Black Mask (Vol. 31, No. 4 — July 1948)

License to Kill by Norman A. Daniels

There’s one breed of crooks that can’t afford to kill off its victims, for the old adage still stands: No golden omelets from a gone goose.

Leon Harwood had closely-set, light blue eyes. His hair was soft and curly enough so he tried to keep it plastered down. He was no gay caballero, but no dope either. On his feet he stood about six-two. He wasn’t on his feet now. He was stretched across the rug of his living room floor and those blue eyes of his were not quite as bright as they’d been a few hours before when he’d been in my office.

The window through which I peered wasn’t too clean and the box I stood on was rickety enough to be groaning under my hundred and eighty. I had seen enough. I got down and put the box back in the garage. I didn’t intend to yell cop. Not right then, though my private detective license might be at stake. The police sort of like to know when somebody has been bumped.

In this particular case I didn’t want them to know until I’d gone a bit further. That meant a fast trip, via my coupe, to the Gayety Theatre just off Broadway. I was a little late — about an hour. The hardboiled, bald-headed man at the stage door told me Miss Kit Maxon had gone home and should be snug in bed by now. He said it with a leer.

I went to her apartment hotel, one of those fancy places with an effeminate night clerk. He didn’t like me. That kind never do. I’m a dumpy guy with a belly I feed too much beer and too much food. I’m doggone near bald and no beauty. I get around though and make a living. I rolled a five dollar bill around the fountain pen sticking out of the desk well.

It found out for me that Miss Kit Maxon hadn’t come home yet and that she was at the Club Farrell. That’s another fancy joint run by an Italian named Satelli who thinks a club has more swank if it’s graced by an Irish name.

I made it to the club in fifteen minutes flat, which took some finagling of traffic because Kit Maxon lived way downtown and the club was in the bright light belt. I parked between two chauffeur-driven buggies and got glared at by their drivers. I passed the doorman with a nod I hoped was casual and polite. He didn’t try to stop me. Maybe the club needed more business.

The hat check girl nailed me cold. I surrendered my hat and light coat to be held for ransom and then I tailed a head-waiter in the general direction of the men’s john. I hadn’t flashed him anything green and he was taking no chances on giving me a good table and not getting paid for it.

I veered to the left when we were halfway across the floor. I saw Kit Maxon sitting at a table one layer from being ringside. She had a glass of something that looked like white mule in one hand and a cigarette stuck in the end of a foot long ivory holder.

She was all in white too. Her hair was corn yellow and it was the McCoy. Peroxide had nothing to do with it.

She was too old and hard looking to be cute, but I thought she might have been one day in the fairly recent past. She couldn’t sing worth a hoot and her dancing was confined to steps that resembled a shuffle-off, but she was loaded with personality and people fought to get tickets for her shows. Her teeth were beautifully capped and she liked to show them. She did now, as I stopped beside her table.

“My!” she exclaimed. “Are you what Harwood sent?”

I didn’t mind. I was used to it, especially from women. I pulled out a chair and sat down.

“Harwood sent me. Name is Stacy Tucker. I don’t look like much, but I’m a fireball. Has anything new developed?”

“No — did Harwood hear from them?”

“Yes. Now get this, Miss Maxon. As I understand things, you and Harwood used to have a little affair. Hot enough so you wrote some steaming letters back and forth. Sexy junk that never meant much — or did it?”

Her amber-colored eyes were like ice. “You’re a louse.”

“For twenty-five bucks a day I can stand it,” I told her. “Now, it seems, you’re going to be married and so is Harwood. Your respective and soon-to-be better halves aren’t the types who’d like to read what is in those letters. Harwood gave you his — the ones you wrote him — some time back. He believed the story that you had destroyed the ones he’d written you. But somebody got them and put them into perpetuity by photostating each one. Whoever did that thinks they are worth some dough. Do you?”

“I’ll never let a blackmailer get me. Not even once, Stacy. I couldn’t afford to.”

“Harwood didn’t think that way. He paid off and now they should be looking to you to double the take.”

She sipped at the drink. It wasn’t white mule but white mint, and it gave her a breath like six types of mouthwash rolled into one mess.

Over the rim of the glass she said: “Harwood paid you. I’m not going to. I can take care of myself, thanks. You’d have me submit to those blackmailers. Harwood thinks he’s very smart — very brainy...”

“Not any more he doesn’t.” I crooked my finger at a waiter and ordered bourbon.

Her eyes stroked my face, her beautiful teeth were showing. I thought she had an idea what I’d meant. But she said it anyway. “What do you mean by that crack?”

“His brains are kind of mixed up. With Bullets.”

She winced. That was the only emotion she showed, except in those eyes again. They were beginning to look haunted.

“You mean he-he’s...?”

“He’ll never be any deader. Now this is the situation as of the present moment. Harwood came to me for help. He was willing to pay off to get those letters, but he was afraid if he did, they’d simply tap him for more. So he came to me for advice. His date was at midnight — about half an hour ago — with the blackmailer agent. But Harwood was dead at ten o’clock. At least he didn’t answer the phone.”

“Perhaps they — came early.” She finished the white mint in one swallow and frantically clawed the air to attract a waiter’s attention. She was off the sissy stuff now. She ordered bourbon too — a double load of it.

“Nix,” I told her. “Blackmailers are scrupulous about keeping appointments. Too many things can go wrong. Oh, they might case a joint or tail a man, but they wouldn’t approach him until the time set. Whoever did it plunked him smack through the middle of the forehead.”

She waited until the drink arrived. I noticed she hadn’t ordered one for me. She kept tracing a series of short lines on the spotlessly white table cloth with long, blood-red fingernails. She practically snatched the drink out of the waiter’s hairy paw, and raised the glass high.

“To Leon Harwood. He was a nice guy. They rarely came any better. I was a fool. I should have married him those years back when we were both young and didn’t give a damn. I would have made a good wife.”

“Maybe. But without the worries you’ve got now. You’re slipping, Kit Maxon. You won’t get many more juicy parts. They do say you’re getting too old and faded.”

She threw back her head. “Take a good look, shamus. Do you see anything faded about me?”

I shook my head and offered her a polite grin. “Not under these lights, baby. They’d made an octogenarian look twenty-two. Want me to continue my spiel or should I just blow?”

“You can blow for all of me,” she said.

I pushed my chair back. Instantly she changed her mind again. “No — wait. I want to hear it all. Do you have any idea who killed Harwood? Do you know where the letters are?”

“No, no and no, to each question respectively. My one hope of landing those guys is by sticking with you, Kit. Partly because Harwood paid me two hundred and fifty bucks to handle the deal and I failed him. I did my best, told him to go home and see nobody until I arrived. He was as worried about you as about himself so for the same two and a half C’s I figured you were entitled to some protection. Besides, if those monkeys contact you, I’ll have a lead.”

“Bait, that’s what you’re making me. I don’t like it.”

I said, dryly: “You wouldn’t like being dead either. Tell me how those letters were swiped.”

She shrugged, proving those strapless gowns stay up anyway. I was interested in that. “Harwood sent them to me. I meant to burn them, but I wanted to read them over first. You might say — to recapture my youth. I put them in a desk drawer in my apartment. The next morning they were gone. So were mine.”

I said: “Hmm — no signs of breaking and entering?”

“No — nothing.”

“Somebody knew you had them, baby. I’ll see you home and then try to find out. How much were they asking from you? Three grand, the same as from Harwood?”

“Yes — three thousand dollars.”

“Then they’re either small time punks or this was just the leader. With more demands to follow. Let’s go home, baby. I don’t like it in here...”

The big car moved away from the curb with hardly a whisper. It merged with traffic and Kit Maxon seemed to be doing a lot of heavy thinking so I stared out of the window and did my own. What I wanted to know — mainly — was whether or not Leon Harwood had been murdered by blackmailers. It seemed almost incredible because there is one breed of crook that can’t afford to kill its victims. With them die the golden eggs. There’d been no signs of a fight in the room so Harwood apparently hadn’t resisted, hadn’t even known what was coming until too late.

I was still pondering those ideas when the car slowed for a red light and then lurched toward the curb. It was a clumsy move. Two men yanked open the rear door and started to get in. Kit screamed, but there weren’t many to hear her. These residential East Side streets are apt to be lonely about one-thirty on a week night.

The one who tried to crowd in first was any average guy in size, but there was nothing average about his determination. Also he had a gun in his hand and as it started to come up, I plugged him. Ruining my coat to do it, but there was no time to get my hand out of my pocket with the .25 in it.

He howled, let go of his gun and sprang back. Things happened very fast after that. The driver twisted around and tried to swing a blackjack at me. He missed and that was enough for him. He bounded out of the car and never stopped until he was out of sight.

The wounded man was taking the pavement fast, too, and the third one had dived head-first into a doorway. I told Kit to get a grip on herself, climb into the front of the car and get us out of here. I saw a flash of silken clad leg as she obeyed.

The guy in the doorway saw her too and took a pot shot at us. He missed and I winged one of those tiny slugs in his direction. He must have recognized the small explosion of my pop-gun and sneered at it because he came out of the doorway and streaked down the street.

He was a wise guy. He knew very well that Annie Oakley couldn’t have hit the Public Library at a hundred yards with a gun like that. I gave him a chance. I pride my self in doing that — when I’m not being shot at. He paid no attention to my yell. I pulled the .38 out of my shoulder clip and brought it down slowly. He was getting set to round a corner. I snapped one at him and it connected. He reeled to one side, hit a building wall and started sliding all the way down it.

I called to Kit: “Drive over there where he is. We’re going to take him ourselves — before the cops come.”

She sent the car rolling down. I hopped off the running board, moved up to the guy carefully. Some of those punks have a habit of playing it dead and then snap shooting anybody who comes close. This one didn’t. He was out like a light.

I dragged him over, hoisted him into the back of the car and then returned to pick up his hat and gun. Kit got away from there fast. We weren’t bothered. Sleepy people in city apartments always think shots are backfiring. Most of the time such a noise is.

We took our wounded prisoner into Kit’s building through the service door and up via the freight elevator. She punched the bell beside her door. A woman of about forty let us in. She was straight as a ramrod with glasses looped around her neck by a black silk cord. One of the super-efficient kind, though this one had a figure and knew it. Her name, Kit told me, was Rose Waverly and she was a secretary-companion.

She saw the blood and gave a little bleat of alarm that drew somebody else from inside the apartment. I wondered how many people would get to know about this. The man was one of those who are big in all directions without being fat. He had a shock of thick black hair that stood up as straight as a Prussian haircut and added inches to his already overwhelming height. His eyes were deep set. I’d seen eyes I liked better.

“What the hell...?” he demanded of everybody in general.

I didn’t stop to explain. I merely suggested that I could use a piano mover and he helped me lug the wounded man into a bedroom to which Kit directed us. I opened my prisoner’s shirt. He was wounded dangerously close to the upper part of the right lung. There was no bleeding at the mouth which was a good sign. I frisked him and took away a swivel knife. There was nothing else by which he could be identified.

I swung around to face the woman in black. “Sit down here, beside the bed. When he wakes up, let me know at once. Or if he begins wheezing, just sing out and I’ll come running.”

I took Kit by one elbow and piloted her down a corridor and into the living room. It was put together like Kit — neatly, with plenty of sweep. Cool and comfortable to look at. I sat down on a chair that looked like a barrel cut in half.

“Now,” the big lug appraised me with a glance and didn’t seem worried, “what’s this all about.”

“Tony Weston.” Kit waved a hand at him. “My fiance.”

I took it from there. “My name is Tucker. I’m a private detective. If you want to know any more about my business, it will have to come from Kit. I’ll only say she did not hire me. That mug in the next room, with two others, jumped the car. Kit’s driver must have been shanghaied someplace because the guy who drove kept his face forward and pulled in at the rendezvous point where he was to meet the others.”

“But the other pair...?” Weston wanted to know.

“The driver hit the air. The second guy got his hand nicked when I shot him.”

“You did that? A little guy like you?”

Kit stirred herself. “He told me he was a fireball. He wasn’t lying, Tony. Now go home, will you? What’s the sense in your getting involved?”

“I will not. I intend to stay...”

“Get out,” she said wearily. “You’ll be shocked at some of the things I have to tell Stacy Tucker. You won’t want to marry me...”

“I’m beginning to think I almost made a bad error. Yes, I will go. Expect me tomorrow, Kit. We have some serious things to discuss.”

She sighed when the door closed. “There goes my last chance to live like any decent human being. And don’t cluck your tongue at me, Stacy. You think he’ll be back? He comes from Boston. He thought I was a very nice girl even if I happened to be an actress.” She picked up a cigarette and lit it. “I get so damned tired sometimes...”

“Kit,” I said, “in those golden days of long ago — how many men did you correspond with — and write letters as you did Leon Harwood?”

She looked at me narrowly through the fog of smoke. “Are you trying to find out how old I am, by any chance? I guess there were a few. I thought one of them might — just might — be the one to give me a boost up the ladder. None of them were until I met Wendy Holmes. He thought I was good... Stacy, you’re not going to bring Holmes into this crazy mess?”

“Why not? It’s a popular swimming pool. Everybody’s diving in. Look, I want to talk with Rose Waverly before she faints dead away from watching a wounded man. Take over and send her out, will you, Kit?”

Rose Waverly looked a trifle pale around the corners of her mouth. The hand which brought those incredible glasses to her nose shook a bit. She was willing to talk.

“I’ve been with Kit since she first went on the stage — when Wendy Holmes gave her first chance. Prior to that I know little of her although even then she had a horde of boy friends. Most of them serious. She was... well, very attractive then.”

“She still is. How was the punk when you left him?”

“Groaning — coming out of it. I was glad you relieved me. I don’t like these things. The police should be called.”

“They will be when I get back. Stay with Kit and don’t let anybody at all in.”

I was half out of the door when Kit screamed. I did a sprint down the hall, nearly took a header on the waved floor and barged right past Kit into the room. The punk I’d plugged was a very good punk now. He was dead. I bent over him and saw some blood on the bottom of the pillow. I walked out of the room backwards and closed the door. I told Kit and Rose to behave and keep quiet. Then I went out on a mission I didn’t like.

Wendell Holmes saw me at once, much to the disgust of his servant who tried to shoo me away. Holmes came into the room supported on a thick cane. He was about sixty and looked ninety. He wore a light blue dressing gown and blue slippers that were built like sandals. I gave it to him cold.

“Harwood is dead — bumped off — because of some letters he wrote to Kit Maxon and some she wrote to him. It’s the old, old blackmail stunt. I have to dig into Kit’s past and I understand you gave her a chance which made her a stage star. Why did you do this? You were a big shot in those days. You had better material all around you than Kit could have hoped to be.”

He smiled and I felt sorry for the guy. Age was the one thing he couldn’t stop and he was game enough to try and take it in his stride.

“You’re a shrewd person, Mr. Tucker. It is your impression that Kit wrote certain letters to Harwood with the intention of blackmailing him. You think possibly, she did that to me also and I kicked in to the tune of making her a star. And don’t get me wrong, Mr. Tucker. She was a star. I made her one of the most famous and best liked actresses in this country. She wasn’t a very good actress, but she had what it took to draw the crowds.”

“Then it was a high-jack. She forced your hand and you gave her the chance because there was no other out?”

He closed his eyes and uttered a long sigh. “I really didn’t mind. I always wanted to take someone without talent and see what I could do. It worked. I was as gratified as she. They were good days. I regret nothing. Kit was a lot of fun, high-spirited as they came. We had fun.” He opened his eyes. They were dead looking. “See what I am now, Mr. Tucker.”

I thought he was going to cry and I got out as gracefully as possible. There were things to do. It looked very much as if Kit had engineered the whole thing. Back in those mellow days she’d deliberately set out to get as many men as possible into her trap. And she’d accomplished it, but then Wendy Holmes had come upon the scene and things changed. She didn’t have to go in for blackmail. What she had always wanted was hers now, and for a kid without much talent she’d done well enough.

But she was slipping, on the verge of being a has-been. If she was broke, as many of her type usually are, perhaps she saw a chance to put her blackmail schemes to work after all these years. In fact, her chances were even better than in the old days because her victims were now married, middle-aged, settled and probably much more wealthy. They’d pay to stay out of scandal. That’s the way Leon Harwood had reacted. The others would be the same. Maybe, if she’d gone through with her original blackmail scheme years ago, there might have been a murder. Over the years, murder had simply waited.

I taxied back to Kit’s apartment house and went in the front way this time, much to the surprise and disgust of the nancy on the desk. Kit let me in. I poured myself a light drink — and then another. It was good. It settled on my stomach like steak and potatoes.

I said: “Rose, this is washed up. Go call the cops. The rest is up to them. Concealing blackmail is one thing, hiding murder something else. I’ve got my license to think about.”

Kit said: “You know what this will do to me, Stacy?”

“You’re on the verge of a complete bust anyway,” I said indifferently. I could hear Rose dialing. I went over and lifted the lid of a lacquered cigarette box, took out a smoke and slipped my little .25 on top of the rest of them. I sat down beside the table on which the box rested. Rose told me the cops were on their way.

They took their time about it, but I told Kit what I’d found out. Before I finished, Kit looked her age. She wanted a cigarette. I gave her one because I didn’t want that toy gun found. She practically ate the cigarette.

“All right,” she admitted, “I did begin laying the ground work for blackmail eighteen years ago. Why not? The suckers I selected had too much money and too few brains. But Holmes gave me a break. I clicked and... well that’s all there is to it. I forgot all about those damned letters.”

“Until you realized this was your last season and things might get tough from now on,” I said without rancour. “It all fits, Kit. It won’t make nice copy...”

The buzzer sounded. I got up. “These guys must have very flat feet,” I said. “I could have sidestepped from the precinct to this building in half the time they took.”

I opened the door and stepped back with a gun prodding my middle. It was a pretty ample middle, I thought. I should do something about it but then, it seemed these two punks were going to take care of it for me. They were the pair who’d gotten away after the shooting fiasco.

One was a sphinx and the other thought he was tough. They shoved me into a chair, but neither realized what chair I steered for. The taller of the two wanted to know where his brother was.

“He’s dead in the bedroom down the hall. He died from the wound I ripped through him.”

“Go look,” the tall one ordered and his pal ambled out of the room and down the hall. I heard him open the door and then start back. I let my hand rest on the lacquered cigarette box. The one with the gun and the wounded hand didn’t pay much attention.

“Can I smoke?” I asked. “Or is that against the rules?”

He didn’t say anything. I lifted the lid, got my hands on the little gun and I was squeezing the trigger before he knew what happened. He tumbled backwards onto a divan. That right hand of his wasn’t going to be good for anything after this. I’d busted it with my first bullet and finished the job by shooting out part of his elbow.

I was running across the room as he fell. The smaller guy had seemed more dangerous to me and I wanted to meet him before he could get set. It worked too. He must have thought it was his pal who’d done the shooting and he had his own gun only half out of his pocket when he looked down the barrel of my pea shooter. I took away his rod, shoved him in front of me and we went into the room.

Before I’d crossed the threshold, a gun was being pushed against my ribs and a soft, feline voice was telling me to drop my gun. I did. That voice was deadly.

Rose Waverly said: “O.K., shamus, go over and sit down. Don’t reach for a cigarette again. Mack — he killed Buck Jordan. He could have called a doctor.”

Mack bent and picked up his pal’s gun. Everybody makes a mistake. I should have crippled that rod and every other one I got my hands on. I sat down before I was gunned down. Mack slapped me across the face with the muzzle of the Smith and Wesson. It drew blood and he liked that. His tall pal was still groaning and not too interested in what went on.

I said: “Be a sap. Go on and be a sap. Rose killed your pal. I told her to watch him and call a doctor if he showed any signs of going under. She shoved a pillow over his snoot and smothered him to death. If you don’t believe me, go back and take another look. You can tell by the blueness of his face that he was smothered. And there is blood on the bottom of the pillow.”

Mack didn’t move. He watched me every moment. “Rose — how about that? His face was blue and it don’t get that way if he croaked of a bullet.”

“This man is stringing you along. That’s all he has to offer — just wits. He’ll talk you out of that gun if you’re not careful. Mack, we’ve got to get out of here. Things have slipped.”

I chortled: “They sure have,” and felt about much like chortling as a baby with a safety pin stick-him where no safety pin should be. “Rose found the letters and decided to cash in. Because if Kit was through, Rose would be too. She knocked off Leon Harwood. I know, because when he died, Kit was on the stage finishing the last act. And Harwood was scared stiff of her. He had an idea she was behind the blackmail scheme. So did I. Shows you how wrong a smart guy can be. Bose went to Harwood’s home and he let her in. The whole place was locked up like a vault. I couldn’t get in without committing burglary. All I did was look through the window. Harwood would have trusted Rose. It’s those damn glasses with the ribbon. They’re as good a prop in real life as in the movies. He’d have been afraid to let Kit in and very distrustful of a stranger. But not of an efficient secretary who might give him the low-down on Kit.

“But Harwood made a mistake in confiding everything to Rose. He told her he’d employed me, that he was going to pay, but afterwards I’d heat up some sort of a trail. She sent three punks to get me. That stickup wasn’t aimed at Kit, but at me. Only I saw it coming and got set. I plugged your pal, but he wasn’t dying. I took him here for questioning and Rose knew he had to die. He was dead when Kit relieved Rose, but Kit wouldn’t know a dead person from a drunken stiff. She didn’t travel in our kind of society, Mack.”

“He’s lying, Mack,” Rose said in a deadly voice.

“He’s telling the truth,” I argued. “Why would I kill him? Or Kit for that matter? We needed him to get the truth. Rose couldn’t afford to have a half-sick, half-delirious man talking his head off. So she made certain he wouldn’t.”

Mack made up his so-called mind. “It don’t make any difference. You got to get plugged anyhow.”

He backed away and I braced myself. This looked very much like the end of a nice private detective agency. It never paid off much, but I liked the work. Not this part though. I was watching Kit. Rose was watching me. The guy on the divan was still yowling and watching nobody. I gave my head a very small nod and Kit threw back her head and emitted the wildest yell I’d ever heard. It dinned like a fire siren at close range. It made Mack turn. It would have made a wooden Indian turn.

And I had him. Low, with my right arm dragging down his gun hand. I don’t claim to be a gent. I sank my teeth into his wrist as far as they’d go and the gun dropped. Rose fired about that time. The slug smacked Mack through the thigh and he went sprawling. I scooped up his gun, jerked it into position and Rose made a dive for the door.

I planted one slug an inch from her right ear, another half an inch from her left and a third that must have burned some of that tightly coiled hair on top of her head. That did it. I had her cuffed to Mack by the time Kit started yelling into the phone.

“You ought to take more interest in your boss’s plays,” I chided Rose. “In the middle of the second act she yells her head off.”

“B-but not as loud as I screamed here,” Kit shuddered. “I knew what you meant when you nodded, Stacy. You realized I was going to scream anyway and I might as well do it up right. That was not acting.”

After they took Rose and the others away and I’d pacified the homicide lieutenant by letting him take full credit for the job, I put on my hat. Kit put her arms around me and kissed me on the chin. I didn’t kiss her back. I’m too old for that. So is she for that matter. If she’d been about twenty — well, who knows?