by Craig Rice
Worse still, no one else seemed to have a motive.
But there was something else. How had Art Sample been given the poison? Malone closed his eyes and remembered everything that had happened in the studio from the moment the broadcast began to when the police allowed every-one to leave. Suddenly he reached for the phone and called von Flanagan.
“No, and it wasn’t on his handkerchief,” von Flanagan said, without preliminaries. “We tested it.”
Malone said, “The bright boys from your department were going over the general debris on the floor when we left. Would you mind reading me the list of what they found?”
“Yes,” von Flanagan said. “But hang on a minute.” Malone could hear his voice yelling, “Klutchetsky, come here and—” He put down the phone and called to Maggie to pick up the extension and grab her notebook.
Approximately two and a half minutes later, a polite voice said, “Mr. Malone? Here you are.” It droned on. “One hundred and thirty-eight cigarette butts, nineteen marked with lipstick; three pieces of Kleenex; nine pencils; twenty-two marked-up scripts; a lady’s handkerchief with the initial ‘N’; a copy of last Thursday’s Racing Form; seven empty cigarette packages; and three sheets of music.”
Von Flanagan’s voice cut in, “And we’ve already tested them all. With no results. Including the Racing Form.”
“Too bad,” Malone said. “You might have found another motive.” He hung up.
Maggie came in and said, “I got it all down. One hundred and thirty-eight cigarette butts, nineteen—”
“Never mind,” Malone said. “Just go away.”
He knew now it wasn’t something he remembered, but something he’d forgotten.
His unhappiness deepened in intensity. Even looking at Nina Shields, the lovely singer with Larry Lee’s band, when she arrived, failed to lighten his mood. He decided that another quickly administered shot of gin would do the trick, and poured one for his client while he was about it.
“Thanks, Malone,” she said in the deep, purring voice that made her listeners purr right along with her. “What are you going to do about our murder?”
Malone jumped, and said, “Our?”
Nina Shields nodded. “I was going to marry the corpse. Of course, I didn’t know he was going to be a corpse.” She got her drink down in a gulp.
Malone swallowed a gasp as fast as she had swallowed the gin. “Your husband,” he began, paused, and said, “I’ve heard a rumor there’s a law against bigamy.”
“I’ve heard of it too,” she said quietly. Almost too quietly. “Art was getting hold of some money that was due him. I don’t know where from, but it was a lot, he said. We’d fly to Mexico, I’d get a divorce from Jack, and we’d be married right away.”
The little lawyer considered telling her that Art might have to figure in some divorce plans of his own, and decided against it.
“You know Jack,” she said. “He’s jealous, and he’s got a violent temper. But he gets over it fast. As soon as he calmed down, he’d think it over. Chances are, he’d send us a telegram of congratulations.”
Malone nodded. He did know the big-time gambler, and he would have bet that Nina was right.
“But now,” she said, “now—” She buried her face in her hands.
Malone decided these tears needed personal comforting, and immediately. He sat down on the arm of the couch, put what he considered a strictly fraternal arm around her, whipped out his handkerchief, and began the comforting. He became so engrossed that he failed to notice a commotion in his outer office, and only looked up when his door was suddenly and violently opened.
Jack Shields began with a string of phrases, the most polite of which referred to Malone’s immediate ancestry. The little lawyer jumped to his feet. He vaguely heard a few more phrases before he had a definite feeling that the latest thing in bombs had just been exploded inside his mouth.
He blinked himself to consciousness, sitting on the floor. Not only did he have the feeling that most of his teeth were protruding from the back of his neck but, far worse, his dignity had taken a well-nigh fatal blow.”
“And what’s more,” the gambler said, “the same thing goes for your clients.” He went on about Art Sample, and obviously no one had ever mentioned to him the impropriety of speaking ill of the dead. “I know he planned to run away with my wife,” he said, “but I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.” He put an arm around Nina. “Let’s get out of here, darling.”
Lorna Lee was standing in the doorway, her eyes wide. Jack Shields smiled at her in passing and said, “Good afternoon!” as pleasantly as though he’d never knocked down a lawyer in his life.
“He hit you!” Lorna Lee gasped.
Malone nodded and struggled to his feet.
“Did he hurt you?”
Malone shook his head. After a minute he tried speech, a little experimentally. “My toose ith looth.”
Lorna Lee touched his tooth with her tiny, pearly fingers, and said, “Oh dear, it is! You’d better go to a dentist right away.”
Malone said, “No sanks.” He hoped he didn’t sound ungrateful. It wasn’t every day he was offered the touch of a comforting hand, especially a hand that reminded him vaguely of a snowflake drifting in a gentle wind.
He allowed himself to be steered to the office couch, and lulled himself into slumber by listening to the voices of Maggie and Lorna Lee arguing over the comparative virtues of ice-packs and hot-water bottles.
What was it he had to remember? He felt close to it now. But sleep was closer.
A cold wet rag slapped him in the face, and Maggie said, “Malone. Malone. Wake up!”
“Snowflakes,” Malone mumbled, “in an early spring wind.” He sat up suddenly and said, “What?”
“Malone, Larry Lee just called. Last night’s show has got to be done all over again. This time, for a recording. He’s got a new clarinet player, to play what Art Sample played last night. And he wants you to be there.” She slapped him again with the wet rag and said, “Same studio, two hours and fifteen minutes from now.”
The little lawyer rose shakily to his feet and said, “Phone him I’ll be there. And meantime, what is the name of that joint on Wabash Avenue where musicians hang out in their spare time? And phone Joe the Angel for a quick hundred-buck loan.” As she headed towards the door, he called out, “—and send down to the drug store for a bottle of toothache drops. All three of these are emergency calls.” He called out again, and louder, “But the first one is the important one.”
It was halfway through shaving, and waiting for Maggie to return, that he decided to call von Flanagan. Because, he knew now what he had forgotten.
Everything was just as it had been the night before. Again the last spasm of rehearsal was going on. There was one exception—that one of the clarinet players was stocky and red-haired, instead of tall and blond. People were milling around in the studio and in the control room. Jack Shields was there and gave Malone a smile that was completely cordial and completely without apology. Malone measured his height and weight and decided that to forgive was not only divine but, in this case, human. Von Flanagan was standing in a corner trying to look as though he had just strayed in to get out of a rainstorm.
Then the sudden silence, and the red hand of the clock describing its last warning circle.
Once again Malone wished he were anywhere else in the world. Then at last it began—the song of Good-bye, of heartbreaking eternal good-bye. Malone didn’t feel his blood run cold, he felt it turn to something moving as fast as the second-place winner at the Indianapolis race track. He turned to Lorna Lee.
“What did you want to see me about?” he asked her in what he hoped was a whisper.
“The insurance,” she whispered back. “Larry Lee had fifty thousand on each of the boys in the band. If it turned out that Larry had murdered him, would he still get the money—and if Larry—I mean, would I—”
Before she could go on, the music swept towards
the four notes everyone had been waiting to hear. Malone went on looking at her for a moment. A snowflake. The first pale flower of April, pushing its way upward through the melting snow.
Then the music pulled his gaze into the studio. He didn’t like what was going to happen, what he was going to have to do.
Four notes—so carefully hidden in the skillfully designed orchestration that no one would know, until—
“Good-bye—forever—”
The red-haired, stocky clarinet player dropped his instrument as though it had bitten him. Then he slumped to the floor like an expiring toy balloon.
Once more, everything stopped.
This time it was von Flanagan who moved first. He said, “So that’s how it was done. Aconite on the reed of his clarinet.”
“No,” Malone said quickly, “that wasn’t how it was done. Right now, stay put, and don’t talk.” He grabbed von Flanagan’s arm and said, “If the guy is dead, hang me. But this is the only way I could prove what happened.”
Again there was the sudden rush of people towards the fallen clarinet player. Jack Shields, who had shoved his way into the studio, threw a protective arm around his wife and demanded loudly that someone call the inhalator squad. Betty Castle ran forward, then paused, her homely little face dazed and bewildered. Lorna Lee burst into tears. Someone called for water. There didn’t seem to be any water available, unless someone took the time to drill a well. Larry Lee moved in, the first-aid look back in his eyes.
Malone nodded to von Flanagan, and walked into the studio. He laid one hand on Larry Lee’s arm and said, “Sorry your recording was spoiled. But you’ll probably get a better performance next time, when everyone isn’t worried about who is the murderer.” He took a few steps more and said, “All right, Buck, you can get up now. It was a magnificent performance.”
If anyone had dropped a pin while the red-haired clarinet player rose to his feet, it would have smashed every seismograph on Mars.
“If you’d been really smart,” Malone said, “you’d have carried an extra Dixie cup to drop on the floor, to account for the one you carried away with you—the one you had to carry away with you because it had traces of aconite.”
He paused for a moment. He was really tired now.
“You knew that with Art Sample dead, Larry Lee would just quietly keep the royalties from the songs,” the little lawyer went on relentlessly. “You wanted the money—and Larry Lee. You were confident that Larry Lee would get a divorce and marry you. You knew that in a pinch you could blackmail him because of the songs.”
He hated to go on, but he had to. He avoided looking at Larry Lee, and wished that Lorna Lee were deaf.
“You knew that he’d grown sick of beautiful faces the way a man can get sick of chocolate éclairs.”
Betty Castle had been like solid stone, now she exploded in a flaming rage, aimed at Lorna Lee. Malone caught a few words, the kindest of which was “tramp,” and the most definite “—all the boys in the band.” Lorna Lee exploded right back at her, and the words Malone caught from her surprised even him. Snowflake, he thought. Spring flower. He said, “Shut up, both of you.”
Von Flanagan had come into the studio. He said, “But—Good-bye Forever—” He stopped just short of adding, “Dog whistles.”
“It worked in perfectly,” Malone told him. “She killed him after he was supposed to be dead. Isn’t that right, Betty?”
She smiled at him wanly. “It was a good try, anyway.” She looked at Larry Lee and her eyes said, “I’m sorry for everything.” She looked at Lorna Lee and her lips moved silently around a very unpleasant word. Then she walked over to von Flanagan without a tremor.
Malone rushed over to her and said, “Don’t forget, I’m your lawyer. Let me do the talking for you. Don’t say a word, and don’t sign anything.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Remember, my dear, you couldn’t be in better hands.”
“But how did you know?” von Flanagan said, hours later.
“Because there wasn’t a clue,” Malone said. He waved at Joe the Angel for two more beers. “I had the motive—in fact, I had a motive for everybody. When I slipped that red-haired clarinet player a hundred bucks to pull a phony faint, I was slipping a slug in a slot machine, as far as I knew.” He reached in his pocket to finger the retainer check Larry Lee had given him.
“It paid off,” von Flanagan said wearily.
“She knew he was nervous, she knew he was superstitious,” Malone went on. “She talked Larry Lee into pulling this stunt as a press-agent gag, and made sure everybody in the band, or connected with it, knew all about it. Then she worked Art Sample into such a state that he was bound to collapse in the studio.”
He relit his cigar and said, “He fainted—she counted on that. Someone rushing up with a Dixie cup of water was the instinctive thing no one would even notice. But there wasn’t an empty Dixie cup among the odds and ends your boys picked up from the floor!”
Malone buried his face in his hands for a moment. He was seeing Betty Castle’s straight little back when she’d walked over to the police officer and said, “Okay.”
“Don’t worry,” von Flanagan said. “After all, she’s got a good lawyer.”
But Malone was thinking of something else. He was seeing Art Sample again, his handsome young face as he reached for that one high note on the clarinet, and he was hearing a melody.
“It never pays to be a ghost,” Malone said. He stared into the circle left by his upraised glass. “To ghost anything. You’re dead before you can even start.”
AND THE BIRDS STILL SING
The hands of the clock in Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar had moved to where they looked like a cartoonist’s idea of Oriental eyebrows. The customers had dwindled down to a janitor from the City Hall, a pair of slightly drunken reporters from the Tribune, an anonymous drunk who had just wandered in, and John J. Malone, Chicago’s most famous (and at the moment, most disheveled and disconsolate) criminal lawyer.
It was with John J. Malone that Joe the Angel was having the argument. It was an old, familiar argument, and nobody was paying any attention.
“Always I am your friend,” Joe the Angel said. “But is it my fault you spend your money on women, and you do not have enough to pay your bar bill?”
“It’s only thirty-two dollars,” Malone said in righteous indignation.
“Malone,” Joe said tearfully. “I am a poor man.” He went on into details of his mother-in-law’s recent operation, his cousin’s traffic ticket, the mortgage payments on his brother’s undertaking parlor, and similar grim details until, carried away by his own eloquence, he automatically poured Malone a drink.
Malone downed it fast, before Joe could change his mind, and said gloomily, “Only thirty-two dollars. And besides, the girl hocked the bracelet and spent the money on another guy.”
“Serve you right,” Joe the Angel said, polishing a glass. He stared at Malone and decided it would take more than a diamond bracelet. The little lawyer was a not-handsome ruin. His expensive Finchley suit looked as though Malone had been sleeping under the seats of a west-side streetcar. But, of course, Malone’s suits always looked like that. His Sulka tie had somehow got under his ear. And there was a slight suggestion of a mouse under one eye, a leftover from the night before last’s poker game.
“Some day,” Malone said, “some woman will spend money on me.”
“I doubt it,” Joe the Angel said sorrowfully.
He was never so wrong in his life. It was just about then that the blonde came in. Even the City Hall janitor lifted his head to look. Her hair was the color of dyed sunlight, her mascaraed eyes were the color of a bottomless lake in a cheap postcard, her mouth was like a recently washed strawberry. She wore enough mink to line a bathtub.
She flashed about one thousand two hundred dollars worth of white teeth at Joe the Angel and asked for John J. Malone.
For once Joe the Angel was speechless. He merely pointed.
She slid onto
the bar stool next to Malone, smiled at him and said, “Hello, Mr. Malone. I’m Mona Trent. May I buy you a drink?”
Malone was about to say gallantly, “No, but may I buy you a drink?” when Joe beat him to the draw by setting out glasses and saying, “What will you have, Malone?”
The drink was down, and a second one ordered before she said, “Mr. Malone, I need your help. A friend of mine—I’d rather not mention his name—recommended you, and said I might find you here.”
“If it’s a traffic ticket—” Malone began.
“It’s something far more serious.”
Malone took another look at her, and realized she was frightened, badly frightened.
“I can’t talk to you here,” she said very quietly, “and I’ve got to leave here alone.” She gave him that smile again. “Can you come up to my apartment at ten tomorrow morning?” Without waiting for him to answer, she wrote down the address and handed it to him.
“Ten,” Malone said, tucking the card in his pocket. “But—”
“Tomorrow,” she said firmly. She beamed at Joe the Angel and said, “The check, please.”
“That will be thirty-two dollars,” Joe said, without blinking.
A half-minute later she pulled two twenty dollar bills from her purse, tossed them on the counter, and said, “Keep the change.” Then she turned to Malone and added, “Consider this a down payment on what I want you to do for me.”
Before he could catch his breath, she was gone.
Five minutes later, Malone said, “Joe, I too am an honest man. There is eight dollars change coming. All I want is half of it.” He stuffed the four dollars in his vest pocket, paused halfway to the door, and said, “There’s an all-night poker game going on at the Atlantis. If you’ll lend me that other four—”
There were times, Joe the Angel reflected, after the little lawyer had gone, when he wondered why he even bothered about Malone.
It was a cold and very dreary morning when Malone arrived at the apartment on Chicago’s near-north side. The poker game hadn’t gone too well, there had been other complications, and it had all ended up with his owing Joe the Angel four dollars and having just enough left for two short taxi rides. And on top of everything else, it was raining—a cold, dismal February rain.