Willie could not see what he could lose by admitting it.
“I am, young man. What can I do for you?”
“I am Cyril Ramikin, program chairman of the civic improvement club of Public School Forty-three, the Bronx,” the well scrubbed sprout said in a hurry. “We offer a guest speaker at our monthly meeting and try to get something different each time. One of my classmates suggested we secure a private detective to address us. You certainly would be different, Mr. Klump.”
“How am I to take that, huh?” Willie said, drawing himself up indignantly. “Uh, skip it. You mean a private detective would be—”
“Yes, Mr. Klump. Oh, would you?” “When will it be, young man? I have a
lot of cases that require my attention almost twenty-three hours of the day an’ my appointment book is pretty full up. I hope it don’t fall on the day of my luncheon appointment with Gert—er—Mr. Hoover.”
“It is this coming Thursday at one- thirty P. M.” Cyril said, his eyes bugging out.
Willie picked up a comic book, hastily tossed it aside and snatched at a small notebook. He flipped the pages, came to a notation that reminded him of a dark- haired little mouse who had smiled at him in Louie’s Lunch on Lexington.
“Why, I think I can make it, young man,” he said.
“Wonderful,” the sprout said. “When you arrive, ask for me.”
“Glad to help in anythin’ civil,” Willie grinned. “An’ it is a good thing to teach school kids crime don’t pay before they’re old enough to commit one.”
Cyril thanked Willie profusely, and hurried out.
“Well, well,” Willie mused a few minutes later. “Maybe I’ll add a subsidy here. Lecture bureau. Twenty-five dollars fee. I wonder how hard it is to write a speech? I’ll see if Gert will help.”
AT ELEVEN-thirty, Willie felt pangs of hunger and counted the money in his pockets. One dollar, eighty-nine cents. Willie thought of Satchelfoot and figured Kelly, after last night’s coup, would be in an expansive mood. It would behoove Willie to appear in front of a certain restaurant on Lafayette Street at about eleven-forty-five.
Willie was in front of the feed bin five minutes earlier for good measure, and soon Satchelfoot Kelly appeared, accompanied by one Hard Hat Hafey. Kelly had a big cigar jutting from one corner of his mouth, and he wore his best suit.
“Why, hello, Satchelfoot,” Willie said, acting surprised. “How long you been eatin’ here?”
“Only about three years, just as if you didn’t know, chowderhead,” Kelly snapped. “You read the papers this mornin’?”
“I did,” Willie said. “It. was wonderful police work, Satchelfoot.”
“Oh, yeah? Thanks,” Kelly said. “Hard Hat, you mind if Willie joins us for lunch?”
“I always can use a laugh,” Hafey said. “Say somethin’ dumb, Willie.”
“Who was it got away, Satchelfoot?” Willie asked when they were comfortably ensconced at a table.
“Huh? We don’t know for sure, but we got an idea he was somethin’ big. Why, maybe there was more’n one crook with Big Joe. Too bad me an’ Hard Hat killed him instantly. We go on the radio next week to tell how we done it.” The waiter hovered. Satchelfoot and Hard Hat ordered the pork chops. Willie said he would take chopped sirloin with onions, two vegetables, apple pie a la mode and coffee. He looked at Kelly and the detective did not seem to mind at all.
“You know I think that coulda been Lippy McNitt,” Hard Hat said. “Sometimes two big shots in the same racket git an idea maybe they could pull a job twicet as big as usual together. I wisht
we’d got whoever he was, Kelly. If it was McNitt he’s wanted in more states than Big Joe was.” Hard Hat shuddered.
“You cold?” Willie asked.
“I was thinkin’ what might of happened to me an’ Satchelfoot if we hadn’t tossed them gas bombs.”
“You and your big mouth!” Satchelfoot said, and Willie scratched his head.
“What did I say, Kelly?”
“Huh? The paper says we shot it out with Big Joe, an’ if people find out the crook was half blind—well, it won’t look so big if—oh, shut up, Hard Hat.”
They ate with gusto. When the waiter came over and raised his eyebrows, Satchelfoot nodded.
“Separate checks, Gus.”
“Huh?” Willie yelped. “Why you ast me to join you an’—”
“If I ast you to join me goin’ into a haberdashery I should buy you a suit?” Kelly grinned.
Willie’s bite was one dollar and sixty cents.
“You are one louse, Kelly,” Willie said, “who won’t never spread plague germs as a self-respectin’ germ wouldn’t be seen with you. An’ they took lambs an’ goats to experiment with at Bikini while the likes of you should live so long.”
“Pay up, moocher, an’ shut up!” Kelly snorted.
“Yeah, an’ leave a tip as we still got to eat here every day,” Hard Hat growled. “Imagine him, Kelly?”
“Don’t go out with us, Willie,” Satchelfoot said. “Reporters might be waitin’ for us an’ what would they think? It would be like Joe DiMaggio bein’ caught traipsin’ around with a stew bum southpaw of the Cross-Eye League.”
“I s’pose you was ast to speak in public, huh?” Willie snapped. “I’m particular who I am seen with, too.
Especially when very good pals of Lippy McNitt’s are at large an’ lookin’ for the flatfeet who knocked off Big Joe. I—”
Bang!
Satchelfoot Kelly jumped over the cigar counter and took the blond cashier to the floor with him, high stool and all. Hard Hat dived under a table and spilled a waiter carrying four bowls of soup.
“It was only a truck back-firin’,” a client said as he walked in.
“You wouldn’t believe they was the two big cops who shot Big Joe Atombi last night, would you?” Willie asked of no one in particular.
He left a five cent tip and hurried out into Lafayette Street.
ACK in his office, Willie Klump called Gertie Mudgett.
“Guess what?” he said to his torch. “I have to make a speech on private investigatin’!”
“Why?”
Willie had no answer for that one. He asked Gertie if she’d scribble down some things that would sound good to say.
“Why not give ‘em a load of that juvenile relinquency stuff, Willie? Or maybe give them what happens day by day to a guy like you. No, they wouldn’t believe it. I’ll think up somethin’, Willie. I’ll have it when I see you tonight.”
“Ah,” Willie said when he hung up, “What would I do without her? What couldn’t I do? With all that dough of mine she’s stashed away for—oh, I better git my mind on somethin’ else.”
Willie met Gertie near the subway kiosk on Fifty-Ninth Street and Gertie seemed to anticipate the private detective’s financial embarrassment.
“Awright, don’t say it, Willie. So we go to the automat. Why don’t you never have any cabbage?”
“If a guy has a hundred bucks an’
somebody, an’ I ain’t mentionin’ names, makes him hand over ninety of it to put on ice, he has ten left to keep body and soul together until he finds another hundred. I guess I’m just a spendthrift.”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” Gertie sniffed, and handed Willie five nickels.
“Don’t you think I’ll over-eat?” Willie walked away, and Gertie did not see him for almost fifteen minutes.
Gertie was eating Hungarian goulash with noodles, etc., and William Klump had a thin ham sandwich, a jelly doughnut and a cup of coffee.
“Where you been?” Gertie complained.
“I was curious,” Willie said. “I watched a cross-eyed man put a nickel in for a cheese sandwich and he got a rice puddin’. How about that speech, Gertie?”
“It is here and all writ out,” Gertie said, and fi
shed into her handbag. “It should knock ‘em dead, Willie.”
The president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency opened up the folded sheet of paper and scanned it hurriedly. Then he repeated it verbatim.
“As I stand before your sea of smilin’ faces I have to think how many of you will become crooks. It is entirely up to you. Will it be from Public School Forty-three to Public Enemy Forty-four? But remember one thing, boys and girls, crime does not pay no matter if you are a detective or a dangerous criminal. I happen to be a very close contemptuary of Detective Aloysius Kelly, who gunned down Big Joe Atombi armed only with a pistol while Big Joe had six machine guns, recently. Detective Kelly is the idle of all law-abiding citizens for his brave and heroick deed. With such men as Kelly about we can sleep in our beds sure that we will wake up alive in the morning. Detective Kelly—”
Willie looked at Gertie. “Remember
me?” he sniffed, then started scratching his head. “I am tryin’ to think of somethin’ Hard Hat Hafey said that Satchelfoot didn’t like. An’ then there was somethin’ about two fellers havin’ the same dear mother die—I just can’t think of it now. Huh, this speech, Gert. Is Kelly runnin’ for mayor?”
“So you don’t like it. Maybe you can do better, lemonhead,” Gertie exploded. “Why’n’t you do it in the first place instead of astin’ me? So I can’t write a speech. Go on an’ say it! You as much as said it! You did say it. Why, you—”
“Everybody’s lookin’!” Willie gulped. “Sh-h-h-h!”
“Of courst. Did you think this was a school for the blind? I’ll talk as much and as loud as I want. I—”
The manager arrived and shook a warning finger at Gertie, and Willie’s girl nearly bit the digit off. Then she pushed the manager into a tray of dirty dishes resting on the next table on which was the remains of a gooey coconut cream pie.
Willie Klump left the automat ahead of Gertrude Mudgett and ducked into an alley. He was shoving a dresser against his door in his rooming house twenty minutes later.
“An’ I didn’t even have a chancet to finish the jelly doughnut,” Willie choked out.
He walked over to the bed, wiped his brow and sat down, wondering what in the name of Harry he was going to say to the P.S. 43 Civic Improvement club. Why, just tell them about your own true experiences, Willie!
A radio across the alley began to blat. A newscaster, statistics crazy, said that next to Lippy McNitt, Big Joe had been the biggest thorn in the side of the insurance companies. A lot of his gorillas were still at large and might join up with another leader like Lippy McNitt.
“Dozens more will die! Property damage will soar!” the mike moaner harangued. “We are still at war—with crime. We—”
Willie shut his window and took a nap.
HE auditorium was crammed with three hundred junior civic leaders when William J. Klump was introduced by Cyril Ramikin. The applause seemed a
trifle doubtful and so Willie began: “Awright, my friends, I don’t look like
a detective, of courst. Why? Would you set a steel trap for a bear an’ leave it lookin’ like a bear-trap instead of coverin’ it with brush? I guess you get what I mean? Now let me give you a typical pacific case. How I misapprehended a gang of jewel robbers. One day when I was in my office—”
Willie got into high gear. The audience howled with glee. They rolled in their seats. Three teachers made their exits as tactfully as was possible. The principal of P.S. 43 seemed on the verge of blowing a gasket. Once, Willie heard Cyril protest:
“But he really is a private detective!”
the boy said.
“He’s better than Hope or Durante,” a freckled kid in the second row yelped, and wiped the tears out of his eyes.
Willie spoke for half an hour and then thanked them all for their kind attention. Cyril stepped to the rostrum and thanked the guest speaker, then headed for the nearest exit. A flashlight bulb exploded as Willie watched the principal chase Cyril. A citizen jumped up.
“I’m from the Bronx News,” he said. “Klump, you were a riot! Gimme some of your background!”
Willie mumbled answers to a few questions and then saw that the doors were guarded by certain irate educators. There was a window open and Willie took advantage of it. He sprinted to the nearest
subway and was swallowed up in the maddening crowd.
“I don’t understand it,” Willie muttered. “I only talked exemptoraneous.” At eight o’clock the next evening, Willie emerged from his rooming house to get himself a doughnut and a cup of coffee, and he was accosted by a pair of characters just as he reached the sidewalk. Something thudded against his sacroiliac and the lantern-jawed gee warned Willie that if he as much as grunted, he would be deader than the dodo. A taxi purred up to
the curb and stopped.
There was a blonde in it.
“Okay, Bub, git into the hack!” the rodent-faced rough boy ordered.
Willie got in, trying to figure what was going. He was certain that he was not being honored with a testimonial dinner. When the cab was three blocks away and roaring uptown, the husky gee spoke.
“Don’t you remember us, pal?” he said. “Take a good look. Hah, so you’re a private dick!”
The president of the Hawkeye took a gander and suddenly his mouth opened. He remembered that mole now, the Charlie McCarthy mouth.
“Yeah, he reckernizes us, Punchy. Just as if he didn’t first off, huh?”
“Y-your mothers died,” Willie gulped. “Listen to the punk play dumb, Spade?
Just as if he didn’t add up the nex’ mornin’ after Big Joe was rubbed out, an’ figured we never lost no mothers, but had that tear gas in our peepers.”
“I did?” Willie choked out, and then wondered why he hadn’t. “I did not, but there was somethin’ I kept tryin’ to think of and couldn’t. H-how did you know I am a detective?”
“Your pitcher, dope!” the blonde said in a voice that was as musical as a saw being sharpened. “Show it to him, Spade. It’s on the front page of the Bronx News.”
“I—I’ll take your word for it,” Willie choked out. “Honest, I wa’n’t lookin’ for none of you. Look, if you’ll let me out at the next corner—”
The blonde snickered. “Imagine such a dumb cluck! With that job comin’ off on Forty-ninth, he thinks we’ll let him lead the cops right to Lip—”
“Keep your trap shut, Flo!” Punchy roared, and Willie’s knees started knocking together and the cab pulled up to the curb and stopped.
“What’s the idea?” Spade snapped at the driver.
“I got an awful knock in the engine, Spade. I—”
“It’s this punk’s knees, Stupid. Keep rollin’!”
“Look, you got me wrong,” Willie argued. “I don’t know nothin’. I never heard the babe say a thing. I—”
“Shah-h-h-hd up!”
“We’ll teach ‘em t’ knock off Big Joe. We figger to shoot at least three flatfeet to even t’ings up for Joe!” Punchy snapped. “After we grab off— Turn right at the nex’ block, Digger!”
ILLIE shivered. Spade! Digger!
They were titles suggestive of a road of no return. There was a smell of lilies in the taxicab, even though the little vase held artificial carnations.
“You sent the kid away, Flo?” Punchy asked.
“Yeah. He’ll be at the farm fer another week,” the blonde said. “I can’t understand what’s got into that Butch. He lies an’ even does things dishonest. It must be his environment. The neighborhood sure is run down.”
The cab swung into a narrow side street and stopped.
“Come on, Klump,” Punchy said. “An’ don’t fergit to be a clam if you don’t want to be a stiff.”
Willie was too petrified to articulate. They took him into the tenement the back way, and up four flights of stairs and into a small flat
. There was an awesome looking individual occupying the best easy chair. Something seemed to have happened to his nose since his last photos had been displayed in the galleries. But Lippy McNitt’s eyes hadn’t been made over. They were as kind as a python’s and set too close together. Lippy had the shoulders of a pro wrestler and the hips of a Billy Conn. His hair was cut close, and dyed.
“So that’s it,” Lippy sneered. “They must of scraped the bottom of the barrel to git suckers fer them correspondent school detective courses. Well, toss him into the nex’ room. A good thing you nabbed him or I’d had to rub you two out instead. Nothin’ can go wrong on this job. It hadn’t better! You dumb gees, goin’ to a tavern after that tear gas—”
“We was blinded, Lippy. We didn’t hardly know where we was goin’.”
They threw Willie into a little room that was only about seven by seven. It had a small cot in it, and there were pictures of airplanes all over the walls. Comic magazines were piled up in one corner.
It was a sprout’s room.
“You make just one yelp out of you and you are dead!” Punchy said.
“I wouldn’t like that,” Willie sighed. Punchy went out and turned a key in a
lock.
William Klump had had plenty of experience with Lippy’s kind, and he knew his chances of casting a vote in the next election were not very good. He moved over to the door quietly and listened. Lippy’s voice was low but it had a resonance like Big Ben.
“You an’ Flo have him here when we git back, see? Of courst we got to rub him out. You think I was goin’ t’ turn him over to a foundlin’ home? Yeah, same ol’
routine, Spade. That furnace in the old brewery.”
Willie shuddered and the sweat popped off his face. If he ever got out of this, and he saw no reason why he should, he would never ask anybody what was cooking again.
“Yeah,” Flo said sotto voce. “I got it cased right. Had ‘em look at my sparkler, Lippy. They put about a hundred grand worth of dazzle dornicks in that can over night. The big geezer, Morganwitz, went for me in a big way an’ I got him braggin’ what a big shot he was. He—”
The Willie Klump Page 14