The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown (free ebook reader TXT) 📕

I waited till she’d stopped crying and then I said, “We’ve got to do something. We can call the police and tell them the truth; that’s one thing. Another; we can scram out of here and let them find it whenever they do. The third would be tougher; we could put it somewhere else for them to find.”

“We can’t call the police, Ed. They’d find out Harry had been living here. They’d find out everything. They’d nail me as an accessory to every job he ever pulled. They’d—” Her face got white as a sheet. “Ed, they did take me along on one job, made me wait in the car and act as lookout. God, what a sap I was not to see he was deliberately fixing me up so I could never talk. The police know Dutch was on that job, and if—”

I said, “Could they identify you, and tie you in with that job?”

“I—I think they could.”

I said, “Then we’d better not call them. But you’re getting out of here anyway, going back to Indianapolis. Couldn’t you just leave tonight?”

“Yes, but—I’d be wanted. They could trace me when they found Dutch dead here. They could find out who I was and where I came from. I couldn’t go back to Indianapolis; I’d have to go somewhere else. There’d be dodgers out for me. All the rest of my life, I’d be—”

I cut her short. “Okay,” I said. “We can’t call copper and we can’t walk off and leave him. How could we get him out of here?”

“He’s awful heavy, Ed. I don’t know if we could do it, but there’s a service elevator at the back of the hall that goes to a back door off the alley. And it’s after midnight. But we’d need a car once we got him to the alley. And he’s awful heavy, Ed. Do you think we could?”

I stood up and looked around till I saw the phone. I said, “I’ll see what I can do, Claire. Wait.”

I went over to the phone and called the Wacker, and I gave Uncle Am’s room number.

When his voice answered, I felt so relieved my knees got weak and I sat down in the chair by the phone table.

I said, “This is Ed, Uncle Am.”

“You young squirt, what you mean walking off on me? I been waiting for you to call. I suppose you got yourself in a jam, huh?”

I said, “I suppose I did. I’m calling from—from the phone number we had.”

“The hell. You’re doing all right, kid. Or are you?”

“I don’t know. It kind of depends on how you look at it. Listen, we need a car or a—”

He cut in, “Who’s we?”

“Claire and I,” I told him. “Listen, this call is through the hotel switchboard, isn’t it?”

“Shall I call you back, kid?”

“It’d be an idea,” I said.

The call came in five minutes. He said, “This is from a booth, Ed. Go ahead.”

I said, “Claire and I were getting along, but we had company. A guy named Dutch. Dutch—uh—drank a bit too much and sort of passed out on us. We want to take him home without taking him through the front lobby. It’d be best if he wasn’t found here. Now if somebody had a car and parked it in the alley back of here, by the service entrance, and then gave us a hand getting him down the service elevator—”

“Okay, kid. Would a taxi do?”

I said, “The driver might be worried about Dutch. He’s pretty—uh—stiff, if you know what I mean.”

Uncle Am said, “I guess I know what you mean. Okay, kid, hold the fort. The marines are coming.”

I felt a hell of a lot better when I put down the phone and went back to the sofa beside Claire.

She gave me a funny kind of look. She said, “Ed, you called the guy Uncle Am. Is he really your uncle?”

I nodded.

She said, “That wild, screwy yarn you pulled about Harry killing your—your father last week and you and your uncle hunting him for that, only your uncle was asleep—wasn’t that in with the seven-foot snow on Michigan Boulevard and the dog teams giving out and—”

I said, “It wasn’t. It was the straight story. I told that first because I knew you wouldn’t believe it, the way I put it. I didn’t know where you stood then.”

She put her hand in mine again. She said, “You should have told me.”

“I did, didn’t I? Listen, Claire, think hard. Did you ever hear Harry—or Dutch or Benny—mention the name Hunter?”

“No, Ed. Not that I remember, anyway.”

“How long have you known them?”

“Two years. I told you that.”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted like hell to believe everything she’d told me. But I had to be sure.

I asked, “Did you ever hear the name Kaufman? George Kaufman?”

She didn’t even hesitate. “Yes, about—I guess two or three weeks ago. Harry told me a man named Kaufman might call up this number and give me a message. He said the message could be an address, and I was to copy it down and give it to him. Or that it might be that someone Harry was interested in meeting was at the tavern Kaufman owned. And that if it was that the guy was there, I was to get in touch with Harry quick, if I knew where he was.”

“Did Kaufman call?”

“No. Not any time I was here, anyway.”

“Could anyone else have taken the message?”

“Harry might have—if it was over a week ago. There would have been times he was here and I was out. Nobody else could have. Ed, this man Harry wanted to meet if he came in Kaufman’s—would it have been your father?”

I nodded. It checked; it fitted Kaufman’s story like a glove, and proved that both he and Claire were telling the truth about it.

I asked her, “Know anything about Harry’s brother, Steve?”

“Only that he’s in jail. I think in Indiana. But that was before I met Harry. Ed, I do want a drink now. How about you? Can I mix you a Martini? Or would you rather have something else?”

I said, “A Martini would be swell.”

When she stood up, she caught sight of herself in the mirror over the mantel. She gasped a little. She said, “I’ll—I’ll be back in a minute, Ed.”

She went through the door behind which I’d hidden not so long ago, and I heard another door open and close and water running. She was feeling better, I knew. When a girl starts worrying about how she looks, she’s feeling better.

She came back looking like a million bucks in crisp new currency.

She had a glass of ice cubes and a bottle of vermouth in her hands when the doorbell rang.

I said, “It’s Uncle Am. I’ll get it.”

But I had my hand on the revolver in my coat pocket when I opened the door, on the chain.

It was Uncle Am. He was wearing a taxi-driver’s cap, grinning.

He said, “You phone for a cab?”

I unhooked the chain. “Yeah,” I said. “Come on in. We got a little packing to do yet.”

I closed the door behind him and locked it. He said, “Yeah, you’ve been doing all right. Wipe that lipstick off your mush and you’ll look better, though. Where is it?”

We went into the living room. His eyebrows went up a little when he saw Claire. I saw his lips make the slight involuntary motion toward a whistle that men’s lips often make when they look at something like Claire.

Then he turned his head a little and saw Dutch. He winced a little.

He said, “Kid, you should have told me to bring a derrick.” He walked over and stood looking down. He said, “No blood, no marks. That’s something, anyway. What’d you do, scare him to death?”

I said, “It was almost the other way around. Uncle Am, this is Claire.”

She put out her hand and he took it. He said, “Even under the circumstances, it’s a pleasure.”

She said, “Thanks, Am. A Martini?”

She was already getting out a third glass. Uncle Am turned and looked at me and I knew what he was thinking. I said, “I’m all right. I had two thimblefuls of green ink, but that was several weeks ago. And one rye in the bar downstairs, but that was last year.”

She finished the cocktails and handed one to each of us. I sipped mine. It tasted good; I liked it.

Uncle Am said, “How much have you told, Ed?”

“Enough,” I told him. “Claire knows what the score is. She’s on our team.”

He said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Ed.”

“I hope so, too,” I told him.

“Well, you can tell me all about it tomorrow. There’s always another day.”

I said, “There’s the rest of tonight.”

He grinned. He said, “I doubt it. Well, let’s get going. Think you can manage half of our drunken friend?”

“I can try.”

He turned to Claire. “The cab is in the alley, outside the service door. But it’s locked; I came in the front way. You got a key?”

“It opens from the inside. And we can put a piece of cardboard so the catch of the lock will stay back and we can get in again. The elevator will be at the first floor. I think I can run it; I’ll go down now and bring it up to the fourth—”

“No,” Uncle Am said. “Elevators are noisy—especially ones that aren’t supposed to be in use in the middle of the night. We’ll get him down those back stairs. You just stay ahead of us so we don’t run into anybody. If you see anybody, speak to ‘em; we’ll hear your voice and stop to wait.”

She nodded.

Uncle Am took Dutch’s shoulders and I took his feet. He was just too heavy for us to try walking him between us like an ambulating drunk. We’d have to carry him and take our chances.

We got him through the hall and down the stairs. It wasn’t a job I’d want to do regularly.

We got all the breaks. The door was like Claire had said it would be. There wasn’t anyone around the alley. We got him into the cab, jackknifed on the floor of the back seat, and put over him a blanket Claire had brought down for the purpose.

I sat down and wiped the sweat off my forehead. Uncle Am did, too.

Then he got in behind the wheel and Claire and I got in back.

He said, “Any choice of a final resting place?”

I said, “There’s an alley off Franklin—No, skip it; that’s the last place we’d want to put him.”

Claire said, “I know where he used to live, up to a few weeks ago. An apartment building on Division. If we left him in the alley back of there—”

“Smart girl,” Uncle Am said. “If