Murder Most Foul Read online

  “You got the wrong number, Buster,” Skreen said.

  “Don’t ring off,” the stranger said. “Without doubt you’re a wrong number in most contexts, but for now you’re the very person to whom I’d intended to speak.” There was a noise from the phone like the snorting of an impatient horse. “Get down, Blouzalind!” the man said, speaking aside from the telephone.

  “Who the hell are you?” Skreen demanded.

  “You may call me Tom,” the stranger said, “peeping Tom. Now, if you’d like. I’ll hold the phone while you pop back into the bathroom for a towel. I shouldn’t care to have you take cold, standing there all wet and shivering.”

  Skreen twisted to look out the window. He could see nobody in the apartment house across the playground, the twin to the building he stood in; nothing but the sun-reflecting mirrors of its windows.

  “Getting a bit of a corporation, aren’t you?” Tom observed. “Exercise is what you need.” Skreen moved back from the window, staring toward the building across the way. The stranger chuckled. “Yes, Mr. Skreen; peeping Tom is watching you now. But do please get a towel about you. In the buff, you’re by no means an attractive sight.”

  Skreen, ignoring the bit about the towel, dropped to the sofa, still looking out the window. “Why have you called me?” he asked. “How do you know my name?”

  “You’re a generous tipper, Mr. Skreen,” Tom said, “and doormen know the names of generous tippers. I simply asked one of them who had the southeast corner apartment on the twenty-third floor. Native wit, Mr. Skreen; simple native wit. I called you because wanted to talk with you about my hobby. I’m quite keen on anthropology—you know, watching my fellow men make fools of themselves. There’s a good deal an amateur like myself can learn with the aid of a good pair of binoculars, particularly when he faces a flat like yours, lighted up half the night like a bloody airdrome. You’ve furnished me some diverting moments, Mr. Skreen.” The snorting noises began again. “Down, Blouzalind! Sit!” Tom shouted at his invisible companion. “Your pardon, Mr. Skreen.”

  “If you’re done digging the cat, I’d kind of like to wash the soap outta my eyes,” Skreen said. “Anything else you want?”

  “That should be self-evident,” Tom said. “I want money.”

  “For doing what?” Skreen asked.

  “How circumspect of you to pretend you don’t know,” Tom said. “For doing nothing, of course. For neglecting my civic duty to go to the police and tell them that I saw you, wearing a scarlet gown, struggle with a girl last night in your apartment. That I saw you hoist that girl, up-a-daisy, over your little potted flowerbed and out the window.”

  “This shapes like a shakedown,” Skreen said. “So what’s the ante, man?” He peered out at the building across the playground, watching for movement, the flash of binoculars that would give away his blackmailer’s ambush. Sunlight blinked back from the wall of windows. “Tom?” Skreen asked. “How much it gonna set me back to keep you cool?”

  “Ten thousand dollars is my set price for a sin of omission.”

  “Ten thou’?” Skreen exploded. “Man, you’re twisted!”

  “This is no occasion for penny-pinching, Mr. Skreen,” Tom said. “When one lives at the altitude you do, defenestrating girls is bound to be dear. Ten thousand dollars wouldn’t buy you free from a charge of murder, now, would it? No more chaffering, please. I’ll telephone tomorrow at the same time to tell you where and how to deliver my money. Till then, Mr. Skreen, Cheerio!”

  Skreen fit the telephone into its cradle. He shivered. In that building across the way, someone was standing with binoculars trained on him. He stood up from the sofa, drawing in his little paunch, and walked to the bathroom for his towel without another glance through the window.

  That astrology column this morning had been hip to the haps, Skreen thought as he laced his shoes. The stars had predicted he’d talk with an important person today, and that’s just where he was going now. Peeping Tom, if he shot his mouth, could turn this town so hot nothing would be cool. Someone had to give Tom the turn-on. That’s where the Moon Child prediction of an important person came in. Skreen was going right on up to Sowbelly Bailey for help.

  Sowbelly Bailey hid his peculiar talent behind the bar at Bailey’s Place, which he maintained as the squarest joint in the city. He had a little electric bowling-alley, a jukebox stacked with Lawrence Welk and mountain music, chintz aprons on the girls who waited table, and signs on the walls like, “If You Spit on the Floor at Home, Go Home and Spit!”

  Sowbelly’s nickname was tribute to his tribal origins, not a comment on his contours. His work kept him lean as a Marine fresh out of boot-camp. He’d come down from the hills right into the big town, where native genius had pushed him up from anonymity in the organization’s goon-pool to his present invisible eminence as the city’s extra-legal Provost Marshall, Enforcer, and Chief Executioner.

  Sowbelly Bailey pointed Skreen to a corner table and brought over two glasses and a pitcher of dark beer. Skreen sat dubiously, glancing at the dozen customers seated at the bar, the open door, the plate glass window behind him, through which a traffic cop and an occasional squadcar were visible. “Safe to talk out here, Sowbelly?”

  Bailey sat and poured beer. “With a mouth like yours it ain’t hardly safe to talk nowheres,” he said. “Sure. We’ll talk out here, right in front of God and his boarders. If you come to check on that holdout pusher of yours, he got the treatment. I had the troops stave in a coupla his ribs and bash his teeth off level with his gums. They gave him a shot of M, then, so’s he wouldn’t feel his hurts. That okay with you?”

  “Maybe I ain’t digging you, Sowbelly,” Skreen said, “What’s the good of scrambling the stud if you don’t let him hurt?”

  “Too bad you ain’t got more smart,” Bailey said. “Look-a-here. What manner of pusher always pays up right on time, come whatever? I’ll tell you: the safest kind of pusher is a fellow that needs the stuff bad as his customers. So we’re just helping that chinch of yours get his self hooked. We’ll hold him down for another free fix tomorrow, maybe one the next day, till he’s nailed. From then on, that boy will buy his own kicks; and he’ll work a long day developing new talent to pay for his powder.”

  “Sploud!” Skreen said. “ should have thought that up, man.”

  “Guess maybe thinking ain’t your long suit,” Bailey said. “You come over here just to find out how bad we dumped your buddy, or you get the colic about something new?”

  “Dig this,” Skreen invited him. “Last night, when I was just getting eyes for some sack time, this bear falls up to my pad, a hype looking to score for free. Boom-Boom made me to her just before they bluegrassed him. Anyway, this chick angled around me, looking like she’s as ready to shiv me as pick my pocket; but when it came to free samples of Horse, naturally I said her Nay. She got set for another round, trying to trade me for the dust what would be a drag for nothing. We tangled when she started to strongarm the stuff, and she just flew out the window. But that ain’t my problem.”

  “You got cops?” Bailey asked.

  “Nay, man,” Skreen said. “I set things up for the nabs to dig my junkie jumped off the roof— scattered her mink and pearls and stuff—and they got conned. The heat never touched me. Push comes to shove, Sowbelly, I could dig up some doobies to declare they were with me on the juice across town, last night. But for one hitch.”

  “Someone see the doll go into your apartment?” Bailey suggested.

  “Worse’n that,” Skreen said. “Some cat saw the doll fly out my window. A square across the way, calls himself Tom, was watching my pad through binoculars. He gets his kicks with binoculars, dig? Today he phones me. Says it’ll take ten grand to keep him from making me to the nabs. Bad, man.”

  “Bad,” Bailey agreed. “It’d break my heart to see you clutching jailbars. Worst thing of all is you’d hi-fi everything you know, if only the cops asked you to.”

  “Not me, Sowbelly!” Skreen tes
tified. “They could burn me up with those bright lights, wear out a hundred feet of hose beating me, and I’d never even whisper.”

  “You’d squirm like a worm in hot ashes and sing like a laying hen,” Bailey said. “Drink your beer—you’re gonna pay for it. Skreen, you got yourself the best racket next to preaching. I bet you net fifteen hundred a week.”

  Skreen sipped his beer. “I got lots of expenses,” he said. “Overhead and stuff.”

  “That’s a batch of birdlime,” Bailey said. “You don’t do diddle-oh. You can’t as much as keep your pushers in line aithout my troops bruise ’em up ever couple of weeks. Ever time somebody hands you a little static, you bawl for me to come prop up your playhouse.”

  “I manage a tough turf, Sowbelly,” Skreen said.

  “What you mean is I manage your tough turf while you prink around like a peaked pullet,” Bailey said. “Now let’s gets this mess of yours settled. How far off is the window this binocular fellow looks at you out of?”

  “About three hundred yards,” Skreen said. “I ain’t sure which window is his, though.”

  “I maybe got a way to find that out,” Bailey said. “Skreen, boy, you ever in the Army?”

  “Skreen set down his beer and leaned over the table toward Bailey. “Was I in the Army? Man, I was sergeant before the ink was dry on my draft notice. I went right into Infantry; that’s the best; we call it Queen of Battle. I got a Good Conduct Medal and one of them red ropes to hang around my shoulder. Was I in the Army? Man, I can soldier like General Grant!”

  “I bet you soldier like I drop kittens,” Bailey said, “but don’t fret about it. What I got to know, General Grant, is do you remember what end of a rifle you point, what end you prop upon your shoulder?”

  “Can I shoot a rifle? Wow! Man, I sounded like a half-track when I marched, I had so many of them little dangly plates hanging off my Expert badge.”

  “Save the snow-job,” Bailey said. “I ain’t recruiting for the American Legion drill team. Skreen, maybe you never thought of it this way, but the job me and my boys do is kinda like janitor work. We clean up other people’s messes. This time, Dead-Eye, I’m gonna let you mop up your own little puddle. Now listen clear, ’cause if you foul me up, you’d be better off in Hell with your back broke. Hear?”

  “I dig you,” Skreen said.

  “Okay. Last thing first. Soon as you do what you’re gonna do, you got yourself a date in L.A. You refrigerate this Tom, and before he’s all the way cool you’ll be inside a airplane. Hear, boy?”

  “Loud and clear,” Skreen said.

  “If there’s the littlest, bittiest splash,” Bailey said, “you won’t be around to see the ripples. Figure to do this job dead right.” Bailey drained his beer, scooted back his chair, and said, “Now’s the time for you to say good-bye, run on home, telephone yourself a girlfriend to come up right away, and wait for me. I’ll come over in about a hour with the tools you’re gonna need. Now get!”

  Skreen stood up. “Sowbelly, do you mind telling me what I got to call a chick for?” he asked.

  “Do like I say,” Bailey suggested. “Maybe you can put off being a angel for a few more years. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Skreen said. “You know where my pad is. Sowbelly?”

  “I know where ever body’s pad is,” Bailey said. “Go, boy!”

  Skreen, soon as he’d gotten back to his apartment, called one of the escort services directed by the organization. Since Skreen was known to the booking agent as both a ranking organization man and a valued client, he was promised the immediate attentions of a girl named Cozy.

  Cozy, who showed up carrying a hatbox twenty minutes later, was a confection of honeyblonde hair, skin sleek as the enamel on this year’s Frigidaire, and the profile, fore and aft, of one of the more conspicuous Cadillacs. She was a superior product, market-ripe. It was easy to forget that Cozy, like the other consumer goods she so much resembled, would be only a trade-in in a couple more years.

  “I heard about you, Mr. Skreen,” Cozy said, grabbing his arm to show the aptness of her professional name. “I heard from some of the girls you’re a real doll.”

  “Maybe so, maybe no,” Skreen said, shaking his arm loose. “Sit it down anywheres. I got a friend coming over to tell us what to do.”

  Cozy sniffed. “Wouldn’t it be privater if you bought one of those books in a plain wrapper?”

  “My friend is Sowbelly Bailey,” Skreen explained.

  “So excuse me for breathing,” Cozy said.

  “I ain’t trying to bug you,” Skreen said. “Why don’t you slop yourself up a drink while we’re sweating out Sowbelly?”

  “If you got some boiled eggs or something, maybe I could take a little nourishment,” Cozy said. “I ain’t what you’d call real thirsty.”

  “There’s a couple little steaks in the refrigerator,” Skreen said. “Fry ’em up, if you want to.”

  “Thanks,” Cozy said, getting up and hurrying toward the kitchen. “The way to a girl’s heart is through her stomach, if you’ll pardon the expression.” In a moment there was the hiss of cold meat on a frying pan. Skreen wrinkled up his nose at the mealy odor coming in from the kitchen, rich as gravy. He wasn’t hungry, not with Sowbelly due any minute. To clear out the smell he opened the window over the playground. He sat back on the sofa, looking toward the place where peeping Tom lived. Some of the windows over there were open, too. Was one of them, Tom’s? How did Sowbelly figure to spot one man in that maze?

  Cozy brought in an open can of beer. “Thought maybe this’d help you wail,” she said, sitting next to Skreen on the arm of the sofa. “That Sowbelly Bailey chills me, know what I mean? If I’d knew he was gonna be here, I’d of took sick and stayed home.”

  “Don’t worry about Sowbelly,” Skreen said, accepting the beer. “Me and him are practically blood-brothers.”

  “I bet he’s bumped off more people than most people have swatted flies,” Cozy said.

  “If Sowbelly cut notches on his gun, he’d have a crosscut saw,” Skreen said.

  The doorbell rang. Skreen shooed Cozy back to the kitchen to tend to her steaks. He opened the door. “This where you having TV trouble, mister?” Sowbelly Bailey asked. He was wearing white overalls and carrying a huge tool kit.

  “Yeah, this is the place,” Skreen said, letting Bailey in. “Can’t get a picture for love nor money, and I twisted all the knobs.” He locked the door. Bailey set down his tool kit and slapped the beer out of Skreen’s hand.

  “What the hell, Sowbelly?” Skreen demanded, looking down at the foaming puddle on his carpet.

  “When a man’s got the kind of work to do we got, he don’t better be drinking beer first,” Bailey explained. He bent to open his tool kit, displaying the ACME TELEVISION SERVICE blazoned across the back of his overalls in red embroidery. Under a top tray of small tools, the kit held a pair of leather-holstered binoculars. Beside the binoculars was Sowbelly Bailey’s chosen instrument: a slide action big game rifle, field-stripped to fit the kit, each assembly nested in velvet. Bailey sat cross-legged on the floor to assemble the rifle, handling the walnut and steel with the knowing touch of a lover. He proved the action, fit one cartridge into the chamber, and closed the bolt. Bracing his elbows between his knees, he sighted out the window toward the apartment house from which Tom did his spying.

  Cozy, carrying a steak sandwich with one bite out of it, stopped in the kitchen doorway. “If there’s gonna be shooting,” she said, muffled by sandwich, “I’m cutting out right now.”

  Sowbelly Bailey pivoted on his hip-bones. The blonde found herself staring down the muzzle of his Remington. “You go anywhere before I say so, girl, and you’ll be toting flowers on your chest,” he said. “I got work for you to do.”

  “Okay,” she wailed, “Okay!”

  Bailey bounced to his feet and handed Skreen his rifle. Skreen balanced the rifle on the palm of his hand to inspect it, then spun it.

  “Watch that stuff, boy,” Bail
ey said. “That ain’t no baton you’re twirling. Now come on in the bedroom.”

  The window in the bedroom faced east, the same direction as the bigger window in the living room, toward Tom’s apartment. “Set down that gun and help me muscle this bed of your’n over by the window,” Bailey ordered.

  Skreen laid the rifle on his dresser to help Bailey wrestle the bed, an eight-by-eight-foot wedding-cake of sponge rubber and green satin, nearer the window. Bailey, recovering his rifle from the dresser, belly-flopped onto the bed, cuddling the butt of the gun into his shoulder and against his cheek. “Great,” he said. “Try it on for size, Hot-Shot.”

  Skreen obediently took Bailey’s place on the bed, snuggling down flat and peering along the sights. “Which window you want I should bust in. Sowbelly?” he asked.

  “Don’t mash that trigger!” Bailey said. He went back to his tool kit to get his binoculars, then knelt between the bed and the window to inspect the building across the way. “Now listen to me close, Skreen,” he said. “I’m gonna be your spotter. When I tell you what window to get your sights on, you do it, just as quick as you can. The second you gel Mr. Tom’s head on top of that front sight, you mash the trigger just as quick and smooth and easy as you know how. My gun is zeroed in perfect for three hundred yards; there’s no more wind outside than at the bottom of a coalmine; you got no outs if you miss. Understand?”

  “I dig you. Sowbelly,” Skreen said. “But look, I never cooled a cat before. I ain’t sure I can do it.”

  “This ain’t your first kill,” Bailey said. “Think about that little girl you goosed out the window t’ other night. Don’t worry none. Just make like the man you see is a electric rabbit in a shooting-gallery, and you’re hankering to get your girl one of them kewpie dolls.”

  Cozy minced into the bedroom carrying her steak sandwich. “If you’ll pardon the expression, I ain’t the type girl that walks into men’s bedrooms and expects to find them laying around with guns,” she said. “What I came in for was to see if you decided what you want me to do, Mr. Bailey.”