Dead Game

by Michael Avallone

  He reddened. “Hell, yes. That’s the move that’s called for. I may play for the Ravens but I know my job. And baseball.” I was a little surprised at the personal pride that was edging into his tone. I hadn’t figured on him caring three raps for his job.

  “Fair enough, Mel. But by moving up, you were pretty close to Lake too. And as our little group can plainly see, you, too, have all the physical requirements for the job.”

  His sneer was mighty. “You got some case. You forgetting something? I proved to you back in the hotel in front of Kitty, I didn’t have the dough. Hell, if I killed Larry I would have got the dough, wouldn’t I?”

  I pinched my cigarette out.

  “It ain’t necessarily so. The killer didn’t get the dough. It looks like the late Mr. Lake knew his stuff. You were looking for the dough, Mel. You were going to help Kitty Arongio find it. Lake was dead then …”

  “Then what are you yakkin’ about, Noon? You can’t pin a thing on me …”

  “He doesn’t have to, mister,” Monks snapped. “The way you played around with matches tonight, your ball-playing days are over.”

  Mel Trilly was a tough cookie. He wasn’t a dope either. Monks had called the shot and he knew it wasn’t going to be any other way. But his bravado would never leave him.

  “Hell, I done you all a favor! What I done to Arongio is nothin’ compared to what you’d like to do to him. He killed a cop, didn’t he? What’s worse, I ask you—what’s worse?”

  Hadley took two steps to his chair and yanked his collar hard.

  “Loud-mouths like you, Trilly. Shut up and stay shut up!”

  Mimi Tango made a sound of impatience. Her slim legs lifted her to her feet.

  “Do we have to listen to all of this?” she blurted. “Haven’t you any feelings at all? Carl is hurt, he’s in pain—can’t he get some sleep?”

  Suddenly I felt sorry for her. Not him. I’m a romantic jackass I guess but I’m always matching up people. And she didn’t belong with him any more than a child bride belongs to an octogenarian.

  “You’re a wonderful gal, Slim. But you should have stayed in Massachusetts. This is no place for a lady.”

  Her thick lips pouted.

  “Talking. That’s all you’re good for. If you were any kind of a detective …”

  Mr. Arongio came to life for the first time in ages. He stirred, his black eyes lighting.

  “Mimi, please. Don’t excite yourself. You must excuse her, gentlemen. She has had a hard time …”

  “She’s excused, Arongio. It doesn’t matter any more anyway. She’s due for the eye-opener anyhow. Might as well be now.”

  Her round-as-a-pool eyes flashed. Her chin tilted at me defiantly.

  “Go ahead. Make another speech. You who were going to run off with that awful woman! You’re nothing but a gangster yourself …”

  This time I blew my top.

  “Okay, Slim. How simple can you get? I’ll make another speech. Short, sweet, and to the point. I am a detective. And a damn good one. I’ve been a little slow up until now because I never expected Poe and murder to mix. I’m no John Dickson Carr. That’s what threw me. Want to know who killed Larry Lake?” I took a breath and sailed right in.

  “Your boy here. Your old tired Romeo with the burned feet. Mr. Arongio. The last of a long lousy line of murderers. And a damn unpredictable human being.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Nobody could go home after that one. Nobody wanted to. It was as if the show was just beginning. And everybody in the room had choice, up-front seats.

  I had always enjoyed the old William Powell movies. Especially those Thin Man roles of his where he was suave and debonair through three quarters of the film. Then the big fade-out scene where all the suspects were sitting around in chairs listening to Demon William sum up the whole case and then finally turn to the guilty party and say you’re it, boy, and no mistake. And everybody would jump about three feet.

  Well, I’m far from suave and debonair but I got pretty much the same effect. Only Mr. Arongio didn’t know from William Powell movies. So he didn’t know how to act.

  No guilty look opened up on his face. Nor was he contemptuous or mocking or daring. None of that junk. He just goggle-eyed his complete amazement.

  “What are you saying … ? That’s nonsense. You make joke …”

  “Yeah, Mr. A. I make joke. Only it’s not a funny one. And you know it. Sure as you know you’re still out twenty thousand dollars. You still don’t know where Lake put it, do you?”

  He passed a confused hand over his face.

  “Please, Mr. Noon. I am tired. I feel faint. You must stop what you are saying …”

  Mimi Tango flew at me, nails first. She raked at me violently. I side-stepped but not quickly enough. One long nail ripped down my cheekbone, drawing blood.

  “Stop it, stop it!” she shrieked. “Can’t you see what it’s doing to him?”

  I slapped her. Just once. It stopped her dead in her high heels. I motioned to one of the big cops who had moved in to grab her. He looked at Monks for confirmation. Whatever Monks signaled, he fell back. He looked silly with nothing to do.

  Mimi Tango, shocked into silence, stared at me. I led her quietly back to her chair. Then she collapsed in a weeping, sobbing heap.

  “Can’t you see what it’s doing to you, Mimi? You don’t know what the hell you’re doing any more. You should have been dragged to the woodshed for some of the things you’ve done for this phony. But I guess this isn’t the place. Maybe what I have to say will do the job just as well.” I turned to Monks. “Can I go on with this?”

  Monks growled. “Don’t stop now, please. You’re doing fine.”

  When I turned back to her, I could see Hadley grinning from ear to ear. He turned it off quick when I caught him.

  Mr. Arongio looked up at me. His face was sorrowful.

  “I killed the policeman, yes. I lost my head when he came after me. But this Lake person. It’s ridiculous. You were there, you saw he was dead when I reached him …”

  “I was there all right. I saw Lake stagger and fall. And then you ran out and frisked him as he lay there. I thought you were just looking for your precious diary or the dough. Well, you were doing that all right. But you were also doing something else. Killing a man who was lying helpless on the ground in front of you.”

  “You are making this up out of nothing, Mr. Noon …”

  “I can’t make this kind of junk up, Arongio. It’s too daffy. Sure, I thought Lake was dead when you got to him. That’s been the joker all along. This was a baseball murder with baseball background and baseball clues. It’s just like the locked-room gag. The victim is murdered when entry is made in the morning by one of the discoverers of the ‘body’ who has sent the only other witness for the police. And everybody thinks the murdered man has been in a locked room all night and wonders how in hell the killer got out. Well, this Lake thing was just like that. The homer threw me off. That and the wide-open field. You killed Lake with eight thousand people watching. Lake who was really doubled up with some of Professor Banjo Brice’s snake oil. Lake who was alive as you or I when you reached him. But not for long. You’re a man of impulse.”

  I was bewildering him right and left. His floormop mustache was damp with his nervous lips.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Impulse, Mr. Arongio. You’ve got more than your share. You’re quick to hate and quick to act When the woman you married and named your fancy shop after double-crossed you by taking up with another guy, and milked you for twenty grand by taking advantage of your weak spot, your love for dear old Edgar Allan Poe, that blew your lid off. Every guy can take so much. And you’d had yours. From then on, you were a wild man. Nothing could stop you. Walsh found that out the hard way. Nothing did stop you. For a while anyway.”

  “Keep talking, Ed.” Monks sounded pleased now.

  “Sure, Mike. Arongio turned rooms upside down, he beat up his wife. Nearly killed her. F
or a variety of reasons. For Lake, for being duped out of his money and the Poe diary which he still is convinced is genuine. He even worked over his beloved Mimi because she came back empty-handed from my office. He didn’t trust anybody any more. He never would again.”

  Carl Arongio kept shaking his head as if my lies were so monumental that I should be forgiven because I didn’t know what I was saying.

  I looked at him coldly.

  “You went to the Polo Grounds with a gun. You might have used it. You might not have. You were going to make Lake sweat. You wanted the diary back which you had paid for. But Banjo Brice and his potion got in the way. Lake fell. You ran out. And frisked him. The diary wasn’t on him. Or the money. You saw red. Here he was. Right in your lap. In a blind rage you dug an awl off the special belt you always wore and rammed it into him. I noticed the belt back at the hotel. I was tied up with it. It’s got notches and loops for carrying all kinds of small tools. Antique dealers need all kinds of tools around their shops for odd little repair jobs. I missed the killing because I was too busy climbing over a railing to get to you.”

  I had him now. It was piling up high against him and he must have known that no amount of spadework was going to get him out from under. The faces of Monks, Hadley, and the two cops must have told him as much. Mimi Tango was staring at him, dry-eyed now, her common sense finally taking a good hold on things.

  When I talk a lot, I smoke a lot. I lit up again.

  “A diary by Edgar Allan Poe. It would have been a fine thing, coming from Poe. But you were a kid about that, too, Arongio. There is no undiscovered Poe diary. There can’t be. It would be just too thick if there was. Lake played for the Ravens, he comes from Providence, the wife he monkeys around with just happens to have a husband who is gone on the Great Man. He just happens to want twenty grand for it. Then he steals it back to get rid of the evidence. The only thing that’s real is the twenty grand you forked over for the diary. But even that wouldn’t do you any good now. Not in the spot you’re in. You’ve got two dead men on your doorstep. As dead as Poe is. You’re through, Arongio.”

  He was a pathetic figure now. He looked helpless sitting there. The thick bandages swathing his tortured feet were incongruous with all the bad things I had just damned him with. It looked more like everything had been done to him. And not the other way around.

  He sighed. It was a mammoth thing because he was such a big man.

  Monks got around to being official now that the charm of my storytelling voice had come to an end. He looked grimly at Arongio.

  “He’s giving it to you straight, Arongio. About the diary. Something even Noon doesn’t know yet. We found a pile of charred ashes in a wastebasket in the Raven clubhouse. I didn’t know what it was until Noon told me about this Poe business. From what little scraps we were able to salvage, it looks like Lake destroyed the thing after all. Sorry I held it back, Ed. I wanted to spring it when it seemed like the best time.”

  I didn’t mind a bit. I was watching Arongio.

  The change in him was remarkable. He looked like he had lost everything in life. All the sand had run out of him.

  Monks shrugged. “Do you want to make a statement?”

  Mr. Arongio shook his head dumbly.

  “It would be better if you cooperated, Arongio,” I offered. “You had some justification for the things you did. A good lawyer might even get you off with life.”

  That aroused him. His mustache bristled and his nostrils flared.

  “The very amusing Mr. Noon! All of life is a joke to you! The dead, the living, love …”

  “You can knock that off right now,” I said. “Philosophy from you I can do without. A grown man should know better. Lose a dame, go find another one. You get betrayed, go find somebody you can trust. Lose a fortune the hard way, go make one another way. If you’d used one grain of good horse sense, you never would be sitting there, all bandaged up like a Rube Goldberg cartoon, with the electric chair staring you in the face.”

  He seemed to take heart from that. His shoulders straightened and his eyes got bright.

  “You are right, of course. As usual for you, Mr. Noon. So right. Yes. If one thing goes wrong, try another. There is always another way …”

  Mimi Tango uncurled herself on the couch. She tensed. She knew him better than I did. I got the impression that something in his tone had tipped her to something.

  “Carl,” she murmured warningly. “Don’t do anything foolish. Ed’s right. You mustn’t …”

  “But I must, Mimi!” he suddenly shouted. “And I will——!”

  Before any of us could find out what he must do and would do, he did. His big hands, handcuffs and all, pawed under his shirt, explored his middle briefly and reappeared with an egg-shaped thing that always looks pretty terrible to a person who knows what it’s for and just what damage it can do. I hadn’t really seen one in almost eight years. But I recognized it. And so did everyone else in the room.

  “Careful, you fool!” Monks yelled. “He’ll yank the pin out!”

  Hadley halted his hero’s lunge and moved back slowly. His lower lip trembled. He muttered something, half to himself, half aloud in stunned disbelief.

  “We passed the box coming in—he was handcuffed—I never figured he could …” It ended off in a fierce curse.

  I stood where I was, my hands at my sides. I didn’t have a gun anyway.

  But Arongio had a hand grenade. A regular, old-fashioned GI hand grenade. I could see the gun-metal gray of the thing, the hard grill pattern of its exterior making it twice as ugly.

  Arongio was still sitting, his cuffed hands extended over his head, holding the awful egg high. One big finger was curled in and around the pin that looped out from one oval end.

  His face was flushed, triumphant in a way that can only be described as completely mad. His whole attitude was one of chortling victory.

  “So, Mr. Noon. Like you, I do something. Everything goes wrong for me. I change everything. Interesting, yes? A man holds the lives of eight people in one little finger. That is power—yes.”

  Banjo Brice and Mel Trilly were rooted in their chairs. Right then and there I knew for a fact that they would kiss the very next baseball they saw.

  If they ever lived to see a baseball again.

  For a second the only sound in the room was the ticking of the tiny clock on Monks’ desk.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Maybe you don’t know about hand grenades. What there is to know is all bad and pretty nasty. When one goes off, it shatters apart in about a thousand pieces and every one of those pieces is a sharp, jagged chunk of metal that can kill a man if it hits in the right places. And the wrong places hurt a helluva lot too. Maybe cripple you for life.

  A confined grenade is even worse. Out in the open it scatters a lot and much of its total effect is lost. But in the confines of a room—I did my level best not to think about it. I was giving myself nightmares.

  Unconsciously, all of us who were standing were inching toward Mr. Arongio. Me, Hadley, and the two cops. We stopped, though, because the crazy look refused to leave his face.

  Mimi Tango moved. She got up off the couch and walked toward him slowly. She extended a firm white hand.

  “Don’t be silly, Carl. Give it to me. You’ve done enough already …”

  “So.” His expression was awful. “Even you, Mimi. You turn on me.”

  “Carl, stop it.” She halted in front of him. She didn’t raise her voice. Just spoke to him in a low monotone, the same way you’d talk to a child whose feelings have been hurt.

  “Mimi—” his voice got thick “—get away. I do what I have to do.”

  I couldn’t do a thing. It was strictly between the two of them. And Mimi Tango seemed to sense it. Either that or she was oblivious of the rest of us in the room. Just like the song says, she only had eyes for him.

  “Carl,” she pleaded, “hasn’t there been enough hurt already? Enough killing? Put that awful thing down, Carl.
I’ll wait for you.”

  He shook her off with a mighty snort.

  “How long will you wait, Mimi? I’m an old man. An old fool. You’ll meet some young man.” His eyes narrowed and his head turned in my direction. “Of course—Mr. Noon. A handsome young man. He’d be right for you, Mimi. Maybe you have noticed him already?” A slight trace of jealousy underscored the last remark he made.

  I was nervous enough already. My imagination had leaped into the near future. About ten minutes from now to be exact. My stomach was beginning to get queasy just thinking about it.

  Arongio staring at me didn’t help any either. The grenade in his hand made it worse.

  “Come on, Arongio.” I said it as gently as possible. I didn’t want to be the one to start him off again. “Relax and put that thing away. Monks will see that you get a fair shake. Won’t you, Mike?”

  Poor Monks. He was sweating just as much as I was. But he managed to sound official: “Of course, I will. Things aren’t as bad as they look.”

  Under my breath, I said, Oh, yeah? How bad do you like it?

  Mimi Tango was still carrying the ball. I had to hand it to her. She had come of age just like that in the last five minutes.

  “I’ll wait for you, Carl. I promise. There’s never been anyone else for me, darling. Do I have to tell you? All these months …”

  “Don’t lie to me, Mimi! Women are all the same …”

  “How can you say that, Carl? Please give me that thing.”

  “No——”

  I suddenly caught Hadley’s eye. He wagged his head ever so slightly. Now I could see that he had moved a full foot from where he had been before. The distraction of Mimi Tango was making Arongio incapable of keeping his eye on all of us at once.

  I decided to help out. Hadley was inching closer every second.

  “Look, Arongio.” I stepped forward very slowly. I stopped when he jumped his eyes in my direction. “This is crazy. What do you want to do? Blow us all up? Then everybody’s dead or maimed. Then what?”

  “Philosophy, Mr. Noon?” His smile was ghastly. “Yes, all dead, perhaps. Then no troubles, no murders, no betrayals …”