The Fabulous Clipjoint

by Fredric Brown

  He said, “Ask the kid here. I gave him the whole story, such as it is. You two are going at it together. I wish you luck.”

  My uncle looked at me, his eyebrows up just a trifle. Bassett wasn’t watching me, so I shook my head a little to let him know I hadn’t blabbed to the detective. A smart duck. I don’t know how he figured that angle so quickly.

  Gardie came in and got reintroduced to Uncle Ambrose. Mom had sent her out to a movie, and I guess she’d really gone to one or she wouldn’t have been home so early.

  I got a kick out of the way Uncle Ambrose patted her on the head and treated her like a kid. Gardie didn’t like it; I could tell that. Five minutes of old-home-week and she went off to her room.

  Uncle Ambrose grinned at me.

  The coffee was cold and Mom started to get some fresh, butUncle Ambrose said, “Let’s go down and have a drink instead. What say, Bassett?”

  The detective shrugged. “Okay by me. I’m off duty now.”

  Mom shook her head. “You two go,” she told them.

  I dealt myself in, said I was thirsty and wanted some Seven-Up or a coke. Uncle Ambrose said, “Sure,” and Mom didn’t squawk, so I went downstairs with them.

  We went to a place on Grand Avenue. Bassett said it was a quiet place where we could talk. It was quiet all right; we were almost the only ones in there.

  We took a booth and ordered two beers and a Coca-Cola. Bassett said he had to phone somebody and went back to the phone booth.

  I said, “He’s a nice guy. I kind of like him.”

  My uncle nodded slowly. He said, “He’s not dumb and he’s not honest and he’s not a louse. He’s just what the doctor ordered.”

  “Huh? How do you know he’s not honest?” I wasn’t being naive; I know plenty of coppers aren’t; I just wondered how Uncle Ambrose could be so sure so quick — or if he was just talking through his hat.

  “Just looking at him,” he said. “I don’t know how, but I know. I used to run a mitt-camp with the carney, Ed. It’s a racket, sure, but you get so you can size people up.”

  I remembered something I’d read. “Lombroso has been dis — ”

  “Nuts to Lombroso. It isn’t the shapes of their faces. It’s something you feel. You can do it with your eyes shut. I don’t know how. But this red-headed copper — we’re going to buy him.”

  He took out his wallet, and holding it under the table so the couple of men at the bar, up front, couldn’t see what he was doing, he took a bill out of it and then put it back in his hip pocket. I got a look at the bill, though, as he folded it twice and palmed it. It was a hundred bucks.

  I felt a little scared. I couldn’t see why he would need to bribe Bassett at all, and I was afraid he was wrong, and offering it would start trouble.

  Bassett came back and sat down.

  My uncle said, “Look, Bassett, I know what you’re up against on a case like this. But Wally was my brother, see, and I want to see the guy who killed him sent up. I want to see him fry.”

  Bassett said, “We’ll do our best.”

  “I know you will. But they won’t allow you too much time on it, and you know that. I want to help any way I can. There’s one way I know of. I mean, there’s times putting out a few bucks here and there will get a song out of somebody who won’t sing otherwise. You know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean. Yeah, sometimes it helps.”

  My uncle held out his hand, palm down. He said, “Put this in your pocket, in case you get a chance to use it where it might get us something. It’s off the record.”

  Bassett took the bill. I saw him glance at the corner of it under the table, and then he put it in his pocket. His face didn’t change. He didn’t say anything.

  We ordered another round of drinks, or they did. I still had half my coke left.

  Bassett’s eyes, behind the shell-rimmed glasses, looked a little more tired, a little more veiled. He said, “What I gave the kid was straight. We don’t know a damn thing more. Two stops on Clark Street; stayed maybe half an hour in each. That one last stop on Grand Avenue; where he bought the beer. Ten gets you one that was the last stop he made. If we could get anything, it ought to be there. But there wasn’t anything to get.”

  “What about the rest of the time?” my uncle asked.

  Bassett shrugged. “There are two kind of drinkers. One holes in some place and stays put to do his drinking. The other kind ambles. Wallace Hunter was the ambling kind, that evening anyway. He was out four hours and stuck around about half an hour — long enough to drink two-three beers in each of the three places we’ve put him. If that’s the average, he probably stopped in six or seven places — you got to allow some time for the walking.”

  “He drank only beer?”

  “Mostly, anyway. One place, the bartender wasn’t sure what he drank. And on Chicago Avenue, he had one shot with his last beer, then bought the bottles to go. Kaufman’s place. Kaufman was behind the bar. Said he seemed a little tight, quiet drunk, but not staggering or anything. In control.”

  “Who’s Kaufman? I mean, outside of being a tavern owner.”

  “Nobody much. I don’t know how straight he is, but we haven’t got anything on him if he isn’t. I checked with the boys at the Chicago Avenue station on that. As far as they know, his nose is clean.”

  “You talked to him. Is it?”

  Bassett said, “He could do with a handkerchief. But I think he’s clean on this. He came up with identifying your brother’s picture after I’d jogged him a little. Used the same line on him as the others; I mean, told ’em we knew he was there and was only interested in getting the time he left. First he said he never saw him. I said we had proof he’d been in there, just wanted to know when, and it wouldn’t get him in any trouble. So he got some glasses out of a drawer and looked again, and then kicked in.”

  “All the way?”

  “I think so,” Bassett said. “You’ll get a look at him and a listen to him tomorrow, at the inquest.”

  “Swell,” my uncle told me. “Look, you don’t know me at the inquest. Nobody does. I just sit at the back, and nobody knows who I am. They won’t want me to testify anyway.”

  Bassett’s eyes unveiled a little, just a little. He asked, “You think you might want to run one?”

  “I think maybe,” my uncle said.

  They seemed to understand one another. They knew what they were talking about. I didn’t.

  Like when Hoagy, the big man, had been talking to my uncle about the blow being sloughed. Only that was carney talk; at least I knew why I didn’t understand it. This was different; they were talking words I knew, but it still didn’t make sense.

  I didn’t care.

  Bassett said, “One angle’s out. No insurance.”

  That did make sense to me. I said, “Mom didn’t do it.”

  Bassett looked at me, and I wondered if I liked him as much as I’d thought.

  Uncle Ambrose said, “The kid’s right. Madge is —” He stopped himself. “She wouldn’t have killed Wally.”

  “You can’t tell with women. My God, I’ve known cases —”

  “Sure, a million cases. But Madge didn’t kill him. Look, she might have waited till he got home and gone for him with a butcher knife or something. But this wasn’t like that. She wouldn’t have followed him into an alley and blackj — Say, was it a blackjack?”

  “Nope. Something harder.”

  “Such as?”

  “Almost anything heavy enough to swing and without a point or sharp edge on the side that hit. A club, a piece of pipe, an empty bottle, a — almost anything.”

  A blunt instrument, I thought. That’s the way the papers would describe it, if the papers would print it.

 
I watched a cockroach that was crawling across the floor away from the bar. It was one of the big black kind, and it moved in hitches, scurrying a little and then stopping still. It would run for about ten inches, stop a second, then another ten inches.

  One of the men at the bar was watching it. He walked toward it and it scurried out from under his foot just in time.

  The second time it wasn’t so lucky. There was a crunching sound.

  “Look,” Bassett was saying, “I got to get home. I just phoned there and my wife is kind of sick. Nothing serious, but she wanted me to bring some medicine. See you at the inquest tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” said my uncle. “We can’t talk there, though, like I said. How about meeting afterwards here?”

  “Fine. So long. So long, kid.”

  He left.

  I thought, a hundred bucks is a lot of money. I was glad I hadn’t a job where people might offer me a hundred bucks for doing something I shouldn’t do.

  Not that, come to think of it, he was being paid for doing anything really wrong. Just for being on our side; for levelling with us. For giving us the straight dope on everything. That was all right; it was only the taking money for it that was wrong. But he had a sick wife.

  And then I thought, my uncle didn’t know he had a sick wife. But my uncle knew he’d take the hundred.

  My uncle said, “It’s a good investment.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But if he’s dishonest, how do you know he’ll play straight with you? He can give you nothing for that hundred dollars. And that’s a lot of money.”

  He said, “Sometimes a dime is a lot of money. Sometimes a hundred isn’t. I think we’ll get our money’s worth. Look, kid, how about making the rounds? I mean, looking over the places he stopped. One thing I want to know. You feel up to it?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I can’t sleep anyway. And it’s only eleven.” He looked me over. He said, “You can pass for twenty-one, I think. If anyone asks, I’m your father and they ought to take my word for it. We can both show identification with the same name. Only we don’t want to.”

  “You mean we don’t want them to know who we are?”

  “That’s it. Anyplace we go in, we order a beer apiece. I drink mine fast and you just sip yours. Then we get the glasses mixed, see? That way —”

  “A little beer won’t hurt me,” I said. “I’m eighteen, damn it.”

  “A little beer won’t hurt you. That’s all you’re going to get. We change glasses. See?”

  I nodded. No use arguing, especially when he was right.

  We walked over Grand to Clark and started north. We stopped on the corner of Ontario.

  “This is sort of where he started,” I said. “I mean, he would have come over on Ontario from Wells, and started north.”

  I stood there, looking down Ontario, feeling almost that I would see him coming.

  It was very silly. I thought, he’s lying on a slab at Heiden’s. They’ve taken out his blood and filled him with embalming fluid. They’d have done that quick because the weather is so hot.

  He isn’t Pop any more. Pop had never minded hot weather. Cold got him down; he hated to go out in cold weather, even for a block or two. But hot weather he didn’t mind.

  Uncle Ambrose said, “The Beer Barrel and the Cold Spot, those are the two places, weren’t they?”

  I said, “I guess Bassett said that when I wasn’t listening. I don’t know.”

  “Wasn’t listening?”

  “I was watching a cockroach,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything. We started walking, watching the names of the places we went past. The taverns average three or four to a block on North Clark Street from the Loop north to Bughouse Square. The poor man’s Broadway.

  We came to the Cold Spot just north of Huron. We went in and stood at the bar. The Greek behind the bar hardly looked at me.

  There were only a few men along the bar, and no women. A drunk was asleep at a table near the back. We stayed only for the one beer apiece, Uncle Ambrose drinking most of mine.

  We did the same at the Beer Barrel, which turned up on the other side of the street, near Chicago. It was the same kind of place, a little bigger, a few more people, two bartenders instead of one and three drunks asleep at tables instead of one.

  There was no one near us at the bar, so we could talk freely.

  I said, “Aren’t you going to try to pump them? To find out what he was doing, or something?”

  He shook his head.

  I wanted to know, “What were we trying to find out?”

  “What he was doing. What he was looking for.”

  I thought it over. It didn’t make any sense that we could find that out without asking any questions.

  My uncle said, “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  We went out and walked back half a block the way we had come and went in another place.

  “I get it,” I told him. “I see what you mean.”

  I’d been kind of dumb. This was different. There was music, if you could call it that. And almost as many women as men. Faded women mostly. A few of them were young. Most of them were drunk.

  They weren’t percentage girls. Maybe a few of them, I decided, were prostitutes, but not many. They were just women.

  We had our one beer apiece again.

  I thought, I’m glad Pop didn’t come here, places like this, instead of the Beer Barrel and the Cold Spot. He’d been out drinking. Just drinking.

  We went north again and crossed back to the west side of the street and turned the corner at Chicago Avenue.

  We passed the police station. We crossed LaSalle and then Wells. He could have turned south here, I thought. It would have been about half-past twelve when he came this way.

  Last night, I thought. Only last night, he came this way. Probably walking on the same side of the street we were on. Only last night, and about at this time. It must be almost twelve-thirty right now, I thought.

  We walked under the el at Franklin.

  A train roared by overhead and it shook the night. Funny that the el trains are so loud at night. In our flat on Wells, a block from the el, I can hear every one at night, if I’m awake. Or early in the morning when I first get up or am still lying in bed. The rest of the time you can’t hear them.

  We walked on, as far as the corner of Orleans Street. We stopped there. Across the way was a Topaz Beer sign. It was on the north side of Chicago Avenue, two doors past the corner. It would be Kaufman’s place. It would have to be, because it was the only tavern in the block.

  Pop’s last stop.

  I asked, “Aren’t we going over there?”

  My uncle shook his head slowly.

  We stood there maybe five minutes, doing nothing, not even talking. I didn’t ask him why we weren’t going over to Kaufman’s.

  Then he said, “Well, kid —?”

  I said, “Sure.”

  We turned around and started walking south on Orleans.

  We were going there now. We were going to the alley.

  | Go to Contents |

  Chapter 4

  The alley was just an alley. At the Orleans end there was a parking lot at one side and a candy factory at the other. There was a big loading platform alongside the candy factory.

  The alley was paved with rough red brick and there were no curbs.

  There was a street light, one of the smaller size they use in the middle of a block, opposite the Orleans end.

  Down at the Franklin end, under the elevated, there was another such light, right at the left of the mouth of the alley. It wasn’t particularly dark. You could stand at the Orleans end and look through it.

  It was dim down in the middle of the alley, but you could see through it, and if a
nyone was in there you could see him silhouetted against the Franklin end.

  There wasn’t anyone in there now.

  Down in the middle of the alley were the backs of flat buildings, ramshackle old ones, that fronted on Huron and on Erie. The ones on the Erie side had wooden back porches with railings, and wooden steps that led up to the back doors of the flats. The ones on the Huron side were flat and flush with the alley.

  Uncle Ambrose said, “If he came this way, it must have been somebody following him. He could have seen anyone waiting in the alley.”

  I pointed up at the porches. I said, “Somebody up on one of them. A man staggers through the alley below them. They go down the steps, getting down just after he passes, catch up with him near the other end of the alley, and —”

  “Could be, kid. Not likely. If they were on the porch, then they live there. A guy doesn’t do something like that in his own back alley. Not that close to home. And I doubt if he was staggering drunk. ‘Course you got to discount how sober a bartender says a guy is when he leaves the place. They don’t want to get themselves in trouble.”

  “It could have been that way,” I said. “Not likely, but it could have been.”

  “Sure, We’ll look into it. We’ll talk to everybody lives in those flats. We’re not passing up off chances; I didn’t mean that when I said it wasn’t likely.”

  We were talking softly, like you do in an alley at night. We were past the middle of the alley, past the flats. We were at the back of the buildings that fronted on Franklin Street. On both sides they were three-story bricks, with stores on the bottom floor and flats above.

  My uncle stopped and bent down. He said, “Beer-bottle glass. This is where it happened.”

  I got a funny feeling, almost a dizziness. This is where it happened. Right where I’m standing now. This is where it happened.

  I didn’t want to think about it, that way, so I bent down and started looking, too. It was amber glass, all right, and over an area of a few yards there was enough of it to have come from two or three bottles.