Харлан Эллисон: Murder Plus: True Crime Stories From The Masters Of Detective Fiction

“Yeah, it was a Veteran’s Cab. The city is full of ’em.”

Dowie thanked the cabbie and released him. Then he turned to Jordan and Dupre. “That other cab,” he said. “Does it give you any ideas?”

Jordan rubbed his chin. “Balli drives a Veteran’s Cab. You can’t mean—”

“That’s just what I do mean,” said Dowie grimly. “It might have been a coincidence that Stella Marshack was around when the murder occurred, but we can’t write off the cab as another one so easily. I want the two of you to turn Miro Street inside out for anyone who used a Veteran’s Cab around three o’clock this afternoon. Hustle back here the moment you get anything.”

After the officers left, the autopsy report came from Coroner Nicholas J. Chetta’s office. It stated that Mrs. Balli met death by strangulation sometime between four and five o’clock that afternoon. The rope had fractured her larynx, indicating that the killer was a person of considerable strength. A second report, this time from the lab, stated that Balli’s blood-type had been obtained from his family physician and had matched the bloodstains found in the abandoned car.

Dowie hurried to Campagno’s office where he quickly briefed the young assistant district attorney on the latest developments.

“You figure Joe Balli killed his wife?” asked Campagno when he was finished.

“I’m sure of it,” replied Dowie. “From what I can learn about him, he’s crazy about redheads. His first wife was one, and so is Stella Marshack, and I’ll bet a month’s pay he’s got another one on the string right now. He’s planned this caper pretty well, but too many redheads tripped him up.”

Jordan and Dupre were waiting for him when he returned to his office.

“No dice, chief,” said Jordan. “Nobody around Miro Street hired a cab this afternoon.”

“That settles it,” snapped Dowie. “We’re going back to the Balli apartment and turn it inside out. We’ve got to find out who that third redhead is!”

A thorough inspection of this missing man’s room failed, however, to reveal the name of Balli’s latest paramour. Questioning Mrs. Martinez a second time, Dowie learned that the suspect was extremely fond of fish food, and frequently patronized a certain restaurant on Bourbon Street.

With a snapshot of the suspect they drove to the restaurant. The manager nodded when he saw Balli’s picture.

“Sure, he comes in here a lot,” he said. “Angelina’s his girl friend.”

“Is Angelina a redhead?”

The man raised his eyes in ecstasy. “And what a redhead!”

They discovered that Angelina’s last name was Prima, and that her father ran a tavern on Calumet Street, and lost little time in getting to the address. Papa Prima blanched when he learned that his daughter’s lover was a married man wanted for the murder of his wife.

“But that can’t be!” he exclaimed, horrified. “My girl and Joseph are going to be married someday.”

“Don’t bet on it,” advised Dowie. “Where is your daughter now?”

Prima kept shaking his head. “She’s with Joseph. They left for Rayne early this afternoon.”

Dowie returned to his office where he put through a call to the Acadia parish authorities in Rayne. He gave them complete descriptions of the wanted pair and requested that they be picked up on sight.

He felt confident that it wouldn’t be long before Balli would be in custody, and he was right. At three A.M. the next morning word came from Rayne that the couple had been apprehended.

Jordan and Dupre brought them back to New Orleans later that day. The girl was stunned when she learned of her lover’s duplicity. She swore she had no idea he was married.

Meanwhile, Balli, grilled incessantly for eight hours, finally broke down and admitted his guilt.

“Yes, I killed her,” he sobbed. “She and the kid were in my way. I couldn’t go on living with her any more. That’s why I got into the house the back way, strangled her when she wasn’t looking and went back to my cab. Nobody saw me. Then I cut myself on the wrist and let blood splatter on the cushions so that you’d think I had been murdered, too.”

“Didn’t you know it would get into the papers and that your girl friend or her parents would read about it?” asked Dowie.

Balli grinned. “You think I’m dumb, eh? Everybody thought my name was Joe Garcia, even Angelina. It was a wonderful idea, but something musta’ went wrong.”

Joseph Balli was indicted ten days later on first degree murder charges and will be tried sometime during the Fall term. Meanwhile he has lots of time to rue the day he began preferring redheads to blondes or brunettes.

D. L. Championcontributed some of the most offbeat private-eye series ever published in Black Mask and Dime Detective. His characters included a midget investigator; a hard-nosed, legless ex-cop; a gaudily dressed Mexican PI; and “the unchallenged world’s champion penny pincher.” Championnever made the leap to book form when the pulp market collapsed in the early 1950s. That is why he isn’t better known today. He turned, instead, to true crime (it paid faster!), and he published as many as fifteen stories a month under a dizzying slew of preposterous pen names, until his death in 1968. This story about a most unlikely femme fatale is one of his best.

When she was six years old, Belle Gunness underwent a searing, traumatic experience as usual as it was unnerving. Every day of the week, save Sunday, she watched her father as he neatly decapitated her mother.

Belle’s parents were members of a theatrical troupe which traveled extensively through the Scandinavian countries.

Her father was a magician and the climax of his act consisted in placing his wife’s head on a block and releasing a miniature guillotine — which apparently decapitated her. Synthetic blood gushed realistically all over the stage and the head appeared to fall with a delightful macabre pop into a wicker basket.

It was an extremely effective act and the audience ate it up. So did little Belle Gunness. She witnessed this execution at each matinee and enjoyed it more than any other spectator.

It wasn’t too long before she invented her own play act. It was a simple game which required only a doll and a hatchet. Little Belle began chopping off the head of every doll she could get her hands on.

The world at this time was totally unaware of Sigmund Freud, and psychiatry had not yet been invented. No one knew what a psychic trauma was and no one had the slightest idea that her father’s guillotine act would profoundly affect Belle Gunness’s later life — and the lives of at least a dozen men and possibly as many as 50.

Belle’s father died while she was still a child and her mother brought her from Norway to Chicago. It was there that she met Merrel Sorenson. Sorenson was a man of middle age and a widower. By profession he was a private detective, but whatever talents he had in his field never bothered Belle.

They had been married for a year when a fire in their Chicago home destroyed the furniture. Belle, to her delight, collected something better than $2000 in insurance. She considered this in the light of found money, and began to wonder how she could get more of it.

It occurred to her then that Sorenson carried a $3500 policy on his life.

Her first move was to persuade her unsuspecting husband to take out a second insurance policy in the amount of $5000. Her second was to negotiate for the purchase of a farm in La Porte, Indiana. Belle Gunness was not possessed of many virtues but she was by no means a fool. It seemed to her that in the event of Merrel Sorenson’s dying under curious circumstances, a rural sheriff could be more easily tricked than the Chicago police department. In addition, the farm at La Porte was a bargain. Some years before an entire family, consisting of seven members, had been mysteriously slaughtered during the night. The house reputed, locally, to be thoroughly haunted — not by a single ghost but by seven.