Murder can be fun aka a.., p.15
Murder Can Be Fun # aka A Plot for Murder, page 15
It was eleven-thirty by then. Time, he thought, that respectable people like Wilkins would certainly be up and about. He might as well get that chore over with, if he could get Wilkins by phone at his home.
He got Wilkins, and Wilkins proved surprisingly agreeable about the week's vacation. Even about letting Dotty have the week off from her regular duties.
“You are sure, though, that she can handle it, Mr. Tracy?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well — she can't go wrong on the plot if she follows that synopsis you turned in. And if you'll read over the scripts and — ah — polish them up if they need it, it'll be quite all right.”
“I'll check up on the scripts before she turns them in. Be glad to do that much. And I'll be around if something comes up — I'm not planning to leave town. I'll probably even drop in at the office once or twice during the week.”
“Ah — by the way, Mr. Tracy. I see by the morning papers that a radio actor is being held in connection with that — ah — matter with which you seem to have become — ah — entangled. The name is not mentioned. Do you happen to know if it is someone from our studio?”
“It was, Mr. Wilkins, but it was a false alarm. The police found they were wrong and released him this morning.”
“Good. It was Pete Meyer, of course?”
“What? No, it was Jerry Evers. But it was purely a mistake and he has been released.”
After he had hung up the receiver, Tracy looked thoughtfully at it for a while. Why had Wilkins assumed that Pete Meyer had been the radio actor who'd been arrested?
He picked up the phone again and called Dotty. She was delighted to learn that Tracy's plan was agreeable to Wilkins.
“So you won't have to report in to work tomorrow,” he told her. “You're off for the week — outside of having Millie Mereton on your hands.”
“Wonderful, Bill. I've been getting behind in my writing for the magazines. I've had two stories on my mind that I've been wanting to write.”
“You can do that and the Millie stuff, too? You're sure?”
“Oh, the Millie stuff will be easy, Bill. I've got four of them done already. I can finish the other one today — I've got an appointment for this afternoon and this evening but it isn't until two o'clock and that gives me a couple of hours.”
“Four of them? Since last night?”
“Yes, Bill. I wrote two after you left last night and one this morning. Of course you've read only one and the start of the second and you may suggest some improvements. Look, shall I take them in to the office tomorrow morning and meet you there? You can look over all five scripts then and if there's any rewriting I can do it right there and—”
“No!” yelled Tracy. “No! Listen, Dotty — uh — don't you see the spot you're putting me on? If you let the office know Monday that you've got them all done, there won't be any excuse for your being off all week, for one thing, and — for heaven's sake, no!
He thought fast and furiously for a moment. “And there's another angle, Dotty. Wilkins is funny one way — if you bat out something fast, he'll tear it to pieces because you did it that way, whether it's good or not. He has the idea that anything good takes a long time to do.”
“Oh. Thanks for telling me that. Well — look, just to let him know I'm really working on it, I'll drop in tomorrow and turn in the one script you've read, the first one. I'll let him think I spent the week end writing it — and then rewriting it after you'd read the first draft. Will that be all right?”
“Sure, fine. And I'll phone you tomorrow and we can arrange to get together so I can read the other scripts.”
“All right, Bill. 'Bye.”
This time he didn't sit staring at the phone; he went into the kitchen and poured himself a drink.
He was sweating a little. What the hell right did a dimwit like Dotty — and she was a dimwit or she couldn't like soap operas — have to possess the ability to turn out continuity like a sausage machine turns out sausage — a foot a second — while a smart guy like him had to sweat the stuff out?
Damn the wench.
Well, Millie Wheeler would be up by now. He wasn't going to cry on her shoulder; not for a million bucks would he go to her for solace in this particular sorrow. But if he stayed alone any longer, he'd start peeling paper off the walls.
Millie was home, and up. She saw his face and said, “Tracy, what's wrong?”
“Wrong? Nothing at all.”
“Sit down and tell mama. And while you tell, there's some bourbon in the cupboard and ginger ale in the icebox. Or would you rather have it straight?”
“Either way. Nothing's wrong, Millie. Fact is, I was just going to suggest we go out and celebrate. I'm free for a week.”
“And then what? You go to jail?”
“Such language. I mean free from Millie's Millions. I've been on the verge of the screaming meamies, and — uh — through Wilkins I found somebody who'd take over the continuity writing for a week.”
“Oh. Tracy, that is good news. But can you — uh—?”
“Afford it? Sure. There's a few hundred in the bank. Not a fortune, but I won't starve.”
Millie had been mixing the drinks. She brought them. “That wasn't what I meant. Are the police going to be stuffy about your leaving town? I hear they sometimes are, when there's a murder case. And you ought to get away somewhere. Province town's nice in August. Why don't you go up there?”
Tracy took a meditative sip at his highball. He said, “Funny, but I never thought of getting away. Now that I do think about it, I don't really want to. Know why?”
“No. Why?”
He sipped the highball again. “The essence of freedom is to be able to remain in the environment in which one ordinarily has to work — without having to work. I'm going to leave the cover off my typewriter all week, so I can thumb my nose at it every time I go by.”
“Ummm,” said Millie. “You might have something there. But also, the essence of freedom is not to sit around with your face a yard long. Are we going out to celebrate or to drown a secret sorrow you won't tell me about? Which?”
Tracy sighed, and then managed to grin. He said, “All right, toots; we'll celebrate. But let's get back to this vacation idea of mine, spent in the same environment. I think I've got something there.”
“What?”
“Take an office worker, for instance, who has to sit at a desk eight hours a day. What would best bring home to him his sense of freedom during a vacation? Going out of town? No. Sticking around and going down to the office every day — or almost every day. Not for eight hours, of course. He'd set his alarm clock for the usual time so he could have the pleasure of shutting it off and going back to sleep.
“When he did get up, he'd go down to the office, late as hell and not having to care about it. Think of the freedom of being able to walk in at ten-thirty or eleven and sit down at his desk, without it mattering at all!”
“Go on,” said Millie.
“And he sits down at his desk and puts his feet up on it — not having to worry for fear the boss is watching him, or for fear his work won't get done — because he hasn't any work to do. Why, the psychic satisfaction of just sitting there, doing nothing, knowing he can get up and walk out any time he decides to — it'd do him a thousand times more good and make him feel a thousand times better than going out of town and coming back a physical wreck.”
“With sunburn and poison ivy.”
“And chigger bites and his money gone because he drank too much in that upstate roadhouse and tried to beat the one-armed bandit.”
“Tracy, it is an idea. I'll bet you could sell an article about it if you wrote one, in the right vein. Not too serious and not too farcical. Keep the reader guessing whether you're kidding or on the level. I'll bet you could sell it to one of the top mags.”
Tracy laughed. “Now you're getting commercial. Come on, let's get going.”
While Millie got ready, he went across the hall for his hat. He was feeling swell now. Solemnly he took the cover off the Underwood and thumbed his nose at it.
Then he winced at the unbidden thought of another typewriter which — at this very moment — was undoubtedly clicking out the final script of Millie continuity for next week at the rate of a page every seven minutes, like clockwork.
He put the thought away from him and went back to get Millie Wheeler.
They had a few drinks, and then ate. They had a few drinks and then stopped in at the Martin to dance. But the music turned out to be too good to dance to. They sat and listened, and talked, and had a few more drinks.
And when — at six — Millie had to leave because of a previous appointment, they were reasonably sober and it had been a magic afternoon. Anyway, it had been fun. Neither murder nor radio had been mentioned once.
Not until he left Millie at her apartment. She kissed him lightly and then, a hand still on his arm, looked at him very seriously.
“Tracy,” she said, “you'll be careful, won't you?”
“Careful?”
“You know what I mean. You didn't want to talk about it, I could see, so I didn't. But you can't fool mama. You got out from under your radio writing for a week so you could find out who killed Dineen and Frank.”
Tracy was startled. “Did I?”
“Of course you did. And I don't blame you. It does seem that the police aren't getting anywhere at all. But do be careful, Tracy. Listen—”
“I'm listening.”
“I've got a hunch, Tracy. The police think whoever killed them is a psychopathic killer, a homicidal maniac.”
Tracy said, “With me, that's an odds-on favorite.”
“But he isn't. Tracy, there's a motive back of those killings. Maybe I'm fey, or maybe I'm a little goofy, but I can feel it. There's a cold, calculating killer back of them, I'm sure. I haven't the faintest idea why, what the motive is, but I'm sure. And if you start to find it, he'll kill you, Tracy, if he can.”
Tracy gulped. He said, “Well — I'll not let him know I'm working on it.”
“But you will, in spite of yourself. You'll be asking people questions; that's the only way you can find out things and try to fit them together. You'll be asking the murderer questions, too. Because you don't know who he is, but he must be someone you know.”
“But—”
“It's got to be, Tracy. Someone who knows you well. Everything points to that. Someone who knows you as well as I do.” Tracy's guard was down. He said, “Not quite that well, Millie,” and reached to put his arm around her again. But her hands against his chest held him off.
She said, “Don't you see how dangerous it will be to meddle with it, Tracy? For all you know, it might be me. Don't you remember, I'm the only one besides yourself you know read that Santa Claus script before the first murder?”
“Don't be silly.”
“I'm not being silly, Tracy. No, I didn't do it. But I'm afraid — for you. You say you'll be careful, but how can you be careful unless you have at least an idea who to be careful of?”
“But—”
“I'm not trying to stop you. I know how you must feel about it. You've got to try — and I wouldn't like you if you didn't feel that way. But if there's any way I can help, let me. Will you?”
“Sure,” Tracy said. “Sure, Millie.”
Then the pressure of her hands against his chest relaxed and he kissed her again. She slipped inside, and closed the door.
Tracy stood there trying to decide whether he was going into his own apartment or outside again. It should have been an easy decision, one way or the other, but he was too confused at the moment to make it. He was a little bewildered at Millie's interpretation of his motives and character, and he was more than a little frightened.
Or could Millie have been right? Had trying to solve this mess been at the back of his mind in his decision to arrange for a week free from work?
Hell, no. It hadn't. What could he, Tracy, hope to do that the police — with all their facilities and all their experience — couldn't do? Especially now that Jerry Evers' little stunt had blown up in Jerry's face and the police weren't any longer wasting time on Jerry. That was the only edge he'd ever had on them; the only thing he'd ever known that they hadn't.
Dammit, that's what the police were for, solving crimes. He, Tracy, wasn't a detective and didn't claim to be. Damn Millie for putting him on a spot like that!
And why, Tracy asked Tracy, didn't you let Millie know she was wrong about why you took the week off? And Tracy couldn't tell Tracy the answer to that, because Tracy knew it already.
Anyway, he needed a drink and didn't want to have it alone in his apartment.
He went downstairs and outside again. It was dusk; there was a pleasant cool breeze. It was a nice evening, or could have been.
He stood there, wondering which way to go, just as he'd stood there a few evenings ago when Mrs. Murdock had introduced herself to him and he'd been shown the scene of the crime in the basement.
And darned if — yes, that was she coming now around the corner. Dressed just as she had been dressed Thursday evening. But she didn't come rushing and gushing this time. She saw him, stopped abruptly, and then scurried into the door of Thompson's like a gopher popping into a hole.
It should have been funny, Tracy told himself.
It wasn't.
Scaring her that way had been a damn silly idea. He had a hunch Bates' serious suspicion of him had dated from that moment. And it wasn't fun being thought a psychopathic killer, either by a Mrs. Murdock or by the police. Particularly by the police.
He swore softly to himself and started walking. He went by Thompson's without looking in, so that Mrs. Murdock — who would be looking out — would see him pass and know the coast was clear for her to scurry home to her insurance-agent husband and her radio serials. He owed her that much anyway, no matter how dowdy and silly she was.
Could Frank have been having an affair with her? He hoped not, for Frank's sake. Not that it mattered to Frank now. Nothing mattered after you were dead.
And all that mattered, really, while you were alive was keeping that way and keeping out of trouble, and trying to enjoy each day as it came, and not missing anything out of life that you didn't have to miss, and — oh, hell. Damn all women.
Damn Mrs. Murdock for having been so silly as to have led him to act even sillier.
Damn Dotty for being able — why not be honest about it? — to write just as good radio continuity with, as it were, one hand, as he could write with two hands and the use of a cudgel on his brains. And double damn her for being so pretty and sweet and desirable that she didn't look as though she knew how to spell words over one syllable. Damn her for being so brilliant — and. yet so incredibly stupid that she could like to write stuff that should make any intelligent person shudder.
Damn Millie Mereton on all counts, and damn Millie Wheeler for trying to make a hero out of him when he was just a heel.
He was in a lousy mood, and he knew it. He walked past Dick Kreburn's hotel without even looking up to see if Dick's window was lighted, because he knew at the moment he wasn't fit company for man or beast, let alone a nice guy like Dick.
He kept on walking, and there was the Blade Building, and he could hear the dim rumble of the presses. He glowered and kept on going. He passed Barney's place — then hesitated, went back and went in. After all, he had to light somewhere, sometime.
Barney's was empty, except for Barney. Sitting down at the bar, Tracy didn't know whether he was glad about that or not. He was in a mood to tell somebody off — and anybody from the Blade who wanted to wisecrack about his present occupation would be a perfect victim.
He said, “Barney, two double bourbons, and no humor. Water for a wash.”
Barney brought the bottle, shaking his head lugubriously. “That ain't the way to drink, Tracy. Not for a guy like you.”
“What about a guy like me?”
“You're a gentleman.”
“Oh,” said Tracy. He sniffed around it suspiciously. It could have been an insult, but Barney hadn't meant it that way.
He said, “You're dead wrong, Barney. I'm a heel.
“You're drunk, Tracy.”
“You're wrong again. I've been drinking like a gentleman all afternoon. Gentlemen don't get stinking drunk, and I intend to get stinking drunk. Have one with me, Barney. Have two with me.”
“Well — a short one.”
“Mud in your eye.”
Tracy put down the first glass and closed his hand over the second one. He took a deep breath and downed that one too.
He felt that second one. The afternoon of drinking like a gentleman had laid a nice foundation.
For a moment he seemed to be looking at himself from a long way off, as though he saw himself through the wrong end of a telescope. The sight saddened him.
He said again, “Barney, I'm no gentleman. I'm a heel.”
Barney grinned. “A heel doesn't know he's a heel. If a guy know's he's a heel, then he ain't.”
It sounded sensible, and then it didn't. He tried to analyze it and it seemed to go around in a circle.
Barney was leaning forward across the bar. He said, “What's wrong with you, Tracy? Anything I can do? Aren't short of money, are you?”
“Money? Hell no, Barney. I've even got the stuff in the bank. It's not like the old days.”
“It ain't at that.” Barney chuckled. “You used to owe me five or ten out of every check you got. Well, if you're in the bucks, it ain't money. Is it women?”
“I've heard the word somewhere. What does it mean?”
Barney scratched his head. “Used to have some French postcards around with women on 'em. If I knew where, I could show you. Say, Tracy, I just remembered. Randolph.”
“Lee? What about him?”
“I mentioned you were in here the other day. Said if you dropped around again, he wanted to see you about something. Okay if I call him up and tell him you're here?” . “I guess so. If you promised him you would.”
“Want to go up to his office if he wants you to, or want him to come here? That is, if he's still in the office — he said something about working tonight.”
