Straight Crooks
By ERLE STANLEY GARDNER
The Cracker paused before the door of the apartment and listened. It was a fool move. We’d already determined, as nearly as we could, that the apartment was empty. Standing before the door, bent over, was simply suicidal. We couldn’t tell when someone was going to pop out of one of the other apartments, even if it was after midnight.
I pushed him to one side and fitted a skeleton key.
The Cracker started to whisper. I kicked viciously at his shin. He shut up.
A skeleton key is a difficult thing to handle. It nearly always makes more or less of a noise, and sometimes has to be held at just a right angle. It isn’t like a regular key that fits the guides perfectly.
The Cracker was peering nervously up and down the hallway, looking like a bum actor trying to register guilt. I could have killed him with pleasure.
The bolt clicked in the door. I pulled in on the knob so the latch wouldn’t make a racket, turned, and pushed the door noiselessly open.
The apartment was dark as pitch.
The Cracker started to whisper something again.
I grabbed him right by the knot of the necktie and dragged him in the apartment with me, turned, closed the door and talked to him there in the dark.
“No wonder you’re a cheap crook with a list of petty convictions as long as your arm,” I snarled at him. “For —— sake don’t stand out in the hallway and whisper. Talk out like a man. A whisper always attracts attention, low-voiced conversation sounds on the up and up. People strain their ears to listen to whispers.”
He was yammering.
“Don’t make so much racket. Maybe this apartment ain’t empty.”
“Listen,” I told him. “You shadowed the broad out. You telephoned the apartment, you sent a telegram. The telephone didn’t answer, and there’s the telegram notice on the knob of the door right now. What more do you want?
“I admit we’re taking a chance, but when we’ve done all we can to smooth out the way ahead of us, we’ve got to quit worrying and barge right ahead.
“If the apartment was occupied do you think we’d stand any more chance of a getaway by hissing out a lot of whispers than by talking right out?”
And I clicked on the light switch.
The Cracker jumped back, shielded his face with his arm.
“No, no, not the lights! Use a flash!”
I laughed at the cheap crook. Use a flash! Signal to anyone who saw it through the windows or against the shades that a burglar was in the place! No wonder The Cracker was a cheap hanger-on of the underworld! Turn on the lights and no one would think anything of it. Use a flash . . . oh hell, what was the use of trying to educate the bum?
The curtains were drawn, the shades down. The apartment might have been left to order for our visit.
The Cracker got his nerve back after a second or two.
“I guess you’re right,” he said, speaking out of one side of his mouth.
He was a tall, skinny cuss, and he carried his head thrust forward, his stomach pulled in in a sort of a crouch, as though he’d been trying to make himself look inconspicuous. It’s the sort of a humped up appearance one sees sometimes on a tall girl who’s tried to make herself look short by humping herself down—and not kidding anybody except herself, and ruining what might have been a good figure.
The Cracker was the sort of a bird who looked like a crook. He gave the impression of trying to hide behind something, even when there wasn’t anything to hide behind.
The apartment had four rooms. It was furnished with a pretty good grade of furniture, and there were a few individual touches to it.
The sitting-room was spick and span. The bedroom was a mess of clothes. There was a dress on the floor, lying in a crumpled circle, just as though a girl had walked out of it and left it right where it had dropped. Some stockings had been washed out and hung over the foot of the bed to dry. The bathroom had some filmy underthings hanging over the edge of the bathtub, on faucets, over the towel hangers.
There were trays filled with cigarette ashes, a flask of whiskey, some tubes of cosmetics, a piece of soft paper smeared with wiped-off facial cream.
The Cracker stood in the doorway and rubbered about him.
“Well,” I snapped, “let’s get busy!”
He started at that, walked over to the davenport, moved the sofa cushions, and began exploring around in the cracks between the upholstery.
“It won’t be there,” I said.
“Why not?” he wanted to know, twisting his head on his long neck and leering at me. “I guess I got as much right to think as you have!”
I sighed, then started to explain, because I really didn’t want to have trouble with him.
“It’s because the bedroom’s so mussy,” I said. “That shows the kind of a girl she is, careless, sloppy. But this room is cleaned up all spick and span. That means she doesn’t live in it much of the time, or else that she has a maid. In either event she’d have the stuff in the bedroom.”
The Cracker got sore.
“Say,” he said, “I don’t know what gives you the right to be so damned superior! I’m in on this job, the same as you are, and I guess I gotta right to look where I want to.”
“Okey,” I said, and moved into the bedroom.
The mattress didn’t show any signs of having been tampered with. I ran my hand around the inside of the pillow cases and found nothing. Back of the pictures showed dust, nothing else. I went through the bureau drawers as a matter of habit, not that I expected to find anything there.
I’d about finished with the conventional places when The Cracker came to the door.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was nervous. I had no business flyin’ off the handle.”
“Forget it,” I told him, “and look around the edges of the carpet.”
He got down on his hands and knees and started searching.
I covered every place I could think of, and drew a blank. I even dipped down inside a big jar of cold cream and smeared my fingers all up, on the off chance that this might be the hiding place.
The Cracker got up from the floor and shook his head lugubriously.
I eyed him speculatively.
“Not here,” he said.
I moved over towards him.
“How sure were you that they were here?”
“Awful sure.”
“And you don’t think she’s got them with her?”
“I know she ain’t. She’s afraid the bulls may search her.”
I frowned.
The Cracker started questioning me again.
“Why are you so anxious for them? Why not just go ahead and call in the cops and let them shake her down?”
I shook my head.
“If we find ’em it won’t prove anything,” he said.
“It’ll prove all I want to prove.”
“Well, just what is that?”
And I saw the eyes of the man slit a little, as though he was laying a trap for me.
I repeated the story I’d given him before.
“You know the case. Two people hold up a cabaret party, Mr. and Mrs. C. Carton Wright; Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Simpson. They get jewels from Mrs. Wright, and then Simpson makes a charge. There’s a shot and Simpson dies. Now I want to solve that murder. My client is paying me to turn up the killer. If this broad has got the bracelet and ring, we’ve got something to base a third degree on. You claim you know she has the stuff. I’m checking that knowledge, that’s all.”
The Cracker kept his eyes slitted.
“They had Ed Jenkins, The Phantom Crook, tagged with that crime for a while,” he said.
“Sure they did. They pin everything on him that they can’t pin on anybody else. But he got himself in the clear by showing the thing couldn’t have been pulled by him. One of the chorus girls gave him an alibi.”