The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

  “Thirty,” I said.

  With that, to my surprise, he stood up, flopped his hand at it disgustedly, and walked out.

  When I came out five minutes later with the box wrapped up under my arm, I saw him sitting in a young dreadnaught with another man, a few yards down the street.

  “So I’m going to be followed home,” I said to myself, “to find out who I am.” That didn’t worry me any; I’d rented my room under my old stage name of Honey Sebastian (my idea of a classy tag at sixteen) to escape the notoriety attendant on Chick’s trial. I turned up the other way and hopped down into the subway, which is about the best bet when the following is to be done from a car. As far as I could make out, no one came after me.

  I watched the street from a corner of the window after I got home, and no one going by stopped or looked at the house or did anything but mind his own business. And if it had been that flashy guy on my tail, you could have heard him coming from a block away. I turned to the wrapped box and broke the string.

  Burns’ knock at my door at five that afternoon was a tattoo of anxious impatience. “God, you took long to get here!” I blurted out. “I phoned you three times since noon.”

  “Lady,” he protested, “I’ve been busy, I was out on something else, only just got back to Headquarters ten minutes ago. Boy, you threw a fright into me.”

  I didn’t stoop to asking him why he should be so worried something had happened to me; he might have given me the right answer. “Well,” I said, “I’ve got him,” and I passed him the rosewood jewel case.

  “Got who?”

  “The guy that Chick’s been made a patsy for.”

  He opened it, looked in, looked under it. “What’s this?”

  “Hers. I had a hunch, and I bought it. He must have had a hunch too—only his agent— and it must have been his agent, he wouldn’t show up himself—didn’t follow it through, wasn’t sure enough. Stick your thumb under the little lock. Not over it, down below it, and press hard on the wood.” Something clicked, and the satin bottom flapped up, like it had with me.

  “Fake bottom, eh?” he said.

  “Don’t be an echo. Read that top letter out loud. That was the last one she got, the very day it happened.”

  “ ‘You know, baby,’ “ Burns read. “ ‘I think too much of you to ever let you go. And if you ever tired of me and tried to leave me, I’d kill you first, and then you could go wherever you want. They tell me you’ve been seen going around a lot lately with some young punk. Now, baby, I hope for his sake, and yours too, that when I come back day after tomorrow I find it isn’t so, just some more of my boys’ lies. They like to rib me sometimes, see if I can take it or not.’ “

  “He gave her a bum steer there on purpose,” I pointed out. “He came back ‘tomorrow’ and not ‘day after,’ and caught her with the goods.”

  “Milt,” Burns read from the bottom of the page. And then he looked at me, and didn’t see me for once.

  “Militis, of course,” I said, “the Greek nightclub king. Milton, as he calls himself. Everyone on Broadway knows him. And yet, d’you notice how that name stayed out of the trial? Not a whisper from beginning to end! That’s the missing name all right!”

  “It reads that way, I know,” he said undecidedly, “but there’s this: She knew her traffic signals. Why would she chuck away the banana and hang on to the skin? In other words, Milton spells real dough, your brother wasn’t even carfare.”

  “But Militis had her branded—”

  “Sure, but—”

  “No, I’m not talking slang now. I mean actually, physically; it’s mentioned in one of these letters. The autopsy report had it too, remember? Only they mistook it for an operation scar or scald. Well, when a guy does that, anyone would have looked good to her, and Chick was probably a godsend. The branding was probably not the half of it, either. It’s fairly well known that Milton likes to play rough with his women.”

  “All right, kid,” he said, “but I’ve got bad news for you. This evidence isn’t strong enough to have the verdict set aside and a new trial called. A clever mouthpiece could blow this whole pack of letters out the window with one breath. Ardent Greek temperament, and that kind of thing, you know. You remember how Schlesinger dragged it out of Mandy that she’d overheard more than one guy make the same kind of jealous threats. Did it do any good?”

  “This is the McCoy, though. He came through, this one, Militis.”

  “But, baby, you’re telling it to me and I convince easy, from you. You’re not telling it to the Grand Jury.”

  I shoved the letters at him. “Just the same, you chase out, have ‘em photostated, every last one of them, and put ‘em in a cool, dry place. I’m going to dig something a little more convincing to go with them, if that’s what’s needed. What clubs does he own?”

  “What clubs doesn’t he? There’s Hell’s Bells—” He stopped short, looked at me. “You stay out of there.”

  “One word from you …” I purred, and closed the door after him.

  “A little higher,” the manager said. “Don’t be afraid. We’ve seen it all before.”

  I took another hitch in my hoisted skirt, gave him a look. “If it’s my appendix you want to size up, say so. It’s easier to uncover the other way around, from up to down. I just sing and dance. I don’t bathe for the customers.”

  “I like ‘em like that,” he nodded approvingly to his yes-man. “Give her a chord, Mike,” he said to his pianist.

  “The Man I Love,” I said. “I do dusties, not new ones.”

  “And he’ll be big and strong,

  The man I love— “

  “Good tonsils,” he said. “Give her a dance chorus, Mike.”

  Mike said disgustedly, “Why d’ya wanna waste your time? Even if she was paralyzed from the waist down and had a voice like a frog, ain’t you got eyes? Get a load of her face, will you?”

  “You’re in,” the manager said. “Thirty-five, and buy yourself some up-to-date lyrics. Come around at eight and get fitted for some duds. What’s your name?”

  “Bill me as Angel Face,” I said, “and have your electrician give me an amber spot. They take the padlocks off their wallets when I come out in an amber spot.”

  He shook his head, almost sorrowfully. “Hang on to that face, girlie. It ain’t gonna happen again in a long time!”

  Burns was holding up my locked room-door with one shoulder when I got back. “Here’s your letters back; I’ve got the photostats tucked away in a safe place. Where’d you disappear to?”

  “I’ve landed a job at Hell’s Bells. I’m going to get that guy and get him good! If that’s the way I’ve got to get the evidence, that’s the way. After all, if he was sold on her, /’//have him cutting out paper dolls before two weeks are out. What’d she have that I haven’t got? Now, stay out of there. Somebody might know your face, and you’ll only queer everything.”

  “Watch yourself, will you, Angel Face? You’re playing a dangerous game. That Milton is nobody’s fool. If you need me in a hurry, you know where to reach me. I’m right at your shoulder, all the way through.”

  I went in and stuck the letters back in the fake bottom of the case. I had an idea I was going to have a visitor fairly soon, and wasn’t going to tip my hand.

  I stood it on the dresser-top and threw in a few pins and glass beads for luck.

  The timing was eerie. The knock came inside of ten minutes. I’d known it was due, but not that quick. It was my competitor from the auction room, flashy as ever; he’d changed flowers, that was all.

  “Miss Sebastian,” he said, “isn’t it? I’d like very much to buy that jewel case you got.”

  “I noticed that this morning.”

  He went over and squinted into it.

  “That all you wanted it for, just to keep junk like that in?”

  “What’d you expect to find, the Hope diamond?”

  “You seemed willing to pay a good deal.”

  “I lose my head eas
y in auction rooms. But, for that matter, you seemed to be willing to go pretty high yourself.”

  “I still am,” he said. He turned it over, emp-

  tied my stuff out, tucked it under his arm, put something down on the dresser. “There’s a hundred dollars. Buy yourself a real good one.”

  Through the window I watched the dread-naught drift away again. “Just a little bit too late in getting here,” I smiled after it. “The cat’s out of the bag now and a bulldog will probably chase it.”

  The silver dress fitted me like a wet compress. It was one of those things that break up homes. The manager flagged me in the passageway leading back. “Did you notice that man all by himself at a ringside table? You know who he is, don’t you?”

  If I hadn’t, why had I bothered turning on all my current his way? “No,” I said, round-eyed, “who?”

  “Milton. He owns the works. The reason I’m telling you is this: You’ve got a date with a bottle of champagne at his table, starting in right now. Get on in there.”

  We walked on back.

  “Mr. Milton, this is Angel Face,” the manager said. “She won’t give us her right name, just walked in off Fifty-second Street last Tuesday.”

  “And I waited until tonight to drop around here!” he laughed. “What you paying her, Berger?” Then before the other guy could get a word out, “Triple it! And now get out of here.”

  The night ticked on. He’d look at me then he’d suddenly throw up his hands as though to ward off a dazzling glare. “Turn it off, it hurts my eyes.”

  I smiled a little and took out my mirror. I saw my eyes in it, and in each iris there was a little electric chair with Chick sitting strapped in it. Three weeks from now, sometime during that week. Boy, how they were rushing him! It made it a lot easier to go ahead.

  I went back to what we’d been talking about—and what are any two people talking about, more or less, in a nightclub at four in the morning? “Maybe,” I said, “who can tell? Some night I might just feel like changing the scenery around me, but I couldn’t tell you about it, I’m not that kind.”

  “You wouldn’t have to,” he said. He fooled with something below table-level, then passed his hand to me. I took it and knotted my handkerchief around the latch-key he’d left in it. Burns had been right. I was a dangerous game, and bridges were blazing and collapsing behind me.

  The doorman covered a yawn with a white kid glove, said, “Who shall I announce?”

  “That’s all been taken care of,” I said, “so you can go back to your beauty sleep.”

  He caught on, said insinuatingly, “It’s Mr. Milton, isn’t it? He’s out of town tonight.”

  “You’re telling me!” I thought. I’d sent him the wire that fixed that, signed the name of the manager of his Philly club. “You’ve been reading my mail,” I said, and closed the elevator in his face.

  The key worked, and the light switch worked, and his Filipino had the night off, so the rest was up to me. The clock in his two-story living room said four-fifteen. I went to the second floor of his penthouse and started in on the bedroom. He was using Ruby Rose Reading’s jewel case to hold his collar buttons in, hadn’t thrown it out. I opened the fake bottom to see if he’d found what he was after, and the letters were gone, probably burned.

  I located his wall safe but couldn’t crack it. While I was still working at it, the phone downstairs started to ring. I jumped as though a pin had been stuck into me, and started shaking like I was still doing one of my routines at the club. He had two phones, one downstairs, one in the bedroom, which was an unlisted number. I snapped out the lights, ran downstairs, picked it up. I didn’t answer, just held it.

  Burns’ voice said, “Angel Face?” in my ear.

  “Gee, you sure frightened me!” I exhaled.

  “Better get out of there. He just came back, must have tumbled to the wire. A spotter at Hell’s Bells tipped me off he was just there asking for you.”

  “I can’t, now,” I wailed. “I woke his damn doorman up getting in just now, and I’m in that silver dress I do my number in! He’ll tell him I was here. I’ll have to play it dumb.”

  “D’ja get anything?”

  “Nothing, only that jewel case! I couldn’t get the safe open but he’s probably burned everything connecting him to her long ago.”

  “Please get out of there, kid,” he pleaded. “You don’t know that guy. He’s going to pin you down on the mat if he finds you there.”

  “I’m staying,” I said. “I’ve got to break him down tonight. It’s my last chance. Chick eats chicken and ice-cream tomorrow night at six. Oh, Burns, pray for me, will you?”

  “I’m going to do more than that,” he growled. “I’m going to give a wrong-number call there in half an hour. It’s four-thirty now. Five that’ll be. If you’re doing all right, I’ll lie low. If not, I’m not going to wait, I’ll break in with some of the guys, and we’ll use the little we have, the photostats of the letters, and the jewel case. I think Schlesinger can at least get Chick a reprieve on them, if not a new trial. If we can’t get Milton, we can’t get him, that’s all.”

  “We’ve got to get him,” I said, “and we’re going to! He’s even been close to breaking down and admitting it to me, at times, when we’re alone together. Then at the last minute he gets leery. I’m convinced in my own mind he’s guilty. So help me, if I lose Chick tomorrow night, I’m going to shoot Milton with my own hands!”

  “Remember, half an hour. If everything’s under control, cough. If you can get anywhere near the phone, cough! If I don’t hear you cough, I’m pulling the place.”

  I hung up, ran up the stairs tearing at the silver cloth. I jerked open a closet door, found the cobwebby negligee he’d always told me was waiting for me there whenever I felt like breaking it in. I chased downstairs again in it, more like Godiva than anyone else, grabbed up a cigarette, flopped back full length on the handiest divan and did a Cleopatra—just as the outside door opened and he and two other guys came in.

  Milton had a face full of storm clouds—until he saw me. Then it cleared and the sun came up in it. “Finally!” he crooned. “Finally you wanted a change of scenery! And just tonight somebody had to play a practical joke on me, start me on a fool’s errand to Philly! Have you been here long?”

  I couldn’t answer right away because I was still trying to get my breath back after the quick-change act I’d just pulled. I managed a vampish smile.

  He turned to the two guys. “Get out, you two. Can’t you see I have company?”

  I’d recognized the one who’d contacted me for the jewel case, and knew what was coming. I figured I could handle it. “Why, that’s the dame I told you about, Milt,” he blurted out, “that walked off with that little box the other day!”

  “Oh, hello,” I sang out innocently. “I didn’t know that you knew Mr. Milton.”

  Milton flared, “You, Rocco! Don’t call my lady friends dames!” and slapped him backhand across the mouth. “Now scar-ram! You think we need four for bridge?”

  “All right, boss, all right,” he said soothingly. But he went over to a framed “still” of me, that Milton had brought home from Hell’s Bells, and stood thoughtfully in front of it for a minute. Then he and the other guy left. It was only after the elevator light had flashed out that I looked over and saw the frame was empty.

  “Hey!” I complained. “That Rocco swiped my picture, right under your nose!”

  He thought he saw a bowl of cream in front of him; nothing could get his back up. “Who can blame him? You’re so lovely to look at.”

  He spent some time working on the theory that I’d finally found him irresistible. After what seemed years of that, I sidestepped him neatly, got off the divan just in time.

  He got good and peeved finally.

  “Are you giving me the runaround? What did you come here for anyway?”

  “Because she’s doublecrossing you!” a voice said from the foyer. “Because she came here to frame you, chief,
and I know it!”

  The other two had come back. Rocco pulled my picture out of his pocket. “I traced that dummy wire you got, sending you to Philly. The clerk at the telegraph office identified her as the sender, from this picture. Ask her why she wanted to get you out of town, and then come up here and case your layout! Ask her why she was willing to pay thirty bucks for a little wood box, when she was living in a seven-buck furnished room! Ask her who she is! You weren’t at the Reading trial, were you? Well, I was! You’re riding for a fall, chief, by having her around you. She’s astoolie!”

  He turned on me. “Who are you? What does he mean?”

  What was the good of answering? It was five to five on the clock. I needed Burns bad.

  The other one snarled, “She’s the patsy’s sister. Chick Wheeler’s sister. I saw her on the stand with my own eyes.”

  Milton’s face screwed up into a sort of despairing agony; I’d never seen anything like it before. He whimpered, “And you’re so beautiful to have to be killed!”

  I hugged the negligee around me tight and looked down at the floor. “Then don’t have me killed,” I said softly. It was two to five, now.

  He said with comic sadness, “I got to if you’re that guy’s sister.”

  “I say I’m nobody’s sister, just Angel Face that dances at your club. I say I only came here ‘cause—I like soft carpets.”

  “Why did you send that fake telegram to get me out of town?”

  He had me there. I thought fast. “If I’m a stoolie I get killed, right? But what happens if I’m the other kind of a doublecrosser, a two-timer, do I still get killed?”

  “No,” he said, “because you were still a freelance; your option hadn’t been taken up yet.”

  “That’s the answer, then. I was going to use your place to meet my steady, that’s why I sent the queer wire.”

  Rocco’s voice was as cracked as a megaphone after a football rally.

  “She’s Wheeler’s sister, chief. Don’t let her ki—”

  “Shut up!” Milton said.

  Rocco just smiled a wise smile, shrugged, lit a cigarette. “You’ll find out.”