The G-String Murders

by Craig Rice

  “It’s horrible,” Dolly said through clenched teeth. “They got him cornered like a rat.”

  It was true. Police were on both ladders.

  “I’ll plug every head that passes the landing,” Louie shouted.

  There was another shot. Someone cursed and groaned. Then silence.

  The Sergeant whispered to the men and suddenly the lights went out. They were going to climb up in darkness. Gee Gee’s fingers dug deeper and deeper into my arm as we heard the grating sound of brass buttons scraping against the brick wall.

  Crack! Crack! The shots were coming from the catwalk. Louie was firing blindly from the narrow bridge. Again he fired and a crash of shattered glass followed.

  “He musta hit one of the bunch lights,” Dolly whispered.

  Crack! Then there was a click, click, click.

  “His gun’s empty.” The Sergeant’s voice boomed out, “Lights on. Lights on.”

  Every light backstage went on: the borders, the foots, the bunches, all the reds and blues, and even the trucks. The stage was illuminated for a ballet. On both sides of the wall, blue uniforms moved steadily upward like flies. They closed in on a lone man who cringed with knees bent and a look of hopelessness on his grinning face. He moved his head from side to side, watching and waiting for the first man to step on the catwalk.

  From the other side of the stage a figure cautiously made its way toward him. It was the Hermit.

  Louie clicked his useless gun, and with a curse he threw it at the flyman’s head. He missed and the gun went clattering to the stage below.

  The Hermit closed in, and from the opposite side a policeman approached.

  Louie looked from one to the other.

  “You’ll never get me!” he shouted and then he leaped straight ahead.

  Gee Gee screamed as the sound of ripping scenery filled the air, then the squash of a body hitting the stage. Dolly fainted. If Gee Gee hadn’t held her she would have rolled down the stairs.

  The lights bathed the broken body that was sprawled in the middle of the stage. Some impulse forced me downstairs. The police were approaching slowly with their guns drawn.

  It wasn’t necessary. Louie, clutching a shred of the gold flitter backdrop in his stubby hand, was dead.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “‘The ten thousand dollars were not found on the body of the dead racketeer.’” Biff stopped reading the morning paper and looked at me. “Want to hear more, Punkin?”

  The voice of the call boy from the far end of the drugstore counter came to me.

  “Sure I wuz there. He damn near fell right on me!” The attention he was getting from his wide-eyed listeners didn’t add any more to my appetite than the two eggs that were staring at me from the thick plate.

  I pushed my breakfast aside and asked Biff to read the finish of the story.

  “Aside from some loose change, there was less than three hundred dollars in his wallet. The bartender claims he gave Grindero the bills. George Johnson tells his story exclusively for the Journal on page ten …”

  “Is that the bartender’s name?” I asked.

  Biff turned to page ten and found the story. “Well, I’ll be damned! Know who it is?”

  “I could tell better if I had the paper,” I said peevishly.

  “It’s the Hermit. And just because you haven’t had enough sleep, you don’t have to be in such a bad humor.”

  “I’m sorry, honey, but …” I couldn’t go on. The smell of dishwater, Coco-Cola sirup, egg salad, and ice cream wafting from behind the counter was making me ill.

  Biff tossed some change on the counter. “Come on, Punkin, let’s walk around the block.”

  He turned around on the leather stool and gave me a hand. The paper, with its glaring headlines, Stripper Strangler Falls to Death, he tossed into the basket on the corner as we walked toward the park.

  We passed Louie’s saloon. A Negro was sweeping the pretzels, cigarette butts, and dirt of the night before into a dustpan. He grinned at Biff and said good morning.

  Biff didn’t ask, “What’s good about it?” and I was glad.

  “Wonder who gets the saloon with Louie gone?” he said.

  It was very much the thing Russell had said when La Verne was found, but it was said so differently. I thought for a second, not only of what Biff had asked, but why I wasn’t annoyed at him for thinking like Russell. He knew he wasn’t going to get the saloon.

  “Moey, maybe. He told me he was a relative; cousin or something,” I replied.

  We passed the pool parlor and the barbershop. Then the surroundings changed abruptly. Large apartment houses with trees growing in cement boxes in front of them were side by side. The handsomely dressed doormen stood at attention. Everything smelled very expensive.

  “When I get rich, I’m going to live in one of those places,” I said.

  “Yeah, and I’ll be one of the doormen,” Biff laughed.

  Then we looked more carefully at their uniforms to find the one that was the most flattering. Biff liked a bottle-green number. “The bottle part of it is what appeals to me,” he confessed, but I held out for a maroon with brass buttons.

  The park in front of us looked so green. The rain had washed the leaves on the trees and they were shining as if they’d been sprayed with brilliantine.

  We stared through the bars of the high fence at the children playing. They were all starched and combed and all had governesses watching them.

  “For rich kids, they look sorta anemic, don’t they?” Biff asked.

  “When I was her age,” I pointed to one who was about seven, “I’d been in show business for years.”

  The only comment Biff could think of was that I didn’t look anemic. Then he looked at the benches. “Wouldn’t you think they’d have a couple of them outside? It’s things like that start revolutions. Makes me want to sit down just lookin’ at ’em.”

  We were silent for a few minutes. It was the first feeling I’d had of peace for days. I felt as if I wanted to wallow in it. I took off my hat and let the breeze muss my hair.

  “I’m glad you feel better, Punkin.”

  “Are you?”

  It was a silly thing to say. Biff thought so, too. He said, “Yes, I am,” and we both laughed.

  We both stopped laughing at the same time. It was as though a cloud had passed overhead. I felt chilly.

  “Biff?”

  “What, hon?”

  “Were you thinking about Louie?”

  “Not so much about him as other things,” Biff admitted. “He couldn’t have put that damned G string in my pocket, for instance. And how did he get the Princess in the Gazeeka Box? What did he want to kill her for, anyway? Why did he want to kill La Verne, for that matter? I can’t get a clear picture of him sneaking up on a dame and strangling her with a G string. If it was a gun, maybe yes, but strangling! And he didn’t have the dough, so who got it? He didn’t have time to stash it any place.”

  We sat down on the curbstone and Biff lit two cigarettes. He gave me one and we smoked for a little while. The feeling of peace was gone. I didn’t think I’d ever feel peaceful again.

  It had to be Louie, it had to be Louie, I said to myself.

  “Who else could it be?” I asked.

  The clock on the Edison Building gonged twelve times. Without answering me, Biff rose. He helped me up. He brushed off the back of my dress and we started back to the theater.

  We passed one of the more pretentious apartment houses, but we weren’t playing our game this trip.

  “This is where the Princess lived when she was in the chorus of the People’s Theater. She had the penthouse, someone told me.” I was just making idle conversation, but Biff stopped short.

  “What’s the matter? Got a stitch from walking so fast?” I asked.

  Biff threw his cigarette away. “No, I just thought of something. When you asked me a minute ago who else would kill the Princess, I couldn’t think of anyone. But, who do you think is going to
be the happiest over her death?”

  “I give up. It looks like a tossup to me.”

  “Have you thought about the guy she was blackmailing?”

  He had asked me the one question I wouldn’t even ask myself!

  “But he was in Hot Springs when La Verne was killed,” I said. “And the cops said that one guy murdered both of them.”

  “He said he was in Hot Springs. Who saw him? Nobody. All we know is that Sammy said he called him from there. Sammy is a guy that’s working for him, don’t forget. He didn’t check into a hotel. He didn’t even take a train. Have you ever heard of him driving a car that far?”

  I hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to admit it. “Moss would no more kill a woman than I would.”

  “There you go, jumping to conclusions. I didn’t say he killed ’em. I just said that he’d be damned glad to have one of ’em damn dead.”

  “One of them is right,” I said quickly. “If you can show me one reason why he’d kill La Verne, I’ll put in with you.”

  Biff stood perfectly still on the corner of Sixteenth Street and Irving Place. If someone had walked up and handed him a million dollars, he couldn’t have looked more surprised, more pleased.

  “You’re absolutely right, Punkin,” he said. “He certainly didn’t have a reason for killing La Verne.”

  I knew better than to remind him that I had just said that. When Biff gets that look in his eye it means he’s thinking. When he’s thinking, it’s a waste of time to talk to him.

  He started walking and he took such big steps that I couldn’t have talked if I’d wanted to. I had all I could do to keep up with him. I waited to speak until we got to the drugstore. I was breathing a little heavily when we went in to have our coffee.

  Jake was sitting at the counter. He was dunking a doughnut, but it didn’t look to me as though he had his heart in it. It was absent-minded dunking.

  Russell and the two comics, Mandy and Joey, were at the counter, too. We said good morning to them and they moved down one stool to make room for us.

  “Good morning,” I said to Jake. He jumped a foot. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” I apologized, but Jake went back to his sloppy dunking without a word.

  Mandy, out of the corner of his mouth, told me that Dolly was just in and had asked Jake to put a bolt on the dressing-room door. “Meaner’n hell about it,” Mandy added in a whisper. “Said there was altogether too much stuff missing from the place. Then she tells him that she’d get the lock—like, if he got it, there wouldn’t be no reason for the bolt.”

  The counter boy was putting the coffee in a container for me when Stachi came in. With him was the oldest-looking man I’ve ever seen. I hardly expected a word of greeting from him, so I wasn’t disappointed when he brushed past me. But the old man interested me.

  He pounded on the counter with his cane. When the boy saw who it was, he dropped my coffee container to wait on him first. Ordinarily I’d be annoyed at such bad service, but this was rather amusing. The old man’s beady eyes peered at the menu behind the counter.

  “What’s that say, boy?” he asked. His voice was pitched as high as a woman’s and if he couldn’t read that menu himself, I’ll play four weeks of stock for Minsky. Those beady little eyes weren’t missing anything. He let the boy go straight through the menu. Then he ordered a ham sandwich to go out.

  The boy fixed it for him. Extra ham, I noticed. When the old man left, Stachi left with him.

  No one else in the drugstore seemed to think they were an unusual pair. Biff was matching pennies with the boys and they didn’t look up from their game.

  “Who’s the old guy, whom you make with the fancy service for?” I asked the waiter.

  He was looking ruefully at a nickel in his palm. “Him? Oh, that’s old man Daryimple. Richest guy in the whole world, I guess. Lives across the street.” With a toss of his head he indicated the most expensive-looking residence in the neighborhood. “He’s in here real often. Stingy as all get-out. Tips me a nickel.”

  He held the nickel up and looked at it again. What the old man tipped didn’t interest me; what he was doing with Stachi did.

  “The three of ’em play cards nearly every night,” the boy said when I asked him. “The other guy works in your joint, too. He’s a stagehand or somethin’. Even when I deliver sandwiches to the old guy’s house, he don’t gimme more’n a nickel.” He put the coffee in the paper bag and handed it to me.

  “Maybe he really isn’t rich,” I said.

  “Isn’t rich! He owns damn near all the town. All down there is his.” The boy made a gesture that took in more than half of the city. “And all down there is his.” That gesture took in what was left. “And still he only tips me a nickel.”

  All that talk about tipping put me in a spot. I gave the kid a quarter so he wouldn’t talk about me and left.

  I waved at Biff from the door and he yelled, “See you in there, Punkin, soon’s I clean these guys out.”

  He flipped a penny on the floor. Then he moaned. Biff’s cleaning up in gambling games usually meant that he was the one who had to borrow a nickel carfare home.

  Three old men playing cards every night. One of them the richest man in the world; one a doorman, and the other a stagehand in a burlesque theater. The only stagehand whom I could fit into that puzzle was our new hero, the Hermit.

  Oh well, I thought as I kicked the stage door open, that’s what I like about burlesque; something doing every minute.

  An odor of theater hit me. Some actors like the smell, but to me it’s plain bad, like any other unclean odor.

  It was dark backstage and I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t want to look at the stage at that moment. It won’t be so bad when the lights are on and people are around, I thought, but I knew if I saw the spot where Louie had fallen, it would have made me too weak to go on for the matinee.

  On the way upstairs I made a fervent wish that there wouldn’t be a bloodstain.

  When I walked in, I heard Gee Gee saying, “Bad luck and deaths run in threes.” She turned to me and asked if that wasn’t right. “About threes, I mean.”

  It sounded like a buildup for a little fortunetelling and I wasn’t in the mood.

  “I’m not superstitious,” I lied.

  “Just careful?” Dolly asked. She was beading her eyes, so I couldn’t see her face, but there was a funny note in her voice.

  Gee Gee didn’t pay any attention to her. If it wasn’t tea leaves on her mind, I was sure it was cards. I was right.

  “Gyppy, tell my fortune.” She shoved the cards under my nose. “Not a big fortune; just the circle.”

  “Later, honey. I’m not anxious to find out what’s happening around this mansion of mirth anyway, and …”

  “That’s why I want to tell it, Gyp.” She was absolutely serious. “I gotta hunch about something and …” She lowered her voice and looked around the room to see if anyone was listening.

  They were all intent on their make-up with the exception of Alice. She was laboriously writing. The well-chewed pencil scratched the paper as Gee Gee spoke.

  “I don’t think Louie is the murderer.”

  I raised an eyebrow because she expected it, but, after listening to Biff, I wasn’t as surprised as I might have been.

  “Who do you think?” I asked.

  “The Chinese waiter, that’s who.”

  I thought she was kidding. When I realized she meant it, I had to tell her I thought she was crazy.

  “Crazy, eh? Well, whose sealing wax was it on the door? Who was in and out of the room all night? Who hated her like poison?” As far as Gee Gee was concerned, the waiter was as close to the electric chair as he could be without getting singed. She had a look in her eye that told me she’d be delighted to pull the switch.

  “A guy isn’t going to kill a dame just because she heaves a pop bottle at him, you know.”

  Gee Gee gave me a knowing look.

  “And what about the Princess?” I asked. “Why and
how did he kill her?”

  The knowing look vanished. “Oh, Gyp, you always spoil everything,” she said petulantly. “I go work up a case and you gotta stick a pin in the balloon.”

  She put her elbows on the shelf and cupped her face in her hands. I was frightened to death that she was thinking. I was right again.

  “Maybe the Princess was Chinese.” She closed her eyes a little, visualizing a picture that would probably have something to do with the death of the thousand-and-one cuts. Gee Gee’s pictures are always good ones, if you have a strong stomach.

  “Or maybe the Chinese is one of these Russian Chinese. She could have been kidnaped and he could …”

  “Honey, I hate to stick another pin in another balloon, but the Princess was a Polack. Her right name was Rosa Yabilowshsky or something.”

  Gee Gee glared at me. But that name was too much for her. While she tried to think of an answer a new country was heard from.

  “Doeth thith thound legal-like?” Alice had finished writing and she held the paper out for someone to read. No one reached for it so she read it aloud herself: “Dear Mr. Moth: Thith will therve ath my two weekth notithe. If you could let me go thooner I would be deeply grateful. Alithe Angel.”

  She waited for a moment for a comment before asking, “Maybe that ‘deeply grateful’ ith too much, huh?”

  “No, it’s all right,” I said. “But why are you giving in your notice now that you have a strip spot and everything?”

  She blushed and tried to change the subject, but I was insistent.

  “Well, I’m—that ith, he—I’m going to get married and he doethn’t want me to … Oh, I don’t want to hurt anyone’th feelingth or anything, but he doethn’t think thtripteathing ith nithe for a married woman.”

  Dolly tucked her crocheting in a pillowcase and pinned the top carefully. “I don’t blame him,” she said with finality.

  “I do,” Jannine said. “It isn’t modesty or anything else, but damned selfishness. Like a lot of guys want the most beautiful paintings in the world and when they get ’em, they won’t let anybody look at ’em. They hang ’em in some old hallway.”

  “I don’t think that Alice’s new husband will hang her in any hall …” I put my hand to my mouth, but it was too late.