Mother Finds a Body

by Craig Rice

  Mother picked up her pin-seal Boston bag and followed her.

  “Whassa matter?” Cullucio asked. “They don’t likea the show?”

  “It isn’t that,” I lied glibly. “It’s only that Mrs. Smith has never been in a saloon before.”

  “Saloon?” Cullucio snapped. “I call this a theater-restaurant.” His cold eyes settled on me. His teeth clamped down on the cigar.

  I should have let it go at that. After all, he could call it the Stork Club for all I cared. To me, it would still be a saloon. I was uncomfortable with him standing at my arm, though. I didn’t like being alone with him. I didn’t like the smell of Caron’s Sweet Pea and the stale cigar smoke that enveloped him. His white belted suit was too tight, the black shirt too shiny.

  To be sociable I smiled at him, but my heart wasn’t in it. My drink gave me a little more courage.

  “Saloon, theater-restaurant. They’re all the same to me,” I said with a prop laugh. “I suppose what you’ve got upstairs you call a hotel? That crap table in the back room, that’s strictly for ping-pong, I guess.”

  I glanced at the bar to see if I could find Biff. He wasn’t there. It gave me a deserted, desolate feeling. Where he had stood, there now sat three women. One of them—I learned later her name was Tanker Mary—was knitting. She didn’t watch her knitting needles as she worked. Her eyes were on the door. Every time a man walked in she smiled at him. Her lips framed suggestions that she alternated with “Knit two, purl two.” The other woman flashed two gold front teeth in a beery smile. “Want to have a good time, dearie?” was her standard remark. The third wore black cotton stockings on her fat legs, purple bedroom slippers on her feet. She was drinking beer; it left a white foam mustache on her mouth.

  “That’s a tasty trio you got there,” I said to Cullucio. “Puts the customers in a happy frame of mind.”

  “What I care about their minds?” Cullucio asked. He drew out a chair and sat next to me. He adjusted his trousers carefully as he sat. He pulled them up to the top of his black-and-white buttoned shoes, flashing a pair of bright-yellow socks, brown legs, and a purple garter.

  I made a quick guess about his underwear. I had an idea it would be silk, with his name spelled out on the chest in a contrasting color.

  “The Lucius Beebe of the border,” I said softly.

  A waiter passing by with a trayful of liquor stopped beside him.

  “Want anything, chief?” he asked. The words came from the side of his mouth. His eyes were furtively casing me.

  Too many Warner Brothers movies, I thought.

  Cullucio waved him away. “If I did I’d ask for it, wouldn’t I?”

  The waiter smiled just like George Raft smiled in Scarface. “O.K. O.K. Don’t get sore. I only asked.”

  “He’s pretty, too,” I said as the waiter shuffled away. “Lots of savoir-faire.”

  “New man,” Cullucio snapped. “My regular waiter didn’t show up.”

  “Well,” I said, “you sure found yourself a good understudy.”

  Another waiter placed a check on the table. If he had piled the chairs on the table, he couldn’t have asked me more clearly to get up and get out. He kept one anxious eye on the entrance of the saloon.

  Customers were standing four deep waiting for tables. One of them had slipped the waiter a fiver, I knew, for our table. Can’t blame a waiter for trying to pick up a soft five, but even so, I didn’t want him to think we were in the place as relatives of the boss.

  “My husband will take care of the check,” I said airily. I tried to give him the nod. The five-dollar-tip nod.

  Cullucio snatched up the check. He pulled out a gold pen that must have weighed ten pounds and unscrewed the onyx top. With a flourish he scribbled his name on the check.

  “My guests,” he said to the waiter.

  I cased the check. The amount hardly warranted such a display of generosity. It certainly didn’t warrant the pressure of his knee against mine.

  Biff’s entrance at that moment was beautiful. In the grand manner of the old school, he handed the waiter a ten-dollar bill.

  “We never drink cuffo,” Biff said, “We pay. Then we can hiss the floor show if we want to.”

  The sheriff was with Biff. They arranged themselves comfortably in the chairs and ignored the boss of The Happy Hour.

  “This joint sure does a helluva business,” Biff said to no one in particular. “Yes, sir, I’ll take a pup out of this any day.”

  Cullucio leaned forward. I thought he was watching the dancers on the floor. Then I saw that his eyes were following Mother.

  She and Mamie were returning from the ladies’ room and Mother was smiling broadly. She had powdered her face and she looked lovely. The sheriff thought so, too. He almost knocked over my chair getting to his feet. Mother loved it. If anyone else flirted so openly with a man, it would be inexcusable, but on Mother it looked good.

  “This is my friend, Mrs. Smith,” Mother said, pushing poor Mamie under the sheriff’s chin. “It was her trailer that was burned up in that awful fire. She’s moved in with us until she gets her insurance.”

  Mrs. Smith held out a limp hand and smiled demurely at the sheriff. She could have saved the personality. He hadn’t taken his eyes from Mother.

  Biff snapped his fingers at a waiter who was passing, the understudy waiter.

  “Tequilla for all of us,” he said, “with beer chasers.” Biff pronounced “tequilla” with a hard double l.

  “Make mine rye,” I said to the waiter. Then to Biff: “You knock yourself out, dear. I’ll drink what I can pronounce.”

  Biff hadn’t heard me. He was waving his arms frantically.

  Joyce, posed in the stage entrance, waved back. She had changed from her sweat-stained blue satin to a sweat-stained cerise velvet. I made a mental note about advising her to stay away from cerise. On some blondes it’s becoming. Joyce wasn’t one of those blondes.

  In a moment she was at our table. She plunked herself into a chair next to Biff. It wasn’t quite close enough to please her, so she wriggled around until the chair was almost in Biff’s lap. She ignored Cullucio, who didn’t seem to mind in the least.

  “You left this in the ladies’ room, dear,” Joyce said to Mother.

  She showed Mother a carelessly wrapped package. It was the same package I had seen Mother take from the trailer, the package I missed when we were standing beside the grave.

  “Oh,” Mother said as she reached for it, “it must have dropped from my bag.”

  Joyce leaned over and smiled sweetly at Mother.

  “Could be,” she said coyly. “Only I found it in the bottom of the towel hamper.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  With all her strange maneuvers, every now and then Mother does something that makes me proud of being her daughter. At that moment she came through with a quick one-two that made me feel like sticking out my chest so far that the local purity squad would have a legitimate small beef. With no dialogue and a take-it-or-leave-it-boys gesture. Mother snatched the package from Joyce.

  “I wanted to show you this,” she said to the sheriff as she unwrapped the package.

  The sheriff, watching her, was almost as pleased as I. Joyce had been altogether too cute with her coyness, and the sheriff knew it.

  I suddenly had a more comfortable feeling about the Ysleta police force. It wasn’t Scotland Yard with all the gimmicks like fingerprinting and the business of having a guy named Lombroso who knows from faces if the suspect is a murderer or not, but it did recognize a good performance. And Mother, if I say so myself, was making like Duse. But I mean Duse in her prime.

  “I bought it in Nogales yesterday,” Mother was saying in an almost too-cultured tone. “You see, I sleep in the car alone. Sometimes I get frightened. I haven’t wanted to alarm the children, but I have been followed. Oh, they don’t believe me, but it’s true. Since we arrived in this town two men have followed me constantly. I was a little nervous about it. Not that I’m a nervous
woman, but these men are so—so—desperate-looking. Really evil. So when I passed the shop and saw this in the window I stopped in and bought it.”

  Mother uncovered a small gun. It was so small it looked like a toy. It had a pearl handle, and the business end couldn’t have been more than an inch long.

  Mother handed it to the sheriff. He accepted it awkwardly. I could understand that. The two engraved silver-handled guns hanging from a holster at his hips were large enough to arm a battleship. He bent the little gun in a way that made it appear as if it were broken.

  Four tiny pellets rolled out into his hand. He examined the bullets, then the gun.

  “Been fired twice,” he said softly.

  “Oh, I tried it out,” Mother said. The Duse quality was out of her voice now. She was right back on Forty-second Street but still good.

  “That’s the way I am. Anything new, and I have to try it out right away.”

  Cullucio leaned over the table and looked at the gun.

  “Hm, short twenty-two,” he said. He smiled at the gun. Then he gave the teeth to the sheriff.

  It was a waste of time. As far as the sheriff was concerned there were two things that mattered. Mother came first; the gun was a slow second.

  “Twenty-two?” Mother said brightly. “That’s what the man told me. The man I bought it from. I told him I didn’t want a gun that would kill a man; I only wanted to frighten them away. A little gun like this couldn’t really kill a man, could it?”

  The sheriff hesitated a moment. “Well,” he said, “I don’t know if it would kill him or not, but if you hit him in the right place it’d make him madder’n hell.”

  Joyce laughed boisterously. “That’s terriffic,” she shouted. “I never knew you could be so funny, Hankie.”

  Biff came to the sheriff’s rescue. “His first name is Hank,” he said to Mother. “Everybody calls him Hankie.”

  “I don’t think Mother believed Biff.

  Joyce had leaned over the sheriff’s shoulder and was holding her glass to his lips. “Take a little drink,” she coaxed. “Just us two. We’ll make it a loving cup.”

  The sheriff was too busy rewrapping the gun to get the full benefit of Joyce’s attitude. The cerise velvet was cut lower than the blue satin. The contrast of her heavily powdered chin against the bluish tinge of her neck was hardly attractive. But then, I might have been prejudiced. I really enjoyed the sheriff’s unawareness of the private floor show. I liked the way he placed the gun in his pocket and patted it to see if it was safe. I liked the way he looked at Mother when he asked if he could keep the gun for a while.

  “It’s a dangerous thing to have around,” he said. “When you flash a gun you have to make sure it’s better than the other guy’s or you don’t draw.”

  “I only bought it because I was nervous,” Mother said softly. “Now that I know you are watching out for us, I don’t need it anyway.”

  The sheriff turned as crimson as Joyce’s dress. It might have been a reflection, though; she was close enough to cast one.

  Then, with a broad, slow smile, she caught on. She let her tired eyes travel from Mother’s flushed face to the sheriff’s.

  “Well,” she said. “Looks like I missed the boat again.”

  The sheriff had the good grace to blush again, but Mother took the line in her stride.

  “There aren’t any boats around here,” she said innocently. “We’re inland.”

  I turned away to giggle and as I did I could see two men standing behind Mother’s chair at the back of the room. They were whispering to each other. Mother caught my eye and turned around. The two men opened a door with a sign OFFICE over it and went into the other room.

  “Those are the men!” Mother said. Her face was very white and she clutched the tablecloth in her tense hands. “Those men have been following me. They went into that room.” Mother pointed to the door.

  As she lifted her arm I could see how it shook.

  Cullucio jumped to his feet. “In that room?” he asked. “Impossible! That’s my private office.” He pushed his way through the crowded saloon and, taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door of his office. He entered and closed the door behind him.

  “Are you sure they are the same men?” the sheriff asked.

  Mother didn’t have time to answer. Cullucio had opened the door and was on the way back to our table. His dark face was wreathed in smiles.

  “Nobody in there,” he said casually. “You must have thought you saw someone. Maybe they went in that other door.”

  There was another door near his office, but I knew which one the men had entered. It was his office, all right, and they hadn’t needed a key to get in. They hadn’t knocked, either.

  Biff was whispering to the sheriff. I knew he was whispering about Mother and her imagination. Mamie heard part of the conversation because she scowled at Biff and the smile she gave Mother was one of deep sympathy. I knew it was up to me to put the thing straight. I don’t have Mother’s imagination and I knew what I saw, but before I could speak I felt Biff’s knee nudge me.

  A telepathic thought came to me. Biff had his own reasons for wanting Mother to be disbelieved. In a flash I knew it. I kept silent.

  Biff turned to Cullucio. “You got a great little show here,” he said. “Strictly four-forty, but have you ever thought of putting in a couple comics?”

  Cullucio leaned back in his chair and put his thumbs through his lucite suspenders. He was businessman enough to know when he was being sold a bill of goods.

  “You talking about yourself?” he asked, half smiling.

  “How did you know I was a comic?” Biff asked. He was surprised but even more flattered.

  “Certainly not from that short you made for Metro,” I said.

  “Matter of fact,” Biff went on, “I was thinking about a couple of friends of mine. Solid comics. Good team, too. They worked together thirty-four weeks steady at the Republic in New York, sixteen weeks at the Rialto in Chicago, full season at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. Records talk, and believe me those are tough houses to make good in.” Biff looked at me. “Aren’t they, Punkin?”

  “Oh yes,” I said, lying in my teeth. Of all the pushover audiences in the world, Biff had mentioned the three top ones. All a comic has to do is spit in his pants and he stops the show cold. “They really are a tough audience,” I said.

  Cullucio was impressed. He dropped his casual air and took his thumbs from his suspenders.

  “I can’t afford to pay much money,” he said. “This business tonight, well, it’s unusual.”

  Where, I thought, have I heard that before?

  “I’d like to see them act, though,” Cullucio said.

  “See them act!” Biff was aghast. “You mean you want Cliff Corny Cobb and his partner, Mandy Hill, to give you an audition?”

  “Well, I dunno …”

  What Cullucio didn’t know was the meaning of the word audition. That was obvious. Obvious to anyone but Biff, that is. Biff didn’t give the man time to ponder, though.

  “These are big-time comics, brother,” he said. “The minute I saw your show I said to myself, ‘What this place needs is a couple of comics, class comics.’ Naturally, I think of the two top boys in the business. That is, since I got out of burlesque. I didn’t mention it to them yet. I don’t know how they’d feel about working m a saloon …”

  “A theater-restaurant, I said sharply.

  Biff took the cue. “Want to talk business with them?” he asked Cullucio.

  Cullucio lost his you-sell-me attitude.

  “Sure I talk to ‘em,’ he said eagerly.

  Biff nearly upset the table in his rush to grab Mandy and Cliff while they still could talk. He brought them back with him to our table and introduced them to the saloonkeeping impresario.

  Cullucio wasn’t quite as eager after getting a good look at the pride of the Steel Pier.

  “I’ll see them in my office tomorrow,” he said. He tossed his t
humb toward the direction of the door with OFFICE printed above it. Under the OFFICE sign I saw another, OFFICIO. Cullucio wasn’t taking any chances on having his sanctum mistaken for the men’s room.

  The two comics left to join the girls at the bar. Biff asked Mamie if she’d like to dance. When she said yes, he was sorry he had mentioned it, but he helped her to her feet as though she were the queen of the ball. Joyce left us to sit with her friends from St. Louis, and the sheriff danced with Mother. I was alone with Francisco Cullucio again.

  “Maybe you like to work here, too,” he said, after the surly waiter put two drinks on the table.

  I took a good look at Cullucio and another at the waiter. No, I certainly didn’t want to work at The Happy Hour. I didn’t tell him that, though. I knew Biff had something up his sleeve or he wouldn’t have acted as agent for Cliff and Mandy. I had seen Biff in action before. When he felt good and ready, he’d tell me his plans. Until then I was expected to follow through if it killed me.

  “I’d love it,” I said, “but I have a clause in my contract. No doubling. I mean I’m not allowed to hold down two jobs at once,” I added hastily as I saw the bewildered expression on his face. “If you’re looking for a stripper, though, I know someone who’d fill the bill.”

  I glanced over at Dimples and Gee Gee. I couldn’t make up my mind which one to throw to the wolf. At a second glance I wondered if the wolf would sit still for either of them. Gee Gee’s multicolored hair was scraggling over her freckled forehead. Her nose was shiny. She needed lipstick. I concentrated on Dimples. She looked worse, but Cullucio struck me as the type who went in for lushness, and Dimples certainly fitted that description. The nickel a drink would net her a nice income, too, I thought.

  “Her name is Dimples Darling,” I said. “She’s billed as the Queen of Quiver.”

  Cullucio’s knee was pressing against mine again.

  “If she’s a friend of yours, I put her to work,” he said meaningfully.

  If the freighted glance and the pressed knee counted, it looked as though I was the one who was going to do the work. I only hoped that whatever Biff was doing was important enough to make up for what I was going through.