Madball

by Fredric Brown

  "Well, for one thing he acts like he's trying to act crazy. For another, his story of how he found out Dolly was with Joe Linder. Says he heard a voice in his sleep telling him so."

  "How do you suppose he did find out, Lieutenant?"

  "Same like you suggested on the Irby deal, woke up and found her gone. And probably had some reason to suspect Joe Linder so he went looking in the right place."

  He lighted a cigarette and took a deep drag. "Well, anyway, Doc, the carneys can quit panicking."

  "Panicking? I hadn't seen any."

  "Maybe I didn't mean it that strong. But plenty of them have been scared ever since the Irby kill. I been damn near living on the lot, and I could feel it. And listen, the postal savings window at the p.o. downtown has been doing a land office business since Monday. While there was a guy on the lot who'd kill for money, nobody wanted heavy sugar around. Some of the boys and gals here put in amounts that kind of surprised me."

  "Most of us try to get enough ahead so we won't have to work during the winter, Lieutenant. I suppose you were in close touch with the p.o. because they were watching for those new twenties with consecutive serials."

  "Yeah. Well, it's washed up now, Doc. Hope, though, that we can get Quintana to make it a really clean washup by confessing to the Irby kill."

  He stood up. "Well, we'll fry him on one count if not the other. And you'll try to find those witnesses and try to talk them into talking to me?"

  "I'll try, Lieutenant. At least I'll keep my ears open. But I can't guarantee any results."

  "Okay, I understand that. Thanks."

  He left.

  The rest of the coffee was cold but Dr. Magus decided he felt well enough to tackle the next step in recovery, a big hot breakfast. The thought of eating one was terrible but it was the only thing that would make him feel human before evening short of starting in to drink again, and that would only postpone the evil day. He took off the soaking bandana and his shirt, which was almost as wet. He found a towel and dried himself, combed his hair and beard and put on a clean shirt. It was easier to make the chow top this time. One more cup of hot coffee and then breakfast. Eating it was a fight, but he won.

  Nothing worse than a dull headache as he walked back to the mitt camp, and that would go away soon.

  Ten by ten feet square, the mitt camp. He paced one side of it, three paces one way and three paces back. Last night he'd had a brilliant idea in connection with finding the money. But what had the idea been?

  He remembered a flash in the crystal. Unless it had been something in his own head, back of his eyeballs. It had been while he'd been concentrating on where the money might be hidden. He'd thought of the generator car and had decided it couldn't mean that. Nor a fuse box.

  And he remembered trying to calculate how big a package forty-two grand would make and had decided on a minimum size, the size of a cigar box. Could be bigger of course, but he wouldn't have to worry about looking in smaller repositories. Two hundred forty dollars you could stuff into a cornet, but not forty-two thousand. Not unless it was in the form of forty-two thousand-dollar bills and it wouldn't be.

  What in - Suddenly he remembered. He'd decided to go to Glenrock to see if he could get a lead at the hospital there.

  For a moment he thought disgustedly, hell, if that's all the idea was-

  But then its possibilities began to come to him. With a good enough song and dance to use at the hospital, he might get a lead to the money even if it wasn't hidden with the carnival. He might find out whom Irby had communicated with while he was in the hospital. He might get a break by learning that Irby had been worried about a suitcase that had been checked somewhere and had sent a check or money order to cover storage charges so it would be held for him. He might have made a long distance phone call or sent a telegram.

  It would take slick con work, a really good song and dance, to get details like that from people as professionally reticent as doctors and nurses, but it might be done.

  It was worth trying.

  He dug a railroad map out of his foot locker to check on how difficult it might be to get there. It wasn't difficult at all. Both Bloomfield and Glenrock were on the main trunk line of the B. & O. There ought to be several trains a day between them and the trip would be just long enough to let him get completely past his hangover.

  Another day lost from work, more money spent, but what did that matter compared to a chance at a beautiful hunk of moolah like forty-two grand?

  ***

  There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.

  Anyway, that was what Brutus had said. And Cassius answer? Then, with your will, go on.

  Cassius, I am on my way.

  Half an hour later, as dapper and at least outwardly as cheerful as he'd been yesterday, he ran into Lieutenant Showalter near the entrance gate.

  Showalter grinned at him. "Doc, you sure look better than you did when I first saw you this morning. I wasn't sure you were going to live."

  "Nor was I, Lieutenant."

  He started on past but the lieutenant said, "Just a second, Doc. I just got some news. You can forget what I asked you to do about finding those witnesses."

  "Oh?" Dr. Magus asked. He had already forgotten it. He had had no faint intention of ever trying.

  "Quintana ain't going to change his mind about that confession. Just got word, he killed himself in his cell. The guy had guts, or else he really was crazy. Want to know what the son of a bitch did?"

  Dr. Magus had a hunch that he didn't want to know.

  "We thought we'd taken away anything he could use to kill himself with - but we didn't think to knock his teeth out. He bit open the vein in one of his wrists. And d'ya want to know what he did while he was bleeding to death?"

  "No," said Dr. Magus firmly. "Please forgive me but I do not want to know."

  He walked on rapidly, feeling a little sick.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE MURDERER FELT LOUSY. Nervous, jittery, keyed-up.

  And worried that he should feel that way for no reason at all. All of his problems were solved. He was safe.

  Everything had worked out better than he'd dared hope. The cops had even written off Mack Irby's murder. Now even if they got him for stealing the money - and he didn't see how they could ever do that anyway with the bills not marked or in consecutive numbers - they'd never suspect him of having murdered to get it. Why, he hadn't even stolen it; he'd found it accidentally and what was illegal about that? Of course if they could prove it was stolen property they could take it away from him, but how could they do more than that?

  The way in which he'd got rid of the only witness against him, Dolly, had been a master stroke. A perfect crime, because he hadn't done it himself; he'd pulled strings like a puppeteer and Dolly and Joe and Leon had danced to his pulling. Why had he been worried that anything could go wrong? Last night for a few minutes he'd almost been panicky enough to run away before waiting to see how it worked out.

  Hadn't had enough confidence in himself, that's all.

  Oh, there'd been luck on his side too. Quintana's killing himself in jail this morning, for instance. But that just made things a little better; it hadn't been necessary. They had Quintana figured for Mack Irby's murder anyway - what a brilliant thought it had been to give that money to Dolly! - but now he couldn't keep on denying he'd killed Irby until maybe they began to doubt, however slightly, that he had.

  And it had been lucky Quintana had told them he'd heard "a voice in his sleep" telling him Dolly was with Joe. Not important but a nice touch.

  There wasn't a way on earth they could touch him now for murder. And there wasn't anybody besides himself who even suspected Charlie and Mack had robbed a bank.

  Everything was perfect. Charlie and Mack dead. Dolly, Joe, Quintana dead.

  Then why was he feeling lousy today?

  Conscience? Hell, he
didn't have any conscience. That was a lot of crap. It hadn't bothered him in the slightest to kill Mack Irby - except of course when he walked out onto the midway with the stake in his hand and Dolly had seen it. Dolly? Just because she was a dame? Nuts. Anyway, he hadn't killed her; Quintana had. And for big money you couldn't be squeamish.

  He'd killed twice before in his life and neither time had it bothered him for five minutes. Of course both of those times had been back when, during the depression, he'd been on the bum or on the grift. The time on the freight train when he'd red-lighted the loud-mouthed shade. The time when he'd mugged the lush in the alley back of Clark Street in Chicago. Yes, he had to admit neither of those had been premeditated murders. He'd pushed the brakeman off the moving train in sudden anger, the same blind anger that had made him strike Sammy last night. And he hadn't really meant to kill the lush he rolled, just to make him unconscious would have been enough. But they were murders just the same. They'd have fried him for either one.

  What he needed, he thought, was a good drunk. A two-weeks knockdown-dragout drunk. But that would have to wait until after the end of the season.

  There was a knock on the trailer door. He said, "Come in," and then, "Hi, Wiggins. Sit down. Too early for a drink? I was just thinking about one."

  "Too early for me. Can't stay anyway. I'm just passing word around the lot about the funerals. Dolly's and Linder's. Both tomorrow morning at an undertaker's downtown, Gresham's. We didn't figure under the circumstances it could be a double funeral but we're having them one right after the other. Dolly's at ten, Linder's at eleven. Think you can make 'em?"

  "I'll try."

  "Good. We'd like a good turnout. Make it if you can."

  Wiggins turned to leave. The Murderer said, "Hey, wait a minute. You going to be downtown today, Wiggy?"

  "Sure. Be leaving here within half an hour."

  "Wonder if you'll do something for me. I won't be leaving the lot today at all and tomorrow morning would be kind of late. Will you have a florist send some flowers for both funerals?"

  "Be glad to. And I've got to go to a florist's anyway."

  The Murderer took a twenty out of his wallet, then hesitated and took out another.

  "Make it twenty for each."

  Wiggins took the money. "Any special kind of flowers?"

  "I wouldn't know one kind from another anyway. Flowers are flowers. Say, I hear Quintana killed himself. Not going to be a funeral for him, is there?"

  "That son of a bitch? Let the state bury him - or stuff him in a garbage can. You want anything special on either card to go with the flowers?"

  "Just my name." He hesitated and then said, "Yeah, just my name."

  "Okay. Be seeing you."

  After Wiggins left, he lifted a dinette seat and took out the whisky bottle. He'd allow himself one drink, one only. Then no more till after closing time late this evening; he'd allow himself two or three then.

  Just one drink now to drive away the jitters. He'd damned near done a foolish thing just now; he'd damned near told Wiggins to put the word, "Sorry," on the card with Dolly's flowers. That would have been foolish, all right. Not because it would have made anyone suspect anything; he was safely past any danger of that. But it would have been foolish because he'd have been admitting to himself that he was sorry. Getting sentimental and silly. That could be dangerous if he let it get him. And anyway Dolly couldn't read the card so it wouldn't mean anything.

  He put back the whisky bottle and noticed alongside it the pile of pornography books he'd moved there last night from the compartment where Sammy had found them. He picked up the top one and started to kill a bit of time looking through it.

  And, realizing something, he started to grin.

  That's what was wrong with him! He hadn't had a woman for over six weeks now, since he'd found the money! Hadn't even thought about it!

  He'd been so busy making plans so he could keep that money, so busy looking forward to the hedonistic future it would give him, that he'd forgotten the present.

  What reason was there why he couldn't have a woman tonight?

  Not that he wanted a permanent tie-up with any of these cheap carney broads. He had better plans than that, but those plans couldn't start for a couple of weeks.

  No, even after he could start spending money freely he didn't want any tie-ups. Cheaper and in the long run better to pay for it. Like many hedonistic and highly sexed men, he basically disliked women. He liked to use their bodies but had only contempt for them otherwise. Sleep with one, yes. Live with one, never. So much simpler when one could afford it, as he'd been able to do although not as often as he liked for several years now, just to pay a woman for the use of her body than to go through the boring motions of being nice to one so you could talk her into bed for free. And, if he wanted a rematch, having to try to please her as well as himself; that took two-thirds of the pleasure away. Above all, he hated sentiment, hated to pretend to feel it when he didn't, hated too the very thought that a woman might ever feel sentimental toward him. Sentiment was a lot of crap and the only way to avoid even the pretense of it was to pay for what you got, right down the line.

  Naturally, he thought of Trixie Connor.

  There were several girls on the lot who'd put out for cash, most of them strictly among the other carneys. For most of the season he'd had one or another of them in his trailer two or three times a week. Always Trixie when he'd been feeling flush; she was the most expensive thing on the lot but worth the difference if you could afford it. There were pigs like the waitress in the grab joint who'd spend the night with you for a fin; Trixie wanted that for a quick flop and twenty to spend the night, so he hadn't had Trixie too often - mostly because he wanted all night or nothing and twenty bucks several times a week ran into heavy money.

  But hell, now he could afford to have Trixie all night and every night for the rest of the season if he wanted to. Well, he couldn't go that far; he didn't want to start acting suddenly prosperous, even now. But it wouldn't be out of character for him to have Trixie come to the trailer tonight and a few more nights before the season was over. In fact he'd been acting out of character not to have had her or any other woman there for six weeks or so.

  Naturally he was jittery and nervous.

  He put the book back and looked at his watch. A good time to make the date; she'd be getting ready for the model show to open. Time for him to leave the trailer anyway and get with his own show.

  He strolled over to the model show top. He went back inside and called out Trixie's name; she came under the canvas partition that shut off the dressing space. "Hi," she said. "Haven't seen you for a long time."

  "Hi yourself, Trixie. Just decided it's been too damn long a time." He dropped his voice. "Busy tonight?"

  "Well, I promised someone I'd see him right after we close, but it's not an all-night date."

  "Good. Want to drop around to my trailer after that?"

  "Sure," she said. "Be there by one at the latest."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE HOSPITAL WAITING-ROOM was paneled in knotty pine and the sofa and two chairs were covered with cool green leather. The pictures on the walls were reproductions of a Rembrandt and an Utrillo.

  Behind a massive mahogany desk, only the receptionist struck a discordant note; she was a faded blonde placidly chewing gum and shuffling cards from an index file.

  Dr. Magus waited patiently until she looked up. He said, "I beg your pardon. I would like, if possible, to talk to the doctor who treated my son here about two months ago. I am Dr. Ranee Irby. My son's name was John MacGregor Irby, but I understand that he gave his name here as Mack Irby."

  "Whatsa doctor's name?"

  "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you that, my dear. It should show on your records. The name is Irby, I-r-b-y."

  She reached for the index file and then hesitated. "Irby - wasn't he one of the two carneys brought here after a accident, talker for a unborn show?"

  She'd been a carney her
self, Dr. Magus knew now. That made her a human being, but he couldn't risk showing it. He said carefully, "He worked for a carnival. In what capacity, I do not know. I had not seen him for many years."

  "I remember him. He had a broken leg. The other fella was killed."

  "That's right."

  "Dr. Kramer took care of him, then. He was resident here and he'd of been the only doctor around at night. It was at night they brought him here."

  "You say Dr. Kramer was the resident physician? You mean that he is no longer with you?"

  "Yeah. He's in Cincinnati now. On the staff at Miseracordia Hospital there."

  Dr. Magus sighed. "Unfortunate. But perhaps I might talk to whichever nurse would remember him best?"

  "Well - I guess so. Only I wouldn't know which one. You better talk to Miss Plackett, the head nurse."

  "Is Miss Plackett here now?"

  "She ain't on duty but she's probally in her room. Sid-down and wait. I'll ring for her."

  Dr. Magus sat down and waited, musing on the sad fate of a carney forced to work as receptionist in a hospital and on the sad fate of a hospital so short of help that it was forced to hire a receptionist who used such atrocious grammar. He didn't know which was the worse.

  A tall woman with graying hair came into the reception room. Years of experience enabled Dr. Magus to size her up at a quick glance. Sharp eyes, sharp nose. Sharp manner too, no doubt, and tough to work for, but soft as butter down inside. Easy to handle. She wasn't in uniform; she wore a severely cut navy blue suit.

  The blonde said, "This gemmun wants to talk to you, Miss Plackett."

  Dr. Magus rose, bowed slightly and smiled. His number one smile. "Miss Plackett, I am Dr. Ranee Irby. My son, I understand, spent almost seven weeks here, up to last Monday afternoon, with a broken leg and other but minor injuries. Which of your nurses would be most familiar with the case?"

  "I believe I myself would, Dr. Irby. I helped Dr. Kramer the night Mr. Irby was brought in, and I am familiar with the progress of the case up to the time he was released. Just what is it you wish to know?"