Unhappy Hooligan

by Stuart Palmer

  The dark girl laughed a little nervously. “How fantastic! I’ll have to come up and see your clippings sometime, so much more interesting than etchings. But now it’s getting kinda late, and I have to—”

  “I wonder,” interrupted Howie Rook very casually, “if the McFarley we’ve been talking about is the same James McFarley who was found shot dead in his apartment last Thursday morning? Of course you read about that?”

  “What?” Mary Kelly turned faintly green, as if she had been hit with a baseball bat across the stomach. “Then that’s why—” she began, and stopped short. “I didn’t know,” she said slowly. “In the circus nobody ever reads anything but Billboard or maybe the Daily Racing Form.” She studied the heavily bediamonded watch on her slim wrist. “I’m afraid I really have to go now. No, please don’t come with me; it’s better if I just take a cab out to the circus yards alone. If you bring me to the train it’ll be all over the circus tomorrow; my affairs are of so damn much interest to everybody. Oh, I don’t mean that kind of affairs,” she added hastily, with what might have been a blush.

  When she was gone, Howie Rook philosophically sat down to finish his beer and think things over. He made a few more notes on his yellow copy paper. He had, he decided, learned a lot about the circus in one short day, even if he hadn’t learned much about James McFarley and the reasons for his demise.

  He walked back to the hotel, took a brisk shower, then filled the tub and soaked his still-aching legs. He was asleep in five minutes, to dream not of murders or clues or clippings but only of a phantasm in which he was pinned behind bars and was being eternally squirted by Biddy the orangutan. He finally awoke, cold and squirming, to find that the shower outlet overhead was dripping on him and that the bath water had grown cold. He tottered off to bed and was just nicely asleep again when the telephone went off in his ear.

  “Mmpff?” he managed to answer after it had rung four times. It turned out to be Mavis McFarley calling long distance from Los Santelos. It seemed that the determined woman had tried every hotel and motor court in the beach area, and had finally run him down. “My dear lady,” he pleaded. “It’s after two o’clock. Can’t it wait until morning, whatever it is?”

  “No, it can’t.” Her voice was icy and sharp as a broken pane of frosted glass. “I just called up to tell you that you’re through!”

  “Through?” he echoed sleepily.

  “Yes, through! Finished, washed up. Do you understand?”

  “No,” said Howie Rook.

  “The very idea of your starting inquiries about Mac’s life insurance, and what I stood to lose unless somebody could prove it was murder instead of suicide! Do you think I wanted all that dragged out into the open just at this time?” She was boiling with rage. “Don’t deny it—my husband’s law office called me today.”

  Rook sighed. So Lou Elder’s emissaries hadn’t been too discreet. The current crop of journalism school graduates…“I made no inquiries,” he told her, which was true only in a literal sense. “But you’ve given me an idea. In situations like this, the more that’s dragged out into the open, the better. Unless, of course, one has something to hide.”

  “Hide? What have I possibly got to hide?” She was almost hysterical. “I’d have told you about that insurance settlement, if you’d only asked me. Are you too stupid to see what’s going on? If I can be framed for Mac’s murder, the insurance money naturally will go to somebody else—and you figure out who that somebody would be!”

  “You mean Vonny?”

  “Who else?”

  There was something wrong with that, but, weary and half asleep as he was, Howie Rook couldn’t put his finger on just what. “Nobody is going to frame anybody,” he said firmly, “though the idea seems to come readily enough to some people’s minds.”

  He yawned. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to bed and seek the arms of Morpheus—or seconal. I expect a hard day tomorrow.”

  There was the rumble of a man’s voice in that distant room, but over the phone Rook was unable to catch any of the words. Mavis said, “But I thought I told you—”

  “I think you’ve changed your mind. If the story of my summary dismissal should get into the newspapers—and I could easily see that it did—it would look even more suspicious than the insurance thing. Besides, my dear lady, it is easier to get me started on a problem than to stop me.”

  “But—but I think I was tailed by a police car tonight—and there’s a man across the street who keeps an eye on my windows. I think the police are watching me!”

  “All the more reason for my keeping on,” Rook pointed out reasonably. “Which of course I’m going to do anyway. Good night, Mrs. McFarley. Sweet dreams.” And he hung up on her before she could hang up on him.

  7

  “Yes,” I answered you last night.

  “No,” this morning, sir, I say;

  Colors seen by candle-light

  Will not look the same by day.

  —Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  IT IS THE PROUD BOAST of the Pullman Company that every sleeping car they ever manufactured—with the exception of the comparative few that have met utter disaster in a train wreck—is still running somewhere. The most venerable of all Pullmans, so Mary Kelly firmly believed, would be one hung up on the circus trains.

  Her berth—the only home she knew from early spring to late fall—was in a rusty, creaky car once named Monadknock. The name had bled through the garish red paint, which is so traditionally the color of circuses and fire engines, but a great yellow 397 overlaid it. Inside, the upper and lower berths had been bolted into place, so that they could never be let down into seats as originally designed; while traveling, the circus people slept in them or lay in them and tried to read, or else stood in the aisles. There was no air conditioning, no heat, and no way of passing from one car to another. Forty people were locked up here in a crowded cubicle, more closely quartered than were the animals in the secondary trains.

  Mary Kelly—alias Marie du Mond—came aboard late that Monday evening, sought her towel and washcloth, and tiptoed into the little room marked WOMEN. There she found Gina Nondello, trying vainly to mix Bromo Seltzer with one hand.

  “Here, let me!” said Mary Kelly.

  “It’s that child again,” the lady acrobat said. “She eats. All day the little one eats, at meals and in between. She eats popcorn and cotton candy and hamburgers and Dio knows what else. So now she has the stomach ache.”

  “Cut off her allowance,” suggested Mary. There was no great love lost between the two women; no woman ever loved Mary Kelly—for obvious reasons.

  “No use,” said Gina. “People feed her, as if she was one of the animals. I don’t know—” She broke off. “Your arm!”

  Mary Kelly hastily covered the purplish-black bruise, and turned away. “It’s nothing—I must have slipped,” she said. “Bumped against something. I can cover it with make-up.”

  Gina Nondello said nothing. She took the Bromo back to Speedy, who was already almost asleep. After a little while she heard Mary Kelly come down the aisle and crawl into the lower berth opposite, but her light stayed on, which was odd, because Mary Kelly was not one for reading, especially at late hours. Gina nudged her sleeping husband. “All is not well across the way,” she whispered.

  “Si, si, carissima,” he murmured, and turned over on his face. The car was still, except for various assorted snores. But Mary Kelly’s light stayed on.

  Mary arose late that Tuesday morning. Even later than usual, so that most of the usual morning pandemonium was over. She was mildly thankful that all of her cell mates were gone; she could get into the one lavatory to wash her face and brush her teeth—and to brush the bitter taste of insomnia out of her mouth. She could even draw a pail of cold water, dig a cake of soap out of her suitcase, go out into the sunlight of Southern California, and in the railroad yards wash her bright dark hair. That was her last resource at times like this.

  When her curl
s were finally dry—an aureole black and purplish iridescent as a raven’s wing—Mary Kelly finished dressing and strode determinedly down the tracks and into the town of Vista Beach. Breakfast on the distant circus lot would long since have been cleared away; she found a little restaurant on Main Street and picked somewhat fitfully at the large breakfast she always ordered, finally settling for one piece of toast and three cups of black coffee. When she had paid and started out, she turned back to ask the cashier if there was a pawnshop in the town.

  “No pawnshops, but there’s a Pawnbrokers’ Exchange. It’s the same thing, almost. Two blocks north, and turn right.” The girl nodded and smiled politely, then went swinging out. The counterman vented a low, meaningful whistle. But the cashier’s pleasantly motherish face wore a puzzled frown. “That girl’s in some sort of trouble,” she said slowly. “Did you see the eyes of her? Like two burnt holes in a blanket.” The counterman said that he hadn’t got up as far as the eyes, and went blithely back to cutting pies.

  Mary Kelly strode on up the street, pausing only once—in front of a mirror in a drugstore window—to adjust a bright scarf so that it completely covered her hair, and to put on a pair of dark sunglasses. Then she went on, turned the corner and found the shop at last. She drew a deep breath, and entered.

  Ten minutes later she came out and back down the street again, walking very fast. Howie Rook saw her from across the way, recognized her instantly by her free-wheeling stride, and would have waved to her had he not been burdened down with assorted bundles and packages. He was carrying a tin pail, a folding canvas camp chair, a big box from the haberdasher’s, and a make-up kit—among other oddments. He did call out “Hi, there!” but either Mary Kelly didn’t hear him or didn’t want to hear him. At the next corner she climbed into a taxi and was whirled away.

  Rook shrugged, and went on. Then he thought better of it, and turned about-face. He had distinctly seen the girl coming out of the Pawnbrokers’ Exchange. A largish question mark began to form in the back of his mind—Mary Kelly had told him that she made two hundred and fifty dollars a week, with keep, and why should she have a sudden need for extra money just at this time?

  He went back to the shop, then hesitated outside. Weren’t pawnbrokers supposed to be as close-mouthed as defense lawyers and priests about their clients’ private affairs? But it was worth trying, anyway. He went inside, and bearded the proprietor in his den. Tactful inquiry got him exactly nowhere—but a twenty-dollar bill did. Mary Kelly hadn’t pawned anything at all, but a Mrs. R. Jones had just purchased a .32 caliber pistol.

  That was that. Rook hastily went back to his hotel, where he gratefully changed into comfortable orlon slacks, a white T-shirt, and canvas sneakers, leaving his pin stripe to be brushed and pressed. Circuses, he thought, were hard on clothes—as well as people and animals.

  Out on the street again with his assorted bundles, he found not a taxicab in sight—his usual luck. After a brief wait his impatience got the better of him and he started hiking down Highway 101. Cars whizzed by him one after the other, but they were always gone before he could set down his bundles and waggle a hopeful thumb. And then, just as he was about to resign himself to the two-mile walk, a red-painted jeep screeched to a stop beside him. “Climb aboard!” cried a masculine voice.

  As Rook gratefully started to climb in, he saw with some surprise that the man at the wheel was the ubiquitous ferret-eyed character in the bright Hawaiian sport shirt.

  “So you’re still with it?” the man said almost jovially, as he put the jeep into gear again.

  “At least so far,” Rook admitted. “Thanks for the ride, I’m getting a bit old for long hikes in the hot sun.”

  “No trouble at all.” The man’s name, it developed, was Tom Reale, and among other things it was his job to pick up the circus mail. “Most important guy on the lot come one o’clock every afternoon, or so they seem to think.” Reale seemed especially talkative this morning, a fact possibly explained by the ripe odor of gin on his breath. “All I ask is that if anybody gets stuff with foreign stamps on it, I keep ’em for my collection.”

  “A philatelist, eh?”

  “Naw, I just collect stamps. No fancy stuff, I just aim to get a stamp with the name of every foreign coin on it—you know, francs and öres and hellers and zlotys, stuff like that. You see, over half the circus people come from the other side of the briney, and they get letters from home. The equestrians, the horse people, are mostly German and Spanish and White Russian. The aerialists are usually Italian or Spanish, the midgets and dwarfs from Switzerland or Southern Europe. They say it’s something in the water that makes ’em small.”

  “Something that isn’t in the water,” said Howie Rook, thinking about something else. “Iodine deficiency, maybe.”

  “Yeah? Then why do they have normal-size brothers and sisters? And why can midgets marry big or little and have standard-size kids?”

  “A mystery,” agreed Rook, who was pondering a more immediate one. Then he turned his head. “You ever get any stamps from Greece?”

  “Naw, the Greeks are too smart to get with the circus. They set up a restaurant instead.” They were now approaching the circus lot, gay banners whipping in the wind about the Big Top. Reale deftly whirled the jeep through an opening in a wire fence and brought the little vehicle to a skidding stop in the midst of the motor-pool area parking lot, now crowded with half a hundred cars and trucks of every possible color and description. He leaped out, and shouldered a sizable mail sack.

  “You forgot the key,” Rook told him, indicating the dashboard.

  “Sure, mister. We always leave the keys. In case of fire”—and here Tom Reale crossed himself—“they have to be moved, but quick. There’s a watchman usually around, and who would steal a circus heap anyway? Of course I’m not saying that some of the boys don’t sneak in and borrow a car sometimes, when they want a night in town.”

  “Thanks again,” said Rook.

  “Okay. And, mister—” Tom Reale lowered his voice. “If you get a horse you like at Hollywood Park or anywhere at any track, I sometimes make a little book for the boys. Understand?”

  Howie Rook gravely thanked him for the information. “I have long ago discovered that one horse can run faster than another horse. While I am a gambler at heart, my weakness isn’t horses. I’ll see you around—and if possible I’d like a look at your stamp collection one of these days.” Reale beamed, and nodded.

  It was all a gamble, Rook thought, as he lugged his impedimenta back to Clown Alley. And there was another gamble he intended to undertake, and soon. Something had to be done, and done fast.

  Every day, every hour after a murder had been committed, the possibility of solving it, of getting to the truth, diminished.

  At that particular moment others were taking a gamble, too. In the distant city, Yvonne McFarley was opening up the door of her dead father’s apartment, and Benny Valentino was following her inside. The young musician was in a black mood, perhaps because he wasn’t used to arising at this ungodly hour or, for that matter, at any hour before noon, and he hadn’t had his coffee.

  “What, no etchings?” he said.

  “Now, Benny, don’t be silly,” the girl said firmly. “This is deadly serious. We’ve just got to find daddy’s notebook; Mr. Rook said so. It must be hidden around here somewhere. We’d better start in the bedrooms—”

  He moved quickly. She stopped short. “You know your way around the place rather well, don’t you?”

  “Natch. I was here the other day—the day you didn’t show—remember? And I had an interview here with your father once that I didn’t tell you about. He gave me hell for leading you astray or something…”

  “Oh, that.” But Vonny was very thoughtful as she led the way into the master bedroom with Benny following her. They went through the room and the built-in wardrobes with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, even turning out the pockets of every one of the late James McFarley’s suits, and stripping the bed
.

  “He wouldn’t have had any reason to hide the thing, would he?” Benny protested finally.

  “I don’t know what my father would do!” she snapped back. “He was such a big kid, always playing complicated games with himself and other people. If you’d only got to know him—”

  “Not my fault. Parents are so hard to get to! You can’t talk to them.”

  “O.K. If you’d only been willing to wait until I was of age—”

  “I’m not the waiting type. You don’t understand me for a damn, Vonny.”

  “I—” she hesitated, her face momentarily softening. “I’d like to try to, though. Honestly.”

  He suddenly caught her in his arms and kissed her, fiercely, hungrily, almost angrily. For a brief moment she fought him, resisting with all her strength. Then she answered him—for a long moment. Benny Valentino let her go, at last, and saw that there were tears in her eyes.

  “You—you’re not ever to kiss me like that again,” she told him. “Not unless you intend to remarry me, that is. I’m not one of your little round-heeled girls around the broadcasting studios.”

  He stopped short. “Oh, so you know all my dark secrets, huh?”

  “I can imagine! A guy as fiendishly attractive as you are—” Biting her soft lower lip, Vonny continued the search.

  The young man watched her for a while, then impulsively crossed to the portable cocktail bar and poured himself a stiffish drink. Vonny slammed shut the drawer of her father’s desk which she had been prowling, and snatched the glass out of his hand. “No, you don’t! This is no time for that stuff.” She put her hand on his arm. “Be sensible, Benny! Find that notebook and I’ll make you a nice cup of coffee—and a whole big breakfast if there’s anything left in the refrigerator.”

  He sighed, and then reluctantly gave in. Benny Valentino was at the moment a very hungry and confused young man, more confused perhaps than hungry. Later there was coffee, but as Benny had suspected, the refrigerator was a complete disappointment. It was a disappointment too to Satanas, the big black tomcat who came scooting in through the open window of the living room at the first sound of the refrigerator door, with loud and demanding “per-r-rows” indicating famishment.