Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 27, No. 3. Whole No. 148, March 1956

Lucky Cop by Steve Fisher[2]

Six months ago we received a letter from Steve Fisher which contained what we considered remarkable news — statistics so extraordinary that we take the liberty of passing them on to you, as an interesting item of information. Steve Fisher reminded us that we published his story titled “Goodbye Hannah” in the second issue of EQMM — back in the winter of 1941. Since that appearance in EQMM fourteen years ago, “Goodbye Hannah” has been bought and shown on TV (we don’t know how many times) — but much more important, it has been reprinted in books and other magazines no less than fourteen times! An average of once every year since EQMM first printed the story in 1941!

And then Steve Fisher told us something else — in its own way, even more astonishing. Certainly it made us feel good — no, it did even more, it gave us a real glow — and especially it made us happy for all the authors we publish, both old “pros” and newcomers. In the October 1953 issue of EQMM we published Mr. Fisher’s story titled “Day Never Came.” Would you believe it, only three days after the October 1953 issue appeared on the newsstands, “Day Never Came” sold to TV! [Authors, please take notice!]

Now we bring you another story by Steve Fisher, and you will find that “Lucky Cop” has all the heart-pull and emotional impact that made “Goodbye Hannah” one of the most popular stories ever to appear in EQMM. [TV producers, please take notice!]

He moved across the sidewalk in the rain, and he was aware that something was wrong with him — though he could not tell what it was and he was not even sure when it had started. He kept wanting to be casual to prove it was only a mood. He saw a uniformed cop at the door of the apartment and recognized him.

“Hello, Mike.”

“Hello, Byron, you got this?”

“Sure,” said Byron, “I got it. All the crummy little details.” That sounded like him, he thought; that sounded like what they expected him to say. Now that he was a detective.

“Well, that’s what you get when you’re third class, Byron — all the routine details. But they’ll be moving you up. They got you out of uniform fast enough, and you won’t be long going to the top. You’re a smart cop.”

A lucky cop, you mean, Byron thought; I was in harness too, but they took me out of it and gave me a badge to carry around. Why don’t you say what you mean? You guys hate me because I’m lucky.

What he replied was, “Well, it’s better than sharpening pencils.”

Then he was inside, going to the elevator, and there was no fooling himself now — he was on edge. He was ready to jump on people, even those who handed him bouquets. His fist was closed and he could feel his pulse beat in the palm of his hand. He could feel a heaviness in him it was impossible to shake. He rode to the fourth floor and got out.

There was a cop by the door of her apartment. This one didn’t know him so well.

“Hello, Mr. Sykes. Ryan and Levine were here and left. O’Donnel came, but he didn’t stay long. Nobody else has been inside.”

“Fingerprint man been around?”

“No, sir. They figured there was time for that in the morning, since she’s already confessed.”

Byron nodded, opened the door.

“Rather a closed case, isn’t it?” asked the cop.

“Yeah, closed,” said Byron.

He was inside then, shutting the door behind him, so that he was alone in her apartment. He was in the living room where Joel Martin had been found. Joel Martin had owned an important night club, so his dying was important.

He stood there, just the other side of the door, looking around. Rain spattered across the window opposite him, and in his nostrils there was the flat taste of stale cigar smoke; yet through it he seemed to be aware of her, of her perfume, her personality; the soft, fragrant odor of life that was Hope Miller. Her picture stood on the mantel. The place had been cleaned up a bit. The first-class men had already left, taking away the principal evidence: the gun, the cigarette butts, a broken watch, a morning tabloid. There was just the apartment, and little routine things still to be taken care of — everything material itemized, inspection of the floor and the walls — little routine details. Later, outside, he would begin talking to the people she had known. Not that they would contribute anything — he was just the echo who followed in the wake of an important case.

He moved to the mantel and stared at her picture. The hair did not show red, but he could see it that way; nor did her cheek bones look so high, nor her eyes so soft, as they actually were. He touched the frame of the picture, and saw that his hand trembled.

He remembered when he had seen her for the first time — in the Tombs just an hour ago. It had been the arraignment. She was beautifully dressed — she looked like a show girl, all right; she stood very straight, and when she had spoken her voice had been soft and clear.

“Guilty,” she said.

She had said that, and she had already signed her confession; no one bad barked or screamed at her to get it. They were all very kind. A matron took her away. Byron Sykes had been standing there near the door as she passed. He had been so close he could have reached out and touched her, and he had noticed then that her face was pale. Behind the shining defiance in her eyes, he had seen fear. All his life he had been learning to detect things like that. It was that fear he remembered most sharply.

She hadn’t seen him at all; she hadn’t even known he was there.

He went to work on the living room. He ripped up the carpet. He listed things in a notebook. He walked all around the room — nothing escaped him. Yet all the while there was a heaviness pressing in his lungs so that it was hard for him to breathe. He had never been so conscious that he was alone, nor of rain dribbling down a pane of glass.

He wanted to get out of the place where she had lived. But he couldn’t get out — not yet.

He went into the bedroom last. He felt funny about it. He tried to be business-like so that he wouldn’t give way to anything. He opened the door of her closet. He saw the gowns, the shoes; a sweater folded and put on the shelf. He kept trying to concentrate on what was routine detail, possibly evidence, but all that was in his mind was her soft voice:

“Mr. Martin arrived shortly after I came back from the club. I had sent for him.”

“You had a quarrel?” the District Attorney had asked.

“Yes.”

“What about?”

“A woman.”

“What’s her name?”

“It isn’t necessary to involve her. Joel — Mr. Martin was very fond of her. I was jealous. I had this gun. I wanted to show him how serious I was. Well—”

“He tried to take the gun from you?”

“He intended to. He came toward me I told him to stay back, but he kept coming toward me. So I fired.”

“No one heard the shot?”

“The walls are soundproof,” she had said.

“Why didn’t you call the police at once?”

“I didn’t know that I wanted to — that is, at first. I didn’t know very much of anything. Later I realized it was all I could do. So I called.”

Byron Sykes rubbed his hand across his face. He sat on the bed and went through the drawer in the night-stand where her telephone stood. There was a small brown book — the names of friends, and their numbers. He saw a number scrawled on the inside cover. There was no regular Manhattan book in the apartment, and this was possibly a number she had got from Information, and had marked down. He called it.

A dullish voice came on: “Grand Central Station. Information.”

He hung up, stuck a cigarette in his mouth, and lit it. He walked over to the bedroom window and looked out. She had lived more in this room than in the other. He could feel her here, as though she were with him.

He tried to understand what it was about her that made him feel the way he did. Her glamor, maybe. He went to the dressing-table mirror and looked at himself. He was pale, too, and there was a queer brightness in his eyes. He was hard, but he was young, and he looked young. She was about his age, he guessed, but that was the only common ground between them. He was a local boy — public school in Manhattan, then Columbia University extension courses, finally police school. He had decided at the age of ten to become a cop and from that time on everything in his life had built toward that end. He had never seriously considered anything else: he took out girls now and then, but they had failed to hold his interest. Compared to this show girl, Hope Miller, he was a hick. He was just ordinary.

“And now crazy,” he said to the mirror. “Now you’re nuts.”

He went down to the manager’s office.

“I’ve got a couple of questions.”

The manager shrugged. “Listen, mister, I’ve answered a million of them.”

“All right,” Byron snapped, “you’ll hear a couple more. What kind of traffic did Hope Miller have coming in and out of here?”

“Traffic?”

“Friends, pal — you know what I mean. Did she ever have Joel Martin with her?”

“Well, I don’t stand around looking to see who the tenants bring in. So, I didn’t see him. But that doesn’t prove he wasn’t here.”

Byron shoved back his hat. “Okay, did you ever notice anyone?”

“Yes. A girl friend. Young girl, about eighteen. The reason I remember her is that one of the elevator boys told me this girl was living here for about a week — with Hope Miller.”

“Know who she was?”

“Another show girl, I guess. They often do that. One of them gets broke and the other will take her in till she gets a job.”

Byron left.

The cop at the door was still there. “Well, how’d it go?”

“Cold turkey.”

He walked in the rain, not particularly conscious of it; his felt hat was crushed out of shape and water dripped from the brim onto his face. He walked, thinking only of the apartment, and then, in his mind’s eye, putting her in it: doing the normal things of life, eating and sleeping, playing the radio, watching late television.

He stepped into a drugstore and phoned from a booth.

“There was a girl that lived with Hope Miller.”

“Yeah, we know. She was the twist this Joel Martin was stuck on, and the reason for the fight. But she left a day before the murder, and Hope Miller’s still good friends with her — anyway, she won’t tell who she is or where we can find her. So far nobody knows this dame. Not that it matters so much, this case being like it is. You stick to what you’re supposed to do and don’t worry about any other angles.”

When he came out of the drugstore he flagged a taxi. He knew he was trying to punch a hole in the best airtight confession Homicide had had for months. In ordinary circumstances he could have seen things clearly, weighed values, but now he didn’t know whether he had a hunch or was just trying to prove he was lucky.

He went to the night club and had a look at her dressing room. They hadn’t done much to it. The beaded gown she wore when she was under the spotlight still hung in the closet. Her cosmetics were on the dresser. He went through the drawers. There were matches and a half-empty pack of cigarettes. He picked a wilted orchid out of the wastebasket. He looked around, then he stuck it in his pocket. He found one of her professional portraits and thought of taking that too, but he didn’t.

He went out and found the stage manager.

“Yeah,” the manager said, “Mr. Martin picked her up now and then, but there were other guys too. She didn’t play favorites much. And she didn’t hang around when her turn was done.”

Byron went out.

He followed the routine circuit for the next two days and didn’t dig up anything startling. Then they asked him to see a kid named Roger Harding who was merely one of the many names listed among her acquaintances. They didn’t think Harding was important because he was younger than Hope, and she always picked older men. It was just that she’d known him.

“The Hardings are more social than rich since their crack-up on Wall Street,” the first-class man had told him, “but they have got prestige, so go easy on the kid. When you get the report in on young Harding we’ll probably take you off the case. Everything’s pretty well sewed up against her. Only, of course, we’d like to find this girl that lived with her...”

So he went to see Roger Harding. The kid lived alone in an apartment. His folks were in the country.

He was a tall good-looking youngster with curly black hair, a pale face, and dark eyes. He was a chain smoker, and walked up and down, while a pop-eyed Boston bull sat on a silk cushion in one corner and blinked at the proceedings.

Byron went down the routine list of questions. Yes, Roger had known her — known her fairly well. He had always thought she was a fine girl. No, he didn’t know anything about the murder.

Then Byron thought about the Grand Central Station number scrawled in the brown book, and he went on his own for a moment. All his life people had said he was lucky the way things broke for him. So he played his luck now, stabbed out without knowing what he was talking about.

“This girl that left town on the train the night of the murder... how about her?”

“What girl?” Roger Harding took the cigarette out of his mouth.

“You know, the one you were sweet on.” Just luck, Byron thought, play it, ride it. He could tell now that the boy knew something definite, the way he acted.

Harding laughed. “Oh, you mean Helen.”

“Helen?”

“Helen Wood. Hope’s known her for a long time. She goes to school in Virginia. Comes to New York only once in a while.”

“I see. She’s your girl?”

“I’m engaged to her, if that’s what you mean.”

Byron said, “Then of course you know what school she’s in?”

Harding knew. Byron had bluffed over the first stumbling block, and it was all easy from there on in. This was the girl who had vanished. This was the girl the first-class men wanted to see. As if Hope Miller’s confession wasn’t enough, they had to build up more evidence against her: establish motive sworn to by witnesses. This was the angle they wanted on the missing girl, and Byron had it now.

Only when he was on the street again he changed his mind about sending in the report. He’d gone this far alone, so he might as well go the rest of the way. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want to hurt Hope Miller if he could help it.

They took him off the case, but he asked for two days’ leave of absence and got them.

He flew to Virginia.

Helen Wood was very pretty, and sweet, yet adult-looking. She seemed more than her eighteen years. She didn’t know anything of what had happened — hadn’t heard of or read about the murder.

“It’s about Joel Martin that I came,” he said, and strictly speaking that was right. “We just want some facts about him, and we thought you could answer a few questions for us.”

She laughed. “But what could I tell you?” She had red hair and delicate features; her skin was very soft.

Hope had red hair too, and looking at Helen, Byron said, “What’s the connection between you and Hope Miller? You staying with her, and that stuff?”

For a moment she didn’t answer, then she said, “Hope’s my sister.”

“Sister?”

She nodded. “Miller is only a stage name. But — well, Hope doesn’t tell about us being related because — since our folks died a long time ago, she’s sort of taken care of me, and she wanted me to marry into a good family. She thought that her being a show girl might hurt my chances.”

“Oh.” Byron just looked at her.

“As for Mr. Martin, the night-club owner, he did take me around a little while I was in New York, but that was all Roger’s fault.”

“Roger Harding?”

“Yes... I’m engaged to him, but — well, sometimes he’s such a little nut. He took me to Mr. Martin’s gambling place, then deliberately left me alone. Mr. Martin noticed how embarrassed I was and offered to take me home. He said Roger had been drinking and wouldn’t be leaving for hours.”

“So you went with Martin?”

“Just to spite Roger, of course. I had dinner with Mr. Martin the next day.”

“Did you see Roger Harding again?”

“Yes. But he acted awfully funny. As though he were sick. He didn’t seem to be interested in me any more. He took me out on my last night in New York, but then he got terribly drunk, and I left him. I went to my sister’s club and told her I’d have to go to the station alone. You see, Hope had a show at midnight — just the time the train was pulling out.”

“Did you see Martin again?”

“No. I went back to Hope’s apartment and got my bag, then took a taxi to Grand Central.”

“One more thing. Does your sister own a gun?”

“Yes. It belonged to my father. She tells people she keeps it under her pillow. It’s sort of a joke among our friends.”

Byron nodded. “And did she know you were going around with Mr. Martin?”

Helen dropped her eyes. “Yes. She didn’t like it.” Then she laughed. “I remember she said, ‘If I thought that man was bothering you, I would kill him!’ ”

Byron stuck a cold cigarette in his mouth and looked away...

On the train back he kept listening to the click of the wheels, and thinking of Hope the day she had made that confession. He kept telling himself it wasn’t hunch any more, it was logic. Pure police logic. Any dumb rookie could see it now. He’d have to go to Joel Martin’s club first, then to the apartment house where Hope had lived, and after that...

He went to the night club, then to the apartment house.

Now he was back to see Roger Harding. It was afternoon, and Harding was wearing slacks and a sports shirt. The Boston bull was chasing a rubber ball. Harding stirred himself a long drink, then flopped down in a chair and stretched out his legs.

“What is it this time?”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Byron said, “but I’ve got a couple of things to say. You can then judge for yourself whether I should have come to see you again or not.”

Harding lit a cigarette, shook out the match.

Byron watched him, then he said, “Look, I’ll tell you how it is. Your folks are next to broke, and that night you gambled at Joel Martin’s place and got in pretty deep.”

“What night?” Harding jerked forward.

“The night you were with Helen Wood and left her alone so long Martin had to take her home. I was around and the boys told me all about it. You dropped nearly a hundred thousand dollars, didn’t you?”

Harding rose. “What of it?”

“As I say, your folks lost their money on Wall Street and they couldn’t pay off for you — you knew it was no good even asking them. Your father has already borrowed up to his neck to keep his business going. It was bad for you, because Joel Martin was tough. You’d heard of welshers that had got killed. You were scared to death Martin would have you bumped off. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“No!”

“I think it is. I think it depressed you, to put it mildly. You got desperate. Helen said you acted sick — You were sick all right. That last night she was here you had a date with her, but you got crocked. While you were high as a kite you got the idea you could kill Martin. It was either him or you, you figured.”

Harding shook his head. “That isn’t true!”

“No? Listen. You got the key to Hope Miller’s apartment out of Helen’s purse. How do I know? Because after I figured it out I asked the night clerk and he said that when Helen came in she said she’d lost her key and they had to let her into the apartment. They didn’t know her name, but they knew she was living there, so it was all right. Just a little everyday occurrence, but it fits.”

“It doesn’t prove murder.”

“No. But this will. We would have known if anybody not belonging in the apartment house had entered around the murder time. We questioned the doorman and the elevator boys, but they didn’t see anyone who didn’t live in the building. So we would have known if you’d come in the regular way. But you didn’t. I talked to Helen, and on the train back from Virginia I thought about it. You used the dog. This Boston bull. You came through the service entrance in the rear and went up in the delivery elevator. You claimed you didn’t like taking the dog in the front way because he was so frisky he always jumped on people. Well, the guy in the service elevator doesn’t know the tenants very well, so he didn’t think anything about it. And since this was a crime somebody had already confessed to, nobody thought of asking him. Only I did, just a little while ago. He remembered you — and the bulldog. Both going in and coming out.”

Roger Harding backed a little.

Byron unholstered the Police Positive and covered him.

“You knew Helen was leaving on the midnight train. So you told Martin to come up at twelve-thirty. You had plenty of time because Hope wouldn’t be through at the club until two. The way you got Martin to come up was by telling him Helen wanted to see him there alone. When he came, you were waiting. You knew where Hope kept her gun, and you had it. You shot him. You weren’t so drunk that you forgot to wipe your prints off the gun...”

“Listen,” Harding whispered. “I wouldn’t have let Hope get sentenced, honest... It’s just that women, they get acquitted on cases like these. But men haven’t got a chance—”

Byron scowled. “Guys like you haven’t a chance. And haven’t guts, either. Look at Hope Miller. She thought that when her kid sister came home to get her bag, she’d met Martin and had some trouble. She thought Helen killed him. So she destroyed all other clues, and took the rap herself. She thought the kid had run off scared, and because she had always protected her, she was going to this time.”

Byron got out his handcuffs.

He was standing on the shabby street outside the Tombs when she came out.

She was lovely. The afternoon sun filtered down through the dusty buildings and shone on her red hair; her face was aglow with smiles. She held herself straight. Newspaper cameras flashed. She walked across the sidewalk to the taxi.

She walked right past Byron, so close he could have reached out and touched her. But he was just a pale young man with a felt hat pushed back on his head, and she didn’t even see him.