Black Mask (Vol. 22, No. 2 — Mary 1939)

“Then you killed him, you filthy big bruiser,” she starts to yell even louder than before.

Now I am fifty pounds under the heavyweight class; I have no mashed potato for a schnozzle and no cauliflower on my ears; also, I take a Turkish as often as the next lad, so there is no call for the dame to get abusive. But I don’t cuff her around until she starts to claw my eyes out with those needle-pointed crimson fingernails. Even then I am loath to clip her on that lovely chin but neither do I feel like posing for a skin-grafting job on my smush.

She is wearing one of those brushed-up hair-dos with a mop of jet curls on top of her head. I reach out and grab a fistful; try to hold her off at arm’s length.

We wrestle around in a clinch that gives me accidentally a hand-hold on parts of her anatomy which no gentleman should clutch without special permission; also a deep drag on some very persuasive perfume, the sort they advertise with a picture of a hammock, a full moon and a name like “Night of Naughtiness” or something. There is positively no doubt that what it is she has got nearly gets me.

She is whining now, for sympathy; but she offsets this tender appeal by kicking me in the shins with those blunt instruments they call Cuban heels. After collecting two jabs that nearly splinter the bone, I jerk sudden on her top-knot and really start the tears streaming from her eyes.

“Calm down, babe,” I warn her. “Or you’ll need a wig in your next show.”

She puts her hands over her face and shakes with convulsive sobs. I let go of her hair. She throws herself on the floor beside the dead man.

“Larry,” she moans. “Larry, darling, why did they do it? I’d have given them all the money they wanted, Larry, if they’d only have let you live!”

“Listen, sister,” I close the door and put my back against it, wondering why the John Laws have not busted in on our little party before this — we are making more noise than a hurricane — “neither of us murdered your husband, if he was your husband.”

“We were secretly married in Atlantic City last summer,” she whimpers.

“You don’t have to prove it to me, Miss Marsh. I just want you to get straight on this shooting business. I’m Vince Mallie; it’s my job to see this sort of thing don’t happen at Mister Kraddakapalous’s affairs.”

“I’m terribly sorry. Seeing Larry like this—”

“Sure, sure. That’s what I want to know about. How come you show up here, anyway? This was supposed to be an invitation meet, for men only.”

She stops blubbering and wipes the mascara out of the corner of her lamps.

“Larry told me. Just a few hours ago. He said I was to come to this room after half-past two and I would be in on the—” there is a little catch in her voice, “the biggest joke of the year.”

That throws me; in the first place it had to be true, because up to an hour before the game began, no one knew where the get-together was to be. Not even me. She had to get the address from Larry or one of the “All The World Loves—” crowd.

In the second place, this Joe-Miller joke talk checked with Del Grave’s dying words. Imagine a cluck with a sense of comedy like that; wanting his wife to pop in to see him turned into an order for the embalmer. Because if she had got there five minutes earlier, she would have been in time to watch him take the Big Dive. And what sort of screwball set-up is it when the victim knows the time-table for his own demise?

All this time, the Louse is trying to make some sense out of this, too, but he gives up and goes to work on the rye without benefit of ice or fizzy. The canary is leaning against the wall, her eyes closed as if she is suffering great pain. She is sort of careless about her clothes and her disclose, if you follow me, but this is certainly no time for a gentleman to be straining his optics, and besides I have a job of work to do.

Somewhere in the Metropole, unless Mike Rubin has slipped up, which I am pretty certain he hasn’t, is a murderer. And two other guys who know who this killer is. They made too tricky a getaway not to have planned it in advance; so I figure they have not gone very far.

Add that all up, multiply it by Del Grave’s dying words, and the prop blood on the corpse’s hand and then subtract five or six thousand seeds that must have been lying around on the table — and what did I get? What I had got so far was a punch in the eye, a smack on the head and an armful of tiger woman.

I am clamping down on the accelerator to my gray matter when there is a knock at the door. A very mean voice calls, “What’s wrong in there? Open up!”

Whatever I do, I get marked for an error. If this inquisitive lad turns out to be a Little Boy Blue, and I let him in, we are all sunk. The Louse loses a lot of clients who won’t play with a gambler who lands on page one; the frill collects some smelly publicity and I will rate a smudge on the precinct blotter which is pure poison to my business, where I have to kid along the coppers every now and again.