The Hardboiled Mystery Megapack

by John Roeburt

  “Come out of it, Solowey, for Christ’s sake,” Devereaux fumed. He found a cigarette, and a match, but broke the weed between his fingers and tossed it into a corner of the room.

  The hour chimed somewhere in the City again, and the light-bulb began its undulation. A bus on the street below coughed into the autumn cold, and the light-bulb began to spin.

  Solowey spoke with shadows moving from his left cheek, to the right, to his left. “You weren’t too coherent on your bed of pain, Devereaux.” A shadow cut his smile in half. “A man with a broken head. The babble required reformulation, and editing.”

  “I told you everything, exactly as Nina Troy told it to me. If you didn’t get it right, it’s senility taking over!” Devereaux added irritably, “The trance you drop off into. I don’t think it’s cerebration. I think it’s your gimmick, to steal forty winks!” Solowey laughed and said, “It is 1:00 A.M.”

  * * * *

  “Let’s organize it then, so we can both go to sleep.” Solowey nodded. “The Tiger Man. We are to find him, on behalf of a distraught wife and mother.”

  “Find The Tiger Man, or find out what happened to him. Where did he disappear to; was it the amnesia pugs with softened heads develop—Or was he murdered?”

  Solowey looked at Devereaux keenly, “You are sure you want the activity?”

  “I’m stuck with it,” Devereaux said. He added wryly, “People keep remembering I’m a cop. I mean, was.”

  Solowey studied Devereaux for some moments, like a man reading secret writing. “People keep remembering, and you remember too.” He nodded as if he had drawn some private conclusion from his study. “Perhaps it is for the good, before the machine falls into rust.”

  “We’re back to psychiatry,” Devereaux said.

  “Before the man falls away,” Solowey persisted.

  Devereaux grinned, to deflect the barb. “Okay, so I’m bored. I’m an actor who can’t act. But let’s not overcapitalize it. A colleague in distress got to my ear. I kept her away for months, but tonight she caught me with my ennui showing. So okay. A missing fight champ, a genuine celebrity—Where did he go, who did him in? It has its fascination, the puzzle provokes, I don’t deny it. It’s back to the salt mines, for a last fling with the shovel. A kind of refresher for Devereaux, to see how flabby is the muscle. A last fling, and then maybe I won’t be so bored.”

  Solowey said, “You are a detective, my good Devereaux. You wear your retirement as a Cross. But—that is your quarrel with yourself. Let the rationalization stand. A last fling with the shovel. Now, how do you expect to operate?”

  Devereaux frowned. “Expect to operate? Oh. You mean, where’s my authority?” He thought for a moment. “You operate, Solowey. Your license. I’ll work out of your office, representing you, as your associate. As your helper. If there’s a fuss, I’ll file for a private license.”

  “File, Devereaux.” A sly look hovered on Solowey’s face. “Inevitably, so why not now? The actor who cannot act. A tough cop selling headache remedies! But I am pillorying a man with a broken head.”

  “The assault for its own sake.” Devereaux smiled. “In a great City, there are barbarians!” He reached into his pocket and produced a wallet. “These are your instructions, your immediate stint. And bright and early in the morning—Don’t hound the pillow! Everything you can dig up about The Tiger Man. Every living fact and dead. His people, background, associates and friends. And of course, his enemies. His habits, virtues, vices, and did he beat his mother. The stories of his disappearance, the versions of it. Facts, theories, rumors. All the gossip, all the scandal. A portrait of the man, as complete as you can assemble.”

  Devereaux extracted some bills from the wallet. “Spend and spend. Buy any secret for sale. Get out of your miserly habit. I’m a rich actor, I’m not spending wages. So don’t identify with my money! Wave the green around, so tongues will loosen up. Action, Solowey, as fast as you can get it. So we can find some orientation.”

  Devereaux crossed the room to the door. His good night was barely audible.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The eyes were behind glass, extra-thick lenses, and they gave Devereaux the sensation of watching fish. He waited quietly for the man he had come to examine to adjust to the surprise of this moment.

  The man looked the characteristically absent kind, slow in movement and vague. The man made fussing motions with a senile hand: a book closed here, some crumbs brushed into a heap on a tablecloth with a checkerboard pattern, a burning cigarette stub moved from its precarious tilt on the ledge of a small ash-tray. Then the eyes magnified grotesquely against the glass, to peer at the detective as if sight had required all this time Devereaux had been in the room.

  “Devereaux, the detective,” the man said familiarly.

  The detective said, “We’ve met before, Hobie. We’re strangers, and we’re not. In the Broadway swim, you make circles. After a lifetime of it, you’ve touched everybody in the pond at least once.”

  Furrows that fell to the chin deepened, as if Hobie in some reverie of his own, was adding scope to the detective’s observation.

  “You’ve come to ask me about The Tiger Man.”

  It was said wearily, a bloodless speech that conveyed volumes. Manifestly the question had been put to Hobie before, so many times before, it whispered in his head. Devereaux stared closely and intuitively at the fight manager, and found a perspective. This hollow man, Hobie Grimes, far older than the sheer tally of his years, had been pillaged by the event of The Tiger Man. The Tiger Man, in its compass of story and climax, was the sum of the waste and the agony in this shrunken elder who wore eyeglasses as a mask.

  Devereaux said, “I don’t know whether it was good or bad. But you were integral to the legend of The Tiger Man, Hobie. I’ve come from a long morning of reading. Periodical stuff, old newspaper clips. You were Manager and Mentor. Over a whole decade. Close, as consanguine as two people can be. Now tell me, what happened to your boy?”

  Hobie said, “What happened to my boy? It’s a line on a tombstone, so old you can hardly read it. Why do you waste your time, Mister Devereaux!”

  A morose moment passed, and Devereaux said, “It’s probably coming out of your ears by now, I know. But while the mystery holds unsolved, you’re fair game, Hobie. Any time a cop with time on his hands gets to thinking about The Tiger Man.”

  “I’ve been nailed to the Cross. A nail a day for five years. Hammer away, Mister Devereaux. I can’t feel a thing.”

  “Oh, can’t you,” the detective’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “You’re more of a ghost since I came in. You were white then, you’re green now.”

  “I’m sick,” Hobie said. “Low blood pressure, I’m anemic, my heart skips. I’ve got a shelf of medicines. My doctor says no excitement, only peace and quiet. But fellows like you come around to turn me green.”

  “You’re sick,” Devereaux said. “No question of it. And I’m sorry, Hobie. But I think I can add to the diagnosis!”

  Hobie’s lips formed the curve of a smile. “Sure. You’re analytical. I never met a policeman who wasn’t also an M.D. In his fantasies, I mean. I’ll say it for you. I’m sick over The Tiger Man. I’ve got cancer of the stomach and brain because of The Tiger Man.”

  “Yes, I think so,” Devereaux said.

  “I’m sick over The Tiger Man. Sure I am,” Hobie said. “I’m sick of being fair game for detectives with time on their hands.”

  “You’re a man with a secret, Hobie. The secret’s eating you up alive,” Devereaux said stubbornly.

  “You can tell, hah.”

  “It’s all over you, Hobie. In neon lights. I’ve seen you around other times, in happier days, in that big Broadway pond. A small man, but wiry. Locomotion on wheels. Life in both fists, and the Racing Form in your teeth. All the time on the go. A dynamo.”

  “Leave the snapshot. I want it for my album. I’ll owe you the twenty-five cents.”

  “Now you’re fifty like ninety. Bones sti
cking out, St. Vitus’ dance in your hands, and eyeglasses styled for a blind man because you’ve cried your eyes out.”

  The detective held his tongue, and his eyes followed Hobie’s course. The little man had turned away, to walk to a corner cupboard in the measured pacing of an inmate whose only life was his room. The head arched a little, and Hobie took one gulping swallow with his back to the detective. There was a sound of bottle and glass and the cupboard door catch.

  Hobie twisted to say, “Another time, Mister Devereaux, if I’m a current entry in your assignment book. I’m tired. I want to take a nap.”

  Devereaux said unyielding, “In my long morning of reading, there were Hobie Grimes vignettes. You were good copy in your day. One same word kept popping up in all the accounts. Teetotaler. Abstinence was a religion with you. You made it a rule for everybody. Every boy in your stable, the seconds and trainers. You once gave a business lawyer the toss when you found out he was a rummy.”

  The curve of a smile was back on Hobie’s mouth. “I was born in Chautauqua. My father played the Carillon in a tower a mile up in the sky. My Mother sang in the choir. I saw the Devil before I saw God.” The smile widened as if Hobie was enjoying his vein. “I had sin confused with whiskey until I was past forty. I had to taste whiskey to find out my Father was a liar and a dope.”

  Devereaux kept to his interrogation. “A blood count right now, and the only thing fueling you is alcohol. I’ll make a wager.”

  Hobie shrugged indifferently, and Devereaux said very quietly, “You’ve let it gnaw at you for five years. Now it’s gnawing at the husk. I don’t have to be a self-fancied M.D. for the observation. Why let it kill you? Get rid of it, Hobie. Some secrets don’t square with the costs.”

  “Your imagination’s sailing, Devereaux!” There was a first small edge in Hobie’s tone.

  Devereaux picked up the gauntlet, eager for the quarrel. He was more at home in quarrel. Subtleties and indirection only up to a point—Tooth and claw had a more satisfying reality for him. It was perhaps the only true reality for him. He could feel his mettle, his muscle too, and his blood. In this familiar pulsation of himself he felt safer, more certain of his skills, and even invincible.

  The detective said sharply, “Where is The Tiger Man?”

  “I’ve answered that question a hundred times. To as many detectives. It’s all on the record.”

  “I’ve seen the record. The question was never answered! Evasions, doubletalk, and plain lies. A hundred plainclothesmen came away with the feeling that you were the kind of actor who wins Oscars, Hobie. You jackassed every one of them.”

  The detective narrowed the gap between them and Hobie had a wilting moment. He retreated awkwardly, to sit uncomfortably on a straight chair, his head oddly erect and muscles everywhere in his cheeks and throat.

  “A case is marked Unsolved,” Devereaux continued. “But that doesn’t close down on it, Hobie. Not in five years or fifty. All time does for you is postpone an accounting.” His eyes swept the Fight Manager. “Five years, and you’ve clammed up tight, and look at the result of the awful silence. You’re a stick, you’re sick, you’re even one shout away from insanity.” The detective’s mouth pursed unfeelingly in contempt. “A stoic your size and style, I’m unimpressed. One tap and you’ll spout from a thousand holes. The truth, unholy or not, will pour like an almighty flood. So far all these years you’ve only had to suffer talk. The polite formalities of cops with an overdose of etiquette, cops under wraps, cops who confuse their nightsticks with fairy wands. They questioned you, sighed with your lies, made perfunctory notes, and then went away. Nobody yet has been impolite enough to tap you, Hobie!”

  Hobie had another wilting moment. His eyes on Devereaux had sudden definition behind the thick lenses. No longer fish with magnified heads. The eyes now had content and depth, and they could be read. The eyes were frightened and supplicating and begging.

  The detective continued relentlessly, “Devereaux the detective. I was someone familiar to you when I came in. Then you also know something about how I work.”

  An attempt at defiance didn’t come off. Hobie’s eyes failed to light. They continued frightened and begging. “Devereaux the tough cop,” he said. “You hurt people.”

  “I make the Law felt,” Devereaux said. “The Law keeps us from being apes.”

  “You have no right to lay a hand on me.”

  “You have less right to conceal the truth, to keep shut.”

  “I can prove my right,” Hobie said.

  “Constitutionally, do you mean?” the detective pressed. “Your right to silence on plea of self-incrimination?”

  Hobie didn’t reply to it, and there was nothing in him to show that the thrust had perhaps found flesh. He was as he’d been. Silent, his lips clamped into chalk, the eyes begging.

  Devereaux sought a new tack. “My morning reading I mentioned before. I was steeped in The Tiger Man; papers as high as my waist. I hadn’t been aware of his size in the world quite. I was never the hysterical fight fan. I never got past World News to the Sports Page.”

  It touched something in Hobie. He spoke almost involuntarily, in a voice close to a whisper. “The Tiger Man. Forty-four straight wins, thirty-seven kayoes. It’s in the history books. The Champion of our times.”

  It suited Devereaux’s tack. “A figure that size cannot be erased. Oblivion, without a good-by even. More than to his own life, The Tiger Man belongs to everybody. In a very great sense he’s public property, Hobie. And when he disappears, the people want to know how and why!”

  Hobie said, “Who stole the statue from the public park?”

  The remark sounded odd to Devereaux, and irrelevant, and unexpected. Then it echoed back again for him to try to understand it, and value it. Who stole the statue from the public park. Was there an emotion implicit in the thought, he wondered. A melancholy, perhaps even a tear?

  Now Devereaux’s eyes hounded the Fight Manager. “What did that mean, Hobie?”

  Hobie shook his head slowly. “Only words. Borrowed words. A line from somewhere, and it fell out of my mouth. I’m a jukebox.”

  “It sounded like from your guts,” Devereaux said.

  Hobie’s face looked just a little greener, and then the mouth once again formed that shadow of a smile on the little man who was too dead for laughter.

  “I’m the kind of an actor who wins Oscars,” Hobie said, and there was soft mockery in his tone that inflamed the detective.

  “Where is The Tiger Man?” Devereaux said.

  “You’re repeating yourself,” Hobie said.

  “Over and over again,” the detective promised. “I’ll be in and out of here day after day. The same question, Hobie. The one question! You’ll live with it, you’ll go to bed with it, you’ll wake up screaming with it. A refrain in your head repeating until it drives everything else out.”

  “So I’ll go crazy,” Hobie said.

  “I’ll strap you to your bed and take charge of your house key.” The detective’s mouth was the thinnest line, and his eyes were cold. “Keeper of a lunatic. I’m up to it, Hobie, capable of it. Try me and see. You’ll be my secret, until I learn yours. Now, where is The Tiger Man?”

  Hobie contracted for a moment in a seizure that passed. Later, when he spoke, Devereaux had the feeling that the little man had sought and found a deep resource in himself, a last vein from which he could mine the fuel it took to contain the assault of a tough cop.

  “He’s on an island,” Hobie said. “But don’t ask me which one.”

  Devereaux said levelly through his teeth, “What’s he doing on an island?”

  “Painting. The Fulton Fish Market from memory. Fish piled higher than the barrels. The Tiger Man always had a yen for painting. Is that a crime? He got very fed up with crowds and the Royal Treatment. So he went away.”

  Devereaux said, “Where is The Tiger Man?”

  “He’s on a Mountain Top. He’s incognito. He grew a beard and developed a stoop. He�
�s writing the story of his life. He doesn’t want to be annoyed by people or cops.”

  Devereaux said, “For five years?”

  “The Tiger Man came off the lower East Side. No chance for education, Devereaux. He was forced to earn an early dollar. He’s illiterate, even by our standards! He has to look up every word. A book can take him forty years. Now you know, so go away and leave me alone.”

  Devereaux said, “Where is The Tiger Man?”

  Hobie tried to quit the straight chair, but fell back wearily, pushing buttocks deeper into the chair. He spoke in the toneless vogue of his last remarks, “I’m numb, I can’t feel my body. I want to take a nap. Right here in this chair, Devereaux. Wish me pleasant dreams.”

  Hobie was suddenly erect, taller than his height and tipped high on his toes in Devereaux’s grasp. The coat pulled to a level with the little man’s ears, and there was the sound of a tear at the armpits.

  “You’re small, Hobie, and three-quarters dead,” Devereaux said. “It’s taking physical advantage, and I’m a bully and a savage.” He held Hobie in front of him; a dangling figure on a gibbet. “One tap might cure you, the one tap might kill you.” The detective seemed to hesitate in a small examination of himself. Then he freed a hand and his palm cut hard into the air to free the figure from the gibbet.

  Hobie fell, and a spurt of blood from where the mouth hemorrhaged covered the left side of his face. His eyes closed and the face settled oddly, as if sleep were worth the price of escape.

  Devereaux closed the door behind him and took the wooden staircase slowly. It was a rooming house in New York’s Chelsea, close to the piers, old-law and derelict, a tinderbox forgotten by the substantial City around, where people could hide and light a flame to the hour, or to yesterday.