Black Mask (Vol. 21, No. 10 — January 1939)

The Doc and the Dame by Eric Howard

Two cops chase an unknown killer — and we bet you’ll never guess who it was.

They pulled me off the traffic detail, where I was really doing something important, getting rid of deathtrap crossings, and put me on Homicide. I didn’t like it. But when you’re on the cops you do as you’re told. It’s like the army.

My partner, Luke Hennessey, had always been a Homicide man. Murder was his meat. He came into the office while I was studying a big map of the city, trying to see how the traffic jam at Sixth and Central could be eliminated. Three people had been killed there during the past month, four more injured. Luke stood there, looking down at me, with a grin on his broad, good-natured face.

“Still worried about the gas-buggies?” he asked. “I’ve got a better puzzle for you.” He tossed a sheet of paper down before me. “Read that, Mike.”

It was a sheet of cheap yellow paper, with a brief note typed in capital letters. It read: “Dr. Harris did not kill himself. He was shot by a man with a deep scar on his right cheek, black hair and black eyes.”

Luke sat down on the edge of the desk, pushed his hat back. I looked up at him, questioningly.

“I had a hunch there was something phony about that suicide,” he said. “Why should the old Doc kill himself?”

“Well, why not?” I argued. “He was sick, broke, all through. Living in that cheap, dirty hotel. He had lost everything — money, family, standing.”

“But not courage,” Luke smiled. “He still had that. He was still fighting. As long as a guy has courage, he doesn’t do the Dutch. Let’s go down there again.”

I handed him the note, which he folded and put in a billfold. I reluctantly left my traffic problem and got in the car with Luke. He drove down to the old firetrap where Dr. Harris had lived — and died.

The slovenly wife of the man who ran the hotel had found him on the floor of his room last night, after hearing a shot. He was lying on the floor, with a bullet hole in his head, and he had the gun in his hand. It looked like suicide.

The doctor was seventy. Two years before they had taken his license to practice away from him, after he had publicly admitted that he had performed an operation while drunk. His patient had died, and he had violently accused himself, saying that such doctors should be locked up. He could have covered it up, but in his grief and nervous excitement he had asked to be punished.

His second wife, considerably younger, had divorced him. He had settled everything he owned on her and had slipped down to the slums, to this cheap hotel. He had stopped drinking and had tried to start over in various kinds of work — selling gadgets from house to house, odd jobs and things like that.

He hadn’t had much luck. He ate when people fed him. He owed two months’ room rent, but the hotel man let him stay because the Doc had given him something for his stomach ulcers. The Doc had two stepchildren, his second wife’s kids, but they had run out on him, too, after his disgrace.

It still looked like suicide to me, no matter what Luke said, but he knew more about such things than I did.

“We’ll try to get a line on the scar-faced guy, with black hair and eyes,” Luke said. “Maybe this note means something.”

“Who wrote it?”

“You got me, Mike,” Luke shrugged. “It came into Headquarters in a plain envelope. Maybe a nut. Maybe somebody that saw the killer. Maybe — if he’s blond and baby-faced — the killer himself. Sometimes guys like that like to give us poor dumb cops some trouble.”

We went into the dump where the Doc had lived. It was smelly and dirty, and the man who ran it — Linker, by name — was dirty, too. Luke asked him about Scarface. He didn’t know such a guy; or, if he did, he wasn’t telling what he knew.

We went upstairs to the Doc’s room. It hadn’t been cleaned up yet. It was just as we had seen it last night, except that Doc’s body had been removed. There was a blood stain added to all the other dirt on the carpet. And Doc’s few possessions were still there.

I looked across the hall. There was a door almost opposite. Somebody in there, if the door was open, would have the best chance to spot the guy who came after Doc. I crossed the hall and put my hand on the knob.

“Hey! Don’t bother her!” the hotel man said. “She’s asleep. She works all night and her dogs give her hell. Let her sleep.”

“Who?” I said.

“Belle Henry. She’s a waitress on the night shift down at Sharkey’s Grill in the next block.”

I would have let her sleep, being a traffic engineer at heart, but Luke shoved Linker aside and opened the door.

“Jeez!” gasped Linker. And we said things, too.

Belle Henry, a fat blonde, was asleep all right — her last sleep. There was a knife in her back. A dusty curtain had been ripped off the window, probably by the man with the knife as he got in or out of the room, by way of the window and the fire escape.

“Nice place you run, Linker,” Luke said. “And this is not suicide.”

“It ain’t my fault,” Linker growled. “It could happen in the Biltmore. Jeez, Belle has been here for three years, never missed a rent day.”

“That’s all you care about, huh?”

“No, I liked her. Belle was all right. She was a good-natured girl and kind-hearted, too. She was always feeding the Doc. He took care of her when she had the flu. She thought he was swell.”

“And this is what it got her.”

Luke phoned in, got the boys to come down and take charge.

“Come on, Mike,” he said to me. “I want to look around another dump.”

He warned Linker not to touch anything till the medical examiner and the rest of them got there. He dragged me down the street, lined with pawn shops, cheap clothing stores, flop joints and employment offices. There were a lot of men hanging around, waiting for jobs; tough huskies, most of them, who had stuck around town all winter, getting by this way and that, waiting for construction work to open up in the spring.

Now it was spring, but things weren’t opening up. They were in for a long hard summer, most of them; and that meant the cops would have trouble. Some of these guys would get hungry; they’d pull stick-ups; they’d crack open service stations and so on; some of them would use rods on their jobs, or saps, and kill people.

We would have plenty to do, and meanwhile the traffic problem would get worse and worse. Traffic had me worried. But the Doc’s death — and now Belle’s — was different. The Doc had nothing to steal. Robbery hadn’t entered into it. Somebody had got him for other reasons. And Belle, too.

We went into Sharkey’s Grill, where Belle had worked. It was not run by a guy named Sharkey. The proprietor was a big, pallid Greek with stiff, bristly hair cut short, whose name was Sam Popoupolos. He thought Sharkey was a good trade name. He served two-bit meals, featuring tough steaks that covered a large area but were paper thin and greasy enough to give a coyote the bellyache. He was standing at the cashier’s desk, up front, typing out a menu with two thick fingers on a battered old typewriter.

He knew we were cops and gave us an oily smile.

Luke swung the typewriter around, looked at the print. He pulled out the note. Anybody could see that it had been typed on this machine — by Belle, maybe. Belle must have seen Scarface go to the Doc’s room. Afraid to talk, she had taken this way of letting the cops know what the killer looked like. That had been just too bad for Belle.

“What’s worryin’ you boys?” Sam asked.

“A girl named Belle Henry work for you?” Luke said.

“Sure. She’s my best girl. Been with me three years. I couldn’t hardly get along without Belle.”

“You’ll have to, feller,” Luke said. “Somebody stuck a knife in her.”

“Huh! You mean— Hey! You mean somebody — croaked Belle?”

Luke nodded, watching him. The Greek looked scared. His eyes shifted and his face twitched.

“Yeah,” Luke said. “Funny, ain’t it? Right after Doc Harris got shot. They tell me Belle liked the old Doc.”

“Didn’t Doc kill himself?” Sam asked. “I heard—”

“Looks like it now, don’t it?” Luke said sarcastically. “No. Some guy killed Doc. Belle got a look at him and got shut up. You wouldn’t know anything, would you?”

“Me? No. All I know is, Belle was O.K. She was right, see? She was havin’ trouble with her dogs and I was buyin’ her some shoes the Doc said she ought to have. Belle was a pal. Sure, she liked Doc. Used to feed him in here or take stuff up to him. I never kicked. Doc was all right.”

Luke shifted his feet, looked around the place, then back at the Greek.

“You know a black-haired guy with black eyes and a deep scar on his right cheek?” he said.

Sam shook his head. “A lot of guys come in here, but I don’t remember nobody like that. No.”

I was just going to grab his arm and call him a cockeyed liar when Luke stepped on my foot. I kept still.

“If you do see such a guy, let me know,” Luke said. “So long, Sam.”

“So long, boys. This about Belle — it’s got me down. I depended on her. Lots o’ times I let her run the place when I wanted to take time off. I’m good for her funeral and if I can help get the guy that knifed her— Say! Did you boys know Doc’s son was down here last night?”

“Huh? His son?”

“Stepson. I guess. He was in here talking to Belle about the Doc. Say, he’s black-haired and black-eyed. Only there’s no scar on his face.”

“What did he want to see Belle about?”

“He was asking about his old man — what had made him bump himself, and like that. And there was something about insurance, too.”

“Insurance?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Belle told me after. Doc had some insurance, all paid up. His missus, the one that split with him, this punk’s mama, was the bene... bene — you know. So the kid said.”

“Beneficiary,” Luke nodded. “Does the punk go by Harris’s name?”

“No, his name is Rogers, so Belle said! Bert Rogers. She gave him the devil because he was never down to see Doc until he died.”

“Thanks. You see a guy with a scar on his face, you let me know.”

“Yeah! Always glad to help you boys out.”

Bert Rogers lived with his mother, the Doc’s ex-wife, and his sister, in a comfortable old house on a wide boulevard. Bert was home when we got there. So was Mama, a fluttery dame about fifty, scatter-brained and full of chatter. And Bert’s sister, a serious-eyed, seventeen-year-old girl with looks; as quiet as her mother was talky.

Bert and Mama were screwballs, nervous, irritable, always interrupting each other and exchanging savage looks. The young girl was all right. Maybe Mama had divorced the Doc because he drank, but she hit the bottle herself. So did Bert. He was about twenty-two, a runt, unhealthy looking; and I’d have bet that he occasionally got high on reefers.

We didn’t get much out of them. They talked a lot, but said little. The dame was mad because the Doc’s death had brought her more scandal. She didn’t know or care whether it was suicide or murder. All she cared about was that the Doc had brought her grief, nothing but grief.

“Yeah,” said Luke. “He set you up to all this, too. When you ditched him, he gave you all the dough he had. The poor guy had an alcoholic conscience. And now about this insurance.” He turned to Bert. “How do I know you didn’t go down and croak the old man, so Mama here could collect?”

The girl gasped, but Bert sneered. He stuck a cigarette between his teeth, let it dangle from his lower lip, and said, “How do I know what you know? What do I care what you think, copper? Try and pin something on me. Go ahead and try.”

Luke grinned at him. “When did you hear the Doc was dead? Where were you?”

“I’m not talking until I see my lawyer,” the punk said. “But I was in a place where a lot of people saw me, right up to the time the news came out.”

I walked over to him. I looked at Luke and he nodded. I put my hand on the punk’s thin neck, lifted him out of the chair, swung my fist under his nose. He yelled; so did Mama.

“Where was this place?” I said.

“The Parisian Inn,” he spluttered. “A lot of people saw me there.”

“Jud Marvin’s spot,” said Luke. “So you hang around there? That helps.”

I didn’t see how, but if Luke thought so, all right. We walked out, with Luke warning them to stay put. The young sister followed us into the hall. She seemed to want to say things to us and I gave her a smile.

“Could I— Would they let me see Dad?” she asked.

“I think so,” I said. “You liked him?”

“Oh, yes! He was always very good to me. I was very sorry for him. Mother is — difficult. I think that’s why he drank. But he was a wonderful surgeon, a wonderful man!” The kid was whispering, and she meant every word of it.

“Florence!” Mama yelled. “Florence! Come here!”

“If I can go to the — the morgue,” she said, “will they let me see him?”

“Sure, honey,” I said. “Tell ’em we said so — Hennessey and McGuire.”

“Thank you!” she breathed, and went back to mama.

“Lousy people,” Luke muttered, as we piled into the car. “Except the kid. Well, let’s go down to Jud Marvin’s.”

“Why?”

“I smelled something like Jud. You know what, boy? This could be bigger than we think. We were going to skip it as the suicide of an old guy who didn’t count any more, just a poor old tramp who hit the skids. But it’s different now. There’s more to it. Let’s talk to Jud.”

Jud Marvin was two hundred and fifty pounds of immobile fat. The guy needed exercise, but never took it. He had a suite of rooms upstairs over his Parisian Café — an office, bedroom and bath — and he spent most of his time there, except when he was downstairs.

He was expecting us. He had been tipped off by a buzzer as we walked in.

“Hello, boys,” he said. “Have a drink? Have a cigar? No? What can I do for you?”

“Help us find a guy, Jud,” Luke said. “You’re doing all right here. Nobody’s bothering you. You want it to stay like that, don’t you?”

Jud smiled. “I’m going to keep it like that,” he said. “It costs me some dough, but I lay it on the line the first of every month. Tell me.”

“Did you hear about a guy named Doc Harris doing the Dutch?”

“Yeah, I heard about it. Some of the boys were talking.”

“He was murdered, Jud, for some pretty good reason. And a dame he knew, a waitress in Sharkey’s Grill, got it, too, on account she tried to tip us off about the killer. A guy with black hair and black eyes and a scar on his right cheek. That’s the one we’re looking for. Maybe you can help us.”

Jud blew cigar smoke toward the ceiling. “I don’t know anybody like that,” he said. “I don’t get around much. But I’ll be glad to help. I’ll put my boys on it. If there’s some guy like that going around killing people, the boys may be able to find him for you.”

“Thanks,” Luke said dryly. “You know Bert Rogers?”

“A punk?”

“A punk.”

“Yeah, he comes here. He was making a play for one of the dancers in our floor show. Why?”

“He’s Doc Harris’s stepson and his old lady, Mrs. Harris, who took everything the old Doc had when he got in a jam and she divorced him, is the beneficiary of an insurance policy Doc had — ten grand she overlooked when she took him to the cleaners.”’

Jud shook his big head. “That’s dames for you,” he said. “They’ll do it every time.”

“You got any ideas about this setup?”

Jud shook his head, blew more smoke. “Unless the punk did it, so the old lady would cash in and he could get his hands on some jack. He’s short of change. He gave me a rubber check some time back, but he made it right. No, I don’t know a thing, boys. You want me to try to find this scar-faced guy for you?”

“Wish you would, Jud. Thanks.”

That was that. When we went out, Luke was muttering, “The damned whale! I’d like to stick a harpoon in that blubber of his and make him yell. I know him. He was lying right down the line.”

Luke was cussing and shifting gears. Suddenly I said, “Wait! Look at this!”

A thin guy, in a light overcoat, stepping high, was approaching the entrance of the Parisian Café. His lips were moving as he talked to himself, and his eyes had a glassy look. He was hopped to the gills. But the interesting thing about him was the scar on his right cheek — and his black hair and black eyes.

“You!” I said.

When he saw I meant him, he shot his hand down into his overcoat pocket. And brought it out fast, with an automatic. He slid back toward the wall of Jud’s building. I was climbing out of the car, and he was telling me to stand still or he’d do things. I stood still and got my hands up. I thought what a sap I was, yelling at him that way without having my gun on him. But Luke had taken care of that.

Luke had got out of the car when I first spoke. He had circled around. The glassy-eyed guy was concentrating his attention on me. Luke smashed down on his right arm; a slug hit the concrete. Then Luke drove one to the side of his neck, caught him as he fell and brought him to the car.

“Drive on, Mike,” he said.

Jud’s doorman saw us leave.

“Headquarters?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” Luke said. “They’d spring him before we could work him over. My place.”

Luke’s place was a flat up above a delicatessen shop, on a little, forgotten street that hadn’t changed in twenty years. It was cheap, roomy and all by itself. The Swiss cheese and bologna merchant down below owned the building, rented Luke the upstairs and asked no questions. Luke had a garage in the yard back of the place, and there was a rear stairway. We took the scar-faced guy up that way. Luke yelled to the delicatessen man:

“Ignatz, send up some beef sandwiches, half a dozen bottles of beer and a side order of chili.”

“Honest, is his name Ignatz?”

“Honest,” said Luke. “Throw that guy on the couch while I telephone.”

I tossed Scarface down and sat on him, while Luke phoned Headquarters. They had just done the usual, routine stuff on the two murders and had nothing new for us, except that they had found the Doc’s insurance policy and a brief will. He had scratched his former wife’s name and had written in Belle Henry’s. In his one-paragraph will, he cut his ex-wife and the two kids off with a dollar apiece, directed that the insurance money go to Belle “for her great kindness.”

The police chemist said this had been written at least a month before. Belle, apparently, hadn’t known the Doc intended to reward her.

“So who gets it?” I asked. “Belle’s heirs, if any.”

The scar-faced guy was coming out of it. When Luke hits ’em on the side of the neck, they’re paralyzed for a while. This one woke up mean and scared.

“Cops, huh?” he said. “What do you want me for? Somebody put you on me? Huh? Who?”

“Yeah, we got word you shot Doc Harris. And if you did, then you also stabbed a dame named Belle Henry.”

“I’ll kill that fat—!” the guy yelled.

“He can’t cross me and then frame me! I’ll kill—”

“That’ll make three,” Luke said. “Why’d you kill the old Doc?”

“You damn fool!” the guy popped off. “I didn’t! Why should I? I don’t even know the mutt. I don’t know this dame you claim got stabbed. You think I go around killin’ people I don’t know?”

“You might — if the price was right.”

He swung off the couch and looked at us, earnestly. “Listen, coppers, it’s a frame, see? I had a little business deal on with a guy—”

“Jud Marvin,” Luke said.

“Yeah, Marvin. When the pay-off time came, he welshed. Gave me the run-around. He thinks I can’t get to him in that joint of his. I’ll get there if I have to tear it to pieces! He thinks he’s a big shot in this town. Thinks he can cross me because I’m a stranger here. Then he put you guys on me. Don’t be saps! I never killed those people. But give me a break and I’ll toss a murder right in your lap. I’ll bump Marvin.”

“Too bad, but it’s against the law,” Luke grinned. “That would make us accessories. What was the deal you had with Jud?”

“That’s none of your business,” the guy said, “and if you think you can make me talk, try.”

“Don’t be so hard,” Luke said. “You might scare my partner, Mike McGuire, only the McGuires scare hard. If you’re telling it straight, tell us this: Why would Marvin want to rub out old Doc Harris?”

“I’ll tell you why,” the guy said. “Sure! The old guy was a surgeon, huh? I heard about it. He fixed up two of Marvin’s boys. Two guys that got hurt in that Second National stick-up, a couple of weeks ago. They held a gun on this Doc and made him do it. He was tough about it. He said he was going to report it to you cops. They told him what would happen if he did. Marvin thought he had him scared. But the old coot had guts, huh?”

“He had ’em,” Luke said. “But he didn’t report.”

“He was going to. There was more to it. Something about a punk kid that had lost some jack to Marvin. The Doc wanted that squared. If Jud had fixed it, Doc wouldn’t tell the cops, he said. But Jud gave him the laugh. Like he give me!”

“Thanks, pal,” said Luke. “This kind of clears things up. Marvin had Doc bumped. Belle was wise, so they got her too. Then they typed that note in Sharkey’s Grill, like it came from Belle, describing you as one we wanted.”

“Yeah? Why in hell should I kill ’em? Give me a break, cops! Let me get that fat—”

“Now, now!” Luke shook his finger at him. “Take it easy. Be good and maybe we’ll overlook your recent jobs in this town. Would you know which of Jud’s boys were on the Second National project? And where the wounded ones could be picked up?”

“No. Give me a crack at Jud and I’ll find out for you.”

“The guy has just one idea,” Luke grinned. “He wants a crack at Jud.”

Somebody knocked on the door and Luke said, “O.K., Ignatz, bring it in.”

It wasn’t Ignatz. A guy kicked the door open and all we saw was the business end of a submachine gun.

“If we turn loose,” the guy said, and I didn’t care for the way he talked, “none of you will ever walk out of here. Throw your guns to the door, coppers. We want your playmate, little Willie the squealer.”

“Come in and get him,” Luke invited.

“Toss your guns, cops!”

“Oke,” said Luke, and we obeyed.

The machine gun didn’t move, but a second guy ducked forward, picked up our two Police Positives.

“Where’s the other guy’s gat?”

“He dropped it when we picked him up,” Luke said. “Where’s Jud?”

“Jud who?” the guy asked, and stepped into the room.

The second man, holding our guns, followed him and kicked the door shut.

“There’s two of the rats that pulled the Second National job,” Scarface said. “The other two are the ones your Doc fixed up. That makes it easy, copper. One of these muggs killed the Doc and the dame.”

The second man swung his right hand with a gun in it. He caught Scarface on the jaw, knocked him down on the couch.

“I’ll cut your guts out for that,” Scarface said, but he’d never get a chance, the way things looked.

But I didn’t know Scarface. He was one tough little guy. The man with the machine gun was facing Luke and me. The other one was standing over Scarface. All at once Scarface sent two pillows at them — right to the nose. At the same time he jumped, or maybe you’d call it diving, and hit the guy with our guns right on the knees.

Luke hit the floor, too, got the machine-gunner around the legs, brought him down. I jumped across the room, kicked the guy in the head and knocked him cold.

The Police Positives had roared a couple of times, but when I got around to looking at Scarface, he was on his feet, near the door, one of the guns in his hand.

“Stay back, copper,” he said. “I’m going after Marvin. I told that rat I’d cut his guts out.”

I looked down. So did Luke. Scarface had sunk a knife in one of Jud’s boys — an ordinary pocket knife, with a blade about three inches long, only it opened with the push of a button. Scarface had twisted it around. He wouldn’t rob any more banks.

The door banged and Scarface was out.

“Get that damned hop-head!” Luke yelled.

He grabbed up the other gun, ran out the door. I nabbed the machine gun and went to the window. There was a sedan down there and a fat man was filling the back seat. Marvin!

It was too late even to warn Jud. Almost as soon as I spotted him, Scarface got him. Marvin’s big body just settled over to one side, as though he had decided to take a nap.

Then Scarface was running down the street, Luke after him, and Ignatz, downstairs, was cheering him on. Scarface was all for getting away; he didn’t stop to do any shooting. Luke lamed him, first in one leg, then the other. When he went down, Luke jumped him and snapped handcuffs on him.

“Call Headquarters,” he yelled up to me, “and get the wagon. Tell ’em Hennessey and McGuire have done it again! Tell the chief—”

I went to the phone and reported in. Our boss, Blair, yelled at me: “Where you guys been? Why in hell don’t you do what I say? Get down here — quick!”

As soon as the wagon came, we left. Luke was saying what he thought of Blair, who was always riding us.

“We clean up two murders, a bank stick-up and incidentally get rid of Jud Marvin,” he griped. “And what does it get us from Blair? A reprimand!”

We walked in on Blair and Luke started to tell him all we had done.

“Yeah?” Blair grunted. “You cleaned up two murders? You two? Nuts! We’ve got the guy who killed the Doc and Belle — right in the next room. He’s confessed.”

“One of Jud’s boys,” Luke said.

“No,” said Blair. “Not one of Jud’s boys. Maybe you cleaned up the Second National job. Maybe, I said. But I sent you out on two Homicides.” He swung the door open. A guy was sitting under a bright light. He screamed when he saw Blair who must’ve been roughing him a bit.

It was Sam Popoupolos.

“Him?” I said.

“Yeah, him,” Blair nodded, and shut the door. Luke looked kind of sick. “You boys overlook things. I don’t. I check on everything. Sam married Belle three months ago. When you told me the note was written on the typewriter in the grill, I looked ’em up and got all I could on Sam and Belle. Somebody else might have used the machine, but Sam had the best chance at it. So I found out they were married. Why did Sam marry this dame? Love? Not him. There were plenty of younger, prettier dames around. So why? Because the Doc told him he had made over his insurance to Belle. Simple, huh?

“Why did he kill the Doc? So Belle would get that jack and he could use it. And why did he kill Belle? He had to. She knew the gun he used. She had seen it in his desk. She accused him. He lied to her, got her to believe somebody had stolen the gun.

“But he couldn’t take a chance. He had to shut her up. Then he wrote the note about this scar-faced punk — he had seen him with Marvin and heard he was a gunman. He thought you boys would stumble around if he gave you something to trip over. Scarface was one, the Rogers punk another. But he’s coughed up the whole story — the gun’s his, the knife in Belle is his; it checks and checks again.”

Luke sat down. “Well, anyway,” he began, “we—”

“You!” Blair snapped. “Hennessey, you’d be good pounding pavements again. And you, McGuire, you’d—”

“I’d like to go back to traffic,” I said meekly. “There’s a jam at Sixth and Central that—”

Blair waved his hands. “Get out, the both of you!” he roared.