The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse

by Michael Avallone

  “Help me up, stupid,” I snarled. “Don’t stand there like a dummy.”

  “Dummy, huh?” That did it. He bounced out of his chair and walked over to where I lay. His eyes didn’t look nice. “I’ll show you who’s a dummy.” His pointed black shoe drew back and I braced myself and closed my eyes. I could hear Drill starting to thump noisily in our direction.

  I was rapidly figuring out how many broken ribs I was earning myself when there was a rush of high heels and a cracking sound of wood meeting flesh. A voice above me cried out in agony and something clattered to the floor with an unmistakable sound. A chair. I opened my eyes.

  It was a fast-moving action sequence after that.

  Holly Hill was on her knees levelling the sub-Thompson at the open doorway. Right below her, the gunner was spread out for the count of ten, a river of blood streaming from his scalp where she had crowned him with the chair she’d been sitting on. And Carver Calloway Drill was coming through the doorway, a .45 looking like a cap pistol in his huge brown paw. Ace yelled something at Holly and Penny was yelling too.

  Holly Hill triggered the machine-gun just once. Maybe she’d never held one before. But she certainly had the right idea. Aim it someplace in the general direction you want and press the funny metal bar hanging down.

  It was just a short burst. But maybe about thirty-five bullets Swiss-cheesed the archway just above Carver Calloway Drill’s high head. Plaster leaped and rained down spattering his bronzed head until he looked like he’d aged fifty years in two seconds flat.

  He got the idea, too. The .45 fell from his hand and his fingers tried to touch the low ceiling. His sun-drenched kisser changed colour faster than a cheap shirt in a thunderstorm.

  “Holly!” he boomed. “Don’t lose your head, girl!”

  The sudden silence was as overpowering as the thunder of the tommy-gun. Holly Hill was panting, her eyes shining with insanity, her breasts heaving. And Carver Calloway was licking his dry lips nervously in the frame of the doorway.

  “No,” she husked. “I won’t lose my head. I got plans for you, you bastard. Worse than you dished out to T.T. Come over here, you big slob, and untie Ace.”

  He was still rooted in the doorway, his eyes riveted on the smoke curling from the nose of the tommy-gun.

  “Move!” she snarled at him. “I won’t tell you twice!”

  He moved. For a guy bigger than the R.C.A. Building, he could move pretty fast when he had to. Ace stepped out of his ropes and rubbed his wrists with a deep, satisfied chuckle. Ace must have felt as if there was such a thing as Santa Claus.

  “Nice going, Holly. Nice going. What do we do now?”

  “How about putting me right for a start?” I suggested.

  Ace laughed and nudged me gently with his toe.

  “How about it, Holly? This character rate a lift from us?”

  Holly Hill never took her eyes off the trembling giant standing before her.

  “Untie him, Ace. I’d never been able to pull this off if he hadn’t worked that cute trick with the chair. I don’t like the wise guy, but he’s got brains and he’s a smart operator.”

  Ace nodded and set me up straight with an easy flow of powerful arms. Penny Darnell was facing me now as Ace went to work on my ropes.

  Penny’s voice dripped with surprise. “Well – coming from you that’s a bouquet, Miss Hill. Ed won’t thank you. But I’ll thank you for him. Thanks.”

  “Shut up, sister. I’m turning you both loose. But that’s all I’m doing.”

  “Thanks for that anyway,” I said.

  Carver Calloway Drill tried to smile, but it didn’t come off.

  “What are you aiming to do, Holly? You got the top cards right now but there’s still a fortune in this. Maybe we could throw our bedrolls together and work out a partnership –”

  She laughed. Right in his face. Her own gutty, wheezy men’s-room laugh. Drill bit his lips and didn’t say another word.

  But Ace had plenty on his mind. Holly had been knocked cold when Drill had sent Luke on his errand. He gave her the good news and her eyes got happy. But Ace was no dummy. “Holly, that chopper made plenty of noise. I think maybe we’d better beat it with the cowboy before a million cops bust in here.”

  Holly shook her head.

  “You losing your marbles, Ace? We’re going to wait right here until Luke comes back from Noon’s office with that little something we want. Then we’ll beat it out of here with Drill. And not before.”

  I was stiff as an ironing-board from the chair but the first thing I did was untie Penny Darnell. I lifted her out of the chair and squeezed her affectionately. She felt real nice.

  “You okay, bright eyes?”

  She nodded. “Can we go home now?”

  Holly Hill flung a look at us, but the tommy-gun was still pointed unwaveringly at Drill.

  “Go sit in a corner, you two. And no funny business. I haven’t got any reason to kill you, so don’t give me one.”

  “Okay, teacher,” I said and led Penny over to the table where we both sat down. But I started to worry all over again. Because when Luke came back with exactly nothing, Holly Hill was going to be damn sore at me. And a dame who’s sore at you and has a loaded sub-Thompson is no laughing matter.

  Inactivity does things to people. Some people take up stamp collecting or learn how to play the piano. For Ace, it was a time to even up old scores. He whispered something to Holly and I didn’t like the way she suddenly leered and gave him the go ahead signal.

  Carver Calloway Drill knew what was coming. And I’ll say this much for him. He was looking trouble right in the face, he knew it was coming and he didn’t fall back an inch.

  With poorly disguised elation, Ace moved in towards him warily. Suddenly, his shoe lashed out and lost itself in the place where the big man’s ankle disappeared into his shoe. Carver Calloway Drill shuddered with the impact and his big shoulders lowered reflexively. That was all Ace needed. He moved forward with blinding speed and threw two jet-propelled punches into Drill’s face. Ace was tall and as well-built as a pro heavyweight but Drill was twice as big. He swayed but he didn’t lose his footing. Ace cursed and brought one up from the floor. His foot. Not his hand. Drill’s bronzed face flattened with pain. No matter how big or how tall you are, no man alive can stand up to a kick in that section of the body. Drill doubled up in agony, his big mitts clawing his lower abdomen. But there was more to come.

  Ace’s last punch was a line drive straight out from the shoulder that nearly took Drill’s head off. The poor slob took the floor headlong with a crash of noise that made the old boards beneath him shake and squeak as if they weren’t long for this world.

  Penny Darnell had seen too much and too quickly in the short time she’d known me. She buried her face in her hands and collapsed on the table, crying softly.

  I kept my head but my mouth can never be still at times like that.

  “Nice going.” I bit it out. “Every time I start to see your side of this mess, you pull stuff like this. Okay. That does it. We can never be friends now. I don’t care what Wild West has done to you. You didn’t give him a chance.”

  Ace was puffing victoriously from his dirty triumph and the smell of the bull ring was in his mashed nose. He whirled on me, his teeth showing in a snarl.

  “You want some of the same, Noon? There’s lots more where that came from.”

  I spit at him. Clear across the room.

  “Stay away from me, Ace. I won’t sit still for a going-over. Holly’d have to use that chopper. Then you’d both be out of business. Better talk it over with your girl boss.” I was rubbing it in, but I knew what I was doing.

  Holly Hill shifted the tommy-gun to her other arm.

  “Knock it off, Ace. That’s enough. Just keep your eye on him. But don’t let him rile you into a dumb play. Soon as we get our property, we can take care of him.”

  Ace growled but didn’t say anything else. I reached across the table and patted Penny’s
head. But she stayed as she was, her shoulders heaving quietly with her tears.

  There was a forced silence in which we all waited for Luke.

  Drill had said it might take him an hour. Well, it took about forty-five minutes. We could hear his footsteps coming up a stairway from somewhere outside. And he was in a hurry. An excited hurry.

  He started to yell as soon as he came through the door. “Boss! Cops! Outside – they musta tailed me from Noon’s office –”

  Luke thundered in through the doorway and saw the whole tableau at once. He must have got the picture immediately. His nondescript ugly face suddenly took on all the meaning in the universe.

  My P38 flashed magically in his hand and Holly Hill swivelled the nose of the tommy-gun at him like a direction finder.

  All the proverbial hell broke loose and the room was alive with gunfire – just as a thousand police sirens shrilled like an air raid from outside the building.

  SIXTEEN

  Ace died first. Ace who had come around Holly Hill and made himself the first target. The guy with my P38 should have gone for Holly Hill because she had the sub-Thompson. But Ace’s fast-moving body was of prime consideration because he was blocking Holly Hill.

  The P38 bucked and roared. Ace screamed with a climbing howl of pain. And Luke had had it. One shot was all he was going to have. He didn’t know about T.T. Thomas’s one-dollar bill wadded in the clip of the gun he was carrying. Wadded so that his next bullet couldn’t possibly reach the firing chamber in a million light years. But I hadn’t forgotten it.

  Ace was just reaching the floor, kicking and dying hard, when Holly Hill opened up with the machine-gun. The room shivered and thundered with noise. And a bag full of hot lead reached Luke in the doorway, turned him completely around, and slammed him back the way he had come. The door splintered and shattered as he fell across the bannister in the hallway and hung there like a bundle of dirty clothes set down for a minute while somebody fishes for the key to a door.

  Holly Hill had forgotten all about me. But I hadn’t forgotten about her. With sirens still shrilling below, I vaulted over Ace’s dead body, side-stepped Carver Calloway Drill’s spread-out carcass and reached her. She was just turning around when I chopped at both her elbows with the flat heels of my hands. I was going for the funny bone. For the unfunniest feeling in the world.

  She screeched like an owl disturbed in its favourite tree and the tommy-gun jumped from her stunned arms. I closed in on her and threw myself at her in a bear hug that was all energy and no affection. She howled and cursed. But I spun her around and dragged her to one of the chairs by the table and slammed her down in it. She was still howling as I stepped away from her, looking for the tommy-gun.

  But Penny Darnell already had it. She had scooped it up from the floor and was training it at Holly Hill with pure unadulterated joy in her eyes. You come of age quick in this business. Yesterday she might have fainted at sight of a bloody nose, but not today. Today she was a man.

  “Quick work,” I panted. “But better let me have it. I cut my teeth on one of those.” I didn’t want a too-excited dame waving a tommy-gun around.

  She handed it over eagerly, like a kid not quite sure of her own ability. I cradled it under one arm easily and looked at Holly Hill. She was hanging back in her chair, her blonde locks all over her face, a pulse in her throat beating rapidly, her breasts rising and falling. But her eyes were still mean. Still contemptuous of me.

  “So what?” she rumbled hoarsely. “So what?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that. There wasn’t time. The former quiet outside the building was now only a fond memory. The lamasery had taken on all the aspects of a Broadway première. I could hear the whine of motors, the noisy shouts of police activity. Somebody was yelling instructions. I stared into the next room, where Drill had come from. Searchlight beams splashed through the windows down at the other end. Now I knew where the street side was. And it wouldn’t be long before somebody hooked a loudspeaker up and went through that bit of standard recitation about being surrounded and coming out with the hands up.

  I turned back to Holly Hill and Penny Darnell.

  “Sit still and don’t worry. Soon as they know we won’t put up a fight, we’ll be out of this. But the next move is theirs. Anybody moving down these steps is liable to get shot up.”

  My body felt as abnormal as a tuxedo in a hobo jungle. I was stiff and sore and maybe just a little swollen. My side where the wound was healing was hot and feverish. And my head wasn’t in much better shape. My eyes ached, my ears hurt and my thinking was confused. Too much had happened too quickly. I didn’t know which end was up. Sure I was in charge of the show now. I had Holly Hill and I had Drill. I had T. T. Thomas’s screwy legacy of a dollar-bill guide to a fabulous something. And now I could probably help Monks solve the mystery of this crazy mixed-up corpse. But somehow I had the feeling I had nothing. Maybe it was the condition of my body, but I didn’t feel happy at all. There was still Tom Long and his strange behaviour and the rap that was hanging over him for having shot an officer of the law.

  The bustling activity outside stilled as if everyone had taken up their proper positions. The police were putting on their usual play and just like a play, every cop has a special job. Somebody talks on the loudspeaker, somebody shoots the tear gas, somebody handles the riot guns. But the loudspeaker routine would come first and that’s the next move I was waiting for.

  “Noon,” Holly Hill suddenly said. “Get me out of this and I’ll split it down the middle with you. Fifty-fifty. Don’t turn me over to the cops.”

  “I don’t think he has any other choice,” Penny Darnell said. “There must be a million policemen outside.”

  “I’m not talking to you sister,” snarled Holly. “Come on, Noon. What do you say?”

  “Penny’s right,” I said. “You couldn’t get out of here now if you were invisible.”

  Holly Hill smiled.

  “There’s a back entrance. Drill told me all about it while he was bragging his head off. You take a lift down below the basement level and you can walk clear over to the next block underground. It’s a cinch. Come on Noon. What percentage is there in turning copper? There ain’t a dime in it and you know it. They might even take your licence away without even saying thanks.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Ed.” Penny showed her teeth. “Ace was her partner too and look what happened to him.”

  Holly Hill cursed. She was the cursingest dame I’ve ever known. But she tried to apologize for herself anyway.

  “Ace was my man. He was an okay guy. But he’s dead now. That’s the breaks. I’m still alive and I want to stay that way. And I’d go nuts in the clink. I couldn’t stand it. Noon –”

  “Shut up.” I barked. “Let me think.” My head was still turning the possibilities over. There were a lot of answers to questions that I’d never get in a police station.

  I was going over the alternatives in my mind when things started popping all over again. Another turn of the screw, another spin of the wheel, another flip of the dice. I should have gone into real estate, as all my well-meaning friends wanted me to.

  The police loudspeaker went on full blast. A full, commanding voice started to crackle out instructions. Then every light in the place went out and total darkness filled the room. And Penny Darnell screamed for the second time that night.

  And somebody kicked the legs out from under me. I went down like a chopped tree with the voice of the cop outside filling the darkness with crisp, authoritative words.

  SEVENTEEN

  It’s pretty hard to remember anything that makes sense at a time like that, with the room suddenly going pitch black. A room containing Ace’s corpse, Drill’s big body on the floor and Holly Hill sitting up in a chair and dying to be somewhere else. Plus Penny Darnell, my pretty little helper, who suddenly meant more to me than the dame who’d always waited on my table at my favourite restaurant. And me with a machine-gun in my mitts that was about
as useful as a grizzly bear at a wedding. I could no more have opened up with that tommy-gun than cut off my right arm to beat my mother over the head.

  And whoever had clicked off the lights and knocked me down knew it, too. Heavy feet were punishing the floorboards running away. Penny stopped screaming and there was a rush of bodies in the darkness. It was like the third time through the Tunnel of Love, only this wasn’t love. I was down on my hands and knees trying to stand up again when a shoe rammed into my back and knocked the brotherly feelings out of me.

  This just wasn’t one of those cases where my body got any good treatment at all.

  A door slammed somewhere while I was fumbling around on the floor. Then my clutching fingers found a cord of some kind at the base of what seemed to be the wall. My thumb closed down on the attachment head of the thing. The room was quiet now and I was seven kinds of a jackass on my hands and knees trying to find the socket that the plug in my hand would fit. I finally found it and plugged it in. I was proud of myself for being able to do it so fast. Gunfire had started to hail on the walls of the place, from outside. I couldn’t blame the cops. They hadn’t gotten an answer to their pleas.

  The lights jumped on like magic and nearly blinded me. But there was no cause for alarm. By the time my eyes had adjusted themselves to the sudden glare, I could see the party had really broken up. Ace hadn’t moved, of course. He was still curled up where he had fallen, as dead as silent movies. But Carver Calloway Drill had vamoosed. Pronto. And so had Holly Hill. Her chair was empty. And Penny Darnell was just crawling out from under the kitchen table, where she had wisely jumped to save her cute skin. She was shaking her head and grinning at me, dust and dirt making her pretty face as appealing as a schoolgirl’s.

  “What a party,” she whispered fiercely. “What an initiation. This night must have aged me twenty years.”

  “You look great,” I said. “Look.” I showed her the plug. “Big boy came to on the floor while we were gabbing. And killed the lights. I wouldn’t know which way he went or how.”