The Limping Goose

20

Johnny looked down at the heap of dimes and pennies and quarters, then scooped them up in his hand. He spread them out on the bed, turned them all up, “heads” upwards. He examined them carefully, then turned them all over, so that the “tails” were up.

He sighed wearily. The coins gave him no message.

The phone rang, startling Johnny. He scooped it up.

“Yes?”

“Fletcher,” a harsh voice said, “you want that gorilla friend of yours in one piece?”

“Who is this?” Johnny asked sharply.

“We haven’t got time for that stuff. I asked you a question, do you want Cragg alive?”

“You haven’t got Cragg,” Johnny retorted.

“Oh, no? If he’s with you, put him on the phone.”

“All right,” said Johnny. “Suppose he isn’t here. What do you want from me?”

“I’ll call you back. I ain’t havin’ this call traced.”

The phone went dead. Johnny hung up and scowled at the phone. He scooped up the coins and looked around the room. He walked to the bathroom and saw the washing Sam had done the day before. On a sudden impulse he took down from the shower curtain rod one of the socks and poured the coins into it, shaking them down into the foot. He tied a knot into the top half of the sock, then taking down the other socks, threw the entire pile into a corner of the bathroom.

The phone rang out in the bedroom. He went back and picked it up.

“All right,” said the harsh voice, “listen careful. Leave your hotel and walk slowly down Forty-fifth to Seventh Avenue. A Lucky Clover taxicab will come along and—”

“Oh, go back to Peekskill,” snapped Johnny, slamming the receiver back on the hook.

The phone rang again instantly. Johnny jerked it off the hook. “Go to hell!” he snarled.

The voice of James Sutton exclaimed, “I say, Fletcher, that’s no way to talk to a man.”

“Oh, you!” growled Johnny. “Somebody else just called and I thought he was calling back.”

“I’d like to talk to you,” Sutton said. “I wonder if you could come over to my digs at the Barbizon-Waldorf.”

“Can’t right now. Busy.”

“I’ll make it worth your while.”

“I’ll try to make it in about an hour.”

“All right, but sooner than that if you can. This may be important. It’s something about Lester Smithson that I don’t think you got at the Harover Club.”

“Oh, you know I’ve been there?”

Sutton chuckled. “You scared the hell out of Whittlesey. An hour, then?”

Johnny agreed and hung up. He left the room and rode down to the lobby. The policemen were still there and Lieutenant Madigan sat in a far corner, reading a newspaper. Johnny looked around, saw Eddie Miller near the desk and walked up to him.

“Gosh, Mr. Fletcher,” Eddie said. “I tried to warn you, but Mr. Peabody spilled it.”

“I know, the louse.”

“Mr. Cragg phoned from Peekskill. He said he was in jail up there.”

“He isn’t any more. That’s why the cops are here. Sam broke out of jail and the Peekskill cops called the New York police.”

“Ouch!” said Eddie. “Then Mr. Cragg is really in trouble.”

“He is, and there isn’t a thing I can do for him right now. He’s somewhere between Peekskill and here and if he shows up they’ll grab him.”

“If I see him first, I’ll try to give him the high sign. If only Peabody... which reminds me, I know the reason he’s so sore. Some crook got into his room and swiped one of his suits, his best one, he claims.”

“Serves him right.”

“He thinks you stole it.”

“Me? Would I do a thing like that?”

Eddie hesitated before replying. “No, I don’t think so. But Peabody’s really burned. I know he went into your room with his passkey, but apparently he didn’t find the suit there. He thinks now that you sold it.”

“I didn’t sell his old suit,” Johnny said, slightly accenting the word sell, “but it’s an idea. If he doesn’t lay off me, I might just do something like that one of these days. I’ve got to go out now. If Sam does happen to come in while I’m gone and the cops grab him, try to get in a word to him. I’ll get him out if I have to bomb the New York police department. He can’t stand jails.”

“That’s what he said.”

Johnny nodded and stepped up to the desk. He laid a five-dollar bill and a single on the desk and said to the clerk, “Have you got a roll of dimes and two rolls of pennies?”

The clerk was somewhat surprised, but took the bills. “I think I can spare them.”

He opened the cash drawer and brought out three rolls of coins. Johnny tore off the paper wrappings and emptied the coins into his right-hand trousers pocket. Eddie Miller stood nearby, puzzled. Johnny grinned at him and left the hotel.

Across the street, a Lucky Clover taxicab was double-parked, facing Seventh Avenue. Johnny put his thumb to his nose and walked toward Sixth Avenue. A harsh voice yelled after him but Johnny continued on to Sixth Avenue.

A bus was waiting for the light and Johnny clambered aboard. A short time later he got off the bus, walked to Fifth Avenue and entered the Chateau Pelham.

The switchboard operator recognized him instantly. “Miss Cummings? I’ll see if she’s in.” She spoke into the phone, then nodded to Johnny.

“You may go up.”

Johnny headed for the elevator, then J.J. Kilkenny came into the lobby. He passed the switchboard operator and came up to Johnny just as the door of the automatic elevator opened.

“Have you been announced?” Johnny asked sarcastically.

The pride of the A.A.A. stepped into the elevator.

“I got words to say to you.”

“Why don’t you write me a letter?” asked Johnny. “Then I can read and appreciate your words at my leisure. Right now I’m pretty busy.”

Kilkenny punched the button for the fourth floor and the car went up. Kilkenny sized up Johnny. He was obviously making a tremendous effort to contain himself.

“I notice,” Johnny pointed out, “you knew what floor.”

“I know,” Kilkenny said tautly. “I know a lot of things.”

They got off at the fourth floor and Kilkenny pressed the buzzer of Alice Cummings’s apartment. She opened the door. She was wearing a street suit that had probably cost in the general neighborhood of three hundred eighty-five. She looked very nice.

“Oh,” she said when she saw Kilkenny with Johnny.

Both men entered the apartment. “Miss Cummings,” Johnny said promptly, “you know that you’re responsible for furniture and glass breakage.”

“That’s right,” the girl said, looking at Kilkenny. “I’m in enough trouble with the apartment house people right now. They’ve given me notice to move. I don’t want a big bill added on.”

“Don’t crowd me,” Kilkenny said to Johnny. “I’ve already lost my job on account of you.”

“Which job?” Johnny asked.

“You know damn well which job,” snarled Kilkenny. “The one with the Acme Adjustment Agency.”

“Good. That’ll be a load off Sam’s mind. He won’t have to worry about that old mandolin rap. I thought maybe you were referring to the other job.” Johnny indicated Alice Cummings.

Alice Cummings flared. “Have you brought those coins, Fletcher?”

“If you’ve got the seventeen dollars ready.”

She got her purse from a table and opened it.

Johnny said, “I warned you, you’re losing money on the deal.”

“I want what’s mine, that’s all.”

Johnny shrugged. He reached deep into his trousers pocket and brought out the handful of pennies and dimes. He held them out to Alice Cummings. She put the seventeen dollars in bills on the table and cupped both hands to take the coins.

Johnny, looking closely, saw that her nostrils were wide and that she was breathing heavily with suppressed excitement.

“And now, Mr. Fletcher,” Alice Cummings said coldly, “I’ve seen enough of you to last me for some time.”

“Well,” said Johnny. “I’d like to talk to you a moment — alone.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“I think you have. And I know I’ve got something to say to you.”

“Nothing you can say could possibly interest me.”

“Let’s put it this way,” Johnny said. “You made an arrangement with our friend Kilkenny here to, ah, retrieve a certain object from my hotel room. A goose bank.”

“Beat it, Fletcher,” snarled Kilkenny.

“Your cheap hoods ripped the hell out of my room,” Johnny went on calmly. “They didn’t have to do that to find the bank, because it was handy. But they didn’t want the bank alone — they were looking for something that had been in the bank.”

“Breakage or no breakage,” Kilkenny said thickly. His hands came up and he started for Johnny. The latter moved quickly around behind a table on which rested a nice china bowl containing flowers.

“Here goes the furniture,” Johnny warned.

“Stop it, you two,” cried Alice Cummings. “If you have to fight wait until you’re outside.”

“You heard the boss, buster,” Johnny said.

Kilkenny stopped.

Johnny pointed at Alice Cummings. “The real reason I came over is because a certain party came to see me. He said you’d telephoned him and offered to sell him something. Do you know who I mean?” he demanded.

Alice Cummings looked sharply at Johnny. “What do you know about — that?”

“Everything.”

She hesitated, then her eyes went to Kilkenny. “Why don’t you come back in a half hour?”

“I’m here now,” Kilkenny said bluntly. “You’re not going to pull a fast one on me.”

“You’ll get your money,” Alice said, beginning to show her claws to the former bill collector.

“I’ll get it, all of it,” Kilkenny snapped. “I’ve stuck my neck out on this job and I want what’s coming to me.”

“You’ll get it.”

“I don’t think Fletcher knows one damn thing. He’s got a big mouth, that’s all. He’ll make you think black is white and he’ll steal the fillings out of your teeth.”

“I like you too, J.J.,” Johnny said.

Kilkenny bared his teeth, but suddenly wheeled toward the door. “I’ll be back in a half hour and I’m warning you, don’t try any double-cross on me.”

He went out.

Johnny said, “Carmichael, Senior. I’m working for him.”

“Why? Why should he employ a man like you?” demanded Alice Cummings.

“Maybe it’s because he trusts me.”

“You? You’re nothing but a two-bit chiseler and sharp shooter.”

“Baby,” said Johnny gently, “that’s rough talk. You’re too beautiful for talk like that. Why, you’re the sort of doll I could go for myself... if I could afford it.”

“I could go for you, too,” Alice conceded. “If you had enough of what it takes. But since you haven’t—”

“Has Flanagan got it?”

The name rocked her back on her heels. “Who?”

“Harry Flanagan, the one and only. The gigolo...”

That did it. Alice flew at Johnny. She struck him a stinging slap on the face. “You filthy...!” she screamed. She tried to slap Johnny again, but caught both her wrists in his hands.

“Whoa, Nellie!” he cried. “You called me a two-bit chiseler, but I never took a quarter from a doll in all my life. Harry Flanagan’s been taking everything he could get from you that you were able to squeeze out of Jess Carmichael. And he’s been giving it to another doll.”

“That’s a lie!” screamed Alice. She raked Johnny’s shin with her high heel, causing him to wince. “That’s a dirty, filthy lie.”

Again she tried to use her heel on Johnny, but he shoved her away so violently she would have gone over backwards except that her back was to the wall and she collided with that.

“Flanagan’s a louse and everybody on Broadway and Forty-Eighth knows it except you.”

“Get out of here, get out of here!”

“You got everything you could out of Jess Carmichael and then when he got fed up and buttoned up his wallet you were through with him. Or maybe he caught you and your fine Harry Flanagan together...”

The new trend frightened Alice Cummings out of her blind rage. “That isn’t true. Harry didn’t kill him. He didn’t. I know he didn’t.”

“He’s got a good chance of frying for it,” Johnny said.

“No! You’re wrong. You... you mustn’t put the police on Harry. He had nothing to do with it.” She ran forward, toward the table on which she had deposited the coins Johnny had give her. “It’s here — Jess told me. He gave me the bank and he told me that if anything happened to him to give the bank to his father. He said that the old man would know who — who hurt him.”

“There was no note inside the bank. I looked.”

“It wasn’t a note. It was...” She stopped, realizing that she was going too far. She made a tremendous effort to compose herself. “You said — Mr. Carmichael had come to you about — about my phone call to him.”

“He told me you tried to shake him down for fifty thousand,” Johnny said insultingly.

“That’s a lie. I... I wanted to sell him the bank and” — she pointed at the coins — “those. It said in the paper this morning that he’d spend his last dollar to — to find the person who murdered his son. Fifty thousand isn’t anything to him. He’s probably worth fifty million. Jess told me it was — in the bank — and all I wanted to do was to give this to his father.”

“Didn’t you get enough out of him?” sneered Johnny. “Mink coats, jewelry, this apartment — the money you gave Harry Flanagan.”

She was sensitive about the name Flanagan, wincing again when Johnny tossed it at her.

“Leave Flanagan’s name out of this,” she said. She became suddenly vicious again, “and you can tell that old goat that the price is going up. Tomorrow it’ll cost seventy-five thousand.”

“Tomorrow,” said Johnny, “you can eat that small change. And the limping goose bank, too. Although I suggest you use some salt and pepper on it. I imagine your stomach is pretty tough, but the bank is made of bronze and it may be a little hard for even you to digest.”

“Get the hell out of here!” cried Alice Cummings.

“Baby,” said Johnny, “I’m going.”

He opened the door and went toward the elevator. She ran after him.

“Wait!” she called.

Johnny punched the button for the elevator.

“A rivederci! Auf wiedersehen — good-bye.”

The elevator door opened.

“Forty thousand. Tell Mr. Carmichael I’ll take forty thousand...”

Johnny grinned nastily and pushed the “down” button.

On the first floor he walked through the lobby, winking at the switchboard operator. Outside the apartment house, Kilkenny stood by the door. And at the curb was the Lucky Clover taxicab, with Harry Flanagan standing by the door.

“All right, Fletcher,” Flanagan sang out. “I’m through monkeying around with you.”

Kilkenny closed in from the side. “Now, you and me are going to have this out!” he snarled.

Johnny danced aside. “Do you boys know each other? You’re both being played for suckers by Alice Cummings.”

Flanagan and Kilkenny had apparently never met before. Both looked at each other with hostile eyes.

“Who’re you?” barked Flanagan.

“Punk!” sneered Kilkenny.

“Good-bye, now,” called out Johnny. He turned and ran swiftly down the street. Both Flanagan and Kilkenny made as if to take after him, but each was suspicious of the other. When he reached the corner, Johnny stopped and looked back.

Flanagan and Kilkenny were facing each other, both gesticulating angrily.