Fit to Die

by Joan Boswell

  Ketcheson sniggered. “They had to, I suppose, after everyone got a look at the grass stains on the back of that pretty red dress of hers. They weren’t playing croquet that night.”

  “Tsk, tsk,” said Miss Doyle, but Gunboat figured she was more ticked off at Ketcheson than the pretty housemaid. Miss Doyle felt certain allowances ought to be made for pretty girls, likely because she was very pretty herself. Tonight she looked like a flower, more like a rose than a girl. Her pink, freckled cheeks made her look younger than the twenty-three he knew she was, and her gold eyes had an agreeable way of sizing up a fellow. Gunboat liked, too, that she showed off her first-rate gams with a paper-thin, slinky number that quit just below the knee. Though he didn’t like Ketcheson’s hand, rock-hard from the hoosegow quarry, resting just above the hemline on her first-rate knee.

  The boss wouldn’t like it either. But he was busy making with the friendly, chatting up the Wall Street big shot and the son of the man who owned the Waldorf-Astoria, and keeping a fatherly eye on Stevie Pounder, who suddenly stood up halfway, before the wire on the radio ear pieces jerked him back.

  “Hot dog! There’s the Polo Grounds!” Stevie cried. “The fighters are going to their corners.”

  “Holy Mike, is it fight time already?” Miss Doyle said. “I’ve just got time to plunk down a few smackeroos on the champ.”

  She clicked open the glittery crystal clasp on the cloth purse no bigger than Gunboat’s fist. When the pencil and notepad came out it reminded him of clowns coming out of a paper car at a vaudeville show he had seen at the Winter Garden when he and the boss were on the road. He kept a poker face as the tiny pearl handle of a gun peeked out of the bag, too. As long as she didn’t point it at the boss, it was none of his business, and a girl who went to speakeasies and talked to jailbirds and bet on prize-fights couldn’t be too careful.

  “You’re throwing your money away on Dempsey,” said Ketcheson, stabbing a calloused finger at the scandalsheet still spread across the bar. “Says right here, the champ doesn’t want it like he used to. It’s more fun fighting to the top of the hill than standing up there and defending it.”

  “I suppose I’m not the best judge,” Miss Doyle said, crossing her legs beneath the satin and giving the brush-off to Ketcheson’s long-fingered paw. “I only get halfway up a hill when I think, cripes, why I am bothering with this stupid hill? What do you think, Gunboat, has the tattlesheet got it right?”

  Her silver charm bracelet jingled as she started to slide him the newspaper, but the boss slipped in and took it, brushing against her in a way that said he would like to brush up against more than that. He must have seen the offending hand get the bum’s rush from the first-rate knee, and another man would have said something cutting. Not the boss. He was one of nature’s gentlemen.

  “It’s right about the challenger, Case, darling.” The boss pointed to a line of ink halfway down the page. “No one knows what Luis Firpo will do in the ring if he’s hurt, because no one has ever hurt him. He lets other fighters come to him and takes what they dish out. Then he bangs away until they collapse.”

  “Dempsey is an overrated chump,” Ketcheson said. “They always say whoever holds the title is the greatest fighter of all time. Bunk and twaddle of the worst kind. Dempsey’s never been up against anything but slow-moving, slow-thinking bums.”

  “You don’t say,” said the boss. If there was a note of warning in his voice, Miss Doyle didn’t hear it. Or maybe she did.

  “Gunboat went a few rounds with the champ before the War,” she said stoutly. “The only knockout of your career, wasn’t it, Gunboat?”

  “So they tell me,” said Gunboat.

  “I remember all right,” said Ketcheson. “They said you telegraphed your best punch.” He acted it out, drawing back his right and lifting his butt, thin in the pants that had fit him before prison, an inch from the barstool.

  “I heard Gunboat punched like a charging elephant,” Miss Doyle said. “A telegraph from a charging elephant doesn’t do much good.” Ketcheson had got Miss Doyle’s Irish up. “Gunboat, give me one hundred smackers on Dempsey.”

  She clicked shut the twinkling clasp, tossed the bag down as if she were packing nothing heavier than face powder and handed him a scribbled note he could not read. “You know, there’s nothing I like better than a grudge match. Two fellows going toe-to-toe to knock the chips from each others’ broad shoulders.” She fashioned her right into a tiny fist that would not have given a mosquito trouble and floated a powder puff that melted before it got halfway across the bar towards Gunboat.

  “Can I set you up, Lester?” the boss asked, waving towards the bottles lined up in front of the bar’s mirror.

  “Very open-handed of you. But I’m after more than a watered-down drink.”

  “Feel free to buy me one,” said Miss Doyle.

  The boss smiled and nodded, and Gunboat took the solid silver cocktail shaker from the shelf over the mirror behind the bar. In the mirror he saw Ketcheson’s dark eyes glued to his back. “As soon as I collect the money owed to me,” the jailbird said agreeably, “I’ll buy a round for the house.”

  “There’s the bell!” Stevie Pounder was too loud, as if the sounds coming though the radio and into his ears filled him up with noise. It beat Gunboat how something in New York City could fly through the air and into those skinny pieces of wire. He thought it almost sinful, but everyone else, everyone but Miss Doyle, was bunched about the boy, hanging on his every word.

  “What money?” Miss Doyle was asking. Gunboat didn’t like the interested look on her pretty face.

  “My cut from the Dempsey fight.”

  Stevie squeaked again. “Dempsey rushed in with a right, but Firpo beat him to the punch! The champ is down on one knee!”

  “You have a pretty swelled head, Les,” said Miss Doyle, those gold eyes narrowing. “The fight has barely started, and here you are collecting your winnings.”

  “Not this fight,” laughed Ketcheson. “The one before I got sent up, the one where Gunboat took a dive.”

  Whatever the boss was going to say, he couldn’t beat Miss Doyle to the punch. “That’s loopy,” she said, waving away the words with a flick of her bangled wrist. “Gunboat makes the finest martinis in the Thousand Islands and is as stand-up as they come. It’s not in his nature to take a dive.”

  The crowd around the radio lowered their noise to a dull roar to hear Stevie’s next report. “The champ is back on his feet, throwing like a crazy man, and Firpo is down!”

  “Lester,” the boss said, “watch yourself.”

  Gunboat took the top off the silver bucket and saw the ice had melted into a solid block. He took the ice pick in his large, hard fist and splintered it with one short stab.

  “The last thing I want to do is get Gunboat’s blood boiling,” Ketcheson said with a wink. “But we both know he took a fall. It was me that told him to.”

  The boss looked around to see who else had heard, but Stevie’s words had the suckers in a spell. “Firpo is up with a big swinging right and bam, he knocks the champ right out of the ring! Dempsey’s gone head over heels over the rope into front row!”

  “You see, Miss Doyle, Pilgrim wasn’t crazy,” Ketcheson went on like he was teaching a pouty kid her ABCs. “If he laid down a bet against his own fighter, everyone would know the fix was in.”

  “You don’t say,” she said, like she really wished he hadn’t said. She turned her back to the bar, and Gunboat saw the back of her dress dipped scandalously low beneath her shoulder blades, a fact he forced himself to ignore.

  “But he wouldn’t go face-to-face with Gunboat, either. He had me do his dirty work there. I couldn’t bring myself to spit it out, not looking at those fists, why, they’re like hammers. I don’t mind telling you, my own hands shook when I gave Gunboat the marker and said it was a message from his boss. But Gunboat’s a gent. When he saw how much was riding against him, he just gave me one of those shrugs and handed the paper back li
ke he was handing a mother cat a kitten.”

  “Ah,” said Miss Doyle, “the plot thickens.” Gunboat had never heard her voice so small or so soft.

  “It was my fault,” said the boss. He was looking at Miss Doyle, but talking to Gunboat. “We were flat broke, but if we made good against Dempsey, we’d be set. So I sold most of my stake to Pilgrim.” There was a slump in his shoulders that hit Gunboat like Dempsey’s right. “I wish to God I hadn’t, but he was the only one with that kind of cabbage.”

  “My God,” young Stevie croaked, “the champ is back in the ring! The swells in the first row pushed him over the ropes!”

  “Why didn’t you collect before, Les?” Miss Doyle’s voice was stronger now, Gunboat thought, like she had made her mind up about something. She had twirled her stool back towards Ketcheson, but she wasn’t looking at anybody. Her eyes were on her lap and she was playing with the clasp of her little bag.

  “It was one of those crazy things. A few days after the fight, I was celebrating and got in a little spat with a lady’s husband. Could’ve happened to anyone.” A spat, thought Gunboat. The hard-done-by husband was shot in the leg and nearly bled to death, and Ketcheson’s payday was a ticket to Kingston Pen.

  “But you said you were here doing business that night,” said Miss Doyle. “So if you didn’t get your money, Harry Pilgrim must have tried to stiff you. That would be your motive for killing him.”

  “Now wait a minute,” Ketcheson said, leaning back on his stool. “There’s no need for crazy talk. I just want what’s coming to me.”

  “You’ll get what’s coming—” Miss Doyle said “—if the cops ever find out you were still here when Harry died.”

  “I lit out long before the old crumb got topped,” said Ketcheson. “The boatman backed me up on that.”

  “Then how did you know the housemaid had grass stains on the back of her dress? Surely it’s not the kind of gossip you hear around the chain gang. No, you must have collected already. That’s how you could pay the boatman to say he took you home earlier. Clearly you had the dosh to go out on the jag that ended you up in the slammer.”

  “Now slow down, honey,” Ketcheson said. “Okay, I was on the back porch finishing my smoke when that girl and her lover boy charged right past me and into the house. But it was Fancypants here,” he pointed a calloused finger at the boss, “who took off out the back door like a bat out of hell.”

  “To investigate the screams,” said the boss smoothly.

  “With a shotgun?” Ketcheson said.

  “Ah, so that’s the pay-off you’re after tonight,” said Miss Doyle. “Reggie pays the piper and you won’t play a little tune in Mr. Policeman’s ear.”

  Stevie’s voice cut in, yipping like one of those pug-dogs well-off American wives carted about. “Dempsey hit Firpo so hard that he lifted him in the air! Boom, Firpo’s hit the canvas!”

  “Things have changed while you were up the river, and Reggie would be nuts to pay you,” Miss Doyle said cheerfully and began ticking off the reasons on her little fingers. “First, he’s a big-time bootlegger, he’s got cops on the payroll now. Second, the suckers up from Syracuse love that murder bit, it brings them in by the boatload. And third, you saw Reggie leave the house after the dead body was found. Why, Reggie has a better alibi than you do. Maybe you killed Pilgrim that night and kept all the dough.”

  “Your logic astounds, my dear,” said the boss. “Like your charm, it bowls one over like a careening motor car.”

  “You rat, Ashe!” cried Ketcheson, his work-hard hand snaking towards his baggy pocket. “Put the frame on me, will you?”

  Gunboat felt things slow down, like when he was in the ring, and his left foot travelled forward in a long falling step. As his weight shifted, his half-opened left hand came straight out from his shoulder, chin high across the top of the bar, and his fingers began to close with a mad clutch, his knuckles lining up like soldiers.

  “No, Gunboat!” the boss barked.

  The boss could not stop him, no one could stop him, no one but Miss Doyle, who leaned in to plant her little gun in Ketcheson’s side. Gunboat lurched to the left, and a punch that could have killed her breezed past, catching the tip of her silly hat and knocking it a little off kilter.

  “Reach for the sky, pardner,” Miss Doyle said. “I always wanted to say that, like one of those Zane Grey posses arriving in the nick.”

  “You won’t shoot,” Ketcheson hissed, careful not to move an inch.

  “Don’t bet on it,” said the boss. Gunboat agreed. Miss Doyle was not the goofy dame she made herself out to be, but then Gunboat had suspected as much. The boss did not go in for goofy dames. He liked his women like his steak and his whiskey, a little on the rare side.

  “If you do Reggie in, Gunboat will go on a rampage and you’ll shoot him. Then where will I find another bartender who makes the perfect martini?” Her hand was steady as the boss reached into the jailbird’s lop-sided jacket, took out something heavy and dropped it in his own pocket.

  “Usually, I don’t have to pull a gun to get a fellow’s attention,” Miss Doyle said, putting her peashooter back in her little bag. “But let me give you a tip. See how Reggie’s pocket sags? If you’re going to cart around a concealed gun, don’t let it pull your coat to one side and, for goodness sake, don’t keep brushing up against someone wearing a sheer little number like mine. Cold metal leaves little to the imagination.” Checking her reflection in the mirror behind Gunboat, she straightened her hat.

  The boss kept one hand in his pocket. With the other he brought out some banknotes and thumbed a few bills on the bar in front of Ketcheson. “Here’s a few bucks for a guy down on his luck, Lester. But that’s all she wrote. Don’t come looking for more.”

  Ketcheson grabbed the bills and gave a halfways grin that made it clear he had thrown in the towel. “Win some, lose some,” he said, as Gunboat made to come out from behind the bar.

  “No, Gunboat, I’ll see Lester out,” said the boss. “Miss Doyle has earned another perfect martini and, while you’re at it, tear up her bar tab.”

  Miss Doyle was the only one watching as the two men left. Stevie was rhyming off a ten count that reminded Gunboat of when Dempsey knocked him out, the numbers coming through layers of wool. The gang at the radio picked it up, chanting till he couldn’t hear the lad, and when the count finished, they went nutty, carrying on like gangbusters because one man licked another, and money from the side bets started changing hands.

  “Gunboat, would you please look at that marker I gave you.” He looked up at Miss Doyle, surprised, although people did the damnedest things at pay-off time. He poked his big fingers into his shirt pocket and fished out the paper.

  “Read it to me,” she said.

  He could smell her perfume on it, like no flower he had ever smelled, but soft and fresh and suiting her. He wanted to hold it up to his nose, but instead he unfolded it and looked at the words she had written. Then, he couldn’t help himself, he shrugged.

  She reached over, took the note, and read. “One hundred dollars on Jack Dempsey to beat Luis Firpo, and another fifty dollars here and now if you can read this note.”

  Gunboat stood there dumb. A good word for him, dumb. He could not read a lick, but somehow she had read his secrets, maybe on his big dumb face.

  “When I handed you that newspaper tonight, Reggie went for it like a stick of dynamite,” she said. “He was trying to sidetrack me and that stuck in my craw, so I slipped this dirty little trick in.” She tossed the marker down on the bar.

  “That’s why you killed Harry Pilgrim. Because you can’t read. When Ketcheson handed you those markers, you weren’t going to let him know you had a glass jaw in the written word department. So you pretended to look it over, shrugged your old shrug, then climbed in the ring and Dempsey licked you fair and square.”

  Gunboat looked at his fists, like boulders, which had failed him the one time he had needed them.

  “Pilgrim sen
t you for champagne, and you found out what he was celebrating. The dive you didn’t take,” Miss Doyle said. “Then you knew he’d done what no one could do in the ring. He made you a bum.”

  “It was just one punch,” Gunboat said. But it was like a cannon going off, a perfect right uppercut driving the base of Pilgrim’s jaw into his brain. If he’d had that punch with Dempsey, they’d be listening to him on the radio now.

  “You found Reggie and came clean, but before he could get rid of the body, those lovebirds stumbled over it. Reggie was running out of time, so he used the shotgun to disguise the weapon only one man around here had.”

  They both looked down at his big clenched fist, and she reached out and took it in her two hands.

  “I didn’t like it,” Gunboat said. If it weren’t for the boss, he’d still be fighting for hooch in some two-bit joint. Or dead.

  “But Reggie insisted,” she said. “He’s one of a kind, isn’t he? Carrying on, a ray of sunshine, knowing everyone thinks he’s a murdering skunk while he’s the truest of pals. It’s the kind of thing that makes me think I ought to marry him.”

  “Marriage is a fine institution,” said Gunboat, although he wasn’t too sure.

  Neither, it seemed, was she. “Can you picture me living in an institution? And come to think of it, I’d get myself banned from this fine institution if Reggie knew what I’ve been spinning to you. So why don’t we keep mum? I don’t want to gamble with my supply of martinis, and say, how’s that one coming along?”

  Gunboat was reaching for the honest-to-God Beefeater, not the bathtub rotgut they used for the saps, when Stevie Pounder bounded up. “The champ is some man! Helps Firpo to his feet after the big knockout. What a class act!”

  Speaking of class acts, Gunboat thought, and looked at the marker face down on the bar. “You just made two hundred shekels, Miss Doyle.”

  “I knew the champ would come through. Anyone who knocks out Gunboat Merkley is the world’s toughest hombre. But forget the bet.” She picked up the marker and began tearing it into strips. “I’ve lost my taste for grudge matches. In fact, I’ve gone off gambling altogether.”