He made no move to rise. “Pure coincidence? Wildcat Ernie, and now Harry Ruffino?”
My ethics problem was dead. Giving Brockhouse what I suspected would hurry Albert’s release.
“Harry wanted an option to buy the stamping works. But he wanted it dirt cheap, so he hired Wildcat Ernie to torch a wing to put a little scare into the owners before he contacted them. The deal he cut must have included paying the taxes in addition to some dough under the table. Part of his deal with Ernie was to finger Albert. To make sure Albert went down for the fire, he offered to defend him for free. That way he could control the trial, make sure no unpleasant doubts arose about Albert’s guilt. Even with Albert convicted, though, Ernie would still be a loose end. So Harry gave Ernie three bottles of really good whiskey, knowing Ernie would lap at it until it killed him.”
“That’s a lot of cunning.”
“Albert Petak is innocent.”
Brockhouse made no move to get up. “I don’t see motive for Ruffino. I can’t see why he would have wanted that old factory. Nobody’s buying property in Rivertown.”
“You said it yourself: Rivertown will come around eventually.”
“That factory is shot. It’s a ruin.”
I ran up to the card table, brought down the aerial photo. “Harry didn’t want the factory. He wanted what runs up to it.”
Brockhouse studied the picture for a few seconds, then handed it back and stood up.
“The only railroad spur in town,” he said. “He’d have made a fortune in fees, charging people to ship through that siding.”
“When Rivertown turns around.”
He shrugged. “It’ll happen.”
“Albert Petak?” I asked him at the door.
“Awfully convenient for Albert, Ruffino dying when he did.”
“Albert Petak was in jail. And he didn’t set that fire.”
Both were true enough.
I didn’t race off to see Albert. I took coffee to the roof, to go over, one last time, the means I’d fitted to the motive. As Brockhouse was telling of Harry’s death, Leo’s throwaway line at lunch had come back to me, banging the facts into a row as straight as the boxcars used to be, lined up on the rail siding at the stamping works.
“First things first, with us addicts,” Leo had said, grinning as he plunged his fingers into Kutz’s New Menu Item. He’d been talking about the yellow stuff Kutz tries to pass as cheese.
And about Albert’s cigarettes.
I tossed the pack of Marlboros onto the table in the green cinderblock room. I hadn’t brought matches. They wouldn’t be necessary.
“The first time I came to see you, you asked for Marlboros — Harry Ruffino’s brand.”
Albert’s eyes stayed steady on mine. He didn’t look at the cigarettes. He no longer needed to scan the corners of the room.
“First things first, with addicts,” I went on. “Any smoker in this place would have lunged for the cigarettes I’d brought. But not you. You only needed one, for the rat powder you scraped out of some corner here.”
The trace of a smile fit onto his lips. “Rats come in all sizes.”
I handed him the receipt I got from the sergeant at the desk. “I wrote you a check for two hundred and fifty dollars.”
Surprise made his eyes flicker. “Why the jingle?”
“It’s half what I got paid by Ruffino. An officer named Brockhouse will probably release you this afternoon, because he doesn’t have enough to hold you anymore. Use the money to run like hell.”
He nodded, but said nothing.
“I’m guessing you only powdered one cigarette. But they could autopsy Ruffino, and then they might check the butts in his ashtray.”
He shrugged.
“They could question yesterday’s visitors, maybe find somebody who saw your hands on two packs of Marlboros as Harry was fumbling for something in his briefcase.”
“Ruffino wanted me down for murder.”
“Run like hell, Albert.”
He got up, walked to knock on the door. He’d left the smokes on the table. As the door opened, Albert Petak gave me a vague salute.
“Thanks for the jingle,” he said.
©2009 by Jack Fredrickson
Unruly Jade
by Terence Faherty
Terence Faherty’s Scott Elliott series has been nominated for two mystery awards, the Dilys, given by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association and the PWa’s Shamus Award. Both nominations were for a novella in which Elliott features, In a Teapot, and in both cases the book was up against full-length novels written by some of the top names in the field. Here is Elliott with a mundane case that suddenly turns deadly.
1.
“It’s a night of danger, intrigue, and infinite possibilities.”
I was inclined to doubt that claim, as the man who’d made it was a little mouse of a guy who looked like he wouldn’t know danger and intrigue if they took turns tickling his ears. And the only possibilities he could spot, I was sure, were the ones quickly receding in the rearview mirror of his life.
His name was Claude Dabney, and he was a humorist, formerly in print and now on the silver screen. He’d come to Hollywood in the late thirties in the wake of another humor writer, Robert Benchley. Benchley had had a mild success both in supporting roles in features and as the star of a series of shorts in which he basically played himself: a slightly befuddled Babbitt, eager to share his confusion with everyone else, often in the form of a comic lecture.
Dabney, who was vaguely English and, as I said, underproportioned, added an additional dimension to the same basic act. In the two-reelers he made for Columbia, he got pushed around by everyone and everything from shoe salesmen to shoelaces, but somehow managed to triumph in the end. In appearance, he resembled Roland Young more than Benchley. That is, he had thinning hair precisely parted, a beak of a nose, and tiny eyes inclined to blink. But there was one area in which he and Benchley might have passed for twins: They both drank like lovesick fish.
Drinking had rushed Benchley’s death, which might have been why Dabney was so cautious. He insisted on company whenever he went on one of what he called his “toots.” And that’s where I came in. On that dangerous and intriguing night in 1946 I was working for Hollywood Security, a firm which swept up after the studios and the stars. I was their current probationer, and as such, I’d been assigned to babysit Dabney, a job any real babysitter in real bobby socks could have handled, in my opinion. My boss, Patrick J. Maguire, had tried to build the part up by telling me that Dabney could be a Jekyll and Hyde when he drank, but I’d dismissed that as Paddy’s standard blarney.
Sure enough, except for a desire to move around more than seemed necessary, Dabney had proven to be quite the lamb. We’d started with an early dinner at the Brown Derby, me, as ordered, in my somewhat seedy tux and Dabney in his very seedy one. Our waiter there had called me “slugger,” as he was an old-timer and remembered the evening before the war when I’d decked a certain star in the Derby. I’d been an actor myself then, in a small way. Dabney had insisted on hearing the story, and it had gotten him blinking and then some.
“But this is wonderful, old boy.” He repeated my name, Scott Elliott, a time or two like he was suddenly remembering it. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you as a former member of the fraternity. But I must say I’m pleased. I wanted us to look like a couple of old friends, out for an evening of reminiscence and perambulation, and now we shall.”
We were a mismatched couple, with me being tall and a little heavier than my acting days and considerably the Englishman’s junior. But I went along with the gag happily. It would be one last chance to make the rounds as my old self.