Din nodded, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “It’s a lie I tell myself. It makes it easier, because what kind of person would do what we do if it wasn’t for the money?” Din let the question hang unanswered between them. “But don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”
Fade coyly raised an eyebrow. “And which is secret that?”
Din gave him a somber smile. “All of them. Come on, there’s a bunch of mobsters dressed up like Indians robbing the First National. If that’s not the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever said I don’t know what is.”
Fade managed a chuckle. “Well, then. Geronimo.”
THE END
THE CIDER KING MURDER
by Derrick Ferguson
“So what do you think?”
“What do I think of what?”
“Of this, nitwit.”
“What exactly is this and what does it have to do with me?”
The speaker was a tall gangly man with colorless eyes and hair to match. Lean and lanky, Foster Fade looked as if he could have easily benefitted from another fifty pounds of weight on him. His Dunston Brothers three piece suit had to have cost at least five hundred bucks but looked as if he’d slept in it the night before. Which he most likely had. The tie around his neck hung loosely and the top button undone. His large, bony hands were thrust into his pants pockets as he looked around and scowled.
The this he referred to was the brand new radio station recently built on the completely renovated thirty-ninth floor of the Planet Tower. The auditorium, meant for an audience of two hundred, was filled with brand spanking new seats. Over to the far left of the auditorium sat the studio itself complete with control room and a long soundproof window. Foster Fade’s disparaging gaze swiveled from the seats to the stage.
Dinamenta Stevens placed red-nailed hands on her wonderfully rounded hips. “This is where you’re going to be broadcasting from, naturally.”
“Broadcasting what, exactly?”
“The Planet’s first radio show, natch. Broadcast from here three times a week, the Adventures of The Crime Spectacularist! Live from the roof of The Planet itself, The Crime Spectacularist will astound America as he narrates in his own words how he solves the most baffling of cases and brings to justice the criminal masterminds that plague our society!”
Fade pulled out a pack of Beemans gum. He unwrapped a stick, popped it into his wide mouth and chewed with all the manners and grace of a plow mule. He gave the auditorium one last look before turning to Din, his hands back in his pockets. “Nuts.”
“What?”
“I said nuts and nuts is what I mean. The deal was that I solve crimes and you write the stories. I make with the gadgets, you handle the snappy prose. I don’t do radio.” Fade turned and walked out of the auditorium. Din followed him into the wide corridor, her stiletto heels click-clacking on the genuine Barkley marble floor.
“You can’t do this, Fade! Hackrox paid a bundle for that studio! And he built it because I sold him on the idea of a radio show about you!”
Fade stopped at the elevator and one unusually long finger stabbed at the UP button. “Then it would have behooved you to have talked to me first. I don’t perform for anybody, Din.”
“But this is for money!”
“I got money.”
“A lot of money!”
“I have a lot of money. You do, too. Last I heard the only person on the Planet staff who makes more than you is Hackrox himself and he owns the paper.”
The elevator door opened smoothly and the operator within nodded and smiled at Fade as he and Din stepped inside. The car contained eight or nine other passengers, some of who gaped at Fade in amazement. They plainly recognized him from his many pictures in The Planet on practically a daily basis. All the operators knew Fade and he knew them, as well he should. They were a valuable part of his operation, keeping their eyes on everybody who went in and out of the Planet tower. “My floor,” Fade said simply. The operator nodded, closed the door and the elevator smoothly headed up to the fortieth floor.
“Hey, I need to go down! I’ll be late for work!” some wag in the rear of the car yelped.
“I’ll be glad to take you down to your floor, sir. Once I’ve taken Mr. Fade to his floor.”
“Are you really The Crime Spectacularist?” The bejeweled dowager asking the question seemed overcome with surprise at being so close to Fade. It was hard to tell if she were actually furiously blushing with excitement through all the rouge on her wrinkled cheeks.
“I am, madam.” Fade bent down and kissed her left cheek. “And now you are the envy of your garden club for at your next meeting you can regale them with the tale of how you were kissed by The Crime Spectacularist himself.”
The elevator door opened and Fade walked toward the door leading to his suite of offices, eating up the distance with his long-legged stride. Din was right behind him, her heels striking the marble sounding like a series of very sharp air-gun shots.
“So exactly what is Hackrox supposed to do with a brand new broadcast studio and auditorium?” Din demanded haughtily.
“Tell him to hire King Mantell and his orchestra. I like King’s music.” Fade unlocked the door to his suite of offices, which included the reception room, the main office and his lab. Adjoining the offices were his private living quarters: the master bedroom and bath, the kitchen and dining area and a guest bedroom used most frequently by Din when they were working on a case. Which they usually were. In fact, it was rare when they weren’t working on a case. But nothing had come up in the past week and so left to their devices, Fade and Din did what they usually did when they were bored: they barked and bit at each other.
“One of these days I got to hire me a secretary,” Fade muttered as he continued on through the reception area to his office. He threw himself down on the couch and folded his big hands across his chest. “Office should have a secretary. It looks too bare outside there.”
The phone on Fade’s desk rang. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a secretary if you had one,” Din replied as she picked it up. “Foster Fade’s office…oh, hey O’Toole, how’s tricks?” Din fell silent as she listened to the voice on the other end. “Really? That’s swell! Thanks, O’Toole! You can collect your fifty at the end of the week.” Din hung up the phone. “C’mon, get cracking, genius.”
Fade lazily opened one eye. “What’s got your motor running?”
“Murder!”
Fade yawned. “Not interested.”
“You better get interested, buster! We haven’t had a juicy case all week and when Hackrox hears how you’ve blown off the radio show idea, he’s not going to be a happy camper! They best thing you can be doing is working on getting me some fresh ink for the evening edition.”
Fade swung his long legs off the couch. “You may have a point there. What’s this murder that’s got you all atwitter?”
“You heard of Philip Williams?”
“Sure. The Cider King. If you drink cider anywhere on the east coast, you’re drinking Williams Cider. He’s been murdered?”
“He’s dead at any rate. But you’re going to prove it was murder.”
“Who called you?”
“Patrolman O’Toole. I’ve got fifty cops on my payroll. Anytime they call me and tip me off to a murder, it’s fifty bucks in their kick.”
“Corrupting honest officers of the law. How low can you go?”
“How low you want me to go? C’mon, get up and let’s ankle it!”
“Waitaminnit. You said that Williams is dead but that I have to prove it was murder? What do the cops think?”
“It doesn’t matter what they think!” Din cried in exasperation, reaching down to seize Fade by the lapels of his suit jacket and yanking him to his feet. An impressive feat of desperation that, considering that on his feet, the top of Din’s head stopped somewhere around the base of Fade’s breastbone, so tall was he. “You’re going to prove it was murder!”
***
Fade’s fi
re engine red Packard convertible came to a crunching halt at the gates of the Williams estate. Four uniformed cops guarded those gates and one ambled over to the vehicle. The cop touched two fingers to the brim of his cap. “Hiya, Din!”
“This here’s O’Toole,” Din said to Fade by way of explanation. “You can get us in, O’Toole?”
“For fifty bucks I’d get you into The Vatican if’n I hadta. Just do me a favor and tell Detective Heath you showed me phony I.D., okay?”
Din smiled, nodded and O’Toole shouted for the other three cops to open the gates. Shortly, the Packard was through and Fade continued driving to the immense two story country style house. Fade parked in front and they climbed out. “Grab that bag for me, willya?” Fade asked.
“Grab it yourself. I’m a reporter, not a pack mule.”
Fade sighed and left the bag there. It contained a selection of forensic equipment that he would normally carry with him to the scene of a murder but then again, he wasn’t even sure this was a murder yet. He unwrapped another stick of gum and popped it into his mouth.
They went on inside to encounter what looked like the city’s entire police force occupying the entrance hall of the mansion. “Didn’t know they were holding the policeman’s ball here this year,” Fade muttered.
“Fade! What the hell you doing here? How’d you catch the squeal on this?” Barrel-chested Detective Don Heath shoved his way through the crowd of uniformed cops toward Fade and Din.
“Good morning to you too, Detective. Who’s protecting the city while you’re all in here?”
“Don’t crack wise with me, Fade! I wanna know how you heard about this!”
Fade jerked a thumb over his shoulder at Din. “Ask her. But do me a favor, okay? Don’t get her confused with a pack mule.”
Detective Heath whirled on Din. “Okay, sister! Spill! Who tipped you off? If it was one of my boys I’ll have his badge before lunchtime!”
“I’m a reporter, Heath. Which means I got a nose for news.” Din tapped her cute snub of a nose. “And this is telling me that you’re as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”
“That’s because I got one of the city’s fat cats lying dead in the next room and nobody can tell me how he died!”
“Well, that’s what I brought The Crime Spectacularist here for, Detective.”
“I got my own people, thank you very much. Last thing I need is Fade—” Heath broke off suddenly and looked around. “Hey, where is Fade, anyway?” Heath stomped off in the direction of the library. Din followed.
Fade stood in the doorway of the library, chewing his gum with the gusto of a horse chewing a raw carrot. He extended an arm that looked twice as long as the average man’s arm. Indeed, it was long enough to bar both Din and Detective Heath from entering the room. “Just stop right there.”
“You’ve got a nerve! I’m in charge here!” Detective Heath snarled.
“Then you should have kept everybody out of this room who had no business being in there. Even from here I can see that at least ten different men have been stomping around in there like a herd of water buffalos. Valuable evidence has undoubtedly been destroyed.”
“Photos were taken as well as fingerprints!”
Fade ignored Detective Heath. His colorless eyes roamed over the floor to ceiling bookshelves, the heavy Italian furniture, the tables next to the window. The body of Philip Williams lay on his back next to the inlaid sideboard bar. His final expression was one of complete and utter neutrality. As if he died with no emotion at all. Only after Fade had made a complete visual inspection of the room did he go in. Fade busied himself examining the bookcases first thing.
“I want the both of you out of here right now or so help me, I’ll jug you for interference with a police investigation.”
“Was it murder?” Din had her notepad out, already furiously taking notes and totally ignoring Heath’s threats.
Heath sighed impatiently. Despite his bluff and bluster he well knew Fade’s capabilities. And this would be a high profile case that the press would be all over. Heath sighed again and gave in. “Okay. All we know is that the poor man died. His daughter came home from being away for a few days and found him here like that. Called us straightaway.”
“This room was for show,” Fade said, moving away from the bookcases, brushing his hands together. “Whoever does his housekeeping is lazier than a Kansas City pimp. There’s dust on top of the books and in the space behind them.”
“So?”
“Means that Mr. Williams didn’t read. The books are here just to impress.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything. So the man didn’t read. So what? I don’t read either.” Heath grunted.
Fade hunkered down next to the body. At the same time he rummaged inside his pockets of his suit jacket, looking for something. Fade knew he had it as he very rarely went anywhere without it. “In your case, you not reading is probably because you’re too lazy to pick up a book and give your brain cells some proper exercise once in a while. In the case of our Mr. Williams, it indicates something else.” From his inside jacket pocket Fade withdrew what looked to be an oversized pair of black horn-rimmed spectacles. Fade put these on and with his index finger, manipulated a small slide lever on the bridge. A slight whirring and clicking emanated from the glasses as he did so.
Intrigued despite himself, Detective Heath bent down to get a closer look and said, “Never seen specs like those before.”
“Mechanical eyeglasses,” Fade replied as he looked at the corpse’s hands, neck and face. “There are different lenses in the frame and by switching back and forth they go from giving me microscopic accuracy when looking at things close up or telescopic to look at objects far away. Get outta my light, willya?”
“Where’s the daughter now?” Din asked insistently. “And didn’t Williams have a wife? Where is she now?”
Before Detective Heath could answer, a snarling voice interrupted. “Detective Heath, what the hell is Fade doing here?”
Fade looked up from his examination, the lenses in his mechanical eyeglasses clicking and whirring as they changed to accommodate his vision to focus on what he looked at now. Which was the angry face of Coroner Jarred Long. “I want Fade out of here, Detective. Right now.”
“You can’t do that!” Din shouted wrathfully, forcefully placing herself between Long and Heath. “Foster Fade is a staff member of The Planet and that means he has all the rights and protection of the press!”
“Fade’s not a snoopy reporter like you. He’s just a plain snoop who thinks he’s better than the police.”
“Smarter at any rate. Or don’t you read The Planet daily?” Din snapped.
“I want him out, Heath, or I’m going to the commissioner. I won’t have Fade second guessing me.”
“Okay, Fade, you heard the man. You—” Heath turned around as he spoke. He stopped in mid-sentence as Fade was gone. At some point during their arguing, Fade had simply left the room. “Where’d he go?” Heath said, whirled back on Din. “Where’d he go?”
“Beats me, Detective. I was busy being chewed out by our favorite coroner here.”
“As long as he’s gone I don’t much care where he is,” Long grumbled. “Now if you can get this skirt outta here, maybe I can get some work done!”
“Have you examined the body yet? Was it murder?” Din asked.
“That’s none of your business! Heath—”
“Quit your bellyaching. It’s giving me a headache.” Fade said as he reentered the library, holding onto the large satchel he had earlier asked Din to bring along. He’d pushed his mechanical eyeglasses back on top of his head. He walked over to the body, knelt and opened up the satchel.
“Get away from that body, Fade! Heath, are you just going to stand there and do nothing?”
“If he wants to solve this murder he will,” Fade said quietly, rummaging around in the satchel. He withdrew several pieces of what looked like shiny typing
paper. He selected one and pressed the corpse’s entire open left hand to it, held it there firmly.
“What the devil do you think you’re doing? Heath!”
“I could tell you but The Good Lord has allotted me only so much breath for this life and I’d rather not waste what I have trying to explain.” Fade continued to hold the open hand to the paper as he looked up at Long. “Let me ask you a question, useless as it may be. Did you examine this body’s hands?”
“Of course I did!”
“Didn’t you notice the unusual scarring on said hands?”
“My husband was a working man all his life, sir. He was proud of those scars as it showed the world he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.”
Emma Williams stood in the doorway of the library, hands folded together, standing ramrod straight and letting her eyes rest briefly on everybody in the room before she stepped in and continued. “My husband’s hands are the result of twenty years of creating a business to support his family. He didn’t inherit wealth. He worked for it. What in the world are you doing?”
Fade moved onto the other hand and as with the first, he held a piece of the shiny typing paper pressed to the dead man’s hand. “Whatever I’m doing isn’t disturbing your husband in the slightest, Mrs. Williams.”
“How dare you! Detective, I want this man removed immediately!”
“Do that and you’ll regret it,” Din promised. “The Planet stands behind Foster Fade one hundred percent in his never ending crusade against evil and injustice!”
Fade groaned theatrically. He put the papers away in a long manila envelope. He removed a small cardboard box and withdrew several pieces of chemically treated tissue paper that cleaned his hands. He wiped his hands with them, threw them into the satchel. He closed it up, put away his mechanical eyeglasses.
Emma Williams never took her wide blue eyes off of him as she said; “Fade? The Crime Spectacularist?”
“The very same,” Din confirmed.
Emma Williams looked at the perplexed duo of Heath and Long. “I thought my husband had a heart attack. Why is Mr. Fade here? Doesn’t he investigate murders and such? This certainly isn’t a murder!”
The New Adventures of Foster Fade, The Crime Spectacularist Page 5