Unhappy Hooligan

by Stuart Palmer

  Vonny picked him up in her arms. “Poor thing—has he been living off garbage all this time? Well, mama will have to do something about that. Do you want a cat, Benny?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “What I want is a—” Then he stopped.

  There he went again. Vonny bit her lip. “Just think, Benny. Right here is the only witness to daddy’s murder. If he could only talk—”

  “And if it was murder—”

  “My father would never take his own life. Mr. Rook says so!”

  “Rook-schmook! Why Mavis ever wanted to take a gamble on a fuddling old amateur like him—”

  Gambling seemed to be in the air that morning. No sooner had Howie Rook arrived in Clown Alley and set up his brand-new water bucket and folding chair than Hap Hammett seized upon him and led him behind the canvas flap into the Little People’s dressing area, where a poker game was flourishing atop a closed trunk. “We need five for stud,” the veteran clown explained. “Care to sit in?”

  Rook decided that he cared. He was introduced all over again to Leo Dawes, now a stiffly military figure, resplendent in drum-major’s uniform. He shook hands with Art Nondello—that would be Speedy’s father—a slight but very well-muscled man who now was wearing only a singlet, tights, and ballet slippers. Maxie the midget was the fourth, and in his capacity as banker sold Rook twenty dollars worth of chips. “Fresh meat,” said the little man, rubbing his hands together. “A lamb to the slaughter.”

  Hap Hammett was dealing. “Don’t talk too soon,” he said. “It may go like last week, when the lamb did the slaughtering. How much did you get taken for, Maxie?”

  “All I had,” confessed the midget cheerfully. “And McFarley took my I O U for thirty. But even at that, I came out better than our tiger trainer. There must have been more than a couple of hundred bucks in that last pot, when the Captain got bluffed out of his full house and threw down his cards and stalked off mad.” Maxie looked gingerly at the corner of his hole card and then said, “Possible pair of aces bets a whole dollar.” He tossed in a red chip.

  Inside of fifteen minutes and half a dozen hands, Howie Rook began to realize that he was in rather fast company—even though, like most newspapermen, he had learned to play poker long before he had learned to use more than two fingers on the typewriter. These men knew cards—but they played wild hunches, they bluffed recklessly, and were seemingly all imbued with a compulsion to stay in every round and willing to pay handsomely for the privilege of seeing every winning hand. Hap Hammett alone seemed to have any rudiments of caution, and even that veteran sometimes got carried away and bet into the teeth of a pair showing.

  There was a recklessness in the very air, in the smell of the circus, Howie Rook decided. All of them were bored and lonely, cut off for most of the year from wives and family and home, rarely knowing or caring about the names of the towns in which they performed. Many of them, like Art Nondello, were exposed to death or serious accident every day. Rook had once heard Ely Culbertson, in a lecture on bridge, point out that there is always a fifth player in a bridge game—Old Man Distribution. In the circus, Rook decided, the fifth man, always present, was Death.

  They lived with that, they walked with it, they lived under that pressure. No wonder they just didn’t seem to give a damn.

  The game seesawed up and down for half an hour or so, and then little Maxie suggested livening it up by making it dealer’s choice. “I call for spit-in-the-ocean.”

  “That was McFarley’s favorite,” observed Hap Hammett. “That’s what we were playing when Captain Larsen blew up.”

  “It wasn’t that,” Leo Dawes put in. “I don’t think that Larsen liked all the questions that the guy kept putting to him—about how long he had worked with the big cats and what did it feel like to be clawed by one, and is it true that lions and tigers go mad at the smell of human blood, and how do training methods differ in this country and in Europe. Stuff like that.”

  “Who does the Captain like?” cut in Nondello. “First one-eyed jack it bets a blue chip—”

  “Up it once,” said Hap Hammett. He had been winning rather consistently, perhaps because his heavy clown make-up effectively concealed his facial expressions.

  Rook commented on that. “Maybe that’s why McFarley slaughtered you,” he suggested. “The make-up. Good for hiding under.”

  “But he wasn’t in make-up at the time,” Hap said. “I guess it was the first time McFarley hadn’t put on his grease paint in the morning and left it on all day. Strange guy.” He threw in his cards. “Make-up or no, I can’t go along with these wild games; include me out. I’ll just kibitz.” He cashed in his chips.

  That left an empty chair, and Max turned to a smaller midget who—unseen until now, at least by Rook—had quietly entered and was starting to change into clown-cop costume. “Olaf, you want to sit in?”

  “Sure, if somebody will stake me until pay day.” The face, without make-up, was wizened, petulant—rather like a nasty old man’s, Rook thought.

  He was about to speak up—after all, he was supposed to carry the character of the rich tycoon to whom money meant nothing—but Hap Hammett nudged him and shook his head.

  “Why don’t you hit your pal Larsen for a couple of sawbucks?” asked Leo Dawes with an odd smile.

  “Mind your own business,” said little Olaf. “And the hell with all of you, then!” He went on with his change. They played four-handed for a couple of rounds, and then were joined by a handsome, burly man in his thirties, who was introduced to Howie Rook as Tommy Thompson, boss top rigger of the show and obviously a personage of major importance in the circus setup. He played cagey poker, and when it came his turn to deal he always reverted to straight poker or stud; there was no wild streak in him.

  The game went on, with Rook’s fortunes swinging erratically up and down. And then suddenly the canvas flaps parted and in came Captain Larsen, boots, breeches, sola topee and all. “Room for one more?” he asked. “If nobody objects?”

  Nobody objected, Rook least of all. They made room for the newcomer, and Rook shook hands with the cat trainer quite as if they had never met before. At close hand, Larsen seemed a very different person from the snapping turtle he had shown himself to be yesterday in the cookhouse; he was considerably more relaxed. He played tight poker, too; Howie Rook found that he no longer had to pull his punches to keep from winning.

  In fact, he had lost his original twenty and most of another before the game was interrupted in the midst of the boss rigger’s deal. Speedy Nondello brought the glad tidings, poking her face through the flaps and announcing “Mail call!” and then racing off. There was no further immediate interest in the cards, for Tom Reale was approaching with his knapsack, stopping at every dressing room, his face and bearing full of importance. He methodically dealt out the precious letters—two or three in feminine handwriting for Maxie, a sheaf for Thompson, one official-looking envelope for Art Nondello, a similar one for Captain Larsen, and a whole wad for Hap Hammett.

  “You get more mash notes than the rest of us put together,” Leo Dawes complained. He himself had received only a music catalogue.

  “Sure,” Hap answered complacently. “And all printed in Crayola from ever-loving admirers under twelve. Is that bad?” There was a real grin under Hap’s painted one. But Art Nondello wasn’t grinning as he read and reread his letter.

  “Bad news, Art?” asked little Maxie in his fluty soprano voice.

  “It just isn’t my lucky time,” complained the aerialist with sagging shoulders. “First, my Gina has to take a bad spill—”

  “McFarley and his goddam lemon!” put in Leo Dawes savagely.

  “—and now this! Just as I expected. You see, I had to put in a couple of years in Mussolini’s Black Shirts when I was a kid, and so the State Department says that my application for first citizenship papers has been put at the bottom of the quota list for Italian nationals.” He swore wearily in soft, fluent Neapolitan. “There goes my little kid’s d
reams of going to school in this country, and joining the Girl Scouts and everything. It is hard. I hate very much to have to go and tell the news to her—”

  “Wait a minute!” cut in Howie Rook. “Speedy’s a friend of mine. Let me think—”

  “Sure!” put in Maxie Kelso encouragingly. “A big shot like you, Mr. Rook—I bet you know somebody in Washington.” Rook hadn’t quite meant to imply anything like that; as a matter of fact the only people he knew in Washington were some of the gang around the bar at the National Press Club. But he had the glimmerings of an idea. He needed all the friends he could get among the circus people, he was firmly devoted to Speedy, and maybe he could work out a tie-in with his project too. “Sit tight until I make a couple of phone calls,” he told Art Nondello, and went out into the Alley again, passing Captain Larsen, his face wearing an almost beatific expression. “Did you get good news, Captain?” Howie Rook asked.

  “Couldn’t really be much better, thanks.” The Captain put the letter away in the pocket of his flared breeches. The letter, or his modest winnings, or both had put the man into an exceptionally jovial mood. “You coming over to the cookhouse to eat?” he asked surprisingly. He smiled, showing a row of firm yellow teeth. “Come with me. You can even sit in my place, or anywhere. I was just jumpy yesterday; I’m sorry. I act that way sometimes when the cats are cantankerous; I don’t know whether I get it from them or they get it from me.” He shook his head.

  It was an apology, and so Rook took it. “I had a rather late breakfast,” he admitted. “Perhaps I’ll go along for a cup of coffee—”

  It was not to be. There was a sudden commotion behind them. Tom Reale, the mailman, was hurrying back toward them and trying to brush off Olaf, the littlest midget, as he would a bothersome gnat. “For the last time, I tell you there’s nothing for you today!”

  “And I tell you, you big lug, that I think you’re holding out on me just because I won’t give you any more foreign stamps! I bet they’re worth money—”

  “You talk to me about money?” Reale said. “If I wanted to crack down and get nasty, shrimp—” The midget, in a torment of frustration, aimed a kick at Reale’s shin which narrowly missed, then scooted back to the dressing room like a rabbit to its hole. “The original pest from Budapest,” Reale observed to the others rather bitterly. He came closer to Rook. “Almost forgot. A telegram came into the front office for you just now.”

  Howie Rook excused himself to the suddenly friendly tiger-tamer, took his message, and sought the comparative privacy of his camp chair. The telegram read: PHONE ME AFTER TWO P.M. AT EVEREST 98872. VONNY.

  That he would do. Thoughtfully he went up the steps to the dressing room and sought a cigar in the pocket of the clown-costume coat, belatedly remembering that somebody had cleaned him out of cigars—and dog biscuits—last night. And then his exploring fingers caught on something—a loose flap of pocket lining. Sure enough, the side of the pocket was torn. And deep in the folds of the voluminous coat he found his cigars, he found the bits of dog biscuit—and he found a small black leather notebook!

  “Eureka!” Rook cried aloud.

  His elation was somewhat tempered when he opened the notebook. It was almost filled, but, except for some names and initials, it was all written in shorthand—the weirdest shorthand he had ever seen. He puzzled over it for a moment, and then, sighing, put it into his pocket.

  Just then Bozo the clown stuck his head in the door. “Somebody looking for you,” said Bozo with a meaningful glance. “Smells to me like John Law.”

  Rook came down the steps in a hurry—to walk almost into the arms of Detective-sergeant Jason. With him was an older, fatter man, chewing gum as if his life depended on it. “My partner, Joe Velie,” Jason announced.

  “So I’m under arrest again?” asked Howie Rook, with a certain amount of veiled sarcasm, as he drew them off into the shelter of one of the circus trucks.

  “Not you,” said Jason. “But maybe somebody else is going to be. We came down here to ask you some questions about your lady boss, and we want some answers.”

  They crowded him a little, and Rook was not a man who liked to be crowded. “May I remind you,” he snapped, “that you have no jurisdiction in Lemon County, and that I have only to say the word and you’ll be thrown off the circus grounds? I’ll answer some questions if you ask them nice and polite, but first I want to ask a couple. What’s against Mavis?”

  Sergeant Jason hesitated. “Tell him, Bert,” said Velie. “It can’t do any harm—it will probably bust in the papers tomorrow anyhow.” He seemed the placating type.

  “Well—” the sergeant frowned importantly. “It all started when somebody began asking questions about the big life-insurance policy that McFarley made out in favor of Mavis at the time of the legal separation. It was two hundred G’s—”

  “One hundred thousand,” cut in Rook quietly.

  “You knew about that, and didn’t tell us?” Jason snapped.

  “You didn’t ask me. Besides, you haven’t been taking me too deeply into your confidence. Go on.”

  “Then we busted her alibi for the night of the murder; she’d told us that she went to the Paramount with a casual friend and saw a science-fiction horror movie, only we found out that the movie they said they saw wasn’t run that night—the theater cut it out for a sneak studio preview of something else.”

  “One lie doesn’t make a confession of guilt—”

  “Listen, mister. We traced back and found that the guy she said she was with—”

  “I suppose you mean Paul?”

  “Yes, Paul Dugan. So you know about him, too? Well, we traced back and found that Dugan was Mavis’ agent years ago when she was in show business, just the one she could maybe get to lie for her. He’s a good-looking smoothie, and we have a hunch that he was maybe more than just her agent.”

  “Everybody has a hobby,” put in Velie, with a jovial leer.

  “And,” continued Jason, “we found latent fingerprints—Mavis’ fingerprints—on the magazine of the murder gun!”

  “You took your time to get to that one,” Rook said thoughtfully, covering up the fact that he felt somewhat staggered.

  “They weren’t recent, and it was a job to bring them out—after somebody thought to look inside. Mavis admits now that it was McFarley’s gun and that she knew he kept it in his desk in the living room. She says maybe she touched it sometime, and that she never said anything about the gun because it slipped her mind!”

  “I doubt if anything ever slips Mavis’ mind,” pronounced Rook.

  “Unless on purpose.”

  The two officers looked at him with a grudging, new respect. “We also found out that this Paul Dugan had been a stage magician before he got to be a talent peddler; if he really was an accomplice he could maybe have worked out some device about leaving the door locked and bolted from the inside—it’s a magician’s trick. We’re working on that angle, and we’ve got a tail on Dugan. Now, how about Mavis McFarley? We want you to tell us just how she acted when she took you to the murder apartment, and how she talked to you when you were there with her—everything.”

  Rook told him as best he could. This was no time for trade secrets. “But I still think you’re barking up the wrong tree,” he said mildly. “Remember, this whole thing would have been written off as suicide if she hadn’t made a fuss.”

  “Probably a smoke screen,” Velie put in helpfully.

  “You’re not thinking of arresting her?” Rook demanded.

  “We’d like to. But the Chief hasn’t made up his mind. In a case like this, with a beautiful rich dame, you got to watch your step. But we’re keeping a pretty close eye on her.”

  “No harm in that,” Rook said judicially. “Except that if you put one of those thumb-fingered, flat-footed cops on her tail she’ll freeze up. By the way, I might just possibly be getting somewhere down here.”

  Both officers looked surprised. “Huh?” said Jason.

  Rook told
them about the knife which last night had made a delicate incision in his Homburg. “And another thing,” he added, “I finally found the little black leather notebook that McFarley carried, in which he was always writing down his impressions of the circus. I have a hunch that there might be a clue locked up in that, if it can be found.”

  “I insist,” said Jason firmly, “that you turn the notebook over to us.”

  “I insist too,” said Rook surprisingly. “Here it is.”

  Jason took it, stared at it. “A lot of names and initials—and the rest of it in some phony shorthand. It’s certainly not Gregg or Pitman…”

  “It is not,” agreed Howie Rook. “It is pure gibberish as far as I can see. Hen tracks, all over the page. But McFarley wrote it, and it must mean something.”

  “We’ll bust it,” promised the young detective confidently.

  Rook looked at him. “I have an idea that it will blow the lid off your circumstantial case against Mavis McFarley—and maybe blow the lid off the whole case. And now, if you’ll excuse me—my public waits.”

  “Hold on! I got a few more questions,” said Sergeant Jason. “You’re working for Mrs. McFarley, and with a looker like that it’s ten to one that you’re falling for her too. Now—”

  “Later, gentlemen. Later. I’ll come up to Los Santelos tomorrow morning, and report to Chief Parkman’s office. Is that good enough?”

  It had to be. With Velie in his wake, Sergeant Jason stalked importantly away, looking very thoughtfully at the precious notebook. Rook waited until they were out of sight, and then went up front and knocked at the door of the silver wagon.

  Again it was opened by the lady with the pink hair, and again he was ushered in and given the up-ended wastebasket to sit on. Mr. Timken shook hands, and then turned to his confidential secretary. “Honey—” he said.

  “I know,” she interrupted. “Coffee break.” And she went out.