The Dead Ringer

by Fredric Brown

  I said, “But then when the midget was killed, you knew where he had been—in the monkey suit. And you must have known Hoagy killed him.”

  “I didn’t know, Eddie. And I’d promised Marge—” My hand was lying on the table; she put hers over it. The shock of the contact jarred me. The touch of her hand was like fire. She said, “Let’s not talk about it here, Eddie. Let’s not talk about it at all. But if we have to, let’s go up to our room where we’ll be alone.”

  It was sensible, but it was too sensible. Upstairs, I wouldn’t want to talk about death.

  I said, “Let’s have one more drink, Rita. It’s—well, I want a minute to adjust my mind to something new; that’s all.”

  I didn’t want to look away from her face, but I turned and caught the waiter’s eye and signaled for two more martinis.

  I looked back at Rita and I thought, it doesn’t matter. I can believe her. I can believe she hadn’t read about the kidnapping and put the two things together. And if she didn’t know anything for sure, she wasn’t under obligation to tell her suspicions.

  I sat looking at her and I believed it, while I looked at her. Then, deliberately, I closed my eyes a moment.

  When I opened them, I said, “Rita, that night in Evansville, you couldn’t have known about the kidnapping. But you could have read the papers next morning, before I met you in the hotel lobby at noon. And you had an errand at the bank, then, while I waited for you, and later you had another appointment with a banker—

  “Let me guess. You were afraid Hoagy might kill you because you knew and guessed too much. He’d already done murder. So you left something with the bank—let’s say a sealed envelope to be opened only in case of your death. And then, after that, you wouldn’t have to be afraid of Hoagy.”

  Her tongue licked her lips again. She said, “Eddie, I’m almost afraid of you. You talk like—like a detective. If I didn’t love you so much, Eddie, I’d—”

  Our martinis came and I paid for them, but I didn’t touch mine yet.

  Rita took a sip of hers, and then put her hand back on mine. “Eddie, let’s forget about all that. It’s over. I got the envelope back Saturday and burned it. And I did it because I really was afraid of Hoagy.”

  I thought, maybe. It could be. I wanted to believe that much and no more, and forget it. She was as beautiful as hell and I could say, “Okay, Rita,” and forget it and we could go up to our room.

  But instead of saying it, I asked a question. I watched her face, and asked, “Rita, what insurance company paid that five-thousand-dollar policy on your father’s life?”

  She jerked her hand away from mine.

  I’d had to know, and now I knew. Until I’d asked, there was an outside chance, a hope, that it had been a coincidence that Weiss had found only thirty-four thousand dollars of the forty thousand Hoagy’d got from the kidnapping—and that my beautiful Rita had so suddenly acquired five thousand dollars.

  Now, I knew, that the only coincidence had been the death of Rita’s father, giving her an easy way to account for suddenly having so much money.

  She was glaring at me across the table. She said, “Damn you, Eddie.”

  That didn’t mean anything. I could say, “Okay, Rita, let’s forget it; I just wanted to know.”

  And, in our room, it would be easy to forget. Oh, we could have fun, Rita and I, spending that blackmail money. Except that that money had come from the kidnapping of a little boy and had led, indirectly, to the death of another little boy—a little boy who could dance like mad.

  I said it. I said, “Okay, Rita, let’s forget it; I just wanted to know.”

  But I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that I couldn’t prove where she did get the money, and didn’t intend to try. I meant, let’s forget everything. I meant, good-by. I never did touch that second martini. I went away from there, and walked. I knew the lake was east, and I went that way until I came to it, and I sat down on a grassy slope in the park, looking out over the water. A cool wind came in off the lake and after a while it began to get dark and I started back.

  From a drugstore I phoned the carney lot and asked for Uncle Am. The girl in the office car said, “He went into town, Ed. Said something about taking you and Rita to dinner.”

  I knew he might have been to the hotel and left, but I went there anyway. He was sitting in the lobby.

  He said, “I was trying to figure out where to look for you, Ed. They told me at the desk Rita had checked out. You—uh— split? You figured out what happened?”

  “You knew?” I asked. “And didn’t tell me?” He shook his head slowly. “I didn’t know, Ed. I was afraid, but I wasn’t sure. You knew her better than I did, and I knew that if she blackmailed Hoagy for that dough, you’d dope it for yourself.”

  “Let’s skip it,” I said. “Shall we go back to the lot and open up tonight? It’s only eight o’clock.”

  “We’re through with the carney, Ed.”

  “Huh?”

  He nodded. “That’s what I came downtown to tell you. That wasn’t any rumor about Maury selling. And the new owner is Skeets Geary.” Uncle Am grinned a little. “He wanted different terms for our running a concession; it seems he doesn’t like us. I told him to hell with it, and I sold our props and stuff to Pop Janney and had our trunks sent to the station. We’re free as air, Ed.”

  I said, “Skeets can’t change terms in the middle of a season. Your contract holds good; he can’t change it.”

  “I told him that, kid. With gestures. If you’ll look closely you’ll see the beginnings of a mouse on my left eye. But you ought to see Skeets.” He grinned reminiscently. “We wouldn’t have worked under him anyway, Ed, under any terms. And don’t worry; the grouch bag is in good shape. We won’t starve for a few months.”

  “What shall we do?” I asked.

  “I was thinking about holing in for a while in Chicago. How about it?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He put his hand on my shoulder. He said, “You’ll get over it, kid. You’ll be all right.”

  I said, “I am all right. I thought it out. I’m over it. I’m okay.”

  “Good. Look, Ed, let’s stay in Milwaukee tonight, then, and go to Chi tomorrow. And we don’t want to hit Chi with too much money; they take it away from you there. So let’s paint Milwaukee a light pink this evening, huh?” He snapped his fingers. “And I just thought, Ed. Estelle’s going to jump the carney, too. She hates Skeets’s guts as much as we do, and he’s taking over the posing show to run himself. So let’s go out and get her, and make it a real evening.”

  I grinned. I said, “That leaves you without a date, though. Why don’t we all three take a plane to Cincinnati and get Flo Czerwinski for you?”

  I was kidding, of course, but I should have known better.

  That’s just exactly what we did.