The Screaming Mimi

by Fredric Brown

  “He’s reasonably clear. Works a night shift on the Journal of Commerce on Grand Avenue; he’s a printer. Didn’t punch out on the time clock till one forty-five and it’d have taken him that long to get there; he wouldn’t have had time to go in the alleyway, wait a while, and then go around to the front. Besides, he has solid alibis for all three other rippings; we checked them.”

  He frowned at Sweeney. “So of the five men we have located who were in that crowd in front of the door, you’re the only one without an alibi for anything at all. By the way, here’s your cutlery; the lab couldn’t get anything on it.” He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Sweeney. Without opening it, Sweeney could feel that it contained his penknife and straight razor.

  He said, “You might have asked me for them. Did you have a search warrant?”

  Bline chuckled. “We didn’t want you in our hair while we were casing the joint. As for a warrant, does it matter now?”

  Sweeney opened his mouth and then closed it again.

  He was mad enough to start something; those things being gone had given him some bad moments. On the other hand, it was going to be helpful if not necessary to have Bline friendly to him; there were things the police could do that he couldn’t.

  So he said, mildly, “You might have left a note. When I missed those, I thought maybe the Ripper thought I was the Ripper. Say, Cap, what do you know about this guy Greene, Doc Greene?”

  “Why?”

  “I kind of like to think of him as the Ripper, that’s all. He tells me he’s got alibis and that you’ve checked them. That right?”

  “More or less. No alibi for Lola Brent, and the one for Dorothy Lee isn’t perfect.”

  “Not perfect? I thought that was the one where he was testifying in court under Judge Goerring.”

  “The times don’t fit perfectly. His alibi takes him up to about ten minutes after four. Dorothy Lee wasn’t found dead until about five o’clock – maybe a few minutes after. The coroner said she’d been dead at least an hour when he saw her at five-thirty, but that means she could have been killed at four-thirty, twenty minutes after Greene’s alibi ends.

  He could have made it, in a taxi, from the court to her place in that time.”

  “Then it’s no alibi at all.”

  Bline said, “Not an iron-clad one, no. But there are angles. She left work at two forty-five to go home because she was sick; ordinarily she worked till five. Even if Greene knew her – and there’s no proof he did – he wouldn’t have known he’d find her home if he rushed there right from court. Only someone who worked with her would have known that.”

  “Or anyone who dropped in her office or phoned for her.”

  “True, but Greene didn’t drop in. He would barely have had time to phone, and still get to her place by four-thirty.” Bline frowned. “You’re stretching probabilities.”

  “Am I? Suppose Greene knew her – well. He could have had a date to pick her up at her apartment after five. But he gets through in court a little after four and goes there to wait for her. Maybe he even has a key, and lets himself in to wait, not knowing she came home sick and is already there.”

  “Oh, it’s possible, Sweeney. I told you it wasn’t a perfect alibi. But you’ve got to admit it isn’t likely. The Ripper probably followed her home, seeing her on the street for the first time after she left work. Like he probably followed Lola Brent home from the gift shop. He couldn’t have been waiting for Lola Brent at her place for two reasons – first, he couldn’t have known she was going to be fired and come home early; second, she was living with a man, Sammy Cole; he couldn’t have known Sammy wouldn’t walk in on him.”

  “And anyway,” Sweeney said, “Lola wasn’t killed in her apartment but in the areaway outside the buildings. Sure, she was probably followed. And so was Stella Gaylord – followed as far as the mouth of the alley. But the Ripper doesn’t always use the following technique. He didn’t follow Yolanda Lang home; he was waiting for her outside that door at the back of the hallway in her building.”

  “You’ve really studied this case, haven’t you, Sweeney?”

  “Why not?” Sweeney asked. “It’s my job.”

  “As I get it, you haven’t been assigned to it yet. Or am I wrong?”

  Sweeney considered whether to give Bline the song-and-dance about the fact detective magazine and decided not to; Bline might ask which magazine, and then check up on him.

  He said, “Not exactly, Cap. But I was assigned on at least one angle of it when Wally Krieg told me to write that eye-witness account. And I figured because of that in I had on the case, he’d probably ask me to do more when I go back to work Monday, so I read up on the case, what’s already been in the papers, and asked a few questions.”

  “On your own time?”

  “Why not? I got interested in it. You’d still follow the case if you got taken off it, wouldn’t you?”

  “Guess I would,” Bline admitted.

  “How about Greene’s other alibi, the New York one? How well did you check on that one?”

  Bline grinned. “You’re hell-bent to fit Greene into this, huh, Sweeney?”

  “Have you met him, Cap?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s why. I’ve known him a day and a half now, and I think the fact that he’s still alive is pretty good proof I’m not the Ripper. If I was, he wouldn’t be.” Bline laughed. “That ought to work both ways, Sweeney. He seems to like you almost as much as you like him. And you’re still alive. But about the New York alibi; we gave it to the New York police and they checked the hotel he was staying at, the Algonquin. He was registered there from the 25th through the 30th.”

  Sweeney leaned forward. “That’s as far as you checked? The Gaylord murder was on the 27th, and it’s only four hours by plane from New York to Chicago. He could have left there in the evening and been back the next morning.”

  Bline shrugged. “We’d have checked further if there’d been any reason for it. Be honest, Sweeney; what have you got against him except that he rubs you the wrong way? And me too, I admit it. But aside from that, he knows one of the four dames who were attacked. To my mind, that’s damn near an alibi in itself.”

  “How the hell do you figure that?”

  Bline said, “When we get the Ripper, I’ll bet you we find he knew all of the four women or none of them. Murderers – even psychopathic ones – follow that pattern, Sweeney. He wouldn’t have picked three strangers and one friend; take my word for it.”

  “And you’ve checked–?”

  “Hell yes, we’ve checked. We’ve made up lists as complete as we could of everybody who knew each of the four women, and then we’ve compared the lists. There’s been only one name that appeared on even two of the four lists, and that much is allowable to coincidence.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Raoul Reynarde, the guy who runs the gift shop that Lola Brent got fired from the day she was killed. Turns out he also had a slight acquaintance with Stella Gaylord, the B-girl.”

  “Good God, what for?”

  Bline grinned. “I see you’ve met him. But why not? Lots of faggots have friends who are women. You have male friends, don’t you? Anyway, it was just a slight acquaintance, both according to Reynarde and to the other friends of Stella Gaylord that we checked with.”

  “But he could have known the other two then. It’s hard to prove that he hadn’t met–”

  “In one case, no; we can’t ask Dorothy Lee. We could only ask her other friends and none of them knew Reynarde. But we could and did ask the strip-tease dame. And Yolanda Lang doesn’t know him from either name or photograph.”

  “You checked him for alibis?”

  “Fairly good ones on two of the cases. Especially on the Lola Brent one. He couldn’t have followed her home after he fired her without closing the store and there’s fairly good evidence – negative evidence, anyway – that he didn’t close it.”

  Sweeney sighed. “Wash him out, then. I
still like Doc Greene.”

  “Sweeney, you’re nuts. All you mean is that you don’t like him. Not a thing to point to him otherwise. We’ve got a hell of a lot better suspect than Greene.”

  “You mean me?”

  “You’re damn right I mean you. Look, not even a shadow of an alibi for any murder. Your extreme interest in the case. The fact that you are psychically unbalanced – or you wouldn’t be an alcoholic. And that, in one case out of the four, we can put you right at the scene of the crime at the time of the crime. I’m not saying that’s enough evidence to hang a dog on, but it is more than we’ve got on anybody else. If you weren’t–”

  “If I weren’t what?”

  “Skip it.”

  Sweeney said, “Wait, I get it. You mean if I wasn’t a reporter, you’d probably drag me in and sweat me down a bit on the off chance. But you figure I’ll be writing on the case and that you couldn’t hold me long and once I got out the Blade’s stories would play merry hell with the captain in charge of the Ripper detail.”

  Bline’s laugh was a little embarrassed. He said, “I guess that isn’t too far off, Sweeney. But damn it, man, can’t you give me something that’ll let me write you off, so I won’t have to waste so much time on you? There ought to be some way you could check where you were at the time of at least one of the murders.”

  Sweeney shook his head. “I wish there was, Cap.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “Tell you what, though. I’ll do the next best thing; I’ll buy you a drink. At El Madhouse. First show goes on at ten; that’s in a few minutes now. You know she’s dancing again tonight already.”

  “I know everything. Except who the Ripper is. Sure, Sweeney, I was thinking of dropping in there tonight anyway. Let’s go.”

  At the door, before he reached back to turn out the light, Sweeney looked at the black statuette on the radio, the slim, naked girl, arms outraised to ward off ineffable evil, a silent scream eternally frozen on her lips. He grinned at her and tossed her a kiss before he flicked off the light and followed Bline down the stairs.

  They hailed a cab at Rush Street. Sweeney said “El Madhouse” to the driver and then leaned back and lighted a cigarette. He looked at Bline, sitting back, relaxed, his eyes closed. He said, “You don’t really think I might be the Ripper, Cap. Or you wouldn’t relax like that.”

  “Like what?” Bline’s voice was soft. “I was watching your hands and letting you think my eyes were all the way closed. And there’s a gun in my right coat pocket, the side away from you, with my hand on it. I could use it quicker than you could pull a knife, if you started to.” Sweeney laughed. And then he wondered what was funny about it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  El Madhouse was crowded. It seemed strange to Sweeney that he hadn’t thought of that. With all the publicity Yolanda Lang had received – the best of it at Sweeney’s own hands – he realized that he should have realized that the joint would be jammed. As they went in the door, he could see the husky waiter stationed at the inner doorway turning people away.

  Over the waiter’s shoulder he could see that more tables than usual had been crowded into the big back room, and that every table was crowded.

  A three-piece orchestra – not good but not bad – was playing back there now, and a woman with gravel in her throat was singing a torch song, probably the first number of the floor show. But from the outer room, the barroom, you couldn’t see the stage – or floor or platform, whichever it would be.

  He grunted disgustedly, but Bline took him by the arm and started with him toward a table from which a couple was just rising. They got the seats and Bline said, “We don’t want to go back there yet. Show’s just starting, and Yolanda won’t come on for forty minutes or so.”

  “We’ll play hell getting back there at all. Unless – Yolanda told me to come around and catch the show; maybe she had more sense than I did and made a reservation for me. I’ll check; you hold this seat for–” He started to get up again.

  “Sit down and relax,” Bline told him. “You got a police escort. Any time we want, we’ll go back there, if they have to put chairs on top of tables for us. Don’t think they’ll have to, though; I told one of the boys to save me a place at his table, and we can crowd an extra chair in if there’s room for one.”

  He caught a rushing waiter by the arm and said, “Send Nick over right away, will you?”

  The waiter tried to pull loose. “Nick’s busy. We’re all going nuts tonight. You’ll have to wait your–” Bline’s free hand pulled back his lapel for a brief flash of silver plate. He said, “Send Nick over.”

  “Who’s Nick?” Sweeney asked, when the waiter had vanished into the crowd.

  “Nick runs the place, nights, for Harry Yahn.” He grinned. “I don’t really want to see him, but it’s the only way we’ll get drinks right away. What you having?”

  “Whiskey highball. Maybe I’ll have to buy one of those badges. It’s a system, if it works.”

  “It works,” Bline said. He looked up as a dapper, stocky man came up to the table. “Hi, Nick. Everything under control?”

  The stocky man grunted. “If there weren’t so many deadheads in the house, we’d be doing better. Four coppers back there already taking up room, and now you come.”

  “And Sweeney, Nick. This is Sweeney, of the Blade. He comes, too. You can crowd in an extra chair for him, can’t you?”

  “Cash customer?”

  “Cash customer,” Sweeney said.

  Nick smiled, and from the smile Sweeney expected him to rub his hands together, too. But instead he stuck one out to Sweeney. “I was kidding, Mr. Sweeney. It’s on the house for you. I read that story you wrote. But it cost us money, too.”

  “The hell,” said Sweeney. “How?”

  “Greene. He’s holding us up, and we got to pay it to cash in.” He turned around and grabbed a flying waiter, the same one Bline had grabbed. “What you gentlemen having?”

  “Whiskey and soda for both of us,” Bline told him.

  “Make it three, Charlie, and make it next,” Nick told the waiter. Then he said, “Just a minute; I get a chair.” He brought one from somewhere and sat down at the table with them just as the drinks came.

  “Bumps,” Sweeney said. “And how come Greene could hold you up; isn’t Yolanda under contract?”

  “Sure she is. For four more weeks. But–” Sweeney cut in; “Doc Greene told me for three.”

  “Greene wouldn’t tell the truth on a bet, even where it don’t matter, Mr. Sweeney. If it’d been three weeks he’d’ve told you four. Sure, she’s under contract through September 5th, but the contract’s got a clause.”

  “Most contracts have,” Sweeney said.

  “Yeah. Well, this clause says she don’t have to work if she’s sick or hurt. And Greene got one of the docs at the hospital to write a paper that says that because of shock she shouldn’t ought to work for a week or even two weeks.”

  “But would she get paid for that time if she didn’t?”

  “Sure she wouldn’t. But look what we can cash in on her if she does. Lookit the crowd tonight, and they’re spending money, too. But because Doc had us by the nuts we had to offer a one-grand bonus if she’d forget she was shocked. A bonus – that’s what Doc calls a bribe.”

  “But is she okay to dance this soon?” Sweeney asked.

  “She really was suffering from shock. I saw her face when she stood up in that hallway.”

  “You didn’t mention her face.”

  “Sure, I did. Before the dog pulled the zipper. Say, Nick, how come she wasn’t wearing a net bra and a G-string under that dress? I never thought to ask, but unless the police rules here have changed, she’d have been wearing them for the show.”

  “Wasn’t she? They don’t show much. I thought you was just exaggerating to make it a better story.”

  “So help me God,” said Sweeney.

  “Well, it could be. We got a pretty good dressing room with a shower here, and Wednesday was a hot night. Pr
obably she took a shower after the last show and didn’t bother to put on anything under a dress to run home in if she expected to go right to sleep. Or something.”

  “If it had been something, she wouldn’t have been alone,” Sweeney pointed out. “But we got off the track. Isn’t it a bit soon for her to start dancing again?”

  “Naw. If she got shocked, she was over it by the time she had a night’s sleep. And the scratch was just a scratch. She’ll be wearing a strip of adhesive tape six inches long, but that’s what the customers are paying to see. Well, not all they’re paying to see.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Well, I got to do things. Want to go back now? Yo won’t be on for half an hour yet, but the rest of the show don’t stink too much.”

  The voice of an emcee telling jokes came from the back room and both Sweeney and Bline shook their heads.

  Bline said, “We’ll look you up when we want to move back.”

  “Sure. I’ll send you two more drinks here, then.” He went away, taking his chair back to wherever it had come from.

  Sweeney asked Bline, “Yolanda just do one number?”

  “Right now, yes. Before the excitement, she was on twice. A straight strip tease for the third number on the show, and then the specialty with the dog for the last number. But Nick told me this afternoon that to get her to go back on right away, they agreed to let her do just the one number, the specialty, on each show. Not that that matters; they’ll get as big crowds here to see her do one number a show as two.” Their drinks came. Bline looked down into his for a moment and then squarely at Sweeney. He said, “Maybe I was a little rough on you tonight, Sweeney. In the cab, I mean.”

  Sweeney said, “I’m glad you were.”

  “Why? So you can pan me in the Blade with a clear conscience?”

  “Not that. As far as I know to date, you don’t deserve any panning. Not for the way you’ve handled the case. But now I can hold out on you with a clear conscience.” Bline frowned. “You can’t hold back any evidence, Sweeney. Not and get away with it. What is it you’re holding back?” He leaned forward, suddenly intent. “Did you notice anything there on State Street Wednesday night that you didn’t tell about in the write-up? Recognize anybody, maybe or notice anybody acting suspiciously? If you did–”