Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 63, No. 2. Whole No. 363, February 1974

The Quick Red Fox by Gerald Tomlinson[10]

They say that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Old wives’ tale or not, it certainly isn’t true at EQMM. A kind of literary lightning has struck twice at EQMM surprisingly often. Once again a new writer has sent us a second story before we’ve had time to publish the first; so once again we are happy to give you, back to back in the same issue, a first and second story by a writer who has never before been published.

And once again we marvel at the startling contrast, both in style and substance, that the two stories offer. Our new writers are doing splendidly, thank you!

Read now how Gerald Tomlinson, to quote from his letter, “avoided the sophomore jinx”...

“I’m afraid you’ve failed the polygraph test, Mr. Older. In fact, you come across on it as a terrible liar.”

Billy Claiburne scowled at the earnest personnel secretary who had just spoken to him. “Drat and double drat. Does that mean I can’t get a job at Fargo Distillers?”

“Yes, I’m afraid it does. You have no idea how careful we have to be in this business. The amount of stealing that goes on here is something awful.”

Claiburne’s red-orange eyebrows rose in an expression of professional interest. “You don’t say.”

“Oh, yes. Just last week one of our fork-lift operators was arrested after setting up his own cocktail lounge in Cold Spring Harbor. It was stocked to the roof with Fargo whiskey, all stolen.”

“You can’t trust anybody these days, Miss Dillon. Now, if you’ll just point me toward the Men’s Room.”

The secretary glanced over her right shoulder, letting her eyes do the pointing. “Down that hall, five doors on the left, Mr. Older. I’m sorry about the lie-detector test.”

“Don’t let it worry you a bit,” said Claiburne, heading toward the teak-paneled canyon, wheezing as he went At 45 his body was scrawny and consumptive-looking, a liability in his line of work. But he had assets. His bespectacled blue eyes were brightly alert, his senses acute, and his mind was a cunning computer of risks.

At the end of the hall, in a small empty office lined with four-color posters for Old Chisholm Bourbon, he saw what he wanted, an IBM Executive typewriter. Entering the office, he pulled a printed note from the pocket of his red plaid jacket, laid it on the desk, stifled a cough, bent over, yanked the electric plug from a floor socket, and copped the 341st typewriter of his career. The note read:

For posterity he had provided an autograph, The Quick Red Fox, and underneath the signature he had scrawled 341/500.

It was past one o’clock, well into the lunch hour at Fargo Distillers. Voices issued from a cafeteria far down another hall, but Claiburne passed no one on his way to the side door of the two-story suburban office building. Into the passenger’s seat of his car went the IBM, into the driver’s seat went The Quick Red Fox himself, and off went the fastest typewriter thief in the East.

His destination was the C&M Typewriter Company of lower Manhattan, dealers in new and used typewriters, operating out of a shabby store in a rundown West Side neighborhood. He parked in his reserved spot in a red-signed, yellow-curbed tow-away zone, which was one of Police Sergeant Alex McSween’s many streetside sources of income.

Three doors toward Ninth Avenue the dusty plate-glass window of C&M offered the best deals in town on new typewriters, unheard-of low prices on used typewriters, and prompt repair service, no savings stated, on any make of typewriter.

“Hey, Jesse,” Claiburne rasped as he closed the door, “there’s an IBM in my car. Grab it before the blind beggar gets it. He’s eyeing it, and he looks like he could use a fix. Where’s Bats?”

“Up in Westchester, man. He said to tell you he’d be back at three.” Jesse Plummer, a retired railroad porter, started toward the front door at his Penn Central shuffle. Plummer treated The Quick Red Fox with easy familiarity, but Bats was quite another matter. Jesse regarded Bats Masterson, master criminal and Claiburne’s tycoon-partner, with mumbling, sycophantic awe. So did many other people.

Claiburne’s office, a cubicle in mauve enamel and frosted glass, was tucked in a corner at the right front of the store. The Fox shed his red plaid jacket — only a costume since Claiburne preferred dark pinstripes — and stepped through the doorway.

Instantly his left arm was twisted like a carriage-return bar as someone applied a sharp upward thrust on it from behind. Pinned nose-to-frost against the glass, he started to sputter. He was stopped by the affable growl of Sergeant Alex McSween. “Didn’t hurt you, did I, Fox-O? Listen. What I want to know is, where’s the birthday present? It’s three days past due. My wife wants a night out and my kids are asking for their allowance.”

Claiburne muttered “Drat” through clenched dentures. “Double drat. Did I ever miss a payment, you dumb ox? Get your hands off me. Money for parking, money for protection, twelve birthdays a year — you’ve got a better partnership than Bats.”

McSween dropped the clamped arm and stepped back, squinting at Claiburne’s bottle-lensed eyeglasses, which were catching a ray of spring sunshine through the grimy window. The sergeant’s heavy jowls worked over a stick of chewing gum, and his heavy-lidded eyes were quizzical.

“I don’t know, Billy. As a matter of fact, I think we both better watch out. I’m not quite sure what they got on you, but somebody at headquarters is taking a sudden interest in this place. What’s going on, Billy? What’s your M.O. these days? You selling horse instead of typewriters?”

Claiburne’s thin mouth tightened. He resented the insult. The Quick Red Fox didn’t need a sideline. He was a specialist in crime, a celebrity, although a minor one, his last important press notice having appeared in the Daily News following theft number 303 only a few months ago. Stealing typewriters was his life, his fulfillment. Bats called it crazy, but it had grossed C&M $100,000 in five years. With a touch of fame and that kind of revenue, what more could a dropout from P.S. 167 ask?

“I’m not in any other line of work, Sergeant,” said The Quick Red Fox with more restraint than he felt. “At my work I’m the best there is. I won’t be caught.”

“I caught you once,” McSween said with tactless pride.

“You didn’t catch me, you ox. You made a lucky guess on number 27, back when I was still learning the trade, and Jesse was too dumb to cover up. He’s as loyal as Tonto, that Jesse, but stupid as the Great Horse Silver.”

McSween blinked, poked his head from behind the glass partition, and looked toward the front door. There was no one in sight. Jesse was probably still arguing with the blind junkie about the meaning of justice as applied to a maverick typewriter. “Okay, Billy. Enough small talk. Pass me the goodies.”

Claiburne pulled six ten-dollar bills from his wallet. He coughed bitterly as he counted the cash. “You may be a credit to the force, Alex, but you’re a debit to me.” He shoved the money into McSween’s palm; the sergeant’s fingers closed around it like five live sausages.

“Thanks, Billy. I appreciate the money and the kind words.” His broad smile was guileless. “Remember, this little contribution buys all the help I can give you. I mean it. But watch out. I’m not the whole force. I’m not state, I’m not Federal. When I hear rumors about the brass — guys like Big Matt Garrett — talking about this place, I worry.”

“I’ll bet you do. You want to see that sixty-buck graft keep coming in every month, don’t you?”

The sergeant’s face fell like a basset hound’s. He spit his chewing gum into a coffee-stained wastebasket, hardly noticing the perfection of the shot. “It’s not just that, Billy. I admire you. Every guy in the city needs a little racket of his own, and you got one, a good one. Better than mine, and it takes real nerve. What was today’s hit, 342?”

“341.”

McSween nodded, his bourbon complexion a tinge redder than usual. “Slow down, Billy. You still need to swipe a lot of typewriters before you retire. Frisco can wait a few years for you. Right now you should take your time, take it easy. Let Garrett pick on someone else.”

McSween turned and ambled toward the street, nodding at Jesse, who stood modestly victorious in the center aisle of the store, swaying under the weight of Number 341.

At one minute before three o’clock Bats Masterson, always on schedule, roared into the store like a Kansas whirlwind, alternately puffing on a cheroot and gobbling a hot dog. “Where’s Billy?” he shouted. “Goofing off?” Claiburne stepped out of his cubicle. “Oh, there you are, partner. How’d it go?”

“No problems.”

“An Executive?”

“What else? Practically new.”

“We need two more,” Bats snapped. “The order is for five. Ike Brocius gets restless.”

“I know. I know. By the end of the week, Bats. I’ll have them by then. This damn pressure for delivery is getting me down. It didn’t used to be like this.”

“Tough.” Masterson fingered his black handlebar mustache. A tall sallow hombre in his late thirties, he dressed mod: a black velvet shirt, gold string necktie, tailored fuchsia suit with wide bell-bottoms, and low Western-style boots. “It’s chicken feed,” he muttered. “Five used Executives. The real money’s in Mt. Kisco, in my end of the business, in new typewriters. Even the kids out of secretarial school have to have a new machine.”

“Any problems in Kisco?”

“Any problems?” Bats snorted. “With an operation like mine there’s always problems. No stability any more, Billy. You set the whole thing up, you put an outlaw production gang together, and, zap, it starts falling apart. Stolen parts are cheap but chancy. They fired Jake Clanton from the plant last Friday, my only key molder, the veteran of the force. They caught him with a lunch box full of m’s and commas, the nincompoop. That kind of stuff went out with boop-boop-a-doop. I was trying to line up a replacement for him last night. You can’t build typewriters without keys, pal, and I’m missing enough m’s and commas to print the Sunday Times. Every other part I’ve got.

“So what do I find in Kisco? A dozen Mr. Cleans at the plant. Key-nabbers are harder to get than platen-grabbers. All four guys on the day shift are straight arrows. No hope. One kid on the swing shift seemed like a good bet though, so I bought him a few beers at Vince’s. Turns out he’s an ex-con who’s going straight until the right deal comes along. He served five-to-ten for art theft, so he’s not about to settle for nickel-and-dime stuff. He won’t lift keys and I don’t blame him. It would be a hell of a drop from Paul Klees to typewriter keys.”

“So?”

“So Vince tells me he knows a man who knows a man from Troy, upstate. This man from Troy just got canned for waltzing off with TV picture tubes from GE. But he’s smart, or so Vince says. Just unlucky. The plant will probably hire him if we can get him to Westchester on time. I’m going back tonight to talk to him. I’ve got forty thousand parts sitting up there in Apartment 7-E waiting for assembly. No m’s, no commas, but, hell, I’ve got more nylon gears than the plant ever had at one time.”

“What about Clanton? Are we going to put him on the C&M payroll?”

Masterson shook his head. “No way. He’s got as much mechanical ability as a coyote. Besides, we need keys, not labor. We’ve got to get a parts flow going, Billy. I’ve hired too many assemblers already. They’re sitting around the apartment up there, drinking beer, watching TV, and drawing their salaries. No repair business to speak of. The lazy creeps.”

“Oh, by the way,” Claiburne said, “McSween was in. I gave him the April green. But get this, he told me we might be in for trouble — says that someone at headquarters is onto this place. Says we should watch out.”

Bats glared, his temper rising quickly, visibly, like a Great Plains tornado. He held himself in check for a moment, then came out with a blast. It was predictable. Billy knew how Bats felt about Alex McSween and The Quick Red Fox and the low-grossing used-typewriter business. “You should watch out, you and your used typewriters, hand-signed poems, payoff money, and only fourteen percent of the C&M income. Damn it, Billy, I’m a businessman, a manufacturer, not a two-bit criminal conspirator. I make typewriters by the hundreds. I’m a builder, an empire builder. But you — you’re just — you’re just a bandit, a wheezing, kooky, small-time bandit. How you ever got away with 337—”

“341 today. And without a hitch. Remember, Bats,” he said stiffly, “I’m the man who put this outfit together. It’s C&M, not M&C.”

“It’s Bats that built the business,” said Masterson with a fine sense of alliteration. “I found you, pal, not the other way around. I thought you were an honest but greedy merchant, a good outlet for homemade typewriters. Ha! Wrong on one of two counts. You’re crooked as a sidewinder. But now you’re rich, and it was the Mt. Kisco operation that put both of us into six figures. You know that. Don’t blow it on petty larceny.”

“It’s not petty—”

“Just a figure of speech, Billy. I know it’s grand larceny, twenty thousand a year, all profit. I have to pay my suppliers and assemblers. But watch out. McSween’s a buddy of yours, he’ll look out for you. But he’s never had to warn you before. He thinks you’re some kind of struggling artist in crime, an attic Rembrandt. He should see your bank account.”

“He should see yours.”

“Well, he expects it of me. He thinks I’m a solid Establishment businessman,” Bats said, flicking a hint of lint from his midnight shirt and adjusting a huge emerald on his ring finger. “Which is good. I want you to keep it that way, Billy. Pick your targets.”

“I always do.”

“Pick ’em better. Slow down. Forget about the machines for Brocius if you have to. I’ll tell him you had an attack of arthritis.”

“Not necessary. I’ll get two more IBM’s without any sweat. One in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on Wednesday. The other in Livingston, New Jersey on Friday. Not even Matt Garrett can stop me short of 500. I’ll be retired to Frisco within three years. After that the whole business is yours, new and used. You can count on it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Masterson said, brushing an imaginary spot of dust from his gaudy sleeve. “Look, I’ve got a few phone calls to make, and then I’m going to hit the trail for Westchester. See you tomorrow.”

Billy Claiburne returned slowly to his cubicle, pondering. How could the police — how could Big Matt Garrett — know anything about the identity of The Quick Red Fox? Claiburne had never been fingerprinted. There had been no photographs taken of him within the last five years. He used a galaxy of aliases: Clyde Older, Hank Galton, James Frank, N. E. Oakley, John Wesley Bass. He was cautious, always cautious. Except for Bats Masterson, Jesse Plummer, Alex McSween, and maybe the blind junkie on the corner, no one knew who the thin shadowy typewriter rustler was.

Why, then, would Garrett be concerned with C&M? What could he know about The Quick Red Fox? Matt Garrett, a young lantern-jawed prosecutor from upstate, a hot-shot lawyer, had recently been named the Governor’s new super-D.A. for the five boroughs of New York. He was supposed to be cleaning up organized crime, including organized crime among the five D.A. offices. But mainly he was after the syndicate, the Big Boys whose careers ended in automobile trunks. He wouldn’t be likely to concern himself with a one-at-a-time typewriter thief.

So then, could the police be onto Bats’s operation in Mt. Kisco? Now there was a thought. Was it possible that Masterson’s typewriter-building enterprise was the real target? Not Billy’s small-scale peccadillos but Bats’s large-scale ripoffs? Had the clever organizer, Bernard Aaron Theodore Sheldon Masterson, the mastermind, somehow managed to slip up? Could it be that this flamboyant cottage-industry tycoon, this ex-typewriter foreman, now self-employed In Apartment 7-E, was under surveillance? No. Not a chance. The man was a pro.

Claiburne knew, with a cynicism born of observation, that criminals of Bats’s magnitude, the Mr. Bigs of Big Town, the Large Worms in the Big Apple, were always sought but never caught. It was the independents, the unconnected, the sly but vulnerable foxes who ended up in the Tombs. He figured Alex McSween must have said or done something to give him away. Never trust a cop, even a crooked one. Drat and double drat.

Quitting time came at six P.M. and Claiburne stepped out the front door into the eye-searing smog of an April evening. Outside he heard a voice call softly, “Hey, Fox.” He looked around. It wasn’t Bats, it might be McSween, but he wasn’t taking any chances. No one was in sight.

As he started to trot toward his car, a voice behind him — it didn’t sound like McSween’s — yelled in an urgent stage whisper, “Hey, Quick Fox, you dope. I’ve got a note from the Dumb Ox.”

It was the blind junkie’s voice. Billy kept going.

Shivering, he jumped into the driver’s seat, snapped on the ignition, and raced off in a cloud of debris.

What was going on? “Hey, Fox... Quick Fox.” A message from McSween through the blind junkie? Incredible. Was his ordered life, his careful routine, about to fall apart? He didn’t like the way things looked.

Did he dare go to his apartment? Not at the moment he didn’t. For an hour he drove aimlessly around lower Manhattan, fuming, quaking. Houston Street never looked drearier. At 7:05 he flipped the wheel toward the East Side, 63rd Street off the park. Why not? He had nowhere else to go.

Billy’s imperious doorman, Loomis, the most superficially distinguished man in the apartment building despite his lack of a first name, handled the car through a junior partner. Billy handled the self-service elevator himself, but not before looking hard into the convex metal mirror.

Claiburne’s studio apartment, richly furnished in rosewood and cowhide, glowed a serene welcome. He was home, safe for the moment, ready to relax in the only place in the world that meant anything to him. Despite all his talk of Frisco, this one-room studio was his permanent home, his only possible home. He loved it as he had loved little else in his 45 years.

This apartment, plus his growing list of typewriter thefts, represented the whole of reality to him. His bold robber-baron dreams of childhood had faded, contracted, narrowed to two small passions: a chromium room in Manhattan and a glittering goal of 500 typewriters. Both were vital to his existence. Everything else was dross.

Here above 63rd Street he could live quietly, obliquely. He could enjoy his vast collection of stereo tapes in total seclusion. He could peer out toward Central Park and see a thousand faceless specimens of humanity, contaminated with their silly, insoluble problems, scurrying below him like insects in a bell jar. A wall of glass protected him.

He crossed the red carpet, lifted an Orrfors tumbler from the wall-hung bar, and poured a double shot of Scotch. He selected a Tex Ritter tape from his shelf of country-and-western favorites. As he started to flip the switch on his stereo set, the telephone began to ring. Strange. No one should be calling.

He drank the Scotch suddenly, at a gulp. A shudder, a wheezing cough swept his narrow frame, and a thin frightened face, his own image in gray parchment, looked back at him from the mirror over the fireplace.

He walked toward the phone like a wary Dodge City gunman at sundown. He lifted the receiver off the hook on the fourth ring. A woman’s cheery voice trilled through the earpiece. “Hello, Western Union calling. Is this Mr. Billy Claiburne?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I have a telegram for you, Mr. Claiburne.”

“Yes?”

“It’s from a Mr. O. K. Earp of Long Island City.”

“Never heard of him, miss. I’m sorry.”

“Well, he’s heard of you, and he’s sent you a telegram. A very weird telegram, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Billy wanted to hang up.

“Well, I mean, it’s like a singing telegram. Only it’s a poem.”

“A poem?”

“So help me, Mr. Claiburne, it’s a poem, and Mr. Earp said to read it like a poem. So here goes.”

She cleared her throat, waited for an interruption but got none. She delivered the lyric in a voice that sounded solemn, determined, and vaguely puzzled.