Unhappy Hooligan (11 page)

“Speaking of that,” Rook pressed, “did your husband ever do any legal work for anybody from the circus?”

She shook her head. “No, not that I know of.”

“Did he have any law cases where he might have made enemies—anything like that?”

Again she shook her head. Rook went on. “What about that stabbing on Skid Row some ten years ago, when he helped to deport some sailors off a Greek ship who got into trouble?”

“Huh?” Mavis looked blank. “Oh, you mean the Finn case! A man named Finn got stabbed or something—Mac has a transcript of the trial in his library. But there wasn’t anything in that to make anybody want to kill him ten years later or any time; he was just doing a routine job, that’s all.”

Rook shrugged wearily. “Another blind alley. Well, my dear lady, it’s been a long hard day, and I suggest that you run back to the city and let me work at this in my own way.”

She looked faintly annoyed for a moment, and then she smiled. “Of course. You’re right, and I mustn’t interfere. I’m only in the way here. But telephone me the moment you’ve found out anything, won’t you?” She pressed his hand warmly, and turned away—but Rook caught up with her in two strides.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said. “It’s late, and there may be some rather rough characters hanging around.”

“I can take care of myself,” Mavis said firmly. “You needn’t bother. I’d really much rather you didn’t. It’s better that we’re not seen together, as a matter of fact. Good night, and good luck.” She hurried off.

For various reasons Howie Rook would have liked to insist on accompanying her, but Mavis was the one who was picking up the tab; he had only the status of an employee. But she hadn’t said anything about not following her, so he cut over behind the freaks’ banners and the kid-show tent, crawled under the ropes and came out at last on the edge of the circus grounds, on the side of Highway 101, moving with a swiftness surprising in one of his age and bulk. He waited there in the shadows for a few moments, and then he saw Mavis McFarley’s flashy red convertible pull out of the parking area on the other side of the highway and swing north. As it passed the lighted space in front of him, he caught a glimpse of an extremely handsome, gray-haired man at the wheel; he was a man with a nose like an eagle’s beak, a jutting jaw, and he wore incongruous yellow gloves.

“That would be Paul,” said Rook to himself. He shrugged, and turned away. It had, as he had told Mavis, been a long hard day—without a single glass of beer, too. He should be heading back to his hotel, but suddenly he felt that he wanted to get the feel of the circus lot at night, when he had it almost to himself. The lights of the Midway were dimmed now; only a few pale bulbs were glowing feebly. It was a lonely place with the crowd gone and the blaring music stilled and the gay banners hanging limply in the chill fog. It was as silent as the proverbial tomb—except for the occasional trumpeting of a bull, the heavy roaring of one of the big cats…

He set out to make a tour of the place, naturally gravitating first to the menagerie. Elephants, he discovered, sleep lying down; zebras sleep like horses standing up. And Biddy the orangutan slept on her pile of straw like a baby, wrapped in her shawl. But she wasn’t sleeping too deeply—for when he paused by her cage the little ape perked up, yawned, and came over to the bars. Then she recognized him, and skirred with pleased surprise.

“I have nothing for you,” Rook said. “Not tonight. Nothing but a problem. Biddy, this is an odd world, and things are not always what they seem. You see before you a man who is beginning to suspect that he is being used as a red herring.”

Biddy cocked her head sympathetically.

“I am confronted with two females of my species, who are to my notion far too anxious to cast aspersions and suspicions on each other. Wouldn’t it be interesting if they were secretly in cahoots?”

Biddy nodded, grasped the bars, and jumped up and down. Then she turned and leaped over to the side door of her cage, pounding on it with eager fists. She made it clear as clear could be that it was her heart’s desire at the moment to be taken out of the cage and to be cuddled in his arms.

“Go back to sleep, Biddy,” Rook told the apelet. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” The simian face looked sad, but as he moved away he got a pantomimed kiss through the bars.

Rook went on, not quite knowing what he was seeking. There must, he knew, be guards and attendants around the place to watch the animals and the property; now he could hear a rather noisy poker game going on somewhere in one of the farther dressing rooms, somewhere else the click of thrown dice, and in the chill air there was the faint scent of coffee. It was a moment after that that Howie Rook realized that he was being followed; he realized that he had been subconsciously aware of being followed for several minutes! He stopped short, then rashly turned and hurried back the way he had come. Nobody was there.

“Overactive imagination,” he decided sensibly, and went on. And then again there came that prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck, the warning of that seventh sense which some people and most animals have…

He hurried on, turning around the outside of the Big Top, ducking under guy ropes and rigging, until at last he reached the steps of the dressing room where his clown costume hung on its hanger beside Hap Hammett’s and the others’, and once in that comparative haven bethought himself of the possible comfort of tobacco, which he had been long without. He sought in the pockets of his clown jacket for a dollar cigar—he remembered having left a handful there—but they were mysteriously gone!

Rook stood there, scratching his head, and was suddenly caught in the bright blaze of a powerful flashlight. He whirled to see the ferret-eyed man in the bright Hawaiian sport shirt, who was looking in upon him curiously, almost suspiciously.

“Hello,” said Howie Rook.

“Oh, it’s
you,”
said the man. “I knew you were hanging around late, but I’d have sworn you went home. I saw somebody coming out of here about ten minutes ago—”

“I think maybe we’ve had a sneakthief,” Rook said slowly. “Because now that I think of it, somebody’s searched this dressing room in a hurry. This isn’t the way I left my stuff.”

The man frowned, and came up the steps to look around. “You miss anything?”

“Only about a dozen expensive cigars,” Rook confessed. “It doesn’t matter, really.”

“Cigars, yet! Well, the last clown out of here at night is supposed to snap the padlock, but half the time they forget. You’re late, friend. You missed the last bus for the yards.”

Rook thought. “Any place I can get me a taxi?”

“You can phone for one from out front in the booth. Failing that, you can play cards with the owl crew or bed yourself down with the hyenas.” The man watched as Rook came down the steps and then rather pointedly slammed the door and snapped the padlock.

Rook thanked him, and hurried off—thinking of a hot bath and a cool bed. Then he stopped, almost mid-stride. Because there had been something else missing from the pocket of his clown coat—the infernal dog biscuits he had palmed and dumped there all afternoon! It was conceivable that some light-fingered person around the circus would filch cigars, but not liver-flavored doggy tidbits.

He stood there for a minute, wondering. There must be some reasonable explanation, there had to be! Methodically, he began to go through the pockets of his Sunday suit—but found money and everything else just where it should have been…

And then he felt his hat move, heard a swift, sibilant hiss overhead, and a “plunk” in the tent pole beside him. When he turned, Howie Rook saw that his brand-new Homburg had left his head and was now neatly pinned to the tent pole by a knife, which seemed to be still quivering from the force of the throw.

Rook was a reasonably prudent man, and a reasonably frightened one, and he saw no point in charging off into the inky blackness unarmed as he was. He realized he was standing almost underneath one of the night lights, a perfect target. Swiftly he pulled the knife from the hat, hesitated, then put the hat on his head and the knife in his pocket, and got out of there. No longer did he have the feeling that he was being followed, but other and far more unpleasant feelings had been superimposed. Suddenly he wanted lights and the company of his fellow man; he wanted to be in Joe’s Grill and Bar with a mug of dark ale and some cronies beside him, listening to the juke box. Anywhere but here.

He hurried down the Midway, and found the pay-phone booth occupied by Mary Kelly du Mond, who waved at him cheerfully through the glass. He waved back—he would have waved at one of the Ubangi women in the side show at that moment. But Kelly was something, he had to admit to himself, even in street clothes. “My taxi is on its way,” she said brightly as she emerged. “Want to share it? We both seem to have missed the last bus.”

Just looking at her made him feel better. “So I have already been advised, my dear. But I hadn’t planned on bunking in the circus train tonight; I have a hotel room in the town.”

“I don’t blame you,” Mary Kelly said. “Forty people in one frowzy old Pullman, and not even a diner where you can get a cup of coffee or anything…”

He hesitated, and was lost. “Would you perhaps care to have a drink with me in town somewhere?” he asked diffidently. “It’s not really so very late.”

“Lo-o-o-ove it!” cried the bumptious beauty. “I was hoping you’d ask me,” She slipped an arm through his, and as they walked out toward the highway she hummed a happy little tune. Howie Rook, somewhat worn and frazzled with his experiences of the day, still found himself wondering just what song it was that the Syrens sang…

But Lord! how everybody’s looks, and discourse in the street, is of death and nothing else…

—Samuel Pepys

“J
UST THINK OF IT,”
said Mary Kelly, snuggling up rather close to him in the taxicab as they rolled toward the town of Vista Beach. “A date! In this racket a girl almost never has a date unless she’s in a town where she knows somebody. You see, the management fines you a week’s pay if you’re caught romancing with anybody who’s with the show—I mean
really
with it. I’m beginning to feel like I’m in a convent or something.”

Howie Rook was beginning to feel as if he were in a spider web or something—but this particular spider had soft blue-black curly hair and bright blue eyes; it was the ancient Irish combination which had always disturbed him and no doubt had disturbed thousands of other men too. And after all, a café was a safe enough place. “Champagne,” he said grandly to the waiter who ushered them into a rear booth at the Mermaid Grotto. He had a certain part to play.

“Lemonade,” corrected his fair companion. “Not necessarily from choice, but you just try doing a headstand on a fifty-foot trap with even the teeniest hang-over! It spells kerplunk!” They finally settled for the lemonade and a pitcher of dark beer. Mary Kelly also thought that she might have just a bite to eat, said bite eventually consisting of a double New York-cut steak, very rare “and hold the potatoes.”

“I caught your act this afternoon,” Rook told her. “But not tonight. It scares me.”

“It scares me too,” the lovely girl confessed. “But it’s a living. And I have a knack for rhythm and balance, so I guess I might as well use it. And don’t forget, Gordo is always down there below. He may not be the brightest man in the world, but he’s quick and strong—he used to be an adagio dancer, believe it or not.”

“I believe it,” said Howie Rook dryly. “A man of many talents, eh?” He gingerly fingered the throwing knife in his pocket, a short, stubby knife with light handle, thick heavy blade, sharp as a needle at the point.

“Those Sicilians!” Mary Kelly murmured, shaking her head. “Me, I like the quieter type man.” She was definitely in a talkative mood, and he had little or no difficulty in working her around to the topic of James McFarley.

“What an absolute doll!” she said reminiscently between bites at her slab of rare steak; the steer that the meat was cut from, Rook thought, must still be breathing. “He was so interested in everybody at the circus and what made us tick.” She sloshed ketchup over her meat, which made Rook wince slightly. “You know,” she continued, “Mr. McFarley’s the kind of sensitive, understanding older man that a girl like me could go for in a big way—the kind of man who could take her away from this traveling madhouse, away from risking her neck twice a day for a measly two fifty a week. Married up to a man like him, a girl could lead a normal life and not worry about the calories. As it is, I have to watch my figure all the time or
nobody
will watch it. See what I mean?”

Rook saw, though he was somewhat bemused by her eyelashes. He was for no reason at all reminded of the remark accredited to Oliver Wendell Holmes, who at over eighty met a luscious young woman at a reception, and said, “Oh, to be sixty again!” “I hear McFarley used to throw very charming cocktail parties,” he said casually.

Was he wrong, or did she start perceptibly? “I wouldn’t know; I never got to one.”

“He was quite a one for hanging around the Polar Club, too,” Rook pressed gently.

Mary Kelly said quickly, “Oh? I don’t know much about nightspots; I don’t get to go very often because they always expect you to drink and as I told you, in my profession I can’t. I hate to seem like a fuddy-dud, but that’s the way it has to be. Why, sometimes when I go to a party I take along a case of Cokes or ginger ale, just so I’ll have a glass in my hand. In case the host doesn’t have any soft drinks. It saves sending out.”

“Very considerate of you,” Rook told her. He was looking at her mouth, which was well worth looking at. “By the way, just what shade of lipstick do you use?”

“Lipstick?” She looked puzzled. “Oh, all sorts. Why?”

“Just idle curiosity,” said Howie Rook, feeling slightly deflated. So women made it harder by shifting their colors? Yet the shade Mary Kelly was wearing was very like the color of the imprint on a certain cocktail napkin he remembered. “The circus is a fascinating place,” he said. “Nothing like it in the world. But some of the people seem oddly superstitious—imagine them calling your friend McFarley the ‘Jinx Man’ behind his back!”