Unhappy Hooligan (23 page)

“On the surface, perhaps, yes. I’m not unalterably wedded to the theory myself, because of one or two flaws. But I can show you stranger ways of committing murder in my collection of clippings. Remember that the first real detective story of all time was Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ where an ape did a human-fly act and killed two women with a razor while merely trying to shave them.”

“Fiction!”

“But nature often, as Oscar Wilde said, tries to copy art. Biddy’s cage is often left unlocked, and she loves to be taken out and to go anywhere with anybody she knows. I realize that you’re supposed to have night guards on the lot and in the menagerie, but I’ve noticed that they are almost invariably holed up in some tent, playing poker or shooting dice. It would have been easy as pie for somebody to take her out of the cage, borrow a jeep or car from the car pool, and drive up to McFarley’s apartment. Biddy is gun crazy, she’d think any gun was a water pistol and playfully let fire at any well-dressed person she saw. She thinks, as Mary Kelly explained to me the day I got initiated with the water cure, that all dudes are to be squirted. On the dark and rainy night when the murder occurred, she could have passed for a child—”

“Did you ever see an ape walk?” Timken cut in. “They have short, bowed legs—they look nothing like a child, even in clothes.”

“Maybe she was carried. She could have been shoved into the apartment through the transom—or maybe she was taken in and then left to come clambering out when summoned by somebody outside in the hall.”

“You’re nuts!” said Mr. Timken firmly.

“Maybe. There’s one flaw that bothers me. But the police have a record of some of their men in a traffic car seeing a man and a small boy walking a dog in the vicinity of the McFarley apartment house that night, close to eleven o’clock.”

“So next you’ll say that the murderer borrowed Hap Hammett’s Cordelia and took her along too?”

“No. Maybe there wasn’t a dog at all. It’s an old trick used by sneak thieves. When the law comes along who might ask questions about why you’re lurking around somebody else’s house, you just look hopefully into the shrubbery and whistle for dear old Fido. It works every time.”

“Well, I don’t buy it,” Timken insisted angrily.

“I don’t entirely buy it either,” said Howie Rook, “but it’s all I’ve got, as yet. The matter of that bolted door bothers me, though. How an ape could be taught to shoot the bolt, and then climb out of the transom—”

“Well!” said Timken.

“But if you can teach an ape to shoot a pistol, you can teach an ape to shoot a bolt. Or maybe the bolt could be manipulated from above by somebody leaning his head and arm through the transom. Anyway, my entire case does not depend on that angle. I happen to have another shot or two in my locker.”

“I sincerely hope so!” said the other. “The way it looks now, the circus is going to get a lot of publicity, and all bad. We haven’t had any bad publicity since the Hartford fire.” Here he shuddered.

“I know,” Rook told him quietly. “I’m
with it,
I’m with you, in more ways than one. I don’t want to hurt the circus, either. If we get a break during the extra act I’m planning on putting on this afternoon—”

“I doubt it,” Timken said. “Within ten minutes after you tacked up those reward posters, all our people got jittery as a hog on ice. They won’t break down and give anything away, they’re all on the defensive.”

“But unless I miss my guess, one of them is
particularly
on the defensive. I’m only asking you to play along with what, on the surface, is just a publicity gag to try and help the Nondello kid be a Girl Scout, pure human-interest stuff. Everybody will go for that, both in and outside the circus.”

Mr. Timken thought about it. Finally he nodded. “Okay. I’ll have Tom Reale round up all the people you want here, outside the silver wagon. We can get the name of the circus in the pictures that way.”

“Outside the trained tigers’ cage in the back yard would be more pictorial, and more private. And why ask Reale the mailman? What authority does he have?”

With a half smile, Timken said, “Because Tom is head of our security force of guards, if you must know. We used to call him the ‘spotter.’ He’s supposed to keep an eye on things; I told him to especially keep an eye on you. Haven’t you noticed him around?”

Howie Rook suddenly realized that he had, time and time again. It had been Reale lurking in the shadows while he talked to Vonny McFarley; it had been Reale who cast a flashlight on him in the dressing room late at night. “I didn’t know,” he confessed. “I guess the bright sport shirt fooled me. But I’ll be glad to have Mr. Reale’s or anybody’s help in this matter. Because I admit that I’m still shooting in the dark. If only I had an answer to one or two more questions—”

“Such as?”

Rook sat back and lighted another cigar. “Sideways questions. Such as who among the circus people were really friendly with Mavis McFarley when she did a season with you as a showgirl eight or ten years ago. Under the name of Bubbles something.” He explained about that.

Mr. Timken didn't remember her at all. “But I suppose I could look her up…”

“There isn’t time,” Rook told him. “I know she knew a number of people casually, but I wish I knew if she’d been especially friendly with Captain Larsen. She had her picture taken with him and one of his tame tigers, I noticed.”

The circus manager was amused. “That’s really a blind alley, Rook. I’ll vouch for Larsen.”

“Why? There’s something phony about him. There’s an old circus poster on McFarley’s wall with a picture of him. There are others in the old programs. None of them look like Larsen today. Why should he change his identity, grow a mustache, put on and take off weight, and all the rest of it?”

Timken was laughing. “You’re very alert, Mr. Rook. But you may as well know. There
isn’t
any Captain Larsen.”

“What?”

“I mean there hasn’t been since the original one got chawed up by a tiger he was trying to break into the act. The name and the tigers belong to the show—we get the beasts from the Ventura Jungle Compound already trained. And any man who puts them through their paces
has
to use the name of Captain Larsen; it saves new publicity and new posters.
This
Larsen has been with us only three years; he’s really named Herman Taras. When we found that we needed another man to work with the cats, we started scouting around—finally we got hold of him through one of our midgets whom you may have met, Olaf Klipp. Klipp vouched for him, and Mr. Rowland took a look at his work over there and we figured he could do what we had in mind. He’s a darned good showman. Everybody in the show knows about this deal, but they’re all sworn to secrecy. The name of Captain Larsen has been built up for so many years that it has a certain value which we like to retain. He’s no Clyde Beatty, but he’s working along in that direction.”

“Then there is no possibility whatever that Larsen or Taras or whatever his real name is could have known Mavis McFarley when she was with the show?”

“No! Impossible. Does that clear him for you?”

Rook slowly nodded. “I’m clearing too many people,” he admitted. “Well, I guess I’ve got to depend on my super-dooper off-the-cuff show this afternoon.” He stood up.

“If you work it out,” Mr. Timken said, “I won’t promise any reward, but I’ll see you get a season’s pass to the show.” He smiled grimly.

Rook left the silver wagon and went slowly and thoughtfully back to Clown Alley—for probably the last time, he thought rather sadly. “I guess I won’t be working out with you and Cordelia this afternoon,” he confessed to Hap Hammett, who was busily answering fan mail in the dressing room.

“You too?” said the big clown. “We both missed you the last few shows. Nobody can fall over his feet like you do. It’s a rare gift. But we’ll miss dear little Olaf more.”

“Olaf?” gulped Rook.

“Yeah. The midget went on a binge last evening, I guess. And sometime during the night he went and took a powder on us. Didn’t even give notice.”

Howie Rook froze, almost but not quite falling down the dressing-room steps. “Yes,” continued Hap, signing his note with a flourish and a cartooned clown face in bright red pencil. “Olaf Klipp packed his trunk and skipped, between two days as the saying goes.”

“Carrying it under his arm?”

“Nope. I guess he’ll send for it, and whatever pay he has coming. He roped the trunk up and left it down in the midgets’ dressing space. We shall miss the little stinker, and his skipping is a nuisance.”

“So?” said Howie Rook flatly, and then went down to look for himself. Sure enough, there was the little old trunk, shaped like an upside-down bathtub, marked with Olaf’s name in faded red paint, neatly roped and tied. Rook turned away, then did a double take and came back. He pondered for a long moment, then whipped out his pocketknife and turned back, hastily and intently beginning to saw at the rope as if his life depended upon it.

“What in hell—?” came Hap Hammett’s voice from behind him. “What’s the idea! You’re not going to open up the little guy’s trunk?” Hap was standing in the tent flap, looking rather bewildered.

“I am not,” said Rook fervently. “I—I just collect odd knots, like this beautiful double running bowline.” He hastily stuffed it into his pocket. “Of course I’ll retie the trunk…”

“You’re a damn liar,” Hap told him, coming closer. “Howie, you’re not as First o’ May as I thought. You’re up to something!”

“Maybe. Hap, just what is this First-of-May thing I’m always being accused of?”

“It means wet behind the ears. That’s the day the circus always used to open. Nowadays it also means somebody who joins up for a free ride, and leaves the show when they get near their home town. But you haven’t answered me. You’ve got things on your mind that you’re not telling me.”

Rook nodded. “I’m thinking that fillér and pengös are both Hungarian coins, and that Greek ships are not necessarily manned by Greek sailors…”

“You feeling all right, Howie?”

“I think I’m just beginning to.” Rook paused. “I’ve changed my mind, Hap. I’d like very much to make a farewell appearance with you and Cordelia this afternoon—if you’ll play along and make a final one with me at a special show I’m setting up after the performance. I need you for what I have in mind.”

Hap Hammett shrugged and grinned. “You know me; I always like to get into the act.”

“Wait,” said Rook, “until I make a certain important phone call and then I’ll come back and get into costume and make-up and do a few final walkarounds with you. Then we can really go into action; I had thought to pull the stunt before the performance, but it will have to wait until later now.”

The veteran clown looked at him. “Just what’s it all about, Howie? We’ve chewed the same sawdust together. Don’t you trust me?”

“I have reasons,” admitted Howie Rook, “why I can’t trust anybody yet. But I’ll certainly have to have you in my act when it comes off. On the surface it’s just a sort of benefit for Speedy Nondello; underneath it’s a lot more important than that. Just play along, and even if I go out on a limb or fall from the high trapeze, don’t try to rescue me, just go on with the act. I’ll cue you, the way you did me that first day. Okay?”

“Okay.” A wide, unpainted grin spread across the veteran clown’s face.

Howie Rook nodded, and hurried off. He was a patient man, a quiet man, and it was only sometimes that he stood up on his hind legs and fought back. But he was fighting now. He went out and down the Midway again—and then ran almost head on into an entourage consisting of Detective-sergeants Jason and Velie, a stocky unshaven little man burdened down with camera cases—and Mavis McFarley. The lovely, green-eyed blonde looked understandably wan and brittle.

“We just got here,” said Jason.

“I hitched a ride,” said Fatso. “In the police car. Saves the
Tribune
some dough.”

“Mr. Rook—Howie!” said Mavis. “Is it
really
true…?”

“At the moment,” Rook said, “I don’t know what’s really true and what isn’t. But the performance that I planned is called on account of rain. At least it’s postponed until after the performance. We need a star performer…”

“But what do we do—?” spoke up Velie.

“What do you do? You’re on an expense account, aren’t you? Go have some cotton candy, or see the side show, or buy a chameleon. The ticket windows will be open soon, go in and catch the show. I’m the one that plays second billing to the trained dog. Do anything, go anywhere—I’m busy.”

He drew Mavis aside. “Sit tight—watch the show, and then watch the show I’m going to put on afterward, and keep your fingers crossed, lady.”

She reached up, and her lips brushed his cheek. “What I said about Hawaii still goes,” she told him in a whisper. Her hand touched him, and held on to him.

“Yes, certainly…” muttered Rook, and hastily turned to Sergeant Jason. “I need
you
right now,” he said. “The others will have to amuse themselves for a while.”

“Don’t worry about me,” put in Fatso cheerily. “I’m going to get some color shots of backstage at the circus—maybe I can make
Look
or
Life.”

Rook nodded, and led Jason aside. “The show breaks at 4:40,” he said. “That’s when we move. We’ve probably got to pick up some local law—”

“Attended to,” said Jason complacently. “Sheriff What’s-his-name will be with us shortly.”

“Well, there’s somebody else who has to be with us if we can get him. That will be up to Chief Parkman and his boys. I know it’s damn short notice but I found out only a few minutes ago what happened last night and how I might be able to stage a real payoff scene. I’d appreciate it if you would get the Chief on the phone and then let me talk to him.”

Jason shrugged and followed Howie Rook to the telephone booth. Jason put through the call, said a few words and then poked his head out. “The Chief’s on,” he said. “I don’t know what this is all about, but go ahead.” Rook crammed his bulk into the booth. “Hello,” he said. “The whole thing, for your information, has been going to hell in a hand basket, but I am surer than ever that the murderer is here. He thinks he’s safe, and he’s laughing up his sleeve at all of us, but maybe even now we can bust him wide open with a certain surprise I have in mind. I need the help of one guy. He knows me. I interviewed him once after he made a movie, and he has just enough ham in him to get a kick out of this. He’s a regular…” Rook went on to explain.