Jerry Tracy, Celebrity Reporter

by Tinsley, Theodore A.

  Jerry stared contemptuously until the hard eyes flickered and turned away. He said, quietly: “Your mother was here in this penthouse today.”

  “What of it? I had some sewing stuff for her. She—she sews things for me.”

  “I see. Sews things for you. And won’t tell the cops she’s your mother. But you don’t mind if she burns for murder. … God, you get better all the time.”

  “What you think about me doesn’t worry me,” Lois said sullenly.

  “Is your maid coming back here tonight?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where does this Selma live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does she look like?”

  Lois’ lovely lips curled contemptuously. “What does any Swede look like?”

  “A Swede, eh? Thanks.”

  He leaned towards her, smiling, and with a sudden gesture wrenched the gun from her hand and shoved her into a chair. She landed with a force that made her bounce.

  “I’m taking a quick look about this arty dump, just for the fun of it,” Tracy growled.

  He disappeared into another room. She could hear him moving about, but her rigid pose never changed. She was still sitting there, barefooted, creamy-bosomed where the coat gaped, when Tracy returned.

  He snapped her eyes awake with a sharp question:

  “Do you happen to know a guy who likes to wear very sporty gray topcoats?”

  He could see the dancer freeze up inside.

  “Well? Do you?” he repeated.

  “Get out!”

  “Sure,” Tracy said unevenly. He threw her gun into her lap. “Do me a favor, Toots. Empty that thing into your rotten little skull. I’d do it myself if I had an exterminator’s license.”

  “What’s your angle on this thing, Tracy?”

  He eyed her steadily. “I’m working for the lad in the gray topcoat.”

  Lois’ breath sizzled briefly. “Do—do you know anything about architecture, Mr. Tracy?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “This apartment is completely soundproof.”

  “So what?” he asked.

  “So—this!” The gun he had tossed contemptuously into her lap streaked upward like a flash of light. Her finger pressed the trigger six times.

  The six harmless clicks sounded almost like one. It was nearly twenty seconds before the knowledge that the gun was empty seeped into her rigid eyes.

  Tracy gave her a scornful, sandpaper chuckle. “I emptied that toy while I was strolling through the apartment. Wanted to see what you’d do. Here—take ’em back! They stink in my pocket.”

  He threw the handful of loose cartridges at her. They bounced off her body, rolled helter-skelter across the rug. Lois didn’t utter a sound. She was sitting there, watching him like a stone carving, when he slammed the apartment door.

  He shivered a little while he waited for the elevator, blinked once or twice to get rid of the image of that baleful face.

  The opening door of the elevator found him debonair and cheerful.

  “Were any of you boys on duty this afternoon?” he asked on the way down.

  “No, sir. … That is, come to think of it—Roy was.” This little bareheaded guy had eyes that seemed to dig right into a fella. “Roy was—was home sick one day this week, so he hadda take a double stretch to make up for it.”

  “I get it.” The elevator stopped and the doors slid apart. “Which one is Roy? Call him over.”

  Roy was a tall, gangling youth with pale, good-natured eyes in a weak, taffy-colored face. The shrewd Daily Planet columnist tabbed his type instantly: a two-dollar race-horse sport, a policy ticket sucker, a sweepstake boob, an eager patron of small crap games. There were a dozen kids just like him in the Daily Planet building. A cinch for a bribe.

  “Come here, son. I wanna talk to you.”

  He went with Roy down a short corridor off the lobby and halted in front of the service elevator. His fingers opened and left a crumpled ten-dollar bill in Roy’s moist palm.

  “All you’ve got to do is answer a couple of harmless questions.”

  Tracy’s grin had never been more warmly appealing. His wink was a humorous, good-natured, man-to-man affair. Roy grinned back.

  Once the kid had started, he spilled like a broken faucet. Tracy’s respectful nods were subtle flattery to egg him on.

  The señorita had gone out a little before two o’clock that same afternoon. Said she couldn’t wait for the sewing woman, and to send her up for the stuff when she came. The old dame came a little after two. Went up. About a half hour later the service buzzer rang. The sewing woman and the maid met Roy in the kitchen doorway. They both looked scared and sorta funny, he thought. He didn’t pay no particular attention; people were always looking funny in a big house like this.

  “What did they want?” Tracy asked.

  Well, they wanted a trunk up out of the storage room in the cellar. He brought it up. After a while—must have been around three o’clock then—he got another buzz. Went up. Took the sewing woman down and the trunk, too.

  Got it out to a cab and the old lady drove off with it.

  “Did she say what was in it?”

  “Yeah. She did. I didn’t ask her, but she told me anyway. Old dresses of the señorita’s. Felt as heavy as hell.” He grinned weakly. “Maybe that was because the old sewing woman forgot to gimme a tip.”

  “Let’s fix that right now.” Tracy shot him another ten spot. “What about the maid?”

  Well, Roy thought, that was sorta funny, too. Selma, the maid, came down in the passenger elevator about twenty minutes later. With a heavy suitcase. Gave up her apartment key. Said she was called away suddenly and to give it to the señorita when she came back. The señorita got back around four or so, Roy thought. He gave her Selma’s key and she looked pretty angry and pretty puzzled. “Not scared?”

  “No, sir. Just wonderin’, sorta. She said okey and rode upstairs. And I guess that’s all.”

  “Do you know Mr. Clement?”

  “Oh, sure. Her manager, you mean?”

  “Yes. Did he call on her any time today?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How about a short, heavy-set man in a light gray topcoat?”

  “Dunno him. There wasn’t any visitors except the old sewing woman.”

  “Thanks, Roy. You’ve been a big help.”

  His pale eyes goggled. “You a detective, mister?”

  Tracy grinned, leaned closer. “Say, ever hear of a guy named Jerry Tracy?”

  “Jeeze, yes. … ”

  Jerry tapped his chest briefly. “Me.”

  “No kiddin’. I—I always thought you was a much bigger guy. I’ll be darned.”

  “Keep your eyes and ears open—and your mouth shut. Any time you run across a hot bit of dirt, gimme a ring at the Planet office.”

  “I sure will, Mister Tracy. Jeeze, thanks. … ”

  Tracy went back to the lobby and out to the street. The rain had stopped but the gutter still raced with water. The doorman’s shrill whistle brought a cab splashing east from the dark avenue.

  Tracy murmured his own address, relaxed with a tired grunt—and immediately leaned forward again. “Change that! Take me to the Club Español.”

  No sense riding home like a shivering, bareheaded dope! His topcoat and hat were still in the checkroom; Nita would be wondering what the hell was wrong.

  The Club Español was still wide-open. Nita grinned perkily at Tracy. “Hey, hey, muchacho! Where you been?”

  He saw that she was looking at him with a peculiar stare.

  “You sure gummed the works here tonight,” she said tonelessly. “Garcia’s still tearing his hair. I hear you pulled the señorita out in her B.V.D.’s—and damned little of them. The customers raised cain when they heard her late show was off. I dunno what Garcia told ’em.” Nita grinned cynically. “Maybe he told ’em the señorita busted her bubble. Anyhow, there was a lot of arguing, one drunken brawl that was a
honey; and half the customers scrammed out to the opposish down the avenoo. First time I ever saw Garcia cry. Tears like big round hunks of putty. I’m not foolin’.”

  “Yeah?” Tracy said inattentively and turned away. Nita’s hand on his wrist pulled him around, restrained him.

  “Remember when you first came in tonight, Jerry? There was a mugg in a very light-gray topcoat. He scrammed the minute he saw you—and you ups and outs right after him. I wondered.”

  “Don’t tell me you tabbed him!” Tracy’s glare was so intent that she pulled back a little, her hand still on his.

  “I didn’t tab him the first time—but I did later.”

  “He came back here?”

  “Yowsuh. I mean, por supuesto, ciertamente,” Nita kidded nervously. “Brought a dame along.”

  “A Swede?” Jerry whispered. “A big horse-faced number? Sorta pale and angular?”

  “Right. She had on a street coat over a very punkerino and second-handish evening rag. They both checked their coats. Didn’t stay long; beat it the moment they heard the señorita wasn’t gonna bounce through that ‘Me and my Bubble’ number.”

  “Did you dip their pockets, honey?”

  “Sure did. Nothing in the dame’s coat but a soiled handkerchief and a few hairpins. In the guy’s pocket—this.”

  The slip of paper switched hands with deft invisibility. Tracy cupped it for an instant, read the penciled memo. Two lines: Selma Borquist, 932 West 10th.

  Something in the way he crawled into his coat and popped the snapbrim hat askew on his rumpled hair brought a solicitous frown to Nita’s dark eyes.

  “You’re not going down there tonight, for Gawd’s sake?”

  “I dunno yet.”

  “Listen, Jerry. You’re dead on your feet right now. There’s a lump on the back of your dome like a hen’s egg, and that left arm of yours looks like it might hurt like hell. G’wan home to bed. The Swede’ll keep till tomorrow.”

  “You’re a sweet kid, Nita.”

  “It’s the mother in me,” she grinned, and wondered why the words should make Tracy look so suddenly queer, as though she had said the wrong thing.

  “I feel all in,” he admitted. “I think I’ll head straight for home, a stiff drink and a swan dive into the hay. S’long. … ”

  He lurched out to the street and Nita, watching the tired drag of his feet, thought angrily: “He’ll kill himself one of these days with his damned running around. About as big as a bag of popcorn—and more pep to him than a Mack truck. … Crazy little runt. … ”

  When Jerry awoke the sun was shining. He picked up his fresh copy of the Daily Planet and saw the expected headline on the front page. There was a photograph of the body, with a squat white arrow above it to help dumb tabloid readers pick it out from the tin cans and debris. No identification yet. Jerry, having carefully cut out all the labels from Clement’s clothing, wasn’t surprised. Twenty-four hours, he thought grimly. After that—Inspector Fitzgerald and the cops.

  Butch was behind the wheel of the Lincoln when Jerry appeared on the sidewalk. Off like oiled lightning, down to Times Square.

  Butch tossed his plaid cap at a peg and squatted in the outer office with a copy of Variety and the Daily Planet funnies. Jerry sat down at his desk and hooked the dictating machine closer with a tug of his patent-leather toe.

  But before he dived into the column he reached for the phone and called Garbo, the very snooty chief operator on the Daily Planet switchboard. He gave her Sweetie Malloy’s suburban number.

  “When you get it, say anything you like. I want to know how the woman sounds when she answers. Keep my line in. Verstehen Sie?”

  “If you mean do I understand,” Garbo said icily, “the answer is yes, Mr. Tracy, I do.”

  He hung on and listened with narrowed eyes to the brief two-way misunderstanding between Garbo and Sweetie Malloy. Garbo lingered a second after she broke the connection. “Satisfactory, Mr. Tracy?”

  “Quite,” he grinned. “Hey, Garbo—listen. Why don’tcha like me, keed? You mad because I call you Garbo?”

  She sniffed audibly and clicked off. But Tracy was satisfied. The sleeping draught he had slipped Sweetie hadn’t done her any harm. She sounded tired and listless—but she was out of the shadow of the electric chair, and there wasn’t a way she could frame herself again. Call in the cops now, and they’d laugh at her!

  He tackled the column with vim. At noon Butch appeared with a mound of Swiss cheese on rye and a pitcher of draught ale. Tracy took the stuff in his stride. When he got busy on an overdue column he was like the Twentieth Century singing along steel rails. At four-thirty a messenger arrived and took the cylinders away. Tracy stretched gratefully. He was done. McCurdy always edited the stuff and trimmed the edges. Nice guy, McCurdy. His youngest brat was named Jerry. On purpose.

  Tracy went down to the sidewalk and thought things over, while a steady stream of pedestrians buzzed and bumped past him. Sam, his favorite hackman, was parked at the curb. He gave the Daily Planet’s columnist a wrinkled grin and gestured briefly towards his tin flag; but Jerry shook his head. The subway seemed a better bet for a well-known little guy on an anonymous mission. The small-calibered gun that he had picked up from the bedroom floor in Sweetie Malloy’s suburban cottage was a sagging weight in his pocket.

  The dump Jerry was hunting was west, between the gaunt Ninth Avenue El and the river. A mean, red brick hovel, tucked away in a welter of dust and decay. An incredibly filthy fish store on one side, a second-hand plumbing shop on the other.

  Tracy hesitated, rubbed his chin uneasily. “Whoa!” he thought. “You’re galloping too fast, keed!” After all, he was a Broadway columnist, not a policeman. If he didn’t tip the cops—and tip ’em right now—he might get his wise little nose so deep into trouble that it would take him eleven years to convince Headquarters that he was acting, not to cover up crime but to expose it!

  He stepped into a telephone booth in a cigar store near the corner and called Police Headquarters in a low voice. After a short wait he heard the welcome sound of Inspector Fitzgerald’s deep voice.

  “Fitz? Listen—”

  “Jerry?” Fitz’ heavy rumble exploded into a pleasant chuckle. “Haven’t seen you in ages. Where have you been keeping yourself, you little bozo?”

  “Don’t talk!” Jerry snapped. “Listen!” He uttered a sentence or two with curt speed.

  Fitz’ voice changed instantly. “Right! I getcha.” A smart cop, Fitz. Never wasted a second asking how or why. He knew Jerry Tracy well enough from past experience to wait until later for complete explanations. Jerry had a habit of handing him a crisis and a solution all in the same breath.

  “You and Sergeant Killan get down here as soon as you can,” Tracy said. “In the meantime I’m gonna have a try at the Swedish maid. She might beat it if I waited for you.”

  “Watch your step, Jerry!”

  “You sound like a subway guard,” Jerry kidded lightly; but there was a hard line to his lips as he hung up. He was aware that he had reached the point where a single misstep might lower his dapper little body into a graveyard for keeps. He had never thought much about the next world, but he knew he liked Broadway!

  He went back to the red-brick tenement and sauntered inconspicuously into the shabby, dirt littered vestibule.

  Jerry glanced at the scraps of paper stuck askew under a row of bell buttons. Most of the name-plates were empty. Borquist was under the last button. Top floor.

  He climbed the stairs through pitch darkness, except for the faint flicker of light on the first and third landings. He could barely see the gun in his hand when he rang the bell, after a long, careful listen.

  There was no answer to his ring. He waited for thirty seconds, then banged noisily on the wood with a clenched fist.

  “Gas man! Gas man, lady!”

  The door opened a mere crack, but Jerry was all set. He recognized the scared face of Selma. His foot blocked the door, his shoulder sent it flying
open.

  Selma backed into the frowsy living-room and Jerry closed the door and held the woman motionless with his gun.

  “Up with the pretty arms, keed!”

  “What—what’s the idea?”

  “I came to borrow a cup of sugar,” he told her pleasantly.

  There was no sound except the rickety roar of an El train slogging past in the growing darkness. Tracy forced the woman ahead of him. He searched every inch of the apartment—bedroom, kitchen, closets. There was no sign of any lurking boy friend. Smiling coldly, Jerry marched Lois Malloy’s ex-maid back to the living-room. Selma’s knees were knocking with fright.

  “Why did you kill Phil Clement?”

  “I didn’t. I swear I didn’t!”

  “Who did?”

  “Lois killed him. All I did, Mister, was to try and help that little devil of a dancer cover up. Her old lady butted in and gummed the works. She said she’d smear me with the murder if I didn’t help her. So we packed the stiff in a trunk and the old dame took it out. That’s all I did, I swear!”

  “How much blackmail did you ask when you called up the dancer yesterday afternoon?”

  No answer.

  “Who suggested putting the bee on Lois? Your boy friend?”

  “I—I got no boy friend.”

  “What’s the use of lying to me?” Tracy snapped. “The guy was in the car with you out on Locust Avenue. You both beat it out there to stop Sweetie Malloy from crabbing your blackmail act. But you were late getting there—and I got there first. Good old Doctor Rolfe!”

  “I dunno what you’re talking about,” she faltered.

  “No?” Tracy’s smile was knifelike. “I gave you a break by stealing the corpse myself. You tried to hijack me and get hold of the stiff again, but my Chrysler was too fast for that lousy can you were driving. So the boy friend hunts me up at the Club Español and does his best to rub me out of the racket. He brought you back to the club later to proposition Lois for quick dough, but I foxed him again by kidnaping her in her Cellophane panties. … For a virgin with no male acquaintances, you sure manage to get around, Selma.”

  Her bony face got suddenly triumphant.

  “Drop that rod!” a voice rasped behind the columnist.

  Tracy became very still. He let the gun fall to the floor.