The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Otto Penzler

  “Scram,” said Vargas curtly. “You too, lady. I got no time for fooling now. I’m busy. Get out of here.”

  Mrs. Tibbet still had her knitting needle, and she held it up now and sighted down its thin shining length. “Make me. Go ahead. I dare you. You’re not going to beat up this poor boy, and I’m going to stay right here and see that you don’t. You can’t bully me. I’m not afraid of you. Not one bit. Dear Mr. Tibbet always said that policemen were bums and that he could prove it by figures.”

  Vargas took a deep breath. “Look, lady. We just found out now that this guy Bly, here, is the bird that recommended the Fitzgerald dame when she came in here.”

  “That’s a lie,” said Mrs. Tibbet.

  Farnham wheezed indignantly. “It ain’t neither! I telephoned to Bingham, the vice-president—”

  “I know him,” said Mrs. Tibbet. “Horace Bingham. He’s fat. Not as fat as you are, nor quite as sloppy, but almost. And he’s even dumber than you are—if that’s possible. If either one of you had asked me I could have told you who was responsible for the Fitzgerald creature’s presence here, but no, you wouldn’t think of a simple thing like that. You’re too busy going around shouting and threatening innocent people. Mr. Tibbet always said that no detective could count above five without using his fingers and what’s more—”

  “That’s enough for this time,” Vargas told her. “You said you knew who was responsible for the Fitzgerald girl being here. Who is it?”

  “If you had any sense you’d know by this time and wouldn’t have to go around asking. It is Gus Findley, of course. The janitor.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Vargas asked.

  “I’ll have you know,” said Mrs. Tibbet, “that I don’t go around lying to people, not even to policemen, although that would hardly count because they aren’t really people. Mr. Tibbet always said that all you needed to do was furnish a policeman with a tail and he’d be at home in any tree. Gus Findley was in and out of that Fitzgerald hussy’s apartment on the average of ten times a day, and in my opinion it’s a scandalous affair and has been from the very first.”

  Vargas jerked his head at the policeman, who was still waiting nervously in the doorway. “Get Findley.”

  Farnham said doubtfully: “Seems like this Findley is a pretty old boy to go in for—”

  “Hah!” said Mrs. Tibbet. “Men! I could tell you a thing or two—”

  “Don’t bother,” Vargas advised wearily.

  They waited and in five minutes the policeman came back and thrust Gus Findley roughly into the bedroom. “Here he is, Lieutenant.”

  Gus Findley blinked at them fearfully. He looked old and sick and shaken, and in the strong light his face had a leaden pallor. “What—what is it, please?”

  Vargas strolled over to him. “Now look here, you. We know that you’re responsible for Patricia Fitzgerald coming to this joint, and we know you’ve been hanging around in her apartment all the time. We want some facts, and we want ‘em right now. Start talking.”

  Gus Findley’s face twisted painfully. “She— she was my niece, sir.” He turned to Bly. “Mr. Bly, I’m so sorry. Please don’t be mad with me. She come here, and she didn’t have no money, and I didn’t have none I could give her on account of my sister’s boy having the operation. So I—I said she could live here, and I—I told Mr. Bingham that you had recommended—”

  “That’s all right, Gus,” Bly said uncomfortably. “If you had asked me, I probably would have recommended her anyway. Don’t worry about it. It’s O.K.”

  “It’s not O.K. with me,” said Vargas. “Just tell us a little more about this matter.”

  “She was no good,” Gus said miserably. “She was never no good. Her name ain’t Patricia Fitzgerald. It’s Paula Findley. Her folks died, and I tried to raise her up right, but she wouldn’t never do nothing I said, and then she run away with some fella and—and he didn’t even marry her I don’t think.”

  “What fella?” Vargas asked sharply.

  Gus shook his head wearily. “I dunno. I never seen him. She said, when she come back, that he’d left her a long time ago. She said she was lookin’ for the fella and that when she found him she was gonna get even with him and make herself a lotta money doin’ it.”

  “What was his name?” Vargas inquired.

  “I dunno, sir. Seems like he had a lot of names, from what she said. Seems like he wasn’t no good, either.”

  “That’s the boy we want,” said Farnham.

  Vargas nodded absently. “Yeah. Now listen, Findley—”

  “You listen,” Mrs. Tibbet invited. “Mr. Findley is an old man, and he’s sick, and he’s had a great shock. You’re not going to ask him any more questions now. Not one more question, do you understand that? I’m going to take him right down to my apartment and give him a nice hot cup of tea, and I don’t want to see any drunken, dirty, foul-mouthed detectives blundering round there while I’m doing it. You hear me, you two?” “Oh yes, indeed,” said Vargas.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  GARBAGE COLLECTION

  LY was ten minutes late to work the next morning, and J. S. Crozier was waiting for him, standing in the open door of his private office with his sallow face set in gleefully vindictive lines.

  “Well, Bly, I’m glad to know that you feel you are so necessary here that you can afford to disregard the rules I’ve been at some pains to impress on your mind.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bly said tightly. “I was delayed….”

  The bulging mat of black hair that made up J. S. Crozier’s toupee had slipped askew over one ear, and he poked at it impatiently. “Yes, yes. I noticed, however, that you entered the building some fifteen minutes ago. I suppose your delay, as you so nicely term it, had something to do with the little lady who works as a typist in the office downstairs.”

  “I spoke to her on my way up,” Bly admitted.

  “No doubt, no doubt. I notice that you spend quite a little time speaking to her lately. Are you contemplating matrimony, Bly?”

  “I think that’s my affair—and hers,” said Bly.

  J. S. Crozier raised his eyebrows elaborately. “And mine, Bly, if you are talking to her when you are presumably working for me. Or are you?”

  “Yes,” said Bly.

  “Thank you for telling me. I was wondering. If I may presume to advise you, Bly, I would say that it would be best for you to secure a position of a little more permanence before you take any rash steps. Pm not at all satisfied with your work, Bly. You’re inclined to dawdle and find any excuse to keep from working. Aren’t you, Bly?”

  “I try to do my best,” Bly answered.

  “Yes,” said J. S. Crozier. “Try. A good word. It is misfits and idlers like you who fill our relief rolls and burden the taxpayers. You haven’t got any get-up-and-go about you, Bly. You’ll never amount to anything. I feel sorry for your pretty friend downstairs if she marries you. I suppose you were so engrossed in her last night that you forgot all about the slight matter of the money Gus Findley owes me?”

  Bly had to swallow and then swallow again before he could steady his voice. “I didn’t really have a chance to talk to him about it. There was a murder at my apartment house last night and—”

  “A murder!” said J. S. Crozier. “Now what kind of a fantastic fairy tale is this? I suppose you’re going to try to tell me that someone murdered Gus Findley!”

  “I didn’t say so,” Bly said, keeping a tight grip on his temper. “But the police were questioning him about the murdered girl and the other tenants—”

  “I see,” said J. S. Crozier. “Very interesting. Do you suppose you might possibly, by the exercise of some great ingenuity, get to see him tonight? I’m growing impatient with you and your excuses, Bly.”

  “I’ll see him tonight.”

  “You’d better,” said J. S. Crozier grimly. “Now I have a call for you to make, Bly. The party’s name is Perkins. He lives in the Marigold Apartments on Halley. Judging from that hove
l that you live in, you wouldn’t know, but the Marigold is an expensive residence. This party called and wants to borrow five hundred dollars with his furniture as security. The furniture should be worth three or four times that. You go over and check up on it. Tell Perkins, if you find things satisfactory, that he can take a taxi and come back here with you, and I’ll have the money for him.”

  “All right,” said Bly.

  J. S. Crozier pointed a blunt forefinger. “Don’t make any mistake about the value of that furniture, Bly. And check up on the title. Do you understand? Have I made it perfectly clear to your limited intelligence, or do you want me to write it down?”

  “I understand,” said Bly thickly.

  “All right. And don’t you take a taxi, getting there. You take a street-car. I’ve noticed these delusions of grandeur in you. You seem to think you’re too fine and sensitive a person to hold such a menial position as this, but just remember that if you had any brains you’d have a better one. Get out, Bly. And don’t stall around with your lady friend on the second floor as you go, either.”

  HE Marigold Apartments was an immense terraced gray-stone building that filled a. whole block. Even without J. S. Crozier’s word for it, Bly would have been immediately aware that it was an expensive residence. The doorman, after one look at Bly, was superciliously insolent and the glittering chrome-and-black-marble expanse of the lobby made Bly painfully aware of his own shabby clothes and cracked shoes.

  Mr. Perkins, it seemed, lived on the fifth floor in a triplex de luxe apartment. The desk clerk— as supercilious as the doorman, but even more expertly insolent—made very sure Bly was expected before he would allow him to go up.

  The elevator boy acted as though Bly’s appearance was a personal affront to him. He deliberately stopped the elevator a foot below the floor and let Bly step up, and he stayed there ostentatiously watching until he made sure Bly was going to the apartment where he was expected.

  The doorbell of Mr. Perkins’ apartment was a black marble knob. Bly tried pushing it without effect, finally pulled it and heard chimes ring inside on a soft rising scale. The door opened instantly and a voice said: “Won’t you come in, please, Mr. Bly?”

  Bly stepped into a long low room with a far wall that was one solid expanse of windows, facing out on a private flagged terrace that looked bright and clean in the sunlight.

  “Shut the door, if you please, Mr. Bly.”

  Bly pushed the door shut behind him, trying to place the man who was speaking to him. He was a short, pudgy man with an air that was benignly pleasant. He had silver-white hair that curled in smooth exact waves. Suddenly Bly realized he was the same man he had seen in Doc’s Hamburger Shack the night before when he had gone in to order the hamburgers for Patricia Fitzgerald. He realized that and, in the same second, without quite knowing why, he felt a little cold tingle along the back of his neck.

  The pudgy man had small pink hands. He put the right one in his coat pocket now and brought it out holding a flat automatic. He was still smiling.

  “Sit down in that chair. The one beside the telephone, if you please.”

  Bly went sideways one cautious step after another, sank numbly in the chair beside the stand that held a chrome-and-gold telephone set.

  “If this is a hold-up,” he said huskily, “you— you’re wasting your time. I didn’t bring the money you wanted to borrow with me. There’s no way you can get it without appearing at the office yourself.”

  “No hold-up,” said the pudgy man in his softly amiable voice. “My name is not Perkins. It is Johanssen—two s’s, if you please. You have heard it, perhaps?”

  “No,” said Bly numbly.

  “You recognize me, though?”

  Bly nodded stiffly. “Yes. You were in Doc’s Hamburger Shack last night when I came in.”

  “Just so.” Johanssen stood staring at him for a second, his bland eyes speculatively wide. “You do not look like a thief, but then one can never tell in these matters. I would like to tell you a story, Mr. Bly. You do not mind? I will not bore you?”

  “No,” said Bly.

  Johanssen smiled. “Good. Since you do not know my name I will tell you I am a pawnbroker. But not the ordinary kind. You believe me, Mr. Bly? Not ordinary.”

  “Yes,” said Bly.

  “Good,” Johanssen repeated. “My business is under my hat. I have no office. I go to my customers. They are all rich people, Mr. Bly. But sometimes they need cash—lots of cash—very quickly and very badly. They do not want people to know this. So they call Johanssen. I come to them with the cash. You see?”

  “Yes,” Bly admitted.

  “One year ago, Mr. Bly, a person called me and gave me the name of a very prominent person with whom I had done business many many times. This person wanted ten thousand dollars at once. He is good for much more, so I say I will bring it to him. But, he says, he is not at home. He is at the apartment of a friend. Will I bring it to him there?

  “So I bring the money where he says. But it is not my customer that has called me. It is a thief. You are listening carefully, Mr. Bly?”

  “Yes,” said Bly.

  “Good. This thief, he is waiting for me on the darkness of the stairs of the apartment house. He gives me no chance, Mr. Bly. He stabs me in the back with a knife and takes my money and runs away. He thinks I am dead. But no. I crawl down the stairs and through the lobby and to the street. I crawl two blocks away before someone sees me and calls an ambulance. It was very hard, that crawling. I remember that, Mr. Bly.”

  Bly swallowed. “Why—why didn’t you wake someone in the apartment house?”

  “No,” said Johanssen gently. “That would bring the police. This is not a business for police. This is Johanssen’s business. You see?”

  “Oh,” said Bly blankly.

  “You do not understand,” Johanssen said. “It is known everywhere that Johanssen carries large sums of money with him. It must be known, also, that it is not safe to rob Johanssen. Not because the police will come after you, but because Johanssen will come after you—and find you. Now do you understand?”

  Bly had the same sense of nightmare panic he had felt the night before when he had been accused of murdering Patricia Fitzgerald.

  “You’re not saying—saying that I—”

  “No, no. May I go on with my story? I found out who stabbed me. It took much money and time and then I did not find the man. Only some of the names he had used. I found out that he had done many crimes—not bad ones like this, only cheating and swindling. This time he is very afraid. He runs and hides, and hides so well that I cannot locate him. But I do locate his woman. He leaves her when he runs with my money. You can guess who his woman was, Mr. Bly?”

  “Patricia Fitzgerald,” Bly said automatically.

  “Yes. She is very angry because he left her. When I offer her five thousand dollars to point this man out to me she says she will do it if she can find him. She did. Last night he was in her apartment. He murdered her. Do you know who that man was, Mr. Bly?”

  “No!” Bly exclaimed.

  “I am willing to pay you five thousand dollars if you will tell me who it was.”

  “But I don’t know!” Bly said. “I didn’t see him.”

  “Then,” said Johanssen gently, “then you will give me back my five thousand dollars, please.”

  “You—your what?”

  “My five thousand dollars.”

  “But I haven’t got—I never saw—”

  “Yes. It was in an envelope in the paper sack that contained the hamburgers.”

  Bly’s mouth opened slackly. “Envelope— hamburgers….”

  “Yes. You see, this Patricia Fitzgerald did not trust me. First, before she points out the man who stabs me, she must see the money. We arrange it. I will wait in the hamburger stand. She will send someone who will mention her name. I will put the money with the hamburgers. Then she will lead this man to this apartment. I will be waiting for them. The five thousand dollars
is a reward I have offered, Mr. Bly. I have even put it in the papers that I will pay that much to anyone who shows me the man who stabbed me. But you have not done so. Give me the five thousand dollars back, please, at once.”

  Bly shook his head dizzily. “But I didn’t know—”

  Johanssen moved the automatic slightly. “I am not joking, Mr. Bly. Give me my five thousand dollars.”

  “Listen,” Bly said desperately. “I didn’t even open the sack. I threw the whole business, just as Doc gave it to me, in the garbage.”

  “Garbage?” Johanssen repeated gently. “This is not the time to be funny, Mr. Bly. You had better realize that.”

  Bly leaned forward. “But it’s true. I did just that. Wait! Gus Findley! The janitor at my apartment house! He’s got a lame back and I hardly ever cook in my apartment….”

  “Yes?” Johanssen said very softly.

  “Maybe he hasn’t emptied the garbage! Let me call him up. It’s a chance—”

  “A chance that you are taking,” Johanssen said. There was an icy little flicker deep back in his eyes. “You may call him up. I will listen. Be very careful what you say.”

  UMBLINGLY, with cold and stiff fingers, Bly dialed the number of the apartment house. He could hear the buzz of the telephone ringing, going on and on interminably while the icy little flame in Johanssen’s eyes grew steadier and brighter.

  And then the line clicked suddenly and Gus Findley’s voice said irritably: “Yes? What you want, please?”

  Bly drew in a gulping breath of relief. “Gus! This is Dave Bly.”

  “Ah! Hello, Mr. Bly. How are you? I ain’t got that money to pay Mr. Crozier yet, Mr. Bly. I’m sorry, but—”

  “Never mind that. Listen to me, Gus. Have you emptied the garbage in my apartment this morning?”

  “No, I ain’t. I’m sorry, Mr. Bly, but my back has been sore like anything and them damned police has been botherin’—”

  “Gus!” said Bly. “I want you to do a favor for me. Go up to my apartment. Go on the back porch and look in the garbage pail. There’s a small paper sack right on top. It’s closed. Bring the sack down with you. I’ll hold the line.”