by Craig Rice
Dimples opened her eyes then. She raised herself up on her elbow and stared around the room. “What hit me?” she said. “I can’t get my breath. I’m all choked up …”
Mother went into action. She grabbed the box of Life Everlasting and poured a mound in the container top.
“Here, this will fix that. It makes my head clear right away …”
Mother touched a match to the powder and waited for the flame to die down before she reached for the towel.
Biff had been watching her. His mouth fell open and he pounded his first on the stove top.
“That’s it!” he shouted. “Why didn’t I think of it before? Of course, that’s the best place in the world to hide it!”
Biff snatched the asthma powder from Mother and shoved it toward the doctor.
“Can you tell what’s mixed up in this stuff?” he asked. “I mean, can you tell if it’s all asthma powder or if something else is in it?”
The doctor took the container from Biff and put it into his pocket. “I’ll have to analyze it,” he said.
“The hell you do,” Biff said quickly. “I see it all now. Every time Evangie had an attack she inhaled that powder. Every time she inhaled it, she went a little nuts. It was the logical place to hide the dope. Nobody would think to look through a can of asthma powder for another kind of powder. Why I didn’t think of it before is beyond me.”
“You think that’s what happened to me?” Dimples asked.
“Sure,” Biff said with assurance. “I smelled the stuff the second I walked into the trailer. You must have gotten a couple good whiffs and, in your weakened, high-strung condition, you were just ripe for it.”
Dimples liked the remarks about her condition.
“Matter of fact,” she said, “I am run-down …”
She would have gone through a list of ailments if Biff and the doctor hadn’t left to see Joyce. Gee Gee waited until they closed the door. Then she eyed the bottle.
“You know,” she said, “even now, when I know there’s no dope in that rye, I still don’t want a drink. I can’t understand it, I don’t want a drink!”
“Maybe you’re cured of the habit,” Mother said. “My sister married a man who took the Keeley cure, and believe it or not…”
Biff opened the bedroom door and came into the sitting room.
“Is Joyce all right?” Gee Gee asked.
Biff nodded. “Yeah, it’s only a scratch. She bled a lot and she’ll be a little weak for a while, but the doc’s taking her into town so she’ll get some rest. He just gave her a shot of something now to make her sleep, an opiate.”
The doctor called to Biff. “Put on some water to boil. I have to clean this up a bit.”
We crowded around the door as the doctor spoke.
“Are you positive she’s all right?” Dimples asked.
“Positive,” the doctor replied. “This won’t even leave a scar.”
Joyce stirred. She opened her eyes and stared at the dootor.
“Honest to Gawd?” she asked.
Opiate or no opiate, I thought, when you mention scars to strip teasers, they all come to.
“Honest,” the doctor said softly.
Joyce fell back on the pillow with a happy smile on her face.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Biff closed the bedroom door. With a contented sigh he settled into the most comfortable chair in the trailer. Not because he was selfish, but because he was the man of the house and he wanted to look it. He wanted his womenfolk sitting around waiting patiently for the words to fall. His picture would have been complete had one of us placed his slippers at his feet.
Gee Gee climbed over his stretched-out legs and found a place on the bed next to Dimples. Mother, still a little wheezy, sat stiffly in a chair near the door. I stood beside the stove. Not because the bottle was there, but because I wasn’t in a sitting mood.
Our man of the house, being a comic, took his own sweet time in getting to the point. He pulled a cigar from his pocket and smelled it lovingly. As though that wasn’t bad enough, he had to touch a match to it.”
“White Owl,” he said comfortably. “Smell the feathers burning?”
We laughed politely. It was an effort, but we made it. Then there was another long silence.
“Would you like a little entrance music?” I asked finally. “Maybe eight bars of Happy Days Are Here Again, as played on a comb?”
Silence. Nothing but the odor of burning feathers and Mother’s wheezing to fill the air.
“Perhaps you’d rather go into the act cold?”
“If,” Biff said with Theatre Guild enunciation, “you will allow everything in its chronological order and not make with the throat, I will name for you the murderer.”
Naturally I was insulted. The offstage dialogue about my throat had become a bit tiresome during the past few days. Biff was rather overdoing the act of Provider, too. But I was more curious than insulted, so I kept quiet. I did kick off my shoes, light a cigarette, and pour myself a drink. It was obvious that we were in for a session.
Biff began modestly enough: “I don’t know if you gals know just what kind of mental guy is sitting here talking to you. You got me pegged as a funny man. A man who makes with the stale jokes. What you overlook is that I am a guy who just found himself a murderer. I mean a murderer of the first water. Not somebody who lost the temper and skewered with an icepick. Not a murderer who didn’t-know-it-was-loaded, but a scheming, conniving murderer. I am not one to brag, but, I, Biff Brannigan, alone, unabetted, unaided, in fact, hampered by the police, have solved the case of Evangie’s body!”
“My body!” Mother shrieked. “I’ll have you remember that I had absolutely nothing to do with that corpse. Nothing besides burying it and that is what any mother would have done. Any mother with true feelings. Any mother with a grain of love for her daughter.”
Mother had risen to her feet on that speech, and as she stood, one hand pressing against the side of the trailer, the other over her heart, she looked a little like Joan of Arc. She knew it too. She glanced around to see if the girls could get a good view. They could. Mother lapsed into an asthmatic, satisfied silence.
“Yes,” Biff said above the wheezing, “I know the murderer of a man named Gus. The murderer of Corny. The murderer of the second body. His name was Jones, incidentally. Ain’t that a hellova name for a corpse? Jones! If you saw it on a hotel register you’d swear it was a gag. Mr. and Mrs. Jones—”
“I knew a Mr. and Mrs. Jones once,” Mother said. “They lived next door to us in Seattle. He was a railroad man. A conductor on the Yessler Way cable car. His wife was a funny little woman, too. Three children, or was it four? I sort of remember a boy—Joe, no I think it was George—”
“I know all of this because of a little brush fire,” Biff said when Mother stopped to think of the Jones’ first names. “Everybody saw that fire. They could be in my shoes right this minute, but no! It was left to me, a burlesque comic—”
“And not too comical at this sitting,” Gee Gee said. “The only funny thing is the gag about the shoes. Who in hell’d want to be in those Juliets?”
“If you will leave my sartorial effects out of this I will go on,” Biff said. “That is if you don’t mind too kindly.”
Biff wasn’t annoyed, but I could see that one more crack would do it. I couldn’t control Mother but I did give Gee Gee the eye. Biff waited until the eye talk was over.
“Yep, it was left to a comic to discover the weak point in an otherwise clever scheme to rob, plunder, kill, murder—”
“Nuts!” Gee Gee said. She reached for the bottle and tilted it to her lips. She gulped daintily.
“You’ll never be able to top the opening of this dialogue, brother,” she said. “Are you going to get to the blackout or is to be continued in this theater next week? Here we sit, the four of us, waiting for you to tell us something, and all you do is make words. Put ’em together! Answer me one quick question: have they got Culluc
io? Yes or no? No gestures, no buildup, just a nice short yes or no!”
Biff hesitated.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, they got him. But first I would like to tell you how and why. I will have to go back—”
“I wish to hell you’d go way back,” Gee Gee muttered.
“As I said, I will have to go back to an afternoon in San Diego. Back to the afternoon when Evangie stopped in a drugstore and bought six cans of Live Everlasting. Had she bought one can this might never have happened to us. We all know that the murderer knew the heroin was in an asthma-powder can. We all know about the two men who followed Evangie. We all know why Corny met his death. We all know why Joyce was stabbed—”
“You mean you know!” Gee Gee said. “So far all we know is that you have a big mouth. What about Corny and Joyce? What about those two guys following Evangie? What about the asthma powder? And what about that handkerchief found in the grave? What about the fire that set your nimble brain galloping along?”
Biff twined his fingers around his suspenders, the red ones with FIREMAN printed on them, and leaned back in his chair.
“I have been in Ysleta a couple of hours while you dames were scaring hell out of each other. In that time I found the answer to everything. Corny was killed because he sold information. He told the murderer the heroin was hidden in the asthma powder. He knew that because he saw Gus put it there in San Diego. He expected Gus to come around for it, and he figured to cut himself in for a little dough when Gus appeared. But no Gus. Why? Because Gus was dead. But Corny does see someone prowling around the trailer. He knows what they’re after and because there was no way he could sell the dope he tells ’em, for dough, of course, where to look. They look all right but they get the wrong container. They go to Corny with a beef. He says for them to take it easy or he’ll tell what he knows about the body in the woods. You see, he didn’t see Evangie bury the body. He saw the second body being buried! He saw Evangie on her way out of the woods. He thought she had hidden the heroin. Not that it mattered to him, he had four thousand-some-odd bucks salted away in the trailer. He didn’t give a damn who got the heroin so long as he had the money. Where he made his mistake is when he told the murderer he knew they had buried a body. That is when he signed his death warrant.”
Biff paused long enough to let the garbled facts sink in, then a little longer while he poured a drink.
“What I like best,” Gee Gee said, “is the ‘signed-his-death-warrant’ line. That is fancy dialogue. Who, may I ask, writes your material?”
“You think I’m wrong, eh?” Biff asked. “Well, then, I’ll go on! Evangie’s two beauty boys were Cullucio’s men.”
“No kidding?” Gee Gee said coldly.
“Sure, finding Jones’ body scared hell out of ’em. See, Jones was one of Cullucio’s waiters. They knew if Hank ever took a look at the corpse he’d recognize him right off the bat. They’re the ones who bashed in his face and tore out the tailor label. They were protecting their boss, that’s all.”
Something had occurred to me! I was almost ashamed to mention it, but I felt it my duty, as a wife, to tell.
“I should have known about the waiter,” I said. Biff looked at me sharply.
“Cullucio told me he’d been gone a couple days, and I should have put two and two together, really. Only he was so calm about telling me. Just as though waiters are found dead in the woods every day. He said the guy had been missing and that was that.”
“Cullucio would,” Biff said laconically.
“Did they get those two guys too?” I asked.
Biff nodded, and I felt a sigh escape me. The only way I wanted to see them again was behind bars. There are muscle boys and there are muscle boys. Cullucio’s were the type who look best in stripes. The thought of them following Mother, hiding around in the woods, sneaking through the trailer, made me tremble. The picture of Cullucio, sitting next to me in the saloon, didn’t help my nerves any either. I could see his white teeth gleaming, his dark hands with the tufts of hair growing on the knuckles, his way of dipping his cigar in his liquor before he smoked. My mouth started to shake. I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t rid myself of that mental picture.
“He—he—could have killed all of us,” I finally managed to say.
“Yes, but he didn’t, so calm down,” Biff said. “He didn’t kill anybody—”
“Hiring someone else to do it for him is just as bad,” I said. “And if I want to have a case of mild hysterics I will thank you to mind your own business.”
I had stopped trembling. I wasn’t even frightened. I had just one emotion left. A slow, burning fury at the saloonkeeper.
“For him to pick on us of all people,” I said. “Dumping his old corpse in our trailer! He might have known it was my honeymoon!”
Biff was going to say something, but Dimples got in there first. She pulled the marabou-trimmed robe closer to her chest and adjusted her chin strap.
“I’ll probably have a sweet time trying to collect my salary from The Happy Hour,” she said. “It may be blood money, but I worked for it and I’d like to get it. I got a fiver coming to me from Corny, too. I guess that dough will go to the state or something. They’ll find some way to stiff me. It’s my usual luck, dammit. I get me a nice job, short hours, no matinees, I was going over swell, too, and the joint turns out to be a dope drop.”
“Say, The Happy Hour isn’t the only saloon in Ysleta, you know,” Biff said. “They got enough of ’em in town that you could make a career from ‘em. I could maybe make a deal for you at The Blinking Pup.”
His voice sounded casual enough, but knowing Biff I looked at him closely. He had something on his mind, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it.
“Matter of fact,” he said, “I thought you gals might feel a little squeamish about staying on at The Happy Hour.”
“Squeamish,” Dimples said. “If it means what I think it means, the word’ll fit.”
Biff said, “I was talking to a guy about it a few hours ago. He runs The Blinking Pup. Caught the act at The Happy Hour, and he thought you were pretty solid.”
Dimples smiled as much as the chin strap would allow. “He did, huh?”
“Yep,” Biff said, “he told me he could use Gee Gee too. Forty a week and meals. Four-week contract. That’s not to be kicked around, you know. I could maybe get him to up the money a little.”
Gee Gee and Dimples looked at each other, then at Biff.
“Can I maul it around in my head for a while?” Gee Gee asked.
“Sure,” Biff said. A broad gesture went with the word. “Think it over. It sounds like a good bet to me, but after all, you’re the girls to decide.”
Then I got it! I might have guessed from Biff’s expression, but being on the slow side that night it took me a little longer than usual. I knew then that when Biff let his eyes travel over the trailer he was mentally picturing it without Gee Gee and Dimples. He looked at Mother for a moment, than he shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“That one stopped you, didn’t it?” I asked sweetly.
Biff started, then his face broke into a grin.
“Not exactly,” he said pensively. “I got an idea on that score, too.”
I was sure he had.
“And what about Mandy?” I asked. “Saloon or no saloon, it won’t be easy to sell him as a single. And of course there’s always Mamie. Have you got her all set as the Belle of The Blinking Pup?”
Gee Gee thought that was very funny. Biff didn’t.
“I’m getting off the original script,” he said. “There’s something I got to tell you all. It’s about poor Mamie. She’s—”
A car stopped in front of the trailer. The headlights glared from the window into Biff’s face, and a second later someone pounded on the door. Mother quickly fluffed up her hair and pinched her cheeks until they were quite pink, then she opened the door for the sheriff.
We all faced him silently. He took off his hat and held it awkwardly in his la
rge hands. He gave the impression of having to stoop a little so his head would clear the ceiling of the trailer. His high-heeled shoes looked silly. I suddenly saw him as a musical-comedy sheriff, and the idea wouldn’t go away.
“I can see you all know,” he said. He let his head drop for a moment, and it was as though the orchestra should go into a number at that point.
“Biff was just telling us about Mamie,” Mother said. “He didn’t get very far with it.”
She realized too late that her words were hardly complimentary. As a quick cover-up she added, “Now that you’re here maybe we can get a straight story.”
The sheriff seated himself as close to Mother as he could. Biff offered him a drink and he refused it. His eyes were on the bedroom door. The knob turned and the door opened. I had forgotten about Gonzales. He turned down the lamp near the bed and picked up his black bag, then he walked on tiptoe to the door and closed it behind him. He stood within touching distance from me, and in the shadows his teeth, when he smiled at Hank, were white. Almost like phosphorus.
“I’ll send the large car for Miss Janice,” he said softly.
“She’ll be better off in town where I can keep an eye on her.”
I watched him as he fastened his black bag. His long, dark fingers moved gracefully as he slipped the leather strap through the clasp. His head was bent over, and the light fell on the black oily hair. When he walked toward the outer door I felt a sudden urge to stop him. I couldn’t explain it. I wanted to look at him closely for a moment. He asked Dimples how she felt.
“Like a babe,” she said, smiling up at him.
Then he was at the door; it opened and closed behind him. I heard the car start up, the gears meshed, I could hear the tires splashing through the soft mud. I ran to the window and looked out. A red taillight flicked for a moment, then it was gone, but not before I saw the light-colored roadster. It was a long, expensive-looking roadster. I had seen it before. It had left the doctor’s driveway while Biff and I stood in the darkness one night. That night Cullucio was driving it.