The Crazy Mixed-Up Corpse Page 8

  She wasn’t alone. Seated in a faded leather chair just to the left of her was a big, tough-looking customer who seemed to be very attached to the sub-machine-gun he had cradled in his lap. You would have thought he was playing with a pet poodle the way his hands ran fondly over the blued steel of the barrel and lingered lovingly on the ammo drum. I shook my head.

  This whole caper was nuts. Close, confined rooms are no place to uncradle a tommy-gun unless you intend to use it. There isn’t a trickier automatic weapon in the wide, wide world.

  The tough guy with the machine-gun looked at the gorilla waiter and said, “Blow, Charley.”

  Charley blew. I saw his lazy smile disappear from the mirror as the door closed behind us.

  Holly Hill rotated on her full hips in the chair and leered up at me. She looked as if she wanted very much to spit.

  “Do we put our hands up, like in the comics?” I asked. “Or is this just an informal get-together for a game of bridge?”

  “Shut up, you bastard.” She grated the words. “I’ve got my stomach full of you. You’ll wish you’d minded your own business before we’re through.”

  “Easy, Holly,” the machine-gunner said. “The cards are all ours. Why fly off the handle?”

  She snorted and twisted towards him, one shoulder slipping out from under the canary yellow robe.

  “Like hell we have. This Noon has given us enough grief to fill a river already. And we still haven’t got what we came for.”

  My eyes had been carefully taking in the details of the room. I wasn’t interested in the cold cream jars, the tubes of jelly, the Kleenex tissue and the make-up junk on the dresser. Nor did the hanging bras and sequin-studded G-strings spread across a yawning wardrobe trunk interest me much either. But on the sagging divan behind the gun-lover’s chair was a split-open package of string and brown wrapping paper. I could see every one of my white shirts and shorts spread out like so much confetti. Somebody had gone over them with very unloving hands.

  I tried a smile just to test the atmosphere of the room. “How’s the dirty laundry business, Miss Hill? I’ve never known a dame so interested in my underwear.”

  Penny Darnell snickered softly and Holly Hill cursed. A foul curse. Penny shut up and looked at the floor. The guy in the chair suddenly stopped caressing the machine-gun in his lap and pointed it at me.

  “I couldn’t miss you from this distance,” he warned.

  “You’d be blind if you did,” I agreed. “Crazy if you do. These things make too much noise. Spill too much blood. We’d be a pair of the messiest corpses for miles around. Hard to get rid of. And even more troublesome than the stiff called T. T. Thomas.”

  I got the message across fast and quick. And for a damn good reason. Mentioning the late T. T. Thomas got more results than candy bars with school kids.

  Holly Hill’s stage eyebrows fluttered and the machine-gunner chuckled low. But Holly Hill wasn’t laughing.

  “If you know his name, Noon, then you must have what we want. Cough up.”

  “No sale, sister. I give it to you and there isn’t one good reason why I should have to stay alive. You’ll have to convince me.”

  The gunner started to get up from his chair, but Holly Hill waved him back.

  “No, Ace. Not here. Let’s get out. We’ll go to my place with the pair of them. We can’t horse around here. Noon might have called his cop friends.”

  “I might have, at that,” I admitted.

  Ace’s tough face widened into a deadly smile. He wasn’t bad-looking except for a slight twist to his nose, as if someone had moved it out of position once and it had stayed that way.

  “Not his kind, Holly. He’s one of them heroes who likes to work alone. I know the type.” He glared at me. “You’re not playing potsy with kids, Noon, so take it real slow. You’re making me wish I’d dropped you permanently that other time. I’m ashamed of myself for lousing up the job.”

  My fingers ached again and the V in my forehead jumped with a sudden rush of red-hot anger. Then it froze over, leaving only cold fury.

  “Your score was fine, Ace. One blind man, one three-year-old kid. And a crippled little girl. I was in the hospital for three weeks. That rates a sharpshooter medal at least.”

  “Tsk, tsk,” Ace apologized. “You’ll have me bawling in a minute.”

  Holly Hill growled. “You and that goddam gun. Just going to scare the Chinaman, you said. Sharpshooter, hell. The gun ran away on you. Stop yakking with Noon. I’ll get dressed and we’ll scram. To hell with the last show. The marks are always too drunk to appreciate how I wiggle at three o’clock in the morning, anyhow.”

  “A woman shouldn’t talk the way you do, lady,” said Penny Darnell suddenly.

  “To hell with you, sister,” sneered Holly Hill. “I own this dump and I’ll talk as I damn please.”

  “Well, it’s damn unpleasing,” Penny snapped, her bright eyes shooting sparks. “And if I was your sister, I’d shoot myself.”

  Holly Hill stopped moving towards her wardrobe trunk. She tightened her robe around her, the one that was doing such a poor job hiding her hills and dales, and glided lithely towards Penny Darnell. The two girls were inches apart now and glaring at each other.

  “Maybe I’ll do it for you, bright eyes.” Holly Hill said it low and mean. She followed it up with a whip-lashing right hand, just as she had in my office. And Penny Darnell’s face vibrated on her shoulders like a smacked dinner gong.

  Ace straightened out of his chair, the tommy-gun unwavering in big, steady mitts. He had two inches on me and a longer wingspread. And the tommy-gun. I stayed where I was.

  “Knock it off, Holly. You can mark her up later. And get out from between us before Noon tries his luck.”

  He was right. I’d been mentally cataloguing my chances. But he’d made me think of something else.

  “You’re a sensible man, Ace. Let’s make a deal.”

  His smile thinned. “I’m listening.”

  “From the events of recent weeks, you and the lady here seem to be all in a dither about something you have to get your hands on. You went to work with your chopper on a Chinese family because you thought they had it. Either that or because they somehow knew the identity of a corpse that’s been bothering the cops to hell and gone. You may have included me in your purge for either of the same reasons. Or both.”

  “Make your point,” he glowered.

  “I will. The name T. T. Thomas rings bells for you, doesn’t it? Something he had or something he was seems to affect you and Miss Hill here like nobody’s business.”

  His glower was on full blast now. And the bend in his nose almost ironed out.

  “So you know that much already?” He flung a glance at Holly Hill, then his eyes got back to me. “What else do you know?”

  I grinned at Holly Hill, who had paused behind a folded screen in the middle of wiggling out of her abbreviations. She was frowning.

  “Don’t let me hold you up, Holly. I was just running through the possibilities.” While I was jawing, my mind was racing. T. T. Thomas’s folded one-dollar bill stuck in the clip of my P38 wasn’t the safest place in the world if they knew what they were looking for. That was one thing I had to find out.

  Ace raised the tommy-gun’s nose a full inch.

  “Keep talking, Noon. I’m all ears.”

  “Like a jackass,” Penny Darnell said sarcastically. But she was still killing Holly Hill with daggers in her eyes.

  I couldn’t exactly blame her. It had been some across-the-face wallop. But Ace was a hard man to offend, which was worth remembering. He ignored Penny’s crack completely, his eyes and gun staying on my face.

  “I’m still listening, Noon,” he said.

  “Okay. So you want something. I’ve got it. So let’s shoot square with each other. How about a trade?”

  “What kind of trade?”

  “Questions and answers trade.”

  He shrugged. “Depends on the questions.”

/>   “That’s fair enough. The cops have a problem and I’ve got a headache from all these screwy manoeuvres. First question – are you and Holly Hill the only ones in on this deal?”

  He smiled. It was an ugly smile. “We’re sweethearts, Noon. That answer your question?”

  “It’ll do for the time being. Second question – did you kill T. T. Thomas and leave his naked body in its screwy condition for the cops to find?”

  “You won’t buy this but the answer is no.”

  I looked at him. There wasn’t any reason for him to lie. But there wasn’t any reason for him to tell the truth, either. I had a third question.

  “I’ll buy that for now. Last question – did Holly Hill blow up the laundry store right after she took my stuff out? And if she did, tell me why.”

  Holly Hill stopped dressing. Her still-bare shoulders gleamed over the top of the screen. Her mean eyes had terrified lights in them.

  “Do I hear you right, Noon?” Her voice was breathless, scared. “Blow up the laundry –”

  “You heard me, Holly. Less than five minutes after you skedaddled, the joint went up in smoke. Seems like somebody planted a bomb or something. I barely got what was left of the Long family out alive.”

  Holly Hill and Ace exchanged glances that were so genuine and spontaneous I didn’t need an answer to my question. If they’d taken acting lessons for a hundred years they couldn’t have reacted more sincerely or naturally.

  Ace’s mouth tightened and two words whistled low past his locked lips. “Drill’s around!” And Holly Hill continued dressing as if it were the most important single act of her life.

  It certainly looked like the mysterious T. T. Thomas had an awful lot of people interested in him and his. But it only left me more confused than ever.

  “Okay,” I said. “That wasn’t your handiwork. So my opinion of you both is a shade higher. But still pretty low at that. Who the hell is Drill?”

  “No more gab, Noon.” Ace was suddenly all business. And in a hurry. His big body was as agitated as if he’d taken on a load of bugs. “Snap it up, Holly. If Drill’s in on this, we’re in real trouble.”

  She didn’t need any hints. Her fingers were flying now. In a minute, she came around the folded screen, wrestling a gold skirt down around her ample hips. She threw a fur boa around her shoulders.

  “Ready,” she puffed. “We’ll go out the back. My car’s in the alley. Only take a second.”

  Ace’s eyes found mine.

  “One phony move – you even cough or blink your eyes or scratch your nose – and I’ll open up. And your girl friend will go first. Hear me good, Noon. You too, girl friend.”

  “Thanks for the classification,” Penny Darnell said. She was still making with the stiff upper lip talk but I could see her trembles. I could almost hear them.

  “I’m sorry, Penny,” I told her. “Hope there isn’t anybody waiting up for you who might worry if you don’t get home on time.”

  Her quiet smile thanked me for the thought. “There’s nobody, Ed. I was working at being an old maid.”

  “Dry up and start moving.” Ace poked the nose of the tommy-gun in my back.

  We moved in Indian file, and slowly, out of the dressing-room and down the rest of the narrow corridor. Holly Hill led the way with Ace bringing up the rear with his automatic plaything.

  It took less than two minutes to traverse the corridor to the back door, which opened on a small driveway. I could see a ’56 Packard with white-wall tyres gleaming in the half-darkness. The neon blaze of the electrified city hung over the entrance to the alleyway about forty yards off. I recognized the Packard from the morning of the machine-gun lesson.

  We marched down the dirty stone steps, circled an army of garbage pails, and reached the Packard. Holly Hill held the keys, which jangled noisily in her fingers. Ace told her to hurry in a worried undertone.

  I had one comforting word for Penny Darnell.

  “Sorry about our date, Penny. It isn’t working out very well.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t care much for that beat-up trench coat anyway. And you ought to buy yourself a new coat too. The one you were wearing looked older than the first automobile.”

  She was quite a dame. I hadn’t realized that the duds we had checked in the Blue Turkey hadn’t been returned. But Penny had just tried to be funny and I appreciated it more than the justifiable complaint she could have made.

  “Quit yakking, you two,” Holly Hill whispered fiercely. “And get in. Both of you up front with me.”

  Ace chuckled. “I’ll be in the back seat with this. So be smart. Any dumb play will only make a lot of dead people.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that. Even if I’d had, there wouldn’t have been enough time.

  “Take your own advice, Ace,” a full, melodious voice said quietly in the darkness behind Ace and along the wall. “Drop that tommy. You’re covered five ways from Sunday.”

  Ace cursed and whirled. And the dazzling beam of a flashlight caught him right between the eyes. It blinded him in nothing flat. And it must have affected his mind and his common sense altogether, because he tried to do something foolish with the tommy gun.

  I was standing right alongside him so I did it for him. Before he could get us all killed by starting things popping, I drove my right hand at his neck in a vicious arc. The blow knifed into the fleshy part of his neck where it met his shoulder, and the sub-tommy fell from his fingers with a noisy clatter.

  But peacemakers get it in the neck too. I was turning towards the blinding glare of the flashlight with my hands starting to rise when somebody decided the top of my head would be an ideal place to drop a grand piano.

  Penny Darnell cried out in terror.

  But that’s all I heard. The flashlight blinked out and so did I, lost in a world of blackness and thundering uproar.

  Music up and out.

  FOURTEEN

  The grand piano that somebody had dropped on my head played on and on. The noisiest concertos and orchestrations in the books. And none of it baby or grand. All crashing, clamoring, colliding notes. And loud, loud, LOUD. Then the crescendos suddenly stopped and my head hummed like a giant-sized tuning fork. My ears felt like two enormous tines.

  But the piano toned down until the riotous rhythms faded dully into the background. I was the musical score of a very bad movie in wide-screen and stereophonic sound. No glorious technicolour though. Just plain old lousy black-and-white.

  I had a headache. The worst kind. Something an aspirin would never take away, at least not until the elephantine lump on my head went down.

  The piano was still throbbing between my ears. And it wasn’t playing songs of love. Just Songs To Lose Your Mind By.

  I opened my eyes. It took about ten minutes to raise the lids.

  Ninety-nine different things jumped into focus. The same way everything sprang out at me whenever I came back to the office and snapped the overheads on. Like so many animals crouched to spring in the darkness.

  I shook my head until the piano noises were almost gone. It cleared a little. I looked around painfully.

  The gang was all here, but I didn’t feel like hailing.

  There were about half a dozen chairs ringed around the room campfire style and every one of them had somebody in them. Somebody tied hand and foot with clothesline. I tried moving my feet. Including me.

  I saw Penny Darnell, Holly Hill and Ace in that order. Penny’s blue dress was torn in strips, Holly Hill’s blonde mane was completely disarranged and the tough-looking Ace had a gorgeous shiner. The stout ropes had them all sitting up straight in their wooden-back chairs. They looked like three adults playing kid games. Except for the lack of gags of any kind. But I could see why nobody was doing any yelling or hollering for help. It would have meant suicide.

  The guy lolling in a chair with his back against the wall by a rickety wooden table wouldn’t have stood for it. The machine-gun in his lap would have settled anything and ever
ything. It looked like Ace’s plaything, but I guess all sub-Thompsons look alike. But nobody ever looked like the guy in the chair. The oval of his face was so much cheesecloth, as if he’d run into a load of buckshot pellets somewhere in his crooked past. He looked mean enough to chew linoleum.

  But there wasn’t any in sight. The old, rotten boards beneath my size nines were ancient and decaying.

  Penny, Holly and Ace were sitting up and taking notice but their three expressions would have been more appropriate at Finnegan’s wake.

  I tried to stretch, but the ropes around my knees bit like sharp teeth and the thick strands running around my waist sandpapered into my stitched side. I winced.

  “Hi, gang,” I said feebly. My head was humming like a beehive.

  Penny Darnell’s cute face revolved towards me. Her bright eyes flashed.

  “Ed – I thought you’d never wake up. You okay?”

  I nodded. Holly Hill’s cruel eyes regarded me for a split second and then turned away. Ace glared at me out of his one good eye. I smiled at him, not feeling like smiling at all.

  “That’s the way the ball bounces, Ace,” I said. “You try to take me for a ride and then somebody takes you for a ride.” I jerked my head towards the thin, pockmarked terror at the table. “Whose little boy is he?”

  Ace wagged his head furiously.

  “Shut your mouth, you jerk. This is Drill’s outfit. And he doesn’t play with smart alecs. Save yourself some bruises and bottle the smart talk.”

  “Thanks, Ace. I’ll remember that.”

  The character with the tommy-gun rocked forward in his chair until the four legs were on the floor again. He reached to his left and thumbed a black button jutting from the cracked plaster wall. A buzzer sounded somewhere behind me, far off and stammering with faulty electrical sound. The gunman lolled back against the wall again and said nothing. There was a brief silence. I looked around, craning my neck as much as the laws of nature and my bonds allowed.

  The room wasn’t a room. Just a big, almost square, low-ceilinged box of indifferent walls and cheap construction. For furniture there were only the each-one-like-the-other wooden chairs and the rickety table. But I could make out a tiny kitchen just beyond the machine gunner. A dirty old cast-iron stove and a strictly 1876 icebox crowded a one-faucet sink into what amounted to an alcove. Behind me was another room with a ceiling a mile high. There seemed to be no doors separating the rooms. Just entranceways, or cleared areas that passed for doorways. The set-up looked familiar somehow. The whole layout was like one of those floors in loft buildings that somebody rents for business quarters as well as living quarters. People like artists, inventors and writers. It’s cheaper and very economical. But sometimes somebody rents such a place for parties – and occasions like this one.