kosher dills."

  "The pickles were all right," he conceded grudgingly.

  "Glad to hear it. Now, here's the description of the missing rifle-loader: Thought to be in his mid-forties, white, about five-ten, sandy hair, mustache, mole on his right cheek."

  "Well, that narrows it to about a hundred thousand men in town," Pickles grumped.

  "And it's said he talks with a slight foreign accent."

  "What kind?"

  "Nobody seemed sure. Maybe German, maybe Swedish, maybe Dutch."

  "Oh swell, which narrows it to maybe fifty thousand. Does this bird happen to have a name?"

  "Samuel White is what he put down on his employment form at the fair."

  "Geez, Snap, that's just jake. Why didn't he call himself John Doe and be done with it? Talk about the old needle in a haystack! This is ridiculous. I suppose you're going to tell me he gave a phony address when he applied?"

  "I am. A number up on Clarendon that doesn't exist. Also, the Social Security number he gave turned out to be bogus, too."

  He rolled his eyes. "Aren't things just peachy now?"

  "Pickles, with anybody but you, I would agree the job is well nigh impossible, but given your special talents–"

  "What special talents would those be?"

  "Your, shall we say…knowledge of the activities of certain persons who don't want the knowledge of their activities made public."

  "Meaning, of course, hoodlums, miscreants, lowlifes, grifters, and various others who your esteemed journal might call 'the dregs of society.'"

  "Well put, sir. I could not have said it better myself."

  "Of course you couldn't. Did you by chance talk to the guy who fired the live round?"

  "I did, and I'm convinced he's totally clean. I believe the cops are convinced as well. He's a young actor trying to make it in town."

  "Okay, now what about the poor sap who cashed in?"

  "Pickles, I have to believe we're dealing with a totally random event. He was a fellow in his early twenties from up in Wisconsin, an actor trying to bre
ak in as well."

  "So, how do you see all of this tying into the second death?"

  "It might just be a coincidence, but almost surely isn't."

  "Could it be somebody with a grudge against the railroad line whose exhibit was where the second murder took place?" Pickles asked as we got coffee refills.

  "The Illinois Central? That might explain the strangulation, but not the shooting. There was no connection in that particular pageant act to any one rail line."

  "Back on the subject of this elusive Mr. White: Any idea how he happened to get hired by the fair in the first place?"

  "Nope. But if I made a guess, I'd say he answered an ad in one of the papers. I know the fair did some advertising for a lot of positions."

  "Do you know if the cops have checked on all those outfits hiring day laborers?"

  "I couldn't say."

  Pickles slapped his forehead with a palm. "You're not a heck of a lot of help."

  I spread my hands. "Regard this as a challenge, as well as an opportunity to make the cops look bad. I know just how much you'd relish doing that."

  "The problem is, even if I do make monkeys out of them, they'll never know it was me. I'm not about to do anything to call attention to yours truly. I've had too many dealings in my previous life with what some of us laughingly refer to as 'Chicago's Finest.'"

  "But, Pickles, think of the personal satisfaction you'll get if you do finger the elusive Mr. White. Isn't that worth something to you?"

  The answer I got was a scowl, followed by a glare, followed by a word mouthed silently, in deference to the families with children seated near us in the crowded and festive dining car.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next several days at the fair were uneventful, the highlight such as it was being my interview with a cowboy in the rodeo show put on by a group of western railways. Fred Metzger told me this Montana-born cowpoke was some kind of champion bronco-buster who had won awards at events like the Calgary Stampede and the Cheyenne Frontier Days. That may well be, but he had about as much to say as the old Indian from the reservation whom I had talked to my first day on the job at the fair.

  This sample from the interview is all you need:

  Me: So, tell me what it takes to be a top bronco-buster.

  Cowboy: Ya gotta show 'em who's the boss, ya know? That's the secret, right there.

  Me: How do you pull that off?

  Cowboy: By letting 'em know right from the start, yes sir, right from the very doggone start, that you are in charge.

  Me: Do you talk to them? Do you do something else to establish control?

  Cowboy: It's all in the way ya mount 'em, the way ya ride 'em, that lets 'em know they can't mess with ya.

  Me: Can you describe that?

  Cowboy: Now it's real hard to say. But you know what I mean. All ya gotta do is watch me.

  In fact, I didn't know what he meant, and I knew even less when, an hour after we had talked, he got thrown over the head of a bronco after being on him for less than a few heartbeats.

  I had a feature story to file, though, and I tried to make the best of it, describing the cowpoke as "a lean, leathery, raw-boned son of the rugged Montana mountains and plains, a man of few words in the finest tradition of such taciturn cinematic Western heroes as John Wayne, Gary Cooper, and Randolph Scott."

  I went on to depict the rodeo itself and "the cheering youngsters in the stands who squealed with delight as they watched the riders desperately try to stay on their angry, snorting, wildly bucking charges." I made no mention, however, of my subject's embarrassingly short ride. Who am I to let specifics get in the way of a good story?

  As the week wore on, it became obvious the police presence had intensified throughout the fairgrounds. I saw a lot of uniforms, as well as several men in suits whom I recognized to be plainclothes detectives. I even spotted Jack Prentiss himself once, and we looked daggers at each other, reflecting our mutual distaste, although no words got exchanged.

  One morning I called Fergus Fahey. "Don't you have enough to do out there on the lakefront without harassing me?" the chief snarled.

  "Hey, I'm not harassing you, I'm just keeping in touch with an old friend. I didn't want you to think I'd forgotten all about you."

  "I should be so fortunate."

  "But I thought maybe you missed our daily conversations. I do."

  "Snap, don't beat around the bush with me. I know you too well. You just want to learn what we've found out about the deaths out there."

  "Well, since you mention it…"

  "Isn't it enough that I keep your man Westcott briefed every day?"

  "How's he doing, by the way?"

  "No comment."

  "That bad, huh? I'm really sorry to hear it, Fergus, but it wouldn't hurt you to fill me in, too. After all, I can be a real asset to you out here, another set of eyes and ears."

  "Your allegiance is to your paper, not to the police department," he said dryly.

  "And your allegiance is to the department, not to any of the papers, mine included. That doesn't mean we can't help each other."

  He exhaled into the receiver. "Not much to report. We've talked again to the young actor who pulled the trigger, and it seems obvious he's clean. As for the two rifle-loaders still on the job, they swear they only put blank cartridges into the weapons. And neither one of them knew the third one, White–or so he called himself. They said in the few days they all had worked together, he didn't say anything about himself except he originally came from someplace in Europe, although he wasn't specific. He never mentioned where he lived in Chicago, or whether he had a family. They described him as one very closemouthed customer."

  "And your men have checked out all the Samuel Whites in the phone book, I suppose?"

  "You suppose right," he muttered. "For the record, there are seven in all, none living on Clarendon, and every last one of them got a visit from us. Two are Negroes, which lets them out. And not one of the other five speaks with anything resembling even a slight foreign accent. Also, all but one is employed and can account for their time on the day of the shooting. The other is seventy-seven years old and has been retired since before the war. Oh, and the suburban directories got checked, too. Three more Samuel Whites, none with an accent. There, have I now filled you in enough?"

  "On that particular situation, yes. What about the strangling?"

  "Dammit, Snap, I can't spend all day talking to you, not the way things are crashing down around us here. If you haven't noticed, the heat is on the department to make your cursed train fair as safe as those tons of gold stored underground at Fort Knox."

  "Nothing on the strangling then?"

  "No! We've interviewed everybody we could find who knew the dead waiter–neighbors, former co-workers on the railroad, even members of his Baptist church in the South Shore neighborhood. Nobody–not one single soul–had anything bad to say about the man. He apparently had no enemies, no debts, no affairs with married women, no apparent vices such as gambling or whoring. Now if you'll excuse me, Elsie just walked into my office and handed me a sheet of paper saying Commissioner Prendergast wants to talk to me. He's under the gun, which of course means I am as well. Looks like we'll have to face an inquisition from your colleagues in the news business." Before I could respond, the line went dead.

  The next day's papers all had pieces on a press conference in which Prendergast, Fahey, and Mayor Martin Kennelly reiterated the city's commitment to keep the Railroad Fair safe, and the mayor insisted the two deaths on the grounds were merely an aberration. Unfortunately, violence at the exposition was about to become less an aberration, more a common occurrence.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thursday dawned clear and fresh, one of those precious July mornings making Chicagoans forget for a while the miseries of a long and dreary winter. I rode into the city on a swaying Lake Street Elevated train whose windows had been opened and whose passengers seemed by outward appearance to be uniformly at peace with the w
orld. The same held true on my streetcar ride south from the Loop to the fairgrounds.

  On both legs of the trek, I alternated between reading the Tribune and planning my day at the fair. Through Fred Metzger, I had lined up an interview with the governor of Washington State, coming to the fair under the auspices of the Great Northern Railway to promote his corner of the continent as a vacation destination–one easily and comfortably accessible by Great Northern trains, of course. My questions to him would include whether the rainy climate in Seattle and its environs depressed its populace, or whether what we in the rest of the country had heard and read was an unfair depiction of a vibrant city in a picturesque setting.

  My spirits dampened the instant I entered the pressroom at the fair. A uniformed and grim-faced police sergeant had just walked out of Metzger's office.

  "What's going on?" I asked as I entered his sanctum and saw the rotund flack slouched behind his desk, looking like a man whose sure-thing horse had just finished last at Sportsman's Park.

  "Another death," he moaned. "This one in the Moffat Tunnel."

  It took me a few seconds to realize what he was talking about. As I had learned early on at the fair, the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad had built a truncated replica of the historic tunnel as part of its exhibit. They had hauled in tons of boulders and created a miniature "mountain" with a tunnel in it and an arched stone portal mimicking the real one at one end of the six-mile-long rail passageway deep beneath the Colorado Rockies.

  "My God, what's the story on this one?" I asked the deflated press agent.

  He shook his head, eyes glazed, and slouched even lower into his chair. "A man who works as a movie projectionist in the little theater the Rio Grande operates at the end of its tunnel was found lying dead in the tunnel this morning. He must have had a heart attack, from the looks of it."

  "Well, at least it wasn't violence," I said by way of trying to soothe him. It didn't help.

  "What difference?" He moaned, throwing up his hands and letting them drop limply into his lap. "It's still news for you and for everybody else. It will be in all the papers and on the radio and even on the television now, for those who have sets."