Right on, Chick! by S. S. Rafferty[4]

A new Chick Kelly story by S. S. Rafferty

Chick Kelly, the medium-time night-club comic with a slanguage all his own, was finding show biz tough. Out-of-town bookings were as scarce as roosters’ eggs, so Chick opened up a small Third Avenue club to keep doing his act.

Kelly’s calling card might read:

Chick the Dick
Comedy Schticks and ’Tec Tricks

A refreshing change of reading pace — call ’em, Chick!

When I quit the road and opened up a small Third Avenue night club, I thought I’d left all my troubles behind me. I overlooked two important details. One, that the national economy was going to opt for instant poverty; two, that my sister would now have my phone number. She sometimes uses it instead of 911, Manhattan’s police emergency number.

Lila was born with a silver panic button in her hand, so I have learned to divide everything she dreams up by seven. That’s not a bad rating on the Chick Kelly Reality Index. I know some guys — most of them producers and press agents — who are divisible by forty-eight before you get to the truth.

It’s about 6:00 p.m. and I am at the joint having a business breakfast with Barry Kantrowitz, my former agent and present partner. Barry was as successful an agent as I was a comic, so we were made for each other. Barry is divisible by three.

Of course, having breakfast with Barry is no great culinary experience. How any guy can eat shredded wheat with milk is beyond me. It’s like eating a wet mattress. I go for the Brisbane special — a rare strip sirloin, eggs over easy, hash browns, and plenty of mayonnaise.

I’m halfway through the first egg when Ling, my headwaiter, comes over and tells me that Lila is on the phone to inform me that my niece and nephew have been kidnaped.

I might as well have been talking to a farmer in Outer Mongolia for all the sense I got out of her. The children had been missing for five hours, and since they were the only witnesses to the D.A.’s killing, it had to be a snatch. And if I ever loved her, I would start negotiations with the underworld for their safe return.

This is some breakfast conversation! I told her to put Arthur, her husband, on, but she said he was at police headquarters. I told her I would be over pronto, hung up, and started dividing by seven.

My nephew and niece are 14 and 9 respectively. Flip is a big kid. To spirit him away would require all seven of the Santini Brothers and a large van. His sister, McCawber, is a human eel, and it would take fancy footwork just to shake her hand.

At this point, folks, you’re probably asking yourself what’s with the names? I can take credit only for Flip. McCawber was her father’s idea. Arthur McQuade (pronounce that AH-thur, as in AHdvertising agency) is more in love with his ancestors than the Dalai Lama. The girl is named after James Petny McCawber, who invented the inkwell or something. Flip’s real name is Foster Chapin McQuade, and God help him. Arthur did not take it kindly when I suggested that a kid named Foster sounded like he was being raised by someone else for pay. How could I introduce him? Meet my Foster nephew? So I call him Flip. Mostly because he’s all mouth (“like someone else I know,” my mother would add).

Normally I would write the whole thing off as two kids being late for dinner, but the D.A. killing got to me. It’s time to get on the think, which I do.

I tell Ling to get me a copy of the Post, which, when you think of it, is like asking Walter Cronkite to tune in NBC for the latest news report. Ling reads more newspapers than a presidential adviser.

“What do you want to know, boss?” he says with a hurt look on his face. I had really wounded the guy.

“What’s with the D.A. being murdered?”

“Not the D.A. An assistant. He was the prosecutor in the Siepi case. They found his body behind a soda-pop machine in the East 14th Street IRT subway station this afternoon.”

Ling goes on to give me the picture, spitting out data like a teletype. Miles Corbett was an ambitious Assistant District Attorney, and the Siepi case was his first big shot at the headlines. I was already familiar with the Siepi hassle. They had nailed old Gino with a Murder One for knocking off Sally Bond. In my book it was a draw.

Gino Siepi was a hood and Sally was an ex-tramp who made her bread by blackmail. Good old Gino the Sappy was the last person seen leaving Sally’s apartment on the night she got it. The boys in blue played tag and Gino lost.

So where does this leave me? Did the kids see Corbett get it? This Ling cannot answer, so it’s back to Ma Bell for me.

Believe it or not, there are a few cops who like me. Not love me, mind you, but like me. One of them is Steve Kozak. Steve is a sergeant on the Vice Squad and we have mutual friends.

Steve tells me that he doesn’t know too much about the case except that the cops didn’t want to take Siepi to trial. The evidence was full of holes, but Corbett, being top man while the D.A. was out of town, insisted. For three days he’s getting his pants beaten off in court, and it looks like Siepi will soon be walking the streets again. Then on Wednesday, Corbett makes a grandstand play for the TV cameras and announces he will bring in vital evidence the next day.

“We told him it was a dumb thing to do,” Steve tells me, “but a guy who wants to be Governor someday has to create cliffhangers for the public. As for the snatch, I’m empty. Sorry about the kids. Give me ten minutes and I’ll dig around.”

Now I’m getting scared. It’s the gut response when trouble decides to sit on your porch instead of someone else’s.

The phone ringing was as startling as a clang out of hell. It was Kozak with a spadeful.

Corbett had left his apartment on East 86th Street yesterday morning at 8:45. According to his wife, he was carrying an envelope in his brief case which he had picked up at Kennedy Airport the night before around midnight.

At this point the police theory was that Sally Bond, being the bright girl she was, had salted away her blackmail dope with someone out of town. It was the old “If something happens to me, open this envelope and spill the beans.” That someone got in touch with Corbett and flew in with the goods.

“So how do the kids figure in?” I asked him.

“Your niece and nephew were on the same subway as Corbett. The little girl recognized him on television when they announced his murder. She said he had been sitting across from her all the way from 77th Street, and just before the train pulled into the 14th Street station he bolted into the next car. She remembered that he had been carrying an unusual-looking brief ease — Corbett’s was made of ostrich skin. Lieutenant Jaffee thinks that Corbett saw his killer and was trying to get away. He also thinks your niece may have seen the killer, too.”

“Jaffee! Is Jaffee on the case?”

“Yeah, Chick, so I’d stay clean if I were you.”

Early on I said a few cops like me. Jaffee hates me. He has never forgiven me for getting out of a murder rap when a lady was found dead in my apartment.

“Does he know the kids are relatives of mine?”

“I don’t know, but what’s the difference? He’ll do a good job anyway.”

That I had to give him. I have seen Jaffee in action and he’s good. Believe me, I respect my enemies.

“The thing that gets me, Steve, is how you guys got a line on the kids.”

“Their father called in Thursday night after the little girl recognized Corbett’s picture on a TV newcast about his murder.”

Good old AH-thur, the civic-minded goon. If he had kept his mouth shut, the kids would now be safe. I made a mental memo to break AH-thur’s neck when all this was over.

“Didn’t Jaffee put a guard on the kids? He drops them into this mess, makes them a target, then doesn’t guard them?”

“That’s what’s odd about this, Chick. He had three men outside their apartment building, one in the rear and two in the lobby. All good eye men. They never saw the kids leave. Jaffee’s had the building searched twice.”

“Why didn’t he put someone right outside the door?”

“Mrs. McQuade wouldn’t allow it.”

Oh, yes, the old Kelly family bugaboo — what will the neighbors think?

“So what’s happening, Steve? Was it one of Siepi’s morons?”

“That’s the party line at the moment, but they’ve all gone beddy-bye. But you can’t discount anyone who was in the Bond dame’s little black book. We estimate that crowd to be about a hundred, so take your pick.”

Sweet sufferin’ Saint Sebastian! My palms are beginning to sweat. I have loved very few things in my life, even an ex-wife or two, but those two kids really ring the gong with me. Right now I want to get a machine gun and knock off every hood in town until I find them. But that’s Nutsville.

“Tell me straight, Steve, do you think, they’ll knock them off?” My throat is getting very tight, and I’m fighting back a crybaby bit.

“Straight, Chick, I really don’t know. If it was Siepi’s boys, I don’t think so. Hoods don’t usually kill kids. They’d probably just hold them until their hit man gets out of the country. But if it was someone else, one of the people being blackmailed, you can’t tell. But take it easy. You sound shaky. Jaffee has every available man on the street. He’s set up a command post at the 19th Precinct, so you know where not to show up.”

I hung up, went back to my table, and near got sick looking at the steak and eggs. Ling had gone out and bought the bulldog edition of the News, which had pictures of the kids. I have the same ones on my dresser. Ling is reading the recap, but I am hardly paying attention. Then a sentence hits me and I ask Ling for a repeat.

“Police are asking anyone who saw a person carrying an ostrich-skin brief case in the vicinity of the Union Square station of the IRT around 8:45 Friday morning to come forward.”

Now that strikes me as funny. That’s the hazard of being a comic. You see and hear the oddball things in life. The sight of a guy who has just murdered someone in a crowd walking around with his victim’s brief case — in ostrich yet — is just inviting attention, Yet, if he took the blackmail dope out of the case, he would surely dump the case, wouldn’t he? Anywhere, just to get rid of it. Now, in little old New York, an expensive brief case left sitting somewhere does not go homeless for long. In fact, out at Kennedy, it is the basis for an entire industry.

I don’t know what Jaffee is thinking right now, but that brief case intrigues me. If he has a command post, I can have one too, so I go into action. First, I tell Ling to call Mario Puccini, who runs a small limousine service out of 76th Street. When he shows up, I give him a sack of money and tell him to start hitting the hack stands and hangouts like the Belmore at 23rd and Lex and Kaye’s at 78th and Lex. There are more cabs in New York than patrol cars, so right away I’m ahead of Jaffee on surveillance. Since the kids’ pictures are in the News and cabbies wouldn’t be caught dead without a copy, they knew what faces to look for.

Now I have to find out where Siepi’s boys have dived for the mattresses. Jaffee, I know, is pulling in every stoolie in town, but he’s kidding himself. No stoolie is going to sing a medley that ends up with “Old Man River.” Okay, I’ve got an angle. Ziggy Klein fronts the five-man combo that plays my joint on weekends. If you want to find out what’s going on under the scalp of New York, get a bunch of musicians together and have them ask questions. They’re into the scene. Ziggy and his boys get busy with their contacts.

I get these pots simmering and reach for another. Who was on Sally Bond’s Hit Parade of Secret Sins? Ten years ago this would have been an easier task. But since the unions have decided there were too many newspapers in New York and buried all but two, there aren’t too many gossip scribes around with that kind of info. So I turn to Tish Loman, whom I don’t particularly like, but she digs me and I’m kind of a rat with women. Tish tosses parties for a living. Yes, folks, there are people so anxious to get into society that they hire people to throw a party for them. Tish knows every celebrity in the city and all the dirt besides. However, I do not feel like being charming at the moment, so I send Barry Kantrowitz to her place as my emissary. I have other fish to fry.

On my way up to 86th Street I ask the driver if he’s on my payroll and he says he is. He also gives me his theory of the whole affair. If there are 2000 hacks on the street, there have got to be 3000 different theories. It is an occupational disease with these guys.

I was surprised, but relieved, to find that Jaffee had not planted one of his boys outside the Corbetts’ apartment door.

The guy who answered the buzzer was a tall good-looking kid who told me that his sister, Mrs. Corbett, could not be disturbed. The death of her husband had floored her and the doctor had her under sedation. He was about to give me the heave-ho when I told him who I was.

“Chick Kelly. The comedian! Well, how are you? I’m in the business myself in a way. I’m a drama student at Columbia.”

He said his name was Ted Saunders and that he lived with his sister and brother-in-law when school wasn’t in session, which it wasn’t. Come to think of it, the McQuade kids were on vacation, too.

Saunders invites me in and I can tell he is trying to build a show-business contact. I should have told him that I had to open my own club to keep doing my act, but why spoil it? I needed information. Saunders is full of information because he has already done the audition for the police.

It seems his brother-in-law left the apartment around 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday to go to Kennedy Airport and didn’t get back until about 3:00 a.m., then went straight to his den where he stayed until 5:00 or 5:30 a.m. He got some sleep and left for court around 8:45.

“Yes,” Saunders said, “the brief case was unique. My sister had it made in Mexico last year. Miles was very proud of—”

He stopped short when a woman in a wrapper walked into the living room. She was probably a stunner under normal conditions, but right now she looked like hell.

“More police questions?” she asked with a weary kind of exasperation.

“No, Stella, Mr. Kelly isn’t from the police. He’s Chick Kelly — you know, the comedian. Mr. Kelly, my sister, Mrs. Corbett.”

“Oh, Lord, what next? Police, Chinese orphans, and now a comedian! Are you a friend of Ted’s, Mr. Kelly?”

I didn’t get a chance to answer because Saunders had already shot a question.

“Chinese orphans? Stella, maybe you should cut back on that sedative, honey. You sound a little delirious.”

“Ted, stop treating me like a child. There were two Chinese orphans here when you were out this afternoon. Collecting for war orphans. I gave them a dollar just to get rid of them.”

The conversation went on between brother and sister and I know it’s time to do a dissolve. I fast-talk my way out of there with a story about knowing the late Mr. Corbett and dropping by to pay my respects.

It took three tries before I found a phone that worked, which is a remarkable feat in itself, the odds usually being five to one. I plunk in a dime and when Lila’s voice comes on, I tell her to shut up and listen.

“Last Halloween the kids went to that school dance as Chinese, didn’t they?” She gives me a yes and I tell her to check the closets. Lila is confused but obedient, and when she comes back with the news that the costumes are missing, I shout hallelujah and tell her that her children are no more kidnaped than I am and that when we turn them up I want first licks.

Back at the club, things are really humming. The cabbies haven’t turned up anything, but Ziggy’s boys are firing on all sixes. Siepi’s boys have holed up in a private house on Staten Island. That’s a trade card for my eventual confrontation with Jaffee. I also put out the word to the cabbies that we are no longer looking for the charming McQuade tots, but to keep the brights on for Lum Foo and his panhandling sister.

I was beginning to think that Barry Kantrowitz had eloped with Tish Loman, but he turns up finally, and has he got some nuggets. Now I’m ready for Jaffee and I’m enjoying myself immensely. Of course, my original concern was to find the kids, but now I had Jaffee to show up. Maybe it’s my nature to be an SOB, maybe not. But Jaffee had worked me over once, and I wanted to get even. As Rodney Dangerfield, a fellow comic, says, “I don’t get no respect,” and I wanted some respect from that hard-nosed Lieutenant.

The 19th Precinct is on East 67th Street. You can always tell a cop from the 19th — they have a built-in bored look from standing guard outside foreign Embassies all day and night. They ought to float the UN over to Hoboken and save the city a lot of money. The move wouldn’t hurt Hoboken any, either.

Lieutenant Jaffee is a rough piece of work. He’s built like a tank and has a shiny dome. The men in the Division call him Bullethead. They tell me he got a law degree going to NYU nights, which gives me a great line about his studying in the dark.

I wasn’t two feet into the squadroom when he spots me and lowers the boom.

“What the hell do you want, Kelly?” my old pal greets me with a snarl. “Beat it.”

“Hello, Lieutenant, nice to see you again.” As you may have guessed, I can be very charming.

“Look, Jokeboy, I don’t need you around here. Scram.”

“Whoa, Lieutenant, just a sec. I have an interest in this case you’re on.”

“Your niece and nephew. I know. But I won’t hold that against the McQuades. I haven’t any news anyway, and if I did, I’d tell your sister, not you.”

“That’s proper. No argument from me. But I have some news, and I thought I’d give it to you rather than the newspapers. You see, Lieutenant, I have an affection for you. I want in every way to—”

“Cut the trimmings, will you, Kelly? If you have some information, dish it out. I’m not that vain.”

I’m thinking “a guy with a bullethead should be vain?” If Jaffee was a heckler in an audience, I could really take him apart. You know, like, “Well, I see the Fifth Artillery is in town,” or “Aren’t you glad the war is over so you can get parts for your head?” But I know Jaffee has a low boiling point beyond which he is not adverse to using his hands in the clenched position, so I stow the wisecracks and get down to business.

When I tell him about the kids wandering around dressed like Orientals, he first doesn’t believe me. Then he does believe me and almost cannonades himself through the ceiling. It’s beautiful. Then he tells a flunky to put the word out to the patrols and chews another one out for being a wall-eyed idiot. I assumed he was one of the great eye men at my sister’s apartment house.

After he gets that done, Jaffee gives me a piece of his mind about my probably being a bad influence on the kids and that if he were my brother-in-law he would make sure they never saw me. Bullethead as my brother-in-law! The one I’ve got is no peach, but Jaffee! My God, I’d commit sororicide, and even nephewcide and nieceacide.

“I know you feel very jubilant, Kelly, but don’t take any comfort from it. I almost wish Siepi’s guys did have them. At least they’d be safe.”

“What are you talking about, Jaffee? Safe?”

“Those kids are out there somewhere playing amateur detective, and you can bet someone is gunning for them. That’s not funny.”

You know, he was right. I hadn’t thought of that. If the entire police force couldn’t find them and a thousand cabbies couldn’t spot them, how could a lone killer do it? But still and all, it was a fact that wouldn’t go away.

Okay, enough of jaffing at Jaffee. I gave him the five names Tish had come up with and he grins.

“You can forget about Jeb Farrell the decorator and Phil Morgan the fight promoter. They’re accounted for at the time of the murder. Why look so surprised, Kelly? We sift through dirt, too. As for McIlroy, we have a possible. He’s been known to toss some weird parties and could be a blackmail victim, although he denies it. He says he was walking in Central Park at the time of the killing. Hah! The other two are new to me. We’ll check it out, but this Phyllis Court doesn’t fit into the picture. This was a man’s job, I’m sure of it. The last one, Calvin West, who’s he?”

“My source say he’s a painter with a past. No one knows too much about him.”

“Your source is Tish Loman, so stop being coy. You just can’t leave the ladies alone, can you, Kelly?”

Someday I am going to devote a whole day trying to analyze why Jaffee dislikes me. I am getting a sneaking suspicion it has to do with women. With his looks Jaffee couldn’t attract Tugboat Annie. When we have time I’ll do a whole number for you on my approach to women. It’s cool, man, cool.

Jaffee is busy sending out his underlings to check on the names and is ignoring me.

“What are you going to do about the kids, Lieutenant?”

“What the hell do you think I’m going to do? Only now it won’t be so difficult. I think I know where they are.”

“Yeah? Where do you think?”

“Two kids dressed up like Orientals, stand out in a crowd, and if this nephew of yours is half as smart as his mother thinks, then there’s only one place they’d head for. Chinatown.”

“But they don’t know anyone in Chinatown.”

“They don’t have to know anyone. It’s the Chinese New Year and there’ll be dancing in the streets all night. Hanragan,” he said to one of his plain-clothesmen, “get Mrs. McQuade on the phone and find out if either child has a Chinese classmate. They could be holing up there.”

I started to leave when Jaffee barked at me, “Kelly, you stay the hell out of Chinatown, do you hear me? I’ve got experts in that district and they can comb it clean without your help. By the way, you may care to know they’re celebrating the Year of the Rat.”

So Jaffee wants to play zap. He’s a creampuff.

“Oh, by the way, Lieutenant, I’ve been so busy digging up names for you to check and finding out about the kids that I didn’t have time to rush out to 241 Elizabeth Street in Tottenville. That’s in Staten Island, you know. You take the ferry over the waves. That’s where you’ll find Siepi’s brood. Out in Tottenville at 241 Elizabeth Street they are celebrating the Year of the Dope.”

I am out of there like a shot, flag a cab, and head back for the club. I’ve just got time to do the eleven o’clock show. I quiz the driver and he tells me he’s been clued in on the Chinese switch. I start wondering how much this is all costing me. Then I start planning just how I am going to punish my nephew. There is that season pass to the Knicks that I could lift. No, that’s capital punishment and that’s been outlawed. But why plan? He won’t be able to see after AH-thur gets hold of him.

It was a wild night. The eleven o’clock show went over good, but the two o’clock brought in a bunch of drunks, which is par. I stayed at the club all night so I could act on any calls from cabbies — I didn’t completely cotton to the Chinatown theory. We got a nibble about seven o’clock in the morning, but it turned out to be two real Chinese kids in the Bronx. It was the first time I had seen the sun come up in seven years. It hadn’t changed much.

Then, at 10:30, we got a hot tip. A driver spotted two Chinese kids in the 300 block on Jay Street in Brooklyn, then lost them. He thinks they might have ducked into one of the buildings, so he’s standing watch. I tell him to keep the meter running, then I make a jump for Mario’s waiting limo, and barrel out there.

We cruised up and down the 300 block, but no kids. Then it hit me. Why would they come all the way over to Brooklyn, I’m asking myself, when bango! There it is in front of me. The Transit Authority Building. The whole thing started on the subway, didn’t it? What a dummy I am. Flip is a smart little son of a gun.

The guy behind the Lost and Found counter did a double take when I asked him.

“What’s with the ostrich brief cases?” he says, giving a silent oy veh with the hands. I’m the third to ask that question this morning. First it was the guy with the mustache, and then it was the two kids, Chinese kids, and now me. More silent oy vehs and then he says the kids were there about twenty minutes ago. He can’t tell me much about the first guy, just that he had a mustache and a scar on his cheek.

Back in the parked limo, I am trying to focus in on the faces on Tish’s list, but no luck. No guy with a mustache and scar.

“Why would Flip come down here anyway?” Mario asks me. “If someone found it they would give it to the cops.”

“The kid was on the right track, Mario. Because the other guy came down here, too. Now that guy’s got two problems. He has two kids running around loose who might be able to identify him, and the blackmail papers are also floating around somewhere. I’m trying to visualize what Corbett must have done on that subway. He spots this dude and knows he’s going to get it, so he tries to beat him into the next car. Now he couldn’t have stashed the brief case in the 14th Street station because the cops have pulled it apart and found zero.”

“Hey, Chick, I ain’t been on a subway in years,” Mario says from the front seat, “but why didn’t that D.A. get off at 18th Street if he spotted the guy at 23rd?”

“Mostly because there isn’t an 18th Street station, Mario.”

“Hell, there ain’t. I used to date a bimbo on East 19th Street years ago and always got off at that station.”

I didn’t bother to mention it to Mario, but I think we knew the same bimbo because I remember getting off at 18th Street too, on the same mission. I’m out of the car and back into the Transit Authority lickety-split. I ask the guy at the Lost and Found what happened to the IRT 18th Street station, and do you know what I get? “Did someone lose it?” he asks. Everyone wants to be a comic.

“Look, you’re breaking me up, pal. Just give me a straight answer.”

“Yeah, they closed it down about ten, fifteen years ago. It was some kind of economy drive. I forgot it was there, to be honest with you.”

“Maybe it was demolished. You know, sealed up or something?”

“Maybe the entrance, but not the station. Why bother?”

When I got back to the car and asked Mario for the gun, he gave me the Alice in Wonderland routine.

“Come on, Mario, you’ve hauled iron around in this heap for years. Give. Please?”

“But, Chick, you don’t have no license.”

“Neither do you, buddy. Is it sterile?”

He gives me a nod, hands me the gun, and I slip it into my pocket. I’ve got an idea in my head that’s going to make Jaffee the joke of the Department. I tell Mario to get back to the club. I can get where I’m going faster by the rattler.

At the Jay Street station I grab the IND and get off at Sixth and Fourteenth. I probably could have figured a route to take me directly to the 14th Street station at Union Square, but I really didn’t have five years to spend. Besides, the best way to go is the way you know. I came up on Sixth (okay, Avenue of the Americas) and headed east, stopping at one of the rag shops where I bought a genuine Japanese flashlight. With all the Jap goods flooding the country, I’m beginning to think they really did win World War II.

I flagged a cab and had him take me to 18th and Park and found just what I expected. No entrance. I then hoofed down to the 14th Street station, went through the turnstile, and pushed my way to the downtown local track.

There is one criticism leveled at New Yorkers that is unfair. People, mostly tourists, think that local citizens are indifferent and cold. They’re just minding their own bloody business, folks! Now if I were in Cleveland, and Cleveland had a subway, someone would wonder what a guy was doing entering a dark subway tunnel and report it. Not in New York, baby. If you want to go for a stroll up the tracks, you can go right ahead and nobody will make a peep.

I waited till a downtown local train had cleared the station, then slipped down the narrow stairs to the track and ran like hell toward 18th Street. Up ahead of me I could see the headlights of another train, probably as far up as 33rd Street. I have read that if you lie down in the center of the tracks, a train will roll over you without touching you, but I wasn’t about to prove the theory. Old Fleetfoot Kelly made it in plenty of time in the half light of the tunnel.

The 18th Street station was something out of a Fellini movie. It was a complete station with its tiled walls, muted change booth, and stairs that led nowhere. It was something dead. A tomb.

I came up on the platform on all fours. The station had about four dirty 40-watt bulbs burning a dull illumination that created a bevy of shadows. A painter broad I used to know would call it chiarascuro, and the chiarascuro was scaring the devil out of me. I heard a scurrying in the comer and reeled with the gun ready to find a rat or something, when I found two rats in Chinese clothing.

“Uncle Chick, baby,” that young punk says to me with his sister hanging on his arm. Man, I wanted to bust him one in the chops.

“Boy, you two are beautiful, really beautiful. What are you trying to do, give your mother a heart attack?”

“Chick, we solved it, man, don’t you dig it?” he says, holding up the ostrich brief case. His father sends him to one of the best schools in the city, and he talks like a hipped sideman.

“Yeah, I dig, Foster.”

“What’s with the Foster bit, Chick?”

“Uncle Charles to you, buster. How are you doing, McCawber?”

The light of my life says she’s okay, but I know she’s scared. She comes to me and I give her a hug. That’s the chimpanzee syndrome. And she’s part monkey anyway. I had put the gun in my pocket and was holding her when I heard him.

“Bring the case over here, kid,” the voice said from the dark end of the platform. “Don’t move, Kelly.”

Flip walked into the shadow, then came back without the brief case and stood next to me. I would jam the bloody gun in my jacket pocket where I couldn’t get it out easily!

“Look, pal,” I said to the voice, “I can’t see who you are, so let’s call it even. You scamper out of here and we’ll forget the whole thing. You’re as free as a big beaked bird. We’ll wait here for ten minutes — an hour if you like.”

He didn’t answer and I knew his silence was going to be killing us. I couldn’t see him, but my ears are like sonar webs. He hadn’t moved since he had last said his piece, so I had a blind fix on him. I have played soldier with the kids since they were old enough to hate pablum, so I hoped they’d remember the script.

I yelled as loud as I could, “Hit the deck!” and dove into the dark at the voice.

I was almost on him when I felt the bum in my arm. I had one hand on him and we both went down. There was no scuffle — he was motionless. Jaffee’s shot had gone through Ted Saunders, Corbett’s wife’s brother, and plinked me in the arm...

Jaffee was, of course, full of threats; there was my carrying iron, trespassing on subway tracks, interfering with a police investigation, and contributing to the delinquency of minors. The last was AH-thur’s two cents.

What really ticked Bullet-head off was the interview I gave to the media. I told them I knew it was Ted Saunders all along. He could easily have had a peek at the papers Corbett brought back from the airport, and he could have known the kids were in Oriental dress. My theory was that Teddy-boy had seen a lucrative future in the papers Corbett had gotten, and went after them. I also added that Columbia’s Drama School should beef up its course on make-up. Ted’s phony mustache and scar were from hunger. I had him on voice anyway; that’s why I tried to fake him out with the escape bit.

One TV newsman went bananas over my heroics and called my leap at Saunders Kier-kegaardian. And we all know what a fine acrobat he was.

Anyway, I got the headlines and the club is jammed with tourists who want to meet the great comic-detective. No, that’s not right — the great detective-comic.

Just before I went on for the eleven o’clock show, McCawber calls me to tell me they are grounded for six weekends. And I tell her that’s cruel and inhuman punishment and that she should get herself a lawyer. Before I hang up, she wants to know if she and Flip really have to call me “Uncle Charles.” She doesn’t like “Uncle Charles.”

I’m about to say okay, but I can never resist an opening. “Maybe, if you’re really good for a while. But for the time being you can call me ‘Uncle Rocco.’ ” That ought to drive AH-thur up the wall a few times.

Right on, Chick!

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