The matilda hunter murde.., p.67
The Matilda Hunter Murder, page 67
“He goes to the lunch counter and stows a good cargo o’ grub aboard. He keeps his big kiester right by his pegs. W’at does that mean? Does it mean he’s goin’ t’ fly, or is he stowin’ th’ grub now because he can’t take that kiester to th’ dining car? Wipin’ his trap, he makes for a ticket window, and gets a ducat. The gravel route, after all! Why? Is it because he’s O-O’d that flyin’ fakealoo, an’ reads about all heavy luggage in a plane bein’ weighed an’ recorded, an’ he don’t want to leave no records behind him from now on? Or am I scrooey about thinkin’ th’ brick’s on him, an’ is it jes’ that he’s headin’ for where it is, an’ is beginnin’ now to do a gradool fade from the public eye—and plane travel is still too prom’nent?
“Well, what is she? New York, Boston, or Philly—or is he doin’ a turn-tail an’ cuttin’ down to Memphis? I’m still bettin’ on New York. Everything he’s did so far in th’ deepo, for some reason, is on the up-and-up. But I soon gets th’ answer. Old Mush-in-the-Mouth at th’ gates commences to bawl his wares, goes open Gate No. 3—and Vandersloan heists up his kiester an’ boards—
“Th’ Chicago Daylight Special. Yes. Cap. I see him climb into a Pullman about halfway t’ th’ engine, wavin’ off th’ smokes wit’ th’ redcaps what want to carry his luggage. And I knows now that he’s goin’ to pull his Houdini some’ere’s at least on that there road.
“’S funny, Cap, about me not even tumblin’ yet that he’s goin’ to Chi. I allus been old Singletracko the Monk, in my mental workin’s; or maybe it’s just that I’m a optometrist w’en it comes to buhlievin’ w’at I wanta buhlieve. I’m thinkin’ so much yet that he’s pullin’ a small-town fadeout, that I just ain’t see the pipe smoke about Chi my hood friend puffed me. Sure, Cap, chalk one ag’in me. Well, I makes the ducat window, and gets me a compartment—not a seat, Cap, but a compartment, an’ on th’ station side o’ th’ line, too; I asks f’r a Pullman clos’t to the rear—afraid o’ head end collisions, says I. An’ as th’ Daylight Special rings her bell, I’m climbin’ up in my own Pullman ready to find out what burg th’ Frog’s goin’ to drop off at.
“There’s no observation platform t’ bring him on back, but in case th’ kiester’s got nothin’ in it but glad rags after all, an’ he can leave it lay, I locks myself up, in case he passes on back through th’ train for a look-see, pulls the shade nearly down, and pipes all th’ guys an’ dames that gets off at each station. But no Froggy dismounts. The aft’noon grows—an’ now it’s gettin’ pretty plain. He’s maybe goin’ to make a scatter in the worst town in th’ U.S.A. f’r me. Now I wishes my hood friend hadn’t had no game peg—I coulda cut him in on th’ deal—an’ I—well, wishes a lot o’ things. But little Matt’s gone an’ dished hisself a closed pie—so he does his best t’ be a optometrist once more, an’ prays f’r Bloomin’ton. In fac’, Bloomin’ton’s my last chance.
“I plays safe, though, calls th’ Smoke who pounds pillows f’r my coach, an’ gives him th’ wire for Violet—that’s th’ Queer—all filled out. I give him a double buck an’ tells him to despatch it at Bloomin’ton an’ keep th’ change. We make Bloomin’ton. We stand f’r ten long minutes in front o’ the station there. We’re on a curve. I can make Vandersloan’s coach. He don’t even show. Toot-toot! Clang, clang, clang. And we’re off—headin’ for Chi—an’ we’ll be there at 8:40 at night.
“Chi! Jeez Cri! Five thousan’ flatties, one thousan’ dicks, wit’ Matt McCafferty’s mug registered on their brain, ready t’ pick up Matt’s brother, Mr. L. T. Peters, an’ check his f.p.’s f’r good luck—an’ hand him to an Ozarkdale prossie! Five thousan’ glitters ready t’ deliver th’ double-crossin’ Matt Y, McCafferty to th’ Al Tetroni mob for a bump-off! Not so good! Not so half good even, Cap. Well, I’ve drawed cards now, an’ I gotta play my hand. They won’t be none o’ Al Tetroni’s mob hangin’ around a station, much less a dinky station like the Polk Street Depot, although they may be a dip ’r two prattin’ trav’lers f’r pokes, so it’ll be up to me to scram through that station th’ best I can an’ get on’ the dark stem. Once safe on first, little Matt’s gotta keep out o’ the daylight—not prowl streets in the daytime, see?—an’ take the dark side o’ all streets at night. He’s got a decent chance to play thataway—on’y it crabs his play bad on his Frog job.
“Well, nothin’ to do now but sit in the compartment and figger on that baby’s play. Now I’m cert, somehow, he’s got the brick in his big kiester. Reason, Cap, is—well—poker again. In them old days, Cap, Vandersloan never bluffed—except as he made a magnif’cent bluff! He’d drive a whole tableful o’ players out on th’ kinda bluffs he’d make—then no more bluffs for weeks an’ weeks. I mean, Cap, he’d never bluff except as every guy at th’ table was makin’ one an’ two-card draws. As a very proof he hadn’t nothin’ and wasn’t pretendin’ he had, he’d draw four cards, give a careless look, buy chips, and how he’d bet! Guys who didn’t know his number ’d fade out of the pot one by one—I’ve seen him take a whole tableful with that bluff. And that, I’m commencin’ to figger now, is what he’d did right here. He’s did the one last thing in th’ world that any dick from the B.P.A. or anybody in Ozarkdale’d ever dream he’d do—even if he could!—walked right out with the brick in his luggage. Brilliant mind that bird had, Cap, or else he was a damn fool. I don’t know yet. I—still somethin’ Mr. Stillwell has spieled here tonight shows me a won’erful ‘out’ that Charlie had, in case of a jam, just so long as he don’t make one suspic’ous play, nowhere, nohow. I mean—well, never mind. You want facts an’ nothin’ else. So here they are:
“We make Chi at 8:40, right on time. The old crummy Polk Street Depot. Shall I lean on th’ Queer—or head on out t’ th’ stem, ready to hire another taxi driver to tail Vandersloan? Jeez, here’s hopin’ jes’ a small wish from Fate: that th’ Office ain’t happenin’ to look tonight f’r no murderers or anything expected to stroll in from Springfield or Bloomin’ton. If I scram past that waitin’ room, I can begin to count hours in Chi anyway.
“We’ve backed into th’ trainshed. That throws my coach up front. I can be first out—or las’, as I want. I decides to duck through ahead o’ Vandersloan. I grabs up my own big green kiester and lamps a skirt tryin’ to tote a kid an’ a kiester too. I grabs up th’ kid, she dishes me a smile, an’ th’ three of us sails down the platform like papa, and mama comin’ home from th’ sticks. As we sails through th’ gate, dam’ if there ain’t my Queer, fumblin’ careless with a bunch of one-buck bills, a blue taxicab hat on his dome. I know him a mile away! He’s all powdered up, cheeks glowin’ like roses—eyes shinin’—eyebrows thinned down to pencil lines.
“I ditches the dame with a tipoff of my lid in the waitin’ room and cruises out on the sidewalk. Jeez, Chi; good old Chi—but it’s sure th’ Argonne Forest f’r me, Cap. I’m commencin’ right there an’ then to shake in my shoes, I tell you. Well, there’s redcaps runnin’ around, an’ yellow and checker taxi-drivers bawlin’. But they ain’t no heart taxicab nowhere. I puts on a hurry-up an’ steers my puppies down twenty-fi’ feet to the dark freight alley next th’ deepo front—and there she is, posted acrost it, in th’ clear on one side, an’ wit’ nose out ready for a neat step-off. The Queer sure is on to this here stuff.
“I climbs inside and parks myself. It’s dark, an’ I can cover th’ whole deepo front myself. Ev’rybody melts away—the deepo quiets down—but th’ Frog ain’t come out yet. I know the Queer’s coverin’ him; so I parks easy. But fin’lly—it’s maybe seven minutes now—th’ Frog shows. Big tan kiester still in his mitt. A newspaper in his hand; and that’s what’s delayed him. Lookin’ up room-to-rent ads. He don’t screw out f’r no dark spots—but stands on th’ curb an’ high-balls a pink an’ tan chariot acrost the stem with a old tuberose in the seat who musta been in the habit of usin’ his beak f’r a headlight. While th’ tuberose’s bringin’ his machine acrost, my Queer slides up around th’ alley and starts to scram into his seat. He makes me. He lisps: ‘I’m thorry, mither, but thith cab ith—’
“‘Pipe down, Violet!’ I says. ‘I’m th’ bozo w’at sent you that there wire.’ I quick gives him the high-sign in the wire. ‘Get after your bird.’
“‘Wighto, thir,’ he says, and throws on the engine.
“Vandersloan’s cab slides off and turns west. Violet takes it easy after him, a half block back. The red-beak, as I see long afterward, is gyppin’ Vandersloan all right, for he takes him way West an’ clear around th’ Loop that way, to run th’ meter up a bit.
“Violet sure can handle a machine! All them Queers is geniuses in some way—and that was his genius. An’ I sees, too, that my hood friend in St. Looey’d make a good mob picker; he knows his eggs. Violet draws up a little—an’ drops back a little—an’ fin’lly I decides to play double safe. I unbuckles my kiester, leans down over it, and w’en I’m sittin’ up, I’ve slipped my kelly an’ throwed over my dome a two-dollar bunch o’ dame’s brown hair in coils, with a ladies’ lid sewed on it—yep, Cap, got it from a St. Looey masq’rade house—an’ a shawl around my shoulders. I—sure, Cap, I know all about them phony fronts bein’ th’ bunk f’r bamboozlin’ a sucker up clost—except as in them stories the arthurs write. But I ain’t givin’ th’ Frog a chanct to case me from two or t’ree feet. I’m keepin’ half to two-t’irds of a dark block behind this guy, see? I’m on’y throwin’ up a—a—smoke screen, see? Now if Vandersloan can screw up his glims good enough to pipe back so far’s that—what I don’t hardly think—there’s just a maiden lady ’way back, ridin’ to Banb’ry Cross!
“We tails west—then north—then east again, back as far as Wells Street. The old town. Good old Chi. Good old—hell! We passes th’ old Golden Rule Mission w’ere I once hung out durin’ a cold winter in this burg, absorbin’ soup, soap, an’ salvation. On we goes, though, quite a ways beyond th’ Golden Rule. On, in fac’, till Vandersloan’s cab sudden-like turns off at Locust Street. Violet noses up careful to Locust Street, an’ comes to a stop under a tree; up th’ block we see Vandersloan climbin’ out in front of a little white dinky cottage wit’ a street light in front of it.
“Kiester still in his mitt, he rings th’ bell—th’ door opens, he chins a few words, an’ he goes inside. Old Cherry-beak settles back in his seat. I’m just about to tell Violet to cut across to th’ opposite corner, w’en out comes Vandersloan—I can see by th’ street light he ain’t got the kiester now—gives the pay-off to cherry-beak, and goes on back inside. Cherry-beak drives off West.
“‘W’at will it be now, thir?’ asks Violet.
“I hold him five minutes till it appears plain Vandersloan ain’t pullin’ no stall o’ no kind. Then I passes Violet his cut—a saw-buck—and scrams out. Queers is all nuts, you know, Cap, on wimmen’s wigs an’ such things, an’ I’ve ditched these an’ left ’em on th’ seat. ‘You can have that there wig, Violet,’ I tells him. ‘An’ now you can duck back to your business.’
“He don’t smile none at the sawbuck—he jest takes it casual-like—but he’s sure all smiles, as he drives off, at ownin’ th’ wig. An’ me, my big kiester in my own mitt, goes up the other side o’ Locust Street. It’s good and dark—trees aplenty.
“I ain’t cert, of course, whether Vandersloan’s answered a ad f’r a furnished room to rent—or whether he’s muscled in at a friend’s house. Or what. But one thing I does do then an’ there. I walks up to a three-story dump on my side o’ th’ stem, maybe fifty feet west o’ bein’ directly across th’ way from Vandersloan’s scatter, a dump that’s all plastered up with room-to-rent signs like Primo Carnero’s mug after a scrap, an’ engages a nice little front parlor with a pair o’ dirty yellow lace curtains that ain’t seen the washtub f’r two years. I has to raise my ante enough so the old gent that runs th’ joint will give a chaseout to some louse that’s got the front room, but is ev’dently behind on his pay-off; but seein’ I’m heeled an’ don’t like back rooms, he gives th’ louse a chaseout to a basement room—and the dump’s mine. Just w’at I’m lookin’ for, Cap, because I can squat there all day an’ all night an’ pipe off No. 213 Locust Street without bein’ lamped myself by V, nor no dicks, nor no small-time grifters neither who may be hangin’ out around Locust Street maybe.
“Well, No. 213 fin’lly darkens up that night. I watches the place all night, though—all wit’ the exception o’ ten minutes around midnight w’en I makes an out from my own dump through a side entrance, out th’ back, an’ takes a prowl around th’ block—Vandersloan’s block, not mine. I thinks it’s better to gamble on ten minutes an’ find out f’r sure whether he’s sittin’ so he can lam out on me through th’ back of No. 213—but a prowl up the blind alley on that side shows that No. 213’s a blind lot—on’y way out th’ back, except a million high fences, is into a side passageway an’ back to th’ street again. Ten minutes later, I’m back in my room feelin’ easier—dressin’ for bed?—not!—squattin’ in th’ dark in a chair by the window.
“Comes mornin’, an’ I’m ten hours in Chi. No bull’s got me. Nor none o’ the Big Shot’s mob. I make a old lady shakin’ a rug from th’ front stoop o’ No. 213—an’ a hour later I makes Vandersloan, lightin’ a cig in full view on th’ sidewalk, trackin’ east careless like f’r th’ nearest car line. What to do now? Put th’ heat on ’im w’en he comes back—or try to work a two-card monte on his landlady? Or—what. Yeah—w’at? Is the junk inside—or ain’t it? He’s got me baffled th’ way he plays on the strickt up an’ up. I’m ready to pull anythin’—on’y I don’t want to make a bum play. One bum play—an’ th’ game’s over. One bum play an’—but Jeez, this is a Dutch of a town for me to try an’ make any kind of a play. Jeez, I’m hamstrung. I can’t make a move. You’d think a’most the Frog come here to be safe from me—on’y he don’t know nothin’ about the Al Tetroni stuff nor nothin’ else. W’at’s he doin’? Is he playin’ possum till he routs up a fence? Where in ’ell’ll he get a fence?
“Well, I’m ready to stick th’ heat on anybody, I’m ready for a sock-an’-clout, and I’m even ready for a two-card monte. Ready as I am, though, I figures th’ time ain’t really ripe for any o’ them things. An’ till it is, there’s one play I c’n make wit’ safety. That’s to sit tight an’ try and make out that guy’s racket—I—w’at’s ’at, Cap? How I think I’ll make a two-card monte on anybody? Well, it jes’ happens, Cap, that inside my own big leather kiester is a lone tan travellin’ bag—an’ inside that there bag is th’ square black leather kiester filled with lead solderin’ sticks w’at Vandersloan has palmed off on me a year before. Exactly, Cap. I’d threaded the steel wire all back through th’ holes, pulled her tight and soldered th’ two ends together so you couldn’t tell it was ever even opened. The seal was intack. Sure, Cap, I retrieved her while I was workin’ in Ozarkdale as Dummy Peters. Run up to Witches Knob on th’ train one day and got her back from th’ hollow tree where I had her stashed. You see, Cap, I figgered that when Vandersloan had fixed up that two-card monte on me a year before with them express bindles, he didn’t have no chance o’ takin’ the contents o’ that leather kiester out an’ puttin’ in solderin’ sticks; he must have fixed another leather kiester exactly like it, in case I peeked in th’ bindle before pullin’ out, an’ he musta wrapped it up rough like an’ switched bindles right in th’ jug itself at the las’ moment. An’ this bein’ so, I have me a hunch that he might—for some damfool reason—y’ know th’ Frog was a deepwaters, Cap—might have that $90,000 kiester, wit’ th’ paper wroppin’ stripped off it, jes’ exactly as he had orig’nally fixed it up. I couldn’t figger out my own hunch, Cap; but now I’m seein’ that a hunch is dam’ good stuff—didja get on to what Mr. Stillwell here spieled us about Vandersloan’s Little Mule Mine? That’s his ‘out’! That’s—oh well, you’ll see it after a while. So, as I says, while I’m ready f’r a sock-an’-clout for a platynum brick wrop in paper or even rags—and travelin’ on the lam aft’ward—it don’t cost me nothin’ to be fix’ for a two-card monte. Jeez, Cap, I wouldn’t play a year wit’out bein’ fix’ t’ pull a gyp move if the chanct showed. An’ if you think hunches ain’t no good, I c’n tell you now an’ here that the Frog did have his little black kiester—naw, naw, th’ platynum kiester—an’ he hadn’t never even broke the lead seal on it—nor cut the wire nor nothin’. Are you wise? Well, you will be!
“Me, I’m gettin’ ahead o’ my story. About my Watch on der Rhine. The Frog has left empty-handed Friday mornin’, an’ he barges home th’ same way Friday night. He sticks close to home that evenin’. Me, closer’n that! I don’t have nothin’ to do with th’ mob that hangs out in th’ flop where I am—they’re all Annie Oakley. Clerks an’ laborers. There’s just one old junker, Cap, the guy who got the chaseout from my room—that causes me a little bother. I find him knockin’ weaklike on my door, an’ think at first he’s tin-earin’ on me. He’s a old Indian—naw, a East Indian, Cap—but you can see from his fiddle-an’-flute—well, Miss, write it—well, costume, yes—you c’n see he’s genooine Indian. A rug peddler, he tells me later he is. Well, he quavers he’s left one o’ his hypos in his room and some o’ the medicine some East Indian croaker on Sout’ State Street gives him for his nerves. But I spots him for some kind of a queer hophead, the minute I weighs him up. We hunts all over th’ place together, him at my rock-an’-boulder all the time, and jus’ w’en I’m cert it’s all a shill, we does run into a stack o’ funny lookin’ brown pills—they don’t stack up like morph or snow to me—Indian hop, I s’pose—on one o’ th’ bed irons. We don’t make the hypo—th’ poor old bird’s nearly lost his memory from junkin—but we begins to strike th’ pills here an’ there an’ ever’where, stashed in twos and threes—so I gives him a finif to get him a new hypo. Later I finds his hypo stuck back in a stuffed chair bottom, an’ puts it away for him. That’s all the trouble I had. Ever’body was Annie Oakley.
