Carnival of Death

by Keene, Day

  Laredo had veered toward the catchall box to pick up the revolver he’d purchased for Paquita’s protection when he had to be away nights. The butt of the gun felt familiar in his hand, but he hoped he didn’t have to use it. He didn’t want to be forced to fight or shoot Kelly. All he wanted was to be left alone. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask.

  He limped a few steps toward the lemonade stand and stopped, waiting to see what Kelly intended to do. If the guard didn’t stop at the stand, fine. If he did stop at the stand and behaved like a gentleman, that was all right, too.

  As Laredo watched, the younger Kelly stopped at the stand, his fellow guard pausing a few feet away, alert eyes continuously scanning the crowd. Kelly asked for and was served a paper cup of the free pink lemonade that Paquita was dispensing. But there was no hanky-panky today. The big youth made no attempt to molest Paquita. All he did was drink the drink he’d been served, toss the empty cup into the waste container, make an elaborate bow to the black-haired girl and walk on carrying both money sacks in one hand.

  Laredo hadn’t realized he was sweating but his white clown costume was spotted with moisture. Kelly hadn’t intended to try anything. He’d just been needling him. He’d known Laredo would be watching.

  Laredo returned the revolver to the catchall box and walked to the miniature train and turned again as a woman screamed.

  Almost at the sidewalk now, the younger Kelly was having trouble walking. Instead of swaggering, as he usually did, his knees were giving under him and he’d clutched at the arm of the woman who’d screamed in a losing attempt to stay on his feet His face was flushed and contorted with pain. He released the woman’s arm and clawed at the buttoned collar of his uniform shirt as if it had suddenly become too tight, then sprawled his full length on the blacktop, one of the money bags he was carrying striking the pavement so hard it gaped open and a half dozen sheaves of bills spilled out.

  The woman who’d screamed said, excitedly, “Well, help him, someone, Don’t just stand there looking at him. The man is sick or he’s been shot or something.”

  Stooping quickly, Quinlan gathered up the sheaves of bills, returned them to the money bag, then knelt beside his partner.

  The babble of voices died away as the men and women nearest to the stricken guard gaped at the man on the ground. The worried guard’s question and the fallen man’s answer were clearly audible over the drone of the carousel organ.

  “What’s the matter, fellow?” Quinlan asked.

  Kelly continued to claw at the collar of his shirt “I don’t know. It hit me all of a sudden. I feel hot and cold all over. And my guts feel like they’re on fire.”

  Quinlan got to his feet and carrying the money sacks with him hurried back to the armored truck and banged on the door of the money compartment with the butt of his gun until the stricken man’s brother opened it.

  “What now?” Mike Kelly asked.

  “I don’t know,” Quinlan puzzled. “But I think you’d better come see. There’s something wrong with Tim.”

  Mike Kelly came out of the truck. “But what could be wrong with Tim? He was all right a few minutes ago.”

  “It hit him all of a sudden. He says he feels like his guts are on fire.”

  “As if his guts are on fire?”

  “That’s what he told me.”

  The inside guard took the money sacks, tossed them into the truck, closed and locked the door, then hurried to where his brother was lying.

  “What’s the matter, Tim?”

  The younger Kelly, speaking with an effort now, told his brother what he’d told Quinlan. “I don’t know, Mike. But I don’t feel good. I don’t feel good at all. It came on me all of a sudden, after I drank that damn lemonade.”

  Kneeling beside his brother, Mike Kelly appealed to the circle of watchers. “Don’t just stand there looking. Someone call a doctor.”

  A middle-aged man with a pencil line mustache stepped out of the crowd. “I’m a doctor.” He squatted beside the two brothers. “Has he ever had an attack like this before?”

  “Never,” Mike Kelly said.

  “Could it be a heat stroke?” Quinlan asked.

  The kneeling man felt Kelly’s pulse, then touched his flushed cheeks with the back of his hand. “I doubt it. The principal action from a heat or sun stroke is to cause paralysis of the heat regulatory center in the medulla. The surface of the body is flushed and hot and dry to the touch. There is usually a rapid circulatory collapse. But while those symptoms are present, this man is complaining of extreme intestinal pain, which is much more symptomatic of food poisoning.”

  The elder Kelly said hotly, “Well, don’t just squat there talking to yourself — do something for him.”

  Quinlan holstered his gun. “Give him time, Mike. He has to figure out what’s wrong.”

  As Kelly clawed at his throat again, the kneeling man continued, “On the other hand, the symptoms of acute food poisoning and chloral hydrate are quite similar. And if chloral hydrate is taken in toxic doses, gastrointestinal irritation may occur and there may be a burning sensation in the throat, plus severe epigastric pain.”

  He unbuttoned the stricken man’s uniform coat and shirt, then said curtly, “There will probably be one on the ambulance, if someone has called an ambulance, but I don’t think we have that much time.” He glanced up at Quinlan. “A Doctor Murman has an office in this block. He probably won’t be there on a Saturday morning, but his nurse should be in the office. Tell her that Doctor Alveredo wants to borrow his stomach pump.”

  As Quinlan hesitated, the elder Kelly said, “You heard the man. Go get it. For all we know, Tim may be dying.”

  Quinlan hurried through the crowd.

  Laredo limped past the revolving Ferris wheel and the carousel, both filled with children, to the lemonade stand, ducking through the crawl hole to come up beside Paquita.

  “You didn’t give him anything in that lemonade, did you, honey?” he asked her.

  Paquita shook her head, then drew a paper cup of lemonade from one of the large glass containers and drank it.

  “All you gave him was lemonade.”

  Paquita bobbed her head emphatically.

  “Funny,” Laredo puzzled. “I mean that it should happen right now.”

  He started to duck out through the crawl hole again and the girl clung to him.

  “You want me to stay with you?”

  She nodded.

  “Why not?” Laredo said. “One thing is sure. We aren’t going to do any business, at least for the next few minutes.”

  He leaned his elbows on the counter and looked back at the two Kellys. The older of the pair had stripped his now unconscious brother to the waist. Dr. Alveredo had taken a small black leather kit from his pocket and was selecting a glass syringe and a hypodermic needle from it. Then, choosing the ampule he wanted, he filled the syringe and plunged the needle into the stricken guard’s arm.

  He waited for a reaction. When there was none he shook his head and said quietly, “I’m sorry. A stomach pump won’t do him any good now. This man is dead.”

  The remaining guard protested, “But he can’t be. Tim can’t be dead!”

  Dr. Alveredo returned the syringe and the needle to his pocket kit and stood up. “I’m sorry.”

  Chapter Seven

  THAT EVENING’S newspaper and the Sunday newspaper were to state that, according to five hundred eyewitnesses, at least a half dozen men dressed in identical clown costumes participated in the robbery of the armored truck, but at no time did Laredo count more than two men beside himself in costume.

  The first indication he had of anything other than Tim Kelly’s sudden and mysterious demise was when he heard the shrill locomotive whistle on the miniature train and looked up, incredulous, to see the train, filled with laughing, happy children pulling away from the station with a clown in the engineer’s seat.

  His first reaction was to try to stop the train. He ducked out of the stand and started for it
, but before he had limped five steps, new sound and motion attracted his attention. The last time he’d looked at the armored truck, Mike Kelly had slammed and locked the door of the money compartment. Now the door to the money compartment was open and a second clown, wearing makeup and a costume identical to his, was standing inside the vehicle scooping up loose money by the handfuls and throwing it out to the delighted crowd of screaming teen-agers and shouting adults who were pushing and jostling and punching each other as they attempted to catch the bills fluttering through the air or pick up the silver tinkling on the blacktop surface of the parking lot.

  Laredo looked for Mike Kelly. The guard had drawn his gun and was attempting to force his way through the excited crowd of men and women between him and the truck, but for the time being at least, he was helpless. Because of the milling people between him and the man, he couldn’t even find a clear field of fire to shoot at the clown looting the truck.

  Laredo was perhaps fifty feet closer to the armored truck than Kelly was. On impulse he started toward it and stopped again as he heard the happy laughter of the children on the miniature train turn to frightened screams.

  The strange clown was gone from the driver’s seat and the untended train, traveling three times as fast as it should be, was swaying wildly on the narrow, unballasted, narrow gauge rails laid around the periphery of the parking lot. At any moment it might jump the track and spill its cargo of terrified children onto the unyielding pavement.

  On impulse, leaving Kelly to deal with the clown looting the money compartment of the truck, running as fast as he could, Laredo cut through the lanes of parked cars in an attempt to intercept the train on the far side of the lot. He reached the tracks barely in time to grab at the brass rail of the locomotive as it passed him, only to be jerked from his feet and thrown against the miniature tender with such impact that it was another few seconds before he could muscle himself aboard and free the deliberately jammed throttle and apply the brakes.

  As far as Laredo could tell, while all of the children had been frightened by their wild ride, none of them had been injured. Still panting from his exertions, he climbed up and stood on the roof of the miniature locomotive so he could see over the roofs of the solid ranks of parked cars to the section of the lot where the armored truck was parked.

  Police car sirens were wailing in the distance, but as yet no uniformed officers had arrived. Mike Kelly was still trying to get to the truck and was still immobilized by the crowd. The clown was still standing in the doorway of the truck, scattering bills and silver to the crowd, now dominated by the group of older teen-agers.

  It was like watching something out of a nightmare. As Laredo watched, the pretty girl in the open car who had joked about a doctor cutting out his Pagliacci stuffed a handful of bills into the already bulging bodice of her dress. They didn’t stay there long. The man standing next to her caught at the cloth with his fingers, ripping the girl’s dress to her waist, leaving her firm young breasts uncovered. The bills fluttered to the pavement, but unconcerned, or unaware, of the fact that she was nude to her waist, the girl continued to scramble for more bills, picking them out of the air and stuffing them into a bodice that no longer existed.

  After telling the children to stay where they were until their parents came for them, Laredo climbed down from the cab of the locomotive and limped painfully toward the riot taking place around the armored truck. When he next caught a glimpse of the clown, the man had jumped down from the truck and was cavorting behind the vehicle, prancing and bobbing and pretending to trip over an inflated bladder on a flexible stick. However, none of the people in the crowd were paying any attention to him. They were too busy scrambling for the bills and silver still lying on the pavement.

  Laredo lost sight of the man for a moment Then, seeing him move rapidly toward the carousel and knowing he couldn’t reach him in time to stop him, he scrambled up on the roof of the nearest parked car and cupped his hands to his mouth in the traditional circus call for help.

  “Hey, Rube!” he shouted to Jocko. “One of the jokers is headed in your direction. Stop him and hold him if you can.”

  Even as he was shouting, the clown broke through the outer fringe of people and passed within a few feet of the old man.

  Jocko released the cluster of balloons he was holding and caught at the fleeing clown’s arm. The man spun around and raised a hand with a revolver in it.

  It was more of the same nightmare. From his point of vantage, Laredo saw two of the bullets raise small puffs of dust on the chest of the ancient green and gold lion tamer’s coat The third bullet went wild and struck a young colored woman with a baby in her arms.

  Laredo climbed down from the hood of the car and, using his fists when needed, fought his way through the crowd to the carousel.

  There was nothing he could do for the young mother. She was lying on the pavement, dead, her baby screaming in her arms. Jocko had shut off the Ferris wheel and was trying to stop the carousel. Laredo stopped it for him, then put an arm around his waist and lowered him to a sitting position under the rearing hoofs of a pink painted pony.

  “How bad is it, Jocko?” he asked.

  It was an effort for the old man to speak. “I’m afraid it’s pretty bad, Mickey.” He tried to smile. “But what the hell. It had to happen sometime.”

  Looking down from the pink pony she was riding on one of the passes Laredo had given her, the big-eyed little girl with the twin long braids said excitedly, “I saw it, senor — I saw it.” She cocked a small thumb and first finger. “The bad clown shot the nice old man and the senora! He went bang, bang, bang with his pistola.”

  Paquita, hurrying over from the pink lemonade stand, stopped to pick the unharmed but outraged infant from its dead mother’s arms. Then, clutching the crying baby to her breasts, she knelt in front of Jocko and looked up at her husband.

  Laredo shook his head. “I don’t think he’s going to make it He’s been shot twice, in the chest” He unfastened the gold frogs of the old man’s coat and unbuttoned his shirt and attempted to staunch the flow of blood with a clean handkerchief. “Did you get a look at him, Jocko? Can you tell us anything that might help the police to catch him?”

  The wounded man shook his head. Then his face lighted, briefly, but his voice was so low that Laredo had to put his ear to the moving lips to hear him.

  “Yeah. Sure. Of course, boss. I thought he looked familiar. I make him now. It was the young clem.”

  Laredo raised his head to see his face. “You’re sure now, Jocko?”

  He started to stoop over the old man again and warned by the anguished look on Paquita’s face, turned quickly but too late to do anything but partially deflect the blow.

  Having finally fought his way through to the armored truck and found the money entrusted to his care gone, half out of his mind with grief and frustration, the surviving Kelly beat at the younger man’s head with the barrel of his gun.

  “What did you do with the money, you damn spick? Who was in this with you?” He swung the gun barrel again. “I’ll teach you to rob my truck.” Continuing to beat at Laredo, he turned his anger on Paquita. “Yeah, and you were in it, too, you dirty little broad. It was you who poisoned Tim to create a diversion. Sure — that’s the way it was. Tim was all right, he was fine, until he drank that damn pink lemonade you gave him.”

  Chapter Eight

  TOM DALY had a number of fantastic theories. One was the archaic belief that, even in a managed economy, a man had the right to enjoy what money he had left after taxes.

  To that end, when the horses weren’t running at any of the major tracks in the Greater Los Angeles area, he normally did one of two things following his Friday night telecast.

  He and Gene DuBoise drove to Palm Springs and spent the weekend basking in the desert sun and admiring the bikini-clad lovelies around the pool of whatever swank club or hotel the two men chose to patronize.

  He and Gene flew to Las Vegas to visit the money
they’d left on their previous trips and assuage any feeling of mal du pays DuBoise might have suffered during the week by applauding and frequently dating the bare-bosomed daughters of Eve in one of the imported French floor shows.

  In Daly’s opinion, both spas were fountains of news and by combining business with pleasure, he seldom failed to return to Los Angeles without one or more newsworthy stories that justified the expenditure for the trip.

  He had only one taboo. While he was in either resort, he refused to read the Los Angeles newspapers, listen to the news on radio or watch a news telecast.

  The weekend the Ramsdale armored truck was robbed he and Gene had chosen Las Vegas. It was midnight Saturday night and DuBoise, at the moment twenty-four hundred dollars ahead of the game, was shooting two thousand dollars and coming out for his fourth consecutive pass when Lieutenant Schaeffer of the Los Angeles Homicide Squad walked up to the dice table where he and Daly were playing.

  “Gentlemen,” Schaeffer greeted them.

  “Hi, Charlie,” Daly said.

  DuBoise nodded pleasantly. Then after exclaiming in pungent French, he breathed on the dice and bounced them off the far cushion of the table.

  Daly translated. “Gene says his baby needs a pair of shoes.”

  As DuBoise’s date of the evening, a tall, shapely blonde, leaned over the table to help DuBoise stack the additional chips he’d won, Schaeffer couldn’t help seeing the obvious. “I wouldn’t mind buying her a pair of shoes,” he sighed. “Look. I’d like to talk to you and Gene for a few minutes, Tom.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “I mean in private.”

  “It must be important.”

  “It is.”

  “In that case, just a minute.”

  Daly transmitted the request to DuBoise. He nodded. “I’ll be with you as soon as I lose the dice.” With French frugality, he isolated most of the money he’d won and pushed the remaining chips out on the board. “Which should be in the next few rolls. I feel a cold wind blowing in off Brittany.”