Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter

by Tinsley, Theodore A.

  Tracy said in a cool conversational tone: “I should have been more careful. I don’t usually take—”

  He sprang, knocked the weapon fiercely aside. There was a stunning report, and a white-hot stab of pain wrenched through Tracy’s wrist. Danker whirled in the doorway of the kitchen and a second bullet whizzed above Tracy’s ducking head and splintered a pile of saucers into swirling fragments.

  Danker’s feet raced through the front hall of the apartment. A door slammed.

  “Where’s your gun?” Tracy shouted at the half-fainting girl. She pointed and he scooped it out of her handbag with his left hand. His right was useless; blood from his shattered wrist dripped down his stiffened fingers.

  “Come on!”

  Pushing the trembling girl ahead of him, he staggered through the front door and down a short flight of stone steps to the street. A man in overalls came rushing up the stairs from the cellar, his dirty face staring.

  “Hey! Stand still, you two! What happened up there?”

  Tracy’s gun chopped round at him. “Get back down in that cellar, or I’ll blow your chin off!”

  The janitor screeched and dived headfirst out of sight.

  They slowed down as they turned the corner into Pearson Street. A cab was swinging west through the triangle from Seventh Avenue. Tracy stuck his bleeding hand in his trouser pocket and hailed the taxi.

  “Up to the Bronx, buddy. Lincoln Avenue. I’ll tell you the address when we get there.”

  He grinned haggardly as he realized that he didn’t know the number of the tenement where Jess Spencer had been pinched eighteen long years ago. He slid his right hand out of his pocket and held it close to the taxi floor, so that the steady drip of crimson wouldn’t mess his clothes and alarm the chauffeur.

  “You’re bleeding,” Margaret Connor gasped. “We’d better stop at a hospital.”

  “Not on your life,” Tracy whispered grimly. “Do you think I’d trade in a bum wrist for a chance at two hundred grand? Hell, I’ve been waiting to dig treasure ever since I was a kid. And I’m not letting any dumb cluck like Danker put me out of action.”

  He was afraid she’d see his pain-twisted face and insist on taking him to the hospital. He caught her arm with his good hand and pinned her close to him on the jouncing seat.

  “Tell me about the jam your father is in, sweet.”

  There was no sign of Fitz or Sergeant Killan on the quiet sidewalk. The library was as dark as a tomb. In spite of its two-story front of weathered gray stone, it looked mean and shabby like the neighborhood. Kids had scrawled chalk marks on the steps and along the stone façade below the windows. Tracy saw two things, however, that filled him with cold satisfaction. The date chiseled into the cornerstone was 1912—place was built five years before Jess Spencer had been arrested for the Connor snatch. The second item that interested Tracy was the inscription on the smoky stone above the doorway—Lincoln Branch.

  The glow of a street lamp threw a gaunt, elongated shadow of empty ash-cans and piled rubbish in front of the tenement next door. At the head of the cellar steps Tracy transferred Margaret’s gun to the pocket of his topcoat, his uninjured hand cradling the butt of the weapon. There was no telling where the ugly figure of Danker might be. Perhaps he was already in the backyard of the library, feverishly searching for the ransom money. Or would he be waiting furtively in the cellar of the tenement to wipe out the only two people who were aware of the hidden fortune?

  Tracy threaded a dark labyrinth towards the rear of the cellar, guided by the faint yellowish glow of an unshaded bulb in the whitewashed ceiling. The girl shrank close to him, her frightened eyes veering towards the dark coal bins beyond the furnace. Her hand clutched Tracy suddenly, and they both rooted themselves in silence.

  “See anything?” he whispered.

  “I—I thought I saw something move—back of those barrels.”

  A second later Tracy uttered a relieved exclamation. A gray tomcat skidded like a noiseless streak from the bin and vanished under the shadowy slant of the cellar steps.

  The back door opened with a faint squeak under Tracy’s even pressure and let them outside into a paved yard. Moonlight bathed pavement and fences with a milky brilliance. Tracy found a broken-backed chair, got up on it and peered over the fence. There was nothing moving in the backyard of the branch library.

  His quick eyes photographed the place. Green lawn and winding paths covered with flagstones. Garden chairs. A flower-bed gone to seed. An arbor in the back with a long green bench under the trellis and a dark climbing vine. But the thing that made Tracy grunt with eager excitement was the statue.

  It was a small bronze bust of Lincoln, mounted on a square stone pedestal.

  “Can you get over?” the girl whispered doubtfully. “Your hand and wrist—”

  “Not bleeding much,” he clipped. “I can make it.”

  It took a lot of effort and brought the sweat springing out on his pale forehead, but he managed to straddle awkwardly and get across. The girl followed him swiftly, unmindful of her embarrassingly stretched dress and ripped stocking. A thoroughbred, Tracy thought dully. Pain from his throbbing wrist was making his head swim. He fought against the blind desire to keel over on the soft grass and let his aching eyelids close.

  The moonlight was so clear that he didn’t have to scratch a match to read the inscription cut into the smooth stone of the pedestal below Lincoln’s weathered bust: “With Malice Toward None.”

  Margaret Connor repeated the words with a hysterical moan. “Malice toward none—my brother Harry dead, my father impoverished—ruined and bankrupt if he doesn’t get that ransom money back—his own money, enough of it to save him from going mad with worry—”

  She swayed against Tracy’s wounded arm and he bit off a groan. “See any numbers on the thing? Can you remember the numbers that were on that infernal bill? My head hurts so that I—I can’t—”

  There was nothing but that ironic phrase from Lincoln, cut in worn letters on the stone.

  “Substitution,” Jerry muttered weakly. “It couldn’t be anything else. Jess Spencer wouldn’t have time to figure out an elaborate code. All he wanted was a guide to anyone he might have to send over here to get the stuff for him. … What was that first number on the five spot?”

  “Fifteen,” Margaret Connor whispered.

  Tracy’s finger moved from left to right along the chiseled quotation. “That makes the first letter R.”

  “Ten next,” Margaret said.

  “Okey. E.”

  “Six.”

  “A.”

  “Fifteen again.”

  “R,” Tracy snapped. Strength flooded back into him for an instant. “R-E-A-R. Rear. It’s behind the statue. Under the path. Buried below that damned flagstone.”

  They stared at the path that skirted the base of the pedestal. Directly in the rear of the statue was a broad flagstone of almost the exact width as the pedestal.

  “Can you get it up?” Tracy muttered. “See if you can hook your fingers under it.”

  She kicked earth and grass away from the edge with the pointed toe of her slipper. Tracy helped her as best he could. With straining effort the girl lifted the flat stone slightly, and Tracy shoved his foot under the edge. Together, they managed to upend it and let it fall over backward with a soft bump. The packed earth underneath looked dry and hard as a brick.

  “We’ll have to dig,” Tracy faltered. “I’ll have to try and get back over the damned fence again. I saw a broom and a coal shovel in the corner of the other cellar.”

  “Let me go,” Margaret Connor urged. “You’ll surely faint if you try to climb over again. I think I can do it in just a—”

  Her hand flew to her mouth as she turned. Jerry’s fingers groped clumsily towards his coat pocket—and stopped, frozen by the aimed weapon and the harsh menace of the face that peered over the fence-top.

  The moonlight was clear on Marty Danker’s murderous face. His gun—the same one that had al
ready smashed Tracy’s wrist—kept the columnist and the girl rooted in silence. Danker’s left hand appeared above the fence and dropped a short-handled shovel to the grass. In another instant he had vaulted easily downward.

  He approached with the springy softness of a cat.

  “Thanks for the brain work,” he jeered. “You did the figgering; I do the digging. Fair enough!”

  His voice hardened.

  “Back up—the two of you—over near that bench. Lay down with your faces on the grass. … No—wait a minute, Tracy! I’ll take that gun you got in your pocket!”

  The absolute hopelessness of Margaret Connor’s white face sent something fierce and primeval surging through the pain-ridden body of the columnist. For the first time in his careful life, he didn’t give a damn whether he lived or died. His legs spread suddenly. He swung his left fist with every atom of his strength at Danker’s grinning mouth.

  Danker sprang aside and Tracy’s blow caught him awkwardly on the ear and skidded off. He fired instantly at the columnist. The bullet ripped through Tracy’s dangling arm and spun him helplessly to the trampled grass.

  He heard through a deep abyss of raw pain the scream of the girl and the sharp continued explosions of pistol fire. They seemed to roar endlessly. Danker was killing her—tunneling her soft body with lead. … Must stop Danker, kill him, tear him apart. …

  Blindly, Tracy groped to his knees in absolute blackness. He felt himself losing his balance. He was falling headlong down a narrow, gleaming incline like the polished surface of a coal chute. He could see it clearly as he whizzed, mile after mile, at terrific speed. He felt grimly exhilarated, happy about something, he couldn’t remember what. …

  Jerry Tracy was spreadeagled on the grass, a fixed grimace on his unconscious lips, when Inspector Fitzgerald turned him gently over.

  “Jeese, he looks dead,” Sergeant Killan muttered huskily. “If that swell little guy is dead, I’ll—”

  “Forget it,” Fitz snapped. His face was haggard in the moonlight. Between Tracy and this gray-thatched old man who was getting perilously close to the edge of retirement there was a strong bond of loyalty and affection. Fitz gulped suddenly: “Don’t let a little blood scare you, Killan.”

  Tracy’s eyelids were fluttering open. “ ’Lo, Fitz. Been trying—dig—buried treasure. Ever hear anything—silly—as that?”

  “Silly, hell,” Fitz told him grimly. “We found it. It’s all there. In a tin box. Two hundred grand.”

  Remembrance swept across Tracy’s blank eyes. “The girl! Where is she, Fitz? Is she all right?”

  He felt the soft pressure of lips against his cheek. He could smell the faint scent of lilac perfume.

  “I’m safe—thanks to you, Jerry.”

  Fitz interrupted huskily. “Killan and I got here just as Danker fired at you. Danker is dead. Killan shot him. We were delayed when we stopped off at Dover Street. You see, I didn’t know that Danker had escaped from you down there.”

  “Danker killed the blonde,” Tracy said weakly.

  “I know it. He came through with a confession when he saw he was done for. I’m holding his gun for the ballistics people.”

  Tracy’s head rolled. Margaret Connor was on her knees in the grass beside him.

  “Did you explain to Fitz the financial jam your father is in?” Jerry mumbled. “Fitz—listen—You gotta cut through the red tape and let her get that dough back to her father in a hurry. He’s in a bad spot—depression bankruptcy—pay debts—give him chance to face—future—clean reputation. … ”

  Jerry’s voice trailed indistinctly.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Fitz replied. “It’s okey. Everything will be taken care of.”

  “Where’s the—girl? Can’t seem to—see her?”

  “I—I’m right here, Jerry. Please don’t try to talk—you mustn’t talk.”

  “You’re a grand, swell kid, Lilac,” he breathed.

  “Lilac? I—I don’t understand.”

  “He’s delirious,” Fitz said huskily. “Let him rest a minute till that damned ambulance gets here.”

  But Jerry Tracy wasn’t delirious. He was slipping into a delicious void, grinning faintly with egotistical pride. He had tabbed Lilac as a decent number right from the start. Old Man Accurate! … Never missed a hunch in his life. … Lilac. …

  BODY SNATCHER

  Jerry Tracy tries to switch a murder tag

  THE SHABBY SUBURBAN BUS jolted to a teeth-jarring halt and the driver growled with patient boredom: “Locust Avenue!”

  Jerry Tracy fell over a couple of legs and swung off the bus, conscious that his lips were wreathed in a faint, somewhat silly grin. If the boys at Times Square could see the Daily Planet’s famous little columnist out here in the sticks, could guess what was inside the two paper-wrapped parcels he was carrying, a jeering laugh would go up that would stop the hands on the Paramount clock! Wise guy Jerry, the lad with the case-hardened front—pulling a sentimental pilgrimage to a has-been, because no one else in roaring Manhattan would remember that today was her birthday.

  Ordinarily, on a trip out of town, Jerry traveled in his very doggy Lincoln, with Butch behind the wheel making delighted horn sounds like the Normandie going down the bay. But today the Daily Planet’s columnist had dived inconspicuously into the subway, ridden out to the end of the line and taken a bus the rest of the way. The big package under his left arm was a birthday cake with a pink, gooey trail on top from a baker’s cornucopia that said: “Hey, hey, Sweetie!” The flat, oblong package had come from a five-and-dime; fluted pink candles with tin shields to catch the grease and pins to stick ’em in the cake.

  Sweetie Malloy had once been a name to adorn the most famous of the Victor Herbert operettas! Beauty, brains and a velvet soprano voice gone at last—turned out to a forgotten pasturage in a punk suburb. It angered Jerry to think that a woman like Sweetie Malloy should be permitted by fate to settle down in a one-horse, out of the way dump like this.

  Chilly raindrops spattered on Jerry’s face. He stared at the gray sky and knew with a wry dismay that it was going to be one of those sullen all-night soakers. By the time he had rung Sweetie’s bell, the dark pavement of the walk was a dull, glistening black.

  The sight of Sweetie’s face in the half-open door made Tracy’s throat catch, as it always would at each new sight of her. The singer was gone but the woman remained. The pale yellow entry light fluffed her soft hair, was kind to the threads of gray. Time had padded the once taut line of her throat, had put wrinkles around the clear, amber eyes without disturbing their serenity or their fine courage.

  “Jerry!” she gasped, with a quick, frightened inflection.

  “How about letting a little guy in out of the rain?”

  “Why—yes. … Of course! Come—come in. … ”

  There was something in the manner with which she closed the door that put Tracy instantly on the, alert, made him study the woman. She was scared to a sickish gray pallor. Stealth! That’s what the careful click of the closing door had meant.

  “Anything wrong, Sweetie?” he asked her, with a level stare.

  “Wrong? Why, what a question! With you here?” Her voice steadied. “Everything is right, my friend. Come, let me take your coat and—and bundles. Gracious, what huge packages! Don’t tell me they’re for—for me?”

  “Happy birthday,” Tracy said gravely. “We’ll open ’em later.” He put his hands on both her shoulders as she turned tremulously. “Listen, keed. Do we have to put on an act—you and me? I’m not Ole Olesen or Jake Kazinsky. I’m Jerry Tracy. I came all the way out here tonight because—well, just because. … I’m asking you as an old friend, is anything wrong?”

  Rain, drumming at the closed window, made a softly sinister sound.

  “Everything is very, very right, my friend!” Her laugh quivered. “As—as right as rain.”

  He let the subject drop for the moment. “The big package is a cake,” he said. “Biggest damn’ cake in the
local cakery. Candles in the smaller bundle. Later on we’re gonna let you inflate the lovely bosom—and Lord help you if you don’t blow ’em all out with one big foooof! I thought that after dinner—”

  “Dinner? Of—of course.”

  “Corned beef,” Tracy grinned. “Same as it’s always been, same as it always will be. Cooked a la Sweetie Malloy, with gobs of hot English mustard—”

  “And—and chopped cabbage with plenty of salt and pepper, lots of b-but-ter—”

  Her voice stopped quite suddenly. Her mouth twisted, began making queer, choking sounds. She turned away towards the couch. Tracy didn’t move an inch from where he stood. The sound of her harsh weeping made his heart ache, but he let her alone, let her have the thing out by herself. After a while her fingers stopped bunching the covering on the couch’s arm.

  “Jerry, will you do something for me—if I beg you as an old friend?”

  The look in her eyes made him wary at once. He didn’t reply.

  “I want you to leave this house immediately and go back to New York.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t understand. For your own sake, Jerry, you’ve got to go! Just forget that you were here.”

  “No.”

  He winced at the sound of her tragic laugh. “In that case, you will have to be convinced. You see, you’re not the only one with a surprise this evening. I—I have one for you.”

  Her cold fingers touched his and held on. She walked silently towards the stairs, and Tracy with her. Upstairs in silence, past the bathroom, down a short, incredibly ugly hallway to a closed door which, being opened, disclosed a curtained bedroom where twin boudoir lamps burned softly atop a dresser.

  Tracy stared at the room’s quiet charm, doubly quiet by reason of the lash of the rain against the shade-drawn windows.

  “So what?” he said in a puzzled voice. “Where’s the surprise come in?”

  “It’s—on the other side of the bed.”