Unhappy Hooligan

by Stuart Palmer

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  “But I—I don’t know what to do!”

  “You don’t have to do anything. I have to do it, and I’m going to do it damn quick. The police have a very thin case against you, and I want to bust it. With your help I think I can.”

  She brightened faintly. “I’m glad, I guess, that you didn’t take me at my word, and quit.”

  “I’m too mad to quit,” he told her. “And getting madder by the minute. There have been two attempts on my life down on the circus lot; I don’t think they were whole-hearted or I wouldn’t be here. Maybe somebody is just trying to scare me away. But the situation is this: the police are turning their whole attention on you, and meanwhile the real murderer is laughing up his sleeve.”

  “Somebody at the circus?” she almost whispered.

  “Obviously.” He nodded. “Maybe one of your old boy friends.”

  “What?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you did a season with the show?”

  Mavis tried hard to be haughty. “What on earth makes you think that?”

  “Come off it, ma’am! You gave yourself away that first day we had lunch together, talking about ‘The Big One’ and using other inside circus argot…”

  She was wary. “Of course, I picked up some of that from Mac.”

  “Yes? And you described Mr. Timken perfectly when you said he was a kind of cold potato. And you had enough drag with Rowland, the big boss of the show, so you could have anybody you picked okayed as a guest clown. That all adds up just one way.”

  “You’re only guessing…” she began.

  “I’m not guessing about those old pictures of you in Hap Hammett’s scrapbooks and old programs. Bozo Klein has a picture of you, the nice shot you had made with your arm around Gladys the tigress. Olaf Klipp has your picture in his trunk—”

  Green eyes were cloudy with memories, and she half smiled. “All right, so now you know my dark secret. Do you think I’d like it known that I was one of those silly circus Janes, even for one season? I worked in burlesque for a few months too, when things on Broadway were tough, but I don’t like to be reminded of it. But Mac knew; it was from my circus programs and scrapbooks that he originally got the circus bug.”

  “I see.” Rook hesitated. “Frankly, did you ever have any heavy romances with people in the circus—with anybody who could still maybe be carrying a torch?”

  Her lip curled scornfully. “Mr. Rook, do you think any girl getting forty lousy bucks a week would risk a fine of a week’s pay just for a romance or even a date with any of those fast-talking characters? I was pure as the driven snow, believe you me. It wasn’t much of a choice—the acrobats are the elite of the show, but they’re all married or else just looking for a girl who can work into the act. Me, I get dizzy in high places.”

  “Leo Dawes wasn’t married, was he?”

  “Married to that damn cornet.” This time she did smile. “His idea of entertaining a girl was to take me out to an all-night jam session with a lot of mad musicians and ply me with coffee and sandwiches.”

  “How about Olaf Klipp?”

  “My devoted swain. Also the devoted swain of every other girl in the show who would give him a look. I went out with him a few times just for laughs. But I couldn’t even bring myself to the point of letting him kiss me good night.”

  “How about Captain Larsen, then?”

  “That fat twerp? He never gave me a look, not that I wanted him to. And he was supposed to have a wife in Stockholm.” Mavis shrugged. “No, I’m leveling with you. Circus life and circus people are just not for little me. A girl gets mixed up with one of those professionals and she’s likely to fall really in love and get married and then she has a honeymoon in a lower berth on the circus train and forty people pretending not to listen in. And then the grind of one-night stands for the rest of her life. No thanks.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Rook. “I’ve got to push along now, but while I’m here I’d like a chance to meet Mr. Dugan.”

  “Huh?” Her face was too blank.

  “Madam,” said Howie Rook, “I was not born yesterday. There are very recent pipe ashes in your ashtray, and I doubt very much if you have learned to smoke a pipe. Ask the gentleman to step in.”

  She froze—and then relaxed. “You are a bastard, Mr. Rook—a very smart bastard. Yes, Paul has been hiding out here, sleeping on my couch. I didn’t want him mixed up in this mess—”

  “You mixed him up in it good,” observed Rook. “Well?”

  She crossed to the door of the bedroom, opened it, and said, “Come on out, Paul.”

  And Paul Dugan came out, looking somewhat shame-faced. “I hope you understand—” he began.

  “I don’t pretend to understand everything. Nor do I need to. Mr. Dugan, I understand that apart from being an agent, you have doubled in stage magic?”

  The big man nodded.

  “Escape stuff, Houdini stuff?”

  Dugan shook his head. “Go check with Actors’ Equity, or Variety, or Billboard. I was never anything but a pasteboard artist, I did tricks with cards. It all started when I was agent for the Great Cardini, the guy who did card tricks with gloves on. He taught me some of the basic stuff, and when things in show business were slow I made a little on the side. But I’m no escape man—”

  “I could have told you that. Paul couldn’t work his way out of a wet paper bag if the top was tied,” put in Mavis. “Does that help any?”

  “I think maybe it does,” admitted Rook. “What this all boils down to is a process of elimination…”

  “Then can I eliminate myself for the moment?” said Dugan hopefully. “I want to go out and get a shave and the morning paper, if you’ll excuse me?”

  Rook shrugged, and Dugan took a hasty departure. “It doesn’t add up,” observed Howie Rook as he lighted one of his dollar cigars. “If you’d wanted to marry Dugan you could have done it any time.”

  “And I never would,” Mavis said quickly. “He’s about the best friend I have, but that’s all. He isn’t even working now, though he has some television ideas…” She rose, and came closer. “Listen to me, Mr. Rook—Howard. If you’ll clear this thing up for me, and clear me so I don’t have to worry about microphones and policemen across the street, I’ll—I’ll be a wealthy woman. I’ll kiss this town off and go to Hawaii or someplace, and I’ll take you with me!”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you! Did anybody ever tell you that you’re a very attractive man, the intellectual, dependable, interestingly mature type that certain women could go for in a great big way?”

  “Only once,” confessed Howie Rook a little feebly. “And that was some time ago.” It was actually less than twenty-four hours ago, but there was no use going into that. Besides, he felt that his neck and ears were flaming red. “I’m afraid that I’d better run along,” he said. “I’ve got to try to crack that notebook of your husband’s. Sit tight, and don’t worry. I have an idea—in fact, I have a complete set of ideas.”

  “Please, please hurry!” she said, and there was moisture in the green eyes. Rook took his departure, feeling that it was high time.

  He stopped in at a corner drugstore to use the phone, calling the number that Yvonne McFarley had given him. After some delay a feminine voice answered, with somewhat too much moonlight and magnolia in it to be Vonny’s. He asked for her.

  “Who’s callin’, please?”

  “Never mind, I’ll—” Rook started to say.

  “Oh! If it’s an answer to her ad about a job, I can take the message. This is her roommate speakin’.”

  “Tell her—tell her Howard Rook called up to invite her to a party. Only I just don’t know when the party will be. I’ll ring her later.” He hung up. So little Vonny was job hunting? That was a good sign, but if he judged her correctly she would be seeking something glamorous and impossible, such as the job of script girl on all Marlon Brando movies.

  He shrugged, and went back to his roo
ming house, stopping off on the way to provide himself with the unaccustomed luxury of a full case of dark ale. Then he sat himself down at his desk with McFarley’s notebook and the thickish volume he had smuggled out of the library. The little alarm clock on his mantel ticked away the hours as Howie Rook sweated and strained over the confusing, maddening hieroglyphics, forgetting dinner, even forgetting to open his ale, forgetting everything in his absorption with his own private Rosetta stone. When he found himself squinting, he got up and turned on the lights—it was after eight o’clock, time for the overture “Here Comes the Circus” to be blaring through the Big Top far away.

  Hap Hammett and Cordelia would have to get on without him again tonight somehow. He sighed, and lost himself again in his studies, covering page after page of yellow scratch paper with cryptic notes and symbols…

  10

  Nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books…

  —Walt Whitman

  CAME THE DAWN—AS they used to say in silent-picture subtitles. And Howie Rook wearily pushed aside his books and scribblings and the notebook, the little black leather notebook that had been James McFarley’s. Its secrets were at long last open to him, such as they were. Still, he was almost more baffled than before; the one single important entry that should have been there just wasn’t there—or if it was there it was coded somehow. As far as he could see there was nothing, nothing at all, incriminating; there was nothing of sufficient importance to have impelled anybody to prowl a dressing room in an attempt to steal it.

  Yet the notebook and its translation were about all he had to go on. He caught a couple of hours of troubled sleep, shivered briefly under an icy shower, breakfasted on three cups of black coffee, and at nine o’clock in the morning was waiting in the anteroom of Parkman’s office. The Chief came in at 9:20, gave him a look, and then beckoned him into the private office. Again he offered the big leather chair and the cigar humidor, both of which Rook gratefully accepted.

  “Howie, you look awful,” ventured Parkman. “You look like the cat that swallowed the canary, and found it was a bumblebee.”

  “I feel like it too,” admitted Rook. “Because while I’ve successfully cracked the secrets of McFarley’s little notebook, I haven’t yet found out how to crack this case. But listen a minute. Perhaps the official mind will see something that I missed. Chief, did you ever hear of Sam Pepys?”

  “Why, yes, I went to college, believe it or not. There I was naturally exposed to English Lit, some of which I retained. Why?”

  “Well, McFarley seems to have been—besides a circus buff and a fervent amateur psychologist—a Pepys fan. He even wrote a book about him. And I happened to remember a clipping—”

  Parkman winced noticeably. “Howie, I’ve got too much to do to listen to this. Get to the point, if any.”

  “A clipping,” Rook continued doggedly, “that told about how a British clergyman played detective on the famous Pepys diaries, which were all in some weird shorthand. It turned out to be the Tachygrafy System by some guy named Shelton—probably the first system of shorthand in the world, and certainly the most awkward and complicated. Pepys complicated it further by using puns and foreign words and all sorts of short cuts and trimmings and elaborations. The famous diaries had lain unsolved for more than two hundred years when the Reverend Mr. Smith cracked them with the help of a copy of Shelton that he found among Pepys’ own books, which had been preserved at Cambridge University.”

  “Ancient history,” said Parkman.

  “Yes. But that was the system McFarley used, with some added tricks of his own.”

  “So you got hold of a copy of Shelton, and—?”

  “I did not. But I did find a copy of Pepys’ Letters in the public library, with a number of plates of the original manuscript. It wasn’t too difficult to match up the translated letters with the facsimile of the shorthand pages. McFarley had improved on Pepys, just as Pepys had improved on Shelton, but I broke most of it and the blanks weren’t too hard to fill in. Here’s the translation; I thought you might like to take a look at it. This, mind you, is what James McFarley scribbled down during his time as a guest clown with the circus.” Howie Rook took a neatly typed sheaf of yellow pages from his pocket and shoved them across the desk.

  Chief Parkman scowled, put on his glasses, and took a look. He scowled again, read on for a few moments in silence, and then said, “Good Lord! This stuff—practical jokes—”

  Rook firmly shook his head. “McFarley thought that he had the scientific mind and the scientific approach and that that excused his psychological experiments. He was doing it all for a book he planned, to be called Stresses and Strains in Circus People.”

  Parkman read aloud incredulously: “Hap Hammett, veteran clown. Age 6o(?). Thymocentric, but reasonably adjusted. Reaction to the dog-rabbit episode very typical, he went right on clowning as if nothing had happened, but worried stiff for fear dog would catch and tear up rabbit and have to be destroyed or banished. Overaffection for mongrel dog indicated, speaks to her and about her as if she were a person. Anthropomorphism? Also marked schizoid tendencies; two entirely different personalities depending on whether in clown make-up and costume or not. Quick switch from introvert in street clothes to extrovert buffoon in clown character. IQ probably around 120. (Expenses—rabbit, $1. Boy to smuggle rabbit in and let loose—$2.50.)

  “Bozo Klein, formerly side-show thin man but put on weight and switched to clowning ten years ago. Abnormal height, sensitive about it. Probably a mild thymocentric hyphenate. Reaction to itch powder in make-up interesting but unremarkable, fluffed latter part of his act with mule and then changed clothes and went out for a beer. Withdrawn, introspective, introvert. IQ around 100. Age about 45. (Expenses—50 cents for Magic Itching Powder.)” Chief Parkman snorted in disgust.

  “Just read on,” said Howie Rook quietly. “The worst is yet to come.”

  Parkman read aloud: “Captain Larsen, tiger trainer. Prepituitary type, some thymus plus parathyroid. Cycles of irritability interspersed with shorter cycles of forced friendliness. Age about 40. Interesting to see what effect a spray of human blood would have on his tigers. Possible work through Doc Bowen or the Blood Bank??? Larsen plays poor poker; cautious on good hands and bluffs wildly on weak ones, his play is entirely predictable. Not apparently very interested in women, but state of mustache indicates certain vanity. IQ probably around 120. I fink!”

  “That last is the best rendition I can give of his hieroglyphics,” Rook admitted apologetically. “Why the man would descend to baby talk—”

  Parkman nodded, and continued. “Gordo Mazetti, professional athlete and safety man for Mary Kelly, also doubles with horse acts and around menagerie. Pyknic type, will be fat in his forties. Age about 28. Heavy drinker, usually solo. Potential alcoholic, but compensates with constant heavy exercise. Some narcissism, worship of own body. Frantically jealous, particularly of anybody who can spend more money on Mary Kelly than he can. When he throws a knife at a target he visualizes real or imagined enemy or rival before him. Wears three religious medals on chain around his neck; probably never goes to Mass. IQ around 90. (Expenses—entertaining M.K.—$24.50.)”

  “That’s Gordo, all right,” nodded Howie Rook. “Not a character you would care to meet in a dark alley, nor for that matter in a lighted one. Beauty-and-the-beast stuff, as far as Mary Kelly is concerned.”

  “But what in hell is all this?” Parkman demanded. “Who did McFarley think he was, God or somebody?”

  “He seems to have rushed in where angels, or psychoanalysts, would fear to tread. But read on.”

  Chief Parkman let his cigar die quietly in the ashtray as he read on. Now and then he snorted. Finally he tossed down the notebook and its translation. “I can hardly believe any of this!” he finally exploded. “To let mice loose among the elephants…”

  “It’s all true; it actually happened. The man took advantage of his in with the circus to work a complicated
pseudoscientific test. And he wrote it all down, in jargon which he himself only half understood, probably. Itemizing every expenditure. He teased Mary Kelly’s worshiping Neanderthaler by hinting he was a millionaire playboy making avid passes at her, he teased the midgets—all of whom have king-size inferiority complexes, and even gave Olaf Klipp, the littlest midget, a space suit and helmet on his birthday.

  “He worried Mr. Timken, the circus manager, with fake threatening phone calls—the circus is always jittery about such things because of ‘accidents’ in the past. He sucked a lemon in front of Leo Dawes, the bandmaster, so that the guy blew some sour notes and lost his tempo and caused a serious accident to a girl acrobat. He introduced loaded dice into a crap game being played by the black gang, and then ducked out and watched the fireworks from a distance. Not even the equestrian director and Tom Reale the mailman were spared—he gave the former a fake movie call for an audition, sensing that the guy was a ham at heart, and he had someone tip off Reale that he was going to be arrested for failing to register and get a federal license to make book on the races. And so on and so on, all down the line. McFarley pried into everybody’s weakness like a dentist’s drill into a sore tooth. So you see—”

  “It’s a wonder they didn’t all want to kill him!” growled Chief Parkman.

  Rook shrugged. “They didn’t all know what he was up to. The guy was clever, and he covered his traces pretty well—though some of them did start calling him the ‘Jinx Man’ behind his back. I think—I’ve got a hunch that just one person at the circus saw through him, no more. And just between ourselves, is there motive enough for murder in any of those cute little psychological experiments that McFarley played? There’s a big difference between wanting to kill somebody and actually performing the job, you know.”

  Parkman nodded thoughtfully, and relighted his cigar. “There are very damn few of us who have lived around without once or twice wishing somebody dead. Only we laugh it off or drink it off, and forget it. It takes a real psychopathic individual to step over the line.”