by Otto Penzler
“Hell, what a story this’ll make in the papers tomorrow!” Jake Dennis said prayerfully. “Watch everything, Larry, while I get the car.” His voice came back to us as he started at a run down the road. “What a story—what a story …”
Lew Ryster thought so the next morning, in the Blaine Agency office in Hollywood, after he heard all the details and read the papers.
“But I told you,” Lew yelped, almost purple-faced, “that those two pirates would steal the shirt off your back when it came to getting credit for a case.” Lew slapped the papers on his desk. “Look at ‘em! Read it and weep. You have to be a good guesser to find anything about us in these papers.”
Little Trixie Meehan, pale and pretty, sweet and soft in a white summer dress and hat, said: “Nuts, Lew. Mike would have cashed in if those two cops hadn’t appeared. Let them have the glory. This man Farnson has promised Mike the two thousand reward, hasn’t he?”
“All right,” Lew surrendered. “Mike takes a thousand, you get a thousand, and I hold the bag. There’s just one thing that’ll make me happy. What is this Great Truth that was being taught to everyone up there?”
“I never found out,” I confessed; and suddenly I grinned as I stood up and reached for my hat. “But I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Never give a sucker an even break. And when we split Farnson’s reward money, I’ll keep you in mind. Lew.”
“Swell, Mike—that’s decent of you. I didn’t expect it.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I’ve had a shot of the Great Truth myself since you busted up my trip to New York. I’ll keep you in mind while this shoulder is healing and I’m spending the reward money.”
I stopped at the door and grinned at Lew.
“So long, Sucker,” I said.
Kindly Omit Flowers
Stewart Sterling
IT WAS NOT AT ALL uncommon for pulp writers to be prolific, considering how little they were paid for their work, but some went to extremes, and Prentice Winchell (1895-1976), whose best-known pseudonym was Stewart Sterling, was at the front of that group. In addition to hundreds (about four hundred seems the best estimate, as there may have been unrecorded pseudonyms) of short stories, he also wrote and produced more than five hundred radio programs, as well as journalism and numerous literary efforts for film and television. Like many other pulp writers, he created detective characters with unusual occupations, most notably a tough fire marshal (Ben Pedley, who appeared in forty stories and nine novels), a hotel dick (Gil Vine, the protagonist in eight novels), and a department store detective (Don Cadee, in nine novels, all written under the Spencer Dean pseudonym). For Black Mask, he created an innovative series of nine novelettes headlined as “Special Squad” stories, covering the activities of the Bomb and Forgery Squad, the Harbor Patrol, the Pickpocket and Confidence Bureau, the Air Police, the Pawnshop Detail, Emergency, Safe-and-Loft, and, twice, Homicide. In the present story, Sergeant Helen Dixon, generally a member of the Policewoman’s Bureau, is temporarily assigned to the Homicide Division. Although there were few women cops or private eyes in Black Mask, Dixon stood out for, well, not standing out. She was ordinary-looking, a useful characteristic for a policewoman.
“Kindly Omit Flowers” was first published in the March 1942 issue of Black Mask.
Kindly Omit Flowers
Stewart Sterling
The Herald of Happiness was the answer to an old maid’s prayer. To its clarion call hearkend one ecstatic victim aftet another—till Sergeant Helen Dixon of the Policewomen’s Bureau was summoned by the siren tones to keep a blind date with death.
The blow knocked Lieutenant
Teccard senseless before his
knees started to buckle
CHAPTER ONE
A GRUESOME EXHIBIT
IEUTENANT TECCARD rocked back in his swivel chair. His fingers gripped the shiny oak arm-pieces tightly. It was an instinctive movement to get as far away as possible from the thing on his desk. Ordinarily, his office in the headquarters building seemed large enough. Now, suddenly, it was oppressively small and close. He kept his eyes away from the long, glass tray on the flat-top, as he reached for the phone.
“O.K. for Sergeant Dixon.”
The woman who came in wouldn’t have been noticed in the average Manhattan lunch-hour crowd. She was pretty, but she hadn’t worked hard at it. A man might not have paid particular attention to her as he passed her on the street, unless he happened to meet her glance. Her eyes were gray and curiously calm—as if they had seen a lot they hadn’t found amusing.
She wrinkled up her nose. “My God, Jerry! A man can live without food for three weeks and without water for three days! But you can’t last three minutes without air!”
Jerry Teccard shoved his brown felt back off a harassed forehead. “Light a cigarette if it gets you, Helen.” He indicated the roll of checkered oilcloth resting in the photographic tray. “You don’t have to turn yourself inside out, gandering at this. You can take the medical examiner’s word for it.”
Acting Detective-sergeant Helen Dixon, second grade, regarded him grimly.
“After that year I put in at the Forty-seventh Street station, it’ll take something to turn m stomach,” she declared.
He lifted one corner of the oilcloth cylinder. “What’s left of a woman’s thigh. After the wharl rats worked on it awhile.”
Her lips compressed a little, but none of the color left her face.
“Where’d it come in?”
“Twenty-third precinct. East Hundred and Fourth.” He consulted a report sheet. “James Boyle, probationer, found a child trying to salvage the oilcloth that had been tied around il with some string. Boyle’s beat takes him along the Harlem docks, foot of Ninety-eighth. This thing was on the tide flat at the side of the Ninety-eighth Street pier.”
“When was this, Jerry?”
“This a.m. Quarter past ten. Doc says it’s been lying there, or under the head of the pier, more’n a week. Some pupae of flies in the end ol the bone. Eggs must’ve been laid seven, eighl days ago, anyway.”
Helen Dixon bent over the tray. She didn’l peer at the discolored bone, her finger pointed tc brown shreds of fiber which clung to the outside of the oilcloth.
“You said it was tied with string?” she asked.
Teccard pointed to a soggy tangle of frazzled gray in one corner of the tray. “Was. Doesn’l mean a thing, though. Million yards of that stufl used every day.”
“But these look like rope strands to me.”
He squinted at them. “I noticed those. I’m going to send ‘em up to the lab, for a microscopic. But the reason I sent for you—”
“You figure this might be one of the Happiness cases?” She moved past his chair to the window, opened it from the bottom a few inches, stood staring down into Centre Street.
“There’s better than an even chance. That’s why I asked the Policewomen’s Bureau to send you up here. I know you’ve been plugging like hell on that assignment. If Crim. Ident. can help, maybe you and I can work together on it. Like old times, when you were playing Big Sister to the floozies we picked up on Sixth Avenue.” He swung around toward her. “My office wouldn’t want any credit.”
She touched his shoulder lightly for an instant, spoke without turning around.
“Damn the credit! If I could only break the case. I’ve been running around in circles for three weeks, hoping it’s just another flock of old maids forgetting about friends and families because wedding bells are still ringing in their ears. But if this,” she inclined her head toward the tray, “is one of them, it means the very nastiest kind of murder.”
Teccard nodded. “Never knew a suicide to cut off her leg. It’s pretty obvious.”
“Any special reason to think she was one of this matrimonial agency’s customers?”
He lifted his chin, ran a finger around under his collar uncomfortably. “Remember what you said that day we had lunch at the Savarin? About the kind of heels who have to find their females thr
ough an ad? Especially when they pick on dames who’ve had the lousy luck to be disfigured or crippled?”
Her voice was bitter. “I’m not likely to forget. Every one of those five appeals for inquiry come from friends or relatives of women who have some physical disability—or some facial blemish that would put them at a disadvantage in the national pastime of husband-hunting. Of course those poor lonely lambs could be led to the slaughter, by some unscrupulous devil who flattered them and promised them … whatever he promised.”
ECCARD fiddled with pipe and pouch. “Well, that thigh bone was broken. In two places. While she was living, I mean.”
Helen Dixon turned, perched on the window sill. “The left leg?”
“Yair. Wasn’t there one of those dames … ?”
“Ruby Belle Lansing.” The sergeant eyed the oilcloth with repugnance. “Spinster. Thirty-six. Grade-school teacher in Tannersville. Hip broken in automobile accident, October 1939. Double fracture, set at Catskill Memorial Hospital. Entered into correspondence with the Herald of Happiness in August 1941. Came to New York, October sixth, after being introduced, by mail, to Philip Stanton, then of 4760 Madison Avenue, this city.”
The lieutenant consulted his report sheet. “Length of femur, 18.1 inches. Let’s see—factor for women is three and six-tenths. About sixty-five inches tall. Would this Lansing—”
“She was just five feet, five, Jerry. By the Tannersville Board of Education records. What must have been more important to Stanton, Ruby Belle had a little more than two thousand dollars in the savings bank at Phoenicia. Three days after her arrival, she had this deposit transferred to the Emigrant Bank here. On October tenth, the next day, it was withdrawn, except for ten dollars. Since then, there hasn’t been a trace of her. Or of Stanton!”
“Any description of him?”
Helen shrugged. “Nothing to count. He never went to Tannersville. Her uncle—the one who asked us for a check-up—said he saw a snapshot of Stanton. But all he remembers is, the fellow was good-looking and had a mustache.”
“That’s a great big help!” Teccard called for a policeman to take the thigh-bone back to the morgue. “What about the people where Stanton lived?”
“A rooming house. Man who runs it’s nearly blind. Stanton didn’t seem to use the room much, anyway. Half the time the bed wasn’t disturbed. Best I could get was, he was kind of dark.”
“Ah! Send out an all-borough to pick up dark guys with mustaches! And reserve Central Park to hold ‘em in! Yair! How about the other four who’re missing? Same skunk, each time?”
Helen bent over the oilcloth, peered at the brown fiber again. “I wish I could remember what that stuff makes me think of. About the men in the other cases—I’m up against one of those things, Jerry. The disappearances were strangely similar. In every instance, the man resided in New York. The woman involved always lived in some small town, upstate. And every time the man sent the woman a ticket to come to the big city. What’s more, flowers were invariably sent. Can you tie that? A bouquet for the unseen bride! Also, every one of the five dropped out of sight within three or four days—after sending for their home-town funds.”
“All cut from the same pattern!”
“I thought so, at first. But the men in each of the cases had different names. Different addresses.”
“What the hell! A crook of that kind could pick out a new alias or a new address as easy as you choose a blue plate!”
“I saw some of the letters these men wrote. In the agency files. The handwritings don’t bear any resemblance.”
“He could fake them. Or get someone else to write them for him.”
“Not usual, is it? A murderer taking someone into his confidence? Unless it’s a gang. Which it might be, from the varying descriptions of the men—according to the photos. There was always a snapshot, you see. One of the Happiness rules. One man had a beard. Another was partly bald. One was around fifty. The fellow in the Schwartz case couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, the victim’s brother claims. You wonder I’ve been stymied?”
Teccard spread his hands. “We’ll have to go at it from this end. That oilcloth probably came from the five-and-dime—be tough to trace. But if this killer chopped the Lansing woman up, there’d have been more than a thigh bone to dispose of. Not so easy to get rid of a cadaver. And he slipped up this once. If he was careless again, we’ll get somewhere. I’ve put a crew from the precinct on that. They’ll sift that whole damn waterfront through a sieve, if necessary.”
The sergeant sauntered toward the door. “I hope you beat me to it, Jerry. I haven’t been sleeping so well, lately. Thinking about some other poor, lonely fool on her way to meet a murderer. If this guy—or this gang—has gotten away with it five times, there won’t be any stop now. It’s about time for another one. They’ve been spaced about a month apart.”
Teccard frowned. “I thought you said you were up a blind alley on it. What do you mean, beat you to it?”
She smiled, tightly.
“I didn’t say I was licked. I still have a card to play.”
“If we’re going to work together—”
“That would be all right with me. But this is something you couldn’t very well come in on. I’m entered in Cupid’s Competition.”
He jumped to his feet. “Now what in the hell!”
She nodded, calmly. “Current issue of the Herald of Happiness, Meeting Place of the Matrimonial Minded Department. ‘Miss Mary Lownes, single, thirty-one. Of Malone, New York. Pleasant disposition. Capable housewife, though suffering from slight spinal complaint. Occupation, nurse.’ I was, you know, before I turned policewoman. ‘Anxious to meet amiable, sober businessman under fifty.’ That ought to get him, don’t you think?”
“Just because you were assigned to an investigation doesn’t mean you’re supposed to risk running up against a killer, Helen.”
“After the slimy specimens I’ve been running up against, a murderer’11 be a relief. This chasing up and down subways and elevateds to trap exhibitionists, those hours of stting through double features to nab mashers in the act—that’s not only hard work, it kind of gets you to thinking half the world’s made up of perverts.”
“Yair. But that’s the sort of stuff only a woman can handle. Homicide isn’t for the Women’s Bureau, it’s a man’s job.”
“It’s my job to put a stop to any matrimonial agency that’s doing business like this—to see that love-hungry women don’t get murdered when they figure on getting married.”
“You find the man. We’ll put a stop to it— without your getting into it.”
“That would suit me swell. But it might not work. I may have to get into it, to find the evidence necessary to convict.”
The lieutenant put his fists on his hips and glared. “Hey! You don’t mean you’d go so far as to marry the murdering so-and-so?”
“I’ll go as far as I have to, Jerry. Maybe you’ve forgotten I had a sister who fell for a slimy snake like this Stanton. Alice turned on the gas one night—without lighting it. I found her body. I hate men like that worse than those phoney abortionists I rounded up this spring. At least those girls knew they were taking a terrible chance. These poor, misguided love-seekers don’t even realize their danger until it’s too late.” There was a dull, hurt look in the gray eyes. “But so far, there’s been no proof that any of these women wound up with any legal certificates. No record of any licenses at City Hall, even.”
“God’s sake, Helen! You know the regulations forbid any infraction of ordinances in attempting to trap a criminal!”
“Nothing criminal about getting married, is there, Jerry?”
He opened his mouth, shut it again, glared at her. When he spoke, it was in the tone of a commanding officer. “You let me know before you go through with any damn nonsense like that, hear?”
She saluted, stiffly. “Yes, Lieutenant.”
He wasn’t more than a minute behind her in leaving the office. The police clerk by the rail
in the outer room spoke out of the corner of his mouth to a plainclothesman one-fingering on a typewriter. “Geeze! The Lieutenant musta just swallowed a cup of carbolic or something.”
“Teccard? He always looks like that when the Dixon dame gives him ‘No’ for an answer. He’s been carryin’ the torch for her so long, he sleeps standin’ up, like the Statue of Liberty.”
CHAPTER TWO
HERALD OF HAPPINESS
HE detective-lieutenant drove his department sedan up Broadway to Twenty-eighth, studied the directory board in the lobby of a ten-story office building, pushed into the elevator.
The Herald of Happiness was housed in a single room at the rear of the third floor. The door was locked, but there was a bulky shadow moving against the ground glass. He rapped.
The man who let him in was fat. Tiny purple veins laced the end of a bulbous nose. The eyes that searched the lieutenant’s were slightly bloodshot.
“You the proprietor of this agency, mister?”
“I am, sir. T. Chauncey Helbourne, if I can be of service to you. You are a subscriber?”
“I’m from police headquarters.”
“What, again? I’ve already put up with a distressing amount of annoyance from a Miss Dixon …”
“You’ll be putting up with a prison diet, if you’re not careful.”
“Prison! You can’t frighten me, sir. I run a legitimate business.”
“Nuts! You come close to being a professional panderer. Don’t tell me you have a license, it doesn’t cover complicity in fraud!”
Helbourne’s neck reddened. “I won’t be bulldozed by any such tactics, officer!”
“Lieutenant. Lieutenant Teccard.” He surveyed the cheap furniture, the unpainted rack of pigeonholes along one wall.
“It makes no difference to me if you’re the commissioner, himself. I have influential connections at City Hall, too. And my records are always open for inspection by authorized parties.”