Madball

by Fredric Brown

  "We've got them. No relatives and no will so they belong to the state. That is, they'll be held for a year and then go to the state unless somebody's put in a claim. But don't get any ideas, Doc, about sending someone around claiming to be his wife unless she's got a marriage certificate that will stand checking on."

  "Nothing was farther from my mind, Lieutenant. Although it's an idea, if I thought I could get away with it. Two thousand dollars isn't hay."

  "A little more than that. Eighteen hundred out of the two thousand that he had in traveler's checks plus nine hundred and fifty that he'd put into postal saving during the three or four months before the accident. The certificates were in his trunk. But what's all this to you, Doc?"

  "Nothing at all, as far as the money is concerned. But I'm hoping you found something of mine among his effects, a book. It completely slipped my mind until today, what with the excitement of a murder, but it is a very valuable book and I'd like to have it back."

  The lieutenant frowned. "I looked through his stuff and I don't remember any book. What kind was it?"

  "A book on astrology, a rare old one printed in England in 1810. I don't know that its monetary value was great - I found it in a used bookstore on Gark Street in Chicago and bought it for a dollar and a half. But it's irreplaceable and there were things in it that I use occasionally. Mack was interested in astrology and had borrowed it a week before the accident. I had in mind to ask him for it as soon as he got back from the hospital but it slipped my mind until today. The book was in English but the title was in Latin - Astra et Homines, stars and men."

  "I'm sure now that there wasn't any such book, Doc. I'm sure I'd remember it now that you've described it. A book with a Latin title I know I'd remember. And now that I come to think of it, I know there weren't any books. Some true detective magazines but no books at all."

  Dr. Magus looked disappointed. "Is there any chance that it could have been pilfered from the trunk?"

  "Not a chance, Doc. There was a watch, a fairly good one, in that trunk, and a few other small but fairly valuable things that a thief would have taken instead of a book. Besides the trunk was locked with a damn good padlock and was packed away under some other stuff in a truck. Your carney owner, Wiggins, was taking care of it until Irby came back for it."

  "Wiggins? I'd have thought Burt would have held it for him."

  "I wouldn't know about that. We were told Wiggins was holding Irby's trunk and got it from him."

  Dr. Magus sighed. "Well, I guess I've lost the book. Unless Irby had loaned it to someone else before the accident. I'll ask around the lot. Thanks a lot, Lieutenant." Curiouser and curiouser, he thought. Why had Burt turned the trunk over to Wiggins instead of keeping it until Irby got back? Of course it could be that Burt was short of packing space after Barney King, who no doubt had a trunk of his own, had come to work for him.

  He'd have to ask Wiggins. Would Wiggins be at the lot now or back at his hotel? Wiggins spent plenty of time on the lot but he always stayed at a hotel, the best one in town, ate his meals there and commuted in his car to the carney lot. And it was now six o'clock; Wiggins would quite likely be at the hotel. Let's see, what was the hotel Wiggy was staying at here? He'd heard him mention it. Oh yes, the Carter House. Since he was already on the main drag and near the center of the town he looked down the street and - yes, there was the Carter House sign, only a block away. He walked there and got Wiggins' room on the house phone; Wiggins answered and said come on up.

  On the way up in the elevator he decided that the song and dance on the astrology book would work just as well with Wiggins as it had with the lieutenant and that he might as well stick to it. He stuck to it.

  "Sorry, Doc," Wiggins said, "but it wasn't in Mack Irby's trunk. I helped the police inventory it, and Charlie Flack's trunk too, the night of the accident."

  "You're sure there wasn't a book in either of them?"

  "Nary a book, as far as I remember. In either trunk."

  "Not that it matters," Dr. Magus said, "but why would the police have opened Mack's trunk? He wasn't dead."

  "No, but he was unconscious and they didn't know yet that he wasn't hurt worse than a broken leg. Thought they might as well check to see if he had any relatives who ought to be notified, while they were checking the same deal on Charlie Flack."

  "You personally helped them inventory both trunks?"

  "Yeah. I happened to be working late with Smitty in the office wagon that night, when they got here, two state cops. I helped 'em locate both trunks - Mack kept his in Burt's unborn show top and Charlie in the model show top - and watched 'em look through. Figured if the boys had any money stashed, no use the cops getting their lousy hands on it."

  "Hell, no. They have any?"

  "Charlie had about four hundred in his trunk. Mack had some postal savings certificates, but no cash."

  Dr. Magus sighed. He was getting good practice in sighing today. He said, "Well, I guess my book is lost. Unless maybe Mack had it lying around loose, not in his trunk. I'll ask Burt if he saw it."

  "Hope you find it, Doc. Say, want a lift back to the lot? I just had something to eat and came up here to put on a clean shirt. I'll go back in a few minutes."

  Dr. Magus declined, explaining that he had one more but very important thing to do while he was in town and that he'd take the bus or a taxi out later.

  And an important thing it was indeed. He hadn't had a drink for four or five hours now and it was high time.

  And just look at the extremely interesting things he'd learned this afternoon? He needed a chance to think.

  So fifteen minutes later, a lovingly lighted fifty-cent cigar between his fingers, he stood with one foot on polished brass and one elbow on polished mahogany.

  "Bushmills Irish, please. A double, over ice."

  Dressed as he was and feeling as he felt he could order no less in either quality or quantity.

  He smiled at himself in the backbar mirror, and reflected. With forty-two thousand dollars he could drink like this, dress like this, really be what at this moment people took him to be.

  Forty-two thousand dollars, and only he even suspected.

  Forty-two thousand dollars. No more reading sweaty palms for stupid people.

  Forty-two thousand dollars. A bachelor flat. Women when he wanted them, women at least as physically attractive as Maybelle but more intelligent, more polished.

  Forty-two thousand dollars. The books and records he had always wanted to own. All the Irish whisky he would ever want - or live - to drink.

  Uisgebaugh forever.

  If he could answer the forty-two thousand dollar question: Where?

  Mack and Charlie had had the money as of Thursday afternoon; they'd done something with it by Friday night, hidden or stashed it so well that it hadn't turned up since.

  It definitely had not been in either of their trunks. Fortune had favored him with positive knowledge of that. Both trunks had been searched right after the accident, by cops being watched by carneys. He wouldn't trust either faction alone, but the two together, positively. Neither would dare trust the other, would dare even suggest glomming onto the money and dividing it among them. Nor could they conceivably have missed finding it in the trunks no matter how careless the search. That much money in assorted bills would have quite a bit of bulk.

  Or could they have stashed it off the lot?

  Pretend to be both of them, he told himself, and talk it over with yourself. Reason the way they'd reason.

  "Okay, Mack, we got this dough. But we still got to be careful and lay low like I told you till the season's over, see? If we cut loose sooner somebody'll start wondering why. I don't think we ought even to divvy it till then. Hide it all in one place and there'll be less chance of it being found than if we put it two places."

  "Okay, Charlie. But how's about a safe deposit vault? We could take one in both our names and fix it so we both gotta be there to get back into it."

  "Use your head, Mack,
that'd be a dead giveaway, anywhere within hundreds of miles from here. Every bank around here knows about that robbery by now and we rent a box on terms like that and there'd be cops on our necks before we even got outside. I thought of renting one before, but even that would have been bad - we'd have had to go to it together right after the robbery and put in a package the size of the loot. That and our having it fixed so we could only get into the box together, two of us, would make somebody suspicious sure as hell."

  "Well, one of us could rent a box."

  "That wouldn't be too risky, Mack. But it sure as hell ain't going to be you. You trust me to do it?"

  "Sure I trust you, Charlie. But - hell, I see what you mean. If we can figure a way to hide it right here on the lot where we can both keep an eye on it, kind of - Say, I know a place nobody'd ever find it!"

  "Where, Mack?"

  Where, Doc?

  He looked down into his glass on the bar in front of him but the money wasn't there. Neither was any whisky.

  All too well he knew that if he had another now he wouldn't read any mitts tonight. Only a week and a half of the season left now and his winter fund still wasn't what he'd like it to be.

  Besides, the show must go on. Or must it? The carney could get along for one evening without a mitt camp. And if he sobered up he'd realize how slim a chance actually he had of getting that money for himself. Whereas if he kept on drinking he could dream about it, even spend it in his imagination. They couldn't take that away from him.

  He caught the eye of his reflection in the back bar mirror and it stared at him somberly for a moment and then winked at him. He beckoned to the bartender.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  JOE LINDER was the best talker on the lot. Yon have to be the best to hold down the mike for the freak show because that's the biggest show with a carnival, the one with the biggest overhead and the biggest take; you've got to be able to pull them in to talk and grind for a freak show. You've got to have what it takes, and Joe Linder had it. You'd never have thought it to look at him. Smallish, blondish, mild-mannered, if you'd seen him on the street you'd have taken him for the meekest of bookkeepers.

  But with a mike in his hand he was different. And now he had a mike in one hand and the stick of the bass drum in the other. He thumped the bass drum.

  Get the tip and turn the tip. Boom ta boom boom boom.

  "Huh-ry, huh-ry, huh-ry, right this way, just in time for the big FREE show we're going to give you right out on this platform, FREE, it won't cost you a penny to see some of the strangest people in the world. This is the BIG show, the BIG show that gives you fifteen separate wonderful shows inside, EACH one worth the price you see all of them for ... But you're not going to pay anything, not a cent, to see a few of these strange and gifted people here and now on this platform! It's free, it's FREE, so huh-ry, huh-ry." Boom ta boom boom boom.

  Not a big tip and mostly kids, but it was about as big a one as he was going to get right now and if he stalled any longer some of them would start wandering off so he gave the single boom of the drum that was the call to bally and went into his spiel as he heard them coming up on the platform beside him. Dolly first for flash, dressed in spangled trunks and halter. Right after her that son of a bitch husband of hers in a red silk shirt, carrying his throwing knives. Dixie with his rack of eating swords. And Midge - Admiral Tim.

  Boom ta boom boom boom.

  "Step in closer, folks, right to the edge of the platform. First I want you to meet a little lady who is going to show you that ropes cannot ..."

  Dolly standing against the stocks with her white arms outstretched along the crossbar. He walked over to her with the ropes and tied one wrist to one end of the cross bar, pulling the knot tight - but very careful, under Leon's baleful eye, not to touch her skin - not with his hands, that is; his mind caressed and kissed it. And as he walked past her to tie the other wrist he said, "Huh-ry, huh-ry, huh-ry," very softly under his breath. He knew Dolly heard it and got it by the sudden movement of the throat muscles under her white skin.

  "... and the little lady, when I give the signal, will step right away from those ropes. Until then, watch her ..."

  That had them hooked; they'd watch her while he sold them on the show, on coming inside the BIG show, they'd feed their damned eyes on the white smoothness of her bare legs and midriff, arms and shoulders, gloat over the contours of that spangled bra and picture the breasts under it. But they could only look and imagine whereas this very night, only a few hours from now-

  Another bally and again and the long grind, the BIG show, fifteen different shows all for one low price, come right in, now going on, stay till you've seen a whole show.

  But Joe Linder was worried. Why did that one worry have to keep heckling him? Why couldn't he forget it and have only anticipation of the night to come and, if things worked out okay, of the years to come?

  It wasn't Leon. Leon was stupid; he'd have no trouble fooling Leon. And he knew a place to take Dolly after the season where Leon would never find them.

  It was Evans. Why was he sticking his neck out, arranging this? What did he have to gain? Nothing. It didn't fit his picture of Evans that the guy would-

  And then, suddenly it came to him what Evans' motive must be. He wasn't the kind of a guy who did favors, so he wasn't doing Dolly a favor at all. Quintana must have stepped on his toes somehow, and he was doing this to take revenge on Quintana, making him lose Dolly.

  That made sense. That fitted. Why hadn't he thought of it sooner?

  He could think about Dolly now, and he did.

  She'd never sleep with Leon again; he'd made up his mind about that. An hour with her to bind the bargain and then he'd take her to a train tonight, or a bus. Trains at 2:14 and 4:08. A bus at 12:50 and an early morning one at 5:00. He'd see she got on one of those - which direction she started out in didn't matter and by the time Leon woke from drugged sleep she'd be safely out of his reach.

  And he'd be back on the lot, alone and asleep in his own top, and Leon wouldn't suspect a thing. Why should he? He'd made a point of doing nothing all season that would make Leon remotely suspect him of being willing to give a right arm to have Dolly.

  Leon wouldn't ever find them, either, no matter how long he carried the torch and kept looking. Joe Linder had something up his sleeve on that, something he wasn't telling even Evans, nor Dolly until he had her safely away. Australia. Almost another world, Australia, as remote as the moon or Mars. He had a friend who was there now and who'd been writing wanting him to come. Mice Murdoch, who'd been his buddy for years with the Craft Shows, with a circus in Australia, but he wrote there were good carneys there too and the grift was fine. He'd been thinking about taking Mike up on it anyway and to keep Dolly safe from Leon it would be the smart thing to do.

  The long grind, the BIG show, fifteen separate superb acts all for one price, now going on, see the whole show, the strangest people on earth ...

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE TAXICAB LET Dr. Magus off at the carnival entrance. The meter showed an even dollar and Dr. Magus munificently tipped the driver another dollar. It startled him into saying thanks, and then, "Say, mister."

  Dr. Magus, who had just closed the door, put his head through the front door window opposite the driver. "Yes, my friend?"

  "Sure you don't want me to drive you back to town?"

  "I am quite sure. May I ask why you make the suggestion?"

  "Well, you're a bit polluted, mister. And them carneys are crooks, all of 'em. If you go in there they'll gyp you if they can and roll you if they can't."

  Dr. Magus looked at him in shocked wonder. "Are you really certain of that? Are you sure?"

  "Sure I'm sure. All the games in there is rigged. Sucker stuff. If you wanta gamble, you oughta go somewhere where they run a straight game."

  Dr. Magus's eyes got even wider. "You could take me to such a place?"

  "Well, yeah. Not right in Bloomfield, but a few miles out the other side of to
wn."

  "Would it have a roulette wheel? I ask because they would not let me play cards, I fear."

  "Sure it's got a wheel. But what you mean they wouldn't let you play cards? You been there before?"

  "No, no. But someone there would be almost certain to recognize me. I am one of the top - it would be immodest for me to say I am the top - sleight of hand artists in the world. I am especially famous for the Reynaldi sleight with a dollar bill. Here, give me back the one I just gave you for a tip and I'll show you. Thank you, my friend. Now I fold it thus twice, hold it between my thumb and fingers, make a pass so - and it has disappeared."

  "Not bad. But look, mister, you want me to take you to the Four Aces or not?"

  "Some other time perhaps."

  "Okay. Well, give me the buck back"

  "That is the second step of the sleight and I am afraid I have not yet perfected it. But thank you just the same." Dr. Magus strode rapidly through the entrance gate before the driver could get out his side of the cab and around it - if he intended to try. Dr. Magus felt fairly sure that he wouldn't; he'd realize by now that his passenger had been a carney and that it wouldn't be healthy to follow him onto the lot to start trouble. As, indeed, it wouldn't have been; there wasn't a carney on the lot who wouldn't have enjoyed helping take that taxi driver apart.

  He saw that the midway was jammed and business was good. He threaded his way through the crowd to the mitt camp and let himself in without putting back the outer flaps that would make the joint open for business. He turned on the overhead bulb and put down on the table the cylindrical package he'd carried out from town with him, a bottle of Irish whisky.

  He looked at his watch and sighed as he realized that, since it was only ten o'clock, he could and should open for business. With a crowd like that outside he might still take in twenty bucks or so by midnight, maybe thirty or thirty-five if he got a few live ones for five-dollar readings.

  But to hell with twenty or even thirty-five bucks.