Having Wonderful Crime

by Craig Rice

  Malone stood in the lobby, looking after them. The picture of young Dennis Morrison breaking down and spending hours riding back and forth on ferry boats gave him an unpleasant pang. The picture of Dennis Morrison in the hands of the police was even more unpleasant. Malone didn’t like to see anyone in the hands of the police, even his worst enemies. Yet, there was nothing he could do about it now. By this time, Dennis had undoubtedly been given a sedative and put to bed. In the morning—

  Meanwhile he did have the job of finding Bertha Morrison, and the first part of it was winning back the money old man Proudfoot had paid him. He located the helpful elevator boy and headed for the poker game with most of Joe the Angel’s hundred dollars in his pockets, hope in his heart, and larceny in his mind.

  18. Just Looking Around

  Malone woke up with a mild hangover, a clear conscience, a slightly blackened eye, and a bit over seven hundred dollars hidden behind one of the pictures in his room. The clear conscience was due to the fact that four hundred and thirty-seven of the dollars belonged to him by right, and a hundred to Joe the Angel. His possession of the remaining two hundred-odd dollars seemed to him a simple matter of poetic justice, though he doubted if Abner Proudfoot would see it that way when he learned about it. The black eye had been gained during a discussion of whether or not he should be allowed to take his winnings away with him, and because of Malone’s quite natural objection to being called a crooked poker player. The hangover was entirely his own idea, and made him a trifle proud. Malone’s feeling about a hangover depended entirely on the circumstances which had accounted for it.

  He was even humming a little when he met Helene in the lobby. “You’ve been fighting again,” she said reprovingly.

  Malone shook his head. “A mosquito bit me on the eyelid, and I slapped him harder than I’d intended.”

  Helene sniffed. “That was a wonderful mosquito, to fly into a New York hotel room during April.”

  “This mosquito rode in on a rocket ship,” Malone said. They went into the coffee shop, where the little lawyer ordered a double pot of black coffee, and implored the waitress to bring it fast.

  “I suppose the mosquito bought you a drink, too,” Helene said.

  “I bought the drink,” Malone said. “After all, he was my guest, wasn’t he? Where’s Jake?”

  “Out,” Helene said. She was silent for a minute, frowning. “He went out early this morning. He said he had important business to attend to, and he didn’t know when he’d be back.”

  “He’s probably gone to see Wildavine,”

  Malone said, starting on his second cup of coffee. His head was beginning to clear now.

  “Malone, what does he see in her?”

  “It’s her poetry,” Malone said. He’d been wondering the same thing. “It would fascinate anybody.”

  “And Wildavine telephoned me this morning and invited all three of us to dinner tomorrow night.”

  “Tell her I’ve broken my leg,” Malone said. “Tell her I’m coming down with the measles.” Still, he did want to find out what Wildavine had been doing in the St. Jacques bar the night of the murder. “On second thought, tell her I’ll be delighted. Her poetry fascinated me, too.” He signaled the waitress and ordered ham and eggs, fried potatoes, pancakes, and a piece of pie. “Maybe you ought to write a poem, too. That would fix everything up.”

  “Maybe I will,” Helene said ominously. “And I’m worried about Dennis Morrison. I wanted to invite him to breakfast with us, and the desk clerk said he went out yesterday afternoon and hasn’t come back. What could have happened to him?”

  “He’s in jail,” Malone said, before he thought.

  Her eyes widened. “In jail! Why? What for?”

  “For riding ferry boats,” Malone said.

  “Malone, they can’t put people in jail for that.”

  The little lawyer sighed. “The answer to that line was thrown out of vaudeville a year before you were born,” he said wearily. He decided it would be better to tell her all the circumstances of how Dennis Morrison got in jail. She’d read them in the papers later, anyway.

  She listened attentively, sipping her coffee. When he’d finished she said in a determined voice, “I’m going with you.”

  “That will be wonderful,” Malone said. He blinked, and added hastily, “You’re going with me where?”

  “To see Dennis Morrison, of course,” she said, “and get him out of this mess.”

  “Purely a delusion,” Malone said. “I’m not going anywhere, and I’m certainly not going to take you with me.”

  Helene looked at him reproachfully and said, “That poor young man!” Malone muttered something unintelligible into his coffee. “And what am I going to do all day?” she went on, in an accusing tone. “You busy with Dennis Morrison, Jake out somewhere. I’ve already been on six sight-seeing tours of New York, and I’ve lost one of my knitting needles.”

  Malone said in a faltering voice, “There is a train for Chicago at six-forty-five tonight, and I’ve got to spend the day packing—” His voice trailed away. He knew when he was licked. Besides, Helene did need to have her mind taken off her personal worries. “But for the love of Mike, behave yourself. This is New York, and you won’t be dealing with Chicago cops.”

  “Cops are cops,” Helene said, with self-confidence.

  There was a moment when Malone shared her self-confidence. That was when O’Brien, loitering in the anteroom outside Arthur Peterson’s office, looked at Helene, at her serene face and shining hair, at her wide-brimmed, violet felt hat, at her pale violet suit and the honey-colored fur collapsed over her arms, at her slender, lovely legs, decorated with stockings the exact shade of corn silk. O’Brien just said, “Gosh!” He said it almost reverently. As though by some interdepartmental telepathy, Birnbaum and Schultz appeared magically in the anteroom. The three of them converged on Malone with smiles of greeting, looking admiringly at Helene.

  During the introductions Helene smiled dazzlingly and impartially at them all. Then she said, wide-eyed, to O’Brien and Birnbaum, “Are you really detectives? I’ve always wanted to meet one!” They assured her happily that they were, offered to show her through headquarters, and to tell her some really exciting stories about detection.

  “Him, though,” Malone said, gesturing at Schultz, “he’s just an ordinary uniformed cop.” Schultz held back a comment about Malone, bridled, and tried to look like a composite rotogravure picture of New York’s Finest.

  Helene flickered her long eyelashes at him and said, “It’s wonderful how much handsomer a uniform makes any man look! I imagine policemen must live terribly dangerous lives, don’t they!” Schultz purred, and agreed that they did.

  By the time the brisk young secretary came to usher Malone and Helene into Arthur Peterson’s office, O’Brien, Birnbaum, and Schultz were Helene’s adoring slaves, and Malone’s self-confidence had soared to a new high. It fell to a momentary all-time low, however, when Arthur Peterson looked up from behind his desk, turned first red, then white, and finally said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  If the little lawyer had known the reason behind Arthur Peterson’s confusion, he might have felt better. After all, Arthur Peterson prided himself on being an upright and conscientious man, to whom keeping secrets between a husband and wife was definitely reprehensible—in spite of the fact that he liked the husband, and that the secret was designed to bring a pleasant surprise to the wife sometime in the near future. The business of finding it necessary to keep the same secret from the newspapers and from his immediate superior was even more bothersome. It was not only unethical, it was the sort of thing that created departmental inefficiency. And then, after a sleepless night of worrying about the rights and wrongs of the situation, to have the wife in question drop in, accompanied by that drunken, probably ignorant, and undoubtedly crooked Chicago lawyer! It was too much! He added, coldly, “Well?”

  Malone was saved from answering, “Well, yourself, you damn
ed squarehead,” by Helene’s bringing one of her high heels down on his toe.

  “How nice to see you again!” she said brightly. “I’m sure you don’t remember me, but we met that awful morning at the St. Jacques, after that perfectly frightful murder. I know, I thought at the time, how fortunate it was that someone was in charge of the case who was really understanding and humane. And,” she added, after a quick glance at Arthur Peterson’s marvelously arranged desk top, “someone so efficient!”

  Arthur Peterson said very lightly and casually, “Oh, we try to do our best.” He wondered if Jake Justus really appreciated not only the rare beauty but the fine intelligence of his wife.

  Malone had been holding his breath, now he relaxed. He’d seen Helene giving that double-barreled smile to policemen before, all the way from Captain von Flanagan of the Chicago Homicide squad to the Sheriff of Jackson County, Wisconsin. It had never failed yet, but there always had to be a first time, and Arthur Peterson had looked like a peculiar customer. Malone beamed, and said, “We’re here about Dennis Morrison, of course.” He took out a cigar and began unwrapping it.

  “Oh, yes, naturally,” Peterson said, still admiring Helene. “You’re his lawyer, aren’t you?”

  “Well,” Malone said, lighting the cigar, “in a sense, yes.”

  “More than that,” Helene said, with just the right touch of mild indignation in her voice, “we’re his friends.” She looked anxiously at the police officer. “I hope you aren’t going to keep him in jail very long.”

  “We aren’t going to keep him in jail at all,” Peterson said, half sharply. A note of bitterness crept into his voice. “He hasn’t broken any law.”

  The little lawyer said, “Glad you see it that way. I didn’t think there was any law against having some perfect stranger murdered in your bridal suite, while you were out on a big bender, or having your bride run away from home. So unless he was drunk and disorderly, or gone insane—”

  “He wasn’t,” Peterson said quickly. “Neither one. He was disturbed and confused, and showed all the evidences of having been under a terrific strain.”

  “And no wonder,” Malone said, chewing savagely on his cigar. “How would you have felt if your bride had disappeared on your wedding night?”

  Arthur Peterson blushed a little and said sternly, “In this job, we find it necessary to avoid personal comparisons.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve found any trace of her yet,” Malone added casually.

  “That’s in another department,” Peterson told him. “Missing Persons.”

  “Maybe she’s been murdered, too,” Helene said, round-eyed, and in an awed voice.

  “In that case, it would come into this department,” Peterson said. “Homicide.”

  Helene looked fascinated, beautiful, and said, “Oh!”

  Arthur Peterson reflected on what a fortunate and probably undeserving individual Helene’s husband was. He said, “Dennis Morrison is on his way here. There are a few little formalities we must go through before his release. Meanwhile, perhaps, as his lawyer, you’ll want to have some private conversation with him.”

  “Of course,” Malone said. He imagined that the police officer had figured on some private conversation with Helene. He was right.

  “And maybe you’d like to look around a little,” Arthur Peterson said, beaming fatuously. “Our crime-detection laboratories are really interesting.”

  “I’d adore it!” Helene said, in a thrilled voice. As they went out the door, she was saying, “Is it really true that you can tell, just from looking at a person’s fingerprints—” and Arthur Peterson was saying happily, “I’ll be glad to explain about that to you.” Malone sighed, shook his head, and relit his cigar. Helene, as usual, had been right. Cops were cops.

  O’Brien brought in a pale, tired-looking Dennis Morrison, who smiled wanly and said, “Good of you to come all the way down here.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Malone said. He was wondering if Dennis Morrison had any money. Probably not. He was always getting stuck with clients who had to pay off with cigarette coupons. Then he remembered suddenly that he was already engaged by Abner Proudfoot to find the missing Bertha Morrison, and that Dennis, unknowingly, might be a help. “I was glad to come.”

  “You can trust him,” O’Brien said to Dennis Morrison. “He’s a good guy. Cousin of mine.” He grinned at Malone and went out.

  “Now tell me,” Malone said, “what the hell were you doing on that ferry boat?”

  “Just—well, just riding,” Dennis Morrison said. “It’s a little hard to explain. You see, they called me up. I guess you know that. I’d been lying down, trying to think things out, trying to decide what I ought to do to find Bertha. And then this police detective telephoned. They’d identified that girl. I felt a lot better, at first. You know. It seemed so awful to think of her lying there in the morgue, without anyone knowing who she was. Mr. Peterson said her father had identified her, and he was at police headquarters now. They just wanted to ask me a few questions and I said I’d be right down.” He paused.

  Malone threw away the stub of his cigar and began unwrapping a fresh one. “It’s taking you a long time to get on that ferry boat,” he said amiably.

  “I told you this was hard to explain,” Dennis Morrison said. He frowned. “I got a newspaper in the subway station.” He paused again. “Habit, I guess. I took the subway instead of a taxi. And I read the paper on the subway train. It told all about Gloria Garden, and about her dad, an old small-town doctor, identifying her. I didn’t mean to stay on the train, but I did. I just didn’t notice when I got to my station. And then I was at South Ferry, and I got off there and realized where I was, and suddenly I decided I’d ride back and forth on the ferry just once, to clear my head a little. No, I hadn’t been drinking, it was just that I couldn’t face meeting that old small-town doctor, after I’d murdered his daughter.”

  “Quite naturally,” Malone said, very calmly. He bit off the end of his cigar and lighted it very leisurely. “After you’d done what?”

  “Murdered his daughter,” Dennis Morrison repeated. He sounded almost irritable. “Because I did, of course. By my absence.” He laughed harshly. “That’s it, you see. I murdered her by my absence. I don’t know who she was, or anything about her, I don’t know how she got into our suite or why she was wearing Bertha’s blue satin nightgown, or why and how she was killed. But if I’d been there, instead of being out on a bender, she wouldn’t have been killed. See what I mean? So I’m her murderer, really. And I rode back and forth on the boat, thinking about her old dad, and how he’d come all the way here from someplace in Iowa or Ohio or wherever it was, only to find her in the morgue, and that it was my fault. I kept thinking about jumping off the ferry boat, but I couldn’t, I had to stay alive and find out what had become of Bertha, and then when the boat docked again there were the police, and they brought me here.” He drew a long, sighing breath. “They’ve been very nice to me, really. I told them exactly how it was, and why I felt the way I did, and they were very nice. Some doctor, a Dr. Grosher, I think his name was, gave me an examination and asked me a lot of questions, and then he gave me something to make me sleep, and I just woke up about an hour ago.”

  “I see,” Malone said, puffing furiously on his cigar. He distrusted kindliness on the part of the police, and especially he distrusted police doctors.

  “Now,” Dennis Morrison said, “before they let me go, they’re going to make me look at that girl—Gloria Garden—again. Why should they do that? I’ve already told them I didn’t know who she was. So why, now that they’ve identified her—”

  “Purely a formality,” Malone said automatically. He flicked a nonexistent ash off his cigar and said, “No, it isn’t a formality. They think that you do know her, and that they can shock you into showing it. An old trick. Just keep your nerve, that’s all. Don’t worry, I’ll be right—”

  The door opened and Helene’s voice trilled, “—but that’s d
angerous, Captain Peterson! Aren’t you ever scared?”

  “Pure routine,” Arthur Peterson said, shutting the door. His voice had a definite purr in it now.

  Later, Malone was never sure just how Helene talked herself into going along when Dennis Morrison was taken to view Gloria Garden—or Hazel Puckett—for the second time. He rather doubted if Arthur Peterson knew, either. Yes, definitely, New York or Chicago, cops were cops. And morgues were morgues. The same dreary anteroom, the same green steel filing cases. The same unpleasant, hygienic smell. The same bored attendants reading movie magazines.

  He realized suddenly that this was his own first look at the corpse, and his nerves tightened. He was not more than half aware of Dennis Morrison’s white, sick face, or of Helene’s murmur to Arthur Peterson that indeed she did want to go along all the way, and that she wouldn’t be the least bit frightened with him right at her side.

  “Don’t get disturbed,” the attendant said, “she’s fixed up real nice.” He slid out the drawer and said, “Pretty, wasn’t she?” Malone wasn’t conscious of Helene’s little gasp, or of Dennis Morrison’s moan. Gloria Garden, née Hazel Puckett, hadn’t been pretty, she’d been beautiful. The newspaper photographs, even the magazine covers, hadn’t begun to do justice to her, to the soft, moon-colored hair, the exquisite skin, the lovely face. He wondered what color her eyes had been.

  “No,” Dennis Morrison said, half sobbing. “No, I’ve never seen that face before. Never in my life.”

  Malone tautened. He caught his breath before he said, “Maybe you haven’t seen the face before, but how about the body?”

  “This isn’t any time or place for humor, Mr. Malone,” Arthur Peterson said harshly.

  “I’m not being humorous,” Malone said. “I’m just pointing out something that you cops have been too dumb to catch onto before now.” He wished he were anywhere else in the world than here in the morgue, because never before in his life had he wanted the feel of a cigar between his fingers as badly as now. He’d spent the longest split second of a lifetime deciding whether to follow up his hunch himself or to let the police follow it up for him. He’d decided on the latter. “I was just asking if our young friend here could identify the body, without the face.”