Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 37, No. 1, July 1975

My Friend the Frog by Arthur Moore

Right or wrong, I was sure to die. I didn’t know which way to jump. Not ’til a frog showed me a way...

“Dubois,” says Roxy Callahan, “Saturday is my birthday and I am like having a hunnerd close friends to the celebration, but there is a hitch.”

“Izzat so?” I say, wondering why Roxy is telling me all this. He and I are not as close as Cleveland is to Hong Kong. He has cornered me in Katzie’s Saloon and ladled out a largesse of lager with a lavish hand.

“This is a birthday party which has been announced a month ago,” he tells me. “It is a question of face.”

I nod, getting the direction of his drift. Roxy has a lot of face to save. He is about as handsome as a fire hydrant, only he is not painted yellow. He is all hood and a chopper wide and there is talk that he was not born but was hatched from a hand grenade.

“So I want you to get the dance contest postponed,” he says. “There is a C note in it for your trouble.”

“What dance contest?” I ask, surprised.

He frowns at me like I am not the brightest barnacle on the beach. “Faceless Robert is holding this Saturday riot on the parking lot of the Club 97. You must of heard.”

“Oh, that riot,” I say, remembering that Gunny Smith, Faceless’ number one head hood and Trigger type is always getting summer notions to route revenue into the clutches of the Big Cat, namely, Faceless... and the Club’s coffers.

Then it comes to me what he has said. “Me!? How can I do a thing like that!?”

“That is up to you, little friend,” Roxy says with a smile that shows his fangs. “You can get into the Club, so you can put a monkey wrench into the spilled beans. You dig?”

I nod, blanching like an albino turnip. Roxy and his hoods cannot get into the area. Roxy and Faceless are the kinds of pals who send each other valentines that tick. But I am also thinking that if Faceless hears what Roxy is ordering me to do he will coil my cable and cram me into a concrete crypt. With no escape hatch.

“When I spring for a century I expect results,” Roxy says, handing me half the fee in advance, fifty pieces of silver, which will guarantee my extinction. He gets up and walks out.

I get up and stumble as far as the sidewalk, gasping for air. I am in Faceless’ good graces at the moment — which Roxy has heard about and is taking advantage of. But good graces or not, Faceless would mash me in a minute. I am in big trouble.

So I totter toward the Club 97, slow as a turtle to a tryst. It is Friday and I have one day to work this miracle.

I remember then about Gloria. Gloria LaMarr is what Roxy is uptight about. If Gloria does her number nobody will show up at his party.

But maybe she is not on the bill. When it comes to writhing her wishbone there is no broad breathing who can beat her unbridled, bacchanalian bumps. When she does her number it is hard to hear the orchestra because of the heavy panting.

I palpitate all the way to the Club and when I arrive I see Roxy has lost. The dress rehearsal in the parking lot is about to begin. Guys are stringing banners which proclaim that Gloria will appear.

There is a dais and divers dangling do-dads amid spotlights and loud speakers. I am able to slip into the lot and I see at a glance that nobody is going to halt this clambake, least of all me.

With Gloria in the lineup, the dance contest is a bust. Any judge would give her the nod even if she showed up in a raincoat and hipboots. However, now that I am here, I look over the lot.

According to the talk I hear, Gunny Smith has beat the bushes for a rival band and has latched onto some longhair leapers who are large on the lists. They have a best-seller called: The Peg That Pierced My Heart Is Grandpa’s Wooden Leg.

This hopeful bunch is headed by a wig-heavy hopper named Jumpy Joe, and the group is the Joe Jitsues. Their big number is a dance called the Jake.

Gloria LaMarr is backed up by the regular combo from the Club 97, the Bug-Eyed Seven. They were not bug-eyed before they started watching Gloria every night.

Since the Jake is such a big hit it is in the rules that all the contestants have to learn it so they can be judged on the same gyrations. There are a dozen other contestants but the scam is that the contest will come down to Jumpy Joe and Gloria. I can hardly wait to see her rehearse.

There is a big prize, but all Faceless wants is the publicity. With Gloria’s assets printed in the papers he will fill the Club with suckers all year long.

Jumpy Joe’s band clangs into a number and Jumpy starts doing the Jake. Five lovely dolls from the group do it with him. It is easy to see that it is a very difficult dance unless you have double-jointed loin bones and plenty of hula blood. It would also help if the dancer did not care what people thought.

After Joe stops rehearsing, Gloria is announced as the next performer. Forty photographers come to life and jostle for positions around the stage.

Gloria comes out of the Club and wriggles toward the parking lot, with a score of hoods clearing the way for her. All the people who are fixing the flags and belaying the bunting and bedecking the buildings race to the rostrum, along with truck drivers, electricians, guards, ticket takers and Left Foot Hamish.

I am astonished to see him and mention this.

He says, “I was on my way to the park, but I heard this here commotion so I crawled under the fence.”

Then he shows me his frog. Left Foot is the kind of slob who knows when it is National Hernia Week. He is a little squeal, not as big as me, and I am a gee who could sit on a dime and let his feet dangle. I should have known he would own a frog.

He is on his way to the park to free this creature.

The frog is agog with the noise of the mob as Miss La Marr comes past. Maybe the sight of Gloria, writhing her willowy way through the wrought-up waves of worshipping workmen is too much for the small green webfoot. Maybe he thinks he is back in the swamp.

He leaps like an eagle.

Left Foot shouts, but the frog bulls-eyes into Gloria’s cleavage. And Gloria gives a squawk — heard in Jersey — and shifts her chassis into high.

She is a beautiful chick. Her voice is the only part of her with edges. Nature has gilded this lily but loused up her larynx. She is visual but not audio so that when she screams it is too much. Some of the overhead lights shatter and neighborhood dogs begin to howl in a very weird way.

When she screams she also wriggles and writhes, trying to get the frog out of her filmy frock. There is a murmur from the crowd when she begins to undulate. Not knowing about the frog, they think she is doing the Jake.

Forty-three chorus girls turn in their sequins and wander off to typing school. Left Foot clutches my sleeve and he is breathing very shallow. He has never seen Gloria do her number — which is banned in stag smokers around the nation. His little heart is thumping and he is trembling like a politician under oath. I try to cover his eyes because I know that the Nude Bellydancer’s Union has protested that Gloria’s body is harmful to depraved persons... and other humans.

Naturally Jumpy Joe spots this development from the stage and he turns livid under the lights.

“That ain’t the Jake!” he shouts. “You’re rooning my dance!”

No one listens. Gloria is busy shrieking and slapping herself in a very abandoned way and the crowd is hip to the beat. The frog dance is catching on. In another second everyone is doing it. The entire parking lot is pulsating and hopping — without music. Gloria’s off-key screaming is reaching the higher octaves and the nearby air-raid warning blaster is shorted and begins to howl.

By the time the fuzz arrives the worst riot in town is revolving around the parking lot. All the Marias in town siren up and cops are cramming citizens into them and yelling for more.

The riot makes the front pages of every newspaper in the country. Gloria’s slithering is smeared on every one — along with sermons on sin from the straight-laced set. Faceless is hysterical with the publicity.

Even though the cops cancel his sell-out for Saturday night.

So I split the C note with Left Foot and the frog.