“The two of them, Butch? Where are they?”
“I’m just tellin’ yuh,” Butch growled patiently. “They’re downstairs. In that funny little alley with the big iron gate in the back. Jeeze, I sure needed a workout; I near froze to death waitin’ for yuh.”
“But—”
“They come out, see? The two of ’em together. And they’re standin’ there on the sidewalk with their backs to the alley. They don’t see me. The mugg in the derby is laffin’. He tells the little guy: ‘So that’s the famous Jerry Tracy, huh? He goes to sleep like anybody else when he gets clipped on the dome.’ And the little guy kinda groans an’ says: ‘Shut up! Let’s climb in the car and scram. We’re late!’ ”
Butch chuckled.
“But they don’t get into no car. I lay ’em in. I socked the big guy foist and throttled the little fella before he could squeal an’ run. I dug the keys outa the little guy’s pocket. Shoved ’em both inside the car on the floor, under that black bear-robe in the back. Then upstairs I come and—”
Tracy plucked fiercely at the sleeve of his garrulous helper. A grim joy danced in Tracy’s eyes, made his voice crackle unevenly.
“Out!” he snarled.
The elevator operator eyed the broken glass door of the penthouse and the faces of his two customers. He didn’t say anything.
Tracy did. He said: “Did you ever get killed, Sonny?”
“N-No, sir.”
“Then don’t get too intelligent about this. You might spoil your record. … Tell Anderson downstairs that I said there’s to be no publicity. Tell him I’ll be back later tonight and give him a confidential earful about the broken door. Tell him I said ‘confidential’ in caps. He’ll understand. And so will you—after Anderson talks to you.”
The lobby downstairs was as softly quiet as a cathedral. Anderson smiled woodenly behind his desk as he noted Tracy’s damaged face.
“Anything wrong, Mr. Tracy?”
The columnist didn’t stop. No time to wait now!
“Not a thing,” he tossed over his shoulder. “Everything serene. I’ll be back later tonight and tell you why. And hold on to that elevator boy!”
The wind made cold, moaning sounds along the deserted sidewalk outside. The sidewalk was dark and chilly and very windy. Tracy opened the rear door of the glossy little foreign job at the curb. Prodded tentatively at the lumpy-looking robe on the floor.
“Get in the back here, boy friend,” he told Butch. “You’ll have to ride with the zoo. If the animals get restive, do something about it. See if you can’t find a wrench somewhere. I wouldn’t want you to hurt your hands.”
He slid in behind the wheel. Butch had thoughtfully shoved Zigger’s ignition key into the dash and Tracy turned over the engine. The car slid westward and Tracy’s voice drifted reverently backward over his shoulder.
“Just an old tomato can, Butch, my lad. It revolts me to have to drive it.”
“Yeah? D’yuh know what yuh’d hafta pay for one of these here—” Butch gulped at the sound of Tracy’s uneven chuckle. “Okey! I’m the come-on in this act. Where do we go now?”
“I don’t know yet. We’ll loaf up through the Park while I get my two brain cells working.”
They turned eastward through 57th, swung unobstrusively into the Park. Tracy kept this dream of a sedan moving along at a twenty-five-mile clip, nicely synchronized with the red lights ahead that changed monotonously to green as he passed.
As the road brushed momentarily; with Fifth Avenue, away up in the-Nineties, Tracy said suddenly: “Uh-huh. … Yeah. Of course.”
“What’s that mean, Boss?” Butch wondered aloud.
“It means the George Washington Bridge, little man. Over the lordly Hudson. Westward ho! To a little gray shack in the west!”
The fur robe on the floor of the car heaved a little and seemed to mumble indistinctly. Butch busied himself professionally and the robe quieted down again. The sedan swung out of the; Park and hummed across 110th to Broadway.
“You thinking about Abe Kolet’s shack over in Joisey?” Butch asked the back of Tracy’s head.
“Yeah. Empty—but nicely furnished, my lad, or so I believe.”
“No dice. Place all locked up. Abe ain’t been there for months.”
“That’s why we’re going there, dope, Know how to break windows?”
“Sure.”
“Okey. Shut up.”
The Hudson was a wide blot of dark-with whitecaps. A of the bridge sing like zithers. Something in the chilly song made Tracy’s lips curve in a small brooding smile. A mile or so beyond the bridge he cut northward and followed a poorly paved road at a speed that made the springy car dance drunkenly. He turned into a rutted lane, followed its weedcovered curve to a high board fence that boxed in the rear of a rambling two-story frame dwelling.
The Planet’s famous little columnist drove round to the front and snapped off his bright lights. The cold air made his nostrils ache. He was wide awake now. Eager, keen. And filled with an inexorable determination.
“For gosh sakes—look at that view!” Butch muttered. “Right on the edge of the Palisades! Another six feet—an’ we’d drop down about a mile and go splash!”
“Get that meat out of the car,” Tracy barked.
He glanced alternately upward and down, shivering incessantly in his light topcoat. The river surface seemed as far away as the remote stars overhead. That yellow stain in the sky, away off yonder, came from the delicatessens and neighborhood movies of Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. But the sky above Tracy’s head was like black velvet. And the wind that gushed over the rocky lip of the Palisades bit at his ears like a sharp tooth.
“All set?” Butch called out. “Where d’yuh want ’em?”
“Inside. Kick that front window in and unlock the door for me.”
“Attababy,” Butch exulted. “This is sure my night for bustin’ glass. Ain’t we got fun?”
His huge hoof made magnificent ruin of the window-pane. He was inside the house almost before the jangling ceased. In a moment he had the door unlocked and open; and was escorting a large and very wobbly Phil into the front room.
“Hadda work a little on the big yum,” he muttered. “Can you take the other mugg? He’s pretty scared but he can walk fine.”
Willie Zigger couldn’t get his cricket voice articulating properly till Tracy shoved him headlong into a chair in the front room. His face looked greenish in the amber light from Abe Kolet’s classy wall lamps.
“You can’t get away with this!” he shouted shrilly. “I’ll have you in the can for the rest of your life for kidnaping.”
Tracy didn’t even look at him.
“Take this other lug down cellar,” he rasped at Butch. “Find some rope and tie him up tight to something. Something he can’t pull loose from.”
“Oke.”
The groggy Phil made peculiar noises on the way downstairs that indicated he might not be walking.
Jerry Tracy shoved his gaunt, implacable face close to Zigger’s and the radio comedian shrank sidewise across the padded arm of the chair.
“What do you want?” he snarled. “You got me all wrong on this thing.”
“I want the truth, you rat.”
“I told you the truth.”
Tracy’s lashing palm left a crimson welt on the side of Zigger’s head.
“Do you think you can kid me like you do those moron listeners of yours? Where’s Ruthie Brenner?”
“I swear I don’t know.”
“Is she alive or dead?”
Zigger hesitated. Tracy waited. There was will in him to wait until the second coming of Christ, he thought joyously.
The comedian’s ratlike eyes darted about the room as though seeking a hole or a crevice into which he might crawl to get away from the set white face that confronted him.
“I’m—I’m afraid to tell you.” He licked his ashen lips nervously. “If I give you the absolute lowdown, will you promise not to get sore?”
“Talk up—or I’ll tear you apart.”
“The kid is—is—dead.”
Tracy’s eyes bored into him. Washed him. Swept him bare.
“You’re a liar, Willie. You lie like hell.”
“No. I’m—I’m talking truth. Honest!”
“All right: Talk, then. What happened? I know damned well you’re lying; but go ahead and talk.”
“I didn’t kill her. She—she died.”
“Died, eh? What from?”
“From—from pneumonia.”
“How come?”
“Well—it was all a mistake. The kid was sorta high-strung. She got frightened, see? And—”
“Wait a minute,” Tracy snapped. “Lemme get something else straight before we go any further. Did Ruthie Brenner follow you to Philly like you said? Of her own free will?”
“Well—I—I took her along with me the night I sneaked off with the old lady’s jack. I—I fed Ruthie a line of booshwah and kidded her into coming with me. … But I didn’t kill her. Not me.”
Sweat glistening on Willie Zigger’s sallow forehead.
“Where did she die?” Tracy asked patiently. “In Philly?”
“No.”
“Afraid I’ll check up on you, eh? Go ahead with some more lies.”
“She was high-strung like I said. A kind of a nervous kid. And she was kinda scared—and—and—when I came into her room, thinking I might help her, cheer her up maybe—”
Tracy’s laugh grated discordantly. He stopped after a while and said: “Don’t mind me. Go right ahead.”
“Well, she jumps right out of bed in her nightgown the minute I come in the door. Runs right downstairs and out of the house. With me after her, worried as the devil, trying to catch her. By the time I catch her and get her back to the house and in bed, she’s as cold as a corpse. I call in a doc—for God’s sake, don’t grin at me like that!—and the doc shakes his head and says pneumonia. … In five days the kid is dead.”
“Where’s she buried?”
“In a little cemetery—can’t think of the name. I’ll think of it in a second. Little dump of a place. I didn’t have no trouble. They thought she was my wife.”
“Mmmmm. … And that’s all?”
“That’s all. It’s the truth, so help me.”
“Dunno know whether it is or not. I think I can find out.”
Tracy’s head nodded slowly.
“Pneumonia, eh? A terrible disease, Willie. It seems to have killed a sixteen-year-old girl and made a gutter bum out of her mother. … Maybe it can make a lying little radio comic talk truth.”
He swung his brooding eyes towards the stolid Butch.
“Will that big guy in the cellar stay put, do you think?”
Butch grinned. “Wanna have a look at him, Boss?”
“Nope. I’ll take your word for it. … Come here a minute, will you? I’m tired of talking. I want a little action now. Undress Mr. Zigger, if you please.”
“Huh?” Butch looked startled and mildly shocked. “Yuh mean, take the guy’s clothes off?”
“You heard me. Undress him. Yank off every stitch he’s got. Strip him down to his dirty little pelt.”
“Okey by me, Boss.”
He advanced with a wide grin. Zigger squealed shrilly and jumped from his chair. Butch dove after him with a bellow of infantile amusement. His big hand tore Zigger’s coat off. A second tremendous clutch ripped the terrified comedian from collar to shirt-tail. In less than a minute Willie Zigger was crouching, shrill with terror, as nude as a peeled onion in a helterskelter of ragged garments.
Butch slapped him playfully and he echoed sharply like a pistol-shot. Tracy cut short Butch’s guffaw with a sharp bark of anger. There was no smile on Tracy’s lips. They were taut with purpose.
“Stop that yelping, Zigger. If you don’t shut up, I’ll have Butch beat you unconscious. And that won’t be so good, because if you’re unconscious you can’t save yourself by telling me the truth about Ruthie Brenner. … Is her name familiar? We’re still on the same old subject, you know. … Only, now, we’re going to talk about pneumonia.”
“What do you mean?” Zigger faltered.
“Pneumonia, Willie. The scourge of the human race. Remember how cold it was when we took you out of your car outside? It’ll be just as cold in the back yard—colder. With a nice high board fence for privacy. I’m going to put you out there, Willie, just the way you are now. Stark naked. Tie you up so you can’t move. And leave you there till you’re colder than a brass monkey. … Unless—”
Jerry Tracy’s voice dripped with a soft, honeyed hate.
“—unless you’ve got some accurate news for me about—let’s see, what’s her name again? I keep forgetting—oh, yes. … A sixteen-year-old girl named Ruthie Brenner. She died of pneumonia, so they say.”
“If you kill me,” Zigger wailed, “I can’t tell you any different.”
“Take him outside, Butch!”
There was a short tussle. Butch said, plaintively: “Hey—the guy’s as greasy as a pig. Hard to hold on to him. … Okey! Shall I take him rout now?”
“Yeah. I’ll relieve you in ten minutes. Give you a chance to come inside and get warm. No sense in you and me freezing, too.”
The columnist walked over to the door and threw it open. A draft of wind whistled through door and smashed window. The cold blast rattled the pictures on the wall, whipped a cloth off a table. Zigger squirmed like a maniac in the clutch of Butch.
“Easier to hold him now,” Butch panted. “He’s got a million goose-pimples already.”
“Take him out!”
“Wait!” Zigger screamed. His voice was as high-pitched as a woman’s. “Wait, for God’s sake! Lemme talk. I’ll—I’ll tell yuh!”
“Hold it, Butch.”
Tracy walked leisurely towards the wide-open door. Smiled at Zigger.
“Ruthie Brenner isn’t really dead, is she?”
“No. … Damn you—no!”
“In other words, she’s alive?”
“Yes—yes—yes!”
“And you know where she is?”
“Y-Yes. I’ll t-tell you. I swear I will.”
His body was squirming spasmodically. He could hardly spit the words through his chattering teeth.
Tracy slammed the door shut with a sweep of his arm.
“Chuck him in that chair,” he told Butch. “And go upstairs and see if you can find a blanket.”
Zigger burrowed into the big chair, shaking like a leaf. From cold. But more from fright. Every last bit of nerve had deserted him. Without his clothes he looked curiously like a chattering monkey.
“You’re a devil,” he whispered. “A murderous devil.”
Jerry Tracy’s head shook calmly.
“Not at all. Just a bit more willpower than you, my friend. You see, I know a liar when I hear one. … And you wouldn’t really have been murdered. You’d have just—died. Contributory negligence on your part. Or something like that. It was strictly up to you, my friend and you knew it—didn’t you, Willie?”
Tracy’s eyes narrowed watchfully.
“All right. We’ll start all over again. Ruthie Brenner is alive. So where is she?”
“Egmont.”
“Where’s that?”
“Little place not far from Philly.”
“Got her under guard there, eh? Locked in? Attic maybe? Dazed with dope? Hoping she’ll cave in and die, perhaps?”
“No, no. I just—”
“Yeah. I can imagine. I’ll tell you why she’s not dead, Willie. Because your guts weren’t strong enough to have her killed. Even though you knew that if she ever managed to get away and told her story in a courtroom. … Mmmm. … Let me have the exact address, please.”
He wrote a line or two in his notebook. Very carefully. And steadily.
“Fine. I’ll have a man over to Egmont tonight. With a note in your own handwriting to whoever’s in cahoots with you. A private gumshoe lad who
knows all the answers and charges accordingly. You’re paying for that, Willie. You’re also going to pay for the swellest private ambulance that ever rolled on balloon tires. And a couple of the best nutrition experts I can find.”
Jerry Tracy smiled.
“So the war seems to be over, eh, Willie? All except the indemnity. No peace terms complete without indemnity. Let’s see. … They’ll need a home, won’t they? Not in the city—Ruthie and her poor devil of a mother have had plenty of the merry old city life, don’t you think? A neat little house in a cute suburb. Eight thousand bucks for the house, say. Then there’ll have to be chickens, telephone, a radio, decent plumbing. … Fifteen grand might do it. … No, better write me out a check for twenty G’s.”
He delved into the wreckage of Zigger’s coat and found a check-book. Gravely he uncapped his own fountain pen and presented it to the radio comic.
“And—Willie, my lad—if you hope to stop payment on this thing or cause me any heartburn whatever, I’ll produce Ruthie Brenner in a courtroom, much as I hate to—and make your name stink in every newspaper in the land. I’ll let you figure out for yourself how many years you’re likely to spend among camphor if you force me to produce the girl.”
Zigger said faintly: “I dunno whether I got twenty grand.”
“Then find it. Borrow it somewhere, Chisel it. That’s up to you. … And hurry that check along, please. I’ve got to go places.”
He made Zigger sign four checks be-fore the signature looked pleasing to him, free from tremor.
“You’re staying here,” he told Butch. “Keep your eye on this bird. And don’t forget that overgrown ape in the cellar. I’ll send over some canned goods and whatever else you need. I’ve got to wait till a check goes through and at-tend to a couple of other little details. Vacation for you, Zigger. Aren’t you glad?”
Zigger’s eyes popped suddenly with a new terror. A despairing realization of something he had forgotten.
“My broadcast!” he wailed. “I’ll miss it. Lemme go. You gotta lemme go! Please—please. … ”
“Dry your tears. You’ve missed it already.”
Butch had to attend to the radio comic for a moment. Not very long; he quieted easily.
Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter Page 25