Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 12, December, 1953

Murder Marches On! by Craig Rice

Perfect place for murder, Malone thought as he joined the parade. The men parading were all undertakers.

The parade started late, as all parades do. There was the usual confusion, with bands mustering on the wrong street corners, floats getting stuck in the traffic jam, and drum majorettes detained at the last minute by snap and elastic failures in strategic areas. There was the customary mix-up in the line of marching orders, with division captains running up and down waving their arms and blowing whistles, and the parade marshal sweating it out in his limousine and scowling at his wristwatch. And there was the usual search for visiting dignitaries, finally discovered in a nearby saloon. That was why John J. Malone was able to catch up with the parade after it had progressed only a block or two from its starting point at Michigan Boulevard and Roosevelt Road.

For the little lawyer, too, had been detained. Finding a rental outfit that would trust him for a frock coat, a high hat and a pair of patent leather shoes without the formality of a cash deposit was not easy on such short notice. That was the formal regalia of the Oblong Marching Society and to have appeared in anything else would have made him look conspicuous. He had no desire to look conspicuous. Somewhere along the line of march one of the marchers was to slip him a list of names and one thousand dollars in cash.

“What do I have to do for the money?” Malone had asked Rico de Angelo. Rico was an undertaker, a relative of Joe of Joe the Angel’s City Flail Bar. “You don’t have to do anything,” Rico had told him on the telephone. “All you have to do is keep this guy’s name out of the newspapers.”

“Why?” Malone said.

Rico hesitated. Then he said, “Remember the Gerasi murder? Well, this friend of mine, he was a friend of Gerasi’s too. And Gerasi gave him this list of names before he was killed. Gerasi wanted him to give the list to the cops. But when Gerasi got killed, my friend got scared. He wants you to take the list and give it to the cops, Malone. He wants to stay out of it.”

Simple. Just a shade too simple, Malone told himself as he hung up the receiver. The newspapers had been running black headlines for weeks about ballot box frauds in the spring elections. Ghost voters. Names taken ‘from the cemeteries. The cops had figured that Gerasi’s Funeral Home had been supplying the names for the fraud. But Gerasi had turned honest, and passed the list on before he’d been killed. Now Malone had to get the list to the cops. But it had to be on the q. t. If the gang found out about it Malone, and Rico’s friend, might both be Rico’s customers.

His friends on the papers would thank him for a list like that, Malone knew, but he also knew that gangsters and crooked politicians took a dim view of informers. He would only be taking the heat off Rico’s friend and putting it on himself. Still, a thousand dollars was a thousand dollars. He had a date with a blonde that night. There was also the office rent, three months overdue, with the landlord breathing down his neck. A thousand dollars would very nicely take care of both emergencies. He could depend on the boys at the city desks to keep his own name out of the papers, he assured himself. Besides, there was his duty as a lawyer to help the innocent, and this guy was an innocent party to the fraud — he hoped.

Third row from the front, fourth guy from the left, facing front, the guy with the red face and the gold tooth. That was how Rico had identified the client. Now, what with the hot Chicago sun beating down from above and the sizzling asphalt giving him the hotfoot from below, the instructions were getting a bit fuzzy in his mind. Fourth row from the front, third guy from the left, or was it third row from the left, fourth guy from the front — no, that couldn’t be it. Something about facing front. He had been following the contingent. The thing to do was to hurry up ahead of it and count facing it. Malone hated walking, anywhere, any time, for any reason. Besides, his feet were killing him in the rented patent leather shoes. Maybe he shouldn’t have reinforced himself quite so much from the bottle in the emergency file in his office before leaving. Under forced march he managed to get up ahead of the marchers and, turning around to face them, walking backwards, he scanned the lines. Yes, that was it. Third guy from the front facing left— Oh, the hell with it. One thing he did remember. Somewhere in that weaving line of faces was a red-faced guy with a gold tooth and one thousand dollars. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, Malone reminded himself. Especially one with a gold tooth.

The girl’s band from Bloomington struck up with a deafening rendition of John Philip Sousa’s Washington Post March. The particularly curvaceous drum majorette doing cartwheels momentarily took Malone’s mind off his work. A visiting dignitary hurrying to catch up with his place in the line of march shook Malone’s hand and disappeared. Walking backwards was beginning to make him dizzy. He was about to give the whole thing up when he spied the flash of a gold tooth and quickly fell in line beside the red-faced guy, a maneuver that brought a polite “Pardon me” from the jolly little fat man he had bumped out of place, and an oath from the big, sad-faced man who reminded Malone of the hound dog Hercules he had once befriended up in Jackson County, Wisconsin, the one whose feet hurt him.

Now there was only one thing left to do. Wait for the red-faced guy on his right to slip him the fraudulent voting list and the one thousand bucks. That was to happen when the close order drill band of the Oblong Marching Society struck up, “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood,” Rico de Angelo had informed him on the telephone. That was to be the signal for him to edge over to the guy with the gold tooth and receive the list and the money.

Keeping up with the steady tread of the marchers, face front, Malone stole a look out of the corner of his eye at the man with the red face. He looked the way any respectable undertaker would be expected to look. His frock coat was well tailored with an expensive Capper and Capper cut to it. His top hat was of the glossiest silk and sat well on his well-groomed head. The expression on his face was the one every undertaker wears when the last notes of the organ music are dying away and he steps up to the coffin to invite the mourners to file past for a last look at the remains.

Solemn. Serious. But nervous. You could tell he was nervous by the too-rigid way he kept his eyes fixed ahead of him, afraid to look either to the right or to the left. Afraid to betray by so much as the flicker of an eyelash that he was even aware of Malone’s sudden and unceremonious appearance in the line beside him. The sweat that glistened on his forehead might have been from the heat, but it stood out in shiny explosive little beads — fear sweat. Yes, he was scared. The red-faced man with the gold tooth was scared stiff. And he wasn’t the only one. There was a feeling of tension all around him, Malone felt. It showed itself when, during a lull in the band music, the jolly little fat man on his left gave out with the first six notes of “Donna E Mobile”. The big sad-faced Hercules behind him promptly squashed him with a “Shet up!” and the red-faced guy winced all over like a spastic.

Yes, there was tension in the ranks. But definitely, Malone told himself. It set him to thinking. What assurance did he have, after all, that he and the red-faced man with the gold tooth were the only ones in the line who knew about the incriminating list of names and the money that was about to be passed. The red-faced guy was sticking his neck out a mile, playing informer on the voting fraud gang. Where there was a neck that long there was probably an ax somewhere in the vicinity, waiting for a chance to strike. A cute little Colt automatic in the pocket, maybe, with the safety off. Or a shiny Smith & Wesson .38 with a sawed-off barrel, under one of these respectable frock coats. And they could be aimed straight at the red-faced guy, ready to fire the minute he made one suspicious move. Or aimed at him, Malone reminded himself ruefully. Either /or — or both.

You don’t pick up a hot list of names and a thousand bucks easy money without putting yourself in jeopardy, the little lawyer reflected, and wiped the sweat from his brow. Who was the jeopard? The little fat guy on his left? He didn’t look it, but appearances could be deceptive. Malone remembered the jolly little man in the Hanson ax-murder case on the South Side. He turned out to be the coldest, most murderous killer he had ever tangled with. Could it be the hound-faced Hercules who was marching directly behind him? There was something sad, even gentle, in the pouchy droop of his eyes. When he said, “Shet up!” to the jolly guy who wanted to sing “Donna E Mobile” it was more in sorrow than in anger. A tired, weary, beaten-down “Shet up!” rather than an angry one. Just the same it could be either one of them. You couldn’t tell about people.

No, and you couldn’t tell about places, either. The middle of a street parade didn’t seem like the kind of a place a gangster would pick to commit a murder. But neither did the corner of State and Madison, “the world’s busiest street corner,” and yet that was where death had caught up with snuffy little Joshua Gumbrill. Right in the middle of the noon-hour rush, too. And the killer had made a clean getaway in the milling crowd.

Yes, it could happen here. And it could happen to him.

He had come away from the office unarmed, with nothing deadlier on him than a half pint of whiskey in his hip pocket. Not that he ever used it — a gun, that is — but it was always comforting to know it was there if you needed it. For that matter, the same could be said for the half pint, Malone reminded himself. He wondered if it was strictly according to the manual of close order drill or the by-laws of the Oblong Marching Society to summon liquid reinforcement in the line of march. Just then a woman fainted from the heat in the watching crowd on the sidewalk and, while all eyes were on the scene of the accident, he raised the bottle to his lips with a quick, practiced gesture that had long ago made his the most celebrated elbow at Joe the Angel’s City Hall bar.

It was a good thing he had fortified himself in time, for it wasn’t two minutes later, at the intersection of Michigan Boulevard and Randolph Street to be exact, that the band leader of the Oblong Marching Society blew a shrill blast on his whistle and the band struck up:

Malone sidled over slowly toward the red-faced guy on his right, ready for the pass that was to deliver the list of names and the money into his hand. Then something happened that wasn’t on the program. The girls’ band from Bloomington just behind them gave out simultaneously with:

“Oh, the monkey wrapped his tail around the flagpole.”

The resulting disharmony and din threw the whole column out of step. Everybody stopped and turned to scowl at the bunglers. Instinctively Malone turned too. When he turned back again the red-faced man was no longer beside him. For a second Malone stared about him, bewildered. Then he looked down and saw that the man had collapsed on the street.

He lay on his back and he was gasping for breath. Immediately the marchers closed around him.

“Give him air,” somebody shouted. “Can’t you see the man’s fainted?”

The parade came to a dead stop as the marchers carried their fellow member off the street, through the crowd and into the lobby of the corner building. He was still gasping for breath as they laid him down on the floor, fanning him with their top hats and debating excitedly about the best way to handle a case of sunstroke. By the time the police shouldered their way through the crowd he had stopped fighting for breath and lay quite still. Too still, Malone thought. He knelt down and reached for the man’s wrist to feel his pulse. As he did so he heard a familiar voice behind him.

It was Captain Daniel von Flanagan of the Homicide Division.

“Well, if it isn’t John J. Malone, attorney and counselor at law. And since when, may I ask, have the undertakers been taking lawyers into membership?”

“Honorary membership,” Malone began lamely, and then, “Don’t ask foolish questions, von Flanagan. A man’s fainted from the heat and we’ve got to get him into an ambulance.”

Von Flanagan bent down and felt the man’s pulse. Then he turned to Malone.

“Fainted, did you say? Fainted from the heat? Malone, this man is dead.”

“Heart failure,” someone in the crowd said, and for a moment Malone was almost prepared to believe it. That red face. The way he had gasped for breath.

Von Flanagan turned the man over on his stomach. A wet patch was spreading over the black broadcloth of his frock coat. The stone floor where he had lain was wet too. And bright red. Von Flanagan pulled the coat up over the dead man’s head and ripped off his shirt. In the middle of his back below the shoulder blades and a little to the left was a neat bullet hole.

“Drilled through the heart,” von Flanagan said. He rose and looked around him at the frock-coated brethren.

“Didn’t anyone hear a shot?” he demanded.

They looked at one another in dumb amazement, shaking their heads.

“I was right next to him,” Malone said. “I didn’t hear any shot.”

But this time the lobby was crawling with cops.

“Nobody leaves here till I say the word,” von Flanagan called out to them. “And you, Malone, I want to have a word with you. In private.”

Malone followed von Flanagan to the storeroom behind the lobby cigar counter. The Captain’s face was red with a hot Irish anger. His eyes narrowed as he looked down at the little lawyer.

“Malone, what do you know about this? I’m putting you all under arrest. You and this whole Oblong Marching outfit. I’ll sweat it out of you if I have to—”

“If you’ll take the advice of an old friend,” Malone said, “you’ll let the parade proceed as scheduled, without another minute’s delay. You’ll order every member of the Oblong Marching Society to take his place in line just exactly where he was before this thing happened. First, though, I want your permission to go through the dead man’s pockets.”

“What for?”

“I’ve got my reasons, but I can’t tell you now,” Malone said. “There isn’t time. You want to catch the killer, don’t your”

“Somebody drilled him from behind,” von Flanagan said. “All I want to know is, who was marching directly behind this guy? What I can’t figure is why didn’t anybody hear the shot?”

“The noise,” Malone said. “The bands got their signals mixed and two of them started up the same time. You could have shot off a cannon and everybody would have thought it was part of the program. Now, if you’ll order the members back into some sort of formation—”

“Maybe you’ve got something there,” von Flanagan said. “And the minute I see who the guy is that was marching behind the murdered man I’ll order him searched and put under arrest at once.”

Malone said, “Listen to me, von Flanagan. You won’t do anything of the kind. If he committed one murder he won’t hesitate to commit a second murder — this time to wipe out the evidence of the first murder. He’ll try to shoot his way out — and innocent people are going to get hurt.”

“Wait a minute, Malone.”

“I’ll point some guy out to you,” Malone said. “You’ll put the guy under arrest in full view of the whole crowd. Then you’ll order the rest of them back into line and let the parade go on. After you take the suspect into custody you and your boys will do a fake vanishing act. Stay out of sight but not too far out of reach. I might need your help. When the killer starts shooting...”

The captain’s face lighted up with its first faint ray of understanding. Then he shook his head. “No. No, Malone, I can’t let you do it. No friend of mine is going to make a clay pigeon out of himself.”

But the Captain quickly let the little lawyer talk him into it. Too quickly, for such a devoted friend, Malone thought afterwards.

Back in the lobby again Malone went through the dead man’s pockets looking for the hot list and the money. There wasn’t a sign of anything like a list anywhere on his person. The only money was a few crumpled bills in his pants pocket. Could it be that the killer had murdered the wrong man? Or had the red-faced guy been scared out of the deal at the last minute?

He rose to his feet, hiding his disappointment and confusion behind a mask of smiling confidence.

“There’s your man,” he told von Flanagan, and pointed to a bewildered, professorial guy in the crowd. The others fell back in amazement as von Flanagan’s cops clapped handcuffs on the man and went off with him.

Von Flanagan addressed himself to the crowd.

“Now I want everyone of you to fall in line again, just the way you were before this happened.”

They filed out of the lobby and took their places in the parade again. Malone noted that his high hat lay on the street, a battered mess, where the marchers had trampled it underfoot in the excitement. He wondered how much that was going to set him back with the rental people. Beside it lay the dead man’s hat. It had miraculously escaped being stepped on. Malone picked it up and put it gingerly on his head. It didn’t quite fit, but he figured it would have to do. He wondered if the rental people would accept the substitution.

At a signal from von Flanagan the band leader blew his whistle and the band struck up “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” The parade began to move once more up Michigan Avenue. Murder marches on, Malone muttered to himself as he looked uneasily to his right at the vacant spot where only a little while before the red-faced man with the gold tooth had been marching beside him.

He stole a backward glance at the man who was marching behind the vacant spot, and wondered why he hadn’t noticed him before. Then the reason dawned on him. Who would figure the fat man for a killer? A jolly little guy singing “Donna E Mobile.” That was why the gang had picked him, Malone realized — he looked like anything but a killer. But if the little fat guy had committed the crime it was going to be hard to convince a jury of it, unless he was taken in flagrante delicto with the murder weapon still smoking in his hand.

That was precisely what he had let himself in for, the little lawyer reflected ruefully. A sitting — or rather, a marching — duck. A waddling duck — his feet were killing him, and the dead man’s hat sat on his head like a tin can on a post. A perfect target for a pot shot, if the fat man happened to miss this time. If he didn’t miss, if his aim was as good on the second try as it was on the first, then he, John J. Malone, attorney and counsellor at law, was a dead duck.

It was a sobering thought and the last thing he wanted just now was sobering thoughts. He reached into his hip pocket and brought out the reinforcing fluid. Let the members of the Oblong Marching Society, and the million spectators along the line of march, too, for that matter, think what they pleased of an undertaker taking a drop of liquid nourishment in public. He was damned if he was going to die of thirst just to uphold the reputation of the undertaking profession.

The band struck up a Sousa march and Malone, in an effort to add further support to his drooping spirits, raised his voice in song.

“Shet up!” said the sad-eyed Hercules behind him.

“What’s the matter with my singing?” Malone replied without turning around.

“It stinks,” said the sad-eyed man.

Malone decided that the man had no ear for music.

The Oblong Marching Society. The name was probably meant to suggest the shape of a hearse. Or was it a coffin? He dismissed the thought from his mind. This was no time to be thinking of hearses or coffins.

When was it going to happen? Was the killer going to fall for the decoy? He was probably weighing his chances right now. He had killed one man and he probably had the murder weapon on him this very minute. What would he have to lose if he killed a second man? They couldn’t kill him twice. And there was always the chance that he could make a get-away in the excitement. So far as he knew the incriminating list was now on the person of John J. Malone, who had searched the dead man. Malone had even taken the precaution to “palm” the papers as he was searching the red-faced guy, just in case the killer was watching him, which he probably was. In short, he had done everything he could to put himself on the spot for anybody intent on obtaining possession of the hot list.

If that was what the killer was after — and what else could it be? — he was certainly a desperate man to be taking such chances right out in the open. Only one thing could explain it. He was one of the gang of racketeers who had muscled into the Oblong Marching Society as a source of cemetery names with which to help the crooked politicians stuff the ballot boxes. They were probably using the Society, too, as a respectable front for plenty of other rackets. Obviously the killer had been hand-picked by the mob as the fall guy for this dangerous assignment. His orders were “Get those papers, or else.” He was right smack between the blue-barreled service automatics of von Flanagan’s boys and the sawed-off shotguns of the mob.

Malone was almost sorry for the guy. He was even a bit sorry for himself. Where were von Flanagan’s boys? He had warned the Captain to keep his man out of sight but not out of reach. Marching with measured tread to the music of the band — a bit unsteadily now, to be sure — he was listening for the reassuring purr of police motorcycles. He told himself he could hear them, ever so faintly, in the distance. He hoped, not too far distant.

He was lost in these reveries when suddenly the drum and bugle corps of V.F.W. Post No. 9 just up ahead broke into:

This is it! Malone told himself. The next instant he felt himself pushed from behind and when he looked up from the asphalt the scene that met his eyes was one of pure pandemonium, uncut and unrefined. The jolly little fat man was struggling in the grip of a dozen arms and von Flanagan’s cops were converging from all sides with sirens moaning, cut-outs blasting the air like jet fighters. In less time than it takes to tell it the culprit was in handcuffs and being led away to the waiting squad car.

“You did it,” von Flanagan told Malone. “You did it and the department owes you an apology for ever suspecting—”

“The department owes me more than an apology,” Malone said. He examined the silk topper. It had a bullet hole on each side of it. “How much,” he asked, “do you think it’s going to cost me to replace one of these things?”

Von Flanagan shrugged and, after a congratulatory handshake, took his departure with the squad car. Malone was left holding the hat. He looked up at the sad-eyed Hercules whose shove from behind had pushed him in the nick of time out of harm’s way.

“I owe my life to you,” he said. “Do you mind if I buy you a drink?”

Ten minutes later at Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar the little lawyer sat brooding, head in hand, on the turn of events that had left him with nothing to show for his pains but a bullet-pierced high silk hat that he would have to pay for when he returned the outfit to the rental people. No hot list. No thousand dollars. Two tired feet that felt like half-raw, quick-fried beef in the tight patent-leather rented shoes. And a headache from the dead man’s ill-fitting hat.

The sad-eyed guy wasn’t proving to be much of a help either, sitting there and staring moodily into his beer. Malone ordered up another double rye. He turned to the sad-eyed one and said for the dozenth time, “I owe my life to you. Can I buy you another beer?”

The dour one shook his head.

“You don’t owe me nothin’,” he said sourly.

This was a hell of a note. A guy saves your life and when you offer to buy him a drink he insults you by ordering one beer and refusing a refill. This was one more frustration in a day that had been nothing but frustrations. This was the last straw.

“Bring this guy a double rye,” he said to Joe the Angel. “Give him two double ryes, Joe. And a beer chaser.”

“In your hat,” said the sad-eyed one.

“Nobody talks like this to my friend Malone,” Joe the Angel said.

Malone said, “You keep out of this, Joe. I owe my life to this man. The least I can do is buy him a drink.”

“Then let him drink up,” Joe the Angel said. He set down two glasses on the bar and poured two double ryes. And a beer chaser.

“Down the hatch,” Malone said, raising his own glass.

“In your hat,” said the sad-eyed Hercules.

Joe the Angel reached for the bung-starter, but Malone stopped him with an imperious wave of the hand.

“An insult is an insult, friend or no friend,” he said to the dour one. He was beginning to feel the heartening effects of the rye. “Now, if you’ll oblige me by stepping outside we can settle this thing like gentlemen.”

The sad-eyed one lifted himself off the bar stool and started for the door. Malone donned the silk topper and followed him outside.

At the first passage of arms Malone found himself sprawling on the sidewalk. Beside him lay the silk hat, a shapeless mess.

“In your hat,” said the dour one, and stalked off.

Before Malone could get to his feet the sad-eyed Hercules had disappeared in the sidewalk crowd.

Malone picked up the battered topper and as he did so his fingers encountered something bulging in the hat-band. He reached in and pulled out a sheaf of carefully folded sheets. They were covered on both sides with close-packed single-space names. He dived into the hat-band and this time he came up with a little sheaf of crisp hundred dollar bills. He counted them. Ten.

He pocketed the typed list and deposited the bills carefully in his wallet. Enough to pay for the busted topper, the back rent, and a date with the blonde which — he glanced at his wrist watch — was only four hours away.

For a second, it didn’t register. Then he got it. Hercules had been a friend of the murdered man. Hercules had known all about the list — and he’d known where it had been hidden. He’d known about Malone, too, and he had been telling Malone everything the lawyer needed to know about the list and the money. It was all cleared up now.

Malone considered chasing the sad-eyed man, but decided against it. Hercules would want no publicity, and very probably no thanks. The way he’d look at it, he’d only have been doing his job. Helping out a friend.

Besides, Malone told himself, Hercules would be too far away by now.

The little lawyer shrugged. He’d had the money with him all the time — and never known it.

“In your hat,” Malone told himself. He put the crumpled topper on his head, and went back to the bar.