Lucky Stiff - Craig Rice (good book club books .TXT) 📗
- Author: Craig Rice
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Book online «Lucky Stiff - Craig Rice (good book club books .TXT) 📗». Author Craig Rice
Malone shook his head. He held the cellophane cigar wrapper to his lips, aimed it at a wastebasket halfway across the room, and blew. It was a perfect shot. “Practice,” he said proudly. He lit the cigar. “Not without consulting Rico di Angelo,” he said.
Helene sat down on the arm of Jake’s chair. “Of course,” she observed, “all we really have to do is wait until Rico opens for business this morning, finds the body, and calls the cops.”
“Assuming, he does call the cops,” Malone said. He scowled. “Whether he does or doesn’t know anything about the body, I don’t want to get him in trouble. No, the person to call is Joe the Angel.” He rose and went to the telephone.
He talked at length to a sleep-voiced Joe the Angel, hung up, and returned to the couch. “He’ll call Rico, tell him the whole story, and then Rico will call me. Then we’ll know better what to do.”
Malone poured out a third cup of coffee. He was beginning to feel in better health with every passing moment.
“About the gun,” Helene said thoughtfully. “It could have killed Jesse Conway and Garrity.”
“It could have killed me, too,” Malone said in a sour voice, “if I hadn’t socked that guy when I did.”
Helene said, “We could wrap it in a pretty little package and mail it to von Flanagan with a note reading, ‘This gun may have been involved in the murders which are baffling the police department. Fingerprints may tell who shot it, and ballistics tests may tell whom it shot. Signed, A Friend!’ “
“At least von Flanagan would know he had a friend,” Jake said. “And then we could all hang around him and hope he’d confide what, if anything, the tests prove.”
“Then we’d send another note,” Helene said, “reading, That gun was taken from a man in a tan raincoat. Fingerprint all the men in Chicago who wear tan raincoats, and you’ll have the murderer. Signed, Same Friend.’ “
“And,” Malone said, “von Flanagan could be happy for days reading up on the psychology of people who send anonymous letters to the police.” He flicked at the scattering of cigar ash on his vest.
The phone rang, and Malone answered it. Rico di Angelo was on the other end of the wire, his voice a curious mixture of anxiety and gratitude. “Malone,” he said fervently, “thanks. It’s a good thing you broke into my place. I’ll do something for you sometime. Think what it would do to my reputation to have a body found in my brand-new undertaking parlor!” He added anxiously, “Who put it there? Why pick on me?”
“That’s what I’m wondering,” Malone said. “Do you have any enemies?”
“No. Me, I’m everybody’s friend. Yes. Wait.” He paused. “Malone, I also got other business. Nice little bar, out on Halsted Street. Two, three weeks ago, couple of guys come in to sell me protection. Me, I tell them to go to hell. I can protect myself.”
It was the familiar story. The bartender arrested for selling beer to minors. The janitor with marijuana on his person. The repeated visits urging Rico to change his mind. But Rico had been sterner stuff than his brother. He’d not only continued to refuse, but on one occasion had personally thrown his visitors into the street.
“Then,” Rico went on, “I am going to open my undertaking parlor. The best one on Division Street. They come back, the bums, and tell me if I don’t pay them protection money, something terrible will happen to my nice new undertaking parlor.”
“And I think,” Malone told him, “that this is it. Can you get rid of the body?”
“Easy,” Rico boasted. “I go there right away. I take the body in my new ambulance, drive a long way away, and leave it. An alley, maybe. I put the ambulance away and go home. Nine o’clock I come down and open up for business just like nothing happen.”
“Good,” Malone said.
“I’m a smart man,” Rico said. “These bums figure that is exactly what I will do. Only they think I will do it later, when I come down at nine o’clock.”
“That’s what I figured,” Malone said. “Now, look. After you open up at nine o’clock, see if anyone seems to be watching your place. If anyone is, pretend that you’re doing the same thing you did earlier. Drive away in your ambulance. See if they—if anyone—follows you. Then park up an alley and let them approach you. Let them talk. They’ll probably offer to forget the whole thing, for cash. Catch on?”
“Sure thing,” Rico said gleefully. “Then I knock their heads together, lock them in the ambulance, and call the cops. Malone, you don’t need to pay for those flowers. I give them to you.”
“Thanks,” Malone said. “One thing more. On your way, stop at Joe the Angel’s. There’ll be a package waiting for you. It contains a gun. Be careful not to touch it, there may be fingerprints on it. Take the gun along and leave it where you leave the body. It’s just a little present I want to give the police.”
“Malone,” Helene said admiringly after he hung up, “you think of everything!”
“Except sleep,” the little lawyer said. “But this was worth it.” He relit his cigar and said, “There’s a chance that some of the tough boys in the police department may be able to find out who’s running this protection racket. And if they can’t,” he added with a wicked grin, “I think I know who can.”
Malone stood back and surveyed the room in which Anna Marie slept. It was, he decided, perfect. He’d arranged the flowers himself, and they turned the room into a bower. There was a thermos of coffee on the bed table, and a note telling her to order anything she wanted from room service and to keep out of sight of the waiter.
He’d considered adding to the note the fact that he loved her but, he’d decided, that had better wait.
Tonight he’d present her with the negligee. Maybe he could pick up a few other trinkets that she’d like.
He tiptoed out of the room after one last glance at her and closed the door very softly.
Back in his own room he looked at himself critically in the mirror. There had been times when he looked worse, but he couldn’t remember them. His suit was rumpled and dusty, his shirt was a complete wreck. For perhaps the thousandth time in his life he wondered why he couldn’t get into a fight without getting his collar torn off. His necktie—one of his favorites—had been lost somewhere along the way.
His black eye had developed into something really spectacular. The other eye was red-rimmed and puffed from lack of sleep. The bruise on his jaw was an interesting shade of violet. He needed a shave.
The little lawyer stripped to the skin and stood under an icy shower until every nerve in his body tingled. He shaved carefully, wincing when his razor touched the bruise. He considered going to the barber’s and having the black eye painted over, then decided against it. It was a magnificent shiner, and he was secretly proud of it.
He selected the dark blue double-breasted suit with the pin-stripe. A proper choice, he thought, for the conservative and respectable businessman he had become. The red and blue striped tie. Finally he looked again in the mirror. The effect was wholly pleasing.
At one minute to nine he opened his office door and stopped whistling to say, “Good morning, Maggie, any calls?”
Maggie dropped her magazine and said, “Good God! What are you doing here?” She looked at him closely. “John J. Malone, you’ve been fighting again!”
“Just a quiet evening with friends,” Malone said airily. “Think nothing of it.”
“But,” she said, “it’s nine o’clock in the morning!”
“Nothing surprising about that,” Malone said. “Once in every twenty-four hours it’s nine o’clock in the morning. And from now on, that’s the hour I arrive at the office. You may not realize it, but I’m a changed man.”
She sniffed. “You don’t look very changed to me,” she commented. She looked at her message pad. “Mick Herman wants his tools back. He needs them in order to pay your fee.”
“Tell him the fee can wait,” Malone said. “I may need the tools another day or two.”
“Judge Seidel wants you to contribute to a benefit.”
“Send him ten bucks,” Malone said, “and take it out of that last fee for getting a traffic ticket fixed.”
“The Toujours Gai Lingerie Shop is sending over that negligee—C.O.D.”
“Pay for it out of the petty cash,” Malone said.
Maggie looked at him coldly. “There’s exactly one dollar and seventy cents, and two three-cent stamps in the petty cash,” she told him.
“Oh, all right.” He drew a wadded mass of bills from a trousers’ pocket, fished out a hundred dollar bill, and gave it to her. “Pay for it with that. Put the change in the petty cash. And get Mrs. Childers on the phone for me.”
He went on into his office and left her staring, bewildered, at the closed door.
Inside his office he tossed his hat on a chair, lit a cigar, and, feeling very businesslike indeed, sat down at his desk to examine the morning mail. Bills. Three envelopes addressed in three different feminine handwritings. An invitation to buy two tickets to a testimonial dinner for a union official. He looked at them for a few minutes, then swept them all into his desk drawer, just as Maggie opened the door and said, “Mrs. Childers on the phone.”
He picked up the telephone, leaned perilously far back in his chair, and said, “Good morning, my dear Mrs. Childers. I suppose you wonder why I’m calling you up so early.”
“Well,” she cooed, “I am just the least little wee bit curious, and I can’t help hoping—”
“That’s it,” Malone said cheerily. “I’ve decided that since I’m going to devote myself wholeheartedly to your case, I will accept the retainer after all.”
“Oh, I’m so glad!” she said. “I’ll send it over. By special messenger!” There was a brief silence. “Mr. Malone?”
“Yes?” Malone said, his senses sharpening.
“I have just a tiny confession to make. I didn’t quite tell you everything yesterday.”
Malone sat up straight. “My dear lady, go right ahead. No client of mine ever needs to keep any secrets from me. Your lawyer should be like your doctor, you know. You should tell him everything—absolutely everything.” He didn’t think for a minute that she would.
“Oh, that’s so right, Mr. Malone,” she said. “I—I’ll tell you—it’s that, well, there is something else I want you to do for me. Besides finding that unfortunate girl’s family, if she had one.”
“My services are at your command,” Malone said gallantly.
“You’re so kind!” She breathed over the phone. “I wonder—maybe, I’d better come down and tell you about it in person.”
“That would be fine,” Malone said. “Any time this afternoon. Unfortunately, I’m tied up all this morning.”
“Four o’clock?”
“Perfect,” Malone said. He hung up and wondered what the hell she had in mind. Well, whatever it was, he’d cope with it somehow. He thought happily of the fat fee that ought to be involved.
He stretched, slapped himself on the chest, and reflected that the life of a respectable, hardworking businessman who got to his office at nine every morning was exactly what suited him.
He rose, went to the door, and said, “Maggie, I’ve got some very serious thinking to do. Under no circumstances am I to be disturbed until I let you know. No matter who or what it is.”
He walked over to
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