Unhappy Hooligan

by Stuart Palmer

  He waited for a taxi, looking over his shoulder occasionally, finally got it, and went on into town where he sought his hotel room. His dreams that night were remarkable, only when he woke he couldn’t remember any of them. So much for the subconscious.

  There was chilly fog—all the way up the Coast Highway that morning and a still chillier fog in the office of Chief of Police Parkman when Howie Rook came barging in. The Chief was obviously in no happy mood, and neither were homicide detectives Jason and Velie when they had been summoned hastily to the sanctum sanctorum.

  “What is this, a wake?” inquired Howie Rook.

  “It’s the McFarley dame,” admitted Parkman sourly. “We don’t dare to arrest her and we don’t dare not to arrest her.”

  Rook sat back smugly in the big leather chair. “Why don’t you dare arrest her?”

  “Because it would be a mistake—”

  “And don’t the police ever make mistakes?”

  “Who don’t?” put in Velie cheerfully. “That’s why they put rubber mats under cuspidors.” Nobody paid him any attention.

  “If we arrest that dame,” Sergeant Jason put in, “she’ll retain some hot-shot lawyer like Al Matthews as her attorney, and he’ll—”

  “He’ll make a laughingstock of you and your case in ten minutes,” Rook finished for him. “If you ever did succeed in getting an indictment at all, which I very much doubt.”

  “But she’s far and away the best bet—” protested Jason, who had a one-track mind. And narrow-gauge, Rook thought.

  “If it was murder at all,” interrupted Parkman through a smoke screen of Havana perfecto. “Nobody’s yet managed to explain that locked and bolted door, remember. No, it’s still my firm belief that McFarley went off his rocker and did himself in. And show-off that he was, he invited his best friends over with the idea that they’d come in and find him dead, and he had it all ready so they could drink a last toast to him.”

  “With the door bolted to keep them out? And with hors d’oeuvres too?” Rook asked quietly.

  “A man nuts enough to take his own life could easily forget those details…”

  “And the clown make-up?”

  “He was hipped on the circus, wasn’t he? So maybe he wanted to die as a clown. There have been other cases—”

  “Sure,” cut in Rook. “Sexual deviates, poor unfortunate twisted people, who paint their faces and put on wigs and the clothes of the opposite sex. There was a case in New Jersey some years ago—I’ve got the clipping—where a man named Forbes or Ward or something, a little haberdasher with a wife and two children, dressed himself up in high heels and silk stockings and an evening dress and all the rest of it, including false eyelashes, and then hanged himself. Transvestitism, and other less savory angles. But McFarley wasn’t a queer. On the contrary, he had a beautiful young wife—and he didn’t neglect a look or so at other lovelies too. I have a hunch that he may have even asked a pretty girl from the circus to come to the cocktail party that night—he left his car out, as if he intended to drive somebody home. The girl I am thinking of doesn’t drink, and she admitted to me that sometimes when she goes to a party she takes soft drinks along to make it easier for the host or hostess. Remember the woman who was seen in the hallway of McFarley’s apartment that night carrying a bag that tinkled?”

  “Which proves nothing,” Jason put in. “If she came, she couldn’t get in either.”

  “I still like Mavis for it,” Velie said. “Prettiest murderess since Babs Graham last year. And—”

  “Take my advice,” interrupted Rook. “Don’t go arresting Mavis. It’s not just because I’m supposed to be working for her, either. But she just doesn’t seem to fit.”

  Parkman nodded. “She’s smart. She’s even changed her story about the supposed alibi. It seems that she lied about going to the movie the night of the murder because she was really with Paul Dugan in his apartment that evening.”

  “Playing canasta, no doubt,” put in Velie with a snigger.

  Howie Rook stubbornly shook his head. “I just don’t buy that picture,” he said.

  “Yeah.” Chief Parkman nodded. “What you mean to say is that nowadays a woman can admit having spent an evening—even a late evening—in a man friend’s apartment without losing her good name forever. She didn’t have to lie.”

  “Some people,” said Howie Rook, “are congenital liars. And she wasn’t under oath when she gave you her statement.”

  “This Dugan is supposed to have a wife somewhere back East, who’s just waiting to get something on him,” Sergeant Jason put in. “Maybe Mavis was trying to cover for him. It’s an old gag, but we can’t bust it at the moment.”

  Rook nodded. “And does Mr. Dugan confirm all this?”

  “Mr. Dugan is suddenly not available for questioning,” admitted Parkman. “He managed to slip his tail early this morning, climbed into his car and took off for points unknown about ten minutes before we were going to have him brought in. I’m not saying that Mavis or any of her attorneys actually advised the guy to make himself scarce right now, but there it is. And we certainly haven’t enough on him to send out a Wanted broadcast. If it weren’t for Mavis’ fingerprints on the magazine of the murder gun…”

  “I wouldn’t count on that angle too much, if I were you,” Rook said softly. He was enjoying every moment of this. “You say that they were old, latent prints. Perfectly possible that when they were married McFarley showed her how to load and use the little gun, in case she was left alone and needed protection. I’ve heard that a lot of husbands do that. She could have touched the clip, and might have honestly forgotten about it.”

  “It’s not a thing she’d have forgotten!” Parkman snorted. “Why didn’t she say so in the beginning?”

  “Because,” said Rook patiently, “very obviously, she didn’t want to admit that it was her husband’s gun. She didn’t want to admit anything that would help to support your original suicide theory. She was hell-bent to have it tagged murder because of the insurance. And if she’d actually planned on shooting her husband, she’d most certainly have checked the magazine—the clip—to make sure it was loaded, and then the prints would have been fresh and plain instead of latent!”

  “He’s probably right, much as I hate to admit it,” Parkman said glumly, addressing the two detectives.

  “I don’t know just how far I’m right. But I don’t mind telling you that I’ve got a far better lead than Mavis—even if I did discover that she once worked in the circus herself!”

  That stopped them cold. “Mavis did?” cried Jason.

  “Sure.” Rook told them what he knew, or most of it. “She seems to have been the glamour girl of the circus for one season. But she went on to better things, at least from her point of view. And I find it hard to believe that any of her ex-swains carried a torch for almost ten years; it just doesn’t add up. I might also admit that at this time I’m working on something hot. I’m just feeling my way, but I’m working up to something. It may require some co-operation from you. If it turns out that I’m wrong, I’ll promise never to write another letter to the newspapers as long as I live!”

  “Okay,” said Parkman, brightening. “But who do you suspect?”

  Howie Rook hesitated. “Several people. Somebody around the circus has been trying to frighten me away; I’ll not hang around there late in the evening any more. I’ve got a lump on my head that says I won’t. But there is no sense in our working at cross-purposes. At this point I am more interested in how and why than I am in who. How about taking the heat off Mavis McFarley—and taking the bug off her telephone?”

  It was a shot in the dark, but it hit. Parkman chewed on his cigar. “Ummm,” he said.

  “Another thing, I believe somebody mentioned that some of your men in a traffic-detail car saw a man and a boy walking a dog on the sidewalk outside McFarley’s apartment house about the time of the murder, and that they might have seen somebody leaving or entering. Did you locate them, and wh
at breed of dog was it?”

  “We didn’t,” put in Officer Velie helpfully.

  “And what difference does it make if the pooch was a Pekingese or a Great Dane?” snapped Jason. “A dog is a dog.”

  “Ummm,” said Howie Rook.

  “You maybe mean,” Parkman said, “that we might trace the man through the dog-registration people or maybe some breeding kennels. But it’s a real long shot—that area has an average of one dog to every apartment and every house, and with the leash law in effect that means that everybody is walking dogs. Probably the guy didn’t notice anybody anyway.”

  Rook shrugged. “Probably not. Well, gentlemen, what I really came up here for was to see about that little black notebook of McFarley’s. Any luck with it?”

  Jason reached into his pocket and tossed the notebook over. “It makes no sense whatever,” he said. “We checked with all the experts, and with the heads of three secretarial schools, and they all agree that it just can’t be shorthand, it’s some private code or cipher—or else just pure nonsense.”

  “I studied it,” said Parkman, “and I’ll vote for the latter.”

  “There was a clipping, which I think I still have,” Rook put in, “from The New Yorker about a man on a commuter’s train from Larchmont to Grand Central who every morning and evening impressed his fellow passengers by busily composing things on music manuscript paper. One night somebody on the train was taking home a famous musician as a week-end guest. The musician peeked at the scribbled composition over the back of the seat—and found it to be pure gibberish!”

  “What some people will do to make an impression…” suggested Velie.

  “But that isn’t the situation here,” Rook pointed out. “But we mustn’t assume that McFarley was trying to impress anybody—at least not with the notebook. Because he didn’t give anybody a look at it. We’ve got to work on the theory that the notebook cipher made some sense to the writer, even if it hasn’t to anybody else. I seem to remember another clipping in my collection—”

  “There he goes again!” muttered Parkman, and the policemen sighed as one.

  “This was a very interesting clipping. It was an U.P. story, picked up—if I remember correctly—from the Manchester Guardian, all about how some obscure English clergyman did some shrewd detective work in one of the college libraries at Cambridge University. If I can only lay my hands on it…”

  Chief Parkman smashed his cigar into the ashtray as if he had a personal grievance against it. “Then will you go back and lose yourself in your damn clippings, and let us work?” Howie Rook nodded pleasantly, and withdrew. Out in the lobby he looked at his watch—it was after eleven o’clock. He would have to miss the circus performance tomorrow; the show would have to go on without him. But if things worked out, he told himself, one of these days he would be putting on a show of his own.

  It was a sort of juggling act he had in mind; perhaps it was somewhat beyond his modest abilities. It was much easier, and more to his taste, to expound his unorthodox theories and ideas to a couple of cronies over a pitcher of beer, or pounding them out on his ancient typewriter. But he had gone out on a limb for once in his life; maybe he’d have to saw it off after himself, too.

  But now he resolutely set off for home, pausing en route at a little German restaurant for a big plate of pigs’ feet and sauerkraut. Back in his little bed-sitting-room, he laid the puzzling notebook that had been James McFarley’s open upon his desk, and then began to tear into his files. It was something of a task, for his filing system was very much like that of Sherlock Holmes—who filed his notes on the voyage of the Victoria Scott and on Victor Lynch the forger under the V’s.

  Yet he went doggedly on, determined to prove to himself that he could be something more than a retired news hack, more than just a passable understudy to a trained mongrel dog in a clown act at the circus. If only he could find that blasted, confounded, illegitimate clipping…

  Finally, as a desperate last resort, he tried the shoebox labeled “Oddments”—and there it was! He rewarded himself with another mug of dark ale, and read:

  UNITED PRESS, NEW YORK, AUGUST 5 (FROM THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN), CAMBRIDGE. IT WAS REVEALED TODAY THAT THE DECYPHERMENT OF THE FAMOUS DIARIES OF SAMUEL PEPYS, SO-CALLED FATHER OF THE BRITISH ADMIRALTY, CAME ABOUT AS THE RESULT OF TEN YEARS OF PATIENT BUT VERY BRILLIANT DETECTIVE WORK ON THE PART OF A HITHERTO UNKNOWN CLERIC, THE REVEREND JOHN L. SMITH, RECTOR OF GREAT BALDOCK IN HERFORDSHTRE. THE DIARIES, WHICH HAD LAIN UNTRANSLATED FOR OVER TWO HUNDRED YEARS AFTER PEPYS’ DEATH BECAUSE THEY WERE WRITTEN IN WHAT WAS THOUGHT TO BE AN UNTRANSLATABLE PRIVATE SYSTEM OF SHORTHAND, HAD THEIR SECRETS UNLOCKED WHEN THE REVEREND MR. SMITH DISCOVERED, AFTER YEARS OF PATIENT RESEARCH IN THE PEPYSIAN LIBRARY AT CAMBRIDGE’S MAGDALYNE COLLEGE, A FORGOTTEN PAMPHLET ENTITLED SHELTON’S SYSTEM OF TACHYGRAFY, PUBLISHED IN 1641. THEREIN LAY THE KEY TO…

  The rest of the clipping was missing, but Rook had enough—tantalizingly enough—to make him ponder through the afternoon and then lie awake for hours after he had retired. He slept at last, and dreamed again of being chased by elephants. But this time the elephants had dark curly hair and blue—or was it black and blue—eyes. He woke and slept again and muttered, “Postage due” in his sleep.

  Reasonably bright and early next morning Howie Rook dressed himself in his finery, breakfasted somewhat lavishly at the nearest drugstore counter on ham and eggs, and regaled himself with the late editions of the A.M. papers. There were columns on the McFarley case, photographs new and old of Mavis McFarley (she had originally worn dark hair) but none of them was new or inspiring. The boys in the city rooms were desperately rehashing old stuff; newsmen, like detectives in these times, were satisfied to sit on their behinds and wait for the news to come to them. There was every cliché in the stories except a statement from Chief Parkman that the case was well in hand and that the district attorney’s office was preparing an indictment.

  “Poof!” vented Howie Rook as he thrust aside the papers and went out into the glaring sunshine. He recklessly took a taxicab uptown to the main branch of the Los Santelos public library, a Moorish temple perched on the edge of a hill, where after some intensive exploration he found that all books by and about Samuel Pepys were—for some reason known only to librarians—to be found not in Literature but in the History Room. There he told the pale, pleasant but rather bloodless young man at the desk something of what he had in mind.

  The librarian had never heard of Shelton’s System of Tachygrafy. Rook explained a little more. “You could try Harvard University, maybe,” the man said doubtfully. “But from what you say I imagine there’s just the one copy, and they probably have that under lock and key in the Tower of London along with the crown jewels.”

  “Thank you so much,” said Rook, “but I haven’t time to burglarize the Tower of London.” The librarian smiled politely at the very mild jest, and after looking around in the stacks for a while Rook took himself off. But the pale young man wasn’t smiling some time later when he was eating lunch with one of his cohorts—lunch out of a paper sack brought from home and eaten on the library steps, an economy made necessary by the unfortunate exigencies of a librarian’s pay.

  “You know what?” said the pale young man. “A nice old guy, dressed to the teeth, comes in this morning asking for a book published in 1641, one I never even heard the name of. When I can’t help him, he calmly wanders through the stacks and goes out, and pretty soon I discover that he has walked away with Mynor Bright’s version of Reverend Smith’s version of Samuel Pepys’ Letters! I’ve been laboring in this vineyard for over ten years and in all that time nobody has ever put in a slip for it, much less thought of pilfering it. And he even left a note!” The librarian showed it.

  “I O U—one copy Pepys’ Letters by Bright. Will return shortly. H. R.” That was the scrawl. “It doesn’t make sense!”

  “What does in a public library?” And the other went on eating peanut-butter sandwiches.

  Very ple
ased with the success of his first crime—other than the quasi-legitimate taking home of paper and pencils and typewriter ribbons from the office, a tradition observed by all working newspapermen—Howie Rook had a copious lunch of clam chowder and Eastern lobster at Birnbaum’s Fish Grotto. Then he stopped in at the Tribune building to explore the city-room library and the dusty morgue down in the basement; they were two of his favorite spots because they boasted even more clippings than his own collection, though less selective. He made many notations on his pad of yellow scratch paper, eventually emerging from the murky vaults with a new light in his eye.

  He had his work cut out for him—but first he had to talk to Mavis. He took a taxi to her hotel, which turned out to be one of the slick, modernistic glass-and-metal extravaganzas which always went against his grain. He phoned Mavis from the lobby, and was not at all surprised by the coldness in her voice when she finally answered.

  “I don’t want to see you; I don’t want to see anybody!” she said.

  “Okay, so you don’t want to. But you got to. I’m coming up.” And he did.

  Mavis McFarley received him in a chartreuse house coat, looking every day her age. It was a stiff, strained moment. “Well!” she said. “I thought I told you—”

  “Skip it,” said Rook firmly. “I’m in this up to my elbows, and I’m going to continue, whether you like it or not.” He crossed the room and turned on the radio.

  “Soap operas, now?” she cried.

  He nodded. “It makes for privacy. They’ve almost certainly got this place bugged. And that burly gentleman across the street who is pretending so hard to be involved in reading his newspaper isn’t there just for fun.”

  “They’re going to arrest me!” Mavis said.