Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “I did, too!” Moose said.

  “When I came in, Ace was already here, looking around,” she added.

  “Speaking of looking around,” Tony put in. “When I passed and saw something was wrong in here, I looked around. So maybe, boss, you’d better look around right where you’re sitting.”

  I BENT and looked. The covers had been thrown partly back, and there was a long slit in the mattress. Gobs of cotton were all over the floor.

  “That’s why I was looking around,” Ace said. “Some bright boy figured you had sixty-five grand of uncut ice in here and was trying to find it. You came in while he was hunting and got slugged. The guy who did it killed Joe. Mike, if the cops find out about this, you’re in a jam. What are you going to do?”

  He spoke in a low voice because some of them might be snooping outside. I spoke low, too. But I wanted time to think and that’s why I didn’t mention the fact that somebody had knifed Beanie and tossed his body up into the calliope truck back of the cooch tent. Thank heaven, my bloody nose, which had struck the door jamb explained the blood on my hand.

  “Right now,” I said to Ace, “I’m going to wash and change my pants and go eat while I try to think.”

  “I’ll wait for you at the grease joint,” Moose said significantly.

  I went into the kitchen and washed and changed pants while Leota waited. We walked over to her tent. Her soft-toed dancing shoes made soft whispering sounds in the grass.

  “Mike,” she said in a voice so low that any tails couldn’t hear, “I’m going to leave the show when this thing is cleared up. I’m tired of watching baldheaded farmers drool; tired of buck-toothed yokels following me around and even offering money for dates—just because I’m carny. I was a pretty good stenographer once. It wasn’t enough to support a mother and an aunt; but we’ll just have to make out. I’m through.”

  I told her to go in and wait. I turned and slid through the darkness, unseen, for the mid lights were dimmed. No tail was following, so I ducked into Beanie’s tent with a fountain-pen flashlight and went straight to a corner. Once somebody had ripped the cushions from Beanie’s car, where he had hidden his loot, and quite by accident, I had found his new hiding place. A block of grass had been carefully cut, and when I raised it, there in the hollow was a huge wad of bills. I pulled them out, replaced the sod, and counted swiftly. Twenty grand.

  Leota was dressed when I returned. She came out, and I said, “So you’re leaving?”

  “Yes,” she answered lightly, “and whoever takes my place, have the calliope fixed for her. It went haywire this afternoon. Two of the pipes just grunted.”

  Kablam! It hit me just like that.

  “Come on!” I said, grabbing her hand.

  THERE wasn’t anybody around the cally truck because the johns were still grilling all the other members of the outfit in small groups. “Better come around on this side,” I told her. “Beanie’s laying behind the pipes and he’s messy. Joe’s killer got him with a shiv.”

  I heard her shuddering intake of breath as I jumped up into the truck and asked her which pipes wouldn’t give. I ran my arm down the first and felt the big roll of bills, twin to mine. I shoved mine down, too, to get rid of the stuff—but fast.

  “Find anything, Mike?” she whispered.

  “Can’t tell. Which other one?”

  This one was larger but I could just barely get hold of the string on the buckskin sack and haul it out. Sixty-five thousand dollars in uncut diamonds rattled as I jumped down beside her.

  She stood frozen, her face white while I showed her the bag. “This will explain why you couldn’t play. Whoever killed Joe had to hide this stuff temporarily and then he didn’t get a chance to come back after it before the show started.”

  “I’ve come back after it now, wise guy,” a voice said from behind. “Just toss it to me.”

  We turned. Tony stood there with the gun in one hand. “Wise guy,” he said again. “Now get up and hand down the dough out of the other pipe. When I get it, you two are going out. I don’t like you and I don’t like this dame who wouldn’t give me a play. It’s a hundred yards to the customhouse, and I can filter through with the crowd. The joints will know later, sure. But I’ve got plans.”

  Chills were going up my back. I stalled for time and gathered for a leap. “So you’re the finger man for that Eastern mob who found Joe. But you didn’t knock him off until you’d found the loot.”

  He grinned at that one. “I knew all the time. I was just waiting until we got here to the border where I could slip over and lam. Wanna know where the stuff was hid? In the safest place in this outfit. In your mattress. Joe put it there and waited till he got to the border, too.”

  “And you tailed him across the Line and watched him make the deal with Villanova that the money would be delivered?”

  He grinned again. “The deal was made. Joe collected the forty grand and brought it back. Then I took Beanie and went across and got the stuff and brought it back. I tried to get a whack at him last night, but he played poker until breakfast time.”

  “It all fits,” I said, leading him on. He was enjoying it, too, as only a man hitting the big time on his first job could enjoy it. “You got Joe this morning, waited until tonight to get the stuff you hid back in the mattress because you knew I was over playing poker until daylight, too, and slipped it into the calliope for a few hours. You knocked off Beanie either because he was after the loot himself or because you had to silence him. Nice going.”

  “He tailed me and tried to get it,” he half snarled. “Now you get—”

  “Stand fast, Tony,” said another voice.

  Tony whirled, and I dived for his legs. I heard his gun go off and another that sounded like a cannon. I went down under him and got all the breath knocked out of me as he fell kicking. I heard yells and running feet, the glare of flashlights hit my eyes, and somebody turned on the lights of an automobile. When I got up, the place was swarming. I saw Ace with a gun in one hand and a buckskin bag in the other.

  “What’s going on here?” roared somebody.

  Beefy Belly himself.

  “Hold it, officer,” cut in Ace’s crisp voice.

  “Who are you and you’re under arrest for carrying a gun. Hand over that gun.”

  “I’m FBI and I’m not under arrest.” The gun slid out of sight and Ace opened a leather folder. “Department of Justice. I’ve been on this jewel case for a long time. I located this Joe Wilson some weeks back but could never find where he had hidden the proceeds from the job back east. He was a very clever criminal. I sensed all along that he would try to contact Senor Villanova, who is well known to the FBI. When he came back across the Line, I could have arrested him and promptly closed the case, but I wasn’t sure if he had the money or merely had made arrangements for it to be delivered.”

  “I see,” the deputy said. “You FBI boys never gamble that way. So you tailed him though?”

  SOMETHING like a half rueful smile came over Ace’s face as he looked at me. “I’m sorry to say he gave me the slip and hid the money in Mr. Padgett’s mattress early this morning while Mr. Padgett was playing poker. I had to keep waiting. The safe job only confused me the more, I’ll frankly admit. It meant that the forty thousand dollars supposedly taken from the safe was now also on the show.”

  I held my breath on that one, wondering if he had heard it all or had just come up in time to hear Tony brag about the killing. I let go a sigh of relief when he said, “We’ll have to search the show for the money.”

  We finally got the mess over with about two o’clock, and Leota and I walked down to the trailer. Presently Ace came in. The diamonds he’d used for bait on Joe were gone.

  “We’ll have to turn the place upside down tomorrow, Mr. Padgett,” he said quite impersonally. “Shall I bring a search warrant?”

  “No need to, Mr. Brugar,” I said.

  “By the way, where were those diamonds hidden? Tony already had them when I came up.”<
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  “Right under the calliope pedals,” I answered promptly and almost fell off the bunk.

  When he was gone, Leota came over and sat down, after sweeping out the cotton. “You don’t have to go, Leota,” I said, “but I don’t want you to stay, either.”

  “Pitch them slower, Mike. They’re too fast.”

  “It’s this pan of mine,” I explained. “Two strikes against me.”

  Those limpid lamps again. “That’s better. But not with me, Mike. It’s what’s back of that face of yours that I’ve always gone for, but you couldn’t see it.”

  “Home run on the third strike,” I said, kind of choked up.

  About that time Moose came in. He smelled like a man who’d been thrown into a pickle vat full of tequila.

  “Moose, after tomorrow you’ll have to find another place to bunk,” I grinned at him. “Leota and I have some business at the county seat courthouse. We’re driving over after I repair the calliope.”

  “Didn’t know it was busted,” Moose said.

  As I mentioned, Moose is not much when it comes to catching fast curves.

  THE BODY IN MY BED

  William F. Schwartz

  It was all hazy to me; a woman lying there, her flimsy nightgown a revealing thing. The pixies were still playing the “Anvil Chorus” in my skull—and it suddenly struck me that the girl wasn’t moving . . .

  I FLIPPED on the light switch and saw doll-like loveliness formed body and an abundance of copper-hued hair that cascaded from her head and clouded her face with a misty, golden veil.

  My breath caught in my throat—in surprise and admiration. She’s beautiful! I thought, and the word seemed strangely inadequate. I’m an alleged artist and I think I know beauty—especially feminine beauty—at a glance.

  And there she was, stretched out on my bed. For a second or two I thought I had staggered into the wrong room by mistake. But I recognized my furniture and decided, maybe, she was a lush who had wandered up from the noisy party below—the same drunken brawl where I had acquired my own rubber legs. Then I saw her feet were bare and she was clad only in a frothy, flesh-colored nightgown.

  Then I heard Rita, who was beside me, heave a sigh. “Rod,” Rita censured, “you shouldn’t have done it.”

  “Done what?”

  “Lured her up here.”

  “But I didn’t!” I protested. “I never saw her before.”

  Rita smirked. Suspicion lurked in her heavy-lidded blue eyes. “Oh, yes, you did! You certainly did see her before. You spent at least an hour bending her ear. You had her backed off in a corner—and making passes, too.”

  I stared at the figure on the bed again. Vaguely, I remembered her—a charming creature—still in her teens—who had informed me she was an artist’s model. It started to come back to me—in spots. I had been downing rum-cokes by the dozens. And when I am swilling rum-cokes, I go slightly haywire. I am liable to pursue anything attractive that wears skirts.

  “Oh, well,” I began and started toward the bed. “Finders keepers!”

  But Rita grabbed my arm and I went stumbling backwards.

  “Don’t be silly, Rod!” Rita said. “We got to get her out of here.”

  “Killjoy!” I muttered and watched as Rita swept toward the bed with her long-legged stride.

  Rita grasped naked shoulders and shook the girl. Then she wheeled on me, her eyes round with sudden shock. “Rod!” Rita gasped. “She’s as cold as ice. Look at the marks on her throat! She’s dead! Strangled!”

  My jaw dropped. I stared, stupidly and drunkenly. I tried to think, but couldn’t! Then, from outside in the street, came a distracting noise. The banshee wail of a police siren that cut through the stillness of the room like a jagged knife. The clamor jarred some of the intoxication from me.

  “This,” I blurted out, “is a job for the cops.”

  I lurched across the room toward the telephone on a floor that was oddly uneven. I tripped over something and the foot of the bed rose suddenly to crash into me. A flash of white brilliance blinded me as my head smashed into wood. Then I reeled off into deep, dark space.

  I WOKE UP with the sound of men’s voices in my ears.

  “All I know, lady,” a big guy in a blue serge suit was explaining to Rita, “is that we got a tip over the phone that there was a murdered girl in this apartment.”

  Rita nudged me with the point of her alligator-leather shoe. “That’s the only corpse here, officer. And that’s not death—that’s alcohol.”

  I wanted to get to my feet to explain. But Rita was shoving them, almost bodily from the room.

  “Go back to your checker game,” she told them. “Solve your mysteries somewhere else; my boy friend and I want to be alone.”

  One of them, a particularly nasty character in a derby hat, scowled down at me in scorn as I tried to scramble to my feet. “Call that a boy friend?” he sneered. “ ‘Looks more like a crawdn’ infant to me.”

  For a second or two, I thought Rita was going to crown him with a left hook. She was perfectly capable; that, I knew from experience. And Rita has always considered herself my guardian angel. “You better go, officer!” she bristled, belligerently.

  He went. And she almost slammed the door to the apartment in his face.

  Then she whirled on me. Her mood was far from jovial. “Now you!” she exclaimed and dragged me to her feet. Among her other jobs, Rita was once a nurse and she could throw grown men around with surprising ease.

  “Where is she?” I wanted to know. The bed was empty now. No corpse.

  “Never mind,” Rita told me. “Get into the shower while I make coffee. You have to sober up.”

  “Why pick on me?” I protested. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “How do you know?” she asked. “How do you know what you do when you’re drunk—you silly chippy-chaser? If only I hadn’t let you alone with that sexy kid!”

  As I stumbled toward the bathroom and the shower, I began to worry. I had quaffed more than my usual quota of rum-cokes. There were blank spaces I couldn’t account for—little gaps in my memory of just what had occurred at the party. Maybe I had brought this kid up here. I wasn’t quite sure. Maybe I had even—

  I shuddered, and drove the accusing thoughts from my brain.

  The cold shower that Rita insisted upon knifed into my body like a million little needles. After I dressed again, Rita forced me to drink almost a pot of black coffee. Gradually, the effects of the alcohol began to wear off. “What did you do with her?” I asked Rita.

  “I took her away.”

  “Away?”

  “Yes, away. After you went into your nosedive and passed out, I went down the corridor until I found an unlocked door. Then I carried her down and dumped her on somebody else’s bed.”

  “Why?”

  “You didn’t actually want her around when the police came, did you? I wanted to get rid of her.”

  I shook my head, tried to throw off some of the cobwebs that still lingered there. “I don’t know whether that was smart,” I told her. “If anybody knows she was in here, they’ll think I killed her and got rid of the body myself.”

  Rita said nothing. But I didn’t like the look in her eyes. I guess I shouted: “Rita, you don’t think I killed her, do you?”

  She shuddered. “I don’t know, Rod.

  You do some queer things since you got that bump on the head in the service—especially when you’ve been drinking.”

  Mechanically, I felt the scar on my left temple. There was a steel plate inside. A Japanese riflebutt on Guadalcanal was responsible for that. “I didn’t do it!” I insisted. But I knew that there was no conviction in my tone.

  “Well, it’s a cinch somebody killed her,” Rita went on. “It wasn’t suicide, not with those marks on her throat; she didn’t strangle herself. She—honestly, Rod, when I saw her body and figured the cops were coming, I guess I got panicky.”

  “That’s not like you,” I said. “Getting panicky, I mean.”


  She made a wry attempt at a smile. “I never figured you killed anybody before, either.”

  IT WAS MY turn to say nothing.

  Strange thoughts were festering in my brain. Rita was always insanely jealous of me. And she said I had been hanging around that kid. Maybe—Once again, I forced wild thoughts from my mind.

  “Honestly, Rod,” Rita was saying. “I didn’t know what to think. Maybe it was crazy but I—I thought that perhaps—perhaps you had killed her. That’s why I got rid of the body.”

  “I don’t know what to think myself,” I confessed.

  “Well, somebody at the party must have done it,” Rita told me. “We have to find out who—before whoever lives in that apartment comes back and sees the body. Pull yourself together! We’re going back down.”

  We were walking toward the elevator when I asked her, “Who brought her to the party, anyway? Do you know?”

  “A fellow named Hakins, I think. A writer.”

  “Think he’d do it?”

  “He might. I never liked his looks. Too big and surly for me. And I know he doesn’t like his women to mess around with other men. He might have done it. But—” She broke off and looked at me in that peculiar way again.

  “But what?” I demanded.

  She grabbed me and hugged me close, pressed her body against mine.

  I could feel her contours, hard against me.

  “Rod,” she said, earnestly, “you know the law. If you marry me, they can’t force me to testify against you.”

  I pushed her away—none to gently. It wasn’t easy, either. I’m no midget;

  I stand six feet in my socks and weigh one ninety stripped. But Rita was nearly as tall and almost as strong. She was entirely feminine; her curves were lush; but there was a hint of Amazon about her, too. And she knew almost as much about judo as any Japanese.

  I stared into her eyes. They were almost on a level with mine.

  “You’re a funny dame,” I told her. And I meant it. I could never figure her out.