The Case of the Bouncing Betty

by Michael Avallone

  “All right, cowboy. You live your way. I’ll live mine. But no more of the cute stuff. I still owe you a couple. So behave and you won’t get hurta.”

  I grinned down at him and smiled tightly at the bodyguard.

  “Fair enough. Well, it’s been nice talking to you both. Especially your bodyguard, Bim. His jokes just broke me up. And please give my regards to Lon, Bucky and Cuba. I hope you weren’t too hard on them, Bim. When people haven’t got brains, you have to be a little lenient with them. It’s a terrible handicap, really.”

  “Beat it,” the bodyguard rasped. “You ain’t funny.”

  Bim Caesar’s bulk heaved in disgust.

  “Don’t bother, Velvet. He’s a Rah-Rah boy. They talka too much. Too much of the time. Goodbye, jerk. And remember what I told you. I’m not kiddin’.”

  I reached for my check but Bim Caesar’s massive paw had already trapped it.

  “On me, Noon.” His smile was terrible. “It’s the last thing I’ll ever do for you.”

  “So long, men,” I said. “It hasn’t been fun.”

  With that, I walked out of the luncheonette, past the copper still cooling his coffee. It must have been a second cup because he might have recognized Bim Caesar and hung around just for laughs.

  I didn’t care. I bee-lined across the street and went into Police Headquarters. Millican, the desk sergeant looked up when I hailed him. His lined old Irish face split into a wide grin.

  “Go right in, Ed. Hadley’s waiting on you.”

  The station was as deserted as a Christmas tree two days after the visit from St. Nick. I grinned. Millican liked me but his smile was miles wide this morning so I figured he was just lonely.

  “Morning, Millican. Is he in a good mood?”

  Millican’s shrug eclipsed his smile.

  “How can a cop ever be in a good mood? Read your mornin’ papers, young blood. Don’t you think that crime–”

  “See you, Millican.” I kept right on walking past his desk toward Hadley’s office.

  “Sure, Ed. Sure.” He went back to reading some official forms on his desk. “I hope you’re savin’ your money, son.”

  Hadley’s office wasn’t exactly virgin territory. What with one thing and another, I’d been a steady caller at Headquarters the last year or so. I have to admit I never did feel exactly comfortable in the place. After all, detective or not, I was an outsider. And outsiders are never really comfortable no matter how many kicks they get out of just being one.

  Hadley was a city paid detective working on a city job. Which puts my kind of operator in the scab category. But I did have a license and a permit for a gun so I kept that thought in mind as I knocked on the door that said HOMICIDE DIVISION. LIEUTENANT A. HADLEY.

  I waited for his answering “Come on in,” before I pushed the door in.

  I should have stayed outside.

  I should have stayed home.

  I should have stayed in bed.

  I should have done everything else in the wide, wide world except one thing. Come to headquarters.

  Because no sooner had I stepped through the door when two big dicks in overcoats grabbed me by either arm and a third one came around behind me and snapped a cold pair of handcuffs on my wrists.

  I was too startled even to blink once but my eyes found Hadley’s. He was squatting behind his desk, arms folded, his fat, pudgy face unrecognizable for the contempt that etched it in hard, ugly lines.

  I had a second gasp, “What the hell is all this?” before my muscles started to strain reflexively in the strong hands that were pinning them back like bat’s wings.

  Hadley slapped the top of the desk with a loud hand.

  “You’re under arrest,” he grated. “That’s what. And before you start getting cute, it’s my duty to inform you that anything you say will be held against you.”

  “Grace Kelly,” I shouted. I was mad. It shot out of me before I could bring myself to understand what he was saying or implying. “Hadley, are you nuts? That sounds like a homicide pitch and you know damn well I’m clean on the Artel thing–”

  Hadley’s eyes motioned his men to let me go. I could see his point. With my hands manacled behind me, I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I’m not talking about the Artel thing.” Hadley’s voice was amazing me with the amount of venom that was in it. “I’m talking about a woman who got pushed down a flight of stairs about an hour and a half ago. A big, heavy woman. Musta weighed all of four hundred pounds. She was your client, Noon. Somebody you forgot to mention yesterday. Don’t tell me you didn’t know somebody named Betty Heck? Don’t even try to deny it. We’ve got all the proof we need.”

  You talk silly at times like that. Your head reels and stupid, plain, clumsy words stumble out of you.

  “Is she dead?” I could hear my own voice husking it out above the shocked feeling in my throat.

  “Dead?” Hadley’s sneer was monumental. “She broke her neck in two places. That dead enough for you?”

  That was dead enough for three people.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I didn’t know what to say. What to do was something else again. But one thought pounded at me, hung in my brain like something left over from a bad memory. In the brief two hours that she’d been out of my sight, somebody had killed Betty Heck. The same somebody who had tried three times before. The poor fat girl had been done in for a reason that I still didn’t know.

  And Hadley was pinning her murder on me. Lieutenant Hadley of Homicide who usually was my friend but now was acting exactly like a cop who has cornered a mad murderer.

  “Well,” he snapped at me. “Say something. Don’t go down without a fight. Don’t you want to know who put the finger on you and why I’m so damn sure of you this time?”

  As upset as I was, this sudden, mixed leniency put hope in my heart, I fought down the worry and the gloom that was trying to take hold of me.

  “Sure I want to know, Hadley. Who was it?”

  Hadley rocked back in his swivel chair, his eyes puzzled. The excitement had died for him now that the cat was out of the bag.

  “Can’t figure you, Ed. I’d never hook you up with pushing a dame down a staircase. No matter what the beef was. It just isn’t you. But I guess everybody has a time when he isn’t himself. This must have been your time. You might have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for Mason.”

  “Mason?” My mind was still foggy. Betty did say something about seeing A Star Is Born–

  “Mason,” Hadley said decisively, “was the guy who tailed you to Bim Caesar’s. You shook him off with your cute exit but he finally caught up with you thanks to a cab driver with a good memory who makes the Club his nightly work. He phoned in this morning–Mason, that is–and I gave him orders to stay put until relieved. I knew you were heading here. When he phoned the kill in, we just sat and waited. I knew you’d put in an appearance.”

  I had only one question worth asking. “Why?”

  His eyes narrowed, getting smaller than ever. “What do you mean–why?”

  “You’re the detective, Hadley. Why did I kill her?”

  His smile was bleak. “That’s what we’re waiting to hear. Want to make a statement? I suggest a few more honest details than that skeleton story you shoveled out in your office yesterday.”

  “On one condition.”

  The detective on my right sneered out loud and the lovely fellow who had cuffed me the indecent way, hands-behind-my-back, shook his head. The dick between me and Hadley and the desk spoke up.

  “No deals, Noon. This is one fix you’re not talking your way out of.”

  “Deals, shmeals,” I blazed. “I killed her, right? You want a statement, right? Okay. Well, let’s go re-enact the crime. I’ll show you the very step I pushed her off. Third from the top. Don’t you want to know how she bounced all the way? That’s customary police procedure, isn’t it?”

  The detective on my right stopped sneering and started to jab me with a heavy elbow. I dan
ced out of the way and frowned at him.

  “That’s against the law, Officer,” I said. “And don’t you ever forget it.”

  He made but a face but Hadley shook him off. I had to grin. Hadley was glowering at me.

  “You keep asking for that, Ed. Look. We’ll take you back there all right. But one phony move and my men have orders to shoot. Understand? No hard feelings but that’s the way the ball rolls.”

  He’d never know how I had to fight to keep the white-hot anger out of my voice.

  “Believe me, Hadley, I wouldn’t want it any other way. After all, I’m a dangerous murderer and you have to keep a good eye on me. No telling when that old killing mood will come over me again. Well, shall we run? I’m dying to see my last corpse. You know how proud we murderers are of our corpses.”

  They didn’t know how to take it. But I didn’t give a damn. I was tired of being surrounded by other people’s dirty homework. I was sick and disgusted of being nailed by Headquarters every time a citizen bit the dust in my general vicinity. Yeah, verily.

  And Hadley was still baffled. In spite of what Mason had phoned in, as damning as it must have been for him to jump on me as soon as I walked into his office, he just couldn’t connect me with the horrible murder of a big, helpless slob. He had only behaved reflexively and instinctively, like the good honest copper he was but the Irisher in him still smelled a rat. What rat he couldn’t have said, but rat it was.

  “Okay, Ed.” He rose wearily. “We’ll go. I’ll hear your story on the ride over. I’ve got lots to ask you. About the fat girl and Artel and a company called Sleep-Tite.”

  I smiled. “I was wondering when you’d get around to that.”

  He stopped moving. “The report was on my desk this morning. You know it burned down last night under suspicious conditions?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you also know that the Heck woman worked for Sleep-Tite? That Artel was her boss?”

  “I did.”

  “Good,” he grunted. “That’ll save us lots of fencing. Come on. We’ll talk it over in the car.”

  They jostled me out of the office down the short corridor but spared me the embarrassment of having to walk out cuffed up as I was in front of my old friend, Millican. Usually when you’re as low on the social scale as I had just temporarily fallen, those things don’t upset you one way or the other. But I’m glad Millican didn’t see me with my wings plucked. We went down a tiny flight of steps that opened onto a concrete alley that hugged the wheels of several assorted patrol cars and one bright, shiny looking Ford. We took the Ford.

  It was Hadley’s car. He drove. One of the dicks shared the front seat with us while the other two filled out the rear. They had the decency to take the cuffs off me so I could ride more easily. We made a real friendly little group for our little drive down to the Village. Hadley and I did all the talking.

  He had no sooner edged out into traffic, found an opening, shoved it into third, that he started firing questions at me.

  “How about co-operating? If you blew your top and shoved this dame down those stairs, that’s only manslaughter. Not as bad as a premeditated rap. Was that the way it was?”

  I folded my arms. “What’s Mason’s story? Did he see me do it?”

  Hadley grunted, his eyes on his driving. “Mason saw you come out of the building. He waited twenty minutes, then walked across to check the apartment. Nobody had come out in all that time. He found her at the bottom of the stairs. He made a quick check on her apartment. The door was open but the place was empty. Then he phoned in.”

  I felt better already. “Hadley, are you nuts? There isn’t a jury in the world that could pin a circumstantial mess like that on me. What about all the other apartments? What about–”

  “Have it.” Hadley’s lack of concern baffled me. “We got a helluva lot more than that. Much more. But I’m saving that until later. We still got time to talk about other things. Come on, now. What kind of deal did you and Artel have worked up with the girl? Bim Caesar tried to muscle in, am I right?”

  I sighed. “Why don’t you stop seeing those Edward G. Robinson revivals? You got this all wrong. I’m just a guy who got hired to do a job–”

  “That’s your story, sonny,” one of the dicks behind me volunteered.

  “So it is,” I admitted. “But it happens to be the truth. Look, Hadley. I’ll give you everything I’ve got. Then you try to figure out where I fit in. And if you can still make me out as the murderer of one Betty Heck, I’ll sign a blasted confession for you.”

  He was still staring straight ahead. “Shoot,” he said, his lower lip unrelenting.

  I did. I didn’t leave out anything. It was all there from the opening line when Betty Heck came bouncing in right down to this last act of her life. Bouncing down a flight of stairs. Lon and Bucky came in where they did and so did Artel and Bim Caesar. I explained as well as I could about the fire and my opinions about why it was set and more important why I thought it was intentional. I told them everything.

  Everything except Lois Hunt and Narcotics. Because I wasn’t sure of either one of them right now. Especially about the first one. Miss Hunt, the last person to see Betty Heck alive. Except her murderer. Same person? I didn’t know.

  Hadley didn’t know either. His pushed-out lower lip unfurled sarcastically.

  “Hard to buy, Ed. Can’t believe you’d be this far into a case without the slightest idea what it’s all about. So somebody tried to kill the fat girl three times and you never got to find out why? Come on, boy. You can do better than that.”

  “I see I better. But believe me when I tell you I’ve been so busy keeping myself out of the frying pan, I forgot all about being caught in the fire.”

  One of the nice fellows in the rear of the car laughed out loud. But there wasn’t time for anymore. Hadley was suddenly tooling the car to the curb in front of the same four story building I had slept in the night before.

  It looked different now. It had to. I guess any building looks different to you when you know somebody who has been killed in it.

  He eased out of the car and somebody walked quickly down the front steps of the place and hurried over to us. I recognized him from the activities of the previous evening when we’d had Grand Ol’ Opry at Bim Caesar’s.

  He favored me with a fish-eye so I took him to my heart immediately.

  “Hello, Mason. How’d you make out with that blonde last night? She wouldn’t let you go last time I looked.”

  “Wise guy,” he sneered. “Not so wise anymore. Dead to rights, Noon. You’ll be laughing out of the other side of your mouth soon enough.” He got back to Hadley. “Lieutenant, the boys from the 13th Precinct are giving us a hand finishing up in the apartment. The body’s still where it was. I kept everyone off it until you got here. The meat wagon boys are a little tired of waiting.”

  I had to hand it to the Police Department. In spite of the fuss and furore usually attendant upon murder scenes, the neighborhood was as quiet as a game of Solitaire. There was a small knot of people hovering on the other side of the street wondering what the hell was going on and several passersby had gotten up enough civic pride to ask the one beat cop on duty at the front door what was going on but other than that it was a nice peaceful murder. I took a hold on myself to steel myself for what I was going to see in the next few minutes.

  Hadley grunted in preamble. “Let’s get this over with.”

  We went up the stairs the same way Lois and Betty Heck and I had the night before and pushed into the small hallway. Only this time was different. I was still alive. Betty Heck wasn’t.

  Oh, how she wasn’t.

  I could see that right away. And it wasn’t easy. Don’t let anybody tell you that you can get used to the sight of death. You can when it’s line of duty like a war or something like that. But when you know the corpse, it’s never easy.

  And this wasn’t. I had known this corpse, drank coffee with her, had her hug me and right this min
ute a hundred dollars of her money was burning a hole in my pocket. Money she had given me to prevent something just like this.

  And she had died horribly, besides.

  All four hundred and forty pounds of her were jammed in the tiny corkscrew turn of the bottom step just before it runged off into the front door. Only the cracked plaster of the outside wall had kept her from falling clear. She was all doubled up, spent and mis-shapen as a heavy sack of potatoes that had been flung down. But a sack of potatoes hasn’t got a neck that is broken in two places. Broken horribly. For one crazy second, I thought that Betty Heck’s pain-twisted face was staring up at me from a position of right angles to her whole body.

  I turned my head and stared up the ballustrade, saw the one or two posts that her immense weight had jarred and splintered but not quite torn loose, saw the trousered legs, of cops and plainclothesmen thumping down the stairs toward us. I couldn’t think of anything right then but of her and the terrible way she had died. The Bouncing Betty. She had bounced all right. Bounced down thirty odd steps, bounced all the way.

  Hadley’s voice seemed to reach me through a great wall of lead.

  “We found this clutched in her hand, Ed. Must have grabbed at the man who was pushing her–”

  I stared at the round, familiar little thing in the palm of his hand. A button. It looked so silly, seemed so silly. Big Betty clutching at tiny buttons for support.

  “Great,” I muttered. “A real clue.” I stared at it closely. Bits of thread strayed out from its eyeholes. Like Hadley had said. Ripped from the killer’s coat. But buttons didn’t mean anything to me. “You’ll have some job tracking down something like that, Hadley. All you gotta do now is locate the million and one suits missing a brown button and you’ll have your killer–”

  “Not too hard, Ed,” he said, shifting his weight suddenly. “Considering that that’s exactly what you’re missing right now. One brown button. It matches your other one too. Mason gave it to me right over the phone. First tiling I looked for when you walked in this morning.”