The Lucky Stiff

by Craig Rice

  “Good,” Malone said.

  “I’m a smart man,” Rico said. “These bums figure that is exactly what I will do. Only they think I will do it later, when I come down at nine o’clock.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Malone said. “Now, look. After you open up at nine o’clock, see if anyone seems to be watching your place. If anyone is, pretend that you’re doing the same thing you did earlier. Drive away in your ambulance. See if they—if anyone—follows you. Then park up an alley and let them approach you. Let them talk. They’ll probably offer to forget the whole thing, for cash. Catch on?”

  “Sure thing,” Rico said gleefully. “Then I knock their heads together, lock them in the ambulance, and call the cops. Malone, you don’t need to pay for those flowers. I give them to you.”

  “Thanks,” Malone said. “One thing more. On your way, stop at Joe the Angel’s. There’ll be a package waiting for you. It contains a gun. Be careful not to touch it, there may be fingerprints on it. Take the gun along and leave it where you leave the body. It’s just a little present I want to give the police.”

  “Malone,” Helene said admiringly after he hung up, “you think of everything!”

  “Except sleep,” the little lawyer said. “But this was worth it.” He relit his cigar and said, “There’s a chance that some of the tough boys in the police department may be able to find out who’s running this protection racket. And if they can’t,” he added with a wicked grin, “I think I know who can.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Malone stood back and surveyed the room in which Anna Marie slept. It was, he decided, perfect. He’d arranged the flowers himself, and they turned the room into a bower. There was a thermos of coffee on the bed table, and a note telling her to order anything she wanted from room service and to keep out of sight of the waiter.

  He’d considered adding to the note the fact that he loved her but, he’d decided, that had better wait.

  Tonight he’d present her with the negligee. Maybe he could pick up a few other trinkets that she’d like.

  He tiptoed out of the room after one last glance at her and closed the door very softly.

  Back in his own room he looked at himself critically in the mirror. There had been times when he looked worse, but he couldn’t remember them. His suit was rumpled and dusty, his shirt was a complete wreck. For perhaps the thousandth time in his life he wondered why he couldn’t get into a fight without getting his collar torn off. His necktie—one of his favorites—had been lost somewhere along the way.

  His black eye had developed into something really spectacular. The other eye was red-rimmed and puffed from lack of sleep. The bruise on his jaw was an interesting shade of violet. He needed a shave.

  The little lawyer stripped to the skin and stood under an icy shower until every nerve in his body tingled. He shaved carefully, wincing when his razor touched the bruise. He considered going to the barber’s and having the black eye painted over, then decided against it. It was a magnificent shiner, and he was secretly proud of it.

  He selected the dark blue double-breasted suit with the pin-stripe. A proper choice, he thought, for the conservative and respectable businessman he had become. The red and blue striped tie. Finally he looked again in the mirror. The effect was wholly pleasing.

  At one minute to nine he opened his office door and stopped whistling to say, “Good morning, Maggie, any calls?”

  Maggie dropped her magazine and said, “Good God! What are you doing here?” She looked at him closely. “John J. Malone, you’ve been fighting again!”

  “Just a quiet evening with friends,” Malone said airily. “Think nothing of it.”

  “But,” she said, “it’s nine o’clock in the morning!”

  “Nothing surprising about that,” Malone said. “Once in every twenty-four hours it’s nine o’clock in the morning. And from now on, that’s the hour I arrive at the office. You may not realize it, but I’m a changed man.”

  She sniffed. “You don’t look very changed to me,” she commented. She looked at her message pad. “Mick Herman wants his tools back. He needs them in order to pay your fee.”

  “Tell him the fee can wait,” Malone said. “I may need the tools another day or two.”

  “Judge Seidel wants you to contribute to a benefit.”

  “Send him ten bucks,” Malone said, “and take it out of that last fee for getting a traffic ticket fixed.”

  “The Toujours Gai Lingerie Shop is sending over that negligee—C.O.D.”

  “Pay for it out of the petty cash,” Malone said.

  Maggie looked at him coldly. “There’s exactly one dollar and seventy cents, and two three-cent stamps in the petty cash,” she told him.

  “Oh, all right.” He drew a wadded mass of bills from a trousers’ pocket, fished out a hundred dollar bill, and gave it to her. “Pay for it with that. Put the change in the petty cash. And get Mrs. Childers on the phone for me.”

  He went on into his office and left her staring, bewildered, at the closed door.

  Inside his office he tossed his hat on a chair, lit a cigar, and, feeling very businesslike indeed, sat down at his desk to examine the morning mail. Bills. Three envelopes addressed in three different feminine handwritings. An invitation to buy two tickets to a testimonial dinner for a union official. He looked at them for a few minutes, then swept them all into his desk drawer, just as Maggie opened the door and said, “Mrs. Childers on the phone.”

  He picked up the telephone, leaned perilously far back in his chair, and said, “Good morning, my dear Mrs. Childers. I suppose you wonder why I’m calling you up so early.”

  “Well,” she cooed, “I am just the least little wee bit curious, and I can’t help hoping—”

  “That’s it,” Malone said cheerily. “I’ve decided that since I’m going to devote myself wholeheartedly to your case, I will accept the retainer after all.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad!” she said. “I’ll send it over. By special messenger!” There was a brief silence. “Mr. Malone?”

  “Yes?” Malone said, his senses sharpening.

  “I have just a tiny confession to make. I didn’t quite tell you everything yesterday.”

  Malone sat up straight. “My dear lady, go right ahead. No client of mine ever needs to keep any secrets from me. Your lawyer should be like your doctor, you know. You should tell him everything—absolutely everything.” He didn’t think for a minute that she would.

  “Oh, that’s so right, Mr. Malone,” she said. “I—I’ll tell you—it’s that, well, there is something else I want you to do for me. Besides finding that unfortunate girl’s family, if she had one.”

  “My services are at your command,” Malone said gallantly.

  “You’re so kind!” she breathed over the phone. “I wonder—maybe, I’d better come down and tell you about it in person.”

  “That would be fine,” Malone said. “Any time this afternoon. Unfortunately, I’m tied up all this morning.”

  “Four o’clock?”

  “Perfect,” Malone said. He hung up and wondered what the hell she had in mind. Well, whatever it was, he’d cope with it somehow. He thought happily of the fat fee that ought to be involved.

  He stretched, slapped himself on the chest, and reflected that the life of a respectable, hard-working businessman who got to his office at nine every morning was exactly what suited him.

  He rose, went to the door, and said, “Maggie, I’ve got some very serious thinking to do. Under no circumstances am I to be disturbed until I let you know. No matter who or what it is.”

  He walked over to the couch, loosened his tie, took off his shoes, stretched out with a luxurious yawn, and ten seconds later was sound asleep.

  When he woke at twelve he felt like a new man.

  There had been a faintly disturbing dream. He sat on the edge of the couch, wriggling his toes and thinking about it. The details of it eluded him, but it had something to do with identical twins. Alik
e, even to the point of identical fingerprints and cavities in their teeth.

  “Silly dream,” he told himself. No two things in the world could be exactly alike, except perhaps those two apartments—Anna Marie’s and the empty one. He scowled. Silly or not, the dream did have some significance, if he could just put his finger on it. He closed his eyes and tried to think. Twins. The two apartments. Something. He felt that an important fact was just beyond his reach of mind, but he could never quite get to it.

  At last he gave up. The way to deal with those elusive thoughts, he’d found in the past, was to ignore them. Sooner or later they came along of their own accord.

  He put on his shoes, straightened his tie, and walked into the outer office.

  “I heard you thinking,” Maggie said scornfully.

  “I do not snore,” Malone said with indignation. He picked up the long white box marked Toujours Gai Lingerie Shop and looked at it lovingly.

  “This came,” Maggie said. She handed him an envelope.

  He opened it and took out the ten one hundred dollar bills.

  “I knew you’d come to your senses about bribes,” Maggie said.

  “Strictly business,” Malone told her. He stuffed five of the bills in his pocket and handed the rest to her. “Pay the rent and the phone bill, pay your back salary, and fix up the overdraft at the bank. If there’s any left over, maybe you’d better put it in the bank, too. We might need it sometime.”

  He went back in his office and sat down behind his desk.

  Maybe the dream was trying to tell him that the two apartments were not exactly alike. He tried to picture them. The windows here. The doors there. The built-in bookcases—

  He was interrupted by Maggie, who came in and laid a card on his desk. Al Harmon, it read.

  Under it was scribbled in pencil, “Special Investigator for the D.A.’s office.”

  “What the hell,” Malone said. He scowled at the card. “Oh, well, send him in.”

  The man who came through the door was the young man in the tan raincoat.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “I don’t believe you,” Malone said hoarsely. He resisted a temptation to duck under his desk.

  “Nobody’s asking you to,” Al Harmon said. “I got credentials.” He slapped them down on the desk, smiling unpleasantly. He had thin lips and tobacco-stained teeth.

  Malone glanced at them and slid them back. “Then what the hell was the idea of chasing me around last night, and putting a gun on me?”

  Harmon sat down, lit a cigarette, and said, “What would you do in the same circumstances, pal?”

  “I’d stay home and read a good book,” Malone said, “and not go around trailing law-abiding citizens. What does the D.A.’s office have against me, anyway?” Though there was, he reflected, a certain amount of justice on Harmon’s side. Under the circumstances, he’d have preferred to have a gun in his own hand.

  “Plenty,” Harmon said, “as far as I’m concerned. I’m going to be living on soup, milk, and liquor for the next three weeks. You as good as shoved my stomach through my backbone.”

  “Next time I will,” Malone said. He felt of his jaw.

  Al Harmon grinned. He took one more puff on the cigarette and used it to light a second one. “Leave us leave bygones be bygones.”

  “By all means,” Malone said. He began unwrapping a cigar. “You’ve got a nice aim with a flashlight. A nice aim at an eye, that is.”

  “Occupational skill,” Harmon said. “You read about it all the time. Like riveters. And diamond cutters. Where’s my gun?”

  “I don’t know,” Malone said truthfully.

  “Did you take it out of that undertaking joint last night?”

  “No,” Malone said, just as truthfully.

  “Why did you go out to that undertaking joint last night?”

  “To get some flowers for my girl,” Malone said. “Why did you follow me there?”

  “I’m asking the questions,” Al Harmon said. “You’re giving the answers. You didn’t go there because Jesse Conway’s body was there, did you?”

  Malone lifted his eyebrows. “Jesse Conway!” His voice was shocked and innocent. “You don’t mean poor Jesse’s dead, do you?”

  “I’ve seen healthier people,” Al Harmon said. He chain-lit a third cigarette. “Why did you buy Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar?”

  “I thought it was a good investment,” Malone said promptly. “And I thought it would be cheaper to own a saloon than to patronize one.”

  “For how much?”

  “Fifty,” Malone said.

  “Fifty what?”

  “Fifty cents, fifty dollars, fifty grand,” Malone said. “It’s none of your business. I’m being very patient with you. Or, I should say, I have been very patient with you.” He lit his cigar. “From now on, I ask the questions. If you’re an investigator for the D.A.’s office, how come you’re also collecting protection money for the racket crowd?”

  “I’ve got an old gray-haired mother to support,” Harmon said, “and two invalid sisters, and I’m sending ten children through college. A living’s a living.”

  “How come you were seen in one of Bill McKeown’s joints with Mrs. Eva Childers?”

  “Mrs. Childers is a very charming lady,” Al Harmon said. “And also, in the bucks.” He added with a slight leer, “Quite a lot of bucks.”

  “She also happens to be my client,” Malone said grandly. “So watch your remarks.” He regretted it the moment he’d said it.

  Al Harmon regarded him with hard, glittering eyes from under eyelids that wrinkled the way Malone imagined lizards’ eyelids wrinkled. “Your client, chum?” He inhaled. “That’s very interesting.”

  “Also, very profitable,” Malone told him. “I, too, am sending twenty children through college, and I have four invalid sisters and two old gray-haired mothers. More questions. How do you know Jesse Conway is dead?”

  “I—”

  “You killed him,” Malone said pleasantly, slipping one hand under his desk for the buzzer that would signal to Maggie, “Help! Fast!”

  “Malone,” Al Harmon said, “do I look like a murderer? Do I talk like a murderer, chum?”

  “No,” Malone admitted. “You look like a rat and you talk like a skunk, but you don’t look like a murderer.” He held one finger close to the buzzer. Harmon grinned at him and didn’t make a move. “I asked you, how do you know Conway is dead? Did you see his body?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  Al Harmon said, “Try and find out. And what’s it to you?” He started another cigarette.

  “You wouldn’t know Jesse Conway was dead because you moved his body, would you?” Malone said nastily. “Or because you found it in Anna Marie St. Clair’s apartment?”

  He was on his feet five seconds ahead of Al Harmon. “Were you looking for the body when you went there?” He went on fast, “Or were you looking for something else? You left in kind of a hurry, didn’t you? Why? Did something startle you?”

  “How do you know?” Harmon said.

  “I’m still asking the questions,” Malone said. “And you’d better sit down, because there’s going to be a lot of them.” He sat down himself, and picked up his cigar.

  Harmon sank into his chair. “Listen, Malone. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “I do,” the little lawyer said. “I saw this one. Now. What’s the straight dope about you being a special investigator?” He added, “A better word for it, I suppose, is private spy.”

  Al Harmon lit his next cigarette with hands that shook just a trifle. “You know the cops haven’t been able to touch the protection racket. Not a thing to go on. Sure, a lot of wild rumors floating around. But not even a complaint. Nobody would admit he was a victim. As rackets go, this was a beaut.”

  Malone nodded. “And a number of night clubs, joints, and just plain saloons changed hands. Most of them had been run by honest guys who never had any trouble with the police until a
ll of a sudden a tip would come along that so-and-so was selling reefers.”

  “You haven’t been doing badly by yourself,” Al Harmon said.

  “I get around,” Malone told him. “After the tip was followed up, so-and-so was arrested, the evidence would mysteriously disappear, so would the witnesses, and some high-powered mouthpiece would spring so-and-so from the can. Shortly after, so-and-so’s joint would quietly change hands.” He scowled. “Couldn’t the cops trace the tips? And how about the new ownership of so-and-so’s joint?”

  “No luck,” Al Harmon said. “The whole business worked smooth as anything you could name. Not because the cops were in on it, either. Believe me, it’s a honey.” There was admiration in his voice.

  “Now,” Malone said, “about the D.A.’s office.”

  Al Harmon grinned. “They decided to find out who the boss was and smash the racket. Could be somebody wants to run for governor. So I drifted in from Detroit, looking for an easy way to make a living.”

  “Detroit, eh?” Malone said. “I wondered why I didn’t recognize you. I know most of the local boys.”

  “The only tip I had,” Harmon said, “was The Happy Days place on Clark Street. I hung around there, and after a while I was in, as a collector.”

  “Who’s the boss?” Malone said.

  “I don’t know. Nobody seems to know.”

  “Why did Jesse Conway call himself Ambersley?”

  “He did a little of the fancier collecting. He didn’t think it was smart to use his own name. He wanted to get out of it, but he couldn’t. With that mob, once you’re in, you’re in.”

  “Which might have been a reason for his sudden death,” Malone said.

  “Doubt it,” Harmon said, shaking his head. “They needed him. But since he did get it, they decided to use his body to frame that tough Di Angelo guy. Only Di Angelo outsmarted him.” His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that, would you, pal?”