The Big Midget Murders

by Craig Rice

  Helene didn’t wait. She hung up fast. That other call would be the word of Mildred Goldsmith’s murder.

  Again she tried to reach Jake, or Malone. Again she was unsuccessful.

  She returned to the cab, her brows knit. “Just go on up the Avenue.”

  The driver grinned at her. “Still thinking, huh?”

  The telephone call to von Flanagan had been a wild hunch, but her wild hunches in the past had been pretty reliable. If Johnny Oscar had intended to murder Annette, he’d have done it right there and then, at the same time as Mildred Goldsmith. Evidently, that wasn’t his plan. Perhaps he meant to try and frighten Annette into keeping quiet about the affair, and maybe even go on with the racket, with him as the boss. He’d murdered Mildred Goldsmith, and forced Annette to leave with him. But where would he take her?

  Why not to his own home?

  “Drive west on Schiller street,” she told the driver.

  She had no idea of what she intended to do. Certainly, not walk right in and say, “Where is Annette Ginnis?” But she had to do something, at least to confirm her own suspicion if she could, and then call the police.

  At the corner nearest the address von Flanagan had given her, she paid off the cab. Now what?

  Perhaps if she walked very slowly past the house, she could see in through the windows, or hear or notice something that would tell her if the hunch was right.

  It was the third building from the corner, an old-fashioned house which had been cut up into flats. She slowed down as she came to it, and groaned with disappointment. The windows were not only grated, but every blind in the house was down. There wasn’t a sign of life around the place.

  Still, the blinds might be down because Annette Ginnis—

  “Don’t move, Mrs. Justus,” a voice said behind her, “and don’t make a sound.”

  Something hard was pressed against her back.

  “Just walk quietly up the front steps,” the voice went on, “and no funny business.”

  Helene obeyed, filled with a cold fury rather than fear.

  At the shabby door, an arm reached around her to unlock the door.

  “Step right inside, Mrs. Justus.”

  The little hall was black as the bottom of a coal mine. Helene felt herself growing uncomfortably cold.

  A light was switched on, and she turned around. The man with the gun was not hard to recognize, from the descriptions she had of him. It was Johnny Oscar.

  “Where’s Annette Ginnis?” she said impulsively.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” the gunman said, “but I know where you are, and where you’re going to stay. So Annette talked to you, did she? And now you’re spying on me. Well, I can’t have you running around loose with that much information in your head.” He smiled mirthlessly.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” he snapped. “I gotta figure something out. But you’re gonna stay right here.” Again he smiled. “Make yourself perfectly to home. The place is yours. Only don’t try to get out of it, because there’s nobody lives upstairs, and you couldn’t bust out through those windows in a lifetime, and all the doors is locked. And there’s no telephone, and you could yell your head off here, and nobody’d hear a sound.”

  He opened the door.

  “Wait,” Helene began.

  But Johnny Oscar had gone. She heard the key turn in the lock.

  Of all ridiculous things to happen, right here in the center of Chicago! Helene leaned against the wall, her hands clenched at her sides. Damn fool, she told herself. You could have told the police, and let them break in and search here. Or you could have waited till you found Jake or Malone. But no, you had to rush right out and play detective. And look where it landed you.

  It seemed odd to her that she wasn’t afraid, only angry.

  Well, she reflected, since you’re here, you might as well explore. Annette Ginnis might still be here. And there must be some way to get out of this place.

  It was a four-room flat, with a staircase leading down to the basement. There didn’t seem to be any way of getting to the rooms above. At first she tried opening the blinds, only to find that they were nailed shut, save for one tiny window in what appeared to be the bedroom. Evidently Johnny Oscar liked his privacy.

  There was a dusty little living room, furnished with a moth-eaten davenport and easy chair, and a few cigarette-scarred tables. There was a disordered bedroom, with dirty sheets on an unmade bed, and soiled and wrinkled clothing littering the floor. There was an equally disordered bathroom, and a kitchen where a few day-old dishes stood in the sink, and a half-empty bottle of cheap bourbon stood on the battered table. But there wasn’t a sign of Annette Ginnis, nor anything to indicate she’d ever been there.

  Helene lit a cigarette, dusted off a chair, and sat down to think it over.

  She could hardly break down one of the doors, nor saw her way through one of the gratings on the windows. But—suddenly a light seemed to flash on in her mind.

  People must be going up and down Schiller street. If she could possibly pry loose the blinds on one of the windows, and break the glass, then she could call for help!

  She inspected the blinds at the front of the house. Yes, with a chisel, she could do it.

  For a few minutes she searched feverishly through the house. There was a big kitchen knife—but no, it wouldn’t be strong enough. Perhaps if she looked in the cellar—

  She switched on the light at the top of the cellar stairs, and stood there for a moment, hesitating. It looked gloomy and uninviting, if not downright fearsome.

  Come now, Helene, she asked herself, you know there’s no one here. What are you afraid of?

  Mice, she answered herself, truthfully.

  This was no time to be afraid of mice. Not if, somewhere in that cellar, there was a chisel or any tool she could use to break out of the house before Johnny Oscar came back. She drew a long breath, and went slowly down the stairs.

  The cellar was divided into two rooms, the farther one evidently serving as a furnace room and coal bin. In the room at the bottom of the stairs was a collection of trunks and boxes, broken furniture, a pile of kindling wood, and a bin full of empty bottles.

  Helene stopped suddenly at the foot of the stairs, staring in front of her.

  There was a table in the center of the room, and on it was what she had been seeking, a sturdy hammer and a chisel, both brand new.

  Now, having found them, she didn’t even look at them.

  Because, there in the center of the table, stood a small, leather-covered, metal strongbox. She knew it immediately for the one Pen Reddick wanted, the midget’s box.

  She took two steps toward the table, and stopped again. Somewhere overhead a door closed.

  She stood there for a long moment, listening, her stomach frozen into a lump of ice. There were faint sounds from overhead. Then suddenly she heard a soft click, and the cellar was plunged into darkness. At almost the same instant the door closed at the head of the stairs.

  How long she stood there, she never knew. There was silence now overhead. A long silence.

  At last she found the courage to move again. Perhaps there was another light switch down in the cellar, or perhaps she could make her way back up the stairs and turn on the switch just inside the door.

  She moved slowly and cautiously through the inky darkness, feeling her way with every step, holding her hands outstretched before her. Once she bumped against the table, and realized she’d been going in the wrong direction. She tried again, moving carefully, until her fingers touched a wall. It was, though, the wooden partition that divided the cellar into two rooms. She was lost, now.

  She drew a long breath, and stood for a moment, trying to figure out in which direction to move. Perhaps by going along the wooden partition, using it as a guide, she could get back to the wall out of which the cellar stairs opened. She felt her way along, stumbling once over a box and getting splinters in her finge
rs, until she came to the door in the partition. She paused there a moment, and then moved on, her arms outstretched, feeling for the wall beyond the door.

  Suddenly her hand touched something. Something warm. Something alive. A human face. There, within arms’ reach of her, in the darkness.

  She heard a faint little gasp, and something fell at her feet.

  This was what people meant when they said “frozen with terror.” This was what happened to you in nightmares. For a moment Helene wondered if she was going to drop dead, right there on the spot.

  There wasn’t a sound anywhere. Little by little Helene could feel the blood coming back into her face again. Instinctively she reached in her pocket for a cigarette, and immediately cursed herself for being, if not the biggest fool in history, at least the biggest fool in the world.

  There had been a folder of matches in her pocket all the time. With four matches in it.

  She tore out a match with shaking fingers, lighted it carefully, and bent down to inspect whatever lay at her feet.

  The faint glow from the match fell on the tear-stained, soot-streaked, unconscious face of Annette Ginnis.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Max Hook’s living room, Jake observed, had been redecorated. The last time he had seen it there had been pale-rose taffeta curtains held back with enormous satin ribbon bows, a multitude of little decorative lamps, and delicately tinted pink walls. Now, the walls were done in an exquisitely designed paper, grey-white scrolls against a darker, purplish grey; the windows were covered with what he suspected to be light-mauve chiffon in thick, billowing folds; the lamps had been replaced by chromium indirect-lighting fixtures. But the frail, beautifully carved, satin-covered furniture remained—now upholstered in violet—as did the cut-glass vases, the enameled cigarette boxes, the white jade statuettes and the painted china ash trays. One more thing remained: the big painted-pine rolltop desk, scarred and dented, which Max Hook had brought with him from his first tiny office on the West Side.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” Max Hook said. He had a voice like a radio announcer advertising a facial cream. “I always like to have things nice.” He swung around in the specially built swivel chair at his desk and faced Jake. He was a mountain of a man, six feet tall and still twice too fat for his height, a jelly-like, quivering fat. His face, with its big, sad eyes, was deceptively gentle and friendly. His head was as bald as an orange. Even his fingers were fat, and they were covered with rings.

  “It’s beautiful,” Jake said, wondering how he was going to talk Max Hook out of wanting his money back.

  The big man beamed. “You have excellent taste, Mr. Justus.” He carefully fitted a tinted cigarette into a slender jade holder. “I’m sorry to have had to trouble you today—”

  “It was no trouble,” Jake said. He sat down on one of the silk-upholstered chairs and dropped his hat on the floor. “Now it’s like this—”

  Max Hook pushed a buzzer beside his desk. “You’ll have a drink?”

  “Thanks,” Jake said. “Rye.” He waited until a sallow-faced young man had come in, taken Max Hook’s order, and gone away again. “Look here. You know the Casino only opened last night, and you promised me more time than that. And you know that you’ll get your money—”

  “Money?” Max Hook raised that portion of his forehead where his eyebrows should have been. “Who’s talking about money? Me?”

  “Well, but—” Jake began.

  He was interrupted by the sallow-faced young man bearing a tray with his rye, and a tall glass of some pinkish stuff. Then the Swiss chimes above the door sounded, the young man slid open the peephole, and turned to announce, “Mr. Malone.”

  “Good!” Max Hook said. “Ask him in.”

  Jake thought, “Thank God!” and drank his rye, fast.

  “I’m glad you got my message,” Max Hook said, as Malone came in the door, “but I didn’t even hope you’d be so prompt.”

  “Message?” Malone said. “I didn’t get any message. I came to see you on business of my own.” He glanced at Jake, said, “What the hell are you doing here?” bounced across the room, and picked up Max Hook’s glass. “What in blazes are you drinking? Pink lemonade?” He sipped it, set it down, and said, “Holy mahogany, it’s pink champagne.” He sat down, fanned himself with his hat before he dropped it on the floor, and said to the sallow-faced young man, “Since I’m invited, I’ll take gin. A big one.”

  “Is it any wonder that I like him?” Max Hook said admiringly to Jake.

  Jake waited until Malone’s drink had arrived, and then said, in the hope of tipping off Malone, “You say it isn’t the money you want to see me about, Mr. Hook?”

  “Ah,” Max Hook said, “since Mr. Malone didn’t get my message asking him here, let’s wait and learn what he wanted to see me about.”

  “Well, it’s like this,” Malone said. He lit a cigar and looked disgustedly at the tiny ash tray. “I’m going to open up a night club, pal, and I thought I’d ask you to lend me—Now, you tell us what you wanted.”

  “A great joker, isn’t he?” Max Hook said. “Well gentlemen, since you insist—” He swung his chair around to face them.

  “It’s too bad you went to night school and studied speaking,” Malone growled. “You sounded a lot better when you ran that joint on West Madison.”

  “Let us not speak of the past,” Max Hook said gently, laying his perfumed cigarette aside.

  “Oh yes, we shall,” Malone said, “the immediate past anyway. What was the tie-up between you and the midget?”

  “There was none,” Max Hook murmured. “I never saw the midget in my life until last night. A great entertainer, too. Too bad that he was called to such an untimely end.”

  Malone scowled. “The best thing I can say about you, Max, is that you don’t tell lies. But”—he puffed at his cigar—“I heard a certain musician in a certain orchestra now performing at a certain night club declare that he and the other band boys hung out at your crooked joints, because the midget—”

  “That’s perfectly true,” Max Hook said. “But I didn’t learn about it until this morning. The rake-off, if I may use so coarse a term, went to a young gentleman who has been in my employ, and who was, so I understand, splitting the proceeds with the midget.”

  Jake shivered involuntarily. He didn’t like the way the Hook had said “who has been.”

  “You can readily understand,” Max Hook went on, “that I could not tolerate anything of the sort.”

  Malone said, “But that hasn’t been all—”

  “Please!” Max Hook looked at him gravely. “I thought you wanted me to tell you.” He paused. “Then you know about this”—he paused again, his eyes blazed, and suddenly he snarled—“this Goddamned racket these stinking rats have been working behind my back.” He pinched out his tinted cigarette between two pink fingers.

  “We know all about it,” Malone said, “or almost all about it. I came up here today to find out if you did.”

  “I do now,” Max Hook said. “That’s why I sent for Jake Justus here today, and why I tried to reach you. Because in the first place I won’t stand for any of the boys going into rackets of their own, and in the second, this business, it’s—it’s as bad as blackmail.” He drew a long breath, turned purple, and said, “It’s criminal!”

  Malone thought of Max Hook’s assorted gambling and vice interests, and of the homicides that had been unofficially chalked up to his boys, and said nothing. After all, every man was entitled to his own opinion about what was criminal.

  Jake said, “How did you find out about it?”

  Max Hook beamed at him, his composure regained. He picked up another cigarette, this one tinted pale blue. “My dear Mr. Justus, don’t you suppose I keep a watch on my boys?” He paused long enough to light the cigarette. “I know all about the marriages and annulments; I know that the midget had a little box containing papers that someone could have used for blackmail purposes; I know that while Mr. Justus was getting t
he box out of his safe, Johnny Oscar came in and hit him over the head and took the box. I learned all this from the young man who had informed on Johnny Oscar a little earlier in the day and who was following Johnny Oscar.”

  There was a moment’s silence before Malone murmured, “You do get around, don’t you?”

  “I suggest,” Max Hook said, “that you go to Johnny Oscar’s and get back the box.” He pressed the buzzer again and, when the sallow-faced young man came in, he said, “Give these gentlemen a duplicate key to Johnny’s apartment.” He beamed at Jake and Malone and said, “I like to keep a check on my boys.”

  “I see you do,” Malone said. “Did Johnny Oscar murder the midget?”

  Max Hook shrugged his enormous shoulders. He didn’t know, and it wasn’t important. Malone knew better than to press him for more information. He tucked the key into his pocket.

  At the door, Jake paused. “But what about Johnny Oscar?”

  “I think”—Max Hook smiled, a wide, magnificent smile—“I will be able to handle that problem.”

  Malone walked halfway down the hall to the elevator before he growled, “Well, there goes two bucks for flowers to send to Johnny Oscar’s funeral. But at least we know what happened to that damned box.” He poked savagely at the elevator button.

  “But who killed the midget?” Jake demanded. “Johnny Oscar?”

  “Possibly,” Malone said. “In which case, all I’ve got to do is prove that he did, before Max Hook gets around to taking steps.” He told Jake about Pen Reddick’s visit.

  Jake said, “But at the time the midget was murdered—”

  “Johnny Oscar is supposed to have been roaming around the city with Annette Ginnis and Ned Royal. We don’t know that for sure.”

  The elevator interrupted further discussion. Out on the sidewalk Malone peered around for a cab and muttered, “I find a guy who might have murdered the midget, and Max Hook is likely to beat me to the draw and do me out of two thousand bucks. What did I ever do that everything should happen to me?”