The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

  “Shut up, Martha. I’ll handle this. As I say, Wilson, it will cost you money. It cost money to buy Bowes off. If he’d gotten on the stand with his yarn, you’d have been tarred and feathered and chased out of town.”

  The girl said, “Yes, Daddy! Think of my reputation. It would have ruined me.”

  The thin man, who didn’t seem to think a great deal of the girl, snapped, “Hagh! That’d be a day.”

  Halstead said thoughtfully, “There’s only one thing to do. Let Mike and Jerry take the fellow out the back way while he’s still out. If they meet anybody they can pretend he’s drunk and that they’re taking care of him.”

  “And then what?” Wilson asked.

  Halstead said, “What can we do? He’s wise to the setup. You’re wrecked if we don’t get rid of him for you. That was the reason for taking care of old man Giovanni. Bowes had told him the story and you couldn’t afford to have him telling it around, could you?”

  Wilson said miserably, “I—I didn’t know what you were going to do.”

  Halstead waved his hand and said, “You’re in it just as deep, whether you knew it or not. And I’ll never think you didn’t know what was going to happen. Now do you pay for us taking this man out or shall we let him stay here with you? Think fast—he won’t be out like that very much longer.”

  Then Benny said, from the hallway: “You’re damn right he won’t.”

  Benny was behind McCarthy and the shock of hearing Benny’s voice brought his head around. Benny was in the center of the door, crouching a little and holding an iron jack handle in one big hand. Chet Morris crowded up behind him, holding a small gun, and he menaced the room with this and quavered:

  “Hands up!”

  That started it. The thin man went for the gun he carried under his arm and Benny went for the thin man with the jack handle. The heavy man jerked at his pocket and Morris closed both eyes and pulled the trigger of his little gun three times.

  McCarthy was watching the heavy man and lunging to his feet at the same time, but Hal-stead’s head was in his line of vision. He saw a black dot spring out at the side of Halstead’s forehead and saw Halstead put his head down on his knees. And then the heavy man got his gun clear of his pocket and McCarthy hit him at the knees.

  The man had a big gun and it drowned out the echo of Morris’s small one when it exploded. But the man was falling backward when this happened and the slug smashed into the ceiling. The heavy man clubbed the gun at McCarthy, who was hanging stubbornly to his knees, and McCarthy took the blow on the shoulder and let go of knees with an arm gone numb. Then he heard a crunching sound about him and heard Benny say:

  “Leave him go, Chief. I bopped the—”

  McCarthy released the heavy man, who showed no further interest in the affair and whose face was now oddly shaped. He heard a screeching sound from the door and turned and saw the blonde pounding at Chet Morris with her high-heeled slipper and saw Morris fending her away and not doing well at all. The girl was crying out:

  “You shot Ira! You shot Ira!” and her voice was a high thin scream that didn’t sound sane.

  And then McCarthy looked for Wilson and didn’t see him and heard a door slam above the noise of the girl’s keening. He got to his feet and went to the thin man and saw he was lying with his head twisted in a line with his shoulder. He got his own gun from where the thin man had put it in his waistband and when he got to the hallway he reached out and caught the blond girl by the hair and threw her back by it clear across the room.

  Then he crowded past Morris and out into the hall in time to see Wilson dancing up and down in front of the elevator opening. He set himself sidewise, as though preparing to shoot at a target, and then called harshly:

  “Wilson!”

  And when Wilson stopped his mad hopping and turned, McCarthy shot him through the knee.

  Later McCarthy told Marge: “We’re celebrating tonight, lamb. Chet Morris and Benny have already started it. They were plastered early this afternoon. They’re to meet us here.”

  Marge said, “I can see the reason for celebrating but that’s about all I see. I haven’t seen you since it happened.”

  “I had to be with the cops, hon. I couldn’t get away. There was a lot to explain—for that matter the cops are still investigating. I asked Shannon to come along, too, and he’s too busy.”

  “What happened?”

  McCarthy told her what had happened, dwelling with emphasis on Benny’s work with the jack handle and on Morris’s poor marksmanship.

  He said, “At that it was a good thing. The guy was a good enough lawyer to maybe slide out of it. He can’t slide off a morgue slab, even if Morris put him there by mistake. You should have seen that little hell cat of a Martha go for Morris with a slipper, hon, it was really good. Benny and Morris saved the day when they followed me and came in.”

  “So Halstead was bleeding Wilson all the time? Halstead was back of it all?” Marge asked.

  “In a way. Halstead had found out Wilson was running around with this tart of a Martha. It was his business to find out those things—he made most of his money by blackmailing. When Wilson ran over the young Giovanni kid the girl was with him, and he was afraid of the scandal and ran away. Halstead got to the girl and she told him the truth—she fell hard for him. He was a nice-looking guy, honey.”

  Marge said automatically, “Nobody’ll ever say that about you, Pat,” and then: “Go on.”

  “That’s about all. Halstead hired Bowes to say he saw the thing. He had to have a witness if he was going to shake down Wilson in a big way. Then Bowes got cold feet on the deal and started to back out. Then Halstead put him out of the way. Or had Mike, one of his two thugs, do it. This Mike used an ice pick, because they can be carried wrapped up and they can’t be classed as a dangerous weapon if you’re stopped by a cop. Get it?”

  “I guess so. But why did they kill that poor Mr. Giovanni?”

  “They had to tell him Bowes was a witness before the old man would consent to start suit. Bowes, when he got cold feet—he calls it religion, but he finally talked to both the priest and the cops, so you can take your pick—went to Giovanni and confessed it was a frame. So they had to kill Giovanni, too. Now is it all straight?”

  “I guess so. I’m glad it’s over, Pat.”

  McCarthy said gloomily, “It got over too soon to suit me, hon. I wanted that little thin guy that was so handy with the ice pick all to myself. Benny got to him first. I’ll admit Benny did a good job—he broke his neck. The big guy’ll hang and Halstead’s dead and Wilson will be laughed out of town as soon as he gets out of the hospital.”

  “Why did you shoot him? You didn’t have to do that.”

  McCarthy said indignantly, “Hell, kid! If he’d been a man and faced the music, none of this would have happened. If he hadn’t been drunk and out riding around with that chippy he’d have never run over the Giovanni boy. If he’d have stood the scandal like a man, the old man wouldn’t have been killed. I should have aimed center instead of just crippling him a bit. He started the whole thing…. I take that Giovanni thing pretty hard, kid.”

  Marge said soberly, “I see what you mean.” And then her eyes widened and she said, “My heavens! It isn’t possible.”

  McCarthy turned and saw Benny and Chet Morris almost at the booth. They were both very drunk. Benny had a severe and formal Homburg perched exactly center on his head and this didn’t go well with a shabby sweater and grease-stained slacks. He carried a pair of yellow gloves proudly in his right hand. His left held a half-full whiskey bottle.

  Morris looked even more spectacular. He wore a cap on the side of his head and the suit he wore had been made for a taller, much thinner man. The green trouser cuffs dragged four inches on his shoes, which were an ugly yellow. The coat hung almost to his knees. He held two glasses and was saying to Benny:

  “Le’s stop an’ have ‘ittle drinkie. Thirsty, I am.”

  McCarthy said, under his breath to Marge: �
�Look at the poor—face. That’s what the gal did with that high heel.”

  Morris’ face was blotched and lumpy and both eyes were black. He looked as though he’d fallen down several flights of stairs.

  Marge gasped, “And him so fussy!”

  Then Morris looked up and saw them. He waved happily, almost falling down while doing so, and came to a halt in front of the booth. He beamed at them and said:

  “Hi! What d’ya think of the new outfit?

  “Ain’t it something, huh?”

  Marge said, “I’d never deny it.”

  Benny came to a halt alongside Morris and said, “I got me a hat at the same place, Chief. Hey, look at me, too, Chief.”

  McCarthy said, “I can’t help it.”

  Chet Morris said, in a confidential voice: “Like this, Pat, m’ frien’. Benny and I we bust into Abe Goldstein down at the station while you was busy with the cops. Abe’s got a brother-in-law who has a clothing store. So Benny and I and Abe take a couple of snorts or so and go down to get a new outfit. Abe says his brother-in-law’s got the best stock in the city and he helped us pick this outfit out. Didn’t cost us nothin’ at all. How’s it look, pal?”

  McCarthy said, “Gorgeous! Simply gorgeous! Will you do me a favor, Chet?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then let me be with you when you see Abe in the morning.”

  “Why? He won’t take our clothes back. He gave ‘em to us. S’funny, too, with him so stingy, but—”

  McCarthy said, “Let’s not spoil our fun tonight, guy. But there’s reasons and you’ll realize it tomorrow. Believe me you will.”

  Marge giggled and said, “It would be bad enough to look at that at any time. But with the hangover Chet’ll have, it’s liable to be fatal.”

  McCarthy agreed with: “Yeah, fatal to Abe.”

  The Devil’s Bookkeeper

  Carlos Martinez

  GUN MOLLS MAGAZINE had a brief and unexciting life. The first issue was published in October 1930 and appeared monthly for only eighteen additional months, folding after the issue of April 1932. Examining the list of contributors fails to elicit a single recognizable name, even to pulp experts who have devoted the major portion of their professional lives to the scholarly study of what was at one time a major element of American literature. Carlos Martinez is such an author—possibly the pseudonym of another hack trying to pay the rent at the rate of half a cent a word, which is what this publication paid.

  Gun Molls and such sister publications as Gangland Detective Stories, Racketeer Stories, Gangster Stories, and others similarly titled did not offer literary prose nor enduring works of fiction. Characterization has no more depth than spray paint, and stylistic nuance is as rare as a humble politician. The villains are utterly odious; they would be loved neither by their mothers nor their dogs. The molls, unless they are working undercover or hopelessly in love with the wrong man, are still more sinister than the thugs with whom they share adventures. Nonetheless, even the worst of these publications offered exactly what their readers demanded: nonstop action, snappy dialogue, blazing guns, automobiles careering around corners with the cops in hot pursuit, and other standard scenes from the cheap B movies of the era and the least of the pulps.

  “The Devil’s Bookkeeper” first appeared in the August 1931 issue of Gun Molls.

  The Devil’s Bookkeeper

  Carlos Martinez

  The figure gyrated maddeningly before them

  Clerical Clara kept records for

  gangdom, and therefore she

  knew plenty. But even an

  auditor can be wrong.

  ACROSS THE ROOF-TOP, a dim shadow slipped silently to a barred window, like a dull gray wraith that merged perfectly with the curling fingers of fog drifting in from the lake.

  It made no sound in its ghost-like approach, and was visible only when the clouds across the crescent moon allowed a faint ghoulish light to filter for a moment upon the roofs of the sleeping city.

  A pale hand attached a small piece of cloth to the glass of the window, on which was smeared a bit of fast drying cement. Then the scratch of a diamond cutting a circle on the glass, a snapping tap as the inner oval fell loose and was withdrawn by the attached piece of cloth.

  Came a hissing intake of breath, unmistakably a woman’s, as the still form of a man was revealed lying on a small bed within the darkened room. Again that pale hand in the shimmer of greenish moonlight; two dull clicks from the blue metal in his fist; a convulsive jerk from the figure on the bed, and when the clouds again cleared across the crescent moon, the dirty rooftop was empty and silent.

  Detective Sergeant Dan Conley was talking to his chief. His Irish face was twisted into a puzzled frown as he hitched his shoulder holster to a more comfortable position, and took a chair opposite the captain.

  “ ‘Mugs’ Brandon was bumped off last night,” he began.

  “Where did they get him?” asked Captain Steele.

  “In that roof-top apartment of his,” said Conley. “No fingerprints. The gun that did for Mugs cut out a circle of the window with a diamond, and let him have it with a .45. Must have used a silencer!”

  “Mugs put up a fight?” asked the captain.

  “Never knew what hit him,” said Conley. “Got him while he was asleep!”

  “Hell!” blazed the captain. “Get out of here and bring somebody in. The commissioner has been threatening to fire every man in the precinct the next time there was a killing. We got to make a showing!”

  “I got a tall hunch about this killing,” said Conley slowly.

  “Sez you!” sneered Steele. “What’s the big idea this time?”

  “There was one footprint on the roof under that window,” said Conley. “It was made by the rubber-sole from a woman’s shoe!”

  “One of Mugs’ old molls,” said Steele. “Check up on those Clancy Street dames he used to play around with. Some hallway baby, maybe!”

  “I got a hunch,” said Conley, stubbornly.

  “Mind letting me in on it?” asked the captain with heavy sarcasm.

  “ ‘Clerical Clara,’ “ said Conley. “It looks like her work!”

  The captain looked at the detective for a moment while his heavy face grew red with exasperation. He spat viciously at the brass cuspidor which is a part of every police captain’s office furniture.

  “You thimble-wit!” he roared. “Clerical Clara!

  You know dam’ well that dame ain’t never been mixed up in this booze racket, and you’ve made us all look like dam’ fools half a dozen times. Now you get out on the East Side, and bring in some of those Clancy Street trollops!”

  “Yes, sir!” Detective Sergeant Conley saluted, swung on his heel, and left the room with his great hands clenched to control his rising anger. He stepped into a squad car, jammed in the shifting lever and roared out of the small courtyard with exhaust wide open.

  In a neat little office on the fourth floor of a side street building a blonde beauty was carefully sorting a list of accounts receivable, and making figures on a pad with machine-like accuracy.

  Her hair was combed straight back in a mannish bob, and the carefully penciled brows were drawn together in a frown of concentration. Her age might have been anything between twenty-five and thirty-five, according to her mood.

  Soft and hard by turns; cold and warmly yielding, whichever best suited her purpose and the business at hand. The sign on her door said: “Clara Beaumont, Accountant. Income Taxes and Collections.”

  She looked up as the handle of the door turned, and then smiled as she motioned lazily to a chair.

  “Hello, Conley,” she drawled. “Can I help you with your income tax?”

  “Can the comedy,” said Conley. “You know dam’ well I don’t have any grafts that make me pay taxes.”

  “More fool you,” she answered. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Mugs Brandon,” said Conley. “When did you last see him?”

  “Don’t know the
gent,” said the girl. “That is, not personally.”

  “He was bumped off last night,” said Conley, watching her carefully. “Some dame did for him.”

  “How interesting,” she sneered. “But then, I specialize in income taxes.”

  “And collections,” said Conley.

  “And I always collect,” said the girl.

  “I know that,” said Conley. “You either collect—or else—”

  “What do you mean—or else?” The girl shot the question at him viciously.

  “Just what I said, and Mugs Brandon never paid anything he could get out of,” said Conley.

  He looked critically at her well-shaped legs, and then allowed his eyes to drop to her shoes. He noted that the thin slippers she was wearing were at least two sizes smaller than the print of the rubber-soled shoe he had measured on the roof of Brandon’s apartment.

  “You dicks make me sick,” she said with disgust.

  “Pardon my asthma,” he said. “I’ll be moving along.”

  “Wait a minute.” She watched him with puzzled eyes. “You got nothing on me.”

  “That’s what I said,” he agreed. “I’ll be shoving along.”

  For ten minutes after he had taken his abrupt departure she sat motionless, trying to figure out what the detective had meant. Then she returned to her accounts. It took brains to swindle the government out of taxes, and she was one of the best in the game.

  “Clerical Clara in the flesh!”

  She started as the smooth feminine voice addressed her, and looked up to see a quietly dressed girl standing just inside the door. As though reaching for a paper, her hand started to slide inside an open drawer.

  “Hold it!”

  The order shot out like the snap of a whip, as the stranger moved her hand out from her side, a wicked little automatic clenched in the tiny fist.

  “I ain’t on the kill for sugar, but you make a funny pass at me and I’ll fan you a heavy dose of lead poisoning,” she articulated slowly. “You know who I am?”