The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Henry Hunt Searls JR. (1922–) received his B.S. from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, then attended the Stanford University Publishing Course. His background in the navy (he is now a retired lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve), plus his avocation of yachting, provided authentic background to his many novels with military backgrounds, not to mention his novelizations of the movies Jaws 2 (1978) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987). He had a long history of writing for the pulps, notably the series about San Francisco private eye Mike Blair, which appeared in Dime Detective in the 1940s and early 1950s; seven Blair adventures were collected in The Adventures of Mike Blair (1988). Searls has written of his inexperience when he began writing, learning his craft while earning a penny a word from the pulps, which served him well when he began to write full-length novels, frequently military thrillers, such as The Crowded Sky (1960), which was filmed the same year with Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and Anne Francis; The Pilgrim Project (1964), filmed by Robert Altman as Countdown (1968), starring James Caan, Joanna Moore, and Robert Duvall; The Penetrators (1965); and the TV movie Overboard (1978) with Angie Dickinson. Among Searls’s other TV writing credits are episodes of The Fugitive, the miniseries Wheels, and the creation of The New Breed, which starred Leslie Nielsen.

“Drop Dead Twice” was published in the March 1950 issue.

When a lady dabbles in blackmail, she’s begging for a shroud — and so is the private dick who goes calling on her corpse!

It was a very nice job — definitely professional. And final. The blonde lay across the hotel bed lengthwise, a gleam of golden flesh showing above her stocking, but otherwise perfectly presentable. A white linen handkerchief was clutched in her hand. She had been mugged — strangled — throttled. Whatever you wanted to call it, the killer had quite thoroughly known his business.

It was no place for me. The package in my pocket was suddenly heavy. I lit a cigarette and did some fast thinking. The more I thought the worse it looked. The desk clerk had taken my name, phoned the room. The blonde had apparently answered the phone and told him to send me up. One short elevator ride later I had walked through the open door, called her name, and gone into the bedroom.

And she was dead.

What do you do when you find a corpse? In the movies, you call the cops. The cops come and they want to know what you’re doing there. You can’t explain. So they stick you in the clink, and you stay, innocent as a new-born babe, until some smart dick solves the crime. Then they spring you and everybody lives happily ever after.

But suppose nobody solves the crime?

Maybe you burn. Maybe they adjust that last, uncomfortable necktie and spring the trapdoor. No, this is California. They put you in a quiet private room with a bottle of cyanide gas and tell you to breathe deep.

Not me.

I flicked the cigarette out the window and took a powder...

Lippy Fargo adjusted his expensive bathrobe over his fat little belly and showed me into his apartment. He motioned to a chair in front of the big window and went to the bar.

“Whiskey, Pete?”

“A shot.”

He waddled back with two glasses and plopped himself down opposite me.

“Did you give the stuff to her?”

I took the package out of my pocket and untied it. I removed four five-hundred-dollar bills and tossed the package to Lippy. I said: “The two grand is for services rendered. Cheap, considering.”

Lippy counted the money absently. “Considering what?”

“Considering you tried to frame me.”

Lippy’s cherubic face turned red. “Suppose you quit talking in circles and tell me what happened.”

“As if you didn’t know.”

“Look, Pete. I told you I’d give you five hundred bucks if you delivered the dough. You didn’t deliver the dough and you kept two thousand. You better have a story worth two grand or else hand it over.”

“You’re damn lucky you’re getting any of it back. If the cops had turned up there, you’d never have seen your money again.”

“Cops? What cops?”

“The blonde was dead. Strangled.”

Lippy looked up sharply. “Who did it?”

“You tell me. It just seems funny as hell that you sent me there, fat, dumb, and happy, and there was somebody waiting to kill her between the time the desk clerk called and gave her my name and the time I got up to the apartment. It smells bad to me. How does it smell to you?”

Lippy shook his head. “So help me, Pete, I didn’t have a thing to do with it.”

“What were you paying off for?”

There was a long silence. “Sorry, Pete. That I can’t tell you.”

I got up and walked to the window. “You better tell me, and it better be good, because I’m calling the cops in about two minutes and telling them why I was there.”

Lippy raised himself with a grunt. He took my arm. “Don’t do that, Pete. We’re friends. You know I can’t afford to get mixed up in anything like that. I’m on parole.”

I swung around. “What about me? Am I going to be the fall guy? Why was I there? ‘Well, I’ll tell you, Inspector, I was looking for my cuff link. I was passing the hotel and it fell off and rolled through the lobby and up the stairs.’ ” I paused. “What’ll I tell them?”

Lippy walked back to his chair and collapsed wearily.

“I don’t know, Pete. It’ll kill my wife. Ever since I got out, I’ve been clean. You know that. Most of the people here don’t even know I’ve served time. My kid’s in college — it’ll ruin her. When the papers get hold of it...” He rubbed his hand over his eyes. “I don’t know...”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Lippy. I don’t know who did it. Maybe you don’t either. But I’ve got to have a story when they pick me up, and it’ll have to be the truth.”

Lippy leaned forward intently. “You’re smart, Pete. You can find out who did it. Name your own price. Just keep me out of it.” His voice was desperate.

I looked out at the fog rolling into the bay. A foghorn moaned dismally. Lippy Fargo — reformed gambler. Worth sticking your neck out for? A good guy, a good friend, but...Finally I turned.

“OK. I’ll take a crack at it. But I can’t guarantee anything if the cops pick me up. And you’ll have to come clean with me.”

Lippy nodded. “OK, Pete. What do you want to know?”

“The pay-off. What was it for?”

Lippy took a deep breath. “Two years ago I was paroled. I wanted to get out of the gambling racket, and I was selling my clubs, one at a time. I went to Nevada to sell my Reno place — broke parole to do it. I was only there three days. I got in a game of stud with two other guys: Dude Wallon, a hood that used to work for me, and an Easterner named Wright.

“Dude was pretty drunk — he was just a gunman anyway — and he claimed this guy Wright was hiding an ace. Wright gives him some lip, so Dude pulls a gun and kills him. Just like that. Then he looks in his coat for the ace. He looks up at me and grins. ‘Wrong again,’ he says. There was a girl in the room — Dude’s girl. That was the blonde you saw.”

I nodded. “So you couldn’t report the murder without being caught violating your parole, and besides, Dude and the girl might have claimed you did it.”

“That’s right. Well, Dude got rid of the body, somehow, and headed for the East — and that’s all there was to it. Until I read this in the paper the other day.”

He walked to a desk and rummaged around. Then he handed me a clipping.

“Well,” Lippy continued, “the other day the blonde turns up. She’s seen the clipping too, she says. She says that now Dude is dead it leaves only herself and me that know about Wright’s murder, and she’s awful broke, and could I spare twelve grand.”

I whistled.

“I told her I’d think it over. I thought it over, and decided to pay. I figured she’d be back for more, but I had to protect my family, and what the hell — twelve grand. I didn’t want to see her again myself, and you were the only guy I knew that I could trust with that kind of dough. That’s the story, Pete.”

I puffed at my cigarette. It sounded all right, but you never know.

“Can you think of anybody that might want to see the blonde murdered? Outside of you, that is?”

He shook his head. “No, not now.”

I looked up. “What do you mean, now?”

“Well, when Dude worked for me he was quite a ladies’ man. He dated this blonde you found dead, Sylvia Clinton, and a redhead named Flame Doreen that sang at the 411 Club, and I don’t know how many others. The redhead didn’t like the blonde, and vice versa. They had a fight once, right in my office. Dude stood there and laughed. But Dude’s dead now, and there wouldn’t have been any reason—”

I shook my head. “Were there any others?”

“Not that I know of. Of course, if she was using blackmail as a steady diet, anybody might have done it.”

I drove back to my hotel to get my stuff before the cops moved in. I cased the lounge carefully — there was no one there but the desk clerk and a few of the girls who hung out in the lobby. I opened my door and switched on the light.

“Hold it, Butler,” said a voice in the shadows. I looked down the barrel of a Police Special. A little old guy wearing horn-rimmed glasses stood behind the gun, and an overgrown kid in a police uniform stood behind the little guy. I stayed where I was.

“Search him, John,” said the little guy. The cop ambled over and went through my stuff. “This is him, Inspector,” he said, looking at my driver’s license. “He’s a private eye and a sheriff’s deputy and — say!” He whistled. “Two thousand dollars.” He handed me back my wallet.

“Does murder pay that well nowadays?” asked the little man. “Maybe I’m in the wrong racket.”

“Look,” I explained, “I was going to call you guys. I just wanted to check on something first.”

“Sure,” said the inspector. “Well, don’t bother to call. The desk clerk found the girl.”

“You’re making a mistake. I didn’t do it.”

“Nobody ever does it, mac. I’ve been working in Homicide for twenty years and I never found anybody that did it.”

“Listen,” I said reasonably. “You think I’d have left my right name at the front desk if I’d gone up there to kill the girl?”

“In a word, yes. It’s a very smart thing to do. It looks awfully good to a jury. That’s why you’d do it, especially if you might get caught anyway. To make it look better, though, you should have reported the crime. Yes, I think you did it, whether you left your name or not.”

“Well, you’re wrong.”

“OK, so I’m wrong. What were you doing up there?”

Well, now was the time. I thought of Lippy, sweating it out at home. I thought of his wife — not a bad old girl. I thought of his daughter in college. I knew I’d hate myself for turning soft, but what can you do?

“Just a friendly call,” I said.

“OK, John, slip the cuffs on him.”

“Now wait a minute,” I said. “I can—”

The big cop moved over and clicked a handcuff onto my wrist, and that was that. A handcuff makes a very decisive sound. He put the other cuff on himself. I felt like tail-end Charlie on a chain gang.

“Take him down to the car. I’m going to look around.”

The cop marched me to the elevator. We stood behind the elevator boy, saying nothing, as we started down to the lobby. The cop towered on my right, a real tribute to American breakfast food: tall, broad, healthy. I eyed him speculatively. I thought of spending the next six months in the city jail with the prospect of graduating to a quiet grave in the municipal cemetery, and decided that it was worth trying. I never had much of a left, but if he had a glass jaw...

He did. I put everything I had into the blow, it went directly to the button, and he folded like a tired old man, almost pulling me down with him. The elevator boy turned, his face white.

“Mr. Butler, you shouldn’t oughta have done that!”

“OK, sonny. Don’t worry about it.” I pulled the gun out of the cop’s holster and the keys out of his pocket. I fumbled with the keys and tried two of them on the steel bracelet. The second one worked. “Let me out in the basement, and then let’s see this elevator head for the top floor, and I mean the top floor.”

I got out quickly, walked swiftly through the help’s quarters, and out the side door into an alley. I ran down the alley and on to the main street. I signaled a taxi and told the driver to take me to the 411 Club. I sat back and wiped the sweat off my brow. My hand was shaking. We’d gone three blocks before I heard the siren start to wail...

I sat at a table in the back of the 411 Club and ordered a shot of whiskey and a bottle of beer. The ten o’clock floor show was just coming on. I watched the girls swinging their legs, and listened to a refugee from a third-rate burlesque try to make like a comedian, and heard a washed-up tenor murder Mother Macree. Then the redhead walked from the shadows, leaned on the piano, and began to sing.

She had creamy white skin and shimmering long hair the color of burnished copper. And sea-green eyes, and a shape that couldn’t have been natural but obviously was. She was wearing a low-cut white evening dress that rippled when she moved and she had a low, husky voice. When she sang, she sang to every man in the place. When she stopped singing, a long, male sigh escaped the room, and then applause. She sang again. I called the waiter.

“Is that Flame Doreen?”

“Yeah. Oh, brother!”

“Tell her I’d like to see her. A friend of Dude Wallon.” I slipped him a five-dollar bill. He looked at it critically.

“OK, mac, but you’re wasting your time. Strictly no soap.”

“Tell her anyway.” The waiter moved off toward the wings of the stage.

In a few minutes she appeared out of a side door, looked over the audience, and crossed the dance floor. She slid into the seat opposite mine and looked me over coolly.

“Yes?”

Now what? I tore my gaze away from the green eyes. “Drink?”

She hesitated. “All right. Whiskey and soda.”

I ordered it and sat back.

“Miss Doreen, I’d like to find out what you know about Sylvia Clinton.”

Her face froze. “Plenty. Who wants to know?”

I flashed my wallet with its sheriff’s deputy badge, and put it back into my pocket. A shadow of fear crossed her face.

“What do you want to know?”

“When did you see her last?” I asked, watching her eyes.

She studied her drink. “The other day. I ran into her on the street.”

“She’s dead.”

The fear lingered in her eyes. She lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. Coolly she said: “I’m so sorry. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.”

“Murdered.”

“That I can believe. Well, is there anything else?”

“Where were you this afternoon?”

She hesitated. “Shopping.”

“What did you buy?”

“Clothes.”

“Where?”

She flushed angrily, her eyes sending out emerald sparks.

“You don’t think I killed her?”

“Maybe.”

“Look Sherlock, why would I do it?”

“Jealousy.”

“Don’t be silly. On acount of Dude? That’s all over with, and for your information, Dude is dead.”

“How do you know?”

She paused. “Maybe I read it in the paper — maybe somebody told me — I don’t know. Anyway, I heard that he was killed. Now if you’re all through...”

Something was wrong. I didn’t know what, but her story didn’t ring true. There was nothing I could do. I stood up.

“OK, sister. But for your information, I don’t believe you were shopping.”

I paid the bill and left the club, my hat down over my face. I hailed a cab and gave him Lippy’s address...

Lippy was still up. He looked as if he’d had a tough night. His eyes were shadowed and his face was drawn. He let me in quickly.

He said, “Pete, thanks.”

“Thanks for what?”

“Giving them the slip.”

“How’d you find out about that?”

“The radio. They’ve broadcast your description. They have a dragnet out for you.”

I sank wearily to the couch. “Oh, brother,” I moaned. Lippy poured me a shot of whiskey. I gulped it and handed him back the glass.

“Well,” I said finally, “I talked to the redhead. No soap.”

Lippy shook his head. “She’s the only one I can think of, Pete, and with Dude dead...”

I walked to the window. Lippy was right. With Dude dead, there was no reason for jealousy. That left Lippy. I began to wonder if I were getting the run-around. I turned.

“Listen, Lippy, I hope to hell you’re playing ball with me, because if you’re not, so help me, I’ll—”

There was a crash of breaking glass and the roar of a gun. Automatically I hit the deck, grabbing for the lamp cord. I got a hand on it and pulled. The light went out. Silhouetted in the glare from the street I saw a shadow on the fire escape. I waited and then crawled to the window. Cautiously I poked my head over the ledge. Two stories below I heard a movement. Someone dropped to the pavement and a dark shape flitted into an alley. In the apartment house across the street lights flicked on and people talked excitedly. I turned.

“You all right, Lippy?” I asked softly.

I heard Lippy grunt and the light clicked on. He was standing by the door, carefully inspecting a jagged hole in the stucco wall of the living room, a big hole with cracks radiating from it.

“Close,” he said wearily, “but no cigar. Reminds me of the old days.”

“Yeah.” I lit a cigarette. “Who do you suppose has you on his list?”

Lippy shrugged. “Lots of people, I guess. Just the same, that doesn’t happen every day. You suppose it’s tied up some way with the blonde’s murder?”

“I don’t know. I do know I gotta get the hell out of here before the cops come to see who lit the firecracker.”

The bedroom door opened and a tall, elderly lady with iron gray hair, still pretty, walked into the room in a negligee. Her face was a mask of fear.

“Lippy, are you all right? What happened?”

“It’s OK, honey. Go back to bed. And don’t worry. It’s all over now.”

I moved to the door.

“If you get any hot ideas, give me a ring at the Perry Hotel on Bush Street. I’ll be registered under the name of Jones. Needless to say, don’t mention I was here.”

Lippy nodded. “Sorry I got you into this, Pete. I—”

I looked at the poor old guy standing there with his wife, scared and miserable.

“Forget it.”

As I left the apartment I heard sirens screaming in the night. A streetcar was passing, almost empty, and I swung myself on. I got off on Bush Street and registered at the Perry Hotel. I went to my room and flopped on the bed.

I couldn’t sleep. I lit a cigarette and watched a flashing neon sign play on the ceiling. On and off, on and off. The shadow of the fire escape began to look like a gallows. I swung my feet over the side of the bed.

The redhead had been lying. About what, I didn’t know. But she had been lying, and she was the missing link. Lippy hadn’t killed the blonde; the redhead probably hadn’t either, but she knew who had. I looked at my watch. It was one a.m.

The 411 Club was still crowded. The last show was almost over and the redhead was singing. She saw me and faltered on a note. When the song was over and the applause had stopped, she walked swiftly through the cigarette smoke to my table.

“I thought you’d gone.”

“I liked your performance so much in the first show that I decided I’d catch the second one.”

“Yeah.” She sat down again. I was surprised, and wary, but I ordered her a drink. She sipped it carefully, watching me with the clear, green eyes.

“I get off after the show,” she said finally. “Sometimes this job bores me so much that I feel as if I have to go out afterwards.”

Well, I’ll be damned, I thought. Little Red Riding Hood asking the wolf in.

“Is that so?”

“I guess when you’re off duty you like to go out too?”

“Sometimes.”

She looked into my face suddenly. There was fear in her eyes, and an almost pathetic hope.

“Will you take me somewhere after the show?”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Someplace for a drink. Anywhere we can have a good time.”

I thought of the cops crowding the town, working overtime. Looking for me. The redhead was frightened of something, and I wanted to know what it was, but it was no time to start painting the town red.

“No,” I said. “Not tonight. What’s frightening you?”

She looked up and laughed. “Frightening me? Don’t be silly. I might ask you the same thing. Or don’t you like redheads?”

“I like redheads, when they come clean with me. Not when they hide things.”

She laughed nervously. “Well, this makes the first time in a long while that I’ve asked for a date and been turned down.” She stood up, smiling, but the fear was still in her eyes. “Drop in some day when you’re not working on a case — then I can turn you down.”

She was off to the dressing room and I was alone. I wondered what had frightened her. Conscience? Maybe she couldn’t bear to be alone. And yet, the strangler had been a man — a woman wouldn’t have had the strength. And the handkerchief in the blonde’s hand — it had been not a woman’s but a man’s handkerchief.

The handkerchief. It had been clean, freshly ironed. Not a handkerchief that had come out of a hip pocket. A handkerchief that had come out of a breast pocket.

I ordered another drink.

Who wears a handkerchief in his breast pocket, nowadays? Flashy dressers. Dudes.

Dudes. Dude Wallon? But Wallon was dead. At least, the paper had said he was dead. But was he? Who had identified him? The blonde had gone East with him. Had she identified the body? A guy like that, permanently erased from the police files, can start all over again. He can take care of all the people who have anything on him and begin a whole new life. From scratch.

Two people who had something on Dude were the blonde and Lippy. The Reno murder. And where would Dude go if he came back West, if he returned from the grave? To a girl who had been in love with him — the redhead. He could hide away with her and take care of his old friends, one at a time. The blonde was gone, and somebody had taken a shot at Lippy. With Lippy dead the books would be closed and Dude could breathe freely.

Except for the redhead.

The redhead had been frightened. She hadn’t wanted to go home. She’d been trying to tell me something all the time, thinking I was a cop. And I hadn’t listened.

I shoved my chair away from the table and started for the stage. A waiter barred my way. He said, “No visitors backstage.” I gave him a ten and he stepped aside.

I walked through the wings and down the corridor. I found a door with a star on it and the name Flame Doreen scrawled beneath it in chalk. I knocked. There was no answer. I opened the door and looked in. The room was a mess, but there was no one there.

I moved further down the hall and heard voices. I knocked on another door and opened it. There was a moment of silence. The room was filled with the girls from the chorus, in various stages of undress. A luscious young blonde looked at me blandly.

“Show’s over, mister. Don’t you knock?”

“I have to find out Miss Doreen’s address.”

The girls looked at me coldly. I pulled out my wallet and flashed the deputy’s badge. The blonde shrugged.

“What’s she done now? She lives at the Manchester Arms, on Wright Street.”

“Thanks. And sorry.” I walked swiftly out the back door and grabbed a taxi.

The Manchester Arms was a cheap apartment with all the trimmings. I asked the doorman for Miss Doreen’s apartment and he winked at me sympathetically.

“It’s 3A, brother, but you’re a little late. There’s a guy been up there all day, and he’s still there.”

“Personal friend of mine,” I said, walking into the elevator.

I got off at the third floor and wandered down the hall, looking at the door numbers. When I came to 3A I stopped. Voices murmured inside. I put my ear to the door. I couldn’t hear a word. I slipped the Police Special out of my pocket and lifted my hand to ring. Then I heard it — a low, desperate cry: “Dude — no!”

It was all I needed. I backed against the far wall and launched myself against the door. It was a cheap lock; it snapped easily. I crashed the door open and went on through.

A big guy, handsome, with a bronzed, hard face and curly blond hair, was leaning over a chair. His face was turned my way, frozen in fear and surprise. His hand flashed toward his coat. As he straightened I glimpsed the redhead lying sprawled on the chair.

“Hold it,” I said. He hesitated. I stepped toward him and relieved him of a gun from a shoulder holster. The girl on the chair moaned and her eyelids flickered.

“Not this time, brother,” I said. “The legal limit on murder is one a day.”

He spit out a curse. I didn’t like the way he did it so I let him have it, backhanded across the mouth. “You don’t make out as well with men as you do with women, do you, Dude?”

He watched me, his eyes glittering. The redhead sat up, holding her throat.

“I knew it,” she whispered. “That’s why I didn’t want to come back. I knew it...”

“Call the cops, honey,” I said. “Tell ’em it’s Butler. Quick, before I lose control of this gun.”

I motioned toward Wallon with the gun. “I wish I had time to work you over, Wallon. I’m afraid the cops are gonna be kind of inhibited. But you’re going to get the gas chamber anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Try and prove something, buddy. Try it.”

“Where’s your handkerchief?” I asked. He looked at his breast pocket and turned white. I said: “You should have checked that before you left the blonde. I assume it has laundry marks on it — it shouldn’t be very hard to prove.”

There was a long silence and then footsteps down the hall. The gray-haired inspector stuck his head through the door. He saw me and whipped out his gun.

I said, “I’m working late, Inspector. Here’s your man.”

“Yeah? You’re my man, brother. Put down that gun.”

I nodded. “Watch him, Inspector. He’s Dude Wallon.” I tossed the gun on the floor.

The inspector’s eyes bugged at the name. He hesitated.

I caught a swift movement from Dude. His hand flashed to his hip pocket and an automatic appeared from nowhere. He grabbed at the redhead and yanked her in front of him. “Outa my way,” he whispered. “Outa my way.”

The inspector’s eyes glinted. Carefully he put away his gun. Wallon moved toward the door, shielding himself behind the girl. My heart sank. If he got away, he’d get me if he had to track me to the end of the world. And as for the redhead — it would be curtains for her.

Wallon’s face relaxed into a grin. “So long, you,” he said to me. “I’ll be seein’ you again.” He stepped into the hall.

There was the roar of a forty-five down the hall and Wallon’s face froze incredulously. Slowly he turned, and suddenly crumpled to the floor. Footsteps hurried down the corridor. It was the big cop I’d slugged in the elevator. He kneeled by the corpse and turned it over. He looked up, his face a mask of horror.

“This isn’t Butler!”

“That’s right, son,” said the inspector. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just as good.”

“Better,” I said. “Much better.”

I turned to the redhead. She was white-faced and shaking like a leaf.

“Now, honey,” I said. “About that drink you wanted. I know a place...”