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

“Why you?”

“Identification. I was the one really identified him first. Mom almost fainted again at the parlors, at Heiden’s. They didn’t want her to faint, so I said I’d look. Later when she was a little calmer, after the detective, Mr. Bassett, had talked to her, she wanted to look too, and they let her.”

I asked, “How did they find out who he was? I mean, he couldn’t have had identification left on him or they’d have been up here in the middle of the night, after they found him.”

“Bobby knew him. Bobby Reinhart.”

“Who’s Bobby Reinhart?”

“He works for Mr. Heiden. He’s learning the undertaking business. I’ve gone out with him a few times. He knew Pop by sight. He came to work at seven, and told them right away who it was, as soon as he went in the—the morgue room.”

“Oh,” I said. I placed the guy now. A slick-looking little punk, about sixteen or seventeen. He greased his hair and had always worn his best clothes to school. He thought he was a woman-killer and pretty hot stuff.

It made me a little sick to think of him maybe helping work on Pop’s body.

We finished the coffee, and Gardie rinsed out the cups and then went back to her room to dress. I heard Mom getting up.

I went in the living room and picked up a magazine. It was starting to rain outside, a slow steady drizzle.

It was a detective magazine. I started a story and it was about a rich man who was found dead in his hotel suite, with a noose of yellow silk rope around his neck, but he’d been poisoned. There were lots of suspects, all with motives. His secretary at whom he’d been making passes, a nephew who inherited, a racketeer who owed him money, the secretary’s fiance. In the third chapter they’d just about pinned it on the racketeer and then he’s murdered. There’s a yellow silk cord around his neck and he’s been strangled, but not with the silk cord.

I put down the book. Nuts, I thought, murder isn’t like that.

Murder is like this.

For some reason, I got to remembering the time Pop took me to the aquarium. I don’t know how I remembered that; I was only about six years old then, or maybe five. My mother had been alive then, but she hadn’t gone with us. I remember Pop and I laughing a lot together at the expressions on the faces of some of the fishes, the surprised astonished look on the faces of some of them that had round open mouths.

Now that I thought about it, Pop had laughed a lot in those days.

Gardie told Mom she was going to a girl friend’s house and would be back by noon.

It rained all morning.

*

At the inquest, it seemed you mostly sat around and waited for it to start. It was in the main hall at Heiden’s mortuary. There hadn’t been any sign out “Inquest Today” but word must have got around, because there were quite a few people there. There were seats for about forty and they were all taken.

Uncle Ambrose was there, in the back row on one side. He’d tipped me a wink and then pretended not to know me. I let myself get separated from Mom and Gardie and took a seat near the back on the other side of the room.

A little man with gold-rimmed glasses was fussing around, up front. He was the deputy coroner in charge. I found out later his name was Wheeler. He looked hot and fussy and annoyed, and in a hurry to get things started and get them over with.

Bassett was there, and other cops, one in uniform, the others not. There was a man with a long thin nose who looked like a professional gambler.

There were six men in chairs lined up along one side of the front of the hall.

Finally, whatever was holding up things must have been settled. The deputy coroner rapped with a gavel and things quieted down. He wanted to know if there was any objection to any of the six men who had been chosen as jurors. There wasn’t. He wanted to know, of them, whether they had known a man named Wallace Hunter, whether they knew the circumstances of his death or had discussed the case with anyone, whether there was any reason why they couldn’t render a fair and impartial verdict on the evidence they would hear. He got negatives and headshakes on all counts.

Then he took the six of them into the morgue to view the body of the deceased, and then to be sworn.

It was very formal, in an informal sort of way.

It was corny. It was like a bad movie.

When that was all out of the way, he wanted to know if there was a member of the family of the deceased present. Mom got up and went forward. She held up her right hand and mumbled something back when something was mumbled at her.

Her name, her address, her occupation, her relation to the deceased. She had seen the body and identified it as that of her husband.

A lot of questions about Pop; his occupation, place of employment, residence, how long he’d lived there and all that sort of thing.

“When did you last see your husband alive, Mrs. Hunter?”

“Thursday night, somewhere about nine o’clock. When he went out.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“N-no. He just said he was going down for a glass of beer. I figured Clark Street.”

“Did he go out like that often, alone?”

“Well—yes.”

“How often?”

“Once or twice a week.”

“And usually stayed out—how late?”

“Around midnight usually. Sometimes later. One or two o’clock.”

“How much money did he have with him Thursday night?”

“I don’t know exactly. Twenty or thirty dollars. Wednesday was payday.”

“You can’t say any closer than that?”

“No. He gave me twenty-five dollars Wednesday night. That was for groceries and—and household expenses. He always kept the rest. He paid rent and gas and light bills and things like that.”

“He had no enemies that you know of, Mrs. Hunter?”

“No, none at all.”

“Think carefully. You know of no one who would—would have cause to hate him?”

Mom said, “No. Nobody at all.”

“Nor anyone who would benefit financially from his death?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, did he have any money, did he have an interest in any business or venture?”

“No.”

“Did he carry any insurance? Or was any insurance carried on him?”

“No. He suggested it once. I said no, that we ought to put the money that would go for premiums in the bank instead. Only we didn’t.”

“Thursday night, Mrs. Hunter, did you wait up for him?”

“I did, yes, for a while. Then I decided he was going to be late and I went to sleep.”

“When your husband had been drinking, Mrs. Hunter, would you say he was—well, careless about taking chances such as walking down alleys or in dangerous neighborhoods, things like that?”

“I’m afraid he was, yes. He was held up before, twice. The last time a year ago.”

“But he wasn’t injured? He didn’t attempt to defend himself?”

“No. He was just held up.”

I listened closely now. That was news to me. Nobody had told me Pop had been held up before, not even once. Then something fitted. A year ago he’d said he’d lost his wallet; he’d had to get a new social security card and union card. Probably he’d just figured it was none of my business how he’d lost it.

The deputy coroner was asking if any of the police present wanted to ask any further questions. Nobody did, and he told Mom she could go back to her seat.

He said, “I understand we have a further identification. Miss Hildegarde Hunter has also identified the deceased. Is she present?”

Gardie got up and went through the rigmarole. She sat down in the chair and crossed her legs. She didn’t have to adjust her skirt; it was short enough already.

They didn’t ask her anything except about having identified Pop. You could tell she was disappointed when she went back to her seat beside Mom.

They put one of the plain-clothes men on the stand next. He was a squad-car cop. He and his partner had found the body.

They’d been driving south, just cruising slowly, on Franklin Street under the el at two o’clock and the alley was dark there and they’d flashed their spotlight in it and seen him lying there.

“He was dead when you reached him?’

“Yes. Been dead about an hour maybe.”

“You looked for identification?”

“Yes. He didn’t have any wallet or watch or anything. He’d been cleaned. There was some change in his pocket. Sixty-five cents.”

“It was dark enough back where he lay that anyone walking by would not have seen him?”

“I guess not. There’s a street light on Franklin at that end of the alley, but it was out. We reported that too, afterward, and they put in a new bulb. Or said they were going to.”

“Was there any indication of a struggle?”

“Well, his face was scratched, but that could have been from falling. He fell face forward when he was hit.”

“You don’t know that,” said the coroner, sharply. “You mean, he was lying on his face when you found him?”

“Yeah. And there was broken glass from several beer bottles and the spot smelled of beer. The alley and his clothes were wet with it. He must have been carrying— Oh, all right, that’s a deduction again. There was beer and beer-bottle glass around.”

“Was the deceased wearing a hat?”

“There was one laying by him. A hard straw hat. What they call a sailor straw. It wasn’t crushed; it couldn’t have been on him when he was hit. That, and the way he was laying makes me think he was slugged from behind. The heister came up on him, knocked off his hat with one hand and swung the billy with the other, like. You can’t take off a guy’s hat to slug him from the front without him knowing it and he’d put up a—”

“Please confine yourself to the facts, Mr. Horvath.”

“Okay—what was the question, now?”

“Was the deceased wearing a hat? That was the question.”

“No, he wasn’t wearing one. There was one laying by him.”

“Thank you, Mr. Horvath. That will be all.”

The cop got down from the witness chair. I thought, we were figuring things wrong last night, because we figured on that street light. It was off at the time. It would have been plenty dark at the Franklin end of the alley.

The deputy coroner was looking at his notes again. He said, “Is there a Mr. Kaufman present?”

A short, heavy man shuffled forward. He wore glasses with thick lenses and behind them his eyes looked hooded.

His name, he testified, was George Kaufman. He owned and ran the tavern on Chicago Avenue known as Kaufman’s Place.

Yes, Wallace Hunter, the deceased, had been in his tavern Thursday night. He’d been there half an hour—not much longer than that anyhow—and then had left, saying he was going home. In Kaufman’s place he’d had one shot and two-three beers. In answer to a question, Mr. Kaufman admitted it might have been three or four beers, but not more than that. He was sure about it being only one shot.

“He came in alone?”

“Yeah. He came in alone. And left alone.”

“Did he say he was going home when he left?”

“Yeah. He was standing at the bar. He said something about going home, I don’t