My Kingdom for a Hearse

by Craig Rice

Helene shook her head. “It should have been murder,” she said. “It must have been murder.”

  “I agree with you,” he told her. “Under the circumstances, a murder was called for. But it wasn’t one. And in any case, why would it have been Myrdell, if it had?”

  Jake nodded. “It was the Debras who were disappearing.”

  “Rita Jardee was jealous of her,” Helene said, “because of her voice.”

  “But Rita Jardee didn’t care about that any more,” Jake said. “As of last night, she’d retired. And who else would have wanted to murder Myrdell Harris?”

  “Who knows?” Malone said gravely. “Who knows indeed? But anyway, nobody did.” He decided it was time to switch the subject off murder, and fast. “And about Rita Jardee—and Otis Furlong—”

  “They came by to see me,” Jake said, “because it was too early to go home. And because he wanted to talk with me about the process he’s trying to work out.”

  Both Helene and Malone sat up expectantly. Helene poured a round of drinks and said, “Then, breakfast.”

  “It seems,” Jake began. He began pawing through a handful of papers on the table, evidently emptied there some time earlier from his pocket. “I made a few notes as we talked.” He picked up a paper cocktail napkin from the Chez, an empty match folder with some figures scribbled on it, and a slip of paper with a name written on it. “Sunflower Dan,” he said, puzzled.

  “Running in the seventh at Santa Anita,” Malone said, “and a good horse, too.”

  Jake ignored him, found another scrap of notepaper, looked at it and said, “Legal angle. Malone.”

  “That’s me,” the little lawyer said.

  “Pay scale,” Jake went on.

  “That’s not me,” Malone said.

  Jake scowled at the paper for a minute, then said, “Oh, I know now. There’s a legal angle, if what he is trying is a success. Can we legally show five girls on television—show four and hear one, I mean—and pass them off to the audience as one girl?”

  They thought that over for a minute. “I don’t know why not,” Helene said at last.

  Malone said, “I don’t know. It might be misleading advertising, at that.”

  “The big question,” Helene said, “is—can it be done?”

  “The big answer,” Jake said, “is yes.” He looked at the paper again. “It’s pretty complicated. But it boils down to photographing every girl separately. Then painting out the part you don’t want to have shown, and finally you print the whole thing together. I mean, that’s how I understand it.”

  “I can see how that would work for one picture,” Helene said dubiously, “but for a movie film—”

  “The whole thing has to be done for every picture on every strip of film,” Jake said.

  Malone shook his head. “It also sounds expensive.”

  Jake sighed and put away the paper. “It’s not that it’s so expensive,” he said, “it’s just that it costs so much. And let’s have breakfast.”

  Helene had evidently read his thoughts of earlier in the morning, Malone reflected, as he lit an after-breakfast cigar. There had been ham and eggs, all pink and white and sunshiny yellow, there had been crisply fried potatoes, and a stack of golden brown toast, lavishly buttered. There had been strawberry jam, and a great deal of scalding hot coffee. He puffed deeply on the cigar and decided he was as close to being as good as new as he probably would ever get.

  On his way back to his office, the thought of Gus Madrid rose up to haunt him like an unfriendly ghost. Probably a little harder to handle than a ghost, too. Gus Madrid was going to want his money back, unless by some miracle he, Malone, could convince him that he’d played an important part in the return of Eva Lou Strauss. The real trick was going to be proving to the hard-headed gunman that his money had been legitimately spent in a search for Eva Lou, and that he’d get the rest of it back as soon as Malone could raise it.

  He decided on a quick stop at Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar, as the beginning of a softening-up process. If he paid Gus Madrid back what money he had left, he was going to need that recently re-established credit.

  A moment after he’d walked through the door, he felt that the visit had been a mistake. Joe the Angel, alone in the place, shoved a rye and beer at him, and regarded him sourly. Even the parakeet seemed to glare at him a little more malevolently than usual.

  “Drink your drink, Malone,” Joe the Angel said gloomily, “and then go away. Go away and don’t come back awhile.” He turned his back.

  “Now wait a minute,” Malone protested. “Look here. I just sent your cousin Rico some very nice business—”

  Joe the Angel wheeled around, sorrow in his eyes. “Malone. I do not know what it is you did. I do not know why you should do it to my cousin Rico, who is your good friend. But until you fix it up whatever it was you did, go away, Malone, and do not come back again.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Maggie looked up from her desk as he came in, as though she sensed something had gone wrong. Malone threw his hat and topcoat at the couch and growled at her to get Rico di Angelo on the phone.

  She came in a few minutes later and reported that Rico di Angelo was nowhere to be found, and that no one in his establishment seemed to know anything about anything.

  Malone swore and sat scowling at his cigar, which had long since gone out. What could have happened? What could have gone wrong? Was it possible that Myrdell Harris had been murdered after all, and that Rico di Angelo had been the one to discover it? But that couldn’t be possible. A doctor like Alonzo Stonecypher would hardly make a mistake like that. And certainly a doctor with his reputation and standing couldn’t be bribed.

  He told Maggie to keep trying, and settled down to worry in earnest. Gus Madrid had not called, which was good. He would undoubtedly call or turn up in person later, which was bad. No one else had called about anything, which could be good or bad. The mail hadn’t come in yet.

  He wondered if Otis Furlong’s process would work. Then he wondered if Jake could talk Rita Jardee into returning as the voice of Delora Deanne.

  Then there was the matter of the calls Dennis Dennis had made to Myrdell Harris. Whatever the reason had been, apparently it had been an urgent one. He picked up the phone and called Delora Deanne. No, Mr. Dennis hadn’t come in yet. Yes, Mr. Malone, she did have his home address and phone number.

  But Dennis Dennis wasn’t at home either.

  Well, he told himself at last, there was no point to just sitting here and getting nothing done. At last he lit a fresh cigar, sighed, and called Charlie Swackhammer. This time the answer was prompter, and a lot less sleepy.

  Just a few things he wanted to know, Malone explained. About undertakers. Sorry, he’d meant morticians. Did they pal around together much, like lawyers and doctors and streetcar conductors, and so on?

  He was gratified to be told that they did indeed, and that a finer bunch of fellows and pals couldn’t be found anywhere. Oh sure, there was a certain amount of business rivalry, just like in any line from Ab to Zz. But as far as friendship and good times were concerned—well, he remembered a convention a few years ago, down in Miami Beach—

  Charlie Swackhammer interrupted some highly colorful reminiscences to say, “What’s going on, Malone? Maybelle’s right here, and I’m watching her like she was the crown jewels, which she’s just a little more valuable than, to me anyway. But what’s this about her being murdered?”

  “She isn’t going to be,” Malone said. “Not if I can help it. So don’t worry.”

  He hung up, thought for a moment, then interrupted a busy and mildly profane Gadenski in what he was doing. Malone quickly offered apologies, tickets for the fights, and the use of a box at Washington Park when the races opened, reached for paper and a pencil, and said, “Now, about those girls—”

  For a few minutes he wrote rapidly. Names, addresses, telephone numbers, and both important and unimportant details. At last he said, “Thanks, and if everybody was
as good in his line as you are in yours, it would be a far, far better world, Gadenski,” and hung up.

  Then for the next few hours he sweated through a series of long-distance telephone calls, to Hollywood, California, to Little Rock, Arkansas, to a whistle stop in southern Ohio. He was thankful that he didn’t have to call Havana, Cuba, though he was pleased that he’d been surprisingly right on that casual guess.

  When he had finished, he leaned back in his chair, chewing on his cigar. Everything added up now, as far as the Delora Deannes were concerned. If he’d had any sense, he told himself, he’d have known it all along.

  Jake chose that moment to arrive, and told the little lawyer that he looked appallingly smug, and what was this he’d muttered at breakfast about the Delora Deannes.

  “That they’re all alive and well,” Malone said. He said it out loud this time. “I ought to have known it all along.”

  “Why?” Jake looked puzzled.

  “The ring,” Malone told him. “I should have known it because of the ring.”

  “What ring?” Jake demanded, in pure exasperation. He added that a good night’s sleep wouldn’t have done Malone any real harm.

  “Eva Lou’s,” Malone said. “The opal. It was in every picture, it had almost become a trademark of the Delora Deanne hands. Otis Furlong told me himself that she could never get it off. That’s when I should have known.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Jake said. “In the pictures, I mean.”

  “That parakeet,” Malone said. “The first time it said, ‘Ring, ring, ring,’ it made me think of something, but I couldn’t quite figure what it was.”

  “Damn you, Malone—”

  “The hands that came to Hazel by mail,” Malone told him, speaking very slowly and patiently, “didn’t wear any ring. There was no ring at all. And no sign of one ever having been worn.”

  Jake looked at him and said nothing.

  “And then when I saw the jeweled garters,” Malone said. “I mean when I didn’t see the jeweled garters—”

  Jake sighed. “All right. What jeweled garters, and where didn’t you see them?”

  Malone decided there was no reason not to explain, and went on to tell about Klutchetsky’s grisly discovery, and the conclusions he’d drawn and passed on to von Flanagan.

  “Any minute now,” Malone said, “he’ll call and tell me he’d found who the girl is. At least I hope he does. He owes me that much, after last night.”

  “But,” Jake said, his freckled face a little pale, “but that’s horrible.”

  “It is,” Malone said. “The whole thing has been horrible. Someone with a mind I’d rather not contemplate right now conceived and carried out the idea. To frighten Hazel—to put her out of business—to torture her—for some reason. Some reason of revenge, quite probably.”

  He drew a long breath. “This person—somehow, he or she found out when a very beautiful girl was going to be buried and managed to steal the body. The hands were sent to Hazel, and then the feet. The torso and legs were probably meant to be next. Just how, we’ll never know. The head—that would have been the real problem.”

  He frowned. Last night, he’d thought of something, something of great importance. He’d almost told it to von Flanagan. Probably would have, except that it still wasn’t altogether clear in his mind then. And whatever it had been, it seemed to be completely gone from him now. Oh well, he’d probably remember it in due time.

  “There was another reason,” he told Jake. “I should have known that the Deloras were all alive and well when I found out that Eva Lou had left all her gloves behind, and Louella had left all her shoes. I certainly should have tumbled to it last night when Rita Jardee was making like a hog caller, but I had other things on my mind.”

  “There must be a very fine line of reasoning there somewhere,” Jake said, “but I don’t get it.”

  “Very simple reasoning,” Malone said. “The Deloras were all sick of their jobs. Sick of Hazel Swackhammer and her stinginess.” When was that check going to get here, and how much would it be? “Sick of being anonymous. Eva Lou left her gloves behind because she was so damned sick and tired of posing her beautiful hands for photographs. Same thing with Louella and the shoes. And then Rita Jardee and her voice.” Jake nodded. “But why did they disappear?”

  “They didn’t,” Malone said. “I know where they are.” He noted a hopeful gleam in Jake’s eye and went on fast. “Gertie Bragg dyed her hair back to its natural red—I’m told it’s very becoming—and married a very rich millionaire. A hardware dealer from Little Rock, Arkansas.”

  “Hooray for her,” Jake said.

  “Eula Stolz,” Malone said, “saw a chance to make important money in Hollywood, doubling in the figure for bathing beauties. Expects to do well, she tells me. Louella Frick went back to a farm in Ohio. Eva Lou Strauss took off for Havana and a rich hoy friend. Changed her mind at Miami and came back to her other boyfriend.” Who would be coming along any time now. “And Rita Jardee—well, she’s retired from radio. That’s the lot.”

  “Nobody ever retired from radio,” Jake said confidently. “And no woman would ever turn down a chance to be the star of a television show.”

  “One-fifth of a star,” Malone reminded him.

  Jake waved that aside. He looked at Malone with unconcealed admiration. “How on earth did you find out all this?”

  “Oh,” Malone said, with great modesty, “I just made a few telephone calls.”

  That was when Maggie appeared in the doorway, her face just a little more worried than usual. “Rico di Angelo, Malone. He’s here.”

  He was here, and almost shoving Maggie to one side. He paused halfway across the room, planted his fists on his hips, and stood looking accusingly at Malone.

  “You! And all these years, you are my good friend.”

  “I am,” Malone said. “Now just a minute. Sit down. Have a cigar. Whatever it is, I had nothing to do with it.”

  Rico di Angelo did not sit down, nor did he take a cigar.

  “First you want me to cut off somebody’s hands.”

  “No,” Malone said. “No, no, no. Nothing of the sort. Nobody had any idea of doing anything of the sort. I just wanted to find out if it could be done. To—settle an argument.” The argument had been with himself but that had nothing to do with it.

  Rico’s silence and the expression of his handsome face showed exactly what he thought of that.

  Malone decided to try taking the offensive. His voice became accusing. “Then,” he said, sounding deeply hurt, “I send you a very nice piece of business, because of my friendship for you—” His voice trailed off weakly.

  “And then,” Rico di Angelo said bitterly, “you hold up my hearse and you steal the body.”

  Malone opened his mouth to speak, and shut it again. There simply didn’t seem to be anything to say.

  Jake said plaintively, “I do wish somebody would tell me just what is going on.”

  Rico di Angelo turned to him. “Too much is going on. First, this business of the hands. All right. That I will forget. That I will believe Malone about. Then last night, a lady friend of his, she dies. Malone sends for me. All right. I go there. Everything is in order. The doctor, he has signed the certificate. Nothing is any kinds monkey-business. I make the arrangements with the lady who was the dead lady’s boss. All right.”

  Jake looked at Malone and said, “Myrdell Harris?”

  “Who else could it be?” Malone snapped.

  “Then what?” Jake said to Rico di Angelo.

  “Then on the way to my beautiful establishment on Division Street, somebody, he holds up my driver. He holds up my driver and me myself, and he steals the body. With a gun.” He glared at Malone, and said, “Well?”

  There still didn’t seem to be anything to say. At long last, the little lawyer said feebly, “And then what did you do?”

  “I went home and go to sleep,” Rico di Angelo said. He seemed to be feeling a little better, his story t
old. He sat down, put his hat on his knee, and took out one of his own cigars. “Because I am your good friend, Malone, I want to find you before I tell the police. I try and try, and I cannot find you, and so I go home and go to sleep.”

  Malone muttered something about going home and going to sleep himself if the day kept up as it had started.

  “Now,” Rico di Angelo interrupted, “I have found you. And I have got to tell the police. This is not a good business to have happen. Not to my fine establishment.”

  “Believe me,” Malone said earnestly, “believe me, Rico, I had nothing to do with it. This is the first I’ve heard anything about it. And I don’t know any more about how it happened, or who did it, than you do.”

  Rico di Angelo turned to Jake as though for confirmation. He was beginning to look a little dazed. Jake nodded vehemently.

  “Malone is telling the truth,” Jake said. “And I’m in a position to know.”

  The baffled undertaker turned back to Malone, who also nodded vehemently.

  “It might take me a little time,” he told Rico, “but I could prove to you where I was every minute of the time between when I called you, and when you walked in just now. And,” he added virtuously, “I certainly wasn’t hijacking any hearses.”

  “But somebody did,” Rico said anxiously.

  “If it’s the last thing I ever do,” Malone promised him, “I’ll find out.”

  “But now in the meantime,” Rico said gloomily, “I have got to tell this to the police.”

  Jake frowned. “Look here, Rico. Is there any way you can put off notifying the police? Not for very long, perhaps just for a few hours?”

  “Right,” Malone said, nodding enthusiastically. “That way, it’ll make it much easier to find out just who did do it.”

  “Besides,” Jake pointed out, “if we find out, and we locate the body, you may never have to notify the police at all.”

  The reasoning appeared sound to Rico di Angelo. After a few minutes’ thought, he nodded agreement. “I manage it. I explain that I am so upset that my assistant he has to take me home and put me to bed, and this makes my assistant so upset that he does not think of the police.” He paused. “Or maybe easier and better, I change all the times around.” He beamed at them both. “Don’t you worry about it. I fix.”