“And this is the same act that Whitey has been doing?” Randall asked.
“Sure. Same thing. Andy taught Whitey the routine before he left.”
“Left?”
“Andy left the show. But he turned over his snake and his act to Whitey, so we’d still have a Ram Singh.”
“Pretty big-hearted, wasn’t he? Was Whitey a good friend of his?”
“Not exactly. Whitey was just an ambitious helper on my Ferris wheel when Andy gave him his chance to be snake charmer.”
“Then how come he picked out Whitey for the job?”
Capucino blinked several times and shrugged. “Because of Gloriana, maybe.”
“Gloriana was Andy’s girl friend before she was Whitey’s?”
“Yep. Whitey kind of took her away from Andy.” He grinned. “She changed trailers, you might say. You know the way girls are. She decided she’d rather play house with Whitey than Andy. Perfectly simple, Lieutenant. Happens all the time. Even with married folks.” He squinted at Randall.
“And how did Andy Grissom take that?”
“Oh, normal, I’d say. He was pretty burned at first, but he got over it quick. It broke up his little family.” Capucino chuckled at his own euphemism. “Some family,” he said raising his bushy eyebrows humorously. “A snake and an acrobat, and a fake Hindu.”
Randall said, “He didn’t seem specially sore at Whitey Whitaker?”
“Naw.”
“But Andy could have had it in for Whitey all the same. Maybe he just kept it hidden,” Randall said.
Capucino shook his head. “The hell with that. What you want to know, Lieutenant, is who changed the snakes in Whitey’s basket over there.”
“Tell me some more about this de-fanging deal. If a vet did it, he ought to be able to identify King, and be able to testify that this is a different snake, oughtn’t he?”
“Sure.”
“So who’s the vet?”
“I never heard his name. And he’s five hundred miles away, anyhow. In Indianapolis. That’s where my Carnival was playing when Andy took King to be de-fanged.”
Randall brooded. Capucino said, “Damn, I wish Andy hadn’t give his snake to Whitey and didn’t leave the show at all. Or I wish he’d of taken the snake with him. Poor Whitey. He was a good kid, coming along fine, going to be a real carny hand before long. I liked him:”
Capucino lit a cigarette with a kitchen match and flicked the match stick toward the snake basket. Randall stared at the little wall cabinet where Whitey had kept his antivenin.
“He kept his antivenin in that cabinet,” Randall said. “Only a few feet from where he collapsed. Seems funny he wouldn’t have been able to make it just those few feet and give himself the shot.”
“Not if you remember Whitey was a little tanked. And maybe he didn’t even realize he’d been bit. Or maybe the poison paralyzed him too quick.”
“Cobra venom paralyzes you quick, does it?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m only telling you what Andy used to say. Cobra bites go after your nerve centers. Rattlesnake bites go to work on your blood corpuscles and are slower. Maybe Whitey never even thought of the antivenin when King bit him. Drunk and excited and all, like he was.”
“If he’s a snake charmer and knows his business, the antivenin would be the first thing he’d think of, Cap.”
“He didn’t know his business so damn good,” Capucino said. “He was still pretty new at it. He’d only been doing the Ram Singh bit for a few days, remember.”
Randall’s yellow eyes narrowed. “What!” He sat forward in his chair.
“Sure. I told you. When Andy left the show last week—”
“You didn’t say last week!”
“In Indianapolis, I said. Last week. Where Andy had King de-fanged. Didn’t I tell you that?”
“Never mind,” said Randall. “You told me now.” He looked at Capucino curiously. To Capucino, the passage of time expressed itself only in the places where his traveling Carnival played. To him, Indianapolis meant last week. And Terre Haute probably meant the second week of August.
“Sure,” Cap was saying, “that’s when Whitey took over as Ram Singh. Last week in Indianapolis. That’s why Andy got King de-fanged there, see?”
“Wait a minute.” Randall tried to keep his irritation from showing. “You mean King has been de-fanged only since last week?”
“Sure. What did you think?”
“I thought Andy had him de-fanged when he started to train him, naturally. To make him safe to handle. Before he even joined your show.”
Capucino laughed. “Oh, no. Andy didn’t need him de-fanged. Andy always milked him. He had him de-fanged to protect Whitey when he took over the act.”
Randall had the curious feeling that he was slowly sinking out of sight in a morass of irrational facts that refused to allow him a secure hold on any of them. He made an effort and inquired, “Andy milked King?”
“Sure. Andy knew how to force King’s jaws open and press out the poison from his poison sacs into a saucer, so he’d be without poison for long enough to be safe during the afternoon and evening performances. That’s all milking is, drawing out the poison.”
“That I know,” said Randall sardonically. “But it’s the only damn thing I do know about this whole mess, so far.”
“Andy was a real snake man,” Capucino said. “He milked the poison out of King every day instead of having him de-fanged, because he thought the sight of those big fangs in the front of King’s mouth made the act that much better for the marks. They get a kind of morbid jolt out of seeing the fangs.”
“So why didn’t Andy show Whitey how to milk King when he took over?”
Capucino shrugged. “Too dangerous for the kid, he said.”
“You’re sure King really was de-fanged when Andy said so?”
Capucino stared at him, startled. “Why, I think so. You want to be absolutely sure, whyn’t you ask Gloriana?”
“I will,” Randall said.
Gloriana’s trailer was an altogether different proposition from Whitey’s. It was larger. Its interior was as frilly and feminine as the frosting on a pink birthday cake. When she wasn’t visiting with Whitey, Gloriana shared it with three other female members of the Carnival troupe. And when Capucino led Randall up the steps and into the trailer, Gloriana’s roommates were variously engaged in trying to comfort the grief-stricken acrobat.
Randall stood in the doorway while Capucino introduced, him. He picked out Gloriana instantly, and after his first inclusive glance, he had eyes for no-one else. She was worth looking at. Even Capucino’s enthusiastic description had failed to do her justice. She had tear stains on her cheeks; her face, innocent of make-up, had the clean, scrubbed look of a little girl’s after a hot bath. Her short blonde hair was in disarray, her pale blue skirt was twisted over her swelling hips, and her pullover sweater had come adrift from its moorings at her waist, exposing an inch-wide gap of milky white flesh. She was one of the most breathtakingly provocative women Randall had ever met.
At his request, her trailer-mates withdrew with Capucino, leaving him alone with Gloriana. She sat down on the daybed. Randall took a chair against the wall, trying not to look at the girl’s legs.
“Mr. Capucino told me you might be able to give me a little information, Gloriana,” he began. “You were pretty friendly with Ram Singh, the snake charmer, he tells me.”
She nodded un-selfconsciously. “Yeah. Whitey and I got along.” Her voice was breathless music.
“Capucino says there was a little more to it than just ‘getting along.’ Is that right?”
“That’s right. Whitey was a doll. Is it a crime?” She was quickly defensive.
“No.” He smiled at her. “I don’t blame Whitey and you a bit.”
She softened. “He was wonderful, Mr. Randall,” she said. “I feel terrible to think he’s gone. And how could it have happened? King had no fangs.”
“Do you know he had no fangs? Fo
r sure, I mean?”
“Of course. Andy brought King home from the vet’s and showed King’s mouth to both Whitey and me that same afternoon, so we’d know King was harmless.”
“Why did Andy have King’s fangs drawn?”
“So Whitey’d be safe putting on the act with King. Whitey was real new at the snake business. He was a Ferris wheel operator before—” Her voice trailed off miserably and her eyes filled.
“I know all about that,” Randall said hastily. “Did Whitey take care of King himself?”
“Yes. Andy always did, and he recommended Whitey do it, too. The snake will do his act better for the man who feeds him and takes care of him, Andy said.”
Randall cleared his throat. “When you changed your affections from Grissom to Whitey, what did Grissom think about it?”
She waggled one incredibly graceful shoulder. “What did he think? He thought I was giving him a dirty deal at first.”
“And weren’t you?”
“Look here, Mr. Randall.” The tears were out of her eyes now, replaced by a flash of independence. “I pick out my own boy friends. And who I pick out is nobody’s business but mine. Andy had his time with me before I met Whitey.”
“And he didn’t carry a grudge when you left him?”
“Not after his first jealousy wore off.”
“When did you shift from Andy to Whitey?”
“About three weeks ago, I guess. In Fort Wayne, it was.”
“Only three weeks? Then it’s perfectly possible, isn’t it, that your change of boy friends had something to do with Andy’s deciding to leave the Carnival?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. But he’d been talking about leaving for a long time before I met Whitey. He wanted to get into something more dignified.”
Randall said, watching her, “You’d be pretty hard to let go of, once a fellow had you.”
“Thanks,” she said, “if that’s supposed to be a compliment.”
“You say Andy didn’t carry a grudge. How do you know?”
“He gave Whitey his snake, didn’t he? For free? King was Andy’s favorite possession, next to me.” She giggled. “He told me he liked Whitey and that’s why he wanted Whitey to take over his act when he loft. He said if Whitey had a good job in the Carnival like that, maybe Whitey and me could get married.”
“I see.” Randall fidgeted in his chair. “When was the last time you saw Whitey alive?”
“Last night, just after the last side show performance. About eleven o’clock. I was going into the city for awhile, and I stopped off in the side show tent to tell Whitey about it.”
“And you didn’t go to his trailer after you got back from town?”
“No. It was pretty late. And Whitey needs his sleep. He usually takes a big dose of whiskey.”
“Cap told me about that.” Randall considered silently. On a hunch, he asked, “Did Grissom happen to tell you the name of the vet in Indianapolis who pulled King’s fangs?”
Surprisingly, she nodded. “Yeah. A Dr. Sachs.”
Randall wrote it down in a little notebook.
“How about Andy Grissom? Did he leave any address with you?”
“Sure,” she said. “He’s right here in this city, Mr. Randall. I had a date with him last night.”
Randall, who thought he was used to surprises by now, almost did a double-take on this one. “You had a date with Grissom? Last night?”
“Why not? This is his home town. It’s where he decided to settle down when he quit the Carnival last week. He’s living at a boarding house on Spruce Street he told me. Mrs. Marion’s.”
“How come you have a date with him when you’re Whitey’s girl now?”
“I didn’t want to,” she said solemnly. “But he called up yesterday morning and asked me to come in and have a late supper with him after the show last night, just for old time’s sake. What he really wanted, I found out, was to ask me how Whitey was getting along with King, and how I was getting along with Whitey.” She looked deprecatingly at Randall, staring into his yellow eyes as innocent as a three-year-old in the Sunday school pageant.
“And you went?”
“Sure. I couldn’t refuse him a little thing like that. He’d been nice to me, you know. And I still like him, for heaven’s sake!”
In two days time, Randall thought morosely, she’ll have forgotten all about Whitey. He wrote in his book: Mrs. Marion’s. Spruce Street.
He got out of his chair. “Would you recognize King from any other snake?” he asked.
She shook her blonde head. “He’s just a snake. I didn’t look at him any more than I had to!”
Randall hesitated. “You’ve been very helpful,” he said.
She rose from the daybed with the undulant grace of the acrobat she was. “And you’re kind of sweet for a policeman, Mr. Randall. You know that?” She moved toward him, every curve an invitation.
“Thanks,” said Randall in confusion. He backed out the door.
He returned at once to Headquarters. By three-thirty that afternoon, he had accumulated these facts.
From Dr. Huncker, after post mortem examination: that Whitey Whitaker had, in fact, died of a snake bite on his right hand; that the snake almost certainly was a cobra, since the victim’s symptoms were all neurotoxic; that Whitey had been bitten between midnight and one o’clock in the morning.
From the police laboratory: that the snake putatively guilty of biting Whitey—brought from the Carnival lot to the lab, cooled to torpidity in the cold chamber, and then examined very gingerly by a technician—did, indeed, possess poison fangs capable of inflicting the fatal bite.
By long distance telephone: that Andy Grissom had paid an Indianapolis vet named Dr. K. L. Sachs to draw the fangs of a cobra called King, in order, as he made plain to the vet, to protect a new snake charmer who would be handling the snake.
From a Tri-state police broadcast: that no cobra had been reported lost, strayed or stolen within the past three days in the Tri-state area.
And from personal interviews: that Andy Grissom did, in fact, reside at the boarding house on Spruce Street; was planning to enter college in the Fall; had indubitably spent the hours between eleven and two A.M. the preceding night in a place called The Purple Angel, where he had met at eleven-thirty and had eaten supper with a girl enthusiastically described as “blonde, beautiful and stacked.”
Contemplating this meager information without, pleasure. Randall swore and lit a black cigar whose bitter taste and evil odor suited his mood. At 3:35 he left his office and walked two blocks to the public library.
There, for the first time, he became convinced beyond doubt that he was dealing with murder.
At four o’clock, he was asking Mrs. Marion, at the front door of her boarding house on Spruce Street, whether her lodger, Andy Grissom, was in. She said he was in his bedroom, would the gentleman like to go up? The gentleman would.
He found Grissom in a small cheerful room on the second floor. The former Ram Singh was, surprisingly, a slender, small-boned man with a thin, almost ascetic face, level blue eyes, a gentle voice, and an unruly shock of black hair. He was younger than Randall had pictured him, too—not more than twenty-six or seven.
Randall introduced himself. “May I come in, Mr. Grissom? I’d like to talk to you.”
“What about?” asked Andy Grissom. He was cool.
“Your snake, King,” Randall said.
“King!” In concern, Grissom held his door wider immediately, and Randall walked in. “Last night, Gloriana, a girl I know from the Carnival, said King was fine.”
Randall sat down without invitation. “Nothing’s happened to King, Mr. Grissom. But something kind of permanent has happened to your friend. Whitey Whitaker.”
Grissom shut the door and leaned back against it. “Whitey? Gloriana said he was great, too.”
“He was. Until last night. Then your old buddy King bit him, and Whitey couldn’t seem to keep from dying of it.”
For a moment, Grissom seemed struck dumb. He stared at Randall with shock and incredulity in his level blue eyes. Randall, who was watching him closely, had to admit that incredulity seemed to predominate. Grissom finally sputtered, after several unsuccessful efforts to speak, “Whitey’s dead?” He swallowed. “And King bit him? What are you trying to hand me, Lieutenant?”
“Nothing but the truth. Gloriana told Whitey she was coming in town to see you last night, Grissom. So after the show, he went to the trailer with your snake, put the basket down in its regular corner and turned in, feeling a little sorry for himself, no doubt. He took his usual jolt of whiskey, maybe more than usual to forget Gloriana’s absence. But before he sacked out for good, he decided to say goodnight to the only companion he had left, your snake. He lifted off the basket lid and King stuck his head out and struck at Whitey like in the climax of your act. Only this time Whitey’s reactions are slowed down by liquor. He’s standing too close to the snake, too, probably. Anyway, King bites him in the hand.”
Grissom was slowly shaking his head. “Not King,” he said in a positive voice. “Poor Whitey. He was a nice kid.”
“Wasn’t he? Nice enough to sweet-talk Gloriana away from your trailer to his. And you hated him for that, didn’t you?”
“No. He took Gloriana away from me, sure. But I never did kid myself I was a permanent fixture with her. Evidently you’ve seen her, so you must know—”
“I have.”
“So nuts,” Grissom said. “What I want to tell you is that King couldn’t have bitten Whitey. It was impossible. King doesn’t have any fangs.”
“Here we go again,” Randall said ironically. “I know the touching story of how you took King to the vet’s and had him de-fanged for Whitey’s protection. I’ve talked to Dr. Sach’s office about it on the phone.”
“Well, then, you know I’m telling the truth. King couldn’t bite.” Grissom sat down quietly on the edge of his neatly-made bed. “Were you asking Mrs. Marion about me earlier this afternoon?”
The Library Fuzz Page 31