Black Mask Detective (Vol. 35, No. 2 — November, 1950)

Die, Gypsy, Die! by Richard E. Glendinning

Death had struck faster than the pretty fortune-teller’s cards could predict — and still faster would be the fierce Gypsy vengeance Lieutenant Daniels had to prevent.

Lieutenant Oscar Daniels of Homicide knew better than to tell the driver to take the squad car down the side street. Inside of five minutes, the hoodlum kids in the neighborhood — and how so many Gypsy facilities could crowd into one city block was beyond Daniels’ understanding — would have the car stripped of everything portable. And if the driver raised his voice in protest, he’d be stripped along with the car.

“Pull up here, Pete,” Daniels said. “I’ll walk in.”

“Thank the good Lord,” Pete said, drawing a deep sigh of relief. “I remember one time—”

“Save it,” said Daniels, getting out of the car. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.” He walked to the corner and stopped long enough to savor a last moment of comparative quiet. Then, his feet moving reluctantly, he rounded the corner.

The noise and confusion cuffed his ears instantly, and he wondered if his pay was worth all this. The trip into the Gypsy settlement on the lower east side was senseless in any case. Getting a Gypsy to talk to a policeman about a crime was like asking the Sphinx to say something about Antony and Cleopatra.

But, Daniels thought, looking down the street, somewhere in this warren there was a young man named Michael, and Daniels wanted him for murder. This was no case of petty thievery which could be settled quickly and quietly by King Georg, the head of his Gypsy tribe. The king, who functioned almost like a ward boss for his people, could square many things. Murder was something else again.

Daniels pushed through the swarm of kids who blocked the sidewalk. Ignoring the jeers and taunts of the adults who leaned from every window and choked every front step, he walked on to the house in the middle of the block where King Georg, his wife and six kids lived. The royal family’s palatial quarters consisted of a single room on the third floor. Daniels took the rickety steps two at a time, anxious to get the interview started and done with.

The king himself answered Daniels’ knock. He was an affable man with a huge stomach, sloping shoulders and a drooping mustache. He wore gaudy earrings, patched and faded trousers and a plaid shirt, but he seldom wore shoes because his feet, allergic to exercise in any form, were always giving him trouble.

“Come in, Lieutenant,” King Georg said, bowing stiffly. “We are honored.”

“Sure, Georg,” Daniels said. He stepped in and nodded to the king’s chunky, fortune-telling wife. Three of the king’s kids were in the room but they suddenly vanished as if by magic, and Daniels knew that everyone on the street would soon be informed that a cop was calling upon the king.

The king offered Daniels a glass of fiery-looking wine, but the detective, who had been here before, waved it away.

“Who would do this thing to Sonya?” King Georg asked, mopping his swarthy brow with a red handkerchief the size of a crib sheet. “Such a brutal thing.”

“You know who did it,” Daniels said, watching the king’s dark eyes.

“Not a Gypsy,” said the king.

“Michael.”

“Not Michael.”

“He and Sonya were going to get married.”

“Michael is a fine boy.”

Daniels laughed. “He never worked a day in his life. He and his family have been on relief for years.”

“He loved Sonya.”

Daniels came close to the king and frowned down at him. “Sonya called off the wedding. She threw him over.” He read the surprise in the king’s eyes. The police weren’t supposed to know about the broken engagement. “You people are too emotional, Georg.”

“Why don’t you ask Michael about it?” the king said, staring up at a corner of the ceiling.

“You know damned well why I don’t. You’re hiding him out.”

“How could one man hide from all the fine policemen in this great city?”

“Listen,” Daniels snapped, “if every cop in town crowded around him at the same time, Michael would not only get away clean but he’d pick every pocket on his way out.”

King Georg beamed proudly but Daniels straightened his face with a stony glare.

“This isn’t a joke,” said Daniels. “A girl, Sonya, one of your own people, was beaten to death with a length of pipe. Her murderer knew her routine, knew what time she closed up her mitt-reading shop and came in just as she was closing for the night. When her body was found by the cop on the beat, she had forty bucks on her.”

“Such a lot of money,” murmured King Georg. “But why must Michael be—”

“Because,” Daniels interrupted, “robbery wasn’t the motive. For another thing, Michael was seen leaving the place.”

“No!” the king protested. “He wasn’t up there.”

“You asked him and he told you no, but he lied. He was seen by Gus Raynor, the cop on the beat, the same one who found Sonya.” Daniels thumped the king’s chest. “I want Michael.”

King Georg stared down at the dirty floor for a moment, then looked up at Daniels. “How did Raynor know it was Michael?”

“He’d seen the boy before, knew who he was. Then, last night about five-forty, he saw Michael hurrying up the steps of the shop. A little later, Raynor came along and saw the door opened down there. He went in and found Sonya.”

“And he saw no one but Michael leave the place?”

“Only Michael. Raynor comes on duty at four. Between then and five-forty Michael was the only one around there.”

The king went to the window and looked down at the street. When he turned back to Daniels, his eyes were sad. “Gypsies are not like other people. They may lie to others but they never lie among themselves. Michael has said that he was not in Sonya’s store yesterday. Your policeman says he was. Who do I believe?”

“I leave that up to you,” Daniels said quietly, knowing that the king would have to solve it in his own way. “I know which I believe. I’ll tell you something else. If you can believe the policeman, then you must also believe Michael is a murderer.”

“I can see that,” said the king.

“I still want Michael. If you don’t bring him to me within twenty-four hours, I’ll come in here with a squad of men and I’ll rip this street apart.”

“And if, as you say, Michael has lied to me,” said King Georg, “you won’t find him on this street. Look first at the river’s edge.”

“Bring him in,” Daniels ordered.

King Georg shrugged his shoulders non-committally. “His first reward will be expulsion from the tribe — Mahrimé. After that, who knows?”

The king smiled suddenly. “But if I decide he isn’t lying, it will be hard to find him in this city. Your twenty-four hours may pass, and then an endless row of days.”

Daniels walked to the door and flung it open. “I want Michael for murder. If I don’t get him, I’ll hound you to death. Your people will be arrested for vagrancy and fraud, your women for fortune-telling, your children for truancy and delinquency. I’ll get enough on every mother’s son of you to keep you in jail for a long time, and it’ll happen so fast you won’t have time to steal a gallon of gas to get out of town.”

The king bowed graciously. “We have been plagued by experts before, Lieutenant.”

“Twenty-four hours,” Daniels warned. He slammed the door and stormed down the stairs to the street.

When he got back to the squad car, Daniels was still fuming with rage.

Pete turned in his seat and grinned. “What’s the matter, Lieutenant? They lift your badge?”

“Very funny,” Daniels groused. “Let’s get uptown. I want another look at that shop.” He knew the Gypsies, knew they were constitutionally opposed to believing anything a policeman said, but if he could find some supporting evidence that Michael had been in Sonya’s store late on the afternoon she was killed, King Georg would be forced to accept Raynor’s identification.

The store, a narrow and poorly ventilated room, was in the basement of a drab building on a side street. Three steps led down to it from the sidewalk. To the right of the door was a dusty, flyblown window which was protected by iron bars. A little light, barely enough to see by, filtered through the dirty pane and showed up the dinginess of the place.

A cheap imitation Persian rug, perhaps a vivid red in its heyday but now a muddy brown and worn down to its burlap backing, covered the floor at the front half of the store. Two chairs and a sagging sofa, all wicker and all painted black, were placed without plan on the rug.

This was the waiting room, Daniels knew. The mitt-reading and the reading of the Tarok — the special Gypsy cards — went on in back, behind the ugly, faded curtain which divided the room in half.

He stood a moment near the door, then crossed the room to a wicker table against the wall. A glass bowl, half filled with tiny balls of paper, stood on the table, and Daniels reached into the bowl to pick out a ball. He unrolled it slowly, then smiled grimly as he read the number 8 on the slip of paper.

“Lucky number,” he told himself. The customer came in, fumbled around for his lucky number and crossed Sonya’s palm with two-bits in silver. No more than twenty-five cents if the price scale on the sign in the window meant anything. Sonya gave bargain rates. A half dollar for a palm reading, a half dollar for a look at the cards.

But the balls of paper in the bowl were covered with a layer of dust. Business must have been slow in the lucky number department.

Daniels heard the shuffle of feet on the steps and he turned toward the door. A big, burly man in a blue uniform came into the room.

Gus Raynor, the cop on the beat. Raynor had been pounding sidewalks for twelve years, thanks to a surly, fiery disposition which kept him at continual loggerheads with his higher-ups, and he carried his bitterness with him as he trudged his daily rounds.

“That you, Lieutenant?” Raynor asked, peering into the gloom.

“Come on in, Gus, I’m trying to get the feel of this place.”

“Filthy hole,” said Raynor. He stepped toward the lieutenant. “Been in back yet?”

“I was just headed there.”

Raynor took out his flashlight and led the way to the rear. He put the beam on a red-covered table where a deck of cards lay. “Do you think she saw her future?”

“I hope not,” said Daniels. “Where did you find her?”

Raynor put the light on the floor. “Right there, next to the chair. I figure she was sitting at the table — her chair backs up to the curtain — when she got it. Then she fell to the right and—”

“You’re positive you saw only one man come in here?”

“Just this Michael.”

“How can you be sure it was him?”

“He came around all the time to see her and I always kept an eye on him. I don’t trust any of these Gyps, but him especially.”

“You came on duty at four and saw Michael about five-forty. Were you watching this place all that time in between?”

Raynor coughed fitfully to cover his confusion. “Well... yeah. I mean, no, not exactly. Maybe I went around the block a couple of times.”

“So someone else could have been in here while you were gone?”

“Listen, Lieutenant,” Raynor said in a rasping voice, “don’t try to mix me up. Sure, somebody else could have come in. But I saw Michael leave. No more than two minutes later I came by and saw the front door opened. Sonya was usually closed up for the night by that time so I thought something was funny.”

“You came in then and found her?”

Raynor nodded. “And she was bleeding like a stuck pig. She couldn’t have been slugged more than a couple of minutes before.”

“All right, Raynor,” Daniels said, “but Michael says he wasn’t here.”

“He’s a liar! I saw him.”

“Can you prove it?”

“Good Lord, Lieutenant!” Raynor bellowed, shaking his head in bull-like anger. “Since when does a cop have to prove he saw something?”

“You never had much dealing with Gypsy thinking,” said Daniels.

He left the store and started across the sidewalk to the car, but suddenly he swerved and walked down the street to a small grocery store which was wedged in between two old brownstones.

The storekeeper, a small, weary woin her middle fifties, was sitting on a stool behind the counter.

“Good evening,” Daniels said. He showed her his badge.

“About that fortune teller, eh?” the woman asked, her eyes sparkling with curiosity. “Too bad.”

“Her place looked dusty,” Daniels said, taking a box of crackers from the counter. He gave the woman a dime. “Did she do much business?”

“Not much. I always wondered how she paid her rent.”

“She didn’t.”

“I figured that. Oh, I’d see people go in every once in a while. Not many, though.”

“I guess women go in pretty heavy for that stuff,” Daniels said idly.

“They eat it up. But most of her customers were men.” The woman tried to put a leer in her voice.

“Men? Well, well.”

“Sure, mostly men. Then there was this young Gypsy fellow. He came around a lot. Michael, I think his name was.”

“She was going to marry him,” Daniels said indifferently, “but they called it off.” He laughed. “So I guess Michael wasn’t around much lately.”

“He was, too,” the woman snapped. “He was in there the afternoon she was killed. Yesterday afternoon. I was arranging vegetables in the window and saw him running out of the place.”

That, thought Daniels, settled that. Hiding his quickening interest, he said, “About what time?”

“Five-thirty, I’d say.”

“Uh-huh. Did you see anyone else?”

“None after Michael — except Raynor, of course.”

Something in her tone of voice brought Daniels’ senses instantly alert. “What about before?”

“Just that man — the one who goes in every day. I asked Sonya once whether he was buggy. You know, getting his palm read all the time. She laughed and told me he came in every day for his lucky number. Every day without fail he pops in — five-thirty exactly — and stays a minute, then he’s right back out again.”

Daniels fumbled a cracker and dropped it on the floor. “Can you describe him?”

“Short and thin. Never wears a hat but his suits must run him over a hundred dollars. Thick blond hair and a sharp nose. Oh, he wears glasses.”

“A Gypsy?”

“Not this one. He’s a high-stepper, he is.”

“Thanks for the help,” Daniels said, walking briskly toward the door.

“Crackers are fifteen.”

Daniels went back, gave her a nickel and left.

“Back to headquarters,” he told Pete as he climbed into the car. He was tired, hadn’t slept for more than twenty-four hours, and he rested his head against the seat.

Pete shook him away. “Hey, Lieutenant, come out of it.”

Knuckling his eyes, Daniels crawled out of the car and dragged his feet up the stairs to his office. There was a note on his desk and he picked it up listlessly to read it. Suddenly he straightened in his chair.

King Georg phoned, the note read. Said the boy was lying. You can have him in twenty-four hours. You’d know where.

Daniels groaned. First, there would be a romano-kris; and, at the tribal court, Michael would be booted out of the tribe. After that, with no family loyalty or ties to protect him, he would really get the business. Daniels could see it now; the fancy knife work, the design carved into Michael’s olive skin. Later, the knife would press deeper still — and Michael, wanted by the police for murder, would become just another name on the list at the Missing Persons Bureau, never to come to trial.

Daniels stared blankly at his hands for a moment, then snatched up his hat and dashed out of the office and down to the basement. Pete was still there in the garage and Daniels shouted to him.

“Roll it out, son. King Georg’s.”

Pete asked no questions. He had the car in gear and was on his way out of the garage before Daniels could get the door closed.

“I’m a chump,” Daniels muttered. “This Michael kid.”

“Do we pull him in?”

“If that’s the only way we can save him. I hope to heaven we’re not too late.”

“Save him?” Pete asked in amazement.

Daniels nodded grimly. If the kid were to die, the responsibility for his death would rest squarely on Daniels’ shoulders. Hadn’t he encouraged the king to find the boy guilty of lying to his own tribe? And hadn’t he been the one to tell the king that if Michael were guilty of lying it stood to reason he was also guilty of murdering one of his own people?

“Above the wail of the siren,” Daniels shouted, “Did you ever hear of a Gypsy turning away from any money lying around loose? They work on the theory that if it isn’t nailed down it’s anybody’s property. But Sonya was found with forty dollars. Michael would have taken it if he had killed her.”

To Daniels’ mind, that meant the boy walked into the store and found her already dead. Terrified, he had rushed out of the place with no stops for looting. And another thing — now that the money had come into the picture, where had Sonya gotten forty dollars? At her rates, that would have meant a minimum of eighty customers, but the lady in the grocery store had said Sonya’s customers were few and far between.

And last, but by no means least, Gypsies were artists with the shiv. Then why a piece of pipe as the murder weapon? The nearest thing at hand? Daniels doubted that. A knife was always closer for a Gypsy.

Brakes and tires screaming, Pete swung the car into King Georg’s street and headed down the middle, scattering the cursing, fist-waving kids in all directions. He slammed to a stop and Daniels leaped out, butting his way across the crowded sidewalk. Hands tried to stop him as he mounted the steps but he shook them off like bothersome flies. Voices yelped at his heels, and other voices shouted a warning to someone up above him.

A man stepped in front of Daniels on the second landing, but Daniels, swinging wildly, rocked him back on his heels and drove him against the wall. Then Daniels ran on up the stairs.

He came to King Georg’s door and pounded on it. He heard a furtive movement inside but no one answered his rap. Moving back a bit, he hurled his hundred and eighty pounds at the frail door. It gave with a noisy wrench of metal hinges, spilling the detective into the room. He straightened quickly and looked around.

King Georg, arms folded across his chest, stood like a statue near the window, his black eyes blazing at Daniels. “We will handle this in our own way,” said the king harshly. His eyes moved to a cot in the corner.

Daniels strode to the cot and looked down into Michael’s face. The boy’s mouth had been battered to a raw gash, his nose was twisted sharply to the left, both his eyes were like eggplants, but there was no indication that a knife had been used on him — yet. The knife was next.

“Who did this to him?” Daniels asked.

The king laughed. “A taxi hit him.”

“He’s innocent,” Daniels said.

“He lied to me. He—”

“I know what he said,” Daniels interrupted, “and it’s a fact he was at her store, but he didn’t kill her. Michael,” Daniels said, leaning over the boy. “She was dead when you got there, wasn’t she?”

The boy nodded.

“And you know who killed her, don’t you?”

The young man’s eyes opened slowly to slits and, in a hoarse voice, he muttered, “No! No!”

Daniels let it pass for the moment. “Why did you and Sonya break up? I want the truth!”

“I... I met another g-girl.”

“You’re lying!” Daniels snapped.

“Let me talk to him,” said King Georg. He moved forward, his eyes hard.

Michael rose halfway from the cot, then fell back again. “The gambling,” he whispered. “I would collect the money down here and take it to Sonya’s store. She had a bowl. I would put the money in the bowl. Someone would come there later to collect it.”

“Sonya wasn’t in on it?” asked Daniels.

Michael shook his head. “When she found out, she was through with me. The day before yesterday she told me to give her what money I had collected. Taking bets from my people, you understand? She said she would confront the man with the money when he came for it. She said she would turn it over to the policeman on her street and make the policeman arrest this man.”

Michael was having trouble talking through his battered mouth and Daniels knew he wouldn’t be able to speak much longer. Hastily he said, “You know who killed her. You know this man’s name.”

“No, I know nothing!” Michael moaned. “Yesterday, I went to Sonya’s. I was worried. I thought the man might hurt her. I found her dead.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“You lie!” King Georg snapped. His fingers dug sharply into Michael’s arm. “Tell the truth, or—”

“But I don’t know. I never talked to him. I would leave the money at the same time every day, then leave. He would watch me from somewhere — I don’t know where — and pick up the money when I was gone. But yesterday, he came early. Only Sonya had talked to him — and she’s dead.”

The king spat in disgust in the boy’s face. “Stinking liar.”

“No,” Daniels said, turning away from Michael. “I think he’s told us all he knows. Why not? He wants to live. You’ll kill him if he lied.”

“He’d be better dead.” The king’s rage gave way to remorse. “If he has told us all he knows, Sonya’s murderer goes free.”

Daniels shook his head. “The bowl is still in her store. There should be fingerprints to be seen all over it.”

“Why are you waiting here, then?” King Georg demanded.

Daniels smiled mirthlessly. “You sure howl for action when your gang’s in the clear, don’t you?”

“Why else have a king?” King Georg replied.

In the squad car once again, Daniels stared gloomily out the window at the pageant of New York’s blinking, garish lights as Pete sped north. Somewhere in this great city there walked a man who had murdered an unimportant Gypsy girl; her death had meant no more to him than the swatting of a mosquito.

“Pete,” Daniels muttered, grinding his fist into his palm, “you give a man a little money, promise him more, and you can buy his soul.”

“This guy who clunked the girl?”

Daniels grunted and lapsed into a thoughtful silence, coming out of it only when the car stopped in front of the store. He got out of the car and walked to the head of the steps. “Hey, Pete,” he called back, “you haven’t eaten yet.”

“Neither have you.”

“There’s a one-arm around the corner. Go get yourself a cup of coffee and a sinker. I’ll meet you there.”

“Right, Lieutenant.”

Pete drove away and Daniels went quietly down the steps. He unlocked the door and slipped into the dark store. By the light of his pocket flash, he found the bowl on the table. Wrapping it carefully in his coat, he started out again. Then, at the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk above, he turned away from the door and moved cautiously toward the rear of the store.

Feet were scraping on the steps now. Daniels eased his gun from its holster and waited in the dark.

“Who’s in there?” a voice called

“Raynor?” Daniels asked.

“Come out with your hands up.”

It was Raynor, all right. “It’s Lieutenant Daniels.”

“Oh.” The relief was obvious in Raynor’s gasp. “I thought maybe—”

“Maybe what?” asked Daniels, moving forward. “The murderer returning to the scene of the crime?”

Daniels and Raynor left the store together and Daniels locked the door. They climbed the steps and crossed the sidewalk and Daniels carefully set the bowl down on the curb.

“What’s that?” Raynor asked.

“Sonya’s bowl,” Daniels said, straightening. “It should be covered with the murderer’s prints.”

“Michael’s?”

“No, Raynor, not Michael’s. You tried hard on that one, Raynor, but you missed. Michael didn’t kill the girl.”

“Who did?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

“What’s the gag, Lieutenant?”

“I don’t care about the guy who killed the girl. We’ll get him. It’s you I’m thinking about now.”

Raynor’s eyes narrowed and he stepped back a pace. “You’re nuts.”

“How much protection money were they paying you to close your eyes every time the banker came around to pick up the dough? And don’t tell me you didn’t see him when he came every day. You saw Michael well enough.”

“Daniels, you’re a—”

“And how much did you get for selling a kid’s life? Nice honest cop, you are. You’d let the boy go to the chair just because some hoodlum bought your soul for a bag of peanuts.”

“I never saw anybody else leave the—”

“Maybe not. Maybe not yesterday — but how many dollars does it take to buy a cinder for the eye? All right, Raynor, what’s his name?”

“I’ve been pounding a beat for twelve years, twelve lousy years, and it took me almost that long to find out how to make it worthwhile. You won’t stop it now.”

“Don’t try it,” Daniels said softly, watching Raynor’s right hand. “All I need is an excuse.”

Raynor’s hands came up to his chest. “There’s enough in it for both of us, Daniels. More than enough. What’s one no-good Gypsy anyway? He could take the rap.”

Daniels listened thoughtfully, nodding his head. “Michael’s a petty thief,” he admitted. “He’s got a record. The D.A. could get a conviction without half trying.”

“Sure. So what do you say?”

“All right,” Daniels said tartly, “I’ll— No, wait a minute, how do I know we’ll get paid off?”

Raynor laughed raucously. “These guys are big. Benny Nerri.”

“Nerri! Well, in that case... Shake on it.” Daniels stepped toward Raynor, his right hand out. Raynor reached to take it and Daniels hit the cop across the ear with a looping left. Raynor went down and Daniels kicked him in the ribs. Glaring down at Raynor, he said, “Never trust an honest cop.”

Down on the lower East Side, Daniels thought, a Gypsy was being kicked out of his group — Mahrimé, the Gypsies called it — not because he had killed one of his own people but because his lying had almost protected her killer. And here, on a midtown sidewalk, lay a man whose crime had been infinitely worse than either the youth’s or the killer’s. What was the Mahrimé for Raynor’s breed?

With a feeling of loathing in his heart, Daniels fingered the butt of his gun and wondered what he could do to make Raynor try to run away.