Black Mask (Vol. 29, No. 3 — January 1947)

I had a choice. I could swing on him, and get killed. He was a lot of man — not just big, but built. Good-looking, dark hair, heavy eyebrows, a Gable type without the cute mustache.

“All right, talk.”

“That’s better,” he said.

He relaxed and picked himself out a chair. He lit a cigarette. Clark was smiling. “I don’t suppose you’re in any mood to hear what I’ve got to say?”

“It better be good.”

“My name doesn’t mean anything to you?” he asked, and I shook my head. “I’m Maxine’s first husband. She told me about you, said you were O.K.”

I let him talk.

“Fowler, what’s your angle on what happened to Maxine?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“Do you believe it was suicide?”

I repeated I was not concerned with what it was. I was leaving it up to the proper authorities.

“How about your thinking, do you leave that to the proper authorities, too?”

“Look, Mr. Clark. You’re a big guy; you can muscle your way in here, and make me listen to you, but if I’ve got to think — it costs money.”

He curled his lip like he was going to spit. Out came his wallet and he dropped two one hundred dollar bills on my desk. “Think,” he said.

We blinked across the desk at each other. The big boy got impatient. “Well?” he demanded.

“I’m thinking,” I told him, and stretched it as far as it would go. “I’m thinking you’re the biggest jerk who ever sat in that chair.”

He didn’t like it. He spread himself over the top of my desk. “One more crack like that, Fowler, and I’m going to start bouncing you off the walls.”

“Sit down,” I said. “Let’s get this straight — just as if you’d walked in here like a normal person. I’d as soon take your money as the next guy’s, but I want to know what it’s supposed to be buying.”

He sat. Then he smiled. “I think we’re going to get along, chum.”

I let it pass.

“If I seem a little anti-social, skip it. I just wound up five years at Quentin.”

I nodded, and extended my hand. “Welcome, brother.” I told him about being sent up there for a year on the bum manslaughter rap in the de Spain case. We gabbed like a couple of old grads at. homecoming. We hated some of the same people.

Clark explained he’d been out a couple of months when he heard Maxine was on the rocks. He wanted to do something about it. He still had some dough and some connections. Things broke just right and he was able to get her a part in a road company by spending a little and putting a bit of pressure on the right people.

“I’m a gambler, Fowler,” he explained. “You’d be surprised at some of the people who are into me for different things. Everything was all set The night Maxine was supposed to have pulled the dutch act, I saw her, and we talked over the whole thing. That’s when she told me about you. She thought you were a pretty good egg. What I’m getting at, Fowler, is there was no reason for her to commit suicide. I’m willing to bet those two Cs and whatever more it takes to prove it wasn’t.”

I said O.K., I’d take him on. “Now how about cutting me in on all the details of Maxine’s past?”

He told me what he could. She had started in show business as a kid in New York, around the nightclubs. She was mostly a showgirl, occasionally stepping out of the line to do a specialty — nothing very startling.

During that period she met Clark, and it was love. They got married and Maxine put away her dancing shoes and became a housewife. Part of being wife to a gambler was providing a little sex appeal to all night poker sessions. Clark didn’t say so, but I gathered she was used for sucker bait.

Then one of their customers, Jake Reed, a Hollywood producer, took an interest in her and talked Clark into letting her sign a contract. They moved to California and Maxine surprised everyone by registering a hit in her first part.

It looked permanent, so they bought a home in Brentwood and settled down. From Clark’s point of view, it was a good deal. He found plenty of men around the picture colony who liked to gamble, and Maxine’s position in the industry gave him almost amateur standing, which didn’t hurt the take.

Everything was wonderful until the story started making the rounds that Jake Reed and Maxine were double-crossing him. Clark ignored the gossip until one night at a party he got too heavily loaded and put an end to the story by punctuating Mr. Reed with a .38 slug.

Clark was tried for second degree murder. Maxine stood by him all the way, but when he went north, the studio said get a divorce or get out of pictures. And that was that. She got the divorce.

The rest of Clark’s story was only things he had heard while at San Quentin. She had married again — an actor named Wally Burke. It hadn’t lasted. Then the fadeout on the picture career.

I asked him if Maxine had always been a heavy drinker. He was emphatic in stating that as long as he knew her, she had done very little drinking.

“There’s just one more thing, Clark,” I said. “I might want to talk to some of Maxine’s old friends to get their slant on her. Have you any ideas on who I might look up?”