The Screaming Mimi

by Fredric Brown

  Sweeney said, “Thanks just the same,” and stood up.

  “I guess it was a bust, Sheriff. I had an idea I could tie your Ripper case up with ours, but it doesn’t look like it can be done with Charlie alibied and everybody else concerned dead. And anyway, you thought of it before I did. Well, thanks anyway.”

  He waited while Henderson washed out the glasses they’d used and hid the empty bottle at the bottom of the garbage pail, and then went downstairs with him and Henderson relieved his wife at the bar. She glared at him before she went back upstairs and he had a feeling that Henderson’s precautions with the glasses and the bottle had been futile. Even if she didn’t find the bottle, she’d know that there had been one.

  There were only four customers in the bar and Sweeney unhappily set up a drink around for them before he went out. He had only a short beer for himself.

  He trudged back to the railroad station and asked what time the next train left for Chicago.

  “Eleven-fifteen,” the agent told him.

  Sweeney glanced up at the clock and saw it was only half past four. He asked, “Is there an airport around where I can get a plane for Chi?”

  “A plane for Chicago? Guess the nearest place is Rhinelander. You can get one there.”

  “How do I get to Rhinelander?”

  “By train,” the agent said. “The eleven-fifteen. That’s the next train headed that way.”

  Sweeney swore. He bought a ticket for Chicago on the eleven-fifteen and had the agent wire to reserve him a lower berth. Anyway, he’d get to Chicago early Sunday morning with a good night’s sleep under his belt.

  He sat down on a bench in the station and wondered how he’d ever manage to kill over seven and a half hours without drinking too damn much if he drank at all. And if he did that, he’d probably miss the eleven-fifteen and that would ruin tomorrow, which was his last day on his own before he had to go back to the Blade.

  He sighed, and decided that he might as well see this Charlie-Chapman Wilson while he was here anyway and had to do something to kill the time.

  But he’d lost all enthusiasm for it now. It had sounded so beautiful when the ex-sheriff had opened up about a Crazy Charlie named Wilson and a blonde being attacked by a Ripper. It had sounded so good that the anti-climax made him wish he’d never heard of Brampton Wisconsin.

  Well, he still had Mini as a lead, but he’d have to trace her the other way, forward instead of backward, and find the Ripper who had a copy of her. Tracing her back here had led only to a coincidence – but a coincidence that was a beautiful confirmation of the idea that Mimi would appeal strongly to a Ripper: she’d been born, in a sense, through contact with a Ripper. Only, alas, not the one who was now operating in Chicago.

  Well, he’d still talk to this Chapman Wilson. And if Wilson was a lush, a bottle would be the best way to get him to talk. He bought a bottle, a fifth this time, at a liquor store on his way down Main Street to Cuyahoga. He found Cuyahoga and the small green shack with a shed behind it.

  But there wasn’t any answer to his knock at the door.

  He tried the door of the shed, but there wasn’t any answer there either. The door of the shed was unlocked; it was fixed to lock only from the inside. Sweeney pushed it open and looked in. Inside, one corner had been partitioned off with beaverboard and was obviously a toilet. In the opposite back corner, sans curtains or partition, was the crude shower the ex-sheriff had described.

  A string hanging beside the door operated to turn on the light, a bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling. Sweeney turned it on, and he could see in the far wall, between the shower and the toilet, the place where the charge of the shotgun must have hit, and gone through; there was a square of beaverboard nailed over it now.

  He looked back at the shower corner and shivered a little, picturing a full-scale model of his Screaming Mimi – only in soft white instead of hard glossy black – standing there screaming, her slender, rounded arms thrust out in ineffable terror, warding off – Sweeney turned out the light and pulled the door shut. He didn’t like his mental picture of what she had been warding off. No wonder the poor girl had gone fatally mad.

  He went back to the front of the shack and knocked again. Then he went to the house next door and knocked. A man with handlebar mustaches answered the door and Sweeney asked if he knew whether Charlie Wilson was gone for the day or would be home soon.

  “Oughta be home soon, I guess. Saw him walk toward town couple hours ago. He always gets home in time to fix his own supper; he wouldn’t be eatin’ downtown.” Sweeney thanked him and went back to the front of the shack. It was five o’clock and already beginning to be dusk; he might just as well wait here as do anything else he could think of.

  He sat down on the wooden step and put his package – the bottle – down on the grass beside the step, resisting an impulse to open it before Charlie came home.

  It was six o’clock, and twilight, when he saw Charlie coming. He recognized him easily from Henderson’s description – five foot two, a hundred ten pounds dripping wet. He looked even lighter than that, possibly because he wasn’t dripping wet, not on the outside, anyway. From the way he walked, he was not suffering from an internal drought.

  He could have been, Sweeney decided as he turned in the gate and came closer, anywhere between twenty-five and forty-five. He had straw-colored, uncombed hair and wore no hat; his clothes were rumpled and he hadn’t shaved for at least two days. His eyes were glassy.

  Sweeney stood up. “Mr. Wilson?”

  “Yeah.” The top of his head was just level with Sweeney’s chin.

  Sweeney stuck out a hand. He said, “Sweeney. Like to talk to you about a certain statuette you made. Ganslen’s number SM-1, a girl screaming–”

  Charlie Wilson’s hand came out, too, but it passed Sweeney’s instead of shaking it. And the hand was doubled up into a fist that landed in Sweeney’s sore stomach.

  Sweeney’s stomach screamed silently and tried to crawl through his backbone.

  Sweeney himself said something inarticulate and bent almost double, which put his chin in handy reach for an opponent Charlie Wilson’s height. Charlie’s fist hit his chin and knocked him off balance, but didn’t straighten him up.

  Nothing would have persuaded Sweeney to straighten up, just then. Nothing at all. He didn’t really feel the poke on his chin at all because the pain in his stomach was too intense. You don’t feel a mosquito bite when you’ve got your leg in a bear-trap.

  Sweeney staggered back, still doubled up, and sat down on the doorstep again, his hands protectively clasped over his stomach. He didn’t care if Charlie Wilson kicked him in the face, as long as he didn’t touch his stomach again.

  He didn’t care about anything in the world except protecting his stomach. Still with his hands over it, he leaned sideways and started to retch.

  When he recovered sufficient interest to look up, Charlie Wilson, arms akimbo, was staring down at him with an utterly amazed expression on his face. His voice matched his expression. He said, “I’ll be damned. I licked you.”

  Sweeney groaned. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Didn’t really hurt you, did I?”

  Sweeney said, “It feels lovely. Everything’s lovely. Everything’s wonderful.” He retched again.

  “Didn’t mean to hurt you, really. But hell, I always get licked whenever I take a poke at anybody, so I try to take as good a poke or two as I can get in before it happens. Hey, want a drink? I’ve got some gin inside. Inside the hovel, I mean; not inside me. That’s whiskey.”

  “What’s whiskey?”

  “Inside me. Want a shot of gin?”

  Sweeney picked up the wrapped fifth of whiskey beside the step. “If you can open that–” Wilson got it open by using the rough edge of a key on the celluloid and turning the cap with his teeth. He handed the bottle to Sweeney and Sweeney took a long drink.

  Sweeney handed back the bottle. “You might as well have one too. To the start of a beautiful f
riendship. And just what did start it?”

  “I hate reporters.”

  “Oh,” said Sweeney. He thought back. “And just what gave you the idea I’m a reporter?”

  “You’re the third in a week. And who else would–?” He broke off, a puzzled look coming into his eyes.

  Sweeney said, “Who else indeed? But let’s start over again, and differently. You’re Chapman Wilson?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Sweeney. Mortimer Sweeney. I’m with the Ganslen Art Company. Of Louisville.” Charlie Wilson put a hand to his forehead. He said, “Oh, my God.”

  “You may well say it.”

  “I’m sorry as hell. Look, can you stand up yet? So I can get the door open. Don’t; I’ve got a better idea. I’ll go around back and open it from inside and then I can help you in.”

  He went around the side of the shack, looking considerably more sober than when he’d first come up the walk. Sweeney heard a back door being opened and then the front door. It nudged his back.

  Wilson’s voice said, “Sorry, I forgot it opens out. You’ll have to stand up anyway to let me get it open. Can you?”

  Sweeney stood up. Not all the way up, but far enough for him to move to one side and then go in when the door opened. He made it to the nearest seat, which was a camp stool with a back; that didn’t matter because he didn’t feel inclined lean back anyway.

  The light was on, a single overhead bulb as in the shed back of the shack. Wilson was washing two glasses at the sink one corner. The sink was piled high with dishes but there weren’t any on the shelves above the sink; obviously Wilson washed dishes when and as he needed them for use rather in the more orthodox system of washing them and putting them away each time after they’d been used.

  He poured a generous slug from Sweeney’s bottle into each the glasses and came over with one of them for Sweeney. Sweeney took a sip and looked around him. The walls, every available inch of them, were hung with unframed canvases. There were landscapes vaguely in the manner of Cezanne that Sweeney rather liked, and there were abstractions that looked interesting; Sweeney wasn’t enough of an expert to know how good they were, but he could tell that they weren’t bad. There didn’t seem to be any portraits or figure work.

  At one side of the room a sculptor’s stand held a partially finished twelve-inch statuette of what appeared to be a gladiator.

  Wilson had followed Sweeney’s gaze. He said, “Don’t look at that. It isn’t finished, and it’s horrible anyway.” He walked across the room and threw a cloth across the clay figure, then sat down on the edge of the cot across from Sweeney.

  Sweeney had begun to feel better. He said, “It’s not bad – the gladiator, I mean. But I’d say oil is your real medium and that the statuettes are pot-boilers. Right?”

  “Not exactly, Mr. Sweeney. Of course if you weren’t from Ganslen I’d say you were exactly right. By the way, what is your job there?”

  Sweeney had been thinking bout that. He didn’t know anything about the set-up of the Louisville art firm and, more important, he didn’t know how much Wilson knew; Wilson might even have visited there and be pretty familiar with the officers. Besides, he didn’t want to do any buying or rejecting. He said, “I’m just a salesman for them. But when the boss heard I was passing through Brampton on this trip, he told me to stop off and see you.”

  “I’m sorry as hell, Mr. Sweeney, that I – uh–”

  “That’s all right,” Sweeney lied. “But first, what’s this business about two other reporters – I mean, two reporters having been here to see you? From what papers, and why?”

  “From St. Paul papers. Or maybe one was from Minneapolis. It was about that statuette you mentioned, your SM-1. That’s why I thought you were another reporter, I guess. What was it you wanted to ask about that?” Sweeney said, “Let’s get it straight first about what these oth – these reporters wanted to know about SM-1.” Wilson frowned. “On account of these Ripper murders in Chicago they wanted to do a rehash of my shooting of the maniac I had to shoot here about four or five years ago. Both of them knew about the statuette I made of Bessie, so I guess they must have talked to Sheriff Pedersen before they came out here.”

  Sweeney took a thoughtful sip of whiskey. “Had either of them seen it, or a photo of it?”

  “I guess not. What they wanted to know mostly was what company I’d sold it to. If they’d seen one, they could have found what company made it. They stamp their name under the base.”

  “Then the sheriff here knew you’d made such a statuette but didn’t know what company you sold it to?”

  “That’s right. And he never saw it. I got a crying jag about it one night when he jugged me for disorderly conduct.”

  Sweeney nodded and felt relieved. Then the St. Paul-Minneapolis papers didn’t have the important part of the story about the Screaming Mimi. They had the inconsequential part – the part he’d learned today from the ex-sheriff – but they didn’t know the important, the all-important, fact that Chicago Ripper had a copy. And they didn’t have even a photo of the statuette. All they had was a rehash of an old local story; it would make their own papers but wouldn’t go out on the AP and UP wires to spoil Sweeney’s angle.

  Wilson leaned back against the wall behind the cot he was sitting on and crossed his legs. He said, “But what is it Ganslen sent you to talk to me about, Mr. Sweeney?”

  “Something that I’m afraid won’t work, if you don’t like the idea of publicity for the statuette and how it originated. You see, we’re taking a loss on that particular number, as things stand. We made a gross of them to try them out – and we’d have lost money if the whole gross had sold, but it sold too slowly to justify our making it in quantity. But it’s even worse than that. We’re stuck with about a hundred out of the original gross; it just turned out not to have any general appeal at all.”

  Wilson nodded. “I told Mr. Burke that when he took it. It’s one of those things; you like it a lot or else you don’t like it at all.”

  “How did you feel about it, as an artist? How did it strike you?”

  “I – I don’t know, Mr. Sweeney. I should never have done it, and I should never have sold it. It’s too – personal, Jesus God, the way Bessie looked standing there screaming, the way I saw her through the doorway past that– Well, the picture just stuck in my mind until I finally had to do it to get it off my mind. It was haunting me up to last year. I had to either paint it or model it and I’m not good at figure work with the brush so I modeled it. And once I did that, I should have destroyed it.

  “But I’d just finished it when Mr. Burke stopped in on one of his buying trips, and he liked it. I didn’t want to sell it to him, but he insisted, and I needed the money so badly I couldn’t turn it down. Hell, it was like selling my own sister; it was, in a way. I felt so lousy about it I stayed drunk a week, so the money didn’t do me any good anyway.” Sweeney said, “I can see how you must have felt about it.”

  “But I told Mr. Burke then I didn’t want any publicity about it and he promised he wouldn’t give the story of it to anybody to try to sell more of them. So why does he send you now to open the subject again?”

  Sweeney cleared his throat. “Well – he thought that, under new circumstances, you might change your mind. But I can see you still feel pretty strongly about it, so I won’t even try to persuade you.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Sweeney. But what new circumstances do you mean?”

  “The same thing those St. Paul reporters meant. You see, right now, there’s a Ripper actively operating in Chicago, and it’s a big story – not just local, but a coast-to-coast big crime story, about the biggest thing since Dillinger. Right now, while the iron’s hot, we could sell a flock of them if we could cash in on that publicity, advertising them – and honestly – as a statuette of a woman being attacked by a Ripper, and from life. From the memory of a sculptor who’d actually seen the attack – and prevented it. But we’d have to release the whole story to do that.”<
br />
  “I see what you mean. And it would mean a little extra, I guess, in royalties to me. But – no, I guess not. As I said, I’m sorry I told it at all and to drag poor Bessie before the public again– How’s about another drink? It’s your whiskey.”.

  “Ours,” said Sweeney. “You know, Charlie, I like you. Not that I thought I would after the way you greeted me.” Wilson poured refills. He said, “I’m really sorry as hell about that. Honestly. I thought you were another of those Goddam reporters like the first two, and I’d made up my mind, I wasn’t going to take another one of them.” He sat down again, glass in hand. “What I like about you best is your not trying to talk me into letting Ganslen release publicity on it. I might weaken if you did. God knows I need money – and God knows it wouldn’t do me any good if I got I it that way.

  “Even with the God-awful prices you get for your statuettes, you might sell thousands of them with a story like that back of them. And with that much money–”

  Sweeney asked curiously, “How much money? I mean, Burke didn’t happen to mention exactly what the arrangements with you were on the deal.”

  “The usual. Usual for me, anyway; I don’t know what kind, of a contract they give their other sculptors, but on all the, statuettes they buy from me, it’s a hundred bucks down and that covers all they sell up to a thousand copies – that’s the point, Burke says, where they start to break even on a number and over that they show a profit. Is that right?”

  “Close enough,” Sweeney said.

  “So if they would sell two or three thousand copies, I’d have one or two thousand coming in royalties – and that hasn’t happened yet. And God help me if it did – in this case. I told you I stayed drunk for a week on the hundred bucks I got out of selling that figure of Bessie the first time. Well, if I cashed in a thousand or two out of the story of it getting dragged through the papers again – after she’s dead, at that – well, I’d go on such a God-damn drunk I probably wouldn’t live through it. Even if I did, the money wouldn’t. I’d be broke and broken, and hate myself the rest of my life.”