Unhappy Hooligan

by Stuart Palmer

  “Shoot the works,” said Howie Rook softly. “Go into the real reason I joined the circus; that ought to hold them for a while longer.”

  Hap nodded. “Yes, yes, yes!” he cried, without batting one of his painted eyes. “And while we are waiting for the petition to be prepared for your signatures, please lend me your indulgence for one second more, my dear and beloved fellow workers. You are each and all, every one of you, quite aware that there is another story going the rounds which, while we are gathered here together, it may be possible to prove or disprove and get settled forever. It is to the obvious advantage of each and every one of you to get to the bottom of this. It seems that a gentleman, a famous lawyer and member of The Circus Saints and Sinners who joined us last week as a clown in a guest capacity, was murdered—was foully done to death by gunshot in his home—”

  Hap Hammett stopped for breath, and caught Howie Rook’s fervent whisper, “Not so fast, Hap, not so fast!”

  Hap caught himself quickly. “Yes, yes, yes! In a few minutes I have a very outstanding and interesting announcement to make. Gather around a little closer, my friends and associates. We are gathered here in the brief interval after the afternoon performance—” He bogged down, not knowing why they were gathered together, not at all.

  Howie Rook tried to think of something brilliant, but he bogged down too—perhaps because he had just seen Vonny McFarley and her precious Benny Valentino edging their way into the crowd. It was a full house now—except for the star performer.

  And just then Sergeant Jason decided to take over. “Excuse me for butting in,” he said suddenly. “But we are gathered here for just one purpose—to find out who bumped off James McFarley with his own gun last Thursday evening. I’m a Los Santelos police officer attached to Homicide; I have the co-operation of the local authorities, and I intend—”

  Rook suddenly nudged the sergeant from behind. “Wrong tack,” he said. Now all the circus people had drawn into a knot, a Gordian knot, and he felt himself without the sword of Damocles or Alexander or whoever it was that cut the original. But he had, in spite of an overweening desire to retreat back within his ivory tower, to do something—something immediate and drastic. And, he reminded himself, there was only one person in this withdrawn, almost alien, group, who had anything to fear. He could perhaps play on that one angle…

  “Listen to me,” Rook said suddenly. “I have a confession to make. I have come here among you under false pretenses, with the co-operation of the bereaved widow, the McFarley family, the Los Santelos Tribune, and of the police—in an attempt to find out which one of you killed James McFarley. I have worked with you and I have grown to know and respect and like you all—all but that one person. This particular ceremony, while it was on the surface only a matter of having your pictures taken for a worthy cause”—here Rook patted Speedy on the shoulder and indicated that she should disappear, which she did though not very far—“this particular ceremony was, I admit, a sort of trap. I wanted to get your photographs to show to the policemen who some years ago arrested some sailors off a Greek ship in Los Santelos harbor, sailors who got mixed up in a brawl and a fatal stabbing of an itinerant named Fink in a Main Street Skid Row saloon and who were convicted of manslaughter. They served some time in San Quentin and were eventually deported. Some details of this old case came across the desk of a deputy district attorney by the name of James McFarley, the same man who was murdered last week shortly after his performance with you as a guest clown. I thought that the arresting officers might still remember that face—the face of the one man among you who knew, or thought he knew, that he—as a fugitive from justice—had been recognized, and that he would be turned in and have to go back and finish his term in prison and then be deported as a result of it all.”

  Rook paused, carefully avoiding looking at anyone in the group. He also wanted to make sure that Fatso had made a safe exit with his precious film. “The point is this,” Rook said very gently. “To the European mind, to those of us who have had to grow up under the pressures of dictators and dictator states, those who have been in authority are dangerous to the individual. A public official is always a public official. A former member of the district attorney’s office must then, ipso facto, always be presumed to recognize a former culprit and report his presence in this country to the proper standing authorities. And, as you may know, a person who has once been deported from the United States, especially for being a participant in a serious felony, may never be readmitted nor may he ever apply for citizenship papers. He is through.”

  Rook searched their faces, without finding anything but a series of blank walls. He saw Gordo working his way toward Mary Kelly, he saw the Nondellos holding hands and looking hopeful, he saw Bozo Klein chain-lighting a cigarette, and Captain Larsen-Taras twirling his defiant mustaches.

  He wondered how at this late hour he himself could straighten all this out. These people were—all but one of them—worried about inconsequential things. Only one of them had anything really on his conscience. Rook also was aware of the nonperformance of Mavis, stiff and straight and tense, of pretty little Vonny clinging to Benny Valentino’s arm. By now even Hap Hammett was fidgeting, perhaps in sympathy, at seeing a friend go off the limb.

  But Rook was in too far to stop now. The minutes were slipping by and he was now dying on the vine as the valiant Hap Hammett had died before him. The silence was pregnant; everybody was looking at everybody else with suspicion. “Well, it’s not me,” cried Mary Kelly suddenly. “Nobody gets deported to Ashtabula.”

  “So what if I do come from Posen?” spoke up Bozo angrily. “I was never arrested in a bar. I don’t drink—ulcers.”

  “Hurry it up,” said Captain Larsen. “I would very much like to get into some clean clothes and go up into the town—”

  “One moment more!” pleaded Howie Rook desperately. His thunderclap was one that had never clapped its hands; it had fallen flat as a pancake. He could not help catching Hap Hammett’s eye and—old showman that he was—Hap could not help shaking his head to indicate that the show was a flop.

  Mr. Timken was now looking at his watch; he also looked at Rook.

  “There is just this,” said Rook. “We have just one more question that we might possibly settle here and now. Why has our fellow worker Olaf Klipp disappeared after hastily and dramatically quitting the show—writing dramatic farewell notes on pretty girls’ mirrors—and so forth. He packed his trunk—which is still standing in his dressing room, by the way. He disappeared a few hours after the posting of a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer of James McFarley. He took off—without even drawing his final pay. Has anybody here anything to contribute on that problem?”

  Nobody had. Rook was sweating profusely. He had counted on the fact that these complicated temperamental people whom he had caused to be gathered together were essentially show people and would respond best to showmanship, but his main event was obviously not coming off; his star performer still wasn’t here. There was the acrid smell of defeat in his nostrils as he turned to Hap Hammett who still stood loyally beside him hoping for the best. “I guess,” Rook whispered “all I can do is apologize and send them on their way.”

  Hammett nodded, and then they were rudely, wonderfully, interrupted by the sudden advent of a minuscule clown in cop-clown’s costume, waving a big rubber billy, who came dashing in from the side lines. “Hey, is it too late for me to get into the pictures?” cried little Olaf. For it was Olaf Klipp, the veritable Olaf, in perfect make-up and costume. Maxie had done his work well.

  “Hey, you quit—” began Mr. Timken, bewildered. Then he stopped short. Everybody stopped, frozen.

  Because Captain Larsen-nee-Taras, the famous big-cat trainer, was mouthing obscenities in Hungarian, and was also dissolving like a lump of sugar in a cup of hot coffee. He stared at the midget clown incredulously. “You’re dead,” he almost whispered. The words were almost torn from his lips. “You can’t be
here!” He was suddenly a man beside himself, beyond himself, as he stared, wide-eyed.

  Nobody moved, nobody said anything. The spectacle of a fellow human being, a co-worker going to pieces was just too much for them. As they all stood there, momentarily paralyzed, Captain Larsen-Taras turned and with an insane sort of desperation sought his last refuge. He ripped open the door of his tigers’ cage, leaped in and slammed it behind him.

  “Come in and get me, you bastards!” he screamed, his voice high and thin, like a hysterical woman’s. The circus people—and Howie Rook’s special guests, including Mavis and Vonny and the police—all moved closer. And even the seven great Bengal tigers rose and milled uncertainly about their cage—completely confused by this sudden variation in their routine and by the hysteria so close to them. Only Gladys purred and tried to rub herself against the cowering frantic trainer. It would have been, thought Howie Rook grimly, a perfect chapter for McFarley’s never-to-be-written treatise on Stresses and Strains in Circus People.

  The policemen drew their guns and then stood there foolishly. Gordo flexed his remarkable biceps and reached for the door of the cage. There was a snarl from one of the tigers, and he wisely thought better of it. Mary Kelly du Mond started giggling hysterically.

  “I guess that’s it,” said Rook. There was no need for any more explanations at the moment.

  “You won’t get me,” screamed the man in the cage. He tugged at one of the big pistols that swung eternally in his belt. The crowd moved suddenly back.

  “Only blanks,” said Mr. Timken calmly. He leaned toward the cage. “Come out of there at once, Taras—or I’ll send for the water hose and wash you out, tigers and all.”

  Captain Larsen-Taras said unprintable things. Then he spat at everybody through the bars and in final desperation placed the muzzle of his blank pistol to his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  The results were most horribly convincing; the tigers, far from being excited by the smell of human blood, drew away from the dying man to the farthest corner of the cage, and looked aloof and embarrassed.

  “And so that is the end of that,” said Howie Rook as, sitting in his own chair, he held court in Clown Alley. “It wasn’t my idea to put you people through this, but it seems it had to happen.”

  The people of the circus with whom he had been deeply involved were all around him.

  “I can show you a dozen clippings from my collection,” he was saying, “where a blank cartridge can take a life, especially when the gases formed by the explosion are discharged in an enclosed space—”

  “Yeh,” agreed Sergeant Jason, “that’s according to the books.”

  “Good-by, Sergeant,” said Howie Rook. “The McFarley case is buttoned up. Captain Larsen-Taras is no longer with us—nor is Olaf. Please thank the Chief for sending Little Willy down—even though it was almost too late.”

  “Yeh,” said the sergeant, “it would have been too late if the top boss hadn’t got hold of a private plane small enough to land on the Del Mar race track.” He took his notebook out. “But if you don’t mind, Mr. Rook, I don’t know how to report this. Too much has been going on too fast.”

  “Look,” he said, “it all comes down to this. McFarley had been around the circus for days—but that poker game was the first time he hadn’t been seen in clown make-up. It was the first time that Larsen recognized him—probably they recognized each other. And Larsen was sure that McFarley was going to make trouble. That’s why Larsen left the poker game so abruptly, and that’s why he got Klipp to go with him to investigate the potentialities—by going to McFarley’s apartment. It wasn’t really a premeditated murder. It was just, as they say, that it seemed to be a good idea at the time. And you will remember that Olaf had no love for McFarley—the guy had given him a child’s space-pilot outfit and thoroughly embarrassed him.”

  “This is hard to put in the record,” said Sergeant Jason.

  “I don’t care where it gets,” said Rook, “but it’s very obvious that this man Taras, who was known as Captain Larsen, was sure that McFarley, who had been implicated on the side of the law in his youthful misdemeanor, would remember him—and he may also have been certain that a money-hungry midget like Olaf who is deeply in debt and deeply anxious to make big with pretty blondes—”

  “Wait a minute,” said the sergeant firmly. “I don’t get this. What is all this with the midget and the locked door?”

  Rook nodded at him patiently. “Midgets—like monkeys—can throw bolts and get over transoms. This deal did not take a magician.”

  Jason shook his head. “I don’t know—it’s too fast for me. And what’s this about the midget being missing? He’s not.”

  Howie Rook said, “He is very missing. And while you’re here would you care to look at a knot I clipped from Olaf’s trunk? Only an experienced sailor can tie a knot like that.”

  “But this cop-clown we just saw—” Velie cut in.

  “A fake ghost,” Rook explained. “All clowns look alike; their own mothers couldn’t recognize them. Gentlemen, meet Little Willy, otherwise Bill Horton.” Rook indicated a handsome, very masculine but tiny man who was just finishing removing his make-up in Hap Hammett’s water bucket.

  “Take it easy, mister,” cut in the Seaside sheriff. “I got a report to make too, you know. You’re saying that you imported this midget to take the place of the other one? I don’t—”

  “Same size, same make-up,” Rook told him. “Maxie fixed him up so he was the living image of Olaf and cued him too.”

  “And you’re saying that the real Olaf is dead and in his trunk?”

  Rook nodded. “I think so. The knots suggest that, as I said. Larsen-Taras probably intended to drop the trunk over the cliff into the ocean at high tide tonight.”

  “But—but—”

  “It was simple. Little Willy is a friend of mine. I interviewed him for the newspaper once, after he starred in a gag Western movie where all the midget cowboys rode Shetland ponies. He kindly consented to double for Olaf today. It was just a trick to push the murderer over the edge of his self-control. It’s not nice to see somebody you thought you’d killed suddenly come romping in, good as new. So the man cracked wide open.”

  “That he did, in more ways than one…” admitted the sheriff.

  And then Little Willy joined them, toweling off his face. “Glad to meet you, gentlemen. Glad to make a quick buck too, the way the picture business is going. I think I may even hit the boss for Olaf’s job, permanent.”

  “Sure, Mr. Timken will go for it,” spoke up Maxie from the side lines. “We’ll all be glad to work with a big movie star.” He turned to Rook. “I guess this is good-by, huh?”

  They shook hands formally, and Maxie led Little Willy off toward the cook tent. Rook started to relax, then stood up as Mavis McFarley and Vonny approached him. “You were simply wonderful!” Mavis said, clutching his hand. “You remember what I said—”

  “Yes,” Rook told her firmly. “I’ll send you a sizable bill one of these days.”

  “But—”

  “Oh, yes, the reward I went and offered without authorization. If you and Vonny want to chip in on that—”

  Mavis stiffened, and the green eyes chilled a little. “Of course we do! It was well worth it, Mr. Rook. You are strictly a businessman, aren’t you? I must remember to send you all my detective work!” And she flounced away, hell having no fury…

  Vonny remained. “Mr. Rook—Benny just up and asked me to marry him again. I—we wish you’d be best man.”

  “I am at the moment too damn tired, my child, to be any kind of man. But best wishes and congratulations and I’ll send you an autographed picture of me in clown costume as a wedding present. Scoot now, will you, please?”

  Vonny scooted, but with a warm and happy smile. Howie Rook relaxed in his folding camp chair, facing Hap Hammett who by this time was out of make-up. “Do you suppose,” said Rook, “that they have a dive in Seaside that sells dark beer?”

&n
bsp; “I should think so,” said Hap, nodding gravely. Then he looked off. “Oh, oh! Here it comes.” He tiptoed away.

  Mary Kelly du Mond suddenly materialized out of the deepening gloom. She seized Rook, and kissed him soundly. “You were simply wonderful!” she cried. “But now—but now I suppose that since it’s all over, you’ll be leaving us for good?”

  Rook nodded, and Hap Hammett spoke up from the background. “If he ever wants to come back to the circus, Cordelia and I will always have a spot for him. Nobody can fall over his own feet like the one and only Howie Rook.” He tactfully went into the dressing room and shut the door.

  “But I guess you see now,” whispered the lovely dark-haired girl in Howie Rook’s ear, “that it just wouldn’t work—I mean you and me. I guess I got carried away a little because you were so gallant and so nice—and maybe,” she added with some candor, “because I figured you for a rich utilities magnate, and everything. But I’ll always think of you.”

  “What with?” said Hap Hammett, poking his head out of the dressing room door.

  Mary Kelly tossed her head, kissed Howie again, and then went tripping off in her unique springlike walk.

  “You’ve been jilted, I guess,” observed Hap Hammett dryly.

  “I have been renounced forever,” agreed Rook, grinning slightly. “But I’ll try to be very, very brave.”

  “You are lucky to get out of that alive,” said the big clown. “Ten to one she winds up this winter with Gordo slinging knives at her. Type casting. What would you say to a thick steak and a tall drink with me in the town?”

  “Why not?” Rook agreed, brightening. “I am still on an expense account, so I’ll buy.”