“Everybody who drank in his rat hole knew that,” Mose said. “Shmendrick was always bragging about his holdings in Dick’s studio.”
“I don’t blame him. They were important. When Mark Richmond decided the time was ripe for a shift control, he went at once to Threadgill, whose nine shares were shifting the balance of power to Dick. Mark was sure he could get Shmendrick and Katie to string along on his side. Threadgill was closer to Dick Piper—he had to be handled carefully. But Mark was a good talker. It didn’t take long to convince Threadgill to come in on his side.
“I’m sure Clark knows, just as all of you do, that Dick Piper was only a figurehead in the studio. No matter how much you fellows hated Mark personally, he was the theoretical head of your outfit. It was Mark who directed the policies of Piper Pictures, supervised the stories and managed the men. After Clark okayed the scheme, Richmond began to deal with Shmendrick. Clark told him where the missing nine shares were. Richmond needed those nine or the scheme was worthless. He kept after Shmendrick and finally arranged an interview with him last night in Clark Threadgill’s apartment. Shmendrick, however, decided to take a trip to the studio on his own. He crossed the lot on the way to Dick’s office. But he met Clark Threadgill on the way, and Threadgill convinced him that he should return to his saloon and meet him later at La Jolla. Hank and I saw him leave. I’m positive that Dick Piper overheard this discussion and decided, at that moment, that he would kill Mark Richmond rather than lose out in the studio.”
“But didn’t we see Threadgill, or hear him, at least, in Dick’s office later?”
“Of course. Dick invited him in to try fighting off the deal Mark had made with him. That was why they went to dinner together. Dick wanted him to abandon the plan and spent the next hour or so attempting to lure Threadgill to his side with more attractive offers. Threadgill was too cagey to give him a definite promise. His plan was to play one against the other for the greatest reward. The interview must have ended on a sour note. Dick carried through his plan of murder.”
“That is clear,” said De Cluny. “But I still do not understand who it was that hit Lloyd.”
“It was Dick Piper, though he didn’t really mean it.”
“Didn’t mean it?” said Buttikoffer. “Concussion of the brain and he didn’t mean it?”
“Dick didn’t know he was hitting Lloyd. He had gone into Quillan’s room to get the automatic. On his way out, he heard someone approaching. He pocketed the gun and hid behind the door. Remember, that room was pretty dark when Lloyd walked in. Dick, mistaking him for Mark, almost battered his brains to a pulp with Quillan’s shillelagh, which was at his elbow, against the wall. It was a good time for murder, and a good tool for the job. He ran out into the hall with the stick in his hands, opened the door to the projection booth and threw the thing inside. He didn’t know P.D.Q. was asleep in there until he opened that door. When he saw Quillan, his alibi was complete. He circled the building and walked toward the main entrance. He must have had the shock of his life when Mark Richmond strolled up the steps with him.”
Buttikoffer mopped his forehead. “I didn’t think that gawk was so smart. You never know.”
“The murder in the sweatbox was even smarter. Dick Piper had it timed perfectly—I covered the route he used and found that he had two and a half minutes to spare. Dick knew exactly when Mark Richmond would enter that sweatbox. Everybody knew. Mark always came to a meeting a half-hour early, to preview the pictures. At five minutes to eight, Clark Threadgill left Dick’s office to search for some papers. Dick followed him into the hall, then ducked into the projection booth. Mark was already in his seat, awaiting the projection boy. Piper put out the lights and switched on the projection machine loaded with the first reel. Then he turned the sound up until the noise was deafening. Mark turned around in his seat to complain, but by that time Piper was out of the booth aiming the gun at Richmond’s chest. Mark never knew who shot him. He was staring directly into the beam of that projection machine. Dick threw the gun away and dashed back to his office to wait for Threadgill.
“That explains the direction of the bullet,” I said.
“Smart boy,” said Homer. “It eliminated the suicide theory when Drexler, the coroner, told us that the bullet took a downward path. No suicide would shoot in that direction. Matter of fact, it proved Mark was sitting down when he was murdered and indicated it was a tallish man who shot him.”
“What happened to the films in the machine?” Buttikoffer asked.
“Those reels run for almost exactly seven minutes, Inspector. Dick knew that Mark’s projection boy would be prompt. He timed his visit so the machine would be running when the projection boy entered the sweatbox. He knew the boy would continue showing films until they were exhausted. This meant that Richmond would be dead and undiscovered in the sweatbox until half past eight.” Homer paused to sip his bourbon. “After he had killed Richmond, Dick’s plan for an out was even more ingenious than the murder. Somehow, he had discovered that Quillan lay asleep in the parking shed. He managed to get away to the shed during the excitement, lift Quillan into his luggage compartment and return undetected.”
“What for?” asked Mose. “Why did he want Quillan out of the way?”
“His plan was simple. If the police couldn’t locate Quillan, P.D.Q. would be immediately suspected of the murder. Dick was smart enough to know that the police wouldn’t search for escaped murderers in the parking lot—at least not in luggage compartments. His scheme wasn’t at all involved. He would take Quillan with him when he left the studio. Quillan was drunk, and there’s no telling what a drunken murderer will do, thought Dick. He probably intended to do away with P.D.Q. somehow—perhaps a gentle push off one of the higher cliffs near Santa Monica. Dick didn’t say. But the fact that Quillan had committed suicide would definitely convince the authorities that he’d killed Richmond. Simple?”
Ellen Tucker shuddered, and I saw her hand reach out for Mose and squeeze his fist. The boys stared moodily into their beers. Only Buttikoffer was gay. He ordered another round of drinks.
“This round’s on me fellows,” he boomed. “And I got to give a toast to Bull here, the best assistant I ever had!”
“Assistant?” I griped. “You remind me of a fat cop I read about in a pulp mystery. All air and a yard wide.”
Buttikoffer colored. “Whattaya mean, fat cop?”
There was a roar from Jimmy Boomer. “That gives me an idea for a new character, guys! Why not animate a fat cop? You know the type—a butter-tub with a badge! It’ll be terrific!”
Louie Cianchini woke up. “We could get in touch with Jay Irving, the guy who draws ’em for Collier’s. It’d be sensational!”
“‘Clunkhead the Cop’,” suggested Jimmy Boomer.
“‘Officer Otto’,” said Mose.
“‘Patrolman Porko’,” sang Eph De Cluny.
“‘Danny the Dick’.”
“‘Flatfoot Farnsworth’.”
They finished the continuity for the first picture three hours and one hundred and forty-two beers later.
Turn the page to continue reading from the Homer Bull & Hank MacAndrews Mysteries
CHAPTER 1
In the United States, many things were news.
Inner circles at the White House gossiped that President Roosevelt might report his travels to a joint session of Congress, thus borrowing a strategy from Churchill.
In Nebraska, a Post Office clerk was amazed when a lady requested the name and number of a Post Office pen because it wrote so well.
A minor explosion shook the Senate. Veteran lawmakers exchanged epithets over the soldiers’ voting bill.
Endless swarms of high-flying bombers dropped tons of bombs over bleeding Berlin. Authorities predicted that Germany would either be knocked out by air or left too weakened to resist the forthcoming invasion from the west. Leaders high in
Army and Navy circles cautioned an uncertain public against overconfidence.
A minor plague of influenza swept the eastern seaboard, raised the absentee rate in war plants. The Health Department of The City of New York reported many tenement buildings unheated. A system of coal rationing was suggested by government experts. People were confused, irritated, aroused, hopeful, phlegmatic, violent and glum.
Dignitaries returning from the Teheran conference reported that Josef Stalin was the dominant personality in that historic meeting. Dramatic climax came when Churchill presented the Stalingrad sword, a gift from King George VI “to the steel-hearted citizens of Stalingrad.”
Adolf Hitler trembled on his Berchtesgaden crag as the great Soviet Army seized the initiative in the battle of the Kiev bulge and slowly pressed the shivering Nazi hordes back toward Russia’s western border.
The German underground movement prepared a new attack on American home front morale. American liberals deplored the sudden rise in apologist propaganda, cautioned against the coming German peace offensive.
A serious tenement fire broke out in lower New York City. Mayor LaGuardia ordered an investigation because the firemen discovered the charred body of a policeman in the ruins of the street floor.
It was a cold fall. The winter would be colder, weather men predicted.
All this was news, good and bad.
At Times Square the streets were alive with the usual late afternoon crowds. Tired and hungry, the workers gathered in the canyon of Times Square for a last deep breath of cool air before taking the plunge into the subway.
Many newspapers were bought. The news was good tonight.
On the west side of the Times Building the crowd knotted. People craned their necks to read the Times Bulletin:
SOVIETS SEIZE INITIATIVE IN BATILE OF KIEV BULGE
Jittery Berlin Sees Several Offensives Under Way
A great noise, a subtle and meaningful noise, rose from the crowd, rose above the din of the traffic. People were approving this news from Russia. American crowds always cheer for the side that fights stubbornly to come back. All this was merely a symptom. Underneath the simple sentiment lay a realistic conviction that the fate of the United States would continue to be linked with the Great Russian Bear, in peace as in war.
Suddenly the crowd tightened around a group of struggling figures. Three men were fighting.
“Harry! Harry—come back here, you fool!” A woman’s scream, in a high tremolo. “Harry! Hareeeeeee!”
Other voices added to the broth of noise.
A man shouted, “Kill the Nazi!”
Another man shouted. The woman screamed: “Harry! Come back here!”
Taxis squealed to a stop. The crowd was surging around the subway entrance now. Several hundred people tried to see three men fight. It was impossible. In the tight small circle around the pavement battle there was confusion. Toes were being mashed. Hats were knocked askew. A policeman entered the outer fringe of the mob. Another shouldered his way from the curbing. Still a third hurled himself into the mêlée and floundered to the core of the crowd.
“Break it up! Break it up! Stand back, you!”
The other two policemen seized a man and held him.
“Who started this?”
The man on the sidewalk didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He lay face down, a thin flood of blood pouring from his forehead to his chin.
The man with the red scratches on his chin squirmed in the grip of the two cops. They edged him forward.
“This guy’s the battler, Tom.”
“That isn’t right,” said the man. “I didn’t hit that man.”
“You didn’t exactly kiss him, mister!”
“No. No. You got me wrong. I tried to help this man, officer. I tried to help him shake off that bum—”
The policeman took out a notebook. “What bum?”
“The one who hit that poor fellow.”
“What’s your name, mister?”
“Harry Wasserstein. But I didn’t do nothing, honest. I was standing here minding my own business, just looking up at the bulletin. Then all of a sudden I hear this man here say something nasty to another guy behind my back.”
“What did he say?”
“He called this big guy a Nazi.”
“Then they started to fight, hey?”
“Yeah. Then they started. So I tried to help this little man hold off the Nazi. But he was plenty tough, that German bum.”
They carried the man on the sidewalk to the drugstore and the big cop called for an ambulance. Harry Wasserstein was released.
His wife, a nervous little woman, wept into a handkerchief. “Oh, Harry, Harry, Harry—you’re always mixing your two cents in where it doesn’t belong.”
Harry patted his wife’s arm. “Never mind, Bertha. You hear what that big Nazi bum said?”
“All right, he said something terrible. It’s a free country, isn’t it? Even if we are at war, let those German fools talk. God will take care of them in due time.”
Harry tried to laugh, but his chin hurt when he moved it. “God is kind of busy these days, Bertha.”
“Please, Harry, please. You’ll make a nervous wreck out of me yet with your hot temper.”
“My temper isn’t hot. I’m a citizen and it hurts me to hear such talk about our country.” He touched his jaw tenderly. “Did you notice the face on that guy?”
“I didn’t even see his face. How could I? I was too busy watching my Harry being a boxfighter!”
“A face like a dog he had.”
“Who cares about him? You’re anxious to maybe fight him again?”
“A face like a dog he had on him, I’m telling you. Never in my life have I seen such a nose.”
“You should talk, Mr. Boxfighter.”
Harry Wasserstein’s hand went to his nose. He blew it. “I know my nose ain’t no beauty, Bertha. But now I don’t feel so bad about mine any more. Now I saw for once in my life a man with something worse on his face than even mine. My best enemies shouldn’t look like that Nazi!”
“Forget about him, please. As a personal favor to me, please forget about him, Harry.”
Harry shook his head and sighed. “Such a face I never saw in my life. Till my dying day I’ll remember him.” He shook his head again, blew his nose violently. “The dirty Nazi!”
Ten minutes later four people left the subway at Canal Street.
The first, an overworked stenographer, climbed the stairs eagerly, as though the smell of fresh air above might take the torture out of her eyes.
Behind her came a young man with a mustache who had been watching her since Grand Central and hoped to meet her personally on Canal Street.
Third came a young man carrying three books. These three books were concerned with medicine, and the young man held them firmly because he had recently paid twenty-three dollars for the set. This young man walked with a sly step. He would wait on the street until the man behind him stood near. Then he would do what he rarely did, he would turn and stare at the man’s face for a long moment.
The man with the lumpy nose came fourth. He passed the medical student a few steps short of the street level. On the street he paused, eyed the sky, sniffed, shrugged and buttoned the top button of his topcoat. It was at this instant that the young medical student stared at him and told himself, “Acne rosacea.” And having told himself this, he lit a cigarette and walked off.
The man with the lumpy nose started east with a step at once spry and jerky. He was a heavy man, broad in the shoulders and broader in the midsection. His head sat tightly on those shoulders, a massive head, thick-necked and stiff-necked. He bent forward a bit, thrust his jaw out and moved quickly, but when his right foot came down you felt the limp.
He paused at a newsstand. He lifted six magazines, one newspaper and a racing s
heet from the stand and walked inside, holding a crumpled bill in his hand.
There were two people in the store: the newsdealer, small, squat, with blue-grey hair on his chin; and another man, tall and thin with a sharp nose, a sharp jaw and sharp eyes behind heavy horn-rimmed glasses.
The man with the lumpy nose held out his hand for change, studied the headlines in his newspaper.
“Getting cooler,” said the storekeeper, in that guttural monotone common to newsdealers.
“Eh?” said the man with the lumpy nose, more to his paper than to the storekeeper. “Yes. Cooler.” Then he pocketed his change, folded his paper and walked out.
The newsdealer joined his friend in the rear. “Where were we, Johnny? Oh, yes, we were talking about unions, wasn’t it?”
John Hedge stared at the door with the measuring glance of a carpenter. “What a nose!” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“That man’s nose,” said Hedge. “That’s a treasure of a nose, I tell you. It isn’t often a roving cartoonist hits a proboscis like that one.”
The other shrugged. “You were talking about unions. Now it’s noses? You artists sometimes strike me as crazy—all of you. To me that nose wasn’t so extra.”
“It was extra, all right.”
“I don’t see it.” He laughed into his front teeth. “But I know what you’ll say next. I am a candy store man, a newsdealer. I can see no further than a man’s nickel and the name of the paper he’s buying. No?”
“Not exactly. It’s a matter of association of ideas. You look at a shoelace and think of a shoe. It’s a perfectly normal reaction. But artists aren’t ever perfectly normal, you see. When I look at a shoelace I think immediately of an old man I saw selling laces on the corner of Forty-Ninth Street and Third Avenue, on a rainy night last August. I can see that old fellow as clearly as I see you now. He was wearing a greenish coat, with two huge patches on his right arm. His beard was a reddish-brown, his eyes were dead black and he had the boniest hand I’ve ever seen. He sold me a pair of shoelaces, too—insisted that I take the laces for my nickel, and I can’t forget the sudden fierce pride in his eyes when I took ’em. That’s a long story for a pair of shoelaces, I know, but can you understand my interest in that nose now?”
He Died Laughing Page 16