A Century of Great Suspense Stories

There is an awful lot of lonesomeness in the work of the late Fredric Brown (1906–1972). Though today he is mostly regarded as a master of the short, tart, wry surprise-ending tale, his best work, including The Fabulous Clipjoint, The Screaming Mimi, The Far Cry, and Knock One-Two-Three, deals with loss of some kind, and how the protagonist (or antagonist, Brown not being afraid to use anti-heroes upon occasion) is crushed by it. The story here was later expanded into a decent novel of the same name, which was a response of sorts to the glamor that the media had suddenly visited upon the Beats. You have to think of early Charles Willeford or George Orwell of Down and Out in Paris and London to fully appreciate Brown’s social portraiture. One suspects that this was the life many of the Beats really led.

One

A fuzz is a fuzz is a fuzz when you awaken from a wino jag. God, I’d drunk three pints of muscatel that I know of and maybe more, maybe lots more, because that’s when I drew a blank, that’s when research stopped. I rolled over on the cot so I could look out through the dirty pane of the window at the clock in the hockshop across the way.

Ten o’clock said the clock.

Get up, Howard Perry, I told myself. Get up, you B.A.S. for bastard, rise and greet the day. Hit the floor and get moving if you want to keep that job, that all-important job that keeps you drinking and sometimes eating and sometimes sleeping with Billie the Kid when she hasn’t got a sucker on the hook. That’s your life, you B.A.S., you bastard. That’s your life for a while. This is it, this is the McCoy, this is the way a wino meets the not-so-newborn day. You’re learning, man.

Pull on a sock, another sock, pants, shirt, shoes, get the hell to Burke’s and wash a dish, wash a thousand dishes for six bits an hour and a meal or two a day when you want it.

God, I thought, did I really have the habit? Nuts, not in three months. Not when you’ve been a normal drinker all your life. Not when, much as you’ve always enjoyed drinking, it’s always been in moderation and you’ve always been able to handle the stuff. This was just temporary.

And I had only a few weeks to go. In a few weeks I’d be back in Chicago, back at my desk in my father’s investment company, back wearing white shirts, and B.A.S. would stand for Bachelor of Arts in Sociology. That was a laugh right now, that degree. Three months ago it had meant something — but that was in Chicago, and this was LA, and now all it meant was bastard. That’s all it had meant ever since I started drifting.

It’s funny, the way those things can happen. You’ve got a good family and a good education, and then suddenly, for no reason you can define, you start drifting. You lose interest in your family and your job, and one day you find yourself headed for the Coast.

You sit down one day and ask yourself how it happened. But you can’t answer. There are a thousand little answers, sure, but there’s no big answer. It’s easier to worry about where the next bottle of sweet wine is coming from.

And that’s when you realize your own personal B.A.S. stands for bastard.

With me, LA had been the end of the line. I’d seen the Dishwasher Wanted sign in Burke’s window, and suddenly I’d known what I had to do. At pearl-diver’s wages, it would take a long time to get up the bus fare back to Chicago and family and respectability, but that was beside the point. The point was that after a hundred thousand dirty dishes there’d be a bus ticket to Chicago.

But it had been hard to remember the ticket and forget the dishes. Wine is cheap, but they’re not giving it away. Since I’d started pearl-diving I’d had grub and six bits an hour for seven hours a day. Enough to drink on and to pay for this dirty, crumby little crackerbox of a room.

So here I was, still thinking about the bus ticket, and still on my uppers on East Fifth Street, LA. Main Street used to be the tenderloin street of Los Angeles and I’d headed for it when I jumped off the freight, but I’d found that the worst district, the real skid row, was now on Fifth Street in the few blocks east of Main. The worse the district, the cheaper the living, and that’s what I’d been looking for.

Sure, by Fifth Street standards, I was being a pantywaist to hold down a steady job like that, but sleeping in doorways was a little too rugged and I’d found out quickly that panhandling wasn’t for me. I lacked the knack.

I dipped water from the cracked basin and rubbed it on my face, and the feel of the stubble told me I could get by one more day without shaving. Or anyway I could wait till evening so the shave would be fresh in case I’d be sleeping with Billie.

Cold water helped a little but I still felt like hell. There were empty wine bottles in the corner and I checked to make sure they were completely empty, and they were. So were my pockets, except, thank God, for tobacco and cigarette papers. I rolled myself a cigarette and lighted it.

But I needed a drink to start the day.

What does a wino do when he wakes up broke (and how often does he wake otherwise?) and needs a drink? Well, I’d found several answers to that. The easiest one, right now, would be to hit Billie for a drink if she was awake yet, and alone.

I crossed the street to the building where Billie had a room. A somewhat newer building, a hell of a lot nicer room, but then she paid a hell of a lot more for it.

I rapped on her door softly, a little code knock we had. If she wasn’t awake she wouldn’t hear it and if she wasn’t alone she wouldn’t answer it.

But she called out, “It’s not locked; come on in,” and she said “Hi, Professor,” as I closed the door behind me. “Professor” she called me, occasionally and banteringly. It was my way of talking, I guess. I’d tried at first to use poor diction, bad grammar, to fit in with the place, but I’d given it up as too tough a job. Besides, I’d learned Fifth Street already had quite a bit of good grammar. Some of its denizens had been newspapermen once, some had written poetry; one I knew was a defrocked clergyman.

I said, “Hi, Billie the Kid.”

“Just woke up, Howie. What time is it?”

“A little after ten,” I told her. “Is there a drink around?”

“Jeez, only ten? Oh well, I had seven hours. Guy came here when Mike closed at two, but he didn’t stay long.”

She sat up in bed and stretched, the covers falling away from her naked body. Beautiful breasts she had, size and shape of half grapefruits and firm. Nice arms and shoulders, and a lovely face. Hair black and sleek in a pageboy bob that fell into place as she shook her head. Twenty-five, she told me once; and I believed her, but she could have passed for several years less than that, even, now without make-up and her eyes still a little puffy from sleep. Certainly it didn’t show that she’d spent three years as a B-girl, part-time hustler, heavy drinker. Before that she’d been married to a man who’d worked for a manufacturing jeweler; he’d suddenly left for parts unknown with a considerable portion of his employer’s stock, leaving Billie in a jam and with a mess of debts.

Wilhelmina Kidder, Billie the Kid, my Billie. Any man’s Billie if he flashed a roll, but oddly I’d found that I could love her a little and not let that bother me. Maybe because it had been that way when I’d first met her over a month ago; I’d come to love her knowing what she was, so why should it bother me? What she saw in me I don’t know, and didn’t care.

“About that drink,” I said.

She laughed and threw down the covers, got out of bed and walked past me naked to the closet to get a robe. I wanted to reach for her but I didn’t; I’d learned by now that Billie the Kid was never amorous early in the morning and resented any passes made before noon.

She shrugged into a quilted robe and padded barefoot over to the little refrigerator behind the screen that hid a tiny kitchenette. She opened the door and said, “God damn it.”

“God damn what?” I wanted to know. “Out of liquor?”

She held up over the screen a Hiram Walker bottle with only half an inch of ready-mixed Manhattan in it. Almost the only thing Billie ever drank, Manhattans.

“As near out as matters. Honey, would you run upstairs and see if Mame’s got some? She usually has.”

Mame is a big blonde who works behind the bar at Mike Karas’ joint, The Best Chance, where Billie works as B-girl. A tough number, Mame. I said, “If she’s asleep she’ll murder me for waking her. What’s wrong with the store?”

“She’s up by now. She was off early last night. And if you get it at the store it won’t be on ice. Wait, I’ll phone her, though, so if she is asleep it’ll be me that wakes her and not you.”

She made the call and then nodded. “Okay, honey. She’s got a full bottle she’ll lend me. Scram.”

I scrammed, from the second floor rear to the third floor front. Mame’s door was open; she was out in the hallway paying off a milkman and waiting for him to receipt the bill. She said, “Go on in. Take a load off.” I went inside the room and sat down in the chair that was built to match Mame, overstuffed. I ran my fingers around under the edge of the cushion; one of Mame’s men friends might have sat there with change in his pocket. It’s surprising how much change you can pick up just by trying any overstuffed chairs or sofas you sit on. No change this time, but I came up with a fountain pen, a cheap dime-store-looking one. Mame had just closed the door and I held it up. “In the chair. Yours, Mame?”

“Nope. Keep it, Howie, I got a pen.”

“Maybe one of your friends’ll miss it,” I said. It was too cheap a pen to sell or hock so I might as well be honest about it.

“Nope, I know who lost it. Seen it in his pocket last night. It was Jesus, and the hell with him.”

“Mame, you sound sacrilegious.”

She laughed. “Hay-soos, then. Jesus Gonzales. A Mex. But when he told me that was his handle I called him Jesus. And Jesus was he like a cat on a hot stove!” She walked around me over to her refrigerator but her voice kept on. “Told me not to turn on the lights when he come in and went over to watch out the front window for a while like he was watching for the heat. Looks out my side window too, one with the fire escape. Pulls down all the shades before he says okay, turn on the lights.” The refrigerator door closed and she came back with a bottle.

“Was he a hot one,” she said. “Just got his coat off — he threw it on that chair, when there’s a knock. Grabs his coat again and goes out my side window down the fire escape.” She laughed again. “Was that a flip? It was only Dixie from the next room knocking, to bum cigarettes. So if I ever see Jesus again it’s no dice, guy as jumpy as that. Keep his pen. Want a drink here?”

“If you’ll have one with me.”

“I don’t drink, Howie. Just keep stuff around for friends and callers. Tell Billie to give me another bottle like this back. I got a friend likes Manhattans, like her.”

When I got back to Billie’s room, she’d put on a costume instead of the robe, but it wasn’t much of a costume. A skimpy Bikini bathing suit. She pirouetted in it. “Like it, Howie? Just bought it yesterday.”

“Nice,” I said, “but I like you better without it.”

“Pour us drinks, huh? For me, just a quickie.”

“Speaking of quickies,” I said.

She picked up a dress and started to pull it over her head. “If you’re thinking that way, Professor, I’ll hide the family treasures. Say, that’s a good line; I’m getting to talk like you do sometimes.”

I poured us drinks and we sat down with them. She’d stepped into sandals and was dressed. I said, “You’ve got lots of good lines, Billie the Kid. But correct me — was that lingerie instead of a bathing suit, or am I out of date on fashions?”

“I’m going to the beach today, Howie, for a sun-soak. Won’t go near the water so why not just wear the suit under and save changing? Say, why don’t you take a day off and come along?”

“Broke. The one thing to be said for Burke as an employer is that he pays every day. Otherwise there’d be some dry, dry evenings.”

“What you make there? A fin, maybe. I’ll lend you a fin.”

“That way lies madness,” I said. “Drinks I’ll take from you, or more important things than drinks. But taking money would make me—” I stopped and wondered just what taking money from Billie would make me, just how consistent I was being. After all, I could always send it back to her from Chicago. What kept me from taking it, then? A gal named Honor, I guess. Corny as it sounds, I said it lightly. “I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not Honor more.”

“You’re a funny guy, Howie. I don’t understand you.”

Suddenly I wanted to change the subject. “Billie, how come Mame doesn’t drink?”

“Don’t you know hypes don’t like to drink?”

“Sure, but I didn’t spot Mame for one.”

“Hype with a big H for heroin, Howie. Doesn’t show it much, though. I’ll give you that.”

“I haven’t known enough junkies to be any judge,” I said. “The only one I know for sure is the cook at Burke’s.”

“Don’t ever try it, Howie. It’s bad stuff. I joy-popped once just to see what it was like, but never again. Too easy to get to like it. And Howie, it can make things rough.”

I said, “I hear your words of wisdom and shall stick to drink. Speaking of which—” I poured myself another.

Two

I got to the restaurant — it’s on Main, a block from Fifth — at a quarter after eleven, only fifteen minutes late. Burke was at the stove — he does his own cooking until noon, when Ramon comes on — and turned to glare at me but didn’t say anything.

Still feeling good from the drinks, I dived into my dishwashing.

The good feeling was mostly gone, though, by noon, when Ramon came on. He had a fresh bandage on his forehead; I wondered if there was a new knife wound under it. He already had two knife scars, old ones, on his cheek and on his chin. He looked mean, too, and I decided to stay out of his way. Ramon’s got a nasty temper when he needs a jolt, and it was pretty obvious that he needed one. He looked like a man with a kingsize monkey, and he was. I’d often wondered how he fed it. Cooks draw good money compared to other restaurant help, but even a cook doesn’t get enough to support a five or six cap a day habit, not at a joint like Burke’s anyway. Ramon was tall for a Mexican, but he was thin and his face looked gaunt. It’s an ugly face except when he grins and his teeth flash white. But he wouldn’t be grinning this afternoon, not if he needed a jolt.

Burke went front to work the register and help at the counter for the noon rush, and Ramon took over at the stove. We worked in silence until the rush was over, about two o’clock.

He came over to me then. He was sniffling and his eyes were running. He said, “Howie, you do me a favor. I’m burning, Howie, I need a fix, quick. I got to sneak out, fifteen minutes.”

“Okay, I’ll try to watch things. What’s working?”

“Two hamburg steak dinners on. Done one side, five more minutes other side. You know what else to put on.”

“Sure, and if Burke comes back I’ll tell him you’re in the can. But you’d better hurry.”

He rushed out, not even bothering to take off his apron or chef’s hat. I timed five minutes on the clock and then I took up the steaks, added the trimmings and put them on the ledge, standing at an angle back of the window so Burke couldn’t see that it was I and not Ramon who was putting them there. A few minutes later the waitress put in a call for stuffed peppers, a pair; they were already cooked and I didn’t have any trouble dishing them.

Ramon came back before anything else happened. He looked like a different man — he would be for as long as the fix lasted. His teeth flashed. “Million thanks, Howie.” He handed me a flat pint bottle of muscatel. “For you, my friend.”

“Ramon,” I said, “you are a gentleman and a scholar.” He went back to his stove and started scraping it. I bent down out of sight to open the bottle. I took a good long drink and then hid it back out of sight under one of the tubs.

Two-thirty, and my half-hour lunch break. Only I wasn’t hungry. I took another drink of the muskie and put it back. I could have killed it but the rest of the afternoon would go better if I rationed it and made it last until near quitting time.

I wandered over to the alley entrance, rolling a cigarette. A beautiful bright day out; it would have been wonderful to be at the beach with Billie the Kid.

Only Billie the Kid wasn’t at the beach; she was coming toward me from the mouth of the alley. She was still wearing the dress she’d pulled on over the bathing suit but she wasn’t at the beach. She was walking toward me, looking worried, looking frightened.

I walked to meet her. She grabbed my arm, tightly. “Howie. Howie, did you kill Mame?”

“Did I — what?”

Her eyes were big, looking up at me. “Howie, if you did, I don’t care. I’ll help you, give you money to get away. But—”

“Whoa,” I said, “Whoa, Billie. I didn’t kill Mame. I didn’t even rape her. She was okay when I left. What happened? Or are you dreaming this up?”

“She’s dead, Howie, murdered. And about the time you were there. They found her a little after noon and say she’d been dead somewhere around two hours. Let’s go have a drink and I’ll tell you what all happened.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ve got most of my lunch time left. Only I haven’t been paid yet—”

“Come on, hurry.” As we walked out of the alley she took a bill from her purse and stuffed it into my pocket. We took the nearest ginmill and ordered drinks at a booth at the back where we weren’t near enough anyone to be heard. The bill she’d put in my pocket was a sawbuck. When the waitress brought our drinks and the change I shoved it toward Billie. She shook her head and pushed it back. “Keep it and owe me ten, Howie. You might need it in case — well, just in case.” I said, “Okay, Billie, but I’ll pay this back.” I would, too, but it probably wouldn’t be until I mailed it to her from Chicago and it would probably surprise the hell out of her to get it.

I said, “Now tell me, but quit looking so worried. I’m as innocent as new-fallen snow — and I don’t mean cocaine. Let me reconstruct my end first, and then tell yours. I got to work at eleven-twenty. Walked straight there from your place, so it would have been ten after when I left you. And — let’s see, from the other end, it was ten o’clock when I woke up, wouldn’t have been over ten or fifteen minutes before I knocked on your door, another few minutes before I got to Mame’s and I was up there only a few minutes. Say I saw her last around twenty after ten, and she was okay then. Over.”

“Huh? Over what?”

“I mean, you take it. From when I left you, about ten minutes after eleven.”

“Oh. Well, I straightened the room, did a couple things, and left, it must have been a little after twelve on account of the noon whistles had blown just a few minutes ago. I was going to the beach. I was going to walk over to the terminal and catch the Santa Monica bus, go to Ocean Park. Only first I stopped in the drugstore right on the corner for a cup of coffee. I was there maybe ten-fifteen minutes letting it cool enough to drink and drinking it. While I was there I heard a cop car stop near but I didn’t think anything of it; they’re always picking up drunks and all.

“But while I was there too I remembered I’d forgot to bring my sun glasses and sun-tan oil, so I went back to get them.

“Minute I got inside the cops were waiting and they asked if I lived there and then started asking questions, did I know Mame and when I saw her last and all.”

“Did you tell them you’d talked to her on the phone?”

“Course not, Howie. I’m not a dope. I knew by then something had happened to her and if I told them about that call and what it was about, it would have brought you in and put you on the spot. I didn’t even tell them you were with me, let alone going up to Mame’s. I kept you out of it.

“They’re really questioning everybody, Howie. They didn’t pull me in but they kept me in my own room questioning me till just fifteen minutes ago. See, they really worked on me because I admitted I knew Mame — I had to admit that ‘cause we work at the same place and they’d have found that out.

“And of course they knew she was a hype, her arms and all; they’re checking everybody’s arms and thank God mine are okay. They asked me mostly about where we worked, Mike’s. I think they figure Mike Karas is a dealer, what with Mame working for him.”

“Is he, Billie?”

“I don’t know, honey. He’s in some racket, but it isn’t dope.”

I said, “Well, I don’t see what either of us has to worry about. It’s not our — My God, I just remembered something.”

“What, Howie?”

“A guy saw me going in her room, a milkman. Mame was in the hall paying him off when I went up. She told me to go on in and I did, right past him.”

“Jesus, Howie, did she call you by name when she told you to go on in? If they get a name, even a first name, and you living right across the street—”

I thought hard. “Pretty sure she didn’t, Billie. She told me to go in and take a load off, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t add a Howie to it. Anyway, they may never find the milkman was there. He isn’t likely to stick his neck out by coming to them. How was she killed, Billie?”

“Somebody said a shiv, but I don’t know for sure.”

“Who found her and how come?”

“I don’t know. They were asking me questions, not me asking them. That part’ll be in the papers, though.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s let it go till this evening, then. How’s about this evening, Billie, are you going to The Best Chance anyway?”

“I got to, tonight, after that. If I don’t show up, they’ll want to know why and where I was and everything. And listen, don’t you come around either, after hours tonight or in the morning. You stay away from that building, Howie. If they find that milkman they might even have him staked out watching for you. Don’t even walk past. You better even stay off that block, go in and out the back way to your own room. And we better not even see each other till the heat’s off or till we know what the score is.”

I sighed.

I was ten minutes late reporting back and Burke glared at me again but still didn’t say anything. I guess I was still relatively dependable for a dishwasher, but I was learning.

I made the rest of the wine last me till Baldy, the evening shift dishwasher, showed up to relieve me. Burke paid me off for the day then, and I was rich again.

Three

Someone was shaking me, shaking me hard. I woke to fuzz and fog and Billie the Kid was peering through it at me, looking really scared, more scared than when she’d asked me yesterday if I’d killed Mame.

“Howie, wake up.” I was in my own little shoe-box of a room, Billie standing by my cot bending over me. I wasn’t covered, but the extent of my undressing had been to kick off my shoes.

“Howie, listen, you’re in trouble, honey. You got to get out of here, back way like I come in. Hurry.”

I sat up and wanted to know the time.

“Only nine, Howie. But hurry. Here. This will help you.” She screwed off the top of a half pint bottle of whisky. “Drink some quick. Help you wake up.”

I took a drink and the whisky burned rawly down my throat. For a moment I thought it was going to make me sick to my stomach, but then it decided to stay down and it did clear my head a little. Not much, but a little.

“What’s wrong, Billie?”

“Put on your shoes. I’ll tell you, but not here.”

Luckily my shoes were loafers and I could step into them. I went to the basin of water, rubbed some on my face. While I washed and dried and ran a comb through my hair Billie was going through the dresser; a towel on the bed, everything I owned piled on it. It didn’t make much of a bundle.

She handed it to me and then was pulling me out into the hallway, me and everything I owned. Apparently I wasn’t coming back here, or Billie didn’t think I was.

Out into the alley, through to Sixth Street and over Sixth to Main, south on Main. A restaurant with booths, mostly empty. The waitress came over and I ordered coffee, black. Billie ordered ham and eggs and toast and when the waitress left she leaned across the table. “I didn’t want to argue with her in front of you, Howie, but that food I ordered is for you; you’re going to eat it all. You got to be sober.”

I groaned, but knew it would be easier to eat than to argue with a Billie the Kid as vehement as this one.

“What is it, Billie? What’s up?”

“Did you read the papers last night?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t read any papers up to about nine o’clock and after that I didn’t remember what I’d done or hadn’t. But I wouldn’t have read any papers. That reminded me to look in my pockets to see what money I had left, if any. No change, but thank God there were some crumpled bills. A five and two ones, when I pulled them out and looked under cover of the table. I’d had a little over nine out of the ten Billie had given me to buy us a drink with, a little under five I’d got from Burke. That made fourteen and I’d spent seven of it somehow — and God knows how since I couldn’t possibly have drunk that much muskie or even that much whisky at Fifth Street prices. But at least I hadn’t been rolled, so it could have been worse.

“They got that milkman, Howie,” Billie was saying. “Right off. He’d given Mame a receipt and she’d dropped it on that little table by the door so they knew he’d been there and they found him and he says he’ll know you if he sees you. He described you too. You thinking straight by now, Howie?”

“Sure I’m thinking straight. What if they do find me? Damn it, I didn’t kill her. Didn’t have any reason to. They can’t do any more than question me.”

“Howie, haven’t you ever been in trouble with cops? Not on anything serious, I guess, or you wouldn’t talk like that. That milkman would put you right on the scene at close to the right time and that’s all they’d want. They got nobody else to work on.

“Sure they’ll question you. With fists and rubber hoses they’ll question you. They’ll beat the hell out of you for days on end, tie you in a chair with five hundred watts in your eyes and slap you every time you close them. Sure they’ll question you. They’ll question you till you wish you had killed Mame so you could tell ’em and get it over with and get some sleep. Howie, cops are tough, mean bastards when they’re trying to pin down a murder rap. This is a murder rap, Howie.”

I smiled a little without meaning to. Not because what she’d been saying was funny, but because I was thinking of the headlines if they did beat the truth out of me, or if I had to tell all to beat the rap. Chicago Scion in Heroin Murder Case. Chicago papers please copy.

I saw the hurt look on Billie’s face and straightened mine. “Sorry,” I said. “I was laughing at something else. Go on.”

But the waitress was coming and Billie waited till she’d left. She shoved the ham and eggs and toast in front of me. “Eat,” she said. I ate.

“And that isn’t all, Howie. They’ll frame you on some other charge to hold you. Howie, they might even frame you on the murder rap itself if they don’t find who else did it. They could do it easy, just take a few little things from her room — it had been searched — and claim you had ’em on you or they were in your room. How’d you prove they weren’t? And what’d your word be against a cop’s? They could put you in the little room and gas you, Howie. And there’s something else, too.”

“Something worse that that?”

“I don’t mean that. I mean what they’d do to me, Howie. And that’d be for sure. A perjury rap, a nice long one. See, I signed a statement after they questioned me, and that’d make it perjury for me if you tell ’em the truth about why you went up to see Mame. And what else could you tell them?”

I put down my knife and fork and stared at her. I hadn’t been really worried about the things she’d been telling me. Innocent men, I’d been telling myself, aren’t framed by the cops on murder charges. Not if they’re willing to tell the truth down the line. They might give me a bad time, I thought, but they wouldn’t hold me long if I leveled with them. But if Billie had signed a statement, then telling them the truth was out. Billie was on the wrong side of the law already; they would take advantage of perjury to put her away, maybe for several years.

I said, “I’m sorry, Billie. I didn’t realize I’d have to involve you if I had to tell them the truth.”

“Eat, Howie. Eat all that grub. Don’t worry about me; I just mentioned it. You’re in worse trouble than I am. But I’m glad you’re talking straight; you sound really awake now. Now you go on eating and I’ll tell you what you’ve got to do.

“First, this milkman’s description. Height, weight and age fairly close but not exact on any, and anyway you can’t change that. But you got to change clothes, buy new ones, because Jesus, the guy got your clothes perfect. Blue denim shirt cut off above elbows, tan work pants, brown loafers. Now first thing when you leave here, buy different clothes, see?”

“All right,” I said. “How else did he describe me?”

“Well, he thought you had blond hair and it’s a little darker than that, not much. Said you needed a shave — you need one worse now — and said you looked like a Fifth Street bum, a wino maybe. That’s all, except he’s sure he could identify you if he ever saw you again. And that’s bad, Howie.”

“It is,” I said.

“Howie, do you want to blow town? I can lend you — well, I’m a little low right now and on account of Karas’ place being watched so close I won’t be able to pick up any extra money for a while, but I can lend you fifty if you want to blow town. Do you?”

“No, Billie,” I said. “I don’t want to blow town. Not unless you want to go with me.”

God, what had made me say that? What had I meant by it? What business had I taking Billie away from the district she knew, the place where she could make a living — if I couldn’t — putting her further in a jam for disappearing when she was more or less a witness in a murder case? And when I wanted to be back in Chicago, back working for my father and being respectable, within a few weeks anyway.

What had I meant? I couldn’t take Billie back with me, much as I liked — maybe loved — her. Billie the Kid as the wife of a respectable investment man? It wouldn’t work, for either of us. But if I hadn’t meant that, what the hell had I meant?

But Billie was shaking her head. “Howie, it wouldn’t work. Not for us, not right now. If you could quit drinking, straighten out. But I know — I know you can’t. It isn’t your fault and — oh, honey, let’s not talk about that now. Anyway, I’m glad you don’t want to lam because... well, because I am. But listen—”

“Yes, Billie?”

“You’ve got to change the way you look — just a little. Buy a different colored shirt, see? And different pants, shoes instead of loafers. Get a haircut — you need one anyway so get a short one. Then get a hotel room — off Fifth Street. Main is okay if you stay away from Fifth. And shave — you had a stubble when that milkman saw you. How much money you got left?”

“Seven,” I said. “But that ought to do it. I don’t need new clothes; I can swap with uncle.”

“You’ll need more than that. Here.” It was a twenty.

“Thanks, Billie. I owe you thirty.” Owe her thirty? Hell, how much did I owe Billie the Kid already, outside of money, things money can’t buy? I said, “And how’ll we get in touch with one another? You say I shouldn’t come to your place. Will you come to mine, tonight?”

“I... I guess they won’t be suspicious if I take a night off, Howie, as long as it wasn’t that first night. Right after the — after what happened to Mame. All right, Howie. You know a place called The Shoebox on Main up across from the court house?”

“I know where it is.”

“I’ll meet you there tonight at eight. And... and stay in your room, wherever you take one, till then. And — and try to stay sober, Howie.”

Four

It shouldn’t be hard, I thought, to stay sober when you’re scared. And I was scared, now.

I stayed on Main Street, away from Fifth, and I did the things Billie had suggested. I bought a tan work shirt, and changed it right in the store where I bought it for the blue one I’d been wearing. I stopped in the barber school place for a four-bit haircut and, while I was at it, a two-bit shave. I had one idea Billie hadn’t thought of; I spent a buck on a used hat. I hadn’t been wearing one and a hat makes a man look different. At a shoe repair shop that handled used shoes I traded in my loafers and a dollar fifty for a pair of used shoes. I decided not to worry about the trousers; their color wasn’t distinctive.

I bought newspapers; I wanted to read for myself everything Billie had told me about the murder, and there might be other details she hadn’t mentioned. Some wine too, but just a pint to sip on. I was going to stay sober, but it would be a long boring day waiting for my eight o’clock date with Billie the Kid.

I registered double at a little walk-up hotel on Market Street around the corner from Main, less than a block from the place of my evening date. She’d be coming with me, of course, since we wouldn’t dare go to her place, and I didn’t want there to be even a chance of trouble in bringing her back with me. Not that trouble would be likely in a place like that but I didn’t want even the minor trouble of having to change the registration from single to double if the clerk saw us coming in, not for fifty cents difference in the price of the room.

I sipped at the wine slowly and read the papers. The Mirror gave it the best coverage, with pictures. A picture of Mame that must have been found in her room and that had been taken at least ten years ago — she looked to be in her late teens or early twenties — a flashlight shot of the interior of her room, but taken after her body had been removed, and an exterior of The Best Chance, where she’d worked. But, even from the Mirror, I didn’t learn anything Billie hadn’t told me, except Mame’s full name and just how and when the body had been discovered. The time had been 12:05, just about the time Billie was leaving from her room on the floor below. The owner of the building had dropped around, with tools, to fix a dripping faucet Mame (Miss Mamie Gaynor, 29) had complained about the day before. When he’d knocked long enough to decide she wasn’t home he’d let himself in with his duplicate key. The milkman’s story and the description he’d given of me was exactly as Billie had given them.

I paced up and down the little room, walked the worn and shabby carpet, wondering. Was there — short of the sheer accident of my running into that milkman — any danger of my being picked up just from that description? No, surely not. It was accurate as far as it went, but it was too vague, could fit too many men in this district, for anyone to think of me in connection with it. And now, with a change of clothes, a shave, wearing a hat outdoors, I doubted if the milkman would recognize me. I couldn’t remember his face; why would he remember mine? And there was no tie-in otherwise, except through Billie. Nobody but Billie knew that I’d even met Mame. The only two times I’d ever seen her had been in Billie’s place when she’d dropped in while I was there, once for only a few minutes, once for an hour or so. And one other time I’d been up to her room, that time to borrow cigarettes for Billie; it had been very late, after stores and bars were closed.

The fact that I’d disappeared from my room in that block? That would mean nothing. Tomorrow a week’s rent was due; the landlord would come to collect it, find me and my few possessions gone, and rent it again. He’d think nothing of it. Why should he?

No, now that I’d taken the few precautions Billie had suggested, I was safe enough as long as I stayed away from her building.

Why was I hiding here now, then?

The wine was gone and I wanted more. But I knew what shape I’d be in by eight o’clock if I kept on drinking it, starting at this hour of the morning.

But I’d go nuts if I stayed here, doing nothing. I picked up the papers, read the funny sheets, a few other things. Back in the middle of one of them a headline over a short item caught my eye, I don’t know for what reason. Victim in Alley Slaying Identified.

Maybe my eye had first caught the name down in the body of the story, Jesus Gonzales. And Mame’s jittery guest of the night before her death had been named Jesus Gonzales.

I read the story. Yesterday morning at dawn the body of a man had been found in an areaway off Winston Street near San Pedro Street. He had been killed with a blunt instrument, probably a blackjack. As he had been robbed of everything he was carrying, no identification had been made at first. Now he had been identified as Jesus Gonzales, 41, of Mexico City, DF. He had arrived in Los Angeles the day before on the SS Guadalajara, out of Tokyo. His passport, which had been left in his room at the Berengia Hotel, and other papers left with it, showed that he had been in the Orient on a buying trip for a Mexico City art object importing firm in which he was a partner, and that he was stopping in Los Angeles for a brief vacation on his return trip.

Mame’s Jesus Gonzales? It certainly looked that way. The place and time fitted; less than two blocks from her room. So did the time, the morning after he’d been frightened by that knock at the door and had left unceremoniously via the fire escape.

But why would he have hooked up with Mame? The Berengia is a swank hotel, only people with well-lined pockets stay there. Mame was no prize; at the Berengia he could have done better through his own bellhop.

Or could it be a factor that Mame was a junkie and, stopping in at The Best Chance, he’d recognized her as one and picked her for that reason? He could have been a hype himself, in need of a jolt and in a city where he had no contacts, or — and this seemed even more likely because of his just having landed from Tokyo — he’d smuggled some dope in with him and was looking for a dealer to sell it. The simplest and safest way to find a dealer would be through an addict.

It was just a wild guess, of course, but it wasn’t too wild to be possible. And damn it, Mame’s Jesus Gonzales had acted suspiciously and he had been afraid of something. Maybe he’d thought somebody was following him, following him and Mame home from The Best Chance. If he was the same Jesus Gonzales who’d just been killed and robbed only two blocks from her place, then he’d been dead right in being careful. He’d made his mistake in assuming that the knocker on Mame’s door was the man who’d followed him and in going down the fire escape. Maybe his Nemesis had still been outside the building, probably watching from across the street, and had seen him leave. And on Winston Street Nemesis had caught up with him.

Nice going, B.A.S., old boy, I thought. You’re doing fine. It isn’t every skid-row pearl-diver who can reconstruct a crime out of nothing. Sheer genius, B.A.S., sheer genius.

But it was something to pass the time, a lot better than staring at the wall and wishing I’d never left Chicago. Better than brooding.

All right, suppose it figured so far — then how did Mame’s death tie in with it? I didn’t see how. I made myself pace and concentrate, trying to work out an answer.

I felt sure Mame had been telling me the truth about Gonzales as far as she knew it, or else she would have had no reason for mentioning it at all. Whatever his ulterior motive in picking her up, whether to buy dope or to find a contact for selling it, he hadn’t yet leveled with Mame before that knock came. Otherwise she wouldn’t have told it casually, as she had, as something amusing.

But the killer wouldn’t have known that. He couldn’t have known that Mame was not an accomplice. If what he was looking for hadn’t been on the person of the man he’d killed he could have figured that it had already changed hands. Why hadn’t he gone back to Mame’s the same night? I didn’t know, but there could have been a reason. Perhaps he had and she’d gone out, locking the door and the fire escape window. Or maybe by that time she had other company; if he had knocked she might have opened the door on the chain — and I remembered now that there was a chain on her door — and told him so. I couldn’t ask Mame now what she’d done the rest of the night after her jittery caller had left.

But if Gonzales was a stranger in town, just off the boat, how would the killer have known he had brought in heroin? — or opium or cocaine; it could have been any drug worth smuggling. And the killer must have known something; if it had been just a robbery kill, for whatever money Gonzales was carrying, then he wouldn’t have gone back and killed Mame, searched her room. He’d have done that only if he’d known something about Gonzales that made him think Mame was his accomplice.

I killed a few more minutes worrying about that and I had the answer. Maybe not the answer, but at least an answer that made sense. Maybe I was just mildly cockeyed, but this off-the-cuff figuring I’d been doing did seem to be getting somewhere.

It was possible, I reasoned, that Mame hadn’t been the first person through whom Gonzales had tried to make a contact. He could have approached another junkie on the same deal, but one who refused to tell him her contact. Her? It didn’t have to be a woman, but Mame had been a woman and that made me think he’d been working that way. Say that he’d wandered around B-joints until he spotted a B-girl as an addict; he could get her in a booth and try to get information from her. She could have stalled him or turned him down. Stalled him, most likely, making a phone call or two to see if she could get hold of a dealer for him, but tipping off her boy friend instead. Killing time enough for her boy friend to be ready outside, then telling Gonzales she couldn’t make a contact for him.

And if any of that had sounded suspicious to Gonzales he would have been more careful the second try, with Mame. He’d get her to her room on the obvious pretext, make sure they were alone and hadn’t been followed before he opened up. Only, between The Best Chance and Mame’s room, he must have discovered that they were being followed.

Sure, it all fitted. But what good did it do me?

Sure, it was logical. It made a complete and perfect picture, but it was all guesswork, nothing to go to the cops with. Even if they believed me eventually and could verify my guesses in the long run, I’d be getting myself and Billie the Kid into plenty of trouble in the short run. And like as not enough bad publicity — my relations with Billie would surely come out, and Billie’s occupation — to have my father’s clients in Chicago decide I wasn’t fit to handle their business.

Well, was I? Worry about the fact that you want a drink so damned bad, I told myself, that soon you’re going to weaken and go down and get another bottle. Well, why not? As long as I rationed it to myself so I would be drinking just enough to hold my own and not get drunk, not until after eight o’clock anyway...

What time was it? It seemed like I’d been in that damned room six or eight hours, but I’d checked in at around eleven and the sun was shining straight down in the dirty areaway my window opened on. Could it be only noon? I went out to the desk and past it, looking at the kitchen-type electric clock on the wall over it as I went by. It was a quarter after twelve.

I decided to walk a while before I went back to the room with a bottle, kill some time first. God, the time I had to kill before eight o’clock. I walked around the court house and over to Spring Street. I’d be safe there.

Hell, I’d be safe anywhere, I thought. Except maybe right in that one block of Fifth Street, just on the chance the police did have the milkman staked out in or near that building. And with different clothes, wearing a hat, he probably wouldn’t recognize me anyway. Billie the Kid had panicked, and had panicked me. I didn’t have anything to worry about. Oh, moving out of that block, changing out of the clothes I’d been wearing, those things had been sensible. But I didn’t have to quit my job at Burke’s — if it was still open to me. Burke’s was safe for me. Nobody at Burke’s knew where I’d lived and nobody in the building I’d lived in knew where I worked.

I thought, why not go to Burke’s? He’d have the sign out in the window, now that I was an hour and a half late, but if nobody had taken the job, I could give him a story why I was so late and get it back. I’d gotten pretty good at washing dishes; I was probably the best dishwasher he’d ever had and I’d been steadier than the average one. Sure, I could go back there unless he’d managed to hire a new one already.

And otherwise, what? I’d either have to look for a new job of the same kind or keep on taking money from Billie for however long I stayed here. And taking money from Billie, except in emergency, was out. That gal named Honor back in Chicago was getting to be a pretty dim memory, but I still had some self-respect.

I cut back to Main Street and headed for Burke’s. The back way, so I could see if anyone was working yet in my place, and maybe ask Ramon what the score was before I saw Burke.

From the alley doorway I could see my spot was empty, dishes piling high. Ramon was busy at the stove. He turned as I walked up to him, and his teeth flashed white in that grin. He said, “Howie! Thank God you’re here. No dishwasher, everybody’s going nuts.”

The bandage was gone from his forehead. Under where it had been were four long scratches, downward, about an inch apart.

I stared at the scratches and thought about Ramon and his monkey and Mame and her monkey, and all of a sudden I had a crazy hunch. I thought about how a monkey like Ramon’s could make a man do anything to get a fix. I moistened my lips. Ramon’s monkey might claw the hell out of his guts, but it hadn’t put those four scratches on his face. Not directly.

I didn’t say it, I’d have had more sense; my mouth said it. “Mame had sharp fingernails, huh?”

Five

Death can be a sudden thing. Only luck or accident kept me from dying suddenly in the next second or two. I’d never seen a face change as suddenly as Ramon’s did. And before I could move, his hand had hold of the front of my shirt and his other hand had reached behind him and come up with and raised a cleaver. To step back as it started down would have put me in even better position for it to hit, so I did the only thing possible; I stepped in and pushed him backward and he stumbled and fell. I’d jerked my head but the cleaver went too wild even to scrape my shoulders. And there was a thunking sound as Ramon’s head hit a sharp corner of the big stove. Yes, death can be a sudden thing.

I breathed hard a second and then — well, I don’t know why I cared whether he was alive or not, but I bent forward and reached inside his shirt, held my hand over where his heart should be beating. It wasn’t.

From the other side of the window Burke’s voice sang out, “Two burgers, with.”

I got out of there fast. Nobody had seen me there, nobody was going to see me there. I got out of the alley without being seen, that I knew of, and back to Main Street. I walked three blocks before I stopped into a tavern for the drink I really needed now. Not wine, whisky. Wine’s an anodyne but it dulls the mind. Whisky sharpens it, at least temporarily. I ordered whisky, a double, straight.

I took half of it in one swallow and got over the worst of it. I sipped the rest slowly, and thought.

Damn it, Howie, I told myself, you’ve got to think.

I thought, and there was only one answer. I was in over my head now. If the police got me I was sunk. B.A.S. or not, I’d have a hell of a time convincing them I hadn’t committed two murders — maybe three; if they’d tied in Jesus Gonzales, they’d pin that on me, too.

Sure, I knew what had really happened, but what proof did I have? Mame was dead; she wouldn’t tell again what she’d told me about her little episode with Jesus. Ramon was dead; he wouldn’t back up my otherwise unsupported word that I’d killed him accidentally in defending myself.

Out of this while I had a whole skin, that was the only answer. Back in Chicago, back to respectability, back to my right name — Howard Perry, B.A.S., not Howard Perry, bastard, wino, suspected soon of being a psychopathic killer. Back to Chicago, and not by freight. Too easy to get arrested that way, vagged, and maybe by that time flyers would be out with my description. Too risky.

So was waiting till eight o’clock when it was only one o’clock now. I’d have to risk getting in touch with Billie the Kid sooner. I couldn’t go to her place, but I could phone. Surely they wouldn’t have all the phones in that building tapped.

Just the same I was careful when I got her number. “Billie,” I said, “this is the Professor.” That nickname wouldn’t mean anything to anybody else.

I heard her draw in her breath sharply. She must have realized I wouldn’t risk calling her unless something important had come up. But she made her voice calm when she answered, “Yes, Professor?”

“Something has come up,” I said. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to make our eight o’clock date. Is there any chance that you can meet me now instead — same place?”

“Sure, soon as I can get there.”

Click of the receiver. She’d be there. Billie the Kid, my Billie. She’d be there, and she’d make sure first that no one was following her. She’d bring money, knowing that I’d decided I had to lam after all. Money that she’d get back, damn it, if it was the last thing I ever did. Whatever money she’d lend me now, plus the other two sums and enough over to cover every drink and every cigarette I’d bummed from her. But not for the love and the trust she’d given me; you can’t pay for that in money. In my case, I couldn’t ever pay for it, period. The nearest I could come would be by being honest with her, leveling down the line. That much she had coming. More than that she had coming but more than that I couldn’t give her.

The Shoebox is a shoebox-sized place. Not good for talking, but that didn’t matter because we weren’t going to talk there.

She got there fifteen minutes after I did; I was on my second drink. I ordered a Manhattan when I saw her coming in the door.

“Hello, Billie,” I said.

Hello, Billie. Goodbye, Billie. This is the end for us, today. It’s got to be the end. I knew she’d understand when I told her, when I told her everything.

“Howie, are you in—”

“In funds?” I cut her off. “Sure, just ordered you a drink.” I dropped my voice, but not far enough to make it conspicuous. “Not here, Billie. Let’s drink our drink and then I’ve got a room around the corner. I registered double so it’ll be safe for us to go there and talk a while.”

The bartender had mixed her Manhattan and was pouring it. I ordered a refill on my whisky-high. Why not? It was going to be my last drink for a long while. The wagon from here on in, even after I got back to Chicago for at least a few weeks, until I was sure the stuff couldn’t get me, until I was sure I could do normal occasional social drinking without letting it start me off.

We drank our drinks and went out. Out into the sun, the warm sunny afternoon. Just before we got to the corner, Billie stopped me. “Just a minute, Howie.”

She ducked into a store, a liquor store, before I could stop her. I waited. She came out with a wrapped bottle and a cardboard carton. “The ready-mixed wasn’t on ice, Howie, but it’s all right. I bought some ice cubes too. Are there two glasses in the room?”

I nodded; we went on. There were two glasses in the room. The wagon not yet. But it wouldn’t have been right not to have a last drink or two, a stirrup cup or two, with Billie the Kid.

She took charge of the two tumblers, the drinks. Poured the drinks over ice cubes, stirred them around a while and then fished the ice cubes out when the drinks were chilled.

While I talked. While I told her about Chicago, about me in Chicago, about my family and the investment company. She handed me my drink then. She said quietly, “Go on, Howie.”

I went on. I told her what Mame had told me about her guest Jesus the night before she was killed. I told her of the death of Jesus Gonzales as I’d read it in the Mirror. I added the two up for her.

She made us another drink while I told her about Ramon, about what had happened, about how I’d just killed him.

“Ramon,” she said. “He has knife scars, Howie?” I nodded. She said, “Knife scars, a hype, a chef. I didn’t know his name, but I know who his woman was, a red-headed junkie named Bess, I think it’s Bess, in a place just down the block from Karas’ joint. It’s what happened, Howie, just like you guessed it. It must have been.” She sipped her drink. “Yes, Howie, you’d better go back to Chicago, right away. It could be bad trouble for you if you don’t. I brought money. Sixty. It’s all I have except a little to last me till I can get more. Here.”

A little roll of bills, she tucked into my shirt pocket.

“Billie,” I said. “I wish—”

“Don’t say it, honey. I know you can’t. Take me with you, I mean. I wouldn’t fit, not with the people you know there. And I’d be bad for you.”

“I’d be bad for you, Billie. I’d be a square, a wet blanket. I’ll have to be to get back in that rut, to hold down—” I didn’t want to think about it. I said, “Billie, I’m going to send you what I owe you. Can I count on your being at the same address for another week or so?”

She sighed. “I guess so, Howie. But I’ll give you my sister’s name and address, what I use for a permanent address, in case you ever — in case you might not be able to send the money right away.”

“I’ll write it down,” I said. I tore a corner off the paper the bottle had been wrapped in, looked around for something to write with; I remembered the fountain pen I’d stuck in my trousers pocket at Mame’s. It was still there.

I screwed off the cap. Something glittered, falling to the carpet, a lot of somethings. Shiny little somethings that looked like diamonds. Billie gasped. Then she was scrabbling on the floor, picking them up. I stared at the pen, the hollow pen without even a point, in my hand. Hollow and empty now. But there was still something in the cap, which I’d been holding so it hadn’t spilled. I emptied the cap out into my hand. Bigger diamonds, six of them, big and deep and beautifully cut.

My guess had been wrong. It hadn’t been heroin Gonzales had been smuggling. Diamonds. And when he’d found himself followed to Mame’s, he’d stashed them there for safety. The pen hadn’t fallen from his coat pocket; he’d hidden it there deliberately.

They were in two piles on the table, Billie’s hands trembling a little as she handled them one at a time. “Matched,” she said reverently. “My husband taught me stones, Howie. Those six big ones — over five carats each, cut for depth, not shallow, and they’re blue-white and I’ll bet they’re flawless, all of them, because they’re matched. And the fifteen smaller ones — they’re matched too, and they’re almost three carats apiece. You know what Karas would give us for them, Howie?”

“Karas?”

“Fifteen grand, Howie, at least. Maybe more. These aren’t ordinary; they’re something special. Sure, Karas — I didn’t tell you everything, because it didn’t matter then, when I said I thought maybe he had some racket — not dope. He handles stones, only stones. Gonzales might have heard of him, might have been trying to contact him through Mame.”

I thought about fifteen thousand dollars, and I thought about going back to Chicago. Billie said, “Mexico, Howie. In Mexico we can live like kings — like a king and queen — for five years for that much.”

And stop drinking, straighten out? Billie said, “Howie, shall I take these to Karas right now so we can leave quick?” She was flushed, breathing hard, staring at me pleadingly.

“Yes,” I said. She kissed me, hard, and gathered them up.

At the doorway, hand on the knob. “Howie, were you kidding when you said you were in love with a girl named Honor in Chicago? I mean, is there a real girl named that, or did you just mean—?”

“I was kidding, Billie the Kid.”

The door closed.

Her heels clicked down the wooden hall. I poured myself a drink, a long one, and didn’t bother to chill it with ice cubes. Yes, I’d known a girl named Honor in Chicago, once, but—...but that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.

I drank my drink and waited.

Twenty minutes later, I heard Billie’s returning footsteps in the hall.