The Screaming Mimi

by Fredric Brown

  Sweeney found he could stand up, not too certainly.

  He stuck his hand across the space between them. He said, “Shake, Charlie. I like you.”

  “Thanks. I like you, Sweeney. Another drink? Of your whiskey?”

  “Our whiskey. Sure, Charlie. Say, which is your first name, Charlie or Chapman?”

  “Charlie. Chapman Wilson was Bessie’s idea. Thought it sounded more like an artist. She was a swell gal, Sweeney. A little screwy sometimes.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “I guess I am. They call me Crazy Charlie around here.”

  “Around Chicago they probably call me Crazy Sweeney.” He picked up his glass. “Shall we drink to craziness?”

  Charlie looked at him somberly for a moment. He said, “Make it to our kind of craziness, Sweeney.”

  “What oth– Oh. To our kind of craziness, Charlie.” They touched glasses and drank, and Sweeney sat back down.

  Charlie stared into his empty glass. He said, “Real craziness is something horrible, Sweeney. That homicidal maniac, covered with blood and the carving knife in his hand. I still get nightmares about his face as he turned away from Bessie and looked at me as he heard me coming.

  “And Bessie – she was such a swell girl. And to see her go to pieces – well, you can hardly call it going to pieces; that implies something gradual. And she went wild – crazy all at once from that horrible experience. Why, we had to hold her down to get clothes on her; she was stark naked when– But you know that, of course; you’ve seen that statuette. I – I think it’s a good thing that she died, Sweeney. I’d rather be dead than insane, really insane. Like she was.” He dropped his head into his hands.

  Sweeney said, “Tough. And she was only nineteen.”

  “Twenty, then. She was twenty-one when she died in the asylum almost four years ago. And she was swell. Oh, she wasn’t any angel. She was kind of wild. Our parents died ten years ago when I was twenty-four and Bessie was fifteen. An aunt of ours tried to take her but she ran off to St. Louis. But she kept in touch with me.

  “And when she got in trouble five years later, it was me that she came to. She was – well, that business with the maniac gave her a miscarriage and took care of that.” He looked up. “Well, maybe she’s better off – life can be a hell of a mess.”

  Sweeney got up and patted Charlie on the shoulder. He said, “Quit thinking about it, kid.” He poured them each a drink and put Charlie’s glass into Charlie’s hand.

  And once he was up he wandered around the room looking at the canvases on the wall, studying them more closely. They weren’t bad; they weren’t bad at all.

  Charlie said, “We were really close, a hell of a lot closer than brother and sister usually are. We never lied to each other about anything. She told me everything she did in St. Louis, every man she’d had anything to do with. She was a waitress first, and then a pony in a chorus line in a cheap burlesque; that’s what she was doing when she found she was pregnant and came here. And then that escaped loonie–”

  “Quit talking about it,” Sweeney ordered gruffly.

  “He died too quickly. If I’d’ve shot his legs off instead of shooting at his chest, I could have taken that carving knife and– Oh, hell, I wouldn’t have, anyway.” He shook his head slowly.

  “Anyway, at that range,” he said, “it put a hell of a big hole in him. Big enough you could stick your head through it.”

  Sweeney sighed and sat down. He said, “Look, Charlie, forget it. Let’s talk about painting.” Charlie nodded slowly. They talked about painting, got off onto music, got back to painting again. Sweeney’s bottle emptied itself and they started on Charlie’s gin. It was pretty horrible gin. After a while Sweeney found difficulty focusing his eyes on paintings they were discussing but his mind stayed clear. Clear enough anyway to know that he was enjoying the evening and having some of the best conversation he’d had in a long time. He wasn’t sorry any more that he’d come to Brampton. He liked Charlie; Charlie was his own breed of cat. And Charlie could hold his liquor, too, remarkably well. His tongue got thickish, but he talked sense.

  So, for that matter, did Sweeney. And he had sense enough to keep an eye on his watch. When it was ten-fifteen, an hour before his train time, he told Charlie he’d better leave.

  “Driving?”

  “No. Got a reservation on the eleven-fifteen. But it’s quite a hike to the station. I’ve had a swell evening.”

  “You won’t have to hike. There’s a bus runs back and forth the length of Main Street. You can catch it on the corner a block and a half down. I’ll walk down with you.” The cool night air felt good and began to sober him up.

  He liked Charlie and wanted to do something for him.

  More than that, he suddenly saw how he could do something for him. He said, “Charlie, I got an idea how I can get you those royalties on the Scream – on SM-1, without that publicity you don’t want. It’ll be publicity for the statuette itself, but it won’t have to bring either you or your sister into the picture at all.”

  “Well, if you can do that–”

  They were at the corner and Charlie was waiting with him until the bus came along.

  “Sure, I can do it. Just on the Chicago angle. Look, Charlie, I know something nobody else knows – and it’ll give you a flock of publicity for that statuette in its own right, apart from the way it was conceived and executed. Your name or your sister’s won’t have to come in it at all.”

  “If you can keep Bessie out of it–”

  “Sure, easy. That isn’t even the real story, as far as the story I’m going to break is concerned. It’s frosting, but we can leave it off the cake. And for your sake I’ll send Ganslen a telegram and tell them to start making more SM-1’s right away to cash in on the boom. And listen, Charlie, do you ever get to Chicago?”

  “Haven’t for a couple of years. Why?”

  “Well, look, when you get some of these royalties, drop down and we’ll have an evening together; I’ll show you the town. We’ll hang one on. If you get in town in the daytime, phone me at the Blade, city room. If you get in after dark, phone–”

  “City room? Blade? You a reporter?” Sweeney said despairingly, “Oh, Lord.” He shouldn’t have; he should have put his hands over his stomach right away, quick. But he didn’t.

  Charlie’s fist went in it, up to Charlie’s wrist, and Sweeney folded like a jackknife, just in time for Charlie’s other fist to meet his chin coming down. But, as before, he didn’t even feel the punch on his chin.

  He heard Charlie say, “You lousy, double-crossing son of a bitch. I wish you’d get up and fight.” Nothing was farther from Sweeney’s mind, or rather, from what was left of Sweeney’s mind. He couldn’t even talk.

  If he’d opened his mouth something might have come out, but it wouldn’t have been words.

  He heard Charlie walk away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  There’s no need to describe how Sweeney felt; that was the third time he’d been hit in the stomach and it didn’t feel any different, except in degree, from the first two times. To go into detail would be sadistic, not to say redundant. And it’s bad enough that he had to go through it a third time; you and I do not.

  After a few minutes he managed to get to the curb and sit there doubled up until, after about ten more minutes, he heard and saw the bus coming and managed to get to his feet, if not quite erect, and boarded it.

  He sat doubled up in the bus, he sat doubled up in the station, and then on the train he lay doubled up in his lower berth. He didn’t get to sleep, soundly, until early dawn, just as the train got into Chicago.

  By the time he got to his room, though, the worst was over, and he slept. It was well into the afternoon – thirteen minutes after two, if you wish exactitude – when he awoke.

  But by then the worst was over and he could walk without being bent over.

  And it was Sunday and the last day of his vacation, and three o’clock by the time he was bathed and
dressed.

  He went outside and looked east and west along Erie Street with a jaundiced eye and finally made up his mind to go east and see if he could find any angle on the Dorothy Lee murder that the police had missed. He didn’t think he would.

  He didn’t.

  Luck was with him in finding both the janitor and Mrs. Rae Haley, the woman who had phoned the police, in.

  But luck was against him in finding out from either of them anything significant that he didn’t already know. He ran out of questions to ask after fifteen minutes with the janitor, who had not known Miss Lee personally at all. It took him an hour and a half to listen to everything Mrs. Haley thought of to tell him, and at the end of that hour and a half he knew a lot more that he had known about Dorothy Lee – nearly all of it favorable – but none of it in the slightest degree helpful, unless negatively.

  Rae Haley, a buxom wench with hennaed hair and just a touch too much make-up for a Sunday afternoon at home, turned out to be an ad-taker for a rival newspaper, but seemed nonetheless eager to talk to the Blade – or to Sweeney.

  She had known Dorothy Lee fairly well and had liked her; Dorothy was “nice and quiet.” Yes, she’d been in Dorothy’s apartment often. They had eaten together frequently, taking turns, each in her own apartment, in doing the cooking, and that way avoiding each having to cook a separate meal. Not all the time, of course, but several times a week. So she knew Dorothy’s apartment pretty thoroughly and, as he had suspected, Sweeney found that “small black statuette” drew a blank. The apartment was rented furnished and Dorothy hadn’t gone in for buying pictures or bric-a-brac of her own. She did, though, have a nice table-top phonograph and some nice records, mostly “sweet swing”.

  Sweeney concealed a shudder.

  Yes, Dorothy had had boy friends; at one time or another she’d gone out with four or five of them, but none had been “serious”. Mrs. Haley had met each of them and knew their names; she’d given the names of all of them to the police. Not because there was any possibility that any of them had been concerned in the horrible thing that had happened to Dorothy, but because the police had asked for the names and had insisted. But apparently the police had found all of them to be all right, because if they had arrested one of them it would have been in the papers, wouldn’t it?

  Sweeney assured her that it would have been. She said that they were all nice boys, very nice boys, and when one of them had brought her home he’d always said goodnight at the door and hadn't come in. Dorothy had been a nice girl.

  The walls of these apartments were almost paper-thin and she, Mrs. Haley, would have known if. She carried the sentence only that far and stopped delicately.

  The poor kid, Sweeney thought, and wondered if she had died a virgin. He hoped that she hadn’t, but not aloud.

  It’s fine, he mused while Mrs. Haley talked on, for a girl to save herself for Mr. Right, but it’s damn tough on her if Mr. Wrong comes along with a carving knife first. Even the prototype of Screaming Mimi, poor Bessie Wilson, hadn’t been handed that tough a break.

  Sweeney thought, for no particular reason, that he would have liked Bessie Wilson; he rather wished that he had known her. And damn it, he liked Charlie Wilson in spite of what Charlie had done to him. A cocky little guy but quite likeable when he wasn’t punching one in the stomach.

  He decided that he’d keep his promise to Charlie anyway and send that telegram to the general manager of Ganslen. He was planning how to word it when he remembered where he was and realized that Mrs. Haley was still talking and that he hadn’t been listening at all. He listened for long enough to find out that he hadn’t been missing a thing, and made his getaway, turning down an invitation to stay for dinner.

  He walked downtown to the Loop and found a Western Union office open. He sat down with a pencil and pad of blanks and tore up two tries before he evolved a telegram that came even close. Then he read that one over again, saw several things missing in it, and gave up. He tore that one up too and walked to a telephone exchange where he asked to see, and was given, a Louisville telephone directory. Luckily Sweeney had a good memory for names and he recalled, from his previous call to Ganslen Art Company, the first name as well as the last name of the general manager. He found a home telephone listed.

  He got a handful of change and went into a booth. A few minutes later he was talking to the general manager and buyer of Ganslen.

  He said, “This is Sweeney of the Chicago Blade, Mr. Burke. I talked to you a few days ago about one of your statuettes, the SM-1. You were kind enough to tell me who modeled it.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “To return the favor, I want to tip you off to something that will make some money for you and for Chapman Wilson. Only I’m going to ask you to keep this confidential until the Blade breaks the story tomorrow. You’ll agree to that?”

  “Uh – exactly what am I agreeing to, Mr. Sweeney?”

  “Merely that you don’t tell anyone at all what I’m going to tell you now until after tomorrow noon. You can go ahead meanwhile and act on the information; you can start getting ready to cash in.”

  “That sounds fair enough.”

  “Okay, here’s the dope. You sold two SM-1’s in Chicago. Well, I’ve got one of them and the Ripper’s got the other one. You’ve heard of our Ripper murders, haven’t you?”

  “Of course. Good Lord! You mean–”

  “Yeah. Tomorrow the Blade will print a picture of Screaming Mimi – about four columns wide on page one, if I judge rightly – and break the story. Probably the Ripper will be caught. A friend or his landlady or someone will have seen it in his room and phone the police. He can hardly have had it for two months without someone having seen it.

  “But whether he’s caught through it or not, it’s a nationwide big story. You’re likely to be swamped for weeks with orders for Mimi. I’d suggest you put her in production immediately – work a night shift tonight if you can get anybody down to your factory or workshop or whatever it is. And if I were you I wouldn’t sell those hundred-odd copies you have; I’d get them to dealers quickly to use as samples to take orders. Get them to Chicago dealers, in particular, as fast as you can. Start one of your salesmen up this way tonight with a trunk full of them.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Sweeney. I can’t say how much I appreciate your giving me this much notice on–”

  “Wait,” said Sweeney. “I’m not through yet. One thing I want you to do. Put a special mark somewhere on each one you sell from now on, so it can be told from the one the Ripper’s got. Keep the mark secret so he can’t duplicate it, and let the police know what the mark is when they come to you – as they will after that story breaks. Otherwise, they’ll be on my neck for tipping you off to flood the Chicago market with them, see? But they’ll see that, in the long run, we’re doing them a favor. If there are more Mimis coming, the Ripper may keep his, whereas if he knows his is going to keep on being the only other one in Chicago, he’ll get rid of it quick. And he won’t know about the secret mark all the others will have. Listen, make the secret mark a tiny chip out of the bottom of the base in the right front corner – so it’ll look accidental if anyone looks at just one of them.”

  “Fine. That will be simple.”

  “I’ll do it on mine. And you’ve got a record, I hope, of just where the forty or so that you actually sold throughout the country went, haven’t you?”

  “Our books would show that.”

  “Good, then if an unmarked Mimi shows up, it can be traced back to prove it’s not the one the Ripper bought. And one more thing–”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not going to drag in the origin of Mimi. Charlie – Chapman Wilson’s pretty sensitive about what happened to his sister, and this is a big enough story without using that. After all, that’s past history and our Ripper is very much current. He said you promised not to use that for publicity – so stick to your promise to him.”

  “Of course, Mr. Sweeney. And thanks again, tremend
ously.”

  After he hung up, Sweeney dropped another nickel but Yolanda’s phone wasn’t answered so he got it back. It was too early for her to be at the night club; she was probably out eating somewhere. Well, maybe he’d better skip trying to talk to her until after tomorrow when he’d broken the Screaming Mimi story in the Blade. And maybe by then the Ripper would be caught and she wouldn’t have an escort of cops everywhere she moved.

  Of course he could watch her dance tonight. Or could he?

  He looked up the number of the Tit-Tat-Toe Club and called it. A bit of argument and the use of his name got him Harry Yahn. Harry’s voice boomed cheerfully over the phone.

  “Hello, Sweeney. How’re things?”

  “Going fine, Harry. I’m going to break a big story on the Ripper tomorrow. Extra publicity for Yolanda.”

  “That’s great. Does it – uh – concern anyone I know?”

  “Not unless you know the Ripper. Do you?”

  “Not by that name. Well, what about it? You don’t want any more money, I hope.”

  “My God, no,” said Sweeney. “Look, Harry, that’s a dead issue. What I want to know is, are we still friends?”

  “Why, sure, Sweeney. Did you have any reason for thinking we weren’t?”

  “Yes,” said Sweeney. “But did that wash it out? Specifically, am I going to be persona non gra – I mean, if I show up at El Madhouse or the Tit-Tat-Toe, do I get in and out again safely? Or do I wear a suit of armor?” Harry Yahn laughed. “You’re welcome any time, Sweeney. Seriously. As you said, it’s a dead issue.”

  “Swell,” said Sweeney. “I just wanted to be sure.”

  “Uh – did Willie use discretion?”

  “For Willie, I imagine it was. I just wanted to be sure you hadn’t passed the good word on to Nick. I’ll probably, otherwise, go around to El Madhouse tonight.”