Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 6. Whole No. 778, June 2006

by Albert Cornelis Baantjer

  There was another gunshot. This one was aimed at Wilson. Wilson could feel it slice the air next to his head as he leaped from the stage.

  Three more shots chased Wilson as he sprinted up the aisle of the theater towards the entrance. Several divisions of both the German and Italian armies had failed at putting a bullet into Wilson, and he had no desire to change his batting average now.

  Back at the bus terminal, Wilson slid his key into locker 221. He needed its contents now more than ever. He opened the locker and pulled out a rolled-up newspaper.

  Wilson went to the men’s room and locked himself in a stall. He unrolled the newspaper and pulled out an old war buddy — his Colt semiautomatic.

  Wilson tucked the pistol into his inner jacket pocket.

  Wilson’s apartment building was staked out. Two police officers dressed in long coats and reading newspapers stood on the steps by the front door of the building and pretended not to be police officers.

  There’d be others inside for sure. In the hallway, on the roof, and probably a couple of them waiting right inside his living room — playing poker and eating his leftovers.

  Wilson was starting to get annoyed. They were his leftovers and he was hungry.

  “Are they police officers?” a voice asked him quietly.

  Wilson nearly jumped out of his skin. He thought he had been alone standing in the darkness of the alley across the street from his building.

  “Those guys on the steps?” It was the redhead from the bar. She had somehow managed to sneak up on Wilson without making a single sound.

  “Yes, they’re cops.”

  “I thought they might be,” Sophie said. “They’re only pretending to read those newspapers.”

  “What are you doing here?” Wilson asked, seeing Sophie’s eyes in a sliver of moonlight.

  “I was looking for you.”

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “You’re in the telephone directory,” Sophie reported.

  “Why are you looking for me?”

  “I found the candy box.”

  Sophie’s room was above an all-night drugstore. Red light flicked on and off outside her open window — vertical neon letters:

  T

  O

  R

  E

  Sophie flicked on the ceiling light. She pointed Wilson in the direction of the dining table.

  Sophie’s room was small, but tidy — a single bed, a couple of chairs. Her dining table had a surface area equivalent to that of a chessboard. On top of it lay a small candy box — tartan-patterned.

  “It was inside the jukebox,” Sophie explained. “It fell out when those cops put a bunch of holes in it trying to shoot at you.”

  “Music to my ears.” Wilson grinned. “Do you know why they were trying to shoot me?”

  “Yeah, they said you shot a woman.”

  “Do you believe them?”

  “I don’t know, you seem okay to me.”

  Wilson pulled the lid off the candy box. Inside the box was a passport. Wilson flicked the passport open.

  The photograph inside the passport was of the dead man with the glass eye. The dead man’s name was apparently Paul Johnson. He was an American citizen, born in Akron, Ohio, in 1896.

  “Mr. Merkon must have taken this off the dead man right after he was shot,” Sophie supposed. “And then he didn’t show it to the police.”

  “Merkon wanted to play his own game,” Wilson said. “By the way, the woman I’m supposed to have shot was your predecessor, Nancy Stillwater.”

  “I heard,” Sophie said.

  Two cars pulled up outside with abrupt screeches of tires.

  Wilson went over to the open window. Two police cruisers were parked in the street below — six large cops were climbing out. The cops were brutish-looking, hairy, fat Neanderthals of law enforcement. Two of them had to lift their hands to stop them dragging on the ground.

  “The police are getting awfully serious,” Wilson remarked, pondering the sight below.

  “They must have followed us,” Sophie said, flicking off the light. “They must have seen us across from your building.”

  “Should I run or just throw them some bananas?”

  Sophie decided for both of them. She led Wilson down the stairs from the second floor.

  When they got to the first floor they didn’t stop, they kept on going and went down into the basement.

  Sophie muttered something about a laundry and adjoining cellars. Wilson couldn’t make out the exact words, but by the time the cops had gotten to the stairs leading up to Sophie’s room, he and Sophie were coming up the stairs in the neighboring building — directly into Mr. Song’s laundry service.

  Mr. Song was pleased to see young Sophie. Her clothes were ready anytime she wanted to collect them. Wilson stopped and made brief inquiries about having some pants turned up at the leg.

  By the time the cops burst their way into Sophie’s room, she and Wilson were coming out into the pitch-black alley behind the neighboring building.

  They marched briskly. A handful of stars above were about the only light in the alley.

  “Did the guy asking questions at the bar last week have a big old-fashioned moustache?” Wilson asked.

  “Yes, he did,” Sophie replied.

  “His name is Filbert, he works at the newspaper. I ran into him earlier this evening.”

  They got out of the alley and onto a cross street. They had planned to head back to the bar. But they hadn’t walked more than a block before the black sedan pulled up at the curb next to them and the familiar sight of a barrel of a .45 was pointed in their direction.

  Bruno was apparently not dead.

  “Do you ever do anything in life where you don’t point a gun at someone’s head?” Wilson snapped at Bruno.

  Bruno was not dead, but he was rapidly running out of blood and growing paler by the minute. With his gun pointed in their direction, he drove them back to his theater. He parked out the back, and then gun-pointed them back inside.

  “If all the world’s a stage, why am I back on this particular one?” Wilson moaned, clomping his way across the wooden boards to the center of the stage again.

  “Shakespeare?” Sophie inquired, right behind him.

  “Kind of.”

  “Who’s Shakespeare?” Bruno asked, trying to point the gun at both of them.

  “Nobody special,” Wilson commented.

  “Did he shoot Nancy?”

  Sophie shook her head. “Shakespeare didn’t shoot anybody. He’s been dead for hundreds of years.”

  Bruno nodded knowingly. “Somebody got him, huh?”

  The three of them stood in the center of the stage, with Bruno aiming his gun in their general direction, with his other hand holding a clump of blood-soaked cloth to his chest.

  “This place could do with a good clean,” Sophie griped, glancing about the theater.

  “So, what’s going on, big guy?” Wilson asked. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

  “Who’s the broad?” Bruno asked, pointing his nose at Sophie.

  “She works at the bar where you shot Paul Johnson.”

  “That man’s name wasn’t Paul Johnson,” Bruno reported.

  “I figured that,” Wilson replied. “I have his passport in my pocket. It’s counterfeit.”

  Bruno stared at Wilson with suspicion.

  “A year ago I worked a story that broke a counterfeit-passport ring,” Wilson explained. “I know what to look for.”

  “Did the broad shoot Nancy?” Bruno asked, pointing his nose at Sophie again.

  “The broad has a name,” Sophie sniffed. “Point your nose at someone else, lump-head.”

  “She didn’t shoot anybody,” Wilson argued.

  “Give me a gun and we’ll see about that,” Sophie snapped.

  “What’s the broad doing here?” Bruno asked.

  “I’m waiting for Mr. Right and some chocolates, lump-head.”

  �
�You brought her here,” Wilson pointed out. “Think about it, Bruno. Whoever shot Nancy probably also shot you.”

  Bruno frowned. He remembered he was bleeding. “Who killed us?”

  Wilson smirked. “How about Nancy’s old boss, Merkon?”

  “Merkon’s dead,” Bruno helpfully pointed out.

  “Merkon was blackmailing you, wasn’t he?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So you shot him.”

  Bruno shook his head.

  “After you shot the man with the glass eye in his bar, Merkon went through his pockets. He found the man’s passport. He knew who pulled the trigger, so he blackmailed you, and then you shot him.”

  “Yeah, Merkon was blackmailing us, but I didn’t shoot him,” Bruno said. “Nancy did.”

  “Score one for Nancy,” Wilson replied. “Was the glass-eyed man one of your jealous-husband targets?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did you shoot him?”

  “He was blackmailing us.”

  “Him too? How?”

  “Nancy found out something about him,” Bruno explained. “Something big from his past. Nancy took him for thousands of dollars. Much more than the jealous-husband routine.”

  “What was his secret?”

  Bruno wasn’t answering that. He was as white as a bed sheet.

  “So, what gave?”

  Bruno frowned. “He had pictures, lots of them — photographs of Nancy and me. He said he’d post them to the newspaper. Nancy didn’t want that.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s a lot of guys around town who think Nancy’s dead on account of me being a jealous husband.”

  “I see the problem.”

  Bruno shook his head. “Nancy set it up. The guy was to wait for her in the bar. There was never anyone in there at that time of morning. Nancy telephoned to say she wasn’t working. Merkon was in the office speaking to her on the telephone. I walked in and shot the guy. But then I forgot to do something.”

  Wilson shook his head. “What do you mean, forgot?”

  Bruno frowned regretfully. It was a sad expression. “I was supposed to leave the gun behind. I was supposed to hide it under a table.”

  “Why?” Wilson asked.

  “It was Merkon’s gun. Nancy lifted it the night before.”

  “You were wearing gloves.”

  Bruno nodded dolefully.

  “You were going to frame Merkon.”

  Bruno nodded.

  “Well, ain’t you the smart one,” Sophie chirped, lighting up a cigarette.

  “So,” Wilson asked. “Who was the dead man with the glass eye and the fake passport, and what was his big secret?”

  Bruno looked as if he was about to say something meaningful, but he finally ran out of blood. He hit the floor of the stage like a sack of potatoes that had gone rotten.

  Wilson frowned. “I don’t think he’ll be getting back up again for the third act.”

  The sun was coming up.

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Sophie asked, winding down the window of Bruno’s black sedan. “Everybody’s blackmailing everybody.”

  Wilson changed gears. He smiled. “I know exactly what’s going on. I just need to make a phone call to confirm it.”

  The telephone on Lieutenant Harden’s desk rang. Harden put down a mug of black breakfast coffee and grabbed it up with his fat hand. “What?”

  A few minutes later Wilson put the receiver down. He was back in the bar.

  “Now I need you to make a call,” Wilson said.

  Sophie nodded.

  The three bears were looking at each other. They looked rather like three elderly gentlemen who had repaired to the garden after breakfast. If they could have talked, they’d have probably discussed the weather — a glorious morning — or the latest zoo gossip, or the stock exchange.

  Sophie leaned over the guardrail and stared at them.

  “Do you know what the collective noun for a group of bears is?” Wilson asked. He leaned over the guardrail alongside her.

  “No,” Sophie replied.

  “A sleuth of bears.”

  Sophie smiled. “Why did you become a reporter, Wilson?”

  Wilson smiled back. “They wouldn’t let me join the police force.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m too short.”

  Sophie nodded. She could see that; she herself had four inches on Wilson.

  At ten o’clock exactly, Sophie was standing alone at the guardrail of the bear pit — as planned. She nervously glanced about. She could hear the chiming of the zoo clock back at the front gate.

  Before the tenth chime had sounded, a man walked into view and headed towards her. The man was holding an umbrella under his arm.

  The man stepped up alongside Sophie, leaned against the guardrail, and then dropped the cheroot he was smoking to the ground. He stepped on it with his shoe and ground it out.

  “Where’s the box?” James Filbert asked.

  “Why did you want to meet me here?” Sophie asked.

  Filbert looked about. “Because there’s no one here, and because I like the zoo at this time of the day.”

  Filbert pulled out his wallet and peeled out a bill. “Here’s the twenty I promised.”

  Sophie took the twenty. She pulled the tartan-patterned candy box out of the grocery store bag she’d been holding.

  “I appreciate your help,” Filbert said, taking the box. “I have a fairly good idea of what’s inside this.”

  Filbert opened the box. He stared at the contents with bemusement. “Although I wasn’t expecting that,” he said, gaping at a picture of Lucille Ball.

  “It’s from the cover of this week’s Time magazine,” Sophie pointed out.

  Filbert screwed up his face in anger. “What’s this all about?”

  “It’s all about this,” Wilson barked, walking toward them holding up the Paul Johnson passport.

  Filbert was even more confused. “What are you doing here, Hills?”

  “I like the zoo at this time of the day,” Wilson replied. “And I was over there hiding in the bushes waiting for you to arrive.”

  Filbert pulled a pistol out of his pocket. He pointed it at Wilson. “Give me the passport.”

  Wilson pulled his own gun out. “No.”

  Sophie backed away. Filbert aimed his gun at her head. “Give me the passport or I’ll shoot her.”

  Sophie froze.

  “The police didn’t want those files from the morgue, like you told me,” Wilson said.

  “How do you know that?” Filbert asked, trying to look at Wilson while aiming at Sophie.

  “I asked them,” Wilson replied, the barrel of his own gun aimed squarely at a point between Filbert’s eyes. “You were blackmailing Nancy.”

  Filbert didn’t deny it. “What of it?”

  “Why did you shoot her?”

  “A successful blackmailer knows when to stop.” Filbert smiled. “Nancy was an amateur. She milked Max Braun for every penny he could lay his hands on. She milked him until he was absolutely dry, and look where it got her.”

  “I’m figuring Max Braun was the real name of the man with the glass eye?” Wilson asked.

  “Yes, it was,” Filbert replied. “He was a Nazi spy, did you know that, Mr. Reporter?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “He came here in the last year of the war. He was an undercover agent, sent to infiltrate. The name in that passport, I think you’ll find, is Paul Johnson.”

  “Correct.”

  “When the war ended, Braun found himself out of a job, and stuck in a very dangerous place should he be found out.”

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” Sophie asked.

  “Go right ahead,” Filbert said. He stared at Wilson. “Nancy’s been getting into trouble lately — she could never stay out of it. I made a good deal of money out of her. I chose to quit while I was ahead.”

  Something dawned on Wilson. “You have the photograph
s!”

  Filbert grinned.

  “Max Braun had photos of Nancy and Bruno,” Wilson said. “He was going to send them to the newspaper.”

  Filbert nodded. “They arrived the week he got shot. They were addressed to the editor. Providence saw to my opening the mail that morning.”

  “So, you knew what was going on.”

  “Max Braun wrote a lovely letter. The photographs were very flattering.”

  “So you shot Nancy, and then you shot Bruno,” Wilson said.

  “Yes,” Filbert answered. “You see, one of the roles of a copy-editor is to tidy things up. To strip out all the unnecessary parts.”

  “You’re hiding all of the evidence.”

  Filbert nodded. “Indeed.” He then sighed. “Poor Bruno, I always felt sorry for him. He was always the last to know anything.”

  At that precise moment, Sophie’s cigarette hit the spot between Filbert’s eyes where Wilson’s gun had been aiming. It was an expert flick.

  Filbert immediately got a face full of cigarette ash. Hot ash went into his eyes and into his mouth.

  Right after that, Wilson hurled his gun at Filbert’s head. It whacked him hard. So hard, Filbert stumbled backwards, tripped over the umbrella he was carrying, and upended himself over the guardrail and fell down into the bear pit. He fired every bullet he had on the way down.

  Before Filbert even landed, a herd of police officers lead by Lieutenant Harden charged onto the scene from out of the bushes Wilson had been hiding in earlier.

  “What in heaven’s name did you do that for?” Harden barked like an indignant walrus as he galloped in Wilson’s direction.

  The three bears played with Filbert as if he were a new toy on Christmas morning — and he lasted about as long as one.

  Wilson frowned. “I see bears actually do eat more than shoots and leaves.”

  Wilson bought Sophie a milkshake. He carefully stored the receipt in his pocket, and together he and Sophie strolled back toward the zoo’s entrance.

  “Have you had that gun all along?” Sophie asked.

  “Yes,” Wilson replied, lighting a cigarette.

  Sophie slurped on her milkshake and looked at him. “Why didn’t you use it last night when Bruno was holding us at gunpoint?”