Sally's in the Alley by Norbert Davis (best color ereader .txt) 📕

to make anything your enemies do seem ridiculous and bungling. It causes you a lot of needless casualties.”

“You ain’t lyin’,” Blue said.

“Why what do you know about it?” Harriet demanded.

“He was maybe thinking of airplanes,” Doan suggested.

Harriet stared at him. “Everyone knows that our planes are the best in the world and that the German planes are nothing but a lot of old junk and ersatz, and that their pilots are all cowards.”

“Sure,” said Doan. “MacAdoo, if you were kicking around in Munich when Hitler was trying to sell pictures, how come you didn’t hitch up with the Nazis when they started going?”

“I did. I’ve got party card number eleven.”

“What does that mean?” Harriet inquired coldly.

“It means there were a total often Nazis, including Hitler, when I joined up. I didn’t join, really. Hitler presented me with a membership when I asked him to pay me back some of the dough I’d lent him.”

“That must have sort of put you in on the ground floor,” Doan said thoughtfully.

“Yes.”

“You ought to have cleaned up when the Nazis began to get rolling.”

“I did.”

“How?” Doan asked.

“I was art director of the_ Reich._ I—ah—bought pictures from people and—ah—sold them to other people.”

Doan said, “You mean you confiscated pictures from Hitler’s enemies, and blackmailed people who wanted to be his friends into buying them.”

“That’s putting it very crudely,” said MacAdoo, “but lucidly.”

“Did you have a monopoly on that business?”

“Yes.”

“You must have put away plenty.”

“I did.”

“What’d you stop for?”

MacAdoo’s lips tightened. “Goering. That big tub of guts. He was building castles all over Germany, and he informed me I should donate pictures for them. He had a list of the pictures. The most valuable ones I had—ah—purchased. Imagine that. I should give him pictures. He wasn’t satisfied with stealing all the steel mills in Germany, he’s got to cut in on my business.”

“What did you do?” Doan inquired.

“Told him to go to hell.”

“What did he do?”

“Tried to murder me six times within six days. I had a few bodyguards of my own, of course, but even then he had ten regiments of thugs plus the air force. I had to cut and run for it. I’m going to get even with him for that one of these fine days. I’ll probably have to wait until after the war, I suppose.”

“Goering is going to be hung after we win the war,” Harriet told him.

MacAdoo looked at her. “Don’t be silly. The Kaiser didn’t have much more than a hundred million dollars, and nobody hung him. Goering is worth two or three billion by this time, and besides that he has heavy influence in England and the United States.”

“How do you know?” Doan asked.

“Read the papers. Who do you think is paying for all this bilge about Goering being a harmless, jolly fat man with a love for medals and a heart of gold? Stuff like that isn’t printed for free. Particularly not after the guy involved has murdered a half million civilians with his air force. I shouldn’t wonder but what he’ll wind up as president of the_ Reich_ under a, pause for laughter, democratic government.”

MacAdoo leaned sideways on his nail keg and pulled a leather covered flask from his hip pocket. He snapped the patented top open with his teeth.

“Have some brandy?”

“No, thanks,” said Doan. “Edmund’s taking a long time, isn’t he?”

MacAdoo smiled. “Isn’t he? He’ll be back, though. Are you thinking about the FBI? Don’t. They won’t be around. They didn’t follow you. I believe they had an idea of scouting for you in a plane, but one couldn’t get off the ground in this kind of weather, and if it did no one in it would be able to see anything.”

“Hmmm,” said Doan. “How’d you get into the country, and stay so long without being spotted? They must have a record and pictures of you.”

“There are ways. They do have pictures of me, but in the pictures I was forty pounds heavier, bald, wore a beard, and had a hooked nose.”

“Oh. What’ll you look like tomorrow?”

“Not like I did then or do now.”

“How’d Edmund spot you?”

“Goering. He’s never quit trying to find me. He finally did.”

“How come he didn’t try some more murder?”

“I got in touch with Adolf. I told him to call Goering off, or I’d start talking to the United States Government, and not about pictures, either.”

“Edmund doesn’t like you very well.”

“No. He thinks I’m a party backslider.”

“When are you going to kill him?” Doan asked.

“After he attends to you—”

The thin, distant crack of a rifle sounded somewhere outside. It was repeated almost instantly.

“That’s the end of your dog,” said MacAdoo. “He never had a chance. Edmund is an expert killer.”

“Too bad,” said Doan. “But then, I never liked Carstairs much anyway. Do you think he really could have gotten a job in pictures?”

“I think so.”

“How about me?”

“No,” said MacAdoo.

Doan sighed. “That’s what comes of having brains instead of beauty.”

The rain rippled musically on the roof, and the wind brushed tentative, prying fingers along the wall of the shack.

“I don’t understand this!” Harriet wailed suddenly.

Doan sighed again. “I might as well tell all, I guess. We might have a long—wait.”

MacAdoo chuckled. “Edmund will come back.”

Doan said, “The FBI delegated me to find out the location of an ore deposit from a man named Dust-Mouth Haggerty.”

“Then why didn’t you do it?” Harriet demanded.

“There wasn’t any such deposit.”

“How long have you known that?” MacAdoo asked.

“Oh, for some time. I’m not as dumb as Edmund.”

MacAdoo nodded. “He is very stupid. I don’t know what they must be thinking of in Germany. Even Americans aren’t complete fools— not all of them.”

“Tell me more!” Harriet commanded.

Doan said, “Dust-Mouth claimed to know where some strategically valuable ore was. He didn’t. There wasn’t any. The FBI were pretty sure of that, but not completely. They used Dust-Mouth and me for bait, and they pulled in quite a haul.”

“You shouldn’t have taken the job,” said MacAdoo.

“Don’t I know it? I didn’t want to. Every time I work for the government, I get put in jail. I’ll bet if I got out of this, they’d slap me away for something.”

“You don’t have to worry—about jail,” said MacAdoo.

“I wonder where Edmund is?”

“He’ll come. He’s probably burying your dog.”

“Well, why did Dust-Mouth say he knew where some ore was if he didn’t?” Harriet said angrily.

“He made a business out of it. He got free room and board because people thought they could make a million out of him. He was a very dumb guy. He was playing with fire all the time and didn’t have sense enough to know it. He had taken plenty of suckers on phony claims in his day, and he didn’t realize that in wartime the suckers might not just laugh it off. He didn’t even know what kind of ore he was supposed to have. He had a collection of samples, and he just agreed they contained whatever you said. If you didn’t say, he made something up.”

“Past tense?” MacAdoo inquired.

Doan nodded. “Edmund.”

“Oh,” said MacAdoo.

“The FBI thought he might be playing a little deeper game than he was. So did I.”

“What were you going to do with him out here?” MacAdoo asked.

“Toast his tootsies over a match flame until he told me who killed Tonto Charlie and Free-Look Jones and Susan Sally.”

“Well, who did?” Harriet asked.

“Edmund,” said Doan. “Just old Edmund. The fellow we’re waiting for. I wonder if he’s reading a burial service over Carstairs? Dust-Mouth heard in Heliotrope that I was a Jap agent. The FBI did that. They even furnished my address. Dust-Mouth was getting short of customers, so he figured he might take a little dough off of me. He sent Tonto Charlie to see me. Tonto ran into Edmund. Edmund bit. That was bad luck for Tonto, because Edmund doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. Tonto brought him out here and showed him what was supposed to be some kind of valuable ore.” Doan looked at MacAdoo. “Is that when Edmund got in touch with you?”

MacAdoo nodded. “Yes. He wanted samples assayed. I had it done for him. The samples showed no traces of any ore worth a dime to anybody for anything.”

“Bing,” said Doan. “Good-by, Tonto Charlie. He was hiding out at the Orna in Edmund’s apartment at the time, waiting for the assayer’s report. Tonto actually thought Dust-Mouth did have something. Edmund got mad and stabbed him, and then he had a body.”

“As I said, he is very stupid,” MacAdoo agreed.

“Comes the FBI looking for Doan,” said Doan. “Edmund gets a little nervous about his body. I mean, Tonto’s. The FBI park a car in front of the door where Edmund can see it and go away. Edmund finds gas ration books made out in my name in the car. A light dawns. He sends the garage attendant or janitor or whoever away on an errand, drives the car into the basement garage, gets Tonto Charlie’s body and sticks it in the luggage compartment, and drives the car back to the front of the apartment and parks it. Now Doan has a body.”

“Oh!” said Harriet.

“I thought it belonged to you,” Doan told her. “I thought your pal, here, stuck it in the car when I stopped for you in the desert. That’s why I wanted to keep you sort of under my eye for the time being.”

“Oh!” said Harriet.

“I’m cold,” said Blue. “Sure wish I was back on my reservation.”

“Don’t these horrible things you’ve been hearing make you want to join the Army and fight, fight, fight?” Harriet demanded. “No,” said Blue glumly. “You’re a coward!”

“I sure am,” said Blue. “I guess you hate me now, huh?”

“Well…” said Harriet. “No. I—I don’t.”

“Oh,” said Blue, sighing.

“And then there was Free-Look Jones,” said Doan. “He was the sort of gent who would lay his hand to anything. He had been sniffing around behind Dust-Mouth and his make-believe ore. Edmund snared him, too, and signed him up. That’s why he jumped me. He wanted me to get into a riot and get my car searched. He missed, and when Tonto Charlie mysteriously turned up with Free-Look’s knife in his throat, he got too hot. Edmund put him away. How did Edmund get to Heliotrope?”

“With Susan Sally and me,” MacAdoo said.

“I thought so. That’s what she wanted to tell me, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Edmund talked too much in front of her. I may have done a little of that myself, at one time or another.”

“Edmund killed her. Very neatly, too. She didn’t know he had done it until she was dead—”

“Very neatly,” MacAdoo agreed. “They teach you those things at the_ Ordensburgen._”

“He took her up in the elevator,” Doan said. “He tripped her when she got out, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” said MacAdoo.

“And when she fell he fell on top of her, hard.”

“Yes,” said MacAdoo.

“He knocked the breath out of her and stabbed her in that instant. He knew just how and where. Then he picked her up and brushed her off and apologized. She was dying right then, but she didn’t know it. It takes a little while, with that kind of a stab wound, for the pain to catch up with you.”

“Yes,” MacAdoo said woodenly.

“She thought she was just breathless and bruised a bit. Edmund steered her toward my apartment and then ran downstairs and started figuring on his radio diagram. That was very clever. He was so obviously