The Crowded Streets, Part 24

The story so far: Detective Rocky Stone has been hired by Wanda Marcellus, aide of Congressional candidate George Wilson, for the purposes of discovering financial improprieties by the incumbent, Congressman Howard Dixon. While investigating the unusual amounts of telephone poles and booths on the streets of town, Rocky discovers connections between a spiritualist guide named Inglehoff, Candidate Geroge Wilson and his wife Martha, and Clarissa King, the wife of prominent businessman and philanthropist Gilbert King. Rocky, along with Clarissa King, tracks Inglehoff to a small apartment on 30th Street, where Rocky finds the body of a woman lying on the floor. In the last episode, Rocky and Lieutenant Sam MacAnulty of Homicide come to the conclusion that Inglehoff was set up to take the rap for the woman's murder. They decide to visit Gilbert King to see what he might know:

As an investigator, you end up in all sorts of places with all sorts of people, and after a time you get to know what to expect when you step across the threshold. A bar named Jimmy's, for instance, will have eight to ten regulars seated at the bar on high stools, being poured watered-down drinks from Jimmy himself. A library is always a library. The newspaper office has a bunch of guys in shirt-sleeves and suspenders falling all over each other as they try to file stories before the afternoon edition goes to press. And the office of a construction company is cramped, poorly designed, and somehow smells of sawdust and sweat no matter how far removed from the site it is. At least, that was the picture I had in my head before I stepped into the office of Millways Construction.

I could smell the money. The floors were white and somehow unscuffed, as if the surface refused to accept dirt of any kind. The reception desk was simple, strong and elegant, built from pine. Behind that desk was a blond with marvelous cheekbones who could have won pageants without trying. Her face lit up and blessed us with a smile that fit on the cover of a magazine.

“May I help you?” she asked, and I believed her.

“Rocky Stone and Lieutenant MacAnulty of Homicide to see Gilbert King.”

Her mouth drooped a little but her eyes kept smiling. “I'm afraid he's in San Francisco today. Is there anyone else who could help you?”

MacAnulty looked at me and I looked at him. So far I wasn't convinced King didn't have anything to do with the dead girl we found in Inglehoff's apartment: after all, he wouldn't do it himself and if he hired someone to do it he wouldn't be anywhere near the place. San Francisco looked awfully convenient, although I'm sure he was there on business. And I couldn't help but think, wouldn't it be a laugh if he scheduled a meeting at the very time that girl was being murdered?

“Any idea when he'll be back?” I asked.

“Tomorrow. He only left for the day. Do you mind if I ask what this is about?”

“We don't mind, but you won't get an answer,” MacAnulty replied in a manner so easy it didn't feel like he was cracking wise with her.

A bespectacled man dressed in a devastating suit stepped out of the hallway and met us full on, the palm of his bony right hand pressing against the air between us, as if he could hold us back with a gesture. He registered anger but he wasn't the type to get in a brawl, even though he looked wiry strong enough to do a fair amount of damage. “Is there some sort of problem here?” he bellowed, hoping the tone in his voice would be enough to make us shrink.

“None,” I said. “But we'll be back tomorrow and I plan on bringing a problem with me.”

MacAnulty turned on his heel and I followed him. The man in spectacles shouted after us: “Hey, you can't just walk away like that! I'm the vice-president of this company!”

“Your mother must be proud,” MacAnulty said over his shoulder, sweetly, as we stepped out of the office.

________________________________

fter I dropped MacAnulty at the police station I grabbed a handful of grease in between two slices of bread at a local joint and headed back to the office. The sun was going down by then and everyone had left the building except for two custodians who were mopping the floors in the foyer. One of them, a ragged man who looked older than he probably was, nodded unsmiling at me while the other tended to his work unfettered by pleasantries.

I climbed the stairs and crashed through the door marked with a '7'. The orange light of sundown poured through the window at the end of the hallway, making it appear that the lights were on in my office. As I got closer, I could see the lights were, in fact, on in my office, and since I knew they weren't that way when I left, I reached for my gun. At that moment the door opened in front of me, and I drew it out like the lawmen do in the old Westerns.

Wanda Marcellus stood there, startled. At first I thought it was because I was standing there with my gun at my side, but as the door fell open I could see three more fearful faces: those of Congressional candidate George Wilson and his wife Martha, and, for a reason I was not able to figure out at first, my dentist, Dr. Allan Wallace. Wanda handed me a card with the name Inglehoff on the front. I flipped it over and saw the same handwriting that was on the card the dead girl had in her dress pocket.

He had written: “Pablo's Pit, 8 p.m. Don't be late. Most urgent. G.I.”

Will Rocky catch up with Ingelhoff at last? Why are all these people in his office? Find out the answers to these questions and many more in the next episode of The Adventures of Rocky Stone!

The Crowded Streets, Part 23

The story so far: Detective Rocky Stone has been hired by Wanda Marcellus, aide of Congressional candidate George Wilson, for the purposes of discovering financial improprieties by the incumbent, Congressman Howard Dixon. While investigating the unusual amounts of telephone poles and booths on the streets of town, Rocky discovers connections between a spiritualist guide named Inglehoff, Candidate Geroge Wilson and his wife Martha, and Clarissa King, the wife of prominent businessman and philanthropist Gilbert King. Rocky, along with Clarissa King, tracks Inglehoff to a small apartment on 30th Street, where Rocky finds the body of a woman lying on the floor. In the last episode, Rocky is met at the crime scene by Lieutenant Sam MacAnulty, who seems to know a lot about the case already:


Lieutenant MacAnulty suggested we go for a drive, just me and him. Just a friendly drive, he said, in a voice that would melt butter, all nice and cozy as if I had a choice in the matter. I figured it would be a long ride in the back of a black-and-white with MacAnulty peering over his shoulder at me the whole time, and when we hit the street I waited for him to pick out the prowl car of his choice. To my surprise, he turned and settled in front of my Buick, waited at the passenger's side door for me.

I unlocked that side and opened the door for him. “Any place you'd care to go?” I asked, as he folded himself into the seat.

“How's about George Wilson's election headquarters?” he grinned. “I'm kidding, son. Hop in.”

MacAnulty was trying to make me sweat and he was doing a swell job of it. Either he was the best cop on the force or he was the best guesser on the West Coast. Maybe both. He had seen it all by the look on his face, and there's only one of two ways that can affect a man: it makes him steady or it makes him weary. MacAnulty was a rock. Nothing was going to move him one way or the other and Lord help you if he rolls up on you.

I pulled out into traffic and told him what he wanted to hear, the details I had left out at the pier a couple days ago when Franklin had driven his car into the ocean. Franklin had bribed me to stay away from my investigation of the unusual number of phone poles and booths in town and how the companies who had the contracts with the city to place them were connected with Congressman Howard Dixon. Franklin worked for Dixon, and had been put under hypnosis by George Inglehoff. Martha Wilson and Clarissa King were similar, possibly unwilling, victims. And now this woman they found in Inglehoff's apartment. All points led back to the same man, I told him. MacAnulty watched me closely and nodded.

“Fisher Baskin,” he said. “His real name is Fisher Baskin. Two years ago he was one of the top acts on the stage, traveled the country, until he got in trouble in Houston. A woman came forward and said Baskin made advances to her. And then another came up in Chicago. Two in Pittsburgh. Seventeen in all, spread out over seven states. Baskin disappeared without a trace. That was, until we got the call.”

“The call?”

“Three hours ago. An anonymous tip that Baskin was in Los Diablos, that he was with a woman, and that he had killed her. No word on his alias. When the operator asked the man on the line where the woman was, he hung up. Swell, huh? We knew there was a body out there somewhere in the city but no way of knowing where.”

I laughed politely. “Anonymous tip. That explains why you stepped in the door and knew everything. You came to that crime scene expecting a set-up, didn't you?”

“It was on my mind,” said MacAnulty. He was too much of an old pro to get his ego bruised and he laughed heartily. “You're good, Stone, you know that? You'll do all right.”

“So if Baskin was set up, who did it?”

MacAnulty settled in his seat and watched the road. “Jealous husband, likeliest.”

“That puts a lot of candidates on the list,” I replied.

“Not as many as you might think,” he said with a knowing grin. “Most men would take care of Baskin and be done with it. But to kill a woman just to make sure Baskin ends up in prison for murder, that's something else. Your man on the street wouldn't do something like that. It would take a professional, or someone in a high enough position to hire a professional.”

“He messed with the wrong man's woman. Plausible.”

He smiled warmly, glad to hear someone thinking along his lines. “Gilbert King has an office in West Hills. Why don't we see what he's up to?”

What will they discover at the office of philanthropist Gilbert King? Find out in the next episode of The Adventures of Rocky Stone! 

The Crowded Streets, Part 22

The story so far: Detective Rocky Stone has been hired by Wanda Marcellus, aide of Congressional candidate George Wilson, for the purposes of discovering financial improprieties by the incumbent, Congressman Howard Dixon. While investigating the unusual amounts of telephone poles and booths on the streets of town, Rocky discovers connections between a spiritualist guide named Inglehoff, Candidate Geroge Wilson and his wife Martha, and Clarissa King, the wife of prominent businessman and philanthropist Gilbert King. Rocky, along with Clarissa King, tracks Inglehoff to a small apartment on 30th Street, where Rocky finds the body of a woman lying on the floor. In the last episode, Rocky sends Clarissa to catch a cab before the police arrive, and Sergeant Hardacre of Homicide begins to investigate the crime:

How long it took to tell the story of how I had come to find a body in the apartment at 2380 30th Street, I couldn't say. My audience, Sergeant Hardacre and an officer with a nameplate reading “Barker,” did not interrupt. Barker was there to take notes and he didn't look up at any point, and when I came to talk about the dead dame, Hardacre yawned. Maybe I should have shoved in the parts about Martha Wilson and Clarissa King to keep their interest going, but I figured it was none of their business.

After I had finished, Hardacre glanced over his shoulder at the officer, who was still scribbling away. When Barker's pen stopped moving, he turned back to me, gave me a look you could hang on a meat hook, stepped past me and ripped open the screen door to go into the apartment. Barker flipped his notebook over to a new page and gave chase, and I followed the both of them.

A thin guy with a chin you couldn't find with a microscope loitered about with a camera twice his size. Three medics were gathered around the body. They had taken the time to cover her with a sheet, but as I came in they lifted up and called the photographer over to get a shot. He sighed quietly and stumbled over. One of the white coats pointed at a spot and the photographer bent over and he and the camera disappeared behind the sheet. The shutter snapped and the photographer straightened, a weary look on his face as if he was being kept from another appointment.

Sergeant Hardacre bent over to take a look. He whistled absently.

“You can just see it there,” said one of the white coats, a dumpy little man with round glasses, as he pointed at the poor girl.

I stepped in and Hardacre caught sight of me out of the corner of his eye. “I was through with you,” he growled. “Sorry if I didn't make that clear.” The photographer squeezed off a shot at nothing in particular, and Hardacre glanced over at him, annoyed.

If he was trying to keep me from discovering what the white coats had found, he was a little too late. They were pointing out a mark on her back, midway down, to the left of the bumps of her spine: a small dot that on a living person you might dismiss as a scratch or a blemish, but in reality was the entry point of a needle. Poison. About what I figured, since there was blood to be found anywhere. Explained a lot, but certainly not everything.

“No suicide,” I said as I looked at that mark. “Jabbed in the shower, you suppose?”

The guys in white stared at me in wonder while the photographer, alerted to something moving in the room, took a picture of me.

“Barker, get him out of here,” Sergeant Hardacre said.

Officer Barker took a step and I raised a hand. “Wait. She was wearing that robe when I found her. If someone managed to poison her while she was taking a shower, why would she take the time to put on a robe?”

“Simple,” said a voice behind me. I turned to look and saw a man you take for a cop at first glance: tall but thick, muscular, with hands like catcher's mitts. He wore an old overcoat that covered an old brown suit and a hat that should have been blocked or trashed months ago. Short ginger-colored hair, cop's hair and a thick mustache. He looked like a turn-of-the-century prizefighter. “It's a frame,” he continued. “Nothing matches up. Either she got it in the shower or she was wearing the robe when she got it. It can't be both.” The photographer snapped another picture off. The cop smiled genially.

Sure, that's what I had in mind, but how did he figure it out just by walking in the door? “Maybe she got out of the tub and put her robe on,” I said, just to be contrary. “She's just about to turn the water off when the murderer jabs her. She tries to run to the telephone but the poison does its work before she can get there. Possible?”

He came forward to where the body lay, took off his hat and rubbed at the stubble on the top of his head. “Yeah, possible. Only one problem with it,” he said, and pointed to the towel covering her hair. “Any woman you know would let the water keep running while she's prettying herself up? She's wearing lip rouge, friend. No, there's more here than meets the eye.” He pulled me away from earshot of the others, took my hand with an undeniable grip and shook it. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Stone. Lieutenant Sam MacAnulty out of Homicide. Now, tell me something, son: why would the wife of one of Los Diablos' leading citizens be catching a cab from a hamburger stand?”

What really happened to the woman in Inglehoff's apartment and will Lieutenant MacAnulty be a help or a hindrance to Rocky? Find out in the next episode of The Adventures of Rocky Stone! 

The Crowded Streets, Part 21

The story so far: Detective Rocky Stone has been hired by Wanda Marcellus, aide of Congressional candidate George Wilson, for the purposes of discovering financial improprieties by the incumbent, Congressman Howard Dixon. While investigating the unusual amounts of telephone poles and booths on the streets of town, Rocky discovers connections between a spiritualist guide named Inglehoff, Candidate Geroge Wilson and his wife Martha, and Clarissa King, the wife of prominent businessman and philanthropist Gilbert King. In the last episode, Rocky, along with Clarissa King, tracks Inglehoff to a small apartment on 30th Street, where Rocky finds the body of a woman lying on the floor:


The police would show up soon. Barricades, ambulances and the whole lot; pretty soon every Nosy Nick in the area would be standing outside wondering what's going on. Every reporter in the city would flock to the area like it's bank night at the Cheapo Lounge, and sure enough, if they caught sight of the wife of a high roller like Gilbert King about the premises, they'd start asking questions, the kind that neither she nor I would want to answer.

Clarissa King was scared to come in. She had been sobbing gently from the stoop from the moment she saw the body, and every once in a while I heard her gasp for air in the background, letting me know she hadn't taken it on the lam. I picked up the phone and called a cab, told them I needed them to pick up a lady at the drive-in across the street, then did the gentlemanly thing and came out to calm her down.

As soon as I had passed through the creaky screen door, she threw her arms around my neck as if I was an old and trusted friend, not some mug trying to eke out a living that she had just met that day.

“Did you know her?” I asked.

She pushed her face into my shoulder and bobbed her head from side to side. “It's just so horrible. Do you think he killed her?”

I did, of course, but there was no sense in giving her anything more to think about. “I'll figure it out,” I replied. “But what I need you to do is to walk across the way to the drive-in. A taxi is going to show up to take you home. The last thing you need to do is be here when the police arrive.”

She pulled her head off my shoulder, brushed some tears away, and nodded. “Thank you,” she said.

“One thing before you go. Inglehoff gave you something this morning. Something to toss into Martha Wilson's purse when she wasn't looking. Do you remember?”

The mists of the hypnosis parted quickly and Clarissa remembered. Maybe she didn't remember all of the day, since I was sure there were parts of the time she had spent that morning with George Inglehoff she wanted desperately to forget, but her meeting with Martha Wilson came into focus. “It was a matchbook. I remember...on the cover it had a penguin wearing a top hat. I can't remember the name of the place, but it was some sort of...”

“...nightclub,” I finished. As far as I knew, only one place in town had a penguin on its sign, a place called The Ice Box out on Gibney Street. Out of the way, dark, and not too loud, with plenty of places to avoid detection. Inglehoff had a private meeting in mind.

I sent Clarissa King on her way. The police screamed in a few minutes later, sirens blaring, a warning to the whole neighborhood that something was up. The full set-up took a few minutes and the uniforms were scattered about like rice at a wedding, directed by a square-shouldered man who looked like he could punch his way through a tank. He was dressed in the odd combination of a tan hat and a dark blue suit and it was more than likely no one was willing to tell him how unfashionable he looked. I stood on the stoop and waited. After shouting at one of the uniforms about how and where and when a barricade should be put up, he stormed through the gate and into the unkempt lawn.

He didn't offer his hand for me to shake. “Stone?” he rumbled, and I nodded at him. “Hardacre. Homicide. We spoke earlier.”

“How could I forget?”

He wasn't in the mood for wise-cracks and scowled purposefully. He slid past me without making any attempt to catch my eye and caught the whiff of death Clarissa and I had experienced a half-hour earlier. I opened the screen door and he had a peek around to see the poor girl on the floor. Hardacre sniffed as if he had seen better. “Shame,” he said, summing it all up.

“No identification. Just a dress with a card in the pocket.” I drew it out and handed it to him. “This one, in fact.”

He scanned one side, saw the name George Inglehoff, then flipped it over and read the rest. The police-issued brain did the calculations and came to the same conclusion I did. Hardacre snapped his fingers twice and two of the more eager uniforms came running. They were sent back to the nearest radio with the information on the card while a man with a white coat filtered in past us to get the final word on the body.
Hardacre's meaty hand gripped my shoulder. “I think we've got some talking to do,” he said.

Who murdered the girl in Inglehoff's apartment and where has he gone? Find out in the next episode of The Adventures of Rocky Stone!

The Crowded Streets, Part 20

The story so far: Detective Rocky Stone has been hired by Wanda Marcellus, aide of Congressional candidate George Wilson, for the purposes of discovering financial improprieties by the incumbent, Congressman Howard Dixon. While investigating the unusual amounts of telephone poles and booths on the streets of town, Rocky discovers connections between a spiritualist guide named Inglehoff, Candidate Geroge Wilson and his wife Martha, and Clarissa King, the wife of prominent businessman and philanthropist Gilbert King. In the last episode, Rocky, along with Clarissa King, tracks Inglehoff to a small apartment on 30th Street, where Rocky finds the body of a woman lying on the floor:
A half a minute passed before the connection went through. The body on the floor was close by and I could see the rip in her robe clearly from that angle. A slight pinkish discoloration in the same direction as the tear, made by a fingernail no doubt, but no visible bruises or wounds on the body, no pool of blood on the floor. I brought the telephone with me while I waited, cradled it under my chin, and shoved her over with my handkerchief to see if the other side of her body would reveal what killed her. When I did that I heard a shriek that probably should have raised the dead, but didn't. I looked up at the doorway and saw Clarissa King standing there. In the commotion I had forgotten she was with me.

“Homicide, Sergeant Hardacre.”

I held up a hand to let Clarissa know I was talking to someone. She stared helplessly at the poor girl on the floor and covered her mouth so no new screams would come out of it.

“Sergeant, this is Rocky Stone. I'm a private detective licensed to Los Diablos working on behalf of the Wilson campaign.”

Clarissa King stepped outside to catch her breath. The smell of decay was strong and I would have laid odds that a lady of her stature had never smelled anything like it before.

“Stone,” he said, with some recognition. “You were on the scene when Carl Franklin took a tumble off the pier, weren't you?”

I said: “Yeah. I just found a woman dead in an apartment in San Cristobal. Not sure of the number, not even sure if it has a number, but it's behind the Canyon Bank branch on the corner of Cristobal Boulevard and 30th.”

“Another body,” he commented. “Not your week, is it?”

“I've had better.” I scanned the face on the floor. Young, far too young to go, undeniably pretty, and somewhat familiar, the kind of face you see on a calendar or on the third chorus-girl from the left. Her left cheek was marked from lying on the carpet for so long, but apart from that I couldn't see any damage to her that might have caused her death. I told Sergeant Hardcare as much and he mumbled something about having the coroner see to it. Then he said they would be out straight away and hung up.

The corner of her robe dangled open, revealing a bit more of her leg than I was comfortable with. I pushed it back quickly with the tip of my shoe and thought about what she might have been wearing when she came in. She must have left a purse somewhere.

It wasn't sitting around anywhere obvious. The apartment had one closet, on the other side of the bed. I covered my hand with my handkerchief and opened the door, only to find that the closet was empty, save for two wooden clothes hangers, one of which was still hanging and the other down below, propped up against the wall where it met the floor.

Inglehoff had cleared out.

I went to the bathroom and turned off the shower. It was clean in there, cleaner than the rest of the apartment. The floor in there was white tile, and if there was so much as a hair on the floor I would've seen it. I switched on the light and I could see the impression of a foot, or part of one. The dead girl must have left it, but I could only see part of the right foot from the third toe to the heel. The rest was missing, swiped away in a perfect line.

Someone did some cleaning in there. After she was dead.

Her dress hung neatly on a hook behind the door with her underclothing and stockings wedged behind the door. The dress had a pocket near the waist and I shoved my hand inside to see if she kept anything in it. I caught my finger against the edge of it, and when I pulled it out I could see it was a plain business card, G. Inglehoff, Spiritual Advisor, and a telephone number which was no doubt disconnected already. On the back, the important part: a note scribbled hastily in a childish hand, a set of words that would make Inglehoff look guilty for the girl's murder even if they put his own family in the jury box.

“I must see you. Come alone. 2380 30th. G. I.”

Did Inglehoff murder the girl? And if so, why? Can Rocky put enough clues together to figure out what happened? Find out in the next episode of The Adventures of Rocky Stone!

The Big Sleep - Trailer

Why? Because you can't beat the classics, that's why.

The Crowded Streets: Take It From the Top

Now that the story is halfway over, maybe you want to backtrack and find out what you missed. Maybe you just want to read the story from the beginning. Whatever. Just click on the link below, which will take you to the very first episode of The Crowded Streets, as it appeared on these pages back in October, then keep following the links until you reach the end. If you want to, you can read the story while you do it. Or not. I suppose that's your choice, brother.

Go to The Crowded Streets, Part 1