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

Uncle Ambrose said, “If he came this way, it must have been somebody following him. He could have seen anyone waiting in the alley.”

I pointed up at the porches. I said, “Somebody up on one of them. A man staggers through the alley below them. They go down the steps, getting down just after he passes, catch up with him near the other end of the alley, and—”

“Could be, kid. Not likely. If they were on the porch, then they live there. A guy doesn’t do something like that in his own back alley. Not that close to home. And I doubt if he was staggering drunk. ‘Course you got to discount how sober a bartender says a guy is when he leaves the place. They don’t want to get themselves in trouble.”

“It could have been that way,” I said. “Not likely, but it could have been.”

“Sure. We’ll look into it. We’ll talk to everybody lives in those flats. We’re not passing up off chances; I didn’t mean that when I said it wasn’t likely.”

We were talking softly, like you do in an alley at night. We were past the middle of the alley, past the flats. We were at the back of the buildings that fronted on Franklin Street. On both sides they were three-story bricks, with stores on the bottom floor and flats above.

My uncle stopped and bent down. He said, “Beer-bottle glass. This is where it happened.”

I got a funny feeling, almost a dizziness. This is where it happened. Right where I’m standing now. This is where it happened.

I didn’t want to think about it, that way, so I bent down and started looking, too. It was amber glass, all right, and over an area of a few yards there was enough of it to have come from two or three bottles.

It wouldn’t be just like it fell, of course. It would have been kicked around by people walking through the alley, trucks driving through. It was broken finer now, and scattered more. But right around here, the center of the area where the glass was, would be where the bottles were dropped.

My uncle said, “Here’s a piece with part of a label. We can see if it’s the brand Kaufman sells.”

I took it and walked out under the street light at the end of the alley. I said, “It’s part of a Topaz label. I’ve seen thousands of ‘em on beer Pop’s brought home. Kaufman has a Topaz sign, but it’s an awful common beer around here. It wouldn’t prove it for sure.”

He came over and we stood looking both ways on Franklin Street. An el train went by almost right over our heads. A long one, it must have been a North Shore train. It sounded as loud as the end of the world.

A noise loud enough, I thought, to cover revolver shots—let alone the noise a man would make falling, even with beer bottles. That might have been why it happened here, near this end of the alley, instead of back in the middle where it was darker. Noise counted, too, along with darkness. When they got here, the killer closing up behind Pop, the el had come by. Even if Pop had yelled for help, the noise of the el would have made it a whisper.

I looked at the store fronts on either side of the alley. One was a plumbing supplies shop. The other was vacant. It seemed to have been vacant a long time; the glass was too dirty to see through.

My uncle said, “Well, Ed.”

“Sure. I guess this is—is all we can do tonight.”

We walked down Franklin to Erie and across to Wells.

My uncle said, “I just figured what’s wrong with me. I’m hungry as hell. I haven’t eaten since noon and you haven’t eaten since about two o’clock. Let’s go over to Clark for some grub.”

We went to an all-night barbecue place.

I wasn’t hungry until I took a bite out of a pork barbecue sandwich, and then I gobbled it down, the French fries and the slaw too. We each ordered a second one.

My uncle asked, while we waited, “Ed, what are you heading for?”

“What do you mean?”

He said, “I mean what are you going to do with yourself? During the next fifty-odd years.”

The answer was so obvious I had to think it over. I said, “Nothing much, I guess. I’m an apprentice printer. I can take up linotype when I’m a little farther on my apprenticeship. Or I can be a hand-man. Printing’s a good trade.”

“I suppose it is. Going to stay in Chicago?”

“I haven’t thought about it,” I told him. “I’m not going to leave right away. After I finish my apprenticeship, I’m a journeyman. I can work anywhere.”

He said, “A trade’s a good thing. But get the trade, don’t let it get you. The same with— Oh, hell, I’m not Dutch. I’m talking like a Dutch uncle.”

He grinned. He’d been going to say, the same with women. He knew that I knew it and so he didn’t have to say it. I was glad he gave me credit for that much sense.

He asked instead, “What do you dream, Ed?”

I looked at him; he was serious. I asked, “Is this the mitt-camp lay? Or are you psychoanalyzing me?”

“It’s the same difference.”

I said, “This morning I dreamed I was reaching through a hockshop window to pick up a trombone. Gardie came skipping rope along the sidewalk and I woke up before I got the trombone. Now I suppose you know all about me, huh?”

He chuckled. “That would be shooting a sitting duck, Ed. Two ducks with one bullet. Watch out for one of those ducks. You know which one I mean.”

“I guess I do.”

“She’s poison, kid, for a guy like you. Just like Madge was — Skip it. What’s about the trom? Ever play one?”

“Not to speak of. In sophomore year at high I borrowed one of the school board’s. I was going to learn so I could get in the band. But some of the neighbors squawked, and I guess it did make a hell of a noise. When you live in a flat— Mom didn’t like it, either.”

The guy behind the counter brought our second sandwiches. I wasn’t so hungry now. With the stuff on the side, it looked awfully big. I ate a few of the French fries first.

Then I lifted the lid off the barbecue sandwich and tilted the ketchup bottle and let it gurgle on thick.

It looked like—

I smacked down the lid of the sandwich and tried to think away from what it looked like. But I was back in the alley. I didn’t even know if there’d been blood; maybe there hadn’t. You can hit to kill without drawing blood.

But I thought of Pop’s head matted with blood and a blot of blood there on the rough brick of the alley last night—now soaked in, worn off or washed away. Would they have washed it away? Hell, there probably hadn’t been any blood.

But the thought of that sandwich was making me sick. Unless I could get my mind off it. I closed my eyes and was repeating the first nonsense that came into my mind to keep from thinking. It was one, two, three, O’Leary; four, five, six, O’Leary—

After a few seconds I knew I’d won and I wasn’t going to be sick. But I looked around at Uncle Ambrose and kept my eyes off the counter.

I said, “Say, maybe Mom’s waiting up for me. We never thought to tell her we’d be late. It’s after one.”

He said, “My God, I forgot it too. Golly, I hope she isn’t. You better get home fast.”

I told him I didn’t want the rest of my second barbecue anyway, and he’d almost finished his. We parted right outside; he went north to the Wacker and I hurried home to Wells Street.

Mom had left a light on for me in the inner hall, but she hadn’t waited up. The door of her room was dark. I was glad. I didn’t want to have to explain and apologize, and if she’d been waiting up, worried, she might have blamed Uncle Ambrose.

I got to bed quickly and quietly. I must have gone to sleep the first instant I closed my eyes.

*

When I woke up, something was funny in the room. Different. It was morning as usual and again the room was hot and close. It took me a minute or two, lying there, to realize that the difference was that my alarm clock wasn’t ticking. I hadn’t wound or set it.

I don’t know why it mattered much what time it was, but I wanted to know. I got up and walked out to look at the kitchen clock. It was one minute after seven.

Funny, I thought; I waked up at just the usual time. Without even a clock running in my room.

Nobody else was awake. Gardie’s door was open and her pajama tops were off again. I hurried past.

I set and wound my alarm clock and lay down again, I might as well sleep another hour or two, I thought, if I can. But I couldn’t go back to sleep; I couldn’t even get sleepy.

The flat was awfully quiet. There didn’t seem to be much noise even outside this morning, except when an el car went by on Franklin every few minutes.

The ticking of the clock got louder and louder.

This morning I don’t have to wake Pop, I thought. I’ll never wake him again. Nobody will.

I got up and dressed.

On my way through to the kitchen I stopped in the doorway of Gardie’s room and looked in. I thought, she wants me to look; I want to look, so why shouldn’t I? I knew the answer damn well.

Maybe I was looking for a counter-irritant for the cold feeling about not having to wake up Pop. Maybe a cold feeling and a hot one ought to cancel out. They didn’t, exactly, but after half a minute I got disgusted with myself and went on out to the kitchen.

I made coffee and sat drinking it. I wondered what I was going to do to fill in the morning. Uncle Ambrose would sleep late; being with a carney he’d be used to sleeping late. Anyway there wasn’t much to do about the investigation until after the inquest. And then, until after the funeral.

Besides, in the light of morning now, it seemed a bit silly. A fat little man with a moustache and a wet-behind-the-ears kid thinking they could find, out of all Chicago, the heister who had got away with a job.

I thought about the homicide man with the faded red hair and the tired eyes. We’d bought him for a hundred dollars, or Uncle Ambrose thought we had. He’d been partly right anyhow; Bassett had taken the money.

I heard bare feet padding, and Gardie came out into the kitchen in her pajamas. The tops, too. The toenails of her bare feet were painted.

She said, “Morning, Eddie. Cup coffee?”

She yawned and then stretched like a sleek kitten. Her claws were in.

I got another cup and poured, and she sat down across the table.

She said, “Gee, the inquest’s today.” She sounded excited about it. Like she would say, “Gee, the football game’s today.”

I said, “I wonder if they’ll want me to testify. I don’t know to what.”

“No, Eddie, I don’t think