The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  Gertie called Willie the next day after he’d been prowling about Manhattan for three hours trying to get a line on Penrod Snerr.

  “I s’pose you think you’re smart leavin’ me holdin’ the bag yesterday, William Klump!” she snapped. “Well, listen, I was in night court an’ got fined nearly a hun’red bucks with costs an’ where do you think I got the money, huh?” “I can guess,” Willie sighed. “My checkin’ account. There should be a law against checkbooks. Well, I’m workin’ on a case so I must hang up.”

  “Use your neck t’ do it!” Gertie said tartly, and severed connections.

  Willie wrote notes for about an hour and then decided to go downtown and inquire about Penrod Snerr and see if he was really among the missing or if he had been fished out of the briny deep in the meanwhile. He entered the office of the first assistant to the D.A. and nodded politely and then suddenly became aware of a character who was in the midst of a tantrum. He was an opulent looking taxpayer clad in the finest grade wool and Willie judged him to be nearly sixty years of age.

  “Look, Mister!” the visitor screeched. “I don’t give a blank blank if the experts said that was my signature. It ain’t mine; see? Somebody has gone an’ forged my name t’ the tune of three grand while I was away in Brazil. Awright, so my name is on the check, an’ so some crook got hold of one somehow!”

  Willie sat down, his hat resting on his knees. “Yeah, like I told my girl, checks should be illegal.”

  “Shut up, Klump!” Mr. Gerke, the assistant prosecutor snapped. “Who let you in any way? Go on, Mr. Slapnicka.”

  “It ain’t my signature!” Slapnicka iterated with vehemence. “Wouldn’t I know what I wrote out a check for three grand for? You get busy an’ grab that no- good forger or I’ll sting the pants of the commissioner himself! Is that clear?”

  “We’ll do our best, Mr. Slapnicka,” Mr. Gerke sighed.

  The prosperous character stomped out and Mr. Gerke mopped his physiognomy.

  “Well, what in the aitch do you want, Klump?”

  “I was wonderin’ if you got any news about—”

  “I haven’t got time to beat my gums with the likes of you, Klump!” the assistant prosecutor interrupted. “Of all the messes I ever heard. Two hours ago in comes a couple of jerks who bought an old book with the name of Benjamin Franklin in it. They had experts check on the old boy’s signature an’ they said it was genuine. Then t’ make sure, they had the writin’ tested an’ the ink couldn’t have been made nowhere near Franklin’s time. So they got gypped for a grand an’ want us t’ find the crook even though they can only remember he had a beard an’ wore glasses. So when this Slapnicka comes in an’ tells us about another forgery—”

  “An epidemic, huh?” Willie said. “Mr. Gerke, I am lookin’ for a Penrod Snerr.”

  “I don’t care if you’re huntin’ for Kilroy’s cousin!” Mr. Gerke roared, and slammed a big lawbook down on the desk.

  A cancelled check jumped off same and skimmed toward Willie and landed at his feet. He bent down and picked it up and was about to hand it back to Mr. Gerke when he saw the slight stain on the back of it.

  “Huh, it is not blood,” he said. “It is red, but has a purple tinge to it. Mos’ likely Slapnicka’s stenog was polishin’ her nails or somethin’ before makin’ out the check.”

  “But Slapnicka said it was forged, flannelhead,” Mr. Gerke yelped. “An’ all the writin’ on it belongs to Slapnicka, you can see that. But what am I arguin’ with you for? Git out of here, Klump!”

  “I can’t say a citizen gits corporation from the cops,” Willie sniffed, and got up. He slapped his old snap-brim hat down over his locks and took his leave. “Don’t never ast me for no help in the future!”

  Willie felt contrite when he reached his office and so gave Gertie a buzz. He shut his eyes against the first blast from the other end of the wire and yelled loudly:

  “Look, le’s have a cocktail or two about five, huh? I got fifty for you t’ put away for me in the checkin’ account.”

  “What, Willie? Oh, you darlin’,” Gertie said. “It is just that I ain’t been quite myself lately. Forgot to keep up the vitamin pills an’ got awful touchy. About five then, Willie.”

  “I guess I’m just a patsy,” Willie sighed. “I wonder where Snerr is.”

  * * * *

  In the tavern at five Willie handed Gertie Mudgett five crisp sawbucks and Gertie picked them up as one, planted a kiss on the legal tender and then put them in her bag.

  “There ain’t nothin’ in the world prettier than moolah, is there, Willie?” she asked, then brought forth a lipstick to repair any damage had been done.

  Willie wondered at the sudden fluttering in his stomach and the brief hum of a little wheel somewhere inside his noggin.

  “What we doin’ t’night, Sugar?” Gertie asked.

  “I have still to earn that scratch I give, you, Gert. I am on the trail of a missin’ person an’ will have t’ work night an’ day.” Willie looked at the clock over the cashier’s coop, and reached for his hat. “The Hawkeye Agency never really closes, Gert. I better be gittin’ on the job.”

  “The check, Willie. You didn’t pay it.” “I give you fifty, remember?”

  “Indian giver, huh? Of all the cheap, no-good tricks!”

  “Maybe you want blood!” Willie howled. “Le’s go to a horspital an’ I’ll git a transfusion an’ you can have some.”

  “So, I’m a vampire, Willie Klump!” Gertie yelped and picked up her bag.

  But the president of the Hawkeye was only a step from the men’s washroom. He jumped inside and bolted the door. “Just as if she wouldn’t foller me in here!” he gulped, and went out of an open window just big enough for him to squirm through.

  William Klump went to the Elko Hotel on East Forty-ninth and inquired about a Penrod Snerr. A fat and oily character assured him that he was interested in the punk’s whereabouts himself as Penrod had left owing a week’s room rent.

  “Find him, pal, an’ I’ll give you fifteen per cent!” the clerk snorted. “He left an ol’ cheap bag here with a dirty shirt an’ a pair of socks in it. Want t’ look at it? There was another guy here couple days ago askin’ for Snerr an’ he looked through the bag. He didn’t find nothin’ he was lookin’ for, though.”

  Willie prowled around for another three hours and visited a good fifty taverns before he gave up for the night. When he walked into his rooming house, the landlady was answering the phone in the hall.

  “Klump?” Willie heard her say. “He just come in this minute.”

  It was Satchelfoot Kelly calling. “Willie, this is the third time I tried to git you the las’ fifteen minutes. I said if I got somethin’ hot, I’d tell you. Well, hurry over to Second Avenue an’ Twenty-

  seventh as we got a corpse. They won’t move it for another twenty minutes or so. It is a murder, Willie, and have we got the culprit!”

  “I’m on my way,” Willie yipped.

  Two police cars and the deep freeze jalopy were parked near the entrance to an areaway on Second Avenue when Willie Klump paid his cabby off. Satchelfoot Kelly and three of his henchmen were examining a roscoe when Willie came up and looked at the defunct character.

  “Hello, Willie,” Kelly said. “This is most peculiar as nobody could ever of fired off this rusty gun. No slugs in it, neither. The deceased was certainly no desperate ginzo an’ only carried the gat to scare citizens. He’s an autograft hound, too.”

  “Come again,” Willie sniffed.

  “His wallet is as clean as an operatin’ kit,” Satchelfoot said. “No indentification left in it, only these two pieces of paper with two autografts on ‘em. Maybe they’re famous, but I never heard of ‘em. Funny lookin’ tomater, ain’t he?” Kelly played the flash on the deceased’s face and Willie took a close gander and nearly fainted.

  “Pe
nrod Snerr!” he yelped. “Look an’ see has he a gold inlay in his crockery, Satchelfoot!”

  “Huh, how would you know, Willie?”

  a cop yelped.

  “Who, me? Well, I git around. Oh, this means I’m out a hun’red bucks, Satchelfoot. Of all the breaks I git!” Willie moaned. “Who rubbed him out, huh?” Willie sleeved the moisture of disappointment from his pan and sat down on an old wooden packing box.

  “Got a letter from his coat pocket, Willie. From a bookie no doubt,” Satchelfoot said. “Says for Snerr to pay up a certain three hun’red clams or git what he should expect. Signed by Al Babichiski, whoever that punk is. Address is the Phoenix A. C., on Eleventh Avenue. We will pick up the gorilla soon as we’re through here.”

  * * * *

  Willie kept looking at the signatures they had found on the stiff and tried to think, and he wished he had never been stuck with a delayed action brain.

  “The guy defunct about three hours when we got here, according to the corpse expert,” Kelly told Willie. “Well, take the remains away, boys, an’ we’ll go after Babichiski. Looks like the bookie better have throwed away a thirty-eight calibre roscoe.”

  “Well, thanks for lettin’ me in on this, Satchelfoot,” Willie said.

  He wondered how Buford Hake knew Al Babichiski’s gorillas had been after Penrod Snerr and why Hake hadn’t told him, when he hired him, that it was Al’s hoods.

  Willie, on his way home, examined the signatures on the two pieces of paper again. He had never heard of the citizens either. Once he got his hands on a phone book, he checked the names and found that both citizens had very deluxe addresses. In his room, far beyond the witching hour, Willie scribbled notes that meant nothing at all when he added them up, but he had a yen to visit the Elko Hotel again. He entered the third rate lodging house at nine o’clock the next morning and asked the obese and lardy clerk to leave him have a gander at the late Penrod Snerr’s bag.

  “A good detective never leaves nothin’ unlooked at,” Willie said, as he followed the clerk into a tacky back room where the trunks and bags of delinquents had been stored.

  He was handed the cheap bag and he opened it up and took out the dirty shirt and the pair of socks and the old newspaper in the bottom. Then he saw the

  bunch of papers covered with writing. One had a certain name scrawled on it at least fifty times and the name screamed at Willie and tore an ejaculation of surprise from his throat. It was T. Furbish Slapnicka! Willie kept looking and he found another paper covered with the signature of Buford Hake! Willie remembered the signature on the character’s check—and this was really an exact replica of it!

  “I’ll leave you t’ have fun, pal,” the clerk said. “I knew you wouldn’t find nothin’.”

  “Thanks for everythin’,” Willie said in a daze.

  A few moments later he was looking at other names. Henry Wallace, J. Reginald Astorby, Harry Truman, Howard Hughes, and others too numerous to mention.

  “A forger, I bet!” Willie choked out. “Now what would Buford Hake want with Penrod Snerr? Why would Al Babichiski want t’ knock Snerr off? The defunct was practisin’ writin’ signatures an’ it was him walked into a bank an’ cashed a three grand check on Slapnicka. But how could he? He didn’t have no more front than a Chinese laundry. But I know a citizen who has one. It is a mare’s nest here I have found. A jackpot. How do these things happen t’ me?”

  Three hours later when Willie went downtown to check up on the Slapnicka check he learned of a second demise by extreme violence. A character known as Little Eggie Getz had been found quite dead by gunfire in an empty lot up by the Harlem River, the same Eggie Getz who had beaten a homicide rap only six months before. And the cops, playing a big hunch, had compared a slug they had extricated from his torso with the one that had been imbedded close to the late Penrod Snerr’s backbone and had found that both had escaped from the same gun.

  “It gits worst every minute,” Willie told Mr. Gerke. “Did Al Babichiski sing?” “They’re still sweatin’ him out, Klump,” the assistant prosecutor sighed. “He’s got an alibi, but we don’t like it too

  much. Go away, huh?”

  Willie asked very humbly if he could have a squint at Mr. Slapnicka’s check once more, and to get rid of him Mr. Gerke acquiesced.

  “A dame,” Willie said, and his words were surprising even to himself, “would like the looks of a three grand check, Mr. Gerke. More than my girl liked fifty measly sawbucks. Maybe a dame—”

  “Klump, you want I should throw you out?” Mr. Gerke yelped. “You comic book dicks should not be allowed loose.”

  “Awright,” Willie sniffed. “But the way things are, I would think you’d want help from most anybody.”

  “You can scrape jus’ so far down the bottom of a barrel!” the prosecutor snorted.

  Willie went out and called up Buford

  Hake.

  “Well, it looks like the case is closed, huh?” the president of the Hawkeye said to his client. “The gorilla caught up with Snerr ‘fore I really got operatin’. Why didn’t you tell me it was a bookie after him?”

  “I got nothin’ more to say to you, Klump,” Mr. Hake snapped. “If you had some ethics, you would refund my fifty!”

  “Sorry,” Willie said. “No refunds. You walked right in an’ ast for it—er—I mean, I wisht clients would confide more in detectives.”

  R. HAKE hung up very rudely. Willie sat down and pondered for a

  while and then he took a cab and went downtown on Fifth to see what kind of a layout the Kismet Importing Company was. He was going to have a talk with Mr.

  Buford Hake, too! He found himself in a small reception room later and talking to one of the most delectable brunettes he had ever seen. Her hair was dark and she had the sloe-eyes of a doll belonging in a harem. Willie’s ears wiggled and there was aspic in his knees.

  “Mr. Hake will not see anybody else today, Buster,” the girl said. “So you’re wastin’ your time hangin’ around.” She fished into a little leather bag and came up with a lipstick and proceeded to straighten her mouth. Willie gaped. The doll paused and looked double-daggers at him. “Well, you never see a girl fix her face before?” she snapped.

  “I, that is,” Willie choked out, “I have a girl. An’ I was wonderin’ what kind of lipstick I would like to buy for her birthday.”

  “It’s Black Beauty,” the brunette said. “It’ll be just right for the horsey type, ha ha!”

  Willie laughed quite feebly and went out, after having digested the name on the babe’s desk. Miss LaMotte.

  “Darkest red I ever saw, an’ has got a smitch of purple to it,” Willie said, and the little fish swimming up and down his spine had scales as cold as ice. “I think I will go an’ look up Slapnicka in the phone book.”

  There was only one Slapnicka Investment Corporation so Willie guessed it had to be the one. He asked for the personnel manager when he reached the establishment and getting him he flashed his badge quickly.

  “I am lookin’ up a certain person,” he said. “You ever have a dame by the name of LaMotte workin’ here?”

  The hiring citizen left Willie for about ten minutes. He came back with the record of a certain Lauren LeMotte.

  “She was with us but two weeks or so, Klump,” the personnel man divulged. “She was Mr. Slapnicka’s secretary, in fact. We

  soon found she was not adequate. Not the type to succeed in business.”

  “I thank you,” Willie said.

  The papers that night told Willie that the cops had to turn Al Babichiski loose as two characters proved him to be where he couldn’t have rubbed out Penrod Snerr at a certain time. The police admitted they’d have to start from scratch looking for the real culprit. There was also a few sticks of news on page seven of Willie’s favorite journal intimating that a very clever forger was operating in and ar
ound the big town. Some citizen had been stuck with a note supposed to have been written and signed by George Washington and this citizen was yelling for justice.

  “Yeah,” Willie wrote down in his room. “Penrod Snerr would look as out of place in a snazzy bank as an elephant would at a flower show. I remember oncet I made snowballs behind a fence for two other kids t’ throw at leadin’ citizens. It looks like you are on the right track, Willie, as there is only one track in your mind anyways. What can I lose?”

  Willie put his notes where he could pick them up in the morning to remind him what he had thought of tonight, for brain children, as far as Willie was concerned, never stayed inside his thinkhouse very long.

  Satchelfoot Kelly called at Willie’s office the next morning while Willie was reviewing his memos.

  “I don’t get it nohow,” he said, and refused a jelly doughnut offered him. “A harmless lookin’ guy like Penrod Snerr gettin’ knocked off. Then the same gun blastin’ Eggie Getz.”

  “A gunman asts for it,” Willie quipped. “He generally gets it. Ha! Eggie gets it. Git it?”

  “I am in no mood for corn,” Kelly sniffed.

  “And Penrod, Satchelfoot,” Willie

  said. ”I just thought of it. A character with that name would like to write things maybe. How much have they got on the case downtown, Satchelfoot?”

  “About as much on as a sprout in a bathtub, Willie,” Kelly sighed. “How much have you?”

  “I will tell you only this,” Willie said. “A citizen hired me a couple of days ago to find a missin’ person who was Penrod Snerr. It don’t matter to you who hired me, as he couldn’t have knocked Snerr off if he wanted him found, huh?”

  “That’s logic,” Kelly admitted. “Even from you.”

  Willie felt sorry for Satchelfoot. “Maybe I’m a sucker,” he said. “But I am goin’ to let you in on bustin’ this case within twenty-four hours, I hope.”

  “Look, in the first place I think you are not quite bright, Willie,” Kelly snorted. “In the second place you wouldn’t throw me nothin’ but a dried herrin’ if I was dyin’ of thirst.”