The Wrong Murder

by Craig Rice

  He knew the night was going to end that way, because that was the way they always did.

  John J. Malone held out his glass to be refilled, emptied it with one breath, and reminded himself that tomorrow morning was the beginning of a new year, and he was going to start life all over again.

  He heard the door open and close. He looked up and saw Joe the Angel’s face whiten a shade and then freeze grotesquely into an expression of horror.

  “Malone!”

  The voice that screamed it was strained, hoarse, terrible, a travesty of a voice. Malone wheeled around on the bar stool.

  A man had come in the door and stood there clinging to the knob with one white-knuckled hand. He was a stranger to John J. Malone. He was hatless, and tiny bits of snow glistened on his smooth, black hair. He was a tall man, lean and angular, dressed in a mustard tweed suit, with a badly worn but expensive camel’s hair topcoat thrown back on his shoulders. There was a deep tan on his big-boned, deeply lined face, but the color now was a hideous, bloodless gray.

  He took two steps into the room.

  “Malone—”

  There was a ghastly, bubbling sound in the voice.

  The crowd in Joe the Angel’s bar was still as death. The man took one more step, and held out his hand Almost automatically, without thinking, John J. Malone reached out his own hand to grasp it. The hand clasped his and loosened again. He felt something hard and cold slip into his palm.

  Then the stranger began to fall. First his knees buckled—slowly—so that he sank to the floor in an attitude of prayer, his hands outstretched in front of him. A look of horror and incredulity came over his colorless face. Then he fell backward, his head striking the wood floor with a strange, hollow sound. One knee unbent, the foot flying out in a curious, springing movement; the other leg remained crooked under him. There was a sudden, horrible twitching that shook his entire frame and then, just as suddenly, he lay still.

  John J. Malone was the first to move. He slid off the bar stool, lurched only a trifle, and knelt beside the twisted figure on the floor. After a divided second he rose, drew a nickel from his pocket, and threw it on the bar.

  “Gimme a slug.”

  Joe the Angel handed him a telephone slug. No one else moved.

  The little lawyer crossed the narrow room to the telephone booth, dropped the slug in the telephone, and dialed POL-1313

  “Send a squad car to Joe the Angel’s, on Dearborn Street. There’s a dead man on the floor.”

  He slammed down the receiver after missing the hook on the first try.

  At exactly that moment hell broke loose. The radio back of the bar began to let forth sounds that rocked the little machine. Outside, whistles began to scream, bells clanged, and the off-pitch roar of voices was heard all the way from State Street where the crowds were gathered.

  It was twelve o’clock on New Year’s Eve, the beginning of a new year.

  John J. Malone swallowed the gin he had left on the bar. When it had set the blood moving in his veins again the little lawyer opened his hand and looked at what the stranger had slipped there in the last moment of his life.

  It was a key. An ordinary key, with the number 114 printed on its handle.

  Chapter Two

  “I tell you I never saw the guy before,” John J. Malone repeated. “I haven’t the faintest idea who he was. He came into Joe the Angel’s bar and dropped dead on the floor at exactly two minutes to twelve, and that’s every last thing I know about him.”

  “Don’t try to give me that noise, Malone.” Daniel von Flanagan of the homicide division scowled heavily. He was a tall, big man, somewhere near middle age, with a large moon face and thinning, gray hair. “You must’ve known him because he knew you. He made it to Joe the Angel’s bar from some place up the street with a knife in his ribs, and hollered ‘Malone.’”

  “He mistook me for someone else,” the lawyer said.

  Von Flanagan snorted loudly. “Come on, who was he? A client? Or just somebody a client of yours was using for target practice?”

  “He was a perfect stranger to me,” Malone insisted. He added under his breath, “And I wish to God you were.”

  It was sometime between two and three by the big electric clock in von Flanagan’s office. The first squad car had arrived at Joe the Angel’s bar just as the last echoes of the twelve o’clock racket were dying away. The dead-wagon had arrived from the morgue thirty seconds later. That was routine. However, since it was New Year’s Eve, locating anyone in authority had taken a little time. The deadlock in von Flanagan’s office was only starting its second hour now.

  John J. Malone was even unhappier than before, and in addition he felt terrible. It had been two hours and twenty-five minutes since the last drink of gin, and the after effects of the preceding gins were beginning to take hold. He felt that his arms, legs, and head were a little too heavy for the rest of him, and he had a vague notion that small green men were sitting on his shoulders, poking miniature battering rams into his ears.

  “Why pick on me,” he said morosely, “just because I happened to be sitting quietly in a barroom when some bum gets mixed up in a knifing?”

  “He was no bum,” von Flanagan said. “Not that guy. He had over four hundred bucks in his kick and a fancy Swiss watch strapped on his wrist.”

  “All right,” Malone said, with an attempt at amiability. “He wasn’t a bum. That proves I couldn’t have known him. Let’s call the whole thing off. If you ask me, headquarters is one hell of a place to spend New Year’s Eve.”

  “You should talk,” von Flanagan growled. “What if you had my job? Damn it, Malone, I never wanted to be a cop. As soon as I get enough dough saved up to buy a little weekly newspaper some place in the country, I’m gonna quit. This just goes to show you. Here I was at a New Year’s party at my brother-in-law’s—” He paused, looked thoughtful, and added, “Not but what it wasn’t a stinking party, anyway. What’dya say, Malone, when I get through with this mess—I think we could still make the last floor show at the Grand Terrace?”

  The little lawyer’s face brightened. He looked at his watch and said, “I guess we could.”

  “Fine,” von Flanagan said heartily. “Now about this guy—” He scowled. “Why couldn’t he of fell over right where he was, in some place where somebody might of known him, instead of walking all over town just to make it hard for me. Somebody stuck him in the ribs, just below his right shoulder blade. If it’d been on the other side, he probably would of died right then and there. But no, he has to—”

  “How far does the doc think he walked?” Malone interrupted.

  “Hell, he can’t say. Chances are he didn’t get more’n a coupla blocks before internal hemorrhage carried him off but that don’t prove nothing.” Von Flanagan spoke bitterly.

  “Well, I was only trying to help,” the lawyer said in an injured tone. Suddenly he frowned. “Funny he wouldn’t have any kind of identification on him. This is none of my business, but do you mind if I take a good look at his clothes?”

  “Not a bit,” von Flanagan told him, a shade more hopefully than before. “Take another look at him, too. I’ve got to go back to the morgue anyway and you might as well come along to keep me company.”

  “Remember, though, I’m not mixing up in this,” Malone said, as he struggled into his overcoat.

  “Oh, sure,” the police official assured him, almost too heartily. “As long as you’re positive you don’t know who he was, and why he came into Joe the Angel’s bar hollering for you, why it’s none of your affair. You’re just helping me out a little tonight, that’s all. You’re not mixed up in it a bit.”

  The lawyer hoped von Flanagan was right, but he didn’t believe it.

  The stranger who had stumbled into Joe the Angel’s bar had been a handsome and impressive figure. He appeared so even now, in the gloomy austerity of the Cook County morgue. He had been tall, big-boned, and muscular, with a lean, large-featured face. It had been a hard face, almos
t cruel; seen even now against the white-sheeted table, it had an expression of grim, inexorable force, a determination that persisted even in death.

  “Tough-looking mug,” von Flanagan needlessly commented.

  The dead man’s hair had been chestnut brown, almost black, coarse and heavy, and perfectly straight. The skin on his chest and upper arms was delicately white, almost womanish, but where it had been exposed to sun and wind it was a deep, leathery brown. Malone guessed that his eyes had been either gray or blue, probably gray.

  “Sure you don’t know him?” von Flanagan asked.

  The lawyer shook his head. “Not from Adam. Never saw him in my life.” He felt almost entirely sober now, but still extremely uncomfortable. He wished he had a drink. The spectacle of the unidentified man starting the new year in the Cook County morgue depressed him.

  “Let’s look at his clothes,” he told von Flanagan.

  The camel’s hair topcoat and mustard tweed suit were piled together untidily on a nicked brown wooden table. Malone poked at them absently, picked up the white broadcloth shirt and examined it, ran a finger over the heavy tan brogues. Suddenly he stood stock-still, his face expressionless, staring at the heap of clothing.

  “What time did it stop snowing tonight?”

  Von Flanagan blinked. “Sometime around midnight. I can find out exactly when it was, if you want me to.”

  “I do,” the lawyer said. While von Flanagan telephoned to the weather bureau, he continued to stand by the table, his eyes fixed on the dead man’s clothing, yet seeing something twenty blocks away.

  Von Flanagan came back and reported, “It stopped snowing at eleven-forty. Can you make something of it?”

  “Twenty minutes to twelve,” Malone said absent-mindedly. He was silent for a moment, then spoke almost dreamily. “When this guy came into Joe the Angel’s bar, it was three or four minutes before twelve. He had snow on his shoes, plenty of it, so he’d been walking. But there wasn’t any snow on his clothes, so it hadn’t been snowing when he was walking. Snow would have stuck to that fuzzy topcoat.” He drew a long breath. “This guy walked to Joe the Angel’s from someplace under seventeen or eighteen minutes’ walking distance, maybe less, but certainly not more. The medical examiner said he’d had a drink or two just before he was killed, not many, but one or two. Now you can try all the places where he might have got a drink within a few blocks of Joe the Angel’s, and see if you can find anybody who remembers him.”

  Von Flanagan looked at him. “I never would of thought of that.”

  “I think of everything,” the lawyer said smugly. He picked up the mustard tweed trousers and examined them, ran a quick glance over the camel’s hair topcoat. “He fell down, once or maybe twice. Mud on his knees and elbows, a little on the front of his coat, fresh mud. Fell down, maybe lay there a few minutes, dished himself out a last batch of energy and got up again.”

  “Finding you must have been pretty important,” von Flanagan said softly.

  Malone ignored him. He picked up the coat of the tweed suit in one hand and one of the tan brogues in the other. “These clothes tell something else, too, if you weren’t too dumb to see it for yourself.”

  The police officer blinked. “I’m just a cop. What else?”

  “These shoes were bought in England and the suit was made there. You can’t get either in this country. Neither are very badly worn. He hasn’t been wearing them more than two months at the most. You might try to find out if some guy looking like this came into the country within the last couple of months and maybe you can find out who he was.”

  “Thanks, Malone,” von Flanagan said explosively. “I want you to know I really appreciate—” He paused, scowled, and said, “But I can’t figure out why he came into Joe the Angel’s and bawled for you.”

  “I never saw him and I never heard of him,” Malone said crossly. One hand slipped into his coat pocket and felt of the key the stranger in his last moment of life had put in his hand. He wished he had a chance to take it out and examine it. “Let’s get the hell out of here, I want a drink.”

  Von Flanagan nodded and muttered something about the last show at the Grand Terrace, then said, “Too bad those friends of yours, Jake Justus and that crazy blonde wife of his, aren’t along.”

  Malone sighed and nodded. He too had been wishing for Jake and Helene. He had an uncomfortable premonition that he was going to need them.

  The late show at the Grand Terrace was all Malone had anticipated, but it didn’t seem to improve his state of mind. Switching from gin to rye didn’t help much, either. If only von Flanagan would give him a chance to examine that key! But the police officer stuck to him like a summons server.

  At the next stop, a second-rate black and tan, the floor show wasn’t as good, but it was noisier. Malone tried following the rye with beer, and felt that an upswing was beginning at last.

  Von Flanagan reminded him that if anything should be asked in the future, they’d spent the whole night attending to the matter of the murdered stranger, and added, “Boy, I wish I had a wife like the one Jake Justus got. Some guys have all the luck.”

  Malone agreed with him, and wished he would stop talking about Jake and Helene. He didn’t like to admit how much he missed them. It was forever, too. They would come back from their honeymoon and Jake would get a job, probably some nine-to-five affair, and he and Helene would settle down to quiet domesticity. In time they would move to the suburbs and he, Malone, would be occasionally invited out to dreary, interminable Sunday dinners. The old days were done now. Of course, if only Jake had won that bet with Mona McClane, and had the Casino to play with—but no use thinking about that now. Unless—He stopped and reminded himself sternly that Jake was a married man now, with responsibilities, and no time to go around mixing up in murder, even to win crazy bets.

  At the next black and tan the floor show was not as noisy, but it was dirtier. Malone tried alternating gin and rye, and began to feel that the world was almost livable again. Von Flanagan was reminded of some incident in the courtship of Jake and Helene, and Malone offered him a poke in the nose if he didn’t change the subject.

  There were no more floor shows anywhere, but at the bar on North Clark Street, Malone consented to sing three verses of Molly Darling.

  The sun rose that morning of January first at 7:24. No one of importance noticed it. Malone and von Flanagan had returned to Joe the Angel’s bar for what both agreed would be a last quick one before going home to bed.

  The police officer’s face had taken on an oddly mottled tone. Now it suddenly became grimly determined. He leaned close to the little lawyer.

  “Now,” he said in an ugly voice, “maybe you’ll tell me why that guy came in here and hollered for you after he’d been stabbed, or do I have to throw you in the can as a material witness?”

  Malone blinked once, and called von Flanagan a colorful collection of names that ran all the way down the alphabet. He dwelt on the subject of the police officer’s family tree, including the questionable behavior of two unmarried great-aunts.

  Some perfect stranger standing at the bar turned to the lawyer and said angrily, “He’s m’friend. Y’can’t say that t’him, y’drunken bum.”

  “Bum!” Malone roared wildly. His face was purple. “I’ll show you from drunken bums!” His left missed the stranger by a good two inches, but as he swung, his foot caught von Flanagan’s ankle and toppled the big man to the floor. At the same instant the stranger’s right landed on Malone’s nose.

  The lawyer let out an anguished howl, butted the stranger in the stomach, grabbed a chair, and aimed it at von Flanagan, who had got to his feet. Someone else at the bar decided the odds were unfair and joined the fray on Malone’s side. Von Flanagan slung a beer bottle at Malone with deadly intent, missed him, and knocked out the stranger who had precipitated the brawl. By that time Malone and his ally had forgotten who was fighting whom, and were scuffling on the floor. Joe the Angel called the police.

&n
bsp; The little lawyer, a few inches of his unknown ally’s necktie between his teeth, was still offering to fight anyone who would come within reach when he was booked for disorderly conduct. By the time he had reached the jail, however, he was peacefully quiet. All he wanted was a nice, comfortable place to sleep, and the bunk in his cell looked as good a place as any. It was even homelike.

  Just as the door clanged shut, however, he had one last flash of sober thought. At last he was going to have a minute to himself. He waited artfully until the last footsteps had died away, and then felt in his pocket for the mysterious key.

  It was gone.

  Chapter Three

  It was thirty minutes past eleven on Thursday, the second of January, when John J. Malone arrived at his office, pale and a trifle shaken, but otherwise none the worse for wear.

  Extricating Captain Daniel von Flanagan of the homicide squad from the clutches of the law had taken a little doing. On leaving his office that New Year’s Eve, the police official had carefully removed his credentials and other identification from his pockets, explaining to Malone that the force was fairly crawling with his relatives nowadays, and that you never knew what might happen. The desk sergeant who had booked them had failed to recognize the officer, but von Flanagan had spotted him immediately as a friend of his brother-in-law, and had announced himself as one Junius P. McGillicuddy of Little Rock, Arkansas.

  Another desk sergeant with no personal connections with von Flanagan’s wife’s kin, had refused to accept any further explanation. He stated that von Flanagan was the fourteenth guy that night who had claimed to be an official of the police department.

  The result had been that the chief of the homicide division had remained in jail until Malone managed to locate identification that would release him without incriminating him in the eyes of his in-laws.

  The little lawyer’s pretty, black-haired secretary looked at him with grim disapproval as he came in the door. Sixteen hours’ sleep, a shave, and a fresh suit had helped his appearance a little, but not much.