Lucky Stiff by Craig Rice (best large ebook reader txt) đź“•
This was their wedding anniversary. He couldn't even remember which one. It didn't really matter. All that mattered was the waking up every morning and seeing her long, silky hair spread out on the pillow, and her face, childlike in sleep, nestled in her arm. Coffee in the sunroom in the morning, Helene in her violet chiffon negligee, or her fluffy white robe, or her bandanna sunsuit, or, on special occasions, the blue satin house pajamas she'd been wearing the first time they met.
"Helene," he said, "every time I look at you I feel as if someone had just given my heart a hot-foot."
Her eyes warmed. "Darling," she whispered, "I didn't know you were a poet!" This time her hand reached out for his, and it wasn't icy cold.
Jake Justus, ex-reporter, ex-press agent, and, as he occasionally reminded himself, definitely ex-amateur detective, sighed again. Happily, this time. That unpleasant knot of anxiety in h
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Anna Marie frowned. She sat down on the arm of a chair, swinging her foot. “I’ve heard about him.”
“He’s a little guy,” Jesse Conway said, “short and stocky, with dark hair and a red face. Always looks mussed up. He’s a souse and a dame chaser and a gambler, but he’s a damn smart lawyer.”
“Yes,” she said, nodding slowly. “That’s the one.”
“He hangs out in Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar,” Jesse Conway said. “He’s got an office somewhere on Washington Street. The address is in the phone book, in case you ever need him.” He smiled mirthlessly. “As you probably will, if you do what I think you’re going to do.”
“I’m not going to do any murders,” Anna Marie said. She stood up and tucked her purse under her arm. Then she, too, smiled. “Unless scaring people to death counts as murder.” Her eyes softened suddenly, almost with pity. “What are you being so damn helpful for?”
The gray-haired man looked past her, his face haggard, his hands clenched together between his knees. “Because,” he said hoarsely. “Because. Today, all day. It was a kind of murder, you know. They were murdering you. And nothing I could do, not one damn thing.” He sucked in his breath sharply. “It was an accident, you know. The confession. It just happened that way. It was a lucky accident.”
“Sure,” Anna Marie said, “and I’m a lucky stiff.” Suddenly she laughed. “That’s funny, you know. I’m a lucky stiff.” She gave Jesse Conway a quick pat on the shoulder, walked to the door and flung it open. “Well, let’s go, ghost.” The air outside was fresh and moist and cool. For a moment Anna Marie stood on the sidewalk, breathing deeply. Free, now. You know, free. Breathe the air, go to a movie, ride on busses, have fun, raise hell. Free, and alive. Just being alive, that wasn’t so bad either. She looked at her watch.
Fifteen minutes to midnight.
She turned to the white-faced, shaken man. For a moment she’d felt pity for him. Now her heart hardened again.
If it hadn’t been for that lucky accident, right at this moment she’d be in her cell, waiting for the footsteps in the corridor. She was alive now, and free, but it wasn’t because of him.
“This insane scheme of yours,” he mumbled. “Had to consent to it. Got us all on the spot, and you know it.” His hand reached out to grasp the doorpost. “For God’s sake, Anna Marie,” he said, his voice rising desperately, “you’re free, it’s all over, it was all a mistake. If you want money I can get it for you, plenty of it. You’re young, you’re beautiful, you can have a happy life—” his voice trailed off into a gasping whisper. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing illegal,” she said. She looked at her watch. “In twelve minutes they’ll inform the newspapers that I went to the chair with a smile on my lips. Then you’re going to give out to the newspaper boys with that confession.” Just one side of her mouth smiled. “It’ll make a nice story. Girl executed for the murder she didn’t do. Anna Marie St. Clair died at midnight, and then—”
“Don’t!” Jesse Conway said. “I won’t do it. I won’t, I tell you.”
“Oh, yes you will,” she said. “You’ve got to. Or you and a lot of your friends are going to be very sorry. Give out with your confession story, Jesse Conway, but not until after the warden releases his statement. Or maybe you’ll have ghosts in your attic, too.”
She walked out to the edge of the curb and stood waving for a taxi. It seemed to her as though the blood was moving in her veins for the first time in all these weeks. There weren’t going to be any footsteps in the corridor. No march to the electric chair. No wisecrack to spring from her lips at the last minute. The whole thing had been one hell of a bad dream— but she hadn’t dreamed it.
A cab rolled up to the curb, the driver reached out and opened the door. Anna Marie paused, one foot on the step, then turned back to look at Jesse Conway.
He looked sick, old. Somehow he managed to cross the sidewalk with slow, shambling steps, managed to hold the door for her, to help her in with what seemed like a travesty of courtliness.
“Wait, Anna Marie,” he said. It was a tortured whisper.
She smiled at him through the open cab door. Then she looked at her watch again.
“In eight minutes now,” she said, “I’ll be dead.”
She threw herself back against the seat cushions and closed her eyes. A few blocks later she sat upright and called to the driver. Her face was bright, almost gay, and her voice was as clear as a bell.
“Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar,” she said.
“Leave him alone,” Joe the Angel said, polishing a glass and putting it away back of the bar. “He’s brooding.”
It was an unnecessary caution. Anyone with half an eye could see that John J. Malone was brooding, sitting there alone at the far end of the bar, his head propped up on his right hand, his left hand nursing a glass of gin. The little lawyer’s face was melancholy. One more gin and he’d probably burst into tears.
The tactful customers of Joe the Angel’s City Hall Bar were leaving him to his sorrows. The bar stools on each side of him were empty. No one knew why John J. Malone was brooding, but the voices in the bar were unusually soft, and no one played the juke box.
Malone stirred and signaled to Joe the Angel, who came hurrying over. He pointed to his empty glass.
“Maybe you’d better just leave the bottle right here,” Malone said. “I’m holding a wake.”
Joe the Angel clucked sympathetically. “Friend or relative?”
“Neither,” Malone said, shaking his head. “No one I ever met. You wouldn’t understand.”
Joe the Angel looked at him, sighed, and went away, leaving the bottle. It was true that he didn’t understand, but then Irishmen like John J. Malone were subject to moods.
Malone looked up at the clock, winced, and looked away again. One minute to twelve. They’d have taken her into the death chamber now, and strapped her into the chair. He hoped she wasn’t frightened, too terribly frightened. In a few more seconds now they’d turn on the infernal thing. He hoped it wouldn’t hurt.
John J. Malone, criminal lawyer, went through this period of suffering whenever a convicted murderer went to the chair or was carried off to jail for life imprisonment. For that matter, he didn’t like to see anyone go to jail for even the most minor offense against law and order.
The suffering had nothing to do with a lack of respect for law and order. Nor with any antisocial attitude toward crime. It wasn’t even because he was a criminal lawyer and, as a matter of professional pride, always felt that if he’d been the condemned person’s lawyer, the trial would have gone otherwise. It was simply that he always felt so damned sorry for the person going to jail or the electric chair, deservedly or not.
In this case, however, his suffering was unusually acute. In the first place the criminal was a woman, and John J. Malone had a deep-seated sense of gallantry which made the execution of a woman impolite, immoral, and unthinkable. In the second, he d fallen in love with the newspaper pictures of Anna Marie St. Clair. He’d dreamed about her nightly during all these weeks leading up to her execution. And, finally, he had a horrible, and uncomfortable conviction that she was innocent. He poured another gin and reviewed the circumstances of the case for the hundredth time. Anna Marie St. Clair had been provided for, lavishly, by Big Joe Childers. Possibly she’d been in love with him, though John J. Malone hoped not.
The day of the murder Anna Marie St. Clair had been informed, anonymously, that Big Joe was keeping company with another girl and was about to desert Anna Marie St. Clair. She’d admitted that at the trial, and admitted that she’d been upset, in fact, sore as hell.
She’d made a date with Big Joe to have it out with him. They’d met in one of the private rooms of a Clark Street bar.
According to a number of witnesses, the two had quarreled violently. At the height of the quarrel there had been the sound of a shot. People had rushed into the private room, to find Big Joe stretched out on the floor, and Anna Marie St. Clair standing over him, her face white, the gun in her hand.
Her story had been that, while they were quarreling, a man—she couldn’t describe him, she hadn’t had a good enough look at him—had rushed into the room, shot Big Joe, thrust the gun into her hand, and rushed out again.
Obviously, the district attorney had said, not only a falsehood but a ridiculous one.
The gun wasn’t Big Joe Childers’. In fact, it was well known that Big Joe never carried a gun. That made it a premeditated crime.
The presence of Big Joe’s widow in the courtroom hadn’t helped Anna Marie’s case any, either. Malone scowled at the thought of Eva Childers. She’d worn simple, inexpensive, almost shabby clothes. She’d been the perfect gentle, heartbroken, and helpless widow. Malone knew that she was a rich woman with social pretensions, and hard as nails.
If he’d been Anna Marie’s lawyer, he never would have let her wear those gorgeous, becoming, and obviously costly outfits. He’d have gotten the Widow Childers on the stand, and somehow managed to show her up for what she was. He’d have—oh, he’d have done a lot of things.
John J. Malone sighed into his gin. Everytime he thought about the case, it seemed to him that there was some one thing that proved Anna Marie’s story to be true. Only he couldn’t put his finger on it. If he could have, perhaps he could have done, something to save her. This time, though, his brains had failed him—and failed her. It was too late now. He looked up at the clock again and realized he’d been musing for an hour. It was all over now. A boy came in selling newspapers. John J. Malone bought one, almost against his will, and spread it out on the bar in front of him. Suddenly his whole body stiffened, his face whitened.
Anna Marie St. Clair had died in the electric chair at midnight. Less than half an hour later a dying gangster’s confession had proved her innocence.
He had been right. Her story had been true. And it was too late, too late.
John J. Malone reached for the gin bottle, then pushed it away from him. He felt stunned and sick; the room displayed just a faint inclination to reel. Not because of the gin, either.
Through the blur in front of his eyes he saw Joe the Angel’s face. He looked at it for a moment while it slowly came into focus, and while the room settled down again. Joe the Angel was white as a piece of chalk, his eyes looked like brown marbles. He was looking at something beside John J. Malone.
A soft voice said, “A double bourbon and water please.” Joe the Angel nodded as though he were hypnotized. He mumbled something and rushed to fill the order.
John J. Malone turned slowly on the bar stool.
There she was.
It took a minute for his brain to function again. In that minute his eyes took in every detail of her pale face and wraithlike hands,
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