Leo grinned. “At least I won't be wasting my own money."
He ordered his usual five hot dogs and the big-swallow soft drink. But instead of the invariable tub of Kutz's gelatinous cheese fries, he tapped the glass in front of Kutz's art and ordered the New Menu Item. I shook my head, in wisdom and disappointment, added another hot dog and a small diet cola to the list, and peeled off a twenty from Harry Ruffino's fee. Our food was ready in thirty seconds because Young Kutz never strives for freshness, and I carried the flimsy plastic tray, following Leo, around to the pigeon-strafed picnic tables behind the trailer.
I took my hot dog and the small diet drink, and pushed the rest across to Leo. Nodding at the New Menu Item, I said, “Surely it's obvious where Kutz gets the ingredients."
"Barbecue cheese onion rings.” He smacked his considerable lips.
"Ketchup crustings from the counter bottles. Mold-spotted, soft onions..."
"Recycling's fashionable.” He made a pincer of his thumb and forefinger and plunged it into the substance coagulating in the little paper tub. A second later, his hand twitched; his fingers had caught something. He pulled it, quivering and slow-dripping the yellow goo that Kutz insists is cheese from the tub.
With a sly glance to make sure I was watching, he tilted his head back, a bird to a worm, and opened his pincer. But the lumpy yellow strand did not drop. It clung, trembling, to the tip of his forefinger. He made snapping motions with his middle finger and thumb, once, twice, and then it fell into the yaw between his grinning lips. He moved his jaws quickly, chewing, then swallowed. And it was done.
He laughed at the horror on my face, and reached for his first hot dog. “Now, tell me what's got you upset."
"Remember that shyster I hired to get the turret rezoned to residential?"
"Harry Ruffino.” He picked up the second of his five tube steaks. Leo has weighed one-forty since high school, a weight gain of zero. He attributes that to speed-eating the corrosive bacteria found in Kutz's hot dogs.
"Harry's representing the alleged torch behind the Sherman Stamping Works. He hired me to talk to the guy."
"You mean look into the fire,” he said around the hot dog.
"No. He just wanted me to talk to the guy, a scrapper named Petak, to see if I could shake anything loose for Ruffino's defense."
"And?"
"I struck out. Petak's acting more concerned with the rats in the jail than with saving his own skin."
"No one likes rats."
"No one likes jail. Yet all he asked me to do was bring him a pack of smokes."
"First things first, with us addicts.” He grinned, making a show of plunging his pincer into the cheese again.
"I went looking for the eyewitness who placed Petak at the factory. He was a guy named Wildcat Ernie."
Leo caught my use of the past tense. He looked up as his fingers came out of the tub squeezing another oozing New Menu Item.
"I found him dead at the Health Center,” I said.
His fingers paused halfway to his mouth. “Murdered?"
"Alcohol poisoning. He drank himself to death with Gentleman Jack."
The yellow-camouflaged bit of ancient onion fell back to the tray. “Gentleman Jack is good whiskey,” he said, watching my eyes.
"Too good for folks at the Health Center. Ernie had three bottles, but only needed two to send himself on his way. I'm thinking somebody gave Ernie those bottles."
"Knowing he'd drink himself to death?"
"Absolutely."
"Who?"
I shrugged, didn't answer.
Leo, ever practical, said, “Does that free your man Petak?"
"No. The cops took the precaution of videotaping Ernie giving his statement. Harry says Ernie's death worsens things, because Harry can no longer take him apart on the stand."
"Ouch.” He slid across the tray of submerged New Menu Items in sympathy.
I pushed it back. “I don't think Harry ever intended to attack Ernie's identification."
"Whoa."
"Immediately after the fire, the back taxes on the stamping works got paid up."
"By whom?"
"Harry."
"Jeez."
"I'm thinking Harry hired Wildcat Ernie to set the fire, to scare the owners into giving him a cheap option to buy the factory."
"Why would he want that place?"
I took out the aerial photo I'd printed off the Internet, and put my thumb in the right place. “In case Rivertown ever comes around."
Leo saw it right away. “Clever Harry. What do you do now?"
"He's dodging me. I left him phone messages, threatening to go to the cops."
He looked down, remembering the bit of New Menu Item that had fallen. It lay motionless—in rigor or in repose—a yellow squiggle atop a crust of more yellow. He picked it up and dropped it in his mouth. “No way he'll ever confess to setting up his client, Petak."
In a quite literal sense, Leo was right.
* * * *
There were no messages on my cell phone, nor on the answering machine back at the turret. I spent the afternoon sweeping up sawdust and cleaning varnishing brushes. And listening for the phone. But Harry didn't call.
At five-thirty, Brockhouse from the Rivertown police knocked on my door.
"Evening, Mr. Elstrom."
"Like to come in?"
"I have, for some time."
He stepped inside. Like most first-timers, he needed a short tour of the round room. It's not the furnishings that grab them; there are only two plastic lawn chairs and a table saw. It's the walls. My grandfather built the turret of good craggy limestone that seems to change color, almost continuously, in the light that drifts in through the slit windows. A wrought-iron staircase curves up, through the beamed ceiling, to the four floors above.
"They talk about this place over at city hall,” Brockhouse said from across the room.
"Because they rezoned it as a municipal structure, so the town can use its image everywhere?"
He smiled. “Rivertown will change, Mr. Elstrom."
We sat on the plastic chairs.
"Any word on Wildcat Ernie?” I asked.
"Autopsy results won't be available for a few days. But like you and me, the medical examiner is thinking it's going to be alcohol poisoning.” He shifted in his chair. “I understand you're feeling some frustration with Mr. Ruffino."
"How did you come to that conclusion?"
"You left strongly worded messages for him today."
I tasted oil at the back of my throat. “What's happened?"
"Tell me about your calls to Harry Ruffino."
"I think Albert Petak is innocent. I want to make sure Ruffino thinks that, too."
"That Albert Petak was set up? By whom?"
"Wildcat Ernie is the obvious candidate."
"He's conveniently dead. Anybody else?"
"I'm not sure.” I was, but the ethics of my client relationship with Harry Ruffino still stuck to me as thickly as the cheese on Kutz's New Menu Item.
"You also drove to Mr. Ruffino's home today. His neighbors told us you appeared quite distressed."
"Cut the crap. What's happened?"
"Harry Ruffino is dead."
My mind stutter-skipped over possibilities. Nobody I knew had motive and means to kill Harry. “How?” was all I could manage.
Brockhouse said nothing.
"I never saw Harry today,” I said.
"You were at his house. Angry."
"I never went inside. He wasn't around."
"You were mad. You threatened him. The neighbors saw you banging on his doors and windows."
"Then the neighbors saw that I didn't go in. And they saw his secretary, too. She was also banging on his door, just as upset."
"She got worried when he didn't show up for work. Why the anger, Mr. Elstrom?"
"I told you: concerns about Petak's case. How'd Harry die?"
He leaned back in the plastic chair and gave me an eighth
of a grin. “In bed, probably of a heart attack."
"You come here implying that I had something to do with Harry's death, then tell me he died in bed, of a heart attack?"
I put my hands on the white plastic, like I was about to get up. “Unless you're going to free Albert Petak, I've got to find him an honest lawyer."
He made no move to rise. “Pure coincidence? Wildcat Ernie, and now Harry Ruffino?"
My ethics problem was dead. Giving Brockhouse what I suspected would hurry Albert's release.
"Harry wanted an option to buy the stamping works. But he wanted it dirt cheap, so he hired Wildcat Ernie to torch a wing to put a little scare into the owners before he contacted them. The deal he cut must have included paying the taxes in addition to some dough under the table. Part of his deal with Ernie was to finger Albert. To make sure Albert went down for the fire, he offered to defend him for free. That way he could control the trial, make sure no unpleasant doubts arose about Albert's guilt. Even with Albert convicted, though, Ernie would still be a loose end. So Harry gave Ernie three bottles of really good whiskey, knowing Ernie would lap at it until it killed him."
"That's a lot of cunning."
"Albert Petak is innocent."
Brockhouse made no move to get up. “I don't see motive for Ruffino. I can't see why he would have wanted that old factory. Nobody's buying property in Rivertown."
"You said it yourself: Rivertown will come around eventually."
"That factory is shot. It's a ruin."
I ran up to the card table, brought down the aerial photo. “Harry didn't want the factory. He wanted what runs up to it."
Brockhouse studied the picture for a few seconds, then handed it back and stood up.
"The only railroad spur in town,” he said. “He'd have made a fortune in fees, charging people to ship through that siding."
"When Rivertown turns around."
He shrugged. “It'll happen."
"Albert Petak?” I asked him at the door.
"Awfully convenient for Albert, Ruffino dying when he did."
"Albert Petak was in jail. And he didn't set that fire."
Both were true enough.
* * * *
I didn't race off to see Albert. I took coffee to the roof, to go over, one last time, the means I'd fitted to the motive. As Brockhouse was telling of Harry's death, Leo's throwaway line at lunch had come back to me, banging the facts into a row as straight as the boxcars used to be, lined up on the rail siding at the stamping works.
"First things first, with us addicts,” Leo had said, grinning as he plunged his fingers into Kutz's New Menu Item. He'd been talking about the yellow stuff Kutz tries to pass as cheese.
And about Albert's cigarettes.
I tossed the pack of Marlboros onto the table in the green cinderblock room. I hadn't brought matches. They wouldn't be necessary.
"The first time I came to see you, you asked for Marlboros—Harry Ruffino's brand."
Albert's eyes stayed steady on mine. He didn't look at the cigarettes. He no longer needed to scan the corners of the room.
"First things first, with addicts,” I went on. “Any smoker in this place would have lunged for the cigarettes I'd brought. But not you. You only needed one, for the rat powder you scraped out of some corner here."
The trace of a smile fit onto his lips. “Rats come in all sizes."
I handed him the receipt I got from the sergeant at the desk. “I wrote you a check for two hundred and fifty dollars."
Surprise made his eyes flicker. “Why the jingle?"
"It's half what I got paid by Ruffino. An officer named Brockhouse will probably release you this afternoon, because he doesn't have enough to hold you anymore. Use the money to run like hell."
He nodded, but said nothing.
"I'm guessing you only powdered one cigarette. But they could autopsy Ruffino, and then they might check the butts in his ashtray."
He shrugged.
"They could question yesterday's visitors, maybe find somebody who saw your hands on two packs of Marlboros as Harry was fumbling for something in his briefcase."
"Ruffino wanted me down for murder."
"Run like hell, Albert."
He got up, walked to knock on the door. He'd left the smokes on the table. As the door opened, Albert Petak gave me a vague salute.
"Thanks for the jingle,” he said.
©2009 by Jack Fredrickson
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Fiction: UNRULY JADE by Terence Faherty
Terence Faherty's Scott Elliott series has been nominated for two mystery awards, the Dilys, given by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association and the PWA's Shamus Award. Both nominations were for a novella in which Elliott features, In a Teapot, and in both cases the book was up against full-length novels written by some of the top names in the field. Here is Elliott with a mundane case that suddenly turns deadly.
1.
t's a night of danger, intrigue, and infinite possibilities."
I was inclined to doubt that claim, as the man who'd made it was a little mouse of a guy who looked like he wouldn't know danger and intrigue if they took turns tickling his ears. And the only possibilities he could spot, I was sure, were the ones quickly receding in the rearview mirror of his life.
His name was Claude Dabney, and he was a humorist, formerly in print and now on the silver screen. He'd come to Hollywood in the late thirties in the wake of another humor writer, Robert Benchley. Benchley had had a mild success both in supporting roles in features and as the star of a series of shorts in which he basically played himself: a slightly befuddled Babbitt, eager to share his confusion with everyone else, often in the form of a comic lecture.
Dabney, who was vaguely English and, as I said, underproportioned, added an additional dimension to the same basic act. In the two-reelers he made for Columbia, he got pushed around by everyone and everything from shoe salesmen to shoelaces, but somehow managed to triumph in the end. In appearance, he resembled Roland Young more than Benchley. That is, he had thinning hair precisely parted, a beak of a nose, and tiny eyes inclined to blink. But there was one area in which he and Benchley might have passed for twins: They both drank like lovesick fish.
Drinking had rushed Benchley's death, which might have been why Dabney was so cautious. He insisted on company whenever he went on one of what he called his “toots.” And that's where I came in. On that dangerous and intriguing night in 1946 I was working for Hollywood Security, a firm which swept up after the studios and the stars. I was their current probationer, and as such, I'd been assigned to babysit Dabney, a job any real babysitter in real bobby socks could have handled, in my opinion. My boss, Patrick J. Maguire, had tried to build the part up by telling me that Dabney could be a Jekyll and Hyde when he drank, but I'd dismissed that as Paddy's standard blarney.
Sure enough, except for a desire to move around more than seemed necessary, Dabney had proven to be quite the lamb. We'd started with an early dinner at the Brown Derby, me, as ordered, in my somewhat seedy tux and Dabney in his very seedy one. Our waiter there had called me “slugger,” as he was an old-timer and remembered the evening before the war when I'd decked a certain star in the Derby. I'd been an actor myself then, in a small way. Dabney had insisted on hearing the story, and it had gotten him blinking and then some.
"But this is wonderful, old boy.” He repeated my name, Scott Elliott, a time or two like he was suddenly remembering it. “I'm sorry I didn't recognize you as a former member of the fraternity. But I must say I'm pleased. I wanted us to look like a couple of old friends, out for an evening of reminiscence and perambulation, and now we shall."
We were a mismatched couple, with me being tall and a little heavier than my acting days and considerably the Englishman's junior. But I went along with the gag happily. It would be one last chance to make the rounds as my old self.
Our perambulating eventually took us to Ciro's, a sophisticated nightspot on Sun
set. The club reminded me of Paddy's Jekyll and Hyde comment; it was sleek and modern on the outside—its entryway roof with its curves and many slender supports looked like a harp designed by Harley Earl—but very baroque on the inside. It had been remodeled by its new owners and toned down a little, but it still resembled a Versailles boudoir that happened to seat three hundred.
Our seats were at the bar, at Dabney's insistence. His drink of choice was a Bronx, an antique cocktail made from gin, sweet and dry vermouth, and orange juice. I'd watched so many being made by then that I had the formula down by heart. I was consuming orange juice, on the rocks. Orange juice and a steady stream of Dabney's patter.
"Have you ever noticed, old boy, how many movies are set in one of two places, a newspaper or a nightclub? I've often thought those locales come up so often because a writer will always fall back on what he knows best. Most screenwriters worked for a newspaper early in their careers, what one might call their honest period. The nightclub experience comes from a writer's Hollywood period, when these upholstered confines come to seem more real than the unupholstered world outside."
I thought of kicking in that nightclub settings popped up so often because they gave the studios a chance to insert their musical performers in nonmusical pictures, thereby keeping them off the streets and out of trouble. I didn't make the observation, because Dabney had segued into a story about his lost days on the London Times. And because the man seated to my left said something just then that divided my attention.
It was: “There she is, the dame in the green dress. Memorize her."
Dabney was peering into his cocktail, so I was free to glance over my shoulder at the dance floor, where the customers were swaying to “They Didn't Believe Me.” I spotted the woman in the green dress right away. She was tall and slender, with dark hair worn up everywhere but in front. There, sharply cut bangs reached down almost to her widely spaced eyes. She was wearing a necklace of green beads a shade brighter than her dress. The necklace also caught the attention of the guy beside me.
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