The Bigger They Come

Chapter 7

A steady, insistent pounding on my door dragged me from oblivion into stupefied semi-consciousness. I heard the voice of my landlady saying, ‘Mr. Lam — oh, Mr. Lam — Mr. Lam. Get up.’

I reached out for the light. My body felt as though it would break in two. I found the light, switched it on, and limped to the door of the little attic bedroom.

The landlady had on a faded green wrapper which made her look like sacked potatoes. The white fringe of a flannel nightgown burst out from beneath the wrapper. She said in a voice shrill with indignation, ‘I don’t know what this new job of yours is, but I’ve put up with just about enough! I’ve let you get weeks behind with the room rent, and now―’

‘What is it?’ I interrupted, and when I tried to talk my swollen nose and lips made my face feel wooden.

‘It’s a woman on the telephone who says she has to talk with you. She keeps screaming into my ear that it’s a matter of life and death. The phone’s been ringing and ringing and ringing It’s woke up everyone in the house. And I’ve had to climb three flights of stairs and stand here banging on the door until―’

‘I’m much obliged, Mrs. Smith,’ I said.

‘Obliged, eh?’ she sniffed. ‘Great goings on to wake everyone up and―’

I forced my tortured body into action, dove back into the room, grabbed a bathrobe, flung it over my pajamas, and kicked my feet into slippers. It seemed an interminable distance down the hall. Alma was all I could think of. I hoped it was Bertha Cool with some new assignment. I knew she was quite capable of doing that very thing, but— The receiver was dangling from the cord. I grabbed it up, placed it to my ear, said, ‘Hello,’ and heard Alma’s voice. ‘Oh, Donald, I’m so glad I reached you. Something awful’s happened.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t tell you over the phone. You must come.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m in the telephone booth in the lobby of Sandra’s apartment house.’

‘Well, where will I meet you?’ I asked.

‘I’ll be right there.’

‘In the apartment, you mean?’

‘No — in the telephone booth. Something awful’s happened. Come quickly.’

I said, ‘Right away,’ hung up the telephone, and went up the stairs as fast as I could force my sore muscles into action. I passed Mrs. Smith wheezing down the steps. She said acidly, ‘There are people in the house, Mr. Lam, who are trying to get back to sleep.’

I got to my room, flung off my robe and pajamas, climbed into my clothes, and was tying my necktie as I dashed down the stairs to the street. I buttoned my vest on the way to the corner. It seemed an age before a late-cruising taxicab came prowling along close to the curb. I signaled him and gave him the address. In the cab, I asked, ‘What time is it, buddy?’

‘Half past two.’

My wrist watch hadn’t been good enough to pawn, but by setting it every day, I could approximate the time. Now it was on the dresser by the head of my bed. I looked through my pockets to make sure I had the certificate of appointment as a private detective which Bertha Cool had given me. I scooped the silver out of my pocket, and held it in the palm of my hand, counting it against the flicking figures which appeared on the illuminated dial of the taximeter. When the driver stopped at the address, there was five cents over. I handed him the whole collection of coins, said, ‘Thanks a lot, buddy,’ and made a dive for the door. I almost broke my arm. It was locked tight. The lobby was lighted, but there was no one at the little desk. I kicked against the door, hoping that Alma would hear me. She did after a while, and came out of the telephone booth and down the corridor.

I stared at her in surprise. She had on sheer silk pajamas, and some sort of filmy gown over them. She opened the door, and I said, ‘Alma, what’s happened?’

‘I’ve shot someone,’ she said, in a hoarse whisper.

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘No.’

‘Have you notified the police?’

‘No.’

‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘We notify the police right away.’

‘But Sandra wouldn’t want me to, and Bleatie says—’

‘To hell with Sandra and Bleatie both,’ I said. ‘Get in there and telephone the police.’

I piloted her back to the telephone booth.

‘Donald, don’t you think I’d better tell you what—’

‘If you’ve shot anyone,’ I said, ‘you get in touch with the police and tell them the whole story.’

She turned to me and said, ‘I’ll have to ask you for a nickel.’ I went through my pockets. There wasn’t a coin on me. I’d given my last cent to the cab driver. I tried the telephone. It simply, positively, wouldn’t work without the coin.

‘How did you telephone me?’ I asked.

She said, ‘A man came in. He was drunk. I told him a story about my husband locking me out, and asked him for a coin so I could telephone. He gave me a nickel.’

‘All right. Let’s go back up to the apartment.’

‘I can’t. I haven’t my keys. There’s a spring lock on the door.’

‘We’ll get the manager. Tell me, what happened?’

‘I went to sleep, and woke up and someone was in the room. He was bending over the bed with his hand right over my nose, ready to shut off my breathing. After that awful experience of last night, I was almost paralyzed with terror. But you’d impressed on my mind what I was to do. You remember you said it didn’t make any difference whether I hit him or not. So I jerked the gun out from under my pillow, and pulled the trigger. I’d slipped the safety catch off when I went to bed. I was never so frightened in my life. That gun made such an awful bang! I thought my eardrums would burst. I dropped the gun and screamed.’

‘Then what?’ I asked.

‘Then I grabbed a robe from the bed — I must have. I don’t remember doing it, but it was over my arm when I got out to the other room.’

‘You ran into the other room?’

‘Yes, and then into the hall.’

I said, ‘Well, he’s probably in there now then, unless he managed to get out through a window. There’s not one chance in ten that you hit him.’

‘Oh, but I did hit him,’ she said. ‘I heard an awful smack like a bullet would make when it hit someone — and he fell down.’

‘How do you know he fell down?’

‘I heard him.’

‘Did you hear him move after that?’ I asked.

‘Yes, I think I did. I heard something. I went completely screwy. I dashed out into the corridor and ran for the elevator just as hard as I could run. The door closed and clicked shut behind me. I stayed in the elevator for a minute, and then realized what a predicament I was in. Look, I haven’t even any slippers on.’

I looked down at her tinted toenails, and said, ‘Well, we’re going to have to get the manager. Don’t be frightened, Alma. It’s probably a burglar, someone who is looking for Morgan Birks’ records, or thought, perhaps, he had some money salted away. Where was Sandra all this time?’

‘She went out.’

‘Where was Bleatie?’

‘I don’t know. In bed, I guess, in the other room.’

‘And he didn’t hear the shot?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Look here, Alma,’ I said. ‘Do you suppose it could have been Bleatie who—’

‘What would he be doing in my room?’ she asked.

I couldn’t think of any answer I wanted to put in words, so I didn’t try to give one. I said, ‘We’ll find the manager, and—’ I broke off and crowded her back into the telephone booth as a big car pulled up in front of the apartment house. ‘Here comes someone now,’ I said. ‘I can mooch a coin and call police headquarters. I’d rather do that than notify the manager.’

‘I have some money in my purse if we can get the door of the apartment open,’ Alma Hunter said.

‘Well, we’ll see who this is and—’

I could see the vague, indistinct form of a driver at the wheel of the big car. A girl was between him and me, and she almost smothered him saying good night. He didn’t come around to open the car door for her or see her into the apartment. But as soon as she disentangled herself and opened the door of the car, he slid away from the curb and out into the night. I started toward the door and stopped. The woman was taking a latchkey from her purse. As she walked up to the door, I saw her face. It was Sandra Birks.

I walked back to the telephone booth and said, ‘Here comes Sandra now. You can go up with her. Tell me, Alma, how did it happen no one heard the shot?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you don’t think they did?’

‘No. At any rate, there hasn’t been anything done about it.’

Sandra Birks came in, walking with quick, determined little steps. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were starry. She seemed to be walking on air. I stepped out from behind the little counter which ran around the desk, and said, ‘Just a minute.’

She caught her breath when she saw me, and then shifted her eyes to stare at Alma in her robe, pajamas, and bare feet.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

‘If you’ve got a dime,’ I said, ‘we’ll call the police. Alma shot someone in your apartment.’

‘A burglar,’ Alma said, quickly.

‘The same one who—’ Sandra broke off to look at her throat.

Alma nodded. ‘I think so.’

‘Where did you get the gun?’

I started to say, ‘I gave it to her,’ but Alma said quickly, ‘It was one I had. I’d had it in Kansas City. I kept it in the bottom of my suitcase.’

Sandra said, ‘We’d better go up and look things over before we—’

‘No, we hadn’t,’ I interrupted. ‘There’s been enough delay already. We call the police.’

Sandra said, ‘What’s the matter? Haven’t you a dime?’

I met her eyes, and said, ‘No.’

She opened her purse, took out a dime and gave it to me. I walked back to the telephone booth. Sandra and Alma stood there by the elevator, talking in low tones; and just then I heard the low wail of a police siren, sounding close at hand. I was just taking the receiver off the hook in the telephone booth when a radio patrol car drew up in front of the door. I started dialing blind, stalling along to keep out of sight. An officer climbed the two stairs, tried the door, and rattled the knob. Sandra walked across and let him in.

I could hear him say through the door to the telephone booth, ‘Someone reported a shot was heard in 419. Do you know anything about it?’

‘I live there,’ Sandra Birks said.

‘Oh, you do?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was there a shot?’

‘I just came in.’

‘Who’s this dame?’

‘She lives with me — it was a shot, I guess — she heard it.’

‘Let’s go up.’

He pushed them along with him into the elevator. The door rattled shut, and the elevator started swaying upward. Over the phone I heard the noise of the ringing bell and a sleepy masculine voice said ‘Hello.’ I thought for a moment, then put the receiver back on the hook.

Apparently no one had said anything about me.

I watched the indicator swing upward in an arc until it came to the fourth floor. Then it stopped. I waited a minute or two to see if the elevator was coming back down, and when I saw it wasn’t, jabbed the button. The indicator remained stationary. Evidently, they’d left the door open when they went up. At that hour of the night, there was only one elevator running, and it was an automatic.

It took me a couple of minutes to climb the four flights of stairs and walk down the corridor to apartment 419.

The apartment door was open. I could hear the sound of voices coming from the bedroom on the right. The lights were on. I stepped into the apartment, and looked through the bedroom door. The two women were standing facing the officer.

Alma Hunter, white-lipped, defiant; Sandra Birks, poker-faced. Sprawled on the floor with his arm outstretched, lying on his back, his glazed eyes reflecting the lights from the ceiling, lay Morgan Birks.

The officer asked Alma, ‘Where did you get this gun?’

‘I had it.’

‘When did you buy it?’

‘I didn’t buy it.’

‘Who gave it to you?’

‘A gentleman friend.’

‘Where? When?’

‘In Kansas City, of course. It was some time ago. I don’t remember how long ago.’

Sandra Birks looked past the officer and saw me. Her eyes narrowed. She raised her hand to her lips, and as she lowered it, flipped the wrist in a signal to go away.

The officer caught either her motion or the expression in her eyes. He whirled and saw me standing there.

‘Who’s this?’ he asked.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked, staring down at the figure on the floor.

Sandra Birks said evenly, ‘I think he has an apartment somewhere on this floor.’

The officer came pushing toward me. ‘You get out,’ he said. ‘This is a homicide. We don’t want a lot of people trooping in. Who are you? What—’

‘Why don’t you put a sign on the door?’ I said. ‘I thought there was some trouble here. You left the door wide open and—’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘On your way, and we’ll close it right now.’

‘Well, don’t get hard about it. I have a perfect right to look in here when the door’s open, and you can’t keep me out. I’m not—’

‘The hell I can’t keep you out,’ he said, and clapped his big hand on my back between my shoulders. He wrinkled my coat up in his fingers to give him a good grip, and shoved. I went out in the hall so fast I had to put up my hand to keep from slamming into the wall on the other side of the corridor. Behind me, the door slammed shut, and I heard the lock click.

Cops are that way. If I’d tried to leave, he’d have dragged me in and given me the third degree. Getting hard and insisting that I had the right to stay, resulted in getting thrown out with no questions asked. He’d proved his point and established the superiority of a police officer over the poor dumb citizen who pays the taxes.

I didn’t know just what had happened, but Sandra Birks’ signal had been enough. I didn’t need to have a brick house fall on me. I walked to the elevator and took it down. My ribs ached every time I breathed, and the shove the officer had given me hadn’t helped any.

The radio patrol car was waiting at the curb. The second officer was seated in it, listening to broadcasts. He was taking notes as I came out, and looked up at me sharply; but the radio was blaring a description of a man wanted for something or other, and he let me go.

I tried to walk casually until I got to the corner, swinging out to the curb once or twice as though looking for a cruising cab. Behind me, I could hear the blare of the police radio as a voice said in a droning monotone, ‘—about thirty-seven or thirty-eight, height five feet ten inches, a hundred and eighty pounds, wearing a gray felt hat-wide black brim-shirt-tie spotted red. When last seen-running-scene-crime—’

I turned the corner. A taxicab hove into sight. I flagged it. ‘Where to?’ the driver asked.

‘Straight down the street,’ I said, ‘until I tell you to stop.’ It wasn’t until we’d got half a dozen blocks that I suddenly realized I hadn’t a cent to my name. I figured the meter would register about sixty-five cents getting to Bertha Cool’s address. I gave him the number and settled back against the cushions.

‘Wait here,’ I said, and got out of the cab, crossed the curb to the apartment house, found Bertha Cool’s name on the directory, and leaned against the door button.

There was going to be an embarrassing moment for me with that taxi driver if Bertha Cool wasn’t in.

To my surprise, the buzzer sounded almost immediately. I pushed against the door, and it opened, letting me into a dark hallway. I groped around, found a light switch, and located the elevator. Bertha Cool was on the fifth floor. I had no difficulty finding her apartment. The light was on. She opened the door as I tapped on the panel. Her hair was messed from sleeping and hung in strings around her face. Her features looked bloated, but her eyes were cold and hard as diamonds glittering out at me from above the puffy folds of flesh. A silk bathrobe was knotted around her waist. Through the opening in the top, I could see the sweep of her massive throat, a V-shaped section of her big chest.

‘You look like hell,’ she said. ‘Who beat you up? Come in.’

I entered the apartment, and she closed the door. It was a two room affair with a kitchenette opening from the back of the living room. The bedroom door was half open. I could see on the bed with the covers thrown back, a desk phone on a stand within a foot of the pillow, a pair of stockings thrown over the back of the chair, a wadded bundle of garments, which looked as though they’d been balled up and tossed onto the seat of another chair. The living room was close, and smelled of stale tobacco. She walked across to the windows, flung them open, looked at me sharply, and said, ‘What’s the matter? Been run over by a truck?’

‘Beaten up by mugs and pushed around by the police,’ I said.

‘Oh, like that?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right. Don’t tell me about it until I’ve found the cigarettes. Where in hell did I put those things? I had a full pack when I went to bed—’

‘In on the taboret by the bed,’ I said.

She looked at me sharply, said, ‘You seem to have an observing disposition,’ dropped down in a big overstuffed chair, and went on in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, ‘Run in and get them for me, Donald. Don’t try to talk to me until I’ve had a couple of good deep drags.’

I brought her the cigarettes, held a match, and when she motioned toward an ottoman, slid it toward her. She elevated her feet, kicked off her slippers, twisted in the chair until she found a comfortable position, settled herself, and said, ‘Go ahead.’

I told her everything I knew.

She said, ‘You should have telephoned me before you went to bed. You should have let me know right away.’

‘But he hadn’t been killed then,’ I said. ‘I only got the phone call—’

‘Oh, the murder,’ she interrupted. ‘To hell with the murder. The police can take care of that, but this gang that kidnaped you and wanted to get in touch with Morgan Birks sounds like ready money to me. You passed up a bet there. You—’ The telephone rang.

She sighed. ‘Donald, go get me that telephone. You can pull the jack out and plug it in here. There’s a long extension cord on it. Hurry before they hang up, dear.’

I ran into the bedroom, followed the extension cord to the wall plug, pulled it out, handed the telephone to Mrs. Cool, and plugged into the living room connection.

She picked up the receiver, said, ‘Bertha Cool talking,’ and waited.

I could hear the rattle of the diaphragm in the receiver as words poured into Bertha Cool’s ear. The twinkling eyes indicated she was enjoying the conversation.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked at length.

The receiver made more noise, and Bertha Cool said, ‘I’d want five hundred dollars, cash money. After that, I’ll probably want more. I can’t guarantee anything... Well, you’ll have to get it, dearie... Safety deposit boxes mean nothing to me. They’ll seal them anyhow... All right, dearie. Fifty dollars will be all right until tomorrow... I’ll keep him under cover. Yes, I hadn’t better come over there right away. Wait until the police get done. There’s no need of antagonizing them. What time is it now?... All right. Let’s say an hour or an hour and a half. You wait there for me unless they take you to headquarters. I don’t think they will.’

She hung up, and her lips twisted in a smile of satisfaction.

‘Sandra Birks,’ she said.

‘Wants you to investigate her husband’s death?’

‘Wants me to take care of Alma Hunter. They’re arresting her.’

‘They got a crust!’ I said. ‘He was trying to choke her, and—’

‘Don’t be so sure,’ she said. ‘Morgan Birks was shot in the back.’

‘In the back!’ I exclaimed.

‘Uh huh. He was evidently trying to get out the door when he was shot. The bullet went completely through and embedded itself in the door. Reconstructing the position of the body from the direction of the wound, the police figure he had his hand on the doorknob and was trying to get out when he was shot in the back.’

‘Well, what the devil business did he have coming in her room, anyway? What was he looking for?’

‘A drink of water probably,’ she said. ‘But the police don’t like to have girls shoot men in the back and then claim they were being attacked.’

‘It was dark in the room,’ I said.

‘He was trying to get out.’

‘He’d tried to choke her the night before.’

‘He had?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me about it.’

I told her. She listened carefully and said, ‘How does she know it was Morgan Birks who tried to choke her?’

‘It stands to reason,’ I insisted.

‘It takes more than that to sell the police on an idea,’ she said. ‘Donald, be a good boy. Ring up the motor-vehicle registration department at headquarters, tell them it’s the Cool Detective Agency, and get them to give you the registration of 5N1525 and 5M1525. I’m going to go get some clothes on.’

She pinched out the cigarette, exhaled a long last appreciative cloud of smoke, heaved herself from the chair, and strode out toward the bedroom, removing the silk robe as she walked. She dressed without bothering to close the door. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her moving around; and she could hear me as I called the department of vehicular registrations and found out that 5N1525 was registered in the name of George Salisbery, 938 Main Street, Centerville, and 5M1525 in the name of William D. Cunweather, 907 Willoughby Drive.

I hung up the telephone after writing down the names and addresses, and Mrs. Cool called from the bedroom. ‘That Salisbery guy doesn’t sound so good. That Willoughby Drive address may be our meat. How does it seem to you, Donald?’

‘It could be. The house looked as though it were out around that section somewhere.’

‘Call a cab,’ she said.

‘I have one waiting downstairs.’

‘Are you sporting taxicabs for your private transportation?’ she asked. ‘Or did you think you were on an expense account?’

I flared up and said, ‘I thought I was on an expense account.’

She was silent for several seconds. I sat there wondering whether she was going to blow up and fire me or take it.

‘All right,’ she said in that maternal voice of hers. ‘We’ll go downstairs and take it, Donald, dear. I’ll make a note of whatever’s on the meter and take it out of your salary. Let’s go.’