One word led to another and they ended up by shouting at each other.
Then Mrs. Madden went into the bathroom to cry and Madden put on his hat. He said to hell with waiting for the phone to ring, and he left the apartment.
He hadn’t had a drink for about three months, but he got to thinking that neither his wife nor his boss believed in him, and so what good was it to try and make a comeback? He stopped at a bar and got a double whisky. After he had sat around for a while he had another. That made him feel better, and he told himself he didn’t give a damn what his wife or his boss thought about him.
He didn’t go home for dinner. Mrs. Madden waited for him and when he didn’t show up she began to worry about him, fearing that he had started — as he had — to drink again.
About eight o’clock that evening, Madden was pretty drunk, and he had no money left to spend. He hated to go home and face his wife, though, because he was beginning to realize what a fool he had made of himself. That started to work on him and make him irritable, looking for a fight — not at all like his usual self.
Somebody at the bar was talking about Senator McCarthy and what a good job he was doing on the Reds. Madden, still sore at the world, said to hell with that stuff, and that started the argument. The guy who liked McCarthy called Madden a dirty subversive and a Commie, and said he ought to be run out of the country.
Madden said: “Well, you might try to make McCarthy run me out of the country, but first I’m going to run you out of this ginmill.”
Then he slugged the guy.
But Madden didn’t really kill the guy. Mary Brown killed him.
If Madden had gotten that call, the guy he slugged could have gone on talking about McCarthy all night and neither Madden nor anybody else would have cared. There wouldn’t have been any cops in the barroom to grab Madden for manslaughter if he’d gotten his call.
But there’s a guy dead and somebody has to be charged. There’s got to be a patsy and that patsy is John Madden.
It’s a rotten jam and it’s going to wreck three lives.
But there’s a lawyer arranging bail now. Once you’re out on bail you’re free, until the case comes up. And you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
So when I get out on bail I’m going to find Mary Brown and I’m going to kill her. Me. John Madden.
Hit and Run
by Richard Deming
Barney had seen the old man get hit, but he didn’t feel sorry for him. The old man might provide him with some cash.
1
At one o’clock in the morning the taverns along Sixth Street are usually full. But there aren’t many people on the street. With only a half hour left until curfew, most people don’t want to waste drinking time walking from one bar to another.
When I stepped out of the Happy Hollow, the only other person in sight was an elderly and rather shabbily-dressed man who was just starting to cross the street. And the only moving vehicle in sight was the green Buick convertible which came streaking along Sixth just in time to catch the elderly man with its left front fender as he stepped from between two parked cars. The car was driving on the left side of the street because Sixth is one-way at that point and either lane is legal.
The old man flew back between the cars he had just walked between to land in a heap on the sidewalk. With a screech of brakes the green convertible swerved right clear across the street and sideswiped two parked cars.
The crash was more terrific than the damage. Metal screamed in agony as a front fender was torn from the first parked car and a rear fender half ripped from the body of the second. The convertible caromed to the center of the street, hesitated for a moment, then gunned off like a scared rabbit.
But not before I had seen all I needed to see. That section of Sixth is a solid bank of taverns and clubs, and neon signs make it as bright as day. With the convertible’s top down, I could see the occupants clearly.
The driver was a woman, hatless and with raven black hair to her shoulders. I could see her only in profile, but I got an impression of evenly molded features and suntanned complexion. The man next to her I saw full face, for as the car shot away he stared back over his shoulder at the motionless figure on the sidewalk. He too was hatless, a blond, handsome man with a hairline mustache. I recognized him instantly.
He was Harry Cushman, twice-married and twice-divorced café society playboy whose romantic entanglements regularly got him in the local gossip columns.
Automatically I noted the license number of the Buick convertible was X-42-209-30.
The crash brought people pouring from doorways all along the block. A yell of rage from across the street, followed by a steady stream of swearing, told me at least one of the damaged cars’ owners had arrived on the scene.
“Anybody see it?” I heard someone near me ask.
Then somebody discovered the man lying on the sidewalk. As a crowd began to gather around him, I crossed the street to look at the two damaged cars. Beyond a ruined fender on each, neither seemed particularly harmed. One was a Dodge and one a Ford, and I tried to file the license number of each in my mind along with the Buick’s.
Apparently someone in the crowd had thought to call an ambulance and the police, for a few moments later they arrived simultaneously. I stood at the edge of the crowd as the police cleared a path for the City Hospital intern who had come with the ambulance and the intern bent over the injured man.
The man wasn’t dead, for I could hear the intern asking him questions and the old man answering in a weak voice. I couldn’t hear what they said, but after a few moments the intern rose and spoke in a louder voice to one of the cops.
“He may have a fractured hip. Can’t tell for sure without X-rays. I don’t think anything else is broken.”
Then, under the intern’s instructions, two attendants got the old man on a stretcher and put him in the ambulance.
“I didn’t get the guy’s name,” the cop complained.
“John Lischer,” the intern said. “You can get his address later. His temporary address for a while will be City Hospital.”
By now it was twenty after one. I re-entered the Happy Hollow for a nightcap, and while I was sipping it I wrote down on an envelope I found in my pocket the three license numbers and the name John Lischer.
2
The private detective business isn’t particularly good in St. Louis. In New York State a private cop can pick up a lot of business gathering divorce evidence, because up there the only ground for divorce is adultery. But in Missouri you can get a divorce for cruelty, desertion, non-support, alcoholism, if your spouse commits a felony, impotency, if your wife is pregnant at marriage, indignities, or if the husband is a vagrant. So why hire a private cop to prove adultery?
I have to pick up nickels wherever I can find them.
By noon the next day I’d learned from the Bureau of Motor Vehicle records that license X-42-209-30 was registered to Mrs. Lawrence Powers at a Lindell address across the street from Forest Park. The address gave me a lift, because there aren’t any merely well-off people in that section. Most of them are millionaires.
I also checked the licenses of the Dodge and the Ford, learning their owners were respectively a James Talmadge on South Jefferson and a Henry Taft on Skinker Boulevard. Then I called City Hospital and asked about the condition of John Lischer.