The Fall Guy

by Joe Barry

  They can hear you in Hammond.”

  Merwin looked hurt. “Aw, Rush, I was just barely whisperin’.” This was an old argument “I know,” Rush said, “but don’t whisper so loud.”

  “Okay, I gotcha. What’s up, Rush?”

  “I’m not sure what I have, Merwin. I’ve got a job to do, but I’m not quite sure how to go about it I think you can help me.”

  “Sure, Rush, I can help you plenty. Give me the lay.”

  “There’s a guy whose daughter has gone on the loose. She’s messing around at Markio’s, talks like she might want a job with the trouble boys. Markio wrote her old man, and he called me in to check up on her.” Rush gave it to him slow and in bare outline. More, Merwin couldn’t handle with his limited capacity for assimilation. Merwin thought it through with the help of heroic gulps of beer. Finally he had it all in place. He shook his head slowly from side to side.

  “I don’t get it,” he whispered. “I don’t get it at all.”

  Rush stopped him before it got too deep. “Don’t worry about it, Merwin. Our problem is just to find out everything we can about this girl. Who she sees, who she knows, and such stuff.”

  That Merwin could understand. “You want I should nose around?”

  “Not quite yet, Merwin. I want you around where I can get you, maybe later tonight. If you go anywhere leave a number with Barney. I may need you.”

  “Okay, Rush. Yeah, I’ll keep dose so’s you can find me.”

  Rush looked at his watch. It was 1:30. “Merwin, you can do something for me now.” He took Germaine’s check from his pocket and endorsed it. “Take this to the bank and deposit it for me. I don’t want to carry it around with me.”

  Merwin looked at the figure and whistled.

  “Forget you saw it, Merwin,” Rush said, “and get it to the bank.”

  “Sure, Rush, right away.” Merwin left, slamming the door behind him.

  Rush sat for a while lost in thought. Then he hoisted himself from the booth and dropped a dollar bill on the counter as he passed out of the bar.

  The heat of State Street hit him full, as though a mantle of measurable weight had dropped, stifling, on his shoulders. Squinting, after the comparative darkness of the bar, he headed south on State. Two blocks brought him to the door of a large, old, but still faintly respectable office building. He stopped at the cigar counter in the lobby for cigarettes and took the elevator to five. He was the sole passenger.

  “Mighty hot, Mr. Henry,” the elevator girl offered.

  “It is, Martha, it is. Why doesn’t the building buy you skirts instead of those musty slacks? They’d be cooler.”

  “These are left over from when they had boys on the cars. They just cut them over for us.”

  “The hell! That’s a chintzy job of chiseling.”

  “It isn’t so bad in the winter. They’re warm then. They’re awful hot now.”

  The car reached five. “You ought to strike, Martha.”

  “We wanted to but the union wouldn’t let us. Said it was unpatriotic.”

  “There must be a loophole somewhere, Martha. I’ll think about it.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Henry.” The elevator door clanged shut behind him. He walked down a short hall to the door of his office.

  Gertrude graced the desk in Rush’s outer office. She burst into a frenzy of typing as the door opened to admit Rush. Then she saw him and relapsed into her usual desuetude.

  “Oh, it’s only you.” She sighed in disappointment. “And about time, too. Where you been?”

  “Business, darling. And what do you care? I pay you good money to sit on your unlovely fanny and do not a damn thing but answer the telephone.”

  “Pooh,” said Gertrude. “You couldn’t get along without me.” As an afterthought—“It is not unlovely.” Then a thought struck her. “Hey, there’s a client in your office. He’s been waiting almost an hour.”

  “What’s he doing in my office?”

  “Oh, he got so fidgety sitting out here it got on my nerves and so I shot him in there.”

  “It’s too bad about your nerves. We must get you a vacation. What’s his name?”

  “He wouldn’t say.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “Only that he wanted to see you.”

  “That’s fine. Did he look like money?”

  “He didn’t look hungry.”

  “That’s something. I’ll go in and see him. If I buzz you, listen on the inter-office communicator and take the interview in shorthand.”

  “Okay, Philo.”

  Rush made a very rude remark regarding her parentage and went into his office. Sitting in a straight back chair, his hands folded in his lap, giving the impression that he hadn’t moved since sitting down, was a slight mouse-colored man, wearing glasses. He might have been twenty-five or forty-five.

  “How do you do,” Rush said, walking around behind his desk. “I’ll be with you in just a moment.” He covered his close scrutiny of the man with some pointless sleight of hand among the papers on top of his desk. Rush decided he was nearer twenty-five; that he didn’t have any money; that he would fluff him off as soon as possible. He ended his paper manipulations by stuffing a mass of typescript in a side drawer. “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “You are Rush Henry?” The man’s voice was as colorless as the man.

  Rush managed a look of surprise that he had asked and nodded.

  “You were recommended to me as a very competent detective.”

  Rush assumed a modest smile.

  “I need protection, Mr. Henry.”

  Rush’s look of astonishment was not assumed. He couldn’t imagine anyone wishing harm to this innocuous character.

  “From what, Mr. —?”

  “I’d rather not tell you my name right now, Mr. Henry.”

  “Okay, no name, but why do you need protection?”

  “My life is being threatened.”

  “By what or whom?” Rush’s eyes expressed polite disbelief.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look, Mr. Blank,” Rush said, “you’re being very vague about the whole thing. Maybe I should tell you now, in the beginning, that I am not in the protection business. I outgrew bodyguarding some years ago. Let me recommend a good man for you and save both of us wasted time.”

  “No.” the little man said. “No. You were recommended to me by someone whose opinion I regard very highly. I’m willing to pay for the best.” He swallowed deep in his throat. “Let me tell you my story.”

  “Okay,” said Rush. “I’ll listen.”

  “Some time ago I accidentally came into possession of articles of very great value. Since I acquired them, strange things have been happening. I received these articles in San Francisco in a quite legitimate fashion, and, to the best of my knowledge, they how belong solely to me. But I’m sure I was followed back from the coast, and since I arrived several things have happened to make me believe my life is in danger.”

  “Such as?” Rush asked.

  “I have been held up twice in two different parts of the city by the same man. Each time I was searched and nothing taken. I didn’t have the articles I mentioned with me either time. An attempt was made to break into my home without success. My—the people with whom I live believe it to have been an ordinary burglar. I am positive it was the same person who had held me up twice before. I am conscious of being followed wherever I go. It is a horrible feeling.”

  “It is, indeed,” said Rush. “But don’t you think you’d better be a little more frank with me? What are these valuable articles? Where did you get them? Why is it only ‘to the best of your knowledge’ that they belong to you?”

  “I can’t tell you that until I am sure that you are working for me.”

  “I see.” Rush looked at the desk, then raised his eyes to the man in the straight chair. “Okay, you say you are willing to pay for the best, what are you willing to pay?”

  “What are your rates?”<
br />
  “A hundred dollars a day and expenses, but since I’m already on a job and will have to hire outside help to take care of both, I’ll have to raise that fifty dollars a day, and ask for ten days in advance.”

  The little man hesitated. “That would be satisfactory, only—”

  “Only what?”

  “Only I’m afraid I haven’t the fifteen hundred dollars or even the first hundred. Right now, that is.” Rush frowned. “Then haven’t you been wasting time for both of us?”

  “No, no, not that at all, Mr. Henry. I intend to give you a large bonus in addition. It’s just that I need protection until I can sell.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rush said. “I think there has been some misunderstanding on both our parts. The fact of the matter is, that the job I have on hand is too important to trust to anyone else. I should have told you that in the beginning. I’m afraid we can’t do business. Thanks anyway, and thank whoever recommended me for suggesting my services.”

  The little man felt the finality in Rush’s voice, and he turned and left the office with only one backward glance. For the first time Rush recognized the tenor in the man’s eyes. For a second he thought of calling him back and offering protection but he dismissed the thought. He picked up his hat and went into the outer office.

  “I’m going to be in conference at Barney’s for a short while, Gert. If anyone wants me, call me there.”

  “Okay, lover. Don’t lap up too much of that third-rate rye he sells. You have a job on.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Merwin was in with your deposit slip. Nobody’s giving you a grand unless you’re working for them. What gives?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later, Gertrude. Right now I’m thirsty. As to the rye, the stocks are running low. I want my share.”

  Gertrude had the last word. “You’ve had it.”

  Rush slammed the door and took the elevator to the street. He halted for a minute as the heat blasted him in the face, and over the roar of traffic he heard the thin whine of a siren. As he stood there lighting a cigarette, getting used to the heat, an ambulance rounded the corner on two wheels, closely followed by a police car. Both screamed to a halt at the mouth of the alley that ran alongside of the office building. Only then Rush noticed the small cluster of citizens standing at the alley staring into its shadowy interior. He walked over.

  Stretcher bearers shouldered through the crowd, two uniformed cops breaking the way for them. As Rush edged a little further into the crowd, stretching on tiptoe to see, he trod ungently on a pair of foes.

  “Sorry, friend, didn’t mean to mangle your toes.”

  “That is quite all right.” The voice was deep and mellow and Rush was surprised to find that it came from a tall, stooped, hollow-chested man beside him. He noted the dark suit, white shirt and black string tie and placed him as a minister.

  “What’s the excitement about?” Rush asked.

  “A man has been stabbed,” the tall one stated, as though he were mentioning the price of eggs.

  “So? Who was it?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  Rush gave him a surprised look, surprised that is at his tone of voice, and turned to go. Killings, even in his own back yard, were none of his business unless somebody paid him for making it his business. He reached the curb as a long, black car drew up with screaming brakes. Rush recognized the occupant.

  “Better save your tires, Carnahan. The city may not always be able to buy new ones.”

  “Hiya, Rush. Who you been killing now?”

  “Can’t tell yet, Sam. Too big a crowd to get in and identify my victim.”

  “Come on in with me. It happened in your block, maybe you can identify.”

  Rush followed the man from the homicide bureau through the crowd to the side of a body covered by a white sheet.

  “D.O.A.?” Carnahan asked an intern in a white jacket.

  “Like a mackerel, Sam.”

  “Uncover it and let’s have a look.”

  The intern reached down and pulled back the sheet. Rush looked and turned quickly away, dragging a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lighting one with a match struck on the sole of his shoe. He turned back to find Carnahan staring at him strangely-

  “What’s with you, Rush?” he asked. “You’ve seen corpses before. Is the heat getting you? Come over here and give a look.”

  Rush went back to the body which now lay entirely uncovered. The knife had entered just under the ribs on the left side and blood seeped down over one incongruous shirttail that hung over the top of his pants. All the pockets were pulled out and the inner lining of the coat had been rudely tom away.

  “Well,” said Carnahan, “a friend of yours?”

  “Never saw him before in my life,” Rush said.

  “Okay,” Carnahan turned to the uniformed policeman. “Clear the alley. You ghouls from City Hospital leave that goddam corpse alone till the doc gets here. And where the hell is my squad? I want pictures of this whole damn alley.” Carnahan went on shouting orders and setting his machinery of investigation in motion. Rush slipped silently away.

  He wondered why he had lied.

  The man in the alley had occupied a straight back chair in Rush’s office and asked for protection less than thirty minutes before.

  3

  The sun had dropped a little toward Berwyn and Oak Park and Rush gratefully accepted the favor, walking in the shadows thrown by the buildings on the west side of State Street. His thoughts were a little mixed up by the scene of a few minutes earlier and it was a matter of a full fifty seconds before he realized he wasn’t alone. Then he noticed that sometimes there was a slight echo to the sound of his heel striking the sidewalk and looked up to find the tall, dark, ministerial gentleman, upon whose toe he had trodden, walking beside him, sometimes in step, sometimes slightly out. Rush raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “I thought perhaps you could satisfy my, perhaps, crude curiosity.” The rumbling tones seemed to come from a point somewhere below the spare thorax of the thin one.

  Rush’s “umm” was noncommittal.

  “Yes,” said his rather disquieting companion, “I have been in many strange places in my time and seen many strange things, but today was my first contact with violent death at close quarters. I am quite curious.” There was a weird detachment in the man’s voice. Rush thought he might have spoken the same way after having seen Mickey Mouse for the first time.

  “I see,” said Rush with forced politeness.

  “Yes. I thought you might be able to answer several questions that come to my mind.”

  “What questions?” Rush was nothing if not direct.

  “The police now, what steps will they take to learn the man’s identity?”

  Rush was slightly surprised. Was it possible that a grown man in this day and age didn’t know the primary facts of police procedure? He spoke pedantically as though to a child.

  “Why, they’ll check his fingerprints against the files at headquarters and if they don’t show there they’ll shoot them to the FBI in Washington. They’ll check his clothes for manufacturer’s and retailer’s marks and find out who bought them. They’ll check his teeth and his glasses. They’ll check laundry and cleaner’s tags and find out who cleaned them. If the guy has a tie in the world, they’ll place him.”

  “I see.” Rush’s companion thought that one through and Rush could see him ticketing each fact and putting it in its place. “And how long will that take?”

  “A day or two if it’s tough. They may know tonight.”

  “Ah! And will that information be available to the public?”

  Rush looked at the man sharply. Was he a crank, a ghoul who got a vicarious thrill from this sudden nearness to the spilling of blood? He answered shortly. “It’ll be in all the papers.”

  “Good,” the man said. Rush wondered why. “I noticed you were acquainted with the officer in charge of the affair. Perhaps they have a theory about the
killing.”

  They had come abreast of Barney’s, Rush’s destination. He stopped and turned to his companion. “They’d hardly have a theory fifteen minutes after it happened. This is where I was heading. I’ll see you around.” He turned to enter the bar. The man looked up and noticed the character of the place and followed him to the door.

  “Since you’ve been so kind to an inquisitive old man perhaps you’d allow me to buy you a drink.”

  Rush looked at him for a second and then grinned ruefully to himself. “Sure, fella, come on in. I’ll have a rye on you.” -

  They entered the door and Rush led the way to his favorite booth in the dark interior of the bar. Barney came back to take their order. He nodded at Rush’s. “Same,” but blinked as the other asked for lemon phosphate.

  “We ain’t got any of that, chum,” Barney said after a second of head scratching.

  “Then I’ll have beer.”

  “Fishbowl?”

  The man looked puzzled.

  “He means a twenty-four ounce bathtub full,” Rush explained.

  “Oh, no, just the ordinary size.”

  Barney seemed on the point of stating that a fishbowl was the ordinary size in his establishment but he decided against it and walked back to the bar shaking his head.

  The drinks came and Rush took a long swallow of his rye. He needed that. He looked across the dim booth at his companion. That one seemed to be struggling with himself. He finally decided in the affirmative.

  “Perhaps you are wondering why I am so curious about the distressing occurrence up the street.”

  “Well—“ Rush said.

  “I’ve been wondering whether to tell you something that may be of value.”

  “Shouldn’t you tell it to the police?” asked Rush.

  “That may be. That is what I would like to ask you. I know so little about these things and you seem to be quite familiar with the procedure.”

  “Thank you.” Rush grinned without humor.

  “What do you think you know?”

  “It isn’t anything I know or think. It is something I saw. I was standing several doors away from the alley for at least fifteen minutes before the crime was discovered. Five minutes before the discovery a short, swarthy man—he looked to be foreign in origin, Italian, perhaps—came out of the alley. He looked quickly both ways and walked rapidly south on State Street.” He paused and looked questioningly at Rush. “Do you think I should say anything to the police?”