Black Mask (Vol. 33, No. 4 — November 1949)

Make with a Wake by John Krill

That lovely voice out of the blue could threaten me till doomsday — just so long as it didn’t...

I’ve had my share of threats. In fact, I’ve had more than is decent for one man to have. To most of them I’ve paid scant attention. I figure that if a guy is set on murder he’ll do it without any bragging. But I felt a decidedly unpleasant chill playing cops and robbers with my spine as I listened to the phone.

“Mr. Mike Trapper?”

The voice was low and sweet. My mind conjured up the image of a beautiful lass to fit such a voice. The picture was that of a lovely blonde. I’m partial to blondes.

The sweet voice got sweeter and I felt the first prickle of ice on my spine. “I just called to inform you that soon you’ll be dead, Mr. Trapper. Very dead.” There was a gentle sigh and the line went dead with a sharp click.

“Now what the hell?” I exclaimed.

It was the sweet sadness of that feminine voice that got under my hide. Those roaring with fury or trembling with hatred only made me cluck: “Tsk, tsk,” to the aggrieved party before I hung up. I’m a private dick and all private dicks make enemies. Yet there was a deadly earnestness in that sweet unknown voice that awoke an instinctive fear in me.

For a long time I stared about my office. The battered and scratched flat-topped desk with its blue vase of artificial tea roses. The two windows overlooking Dean Street. The olive-green filing cabinets and the photos of fighters, wrestlers, and luscious movie queens on the cream-colored walls.

“Mary!” I bawled out. “Mary!”

The chill was leaving me but I retained an unpleasantly vivid recollection, like a kid remembers the taste of castor oil or a razor strop. I heard the wild screeching of a warped drawer being shoved back and then the sharp clack-clack of high heels.

“How many times, you uncouth baboon,” Mary scolded as she came into the inner office, “have I told you that I’m not to be yelled at?”

My brother Andy followed her in with a grin on his face. He w as a year younger than I, but he was built like me and his features were enough like mine to sometimes confuse people.

“Sorry,” I muttered, but that didn’t stop Mary.

Mary Yancey was a golden blonde of twenty-five. Not one of your fragile doll-baby kind. She stood five-eight and weighed just enough to fill out her chassis the way one should be filled out. Her eyes were so blue that other blues looked lifeless. She was shaking an indignant finger under my nose. I thought she looked wonderful when she was mad. I also liked the way her thick, soft, pale golden hair, done in a plain upsweep, crowned her oval face. But I didn’t like Andy’s grin of enjoyment.

“I’m a lady,” Mary’s voice was concluding a very unflattering opinion of me, “and you’d better remember that.”

“Mary,” I gasped in a voice much weaker than necessary, “a party just called and told me I’d soon be dead.”

“Then they’d better hurry up before I cheat them of the pleasure!”

Andy roared heartily at this crack. Mary took him by the arm and said: “C’mon, Andy. Take your sister-in-law-to-be out to lunch.” Without a backward glance they walked out, leaving me to await my fate alone. Heartless.

My heels scratched the desk some more as I tilted the chair backward to do some heavy concentrating. It was no use. That voice was new to me. Half an hour later the phone rang. A sudden premonition of evil filled me as I reached for it.

“Mike... Mike — come to the Commodore Grill!” It was Mary’s voice frightened and tearful. “Andy’s been shot — killed!”

“Killed!” I groaned the ugly word as I raced out of the building and headed for the Commodore Grill. I saw the crowd from two blocks away.

Andy was sprawled on the sidewalk just in front of the entrance. He was dead. A load of heavy shot had hit him in the back. My eyes burned fiercely and a great grief swamped me so that I couldn’t see. Andy, my happy-go-lucky brother, lay there murdered.

An ambulance drew up and removed his body, after Horace Gill, lieutenant of the homicide detail, gave the order.

Mary was clinging to me and nearly hysterical with sorrow and fear. Lieutenant Gill came over and tapped Mary on the shoulder.

“Get into the squad car, Mary. Looks like some of the pellets hit you.”

I looked at Mary. A red stream was flowing thinly past the sleeve of her coat and staining her right hand.

“You better come with her,” Gill told me. I followed numbly.

On the way to the hospital, Mary told me what happened in a scarcely audible voice. She and Andy came out of the grill when a blue sedan pulled away from the curb. A sudden blast of gunfire burst from the car and Andy fell. The car picked up speed and vanished. That was all. No one caught the license number because the tag had been bent.

A painful sob choked in my throat. I knew why Andy had been killed. Somebody had mistaken him for me. By rights, it was I who should be on the slab.

“The voice,” I gritted to myself. “The voice on the phone.”

A single pellet was removed from Mary’s upper arm. Size three. I left her there to recover from the shock. Gill took me back to the office.

My mind was like a ball-bearing race. It sifted out every case I’d ever worked on. To help it I dragged out my files and studied them. Dead end. None of the ladies and gentlemen who had gone to prison lately because of my efforts had been released.

The two latest big cases concerned Count Josef Pillowski, a gent with a bogus nobility title for sale, and one Eli J. Witler, a blackmailer. I had placed both of them in storage a few months ago.

Neither had threatened me, something unusual among these lower-crust citizens. But I had no trouble reading the fond hopes of homicide-to-be that ran through their minds. Pillowski had almost saddled his phony title on a nobility-mad dowager with more bucks than sense. A suspicious member of the family had engaged me to delve into the count’s family tree. It didn’t take long to find out that the tree had flourished lustily in the cool of numerous prisons both here and abroad. Count Pillowski was then rapped for signing a few checks of noble size with the name of his bride to be.

Eli J. Witler was a blackmailer of the rottenest type. I got him engineering a badger game. He gave me a cold sneer as the judge gave him a permanent address for the next ten years. But Witler didn’t stay in the pen long. A landslide caught a crew of convicts working in a deep quarry at the foot of Sheer Canyon. Thousands of tons of rock and earth had engulfed the crew of ten men and two guards. No bodies had been recovered. Eli Witler had been a member of the unfortunate group.

“Who could have done it? Who could have done it?” I asked myself ceaselessly. I shook my head and answered, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” If only I knew the owner of that sweet voice.

Next morning I jockeyed my faithful car to the curb in front of St. John’s Hospital and went in to see my golden girl. She was happy to see me and appeared normal except for her bandaged arm.

I shook my head to the question in her worried blue eyes. “No leads, dear. Don’t know who or why.”

“Be careful, Mike.” Her whisper carried a low undertone of desperate fear.

“Sure, honey, sure.”

My hand patted my hip as I left her. But the other party carried the same kind of medicine and was in a position to use it first.

Robins warbled cheerfully in the green maple fronting the lawn. Little kids were having a circus chasing about the tiny playground. Everything and everybody was happy but me.

It’s a helluva feeling to walk down the street and wonder if the guy or jane approaching you is ready to let you have it. You get the same idea when a car slows down. That’s what it is when you don’t know who’s out to kill you.

I called Lieutenant Gill from my office. No, Homicide had nothing new. Just the wad from the shotgun shell that had killed Andy. A twelve-gauge loaded with number three shot.

Flopping wearily back in my swivel chair, I let my brain start on a mental merry-go-round. The phone rang and I swore at it.

“Hullo.” Then I was suddenly tense. It was the voice.

“Sorry about yesterday, Mr. Trapper,” it purred with honeyed sadness. “But we’ll make no mistake next time.”

A hard click killed the wire. But I heard more than just the voice this time. I’d heard the same thing the first time only it hadn’t registered in my thick skull. The sharp drumming of riveting guns had come clearly over the wire.

Damn near breaking my neck, I ran out of the building and hopped into my car.

A building project in our small industrial town is cause for public rejoicing. The newspaper plays the event up big and starts printing expansion graphs. There was only one structure being built at present that required extensive riveting. That was a slaughterhouse on the eastern outskirts of town. The section was mostly swampland with a dozen or so little cottages along the road.

I had something to go on now. The phone call had come from the vicinity of the new meat packing plant. Also the caller had said “we.” That meant more than one. I smiled grimly. The trail was still cold, but soon it would warm up — provided I didn’t catch a permanent chill.

I slowed down as the skeleton framework of steel beams met my sight. The air vibrated with the drone of riveting guns and I saw tiny figures moving over the steel ribs of the structure. Cat-tails showed their brown batons for a huge area around. Redwings flew about or rested on the wires running from the utility poles. Great patches of swamp sumach dotted the landscape on both sides of the gravel road. Then the sparsely-spaced cottages appeared on small elevations of dry ground.

The call, I had no doubt, came from one of those houses. Which one? Who lived in it? Since the murderer knew me by sight and was unknown to me, it would be sheer stupidity to show myself in the neighborhood. I pulled my car behind a concealing clump of elderberry shrubs and sat down on the running board. I’d have to do some waiting.

About five o’clock I spotted whom I was waiting for. A kid of about fourteen pulling a wagon loaded with newspapers. I left my concealment and pretended that I was strolling down the dusty road.

“Hi, son.” I said, smiling at him.

“Hi.” He grinned back, freckled and slightly pug-nosed.

“Can you give me a list of all the people who live around the new building, son?” My hand twisted a dollar bill.

“Sure, mister.” The kid’s eyes were glued on the bill. He yanked out his route list and started copying it on a grimy bit of ruled tablet paper. “Gee, thanks,” he cried happily as I gave him the buck.

I pulled out after he was gone from sight.

Back in my room at the YMCA, I phoned the hospital.

“Hi, Sugar.”

“Oh, Mike! I’m so glad to hear from you.”

“I’m happy to hear you say that, baby,” I returned softly. “The ball is ready to start rolling in the morning. Just a little scheme I thought up.”

“Tell me, darling.”

“Not now, hon. Let you know when I visit you. Tomorrow.”

To my surprise, my Mary was at her desk next morning.

“Honey!” I exclaimed, “why aren’t you still in the hospital?”

Right away I wrapped a morale-stimulating hug around her. She couldn’t put up much of a struggle because her arm was still hung in a linen sling.

“I’d hate to think of what’d happen to me if both my arms were out of commission, you big ape.” She closed her eyes and cooperated in a long kiss of lingering sweetness.

Thinking of Andy sobered us both. I pulled out the list of names the kid had given me.

“Copy this list on the typewriter, sweetheart. With a carbon.”

Her left hand did it a lot faster and neater than I could with my one-finger system. I took the carbon, leaving her the original.

“Now, babe,” I said with rising anticipation, “get the phone directory and get the telephone numbers for each of the names. They all live on the same road, Parkhill Extension. Then ring each party and say you’re selling magazine subscriptions. Get them to talk about a minute. I’ll be listening in on the extension phone.”

Mary’s eyes began to shine. I didn’t have to tell her what I was after.

The receiver of the extension phone was against my ear the moment she got the first number. No soap. On the fourth call, damned if the party didn’t want to subscribe to the magazines Mary mentioned. Mary kept ringing the numbers and the remaining names grew fewer. I was becoming worried now. Then the tenth call had me alert in my chair. It was the voice!

“Yes, this is the Milford residence,” a sweet-sad voice enunciated. “Magazine subscriptions? No — no. We already take those you’ve mentioned. I’m sorry.”

I hugged Mary from sheer joy. “That’s the party I want!” It was on the list as Mr. Elmer Milford, R.F.D. No. 1, Parkhill Extension. “Take the rest of the day off, hon. I got business.”

I was gone before she could protest.

Nor did it take long to rent a panel truck and borrow a pair of greasy overalls. My face was smudged with grime, and the brim of a sadly battered black hat covered my forehead.

I don’t smoke, but a cigarette was between my lips as I drove the panel truck past the slaughterhouse. The workmen were scattered around eating lunch. The first house appeared and I slowed down to ten miles an hour. My eyes were searching the mailboxes. “Bond,” I read them off, “March — Tadaroff — Kyle.”

Then at a box well separated from the rest, I found the name of Elmer Milford.

“Things will be even now,” I said harshly to myself.

I looked at the small green and white cottage set well back from the gravel road. The lawn was overgrown with tough clumps of crab grass. A clothesline sagged listlessly under the weight of dull gray bed sheets, flesh — colored woman’s lingerie of decidedly ample size, and three man’s shirts about size fifteen.

“Must be a little guy,” I figured from the shirts.

The truck made it possible to drive slowly without arousing suspicion. Just a deliveryman looking for an address. Going past the house and into a slight dip, I pulled off into a dusty, rutted lane out of sight of the road.

The carroty perfume of Queen Anne’s lace filled the warm air as I stole past patches of reddening blackberries toward the little cottage. A whistled tune struck my tense ears. Somebody was coming down the road.

A break in the feathery sumacs revealed a little guy in a straw hat, blue rayon shirt and white slacks heading for the house. He was whistling the Poet and Peasant Overture with great animation. His face was unrecognizable in the distance but I liked the rendition of the overture. It was true in key and flowed like a soothing rivulet.

It wasn’t hard to work my way closer. The whistler turned into the walk and entered the front door of the cottage without knocking. My pulse began to pound. Was that the guy who murdered Andy?

Mosquitos came in clouds to welcome me. Biting flies and gnats started to drill for blood on my exposed face and hands. A helluva position.

Pretty soon a big florid woman with peroxide hair, a jutting chin, and a heavy muscular build came out at the rear of the house. She wore shapeless blue slacks and a sweater. A big kettle of steaming water was in her strong, thick-fingered hands. She set the kettle down gently and entered the chicken pen crowded with Buff Orpingtons.

A terrified squawking rose from the big rooster she neatly caught inside the roost. One capable hand seized the bird by the head. She gave it a twirl and the rooster flapped headless to the ground. It fluttered briefly while the blood ran redly from the stump of the neck. Then she picked it up and dunked it in the big kettle of steaming water.

Glancing toward the house, she called: “Elmer!”

I got a powerful shock. The voice was sweetly-sad — musical. It was the one I’d heard over the phone.

I shuddered. That dame certainly looked capable of doing me in. But I didn’t know her. I had never seen her before.

The little guy came out. I could see him clearly now. His eyes were shifty and black, his skin dark. The fingers were long and slim like those of a musician — or safe cracker. A foxy chin, clean shaven, hung in a slight upsweep beneath a long and sharp nose. I didn’t know him either. He was about forty-nine or fifty.

What the hell was all this? I was irritated now. There had been little doubt in my mind that I’d find somebody I knew hiding out here. This couple awoke not the faintest recollection. Was I all wet in tracing the phone call? But no. The woman was talking again and there was no mistaking that voice. I was puzzled. I crept up closer and lay flat behind a thick lilac bush.

The woman was evidently becoming angry as she dressed the rooster. “Quit stalling and get Trapper,” she snapped.

“Yeah, yeah, Rose,” the little guy whined.

He went into the house after her, and I beat it back to the concealed truck.

I planned to return that same night for a bit of real work. The whole thing looked screwy to me. And I couldn’t do a thing about it legally. No tangible proof that they’d killed Andy. No motive. I drove back to town.

It was already dark when I left my room at the YMCA and hurried toward the parking lot where I kept my car. A storm was due to break any minute. The streets were deserted and a strong wind cried between the buildings. In the gloom I could hear the crunch-crunch of the lot attendant walking from the end of parking lot.

Then I heard him break into a whistle. My blood froze. He was whistling the Poet and Peasant Overture. The melody soared on velvet wings, sweetly, exquisitely. The whistler could be but one person — Elmer Milford.

Too late for me to retreat. I went on in seeming unconcern. My Savage was ready for action. My hands started to sweat as the attendant came closer. It was Milford, all right.

I said: “Where’s the other attendant — Al Radski?”

“Gone to see a movie, sir.”

But I knew different. Milford had found out where I kept my car. He knew that I would come for it. He must have put Al Radski out of the way, probably with a sock on the head.

We walked toward my car and I made sure that Milford didn’t get behind me.

Milford said: “It’s going to be a mean night.” I knew he wasn’t referring to the muttering storm.

When we reached the car, he stuck his hand into his hip pocket as if to pull out a rag to wipe off my windshield. My .38 Savage filled my hand so fast that the guy froze like stone. My hand dipped into his pocket and pulled out a cheap Spanish automatic of .25 caliber. In a surge of rage I slapped him twice across the face. His cap flew off, showing intense surprise in the foxy features.

“Get moving, Milford!” My voice rattled like a can full of pebbles.

I prodded him into the attendant’s shanty. Radski’s cap lay on the floor, but Radski was nowhere in sight. I batted Milford on the jaw. He went out cold.

I found Radski inside of a battered car. He was unconscious from a blow on the head. Returning to the shanty, I picked Milford up and tossed him into my car. Then I phoned the cops. They would take care of Radski.

Rain pattered like liquid shot on the roof of the car. I had pulled up beside the new slaughterhouse and waited for my friend to come to. A little rainwater judiciously applied helped. It was pitch black and the wind snarled and yelped in the dreary night.

“Start talking, Mister,” I snapped at the groaning man.

“Don’t know whatcha mean.”

“Suit y’self, bud.” The Savage made a mean sound as I cocked it. “You murdered my brother with a shotgun. I ain’t got the kind of evidence that’ll hold up in court. So I’m just gonna shoot you now and roll you out into the ditch. Nobody will know who did it.” Opening the car door, I squeezed out first. “Outside, punk!”

His thin face was drawn and white in the faint glow of the panel light. The dripping of the rain and the moaning of the wet wind had the psychological effect I hoped for.

“I’ll... I’ll talk, Trapper!”

“That’s better,” I grunted and got back in. “My brother was killed by mistake, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah. You see—”

“Why are you so damned anxious to kill me? I don’t know you or your wife.”

He licked his thin lips. “We was forced into it, Trapper.” I listened in stony silence. “A party has something on me. Blackmailing me and my wife to do this thing. Honest, we didn’t want to do it.” He was pleading now. “But neither Rose or I had anything to do with your brother’s killing.”

“Then who did?”

“Can’t you let me go, Trapper?” There was genuine fear in the staring black eyes. “We’ll go away an’—”

“Maybe. But what’s to keep the blackmailer from doing me in? What about my brother? I got to know.”

“It’ll mean curtains if he finds out.”

“You didn’t worry about it meaning curtains for me, rat. I’m tired of talking. Get outside.”

“Wait!” There was cringing terror now. “It... it’s Eli Witler. He—”

“What are you handing me? Witler died a few months back in a landslide.”

“No... no! He escaped. He went for a drink of water and the slide missed him. Then he made his way to me. I... I escaped from Stockton Penitentiary. I’d served two years of a twenty-year rap. Witler threatened to turn me in if I didn’t help him get you.”

“Where is Witler now?”

“He’s at the house with my wife. He shot your brother by mistake. The phone calls were intended to scare you outa your pants first. Neither my wife nor I knew he intended to pull a killing until after he shot your brother. He said he’d turn us both in as accessories if he was caught. So we had to do what he ordered.”

It sounded like Witler, all right.

I nodded gravely. “Okay, Milford. C’mon. We’re gonna pay him a little visit.”

Above the patter and swish of the rain I could hear the chattering of Milford’s teeth. A quarter of a mile from the house, I hung another one on Milford’s jaw. He folded up like a road map. I had him tied in a jiffy, then left him in the car.

I was glad for the wind and rain. It was impossible to hear me moving about outside. An inch of clear space between the blind and sash permitted me to peek into the kitchen.

I swore under my breath. There sat Eli Witler at a porcelain-top table. He was drinking beer. Milford’s big wife was weepy-eyed by the range.

Edging up to the kitchen door, I gently grasped the knob and tried it. It turned. With my Savage in my hand I suddenly thrust the door open.

Eli Witler, surprise written all over his pock-marked face, acted fast. The glass of beer he’d been drinking came flying at me, splashing my face. The Savage cracked once as I tried to connect. But the beer had blinded me.

“Stop, Witler!” I roared. The slamming of a door answered me.

“Come and get me, shamus!”

Rose was screaming shrilly.

“Shut up!” I shouted at her. She collapsed into a chair.

Witler was in one of the bedrooms. I snapped off the kitchen light. Pitch black. Holding my breath I listened for the sound of a window being raised. It came. I pounded for the kitchen door, tore it wide open, then slammed it shut. But I stayed inside of the kitchen.

The ruse worked. Thinking I’d run outside to intercept him, Witler rushed back into the kitchen from the bedroom. My automatic began to pump bullets as I snapped the light on. He shot back once and dropped helplessly to the floor. His slug laid my left cheek open.

“Too bad it wasn’t over a bit farther,” he snarled at me. Five red spots appeared over his white shirt and merged into one great crimson one. The hate was still in his eyes when he died.

The hefty blonde was in a dead faint. I phoned the law from the living room and flopped on the sofa. Then I reached for the phone once more.

“Sugar,” I said huskily, “the job is done.” Then I lay back to wait for the cops.